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Saladin ( 1137 - 1193) (Salah al Din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub; صلاه الدين يوسف ابن ايوب) founded the ethnically Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt and Syria. He was also renowned in both the Christian and Muslim worlds for his leadership and military prowess tempered by his chivalry and merciful nature during the Crusades.1 Rise to power
Salah al Din was born into a Kurdish family at Tikrit on the river Tigris and was sent to Damascus to finish his education. There he lived for ten years at the court of Nur ad-Din, and distinguished himself by his interest in Sunni hadith. After an initial military education under the command of his uncle, the Seljuk statesman and soldier Shirkuh, who was representing Nur ad-Din on campaigns against a faction of the FatimidThe Fatimid Empire or Fatimid Caliphate ruled North Africa from A. 909 to 1171. The term "Fatimite" is sometimes used to refer to citizens of the Empire/Caliphate. The name Fatimid is derived from the name of daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, Fatima az-Za caliphCaliph is the term for the Islamic leader of the Ummah or community of Islam. Selected by committee, the holder of this title claims rulership over all Muslims. The Sunnis and Shiites differ as to whom was the first Caliph of Islam. According to Sunni thoate of Egypt in the 1160s, Saladin eventually succeeded the defeated faction and his uncle as vizierA Vizier (, sometimes also spelled Wazir is an Arabic term for a high-ranking religious and political advisor, often to a king or sultan. During the days of the Ottoman Empire the Grand Vizier played the role of a pseudo- prime minister in the Sultan's co in 1169, and inherited a difficult role defending Egypt against the incursions of the Latin Kings of Jerusalem, especially Amalric IAmalric I (also Amaury or Aimery ( 1136- 1174) was king of Jerusalem from 1162 to 1174. Amalric was the son of Fulk of Jerusalem, and the brother of Baldwin III. He was married twice, first to Agnes of Edessa, with whom he had two children, Baldwin IV and. His position was tenuous at first, as no one expected him to last long in Egypt, where there had been many changes of government in previous years, due to a long line of child caliphs fought over by competing viziers. As the leader of a foreign army from Syria, he also had no control over the Shi'ite Egyptian army, which was led in the name of the now otherwise powerless caliph. When he died, in September 1171, Saladin had the imams pronounce the name of the Abassid caliph in Baghdad at Friday prayers, and the weight of authority simply deposed the old line. Now Saladin ruled Egypt, but officially as the representative of Nur ad-Din, who himself conventionally recognized the Abassid caliph.
Thus ran the fictions of power. In reality, with the aid of his brothers who were given control of large estates in Lower Egypt, land-holdings whose pattern had survived largely unchanged since late Antiquity, Saladin turned Egypt into a fiefdom of his own family, against the wishes of Nur ad-Din, who had sent Shirkuh and Saladin to Egypt in the first place. With Nur ad-Din's death (1174), he assumed the title of sultanA sultan Arabic ) is an Islamic monarch ruling under the terms of shariah''. The title carries moral weight and religious authority, as the ruler's role was defined in the Quran. The sultan however was not a religious teacher himself. In the Byzantine Emp in Egypt, where he was treated as a usurper by many Seljuks, who refused to serve under a Kurdish "sultan". Nevertheless, Saladin proved to be the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and restored SunnismSunni Islam is the largest denomination of Islam. Followers of the Sunni tradition are known as Sunnis or Sunnites, and sometimes refer to themselves as the Ahlus Sunnah wal-Jamaa'h. It is widely believed among Sunnis that the name Sunni derives from the in Egypt. He extended his territory westwards in the maghreb, and when his uncle, sent up the Nile to pacify some resistance of the former Fatimid supporters, continued on down the Red Sea to conquer Yemen, Nur Ad-Din in Damascus was beginning to sense that he had unwillingly unleashed a dangerous new power, when he died in 1174.
