Ever since Professor Max Müller delivered his lecture in Westminster Abbey, on the day of intercession for missions, in December, 1873, it has been a literary commonplace, that the six great religions of the world may be divided into missionary and non-missionary; under the latter head fall Judaism, Brahmanism and Zoroastrianism, and under the former Buddhism, Christianity and Islam; and he well defined what the term,—a missionary religion,—should be taken to mean, viz. one “in which the spreading of the truth and the conversion of unbelievers are raised to the rank of a sacred duty by the founder or his immediate successors.… It is the spirit of truth in the hearts of believers which cannot rest, unless it manifests itself in thought, word and deed, which is not satisfied till it has carried its message to every human soul, till what it believes to be the truth is accepted as the truth by all members of the human family.”1

It is such a zeal for the truth of their religion that has inspired the Muhammadans to carry with them the message of Islam to the people of every land into which they penetrate, and that justly claims for their religion a place among those we term missionary. It is the history of the birth of this missionary zeal, its inspiring forces and the modes of its activity that forms the subject of the following pages. The 200 millions of Muhammadans scattered over the [2]world at the present day are evidences of its workings through the length of thirteen centuries.

The doctrines of this faith were first proclaimed to the people of Arabia in the seventh century, by a prophet under whose banner their scattered tribes became a nation; and filled with the pulsations of this new national life, and with a fervour and enthusiasm that imparted an almost invincible strength to their armies, they poured forth over three continents to conquer and subdue. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and Persia were the first to fall before them, and pressing westward to Spain and eastward beyond the Indus, the followers of the Prophet found themselves, one hundred years after his death, masters of an empire greater than that of Rome at the zenith of its power.

Although in after years this great empire was split up and the political power of Islam diminished, still its spiritual conquests went on uninterruptedly. When the Mongol hordes sacked Bag͟hdād (A.D. 1258) and drowned in blood the faded glory of the ʻAbbāsid dynasty,—when the Muslims were expelled from Cordova by Ferdinand of Leon and Castile (A.D. 1236), and Granada, the last stronghold of Islam in Spain, paid tribute to the Christian king,—Islam had just gained a footing in the island of Sumatra and was just about to commence its triumphant progress through the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In the hours of its political degradation, Islam has achieved some of its most brilliant spiritual conquests: on two great historical occasions, infidel barbarians have set their feet on the necks of the followers of the Prophet,—the Saljūq Turks in the eleventh and the Mongols in the thirteenth century,—and in each case the conquerors have accepted the religion of the conquered. Unaided also by the temporal power, Muslim missionaries have carried their faith into Central Africa, China and the East India Islands.

At the present day the faith of Islam extends from Morocco to Zanzibar, from Sierra Leone to Siberia and China, from Bosnia to New Guinea. Outside the limits of strictly Muhammadan countries and of lands, such as China and Russia, that contain a large Muhammadan population, there are some few small communities of the followers of [3]the Prophet, which bear witness to the faith of Islam in the midst of unbelievers. Such are the Polish-speaking Muslims of Tatar origin in Lithuania, that inhabit the districts of Kovno, Vilno and Grodno;2 the Dutch-speaking Muslims of Cape Colony; and the Indian coolies that have carried the faith of Islam with them to the West India Islands and to British and Dutch Guiana. In recent years, too, Islam has found adherents in England, in North America, Australia and Japan.

The spread of this faith over so vast a portion of the globe is due to various causes, social, political and religious: but among these, one of the most powerful factors at work in the production of this stupendous result, has been the unremitted labours of Muslim missionaries, who, with the Prophet himself as their great ensample, have spent themselves for the conversion of unbelievers.

The duty of missionary work is no after-thought in the history of Islam, but was enjoined on believers from the beginning, as may be judged from the following passages in the Qurʼān,—which are here quoted in chronological order according to the date of their being delivered.

Similar injunctions are found also in the Medinite Sūrahs, [4]delivered at a time when Muḥammad was at the head of a large army and at the height of his power.

The following passages are taken from what is generally supposed to be the last Sūrah that was delivered.

With regard to the unbelievers who had broken their plighted word, who “sell the signs of God for a mean price and turn others aside from His way,” and “respect not with a believer either ties of blood or good faith,” … it is said:—

Thus from its very inception Islam has been a missionary religion, both in theory and in practice, for the life of Muḥammad exemplifies the same teaching, and the Prophet [5]himself stands at the head of a long series of Muslim missionaries who have won an entrance for their faith into the hearts of unbelievers. Moreover it is not in the cruelties of the persecutor or the fury of the fanatic that we should look for the evidences of the missionary spirit of Islam, any more than in the exploits of that mythical personage, the Muslim warrior with sword in one hand and Qurʼān in the other,3—but in the quiet, unobtrusive labours of the preacher and the trader who have carried their faith into every quarter of the globe. Such peaceful methods of preaching and persuasion were not adopted, as some would have us believe, only when political circumstances made force and violence impossible or impolitic, but were most strictly enjoined in numerous passages of the Qurʼān, as follows:—

Such precepts are not confined to the Meccan Sūrahs, but are found in abundance also in those delivered at Medina, as follows:—

[7]

It is the object of the following pages to show how this ideal was realised in history and how these principles of missionary activity were put into practice by the exponents of Islam. And at the outset the reader should clearly understand that this work is not intended to be a history of Muhammadan persecutions but of Muhammadan missions—it does not aim at chronicling the instances of forced conversions which may be found scattered up and down the pages of Muhammadan histories. European writers have taken such care to accentuate these, that there is no fear of their being forgotten, and they do not strictly come within the province of a history of missions. In a history of Christian missions we should naturally expect to hear more of the labours of St. Liudger and St. Willehad among the pagan Saxons than of the baptisms that Charlemagne forced them to undergo at the point of the sword.4 The true missionaries of Denmark were St. Ansgar and his successors rather than King Cnut, who forcibly rooted out paganism from his dominions.5 Abbot Gottfried and Bishop Christian, though less successful in converting the pagan Prussians, were more truly representative of Christian missionary work than the Brethren of the Sword and other Crusaders who brought their labours to completion by means of fire and sword. The knights of the “Ordo fratrum militiæ Christi” forced Christianity on the people of Livonia, but it is not to these militant propagandists but to the monks Meinhard and Theodoric that we should point as being the true missionaries of the Christian faith in this country. The violent means sometimes employed by the Jesuit missionaries6 cannot derogate from the honour due to St. Francis Xavier and other preachers of the same order. Nor is Valentyn any the less the apostle of Amboyna because in 1699 an order was promulgated to the Rajas of this [8]island that they should have ready a certain number of pagans to be baptised, when the pastor came on his rounds.7

In the history of the Christian church missionary activity is seen to be intermittent, and an age of apostolic fervour may be succeeded by a period of apathy and indifference, or persecution and forced conversion may take the place of the preaching of the Word; so likewise does the propaganda of Islam in various epochs of Muhammadan history ebb and flow. But since the zeal of proselytising is a distinct feature of either faith, its missionary history may fittingly be singled out as a separate branch of study, not as excluding other manifestations of the religious life but as concentrating attention on an aspect of it that has special characteristics of its own. Thus the annals of propaganda and persecution may be studied apart from one another, whether in the history of the Christian or the Muslim church, though in both they may be at times commingled. For just as the Christian faith has not always been propagated by the methods adopted in Viken (the southern part of Norway) by King Olaf Trygvesson, who either slew those who refused to accept Christianity, or cut off their hands or feet, or drove them into banishment, and in this manner spread the Christian faith throughout the whole of Viken,8—and just as the advice of St. Louis has not been made a principle of Christian missionary work,—“When a layman hears the Christian law ill spoken of, he should not defend that law save with his sword, which he should thrust into the infidel’s belly, as far as it will go,”9—so there have been Muslim missionaries who have not been guided in their propagandist methods by the savage utterance of Marwān, the last of the ʻUmayyad caliphs: “Whosoever among the people of Egypt does not enter into my religion and pray as I pray and follow my tenets, I will slay and crucify him.”10 Nor are al-Mutawakkil, [9]al-Ḥākim and Tīpū Sulṭān to be looked upon as typical missionaries of Islam to the exclusion of such preachers as Mawlānā Ibrāhīm, the apostle of Java, K͟hwājah Muʻīn al-Dīn Chishtī in India and countless others who won converts to the Muslim faith by peaceful means alone.

But though a clear distinction can be drawn between conversion as the result of persecution and a peaceful propaganda by means of methods of persuasion, it is not so easy to ascertain the motives that have induced the convert to change his faith, or to discover whether the missionary has been wholly animated by a love of souls and by the high ideal set forth in the first paragraph of this chapter. Both in Christianity and Islam there have been at all times earnest souls to whom their religion has been the supreme reality of their lives, and this absorbing interest in matters of the spirit has found expression in that zeal for the communication of cherished truths and for the domination of doctrines and systems they have deemed perfect, which constitutes the vivifying force of missionary movements,—and there have likewise been those without the pale, who have responded to their appeal and have embraced the new faith with a like fervour. But, on the other hand, Islam—like Christianity—has reckoned among its adherents many persons to whom ecclesiastical institutions have been merely instruments of a political policy or forms of social organisation, to be accepted either as disagreeable necessities or as convenient solutions of problems that they do not care to think out for themselves; such persons may likewise be found among the converts of either faith. Thus both Christianity and Islam have added to the number of their followers by methods and under conditions—social, political and economic—which have no connection with such a thirst for souls as animates the true missionary. Moreover, the annals of missionary enterprise frequently record the admission of converts without any attempt to analyse the motives that have led them to change their faith, and especially for the history of Muslim missions there is a remarkable poverty of material in this respect, since Muslim literature is singularly poor in those records of conversions that occupy such a large place in the literature [10]of the Christian church. Accordingly, in the following sketch of the missionary activity of Islam, it has not always been possible to discover whether political, social, economic or purely religious motives have determined conversion, though occasional reference can be made to the operation of one or the other influence. [11]

It is not proposed in this chapter to add another to the already numerous biographies of Muḥammad, but rather to make a study of his life in one of its aspects only, viz. that in which the Prophet is presented to us as a preacher, as the apostle unto men of a new religion. The life of the founder of Islam and the inaugurator of its propaganda may naturally be expected to exhibit to us the true character of the missionary activity of this religion. If the life of the Prophet serves as the standard of conduct for the ordinary believer, it must do the same for the Muslim missionary. From the pattern, therefore, we may hope to learn something of the spirit that would animate those who sought to copy it, and of the methods they might be expected to adopt. For the missionary spirit of Islam is no after-thought in its history; it interpenetrates the religion from its very commencement, and in the following sketch it is desired to show how this is so, how Muḥammad the Prophet is the type of the missionary of Islam. It is therefore beside the purpose to describe his early history, or the influences under which he grew up to manhood, or to consider him in the light either of a statesman or a general: it is as the preacher alone that he will demand our attention.

When, after long internal conflict and disquietude, Muḥammad was at length convinced of his divine mission, his earliest efforts were directed towards persuading his own family of the truth of the new doctrine. The unity of God, the abomination of idolatry, the duty laid upon man of submission to the will of his Creator,—these were the simple truths to which he claimed their allegiance. [12]The first convert was his faithful and loving wife, K͟hadījah,—she who fifteen years before had offered her hand in marriage to the poor kinsman that had so successfully traded with her merchandise as a hired agent,—with the words, “I love thee, my cousin, for thy kinship with me, for the respect with which thy people regard thee, for thy honesty, for the beauty of thy character and for the truthfulness of thy speech.”1 She had lifted him out of poverty, and enabled him to live up to the social position to which he was entitled by right of birth; but this was as nothing to the fidelity and loving devotion with which she shared his mental anxieties, and helped him with tenderest sympathy and encouragement in the hour of his despondency.

Up to her death in A.D. 619 (after a wedded life of five and twenty years) she was always ready with sympathy, consolation and encouragement whenever he suffered from the persecution of his enemies or was tortured by doubts and misgivings. “So K͟hadījah believed,” says the biographer of the Prophet, “and attested the truth of that which came to him from God and aided him in his undertaking. Thus was the Lord minded to lighten the burden of His Prophet; for whenever he heard anything that grieved him touching his rejection by the people, he would return to her and God would comfort him through her, for she reassured him and lightened his burden and declared her trust in him and made it easy for him to bear the scorn of men.”2

Among the earliest believers were his adopted children Zayd and ʻAlī, and his bosom friend Abū Bakr, of whom Muḥammad would often say in after years, “I never invited any to the faith who displayed not hesitation, perplexity and vacillation—excepting only Abū Bakr; who when I told him of Islam tarried not, neither was perplexed.” He was a wealthy merchant, much respected by his fellow citizens for the integrity of his character and for his intelligence and ability. After his conversion he expended the greater part of his fortune on the purchase of Muslim slaves who were persecuted by their masters on account of their adherence to the teaching of Muḥammad. [13]Through his influence, to a great extent, five of the earliest converts were added to the number of believers, Saʻd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, the future conqueror of the Persians; al-Zubayr b. al-ʻAwwām, a relative both of the Prophet and his wife; Ṭalḥah, famous as a warrior in after days; a wealthy merchant ʻAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʻAwf, and ʻUt͟hmān, the third K͟halīfah. The last was early exposed to persecution; his uncle seized and bound him, saying, “Dost thou prefer a new religion to that of thy fathers? I swear I will not loose thee until thou givest up this new faith thou art following after.” To which ʻUt͟hmān replied, “By the Lord, I will never abandon it!” Whereupon his uncle, seeing the firmness of his attachment to his faith, released him.

With other additions, particularly from among slaves and poor persons, the Prophet succeeded in collecting round him a little band of followers during the first three years of his mission. Encouraged by the success of these private efforts, Muḥammad determined on more active measures and began to preach in public. He called his kinsmen together and invited them to embrace the new faith. “No Arab,” he urged, “has offered to his nation more precious advantages than those I bring you. I offer you happiness in this world and in the life to come. Who among you will aid me in this task?” All were silent. Only ʻAlī, with boyish enthusiasm, cried out, “Prophet of God, I will aid thee.” At this the company broke up with derisive laughter.

Undeterred by the ill-success of this preaching, he repeatedly appealed to them on other occasions, but his message and his warnings received from them nothing but scoffing and contempt.

More than once the Quraysh tried to induce his uncle Abū Ṭālib, as head of the clan of the Banū Hāshim, to which Muḥammad belonged, to restrain him from making such attacks upon their ancestral faith, or otherwise they threatened to resort to more violent measures. Abū Ṭālib accordingly appealed to his nephew not to bring disaster on himself and his family. The Prophet replied: “Were the sun to come down on my right hand and the [14]moon on my left, and the choice were offered me of abandoning my mission until God himself should reveal it, or perishing in the achievement of it, I would not abandon it.” Abū Ṭālib was moved and exclaimed, “Go and say whatever thou wilt: by God! I will never give thee up unto thy enemies.”

The Quraysh viewed the progress of the new religion with increasing dissatisfaction and hatred. They adopted all possible means, threats and promises, insults and offers of worldly honour and aggrandisement to induce Muḥammad to abandon the part he had taken up. The violent abuse with which he was assailed is said to have been the indirect cause of drawing to his side one important convert in the person of his uncle, Ḥamzah, whose chivalrous soul was so stung to sudden sympathy by a tale of insult inflicted on and patiently borne by his nephew, that he changed at once from a bitter enemy into a staunch adherent. His was not the only instance of sympathy for the sufferings of the Muslims being aroused at the sight of the persecutions they had to endure, and many, no doubt, secretly favoured the new religion who did not declare themselves until the day of its triumph.

The hostility of the Quraysh to the new faith increased in bitterness as they watched the increase in the numbers of its adherents. They realised that the triumph of the new teaching meant the destruction of the national religion and the national worship, and a loss of wealth and power to the guardians of the sacred Kaʻbah. Muḥammad himself was safe under the protection of Abū Ṭālib and the Banū Hāshim, who, though they had no sympathy for the doctrines their kinsman taught, yet with the strong clan-feeling peculiar to the Arabs, secured him from any attempt upon his life, though he was still exposed to continual insult and annoyance. But the poor who had no protector, and the slaves, had to endure the cruelest persecution, and were imprisoned and tortured in order to induce them to recant. It was at this time that Abū Bakr purchased the freedom of Bilāl,3 an African slave, who was called by [15]Muḥammad “the first-fruits of Abyssinia.” He had been cruelly tortured by being exposed, day after day, to the scorching rays of the sun, stretched out on his back, with an enormous stone on his stomach; here he was told he would have to stay until either he died or renounced Muḥammad and worshipped idols, to which he would reply only, “There is but one God, there is but one God.” Two persons died under the tortures they had to undergo. The constancy of a few gave way under the trial, but persecution served only to re-kindle the zeal of others. ʻAbd Allāh b. Masʻūd made bold to recite a passage of the Qurʼān within the precincts of the Kaʻbah itself,—an act of daring that none of the followers of Muḥammad had ventured upon before. The assembled Quraysh attacked him and smote him on the face, but it was some time before they compelled him to desist. He returned to his companions, prepared to bear witness to his faith in a similar manner on the next day, but they dissuaded him, saying, “This is enough for thee, since thou hast made them listen to what they hated to hear.”

The virulence of the opposition of the Quraysh is probably the reason why in the fourth year of his mission Muḥammad took up his residence in the house of al-Arqam, one of the early converts. It was in a central situation, much frequented by pilgrims and strangers, and here peaceably and without interruption he was able to preach the doctrines of Islam to all enquirers that came to him. Muḥammad’s stay in this house marks an important epoch in the propagation of Islam in Mecca, and many Muslims dated their conversion from the days when the Prophet preached in the house of al-Arqam.

As Muḥammad was unable to relieve his persecuted followers, he advised them to take refuge in Abyssinia, and in the fifth year of his mission (A.D. 615), eleven men and four women crossed over to Abyssinia, where they received a kind welcome from the Christian king of the country. Among them was a certain Muṣʻab b. ʻUmayr whose history is interesting as of one who had to endure that most bitter trial of the new convert—the hatred of those he loves and who once loved him. He had been led to [16]embrace Islam through the teaching he had listened to in the house of al-Arqam, but he was afraid to let the fact of his conversion become known, because his tribe and his mother, who bore an especial love to him, were bitterly opposed to the new religion; and indeed, when they discovered the fact, seized and imprisoned him. But he succeeded in effecting his escape to Abyssinia.

The hatred of the Quraysh is said to have pursued the fugitives even to Abyssinia, and an embassy was sent to demand their extradition from the king of that country. But when he heard their story from the Muslims, he refused to withdraw from them his protection. In answer to his enquiries as to their religion, they said: “O King, we were plunged in the darkness of ignorance, worshipping idols, and eating carrion; we practised abominations, severed the ties of kinship and maltreated our neighbours; the strong among us devoured the weak; and so we remained until God sent us an apostle, from among ourselves, whose lineage we knew as well as his truth, his trustworthiness and the purity of his life. He called upon us to worship the One God and abandon the stones and idols that our fathers had worshipped in His stead. He bade us be truthful in speech, faithful to our promises, compassionate and kind to our parents and neighbours, and to desist from crime and bloodshed. He forbade to do evil, to lie, to rob the orphan or defame women. He enjoined on us the worship of God alone, with prayer, almsgiving and fasting. And we believed in him and followed the teachings that he brought us from God. But our countrymen rose up against us and persecuted us to make us renounce our faith, and return to the worship of idols and the abominations of our former life. So when they cruelly entreated us, reducing us to bitter straits and came between us and the practice of our religion, we took refuge in your country; putting our trust in your justice, we hope that you will deliver us from the oppression of our enemies.” Their prayer was heard and the embassy of the Quraysh returned discomfited.4 Meanwhile, in Mecca, a fresh attempt [17]was made to induce the Prophet to abandon his work of preaching by promises of wealth and honour, but in vain.

While the result of the embassy to Abyssinia was being looked for in Mecca with the greatest expectancy, there occurred the conversion of a man, who before had been one of the most bitter enemies of Muḥammad, and had opposed him with the utmost persistence and fanaticism—a man whom the Muslims had every reason then to look on as their most terrible and virulent enemy, though afterwards he shines as one of the noblest figures in the early history of Islam, viz. ʻUmar b. al-K͟haṭṭāb. One day, in a fit of rage against the Prophet, he set out, sword in hand, to slay him. On the way, one of his relatives met him and asked him where he was going. “I am looking for Muḥammad,” he answered, “to kill the renegade who has brought discord among the Quraysh, called them fools, reviled their religion and defamed their gods.” “Why dost thou not rather punish those of thy own family, and set them right?” “And who are these of my own family?” answered ʻUmar. “Thy brother-in-law Saʻīd and thy sister Fāṭimah, who have become Muslims and followers of Muḥammad.” ʻUmar at once rushed off to the house of his sister, and found her with her husband and K͟habbāb, another of the followers of Muḥammad, who was teaching them to recite a chapter of the Qurʼān. ʻUmar burst into the room: “What was that sound I heard?” “It was nothing,” they replied. “Nay, but I heard you, and I have learned that you have become followers of Muḥammad.” Whereupon he rushed upon Saʻīd and struck him. Fāṭimah threw herself between them, to protect her husband, crying, “Yes, we are Muslims; we believe in God and His Prophet: slay us if you will.” In the struggle his sister was wounded, and when ʻUmar saw the blood on her face, he was softened and asked to see the paper they had been reading: after some hesitation she handed it to him. It contained the 20th Sūrah of the Qurʼān. When ʻUmar read it, he exclaimed, “How beautiful, how sublime it is!” As he read on, conviction suddenly overpowered him and he cried, “Lead me to Muḥammad that I may tell him of my conversion.”5 [18]

The conversion of ʻUmar is a turning-point in the history of Islam: the Muslims were now able to take up a bolder attitude. Muḥammad left the house of al-Arqam and the believers publicly performed their devotions together round the Kaʻbah. The situation might thus be expected to give the aristocracy of Mecca just cause for apprehension. For they had no longer to deal with a band of oppressed and despised outcasts, struggling for a weak and miserable existence. It was rather a powerful faction, adding daily to its strength by the accession of influential citizens and endangering the stability of the existing government by an alliance with a powerful foreign prince.

The Quraysh resolved accordingly to make a determined effort to check the further growth of the new movement in their city. They put the Banū Hāshim, who through ties of kindred protected the Prophet, under a ban, in accordance with which the Quraysh agreed that they would not marry their women, nor give their own in marriage to them; they would sell nothing to them, nor buy aught from them—that dealings with them of every kind should cease. For three years the Banū Hāshim are said to have been confined to one quarter of the city, except during the sacred months, in which all war ceased throughout Arabia and a truce was made in order that pilgrims might visit the sacred Kaʻbah, the centre of the national religion.

Muḥammad used to take advantage of such times of pilgrimage to preach to the various tribes that flocked to Mecca and the adjacent fairs. But with no success, for his uncle Abū Lahab used to dog his footsteps, crying with a loud voice, “He is an impostor who wants to draw you away from the faith of your fathers to the false doctrines that he brings, wherefore separate yourselves from him and hear him not.” They would taunt him with the words: “Thine own people and kindred should know thee best: wherefore do they not believe and follow thee?” But at length the privations endured by Muḥammad and his kinsmen enlisted the sympathy of a numerous section of the Quraysh and the ban was withdrawn.

In the same year the loss of K͟hadījah, the faithful wife who for twenty-five years had been his counsellor and [19]support, plunged Muḥammad into the utmost grief and despondency; and a little later the death of Abū Ṭālib deprived him of his constant and most powerful protector and exposed him afresh to insult and contumely.

Scorned and rejected by his own townsmen, to whom he had delivered his message with so little success for ten years, he resolved to see if there were not others who might be more ready to listen, among whom the seeds of faith might find a more receptive and fruitful soil. With this hope he set out for Ṭāʼif, a city about seventy miles from Mecca. Before an assembly of the chief men of the city, he expounded his doctrine of the unity of God and of the mission he had received as the Prophet of God to proclaim this faith; at the same time he besought their protection against his persecutors in Mecca. The disproportion between his high claims (which moreover were unintelligible to the heathen people of Ṭāʼif) and his helpless condition only excited their ridicule and scorn, and pitilessly stoning him with stones they drove him from their city.

On his return from Ṭāʼif the prospects of the success of Muḥammad seemed more hopeless than ever, and the agony of his soul gave itself utterance in the words that he puts into the mouth of Noah: “O my Lord, verily I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry only makes them flee from me the more. And verily, so oft as I cry to them, that Thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist (in their error), and are disdainfully disdainful.” (lxxi. 5–6.)

It was the Prophet’s habit at the time of the annual pilgrimage to visit the encampments of the various Arab tribes and discourse with them upon religion. By some his words were treated with indifference, by others rejected with scorn. But consolation came to him from an unexpected quarter. He met a little group of six or seven persons whom he recognised as coming from Medina, or, as it was then called, Yat͟hrib. “Of what tribe are you?” said he, addressing them. “We are of the K͟hazraj,” they answered. “Friends of the Jews?” “Yes.” “Then will you not sit down awhile, that I may talk with you?” “Assuredly,” [20]replied they. Then they sat down with him, and he proclaimed unto them the true God and preached Islam and recited to them the Qurʼān. Now so it was, in that God wrought wonderfully for Islam that there were found in their country Jews, who possessed scriptures and wisdom, while they themselves were heathen and idolaters. Now the Jews ofttimes suffered violence at their hands, and when strife was between them had ever said to them, “Soon will a Prophet arise and his time is at hand; him will we follow, and with him slay you with the slaughter of ʻĀd and of Iram.” When now the apostle of God was speaking with these men and calling on them to believe in God, they said one to another: “Know surely that this is the Prophet, of whom the Jews have warned us; come let us now make haste and be the first to join him.” So they embraced Islam, and said to him, “Our countrymen have long been engaged in a most bitter and deadly feud with one another; but now perhaps God will unite them together through thee and thy teaching. Therefore we will preach to them and make known to them this religion, that we have received from thee.” So, full of faith, they returned to their own country.6

Such is the traditional account of this event which was the turning-point of Muḥammad’s mission. He had now met with a people whose antecedents had in some way prepared their minds for the reception of his teaching and whose present circumstances, as afterwards appeared, were favourable to his cause.

The city of Yat͟hrib had been long occupied by Jews whom some national disaster, possibly the persecution under Hadrian, had driven from their own country, when a party of wandering emigrants, the two Arab clans of K͟hazraj and Aws, arrived at Yat͟hrib and were admitted to a share in the territory. As their numbers increased they encroached more and more on the power of the Jewish rulers, and finally, towards the end of the fifth century, the government of the city passed entirely into their hands.

