Sea of Faith

by Stephen O'Shea

  Her allies on that occasion of 1186 were a colorful lot. Proffering the crown to the couple was a corrupt priest from the Auvergne named Eraclius, who had been made Latin patriarch of Jerusalem several years earlier by virtue of sharing the bed of Sibylla's mother. (He had preceded Guy's brother as her lover.) Patriarch Eraclius had since taken up with a married lady of Nablus, known throughout the kingdom as Madame la Patriarchesse. Another of Guy's supporters, Gerard of Ridefort, the leader of the Templars, had a sizable ax to grind. On arriving in Outremer in 1173, he had gone into the service of Raymond of Tripoli, on the understanding that the count would find him a wealthy fief once a marriageable widow came on the market. Raymond, for reasons unknown, reneged on the deal, giving a certain Lucia, the widowed heiress of Botrun, in what is now Lebanon, to a Pisan merchant in exchange for a hefty payment of gold. Gerard, infuriated, joined the Templars and rose through the ranks to the office of grand master, his hatred of his former master sharpened by the insult of having been passed over for a mere merchant. When Guy of Lusignan bowed his head to receive the regalia, Gerard averred smugly, "This crown compensates for the Botrun marriage." Applauding alongside him was the inevitable Reynaud of Chatillon. A pliant monarch—and one indebted to him for his ascent to power—was precisely the type of man the lord of Kerak sought for Jerusalem. King Guy would not dare interfere with his sponsor's campaign of anti-Muslim brigandage. The hawks of Outremer, those fired by newcomer zeal and greed, had orchestrated a coup.

  Disgusted, Raymond of Tripoli watched as his fellow poulain barons hastened to Jerusalem to make obeisance to King Guy and Queen Sibylla. The great lord of Tripoli rode in the opposite direction, up the Jordan River Valley to Tiberias, the capital of his wife's fief on the Sea of Galilee. Fearful that his enemies would try to undermine him further, Raymond entered into negotiations with Saladin, with a view to forming an alliance in the event of attack from the forces of Jerusalem. This overture was, if not treasonous, certainly unusual. For Saladin, the offer came as heartening proof that his intent to fight the Franks later in the year was well timed, for obviously they were now afflicted with the same divisiveness that had plagued the Muslims for so long. Saladin replied to Raymond's peace feeler by making an equally unusual request: he asked to send an armed reconnaissance party through the count's possessions in lower Galilee, just to get a sense of the lay of the land. After mulling over the matter for a few days, Raymond gave his assent, on condition that the Muslim cavalry arrive after dawn and leave before sunset and engage in no looting or rapine. May 1, 1187, was set as the date for this peaceful razzia. Raymond's messengers rode out to the towns and castles of Galilee, warning one and all to stay indoors.

  Had the hawks of Jerusalem remained true to form in shunning Raymond, the day might have passed without incident. However, Guy and Sibylla realized that reconciliation with such a powerful baron had to be attempted and to that end had dispatched a delegation of nobles northward to smooth the count's ruffled feathers. They had just entered Galilee when a messenger from Tiberias arrived bearing news of the upcoming one-day invasion and of Raymond's recommendation to lie low. For some in the Jerusalem embassy, this complaisance with the enemy proved that the Arabic-speaking, orientalized count of Tripoli was, indeed, an apostate. For others, notably Gerard of Ridefort, just hearing news of approaching Muslims was tantamount to waving a red flag before a bull. He and his counterpart, the master of the Hospitalers, summoned as many men as they could from their orders' possessions in the area. By midday of May 1, a force of about 130 armored knights lumbered north toward Nazareth, in search of their quarry.

  The contingent led by Kukburi, an experienced Mesopotamian emir, is said to have numbered seven thousand mounted archers and light cavalry. Even if that figure is exaggerated, the day-trippers from Syria vastly outnumbered their would-be ambushers. True to the accord passed with Raymond, the Muslim force had forded the Jordan at dawn and gone on a long loop through Galilee, scrupulously avoiding damage to crops or property and, no doubt, reconnoiter-ing the terrain for a future engagement. Toward the end of the afternoon, they stopped to water their horses at a spring called Cresson, just below Cana. Just then the Templars and Hospitalers crested the ridge at Nazareth and saw the size of the enemy force. The master of the Hospital suggested they exercise the better part of valor, as did another commander of the Templars, James of Mailly. Grand Master Ridefort taunted the latter, "You love your blond head too well to want to lose it!" The two sensible men were shamed into changing their minds. The knights, as suicidal as any Assassin, then charged down the hill into the mass of the Muslim cavalry. The outcome was one-sided: of the Christians, only Gerard of Ridefort and two others survived the battle to ride away to safety.

