Richard and Saladin

First, I’ll give you some background on Saladin because you probably don’t know who he was. Saladin joined the army at age 18 under his uncle who was the Muslim military leader. His father, a famous diplomat, believed that the Christians had only been successful in the Second Crusade because the Muslims hadn’t been united. After a while in the army, Saladin’s uncle made him a state official and he eventually became sole ruler of Egypt and Syria. Saladin then converted Egypt to Islam and decided he had to unite the Muslims to get the Christians to leave Egypt. Unfortunately for him, the Christian states in Egypt were in the middle of his realm.

So in 1187, Saladin launched a plan to eliminate the Crusader states. Saladin succeeded in taking Jerusalem before the year even ended, pretty fast, huh? He won most of the Christian territory back and restored it as his. He was usually civilized and let the Christians leave freely. Although he got some land back, he couldn’t seem to conquer the Christian forts at Antich, Tripoli, and Tyre. Meanwhile, the Europeans were being sneaky and launched the Third Crusade. This was when Richard forced Saladin to negotiate a truce. Richard tried, after the Third Crusade, to retake Jerusalem and couldn’t but he signed a treaty with Saladin so Christians could make safe pilgrimages to Jerusalem. That is one of the reasons that Middle-Eastern Muslims still hate Christians today. Nice job King Richard… not!