My current Turkish TV addiction is 'Saladin: The Conqueror of Jerusalem'. Another very long TV series, this one was co-produced in Pakistan. The producers asserted that the main target of the series is non-Muslims who are unaware of Muslim history.
A good start, however, anyone who has read any history will quickly spot that this isn't the case. This clicked with me when the series starts with Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayub being secretly adopted by Nur ad-Din, who wasn't even the 'Sultan' at the time, and it didn't happen. They also forgot to mention that Saladin was a Kurd 😅. There are all sorts of other historical imaginations, including the Jews financing the Crusades, in a pretty awful bit of anti-semitism. Impoverished Crusaders often funded their military expeditions by looting and plundering wealthy Jewish communities. In this series, the Crusaders are bossed around by the Jews, whose plan is to secretly create a Jewish state. It is frankly inconceivable that Crusader kingdoms would have tolerated anything even close to being bossed about by Jews, anywhere. Everyone also travels around the region as if Damascus, Jerusalem, and Ashkelon are a couple of miles away!
However, once you get past the fact that this is not anything close to being historically accurate, it has all the best bits of a Turkish TV series. You always know who the baddy is, and when one dies, another quickly arrives. The uniforms are not bad in this one, although horse archers dismounting is always an irritation. Given that horse archers were trained from birth, I accept the challenges here. There are also strong roles for women, perhaps a little overdone, including their amazing sword-fighting abilities, but great fun. I suspect the Turkish producers won on this one because it reflects other historical TV series.
It reminded me that I had read the first in Jack Height's Saladin Trilogy. This is historical fiction, but a lot closer to the history. This mostly covers his period as Vizier of Egypt, a really interesting period in his life that is often forgotten in Britain, as we focus on his time fighting Richard the Lionheart. Richard appears in the final book. This is excellent historical fiction and highly recommended.
This inevitably led to the tabletop. Most of my Crusaders tend to come from Spain and the Balkans, but the Spanish are mostly fine. I have a mix of Seljuks and others that also work fine. For last week's midweek game, we played a game using the Midgard rules. We hadn't played with them for a while, so the game went slower than planned, but I do like them.
I was playing the Crusaders, and while my knights stormed across the table, my infantry was a bit slow getting forward, hanging onto a hill in front of them. They outnumbered the enemy, so this was a mistake. Anyway, my cavalry charged up the hill on the left, taking a few casualties, but still got pushed back. On the right, they did better but got flanked by the Turcomen horse. There was a bit of recovery on the left, but the wicked Ayyubids got onto my flank there as well. The infantry eventually reached the enemy but then got flanked as well. Game over.
Still, a good game, and we must play more.