Wilson, Charles W. [Editor]; Fenn, Harry [Ill.]: Picturesque Palestine: Sinai and Egypt ; in 2 volumes (Band 1) (New York, 1881)

4i8

PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.

BEDOUINS BUYING SPEARS.

In the Suk es Sinaniyeh, which is the great emporium for all the requirements of
Bedouins and peasants, including all kinds of primitive weapons and clothing.

THE TOMB OF SALADIN.

Saladin, whose mortal remains
are deposited near to the Great
Mosque of Damascus (see page
389), is the greatest character
anions the Muslims during; the
period of the Crusades, and puts to
shame many a Christian knight.
Some men are much better, some
much worse, than their creed.
When we read the contemporary
accounts of the Crusades, William
of Tyre, Fucher of Chartres,
&c, and strip the narrative of its
palpable partiality, we feel that, in
their encounter with the Muslim
robbers, the Christian knights were
by no means always in the right,
and private documents, letters, &c,
show that the Christian knights
sometimes felt so themselves. But
even if there were no historical or
private documents to tell us that
the Crusaders, when they stood face
to face with the Muslims, often felt
themselves in the presence of a
higher civilisation, in which many
fundamental virtues of human cha-
racter and life were developed to a
height and perfection hardly dreamed
of or utterly forgotten by the
Christian world,-we would know it
from the fact that, generally speak-
ing, the Christian knights ended
with imitating the Muslim robbers.

In no point is this imitation
more easy to realise than in the
contest between Saladin and the
military religious orders, the Hos-