There is no doubt that the Crusaders were indeed impressed by him as a military adversary, this is evident from their chronicles. However, before all of that came about, Saladin had spent the previous 25 years in a struggle to unify the feudal principalities of western Asia, utilizing his superior political and military skills. He was brought up in cities and royal courts, and learned the arts of statesmanship and war. Uniquely, he combined these with orthodox piety, a zealous study of theology, and an almost ascetic simplicity, of life; the Moslems number him among their greatest saints.

            His chief garment was a coarse woolen cloth, and his only drink was water. Saladin built mosques, hospitals, monasteries, and theological schools. He also encouraged architecture, and all wrongs that came to his knowledge were speedily redressed. Taxes were lowered at the same time that public works were extended, and the functions of government were carried on with efficiency and zeal. Islam gloried in the integrity and justice of his rule, and Christendom acknowledged in him an infidel gentleman.

            Of Kurdish origin, he was a Sunni, and was able to mobilize the strength and religious fervor of Egyptian and Syrian Muslims in order to defeat the European Crusaders, who had established states in Palestine and on the Syrian coast at the end of the eleventh century. The dynasty founded by Salahal-Din, that of the Ayyubids, ruled Egypt from 1169 to 1252, Syria to 1260, and part of western Arabia to 1229.

            Durant notes that this man also had a particular impact on a minority of the European population who had no particular love for their own contemporary religious views. Contact with Islam through the Crusades and the translations of many written works enlarged this minority in the thirteenth century. The discovery that another great religion existed, and had produced fine men like Saladin and al-kamil, along with philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes, was in itself a disturbing revelation and severely affected the status quo, resulting in a long period of painful re-examination of European religious belief systems.

            As background to the time of Saladin, Hourani points out that the early period of Islamic rule had been one in which relations between Christians, Muslims, and Jews were generally fruitful. In fact, the coming of Islam improved the position of the Nestorian and Monophysite churches by removing ". . . the disabilities from which they suffered under Byzantine rule." The Nestorian Patriarch was an important personality in Baghdad of the Abbasid caliphs, and the church of which he was the head extended east wards into inner Asia and as far as China. As Islam developed, it did so in a largely Christian environment, and Christian scholars played an important part in the transmission of Greek scientific and philosophical thought into Arabic. Later, the dominant Muslim minority turned into a majority, and acquired a strong autonomous and self-confident intellectual and spiritual life.

            This early Islamic period also saw the main centers of Jewish population and religious culture in countries ruled by Muslims. Iraq continued to be the main center of Jewish religious learning. In its two great academies worked the scholars who were regarded as guardians of the long oral tradition of the Jewish religion, and to whom questions about matters of interpretation were sent from all over the Jewish world. Later, however, as the Abbasid empire disintegrated, independent authority was exercised by colleges (yeshivot) which grew up in the main centers of Jewish population: Cairo, Gayrawan, and the cities of Muslim Spain. In short, it can be seen that Islam, the Christians, and the Jews influenced each other in significant ways.

            The greatest figure of medieval Judaism, Musa ibn Maymun (Maimonides, 1135 -1204), was court physician to Salah al-Din and his son. He clearly found a freer environment in Cairo under the Ayyubids than in the Andalus from which he came. His Guide of the Perplexed, written in Arabic, philosophical interpretation of religion and other works in Arabic and Hebrew. His life a thought gives evidence of easy relations between Muslims and Jews of education and standing in the Egypt of his time.

            After his death, Saladin’s kingdom was divided amongst his heirs, and the Ayyubids were never reunified with one element acknowledged supreme over the others. These relationships are reflected in their coins. The main branches of the line, according to Stephen Album, were in Egypt, Aleppo, Damascus, Hamat, Mayya-fariquin, and the Yemen.

            The Ayyubids coined money extensively in all three metals. Gold is fairly scarce, but silver dirhams ‘are easily acquired at reasonable prices, as are copper issues. Album notes that the Crusaders often imitated Ayyubid coins in lieu of their own types, and that current research in Ayyubid coinage is attempting to separate the genuinely Ayyubid issues from the Crusader imitations.