Saladin: hero or infidel?

In Baghdad in the 1980s there was a children’s book published called The Hero Saladin. The cover bore an image of Saddam Hussein, identified, in what his biographer drily describes as ‘the second and longer part’ of the book, as ‘Saladin II Saddam Hussein’.

Given that Saladin was actually Kurdish — and knowing what we do about Saddam’s respect for that section of his population — the gesture seems even more crass and insolent than it might otherwise. But then, it’s also absolutely standard. Jinnah was Saladin. Assad was Saladin. Saladin is, in modern Arab and Muslim political mythology, more icon than historical figure. If the anti-imperialist rhetoric of the Arab street in the 20th century were the sentimentality of English football fans, he’d be Bobby Moore.

Anne-Marie Eddé remarks in a punchy moment that she prefers to ‘use the term “myth” rather than “legend” ’ of these representations — because the Western Saladin is at least a distortion of actual history, whereas ‘the Saladin myth in Arab countries is closer to a political construction that freely and subjectively interprets a historical reality to adapt it to a given situation’.