2023

King an-Nasir Abu al-Muzaffar Saladin and Dunya Yusuf ibn Ayyub Ibn Shazi ibn Marwan Ibn ya'qub Al-duwayni Al-Tikriti (532-589 Ah / 1138-1193 ad), known by the nickname of Saladin, the Muslim leader who founded the Ayyubid state that United Egypt, the Levant, Hejaz, Tihama and Yemen under the Abbasid banner, after he eliminated the Fatimid state that lasted 262 years. Saladin led several campaigns and battles against the Franks and other European Crusaders to regain the holy lands captured by the Crusaders in the late eleventh century. He was eventually able to regain most of the lands of Palestine and Lebanon, including the city of Jerusalem after the army of Jerusalem was badly defeated in the Battle of Hattin. Salah al-Din was following the doctrine of the Ahl al-Sunnah and the Jamaat. It is narrated that Abdul Qadir al-Jilani called him with blessings when he saw him, during a "hidden visit" to Najm al-Din Ayyub and his family in Baghdad in 533 Ah/1138 ad, and this explains his following the Qadiriyya method later. Some scholars such as Al-maqrizi, and some late historians said: that he was an ash'ariya, the Shafi'i of the doctrine, and that he was accompanying the scholars of Sufism Ash'ariya to take opinions and advice, and showed the ash'ari Creed. Saladin is famous for his tolerance and humane treatment of his enemies, so he is one of the most revered and respected people in the Eastern Islamic and Christian European worlds, crusader historians wrote about his valor in several situations, most notably when he besieged the Karak fortress in Moab, as a result of this, Saladin was respected by his opponents, especially King Richard I of England, the "Lionheart", and instead of turning into a hated person in western Europe, he became a symbol of chivalry and courage, and was mentioned in several English and French stories and poems the era.

Pedigree and upbringing,

Salah al-Din was born in Tikrit in Iraq in 532 Ah/1138 ad on the night his father Najm al-Din Ayyub left the Tikrit Castle when he was governor of it, and the lineage of the Ayyubids goes back to Ayyub Ibn Shazi ibn Marwan from the people of the ancient city of Duin in Armenia, from which Shazi was exiled in 524 Ah/1130 AD when a Turkish Prince seized the city from its Kurdish Prince. The historians differed in the lineage of the Ayyubid family, as the Mosul historian Ibn al-Athir al-Jaziri reported in his history that their origin is from the Kurds of Al-rawadiya, and they are a thigh of the hadbaniyya, the dominant Kurdish tribe in the Duin region at that time. Ahmad ibn khalkan mentions the following: "A man, a jurist who knows what he is saying, a native of Duin, told me that Bab Duin is a village that is said to have two grandparents and all its people are pioneer Kurds, and Shazi had taken his two sons Asad Al-Din shirkuh and Najm al-Din Ayyub and took them to Baghdad and from there they went to Tikrit, and Shazi died in it and his grave has a dome inside the country," which is confirmed by said Abdel Fattah Ashour, Jamal al-Din al-Shayal and Abdel Moneim Majid. After the Ayyubids settled in power, a group of their Kings adopted Noble Arab lineages and denied Kurdish descent, as they said, "But we are Arabs, we settled down with the Kurds and married them."However, they differed in their lineage. the King Al-Mu'izz Ismail al-Ayyubi, the owner of Yemen, attributed the lineage of the Bani Ayyub to the Bani Umayyah, and when the Just King Saif al-Din Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub said: "Ishmael lied that we are originally from the Bani Umayyah," as for the Ayyubids, the Kings of Damascus, proved their lineage to the Bani Murrah Ibn Auf from the stomachs of ghatfan.this lineage was brought to the great Isa ibn Ahmad, the owner of Damascus, and his son King Nasser Salah al-Din David heard him.

Al-Hasan ibn Dawud Al-Ayyubi explained in his book "the obvious benefits in the nasirids" what was said about the lineage of his ancestors and confirmed that they were not Kurds, but descended with them and attributed to them. "I have not seen anyone I recognized from the sheiks of our house recognize this lineage,"he said.

Also, Al-Hasan ibn Dawud in his book has weighed the validity of the genealogical tree established by Al-Hasan ibn Gharib, in which the family is attributed to job Ibn Shadi ibn Marwan ibn Abi Ali Muhammad ibn Antara Ibn Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Ali ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Hadba Ibn al-Husayn ibn al-Harith Ibn Sinan ibn Amr ibn Murrah Ibn AWF Ibn Osama bin behis Ibn al-Harith Ibn AWF ibn Abu hartha Ibn Murrah Ibn Nashoba Ibn Ghiz Ibn Murrah Ibn Auf Ibn Louay Ibn Ghalib Ibn Fahr ibn Malik ibn Quraysh.

It is mentioned in the Arabic encyclopedia that the Rowadians are a branch of another Kurdish family known as the Bani Salar. According to university professor and Syrian historian Shaker Mustafa, the pioneers belong to the Yemeni Arabs from the Arab AZD tribe, but over the days, because they are few in that area, they took on a Kurdish character in some of their cases. Saladin's father, Najm al-Din, had moved to Baalbek, where he became its guardian for seven years and moved to Damascus, and Saladin spent his childhood in Damascus, where he spent his youth at the court of the Just King Nur al-Din Mahmud Ibn Zinki, the Emir of Damascus. The sources about Saladin's life during this period are few and scattered, but it is known that he deeply adored Damascus, received his Sciences in it, and excelled in his studies, until some of his contemporaries said about him that he was a scholar of Euclidean geometry, magisterial mathematics, arithmetic Sciences and Islamic law, and some sources state that Saladin was more passionate about religious sciences and Islamic jurisprudence than Military Sciences during his school days. In addition, Saladin was well versed in genealogy, biographies, the history of the Arabs, and poetry, he memorized the Diwan of enthusiasm for Abu Tamam by heart, he also loved the Arabian horses, and knew their purest bloodlines.

The Abbasid state had fragmented into several states by the time Saladin appeared, in the middle of the XII century, the Fatimids were ruling Egypt and calling for their successors on the pulpits of mosques and not recognizing the caliphate of Baghdad, the Crusaders were occupying the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea from Asia Minor to the Sinai Peninsula, and the atabegs controlled northern Iraq and inner Syria.

Salah al-Din's star shone in the sky of battles and military leadership when he accepted the Fatimid Vizier Shawar bin Mujir Al-Saadi to the Levant fleeing from Egypt, and from the Vizier Dargham bin Amer bin Sawar Al-mundhiri Al-Lakhmi nicknamed The Knight of the Muslims when he seized the Egyptian state and conquered him and took his place in the ministry and killed his eldest son Ta'i bin Shawar, seeking refuge with King Nur al-Din Zinki in Damascus in the month of Ramadan in 558 ah and entered Damascus on the 23 of Dhu al-Qa'dah of the same year, Nur al-Din Saladin, the twenty-six-year-old son of Rabi, was among them in the service of his uncle and the service of the army of the Levant, and he is averse to traveling with them, and Nur al-Din had to send this army He wanted to inquire about the conditions of Egypt, but he was informing him that it was weak on the part of the soldiers and its conditions were very dysfunctional, so he intended to reveal the truth of this. Nur al-Din was very dependent on shirkuh for his courage, knowledge, and honesty, so he assigned him for this, Asad Al-Din made shirkuh his nephew Salah al-Din the Lieutenant Colonel of his army and consulted with them, so they came out of Damascus at the head of the army in Jumada I in 559 ah and entered Egypt and took control of it and took over the matter in Rajab of the same year, it is known that Salah al-Din did not play a big role during this first campaign, but his role was limited to secondary tasks.

When Asad Al-Din and Shawar arrived at the Egyptian homes and captured them and killed the vizier Dargham and Shawar got to his destination and returned to his post his rules were smoothed and his affairs continued, Asad Al-Din betrayed his shirk and took refuge with the Franks and besieged him in bilbies for three months, and Asad Al-Din had seen the country and knew its conditions, but under pressure from the attacks of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and successive campaigns on Egypt in addition to the small number of Levantine soldiers forced to withdraw from the country. Nur al-Din in Damascus, as well as Asad Al-Din, came to the knowledge of the Office of the minister Shawar to the Franks and what was decided between them, fearing that Egypt should own it and in its way own all the country there, so Asad Al-Din was equipped in command of the army and came out of Damascus and carried out with him Nur al-Din Asaker and Salah al-Din in the service of his uncle Asad Al-Din, and Asad Al-Din's arrival in the country was comparable to the arrival of the Franks, so they agreed with the Fatimids on him, so they engaged in the first big battle in the Giza desert, and in that battle, Salah al-Din played a big role, as the Fatimids and the Franks outnumber the Levant army, so shirkuh thought to make Saladin on the heart because he believed that the Franks would bear on the heart thinking that shirkuh would be in Shirkuh took over the starboard command with the Braves of his army, and handed over the command of the port to a gathering of Kurdish commanders. At the beginning of the battle, the Crusaders, who regularly retreated in front of this attack, were carried to the heart, only to be encircled by shirkuh and his soldiers in a kind of pincer tactic. Some Western historians believe that the roughness of the land, the density of sand, the weight of European horses and armored Frankish soldiers contributed to making the verse turn against them, and the Levant army defeated them, and Saladin was able to capture one of the leaders of the Crusader army when he attacked his wing, the owner of Caesarea.

The Battle of Alexandria,

After this victory, Asad Al-Din headed to the city of Alexandria, known for hating Shawar, and opened its doors to him. Soon, Amuri I, the king of Jerusalem, restored and consulted the order of the army, and despite the heavy losses inflicted on them, their army was still more numerous than that of Asad ad-Din, and they laid a harsh siege to Alexandria. The signs of famine began to loom on the horizon, so Asad Al-Din decided to sneak out of Alexandria with a garrison and replaced Salah al-Din on it, heading to Upper Egypt in the hope that Amuri's armies would catch up with him, but Shawar pointed out the importance of Alexandria so that the siege on it would continue. The Crusader sources believe that Asad Al-Din sneaked out of Alexandria when things got bad there that he was sent to negotiate that both armies should leave Egypt and that the people of Alexandria should not be punished for the support they provided. One of the main reasons for Amuri's approval of this deal was the raid of Nur ad-Din Zengi on the emirate of Tripoli, which led to Amuri's first fear for his lands in the Levant. While Arab sources believe that Asad Al-Din parted ways with Saladin immediately after entering Alexandria, and began to change in Upper Egypt. When the siege of Alexandria intensified, he moved towards it, the Crusaders stopped him in peace and agreed to this on the condition that the Frankish and Levantine armies leave Egypt. The Levant Army left Egypt on Shawwal 29, 562 AH, corresponding to August 18, 1167 AD.

