[In the following review, Jakeman maintains that The Book of Saladin is a fulfilling read, utilizing “sparse prose” filled with exotic settings in order to create a realistic portrait of the sultan.]

[The Book of Saladin] is a work of fiction based on a historical character who has attained quasi-mythical status in both east and west. To the Muslim world, he is a rallying cry, an almost superhuman conqueror, an utterly virtuous religious figure as the commander of a holy war, leading the charge onward at sword point as the famous equestrian statue at Damascus. To the Christian world, he has long been the redeeming light in a world perceived generally as obscure and cruel: the rare courtly opponent surrounded by oriental darkness and wiles.

It was this western version of the Saladin legend that enabled the 19th century to create the concept of a superior warrior breed, wielders of damascened weapons as described in Lane-Poole's Art of the Saracens. Saracens, not Muslims or Arabs or Kurds. By splitting off certain aspects of Islamic history, it was possible for the west to appreciate a refined aristocratic culture unconnected with the inconvenient real peoples in the Muslim world. The Saladin myth was a powerful one that still informed Eden's aristocratic viewpoint in the Suez crisis, when he clearly could not believe that an ordinary little city clerk like Nasser, holding a pen instead of a sword and dressed in trousers instead of chain mail, could be an acceptable Arab leader.

We are used to the Saladin legend told from the Christian point of view, a set iconography of encounters between east and west glamourised by writers from Sir Walter Scott to Graham Shelby, a version that has sided with the Crusaders except for the occasional excursion to concede Saladin's chivalry. This version has been ultimately derived from the western chronicles. Historians who would have been shamed not to read Greek and Latin sources in the original had no compunctions over ignoring the Arab accounts. Sir Steven Runciman, the definitive modern western historian of the Crusades and a master of Byzantine Greek, did not think it necessary to learn Arabic.

It is illuminating, then, to have the Saladin story told by a writer who has immersed himself in the other side. Tariq Ali's novel creates an authentic-seeming court, full of intrigue, dominated by a man who is charismatic yet not a hero of romance, a rather hesitant limping figure, a sultan whose preferred diet is soup and beans.

The life of Saladin is recounted by a Jewish chronicler, Ibn Yakub, an attractive figure whose own story is told in the intervals. The narrative is partly dictated by the sultan himself, partly by others such as the elderly scholar Imad al-Din, and the fascinating figure of Maimonides hovers in the background. The innocent Ibn Yakub is thrown into a dangerous world of shifting alliances, deceptive appearances and military calculation.

As well as the great scenes—the defeat of the Crusaders at Hattin, the encounter with Reynald of Chatillon, the taking of Jerusalem—this is the private life of the sultan, with lively characters who will not be treated as ciphers and a good deal of humour and directness of speech. In Saladin's entourage are strong and intelligent women, the Sultana Jamila and her female lover, and their story is interwoven with that of the sultan's public life. It may be controversial to assign such dominance to the women in a harem, but these are characters in a convincing story with a reality beyond that of historical cliché.

This is a satisfying novel, told, despite its exotic settings, in sparse prose carrying a ring of authenticity reminiscent at times of Naguib Mahfouz. The book deals in complex and subtle people who question the nature of the relationship between body and soul and ponder the purposes of war, not in easy stereotypes or generalisations, even in an area which has traditionally been replete with them. It gives a feeling of how it must have been to be in the company of a great but harried genius and also paints a pluralistic and tolerant Islam, a world of philosophical inquiry as well as military prowess. Saladin's despair of perpetuating such a world and his anguish over lack of Muslim unity, as his life moves towards its conclusion, are moving. “The sultan often asks himself if this bad dream will ever end or is it our fate as the inhabitants of an area which gave birth to Moses, Jesus and Mohammed to be always at war.”

It is here, perhaps, that one senses in the author the sadness of a radical who has seen the failure of ideals in his own lifetime. If this novel offers little comfort for the Crusader side of the story, its dense and multi-faceted explorations are also a plea against all religious bigotry.