The Talisman

During the Third Crusade, a Scottish knight, Sir Kenneth of the Couchant Leopard, meets a Saracen emir in single combat in the desert near the Dead Sea; they fight to a draw and become friends. In the crusaders' camp, King Richard the Lionheart lies ill with fever, and a physician sent by Sultan Saladin cures him with a mysterious talisman. But the Christian camp is full of jealousy and intrigue among the European princes, and Sir Kenneth, who loves Richard's kinswoman Edith, is disgraced.

Sir Walter Scott published the novel in 1825. Its most memorable figure is Saladin, shown as wise, generous and chivalrous, often wiser than the quarrelling Christian kings, and the book shaped how European readers imagined the great sultan for a century. Worth reading alongside it: Scott's Ivanhoe.