by A R Azzam
Revival in the east, then Nur al-Din was its potent symbol in Syria. Indeed,
so great was Nur al-Din's impact on those around him and so transformative
was his presence and influence, that his actions created a tide which pulled
Saladin and others in its wake. Throughout his life Saladin had to live with
Nur al-Din's reputation and legacy looming over him. Certainly he was a
source of inspiration, for Saladin had great respect for the man in whose
court he grew up and to whom he owed so much. But he was also a burden,
for it was, above all, Nur al-Din's legacy, and its supposed betrayal, which
was used as a stick by Saladin's critics with which to beat him.
• 35 •
Chapter 3
The Young Saladin
These people speak nothing but Frcmkish; we do not understa-nd what they
spty.
Usamn Ibn Munqidh, twelfth-century Muslim warrior and courtier
r'rom Aleppo Nur al-Din, accompanied by Shirkuh who had entered his
service, watched as Baalbek surrendered to Damascus. Although Nur
al-Din could not blame Ayyub for surrendering the city - since no one had
• been able to come to his aid - Ayyub's move to Damascus effectively meant
that he was now in the Damascene camp, in theory opposed to Nur al-Din
and his own brother. Aware how close the two brothers were, Nur al-Din
naturally distanced himself from Shirkuh and for a period of time a certain
tension existed between them. In the meantime, however, Ayyub had been
busy and the old fox succeeded in having the Damascenes appoint him as
head of their militia, which was an important defence force which guarded
the city. It was a critical period for Damascus for, in 1148, the city suffered
an onslaught from the Second Crusade. Even though the crusade itself was
a fiasco, the effect it had on Damascus was profound, for not since the First
Crusade had the inhabitants of a major Muslim city come face to face with
the Franks. Prior to the Second Crusade, Damascus had become a Franldsh
protectorate; its atabeg paid tribute to the Idng of Jerusalem, put up with
Prankish raids on his lands, and authorised the king's envoys to inspect the
slave markets so as to release any Christian slaves.^ But the unexpected
• 36
3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN
attack on the city - for initially the aim had been Edessa - changed every-
thing. In fact, as events would prove, the decision to attack Damascus
was disastrous for the crusaders and perhaps fatal in the long term to the
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem itself,^ for it demonstrated that Damascus was
now the key to Syria. From Antioch and Aleppo the centre of conflict had
shifted south to Damascus, and from Damascus it would, move further
south to Egypt. The crusaders penetrated as far as the gardens of the walls
of Damascus, but then, confused by the network of streams and walls, were
picked off by the militia and had to beat a hasty undignified retreat. No
crusader was ever to set foot in Damascus except as an emissary, a tourist or,
most commonly, as a prisoner of war.^ The shock and horror caused by the
Franldsh attack now concentrated the minds of the Damascenes, and in that
the ulama played a crucial role. As the heartbeat of Sunni Islam in Syria,
Damascus had been the first city in which the seeds of the Sunni Revival had
taken hold, and it was in Damascus - and in light of the Second Crusade -
that the Islamic revanche commenced. It is noteworthy that Muslim sources
are at pains to point out that during the siege of Damascus two members of
the religious classes - Abd al-Rahman al-Halhuli and Yusuf al-Findawli -
were killed while taking part in the fighting. If the fall of Edessa had sig-
nalled a change in the tide, then the siege of Damascus signalled a change
in the mood of the Muslims.
The religious milieu in which Saladin grew up
We do not know whether Saladin was in Damascus during the attack on the
city or whether, more probably, he was in Baalbek, but one can imagine that
the dramatic and traumatic assault on the city would have impacted greatly
on him. However, the question that needs to be asked is how much did he
actually know of the Franks who were attacking Damascus? How did he
view this strange enemy? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, was that Saladin
would have known very litde about the Franks and would have cared less.
