x-factor
07-03-2007, 16:39
Most remember that the Battle of Gettysburg ended on July 4, 1776, but few know that another historic battle was fought on July 4, 1187.
On that day, the Crusader army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was crushed by Saladin at the Horns of Hattin. This opened up the way for the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem. The Crusader states would never fully recover from the defeat and were eventually destroyed entirely. As such, Hattin was a critical turning point in history...perhaps even moreso than the better remembered Gettysburg.
[The following is excerpted from a larger paper of mine on Crusade history and how it influences jihadist views today.]
Saladin was, by all accounts, committed to jihad (as he defined it, meaning the destruction of the Crusader states and reconquest of the Holy Land, but not the expulsion/conversion/killing of all Christians nor the denial of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem), but he was also a pragmatist and a moralist. He fought a give-and-take campaign with the young leper-king Baldwin IV before eventually reaching a détente that left the Crusaders in control of Jerusalem. Baldwin's death in 1184 offered Saladin an opportunity to make a decisive attack, but instead he agreed to a four-year truce knowing that eventually he would be given a more honorable proximate cause to make war.
Saladin’s sense of chivalry was broad and generous but it also had an edge to it. Insults to Islam and dishonorable behavior were dealt with severely. One Crusader more than any other drew Saladin’s ire: Reynald of Chatillon. Reynald was a zealot, sadist, and sociopath with no thoughts of coexistence. He had been in the Middle East since 1147 and early on made himself an enemy of the Byzantines by ravaging Cyprus and gruesomely torturing the Orthodox Christian clergy in 1156. In 1181, in violation of the treaty and the general sense of Crusader-Muslim détente, he attacked a Syrian caravan headed to Mecca, but his ultimate offense came two years later. Setting out from the port of Eilat he sailed down the Arabian coast and raided the cities of Yanbuh (the port servicing Medina) and Rabigh, not far from Mecca. Merchant ships were captured and one shipload of pilgrims bound for Jeddah was sunk and a land caravan was raided on Arabian soil. The Egyptian navy finally caught up with the Crusaders-turned-pirates and, although Reynald managed to escape, almost all his men were captured and some had the dubious distinction of being beheaded in the courtyard of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. When reports arrived that Reynald had taunted Muslim prisoners, saying “Call on your Mahomet to save you,” Saladin reportedly swore to kill him with his own hands.
Reynald became and remains the ultimate “poster boy” for Crusader crimes against Islam and his role as the quintessential villain makes Saladin’s role as the hero all the more appealing to Muslims. One might say that Reynald was the Zarqawi of his time: a criminal-zealot who proved impossible for even his own side to fully control and who ultimately met a bloody end. Reynald’s attack on the Arabian peninsula -- on the Hijaz itself -- was a new low for the Crusaders and so he was the trigger for Saladin’s final assault on the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Showing operational acumen to match his political skill, Saladin systematically planned to force a decisive battle and break the army of Jerusalem. To set the trap, he occupied Tiberias in the County of Tripoli, despite the fact that the Count was one of the most détente-oriented Crusader leaders (to the point that he was accused of treason by Crusader extremists like Reynald). The Crusader army assembled at Sephoria, on lush ground 20 miles from Tiberias. The Count of Tripoli himself argued for patience rather than marching to combat across the hot, arid land, but Saladin had correctly judged his adversary and King Guy sided with more aggressive factions in the war council. In the end, the Crusader army marched out to attack on the advice of the Templar Grandmaster and Reynald, who argued “fire is not daunted by the quantity of wood to burn.”