Asad Al-Din returned from Damascus to Egypt a third time, the reason for this was that the Franks gathered their knight and foot and went out to Egypt due to Shawar's failure to pay the royalty to the Crusader garrison in Egypt, in addition to rumors that Al-Kamil Ibn Shawar proposed to marry Saladin's sister. When this reached Asad Al-Din and Nur al-Din in the Levant, they could not wait, so they hurried to Egypt, as Nur al-Din had money and the army, and he could not march by himself to counter any attempt by the farang, Asad Al-Din himself, his money, brothers, family and men, and the army marched. When Shawar felt the departure of the Franks to Egypt, he walked to Asad Al-Din in Damascus to appeal to him and help him, so he got out quickly, and his arrival in Egypt was in the month of Rabi ' al-Awwal in 564 ah, and when King Amuri I learned of the arrival of Asad Al-Din at the head of the army from Damascus to Egypt, he decided to surprise him at Suez, but Asad Al-Din realized this and headed south bypassing the Crusaders. It was only Amory to evacuate from the land of Egypt on January 2, 1169, so Asad Al-Din entered Cairo on 7 Rabi al-akhir in 564 AH, corresponding to January 8, 1169, and Asad Al-Din stayed there, Shawar frequented him at times and promised them money in exchange for what they lost from alimony, but nothing was delivered to them, and Asad Al-Din knew that Shawar was playing with him at other times, and realized that there was no way to seize the country with Shawar remaining, so he unanimously decided to arrest him if he went out to him, and on 17 another spring, corresponding to January 18, Shawar was arrested and the Fatimid caliph, adherent of Allah, issued an order to kill him and appointed Asad Al-Din as vizier.

Establishment of the state in Egypt,

Taking over the ministry and overthrowing the Fatimid state
Before the advent of Saladin, Egypt was the seat of the Fatimid state, and by that time the Fatimid Caliph had nothing but prayers on the pulpits, and all matters were in the hands of the ministers, and the minister of State was the owner of the order and the prohibition, so Asad Al-Din shirkuh became the first man in the country, and he continued to do this and Saladin took matters to a place of his sufficiency, knowledge, good opinion and policy for two months, when Asad Al-Din died, the Fatimid caliph assigned the ministry to Saladin. Historians, led by Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, mention that after Shirkuh's death and the expiration of the mourning period, the zankis, the princes of Damascus, demanded the Fatimid caliph and even pressured him to make Salah al-Din his vizier, and the Caliph accepted this despite the intense competition that the Islamic states were witnessing at that period, to control Arab lands, due to the severity of the weakness of the Fatimid state, the strength of the zinkis and their popularity, and the popularity of Salah al-Din himself among the people and the princes of the Levant, after. Despite this support, Salah al-Din's assumption of the Ministry of Egypt did not pass peacefully, a few months after his assumption, he was subjected to an assassination attempt by some Fatimid soldiers and princes, and it turned out that the main instigator of this was the confessor of the Fatimid caliph and was a eunuch in the palace of Al-aadid for the religion of Allah, and this eunuch was looking to rule in, but he managed to suppress them and break their Thorn, and that was the last uprising against Saladin taking place in the city.

After the fall of Egypt to the Zincians, King Amuri sent his messengers to send a new crusade explaining the seriousness of the matter and the change in the balance of power in the region, Pope Alexander III responded and sent letters to the Kings of Europe, but they did not find a listening ear. The messenger sent to Constantinople succeeded due to the realization by Emperor Emmanuel Komnenos of the imbalance of power in the region. He offered the cooperation of the Imperial fleet with the campaign of Amuri I, who found the opportunity appropriate due to the preoccupation of King Nur ad-Din Zenki with his internal problems, in addition to the death of Asad ad-Din shirkuh and the appointment of Saladin as his successor, whom King Amuri considered an inexperienced person.

Saladin prepared well, he was able to get rid of the palace guard of the Fatimid caliph, who supported the religion of Allah, and replaced it with a guard loyal to him. This was due to the delay of the crusade three months since its launch on Shawwal 13, 564 AH, corresponding to July 10, 1169 ad, due to the lack of enthusiasm of the Crusader princes and Barons for the battle after the last battles in which they were defeated, the Crusaders began their campaign with the siege of the city of Damietta on 1 Safar, 565 AH, corresponding to October 25, 1169 ad, so Saladin sent his forces led by Shahab al-Din Mahmud and his nephew Taqi al-Din Omar, and he complains about what they are afraid of and says: "if I am late for Damietta, the king of the Franks, and if I walk to her, the Egyptians followed me in her people with evil, and they got out of my obedience, and walked in my trail, and the Franks in front of me, then there is no more for us to stay," Nur al-Din said in that: "I am ashamed of Allah to smile and Muslims are surrounded by Franks," he said. Nur ad-Din fled to the Crusader principalities in the Levant and launched raids on crusader fortresses to relieve pressure on Egypt. The garrison of Damietta played a key role in the defense of the city and threw a huge chain across the river, blocking the access of Roman ships to it, heavy rains turned the Crusader camp into a swamp, so they prepared to return and left Damietta after a siege that lasted fifty days, after they burned all the siege tools. When the Byzantine fleet sailed, a violent storm came, the sailors - almost starving - could not control their ships, and most of them drowned.

Saladin and his Army followed the remnants of the retreating Crusader army north until they clashed with them in the city of Deir al-Balah in 1170 ad, so King Amuri I and his garrison of the Knights Templar came out of Gaza City to fight Saladin, but the latter was able to evade the Crusader army and turned his march to Gaza itself, where he destroyed the town built by the Crusaders outside the walls of the city. Some documents report that during this period, Saladin conquered the Eilat fortress built by the Crusaders on a small island in the Gulf of Aqaba on 10 Rabi al-akhir 566 Ah, although it did not pose a threat to the Muslim Navy, its knights were sometimes exposed to small merchant ships and boats.

After this victory, the zincians fixed their feet in Egypt, and it became clear that the Fatimid state was breathing its last breaths, so Nur ad-Din sent to Salah ad-Din asking him to stop praying to the Fatimid caliph and pray to the Abbasid caliph in the mosques of Egypt. Saladin did not want to comply with this order for fear of Shiite influence in Egypt, and he began to be evasive in delaying the order, but Nur al-Din threatened Saladin to personally come to Cairo. Salah al-Din took the necessary police measures, but no one dared to do so, until a Sunni Sheikh from Mosul came as a visitor and stood in the Al-Azhar mosque and preached to the Abbasid caliph illuminated by the command of Allah on the first Friday of the year 567 AH, corresponding to September of the year 1171 ad, so that all Cairo followed his example, at a time when he moved his family and his father Najm al-Din to it to be his loyal helpers, and thus the Fatimid state completely disappeared after it lasted 262 years.

Sultan of Egypt,

Saladin began to strengthen his position in Egypt after the demise of the Fatimid state and sought independence from it, so he worked to win the love of Egyptians, assigned state positions to his supporters and relatives, dismissed Shiite judges, and replaced them with Shafi'i judges, abolished the DA'wa councils and removed the origins of the Ismaili Shiite doctrine. He ordered on the tenth Friday of Dhu al-Hijjah in 565 Ah, approved in 1169 ad, to mention in the Friday sermon all the adult caliphs: Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Othman ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib, and he also founded two large schools in Fustat, the Nasiriya school, and the Kamiya school to prove the doctrine of Sunnis in the country, and these two schools were teaching the sciences of Sharia according to the and Shafi'i.

Nur ad-Din Zengi was afraid of the growing power of his follower Saladin, and the relationship between them was already frosty since Saladin took power in Egypt. This tension in the relationship began to appear when Saladin was late in the sermon to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad until Nur al-Din threatened to march to him and also appeared when Saladin asked Nur al-Din to send his brothers to him, but he did not answer him to that and said: "I am afraid that one of them will disagree with you and spoil the country". The dispute between them increased in the year 567 Ah, approved in 1172 AD, until it became a monster, when they agreed on the siege of the castles of Karak and the city of Al-Shobak in the desert of Jordan, and Saladin returned to Egypt, before he met Nur al-Din, fearing that the latter would isolate him from Egypt, and that the control of the two fortresses would open the way for Nur al-Din to Cairo, so Saladin withdrew citing the dangerous conditions in Egypt, so most of the matter on Nur al-Din, until he decided to march to Egypt. When Saladin learned of this, he gathered his relatives and consulted them about the matter, some of them advised him to fight Nur al-Din, but his father and uncle prevented him from doing so, and his father demanded that he send letters of apology and justification to Nur al-Din, but Nur al-Din was not convinced of any of these justifications, and he resolved to conduct a campaign to Egypt to depose Saladin as soon as possible.

In the summer of 1172, there were reports that an army of Nubians accompanied by Armenian elements had reached the borders of Egypt and was preparing to besiege Aswan, so its emir asked for military aid from Saladin and sent him reinforcements led by his older brother, Turan Shah, forced the Nubians to withdraw. The Nubian Army returned to Egypt in 1173, but this time it was also followed by the Ayyubid army to Nubia and the town of Qasr Ibrim was conquered. At that time, Nur al-Din Zenki had not yet taken any military step toward Saladin, but he demanded that he return the amount of 200,000 dinars that Nur al-Din had allocated to finance the campaign of Asad Al-Din shirkuh, which succeeded in conquering the country and eliminating the Crusader and Fatimid influence in it, so Saladin paid 60,000 dinars, and attached it with a load of the best goods and some jewels, in addition to a thoroughbred Arabian horse and an elephant, and considered it a fulfillment of religion. Saladin took advantage of the opportunity of his passage through the Levantine crusader lands to deliver money and gifts to Damascus, and raided some of the Bedouin strongholds in the desert to deprive the Crusaders of the opportunity to use trackers or local guides to guide them in case they decided to attack Egypt or the Muslim lands adjacent to them. While Saladin was in the Levant, his father Najm al-Din Ayyub was injured in an accident while riding his horse, and he died on 27 Dhu al-Hijjah 568 ah, a few days before Saladin arrived in Egypt. In the year 1174 AD, corresponding to the year 569 Ah, Saladin reported that a man in Yemen seized it, and the king of its fortresses was called Abdul Nabi Ibn Mahdi, when he found out the strength of his army and the number of his soldiers, Saladin sent his brother Shams Al-Dawla Turan Shah to Yemen, and killed Mahdi's son, and took the country from him, then the Hejaz announced its accession to Egypt as well. Then Saladin sent his commander Sharaf al-Din Karakush to subjugate lower Morocco under Ayyubid rule, the Almohads saw that Karakush's invasion of ifriqiya posed a serious threat to their existence, embodied this danger through the alliance that was concluded between Karakush and the Arab tribes in the lower Morocco and the fall of many cities in the grip of Arab tribes who declared their allegiance to the Abbasid Caliphate and called for the caliph in the pulpits.

