Battle of Hattin
The Battle of Hattin took place on July 4, 1187, between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the forces of the Kurdish Ayyubid sultan Salah ad-Din, known in the West as Saladin. It is also known as the Battle of the Horns of Hattin, from a nearby extinct volcano.
The Muslim armies under Saladin captured or killed the vast majority of the Crusader forces, removing their capability to wage war. As a direct result of the battle, Islamic forces once again became the eminent military power in the Holy Land, re-conquering Jerusalem and several other Crusader-held cities. These Christian defeats prompted the Third Crusade, which began two years after the Battle of Hattin.
Location
The battle took place near Tiberias in present-day Israel. The battlefield, near the town of Hittin, had as its chief geographic feature a double hill (the "Horns of Hattin") beside a pass through the northern mountains between Tiberias and the road from Acre to the east. The Darb al-Hawarnah road, built by the Romans, served as the main east-west passage between the Jordan fords, the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast.
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