On 3 July the Frankish army, about twelve thousand strong, began to move. In normal times, it did not take long to travel from Saffurīya to Tiberias: it was four hours’ march at most, but in summer this stretch of Palestinian land was arid. There were no sources of water and no wells, and the river-beds were dry. Nevertheless, as they left Saffurīya in the early morning, the Franj were confident that by afternoon they would be able to slake their thirst at the lakeside. Saladin, however, had laid his trap carefully. Throughout the day his cavalry harassed the enemy, attacking from behind, from in front, and then on both flanks, pouring clouds of arrows down upon them relentlessly. Some losses were inflicted on the Occidentals in this way, but more important, they were forced to slow their advance.
Shortly before nightfall, the Franj reached a promontory from which they could overlook the entire area. Just below them lay the small village of Ḥiṭṭīn, a few earth-coloured houses, while the waters of Lake Tiberias glimmered at the bottom of the valley. Between the Franj and the lake, in the verdant plain stretching along the river bank, was the army of Saladin. If they were to drink, they would need the sultan’s permission.
Saladin smiled. He knew that the Franj were exhausted, dying of thirst, that they had neither the strength nor the time to cut themselves a passage to the lake before dark, and that they would therefore have to spend the night without a drop to drink. Would they really be able to fight in these conditions? That night, Saladin divided his time between prayers and meetings with his general staff. At the same time, he ordered several of his emirs to slip behind the enemy in order to cut off any possible retreat, while making sure that all his men were in position and understood their orders.
The next day, 4 July 1187, at first light of dawn, the Franj, now surrounded and crazy with thirst, desperately tried to move down the hill to reach the lake. Their foot-soldiers, more sorely tested than the knights by the previous day’s exhausting march, rushed ahead blindly, bearing their battleaxes and maces like a burden. Wave upon wave of them were crushed as they encountered a solid wall of swords and lances. The survivors were pressed back up the hill in disarray, where they intermingled with the knights, now certain of their own defeat. No line of defence could be held. Yet they continued to fight with the courage born of despair. At the head of a handful of close collaborators, Raymond tried to cut a pathway through the Muslim lines. Saladin’s lieutenants recognized him and allowed him to escape. He rode all the way back to Tripoli.
After the count’s departure, the Franj were on the point of capitulating, Ibn al-Athīr writes. The Muslims had set fire to the dry grass, and the wind was blowing the smoke into the eyes of the knights. Assailed by thirst, flames, and smoke, by the summer heat and the fires of combat, the Franj were unable to go on. But they believed that they could avoid death only by confronting it. They launched attacks so violent that the Muslims were about to give way. Nevertheless, with each assault the Franj suffered heavy losses and their numbers diminished. The Muslims gained possession of the True Cross. For the Franj, this was the heaviest of losses, for it was on this cross, they claim, that the Messiah, peace be upon him, was crucified.
According to Islam, Christ was crucified only in appearance, for God loved the son of Mary too much to allow such an odious torture to be inflicted upon him.
In spite of this loss, the last of the Franj survivors, nearly a hundred and fifty of their best knights, continued to fight bravely, digging in on the high ground above the village of Ḥiṭṭīn, where they pitched their tents and organized resistance. But the Muslims pressed them from all sides, and finally only the king’s tent remained standing. What happened next was recounted by the son of Saladin himself, al-Malik al-Afḍal, who was seventeen at the time.
I was at my father’s side during the battle of Ḥiṭṭīn, the first I had ever seen. When the king of the Franj found himself on the hill, he and his men launched a fierce attack that drove our own troops back to the place where my father was standing. I looked at him. He was saddened; he frowned and pulled nervously at his beard. Then he advanced, shouting ‘Satan must not win!’ The Muslims again assaulted the hill. When I saw the Franj retreat under the pressure of our troops, I screamed with joy, ‘We have won!’ But the Franj attacked again with all their might, and once again our troops found themselves grouped around my father. Now he urged them into the attack once more, and they forced the enemy to retreat up the hill. Again I screamed, ‘We have beaten them!’ But my father turned to me and said, ‘Silence! We will have crushed them only when that tent on the hill has fallen!’ Before he had time to finish his sentence, the king’s tent collapsed. The sultan then dismounted, bowed down and thanked God, weeping for joy.
