Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 30
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15 / Part 16 / Part 17 / Part 18 / Part 19 / Part 20 / Part 21 / Part 22 / Part 23 / Part 24 / Part 25 / Part 26 / Part 27 / Part 28 / Part 29
And that is exactly, according to Gibb, what Saladin had achieved several hundred years earlier: he had saved Islam. Saladin reintroduced the SharÄ«”˜a, and closed the rifts within the Community: “[Saladin] saw clearly that the weakness of the Muslim body politic, which had permitted the establishment and continued to permit the survival of the crusading states, was the result of political demoralization. It was against this that he revolted. There was only one way to end it: to restore and revive the political fabric of Islam as a single united empire, not under his own rule, but by restoring the rule of the revealed law [SharÄ«”˜a], under the direction of the Abbassid Caliphate.” [1]
Gibb wrote in Saladin: “If the war to which he had vowed himself against the Crusaders was to be a real jihad, a true “˜Holy War”, it was imperative to conduct it with scrupulous observance of the revealed Law of Islam. A government that sought to serve the cause of God in battle must be not only a lawful government, duly authorized by the supreme representative of the Divine Law, but must serve God with equal zeal in its administration and its treatment of its subjects. In brief, Saladin’s object was to restore to Islamic politics the reign of law, a concept that had become for the contemporary princes not only an empty phrase but an absurdity”. [2]
Thus certain “sections of contemporary Muslims” are one with “contemporary princes” of Saladin’s times in their contempt for the Sacred Law, SharÄ«”˜a. Saladin was not, says Gibb, a great military general or strategist, nor was he a successful administrator; the real explanation of his success lies elsewhere: “Himself neither warrior nor governor by training or inclination, he it was who inspired and gathered round himself all the elements and forces making for the unity of Islam against the invaders. And this he did, not so much by the example of personal courage and resolution-which were undeniable- as by his unselfishness, his humility and generosity, his moral vindication of Islam against both its enemies and its professed adherents. He was no simpleton, but for all that an utterly simple and transparently honest man. He baffled his enemies, internal and external, because they expected to find him animated by the same motives as they were, and playing the political game as they played it. Guileless himself, he never expected and seldom understood guile in others — a weakness of which his own family and others took advantage, but only (as a general rule) to come up at the end against his single-minded devotion, which nobody and nothing could bend, to the service of his ideals.” [3]
Saladin’s achievements were moral, religious and spiritual; he was not someone motivated by “personal ambition and lust of conquest, and who merely exploited religious catchwords and sentiments to achieve their own ends”, rather, “his career involved distinctive moral elements which gave his initial victory and subsequent struggle with the Third Crusade a quality of its own”. [4] His moral and religious convictions resulted in Muslim unity, and a revival of Islamic values.
[1] H.A.R.Gibb. The Achievement of Saladin, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 35, no.1 (Manchester, 1952) pp. 44-60.
[2] H.A.R.Gibb. The Life of Saladin. Foreword by Robert Irwin. London: Saqi Books, 2006, [1st Edn. Oxford University Press, 1973], p. 19.
[3] H.A.R.Gibb. The Achievement of Saladin, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 35, no.1 (Manchester, 1952) pp. 44-60.
[4] Ibid. p. 44.
To be continued.
Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.