The Dream and the Tomb (36 page)

The battle raged through the following morning. During the night the infantry had regained their courage, which was the courage of despair. Sometimes the billowing clouds of smoke proved advantageous to the defenders, but more often the smoke helped the Saracens who infiltrated Crusader lines. Infantry and cavalry clung together. There were fewer charges. Raymond of Tripoli, who had shown himself to be dauntless and whose knights were among the most fearless, continued to search for a chink in the enemy lines. Nevertheless, five of his knights went over to the
enemy and begged the Saracens to kill them in order to end their misery. At midmorning, Raymond led his knights in an attack on the battalions commanded by el-Modhaffer Taki ed-Din, Saladin's nephew. It was one of those sudden hurtling charges of heavily armored knights which the Saracens feared, and it succeeded. Once he had broken through, Raymond decided to abandon the battlefield and make his way to Tripoli in order to fight another day. King Guy had given his blessing to this maneuver, for it seemed unlikely that anyone would be left to fight future battles unless some of the knights and infantrymen escaped. The king had lost about a quarter of his best knights; yet he ordered another charge immediately. The Saracens wondered how the Christians could find the strength to fight without food, without water, and without hope, for they were still hemmed in on all sides.

The bishop of Acre, who had been carrying the jeweled True Cross, was killed in the battle. After his death the Cross was carried by the bishop of St. George of Lydda, who was so fearless or so foolish that he advanced close to the enemy and was captured. Nothing more was ever heard of the Cross, except the rumor that it eventually passed into the possession of the Great Mosque in Damascus, where it was buried under the threshold so that every Muslim stepping into the mosque stepped on the True Cross.

Saladin's young son, al-Afdal, whose first battle this was, recorded the last moments of the battle, as the remaining knights and infantrymen gathered around the king's red tent, high on one of the Horns of Hattin, and kept on charging until they could charge no more. Finally he writes, “. . . we saw the tent come down; then my father dismounted, prostrated himself to the earth in thanks to Allah, and wept tears of joy.” The battle of Hattin was over. The Christians were so exhausted that they simply lay on the ground, almost beyond caring, too weary even to perform the formalities of surrender.

Saladin had won more than a battle; he had triumphed over the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Thereafter, people might speak of the kingdom, but the kingdom no longer existed. Kings and queens of Jerusalem would continue to be crowned while the kingdom itself became a mirage, a ghostly shape which continued to haunt the imaginations of the Crusaders. They remained in the Holy Land for another hundred years, but the kingdom and Jerusalem itself were lost to them. At the Horns of Hattin, on a midsummer day, among the lava rocks and the creeping grass fires, the heart had gone out of them.

SALADIN, famous for his chivalry, showed very little toward the Christian army he defeated at the Horns of Hattin. It was Saladin's pleasure that all the surviving infantrymen should be immediately sent off to Damascus to be sold in the slave market. A different fate was reserved for the knights: they were killed not by soldiers but by the mullahs who accompanied him everywhere. A few, very few, of the leaders were spared and allowed to live in dungeons in Damascus until suitable ransoms were paid for them.

The battle had ended about noon. That afternoon, Saladin ordered his tent to be erected near the battlefield. Standing outside the tent, he held a review of his prisoners, who included Gerard of Ridfort, the Master of the Temple, leading a small number of Templars and Hospitallers. King Guy, his brother Geoffrey, Hughes of Jebail, Humphrey of Toron, and Reynald of Chatillon were among the first of the Crusader lords to fall into enemy hands. Saladin had promised himself that he would kill Reynald the moment he set eyes on him, but now he was savoring his victory. He permitted the great lords of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem to enter the shade of his tent. He engaged them in conversation, and probably young Humphrey of Toron served as his interpreter. King Guy was suffering terribly from thirst, and Saladin handed him a goblet of water cooled by the snows of Mount Hermon. Suddenly he raged against Reynald, saying that the lord of Kerak had broken every promise he had ever made and every agreement he had signed. Reynald answered, “I did only what princes have always done. I followed the well-trodden path.” This was a surprisingly adroit defense, for Saladin had also broken promises and treated agreements with disdain. Saladin was sitting next to the king; Reynald sat on the king's far side. Saladin was watching them closely. When the king handed the goblet to Reynald, who was also suffering terribly from thirst, Saladin made no effort to prevent him from drinking; but he pointed out to the king that the gift of cool water to Reynald had been made without asking
his permission. “I am therefore not bound to protect his life,” he said, reminding the king that Reynald had committed too many crimes to receive the benefits of Arab hospitality. A stranger who has received drink or food in an Arab's tent is under the protection of his host: he cannot be killed or maimed in any way.

