The EconomistJune 1st 2019 Books & arts 792 cesses. WalterScott’s“TheTalisman”, in
which a disguised Saladin heals an ailing
Richard the Lionheart, is also bunk. The
two men never met.
And Saladin’s conquests owed more to
artifice and luck than to military prowess.
Potentates in Egypt and Syria made way for
him by dying. He negotiated truces to avoid
fighting on several fronts and to stall for
time while he rearmed. He won Jerusalem
at the negotiating table, but lost Acre in bat-
tle. His greatest military victory, at the bat-
tle of Hattin in 1187 (reimagined above), was
a masterpiece of guile. He goaded the cru-
saders into a summer march through
parched land, then choked them with
bush-fires and taunted them by spilling
water on the ground.
Many Muslim contemporaries had a de-
cidedly lukewarm impression. Saladin was
not above the occasional massacre. His
road to Jerusalem involved a long detour
through other people’s territories. Con-
quests in Egypt, Yemen and Mosul helped
amass the forces and revenues needed to
take on the crusaders, but it was only in his
last years that the interlopers became his
primary target. Perhaps most damning of
all was Saladin’s role in stemming the in-
tellectual curiosity, pluralism and joie de vi-
vre that characterised classical Islam, and
in precipitating its descent into intoler-
ance and fundamentalism.
In his zeal to impose Sunni orthodoxy
on the Middle East, he closed Alexandria’s
120 pubs and crucified a philosopher in
Aleppo. Shias in Egypt still dub him Kharab
al-Din, the destroyer of religion, not Salah
al-Din, its righteous reformer. They deride
him for toppling the magnificent Shia Ca-
liphate of the Fatimids, selling off its vast
library and turning pleasure palaces into
madrassas for learning jihad.
Sowhythehero-worship?GamalAbdel
Nasser,SaddamHusseinandOsamabin
LadenveneratedSaladinasa rolemodelfor
fightingWesternimperialismandrecover-
ing Jerusalem. The West’s adulation is
moreperplexing.MrPhillipssuggeststhat
crusadersbackfromtheHolyLandneeded
anexplanationforlosing.Theyelectedto
emphasisechivalryoverIslam.TheWest
needsMuslimheroes,butSaladinmaynot
bethemostfittingchoice. 7Holy warriors at the battle of HattinT
he episodestarts on an ordinary night
in Mecca in 1979, as worshippers file
into the grand mosque for prayers. Viewers
are given a few hints of what will follow:
characters swap furtive glances; a camera
zooms in ominously from above. But any
Saudi watching “Al-Asouf” this Ramadan
already knew the twist. Rifles were un-
packed. The doors of the mosque were
chained shut. A siege that would last two
weeks and transform the kingdom began.
“Al-Asouf” (“Winds of Change”) is not,
in fact, principally a series about the siege
of Mecca; the clash does not feature until
episode 15, which aired on May 20th. Earli-
er hours were languid, focusing on the
transformation of Riyadh, a sleepy town
soon to become a modern metropolis.
But the scenes in Mecca are the denoue-
ment. The broadcaster, mbc, used them inadvertisements. Saudis discussed them
endlessly on social media. With good rea-
son—the siege was a seminal event in Sau-
di history. Its leader, Juhayman al-Otaibi,
was once a member of the praetorian
guard. He left the force in 1973 and slowly
became an extremist, angry about the sup-
posed decadence of the royals and the in-
trusion of “Western” culture. After the
siege was resolved King Khaled, fearful that
these criticisms might find wider support,
steered Saudi Arabia in a more conserva-
tive direction. Cinemas were closed; gen-
der segregation was strictly enforced.
Ramadan is the biggest month for Arab
television, when families spend hours in
front of the set after breaking their fasts. In
a region with little free media, the shows
broadcast at this time are a barometer for
politics—a glimpse at the messages Arab
governments wish to send their citizens.
As Egypt slides further into a repressive
dictatorship, for example, producers churn
out police procedurals that glorify the se-
curity services. “Al-Asouf” was not con-
ceived by the government. But it could not
have aired on mbc, which is mostly state-
owned, without official blessing.
This is the first dramatic portrayal of the
siege, long a taboo subject—but one the
crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, is
now eager to broach. Last year women
gained the right to drive. Sexes mix freely
in Riyadh’s cafés; the once-feared religious
police are nowhere to be found. To justify
all this, the prince has sought to cleave the
kingdom’s modern history in two. In his
telling, the years since 1979 have been an
aberration, foisted on the country by politi-
cal Islamists and Iran (which had its Islam-
ic revolution months before the siege).
As historical scholarship, this is ques-
tionable. The modern state was founded as
an alliance between the royal family and
puritanical clerics. No one would have con-
fused mid-century Riyadh with free-
wheeling intellectual capitals like Cairo or
Beirut. But it is astute politics. The first sea-
son of “Al-Asouf”, which portrayed the ear-
ly 1970s, depicted adultery, boozy parties
and illegitimate children. In this version of
history, Saudi society was once more toler-
ant; religious conservatives were interlop-
ers who went too far in purging its diversity
and imposing a doctrinaire vision.
The series is a shift for its star, Nasser al-
Gassabi, previously known for his role in
the long-running satire “Tash ma Tash”
(“No Big Deal”). That show had its own po-
litical allusions, lampooning the religious
police and other aspects of Saudi society—
humour that felt like a despairing rear-
guard action. These days, the kingdom is
still deeply conservative; social reforms are
coupled with harsh political repression.
Still, many Saudis see this as a hopeful mo-
ment—a time not for dark humour but for
thoughtful drama. 7CAIRO
A series featuring the siege of Mecca
captures the mood of Saudi ArabiaSaudi televisionPrincely drama