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Description
I wanna start this one off by airing out a bit of dirty laundry I found in a rabbit hole. Initially, I was going to title this piece "Saracen Soldiers", because that's the most common word often used to denote the Muslim counterparts to the Crusaders in popular media. I came to find out, though, this word really doesn't do a service to the reality of this period in history. Saladin's army did not call themselves "Saracens", they were Arabs, Egyptians, Turks, and many other groups who pledged allegiance to the Ayyubid Dynasty. "Saracen" is the word that medieval Europeans used to refer to any and all Muslims by the 12th century, usually in a derogatory sense. No one seems quite sure where the hell this word comes from. We can trace it back to the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who records the word "Sarakenoi" as referring to the desert nomads living in the vicinity of the city-dwelling Arabs. It seems most likely that this in turn is derived from the Arabic root "ś-r-q" which means "Easterner", though it could also be derived from Arabic "sariqeen" meaning "thieves". It's possible these two roots aren't mutually exclusive, of course. In both cases, the indigenous Arabs used the word to refer to the Bedouin tribes who often raided their settlements, and when the Byzantines needed a word to designate Muslim raiders, that was the closest proper noun in their translations. Put it through a thousand year game of Telephone and eventually "Saracen" just comes to mean "any Muslim I don't like", which of course in those times were… all Muslims. It's sort of how the peoples of the Middle East just used the term "Frank" to describe all white people in the region, even though they weren't all French and certainly weren't unified. They were simply the first to come in and break everyone's shit, so that became the reference point. All of that in consideration, I opted to forgo using the term "Saracen" here, and instead clumped these soldiers together as "Ayyubid" which I think is both more accurate and more helpful for educational purposes. I'll definitely still be using "Franks" though, because I have zero qualms about bullying the French. Hon hon hon.

Okay, on to the actual history. I already went over the beginnings of the Ayyubid Dynasty in my blurb about Saladin, so I'll try to keep the summary brief here. Saladin, of course, was the renowned Kurdish commander who got his career off the ground trying to make Nur ad-Din's dream of uniting the Muslim world against the Crusader states a reality. Saladin was sent to Egypt with his uncle Shirkah in 1169 (nice), on a mission to conquer what was left of the dying Fatimid Caliphate. The operation went swimmingly, and Shirkuh was crowned vizier of Egypt. He died of quinsy just two months after the conquest, though, so the job was passed to Saladin. Saladin turned out to be a master diplomat, and ensured that all the major governmental positions were filled with people he could trust, usually close family members. Of course, the amount of Egyptian resources you own is typically proportional to the size of your balls, and when Nur ad-Din died in 1174, Saladin looked to his former territory and said "heyyyy, you know, this is mine now I've decided". Saladin thus marched into Syria, assimilated or suppressed all his rivals, and he was proclaimed sultan of both lands. Thus, his Ayyubid Dynasty (named for his father, Najm al-Din Ayyub), was established, just in time for a Crusade.

Saladin already had "boot the Franks out of my Holy Land" on his bucket list for a while now. The many Baldwins who ruled over the Kingdom of Jerusalem had an annoying habit of not making peace an option, what with their oath-breaking and caravan-plundering. Guy of Lusignan's marriage to Sibylla, wife of Baldwin IV, in 1186 ended up causing just the right amount of internal strife for Saladin to slip in and lay a trap at the Crusader fortress of Tiberias in 1187. The Crusaders' miserable attempt to rescue the fortress led to Saladin's most famous victory: the Battle of Hattin, which opened the door for the sultan to march on most sacred Jerusalem and negotiate its transfer into Ayyubid hands. Saladin still allowed Christian pilgrims to come and go through the city as they pleased, as was usually custom for medieval Islamic rulers, but apparently this wasn't good enough for the Pope, who died of a heart attack as soon as he heard the news. With his dying breath, His overreactive Holiness called for the Third Crusade. The most famous man to answer the call was Richard the Lionheart, King of England, a renowned warrior who came to mutually respect Saladin as an honorable warrior and worthy opponent. Richard was definitely the better soldier, wiping the floor with Saladin at such famous battles as Acre, Arsuf, and Jaffa, all in 1191. Saladin, though, was able to outlast Richard. A failed attempt to reclaim Jaffa in 1192 made both sides realize they were pretty tired of beating each other up, and peace talks were started. Richard returned to Europe to tend to matters back home, while Saladin's health took a toll on him. He died in 1193, leaving behind an incredibly tenuous state of affairs in the Middle East.

