Western writing has long preferred to imagine Saladin's armies as a countless horde. They were nothing of the kind — they were salaried, graded and administered. A survey of his Egyptian army in 1181 counts it precisely: 111 amirs, 6,976 first-grade cavalry and 1,153 of the second grade, part of some sixteen thousand regular horsemen under Saladin's direct command, with four thousand more owed by the Zengid princes of Mosul. Each amir held an iqta', a grant of land revenue, and against it owed a fixed number of fully equipped and trained cavalrymen whenever the sultan called; the men themselves drew a monthly wage called the jāmakiyya. The elite mamluk regiments took their names from the masters who bought and trained them — the Asadiyya from Saladin's uncle Shirkuh, the Salahiyya from Saladin himself. And a third of that army was Kurdish, serving in tribal corps under their own names. A rider carrying the sultan's own standard came from the innermost of those circles.

King & Country mount him on a piebald horse in full harness, scale armour over mail, both hands on the staff of a tall green banner — the sort of figure a whole wing of an army was meant to watch for. He belongs beside Saladin the Mighty, whose standard this is, with the Attacking Saracen as the fighting edge of the same army; face the pair of them across a diorama towards Richard the Lionhearted Mounted and you have the two commands of the Third Crusade in one scene. A standard bearer is the piece that gives a display its centre — everything else can be arranged to look toward him.

Model: MK204 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set