Templars - Templar Knight versus Mamluk Warrior 1218-50

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Osprey Publishing,

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Authors dedication

This book is dedicated to Geoff Banks, in the faint hope that such an honour might encourage him to actually read the text rather than just look at the pictures.

Authors acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following: the Verger and staff of Temple Church, London for their kind permission to photograph the effigies contained therein; Dr David Nicolle, for his advice and kind permission to use some of his original photography; David Greentree, without whom I would not have gone down this particular path; Graham Campbell, for paying the bills among other things; Rick Lippiett, for his useful advice and contacts; Geoff Banks, for a miscellany of exceedingly small but nevertheless useful tasks; Gkmen Altinkulp, whose practical knowledge of Turkish horse-archery traditions and equestrianism proved both insightful and a material aid in the writing of this book; Lukas Novotny of the Saluki Bow Company (www.salukibow.com), for his generous help in answering questions and providing images; the staff of Southsea Library; the British Library (http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm); the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (http://www.metmuseum.org/), who, through their OASC (Open Access for Scholarly Content) system have made a broad range of images of artworks widely and freely available for scholarly and academic publication; and finally to my editor Nick Reynolds, whose attention to detail always makes for a better book, and for his impressive reserves of patience.

Editors note

Though the mamlk were Turkic in origin and language, the literature that surrounds them is mostly written in Arabic, and thus the military terms, names of weapons and of armour are given in that tongue. Measurements are given in imperial throughout. For ease of comparison please refer to the following conversion table:

1 mile = 1.6km

1yd = 0.9m

1ft = 0.3m

1in = 2.54cm/25.4mm

1lb = 0.45kg

Introduction

Salh ad-Dn had come so close. Building on the successes of his predecessor Nr ad-Dn, atbak of Aleppo (r. 114674), Salh ad-Dn became the personification of the resurgent Islamic states of the region, bringing a vigour and consistency to the war against the Franks that bore much fruit; he unified the Muslim lands that surrounded their kingdoms, he eroded their possessions, took their strongholds and, at Hattin in 1187, destroyed much of their military capability for a generation. His immediate failure, due in part to the tenacity of his Frankish enemies and their vital reinforcement by the Third Crusade (118992), may not have been the end of the story had he not died in 1193. Even so, the world he left behind seemed an ominously threatening one to the Crusader States, beset as they were on all sides by an enemy that had been in the ascendant for decades, and had nearly driven them into the sea. However, it was Salh ad-Dn, his personality, his authority, and his vision that had shaped and driven that ascendancy, and without his guiding hand drawing together the political and military strength of the regions fractious princes, much would change.