stantinople; came even under the walls of Vienna, and were
at length beaten back by Charles Martel.

[Sidenote: _Jerusalem Sacred to Mohammedans_]

[Sidenote: _Jerusalem Taken by Omar_]

Jerusalem was almost as sacred a city to the Mohammedans as to the
Christians. Their prophet had visited it, and had journeyed to heaven
from it. Attacked by the soldiers of Omar shortly after the death of the
prophet, the Christians endured the horrors of a siege for four months,
resisting armies which claimed the city as theirs by the promises of
God. Omar came to receive the keys of the exhausted city, and Christians
cried out in agony as the chief infidel defiled by his presence the Holy
Sepulcher. They were permitted to worship, but not openly to exhibit
their crosses and sacred books. Their conqueror erected a mosque on the
site of the temple. This was more than the breaking heart of the
Christian patriarch could bear. He died bewailing the sorrows and
desolation of the city of the Great King.

[Sidenote: _Omar Checks Persecution_]

While Omar lived the hand of persecution was in good measure stayed, but
worked in full vigor as soon as he was dead. Christians were certain
neither of their homes nor of their churches. Their taxes were increased
to the point of exhaustion. They could not mount a horse nor bear a
weapon. A leather girdle must always show their subjection. No Arabic
word must fall from their lips, nor could they speak the name of their
own Patriarch without permission.

[Sidenote: _Hardships Stimulate Pilgrimages_]

These hardships awakened the sympathy of the Christian world, and
stimulated many to go to the Holy Land that they then might be
"accounted worthy to suffer with Christ."

Arculphus and Antoninus, of Plaisance, reached sainthood by making this
journey and certifying to the Western Churches the persecutions of the
Christians in the Holy Land.

[Sidenote: _Haroun al Raschid Just_]

Yet truth compels the statement that the Mohammedans were not always
unjust or unkind. Intervals of peace came to cheer those who wept, and
the reign of Haroun al Raschid offered them the largest hope. The great
Charles was now great enough, even in Eastern eyes, to secure liberty
and peace to Christians in far-off Palestine, and was treated as an
equal through embassies and presents by the great Caliph.

Never could a monarch have received a more welcome present than did
Charlemagne when the Caliph sent him the keys