The Third Crusade and the Race of Kings

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Saladin's Ayyubid forces shattered the Crusader field army at the Battle of Hattin in July 1187 and went on to retake Jerusalem itself within months, a loss that brought the three most powerful rulers in Latin Christendom into the field together: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip II of France and King Richard I of England. Barbarossa never reached the Holy Land, drowning while crossing a river in Anatolia in 1190, and it fell to Philip and Richard, whose rivalry repeatedly strained the campaign's cooperation, to lead the siege that recaptured the port of Acre in July 1191.

The crusade that followed Acre's fall achieved only a partial success. Richard's forces retook the coastal strip running from Tyre to Jaffa, but two separate marches he led toward Jerusalem itself were abandoned within sight of the city rather than risk a siege his own commanders judged unwinnable. The September 1192 Treaty of Jaffa he negotiated with Saladin left Jerusalem under Ayyubid control while guaranteeing Christian pilgrims access to it, an arrangement neither side treated as a final settlement, and the city itself would not return to Christian hands again during the crusading era.