What happened at the Battle of Jaffa in 1192?
In late July 1192, while Richard I was at Acre preparing to sail home, Saladin besieged Jaffa and took the town on 31 July. The garrison held the citadel and agreed to surrender if no help came. Richard sailed down the coast, waded ashore on 1 August and drove Saladin’s army out of the town. On 5 August Saladin’s cavalry surprised his small camp outside the walls, but a line of kneeling spearmen and crossbowmen held them off all day, and Saladin’s men refused to charge again. A truce followed on 2 September.5
It was the last fight between the armies of Richard and Saladin. R. C. Smail calls it a brilliant tactical success, and Stanley Lane-Poole wrote that the rescue crowned Richard’s crusade with a glow of setting glory. The year before Acre and Arsuf are told in the Siege of Acre and the Battle of Arsuf, and the two commanders side by side in Saladin vs Richard the Lionheart.6
Jaffa after Arsuf
After taking Acre in July 1191 Richard marched south along the coast, beat off Saladin at Arsuf and occupied Jaffa, the port nearest Jerusalem. Smail notes that the crusaders had more ships than the armies of the First Crusade, so they refortified Jaffa as a base before trying for Jerusalem, and the Fordham sourcebook’s introduction calls it the intended base for the drive on the Holy City.7
Twice, in the winter of 1191 to 1192 and again in the summer, the crusaders advanced inland and turned back short of Jerusalem. After the second retreat, the Itinerary writes, the army, broken up and with a heavy heart, returned to Jaffa and then to Acre, leaving many sick men in Jaffa. Talks with Saladin dragged on, and Ascalon was the sticking point: Saladin wanted it pulled down, Richard would not let a single stone be moved.8
Richard turns north
In late July 1192 Richard and most of the army were back at Acre. Lane-Poole writes that they were preparing to sail for Europe and that Richard meant to seize Beirut by a sudden stroke on the way. Norgate shows from Baha ad-Din that Saladin’s spies already reported on 22 July that the Franks were moving on Beirut.9
Baha ad-Din says it was the news of Richard’s march towards Beirut that led Saladin to strike at Jaffa. The sultan’s son al-Zahir had joined him from Aleppo, and his brother al-Adil was close behind with troops from beyond the Euphrates.10
Saladin strikes
The sources give slightly different days. The Itinerary has Saladin before Jaffa on the Sunday before the feast of St Peter in Chains, which Norgate dates to 26 July, the very day Richard reached Acre, and the attack beginning on the Monday. Lane-Poole writes that Saladin left Jerusalem on 27 July and was before the walls that same day, and Baha ad-Din dates the march to Tuesday 15 Rajab.11
The Itinerary credits Saladin with 20,000 horse, about a hundred and six emirs and a great multitude of hill infantry, and puts the people inside at about 5,000. Baha ad-Din describes the army drawn up in three divisions, its wings on the sea, al-Zahir commanding the right and al-Adil the left.12
The defenders fought hard. Baha ad-Din, who was with the sultan, describes miners digging under the curtain near the east gate and the garrison breaking into their mine, and he admits that the defenders’ resistance discouraged the besiegers. When the mine was fired and half the curtain came down, the Franks had already piled wood behind it and set it alight, so that no one could get through.13
The town falls
On Friday 31 July the wall finally fell to the mangonels and the mines. Baha ad-Din writes that when the dust and smoke cleared, a wall of halberds and lances stood in the breach, and he saw two men holding the rampart path, one struck down by a stone and the other taking his place at once. The garrison asked for terms, and Saladin told them to withdraw into the citadel, because nothing would stop his men from getting in.14
The town was sacked. The Itinerary writes that the Turks killed the sick in their beds and let the wine run in the streets, and Ibn al-Athir that they killed Franks and took many prisoners and much of the booty the Franks had taken from an Egyptian caravan. He adds that Saladin’s mamluks stood at the gates and took the plunder from any soldier who came out with it.15
The terms for the citadel are told differently. In the Itinerary the new Patriarch obtained a respite until the next day: if no help came by the ninth hour, each man would pay ten bezants, each woman five and each child three, and the Patriarch, Alberic of Reims and others went to Saladin as hostages. Baha ad-Din speaks of the same ransom as had been paid at Jerusalem in 1187. Roger of Howden says Alberic surrendered the city and then, hearing that Richard was coming, gave back Saladin’s arrow, the token of the treaty, and was taken prisoner.16
A message reaches Acre
