=Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, 1099 A.C.=—Tripoli, a famous seat of learning in those days, was reduced to ashes; Antioch and other cities were turned into shambles. On the 15th July 1099 Jerusalem was taken by storm; and the triumph of the Cross was celebrated by a slaughter of over seventy thousand people. Neither age nor sex met with mercy. The squares, the streets, and the houses were strewn with the dead bodies of men and women, and the mangled limbs of children. Many were burnt alive under the portico of the principal mosque, the blood of the victims ‘reached the horses’ bridles.’ ‘The carnage,’ says Michaud, ‘lasted a week: the few who escaped were reduced to horrible servitude.’ =Capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, 1187.=—In 1187 A.C. Saladin recaptured the city. He released all prisoners, supplied them with food and money, and allowed them to depart with a safe conduct; no woman was insulted; no child was hurt; no person was slain. =Eruption of the Tartars.=—Hardly had the Moslems recovered from the destruction and havoc wrought by the Crusades, when the eruption of the Mongolian savages from the steppes of Tartary, falling like an avalanche, swept away all vestiges of culture and civilisation, and converted Middle and Western Asia into a charnel-house. And although centuries have passed since the sack of Bagdad and other famed centres of Moslem learning and arts, Islâm has not regained yet its true life and progressive vitality. After the fall of Cordova the continuity of Islâmic civilisation in Spain was maintained, not only by the petty principalities which sprang up in its place, but also by the Almoravide and Almohade sovereigns, who reunited in their vigorous hands the greater part of the Ommeyade Caliphate. =Granada.=—The break-up of the Almohade Empire, in 1227 A.C., led to the gradual destruction by the Christian hordes of the minor Moslem kingdoms. Granada alone, for nearly two centuries, held aloft the torch of knowledge and civilisation. But the fires of the Inquisition had already been lighted in Christian Spain by the ‘pious’ Ferdinand and the ‘saintly’ Isabella. =The Fall of Granada—Destruction of Moslem Civilisation, 1498 A.C.=—And when, after a heroic struggle, the city of the Banu-Nasr, the home of culture, chivalry, and arts, capitulated to its Christian assailants, the glory of Moorish Spain died with the martyrs who were burnt at the stake or slaughtered like sheep regardless of age or sex, or suffocated in the caverns to which they betook themselves for refuge. =The Sunni Church.=—The spiritual allegiance of Christendom is divided between four Churches; of the world of Islâm between two—the Sunni and the Shiah. The foundation of the Sunni Church, which owns nowadays the largest number of followers, was laid by Mansûr, the second Caliph of the House of Abbâs.[48] And although the superstructure was completed under his successors, its whole character and organisation are due to his genius.