Reluctant, perhaps unable, to discriminate, the invaders grew corrupt, and the evils characteristic of a sensual and luxurious race were insensibly adopted with the benefits which its culture afforded. After the Norman conquest, the spirit of Moorish civilization still remained paramount. The Saracens formed no unimportant part of the military establishment of their conquerors, maintained both for service and ostentation. At the siege of Amalfi, in 1096, twenty thousand of them served under the Norman standard. In 1113, when Adelaide, mother of Count Roger, went to Ascalon to marry Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, she presented him with a band of Moorish archers splendidly uniformed in scarlet and gold. The forms of government observed by the emirs were retained. Moslem ministers and magistrates directed the administration of the state, regulated the finances, dispensed justice. The Arabic tongue continued to be not only the recognized medium of communication between all classes of society, but the vehicle of public acts and edicts, and the official idiom of the courts of law. Over the gateways of palaces constructed by the princes of the family of De Hauteville are still to be deciphered legends whose sentiment is unmistakably Mohammedan. The Norman coins were stamped with sentences from the Koran and with the date of the Hegira. The dress, the manners, the etiquette of public audiences, the habits of private intercourse, became essentially Oriental. The umbrella, an emblem of royalty borrowed from the Fatimites of Egypt, was borne over the heads of the Norman kings on occasions of ceremony. The robes of distinguished personages were interwoven with Arabic texts, whose characters and whose significance excited the pious horror of the orthodox. The regulation of the royal household was modelled after that of the emirate. The very titles of the public officials were Arabic. The education of youth was committed without reserve to learned doctors of the Mussulman or the Hebrew faith. In some of the harems of the Norman lords the inmates were all Mohammedans; in those of others, Christian damsels shared the favor and the affection of the licentious noble. No restrictions were imposed upon the religious prejudices of either, and it is related that the Christians, convinced by the arguments or the fascinations of their infidel associates, not infrequently became proselytes to the doctrines of Islam. Under the enlightened government of the Normans, persecution was unknown. Indeed, the vanquished people were regarded with such partiality that Count Roger absolutely forbade that any Moslem should, even by the most gentle means, be converted to Christianity. The clergy, unable to resist the prevailing influence, suffered their sacred edifices to be adorned with sentences from the Koran, whose monotheistic tendency accorded ill with the accepted maxims of patristic theology and the infallible edicts of ecclesiastical councils.