THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, August 21, 2019 |A
A Portrait
Of a Champion
The Life & Legend of the Sultan Saladin
By Jonathan Phillips
(Yale, 478 pages, $32.50)BOOKSHELF| By Christopher Tyerman
U
ntil the 21st century, Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub
(Righteous of the Faith; Joseph, son of Ayyub), known
in Europe as Saladin, was probably the most famous
Muslim in Western culture after the Prophet Muhammad
himself. The historical reputation of Saladin (1137-93) rests on
a few celebrated achievements, each recounted and analyzed
in Jonathan Phillips’s learned and engaging biography. He
created a new Near Eastern empire that united Egypt with
Syria, in the process suppressing the heretical (to orthodox
Sunni Muslims) Shiite Fatimid caliphate in Cairo (1171); he
recaptured Jerusalem for Islam (1187), defeating Christian
rulers who had held the city since the First Crusade in 1099;
and he resisted the massive Third Crusade (1188-92) led, in
part, by Richard the Lionheart.
Saladin’s legendary status was burnished early on by
elaborate Western fantasies that emphasized his supposed
chivalric qualities of bravery and mercy, and in later fictions
from Walter Scott’s “The Talisman” (1825) to the movie
“Kingdom of Heaven” (2005),
which similarly portray him
as a worthy opponent. These
depictions employ Saladin as a
sophisticated, tolerant, just
and generous cipher, intended
to contrast with Western
leaders’ supposed narrow-
minded aggression or myopic
enthusiasm. This anachronistic
rebranding of an archenemy into
an icon of praiseworthy rule is
only equaled, perhaps, by the
admiration some have for
Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the Islamic world, Saladin’s
actual achievements were also, if less
tendentiously, refashioned to create a lasting
portrait of a champion of Muslim tradition and power, a hero
who successfully overcame heretics and infidels. The image of
Saladin as the ideal pious Quranic leader remained a potent
symbol in regional public memory, serving as an abiding
challenge to politically divisive or corrupt local rulers. As
Western powers encroached on the eastern Mediterranean
over the last two centuries, he also came to be seen as the
epitome of resistance for proponents of Arab unity and
independence, from secularists such as Gamal Nasser, Hafez
Assad or Saddam Hussein to the religious radicals of the
Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Thus there are two Saladins, the 12th-century ruler and the
equally historical subsequent political and literary invention.
Not the least virtue of “The Life and Legend of the Sultan
Saladin” is Mr. Phillips’s wide-ranging scrutiny of both.
Saladin’s achievements as a Kurdish mercenary captain who
founded an empire are startling on any scale—the result of
skill and luck, as well as the fluid political and social setting of
the 12th-century Near East, which Mr. Phillips captures well.
Inevitably Saladin has inspired many previous scholarly
biographies, most recently a rich investigation of evidence by
Anne-Marie Eddé (2008), translated from the French by Jane
Marie Todd in 2011. Unlike his predecessors, however, Mr.
Phillips is not an Arabist; he is a professor of history at Royal
Holloway, University of London. Nonetheless, aided by
existing translations and new ones (not least those of his
former research pupil Osman Latiff), Mr. Phillips has fruitfully
extended the range of Arabic source material to create a
rounded portrait of Saladin’s world, often sketched in sharp,
unexpected detail.The author makes telling observations on the importance
of Saladin’s Ayyubid family, particularly the loyalty of his
father (Ayyub), brother (al-Adil), and nephew (Taqi al-din),
who all held land and power under him. His speculations on
Saladin’s psychological and physical state in his exhausting
final years are finely judged, drawing on biographies by the
sultan’s intimates. The taxing bodily burdens of life as
politician, administrator, ruler and warrior come across well,
and the picture is lent immediacy by Mr. Phillips’s own travels
in the region, from the sands around Acre to Saladin’s
mausoleum in Damascus.
Mr. Phillips draws in the reader with vivid accounts of
people, places and events, relying on apt quotation from
primary sources of scenic descriptions and direct speech.
Yet the unwary might miss a central difficulty: Much of the
biographical material about Saladin was composed after his
success by apologists following formal patterns to create an
image of an ideal prince, or was written many generations
later. More generally, it is a bit odd that a third of Mr.
Phillips’s biography is dedicated to the climactic
confrontation with the Franks and crusaders between 1187
and 1192—well-trodden territory in which Mr. Phillips can
excavate little new. This account also underplays the
important effects within the Islamic world of Saladin’s
suppression of the Shiite Fatimids.
