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.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, while the powerful Muslim 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 Muslims 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 Muslim communities being tributaries of the king of Abyssinia, it is difficult to determine. The Muslims 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 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 Muslim 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 Muslims 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 Muslim ruler of Adal, Aḥmad Gran—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 Adals[61]—invaded Abyssinia from 1528 to 1543, many Abyssinian chiefs with their followers joined his victorious army and became Muslims, 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.

" 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; "

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 favored the rise of petty independent chieftains, many of whom had strong Muslim sympathies, though (in accordance with a fundamental law of the state) all the Abyssinian princes had to belong to the Christian faith; the Muslims, 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]

the degradation and apathy of the Abyssinian clergy and the interminable feuds of the Abyssinian chiefs, have left Muslim influences free to work undisturbed.

Mr. Plowden, who was English consul in Abyssinia from 1844 to 1860, speaking of the Habab, three Tigrē tribes dwelling between 16° and 17° 30 lat., to the north-west of Massowah, says that they have become Muslim "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 Muslims 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 neighbors."[72]

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 Muslims 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 Muslims; 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 Muslim 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 in which they had been baptized 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 Muslim 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 Muslims to be baptized, 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 Mahdi, to assert his independence, and became Muslims, 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.