by A R Azzam
on the waterless plain then not just the army but the Idngdom would be
lost. Then, to Raymond's great consternation, Guy ordered that the column
halt and make camp in this desolate spot. It was the action of an exhausted
man who had lost his nerve at a time when strong and forcefiil action was
vital. 'Alas! Alas! Lord God', bemoaned Raymond when the king's com-
mand was delivered to him, 'the war is over. We are betrayed to death and
the land is lost.' But Guy had little option but to strike camp, since there
was a grave danger of the rearguard being cut off and sacrificed. Soon night
fell and the darkness hid the two armies from each other.
The night of 3 - 4 July I I 8 9 was a terrible one for the Christian army and
a tense one for the Muslim army. So hemmed in were the Christian forces
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that, according to the chroniclers, not even a cat could have passed through
the Muslim lines to escape, and so close were the two armies that both sides
could hear the other side's conversations. Desolate and urgent prayers to
the Christian and Muslim Gods now drifted heavenwards in the dark night,
as men from both sides prepared for daylight. Throughout the night the
Muslim drums continued to beat and a continuous rain of arrows descended
on the Christian camp. 'As the arrows struck them down', so wrote Ibn
Shaddad, 'those who had seemed like lions now seemed like hedgehogs.'
Then just before dawn a brief silence fell, but only as prelude to the Muslim
call to prayer, as the hills echoed with the sound of 'Allahu Akbar, Allahu
Akbar'. That night Saladin was like a man possessed and refused any rest.
He understood that his destiny awaited him with the break of dawn, but his
cautious nature told him that the battle was far from over and that victory
remained elusive. So far, few Prankish knights had perished and he knew
that there would come a time during the next day when, confronted with
no choice, the knights would charge. If they succeeded in making a break-
through to the springs of water then they would be safe and his victory
incomplete. And so orders were given that next day there should be no ces-
sation in the rain of arrows that descended on the Christian camp, for no
sooner would the Icnights feel the arrows lessening than they would certainly
unleash a ferocious and desperate charge and the outcome of that would be
uncertain. At the same time, a constant convoy of camels, laden with thou-
sands of goat skins filled with water, made its way from Lake Tiberias into
the Muslim camp, for water and the thirst of the Christians was certain to
play a huge factor when the sun arose.
As dawn broke on 4 July Saladin remained uncertain as to the tactics of
the Christian army. Would they try to retreat to tiie spring of Turan, or
make a dash for Hattin, or would they make a sudden and furious attack
on his position to force a way out? As daylight broke, Guy ordered his army
to begin its desperate move, and Ibn Shaddad noted that the Christians
'looked like mountains on the march, like seas boiling over, wave upon
wave'. Once again Raymond led the vanguard, with the king and the True
Cross in the centre, and Balian and the white-robed Templars and black-
mantled Hospitallers protecting the fragile rear. Into the blinding light of
the rising sun the Christian army marched to its doom. Saladin held back
and only some sporadic incursions were made against the rearguard, though
he did suffer casualties and one of his most trusted amirs - Muranguras
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- was slain. But as the heat of the sun began to take its toll and as the
two wings of the Muslim army held firm, several Icnights, to the horror of
the Christians, broke out of the formation and sought sanctuaiy with the
Muslims, prepared to take up the Muslim faith. It was then that Saladin
ordered that scrub fires be ignited, for he knew that the westerly winds
would blow the smoke and ash into the faces of the Franks, creating flirther
confusion and allowing his horsemen to launch deadly attacks.
At this point the morale of the infantry collapsed, and one by one they
began to break away from the column and the formation began to crack.
With a unity of purpose that only shared suffering could give them, the
exhausted men began to run and stumble in their thousands up the black,
rocky slopes of the Horns of Hattin.^ The king's red tent was now pitched
in futility to act as a rallying point for the infantry, who were beyond rally-
ing. Even the bishops carrying the True Cross could not persuade the foot
soldiers, for they were calling to men who had abandoned themselves to
death.® The disintegration of the infantry was crucial, since it was their
responsibility to protect the knights. In their absence, the Muslims easily
succeeded in killing the Icnights' horses, thereby rendering them ineffective.
The Franldsh army broke into three parts, while around the Idng's tent,
besieged and terrified, massed the nobles and knights of the kingdom. At
the head of the army Raymond was faced with a hopeless situation. The only
recourse, one which he had constantly advocated, was to charge Taqi ul-
t)in's wing and tiy to make a breakthrough. It would mean abandoning the
Idng and the True Cross, but the batde was lost and Guy had brought this
calamity on his own head. Raymond now desperately ordered his knights to
line up for a charge and to take advantage of a downward slope. Saladin's
nephew saw clearly what was on Raymond's mind and as the knights
charged he ordered his forces to open their ranks and allow them to sweep
through. As the riders passed, the archers rained volleys of arrows on them,
and then when they had passed, Taqi ul-Din once again closed ranks.
