84 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book i.

by the Arab; that the Turks or Turcomans underthe children of Seljuk had taken Persia, Mesopotamia,Syria and Asia Minor, and were now menacing atonce Cairo and Constantinople; that neverthelessthe population of nearly all the towns taken bythe Turks in Anatolia, continued for the chief partChristians, Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Georgian;while the victors, habituated to the freedom of anomade life, preferred dwelling in tents in the openfields, taking care of the cattle along with sometribes of Arab origin, and that all that remainedof the famous Arabian Empire was Egypt, with afew fragments of Africa and Spain.

As early as 1010 the Turks had commencedspeaking of a Christian army preparing to marchagainst them, exercitus Fran corum super Saracenosorientales commotos; and at the destruction of theHoly Sepulchre then, certain stones glittered andresisted the fire like diamonds, which, without anymiracle, might really be. Signs' in the skies hadtold the Turks repeatedly that the West was goingto rise against them; and at last in 1062, a meetingwas held at Omar’s Mosque in Jerusalem, for theMoslem doctors to study in the Koran for an ex-planation of what had been seen and could still beseen in the air; and these wise men, after gazingup intently from morning until night, declared