ABSTRACT
The count had retired with his forces to the city of Arka and was there awaiting an opportunity to engage the enemy without too much risk. The knights of the Temple who lived in the same vicinity also remained shut up in their strongholds; they expected almost hourly to be besieged and did not wish to risk an encounter with the Turks. The brothers of the Hospital had likewise retired in alarm to their fortied castle of Krak. They felt that if, in the midst of such confusion they could defend the fortress just named from injury by the enemy, their duty had been done. . . . During this time Saladin ranged here and there over the plain, especially the cultivated elds, and without opposition traversed the entire locality. He burned all the crops, those that had been gathered into the granaries, those still stacked in the elds, and the growing grain as well. He drove off cattle as booty and laid waste the whole country in every direction.
