On a cripplingly hot day at the start of July 1187, Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, stood beside his son al-Afdal and peered across the battlefield towards a red tent on a hill. The sultan’s face was pale with worry. The armies before him had been fighting for hours, tortured by near-unbearable heat, dust and smoke, which billowed up from the desert scrub Saladin’s own men had set alight. Thousands of men and horses lay dead. The enemy – a vast force led by the Christian king Guy of Jerusalem – was badly battered and falling back, but until the king’s red pavilion fell, victory would not be complete.
Al-Afdal, youthful and bullish, cheered every Christian charge that the Muslim army repulsed. Saladin scolded him. “Be quiet!” he said. “We have not beaten them until that tent falls.” Moments later, the sultan’s angst turned to tearful jubilation. The tent collapsed, King Guy was captured and the battle of Hattin was over. The Christians’ holiest relic – a fragment of the True Cross – was seized. The dead were left to rot where they lay, while the living were led off in disgrace: the lowliest Christian prisoners for slaves, and the more valuable for ransom.
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