The Third Crusade of Richard and Saladin

I. The Rise of Saladin

Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, known in the west as Saladin, was a Kurd born at Tikrit in about 1137. His father Ayyub and his uncle Shirkuh served Zengi and then Nur al-Din, whose rise is described in the site's page on the Second Crusade. In the 1160s Nur al-Din and King Amalric of Jerusalem competed for control of Fatimid Egypt, whose government had fallen into chaos. Shirkuh led three expeditions to Egypt and in 1169 became vizier to the Fatimid caliph. When he died two months later, his nephew Saladin succeeded him.

Saladin consolidated his power in Egypt and in 1171 brought the Fatimid caliphate to an end, restoring the Friday prayer in the name of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. Relations with Nur al-Din became tense, since Saladin was reluctant to commit Egyptian resources to Nur al-Din's wars. Nur al-Din's death in 1174 removed the danger of open conflict and gave Saladin the opportunity to extend his power. He took Damascus in 1174, and over the following twelve years he fought his Muslim rivals, the Zengid princes of Aleppo and Mosul, as much as the Franks. Aleppo submitted in 1183 and Mosul acknowledged his overlordship in 1186.

By 1186 Saladin ruled Egypt, Damascus, Aleppo and much of upper Mesopotamia, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was surrounded. His propaganda, directed by his secretary al-Qadi al-Fadil and the scholar Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, presented his wars against fellow Muslims as necessary steps towards the jihad against the Franks. Whether he was primarily a holy warrior or an ambitious dynast has long been debated, but by the 1180s the two aims had converged.

II. The Kingdom of Jerusalem in Crisis

The kingdom faced this threat in a state of internal division. King Baldwin IV, who came to the throne in 1174 at the age of thirteen, suffered from leprosy. He was a brave and capable ruler who defeated Saladin at Montgisard in 1177, but his illness made the question of the succession acute. His sister Sibylla married William of Montferrat, who died in 1177, and then Guy of Lusignan, a young nobleman from Poitou who was unpopular with many of the barons.

Two factions formed. One gathered around Sibylla and Guy, supported by Reynald of Châtillon, lord of Transjordan, and the master of the Templars, Gerard of Ridefort. The other was led by Count Raymond III of Tripoli and the Ibelin family. Baldwin IV died in 1185, and his nephew Baldwin V, Sibylla's son by her first marriage, died in 1186 aged about eight. Sibylla was crowned queen and crowned Guy king in a coup that excluded Raymond's party. Raymond withdrew to Tiberias and made a separate truce with Saladin.

Reynald of Châtillon had already provoked Saladin by raiding caravans and, in 1182 and 1183, by launching ships on the Red Sea that attacked pilgrims heading for Mecca. In late 1186 or early 1187 he attacked a caravan travelling from Cairo to Damascus in breach of a truce. Saladin swore to kill him with his own hand. The way was open for war.

III. The Battle of Hattin

In the spring of 1187 Saladin assembled the largest army he had ever led, perhaps 30,000 men. Guy of Lusignan, reconciled with Raymond of Tripoli after a Muslim force had destroyed a party of Templars and Hospitallers at the Springs of Cresson on 1 May, gathered the whole strength of the kingdom at Sephoria, perhaps 1,200 knights and 15,000 foot soldiers. He also brought the relic of the True Cross, which had been carried into battle since the time of the First Crusade.

On 2 July Saladin took the town of Tiberias, where Raymond's wife was besieged in the citadel. Raymond advised Guy not to march across the waterless plateau to relieve the town in the heat of summer, even though his own wife was there. Gerard of Ridefort persuaded the king that this was cowardice. On 3 July the army set out. Harassed by Muslim archers and short of water, it was forced to camp on the plateau. On the morning of 4 July, surrounded near the twin hills known as the Horns of Hattin, suffering from thirst and choked by the smoke of fires set by the Muslims in the dry grass, the army was destroyed. Raymond broke out with a few men. The True Cross was captured.

