might, a tale wherein any who are drawn to the romance of that
pregnant and mysterious epoch, when men by thousands were glad to
lay down their lives for visions and spiritual hopes, could find
a picture, however faint and broken, of the long war between
Cross and Crescent waged among the Syrian plains and deserts. Of
Christian knights and ladies also, and their loves and sufferings
in England and the East; of the fearful lord of the Assassins
whom the Franks called Old Man of the Mountain, and his fortress
city, Masyaf. Of the great-hearted, if at times cruel Saladin
and his fierce Saracens; of the rout at Hattin itself, on whose
rocky height the Holy Rood was set up as a standard and captured,
to be seen no more by Christian eyes; and of the Iast surrender,
whereby the Crusaders lost Jerusalem forever.

Of that desire this story is the fruit.



PROLOGUE



Salah-ed-din, Commander of the Faithful, the king Strong to Aid,
Sovereign of the East, sat at night in his palace at Damascus and
brooded on the wonderful ways of God, by Whom he had been lifted
to his high estate. He remembered how, when he was but small in
the eyes of men, Nour-ed-din, king of Syria, forced him to
accompany his uncle, Shirkuh, to Egypt, whither he went, "like
one driven to his death," and how, against his own will, there he
rose to greatness. He thought of his father, the wise Ayoub, and