Some of the Arabs had embraced the Jewish religion, and many of the former masters of the city still dwelt there in [21]the service of their conquerors, so that it contained in Muḥammad’s time a considerable Jewish population. The people of Yat͟hrib were thus familiar with the idea of a Messiah who was to come, and were consequently more capable of understanding the claim of Muḥammad to be accepted as the Prophet of God, than were the idolatrous Meccans to whom such an idea was entirely foreign and especially distasteful to the Quraysh, whose supremacy over the other tribes and whose worldly prosperity arose from the fact that they were the hereditary guardians of the national collection of idols kept in the sacred enclosure of the Kaʻbah.

Further, the city of Yat͟hrib was distracted by incessant civil discord through a long-standing feud between the Banū K͟hazraj and the Banū Aws. The citizens lived in uncertainty and suspense, and anything likely to bind the conflicting parties together by a tie of common interest could not but prove a boon to the city. Just as the mediæval republics of Northern Italy chose a stranger to hold the chief post in their cities in order to maintain some balance of power between the rival factions, and prevent, if possible, the civil strife which was so ruinous to commerce and the general welfare, so the Yat͟hribites would not look upon the arrival of a stranger with suspicion, even though he was likely to usurp or gain permission to assume the vacant authority.

On the contrary, one of the reasons for the warm welcome which Muḥammad received in Medina would seem to be that the adoption of Islam appeared to the more thoughtful of its citizens to be a remedy for the disorders from which their society was suffering, by its orderly discipline of life and its bringing the unruly passions of men under the discipline of laws enunciated by an authority superior to individual caprice.7

These facts go far to explain how eight years after the Hijrah Muḥammad could, at the head of 10,000 followers, enter the city in which he had laboured for ten years with so meagre a result.

But this is anticipating. Muḥammad had proposed to [22]accompany his new converts, the K͟hazrajites, to Yat͟hrib himself, but they dissuaded him therefrom, until a reconciliation could be effected with the Banū Aws. “Let us, we pray thee, return unto our people, if haply the Lord will create peace amongst us; and we will come back again unto thee. Let the season of pilgrimage in the following year be the appointed time.” So they returned to their homes, and invited their people to the faith; and many believed, so that there remained hardly a family in which mention was not made of the Prophet.

When the time of pilgrimage again came round, a deputation from Yat͟hrib, ten men of the Banū K͟hazraj, and two of the Banū Aws, met him at the appointed spot and pledged him their word to obey his teaching. This, the first pledge of ʻAqabah, so called from the secret spot at which they met, ran as follows:—“We will not worship any but the one God; we will not steal, neither will we commit adultery or kill our children; we will abstain from calumny and slander; we will obey the Prophet in every thing that is right.” These twelve men now returned to Yat͟hrib as missionaries of Islam, and so well prepared was the ground, and with such zeal did they prosecute their mission, that the new faith spread rapidly from house to house and from tribe to tribe.

They were accompanied on their return by Muṣʻab b. ʻUmayr; though, according to another account he was sent by the Prophet upon a written requisition from Yat͟hrib. This young man had been one of the earliest converts, and had lately returned from Abyssinia; thus he had had much experience, and severe training in the school of persecution had not only sobered his zeal but taught him how to meet persecution and deal with those who were ready to condemn Islam without waiting to learn the true contents of its teaching; accordingly Muḥammad could with the greatest confidence entrust him with the difficult task of directing and instructing the new converts, cherishing the seeds of religious zeal and devotion that had already been sown and bringing them to fruition. Muṣʻab took up his abode in the house of Asʻad b. Zurārah, and gathered the converts together for prayer and the reading of the Qurʼān, sometimes [23]here and sometimes in a house belonging to the Banū Ẓafar, which was situated in a quarter of the town occupied jointly by this family and that of ʻAbd al-Ashhal.

The heads of the latter family at that time were Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h and Usayd b. Ḥuḍayr. One day it happened that Muṣʻab was sitting together with Asʻad in this house of the Banū Ẓafar, engaged in instructing some new converts, when Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h, having come to know of their whereabouts, said to Usayd b. Ḥuḍayr: “Drive out these fellows who have come into our houses to make fools of the weaklings among us; I would spare thee the trouble did not the tie of kinship between me and Asʻad prevent my doing him any harm” (for he himself was the cousin of Asʻad). Hereupon Usayd took his spear and, bursting in upon Asʻad and Muṣʻab, “What are you doing?” he cried, “leading weak-minded folk astray? If you value your lives, begone hence.” “Sit down and listen,” Muṣʻab answered quietly, “if thou art pleased with what thou hearest, accept it; if not, then leave it.” Usayd stuck his spear in the ground and sat down to listen, while Muṣʻab expounded to him the fundamental doctrines of Islam and read several passages of the Qurʼān. After a time Usayd, enraptured, cried, “What must I do to enter this religion?” “Purify thyself with water,” answered Muṣʻab, “and confess that there is no god but God and that Muḥammad is the apostle of God.” Usayd at once complied and repeated the profession of faith, adding, “After me you have still another man to convince” (referring to Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h). “If he is persuaded, his example will bring after him all his people. I will send him to you forthwith.”

With these words he left them, and soon after came Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h himself, hot with anger against Asʻad for the patronage he had extended to the missionaries of Islam. Muṣʻab begged him not to condemn the new faith unheard, so Saʻd agreed to listen and soon the words of Muṣʻab touched him and brought conviction to his heart, and he embraced the faith and became a Muslim. He went back to his people burning with zeal and said to them, “Sons of ʻAbd al-Ashhal, say, what am I to you?” “Thou art our lord,” they answered, “thou art the wisest and most illustrious [24]among us.” “Then I swear,” replied Saʻd, “nevermore to speak to any of you until you believe in God and Muḥammad, His apostle.” And from that day, all the descendants of ʻAbd al-Ashhal embraced Islam.8

With such zeal and earnestness was the preaching of the faith pushed forward that within a year there was not a family among the Arabs of Medina that had not given some of its members to swell the number of the faithful, with the exception of one branch of the Banū Aws, which held aloof under the influence of Abū Qays b. al-Aslat, the poet.

The following year, when the time of the annual pilgrimage again came round, a band of converts, amounting to seventy-three in number, accompanied their heathen fellow-countrymen from Yat͟hrib to Mecca. They were commissioned to invite Muḥammad to take refuge in Yat͟hrib from the fury of his enemies, and had come to swear allegiance to him as their prophet and their leader. All the early converts who had before met the Prophet on the two preceding pilgrimages, returned to Mecca on this important occasion, and Muṣʻab their teacher accompanied them. Immediately on his arrival he hurried to the prophet, and told him of the success that had attended his mission. It is said that his mother, hearing of his arrival, sent a message to him, saying: “Ah, disobedient son, wilt thou enter a city in which thy mother dwelleth, and not first visit her!” “Nay, verily,” he replied, “I will never visit the house of any one before the Prophet of God.” So, after he had greeted and conferred with Muḥammad, he went to his mother, who thus accosted him: “Then I ween thou art still a renegade.” He answered, “I follow the prophet of the Lord and the true faith of Islam.” “Art thou then well satisfied with the miserable way thou hast fared in the land of Abyssinia and now again at Yat͟hrib?” Now he perceived that she was meditating his imprisonment, and exclaimed, “What! wilt thou force a man from his religion? If ye seek to confine me, I will assuredly slay the first person that layeth hands upon me.” His mother said, “Then depart from my presence,” and she began to [25]weep. Muṣʻab was moved, and said, “Oh, my mother! I give thee loving counsel. Testify that there is no God but the Lord and that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger.” But she replied, “By the sparkling stars! I will never make a fool of myself by entering into thy religion. I wash my hands of thee and thy concerns, and cleave steadfastly unto mine own faith.”

In order not to excite suspicion and incur the hostility of the Quraysh, a secret meeting was arranged at ʻAqabah, the scene of the former meeting with the converts of the year before. Muḥammad came accompanied only by his uncle ʻAbbās, who, though he was still an idolater, had been admitted into the secret. ʻAbbās opened the solemn conclave, by recommending his nephew as a scion of one of the noblest families of his clan, which had hitherto afforded the Prophet protection, although rejecting his teachings; but now that he wished to take refuge among the people of Yat͟hrib, they should bethink themselves well before undertaking such a charge, and resolve not to go back from their promise, if once they undertook the risk. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr, one of the Banū K͟hazraj, protesting that they were firm in their resolve to protect the Prophet of God, besought him to declare fully what he wished of them.

Muḥammad began by reciting to them some portions of the Qurʼān, and exhorted them to be true to the faith they had professed in the one God and the Prophet, His apostle; he then asked them to defend him and his companions from all assailants just as they would their own wives and children. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr, taking his hand, cried out, “Yea, by Him who sent thee as His Prophet, and through thee revealed unto us His truth, we will protect thee as we would our own bodies, and we swear allegiance to thee as our leader. We are the sons of battle and men of mail, which we have inherited as worthy sons of worthy forefathers.” So they all in turn, taking his hand in theirs, swore allegiance to him.

As soon as the Quraysh gained intelligence of these secret proceedings, the persecution broke out afresh against the Muslims, and Muḥammad advised them to flee out of the [26]city. “Depart unto Yat͟hrib; for the Lord hath verily given you brethren in that city, and a home in which ye may find refuge.” So quietly, by twos and threes they escaped to Yat͟hrib, where they were heartily welcomed, their co-religionists in that city vying with one another for the honour of entertaining them, and supplying them with such things as they had need of. Within two months nearly all the Muslims except those who were seized and imprisoned and those who could not escape from captivity had left Mecca, to the number of about 150. There is a story told of one of these Muslims, by name Ṣuhayb, whom Muḥammad called “the first-fruits of Greece” (he had been a Greek slave, and being set free by his master had amassed considerable wealth by successful trading); when he was about to emigrate the Meccans said to him, “Thou camest hither in need and penury; but thy wealth hath increased with us, until thou hast reached thy present prosperity; and now thou art departing, not thyself only, but with all thy property. By the Lord, that shall not be;” and he said, “If I relinquish my property, will ye leave me free to depart?” And they agreed thereto; so he parted with all his goods. And when that was told unto Muḥammad, he said, “Verily, Ṣuhayb hath made a profitable bargain.”

Muḥammad delayed his own departure (with the intention, no doubt, of withdrawing attention from his faithful followers) until a determined plot against his life warned him that further delay might be fatal, and he made his escape by means of a stratagem.

His first care after his arrival in Yat͟hrib, or Medina as it was called from this period—Madīnah al-Nabī, the city of the Prophet—was to build a mosque, to serve both as a place of prayer and of general assembly for his followers, who had hitherto met for that purpose in the dwelling-place of one of their number. The worshippers at first used to turn their faces in the direction of Jerusalem—an arrangement most probably adopted with the hope of gaining over the Jews. In many other ways, by constant appeals to their own sacred Scriptures, by according them perfect freedom of worship and political equality, Muḥammad [27]endeavoured to conciliate the Jews, but they met his advances with scorn and derision. When all hopes of amalgamation proved fruitless and it became clear that the Jews would not accept him as their Prophet, Muḥammad bade his followers turn their faces in prayer towards the Kaʻbah in Mecca. (ii. 144.)9

This change of direction during prayer has a deeper significance than might at first sight appear. It was really the beginning of the National Life of Islam: it established the Kaʻbah at Mecca as a religious centre for all the Muslim people, just as from time immemorial it had been a place of pilgrimage for all the tribes of Arabia. Of similar importance was the incorporation of the ancient Arab custom of pilgrimage to Mecca into the circle of the religious ordinances of Islam, a duty that was to be performed by every Muslim at least once in his lifetime.

There are many passages in the Qurʼān that appeal to this germ of national feeling and urge the people of Arabia to realise the privilege that had been granted them of a divine revelation in their own language and by the lips of one of their own countrymen.

But the message of Islam was not for Arabia only; the whole world was to share in it.10 As there was but one God, so there was to be but one religion into which all men were to be invited. This claim to be universal, to hold sway over all men and all nations, found a practical illustration in the letters which Muḥammad is said to have sent in the year A.D. 688 (A.H. 6) to the great potentates of that time. An invitation to embrace Islam was sent in this year to the Emperor Heraclius, the king of Persia, the governor of Yaman, the governor of Egypt and the king of Abyssinia. The letter to Heraclius is said to have been as follows:—“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, Muḥammad, who is the servant of God and His apostle, to Hiraql the Qayṣar of Rūm. Peace be on whoever has gone on the straight road. After this I say, Verily I call you to Islam. Embrace Islam, and God will reward you twofold. If you turn away from the offer of Islam, then on you be the sins of your people. O people of the Book, come towards a creed which is fit both for us and for you. It is this—to worship none but God, and not to associate anything with God, and not to call others God. Therefore, O ye people of the Book, if ye refuse, beware. We are Muslims and our religion is Islam.” However absurd this summons may have seemed to those who then received it, succeeding years showed that it was dictated by no empty enthusiasm.11 These letters only gave a more open and widespread expression to the claim to the universal acceptance which is repeatedly made for Islam in the Qurʼān. [29]

In the hour of his deepest despair, when the people of Mecca persistently turned a deaf ear to the words of their prophet (xvi. 23, 114, etc.), when the converts he had made were tortured until they recanted (xvi. 108), and others were forced to flee from the country to escape the rage of their persecutors (xvi. 43, 111)—then was delivered the promise, “One day we will raise up a witness out of every nation.” (xvi. 86.)12

This claim upon the acceptance of all mankind which the Prophet makes in these passages is further prophetically indicated in the words “first-fruits of Abyssinia,” used by Muḥammad in reference to Bilāl, and “first-fruits of Greece,” to Ṣuhayb; Salmān, the first Persian convert, was a Christian slave in Medina, who embraced the new faith in the first [30]year of the Hijrah. Thus long before any career of conquest was so much as dreamed of, the Prophet had clearly shown that Islam was not to be confined to the Arab race. The following account of the sending out of missionaries to preach Islam to all nations, points to the same claim to be a universal religion: “The Apostle of God said to his companions, ‘Come to me all of you early in the morning.’ After the morning prayer he spent some time in praising and supplicating God, as was his wont; then he turned to them and sent forth some in one direction and others in another, and said: ‘Be faithful to God in your dealings with His servants (i.e. with men), for whosoever is entrusted with any matter that concerns mankind and is not faithful in his service of them, to him God shuts the gate of Paradise: go forth and be not like the messengers of Jesus, the son of Mary, for they went only to those that lived near and neglected those that dwelt in far countries.’ Then each of these messengers came to speak the language of the people to whom he was sent. When this was told to the Prophet he said, ‘This is the greatest of the duties that they owe to God with respect to His servants.’ ”13

The proof of the universality of Islam, of its claim on the acceptance of all men, lay in the fact that it was the religion divinely appointed for the whole human race and was now revealed to them anew through Muḥammad, “the seal of the prophets” (xxxiii. 40), as it had been to former generations by other prophets.

But to return to Muḥammad in Medina. In order properly to appreciate his position after the Flight, it is important to remember the peculiar character of Arab society at that time, as far at least as this part of the peninsula was concerned. There was an entire absence of any organised administrative or judicial system such as in modern times we connect with the idea of a government. Each tribe or clan formed a separate and absolutely independent body, and this independence extended itself also to the individual members of the tribe, each of whom recognised the authority, or leadership of his chief only as being the exponent of a public opinion which he himself happened to share; but [32]he was quite at liberty to refuse his conformity to the (even) unanimous resolve of his fellow clansmen. Further, there was no regular transmission of the office of chieftain; but he was generally chosen as being the oldest member of the richest and most powerful family of the clan, and as being personally most qualified to command respect. If such a tribe became too numerous, it would split up into several divisions, each of which continued to enjoy a separate and independent existence, uniting only on some extraordinary occasion for common self-defence or some more than usually important warlike expedition. We can thus understand how Muḥammad could establish himself in Medina at the head of a large and increasing body of adherents who looked up to him as their head and leader and acknowledged no other authority,—without exciting any feeling of insecurity, or any fear of encroachment on recognised authority, such as would have arisen in a city of ancient Greece or any similarly organised community. Muḥammad thus exercised temporal authority over his people just as any other independent chief might have done, the only difference being that in the case of the Muslims a religious bond took the place of family and blood ties.

Islam thus became what, in theory at least, it has always remained—a political as well as a religious system.

“It was Muḥammad’s desire to found a new religion, and in this he succeeded; but at the same time he founded a political system of an entirely new and peculiar character. At first his only wish was to convert his fellow-countrymen to the belief in the One God—Allāh; but along with this he brought about the overthrow of the old system of government in his native city, and in place of the tribal aristocracy under which the conduct of public affairs was shared in common by the ruling families, he substituted an absolute theocratic monarchy, with himself at the head as vicar of God upon earth.

“Even before his death almost all Arabia had submitted to him; Arabia that had never before obeyed one prince, suddenly exhibits a political unity and swears allegiance to the will of an absolute ruler. Out of the numerous tribes, big and small, of a hundred different kinds that [33]were incessantly at feud with one another, Muḥammad’s word created a nation. The idea of a common religion under one common head bound the different tribes together into one political organism which developed its peculiar characteristics with surprising rapidity. Now only one great idea could have produced this result, viz. the principle of national life in heathen Arabia. The clan-system was thus for the first time, if not entirely crushed—(that would have been impossible)—yet made subordinate to the feeling of religious unity. The great work succeeded, and when Muḥammad died there prevailed over by far the greater part of Arabia a peace of God such as the Arab tribes, with their love of plunder and revenge, had never known; it was the religion of Islam that had brought about this reconciliation.”14

Even in the case of death, the claims of relationship were set aside and the bond-brother inherited all the property of his deceased companion. But after the battle of Badr, when such an artificial bond was no longer needed to unite his followers, it was abolished; such an arrangement was only necessary so long as the number of the Muslims was still small and the corporate life of Islam a novelty; moreover Muḥammad had lived in Medina for a very short space of time before the rapid increase in the number of his adherents made so communistic a social system almost impracticable.

It was only to be expected that the growth of an independent political body composed of refugees from Mecca, located in a hostile city, should eventually lead to an outbreak of hostilities; and, as is well known, every biography of Muḥammad is largely taken up with the account of a long series of petty encounters and bloody battles between his followers and the Quraysh of Mecca, ending in his triumphal entry into that city in A.D. 630, and of his hostile relations with numerous other tribes, up to the time of his death, A.D. 633.

To give any account of these campaigns is beyond the scope of the present work, but it is important to show that Muḥammad, when he found himself at the head of a band [34]of armed followers, was not transformed at once, as some would have us believe, from a peaceful preacher into a fanatic, sword in hand, forcing his religion on whomsoever he could.15

It has been frequently asserted by European writers that from the date of Muḥammad’s migration to Medina, and from the altered circumstances of his life there, the Prophet appears in an entirely new character. He is no longer the preacher, the warner, the apostle of God to men, whom he would persuade of the truth of the religion revealed to him, but now he appears rather as the unscrupulous bigot, using all means at his disposal of force and statecraft to assert himself and his opinions.

But it is false to suppose that Muḥammad in Medina laid aside his rôle of preacher and missionary of Islam, or that when he had a large army at his command, he ceased to invite unbelievers to accept the faith. Ibn Saʻd gives a number of letters written by the Prophet from Medina to chiefs and other members of different Arabian tribes, in addition to those addressed to potentates living beyond the limits of Arabia, inviting them to embrace Islam; and in the following pages will be found instances of his having sent missionaries to preach the faith to the unconverted members of their tribes, whose very ill-success in some cases is a sign of the genuinely missionary character of their efforts and the absence of an appeal to force. A typical example of such an unsuccessful mission is that sent to preach Islam to the Banū ʻĀmir b. Ṣaʻṣaʻah in the year A.H. 4. The chief of this tribe, Abū Barā ʻĀmir, visited Muḥammad in Medina, listened to his teaching, but declined to become a convert; he seemed, however, to be favourably disposed towards the new faith and asked the Prophet to send some of his followers to Najd to preach to the people of that country. The Prophet sent a party of forty Muslims, most of them young men of Medina, who were skilled in reciting the Qurʼān, and had been accustomed to meet together at night for study and prayer. But in [35]spite of the safe conduct given them by Abū Barā ʻĀmir, they were treacherously murdered and three only of the party escaped with their lives.16

The successes of the Muslim arms, however, attracted every day members of various tribes, particularly those in the vicinity of Medina, to swell the ranks of the followers of the Prophet; and “the courteous treatment which the deputations of these various clans experienced from the Prophet, his ready attention to their grievances, the wisdom with which he composed their disputes, and the politic assignments of territory by which he rewarded an early declaration in favour of Islam, made his name to be popular and spread his fame as a great and generous prince throughout the Peninsula.”17

It not unfrequently happened that one member of a tribe would come to the Prophet in Medina and return home as a missionary of Islam to convert his brethren; we have the following account of such a conversion in the year 5 (A.H.).

The Banū Saʻd b. Bakr sent one of their number, by name Ḍimām b. T͟haʻlabah as their envoy to the Prophet. He came and made his camel kneel down at the gate of the mosque and tied up its fore-leg. Then he went into the mosque, where the Prophet was sitting with his companions. He went up close to them and said, “Which among you is the son of ʻAbd al-Muṭṭalib?” “I am,” replied the Prophet. “Art thou Muḥammad?” “Yes,” was the answer. “Then, if thou wilt not take it amiss, I would fain ask thee some weighty questions.” “Nay, ask what thou wilt,” answered the Prophet. “I adjure thee by Allāh, thy God and the God of those who were before thee and of those who are to come after thee, hath Allāh sent thee as a prophet unto us?” Muḥammad answered, “Yea, by Allāh.” He continued, “I adjure thee by Allāh, thy God and the God of those who were before thee and of those who are to come after thee, hath He commanded thee to [36]bid us worship Him alone, and to associate naught else with Him and to abandon these idols that our fathers worshipped?” Muḥammad answered, “Yea, by Allāh.” Then he questioned the Prophet concerning all the ordinances of Islam, one after another, prayer and fasting, pilgrimage, etc., solemnly adjuring him as before. At the end he said, “Then I bear witness that there is no God save Allāh and I bear witness that Muḥammad is the Prophet of Allāh, and I will observe these ordinances and shun what thou hast forbidden, adding nothing thereto, and taking nothing away.” Then he turned away and loosened his camel and returned unto his own people, and when he had gathered them together, the first words he spoke unto them were: “Vile things are Lāt and ʻUzzā.” They cried out, “Hold! Ḍimām, take heed of leprosy or madness!” “Fie on you!” he replied. “By Allāh! they can neither work you weal nor woe, for Allāh has sent a Prophet and revealed to him a book, whereby he delivers you from your evil plight; I bear witness that there is no God save Allāh alone and that Muḥammad is His servant and His Prophet; and I have brought you tidings of what he enjoins and what he forbids.” The story goes on that ere nightfall there was not a man or woman in the camp who had not accepted Islam.18

Another such missionary was ʻAmr b. Murrah, belonging to the tribe of the Banū Juhaynah, who dwelt between Medina and the Red Sea. The date of his conversion was prior to the Flight, in the same year (A.H. 5), and he thus describes it: “We had an idol that we worshipped, and I was the guardian of its shrine. When I heard of the Prophet, I broke it in pieces and set off to Muḥammad, where I accepted Islam and bore witness to the truth, and believed on what Muḥammad declared to be allowed and forbidden. And to this my verses refer: ‘I bear witness that God is Truth and that I am the first to abandon the gods of stones, and I have girded up my loins to make my way to you over rough ways and smooth, to join myself to him who in himself and for his ancestry is the noblest of men, the apostle of [37]the Lord whose throne is above the clouds.’ ” He was sent by Muḥammad to preach Islam to his tribe, and his efforts were crowned with such success that there was only one man who refused to listen to his exhortations.19

When the truce of Ḥudaybiyyah (A.H. 6) made friendly relations with the people of Mecca possible, many persons of that city, who had had the opportunity of listening to the teaching of Muḥammad in the early days of his mission, and among them some men of great influence, came out to Medina, to embrace the faith of Islam.

The continual warfare carried on with the people of Mecca had hitherto kept the tribes to the south of that city almost entirely outside the influence of the new religion. But this truce now made communications with southern Arabia possible, and a small band from the tribe of the Banū Daws came from the mountains that form the northern boundary of Yaman, and joined themselves to the Prophet in Medina. Even before the appearance of Muḥammad, there were some members of this tribe who had had glimmerings of a higher religion than the idolatry prevailing around them, and argued that the world must have had a creator, though they knew not who he was; and when Muḥammad came forward as the apostle of this creator, one of these men, by name Ṭufayl b. ʻAmr, came to Mecca to learn who the creator was.

