ABSTRACT

On September 7 1191, in the southern Sharon Plain near the coastal town known as Arsūf in Arabic and as Arsur in Latin and Old French, 1 there took place the first major open battle between Christians and Muslims after Saladin’s triumph on July 4 1187 at the Horns of Hattīn that brought an end to the First Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Battle of Hattīn and that of Arsūf/Arsur were engagements in which a Christian marching column came under Muslim attack. 2 But the Christian fighting march in 1191 differed significantly from that in 1187, which suggests that the Christians had drawn their lessons from the crushing defeat at Hattīn and took measures to avoid its repetition. In 1187 they had attempted in vain to traverse about 30 kilometers in a single day in order to avert the fall of Tiberias; on their march from Acre to Arsur in 1191 they covered about 100 kilometers in 17 days, with the crusader army resting on no less than seven of those days; this means that during the 10 days the army did march it covered on average just one-third of the distance that the Franks had hoped to cover in one day in their rush to Tiberias. 3 In 1187 Saladin had succeeded, quite early in the battle, in surrounding a thirsty and fatigued Frankish army; on the way to Arsur the crusaders clung to the shore of the Mediterranean, thereby preventing encirclement by the Muslims; in addition, they were repeatedly re-victualed by the fleet that sailed southward in parallel to them. And while at Hattīn Saladin had succeeded in separating the Frankish horse and foot from each other, on the march to Arsur the crusaders, after an initial setback, advanced southward in tight formation: one-half of the foot soldiers marched on the left, facing the Muslim skirmishers attacking them from the east; the knights rode in the middle; and the other half of the foot soldiers marched on the right, between the knights and the seashore, and carried the baggage and tents. Bahā′ al-Dīn, the judge of Saladin’s army and an eyewitness who described the Christian infantry as surrounding the cavalry “like a wall,” adds that when the foot soldiers who marched on the left became tired of fighting or weakened by wounds they would change places with the foot soldiers marching on the right, and thus get a rest from combat. 4 Obviously, much thought was invested in planning this march and it stands to reason that King Richard the Lionheart, the crusade’s uncontested leader at this point, played a major role in devising it. 5 But what was the plan of the king—qui tant saveit d’ost et de guerre, as Ambroise, the crusading eyewitness, puts it 6 —for the battle itself?