Qadi al-Fadil

Muhyi (or Mujir) al-Din Abu Ali Abd al-Rahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Lakhmī al-Baysani al-Asqalani, better knwon as al-Qadi al-Fadil (Arabic: القاضي الفاضل, lit. 'the Excellent Judge'; 3 April 1135 – 26 January 1200) was an Arab official who served the last Fatimid caliphs, and became the secretary and chief counsellor of the first Ayyubid sultan, Saladin.

Quotes

• They advanced like men; like women they vanished.
  • The forces of the Atabeg of Mosul and the Shah of Armenia abandon their position on the plain of Harzem, below Maridin, to avoid battle with Saladin (late February – early March 1183). Stanley Lane-Poole, Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906) p. 172

Quotes about al-Fadil

• No scribe is known to have reached a position with regard to his master comparable to that achieved by al-Fāḍil with Saladin. It was said that the lands were not conquered by the armies of Saladin but by al-Fāḍil's pen.
  • Sūq al-Fāḍil (‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz ibn al-‘Adīm, MS. 4). Malcolm C. Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge UP, 1984) ch. 3, p. 57