Les transformations de l'image de Saladin dans les sources occidentales

• Main Author: Jean Richard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Provence 2000-07-01
• Series: Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/279

Salāh al-din Yūsuf, the Kurdish officer who served under Nūr al-din, who conquered Egypt and later Damascus and Aleppo, who founded the Ayyubide Empire, was quite a controversial character during his lifetime but posterity has consecrated him as « the purest among the heroes of Islam ». Very quickly, his adversaries, the Eastern Francs considered him with curiosity and thus gathered some material which appeared before 1187 in a Carmen de Saladino. In this work Saladin is depicted as an unscrupulous adventurer. His faithlessness towards his masters was particularly underlined. The terrible blows he inflicted to the Franks were accompanied with cruelty ;but his chivalrous attitude was soon mainly retained, for it was the most highly valued quality in both camps. The minstrel Ambroise still considered him as an enemy capable of treachery, but Guillaume de Tyr's translator softened these aspects in his French version in order to present a more attractive Saladin to his public. The epics in which Saladin appears in the first half of the 13th century (Estoires d'Outremer, Ordene de Chevalerie) go even further in this respect. But it is mainly in the second phase of the Crusade that the most eminent chivalrous qualities are attributed to Saladin. He was even said that he was of Christian origins (through the Comte de Ponthieu's daughter). He was attributed outstanding qualities putting forward his generosity, his courage, his supposed arbitrations over religious controversies and finally his longing for a Christian death. Thus the new image of Saladin was quite different from the one drawn by the Francs at the end of the 12th century.