Saladin

by John Man

  Secondly, successor dynasties in both Egypt and Syria had agendas of their own, and lasted much longer. Saladin’s dynasty, the Ayyubids, ruled for seventy-six years in Egypt and eighty-six in Syria, whereas the Mamluks of Egypt were in power for two and a half centuries and the Turks, after their seizure of Constantinople in 1254, created the Ottoman Empire that would last into the twentieth century. It is virtually a law of history that new dynasties disparage those they displace. In addition, they liked to celebrate heroes and epic struggles of their own, against both the Franks and the Mongols.

  Thirdly, Saladin was not quite the unifier he seems at first glance. There was no doubting his piety, of course. He eliminated taxes that did not conform to Islamic law, rebuilt mosques, founded madrasas – nine in Cairo, a dozen in Damascus – defended the caliphate, fought heresy, did much for the poor, and encouraged pilgrims. But all this was done in the name of his own brand of Islam, Sunnism, and at the expense of its great rival, Shi’ism, the predominant creed in Egypt. There was some justification for this: from Egyptian Shi’ism had sprung the Assassins and their murderous agenda, which threatened the life of any less extreme ruler. But Saladin imposed his own beliefs in other ways. For example, he restored the Shi’ite sanctuary in Cairo that sheltered the head of al-Husain, the son of Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali. The head had been rescued from Ascalon in the mid-twelfth century to save it from the Franks. Saladin created ‘a mausoleum so superb as to be beyond description’, in the words of ibn Jubayr, decorating it with brocades, and silver and gilt candlesticks, its upper part ‘encircled by golden spheres like apples, skilfully executed to resemble a garden and holding our eyes in spell by its beauty.’ This in effect hijacked the shrine for Sunnism. In Islamic eyes, Saladin was less a unifier than a dictator imposing his will, and Shi’ites – some 15 per cent of Muslims – have never forgiven him.

  There is no such long-term ambivalence in the European – that is, the Christian – view.

  Yes, to start with he was the enemy who was committed to driving the Christians from the land they considered holy, theirs by right as the homeland of the fount and origin of their faith. To them, it was self-evident that the Muslims were wrong, that Saladin was illegitimate, treacherous, cruel, lowborn, tyrannical and utterly evil; that they were right and that God was behind them at every step: taxes, military preparations, campaigns, the lot, all the way to total Christian control of Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. For two Crusades, faith ruled supreme, breeding arrogance and brutality.

  Then, suddenly, within a century of Saladin’s death, everything flipped. Saladin’s successes revealed that God was not on the Christian side after all. How to explain this reversal? Christians had the answer, embedded in the concept of sin. They had fallen short in some way. They were guilty, they deserved to be punished. What better punishment than defeat by their enemy? Saladin was God’s instrument, sent to scourge Christians back into the ways of righteousness, as if he were the penance imposed on a sinful people – the ‘flagellum Christianorum’, the Scourge of Christians, as the thirteenth-century chronicler and cardinal Oliver of Paderborn called him.

  This, by the way, was not the only time those who claimed to be civilized explained away victorious ‘barbarians’. Attila, the most successful of the many barbarian chiefs tearing at the flanks of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, was also called God’s Scourge. And when Genghis Khan fell upon the Islamic world in 1219, not long after Saladin’s day, the thirteenth-century Muslim historian Ata-Malik Juvaini says that Genghis told Bukhara’s wealthiest and most eminent citizens, ‘If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.’ Juvaini was writing with hindsight, for his masters the Mongols, justifying their brutality and success by blaming the victims.

  But wait: Saladin was not a Christian. How could he possibly be the instrument of a Christian God? Again, an answer was to hand, a twofold one. Firstly, he displayed obvious virtues, like courage, courtesy, generosity – Milte, generosity of spirit, as the medieval German poet Walther von der Vogelweide put it – austerity and forgiveness. These were more in line with the ideals of Christian chivalry than the base qualities of a pagan barbarian. So it stood to reason that he was not a true Muslim, but a closet Christian, knighted (according to one of several accounts) by Humphrey of Toron. Several stories actually proposed that he had French ancestors. Others say that he baptized himself; that he travelled incognito through Europe, undergoing many adventures;73 that various monks, even Francis of Assisi himself, came to the Holy Land to convert him. All this was the stuff of good drama, making Saladin a near-equal to England’s hero, Richard the Lionheart.

