4. How committed was Saladin to Jihad against the Franks during the years 1169-1187?

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about what motivated Saladin to build his empire and wage war against the Franks, focusing in particular on: (i) the question of whether Saladin was genuinely motivated by a sense of obligation to jihad or whether his professed piety was simply a cover for more material aims, e.g. his own ambition, thirst for power, etc.; (ii) the positive picture of Saladin provided by Baha ad-Din's Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, as well as in the account of William of Tyre, and the reasons we might question the positivity of these portrayals; (iii) the more sceptical accounts of Ibn al-Athir, particularly in relation to Saladin's dealings with Nur ad-Din, and Saldin's actions following Nur-ad-Din's death in 1174; (iv) the appraisals of more recent historians, including Stanley Lane-Poole's Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem (1989) and Hamilton Gibb's Life of Saladin (1973), which are both positive, Andrew Ehrenkreutz's Saladin (2001), Lyons and Jackson's Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (1982), and Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land (2010), which are more cynical, and Carole Hillenbrand's The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (1999), which suggests that we may never know Saladin's true motivations.

Suggested reading:
– M. C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of Holy War (1982)
– H. Gibb, The Life of Saladin: From the Works of Baha Ad-Din and Imad Ad-Din (1973)
– S. Lane-Poole,Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem (1898)
– Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (1999)
– Andrew Ehrenkreutz, Saladin (2001)
– Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land (2010)

Course

In this course, Dr Nicholas Morton (Nottingham Trent University) considers four questions related the Second Crusade, 1147-49: (i) How did the Crusader States survive and grow in the decades following the First Crusade?; (ii) Why did the Second Crusade fail?; (iii) Why did the Turkish resistance to the Crusaders intensify during the Twelfth Century?; (iv) How committed was Saladin to Jihad against the Franks during the years 1169-1187? In each module, we outline some potential approaches to the question, as well as considering the sources that are available that might help us answer the question.

Lecturer

Dr Nicholas Morton is a specialist in the history of crusading and the Medieval Mediterranean between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. More recently he has begun to focus specifically upon the theme of inter-faith relations between Christianity and Islam in this region. He has published extensively on topics connected to this subject area, writing a range of monographs and scholarly articles. He is also an editor for the Ashgate series Rulers of the Latin East.

Currently Dr Morton is completing a monograph exploring the First Crusaders' attitudes and behaviour towards the various non-Christian peoples they encountered during their campaign. This will be a highly revisionist work addressing many key scholarly and public orthodoxies surrounding the nature of Christian/Islamic interaction during the crusade.