“I have become so great as I am because I have won men's hearts by gentleness and kindliness.”
— saladin ayyubid
Recorded in medieval chronicles and cited by Stanley Lane-Poole in Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1898.
When I entered Jerusalem in October 1187, my emirs wanted blood. They remembered 1099. I stood in the al-Aqsa Mosque and chose differently. I let the Christians buy their freedom. I paid the ransom for thousands who could not. People call it mercy. It was simpler: I refused to become what I fought against. When you hold power over someone, that is your test.