Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (c. 1137 – 4 March 1193), commonly known as Saladin, was a Kurdish commander and political leader. He was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egy In… Saladin was widely renowned in medieval Europe as a model of kingship, and in particular of the courtly virtue of regal generosity. As early as 1202/03, Walther von der Vogelweide urged the German King Philip of Swabia to be more like Saladin, who believed that a king's hands should have holes to let the gold fall through. By the 1270s, Jans der Enikel was spreading the fictitious but approving story of Saladin's table, which presented him as both pious and wise to religious diversity. In The Divine Comedy (1308–1320), Dante mentions him as one of the virtuous non-Christians in limbo, and he is also depicted favorably in Boccaccio's The Decameron (1438–53). Although Saladin faded into history after the Middle Ages, he appears in a sympathetic light in modern literature, first in Lessing's play Nathan the Wise (1779), which transfers the central idea of "Saladin's table" to the post-medieval world. He is a central character in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Talisman (1825), which more than any other single text influenced the romantic view of Saladin. Scott presented Saladin as a "modern [19th-century] liberal European gentlemen, beside whom medieval Westerners would always have made a poor showing". 20th-century French author Albert Champdor described him as "Le plus pur héros de l'Islam" (English: The purest Hero of Islam). Despite the Crusaders' slaughter when they originally conquered Jerusalem in 1099, Saladin granted amnesty and free passage to all common Catholics and even to the defeated Christian army, as long as they were able to pay the aforementioned ransom (the Greek Orthodox Christians were treated even better because they often opposed the western Crusaders). Notwithstanding the differences in beliefs, the Muslim Saladin was respected by Christian lords, Richard especially. Richard once praised Saladin as a great prince, saying that he was, without doubt, the greatest and most powerful leader in the Muslim world. Saladin, in turn, stated that there was not a more honorable Christian lord than Richard. After the treaty, Saladin and Richard sent each other many gifts as tokens of respect but never met face to face. In April 1191, a Frankish woman's…