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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2016
The period following the death of Saladin (589/1193) was a formative one in the history of the Ayyūbid empire. It saw the eventual establishment of Saladin's younger brother Sayf al-Dīn al-Malik al-ʿĀdil as the acknowledged sovereign of the various territories ruled by members of the Ayyūbid family, overturning the succession arrangements that Saladin had put into place; and it established modes of behaviour to be followed, mutatis mutandis, following the death of a leading Ayyūbid ruler on future occasions. The main loser in al-ʿĀdil's rise to the sultanate was Saladin's eldest son, al-Malik al-Afḍal ʿAlī, whom some have written off as an incompetent failure. In this paper for David Morgan, for many years my trusted colleague in the SOAS History Department, I suggest that that judgment on al-Afḍal is open to appeal.
1 Fa-ʾnẓur ilā ḥaẓẓi hādhā ʾl-ismi kayfa laqiya min al-awākhiri mā lāqā min al-awwali
2 Ibn Wāṣil, Al-Taʾrīkh al-Ṣāliḥī ((ed.) ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī, 2 vols., Beirut: Al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 1431/2010) 2: 287; Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt al-zamān fī taʾrīkh al-aʿyān (vol. 8, part 2, Ḥaydarābād: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, 1371/1952): 638.
3 The following summary of the events following Saladin's death is much indebted to Chapter 3, “The Rise of al-ʿĀdil”, in Humphreys, R. Stephen, From Saladin to the Mongols, (Albany, 1977)Google Scholar. For a discussion of those events that focuses on Aleppo, see Eddé, Anne-Marie, La principauté ayyoubide d'Alep (579/1183-658/1260), (Stuttgart, 1999)Google Scholar; and for events involving al-Afḍal during the lifetime of his father, Eadem, Saladin, (Paris, 2008), English translation by Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2011), index.
4 According to al-MaqrIzī, already in 580/1184 Saladin had provided for al-Afḍal to become the ruler of Damascus with his uncle Sayf al-Dīn al-ʿĀdil as his guardian (bi-kafālat ʿammihi), but those provision were not put into effect: Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, (ed.) Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Ziyāda, vol. 1, part 1, (Cairo, 1934), p. 85, English translation, Broadhurst, R. J. C., A History of the Ayyūbid Sultans of Egypt (Boston, 1980), p. 75 Google Scholar.
5 For the coinage, see Balog, P., The Coinage of the Ayyūbids, (London, Royal Numismatic Society, 1980 Google Scholar), pp. 240-241; for an inscription, Répertoire chronologique d'épigraphie arabe, (Cairo, 1931) onwards, vol. 9, no. 3464; and for the decree, Khan, Geoffrey, “A document of appointment of a Jewish leader in Syria issued by Al-Malik al-Afḍal ʿAlī in 589 A.H. / 1193 A.D.”, in Rāġib, Yūsuf (ed.) Documents de l'Islam médiéval: nouvelles perspectives de recherche. (Cairo, 1991 Google Scholar), pp. 97-116.
6 For the medical treatises, see G. Vajda s.v. Ibn Maymūn in EI2.
7 For this last episode, see especially Eddé, Principauté d'Alep, pp. 89-92; Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, pp. 159-160.
8 Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij al-kurūb fī akhbār Banī Ayyūb, (eds.) Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl, Ḥassanain Muḥammad Rabīʿ and Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ ʿĀshūr, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1953 onwards) 4:157; essentially repeated by al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 1/1: 216-7. English translation, p. 193.
9 On those two and the third brother, Majd al-Dīn, see F. Rosenthal in EI2 s.v. Ibn al-Athīr.
10 That is the sense of the Arabic: wa-kāna Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-madhkūr lammā ʾttaṣala bi-khidmat al-Malik al-Afḍal shābban ghirran. The idea is odd, though, and one might think the adjectives more apposite if applied to al-Afḍal (it may refer to a time before he succeeded his father). At the time of Saladin's death Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn was 30, having been born in 558/1163.
