ABSTRACT

The three enemies who had threatened Christendom in the ninth and tenth centuries had now been beaten off. The Magyars had been pushed back to the line of the Leitha; they were now converted, and had become members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe. The Moors had been driven out of Sicily and Sardinia—instead of plaguing Italy with their inroads, they were busy in defending their own African shore from the raids of the Genoese, Pisans, and Normans. Lastly, the third and most formidable of the enemies of Christendom had at last begun to slacken in their assaults. The state of the Moslem powers of the Levant in 1096 was on the whole favourable for the assailants who were about to throw themselves upon Syria and Asia Minor. At the moment when the first Crusaders crossed the Bosphorus, the Sultanate of Roum had separated itself from the main body of the Turkish Empire, petty princes governed Antioch, Damascys, and Mesopotamia.