tihvary of t:he theological ^eminarjp 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PURCHASED BY THE 
 HAMILL MISSIONARY FUND 
 BP 172 .S54 
 
 Shedd, William Ambrose 
 Islam and the Oriental 
 churches 
 
Islam and the Oriental 
 Churches 
 
 Their Historical Relations 
 
 Students' Lectures on Missions 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary 
 
 1902-J 
 
 BY • 
 WILLIAM AMBROSE SHEDD, M. A., 
 
 Missiottary of the American Presbperian Church 
 to Persia 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 
 AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 
 
 1904 
 
Copyright, 1904, by 
 
 THE TRUSTEES OF THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 
 
Dedicated to 
 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 
 BENJAMIN WOODS LABAREE 
 
 WHO MET A CRUEL DEATH, SALMAS, PERSIA 
 MARCH NINTH, MCMIV 
 
 A TRUE FRIEND AND A DEVOTED MISSIONARY 
 2nENA6MEN02 
 
Preface 
 
 The following chapters were prepared in 
 response to an invitation from the faculty of 
 Princeton Theological Seminary to fill the 
 Student Lectureship on Missions. They were 
 delivered in substantially the form published 
 here. After delivery at Princeton they were 
 given also at Auburn Theological Seminary, 
 McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago 
 Theological Seminary, and the Presbyterian 
 Theological Seminary of Kentucky. The kind 
 reception accorded them in these places has 
 encouraged me to present them to the general 
 public. 
 
 I am greatly indebted to the following libraries 
 for the generous loan of books : Case Memorial 
 Library of Hartford Theological Seminary, the 
 Library of Princeton Theological Seminary, and 
 the Foreign Missions Library in New York. 
 
 The original sources consulted have been 
 Syriac. I am aware that an exhaustive treat- 
 ment of the subject must be based on the 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 accounts of the Muhammadan as well as the 
 Christian writers. So far, however, as the evi- 
 dence of Christian writers mitigates the severity 
 of our judgment of Muhammadan rulers, it can 
 surely be trusted ; and the fact is that the princi- 
 pal Syriac writers show few signs of bitterness 
 toward the Arabs. Moreover, the Arabic 
 sources have been used by writers more gen- 
 erally than the Syriac sources. It is, perhaps, 
 well to warn the reader that the treatment of the 
 subject is far from exhaustive geographically or 
 chronologically. In particular the histories of 
 the Christians of Egypt and of those under 
 Osmanli rule illustrate the havoc wrought by the 
 principle of limited toleration. 
 
 A word as to that vexed subject, oriental 
 orthography. I have tried to be consistent and 
 scientific, but I have not attempted to represent 
 in any way the Semitic guttural 'ain, which has 
 no equivalent in our Western tongues. If to 
 some readers the spelling MuJiammad appear 
 pedantic, it must be urged that neither of the 
 alternatives Mahomet or Mohammed is uni- 
 versally adopted and that both are incorrect. 
 William Ambrose Shedd. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction — Islam and the Oriental Churches 
 
 Importance of the Muhammadan missionary 
 problem. Neglect and misunderstandings of the 
 historical relations of Christianity and Islam. Im- 
 portance of studying them. Scope of the present 
 course of lectures I 
 
 FIRST LECTURE 
 
 The Influence of Christianity on Muhammad and on 
 the Beginnings of Islam 
 
 The personality of Muhammad in Islam. Influ- 
 ences that prepared for Islam. Jewish and Christian 
 influences ; character, extent, evidence in Arab poetry. 
 Christian influences that affected Muhammad him- 
 self. Evidence of personal contact with Christianity, 
 references to Christianity in the Quran, doctrmal in- 
 fluences, relation to Christianity as claimed by Mu- 
 hammad. Bearing of these facts on the estimate of 
 Muhammad's character. Relation to the Muham- 
 madan controversy. Can Islam lead to Christianity ? 
 The failure and fault of the church ir 
 
 SECOND LECTURE 
 
 The Relation of Christianity to the Development of 
 Muslim Theology 
 
 Conditions under which Muslim and Christian 
 theology developed. Oriental Christianity. Its 
 division, extent, character, theological differences and 
 agreements. Interchange of religious ideas between 
 Muslims and others. Christian influence in the doc- 
 trine of the " foundations " of Islam. The eternal 
 Quran, legendary history in the traditions, the doc- 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 trine of agreement. Christian influence on the 
 Muslim doctrine of God and the apostolate. Chris- 
 tian influence on the sects of Islam. Slightness of 
 Muslim influence on Christianity, and limits of Chris- 
 tian influence on Islam. Can Islam meet modern 
 conditions ? 45 
 
 THIRD LECTURE 
 
 The Relation of Muhammadan Government to the 
 Oriental Churches 
 
 General outline and periods of the history A. D., 
 600-1500. Toleration, in the strict sense, the char- 
 acteristic of the policy of Islam to other religions. 
 The origin of the policy. Policies of the eastern 
 Empire and of Persia. Practice of Muhammad. 
 The history of the policy. The constitution of Umar, 
 Arabian Christianity, the attitude of the Christians to 
 the Arab conquest, maintenance of the status quo, 
 Christianity under the Khalifas, conditions under the 
 Mongols, fanatical reaction. The effect on the 
 churches. Spiritual eff'ect of limiting activity, eff^ect 
 of governmental influence in ecclesiastical aff"airs. 
 Dangers of toleration. Compromise a characteristic 
 of Islam 91 
 
 FOURTH LECTURE 
 
 The Expansion of the Faiths 
 
 Difficulty of the subject. Some conditions of the 
 expansion. Character of the Muslim propaganda. 
 Divisions of the subject. Converts to Christianity 
 from Islam and Christian apologies. The Syriac- 
 speaking peoples. Failure of Islam to gain them, 
 proselytes from them to Islam. The Iranians. Ex- 
 tent of Christianity among them, extension after rise 
 of Islam, means of extension, Nestorian monasticism 
 and monastic missions, failure of Christianity to win 
 the Iranians, Muslim propaganda and success. The 
 Turks and Mongols. Christianity in China, Uighurs, 
 Keraits, means of extension, character of the Chris- 
 tians, failure of Christianity, propaganda and success 
 of Islam. The relation of Muslim missions to polit- 
 ical movements. Estimate of the Nestorian missions. 
 Religious and national movements 139 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 
 FIFTH LECTURE 
 
 The Downfall of Christianity in the Common Ruin 
 
 Tragic character of the course of the history and 
 the relation of the Christians to it. Geographical dis- 
 tribution of the Christians and the fortunes of the 
 centers of Christian population. Service of faith in 
 the dark days 189 
 
 SIXTH LECTURE 
 
 The Light of the Past on the Future Missionary 
 Conflict 
 
 Incentives from the failures of the past. Place of 
 the oriental churches. The missionary character of 
 the Syrian churches. Our duty to them. The 
 Christianity that can conquer. Its methods, its theo- 
 logical character, its vital relation to Christ .... 205 
 
 APPENDIXES 227 
 
Introduction 
 
Importance of the Muhammadan missionary problem. Neg- 
 lect and misunderstandings of the historical relations of Chris- 
 tianity and Islam. Importance of studying them. Scope of 
 the present course of lectures. 
 
Islam and the Oriental Churches 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The problem of Islam is so vast and so com- 
 plex and, furthermore, is of such vital interest to 
 all who desire the coming of the kingdom of 
 Christ on earth, that no apology is required for 
 making it the subject of a course of lectures on 
 missions. To say that the most elaborate inves- 
 tigation ever made into the statistics of Islam 
 resulted in the conclusion that the Muhamma- 
 dans number two hundred and sixty millions, or 
 over fifteen per cent, of the population of the 
 globe, is dealing in figures too large to be defi- 
 nitely significant to the mind.' 
 
 The geographical distribution will be clearer 
 if we remember that there are large bodies of 
 Muhammadans in every country in Asia, — Siam, 
 Japan, and Korea excepted, — that among the 
 Malays there are thirty millions of this faith, and 
 
 * Dr. H. Jansen, Verbreitiaig des /slants, Berlin, 1897. 
 3 
 
4 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 that about three eighths of the inhabitants of 
 Africa are followers of the Prophet of Arabia. 
 As various as the races represented are the de- 
 grees of culture, from the savage just emerged 
 from heathenism to the most refined philosoph- 
 ical pantheist, yet all profess reverence to the 
 same book and the same name. 
 
 To the follower of Christ and especially to 
 the student of Christian history Islam possesses 
 a melancholy interest peculiar to it among the 
 religions of the world. It alone can claim to 
 have met and vanquished Christianity. Islam 
 arose in a region accessible to Christianity, for 
 Mecca is only eight hundred miles from Jeru- 
 salem over a road traveled by Muhammad in his 
 youth. It arose at a time when Christianity 
 should have evangelized Arabia, for in the six 
 centuries by which the gospel of Christ preceded 
 the creed of Muhammad, Christianity had spread 
 to the borders of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic 
 Oceans ; had revolutionized the greatest empire 
 known to ancient history, and had created a vast 
 literature and a new learning. Why did it lose 
 in Asia? What were the causes of defeat? 
 Why was it possible for Muhammad to arise in 
 that age of the world ? Why did his religion 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 take root and flourish in lands sacred in Chris- 
 tian history? To ask and seek an answer to 
 these and other such questions is the duty of the 
 apologist, who defends the faith. The mission- 
 ary should seek, in this dark and well-nigh for- 
 gotten past, light on the present battle in the 
 world-wide field. 
 
 Another reason that gives the study of this 
 department of history a special claim is that it 
 has been neglected or misunderstood. Church 
 history has very little to say on the subject, and 
 the statements in church histories and in mis- 
 sionary literature are often far wide of the truth. 
 One error is to enroll the eastern church en 
 masse in the list of martyrs, as in the following 
 sentence from the latest English history of eastern 
 Christianity : " For long years past the existence 
 of the eastern church has been one continued 
 martyrdom." ^ Similarly, Neale says : " The 
 empire of the Caesars was vanquished (by the 
 Arabs), and limited, and contracted : the spiritual 
 dominion of the eastern church stooped not to 
 the victor. Many a noble victory was won for 
 Christ : many a glorious athlete was sent to 
 
 1 See Hoare's Eighteen Centuries of the Orthodox Greek 
 Church. 
 
6 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 martyrdom. The church rode out the storm : 
 as httle did she quail before the successive billows 
 of devastation that poured in around her,"' An 
 often and opposite error cannot be expressed 
 more tersely than in the following sentences 
 from the Report of the Ecumenical Missioiiary 
 Conference in New York : " When Muhammad 
 arose, Christianity was so dead that it was putrid, 
 Muhammadanism crushed it in its mailed hand 
 as if it had been a Dead Sea apple." ^ 
 
 Another misunderstanding of history is that 
 the Arab conquest of western Asia was a crisis 
 of fire and blood in which multitudes were 
 forced to accept Islam at the point of the sword. 
 It would probably have been better for Chris- 
 tianity, if this had been the case ; but it was not. 
 Again, in explaining the causes of the greater 
 comparative success of Islam in this or former 
 ages it is easy to assign reasons that, if true, are 
 exceedingly damaging to the Christian cause. 
 The following from a volume published by a 
 great Christian publishing society is an extreme 
 illustration. Speaking of the success of Islam 
 in west Africa the author remarks, " Given a 
 
 • Holy Eastern Church, Vol. I, p. 5. 
 2 Report, Vol. I, p. 436. 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 climate in which a European can hve, and a 
 strong neutral government, Christianity would 
 fear no comparison, in matter of results, with 
 Islam or any other creed." ^ And, forsooth, are 
 a temperate climate and the protection of a civi- 
 lized government necessary conditions to the 
 successful spread of the rehgion of Christ? It 
 is an admission of failure in fundamental char- 
 acter worse than a thousand defeats in detail. 
 
