583, he occupied himself in arranging large collections of money, making that a regular payment which had before been an extraordinary grant. He wrote therefore to the people of the open country and to the dwellers in the chief cities, begging them to collect armies for the sacred war, and to send troops for the purpose of accomplishing those designs which his breast entertained respecting cutting off all places of strength or of value from the people of error, and deviators from the right road, and adversaries of the truth. To this they agreed, and came to join him from all quarters. And in the year 580 the Sultán SaláhUddín set off from the Holy Land, and left the city, and all those coasts near to it of which he had obtained possession when he marched from Syria, to its inhabitants, to cultivate in security. He proceeded on to the citadel of the Kurds, and laid siege to it. And his army laid waste the lands of the Franks far and wide, and cut down their trees, and all the constructions of these wanderers from truth, that were to be found. Then he went to Tarsus, which he took by storm. Then he went to its mountain-citadel and the fortresses around it, which he took by storm. Then he went to Laodicea, which he besieged some days (a short time); then he took it, and obtained a great booty from it. Then he went to

Antioch; but the lord of that city, who is the Prince of Antioch, begged for a truce: therefore he made a truce with him. Then he marched to Sahyún, which was a citadel upon the very top (of a hill). He besieged it, and took it by capitulation after three days. Then his army, and his sons, and his guards, dispersed (in different divisions), and took the different fortresses of this part of the country; such as Palatinus, and Kalat-ul-Jáhír, and Bikkás, and Shaar, and Tasmania, and the pass of Shák and Bifras. Then he went on to Shúbak, and took it by capitulation. Then he marched to Sapphirus (Safad), and began to storm it. Here his brother, Prince Adil-Abú-Bekr, arrived with his army. The siege of Safad lasted until the ninth of Shawwál, when it was taken by capitulation. Then he marched to the fort of Kúkía, and stormed it and besieged it, and took it, in the middle of the month Dhúl Khaadát, in the year 584,-a year remarkable for the blessings it conferred on the Moslems.

And in the year 585 the Franks began to bestir themselves, and to burn with rage, and to be full of boiling fury, and made a sally from the city of Tyre, making towards Akká; and all the priests and monks, and all their most eminent men, assembled, and they put on black garments, publicly to denote their indignation and sorrow about the

Holy City. And the Patriarch (he whose splendid house near the Church of the Resurrection the Sultán had taken, and made it into a convent of Súfis, wherein the mighty Korán might be read, and the vocal summons to prayer clearly pronounced, and wherein wise men might compose histories,) took all the sacred vessels, and set off with them to the country of the Franks. So they began to make processions all around, and to call for aid, and to beseech help from all the princes and great men of the Christian Religion. And they made an image (or picture) of Christ, and a picture of the Prophet; and represented the latter as beating Christ, and driving him off,— and the blood flowing over his face. Now this made a mighty impression upon the Franks, and indignation seized upon them-the filthy indignation of folly. So they assembled until the number of men, and the wealth that was collected, surpassed computation. One who was with them relates that they arrived at the appointed station, in small transports, at Greater Greece. Then (says he) we marched forth out of these, and loaded our camels from the holds (of the vessels). Again, Ibn-Al-Attír reports, The Franks marched by rough ways and easy ways, by land and sea, going over every deep lake and ravine, in the belief that they would become masters of Jerusalem,

and wrest it from the hands of the Moslems, and restore it to the condition wherein it was whilst in their hands, (God, however, forbid but that its light should still remain, even though the Infidels detest it!) Then the Franks, therefore, besieged Akká in the middle of the month Rajib in the year aforesaid, and invested it until no passage remained to the Moslems to approach it by. And the Sultán Saláh-Uddín came, and an army of Unitarians with him; and many great battles fell out between them. In one of them, Takí-Uddín, son of SaláhUddin's brother, made, by a feint, a charge upon the right of the Franks, which drove them back, and intercepted them from their entrenchments. Then the Sultán Saláh-Uddín became master of their magazines and their ground and the higher suburb of Akká; and the Sultán entered the country, and gave entrance to any number of men who were willing. And, upon the twentieth of Shabán, the Franks assembled a council of war; and the opinion they expressed was this :-If we attack the Musalmáns to-morrow, whilst in a state of confusion and carelessness, probably we shall gain the victory over them before they shall receive any extension of force, (which will not be the case) if the army of the Moslems be augmented by those who have been left at a distance; some before Antioch, from a dread of the treachery of its

prince; some in Emessa, before Terapolis; some before Tyre and the army of Egypt in Alexandria and Damietta. So the Franks rose in the morning, looking with an evil eye for slaughter; and the Sultán rose in the morning, having changed the strict order of battle-array; and the Franks sallied forth, resembling a wide stream of locusts, and filled the land with their length and breadth. Then they began to attack single men. Then the Moslems hastened, and some of them stood their ground, and firmly closed their ranks. Then some of the Moslems returned, and the Sultán made with them a charge in right earnest, and made a tremendous slaughter of the Franks, and took the whole of them prisoners and the number of those slain on that day was ten thousand. So the Sultán commanded them, and they cast them into the river, of which the Franks drank. Also it is reported by Omad, (may God compassionate him!) that those of the Moslems who stood their ground drove back one hundred thousand Infidels; and that one would say, I killed thirty; and another, I killed forty. And the whole land was infected with the odour of the putrefying bodies of the slain; and the temperature of the air was changed; and the Sultán fell sick; and they advised him to quit that part of the country, and to leave contending with the Franks