| Having established themselves in a fragmented part-Muslim world, the Crusader kingdoms eventually stimulated a united response. The revival can be traced to the seizure of Aleppo by the Saljuq governor of Mosul, Zangi, in 1128. His son Nur al-Din, who ruled in Damascus from 1154 to 1174, consolidated his power in Syria and Mesopotamia, sending his Kurdish general Salah al-Din (Saladin) to take control of Egypt in 1169. Two years later Saladin assumed power symbolically by deposing the last of the Fatimid caliphs. He and his descendants, the Ayyubids, broadened the appeal of Sunnism in Egypt by allowing scholars from the different legal schools to work alongside each other, while popular devotion to the House of Ali was permitted at the mosque of Hussein, where the martyr’s head is buried. From Egypt Saladin conquered Syria and upper Mesopotamia, restoring a unified state in the East for the first time since the early Abbasids. In 1187 he crowned his achievement by taking Jerusalem from the Franks. |
Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty, however, was not to endure. In 1250 the last Ayyubid sultan was killed by his Turkish mamluk soldiers. They proclaimed their own general sultan, initiating more than two and a half centuries of mamluk rule. Ten years later the brilliant mamluk general Baybars defeated the Mongol invaders at Ayn Jalut in Syria. By 1291 his successors had reunited Syria, expelled the last Crusaders, and expanded the boundaries of their empire into the upper Euphrates valley and Armenia. The mamluks kept their Turkish names and the exclusive right to ride horses and to own other mamluks as slaves. For the most part they married the female slaves who had been imported with them. If they married local women or took on Muslim-Arab names, they lost caste among themselves. When the supply of Kipchak Turkish slaves began to run out the Kipchak mamluks (known as Bahris) were replaced by Circassians (known as Burjis). Though most of the sultans tried to establish dynasties, their efforts were rarely successful, since minors or weaklings were invariably ousted by more powerful rivals. Nevertheless they demonstrated their devotion to Islam by patronizing scholarship and the Sufi orders, and by the magnificent buildings, including mosques, seminaries, and inns, which they lavished on Cairo in the distinct and ornate style that carries their name.
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Saladin, depicted here as the archetypically heroic Saracen by Gustave Doré (1884), was equally admired by the Muslims and his Crusader foes for his sense of honor and humanity. His reputation in the West was enhanced by the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Talisman (1825). |
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