The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (40 page)

In late May the sultan himself marched into the Hauran and, as the last troop contingents arrived, moved to the advance staging post of Ashtara, around a day’s march from the Sea of Galilee. He now was joined by Taqi al-Din, returned from northern Syria, where a series of vicious raids had forced the Frankish Prince Bohemond III to agree terms of truce that safeguarded Aleppo from attack. Throughout June, Saladin made his final plans and preparations, carefully drilling his troops and organising battle formations, so that his immense army might function with maximum discipline and efficiency. Three main contingents were formed, with the right and left flanks under Taqi al-Din and Keukburi respectively, and a central force under Saladin’s personal command. At last, on Friday 27 June 1187, the Muslims were ready for war. A crossing of the Jordan was made just south of the Sea of Galilee and the invasion of Palestine began.

In response to the terrible spectre of Islamic attack, King Guy had followed standard Frankish protocol, amassing the Christian army at Saffuriya. Given the unprecedented scale of Saladin’s forces, the king had taken the drastic step of issuing a general call to arms, gathering together practically every last scrap of available fighting manpower in Palestine and using money sent by King Henry II of England to the Holy Land (in lieu of actually crusading) to pay for further mercenary reinforcements. A member of the sultan’s entourage wrote that the Latins came ‘in numbers defying account or reckoning, numerous as pebbles, 50,000 or even more’, but, in reality, Guy probably pulled together around 1,200 knights and between 15,000 and 18,000 infantry and Turcopoles. This was one of the largest hosts ever assembled beneath the True Cross–the Franks’ totemic symbol of martial valour and spiritual devotion–but it was, nonetheless, heavily outnumbered by the Muslim horde. In mustering this army, the Christian king had also taken a considerable gamble, leaving Palestine’s fortresses garrisoned by the barest minimum of soldiers. Should this conflict end in a resounding Latin defeat, the kingdom of Jerusalem would stand all but undefended.
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Saladin’s overriding objective was to achieve just such a decisive victory, drawing the Franks away from the safety of Saffuriya into a full-scale pitched battle on ground of his choosing. But all his experience of war with Jerusalem suggested that the enemy would not easily be goaded into a reckless advance. In the last days of June, the sultan climbed out of the Jordan valley into the Galilean uplands, camping in force at the small village of Kafr Sabt (about six miles south-west of Tiberias and ten miles east of Saffuriya), amidst an expansive landscape of broad plains and undulating hills, peppered with occasional rocky outcrops. He began by testing the enemy, dispatching raiding sorties to ravage the surrounding countryside, while personally reconnoitring Guy’s encampment from a distance. After a few days it became obvious that, as expected, a Latin reaction would only be elicited by bolder provocation.

On 2 July 1187, Saladin laid his trap, leading a dawn assault on the weakly defended town of Tiberias, where Christian resistance soon buckled. Only the citadel held out, proffering precarious refuge to Lady Eschiva, Raymond of Tripoli’s wife. This news raced back to Saffuriya (indeed, the sultan probably allowed Eschiva’s messengers to slip through) bearing entreaties for aid. Saladin’s hope was that the tidings of Tiberias’ stricken condition would force Guy’s hand. As evening fell, the sultan waited to see whether this bait would bring forth his quarry.

Lodged sixteen miles away, the Franks were locked in debate. At a gathering of the realm’s leading nobles, presided over by King Guy, Count Raymond seems to have advised caution and patience. He argued that the risk of direct confrontation with so formidable a Muslim army must be avoided, even at the cost of Tiberias’ fall and his own spouse’s capture. Given time, Saladin’s host would break apart, like so many Islamic forces before it, compelling the sultan to retreat; then Galilee might be recovered, and Eschiva’s ransom arranged. Others, including Reynald of Châtillon and the Templar Master Gerard of Ridefort, offered a different view. Counselling Guy to ignore the traitorous, untrustworthy count, they warned of the shame attendant upon cowardly inaction and urged an immediate move to relieve Tiberias. According to one version of events, the king initially elected to remain at Saffuriya, but, during the night, was persuaded by Gerard to overturn this resolution. In fact, the most decisive factor shaping Latin strategy was probably Guy’s own experience. Confronted with a near-identical choice four years earlier, he had eschewed battle with Saladin and, in consequence, faced derision and demotion. Now, in 1187, he embraced bold pugnacity and, on the morning of 3 July, his army marched forth from Saffuriya.

