The Knights Hospitaller also advised Guy not to provoke Saladin. In spite of that, Raymond argued that Guy should not engage Saladin in battle and that Saladin could not hold Tiberias because his troops would not stand to be away from their families for so long. In July Saladin laid siege to Tiberias, where Raymond III's wife, Eschiva, was trapped. Jonathan Phillips states that "the damage to Frankish morale and the scale of the losses should not be underestimated in contributing towards the defeat at Hattin". The Templars lost around 150 knights and 300 foot-soldiers, who had made up a great part of the military of Jerusalem. Gerard de Ridefort and the Templars engaged Gökböri in the Battle of Cresson in May 1187 and were heavily defeated. Saladin swore that he would kill Raynald for violating the truce, and he sent his son Al-Afdal ibn Salah ad-Din and the emir Gökböri to raid the Frankish lands surrounding Acre. In 1187 Raynald of Châtillon raided a Muslim caravan while the truce with Saladin was still in place. Raymond III was certainly reluctant to engage in battle with Saladin. That rumour was echoed by Ibn al Athir, whether that was true is unclear.
It was rumoured by the Franks that Raymond III of Tripoli had made an agreement with Saladin under which Saladin would make him King of Jerusalem in return for peace. Saladin often made strategic truces with the Franks when he needed to deal with political problems in the Muslim world, and one such truce was made in 1185. He united his subjects under Sunni Islam and convinced them that he would wage holy war to push the Christian Franks from Jerusalem.
He controlled the entire southern and eastern flanks of the crusader states. In the background of those divisions, Saladin had become vizier of Egypt in 1169 and had taken Damascus in 1174 and Aleppo in 1183. The Muslim chronicler Ali ibn al-Athir claimed that Raymond was in a "state of open rebellion" against Guy. Open warfare was prevented only by Humphrey of Toron swearing allegiance to Guy, which ended the succession dispute.
Raymond III of Tripoli had supported the claim of Sibylla's half-sister Isabella and Isabella's husband, Humphrey IV of Toron, and led the rival faction to the court party. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was divided between the "court faction" of Guy, consisting of Sibylla and relative newcomers to the kingdom such as Raynald of Châtillon, Gerard of Ridefort and the Knights Templar versus the "nobles' faction", led by Raymond III of Tripoli, who had been a regent for the child-king Baldwin V and had opposed Guy's succession. Guy of Lusignan became king of Jerusalem in 1186, in right of his wife, Sibylla, after the death of her son Baldwin V. The Darb al-Hawarnah road, built by the Romans, served as the main east-west passage between the Jordan fords, the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean coast. The battlefield, near the town of Hittin, had as its chief geographic feature a double hill (the " Horns of Hattin") beside a pass through the northern mountains between Tiberias and the road from Acre to the east. The battle took place near Tiberias in present-day Israel. Horns of Hattin, 2005, as viewed from the east These Christian defeats prompted the Third Crusade, which began two years after the Battle of Hattin. As a direct result of the battle, Muslims once again became the eminent military power in the Holy Land, re-conquering Jerusalem and many of the other Crusader-held cities. The Muslim armies under Saladin captured or killed the vast majority of the Crusader forces, removing their capability to wage war. It is also known as the Battle of the Horns of Hattin, due to the shape of the nearby extinct volcano of Kurûn Hattîn. The Battle of Hattin took place on 4 July 1187, between the Crusader states of the Levant and the forces of the Ayyubid sultan Saladin.