Julian saw Manbij in the last days of its pagan glory, and for him, as for Crassus before him, the omens of Hierapolis were unfavourable, for as he entered the gates of “that large city, a portico on the left fell suddenly while fifty soldiers were passing under it, and many were wounded, being crushed beneath the vast weight of the beams and tiles.”[22] A couple of hundred years later its estate was so much diminished that no attempt was made to defend it against Chosroes, who held it to ransom, and then treacherously sacked it. Procopius says that the space enclosed by the wide circuit of the walls was at that time a desert, and since it was far too large to be defended by the scanty remnants of the population, Julian drew in the walls to a smaller compass.[23] After the Mohammadan conquest, Hârûn er Rashîd made Manbij one of the fortresses of his frontier province, el ’Awâṣim, the Strongholds; it passed from hand to hand in the wars carried on by the Greek emperors and the Crusaders against the khalifs, and finally remained in the possession of the latter. Under the house of Saladin it enjoyed a second period of prosperity, and the inscriptions near the mosque show that El Malik eẓ Ẓâhir, that great builder, must have expended some of his skill upon it. Ibn Jubeir found it rich and populous, with large bazaars and a strong castle. But its fortifications could not protect it against Hûlâkû, who took and sacked it in 1259, and sixty years later Abu’l Fidâ found most of its walls and houses in ruins. It never recovered from this disaster, but sank gradually into the featureless decay from which the Circassian colony is engaged in rescuing it.