Battle of Hattin
also: Battle of the Horns of Hattin
Battle of Hattin, depiction from the 15th century
| date | 4th July 1187 |
|---|---|
| place | Horns of Hattin
near Tiberias |
| output | Ayyubid victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
|
|
| Commander | |
|
|
|
| Troop strength | |
| about 22,000 men | about 45,000 men |
| losses | |
|
devastatingly beaten |
unknown |
Montgisard - Jakobsfurt - Kerak - Cresson - Hattin - Jerusalem
The Battle of Hattin (also called Hattyn , Huttin , Hittin or Hittim in some records ) on July 4, 1187 was the greatest military defeat of the Crusaders and led to the loss of large parts of the Crusader states, including the Kingdom of Jerusalem, to the Muslims .
The battlefield was between Acre and the Sea of Galilee , south of the double hilltop called the Horns of Hattin . The Sea of Galilee is within sight.
prehistory
Rainald von Chatillon , lord of the Kerak de Moab fortress in the southern Jordan Valley, repeatedly ambushed caravans of Muslim merchants who were traveling in confidence that peace had been concluded between Damascus and Arabia . Rainald chained the travelers and plundered the goods, upon which Saladin swore vengeance. After the new king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan , reparation and delivery Reynald refused, Saladin drew nearly 45,000 men, of which 12,000 men of the Mamelukes - Guard together, at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee and besieged first the fortress and the city of Tiberias .
The Darb al-Hawarnah road , which is said to have been built by the Romans , is the direct east-west connection between the Jordan ford , the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast . Saladin had taken Tiberias on the west bank of the lake on July 2, 1187 and conquered some Christian sites. Raymond of Tripoli , whose wife Eschiva was trapped in the fortress of Tiberias, and King Guido of Jerusalem were in Acre with the main body of the Christian army.
The troops presumably consisted of 1,200 knights , 4,000 Turkopolans and other light cavalry as well as 15,000 to 18,000 foot troops of varying combat strength, ranging from professional crossbowmen to inexperienced settlers and civilians. The Turkopolans were mercenaries and were paid with the money that King Henry II of England had deposited with the Templars in the Holy Land as a personal penalty for the murder of Thomas Becket and which was actually intended to be used in an imminent crusade by Henry.
Raimund gave a first speech in Acre in which he pointed out that a march from Acre to relieve Tiberia in midsummer would be suicide. Due to internal power struggles and in order to avoid suspicion of cowardice, King Guido ordered the immediate march against Saladin to Tiberias.
course
At first the entire Christian army gathered in the safe Sepphoris , where there was enough water and pasture land. Raimund of Tripoli gave a second speech here in which he urgently advised against marching on, since there was justified hope that Saladin's army would disintegrate again. All the great ones agreed with his convincing words and went to bed. The Grand Master of the Templars Gérard de Ridefort and Rainald von Chatillon visited the fickle king around midnight and convinced him to horrify Tiberias in any case. The next morning, July 3, the Christian army began its march from Sepphoris towards Tiberias, contrary to all of Raimund's invocations.
The local Raimund fell to lead the vanguard , as it was his fiefdom. The king, the Order of Lazarus and the heavily armed horsemen formed the middle, and the Templars and Hospitallers the rear guard, led by the brothers Balian and Baldwin von Ibelin .
From the beginning, the light, agile riders of the Muslims attacked the slowly moving troops by covering them with a hail of arrows and slowing down their progress. Saladin also had all the bushes in the area burned to make the air even more stuffy and drier for the Christians. Towards evening the vanguard reached Maskana, only a mile from the lakeshore. Saladin had meanwhile drawn his troops from Kefr Sebt and successfully blocked their way. The hesitant King Guido then asked Raimund for advice. He suggested moving to the village of Hattin, but this failed because the Muslims successfully blocked the way here with troops. The Christians slept thirsty and with no prospect of water in the open field of the southern tip of the horns of Hattin.
On the morning of July 4, 1187, the Christian troops attempted a sortie towards the Sea of Galilee. At first the Muslims did not stand up to fight, but slowly walked back, burned the surrounding bushes and covered the Christians with arrows. When the Christians were exhausted, disoriented, and disorganized, Saladin stopped with his orderly troops. The Christian army came out of the smoke and was attacked and decimated by Saladin. The lack of water and the excessive heat in particular had weakened most Christian fighters considerably. The Holy Cross , also called the True Cross of Christ, was captured from the Muslims after the bishop of Bethlehem, to whom it was entrusted, was killed.