Guy and the leading barons were taken to Saladin's tent. Saladin offered Guy a cup of iced water, and when Guy passed it to Reynald, Saladin said that he had not given it to Reynald, meaning that he was not bound by the custom of hospitality to spare him. He then killed Reynald, according to most accounts with his own hand. He also ordered the execution of about 200 Templars and Hospitallers, who were killed by Sufis and scholars in his entourage. Imad al-Din describes the scene with relish. Guy and the other barons were spared.

IV. The Surrender of Jerusalem

After Hattin the kingdom was almost defenceless, since its garrisons had been stripped to form the army. In the following weeks Saladin and his commanders took Acre, Nablus, Jaffa, Sidon, Beirut and Ascalon. Tyre held out, thanks to the arrival of Conrad of Montferrat, who took command of the defence.

Saladin reached Jerusalem on 20 September 1187. The city was defended by Balian of Ibelin, who had escaped from Hattin and had been allowed by Saladin to go to Jerusalem to fetch his wife on condition that he stayed only one night. The inhabitants persuaded him to stay and lead the defence, and Saladin released him from his oath. Balian had few knights, and he knighted the sons of burgesses to strengthen the garrison. After the walls were breached, he threatened to kill the Muslim prisoners, destroy the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque and fight to the death unless terms were granted.

Saladin agreed to allow the inhabitants to ransom themselves at ten dinars for a man, five for a woman and one for a child, and the city surrendered on 2 October 1187, the anniversary of the Prophet's night journey. Perhaps 15,000 people who could not pay were sold into slavery, but Saladin and his brother al-Adil released several thousand without ransom. The Muslim conquest was much less bloody than the crusader conquest of 1099, a contrast that was noted by contemporaries and has been emphasised by historians ever since. The cross was taken down from the Dome of the Rock, and the al-Aqsa mosque was purified with rose water.

V. Audita Tremendi and the Saladin Tithe

News of Hattin reached Rome in October 1187. Pope Urban III is said to have died of grief. His successor Gregory VIII issued the bull Audita tremendi on 29 October 1187. It described the disaster in terms of the sins of the Christians, both in the east and in the west, and called for repentance, fasting and a new crusade. Crusaders were promised full remission of sins, protection of their goods and freedom from interest.

The response was rapid. Archbishop Joscius of Tyre travelled west and persuaded Henry II of England and Philip II of France, who were at war, to take the cross at Gisors in January 1188. Richard, count of Poitou, Henry's son, had already taken the cross in November 1187. In March 1188 Frederick Barbarossa took the cross at Mainz, at an assembly called the Court of Christ.

To pay for the crusade, Henry II and Philip imposed the Saladin Tithe, a tax of one tenth of the revenues and movable goods of everyone who did not take the cross. In England it raised large sums and was collected with great rigour, the clergy being threatened with excommunication. The Jews of England were taxed separately and very heavily, at a quarter of their goods. The tithe set a precedent for general taxation in England and France and, through the church, for the later papal crusade taxes.

VI. The Massacre of the Jews of York

As in 1096 and 1146, the preaching of the crusade was accompanied by violence against Jews, this time in England. At Richard's coronation at Westminster on 3 September 1189, Jewish leaders who had come with gifts were attacked, and a riot spread through London in which the Jewish quarter was burned and about thirty people killed. In the early months of 1190, as crusaders prepared to leave, there were attacks at King's Lynn, Norwich, Stamford, Bury St Edmunds and Lincoln.

The worst occurred at York in March 1190. The Jews of the city took refuge in the royal castle, where they were besieged by a mob that included crusaders and local knights in debt to Jewish lenders. On the night of 16 March, the eve of the Sabbath before Passover, many of those in the tower followed the advice of their rabbi, Yom Tov of Joigny, and took their own lives rather than be forcibly baptised, setting fire to the tower. Those who surrendered on a promise of safety were killed. The rioters then burned the records of debts kept in the minster. Perhaps 150 people died. The chronicler William of Newburgh condemned the attack as having been carried out under the pretext of religion by men motivated by greed.

VII. The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa

Frederick I, called Barbarossa, was about sixty-seven years old when he set out from Regensburg in May 1189 at the head of a large and well-organised army. He had taken part in the Second Crusade as a young man and had learned from its failures. He insisted that every crusader bring enough money to support himself for two years, and he negotiated in advance with the rulers through whose lands he would pass.

