Salahuddin Ayyubi: Righteousness of the Faith

Start hereHis biographer says Saladin died leaving only forty-seven Nasri dirhems and one Tyrian gold piece in his treasury. The same biographer records that after Hattin he had the captured Templars and Hospitallers executed, and “spared not a single one”. Which man do the sources show?

01Salahuddin Ayyubi

Salahuddin Ayyubi, known in Europe as Saladin, was a sultan of Kurdish descent. He united Egypt and Syria and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. In 1187 he defeated the Crusaders at Hattin and then took Jerusalem.

“Salah ad-Din” means “righteousness of the faith”. It was a title of honour. His own name was Yusuf ibn Ayyub.

He was born in 1137 or 1138 and died in Damascus on 4 March 1193. We know him well because Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, the judge of his army who went with him on his later campaigns, wrote his life.

Four writers tell most of the story of 1187. Baha ad-Din and Imad ad-Din both served Saladin. The historian Ibn al-Athir also wrote from the Muslim side. The fourth is the Frankish chronicle attributed to Ernoul. Ernoul was a squire of Balian of Ibelin, the man who negotiated Jerusalem’s surrender on the other side. Where they disagree, both versions are given.

02Meaning of Salahuddin Ayyubi

Salah

Ṣalāḥ (صلاح) is Arabic for “righteousness”.

Uddin

Al-Dīn (الدين) means “the faith” or “the religion”. Uddin, ad-Din and al-Din are different English spellings of the same words. Together, Salah ad-Din means “righteousness of the faith”.

Titles built this way, a word followed by al-Din, were a standard kind of honorific in classical Arabic names. Library cataloguers class them as a kind of laqab, a title added to a name. One of their examples is Nur al-Din, the name of Saladin’s own overlord.

So Salah ad-Din was a title, not a given name. His personal name was Yusuf, the Arabic form of Joseph.

Ayyubi

His father was Ayyub, the Arabic form of Job, so he was Yusuf ibn Ayyub: Yusuf, son of Ayyub.

Ayyubi is a nisba, the part of an Arabic name formed with the ending -i that shows where or whom someone comes from. The dynasty he founded is called the Ayyubids for the same reason.

So Salahuddin Ayyubi can be read as “Righteousness of the Faith, of the family of Ayyub”.

Salah“righteousness”

al-Din“the faith”; “uddin” is another English spelling

Yusuf ibn Ayyubhis own name: Joseph, son of Job

Ayyubia nisba, “of Ayyub”; the Ayyubid dynasty takes its name from it

03Early Life and Faith

Baha ad-Din says he was born in the year 532 of the Islamic calendar (AD 1137–1138). The place was the citadel of Tikrit, where his father was governor.

The introduction to the 1897 English edition of Baha ad-Din’s book adds that the family was of Kurdish descent.

His father and his uncle, Shirkuh, served the Zengid ruler of Mosul. They later moved to Syria, where the boy began his own service under his father.

Baha ad-Din describes his faith in detail. He kept the daily prayers, travelling or not. His charity was so constant that when he died he left, in Baha ad-Din’s words, “but forty-seven Nasri dirhems, and one Tyrian gold piece” in his treasury.

That is a friend’s account, written after his death, and it reads like one. It is also the closest witness we have.

04How he rose

His power was built long before Jerusalem.

• Egypt. He went to Egypt with his uncle Shirkuh, who became vizier to the Fatimid caliph. When Shirkuh died in March 1169, Saladin took his place at the head of the government.

• The end of the Fatimid caliphate. The last Fatimid caliph, al-Adid, died in September 1171. Shortly before the caliph’s death, Saladin had the Friday sermon read in the name of the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. That ended the Shiʿi Fatimid caliphate in Egypt.

• Syria. His overlord Nur ad-Din died in Damascus on 15 May 1174. Saladin moved into Syria and took Damascus. Over the following years he fought Muslim rivals as well as the Crusaders.

Uniting Egypt and Syria is what made 1187 possible. In March of that year, Baha ad-Din says, Saladin camped and waited for “the armies from Egypt and Syria” to arrive.