11 Ibn Wāṣil. Mufarrij, 3:10; cf. his Al-Taʾrīkh al-Ṣāliḥī, 2: 251; Abū Shāma, Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn (ed.) Ibrāhīm al-Zībaq, 5 vols., (Beirut, 1418/1997) 4: pp. 419, 420; Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt, 8/2: pp. 441-442, ascribes the joint attack of al-ʿAzīz and al-ʿĀdil against al-Afḍal in 592/1196 to the fact that one of this last's amirs and other notables had written to al-ʿĀdil complaining about the wazīr’s pernicious acts. Al-ʿĀdil wrote to al-Afḍal telling him to get rid of the wazīr, and it was when al-Afḍal rejected that advice that al-ʿĀdil agreed with al-ʿAzīz to send an army against Damascus. Ibn al-Athīr, Al-Kāmil fiʾl-taʾrīkh (13 vols. Beirut, 1965-67) 12: pp.109-110, English translation D. S. Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period, 3 vols. (Farnham, 200[5]6-8) 3, p. 16, unsurprisingly, has no criticism of Afḍal for appointing his brother as wazīr.
12 Ibn Wāṣil Mufarrij, 3: 14 (waqaʿū fiʾl-Malik al-Afḍal ʿinda ʾl-Malik al-ʿAzīz wa-ḥassanū lahu al-istibdād biʾl-mulk waʾl-qiyām biʾl- salṭana maqām abīhi). According to Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil 12:118, English translation 3: 23, the nature of the incitement was somewhat different; see below.
13 Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij, 3:15; idem, Al-Taʾrīkh al-Ṣāliḥī, 2: 251; Abū Shāma, Rawḍatayn, 4: 420. Saladin had allocated one third of the income from Nāblus and its districts as a waqf for the upkeep of Jerusalem, but the governors of Nāblus had been misappropriating the sum for other purposes. When they heard of al-Afḍal's plan, therefore, they wrote to him saying that they would provide for the upkeep of Jerusalem and its garrison entirely out of the waqf and there would be no need to find money for it from any other source. Al-Afḍal then confirmed them in office. Since the Egyptian ruler had already promised Nāblus to two of the amīrs who had come to him from Damascus, he was not best pleased.
14 ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij, 3: 27-8; Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt 8/2: 442 says that when al-ʿĀdil and al-ʿAzīz launched their third attack on Damascus all of al-Afḍal's advisors urged him to negotiate with them, and only the wazīr advised resistance; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 116, English translation, p. 103.
15 Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij, 40; Abū Shāma, Rawḍatayn, 4: 424; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 118-119, English translation, p.105.
16 Ibn Wāsil, Mufarrij, 3: 41; al-Taʾrīkh al-Ṣāliḥiyya, 2: 253-254 (again more virulent than the Mufarrij: the wazīr is described as sayyiʾ al-rayʾ fāsid al-tadbīr radīʾ al-sīra); al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 123, English Translation p. 109.
17 Subsequently, Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn, most of whose written works are concerned with literary criticism, rejoined al-Afḍal and remained in his service in Samosata until 611/1214; he died in 637/1239 in the service of the rulers of Mosul. See Rosenthal s.v. Ibn al-Athīr in EI2.
18 EI2, s.v. al-Afḍal. See too his censure of the “misgovernment and weakness” that turned Saladin's troops against Al-Afḍal in his chapter “The Aiyūbids”, in Robert Lee Wolff and Harry W. Hazard (eds.), The later Crusades 1189-1311, A History of the Crusades, volume II, (Philadelphia, 1962), p. 695.
19 Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, pp. 104, 112,113.
20 Kurdish Life, (ed.) Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, Brooklyn, New York 32 (Fall 1999), pp 18-20; “The Shadow Kills the Growth: Al-Malek al-Afdal ʿAli, the Second Ayyubid Sultan”.
21 Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth. . .
22 At the time of his father's death, al-Afḍal was still only in his early twenties and for the previous four years or so the struggle against the Third Crusade had hardly left Saladin scope for training his family for administering his lands, should he die. Al-Afḍal had participated in the build-up to Haṭṭīn in 583/1187, and was present with his father at the battle when, according to Ibn al-Athīr, Saladin chided him for prematurely rejoicing at the victory. To say, as the author of the article in Kurdish Life does, that Saladin “systematically excluded” al-Afḍal from administrative affairs is to put it too strongly.
23 On ʿImād al-Dīn, see H. Massé s.v. in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition and Donald S. Richards, s.v. ʿEmād-al-Dīn Kāteb in Encyclopaedia Iranica. Of the other leading companions of Saladin, al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil joined al-ʿAzīz soon after his master's death, and Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād left to become qāḍī in Aleppo under al-Ẓāhir.
24 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 12: 118-119. English translation pp. 23-24.
25 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmi, l 12: 119-120. English translation pp. 23-24.
26 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 12: 122-123. English translation pp. 25-26.