Had it been purely a matter of numbers as Reynald’s logic asserted, the Crusaders might have won the Battle of Hattin. Crusader quality had overwhelmed Muslim quantity in major battles before, but Saladin’s trap was about more than numbers. He positioned his forces between the Crusader army and Lake Tiberias (also known as the Sea of Galilee or Lake Galilee), the only available source of water, and kept the pressure on the advancing Crusaders with constant harassment by mounted archers. When the Crusaders arrived many were already dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke, in some cases literally cooking in their chain mail. Most of the Crusader barons wanted to fight through to the water immediately, but King Guy ordered the army to make camp. Saladin tightened the screw by firing the dry brush surrounding the Crusader camp. This added to the already oppressive heat and the smoke served a dual purpose: harassing the lungs of the Crusaders and masking the movement of Muslim army. When dawn broke, the Crusaders were surrounded, choking on the smoke, and had been nearly 24 hours in harsh heat without water. Those who ran for water were cut down, those who stayed to fight were slowly decimated.
To this day Hattin is remembered by Muslims as a crowning moment for Islamic civilization. It is used as an honorific for Muslim military units, including one of the first three brigades of the Palestine Liberation Army, and former Syrian president Hafez Assad had a painting of the battle hanging in his office; reportedly, he would present the painting to Western visitors and tell them that one day a new Saladin would come.
Hattin serves as more than a cultural victory. It played and still plays a major part in defining the jihadist style of war. Hattin was not won by a stunning cavalry charge (bold maneuver) or a massive war machine (technology), but rather by a combination of cunning and patience: entrapping and grinding down an overextended, overconfident, and overaggressive enemy. It is the same general approach that jihadist forces have favored in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Saladin’s patience and planning was rewarded not only with victory at Hattin, but also with a more personal measure of satisfaction. In what is perhaps his most famous anecdote, Saladin had King Guy and Reynald, now prisoners, brought before him. Imad al-Din al-Asfahani, one of Saladin’s advisors who was present at the time, recorded what transpired:
Salah al-Din invited the king to sit beside him and when [Reynald] entered in his turn, he seated him next to his king and reminded him of his misdeeds: ‘How many times have you sworn an oath and then violated it? How many times have you signed agreements that you have never respected?’ [Reynald] answered through an interpreter: ‘Kings have always acted thus. I did nothing more.’ During this time, Guy was gasping with thirst, his head dangling as though he were drunk, his face betraying great fright. Salah al-Din spoke reassuring words to him, had cold water brought, and offered it to him. The king drank, then handed what remained to [Reynald], who slaked his thirst in turn. The sultan then said to Guy: ‘You did not ask my permission before giving him water I am therefore not obliged to grant him mercy [according to Muslim traditions of hospitality].’
After pronouncing these words, the sultan smiled, mounted his horse, and rode off, leaving his captives in terror. He supervised the return of the troops, then came back to his tent. He ordered [Reynald] brought there, advanced towards him, sword in hand, and struck him between the neck and shoulder-blade. When [Reynald] fell, he cut off his head and dragged the body by its feet to the king, who began to tremble. See him thus upset, the sultan said to him in a reassuring tone: ‘This man was killed only because of his maleficence and his perfidy.’
What is not often added to that story is that, although Saladin ransomed King Guy and the secular knights, he also had beheaded all the members of the monastic-military orders captured at Hattin. Imad ad-Din tells the story in no uncertain terms:
Two days after the victory, the Sultan sought out the Templars and Hospitallers who had been captured and said: ‘I shall purify the land of these two impure races.’ He assigned fifty dinar to every man who had taken one of them prisoner, and immediately the army brought forward at least a hundred of them. He ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair, the troops were drawn up in their ranks, the amirs stood in double file. There were some who slashed and cut cleanly, and were thanked for it; some who refused and failed to act , and were excused; some who made fools of themselves, and others took their places. I saw there the man who laughed scornfully and slaughtered, who spoke and acted; how many promises he fulfilled, how much praise he won, the eternal rewards he secured with the blood he had shed, the pious works added to his account with a neck severed by him! How many blades did he stain with blood for a victory he longed for, how many ills did he cure by the ills he brought upon a Templar, how much strength did he give to the leaders whom he supported, how many banners did he unfurl against disaster that retreated! I saw how he killed unbelief to give life to Islam, and destroyed polytheism to build monotheism, and drove decisions through to their conclusion to satisfy the community of the faithful, and cut down enemies in the defence of friends!
