In the sequel, several princes, and particularly those of Persia, have, from political motives, attempted to prevent the pilgrimage to Mecca, and to turn the devotion of the people rather to other burial places, as Meshed Ali’s, on the Euphrates, which was also covered with plates of gold by Shah Abbas; or Meshed Ben Mussa’s, at Tuss, in Khorassan, in order that, with the caravans, the money may remain in the country. Mecca, however, retained its superiority as the true and only shrine of Islamism, which triumphed over the conquests of the Karmathites and Wahabites; and whose gates, spite of the wide-spread portals of infidelity and impiety, remained to the last ever open to the pilgrim. Turanshah defeated and killed Abdennebi, the protector of unbelief, razed his father’s monument, and added the treasures to those of his brother Salaheddin, in Egypt; by command of the latter he caused prayers to be repeated from the pulpit for the khalif of Bagdad and Nureddin. After the death of Nureddin,[185] the prayers as well as the coinage were continued by Salaheddin, in Egypt and Arabia, in the name of Saleh, a boy of eleven years of age, the son of Nureddin, who, himself incapable as yet of governing, was in the power of his grandees, and particularly of the eunuch Gumushteghin, who transferred the young prince’s residence to Aleppo, leaving Ibn al Mokaddem governor of Damascus. The Crusaders, who desired, after Nureddin’s demise, to avail themselves of the favourable circumstance of his son’s minority, threatened Damascus, the siege of which was only raised on the governor’s disbursing to them large sums of money. Enraged at this, and being invited by some of the chief men, Salaheddin repaired in all haste to Damascus with only seven hundred horse. He reproached the governor with his unworthy conduct, and wrote to the young atabeg a respectful letter, in which he did homage to him as his lord, and averred that he had come into Syria only for his defence, his possessions being assailed on two sides, by the Crusaders and his nephew Seifeddin, lord of Mossul. The answer which was drawn up by his enemies, contained, instead of thanks, accusations of ingratitude and disobedience, and threats of very shortly removing him from the vice-royalty of Egypt.