Jerusalem. The Biography

to restrain Reynald of Kerak and the Master of the Templars, who were both spoiling for a fight with Saladin. Despite the truce, Reynald ambushed a
haj
caravan from Damascus, capturing Saladin’s own sister, mocking Muhammad and torturing his prisoners. Saladin appealed for compensation to King Guy, but Reynald refused to pay it.
    In May, Saladin’s son raided Galilee. The Templars and the Hospitallers recklessly attacked him, but they were slaughtered at the springs of Cresson, the Master of the Templars and three knights being the only ones to escape. This disaster brought temporary unity.
    KING GUY: TAKING THE BAIT
     
    On 27 June 1187, Saladin, at the head of an army of 30,000, marched on Tiberias, hoping to lure the Franks out and strike ‘a tremendous blow in the jihad’.
    King Guy mustered 12,000 knights and 15,000 infantry at Sephoria in Galilee, but, at a council in the red tent of the kings of Jerusalem, he agonized over the unpalatable alternatives facing him. Raymond of Tripoli urged restraint even though his wife was besieged in Tiberias. Reynald and the Master of the Templars responded by calling Raymond a traitor and demanded battle. Finally Guy took the bait. He led the army across the baking-hot Galilean hills for a day until, harassed by Saladin’s troops, overwhelmed by scorching heat and paralysed by thirst, he pitched camp on the volcanic plateau of the twin-peaked Horns of Hattin. They then went looking for water – but the well there was dry. ‘Ah Lord God,’ said Raymond, ‘the war is over; we are dead men; the kingdom is finished.’
    When the Crusaders awoke on the morning of Saturday 4 July, they could hear prayers in the Muslim camp below. They were already thirsty in the summer heat. The Muslims lit the scrubland. Soon it was burning all around them. 13

1187–1189
     
    SALADIN: THE BATTLE
     
    Saladin did not sleep, but spent the night organizing his forces and supplies, positioning his two wings. He had surrounded the Franks. The Sultan of Egypt and Syria was determined not to waste this opportunity. His multinational army, with its contingents of Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Armenians and Sudanese, was an awesome sight, relished by Saladin’s excitable secretary, Imad al-Din:
     
A swelling ocean of whinnying chargers, swords and cuirasses, iron-tipped lances like stars, crescent swords, Yemenite blades, yellow banners, standards red as anemones and coats of mail glittering like pools, swords polished white as streams of water, feathered bows blue as birds, helmets gleaming over slim curvetting chargers.
     
    At dawn, Saladin, commanding the centre on horseback, accompanied by his young son Afdal, and protected as always by his bodyguard of devoted Turkish mamluks (slave-soldiers), started his attack, showering the Franks with arrows and directing the charges of his cavaliers and horse-archers to keep the heavily armoured Franks at bay. For Guy, everything depended on maintaining the shield of infantry around his mounted knights; for Saladin, everything depended on separating them.
    As the Bishop of Acre raised the True Cross before the king, Guy’s army repelled the first charges, but soon the thirsty Frankish soldiers fled to higher ground, leaving the knights exposed. Guy’s knights launched their charges. As Raymond of Tripoli and Balian of Ibelin galloped towards the sultan’s forces, Saladin simply ordered his nephew Taki al-Din, commanding the right wing, to open his ranks: the Crusaders galloped through. But the Muslim ranks closed again, tightening the net. Their archers, mostly Armenians, picked off the Frankish horses with ‘clouds of arrows like locusts’, stranding the knights, and ‘their lions became hedgehogs’. On that ‘burningly hot day’, unhorsed and exposed, swollen-mouthed with thirst, tormented by the infernalbrushwood, unsure of their leadership, Guy’s soldiers perished, fled or surrendered as his order of battle disintegrated.
    He retreated to one of the Horns and there pitched his red tent. His knights surrounded him for a last stand. ‘When the Frankish king had withdrawn to the hilltop,’ recalled Saladin’s son Afdal, ‘his knights made a valiant charge and drove the Muslims back upon my father.’ For a moment, it seemed as if Frankish courage would threaten Saladin himself. Afdal saw his father’s dismay: ‘He changed colour and pulled at his beard then rushed forward crying, “Give the devil the lie!”’ at which the Muslims