Original subtitles

Jerusalem, a city divided by religion.

In the year 1187, a mighty Muslim army stands at the gates of the city.

At its head is a charismatic warlord.

He's launched a jihad, a holy war, to recapture the city from Christian

control.

At no point did the Muslims ever accept

that the result would be other than Jerusalem being regained by the Muslims.

As the Christians prepare for the bloodbath soon to be visited upon them,

the actions of one Muslim warrior will echo down the centuries.

An Islamic champion will rise and influence the rules of war.

As we open the mystery files on Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayyub.

Saladin.

Cairo, 1167.

A young Muslim noble is in Egypt on military service.

His name is Salah al-Din, and he has been sent from the Syrian capital,

Damascus, to shore up the weak Egyptian regime against the threat from the

European crusaders.

Dr. Abdel Azam is an authority on Saladin.

The Muslims could not afford for Egypt to fall under the crusaders or the

Christian influence.

Whoever controlled Egypt would have the manpower, would have the wealth to be

able to send army after army to fight in Syria.

When the Egyptian ruler, the vizier, dies, Saladin acts swiftly to seize

power. Saladin's rise to power was quite meteoric. I would say that up to the

point when Saladin suddenly becomes the vizier of Egypt, he was unknown.

Over the next two decades, Saladin builds an empire with Damascus in Syria

as his capital, stretching from Tripoli in North Africa through much of the

Middle East to the Euphrates in what is now Iraq.

But he not only relies on the sword to unify his conquered peoples.

Saladin was a man of great sincerity in his religious beliefs.

What makes Saladin stand out?

was his compassion, his charity, his generosity, his patience, his endeavor,

his fortitude.

Saladin, a devout Sunni Muslim, builds religious schools called madrassas

across his empire.

Madrassas are fundamentally schools of law.

The strength of the madrassas is that it created a uniform Islamic viewpoint.

It created social networking.

It created tremendous bonds of friendship, of knowledge, of letter

writing.

There are also non-Muslims living peacefully under Saladin's rule, Jews

and native-born Oriental Christians.

But there are unwelcome guests as well.

Crusaders from Europe occupy Jerusalem and outposts throughout the Holy Land.

Carol Hillenbrand is Professor Emerita of Islamic Studies at Edinburgh

University.

Jerusalem's regarded as the third most holy city in Islam after Mecca and

Medina.

And in it, there are two very sacred monuments, the Dome of the Rock and the

Aqsa Mosque.

But Jerusalem is sacred to Christians too, the place of Christ's crucifixion

and resurrection.

The Crusaders have held the city since 1099.

Over half a century after they were ordered by Pope Urban II to end over 400

years of Muslim occupation, the indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims,

Jews, and non-Catholic Christians alike.

The Muslims were caught by surprise.

They had no idea who this enemy was. They did not really understand the

nature of the enemy, nor were they in a position to respond because of

fragmentation.

until saladin there has been no effective muslim resistance to the

crusaders finally a sense of outrage begins to spread from his religious

schools the madrassas the real response to what was taking place

and what took place in jerusalem came from the religious scholars they're the

ones who very early on understood the implications these were you know

crusaders who were coming to settle and to create their kingdom in the heart of

the Muslim world.

Having faced little Muslim opposition, the Crusaders have created across the

Holy Land what they call the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Amongst the Christian ranks are two zealous orders of warrior monks known as

the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller. To Saladin, they are the

ultimate enemy.

The Hospitaller and Templars were driven by the crusading vision of showing no

mercy towards the Muslims.

And this was a reciprocal feeling on Saladin's part.

By 1187, Saladin has only one goal.

As much a shrewd politician as he is a soldier, he declares a jihad for the

recapture of Jerusalem, a holy war that will unite the Muslim peoples and armies

of his subject lands.

against a common enemy.

The only way these armies would fight together is if they were fighting a

jihad.

So the legitimacy of the armies coming together under one leader for one

purpose was that of holy war.

Saladin marches from Damascus towards Jerusalem at the head of an army of 30

,000 men.

He boasts that its dust darkens the sun.

There were Koran reciters there.

There were religious judges there. And it was a real feeling

of a religious war, a feeling which in the early days of the

Crusades had become rather buried in the hearts of the Muslims.

At Saladin's side is an expert on Islamic Sharia law, on hand to advise on

the rules of war.

His name is Ibn Shaddad, and he will write an account of Saladin's life still

used by scholars today.

An original manuscript is kept here at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

It's very unusual in medieval Islamic writing to have

biographies of famous people.

Bahar ad-Din Ibn Shaddad was his...

religious advisor.

It's from Shaddad's account that we know so much about Saladin.

By July 1187, Saladin has reached the Sea of Galilee, encircling the Christian

outpost at Tiberias.