The picture that emerges of the historical Saladin is
admiring. Mr. Phillips sidesteps what he calls the “eternal
dilemma” of seeing Saladin either as a pious holy warrior or a
grasping dynast, a paragon of sanctity or of selfish ambition.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Because he was a Kurdish
upstart, Saladin needed to wrap himself in the aura of holy
warrior and upholder of orthodox Islam. It justified his own
usurpation of power and lent respectability to followers of
previous regimes who were changing allegiances.
All medieval rulers lived their lives—domestic no less than
official—in public. Saladin’s austere, Quranic lifestyle, even if
gilded by his eulogists, could be seen as a necessity; it hardly
opens a window into his soul. After all, he failed to complete
the Hajj, sending a proxy, and spent most of his career fighting
fellow Muslims (Sunnis as well as Shiite). Only after the
capture of Jerusalem did the mission to expel the Christians—
with whom he previously had made a series of alliances—
appear an inevitable trajectory.
Mr. Phillips’s book concludes with an innovative and
sweeping final section on posthumous images of Saladin,
demonstrating precisely how memories of the past are
unfixed and easily manipulated. He has been recast as every-
thing from a chivalrous knight to a tolerant gentleman of the
Enlightenment to a modern jihadist fighter. Whatever the
truth behind this image-making, Saladin’s was a truly
astonishing career, one to which Mr. Phillips does justice.Mr. Tyerman is a professor at the University of Oxford
and the author, most recently, of “How to Plan a Crusade.”The legend of Saladin as an ideal Quranic leader
who fought back invaders remains a potent
symbol in the Islamic world’s public memory.The Mexican-Salvadoran Antagonism
I
buy drinking water from
a local store in Los Ange-
les called the Watería.
Rosa runs the place. We speak
in Spanish, mostly about our
kids. But one time she
launched into a story about a
man who had come in the day
before. He was belligerent,
coarse and flung curse words
at her. She said, “Of course
the guy was Salvadoran.”
I knew right then: Rosa was
Mexican. I let her go on for a
while before telling her that I,
too,wasSalvadoran.Ismiled
when I said it, to take the
sting out of the words.
Her jaw dropped. She said I
didn’t look Salvadoran—more
Argentine, or maybe Italian.
She was vexed. “You’re such a
gentleman, how can you be
Salvadoran?” I told her my fa-
ther was white. “Ah,” she said,
“so that’s where the goodness
comes from!”
So much was happening in
such a short conversation. The
entire history of animosity be-
tween Salvadorans and Mexi-
cans unfolded as Rosa filled
my water bottles.
The hatred goes back a
long way, though I haven’t
metaSalvadoranorMexican
who knows when it began. It’s
our own Hatfield and McCoyfeud: One doesn’t trust the
other, but neither group
knows why. It’s simply the
way things are.
The writer Gustavo Arel-
lano has a theory. In a 2009
LA Weekly article, he claims
the rancor began in 1821,
shortly after Central America
gained independence from
Spain. Mexico tried to swallow
the region into its empire. ElSalvador said no way. They
went to war. Eventually, Mex-
ico left Central America alone.
Mexico had other issues,
mainly its relationship with
the U.S. and the two coun-
tries’ fight over territory. But
the animosity between Mexico
and El Salvador remained.
Some might be tempted to
tell us both to get over it al-
ready. But are old grudges re-
ally so silly, or so unusual?
The polarization between the
American right and left isn’t
anything new, even if it seems
worse than ever. But Ameri-
cans are lucky; I don’t know
any who have to flee persecu-
tion or poverty to find a home
in another country.
In northern Mexico, Central
Americans gather by the thou-
sands, alongside Mexicans
who are leaving their own na-
tion for the same reasons:
gang violence, economic hard-
ship, the desire for a better,
less fearful life. Desperation
has shoved them together. Iwonder how the age-old ha-
tred is playing out.
I don’t feel the Mexican-
Salvadoran conflict except in
little moments, such as with
my water lady, Rosa. I don’t
have to worry about gang vio-
lence running me out of my
country. I’ve never had to
push against a border, along-
side thousands of other refu-
gees, to find a better life for
myself and my kin.
Rosa and I now politely
avoid the Mexican-Salvadoran
conflict. We talk about our
kids, the weather, President
Trump. She has relatives on
the border, and worries con-
stantly for them. She trusts
me enough to say she also
came to the U.S. without pa-
pers, years ago. We can speak
freely in the Watería, where
there are no borders.Mr. Villatoro is a professor
of literature at Mount St.
Mary’s University in Los
Angeles.By Marcos Villatoro
It flared up in a small
store in Los Angeles
called the Watería.OPINION
The Eliza-
beth Warren
Scares Me
Roundtable
unveiled a
new policy
statement
this week.
Oh, wait, I’m
mistaken. It
was the
Business
Roundtable that issued the
new statement.
Read it for yourself. There
isn’t much to object to, unless
you are Rep. Alexandria Oca-
sio-Cortez.