Almost immediately, Ayyubid territory became the battleground between Saladin's three sons: Al-Afdal (who governed Damascus), Al-Aziz (who governed Egypt), and Az-Zahir (who ruled Aleppo). On paper, all of the emirs were supposed to swear loyalty to Al-Afdal, being Saladin's eldest son. Saladin's brother, Al-Adil (the same diplomat Richard wanted his sister Joan to marry during the peace talks) supported this dynamic, and bless his heart, did his damnedest to keep the brothers from strangling each other. Then the brothers started to think "heeeey, what kind of asshole makes peace between brothers? What's your game old man?" At this point, Al-Adil must've given a long, exasperated sigh, and used his own army to spank every single contender to the throne. All the sons were put in time out in minor outposts around the empire, while Al-Adil proclaimed himself sultan in February 1200. He more or less kept the peace in this position until his death in August 1218. Al-Adil was succeeded by his son Al-Kamil, who really wanted to just keep doing what his father had been doing, but unfortunately a bunch of snot-nosed European kids had tried and failed to retake the Holy Land in 1213.

Instead of inspiring the shitty 80s Saturday morning cartoon that it sounds like, the Children's Crusade instead got Pope Innocent III remember that oh yeah, Jerusalem was still in Muslim territory, and don't ask me why but apparently we just can't have that! The Fifth Crusade was called and arrived in the Holy Land in 1217. The Crusaders took aim at Egypt, because Jerusalem is great and all, but economically speaking, there was no way the Ayyubids could leave their beating artery unattended. By 1219, the Crusaders had become such a menace that Al-Kamil had no choice to concede to negotiations. His terms were extremely generous, offering to surrender control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. For the Crusaders, this was awesome! This was literally the entire reason they came all this way to wreck everyone's day! There was, however, one dill-hole bureaucrat named Pelagius Galvani who… for whatever godforsaken reason that I cannot possibly fathom, said… "nah, no deal". The Ayyubids at this point must've just looked back and forth at everyone in the room with slack jaws like an Old Spice commercial, and just sort of packed up to go back to fighting. Pelagius ordered an attack on Cairo, but knowing absolutely nothing about Egypt's geography, plopped his camp right in the middle of the Nile's flood plain. As this was clearly just pest control at this point, Al-Kamil opened the floodgates, wiped the Crusaders out, and sent them scurrying back to Europe with absolutely no territorial concessions. I'm not even pro-Crusader, but man, fuck you in particular, Pelagius.

Things might have gone better for the Crusaders if Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had shown up like he said he would, but he kept pulling the "oh sorry boss, I still can't come into work, I'm still totally sick" excuse until the Pope called him out and forced him to go in 1228. This Sixth Crusade was honestly my favorite of the bunch, because it involved almost no fighting. By this point, both Frederick II and Al-Kamil were so bogged down with dynastic disputes that they skipped straight to the part where they all sat down and talked terms. Jerusalem was handed over to the Christians (meaning it was their problem now) and Al-Kamil could get back to getting his own family in line until his death in 1238, whereupon his sons started clawing at each other's throats. His appointed successor, Al-Adil II, was deposed by the army in 1240, and they installed Al-Adil's half-brother As-Salih Ayyub on Egypt's throne. This claim was contested by his uncle, the confusingly named as-Salih Ismail, and Ayyub felt he couldn't trust even his most loyal advisors, because… well… look at the pattern in this family. Instead, he employed the service of mercenary slaves from the ranks of the Kipchak Turks to do his dirty work for him. These slaves were known in Arabic as "mamluk", which means "owned", and we'll be putting a big old pin in that for just a moment.

Another Turkic people had begun to migrate into Ayyubid lands at this point. Back in 1220, the Khwarazmians had made the single most suicidal mistake you could possibly make in all of history: they pissed off Genghis Khan. They'd been on the run ever since, and seeing an opportunity, Ayyub was like "heeey you can come right on in and settle but first I need you to do me a small favor and retake Jerusalem". The Khwarazmians nodded expediently and were like "yeah man retake Jerusalem totally sure whatever you say boss," and so in 1244, without any of the finesse or diplomacy of Saladin, the Khwarazmians completely sacked Jerusalem, marking the last time any Christian king would ever hold the territory. Not for lack of trying, as the Seventh Crusade was called under the leadership of King Louis IX of France, but instead of recapturing Jerusalem, he himself was captured. Before then, however, Ayyub had died, and his son Al-Muazzam Turanshah took his sweet ass time getting to Egypt to pick up the slack.

