Saladin,
the Kurdish hero of the Arabs
The warrior who took
Jerusalem back from the Crusaders in 1187 ended the division of the Muslim
world by defeating the Shia caliphate of Egypt. He will become a reference
hero for nineteenth-century Arab nationalists. Although Kurdish
It is with Islam that the Arabs have
entered history and it is in Arabic that Islam has revealed itself before
becoming a religion with a global vocation. This double link still disturbs
definitions today. The Arab national sentiment rarely departs from the Islamic
reference, while the resurgence of Islam appears to many, especially when
fueled by the Saudi petrodollars, as a way to impose an Arab vision of the
world to diverse populations living in Indonesia, Bosnia, Pakistan, Nigeria,
Chinese Turkestan and, increasingly, Western Europe. A historical figure more
than others embodies these ambiguities: that of Saladin, son of a Kurdish
officer sacred Arab hero by the twentieth century nationalists for taking
Jerusalem Crusaders.
From the first conquests, the Moslem
civilization is nourished by the contributions of the conquered - Byzantine,
Iberian or Berber peoples. Legitimacy, however, remains primarily tribal. As
well as religion: under the Umayyads and in Al-Andalus (LT of 08 and 09.08.2011
), becoming a Muslim is equivalent to being, in a way, Arab by adoption.
Things change with the establishment of
the Abbasid caliphate in 750, after a revolt fomented Khorassan . Persian
civilization, first, resists better - to the point of using Islam as a vector
of its influence. The very extent of the empire puts the assimilation model of
the elites conquered to the Bedouin clans into difficulty. And most
importantly, the conquerors are tired.
Become princes, traders, navigators, they
resort more and more, from the ninth century, to armies composed of slaves or
mercenaries, whom they engage sometimes in block, with their tribal chief
Persian, Armenian, Kurd or, more and more often, Turkish. These fighters are
given territories where they can exploit the tax revenues, for them to provide
the necessary armed contingents. If all act in the name of the caliph, many in
fact only at their head, or even found their own state under his obedience
always more theoretical.
At the moment when the first Crusade was
founded on Asia Minor in 1096, it was to the successor States of an ephemeral
Turkish empire, that of the great Seljuks, that the soldiers of the Cross
wrenched the territories of Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli or Jerusalem.
It is not easy to measure exactly the
loss to the Muslim world of the fall of the latter in Christian hands on July
15, 1099. Holy by his eminent role in the two monotheistic religions whose
Islam is the successor, the city also occupies a central place in a mysterious episode of the Qur'an
that sees Muhammad transported to the "distant mosque" (Al-Masjid
Al-Aqsa), where the great prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition pray under
his direction, then leads in the presence of God.
Abundantly enriched over the centuries,
this tradition seems to have been attached very early to Jerusalem, where an
equally early belief places the fulfillment of the end of time. It is around
the rock where the Prophet is known to have gained momentum for his ascent that
the first conqueror of the city, Omar, would have built a modest place of
prayer destined to become, under one of his successors, Abd al- Malik , the
dome of the Rock, whose construction is quickly followed by that of the Al-Aqsa
Mosque - two of the main architectural achievements of the Umayyads.
In the following centuries, however, the
image of Jerusalem seems to fade. The center of gravity of the Muslim world, as
we have said, has moved to the East. The rivalries between emirs dominate the
scene to the point of pushing some to seek under the mantle the shameful
alliance of the Franks. If these rivalries leave intact the unity of principle
of the Muslims, the latter is undermined by another, more fundamental division:
the one that pits the Sunni world against the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt, of
Shiite obedience. In short: if the Frankish invasion undoubtedly represents a
shock to Baghdad, the reactions it arouses remain scattered at first.
Things changed from 1144. That year, the
Turkish atabeg (regent) of Mosul, Zengi , took over Edesse (current Urfa, in
the south-east of Turkey) from the free knight Josselin de Courtenay . This
Christian defeat will motivate the second Crusade. It also seems to mark in the
Muslim world the emergence of a desire for reconquest that Zengi's son, Nur
ad-Din , deliberately feeds.
Supported by the latter, the religious
are the propagandists of jihad, sometimes against the more down to earth
concerns of political and military authorities. The works extolling the merits
of Jerusalem are multiplying. Nur ad-Din built a pulpit (minbar) of
ivory-encrusted wood in Aleppo for Al-Aqsa mosque. But it is in Syria that he
wars to recreate the unity shattered in the death of his father in 1146. And it
is Saladin who will realize his wish.
Son of the Kurdish governor of Tikrit,
quickly forced into exile, Yussuf ibn Ayoubi said Salah ed-Din - the firmness
of religion - entered the service of Nur ad-Din around 1150, following his
uncle Shîrkûh . He made his first deeds in Egypt, where he ousted the Fatimid
caliph in 1169 to restore Sunni orthodoxy.
This eminent service rendered to the
Abbasid Caliph Al-Mustadî allows him, on the death of Nur ad-Din in 1175, to
claim his succession as protector of his minor son. He does this by presenting
himself to the Commander of the Believers as the "adversary whom no
calamity can bring down" from the Franks, and promises to fight to restore
to the believers without them "needing to take their hands out of their
cloak" "The mosque where God carried his servant during the night".
Like Nur ad-Din before him, Saladin
speaks of Jerusalem but begins by waging war in Syria where he must sit a power
all the more contested that its legitimacy is questionable. Between a skirmish
and a truce with the Franks, he assures Damascus and Aleppo before taking an
interest in Mosul, dangerously near Baghdad.
