Here are some excerpts from the book, Beyond the Bascilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth, by Chad F. Emmett, 1995, Univ. of Chicago Press. With my commentary. The mother of Emperor Constantine went to Nazareth and built a church on the site of where Mary saw the angel Gabriel, and other holy sites that were visited by many pilgrims during the future centuries.

After Muslims conquered Palestine, Christians and Muslims lived together at Nazareth, at times in peace and harmony, and at other times they were slaughtered. Now the quotes:

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When the Gallic Bishop Arculf visited Nazareth during a pilgrimage thirty-two years after the [Arab] invasion, he noted two large churches in the unwalled village, one at the site of the house of Joseph where Jesus was reared, and one at the site of the house of Mary where the Annunciation took place. . . .

Christian-Muslim relations took a turn for the worse in 722 when Yazid II ordered the destruction of all images in churches, following the Islamic prohibition of depicting the human form. Perhaps as a result of this decree, the Church of St. Joseph was also destroyed, for when the pilgrim Willibald visited Nazareth in 724-726, just forty years after Arculf and two years after the decree, he found only the Church of St. Mary in the village and recorded that "the Christians have to repurchase it from the Pagan Saracens every time they decide to destroy it." The Church of St. Joseph remained in ruins for many years, . . . (page 18-19)

When the crusaders, under the leadership of Tancred, entered Nazareth in 1102, they found the city and its churches in ruins, as recorded by the traveler Saewulf, who writes: "The city of Nazareth is entirely laid waste and overthrown by the Saracens; but the place of the Annunciation is indicated by a very noble monastery" (Wright 1848, 46). The city had been destroyed, then abandoned, by its Muslim inhabitants (Mansur 1924, 41). Within a decade, Daniel of Russia wrote that the Church of the Annunciation was being rebuilt by the Franks (i.e., Europeans) and that a "very rich" bishop lived at the monastary (Wilkinson 1988, 164). During this same period the Greeks built the Church of St. Gabriel near Mary's well (Meistermann 1923, 481). Nazareth became the seat of an archbishop in the mid-twelfth century, and by the 1170s it was described by travelers as a large village or even a town.

When the crusaders were defeated by Saladin at the Battle of Hittin in 1187, the inhabitants of Nazareth, as well as Nablus and Haifa, fled to Tyre or Jerusalem (Maalouf 1984, 195) or, as Michel of Syria recordes, to "cities in the north." Mansur writes that the army of Saladin did not kill or destroy in its conquest of Nazareth, but only expelled the crusaders (Mansur 1924, 42). Nakrizi, however, writes that the city was pillaged and the women and children taken into slavery (Bagatti 1984, 12). {footnote: ... writes that the Frankish inhabitants "sought refuge in the Church of the Annunciation, but were butchered by the Muslims."} . . . (page 19)

The Mamluks of Egypt, under the leadership of Baibars and in battle with crusaders, entered Nazareth in 1263, destroyed the churches and convents, and killed those Christians who would not convert to Islam. Prince Edward reconquered the city in 1271 and started to rebuild the churches, but in 1291 the Muslim armies regained control and killed all Western Christians (Mansur 1924, 43). The killings during the Crusades were by the invading foreign armies and not the result of Nazarenes turning upon earch other. (page 19-20)

The Muslims who took up residence in Nazareth after the Crusades were described in 1322 by Sir John Maundeville as "very cruel and wicked" and "more spiteful than in any other place" (Conder 1878, 141). A German pilgrim who visited the village in 1350 described how the Saracens attempted to fill in the fountain and defiled the remains of the church by using it as a dumping ground for the carcasses of camels and other dead animals (Von Suchem 1895, 125). (page 20)

. . . One report from the sixteenth century describes how, once Christian pilgrims had entered the churches, the local Muslims would shower stones through the windows until the pilgrims offered money for relief (Tobler 1868, 56). However a report by an Italian pilgrim in 1524, shortly after the start of Ottoman control, records that in the village reduced to eighty homes, the holy chapel in the center of the Church of the Annunciation "is held in great veneration by all Christians and Moslems" and that "on the Feast of the Annunciation all Galilee gathers to this chapel and this most holy house, both Christian and Saracens, and on that day they make a great fair and great rejoicing and they feast in honour of the Blessed Virgin" (Suriano 1949, 160).

