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.
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.
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.
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 of the Holy Sepulcher.