  Christians have a similar legend about Jesus: ‘And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England’s mountains green ?’ No, they didn’t. But that doesn’t diminish the appeal of the myth.

  Adventures apart, Saladin struck a chord in Europe because his generosity offered a way to resolve a problem much pondered by those who were not totally in thrall to Christianity: the three major religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – overlapped in their histories, ideals and ways of life. How could one choose between them?

  One story, which existed in many versions, had Saladin wondering on his deathbed which of the three main religions was the best, and summoning the wisest priests of all three so that he could question them. In the words of a thirteenth-century Latin version:74

  Quoted in Gaston Paris, La Légende de Saladin, 1893.

  ‘Mine,’ says the Jew, ‘but if I abandoned it I would adopt Christianity, which is its heir.’

  ‘Mine,’ says the Saracen, ‘but if I abandoned it, I would adopt Christianity, which is its heir.’

  ‘Mine,’ says the Christian, ‘and I would not abandon it at any price.’

  Then says Saladin: ‘Those two, if they abandoned their faith, agree they would adopt this one’s; but he would never have any other but his own; so I judge this to be the best, and choose it.’

  Here is another very different approach to the question of the truth of the three religions. It is by a thirteenth-century Viennese chronicler and poet called Jans der Enikel, Jans ‘the Grandson’. His main work was a world history in 30,000 lines of verse, much copied in its day, now virtually unknown. It starts with Satan being cast from Heaven, runs through the Bible and merges into a mish-mash of pseudo-history, folklore and Chaucer-like stories. Graeme Dunphy, Professor of Translation at the University of Applied Sciences of Würzburg-Schweinfurt, has recently produced an edited version and a translation. One 125-line segment tells the story of Saladin’s table, a symbol of whatever underlies the three religions that dominated the thoughts of many Europeans during and after the Crusades. Where lies the truth, and what should be done about it? Jans’s response is rather unexpected, given that his listeners were Christians. Saladin – generous, austere, curious – struggles to find an answer, but fails:75

  The original is in verse, with very short lines. It begins: Ich kann iu wærlich niht verdagen I really cannot keep this from you: Von einem künig wil ich iu sagen I want to tell you about a King, Der was geheizen Salatin whose name was Saladin. I have run it as prose to make it read more easily in modern English.

  I really cannot keep this from you: I want to tell you about a King, whose name was Saladin. Truly he could not have been more generous. He gave stallions, and robes, the best that could be found on sale. Silver, gold and gemstones, all of these he gave. His generosity was not feigned for the sake of honour, for he kept only one table for himself. It was made of a gigantic sapphire, the likes of which no one had ever seen, more valuable than a ruby. No treasure could be better than this same table was. I have seen its length written: it was three cubits long. It was set in a frame of gold, as if God himself had perfected it.

  The gentleman was generous, so they say, so generous that he had nothing left. He distributed his whole treasure. As generous as this gentleman was, he fell sick and did not recover. When he became
aware of his illness, he sent for the best doctors and had them check a urine sample. They all declared that he certainly could not recover, and would definitely die. Then he was sorely lamented, the whole population in chorus lamented for him so utterly that I cannot put it into words.

  When the pious heathen saw that he would have to leave his honour and his wealth, his heart was sad, for he was dissatisfied with his life. He said: ‘If I must now depart, I must ask what will happen to my soul? Who will take care of it when it departs from my body? If I entrust it to Mohammed, the Christians will mock; they say that their Lord God is stronger than Mohammed. And I know full well that the Jews are quick to say that their God is stronger. This is a sorry state of affairs. If only I knew for sure which of them is the best, to that God would I give my table without a moment’s hesitation. Since I cannot know which is right and I mistrust all of them, I shall divide that whole gemstone between them – I mean that table of mine.’

