They exiled the majority of Jerusalem's popula- tion, dispersing them throughout the empire. Jewish hopes for Uberation from Roman rule were raised again when an upris- ing, headed by Simon Bar Kosiba , broke out in 123 CE. Although the Jews made some headway, Roman troops pushed them back to their fortress in Judea, which fell in 135 CE. In the wake of the revolt, many towns and villages in Judea were razed. Perhaps to obliterate the land's connection with the Jews, Hadrian bestowed on the territory the name Syria-Palestine, after the Philistines. With the division of the empire into Latin West and Byzantine East in 330 CE, Pal- estine came under the supervision of Constantinople. Although little changed administratively, the adoption of Christianity by Emperor Constantine in 325 CE created increased interest in what to many was the "Holy Land" . Led by pilgrim St. Eleni , worshipers built churches and endowed monasteries and schools. EARLY ARABS After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE , Bedouin armies, inspired by Islam and the prospect of substantial booty, ventured outside their traditional strongholds in central Arabia. By 642, they had conquered Meso- potamia, Palestine, Syria, Persia, and Egypt. Muhammad's death gave rise to political confusion, as he had designated no suc- cessor. Amid vigorous debate as to whether the successor had to be a blood rela- tive, Abu Bakr was chosen as the first successor . The choice of his descendant Ali as the 3rd successor incited a civil war and produced a lasting schism in Islam between the Sunni , and the Shi'a Ali's claim and believe that the caliph should be a direct descendant of the . The advent of the Umayyad Dynasty, founded in 661, installed a Sunni hereditary caliphate . Eighty years later, the Islamic world stretched from Narbonne to Samarkand. By 750, when the 'Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads, the majority of the peasantry had converted to Islam. A mammoth bureaucracy, composed of everything from tax officials to scribes to Islamic jurists , helped run the empire. The Shi'a Fatimids, attacking eastward from their domain in Tunisia, expelled the 'Abbasids from Egypt in 969. By 977, the Fatimids had captured most of Pales- tine and controlled Jerusalem. It was the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim who broke the long-established trend of Muslim toleration of other faiths and destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. THE CRUSADES Europe's internal violence and rumors of Seljuk Muslim policies regarding the treatment of Christian pilgrims prompted western Europeans to launch a series of Crusades to recapture the Holy Land. Impelled by desires for land, power, and heavenly reward, the Crusaders wreaked havoc. Massacring the Muslim and Jew- ish inhabitants of Jerusalem in 1099, the Crusaders established a feudal kingdom under Godfrey I and then Baldwin I. The members of the second and third Crusades were choked at the hands of Salah al-Din , founder of the short-lived Ayyubid Dynasty .