THE FIRST SULTAN SALADIN

Ask anyone in the eastern Mediterranean to name their greatest hero and the answer will almost certainly be Saladin. All across Europe and America, if you ask for one Arabic hero, the answer will probably be the same. His achievements alone explain why. Salāh al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb – known as Saladin – united most of the divided Muslim world against the Crusaders, who had seized what they called the Holy Land and its religious heart, Jerusalem. In 1187, after 20 years of campaigning, he recaptured Jerusalem and set about driving the Crusaders into the sea. But he was more than a brilliant general. It was his personality that made him a hero for both sides.

Although a leader of the Arabs, he was technically Kurdish, born in Tikrit, Iraq, some time in 1137-8. His father, Ayyub, took him to Baalbek in today’s Lebanon to escape a family feud. This was the first of many strokes of good luck that shaped his life. Baalbek – ancient, with crisp air smelling of orchards and gardens – was at the centre of the Muslim world, which reached from Spain to India and inspired glorious buildings, rich literature and first-rate science. Baalbek was also on the frontier between two rival empires, the Abbasids ruling in Baghdad and the Fatimids in Cairo. The two had inherited the great split in the Muslim world between Sunnis – those guided by the sunnah, the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed which they traced back to the Prophet’s uncle Abbas – and the Shia (Shiat Ali, the Party of Ali), who looked back to the Prophet’s son-in-law Ali and his wife, the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. Abbasids and Fatimids, Sunni and Shia: their rivalry defined Islam, with the regions of the rival sects further divided by sub-sects and ambitious rulers. To unify such a mix was a challenge for any leader wishing to face the greatest challenge of all –