o the Great, brother of the King of
France; Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror; Raymond
of St. Gilles, Duke of Toulouse; and Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum.
Towards the end of 1097 A.D. the invading force invested Antioch, and,
after a siege of nine months, took it by storm. Edessa was also captured
by the Crusaders, and in the middle of the summer of 1098 they reached
Jerusalem, then in the hands of the Fatimites.

El-Mustali b'Illah Abu'l Kasim, son of Mustanssir, was then on the
throne, but he was only a nominal ruler, for El-Afdhal, a son of
El-Gemali, had the chief voice in the affairs of the kingdom. It was the
army of Kasim that had captured Jerusalem. The city was besieged by the
Crusaders, and it surrendered to them after forty days. Twice did new
expeditions arrive from Egypt and attempt to retake the city, but with
disastrous results, and further expeditions were impossible for some
time, owing to the internal disorders in Egypt. Mustali died after
a reign of about four years; and some historians record, as a truly
remarkable circumstance, that he was a Sunnite by creed, although he
represented a Shiite dynasty.

The next ruler, El-Amir, was the five-year-old son of Mustali, and
El-Afdhal conducted the government until he became of age to govern.
His first act was to put El-Afdhal to death. Under El-Amir the internal
condition of Egypt continued unsatisfactory, and the Crusaders, who had
been very successful in capturing the towns of Syria, were only deterred
from an advance on Egypt by the death of their leader, Baldwin. In
a.h. 524, some of the surviving partisans of El-Afdhal, it is said,
put El-Amir to death, and a son of El-Afdhal assumed the direction of
affairs, and appointed El-Hafiz, a grandson of Mustanssir as caliph.
Afdual's son, whose name was Abu Ali Ahmed, perished in a popular
tumult. The new caliph had great trouble with his next three viziers,
and at length abolished the office altogether. After reigning twenty
years, he was succeeded by his licentious son, Dhafir, whose faults led
to his death at the hand of his vizier, El-Abbas.

For the ensuing six years the supreme power in Egypt was mainly the bone
of contention between rival viziers, although El-Faiz, a boy of five,
was nominally elected caliph on the death of Dhafir. El-Abbas was
worsted by his rival, Tatae, and fled to Syria with a large sum of
money; but he fell into the hands of the Crusaders, was returned to
T