Saladin is a legendary figure in the history of the Middle East. Saladin's rise to fame in the tumultuous arena of twelfth-century Middle Eastern politics was rapid, and he quickly established himself as a military commander of genius, a man of honor, and an intrepid statesman. This classic detailed biography of Saladin and history of his life and times was written by the eminent historian Stanley Lane-Poole. The author, able to access the rich and colorful chronicles of Arab and Moslem historians, provides us with a brilliant insight into the life and deeds of this warrior-monarch. Based on a lifetime of study.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stanley Lane-Poole was an eminent historian of the history of the Middle East. His works include The Moors in Spain and The Art of the Saracens Cairo. David Nicolle is an acknowledged expert on the military history of the Middle Ages.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
On the jihad trail with the Sultan,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem (Hardcover)
Recently, I saw the 2005 film THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, a sword and shield epic centered upon the 1187 recapture of Jerusalem from the Christians by Sultan Yusuf Ibn Najni al-Din Ayyub Ibn Shadlhi Abu'l-Muzaffar Salah al-Din al-Malik al-Nasir, aka "Saladin". The hero of the film was not Saladin (Ghassan Massoud), but rather Balian (Orlando Bloom), who, as the film opens, is sweating over a hot forge as a sword maker in some dump of a rural French town in the early 1180s. Then, along comes Godfrey (Liam Neeson), a knight and minor noble back from Palestine, who reveals himself as Balian's previously unknown father. Godfrey persuades Balian to take up a sword in defense of the Holy Land. On the return trip, Godfrey dies, but not before knighting his son. Balian subsequently inherits his father's castle of Ibelin within the Kingdom of Jerusalem, becomes chummy with King Baldwin IV and his sister Sibylla (Eva Green), finds himself defending the Holy City almost single-handed against Saladin's horde after the Christian army's disastrous defeat at Hitton, and ultimately returns to France, where he ostensibly lives happily ever after with Sibylla, who now holds the title Queen of Jerusalem. Uh-huh. So, I picked up SALADIN AND THE FALL OF JERUSALEM to find out the real story.Penned in 1898 by Stanley Lane-Poole, this volume is a competent and informative bio of the great Muslim leader, who was respected and praised even by his Crusader foes. Admittedly, the first several chapters dealing with "Saladin's world", and which describe the Muslim politics of the region and the events of the First Crusade prior to Saladin's birth and rise to power, make for educational, but less than riveting, reading. It's only with Saladin's accession as the Sultan of Egypt in 1171 that his life really becomes interesting as he subsequently labors militarily and politically to unite the Muslim Middle East under one rule, i.e. his, drive the Unbelievers into the sea, and topple the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The book's 19th century roots show even in this 2002 reprint of the original. The occasional map, while certainly not indecipherable, doesn't have the clean look of one of modern construction. More telling, the author infrequently sprinkles the text with passages from original Latin or French sources, which go untranslated. Presumably, the average reader at the turn of the 19th century was more educated and literate than now and could be expected to get along as required in something other than English. This new reprint does, however, include a helpful section of black and white photographs that apparently, because of the presence of automobiles, didn't appear in the first release. The tone of Lane-Poole's narrative is one of detached and uncritical admiration for his hero, as justifiably it should be, since Saladin demonstrated more chivalry, magnanimity, and honor throughout his career than his chief Crusader opponent from June 8, 1191 to October 9, 1192, King Richard I of England. Indeed, the author, who's otherwise adulatory of the Lionheart's prowess in battle, doesn't shirk from recounting Richard's barbarous order to massacre 2,700 Muslims taken prisoner during his capture of Acre, an order that the author terms "cruel and cowardly", and would today be cause for a war crimes tribunal. Well, so much for the flower of English chivalry. SALADIN AND THE FALL OF JERUSALEM should satisfy a reader such as myself that seeks a general knowledge of Saladin and his accomplishments without getting too obsessive about it. And what of Balian? While he was one of only three knights left after the Battle of Hitton to defend Jerusalem, and who indeed played the key role in the defense of the city and subsequent surrender negotiations with Saladin, Balian had only a relatively small part in the rest of the story - so small that I had to resort to a Web encyclopedia to get more info about the man. What I learned there was that his saga in THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN was rampant fiction evidently hallucinated by a Hollywood screenwriter in the throes of an illegal substance. Especially that bit about running off with Sybilla. Gee, why doesn't that surprise me?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic and highly readable account of the most prominent figure of the Crusades,
By Whitt Patrick Pond "Whitt" (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem (Hardcover)
