Orders were sent to Jerusalem for the destruction of the church of _al-Qayama_ “the resurrection,” the most famous and honoured sanctuary of Christendom. In accordance with these orders it was plundered and then pulled down, an act which produced a deep feeling of anger in the Christian community generally, as well as amongst the subjects of the Greek Empire as amongst those who lived in Hakim’s dominions. Indirectly it caused the Christian world to form an idea of Islam as a persecuting power, and so paved the way to the Crusades. The cause of the destruction of this sanctuary is said to have been a malicious report which alleged that the Christians practised a fraud in connection with the “holy fire” given out at Easter in that church. This blessing and distribution of new fire is a prominent part of the Easter Eve ceremonies of the Greek and of the Gallic churches, and from the latter afterwards passed into the Roman rite where it originally had no place. A common but apparently unauthorised superstition amongst the Greeks represents this “new fire” as distributed in the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem as sent down from heaven, and this superstition was already in existence in the days of Hakim. A certain chaplain of the church, suffering from some grievance, declared to the Muslim authorities that the canons of the church practised a fraud to play upon this superstition. He said that they used to anoint the iron chain by which the great lamp was suspended in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, and that after the Muslim governor had closed and sealed the door of the church, as was the custom, they used to get at the chain from the roof and so the fire was passed along the anointed surface and reached the wick of the lamp which was thus lighted, whilst the chaplains sang _Kyrie eleison_ and wept, and pretended that the fire came down from heaven, thus confirming the Christians in their religious errors (Bar Hebraeus: _Chron._, pp. 215 sqq.). Severus attributes the outbreak of this persecution to a monk named John whom the Patriarch steadily refused to ordain bishop and who, on this account, made his complaint to the Khalif. He waylaid Hakim as he was walking on the Mokattam hills and called on him for assistance, at the same time presenting a petition in which he said: “You are the ruler of this country, but the Christians have a king who is more powerful than you by reason of the immense wealth he has acquired. He sells bishoprics for money and acts in a way displeasing to God.” Influenced by this petition Hakim ordered the churches to be closed and the Patriarch to be brought before him. The Patriarch Zacharias was a man far advanced in years and now, by the Khalif’s order, was cast into prison. The very day after the Patriarch’s arrest Hakim sent the letter to the governor in Jerusalem ordering the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection, the clerk who prepared the letter being a Christian named Ibn Sharkin.