The city thus had two streams of pilgrims, one to the Holy Rock, the Mosque of Omar, and the other to the Holy Cave, the Sepulchre of Christ. Nicephorus being murdered, John Zimisces, his successor and murderer, followed up his victories. He easily gained possession of Damascus and Syria, and reduced to submission all the cities of Palestine. He did not, however, enter Jerusalem, to which he sent a garrison. Death[47] interrupted his victorious career, and Islam once more began to recover its forces. The Fatemite Caliphs, who had succeeded in establishing themselves in Egypt, made themselves masters of Jerusalem, and though for a short time the Christians were treated rather as allies and friends than as a conquered people, the accession of Hakem was an event which renewed all former troubles with more than their former weight. Footnote 47: After having murdered Nicephorus, he was himself poisoned by Basil, his grand chamberlain, who succeeded him. In the Greek empire murder seems to have formed the strongest title to the crown. He ordered that Jews should wear blue robes and Christians black, and in order to mark them yet more distinctively, that both should wear black turbans. Christians, moreover, were at first ordered to wear wooden stirrups, with crosses round their necks, while the Jews were compelled to carry round pieces of wood, to signify the head of the golden calf which they had worshipped in the desert. The destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by this madman has been already alluded to.[48] For another account of the same transaction and of the causes which led to it we are indebted to Raoul the Bald (Glaber), who describes the excitement produced in Europe by this act. “In the year 1009,” he says, though his date appears to be wrong by one year, “the Church of the Sepulchre was entirely destroyed by order of the prince of Babylon.... The devil put it into the heads of the Jews to whisper calumnies about the servants of the true religion. There were a considerable number of Jews in Orleans, prouder, more envious, and more audacious than the rest of their nation. They suborned a vagabond monk named Robert, and sent him with secret letters, written in the Hebrew character, and for better preservation enclosed in a stick, to the prince of Babylon. Therein they told how, if the prince did not make haste to destroy the shrine at which the Christians worshipped, they would speedily take possession of his kingdom and deprive him of his honours. On reading the letter, the prince fell into fury, and sent to Jerusalem soldiers charged with the order to destroy the church from roof to foundation. This order was but too well executed; and his satellites even tried to break the interior of the Sacred Sepulchre with their iron hammers, but all their efforts were useless.... A short time after, it was known beyond a doubt that the calamity must be imputed to the Jews, and when their secret was