It was thus left to his army of mamluks to make a victorious stand at the Battle of Mansurah in February 1250. Instead of acknowledging the massive solid they did him, Al-Muazzam completely sidelined the mamluks. So, the same thing happened that always happens when you don't pay your mercenaries: they had Al-Muazzam assassinated and set up their own dynasty. An-Nasir Yusuf, emir of Damascus and grandson of Az-Zahir, took issue with this, and spent the next decade either bullying the Mamluks or trying to out-whine them in the court of the Abbasid Caliph. That second strategy hit a slight snag in 1258, though, because that was when the Mongols steamrolled over Baghdad and exterminated the Caliphate. Having been so preoccupied with harassing the Mamluks, Yusuf was completely unequipped to hold back the might of the Horde. Aleppo was utterly sacked in December 1259, and within a month, the Mongols had Yusuf's head on a platter. Ayyubid power was functionally extinct as a result, and the Herculean task of repelling the Mongols was left to the Mamluks at Ain Jalut, but that's a story for another day.

Design notes, whenever I do these, I'm in a constant tug-of-war with myself debating if I'm designing the soldiers way too simply or way too complex. You all know I love my details, but these are always meant to be generic NPC-type designs. For the regular, I feel it's too simple, and for the elite, I feel it's too complex. Ah well, I'm still actually very happy with how this one came out in the end. I had my doubts, especially when it came to the colors at first. I couldn't find any references to Saladin's army preferring any particular color, and all the depictions I could find paint them in all shades of the rainbow. I've mentioned before, this is actually pretty typical of historical armies. There wasn't really a concept of "national colors"... or "nations" for that matter, in the same way we imagine them today. To a medieval knight, a shirt was a shirt and metal was metal. It was more important not to have a spear lodged in your spleen than it was to show off how French you were or whatever. I did see it referenced multiple times that Saladin's personal banner was golden, so I decided to roll with that, and it actually came out looking surprisingly beautiful. I'm not normally one for gilded glamor, but something about it just really works well with medieval Islamic armor like this. Then again, I really like the look of medieval Islamic armor in general, so maybe I'm just biased-

Anyways, if I'm absent for longer than usual, it's because AC Mirage is about to come out in a couple days, and y'all know imma be playing the shit out of that. See you in Baghdad!

Description
I wanna start this one off by airing out a bit of dirty laundry I found in a rabbit hole. Initially, I was going to title this piece "Saracen Soldiers", because that's the most common word often used to denote the Muslim counterparts to the Crusaders in popular media. I came to find out, though, this word really doesn't do a service to the reality of this period in history. Saladin's army did not call themselves "Saracens", they were Arabs, Egyptians, Turks, and many other groups who pledged allegiance to the Ayyubid Dynasty. "Saracen" is the word that medieval Europeans used to refer to any and all Muslims by the 12th century, usually in a derogatory sense. No one seems quite sure where the hell this word comes from. We can trace it back to the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who records the word "Sarakenoi" as referring to the desert nomads living in the vicinity of the city-dwelling Arabs. It seems most likely that this in turn is derived from the Arabic root "ś-r-q" which means "Easterner", though it could also be derived from Arabic "sariqeen" meaning "thieves". It's possible these two roots aren't mutually exclusive, of course. In both cases, the indigenous Arabs used the word to refer to the Bedouin tribes who often raided their settlements, and when the Byzantines needed a word to designate Muslim raiders, that was the closest proper noun in their translations. Put it through a thousand year game of Telephone and eventually "Saracen" just comes to mean "any Muslim I don't like", which of course in those times were… all Muslims. It's sort of how the peoples of the Middle East just used the term "Frank" to describe all white people in the region, even though they weren't all French and certainly weren't unified. They were simply the first to come in and break everyone's shit, so that became the reference point. All of that in consideration, I opted to forgo using the term "Saracen" here, and instead clumped these soldiers together as "Ayyubid" which I think is both more accurate and more helpful for educational purposes. I'll definitely still be using "Franks" though, because I have zero qualms about bullying the French. Hon hon hon.