 Other and cogent reasons can be given for the 
 missionary study of the historical relations of 
 these great historical faiths. Islam has been in 
 contact with Christianity throughout its whole 
 history, and the relation has not been, for the 
 most part, that of master to slave or of conqueror 
 to captive. Force has played a smaller part than 
 is usually supposed. The church has had oppor- 
 tunities and has gained victories, too, that are 
 forgotten by most. In other words there is a 
 history to study, and one that throws light both 
 on the character, the religions, and on our pres- 
 fent-day conflict, which has little more than 
 begun. 
 
 The study has much to teach as to the char- 
 acter of Islam. That religion claims to be a 
 
 * Haines, Islam as a Missionary Religion, S. P. C. K., p. 207. 
 
8 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHUECHES 
 
 daughter of Christianity, or its younger sister, 
 and there are some outside Muhammadan ranks 
 who maintain the rightfulness of this claim. 
 What is the testimony of history ? On historical 
 subjects most people have to content themselves 
 with general conceptions and ideas and cannot 
 expect to have detailed knowledge, and this is 
 true of the subject before us. It is not neces- 
 sary that every missionary worker, even, should 
 have a philosophical grasp of the religion he or 
 she meets, although it is absolutely essential that 
 some missionaries should have a sympathetic and 
 philosophical conception of its system of be- 
 lief. Christianity takes hold of the masses, and 
 the masses are ignorant folk, especially when, 
 as in Muhammadan lands, women are kept in the 
 ignorance without the innocence of childhood. 
 But it is vastly important that the general con- 
 ceptions of that religion should be true, and espe- 
 cially so with the missionary, for such ideas enter 
 unconsciously into his whole attitude and color 
 all his thought. 
 
 What has been said may appear presumptuous ; 
 and lest the performance be disproportionate to 
 the promise, it will be well at once to define the 
 limits of the subject. Such limits are suggested 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 by the time that can be given to such a course 
 of lectures and are made still more imperative 
 by the personal limitations of the lecturer, as re- 
 gards both equipment and opportunity. We will 
 discuss the historical relations of the faiths, not their 
 philosophical and moral effects, except inciden- 
 tally. Geographically we will limit ourselves for 
 the most part not merely to western Asia, but to a 
 portion of that region, and ecclesiastically to the 
 Nestorian and Jacobite churches. Asia Minor 
 and the long contest in it as well as in southeast- 
 ern Europe ; Africa, where Christianity has a 
 checkered history under Muslim rule; Spain, 
 where the faiths came into close contact, and the 
 crusades, — all are largely excluded from our view. 
 It is believed that with these limits the field 
 chosen is one of peculiar importance. It ex- 
 hibits Islam in the region where it developed, 
 was dominant, and was most free to work out its 
 own destiny. It presents both religions where 
 political rivalries have been least prominent and 
 where missionary activity has been most marked. 
 It has seemed best to adopt an arrangement 
 which is not chronological but which will, it is 
 hoped, nevertheless indicate to some degree the 
 onward march of history. Perhaps it is well 
 
10 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 to add that all is written from the missionary's 
 point of view, in the full conviction that no 
 destiny for Islam and no Submission (for that 
 is the meaning of the word) can be so full of 
 hope and blessedness as the acknowledgment 
 of the supreme Lordship of Jesus Christ. 
 
First Lecture 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ON MUHAMMAD AND ON THE 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF ISLAM 
 
The personality of Muhammad in Islam. Influences that 
 prepared for Islam. Jewish and Christian influences, character, 
 extent, evidence in Arab poetry. Christian influences that 
 affected Muhammad himself Evidence of personal contact 
 with Christianity, references to Christianity in the Quran, 
 doctrinal influences, relation to Christianity as claimed by 
 Muhammad. Bearing of these facts on the estimate of Muham- 
 mad's character. Relation to the Muhammadan controversy. 
 Can Islam lead to Christianity ? The failure and fault of the 
 church. 
 
First Lecture 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ON MUHAMMAD AND ON THE 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF ISLAM 
 
 It has been remarked that in Islam trivial 
 things have been the occasion of far-reaching 
 results. For example, the vicissitudes in the 
 family life of the Prophet lie at the basis of the 
 legislation in the Quran that regulates the status 
 of woman for Muslims in all ages. The reason 
 for this is that the personality of Muhammad 
 dominates the religion as his personal needs and 
 whims in large measure regulated the revelations 
 of the Quran. The traditions occupy themselves 
 with his words and his deeds, the most passing 
 remarks and the most trivial acts. It is said 
 that the great Umar looked at the black stone in 
 Mecca and said : " By God, I know that thou art 
 only a stone and canst grant no benefit, canst do 
 no harm. If I had not known that the Prophet 
 kissed thee, I would not have done so, but on 
 account of that I do it." The following refers 
 13 
 
14 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 to Ibn Hanbal, one of the masters in law and 
 theology. " It is said this great traditionist 
 would not even eat watermelons, because, al- 
 though he knew the Prophet ate them, he could 
 not learn whether he ate them with or without 
 the rind, or whether he broke, bit, or cut, them ; 
 and he forbade a woman, who questioned him as 
 to the propriety of the act, to spin by the light 
 of the torches passing in the street by night, be- 
 cause the Prophet had not mentioned that it was 
 lawful to do so." ^ 
 
 These people were not imbecile, though to us 
 their conduct may be incomprehensible. It was 
 based on a conception of religion radically dif- 
 ferent from ours and on a profound faith in the 
 absolute inspiration of Muhammad. Their ideal 
 was to have the details of life dominated by the 
 example of Muhammad, and hence their minute 
 biographical interest in his life was religious and 
 not historical. This aspect of Islam is brought 
 out clearly by Kuenen in his " Hibbert Lec- 
 tures " in which he says : " As for Muhammad, 
 we can resolve him into his factors, so to speak, 
 and thus explain him ; but we cannot explain 
 Islam without him. If I might for a moment 
 ' Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, s. v. Tradition. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 15 
 
 separate those elements that in reahty never ap- 
 pear except in combination, I should say : Islam 
 is in a high degree and far more than most other 
 religions, the product not of the time or of the 
 people, but of the personality of its founder." ' 
 It is evident from all this that our first task 
 should be to inquire into the personal relation of 
 Muhammad to Christianity and into the impress 
 of that personal relation on the reHgion. In 
 order to understand these we must have as clear 
 an idea as possible of the relation of his people 
 and generation to Christianity. 
 
 Muhammad came in the fullness of time. He 
 reaped a quick and rich harvest because the 
 ground had been made ready and the seed sown. 
 The forces that prepared Arabia for revolution 
 were Jewish and Christian in origin, though it is 
 doubtful just what form they took and how much 
 is due to one or the other of the older faiths. 
 
 There was no Jewish community in Mecca, 
 the birthplace and home of Muhammad, but 
 north along the road to Syria there were Jewish 
 colonies in Yathrib (now Medina), where Muham- 
 mad lived the last ten years of his life, and in 
 Taima, Khaibar, and Fadak. South of Mecca 
 ' Natural Religions and Universal Religions, p. 23. 
 
16 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 in Yaman, opposite the coast of Abyssinia, were 
 large numbers of Jews. Besides the native 
 Hebrews there were Arab converts to Judaism, 
 assimilated to the Jews in customs and tribal life 
 and so separated from their own people. The 
 Jews of Arabia were engaged in agriculture, trade, 
 and manufactures, and were an established and 
 powerful element in society. The following de- 
 scription from Deutsch may be colored with 
 patriotic enthusiasm, but the influence of Judaism 
 in preparing Arabia for Islam is unquestioned. 
 " Acquainted, " he says, " with the Halachah and 
 Haggadha, they seemed, under the peculiar story- 
 loving influence of their countrymen, to have 
 cultivated the latter with all its gorgeous hues 
 and colors. Valiant with the sword, which they 
 not rarely turned against their own kinsmen, 
 they never omitted the fulfillment of their great- 
 est religious duty — the release of their captives, 
 though these might be their adversaries ; and 
 further, like their fathers from of old, they kept 
 the Sabbath holy even in war, though the pro- 
 hibition had been repealed. They waited for the 
 Messiah, and they turned their faces toward 
 Jerusalem. They fasted, they prayed, and they 
 scattered round them the seeds of such high cul- 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 17 
 
 ture as was contained in their literature. And 
 Arabia called them the people of the ' Book ' ; 
 even as Hegel has called them the people of the 
 ' Geist.' These seeds, though some fell on 
 stones, and some on the desert sand, had borne 
 fruit a thousandfold." The eloquent author goes 
 on to mention specific evidences of Jewish in- 
 fluence, in the calendar, in the religious rites of 
 the Kaaba and the well of Zemzem, in the ven- 
 eration of Ishmael, and in the remains of Jewish 
 Arab poets. The Quran is full of evidence of 
 Jewish influence, especially in the legends it con- 
 tains ; and above all Judaism with Christianity- 
 prepared hearts to echo the great cry of Muham- 
 mad, " No god but Allah." ^ 
 
 Christianity entered Arabia from three distinct 
 geographical sources. The first was Palestine 
 and Syria, whence Christianity went into Arabia 
 Petrsea and the region east of the Jordan, and 
 thence farther into the desert. Bostra, east of the 
 Jordan, was for centuries the seat of a bishopric, 
 as was Ayla, at the head of the Gulf of Akaba, 
 in the Prophet's time. The Christian chieftain- 
 kings of Ghassan, farther north and tributary to 
 
 ' Remains of Emmanuel Deulsch, Islam, New York Ed., p. 
 92. 
 