Nur al-Din Zenki began to gather a huge army in the spring of 1174, in an attempt to depose Saladin in Egypt he sent messengers to Mosul, Diyar Bakr, and the Euphrates Island urging men and calling them to jihad, but this campaign was not destined to take place, as Nur al-Din signed in early Shawwal of the year 569 Ah, approval in May of the year 1174 ad angina and stayed on the bed of illness eleven days to die on 11 Shawwal of the year 569 on May 15, 1174, at the age of fifty-nine, with the death of Nur ad-Din, Saladin effectively became the sole master of Egypt, as he was independent of all political dependence, and it is said that he swore at that time to become a sword drawn on his enemies And the enemies of Islam, and he became the head of the most powerful Islamic ruling dynasty in that era, the Ayyubid dynasty, so historians usually call the areas that were subjected to his authority and the Sultan of his subordinates the Ayyubid state.

Nur al-Din Zenki had succeeded his eleven-year-old son, the righteous king Ismail, as Prince of Damascus, and after Nur al-Din died, Salah al-Din had two options that his dreams passed: Either to attack the Crusader Kingdoms from Egypt and leave them open and vulnerable to European and Byzantine naval attacks or to wait until the Good King appeals to him, especially since he is still a boy who is not independent of the matter and does not carry the King's burdens, Saladin also had a decisive choice, which is to enter Damascus and control it and take over the affairs of the country he commanded the armies after the death of Asad Al-Din shirkuh, helped him to empower his position in Egypt, whereupon the soldiers and people may not perceive him as worthy Led by the Muslim army. So Saladin preferred to wait for an invitation from the righteous king, or to warn him himself about the possible escalation of the Crusader danger to Damascus.

The situation in the Levant was different, so Salih Ismail was transferred to Aleppo, and Saad al-Dawla was appointed as mushtakin, the Emir of the city and the chief veteran of the zinc soldiers, as his guardian until he reached the most severe, and soon kamshtakin aspired to expand his sphere of influence to include the rest of the inner cities of the Levant and the Euphrates Island, and decided to conquer Damascus, so he wrote to the Emir of the city, Shams al-Din bin Saladin, so he prepared from Egypt in a dense army and left those who kept it and went to Damascus, showing that he was taking care of the interests of the righteous king. The army of Saladin consisted of 700 horses, crossed Karak to Busra, and along the way masses of Kurds and Arabs joined the army from Princes, freemen, and Bedouins, "they will be smacked in their faces," as reported by Saladin. The army entered Damascus in the month of the first spring of the year 570 AH, corresponding to November of the year 1174 AD, and the first thing Salah al-Din entered was his father's house, the house known as Sharif Al-aqiki, and people gathered to him and rejoiced at him and spent that day a lot of money and showed pleasure with the Damascenes, and climbed the castle and received it from

Internal conquests of the Levant

Salah al-Din replaced his brother Saif al-Islam and overwhelmed Damascus before he set off to annex the rest of the inner cities of the Levant, which became impossible to be independent of any de facto dependence after the death of Nur al-Din Zinki, so he easily conquered Hama, modified the siege of the city of Homs to protect its walls, then turned his sights towards Aleppo and attacked it after its emir refused to submit "as complainants", and the Ayyubids believed that the words of as-Salih Ismail in front of the people were "like a bewitching magic effect" on the population.

As a complainants, he wrote to the sheik of the assassins named Rashid Al-Din Sinan, who was at odds with Saladin and hated him very much after he overthrew the Fatimid state, and agreed with him to kill Saladin in the heart of his camp, so he sent a battalion of Thirteen Assassins who were able to penetrate into the camp and head towards Saladin's tent, but their order was exposed before they started the attack, one of them was killed by one of the commanders, and the rest were injured while trying to escape.

Meanwhile, Raymond III of Tripoli moved to attack Homs, and massed his army near the southern Grand River, on the northern Lebanese-Syrian border, but soon retreated from achieving his goal, when he was informed that Saladin had sent a large military detachment equipped with the necessary equipment to join the garrison of the city. During this time, Saladin's enemies in the Levant and the Euphrates were launching counter-campaigns against him and attacking him whenever the opportunity arose, they said that he had forgotten his origin, he was not only a servant of the Just King Nur al-Din Zinki, but a servant who is ungrateful and does not trust anything, betrayed his master and his mullah and exiled his son from his father's country to another country, and then besieged it. Saladin responded to these fierce campaigns, saying that he did not besiege Aleppo and did not come to the Levant from the beginning only to protect Dar al-Islam and Muslims from the Crusader armies, and to recover what was stolen from the Holy Land and that this was a task that cannot be handled by a boy who has not reached the most severe yet, and it is easy for malicious souls to manipulate him. To reassure people more, Saladin marched at the head of his army to Hama to fight a Crusader squad sent to conquer the city, but the Crusaders withdrew before the meeting after they reached the size of the Ayyubid army, so Saladin entered the city easily, and surrendered its castle in March of 1175, after fierce resistance from its garrison.

After these events, Saif al-Din Ghazi bin Qutb al-Din maw-dud bin Imad al-Din al-Zinki, the owner of Mosul, learned that Salah al-Din had taken over the country and his foot settled in the king and the matter went beyond him, so he carried out a plentiful army and a great army and his brother Izz al-Din Masud bin Qutb al-Din mawdud and they wanted to meet him to drive him away from the country when Salah al-Din reached to meet them. When Izz al-Din Masud arrived in Aleppo, his army was joined by his cousin, the righteous king Ismail Ibn Nur al-Din, and they went out in a great gathering, and when Saladin learned of their march, he walked until he met them on the horns of Hama and sent them and messengers and tried to reconcile with him, so they reconciled, and they saw that beating the handshake with him may have achieved their purpose, and on the nineteenth of the month of Ramadan in the year 570 Ah, approval was given on April 23 of the year 1175 ad, then Saladin followed his victory and descended on Aleppo again, and the zinkians favored him to take Maarat al-Numan, Kafr Taab, and Barin.

Salah al-Din declared himself king of the country he conquered after his victory over the zankis, the imams of the mosques addressed him on Friday as "King Nasser", gold dinars were struck in Cairo in his name, and his king promised to marry the widow of Nur al-Din Zanki called Isma al-Din Khatun. Saladin's sovereignty over the country quickly became legitimate when the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad assigned him authority over Egypt, the lower Maghreb, Nubia, Hejaz, Tihama, Palestine, and central Syria, and deposed him the title of "Sultan of Egypt and the Levant".

The war between the Ayyubids and the Zengids continued despite the victory of Saladin in Hama, and the last signing between them occurred in the summer of 1176 AD. Saladin had brought his armies from Egypt in preparation for the decisive encounter, and Saif al-Din Ghazi Ibn Qutb al-Din mawdud recruited men in the areas he still controlled, in Diyarbakir and the villages and towns of the Euphrates island. The Ayyubids crossed the ASI river heading north until they reached Tell Al-Sultan, 24 kilometers (15 miles) from Aleppo, where they met the Zengid army, so the two armies clashed in a fierce battle, and the Zengids were able to defeat the Ayyubid army, so Salah al-Din himself rushed towards the guards of Saif al-Din Ghazi and worked the sword on them, so the Ayyubids were encouraged and rushed tearing the ranks of the zengid Army, the zengids panicked and began to retreat leaving many dead on the battlefield, Saifuddin was almost among them. Many officers of the Zengid Army were killed in the battle and some of them were captured, and the Ayyubids plundered the Zengid camp with tents, luggage, horses, and weapons, and Saladin treated the prisoners with dignity, gave them gifts, and released them, then distributed The Spoils of the whole battle to his soldiers, and kept nothing for himself.

Saladin marched after his victory to resume the siege of the city of Aleppo, and during his March, the Ayyubid army opened the Fort of buzaa and the Fort of Manbij, and then headed west to subdue the Fort of Azaz, when the army hit the siege on the Fort, some of the assassins engineers broke into the camp and one of them was able to reach Saladin's tent and Saladin captured him, helped him and his fellow Ayyubid soldiers and relatives and killed them all. This assassination attempt had a great impact on Saladin, as he was determined to eliminate Kamchatkin, the Emir of Aleppo, who had previously colluded with assassins to kill Saladin and became very careful to meet only those he knew. Abu Shama al-Maqdisi says in his book Al-raw data in in the News of the Two Countries:

Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi when the Sultan conquered the fort of Buza and Manbij, those under their authority made sure that what was in their hands came out of the strongholds, and castles and erected ropes for the Sultan. So they wrote to the owner of hashish a second time, and they wanted him with money and appointments, and they got him to buy, so he sent a group of his companions, and they came dressed as soldiers, entered between the fighting and started the war and did the best in it, and they mixed with the Sultan's friends so that they might find an opportunity to take advantage of it. One the Sultan was one day sitting in a tent, and the war was going on and the Sultan was busy looking at the fighting, one of the hashish jumped on him and hit him with a knife on his head, he was cautious and afraid of hashish, the pliers did not leave his body nor the iron plates from his head; hashish ' blow did nothing to replace the iron plates and hashish felt the iron plates on Sultan's head so he swam his hand with the knife to Sultan's cheek and wounded him and blood ran down his face; the Sultan enjoyed it.
When Al-hashishi saw this, he attacked the Sultan, pulled his head, put him on the ground, and knelt to lower him; and those around the Sultan realized a surprise that took their minds off. Sayf al-Din Yazkuj was present at that time, and it was said that he was present, so he drew a sword and hit Al-hashishi, killing him. Another of the hashishis also came to the Sultan, so the Kurdish Prince David bin Manklan intercepted him and struck him with a sword, hashishis preceded Ibn Manklan and wounded him in the forehead, and Ibn Manklan killed him, and Ibn Manklan died from hashishis blow days later. Another came from the esoteric, and he got into the arrow of Prince Ali ibn Abi Al-fawaris, so he attacked the esoteric, and entered the esoteric to beat him, Ali took him under his armpit, and the esoteric's hand remained behind him unable to hit him, Ali shouted: "kill him and kill me with him," and Naser al-Din Muhammad ibn shirkuh came and stabbed the abdomen of the esoteric with his sword, and he still fought in it until he fell dead and Ibn Abi Al-fawaris survived. Another of the hashishiyya came out defeated, and was met by Athir Shihab al-Din Mahmud, the Sultan's uncle, so the esoteric was engaged by Shihab al-Din, so his companions went to him and cut him with swords.