Though warned by the Quraysh of the dangerous influence that Muḥammad might exercise over him if he entered into conversation with him, he followed the Prophet to his house one day, after watching him at prayer by the Kaʻbah. Muḥammad expounded to him the doctrines of Islam, and Ṭufayl left Mecca full of zeal for the new faith. On his return home he succeeded in converting his father and his wife, but found his fellow-tribesmen unwilling to abandon their old idolatrous worship. Disheartened at the ill-success of his mission, he returned to the Prophet and besought him to call down the curse of God on the Banū Daws; but Muḥammad encouraged him to persevere in his efforts, saying, “Return to thy people and summon them to the faith, but deal gently with them.” At the [38]same time he prayed, “Oh God! guide the Banū Daws in the right way.” The success of Ṭufayl’s propaganda was such that in the year A.H. 7 he came to Medina with between seventy and eighty families of his tribesmen who had been won over to the faith of Islam, and after the triumphal entry of Muḥammad into Mecca, Ṭufayl set fire to the block of wood that had hitherto been venerated as the idol of the tribe.20

In A.H. 7, fifteen more tribes submitted to the Prophet, and after the surrender of Mecca in A.H. 8, the ascendancy of Islam was assured, and those Arabs who had held aloof, saying, “Let Muḥammad and his fellow-tribesmen fight it out; if he is victorious, then is he a genuine prophet,”21 now hastened to give in their allegiance to the new religion. Among those who came in after the fall of Mecca were some of the most bitter persecutors of Muḥammad in the earlier days of his mission, to whom his noble forbearance and forgiveness now gave a place in the brotherhood of Islam. The following year witnessed the martyrdom of ʻUrwah b. Masʻūd, one of the chiefs of the people of Ṭāʼif, which city the Muslims had unsuccessfully attempted to capture. He had been absent at that time in Yaman, and returned from his journey shortly after the raising of the siege. He had met the Prophet two years before at Ḥudaybiyyah, and had conceived a profound veneration for him, and now came to Medina to embrace the new faith. In the ardour of his zeal he offered to go to Ṭāʼif to convert his fellow-countrymen, and in spite of the efforts of Muḥammad to dissuade him from so dangerous an undertaking, he returned to his native city, publicly declared that he had renounced idolatry, and called upon the people to follow his example. While he was preaching, he was mortally wounded by an arrow, and died giving thanks to God for having granted him the glory of martyrdom. A more successful missionary effort was made by another follower of the Prophet in Yaman—probably a year later—of which we have the following graphic account: “The apostle of God wrote to al-Ḥārit͟h and Masrūḥ, and Nuʻaym b. ʻAbd al-Kulāl of Ḥimyar: ‘Peace be upon you so long as [39]ye believe on God and His apostle. God is one God, there is no partner with Him. He sent Moses with his signs, and created Jesus with his words. The Jews say, “Ezra is the Son of God,” and the Christians say, “God is one of three, and Jesus is the Son of God.” ’ He sent the letter by ʻAyyāsh b. Abī Rabīʻah al-Mak͟hzūmī, and said: ‘When you reach their city, go not in by night, but wait until the morning; then carefully perform your ablutions, and pray with two prostrations, and ask God to bless you with success and a friendly reception, and to keep you safe from harm. Then take my letter in your right hand, and deliver it with your right hand into their right hands, and they will receive it. And recite to them, “The unbelievers among the people of the Book and the polytheists did not waver,” etc. (Sūrah 98), to the end of the Sūrah; when you have finished, say, “Muḥammad has believed, and I am the first to believe.” And you will be able to meet every objection they bring against you, and every glittering book that they recite to you will lose its light. And when they speak in a foreign tongue, say, “Translate it,” and say to them, “God is sufficient for me; I believe in the Book sent down by Him, and I am commanded to do justice among you; God is our Lord and your Lord; to us belong our works, and to you belong your works; there is no strife between us and you; God will unite us, and unto Him we must return.” If they now accept Islam, then ask them for their three rods, before which they gather together to pray, one rod of tamarisk that is spotted white and yellow, and one knotted like a cane, and one black like ebony. Bring the rods out and burn them in the market-place.’ So I set out,” tells ʻAyyāsh, “to do as the Apostle of God had bid me. When I arrived, I found that all the people had decked themselves out for a festival: I walked on to see them, and came at last to three enormous curtains hung in front of three doorways. I lifted the curtain and entered the middle door, and found people collected in the courtyard of the building. I introduced myself to them as the messenger of the Apostle of God, and did as he had bidden me; and they gave heed to my words, and it fell out as he had said.”22 [40]

In A.H. 9 a deputation of thirteen men from the Banū Kilāb, a branch of the Banū ʻĀmir b. Ṣaʻṣaʻah, came to the Prophet and informed him that one of his followers, Ḍaḥḥāk b. Sufyān, had come to them, reciting the Qurʼān and teaching the doctrines of Islam, and that his preaching had won over their tribe to the new faith.23 Another branch of the same tribe, the Banū Ruʼās b. Kilāb, was converted by one of its members, named ʻAmr b. Mālik, who had been to Medina and accepted Islam, and then returned to his fellow tribes and persuaded them to follow his example.24

In the same year a less successful attempt was made by a new convert, Wāt͟hilah b. al-Asqaʻ, to induce his clan to accept the faith that he himself had embraced after an interview with the Prophet. His father scornfully cast him off, saying, “By God! I will never speak a word to you again,” and none were found willing to believe the doctrines he preached with the exception of his sister, who provided him with the means of returning to the Prophet at Medina.25 This ninth year of the Hijrah has been called the year of the deputations, because of the enormous number of Arab tribes and cities that now sent delegates to the Prophet, to give in their submission. The introduction into Arab society of a new principle of social union in the brotherhood of Islam had already begun to weaken the binding force of the old tribal ideal, which erected the fabric of society on the basis of blood-relationship. The conversion of an individual and his reception into the new society was a breach of one of the most fundamental laws of Arab life, and its frequent occurrence had acted as a powerful solvent on tribal organisation and had left it weak in the face of a national life so enthusiastic and firmly-knit as that of the Muslims had become. The Arab tribes were thus impelled to give in their submission to the Prophet, not merely as the head of the strongest military force in Arabia, but as the exponent of a theory of social life that was making all others weak and ineffective.26 Muḥammad had succeeded in introducing into the anarchical society of his time a [41]sentiment of national unity, a consciousness of rights and duties towards one another such as the Arabs had not felt before.27 In this way, Islam was uniting together clans that hitherto had been continually at feud with one another, and as this great confederacy grew, it more and more attracted to itself the weaker among the tribes of Arabia. In the accounts of the conversion of the Arab tribes, there is continual mention of the promise of security against their enemies, made to them by the Prophet on the occasion of their submission. “Woe is me for Muḥammad!” was the cry of one of the Arab tribes on the news of the death of the Prophet. “So long as he was alive, I lived in peace and in safety from my enemies;” and the cry must have found an echo far and wide throughout Arabia.

How superficial was the adherence of numbers of the Arab tribes to the faith of Islam may be judged from the widespread apostasy that followed immediately on the death of the Prophet. Their acceptance of Islam would seem to have been often dictated more by considerations of political expediency, and was more frequently a bargain struck under pressure of violence than the outcome of any enthusiasm or spiritual awakening. They allowed themselves to be swept into the stream of what had now become a great national movement, and we miss the fervent zeal of the early converts in the cool, calculating attitude of those who came in after the fall of Mecca. But even from among these must have come many to swell the ranks of the true believers animated with a genuine zeal for the faith, and ready, as we have seen, to give their lives in the effort to preach it to their brethren.

“These men were the true moral heirs of the Prophet, the future apostles of Islam, the faithful trustees of all that Muḥammad had revealed unto the men of God. Into these men, through their constant contact with the Prophet and their devotion to him, there had really entered a new mode of thought and feeling, loftier and more civilised than any they had known before; they had really changed for the better from every point of view, and later on as statesmen and generals, in the most difficult moments of the war of [42]conquest they gave magnificent and undeniable proof that the ideas and the doctrines of Muḥammad had been seed cast on fruitful soil, and had produced a body of men of the very highest worth. They were the depositaries of the sacred text of the Qurʼān, which they alone knew by heart; they were the jealous guardians of the memory of every word and bidding of the Prophet, the trustees of the moral heritage of Muḥammad. These men formed the venerable stock of Islam from whom one day was to spring the noble band of the first jurists, theologians and traditionists of Muslim society.”28

But for such men as these, so vast a movement could not have held together, much less have recovered the shock given it by the death of the founder. For it must not be forgotten how distinctly Islam was a new movement in heathen Arabia, and how diametrically opposed were the ideals of the two societies.29 For the introduction of Islam into Arab society did not imply merely the sweeping away of a few barbarous and inhuman practices, but a complete reversal of the pre-existing ideals of life.

Herein we have the most conclusive proof of the essentially missionary character of the teaching of Muḥammad, who thus comes forward as the exponent of a new scheme of faith and practice. Whatever may have been the conditions favourable to the formation of a new political organisation, Muḥammad certainly did not find the society of his day prepared to receive his religious teaching and waiting only for the voice that would express in speech the inarticulate yearnings of their hearts. But it is just this spirit of expectancy that is wanting among the Arabs—those at least of the Central Arabia towards whom Muḥammad’s efforts were at first directed. They were by no means ready to receive the preaching of a new teacher, least of all one who came with the (to them unintelligible) title of apostle of God.

Again, the equality in Islam of all believers and the common brotherhood of all Muslims, which suffered no [43]distinctions between Arab and non-Arab, between free and slave, to exist among the faithful, was an idea that ran directly counter to the proud clan-feeling of the Arab, who grounded his claims to personal consideration on the fame of his ancestors, and in the strength of the same carried on the endless blood-feuds in which his soul delighted. Indeed, the fundamental principles in the teaching of Muḥammad were a protest against much that the Arabs had hitherto most highly valued, and the newly-converted Muslim was taught to consider as virtues, qualities which hitherto he had looked down upon with contempt.

To the heathen Arab, friendship and hostility were as a loan which he sought to repay with interest, and he prided himself on returning evil for evil, and looked down on any who acted otherwise as a weak nidering.

To such men the Prophet said, “Recompense evil with that which is better” (xxiii. 98); as they desired the forgiveness of God, they were to pass over and pardon offences (xxiv. 22), and a Paradise, vast as the heavens and the earth, was prepared for those who mastered their anger and forgave others. (iii. 128.)

The very institution of prayer was jeered at by the Arabs to whom Muḥammad first delivered his message, and one of the hardest parts of his task was to induce in them that pious attitude of mind towards the Creator, which Islam inculcates equally with Judaism and Christianity, but which was practically unknown to the heathen Arabs. This self-sufficiency and this lack of the religious spirit, joined with their intense pride of race, little fitted them to receive the teachings of one who maintained that “The most worthy of honour in the sight of God is he that feareth Him most” (xlix. 13). No more could they brook the restrictions that Islam sought to lay upon the licence of their lives; wine, women, and song, were among the things most dear to the Arab’s heart in the days of the ignorance, and the Prophet was stern and severe in his injunctions respecting each of them. [44]

Thus, from the very beginning, Islam bears the stamp of a missionary religion that seeks to win the hearts of men, to convert them and persuade them to enter the brotherhood of the faithful; and as it was in the beginning, so has it continued to be up to the present day, as will be the object of the following pages to show. [45]

After the death of Muḥammad, the army he had intended for Syria was despatched thither by Abū Bakr, in spite of the protestations made by certain Muslims in view of the then disturbed state of Arabia. He silenced their expostulations with the words: “I will not revoke any order given by the Prophet. Medina may become the prey of wild beasts, but the army must carry out the wishes of Muḥammad.” This was the first of that wonderful series of campaigns in which the Arabs overran Syria, Persia and Northern Africa—overturning the ancient kingdom of Persia and despoiling the Roman Empire of some of its fairest provinces. It does not fall within the scope of this work to follow the history of these different campaigns, but, in view of the expansion of the Muslim faith that followed the Arab conquests, it is of importance to discover what were the circumstances that made such an expansion possible.

A great historian1 has well put the problem that meets us here, in the following words: “Was it genuine religious enthusiasm, the new strength of a faith now for the first time blossoming forth in all its purity, that gave the victory in every battle to the arms of the Arabs and in so incredibly short a time founded the greatest empire the world had ever seen? But evidence is wanting to prove that this was the case. The number was far too small of those who had given their allegiance to the Prophet and his teaching with a free and heartfelt conviction, while on the other hand all the greater was the number of those who had been [46]brought into the ranks of the Muhammadans only through pressure from without or by the hope of worldly gain. K͟hālid, ‘that sword of the swords of God,’ exhibited in a very striking manner that mixture of force and persuasion whereby he and many of the Quraysh had been converted, when he said that God had seized them by the hearts and by the hair and compelled them to follow the Prophet. The proud feeling too of a common nationality had much influence—a feeling which was more alive among the Arabs of that time than (perhaps) among any other people, and which alone determined many thousands to give the preference to their countryman and his religion before foreign teachers. Still more powerful was the attraction offered by the sure prospect of gaining booty in abundance, in fighting for the new religion and of exchanging their bare, stony deserts, which offered them only a miserable subsistence, for the fruitful and luxuriant countries of Persia, Syria and Egypt.”

These stupendous conquests which laid the foundations of the Arab empire, were certainly not the outcome of a holy war, waged for the propagation of Islam, but they were followed by such a vast defection from the Christian faith that this result has often been supposed to have been their aim. Thus the sword came to be looked upon by Christian historians as the instrument of Muslim propaganda, and in the light of the success attributed to it the evidences of the genuine missionary activity of Islam were obscured. But the spirit which animated the invading hosts of Arabs who poured over the confines of the Byzantine and Persian empires, was no proselytising zeal for the conversion of souls. On the contrary, religious interests appear to have entered but little into the consciousness of the protagonists of the Arab armies.2 This expansion of the Arab race is more rightly envisaged as the migration of a vigorous and energetic people driven by hunger and want, to leave their inhospitable deserts and overrun the richer lands of their more fortunate neighbours.3 Still the unifying [47]principle of the movement was the theocracy established in Medina, and the organisation of the new state proceeded from the devoted companions of Muḥammad, the faithful depositaries of his teaching, whose moral weight and enthusiasm kept Islam alive as the official religion, despite the indifference of those Arabs who gave to it a mere nominal adherence.4 It is not, therefore, in the annals of the conquering armies that we must look for the reasons which lead to the so rapid spread of the Muslim faith, but rather in the conditions prevailing among the conquered peoples.

The national character of this ethnic movement of migration naturally attracted to the invading Arab hosts the outlying representatives of the Arab race through whom the path of the conquering armies lay. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that many of the Christian Bedouins were swept into the rushing tide of this great movement and that Arab tribes, who for centuries had professed the Christian religion, now abandoned it to embrace the Muslim faith. Among these was the tribe of the Banū G͟hassān, who held sway over the desert east of Palestine and southern Syria, of whom it was said that they were “Lords in the days of the ignorance and stars in Islam.”5 After the battle of Qādisiyyah (A.H. 14) in which the Persian army under Rustam had been utterly discomfited, many Christians belonging to the Bedouin tribes on both sides of the Euphrates came to the Muslim general and said: “The tribes that at the first embraced Islam were wiser than we. Now that Rustam hath been slain, we will accept the new belief.”6 Similarly, after the conquest of northern Syria, most of the Bedouin tribes, after hesitating a little, joined themselves to the followers of the Prophet.7

That force was not the determining factor in these conversions may be judged from the amicable relations that existed between the Christian and the Muslim Arabs. Muḥammad himself had entered into treaty with several [48]Christian tribes, promising them his protection and guaranteeing them the free exercise of their religion and to their clergy undisturbed enjoyment of their old rights and authority.8 A similar bond of friendship united his followers with their fellow-countrymen of the older faith, many of whom voluntarily came forward to assist the Muslims in their military expeditions in the same spirit of loyalty to the new government as had caused them to hold aloof from the great apostasy that raised the standard of revolt throughout Arabia immediately after the death of the Prophet.9 It has been suggested that the Christian Arabs who guarded the frontier of the Byzantine empire bordering on the desert threw in their lot with the invading Muslim army, when Heraclius refused any longer to pay them their accustomed subsidy for military service as wardens of the marches.10

In the battle of the Bridge (A.H. 13) when a disastrous defeat was imminent and the panic-stricken Arabs were hemmed in between the Euphrates and the Persian host, a Christian chief of the Banū Ṭayy sprang forward like another Spurius Lartius to the side of an Arab Horatius, to assist Mut͟hannah the Muslim general in defending the bridge of boats which could alone afford the means of an orderly retreat. When fresh levies were raised to retrieve this disgrace, among the reinforcements that came pouring in from every direction was a Christian tribe of the Banū Namir, who dwelt within the limits of the Byzantine empire, and in the ensuing battle of Buwayb (A.H. 13), just before the final charge of the Arabs that turned the fortune of battle in their favour, Mut͟hannah rode up to the Christian chief and said: “Ye are of one blood with us; come now, and as I charge, charge ye with me.” The Persians fell back before their furious onslaught, and another great victory was added to the glorious roll of Muslim triumphs. One of the most gallant exploits of the day was performed by a youth belonging to another Christian tribe of the desert, who with his companions, a company of Bedouin horse-dealers, had come up just as the Arab army was being [49]drawn up in battle array. They threw themselves into the right on the side of their compatriots; and while the conflict was raging most fiercely, this youth, rushing into the centre of the Persians, slew their leader, and leaping on his richly-caparisoned horse, galloped back amidst the plaudits of the Muslim line, crying as he passed in triumph: “I am of the Banū Tag͟hlib. I am he that hath slain the chief.”11

The tribe to which this young man boasted that he belonged was one of those that elected to remain Christian, while other tribes of Mesopotamia, such as the Banū Namir and the Banū Quḍāʻah, became Muslim. The Banū Tag͟hlib had sent an embassy to the Prophet as early as the year A.H. 9. The heathen members of the deputation embraced Islam and he made a treaty with the Christians according to which they were to retain their old faith but were not to baptise their children. A condition so entirely at variance with the usual tolerant attitude of Muḥammad towards the Christian Arabs, who were allowed to choose between conversion to Islam and the payment of jizyah and never compelled to abandon their faith, has given rise to the conjecture that this condition was suggested by the Christian families of the Banū Tag͟hlib themselves, out of motives of economy.12 The long survival of Christianity in this tribe shows that this condition was certainly not observed. The caliph ʻUmar forbade any pressure to be put upon them, when they showed themselves unwilling to abandon their old faith and ordered that they should be left undisturbed in the practice of it, but that they were not to oppose the conversion of any member of their tribe to Islam nor baptise the children of such as became Muslims.13 They were called upon to pay the jizyah14 or tax imposed on the non-Muslim subjects, but they felt it to be humiliating to their pride to pay a tax that was levied in return for [50]protection of life and property, and petitioned the caliph to be allowed to make the same kind of contribution as the Muslims did. So in lieu of the jizyah they paid a double Ṣadaqah or alms,15—which was a poor tax levied on the fields and cattle, etc., of the Muslims.16 It especially irked the Muslims that any of the Arabs should remain true to the Christian faith. The majority of the Banū Tanūk͟h had become Muslim in the year A.H. 12, when with other Christian Arab tribes they submitted to K͟hālid b. al-Walīd,17 but some of them appear to have remained true to their old faith for nearly a century and a half, since the caliph al-Mahdī (A.H. 158–169) is said to have seen a number of them who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, and learning that they were Christians, in anger ordered them to accept Islam—which they did to the number of 5000, and one of them suffered martyrdom rather than apostatise.18 But for the most part, details are lacking for any history of the disappearance of Christianity from among the Christian Arab tribes of Northern Arabia; they seem to have become absorbed in the surrounding Muslim community by an almost insensible process of “peaceful penetration”; had attempts been made to convert them by force when they first came under Muhammadan rule, it would not have been possible for Christians to have survived among them up to the times of the ʻAbbāsid caliphs.19

The people of Ḥīrah had likewise resisted all the efforts made by K͟hālid to induce them to accept the Muslim faith. This city was one of the most illustrious in the annals of Arabia, and to the mind of the impetuous hero of Islam it seemed that an appeal to their Arab blood would be enough to induce them to enrol themselves with the followers of the Prophet of Arabia. When the besieged citizens sent an embassy to the Muslim general to arrange the terms of the capitulation of their city, K͟hālid asked them, “Who are [51]you? are you Arabs or Persians?” Then ʻAdī, the spokesman of the deputation, replied, “Nay, we are pure-blooded Arabs, while others among us are naturalised Arabs.” K͟h. “Had you been what you say you are, you would not have opposed us or hated our cause.” ʻA. “Our pure Arab speech is the proof of what I say.” K͟h. “You speak truly. Now choose you one of these three things: either (1) accept our faith, then your rights and obligations will be the same as ours, whether you choose to go into another country or stay in your own land; or (2) pay jizyah; or (3) war and battle. Verily, by God! I have come to you with a people who are more desirous of death than you are of life.” ʻA. “Nay, we will pay you jizyah.” K͟h. “Ill-luck to you! Unbelief is a pathless desert and foolish is the Arab who, when two guides meet him wandering therein—the one an Arab and the other not—leaves the first and accepts the guidance of the foreigner.”20

Due provision was made for the instruction of the new converts, for while whole tribes were being converted to the faith with such rapidity, it was necessary to take precautions against errors, both in respect of creed and ritual, such as might naturally be feared in the case of ill-instructed converts. Accordingly we find that the caliph ʻUmar appointed teachers in every country, whose duty it was to instruct the people in the teachings of the Qurʼān and the observances of their new faith. The magistrates were also ordered to see that all, whether old or young, were regular in their attendance at public prayer, especially on Fridays and in the month of Ramaḍān. The importance attached to this work of instructing the new converts may be judged from the fact that in the city of Kūfah it was no less a personage than the state treasurer who was entrusted with this task.21

From the examples given above of the toleration extended towards the Christian Arabs by the victorious Muslims of the first century of the Hijrah and continued by succeeding generations, we may surely infer that those Christian tribes that did embrace Islam, did so of their own choice and free [52]will.22 The Christian Arabs of the present day, dwelling in the midst of a Muhammadan population, are a living testimony of this toleration; Layard speaks of having come across an encampment of Christian Arabs at al-Karak, to the east of the Dead Sea, who differed in no way, either in dress or in manners, from the Muslim Arabs.23 Burckhardt was told by the monks of Mount Sinai that in the last century there still remained several families of Christian Bedouins who had not embraced Islam, and that the last of them, an old woman, died in 1750, and was buried in the garden of the convent.24

Many of the Arabs of the renowned tribe of the Banū G͟hassān, Arabs of the purest blood, who embraced Christianity towards the end of the fourth century, still retain the Christian faith, and since their submission to the Church of Rome, about two centuries ago, employ the Arabic language in their religious services.25

If we turn from the Bedouins to consider the attitude of the settled inhabitants of the towns and the non-Arab population towards the new religion, we do not find that the Arab conquest was so rapidly followed by conversions to Islam. The Christians of the great cities of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine empire seem for the most part to have remained faithful to their ancestral creed, to which indeed they still in large numbers cling.

In order that we may fully appreciate their condition under the Muslim rule, and estimate the influences that led to occasional conversions, it will be well briefly to sketch their situation under the Christian rule of the Byzantine empire which fell back before the Arab arms.

A hundred years before, Justinian had succeeded in giving some show of unity to the Roman Empire, but after [53]his death it rapidly fell asunder, and at this time there was an entire want of common national feeling between the provinces and the seat of government. Heraclius had made some partially successful efforts to attach Syria again to the central government, but unfortunately the general methods of reconciliation which he adopted had served only to increase dissension instead of allaying it. Religious passions were the only existing substitute for national feeling, and he tried, by propounding an exposition of faith, that was intended to serve as an eirenicon, to stop all further disputes between the contending factions and unite the heretics to the Orthodox Church and to the central government. The Council of Chalcedon (451) had maintained that Christ was “to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, change, division, or separation; the difference of the natures being in nowise taken away by reason of their union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved, and concurring into one person and one substance, not as it were divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten, God the Word.” This council was rejected by the Monophysites, who only allowed one nature in the person of Christ, who was said to be a composite person, having all attributes divine and human, but the substance bearing these attributes was no longer a duality, but a composite unity. The controversy between the orthodox party and the Monophysites, who flourished particularly in Egypt and Syria and in countries outside the Byzantine empire, had been hotly contested for nearly two centuries, when Heraclius sought to effect a reconciliation by means of the doctrine of Monotheletism: while conceding the duality of the natures, it secured unity of the person in the actual life of Christ, by the rejection of two series of activities in this one person; the one Christ and Son of God effectuates that which is human and that which is divine by one divine human agency, i.e. there is only one will in the Incarnate Word.26

But Heraclius shared the fate of so many would-be [54]peace-makers: for not only did the controversy blaze up again all the more fiercely, but he himself was stigmatised as a heretic and drew upon himself the wrath of both parties.

Indeed, so bitter was the feeling he aroused that there is strong reason to believe that even a majority of the orthodox subjects of the Roman Empire, in the provinces that were conquered during this emperor’s reign, were the well-wishers of the Arabs; they regarded the emperor with aversion as a heretic, and were afraid that he might commence a persecution in order to force upon them his Monotheletic opinions.27 They therefore readily—and even eagerly—received the new masters who promised them religious toleration, and were willing to compromise their religious position and their national independence if only they could free themselves from the immediately impending danger.

Michael the Elder, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, writing in the latter half of the twelfth century, could approve the decision of his co-religionists and see the finger of God in the Arab conquests even after the Eastern churches had had experience of five centuries of Muhammadan rule. After recounting the persecutions of Heraclius, he writes: “This is why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful, and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the humble—beholding the wickedness of the Romans who, throughout their dominions, cruelly plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without pity—brought from the region of the south the sons of Ishmael, to deliver us through them from the hands of the Romans. And, if in truth, we have suffered some loss, because the catholic churches, that had been taken away from us and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when the cities submitted to the Arabs, they assigned to each denomination the churches which they found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great church of Emessa [55]and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless it was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves at peace.”28

When the Muslim army reached the valley of the Jordan and Abū ʻUbaydah pitched his camp at Fiḥl, the Christian inhabitants of the country wrote to the Arabs, saying: “O Muslims, we prefer you to the Byzantines, though they are of our own faith, because you keep better faith with us and are more merciful to us and refrain from doing us injustice and your rule over us is better than theirs, for they have robbed us of our goods and our homes.”29 The people of Emessa closed the gates of their city against the army of Heraclius and told the Muslims that they preferred their government and justice to the injustice and oppression of the Greeks.30

Such was the state of feeling in Syria during the campaign of 633–639 in which the Arabs gradually drove the Roman army out of the province. And when Damascus, in 637, set the example of making terms with the Arabs, and thus secured immunity from plunder and other favourable conditions, the rest of the cities of Syria were not slow to follow. Emessa, Arethusa, Hieropolis and other towns entered into treaties whereby they became tributary to the Arabs. Even the patriarch of Jerusalem surrendered the city on similar terms. The fear of religious compulsion on the part of the heretical emperor made the promise of Muslim toleration appear more attractive than the connection with the Roman Empire and a Christian government, and after the first terrors caused by the passage of an invading army, there succeeded a profound revulsion of feeling in favour of the Arab conquerors.31 [56]

For the provinces of the Byzantine empire that were rapidly acquired by the prowess of the Muslims found themselves in the enjoyment of a toleration such as, on account of their Monophysite and Nestorian opinions, had been unknown to them for many centuries. They were allowed the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion with some few restrictions imposed for the sake of preventing any friction between the adherents of the rival religions, or arousing any fanaticism by the ostentatious exhibition of religious symbols that were so offensive to Muslim feeling.32 The extent of this toleration—so striking in the history of the seventh century—may be judged from the terms granted to the conquered cities, in which protection of life and property and toleration of religious belief were given in return for submission and the payment of jizyah.33

The exact details of these agreements cannot easily be disentangled from the accretions with which they have become overlaid, but whether verbally authentic or not, they are significant as representing the historic tradition accepted by the Muslim historians of the second century of the Hijrah—a tradition that could hardly have become established had there been extant evidence to the contrary. As an example of such an agreement, the conditions34 may be quoted that are stated to have been drawn up when Jerusalem submitted to the caliph ʻUmar b. al-K͟haṭṭāb: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! This is the security which ʻUmar, the servant of God, the commander of the faithful, grants to the people of Ælia. He grants to all, whether sick or sound, security for their lives, their possessions, their churches and their crosses, and for all that concerns their religion. Their churches shall not be changed into dwelling places, nor destroyed, neither shall they nor their appurtenances be in any way diminished, nor the crosses of the inhabitants nor aught of their possessions, nor shall any constraint be put upon them in the matter of their faith, nor shall any one of them be harmed.”35 [57]

Tribute was imposed upon them of five dīnārs for the rich, four for the middle class and three for the poor. In company with the Patriarch, ʻUmar visited the holy places, and it is said while they were in the Church of the Resurrection, as it was the appointed hour of prayer, the Patriarch bade the caliph offer his prayers there, but he thoughtfully refused, saying that if he were to do so, his followers might afterwards claim it as a place of Muslim worship.

