Yusuf ibn Ayyub (“Joseph, son of Job”) was born in Islamic Mesopotamia around the year 1137, and given the honorific title Salah ad-Din, meaning “Righteousness of the Faith”. To Europeans he became known as Saladin. Even among the Christians who were his sworn enemies, he had a reputation as a gallant and courageous warrior. A century after his death, the Italian poet Dante placed Saladin not in Hell but in the limbo of “virtuous non-Christians”, along with the great heroes of ancient Greece and Rome.The Renaissance notion of Limbo was something I mentioned in an earlier post (Descent into Limbo). In the early days of Christianity, things were straightforwardly clear-cut: all non-Christians were uniformly wicked and automatically went to Hell. But by the Renaissance, Europeans were rediscovering the wisdom and depth of their pagan past, as embodied in the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome. So they came up with the notion of Limbo—neither Hell nor Heaven—where the virtuous men and women of pre-Christian times could reside in relative peace and comfort for eternity.
The most detailed description of Limbo can be found in Dante’s Divine Comedy, written in the early 1300s. Dante was an archetypal Renaissance Man, and had enormous respect for the pre-Christian culture of Europe. He took the opportunity to put all his favourite heroes and heroines from ancient Greece and Rome in Limbo – from fellow poets like Homer and Ovid to mythical heroes like Hector and Aeneas and noble Roman ladies like Cornelia Africana and Lucretia. And he lists more than a dozen philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Heraclitus, Euclid and Ptolemy – all of whom featured two centuries later in another Renaissance masterpiece, Raphael’s The School of Athens.
To his credit, Dante puts not only ancient Greeks and Romans in Limbo, but some recently deceased Islamic scholars as well. There is Averroes, who is also featured in The School of Athens—and died only a few decades before Dante was born—and an earlier Muslim philosopher named Avicenna. But the oddest inclusion of all is Saladin.
Saladin wasn’t a philosopher, although by all accounts he was a scholarly and learned individual who was famed for his wisdom and generosity. But first and foremost he was a military leader. Twenty-first century values notwithstanding, this wouldn’t by itself have been a block to being considered “virtuous” in the Middle Ages – Dante also honours Julius Caesar with a place in Limbo. But Caesar was a European, whereas Saladin fought against Europeans – and only a century or so before Dante was writing.
Saladin united the Islamic world against the Christian Crusaders, and set the stage for Islamic supremacy in the Middle East. So it’s no surprise that he is a great hero to Muslims, and that he is respected and revered by many modern-day historians. But it really is a surprise to find a 14th century Christian writer like Dante treating him with such honour. This strikes me as an extraordinarily enlightened view – even today, Westerners have great reluctance to say anything generous about their military opponents.
Arsuf – 1191. This is my fifth contribution to the Bretwalda Battles series – I mentioned the first two in earlier posts (London versus the V-2 rockets and The Siege of Lachish). The other two are on non-Fortean subjects (Rolling Thunder
and Sinking the Bismarck) but well worth a read for anyone interested in military history.