Historian

🌿 My Hero

Salahuddin al-Ayyubi

Sultan of Egypt & Syria · 1137 – 1193

When Salahuddin recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, after 88 years of Crusader rule, he forbade massacre, ransomed the poor from his own treasury, and allowed Christian worship to continue. This stood in stark contrast to the bloodbath of the 1099 Crusader conquest. He then held off Richard I of England in the Third Crusade, ending not in defeat but in the Treaty of Jaffa, a triumph of diplomacy as much as arms.

Born into a Kurdish family in Tikrit, he spoke Kurdish and Arabic, and knew Turkish and Persian. He knew the Quran by heart. Despite ruling an empire stretching from Egypt to Yemen to northern Iraq, he owned no estates and no house. His enemies admired him. Even Dante placed him among the righteous souls in his Divine Comedy.

He died in Damascus in 1193. His treasury held only one Tyrian gold coin and forty-seven silver dirhams. All else had been given to his people. There was not enough left to pay for his funeral.

“He attributed to him the ideal qualities of prudence, generosity, and bravery, a ruler eager for knowledge and honour, a model of wisdom and virtue.”
— Medieval historians on Salahuddin’s chivalry