  He had the table brought before him. And I can tell you the truth of the matter: an axe was prepared. No more time was wasted, he had the table neatly split into three parts. At once he gave one part to his God Mohammed, the second part – honestly! – he gave to the Christians’ God: the third part in truth he gave to the God of the Jews. He said: ‘Whichever of them is strongest, let him take away my worries, for I cannot know better than that.’

  Thus spoke the righteous man. With that, his soul departed.

  Saladin as knight became a popular motif. He appears in a minor French poem of the early fourteenth century, Le Pas Saladin, which tells of a battle between Christians and Saracens for a narrow pass. The Christians are victorious and Saladin retreats, not however because he is overwhelmed but because, being a knight imbued with the ideals of chivalry, he does not want to cause the death of other knights. He generously frees his impoverished captive, King Guy, without a ransom being paid. It was a popular tale, in several versions, one being a play still liked well enough decades later to be performed for the eighteen-year-old queen Isabel of Bavaria –wife of the French king Charles VI – when she made a lavish state entry into Paris in 1389. The historian Jean Froissart was there to record the scene (in this sixteenth-century translation by the soldier and statesman John Bourchier):

  On the stage was ordained the pass of king Saladin, and all their deeds in personages, the Christen-men on the one part and the Saracens on the other part, armed with such armour as they then used . . . The personage on the stage of King Richard . . . went to the French king and demanded licence to go and assail the Saracens; and the King gave him leave. Then King Richard returned to his twelve companions; then they all went and assailed the king Saladin and the Saracens . . . There in sport there seemed a great battle, and it endured a good space. This pageant was well regarded.

  But it was Saladin’s virtues – his generosity, his magnanimity – that captured the European imagination more than his fighting skills. In Italy, the legend of Saladin’s virtue took root, partly based on the account of his death, according to which he died with hardly a penny to his name and left nothing but his burial shroud. In many versions, one of his subjects parades the shroud through his realm suspended on a lance, proclaiming this to be the only object to accompany his master in death.

  Dante, writing in the early fourteenth century, twice mentions Saladin and his austerity. His Convivio (The Banquet) is a sort of philosophical compendium in verse and prose. One section discusses the dangers of wealth and the rewards of generosity, considered a prime virtue among poets and philosophers, perhaps because they stood to benefit. This is what he writes, in a condensed version:

  I say then, ‘It is evident that riches are imperfect, and base as well, for however great they are, they bring no peace, but rather grief.’ How fair an exchange does he make who gives of these most imperfect things in order to have and acquire things that are perfect, such as are the hearts of worthy men! Who does not still keep a place in his heart for Alexander because of his royal acts of benevolence? Who does not keep a place for Saladin?

  A few years later, in his Divine Comedy, Dante grants Saladin a place among the virtuous non-Christians in the First Circle of Hell, along with a host of great pre-Christian figures, among them Dante’s guide, Virgil. Why are they here? Virgil explains: they have not sinned, but were not baptized and did not know Christ, and therefore did not worship in the right way.

  For this defect, and for no other guilt,

  We here are lost. In this alone we suffer;

  Cut off from hope, we live on in desire.

  And there, among the great and good, ‘I noticed Saladin’, solo in parte, by himself alone. Why alone? Perhaps because, of all those named, he is the only one who in life was a near contemporary, and close enough to Christians to have been baptized – but was not, and so remains in limbo.

  Meanwhile, the matter of how to identify the one true faith had seeded, propagated and flowered. A story had arisen long before in Persia of a prince who, when entreated by his three beautiful daughters to say which he loved the most, gave them each a wonderful ring in secret, so that each believed herself the best-beloved. The story spread, and changed. The rich man becomes the caliph, the ring becomes a pearl, which evolves into a symbol of True Religion, and at last it migrates to Europe, where daughters become sons and the pearl becomes a ring again, and the story absorbs that of Saladin’s table, turning into a fable about religious toleration.