It is in harmony with the same spirit of kindly consideration for his subjects of another faith, that ʻUmar is recorded to have ordered an allowance of money and food to be made to some Christian lepers, apparently out of the public funds.36 Even in his last testament, in which he enjoins on his successor the duties of his high office, he remembers the d͟himmīs (or protected persons of other faiths): “I commend to his care the d͟himmīs, who enjoy the protection of God and of the Prophet; let him see to it that the covenant with them is kept, and that no greater burdens than they can bear are laid upon them.”37

A later generation attributed to ʻUmar a number of restrictive regulations which hampered the Christians in the free exercise of their religion, but De Goeje38 and Caetani39 have proved without doubt that they are the invention of a later age; as, however, Muslim theologians of less tolerant periods accepted these ordinances as genuine, they are of importance for forming a judgment as to the condition of the Christian Churches under Muslim rule. This so-called ordinance of ʻUmar runs as follows:—“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! This is a writing to ʻUmar b. al-K͟haṭṭāb from the Christians of such and such a city. When you marched against us, we asked of you protection for ourselves, our posterity, our possessions and our co-religionists; and we made this stipulation with you, that we will not erect in our city or the suburbs any new monastery, church, cell or hermitage;40 [58]that we will not repair any of such buildings that may fall into ruins, or renew those that may be situated in the Muslim quarters of the town; that we will not refuse the Muslims entry into our churches either by night or by day; that we will open the gates wide to passengers and travellers; that we will receive any Muslim traveller into our houses and give him food and lodging for three nights; that we will not harbour any spy in our churches or houses, or conceal any enemy of the Muslims; that we will not teach our children the Qurʼān;41 that we will not make a show of the Christian religion nor invite any one to embrace it; that we will not prevent any of our kinsmen from embracing Islam, if they so desire. That we will honour the Muslims and rise up in our assemblies when they wish to take their seats; that we will not imitate them in our dress, either in the cap, turban, sandals, or parting of the hair; that we will not make use of their expressions of speech,42 nor adopt their surnames; that we will not ride on saddles, or gird on swords, or take to ourselves arms or wear them, or engrave Arabic inscriptions on our rings; that we will not sell wine; that we will shave the front of our heads; that we will keep to our own style of dress, wherever we may be; that we will wear girdles round our waists; that we will not display the cross upon our churches or display our crosses or our sacred books in the streets of the Muslims, or in their market-places;43 that we will strike the bells44 in our churches lightly; that we will not recite our services in a loud voice when a Muslim is present, that we will not carry palm-branches or our images in procession in the streets, that at the burial of our dead we will not chant loudly or carry lighted candles [59]in the streets of the Muslims or their market-places; that we will not take any slaves that have already been in the possession of Muslims, nor spy into their houses; and that we will not strike any Muslim. All this we promise to observe, on behalf of ourselves and our co-religionists, and receive protection from you in exchange; and if we violate any of the conditions of this agreement, then we forfeit your protection and you are at liberty to treat us as enemies and rebels.”45

The earliest mention of this document is made by Ibn Ḥazm, who died in the middle of the fifth century of the Hijrah; its provisions represent the more intolerant practice of a later age, and indeed were regulations that were put into force with no sort of regularity, some outburst of fanaticism being generally needed for any appeal to be made for their application. There is abundant evidence to show that the Christians in the early days of the Muhammadan conquest had little to complain of in the way of religious disabilities. It is true that adherence to their ancient faith rendered them obnoxious to the payment of jizyah—a word which originally denoted tribute of any kind paid by the non-Muslim subjects of the Arab empire, but came later on to be used for the capitation-tax as the fiscal system of the new rulers became fixed;46 but this jizyah was too moderate to constitute a burden, seeing that it released them from the compulsory military service that was incumbent on their Muslim fellow-subjects. Conversion to Islam was certainly attended by a certain pecuniary advantage, but his former religion could have had but little hold on a convert who abandoned it merely to gain exemption from the jizyah; and now, instead of jizyah, the convert had to pay the legal alms, zakāt, annually levied on most kinds of movable and immovable property.47 [60]The pecuniary temptation to escape the incidence of taxation by means of conversion was considerably lessened when financial considerations compelled the Arab government, towards the end of the first century, to insist on the new converts continuing to pay jizyah even after they had been received into the community of the faithful.48 On the other hand it must be remembered that the non-Muslim sections of the population always ran the risk of becoming the victims of fiscal oppression when the state was in need of revenue.

The rates of jizyah levied by the early conquerors were not uniform,49 and the great Muslim doctors, Abū Ḥanīfah and Mālik, are not in agreement on some of the less important details;50 the following facts taken from the Kitāb al-K͟harāj, drawn up by Abū Yūsuf at the request of Hārūn al-Rashīd (A.D. 786–809) may be taken as generally representative of Muhammadan procedure under the ʻAbbāsid Caliphate. The rich were to pay forty-eight dirhams51 a year, the middle classes twenty-four, while from the poor, i.e. the field-labourers and artisans, only twelve dirhams were taken. This tax could be paid in kind if desired; cattle, merchandise, household effects, even needles were to be accepted in lieu of specie, but not pigs, wine, or dead animals. The tax was to be levied only on able-bodied males, and not on women or children.52 The poor who were dependent for their livelihood on alms and the aged poor who were incapable of work were also specially excepted, as also the blind, the lame, the incurables and the insane, unless they happened to be men of wealth; this same condition applied to priests and monks, who were exempt if dependent on the alms of the rich, but had to pay if they were well-to-do and lived in comfort. The collectors of the jizyah were particularly instructed to show leniency, and refrain from all harsh treatment or the infliction of corporal punishment, in case of non-payment.53

This tax was not imposed on the Christians, as some would have us think, as a penalty for their refusal to accept the Muslim faith, but was paid by them in common with the [61]other d͟himmīs or non-Muslim subjects of the state whose religion precluded them from serving in the army, in return for the protection secured for them by the arms of the Musalmans. When the people of Hīrah contributed the sum agreed upon, they expressly mentioned that they paid this jizyah on condition that “the Muslims and their leader protect us from those who would oppress us, whether they be Muslims or others.”54 Again, in the treaty made by K͟hālid with some towns in the neighbourhood of Hīrah, he writes: “If we protect you, then jizyah is due to us; but if we do not, then it is not due.”55 How clearly this condition was recognised by the Muhammadans may be judged from the following incident in the reign of the Caliph ʻUmar. The Emperor Heraclius had raised an enormous army with which to drive back the invading forces of the Muslims, who had in consequence to concentrate all their energies on the impending encounter. The Arab general, Abū ʻUbaydah, accordingly wrote to the governors of the conquered cities of Syria, ordering them to pay back all the jizyah that had been collected from the cities, and wrote to the people, saying, “We give you back the money that we took from you, as we have received news that a strong force is advancing against us. The agreement between us was that we should protect you, and as this is not now in our power, we return you all that we took. But if we are victorious we shall consider ourselves bound to you by the old terms of our agreement.” In accordance with this order, enormous sums were paid back out of the state treasury, and the Christians called down blessings on the heads of the Muslims, saying, “May God give you rule over us again and make you victorious over the Romans; had it been they, they would not have given us back anything, but would have taken all that remained with us.”56

As stated above, the jizyah was levied on the able-bodied males, in lieu of the military service they would have been called upon to perform had they been Musalmans; and it is very noticeable that when any Christian people served in the Muslim army, they were exempted from the payment [62]of this tax. Such was the case with the tribe of al-Jurājimah, a Christian tribe in the neighbourhood of Antioch, who made peace with the Muslims, promising to be their allies and fight on their side in battle, on condition that they should not be called upon to pay jizyah and should receive their proper share of the booty.57 When the Arab conquests were pushed to the north of Persia in A.H. 22, a similar agreement was made with a frontier tribe, which was exempted from the payment of jizyah in consideration of military service.58

We find similar instances of the remission of jizyah in the case of Christians who served in the army or navy under the Turkish rule. For example, the inhabitants of Megaris, a community of Albanian Christians, were exempted from the payment of this tax on condition that they furnished a body of armed men to guard the passes over Mounts Cithæron and Geranea, which lead to the Isthmus of Corinth; the Christians who served as pioneers of the advance-guard of the Turkish army, repairing the roads and bridges, were likewise exempt from tribute and received grants of land quit of all taxation;59 and the Christian inhabitants of Hydra paid no direct taxes to the Sultan, but furnished instead a contingent of 250 able-bodied seamen to the Turkish fleet, who were supported out of the local treasury.60

The Southern Rumanians, the so-called Armatoli,61 who constituted so important an element of strength in the Turkish army during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Mirdites, a tribe of Albanian Catholics who occupied the mountains to the north of Scutari, were exempt from taxation on condition of supplying an armed contingent in time of war.62 In the same spirit, in consideration of the services they rendered to the state, the capitation-tax was not imposed upon the Greek Christians who looked after the aqueducts that supplied Constantinople with drinking water,63 nor on those who had charge of the powder-magazine in that city.64 On the other hand, when the Egyptian [63]peasants, although Muslim in faith, were made exempt from military service, a tax was imposed upon them as on the Christians, in lieu thereof.65

Living under this security of life and property and such toleration of religious thought, the Christian community—especially in the towns—enjoyed a flourishing prosperity in the early days of the Caliphate.

Muʻāwiyah (661–680) employed Christians very largely in his service, and other members of the reigning house followed his example.66 Christians frequently held high posts at court, e.g. a Christian Arab, al-Ak͟hṭal, was court poet, and the father of St. John of Damascus, counsellor to the caliph ʻAbd al-Malik (685–705). In the service of the caliph al-Muʻtaṣim (833–842), there were two brothers, Christians, who stood very high in the confidence of the Commander of the Faithful: the one, named Salmūyah, seems to have occupied somewhat the position of a modern secretary of state, and no royal documents were valid until countersigned by him, while his brother, Ibrāhīm, was entrusted with the care of the privy seal, and was set over the Bayt al-Māl or Public Treasury, an office that, from the nature of the funds and their disposal, might have been expected to have been put into the hands of a Muslim; so great was the caliph’s personal affection for this Ibrāhīm, that he visited him in his sickness, and was overwhelmed with grief at his death, and on the day of the funeral ordered the body to be brought to the palace and the Christian rites performed there with great solemnity.67

ʻAbd al-Malik appointed a certain Athanasius, a Christian scholar of Edessa, tutor to his brother, ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz. Athanasius accompanied his pupil, when he was appointed governor of Egypt, and there amassed great wealth; he is said to have possessed 4000 slaves, villages, houses, gardens, and gold and silver “like stones”; his sons took a dīnār from each of the soldiers when they received their pay, and as there were 30,000 troops then in Egypt, some idea may be formed of the wealth that Athanasius accumulated during [64]the twenty-one years that he spent in that country.68 At the close of the eighth century, a certain Abū Nūḥ al-Anbārī was secretary to Abū Mūsạ̄ b. Muṣʻab, governor of Mosul, and used his powerful influence for the benefit of his Christian co-religionists.69

In the reign of al-Muʻtadid (892–902), the governor of Anbār, ʻUmar b. Yūsuf, was a Christian, and the caliph approved of the appointment on the ground that if a Christian were found to be competent, a post might well be given to him, as there were better reasons for trusting a Christian than either a Jew, a Muslim or a Zoroastrian.70 Al-Muwaffaq, who was virtual ruler of the empire during the reign of his brother al-Muʻtamid (870–892), entrusted the administration of the army to a Christian named Israel, and his son, al-Muʻtaḍid, had as one of his secretaries another Christian, Malik b. al-Walīd. In a later reign, that of al-Muqtadir (908–932), a Christian was again in charge of the war office.71

Naṣr b. Hārūn, the Prime Minister of ʻAḍud al-Dawlah (949–982), of the Buwayhid dynasty of Persia, who ruled over Southern Persia and ʻIrāq, was a Christian.72 For a long time, the government offices, especially in the department of finance, were filled with Christians and Persians;73 to a much later date was such the case in Egypt, where at times the Christians almost entirely monopolised such posts.74 Particularly as physicians, the Christians frequently amassed great wealth and were much honoured in the houses of the great. Gabriel, the personal physician of the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, was a Nestorian Christian and derived a yearly income of 800,000 dirhams from his private property, in addition to an emolument of 280,000 dirhams a year in return for his attendance on the caliph; the second physician, also a Christian, received 22,000 dirhams a year.75 In trade and commerce, the Christians also attained considerable affluence: indeed it was frequently their wealth that excited against them the jealous [65]cupidity of the mob—a feeling that fanatics took advantage of, to persecute and oppress them. Further, the non-Muslim communities enjoyed an almost complete autonomy, for the government placed in their hands the independent management of their internal affairs, and their religious leaders exercised judicial functions in cases that concerned their co-religionists only.76 Their churches and monasteries were, for the most part, not interfered with, except in the large cities, where some of them were turned into mosques—a measure that could hardly be objected to in view of the enormous increase in the Muslim and corresponding decrease in the Christian population.

Recent historical criticism has demonstrated the impossibility of the legend that when Damascus was taken by the Arabs, the churches were equally divided between the Christians and the conquerors, on the plea that while one Muslim general made his way into the city by the eastern gate at the point of the sword, another at the western gate received the submission of the governor of the city; a similar scrutiny of historical documents as well as of the topography of the building has shown that the great cathedral of St. John could never have been used in the manner described by some Arabic historians as a common place of worship for both Christians and Muslims.77 But the very fact that these historians should have believed that such an arrangement continued for nearly eighty years, testifies to the early recognition of the liberty granted to the Christians of practising the observances of their religion.

The opinion of the Muhammadan legists is very diverse on this question, from the more liberal Ḥanafī doctrine, which declares that, though it is unlawful to construct churches and synagogues in Muhammadan territory, those already existing can be repaired if they have been destroyed or have fallen into decay, while in villages and hamlets, where the tokens of Islam do not appear, new churches and synagogues may be built—to the intolerant Ḥanbalite view that they may neither be erected nor be restored when damaged or ruined. Some legists held that the privileges varied according to treaty rights: in towns taken by force, [66]no new houses of prayer might be erected by d͟himmīs, but if a special treaty had been made, the building of new churches and synagogues was allowed.78 But like so many of the lucubrations of Muhammadan legists, these prescriptions bore but little relation to actual facts.79 Schoolmen might agree that the d͟himmīs could build no houses of prayer in a city of Muslim foundation, but the civil authority permitted the Copts to erect churches in the new capital of Cairo.80 In other cities also the Christians were allowed to erect new churches and monasteries. The very fact that ʻUmar II (717–720), at the close of the first century of the Hijrah, should have ordered the destruction of all recently constructed churches,81 and that rather more than a century later, the fanatical al-Mutawakkil (847–861) should have had to repeat the same order, shows how little the prohibition of the building of new churches was put into force.82 We have numerous instances recorded, both by Christian and Muhammadan historians, of the building of new churches: e.g. in the reign of ʻAbd al-Malik (685–705), a wealthy Christian of Edessa, named Athanasius, erected in his native city a fine church dedicated to the Mother of God, and a Baptistery in honour of the picture of Christ that was reputed to have been sent to King Abgar; he also built a number of churches and monasteries in various parts of Egypt, among them two magnificent churches in Fusṭāṭ.83 Some Christian chamberlains in the service of ʻAbd al-ʻAziz b. Marwān (brother of ʻAbd al-Malik), the governor of Egypt, obtained permission to build a church in Ḥalwān, which was dedicated to St. John,84 though this town was a Muslim creation. In A.D. 711 a Jacobite church was built at Antioch by order of the caliph al-Walīd (705–715).85 In the first year of the reign of Yazīd [67]II (A.D. 720), Mār Elias, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, made a solemn entry into Antioch, accompanied by his clergy and monks, to consecrate a new church which he had caused to be built; and in the following year he consecrated another church in the village of Sarmada, in the district of Antioch, and the only opposition he met with was from the rival Christian sect that accepted the Council of Chalcedon.86 In the following reign, K͟hālid al-Qasrī, who was governor of Arabian and Persian ʻIrāq from 724 to 738, built a church for his mother, who was a Christian, to worship in.87 In 759 the building of a church at Nisibis was completed, on which the Nestorian bishop, Cyprian, had expended a sum of 56,000 dīnārs.88 From the same century dates the church of Abū Sirjah in the ancient Roman fortress in old Cairo.89 In the reign of al-Mahdī (775–785) a church was erected in Bag͟hdād for the use of the Christian prisoners that had been taken captive during the numerous campaigns against the Byzantine empire.90 Another church was built in the same city, in the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809), by the people of Samālū, who had submitted to the caliph and received protection from him;91 during the same reign Sergius, the Nestorian Metropolitan of Baṣrah, received permission to build a church in that city,92 though it was a Muslim foundation, having been created by the caliph ʻUmar in the year 638, and a magnificent church was erected in Babylon in which were enshrined the bodies of the prophets Daniel and Ezechiel.93 When al-Maʼmūn (813–833) was in Egypt he gave permission to two of his chamberlains to erect a church on al-Muqaṭṭam, a hill near Cairo; and by the same caliph’s leave, a wealthy Christian, named Bukām, built several fine churches at Būrah in Egypt.94 The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, who died A.D. 820, erected a church at Takrīt and a monastery at Bag͟hdād.95 In the tenth century, the beautiful Coptic church of Abū [68]Sayfayn was built in Fusṭāṭ.96 A new church was built at Jiddah in the reign of al-Ẓāhir, the seventh Fāṭimid caliph of Egypt (1020–1035).97 New churches and monasteries were also built in the reign of the ʻAbbāsid, al-Mustaḍī (1170–1180).98 In 1187 a church was built at Fusṭāṭ and dedicated to Our Lady the Pure Virgin.99

Indeed, so far from the development of the Christian Church being hampered by the establishment of Muhammadan rule, the history of the Nestorians exhibits a remarkable outburst of religious life and energy from the time of their becoming subject to the Muslims.100 Alternately petted and persecuted by the Persian kings, in whose dominions by far the majority of the members of this sect were found, it had passed a rather precarious existence and had been subjected to harsh treatment, when war between Persia and Byzantium exposed it to the suspicion of sympathising with the Christian enemy. But, under the rule of the caliphs, the security they enjoyed at home enabled them to vigorously push forward their missionary enterprises abroad. Missionaries were sent into China and India, both of which were raised to the dignity of metropolitan sees in the eighth century; about the same period they gained a footing in Egypt, and later spread the Christian faith right across Asia, and by the eleventh century had gained many converts from among the Tatars.101

If the other Christian sects failed to exhibit the same vigorous life, it was not the fault of the Muhammadans. All were tolerated alike by the supreme government, and furthermore were prevented from persecuting one another.102 In the fifth century, Barsauma, a Nestorian bishop, had persuaded the Persian king to set on foot a fierce persecution [69]of the Orthodox Church, by representing Nestorius as a friend of the Persians and his doctrines as approximating to their own; as many as 7800 of the Orthodox clergy, with an enormous number of laymen, are said to have been butchered during this persecution.103 Another persecution was instituted against the Orthodox by K͟husrau II, after the invasion of Persia by Heraclius, at the instigation of a Jacobite, who persuaded the King that the Orthodox would always be favourably inclined towards the Byzantines.104 But the principles of Muslim toleration forbade such acts of injustice as these: on the contrary, it seems to have been their endeavour to deal fairly by all their Christian subjects: e.g. after the conquest of Egypt, the Jacobites took advantage of the expulsion of the Byzantine authorities to rob the Orthodox of their churches, but later they were restored by the Muhammadans to their rightful owners when these had made good their claim to possess them.105

In view of the toleration thus extended to their Christian subjects in the early period of the Muslim rule, the common hypothesis of the sword as the factor of conversion seems hardly satisfactory, and we are compelled to seek for other motives than that of persecution. But unfortunately very few details are forthcoming and we are obliged to have recourse to conjecture.106 In an age so prolific of theological speculation, there may well have been some thinkers whose trend of thought had prepared them for the acceptance of the Muhammadan position. Such were those Shahrīghān or landed proprietors in Persia in the eighth century, who were nominally Christians, but maintained that Christ was an ordinary man and that he was as one of the Prophets.107 They appear at times to have given a good deal of trouble [70]to the Nestorian clergy, who were at great pains to draw them into the paths of orthodoxy;108 but their theological position was more closely akin to Islam than to Christian doctrine, and they probably went to swell the ranks of the converts after the Arab conquest of the Persian empire.

Many Christian theologians109 have supposed that the debased condition—moral and spiritual—of the Eastern Church of that period must have alienated the hearts of many and driven them to seek a healthier spiritual atmosphere in the faith of Islam which had come to them in all the vigour of new-born zeal.110 For example, Dean Milman111 asks, “What was the state of the Christian world in the provinces exposed to the first invasion of Mohammedanism? Sect opposed to sect, clergy wrangling with clergy upon the most abstruse and metaphysical points of doctrine. The orthodox, the Nestorians, the Eutychians, the Jacobites were persecuting each other with unexhausted animosity; and it is not judging too severely the evils of religious controversy to suppose that many would rejoice in the degradation of their adversaries under the yoke of the unbeliever, rather than make common cause with them in defence of the common Christianity. In how many must this incessant disputation have shaken the foundations of their faith! It had been wonderful if thousands had not, in their weariness and perplexity, sought refuge from these interminable and implacable controversies in the simple, intelligible truth of the Divine Unity, though purchased by the acknowledgment of the prophetic mission of Mohammed.” Similarly, Caetani sees in the spread of Islam, among the Christians of the Eastern Churches, a revulsion of feeling from the dogmatic subtleties introduced into Christian theology by the Hellenistic spirit. “For the East, with its love of clear and simple concepts, Hellenic culture was, from the religious point of view, a misfortune, because [71]it changed the sublime and simple teachings of Christ into a creed bristling with incomprehensible dogmas, full of doubts and uncertainties; these ended with producing a feeling of deep dismay and shook the very foundations of religious belief; so that when at last there appeared, coming out suddenly from the desert, the news of the new revelation, this bastard oriental Christianity, torn asunder by internal discords, wavering in its fundamental dogmas, dismayed by such incertitudes, could no longer resist the temptations of a new faith, which swept away at one single stroke all miserable doubts, and offered, along with simple, clear and undisputed doctrines, great material advantages also. The East then abandoned Christ and threw itself into the arms of the Prophet of Arabia.”112

Again, Canon Taylor113 says: “It is easy to understand why this reformed Judaism spread so swiftly over Africa and Asia. The African and Syrian doctors had substituted abstruse metaphysical dogmas for the religion of Christ: they tried to combat the licentiousness of the age by setting forth the celestial merit of celibacy and the angelic excellence of virginity—seclusion from the world was the road of holiness, dirt was the characteristic of monkish sanctity—the people were practically polytheists, worshipping a crowd of martyrs, saints and angels; the upper classes were effeminate and corrupt, the middle classes oppressed by taxation,114 the slaves without hope for the present or the future. As with the besom of God, Islam swept away this mass of corruption and superstition. It was a revolt against empty theological polemics; it was a masculine protest against the exaltation of celibacy as a crown of piety. It brought out the fundamental dogmas of religion—the unity and greatness of God, that He is merciful and righteous, that He claims obedience to His will, resignation and faith. It proclaimed the responsibility of man, a future life, a day of judgment, and stern retribution to fall upon the wicked; and enforced the duties of prayer, almsgiving, fasting and [72]benevolence. It thrust aside the artificial virtues, the religious frauds and follies, the perverted moral sentiments, and the verbal subtleties of theological disputants. It replaced monkishness by manliness. It gave hope to the slave, brotherhood to mankind, and recognition to the fundamental facts of human nature.”

Islam has, moreover, been represented as a reaction against that Byzantine ecclesiasticism,115 which looked upon the emperor and his court as a copy of the Divine Majesty on high, and the emperor himself as not only the supreme earthly ruler of Christendom, but as High-priest also.116 Under Justinian this system had been hardened into a despotism that pressed like an iron weight upon clergy and laity alike. In 532 the widespread dissatisfaction in Constantinople with both church and state, burst out into a revolt against the government of Justinian, which was only suppressed after a massacre of 35,000 persons. The Greens, as the party of the malcontents was termed, had made open and violent protest in the circus against the oppression of the emperor, crying out, “Justice has vanished from the world and is no more to be found. But we will become Jews, or rather we will return again to Grecian paganism.”117 The lapse of a century had removed none of the grounds for the dissatisfaction that here found such violent expression, but the heavy hand of the Byzantine government prevented the renewal of such an outbreak as that of 532 and compelled the malcontents to dissemble, though in 560 some secret heathens were detected in Constantinople and punished.118 On the borders of the empire, however, at a distance from the capital, such malcontents were safer, and the persecuted heretics, and others dissatisfied with the [73]Byzantine state-church, took refuge in the East, and here the Muslim armies would be welcomed by the spiritual children of those who a hundred years before had desired to exchange the Christian religion for another faith.

