Saladin

CHAPTER 6 · 1171–1187 · The Crusades, 1095–1291

The map’s single most important colour change is quiet: in 1171 grey Fatimid Egypt turns charcoal. Saladin, sent to Egypt as Nur al-Din’s officer, has abolished the Shia Fatimid caliphate and returned Egypt to Sunni allegiance — and made himself its master. When Nur al-Din dies in 1174, Saladin spends a decade taking Syria too, mostly from fellow Muslims. His legitimacy is engineered as carefully as any conquest: he marries into the Zengid house, wins the Baghdad caliph’s recognition, and wraps the whole project in the jihad propaganda Nur al-Din had built. For the first time since the crusade

The turn: The Horns of Hattin, 4 July 1187.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.