05Hattin, 4 July 1187

The victory that opened Jerusalem was won near Hattin, west of Tiberias. King Guy of Lusignan led the Crusader army to relieve Tiberias, which Saladin was besieging. The march crossed ground with little water.

Baha ad-Din describes the Crusaders on the hill of Hattin tormented by thirst as the Muslims set fires around them. Guy was captured, and the relic of the True Cross was lost.

What happened next is told in detail by Baha ad-Din. Saladin gave the thirsty king a bowl of iced rose-water sherbet.

Guy passed it to Reynald of Châtillon, the lord of Kerak who had attacked a caravan during a truce. Saladin said it was the king, not he, who was giving Reynald a drink. By custom, a captive who ate or drank with his captor was spared.

Later that day Saladin struck Reynald himself, and his men finished him. He told the frightened king: “It is not the wont of kings to kill kings; but that man had transgressed all bounds”.

Baha ad-Din also records that Saladin resolved to execute the captured Hospitallers and Templars, “and he spared not a single one”.

06Jerusalem, 1187

Saladin reached Jerusalem on 20 September 1187, and the city surrendered on 2 October 1187. There was no massacre.

That is a real contrast with the Crusader capture of 1099. In the Crusaders’ own account, the killing at the Temple was so great that “our men waded in blood up to their ankles”.

Saladin first refused terms. Ibn al-Athir says he told the Franks he would treat them as the Crusaders had treated Jerusalem’s people, repaying evil with evil. He agreed to a ransom after Balian threatened to kill the defenders’ own families and the Muslim prisoners, and his council advised him to accept.

But leaving the city was not free. Three early accounts, from both sides, give the same ransom. A fourth differs on one figure:

• 10 dinars for a man, 5 for a woman and 1 for a child, according to Baha ad-Din. The chronicle attributed to Ernoul gives 10, 5 and 1 bezants.

• The Latin De expugnatione Terrae Sanctae also gives 10, 5 and 1. It counts boys of seven and under as children.

• The historian Ibn al-Athir, in an English translation quoted by the Muslim Heritage site, gives two dinars for a child.

With three accounts from both sides agreeing on one, the evidence leans to one.

In Ernoul’s account Saladin first asked 20, 10 and 5, adding that anyone who could not pay would remain a slave. He brought the price down after negotiation with Balian. Baha ad-Din puts it the other way round: everyone who paid was to go free.

Many of the poor were freed anyway. Ernoul’s chronicle says Saladin’s brother, whom the Franks called Saphadin, asked for a thousand of them as slaves and freed them. The Patriarch and Balian were each given more to free.

Then, as his own alms, Saladin had the poor let out through the postern (a small side gate) of St Lazarus. They went out from sunrise to sunset, and no one counted them.

The same passage adds that anyone found carrying the means to pay was to be imprisoned. The young men and women were put between two walls, while the old were put outside the city.

Balian and the Patriarch also bought the freedom of 7,000 poor people for 30,000 bezants. The money came from the king of England’s treasure, held by the Hospitallers.

Ibn al-Athir complains that the officials at the gates shared out the ransom money, and that some emirs let people out for private payments. Only a small sum, he says, reached Saladin’s treasury. Baha ad-Din was told that Saladin kept none of the treasure for himself, though it came to nearly 220,000 dinars.

Baha ad-Din adds that everyone who paid was escorted to Tyre. The Muslim prisoners freed in the city, he says, numbered more than three thousand.

Ernoul’s chronicle and Baha ad-Din, from opposite sides, describe the same thing: far more restraint than a sack, and a ransom that many people could not pay. What happened to those who could not pay is set out in the next section.

10 / 5 / 1	dinars for a man, a woman, a child
1,000	freed at the request of Saladin’s brother
7,000	freed for 30,000 bezants
about 11,000	still unransomed at the end, in the Frankish chronicle; under the terms they remained slaves
8,000	women and children alone, in the count of Saladin’s secretary Imad ad-Din

Ransom from Baha ad-Din, the chronicle attributed to Ernoul and the Latin De expugnatione; Ibn al-Athir gives 2 dinars for a child.

