When a great idea is firmly fixed in men's minds with the twofold sanction of duty and feeling, many generations live and die in its service before efforts are exhausted and the end reached or abandoned.
During this forty years' interval between the end of the second and beginning of the third crusade, the relative positions of West and East, Christian Europe and Mussulman Asia, remained the same outwardly and according to the general aspect of affairs; but in Syria and in Palestine there was a continuance of the struggle between Christendom and Islamry, with various fortunes on either side.

The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem still stood; and after Godfrey de Bouillon, from 1100 to 1180, there had been a succession of eight kings; some energetic and bold, aspiring to extend their young dominion, others indolent and weak upon a tottering throne.

The rivalries and often the defections and treasons of the petty Christian princes and lords who were set up at different points in Palestine and Syria endangered their common cause.

Fortunately similar rivalries, dissensions, and treasons prevailed amongst the Mussulman emirs, some of them Turks and others Persians or Arabs, and at one time foes, at another dependants, of the Khalifs of Bagdad or of Egypt.
Anarchy and civil war harassed both races and both religions with almost equal impartiality.

But, beneath this surface of simultaneous agitation and monotony, great changes were being accomplished or preparing for accomplishment in the West.