Saladin- A lost hero

Sorry guys but i slacked off on the blogs a bit (BIG UNDERSTATEMENT). I've been working on my senior thesis(The Evolution of the Professional Athlete) as well as having midterms, so i have not been as responsible as i could have been with these assignments. With that said, please forgive me for the following posts, as they are one-on-top of another. I also appreciate the comments. I hated the idea of blogs when they were first mentioned in the class as a requirement, but now as i have sat here reading your responses, they are starting to mean something as a way of positive reflection. As someone who plans on being a teacher, i find this idea to be kinda cool.

Anyways, one of the questions that I feel gets constantly lost when we are studying the places of the past is the the question "What was it like before?" Recently we have been studying Mamluk Egypt, but i think one of the times periods that left damaged relations between Middle Eastern and Western Culture was the Crusades. In simple terms, the crusades were a religiously based military conflict that saw Christian Europe trying to "recapture" the holy land from the Muslims who had assumed control following the Fall of Rome. This story unto itself would make a great research paper. More interesting perhaps is some of the things that occured during the Crusades and some of the lost Islamic Heros that have been denied a true place in Western History Books.

It could lead to a lengthy argument if you were trying to determine who was the dominant Christian figure during the Crusades. Maybe point to Pope Urban (who called for the first Crusade and granted indulgances for all who fought) or Richard the Lionhearted (who chose as King(!!) to lead a christian army to the Middle East to reclaim Jeruselem.) However, the chief commander of the Muslims during this time, Saladin (refered to as Salah al Din in class), constantly finds himself relegated to the back pages of history books.

Saladin is referred by all cultures when researched. Muslims remember him for his valor and bravery as he fought for Allah and all that the Koran stood for at this time. Militarily he was brilliant, staving off countless Christian offenses and expanding the borders of his Ayyubid Kingdom from as far north as modern-day Syria, into Egypt and Yemen. One of the few Muslim figures written of fondly by Western biographers, he was noted as someone who never took the pride away from his oppenents, not taking prisioners of war, and for not attacking those again who he had already vanquished. He captured and then held Jeruselem, fending off dozens of offensives against his army. His army was responsible for the victory at the Battle of Hadid (sp?) in which he annilated the Crusader Army and forced their retreat, effectively ending the greatest opprotunity for the Crusaders to stake their claim in the Middle East.

Now while this is a brief description of Saladin's accomplishments as head of the Muslim army, it is important to understand that they were operating with less man-power and with far inferior technologies than that what the Europeans were using. He effectively broke the moral of the Europeans that he thought against and this discontent fostered centuries of malcontent towards the region as a whole. Pretty impressive for one guy.