by A R Azzam
teach their Egyptian counterparts the new cursive script.
It was during the siege of Alexandria that Saladin first came across the
two giants of Islamic sciences - al-Silafi and Ibn Awf He was quick to pay
homage to both men and travelled often to Alexandria, where he attended
their respective madrasas and listened to hadith from both men. As a fellow
Shafii, there is no doubt that Saladin kept very close to al-Silafi and turned
to him on many occasions, as did his brother al-Adil and his nephew Taqi
ul-Din. For example, when confronted with a thorny question relating to
inheritance among Jews under his rule, Saladin turned to two men to give
him their legal opinions: al-Silafi for the Shafii viewpoint and Ibn Awf for
the Malild one. However, Saladin was not a serious scholar, as was demon-
strated on one occasion when he and his brother al-Adil attended one of
al-Silafi's classes. For a while the two brothers listened intentiy, but soon
enough their attention began to wander and they started chatting to each
other, only to be reprimanded sharply by al-Silafi. In any case as the leading
Shafii jurist in Egypt, it was not surprising that al-Silafi would quickly come
to the attention of Saladin, who urgentiy needed Shafii jurists to help him
administer. What is remarkable is the number of people who served under
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SALAD I N
Saladin who studied at one stage at al-Silafi's madrasa. The most famous,
apart from Saladin, were al-Qadi al-Fadil and Isa al-Haldcari, but by no
means were they all Shafiis; Abul Majid al-Iskandarani for example, Icnowii
as Kamal al-Din, who was the head of the diwan of Upper Egypt and who
studied hadith under al-Silafi, was a Maliki/^
If the aim of establishing madrasas was to produce Sunni jurists who
could administer, then Ibn Awf's contribution was no less significant than
that of al-Silafi, and among his students - reflecting the new breed of
scholar/administrator that was the product of the madrasa - was Ibn al-
Mujawir, who would become Saladin's son's vizier and who was born in
Iran and assumed power in Egypt. Another was Abul-Qasim al-Makhzumi,
loiown as al-Ashraf, who joined Saladin's government and was head of the
bureaucracy. An administrator but also a scholar, his work in government
did not stop him teaching hadith in Alexandria, Damascus and Baghdad.
As soon as Saladin had stabilised his position politically, the question
that began to dominate his thinking was where he would build his first
madrasa. Alexandria he knew well and loved, for its people had stood strong
and firm with him during Shawar's siege. Furthermore, previously all
madrasas had been built in Alexandria. But Alexandria was not Egypt, the
land over which Saladin now ruled. A bold and public statement needed to
be made - maldng a declaration towards his political masters in Damascus
and Baghdad as well as broadening his appeal among the Sunnis of Egypt.
And so Saladin chose to build his first madrasa in Fustat. Fustat but not
Cairo. His cautious nature made him wary and perhaps he did not feel his
position was strong enough to test the unpredictable reaction of the Shiites
if a Sunni madrasa was built in their capital. So at this stage there was no
need for provocation and the choice of Fustat was ideal - not Cairo, but
close enough to cast a Sunni shadow. In the actions of great men one can
never rule out personal ambition and Saladin may have realised that he
gained no benefit in building a madrasa in Alexandria. After all, the city was
already loyal. At the same time, and on a more personal level, he clearly
must have wanted his first madrasa to shine, and one of the first decisions
he would have had to make was to appoint a professor. Now Alexandria was
a city confident in its laiowledge in an age when education was judged not
on loci but on personae}' It mattered little where a student studied, what mattered above all was with whom he studied. Alexandria, as we have seen,
was blessed with two intellectual giants and the city's seekers of Icnowledge
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6: M A S T E R O F EGYPT
were spoiled for choice. Saladin knew both men well, and one can only
surmise diat he was advised that in this abundant market of loiowledge,
another madrasa would be overshadowed.
So Fustat it was. And not just anywhere in Fustat, but right next to the
the mosque of Amr Ibn al-As - the very heart of the Sunni community, to
which the madrasa had direct access. In addition, Saladin's own residence
was nearby so daily he would have watched the construction. Nothing was
left to chance. Throughout his life Saladin always chose his dates carefully for
their religious symbolism, and it was not an accident that it was on the first
day of the new Muslim year of 566 (1170) that construction of his madrasa
commenced. Even the location held symbolic significance - a prison just
south of the Amr mosque was torn down to make way. The message could
not be clearer: the building that represented the coercive power of the
Fatimid regime was turned into an institution identified with Sunni Islam.
