Gabriel, the personal physician of the Khalifa Haroon al-Rashid, 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 Khalifa; 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 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.

We have numerous instances recorded, both by Christian and Muslim historians, of the building of new churches : e.g. in the reign of Abd al-Malik (685-705), a wealthy Christian of Odessa, named Athanasius, erected in his native city a fine church dedicated to the Mother of God, and a Baptistery in honor 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 Fustat.[83]

Indeed, so far from the development of the Christian Church being hampered by the establishment of Muslim 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 sympathizing with the Christian enemy.

On the other hand, under the rule of the Khalifas, the security the Nestorians 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 seas 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 Muslims. 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 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 Khusrau II, after the invasion of Persia by Heracleus, at the instigation of a Jacobite, who persuaded the King that the Orthodox would always be favorably 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 endeavor 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 Muslims to their rightful owners when these had made good their claim to possess them.[105]

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 Muslim position. Such were those Shahrighan 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 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 theologians[109] 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 vigor of new-born zeal.[110]

For example, Dean Milman[111] asks, What was the state of the Christian world in the provinces exposed to the first invasion of Muslims?:

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 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 Taylor[113] says:

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 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 Khilaafah, especially in the towns and the great centers 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 Muslim 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 :—

But the condition of the Christians did not always continue to be so tolerable as under the earlier Khalifas. In the interests of the true believers, vexatious conditions were sometimes imposed upon the non-Muslim population (or dhimmis), with the object of securing for the faithful superior social advantages.

Unsuccessful attempts were made by several Khalifas to exclude them from the public offices. Decrees to this effect were passed by al-Mansoor  (754-775), al-Mutawak'kil (847-861), al-Muqtadir (908-932), and in Egypt by al-Amir (1101-1130), one of the Fatimi Khalifas, and by the Mamluk Sultans in the fourteenth century.[128]

The Christians under Muslim rule have often had to suffer for the bad faith kept by foreign Christian powers in their relations with Muslim 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 the Khalifa Haroon.[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 behavior of the Christians towards the Muslims.

Religious fanaticism is, however, responsible for many of such persecutions, as in the reign of the Khalifa al-Mutawak'kil (847-861), under whom severe measures of oppression were taken:

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-Mutawak'kil, and as ceasing with his death.[133]

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 realize this fact that has rendered possible the highly-colored pictures of the sufferings of the Christians under Muslim 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 Khalifas al-Mansoor  (754-775), al-Mahdi (775-785), al-Ma'Moon (813-833), al-Mutawak'kil (847-861), al-Muqtadir (908-932), and many of their successors.[138]

They also incurred the odium of many Muslims by acting as the spies of the Abbasid 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 Crusaders[140] 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 but one God: Muhammad is the Apostle of God."

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 fiber 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 suggests[141] —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 organized 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 Khalifas 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 tolerant attitude of the Muslim governments towards them..[142]

Of the ancient Churches in Western Asia at the time of the Muslim conquest, there still survive about 150,000 Nestorians,[143] and their number would have been larger but for the proselytizing efforts of other Christian Churches; the Chaldees who have submitted to the Church of Rome number 70,000, in 1898 the Nestorian Bishop Mar 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 battle­field, overrun by Turks, Mongols and Crusaders, it being further remembered that they were forbidden by the Muslim law to make good this decay of their numbers by proselytizing efforts—if indeed they had cared to do so, for they seem (with the exception of the Nestorians) even before the Muslim conquest, to have lost that missionary spirit, without which, as history abundantly shows, no healthy life is possible in a Christian Church[150].

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 Iraq for example may be formed from the fact that the income from taxation in the reign of Omar was from 100 to 120 million dirhams, while in the reign of Abd 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 Muslim 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 Khurasan, as we learn from a letter of a contemporary ecclesiastic, the Nestorian Patriarch Isho-yabh III, addressed to Simeon, the Metropolitan of Rev-Ardashir 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.

The reign of the Khalifa Omar II (a.d. 717-720) particularly was marked with very extensive conversions to Islam:

The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, used to hold discussions on religious matters in the presence of the Khalifas, al-Haadi and Haroon al-Rashid, 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 Khalifa, al-Mahdi (775-785), but was persuaded by the Khalifa to accept Islam and was rewarded for his apostasy with rich presents and an official appointment in Basrah.[163]

Al-Ma'Moon 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 Farghanah.[167]

At the same time he did not abuse his royal power, by attempting to force his own faith upon others: when a certain YazdanbaKht, a leader of the Manichean sect, came on a visit to Baghdad[168] and held a disputation with the Muslim theologians, in which he was utterly silenced, the Khalifa tried to induce him to embrace Islam.

But YazdanbaKht 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 Khalifa furnished him with a bodyguard, that he might not be exposed to insult from the fanatical populace.[169]

So far the Christian Churches that have been described as coming within the sphere of Muslim 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 Seljuk Sultan, Arslan; 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.

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 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 U'sama b. Munqidh, a Syrian Amir of the twelfth century, visited Jerusalem, during a period of truce, the Knights Templar, who had occupied the Masjid al-Aqsa, 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]

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 labors. We know, however, that they had at their head the great Saladin himself, who is described by his biographer as setting before 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 Hittin, Guy, king of Jerusalem, being among the prisoners. On the eve of the battle, six of his knights, deserted the king and escaped into the camp of Saladin, where of their own accord they became Muslims.[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.nSg-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 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 Muslims: 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 traveled to the Holy Land and other countries of the East.

The terms of the oath which was proposed to St. Louis by his Muslim 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 Muslim 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 recognized 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 Muslims or turned renegades.[194]

Ludolf de Suchem, who traveled 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 Westphalian knight, who was held in high honor by the Sultan and other Muslim 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.

The native Christians certainly preferred the rule of the Muslims 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 Seljuk Muslims 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 Muslims 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 Muslims dominions.[203]

To be Continued