Saladin — Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (1137/38–1193) — was the Kurdish-born sultan who founded the Ayyubid dynasty, united Egypt and Syria under a single Muslim rule, and in 1187 recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders after eighty-eight years of Christian occupation.
Famed in both worlds for chivalry — he sent his own physicians to the sick Richard the Lionheart and freed Christian prisoners — he became a romantic hero in European literature even as he dismantled the Crusader kingdom. He died in Damascus, reportedly so generous that his treasury could barely pay for his funeral.
