# Ibn Shaddad’s translated vita presents the sultan as sitting with qadis, a court-centred justice image

Date: 2001

## The fact

The 2001 English Ibn Shaddad presents [Saladin](/people/saladin) as a ruler who hears cases and jihad together, a personalised justice image rather than an independent bench. It is panegyric.

## Context

A qadi-sultan duet can be competent and still be non-independent. Medium confidence. Do not upgrade panegyric into a human-rights court.

Saladin is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official heritage, encyclopedia, or edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: D. S. Richards trans. — Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (https://www.routledge.com/The-Rare-and-Excellent-History-of-Saladin-or-al-Nawadir-al-Sultaniyya/Richards/p/book/9780754640813; Routledge / Ashgate crusade texts).

## Significance

A translated anecdote is not a code of civil procedure.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Saladin: https://factrail.ai/people/saladin

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ayyubid-dynasty
- https://www.routledge.com/The-Rare-and-Excellent-History-of-Saladin-or-al-Nawadir-al-Sultaniyya/Richards/p/book/9780754640813

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-justice-qadi-court-as-chronicle