March 4, 1193

Saladin

Death of Saladin and accession of his regional heirs

Saladin's fatal illness began after a rain-soaked ride out to greet the pilgrims returning from Mecca.

Twelve days of fever

After riding out in wet weather to welcome the returning pilgrimage caravan on 20 February 1193, Saladin developed a fever that night and deteriorated over the following twelve days.

He died in Damascus at dawn on Wednesday, 4 March 1193, corresponding to 27 Safar 589 AH.

The illness is described as a fever with headache, weakness and delirium; identifying a specific disease would be speculation.

Buried the same afternoon

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād attended the court during the final illness and recorded the death and the public mourning. Crowds waited outside the citadel and tried to read the faces of Bahāʾ al-Dīn and al-Fadil as they emerged from the sickroom.

Saladin was buried that afternoon in a garden house within the Citadel of Damascus. His body was transferred to the mausoleum beside the Umayyad Mosque in 1195.

That first funeral was so simple that the burial expenses, and even material for the grave's bricks, reportedly had to be borrowed.

Four rulers, no single successor

Al-Afdal, who was present in Damascus and had previously received the army's oath, immediately became ruler of Damascus, Jerusalem and much of southern Syria and Palestine.

Al-Aziz took control in Egypt, al-Zahir retained Aleppo and its dependencies, and their uncle al-Adil remained established at Kerak and in the Jazira. The partition was not invented that day — Saladin had already stationed sons and relatives as provincial rulers.

One thing the day's usual telling gets wrong: “Saladin” does not mean “the Lion.” Salah al-Din is an honorific meaning approximately “Righteousness of the Faith”; it is his uncle's honorific, Asad al-Din, that contains the word for lion.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited

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What the sources leave uncertain

The death date is securely transmitted, but Saladin’s birth date is not precise enough to make every stated age exact.
The illness is described as a fever with headache, weakness and delirium; identifying a specific disease would be speculation.
Imad al-Din names fifteen sons in one list but elsewhere says seventeen sons and one daughter survived Saladin. The total should be attributed to the chronicler, not treated as a perfectly reconciled family register.
The CE date is the conventional medieval Julian-calendar date.