18 ISLAM AND THE OBIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the Roman power, have a place in the ecclesias- 
 tical histories of the fifth and sixth centuries. 
 From early times the desert regions adjoining 
 Syria and Palestine were the haunts of the her- 
 mits, most famous among whom is St. Simon 
 Stylites, who is credited with the conversion of 
 many Arabs to Christianity. Wellhausen says, 
 " The Rahib keeping shy of men in his lonely 
 cell, with his lamp, which lights caravans by 
 night is a popular figure in Arabic poetry." ^ 
 The second source was Mesopotamia and Baby- 
 lonia, and here Christianity made a center at 
 Hira, near the Euphrates, with many adherents 
 along the coast and on the islands of the Persian 
 Gulf, and extended south to the borders of 
 Yaman. Of these we read in Nestorian history. 
 From these two sources Christian influences had 
 extended so generally in northern Arabia that 
 we may accept /the statement that " if Islam had 
 not intervened, all northern Arabia from the 
 Red Sea to the Persian Gulf would shortly have 
 been Christian." '^ 
 
 The third source of Christian influence was 
 Africa, and especially Abyssinia, with which the 
 
 • Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiteti, III, p. 200. 
 »/<J., p. 199. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 19 
 
 Himyarite Christians in Yaman were closely 
 connected. These last were so numerous as to 
 be a formidable political power and were sup- 
 ported by the Abyssinians. In the century be- 
 fore the rise of Islam, sanguinary conflicts took 
 place between the Jews and Christians of Yaman 
 for the supremacy, conflicts that gave rise to the 
 Christian history of the Himyarites who endured 
 martyrdom at the hands of the Jews. The at- 
 tempt of the Christian viceroy of Abyssinia to 
 take Mecca with the purpose of destroying the 
 Kaaba, which was frustrated by some sudden 
 calamity, supposedly in the year of Muhammad's 
 birth, is celebrated in the Sura of the Elephant : 
 " Hast thou not seen what thy Lord did with the 
 fellows of the elephant ? Did he not make their 
 strategem lead them astray, and send on them 
 birds in flocks, to throw down on them stones of 
 baked clay, and make them like blades of her- 
 bage eaten down ? " 
 
 Christian influence was least strong in Central 
 Arabia and in the Hijaz, the region near the Red 
 Sea including Mecca ; but even here there were 
 Christian influences. Slaves were not infre- 
 quently Christian captives, the Arabs made trad- 
 ing journeys to Syria and elsewhere, and traders 
 
20 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 from outside passed through the country. Says 
 an Arab poet : " Whence has Al Asha his Chris- 
 tian ideas ? From the wine-dealers of Hira of 
 whom he bought his wine ; they brought them 
 to him." 1 
 
 Ecclesiastically these influences were very 
 largely either Nestorian or Monophysite, and to 
 a very small extent probably of the Orthodox 
 Greek Church. The Christianity of Syria was 
 largely, and that of Egypt and Abyssinia still 
 more prevailingly, Monophysite. The rather re- 
 cently organized Jacobite Church had dioceses 
 among the northern Arabs, while there were 
 Nestorian dioceses at Hira on the Euphrates, on 
 the Persian Gulf, and in Najran in Central Arabia. 
 Both these churches were identified with Aramaic 
 culture and the Syriac language. If there was 
 any Arabic translation of the Bible, it was not in 
 general use, and there is little probability that 
 any Christian Arabic literature existed. There 
 was also a large and indefinable body of still more 
 heretical Christianity. The Monophysite move- 
 ment in the century before Muhammad had 
 been very proHfic in minor heresies, among 
 others being a sect of tritheists in Mesopotamia, 
 
 • Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, p. 200. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 21 
 
 which has a special interest as furnishing a pos- 
 sible source for Muhammad's tritheistic concep- 
 tion of Christianity. The numerous hermits 
 were mainly heretical. 
 
 The strange survivals to-day in Islam of all 
 sorts of forgotten sects gives one an idea of the 
 possibilities of survivals of old heresies in that 
 time. Two Arabic terms found in the Quran, 
 which have always been puzzles, very likely re- 
 fer directly to such Christians. One is the word 
 Hanif, which has been referred to monotheistic 
 seekers after more light and so forerunners of 
 Muhammad. It appears, however, to have been 
 used as a synonym of Rahib, a monk, and that 
 the Hanifs were so called because of their rela- 
 tion at least in ascetic practices to the hermits. 
 The other word is Sabaean, frequently used in 
 the Quran along with Jew and Christian and in 
 contrast to idolater. This is not unlikely a 
 name for the Elkasaites, a strange Jewish-Chris- 
 tian sect, who practiced frequent baptisms, hence 
 the " plungers " as the name means.^ This pe- 
 culiarity would account for the first Muslims with 
 their frequent ablutions being called Sabaeans by 
 
 • Wellhausen, pp. 206-208. Sell, I/t'siorica/ Development of 
 the Quran, p. 65. 
 
22 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the Meccans. In brief", the Christianity that 
 reached Arabia was heterogeneous and varied, 
 made up of conflicting cults and doctrines, yet in 
 part of a definite and ascertainable theological 
 character. 
 
 A striking proof that these Christian influences 
 had really affected Arab hfe is found in the 
 remnants of pre-Islamic poetry. Wellhausen, 
 who has already been quoted, after mention- 
 ing several Christian poets, says : " In general 
 Christianity had its silent part in the spiritual 
 culture of the Arabs as represented in poetry. 
 In general also through the channel of poetry 
 with culture Christian thought and sentiment 
 had been infused among the Arabs. For 
 example, it is observable in the sententious, 
 moralizing parts, which are so desired at the 
 close of the poems. Even such specific repre- 
 sentations as that of the Heavenly Book, are 
 not unfamiliar to the poets and are used by them. 
 The idea of Allah has assuredly not grown on a 
 purely heathen basis. Besides this, the unpeace- 
 ful introspection, the meditation on death, the 
 placing value on the life of the individual in- 
 stead of on the permanency of the tribe, which we 
 have found to be the fact at least in the case of 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 23 
 
 single prominent men, point to a preparation 
 through Christian influence." ^ Such influences 
 would go far beyond the limits of specific 
 knowledge of Christian doctrine and would pre- 
 pare the way for changes which only a stronger 
 force could actually bring to pass. 
 
 It seems that the above facts are enough to 
 warrant the conclusions that the people were 
 prepared for Islam by Christian influences, and 
 also that Muhammad himself must have had 
 some general knowledge of Christianity, and 
 that without presupposing any special inquiry on 
 his part. Furthermore, we may conclude that 
 opportunities to get considerable specific knowl- 
 edge of that religion were within his reach. It 
 is a suggestive tradition that tells of the four 
 Meccans, friends of Muhammad, who, renounc- 
 ing idolatry, went out to seek for the pure faith 
 of Abraham. Three of the four became Chris- 
 tian, one of them ending his life in Mecca, one 
 in the dominions of the Greeks, and the third in 
 Abyssinia, whither he had fled after having ac- 
 cepted Muhammad's prophetic claims. He used 
 to tell his companions in exile that he had found 
 
 ' Wellhausen, p. 203. Lyall, Ancient Arabian Poetry, xxx. 
 92f., 119. 
 
24 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the truth, while they were still groping in the 
 dark. So early was the first convert from Islam 
 to Christianity. 
 
 Specific proof is not wanting that Muhammad 
 came in contact with Christians, even allowing 
 for much that is doubtful in the traditions. 
 These connect his journey or journeys in his 
 youth to Syria with a monk variously called 
 Sergius, Bahira, and Nestor, whom he saw in 
 Syria and who foretold his future greatness : a 
 legend which is found in Syriac as well as 
 Arabic with wonderful ampHfications. The use 
 of ascetic practices by Muhammad, particularly 
 night vigils of prayer, and the association of the 
 word Hanif with the hermits, give color to the 
 legend though not to the form it takes in the 
 tradition. Another tradition is that the Prophet 
 heard at the great fair at Oqaz a hermit or poet 
 or bishop, for the details differ, whose preaching 
 made a lasting impression on him. Among the 
 early friends and followers of Muhammad were 
 Zaid, his adopted son, who was of Christian 
 parentage, some who left Christianity for Islam, 
 and the three " Hanifs " mentioned above who 
 accepted Christianity. One of these, Waraqa, 
 is credited in Muslim history with a knowledge 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 25 
 
 of the Christian Scriptures and even with having 
 translated some portion of them into Arabic. 
 Before Muhammad's flight from Mecca his per- 
 secuted followers found refuge with the Chris- 
 tians of Abyssinia; and at Medina he re- 
 ceived repeated embassies from Christian tribes. 
 In seeking to discover what knowledge 
 Muhammad actually had of Christianity, we can 
 go to the Quran for testimony. Its testimony 
 so far as it goes is unimpeachable. If it were 
 our purpose to seek for the evidences of Jewish 
 influence the material would be far more 
 abundant; and especially in view of the Judaistic 
 heresies of the time it is impossible to draw a 
 sharp line between Christian and Jewish influence. 
 It will be simpler, and sufficiently accurate as 
 well, to take into account only the references 
 in the Quran to distinctively Christian doctrine, 
 thus excluding the references to the Old Testa- 
 ment, which might as well be Jewish as Christian 
 in origin. Those to the New Testament are 
 almost certainly Christian in origin, though it 
 would be impossible to say how much was 
 derived from the common knowledge of the 
 story-loving populace and how much came 
 directly from Christians. At the risk of tedi- 
 
26 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 ousness it will be well to give a summary of the 
 supposed New Testament history contained in 
 the Quran. All refers to the life of Christ, the 
 only other Christian legend in the Quran being 
 the story of the Seven Sleepers. The sacred 
 history of Christianity as known to Muhammad 
 was, then, somewhat as follows : — 
 
 The wife of Imran {i. e., Amram), being with- 
 out child, dedicated her offspring to God, and 
 though the child was a daughter, remained stead- 
 fast in her vow. The child, who was Aaron's 
 sister, was called Mary, and was cared for by 
 Zechariah, aided by some special divine pro- 
 vision, he having been chosen to this office 
 among the priests by lot. Zechariah, though 
 stricken in years, asked God for an heir, and one 
 was promised him ; and he then asked for a sign, 
 which was given him in a three days' dumbness. 
 This son was John, the forerunner of the word 
 of God. Angels, or the Spirit of God, an- 
 nounced to Mary, who was in an eastern place 
 {i.e.,m an attitude of prayer) and veiled from 
 the rest of the family, that she in her virginity 
 should bear a son who should be the Messiah. 
 The child thus conceived by the power of the 
 Spirit was born under a palm tree, the mother 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 27 
 
 being refreshed by a stream of water at her feet 
 and by fresh dates shaken from the tree, and be- 
 ing warned to eat no more food that day and to 
 speak to no one. When she brought the child 
 to her people, they reproached her ; but she 
 pointed to the little one, who spoke from the 
 cradle announcing himself to be a prophet sent 
 from God. Jesus, after he grew up, taught the 
 people, presented himself to them as a prophet, 
 and by the help of the Spirit worked miracles, 
 forming a bird of clay and breathing life into it, 
 healing the blind and the lepers, raising the dead, 
 telling people what was in their house and what 
 they ate. 
 
