AYYUBID DYNASTY AND THE COPTS. The situation of the Coptic
community in Egypt under the rule of the Ayyubid dynasty
(1171-1250) was controlled by the progress of the Crusades and
the Muslim reaction. With the death of the last Fatimid caliph,
al-‘Adid, on 25 September 1171, and the termination of Fatimid
rule in Egypt, Saladin, a young Kurdish soldier who had gone to
Egypt in the train of his uncle Shirkuh, was invested with the
power of the state in Cairo, under the titular control of the
Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. On 15 May 1174, Nur al-Din died in
Syria, and Saladin was able to seize his throne. Saladin
consequently became sultan of the whole area extending from
Mosul to Aleppo in the north and Egypt in the south. In this
way, Saladin extended his borders around the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem, and confrontation with its forces became inevitable.
In Jerusalem, the Latin occupants, who were lenient with most of
the Eastern Christian communities, took a rather different
position with regard to the Orthodox