Amongst all those principalities and powers against which Dragut contended during the whole of his strenuous existence, there was no one among them which he held in so much detestation as the famous Knights of Saint John, known in the sixteenth century as the Knights of Malta. This militant religious organisation had its origin in Jerusalem in peculiar and interesting circumstances. After the death of Mahomet, his followers, burning with zeal, put forward the tenets of their religion by means of fire and sword; during the years which followed the Hegira, 622 A.D., the arms of the Moslems were everywhere successful, and amongst other places conquered by them was Palestine. So great was the renown acquired by the Emperor Charlemagne that his fame passed even into Asia, and Eginard states that the Caliph Haroun Raschid permitted the French nation to maintain a house in Jerusalem for the reception of pilgrims visiting the holy places, and that, further, the Prince permitted the Patriarch of Jerusalem to send to the Christian Emperor, on his behalf, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and those of the Church of Calvary, together with a standard which was the sign of the power and authority delegated by the Moslem ruler to his mighty contemporary. In the middle of the eleventh century Italian merchants coming from Amalfi, who had experienced the hard lot of the Christian pilgrims in reaching the Holy City, secured from the Caliph Moustafa-Billah a concession of land, on which they built a chapel known as St. Mary of the Latins, to distinguish it from the Greek church already established at Jerusalem, and also constructed a hospice in which to receive the pilgrims, whether in sickness or in health, known as the Hospice of St. John. In 1093 the untiring efforts of Peter the Hermit, with the support of Pope Urbain II., brought about the first Crusade, and in 1099 we first hear of Gerard, the founder of the Order of St. John. Gerard was a French monk who, seeing the good work done by the Hospice of St. John, had attached himself to it, and had at this time been working in the cause of charity, and devoting himself to the pilgrims for many years. Godfrey de Bouillon, having defeated the Saracens outside the walls of Jerusalem, entered that city and visited the Hospice of St. John; he there found many of the Crusaders who had been wounded during the siege, and who had been carried thither after the taking of the place: all of these men were loud in their praises of the loving kindness with which they had been received and tended.