To understand why this was the case, we first have to understand that the
Crusades were largely both a western phenomenon and obsession. In fact it
would be fair to say that the Mongol invasion had a far more dramatic
impact on the Muslims than the crusaders. Bernard Lewis has argued that
for two centuries the Muslims of the Middle East were in intimate if hostile
contact with groups of Franks established among them - yet at no time did
• 37 •
SALAD I N
they develop the least interest in them.^ This claim may appear slightly exag-
gerated, but it does without question capture the Muslim attitude towards
the Franks. Although Muslim chroniclers used the term Ifranj (Franks)
when identifying the emerging enemy, they quickly began to differentiate
between them and began classifying them according to their ethnic groups.®
Knowledge of the Franks, however, did not necessarily mean interest in
them, and it can be safely surmised that Europe held few attractions for the
medieval Muslim. Indeed, if Europe was perceived in the Muslim con-
sciousness, then it was seen as a cold, intemperate place. The description of
the chronicler al-Masudi of the Franks was typical of this view; the nature of
the Europeans, he writes, was gross, their manners harsh, their understand-
ing dull, and their tongues heavy. A contemporary of al-Masudi, Ibn Abi-1
Ashath, who died in 970 went even further and declared that the inhabitants
of Europe shed their hair annually as animals do. One century later the
Muslim view had not altered, as was reflected in tlie writing of the Spanish
Muslim Said Ibn Ahmad, who described the Europeans as being overcome
with ignorance and apathy, lack of discernment and stupidity. Certainly a
recurrent theme during this period among Muslim chroniclers was the moral
baseness and lack of personal hygiene of the Franks. Writing half a century
after Saladin's death, al-Qazwini asserted that Europeans bathed no more than
once or twice a year and that they never washed their garments. Nowhere is
there any attempt to move away from this caricature and towards a deeper
understanding of the nature of the Franks, and this was largely due to the
sense of superiority and condescension felt towards the Christians.
In short, despite the military defeats which saw the establishment of
the crusading states, the Muslims remained adamant they had little to learn
from Europe. So when a Christian knight offered to take Usama Ibn
Munqidh's son back with him to Europe to educate him, Usama's response
was one of barely concealed horror: 'A truly cultivated man would never be
guilty of such a suggestion; my son might just as well be taken prisoner'.
Even after Muslim Icnowledge of the Christians had deepened, the Muslims
&nb
sp; still clung to their old polemical stances. Sivan concludes that the lack of any
attempt by the Muslims to engage with the Christians was because Islam
was at that time in full stagnation,*^ but we have seen earlier how the Sunni
Revival had led to a flowering of religious thought. Clearly Islam was not in
stagnation and yet one is struck by the complete lack of curiosity shown by
the Muslims towards the Christians. Certainly very few Muslims made an
• 38 •
3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN
effort to learn the languages spoken by the crusaders, and although on an
everyday level Muslims and Franks engaged in trade such interactions must
not be exaggerated; the ideological divide remained and regular contact
did not, in the words of Hillenbrand, imply that the Muslims respected
or liked the Franks, either individually or as a group/ At best the Muslims
were intrigued by the Frankish idiosyncrasies and their manners, even if
they viewed their presence as alien and unwelcome. Admittedly the Franks
were courageous and hardened, but then again these were qualities best
associated with animals. The references to animals was deliberate, as was the
moral laxity, and were summed up by the term najas, which is best trans-
lated as things that are impure. To the Muslim ear no term is more shock-
ing than that of najas, for it implies not simply a state of uncleanliness but
of intrinsic impurity. For Muslims pigs are najas, and for medieval Muslims
the Franks were najas. Not surprisingly, therefore, for Muslims the Franldsh
occupation of the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem
was an act of grave desecration. Even more than the military occupation was
the profanation of the Muslim sacred space by Christian symbols of worship:
the gilded dome of the Dome of the Rock was surmounted by a cross and
the al-Aqsa mosque was occupied by the Knights Templar. The removal of
the cross was therefore one of Saladin's first acts. Indeed his actions, as we
shall see, on entering Jerusalem in 1187, confirmed how deeply entrenched
such Muslim views were.
Although the presence of oriental Christians meant that the Muslims
were familiar with the tenets of the faith, they showed littie interest in
Christianity, whether it was Latin or Byzantine. It is likely that it must have
taken some time for them to understand the difference between the native
Christians and those pouring in from Europe. At the same time it was clear
that those Franks who had settied among Musfims quickly became acclima-
tised to life in the orient and, human nature being what it is, they gradually
adopted a Muslim lifestyle. Usama Ibn Munqidh described an incident
when he was in Antioch and met with a knight who had arrived during the
First Crusade. Usama was invited to the knight's house, where a meal was
prepared. 'Eat and set your mind at ease,' the host assured Usama, 'for I
don't eat the Franks food. I have Egyptian women cooks. I eat only what
they have cooked and no pork enters my house.' The Muslims were also
aware of another group of Franks - the military orders of the Hospitallers
and the Templars - in whom the fire of the Crusades continued to burn
• 39 •
SALADIN
implacably bright and whose vows determined that no compromise be
made. Towards them the Muslims showed an unwavering hostility, and
Saladin certainly was uncompromising in his enmity towards them: 'I will
purify the earth of these two filthy races', he claimed, and when the oppor-
tunity arose after his victory at Hattin he was true to his word.
The Muslims called Ascalon 'the virgin of the desert' for it had become
the only coastal city which still held out against the Franks. But in 1153
Baldwin III captured the great city-port - an event that struck terror in the
hearts of Damascenes, who firmly believed that their city would be the next
one to fall. For the Damascenes there was only one possible protector: Nur
al-Din. But they remained wary, for he was Zengi's son and he would surely
seek a bloody revenge for the number of times they had thwarted his father.