Heading towards him is the Crusader army under the King of Jerusalem, Guy de

Lusignan. To signify the support of God, The Christians carry a fragment of the

true cross.

Raffi Lewis is a battlefield archaeologist at the University of

Haifa.

The idea was basically to march towards Tiberias and to retake the city of

Tiberias from the hands of Saladin.

But Saladin has a trap prepared for them.

Aware of the surrounding landscape, he uses it to his advantage.

He has captured and now controls all the main water sources.

in the galilee region

out of water for both men

and horses and constantly harried by saladin's archers the first maddened

frankish army is herded toward this dramatic feature the remnants of a

volcanic crater known as the horns of hattin the crusaders are driven into the

pincers of the horns

Rafi thinks that Saladin planned to use the terrain to split the Crusader

infantry from their cavalry.

The infantry is leaving the main body of knights behind, climbing up to the

horns, trying to find refuge on this hill, leaving the main body of knights

to be massacred by the Muslims.

Rafi believes that one feature on the horns played a crucial role in the

battle, an Iron Age dry stone wall.

Unpassable to mounted knights.

Remnants of the wall can still be seen.

Against those Iron Age walls, which couldn't be crossed with horses, and

basically, we are looking right now.

Meters under us, this is where the butchery was happening. This is where

it's all ended.

Their horses killed or wounded, the cumbersome knights are easy prey for the

Muslims.

Saladin's mastery of strategy and terrain has won him a comprehensive

victory.

The fragment of the true cross is captured, Azar Ghi, the king of

Jerusalem, and a hated crusader named Reno de Chatillon, a man that Saladin

has vowed to kill.

Reno de Chatillon had broken many truces and had attacked the Muslims at the time

when there was a truce between the two camps.

His two captives brought before him.

The devout Saladin acts in accordance with Islamic teaching.

To their surprise, Saladin extends hospitality to Guy, offering him a cup

of iced water.

And when Guy had drunk from it, he passed this goblet of water to Reynaud

of Chatillon.

According to Muslim tradition, an offer of hospitality is an offer of protection

for passing the water to Reynaud.

His first response to Guy was that it was you who gave him to drink.

It was not Saladin offering his shibari.

Saladin draws his sword and strikes deep into Raynaud's neck.

He shows mercy to a terrified Guy.

Saladin put him at ease.

by saying to him that kings did not kill kings.

Saladin treated Guy with the honor that Guy as the king deserved.

230 detested Templars and Hospitallers are handed over to Muslim clerics.

Again, Saladin acts according to Islamic rules of war.

When it came to the treatment of the Hospitallers and Templars, as usual,

they were offered the choice.

Embrace Islam or die.

And being the military orders, of course, they refused.

Guy's army destroyed, Saladin is free to take Jerusalem virtually unopposed.

Just over two months after his resounding victory at Hattin, Saladin's

forces arrive outside Jerusalem's city walls.

Inside, there is terror.

Mothers fear for their daughters as people prepare for the death or

enslavement that must surely come.

Once more, Saladin's behavior confounds expectations.

He offers clemency.

He allows the crusaders to leave.

He asks for ransom.

according to the gender of the inhabitant, and these ransom

amounts are collected.

Not only are their lives spared, but they are granted freedom from slavery on

condition they quit the Holy Land forever.

Many return to Europe with tales of Saladin, a Muslim warrior of greater

chivalry than any European knight.

It's the stuff of legend.

a kind of noble savage, if you like. He was someone who was not a Christian, who

was an infidel, and who nevertheless had the virtues which Christianity admired.

Reuven Amitai is an expert in early chivalry.

Saladin is the heir of centuries of development of a political and legal

culture in the Islamic world.

Much of this is based on the Sharia, the Islamic legal code, which was basically

hammered out in the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries.

In Europe, Saladin becomes the model for a knight's code of honor.

As late as 1825, his chivalry is extolled in Sir Walter Scott's epic

novel of the Crusades, The Talism.

In Jerusalem, Saladin sets about cleansing the sacred sites of Islam with

rose water.

Abiding by Islamic teachings to respect Jews and Christians, pilgrims are free

to worship on payment of a tax known as the jizya.

But even as the calls to prayer sound once more from the minarets of

Jerusalem, Saladin knows the crusaders will return.

The horror of this cataclysmic event for Western Christendom is symbolised by the

Pope of the time dying shortly afterwards, allegedly of grief.

The new Pope, when he came into the office, immediately initiated a new

crusade to retrieve Jerusalem.

King Richard I of England answers the call of the new Pope, Gregory VIII.

A fearless warrior who will earn the nickname Lionheart.

Richard joins the Crusaders laying siege to the Muslim-held port of Acre.

But the besiegers were themselves being besieged by Saladin.