  In the dying light of the day, Raymond of Tripoli, in his citadel in Tiberias, would have been gladdened to see Kukburi and his men approaching his city on their way out of Galilee, showing that the risky agreement had been honored. Relief would have then changed to consternation as he recognized the heads of dozens of Templar and Hospitaler knights affixed to the lances of the passing cavalry. News of the massacre spread quickly, spurring King Guy to call every able-bodied man of Outremer to arms. A large sum of money that had been donated to the Templars and the Hospitalers by Henry II of England—as atonement for his role in the recent murder of Thomas Becket—was used to buy armor and hire mercenaries. Raymond of Tripoli, appalled by the result of his flirtation with Saladin, made amends and joined the king in Acre, the great fortified port of the Levant that had been turned into a marshaling yard for the largest army Outremer would ever field. By late June the preparations were over. The Latins headed east into the Bet Netofa Valley, some twelve hundred armored knights, a greater number of lighter cavalry, and perhaps ten thousand foot soldiers, supplemented by crossbowmen from the Italian merchant fleet. The bishop of Acre held aloft a relic known as the True Cross, that long-cherished fragment of wood purportedly from the original timber on which Christ had been crucified. Normally this duty would have been performed by the patriarch of Jerusalem, but Eraclius had, characteristically, begged off.

  On July 1, 1187, Saladin crossed the Jordan with a force superior in number to the Latins, estimated at twelve thousand cavalry and thirty thousand infantry. This too was the largest army he was ever to command, coming as it did from every corner of his empire. Kurds, Turks, Egyptians, Damascenes, Aleppans, Yemenis, Mespotamians, and thousands of exalted religious volunteers poured into Galilee, ready and eager to take the battle to the Christians. One army moved east, in from the Mediterranean; the other west, from the Sea of Galilee. The land could support this many men on the move for a few days, at most.

  Zippori, a ruined city from Roman and Byzantine antiquity alternately known as Sepphoris, spreads out over a southern ridge of the Bet Netofa Valley, its recently uncovered floor mosaics a tribute to pagan bacchanalia. A capital of Galilee under the Romans, Zippori was home to Anne and Joachim, the parents of Mary, and during its expansion in the last years before the birth of Christ, it is thought that the work available on its building sites induced Joseph to settle in nearby Nazareth. Later, during the rebellion of the Jerusalem Jews against Roman rule in the first century C.E., the city avoided the destructive wrath of the emperors Vespasian and Titus by its politic refusal to join the revolt. The Sanhedrin—the high court of the Jews—eventually moved to Zippori, where one of its leaders compiled the Mishnah, a compendium of oral traditions fundamental to rabbinic Judaism. By the time the Latins arrived, the city was depopulated, having been supplanted by Tiberias, twenty-five kilometers distant, as the main center of Galilee. Still, aware of the site's strategic and scriptural significance, the crusaders erected a small fort on its acropolis (using Roman sarcophagi as building blocks) as well as a modest church dedicated to Anne and Joachim, which is now a ruin attached to a convent of Italian nuns.

  The site had lent itself to settlement for the usual reasons: its position on a height made it defensible, and its flowing sp
ring made it sustainable. The same considerations led the large Latin army to pitch camp there on July 2, 1187. As long as they stayed in the shaded mulberry groves of Zippori, men and horses could rest and feed, ready to repel assault and ride out to skirmish. Any opponent stuck out on the bald valley floor fifty meters below could not last long in the heat. This, in essence, was what Raymond of Tripoli argued in the council of war held that night. Even after news arrived that the lower town of Tiberias had fallen to Saladin and that Raymond's wife, Eschiva, was trapped in that city's citadel, the count of Tripoli remained unmoved. He knew Saladin to be too honorable to visit any outrage upon his lady and that the customary payment of ransom would free her. Raymond argued that, if anything, the siege was a ploy to get them to leave the cool embrace of Zippori for the scorched earth of the valley leading to Tiberias. King Guy saw sense in Raymond's reasoning and ruled that the army would stay put, in the hope that Saladin and his men would dither ineffectually in the heat and then disperse. The council was dismissed.

