The Crusaders first appeared in these lands in the year 1079 AD, and their shadow finally withdrew from them in the year 1297 AD, so that the duration of their presence there was about two full centuries, during which the country endured terrors. Their presence was a calamity for the native Christians in particular. For when certain small-minded Muslims saw the Crusaders slaughtering Muslims, their hearts recoiled from their Christian compatriots. They began to regard them with hostility and to persecute them whenever the Crusaders evacuated a land in which there were some Christians — even though the Crusaders, who claimed that they had come to these lands only to deliver its Christians from the oppression of the Muslims, had in fact persecuted the native Christians severely and made them taste bitter torments. They wrested the Holy Places from the hands of the Orthodox and took over the patriarchate, the churches, and the monasteries, and began to appoint patriarchs from among themselves; nor did they grant the Christians of the land any share in the Holy Places or in ecclesiastical offices. Rather, they cast them off as one casts away a date-stone, and despised them and despised their language. This did not escape that great commander Saladin (Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi), who sought the aid of the Christians of these lands in conquering Jerusalem when he observed the hatred they harbored for the Franks and their inclination toward their Arab compatriots. And when he drove the Crusaders out of Jerusalem, he handed the Holy Places back to their owners, the native Orthodox, and assured them the safety of their lives and their property, and employed many of them in his army as provisioning officers and treasurers — posts given only to those renowned for trustworthiness, uprightness, sincerity, and good conduct.

The Crusaders scattered after the fall of Jerusalem: a portion of them returned to their own countries, while others took refuge with their brethren in Tyre and Tripoli, but were not received. So they wandered through the land and, over the passing of the days, blended into its people; they learned the language of its inhabitants and their customs, intermarried with them, and mingled with them, so that they became Arabized and could no longer be distinguished from the natives. Some historians have noted that those remnants of the Crusaders who lingered in Jerusalem alone numbered sixteen thousand souls, apart from a company of the Knights of Saint John who remained to care for their sick and their weak.

Such being the case, even though the Crusaders did not mingle with the rest of the population during their presence in the land, the remnants that stayed behind did merge into the Christians of these lands. The truth of this statement is attested by the non-Arab surnames one hears in every household of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Beit Jala, Gaza, and Jaffa — among the towns and villages of Palestine — and in many of the Syrian lands. After the land had been emptied of the Crusaders, the government on one side and the populace on the other came to fear and shun everything foreign, and would not consent to hear a foreign tongue. For this reason there appeared in Syria and Palestine, after the departure of the Crusaders, patriarchs, priests, and monks of Arab stock. Many of them occupied themselves with authorship, so much so that you will find most of the manuscripts preserved in the famous libraries we referred to earlier to be relics of those ages.

In that period several outstanding men of the Arab clergy in Syria and Palestine rose to distinction, among whom we mention: Metropolitan Sulayman ibn Hasan al-Ghazzi, bishop of Gaza, the famous scholar and gifted poet, who composed a poetic collection (diwan) describing the Christian religion, expounding its beliefs, describing the Holy Places, and the like, in 154 pages; this diwan still exists to this day in its classical Arabic in the library of the Monastery of the Rūm (the Greeks) in Jerusalem, and he also has three religious treatises in Arabic. And Metropolitan Elias, bishop of Bethlehem, the Arab who was a famous scholar; he was buried in the Church of Mar Elias, and his tomb is still there to this day, with the date of his death inscribed upon it in Arabic. And Euthymius Karma of Hama. And Macarius Ibn al-Zaʿim, the famous patriarch of Antioch. And Ibn al-Khoury Boulos (Paul), author of the well-known works. And the deacon ʿAbdallah ibn al-Fadl al-Antaki. And Dorotheus II, patriarch of Antioch in 1436, who was Ibn al-Sabuni. And Michael IV, patriarch of Antioch in 1454, who was Ibn al-Marudi [?]. And Joachim IV, patriarch of Antioch in 1524, who was Ibn Jumʿa al-Bayruti. And Dorotheus IV, who was ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn Ahmar of Damascus. And Athanasius III Ibn al-Dabbas of Damascus. And Joachim V ibn Daw of Burj Safita … and many others whom space forbids us from enumerating along with their works. We note that when the Council of Florence convened in the year 1439 AD to unite the Orthodox and Papal churches, the three patriarchs present at that council — those of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria — were Arabs, and only the patriarch of Constantinople at that council was Greek.

We further note that when the land came under the rule of the Circassian Mamluks, a new element also appeared among its Christians, namely the Georgian element. They were Orthodox Christians from the Caucasus. They built themselves monasteries, shared with the people of the land in the administration of the Holy Places, mingled with them, and were held in high regard by the Circassian Mamluks, their compatriots.

In the middle of the fifteenth century AD, strife broke out in Hauran among the Arab tribes, and some of them pressed hard upon the Christianized Arab tribes in those regions, so that some of the Christian Arabs departed — foremost among them the remnants of the Ghassanids — and some took refuge in Lebanon, some in Palestine, and some in Karak. The famous historian, the late Jurji Zaydan, mentioned in one of the issues of the magazine "Al-Hilal," in its seventeenth year, page 425, that the sheikhs of the House of al-Khazin in Lebanon trace their origin to Hauran. Likewise the House of Mutran in Baalbek and Zahle are originally from the Hauran émigré community. He also mentioned many houses in Syria that are traced to Hauran, and in particular to the Ghassanids, such as the houses of Jabbara, Ghannam, Hourani, ʿAtiyya, Shuqair, Tarrad, Sfeir, Ghosn, and others.

