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Of Scorpions, Vipers, And The Assassin’S Drug, D. Morgan Davis

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Twelfth-century Cairo was a vibrant place. The legendary Saladin, who had recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, had established himself there and was actively transforming it from a royal resort into a cosmopolitan center of power, commerce, learning, and culture. A pious Muslim, Saladin chose for his physician at court a Jew who had been twice exiled—first from his hometown of Cordoba, Spain (Andalusia), and then again from Fez, Morocco (al- Maghreb)—by the fanatical Almohad regime of Northwest Africa.