Okay, on to the actual history. I already went over the beginnings of the Ayyubid Dynasty in my blurb about Saladin, so I'll try to keep the summary brief here. Saladin, of course, was the renowned Kurdish commander who got his career off the ground trying to make Nur ad-Din's dream of uniting the Muslim world against the Crusader states a reality. Saladin was sent to Egypt with his uncle Shirkah in 1169 (nice), on a mission to conquer what was left of the dying Fatimid Caliphate. The operation went swimmingly, and Shirkuh was crowned vizier of Egypt. He died of quinsy just two months after the conquest, though, so the job was passed to Saladin. Saladin turned out to be a master diplomat, and ensured that all the major governmental positions were filled with people he could trust, usually close family members. Of course, the amount of Egyptian resources you own is typically proportional to the size of your balls, and when Nur ad-Din died in 1174, Saladin looked to his former territory and said "heyyyy, you know, this is mine now I've decided". Saladin thus marched into Syria, assimilated or suppressed all his rivals, and he was proclaimed sultan of both lands. Thus, his Ayyubid Dynasty (named for his father, Najm al-Din Ayyub), was established, just in time for a Crusade.

Saladin already had "boot the Franks out of my Holy Land" on his bucket list for a while now. The many Baldwins who ruled over the Kingdom of Jerusalem had an annoying habit of not making peace an option, what with their oath-breaking and caravan-plundering. Guy of Lusignan's marriage to Sibylla, wife of Baldwin IV, in 1186 ended up causing just the right amount of internal strife for Saladin to slip in and lay a trap at the Crusader fortress of Tiberias in 1187. The Crusaders' miserable attempt to rescue the fortress led to Saladin's most famous victory: the Battle of Hattin, which opened the door for the sultan to march on most sacred Jerusalem and negotiate its transfer into Ayyubid hands. Saladin still allowed Christian pilgrims to come and go through the city as they pleased, as was usually custom for medieval Islamic rulers, but apparently this wasn't good enough for the Pope, who died of a heart attack as soon as he heard the news. With his dying breath, His overreactive Holiness called for the Third Crusade. The most famous man to answer the call was Richard the Lionheart, King of England, a renowned warrior who came to mutually respect Saladin as an honorable warrior and worthy opponent. Richard was definitely the better soldier, wiping the floor with Saladin at such famous battles as Acre, Arsuf, and Jaffa, all in 1191. Saladin, though, was able to outlast Richard. A failed attempt to reclaim Jaffa in 1192 made both sides realize they were pretty tired of beating each other up, and peace talks were started. Richard returned to Europe to tend to matters back home, while Saladin's health took a toll on him. He died in 1193, leaving behind an incredibly tenuous state of affairs in the Middle East.

Almost immediately, Ayyubid territory became the battleground between Saladin's three sons: Al-Afdal (who governed Damascus), Al-Aziz (who governed Egypt), and Az-Zahir (who ruled Aleppo). On paper, all of the emirs were supposed to swear loyalty to Al-Afdal, being Saladin's eldest son. Saladin's brother, Al-Adil (the same diplomat Richard wanted his sister Joan to marry during the peace talks) supported this dynamic, and bless his heart, did his damnedest to keep the brothers from strangling each other. Then the brothers started to think "heeeey, what kind of asshole makes peace between brothers? What's your game old man?" At this point, Al-Adil must've given a long, exasperated sigh, and used his own army to spank every single contender to the throne. All the sons were put in time out in minor outposts around the empire, while Al-Adil proclaimed himself sultan in February 1200. He more or less kept the peace in this position until his death in August 1218. Al-Adil was succeeded by his son Al-Kamil, who really wanted to just keep doing what his father had been doing, but unfortunately a bunch of snot-nosed European kids had tried and failed to retake the Holy Land in 1213.

Instead of inspiring the shitty 80s Saturday morning cartoon that it sounds like, the Children's Crusade instead got Pope Innocent III remember that oh yeah, Jerusalem was still in Muslim territory, and don't ask me why but apparently we just can't have that! The Fifth Crusade was called and arrived in the Holy Land in 1217. The Crusaders took aim at Egypt, because Jerusalem is great and all, but economically speaking, there was no way the Ayyubids could leave their beating artery unattended. By 1219, the Crusaders had become such a menace that Al-Kamil had no choice to concede to negotiations. His terms were extremely generous, offering to surrender control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. For the Crusaders, this was awesome! This was literally the entire reason they came all this way to wreck everyone's day! There was, however, one dill-hole bureaucrat named Pelagius Galvani who… for whatever godforsaken reason that I cannot possibly fathom, said… "nah, no deal". The Ayyubids at this point must've just looked back and forth at everyone in the room with slack jaws like an Old Spice commercial, and just sort of packed up to go back to fighting. Pelagius ordered an attack on Cairo, but knowing absolutely nothing about Egypt's geography, plopped his camp right in the middle of the Nile's flood plain. As this was clearly just pest control at this point, Al-Kamil opened the floodgates, wiped the Crusaders out, and sent them scurrying back to Europe with absolutely no territorial concessions. I'm not even pro-Crusader, but man, fuck you in particular, Pelagius.

