Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad

Also known as Baha al-Din Yusuf ibn Rafi ibn Shaddad, Bohadinus

Saladin's intimate companion, qadi of his army from 1188, and author of the Sirat Salah ad-Din — the eyewitness biography written by the man who slept in the sultan's tent through the Third Crusade.

Baha ad-Din was born at Mosul in 1145, studied law at the Nizamiyya of Baghdad, and rose to a teaching chair in his home city before the king of Mosul sent him on embassy to Saladin in 1188. The sultan, who had read his earlier book on the religious obligation of jihad, recruited him on the spot as qadi al-askar — chief judge of the army — and from then until Saladin's death in 1193 the two men were rarely apart.

His Sirat Salah ad-Din, composed in the 1220s after long years as qadi of Aleppo, is the warmest of the medieval Arabic biographies of any sultan. It records the Battle of Hattin, the long siege of Acre, and the negotiations of the Treaty of Jaffa with Richard the Lionheart from inside the command tent, with affectionate close-up details: Saladin praying through the small hours in the saddle, weeping at news of his lieutenants' deaths, refusing to retire to comfort while his men suffered in the lines.

The book is partisan — its purpose is praise — but Baha ad-Din was a sharp lawyer and his testimony on dates, troop movements, and the texts of letters has stood up to seven centuries of cross-checking. His memoir is read alongside Imad ad-Din's Fath al-Qussi as the foundation pair of Muslim sources for Saladin's reign.

Read more on Wikipedia: English article