SOURCE: “The Arabic Sources for the Life of Saladin,” Speculum, Vol. XXV, No. 1, January, 1950, pp. 58–72.

In the following essay, Gibb examines the style, content, and historical accuracy and value of several contemporary Arabic sources of the life of Saladin.

All historians who have studied the life of Saladin have given the first place to two Arabic sources: the Life of Saladin by Bahâeddîn Ibn Shaddâd (translated in Volume III of the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Orientaux), and the universal history, el-Kâmil, of ‘Izzeddîn Ibn el-Athîr (partially translated in Volumes I and II, 1, in the same series). As to the authority and reliability of the former, little can now be added to the testimony of Stanley Lane-Poole in his preface (p. vi) to Saladin, in the ‘Heroes of the Nations' series (London and New York, 1898). Bahâeddîn (1145-1234) writes with...