27 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 12: 140. English translation p. 39: kāna . . .maḥbūban ilā ʾl-nāṣ yurīdūnahu; Richards translates, “beloved by the people and their favourite”, but possibly nās here refers to the soldiers?
28 For a highly critical view of Ibn al-Athīr as a source, see Gibb, H. A. R., “Notes on the Arabic Materials for the History of the early Crusades”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 7 (1935), pp. 739–754 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but cf. D. S. Richards in the Introduction to his translation of the Kāmil, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athīr for the Crusading Period, Part 1, (Farnham, 2005), p. 4.
29 Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij 4, pp. 155-158; idem, Al-Taʾrīkh al-Ṣāliḥī, 2: 286-287; similar obituaries are to be found in Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt 8/2: 637-638; Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil 12: 428-429. English translation 3: 253-254; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 216-217. English translation pp. 193-194; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, (ed.) Iḥsān ʿAbbās, (Beirut, 1968) 72, 3: p. 486.
30 Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij 3: 44; Abū Shāma, Rawḍatayn 4 :425; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 123-124. English translation pp. 109-110.
31 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil 12: 119. English translation 3: p. 23.
32 Abū Shāma, Rawḍatayn 4: 407-409, citing ʿImād al-Dīn's Fatḥ. The last word is written without hamza and rhymes with rasūlihi, but is related to the verb saʾala, “to ask”: see Lane, Lexicon, s.v. s-w-l.
33 Ibn Wāṣil, 3: 27-28; Abū Shāma, Rawḍatayn 4: 421. Ibn Wāṣil has al-Afḍal explicitly state his willingness to allow his brother to have the khuṭba and sikka, whereas Abū Shāma, citing ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī’s Al-ʿUtbā waʾl-ʿuqbā, puts it more ornately: al-Afḍal considered writing to his brother bi-kulli mā yaḥibbu min iʿlāʾ kalimatihi waʾl-ijtimāʿ ʿalayhi wa-yakūnu ʾl-Afḍal min baʿḍi al-qāʾimīna bayna yadayhi. The motive attributed to al-Afḍal is his wish to avoid civil strife (fitan) and hatred (iḥan), but he received wrong advice. Cf. al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 123. English translation p. 103.
34 Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 12: 122. English translation p. 25.
35 This assessment agrees with that of Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, pp. 122-123, who suggests that Saladin may have consciously planned for a period of uncertainty that would allow the most able to establish his rule.
36 In addition to the works mentioned above in note 2, see the articles s.v. Ayyūbids in EI2 (by Claude Cahen) and Encyclopaedia of Islam THREE (by Anne-Marie Eddé); Chamberlain, Michael, “The Crusader era and the Ayyūbid dynasty”, in Petry, Carl F. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1, (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar, pp. 211-241; Donald P. Little, “Historiography of the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk epochs”, ibid. pp. 412-144; Eddé, Anne-Marie, “Bilād al-Shām from the Fāṭimid conquest to the fall of the Ayyūbids (359-658/970-1260)”, in Fierro, Maribel (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2, The Western Islamic World Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 161–200 Google Scholar; and Yaacov Lev, “The Fāṭimid caliphate (358-567/969-1171) and the Ayyūbids in Egypt (567-648/1171-1250)”, Ibid. pp. 201-236.
37 From Saladin to the Mongols, p. 93.
38 As well as the Seljuq empire and its successor states, the Kurdish ʿAnnāzid and Shaddādid dynasties provide examples of fragmented polities, various parts of which were ruled by members of the same family.
39 Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols, p. 80.
40 Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 121-122. English translation pp. 107-108.
41 Maqrīzī, Sulūk 1/1: 133. English translation pp. 117-118.
42 Abū Shāma, Rawḍatayn 4: p. 420; Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij, 3: pp. 10-11, 12, 14; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk. English translation pp. 101-102; Ibn al-Athīr refers to the defection of the Ṣalāḥīyya amīrs from al-Afḍal in his account of the second attack of al-ʿAzīz on Damascus (Kāmil, 12: 118. English translation 3: p. 123).
43 From Saladin to the Mongols, pp. 91-92.
44 Michael Chamberlain, “The Crusader era and the Ayyūbid dynasty”, p. 220, appositely quotes one of the leaders of the Ṣalāḥiyya admitting that they had become known for continually raising up one prince and deposing another (Ibn Wāṣil, Mufarrij 3: p. 118).
45 On the contrasting careers and agendas of these two historians of Saladin and the Ayyūbids, see: Hirschler, Konrad, Medieval Arabic Historiography. Authors as Actors, (London and New York, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.