As for the sultan, he rode from time to time to his marquee with his blood on his cheek liquid, and from that time on he took care and precaution, and beat around his marquee the example of the kharkah, and erected for him in the center of his marquee a tower of wood in which he sat and slept, and only those who knew him could enter it, and the war was nullified that day, and people were afraid for the Sultan. The military was troubled and people were afraid of each other, so I resorted to riding the Sultan for people to watch, so he rode up to the military residence

Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi,

After the victory was achieved and the Azaz fortress was opened in Dhu al-Hijjah in the year 571 Ah, Saladin turned his sights towards Aleppo and laid siege to it to get rid of the Emir Kamshtakin, the garrison resisted him severely again, but he failed to storm the city, but he managed to impose a truce on kamshtakin and the righteous king Ismail and concluded an alliance with them, and the text of the truce stated that the zinkians the princes of Mardin and its vicinity recognized the sovereignty of Saladin and his king over the Levant. When the truce ended, the righteous king sent his younger sister al-Khatun bint Nur al-Din to Salah al-din demanding that he return the fortress of Azaz to the Zinkians, so he heeded her request and accompanied her himself to the gate of Aleppo loaded with many gifts.

The campaign against junkies,

After Saladin allied with the Zinkids and concluded a peace treaty with the kingdom of Jerusalem, he was left with no threat to his state except the Hashashin sect led by the mountain Sheikh Rashid Al-Din Sinan bin Salman bin Mohammed, this sect was following the method of organized assassination to get rid of its enemies and rivals. The assassins were abstaining in a series of castles and fortresses in several high-rise honorable sites in the Nasiriyah mountains, and when Saladin was determined to exterminate their sect and break their Thorn, he sent some military teams to their mountains and returned the remaining soldiers to Egypt, and Saladin took command of the Army himself, and struck the siege on all the castles of the assassins during August of 1176, but he was unable to open any of. While Ibn Kathir and Ibn al-Athir reported that Saladin besieged their fortress Masyaf, killed and exiled them, and then his uncle Shihab al-Din Mahmud Ibn Yaqsh interceded for them. However, some manuscripts belonging to Rashid Al-Din Sinan stated that Saladin withdrew fearing for his life, and that he was scattering ashes and chalk dust around his tent at night when he besieged the castle of Masyaf, to find out if the assassins came near him at night, and made each of his guards carry a luminous Saraj.

As for the version of Saladin himself, he said that his guards noticed the glint of metal on one of the hills of Masyaf one night, and then disappeared among the soldiers ' tents, and Saladin reported that he woke up from his sleep to see a person coming out of the tent, and the lamps were scattered and near his bed he found Thin cakes, the hallmark of assassins, and at the top of the tent he found a letter hanging with a poisoned dagger in which he wrote a threat that if he did not leave the mountains he would be killed. Then Saladin shouted that senana was in his tent and left it, and this experience made him realize his inability to fight the assassins and their destruction quickly, so he asked his soldiers to send them to conclude an alliance with them, and thus he achieved another victory, namely, depriving the Crusaders of an important ally.

Return to Egypt and invasions in Palestine,

Saladin withdrew from the nusayriyah mountains after he was unable to open its castles and returned to Damascus, demobilized his shawam soldiers and made them return to their homes to rest and prepare for the coming wars, and then left the city accompanied by his guards only to Egypt, reaching Cairo about a month later. Saladin had to organize a lot of things in the Egyptian homeland after missing about two years spent in continuous battles in the Levant, and foremost of these things was the fortification of Cairo and the reconstruction of its destroyed sections, so he repaired its walls and supplied more of them, as well as began the construction of the Cairo fortress in 573 Ah, later known as the castle of Salah al-Din, whose construction was supervised by Baha Al-Din Qaraqosh, and the well of Joseph 85 meters (280 feet) deep. Another of Saladin's works was the construction of a huge bridge in Giza to serve as one of the initial lines of defense against a possible Moroccan invasion.

Salah al-Din remained in Cairo supervising the urban works there, he built a few schools to spread science besides the military buildings, followed the internal administration of the country himself, took care of social institutions that helped people and relieved them of the trouble of life, pledged to spend on the poor and strangers who resort to mosques to live in them, and made the Ahmed Ibn Tulun mosque in Cairo a shelter for strangers who come to Egypt from the Maghreb. Ibn al-Muqaffa says:

Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi King Salah al-Din treated his subjects in the country of Egypt with a good that the descriptor cannot describe established Justice and good to the Egyptians and removed many injustices on the people and ordered the abolition of casinos in the country of Egypt and nullified every evil evil and established the boundaries of Islamic law. He would sit down to rule among the people in the half of the oppressed of the unjust and have in his council a group of Jurists and celebrities of the state to consider issues between the people and work as required by the provisions of Sharia, truth, and Justice.

In another Jumada month in 573 AH, corresponding to November of 1177 AD, the Crusaders raided the suburbs of Damascus, so Saladin considered that the truce with the kingdom of Jerusalem had been violated and ended, and he gathered the men and marched to Palestine to change on some crusader sites, so the Crusaders only sent a large part of their army to the city of Haram south of Aleppo to the Crusader went north and then headed to Ashkelon, which he said was the "bride of the Levant" after seeing the situation favorable for such a move. The Crusader historian William al-Suri says that the Ayyubid army consisted of 26,000 soldiers,8,000 of whom were the elite, and 18,000 were Negro slaves from Sudan. Saladin continued to conquer the secondary crusader positions one by one, attacking Ramla and Lydda, reaching the gates of Jerusalem.

War and truce with Baldwin IV,

The young king of Jerusalem Baldwin IV Ben Amory, the "leper", moved while Saladin was on the outskirts of Jerusalem, marched to collect the Templars from Gaza City and entered Ashkelon. This news reached Saladin, so he returned with a section of his army to the outskirts of the city, but he hesitated to attack the Crusaders-despite the numerical superiority of the Ayyubids - because of the presence of a number of skilled veteran commanders in their ranks, and this hesitation had a great impact, as the Crusaders under the command of King Baldwin and Arnat Al-shatiun owner of Karak made a surprise attack on November 25 of the year 1177, and took the Ayyubids by surprise and defeated them at the hill of islands near Ramla. Saladin tried to organize the ranks of the army and rally the soldiers again, but they were scattered, and all his guards were wounded in the battle, so he decided to withdraw to Egypt and save the rest of the soldiers

Saladin prepared to fight the Crusaders again after his return to Egypt, he gathered the necessary troops and equipment, and the defeat at Ramla did not discourage him, but increased his determination to fight. In the spring of 1178, the Ayyubid Army landed near Homs, and there were a few skirmishes between it and the Crusader army, and in the month of Rabi ' al-Awwal in 574 AH, corresponding to the month of August 1178, other Crusader squads attacked the city of Hama and nearby villages and killed some of the inhabitants, but they were defeated by the garrison of the city and captured many of its members, and they were taken to Saladin, who ordered their execution for having "wreaked havoc in the land of the believers". Saladin spent the rest of the year in the Levant without fighting any other battles, but the situation did not last long as such, Saladin received alarming news from his spies that the Crusaders were planning to launch a military campaign on central Syria, so he ordered his nephew Izz al-Din Farrukh Shah Bin Shahanshah bin Najm al-Din Ayyub to stand on the Damascene front with a thousand soldiers in preparation for Saladin knows of their coming and moves to meet them himself. In the month of Dhu al-Qa'da in the year 574 AH, corresponding to the month of April of 1179, the Crusaders led by King Baldwin advanced towards Damascus expecting weak resistance, and began attacking villages and shepherds in the Golan Heights, so an Ayyubid military detachment led by Farrukh Shah confronted them, then withdrew from front of them, so they tracked it to the southeast of Quneitra, where the main part of the Ayyubid army was waiting, so a battle occurred in which victory was in favor of the Ayyubids. Saladin strengthened his forces after this victory, so he asked his younger brother, the Just King Saif al-Din Abu Bakr, to send him 1,500 Knights from Egypt to join the Levant Army.

By the summer of 1179, Baldwin IV had erected a border fortress, which Muslim historians called the "fording of Sorrows fortress" on the road leading to Damascus to secure it, and he was determined to build a bridge over the Jordan River, the "Jacob's crossing" (today known as the Daughters of Jacob bridge), to connect the Crusader lands with the Banias plain, which separates the Crusader principalities and Muslim lands. Saladin objected to the project and considered it an act of hostility towards Muslims, and offered Baldwin 100,000 gold coins in exchange for abandoning him, but the latter refused to compromise, so Saladin decided to attack and destroy the border Fort, then marched his army and made its center Banias. The Crusaders rushed to meet the Muslims after that step, but their army dispersed, the infantry lagged, and Saladin continued to lure them away until he had the opportunity and it turned out that the Crusader army was exhausted, so he pounced on him and the two armies clashed in a grinding battle in which the Muslims won, and captured many of the senior Crusader knights, then Saladin moved towards the fortress and struck the siege on it, and entered it conquering on 26 Rabi ' al-Awwal in 575 AH, corresponding to August 30 of the year 1179 ad.

In the spring of 1180, while Saladin was in Safed preparing to invade Jerusalem, King Baldwin wrote to him offering a truce, and he agreed. Indeed, the drought that year was a major motivation for both men to stop the fighting, as the crops withered and little matured, the supplies of the Crusader and Ayyubid armies were reduced, and it became impossible for either of them to lay siege to a castle or a city belonging to the other without risking famine in his ranks. Raymond III of Tripoli refused to abide by the truce at first and insisted on fighting, but soon relented after the Ayyubid army raided his emirate in May, and the Muslim fleet appeared near the port of Tartus threatening to attack.

Nasser and Saladin,

Caliph Ahmed Al-Nasser supported the religion of Allah Sultan "Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi" in his wars in which he fought the Franks, and ordered the Kings in the Islamic countries to help him with their soldiers and armies, each according to his war potential, and when Salah al-Din conquered Jerusalem in 583 ah, and the news reached Baghdad, Nasser sent him an engraved tablet: "الحم we have written in the zibur after the mention that the land is inherited by the righteous worshippers﴾, praise be to Allah who fulfilled his promise and the victory of his servant, and established the caliph of the Almighty, The Master of the ATRA messenger of Allah, and the fruit of his good tree known to him, Abu al-Abbas Ahmad Al-Nasser for the religion of Allah, the Prince of believers, Allah bestowed his shadow" I am grateful that this conquest was conducted by the hands of his state and a sword was won by Yusuf ibn Ayyub, a certain Prince of believers, " he said. This tablet was hung on the Greater Jerusalem.

At the end of the reign of Sultan Saladin, the forces of the Frankish Crusaders moved, so England sent an army led by its King Richard I of England, nicknamed The"Lionheart", France an army led by its king and Germany led by its emperor. Saladin promised to send his army to the Levant, and they agreed on this, which indicates the unity of the nation and the togetherness of Nasser and Saladin, despite the rumored coolness in the relationship, Saladin had enough of his army and no longer urgently needed Nasser's Army, through cooperation and coordination between them. Saladin was a Shafi'i like Nasser, and the confident notables testified that Saladin died in obedience to Nasser and the Abbasid Caliphate.

