THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.
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 historian [45] 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 brought into the ranks of the Muhammadans only through pressure
from without or by the hope of worldly gain. Khālid, ‘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.
[46] 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. [47] Still the unifying 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.
[48] 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 Ghassān, 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.” [49] 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.” [50] Similarly,
after the conquest of northern Syria, most of the Bedouin tribes, after
hesitating a little, joined themselves to the followers of the Prophet.
[51]
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 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. [52] 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. [53] 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. [54]
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 Muthannah 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, Muthannah 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 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 Taghlib. I am he that hath slain the chief.”
[55]
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 Taghlib 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
Taghlib themselves, out of motives of economy. [56] 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. [57]
They were called upon to pay the jizyah [58] 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 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, [59]—which was a poor tax levied on the
fields and cattle, etc., of the Muslims. [60] It especially irked the
Muslims that any of the Arabs should remain true to the Christian
faith. The majority of the Banū Tanūkh had become Muslim in the year
A.H. 12, when with other Christian Arab tribes they submitted to Khālid
b. al-Walīd, [61] 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. [62]
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. [63]
The people of Ḥīrah had likewise resisted all the efforts made by
Khālid 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, Khālid asked them, “Who are 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.” Kh.
“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.” Kh. “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.” Kh. “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.” [64]
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.
[65]
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 will. [66] 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. [67] 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. [68]
Many of the Arabs of the renowned tribe of the Banū Ghassān, 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. [69]
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 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. [70]
But Heraclius shared the fate of so many would-be 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. [71] 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 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.” [72]
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.” [73] 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. [74]
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. [75]
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. [76] 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. [77]
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 conditions [78] may be quoted that
are stated to have been drawn up when Jerusalem submitted to the caliph
ʻUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb: “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.” [79]
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. [80] Even in his last testament, in
which he enjoins on his successor the duties of his high office, he
remembers the dhimmīs (or protected persons of other faiths): “I
commend to his care the dhimmīs, 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.” [81]
A later generation attributed to ʻUmar a number of restrictive
regulations which hampered the Christians in the free exercise of their
religion, but De Goeje [82] and Caetani [83] 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-Khaṭṭāb 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; [84] 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; [85] 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, [86] 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; [87] that we will strike the
bells [88] 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 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.”
[89]
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; [90] 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. [91] 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. [92] 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,
[93] and the great Muslim doctors, Abū Ḥanīfah and Mālik, are not in
agreement on some of the less important details; [94] the following
facts taken from the Kitāb al-Kharāj, 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 dirhams [95] 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. [96] 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. [97]
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 other dhimmīs 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.” [98] Again, in the treaty made
by Khālid 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.” [99] 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.” [100]
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 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. [101]
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. [102]
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; [103] 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. [104]
The Southern Rumanians, the so-called Armatoli, [105] 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. [106] 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, [107] nor on those who had charge
of the powder-magazine in that city. [108] On the other hand, when the
Egyptian peasants, although Muslim in faith, were made exempt from
military service, a tax was imposed upon them as on the Christians, in
lieu thereof. [109]
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. [110]
Christians frequently held high posts at court, e.g. a Christian Arab,
al-Akhṭal, 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. [111]
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 the twenty-one years that he spent in
that country. [112] 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. [113]
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. [114]
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. [115]
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. [116] For a long time, the government offices,
especially in the department of finance, were filled with Christians
and Persians; [117] to a much later date was such the case in Egypt,
where at times the Christians almost entirely monopolised such posts.
[118] 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. [119] 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. [120] 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. [121] 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, no new houses of prayer might be erected by dhimmīs, but if a
special treaty had been made, the building of new churches and
synagogues was allowed. [122] But like so many of the lucubrations of
Muhammadan legists, these prescriptions bore but little relation to
actual facts. [123] Schoolmen might agree that the dhimmīs 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. [124] 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, [125] 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. [126] 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.
[127] 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, [128] 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). [129] In the first year of the reign of Yazīd 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. [130] In the
following reign, Khālid 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. [131] 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. [132] From the same century dates the
church of Abū Sirjah in the ancient Roman fortress in old Cairo. [133]
In the reign of al-Mahdī (775–785) a church was erected in Baghdād for
the use of the Christian prisoners that had been taken captive during
the numerous campaigns against the Byzantine empire. [134] 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; [135] during the same reign Sergius, the
Nestorian Metropolitan of Baṣrah, received permission to build a church
in that city, [136] 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. [137] 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. [138] The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, who died A.D. 820,
erected a church at Takrīt and a monastery at Baghdād. [139] In the
tenth century, the beautiful Coptic church of Abū Sayfayn was built in
Fusṭāṭ. [140] A new church was built at Jiddah in the reign of
al-Ẓāhir, the seventh Fāṭimid caliph of Egypt (1020–1035). [141] New
churches and monasteries were also built in the reign of the ʻAbbāsid,
al-Mustaḍī (1170–1180). [142] In 1187 a church was built at Fusṭāṭ and
dedicated to Our Lady the Pure Virgin. [143]
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. [144]
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. [145]
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. [146] 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. [147] Another
persecution was instituted against the Orthodox by Khusrau 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. [148] 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. [149]
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. [150] 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.