07What happened to captives and civilians

People taken in battle, by storm or in raids were often enslaved, and the captured knights of the military orders were executed.

After Hattin

Few of the Crusader army got away. Baha ad-Din says that of the ordinary soldiers, some were killed and others taken captive. A man he trusted saw one soldier leading more than thirty prisoners, tied together with a tent cord.

The captured Templars and Hospitallers were singled out. Ibn al-Athir says Saladin offered fifty Egyptian dinars for each one, because captors would not otherwise give up a man they hoped to ransom. Two hundred were brought to him and beheaded.

He also ordered his deputy in Damascus to kill those of them taken there. Ibn al-Athir explains that these knights fought harder than any other Franks.

Imad ad-Din, Saladin’s secretary, describes the killings. In a passage quoted by the historian Andrew Holt, scholars and Sufis each begged to be allowed to kill one, while Saladin sat on his dais, “his face joyful”.

The king and several leading prisoners were sent to Damascus. Ordinary prisoners belonged to the men who had taken them, who hoped to ransom them.

Towns and castles

What happened to a town depended mostly on how it fell.

• Tiberias. The lady of Tiberias asked for safe conduct for herself, her children, her servants and her goods. Ibn al-Athir says it was granted and kept.

• Acre. Ibn al-Athir says the townspeople were promised their lives and property and offered the choice to stay or leave. They left, taking what they could carry. Baha ad-Din adds that Saladin freed more than four thousand captives held in the city.

• The country around Acre. Raiding parties took Nazareth, Caesarea, Haifa, Saffuriya and other places. Ibn al-Athir says they enslaved men, women and children, so many that the countryside seemed covered with captives.

• Nablus. The citadel surrendered on terms. The townspeople stayed and kept their property.

• Jaffa. Saladin’s brother al-Adil took it by storm, and Ibn al-Athir says its men and women were enslaved. He writes that its people suffered more than those of any other place.

• A woman from Jaffa. Ibn al-Athir later owned one of them, a young woman, as a slave in Aleppo. She told him her six brothers had all died, and she did not know what had become of her husband and two sisters.

• Tibnin (Toron). The two Muslim accounts disagree. Baha ad-Din says it was taken by storm and the surviving defenders were led into captivity. Ibn al-Athir says the defenders released more than a hundred Muslim prisoners, then surrendered and were sent to safety.

• Beirut. It surrendered on 6 August 1187 after an eight-day siege, with its people’s lives and goods guaranteed.

• Ascalon. It surrendered in September 1187 after fourteen days. Ibn al-Athir says its people were taken to Jerusalem with their wives, children and property, and the terms were kept.

• Tyre. The people let go from Acre, Beirut and other towns gathered in Tyre, Ibn al-Athir notes. Many of them then helped to defend it against him.

• The north, 1188. At Latakia the defenders left free with their families and belongings, but gave up their arms and stores. Baha ad-Din says Saladin “never refused to grant terms when an enemy wished to surrender”.

• Sahyun, 1188. The defenders of the keep were let go for a ransom of 10 gold pieces a man, 5 a woman and 2 a child.

• Bekas and Burzey, 1188. Both were taken by storm. Those not killed were led into captivity.

Jerusalem: the unransomed

• A deadline. In Ibn al-Athir’s version, anyone who had not paid within forty days became a slave.

• Three counts. When the counting was done, Ernoul’s chronicle says, about eleven thousand were still unransomed. The historian Ibn al-Athir says 16,000 men, women and children were made captive. Saladin’s own secretary, Imad ad-Din, writes in a passage quoted by Holt that the women and children alone “came to 8,000 and were quickly divided up among us”.

• They do not count the same thing. Ernoul counts those still to be ransomed, Ibn al-Athir those made captive, and Imad women and children only. No source settles which figure is closest.

• No hostages. Saladin refused an offer from the Patriarch and Balian to stay as hostages in their place.

