The conquest of Palestine by Omar did not by any means lead to the closing of the country to Christians. One of the best known and most detailed accounts of the Holy Land written up to that time was taken down from the lips of the French Bishop Arculphus[7] by Adamnan, Bishop of Iona, about 680 A.D., in the monastery of Hy. It appears that Arculph was in Palestine during the reign of Mu’awîyeh, the first independent Khalif of Syria ruling in Damascus, and the same policy of toleration and peace which was inaugurated by this ruler enabled St. Willibald in 722 A.D.[8] to journey through the whole length of the land. These writers are concerned chiefly in description of the holy places, which increased in number and in celebrity from century to century. Arculphus constantly interrupts his narrative with pious legends, much resembling those of the modern Roman Catholic guide-books to Palestine, though some of the sites which were correctly identified by these early Christian pilgrims were transferred by the Latin priests of the twelfth century to impossible localities, where they are still in some cases shown to Latins, while the older tradition survives among the Greek Christians. We often encounter an interesting note in these pilgrim diaries, such as Arculphus’ description of the pine-wood north of Hebron, now represented by but a few scattered trees. St. Willibald seems to have been regarded as a harmless hermit, who, when once the object of his journey was understood, was allowed by the “Commander of the Faithful” to travel in peace throughout the land. In the reign of Charlemagne good political relations existed between that monarch and the Khalif of Baghdad, Harûn er Rashîd. The keys of Jerusalem were presented to the Western monarch, who founded a hospice for the Latins in that city. About half a century later, at the time when Baghdad was at the height of its glory as a centre of literature and civilisation, Bernard, called the Wise,[9] with two other monks, one Italian, the other Spanish, visited the Holy Land from Egypt, and they were able to obtain permits which were respected by the local governors. The rise of the Fatemites in Egypt altered materially the status of the Christians in Syria. We have no known Christian account of Palestine between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hakem, the mad Khalif of Egypt, destroyed the Christian churches in Jerusalem in 1010 A.D., and the country seems to have been then closed to pilgrims.