Today in history witnessed an epic battle between Christians and Muslims. The sheer ferocity and valor displayed at the battle of Arsuf would make most otherwise “breathtaking” battle scenes emanating from Hollywood seem like child’s play.
Context: in late August, 1191, Richard the Lionhearted, at the head of a large force of Crusaders, set out from Acre to Jaffa. Along with the fierce Syrian sun, the Christians were harried by a nonstop deluge of arrows from the hordes of Saladin, he who a few years earlier had all but annihilated the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin.
Despite the casualties from arrows, sunstroke, snakebite, starvation, and disease, the Christian warriors remained undaunted and pressed on. Saladin’s own biographer, Baha’ al-Din, expressed dismay: “I saw various individuals amongst the Franks with ten arrows fixed in their backs, pressing on in this fashion quite unconcerned… Consider the endurance of these people, bearing exhausting tasks without any pay or material gain.”
Finally, on September 6, as the Crusaders emerged from a dense wood, there on the vast plains of Arsuf, they saw “all the forces” of Islam marshalled before them, “from Damascus and Persia, from the Mediterranean Sea to the East,” writes a chronicler. There was not a single warlike Muslim people “whom Saladin had not summoned to aid him in crushing the Christian people,” for he “hoped to wipe the Christians completely off the face of the earth.”
Battle commenced on the morning of September 7, 1191. A wild din erupted from the Muslim camp. Drums, horns, and cymbals banged and brayed, to reverberant cries of “Allahu Akbar” and other “horrible yells.” As the Crusaders knelt in prayer and went into battle formation, the “land all around resounded with the echo of their [Muslims’] harsh cries and roaring noise.” Suddenly, in the midst of this “terrifying racket,” thousands of Turks “rushed down on our people” on horses “driven like lightning.” The dust storm caused by this stampede “filled the sky like a dark cloud.” Behind the galloping Turks “ran a devilish race, very black in color.”
Continued…
Approved ~ MJM
