Jouda Sellami, Le mythe littéraire de Saladin: Origines et perpétuations du Moyen Âge au début du XIXe siècle. Histoire Culturelle, 25. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2024, 314 pp.

The Muslim ruler Saladin, a Kurdish leader who reconquered the Holy Land was the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He enjoys a mythical character like Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, or Attila the Hun, and this not only in the Islamic world, but also in the west, in literature and public opinion. This underscores that cultural history cannot and should not be viewed in a narrow, nationalistic or linguistic fashion. Jouda Sellami, who teaches at the University of Manouba, Tunisia, here offers a detailed discussion of this famous figure, but primarily only in French literature, first in the Middle Ages, and then far into the modern age. Although the topic itself has already been covered in numerous previous studies, the author’s effort to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon in both time periods can certainly be welcomed. I only wished that the book title would have made it clear that the focus rests almost exclusively on French narratives.