In 2003, the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq intent on overthrowing Saddam Hussein. President George W. Bush referred to the invasion as a crusade. Calling it a crusade was a gift to Saddam Hussein. Among Arabs, “crusade” is code for European cultural and racial imperialism.
While most Europeans have moved on, the Arabs have never forgotten the original Crusades. In the 1090’s Pope Urban II called for a crusade to save Christian Byzantium from the Seljuk Turks and liberate Christian sites in Jerusalem from Muslim control.
In 1099, the Crusaders captured Jerusalem and slaughtered its defenders after promising safe passage away from the city. Then they set up the Kingdom of Jerusalem and began backstabbing and double-crossing each other in scenes familiar to anyone who has watched the Godfather movies. When not fighting each other, the Crusaders fought Arab efforts to reclaim the land.
Then in 1137-38, a new player was born in Tikrit, Iraq. His full name is Al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din Abu’l Muzaffar Yusuf ibn Ayyub al-Tikriti al-Kurdi. We know him as Saladin.
Saladin took up the challenge of jihad. Jihad means the spiritual struggle of every Muslim to live according to Koranic teachings. Jihad also means the individual and community obligation to defend the faith through defensive or offensive warfare. Saladin followed both meanings but is best known for the latter.
Saladin joined the jihad to recover Jerusalem from the Crusaders. His big opportunity came in 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, a desolate spot in the hills west of the Sea of Galilee. Saladin laid siege to a nearby Crusader castle hoping to lure the Crusaders into battle. The Crusaders duly obliged thanks to Gerard of Ridefort, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, whose confidence was exceeded only by his incredibly poor military sense.
Gerard convinced the Crusader army to chase a small Muslim decoy force into the desert. After a couple of days in the summer heat without water, the Crusaders were surrounded at Hattin and annihilated. The Knights Templars and the Hospitallers lost most of their knights, although Gerard survived.
Saladin immediately marched on Jerusalem. The city’s most able defenders were either among the dead at Hattin or prisoners waiting for their ransoms to be paid. Saladin offered safe passage to the Christian defenders if they surrendered. The city surrendered and Saladin kept his word. Saladin was widely admired by Europeans and Arabs for this act of mercy.
The loss of Jerusalem galvanized Europe into the Third Crusade (1189 – 1192). Richard the Lionhearted and Phillip Augustus, King of France, led an army to the Holy Lands and immediately laid siege to Acre, an important sea port.
Acre fell after a two year siege and the starving Muslim defenders were held for ransom. But as the negotiations dragged on, Richard thought the Arabs were acting in bad faith. So he marched 2000 prisoners to a hill top and executed them as Saladin’s army watched. Richard was condemned by Europeans and Muslims for the massacre.
Eventually, Richard and Saladin negotiated an end to the Third Crusade because neither side could win outright. The Crusaders kept a few cities on the Mediterranean coast. Jerusalem became part of Saladin’s caliphate which covered modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank, Egypt, Yemen and parts of Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It’s the only time that a pan-Arab “country” existed.
Saladin died in 1193, but his legend lived on in stories and songs. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Arab nationalists adopted Saladin as their hero hoping to recreate a pan-Arab world free from European invasions and interference. Europeans had carved up the Middle East after World War I without consulting the Arabs.
So when President Bush talked about a crusade, angry Arabs marched through the streets invoking Saladin’s memory. Unfortunately for him, Saddam Hussein couldn’t capitalize on their anger because his blood-soaked regime was loathed by other Arabs. Hussein was brutal, vicious and rather stupid; the antithesis of Saladin.
To learn more about what Saladin’s role in Arab history and folklore, see The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin, by Jonathan Phillips (2019).
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