by A R Azzam
Sunni Revival into battie. They were the leaders of the public opinion in the
mosque and in the market place, and it was they who provided the bridge
between the common people and their military overlords.^' And it was the
establishment of madrasas in Damascus and Aleppo but in also small and
large cities throughout Syria that produced the jurists - at first hundreds and
then thousands - to carry this message; one can effectively speak of the birth
of an army of ulama. The ideology of the counter-crusade was built on the
platform of madrasas which spread the message of the Sunni Revival, and it
was in the madrasas that the alliance between the military princes and the
religious classes was forged.
It was also jurists who were the first to sense the chill of the crusader
shadow, and to do so at least one generation before others could sense
it. They may have struggled to come to terms with the sheer scale of the
brutality and violence visited upon them, but one is struck by the astuteness
and sophistication of the analyses of the jurists as to why they were being
attacked, and in its prescient and objective contemporary assessment of the
First Crusade no Muslim source can match the analysis offered by Ali Ibn
Tahir al-Sulami, who died in 1106. What makes his views, compiled in
the Kitab al-Jihad (Book of the Holy War), remarkable was the clarity with
which he understood the political picture at a time when the Franks were
still besieging the cities of Syria. Al-Sulami clearly understood that this
enemy was unlike previous ones, for though there may have been an initial
confused belief that the Christian armies were nothing more than another
Byzantine foray, al-Sulami was not confiased. These were not Byzantines -
he labelled the invaders Ifranj (Franks) and not Rum (Byzantines) - and he
42
3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN
saw their aim all too clearly/^ Al-Sulami warned that 'Jerusalem was the
ultimate of their desires'/® bvxt he also warned that Prankish appetite for
conquest would not be sated there, for 'they hope now for certain to make
themselves masters of the whole countiy and to take its inhabitants cap-
tive'/^ Such was the extremity of the danger posed by the Franks that al-
Sulami made a strildng and unprecedented appeal for the Abbasid and
Fatimid caliphs to put aside their differences - an extraordinary statement
given the bitterness of the Sunni-Shiite conflict. Throughout, there is
a sense of urgency in al-Sulami's words; strike now, he urges, while the
enemy has a small amount of cavalry and while they are distant from their
reinforcements - strike now, before it is too late. He even established a
blueprint for Nur al-Din and Saladin when he insisted that the only way the
Muslims would triumph was if Syria, Egypt and northern Iraq reconciled
their 'old hatreds and secret hostilities'^'' and came together to regain lands
lost. A prophetic statement indeed, but like many a prophet al-Sulami was
without honour in his own country and his warnings went unheeded,^® since
the military leaders had no intention whatsoever of sacrificing their own
political interests for the sake of some nebulous ideal of Islamic solidarity.
Now, in the reign of Nur al-Din, al-Sulami's words found a willing
listener. In his seminal work on the life of Nur al-Din, Elisseef summarised
the four cornerstones on which liis system of belief was based: the revival of
jihad, the liberation of Jerusalem, the re-establishment of the political unity
of Islam and the diffusion of Sunni orthodoxy.^" Of particular interest, and
very much in al-Sulami's tradition, is a treatise written at the height of Nur
al-Din's power by an anonymous religious scholar in Aleppo. The Bahr
al-Favai^d (Sea of Precious Virtues) offers a contemporary insight into
how the ulama of this period viewed the fighting of the holy war, and two
fascinating facts emerge. First, the author of the Bahr al-Fava'id stresses the fundamental role to be played in the holy war by the religious scholar.
'Beware', he writes, 'lest you think that a ghazi [someone who volunteers
to go on jihad] is only he who holds a sword . . . for indeed a scholar who
in a mosque . . . holds pen in hand and knows the proofs of Islam is a
warrior and his pen is sharper than the s w o r d . T h e author even insists that
so important is the role of the religious scholar that he should be entitied
to a share of the spoils of war. Second, and even though the author was
concerned with the struggle with the Franks in Syria, he makes it clear that
the struggle against heresy is of far more importance. 'The shedding of
43 •
SALADIN
blood of a heretic is the equal of seventy holy wars.' The obsession with the
crusades has tended to obscure the fundamental point that the Sunni
Revival was, in the words of Irwin, a moral rearmament movement in which
both rulers and the religious elite devoted themselves to stamping out cor-
ruption and heterodoxy in the Muslim community, as part of a grand jihad
which had much wider aims than merely the removal of the Franks from the
coastline of Palestine.
