49 Fun Facts About Saladin

Saladin was born in Tikrit, in which modern country?

Iraq. Saddam Hussein, born just outside Tikrit eight centuries later, made much of the shared birthplace and had himself portrayed as a second Saladin.

Saladin founded which ruling house, becoming the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria?

Ayyubid comes from his father's name, Ayyub. Saladin shared his provinces out among relatives, so at his death the empire split between his sons, who were soon fighting over it.

What does Saladin's Arabic honorific, 'Salah ad-Din', mean?

Righteousness of the Faith was a title, not a name. The sultan was born Yusuf, the Arabic form of Joseph, and to the crusaders' chroniclers his honorific became his name.

Saladin became a hero to the Arab world, but he was born into which people?

The Kurds. When Egypt's top post fell vacant in 1169, an ally talked a rival into standing aside for Saladin by arguing that both men were Kurds and must not let power pass to the Turks.

Under which uncle, a mercenary commander, did Saladin's military career begin?

Shirkuh conquered Egypt in 1169 and became its vizier, but the famously heavy eater died about two months later after one rich meal too many, and his nephew inherited the post.

Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187 without a massacre, unlike the army of which crusade, which had slaughtered its inhabitants?

The First Crusade stormed the city in 1099 and killed thousands. Saladin had sworn to take it back by the sword too, but in the end he let the Christians buy their freedom and leave.

In 1171 Saladin abolished which Cairo-based Shia regime and realigned Egypt with the Sunni Abbasids?

The Fatimids had ruled Egypt for two centuries, yet they went without a fight: Saladin simply had Friday prayers said in the Abbasid caliph's name, and the congregations let it pass without protest.

The caliph who proclaimed Saladin sultan of Egypt and Syria in 1175 reigned from which city?

Baghdad was the seat of the Abbasid caliph, head of Sunni Islam. Saladin had just seized his late master's lands, and the caliph's diploma and robes of honour made a usurper into a lawful ruler.

Saladin twice survived attacks sent by Rashid ad-Din Sinan, the Assassin leader crusaders knew by which nickname?

The Old Man of the Mountain ruled a chain of Syrian hill castles. When Saladin besieged one, legend says he woke to find a warning pinned by his bed with a poisoned dagger, and soon withdrew.

Saladin's decisive 1187 victory over the Crusader army was at which battle?

Hattin was won by thirst. Saladin drew the crusaders across a waterless plateau in July heat, then set the dry grass alight so that smoke finished what the sun had begun.

After his great 1187 victory, Saladin personally executed which Crusader lord, fulfilling a vow made after attacks on Muslim caravans?

Raynald of Châtillon had broken a truce to plunder a caravan. Muslim chroniclers say Saladin offered him the chance to embrace Islam; he refused, and the sultan struck him down with his own sabre.

Why did Saladin object when the captive King Guy passed his iced water to another prisoner?

It was a pledge of safety: by Arab custom a captive given food or drink by his captor could not then be killed. Saladin had the king told the gift was Guy's, not his, and the other man was executed soon after.

Saladin spared King Guy of Lusignan with which remark?

'It is not the wont of kings to kill kings', Saladin told the terrified Guy, and freed him a year later. The mercy cost him: Guy went on to besiege Acre, where Richard the Lionheart's army later landed.

Jerusalem surrendered to Saladin on the anniversary of which event in Muhammad's life?

His Night Journey, in Muslim belief, carried Muhammad to Jerusalem and up to heaven. Saladin entered the city on that very anniversary, and his camp broadcast the date as proof of divine favour.

Who, played on screen by Orlando Bloom, led Jerusalem's defence and negotiated its surrender to Saladin?

Balian of Ibelin won terms with a threat: unless the Christians could ransom themselves, the defenders would kill their Muslim prisoners and tear down the Dome of the Rock.

After taking Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin allowed which community to settle in the city again?

The Jews had been among the dead when the crusaders stormed the city in 1099. Saladin is said to have invited them back himself, and under his rule they could live there once more.

Which coastal city, held by Conrad of Montferrat, withstood Saladin's sieges and became the kingdom of Jerusalem's last stronghold?

