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Saladin and His Admirers: A Biographical Reassessment

Author(s): P. M. HoltReviewed work(s):Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 46,No. 2 (1983), pp. 235-239Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/615389 .

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SALADIN AND HIS ADMIRERS:

A BIOGRAPHICAL REASSESSMENT1

By P. M. HOLT

'The lifeandachievementsof Saladin constitute one of the great moments inthe history of the crusades. In literature he appears most frequently as a

conqueringhero,who fought his enemiesvictoriously and in the end beat themto a standstill. But a closer examination of his actual life reveals him not

only as a conqueror,but as a man who struggledwith enemies of his own sidewho finally joined him and fought along with him under his sole command.From this angle we see him as a man who fought for his ideals, and fought, not

victoriously, but in a measure that fell short of his hopes and ambitions.' 2

Theseopening

words of Sir Hamilton Gibb'sbiography

of Saladin are the

latest, and perhaps the last, expression of a tradition in the European historio-

graphy of the Crusadeswhich has been influential at least since the publicationin 1898 of Stanley Lane-Poole's Saladin and the all of thekingdomofJerusalem.The origin of this tradition may indeed go even further back to Sir WalterScott's Talisman, which Gibb himself, we are told, gave' to students as a workof art from which they could learn much about Islamic history.' 3

This view of Saladinis, however, confronted with the difficultythat from the

beginning of his independent reign in 570/1174 until his death in 589/1193,Saladin spent twelve years mainly in fighting the Zangids, the family and

partisans of his former lord, Niir al-Din, and five years only in the Holy War

against the Latin kingdom and the Third Crusade.Any judgement of his careerand character must depend largely on the view taken of those first twelve years.Gibb saw Saladin as inspired throughout by the resolve to wage the HolyWar against the Franks, and indeed as having wider aims, 'to restore andrevive the political fabric of Islam as a single united empire, not under his ownrule, but by restoring the rule of the revealed law under the direction of theAbbasid Caliphate.'4 This teleological interpretation of Saladin's career rests

upon contemporaryArabic sources, in which already by the time of his death a

legend of his achievements was coming into existence. Since these sources are

only briefly discussedin the work underreview (pp. 2-3), a fuller examination is

perhaps justifiable.Saladin's two contemporarybiographerswere Bahi' al-Din Ibn Shaddid and

'Imid al-Din al-Isfahini. Ibn Shaddid's work, al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya

wa'l-mah.Xsinal-Yisufiyya, was published in Europe with a Latin translation by

the Dutch orientalist, Albert Schultens, as early as 1732. It was thus a primeinfluence in forming the view of Saladin held by European historians. It wasused by Gibbon, who calls the author Bohadin, and eighty years later, whenWilliam Stubbs wrote his introduction to Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, Bohadinwas still the principal, and almost the sole, Arabic source available to him.

Al-Isfahini wrote a seven-volume chronicle of Saladin's life and times, entitled

1Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin : the politics of the Holy War.(University of Cambridge Oriental Publications.) viii, 456 pp. Cambridge, etc.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1982. ?25.

2 Hamilton [A. R. ] Gibb, The life of Saladin, Oxford, 1973, 1.3 Albert Hourani, ' H. A. R. Gibb: the vocation of an orientalist ', Europe andtheMiddleEast,

[London, 1980], at p. 106.4 H. A. R. Gibb,' The achievement of Saladin ', Studies on the civilisation of Islam, Boston,

[1962], at p. 100.

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236 r. M.Ho0r

al-Barq al-Shami. Only two complete volumes are now extant, but excerptsfrom the others survive, and an abridgement by al-Bundari, SanJ al-barq

al-Shimsi,has recently been published in full. He also wrote an account of thelast glorious phase of Saladin's career from 583/1187 to his death, entitled

al-Fath al-Quss7iJi'l-fath l-Qudsi.These may appear to be impeccable sources, since both men belonged to the

inner circle of Saladin'scourt officials,Ibn Shaddadhaving been his army-judgeand al-Isfahini his secretary. Such in fact was Gibb'sview. But some caution is

necessary. These after all were royal biographies, written by courtiers abouttheir master. Al-Fath was certainly completed within a few months of Saladin's

death, and D. S. Richards has shown that much of it was ' already available insomeform during Saladin's lifetime' as 'the work was probably intended for

presentation to Saladin.'5 Al-Nawadir,

which Richards has shown to be partlydependent on al-Fath, was perhaps completed as early as 1198, and certainly notlater than 1216, i.e. at a time when Saladin's Ayyubid kinsmen were the

unquestionedrulers of Egypt and MuslimSyria. Writing on medieval Europeanhistoriography, Beryl Smalley has remarked that,

