Lionhearts: Saladin, King Richard I, and the Third Crusade
In In the year 1138 a boy was born in the little town of Takrit on the Tigris River Like every Muslim child he was welcomed into the world of faith with these words the first he ever heard La ilaha illa Allah Muhammad rasul Allah There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet The boy was named Yusuf ibn Ayyub which means Joseph son of Job Later he would earn a new name Salah al-Din he who honors the faith Each morning before dawn he was awakened by the voice of the muezzin high up in the minaret at the mosque calling the faithful to prayer Prayer is better than sleep the voice sang The boy would wash himself as he had been taught hands and feet face and hair then cover his head and turn in the direction of Mecca to pray Four more times each day no matter where he was in the mosque at the market or at school he would pause at the appointed times and surrender himself to God Religion told him what he was allowed to eat and what was forbidden forbidden such as pork and wine Religion decreed that for one month every year the month of Ramadan he was not to eat or drink anything at all from the rising of the sun until it was too dark to tell a white thread from a black one From the age of seven the boy was schooled at the mosque He memorized memorized passages from the Koran the holy book of Islam and practiced writing these passages on his tablet in the beautiful Arabic script He learned the Five Pillars of Islam faith prayer the giving of alms fasting and pilgrimage and knew he must follow them to be a righteous man
One One day this boy heard a dreadful story Forty years before he was born his country had suddenly been invaded by thousands of Franks fierce barbarians from the West They were Christians and because the land was holy to them they thought it should be theirs So they rode in with their swords and lances and conquered one Muslim city after another Then they turned inland and in 1099 they took the Holy City of Jerusalem murdering everyone who lived there Muslims Jews and even Christians The boy could scarcely believe it How could the Franks think God would send anyone on such a terrible mission Didn’t they know that Muslims Muslims and Jews also worshipped the God of Abraham and called Jerusalem holy It was the city where David had built the Hebrew Temple It was the place where Jesus spent his final days The beautiful Dome of the Rock marked the sacred spot where the prophet Muhammad was carried up into heaven and beheld the face of God And Jerusalem was where the Muslim faithful would gather on the Last Day Couldn’t everyone just share it Yet the story was true That beautiful city holy to three faiths was now the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem ruled by coarse men who could scarcely read or write and who thought it unhealthy to take a bath They were valiant fighters though It would not be easy to drive them out What the boy felt as he pondered all this we can only imagine Like other boys of his time he must have dreamed of riding off to war and sending those horrible men scurrying back to France or England or wherever wherever it was they had come from But unlike those other boys he would actually do it One day he would become famous as Saladin the Muslim saint-king praised even by his enemies as the marvel of his time
