Saladin Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
49 free Saladin trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Saladin trivia quiz covers the Kurdish commander who founded the Ayyubid dynasty and took Jerusalem back from the Crusaders. The easy questions ask where he was born, which dynasty he founded, which battle broke the Crusader army in 1187, which English king he fought and what his name means. From there it moves through his rise in Egypt, the caliphate he abolished, the uncle who trained him, the Assassins who tried to kill him and the negotiations that ended the Third Crusade. The hard end is for people who have read Ibn Shaddad: the goblet he struck from Raynald's hand, the vow he kept, the ransom set for Jerusalem's poor, the Georgian queen who tried to buy the True Cross, the marriage Richard proposed for his sister, the two sarcophagi in his Damascus tomb, the German Kaiser who visited it, the nickname Egyptian Shias gave him and the eagle that flies on the flags of four Arab states. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on Saladin, the Battle of Hattin, the 1187 siege of Jerusalem, the Third Crusade, Richard I, the Battle of Arsuf, the Ayyubid dynasty, the Eagle of Saladin, the Cairo Citadel and Kingdom of Heaven before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Crusades, Richard the Lionheart and medieval history quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Saladin was born in Tikrit, in which modern country?
Iraq
Iraq. Saddam Hussein, born just outside Tikrit eight centuries later, made much of the shared birthplace and had himself portrayed as a second Saladin.
Q 02Saladin founded which ruling house, becoming the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria?
Ayyubid
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.
Q 03What does Saladin's Arabic honorific, 'Salah ad-Din', mean?
Righteousness of the Faith
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.
Q 04Saladin became a hero to the Arab world, but he was born into which people?
The Kurds
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.
Q 05Under which uncle, a mercenary commander, did Saladin's military career begin?
Shirkuh
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.
Q 06Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187 without a massacre, unlike the army of which crusade, which had slaughtered its inhabitants?
The First Crusade
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.
Q 07In 1171 Saladin abolished which Cairo-based Shia regime and realigned Egypt with the Sunni Abbasids?
The Fatimids
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.
Q 08The caliph who proclaimed Saladin sultan of Egypt and Syria in 1175 reigned from which city?
Baghdad
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.
Q 09Saladin twice survived attacks sent by Rashid ad-Din Sinan, the Assassin leader crusaders knew by which nickname?
Old Man of the Mountain
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.
Q 10Saladin's decisive 1187 victory over the Crusader army was at which battle?
Hattin
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.
Q 11After his great 1187 victory, Saladin personally executed which Crusader lord, fulfilling a vow made after attacks on Muslim caravans?
Raynald of Châtillon
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.
Q 12Why did Saladin object when the captive King Guy passed his iced water to another prisoner?
It was a pledge of safety
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.
Q 13Saladin spared King Guy of Lusignan with which remark?
Q 21Richard the Lionheart defeated Saladin's army in open battle at which place in September 1191?
Arsuf
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.
Q 22Richard the Lionheart proposed to end the crusade by marrying his sister Joan to which of his enemies?
Saladin's brother
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.
Q 23Under the 1192 peace with Richard the Lionheart, the Crusaders kept a coastal strip running south to which port?
Jaffa
'It is not the wont of kings to kill kings'
'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.
Q 14Jerusalem surrendered to Saladin on the anniversary of which event in Muhammad's life?
Night Journey
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.
Q 15Who, played on screen by Orlando Bloom, led Jerusalem's defence and negotiated its surrender to Saladin?
Balian of Ibelin
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.
Q 16After taking Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin allowed which community to settle in the city again?
The Jews
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.
Q 17Which coastal city, held by Conrad of Montferrat, withstood Saladin's sieges and became the kingdom of Jerusalem's last stronghold?
Tyre
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.
Q 18Georgia's Queen Tamar is said to have offered Saladin 200,000 gold pieces for which relic, seized in his 1187 victory?
The True Cross
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.
Q 19England's 'Saladin tithe' of 1188 was raised to pay for what?
The Third Crusade
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.
Q 20How did Saladin answer Richard the Lionheart's massacre of prisoners at Acre?
Executed his captives
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.
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.
Q 24Why did Saladin always refuse to see Richard the Lionheart in person?
Royal etiquette
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.
Q 25Saladin died of a fever in 1193 in which city?
Damascus
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.
Q 26Why did the money for Saladin's funeral in 1193 have to be borrowed?
He had given everything away
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.
Q 27Saladin's tomb stands in a garden beside which great house of worship?
The Umayyad Mosque
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.
Q 28Which German emperor paid his respects at Saladin's tomb in 1898?
Wilhelm II
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.
Q 29Saladin was urged to demolish which Jerusalem church in 1187, but reopened it to pilgrims instead?
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
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.
Q 30Which bird, named after Saladin, appears on the flag of Egypt?
An eagle
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.