In the seventh century, the conquest of Palestine by the Arabs or Saracens, attracted by fanaticism to the banner of Mahomet’s immediate successors, had occasioned the most painful, if not the first of these terrible trials to Christendom. Already pilgrims, on their return from the Holy Land, had related to the dismayed West the sacrileges of which they had been the witnesses, and the annoyances of which they themselves had been the victims. Their dismal recitals represented the Christian population of Judea as reduced to a species of slavery, groaning under heavy tribute, clad in a degrading livery, forbidden to use the language of their conquerors, banished from their temples, now transformed into mosques, and obliged to conceal every external emblem of their religion, which they were no longer allowed publicly to practise. But a gentler rule succeeded these hardships, thanks to the internal dissensions of the Mussulmans, who, in the midst of their fratricidal struggles, forgot to persecute the Christians; thanks also to the policy of the famous Haroun-al-Raschid and his children, who, being constantly at war with the emperors of Constantinople, dreaded lest the Eastern Christians should summon the Western to their assistance, and, consequently, were always showering on the latter every possible mark of deference, of kindness, and of consideration. Later, when the empire of Haroun-al-Raschid had fallen into decay, one of Constantine’s successors, John I., surnamed Zimisces (970), attempted to accomplish the freedom of the Holy Land, and had nearly succeeded, when death struck down the leader of the Christian army in a battle with the Arabs, and with him was destroyed the last hope of the faithful, who soon found themselves delivered over to the horrors of a terrible persecution. “It is impossible to put on record all the evils they suffered,” says William of Tyre, in his great history of the holy war. [Illustration: Fig. 97.--Façade of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, founded in 326 by the Emperor Constantine, and restored by the Crusaders in 1099 (present condition, from a Photograph).]