How Saladin Took Jerusalem in 1187
When the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, they killed so many of its people that their own chroniclers boasted of riding through streets that ran with blood. When Saladin took the city back in 1187, he let the people walk out alive. The contrast was deliberate, it was noticed at the time, and it has fixed his reputation ever since, even among the descendants of the men he beat.
The making of a sultan
Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub was a Kurd, born in Tikrit around 1137, who rose through service to the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din. Sent to Egypt as a junior commander, he ended up master of it, abolished the Shia Fatimid caliphate there, and after Nur ad-Din's death pulled Egypt and Syria together under his own authority. By the 1180s he commanded the resources to do what no Muslim leader had managed since the First Crusade: face the Crusader states as a single power rather than a patchwork of rivals.
Hattin
The decisive year was 1187. Provoked by the raids of the baron Reynald of Chatillon, who had attacked Muslim caravans and pilgrims in defiance of a truce, Saladin drew the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem out into open country in the dry heat of July. At the Horns of Hattin, a pair of hills above Tiberias, he cut the Crusaders off from water and let thirst and the sun do much of his work before the fighting was finished. The Christian field army was destroyed almost entirely. With it gone, the fortified towns of the kingdom had no one left to defend them.
The fall of Jerusalem
Jerusalem surrendered that October after a short siege. Its defender, Balian of Ibelin, negotiated terms, and Saladin agreed that the inhabitants could buy their freedom for a set ransom. When it became clear that many of the poor could not pay, Saladin and his brother al-Adil let large numbers go free anyway, and Saladin was criticised by his own treasury for the revenue he had waved away. There was no massacre. The churches were left standing, and Eastern Christians were allowed to remain.
The legend that crossed enemy lines
His secretary and biographer, Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad, recorded his patience, his generosity and his refusal to break his word, and the portrait is flattering but not implausible given the conduct it describes. What is remarkable is that European writers came to agree. Within a century or two, Saladin had been turned into a model of chivalry in Christian literature, the noble opponent against whom Crusader kings could measure themselves. Few conquerors have been so admired by the people they conquered. He died in Damascus in 1193 with so little personal wealth left that there was barely enough to pay for his grave.
The Saladin print is part of the Riwayah Empires collection. You can view the print.
Saladin was one chapter in a much longer imperial story. For the wider sweep, see the great Islamic empires.