 At one time the apostles asked Jesus if God 
 were able to send down a table from heaven, 
 saying that they desired to eat from it and so be 
 perfectly convinced in heart. Jesus prayed and 
 God replied with a promise to send it and also 
 with a threat of most dire punishment, if they 
 should still be unbelieving. Again, a dialogue 
 between God and Jesus refutes the idea that 
 Jesus and his mother may rightly be worshiped 
 as gods. The Jews disbelieved in Jesus and 
 were cursed by him, but the apostles under divine 
 guidance were his helpers. Two of them were 
 
28 I8LA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 once sent to a city and, when they were rejected, 
 a third was sent ; but all three were denounced 
 as liars. One man only received their message 
 and was forgiven, while the other people were 
 destroyed by a single sound from heaven. It is 
 a calumny that the Jews killed Jesus. They did 
 not kill him, but some one resembling him ; while 
 God took him to himself. On this point Chris- 
 tians are said to differ and to have no certain 
 knowledge. Jesus is the sign of the Hour, an 
 Hour that shall come suddenly and unex- 
 pectedly.i 
 
 In these narratives the full acceptance of the 
 Virgin-birth and the denial of the reality of the 
 Crucifixion are noticeable, as is the recognition 
 of the Virgin as worthy of special honor. The 
 legendary and partially trivial character of the 
 material, analogous to the apochryphal and not 
 to the canonical Christian, literature is too marked 
 to require comment. Christ is frequently men- 
 tioned in the Quran as one of the greatest in the 
 prophetic line, while it is vehemently denied 
 that he is more than man. Indeed the only two 
 specific doctrines of Christianity mentioned in 
 
 J Qurait, iii. 30-50 ; iv. 154-156; v. 82, 109-II7 ; xix. 2-34; 
 xxi. 89-93; xxxvi. 13-2S ; xliii. 56-70. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 29 
 
 the Quran are vehemently contradicted. These 
 are the Trinity, taken in a tritheistic sense, and the 
 Sonship of Christ, taken in a materiahstic sense. 
 This denial is implied in such passages as the 
 following short sura : — 
 
 " In the name of the merciful and compassion- 
 ate God. 
 
 Say, ' He is God alone ! 
 
 God the Eternal ! 
 
 He begets not and is not begotten ! 
 
 Nor is there like unto him any one ! ' " ^ 
 
 As well as in explicit statements like this : — 
 " O ye people of the Book ! do not 
 exceed in your religion, nor say against 
 God aught save the truth. The Mes- 
 siah, the son of Mary, is but the apostle 
 of God and his Word, which he cast 
 into Mary, and a spirit from him ; be- 
 lieve then in God and his apostles and 
 say not • Three.' Have done, it were 
 better for you. God is only one God. 
 Celebrated be his praise that he should 
 beget a son." ^ 
 
 And this :— 
 
 " And when God said, ' O Jesus, son of 
 Mary, is it thou who didst say to men, 
 take me and my mother for gods, be- 
 side God ? ' He said, * I celebrate thy 
 praise, what ails me that I should say 
 what I have no right to say ! ' " ^ 
 
 ' Ibid, cxii. ' Qurait, iv. l68f. 
 
 ^Qurafi, V. Ii6. 
 
30 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 A number of passages show that Muhammad 
 was famihar with the term " Holy Spirit," and 
 that he connected the Spirit with Christ in a 
 special manner. The way in which Christ is 
 called the Spirit of God, a term applied now by 
 Muslims to him, shows that Muhammad did not 
 conceive of the Spirit in a personal sense.^ The 
 only passage approaching a direct reference to 
 the words of Jesus as found in the New Testa- 
 ment is the following : " And when Jesus the 
 son of Mary said, • O children of Israel ! verily I 
 am the apostle of God to you, verifying the law 
 that was before me and giving you glad tidings 
 of an apostle who shall come after me, whose 
 name shall be Ahmad.' " ^ This has been ex- 
 plained by commentators on the Quran as refer- 
 ring to the word Paraclete, the Greek word being 
 
 u 
 taken apparently as 7cepi/iX)qT6Q (renowned) instead 
 
 of napdfiXrjro(;, a meaning akin to Ahmad and the 
 cognate word Muhammad, is not an afterthought. 
 Two supposed references to the Sacraments are 
 too indefinite and dubious to merit attention.^ 
 Monks and priests are mentioned, once in praise 
 
 ' See Hughes, Dictionary of Islatn, s. v. Spirit. 
 ^ Quran Ixi. 6. Deutsch (^J?e??iains, p. 68 note) explains 
 Ahmad from Old Testament Messianic prophecy. 
 3 Quran ii. 138; v. 1 12- 1 14. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 31 
 
 and elsewhere with blame.^ The divisions and 
 disputes of Christians with each other are fre- 
 quently referred to. 
 
 A broader and more difficult matter than de- 
 termining the direct references to Christian sub- 
 jects in the Quran is to estimate the extent of 
 Christian influence on the underlying theological 
 conceptions of Muhammad as contained in the 
 book he left behind him. Fundamental to all 
 else is, of course, the idea of God, and there is no 
 room for doubt that the influences which led 
 Muhammad and others in his generation to re- 
 ject polytheism were Jewish and Christian. He 
 himself regarded Allah, whom he worshiped, as 
 the same as the God of the Jews and the Chris- 
 tians. The most magnificent thing in the Quran 
 is the conception of God " the merciful, the com- 
 passionate and the ruler of the day of judgment " : 
 
 '• He who knows the unseen and the visible, — 
 the great, the lofty one. . . . And the 
 thunder celebrates his praise, and the angels too 
 for fear of him ; and he sends the thunder-clap 
 and overtakes therewith whom he will ; — yet 
 they wrangle about God ! But he is strong in 
 might." 2 
 
 ' Quran v. 85 ; ix, 31-35 ; Ivii. 27. ' Quran xiii. 10-14. 
 
32 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 There may be a trace of Christian usage in the 
 name "the merciful," but nevertheless all the 
 distinctively Christian and some of the Jewish 
 elements in the conception of God are lacking. 
 He is not the Father ; his holiness calls for no 
 atonement or expiation ; his love does not yearn 
 for fellowship with man. Another fundamental 
 conception that is assuredly biblical is that of 
 revelation by means of inspired men and books. 
 Muhammad's doctrines of inspiration go be- 
 yond that of any Christians in the idea of a 
 heavenly original of the Quran. Also in the 
 conception of faith, of grace, of obedience, and of 
 submission, there are traces of Christian influ- 
 ences. The conception of the last day with that 
 of the Resurrection is assuredly Christian in origin. 
 
 " When the heaven is cleft asunder, 
 And when the stars are scattered. 
 And when the seas gush together. 
 And when the tombs are turned upside 
 down, 
 
 The soul shall know what it has sent on 
 or kept back. 
 
 A day when no soul shall control aught 
 for another; and the bidding on that 
 day belongs to God." ^ 
 
 ' Idid Ixxxii. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 33 
 
 Angelology, demonology, eschatology, with 
 Gabriel, the last trump, Iblis, Harut and Marut, 
 Jinns " created before of smokeless fire," the 
 reading of the books, the weighing in the bal- 
 ances, the gardens, the Houris, and all the detail 
 of imagery in which the Quran abounds — these 
 are collected from various sources, Jewish, Chris- 
 tian, Zoroastrian, heathen. Like the legends, 
 the Prophet cared not whence they came, so that 
 they suited his purpose. Some are certainly 
 Christian. In the externals of the faith, the fast 
 is probably derived from the Christian Lent, the 
 ablutions from the washings of the Sabaeans or 
 Elkasaites, and the ritual prayer from either Jews 
 or Christians. Any one who has attended serv- 
 ice in an oriental church and in a synagogue in' 
 the east needs no further proof that either could 
 teach the scanty ritual of Islam. Much more 
 might be said on the influence of Christianity as 
 traced in the beliefs of Muhammad, but we must 
 pass on to the conclusions derivable from the 
 evidence.^ 
 
 First, however, we must bring to mind the 
 fact that Muhammad claimed, and never weak- 
 ened in the claim, that he came to confirm the 
 * See Smith, Bidle and Islam, on this topic. 
 
34 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 religion of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, In what 
 was perhaps the very last sura, we read the words, 
 " promised in truth in the Law, and in the Gos- 
 pel, and in the Quran." ^ 
 
 Let us attempt a general statement of Muham- 
 mad' s personal relatio?i to Christian teaching. 
 His fundamental beliefs were largely influenced 
 by Christianity, probably without himself recog- 
 nizing the source of those ideas ; he had consid- 
 erable but very desultory knowledge of Christian 
 legend and much less of Christian doctrine and 
 ritual ; his knowledge was very limited and on 
 many points of the first importance he was 
 ignorant, as for example the sacramental system 
 of Christianity and the distinction between Scrip- 
 ture and tradition ; while he misunderstood or 
 misrepresented other equally important doctrines, 
 such as the death of our Lord and the Trinity. 
 It is incredible that he ever saw or heard the 
 New Testament. For example, the opposition 
 of Herod and his attempt to kill the Child Jesus 
 and the flight into Egypt are the kind of nar- 
 rative that Muhammad made use of, and so also 
 are the persecutions suffered by the apostles. 
 If any Christian writings reached his hand or 
 ' Quran, ix. 113. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 35 
 
 ear, they were apocryphal and legendary ; but 
 there seems to be no good reason to suppose 
 that any literary sources are required in order to 
 account for his knowledge, such as it was. 
 
 Attempts have been made to trace the mate- 
 rials in the Quran to specific sources in the 
 Syriac and Arabic Christian writings, but even 
 if well taken they do not prove any direct re- 
 lation. Indeed many of the books referred to 
 are later than Muhammad.^ The eclectic char- 
 acter of the Christian material is such that it is 
 hopeless to attribute it to one man or to the in- 
 fluence of one sect. If Muhammad takes a 
 doketic view of the death of Christ, he insists 
 that his life was only human. If he objects to 
 tritheism and we read of contemporary monophy- 
 site tritheists, Muhammad's trinity is not the 
 same as theirs. He inveighs against the deifica- 
 tion of the Virgin, but it is a far call from Mu- 
 hammad in the seventh century to the CoUy- 
 ridians, an obscure sect that was imported into 
 another part of Arabia in the fourth century. 
 Muhammad was not an investigator into religious 
 teaching, and there is no reason to suppose that 
 he made much effort to learn about Christianity. 
 1 E.g., St. Clair-Tisdall, Sources of Islam, Ch. IV. 
 
36 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 He was a dreamer, a seer of visions, a prophet 
 whose heart burned with a message. 
 
