Saladin

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Myth and history | A Noble Enemy. Economist, June 1, 2019
https://www.economist.com/books- ... -a-hero-in-the-west
(book review on Jonathan Phillips, The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin; Yale University Press, 2019)

Note:
(a) "Born on the banks of the Tigris, he [Saladin] carved out an emirate which by his death in 1193 stretched from the modern-day borders of Tunisia to Yemen, Turkey and Iran. * * * He ended the crusaders’ 88-year reign in Jerusalem, reducing their kingdom Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1291)] to a few fortress towns dotted along the coast of the Levant."
(i) Saladin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin
(1137 – 1193; founder of the Ayyubid dynasty; A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish ethnicity’ " 'Salah ad-Din' is * * * an honorific epithet, meaning 'Righteousness of the Faith' ")
(A) Saladin (whose given name is yusuf: Joseph) had father named Ayyub (Arabic for prophet Job, a prophet in Islam also) -- the eponym of the dynasty.
(B) About the "Ibn" in their (Saladin's and his father's) name, see
English dictionary:
* ibn (alternative formL bin; from Arabic [noun masculine] ibn son): "(in Arabic names) son of  <Ali ibn ['i' in lower case] Amr: Ali son of Amr>"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ibn
(C) Ayyubid
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Ayyubid
(pronunciation)
(ii) History of Jerusalem during the Kingdom of Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi ... ingdom_of_Jerusalem
("Jerusalem was conquered by the Christian First Crusade ['military expedition of primarily Frankish nobles': en.wikipedia.org for 'First Crusade'] in 1099, after it had been under Muslim rule for 450 years [638-1099]")

(b) "Warrior monks scorned Saladin as the whore of Babylon and son of Satan. Medieval England named a tax after him, the ultimate slur. But from the first the opprobrium, was tinged with admiration. Crusader accounts celebrated his reputation for mercy, generosity (lavished on Christians as well as Muslim visitorsto his court) and above all his adab, Arabic for chivalry. Decades after his death, Boccacio and Petrarch extolled him. In 'The Divine Comedy,' he merits a place in Dante's first circle of hell, alongside virtuous pagans such as Plato -- and seven levels above the Prophet Muhammad [c 570 – 632]. He was a hero of Victorian romantic novels; in the 20th century he gave his name to a British battleship and a type of armoured car."
(i) warrior monk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_monk
(may refer to "Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights, warriors during the Crusades")
(ii) Saladin tithe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin_tithe
(iii) opprobrium (n; Did You Know?)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opprobrium
(iv) Giovanni Boccaccio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio
(v) Petrarch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch
(vi) The armored car is Alvis Saladin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvis_Saladin

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(c) "Mr Phillips finds much to praise. Unlike the crusaders who killed the inhabitants when they captured Jerusalem, Saladin spared them when he recovered it. The crusaders defiled Islam's third-holiest mosque, using al Aqsa for stables. Saladin preserved Christian places of worship, including Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Hospital of the Order of St John. He ransomed a Christian woman from her kidnappers; he generously redistributed the wealth he took in plunder."
(i) Al-Aqsa Mosque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Mosque
(Arabic المسجد الأقصى; section 1 Etymology)
(A) right-to-left
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-left
("Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu Sindhi are the most widespread RTL writing systems in modern times")
(B) from two sources in the Web:

"Arabic adjectives always follow the noun they modify."

"Arabic adjectives agree with the noun they postmodify [referring to word order] in gender, number, case and definiteness/indefiniteness."
(C) Arabic-English dictionary:
* masjid (Arabic مَسْجِد‎ -- transliteration masjid): "mosque"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masjid
(D) Arabic definite article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_definite_article
(Arabic ال‎; also Romanized as el- ; al- is typically translated as the in English)
(E) Arabic nouns and adjectives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_nouns_and_adjectives
(section 1 Noun and adjective inflection (Classical Arabic), section 1.5 Article: "The article الـ al- is indeclinable and expresses the definite state of a noun of any gender and number. As mentioned above, it is also prefixed to each of that noun's modifying adjectives")

This explains why al also appears before aqsa (adjective).
(F) أقصى (etymology)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/أقصى
(transliteration or Romanization: ʾaqṣā)
(G) Night Journey. Oxford Islamic Study Online, undated
www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e1752
("Muslims debate whether this journey was physical or mystical in nature")
(ii) Worldwide History. Order of the St John, undated
https://www.saintjohn.org/worldwide/worldwide-history

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(d) "Contrary to French bodice-rippers [First Crusade participants], he [Saladin] never seduced crusader princesses. Walter Scott's 'The Talisman,' in which a disguised Saladin heals an ailing Richard the Lionheart, is also a bunk. The two men never met.  And Saladin's conquest owed more to artifice and luck than to military prowess. Potentates in Egypt and Syria made way for him by dying. He negotiated truce to avoid fighting on several fronts and to stall for time while ge rearmed. He won Jerusalem at the negotiating table [see Note (d)(iii)], but lost Acre in battle. His greatest military victory, at the battle of Hattin in 1187, was a masterpiece of guise. He goaded the crusaders into a summer march through parched land, then choked them with bush-fires and taunted them by spilling water on the ground.  Many Muslim contemporaries had a decidedly lukewarm impression. Saladin was not above the occasional massacre, * * * Perhaps the most damning of all was Saladin's role in stemming intellectual curiosity, pluralism and joie de vivre that characterised the classic Islam, and in precipitating its descent into intolerance and fundamentalism.  In his zeal to impose Sunni orthodoxy on the Middle East, he closed Alexandria's 120 pubs and crucified a philosopher in Aleppo [in present-day Syria]. * **  Shias in Egypt  * * * deride [note the present tense] him for toppling the magnificent Shia caliphate of the Fatimids, selling off its vast library and turning pleasure palaces unto madrassas for learning jihad."
(i) Walter Scott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott
(1771-1832; a Scottish historical novelist)
(ii)
(A) Acre, Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre,_Israel
(section 1 Names: unknown; section 2 History, section 2.6.1 First Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1104-1187) )
(B) Siege of Acre (1189–1191)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Acre_(1189–1191)
(table: Result: Crusader victory, Saladin led Muslims)

Muslims, but not Saladin, were under siege in Acre.
(iii) Siege of Jerusalem (1187)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(1187)
(Sept 20-Oct 2, 1187; by Saladin)

Following Battle of Hattin, that is.
(iv) Battle of Hattin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hattin
(July 4, 1187; at Horns of Hattin [qv: 'an extinct volcano with twin peaks overlooking the plains of Hattin;' elevation 326m])
(v) joie de vivre (etymology)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/joie%20de%20vivre