Saladin or Salah ad-Din

Saladin or Salah ad-Din, or Salahuddin Ayyubi (Arabic: صلاح الدين الأيوبي, Kurdish: صلاح الدین ایوبی) (so-lah-hood-din al-aye-yu-be) (c. 1138 - March 4, 1193) was a twelfth century Kurdish Muslim general and warrior from Tikrit, in present day northern Iraq. He founded the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Mecca Hejaz and Diyar Bakr.

Saladin is renowned in both the Muslim and Christian worlds for leadership and military prowess, tempered by his chivalry and merciful nature during his war against the Crusaders. Military, politically, and in every other way, Saladin was the most successful leader of the period. Historians convinced that his succeeded in war for a much deeper reason; a reason that won’t seem at first to be related to war at all.

On one occasion, an army scout came to Saladin with a sobbing woman from the enemy camp. She had requested, hysterically, that the scout take her to Saladin. She threw herself before Saladin, and said, ‘Yesterday some Muslim thieves entered my tent and stole my little girl. I cried all through the night, believing I would never see her again. But our commanders told me that you, the king of Muslims, are merciful.’ She begged for his help. Saladin was moved to tears. He immediately sent one of his men to the slave market to look for the girl. They located her within the hour and returned her to her mother, whom they then escorted back to the enemy camp.

Saladin united all the Muslim peoples from Syria to Egypt and mobilized their collective resistance. His army recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. In the spring of 1187, after the Crusaders had broken a truce, Saladin called upon the forces of Islam to gather in Damascus. He planned to march against the occupiers in a unified effort and drive them from Jerusalem.

Saladin sprung a trap on the occupying – err, rather, Western – forces near the Sea of Galilee. A few escaped, including a leader named Balian of Ibelin. Balian escaped to Tyre, where via a messenger he made a surprising request of Saladin: he asked whether he could go to Jerusalem and fetch his wife and bring her back to safety in Tyre. He promised he would not take up arms in defense of Jerusalem. Saladin agreed.

However, upon arriving in Jerusalem and finding there was no one to lead its defense, Balian begged Saladin to let him out of his commitment. He wanted to stay and lead the resistance against Saladin’s army. Saladin not only allowed it, he sent an escort to lead Balian’s wife from Jerusalem to the safety of Tyre!

If you were to research Saladin, you would discover that this story is characteristic. He was renowned for his kindness toward allies and enemies alike. Despite his fierce struggle to the Christian incursion, Saladin achieved a great reputation in Europe as a chivalrous knight, so much so that there existed by the fourteenth century an epic poem about his exploits, and Dante included him among the virtuous pagan souls in Limbo. The noble Saladin appears in a sympathetic light in Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman (1825). According to The French Writer Rene Grousse: "It is equally true that his generosity, his piety, devoid of fanaticism, that flower of liberality and courtesy which had been the model of our old chroniclers, won him no less popularity in Frankish Syria than in the lands of Islam."

The siege of Jerusalem began on the twentieth of September 1187. Nine days later, Saladin’s men breached the wall close to the place where the Crusaders had flowed through almost ninety years earlier. Saladin put his men under strict order not to harm a single Christian person or plunder any of their possessions. He reinforced the guards at Christian places of worship and announced that the defeated peoples would be welcome to Jerusalem on pilgrimage whenever they liked.

Despite the Crusaders' slaughter when they originally conquered Jerusalem in 1099, Saladin granted amnesty and free passage to all common Catholics and even to the defeated Christian army, as long as they were able to pay the aforementioned ransom (the Greek Orthodox Christians were treated even better, because they often opposed the western Crusaders).

As a way to restock the treasury, Saladin worked out a ransom structure with Balian for each of the city’s inhabitants. His men protested that the amount were absurdly low. But Saladin was concerned for the poor among them. So much so, in fact, that he let many leave without any ransom whatsoever. He sent widows and children away with gifts. His leaders objected, saying that if they were going to let so many leave without any compensation, they should at least increase the ransom for the wealthy. But Saladin refused. Balian himself was allowed to leave with a rich sum. Saladin even sent an escort to protect him on his journey to Tyre.

He sounds for most people disturbingly weak. Yes, so weak that he was the most successful military leader of his era and remains revered to this day. But he wasn’t weak. He was, in fact, remarkably and unfailingly strong. But he was something more than – or perhaps more accurately deeper than – strong. And this extra something is what set him apart from all the others of his era who, although strong, were unsuccessful. The secret of Saladin’s success in war was that his heart was at peace. And not just in war. It is the secret to success in business and family life as well. The state of your heart toward your children – weather at peace or at war – is by far the most important factor in the success of raising your children. It is also what will most determine your ability to successfully maneuver your company through the challenging times.