Further, the general adoption of the Arabic language throughout the empire of the caliphate, especially in the towns and the great centres of population, and the gradual assimilation in manners and customs that in the course of about two centuries caused the numerous conquered races to be largely merged in the national life of the ruling race, had no doubt a counterpart in the religious and intellectual life of many members of the protected religions. The rationalistic movement that so powerfully influenced Muslim theology from the second to the fifth century of the Hijrah may very possibly have influenced Christian thinkers, and turned them from a religion, the prevailing tone of whose theology seems at this time to have been Credo quia impossibile. A Muhammadan writer of the fourth century of the Hijrah has preserved for us a conversation with a Coptic Christian which may safely be taken as characteristic of the general mental attitude of the rest of the Eastern Churches at this period:—

“My proof for the truth of Christianity is, that I find its teachings contradictory and mutually destructive, for they are repugnant to reason and revolting to the intellect, on account of their inconsistency and mutual contrariety. No reflection can strengthen them, no discussion can prove them; and however thoughtfully we may investigate them, neither the intellect nor the senses can provide us with any argument in support of them. Notwithstanding this, I have seen that many nations and mighty kings of learning and sound judgment, have given in their allegiance to the Christian faith; so I conclude that if these have accepted it in spite of all the contradictions referred to, it is because the proofs they have received, in the form of signs and miracles, have compelled them to submit to it.”119

On the other hand, it should be remembered that those who passed over from Christianity to Islam, under the influence of the rationalistic tendencies of the age, would [74]find in the Muʻtazilite presentment of Muslim theology, very much that was common to the two faiths, so that as far as the articles of belief and the intellectual attitude towards many theological questions were concerned, the transition was not so violent as might be supposed. To say nothing of the numerous fundamental doctrines, that will at once suggest themselves to those even who have only a slight knowledge of the teachings of the Prophet, there were many other common points of view, that were the direct consequences of the close relationships between the Christian and Muhammadan theologians in Damascus under the Umayyad caliphs as also in later times; for it has been maintained that there is clear evidence of the influence of the Byzantine theologians on the development of the systematic treatment of Muhammadan dogmatics. The very form and arrangement of the oldest rule of faith in the Arabic language suggest a comparison with similar treatises of St. John of Damascus and other Christian fathers.120 The oldest Arab Ṣūfīism, the trend of which was purely towards the ascetic life (as distinguished from the later pantheistic Ṣūfīism) originated largely under the influence of Christian thought.121 Such influence is especially traceable in the doctrines of some of the Muʻtazilite sects,122 who busied themselves with speculations on the attributes of the divine nature quite in the manner of the Byzantine theologians: the Qadariyyah or libertarians of Islam probably borrowed their doctrine of the freedom of the will directly from Christianity, while the Murjiʼah in their denial of the doctrine of eternal punishment were in thorough agreement with the teaching of the Eastern Church on this subject as against the generally received opinion of orthodox Muslims.123 On the other hand, the influence of the more orthodox doctors of Islam in the conversion of unbelievers is attested by the tradition that twenty thousand Christians, Jews and Magians became Muslims when the great Imām Ibn Ḥanbal died.124 A celebrated [75]doctor of the same sect, Abu’l-Faraj b. al-Jawzī (A.D. 1115–1201), the most learned man of his time, a popular preacher and most prolific writer, is said to have boasted that just the same number of persons accepted the faith of Islam at his hands.125

Further, the vast and unparalleled success of the Muslim arms shook the faith of the Christian peoples that came under their rule and saw in these conquests the hand of God.126 Worldly prosperity they associated with the divine favour and the God of battle (they thought) would surely give the victory only into the hands of his favoured servants. Thus the very success of the Muhammadans seemed to argue the truth of their religion.

The Islamic ideal of the brotherhood of all believers was a powerful attraction towards this creed, and though the Arab pride of birth strove to refuse for several generations the privileges of the ruling race to the new converts, still as “clients” of the various Arab tribes to which at first they used to be affiliated, they received a recognised position in the community, and by the close of the first century of the Hijrah they had vindicated for this ideal its true place in Muslim theology and at least a theoretical recognition in the state.127

But the condition of the Christians did not always continue to be so tolerable as under the earlier caliphs. In the interests of the true believers, vexatious conditions were sometimes imposed upon the non-Muslim population (or d͟himmīs), with the object of securing for the faithful superior social advantages. Unsuccessful attempts were made by several caliphs to exclude them from the public offices. Decrees to this effect were passed by al-Manṣūr (754–775), al-Mutawakkil (847–861), al-Muqtadir (908–932), and in Egypt by al-Āmir (1101–1130), one of the Fāṭimid caliphs, and by the Mamlūk Sultans in the [76]fourteenth century.128 But the very fact that these decrees excluding the d͟himmīs from government posts were so often renewed, is a sign of the want of any continuity or persistency in putting such intolerant measures into practice. In fact they may generally be traced either to popular indignation excited by the harsh and insolent behaviour of Christian officials,129 or to outbursts of fanaticism which forced upon the government acts of oppression that were contrary to the general spirit of Muslim rule and were consequently allowed to lapse as soon as possible.

The beginning of a harsher treatment of the native Christian population dates from the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809) who ordered them to wear a distinctive dress and give up the government posts they held to Muslims. The first of these orders shows how little one at least of the ordinances ascribed to ʻUmar was observed, and these decrees were the outcome, not so much of any purely religious feeling, as of the political circumstances of the time. The Christians under Muhammadan rule have often had to suffer for the bad faith kept by foreign Christian powers in their relations with Muhammadan princes, and on this occasion it was the treachery of the Byzantine Emperor, Nicephorus, that caused the Christian name to stink in the nostrils of Hārūn.130 Many of the persecutions of Christians in Muslim countries can be traced either to distrust of their loyalty, excited by the intrigues and interference of Christian foreigners and the enemies of Islam, or to the bad feeling stirred up by the treacherous or brutal behaviour of the latter towards the Musalmans. Religious fanaticism is, however, responsible for many of such persecutions, as in the reign of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–861), under whom severe measures of oppression were taken against the Christians. This prince took advantage of the strong Orthodox reaction that had set in in Muhammadan theology against the rationalistic and freethinking tendencies that [77]had had free play under former rulers,—and came forward as the champion of the extreme orthodox party, to which the mass of the people as contrasted with the higher classes belonged,131 and which was eager to exact vengeance for the persecutions it had itself suffered in the two preceding reigns;132 he sought to curry their favour by persecuting the Muʻtazilites, forbidding all further discussions on the Qurʼān and declaring the doctrine that it was created, to be heretical; he had the followers of ʻAlī imprisoned and beaten, pulled down the tomb of Ḥusayn at Karbalāʼ and forbade pilgrimages to be made to the site. The Christians shared in the sufferings of the other heretics; for al-Mutawakkil put rigorously into force the rules that had been passed in former reigns prescribing a distinction in the dress of d͟himmīs and Muslims, ordered that the Christians should no longer be employed in the public offices, doubled the capitation-tax, forbade them to have Muslim slaves or use the same baths as the Muslims, and harassed them with several other restrictions.

It is noteworthy that the historians of the Nestorian Church—which had to suffer most from this persecution—describe it as something new and individual to al-Mutawakkil, and as ceasing with his death.133 One of his successors, al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908–932), renewed these regulations, which the lapse of half a century had apparently caused to fall into disuse.

Other outbursts of fanaticism led to the destruction of churches and synagogues,134 and the terror of such persecution led to the defection of many from the Christian Church.135 But such oppression was contrary to the tolerant spirit of Islam, and to the teaching traditionally ascribed to the Prophet;136 and the fanatical party tried in vain to enforce [78]the persistent execution of these oppressive measures for the humiliation of the non-Muslim population. “The ʻulamaʼ (i.e. the learned, the clergy) consider this state of things; they weep and groan in silence, while the princes who had the power of putting down these criminal abuses only shut their eyes to them.”137 The rules that a fanatical priesthood may lay down for the repression of unbelievers cannot always be taken as a criterion of the practice of civil governments: it is failure to realise this fact that has rendered possible the highly-coloured pictures of the sufferings of the Christians under Muhammadan rule, drawn by writers who have assumed that the prescriptions of certain Muslim theologians represented an invariable practice. Such outbursts of persecution seem in some cases to have been excited by the alleged abuse of their position by those Christians who held high posts in the service of the government; they aroused considerable hostility of feeling towards themselves by their oppression of the Muslims, it being said that they took advantage of their high position to plunder and annoy the faithful, treating them with great harshness and rudeness and despoiling them of their lands and money. Such complaints were laid before the caliphs al-Manṣūr (754–775), al-Mahdī (775–785), al-Maʼmūn (813–833), al-Mutawakkil (847–861), al-Muqtadir (908–932), and many of their successors.138 They also incurred the odium of many Muhammadans by acting as the spies of the ʻAbbāsid dynasty and hunting down the adherents of the displaced Umayyad family.139 At a later period, during the time of the Crusades they were accused of treasonable correspondence with the Crusaders140 and brought on themselves severe restrictive measures which cannot justly be described as religious persecution.

In proportion as the lot of the conquered peoples became harder to bear, the more irresistible was the temptation to free themselves from their miseries, by the words, “There is no god but God: Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.” [79]When the state was in need of money—as was increasingly the case—the subject races were more and more burdened with taxes, so that the condition of the non-Muslims was constantly growing more unendurable, and conversions to Islam increased in the same proportion. The dreary record of scandals, with which the pages of the Christian historians of this later period are filled, would suggest that the Christian Churches had failed to develop a moral fibre strong enough to endure the stress of adverse conditions, and when persecution came, the reason for the defection that followed might—as the historian of the Nestorian Church suggests141—be sought for in the prevailing negligence in the performance of religious duties and the evil life of the clergy.

Further causes that contributed to the decrease of the Christian population may be found in the fact that the children of the numerous Christian captive women who were carried off to the harems of the Muslims had to be brought up in the religion of their fathers, and in the frequent temptation that was offered to the Christian slave by an indulgent master, of purchasing his freedom at the price of conversion to Islam. But of any organised attempt to force the acceptance of Islam on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic persecution intended to stamp out the Christian religion, we hear nothing. Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action, they might have swept away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestantism penal in France, or the Jews were kept out of England for 350 years. The Eastern Churches in Asia were entirely cut off from communion with the rest of Christendom, throughout which no one would have been found to lift a finger on their behalf, as heretical communions. So that the very survival of these Churches to the present day is a strong proof of the generally [80]tolerant attitude of the Muhammadan governments towards them.142

Of the ancient Churches in Western Asia at the time of the Muhammadan conquest, there still survive about 150,000 Nestorians,143 and their number would have been larger but for the proselytising efforts of other Christian Churches; the Chaldees who have submitted to the Church of Rome number 70,000, in 1898 the Nestorian Bishop Mār Jonan, with several of the clergy and 15,000 Nestorians were received into the Orthodox Russian Church; and numbers of Nestorians have also become Protestants.144 The Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch exercises jurisdiction over about 80,000 members of this ancient Church, while 25,000 families of Uniat Jacobites obey the Syrian Catholic Patriarch.145 Belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, there are 28,836 families under the Patriarch of Antioch and more than 15,000 persons under the Patriarch of Jerusalem,146 while the Melchites or Greek-Catholics number about 130,000.147 The Maronite Church, which has been in union with the Roman Catholic Church since the year 1182, has a following of 300,000.148

The marvel is that these isolated and scattered communities should have survived so long, exposed as they have been to the ravages of war, pestilence and famine,149 living in a country that was for centuries a continual battle-field, overrun by Turks, Mongols and Crusaders,150 it being [81]further remembered that they were forbidden by the Muhammadan law to make good this decay of their numbers by proselytising efforts—if indeed they had cared to do so, for they seem (with the exception of the Nestorians) even before the Muhammadan conquest, to have lost that missionary spirit, without which, as history abundantly shows, no healthy life is possible in a Christian Church. It has also been suggested that the monastic ideal of continence so widespread in the East, and the Christian practice of monogamy, together with the sense of insecurity and their servile condition, may have acted as checks on the growth of the Christian population.151

Of the details of conversion to Islam we have hardly any information. At the time of the first occupation of their country by the Arabs, the Christians appear to have gone over to Islam in very large numbers. Some idea of the extent of these early conversions in ʻIrāq for example may be formed from the fact that the income from taxation in the reign of ʻUmar was from 100 to 120 million dirhams, while in the reign of ʻAbd al-Malik, about fifty years later, it had sunk to forty millions: while this fall in the revenue is largely attributable to the devastation caused by wars and insurrections, still it was chiefly due to the fact that large numbers of the population had become Muhammadan and consequently could no longer be called upon to pay the capitation-tax.152

This same period witnesses the conversion of large numbers of the Christians of K͟hurāsān, as we learn from a letter of a contemporary ecclesiastic, the Nestorian Patriarch Īshōʻyabh III, addressed to Simeon, the Metropolitan of Rev-Ardashīr and Primate of Persia. We possess so very few Christian documents of the first century of the Hijrah, and this letter bears such striking testimony to the peaceful character of the spread of the new faith, and has moreover been so little noticed by modern historians—that it may well be quoted here at length. “Where are thy sons, O father bereft of sons? Where is that great people of Merv, who though they beheld neither sword, nor fire or tortures, captivated [82]only by love for a moiety of their goods, have turned aside, like fools, from the true path and rushed headlong into the pit of faithlessness—into everlasting destruction, and have utterly been brought to nought, while two priests only (priests at least in name), have, like brands snatched from the burning, escaped the devouring flames of infidelity. Alas, alas! Out of so many thousands who bore the name of Christians, not even one single victim was consecrated unto God by the shedding of his blood for the true faith. Where, too, are the sanctuaries of Kirmān and all Persia? it is not the coming of Satan or the mandates of the kings of the earth or the orders of governors of provinces that have laid them waste and in ruins—but the feeble breath of one contemptible little demon, who was not deemed worthy of the honour of demons by those demons who sent him on his errand, nor was endowed by Satan the seducer with the power of diabolical deceit, that he might display it in your land; but merely by the nod of his command he has thrown down all the churches of your Persia.… And the Arabs, to whom God at this time has given the empire of the world, behold, they are among you, as ye know well: and yet they attack not the Christian faith, but, on the contrary, they favour our religion, do honour to our priests and the saints of the Lord, and confer benefits on churches and monasteries. Why then have your people of Merv abandoned their faith for the sake of these Arabs? and that, too, when the Arabs, as the people of Merv themselves declare, have not compelled them to leave their own religion but suffered them to keep it safe and undefiled if they gave up only a moiety of their goods. But forsaking the faith which brings eternal salvation, they clung to a moiety of the goods of this fleeting world: that faith which whole nations have purchased and even to this day do purchase by the shedding of their blood and gain thereby the inheritance of eternal life, your people of Merv were willing to barter for a moiety of their goods—and even less.”153 The reign of the caliph ʻUmar II (A.D. 717–720) particularly was marked with very extensive conversions: he organised a zealous missionary movement and offered every kind of inducement to the [83]conquered peoples to accept Islam, even making them grants of money; on one occasion he is said to have given a Christian military officer the sum of 1000 dīnārs to induce him to accept Islam.154 He instructed the governors of the provinces to invite the d͟himmīs to the Muslim faith, and al-Jarrāḥ b. ʻAbd Allāh, governor of K͟hurāsān, is said to have converted about 4000 persons.155 He is even said to have written a letter to the Byzantine Emperor, Leo III, urging on him the acceptance of the faith of Islam.156 He abrogated the decree passed in A.D. 700 for the purpose of arresting the impoverishment of the treasury, according to which the convert to Islam was not released from the capitation-tax, but was compelled to continue to pay it as before; even though the d͟himmī apostatised the very day before his yearly payment of the jizyah was due or while his contribution was actually being weighed in the scales, it was to be remitted to the new convert.157 He no longer exacted the k͟harāj from the Muhammadan owners of landed property, and imposed upon them the far lighter burden of a tithe. These measures, though financially most ruinous, were eminently successful in the way the pious-minded caliph desired they should be, and enormous numbers hastened to enrol themselves among the Muslims.158

It must not, however, be supposed that such worldly considerations were the only influences at work in the conversion of the Christians to Islam. The controversial works of St. John of Damascus, of the same century, give us glimpses of the zealous Muslim striving to undermine by his arguments the foundations of the Christian faith. The very dialogue form into which these treatises are thrown, and the frequent repetition of such phrases as “If the Saracen asks you,”—“If the Saracen says … then tell him” …—give them an air of vraisemblance and make them appear as if they were intended to provide the Christians with ready answers to the numerous objections which their Muslim neighbours brought against the Christian creed.159 That the aggressive attitude of the Muhammadan disputant is [84]most prominently brought forward in these dialogues is only what might be expected, it being no part of this great theologian’s purpose to enshrine in his writings an apology for Islam. His pupil, Bishop Theodore Abū Qurrah, also wrote several controversial dialogues160 with Muhammadans, in which the disputants range over all the points of dispute between the two faiths, the Muslim as before being the first to take up the cudgels, and enabling us to form some slight idea of the activity with which the cause of Islam was prosecuted at this period. “The thoughts of the Agarenes,” says the bishop, “and all their zeal, are directed towards the denial of the divinity of God the Word, and they strain every effort to this end.”161 The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, used to hold discussions on religious matters in the presence of the caliphs, al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd, and embodied them in a work that is now lost.162 Timotheus had secured his election to the patriarchate in the face of the active opposition of many of the most powerful ecclesiastics of his own Church; among these was Joseph, the metropolitan of Merv, who intrigued against him with the caliph, al-Mahdī (775–785), but was persuaded by the caliph to accept Islam and was rewarded for his apostasy with rich presents and an official appointment in Baṣrah.163

These details from the first two centuries of the Hijrah are meagre in the extreme and rather suggest the existence of proselytising efforts than furnish definite facts. The earliest document of a distinctly missionary character which has come down to us, would seem to date from the reign of al-Maʼmūn (813–833), and takes the form of a letter164 written by a cousin of the caliph to a Christian Arab of noble birth and of considerable distinction at the court, and held in high esteem by al-Maʼmūn himself. In this letter he begs his friend to embrace Islam, in terms of affectionate appeal and in language that strikingly illustrates the tolerant attitude of the Muslims towards the Christian Church at this period. This letter occupies an almost unique place in the early history of the propagation of Islam, and has [85]on this account been given in full in an appendix.165 In the same work we have a report of a speech made by the caliph at an assembly of his nobles, in which he speaks in tones of the strongest contempt of those who had become Muhammadans merely out of worldly and selfish motives, and compares them to the Hypocrites who while pretending to be friends of the Prophet, in secret plotted against his life. But just as the Prophet returned good for evil, so the caliph resolves to treat these persons with courtesy and forbearance until God should decide between them.166 The record of this complaint on the part of the caliph is interesting as indicating that disinterested and genuine conviction was expected and looked for in the new convert to Islam, and that the discovery of self-seeking and unworthy motives drew upon him the severest censure.

Al-Maʼmūn himself was very zealous in his efforts to spread the faith of Islam, and sent invitations to unbelievers even in the most distant parts of his dominions, such as Transoxania and Farg͟hānah.167 At the same time he did not abuse his royal power, by attempting to force his own faith upon others: when a certain Yazdānbak͟ht, a leader of the Manichæan sect, came on a visit to Bag͟hdād168 and held a disputation with the Muslim theologians, in which he was utterly silenced, the caliph tried to induce him to embrace Islam. But Yazdānbak͟ht refused, saying, “Commander of the faithful, your advice is heard and your words have been listened to; but you are one of those who do not force men to abandon their religion.” So far from resenting the ill-success of his efforts, the caliph furnished him with a bodyguard, that he might not be exposed to insult from the fanatical populace.169 [86]

Some scanty references are made by Christian historians to cases of ecclesiastical dignitaries who became Muhammadans, e.g. George, Bishop of Baḥrayn, about the middle of the ninth century, having been deposed from his office for some ecclesiastical offence, exchanged the Christian faith for that of Islam,170 and the conversion of a brother of Gabriel, metropolitan of Fārs about the middle of the tenth century, only receives mention because the fact of his having become a Muslim was alleged as disqualifying Gabriel for election to the patriarchate of the Nestorian church.171

In the early part of the same century, Theodore, the Nestorian Bishop of Beth Garmai, became a Muslim, and there is no mention of any force or compulsion by the ecclesiastical historian172 who records the fact, as there undoubtedly would have been, had such existed. Some years later (between A.D. 962 and 979), Philoxenos, a Jacobite Bishop of Ād͟harbayjān, also became a Muslim,173 and in the following century, in 1016, Ignatius,174 the Jacobite Metropolitan of Takrīt, who had held this office for twenty-five years, set out for Bag͟hdād and embraced Islam in the presence of the caliph al-Qādir, taking the name of Abū Muslim.175 It would be exceedingly interesting if an Apologia pro Vita Sua had survived to reveal to us the religious development that took place in the mind of either of these converts. The Christian chronicler hints at immorality in the last three cases, but such an accusation uncorroborated by any further evidence is open to suspicion,176 much as it would be [87]if brought forward by a Roman Catholic when recording the conversion of a priest of his own communion to the Protestant faith. It is doubtless owing to their exalted position in the Church that the conversion of these prominent ecclesiastics of two hostile Christian sects has been handed down to us, while that of more obscure individuals has not been recorded. As Barhebræus brings his ecclesiastical chronicle nearer to his own time, he gives fuller details of the career of such converts, e.g. in recording the public lapse of some of the Jacobite bishops, in the middle of the twelfth century he makes particular mention of Aaron, bishop of a town in K͟hurāsān, as having become a Muhammadan after having been convicted of some moral fault; repenting of this change, he wished to regain his episcopal status, and when this was refused him, went to Constantinople and abjured the Monophysite doctrines of the Jacobite Church; then apparently dissatisfied with the reception he received in Constantinople, he returned to the Jacobite Patriarch, but a second time went over to Islam “without any reason”; then repenting again, he finally ended his days among the Maronites of Mount Lebanon.177 A contemporary of Barhebræus, in the middle of the thirteenth century—Daniel, Bishop of Khabur—who is said to have been proficient in secular learning, sought to be appointed to the diocese of Aleppo, but disappointed in this ambition, he abandoned the Christian faith and to the grief and shame of all Christian people “became a Muslim; but God (praise be to His grace!) soon consoled his afflicted people and took away the shame from the redeemed, the redeemed of the Lord; for a few months later that unhappy wretch died miserably in a caravanserai; his name perished, he was taken away out of our midst, and no man knoweth his abiding place.”178

But that these conversions were not merely isolated instances we have the valuable evidence of Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre (1216–1225), who thus speaks of the Eastern Church from his experience of it in the Holy Land:—[88]“Weakened and lamentably ensnared, nay rather grievously wounded, by the lying persuasions of the false prophet and by the allurements of carnal pleasure, she hath sunk down, and she that was brought up in scarlet, hath embraced dunghills.”179

So far the Christian Churches that have been described as coming within the sphere of Muhammadan influence, have been the Orthodox Eastern Church and the heretical communions that had sprung out of it. But with the close of the eleventh century a fresh element was added to the Christian population of Syria and Palestine, in the large bodies of Crusaders of the Latin rite who settled in the kingdom of Jerusalem and the other states founded by the Crusaders, which maintained a precarious existence for nearly two centuries. During this period, occasional conversions to Islam were made from among these foreign immigrants. In the first Crusade, for example, a body of Germans and Lombards under the command of a certain knight, named Rainaud, had separated themselves from the main body and were besieged in a castle by the Saljūq Sultan, Arslān; on pretence of making a sortie, Rainaud and his personal followers abandoned their unfortunate companions and went over to the Turks, among whom they embraced Islam.180

The history of the ill-fated second Crusade presents us with a very remarkable incident of a similar character. The story, as told by Odo of Deuil, a monk of St. Denis, who, in the capacity of private chaplain to Louis VII, accompanied him on this Crusade and wrote a graphic account of it, runs as follows. While endeavouring to make their way overland through Asia Minor to Jerusalem the Crusaders sustained a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Turks in the mountain-passes of Phrygia (A.D. 1148), and with difficulty reached the seaport town of Attalia. Here, all who could afford to satisfy the exorbitant demands of the Greek merchants, took ship for Antioch; while the sick and wounded and the mass of the pilgrims were left behind at the mercy of their treacherous allies, the Greeks, who received five hundred [89]marks from Louis, on condition that they provided an escort for the pilgrims and took care of the sick until they were strong enough to be sent on after the others. But no sooner had the army left, than the Greeks informed the Turks of the helpless condition of the pilgrims, and quietly looked on while famine, disease and the arrows of the enemy carried havoc and destruction through the camp of these unfortunates. Driven to desperation, a party of three or four thousand attempted to escape, but were surrounded and cut to pieces by the Turks, who now pressed on to the camp to follow up their victory. The situation of the survivors would have been utterly hopeless, had not the sight of their misery melted the hearts of the Muhammadans to pity. They tended the sick and relieved the poor and starving with open-handed liberality. Some even bought up the French money which the Greeks had got out of the pilgrims by force or cunning, and lavishly distributed it among the needy. So great was the contrast between the kind treatment the pilgrims received from the unbelievers and the cruelty of their fellow-Christians, the Greeks, who imposed forced labour upon them, beat them and robbed them of what little they had left, that many of them voluntarily embraced the faith of their deliverers. As the old chronicler says: “Avoiding their co-religionists who had been so cruel to them, they went in safety among the infidels who had compassion upon them, and, as we heard, more than three thousand joined themselves to the Turks when they retired. Oh, kindness more cruel than all treachery! They gave them bread but robbed them of their faith, though it is certain that contented with the services they performed, they compelled no one among them to renounce his religion.”181

The increasing intercourse between Christians and Muslims, the growing appreciation on the part of the Crusaders of the virtues of their opponents, which so strikingly distinguishes [90]the later from the earlier chroniclers of the Crusades,182 the numerous imitations of Oriental manners and ways of life by the Franks settled in the Holy Land, did not fail to exercise a corresponding influence on religious opinions. One of the most remarkable features of this influence is the tolerant attitude of many of the Christian Knights towards the faith of Islam—an attitude of mind that was most vehemently denounced by the Church. When Usāma b. Munqid͟h, a Syrian Amīr of the twelfth century, visited Jerusalem, during a period of truce, the Knights Templar, who had occupied the Masjid al-Aqṣā, assigned to him a small chapel adjoining it, for him to say his prayers in, and they strongly resented the interference with the devotions of their guest on the part of a newly-arrived Crusader, who took this new departure in the direction of religious freedom in very bad part.183 It would indeed have been strange if religious questions had not formed a topic of discussion on the many occasions when the Crusaders and the Muslims met together on a friendly footing, during the frequent truces, especially when it was religion itself that had brought the Crusaders into the Holy Land and set them upon these constant wars. When even Christian theologians were led by their personal intercourse with the Muslims to form a juster estimate of their religion, and contact with new modes of thought was unsettling the minds of men and giving rise to a swarm of heresies, it is not surprising that many should have been drawn into the pale of Islam.184 The renegades in the twelfth century were in sufficient numbers to be noticed in the statute books of the Crusaders, the so-called Assises of Jerusalem, according to which, in certain cases, their bail was not accepted.185

