Turkish and Pakistani companies have announced an agreement to produce a TV series on the life of Sultan Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, th Salahuddin al-Ayyubi e founder of the Ayyubid state and the military general who defeated the crusaders in Jerusalem and is known in the West as Saladin.
Producer Emre Konuk, owner of Turkey’s Akli Films, announced on Saturday a co-production agreement with Pakistan’s Ansari & Shah Films.
The series, it was announced, will feature actors from Turkey and Pakistan. It will be shot in Turkey and is scheduled to run over three seasons.
A statement from the Turkish company Akli and the Pakistani company Ansari Shah said that the two companies have agreed to produce three parts of an historical series depicting the life of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi and that the filming would take place in Turkey.
Emre Konuk said the project “is a great gain for Turkey in the cultural and economic fields.”
The agreement between the two companies consecrates a Turkish-Pakistani trend fuelled by the interest of the two countries’ leaders, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, in forging a joint Islamic cultural axis linked to Ottoman heritage. On a previous occasion, Imran expressed his fascination with Turkish drama and its impact on viewers in his country and the region.
It is expected that the series will focus on Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, as a Muslim character and try to avoid sensitivities about his Kurdish origin or the Shia attitudes towards him because of his role in ending the first Shia state.
Considering Turkish sensitivity to anything Kurdish, the series will faces a major problem dealing with the character of the Kurdish leader who was born in Iraq and who ended the rule of the Turkish Zangi state that ruled large parts of Iraq, Syria and Egypt after the death of Sultan Nureddin Zangi.
The Kurdish origins of Salahuddin al-Ayyubi will not be the only the thorny issue to face the series. Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, overthrew the Shia Fatimid state, which ruled from Cairo large parts of the Middle East for nearly two centuries.
Salahuddin al-Ayyubi has been portrayed before in Arab and Western productions. Egyptian director Youssef Chahine directed “Al-Nasser Salahuddin” (1963) and used it to highlight the importance of Egypt’s unity with Syria in the face of the West and Israel.
Shaheen deviated from the historical narrative and invented a Christian figure (Issa al-Awwam) to show the Muslims’ tolerance of Christians, while in reality Salahuddin did not allow non-Kurds and Turks to join his army and dealt with the Arabs of the Levant and Egypt only as subjects.
In 2001, the late Syrian director Hatem Ali produced the TV series “Salah al-Din al-Ayoubi”, which achieved great success.
Western cinema presented the character of Salahuddin dignity in several works, the most important of which was the movie “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005) by British director and producer Ridley Scott, who assigned the character of Saladin to the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud.
Filming took place in Ourazazate, Morocco and in Spain.
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