Royal biographies have one feature in common: they are propagandapieces. The writers' purposes and techniques varied, but they had all tofind a mould which would contain the unruly facts. The prince had to be

presented as his biographerwished to show him to his readers or hearers."

This was also true of Ibn Shaddad and al-Isfahani. Thereis a further considera-

tion. Both of them had gone over to Saladin's service from the Zangids.Al-Isfahani, who had been Niir al-Din's secretary, had joined Saladinin the yearafter his master's death. Ibn Shaddad's home was at Mosul, and he negotiatedwith Saladin on behalf of its Zangidruler in 581/1186. It was not until two yearslater that he entered Saladin's service. Both men may have sought to justifytheir shift of allegiance by exalting Saladin's characterand achievements. Onemust also bear in mind that Ibn Shaddad could write from personalknowledge

only of the last years when Saladin was engaged in the critical struggle with theFranks.

About the same time as these works by Saladin'spartisans, there appeareda

work by the historian Ibn al-Athir (555-630/1160-1233), who spent most of hislife in Mosul,and who gives the Zangidview of events. His dynastic history of

the Zangids, al-Bahir fT ta'rikh atabakatal-Mawsil, completed in 607/1211,appearsto be a counterblast to the writings of Saladin'sadmirers. Although thetitle refersspecificallyto the atabegsof Mosul,Ibn al-Athir'spatrons, much spaceis devoted to Nfilral-Din, who ruled only in Syria but was undoubtedly the most

distinguished member of the family. In his introductory remarks,Ibn al-Athir

emphasizesthe role of the Zangidsas championsin the Holy War. His long anddetailed eulogy of Nfir al-Din appears in some respects to retort to statementsmade by Ibn Shaddid about Saladin.

Thus within about twenty years of Saladin'sdeath, there came into existencetwo rival presentations of the twelfth-century rulersof MuslimSyria, glorifyingthe exploits of the Zangidsand Saladinrespectively. Thesetwo historiographieswere reconciled by Abf? Shima (559-665/1203-68), who passed almost hiswhole life in Damascus. The title of his work, Kitab al-rawdatayn i akhbar

al-dawlataynal-Niiriyya wa'l-Saldhiyya (' The book of the two gardens con-

5 D. S. Richards, ' A consideration of the sources for the life of Saladin ', Journal of Semitic

Studies, xxv, 1, 1980, at p. 61.*

Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages, London, [1974], 67.

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SALADIN AND HIS ADMIRERS: A BIOGRAPHICAL REASSESSMENT 237

cerning the two regimes of Nfir al-Din and Saladin '), announces its eirenic

purpose. It was completed in 651/1253 in changed circumstances from thosewhich the earlier writers had known. The

Ayyubidshad lost

Egyptto the

Mamlfiks. St. Louis, defeated in Egypt, was at Acre, restoring the defences ofthe Latin kingdom. To the Mamliks and to their opponent, the Ayyubid rulerof Aleppo and Damascus, he was a desirableally, and both offeredhim the retro-cession of the territories taken by Saladin. Although the negotiations ended

inconclusively, it must have seemed to Abfi Shama, a pious scholar,unpractisedin politics, as if Saladin's work was about to be undone by his successors. It isnot surprisingthat he drew from history a lesson for the rulersof his own time,which he sought to convey in this combined history of Nfir al-Din and Saladin.

