Saladine Family History

Apparently from Saladin (Arabic Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ‘righteousness of the faith’), the name of the Sultan of Egypt and Syria who ruthlessly defeated the Christian Crusader army in 1187 and captured Jerusalem, but who subsequently became a byword for chivalry among Christians from his acts of generosity during the Third Crusade (1189–92).

The crusade was paid for in England and France by an unpopular tax known as the ‘Saladin tithe’. The sense of the nickname is uncertain. It may have been given to one who went on the Third Crusade, in which case the surname illustrated below was already hereditary by 1279.

Alternatively, it may have been given to someone thought to resemble Saladin in some way. The nickname evidently had currency in medieval France, for it also gave rise to a surname there.