• The terms. Under the terms, those who could not pay remained slaves. The Latin account’s version of the terms says that those who did not have ten besants “were to become booty, to be slain by the army’s swords”.

• The women. Imad ad-Din goes on, in ornate rhetorical prose, to describe many of the women being taken as concubines and forced to submit. Holt notes some poetic licence in the passage, but nothing to suggest it is invented.

08The Third Crusade and his death

The loss of Jerusalem brought a new crusade from Europe. Richard I of England defeated Saladin at Arsuf on 7 September 1191. Baha ad-Din calls it a blow to every Muslim heart. But Richard never took Jerusalem.

The war ended with a three-year peace dated 2 September 1192. Jaffa, Caesarea, Arsuf, Haifa and Acre went to the Crusaders, and Ascalon was to be demolished. Christian pilgrims went up to Jerusalem under Saladin’s escort.

Saladin died in Damascus on 4 March 1193, six months after the peace. Baha ad-Din was there. “We were obliged to borrow money to purchase everything necessary for the funeral,” he writes, “even down to things that cost but a halfpenny”.

09Kingdom of Heaven is a drama, not a history

If you know Saladin from Ridley Scott’s film Kingdom of Heaven (2005), written by William Monahan, treat it as a drama. It is not a reliable history. It keeps the outline of events, but much of the detail is the film’s own.

• Balian of Ibelin. In the film he is a blacksmith. The real Balian was a baron of the kingdom and the brother of Baldwin of Ramla. He fought at Montgisard in 1177, and in 1187 he led the defence of Jerusalem.

• Baldwin IV’s silver mask. Neither of the two main chronicles of his reign, William of Tyre and the chronicle attributed to Ernoul, mentions a mask.

• “A king may move a man, a father may claim a son…” This speech is film dialogue, spoken by Baldwin to Balian. It is not a medieval quotation.

• “It is a kingdom of conscience, or nothing.” In the film this is Balian’s line, not Baldwin’s. Neither line is in William of Tyre’s history of the kingdom. Both belong to the screenplay.

• The surrender of Jerusalem. In the film, Saladin promises “every soul safe conduct to Christian lands”. In the record, leaving cost a ransom, and thousands who could not pay remained slaves.

10Legacy of Salahuddin Ayyubi

Saladin was admired by writers on both sides of the war he fought. His biographer wrote as a devoted servant. In Europe, Dante’s line places him, alone, among the virtuous non-Christians of Limbo. Scott’s The Talisman made him a romantic hero.

Baha ad-Din opens his book not with victories but with chapters on Saladin’s religion, his love of justice and his generosity. Whatever you make of the man, it is a record of what his contemporaries thought righteousness looked like.

The sources give a fuller picture than either legend. The same biographer who records the empty treasury also records the execution of every captured Templar and Hospitaller after Hattin.

The Frankish chronicle that praises his courtesy to the widows and daughters of knights also counts the thousands left unransomed. Both are part of the record.

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• Baha ad-Din’s Life of Saladin (1897 English translation) and the chronicle attributed to Ernoul (1871 edition) were read in their Internet Archive scans. Where the scan’s text was garbled, the passage was read by hand.
• The line that his family was of Kurdish descent comes from the introduction to the 1897 English edition (p. xv), not from Baha ad-Din’s own text.
• Ibn al-Athir was read in the 1872 French translation of the Recueil des historiens des croisades. The English renderings of it on this page are ours.
• The 2-dinar child ransom appears in the 1872 French translation (p. 701) and in an English translation quoted on the Muslim Heritage site; the Arabic text was not opened.
• Imad ad-Din is quoted through the historian Andrew Holt, because Gabrieli’s Arab Historians of the Crusades, which Holt quotes, is lending-only.
• Ernoul gives a number for the poor freed at the Patriarch’s and Balian’s request, but it could not be read reliably in the scan, so the page gives none.
• The absence of a silver mask rests on full-text searches of William of Tyre (Babcock and Krey) and Ernoul; the absence of the two speeches, on a search of William of Tyre.
• Dante’s “alone, apart” is our translation of “solo, in parte”.

Checked October 2026.

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14Sources