Messengers from Jaffa found Richard in his tent at Acre, Norgate writes on the evening of 28 July, talking with his officers about sailing for home the next day. In the Itinerary he breaks in on them: “As God lives, I will be with them.” The French, says the Itinerary, would not even answer him, and Norgate that they declared they would not stir a foot.17
Templars, Hospitallers and other knights went by land, but halted at Caesarea for fear of an ambush. Richard went by sea with his own men and the Pisans and Genoese. Norgate writes that a contrary wind held his ships for three days off Haifa and that only three of them came in sight of Jaffa late on Friday 31 July. Roger of Howden gives Richard seven galleys.18
The landing of 1 August
At daybreak on Saturday 1 August Saladin’s camp heard Frankish trumpets at sea. Baha ad-Din was sent to bring the garrison out of the citadel before help could land, and he describes waking al-Zahir, who was asleep in his mail. The garrison agreed to leave, but the emir Jurdik held them back until the plundering troops could be cleared from the streets, and by noon only forty-nine men with their horses and wives had come out.19
Then the fleet drew closer. Baha ad-Din counted thirty-five vessels at first and later more than fifty, fifteen of them swift galleys. The men left in the citadel took heart, put their armour back on and sallied, and were driven back again. The Itinerary adds that the Turks had already beheaded seven men who paid their ransom.20
From the sea the town looked lost, with Muslim banners everywhere. A priest jumped from the citadel, unhurt on the sandy shore, and was taken to Richard’s galley, which Baha ad-Din describes as painted red, with a red awning and a red flag. The Itinerary has Richard wade ashore up to his waist with his thighs unarmoured and clear the beach with a crossbow, and Lane-Poole, following other chroniclers, gives him a Danish axe.21
In less than an hour, Baha ad-Din writes, the galleys had landed their men and driven the Muslims out of the harbour under his eyes. Richard climbed a stair to the Templars’ house, raised his banners on the walls, and the garrison charged out of the citadel. The Itinerary says he found more than 3,000 Turks plundering the town, and Ralph of Coggeshall that he cleared it of nearly 3,000 with only six knights.22
Baha ad-Din galloped to Saladin and found him writing out the terms for the Patriarch and the castellan. The sultan kept talking so the envoys would not guess, then had them arrested and ordered the retreat to Yazur. The army left behind great bales of booty it could not carry. Richard pitched his tents where Saladin’s had stood, with only three horses, says the Itinerary.23
“I am still wearing only the shoes I wore on board”
That evening Saladin’s chamberlain Abu Bakr found Richard talking with mamluks and emirs, apparently prisoners, half serious and half joking. Baha ad-Din reports him asking why so mighty a sultan had fled at his first appearance, when “I am still wearing only the shoes I wore on board”, and adding that he had thought Saladin could not take Jaffa in two months, yet he had taken it in two days. Lane-Poole and Norgate give the same scene from Baha ad-Din.24
Richard asked for peace, saying his country beyond the sea was being ruined. Saladin offered the coast from Tyre to Caesarea, then Jaffa with Ascalon kept for himself. Richard asked to hold Jaffa and Ascalon as Saladin’s man, and Saladin answered that he could not give up Ascalon and that the king, young and far from home, would find it harder to winter in Syria than an old sultan in his own country.25
The dawn alarm of 5 August
Richard repaired the broken walls with stones piled without mortar, and Count Henry of Champagne joined him by sea from Caesarea, where the troops coming by land were still held up. Saladin rode north to the river Auja to cut them off, learned they were safe in Caesarea, and turned back in the night to surprise Richard’s camp of a dozen tents outside the walls.26
At dawn on Wednesday 5 August, the Wednesday after the feast of St Peter in Chains in the Itinerary’s dating, a Genoese who had gone out into the fields heard horses and saw helmets catching the light. He ran back shouting “To arms!” The Itinerary and Ambroise say the king and many others fought that day with their legs bare, some without breeches.27
No two sources agree on Richard’s force. The Itinerary gives 55 knights with 15 horses and about 2,000 Genoese, Pisans and others, Ambroise 50 or at most 60 knights, and Ralph of Coggeshall, who had his account from Richard’s companion Hugh de Neville, 80 knights and 400 crossbowmen with six horses and a mule. Baha ad-Din, who was ill that day and not present, was told of nine to seventeen horsemen and from 300 to under 1,000 foot.28
The wall of spears