Raymond found himself on the outside of the battle, and with tired horses
and exhausted men he could not hope to fight his way back. In any case
there was nothing he could now do to alter the result of the battle. And so
Raymond rode to the castle of Safad in the hills to the north. His escape was
accompanied by accusations of cowardice and treachery, but it is hard to see
what else he could have done. After all, he had done all he could to avert
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this disaster. A few weeks later Raymond died in Tripoli - and some said
that he died from shame.
The capture of the True Cross
Then, when all seemed lost, the knights of the Prankish army began to fight
with the desperation of martyrs. Wliile the infantiy huddled on the hillsides,
the loiights around Guy chose to charge at Saladin himself, hoping to slay
him. Not once but twice tremendous charges were made, which carried the
fighting almost to Saladin's tent. Saladin's son al-Afdal and Ibn Shaddad
were accompanying him that day, and al-Afdal recorded his father's anxiety
at the blight's charge: T looked at him and saw that he had turned ashen
pale in distress and had grasped his beard'. The knights were driven back
and al-Afdal cried out in joy, 'We have beaten them', only to be hushed by
his father. 'We
have not beaten them until that tent falls', Saladin said,
pointing to the red tent of the Icing. No sooner had Saladin spoken than the
ropes of the king's tent were cut and it collapsed, and Saladin knew that the
battle was over and that victory was his. At once he dismounted from his
horse and prostrated himself, Idssing the ground in thanks to his Lord. At
the same time Guy of Lusignan, overwhelmed by the Muslim forces pour-
ing around his tent, threw his sword aside, covered his head with his arms
and sank to his knees in despair. In the meantime a fierce battle, led by Taqi
ul-Din, raged around the relic of the True Cross, which was protected by
the Bishops of Acre and Lydda. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting took place as
arrows were abandoned in favour of swords, and though the Bishop of Acre
was slain as he protected the Cross, his colleague, the Bishop of Lydda, did
not hesitate to seize a sword and fight with the fierce abandon of a skilled
warrior. It was magnificent and moving, but hopeless and fiitile. One by one
the warriors protecting the relic fell by the side as the Muslim forces pressed
forward, and it was none other than Saladin's nephew who burst through
the Christian defence and seized the Cross, holding it aloft as joyous ulula-
tions of Muslim chants filled the air.
The overwhelming victory at the batde of Hattin has elevated Saladin to
the ranks of the great military leaders of history. To an extent this is mis-
leading, since though the victory was certainly achieved on the battlefield,
Saladin's greatness lay elsewhere. A carefi.il study of the events of those
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fateful days reveal a considerable amount about his character and motiva-
tions. It has been argued by historians - and not without an element of
truth - that Guy lost the battle of Hattin rather than that Saladin won it,
and certainly Guy made two fatal mistakes. The first one was obvious: he
chose to march his army from a defensive and secure position to Tiberias.
We have touched briefly and speculated on why he changed his mind on
that fateflil night, but we have also stressed that marching the army to
Tiberias - admittedly in inclement weather - did not automatically signal
its doom. Certainly Guy had handed Saladin an advantage, but the battle
was at that stage far from being won or lost. It should also be noted that
Guy's decision to march was precisely because Saladin attacked Tiberias and
had accordingly set a trap for him, even if Saladin's surprise when he was
informed that Guy was marching is proof that he was not expecting him
to take the bait. The second error made by Guy was far more serious,
and that was that he fiindamentally underestimated the size of Saladin's
army. The frustrating years of diplomacy in Aleppo and Mosul had finally
paid ofii" and the army which Saladin had gathered came from all corners of
the Muslim world. Perhaps Guy was less informed of what was happening
in Saladin's camp than Saladin was of the internal schisms among the
Christian knights, but it is hard to see what he could have done even
then. In any case, Saladin's greatest achievement was that he succeeded in
gathering together the greatest Muslim army since the Abbasid times - and
otie that was held together by the force of his personality. There was still a
batde to be fought, of course, but it was clear that Saladin's years in the
wilderness had not been spent in vain. But even then, Guy's two errors did
not hand Saladin victory. Although a batde could be lost, it also needed to
be won.
