religion. They were deprived of their church-bells, but kept their churches; and if large numbers of them embraced El Islâm, it was through self-interest (or conviction) and not at the point of the sword as has been represented. Indeed, the toleration displayed by the Moslems towards the vanquished, though less than we should practise nowadays, is without a parallel in Europe till many centuries later. It was not emulated by the Crusaders,[1] who, rushing to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the clutch of the “foul Paynim,” were astonished to find it in the hands of Christians, whom, to cloak their disconcertion, they denounced as heretics.
From the Moslem conquest downward—with the exception of the mad destructive inroads called crusades, and the short-lived Frankish kingdom (often referred to by the Mohammedan fellahìn as the Time of the Infidels)—one tradition has prevailed in the land till quite recent years. In that conquest the East reclaimed her own, the young civilisation of the Arabs overpowering the luxury of the moribund Roman empire: a judgment from God, it is said. It was a return to the time of David at least, if not of Abraham; and this tremendous relapse must be borne in mind of those who would deduce from existing conditions in Palestine the life that was led there in the time of Christ. From Omar’s time,
- ↑ Many of the Crusaders were so ignorant as to believe that the Moslems were idolators.