Relations with the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos were bad, since Isaac had made an agreement with Saladin, and the Germans occupied Philippopolis and Adrianople before Isaac agreed to ferry them across the Dardanelles in March 1190. In Anatolia the army defeated the Seljuks and on 18 May 1190 stormed their capital Iconium. It then marched into Cilician Armenia.

On 10 June 1190 Frederick drowned while crossing, or bathing in, the river Saleph near Seleucia. The circumstances are uncertain, but the effect was devastating. Much of the army dispersed. His son Frederick of Swabia led the remainder to Antioch, where many died of disease, and then to Acre, where he himself died in January 1191. Frederick's flesh was buried at Antioch and his bones were later taken to Tyre. Legends later grew up that he was not dead but sleeping in a mountain, waiting to return.

VIII. The Siege of Acre Begins

In the summer of 1189 Saladin released Guy of Lusignan on his promise not to fight again. Guy broke the promise, and when Conrad of Montferrat refused to admit him to Tyre, he marched south with a small force and on 28 August 1189 began a siege of Acre, the greatest port of the kingdom. It was an act of extraordinary boldness, since his army was much smaller than the garrison. Saladin arrived soon after and surrounded the besiegers, who were themselves besieged.

The siege of Acre lasted almost two years and became one of the great sieges of the Middle Ages. Contingents arrived from all over Europe throughout 1189 and 1190, including Danes, Frisians, Flemings, Italians, French and English, and the remnants of Frederick's army. A great battle on 4 October 1189 ended indecisively. In the winter of 1190–91 famine and disease killed thousands in the crusader camp, among them Queen Sibylla and her two daughters, which weakened Guy's claim to the throne. During this siege some German merchants from Bremen and Lübeck founded a field hospital that would become the Teutonic Order, as the site's page on the Crusader States and the Military Orders explains.

IX. Philip and Richard

Philip II of France and Richard I, who had become king of England on the death of Henry II in July 1189, set out together from Vézelay in July 1190. They wintered in Sicily, where Richard quarrelled with King Tancred over the dowry of his sister Joan, the widow of the previous king, and sacked Messina. Philip sailed directly to Acre and arrived in April 1191.

Richard's fleet was scattered by a storm, and some ships were wrecked on Cyprus, where the island's ruler, the self-proclaimed emperor Isaac Komnenos, mistreated the survivors. In May 1191 Richard conquered Cyprus in a campaign of a few weeks and married Berengaria of Navarre at Limassol. The conquest of Cyprus was one of the most lasting results of the crusade, since the island remained under Latin rule until 1571. Richard sold it to the Templars and then to Guy of Lusignan, whose family ruled it as a kingdom for three centuries.

Richard reached Acre on 8 June 1191. The two kings brought large forces and siege engines, and the bombardment intensified. Both fell ill with a fever called arnaldia, but the attacks continued. On 12 July 1191 the garrison surrendered on terms negotiated without Saladin's full consent. The garrison's lives were to be spared in exchange for 200,000 dinars, the release of 1,500 Christian prisoners and the return of the True Cross.

X. The Massacre of the Prisoners

Philip II left for France at the end of July 1191, leaving the duke of Burgundy in command of the French. Negotiations over the fulfilment of the terms of the surrender dragged on. Saladin delayed, either because he could not raise the money, or because he hoped to keep Richard at Acre until the campaigning season was over, or because he doubted that the Franks would keep their side. Richard was anxious to march south.

On 20 August 1191 Richard had about 2,700 Muslim prisoners led out onto the plain in front of the walls, in view of Saladin's army, and killed. Their wives and children were also killed according to some Muslim sources. The Muslim army attacked but was driven back. The Itinerarium of Richard's crusade and the chronicler Ambroise present the killing as a justified response to Saladin's bad faith. Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad, Saladin's biographer and a judge in his army, describes it with horror. Saladin, in retaliation, killed Frankish prisoners for some time afterwards.

