Saladin, Richard the Lionheart
and the legacy of the Crusades
Dr Jonathan Phillips
On 15 July 1099, the armies of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem and massacred its defenders to claim the city for Christianity. Eighty-eight years later, Saladin, the charismatic leader of the Muslim Near East, retook the holy city for Islam. A Christian riposte was inevitable: within three years, Richard the Lionheart was leading the Third Crusade. Yet, despite winning several battles, he failed to take Jerusalem. On 9 October 1192, he set sail for home, exhausted by his attempts to regain the Holy Land.
Over 800 years later, the present political climate sees the ideas of crusade, its Muslim counterpart jihad and the legacies of Richard and Saladin back in the public spotlight. Such imagery has been invoked by various of the leading players in today’s conflicts.
Foolish and intemperate
On 16 September 2001, in the immediate aftermath of al-Qaeda’s terror attacks on the United States, President George W Bush described the struggle with Usama bin Laden as ‘a crusade’. Given that he was trying to induce countries such as Syria and Egypt – both of which had been on the receiving end of the original crusading movement – to join a common front against an Islamic enemy, this was an unfortunate choice of words. Bush was rapidly condemned for his foolish and intemperate statement.
Nevertheless, it gave added ammunition to those who see the United States as a successor to the Crusaders: Westerners coming over to the Middle East, bringing death and destruction and subjecting Muslim peoples to their control. In the secular Western world of today, the use of the word ‘crusade’ has become quite generic: crusades for fair play in sport; crusades to cut hospital waiting lists. In the Muslim world, however, the term is still generally viewed in terms of aggressive wars of conquest. It is this perception that makes the idea of the Crusades and, for the Muslim world, the image of Saladin seem so relevant to today.
Crude stereotyping
Yet, for many centuries after the Crusades, Saladin was largely forgotten in the Near East. It was the reputation of Sultan Baibars – the man who broke the remaining Christian hold on the Holy Land in the 1260s – that was the most prominent. By contrast, Saladin’s image flourished in western Europe and, ironically, it is through this route that much of his modern profile originates.
Unsurprisingly, most medieval crusading authors chose to vilify their Muslim opponents, resorting to crude stereotyping to depict their enemies. The infidel were polytheists, idolators who gabbled, howled and gnashed their teeth. Knowledge of Islam was rudimentary to say the least; the Koran was not translated into Latin until 1142, and it was not until the 13th century that any real attempts to engage in conversion or genuine religious dialogue took place.
The essence of Western knighthood
Yet, in spite of this, Saladin was viewed in the most glowing terms. Western writers on the Third Crusade lauded his generosity, his courteous treatment of women, his diplomatic skills and his military prowess. They were also aware of his peaceful conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 and the fact that he had chosen not to emulate the bloodbath of the First Crusade. In these aspects, his behaviour matched the highest standards of chivalry. In fact, Saladin occupied a central place in the most popular medieval ‘handbook’ of chivalry – such was his fame that he had penetrated the very essence of Western knighthood!
Of course, Richard the Lionheart was praised, too. Western writers recognised his enormous courage and his strategic genius. Similarly, in a rare break from their customary denigration of ‘Western pigs’, Muslim writers eulogised: ‘Never have we had to face a bolder or more subtle opponent.’
Human folly
In the centuries after the Crusades, these profiles changed. With the Reformation and then the Enlightenment, crusading fell into disrepute as a tool of the papacy and as a manifestation of irrationality. In 1761, the Scottish philosopher David Hume described it as ‘the most durable monument to human folly that has yet appeared.’
Yet in the 19th century, this view, too, began to alter. As Europeans created colonies in the Middle East, travel to the Levant fed interest in the Crusades - they were sometimes seen as earlier examples of Western colonisation. The Romantic movement encouraged interest in medieval architecture and history; there was also the first serious academic research into the Crusades with the publication of collections of Muslim and Christian sources.
Finally, the writings of Sir Walter Scott and particularly his novels Ivanhoe and The Talisman – the latter including a fictitious meeting between Richard and Saladin – did much to impose the idea of the noble and magnanimous Muslim leader dealing with the brave but barbaric Crusaders.
These ideas then travelled to the Middle East. When Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Damascus in 1898, he proclaimed that Saladin ‘often had to teach his opponents the right way to practice chivalry’.
The struggle with the West
As the Arab world began to resist European imperialism, the legacy of the noble Muslim warrior fighting off Western invaders became increasingly attractive, and the image conveyed to the East by individuals such as Kaiser Wilhelm was soon appropriated and developed. Because Saladin unified Palestine, Syria and Egypt under the banner of the jihad, over the last hundred years he has been adopted by many groups and nations – both secular and religious – in conflict with the West. Because Saladin captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders and saw off the challenge of the greatest warrior of the age, his achievements are viewed as an exemplar for those engaged in the struggle with the West today.
Arab nationalists such as Saddam Hussein and Islamist groups such as al- Qaeda both see close and highly charged parallels with the medieval period. Saddam chooses to portray himself as the modern-day successor to Saladin. He has had himself depicted next to the emir on postage stamps. In huge murals, he stands above tanks rolling to victory; alongside him is Saladin pictured above his charging cavalry. The message is clear: just as Saladin vanquished the Western invader, so Saddam will, too.
Unenthusiastic about Richard
Richard the Lionheart has a less polemical status. In the West, he is best represented by the Victorian statue of him erected outside the Houses of Parliament, which shows a great hero symbolising English bravery and expansion overseas. Otherwise, in popular culture he is simply seen as a particularly violent king who spent most of his reign abroad, leaving it to Robin Hood to keep justice alive in England.
He is not used as a political tool by modern leaders, who are obviously unenthusiastic about such an image. However, among Islamic militants, his name is sometimes invoked as an example of Western brutality.
The admiration of enemies
In reality, Richard and Saladin were two of the greatest warriors and statesmen of the medieval age. They held each other in great respect, and both were unusual in attracting the admiration of their enemies.
While Richard has a relatively low profile today, Saladin has become one of the major heroes of Islam. The needs of modern-day politics have dictated that both he and the crusading movement as a whole remain highly charged images – an enduring and powerful legacy to the 21st century.
Dr Jonathan Phillips is a senior lecturer in medieval history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has written several books and articles on the Crusades, including The Crusades, 1095-1197 (2002).