  Raymond's fiercest detractor among the hawks, Gerard of Ridefort, came back to the king's red tent later in the night. The Templar was having none of it. For Gerard, the count of Tripoli was no better than a traitor, his complicity with Saladin a public scandal. One hundred brave Templars and Hospitalers would have been alive to fight for Outremer had Raymond not given the infidels permission to cross his lands. The man, Gerard added, was not even willing to rescue his wife.

  As a warrior, Gerard impressed upon Guy that this was not the time to shrink from the enemy; almost every able-bodied man in Outremer was there, ready for combat. As his sponsor in gaining the throne, Gerard leaned on the king even harder, threatening to withdraw the support of the Templars—the backbone of the kingdom—for Guy's exalted station in Outremer. There is no record of Reynaud of Chatillon being present, but his stout seconding of Gerard's arguments would have been no secret to either man. The king cracked under the pressure. The army that had gone to sleep thinking it would dig in at Zippori was awakened before dawn and told to march to Tiberias.

  In the half-light, King Guy shouted at all who questioned his change of heart: "It is not for you to ask me by what counsel I am doing it," Guy bellowed. "I want you to mount your horses and prepare yourselves immediately to go to Tiberias." The Latin army of Outremer gathered around the spring of Zippori and formed three separate columns. Raymond, his warnings ignored, agreed to command the vanguard of the column—it was his due as their route would pass through his fiefs. King Guy and Reynaud, accompanied by the True Cross, led the bulk of the men in the center. In the rear, the most exposed position for an army on the march, came the Templars and the Hospitalers, commanded by their respective masters and a great baron, Balian of Ibelin. The foot soldiers, archers, and crossbowmen, their body armor consisting of sturdy leather doublets, formed human walls on the sides of the marching columns, protecting the heavily armed warhorses. The latter, the tanks of medieval warfare, had to be preserved for devastating, unstoppable charges. Lighter cavalry, many of them Turcopoles, or native Levantines forced to convert to Christianity, danced around the flanks, ready to counter any harassers with sudden sallies.

  The army marched out into the valley, the rising sun glinting off the metal of thousands of swords. Sentinels posted by Saladin jumped onto their mounts and raced back to his camp in the hills beyond Nazareth with the news. Warfare in Outremer had heretofore been a succession of sieges won or lost and of cautious withdrawals to avoid a decisive encounter: on this day, with the odds in his favor, Saladin rolled the dice. He split his forces, ordering his able nephew Taliq al-Din to take the right wing of the army and head for the northern hills of the valley, a few miles in front of the Christian advance. Kukburi was to leave his position and stealthily prepare to get behind the rear of the Latins' column. The mass of soldiery under Saladin moved farther to the southern lip of Bet Netofa, at a place overlooking the village of Lubiya. In the distance, to the west, the cloud of dust from the marchers would have been visible from this vantage point, as the Christians slowly picked their way along the old Roman road running through the valley. Saladin knew that he would never again command such a huge force and, especially, that never again would the men of iron from beyond the sea needlessly expose themselves to such peril.

  The attacks began almost at once, irregular at first, then building to a crescendo of bedlam later in the day. Kukburi's bowmen rode out of the hills to harass the rear and flanks, their arrows sailing upward in high arcs to seek the horses in the middle of the columns. Others fired into the flanking soldiers, retreating quickly once the Pisans had leveled their deadly but slow-to-load crossbows and let fly. The pace of attack and retreat heightened as the sun rose higher in the sky. The Latins gulped the last drops from their gourds and kept their heads down, many of their quilted garments sporting a bouquet of arrows that had found their mark but been stopped by leather and mail.

  Toward the end of the morning the three columns came alongside, on their left, the Tauran ridge. An Arab village of the same name (which is still there) spread over the base of the limestone height, its spinney of trees giving proof that a spring gurgled nearby. The order was given to bypass Tauran, to stick to the road, to keep on marching eastward; the men could slake their ever-mounting thirst at dusk, once they had reached the shore of the freshwater Sea of Galilee. The columns moved on, toward the kinks of heat rising from the waterless plain before them. Seeing their mistake, Kukburi brought his full force into the field behind the Latins, blocking any backtracking to the lifesaving well of Tauran. The attacks intensified, the terrifying din of cymbals and drums echoing down from the hills as wave after wave of Kurdish bowmen, and the heavily armed infantry, charged the Christian rear. The valley grew hellish, the ordeal complete, the foot soldiers with the armed monks walking backward to protect the warhorses from repeated assault. From within the rear column, the knights of the Temple and the Hospital sent riders to King Guy to call a halt to the march: they would take their mounts and ride out to defeat the foe. When the sun was at its zenith, the Latins stopped. Raymond of Tripoli, in the vanguard several miles ahead, cursed the folly of his countrymen.

