Did Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Destroy the Fatimids' Books? An Historiographical Enquiry

A persistent myth featuring in some modern accounts of the transition from Fatimid to Ayyubid rule (1169-71) is that one of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s (r. 1171-93) first action upon attaining sovereignty over Egypt was to destroy the Fatimids’ book collections in their entirety. Medieval sources present a different, more nuanced depiction of books sold and dispersed over a decade or more, rather than extirpated and put out of circulation altogether. This article collects and examines medieval Arabic accounts of the episode, and finds further indications of the robust survival of Fatimid-era works in the composition of later chronicles, where native Fatimid-era accounts, which clearly did endure beyond the Fatimid age, are well-represented. The article also looks at the tendentious aspects of medieval accounts of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s policies, and the difficulties they pose to a modern appraisal of the sultan’s character and intellectual-ideological tendencies.