The crusaders are driven from Jerusalem and most of Palestine by the great Kurdish general Salah ad Din ibn Ayyub, known in the West as Saladin.

Saladin had come to Egypt in 1168 in the entourage of his uncle, the Kurdish general Shirkuh, who had become the wazir, or senior minister, of the last Fatimid caliph.

Saladin becomes the master of Egypt after the death of his uncle.

The dynasty he founds in Egypt, called the Ayyubid, will rule until 1260.

Saladin abolishes the Fatimid caliphate, which by this time is dead as a religious force, and returns Egypt to Sunni orthodoxy.

He restores and tightens the bonds that tie Egypt to eastern Islam and reincorporates Egypt into the Sunni fold represented by the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad.

At the same time, Egypt is opened to the new social changes and intellectual movements that have been emerging in the East.

Saladin introduces into Egypt the madrasah, a mosque-college, which is the intellectual heart of the Sunni religious revival.

Even Al Azhar, founded by the Fatimids, becomes in time the center of Islamic orthodoxy.