Prior to his 1187 conquest of Jerusalem, the Kurd Saladin had already toppled the last Fatimid ruler of Egypt and would establish his own short-lived Ayyubid dynasty. Besides being skilled horsemen, Saladin’s Turkish and Caucasian mamluks wielded the bow and arrow to devastating effect, especially during the crusades. At the Battle of Hattin, the predominantly mamluk archers were provided with four hundred loads of arrows, with reserves of additional missiles packed onto seventy camels and placed “in the thick of the fray.” Without their mamluk core, Saladin’s Kurds would surely not have
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