" Now Syria," continues Mukaddasi, " is a land of blessing, a country of cheapness, abounding in fruits, and peopled by holy men. The upper province, which is near the dominions of the Greeks, is rich in streams and crops, and the climate of it is cold. And the lower province is even more excellent, and pleasanter, by reason of the lusciousness of its fruits and in the great number of its palm trees." Within the province of Palestine he listed thirty-six products not to be found thus united in any other land. "There is matter of comfort both for this world and the next," he concludes, "for here the heart softens and men's limbs incline to the attitude of prayer." Before the Crusades these lands had passed through many vicissitudes. The successors of Mahomet had ruled over a vast territory subjugated by the irresistible soldiers of Islam, and at one time the power of the Caliph extended over Egypt, Persia, Syria and into North Africa and Spain. When his temporal power began to wane, beginning in the Ninth Century and progressing to impotency by the close of the Tenth, i, number of small kingdoms controlled by native Arabs came to the fore, but at the beginning of the Eleventh a new and potent force swept over all, conquering Per sia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine. Wild tribes from Turkestan, descendants of Seljuk, chief of the Turkish tribe of Ghuzz, fell like the wind of wrathupon the decadent inhabitants and were accepted as conquerors with but little opposition. They had already adopted the faith of the conquered and