Tyre held because its commander would not bargain. When Saladin paraded Conrad's captured father before the walls, Conrad said the old man had lived long enough and aimed a crossbow at him.

Georgia's Queen Tamar is said to have offered Saladin 200,000 gold pieces for which relic, seized in his 1187 victory?

The True Cross had been carried into battle by the crusaders and lost on the field. Every bid to buy it back failed, Richard the Lionheart's included, and the relic then vanished from the record.

England's 'Saladin tithe' of 1188 was raised to pay for what?

The Third Crusade. Dodgers faced excommunication, but anyone who took the cross paid nothing, so the tax doubled as a recruiting drive that Henry II, who decreed it, never lived to join.

How did Saladin answer Richard the Lionheart's massacre of prisoners at Acre?

Executed his captives. Richard had lost patience when the agreed ransom failed to arrive on time, and the sultan famed for mercy answered the massacre in kind, killing Frankish prisoners.

Richard the Lionheart defeated Saladin's army in open battle at which place in September 1191?

Arsuf turned when the Hospitallers at the rear, goaded for hours by Saladin's horse archers, charged, by most accounts before the signal. Richard at once threw his whole army in behind them.

Richard the Lionheart proposed to end the crusade by marrying his sister Joan to which of his enemies?

Saladin's brother al-Adil and Joan were to rule from Jerusalem as king and queen while Richard sailed home. The match foundered on the difference of religion, and nothing came of it.

Under the 1192 peace with Richard the Lionheart, the Crusaders kept a coastal strip running south to which port?

Jaffa was as far south as the strip ran. Beyond it lay Ascalon, whose walls Richard had only just rebuilt and now had to pull down again as the price of peace.

Why did Saladin always refuse to see Richard the Lionheart in person?

Royal etiquette: kings should not fight after meeting and eating together, he replied, so any meeting must wait for peace. The two sent each other gifts and envoys for over a year and never once met.

Saladin died of a fever in 1193 in which city?

Damascus was the city he loved. He rode out to greet pilgrims coming home from Mecca, fell ill with fever the next day and was dead within two weeks.

Why did the money for Saladin's funeral in 1193 have to be borrowed?

He had given everything away: the ruler of Egypt and Syria left one gold coin and a few dozen silver ones, with no house, garden or estate to his name.

Saladin's tomb stands in a garden beside which great house of worship?

The Umayyad Mosque was not his first neighbour. Saladin was buried in the garden palace where he died, and a son moved him a couple of years later into the tomb that still stands beside it.

Which German emperor paid his respects at Saladin's tomb in 1898?

Wilhelm II and his empress laid a bronze wreath on the tomb. When Arab forces took the city in 1918, the wreath was carried off as a relic of the Ottomans' German ally.

Saladin was urged to demolish which Jerusalem church in 1187, but reopened it to pilgrims instead?

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stayed shut for three days while he decided. He was reminded that the caliph Umar had left it to the Christians five centuries before, and he did the same, for a fee.

Which bird, named after Saladin, appears on the flag of Egypt?

An eagle. It is popularly said to have been Saladin's own emblem, though nothing from his day shows he used one; Egypt's revolutionaries adopted it in the 1950s as a symbol of Arab unity.

Stone from small pyramids at Giza was carted off in the 1170s to build which Cairo landmark for Saladin?

The Citadel was meant as Saladin's seat of government, but he left Egypt in 1182 and never came back to see it finished. Later rulers governed from it until 1874.

Which 1825 Walter Scott novel made Saladin its chivalrous hero, opposite a hot-tempered Richard the Lionheart?

The Talisman has Saladin slip into the crusader camp disguised as a physician and cure the fevered Richard with a charm. It is pure invention: the two men never came face to face.

Dante places Saladin where in The Divine Comedy?

Among the virtuous non-Christians in limbo Dante admits only three Muslims: two philosophers and Saladin, who stands 'by himself, apart', the one man there who had beaten Christendom in war.

Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud played Saladin opposite Orlando Bloom in which 2005 Ridley Scott epic?