The confrontation between Saladin and the king was high drama. Everyone was watching them closely. Both the king and Reynald were trembling, probably not so much from fear as from exhaustion, hunger, and a thirst that could not be quenched by a goblet of snow-cooled water. Saladin had not yet decided what he would do with his high-ranking prisoners. Quite suddenly he left the tent and rode off on his horse for a tour of the battlefield. He was probably accompanied by Imad ed-Din, who is known to have ridden over the battlefield that afternoon, and who wrote:

I rode across the battlefield, and learned many lessons. I saw what the elect have done to those who are entirely rejected, and the fate inflicted on their leaders provided me with a moral. I saw heads lying far from their bodies, eyes gouged out, bodies coated with powdery ashes, their beauty marred by the clawmarks of birds of prey, limbs mangled in battle and scattered and scattered about, naked, torn, shreds of flesh, stumps of flesh, crushed skulls, cloven necks, loins smashed, sliced heads, feet cut off, noses cut off, extremities hacked away, empty eyes, open bellies, bodies cut in two, shrivelled mouths, gaping foreheads out of which eyes trickled, twisted necks, all lifeless and contorted among the stones and as rigid as the stones. And what a moral this conveys! These faces glued to the earth, no longer animated by desires, made me think of the words of the Koran:
The infidel shall say: Would to God that I might become dust
. And yet what a sweet odour rises from this charnel house.

Imad ed-Din was a moralist of the old order, ready to find lessons in brooks and stones and crushed skulls. Saladin's ride over the battlefield led him, too, to some moral conclusions. The infidel must die, and he must make an example of Reynald with his own hands. Returning to his tent, he summoned Reynald into his presence and immediately stabbed him in the throat, killing him. Saladin then ordered that his head be cut off and the headless body dragged in front of the king. Pointing to Reynald's body, Saladin said, “This man was guilty of unimaginable crimes. His perfidy and insolence brought about his death. You should have no fear, for a king does not kill a king.” The trunk was then thrown out of the tent but the head was kept. Stuck on a lance, it would decorate Saladin's triumphal march through Damascus.

On July 5, the day following the battle, Saladin rested. His only known
act on that day was to send a chivalrous message to the countess of Tripoli, who had remained in the heavily fortified castle at Tiberias, offering her safe-conduct through the Galilee to rejoin her husband. Her servants, her bodyguard, her soldiers, and all her possessions were allowed free passage through the country.

On Monday, July 6, he put into action the moral conclusions he had reached two days earlier. He was prepared now, after long contemplation, to murder his captives. The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were sentenced to be killed by the mullahs and religious teachers who accompanied his army. Imad ed-Din, who watched the executions, describes them as “men of pious and austere sentiments, devout sufis, men of the law, learned and initiated in asceticism and mystical knowledge.” Some two hundred knights were drawn up outside Saladin's tent; each mullah and religious teacher was given a sword. Saladin spoke briefly about the harm done by the knights and how the world must be set free from these people who represented the worst of the infidels. Then, one by one, the knights were killed. It took a long time. Some executioners did a good job and were applauded, some botched it and were excused, and some put on such a ridiculous performance that they had to be replaced. Imad ed-Din, standing close by, observed the smiling Saladin, and pondered the merit granted to him by Allah for cutting off so many heads.