It was certainly during Nur al-Din's time that Jerusalem became the
focus of the ideological campaign of the counter-crusade, and it was from
Damascus that this ideological campaign originated. For Muslims the sanc-
tity of Jerusalem was clear: the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque
lay within the city, and it was from Jerusalem that Muslims believe that the
Prophet Muhammad made his Night Journey to the Heavens. They also
believe that Jerusalem will be the site on which the Resurrection will take
place on the Day of Judgement. Certainly Nasir-i Khusrau, the Persian
traveller who visited Jerusalem in 1047, noted the spiritual importance of
the city when he remarked that those Muslims who were unable to perform
the pilgrimage to Mecca assembled instead in Jerusalem and performed the
rites they would have made in Mecca. What is certain is that the yearning
for Jerusalem was exploited fully by the ulama who filled Nur al-Din's ranks,
and it was they who unceasingly whispered to him about Jerusalem, until
their whisperings became a crescendo. There is no doubt that Jerusalem
was in their minds before it became implanted in the heart of Nur al-Din,
but, once it became implanted, his ambitions became totally focused on
Jerusalem.^''
The education of Saladin
It is true that we know very little about the early life of Saladin, but we laiow
very little about the early life of most medieval men. In an age when a silent
acceptance of the will of elders was considered a basic virtue and a sign
of good breeding, Saladin's early life can be understood as nothing more
than an honourable conformity to this tradition. Saladin himself wrote that
'Children are brought up in the way in which their elders were brought up'.
This was an age where adolescence was shortened as much as possible and
where the emphasis on early maturity was stressed. Not surprisingly, there
are no references to Saladin's birth and early boyhood, and his early days
• 44 •
3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN
are, for the most part, a blank.^^ That the study of the Quran should be at
the heart of his education was only to be expected, since the Quran was the
assimilative force which instinctively united the Muslims, and one imagines
that Saladin would have spent many hours memorising as many verses as
he could. The study of the Quran as well as the hadith would have given
him an excellent knowledge of Arabic, for although by birth he was a Kurd,
his education and learning would have been arabised at a very early age.
Nevertheless, it is likely that he spoke Kurdish at home. He would also have
equally been fluent in Turkish, which was the language of the military. His
study of Arabic would not have been limited to the Quran, and he is cred-
ited with having learnt by heart the HnnMsnh of Abu Tammam,^® which is
generally considered as one of the greatest anthologies of Arabic literature.
This was a period when a man could not call himself educated if he was
not immersed in poetry, for poetry held a position of honour not accorded
to any of the other arts. The spoken word well put moved cultivated men
as nothing in life was permitted to,^^ and a right thought articulated in the
cleverest way decorated the scene as much as did rich robes or flowered gar-
dens.^® Arabic was considered not just a language, it was an art. Knowledge
of its grammatical intricacies was essential and command of its rich vocabu-
lary vital, since just one line of poetry had the power to elevate the position
of an individual or a tribe. The Bani Anfolnaqah tribe, for example, were
mocked for their name, which translated read the tribe of the nose of the
camel. Thanks, however, to one line of poetry by one of their members,
embarrassment was transformed to pride: 'There are people who are the
nose whilst others are the tails, and who compares the nose of the camel
with its tail?' Certainly in Saladin's court could be found some of the most
distinguished writers of the twelfth century and some of the most famous
poets. None more so were the two men who were closest to him: Imad al-
Din al-Isfahani, who worked in his chancery and was also the most famous
poet of his age and the innovator of a much copied style of prose; and al-
Qadi al-Fadil, who headed Saladin's chancery and who was Saladin's closest
adviser, as well as a formidable poet. In the case of Saladin himself, it appears
that though the poetic licence in him was limited, he was equally steeped in
Arabic literature.
An equally important part of an educated man's arsenal was knowledge
of the maqamat, a literary term usually translated as assemblies. Composed
in the form of rhyming prose, the maqamat were famous - mainly among
• 45 •
SALADIN
learned audiences, though certainly not exclusively so - throughout the
Arab world. This popularity was best reflected in the label accorded to the
recognised founder of this literary form, al-Hamadhani, who in the tenth
century was known as Badi ul-Zaman (Wonder of his Age). Through the
adventures of his leading character, the unscrupulous rogue Abul Fatih al-
Iskandarani, al-Hamadhani charmed his audience with his brilliance in wit
and rhetoric. A century later, al-Harriri took the maqamat to new heights,
through which he displayed, through anecdotes relating to a charlatan by
the name of Abu Zayd, a brilliant virtuoso of the intricacies Ai-abic language.
The audiences were suitably dazzled, for the maqamat of al-Harriri were
widely accepted as the greatest literary treasure of Arabic, after the Quran.