In the midst of the cries of joy Saladin rose, mounted his charger, and headed for his tent. The leading prisoners were brought before him, notably King Guy and Prince Arnat. The writer ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Asfahāni, one of the sultan’s advisers, was present at the scene.
Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, he wrote, invited the king to sit beside him, and when Arnat entered in his turn, he seated him next to his king and reminded him of his misdeeds: ‘How many times have you sworn an oath and then violated it? How many times have you signed agreements that you have never respected?’ Arnat answered through an interpreter: ‘Kings have always acted thus. I did nothing more.’ During this time, Guy was gasping with thirst, his head dangling as though he were drunk, his face betraying great fright. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn spoke reassuring words to him, had cold water brought, and offered it to him. The king drank, then handed what remained to Arnat, who slaked his thirst in turn. The sultan then said to Guy: ‘You did not ask my permission before giving him water. I am therefore not obliged to grant him mercy.’
Indeed, according to Arab tradition, a prisoner who is offered food or drink must be spared, an engagement Saladin could not have respected in the case of a man he had sworn to kill with his own hands. ‘Imād al-Dīn continues:
After pronouncing these words, the sultan smiled, mounted his horse, and rode off, leaving his captives in terror. He supervised the return of the troops, then came back to his tent. He ordered Arnat brought there, advanced towards him, sword in hand, and struck him between the neck and shoulder-blade. When Arnat fell, he cut off his head and dragged the body by its feet to the king, who began to tremble. Seeing him thus upset, the sultan said to him in a reassuring tone: ‘This man was killed only because of his maleficence and his perfidy.’
Although the king and most of the prisoners were spared, the Templars and Hospitallers suffered the same fate as Reynald of Châtillon.
Even before that memorable day had ended, Saladin assembled his chief emirs and congratulated them on their victory, which, he said, had restored the honour so long scorned by the invaders. The Franj, he believed, no longer had an army, and it was necessary to seize upon this opportunity without delay to recover all the lands unjustly occupied. The next day, a Sunday, he therefore attacked the Tiberias citadel, where the wife of Raymond, knowing that further resistance would have been futile, surrendered. Saladin, of course, allowed the defenders to leave unmolested, with all their property.
The following Tuesday the victorious army marched on the port of Acre, which capitulated without resistance. The city had acquired considerable economic importance during these past years, for trade with the West was channelled through it. The sultan tried to convince the many Italian merchants to remain, promising that they would enjoy all the necessary protection. But they preferred to depart for the neighbouring port of Tyre. Although he regretted their decision, the sultan did not try to stop them. He even allowed them to take away all their riches and offered them an escort to protect them from brigands.
Saladin saw no point in his roaming the countryside at the head of such a powerful army, so he ordered his emirs to reduce the various strongholds of the Franj in Palestine. The Frankish settlements of Galilee and Samaria surrendered one after the other, sometimes in a few hours, sometimes over severa
l days. The inhabitants of Nablus, Haifa, and Nazareth headed for Tyre or Jerusalem. The only serious engagement occurred in Jaffa, where an army from Egypt, commanded by Saladin’s brother al-‘Ādil, met with fierce resistance. When he finally managed to take the city, al-‘Ādil reduced the entire population to slavery. Ibn al-Athīr says that he himself bought a young Frankish woman from Jaffa at a slave market in Aleppo.
She had a one-year-old child. One day, as she was carrying the child in her arms, she fell and scratched her face. She burst into tears. I tried to console her, telling her that the wound was not serious and that there was no reason to shed bitter tears over such a trifle. She answered, ‘That is not why I am crying; it is because of the misfortune that has befallen us. I had six brothers, and all were killed. I don’t know what has become of my husband and sisters.’ Of all the Franj of the littoral, the Arab historian explains, only the people of Jaffa suffered such a fate.