Things might have gone better for the Crusaders if Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had shown up like he said he would, but he kept pulling the "oh sorry boss, I still can't come into work, I'm still totally sick" excuse until the Pope called him out and forced him to go in 1228. This Sixth Crusade was honestly my favorite of the bunch, because it involved almost no fighting. By this point, both Frederick II and Al-Kamil were so bogged down with dynastic disputes that they skipped straight to the part where they all sat down and talked terms. Jerusalem was handed over to the Christians (meaning it was their problem now) and Al-Kamil could get back to getting his own family in line until his death in 1238, whereupon his sons started clawing at each other's throats. His appointed successor, Al-Adil II, was deposed by the army in 1240, and they installed Al-Adil's half-brother As-Salih Ayyub on Egypt's throne. This claim was contested by his uncle, the confusingly named as-Salih Ismail, and Ayyub felt he couldn't trust even his most loyal advisors, because… well… look at the pattern in this family. Instead, he employed the service of mercenary slaves from the ranks of the Kipchak Turks to do his dirty work for him. These slaves were known in Arabic as "mamluk", which means "owned", and we'll be putting a big old pin in that for just a moment.

Another Turkic people had begun to migrate into Ayyubid lands at this point. Back in 1220, the Khwarazmians had made the single most suicidal mistake you could possibly make in all of history: they pissed off Genghis Khan. They'd been on the run ever since, and seeing an opportunity, Ayyub was like "heeey you can come right on in and settle but first I need you to do me a small favor and retake Jerusalem". The Khwarazmians nodded expediently and were like "yeah man retake Jerusalem totally sure whatever you say boss," and so in 1244, without any of the finesse or diplomacy of Saladin, the Khwarazmians completely sacked Jerusalem, marking the last time any Christian king would ever hold the territory. Not for lack of trying, as the Seventh Crusade was called under the leadership of King Louis IX of France, but instead of recapturing Jerusalem, he himself was captured. Before then, however, Ayyub had died, and his son Al-Muazzam Turanshah took his sweet ass time getting to Egypt to pick up the slack.

It was thus left to his army of mamluks to make a victorious stand at the Battle of Mansurah in February 1250. Instead of acknowledging the massive solid they did him, Al-Muazzam completely sidelined the mamluks. So, the same thing happened that always happens when you don't pay your mercenaries: they had Al-Muazzam assassinated and set up their own dynasty. An-Nasir Yusuf, emir of Damascus and grandson of Az-Zahir, took issue with this, and spent the next decade either bullying the Mamluks or trying to out-whine them in the court of the Abbasid Caliph. That second strategy hit a slight snag in 1258, though, because that was when the Mongols steamrolled over Baghdad and exterminated the Caliphate. Having been so preoccupied with harassing the Mamluks, Yusuf was completely unequipped to hold back the might of the Horde. Aleppo was utterly sacked in December 1259, and within a month, the Mongols had Yusuf's head on a platter. Ayyubid power was functionally extinct as a result, and the Herculean task of repelling the Mongols was left to the Mamluks at Ain Jalut, but that's a story for another day.

Design notes, whenever I do these, I'm in a constant tug-of-war with myself debating if I'm designing the soldiers way too simply or way too complex. You all know I love my details, but these are always meant to be generic NPC-type designs. For the regular, I feel it's too simple, and for the elite, I feel it's too complex. Ah well, I'm still actually very happy with how this one came out in the end. I had my doubts, especially when it came to the colors at first. I couldn't find any references to Saladin's army preferring any particular color, and all the depictions I could find paint them in all shades of the rainbow. I've mentioned before, this is actually pretty typical of historical armies. There wasn't really a concept of "national colors"... or "nations" for that matter, in the same way we imagine them today. To a medieval knight, a shirt was a shirt and metal was metal. It was more important not to have a spear lodged in your spleen than it was to show off how French you were or whatever. I did see it referenced multiple times that Saladin's personal banner was golden, so I decided to roll with that, and it actually came out looking surprisingly beautiful. I'm not normally one for gilded glamor, but something about it just really works well with medieval Islamic armor like this. Then again, I really like the look of medieval Islamic armor in general, so maybe I'm just biased-

Anyways, if I'm absent for longer than usual, it's because AC Mirage is about to come out in a couple days, and y'all know imma be playing the shit out of that. See you in Baghdad!