In this way, sixty years after Saladin's death, the creation of his legend was

completed. Saladin, the usurper of the patrimony of the Zangids, is shown astheir successor in a divinely appointed mission. The contests for supremacy in

Syria between Muslim and Muslim, as well as between Muslim and Frank, areseen in retrospect,as if the reconquestof Jerusalemat the end had been Saladin'sintention from the beginning. It is an interpretation of twelfth-century Syrianhistory which has dominated later writing, but in essence it is Heilsgeschichte,the salvation of the Islamic community in the latter days as the Hijra of the

Prophet saved it at its beginning, as al-Isfahlni implies in al-Fath.4A reassessment of Saladin and his achievements by Andrew S. Ehrenkreutz

appeared almost simultaneously with Gibb's biography. In his introduction,Ehrenkreutz reviewed previous presentations of Saladin, and in the body of the

work he drew on his specialist knowledge of the economic history of the periodto draw attention to aspects of the reign which the political historians hadtended to ignore. His final judgements is severe:

Most of Saladin's significant historical accomplishments should beattributed to his military and governmental experience, to his ruthless per-secution and execution of political opponentsand dissenters,to his vindictive

belligerenceand calculated opportunism,and to his readinessto compromisereligious ideals to political expediency.

... Rather than the alleged attractiveness of his romantic personality,

it was the potent spell of his tendentious biographerswhich has clouded theperceptions of most modern writers retelling the story of the great sultan.8

The revision of the historical role of Saladin and the reassessment of his

personal qualities is carried a stage further by the work under review, which

surveys the whole of his life in the context of his period. To quote theForeword:

The object of this work is to re-examine and, where possible, to add to evi-dencefor the careerof Saladinin orderto strengthenthe frameof reference ntowhich the judgementsand conclusionsof his modernbiographerscan befitted.

It is an important biography in two respects. In the first place, it gives a verydetailed narrative of Saladin's career, which is a most useful assemblage of

political and military data. In the second place, it draws on two sourceswhich

' Or j'ai adopt6, pour d6part de ma chronologie, une seconde h6gire qui atteste que le termede la premibre sera marqu6 par la resurrection et que sa promesse est la vraie, celle qu'on ne refutepas, celle qui est &vidente, celle qu'on ne fausse pas. Cette h6gire, c'est l'6migration de l'Islamvers Jerusalem. Son acteur est le sultan Salth ad-Din Abf 1-Muzaffar Yfsuf b. Ayyfib.''Imid ad-Din al-Igfah~ni, Conquite de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, tr. Henri Mass6,Paris, 1972, 6.

8 Andrew S. Ehrenkreutz, Saladin, Albany, N.Y., 1972, 238.

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238 P.M.HOLT

have not been exploited by previous writers. One of these is al-Bundari'sabridgement of al-Barq al-Shami, mentioned above. The published edition by

Fathiyya al-NabarawlI was not available to the authors, who used herCambridgePh.D. thesis and a partial edition by R. qeaen, published in 1971.The second new source, which has played a large part in forming the author'sview of Saladin and his policies, is the corpus of letters from Saladin's court,which to some extent supply the lack of a true archive. They arethus described:

In the main, these are attributed to Saladin's administrator, the Qadi

al-F.dil,and they comprise both personal letters sent by al-Fadil himself

and others drafted for Saladin. Some are quoted by the narrative historiansor are found in other works; twenty-six are included, complete or in part,in a Cairo edition, but a large number are still unedited. This collection is

supplemented by a manuscriptof letters wronglyattributed to 'Imid al-Dinand by the writings of another of Saladin's contemporaries, the NorthAfrican al-Wahrini. The scope of their material is, of course, limited and

they cannot compensate entirely for the dearth of officialdocuments, but inaddition to the details that they provide, many show the construction thatSaladin himself wished to have placed on his actions, while others supplythis with an unofficialcommentary.x0

The authors have also drawn on Western and Byzantine sources for the period,e.g. William of Tyre and Nicetas Choniates. Previous writers, approachingthe

subject from an orientalist background, have tended to neglect this valuable

range of materials. One may note in passing that the significant study byHannes Mdhring,Saladin und der Dritte Kreuzzug, Wiesbaden, 1980, whichdraws extensively on medieval European, Byzantine and Arabic sources,

although listed in the bibliography, was published after the completion of thiswork.

