Battle of Ḥaṭṭīn

Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn drew the combined army of the Latin kingdom away from its water and onto the twin volcanic hills called the Horns of Ḥaṭṭīn, above Tiberias. Through a day of heat, smoke and repeated charges, the Frankish army — the largest the kingdom had fielded — was surrounded and destroyed. King Guy was taken, Reynald of Châtillon was killed, and the relic of the True Cross was captured.

The kingdom's garrisons had marched with the army; with it gone, the cities fell through the summer like a row of doors, and Jerusalem itself surrendered three months later.

The tagline the chroniclers gave the day — that the road to Jerusalem opened at Ḥaṭṭīn — is scarcely an exaggeration.