Imad al-Din, p. 25. My own experience of walking through Israel from the Lebanese border to Jerusalem in July 1999 made me realise just how vital water would be during a midsummer campaign. My water consumption peaked at an extraordinary seventeen litres per day! Luckily I had plenty of opportunities to fill my water bottles–in 1187 the Latins were not so fortunate.

Eracles, ‘L’Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la Terre d’Outremer’, RHC Occ. II (Paris, 1859), pp. 62–5; Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 321; Imad al-Din, p. 26.

Imad al-Din, p. 26; Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 322.

Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 323; Imad al-Din, p. 26.

Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, pp. 323–4. This famous episode was recorded in numerous Muslim and Christian accounts, with minor variations on Reynald’s attitude (with some western sources claiming that he remained defiant to the last) and on whether Saladin killed Reynald with his own hand. For example, see: Melville and Lyons, ‘Saladin’s Hattin Letter’, p. 212; Imad al-Din, pp. 27–8; Baha al-Din, pp. 74–5; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M. R. Morgan (Paris, 1982), pp. 55–6.

Imad al-Din, pp. 28–9; Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 324.

Imad al-Din, p. 31. A similarly horrific spectacle of clumsy butchery had been played out for the amusement of spectators in 1178. On that occasion Imad al-Din himself was asked by Saladin to participate in a mass execution of Christian captives, but turned aside when he discovered that his allotted victim was but a boy. Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp. 131–2. Melville and Lyons, ‘Saladin’s Hattin Letter’, pp. 210, 212; Z. Gal, ‘Saladin’s Dome of Victory at the Horns of Hattin’, The Horns of Hattin, ed. B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 213–15.

‘Historia de expeditione Friderici Imperatoris’, Quellen zur Geschichte der Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I, ed. A. Chroust, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Berlin, 1928), pp. 2–4; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 56–8. Acre’s immense wealth and valuable landed estates were distributed among three of Saladin’s most prominent lieutenants–al-Afdal, Taqi al-Din and Isa–although even Imad al-Din later admitted that the sultan might have been better advised to retain at least some of this booty for his own treasury. On Saladin’s strategy after Hattin see: W. J. Hamblin, ‘Saladin and Muslim military theory’, The Horns of Hattin, ed. B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 228–38.

Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 328; Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 2, p. 471.

These hugely influential ideas can be traced through modern scholarship. In the 1950s Hamilton Gibb wrote that Jerusalem surrendered ‘on terms that confirmed–if confirmation were needed–[Saladin’s] reputation for limitless courtesy and generosity’ (‘Saladin’, p. 586). Around the same time, Steven Runciman–whose three-volume account of the crusades often is marred by historical imprecision, but remains widely read–argued that the sultan specifically mentioned the events of 1099 in his dealings with Balian. Runciman added that ‘Saladin, so long as his power was recognised, was ready to be generous, and he wished Jerusalem to suffer as little as possible’, and the historian went on to contrast the ‘humane’ Muslims with the Franks who had ‘waded through the blood of their victims’ (A History of the Crusades, vol. 2, pp. 465–6). In 1988 these sentiments were echoed by Hans Mayer, affirming that Jerusalem’s inhabitants ‘had reason to be grateful that they were at the mercy of a merciful enemy’ (The Crusades, pp. 135–6). And Carole Hillenbrand, in her benchmark study of the crusades from an Islamic perspective (1999), highlighted Saladin’s magnanimity, arguing that for Muslim chroniclers ‘the propaganda value of the bloodless conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin count[ed] for much more than the temptation, soon overcome, to exact vengeance’ (The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, p. 316).

Imad al-Din, Arab Historians of the Crusades, pp. 156–8. Massé’s text claimed at this point (p. 46, n. 2) that Imad al-Din’s account was replicated by Abu Shama (even though this is not the case) and, therefore, Massé did not present this part of the text. For this reason the Gabrieli translation has been cited here. Baha al-Din, pp. 77–8; Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp. 273–6; Richard, The Crusades, p. 210. References to the precedent set by the First Crusade appear only in later sources: Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 332; La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 66–7.

Saladin may have sought to engineer the negotiated surrender of Jerusalem in early September while engaged in the siege of Ascalon, but the Franks refused. La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 61–3; Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp. 271–2.

Imad al-Din, Arab Historians of the Crusades, p. 158; Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, pp. 333–4. The Hospital of Jerusalem also was permitted to stay open for one year, so as not to cause undue harm to its patients, after which point it was transformed into a college of Islamic law. In response to lobbying from Isa, Saladin agreed to allow ‘eastern’ Christians to remain in the Holy City if they accepted subject status and paid a ransom plus the customary poll tax owed by non-Muslims living under Islamic rule.

Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp. 275–6.

Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, pp. 188–92, 286–91, 298–301, 317–19.

Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 335; Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, p. 316.

PART III: THE TRIAL OF CHAMPIONS

The Third Crusade is the first expedition for which modern historians have access to full and detailed eyewitness sources from both Latin Christians and Muslims. Among the western observers was Ambroise, a Norman cleric who went on crusade with Richard the Lionheart and then, between 1194 and 1199, wrote an Old French epic verse poem recounting the expedition–The History of the Holy War–running to more than 12,000 lines. Ambroise’s account seems to have been used by another crusader, Richard de Templo, in constructing his Latin narrative history of the crusade, the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (the Itinerary of the Pilgrims and Deeds of King Richard). The narrative accounts, biographies and letters written by three highly placed officials within Saladin’s court–Imad al-Din, Baha al-Din and the Qadi al-Fadil–offer invaluable insights into the Muslim perspective on the crusade. They can also be usefully compared to the testimony of the Mosuli historian Ibn al-Athir, who was not a partisan of Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty. In spite of this abundance of primary source material, there is a surprising dearth of authoritative modern scholarship focusing specifically on the Third Crusade. Therefore, I have devoted the third part of this current work to the Third Crusade. The main primary sources for this expedition include: Baha al-Din, pp. 78–245; Imad al-Din, pp. 63–434; Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, pp. 335–409; Abu Shama, ‘Le Livre des Deux Jardins’, RHC Or. IV, pp. 341–522, V, pp. 3–101; Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. and trans. M. Ailes and M. Barber, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 2003) (all the following references to Ambroise relate to the Old French verse edition in volume I). Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, vol. 1, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series 38 (London, 1864). For a translation and useful introduction to the complexities surrounding this text see: Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. H. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1997). La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 76–158. For a translation of this text and a number of other related sources see: P. W. Edbury (trans.), The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation (Aldershot, 1996). For further reading on these sources see: C. Hanley, ‘Reading the past through the present: Ambroise, the minstrel of Reims and Jordan Fantosme’, Mediaevalia, vol. 20 (2001), pp. 263–81; M. J. Ailes, ‘Heroes of war: Ambroise’s heroes of the Third Crusade’, Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses, ed. F. Le Saux and C. Saunders (Woodbridge, 2004); P. W. Edbury, ‘The Lyon Eracles and the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre’, Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, ed. B. Z. Kedar, J. S. C. Riley-Smith and R. Hiestand (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 139–53. Secondary works that do shed light on the Third Crusade include: S. Painter, ‘The Third Crusade: Richard the Lionhearted and Philip Augustus’, A History of the Crusades, vol. 2, ed. K. M. Setton (Madison, 1969), pp. 45–85; Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, pp. 279–363; H. Möhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug (Wiesbaden, 1980); J. Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven and London, 1999); Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 375–474.