Saladin (Salah al-Din)

A Kurdish Officer's Son

Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known by his honorific Salah al-Din, the righteousness of the faith, was born around 1137 or 1138 at Tikrit on the Tigris, in what is now Iraq. His family were Kurds who had risen in the service of Turkish rulers. His father, Ayyub, and his uncle, Shirkuh, were officers of Zengi, the ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, and then of Zengi's son Nur al-Din, who made the war against the crusader states a religious cause. Saladin grew up largely in Damascus and Baalbek, educated in the Qur'an and in the culture of a Muslim court.