Once news reached Saladin that the Franks were on the move, he immediately climbed back into the Galilean hills, leaving a small body of troops to maintain the foothold gained in Tiberias. The enemy were advancing eastwards in close order, almost certainly following the broad Roman road that ran from Acre to the Sea of Galilee, with Raymond of Tripoli in the vanguard, the Templars holding the rear and infantry screening the cavalry. A Muslim eyewitness described how ‘wave upon wave’ of them came into sight, remarking that ‘the air stank, the light was dimmed [and] the desert was stunned’ by their advance. Guy of Lusignan’s precise objectives that first day are difficult to divine, but he may, rather optimistically, have hoped to reach Tiberias or at least the shores of the Galilean sea. The sultan was determined to prevent either eventuality. Sending skirmishers forward to harass the Christian column, he held the bulk of his troops on the open plateau north of Kafr Sabt, blocking their path.

Saladin’s Hattin Campaign-July 1187

Saladin rightly grasped that access to water would play a crucial role in this conflict. During high summer, soldiers and horses crossing such arid terrain might easily become dangerously dehydrated. With this in mind, he ordered any wells in the immediate region to be filled in, while ensuring that his own troops were well supplied from the spring at Kafr Sabt and with water ferried on camel-back from the Jordan valley below. Only the ample spring in the village of Hattin remained, on the northern fringe of the escarpment, and the approaches to this were now heavily guarded. The sultan had created what was, in effect, a waterless killing zone.
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Around noon on 3 July, the Franks paused for brief respite beside the village of Turan, whose minor spring could temporarily quench their thirst but was not adequate to the needs of many thousand men. Guy must have believed that he could still break through to Tiberias, for now he turned his back on even this insubstantial sanctuary, continuing the creeping march eastwards. But he had underestimated the sheer weight of numbers at Saladin’s disposal. Holding his central contingent in place to block and hamper the Christian advance, the sultan sent Keukburi’s and Taqi al-Din’s flanking divisions racing to take possession of Turan, barring any possibility of Latin retreat. As the Franks marched on they entered the plateau area so carefully prepared by Saladin for battle and victory. The trap had been sprung.

Near the day’s end, the Christian king hesitated. A committed frontal assault, either east towards the Sea of Galilee or north-east to Hattin, might still have had some chance of success, enabling the Latins to break through to water. But instead, Guy made the forlorn decision to pitch camp in an entirely waterless, indefensible position, a move that was tantamount to an admission of impending defeat. That night the atmosphere in the two armies could not have been more different. Hemmed in by Muslim soldiers ‘so close that they could talk to one another’ and so tightly that even ‘a [fleeing] cat…could not have escaped’, the Franks stood to in the heavy darkness, weakening each hour with terrible, unslaked thirst. The sultan’s troops, meanwhile, filled the air with chants of ‘
Allah akhbar
’, their courage quickening, ‘having caught a whiff of triumph’, as their leader made final assiduous preparations to deliver his
coup de grâce
.

