Al-Adil I (, in full al-Malik al-Adil Sayf ad-Din Abu-Bakr Ahmed ibn Najm ad-Din Ayyub, , "Ahmed, son of Najm ad-Din Ayyub, father of Bakr, the Just King, Sword of the Faith"; 1145 – 31 August 1218) was the fourth Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and brother of Saladin, who founded both the Sultanate of Egypt, and the Ayyubid dynasty. He was known to the Crusaders as Saphadin (derived from his laqab or honorific title Sayf ad-Din, meaning "Sword of Faith"), a name by which he is still known in the Western world. A gifted and effective administrator and organizer, Al-Adil provided crucial military and civilian support for the great campaigns of Saladin (an early example of a great minister of war). He was also a capable general and strategist in his own right, and was instrumental in the transformation of the decayed Fatimid Caliphate of Cairo into the Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt.
Family
Al-Adil had 16 sons and several daughters. The names of the surviving children, given in the work of the Kurdish historian Abu'l Fida (who was the Ayyubid Emir of Hama), are as follows;
Malik Al-Kamil
Malik Al-Ashraf Musa
Dayfa Khatun
Al-Awhad Ayyub
Al-Mu'azzam Isa
Al-Muzaffar Ghazi
Safiya Sitt Khatun
Mufaddal Kutb ad-din Ahmad
Hafız Nur ad-din Arslanshah
Aziz Imad ad-din Uthman
Salih İmad ad-din Ismael
Malika Adliya Khatun
Amjad Hassan
Al-Mughith Mahmud
Faqiz Ibrahim
Qahir Ishak
Mavdud Khalil
Takiyaddin Abbas
Avhad Najm ad-Din Ayyub
Zahra
Gaziya
Malek
Early life
Al-Adil was a son of Najm ad-Din Ayyub, he was member of Kurdish Ayyubid family and a younger brother of Saladin. He was born in June 1145, possibly in Damascus. He first achieved distinction as an officer in Nur ad-Din Zengi's army during his uncle Shirkuh's third and final campaign in Egypt (1168–1169); following Nur ad-Din's death in 1174, Al-Adil governed Egypt on behalf of his brother Saladin and mobilized that country's vast resources in support of his brother's campaigns in Syria and his war against the Crusaders (1175–1183). He was governor of Aleppo (1183–1186) but returned to administer Egypt during the Third Crusade (1186–1192); as governor of Saladin's northern provinces (1192–1193), he suppressed the revolt of 'Izz Al-Din of Mosul following Saladin's death (March 1193). On Saladin's death he was governor of Damascus.
In 1190, King Richard I of England successively proposed to marry his younger sister Joan and his niece Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany to Al-Adil, but both were in vain, as Al-Adil showed no interest in Christianity.