and attempts by those people and others to force conversion on the Samaritans. It is crucial to keep in mind that the Samaritan community was the smallest among the other dhimmi communities and that it was also situated in Samaria, where Muslim settlement continued to expand as evidenced by the text; by the ninth century, villages such as Sinjil and Jinsafut were already Muslim. This makes it possible to assume that the Samaritans were more vulnerable than other dhimmi, what greatly broadened the extent of their Islamization. Archaeological data demonstrates that during the 8th and 9th centuries, winepresses west of Samaria stopped operating, but the villages to which they belonged persisted. Such sites could be securely identified as Samaritan in some of those cases, and it is likely in others. According to one theory, the local Samaritans who converted to Islam kept their villages going but were barred by Islamic law from making wine. These findings date to the Abassid period, and are in accordance with the Islamization process as described in the historical sources. As time goes on, more information from recorded sources refers to Nablus and less to the vast agricultural regions that the Samaritans had previously inhabited. Hence, the Abassid era marks the disappearance of Samaritan rural habitation in Samaria. By the end of the period, Samaritans were mainly centered in Nablus, while other communities persisted in Caesarea, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Sarepta, and Ascalon. Crusader period During the Crusades, the Frankish takeover of Nablus, where the majority of Samaritans lived, was relatively peaceful compared to the massacres elsewhere where one can assume that Samaritans shared the fate of Arabs and Jews generally in Palestine by being put to death or enslaved. Such acts took place in Samaritan maritime communities in Arsuf, Caesarea, Acre and perhaps Ascalon. During the initial razzia in Nablus, nonetheless, the invading Franks destroyed Samaritan buildings and sometime later tore down their ritual bath and synagogue on Mt. Gerizim. Christians bearing crosses successfully pleaded for a calm transition. Like the non-Latin Christian inhabitants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, came to be tolerated and perhaps favored because they were docile and had been mentioned positively in the New Testament. The calamities that befell them during the Frankish reign came from Muslims such as the commander of the Dasmascene army, Bazwȃdj, who raided Nablus in 1137 and abducted 500 Samaritan men, women and children back to