CHRISTENDOM  AND   ISLAM	199
Castle Pilgrim, had pastures, woods, and even a salt mine
within its walls, as well as a spring, a fish pond, and enough
food to last a thousand men for several years.
For the first half of the Latin occupation, the Moslems
feared the invaders, but Islam realised its own strength before
the middle of the twelfth century. By then, however, the
Christians were accepted, if not tolerated, in the East. They
had fought with Moslem princes as well as against them,
and had proved valuable allies to, for instance, the
Damascenes. Several of the Moslem emirs preferred the
Christians rather than their own co-religionists as neighbours,
and" though most of the independent princes were crushed by
Zenghi, Noureddin and Saladin, the friendly feeling towards
the Christians remained among the Moslem inhabitants of the
territories bordering the Latin states.
The belief in the righteousness of the holy war had been
the inspiration of the first Crusaders, and, lacking such an
inspiration to spur them to feats of tremendous endurance and
deeds of wild heroism, they would never have established
the Latin kingdom. The military Orders retained that belief
long after it disappeared among the other Christian settlers,
and the Templars and the Hospitallers fought with the mad
valour of men who sacrifice themselves joyfully in the
knowledge that they serve no earthly monarch but a King who
promises an eternal reward. The Moslems never showed
this quality to the same degree. The Jihad, the holy war of
Islam, was real enough, but it did not grip the imagination of
the Moslems deeply. No such hosts marched from Egypt or
from Syria as had marched from Europe 5 the East had not
seen hundreds of thousands of Moslems who, throwing aside
everything else as worthless, believing that their Creator had
expressly called them to service, assured that a heavenly
reward awaited those who died in the fight, advanced happily
to their doom. The Christian pilgrims had dreamed of a
land flowing with milk and honey, had been certain that their