The extraordinary character and career of Saladin are the keys to
understanding the Battle of Hattin, the fall of Jerusalem and the
failure of the Third Crusade. He united warring Muslim lands,
reconquered the bulk of Crusader states and faced the Richard the Lion
Heart, king of England, in one of the most famous confrontations in
medieval warfare. Geoffrey Hindley's sympathetic and highly readable
study of the life and times of this remarkable, many-sided man, who
dominated the Middle East in his day, gives a fascinating insight into
his achievements and into the Muslim world of his contemporaries.