Twelve hundred and fifty years have borne witness to the truth of that sorrowful word, and still, “the desolation continues even to the end,”(64) and the soldier of the false prophet keeps order among Christians before the sepulchre of their Lord. Hardly could the chalif Omar be induced to put off his rough garment long enough for it to be washed, and to take another. But when the time of Moslem prayer came, he would not say it in the church, lest the Moslim should seize a church in which their chalif had prayed, but he went to the steps of the eastern portion of Constantine’s church and prayed there. He resolved to build a mosque on the spot where Jacob had seen in vision the ladder, or on which the temple of Solomon stood. He gave a hand himself to sweep away the rubbish from it. The structure, built in haste, disappeared suddenly. Theophanes relates that Omar was much confused at the disappearance of his new mosque. Some Jewish teachers came to him and said that the structure would only remain if the cross on Mount Calvary, not that on the Mount of Olives, were removed. Omar did what these men suggested. Some of his fanatics, in spite of the compact, broke all the public crosses, destroyed holy images, attacked various churches and chapels. He gave a special writing to protect the church at Bethlehem wherein he had prayed, but the Moslim afterwards took possession of this church and of the portico at Jerusalem, and made them mosques. Omar returned to Medina. His armies received command to take Ctesiphon, Aleppo, Antioch. In the summer of 638, Heraclius retired from Antioch to Constantinople, and as he left, says Abulfeda, cried out, “Farewell, Syria, farewell for ever”. When Antioch in August, 638, surrendered, Mesopotamia as well as Syria fell into the hands of Omar, and all Roman land up to the Taurus belonged to the chalif, no imperial force could meet him any longer in the field. Egypt and Persia were open to him.