Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/42

 1076 (Al-Ghazali was then eighteen years old) they massacred three thousand of these Christian people and their subsequent rule was relentless in its tyranny. We read that " the venerable Patriarch was dragged by the hair along the streets, and cast into a dungeon; the clergy of every sect were insulted; and the unhappy pilgrims were made to suffer every indignity and abuse."

This treatment of Christian pilgrims produced a storm of indignation and anger throughout the West. Peter the Hermit himself visited Jerusalem and returned to Europe to arouse the nations. The result was the first Crusade, in which Pope Urban II cooperated. Three hundred thousand half armed, half-naked peasants forced their way across Europe along the Rhine and the Danube. Only one-third of their number reached the shores of Asia. There they were utterly destroyed and only a pyramid of bones remained to tell of their fate.

The Crusade under Godfrey of Bouillon was a well-appointed military expedition embracing the flower of Europe. There are said to have been mustered in the plains of Bithynia one hundred thousand horsemen in full armour and six hundred thousand footmen. These numbers may be exaggerated, and pestilence and famine thinned their ranks, but in less than three years they had attained the great object of their expedition. In 1097 they laid siege to Nicea and captured it. They a