Statue of Saladin, Damascus (must see)

The Statue of Saladin, a bronze statue depicting the Kurdish Ayyubid Sultan Saladin, is located in front of the Citadel of Damascus. Designed by Syrian sculptor Abdallah al-Sayed, it was unveiled by the late Syrian president Hafez Assad in 1993 to mark the 800th anniversary of Saladin's death. The statue, which graces the main plaza of the city, depicts Saladin in the same pose and the same dress as he appears in a number of 19th-century Western depictions of the Crusades. On each side of Saladin's horse stand two soldiers and a Sufi. Behind the horse, two crusaders, Guy of Lusignan and Raynald of Châtillon, kneel. According to the sculptor, Saladin appears not as an individual warrior but as a leader embodying a wave of popular feeling against the Franks.