ABSTRACT
The topos of the Great Man was initially a European concept of the Enlightenment. The Great Man was a product of historicism and its teleological view that the world was moving on a trajectory towards betterment, and the logic of this movement could only be grasped through history. Saladin - in Arabic, Salah al-Din - is one of the central heroes of Arab history, with particular relevance in the countries of the Fertile Crescent. Saladin was consequently not only a hero of particular national identification, but also a dialogical figure: Arabs have used him since the late nineteenth century as a mirror to re- and deflect Orientalist stereotypes because he belonged to the repertory of European crusader mythology, too, representing Muslim chivalry. When authors like Haddad and Shawqi discovered Saladin in the late nineteenth century, they were looking for a role model in the confrontation with European imperialist expansion and Western Orientalist arrogance.
