Saladin was idealized in medieval European chivalric epics as a mirror of knighthood

Evidence

35. See Tolan, “Le Baptême du Roi ‘Païen’ dans les Épopées de la Croisade,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 216 (2000); Tolan, “Mirror of Chivalry: Salâh al-Dîn in the Medieval European Imagination,” in Images of the Other: Europe and the Muslim World before 1700, Cairo Papers on Social Science 19:2 (summer 1996):7-38. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1853

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘mirror of chivalry’ reading of Saladin — a Muslim enemy being simultaneously vilified and admired — is directly ancestor to the ambivalence Aziz and others track in modern representations.