Stanley Lane-Poole's Saladin And The Fall Of Jerusalem was first published in 1898, but even after a hundred years it remains one of the best overall accounts of the life of the man known to the West as Saladin, arguably the most prominent figure of the time of the Crusades. Though the book covers the entire period of Saladin's life, the ultimate focus is, as the title indicates, the Fall of Jerusalem, not only because it was the prize sought by both sides in the Crusades but because, as Lane-Poole quotes from a contemporary chronicler of the events:"If the taking of Jerusalem were the only fact known about Saladin, it were enough to prove him the most chivalrous and great-hearted conqueror of his own, and perhaps of any, age." For unlike the slaughter of the inhabitants carried out when the First Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 that literally filled the streets with blood, the re-occupation of the city by Saladin in 1187 was carried out without any acts of vengeance or retaliatory massacre. It was a remarkable act of mercy, but not the only one for which Saladin was known, and it earned him the respect and admiration of even his sworn enemies. Lane-Poole's personal admiration for Saladin (his full name and title was Sultan Yusuf Ibn Najni al-Din Ayyub Ibn Shadlhi Abu'l-Muzaffar Salah al-Din al-Malik al-Nasir), while evident in his account of the man's life, does not impinge on his historian's professionalism. His research is well-documented and all sources are fully acknowledged, and he makes note of any occasions where his sources disagree on certain facts, and any instances where he engages in speculation in the absence of known facts. A couple of comments must be noted about the style of the book, written as it was for a different audience in a different era. Lane-Poole has a rich personable narrative style, akin to what one would expect to hear in a lively and engaging university lecture. This serves to bring the events and the people of the time alive for the reader, particularly in bringing out the emotions felt by the historical personages at the heart of those events. At the same time though, reflecting the education standards of the time, the book is sprinkled throughout with observations and references in both Latin and French without any translation as it was assumed that they would already be familiar to any literate Victorian reader. In addition, the maps provided in the book reflect the style and quality of map-making common to the Victorian period, including some variant spellings that may seem strange to contemporary readers. But as this book is a faithful reprinting of the 1898 original, this has a value of its own, making the reader familiar with the styles and standards of that particular period. All in all, I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the life of Saladin, in the Crusading era, or in seeing the distinctive, more personal, style historians tended to use back during the Victorian era.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Honour of the Faith,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Saladin and the Fall of Jerusalem (Hardcover)
Salah ud-Din, which name translates as the title of this review, qualifies as one of the defining figures of the Crusades, of mediaeval Islam and of chivalry. Poole, of whom I am now very much a fan, approves of him in a writing style of his customary grace and ease and a historian's style which is probably not as objective as it ought to be. I am prepared to forgive Poole this foible, as his writing is a joy and his sympathy for his Muslim subjects very appealing. In any case, he was writing in the 19th Century when standards of objectivity had not quite reached their modern peak of obsessiveness. And finally, if you aren't a historian then you will probably take my position of just wanting to read about the time and pick up some learning without making it a drudge.The reader ought to be warned that Poole comes from a time when it could be presumed that an educated reader would cope with untranslated quotes in Latin, Greek, French and Italian, and takes occasional advantage of this presumption. I find that it does not interrupt the flow of the book too much, and in any case I more-or-less get by in the last two languages, but it is perhaps a little much to ask in our day. I don't speak a word of the former two but didn't feel the loss too sharply. Fortunately he doesn't venture into Arabic or Turkish, which I can report from experience to be ferociously intractable unless you grew up with them or are a natural linguist. It might come as a surprise to the modern reader that Poole's Victorian writing style is light and engaging. More so, perhaps, given the presumptions of national superiority typical of his contemporaries, that he finds such a glowing example among the Muslims of the Middle Ages. Saladin may go some way to explaining that. Greatness was forced upon Salah ud-Din when he was dispatched to Egypt. Without the responsibilities of leadership being pressed into his hands, he might have remained a secluded and bookish scholar and deprived history of one of its shining figures. Without the sudden death of Nur ed-Din, he might have been put in his place and his ascent to the throne prevented. Such are the hinges of history. At any rate, the Muslim world received a leader of unique character whose brush with death at the hands of a fever left him with a compulsion to do right. The outcome was the end of the Crusader state of Outremer and the expulsion of Latin Christianity from all but a small coastal strip. Even this might have been retrieved has it not been for Saladin's curious negligence at Tyre, where he abandoned the siege and left the Crusaders a staging post. This was a rare lapse, but a potentially catastrophic one, and may stem from pressure from his weary emirs. Saladin leaves few traces of character flaws, by-and-large, with one exception being the execution of a single Sufi mystic. He seems to have been an orthodox type, generous to a fault with enemies of other religions but with a blind spot for dissent and heresy within his own faith. Certainly the Catholicos of the Armenians and the Emperor of Constantinople regarded him as an ally and warned him of the approach of the Western Emperor through Asia Minor. His clemency has gone down in history, as his emirs vied to be gifted with slaves from the un-ransomed poor at Jerusalem that they might gain their sultan's approval by freeing them. And Saladin's word was truly his bond, and accepted as such even by his enemies. The contrast with the compulsive oath-breaking and the brutality of the Christians, typified by the slaughter of 2,700 Muslims prisoners at Acre by Richard, could not be more marked. Saladin is a unique figure, and well-enough documented that much of this hagiography can be taken at face-value or close to it. Poole is not truly objective, but the sources all seem to agree with him. Aside from that, he is a joy to read. Highly recommended.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
