Ayyubid Sultanate

The state Saladin built out of a job he was sent to do for someone else. Saladin was a Kurdish officer sent to Egypt in the 1160s in the service of the ruler of Damascus; he made himself vizier, abolished the Shia Fatimid caliphate in 1171, restored Egypt to Sunni allegiance, and then took Syria for himself after his employer died. The result was that the Crusader states, which had survived by playing Cairo against Damascus, were suddenly encircled by one power. At Hattin in 1187 he destroyed the field army of the kingdom of Jerusalem and took the city within months, ending 88 years of Christian rule. His conduct there - a negotiated surrender with ransom rather than the massacre that had accompanied the Crusader capture in 1099 - gave him a reputation for chivalry in European writing that has outlasted almost everything else about him. The Third Crusade recovered the coast but not Jerusalem. Saladin died in 1193 reportedly with almost no personal wealth, having given it away. The dynasty he founded divided his territory among relatives and spent much of its remaining time in family disputes, sometimes allying with Crusaders against each other. The Ayyubids patronised madrasas and fortification, and the Citadel of Cairo is theirs. They relied increasingly on Turkic slave soldiers. Those soldiers seized power in 1250. Saladin's tomb is in Damascus. The dynasty ruled Egypt, Syria, the Hejaz and Yemen from 1171 to 1250. Cairo and Damascus were its principal cities. Saladin's full name was Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub. The Ayyubids ruled Egypt for 79 years.

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