People & Histories
2 October 1187

Saladin retakes Jerusalem

Saladin, a Muslim sultan from a Kurdish family, defeats the Crusaders at Hattin and takes Jerusalem.

  • Saladin — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War — Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Cambridge University Press (1982)
  • A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)

Well established religionempireidentity

Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known in Europe as Saladin, was born in Tikrit, in today’s Iraq, in 1137 or 1138, into a Kurdish family. His father Ayyub and uncle Shirkuh were Kurdish soldiers who rose in the service of the Turkish Zengid rulers of Mosul and Aleppo.

  • Saladin — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War — Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Cambridge University Press (1982)
Saladin went with Shirkuh to Egypt and, in 1171, ended the Fatimid caliphate there. Over the next fifteen years he brought Egypt, Syria and much of upper Mesopotamia under the dynasty named after his father, the Ayyubids.
  • Saladin — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War — Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Cambridge University Press (1982)

On 4 July 1187 he destroyed the army of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin, and on 2 October Jerusalem surrendered to him. Unlike the Crusaders’ massacre of 1099, the city’s Christians were allowed to ransom themselves and leave. That reputation for chivalry made him admired even in medieval Europe.

  • Saladin — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War — Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Cambridge University Press (1982)
He died in Damascus in 1193.

Historians are clear that Saladin thought of himself as a Sunni Muslim ruler, and his court and army were a mix of Kurds, Turks and Arabs.

  • Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War — Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Cambridge University Press (1982)
  • A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
Still, his Kurdish roots are well established, and for Kurds today he is a source of pride, a reminder that their people were once at the centre of the Islamic world.

Why it matters today

Kurds

Saladin is the Kurds' most famous ancestor, and many Kurds bring him up with real pride. They also know the bittersweet joke behind it: the greatest Kurdish ruler of all fought for Islam and an empire, not for a Kurdish homeland.