 A tradition, Hke so many others true in spirit 
 though dubious in fact, says that Umar once 
 brought a Pentateuch to Muhammad to read 
 from. The Prophet was displeased and the 
 faithful disciple said in true Muslim spirit : " God 
 protect me from his own anger and that of his 
 apostle ! It suffices me that God is my cherisher, 
 and Islam my religion, and Muhammad my 
 Prophet." Then the Prophet added, " If Moses 
 were alive and knew my prophecy, he would 
 follow me." ^ He had the truth of God, and 
 other revelations must be identical with his : 
 therefore he used them merely to support his 
 own claims. This is shown by the character of 
 the contents of the Quran taken in connection 
 with the general acquaintance with Christianity, 
 by the fact that there is no evidence in the Quran 
 of growth in his knowledge of Christianity with 
 the lapse of time, and by the use he makes of 
 Jewish and Christian material. The first of these 
 points need not delay us, except to remark on 
 some of the omissions of the Quran. It seems 
 inconceivable that one who cared to learn, should 
 
 ^ Smith, Bil)le and Islam, p. 189 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY Zt 
 
 have so little knowledge of the institutions of 
 Christianity, of the place of Christ's death not 
 only in theology but in popular religion, or of 
 the battle cry of controversy, the Theotokos. 
 This last would have been admirably suited to 
 Muhammad's polemic. 
 
 Of course this argument from silence must be 
 used with care, because the Quran does not 
 necessarily contain all that Muhammad knew of 
 Christianity. Some things, as the sacraments 
 for example, were uncongenial to his tempera- 
 ment and would not attract him. The suras 
 that contain the narratives referring to Christ 
 belong partly to the Mecca and partly to the 
 Medina period of his life, and they practically 
 agree in their contents. They disprove any 
 growth in knowledge. The denial that Christ 
 was really killed by the Jews is in only a later 
 sura, and this may be a later opinion or a change 
 in opinion.^ At all events it illustrates the way 
 in which Muhammad used his material and the 
 motive that actuated him. There were two 
 reasons why it suited Muhammad not to accept 
 the death of Christ. One is that in the Quran 
 the prophets are represented as persecuted by the 
 ^ Quran, iv. I56f. 
 
38 ISLAM AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 people but delivered by God from them. The 
 other is that the Jews claimed to have killed 
 Jesus and at the time Muhammad was quarrel- 
 ing with the Jews of Medina. The gospel story 
 of Christ's death, hinted at in the reference to 
 the differing opinions on the matter, did not 
 meet his purpose, while the other did, and so 
 he chose it. So throughout the Quran " the 
 Prophet evidently worked over the material he 
 received, to fit it to his own purpose. He was 
 not a historian, but a preacher. . . . For 
 the most part the narratives were made strictly 
 subordinate to his main purpose, and we can 
 understand the narratives only as we keep the 
 purpose in mind." ^ 
 
 The question must arise as to the bearing of 
 these facts on our estimate of the character of 
 Muhammad. How can we reconcile sincerity 
 with misrepresentation, honesty with unnecessary 
 ignorance, the claim of the identity of his own 
 teaching and that of earlier prophets with the evi- 
 dent differences ? A distinction must be made 
 between judging Muhammad as an Arab and as 
 the founder of a universal religion, as a preacher 
 for the seventh century and as a teacher for the 
 
 ^ Smith, Bible and Islam, p. 95 f., 6l. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 39 
 
 twentieth. The same canons of judgment can- 
 not be appUed in both cases. These facts are 
 not a sufficient ground for denouncing him as an 
 impostor. He came to his behef not through 
 the teachings of another, nor by way of some 
 system of rehgion, but through the experience 
 of his own soul, using the materials he found in 
 the life and thought of his time to feed and 
 clothe the faith, that was itself born of the 
 travail of his own spirit. These materials were 
 not, therefore, the foundation of his faith. 
 
 Furthermore, there was none of the critical 
 instinct in the mind of Muhammad, as there is 
 very little in the mind of the Orient in general. 
 The skeptics in the history of Islam have been 
 such on metaphysical grounds and not from 
 questioning the historical bases of their religion. 
 The proverbial untruthfulness of Orientals is half 
 of it due to the absence of the critical faculty. 
 They believe contradictions and are as credulous 
 as they are unveracious. Muhammad was a 
 ready auditor of what he himself called the 
 " fables of the ancients." But, if we regard him 
 no longer as an Arab and citizen of Mecca 
 merely, we cannot urge such considerations. It 
 is no longer a question of sincerity but of worth. 
 
40 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 And it is no longer the man alone who is 
 judged, but the religion. The man and the faith 
 are inseparable, as is shown by the fact that the 
 most elaborate attempt yet made to present Islam 
 as a religion for the modern world is entitled 
 The Life and Teachings of Muhammad and con- 
 sists largely of a eulogistic biography of the 
 Prophet.^ The accuracy of this author's picture 
 of the Prophet's life is as little likely to be ac- 
 cepted by scientific scholarship as is his right to 
 represent Islam likely to be recognized by the 
 Ulema of that faith. His view of the narratives 
 of the Quran as " essential parts of the folklore 
 of the country " and " traditions floating among 
 the people " is very different from that of the 
 mass of Muhammadans in all ages, who regard 
 them as part of the Quran brought down from 
 heaven. It is difficult to conceive how the 
 Quran in its use of impossible narratives and 
 misrepresentation of Christianity can be ac- 
 commodated to the scientific spirit without mak- 
 ing it so indefinite and lacking in authority as to 
 be useless. 
 
 The facts that we have been considering offer 
 
 1 Life and Teachings of MohatntneJ, or The Spirit of Islam, 
 by Syed Ameer Ali. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 41 
 
 a very obvious line of argument against Islam, 
 as received by Muslims everywhere. The Quran 
 attests the authority of the earlier Scriptures in 
 repeated verses, such as the following : — 
 
 " He hath sent down to thee the Book in 
 truth, confirming what was before it, and has 
 revealed the law, and the gospel before for the 
 guidance of men, and has revealed the discrim- 
 ination." ^ 
 
 While thus attesting their authority, it con- 
 tradicts them. Muslims meet this with the 
 scientifically untenable claim that the Scriptures 
 have been falsified, basing the claim on a charge 
 by Muhammad against the Jews of perverting 
 Scripture. Another argument that has been 
 formulated against Islam is the following : 
 " The Coran is held to be of eternal origin, re- 
 corded in heaven and lying there on the 
 ' Preserved Table.' Thus God alone is held to 
 be the ' Source ' of Islam ! and, if so, then all 
 effort to find a human origin for any part of it 
 must be in vain. Now, if we can trace the 
 teaching of the Coran, or any part of it, to an 
 earthly source, or to human systems existing 
 previous to the Prophet's age, then Islam at 
 
 ' Quran iii. 2, 
 
42 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 once falls to the ground." ^ It may be ques- 
 tioned how effective the argument would prove in 
 this form, for the man who accepts the theory of 
 inspiration referred to will hardly feel its force. 
 Having swallowed the camel, he is not Hkely to 
 strain at the gnat. However, it undoubtedly 
 furnishes the basis for a strong and effective 
 argument. 
 
 These facts have an important bearing on a 
 question that has been discussed of late years, 
 whether Islam is to be regarded as a stepping 
 stone to Christianity. This position assumes 
 two things : that Islam teaches truth, while it 
 eradicates error, and that it is capable of such 
 modification as will enable it to approach Chris- 
 tianity. It i^s of course evident that it is a great 
 teacher of Monotheism, but observation in any 
 Muhammadan land shows that along with the ac- 
 ceptance of Islam earlier beliefs and practices are 
 singularly persistent.^ But passing by that ques- 
 tion, can it approximate Christianity as a system 
 or be a bridge for individuals from heathenism to 
 Christianity ? I believe that it cannot, unless 
 Christianity deny the Trinity and the divinity of 
 
 ^ Sources of Islam, p. 2. 
 
 ^ See Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 43 
 
 our Lord, and not only that, but also unless he 
 be brought down to the level of other prophets. 
 Besides this dogmatic contradiction of doctrines 
 that have become identified with historic Chris- 
 tianity, and besides the denial to Jesus of a unique 
 place and authority in religious and spiritual mat- 
 ters, there is in Islam, as we have seen, a misrep- 
 resentation and distortion of the facts of the 
 sacred history of Christianity. These facts are 
 ignored by writers of whom Bosworth Smith is a 
 conspicuous example. The barrier is not prima- 
 rily in the traditions or in the later dogmas of 
 Islam, but in the unchanging and unchangeable 
 Quran, nay, it originated in the mind of Muham- 
 mad himself. And history bears out this con- 
 tention. ^ 
 
 Islam owes its origin not to the strength of 
 Christian influence but to its weakness, not to 
 force of circumstance but to the fault of the 
 church. Arabia was neglected for six hundred 
 years and the church has suffered the penalty. 
 The Romans, Greeks, and Syrians, despised the 
 barbarians of the desert and they paid the price 
 of their scorn. This is the first chapter of a long 
 story of defeat, but the greatest defeat of all was 
 unfought and unsuspected. It took place in the 
 
44 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 desert, where a nation was left in ignorance, as 
 they now call those days, and where forces gath- 
 ered and matured, suddenly to issue forth with a 
 mighty and long enduring power. Some of the 
 causes for this failure will come before us later. 
 Let us now impress on our minds that such neg- 
 lect will always be punished, that Christendom 
 will always and inevitably pay the penalty of its 
 indolence. 
 
Second Lecture 
 
 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM 
 
 THEOLOGY 
 
Conditions under which Muslim and Christian theology de- 
 veloped. Oriental Christianity. Its division, extent, charac- 
 ter, theological differences and agreements. Interchange of 
 religious ideas between Muslims and others. Christian influ- 
 ence in the doctrine of the " foundations " of Islam. The eternal 
 Quran, legendary history in the traditions, the doctrine of agree- 
 ment. Christian influence on the Muslim doctrine of God and 
 the apostolate. Christian influence on the sects of Islam. 
 Slightness of Muslim influence on Christianity, and limits of 
 Christian influence on Islam. Can Islam meet modern condi- 
 tions ? 
 
Second Lecture 
 
 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM 
 
 THEOLOGY 
 
 Few periods of equal length in the world's his- 
 tory exhibit such marvelous changes as those in 
 western Asia during the seventh and eighth 
 centuries. In the early years of the seventh cen- 
 tury, while Muhammad was preaching a new 
 faith in Mecca and afterwards founding a new 
 empire in Medina, a conflict was taking place 
 between the two great world-empires, Rome and 
 Persia, led by two men of marvelous ability. Not 
 since the days of Darius and Xerxes had Asiatic 
 armies so devastated the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean as did those of Khusru, the Persian king, 
 and the campaigns of Heraclius in Asia ap- 
 proach those of Alexander in brilliancy. While 
 Constantinople was beleaguered by Persians 
 and Avars, Heraclius was winning victories 
 in the very heart of the Persian empire, but the 
 permanent fruits of conquest were gathered 
 47 
 
48 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 neither by the Roman nor by the Persian, but 
 by the Arab. The wars had only prepared the 
 way for a foe who should utterly destroy the one 
 empire and deprive the other of many of its fair- 
 est provinces. 
 
