AT the time of the first, or great Crusade, Jerusalem was under the rule of the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt; but the different races composing the Caliphate of the period were at constant war with each other, and their dissensions allowed of an easy conquest of the Levant by the enterprising colonists from Western Europe. A short time before the Crusaders arrived on the scene the Holy City had been occupied by the famous Sokman son of Ortek the Seljuk Turk, who a few years later founded a powerful Seljuk dynasty in the region of Mesopotamia. The Egyptian Caliph had however succeeded in driving the Turks out of Jerusalem in August 1098—only in turn to be driven out himself by the Crusaders on the 15th July of the following year.

The settlement of the Franks within the walls of Jerusalem was evidently accompanied by an immense revolution in the condition and ownership of properties within the city; from the Temple area the Moslems were ejected, and it is not clear how far the Christians who were not Crusaders were allowed to occupy the Christian Holy Places.

Possibly the Orthodox monks may have been allowed an equal share in the use of the Holy Sepulchre as a shrine, although we do not hear of such being the case, and it was only at a later period, when the feudal law had been firmly established, that the rights and privileges of the native Christian communities were clearly defined in the usual documents and decrees.