Battle of Hattin

The Battle of Hattin, fought on 3–4 July 1187 near Tiberias in Galilee, was a crushing defeat of the army of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem by the forces of Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria. Almost the whole crusader field army was killed or captured. Within months Saladin had taken Jerusalem and most of the crusader towns and castles, and the disaster prompted the Third Crusade.

In 1186 Guy of Lusignan became king of Jerusalem through his wife, Sibylla. The kingdom's barons were split between Guy's supporters, among them Raynald of Châtillon and Gerard of Ridefort, master of the Knights Templar, and a party led by Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, who had opposed Guy's accession. Saladin, meanwhile, had become vizier of Egypt in 1169 and had taken Damascus in 1174 and Aleppo in 1183, so that his lands now surrounded the crusader states to the south and east. He presented himself as the leader of a holy war to recover Jerusalem.

A truce agreed in 1185 was broken when Raynald attacked a Muslim caravan of pilgrims. Saladin vowed to kill him and sent raiders into crusader territory; in May 1187 they routed a force of Templars at Cresson. In late May Saladin gathered on the Golan Heights the largest army he had ever led, perhaps 40,000 men, and on 30 June crossed the Jordan. Guy assembled perhaps 18,000 to 20,000 men, including about 1,200 knights, at the springs of La Saphorie, with a relic believed to be the True Cross carried before them.

On 2 July Saladin attacked Tiberias, a town belonging to Raymond, whose wife held out in the citadel. Raymond himself urged Guy to stay at La Saphorie, where there was water, and not to fall into Saladin's trap. Gerard and Raynald accused him of cowardice, and Guy ordered the army to march. On 3 July the crusaders set out across dry country under constant attack from mounted archers. Unable to reach Tiberias, they turned towards the springs at Hattin, but Saladin's troops blocked the way, and they had to camp on an arid plateau with no water, surrounded.

During the night the Muslim troops set the dry grass alight. On 4 July the exhausted and thirsty crusaders tried to push through to water under clouds of smoke and showers of arrows. Raymond charged and broke out to the lake, escaping to Tyre. Much of the infantry fled up the twin hill known as the Horns of Hattin and took no further part. The knights fought on around the king's tent but were finally overwhelmed. The True Cross was captured.

Guy, Raynald, Gerard and many barons were taken. In Saladin's tent, Raynald was accused of breaking the truce and was killed, by Saladin's own hand according to some accounts. Guy was spared and later released. About 200 captured Templar and Hospitaller knights were executed, as were captured turcopoles, local mounted soldiers whom Saladin regarded as converts from Islam. Many ordinary soldiers were sold as slaves.

With its garrisons stripped to raise the army, the kingdom had almost no defence left. Tiberias surrendered the next day, and by mid-September Saladin held Acre, Nablus, Jaffa, Sidon, Beirut and Ascalon, among over fifty places. Tyre held out under Conrad of Montferrat. Jerusalem, defended by Queen Sibylla, the patriarch Heraclius and the nobleman Balian, surrendered on 2 October 1187. Pope Gregory VIII called for a new expedition, and the Third Crusade, which got under way in 1189, restored many Christian holdings. Even so, the crusader states stayed vulnerable for decades, and the defeat at La Forbie in 1244 is often seen as the final collapse of their military power in the age of the crusades.

The battle falls between our 1100 and 1200 maps, which show the eastern Mediterranean in the age of the crusades, with the Byzantine Empire to the north.