Saladin
1137–1193 1 entry
Biography
Saladin, in Arabic Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, was a Muslim sultan of Egypt and Syria and the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. He was born around 1137 in Tikrit, in today’s Iraq, into a Kurdish family, and rose in the service of the rulers of Syria, who sent him with his uncle to Egypt. In 1171 he ended the rule of the Fatimid caliphs there, and over the following years he united Egypt, Syria and much of the surrounding lands under his rule.
In 1187 he defeated the army of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin and took Jerusalem, sparing the lives of its Christian inhabitants and allowing many of them to ransom themselves and leave. His war with the Third Crusade and its leader, Richard the Lionheart, ended in 1192 with a truce that left Jerusalem in his hands but allowed Christian pilgrims to visit it. He died in Damascus in 1193, so poor, it is said, that there was not enough money for his burial. Muslim and Christian writers alike remembered him as a model of a generous and chivalrous ruler.
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