“The free-market system is
the best means of generating
good jobs, a strong and sus-
tainable economy, innovation,
a healthy environment and
economic opportunity for all.”
A central purpose of the
corporation is “generating
long-term value for sharehold-
ers, who provide the capital
that allows companies to in-
vest, grow and innovate.”
August being a slow news
month, introduction of the
word “stakeholders” on the
way to delivering these bro-
mides is what set the media
aflame this week. By whomp-
ing up the significance of this
rhetorical innovation, we are
invited to hurry past an obvi-
ous question: How can share-
holder wealth ever be created
except by satisfying other
stakeholders, who include cus-
tomers, workers, suppliers
and the communities that cre-
ate the legal environment in
which firms operate?
All of the above participate
voluntarily. Apple, one of the
signers, has never put a gun
to your head and marched you
CEOs for President Warren
down to the Apple store to
buy its products. It doesn’t
dragoon the best college grad-
uates against their will to
work for high pay and gener-
ous benefits in a building by
Norman Foster.
Widely cited is the 1970 ar-
ticle by the late Milton Fried-
man, arguing that a public
company’s purpose is to in-
crease its profits legally and
nothing else. Supposedly his
wisdom is now obsolete. But
his most important words, in
the same article, may be a
conditional statement ques-
tioning whether any corpo-
rate sloganeering to the con-
trary should ever be taken
“seriously.”
After all, CEOs will still be
hired by boards who are
elected by shareholders; they
will still be rewarded under
contracts that pay them for
producing sustainable in-
creases in the stock price
(that’s what those vesting re-
quirements are for). Before
this week’s statement, CEOs
boasted freely about their em-
ployee-happiness ratings,
their sustainability programs,
their diversity efforts, as if
these were perfectly consis-
tent with shareholder wealth-
maximization duties. What
changed?
The press, in trying to
make sense of nonsense, reli-
ably takes refuge in the fal-
lacy of conflating shareholder
wealth maximization with
short-run profit maximization.
These are completely dif-
ferent things. Any company
can boost immediate profits
by cutting customer service,
advertising, product develop-
ment, etc. But its share pricewould go down, not up.
Companies maximize
shareholder wealth by opti-
mizing (not minimizing, not
maximizing) other values like
customer happiness and
worker satisfaction. If there’s
a better way, let’s hear it.
Maybe companies should be
required to maximize share-
holder wealth, minus 25%.
How is this to be imple-
mented? And why shouldAmerica’s 3,600 public corpo-
rations bear special burdens
in this regard? These compa-
nies account for less than
one-third of the nation’s pri-
vate-sector workforce and a
tiny proportion of its 5.6 mil-
lion employer firms.
An esoteric point is usually
lost on the media: Requiring
public companies to maximize
any other value (such as
worker pay) is nothing but an
attempt to make them do in
an opaque and corrupting way
what politicians should do in
the full light of day—namely,
pay off a favored constituency.
Investors especially have
reason to be unhappy with the
Business Roundtable. CEOs
now may feel slightly more
empowered to cling to their
jobs even when they are visi-
bly failing investors. The
roundtable has put a word
salad at their disposal that in-
evitably will be used to pro-mote policies beneficial to big
business but not necessarily
beneficial to the economy.
Some will detect an in-kind
donation to the Elizabeth
Warren campaign. A mighty
fig leaf our corporate leaders
have afforded themselves if
they must powow with Presi-
dent Warren 17 months from
now.
In the time-honored
phrase, it’s better to be at the
table than on the menu.
Whatever comes out of a War-
ren administration or a Joe
Biden administration or a
Donald Trump administration
may be bad for business and
the economy generally. The
job of the politically con-
nected CEO is to make sure
it’s worse for his competitors
and for small businesses that
aren’t at the table. At least he
or she must bring home some
plums to weigh against the
wealth destruction.
Example: Never too un-
happy with Washington are
GM and Ford, two of the sign-
ers, as long as America’s 25%
tariff on imported pickup
trucks remains in place. The
domestic industry could
scarcely exist in its present
form without this giant tax on
its most loyal customers. Its
leaders would be judged to
have failed in their jobs if it
ever were repealed (which any
president can do with a stroke
of a pen).
The roundtable’s Monday
statement perhaps does not
merit quite as much ink as
has been spilled over it. But
the eternal struggle between
destroyers and creators, rest
assured, will remain a strand
of this or any nation’s politics.Business Roundtable
throws shareholders
under the bus, even
if just for show.BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.
It’s the dog
days of Au-
gust—the
calm before
the political
storm, and a
good time to
review the
state of the
presidential
race.
