Текст книги "The Crusades. The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land"

Автор книги: Thomas Asbridge

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12

HOLY WARRIOR

In the spring of 1186, with the worst of his illness behind him, Saladin–now some forty-eight years old–returned to Damascus. Much of the remainder of that year was given over to his protracted convalescence, and the calmer recreations of theological debate, hawking and hunting, as his physical vitality slowly rekindled. That summer, one marked distraction was provided by the prediction of an impending apocalypse. For decades, astrologers had foretold that, on 16 September 1186, a momentous planetary alignment would stir up a devastating wind storm, scouring the Earth of life. This bleak prophecy had circulated among Muslims and Christians alike, but the sultan nonetheless thought it ridiculous. He made a point of holding a candlelit, open-air party on the appointed night of disaster, even as ‘feeble-mind[ed]’ fools huddled in caves and underground shelters. Needless to say, the evening passed without event; indeed, one of his companions pointedly remarked that ‘we never saw a night as calm as that’.

While his health gradually improved, Saladin looked to reorganise the balance and distribution of power within what could now be termed his Ayyubid Empire. One priority was the promotion of his eldest son al-Afdal as primary heir. The young princeling, now around sixteen, was brought north from Egypt to Syria. Entering Damascus to celebrations fit for a sultan, al-Afdal became nominal overlord of the city, although in the years to come Saladin often kept him by his side, tutoring him in the arts of leadership, politics and war. Two of Saladin’s younger sons were similarly rewarded. Uthman, aged fourteen, was appointed ruler of Egypt, and the sultan’s trusted brother al-Adil returned from Aleppo to the Nile region to act as the young boy’s guardian and governor. Aleppo itself passed to the thirteen-year-old al-Zahir. The only problem spawned by this extensive reshuffle was Saladin’s nephew Taqi al-Din. As governor of Egypt since 1183, he had shown worrying tendencies towards independent action. With the aid of Qaragush (whom Saladin had appointed to oversee the Cairene court in 1169), Taqi al-Din had laid plans for a campaign westwards along the North African coast that would have deprived the sultan of valuable troops. Rumours also abounded that, during the sultan’s illness, Taqi al-Din had been preparing to declare his autonomy. In autumn 1186, Isa, ever the consummate diplomat, was tasked with the delicate mission of persuading him to relinquish his hold on Egypt and return to Syria. Arriving unexpectedly at Cairo, Isa was initially greeted with prevarication, but then apparently advised Taqi al-Din to ‘Go wherever you want.’ This seemingly neutral statement possessed an icily threatening undertone, and Saladin’s nephew soon left for Damascus, where he was welcomed back into the fold and rewarded with his former lordship at Hama and further lands in the newly subdued region of Diyar Bakr.⁶³

The question of Taqi al-Din’s continued subservience reflected a wider issue. To sustain his burgeoning empire, Saladin relied upon the support of his wider family, but the sultan was also determined to protect the interests of his sons, the direct perpetuators of the Ayyubid bloodline. Saladin had to achieve a delicate balance–he needed to harness the drive and ambition of kinsmen like Taqi al-Din, because their energy was vital to the continued preservation and expansion of the realm; but at the same time, their independence had to be curbed. In Taqi al-Din’s case, Saladin hoped to ensure loyalty by offering his nephew the prospect of continued advancement in Upper Mesopotamia.

ISLAM UNITED?

Saladin’s attempts to shape the dynastic fortunes of the Ayyubid Empire in 1186 were, to some extent, a direct function of the increased power and territory he had now accumulated. Since emerging as a political and military force in 1169, he had masterminded the subjugation of Near Eastern Islam, extending his authority over Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and large stretches of Mesopotamia. The Fatimid caliphate’s abolition had brought the crippling division between Sunni Syria and Shi‘ite Egypt to an end, ushering in a new era of pan-Levantine Muslim accord. These achievements, unparalleled in recent history, surpassed even those of Nur al-Din. On the face of it, Saladin had united Islam from the Nile to the Euphrates; his coinage, circulating throughout his realm and far beyond, now bore the inscription ‘the sultan of Islam and the Muslims’, stark proclamation of his all-encompassing, almost hegemonic authority. This image has often been accepted by modern historians–an attitude typified by one scholar’s recent assertion that after 1183 ‘the rule of all Syria and Egypt was in [Saladin’s] hands’.⁶⁴

Yet the notion that Saladin now presided over a world of complete and enduring Muslim unity is profoundly misleading. His ‘empire’, constructed through a mixture of direct conquest and coercive diplomacy, was in truth merely a brittle amalgam of disparate and distant polities, many of which were administered by client-rulers whose allegiance might easily falter. Even in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo–the linchpins of his realm–the sultan had to rely upon the continued fidelity and cooperation of his family, virtues that were never assured. Elsewhere, in the likes of Mosul, Asia Minor and the Jazira, Ayyubid supremacy was largely ephemeral, dependent upon loose alliances and tainted by barely submerged antipathy.

In 1186 the spell held. But it did so only because Saladin had survived his illness and still possessed the wealth, might and influence to manifest his will. In the years that followed, the work of sustaining and governing such a geographically expansive and politically incongruent empire tested the sultan to breaking point. And the struggle to counteract the ingrained centrifugal forces that could so readily rip apart the Ayyubid Empire proved constant and consuming.

Even after some seventeen years of unrelenting struggle, Saladin’s work was not done. Amidst the holy war to come, he could call upon a dedicated, loyalist core of battle-hardened troops, but for the most part the sultan stood at the head of a fragile, often restive, coalition, ever conscious that his realm might be disrupted by insurrection, rebellion or cessation. This fact was of paramount importance, for it shaped much of his thinking and strategy, often forcing him to follow the path of least resistance to seek swift, self-perpetuating victories. Contemporaries and modern historians alike have sometimes criticised Saladin’s qualities as a military commander in this later phase of his career, arguing that he lacked the backbone to prosecute costly and prolonged sieges. In fact, he depended upon speed of action and ongoing success to maintain momentum, clear in the knowledge that if the Muslim war machine ground to a halt, it might well collapse.

At a fundamental level, Saladin’s empire had also been forged against the backdrop of jihad; at every step he justified the extension of Ayyubid authority as a means to an end. Unity beneath his banner may have been bought at a heavy price, but he argued that it was directed at one sole purpose: the jihad to drive the Franks from Palestine and liberate the Holy City. This ideological impulse had proved to be an enormously potent instrument, fuelling and legitimising the motor of expansion, but it came at a near-unavoidable cost. Unless Saladin wished to be revealed as a fraudulent despot, all his promises of unbending devotion to the cause must now be fulfilled and the long-awaited war waged. Certainly, in the aftermath of his illness, and what may have been a period of deepening spirituality, the sultan’s promulgation of the jihad became ever more active. Revered Islamic scholars like the brothers Ibn Qudama and Abd al-Ghani, both long-time proponents of Saladin’s cause, were among those who contributed to a quickening of religious fanaticism. In Damascus, and across the realm, religious tracts and poems on the faith, the obligation of jihad and the overriding devotional significance of Jerusalem all were recited at massed public gatherings with increasing regularity. By the end of 1186, it appears that the sultan had not only recognised the political necessity for an all-out assault on the Latins, but had also embraced the struggle ahead at a personal level. This is borne out by the testimony of one of Saladin’s few critics among contemporary Muslim commentators, the Mosuli historian Ibn al-Athir. Recording a war council from early 1187, the chronicler wrote:

One of [Saladin’s] emirs said to him: ‘The best plan in my opinion is to invade their territory [and] if any Frankish force stands against us, we should meet it. People in the east curse us and say, “He has given up fighting the infidels and has turned his attention to fighting Muslims.” [We should] take a course of action that will vindicate us and stop people’s tongues.’

Ibn al-Athir’s intention was to censure Ayyubid expansionism, while evoking the tide of public pressure and expectation now attendant on the sultan. But he went on to suggest that Saladin experienced a brief, but significant, moment of self-realisation at this meeting. According to Ibn al-Athir, the sultan declared his determination to go to war and then mournfully observed that ‘affairs do not proceed by man’s decision [and] we do not know how much remains of our lives’. Perhaps it was the sultan’s own sense of mortality that moved him to action; whatever the reason, a change does seem to have occurred. Real questions remain about the true extent of his determination to combat the Franks in the long years between 1169 and 1186, but regardless of what had gone before, in 1187 Saladin brought the full force of his empire to bear against the kingdom of Jerusalem. He was now doggedly resolved to bring the Christians to full and decisive battle.⁶⁵

A KINGDOM UNDONE

This upsurge of Ayyubid aggression coincided with a deepening crisis in Latin Palestine. At some point between May and mid-September 1186 the young King Baldwin V of Jerusalem died, and a rancorous succession dispute erupted. Count Raymond of Tripoli, who had been acting as regent, schemed to seize the throne, but he was outmanoeuvred by Sibylla (Baldwin IV’s sister) and her husband, Guy of Lusignan. Having won the support of Patriarch Heraclius, a large proportion of the nobility and the Military Orders, Sibylla and Guy managed to have themselves crowned and anointed as queen and king. Raymond tried to engineer an outright civil war, proclaiming Humphrey of Toron and his wife Isabella as the rightful monarchs of Jerusalem. But, perhaps mindful of the terrible damage that might be wrought should this claim be pursued, Humphrey declined to step forward.

As king, one of Guy’s first steps was to buy time to restore some sense of order to the realm by renewing the treaty with Saladin until April 1187 in return for some 60,000 gold bezants. Guy was a divisive figure–Baldwin of Ibelin was so disgusted by his elevation that he gave up his lordship and moved to Antioch–and, as king, Guy’s policy of putting family members from Poitou into positions of power caused further unease. To deal with his most powerful enemy, Raymond of Tripoli, Guy seems to have hatched a plan to seize the lordship of Galilee by force. But in response, Raymond took the quite drastic step of seeking protection from Saladin himself. Muslim sources indicate that many of the sultan’s advisers were suspicious of this approach, but that Saladin rightly judged it to be an honest offer of alliance, the product of the desperate division that now afflicted the Franks. To the evident horror of many of his Latin contemporaries, Raymond welcomed Muslim troops into Tiberias, to bolster the town’s garrison, and gave Ayyubid forces licence to travel unhindered through his Galilean lands. At this worst moment, the count perpetrated an act of treason, engendering even greater disunity among the Christians.

Then, in the winter months of 1186 and 1187, Reynald of Châtillon, lord of Kerak, contravened the truce with the Ayyubids by attacking a Muslim caravan travelling through Transjordan on its way from Cairo to Damascus. His motives remain open to debate, but basic greed probably combined with a realisation that Saladin was building towards a major offensive to spur Reynald into action. Certainly in the weeks that followed he made no effort to repair relations, bluntly refusing the sultan’s demands for restitution of the stolen goods. Even without Reynald’s raid, Saladin would almost certainly have refused that spring to renew the truce with Frankish Palestine, so the once popular contention that the lord of Kerak effectively ignited the war to come should probably be discarded. Nonetheless, Reynald’s exploits did reinforce his status as the Muslim world’s abhorred enemy. They also provided Saladin with a clear cause for war further to inflame the heart of Islam.

TO THE HORNS OF HATTIN

In the spring of 1187 Saladin began to amass his forces for an invasion of Palestine. Drawing troops from Egypt, Syria, the Jazira and Diyar Bakr, he assembled a massive army, with some 12,000 professional cavalrymen at its heart, supported by around 30,000 volunteers. One Muslim eyewitness likened them to a pack of ‘old wolves [and] rending lions’, while the sultan himself described how the dust cloud raised when this swarming horde marched ‘dark[ened] the eye of the sun’. Marshalling such a huge force was a feat in itself–a muster point was appointed in the fertile Hauran region south of Damascus and, with soldiers coming from so far afield, the mobilisation took months to complete. The task was overseen by Saladin’s eldest son, al-Afdal, in his first major command role.⁶⁶

During the early stages of the 1187 campaign, Muslim strategy largely followed the pattern established by Ayyubid attacks in previous years. In April, the sultan marched into Transjordan to link up with forces advancing from North Africa, while prosecuting a series of punitive raids against Kerak and Montreal, including the widespread destruction of crops. But the Franks offered little or no reaction to this provocation. Meanwhile, on 1 May, al-Afdal participated in a combined reconnaissance and raiding mission across the Jordan, testing Tiberias’ defences while Keukburi led a mounted assault force of around seven thousand to scout the Franks’ own preferred muster point at Saffuriya. That night they were spotted by watchmen in Nazareth, and a small party of Templars and Hospitallers, then travelling through Galilee and led by the masters of both orders, decided to give battle. A bloody skirmish followed at the springs of Cresson. Vastly outnumbered, around 130 Latin knights and 300 infantry were killed or captured. The Templar Master Gerard of Ridefort was one of the few to escape, but his Hospitaller counterpart was among the dead. An early blow had been struck, buoying Muslim morale and denting Christian manpower. In the aftermath of this shocking defeat, with the overwhelming Ayyubid threat now impossible to ignore, King Guy and Raymond of Tripoli were begrudgingly reconciled, and the count broke off contact with Saladin.

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.⁶⁷

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.⁶⁸

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.’⁶⁹

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:

When the count fled, [the Latins’] spirits collapsed and they were near to surrendering. Then they understood that they would only be saved from death by facing it boldly, so they carried out successive charges, which almost drove the Muslims from their positions despite their numbers, had it not been for God’s grace. However, the Franks did not charge and retire without suffering losses and they were gravely weakened…The Muslims surrounded them as a circle encloses its central point.⁷⁰

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:

The Franks regrouped and charged again as before, driving the Muslims back to my father [but we] forced them to retreat once more to the hill. I shouted, ‘We have beaten them!’ but my father rounded on me and said, ‘Be quiet! We have not beaten them until that tent falls.’ As he was speaking to me, the tent fell. The sultan dismounted, prostrated himself in thanks to God Almighty and wept for joy.

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.⁷¹

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.⁷²

The sultan’s personal secretary, Imad al-Din, summoned forth all his powers of evocation to depict the scene he witnessed as dusk fell over Galilee that evening. ‘The sultan’, he wrote, ‘encamped on the plain of Tiberias like a lion in the desert or the moon in its full splendour’, while ‘the dead were scattered over the mountains and valleys, lying immobile on their sides. Hattin shrugged off their carcasses, and the perfume of victory was thick with the stench of them.’ Picking his way across a battlefield that ‘had become a sea of blood’, its dust ‘stained red’, Imad al-Din witnessed the full horror of the carnage enacted that day.