Battle of Kerak: A Historic Saga of Valor and Strategy

Start hereSaladin besieged Kerak twice and withdrew both times. Yet the castle passed to him in 1188 without being taken by force. How did a fortress he could not take end up in his hands?

01Two sieges at Kerak

What	Two sieges of a Crusader castle, not one battle
When	Late 1183, and summer 1184
Besieger	Saladin
Lord of the castle	Reynald of Châtillon
Relief	King Baldwin IV’s army in 1183; a Frankish army in 1184
Result	Saladin withdrew both times
How it fell	By surrender, in late 1188, after Hattin

The details below come from three writers of the time:

• William of Tyre, writing inside the kingdom.
• The Old French chronicle that goes under the name of Ernoul.
• Baha ad-Din Ibn Shaddad, who served Saladin as judge of the army.

Where they disagree, this page says so.

02The castle

Kerak was a hard place to reach. William of Tyre says the site was once called Petra of the Desert.

He describes a citadel built in King Fulk’s reign by a lord called Paganus the Butler. It stood on a very high mountain surrounded by deep valleys, and later lords strengthened it with a moat and towers.

Below the citadel lay a village. At only two points, William says, could anyone reach the top of the mountain.

Kerak mattered because of the roads it watched. Baha ad-Din says it controlled the road to Egypt so well that caravans could not travel without a strong military escort. The notes to his translation add that Reynald’s castles commanded the pilgrim road to Mecca.

Today the town of Karak, with its Crusader castle, is in Jordan.

03Key Players

Three people stand at the centre of the story: the castle’s lord, the sultan who besieged it and the king who came to relieve it.

Reynald of Châtillon

Reynald held Kerak as lord of Oultrejordain, the land beyond the Jordan. Ernoul says he was given the lady of Kerak and Montreal as his wife. Her name was Stephanie.

The notes to the 1897 English translation of Baha ad-Din describe him as a bitter enemy of the Muslims. They also record his march toward Medina in 1182–83.

William of Tyre calls Reynald’s decision to defend the village below the castle in 1183 rash. William’s modern translators note that his information probably came from nobles opposed to Reynald.

Salahuddin Ayyubi (Saladin)

Saladin, Salah ad-Din Yusuf, son of Ayyub, was of Kurdish descent. His biographer Baha ad-Din entered his service, became judge of the army and went with him on his later campaigns. He dates both campaigns against Kerak in the Islamic calendar.

Baldwin IV and the wedding couple

Baldwin IV was the leper king of Jerusalem. In 1183, William of Tyre writes, his leprosy grew worse. His sight failed, and his hands and feet went completely numb.

The wedding under way in Kerak when the siege began joined Stephanie’s son, Humphrey of Toron, and Baldwin’s younger half-sister, Isabella. She was the daughter of King Amalric and Queen Maria.

04The Battle Unfolds

The first siege, 1183

Saladin was besieging Kerak in November 1183. William says Saladin appeared before Kerak when the wedding celebrations were barely over, “in fact, on that very day, it is said”.

Reynald tried to hold the village outside the citadel. His men were driven back. William credits a single knight, Iven, with stopping the attackers at the bridge to the citadel gate.

The defenders then threw the bridge down themselves. The citadel was crowded with townspeople, and with actors and players of the flute and psaltery who had come for the wedding.

The bombardment. Saladin set up eight siege engines, six on the site of the old town and two outside. He kept up the attack night and day.

The wedding courtesy. Ernoul tells the story this siege is remembered for. The groom’s mother, the wife of Prince Reynald, sent Saladin bread, wine, oxen and sheep from her son’s wedding.

Saladin thanked her warmly and asked which tower the bride and groom were in. He had it announced through his army that no one should shoot at or attack that tower.

Ernoul adds that her message reminded Saladin of their past. In his telling, she recalled that he had often carried her in his arms when he was a slave in the castle and she was a child. Neither William of Tyre nor Baha ad-Din mentions the gift, the spared tower or that claim.

The relief. Baldwin IV summoned the kingdom’s army, took the True Cross and, in William’s words, “marched thither himself”. Neither William nor Ernoul says how he travelled. The historian Bernard Hamilton judges that he was “almost certainly too ill to ride, and would have had to be carried in a litter”.

At the Dead Sea he handed command of the whole army to Raymond, count of Tripoli. Hearing that the Christian army was near, Saladin abandoned his engines and withdrew. The king still continued his march to Kerak, where his arrival brought relief to its people.

By Baha ad-Din’s dates, the Franks reached Kerak on 16 Sha’ban 579, about 4 December 1183. Saladin was back in Damascus on 24 Sha’ban, about 12 December.