 Twenty years after the flight of Muhammad 
 alone with Abu Bakr to Medina, Egypt, Syria, 
 and Persia were conquered. In another decade 
 the Arab capital was Damascus, where it re- 
 mained for nearly a century and whence the 
 Khalifa's dominions extended to central Asia 
 and to the borders of France. In the middle of 
 the eighth century the capital was removed to 
 the fertile valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, a 
 region that has been the seat of empire more 
 continuously than any other in the world. 
 Baghdad was founded, and the close of the cen- 
 tury saw the height of Arab magnificence in the 
 reign of Harun-ar-Rashed. These familiar facts 
 are rehearsed because church and state are one 
 in Islam, and with the empire the religion was 
 transplanted. 
 
 As in every other religion, so in Islam, first the 
 faith was established and afterwards theology 
 was developed, but never before or since under 
 such circumstances. We can bring these before 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 49 
 
 our mind more clearly by instituting a compari- 
 son with the history of Christianity. In both 
 religions theology was developed under condi- 
 tions and in regions widely different from those 
 in which the faiths were established. Christian- 
 ity emerged from Palestine to come into contact 
 and conflict with pagan thought, both religious 
 and philosophical ; and the seats of Christian 
 learning were for the most part great Greek and 
 Roman cities, such as Alexandria, Antioch and 
 Carthage. Similarly Islam emerged from the 
 desert, and her theology was developed in centers 
 of population where Christianity and Magianism, 
 with their attendant heresies and modifications, 
 had long been supreme. The parallel is far from 
 complete and one difference is particularly im- 
 portant. For nearly three hundred years 
 Christianity was not the religion of the state ; 
 and during this period it was often persecuted, 
 always despised, and never secure. Islam, on 
 the contrary, except for a single decade in the 
 life of the Prophet, was a sovereign state ; 
 questions of theology were matters of state ; the 
 emperor was also the Khalifa, the successor of 
 the Prophet ; and the growth of political power 
 was marvelously rapid. Imagine, if you can, 
 
50 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 that the victories of Constantine followed im- 
 mediately on the events related in the first part 
 of the book of The Acts, and it will give an idea 
 of one important phase of the circumstances 
 in which Muslim theology grew up. It is 
 often said or impHed that the growth of 
 Christian theology under the influence of Greek 
 philosophy in particular has been such as to 
 hamper and impair the efficiency of the faith. 
 A similar judgment has been passed on the his- 
 tory of Islam, and it has been claimed that the 
 religion suffered from Persian and Christian in- 
 fluences. Thus a brilliant writer speaks in terms 
 of disparagement of " Persianized and Christian- 
 ized Islam," meaning Islam as developed in 
 Baghdad.^ Such a phrase as " Christianized 
 Islam " will come to most as a surprise, if 
 not a shock. Can it be justified and how 
 far? 
 
 The advent of Islam synchronizes with the be- 
 ginning of the last of the Christological controver- 
 sies, for it was the desire to unite the Christian 
 parties against the Saracens that led the emperor 
 Heraclius to propound as a compromise measure 
 the doctrine of one will in the person of Christ. 
 
 ^ Essays on Eastern Questions, W. G. Palgrave, p. 336. 
 
 1 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF 3IUSLIM THEOLOGY 51 
 
 Christian theology was therefore developed to 
 nearly the full measure reached by the Ortho- 
 dox Church of the East, and the peculiar doctrines 
 of the schismatic churches of the Orient were 
 fully defined.^ The controversies over the 
 definition of the doctrine of Our Lord's Person 
 had resulted in successive great secessions from 
 the main body of Christians, all of which had af- 
 fected almost exclusively the Christians of Africa 
 and the East. The council of Ephesus, in a. d. 
 431, anathematized Nestorius, then Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, and his teachings. He was an 
 Antiochian, as were his closest friends, while the 
 great scholar to whose influence the fundamental 
 ideas of Nestorianism are traced, was the 
 Antiochian, Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose 
 diocese, however, was in Cilicia. The ancient 
 Christian school at Edessa, in western Meso- 
 potamia, espoused the cause of Nestorius with 
 zeal, and finally Nestorianism became the religion 
 of the church in Persia, whence it extended far 
 into Asia. Similarly Monophysitism, though not 
 confined to those regions, was strongest in Egypt 
 and Syria ; and the organized bodies of Mo- 
 nophysites were those whose successors are now 
 
 1 See Appendix : On the Divisions of Oriental Christianity. 
 
52 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 known as the Copts, the Abyssinians, the Jacob- 
 ites, and the Armenians. 
 
 After the Arab conquest all of these Nestorian 
 and Monophysite churches, except the Abyssin- 
 ian, were subject to Muslim rule, and the brunt of 
 the conflict with Islam fell on them. In this 
 conflict the Orthodox Eastern Church shared, 
 in close identification with the Eastern Empire, 
 though more and more within Muslim dominion ; 
 and not till the complete victory of the Osmanli 
 Turks, nine centuries after the first Arab con- 
 quests, was its Patriarch the subject of a Muslim 
 ruler. Among these churches, the Syrian 
 churches, Nestorian and Jacobite, came into the 
 closest contact with Islam and to them accord- 
 ingly we will devote our attention chiefly. With 
 them might be classed the Coptic and Armenian 
 churches ; but Egypt was for the most part 
 politically separate from the Asiatic regions, and 
 the Armenian history from the Sassanian period 
 is quite distinct from that of the Aramaic 
 churches. It was given a character of its own 
 by the long national conflict with the Persian 
 power, and, furthermore, the Armenians never 
 possessed the proselyting zeal that marked the 
 history of the Syrian churches. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLUI THEOLOGY 53 
 
 At the risk of digressing from the immediate 
 topic before us to-day, it seems better to get a 
 general view of the Syrian or Aramaean Chris- 
 tianity, with special reference to its theological 
 character. 
 
 The spread of Christianity northward and 
 westward from Palestine is familiar to us, but 
 we are far less familiar with its rapid extension 
 to the East. The fact that the apostles, like their 
 Master, spoke an Aramaic dialect, would naturally 
 lead some of them to preach the gospel to the 
 peoples who spoke this language, and tradition 
 agrees in designating Thomas as the Apostle of 
 the East. Whatever the basis may be to that 
 tradition, it is certain that Christianity very soon 
 extended into Mesopotamia. In the second 
 century the princes of Edessa probably pro- 
 fessed Christianity. Here a school of Chris- 
 tian learning grew up and with it an extensive 
 and ancient Christian literature, whose most pre- 
 cious but not sole fruitage was the Pshitta ver- 
 sion of the Bible. Circumstances rendered the 
 evangelization of the Aramaic or Syriac speak- 
 ing population that extended from the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea to the eastern border of the Mesopo- 
 tamian plain a comparatively easy task. They 
 
54 ISLA3f AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 had lost all national unity, if indeed they ever 
 had any. They were in part under Roman and 
 in part under Parthian rule, and probably in 
 both cases the authority exercised was not more 
 than that of a suzerain. Neither government 
 certainly had any zeal for the native religion of 
 that region. Furthermore Greek and Persian re- 
 ligions and intellectual influences must have 
 tended to prepare for a change in faith. 
 
 At all events, Christianity spread rapidly and 
 was firmly established when the rise of the Sas- 
 sanians brought into power in Persia and Meso- 
 potamia a strong dynasty definitely associated 
 with the Zoroastrian hierarchy. This was in 
 A. D. 224. From that time for several centuries 
 the history of Persian Christianity is not unlike 
 church history in the Roman empire before Con- 
 stantine, one of growth in spite of intermittent and 
 sometimes violent persecution. After Chris- 
 tianity became the state religion of the West, it 
 was natural that the most zealous persecutors 
 should be the kings whom ambition or necessity 
 drove to war with Rome. The outcome, how- 
 ever, was different, for in the middle of the sixth 
 century the Persian government under the great 
 Anurshirvan finally recognized the right of Chris- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 55 
 
 tianity to be tolerated but not to proselyte.^ 
 This toleration was secured in part because of the 
 acceptance of Nestorianism as the faith of the 
 Persian Church, that form of Christianity being 
 persecuted by the Empire and so favored by 
 Persia, 
 
 We need not regard political expediency as 
 the only motive that actuated Barsuma and his 
 associates in espousing the doctrines of Nestorius 
 and cutting themselves off from the Church of 
 the Empire, for the school of Edessa, from 
 which they were driven to establish themselves 
 in Nisibis, was strongly Antiochian and the 
 memory and writings of the great Theodore 
 were highly venerated. This process of separa- 
 tion had begun before the Nestorian contro- 
 versy, as is shown by the assumption by the 
 Bishop of Seleucia of the title Catholicos ; but 
 it was completed on the acceptance of Nes- 
 torianism by the organization of the church 
 upon an independent basis. This occurred in 
 the latter part of the fifth century. The Pa- 
 triarchal seat was at the capital Seleucia, with 
 
 * This is evident from the Syriac Lives of Mar Gregor and 
 Mar Aba as yet untranslated. (Bedjan, Afar YaWalaha, 1895.) 
 See also the terms of Anushirvan's peace with Justinian in 562 
 (Rawlinson, Seventh O. Monarchy.') 
 
56 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 numerous metropolitan and diocesan bishops 
 throughout the Persian empire. 
 
 The Monophy site controversy followed close on 
 the heels of the Nestorian, but it was not until the 
 sixth century that Jacob Baradai did for the Jacob- 
 ites what Barsuma in the fifth century had done 
 for the Nestorians — completed their separate 
 organization. The Monophysite party had always 
 had a large popular following in Syria, but they 
 were persecuted by the government and were di- 
 vided among themselves, with little hope of suc- 
 cess, until this indomitable leader took up their 
 cause and gave them new life and organization. 
 The impression made by his energy is testified to 
 by the report that he ordained 100,000 deacons and 
 priests. The sect of Jacobites is with right named 
 after him. The patriarchal residence shifted 
 among the cities of northern Mesopotamia; 
 while the second in the hierarchy, the MapJiri- 
 ana, as he was called, lived in Takrit near 
 Baghdad. 
 
 It is impossible to form any exact estimate of 
 the size of these Christian bodies, but we have 
 evidence as to their wide geographical distribu- 
 tion and large numbers. All Syriac historical 
 literature testifies to the large Christian popula- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 57 
 
 tion throughout Mesopotamia and the adjacent 
 regions to the eastward, as well as considerable 
 bodies in still more remote districts. Cosmas, a 
 Christian traveler a hundred years before Mu- 
 hammad, says after speaking of the Christians of 
 India : " In the same way, among the Bactrians, 
 Huns, Persians, Persarmenians, Elamites, and in 
 the whole country of Persia, the churches and the 
 bishops are without number, and the Christian 
 population very numerous." During the Khalifat 
 of Umar Christianity entered northern China. 
 As the Arab hordes poured out of Arabia, they 
 everywhere found Christianity firmly established 
 and organized. In Syria there were the mem- 
 bers of the orthodox state-church and large 
 bodies of Jacobites ; beyond the bonds of the 
 Empire Nestorians were most numerous, but 
 with them were a few orthodox, Chalcedonians 
 or Melchites as they were called, and more Jaco- 
 bites ; and even in the farther regions of the 
 Persian dominion, as Khurasan, there were not 
 only Nestorians but also Jacobites.^ 
 
 The theological tenets of these great divisions 
 of oriental Christianity did not differ as widely 
 
 'The latter had been transported by the Sassanian govern- 
 ment from Edessa [Ass. III., 420). 
 
