A British pilgrim called Saewulf, who visited Jerusalem around 1103, suffered shipwreck and piracy during his long sea journeys to and from the east, and complained that the roads around Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth were plagued by brigands who hid out in caves, “awake day and night, always keeping a lookout for someone to attack.” (By the roadside, he wrote, lay “countless corpses which have been torn up by wild beasts.” 19)
