Description: Saladin represents the best kind of biography--a portrait of a man who is said to have made an age, and the most complete account we have to date of an age that made the man. The result is a unique view of the Crusades from an Arab perspective, and an erudite biography of a political figure whose image was layered in myth with the passage of time.
Brief description: Anne-Marie Eddé is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, and was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reims.
Review Quotes: A central figure in the history of the Crusades, an enlightened sovereign, a reunifier of the Muslim world, Saladin...is more than an icon in the East, he is the greatest figure of its glorious past and the model of the ruler par excellence. Profoundly attached to Arab values, he is awash with unparalleled glory and respect from the time of his reign until the present, and from his own territories to Europe. That cannot fail to raise problems when it comes to writing his biography. In fact, between hagiographical accounts emerging directly from his close circle and hostile criticism from his fiercest detractors, there was no objective middle course. This book constitutes the first step on that path: rigorous without being academic, resituating the man within his context and noting the influences exerted on him, it proposes to discover, beyond the usual panegyrics, the hidden face of Saladin, a portrait in light and shadow.--Chrysostome Gourio, Libraire Le Comptoir des Mots