More striking visual aids may have been employed, although testimony comes only from two Muslim observers. According to the well-informed Iraqi historian Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233), a picture was circulated in the west showing Christ being struck in the face by an Arab. Saladin’s friend and chief judge in his army, Baha’ al-Din Ibn Shaddad, recorded that Conrad of Montferrat, whose timely appearance had saved Tyre in 1187, commissioned a large painting of Jerusalem showing a Muslim cavalryman trampling over the Holy Sepulchre on which his horse was urinating.
- Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, p. 384