by A R Azzam
Clearly the Aleppans were unwilling to surrender, nor could the city be
seized by force, for the risk of bloodshed was too great. And so the answer,
frustratingly, was for the time being very littie could be done. In the mean-
time Saladin turned his attention to Masyaf, which was the stronghold of
the Assassins, for the time had come to reckon with them. What happened
next is shrouded in mystery. Having laid a siege, Saladin suddenly broke it
off and withdrew to Damascus. Why he acted thus has never been fiilly
explained. According to some reports a message was sent to hirti that unless
the siege was lifted his uncle Shihab al-Din Harimi and his family would be
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7: T H E P R I Z E O F SYRIA
slaughtered. Perhaps, but it does seem unlikely that Saladin would have
succumbed to such threats since it was so out of character. What was more
significant was that having withdrawn, Saladin was never again threatened
by the Assassins; proof that some form of deal was cut. Upon returning to
Damascus Saladin discovered that Kamal al-Din al-Shahrazuri had died and
in his place, as qadi of Damascus, he appointed a Mosuli, Ibn Abi Asrun, of
whom it was said that he never made a mistake or took a bribe.^^ Ibn Abi
Asrun is of particular interest because he rose to great prominence under
Saladin. It was he who, following the victory at Hattin, carried the captured
True Cross, fixed upside down on a lance, into Damascus. But Ibn Abi
Asrun is also of interest for another reason, for he represents another exam-
ple of the influence of Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani on those who surrounded and
influenced Saladin. Born in Mosul, Ibn Abi Asrun had studied Shafii law in
the city before travelling to Baghdad to study at the Nizamiyya. It was in
that city he came across al-Jilani, whom he befriended.
While in Damascus Saladin married Ismat al-Din Khatun, who was Nur
al-Din's widow. Although it was undoubtedly a poUtical marriage, for she
was already in her fifiiies, it was one that contained much love and tender-
ness. Years later when she passed away, Saladin was ill on campaign and it
was felt best to withhold the news from him; so we are left with the image
of him continuing to write letters to her. Leaving his brother Turan Shah as
his deputy, Saladin then returned to Egypt in September 1176. In the very
same month, and as he headed to Cairo, news reached him that the Seljuq
sultan Kilij Arslan had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Byzantine forces at
Myriokephalon. This in the fiillness of time would signal a significant blow
for the Franks of the Latin Kingdom, since despite the mutual mistrust the
existence of the Byzantium army acted as a safeguard against the Muslims.
Perhaps at first they did not fiilly realise what had occurred, but when
William of Tyre visited Constantinople three years later and learnt what had
happened, he realised the dangers ahead.^^ For Saladin, the news of Kilij
Arslan's victory was received with mixed emotions; yes, a significant defeat
had been inflicted on a Christian army, but there now existed a challenger
to his claim of being the champion of the holy war. Indeed Kilij Arslan
could claim - as he often did - that he was engaging the Christians at a time
when Saladin had not only allowed himself to get bogged down fighting
fellow Muslims, but had even gone as far as to make a truce with the Franks.
It was a claim which Saladin found hard to shake off".
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Cha^pter 8
The Meddlesome Priest:
Saladin and al-Khabushani
We ha-ve no power over this shuykh, so satisfy him.
So-lcniin
Madrasa building in Egypt
•In Egypt Saladin could forget his Syrian problems for a while and focus his
efforts on introducing Sunni orthodoxy into the land of the Nile. Apart from
the al-Nasiriyyah madrasa of which we have spoken earlier, we are certain
that he buih at least five madrasas in Egypt. Although as a Shafii he gave
precedence to that madhab, there are no signs that he was interested in
promoting it at the expense of the others. So at the same time that al-
Nasiriyyah was being constructed, he ordered work on a Malild madrasa.
This, too, stood near the mosque of Amr, and was built on the site of a
covered market. Saladin endowed the madrasa with die booksellers' market,
which was located only a few minutes away, and with two villages in Fayyum,
which provided wheat for the students there. Hence it became Icnown as al-
Qamihiyya. The revenue of the booksellers' market supported the professors
and the students. Saladin also showed a personal interest in the Malilds,
many of whom were originally from North Africa. The pilgrimage route
from the Maghreb involved an arduous land journey until the pilgrims
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8: T H E M E D D L E S O M E P R I E S T : SALADIN A N D A L - K H A B U S H A N I reached Alexandria and, aware of this, Saladin decreed that all Maghribi
travellers be entitled to a daily portion of bread, the expenditure for which
was covered through a pious endowment. Upon reaching Cairo they were
treated no less well than in Alexandria and the pilgrims could stay and study
at the mosque of Ibn Tulun, while the costs of their sojourn were covered
by the authorities. Nor did Saladin forget the followers of the Hanafi
madhab, even though they were few in number in Egypt. In 1176 he
founded a college for them in Cairo and once again the location was care-
fully selected for symbolic value, being the house of several Fatimid viziers.
