When the sultan of Egypt had been informed of the march of the Templars to Jerusalem, and the re-possession by the military friars of the holy places and sanctuaries of the Mussulmen, he sent an army of several thousand men across the desert, to drive them out of the Holy City before they had time to repair the fortifications and re-construct the walls. The Templars assembled all their forces and advanced to meet the Egyptians. They occupied the passes and defiles of the hill country leading to Jerusalem, and gained a glorious victory over the Moslems, driving the greater part of them into the desert. Ayoub, sultan of Egypt, finding himself unable to resist the formidable alliance of the Templars with Saleh Ismael, called in to his assistance the fierce pastoral tribes of the Carizmians. These were a warlike race of people, who had been driven from their abodes, in the neighbourhood of the Caspian, by the successful arms of the Moguls, and had rushed headlong upon the weak and effeminate nations of the south. They had devastated and laid waste Armenia and the north-western parts of Persia, cutting off by the sword, or dragging away into captivity, all who had ventured to oppose their progress. For years past they had been leading a migratory, wandering life, exhausting the resources of one district, and then passing onwards into another, without making any fixed settlement, or having any regular places of abode, and their destructive progress has been compared by the Arabian writers to the wasting tempest or the terrible inundation. The rude hardships of their roving life had endowed them with a passive endurance which enabled them to surmount all obstacles, and to overcome every difficulty. Their clothing consisted of a solitary sheep’s skin, or a wolf’s skin, tied around their loins; boiled herbs and some water, or a little milk, sufficed them for food and beverage; their arms were the bow and the lance; and they shed the blood of their fellow-creatures with the same indifference as they would that of the beasts of the field. Their wives and their children accompanied their march, braving all dangers and fatigues; their tents were their homes, and the site of their encampment their only country. Nothing could exceed the terror inspired in Armenia and Persia by the military expeditions of these rude and ferocious shepherds of the Caspian, who were the foes of all races and of all people, and manifested a profound indifference for every religion.