The justice and tolerance of the great khalifs of Baghdâd is admitted by Bernard, the pilgrim monk of the ninth century who visited Egypt and Palestine in the time of El Mut’azz, the thirteenth ’Abbaside khalîfah, just before the Turks became powerful in the East. He says that “the Christians and the pagans have there such peace between them that if I should go a journey, and in the journey my camel or ass which carries my baggage should die, and I should leave everything there without a guard, and go to the next town to get another, on my return I should find all my goods untouched. The law of public safety is there such that if they find in the city, or on the sea, or on the road, any man journeying by night or by day without a letter, or some mark of a king or prince of that land, he is at once thrown into prison, till such time as he can give good account whether he be a spy or not.” The Jerusalem Christians benefited by this peaceful rule in the East, and we have evidence of their undisturbed possession of property, in the Greek inscriptions of the rock tombs on the south precipice of the Hinnom Valley. [Sidenote: CHRISTIAN TEXTS] In these tombs there are fifteen inscriptions in Greek uncial characters, which have recently been copied again with great care by Mr. R. A. Stewart Macalister.[470] Their translation has puzzled many scholars, and remains still doubtful in some details; but the following interpretations may perhaps be found more satisfactory than those as yet proposed. The texts begin and sometimes end with Greek crosses, showing their Byzantine character. Five of them read only “of Holy Sion,” and two more “monument of Holy Sion.” These seven seem to mark tombs belonging to priests or monks connected with the ancient Sion Church. Another text in red paint is now illegible, but the remaining seven inscriptions are more important. Pilgrims from the West were numerous in this age: St. Willibald (about 722 A. D.) came from Hampshire, and Bernard the Wise (about 867 A. D.) was a Breton monk from Mont St. Michel; we are therefore not surprised to read over one tomb, “Private monument of Thekla, daughter of Mærwulf the German.” She may have been a pilgrim, or a nun who took this Greek name as her title in religion, and who died in the hospice about to be mentioned; or she may have come from Byzantium, where Teutonic mercenaries were employed, and no doubt married Greeks. The next text is that of “The private monument of Ouroros [perhaps for Auroros] of Holy Sion,” probably a monk, and possibly also a Teuton. Another, inscribed in red paint now much defaced by weather, is that of “The common tomb of the Patriarch’s Hospital,” which was apparently consecrated for pilgrims dying in Justinian’s hospital, or in that which was founded about 800 A. D. by Charlemagne, as will appear immediately. A fourth text is of great value, as giving a date: “Pachomios was buried singly in the year