e occurred both for Islam and for the
world at large. For Islam it meant the rule of dull-witted bigots under
which enlightened progress was impossible. Of course Islam did gain a
great accession of warlike strength, but this new power was so wantonly
misused as to bring down disastrous repercussions upon Islam itself.
The first notable exploits of the immigrant Turkish hordes were their
conquest of Asia Minor and their capture of Jerusalem, both events
taking place toward the close of the eleventh century[4]. Up to this
time Asia Minor had remained part of the Christian world. The original
Arab flood of the seventh century, after overrunning Syria, had been
stopped by the barrier of the Taurus Mountains; the Byzantine Empire had
pulled itself together; and thenceforth, despite border bickerings, the
Byzantine-Saracen frontier had remained substantially unaltered. Now,
however, the Turks broke the Byzantine barrier, overran Asia Minor, and
threatened even Constantinople, the eastern bulwark of Christendom. As
for Jerusalem, it had, of course, been in Moslem hands since the Arab
conquest of A.D. 637, but the caliph Omar had carefully respected the
Christian "Holy Places," and his successors had neither persecuted the
local Christians nor maltreated the numerous pilgrims who flocked
perennially to Jerusalem from every part of the Christian world. But the
Turks changed all this. Avid for loot, and filled with bigoted hatred of
the "Misbelievers," they sacked the holy places, persecuted the
Christians, and rendered pilgrimage impossible.

The effect of these twin disasters upon Christendom, occurring as they
did almost simultaneously, was tremendous. The Christian West, then at
the height of its religious fervour, quivered with mingled fear and
wrath. Myriads of zealots, like Peter the Hermit, roused all Europe to
frenzy. Fanaticism begat fanaticism, and the Christian West poured upon
the Moslem East vast hosts of warriors in those extraordinary
expeditions, the Crusades.

The Turkish conquest of Islam and its counterblast, the Crusades, were
an immense misfortune for the world. They permanently worsened the
relations between East and West. In the year A.D. 1000 Christian-Moslem
relations were fairly good, and showed every prospect of becoming
better. The hatreds engendered by Islam's first irruption were dying
away. The frontiers of Islam and Christendom had become apparently
fixed, and neither side showed much desire to