THE TOMB OF SALAH AD

THE TOMB OF SALAH AD-DIN

Saladin.  The name is familiar to most westerners from childhood, even although we may not always know exactly who he was or what he did, and some may even confuse him with Aladdin of the lamp!

Salah ad-din, whose name means the Righteous One of Religion, though admired as one of the foremost figures of Arab history, was not an Arab at all but a Kurd from Iraq!  In 1171 Saladin overthrew the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, and on the death of his uncle, Nur ad-Din, he stepped into his uncle’s shoes as leader of the fight against the Franks as the Crusaders were known to the Arabs, taking over the succession from Nur ad-Din’s infant son.  He then founded his own dynasty, that of the Ayyubids, the name being based on his family name. With the two centres of Arab resistance, Cairo and Damascus, now united under Saladin, he joined battle with the Crusaders at Hittin where the Crusader army was routed and the king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, taken prisoner.  Gradually Saladin’s forces recaptured most of the Crusader strongholds until only a few isolated fortresses were left, most notably at Tartous, Arwad in Syria and some other places on the Lebanese coast.  In contrast to the merciless treatment meted out by the Crusaders to their Arab captives, Moslems and Christian alike, Saladin was lenient and allowed most captives to buy their freedom.  The fall of Jerusalem to the Arab forces inspired the legendary Third Crusade which involved some of the most outstanding figures of the age, Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Philip Augustus of France and Richard the Lionheart of England.  Although much has been made of the relationship between Richard and Saladin, the truth is that these two colossi of history never met at all, although they did exchange gifts.

As our entrance fee to the Great Mosque also included the entrance to the tomb of Saladin, we turned the corner of the mosque and made our way to the small garden in which the tomb stands.  This is no grandiose monument. The simplicity of the building stands in stark contrast to the greatness of the man whose remains it houses, whose rule, at the height of his power, extended from northern Iraq to Libya. However, it does reflect his own lack of pretentiousness and personal acquisitiveness for, despite the power which  he wielded, Saladin died without personal wealth.

The original cenotaph is a humble construction made of wood carved with an inscription which reads. “Oh Allah, be satisfied with this soul and open to him the gates of paradise, the last conquest for which he hoped”.  In 1878 the Sultan Hamid ordered a new cenotaph to be made of white marble, and this now stands side by side with the older wooden one. Personally I liked the old one best. Over the centuries the site was neglected to such an extent that in 1898, when he visited the tomb on his way to the Holy Land, Kaiser Wilhelm was so appalled that the tomb of such a great leader should lie in so abject a state of abandonment that he funded the restoration of the mausoleum chamber.  Over the marble cenotaph hangs a silver lamp which bears the monograms of both Kaiser Wilhelm and Sultan Hamid.

June 27th 1998