Richard drew his men up behind a low barricade. In the Itinerary’s description each spearman knelt on his right knee, held his shield before him with the left hand and planted the butt of his lance in the ground with its point towards the enemy. Between every two of them Richard placed a crossbowman, with a second man behind him to load a spare crossbow.29
Saladin’s horsemen came on in seven squadrons of about a thousand each, according to the Itinerary, which Ambroise’s editor also cites. The first line rode up to the spears, could not break them and wheeled away, and the crossbows shot down men and horses. Norgate, following Ralph of Coggeshall, counts five or six such charges from early morning almost to the ninth hour.30
Then Richard charged with his few mounted knights, rode right through the Turkish lines, rescued the unhorsed Earl of Leicester and saved Ralph de Mauleon as he was being led away. The Itinerary says that he came back with his body stuck with javelins like a deer pierced by hunters, and Norgate quotes Coggeshall’s image of the bristles of a hedgehog.31
In the middle of the fight Richard received two fine horses from the other side. The Itinerary says that al-Adil, Saladin’s brother, sent them, and so does the chronicle of Ernoul cited by Lane-Poole. Lane-Poole himself has Saladin send them and rejects Ernoul’s version, since al-Adil was lying sick near Jerusalem at the time.32
Saladin’s men will not charge
Baha ad-Din, Saladin’s own adviser, admits the failure. The sultan rode from squadron to squadron promising rich rewards for another charge, and no one answered except his son al-Zahir, whom he held back. An emir, al-Mashtub’s brother Janah ad-Din, told him to send for the servants who had beaten the soldiers and taken their booty on the day Jaffa fell, a story Ibn al-Athir also tells.33
Smail explains the mood: Saladin had let the garrison negotiate instead of letting his troops storm the citadel, and the soldiers felt cheated of plunder. Baha ad-Din was told that Richard rode the whole length of the Muslim army, lance in hand, and no one left the ranks to meet him. Ibn al-Athir adds that he stopped between the armies, asked the Muslims for food and dismounted to eat.34
Saladin left the field in anger for Yazur, Baha ad-Din writes, and two days later he was in Jerusalem ordering more work on the walls. Lane-Poole notes that he no longer believed Richard would leave without trying to take the city.35
Counting the day
The losses come only from the crusader side. The Itinerary and Ambroise say that only one or two Christians were killed, while more than 700 Turks and 1,500 horses lay dead in the field. Ralph of Coggeshall says that all came through unharmed except one man. None of the Muslim writers used here gives a count.36
One English chronicler tells a different story altogether. Roger of Howden writes that three days after the relief Saladin offered a pitched battle, and then declined it when five galleys of reinforcements arrived from Acre. Norgate builds her account of the fight mainly on Ralph of Coggeshall, whose informant Hugh de Neville was close to the king throughout.37
The modern verdicts are short. Gale’s Encyclopedia of World Biography says Richard twice defeated Saladin, at Arsuf and at Jaffa, and dates Jaffa to July 1192. Smail calls the day a brilliant tactical success, due as much to the low spirit of Saladin’s troops as to Richard’s skill.38
The truce of September 1192
Richard fell seriously ill soon after. Lane-Poole writes that Saladin sent him pears, peaches and snow from the mountains, and that Richard asked al-Adil to get him the best terms he could. The Itinerary, in the Fordham translation, says the king chose a truce rather than leave the land with the business unfinished, since he was sick, had little support and lay two miles from the enemy.39
The treaty kept the coast for the Franks. Abu al-Fida lists Jaffa, Caesarea, Arsuf, Haifa and Acre with their lands, Lydda and Ramla shared, and Ascalon left in ruins, and the Fordham text adds free access for pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre without tribute. Abu al-Fida writes that Richard would not swear an oath, saying kings did not, and gave his hand instead, while Henry of Champagne and the leading Franks swore.40
The length of the truce is given as three years by Lane-Poole and Roger of Howden, three years and three months by Abu al-Fida, and three years and eight months by Ibn al-Athir. Abu al-Fida dates the agreement to Saturday 29 August and the oaths to Wednesday 2 September 1192, and Lane-Poole gives 2 September for the signing. Richard sailed from Acre on 9 October.41
Gale’s encyclopedia recounts how Richard was captured on his way home and held until a ransom was paid. His life is told in our life of Richard the Lionheart, and his opponent’s in our biography of Saladin. The wider war is in our guide to the Crusades.42
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