Ayyoob, also called Al-Malik An-Naasir Salaah Ad-DeenYoosuf I. He was
born in 1137/38 CE in Tikrit, Mesopotamia and died March 4, 1193, in
Damascus . He later became the Muslim sultan of Egypt Syria Yemen and
Palestine founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, and one of the most famous
of Muslim heroes. In warsagainst the Christian crusaders, he achieved
final success with thedisciplined capture of Jerusalem (Oct. 2, 1187),
ending its 88-year occupation by the Franks. The great Christian
counterattack of the Third Crusade was then stalemated by his military
genius.
Salaahuddeen was born into a prominent Kurdish family. On the night of
his birth, his father, Najm ad-Deen Ayyoob, gathered his family and
moved to Aleppo entering there the service of 'Imaad ad-Deen Zanqi bin
Al- Sunqur, the powerful Turkish governor in northern Syria . Growing
up in Balbek and Damascus Salaahuddeen was apparently an
undistinguished youth, with a great taste for religious studies over
military training.
His formal career began when he joined the staff of his uncle Asad
ad-Deen Shirkuh, an important military commander under the Ameer
Nuruddeen, who was the son and successor of Zanqi. During three
military expeditions led by Shirkuh into Egypt to prevent its falling
to the Latin-Christian (Frankish rulers of the states established by
the First Crusade), a complex, three-way struggle developed between
Amalric I, the Latin king of Jerusalem; Shawar, the powerful State
Minister of the Egyptian Fatimid caliph; and Shirkuh. After Shirkuh's
death and order of Shawar's assassination, Salaahuddeen was appointed
both commander of the Syrian troops in Egypt and State Ministerof the
Fatimid Caliphate there in 1169, at the age of 31. His relatively
quick rise to power must be attributed to his own emerging talents. As
State Minister of Egypt, he received the title king (Malik), although
he was generally known as the sultan.
Salaahuddeen's position was further enhanced when, in 1171, he
abolished the weak and unpopular Shiite Fatimid Caliphate, proclaimed
a return to Sunni Islam in Egypt and became the country's sole ruler.
Althoughhe remained for a time, theoretically, a Governor for
Nuruddeen, that relationship ended with the Syrian Ameer's death in
1174. Using the rich agricultural possessions in Egypt as a financial
base, Salaahuddeensoon moved into Syria with a small, but strictly
disciplined, army to claim the regency on behalf of the young son of
his former leader.
Soon, however, he abandoned this claim, and from 1174 until 1186 he
zealously pursued a goal of uniting, under his own standard, all the
Muslim territories of Syria northern Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt
. This was accomplished by skillful diplomacy backed, when necessary,
by the swift and resolute use of military force. Gradually, his
reputation grew as a generous and virtuous but firm ruler, devoid of
deception, lavishness, and cruelty. In contrast to the bitter
dissension and intense rivalry that hampered the Muslims in their
resistance to the crusaders, Salaahuddeen's consistency of purpose
induced them to rearm both physically and spiritually.
Salaahuddeen's every act was inspired by an intense and unwavering
devotion to the idea of Jihaad against the Christian crusaders. It was
an essential part of his policy to encourage the growth and spread of
Muslimreligious institutions. He courted its scholars and preachers,
founded colleges and mosques for their use, and commissioned them to
write edifying works, especially on Jihaad itself. Through moral
regeneration, which was a genuine part of his own way of life, he
tried to re-create in his own realm some of the same zeal and
enthusiasm that had proved so valuable to the first generations of
Muslims when, five centuries before, they had conquered half of the
knownworld.
Salaahuddeen also succeeded in turning the military balance of power
in his favor by uniting and disciplining a great number of unruly
forces rather than employing new or improved military techniques. At
last in 1187, he was able to throw his full strength into the struggle
with equivalent armies to that of the Latin Crusader kingdom. On July
4, 1187, by the permission of Allaah, then by using his own good
military sense and by a phenomenal lack of it on the partof his enemy,
Salaahuddeen trapped and destroyed, in one blow, an exhausted and
thirst-crazed army of crusaders at Hattin, near Tiberias in northern
Palestine.
So great were the losses in the ranks of the crusaders in this
onebattle that the Muslims were quickly able to overrun nearly
theentire Kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre, Toron, Beirut, Sidon, Nazareth,
Caesarea, Nabulus, Jaffa(Yafo), and Ascalon (Ashqelon) fellwithin
three months. But Salaahuddeen's crowning achievement and the most
disastrous blow to the whole crusading movement came on Oct. 2, 1187,
when Jerusalem, holy to both Muslims and Christians alike, surrendered
to Salaahuddeen's army after 88 years of being in the hands of
theFranks. In stark contrast to the city's conquest by the Christians,
when blood flowed freely during the barbaric slaughter of its
inhabitants, the Muslim reconquest was marked by the civilised and
courteous behaviourof Salaahuddeen and his troops.
His sudden success, which in 1189saw the crusaders reduced to
theoccupation of only three cities, was, however, marred by his
failure to capture Tyre, an almost unconquerable coastal fortress
towhich the scattered Christian survivors of the recent battles
flocked. It was to be the rallying point of the Latin counterattack.
Most probably, Salaahuddeen did not anticipate the European reaction
to his capture of Jerusalem - an event that deeply shocked the West
and to which itresponded with a new call for a crusade. In addition to
many great nobles and famous knights,this crusade, the third, brought
the kings of three countries into the struggle. The magnitude of the
Christian effort and the lasting impression it made on contemporaries
gave the name ofSalaahuddeen, as their gallant and chivalrous enemy,
an added luster that his military victories alone could never confer
on him.
The Crusade itself was long and exhausting and, despite the obvious,
though at times impulsive, military genius of Richard I - the
Lion-Heart - it achieved almost nothing. Thereinlies the greatest -
but often unrecognised - achievement of Salaahuddeen. With tired and
unwilling feudal levies, committed to fight only a limitedseason each
year, his determined will enabled him to fight the greatest champions
of Christendom to a draw. The crusaders retained little more than a
precarious foothold on theLevantine coast, and when King Richard left
the Middle East in October 1192, the battle was over. Salaahuddeen
withdrew to his capital in Damascus.
Soon, the long campaigning seasons and the endless hours in the saddle
caught up with him, and he died. While his relatives were already
scrambling for pieces of the empire, his friends found that the most
powerful and most generous ruler in the Muslim world had not left
enough money to pay for his ownburial. Salaahuddeen's family continued
to rule over Egypt and neighboring lands as the Ayyubid dynasty, which
succumbed to theMamlooks in 1250.
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