It would be interesting to discover who were the Muslims who busied themselves in winning these converts to Islam, but they seem to have left no record of their labours. We know, however, that they had at their head the great Saladin himself, who is described by his biographer as setting before [91]his Christian guest the beauties of Islam and urging him to embrace it.186

The heroic life and character of Saladin seems to have exercised an especial fascination on the minds of the Christians of his time; some even of the Christian knights were so strongly attracted towards him that they abandoned the Christian faith and their own people and joined themselves to the Muslims; such was the case, for example, with a certain English Templar, named Robert of St. Albans, who in A.D. 1185 gave up Christianity for Islam and afterwards married a grand-daughter of Saladin.187 Two years later, Saladin invaded Palestine and utterly defeated the Christian army in the battle of Ḥiṭṭīn, Guy, king of Jerusalem, being among the prisoners. On the eve of the battle, six of his knights, “possessed with a devilish spirit,” deserted the king and escaped into the camp of Saladin, where of their own accord they became Saracens.188 At the same time Saladin seems to have had an understanding with Raymund III, Count of Tripoli, according to which he was to induce his followers to abandon the Christian faith and go over to the Muslims; but the sudden death of the Count effectually put a stop to the execution of this scheme.189

The fall of Jerusalem and the successes of Saladin in the Holy Land stirred up Europe to undertake the third Crusade, the chief incident of which was the siege of Acre (A.D. 1189–1191). The fearful sufferings that the Christian army was exposed to, from famine and disease, drove many of them to desert and seek relief from the cravings of hunger in the Muslim camp. Of these deserters, many made their way back again after some time to the army of the Crusaders; on the other hand, many elected to throw in their lot with the Muslims; some, taking service under their former enemies, still remained true to the Christian faith and (we are told) were well pleased with their new masters, while others embracing Islam became good Muslims.190 The conversion of these deserters is recorded also by the chronicler who accompanied Richard I upon this Crusade:—“Some [92]of our men (whose fate cannot be told or heard without grievous sorrow) yielding to the severity of the sore famine, in achieving the salvation of the body, incurred the damnation of their souls. For after the greater part of the affliction was past, they deserted and fled to the Turks: nor did they hesitate to become renegades; in order that they might prolong their temporal life a little space, they purchased eternal death with horrid blasphemies. O baleful trafficking! O shameful deed beyond all punishment! O foolish man likened unto the foolish beasts, while he flees from the death that must inevitably come soon, he shuns not the death unending.”191

From this time onwards references to renegades are not infrequently to be met with in the writings of those who travelled to the Holy Land and other countries of the East. The terms of the oath which was proposed to St. Louis by his Muhammadan captors when he was called upon to promise to pay the ransom imposed upon him (A.D. 1250), were suggested by certain whilom priests who had become Muslims;192 and while this business of paying the ransom was still being carried on, another renegade, a Frenchman, born at Provins, came to bring a present to the king: he had accompanied King John of Jerusalem on his expedition against Damietta in 1219 and had remained in Egypt, married a Muhammadan wife and become a great lord in that country.193 The danger of the pilgrims to the Holy Land becoming converts to Islam was so clearly recognised at this time that in a “Remembrance,” written about 1266 by Amaury de la Roche, the master of the Knights Templar in France, he requests the Pope and the legates of France and Sicily to prevent the poor and the aged and those incapable of bearing arms from crossing the sea to Palestine, for such persons either got killed or were taken prisoners by the Saracens or turned renegades.194 Ludolf de Suchem, who travelled in the Holy Land from 1336 to 1341, speaks of three renegades he found at Hebron; they had come from the diocese of Minden and had been in the service of a [93]Westphalian knight, who was held in high honour by the Soldan and other Muhammadan princes.195

These scattered notices are no doubt significant of more extensive conversions of Christians to Islam, of which no record has come down to us: e.g. there were said to be about 25,000 renegades in the city of Cairo towards the close of the fifteenth century,196 and there must have been many also to be found in the cities of the Holy Land after the disappearance of the Latin princedoms of the East. But the Muhammadan historians of this period seem to have been too busily engaged in recording the exploits of princes and the vicissitudes of dynasties, to turn their attention to religious changes in the lives of obscure individuals; and (as far as I have been able to discover) they as little notice the conversions of Christians to Islam as of those of their own co-religionists to Christianity. Consequently, we have to depend for our knowledge of both of these classes of events on Christian writers, who, while they give us detailed and sympathetic accounts of the latter, bear unwilling testimony to the existence of instances of the former and represent the motives of the renegades in the worst light possible. The possibility of any Christian becoming converted to Islam from honest conviction, probably never entered into the head of any of these writers, and even had such an idea occurred to them they would hardly have ventured to expose themselves to the thunders of ecclesiastical censure by giving open expression to it.

As an example of the rare instances of such a conversion being recorded, the account may here be cited which Fürer von Haimendorf, who was in Cairo in 1565, gives of the conversion of a German scholar who had studied in the University of Leipzig. “Sed dum nos hanc moram Cairi nectimus, accidit ut Justus quidam Stevenius Germanus Hamelensis qui in iisdem ædibus nobiscum habitaverat, fide Christianorum abnegata Turcarum religioni se initiandum atque circumcidendum obtulerit. Vir erat doctus, qui diu se Witebergæ ac Lipsiæ studiis operam dedisse sæpe nobis [94]narrabat: verum de hoc facto interrogatus, peculiarem nunc sibi Spiritum adesse ajebat, sine cujus instinctu nihil vel facere sibi, vel cogitare fas esset; quæ hominis apostasia nimium quantum animos nostros commovit, et ad fugam quasi excitavit. Eodem quoque die Judæus quidam, qui paucis diebus ante religionem Mahumetanam amplexus fuerat, triumphali pompa per urbem circumducebatur; quod idem cum Stevenio isto futurum esse, Janissarii quidam nobis affirmabant.”197

From the historical sources quoted above, we have as little information respecting the number of these converts as of the proselytising efforts made to induce them to change their faith. A motive frequently assigned for going over to Islam is the desire to escape the death penalty by means of apostasy. European travellers make frequent mention of such cases. A late example of such an account may be selected, for the picturesqueness of its language, from the report of a Jesuit, who was in Cairo in 1627; he saw a Copt who, having allowed himself to be carried away “partly by passion and partly by the violence of an indiscreet zeal, had killed his brother with his own hand, in detestation of his having in a dastardly manner left Jesus Christ to embrace Mahometanism, in order to deliver himself from the vexation of the Turks. The poor man was at once seized in the heat of his crime, and he boldly confessed that the renegade, unworthy of being his brother, could only wipe out so black a spot by his blood. He was urged to abandon his faith in order to save his life,” but he declared that he was resolved to die a Christian; the cruel torments, however, inflicted on him by the executioners, weakened his resolution and he yielded at the last moment. “This disaster changed him in a moment from a confessor into a renegade, from a martyr into an apostate, from a saint into one of the damned, and from an angel into a veritable devil. He made the profession of faith or rather of perfidy, after the manner of the Mahometans … he was set at liberty, the liberty not of the sons of God, but of the sons of perdition.” Later on, the reproaches of his conscience caused him again to recant [95]and he was put to death by the Muhammadans for his apostasy.198

The monk Burchard,199 writing about 1283, a few years before the Crusaders were driven out of their last strongholds and the Latin power in the East came utterly to an end—represents the Christian population as largely outnumbering the Muslims throughout the whole of the Muhammadan world, the latter (except in Egypt and Arabia) forming not more than three or four per cent. of the whole population. This language is undoubtedly exaggerated and the good monk was certainly rash in assuming that what he observed in the cities of the Crusaders and of the kingdom of Little Armenia held good in other parts of the East. But his words may be certainly taken to indicate that during the period of the Crusades there had been no widespread conversion to Islam, and that when the Muhammadans resumed their sovereignty over the Holy Land, they extended the same toleration to the Christians as before, suffering them to “purchase peace and quiet” by the payment of the jizyah. The presumption is that the conversions that took place were of individual Christians, who were persuaded in their own minds before they took the final step. Instances have already been given of Christians who took service under Muhammadan masters, in the full enjoyment of their own faith, and the Assises of Jerusalem made a distinction between “those who have denied God [96]and follow another law” and “all those who have done armed service to the Saracens and other miscreants against the Christians for more than a year and a day.”200

The native Christians certainly preferred the rule of the Muhammadans to that of the Crusaders,201 and when Jerusalem fell finally and for ever into the hands of the Muslims (A.D. 1244), the Christian population of Palestine seems to have welcomed the new masters and to have submitted quietly and contentedly to their rule.202

This same sense of security of religious life under Muslim rule led many of the Christians of Asia Minor, also, about the same time, to welcome the advent of the Saljūq Turks as their deliverers from the hated Byzantine government, not only on account of its oppressive system of taxation, but also of the persecuting spirit of the Greek Church, which had with such cruelty crushed the heresies of the Paulicians and the Iconoclasts. In the reign of Michael VIII (1261–1282), the Turks were often invited to take possession of the smaller towns in the interior of Asia Minor by the inhabitants, that they might escape from the tyranny of the empire; and both rich and poor often emigrated into Turkish dominions.203

Some account still remains to be given of two other Christian Churches of Western Asia, viz. the Armenian and the Georgian. Of the former it may be said that of all the Eastern Churches that have come under Muhammadan rule, the Armenian Church has probably given fewer of its members (in proportion to the size of the community) to swell the ranks of Islam, than any other. So in spite of the interest that attaches to the story of the struggle of [97]this brave nation against overwhelming odds and of the fidelity with which it has clung to the Christian faith—through centuries of warfare and oppression, persecution and exile—it does not come within the scope of the present volume to do more than briefly indicate its connection with the history of the Muhammadans. The Armenian kingdom survived the shock of the Arab conquest, and in the ninth century rose to be a state of some importance and flourished during the decay of the caliphate of Bag͟hdād, but in the eleventh century was overthrown by the Saljūq Turks. A band of fugitives founded the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, but this too disappeared in the fourteenth century. The national life of the Armenian people still survived in spite of the loss of their independence, and, as was the case in Greece under the Turks, their religion and the national church served as the rallying point of their eager, undying patriotism. Though a certain number, under the pressure of cruel persecution, have embraced Islam, yet the bulk of the race has remained true to its ancient faith. As Tavernier204 rather unsympathetically remarks, “There may be some few Armenians, that embrace Mahometanism for worldly interest, but they are generally the most obstinate persons in the world, and most firm to their superstitious principles.”

The Georgian Church (founded in the early part of the fourth century) was an offshoot from the Greek Church, with which she has always remained in communion, although from the middle of the sixth century the Patriarch or Katholikos of the Georgian Church declared himself independent. Torn asunder by internal discords and exposed to the successive attacks of Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Turks and Mongols, the history of this heroic warrior people is one of almost uninterrupted warfare against foreign foes and of fiercely contested feuds between native chiefs: the reigns of one or two powerful monarchs who secured for their subjects brief intervals of peace, serving only to bring out in more striking contrast the normally unsettled state of the country. The fierce independent spirit of the Georgians that could not brook a foreign rule has often exasperated well-nigh [98]to madness the fury of their Muhammadan neighbours, when they failed to impose upon them either their civil authority or their religion. It is this circumstance—that a change of faith implied loss of political independence—which explains in a great measure the fact that the Georgian Church inscribes the names of so many martyrs in her calendar, while the annals of the Greek Church during the same period have no such honoured roll to show.

It was not until after Georgia had been overrun by the devastating armies of the Mongols, leaving ruined churches and monasteries and pyramids of human heads to mark the progress of their destroying hosts, and consequently the spiritual wants of the people had remained long unprovided for, owing to the decline in the numbers and learning of the clergy—that Christianity began to lose ground.205 Even among those who still remained Christian, some added to the sufferings of the clergy by plundering the property of the Church and appropriating to their own use the revenues of churches and monasteries, and thus hastened the decay of the Christian faith.206

In 1400 the invasion of Tīmūr added a crowning horror to the sufferings of Georgia, and though for a brief period the rule of Alexander I (1414–1442) delivered the country from the foreign yoke and drove out all the Muhammadans—after his death it was again broken up into a number of petty princedoms, from which the Turks and the Persians wrested the last shreds of independence. But the Muhammadans always found Georgia to be a turbulent and rebellious possession, ever ready to break out into open revolt at the slightest opportunity. Both Turks and Persians sought to secure the allegiance of these troublesome subjects by means of conversion to Islam. After the fall of Constantinople and the increase of Turkish power in Asia Minor, the inhabitants of Akhaltsikhé and other districts to the west of it became Muhammadans.207 In 1579 two Georgian princes—brothers—came on an embassy to Constantinople with a large retinue of about two hundred [99]persons: here the younger brother together with his attendants became a Musalman, in the hope (it was said) of thereby supplanting his elder brother.208 At a rather later date, the conquests of the Turks brought some of the districts in the very centre of Georgia into their power, the inhabitants of which embraced the creed of the conquerors.209 From this period Samtzkhé, the most western portion of Georgia, recognised the suzerainty of Turkey: its rulers and people were allowed to continue undisturbed in the Christian faith, but from 1625 the ruling dynasty became Muhammadan and many of the chiefs and the aristocracy followed their example.

Christianity retained its hold upon the peasants much longer, but when the clergy of Samtzkhé refused allegiance to the Katholikos of Karthli, there ceased to be regular provision made for supplying the spiritual needs of the people: the nobles, even before their conversion, had taken to plundering the estates of the Church, and after becoming Musalmans they naturally ceased to assist it with their offerings, and the churches and monasteries falling into decay were replaced by mosques.210

The rest of Georgia had submitted to Persia, and when Tavernier visited this part of the country, about the middle of the seventeenth century, he found it divided into two kingdoms, which were provinces of the Persian empire, and were governed by native Georgian princes who had to turn Muhammadan before being advanced to this dignity.211 One of the first of such princes was the Tsarevitch Constantine, son of King Alexander II of Kakheth, who had been brought up at the Persian court and had there embraced Islam, at the beginning of the seventeenth century.212 The first Muhammadan king of Karthli, the Tsarevitch Rustam (1634–1658), had also been brought up in Persia, and he and his successors to the end of the century were all Muhammadans.213

Tavernier describes the Georgians as being very ignorant in matters of religion and the clergy as unlettered and vicious; some of the heads of the Church actually sold the [100]Christian boys and girls as slaves to the Turks and Persians.214 From this period there seems to have been a widespread apostasy, especially among the higher classes and those who sought to win the favour of the Persian court.215 In 1701 the occupant of the throne of Georgia, Wakhtang VI, was a Christian: for the first seven years of his reign he was a prisoner in Ispahan, where great efforts were made to induce him to become a Muhammadan; when he declared that he preferred to lose his throne rather than purchase it at the price of apostasy, it is said that his younger brother, although he was the Patriarch of Georgia, offered to abandon Christianity and embrace Islam, if the crown were bestowed upon him, but though invested by the Persians with the royal power, the Georgians refused to accept him as their ruler, and drove him out of the kingdom.216

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the king of Georgia placed his people under the protection of the Russian crown. Hitherto their intense patriotic feeling had helped to keep the Christian faith alive among them so long as their foreign invaders had been Musalmans, but now that the foreign power that sought to rob them of their independence was Christian, this same feeling operated in some of the districts north of the Caucasus to the advantage of Islam. In Daghistan a certain Darvīsh Manṣūr endeavoured to unite the different tribes of the Caucasus to oppose the Russians; preaching the faith of Islam he succeeded in converting the princes and nobles of Ubichistan and Daghistan, who have remained faithful to Islam ever since; many of the Circassians, too, were converted by his preaching, and preferred exile to submitting to the Russian rule.217 But in 1791 he was taken prisoner, and in 1800 Georgia was formally incorporated in the Russian empire.

Darvīsh Manṣūr was not alone in his efforts to convert the Circassians. When the treaty of Kūchak-Qaïnarji in 1774 had recognised the independence of the Crimea and [101]opened the Black Sea to Russian vessels, the Turkish government became alarmed at the prospect of a further movement of Russian domination along the eastern coast of the Black Sea and resolved to make an attempt to stir the Circassians to resistance. A Turkish officer, named Faraḥ ʻAlī, was sent in 1782 to establish a military colony at Anāpa, near the outlet of the sea of Azov, and to enter into relations with the Circassian tribes. Faraḥ ʻAlī’s first care was to seek the hand of a daughter of one of the Circassian beys, offering rich presents of arms, horses, etc., to her father; the marriage was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, and Faraḥ ʻAlī encouraged his soldiers to follow his example, by promising to defray the expenses of their nuptials. The result was that a number of Circassian women joined the little colony and accepted the religion of their husbands, and with the zeal of new converts won over to Islam their fathers and brothers. An active movement of proselytism began, and the Circassians who came in contact with the Turkish colony appear readily to have abandoned their pagan beliefs for the religion of the Qurʼān, the mollas were kept busy in instructing the new Muslims, and help had to be sought from Constantinople to deal with the increasing number of conversions.218 But the work of Faraḥ ʻAlī was short-lived; he died in 1785 and his tomb was reverenced as that of a saint, but his work perished with him. Anāpa passed into the hands of the Russians in 1812, and when the resistance of the Circassians was finally overcome in 1864, more than half a million Circassian Muhammadans migrated into Turkish territory.

Under Russian law conversions to any faith other than that of the Orthodox Church were illegal, and the further progress of Islam was stayed until the promulgation of the edict of toleration in 1905. One of the results of this in the Caucasus was a large accession to Islam from among the Abkhazes, who had long been nominal converts to Christianity, but now became Muhammadans in such numbers that the Orthodox clergy became alarmed and founded a special society for the distribution of religious tracts among them, in the hope of combating Muhammadan influences.219 [102]

Islam was first introduced into Africa by the Arab army that invaded Egypt under the command of ʻAmr b. al-ʻĀṣ in A.D. 640. Three years later the withdrawal of the Byzantine troops abandoned the vast Christian population into the hands of the Muslim conquerors. The rapid success of the Arab invaders was largely due to the welcome they received from the native Christians, who hated the Byzantine rule not only for its oppressive administration, but also—and chiefly—on account of the bitterness of theological rancour. The Jacobites, who formed the majority of the Christian population, had been very roughly handled by the Orthodox adherents of the court and subjected to indignities that have not been forgotten by their children even to the present day.1 Some were tortured and then thrown into the sea; many followed their Patriarch into exile to escape from the hands of their persecutors, while a large number disguised their real opinions under a pretended acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon.2 To these Copts, as the Jacobite Christians of Egypt are called, the Muhammadan conquest brought a freedom of religious life such as they had not enjoyed for a century. On payment of the tribute, ʻAmr left them in undisturbed possession of their churches and guaranteed to them autonomy in all ecclesiastical matters, thus delivering them from the continual interference that had been so grievous a burden under [103]the previous rule; he laid his hands on none of the property of the churches and committed no act of spoliation or pillage.3 In the early days of the Muhammadan rule then, the condition of the Copts seems to have been fairly tolerable,4 and there is no evidence of their widespread apostasy to Islam being due to persecution or unjust pressure on the part of their new rulers. Even before the conquest was complete, while the capital, Alexandria, still held out, many of them went over to Islam,5 and a few years later the example these had set was followed by many others.6 In the reign of ʻUt͟hmān (A.D. 643–655), the revenue derived from Egypt amounted to twelve millions; a few years later, in the reign of Muʻāwiyah (661–679), it had fallen to five millions owing to the enormous number of conversions: under ʻUmar II (717–720) it fell still lower, so that the governor of Egypt7 proposed that in future the converts should not be exempted from the payment of the capitation-tax, but this the pious caliph refused to allow, saying that God had sent Muḥammad to call men to a knowledge of the truth and not to be a collector of taxes.8

But later rulers recognised that for fiscal reasons such a policy was ruinous to the state, and insisted on the converts continuing to pay taxes as before; there was, however, no continuity in such a policy, and individual governors acted in an arbitrary and irregular manner.9 When Ḥafṣ b. al-Walīd, who was governor of Egypt in A.D. 744, promised that all those who became Muslims would be exempted [104]from the payment of jizyah, as many as 24,000 Christians are reported to have accepted Islam.10 A similar proclamation is said to have been made by al-Saffāḥ, the first of the ʻAbbāsid caliphs, soon after his accession in A.D. 750, for “he wrote to the whole of his dominions saying that every one who embraced his religion and prayed according to his fashion, should be quit of the jizyah, and many, both rich and poor, denied the faith of Christ by reason of the magnitude of the taxation and the burdens imposed upon them.”11 In fact many of the Christians of Egypt seem to have abandoned Christianity as lightly and as rapidly as, in the beginning of the fourth century, they had embraced it. Prior to that period, a very small section of the population of the valley of the Nile was Christian, but the sufferings of the martyrs in the persecution of Diocletian, the stories of the miracles they performed, the national feeling excited by the sense of their opposition to the dictates of the foreign government,12 the assurance that a paradise of delights was opened to the martyr who died under the hands of his tormentors,—all these things stirred up an enthusiasm that resulted in an incredibly rapid spread of the Christian faith. “Instead of being converted by preaching, as the other countries of the East were, Egypt embraced Christianity in a fit of wild enthusiasm, without any preaching, or instruction being given, with hardly any knowledge of the new religion beyond the name of Jesus, the Messiah, who bestowed a life of eternal happiness on all who confessed Him.”13

In the seventh century Christianity had probably very little hold on a great mass of the people of Egypt. The theological catchwords that their leaders made use of, to stir up in them feelings of hatred and opposition to the Byzantine government, could have been intelligible to a very few, and the rapid spread of Islam in the early days of the Arab occupation was probably due less to definite efforts to attract than to the inability of such a Christianity to retain. The theological basis for the existence of the [105]Jacobites as a separate sect, the tenets that they had so long and at so great a cost struggled to maintain, were embodied in doctrines of the most abstruse and metaphysical character, and many doubtless turned in utter perplexity and weariness from the interminable controversies that raged around them, to a faith that was summed up in the simple, intelligible truth of the Unity of God and the mission of His Prophet, Muḥammad. Even within the Coptic Church itself at a later period, we find evidence of a movement which, if not distinctly Muslim, was at least closely allied thereto, and in the absence of any separate ecclesiastical organisation in which it might find expression, probably contributed to the increase of the converts to Islam. In the beginning of the twelfth century, there was in the monastery of St. Anthony (near Iṭfīḥ on the Nile), a monk named Balūṭus, “learned in the doctrines of the Christian religion and the duties of the monastic life, and skilled in the rules of the canon-law. But Satan caught him in one of his nets; for he began to hold opinions at variance with those taught by the Three Hundred and Eighteen (of Nicæa); and he corrupted the minds of many of those who had no knowledge or instruction in the Orthodox faith. He announced with his impure mouth, in his wicked discourses, that Christ our Lord—to Whom be glory—was like one of the prophets. He associated with the lowest among the followers of his religion, clothed as he was in the monastic habit. When he was questioned as to his religion and his creed, he professed himself a believer in the Unity of God. His doctrines prevailed during a period which ended in the year 839 of the Righteous Martyrs (A.D. 1123); then he died, and his memory was cut off for ever.”14

Further, a theory of the Christian life that found its highest expression in asceticism of the grossest type15 could offer little attraction, in the face of the more human morality of Islam.16 On account of the large numbers of Copts that [106]from time to time have become Muhammadans, they have come to be considered by the followers of the Prophet as much more inclined to the faith of Islam than any other Christian sect, and though they have had to endure the most severe oppression and persecution on many occasions, yet the Copts that have been thus driven to abandon their faith are said to have been few in comparison with those who have changed their religion voluntarily,17 and even in the nineteenth century, when Egypt was said to be the most tolerant of all Muhammadan countries, there were yearly conversions of the Copts to the Muslim faith.18 Still, persecution and oppression have undoubtedly played a very large part in the reduction of the numbers of the Copts, and the story of the sufferings of the Jacobite Church of Egypt,—persecuted alike by their fellow Christians19 and by the followers of the dominant faith, is a very sad one, and many abandoned the religion of their fathers in order to escape from burdensome taxes and unendurable indignities. The vast difference in this respect between their condition and that of the Christians of Syria, Palestine and Spain at the same period finds its explanation in the turbulent character of the Copts themselves. Their long struggle against the civil and theological despotism of Byzantium seems to have welded the zealots into a national party that could as little brook the foreign rule of the Arabs as, before, that of the Greeks. The rising of the Copts against their new masters in 646, when they drove the Arabs for a time out of Alexandria and opened the gates of the city to the Byzantine troops (who, however, treated the unfortunate Copts as enemies, [107]not having yet forgotten the welcome they had before given to the Muhammadan invaders), was the first of a long series of risings and insurrections,20—excited frequently by excessive taxation,—which exposed them to terrible reprisals, and caused the lot of the Jacobite Christians of Egypt to be harder to bear than that of any other Christian sect in this or other countries under Muhammadan rule. But the history of these events belongs rather to a history of Muhammadan persecution and intolerance than to the scope of the present work. It must not, however, be supposed that the condition of the Copts was invariably that of a persecuted sect; on the contrary there were times when they rose to positions of great affluence and importance in the state. They filled the posts of secretaries and scribes in the government offices,21 farmed the taxes,22 and in some cases amassed enormous wealth.23 The annals of their Church furnish us with many instances of ecclesiastics who were held in high favour and consideration by the reigning princes of the country, under the rule of many of whom the Christians enjoyed the utmost tranquillity.24 To such a period of the peace of the Church belongs an incident that led to the absorption of many Christians into the body of the faithful.

