Ayyubid dynasty: A Visual History

The Ayyubid dynasty was founded by Saladin (Salah al-Din), a Kurdish officer sent to Egypt by Nur al-Din of Syria, who abolished the Fatimid caliphate in 1171, took Damascus and Aleppo, destroyed the Crusader army at Hattin in 1187 and recaptured Jerusalem. After his death in 1193 his relatives ruled Egypt, Syria, Yemen and the Jazira as a loose family confederation, trading and fighting with the Crusaders (al-Kamil handed Jerusalem to Frederick II in 1229). Their Turkish mamluk troops seized power in Egypt in 1250 and the Mongols swept away the Syrian branch in 1260.

When it existed: the era ribbon

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Ayyubid territory

Timeline of the Ayyubid dynasty

1. 1169
   Saladin vizier of Egypt
2. 1171
   Fatimid caliphate abolished
3. 1174
   Saladin takes Damascus
4. 1187
   Hattin; Jerusalem retaken
5. 1192
   Truce with Richard I
6. 1193
   Saladin dies
7. 1229
   Jerusalem ceded to Frederick II
8. 1250
   Mamluks take Egypt
9. 1260
   Mongols end the Syrian Ayyubids

Saladin's rise

Saladin accompanied his uncle Shirkuh to Egypt in 1169 to prop up the Fatimids against the Crusaders, became vizier when Shirkuh died, and in 1171 quietly ended the Shia caliphate. After Nur al-Din's death in 1174 he took Damascus and, over a decade, Aleppo and Mosul, uniting Egypt and Syria for the first time since the Fatimids' early days. He built the Cairo Citadel and endowed Sunni madrasas.

Hattin and the Third Crusade

On 4 July 1187 Saladin trapped the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin, without water, and destroyed it; Jerusalem surrendered in October and most of the Crusader towns fell. The Third Crusade under Richard the Lionheart retook Acre and won at Arsuf but could not take Jerusalem; the truce of 1192 left the coast to the Christians and Jerusalem to Saladin, who died in Damascus in March 1193 having given away almost all his wealth.

The family confederation and its end

Saladin's brother al-Adil reunited the family lands; his son al-Kamil defeated the Fifth Crusade at Damietta in 1221 and in 1229 ceded Jerusalem to Frederick II by treaty. Family wars followed. Al-Salih Ayyub built a large Qipchaq mamluk corps to hold Egypt; when Louis IX's crusade came in 1249 the mamluks won at Mansura, then murdered al-Salih's heir Turanshah in 1250. The Syrian Ayyubids submitted to the Mongols and were destroyed with them in 1260; only Hama survived as a Mamluk vassal.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Fatimid Caliphate (909 to 1171)
• Mamluk Sultanate (1250 to 1517)
• Great Seljuk Empire (1037 to 1194)
• Ilkhanate (1256 to 1335)
• Byzantine Empire (395 to 1453)
• Khwarazmian Empire (1077 to 1231)

Wars of the same era and region

• Crusades (1096 to 1291)
• Reconquista (718 to 1492)
• Mongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)

8 surprising things about the Ayyubid dynasty

1. Saladin was so generous that at his death his treasury contained only one gold piece and forty silver ones, not enough for his funeral.
2. He treated the sick Richard the Lionheart to fruit and snow, and offered his own physician.
3. Saladin's capture of Jerusalem in 1187 spared the inhabitants, in pointed contrast to the Crusader massacre of 1099.
4. The dynasty was Kurdish but ruled through Turkish soldiers and Arab officials, and quickly became Arabic-speaking.
5. Saladin's tomb in Damascus received a marble sarcophagus from Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898; his body remains in the older wooden one.
6. The Ayyubids conquered Yemen and Ayyubid rule there lasted until 1229.
7. Al-Kamil discussed philosophy with St Francis of Assisi during the Fifth Crusade.
8. The Ayyubid dynasty is one of the few in Islamic history whose founder is a hero in both Muslim and Western tradition.

Sources

• Ayyubid dynasty Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Ayyubid dynasty Wikipedia
• Saladin World History Encyclopedia
• R. Stephen Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols (1977) SUNY Press

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