[151] 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; [152] 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 [153] 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. [154] For example, Dean Milman [155]
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 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.” [156]
Again, Canon Taylor [157] 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, [158] 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 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, [159] 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. [160] 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.” [161] 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. [162] 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 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.” [163]
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 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. [164] 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. [165] Such influence is especially traceable in the
doctrines of some of the Muʻtazilite sects, [166] 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. [167] 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. [168] A celebrated 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.
[169]
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. [170] 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.
[171]
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 dhimmīs), 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 fourteenth
century. [172] But the very fact that these decrees excluding the
dhimmīs 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, [173] 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. [174] 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 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, [175] and which was eager
to exact vengeance for the persecutions it had itself suffered in the
two preceding reigns; [176] 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
dhimmīs 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. [177] 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, [178] and the terror of such persecution led to the
defection of many from the Christian Church. [179] But such oppression
was contrary to the tolerant spirit of Islam, and to the teaching
traditionally ascribed to the Prophet; [180] and the fanatical party
tried in vain to enforce 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.” [181] 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. [182]
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. [183] At a later period, during the time of the
Crusades they were accused of treasonable correspondence with the
Crusaders [184] 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.” 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 suggests [185]—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 tolerant
attitude of the Muhammadan governments towards them. [186]
Of the ancient Churches in Western Asia at the time of the Muhammadan
conquest, there still survive about 150,000 Nestorians, [187] 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. [188] 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.
[189] 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, [190] while the Melchites or Greek-Catholics
number about 130,000. [191] The Maronite Church, which has been in
union with the Roman Catholic Church since the year 1182, has a
following of 300,000. [192]
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, [193] living in a country that was for centuries
a continual battle-field, overrun by Turks, Mongols and Crusaders,
[194] it being 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. [195]
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. [196]
This same period witnesses the conversion of large numbers of the
Christians of Khurāsān, 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 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.” [197] 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
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. [198] He instructed
the governors of the provinces to invite the dhimmīs to the Muslim
faith, and al-Jarrāḥ b. ʻAbd Allāh, governor of Khurāsān, is said to
have converted about 4000 persons. [199] 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. [200] 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 dhimmī 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.
[201] He no longer exacted the kharāj 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.
[202]
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. [203] That the
aggressive attitude of the Muhammadan disputant is 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 dialogues [204] 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.” [205] 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. [206] 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. [207]
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 letter [208]
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 on this account
been given in full in an appendix. [209] 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. [210] 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 Farghānah. [211] At the
same time he did not abuse his royal power, by attempting to force his
own faith upon others: when a certain Yazdānbakht, a leader of the
Manichæan sect, came on a visit to Baghdād [212] and held a disputation
with the Muslim theologians, in which he was utterly silenced, the
caliph tried to induce him to embrace Islam. But Yazdānbakht 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. [213]
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, [214] 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. [215]
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 historian [216] 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 Ādharbayjān, also became a Muslim, [217] and in the following
century, in 1016, Ignatius, [218] the Jacobite Metropolitan of Takrīt,
who had held this office for twenty-five years, set out for Baghdād and
embraced Islam in the presence of the caliph al-Qādir, taking the name
of Abū Muslim. [219] 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,
[220] much as it would be 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
Khurāsān, 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. [221] 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.” [222]
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:—“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.” [223]
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. [224]
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 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.” [225]
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, [226] 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. Munqidh, 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. [227] 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. [228] 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. [229]
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 his Christian guest the beauties of Islam
and urging him to embrace it. [230]
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. [231] 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. [232] 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. [233]
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. [234] 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 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.” [235]
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; [236] 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. [237] 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. [238] 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 Westphalian knight, who was
held in high honour by the Soldan and other Muhammadan princes. [239]
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, [240] 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 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.” [241]
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 and he was put to death by
the Muhammadans for his apostasy. [242]
The monk Burchard, [243] 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 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.”
[244]
The native Christians certainly preferred the rule of the Muhammadans
to that of the Crusaders, [245] 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. [246]
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. [247]
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 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 Baghdād,
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 Tavernier [248] 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 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. [249] 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. [250]
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. [251] In 1579 two Georgian princes—brothers—came on an
embassy to Constantinople with a large retinue of about two hundred
persons: here the younger brother together with his attendants became a
Musalman, in the hope (it was said) of thereby supplanting his elder
brother. [252] 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.
[253] 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. [254]
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. [255] 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. [256] 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. [257]
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 Christian boys and girls as slaves to the
Turks and Persians. [258] 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. [259] 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. [260]
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. [261] 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 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. [262] 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. [263]