The second siege, 1184

The second siege ended the same way as the first. Baha ad-Din gives it in detail.

Saladin halted near Kerak for several days to wait for his nephew, who joined him on 19 Rabi II (30 July 1184). He gathered troops from Egypt, Syria and the Jazira. By 4 Jumada I (13 August 1184), Kerak was completely surrounded, and mangonels (stone-throwing engines) were battering it.

A Frankish army came out to relieve the castle and camped at a place he calls el-Waleh. On 26 Jumada I (4 September 1184) the Franks moved their camp nearer Kerak.

Saladin then sent his army instead into the lands toward the coast, which had been left unprotected. There his troops stormed and pillaged the town of Nablus, though not its castle, and took Jenin, before Saladin returned to Damascus. Kerak held again.

How Kerak finally fell

In the end Kerak was surrendered, not taken by force. In 1187 Saladin defeated the Frankish army at Hattin. Baha ad-Din lists Reynald, lord of Kerak, among the leaders taken prisoner, along with “the son of el-Honferi (Honfroi de Toron)”.

Kerak itself held out into the next year. Baha ad-Din says Saladin gained possession of it during the month of Ramadan in the year 584 (late October to late November 1188). The officers in command surrendered the fortress so that their lord would be set free.

Ernoul, for his part, says Saladin sent Humphrey, freed, to his mother, the wife of Prince Reynald.

The coupleHumphrey of Toron and Isabella, the king's younger half-sister.

The giftThe groom's mother sent Saladin bread, wine, oxen and sheep from the wedding.

The towerSaladin asked where the couple were and ordered his army not to shoot at that tower.

William of Tyre records the wedding; of these three writers, only Ernoul tells of the gift and the spared tower.

05Where the sources disagree

Each of the three writers is useful, and none is neutral.

How long the first siege lasted. William says Saladin kept up the siege for “an entire month”. Ernoul’s text says eight weeks, or six in some manuscripts. Where the sources disagree like this, a range is the fairest answer.

What happened at Nablus. Ernoul tells the most vivid stories. But his account of the 1183 siege runs straight on to Saladin going to Nablus. There, it says, he stayed two days and left the town unharmed, apart from the food his army took. Baha ad-Din has Saladin’s troops storming and pillaging Nablus in the second campaign, in 1184.

The dates. Baha ad-Din dates events by the Islamic calendar. A Christian-calendar date for them, like 4 December 1183, is a conversion to the Julian calendar used at the time, not something he wrote.

William of Tyre	“an entire month”
Ernoul	eight weeks; some manuscripts say six

06The record and the legends

• “A battle at Kerak in 1177.” Baldwin IV and Saladin did fight a battle in 1177, but it was Montgisard, on 25 November 1177. William of Tyre, the kingdom’s chancellor and historian, records it as a Christian victory. There was no battle at Kerak that year.
• “Saladin won at Kerak.” He withdrew in 1183 and again in 1184. The castle changed hands only by surrender, after Hattin (how it fell).
• “The king rode out to save Kerak.” He led the army out, but the two Frankish chronicles don’t say how he travelled. The litter is a modern historian’s inference (the relief).

A battle at Kerak in 1177.	1177 was Montgisard, 25 November, which William of Tyre records as a Christian victory. Kerak was besieged in 1183 and 1184.
Saladin won at Kerak	He withdrew in 1183 and again in 1184. Kerak passed to him only by surrender, in late 1188.

07Legacy of the Battle

Kerak is one of the places where Saladin’s campaigns did not succeed by force. A castle on a mountain, and a relief army on its way, twice made him give up.

The story people remember is the wedding courtesy. It is a good story, and of the three writers it rests on one. For the besieger and the king who came to relieve the castle, see our pages on Salahuddin Ayyubi and Baldwin IV, the leper king.

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• William of Tyre (Babcock and Krey's 1943 translation), the chronicle attributed to Ernoul (1871 edition) and Baha ad-Din (the 1897 Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society translation) were read in their Internet Archive scans.
• Ernoul is in Old French; the English renderings are ours.
• Baha ad-Din dates events in the Islamic calendar. The Christian-calendar dates on the page are conversions to the Julian calendar, worked from his translator's own conversions.
• The litter is Bernard Hamilton's inference (The Leper King and His Heirs, p. 196). Neither William nor Ernoul says how the king travelled.
• That, of the three writers, only Ernoul tells the wedding gift and the spared tower rests on reading William's and Baha ad-Din's Kerak chapters in full.

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