SOURCE: “Saladin and the Loss of the Kingdom” in The Kingdom of the Crusaders, Kennikat Press, 1935, pp. 147–73.

In the following essay, Munro offers an account of Saladin's rise to power and discusses his capture of Jerusalem and truce with the Christians.

From all those engaged in the crusading wars romance has singled out Saladin as its own particular hero, with Richard the Lion-Hearted as a poor second. The choice was a natural one, for Saladin had the qualities which commended him to both Christian and Muslim. He did not have the broad tolerance in religion with which Lessing endowed him in Nathan der Weise: no Muslim leader could have had this tolerance; some of the Christian leaders in the Crusades came nearer to it through their acquaintance with the many religions they found in the Holy Land, and through their disillusionment with their own narrow inherited faith. Saladin...