During the reign of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) (1169–1193) over Egypt, the condition of the Christians was very happy under the auspices of this tolerant ruler; the taxes that had been imposed upon them were lightened and several swept away altogether; they crowded into the public offices as secretaries, accountants and registrars; and for nearly a century under the successors of Saladin, they enjoyed the same toleration and favour, and had nothing to complain of except the corruption and degeneracy of their own clergy. Simony had become terribly rife among them; the priesthood was sold to ignorant and vicious persons, while postulants for the sacred office who were unable to pay the sums demanded for ordination, were repulsed with scorn, in spite of their [108]being worthy and fit persons. The consequence was that the spiritual and moral training of the people was utterly neglected and there was a lamentable decay of the Christian life.25 So corrupt had the Church become that when, on the death of John, the seventy-fourth Patriarch of the Jacobites, in 1216, a successor was to be elected, the contending parties who pushed the claims of rival candidates, kept up a fierce and irreconcilable dispute for nearly twenty years, and all this time cared less for the grievous scandal and the harmful consequences of their shameless quarrels than for the maintenance of their dogged and obstinately factious spirit. On more than one occasion the reigning sultan tried to make peace between the contending parties, refused the enormous bribes of three, five, and even ten thousand gold pieces that were offered in order to induce him to secure the election of one of the candidates by the pressure of official influence, and even offered to remit the fee that it was customary for a newly-elected Patriarch to pay, if only they would put aside their disputes and come to some agreement,—but all to no purpose. Meanwhile many episcopal sees fell vacant and there was no one to take the place of the bishops and priests that died in this interval; in the monastery of St. Macarius alone there were only four priests left as compared with over eighty under the last Patriarch.26 So utterly neglected were the Christians of the western dioceses, that they all became Muslims.27 To this bald statement of the historian of the Coptic Church, we unfortunately have no information to add, of the positive efforts made by the Musalmans to bring these Christians over to their faith. That such there were, there can be very little doubt, especially as we know that the Christians held public disputations and engaged in written controversies on the respective merits of the rival creeds.28 That these [109]conversions were not due to persecution, we know from direct historical evidence that during this vacancy of the patriarchate, the Christians had full and complete freedom of public worship, were allowed to restore their churches and even to build new ones, were freed from the restrictions that forbade them to ride on horses or mules, and were tried in law-courts of their own, while the monks were exempted from the payment of tribute and granted certain privileges.29

How far this incident is a typical case of conversion to Islam among the Copts it is difficult to say; a parallel case of neglect is mentioned by two Capuchin missionaries who travelled up the Nile to Luxor in the seventeenth century, where they found that the Copts of Luxor had no priest, and some of them had not gone to confession or communion for fifty years.30 Under such circumstances the decay of their numbers can readily be understood.

A similar neglect probably contributed to the decay of the Nubian Church which recognised the primacy of the Jacobite Patriarch of Alexandria, as do the Abyssinians to the present day. The Nubians had been converted to Christianity about the middle of the sixth century, and retained their independence when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs; a treaty was made according to which the Nubians were to send every year three hundred and sixty slaves, with forty more for the governor of Egypt, while the Arabs were to furnish them with corn, oil and raiment.31 In the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (833–842), ambassadors were sent by the caliph renewing this treaty, and the king of Nubia visited the capital, where he was received with great magnificence and dismissed with costly presents.32 In the twelfth century they were still all Christian,33 and retained their old independence in spite of the frequent expeditions sent against them from Egypt.34 In 1275 the nephew of the then king of Nubia obtained from the sultan of Egypt a body of troops to assist him in his revolt against his uncle, [110]whom he by their help succeeded in deposing; in return for this assistance he had to cede the two northernmost provinces of Nubia to the sultan, and as the inhabitants elected to retain their Christian faith, an annual tribute of one dīnār for each male was imposed upon them.35 But this Muhammadan overlordship was temporary only, and the Nubians of the ceded provinces soon reasserted their independence.36

But settlements of Arabs had been established in Nubia for several centuries earlier and the Arabs on the Blue Nile had so increased in number and wealth in the tenth century that they were able to ask permission to build a mosque in Soba,37 the capital of the Christian kingdom.38 In the thirteenth and especially from the beginning of the fourteenth century there began a general process of interpenetration through the migration into Nubia of Arabs, especially of the Juhaynah tribe, who intermarried with the women of the land and gradually succeeded in breaking up the power of the Nubian princes.39 In the latter half of the fourteenth century Ibn Baṭūṭah40 tells us that the Nubians were still Christians, though the king of their chief city, Dongola,41 had embraced Islam in the reign of Nāṣir (probably Nāṣir b. Qulāūn, one of the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt, who died A.D. 1340); the repeated expeditions of the Muslims so late as the fifteenth century had not succeeded in pushing their conquests south of the first cataract, near which was their last fortified place,42 while Christianity seems to have extended as far up the Nile as Sennaar.

The Christian Nubian kingdom appears to have come to an end partly through internal dissensions and partly [111]through the attacks of Arab and Negro tribes on its borders, and finally by the establishment of the powerful Fūnj empire in the fifteenth century.43

But it is probable that the progress of Islam in the country was all this time being promoted by the Muhammadan merchants and others that frequented it. Maqrīzī (writing in the early part of the fifteenth century) quotes one of those missionary anecdotes which occur so rarely in the works of Arabic authors; it is told by Ibn Salīm al-Aswāni, and is of interest as giving us a living picture of the Muslim propagandist at work. Though the convert referred to is neither a Christian nor a Nubian, still the story shows that there was such a thing as conversion to Islam in Nubia in the fifteenth century. Ibn Salīm says that he once met a man at the court of the Nubian chief of Muqurrah, who told him that he came from a city that lay three months’ journey from the Nile. When asked about his religion, he replied, “My Creator and thy Creator is God; the Creator of the universe and of all men is One, and his dwelling-place is in Heaven.” When there was a dearth of rain, or when pestilence attacked them or their cattle, his fellow-countrymen would climb up a high mountain and there pray to God, who accepted their prayers and supplied their needs before even they came down again. When he acknowledged that God had never sent them a prophet, Ibn Salīm recounted to him the story of the prophets Moses and Jesus and Muḥammad, and how by the help of God they had been enabled to perform many miracles. And he answered, “The truth must indeed have been with them, when they did these things; and if they performed these deeds, I believe in them.”44

Very slowly and gradually the Nubians seem to have drifted from Christianity into Muhammadanism.45 The spiritual life of their Church had sunk to the lowest ebb, and as no movement of reform sprang up in their midst, and as they had lost touch with the Christian Churches beyond their borders, it was only natural that they should seek for an expression of their spiritual aspirations in the [112]religion of Islam, whose followers had so long borne witness to its living power among them, and had already won over some of their countrymen to the acceptance of it. A Portuguese priest, who travelled in Abyssinia from 1520–1527, has preserved for us a picture of the Nubians in this state of transition; he says that they were neither Christians, Jews nor Muhammadans, but had come to be without faith and without laws; but still “they lived with the desire of being Christians.” Through the fault of their clergy they had sunk into the grossest ignorance, and now there were no bishops or priests left among them; accordingly they sent an embassy of six men to the king of Abyssinia, praying him to send priests and monks to instruct them, but this the king refused to do without the permission of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and as this could not be obtained, the unfortunate ambassadors returned unsuccessful to their own country.46 The same writer was informed by a Christian who had travelled in Nubia, that he had found 150 churches there, in each of which were still to be seen the figures of the crucified Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and other saints painted on the walls. In all the fortresses, also, that were scattered throughout the country, there were churches.47 Before the close of the following century, Christianity had entirely disappeared from Nubia “for want of pastors,” but the closed churches were to be found still standing throughout the whole country.48 The Nubians had yielded to the powerful Muhammadan influences that surrounded them, to which the proselytising efforts of the Muslims who had travelled in Nubia for centuries past no doubt contributed a great deal; on the north were Egypt and the Arab tribes that had made their way up the Nile and extended their authority along the banks of that river;49 on the south, the Muhammadan state of the Belloos, separating them from Abyssinia. [113]These Belloos, in the early part of the sixteenth century, were, in spite of their Muslim faith, tributaries of the Christian king of Abyssinia;50 and—if they may be identified with the Baliyyūn, who, together with their neighbours, the Bajah (the inhabitants of the so-called island of Meroe), are spoken of by Idrīsī, in the twelfth century, as being Jacobite Christians,51—it is probable that they had only a few years before been converted to Islam, at the same time as the Bajah, who had been incorporated into the Muhammadan empire of the Fūnj, when these latter extended their conquests in 1499–1530 from the south up to the borders of Nubia and Abyssinia and founded the powerful state of Sennaar. When the army of Aḥmad Grāñ invaded Abyssinia and made its way right through the country from south to north, it effected a junction about 1534 with the army of the sultan of Maseggia or Mazaga, a province under Muhammadan rule but tributary to Abyssinia, lying between that country and Sennaar; in the army of this sultan there were 15,000 Nubian soldiers who, from the account given of them, appear to have been Musalmans.52 Fragmentary and insufficient as these data of the conversion of the Nubians are, we may certainly conclude from all we know of the independent character of this people and the tenacity with which they clung to the Christian faith, so long as it was a living force among them, that their change of religion was a gradual one, extending through several centuries.

Let us now pass to the history of Islam among the Abyssinians, who had received Christianity two centuries before the Nubians, and like them belonged to the Jacobite Church.

The tide of Arab emigration does not seem to have set across the Red Sea, the western shores of which formed part of the Abyssinian kingdom, until many centuries after Arabia had accepted the faith of the prophet. Up to the tenth century only a few Muhammadan families were to be found residing in the coast towns of Abyssinia, but at the end of the twelfth century the foundation of an Arab dynasty alienated some of the coast-lands from the Abyssinian kingdom. In 1300 a missionary, named Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad, made his way into Abyssinia, calling [114]on the people to embrace Islam, and in the following year, having collected around him 200,000 men, he attacked the ruler of Amhara in several engagements.53 King Saifa Arʻād (1342–1370) took energetic measures against the Muhammadans in his kingdom, putting to death or driving into exile all those who refused to embrace Christianity.54 At the close of the same century the disturbed state of the country, owing to the civil wars that distracted it, made it possible for the various Arab settlements along the coast to make themselves masters of the entire seaboard and drive the Abyssinians into the interior, and the king, Baʼeda Māryām (1468–1478), is said to have spent the greater part of his reign in fighting against the Muhammadans on the eastern border of his kingdom.55 In the early part of the sixteenth century, while the powerful Muhammadan kingdom of Adal, between Abyssinia and the southern extremity of the Red Sea, and some others were bitterly hostile to the Christian power, there were others again that formed peaceful tributaries of “Prester John”; e.g. in Massowah there were Arabs who kept the flocks of the Abyssinian seigniors, wandering about in bands of thirty or forty with their wives and children, each band having its Christian “captain.”56 Some Musalmans are also mentioned as being in the service of the king and being entrusted by him with important posts;57 while some of these remained faithful to Islam, others embraced the prevailing religion of the country. What was implied in the fact of these Muhammadan communities being tributaries of the king of Abyssinia, it is difficult to determine. The Musalmans of Ḥadya had along with other tribute to give up every year to the king a maiden who had to become a Christian; this custom was in accordance with an ancient treaty, which the king of Abyssinia has always made them observe, “because he was the stronger”; besides this, they were forbidden to carry arms or put on war-apparel, and, if they rode, their horses were not to be saddled; “these orders,” they said, “we have always obeyed, so that the [115]king may not put us to death and destroy our mosques. When the king sends his people to fetch the maiden and the tribute, we put her on a bed, wash her and cover her with a cloth, and recite the prayers for the dead over her and give her up to the people of the king; and thus did our fathers and our grandfathers before us.”58

These Muhammadan tributaries were chiefly to be found in the low-lying countries that formed the northern boundary of Abyssinia, from the Red Sea westward to Sennaar,59 and on the south and the south-east of the kingdom.60 What influence these Muhammadans had on the Christian populations with which they were intermingled, and whether they made converts to Islam as in the present century, is matter only of conjecture. Certain it is, however, that when the independent Muhammadan ruler of Adal, Aḥmad Grāñ—himself said to have been the son of a Christian priest of Aijjo, who had left his own country and adopted Islam in that of the Adals61—invaded Abyssinia from 1528 to 1543, many Abyssinian chiefs with their followers joined his victorious army and became Musalmans, and though the Christian populations of some districts preferred to pay jizyah,62 others embraced the religion of the conqueror.63 But the contemporary Muslim historian himself tells us that in some cases this conversion was the result of fear, and that suspicions were entertained of the genuineness of the allegiance of the new converts.64 But such apparently was not universally the case, and the widespread character of the conversions in several districts give the impression of a popular movement. The Christian chiefs who went over to Islam made use of their personal influence in inducing their troops to follow their example. They were, as we are told, in some cases very ignorant of their own religion,65 and thus the change of faith was a less difficult matter. Particularly instrumental in conversions of this kind were those Muhammadan chiefs who had previously entered the service of the king of Abyssinia, and those renegades who took the opportunity of the invasion of the country by a conquering Musalman [116]army to throw off their allegiance at once to Christianity and the Christian king and declare themselves Muhammadans once more.66

One of these in 1531 wrote the following letter to Aḥmad Grāñ:—“I was formerly a Muslim and the son of a Muslim, was taken prisoner by the polytheists and made a Christian by force; but in my heart I have always clung to the true faith and now I seek the protection of God and of His Prophet and of thee. If thou wilt accept my repentance and punish me not for what I have done, I will return in penitence to God; and I will devise means whereby the troops of the king, that are with me, may join thee and become Muslims;”—and in fact the greater part of his army elected to follow their general; including the women and children their numbers are said to have amounted to 20,000 souls.67

But with the help of the Portuguese, the Abyssinians succeeded in shaking off the yoke of their Muhammadan conquerors and Aḥmad Grāñ himself was slain in 1543. Islam had, however, gained a footing in the country, which the troublous condition of affairs during the remainder of the sixteenth and the following century enabled it to retain, the rival Christian Churches being too busily engaged in contending with one another, to devote much attention to their common enemy. For the successful proselytising of the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic missionaries and the active interference of the Portuguese in all civil and political matters, excited violent opposition in the mass of the Abyssinian Christians;—indeed so bitter was this feeling that some of the chiefs openly declared that they would rather submit to a Muhammadan ruler than continue their alliance with the Portuguese;68—and the semi-religious, semi-patriotic movement set on foot thereby, rapidly assumed such vast proportions as to lead (about 1632) to the expulsion of the Portuguese and the exclusion of all foreign Christians from the country. The condition of Abyssinia then speedily became one of terrible confusion and anarchy, of which some tribes of the Galla race took [117]advantage, to thrust their way right into the very centre of the country, where their settlements remain to the present day.

The progress achieved by Islam during this period may be estimated from the testimony of a traveller of the seventeenth century, who tells us that in his time the adherents of this faith were scattered throughout the whole of Abyssinia and formed a third of the entire population.69 During the following century the faith of the Prophet seems steadily to have increased by means of the conversion of isolated individuals here and there. The absence of any strong central government in the country favoured the rise of petty independent chieftains, many of whom had strong Muhammadan sympathies, though (in accordance with a fundamental law of the state) all the Abyssinian princes had to belong to the Christian faith; the Muhammadans, too, aspiring to the dignity of the Abyssinian aristocracy, abjured the faith in which they had been born and pretended conversion to Christianity in order to get themselves enrolled in the order of the nobles, and as governors of Christian provinces made use of all their influence towards the spread of Islam.70 One of the chief reasons of the success of this faith seems to have been the moral superiority of the Muslims as compared with that of the Christian population of Abyssinia. Rüppell says that he frequently noticed in the course of his travels in Abyssinia that when a post had to be filled which required that a thoroughly honest and trustworthy person should be selected, the choice always fell upon a Muhammadan. In comparison with the Christians, he says that they were more active and energetic; that every Muhammadan had his sons taught to read and write, whereas Christian children were only educated when they were intended for the priesthood.71 This moral superiority of the Muhammadans of [118]Abyssinia over the Christian population goes far to explain the continuous though slow progress made by Islam during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the degradation and apathy of the Abyssinian clergy and the interminable feuds of the Abyssinian chiefs, have left Muhammadan influences free to work undisturbed. Mr. Plowden, who was English consul in Abyssinia from 1844 to 1860, speaking of the Ḥabāb, three Tigrē tribes dwelling between 16° and 17° 30′ lat., the north-west of Massowah, says that they have become Muhammadan “within the last 100 years, and all, save the latest generation, bear Christian names. They have changed their faith, through the constant influence of the Muhammadans with whom they trade, and through the gradual and now entire abandonment of the country by the Abyssinian chiefs, too much occupied in ceaseless wars with their neighbours.”72 They have a tradition that one of their chiefs named Jāwej rejected Christianity for Islam, in the belief that the latter faith brought good luck and long life; he then said to his priest, “Break in pieces the Tābōt”;73 the priest answered, “I dare not break in pieces the Tābōt of Mary”; so Jāwej seized the Tābōt with his own hands and cut it in pieces with an axe; the Christian priests then adopted Islam, and all their descendants are shayk͟hs of the tribe to the present day.74

Other sections of the population of the northern districts of the country were similarly converted to Islam during the same period, because the priests had abandoned these districts and the churches had been suffered to fall into ruins,—apparently entirely through neglect, as the Muhammadans here are said to have been by no means fanatical nor to have borne any particular enmity to Christianity.75 Similar testimony to the progress of Islam in the early part of the nineteenth century is given by other travellers,76 who found numbers of Christians to be continually passing over to that faith. The Muhammadans were especially favoured by Ras ʻAlī, one of the vice-regents of Abyssinia and practically master of the country before the accession [119]of King Theodore in 1853. Though himself a Christian, he distributed posts and even the spoils of the churches among the followers of Islam, and during his reign one half of the population of the central provinces of Abyssinia embraced the faith of the Prophet.77 Such deep roots had this faith now struck in Abyssinia that its followers had in their hands all the commerce as well as all the petty trade of the country, enjoyed vast possessions, were masters of large towns and central markets, and had a firm hold upon the mass of the people. Indeed, a Christian missionary who lived for thirty-five years in this country, rated the success and the zeal of the Muslim propagandists so high as to say that were another Aḥmad Grāñ to arise and unfurl the banner of the Prophet, the whole of Abyssinia would become Muhammadan.78 Embroilments with the Egyptian government (with which Abyssinia was at war from 1875 to 1882) brought about a revulsion of feeling against Muhammadanism: hatred of the foreign Muslim foe reacted upon their co-religionists within the border. In 1878, King John summoned a Convocation of the Abyssinian clergy, who proclaimed him supreme arbiter in matters of faith and ordained that there should be but one religion throughout the whole kingdom. Christians of all sects other than the Jacobite were given two years in which to become reconciled to the national Church; the Muhammadans were to submit within three, and the heathen within five, years. A few days later the king promulgated an edict that showed how little worth was the three years’ grace allowed to the Muhammadans; for not only did he order them to build Christian churches wherever they were needed and to pay tithes to the priests resident in their respective districts, but also gave three months’ notice to all Muhammadan officials to either receive baptism or resign their posts. Such compulsory conversion (consisting as it did merely of the rite of baptism and the payment of tithes) was naturally of the most ineffectual character, and while outwardly conforming, the Muslims in secret protested their loyalty to their old faith. Massaja saw some such go straight from the church [120]in which they had been baptised to the mosque, in order to have this enforced baptism wiped off by some holy man of their own faith.79 These mass conversions were rendered the more ineffectual by being confined to the men, for as the royal edict had made no mention of the women they were in no way molested,—a circumstance that probably proved to be of considerable significance in the future history of Islam in Abyssinia, as Massaja bears striking testimony to the important part the Muhammadan women have played in the diffusion of their faith in this country.80 By 1880 King John is said to have compelled about 50,000 Muhammadans to be baptised, as well as 20,000 members of one of the pagan tribes and half a million of Gallas,81 but as their conversion went no further than baptism and the payment of tithes, it is not surprising to learn that the only result of these violent measures was to increase the hatred and hostility of both the Muslim and the heathen Abyssinians towards the Christian faith.82 The king of the petty state of Kafa (which had almost always acknowledged the supremacy of Abyssinia),—Sawo-Teheno,—took advantage of the embarrassment of King John, who was threatened at once by the Italians and the followers of the Mahdī, to assert his independence, and became a Musalman, in order to do so more effectively. He successfully resisted all attacks until 1897, when his state was reconquered and he himself taken prisoner by the Emperor Menelik, the former king of Shoa, who had established his authority over the whole of Abyssinia after the death of King John in 1889. Christianity was re-established as the state religion throughout Kafa and Christian worship renewed in the churches, which had been left uninjured, being either shut up or turned into mosques.83 But these violent measures taken in the interests of the Christian faith have failed to arrest the growing power of Islam during the nineteenth century. Whole tribes that were once Christian and still bear Christian names, such as Taklēs (“Plant of Jesus”), Hebtēs (“Gift of Jesus”) [121]and Temāryām (“Gift of Mary”), have become Muslim. The two Mänsaʻ tribes which were entirely Christian about the middle of the nineteenth century had become Muslim, for the most part, at the beginning of the twentieth century; the propagandist efforts of the Muslims who converted them appear to have been facilitated through the ignorance of the Christian clergy. A similar Muhammadanising process has been going on for some time among other tribes also.84

We must return now to the history of Africa in the seventh century, when the Arabs were pushing their conquests from East to West along the north coast. The comparatively easy conquest of Egypt, where so many of the inhabitants assisted the Arabs in bringing the Byzantine rule to an end, found no parallel in the bloody campaigns and the long-continued resistance that here barred their further progress, and half a century elapsed before the Arabs succeeded in making themselves complete masters of the north coast from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. It was not till 698 that the fall of Carthage brought the Roman rule in Africa to an end for ever, and the subjugation of the Berbers made the Arabs supreme in the country.

The details of these campaigns it is no part of our purpose to consider, but rather to attempt to discover in what way Islam was spread among the Christian population. Unfortunately the materials available for such a purpose are lamentably sparse and insufficient. What became of that great African Church that had given such saints and theologians to Christendom? The Church of Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, which had emerged victorious out of so many persecutions, and had so stoutly championed the cause of Christian orthodoxy, seems to have faded away like a mist.

In the absence of definite information, it has been usual to ascribe the disappearance of the Christian population to fanatical persecutions and forced conversions on the part of the Muslim conquerors. But there are many considerations that militate against such a rough and ready settlement of this question. First of all, there is the absence [122]of definite evidence in support of such an assertion. Massacres, devastation and all the other accompaniments of a bloody and long-protracted war, there were in horrible abundance, but of actual religious persecution we have little mention, and the survival of the native Christian Church for more than eight centuries after the Arab conquest is a testimony to the toleration that alone could have rendered such a survival possible.

The causes that brought about the decay of Christianity in North Africa must be sought for elsewhere than in the bigotry of Muhammadan rulers. But before attempting to enumerate these, it will be well to realise how very small must have been the number of the Christian population at the end of the seventh century—a circumstance that renders its continued existence under Muhammadan rule still more significant of the absence of forced conversion, and leaves such a hypothesis much less plausibility than would have been the case had the Arabs found a large and flourishing Christian Church there when they commenced their conquest of northern Africa.

The Roman provinces of Africa, to which the Christian population was confined, never extended far southwards; the Sahara forms a barrier in this direction, so that the breadth of the coast seldom exceeds 80 or 100 miles.85 Though there were as many as 500 bishoprics just before the Vandal conquest, this number can serve as no criterion of the number of the faithful, owing to the practice observed in the African Church of appointing bishops to the most inconsiderable towns and very frequently to the most obscure villages,86 and it is doubtful whether Christianity ever spread far inland among the Berber tribes.87 When the power of the Roman Empire declined in the fifth century, different tribes of this great race, known to the Romans under the names of Moors, Numidians, Libyans, etc., swarmed up from the south to ravage and destroy the wealthy cities of the coast. These invaders were certainly heathen. The Libyans, whose devastations are so pathetically bewailed [123]by Synesius of Cyrene, pillaged and burnt the churches and carried off the sacred vessels for their own idolatrous rites,88 and this province of Cyrenaica never recovered from their devastations, and Christianity was probably almost extinct here at the time of the Muslim invasion. The Moorish chieftain in the district of Tripolis, who was at war with the Vandal king Thorismund (496–524), but respected the churches and clergy of the orthodox, who had been ill-treated by the Vandals, declared his heathenism when he said, “I do not know who the God of the Christians is, but if he is so powerful as he is represented, he will take vengeance on those who insult him, and succour those who do him honour.”89 There is some probability that the nomads of Mauritania also were very largely heathen.

But whatever may have been the extent of the Christian Church, it received a blow from the Vandal persecutions from which it never recovered. For nearly a century the Arian Vandals persecuted the orthodox with relentless fury; sent their bishops into exile, forbade the public exercise of their religion and cruelly tortured those who refused to conform to the religion of their conquerors.90 When in 534, Belisarius crushed the power of the Vandals and restored North Africa to the Roman Empire, only 217 bishops met in the Synod of Carthage91 to resume the direction of the Christian Church. After the fierce and long-continued persecution to which they had been subjected the number of the faithful must have been very much reduced, and during the century that elapsed before the coming of the Muhammadans, the inroads of the barbarian Moors, who shut the Romans up in the cities and other centres of population, and kept the mountains, the desert and the open country for themselves,92 the prevalent disorder and ill-government, and above all the desolating plagues that signalised the latter half of the sixth century, all combined to carry on the work of destruction. Five millions of Africans are said to have been consumed by the wars and government of the Emperor Justinian. The wealthier [124]citizens abandoned a country whose commerce and agriculture, once so flourishing, had been irretrievably ruined. “Such was the desolation of Africa, that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days without meeting the face either of a friend or an enemy. The nation of the Vandals had disappeared; they once amounted to an hundred and sixty thousand warriors, without including the children, the women, or the slaves. Their numbers were infinitely surpassed by the number of Moorish families extirpated in a relentless war; the same destruction was retaliated on the Romans and their allies, who perished by the climate, their mutual quarrels, and the rage of the barbarians.”93

In 646, the year before the victorious Arabs advanced from Egypt to the subjugation of the western province, the African Church that had championed so often the purity of Christian doctrine, was stirred to its depths by the struggle against Monotheletism; but when the bishops of the four ecclesiastical provinces in the archbishopric of Carthage, viz. Mauritania, Numidia, Byzacena and Africa Proconsularis, held councils to condemn Monotheletism, and wrote synodal letters to the Emperor and the Pope, there were only sixty-eight bishops who assembled at Carthage to represent the last-mentioned province, and forty-two for Byzacena. The numbers from the other two dioceses are not given, but the Christian population had undoubtedly suffered much more in these than in the two other dioceses which were nearer to the seat of government.94 It is exceedingly unlikely that any of the bishops were absent on an occasion that excited so much feeling, when zeal for Christian doctrine and political animosity to the Byzantine court both combined in stimulating this movement, and when Africa took the most prominent part in stirring up the opposition that led to the convening of the great Lateran Council of 648. This diminution in the number of the African bishops certainly points to a vast decrease in the Christian population, and in consideration of the numerous causes contributing to a decay of the population, too great [125]stress even must not be laid upon the number of these, because an episcopal see may continue to be filled long after the diocese has sunk into insignificance.

