The conquest of Jerusalem that shocked Europe — with mercy

When the armies of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, they killed much of the city's Muslim and Jewish population. The memory of that massacre lingered across the Islamic world for generations.

By the 1180s Saladin had united Egypt and Syria under his rule. In July 1187 he destroyed the main Crusader army at the Battle of Hattin, near the Sea of Galilee, and moved on Jerusalem.

The city was defended by the nobleman Balian of Ibelin, who threatened to destroy the holy sites if no terms were offered. Saladin negotiated. On 2 October 1187 the city surrendered, and its Christian inhabitants were allowed to buy their freedom with a ransom.

Many of the poor could not pay. Chroniclers record that Saladin and his brother al-Adil freed thousands of them without payment. There was no massacre.

The fall of Jerusalem launched the Third Crusade and his long duel with Richard the Lionheart. Yet even his enemies' writers came to describe Saladin as a model of chivalry. Victory, he showed, can be measured by what you choose not to do with it.