Domestic issues,

Saladin had tried to approach the Emir of the Kiva fort, named Nur al-Din Muhammad al-arquni, when he offered to mediate between him and Izz al-Din qalj Arslan Ibn mas'ud, Sultan of the Seljuks of rum, to end an existing dispute, where the latter had demanded Nur al-Din return some of the lands he received as a wedding gift after marrying his daughter, and then it turned out that he mistreated her and that his goal of that marriage was only to control more areas only, Nur al-Din accepted the mediation of the Ayyubid Sultan while qalj Arslan rejected it. In June 1180, Saladin received Prince Nur al-Din Muhammad and his brother Abu Bakr in an attempt to gain friendship and strengthen relations with the artsakhs in preparation for any possible confrontation between the Ayyubids and the princes of Mosul, Anatolia and the Crusader Kings, and both princes were accompanied by gifts said to be worth more than 100,000 dinars. After this meeting, Sultan qalij Arslan wrote to Saladin announcing his acceptance of mediation and his entry into the Ayyubid-artuqian alliance. Saladin rejoiced at this news because of the promise of the reunification of the Muslim lands, but his joy soon turned into great anger, when he received a letter from Arslan saying that Nur al-Din returned to mistreat his wife, the daughter of the Sultan of the Seljuks, so Saladin threatened to march to at a time when Muslims were most in need of uniting, and in fact, Saladin did not want to march to Nur al-Din Muhammad, because he allied with him and could no longer break this alliance, and in At the same time, Sultan qalag Arslan had the full right to fear for his daughter, defend her and prevent her from being exploited for political ends, so Saladin's speech came sharp in order to scare Nur al-Din and urge him to submit. When Nur ad-Din Muhammad realized that he was not capable of the Ayyubid army, he submitted to the orders of Saladin and Izz ad-Din qalj Arslan, and agreed to send his wife to her father for a year, especially after it was stated in a letter sent to him by Saladin, that if he violates this agreement, Saladin will break the agreement between them.
Saladin returned to Cairo at the beginning of 1181 AD and left Farrukh Shah to take over the affairs of the Levant during his absence; Abu Shama al-Maqdisi says that Saladin intended to spend the month of Ramadan in Egypt that year, and then go on Hajj in Mecca, but for unclear reasons he changed the pilgrimage of the sacred house, and was seen in June inspecting the banks of the Nile. During that period, there were some problems between him and the Bedouins, as some of them were accused of trading with the Crusaders, he confiscated their crops forced them to leave eastern Egypt and live in the West, and seized two-thirds of the lands belonging to the feudalists from them and gave them to the feudalists of Fayoum to compensate them for their private lands, which he aimed to make public property of the state, and also diverted some warships on the river pirates from the Bedouins who were changing farms and villages adjacent to the Nile and its branches.

In the summer of 1181, Saladin's brother Saif al-Islam Zahir al-Din taghtekin ibn Ayyub led a military squad to arrest Turan Shah's deputy in the town of Zabid in Yemen, Hatan bin Kamil bin Munqidh al-Kanani Al-kalbi, for embezzling the financial revenues of the town he was in charge of, but Saladin said that there was no evidence to prove the truth of what was said, and ordered his release in exchange for 80,000 dinars for him personally and other sums for his brothers. The controversial arrest of Hatan al-Kanani Al-kalbi was the result of the dissatisfaction of some close to Saladin with the administration of Yemen after Turan Shah left it; although his deputies continued to send the country out, the Ayyubid authority over Yemen began to weaken somewhat, as a struggle for sovereignty emerged between Izz al-Din Osman Sahib of Aden and Sahib Zabid, which made Saladin say that it costs the Ayyubid State large expenses and does not bring it the desired and expected benefits.

The conquest of the extremities of Mesopotamia,

Sayf al-Din Ghazi Ibn Qutb al-Din Mawdud died on 3 Safar in the year 576 AH, corresponding to June 28 of the year 1180 AD, and his brother Izz al-Din succeeded him in the emirate of Mosul. On the 25th of Rajab in the year 577 AH, corresponding to December 4, 1181 ad, the Righteous King bin Nuruddin Zinki died in Aleppo. Before his death, when he despaired of himself, he summoned the princes and swore them to his cousin Izz al-Din Masud Ibn Qutb al-Din, the owner of Mosul, for the strength of his authority and his ability, to prevent it from Saladin. He welcomed Izz al-Din in Aleppo, but his possession of Aleppo and Mosul was beyond his capabilities, so he ceded Aleppo to his brother Imad al-Din Zinki, in exchange for Sinjar, Khabur, Raqqa, nasibin, sorouj, and other parts of the country. Saladin did not try to take advantage of those circumstances out of respect for the treaty he had previously concluded with the zengids.

On Muharram 5, 578 AH, corresponding to May 11, 1182, Saladin left Cairo with half of the Egyptian Ayyubid army and many volunteers to the Levant. When he learned that the Crusader troops were massed on the border to intercept him, he changed his route through Sinai to Ayla, and there Saladin met no resistance from Baldwin's troops. Arriving in Damascus in June, Izz ad-Din Farrukh Shah raided the country of Tiberias, occupying daburiya and Habis Gildak, one of the fortresses of great importance to the Crusaders. In July, Saladin sent Farrukh Shah to attack the planet al-Hawa. In August, the Ayyubids launched a land and sea offensive to capture Beirut; Saladin led his army in the Bekaa Valley, and as it seemed to Saladin that the attack might fail, he preferred to stop his attack and focus on his mission towards Mesopotamia.

Muzaffar al-Din kokbari Ibn Zayn al-Din Ali ibn Bektakin, one of the princes of Harran, invited Saladin to conquer the island country, located north of Mesopotamia. With the end of the truce between him and the zinkids officially in Jumada I in 578 AH, corresponding to September of 1182, and before his march to the island country, tension had increased between the zinkid rulers in the region, due to their unwillingness to pay tribute to the owner of Mosul. Before crossing the Euphrates, Saladin besieged Aleppo for three days, as soon as the truce expired. As soon as he reached the fortress of Al-Bireh near the Euphrates River, kokbari and Nur al-Din, the owner of the fortress of Kefa, joined him, and the Joint Forces captured the cities of the island one by one, Edessa fell, followed by Suruc, then Raqqa, qirqisiyah, and nisibin. Raqqa was an important transit point, which was in the hands of Qutb al-Din yannal Ibn Hassan al-manbiji, who had previously lost Manbij to the forces of Saladin in 1176 AD. When Qutb al-Din saw the large size of Saladin's army, he did not offer any resistance and surrendered on condition that he kept his possessions. Saladin impressed the people of the city after he ordered the abolition of several taxes, as he said, "The evil of the rulers are those who are fat and their people are hungry". From Raqqa, he conquered Maxine, Doreen, oraban, and Al-Khabur, which all submitted to him.

Saladin then proceeded to invade Nusaybin which surrendered without resistance. Nasibin was a medium-sized town, not of great importance, but it was strategically located between Mardin and Mosul and easily accessible from Diyarbakir. Amid these victories, Saladin received news that the Crusaders had raided the villages of Damascus. He replied, " Let them.. While they are destroying villages, we are taking over the cities; when we return, we will have to gather more forces to fight them," he said. Meanwhile, in Aleppo, its Emir al-Zengi raided the cities of Saladin in the North and East, such as Balis, Manbij, Suruj, buzayy, and Al-quraydin, and also destroyed his castle in the town of Azaz so that the Ayyubids would not use it if they managed to capture it.

Annexation of Aleppo,

After Mosul, Saladin was interested in annexing Aleppo, so he sent his brother Taj al-Mulk Abu Sa'id Buri to occupy Tell Khalid, located 130 kilometers northeast of Mosul and prepared to besiege it, but the governor of Tell Khalid surrendered with the arrival of Salah al-Din himself on May 17 before the siege struck. After telling Khalid, Saladin's Army headed north to aintab to occupy it, and then quickly returned 60 km in the direction of Aleppo. On May 21, Saladin camped outside Aleppo and positioned himself east of the Aleppo Citadel, his forces also surrounded the suburb of Banqasa in the Northeast and Bab Jinan in the West, and the rest of his men were stationed near the city, hoping to open it in the shortest possible time.

Imad ad-Din Zinki Ibn Qutb ad-Din mawdud did not resist for a long time, as he was unpopular among his subjects, and for wanting to return to Sinjar the city he had previously ruled. Negotiations were held to exchange territories, on the condition that Zengi would hand over Aleppo to Saladin in exchange for regaining control of Sinjar, nisibin, Raqqa and Suruj, and that Zengi's forces would fight alongside Saladin's Army. By 18 Safar 579 Ah / 12 June 1183 ad, Aleppo was in Ayyubid hands. The people of Aleppo did not know about these negotiations, so they were surprised when they saw the banner of Saladin raised above the Aleppo fortress. At that time, two princes, one of whom was Izz ad-Din gerdak, an old friend of Saladin, offered their services to Saladin, who welcomed this. Saladin replaced the Hanafi judiciary with the Shafi'i judiciary, with a promise not to interfere in the religious leadership of the city. And although Saladin needed money, he allowed Zenki to leave with everything he could carry from the coffers of the city fortress, and sell the rest to Saladin himself.

Despite his reluctance in the past to complete the exchange process, he was confident of his success because he was sure that Aleppo was "the door that would open the lands to him" and that "this city is Ain al-Sham, its castle, and its disciples". For Saladin, the capture of the city marked for him the end of more than eight years of waiting, he told Farrukh Shah "We can only wait, and Aleppo will be ours." From his point of view, by capturing Aleppo, he will now be able to threaten the entire crusader Coast.

Having spent one night in the fortress of Aleppo, Saladin marched to Harim near the Crusader Principality of Antioch. Harem was under the rule of "Sarakhk", a minor Mamluk, to whom Saladin made an offer of the city of Busra and lands in Damascus in exchange for harem, but when Sarakhk asked for more, the garrison of the town forced him to leave, where Taqi al-Din, Saladin's deputy, arrested him after allegations that he was planning to cede harem to bohemand III, Prince of Antioch. After the surrender of harem, Saladin proceeded to arrange the defenses of the city in preparation for the Crusaders and sent to the caliph and his followers in Yemen and Baalbek that he would attack the Armenians. Before he was interested in moving, some administrative details had to be settled, Saladin agreed to a truce with Bohmand in exchange for the return of Muslim prisoners he was holding, and then Suleiman Ibn Jinder, the Emir who joined Saladin in Aleppo, took over the administration of Azaz, as did Saif al-Din yazkuj, the former Mamluk of his uncle Asad Al-Din shirkuh, who saved him from an assassination attempt in Azaz, took over the administration of Aleppo.