58 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 as one might infer from the rancor of their de- 
 bates. I would not depreciate the importance of 
 the Christological controversies in bringing out 
 clearlu the true significance of our Lord's per- 
 son, but 'that need not make us forget the prac- 
 tical identity of the belief of the disputants on 
 almost all doctrines. For our purpose the dif- 
 ferences are important only so far as they af- 
 fected the character of the Christians themselves, 
 for they lie in a department of theology placed 
 entirely outside the pale of discussion with Mus- 
 lims by the denial in the Quran of the Sonship 
 of Christ. These differences affected the char- 
 acter of the Christians not so much by the im- 
 plications of the peculiar doctrines, as by the 
 artificial divisions marked by them and by the 
 unreal character of the theological literature. 
 The founders of the Nestorian and Monophysite 
 churches contended for something that to them 
 had real value. It was not a battle over words, 
 nor was it mere skirmishing for power. But 
 with their successors, generation after generation, 
 the case was different. The point at issue be- 
 tween Jacobite and Nestorian had a merely fic- 
 titious importance. Nature, and Person, and 
 Hypostasis were nothing more to them than the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 59 
 
 shibboleths of party strife. Their writers did not 
 even discover new arguments ; they merely fought 
 over again the battles of a bygone age, using 
 the same weapons, heaping up opprobrious epi- 
 thets on Cyril or Nestorius.as the case might be. 
 The East is full of strange survivals, but there 
 is none more incomprehensible and more pa- 
 thetic than the rehearsal of old debates by ori- 
 ental Christians even to-day. It marks a steril- 
 ity of thought that explains much of their failure 
 to impress the new religion in a vital way. But, 
 as already remarked, these differences were 
 Christological and hence could have little or no 
 interest to Muslims. Not so with their agree- 
 ments. They were practically at one in their 
 teaching as to the nature of God, in the accep- 
 tance of the same canonical Scriptures, even in 
 their traditions and legends, in the organization 
 of the Christian society, in the mode of worship, 
 and in their conception of the Christian walk and 
 life. In all of these it is at least conceivable 
 that they should have influenced Islam. It may 
 be thought that the Nestorians differed more 
 widely from the others than they from each 
 other, and to some extent it is true. The Nes- 
 torians were more primitive, for their develop- 
 
60 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 ment had been arrested at an earlier stage ; but 
 there is no sufificient reason for calling them, as 
 has been done, the Protestants of the East. 
 They differed from the others in the arrange- 
 ment of the church, in the rules as to marriage 
 of the clergy, in not using images or pictures, 
 and in some other points. The absence of 
 images would appeal to the Muhammadans, but 
 probably not the other differences. The Nes- 
 torian liturgy, which with the other liturgies is 
 very ancient, is less explicit than they in its 
 sacerdotal teaching ; but it contains in essence 
 the doctrine of the sacerdotal priesthood, the 
 sacrificial element in the Eucharist, the prayers 
 for the dead, and the intercession of the 
 saints.^ 
 
 If further illustration be required, it may be 
 found in the letters of the Patriarch Ishuyabh, 
 written about a. d. 660, in which he urges cer- 
 tain unruly Christians to submit themselves to 
 the Patriarch, because they were cutting them- 
 selves off from the channels of sacramental grace 
 through the ordained ministry and the Apostolic 
 Succession.^ In brief, the Christianity we are 
 
 ^ See Brightman's Liturgies, Eastern and Western, Vol. I. 
 * Budge, Thomas of JMarga's Book of Governors, ii. 154. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 61 
 
 considering was substantially the Christianity of 
 the later Councils, fallen in many ways from 
 primitive purity, but yet not lacking in intel- 
 lectual power nor altogether in spiritual zeal. 
 The Nestorian and Jacobite writers of the period 
 immediately preceding Islam are men of no little 
 strength, and John of Damascus of the Orthodox 
 Greek Church, famous alike for his hymns and 
 his theological treatises, lived under the Khalifas 
 of Damascus. 
 
 But we must turn to Islam. The period of 
 the development of orthodox Muslim theology 
 may be limited by the death in the year 241 of 
 the Hijra of Ibn Hanbal, the last of the four great 
 masters of theology. The seat of empire and of 
 religion was first in Damascus and then in Bagh- 
 dad, and we know from historical records that in 
 both these places Muslims and Christians dis- 
 cussed with one another theological topics. The 
 most famous disputant in Damascus is John, the 
 orthodox theologian, among whose writings are 
 disputations against Islam. In Baghdad a favorite 
 amusement of some of the Khalifas was to have 
 debates by representatives of different religions, 
 and the illustrious example of the rulers was fol- 
 lowed by those in less exalted station. The 
 
62 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Apology of Al Kindi, still extant, shows that the 
 debaters were able and well informed. It is a 
 fact to which we shall have occasion to refer 
 more fully at another time, that the prejudices 
 that exist between Christians and Muslims have 
 been intensified since the early centuries of Islam. 
 The conquerors required the services of the 
 Christians for governmental and literary pur- 
 poses, and Christians held positions of high influ- 
 ence in the Arab court. One Khalifa after an- 
 other employed Christian physicians, whose 
 wealth and influence are subjects of frequent re- 
 mark by the Jacobite historian, Gregory Bar 
 Hebraeus. The debt of Arabic learning to the 
 Christians who translated for them the works of 
 the Greek philosophers is remarked by every 
 historian. An evidence of the interchange of 
 religious opinions is that during the period of 
 the great Abbasid Khalifas translations were 
 made of the gospels into Arabic from Syriac, 
 one of them according to Bar Hebraeus in the 
 seventh century at the request of an Arab gov- 
 ernor, and there is record also of a refutation of 
 the Quran in Syriac about the beginning of the 
 ninth century by one Abu Nuh, who was in the 
 
DEVEL0P3TENT OF 3IUSLI5I THEOLOGY 63 
 
 employ of the governor of Mosul.^ It is not 
 likely that these works were composed for the 
 purpose of gaining proselytes. The motive was 
 almost certainly theological curiosity. 
 
 The story of the Karaite Jews is a very inter- 
 esting example of the influence of one religion 
 upon another in the period of Arab rule. This 
 sect of Jews was founded by one A nan ben David, 
 who aspired to be the prince of the Baghdad 
 Jews, but failed in his purpose. The point that 
 interests us is that they recognized Jesus as a 
 prophet and also Muhammad, and that they 
 were affected by the discussions current among 
 the Muhammadans as to the anthropomorphisms 
 in the Scripture representation of God. Two 
 Jewish sects at the beginning of the ninth cen- 
 tury, founded by Persian Jews, owed their ex- 
 istence to Mutazilite influence ; and one of them 
 after the death of their leader borrowed the con- 
 venient doctrine of the Alyides that he was not 
 dead but only concealed.^ There is no room for 
 doubt as to the opportunity of the Christians to 
 make their beliefs known to the Muhammadans. 
 
 1 See Hastings' Bible Dictionary, s. v. Arabic Versions ; 
 Bar HebrKus, Ec. Chron., i. 275 ; Assemani, Bib. Orient., iii, 
 I, 212. 
 
 ' Graetz, History of the Jews, Vol. II, ch. v. 
 
64 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 It is well known that Islam acknowledges four 
 foundations or sources of theology : the Quran, 
 the Sunnat or Tradition believed to embody the 
 rule or teaching of the Prophet ; Ijma or Agree- 
 ment of the Companions of the Prophet and the 
 authoritative expositors of the law ; and Qias or 
 analogical reasoning. This department of the- 
 ology (/. e., its sources) is developed and defined 
 in Islam to an extent unknown to Christianity. 
 The doctrine of inspiration of the Quran is due 
 to the high claims made by Muhammad himself 
 rather than to any later influence. Enough to 
 say that it is regarded as having been sent down 
 from heaven by means of Gabriel and given word 
 for word. In connection with the Quran, how- 
 ever, a question has been the occasion of much 
 controversy, which in all probability was sug- 
 gested by Christianity. The following quotation 
 from Abu Hanifa, who died a. h., 150, will indi- 
 cate the character of the doctrine of the " Un- 
 created Quran," as well as that 'of inspiration. 
 He says, " The Quran is the Word of God, and 
 is his inspired Word and Revelation. It is a 
 necessary attribute of God. It is not God, but 
 still it is inseparable from God. It is written in 
 a volume, it is read in a language, it is remem- 
 
DEVEL0P3IENT OF 3IUSLIM THEOLOGY 65 
 
 bercd in the heart, and its letters and its vowel 
 points, and its writings are all created, for these 
 arc the works of man, but God's Word is uncre- 
 ated. Its words, its writings, its letters, and its 
 verses are for the necessities of man, for its 
 meaning is arrived at by their use, but the Word 
 of God is fixed in the essence of God, and he 
 who says that the Word of God is created is an 
 infidel." ^ Muhammad used the expression Word 
 of God in reference to Christ ; and here while 
 there is no thought of Christ, it is difficult to re- 
 sist the belief that there is a trace of the teaching 
 of the Word that was in the beginning with God. 
 This is made still more likely by the fact that in 
 the extant disputations of John of Damascus and 
 of his pupil, Theodore Abukara, an argument is 
 based on the use of the title Word of Our Lord 
 by Muhammad. What was original to the 
 Muslim theologians was the application of the 
 concept to the Quran.^ 
 
 The dogma of the Sunnat, or Tradition, in 
 Muslim theology grew out of the veneration 
 paid to the prophet together with the conception 
 
 1 Hughes, Diet, of /slam, p. 484. 
 
 2 Sell's Fait/i of Islam, 79f., i88ff. ; Macdonald, Developmeni 
 0/ Muslim Theology, p. 146; Diet, of Christ Biog., iii. 414. 
 