On that day, the Crusader army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was crushed by Saladin at the Horns of Hattin. This opened up the way for the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem. The Crusader states would never fully recover from the defeat and were eventually destroyed entirely. As such, Hattin was a critical turning point in history...perhaps even moreso than the better remembered Gettysburg.
[The following is excerpted from a larger paper of mine on Crusade history and how it influences jihadist views today.]
Saladin was, by all accounts, committed to jihad (as he defined it, meaning the destruction of the Crusader states and reconquest of the Holy Land, but not the expulsion/conversion/killing of all Christians nor the denial of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem), but he was also a pragmatist and a moralist. He fought a give-and-take campaign with the young leper-king Baldwin IV before eventually reaching a détente that left the Crusaders in control of Jerusalem. Baldwin's death in 1184 offered Saladin an opportunity to make a decisive attack, but instead he agreed to a four-year truce knowing that eventually he would be given a more honorable proximate cause to make war.
Saladin’s sense of chivalry was broad and generous but it also had an edge to it. Insults to Islam and dishonorable behavior were dealt with severely. One Crusader more than any other drew Saladin’s ire: Reynald of Chatillon. Reynald was a zealot, sadist, and sociopath with no thoughts of coexistence. He had been in the Middle East since 1147 and early on made himself an enemy of the Byzantines by ravaging Cyprus and gruesomely torturing the Orthodox Christian clergy in 1156. In 1181, in violation of the treaty and the general sense of Crusader-Muslim détente, he attacked a Syrian caravan headed to Mecca, but his ultimate offense came two years later. Setting out from the port of Eilat he sailed down the Arabian coast and raided the cities of Yanbuh (the port servicing Medina) and Rabigh, not far from Mecca. Merchant ships were captured and one shipload of pilgrims bound for Jeddah was sunk and a land caravan was raided on Arabian soil. The Egyptian navy finally caught up with the Crusaders-turned-pirates and, although Reynald managed to escape, almost all his men were captured and some had the dubious distinction of being beheaded in the courtyard of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. When reports arrived that Reynald had taunted Muslim prisoners, saying “Call on your Mahomet to save you,” Saladin reportedly swore to kill him with his own hands.
Reynald became and remains the ultimate “poster boy” for Crusader crimes against Islam and his role as the quintessential villain makes Saladin’s role as the hero all the more appealing to Muslims. One might say that Reynald was the Zarqawi of his time: a criminal-zealot who proved impossible for even his own side to fully control and who ultimately met a bloody end. Reynald’s attack on the Arabian peninsula -- on the Hijaz itself -- was a new low for the Crusaders and so he was the trigger for Saladin’s final assault on the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Showing operational acumen to match his political skill, Saladin systematically planned to force a decisive battle and break the army of Jerusalem. To set the trap, he occupied Tiberias in the County of Tripoli, despite the fact that the Count was one of the most détente-oriented Crusader leaders (to the point that he was accused of treason by Crusader extremists like Reynald). The Crusader army assembled at Sephoria, on lush ground 20 miles from Tiberias. The Count of Tripoli himself argued for patience rather than marching to combat across the hot, arid land, but Saladin had correctly judged his adversary and King Guy sided with more aggressive factions in the war council. In the end, the Crusader army marched out to attack on the advice of the Templar Grandmaster and Reynald, who argued “fire is not daunted by the quantity of wood to burn.”
Had it been purely a matter of numbers as Reynald’s logic asserted, the Crusaders might have won the Battle of Hattin. Crusader quality had overwhelmed Muslim quantity in major battles before, but Saladin’s trap was about more than numbers. He positioned his forces between the Crusader army and Lake Tiberias (also known as the Sea of Galilee or Lake Galilee), the only available source of water, and kept the pressure on the advancing Crusaders with constant harassment by mounted archers. When the Crusaders arrived many were already dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke, in some cases literally cooking in their chain mail. Most of the Crusader barons wanted to fight through to the water immediately, but King Guy ordered the army to make camp. Saladin tightened the screw by firing the dry brush surrounding the Crusader camp. This added to the already oppressive heat and the smoke served a dual purpose: harassing the lungs of the Crusaders and masking the movement of Muslim army. When dawn broke, the Crusaders were surrounded, choking on the smoke, and had been nearly 24 hours in harsh heat without water. Those who ran for water were cut down, those who stayed to fight were slowly decimated.
