Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/28

 After the death of Mahomet, his successors, who assumed the title of caliph, or vicar of the prophet, gradually overran the neighbouring provinces. Damascus, Antioch, and Syria having fallen to their arms, they penetrated into Palestine, seized upon Jerusalem, and passing from thence into Egypt, they annexed that country also to their empire; Media, Korassan, and Mesopotamia shared the same fate; and entering Africa they spread themselves over its whole northern coast. In Europe, after having successively captured the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, Candia, Sicily, and Malta, they founded a new empire in the heart of Spain, whence they carried on for many years a desperate struggle with the Christians of the surrounding provinces.

Of all these conquests, however, the one which caused the greatest dismay, and which in after times was fraught with the most eventful results, was that of the Holy Land and the city of Jerusalem. So long as the Christian emperors of the East maintained their rule over its sacred limits, the advent of pilgrims from all parts had been encouraged to the greatest possible extent. The government had early discovered that a large amount of money was by this means brought into the empire, and that its commerce was much extended by the vast concourse of ever-changing people collected together within the favoured district. Matters changed greatly for the worse when the province fell into the hands of the caliphs. Although they were far too keen-sighted and politic to prohibit altogether the influx of this stream of Christians into the sacred city, they nevertheless imposed such heavy taxes upon them as told materially upon the slender finances of the pilgrims, and became a source of considerable profit to their own treasury.

The infidels were at that time much divided by serious discords among themselves. Shortly after Mahomet’s death they had split up into separate factions, each led by a chief who claimed for himself the right of empire, as being the nearest in descent from the prophet. There were at one time no less than five distinct pretenders to this position. The sovereignty of the Holy Land had been warmly contested between two of these rivals, the caliphs of Bagdad and of Egypt. In their struggles for supremacy the poor unoffending