Full battle was not joined with the coming of dawn on 4 July. Instead, Saladin allowed the Christians to make pitifully slow progress, probably eastwards along the main Roman road. He was waiting for the heat of the day to rise, maximising the withering effects of dehydration upon the enemy. Then, to further exacerbate their agony, Saladin’s troops set scrub fires, sending clouds of stifling smoke billowing through the faltering Latin ranks. The sultan later chided that this conflagration was ‘a reminder of what God has prepared for them in the next world’ it was certainly enough to prompt pockets of infantry and even some named knights to break ranks and surrender. One Muslim eyewitness remarked, ‘the Franks hoped for respite and their army in desperation sought a way of escape. But at every way out they were barred, and tormented by the heat of war without being able to rest.’
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So far, Muslim skirmishers had continued to harass the enemy, but Saladin’s deadliest weapon had not been unleashed. The preceding night he had distributed some 400 bundles of arrows among his archers and now, around noon, he ordered a full, scything bombardment to begin. As ‘bows hummed and the bowstrings sang’ arrows flew through the air ‘like a swarm of locusts’, killing men and horses, ‘open[ing] great gaps in [the Frankish] ranks’. With the panicking infantry losing formation, Raymond of Tripoli launched a charge towards Taqi al-Din’s contingent to the north-east, but the Muslim troops simply parted to defuse the force of their advance. Finding themselves beyond the fray, Raymond, Reynald of Sidon, Balian of Ibelin and a small group of accompanying knights thought better of returning to the battle and made good their escape. A Muslim contemporary wrote that:

In desperation, Guy sought to make a last stand, beating a path north-east towards higher ground, where twinned rocky outcrops–the Horns of Hattin–stood guard over a saddle of land and a bowl-like crater beyond. Here, two thousand years earlier, Iron Age settlers had fashioned a rudimentary hill fort, and its ancient ruined walls still offered the Franks a degree of protection. Defiantly rallying his troops to the True Cross, the king pitched his royal red tent and prepared those knights who remained for a final, desperate attack. The Christians’ only hope now lay in striking directly at the Ayyubid army’s heart–at Saladin himself. For, should the sultan’s yellow banner fall, the tide of battle might turn.

Years later, al-Afdal described how he watched alongside his father, in dread, as twice the Franks launched driving, heavy charges over the saddle of the Horns, spurring their horses directly towards them. On the first occasion they were barely held back, and the prince turned to see that his father ‘was overcome by grief…his complexion pale’. Another eyewitness described the fearful damage inflicted upon the Latins when they were turned back to the Horns, as the pursuing Muslims’ ‘pliant lances danced [and] were fed on entrails’ and their ‘sword blades sucked away their lives and scattered them on the hillsides’. Even so, as al-Afdal recalled:

With the king’s position overrun, the True Cross was captured and the last shreds of Christian resistance crumbled. Guy and all the Latin kingdom’s nobles, bar those few who had escaped, were taken prisoner, along with thousands of Frankish survivors. Still thousands more had been slain.
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As the clamour of battle subsided, Saladin sat in the entryway to his palatial campaign tent–much of which was still being hurriedly erected–to receive and review his most important captives. Convention suggested that they be treated with honour and, in time, perhaps ransomed, but the sultan called forth two in particular for a personal audience: his adversary, the king of Jerusalem; and his avowed enemy, Reynald of Châtillon. With the pair seated beside him, Saladin turned to Guy, ‘who was dying from thirst and shaking with fear like a drunkard’, graciously proffering a golden chalice filled with iced julep. The king supped deeply upon this rejuvenating elixir, but when he passed the cup to Reynald, the sultan interjected, calmly affirming through an interpreter: ‘You did not have my permission to give him drink, and so that gift does not imply his safety at my hand.’ For, by Arab tradition, the act of offering a guest sustenance was tantamount to a promise of protection. According to a Muslim contemporary, Saladin now turned to Reynald, ‘berat[ing] him for his sins and…treacherous deeds’. When the Frank staunchly refused an offer to convert to Islam, the sultan ‘rose to face him and struck off his head…After he was killed and dragged away, [Guy] trembled with fear, but Saladin calmed his terrors’, assuring him that he would not suffer a similar fate, and the king of Jerusalem was led away into captivity.
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