Historians have discussed whether the massacre was a calculated military decision, since the prisoners would have needed guarding and feeding during the march, or an act of anger. It contrasts sharply with the reputation for chivalry that Richard later acquired. The words of Proverbs 25:21-22, repeated by Paul in Romans 12:20, counsel giving food and drink to an enemy, and Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies (Luke 6:27-28). The conduct of both sides in this war shows how far the conventions of holy war had departed from such teaching.

XI. The March to Arsuf

On 22 August 1191 Richard led the army south along the coast towards Jaffa, the port of Jerusalem. The army marched in close formation, with the fleet sailing alongside to supply it, the infantry protecting the cavalry from the arrows of the Turkish horse archers, and the baggage between the army and the sea. Richard limited the length of each day's march to spare his men from the heat. Saladin's army shadowed the march and attacked repeatedly.

On 7 September 1191, near Arsuf, Saladin launched a full-scale attack. Richard held the knights back until the moment was right, but the Hospitallers at the rear, suffering heavy losses, charged without orders. Richard immediately committed the rest of the army, and the Muslim forces were routed. Arsuf was the first major defeat of Saladin in open battle since Montgisard, and it restored the confidence of the crusaders. The army reached Jaffa on 10 September and began to rebuild its walls.

XII. The Two Marches on Jerusalem

The ultimate aim of the crusade was Jerusalem, and in the winter of 1191–92 Richard led the army inland. In early January 1192 it reached Beit Nuba, about twenty kilometres from the city. But the weather was terrible, the army was short of supplies and the local barons and the masters of the military orders advised that even if Jerusalem were taken it could not be held once the crusaders went home. Richard turned back, to the dismay of many of the rank and file.

In the spring of 1192 the army rebuilt Ascalon, which Saladin had demolished, to block the route between Egypt and Syria. In June Richard again led the army to Beit Nuba. According to a later story, he refused to look at the city, saying that he was not worthy to see it if he could not deliver it. The army captured a large Egyptian caravan, but the leaders again decided against a siege, and Richard proposed an attack on Egypt instead, which the French refused. The army withdrew in July.

XIII. Conrad, Henry and the Crown

The question of the crown of Jerusalem divided the crusade. After the death of Sibylla, Guy of Lusignan's claim was challenged by Conrad of Montferrat, who married Sibylla's half-sister Isabella in November 1190, after her first marriage had been annulled in dubious circumstances. Richard supported Guy, and Philip supported Conrad. In April 1192 an assembly of the barons chose Conrad, and Richard accepted it, compensating Guy with Cyprus.

A few days later, on 28 April 1192, Conrad was murdered in Tyre by two Assassins, members of the Nizari Ismaili sect whose leader in Syria, Rashid al-Din Sinan, was known to the Franks as the Old Man of the Mountain. Rumours accused Richard of arranging the murder. Isabella, who was pregnant, married Count Henry of Champagne, nephew of both Richard and Philip, eight days later, and Henry became ruler of the kingdom without being crowned king.

XIV. Jaffa and the Treaty

At the end of July 1192, while Richard was at Acre preparing to leave, Saladin attacked Jaffa and took the town. The garrison held out in the citadel. Richard sailed south with a few ships and, on 1 August, waded ashore at the head of his men and drove the Muslims out of the town. A few days later, with a small force, he beat off a counter-attack. These episodes made his reputation as a warrior among Muslims as well as Christians.

Both sides were exhausted. Richard was ill and had received news that his brother John and Philip II were conspiring against him. Saladin's emirs were weary of the long campaign. On 2 September 1192 they agreed the Treaty of Jaffa, a truce for three years and eight months. The Franks were to hold the coast from Tyre to Jaffa, Ascalon was to be demolished, and Christian pilgrims were to have free access to Jerusalem and the holy places. Many crusaders went to Jerusalem as pilgrims, but Richard refused to go. He left the Holy Land on 9 October 1192, was captured on his way home by Duke Leopold of Austria, whom he had insulted at Acre, and was handed to the emperor Henry VI, who released him only on payment of a huge ransom in 1194.

Saladin died at Damascus on 4 March 1193. His empire was divided among his sons and his brother al-Adil, who eventually reunited most of it.