His war for Mosul

As Saladin approached Mosul, he had to justify the question of capturing that big city. The zankiyu of Mosul appealed to the Abbasid caliph Al-Nasir of the religion of Allah in Baghdad, whose Minister favored them, and Al-Nasir sent Badr Al-Badr, a high-ranking religious figure, to mediate between the two sides. Saladin arrived in the city on November 10, 1182, and Izz al-Din did not accept his conditions because he considered them a big trick, and immediately Saladin laid siege to the well-fortified city.

After several minor skirmishes and the impasse in front of the Caliph, Saladin decided to find a way to withdraw from the siege without damaging his reputation, so he decided to attack Sinjar, ruled by Sharaf al-Din Amir Amiran Hindwa, brother of Izz al-Din while leaving a force to continue the siege, Sinjar fell after a siege of 15 days on Ramadan 3, 578 AH, corresponding to December 30, 1182 ad. Saladin's commanders and soldiers did not observe their discipline and plundered the city, and Saladin himself managed to protect the governor of the city and his officers by sending them to Mosul. Having left a garrison in Sinjar, he waited until he gathered his troops from Aleppo, Mardin, and Armenia to confront Izz ad-Din. Saladin sent his army to meet his forces in Harran in the month of Dhu al-Qa'dah of the year 578 AH, corresponding to February of 1183 ad, and when Izz al-Din learned of the arrival of Saladin's army, he sent his messengers to ask for peace, and dispersed his forces.

On 6 Dhu al-Qa'ida in 578 AH, corresponding to March 2, 1183, the just Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub from Egypt wrote to Saladin that the Crusaders had stabbed the heart of Islam, the owner of Karak, Arnat Al-shatiun, sent ships from the Gulf of Aqaba to raid towns and villages off the coast of the Red Sea, and although this attempt was not aimed at imposing crusader influence on the sea or to control trade routes, and it was just piracy, Imad al-Din wrote that the raid accustomed to attacks by sea, ibn al-Athir added that the inhabitants had never entrusted a Frankish neither a Merchant nor a warrior.

Ibn Jubayr said that sixteen Muslim ships were burned by the Crusaders, who captured a pilgrim ship and a caravan in ayyab. He also stated that they intended to attack Medina and plunder the Tomb of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-maqrizi added that rumors spread claiming that they were going to transport the body of the Prophet Muhammad to the Crusader lands, to make Muslims make pilgrimages to it. Fortunately for Saladin, Al-Adil had moved warships from Fustat and Alexandria to the Red Sea under the command of Hossam al-Din Lu'lu, the commander of the Egyptian fleet, so he began to attack the forces that attacked Ayla and defeated them, then he marched to fight those who attacked ayyab, he caught them in the coast of Hawra (Umluj) and destroyed most of their ships, they went down to land trying to escape and defeated them badly. Saladin ordered the killing of the 170 captured Crusader fighters in several Muslim cities.
The Ayyubid state and neighboring countries at the end of Saladin's campaign against the principalities of the Levant and Mesopotamia.

From Saladin's point of view, the war against Mosul was going well, but he had not yet succeeded in achieving his goals and his army began to dwindle; Taqi al-Din returned with his men to Hama, and Nasir al-Din Muhammad ibn Shirkuh left with his troops. This encouraged Izz ad-Din and his allies to attack. He gathered his forces in Haradh, located 140 kilometers from Harran. At the beginning of April, without waiting for Nasir al-Din, Saladin and Taqi al-Din began their advance against Izz al-Din's forces, heading east to Ras Al-Ain without encountering resistance. By the end of April, after three days of fighting, the Ayyubids captured Amed. The city was handed over by Nur ad-Din Muhammad ibn Qara Arslan with its vaults with 80,000 candles, a whole tower filled with arrows, and 1,040,000 books. In exchange for his return as governor of the city, Nur ad-Din swore allegiance to Saladin, promising to help him in all his campaigns in the war against the Crusaders and repair the damage caused to the city. With the fall of AMD, the ruler of Mardin decided to ally with Saladin, which weakened Izz ad-Din's alliance.

Wars against the Crusaders

After Saladin succeeded in uniting Egypt, Syria, Hejaz, Tihama, and Iraq into a strong unified Islamic State surrounding the kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader Emirates from the North, East, and South, and reassured of its unity and cohesion, he moved to achieve the second part of his political plan, which is to fight the Crusaders and expel them from the country, and the opportunity came when Arnat Al-shatiun, owner of Karak, was exposed to a when he refused, Saladin, who was then in Damascus, sent to all parties to summon the soldiers for the war of Arnat, and headed himself And from there to Jordan, and he came down with a chrysanthemum hole.

On the 9th of Jumada al-akhirah in 579 AH, corresponding to September 29, 1183 ad, Saladin crossed the Jordan River to attack Baysan, which he found empty. The next day, his forces set fire to the town and marched west, intercepting crusader reinforcements from the forts of Karak and shawbak along the Nablus Road and capturing a number of them. Meanwhile, the main Crusader force led by Guy of Lusignan, consort of Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem, Baldwin's sister, had moved from Safavid to Afula. Saladin sent 500 fighters to skirmish with the Crusader troops, and himself marched to Ain Goliath. When the Crusader forces advanced, which were the largest force the kingdom had gathered from its own resources, but were still inferior to the Muslim forces, the Ayyubids unexpectedly retreated to Ain Jalut. Although there were a few Ayyubid raids, including attacks on Zara'in, Taybah and Jabal Tabur, the Crusaders did not participate fully in the Battle of Afula, in which Saladin led his men across the river in a slow retreat.

However, further crusader attacks angered Saladin. Arnat Al-shatiun continued to attack Muslim trade convoys and pilgrimage routes with a fleet in the Red Sea, the waterway that Saladin needed to keep open. In response, Saladin built a fleet of 30 ships to attack Beirut in 1182. Raynald threatened to attack the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, to which Saladin responded by besieging Karak, Arnat's fortress fortress twice, in 1183 and 1184, Raynald responded by looting the caravan of pilgrims in 1185, and according to the historian of the thirteenth century Frankish William the Syrian, Arnat captured Saladin's sister in that raid on the caravan, which is not proven by contemporary sources, both Islamic and European, instead stated that Arnat attacked the caravan, and Saladin's soldiers protected his sister and her son until they arrived without any damage.

After the impregnable fortress of Karak eluded Saladin, he turned his face another way and returned to attack Izz al-Din mas'ud Ibn mawdud al-Zinki in the areas of Mosul, which he had begun his efforts to annex in 1182, but Izz al-Din's alliance with the ruler of Azerbaijan and the kingdom of the mountains, who sent his soldiers through the Zagros Mountains in 1185, made Saladin hesitate in his attack. When the defenders of Mosul learned that reinforcements were on their way, their morale rose and they increased their efforts, and this coincided with Saladin's illness, so in March of 1186, he signed a peace treaty.

Battle of Hattin

The disease had intensified on the king of Jerusalem Baldwin IV, in 1185 and soon died that year after he named his sister's son Baldwin V as his successor, but the latter died within a year, and his mother Sibylla took the throne, immediately crowned her second husband Guy of Lusignan as King, and the latter had planned to be the Regent after Baldwin IV, but his alliance with Arnat and Al-Hajjaj, which caused Saladin to besiege Karak, made Baldwin IV amend his naming as his successor after his death. When Guy took the throne of Jerusalem, the divisions among the Crusaders appeared and expanded, and a number of princes were not satisfied with his assumption, including Raymond III, the owner of Tripoli, whose anger prompted him to write to Saladin and befriend him and agreed with him not to fight him and not to raise a sword against him, he said to him: "I have Tiberias, descend on it and seize it, and I leave it to you, so you will strengthen the Franks with it and weaken their hearts". So Saladin went and landed near Tiberias, and the owner of Tripoli handed it over to him, and the newly crowned king of the Franks heard what had happened, so he rallied the public in the country with the soldiers of the coast and marched to meet Saladin, and the owner of Tripoli joined him to cover up his act.

The Battle of Hattin between the Crusaders and the Muslims,

On Saturday, the 25th of the other spring in 583 AH, corresponding to July 5, 1187 ad, the Crusaders descended the horns of Hattin, and Saladin had preceded them there and stationed his army in the upper area of it where the water spring was, and the heavy military equipment of the Franks was the reason for their delay in arriving, and when they arrived at the site they were so thirsty that they drank wine instead of water, they got drunk a lot, and attacked the army of Saladin they defeated the Muslims in the first day, but the circles turned at the end of the day, so the Ayyubids pounced on the Crusader army and tore its ranks, and the battle lasted for many hours، As soon as the dust settled, the extent of the disaster for the Crusaders became clear: they lost the flower of their young soldiers, many knights and veteran officers were killed, and King Guy the Lusignan, his brother Arnat the owner of Karak and other senior Crusaders fell into captivity. As for Raymond III, the owner of Tripoli, he pretended to attack the Muslims, so he passed between their ranks and went and did not return as if he had been defeated, and headed to the city of tire and stayed there.

After this victory, Saladin sat in his tent and ordered to bring King Guy, his brother and Arnat, and when they appeared before him, he gave the King a drink of Jalab and ice, he drank it, and he was very thirsty, and then handed it to Arnat, and Saladin Said to the translators: "I have given you, but I did not permit you to water it, this has no he killed him after he had killed many Muslims. After that, Saladin ordered to bring some food to King Guy, and as soon as he was finished, he ordered Arnat to be brought, stopped him in his hands, and then said to him: "yes, I am acting for the messenger of Allah in the victory for his nation," and invited him to convert to Islam, and he refused and said What includes disparaging the Prophet Muhammad, so Saladin believing that he had followed him, Saladin summoned him and kindly told him:

Do not be afraid, O king, you will not die today, but live, and if the rest of your people remained, I would have owned you over them and helped you with my money and men all the days of your life. The reason for what I did to him was that Karak was the way of merchants and travelers, so he was attacking caravans with injustice and violence, and the Muslim kings Nur al-Din and others were asking for peace with him to alleviate his harm to Muslims, so he agreed with them once and did not attack merchants, and a thousand times he attacked. When she had taken possession and ruled the country, she sent him a gift with a lot of money and took off.. He swore to my messenger that he would not harm the Muslims and would leave the merchants unharmed and pave the way for them and not be attacked by any of his companions.three days after the reconciliation, a caravan crossed to Damascus, took its leg with its camels, men, and money and went with it to Karak and captured its men and took the money. when I found out about something that undermined the covenant, I kept my anger and warned Allah that whenever I won, I would slaughter him and cut his neck, do not blame me, O King.

Saladin and the lusignans after the Battle of Hattin.

Then he summoned his servant and asked him to bring a drink, and he came with him, took him by hand, drank from him and handed him to the king, and drank, and gave him and his companions a tent and made guards to guard him and kept him, and sent him to Damascus as a prisoner, accompanied by the judge ibn Abi isron, until the end of the war and Jerusalem they carried him with them on the day of Hattin, and he was deposited in the fortress of Damascus upon his arrival.