These conquests, he repeats in the
letters addressed to Al-Mustadi's much more reluctant successor, Al-Nasir
li-Din Allah , are aimed at realizing the union of believers to better
undermine the Franc out of Dar al-Islam. Strategy? Probably not only: Saladin
is really the pious man, attached to respect the principles of Islam that a
carefully orchestrated propaganda presents to his contemporaries. But whatever
its prestige, Jerusalem is not a center of power.
In 1187, the stirring Renaud de Chatillon
, author of several raids much criticized, including in his camp, against
Muslim caravans, recurrence on the road to Damascus. This is good for Saladin,
whose inaction against the Franks is increasingly criticized. The offensive he
launched with some 30,000 men was devastating. The Christian armies suffered a
decisive defeat at Hattin , near the Sea of Galilee, in July, then lost almost the entire Mediterranean coast.
Jerusalem no longer has an army really
capable of defending it. Balian d'Ibelin , who defends the holy city,
negotiates his surrender on 2 October. Those of the inhabitants who can pay the
fixed ransom are free to leave with their personal property, the others are
reduced to slavery - and, for a part, redeemed by Saladin himself who would
have released them. As for Eastern Christians, if they are not exempt from
ransom, they are allowed to stay in the city where they have always lived.
This moderate solution to the bag imposed
by the Crusaders a century earlier does not exclude looting of religious
property. Neither other abuses if we believe the description of the Persian
chronicler of Saladin, Imad ad-Din : "How many women whose sails were torn
[...] What beautiful were put to the test! How many virgins were deflowered!
How many noble ladies were married by force! "
But the big thing is of course to restore
the holy places - the dome of the Rock, turned into a church and the Al-Aqsa
Mosque, used as a residence by the Knights Templar. In the process, many
churches are destroyed, with the exception of the Holy Sepulcher . Always
concerned about his image, Saladin spared him, as the first conqueror of
Jerusalem had done before him, the second Caliph Omar, whom he hopes to be
equaled by posterity.
It will take him seven centuries. If
paradoxically Christian literature will consider it with affection - to the
point of imagining it secretly converted - the Arab-Muslim memory prefers the
more consensual figure of Nur ad-Din. Dead, it is said, ruined by his largesse,
he had to return the Syrian coastline to Richard the Lionheart in 1192. Even
Jerusalem again passed into Christian hands, by treaties, between 1229 and 1244.
But above all, the world where he has
carved his glory is doomed. In 1258, the bag of Baghdad by the Mongols causes a
shock wave not commensurate with that caused by the fall of Jerusalem. Chased,
the Abbasid caliphate survives for three centuries in Cairo under the
protection of the Turkish power of the Mamluk before falling into Ottoman
hands. The cosmopolitan empire whose sovereign is now the shadow of God on
earth moves its geographical center towards the West while the Persian
influence is still there before giving way, from the nineteenth century, to an
attraction growing European. If Arabic continues to be the privileged language
of faith and religious studies, the men who claim it speak it less and less and
in the West they are no longer called, whatever their origin, that the Turks .
Last heroic figure of an empire already
strongly mixed but still Arab, at least, in his references, Saladin resumes
service, finally no little surprising, when the West appears again as a threat.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II summoned him at the end of the nineteenth century to fuel
hostility to the British and French aims over his empire. At the same time, the
Egyptian poet Ahmed Chawq i place him, with the conqueror of Constantinople
Mehmet II, at the top of the Moslem merit, immediately behind the first four
caliphs.
Only the Kurds, who make it a national
hero, seem to remember its origin. It does not prevent him from being adopted
by Nasser - did he not also rule over Egypt? - by Saddam Hussein - born, like
him, in Tikrit - and Hafez al-Assad as a symbol of their resistance to Western
imperialism.
As for the question of knowing which
membership he would have personally favored, it is doubtless perfectly vain. In
fact, there is nothing to say that he saw any contradiction between his
commitment to an Arab dynasty carrying Islamic legitimacy and his propensity to
install members of his Kurdish clan in all the key positions of his empire.
موضوع انجليزي عن الماء للصف الثامن فقرة برزنتيشن بحث موضوع ملخص جاهز باللغة الانجليزية انشاء موضوع انجليزي عن ابدا قصير كيفية كتابة موضوع تعبير باللغة الانجليزية توجيهي قواعد كتابة تعبير بالانجليزي طريقة سهلة لكتابة تعبير بالانجليزي
موضوع تعبير انجليزي يصلح لكل المواضيع كتابة تعبير بالانجليزي عن نفسك وصف تعبير انجليزي
يصلح لكل المواضيع موضوع انشاء شامل لكل المواضيع موضوع يصلح لجميع المواضيع موضوع
تعبير انجليزي جاهز برجراف ينفع لاى موضوع
موضوع انجليزي عن الماء قصير وسهل فوائد بالانجليزي عبارات بالانجليزي طويل اهمية مترجم ثالث ثانوي اول ثاني
ثانوي متوسط خمس سبع ثمان تسع اربع جمل كلمات كلام مقال علمي مقدمة بحث انجليزي حلول
اسباب حل مشكلة طويل شعر وصف قدوتي في الحياه انشودة نشيد كلام جميل حالات واتساب 2018 كلام
قصة عن صلاح الدين الايوبي بالانجليزي
معلومات عن صلاح الدين الايوبي للصف الخامس الابتدائي
معلومات عن صلاح الدين الايوبي مولده ووفاته ابرز
صفاته واهم انجازاته
اعمال صلاح الدين الايوبي بالانجليزي
salah aldeen al ayoubi
موضوع قصير عن صلاح الدين الايوبي
قلعة صلاح الدين بالانجليزي
معلومات بسيطة عن صلاح الدين الايوبي للاطفال
تعبير عن صلاح الدين الايوبي
إرسال تعليق