In general, for a boy in Saladin’s time, they would have been educated at home first of all, by their father or other relatives. They would have learned to memorize the Qur’an primarily, and would study Arabic grammar. Older students could study with a tutor in their own home, or at the tutor’s home, or they could study with teachers at the local mosque. As teenagers and adults they could study Hadith, and then jurisprudence and theology - this would probably also take place at the mosque, but when studying religion and law the school was generally known as a madrasa. Not everybody would go this far and become a religious scholar, of course, but that was the goal of higher education.

As for Saladin specifically, we don’t really know a lot about his childhood, but presumably he followed the early part of this kind of education. He was born in Dvin around 1137, and his family moved to Baalbek when he was a baby. He lived there until 1146, when they moved to Damascus. In about 1151 or 1152, he joined his uncle Shirkuh in the military service of Sultan Nur ad-Din in Aleppo, so from then on he was destined for a military career. But:

“Military training, which included polo and hunting, was not the only occupation of the young Saladin, who also received a literary and religious education. He learned, probably from his earliest childhood, to read and write Arabic, as attested by some letters later written in his hand.” (Eddé, pg. 26)

He probably also spoke Kurdish and apparently also a little bit of Persian.

“Although it is not possible to date with exactitude the beginning of his interest in the religious sciences and in letters, we know that in his youth he took classes from a reputed Shafite jurist from Iran, who taught in Damascus and Aleppo beginning in 1145. The jurist wrote an opuscule for Saladin containing the essential principles of the Muslim faith, which Saladin later had his own children learn. This history and culture of the Arabs, particularly their genealogies and the pedigrees of their horses, interested him a great deal, and he learned by heart the poetry anthology (Hamasa) compiled by Abu Tammam, a ninth-century Arab poet. All the same, though Saladin showed a clear interest in the religious sciences and in letters and always displayed a great respect toward the ulemas (he enjoyed taking their courses and following their discussions), he was never himself a learned sovereign, unlike several other Ayyubid princes.” (Eddé, pg. 26)

In other words, some of Saladin’s family members (the other Ayyubid rulers) did have a more advanced education in religion in law, while Saladin focused more on military and political training. But he still enjoyed learning about those subjects as a hobby.

Sources:

- Anne-Marie Eddé, Saladin, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Harvard University Press, 2011)

- James E. Lindsay, Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World (Greenwood, 2005)

- George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh University Press, 1981)