Battle of Hattin

On 4 July 1187 Saladin destroyed the field army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin, a double hill above the Sea of Galilee. The campaign began when Saladin, having spent a decade uniting Egypt and Muslim Syria under Ayyubid rule, crossed the Jordan with a large army and besieged Tiberias, whose citadel held out under the countess Eschiva of Galilee. The kingdom mustered nearly its full strength, around 1,200 knights and many thousands of foot soldiers and turcopoles, at the springs of Saffuriya.

King Guy of Lusignan faced conflicting counsel: Raymond III of Tripoli, whose own wife was besieged in Tiberias, argued against marching across the waterless plateau in high summer, while others pressed for relief. Guy ordered the advance on 3 July. Harassed by mounted archers and cut off from water, the army halted short of the lake and spent the night surrounded; the Muslims fired the dry scrub upwind of the camp. On the following day the thirst-weakened infantry broke from the knights, repeated cavalry charges failed to open a path to the springs, and the army was destroyed where it stood. The relic of the True Cross, carried with the army, was captured.

Guy was taken prisoner and treated honorably. Raynald of Châtillon, lord of Kerak, whose attacks on Muslim caravans in violation of truce had been a stated cause of the war, was executed by Saladin personally or on his order; some two hundred captured Templars and Hospitallers were also put to death, while the bulk of prisoners were sold or ransomed. With the kingdom's army gone, its cities and castles fell in rapid succession through the summer and autumn, leaving Jerusalem itself exposed and culminating in its surrender in October.