Identifier: saladinfallofkin00lane (find matches)
Title: Saladin and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Lane-Poole, Stanley, 1854-1931
Subjects: Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, 1137-1193
Publisher: London Putnam
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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y must have brought with them the knowledgeof other lands and other customs and arts. PerhapsSaladin sat and listened in the west corner of theGreat Omayyad Mosque, when Ibn-Aby-Usrun washolding his lectures there. He could have no bettermaster than one who was styled a leader of his agein talents and legal learning, and whom Nur-ed-dinnot only brought with him to Damascus, but evenbuilt colleges in most of the great cities of Syria forhim to lecture in, that his wonderful gifts might beknown of all. He became a judge in Mesopotamia,and it speaks well for Saladins faithfulness to earlyties that, when the old man lost his sight, theDamascus youth who had become the greatest ofSultans refused to let him be deprived of his hon-ourable office. A negative proof of the retired life led by Saladinin youth and early manhood is found in the factthat Osama, who spent nearly the whole of the tenyears, u 54-1164, at Damascus in intimate relationswith the court (when it happened to be there), does
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1164) Shirkuh. 75 not once mention him, and when at last he met himin 1174 it seems that a formal introduction had tobe made.* Had Saladin been constantly at court,Osama must have known him. At the same time itmust be remembered that the Arab chief was be-tween sixty and seventy at the period of his earlierDamascus residence, and would hardly have paidmuch attention to a mere youngster; and further,that the old poets impulsive Bohemian nature couldhave had little in common with the staid young manwho preferred the society of divines. Saladin pos-sibly thought Osama a sad warning, and the wildold Arab perhaps retorted with the opinion that thegovernors discreet son was no better than a prig. The fact that Saladin, who was afterwards themost renowned leader of his time, was apparently^ acompletely obscure individual up to the age oftwenty-five, is the more curious when it is remem-bered that his uncle Shirkuh, who afterwards broughthim into public life, was Nur-ed-din?s right-hand man,a

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