[750-860 A.D.]
Amidst the first conquests of the Saracens, they had turned their eyes towards Jerusalem. According to the faith of the Moslems, Mohammed had been in the city of David and Solomon; it was from Jerusalem that he set out to ascend into heaven in his nocturnal voyage. The Saracens considered Jerusalem as the house of God, as the city of saints and miracles. The Christians had the grief of seeing the church of the Holy Sepulchre profaned by the presence of the chief of the infidels. Although Omar had left them the exercise of their worship, they were obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The caliph ordered a mosque to be erected on the spot whereon the temple of Solomon had been built. In the meantime, the presence of Omar, of whose moderation the East boasts, restrained the jealous fanaticism of the Moslems. After his death the faithful had much more to suffer; they were driven from their houses, insulted in their churches; the tribute which they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine was increased, and they were forbidden to carry arms or to mount on horseback. A leathern girdle, which they were never allowed to be without, was the badge of their servitude; the conquerors would not permit the Christians to speak the Arab tongue, sacred to the disciples of the Koran; and the people who remained faithful to Jesus Christ had not liberty even to pronounce the name of the patriarch of Jerusalem, without the permission of the Saracens.
HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM
All these persecutions could not stop the crowd of Christians who repaired to Jerusalem, the sight of the Holy City sustaining their courage as it heightened their devotion. There were no evils, no outrages, that they could not support with resignation, when they remembered that Christ had been loaded with chains and had died upon the cross in the places they were about to visit. The Christians of Palestine, however, enjoyed some short intervals of security during the civil wars of the Mussulmans. The dynasty of the Omayyads, which had established the seat of the Moslem empire at Damascus, was always odious to the ever-formidable party of the Alids, and employed itself less in persecuting the Christians than in preserving its own precarious power. Merwan II, the last caliph of this house, was the most cruel towards the disciples of Christ; and when he, with all his family, sank under the power of his enemies, the Christians and the infidels united in thanks to heaven for having delivered the East from his tyranny.
The Abbasids, established in the city of Baghdad which they had founded, persecuted and tolerated the Christians by turns. The Christians, always living between the fear of persecution and the hope of a transient security, saw at last the prospect of happier days dawn upon them with the reign of Harun ar-Rashid, the greatest caliph of the race of Abbas. Under this reign the glory of Charlemagne, which had reached Asia, protected the churches of the East. His pious liberality relieved the indigence of the Christians of Alexandria, of Carthage, and Jerusalem. The two greatest princes of their age testified their mutual esteem by frequent embassies: they sent each other magnificent presents; and, in the friendly intercourse of two powerful monarchs, the East and the West exchanged the richest productions of their soil and their industry. There was no doubt policy in the marks of esteem which Harun lavished upon the most powerful of the princes of the West. He was making war against the emperors of Constantinople, and might justly fear that they would interest the bravest among Christian people in their cause. To take from the Franks every pretext for a religious war, which might make them embrace the cause of the Greeks, and draw them into Asia, the caliph neglected no opportunity of obtaining the friendship of Charlemagne; and caused the keys of the Holy City and of the Holy Sepulchre to be presented to him.
Whilst the Arabians of Africa were pursuing their conquests towards the West, whilst they took possession of Sicily, and Rome itself saw its suburbs and its churches of St. Peter and St. Paul invaded and pillaged by infidels, the servants of Jesus Christ prayed in peace within the walls of Jerusalem. To the desire of visiting the tomb of Jerusalem was joined the earnest wish to procure relics, which were then sought for with eagerness by the devotion of the faithful. All who returned from the East made it their glory to bring back to their country some precious remains of Christian antiquity, and above all the bones of holy martyrs, which constituted the ornament and the riches of their churches and upon which princes and kings swore to respect truth and justice. The productions of Asia likewise attracted the attention of the people of Europe.
[860-1050 A.D.]
In short, the Christians of Palestine and the Moslem provinces, the pilgrims and travellers who returned from the East, seemed no longer to have any persecutions to dread, when all at once new storms broke out in the East. The children of Harun soon shared the fate of the posterity of Charlemagne, and Asia, like the West, was plunged into the horrors of anarchy and civil war. The gigantic empire of the Abbasids crumbled away on all sides, and the world, according to the expression of an Arabian writer, was within the reach of him who would take possession of it. The Greeks then appeared to rouse themselves from their long supineness, and sought to take advantage of the divisions and the humiliation of the Saracens. Nicephorus Phocas took the field at the head of a powerful army, and recaptured Antioch from the Moslems. Deprived of the powerful stimulus of fanaticism, Nicephorus found among the Greeks more panegyrists than soldiers, and could not pursue his advantages against the Saracens. His triumphs were confined to the taking of Antioch, and only served to create a persecution against the Christians of Palestine.