The brilliance of the Arabic was combined with anecdotes which were not
just daring but on occasion religiously scandalous. This, however, did not
dilute their appeal among the audiences, who delighted in the duel between
the barbed wit that provoked Islamic sensibilities and the brilliance of the
language which ultimately soothed it.^'
Humour and satire were a noble tradition among poets, who offered a
revealing and more human glimpse into a world that often tended to be
ignored by those writing for historical posterity. In the case of Saladin
the contemporary presence of the North African al-Wahrani, who died in
1179 - a minor poet by his own admission - reminds us that despite the
efforts of the pious guardians of the Sunni Revival in general and Saladin's
legacy in particular, the bawdy and coarse humour and the witty mot juste
was never far away.'" To Saladin's nephew, Taqi ul-Din, therefore, al-
Wahrani could claim that his words were 'sweeter than a beating with a
prostitute's slipper'.®^ Clearly the two men knew each other well, for, on
another occasion, al-Wahrani urged him to give up the nonsense of respon-
sibility and the holy war and to 'setde in the orchards of Damascus, turn
from repentance and collect together the sinners of Damascus, the prosti-
tutes of Mosul, the panders of Aleppo and the singing girls of Iraq, delight-
ing the five senses'.'^ Saladin himself was not exempt from al-Wahrani's
wit, though he certainly gave as good as he got. Once, when al-Wahrani
protested that he was a true believer, Saladin tartly retorted that he would
not believe that al-Wahrani was a Muslim 'even if I saw you walking on
water
Unlike Nur al-Din, whose love of books was famous throughout the
Muslim world, from a young age it was clear that Saladin was not suited for
• 46 •
3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN
the scholarly life. Indeed it would be fair to say that his knowledge never
matched his p i e t y , a n d it was probably for this reason that he spoke very
litde about his education later in life. His studies in Islamic science stopped
at an early age and he preferred to follow in the path of his father or his
uncle rather than that of the scholar. As a young man he visited the great
Damascene scholar Ibn Asaldr, but he took little from this visit apart from
a great respect for the sayings of the Prophet, the hadith.'^ As Ibn Shaddad,
who at one stage was as close to Saladin as anyone, diplomatically put it,
Saladin knew just enough so that when he spoke to scholars he was capable
of saying good things: 'He understood of what one needs to understand'.^®
Saladin's comparative lack of religious education was of course not a critical
factor, since he was not going to be judged on how good a scholar he was,
but how capable a soldier. Although there were exceptions of men straddling
the two worlds of the military and the ulama, these exceptions were rare;
among Saladin's contemporaries the name of a fellow Kurd, Isa al-Hakkari,
of whom we shall speak later, is the one that springs to mind. A madrasa-
trained member of the ulama was someone who devoted his early life to
studying in order to pursue a career as a jurist or teacher, while a member
of the military aristocracy was always conscious that his reputation would be
recognised on the battlefield.
Piety, of course, was not measured by education. When Saladin was
about 12, he moved with his father to Damascus, and was introduced
to Qutb al-Din al-Nishapuri. A scholar of great renown, al-Nishapuri had
/>
originally studied in Baghdad and then made his way to Aleppo where -
in respect of his great renown - he had two madrasas built for him by Nur
al-Din and Shirkuh. Intriguingly we also read that he was used by the two
men as an envoy in carrying out diplomatic missions - clearly a role only
given to those who could be completely trusted. Ibn Shaddad noted the
spiritual influence that al-Nishapuri had over the young Saladin, writing that
the scholar taught Saladin a litany of prayers to be recited 'which con-
tained all that he needed'. Although the exact formula of the litany is not
Icnown, it would probably have followed the traditional form of a series
of invocations, supplications and praise of the Prophet. It appears Saladin
persevered with this litany for Ibn Shaddad saw him teaching it to his
children, 'sitting with them and teaching it to them while they recited it'.
Al-Nishapuri is also of particular interest as he is the first of many of those
who would become Saladin's closest companions or advisers who had
• 47 •
SALADIN
Studied or were spiritual disciples of Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, who died in 1166
and who was universally recognised as the spiritual pole (qutb) of his age.
No scholar had more influence, during Saladin's age, than al-Jilani. If
al-Ghazali more than anyone else may be said to have prepared the way for
the general recognition of sufism, it was al-Jilani, destined to be Icnown as
the 'Sultan of the Saints', who was to make the recognition flilly operative.
We Icnow that the influence of al-Ghazali on al-Jilani was considerable, for
he was well versed in al-Ghazali's work, Ihya, Ulum al-Din, and copied parts of it word for word.^® Born into a family based south of the Caspian sea,
al-Jilani was sent, as a youth, to Baghdad to further his religious studies, and
he became a jurist, well versed in Hanbali law, before he became initiated
into sufism.'' So impressed were the people of Baghdad by al-Jilani's
preaching that he was given a madrasa near one of the gates of the city, and
visitors who came from distant lands made a point of attending his sermons
and mystical discourses.^" Often people came the night before so that they