It was here that Ayyub's presence was crucial for Nur al-Din's cause, for
he spoke to the people of Damascus and soothed their concerns, and they
listened. In this way Ayyub was instrumental in handing Damascus to Nur
al-Din, who entered the city in 1154 without any bloodshed. But first
Ayyub knew that he had to soothe his own relations with Nur al-Din, for
the latter had not forgotten that Ayyub had handed over Baalbek, and he
did this in a manner which justified his reputation for diplomacy: he sent
Saladin - now aged 14 years old - to Aleppo to enter into Nur al-Din's
service. No more dramatic an act of loyalty could be offered, and the wily
Ayjoib Icnew it would be well received. Shirkuh now introduced his nephew
, to Nur al-Din - this was probably the first time the two met - and Nur
al-Din reciprocated Ayyub's act by accepting Saladin into his service and by
granting Saladin some land. As for Ayyub, he was richly rewarded and was
made governor of Damascus, and once again the two brothers were re-
united. For Nur al-Din the capture of Damascus - and peacefully at that -
was the fulfilment of a dream, for he had now achieved what no Muslim
ruler had accomplished since the height of the Abbasid caliphate: he united
the two most important cities in Syria, Damascus and Aleppo, under one
political banner. This development was watched with alarm by the Latin
Kingdom of Jeruslaem but, for the time being, the political situation was
finely balanced, with Nur al-Din's increasing power matched and con-
fronted by two formidable kings of the Jerusalem: first Baldwin III, and,
when he died in 1163, his successor Amalric.
When Nur al-Din entered Damascus he discovered that 11 rehgious
institutions had been constructed.® What is noteworthy is that all 11 had
• 40 •
3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN
been endowed privately. In other words they were the products of pious
acts rather than state policy. This all changed with his arrival; by the end of
his reign Damascus had a total of 22 madrasas, while Aleppo - where the
Shiite influence remained strong - had only eight.® A closer look at this
period confirms the rapid growth of madrasas; between 1076 and 1154 -
roughly from the establishment of the initial madrasas in Baghdad by Nizam
ul-Mulk and Nur al-Din's entry into Damascus - 11 religious institutions
were built, at an average of one every seven years. In roughly the same
period of time, between 1154 when Nur al-Din entered the city and when
Damascus fell to the Mongols - that is to say during the period when
the city was under the rule of Nur al-Din, Saladin and the Ayyubids - 110
religious institutions were constructed, of which 92 were madrasas, at an
average of just under one institution every year.^" The social and political
implications of this rate of growth would be profound.
Naturally the rapid increase of the number of madrasas in Syria demanded
the appointment of qualified people who could teach in them. Although
some native Sunni ulama
could be found - like the Banu'l Adim of Aleppo
and the Banu Asakir of Damascus - the rapid growth in the number of
establishments meant that scholars from further afield had to be brought in.
The welcoming of the ulama to Syria were the fruits of a positive and con-
scious policy first developed in Syria by Nur al-Din." There could be no
better example of the migration of scholars into Syria than that of Kamal
al-Din al-Shahrazuri who had served Zengi in Mosul and who must have
impressed Nur al-Din, since he brought him with him when he came to
Damascus and appointed him to the position of qadi. This was symbolically
a very important appointment, since Kamal al-Din was not only a scholar, a
professor of Shafii law and a qadi of Damascus, but he was also Nur al-Din's
vizier in charge of government administration and the state bureaucracy. No
better example can be found of a scholar who gradually became transformed
into a government official, and no clearer demonstration can there be of
how closely Nur al-Din was inspired by Nizam ul-Mulk's diktat of twining
religion and government and creating a loyal Sunni cadre of administrators.
The beginning of the Islamic counter-crusade
Saladin's family participated fully in the Sunni Revival which spread across
Syria. His father, Ayyub, built a madrasa in Damascus and a sufi monastry
• 41 •
SALAD I N
in Baalbek, while Shirkuh was more prolific; he founded two madrasas in
Aleppo and two in Damascus, one of which overlooked the lawns created
by Nur al-Din for military practice and polo, probably reflecting Shirkuh's
position as the commander-in-chief of his army. The most strildng thing
about this madrasa was tliat it was open both for Shafiis and Hanafis. This
was the second madrasa in the Muslim world - and the first in Syria - which
combined two sects.^^ All this of course commenced with Nizam ul-Mulk,
but never could he have imagined that the madrasas which he launched
would be the institutions from which Nur al-Din and Saladin would draw
their strength in their battles with the crusaders. In a previous century the
Hanbali jurists had come to the Abbasid caliph's aid to support his Qadiri
Creed. Now, once again, it was the jurists who carried the message of the