From the considerations enumerated above, it may certainly be inferred that the Christian population at the time of the Muhammadan invasion was by no means a large one. During the fifty years that elapsed before the Arabs assured their victory, the Christian population was still further reduced by the devastations of this long conflict. The city of Tripolis, after sustaining a siege of six months, was sacked, and of the inhabitants part were put to the sword and the rest carried off captive into Egypt and Arabia.95 Another city, bordering on the Numidian desert, was defended by a Roman count with a large garrison which bravely endured a blockade of a whole year; when at last it was taken by storm, all the males were put to the sword and the women and children carried off captive.96 The number of such captives is said to have amounted to several hundreds of thousands.97 Many of the Christians took refuge in flight,98 some into Italy and Spain,99 and it would almost seem that others even wandered as far as Germany, judging from a letter addressed to the diocese of St. Boniface by Pope Gregory II.100 In fact, many of the great Roman cities were quite depopulated, and remained uninhabited for a long time or were even left to fall to ruins entirely,101 while in several cases the conquerors chose entirely new sites for their chief towns.102

As to the scattered remnants of the once flourishing Christian Church that still remained in Africa at the end [126]of the seventh century, it can hardly be supposed that persecution is responsible for their final disappearance, in the face of the fact that traces of a native Christian community were to be found even so late as the sixteenth century. Idrīs, the founder of the dynasty in Morocco that bore his name, is indeed said to have compelled by force Christians and Jews to embrace Islam in the year A.D. 789, when he had just begun to carve out a kingdom for himself with the sword,103 but, as far as I have been able to discover, this incident is without parallel in the history of the native Church of North Africa.104

The very slowness of its decay is a testimony to the toleration it must have received. About 300 years after the Muhammadan conquest there were still nearly forty bishoprics left,105 and when in 1053 Pope Leo IX laments that only five bishops could be found to represent the once flourishing African Church,106 the cause is most probably to be sought for in the terrible bloodshed and destruction wrought by the Arab hordes that had poured into the country a few years before and filled it with incessant conflict [127]and anarchy.107 In 1076, the African Church could not provide the three bishops necessary for the consecration of an aspirant to the dignity of the episcopate, in accordance with the demands of canon law, and it was necessary for Pope Gregory VII to consecrate two bishops to act as coadjutors of the Archbishop of Carthage; but the numbers of the faithful were still so large as to demand the creation of fresh bishops to lighten the burden of the work, which was too heavy for these three bishops to perform unaided.108 In the course of the next two centuries, the Christian Church declined still further, and in 1246 the bishop of Morocco was the sole spiritual leader of the remnant of the native Church.109 Up to the same period traces of the survival of Christianity were still to be found among the Kabils of Algeria;110 these tribes had received some slight instruction in the tenets of Islam at an early period, but the new faith had taken very little hold upon them, and as years went by they lost even what little knowledge they had at first possessed, so much so that they even forgot the Muslim formula of prayer. Shut up in their mountain fastnesses and jealous of their independence, they successfully resisted the introduction of the Arab element into their midst, and thus the difficulties in the way of their conversion were very considerable. Some unsuccessful attempts to start a mission among them had been made by the inmates of a monastery belonging to the Qādiriyyah order, Sāqiyah al-ḥamrāʼ, but the honour of winning an entrance among them for the Muslim faith was reserved for a number of Andalusian Moors who were driven out of Spain after the taking of Granada in 1492. They had taken refuge in this monastery and were recognised by the shayk͟h to be eminently fitted for the arduous task that had previously so completely baffled the efforts of his disciples. Before dismissing them on this pious errand, he thus addressed them: “It is a duty incumbent [128]upon us to bear the torch of Islam into these regions that have lost their inheritance in the blessings of religion; for these unhappy Kabils are wholly unprovided with schools, and have no shayk͟h to teach their children the laws of morality and the virtues of Islam; so they live like the brute beasts, without God or religion. To do away with this unhappy state of things, I have determined to appeal to your religious zeal and enlightenment. Let not these mountaineers wallow any longer in their pitiable ignorance of the grand truths of our religion; go and breathe upon the dying fire of their faith and re-illumine its smouldering embers; purge them of whatever errors may still cling to them from their former belief in Christianity; make them understand that in the religion of our lord Muḥammad—may God have compassion upon him—dirt is not, as in the Christian religion, looked upon as acceptable in the eyes of God.111 I will not disguise from you the fact that your task is beset with difficulties, but your irresistible zeal and the ardour of your faith will enable you, by the grace of God, to overcome all obstacles. Go, my children, and bring back again to God and His Prophet these unhappy people who are wallowing in the mire of ignorance and unbelief. Go, my children, bearing the message of salvation, and may God be with you and uphold you.”

The missionaries started off in parties of five or six at a time in various directions; they went in rags, staff in hand, and choosing out the wildest and least frequented parts of the mountains, established hermitages in caves and clefts of the rocks. Their austerities and prolonged devotions soon excited the curiosity of the Kabils, who after a short time began to enter into friendly relations with them. Little by little the missionaries gained the influence they desired through their knowledge of medicine, of the mechanical arts, and other advantages of civilisation, and each hermitage became a centre of Muslim teaching. [129]Students, attracted by the learning of the new-comers, gathered round them and in time became missionaries of Islam to their fellow-countrymen, until their faith spread throughout all the country of the Kabils and the villages of the Algerian Sahara.112

The above incident is no doubt illustrative of the manner in which Islam was introduced among such other sections of the independent tribes of the interior as had received any Christian teaching, but whose knowledge of this faith had dwindled down to the observance of a few superstitious rites;113 for, cut off as they were from the rest of the Christian world and unprovided with spiritual teachers, they could have had little in the way of positive religious belief to oppose to the teachings of the Muslim missionaries.

There is little more to add to these sparse records of the decay of the North African Church. A Muhammadan traveller,114 who visited al-Jarīd, the southern district of Tunis, in the early part of the fourteenth century, tells us that the Christian churches, although in ruins, were still standing in his day, not having been destroyed by the Arab conquerors, who had contented themselves with building a mosque in front of each of these churches. Ibn K͟haldūn (writing towards the close of the fourteenth century), speaks of some villages in the province of Qastīliyyah,115 with a Christian population whose ancestors had lived there since the time of the Arab conquest.116 At the end of the following century there was still to be found in the city of Tunis a small community of native Christians, living together in one of the suburbs, quite distinct from that in which the foreign Christian merchants resided; far from being oppressed or persecuted, they were employed as the bodyguard of the Sultan.117 These were doubtless [130]the same persons as were congratulated on their perseverance in the Christian faith by Charles V after the capture of Tunis in 1535.118

This is the last we hear of the native Christian Church in North Africa. The very fact of its so long survival would militate against any supposition of forced conversion, even if we had not abundant evidence of the tolerant spirit of the Arab rulers of the various North African kingdoms, who employed Christian soldiers,119 granted by frequent treaties the free exercise of their religion to Christian merchants and settlers,120 and to whom Popes121 recommended the care of the native Christian population, while exhorting the latter to serve their Muhammadan rulers faithfully.122 [131]

In 711 the victorious Arabs introduced Islam into Spain: in 1502 an edict of Ferdinand and Isabella forbade the exercise of the Muhammadan religion throughout the kingdom. During the centuries that elapsed between these two dates, Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest pages in the history of mediæval Europe. Her influence had passed through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the Renaissance. But these triumphs of the civilised life—art and poetry, science and philosophy—we must pass over here and fix our attention on the religious condition of Spain under the Muslim rule.

When the Muhammadans first brought their religion into Spain they found Catholic Christianity firmly established after its conquest over Arianism. The sixth Council of Toledo had enacted that all kings were to swear that they would not suffer the exercise of any other religion but the Catholic, and would vigorously enforce the law against all dissentients, while a subsequent law forbade any one under pain of confiscation of his property and perpetual imprisonment, to call in question the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Evangelical Institutions, the definitions of the Fathers, the decrees of the Church, and the Holy Sacraments. The clergy had gained for their order a preponderating influence in the affairs of the state;1 the bishops and chief [132]ecclesiastics sat in the national councils, which met to settle the most important business of the realm, ratified the election of the king and claimed the right to depose him if he refused to abide by their decrees. The Christian clergy took advantage of their power to persecute the Jews, who formed a very large community in Spain; edicts of a brutally severe character were passed against such as refused to be baptised;2 and they consequently hailed the invading Arabs as their deliverers from such cruel oppression, they garrisoned the captured cities on behalf of the conqueror and opened the gates of towns that were being besieged.3

The Muhammadans received as warm a welcome from the slaves, whose condition under the Gothic rule was a very miserable one, and whose knowledge of Christianity was too superficial to have any weight when compared with the liberty and numerous advantages they gained, by throwing in their lot with the Muslims.

These down-trodden slaves were the first converts to Islam in Spain. The remnants of the heathen population of which we find mention as late as A.D. 693,4 probably followed their example. Many of the Christian nobles, also, whether from genuine conviction or from other motives, embraced the new creed.5 Many converts were won, too, from the lower and middle classes, who may well have embraced Islam, not merely outwardly, but from genuine conviction, turning to it from a religion whose ministers had left them ill-instructed and uncared for, and busied with worldly ambitions had plundered and oppressed their flocks.6 Having once become Muslims, these Spanish converts showed themselves zealous adherents of their adopted faith, and they and their children joined themselves to the Puritan party of the rigid Muhammadan theologians as against the careless and luxurious life of the Arab aristocracy.7

At the time of the Muhammadan conquest the old Gothic virtues are said by Christian historians to have declined [133]and given place to effeminacy and corruption, so that the Muhammadan rule appeared to them to be a punishment sent from God on those who had gone astray into the paths of vice;8 but such a statement is too frequent a commonplace of the ecclesiastical historian to be accepted in the absence of contemporary evidence.9

But certainly as time went on, matters do not seem to have mended themselves; and when Christian bishops took part in the revels of the Muhammadan court, when episcopal sees were put up to auction and persons suspected to be atheists appointed as shepherds of the faithful, and these in their turn bestowed the office of the priesthood on low and unworthy persons,10 we may well suppose that it was not only in the province of Elvira11 that Christians turned from a religion, the corrupt lives of whose ministers had brought it into discredit,12 and sought a more congenial atmosphere for the moral and spiritual life in the pale of Islam.

Had ecclesiastical writers cared to chronicle them, Spain would doubtless be found to offer instances of many a man leaving the Christian Church like Bodo, a deacon at the French court in the reign of Louis the Pious, who in A.D. 838 became a Jew, in order that (as he said), forsaking his sinful life, he might “abide steadfast in the law of the Lord.”13 [134]

It is very possible, too, that the lingering remains of the old Gothic Arianism—of which, indeed, there had been some slight revival in the Spanish Church just before the Arab conquest14—may have predisposed men’s minds to accept the new faith whose Christology was in such close agreement with Arian doctrine,15 and a later age may have witnessed parallels to that change of faith which is the earliest recorded instance of conversion to Islam in western Europe and occurred before the Arab invasion of Spain—namely the conversion of a Greek named Theodisclus, who succeeded St. Isidore (ob. A.D. 636) as Archbishop of Seville; he was accused of heresy, for maintaining that Jesus was not one God in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but was rather Son of God by adoption; he was accordingly condemned by an ecclesiastical synod, deprived of his archbishopric and degraded from the priesthood. Whereupon he went over to the Arabs and embraced Islam among them.16

Of forced conversion or anything like persecution in the early days of the Arab conquest, we hear nothing. Indeed, it was probably in a great measure their tolerant attitude towards the Christian religion that facilitated their rapid acquisition of the country. The only complaint that the Christians could bring against their new rulers for treating them differently to their non-Christian subjects, was that they had to pay the usual capitation-tax of forty-eight dirhams for the rich, twenty-four for the middle classes, and twelve for those who made their living by manual labour: this, as being in lieu of military service, was levied only on the able-bodied males, for women, children, monks, the halt, and the blind, and the sick, mendicants and slaves were exempted therefrom;17 it must moreover have appeared [135]the less oppressive as being collected by the Christian officials themselves.18

Except in the case of offences against the Muslim religious law, the Christians were tried by their own judges and in accordance with their own laws.19 They were left undisturbed in the exercise of their religion;20 the sacrifice of the mass was offered, with the swinging of censers, the ringing of the bell, and all the other solemnities of the Catholic ritual; the psalms were chanted in the choir, sermons preached to the people, and the festivals of the Church observed in the usual manner. They do not appear to have been condemned, like their co-religionists in Syria and Egypt, to wear a distinctive dress as sign of their humiliation, and in the ninth century at least, the Christian laity wore the same kind of costume as the Arabs.21 They were at one time even allowed to build new churches.22

We read also of the founding23 of several fresh monasteries in addition to the numerous convents both for monks and nuns that flourished undisturbed by the Muhammadan rulers. The monks could appear publicly in the woollen robes of their order and the priest had no need to conceal the mark of his sacred office,24 nor at the same time did their religious profession prevent the Christians from being entrusted with high offices at court,25 or serving in the Muslim armies.26 [136]

Certainly those Christians who could reconcile themselves to the loss of political power had little to complain of, and it is very noticeable that during the whole of the eighth century we hear of only one attempt at revolt on their part, namely at Beja, and in this they appear to have followed the lead of an Arab chief.27 Those who migrated into French territory in order that they might live under a Christian rule, certainly fared no better than the co-religionists they had left behind. In 812 Charlemagne interfered to protect the exiles who had followed him on his retreat from Spain from the exactions of the imperial officers. Three years later Louis the Pious had to issue another edict on their behalf, in spite of which they had soon again to complain against the nobles who robbed them of the lands that had been assigned to them. But the evil was only checked for a little time to break out afresh, and all the edicts passed on their behalf did not avail to make the lot of these unfortunate exiles more tolerable, and in the Cagots (i.e. canes Gothi), a despised and ill-treated class of later times, we probably meet again the Spanish colony that fled away from Muslim rule to throw themselves upon the mercy of their Christian co-religionists.28

The toleration of the Muhammadan government towards its Christian subjects in Spain and the freedom of intercourse between the adherents of the two religions brought about a certain amount of assimilation in the two communities. Inter-marriages became frequent;29 Isidore of Beja, who fiercely inveighs against the Muslim conquerors, records the marriage of ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz, the son of Mūsạ̄, with the widow of King Roderic, without a word of blame.30 Many of the Christians adopted Arab names, and in outward observances imitated to some extent their Muhammadan neighbours, e.g. many were circumcised,31 and in matters [137]of food and drink followed the practice of the “unbaptized pagans.”32

The very term Muzarabes (i.e. mustʻaribīn or Arabicised) applied to the Spanish Christians living under Arab rule, is significant of the tendencies that were at work. The study of Arabic very rapidly began to displace that of Latin throughout the country,33 so that the language of Christian theology came gradually to be neglected and forgotten. Even some of the higher clergy rendered themselves ridiculous by their ignorance of correct Latinity.34 It could hardly be expected that the laity would exhibit more zeal in such a matter than the clergy, and in 854 a Spanish writer brings the following complaint against his Christian fellow-countrymen:—“While we are investigating their (i.e. the Muslim) sacred ordinances and meeting together to study the sects of their philosophers—or rather philobraggers—not for the purpose of refuting their errors, but for the exquisite charm and for the eloquence and beauty of their language—neglecting the reading of the Scriptures, we are but setting up as an idol the number of the beast. (Apoc. xiii. 18.) Where nowadays can we find any learned layman who, absorbed in the study of the Holy Scriptures, cares to look at the works of any of the Latin Fathers? Who is there with any zeal for the writings of the Evangelists, or the Prophets, or Apostles? Our Christian young men, with their elegant airs and fluent speech, are showy in their dress and carriage, and are famed for the learning of the gentiles; intoxicated with Arab eloquence they greedily handle, eagerly devour and zealously discuss the books of the Chaldeans (i.e. Muhammadans), and make them known by praising them with every flourish of rhetoric, knowing nothing of the beauty of the Church’s literature, and looking down with contempt on the streams of the Church that flow forth from Paradise; alas! the Christians are so ignorant [138]of their own law, the Latins pay so little attention to their own language, that in the whole Christian flock there is hardly one man in a thousand who can write a letter to inquire after a friend’s health intelligibly, while you may find a countless rabble of all kinds of them who can learnedly roll out the grandiloquent periods of the Chaldean tongue. They can even make poems, every line ending with the same letter, which display high flights of beauty and more skill in handling metre than the gentiles themselves possess.”35

In fact the knowledge of Latin so much declined in one part of Spain that it was found necessary to translate the ancient Canons of the Spanish Church and the Bible into Arabic for the use of the Christians.36

While the brilliant literature of the Arabs exercised such a fascination and was so zealously studied, those who desired an education in Christian literature had little more than the materials that had been employed in the training of the barbaric Goths, and could with difficulty find teachers to induct them even into this low level of culture. As time went on this want of Christian education increased more and more. In 1125 the Muzarabes wrote to King Alfonso of Aragon: “We and our fathers have up to this time been brought up among the gentiles, and having been baptised, freely observe the Christian ordinances; but we have never had it in our power to be fully instructed in our divine religion; for, subject as we are to the infidels who have long oppressed us, we have never ventured to ask for teachers from Rome or France; and they have never come to us of their own accord on account of the barbarity of the heathen whom we obey.”37

From such close intercourse with the Muslims and so diligent a study of their literature—when we find even so bigoted an opponent of Islam as Alvar38 acknowledging that the Qurʼān was composed in such eloquent and beautiful language that even Christians could not help reading and [139]admiring it—we should naturally expect to find signs of a religious influence: and such indeed is the case. Elipandus, bishop of Toledo (ob. 810), an exponent of the heresy of Adoptionism—according to which the Man Christ Jesus was Son of God by adoption and not by nature—is expressly said to have arrived at these heretical views through his frequent and close intercourse with the Muhammadans.39 This new doctrine appears to have spread quickly over a great part of Spain, while it was successfully propagated in Septimania, which was under French protection, by Felix, bishop of Urgel in Catalonia.40 Felix was brought before a council, presided over by Charlemagne, and made to abjure his error, but on his return to Spain he relapsed into his old heresy, doubtless (as was suggested by Pope Leo III at the time) owing to his intercourse with the pagans (meaning thereby the Muhammadans) who held similar views.41 When prominent churchmen were so profoundly influenced by their contact with Muhammadans, we may judge that the influence of Islam upon the Christians of Spain was very considerable, indeed in A.D. 936 a council was held at Toledo to consider the best means of preventing this intercourse from contaminating the purity of the Christian faith.42

It may readily be understood how these influences of Islamic thought and practice—added to definite efforts at conversion43—would lead to much more than a mere approximation and would very speedily swell the number of the converts to Islam so that their descendants, the so-called Muwallads—a term denoting those not of Arab blood—soon formed a large and important party in the state, indeed the majority of the population of the country,44 and as early [140]as the beginning of the ninth century we read of attempts made by them to shake off the Arab rule, and on several occasions later they come forward actively as a national party of Spanish Muslims.

We have little or no details of the history of the conversion of these New-Muslims. Instances appeared to have occurred right up to the last days of Muslim rule, for when the army of Ferdinand and Isabella captured Malaga in 1487, it is recorded that all the renegade Christians found in the city were tortured to death with sharp-pointed reeds, and in the capitulation that secured the submission of Purchena two years later, an express promise was made that renegades would not be forced to return to Christianity.45 Some few apostatised to escape the payment of some penalty inflicted by the law-courts.46 But the majority of the converts were no doubt won over by the imposing influence of the faith of Islam itself, presented to them as it was with all the glamour of a brilliant civilisation, having a poetry, a philosophy and an art well calculated to attract the reason and dazzle the imagination: while in the lofty chivalry of the Arabs there was free scope for the exhibition of manly prowess and the knightly virtues—a career closed to the conquered Spaniards that remained true to the Christian faith. Again, the learning and literature of the Christians must have appeared very poor and meagre when compared with that of the Muslims, the study of which may well by itself have served as an incentive to the adoption of their religion. Besides, to the devout mind Islam in Spain could offer the attractions of a pious and zealous Puritan party with the orthodox Muslim theologians at its head, which at times had a preponderating influence in the state and struggled earnestly towards a reformation of faith and morals.

Taking into consideration the ardent religious feeling that animated the mass of the Spanish Muslims and the provocation that the Christians gave to the Muhammadan government through their treacherous intrigues with their co-religionists over the border, the history of Spain under Muhammadan rule is singularly free from persecution. [141]With the exception of three or four cases of genuine martyrdom, the only approach to anything like persecution during the whole period of the Arab rule is to be found in the severe measures adopted by the Muhammadan government to repress the madness for voluntary martyrdom that broke out in Cordova in the ninth century. At this time a fanatical party came into existence among the Christians in this part of Spain (for apparently the Christian Church in the rest of the country had no sympathy with the movement), which set itself openly and unprovokedly to insult the religion of the Muslims and blaspheme their Prophet, with the deliberate intention of incurring the penalty of death by such misguided assertion of their Christian bigotry.

This strange passion for self-immolation displayed itself mainly among priests, monks and nuns between the years 850 and 860. It would seem that brooding, in the silence of their cloisters, over the decline of Christian influence and the decay of religious zeal, they went forth to win the martyr’s crown—of which the toleration of their infidel rulers was robbing them—by means of fierce attacks on Islam and its founder. Thus, for example, a certain monk, by name Isaac, came before the Qāḍī and pretended that he wished to be instructed in the faith of Islam; when the Qāḍī had expounded to him the doctrines of the Prophet, he burst out with the words: “He hath lied unto you (may the curse of God consume him!), who, full of wickedness, hath led so many men into perdition, and doomed them with himself to the pit of hell. Filled with Satan and practising Satanic jugglery, he hath given you a cup of deadly wine to work disease in you, and will expiate his guilt with everlasting damnation. Why do ye not, being endowed with understanding, deliver yourselves from such dangers? Why do ye not, renouncing the ulcer of his pestilential doctrines, seek the eternal salvation of the Gospel of the faith of Christ?”47 On another occasion two Christians forced their way into a mosque and there reviled the Muhammadan religion, which, they declared, would very speedily bring upon its followers the destruction of hell-fire.48 Though [142]the number of such fanatics was not considerable,49 the Muhammadan government grew alarmed, fearing that such contempt for their authority and disregard of their laws against blasphemy, argued a widespread disaffection and a possible general insurrection, for in fact, in 853 Muḥammad I had to send an army against the Christians at Toledo, who, incited by Eulogius, the chief apologist of the martyrs, had risen in revolt on the news of the sufferings of their co-religionists.50 He is said to have ordered a general massacre of the Christians, but when it was pointed out that no men of any intelligence or rank among the Christians had taken part in such doings51 (for Alvar himself complains that the majority of the Christian priests condemned the martyrs52), the king contented himself with putting into force the existing laws against blasphemy with the utmost rigour. The moderate party in the Church seconded the efforts of the government; the bishops anathematised the fanatics, and an ecclesiastical council that was held in 852 to discuss the matter agreed upon methods of repression53 that eventually quashed the movement. One or two isolated cases of martyrdom are recorded later—the last in 983, after which there was none as long as the Arab rule lasted in Spain.54

But under the Berber dynasty of the Almoravids at the [143]beginning of the twelfth century, there was an outburst of fanaticism on the part of the theological zealots of Islam in which the Christians had to suffer along with the Jews and the liberal section of the Muhammadan population—the philosophers, the poets and the men of letters. But such incidents are exceptions to the generally tolerant character of the Muhammadan rulers of Spain towards their Christian subjects.

One of the Spanish Muhammadans who was driven out of his native country in the last expulsion of the Moriscoes in 1610, while protesting against the persecutions of the Inquisition, makes the following vindication of the toleration of his co-religionists: “Did our victorious ancestors ever once attempt to extirpate Christianity out of Spain, when it was in their power? Did they not suffer your forefathers to enjoy the free use of their rites at the same time that they wore their chains? Is not the absolute injunction of our Prophet, that whatever nation is conquered by Musalman steel, should, upon the payment of a moderate annual tribute, be permitted to persevere in their own pristine persuasion, how absurd soever, or to embrace what other belief they themselves best approved of? If there may have been some examples of forced conversions, they are so rare as scarce to deserve mentioning, and only attempted by men who had not the fear of God, and the Prophet, before their eyes, and who, in so doing, have acted directly and diametrically contrary to the holy precepts and ordinances of Islam which cannot, without sacrilege, be violated by any who would be held worthy of the honourable epithet of Musulman.… You can never produce, among us, any bloodthirsty, formal tribunal, on account of different persuasions in points of faith, that anywise approaches your execrable Inquisition. Our arms, it is true, are ever open to receive all who are disposed to embrace our religion; but we are not allowed by our sacred Qurʼān to tyrannise over consciences. Our proselytes have all imaginable encouragement, and have no sooner professed God’s Unity and His Apostle’s mission but they become one of us, without reserve; taking to wife our daughters, and being employed in posts of trust, honour and profit; we [144]contenting ourselves with only obliging them to wear our habit, and to seem true believers in outward appearance, without ever offering to examine their consciences, provided they do not openly revile or profane our religion: if they do that, we indeed punish them as they deserve; since their conversion was voluntarily, and was not by compulsion.”55

This very spirit of toleration was made one of the main articles in an account of the “Apostacies and Treasons of the Moriscoes,” drawn up by the Archbishop of Valencia in 1602 when recommending their expulsion to Philip III, as follows: “That they commended nothing so much as that liberty of conscience, in all matters of religion, which the Turks, and all other Muhammadans, suffer their subjects to enjoy.”56

What deep roots Islam had struck in the hearts of the Spanish people may be judged from the fact that when the last remnant of the Moriscoes was expelled from Spain in 1610, these unfortunate people still clung to the faith of their fathers, although for more than a century they had been forced to outwardly conform to the Christian religion, and in spite of the emigrations that had taken place since the fall of Granada, nearly 500,000 are said to have been expelled at that time.57 Whole towns and villages were deserted and the houses fell into ruins, there being no one to rebuild them.58 These Moriscoes were probably all descendants of the original inhabitants of the country, with little or no admixture of Arab blood; the reasons that may be adduced in support of this statement are too lengthy to be given here; one point only in the evidence may be mentioned, derived from a letter written in 1311, in which it is stated that of the 200,000 Muhammadans then living in the city of Granada, not more than 500 were of Arab descent, all the rest being descendants of converted Spaniards.59 Finally, it is of interest to note that even up to the last days of its power in Spain, Islam won converts to the faith, for the historian, when writing of events that occurred in the year 1499, seven years after the fall of Granada, draws attention to the fact that among the Moors were a few Christians who had lately embraced the faith of the Prophet.60 [145]