  This is the version in the 100 stories told by Boccaccio in his Decameron around 1350. Saladin runs out of money. Melchizedek, a Jew, has money enough to cover the shortfall, but Saladin believes he will not lend it fairly. Saladin tries to trick Melchizedek into giving offence (and justifying the seizure of his wealth) by asking him which is the true word of God: Judaism, Christianity or Islam? Melchizedek evades the trap by telling the story of a merchant who had a precious ring and three virtuous sons. Having promised the ring (and, with it, his estate) to all three, the king had two equally precious copies made and gave one ring to each son. Thus it could not be determined who was heir to the estate. Likewise, it cannot be determined which faith is the truth. Saladin gets his loan and repays it, and Melchizedek gains Saladin’s respect. In this form, the story entered the European imagination, where it inspired numerous versions for the next three centuries.

  This humanist view found expression in another cycle of stories, which suggested that the major religions were not truly separate, that Saladin was actually a mix of Muslim and Christian. A thirteenth-century novel suggests that its heroine, the anonymous Lady of Ponthieu, was Saladin’s grandmother, a myth repeated in many versions for the next 500 years. The Catholic church had its fanatics; but Europe also had a more subtle tradition that drew inspiration from Islam’s greatest leader.

  In the eighteenth century, scientific advances produced a new age of scepticism and a renewed appreciation of the need for tolerance. Saladin was recruited to serve the Enlightenment. ‘It is said that he ordered in his will that the same alms were to be distributed to poor Muslims, Jews and Christians.’ This was the philosopher Voltaire writing in his Essai sur les Mœurs (Essay on Customs) in 1756.76 ‘He wanted to show through his command that all men are brothers.’

  That was the first edition. He went on adding to it for the rest of his life.

  In the German-speaking regions, the Enlightenment included the playwright and theatrical all-rounder Gottfried Lessing, who was a great friend of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of the composer. Lessing was famous as a free-thinker, warning against taking the Bible as literally true. His views brought him up against established powers of church and state, and he was forbidden to publish them. To smuggle them into the public domain, he turned to the stage, principally in his most famous play, Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise), in which the main characters are the Jew Nathan; a Christian friar, Conrad; and Saladin (generous to a fault, to the despair of his treasurer). When asked by Saladin which religion is true, Nathan – p
artly based on Lessing’s friend Mendelssohn – replies by picking up the allegory of the three rings, which ever since Boccaccio four centuries before had been symbols of the three main religions. Since they cannot be told apart, there is no alternative but tolerance. ‘Marvellous! Marvellous!’ says Saladin when Nathan concludes his tale. ‘You have set my mind at rest.’

  Lessing makes tolerance work in practice. All the characters – Christian, Muslim and Jewish – turn out to be interrelated by blood or adoption, and all will live in harmony ever after.

  In Britain, a few decades later, with revolution in the air across the Channel, the historian Edward Gibbon emphasized virtues that turned Saladin into a rough-and-ready hero of the underdog. He was, after all, a Kurd, ‘a people hardy, strong, savage and impatient with the yoke . . . the garment of Saladin was a coarse woollen; water was his only drink.’

  In nineteenth-century fiction, the chivalric qualities return, though the tone becomes ever more patronizing as British power increases. In 1825, Sir Walter Scott in the introduction to The Talisman says he was drawn by the old paradox in which ‘the Christian and English monarch showed all the cruelty and violence of an Eastern Sultan; and Saladin, on the other hand, displayed the deep policy and prudence of a European sovereign’. Why, he would sound like a European statesman, except for one little disadvantage: ‘true-hearted and loyal, so far as a blinded infidel may be called so’. Certainly he has the manners for the part. Richard challenges Saladin, who declines, being the epitome of prudence and politeness, saying that if he fell to Richard’s sword he ‘could not pass to Paradise by a more glorious death’. At the turn of the century, with the British Empire at its adventurous zenith, in George Henty’s Winning Spurs: A Tale of the Crusades and Rider Haggard’s The Brethren, Saladin is a virtual public-school boy, a model for those aspiring to make their mark in the great game of life, the rules of which were by happy chance written in English.