Saladin Province (or Salah ad Din Governorate) is a province in Iraq, north of Baghdad. The governorate has an area of 24,363 square kilometres. The estimated population for 2003 was 1,042,200 people. The capital is Tikrit; the governorate also contains the significantly larger city of Samarra. Before 1976 the governorate was part of Baghdad Governorate.
The province is named after Saladin (written Salah ad-Din in modern Arabic Latin transcription), a Kurdish Muslim leader who defeated the Crusaders at Hattin, who hailed from the province. Salah ad Din was the home province of Saddam Hussein; he was born in Al-Awja, a town near Tikrit.
In October 2011, the government in Saladin governorate declared itself a semi-autonomous region within Iraq. The government explained that the declaration was in response to the central government's "domination over the provincial council authorities". Saladin, which is a largely Sunni governorate, is also hoping that by declaring themselves an autonomous region within Iraq, that it will entail them to a larger portion of government funding. The council cited "article 119 of Iraq's constitution" in its call for autonomy, which states that "one or more governorates [provinces] shall have the right to organize into a region" if one third of the Provincial Council members or one tenth of the voters request to form a region"
