# Saladin The first fact about Saladin is a source limit. The richest Arabic narratives are courtly. The richest Latin narratives are crusade-sided. The richest objects still standing are palaces and walls restored by later states. A dossier that treats Ibn Shaddad as a photograph is naive. A dossier that treats the sultan as only a 1980s poster is evasive. Hattin and the killing of Templar and Hospitaller captives; intra-Muslim wars to assemble the jihad coalition; ending the Fatimid caliphate; dhimmi fiscal limits; ransom-and-slavery as war finance; citadel labour; personalised justice; family partition after 1193; Scott’s romance; Wilhelm’s tomb theatre; Nasser’s eagle; Saddam’s Tikrit ancestor; Kurdish-versus-Arab statue fights. Those are dated as chronicles-in-later-editions or as modern uses. The offsets are also dated: Jerusalem 1187 terms as received; Sunni madrasas; Richards and Lane-Poole and Lyons as public English; Recueil; UNESCO Historic Cairo and Damascus; citadel museum and WMF conservation. Those gains do not rebate the dead at Hattin. They are separate paths. What the score must not say: that he is Nasser or Saddam; that Scott is a source; that UNESCO undid corvée; that courtesy deleted executions; that 1171 is a human-rights upgrade because Ismailis lost. Complex contribution is the honest type. Confidence is high on 1979–2001 conservation and translation, medium on chronicle numbers, low on any civil-registry inner life. Related people are Shirkuh, Nur al-Din, al-Adil, Baha al-Din, Richard I, Balian, Lane-Poole as a modern writer, Nasser as a later user. 2001 is not 1187. 1979 is not 1176. A Recueil page is a nineteenth-century corpus. A citadel ticket is a twentieth-century economy. If those distinctions feel pedantic, they are the alternative to a statue and the alternative to a cartoon villain with a fake headcount. What would change the picture: a surviving audited chancery series; a forensic mass-grave with an Ayyubid label; a measured tourism-rent series at object level. Until then the dossier refuses fake chivalry and refuses fake eternity. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Keep Hattin, Jerusalem terms, the citadel listing, and Tikrit posters on separate dates. Sources used in this catalog include 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); Britannica — Saladin (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saladin); Stanley Lane-Poole, Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1898 scan) (https://archive.org/details/saladinandfallk00lanegoog); BBC History — Saladin (https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/saladin.shtml); UNESCO — Historic Cairo (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/89/); Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities — Citadel of Cairo (https://egymonuments.gov.eg/en/archaeological-sites/saladin-citadel-of-cairo/). ## Dated facts - 2001: Modern editors note that Ayyubid chancery files do not survive as a public data series. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-personal-chancery-files-not-public. Sources: https://www.soas.ac.uk/, https://www.routledge.com/The-Rare-and-Excellent-History-of-Saladin-or-al-Nawadir-al-Sultaniyya/Richards/p/book/9780754640813. - 2001: Modern translations of Ibn Shaddad make jihad rhetoric of the Ayyubid court publicly readable. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-jihad-rhetoric-as-chronicle. Sources: https://www.britannica.com/event/Third-Crusade, https://www.routledge.com/The-Rare-and-Excellent-History-of-Saladin-or-al-Nawadir-al-Sultaniyya/Richards/p/book/9780754640813. - 2001: Ibn Shaddad’s translated vita presents the sultan as sitting with qadis, a court-centred justice image. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-justice-qadi-court-as-chronicle. 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. - 2001: D. S. Richards publishes an English Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad as a public Saladin vita. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-richards-ibn-shaddad-2001. Sources: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saladin, https://www.routledge.com/The-Rare-and-Excellent-History-of-Saladin-or-al-Nawadir-al-Sultaniyya/Richards/p/book/9780754640813. - 2000: Cairo Citadel tourism captures modern rent from an Ayyubid labour landscape. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-tourism-citadel-rent. Sources: https://english.ahram.org.eg/, https://egymonuments.gov.eg/en/archaeological-sites/cairo-citadel/. - 2000: International conservation programmes take the Cairo Citadel as a historic-cities project. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-citadel-conservation-wmf. Sources: https://www.akdn.org/, https://www.wmf.org/project/citadel-salah-al-din. - 1992: Late-twentieth-century Kurdish and Arab nationalisms contest Saladin as an ethnic ancestor. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-kurdish-and-arab-claims. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/20/iraq.rorymccarthy, https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/saladin.shtml. - 1987: Ba‘thist Iraq stages Saladin as a Tikriti ancestor in late-twentieth-century propaganda. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-saddam-tikrit-cult. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/20/iraq.rorymccarthy, https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/saladin.shtml. - 1983: Modern site interpretation records the Citadel as a forced-labour and corvée landscape of Ayyubid state building. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-citadel-labour-as-later-account. Sources: https://www.wmf.org/project/citadel-salah-al-din, https://egymonuments.gov.eg/en/archaeological-sites/cairo-citadel/. - 1983: Egyptian antiquities administration presents the Citadel as a public museum-fortress. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-egypt-citadel-public-museum. Sources: https://english.ahram.org.eg/, https://egymonuments.gov.eg/en/archaeological-sites/cairo-citadel/. - 1982: Lyons and Jackson publish Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War as a critical modern biography. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-lyons-jackson-1982. Sources: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/saladin/, https://www.soas.ac.uk/. - 1981: UNESCO lists the Old City of Jerusalem, the urban object of the 1187 campaign. https://factrail.ai/facts/sa-jerusalem-unesco-old-city. Sources: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/148/, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/crus/hd_crus.htm. ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/saladin