But this was not just any house, for its history was both well known and
scandalous. It was there, so rumour went, that the caliph al-Zafir had had a
homosexual liaison with the son of a Fatimid vizier, whose slain body was
later left to rot on the gates of Bab Zuwaila. Saladin could not have chosen
better; he was undoubtedly aware of the scandalous story and realised that
the transformation of the house into a madrasa would dramatically signal a
purification of the past. The madrasa was called al-Suyufiyya due to its prox-
imity to the market of the sword sellers. The income for the madrasa was
provided for by the endowment of 32 shops in the market of Amir al-Juyush.
This madrasa affords us an opportunity to throw light on some of the
characters who were associated with Saladin, for several intriguing personal-
ities were linked to the al-Suyufiyya. A glance at the signatories of the
certificate authorising the madrasa reveals none other than Zein al-Din Ibn
Naja, whom Saladin labelled as his Amr Ibn al-As for helping him restore
Sunnism to Egypt. One wonders what the ascetic Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani
would have made of his disciple, for it was common knowledge that Ibn
Naja's supposed spiritual austerity did not prevent him from acquiring great
wealth, which included 20 slave girls valued at 1,000 dinars each and a cui-
sine which was the envy of the city. The first professor of the al-Suyufiyya
provides an example of how far scholars travelled in those days. Born in
Khutan, now in Chinese Turkmenistan, Majd al-Din al-Khatuni studied
hadith in Samarqand, Bukhara
and Khurasan. His travels took him to Iraq
and Syria, where he fought against the crusaders. He came to the attention
of Nur al-Din, who appointed him as professor of the al-Sadriyya madrasa
in Damascus, where he taught for a while before leaving to perform the pil-
grimage, after which he headed for Egypt, where Saladin appointed him as
head of the al-Suyufiyya. What occurred next goes to the heart of how
potentially tempestuous the relationship could be between the rulers and
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SALAD I N
the scholars and how waiy ulama were of being associated with those in
power. While al-Kliatuni was teaching at the madrasa he heard about some
illegal taxes which apparently Saladin had not abrogated. At once the
scrupulous al-Khatuni dropped everything, left the madrasa and departed
for Spain. Whatever had irked al-Kliatuni so much appeared to have resolved
itself; perhaps Saladin acted accordingly, for al-Khatuni returned to the
madrasa, where he remained until his death in 1190.
Equally intriguing was al-Bajali, the second professor of the madrasa.
Born in Baghdad, he studied and lived in Damascus, where he came into
close contact with Saladin and in particular with Shirkuh, over whom he
had considerable influence. By all accounts he was a militant Sunni who had
litde time for the Shiites, and he was one of those who urged Shirkuh to
march on Egypt and put an end to the Fatimids. After Saladin becapae
vizier, al-Bajali joined him in Cairo. Without doubt the most prestigious of
Saladin's madrasas was the al-Salihiyya and its location explains its import-
ance: it was built near the tomb of Imam al-Shafii. As a Shafii Muslim, it was
natural that Saladin should honour the founder of his madhab so grandly.
For many years the tomb had been an object of pilgrimage, visited both by
Sunnis and Shiites. How important the imam was to Egypt is borne out in
an interesting anecdote. When Nizam ul-Mulk, who himself was a Shafii,
built the Nizamiyya he wanted to have the remains of the imam brought to
Baghdad and entombed within the walls of the madrasa. The Fatimid vizier
Badr al-Jamali, who was an Armenian Christian who had converted to
Islam, was unconcerned about such matters and agreed to this request, but
was forced to backtrack when attempts to exhume the remains of the imam
were met with vociferous demonstrations from the Sunnis of Cairo who, it
seems, were not prepared to allow the remains of their beloved imam to
leave Egypt. Saladin would undoubtedly have been told of the incident
involving Nizam ul-Mulk and he now saw an opportunity to mirror the
actions of great Persian vizier by constructing a madrasa which incorporated
the tomb of al-Shafii. No expense was spared, neither in its construction nor
in the enormous salary which it paid its professor. It was truly unrivalled in
Egypt. The traveller Ibn Jubayr was so impressed by the complex, which
must have dominated the entire cemetery, that he likened it to a separate
town.^ The madrasa accommodated at least one hundred students who were
resident there. What is equally noteworthy is that one of the few inscriptions
to survive in Egypt is from the al-Salahiyya and is written in the cursive
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8: T H E M E D D L E S O M E P R I E S T : SALADIN A N D A L - K H A B U S H A N I script which Saladin had imported from Syria. Clear and legible, the letter-ings themselves were enough to announce that the new age of Sunnism had
firmly arrived in Egypt. As for the content of the inscription, that too
was of great interest, since it set a condition which prevailed in Saladin's
madrasas, which was the teaching of Asharism. This was the Asharism which
al-Ghazali had helped integrate within the fold of orthodox Islam, and in
this way another of the main pillars of the Sunni Revival - Asharism -
became the doctrine of Egypt.
