Battle of Hattin

July 4, 1187

Saladin lured the thirst-maddened Crusader army into the volcanic hills above Lake Tiberias and annihilated them. King Guy was captured, the True Cross was lost, and within months Jerusalem itself fell - undoing eighty-eight years of Latin rule in the Holy Land. The defeat was so complete that Saladin took fifty Crusader castles in the weeks that followed, reducing the Latin kingdom to a few coastal strongholds.