The 1963 film El Naser Salah el Dine (Saladin) is an historical epic by Egyptian Christian filmmaker Youssef Chahine and the second film (a black and white one appeared in 1941) about one of the most famous Muslim heroes ever, let alone of the Middle Ages, Salah ad-Din (a nickname meaning "Righteousness of the Faith"), "Saladin" in the West. The film also has an interesting subtext of conflating Saladin's reputation with that of then-Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the late 12th century, Saladin conquered the Arab world and reconquered most of the crusader states (including Jerusalem) for Islam before fighting English King Richard Lionheart to a draw in the Third Crusade. A film classic in Egypt, Saladin remains little known in the West. Ironically, it gives a view of Saladin that appears to be like the Western one on the surface, but is fundamentally different. At heart, Western contemporaries of Saladin saw him as an honorable Muslim outlaw. Modern Arabs, meanwhile, use the same stories to portray him as the paragon of a legitimate Arab ruler.
Both are wrong.
First, the film implies that Saladin was an Arab who united the Arab world in the face of a crusader threat. Imitating Western authors like Walter Scott (the threat to burn the heroine as a witch and Saladin's probably legendary friendship-at-a-distance with Richard) for its own purposes, it presents Saladin as a lawful Arab ruler of the medieval Arab world. Actually, Saladin spent most of his career conquering his Arab neighbors for the gain of his own empire and wasn't an Arab at all. He was a Kurd from what is now northern Iraq.
Second, the film presents Saladin as a mild and just ruler when his own biographers paint a rather different picture. 'Imad-ad-Din describes Saladin as laughing with joy at the sight of Templars and Hospitallers being executed after the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Baha' ad-Din praises the pious Saladin for imposing a Sunni inquisition on the Shi'ite Egyptians after conquering them. Usamah Ibn Munqidh, this week's author, claims that Saladin once cut one of his officers in half for disagreeing with him.
Saladin was an alien conqueror who had to establish his legitimacy to rule after the fact, not an outlaw but a conqueror who was so successful that the descendants of his enemies now see him as a shining example of Arab Muslim unity. Tyrants like Saddam Hussein have attempted to claim association with Saladin, ignoring the irony that many of Saladin's Muslim contemporaries actively hated his guts. Saladin is a true military legend, but like his rival Richard Lionheart, he wasn't the nice guy that legend makes him, either.
Paula Stiles - I'm an American who's traveled all over the place, including working for the Peace Corps for two years in Cameroon. Until recently, I was ...