A pious endowment was established for the maintenance of the madrasa -
known as al-Nasiriyyah - which included a goldsmiths' market and a village,
probably in Fayyum, as well as properties adjacent to it such as an oven,
a bathhouse and shops. Included also in the endowment was the Island
of Elephants. It was, of course, a Shafii madrasa and the first mudarris
appointed was Ibn Zain al-Tujjar. Originally from Damascus, he may have
come to Egypt with Shirkuh, and it does seem that Saladin Icnew him from
Damascus. The choice was an uncontroversial one and perhaps in this mat-
ter Saladin was too cautious, for Ibn Zain managed to teach at al-Nasiriyyah
for 25 years without making a significant impact. In short, and in compari-
son with the two giants of Alexandria, the stature of the professor barely
filled the grandeur of the madrasa. Such a low profile tempts the question of
whether Saladin purposely chose a mediocre mudarris, whom he could eas-
ily manage,^® but it is more likely that he chose someone whom he knew well
and trusted and who simply turned out to be a poor teacher. Nur al-Din
would perhaps have devoted more attention in selecting a more suitable pro-
fessor for such an important position. It would not, as we shall see, be the
first time that Saladin would choose badly. Suffice to say that the originality
of al-Nasiriyyah being the first madrasa in Fustat and its proximity to the
Amr mosque secured its status, contradicting the usual maxim in medieval
Islamic education that one's teacher mattered, but the venue did not.
Islamic education during this period remained essentially informal and
flexible to the extreme. There was no curriculum nor any attempt to
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SALAD I N
institutionalise education, nor was there any formal procedure of admission
based on previous educational qualifications. Permission of the teacher was
required, otherwise students were able to attend any study circle they
desired. One searches in vain for a programme which trained bureaucrats
;
indeed, such a curriculum would have been totally alien. It appears that a
grounding in Islamic law was sufficient. Above all, the loyalty of the student
remained overwhelmingly to the teacher and not to the location; the pro-
fessor made the madrasa and not the other way round. Knowledge was a
highly personal process and was dependent upon the relationship between
the teacher and the student. Thus biographies of the eleventh- and twelfth-
centuiy Baghdadi scholars make almost no mention of the madrasas in
which they studied, even though this information was widely Icnown;
instead they feature the list of teachers with whom the individual studied.
The actual location where the studies took place must be reconstructed
from the context. The reason for this was that teachers imparted more than
knowledge to their pupils, and they also imparted authority over texts and
learning that could be transmitted only through some form of direct per-
sonal contact.'^ This transmission took the form of an ijaza (licence) issued
by a shaykh to a student, and the ijaza quickly became the standard means
by which Muslim learning was passed on.^® Even people who had books but
no teachers with whom to study tried to get close to the author - we read
about a scholar who while studying the works of Ibn Arabi made visitations
to his tomb to read his books there. This was because loiowledge was seen
as a form of blessing (baraka) and was independent of the book that
contained it; the shaykhs who taught it partook of it and became infused by
it in ways which today the secular mind would find incomprehensible.
Damascenes, for example, seeldng baraka, drank the water in which the
scholar Ibn Taymiyya did his ablutions. In any case the books themselves
were simply an aid to memorisation: Ibn Khallikan related the story of a
scholar who claimed that if all al-Shafii's books were burned it would mat-
ter litde to him, as he could write them out himself from memory.
Many students travelled to study with professors, collect hadith and
obtain ijazas before setding down. It was customary for students, often in
their twenties though sometimes much older, to leave their city of origin
and travel to other cides to study. This was called the rihla, the journey. The
distances that were travelled were immense. Scholars in Iran and Spain read
books written in Egypt and law professorships in Baghdad were filled by
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6: M A S T E R OF EGYPT
scholars bom in Damascus. It was not uncommon for a scholar to be born
in Alexandria and die in China. The example of Hasan al-Andalusi is a good
if certainly not rare one. A native of Valencia, Hasan travelled as a young
man all the way to China to collect hadith, before maldng his way to the
Nizamiyya in Baghdad to study law with al-Ghazali. Some students studied
with many professors; others stayed with the same professor for many years,
often acting as his companion. Inevitably social bonds were born and rela-
tionships developed. Frequently a young scholar married the daughter of
a native-born professor. In this way inter-city marriage alliances began to
exist. Nor did travel mean that the scholars lost touch with each other,
and letters were an easy and accessible form of communication. The letters
did not concern themselves with scholarly subjects only, and political and
military matters were keenly discussed. When a famous scholar died, people
around the Islamic world mourned him.^' There is no question that this
resulted in the formation of a strong, cosmopolitan, intellectual elite^"
and the establishment of networks of learning and Icnowledge, which tied
Islamic lands together in ways that political events, no matter how seismic,
could hope to. If we stress this point, it is because its implications were
profound.
• 97 •
Cha^pter 7
The Prize of Syria
Let us not remove him from our iiUe£ia.n.ce, he is stronger than we are.
Kamal al-Din al-Shahrazuri
It is impossible to overstress the influence of Nur al-Din on Saladin.
