Al-Harawi´s Admonitions on The Stratagems of War: a 12th-Century Arab Political-Military Handbook: DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18847/1.6.12

Abstract

Al-Harawi’s manual presents a unique example of the so-called mirrors of princes, it was written at the time of the Crusades, and aiming at the consolidation of the emerging Ayyubi state of Saladin. At that time, its singularity lied in the defence of the use of trickery and stratagems in the exercise of a military, and political, power whose only mention ought to cause fearfulness and debility. Nowadays, in the noticeable parallels found between some of its premises and those in Abu Bakr Naji’s The Management of Savagery.