ABSTRACT
Historians’ assessments of the period 1174 to 1187 are often coloured by their knowledge of events at the Battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187 when the army of Saladin crushed the forces of King Guy of Jerusalem and precipitated the fall of the holy city to Islam. The Franks’ defeat at Hattin has been viewed as an inevitability: the vigorous rule of King Amalric and the obvious incapacity of his young son, the leper-king Baldwin IV, combined with the ceaseless in-ghting of the nobility is contrasted with the remorseless rise of Saladin and the triumph of Islam (Runciman, 1952: 2.400). This is an attractive and easily assimilated picture, but on closer inspection, a false one. First, simply because Baldwin IV (1174-85) was a leper does not mean that he, or his commanders, were incapable of effective action. While it is true that, at times, the Franks revealed an extraordinary tendency to contribute to their own downfall through political conict and personal jealousies, they also attracted – from their perspective at least – the most wretched and unpredictable ill-luck. On Saladin’s part, it should be remembered that he required thirteen years of hard struggle to establish his power and to create the conditions necessary to confront and defeat the Franks in battle. The political narrative of the period is, at times, complex and confusing, but following this thread is essential in understanding just how nely balanced the contest was, the danger that the Franks posed to Saladin and the challenges that he faced against both his Christian and Muslim opponents; this in turn, enables a proper assessment of the emir’s own considerable achievements.
