Salahuddin al-Ayyubi
The Kurdish sultan who recaptured Jerusalem for Islam eighty-eight years after the First Crusade. When he entered the city in 1187, he forbade a massacre and let the Christian inhabitants ransom themselves. Died with nothing.
- Lived
- 1137 - 1193 CE
Who was Salahuddin al-Ayyubi? The Kurdish sultan who recaptured Jerusalem for Islam eighty-eight years after the First Crusade. When he entered the city in 1187, he forbade a massacre and let the Christian inhabitants ransom themselves. Died with nothing.
Life
Salahuddin Yusuf ibn Ayyub was born in Tikrit in 1137 CE into a Kurdish family serving the Zangid sultan Nur ad-Din. He rose through military and political service in Egypt, eventually founding the Ayyubid dynasty. But his name is remembered for one act above all others: the recapture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 CE.
Eighty-eight years earlier, when the First Crusade took Jerusalem, the streets ran red with the blood of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants: eyewitness accounts say the crusaders waded ankle-deep through the massacre. When Salahuddin entered the city on 2 October 1187, he had every legal and cultural warrant to answer that memory in kind. He did not. He forbade a massacre, imposed a modest ransom, released those who could not pay, and permitted Christians to worship freely at the Holy Sepulchre. Even his enemies wrote of him with awe.
Salahuddin later fought the Third Crusade against Richard the Lionheart. When Richard fell ill outside Jaffa, Salahuddin sent his personal physician and gifts of fruit and snow from Mount Hermon to cool the king's fever. He died in Damascus in 1193 CE. When his estate was counted, he owned one dinar and forty-seven dirhams, not enough to pay for his own funeral. His shroud was borrowed. His tomb still stands in Damascus.
Stories
Each story below is drawn from the classical Islamic sources and is told in longer form on its own page.
The day Jerusalem was not a massacre
In 1099, when the First Crusade took Jerusalem, its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were massacred in the streets. The rivers of the killing were reported to reach the horses' bridles. When Salahuddin took Jerusalem back in 1187, he had every warrant of custom to answer that in kind. He did not.
The snow he sent for Richard's fever
During the Third Crusade, King Richard the Lionheart fell ill outside Jaffa. His army feared he would die. When Salahuddin heard of it, he sent his personal physician, a basket of Mount Hermon snow, and a gift of Persian pears.