XV. The Reputations of Richard and Saladin

The Third Crusade created two of the most enduring legends of the Middle Ages. In the west Richard became the model of the chivalrous crusader king, the Lionheart, celebrated in romance and later in the novels of Walter Scott. In the Muslim world Saladin was remembered as the liberator of Jerusalem, a model of piety and generosity. In the west, too, Saladin gained a reputation as a noble and generous enemy, and medieval writers invented stories that he had been secretly knighted or had Christian ancestry. Dante placed him in Limbo among the virtuous non-Christians.

The reality was more complex. Saladin could be generous, as at Jerusalem in 1187, but he could also be ruthless, as with the military orders after Hattin. Richard was a brilliant commander, but he also ordered the massacre at Acre and spent most of his reign at war. The legends reflect the wish of later generations to find honour in a conflict that was, in practice, brutal on both sides.

XVI. The Jews and the Third Crusade

The Third Crusade affected Jewish communities in several ways. In England it brought massacre. In the east, Saladin's capture of Jerusalem made it possible for Jews to return to the city, from which they had been excluded since 1099. The poet Judah al-Harizi, who visited Jerusalem in the early thirteenth century, praised Saladin for allowing Jews to settle there, and communities from Ascalon and North Africa came to live in the city. The great scholar Maimonides, who lived in Cairo and served as a physician at the court of Saladin's vizier al-Qadi al-Fadil, witnessed these events from Egypt. The site's page on the Jews of Cairo describes the community in which he worked.

XVII. The Holy City and the Kingdom of God

The Third Crusade was fought, like its predecessors, for the earthly Jerusalem. Its failure to recover the city was felt as a bitter disappointment, and the cry of the pilgrims who were allowed to visit under the truce, that they had seen the holy places, shows the deep attachment of medieval Christians to them.

The Greek Scriptures, however, consistently point away from the earthly city. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and foretold its destruction (Luke 19:41-44), and he told his disciples that his kingdom did not come with striking observableness (Luke 17:20-21). The Christians of the first century, when the Roman armies approached Jerusalem, were told to flee, not to defend it (Luke 21:20-21). The apostle Peter wrote of a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness would dwell (2 Peter 3:13). None of these texts suggests that the followers of Jesus should take up arms to possess the city.

XVIII. Assessment

The Third Crusade was the largest and best-organised crusade yet. It did not recover Jerusalem, but it saved the remnant of the crusader states, re-established a Latin kingdom on the coast with its capital at Acre, and gave the Franks Cyprus. The Kingdom of Jerusalem survived for another century, until the fall of Acre in 1291. The crusade also showed the limits of what western armies could achieve. Even under a commander of genius, and against an opponent whose army was weary, they could not take and hold the holy city.

The crusade was accompanied by atrocity on both sides, at Hattin and at Acre, and by the massacre of Jews in England. It deepened the hostility between western Christians and Byzantium, whose emperor had allied with Saladin. And it led directly to the next expedition, the Fourth Crusade, which was intended to attack Egypt but ended by sacking Constantinople.

XIX. The Sources of the Third Crusade

The Third Crusade is unusually well documented from both sides. On the western side the most important narratives are the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, compiled by an English cleric, probably Richard de Templo, prior of Holy Trinity in London, and the Old French verse history of Ambroise, a Norman cleric who accompanied Richard. The two are closely related and both present Richard in a heroic light. The Latin continuations of William of Tyre and the Old French chronicle attributed to Ernoul give the perspective of the barons of the east, and are often critical of Guy of Lusignan and Gerard of Ridefort.

On the Muslim side, Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad, who joined Saladin's service in 1188, wrote a biography of the sultan that combines personal admiration with careful eyewitness detail. Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Saladin's secretary, wrote an elaborate account of the conquest of Jerusalem in highly rhetorical rhymed prose. The Mosul historian Ibn al-Athir, who was hostile to Saladin's dynasty because of its treatment of the Zengids, provides a more critical view. The German accounts of Barbarossa's expedition, including the Historia de expeditione Friderici, describe the march across the Balkans and Anatolia in detail.