The same day, Saladin sent an order to the governor of Damascus to cut off the heads of all the knights imprisoned in his dungeons. The only people he spared were the king, his brother, Humphrey of Toron, Hughes of Jebail and Gerard of Ridfort, the Master of the Temple, and the other knights of noble blood. They were all sent to Damascus except for Balian of Ibelin, who asked permission to go to Jerusalem on parole to look after his wife, Maria Comnena, the former queen of Jerusalem, the widow of Amaury I. Kingship weighed heavily on Saladin. It seemed to him that even Christian kings and queens received their titles from God and were under divine protection. He therefore permitted Balian to make the journey to Jerusalem.

After Hattin, Saladin's chief task was to secure the coast of Palestine. Acting with great speed, his army reached the walls of Acre four days after the battle of Hattin. Three days later, Saladin attended public prayers in the mosque, which had been a church for three generations. He freed four thousand Muslim captives and acquired the wealth of the richest city on the Palestinian coast. He summoned his brother al-Adil (Saphadin) to help him reduce all Palestine with his Egyptian army. Al-Adil marched up the coast to Jaffa and laid siege to the city, which refused to surrender. He therefore took it by storm, and the entire population was made captive, to be sold eventually in the slave markets of Aleppo. In Acre the Christians fared better for they were allowed to leave unharmed with their private possessions.

From Acre, Saladin's forces fanned out over the Galilee and Samaria, receiving the surrender of Nazareth and Sephoria, while others marched along the coast to capture Haifa and Caesarea. Nablus fell, and so did Toron, which was besieged for six days. By the first week in August, Saladin was master of Sidon, Beirut, and Jebail. Beirut alone put up stiff resistance, holding out for eight days. In these cities Saladin offered the same terms he had offered to Acre: the citizens could leave freely. Only Jerusalem, Tyre, and Ascalon remained in Christian hands, and Jerusalem was doomed.

Tyre survived because Saladin was in no hurry to capture it. This was a mistake. Conrad of Montferrat, who had been in the service of the Byzantine emperor, left Constantinople suddenly as a result of a blood feud and sailed in his own ship first to Acre, then, as soon as he realized that Saladin's army was in possession of the city, he sailed to Tyre, where he found the Christians downcast by the defeat at Hattin and disturbed by Reynald of Sidon, who was preparing to surrender the city to Saladin. Conrad took command, expelled Reynald, and issued orders that everyone in the city must man the defenses. Conrad was fiery, ruthless, and absolutely determined.

Saladin brought up his army and attacked. Tyre proved to be impregnable. By order of Saladin the old marquis of Montferrat, Conrad's father, was brought from his dungeon in Damascus, paraded outside the city walls, and threatened with death unless the city surrendered. Conrad answered that he would not bargain over his father's life; he would not surrender. Saladin permitted the old marquis to return to his dungeon, and continued the attack.

The defense of Tyre was crucial to the survival of the Crusaders. Conrad knew this, and fought all the more ardently. At last Saladin pulled out his army and sent it against Ascalon, where there was no one like Conrad capable of stirring up the population to uncompromising defiance of the enemy. Just as the old marquis had been brought to Tyre to be shown to the people standing on the walls, so now before the walls of Ascalon Saladin paraded the king and the master of the Temple, who had been brought from Damascus, promising them their liberty if Ascalon surrendered. But Ascalon refused to surrender and continued to fight for another two weeks. Then, when it became clear that Saladin would take the city by assault and that such assaults were generally accompanied by a general massacre, the king intervened, and on his authority the city surrendered. He was not given his liberty immediately. Instead he was imprisoned in Nablus, where he was permitted to see Queen Sibylla. The following summer, he was released with his brother together with all the nobles captured at the battle of Hattin.

None of these excursions was so important to Saladin as the certain surrender of Jerusalem, to which he now turned his attention. Jerusalem
had no army capable of defending it, and no commander capable of arousing the people in a
levée en masse
. Heraclius, who was in command, was distrusted by the inhabitants, and detested by the clergy and the captains of the garrison. On the day Ascalon surrendered—it was September 4, 1187—there took place a partial eclipse of the sun. On this day, in near darkness, Saladin received a delegation from Jerusalem, fifty miles away, consisting of its leading citizens. Saladin asked them when they were prepared to surrender the city. They answered that they would defend it to the very end. Angrily, he sent them home, reminding them that he had the power to capture Jerusalem and destroy all the Christians in it.