Indeed, everywhere else the reconquest was nearly bloodless. After his short stay in Acre, Saladin headed north. He passed Tyre, deciding not to waste time at its powerful walls, and set out in a triumphant march along the coast. On 29 July, after seventy-seven years of occupation, Saida capitulated without a fight, followed a few days later by Beirut and Jubayl. The Muslim troops were now quite close to the county of Tripoli, but Saladin, feeling that he no longer had anything to fear from that quarter, turned south, and again paused before Tyre, wondering whether or not he should lay siege to it.
After some hesitation, Bahā' al-Dīn tells us, the sultan decided not to do so. His troops were widely scattered, and exhausted by this over-long campaign. And Tyre was too well defended, for all the Franj of the coast were now gathered there. He therefore preferred to attack Ascalon, which was easier to take.
Saladin would later come to regret this decision bitterly. For the moment, however, his triumphal march continued. On 4 September Ascalon capitulated, followed by Gaza, which was held by the Templars. At the same time, Saladin dispatched several of his army’s emirs to the environs of Jerusalem, where they seized a number of positions, including Bethlehem. The sultan now had but one desire: to crown his victorious campaign, and his career, with the reconquest of the holy city.
Would he be able to duplicate the feat of the caliph ‘Umar, and enter this venerated city without destruction or bloodshed? He sent a message to the inhabitants of Jerusalem inviting them to hold talks on the future of the city. A delegation of notables came to meet him in Ascalon. The victor’s proposal was reasonable: the city would be handed over to him without combat; those inhabitants who desired to leave could do so, taking their property with them; the Christian places of worship would be respected; in the future, those who wished to visit the city as pilgrims would not be molested. But to the sultan’s great surprise, the Franj responded as arrogantly as they had during the time of their ascendancy. Deliver Jerusalem, the town where Jesus had died? Out of the question! The city was theirs and they would defend it come what may.
Swearing that he would now take Jerusalem only by the sword, Saladin ordered his troops, dispersed in the four corners of Syria, to assemble around the holy city. All the emirs came at the run. What Muslim would not wish to be able to say to his creator on Judgement Day: I fought for Jerusalem. Or better still: I died a martyr for Jerusalem. An astrologer had once predicted that Saladin would lose an eye if he entered the holy city, to which Saladin had replied: ‘To take it I am ready to lose both eyes!’
Inside the besieged city, the defence was under the command of Balian of Ibelin, the ruler of Ramlah, a lord, according to Ibn al-Athīr, who held a rank among the Franj more or less equal to that of king. He had managed to escape from Ḥiṭṭīn shortly before the defeat of his troops, and had taken refuge in Tyre. During the summer he had asked Saladin for permission to go and fetch his wife from Jerusalem, promising that he would not bear arms and that he would spend only a single night in the holy city. Once there, however, they begged him to stay, for no one else had sufficient authority to direct the resistance. Balian, who was a man of honour, felt that he could not agree to defend Jerusalem and its people without betraying his agreement with the sultan. He therefore turned to Saladin himself to ask what he should do. The magnanimous sultan released him from his commitment. If duty required that he remain in the holy city and bear arms, so be it! And since Balian was now too busy organizing the defence of Jerusalem to look after his wife, the sultan supplied an escort to lead her back to Tyre!
Saladin would never refuse a request from a man of honour, even the fiercest of his enemies. In this particular case, however, the risk was minimal. Despite his bravery, Balian could not seriously resist the Muslim army. Though the ramparts were solid and the Frankish population deeply attached to their capital, the defenders were limited to a handful of knights and a few hundred townsmen with no military experience. Moreover, the Orthodox and Jacobite Oriental Christians of Jerusalem were favourable to Saladin—especially the clergy, for they had been treated with unrelenting disdain by the Latin prelates. One of the sultan’s chief advisers was an Orthodox priest by the name of Yūsuf Batit. It was he who took charge of contacts with the Franj, as well as with the Oriental Christian communities. Shortly before the siege began, the Orthodox clerics promised Batit that they would throw open the gates of the city if the Occidentals held out too long.