Taken together these sources allow historians to see the same events from opposing perspectives, and to test the claims of each. They also show how quickly both sides shaped their narratives to serve the reputations of their rulers.

XX. Supply, Ships and the Sea

The Third Crusade was transformed by sea power. Unlike the armies of the First and Second Crusades, which had marched overland and suffered terribly in Anatolia, the English and French went by sea, and fleets from Denmark, Frisia, Flanders, Pisa and Genoa supplied the siege of Acre. Richard's fleet, assembled from the ports of England, Normandy and Aquitaine, may have numbered over a hundred ships, and its arrival tipped the balance at Acre.

Control of the sea allowed the crusaders to bring in reinforcements, food and timber for siege engines, while Saladin's Egyptian fleet was unable to break the blockade for long. The march along the coast to Jaffa depended on the fleet, which carried supplies and the wounded. The decision not to besiege Jerusalem owed much to the distance of the city from the sea, which would have made it impossible to keep an army supplied in the hills of Judea in winter. The Italian maritime cities, which provided many of the ships, were rewarded with commercial privileges in the ports of the kingdom, and their quarrels would later divide Acre itself.

XXI. Byzantium and the Crusade

The Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos had made an agreement with Saladin, and the Byzantines were seen in the west as allies of the enemy. Isaac imprisoned Frederick's envoys and tried to obstruct the German march, and Frederick, who considered an attack on Constantinople, wrote to his son Henry asking him to raise a fleet and obtain papal approval for a crusade against the Greeks. The crisis was resolved by negotiation, but it confirmed the view that Byzantium was an obstacle to the crusade.

The loss of Cyprus to Richard was another blow to Byzantium. Isaac Komnenos had been a rebel against Constantinople, but the island had been Byzantine territory, and its conquest by a crusading king showed that crusaders were willing to take Christian lands by force. The emperor Henry VI, who inherited the Norman kingdom of Sicily in 1194, demanded tribute from Constantinople and planned his own crusade, which set out in 1197 and was cut short by his death. These tensions formed the background to the Fourth Crusade.

XXII. The Fate of the True Cross

The relic of the True Cross captured at Hattin was never returned. It had been discovered, according to the chroniclers, in 1099, and it had been carried before the armies of the kingdom in many battles. Its loss was felt as a catastrophe, and its return was a condition of the surrender of Acre. Saladin is said to have kept it and to have shown it to envoys, and some sources say it was sent to Damascus or Baghdad. After the massacre of the prisoners it was not mentioned again in the negotiations.

The loss of the relic was interpreted in the west as a sign of divine anger. The reliance placed on it by the army at Hattin, however, recalls the episode in 1 Samuel 4:3-11, when the Israelites brought the ark of the covenant into battle against the Philistines, expecting it to save them, and the ark was captured. The lesson of that account was that objects cannot substitute for obedience to God.

XXIII. Chronology

In 1169 Saladin became vizier of Egypt, and in 1171 he ended the Fatimid caliphate. In 1174 Nur al-Din died and Saladin took Damascus. In 1177 Baldwin IV won at Montgisard. In 1183 Aleppo submitted to Saladin. In 1186 Guy and Sibylla were crowned. On 1 May 1187 the military orders were defeated at Cresson, on 4 July 1187 the Franks were destroyed at Hattin, and on 2 October 1187 Jerusalem surrendered. On 29 October 1187 Gregory VIII issued Audita tremendi.

In January 1188 Henry II and Philip II took the cross, and in March 1188 Frederick Barbarossa took the cross. On 28 August 1189 Guy began the siege of Acre. On 3 September 1189 Richard was crowned, and in March 1190 the Jews of York died. On 10 June 1190 Frederick drowned. In May 1191 Richard conquered Cyprus. On 12 July 1191 Acre surrendered, and on 20 August Richard killed the prisoners. On 7 September 1191 the crusaders won at Arsuf. In January and June 1192 Richard approached Jerusalem. On 28 April 1192 Conrad was murdered. On 2 September 1192 the Treaty of Jaffa was concluded, and on 4 March 1193 Saladin died.

XXIV. Bibliography

The following studies, editions and reference works underlie this account.