The Saladin who emerges from these pages is no longer the confident anddedicated champion of Islam, even if he is not the anti-hero, disastrous to

Egypt, depicted by Ehrenkreutz. The precariousnature of his position appearsconstantly. The jihad was a means of legitimating his authority (cf. pp. 88-9,

97), as also was his marriageto 'Ismat al-Din Khitain (p. 110). As the daughter

of Mu'inal-Din Ondrand widow of Nir al-Din, she provided him with a doublepersonal link with the rulers who preceded him. Ironically, at the time of this

marriage n 1176, al-Salih Ismi'il, her son by Nir al-Din, still reignedin Aleppo,and was the figurehead of Zangid resistance to Saladin's usurpation. An

interesting paragraph (pp. 152-3) stimulates reflection as to the nature ofSaladin'srule--' the question of whether Saladinwas, or had become, primarilya war-band leader or whether he should be thought of as a territorial ruler.'His situation was not unlike that of the Norman and early Angevin monarchs,

ruling two distinct territories with a 'peripatetic administrative nucleus.' Hisrelation to the administration is summarized (pp. 366-7) as 'an inherited

bureaucracy within whose framework operated a system of patronage withSaladin at its head. It was patronage, rather than formal administration, that

appearsto have occupiedhis own time '. The ambiguity of his policy as the self-

appointed championof Islam is broughtout at variouspoints in his career: thusin 1182, after the death of

al-Shlih.Isma'il:

The policy of Ayyubid expansionismthat had been blocked by the peace

g Fathiyya al-Nabariwi, SanE al-barq al-Shami, Cairo, 1979.

10 Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 1-2.

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SALADIN AND HIS ADMIRERS: A BIOGRAPHICAL REASSESSMENT 239

treaty of 1176 was about to be renewed. Saladin was laying claim not only to

Aleppo, but to any other town whose troops could be shown to be neededfor the

HolyWar. This could not be

acceptedeither

by 'Izz al-Dinin Mosul

or by Zangi in Aleppo and Saladin's sincerity in turning his back on theFranks to fight his fellow-Muslims was bound to be called in question.11

The nemesis of Saladin's policy is thus characterized:

As his letters show, however, he was finding that the logical end to the

cycle of expansion, where power depended on conquests, attracting recruitsto be paid for by furtherconquests, was a power monopoly coterminouswiththe frontiers of Islam.12

Another passage, referringto the situation in 1188, but applicable to the whole

of Saladin's reign, examines another reason for his precarious position:

A factor that had to be taken into account was the loose structure of his

army. His allies had no reason to give him whole-heartedsupport. For hisown emirs and professionalsoldiershe and his family were merely successfulmembers of their own class; his dynasty was bolstered by no divine right of

kings and the religious sanction it had claimed had been denied it byBaghdad. During the period of its expansion it had been profitable to joinhis side, but profit and numbers were inextricably linked. If his militaryaccounts began to show a loss, his numbers could be expected to diminishand his dynasty in its turn could be threatened by other Muslim

expansionists.•"

The authors have provided a detailed, consideredand perceptive account of

Saladin, setting his acts and policies firmlyin their propercontext-the complexand unstable political and military condition of the Near East in the late twelfth

century, a condition in which the Frankish states were one, but not the sole,factor. The amount of detail and the numerous characters who make their

appearancedo not conduce to an easy narrative, and in one or two respects theauthors might have helped the reader more. Although the month and even the

day in which events occurred are usually given, it is often necessary to range

over quite a number of pages to ascertain the year. A running date-heading (asin Lane-Poole's book) may be old-fashioned but it is of much assistance in

following a full chronologicalnarrative, and still more for purposesof reference.The provision of the Hijri equivalents to Christian dates would have facilitatedreference to Arabic sources. On the other hand, to give the equivalent inkilometres to every distance in miles is hardly necessary. The present reviewerfinds the system of abbreviations used in the notes bewildering and tiresome,and it is curious that the bibliography, while separately listing Arabic primarysources does not distinguish original Western (and Byzantine) sources frommodern works. The eight maps provided are useful, although the Dongola

shown on Map 6 is New Dongola (al-'Urdi), which developed in the nineteenthcentury, not the medieval town (Dunqula al-'Ajilz), which lies about ninetymiles furtherup the Nile and on the right bank. Plans of the site of the battle of

HIattinand of medieval Jerusalem and Acre would have been helpful. These,however, are criticisms of ancillary details, and in no way detract from thevalue and importance of this long awaited work.

11Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 172.

la Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 201.

a13 yons and Jackson, Saladin, 286.