Battle of Hattin

Battle of Hattin

Introduction

Just fifteen phrases of his multi-volume Geschichte der Kriegskunst did Hans Delbruck, the eminent infantry historian, dedicate to the Battle of Hattin, giving the attitude that it yields not anything of significance for the annals of warfare. This may well be the case. But a battle's assistance to the art of conflict is not inevitably commensurate with its political implication and, still less so, with the fascination it retains for posterity. Hattin, a climax in the annals of crusade and jihad, is replete with high drama: Saladin's calculated push at Tiberias, eliciting King Guy's seesaw responses at Saforie; the tired Franks encircled on the arid plateau throughout the evening that preceded the last battle; the air journey of the desire stricken Frankish base fighters to the Horns of Hattin overlooking, the inaccessible waters of Lake Tiberias; the last Frankish cavalry allegations nearly coming to Saladin, tugging at his whiskers in agitation; the meet between the triumphant Saladin and the apprehended Frankish managers, with the victor murdering his archenemy with his own hand. Small marvel that historians turn their vigilance to this assault time and again. During the last twenty-five years no less than three foremost reconstructions have been put forward. In 1964, Joshua Prawer released his "La bataille de Hattin," which assisted inter alia to the comprehending of the Lower Galilee street scheme at the time of the battle. In 1966, Peter Herde came out with his "Die Kampfe bei den Hornern von Hittin and der Untergang des Kreuzritterheeres). Eine historisch-topographische Studie," the most comprehensive account of the happenings suggested to designated day, founded on painstaking inspection of the causes and the battlefield. In 1982, Malcolm C. Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson dedicated a section of their publication on Saladin to Hattin, utilizing for the first time an account of the assault in writing after the arrest of Acre on 10 July 1187.

 

Analysis

The present try is a by-product of the Second SSCLE Conference.  Seeking an befitting location for the meeting arranged to take location at the Horns of Hattin, I went over the terrain with Eliot Braun, the archaeologist, who made me cognizant of Zvi Gal's review of the very vintage partitions along the circumference of the horns and Gal's excavations of an isolated medieval structure on the summit of the south horn; this directed to the identification (or rather reidentification) of that structure with the Dome of Victory that Saladin had erected on the horns next the battle.

Kafr Sabt - a town that belonged to the abbey of Mount Tabor, and the location of source of one of its turcopoles  - lies beside the to the east for demonstration of a sizable plateau, just to the south of the major street that, not less than from Late Bronze times onward, connected Acre with the Jordan Valley and Transjordan.  Southeast of Kafr Sabt, this street sprints along Wadi Fidjdjas, which presents the most stepwise fall to the Jordan in the ...