| Battle of Banias | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Crusades | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Kingdom of Jerusalem |  Ayyubid Dynasty | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Baldwin IV Humphrey II † | Farrukh Shah | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Unknown | 1,000 men | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Heavy | Unknown | ||||||
The Battle of Banias was a military engagement between the Ayyubid force and the Crusader force led by King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. The Ayyubids routed the Crusaders.
After the crushing defeat at the Battle of Montgisard, the Ayyubid sultan, Saladin, retreated to Egypt and remained there for several months, consolidating his position there. In late spring 1178, he returned to Damascus and remained there for the rest of the year. Following up with his victory, Baldwin pushed forward towards Syria and established a fortress on the road to Damascus called Jacob's Ford. Seeing this, Saladin attempted to induce Baldwin to abandon the fort by offering 60,000 and then 100,000 gold pieces, but that didn't happen. [1] [2]
In the spring of 1179, Baldwin launched an expedition to collect the sheep passing Banias as the seasonal movement of flocks began from the fields of Damascus. Alarmed, Saladin dispatched a force of 1,000 lancers led by Farrukh Shah to see what was happening. On April 10, he suddenly met the crusader forces in a narrow valley in the forest of Banias. The Crusader force was taken by surprise and ambushed; both sides fought fiercely until the Crusader force was routed. Baldwin almost fell prisoner; however, he was saved by Humphrey II of Toron, who managed to hold off the Ayyubids with his bodyguards until the crusader force withdrew. However, Humphrey was mortally wounded in the battle and forced to retreat. [3] [4] [5]
The death of Humphrey was a heavy blow to the Crusaders, as he was respected not only by his fellow crusaders but also by Muslims. [6] Ibn al-Athir describes Humphry: [7] [8]
No words can describe Hunfray; his name was a proverb for bravery and skill in war. He was indeed a plague let loose by God for the chastening of the Moslems.
After his victory, Saladin marched to the fort and laid siege to it; however, after a few days of fierce resistance, Saladin withdrew before Banias and sent raiding parties to Galilee, Sidon, and Beirut. Baldwin marched to meet Saladin but was defeated again at the Battle of Marj Ayyun. [9]
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as the Latin Kingdom, was a Crusader state that was established in the Levant immediately after the First Crusade. It lasted for almost two hundred years, from the accession of Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 until the fall of Acre in 1291. Its history is divided into two periods with a brief interruption in its existence, beginning with its collapse after the siege of Jerusalem in 1187 and its restoration after the Third Crusade in 1192.
Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia.
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The Ayyubid dynasty, also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish origin, Saladin had originally served the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din, leading Nur ad-Din's army in battle against the Crusaders in Fatimid Egypt, where he was made Vizier. Following Nur ad-Din's death, Saladin was proclaimed as the first Sultan of Egypt by the Abbasid Caliphate, and rapidly expanded the new sultanate beyond the frontiers of Egypt to encompass most of the Levant, in addition to Hijaz, Yemen, northern Nubia, Tarabulus, Cyrenaica, southern Anatolia, and northern Iraq, the homeland of his Kurdish family. By virtue of his sultanate including Hijaz, the location of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, he was the first ruler to be hailed as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, a title that would be held by all subsequent sultans of Egypt until the Ottoman conquest of 1517. Saladin's military campaigns in the first decade of his rule, aimed at uniting the various Arab and Muslim states in the region against the Crusaders, set the general borders and sphere of influence of the sultanate of Egypt for the almost three and a half centuries of its existence. Most of the Crusader states, including the Kingdom of Jerusalem, fell to Saladin after his victory at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. However, the Crusaders reconquered the coast of Palestine in the 1190s.
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Bohemond III of Antioch, also known as Bohemond the Child or the Stammerer, was Prince of Antioch from 1163 to 1201. He was the elder son of Constance of Antioch and her first husband, Raymond of Poitiers. Bohemond ascended to the throne after the Antiochene noblemen dethroned his mother with the assistance of the lord of Armenian Cilicia, Thoros II. He fell into captivity in the Battle of Harim in 1164, but the victorious Nur ad-Din, atabeg of Aleppo released him to avoid coming into conflict with the Byzantine Empire. Bohemond went to Constantinople to pay homage to Manuel I Komnenos, who persuaded him to install a Greek Orthodox patriarch in Antioch. The Latin patriarch of Antioch, Aimery of Limoges, placed Antioch under interdict. Bohemond restored Aimery only after the Greek patriarch died during an earthquake in 1170.
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