Liberation of El Sahel Al Shamii,

Saladin considered it safer not to go directly to conquer Jerusalem after the victory of Hattin, but he considered it safer to march to conquer the cities of the coast and then attack Jerusalem, so he left asking for Acre and landed on it on Wednesday, and fought the Crusaders with it on Thursday, starting Jumada I in 583 Ah, so he took it and saved those who were Muslim prisoners, and they were more than 4 thousand people, and seized the money, ammunition, and goods in it as it was the main trading port of the Crusaders and their window on their motherland in Europe. Then the Ayyubid soldiers dispersed to the coast, taking forts, castles, and impregnable places, so they conquered Nablus, Haifa, Nazareth, Caesarea, and Safuriya after most of the men were either killed on the battlefield or fell into captivity or to escape from the Ayyubid Army after their number was reduced. When the bases of Acre were settled, Saladin divided its funds among its people, kept some crusader commanders in captivity and released some soldiers, and then marched to ask for the castle of Tabnin, and he arrived on Sunday on the first Jumada 11 of the same year, he erected catapults and tightened the siege on it, and its garrison resisted violent resistance before surrendering and entered the Ayyubid army, and then left to Sidon and received it the day after his arrival.

While Saladin was heading to conquer Beirut in 1187, Prince Jamal al-Din Haji Al-tanukhi met him in the town of Khalda and marched with him to besiege the city, so the two laid siege to it and entered it after 7 days, and Salah al-Din rewarded Prince Al-tanukhi for his loyalty to him and fixed him on the fiefs of his fathers and grandfathers and increased it until it included the entire region of the West, stretching from southern Beirut to the heights of Mount Lebanon, as he did with the Shahabi Princes in the Bekaa Valley, they were fighting the Crusaders for a period that ended with their capture on Hasbaya and its surroundings, Saladin interpreted this and Prince Munqidh Al-Shihabi took over the country he conquered. During Saladin's siege of Beirut, an Ayyubid military division had recaptured Byblos from the hands of the Crusaders, and when he finished from this side, he saw that his intention was Ashkelon first, because its siege and conquest was easier than the siege of the tire, so Ashkelon came and on his way to it received many sites such as Ramla and Darom, and in Ashkelon, he erected Saladin had regained most of the Levant coast, and only the cities of Tripoli and tire and a part of the emirate of Antioch did not hold out against him.

Conquest of Jerusalem,

Salah al-Din remained in Ashkelon until he organized its administration and handed it over to one of his kingdoms, whose name was Alam al-Din Caesar, and gave him the state of Ashkelon and the sector around it and left from it and headed to Jerusalem to open it, arriving on Thursday on 11 Rajab in 583 AH, corresponding to September 20, 1187 ad, from the direction of Ain Silwan so that the water would be close to his army and ordered his soldiers to besiege the city in a circular the holy city was a great force to protect it from the Ayyubid attack, as the number of soldiers did not exceed 1400 soldiers, the rest were poor people and people who had no experience in fighting and Balian Ibn Barzan was a knight of the Knights of The great Franks inhabited the city of Jerusalem and took over its affairs since King Guy left it, and this Balian was the owner of the city of Ramla, and he led the fighting that day and was joined by priests and deacons, and he was skilled in managing the fighting and directing the fighters in front of Saladin's forces, and his greatest fear was that Muslims would kill all the Christians of Jerusalem when they entered, as the Crusaders did when they conquered the city more than a century ago, so he urged the inhabitants to defend their lives and their sanctuaries until the last breath, and when Saladin sent him to surrender the city and ask for safety, he did not, he insisted on fighting and continued the war for 14 days.

When Saladin saw that the war would be severe and he was not able to occupy the city of Jerusalem, he brought Yusuf al-batayt, a holy Orthodox Christian man, who moved to the city of Damascus and lived there and had knowledge of Muslim and Frankish princes, and he was one of whom Saladin knew, and he also knew his father and uncle Asad Al-Din they Saladin used him to correspond with the Franks, and he knew the conditions of the country and its people as he knew the leading Knights of that country, so he asked He should agree with the Orthodox Christians from the Arabs and Romans, promising them good and pardon them if they did not help the Franks in the fight and hand over the city to Saladin from the side where they live in Jerusalem, so they destroyed the Franks, whom Saladin refused to pardon once the city was conquered, until Balian threatened to kill the Muslim hostages, estimated at four thousand Muslims, and destroy the Islamic holy places, namely the dome of the rock and the tribal mosque, which constitute the Al-Aqsa mosque, if Saladin did not pardon them.

The Frankish population is in the hands of Saladin after his recapture of Jerusalem.
Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi consulted his council and accepted these conditions, on the condition that a ransom be paid on each of them in the amount of ten dinars from each man, five dinars from each woman and two dinars for each boy and every boy who has not reached the age of majority. After the deadline expired, Saladin allowed those who could not pay to leave without a ransom, but most of the fighters were sold into slaves. Saladin entered the city on the night of Miraj on 27 Rajab in 583 AH, corresponding to October 2, 1187 ad, and allowed the Jews to return to the city, which prompted the Jewish residents of Ashkelon to settle Jerusalem. Saladin closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the face of the Franks after the conquest of the city, and ordered the restoration of the old Omari mihrab and carried a Melih pulpit from Aleppo that King Nur al-Din Mahmud Ibn Zinki had ordered to be made to be placed in the Al-Aqsa mosque when he opened Jerusalem, so Saladin ordered it to be carried from Aleppo and installed in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and she made it a school for Shafi'i jurists, and then Saladin reopened the church and decided on who to repay from the Franks a tax to be paid.

The Muslims rejoiced greatly at the return of Jerusalem to the Islamic lands and the Abbasid Caliphate, and many people came to pay tribute to the Sultan, including the famous poet Abu Muhammad Abdul Rahman bin Badr bin Hassan bin mufarrij al-Nabulsi, so Salah al-Din sang a long poem from a hundred verses praising and congratulating him on the conquest, and what is stated in the poem:

That's what the hopes were waiting for
May Allah fulfill what they have vowed
This is the breakthrough that time has brought
Here are from the lapses of eternity he apologizes
Tell him about his defeat
Description and systematics of praise or prose
I have opened sticks of their holes
If it wasn't for you, there would be no stone unturned

Siege of tyre and Acre,

Most of the Frankish princes and Knights were going to the fortress cities that were still in their hands, such as Antioch and tyre, the latter was ruled by a king of Europe, Conrad, Marquis of Monferrato, and some say that he was Rumi, the nephew of the emperor of Constantinople. Tyre was more strategically important than Jerusalem, so Saladin was expected to conquer it first, but he preferred to retake the holy city first to boost Muslim morale before heading to besiege the fortified city. Before the siege of tire, Saladin headed with his army to Safed Castle and besieged it for seven months, and when the food ran out and the garrison was hungry, they had to hand over the castle to him and ask for safety, and when the Frankish soldiers and their Knights left it, they went to tyre and every castle, fortress or city asked for safety and handed it over to Saladin, the Franks were leaving it to tire, so to Sultan's heart, the siege was lifted from her, postponing the achievement of conquest until a future opportunity. In 1188, Saladin released King Guy the Lusignans and returned him to his wife Sibylla, so they went to live in Tripoli, then headed to Antioch, before deciding to go to tyre, but Conrad refused to allow them to enter the city because he did not recognize the legitimacy of guy's monarchy.

Siege of Acre.

After Saladin left Safed, he continued to conquer cities and castles, conquering Jableh, Latakia, the fortresses of Zion, bekas, shughar, sarminiya, barziyya, Darb Sakk, Karak, and Kaab, and bohmand III, the owner of Antioch, sought to pacify Saladin for eight months, and Saladin accepted this on condition that bohmand would release from him one of the Muslim prisoners. When the tyre was filled with those who took refuge from the Franks, some of their monks and priests shipped the Franks to avenge the loss of Jerusalem, they decided to attack Acre, so they gathered their forces and struck a land-sea siege on it on 15 Rajab 585 AH, corresponding to August 28, 1189 AD. The garrison of the city appealed to Salah al-Din, and he sent to his workers and allies demanding that they hurry to the rescue of the city, so he was met by the military of Mosul, Amed, Sinjar and other countries of the island, Harran and Al-Raha, as well as his brother the Just King Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub in the Egyptian army and the Egyptian fleet led by Husam al-Din Pearl, so great battles took place between the two teams in which neither team prevailed.

The Third Crusade,

The Battle of Hattin and the conquest of Jerusalem were two main reasons for the exit of the Third Crusade, where Pope Gregory VIII urged the Kings of Europe to launch a new crusade to retake Jerusalem, the first to answer the call was the German Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa Holy Roman emperor who marched his army overland through Hungary and Romania until he reached Constantinople, whose Emperor Isaac II had secretly allied with Saladin, not by providing them with supplies. Friedrich sent the Sons of the Sultan of the Seljuks of Rum, qalj Arslan II, who had quarantined their father, to pass through their lands, so they allowed him, and qalj Arslan II sent apologies to Saladin for his inability to prevent the Germans from passing through his lands, so the messengers informed Saladin while he was besieging acre.

Nevertheless, Friedrich's campaign failed to reach the East, due to the long distance and the arrival of winter on the mobile army and the resistance of some princes of the regions through which the campaign passed to the invading army, and the lack of supplies, especially after the refusal of Isaac II, The Emperor of Rome, to supply them with supplies, in addition to the drowning of Friedrich Barbarossa himself in one of the rivers near Antioch, and the disputes that followed his death over who would succeed him, the news of the failure of the Barbarossa campaign has aroused elation in the Muslim camp defending acre.

The campaign did not stop there, but was also countered by two of the largest kings of Europe at that time, Richard I "Lionheart" of England and Philip Augustus of France, who financed it by imposing a special tax known as Saladin's tithe (English: Saladin tithe; French: Dîme Saladin) in England and parts of France, and joined the siege of Acre, which fell in 587 AH, corresponding to 1191, in front of the troops led by Richard, in which Muslim prisoners, including women and children. Saladin responded by killing all the Franks he had captured between August 28 and September 10, Baha Al-Din ibn Shaddad has written "and while we were there they brought two captured Franks to Sultan Saladin, and immediately ordered to cut off their heads."On 15 Sha'ban in 587 AH, corresponding to September 7, 1191, the armies of Saladin clashed with the Crusader armies led by Richard the Lionheart in the Battle of Arsuf, in which Saladin was defeated, but the Crusaders could not penetrate inland and remained on the coast, the war remained a quarrel between the two teams, and all attempts by the Franks to conquer Jerusalem failed.