Saladin had grown up in Nur al-Din's court and both his father and uncle
had served him loyally. Now, even though he was master of Egypt, he lived
in Nur al-Din's shadow. Ideologically there was litde to choose between
them, although the men were naturally different. Nur al-Din was a deep
thinker and an avid collector and reader of hadith, while Saladin was clearly
less intellectual but equally sincere in his adherence to the principles of
Sunni orthodoxy. Both had tremendous respect for holy men and were
drawn to sufism, though once again Saladin was content to bow to those
with greater knowledge. There was an austerity in both men and an asceti-
cism, although one gets the impression that there was a rigour in Nur al-
Din which in Saladin's case was softened by a natural kindness that often
brought him to tears. Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, who served both men as sec-
retary (and who incidentally also served Ibn Hubayra), had no doubt about
Saladin's ideological indebtedness to Nur al-Din, for he wrote that Saladin
modelled himself on all the qualities of Nur al-Din.
Nevertheless, as Saladin's position in Egypt began to assume a level of
normality it was inevitable that a tension between the two men should
surface. The root of this tension was simple: what was to become of Egypt?
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7: T H E P R I Z E O F SYRIA
Once again Imad al-Din al-Isfahani summed up the dilemma: 'Since the
time that Egypt was taken Nur al-Din had wanted an agreed sum of money
to be contributed which would help him meet the expenses of the holy war
. . . He was waiting for Saladin to suggest this on his own account and did
not ask him for it'. In other words Nur al-Din needed Egypt to financially
subsidise his campaigns in Syria. The fact was both men had come to power
through their militaiy strengths and had no Islamic right to rule, and neither
fitted the requirements of the Sharia.^ In that sense they needed to justify
legally what they had seized by force, and legitimisation could only come
from the caliph. Nur al-Din needed to show the caliph that he had restored
Ismaili Egypt to the Sunni fold and he grew increasingly restive as Saladin
hesitated in doing so. Saladin, on the other hand, would not be rushed;
in any case his nature was not one of haste. Nur al-Din was also unaware of
the dangers of rebellion and plots that lurked in the shadows of Cairo. The
threat of internal trouble, though diminished, had not receded totally and
around April 1174 another Fatimid plot was put down. The plot was said
to have involved a cocktail of those who held grievances against Saladin:
Fatimids, Armenians, Sudanese and others who had had their lands dispos-
sessed. The plot was quicldy uncovered and crushed, though once again
we are thrown into the murky world of informers and agent provocateurs:
the two men who had infiltrated the plotters and then betrayed them were
Ibn Masai, who had become very close to Saladin when they endured the
siege of Alexandria, and the shadowy Ibn Naja, who seems to have had a
foot both in Nur al-Din's camp and the Fadmid one.
There is no doubt that Saladin shared Nur al-Din's desire to end what
he perceived as a Shiite heresy, but his first priority was to build a strong
force to hold Egypt. 'Saladin had to act as a true ruler of Egypt', writes
Ehrenkreutz, 'following a policy dictated by the interests of Egypt, not
by those of a foreign power'.^ In other words, Egypt could not do Syria's
bidding. At the same time, personal factors must have come into play as
Saladin began to appreciate the enormous wealth and resources to be found
in the land of the Nile. He may well have recalled that when his uncle had
returned afl:er the second campaign, Nur al-Din had compensated him with
Homs, and he now saw that the whole of Homs was smaller than Cairo, let
alone Egypt. If he were to return now to Syria, could he expect any better
than Homs.? He had been reluctant to come to Egypt, but now he under-
stood that he would be a fool to leave. How deep the tension was between
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SALAD I N
the two men is hard to fathom. Ibn al-Athir writes of an Ayyubid family
council in which Taqi ul-Din showed open defiance towards Nur al-Din,
while the wise Ayyub took Saladin aside and counselled prudence. Since
the Zengid and notoriously anti-Saladin Ibn al-Athir mentioned that this
conversation was held in private between the two men, one wonders how
he would have been privy to it, and one suspects that it was nothing more
than one of the historian's fabrications, worthy of Thucydides. Although
Ehrenlcreutz insists that Nur al-Din was quick to undermine Saladin with
'obstructionist measure or gestures' calculated to undermine his authority,
and quoting Ibn al-Athir he points to his confiscation of Shirkuh's lands in
Homs as proof of his displeasure, one can interpret Nur al-Din's speed of
action in a different light; above all his realisation that Shirkuh's son, Nasr
al-Din, was too young to hold such an important frontier post.
The truth is we do not Icnow how badly the relations between the two
men deteriorated. Admittedly by the summer of 1174 Nur al-Din began to
muster troops from Mosul and upper Mesopotamia, but was he seriously
thinking of advancing on Egypt.!' He had, after all, not hesitated in sending