ABEY.I.] ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. 29

desires is as a law to all Christian people. Butyou who are of the blood of our Prophet, it is foryou to do far more than that infidel high priest ofRome the great. What your servant here writes,he would dare say in the dust at the threshold ofyour palace. I am resigned to the will of God,and hope to be firm in danger. But you areIslam’s physician, and we the sick .” 1 Again.“Not only the Pope of his own authority restrainsthe Christians as to eating and drinking, but hemenaces with excommunication whoever does notmarch with a spirit of piety to the deliverance ofJerusalem. Such is the obstinacy of Christians intheir perverse cause. Then what should be wetrue believers ?” 2

All the Moslem army were now at Kissan.Their camp was like a splendid city. Severalstreets and an immense square. “ I myself countedseven thousand well-stocked shops (wrote an eye-witness) and a hundred and forty sheds for shoeinghorses. Of a multitude of kitchens, one had twenty-eight boilers, each boiler large enough to hold anentire sheep; a single seller of butter had paidseventy gold pieces to transport his utensils; of bathsthere were one thousand, a bit of silver being the

1 Arab. Chron., 284.

2 Id., 286.