With the ever-changing fortunes of the Holy City, the Mosque of El-Aksa has passed from master to master. Originally a Christian basilica, built by order of the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, and by him dedicated to “My Lady,” the Virgin Mary, a hundred years thereafter it was converted into a temple of Moslem worship. Four and a half centuries later, Tancred and his brave knights drove out the Arabians, and reconsecrated the Church of Justinian to the Blessed Virgin. In 1119 A.D. Baldwin II. gave it to his followers, whom he was pleased to call “the poor fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ,” and for whose accommodation he erected on its eastern side a dormitory, refectory, and infirmary. A gift so humble was the beginning of the wealth, power, and glory of the Knights Templars, whose mystic kingdom afterward extended to the farthest limits of Christendom, and who received the benedictions of pontiffs, the homage of kings, and the donations of the pious. Beneath the green sod in front of the venerable basilica were interred, in the year of our Lord 1170, the four knights who, at the instigation of Henry II., assassinated Thomas à Becket in the ancient cathedral of Canterbury. Remaining in the possession of the Crusaders for eighty-eight years, in 1187 A.D. Saladin marched against Jerusalem, captured the city, put the Templars to the sword, and reopened the portals of the mosque to the children of the Prophet.[128] Whatever pleasure is experienced in recalling the ever-shifting fortunes of Moslem and Christian, and in reciting the legends of the one and the traditions of the other, the traveler turns away from scenes and memories so romantic to explore with deeper interest the works of Solomon.