Palden
Jenkins

Salah-ad-Din

Palden Jenkins

September 30th 2001

Recent events, together with the news that the al Queda terror group and the Taliban look up to the medieval Muslim hero Saladin, have prompted me to write some notes about this notable man. Salah-ad-Din means 'Light of the Faith'.

He lived from 1138-1193, a Kurd who reunited Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) and almost succeeded in driving the incursive European Crusaders out of the Holy Land. The Crusades were the very first manifestation of European imperialism. Saladin was a great general and sultan, respected in the West, and one of history's only Muslim leaders to acquire a Westernised name. When the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 they murdered virtually all of its inhabitants, boasting that parts of the city were knee-high in blood. When Salah-ad-Din re-took the city in 1187, he spared his victims, giving them time to leave and safe passage - it was, after all, a holy city, and this was fought as a 'just war' by the Muslims.

So recent allusions to Saladin are apposite in many respects - though the full point has not been publicly made, to my knowledge. There are many different lessons to be learned from Saladin's example and from Crusader history in the current circumstances. A few examples follow.

1. A personal rule of Saladin's was never to take wars into cities or besiege them, or involve innocent civilians. He eventually broke this rule when he had the Crusaders penned up after too many years of war: he laid siege on the port of Acre. The Crusaders, cornered, played dirty - or desperate - resorting to medieval biological warfare (spreading diseased bodies). Result: tens of thousands on all sides died. Saladin soon died too, broken-hearted, a year or two later, having broken his principles and received his pay-back. He had laid siege because he was tired of war and losing his allies, and he wanted 'closure' - this, today, could be a weak point when Bush and Blair approach re-election time or when USA and its allies suffer diminishing resources or success. The West had better watch out for this trap. But, on the other side, al Queda too have seemingly underestimated the extent to which Western opinion stiffened after the WTC attack - civilian deaths thus suddenly raised the moral standards of the West.

2. Take a tactical lesson from Saladin: he specialised in laying traps for the Crusaders. Look at the decisive battle of Hattin in 1187: Saladin lured the Crusaders onto an exposed hill, roasting them under the sun in their own heavy armour (the sun nowadays being world public opinion) and, once 'cooked', debilitated and dying, he went in for an easy kill. This was his greatest single victory, won on strategy rather than might. In other words, the West had better watch out for being checkmated through al Queda's tactical manipulation of the Western media and public-opinion, and outwitting of clumsy, top-heavy Western might. Current references to Salah-ad-Din are pertinent not solely because al Queda idolise him. Take a tactical note here: al Queda is probably intending to set traps for the new, heavily-armed Crusaders of today, preying on their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

3. Another crafty tactical example. Saladin deployed female warhorses on heat, not only, of course, because fillies were more mobile than the heavy, armoured, male Crusader stallions! The handsome stallions fell into veritable chaos and the Crusader knights had to avoid close engagement with the Muslim warriors, who then picked them off one by one! The modern version? Al Queda are catching the West on its own weaknesses: its enormity, its dependence on oil, 'open skies', 'free markets' and globalised, widely-spread predominance. Saladin employed the ancient Chinese general Hsun Tzu's adage: "understand and anticipate your enemy". Exploit their weaknesses. Draw them into your own chosen field of battle. Force them to fight uphill. Such as in Afghanistan. The West needs to watch its logistical supply-lines, the appropriateness of its munitions, its tactics and insider intelligence-sourcing, as well as re-examining the inherent structural weaknesses of its global, techno-economic hegemony.

4. One of the big under-told stories of history is that, after re-taking Jerusalem, Saladin offered the Crusaders a power-sharing arrangement in the Holy Land. He realised they had a point, even if he didn't like their methods. It was the Crusaders' rejection of this option which caused him to despair and declare 'jihad' against them, initiating the idea of driving them into the sea (an idea applied to the state of Israel in the last 50 years). Within the Crusader camp, internationalists (Euro-residents of Palestine who respected Muslim civilisation) clashed politically with the Euro-isolationists (Papist fundamentalists and land-grabbers with European interests), and the latter won the argument. The Crusaders thus rejected the deal with Saladin, and war was guaranteed. This isolationist Euro-bombast set in motion the Muslim jihad, in its aspect as territorial war. Islam had, until then, been tolerant of Christians, as long as they behaved themselves. Had the Crusader internationalists won, the story of the Crusades and of subsequent history would probably have been very different, possibly to this day - it would have brought interaction rather than aversion between Christian and Muslim worlds. This points to the need for a great-heartedness on both sides if true conflict resolution is to be established between Islam and the West.

5. Saladin took a long view. He realised these Crusaders were nasty people, lacking principle and honour. Once the power-sharing offer was dead, he knew that getting rid of them would take time. Once the symbolic challenge of re-taking Jerusalem was achieved, he had great problems keeping his emirs locked into the holy alliance against the Crusaders. He knew that if the Crusaders were not entirely cleared out of Palestine, they would await their moment and try for Jerusalem again. But Saladin's emirs - contributors of troops and logistics - proved a major problem over the years, unwilling to go for the long haul. This is a lesson about the longterm weakness of alliances.

6. Saladin was famous as a tactician and general, yet he was deeply dedicated to peace and liberality. Take a lesson here concerning the background motivation of Usama bin Laden, who sees himself as a philanthropist. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist-philanthropist too. He and the ANC reluctantly resorted to terror as the only way they could achieve their aims against an unfair, overwhelming opposition. One might disagree with bin Laden, but his position has been similar. Though Saladin was the re-inventer of 'jihad' as territorial 'holy war' (called, in the West, 'just war'), he believed deeply in the spiritual meaning of 'jihad', as a soul-searching struggle within oneself for truth. Bearing in mind an apposite quote from the late Indian teacher, Meher Baba ("...wars in themselves do not constitute the central problem for humanity, but are rather the external symptoms of something graver which is at their root"), the concept of jihad needs a thorough re-examination by both sides, whether seen as Muslim 'holy war' or Western 'just war'. In the West, the true concepts of jihad are unconsciously being played out both in public opinion and in tactical assessments of the current crisis - and it is clearly known that a degree of moral rectitude is crucial in winning the 'war against terrorism'.

7. Saladin's greatest enemies, who scared him most, were not the Crusaders. They were the Hashishiyun, dedicated martyr-assassins who derived from his own homeland, Kurdistan. They were true terrorists with precision-strike capabilities (the cut-throat knife and poison - chemical warfare). As fundamentalists, they opposed his overwhelming power in the Muslim world. He never beat them - this was left to the Mongols. This says something about the might of generals when pitted against the stealth of terrorists.

The lessons from Salah-ad-Din's time are many and varied, and they are applicable to all sides of the current conflict. If the West wishes to know its enemy, it would do well to take a good look at this man, his strengths and weaknesses and the reason why al Queda study his form.

One of the best sources I have found, summing up the history of his time, is Karen Armstrong's book "Holy War - the Crusades and their impact on today's world" (MacMillan, London, 1988 on). And thank you to Jo Buchanan in Australia for prompting me to write this piece.

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