Many of the Christians have broken the vows they made to Saladin to leave the

Holy Land for good.

In their camp, disease is rife.

It was a vile, smelly place.

It's quite clear that the Crusaders didn't have the same standards of

hygiene as the Muslims.

Richard himself soon falls ill.

Yet again, Saladin confounds the Christians with his charity.

Hearing of Richard's sickness, he sends gifts of fruit and water.

There were certain political undertones behind this. He was also sending a clear

message to the Christians and to the crusaders who had come to his land that

he was in control of the situation.

By now, King Richard's camp is rife with stories of Saladin's chivalry.

When a Christian child is snatched by a Muslim slaving party, the crusaders urge

the mother to appeal directly to Saladin.

for its safe return.

And indeed she goes to Saladin.

He orders for the baby to be found.

The baby is reunited with the mother.

These stories are not legendary. These are true historical facts.

It is another deed that will grow Saladin's reputation in Europe.

He's portrayed as a man of generosity, or in a positive way, a man of his word.

But Saladin's chivalry costs him dearly at Achan.

Restored to health, Richard brings fresh impetus to the Crusader assault, ending

their two-year siege of the coastal fortress.

He takes 3,000 Muslim prisoners and offers Saladin terms for their

release, including a payment of ransom and the return of the true cross.

Perhaps believing Richard will show mercy to his captives, Saladin stalls

negotiations to hold him at Acre.

Richard realized that it was actually Saladin who was keeping him prisoner in

Acre because he had 3,000 prisoners with him.

What took place was, of course, very dramatic.

He led out the 3,000 Muslim prisoners onto the fields of Acre and he had them

slaughtered.

Just 13 days after Richard marches from Acre, the two forces clash in full

battle in the forest of arsuf just north of javel

typically richard is

in the thick of the fighting

but

when the english king's horse is killed saladin's code of honor overrides his

desire to seize the advantage

Despite the Crusaders' atrocity at Acre, Saladin sends to Richard not one, but

two replacement mounts, an action that almost certainly led to Saladin's

crushing defeat.

In his words, it was unbefitting for a king to fight on foot. It goes back to

the fact that Saladin had a code of honor which remained as firm and as

noble. in the heat of battle as well as in peacetime.

Richard's thoughts turned toward Jerusalem.

Saladin knows the end game is approaching and again decides to buy

time.

So the tactics of Saladin changed after Arsuf.

He realized he could not defeat Richard on the battlefield, although he never

met with Richard. He sent his brother, Eladl, and he encouraged Eladl and

instructed him to...

enter in negotiations for as long as they took with Richard.

As Al-Adil keeps Richard talking, Saladin prepares for the worst.

Saladin then retreated back into Jerusalem, where he fortified the city,

and really began a waiting game to see how Richard would respond.

Despite Al-Adil's best efforts to detain him, pressure is mounting on Richard to

act. At home, his brother John is threatening his throne.

Richard makes his move.

Arriving to the north of Jerusalem ready to strike, Saladin prepares to face his

nemesis.

Jerusalem had by that time come to symbolize everything that Saladin stood

for. He gathered his loyal lieutenants around him, those who had served him for

many years, and he explained in very coherent and very simple manner that

they had to fight to the death.

Jerusalem lies within Richard's sight.

But now the Lionheart knows he lacks the men needed to take and hold the city.

Archaeologist Professor Shimon Gibson explains.

He realizes that he cannot actually capture Jerusalem.

He didn't have control over the landscape surrounding Jerusalem.

It's a famous story of him holding up his shield and saying, I don't actually

want to look at Jerusalem because I can't take the city from the Muslims.

And then he makes a retreat.

Richard realizes that he must negotiate a truce with Saladin through Al-Adil.

The terms of the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192 are that

the...

true cross will be returned to the Crusaders, that

Christian and Muslim pilgrims will be allowed to visit Jerusalem to

pay homage at their shrines.

Richard leaves the Holy Land, returning to England many months later after an

arduous homeward journey.

Worn down by the conflict, Saladin retires to Damascus, where he dies in

March 1193, renouncing bloodshed.

Word of Saladin's noble conduct, informed by his Islamic faith, spreads

far and wide.

The Sharia, the Islamic law, defines very clearly how

one behaves before battle, during battle, and after battle.

There's no doubt in my mind that this influenced Saladin greatly.

This was perceived by his opponents in a positive way. Saladin was seen on the

whole as an honorable and honest opponent, a worthy opponent.

And I think that this image was picked up in the Western world.

Saladin's legacy of mercy and compassion is echoed today on the modern

battlefield. He inspired the medieval code of European chivalry.

Some think his influence on international notions of the rules of

war, such as the Geneva Convention, can still be felt.

Rules influenced not only by Christianity, but by Saladin through

Islam.