In 1620, Emir Fakhr al-Din, the Druze ruler of the Galilee, granted permission for the Franciscans to enter the Grotto of the Annunciation, and a group of priests moved in to protect their holdings. The emir, a sworn enemy of the Turks, had lived in Italy for several years and was an ally of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. By allowing the Franciscans to return, he was able to insure that the Duke would continue to assist the emir in his struggle against the Turks (Colbi, 1988, 88). The Franciscans moved quickly to establish their presence. A 1664 drawing of the village by Franciscan Brother Roger shows the dormitory and refectory of the Franciscans to be the largest building in Nazareth. This imposing, two-story rock building, which stands adjacent to the house of Mary and close to the village mosque with its tall minaret, is surrounded by a garden and a wall. The illustration also identifies the grotto near Mary's well, which "is used by the Greeks as a church" (Bagatti 1969, 5).

The return of the Latin priests after an absence of several centuries was not without incident. In 1624 the sanctuary was pillaged and three priests were battered. Village officials took compassion and came to their aid. Then in 1636, priests were incarcerated by Muslims, who insisted that the church must remain the same as in ancient times. (page 21) . . .

Further problems erupted later in the century when in 1696, in the face of persecution, the Christians of Nazareth were forced to flee, only to return the next year.

Henry Maundrell, who visited Nazareth in 1697, wrote that at the place of the Annunciation were "seven or eight Latin fathers, who live a life truly mortified, being perpetually in fear of the Arabs, who are absolute lords of the country" (Wright 1848, 477). Two years later, other pilgrims offered an opposing view. Beaugrand records that when his group of pilgrims had barely reached the houses on the outskirts of town, Muslim men, women, and children came out and greeted them, kissed their hands, and then escorted them to the church (Tobler 1868, 57). In 1708 there was a brawl between the Christians and Muslims of Nazareth; the convent was pillaged again and abandoned for a year (Bagatti 1984, 22).

The presence of Franciscans in Nazareth took a turn for the better in 1730, when Bedouin sheikh Dahir al-Umar, the regional ruler, granted them permission to build a small church dedicated to the Annunciation. The structure they built had to be very modest because construction time was limited to six months-- the time it took for a pilgrimage from Nazareth to Mecca to be completed. The Franciscans were even required to pay the cost of the pilgrimage for the official who issued the building permit (Nazareth Today, 17). Al-Umar also allowed the Franciscans to buy in 1741 the traditional site of the synagogue where Jesus taught and in 1754 the traditional site of Joseph's workshop. In 1767, Dahir al-Umar also granted permission to the Orthodox bishop of Akka to reconstruct the Church of St. Gabriel over the ruins of the octagonal crusader church at Mary's well (Colbi 1986, 89). . . .

With sympathetic leaders and the increase in Christian-owned holy sites, the Christian population of Nazareth continued to grow. The Franciscans bolstered the Christian presence by asking the Maronite patriarch to send some Maronite families from Lebanon. During this same period, a Greek Orthodox priest and family settled in Nazareth from Transjordan. In 1762, twenty Roman Catholic families . . . (page 22)

Still there were occasional incidents in which Christians and Muslims clashed. In 1828, a Christian was accused of robbing the mosque. When the ruling pasha came to investigate, he noticed that the Christians and Muslims of Nazareth were all wearing the same style and color of head coverings. This was very unusual for a region where Christians and Jews were required to differentiate themselves in their attire from the Muslims. The Pasha ordered Christians to stop wearing black headdresses, then ordered the Muslims to attack and kill Christians. The Muslims protested with the argument that a man does not kill his milking cow. The Pasha rescinded his order and instead ordered the Muslims to rob the Christians, which they did during Easter services, when they entered the churches and took jewelry from the women.

That same year, a Christian girl, in rebuffing advances from a Muslim boy, was accused of blasphemy against the prophet Mohammad. Her sentence was to either convert to Islam or die. She chose to die, and execution was carried out by tying her to a horse and dragging her through the streets.

The situation, however, soon improved when in 1832, Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha brought Palestine under his control and instituted reforms and improved the situation for Christians. So good was Ibrahim to the Christians that some Muslims accused him of being a Christian in disguise. When there was a revolt against Ibrahim, the Christians of Nazareth sided with him (Mansur 1924, 65-66). . . . . . (page 24)

-----------------------------------------------------Commentary below------

According to the Muslim historians, Christians were left totally unmolested throughout the realms of all Muslim rulers, but any examination of history shows that is false.

If we had better records we would know what happened to the Christian population of Nazareth back when their disappearance indicated that they must have been massacred and the survivors sold into slavery.

The closer we get to modern times the greater the details we have of daily life between the Christians and Muslims. And the record shows that all the Christians would have been massacred again were it not for the money the Muslims were making from them and the Christian pilgrims. They did not object to killing the Christians on moral grounds but only because they saw them as cash cows.

The above quotes indicate that relations between the Christians and Muslims in Nazareth were as good as they were only because of the money the Muslims were making from the Christians visiting the holy sites. It also shows that even under these better-than-normal conditions, there were occasional persecution and murder and forced conversion.