46 ISLAM AT WAR
ful, generous, and highly intelligent man. Like all of his contemporary
warlords, his ultimate goal was personal power. This may be seen as greed,
although in the ethic of the time it was not. Certainly Saladin was a wise
ruler in all of his lands, and if his personal power grew to be enormous,
so did the nobility of his character.
Saladin’s early years were spent in consolidating his enormous empire.
His chief threats were from Persia and Turkey, and of course there was
the ever-present danger of revolt by a subordinate. Slowly and methodi-
cally he dealt with the various threats as they arose. It would take several
years to completely consolidate his authority, but he had the necessary
time. The crusaders failed to respond to his rise other than with their
normal bickering and jealousy.
Between 1180 and 1183 Reynauld of Chaˆtillon, a powerful warlord of
the Jerusalem kingdom, ordered a number of raids and massacres into
Muslim lands. Reynauld was as merciless and murderous a man as any
warlord of the day. He was one of those who did not accept that the small
crusader states would have to live with their Muslim neighbors to survive.
One of his pillaging expeditions went as far as Arabia itself. Saladin tried
measured responses, but by 1187 he would no longer be restrained. He
attacked the kingdom of Jerusalem, laying siege to the town of Tiberias.
The main Christian army filed out of Jerusalem and marched to relieve
Tiberias, crossing miles of dusty plains and dry riverbeds. Worn out by
fatigue and thirst, they were easily smashed by Saladin’s forces on July
4, 1187, at the Battle of Hattin. Saladin personally executed Reynaud,
whose depredations had caused the war. The religious order knights were
also massacred, as they were the perpetrators of many atrocities.
The Battle of Hattin was one of the decisive battles in world history.
Virtually all of the military might of the crusaders had been annihilated.
The Christians had stripped their garrisons to provide a field army. Little
remained with which to mount a defense of the cities and castles that the
crusaders held. Saladin struck swiftly. Jerusalem fell at the beginning of
October. Most of the Frankish holdings withered quickly. By the end of
the year all of the crusader kingdoms had been reduced to the isolated
cities of Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch.
The news of the great Muslim victories shocked Europe, and as before,
waves of reinforcements began swarming into the Middle East. Frederick
Barbarossa led a great army of Germans south. This fine and honorable
old man died either of sickness or drowning—or both—at a river crossing
in Turkey just before his troops might have made an impact, and they
returned home. King Richard the Lionheart of England led a brave con-
tingent across the seas in 1191, accompanied by King Phillip Augustus