Battle of Kerak
A Historic Saga of Valor and Strategy

The short answer

The “Battle of Kerak” was two sieges of a Crusader castle, and Saladin withdrew from both:

• 1183: Saladin was besieging Kerak in November. A relief army led out by King Baldwin IV reached the castle in early December, and Saladin withdrew.
• 1184: he came back in the summer, had the castle surrounded by mid-August, and again drew off when a Frankish relief army arrived in early September.

Kerak passed into Saladin’s hands only in late 1188, by surrender, after the Frankish defeat at Hattin. There was no battle at Kerak in 1177: that year’s battle between Baldwin IV and Saladin was Montgisard, on 25 November 1177, which William of Tyre, the kingdom’s chancellor and historian, records as a Christian victory.

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; and Baha ad-Din Ibn Shaddad, who served Saladin as judge of the army. Where they disagree, this page says so.

The castle

William of Tyre says the site was “formerly called Petra of the Desert”. He describes Kerak as a citadel built during the reign of King Fulk by a lord called Paganus the Butler, on a very high mountain “surrounded by deep valleys”, and later strengthened by his successors 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 the castle “so effectually commanded the road to Egypt that caravans could not travel without a strong military escort”, and 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.

Key Players

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 call him “a bitter enemy of the Moslems” and record his march toward Medina in 1182–83. William of Tyre calls his decision to defend the village below the castle in 1183 rash, and 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 extremities became completely deadened”. The couple whose wedding was under way in Kerak when the siege began were Stephanie’s son, Humphrey of Toron, and Baldwin’s younger half-sister, Isabella, daughter of King Amalric and Queen Maria.

The Battle Unfolds

The first siege, 1183

The start. Saladin appeared before Kerak, William says, 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, and 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 performers on 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, and kept up the attack “by night as well as by 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, asked which tower the bride and groom were in, and had it cried through his army that no one should shoot at or attack that tower. Ernoul adds that her message reminded Saladin 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 Life-giving Cross and 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. Baha ad-Din’s dates put the Franks’ arrival at Kerak on 16 Sha’ban 579, which works out to about 4 December 1183, and Saladin back in Damascus on 24 Sha’ban, about 12 December.

How long it lasted depends on the source. William says Saladin kept up the siege “for an entire month”. Ernoul’s text says eight weeks; some manuscripts say six.

The second siege, 1184

Baha ad-Din gives the second siege 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, and by 4 Jumada I (13 August 1184) Kerak “was completely invested”, with mangonels 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: 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 1187 Saladin defeated the Frankish army at Hattin. Baha ad-Din lists Reynald, “Lord of el-Kerak”, and “the son of el-Honferi (Honfroi de Toron)” among the leaders taken prisoner. Kerak itself held out into the next year. Baha ad-Din says that during the month of Ramadan in the year 584 (late October to late November 1188) Saladin “obtained possession of el-Kerak, the officers in command surrendering the fortress in order that their lord might be set at liberty”. Ernoul, for his part, says Saladin sent Humphrey, freed, to his mother, the wife of Prince Reynald.

Legacy 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. He took it in the end by surrender, after his victory at Hattin.

How to read a medieval battle story

The sieges of Kerak also show how to read any medieval battle story:

1. Ask whose account it is. William of Tyre was the kingdom’s chancellor and drew on nobles hostile to Reynald; Baha ad-Din served Saladin; Ernoul tells the best stories, but his account of the 1183 siege runs straight on to Saladin going to Nablus, staying two days and leaving 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. Each is useful, and none is neutral.
2. Check the calendar. 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.
3. Expect the numbers to differ. One source says the first siege lasted a month; another says eight weeks, or six. Where the sources disagree, a range is the fairest answer.
4. Treat the best anecdote with care. Of these three writers, only Ernoul tells the wedding courtesy. That does not make it false, but it is one witness, not three.

Sources

• William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and A. C. Krey (Columbia University Press, 1943), with the translators’ introduction and notes; Book 21, ch. 22–23 (Montgisard) and Book 22, ch. 25 and 28–30 (Kerak, 1183): https://archive.org/details/williamoftyrehistory
• Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie (Société de l’histoire de France, 1871), pp. 30–31, 102–106 and 253; translations from the Old French are ours: https://archive.org/details/chroniquedernoul00ernouoft
• Baha ad-Din Ibn Shaddad, The Life of Saladin, trans. C. R. Conder (Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, 1897), ch. 25, 28, 35 and 47, with the translator’s notes: https://archive.org/details/lifesaladin00condgoog
• Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 196.
• Jordan Tourism Board, Karak: https://international.visitjordan.com/wheretogo/karak/

Checked September 2026.