Tension reaches a climax in the epic battle between Saracen leader Saladin and England s Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade, with the fate of the.
hussein. it s a big sign that islam has recovered jerusalem. saladin, himself, got down on his hands and knees and cleaned the temple mount with rosewater to purify it again as an islamic shrine. while saladin focuses on jerusalem, the crusaders have regrouped under the command of king guy. saladin allowed king guy to go freely on the condition that he sail across the sea, meaning he goes back to france from whence he came. guy is not so naive. he recognizes that he still has another card to play. he goes to this little island about two miles offshore and comes back and says, i ve been overseas. in allowing him to live, saladin unwittingly allowed king guy to reconstitute his army.
he s incredibly energetic. he s efficient, and he s a flamboyant character. he has the irony of being a bad son, a bad brother, an absent king, but a brilliant military strategist. richard was much more a kind of person who would react on the basis of instinct rather than thinking. this is why he s called lionhearted. he fights brutally and ruthlessly. when king richard arrives in palestine, he was a very, very powerful figure. king guy essentially became a footnote. nobody bothered about who he was, what he was doing, because it didn t matter. both saladin and king richard believe that jerusalem belongs to their faiths. for christians, jerusalem is a place of pilgrimage. for muslims, jerusalem is a place of pilgrimage.
one way we re making a difference. king guy has rallied his army outside the walls of jerusalem and marched north. but while he is less experienced than the great muslim leader, king guy believes his army is invincible as long as they fight beneath the true cross. when the crusaders captured jerusalem in 1099, they discovered the relic of the true cross. it s a small piece of wood that
young warrior, but way too inexperienced to be a proper king, becoming ruler of the entire kingdom of jerusalem. when saladin amasses his forces in northern palestine, king guy s inexperience is quickly put to the test. saladin was very shrewd in sort of provoking the christians to come out of the safety of jerusalem to meet them further north. guy of lusignan felt like this was his chance to strike at saladin s army once and for all. if he could win, it would be a huge victory. if not, it could be disastrous.