Ernoul Ernoul is the name generally given to the author of a chronicle of the late 12th century dealing with the fall of the crusade r Kingdom of Jerusalem . Biography . Ernoul himself is mentioned only once in history , and only in his own chronicle . He was a squire of Balian of Ibelin , an important crusader noble in Jerusalem , and accompanied his lord on an embassy from King Guy of Jerusalem to Count Raymond III of Tripoli in 1187 . Balian and his retinue remained behind for a day at Nablus during the voyage to Tripoli ; the rest were ambushed at the Battle of Cresson on May 1 . It was Ernoul who investigated the almost - empty Templar castle of La Fève before news of the battle reached Balian . No other mention is made of Ernoul . However , it is clear that he was at the Battle of Hattin on July 4 , as his chronicle gives an account from the rearguard , which was commanded by his master Balian . According to M . R . Morgan , the squire Ernoul was the same man as Arnaix or Arneis of Gibelet , who was an important noble in the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus in the first half of the 13th century , and must have been connected to the Ibelin s , who were also important there ; the Gibelets had strong ties to the Ibelins throughout the 12th and 13th centuries in both Jerusalem and Cyprus . This identification is rejected by Peter Edbury , who suggests that Arneis lived too late to be Ernoul , and also that their names are too dissimilar . The chronicle . The so - called Chronicle of Ernoul is actually a number of separate but similar manuscripts , stemming from an original source that does not survive but assumed to have been written by Ernoul himself . The basis of these is a 13th - century Old French translation of the Latin chronicle of William of Tyre , who wrote in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the mid - to late - 12th century . This French translation came to be known as the " History of Heraclius " or the " Estoire de Eracles " , because William of Tyre began his chronicle with the reign of Byzantine emperor Heraclius . One of the more important manuscripts is known as the " Lyon Eracles " , which is the basis of modern editions . It was edited by Morgan as " La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr ( 1183 – 1197 ) " . This manuscript continues until 1248 , and the section containing the years 1184 – 1197 is not found in any other manuscript . The 19th century " Receuil des historiens des croisades " , a collection of crusade texts compiled by the Académie des inscriptions et belles - lettres , used a different version of the " Eracles " known as the " Colbert - Fontainebleau Eracles " . There is also a shorter manuscript known as the " abrégé " , and a " Florentine Eracles " from the Laurentian Library in Florence which has a unique section from 1191 to 1197 and continues until 1277 . The text known as " The Chronicle of Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer " , edited by L . de Mas Latrie in the 19th century , has a separate manuscript tradition . It is essentially the same as the " abrégé " , and appears to have been produced from the French translation of William of Tyre , which was then mostly removed except for a few sections . It carries on until 1227 or 1231 , depending on the manuscript . The surviving texts were written in their final form from the 1230s to the 1250s . Ernoul himself may have written only a small part , covering the years 1186 and 1187 , in which Balian and the Ibelin family feature prominently .