The Crusaders professed to be the champions of the Christian religion and declared their aim as being the deliverance of the sacred sites from the occupation of the Muslims. Before reaching Syria, however, they had made it plain that this was not to be understood in a literal sense, for they had shown marked hostility towards the Greek Church, and throughout the whole of their career they were the uncompromising enemies of all the eastern churches. No doubt this can be partly explained by a total lack of understanding or sympathy towards religious bodies whose general customs and external organisation, and more particularly whose liturgy, differed so markedly from the forms developed in the west; but the fact remains that their fellow Christians in the east soon came to regard the Crusaders with as much dislike as the Muslims. This antagonism towards the Greek and eastern churches generally was fully defined before their arrival in Syria. But in fact they were not even the champions of Latin Christianity. Some, no doubt, were sincere in their desire to rescue the Holy Land from non-Christian occupation, but for the most part they were adventurers desirous of carving out principalities in lands which they were well aware were much richer and more prosperous than their own countries in the west. From their own point of view the time at which this Crusade arrived was exceptionally promising: the Saljuq power was broken and there was a temporary lull in the migration of the virile and warlike Turkish races westwards, whilst the Muslim community was divided between ʿAbbasids and Fatimids beyond the possibility of united resistance. Twenty years earlier, or fifty years later they would certainly not have been able to establish themselves in Palestine, but just at the moment circumstances were favourable.