Saladin — Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub — was not an Arab prince but a Kurd, born around 1137 in Tikrit into a family of soldiers who served other men's ambitions. He rose in the household of Nur al-Din, went to Egypt as a subordinate, and there outgrew his masters: he ended the Fatimid caliphate, took the title of sultan, and welded Egypt and Syria into a single power under the Ayyubid dynasty he founded. That unity was exactly what the Crusader states had always feared. In July 1187 he destroyed their field army at the Horns of Hattin, and by October he had retaken Jerusalem after eighty-eight years of Frankish rule.

King & Country's figure gives him the dignity the histories do. Saladin rides a grey Arabian in mail and lamellar scale worked in green, gold and crimson, a turban wound over his helmet and a round shield at his shoulder — mounted, watchful, unhurried. When he entered Jerusalem he let its people ransom their freedom rather than putting them to the sword as the First Crusade had done in 1099, though thousands too poor to pay were still enslaved; even his enemies conceded his restraint. Set him across the field from Richard the Lionheart, the king he fought to a standstill, then build his retinue around him with his personal standard bearer and the Army of Islam standard bearer — the heart of a Saracen cavalry diorama.

Model: MK203 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set