volume one

HISTORY OF TUE CRUSADES. 397
Saladin,* this young warrior, was sprung from the people
who inhabit the mountains situated beyond the Tio^ris. His
father Ayoub, and his uncle Chirkou, after the example of
the warriors of their nation, M'ho fight for pay under JMussulman
powers, had left Curdistan to serve in the troops of
the sultan of Bagdad. They had both attained high military
employments ; but Chirkou, a violent and brutal man,
having run through the body with his sword an officer of
justice, the two brothers were obliged to take to flight, and
came to offer their services to the Attabeks of Syria, whom
they assisted in their wars against the Christians. The young
Saladin, although he was brought up at the court of Damas-
cus, under the eye of an ambitious father, did not at first
appear to be eager for either fortune or glory. In his youth
he was fond of dissipation and pleasures, and remained a
long time a stranger to the cares of politics or the dangers
and labours of war. Having followed his uncle Chirkou in
his first expeditions to Egypt, he had distinguished himself
by the defence of Alexandria ; but he suffered so much, that
when JN^oureddin commanded him to return to the banks of
the Nile, he sought pretexts to avoid obedience. When the
sultan repeated his orders, Saladin set out, as he himself said
afterwards, with the despair of a man who is led to death.
" Thus it is," says the historian Hamad Eddin, who was for
a long time his secretary, " that men know not what they
refuse or what they desire ; but God, who knows all things,
sports with their designs, which always terminate according
to the views of Providence."
At the death of Chirkou, the caliph of Egypt, who trembled
for his power, named Saladin to the post of vizier,
because he thought him the least capable, by his talents or
* Saladin has had many historians. Among the Arabian authors the
most celebrated are Bohaddin, who has written his hfe ; Omad-el-Cathed,
secretary of the sultan, and author of the Phatah ; Schahab-Eddin, author
of the hves of Noureddin and Saladin, entitled El Revdatahis (or the two
gardens). Several particulars relative to the Mussulman hero are to be
met with in Aboulfeda, who was of the family of Ayoub, and in several
other Arabian writers quoted by D. Bf rthereau. There is a Life of Saladin
in French, by Marin. In the Imperial Library [of France
manuscript Lives may likewise be consulted, one by the Abbe Renaudot,
and the other by Galland, the translator of the Thousand and One Nights,
—
Trans.] two