The physical and moral decline of the Latins was made more fatal by their divisions. The princes of Antioch and their Armenian neighbours stood apart from the states of southern Syria, and the Greek Empire was increasingly hostile. While Roger of Sicily repeated the policy of Robert Guiscard and Bohemund, and the Italian allies of the Crusaders robbed the Empire of its trade, real co-operation against Islam was impossible. Within the crusading realm there was constant strife. The Templars quarrelled with the Hospitallers, the French with the Provençals, English, and Germans, and the Genoese with the Pisans and Venetians. The new-comers from the West quarrelled with the older settlers. Among the baronial houses hereditary feuds arose, as in every feudal country. The purely feudal organisation of the kingdom made a strong central power impossible, and nothing but a vigorous despotism, like that of Henry II. in England, could have long kept the motley state together. As time went on, the relations between the Franks and their Eastern subjects grew worse, and neither the unwarlike Armenian nor the slavish Syrian was of any avail to supplement their armies. It speaks well for the energy of such parts of the polity as remained sound, that a century was still to elapse before the crusading kingdoms entirely disappeared. The growth of a great Moslem monarchy in Syria was the last and worst of the many misfortunes of the Latin Christians. After Zangi’s death in 1146, Noureddin had carried the power of the Atabeks to much loftier heights. [Sidenote: Growth of the power of Saladin.] He captured Damascus, and pushed his dominions to the sea-coast, thus isolating Antioch from Tripoli and Jerusalem. In 1171 his general, Saladin, conquered Egypt, and practically put an end to the schismatic Caliphate of the Fatimites. Noureddin died in 1174, recognised even by the Christians as a ‘just man, wise and religious, so far as the traditions of his race allowed.’ His sons were quite unable to hold their own against Saladin. Hence in a few years the lord of Cairo and Alexandria soon became also the lord of Aleppo and Damascus. The Latins were enclosed by a single united Moslem state, ruled by a generous soldier and a crafty statesman.