From the moment that, the Christian army set off on its march to
Tiberias, Saladin unleashed the force of his army against the Franks. So
fierce were the attacks led by Keukburi that the Christian rearguard was
slowed down to such a slow pace that there was a real danger that Raymond
and Guy would leave it behind. As long as the infantry protected the loiights
from the Muslim attacks then the Christian army could move relatively
unhindered, but the collapse of the morale of the infantry and the sub-
sequent collapse and desertions were of course partly due to the extreme
heat and thirst of the men, but also largely to the incessant and ferocious
nature of the Muslim attacks. If to slow the army down was Saladin's first
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objective, then his second one was to prevent it from reaching the spring
of Hattin. As soon as Saladin saw that Raymond had changed direction and
was maldng for Hattin, he ordered Taqi ul-Din to block him, and achieving
this objective brought the first act of the war to an end as night fell. So far
the battle had gone according to plan, but one imagines that the night of
4 July was a long one since Saladin Imew that victory was far from assured. He
would have loiown that the Christians were fighting a holy war, which was
just as precious to them as his jihad was to him. Thus when dawn broke an
iron discipline would be required to ensure that that which had been gained
would not be lost. And indeed the Christian army tested the resolve of the
Muslims to the full; against Keukburi on the left wing, against Taqi ul-Din
on the right, and even against Saladin in the centre. But all three held firm
and, that day, victory belonged to Saladin. One can certainly argue that
Guy's errors were crucial to the outcome at Hattin, but at the same time
Saladin got his enemies to fight where he wanted, when he wanted and how
he wanted,' and that, in itself, was a tremendous achievement.
As Saladin slowly rode to camp, the impact of what had been achieved
began to sink in. The devastated Christian survivors were rounded up as
prisoners and Saladin ordered that they be sent off to Damascus. There were
so many prisoners that Ibn Shaddad witnessed the sight of a Muslim man
walldng and dragging behind him a tent rope from which he had tied the
hands of 30 Prankish prisoners who sullenly followed him. Such was the
scale of the victory that the price of a prisoner fell to dinars, and it was told
that a prisoner in Damascus was sold for a shoe. As for the Cross, it was
fixed upside down and carried by Ibn Abi Asrun - who had once as a young
man befriended Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani in Baghdad - victoriously into
Damascus. The list of noblemen who had been taken prisoner was impres-
sive. There was the king of course, but also his brothers, the Marquess
WiUiam of Montferrat, Reynald of Chatillon, Joscelin of Courtenay,
Humphrey of Toron, the master of the Templars Gerard of Ridefort, the
Bishop of Lydda, the master of the Hospitallers, and hundreds of men of
lesser rank and d i s t i n c t i o n . I t would be hard to exaggerate the scale of the victory, for in one day - terrible for the Christians, glorious for the
Muslims - the Franldsh army and with it the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
had been devastated. Strict instructions were then issued that all Templars
and Hospitallers were to be taken aside and ransoms paid for those who had
captured them, for a different fate awaited them.
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Saladin slays Reynald of Chatillon
To Saladin's tent the king Guy and Reynald of Chatillon were brought.
To Guy, Saladin maintained his famed magnanimity and offered him a gob-
let of iced water to quench his thirst. But when the Icing passed the goblet
to Reynald, Saladin frowned and told the king - through an interpreter - 'It
is you who gave him to drink'. The implication was clear, for it was a uni-
versally accepted tradition among the Muslims that if a captive was given
food or drink then his life was safe. Saladin then reproached Reynald for his
past actions and for his attack on the caravan, but Reynald remained defiant,
claiming that he did only what princes do. Saladin remained passive, his
face expressionless, and for a few moments the men sat in silence. Saladin
then stood up and left the tent. When he returned, Guy was taken into an
antechamber and Reynald brought into Saladin's presence. This time
Saladin was curt and he simply offered Reynald the option of converting
to Islam. It was an option which of course he knew Reynald would
never accept, but legally Saladin had to offer it. No sooner had Reynald
refiased it did Saladin draw his sword and strike him around the neck. The
blow felled Reynald but did not kill him, and a guard stepped forward
and cut his head off. The body was then dragged out of the tent and past
Guy, who became ashen faced and began to shake, for he feared that he
too would be slain. Saladin, however, quickly emerged and reassured Guy
that his life was safe. 'Kings do not kill Icings', he told him, 'but he had
transgressed his limits.' Saladin had fulfilled his vow to his old friend al-Qadi
al-Fadil.
Meanwhile the Templars and the Hospitallers, whom Saladin detested,
had been gathered. 'I wish to purify the land of these two monstrous
orders', Saladin had once vowed, and he was true to his word. He knew that
the prisoners would disdain ransom and that if released would fight him
again, for that was what they had vowed. And so he ordered that they
should all be gathered and executed in one session. Intriguingly, those who
were to carry out the executions were not Saladin's soldiers but the religi-
ous clerics and sufis. This seems a perplexing command. Perhaps Saladin
intended it to be a symbolic act; to allow the sufis to participate in the shed-