So far as the history of Western Asia is concerned the Crusaders produced very great results, but these were purely destructive in character. They checked the Saljuqs and effectively broke their power, though that power had already commenced its decline before the Crusaders’ arrival: but this only made way for a new Kurdish power. The Crusades as a religious war provoked an anti-Crusading movement, quite distinctly religious in its character, on the Muslim side,—a Holy War to resist the champions of the Cross. The first mover in this was Zengi atabeg of Mosul, and it was continued by his son Nur ad-Din. In the employ of these atabegs of Mosul was a Kurdish soldier named Ayyub who, at the death of Zengi in 541 (= A.D. 1146) moved to Damascus, and eight years later became governor of the city. From him were descended the Ayyubites, Shirkuh and his nephew Salah ad-Din, the instruments by which the Fatimid Khalifate was finally destroyed. It was not the rise of a new power but merely the development of one of the minor local states formed from the disintegrating Saljuq empire. The immediate result of the Crusades lay in the formation of Latin states in Palestine and Syria, at Jerusalem, Edessa, and Antioch, and in the final exclusion of the Fatimids from Syria, but none of these states had any stable foundation. Only in quite minor issues can we find any permanent traces of the Crusaders’ presence in Asia. In the East their memory lives as a legend of tyranny and religious intolerance, whilst a few Arab tribes preserve a tradition of Crusading blood. In the West it may be possible to argue that only the Carmelite Friars show any enduring trace of the Crusades: almost every influence which has been traced to the Crusades seems to have been due to intercourse between Muslim and Christian in Spain, or to Frederick II. in Naples and Sicily,—though, of course, it might be argued that Frederick himself was a product of the Crusading age: yet it must be remembered that Frederick came more under the influence of Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain by the intolerance of the Muwahhid rulers.