The "massacre" at the sack of Jerusalem has become a commonplace motive in popular depictions, but the historical event is difficult to reconstruct with any certainty.
Arab sources give figures of between 30,000 and 70,000 casualties (in an anonymous Syrian chronicle, and in Ibn al-Athir, respectively). These figures are rejected as unrealistic by Thorau (2007), who argues it is very unlikely that the city at the time had a total population of this order; medieval chroniclers tend to substantially exaggerate both troop strength and casualty figures; they cannot be taken at face value naively, and it is less than straightforward to arrive at realistic estimates based on them.
Peter Thorau, Die Kreuzzüge, C.H.Beck, München 2007, ISBN 3406508383.
Dittmar, Heinrich (1850). Die Geschichte der Welt vor und nach Christus, Vol. 3. Heidelberg.[halaman dibutuhkan]
Valentin, François (1867). Geschichte der Kreuzzüge. Regensburg.[halaman dibutuhkan]
Mackintosh, Sir James (1830). The history of England, Volume 1. Philadelphia.[halaman dibutuhkan]
