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Originally Posted by Aqtai
I don't think anyone is saying that Salaheddin's army was exclusively Turkish, but Turks would have been in the majority. In the 12th century there were Turks settled in Syria and Iraq. Futhermore he wouldn't have needed to go to eastern Anatolia to purchase Turkish slaves, they were easily available in the slave markets of Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo. 
Finally were would Salaheddin have got all these Arab soldiers from? A 12th century Muslim ruler would not have considered the urban population of Cairo or Damascus or the fellahin of the countryside soldierly material. These cities did have a military class of Turkish and Kurdish origin whose family business had been soldiering for several generations. Salaheddin himself was one of these. His father Ayyub, his uncle Shirkuh, his brothers Abu-bakr and Turan-Shah were all soldiers. If Salaheddin had not become Sultan, doubtless his children would also have soldiers. |
We are in a complete agreement. The same picture is true for almost the entire muslim world - even during the wars in Georgia, despite the fact that Tbilisi's Caliphat was mostly populated by arabs, all those 250-500,000 muslim armies that fought there consisted mostly of turks.