  The counterattack came to nothing, the adversary melting away in the blinding light of midday, to leave the juggernaut of knights in search of a target. They regained the ranks and the march resumed, through a blizzard of violence as Saladin's men, their orange and yellow banners unfurled, swooped down to harry the central column. Raymond pleaded unsuccessfully with Guy to leave the infantry behind and stage a cavalry breakout; it was their only chance. Yet the faltering march continued, men falling by the wayside, horses shrieking as they went down, attackers loosing clouds of arrows and howls of victory. The afternoon dragged on, Galilee became an oven. Raymond, seeing that they would never make Tiberias, prevailed upon Guy to change their route, urging him to leave the gentler gradations of the valley and hurry down a dangerous cleft of land to the northeast, near the village of Hattin, its well the only thing standing between them and their creator. As the count gathered the knights of the vanguard, from Antioch, Tyre, and Tripoli, readying them for the charge to open the way, Taliq al-Din and his thousands dashed across the front of the Christian advance to block their path to Hattin. Saladin, the tactician on the hilltop, wanted to keep them as they were, a malevolent mass of infidels, trapped out in the open, dying from a thousand cuts, going mad from thirst.

  Raymond's charge never came to pass. Balian of Ibelin, commanding the rear of the column, implored the king: the rear guard had had enough, the men were swooning in the heat; a camp had to be pitched, organized, fortified. Near the village of Lubiya, halfway between Zippori and Tiberias, King Guy gave the order. They would halt there for the night. Count Raymond, far ahead in the unharassed van, learned the news and cried out, "Ah! Lord God, the battle is over! We have been betrayed unto death! The Kingdom is finished!"

  The old village of Lubiya is now gone, the land around it cultivated by the Kibbutz Lav
i, a cooperative founded by German and Austrian Jews who first fled to England to escape the Shoah, then settled in Galilee in 1949. The kibbutzniks tend pear, lichee, and almond orchards; grow wheat, barley, sunflower, and cotton; and, in a large workshop in the center of the residential complex, make furniture for synagogues throughout Israel. Asher Aldubi, the avuncular fellow who heads the kibbutz, knows full well the significance of the site from which his community draws sustenance. "We have tourists who come to the Horns," he says. "Muslims, mostly . . . The Christians, maybe they are ashamed?"

  The part of the valley through which the crusaders passed on July 3,1187, lies within Lavi farmland. On a nearly imperceptible rise running down the middle of the valley, fragments of the Roman road remain, a few faint traces of classical stone masked by a carpet of spiky weeds. A power line runs alongside it. The view to the north has the sturdy limestone barrier of Mount Tauran perhaps two kilometers away; at an equal distance to the south rise the hills near Nazareth. From either direction, the Muslim harassers had to ride across open country to get at their quarry.

  Directly ahead on the line of the march the land dips into a hollow before rising into a lightly forested hill that signals the end of the open valley. Somewhere to the west of this hill, now crowned by the kibbutz buildings, the exhausted Guy ordered the camp to be set up. The Lavi hill is deceptive—beyond it the land does not fall off but rises gently into a prairie of dry grass and twisted chapparal. And the soil itself changes, from porous, water-catching limestone to hard, unforgiving basalt. At the end of this gradual incline stands the unmistakable silhouette of the Horns of Hattin, a low saddle-shaped hill with a pair of grassy brown eminences, resembling pommels, one at each extremity. Its height is not forbidding; approached from the west, through the grassland, a dirt track leads up the twenty meters or so to the summit ridge. There, between the horned peaks at each side, stretches a rectangular depression, no more than a half-kilometer in length. The gray volcanic soil supports a few prickly-pear bushes, cactuslike in their isolation, and gazelle droppings litter the burnt brown grass. Hoopoe birds pop around the expanse, letting out silly cries. Aside from the horns, the hill seems unremarkable, until one turns east and realizes how geology would torment the crusader.