The two sides then resorted to peace, and a truce was concluded on 20 Sha'ban in 588 AH, corresponding to September 1, 1192, for a period of three years and eight months starting from that date, after the war strained the two teams, according to which the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem is confined to a coastal strip between Jaffa and tyre, and Jerusalem remains in Muslim hands while allowing Christians to make pilgrimages to it. However, Saladin's relationship with Richard was dominated by mutual respect and magnanimity far from military rivalry, so when Richard fell ill with a fever, Saladin offered him the services of his personal doctor, and sent him an iced fruit. And in Arsuf, when Richard lost his horse, Saladin sent him two in his place. Richard also offered Saladin a united Palestine for European Christians and Muslims by marrying Richard I's sister to Saladin's brother and that Jerusalem would be their wedding gift, provided that what the Muslims had conquered under the rule of Al-Adil and what the Franks had conquered under the rule of Richard's sister, but this was not done. However, the two men never met face-to-face and the communication between them was in writing or by messengers.

When the reconciliation was completed, Saladin marched to Jerusalem and fortified its walls, entered the Church of Zion within its walls, built a school, a horse tie, a Bimaristan, and other interests, and spent the month of Ramadan in the city from the year 588 ah, and then left it on 5 Shawwal heading to Damascus where he spent his last days.

His death,

The confrontation with King Richard and the Treaty of Ramla was the last act of Saladin, because shortly after Richard's departure, Saladin fell ill with biliary fever on Saturday, February 20, 1193, corresponding to 16 Safar years 589 ah, and he became restless and slept little at night, and the illness began to intensify and increase until his private doctor said that Sultan's order was around the corner, and the illness continued to intensify until it ended he injected two batches, and from the injections he got some relief, but he returned and the illness intensified until the doctors despaired of his condition. Salah al-Din died at dawn on Wednesday, March 4, 1193, corresponding to 27 Safar years 589 Ah, his death saddened Muslims in general and Damascenes in particular, and many cried at his funeral, and it was said that even a sane person would have imagined that the whole world was shouting one voice from the intensity of crying, and people were distracted from praying for him, and people regretted when his safe was opened, there was not enough money in it for his funeral, there were only forty-seven Nazarene dirhams and one gold dinar in it, and he left neither a king nor a house because he was He spent most of his money on charity.

At the hour of his death, the virtuous judge of Damascus, the judge of Damascus, wrote to his son, the apparent King of Aleppo, a letter in which he said: "﴿You had a good example in the messenger of Allah ﴾ ۞ ﴿ the earthquake of the hour is a great thing﴾ I wrote to Maulana the apparent King, may Allah best console him, make reparation for his injury, and make the successor of the predecessor in I have delivered him to Allah alone, overcome by cunning, weak in strength, satisfied with Allah, and helpless only by Allah. And at the door of the conscripted soldiers, and the baptized weapons, unless the scourge is paid, nor what the Justice returns, the eye tears and the heart fears, and we say only what pleases the Lord, and we, o Joseph, are grieved for you. As for the rules of the matter, if an agreement is signed, then you have only executed his kind person, and if otherwise, the future misfortunes are lessened by his death, which is the great horror and peace".

The shrine of Saladin.

Wilhelm II, The Emperor of Germany, when he visited Damascus, went to Saladin's tomb and placed a bouquet of funeral flowers on his grave with an inscription meaning "a king without fear and no blame, taught his opponent's true chivalry". he also gifted a marble coffin to the mausoleum, but Saladin's body was not transferred to him, and remained in the wooden casket because Islam forbids exhuming graves and exhuming the dead for illegal purposes and classifies this as a violation of the sanctity of the tomb, so the casket remained empty in the mausoleum to this day.

The Ayyubid state after Saladin,

Salah al-Din divided his state before his death between his children and members of his family, so he made the emirate of Damascus for his best son Nur al-Din Ali, who is the eldest of his children, and recommended him to the Sultanate, and made the Egyptian home for his dear son Othman, and the emirate of Aleppo for his apparent son Ghazi Ghiyath al-Din, and left Karak, Shobak, Jabar country and many countries Asad Al-Din shirkuh bin Nasser, and Yemen, with its strongholds and caliphates, is in the grip of Sultan Zahir al-Din Saif al-Islam taghtekin bin Ayyub, brother of Salah al-Din. The dispute did not end immediately when a bear appeared between the children of Saladin, which made their uncle Al-Adil isolate them and unite the Ayyubid House under his banner. As Saladin did before, his brother King Al-Adil did, so he divided the territory of his state between his sons while he was alive, but these brothers were not on good terms after the death of their father, so they fought each other, although the Crusaders were benefiting from this dispute, and after them came to their children, they were no better than their fathers in their Saladin is under his authority. When the righteous Ayyub died, his son Turan Shah took over the Sultanate, but his Mamluks entrusted him and killed him, and then they installed his stepmother, the "elder tree", as a sultan over them, and thus the Ayyubid state in Egypt disappeared and the Mamluk State took its place.

His family,

According to Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Saladin fathered five sons before leaving Egypt in 1174. His eldest son, the best, was born in 1170 from his wife Shamsa, whom he took with him to the Levant, and his son, Othman, was born in 1172 in Egypt, and then gave birth to another child in 1177. While Abu al-Abbas al-qalqashandi mentioned that his twelfth son was born in May 1178, while Isfahani mentioned that this child was the son of Saladin VII. Mas'ud was also born to him in 1175 and Jacob in 1176, the latter by his wife Shamsa. Saladin married the widow of Nur ad-Din Zengi Isma ad-Din Khatun in September 1176, and one of his wives gave birth to Ghazi and David in 1173 and 1178 respectively, and another gave birth to Isaac in 1174 and another son in July 1182.

Although the state founded by Saladin did not last long after him, Saladin is considered in the Arab-Islamic consciousness the liberator of Jerusalem, and with the rise of Arab nationalism in the twentieth century, especially in the presence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Saladin's heroism and leadership acquired a new significance. His personality was also inspired by epics, poems, and even the curricula of national education in the Arab countries, and she also wrote dozens of books about his biography and dealt with plays, plays, and dramas. Saladin still sets the example of an exemplary Muslim leader who decisively confronted his enemies to liberate Muslim lands, without giving up gallantry and high morals.

Moreover, the unity of the Arab world under the banner of Saladin was perceived as an ideal symbol of the new unity sought by Arab nationalists, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. For this reason, Saladin's punishment became a symbol of the post-monarchical state of Egypt and was later adopted as the emblem of several other Arab countries such as Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, and Syria. There is even a province in Iraq named after him, in addition to Salahuddin University in Erbil, the largest city of Iraqi Kurdistan.

There are few buildings from the era of Saladin still surviving in modern cities. Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi was the first to fortify the Cairo Citadel (1175-1183), introducing that military architectural style to Egypt that was known only to North African forts before, and another model of it, albeit the smallest, soldier's fortress in Sinai, which oversees the caravan route linking Egypt to the Near East. In that Castle, a French archaeological team found in 1909, several large domed rooms carved into the rock, with the remains of shops and water tanks. The ruins of the Cairo Eye Canal wall remain to this day.

Some Muslims also call their male children "Salah al-Din" after this leader, although this name was a nickname for the Ayyubid Sultan, who was deposed after overthrowing the Fatimid state and fighting the Crusaders.

The European consciousness,

Even though Saladin was an opponent of the Europeans, he remained in the European consciousness a model of a gallant knight in which chivalric morality is embodied in the European concept, there is even a poetic folk epic of the XIV century describing his heroic deeds. Despite the massacre by the Crusaders when they captured Jerusalem in 1099, Saladin pardoned and allowed the Western Christians to leave with the remnants of the defeated Christian army, as long as they were able to pay the ransom he had imposed on them. The Orthodox (including Arab Christians) were also treated better because they usually opposed the European crusader invasion.

Despite the difference in doctrine, the Christian leaders praised Saladin, especially Richard the Lionheart, who is said to have said that he was a great prince and that he was undoubtedly the greatest and most powerful leader in the Muslim world; it is also said that Saladin replied that there was no Christian leader more honorable than Richard. After the Treaty of Ramla, Saladin and Richard exchanged gifts as a symbol of mutual respect, but they never met face to face.

European historians said about him that "it is true that his generosity, piety, and distance from fanaticism; that liberalism and integrity, which was the model that inspired our ancient historians; is what earned him respect in Frankish Syria no less than in the land of Islam.»

On the contrary, according to some sources, during the First World War, the British commander Edmund Allenby proudly declared that "today the Crusades are over", raising his sword to a statue of Saladin after the capture of Damascus, a phrase that stuck to Allenby throughout his life, which he strongly protested against those who describe his invasion of Palestine in 1917 as a crusade. In 1933, Allenby stated that the importance of Jerusalem lay in its strategic importance, and there were no religious motives for that campaign. The British press also celebrated the occupation of the Levant with a comic drawing of Richard the Lionheart looking at Jerusalem and the words "Finally, my dream has come true" written under it. After the first French Lieutenant General Henri Gouraud entered the city in July 1920, he kicked the Tomb of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi shouting "Wake up, Salah al-Din, We are back, my presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the Crescent".

From what is told about him,

Baha Al-Din Isfahani mentioned that in April 1191, a Frankish woman had her three-month-old baby stolen from her and sold in the market, so the Franks advised her to complain to Saladin himself, so Saladin ordered the child to be restored from his own money to his mother, and returned her to her camp.

Saladin in media and literature,

The character of Salah al-Din appeared in several films and television series, most often the roles were performed by Arab actors from Syria or Egypt, and the most prominent visual artworks that dealt with the character of Salah al-Din: Nasser Salah al-Din, a film dating back to 1963 directed by Youssef Chahine, starring the Egyptian actor Ahmed Mazhar, who played the role of Salah al-Din, and the Saladin series starring Syrian actor Jamal Suleiman. The most prominent cinematic artwork that dealt with the character of Saladin was the film Kingdom of Heaven (in English: Kingdom of Heaven) by British director Sir Ridley Scott, in which the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud played the role of Saladin, and this film welcomed in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and cinema-goers said that it offers something different from the stereotype of Arabs and Muslims in Hollywood films as terrorists, as well as praised the performance of Ghassan Massoud as the historical leader, and the script and critics that Ghassan Massoud would have made a better impression if Scott had given him more space, "we have seen glimpses of his heroism، That doesn't meet all the ambitions, but we can't ask Ridley Scott to give everything, because he presented an image with some balance," he said.

Literature,

Tariq Ali's novel "The Book of Saladin" aroused interest in Saladin and the world in which he lived. The poet Dante Alighieri, the author of The Divine Comedy, also put him in purgatory with several characters whom he considered infidels - according to his Catholic Christian belief - but in his opinion, they are morally righteous and sublime characters (Dante also put the Prophet Muhammad in purgatory). Saladin is also depicted acceptably in Walter Scott's novel "The Talisman" (English: The Talisman) written in 1825

Salah El-Din Al-Ayoubi 16 / 5 / 2023