Except during the temporary excitement of a change of dynasty, the rule of these African princes was generally mild and enlightened. They came, for the most part, of the indigenous Berber population, and were not naturally disposed to intolerance or unneighbourliness. The Christians kept their churches, and were suffered to worship unmolested. We read of a Bishop of Fez as late as the thirteenth century, and the Kings of Morocco and Tunis were usually on friendly terms with the Pope. Christians were largely enrolled in the African armies, and were even appointed to civil employments. The relations of the rulers of Barbary with the European States throughout the greater part of this period--from the eleventh century, when the fighting Fātimīs left Tunis and went eastward to Egypt, to the sixteenth, when the fighting Turks came westward to molest the peace of the Mediterranean--were eminently wise and statesmanlike. The Africans wanted many of the industries of Europe; Europe required the skins and raw products of Africa: and a series of treaties involving a principle of reciprocity was the result. No doubt the naval inferiority of the African States to the trading Republics of the Mediterranean was a potent factor in bringing about this satisfactory arrangement; but it is only right to admit the remarkable fairness, moderation, and probity of the African princes in the settlement and maintenance of these treaties. As a general rule, Sicily and the commercial Republics were allied to the rulers of Tunis and Tilimsān and Fez by bonds of amity and mutual advantage. One after the other, Pisa, Genoa, Provence, Aragon, and Venice, concluded commercial treaties with the African sovereigns, and renewed them from time to time. Some of these States had special quarters reserved for them at Tunis, Ceuta, and other towns; and all had their consuls in the thirteenth century, who were protected in a manner that the English agent at Algiers would have envied seventy years ago. The African trade was especially valuable to the Pisans and Genoese, and there was a regular African company trading at the Ports of Tripoli, Tunis, Bujēya, Ceuta, and Salē. Indeed, the Genoese went so far as to defend Ceuta against Christian crusaders, so much did commerce avail against religion; and, on the other hand, the Christian residents at Tunis, the western metropolis of Islam, had their own place of worship, where they were free to pray undisturbed, as late as 1530. This tolerance was largely due to the mild and judicious government of the Benī Hafs, whose three centuries' sway at Tunis was an unmixed benefit to their subjects, and to all who had relations with them.