Hiatus

The coming of winter in December 1189 brought a further lull in the siege. Faced with roughening seas and lacking access to the safety of Acre’s inner harbour, the Latin fleet was forced to sail north to Tyre and beyond in search of shelter. Conrad of Montferrat also returned to Tyre. Worsening weather forced a lull in hostilities as rain turned the ground between the crusaders’ trenches and Saladin’s camp at al-Kharruba to mud, across which it was impractical to launch attacks. The sultan sent the bulk of his troops home, remaining in person, while the Franks hunkered down to wait out the season, hoping to survive the predations of disease and hunger, devoting their energy to the construction of siege engines.

According to his confidant, Baha al-Din, Saladin now recognised ‘how much importance the Franks…attached to Acre and how it was the target at which all their determined plans were directed’. The decision to winter outside the city indicates that the sultan now regarded it as the war’s critical battleground. He may have lacked the nerve for an all-out assault on the crusader camp earlier that autumn, but at least he did show a new, steadfast determination to persevere with the campaign. Having spent the two years that followed Hattin scooping up easy conquests, avoiding drawn-out confrontations, he evidently decided that a line must be drawn at Acre and the Latin advance into Palestine halted in its tracks.

Knowing full well the devastation that would be rained upon Acre come spring, the sultan set about ‘[pouring in] sufficient provisions, supplies, equipment and men to make him feel confident that it was secure’. It was probably at this point that Saladin installed Abu’l Haija the Fat as the city’s military commander, alongside Qaragush. Even the crusaders were impressed by these measures, with one later commenting that ‘never was there a castle nor city that had so many arms, such defence, such provision of food, at such expense’. Amid the flurry of activity, the sultan suffered a grave personal loss when his close friend and shrewd counsellor Isa died of illness on 19 December 1189.³¹

The long months of stalemate were not solely the domain of grim-eyed exchanges and frenetic preparation. The winter afforded the first opportunities for fraternisation and the blossoming of a familiarity that would remain an undercurrent of the campaign. One of the last Latin ships to arrive in 1189 had carried a different breed of reinforcement: ‘300 lovely Frankish women, full of youth and beauty, assembled from beyond the sea [to offer] themselves for sin’. Saladin’s secretary, Imad al-Din, took a certain scandalised pleasure in describing how these prostitutes, having set up shop outside Acre, ‘brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden earrings [and] made themselves targets for men’s darts’, but noted with evident disgust that some Muslims also ‘slipped away’ to partake of their charms.

Another Muslim eyewitness noted that the Christian and Muslim enemies eventually ‘got to know one another, in that both sides would converse and leave off fighting. At times people would sing and others would dance, so familiar had they become.’ In the later periods the sheer proximity of the two entrenched sides must have contributed to this familiarity, as the Muslims were said to be ‘face to face with the enemy…with both sets of camp fires visible to each other. We could hear the sound of their bells and they could hear our call to prayer.’ The city’s garrison, at least, earned the crusaders’ begrudging respect, with one commenting that ‘never was there a people as good in defence as these devil’s minions’. This image of burgeoning friendship and acquaintance should not be stretched too far. Recent scholarship has unearthed an intriguing Latin survey of the forces amassed by Saladin at Acre, quite probably written during the siege. Characterised by a mixture of patchy knowledge and animosity, this document offers up precise details of Muslim troop characteristics and armament, peppered by persistent defamation and fantasy. Arabs were said to ‘circumcise’ their ears, while Turks were apparently renowned for indulging in homosexuality and bestiality, all in accordance with the supposed precepts of Muhammad.

The informal ‘rules’ of engagement that gradually built up between these entrenched foes also were sometimes transgressed. An understanding appears to have existed that troops leaving the safety of their camp to relieve themselves would not be attacked. The crusaders were therefore appalled when, on one occasion, ‘[a knight] doing what everyone has to do…was bent over’ when a mounted Turk raced from his front line hoping to skewer him with his lance. Wholly unaware of the danger, the knight was warned in the nick of time by the shouts of ‘Run, sir, run’ from the trenches. He ‘got up with difficulty…his business finished’, just managing to dodge the first charge, and then, facing his enemy unarmed, felled the horseman with a well-thrown rock.³²

THE STORM OF WAR

With the advent of ‘the soft season of spring’, open warfare returned, and the first battle to be fought was for dominion of the sea. In late March 1190, shortly after Easter, news reached Acre that fifty Latin ships were approaching from Tyre. In the course of the winter, Conrad had agreed a partial reconciliation with Guy, becoming the ‘king’s faithful man’ in return for rights to Tyre, Beirut and Sidon. The fleet he now led south sought to re-establish Christian control over the Mediterranean seaboard to reconnect the crusaders’ lifeline to the outside world. This was a struggle that Saladin could ill afford to lose, as perhaps his best hope of overall victory at Acre lay in isolating the Frankish besiegers. He resolved to resist the oncoming ships at all costs, prompting one of the twelfth century’s most spectacular naval engagements.

The battle for the sea

When the Latin fleet appeared, driven down the coast by a north wind, around fifty of Saladin’s ships sailed out of Acre’s harbour in pairs to meet it, flying green and gold banners. The Franks possessed two main types of vessel: ‘long, slender and low’ galleys, fixed with battering rams and powered by two banks of oars (one below and one on deck); and ‘galliots’, shorter, more manoeuvrable warships with a single bank of oars. As the fleet approached, shield walls were erected on decks and the Christian ships formed into a V-shaped wedge, with the galleys at its point. With a cacophony of trumpets sounding on both sides, the two forces ploughed into one another and battle was joined.

Sea-borne combat was still a relatively rudimentary affair in 1190. Larger ships might try to ram and sink enemy craft, but on the whole fighting took place at close quarters and consisted of the exchange of short-range missiles and attempts to draw in opposing vessels with grappling hooks and board them. The greatest horror, as far as sailors were concerned, was Greek fire, because it could not be extinguished by water, and in this engagement both sides possessed supplies of this weapon. The Muslim fleet came close to gaining the upper hand on a number of occasions. One Frankish galley was bombarded with Greek fire and boarded, prompting its oarsmen to leap into the sea in terror. A small number of knights who were weighed down by their heavy armour, and who did not know how to swim anyway, chose to hold their ground ‘in sheer desperation’ and managed to win back control of the half-burnt vessel. In the end, neither side achieved an overwhelming victory, but the Muslim fleet came off the worst, being forced back behind Acre’s harbour chain. One of their galleys was driven ashore and ransacked, its crew dragged on to the beach and summarily butchered and beheaded by a merciless pack of knife-wielding Latin women. In a grim aside, a crusader later noted that ‘the women’s physical weakness prolonged the pain of death’ because it took them longer to decapitate their foes.