The west has few Muslim heroes but, astonishingly, a 12th-century jihadist is one of them. Saladin broke onto the Middle East's map in a drama not unlike the recent eruption of Islamic State. Born on the banks of the Tigris, he carved out an emirate which by his death in 1193 stretched from the modern-day borders of Tunisia to Yemen, Turkey and Iran. Powerful realms fell like matchsticks before him. He ended the crusaders' 88-year reign in Jerusalem, reducing their kingdom to a few fortress towns dotted along the coast of the Levant.
Warrior monks scorned Saladin as the whore of Babylon and son of Satan. Medieval England named a tax after him, the ultimate slur. But from the first the opprobrium was tinged with admiration. Crusader accounts celebrated his reputation for mercy, generosity (lavished on Christian as well as Muslim visitors to his court), and above all his adab, Arabic for chivalry. Decades after his death Boccaccio and Petrarch extolled him. In "The Divine Comedy", he merits a place in Dante's first circle of hell, alongside virtuous pagans such as Plato—and seven levels above the Prophet Muhammad. He was a hero of Victorian romantic novels; in the 20th century he gave his name to a British battleship and a type of armoured car. It is "impossible to think of another figure from history who dealt such a deep wound to a people and a faith," writes Jonathan Phillips in his gripping biography, "and yet became so admired."
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