it. The plan succeeded; the charge, though perfectly true, could not be proved, and the Patriarch escaped.* At this period the massacre of an immense number of Mohammedan pilgrims on their way to Mecca led to the -substitution for thirty years of Jerusalem for Mecca.! The city thus had two streams of pilgrims, one to the Holy Rock, the Mosque of Omar, and the other to the Holy Cave, the Sepulchre of Christ. Nicephorus being murdered, John Zimisces, his successor and murderer, followed up his victories. He easily gained possession of Damascus and Syria, and reduced to submission all the cities of Palestine. He did not, however, enter Jerusalem, to which he sent a garrison. DeathJ interrupted his victorious career, and Islam once more began to recover its forces. The Fatemite Caliphs, who had succeeded in establishing themselves in Egypt, made themselves masters of Jerusalem, and though for a short time the Christians were treated rather as allies and friends than as a conquered people, the accession of Hakem was an event which renewed all former troubles with more than their former weight. He ordered that Jews should wear blue robes and Christians black, and in order to mark them yet more distinctively, that both should wear black turbans. Christians, moreover, were at first ordered to wear wooden stirrups, with crosses round their necks, while the Jews were compelled to carry round pieces of wood, to signify the head of the golden calf which they had worshipped in the desert. The destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by this madman has been already alluded to.§ * Williams's ' Holy City,' vol. i. pp. 338, 339. t Sec Chap. V. % After having murdered Nicephorus, he was himself poisoned by Basil, his grand chamberlain, who succeeded him. In the Greek empire murder seems to have formed the strongest title to the crown. § If there is any one fact in history which seems absolutely clear and certain, it is this, that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre u-as destroyed by command of liakem. William of Tyre expressly Κ