Crusades · 1187
Is Saladin’s heroic reputation earned or made?
The seminar question: “Was Saladin’s reputation as a hero earned, or was it made by later storytellers?”
Saladin ended the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt in 1171 and, after Nur al-Din’s death in 1174, took Syria, uniting the two powers around the crusader states. On 4 July 1187 he destroyed the army of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin; the cities surrendered one after another, and Jerusalem gave up in October 1187.
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Saladin arrived in Egypt as a subordinate of Nur al-Din. In 1171 he abolished the Shia Fatimid caliphate and restored Sunni allegiance, establishing himself as Egypt’s ruler. Nur al-Din died in 1174, and Saladin then spent years acquiring territory in Syria, often fighting fellow Muslims. By 1186 he controlled Egypt and much of Syria. The crusader states could no longer rely in the same way on the rivalry between rulers on either side of them.
The short answer
- The union of Egypt and Syria. Saladin brought Egypt and much of Syria under his authority between 1171 and 1186. Earlier, the crusader states could seek help among competing rulers; now one ruler could draw on resources from both regions. That made the kingdom’s position more dangerous without making the outcome of each battle certain.
- Legitimacy, manufactured. Saladin, a Kurdish commander, gained power from fellow Muslim rulers and needed support for his authority. His Zengid marriage and the caliph’s recognition helped supply it. The language of jihad presented his Syrian campaigns as preparation for war against the Franks. Urban and Nur al-Din had also joined religious purpose to the building of political power.
- The crusaders’ self-destruction. The disputed succession left Guy opposed by a powerful faction. The military orders lost valuable cavalry at Cresson, and the march toward Tiberias took the main army away from water and exposed it to encirclement. As Chapter 3 showed, the kingdom had little strategic depth in which to absorb the loss of that force.
THE TURNING POINT
The Horns of Hattin, 4 July 1187. On 4 July 1187 at the Horns of Hattin, Guy’s army ran short of water and was surrounded and destroyed; the True Cross was captured. Most of the kingdom’s field force was gone. Its scattered defenses could no longer count on relief from that army, opening the way to the loss of cities acquired over nearly ninety years.
What it changed
Outremer reduced to slivers. The map marks the kingdom’s lost territory with hatching. Tyre held out on the coast, and Tripoli and Antioch survived in the north. Even with those exceptions, Saladin reversed much of the Frankish conquest in one campaigning season.
The Third Crusade summoned. News of Jerusalem’s fall shook Europe. Three major kings took the cross for the Third Crusade, whose expedition to the eastern Mediterranean is the subject of the next chapter.
A legend in two civilizations. The mercy shown at Jerusalem entered a reputation that crossed religious boundaries. Muslim writers celebrated a champion of jihad; Western writers fashioned a chivalric opponent. Those accounts drew on a career that included both clemency and ruthless violence.
The full answer, argued
His reputation was both earned and made. At Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin’s treatment saved lives and contrasted sharply with the massacre of 1099. He also ordered captured members of the military orders executed after Hattin and killed Reynald of Châtillon. Since he had taken power from fellow Muslims, he needed legitimacy; public mercy could strengthen his authority while remaining genuine mercy. Muslim court writers praised his jihad, while Western writers made him a chivalric opponent whose courtesy reflected their own ideals. Enlightenment authors later used the “noble Saladin” to criticize their crusading ancestors. The reputation rests on actions that later writers selected and interpreted for their own audiences.
An interesting fact
Saladin’s secretary, Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, recorded a scene he witnessed in the sultan’s tent after Hattin. Saladin seated the captured King Guy beside him and gave him water cooled with snow. Guy passed the cup to Reynald of Châtillon. Saladin had an interpreter make clear that Guy, rather than the sultan, had given Reynald the drink: custom bound a host who offered a captive water to spare him. Saladin then killed Reynald himself, fulfilling an earlier oath, but spared Guy, saying that kings do not kill kings. The distinction over the cup made room for both acts.
This is the study layer of Saladin and the fall of Jerusalem, chapter 6 of The Crusades, 1095–1291; the full index of the atlas is here.
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