Siege of Jerusalem (1187)

Friday, 2 October 1187 — not 20 September

Balian of Ibelin surrendered Jerusalem to Saladin on Friday 2 October 1187 — 27 Rajab 583 — after negotiating safe conduct for inhabitants who paid ransom.

The 20 September date marks the siege's opening in a common Latin chronology; medieval sources place Saladin's arrival between 18 and 21 September. From the conventional start to the surrender is twelve days, not a month.

The surrender fell on 27 Rajab, the anniversary associated with Muhammad's Night Journey, giving the date unusual symbolic weight for the victors.

Negotiated at the point of a breach

Mangonels, archers and sappers had opened a substantial breach in the northeastern wall, and the defenders could not close it.

Balian warned that a final assault would leave the defenders fighting to the death, destroying property and Muslim holy places and killing the Muslim prisoners held inside. That threat reaches us through medieval narrative sources and should be attributed rather than quoted.

Ransom, not amnesty

Ransomed Latins were allowed to depart with their movable possessions; those who could not pay faced enslavement. The Latin Libellus gives ten bezants for each male aged ten or over, five per female and one per young boy; an Arabic-source synthesis gives ten dinars, five and two, payable within forty days.

Imad al-Din says Balian offered 30,000 dinars on behalf of the poor, and further groups were released without payment — 700 at the patriarch's request, 500 at Balian's and 1,000 at al-Adil's.

Muslim prisoners in the city were released, and Saladin's administration began restoring the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque to Muslim worship.