Saladin

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.

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  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 ar />
  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