To this day Hattin is remembered by Muslims as a crowning moment for Islamic civilization. It is used as an honorific for Muslim military units, including one of the first three brigades of the Palestine Liberation Army, and former Syrian president Hafez Assad had a painting of the battle hanging in his office; reportedly, he would present the painting to Western visitors and tell them that one day a new Saladin would come.
Hattin serves as more than a cultural victory. It played and still plays a major part in defining the jihadist style of war. Hattin was not won by a stunning cavalry charge (bold maneuver) or a massive war machine (technology), but rather by a combination of cunning and patience: entrapping and grinding down an overextended, overconfident, and overaggressive enemy. It is the same general approach that jihadist forces have favored in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Saladin’s patience and planning was rewarded not only with victory at Hattin, but also with a more personal measure of satisfaction. In what is perhaps his most famous anecdote, Saladin had King Guy and Reynald, now prisoners, brought before him. Imad al-Din al-Asfahani, one of Saladin’s advisors who was present at the time, recorded what transpired:
Salah al-Din invited the king to sit beside him and when [Reynald] entered in his turn, he seated him next to his king and reminded him of his misdeeds: ‘How many times have you sworn an oath and then violated it? How many times have you signed agreements that you have never respected?’ [Reynald] answered through an interpreter: ‘Kings have always acted thus. I did nothing more.’ During this time, Guy was gasping with thirst, his head dangling as though he were drunk, his face betraying great fright. Salah al-Din spoke reassuring words to him, had cold water brought, and offered it to him. The king drank, then handed what remained to [Reynald], who slaked his thirst in turn. The sultan then said to Guy: ‘You did not ask my permission before giving him water I am therefore not obliged to grant him mercy [according to Muslim traditions of hospitality].’
After pronouncing these words, the sultan smiled, mounted his horse, and rode off, leaving his captives in terror. He supervised the return of the troops, then came back to his tent. He ordered [Reynald] brought there, advanced towards him, sword in hand, and struck him between the neck and shoulder-blade. When [Reynald] fell, he cut off his head and dragged the body by its feet to the king, who began to tremble. See him thus upset, the sultan said to him in a reassuring tone: ‘This man was killed only because of his maleficence and his perfidy.’
What is not often added to that story is that, although Saladin ransomed King Guy and the secular knights, he also had beheaded all the members of the monastic-military orders captured at Hattin. Imad ad-Din tells the story in no uncertain terms:
Two days after the victory, the Sultan sought out the Templars and Hospitallers who had been captured and said: ‘I shall purify the land of these two impure races.’ He assigned fifty dinar to every man who had taken one of them prisoner, and immediately the army brought forward at least a hundred of them. He ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and Sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics; each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais; the unbelievers showed black despair, the troops were drawn up in their ranks, the amirs stood in double file. There were some who slashed and cut cleanly, and were thanked for it; some who refused and failed to act , and were excused; some who made fools of themselves, and others took their places. I saw there the man who laughed scornfully and slaughtered, who spoke and acted; how many promises he fulfilled, how much praise he won, the eternal rewards he secured with the blood he had shed, the pious works added to his account with a neck severed by him! How many blades did he stain with blood for a victory he longed for, how many ills did he cure by the ills he brought upon a Templar, how much strength did he give to the leaders whom he supported, how many banners did he unfurl against disaster that retreated! I saw how he killed unbelief to give life to Islam, and destroyed polytheism to build monotheism, and drove decisions through to their conclusion to satisfy the community of the faithful, and cut down enemies in the defence of friends!