If Ibn Zain al-Tujjar - the first professor of al-Nasiriyyah, the first
madrasa which Saladin had constructed - can be fairly claimed to have been
nondescript, then the same can certainly not be said about the first professor
of the al-Salihiyya madrasa, a man who, if nothing else, proved that Saladin
too had his meddlesome priest. How does one begin telling the story of
the larger-than-life Najm al-Din al-Khabushani> What is certain is that the
pedigree of his knowledge was impeccable, both as a scholar and a sufi.
Born in Khabusan, in the province of Nishapur, he studied Shafii law with
Muhammad Ibn Yahya, who was a student of al-Ghazali. He even wrote a
16-volume work, Tcthqiq al-Wasit, which was a commentary on al-Ghazali's
work. Al-Khabushani travelled to Damascus where he spent time in the
same sufi khanaqah where al-Ghazali had resided, and where he apparently
lived in poverty and practised mortification of the flesh.^ It was while he was
in Damascus that he first came into contact with Saladin's father and with
Shirkuh. Outspoken against the Ismailis, whom he considered a dangerous
heresy, he was vociferous in his pleas to Shirkuh to advance on Egypt, boast-
ing that he himself would go and get rid of the Fatimid caliph. It was also
during this period that al-Khabushani first met Saladin.
Six months after Saladin's appointment as vizier, al-Khabushani arrived in
Egypt and his garrulous and confrontational character meant that it would
not be long before his presence was felt. Outspoken against the Fatimids in
Damascus, he was certainly not prepared to hold his tongue in Cairo, even
if matters of tact dictated it, for this was still the period when the diplomatic
charade meant that Saladin was serving the Fatimid caliph as his vizier.
Having deliberately chosen a mosque not far from the Fatimid palace to live
in, al-Khabushani wasted no time in publicly denouncing Ismailism. Clearly
the withdrawn and contemplative path to Icnowledge, made famous by al-
Ghazali, was not the one al-Khabushani was prepared to take. Here was
an ascetic with an attitude. Before long his public denunciations were so
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SALAD I N
effective that they reached the ears of those at the Fatimid palace, and an
attempt to quieten him was made. Perhaps a gift would silence this noisy
preacher, so a messenger was sent with 4,000 dinars, a sum large enough to
render most preachers contemplative. But the messenger had not accounted
for al-Khabushani's hatred of heresy, nor had he expected to confront a short-
tempered scholar. On seeing the man, al-Khabushani exploded with anger
and struck him on the head, unravelling his turban. He then sent the man
scurrying down the stairs while throwing the dinars at his head, all accom-
panied by curses that no man of God should know. Another story is also
told of him and the Fatimids. The caliph al-Adid had a dream in which he saw
a scorpion emerge from a mosque to bite him. When he awoke he was alarmed
by this and asked that the inhabitant of this mosque be brought to him. The
man was, of course, al-Khabushani. In reality it is extremely unlikely tha|: the
Fatimid caliph would have ever crossed paths with al-Khabushani but one
wonders if the latter would have held his tongue. But what was certainly not
officially abolish the Fatimid caliphate, he turned to his jurists to give him
their legal opinions. The jurists agreed that it was legally permissible to kill
the caliph, and the most adamant in this insistence was al-Khabushani.
Clearly this scholar's fiiry and tongue-lashing spared no one. Not even
Saladin. On one occasion, when the sultan was preparing to leave for a cam-
paign against the Franks, al-Khabushani went to bid him farewell. At the
^ame time he took the opportunity to ask him to repeal some improper
taxes from the people, which he declared were un-Islamic. Saladin, however,
preoccupied with the forthcoming campaign, refiised to do so, at which
point and to the bewilderment of everyone present, al-Khabushani burst
into a rage and railed at the sultan: 'May God then not grant you victory!'
Astonishing as such an incident as this was, what was to follow was even
more shocldng. Advancing on Saladin, he raised his cane and struck him,
knocking his headgear to the ground. Clearly al-Khabushani who, one
recalls, knew Saladin and his father from his days in Damascus, felt that he
could act in such an outrageous manner. Saladin, we are told, was left
speechless. But that was not the end of the story. The campaign went badly
for Saladin, and upon his return he went to see al-Khabushani and kissed his
hand and asked for forgiveness. Such a public display of remorse appears
astonishing. Did Saladin truly believe that his military setback was due to
the withdrawal of al-Khabushani's blessing? Or was such a public display a
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8: T H E M E D D L E S O M E P R I E S T : SALADIN A N D A L - K H A B U S H A N I calculated attempt aimed at identifying himself with a holy man - given the
great reverence in which such men were held in popular Islam? The whole
incident is so astonishing that it is impossible to come to a conclusion.
Clearly Saladin held al-Khabushani in considerable respect, although he was
by no means a great teacher - he certainly was not in the calibre of Ibn Awf
or al-Silafi - but we simply don't know why Saladin gave him such leeway.
The only comment we have from Saladin is related to another incident,