Battle of Hattin

On 4 July 1187 Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, destroyed the army of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Horns of Hattin, an extinct volcano west of Tiberias. King Guy of Lusignan had led about 20,000 men from the springs of Tzippori to relieve Tiberias, which Saladin was besieging. They marched through the summer heat without water, were surrounded on the night of 3 July, and on the next day the army was broken. Guy was taken prisoner, Saladin killed Reynald of Châtillon with his own hand, the captured Templars and Hospitallers were executed, and the relic of the True Cross carried into battle was lost.

With the field army gone, Acre and most of the kingdom fell within weeks, and Jerusalem surrendered on 2 October 1187, 88 years after the Crusader conquest. Saladin allowed Jews to settle in the city again, and families from Ashkelon, North Africa and later France came. The loss of Jerusalem launched the Third Crusade under Richard the Lionheart, and the crusading fervour it stirred in England led to the massacres of 1189–1190, including York.