 Although Muslims, as well as Jews and Eastern Christians, had virtually no rights in the countryside, where they were essentially the property of the crusader lord who owned the land, tolerance for other faiths was in general no higher or lower than that found elsewhere in the Middle East.Greeks, Syriacs, and Jews continued to live as they had before, subject to their own laws and courts, with their former Muslim overlords simply replaced by the crusaders; Muslims now joined them at the lowest level of society.The "ra'is", the leader of a Muslim or Syriac community, was a kind of vassal to whatever noble owned his land, but as the crusader nobles were absentee landlords the "ra'is" and their communities had a high degree of autonomy.