The Value of Poetry as a Historical Document: The Case Study of Ibnu’s-Sâ‘âtî’s Encomium for Saladin Ayyubi on the Victory of Hattin

Poetry, primarily an art form that appeals to aesthetic sensibilities, can be defined as the poet's reinterpretation of real-world objects, phenomena, or events through creative imagination, expressed in an artistic manner, often within the constraints of meter and rhyme. However, given the information it contains regarding the individual, social, and political conditions of its era, poetry also serves as a historical document. Particularly encomiums (methiye) and elegies (mersiye) composed for sultans and state officials, poems describing regions, cities, and palaces, as well as social critiques or satires targeting specific individuals or groups, all provide significant historical insights. Ibn Sa’ati’s (553/1158-604/1207) panegyric on Saladin Ayyubi celebrating the Battle of Hattin stands as a prime example of such historical poetry. A prominent Arab poet of the Ayyubid period, Ibn Sa’ati composed numerous encomiums for various state figures, including 16 kasides dedicated to Saladin. The 37-couplet kaside, written to congratulate Sultan Saladin after the Battle of Hattin—which prepared the ground for the conquest of Jerusalem and in which the poet personally participated—is distinguished by its stylistic elegance among his panegyrics. This article aims to provide a brief overview of the poet’s life, analyze the semantic and rhetorical features of the expressions used in his panegyrics for Sultan Saladin with examples from the verses, and conduct a detailed literary analysis of the aforementioned kaside, thereby highlighting its critical importance in documenting the political climate of its time from an academic perspective.