Ends with Saladin's death in March 1193 and so gives no event of 1200, but it is the formative portrait of the Ayyubid house of 1200: al-Adil, al-Afdal, al-Aziz and al-Zahir Ghazi as Saladin's lieutenants, the Mosul and Jazira campaigns, the war of Acre and the treaty of Jaffa of 1192. Baha al-Din was Saladin's qadi of the army; in 1200 he was qadi of Aleppo and the chief counsellor of al-Zahir Ghazi, which explains Aleppo's stance in the family war. Reliable and dated, but a eulogy.
About this source
- Title
- al-Nawadir al-sultaniyya wa'l-mahasin al-Yusufiyya
- Author
- Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad
- Author's dates
- 1145 to 1234
- Written
- after 1193, probably between about 1198 and 1228, at Aleppo
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- 1137 to 1193, in detail from 1188
- Kind
- Biography
The 1897 English was made from the RHC French, not the Arabic, and is loose; Richards's 2001 English is the one to cite and is in copyright. Baha al-Din's geographical work on the Jazira is a different author (Izz al-Din Ibn Shaddad).
Where to read it
Editions
- A. Schultens (ed.), Vita et res gestae sultani Saladini (Leiden, 1755), Arabic text with Latin translation
- Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens orientaux, vol. 3 (Paris, 1884), Arabic text with French translation
Translations
- Saladin, or What Befell Sultan Yusuf, Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society vol. 13 (London, 1897), English, revised by C. R. Conder
- C. R. Conder (ed.), The Life of Saladin by Beha ed-Din, Palestine Exploration Fund (London, 1897), the same translation issued separately
- D. S. Richards, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (Aldershot, 2001), English (not freely online)