SOURCE: “Saladin’s Hattin Letter” in The Horns of Hattin, edited by B. Z. Kedar, Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1992, pp. 208–13.

In the following excerpt, Melville and Lyons note that Saladin's Hattin letter functions as a triumph song, rather than a factual account. Like most medieval Arabic diplomatic correspondence, the letter is “colored by metaphor and rhetorical exaggeration.” The critics then offer an English translation of the letter.

The repetitive patterns of medieval Arabic diplomatic correspondence are colored by metaphor and rhetorical exaggeration. Here, facts are the one half-pennyworth of bread in an intolerable deal of sack, and to this general rule the Hattīn letter is no exception. Not surprisingly, it is a triumph song rather than a battlefield communiqué, but in spite of this it supplies a clue that is essential to an understanding of the battle. The letter tells us that the crusaders occupied “one of the...