As it happened, the resistance of the Franj was courageous but short-lived, and conducted with few illusions. The encirclement of Jerusalem began on 20 September. Six days later Saladin, who had established his camp on the Mount of Olives, asked his troops to intensify their pressure in preparation for the final assault. On 29 September sappers managed to open a breach in the northern part of the wall, very close to the place where the Occidentals had achieved their own breach back in 1099. When he saw that there was no longer any point in continuing the fight, Balian asked for safe conduct and presented himself before the sultan.
Saladin was intractable. Had he not offered the inhabitants the best possible terms on which to capitulate well before the battle? Now was not the time for negotiations, for he had sworn to take the city by the sword, just as the Franj had done. He could be released from his oath only if Jerusalem threw open its gates and surrendered to him completely and unconditionally.
Balian insisted on obtaining a promise from Saladin to spare his life, Ibn al-Athīr reports, but Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn would promise nothing. Balian tried to soften his heart, but in vain. He then addressed him in these terms: ‘O sultan, be aware that this city holds a mass of people so great that God alone knows their number. They now hesitate to continue the fight, because they hope that you will spare their lives as you have spared so many others, because they love life and hate death. But if we see that death is inevitable, then, by God, we will kill our own women and children and burn all that we possess. We will not leave you a single dinar of booty, not a single dirham, not a single man or woman to lead into captivity. Then we shall destroy the sacred rock, al-Aqṣā mosque, and many other sites; we will kill the five thousand Muslim prisoners we now hold, and will exterminate the mounts and all the beasts. In the end, we will come outside the city, and we will fight against you as one fights for one’s life. Not one of us will die without having killed several of you!’
Although he was not impressed by the threats, Saladin was moved by the man’s fervour. In order not to appear to soften too easily, he turned to his advisers and asked them if he could not be released from his pledge to take the city by the sword—simply in order to avoid the destruction of the holy places of Islam. Their response was affirmative, but since they were aware of their master’s incorrigible generosity, they insisted that he obtain financial compensation from the Franj before he allowed them to leave, for the long campaign had emptied the state treasury. The infidels, the advisers explained, were virtual prisoners. To purchase their freedom, each should pay a ransom: ten dinars for each man, five for a woman, and one for a child. Balian accepted the principle,
but he pleaded for the poor, who, he said, would be unable to pay such a sum. Could not seven thousand of them be released in exchange for thirty thousand dinars? Once again, the request was granted, despite furious protests from the treasurers. Satisfied, Balian ordered his men to lay down their arms.
So it was that on Friday 2 October 1187, or 27 Rajab 583 by the Muslim calendar, the very day on which Muslims celebrate the Prophet’s nocturnal journey to Jerusalem, Saladin solemnly entered the holy city. His emirs and soldiers had strict orders: no Christian, whether Frankish or Oriental, was to be touched. And indeed, there was neither massacre nor plunder. Some fanatics demanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre be destroyed in retaliation for the excesses committed by the Franj, but Saladin silenced them. On the contrary, he strengthened the guard at the Christian places of worship and announced that the Franj themselves would be allowed to come on pilgrimage whenever they liked. The Frankish cross attached to the Dome of the Rock mosque was removed, of course. And al-Aqṣā mosque, which had been turned into a church, became a Muslim place of worship again, after its walls had been sprinkled with rose water.
Most of the Franj remained in the city as Saladin, surrounded by a mass of companions, went from sanctuary to sanctuary weeping, praying, and prostrating himself. The rich made sure to sell their houses, businesses, or furniture before going into exile, the buyers generally being Orthodox or Jacobite Christians who planned to stay on. Other property was later sold to Jewish families settled in the holy city by Saladin.