It appears that around that same time some Arab tribes also migrated from Hauran and from the regions of Karak to Palestine. For the Christians of Ramallah, al-Tayba, Bir Zeit, and ʿAin ʿArik, and the people of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, trace their descent to those lands. We have found no explanation in history for this migration — which was almost unanimous, or by prior consultation [?] — other than one of two things: either new tribes flooded in upon them from the desert and pressed hard upon them, and they saw that they had no power to resist them, and so they migrated; or else they joined their brethren and allies among the Muslim Arab tribes whom Saladin and the Muslim kings who came after him had brought and settled in the land after the Crusaders had departed from it and it had been emptied of inhabitants — and this is the more likely. What supports this statement is that when the Haddada clan in Ramallah migrated from Karak and came to Palestine, they had allies and friends among the Muslims there — they are the present-day people of al-Bireh — who did not let them migrate alone, but migrated with them and came and settled beside one another: the Haddada in Ramallah — and from their ancestor al-Haddad branched out the clans of Ramallah known today — and the House of al-Qurʿan and the House of al-Tawil in al-Bireh. And ever since that time until now they have reckoned one another to be cousins.

As for the genealogies of the Christians in the cities, in these the warp has become tangled with the weft, and we have often tried [?] to ascertain the genealogies of some of the famous houses, only to find, unfortunately, that most of them know nothing of their genealogies. Indeed some of them know no further back than their grandfather or great-grandfather. Those of greater reach and wider learning had attempted this before us — I mean the late scholar George Zaydan, proprietor of the magazine Al-Hilal, and the famous historian Professor Issa Iskandar al-Maʿluf, and other researchers and investigators — and they succeeded in learning the genealogies of some famous houses in Syria and Lebanon. They said that the houses of Hindiyya, Khayyat Basha, Abkarius, Wortabet, and Karabet, and others, go back to an Armenian origin, as their names indicate. And the House of Atila is originally from Spain. And the House of Tasso from the Italians. And the House of Churchill from the English. And the House of Karam in Ehden (Mount Lebanon) traces itself to a French colonel, and the House of Tarabya in Tripoli traces itself to the French from the time of the Crusaders — except for those among them who became Arabized and took an Arab surname. They also mentioned houses in Syria whose genealogies go back to a Greek origin, such as the houses of Yani, Pauli, Katsflis, Papadopoulos, and Philippis, whose names indicate as much. There are also houses whose names were changed to Arab names while their genealogies were preserved among their people, such as the House of Mishaqa in Damascus, who trace their lineage back to Yusuf Barki of Corfu in Greece, who settled in Tripoli of Syria and was a merchant of oakum (mishaqa), so that his name became known by it. And the House of Musarra, a branch of a Greek family that arose in Trebizond, whose ancestor came to Diyarbakir, then to Aleppo, and branched out in Damascus and Egypt.

Then, when the land came into the possession of the Ottoman Turks and security spread throughout it, there came to Palestine many pilgrims — Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians, and others — and many families of them settled in these lands, especially the Greeks. Some of them became Arabized in name and in fact, while some have remained to this day preserving their language, nationality, and customs. After the Turkish conquest there also came to Palestine and Syria many peoples from the West — English, French, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and others — except that this time few of them mingled with the original people of the land.

In sum, the genealogies of the Christians in Syria and Palestine today go back to original genealogies and to incoming ones. The original genealogy is the Aramaic. As for the incoming genealogies, they are the Arab and the Greek. The Arab lineage among the Syrians and Palestinians is ancient and deeply rooted in them, but most of it is in the east and south of Syria (al-Sham), in eastern and western Jordan (Transjordan), and in the vicinity of Gaza. As for the Greek lineage, it is oldest and most widespread along the shores of the Mediterranean, because the Greeks came to Syria and Palestine and mingled with its people from the earliest times of history and used to settle its coasts. Their migration increased after the time of Alexander, until these lands became a second homeland for them, as previously mentioned. They continued to come to it after the Islamic conquest, and remain so to this day.

As for the remaining Christian genealogies, among them are the Armenian origins, which are numerous in Syria especially. And among them are the Frankish origins — from the Spaniards, Italians, English, French, and others — from the time of the Crusaders. And by this you may reckon the rest of the Christian nations that settled these lands, whether for the purpose of trade or of pilgrimage, and mingled with its people, such as the Russians, Georgians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs, and others, an account of whom would be too long to give.

The Christians, then, in Syria and Palestine are not Arabs in respect of genealogy. But they are counted as Arabs because they speak Arabic, have multiplied in Arab lands, and have taken on the character of the Arabs. For Syria and Palestine — which are one land — became, after the Arab Islamic conquest, Arab, on account of the settlement of the Muslim Arabs in them and their taking of them as a homeland. They spread their tongue, their customs, and their manners throughout it. So its inhabitants are counted as Arabs even though not all of them trace their genealogies back to the Arab tribes. Arabs in this sense are of three classes: (1) the people of the desert (Bedouin), who trace their descent to the Arab tribes and still preserve their genealogies, and among whom there are both Muslims and Christians; (2) the Muslim Arabs who settled in the countryside and mingled with non-Arabs through intermarriage, and into whom were assimilated others of the non-Arab Muslim nations — such as the Turks, Kurds, Persians, Circassians, and others — and these are the inhabitants of the cities in Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, and the Maghreb, apart from those of the various Christian nations who embraced Islam — especially of the Crusaders — and then became Arabized and merged with the people of the towns and villages; (3) the pure Arabs (al-ʿArab al-ʿAriba), who are most of the Christians among the inhabitants of these lands. Many are counted as Arabs by consideration of their language, customs, and manners, not by consideration of their genealogies.

By this same measure, the Christians of the mainland of Anatolia who speak Turkish are counted as Turks, even though most of them are of the Greeks.

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