Raimund, who had been cut off from the main body of the army, finally broke through the enemy lines with the vanguard under him and escaped through the Wadi al-Hammam in the northeast. Part of the rearguard , led by the Ibelin brothers, was able to flee westwards towards Acre.
The king withdrew with the remaining troops to the southern tip of the horns of Hattin and had his tent erected there. After several violent waves of attack and relief, led by the knights of the order, who were still fighting disciplined, the king's tent and banner fell around noon under a common onslaught of all Saladin's troops. King Guido himself and the remaining knights, among them the Grand Master of the Templars, Gérard de Ridefort, were captured completely exhausted.
Saladin personally handed King Guido water as a sign that he would not harm him. The King and Grand Master Ridefort were taken hostage. He had Rainald von Chatillon beheaded (according to Muslim sources, he did this himself). All other surviving knights (100 to 200 people) were also beheaded. The offer to save themselves from beheading by converting to Islam was only accepted by a handful of knights. Only a few Christian knights were able to escape the battle in the end by fleeing.
consequences
In order to provide contingents of troops for the battle, the garrisons of the forts had been greatly reduced, which facilitated the subsequent Muslim attacks. According to the chronicler Baha ad-Din , Saladin occupied 52 cities and fortresses by mid-September . After a brief siege, Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Muslims on October 2, 1187. Only a few areas were able to successfully resist the siege , including: the fortress near Gaza , the fortress of Tire , the fortress of Tripoli , the Johanniter castle Krak des Chevaliers , the Templar castle Tortosa and the Johanniter castle Margat .
The news of the crushing defeat at the Horns of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem finally led to the Third Crusade . Although this was able to prevent the annihilation of the crusader states for the time being, this annihilating defeat was the beginning of the end. The Holy Land under Christian rule fell on the defensive and the decline could not be stopped. With the loss of the last city and fortress Akkon in 1291, the Christian crusader statehood in the Middle East ended , except for the kingdoms of Cyprus and Lesser Armenia .
literature
- Peter Herde : The fighting at the horns of Hittin and the fall of the crusader army (3rd and 4th July 1187). A historical-topographical study. In: Roman quarterly. Vol. 61, 1966, ISSN 0035-7812 , pp. 1-51.
- Martin Hoch: Hattin, Battle of (1187). In: Alan V. Murray (Ed.): The Crusades. To Encyclopedia. Volume 2. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara CA et al. 2006, ISBN 1-57607-862-0 , pp. 559-561.
- Benjamin Z. Kedar (Ed.): The Horns of Ḥaṭṭīn (= Proceedings of the Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. 2, ZDB -ID 1163494-7 ). Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi et al., Jerusalem et al. 1992, ISBN 965-217-085-2 .
- Hans Eberhard Mayer : History of the Crusades (= Kohlhammer Urban Pocket Books. Vol. 86). 10th, completely revised and expanded edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-018679-5 , pp. 165-168.
- Christopher Tyerman: God's war. A new history of the crusades. Penguin, London a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-674-02387-1 , p. 366 ff.
Web links
- Source excerpt in English Translation of the Battle of Hattin on fordham.edu
- De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History on deremilitari.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b See David Nicolle : Hattin 1187. Saladin's greatest victory (= Osprey Military. Campaign. 19). Osprey Publishing, London 1993, ISBN 1-85532-284-6 , p. 61.
- ↑ a b c Cf. David Nicolle: Hattin 1187. Saladin's greatest victory (= Osprey Military. Campaign. 19). Osprey Publishing, London 1993, ISBN 1-85532-284-6 , p. 58.
- ↑ Cf. David Nicolle: Hattin 1187. Saladin's greatest victory (= Osprey Military. Campaign. 19). Osprey Publishing, London 1993, ISBN 1-85532-284-6 , p. 59.
- ↑ Ibn al-Atir XI 351-355.
- ^ Thomas Asbridge: The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land . Simon & Schuster, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84983-688-3 ( google.at ).
Coordinates: 32 ° 48 ′ 13 ″ N , 35 ° 26 ′ 40 ″ E