Kingdom of Heaven was made in the wake of 9/11 as a deliberate attempt to cool the rhetoric about crusades. With a Syrian actor as its dignified Saladin, it became a hit across the Arab world, in Egypt above all.

Saladin appears as the leader of the Arabs in several instalments of which video game series?

Sid Meier's Civilization makes him the face of Arabia, which is a neat irony: the real Saladin was not an Arab, and he ruled from Egypt and Syria rather than the Arabian peninsula.

Ibn Shaddad tells how Saladin used his own money in 1191 to buy back what for a weeping Frankish woman?

Her stolen baby, three months old, had been sold in the camp market. Saladin paid the buyer himself and handed the child back, and his biographer, watching in the crowd, says everyone there wept.

Saladin was routed in 1177 at Montgisard by a Crusader army under which young leper king of Jerusalem?

Baldwin IV was sixteen and already marked by leprosy. With a far smaller force he caught Saladin's army scattered and plundering, and the sultan escaped to Egypt on a racing camel.

Which desert fortress, base of the raider Saladin later executed, withstood his sieges in 1183 and 1184?

Kerak was hosting a wedding when Saladin attacked in 1183. A Frankish chronicler says the groom's mother sent out dishes from the feast, and Saladin told his catapults to spare the newlyweds' tower.

In 1176 Saladin married Ismat ad-Din Khatun, the widow of whom?

Nur ad-Din Zengi had been Saladin's master, and Saladin had just taken his Syrian lands from his young heir. The widow was a prince's daughter too, so one wedding tied the newcomer to two ruling houses.

The dynasty Saladin founded was overthrown in Egypt in 1250 by whom?

The Mamluks were the dynasty's own slave soldiers, bought as boys and trained as its elite guard. They killed the sultan they served, took Egypt for themselves, and ten years later stopped the Mongols at Ain Jalut.

Saladin's biographer Ibn Shaddad wrote that the sultan was more zealous about which duty than any other?

Jihad, his biographer wrote, weighed on his heart until he spoke of little else. It crowded out even the pilgrimage to Mecca, which he planned more than once and never managed to make.

Saladin's family was banished from Tikrit on the night of his birth after his uncle did what?

Killed a man, by one account to avenge a wrong done to a woman. The family left in disgrace that same night with the newborn, who would be master of Egypt before he was thirty-five.

Salahaddin University, named after Saladin, stands in which city, among the oldest continuously inhabited in the world?

Erbil has had the university only since 1981. It was founded in Sulaymaniyah in 1968, and the government of the day uprooted the whole institution and renamed it after Saladin.

In 1174 Saladin sent his elder brother Turan-Shah south to conquer which land?

Yemen was wanted, chroniclers say, as a bolt-hole: if Saladin's overlord in Syria ever marched on Egypt, the family would have somewhere far away to run. The overlord died that same year instead.

Why, by one chronicler's account, did Egypt's caliph pick Saladin as his vizier in 1169?

He seemed the weakest candidate: the caliph's advisers, the chronicler says, wanted a young vizier whom none of the emirs would obey. Within three years the tame choice had abolished their caliphate.

What habit did Saladin reportedly renounce on becoming vizier of Egypt in 1169?

Wine-drinking stopped, his biographer says, when he took office and 'donned the garments of seriousness'. The detail is telling: it admits that the future model of piety had been a drinker.

The young Saladin made his name at court for his skill at which sport?

Polo stayed with him for life. A Spanish Muslim traveller who passed through in 1184 found the sultan, by then master of an empire, still riding out to play on the green beside the city.

On what charge did Saladin order the death of Suhrawardi, the Persian philosopher of 'Illumination'?

Heresy was the charge. Aleppo's religious scholars, unsettled by his radical ideas, pressed for his death, and the sultan famed for sparing enemies agreed; Suhrawardi is remembered as 'the Murdered Master'.

Crusader raiders who sailed the Red Sea in 1183 were rumoured to be planning to seize Muhammad's body from where?

Medina was never reached. An Egyptian fleet sent into the Red Sea hunted the raiders down, and Saladin had the captives executed in public across his realm as a warning.