Page 9 - Devastates Saladin News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

To take on the christians, throw them out of jerusalem, and recover it for islam. >> but many choose war. >> so one of the tensions in saladin's life is the tension between saying i'm the hero of sunni, islam, and the fact that he spends quite a long time fighting his fellow sunni muslims in creating that empire. >> he said to his son later, don't get used to killing. don't get into killing. don't believe in killing because blood never sleeps. >> we shouldn't confuse our desire to transform saladin into this middle eastern sage. he was a general, a brutal general. that's what saladin was. >> s...

Region want to throw out the westerners. >> and so this is what prompted the rise of saladin, to take back jerusalem from the christians who had taken it from the muslims. >> saladin was a kurd, an ethnic kurd, who was born in the city of tikrit. >> he's famous for his generosity. in fact, his administrators say, we've got to hide money from him because if he knows he's got it, he's going to give it away. >> saladin wants to conquer jerusalem. but in order to conquer jerusalem, he's first got to unite all of the disparate arab armies into one. meaning he spent a lot of his career fighting agai...

Major port city at the time was acre. >> the city of acre on the northern coast of present-day israel was an entry point for the maritime trade that flourished across the mediterranean. >> it was an actual economic and political capital of the crusader project in the middle east. it was very important for them because the port of acre is huge. the city is large. >> king guy has not gotten any men, but he knows that he has to give them a target, something to fight for. and he decides to attack the city of acre. >> if they could capture it, they could defend the coast, then, and mount a charge o...

So, richard was a great king who lived by the sword and died by the sword. >> at the end of the third crusade, saladin is able to return to demascus where he is given a hero's welcome. but he has spent years and years fighting. physically and mentally he is shattered. and just six or seven months after richard has gone home, saladin falls ill. on the fourth of march, 1193, the great hero of the near east dies. >> this was a man who united all of these muslim groups and took back jerusalem from the crusaders. and now, what's going to happen to all these muslim groups that saladin united? >> his...

By all accounts, he is equally skilled as saladin, but he's his younger brother, so he had few opportunities to show that. >> he's a man of courtesy, of culture. he enjoys talking with richard about music, about singing, about hunting. he's part of a positive relationship that's formed between the two of them. and in the course of the negotiations, there is a radical solution put forward by richard at one stage, and that involves his sister. >> joanna is richard the lionheart's sister, who happens to be the queen of sicily. and when her husband dies, richard stops by sicily on the way to the h...