The monk Burchard, [243] writing about 1283, a few years before the Crusaders were driven out of their last strongholds and the Latin power in the East came utterly to an end—represents the Christian population as largely outnumbering the Muslims throughout the whole of the Muhammadan world, the latter (except in Egypt and Arabia) forming not more than three or four per cent. of the whole population. This language is undoubtedly exaggerated and the good monk was certainly rash in assuming that what he observed in the cities of the Crusaders and of the kingdom of Little Armenia held good in other parts of the East. But his words may be certainly taken to indicate that during the period of the Crusades there had been no widespread conversion to Islam, and that when the Muhammadans resumed their sovereignty over the Holy Land, they extended the same toleration to the Christians as before, suffering them to “purchase peace and quiet” by the payment of the jizyah. The presumption is that the conversions that took place were of individual Christians, who were persuaded in their own minds before they took the final step. Instances have already been given of Christians who took service under Muhammadan masters, in the full enjoyment of their own faith, and the Assises of Jerusalem made a distinction between “those who have denied God and follow another law” and “all those who have done armed service to the Saracens and other miscreants against the Christians for more than a year and a day.” [244] The native Christians certainly preferred the rule of the Muhammadans to that of the Crusaders, [245] and when Jerusalem fell finally and for ever into the hands of the Muslims (A.D. 1244), the Christian population of Palestine seems to have welcomed the new masters and to have submitted quietly and contentedly to their rule. [246] This same sense of security of religious life under Muslim rule led many of the Christians of Asia Minor, also, about the same time, to welcome the advent of the Saljūq Turks as their deliverers from the hated Byzantine government, not only on account of its oppressive system of taxation, but also of the persecuting spirit of the Greek Church, which had with such cruelty crushed the heresies of the Paulicians and the Iconoclasts. In the reign of Michael VIII (1261–1282), the Turks were often invited to take possession of the smaller towns in the interior of Asia Minor by the inhabitants, that they might escape from the tyranny of the empire; and both rich and poor often emigrated into Turkish dominions. [247]