The most
important fact about the Dem-
ocratic nominating contest is
its fluidity. According to a Pew
survey released Friday, 25% of
Democratic voters have yet to
form any preference. Of those
who have, almost two-thirds—
including 80% of Elizabeth
Warren’s supporters and 78%
of Kamala Harris’s—report
that they are excited by more
than one candidate. By con-
trast, almost half of Joe Bi-
den’s supporters and 51% of
Bernie Sanders’s say that they
are excited only by their top
choice. In fact, large shares of
their supporters are stumped
when asked to name their sec-
ond choice. This suggests they
are likely to stick with their
candidate.
On the other hand, only 11%
of Democrats term Mr. Biden
their second choice, and 12%
Sen. Sanders, limiting those
candidates’ chances of expand-
ing their support. As the sec-
ond choice of 21% and 19%, re-
spectively, Sens. Warren and
Harris have more room to
grow. But it’ll have to be at the
others’ expense, because the
leading second choice of Ms.
Warren’s backers is Ms. Harris,
and vice versa.
Ms. Warren and Mr. Sand-
Road to the White House Comes Into View
ers have similar ideological
profiles, doing best among
very liberal Democrats and
worst among those who regard
themselves as moderate or
conservative. But ideology
isn’t everything. Only 23% of
Ms. Warren’s supporters name
Mr. Sanders their second
choice, while 39% of them pick
Ms. Harris.
The reasons voters give for
their preferences largely track
conventional wisdom. More of
Ms. Warren’s supporters cite
their candidate’s policy posi-
tions than do Ms. Harris’s,
many of whom point to the
California senator’s personal
characteristics. Mr. Sanders’s
supporters are the most likely
to tout policy and the least
likely to hang their hats on
electability. Roughly equal
shares of Mr. Biden’s, Ms. War-
ren’s and Ms. Harris’s support-
ers regard electability as the
most important reason for
their choices.
The demographic profile of
Mr. Biden’s supporters reveals
the opportunities his campaign
enjoys and the risks it con-
fronts. He has very little sup-
port from young adults but
laps the field among voters 65
and older, low support among
very liberal Democrats but
strong support at the other
end of the Democratic spec-
trum. He does a bit better
among less-educated voters
than among those with bache-
lor’s or postgraduate degrees.
Tellingly, Mr. Biden domi-
nates the other candidates
among both African-Americans
and white Catholics. During
the primaries, he must rely onblack voters as the foundation
of his coalition, and also as in-
surance against potential early
losses in Iowa and New Hamp-
shire, where his edge is now
modest.
South Carolina, where the
black vote is the central force
in the party and where Mr. Bi-
den now leads by more than
20 points, may turn out to be
the most important state for
his candidacy. A loss thereprobably would be his undo-
ing. Accordingly, the worst
case for Mr. Biden would be an
early victory by Ms. Harris
that sparks a surge of black
voters to her campaign in
South Carolina, as they did to
then-Sen. Barack Obama’s
2008 campaign after his star-
tling victory over Hillary Clin-
toninIowa.
If the general election were
held tomorrow, President
Trump would likely lose to Mr.
Biden, and perhaps to other
potential Democratic nomi-
nees. But the race will tighten
next summer, and the Mid-
western states that gave Mr.
Trump his upset victory will
prove pivotal once again. This
is why the demographic pro-
file of Mr. Biden’s support is
so important.
Those key Midwestern
states are substantially olderand less educated than the U.S.
average, and the former vice
president’s appeal to white
Catholics would be especially
helpful in Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin. These demographic
factors help explain not only
why Mr. Biden gets 50% or
more of the popular vote
against Mr. Trump in recent
surveys, but also why he leads
the president by 10 points in
Michigan and 11 in Pennsylva-
nia. It’s why he is the only po-
tential Democratic nominee
who enjoys a statistically sig-
nificant edge over President
Trump in Ohio.
All this could change, how-
ever, because incumbents who
don’t face a serious primary
challenge can go on offense be-
fore the other party’s national
convention. The “Swift Boat”
attack against John Kerry in
2004 by pro-George W. Bush
forces threw the Democrat off-
balance during crucial weeks.
Eight years later, pro-Obama
groups turned the tables, tar-
ring Mitt Romney as a heart-
less plutocrat even before he
was nominated. Mr. Romney
never recovered.
In this election cycle,
Trump allies will be able to
mobilize hundreds of millions
of dollars to label the Demo-
crats as socialists who want to
traduce the Second Amend-
ment, open the border, and
give away the store to other
countries. In the absence of a
well-organized and well-
funded effort to counter the
inevitable assault, the Demo-
cratic nominee—despite enjoy-
ing structural advantages—
could face an uphill climb.Trump is vulnerable,
but he’ll go on offense
while Democrats fight
it out with each other.POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston