Excerpt from The Knights Hospitallers in the Holy Land Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. It is a great and noble story, which has long been waiting to be told, and the writing of it has only been rendered possible by the lifelong labours of that learned and devoted student of the history of the Order, the late Joseph Delaville Le Boulx. To his first essay De prime origine, to his monumental Oartulaire and to the conclusions that he has drawn from it in his H ospitaliers en Terre Sainte, the present writer is deeply indebted. Delaville Le Roulx has provided with lavish hand the materials upon which every historian of the early centuries of the Hospitallers must always base his work. For the general historic background to the deeds of the Knights of the Hospital the author has relied mainly upon Stevenson's Crusaders in the East, and lane-poole's Life of Saladin and Egypt in the Middle Ages, and for the military history of the period upon Oman's History of the Art of War. He has been greatly assisted in his work by two of his confreres in the Order of St. John, Mr. H. Pirie-gordon, Knight of Justice, who has read through and corrected the whole of the manuscript, and made many most helpful suggestions, and by Mr. H. W. Fincham, Knight of Grace and assistant-librarian to that Order, who has arranged the whole of the illustrations, to them both he desires to tender his most grateful thanks. He must also thank Miss Ethel Stokes for her valuable assistance in the translation of many of the original docu ments, Sir Charles Oman for his courtesy in permitting him to use some of the maps in his History of the Art of War, Mr. Lane-poole for permission to use one of the maps in his I/tfe ofsaladin, and The Times newspaper for the photograph of the Castle of Le Crac. The history of the Knights Hospitallers in the Holy Land is but a part of the long and dramatic story of the venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Should this book meet with the approval of the public, it will be the ambition of its author to complete that story in two subsequent volumes describing the career of the Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes and Malta down to the present day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.