66 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 of religion by which necessity was felt for some 
 word or act of his to guide every detail of life. 
 The Quran was inadequate to the demand and 
 was supplemented by the mass of traditions, and 
 in passing it may be remarked that the number 
 of accepted traditions, goes up into the thou- 
 sands, while tens of thousands more were re- 
 jected. There is nothing corresponding to this 
 in Christianity, though the Apocryphal gospel, 
 if made canonical, would be a partial parallel. 
 Muslims in arguing with Christians usually 
 maintain that the gospels do not correspond to 
 the Quran but to the Traditions. Alongside of 
 Tradition in the sense just explained there has 
 grown up in Islam, as to some extent in scholas- 
 tic Christianity, a mass of legendary history and 
 exegesis, created in order to explain the allusions 
 and narratives of the Quran. In character 
 these glosses are like the Quranic legends, only 
 multiplied many times in volume and in 
 marvels ; and the sources are similar to those 
 used by Muhammad himself. Furthermore 
 there is the same naive absence of criticism. 
 Any one who has hved in the East and en- 
 gaged in religious conversation with Muslims 
 knows that much of the lore of the learned is 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 67 
 
 composed of statements such as that Job 
 stamped with his foot and two springs, one hot 
 and one cold, gushed out, or that in his later 
 prosperity gold rained on one threshing floor 
 and silver on another. I remember a call on a 
 learned doctor of the law, in the course of 
 which he related to us with a very evident sense 
 of satisfaction the details of an interview be- 
 tween the Lord Jesus and Plato : both of whom, 
 he said, were great physicians. Apparently the 
 transmitters (or inventors) of these legends were 
 mainly Jews, but Christians no doubt furnished 
 a part.^ Such influences are hardly worthy of 
 mention, except that they make up much of the 
 substance of popular religion. 
 
 We can without much doubt trace Christian in- 
 fluence in the third foundation of Islam, Ijma or 
 Agreement. There is difference of opinion as to 
 the persons whose agreement is a valid basis for 
 law and dogma. All join in accepting the Agree- 
 ment of the Companions of the Prophet, and 
 practically all Sunnites accept the agreement of 
 the great Masters, the four Mujtahids. How- 
 
 ' See Am. Journal Sem. Lang., xiv. l37fF. Also Articles on 
 Bible Characters in Jewish Encyl. ; and in Hughes' Diet, of 
 Islam. 
 
68 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 ever defined, it is the same principle as the 
 unanimous consent of the Fathers or the de- 
 cision of an ecumenical council, and probably 
 the latter is the form in which it would be most 
 appealed to by the Christians, with their dis- 
 putes as to the various councils. A still more 
 direct proof of the Christian origin of this 
 principle is found in Muslim jurisprudence. 
 It must be borne in mind that jurisprudence and 
 theology are in Islam one in their origins and 
 their sanctions. The following is quoted from 
 Macdonald : •' The courts (in the territories 
 conquered by the Arabs) were permitted to 
 continue in existence till Islam had learned 
 from them all that was needed. We can 
 still recognize certain principles that were so 
 carried over. That the duty of proof lies upon 
 the plaintiff, that the right of defending himself 
 with an oath upon the defendant ; the doctrine 
 of invariable custom and that of the different 
 kinds of legal presumption. These, as ex- 
 pressed in Arabic, are almost verbal renderings 
 of the pregnant utterances of Latin law. But 
 most important of all was a liberty suggested by 
 that system to the Muslim juriconsults. This 
 was through the part played in the older school 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLI3I THEOLOGY 69 
 
 by the Responsa Priidentium^ answers by promi- 
 nent lawyers to questions put to them by their 
 clients, in which the law of the Twelve Tables 
 was expounded, expanded, and often practically 
 set aside by their comments. . . . Further, 
 the validity of a general agreement of juricon- 
 sults ' reminds us of the rescript of Hadrian, 
 which ordained that, if the opinion of the 
 licensed prudentcs (or lawyers) all agreed, such 
 common opinion had the force of statute ; but 
 if they disagreed, the judge might follow which 
 he chose.' " * 
 
 The two departments of theology that are 
 most fully developed in the eastern churches are 
 the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ. 
 It has been said by Harnack that " at the close 
 of the fourth century it was settled that the 
 dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation con- 
 stituted the faith." ^ The proportions of Muham- 
 madan theology are not unfairly indicated by 
 the following statement from a summary of 
 modern scholastic Islam : " Know that it is in- 
 cumbent on every Muslim that he should know 
 fifty articles of belief, and for each article he should 
 
 ' Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theol., 84ff. 
 "* History of Dog//ia, IV, 335. 
 
70 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 know a proof, general or detailed. . . . Now, 
 let us state to you the fifty articles shortly before 
 stating them in detail. Know, then, that twenty 
 qualities are necessary in God Most High, that 
 twenty are impossible in him, and that one is 
 possible. This makes up forty-one. And in 
 the case of the apostles, four qualities are neces- 
 sary, four impossible and one possible. This 
 makes up the fifty." ^ In Islam the Apos- 
 tolate (/. e ., the prophetic authority) has taken 
 the place of Christology. In beginning, as 
 every theologian must, with the doctrine of God, 
 the Arabs could not but be influenced by the 
 systems worked out in oriental Christianity. 
 The denial of the Trinity would limit that in- 
 fluence, but the eastern churches themselves 
 had no adequate grasp of the character of God as 
 Father and in the enumeration of the attributes 
 of God, which composes so much of Muslim 
 theology, the differences would not be impor- 
 tant. It is not imitation that leads the oriental 
 Christian to-day to say, " God is merciful," in a dif- 
 ferent language but precisely the same spirit of 
 trust in his arbitrary good-nature as the Muslim. 
 A Nestorian apologist for Christianity argues 
 *Macdonald, Appendix, Creed of JMiihani»iad al Fiidali. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF 3IUSLIM THEOLOGY 71 
 
 that the only difference between Christians and 
 Muhammadans is the acceptance of Muhammad 
 by the latter.^ We cannot doubt that investiga- 
 tion would reveal parallels in language and sub- 
 stance of doctrine. In one matter of detail it is 
 very certain that there was an interchange of 
 ideas between Muslims and Christians. It is the 
 belief of orthodox Muhammadans that in para- 
 dise God will be visible to the corporeal eye. 
 On this matter there was bitter controversy be- 
 tween the conservatives and the Mutazilite 
 liberals. A little before Muhammad this same 
 point was at issue between the Nestorians and 
 the Euchites, the latter believing that in trances 
 they actually saw the Trinity ; and at the very 
 time that the Muslims were debating the question 
 there was some difference of opinion among the 
 Nestorians themselves, the Patriarch deciding 
 that the divine essence was not visible even to 
 the human nature of Christ. It may be noticed 
 that the astute Timothy took the same side as the 
 Khalifa Mamun.^ In maintaining, with a good 
 
 1 Epistles of Elijah, or Disputation with Hussein Abiilgasim, 
 Assemani, Bib. Orient., Ill: I, 270. 
 
 « Assemani, Bibl. Orient., Ill : II, 172. See also Goldziher 
 {^Wiener Zeit. fiir Kunde des Morg., XIII, 53) on Sufi faith- 
 healers, whose spokesman was a Christian, Abukheir. 
 
72 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 deal of casuistry, it must be said, the sinlessness 
 of all the prophets, including Muhammad, surely 
 the orthodox were striving to prove his fitness to 
 be in the glorious company of Him in whom 
 was no sin found and against whom alone of the 
 prophets there is in the Quran no suggestion of 
 evil. 
 
 The history of Muhammadan theology, to a 
 far greater extent than that of Christian, is 
 one of accretion in distinction from develop- 
 ment. Some of these accretions have been 
 accepted into the orthodox system, while others 
 belong to the indefinite body of sectaries and 
 mystics that are in Islam but not of it. They 
 owe their origin in large measure to the inevi- 
 table effort of the soul to bridge the chasm 
 between God and man. In the mind of Muham- 
 mad this was done by the sending of prophets 
 from God to man, by faith on the part of man, 
 and by an act of forgiveness by God in the 
 working of his omnipotent will. There is no 
 place in this system either for a mediator or a 
 sacrifice, and much less for any Incarnation in 
 which God unites man to himself. This phase 
 of Islam is expressed in the following quotation 
 from a statement by the Sheikh ul Islam at Con- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLI3I THEOLOGY 73 
 
 stantinople some years ago. " The unsubmitted 
 man becomes one of the submitted (z. e., the 
 non-MusHm becomes Mushm) by faith ; that is, 
 by fixing in his heart and proclaiming in words, 
 • There is no God but God, and Muhammad is 
 the prophet of God.' By that act he has become 
 Mushm and has found divine grace. But no 
 human being can be intermediary between man 
 and God. This transaction is one in which men 
 or priests have no part. Behef annuls all sin. 
 The unbeliever who accepts Muhammadanism 
 becomes by conversion as innocent as on the day 
 of his birth, except that his neighbor's rights 
 cannot be annulled ; he must make reparation 
 on the Judgment Day to every person whom he 
 has oppressed or injured." ^ 
 
 Nevertheless, even in scholastic Islam inter- 
 cession and sacrifice are recognized, while in 
 popular Islam they form a great part of religion. 
 In the Quran itself there is no definite promise 
 of intercession for believers, the sum of the utter- 
 ances being that no one shall intercede save he 
 " whom the Merciful permits." In the traditions 
 the basis is more explicit, and so in theological 
 works it is taught that Muhammad will intercede 
 
 • Quoted in Dwight, Constantinople and its Problems, p. 59. 
 
74 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 for believers, especially but not exclusively on 
 the last day. The intercession is not confined 
 to that of Muliammad, as the following indicates, 
 " He should believe in the intercession of the 
 prophets, next of the learned, next of the martyrs, 
 next of the rest of the believers — each according 
 to his dignity and rank with God Most High." ' 
 The whole Muslim world is dotted with shrines, 
 which are usually, and perhaps invariably, con- 
 nected with some holy man, either as his tomb 
 or as being associated in some way with his life. 
 Thus Persia is full of the footprints and finger- 
 prints of Ali. Only a few can make the pil- 
 grimage to Mecca, but these local shrines are 
 patronized by everybody. How much of this 
 is the residue of old heathenism and how much 
 is due to Christian influence, being in part 
 heathenism through Christian channels and in 
 part due to the desire to raise Muhammad to the 
 dignity claimed for Christ, cannot well be de- 
 cided ; but the ideas of the Muslims and those 
 of the Christians are so identical that they have 
 little scruple in visiting and making offerings to 
 each other's shrines. , 
 
 ' Macdonald, Developtiient of Muslim Theology, Appendix, 
 Creed by Al-Ghazzali, p. 307. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 75 
 
 Lane, in his Modern Egyptians^ remarks " that 
 it is a very remarkable trait in the character of 
 the people of Egypt and other countries of the 
 East, that Muslims, Christians, and Jews adopt 
 each other's superstitions, while they abhor the 
 more rational doctrines of each other's faiths." ^ 
 This is very true of the practices based on the 
 idea of the intercession of the saints. Sacrifices 
 are made in orthodox Islam in connection espe- 
 cially with the Feast of Sacrifice, at Mecca, where 
 thousands of animals are slain, and aU over the 
 world of Islam. Sacrifice was a part of the 
 original rites of the heathen pilgrims and was 
 continued by Muhammad along with the Haj 
 pilgrimage and not from any theological consid- 
 eration. It was thus from the first a foreign 
 element in the religion, and is so still. 
 
 In connection with the veneration of saints just 
 mentioned sacrifices are numerous, and among 
 the Shi'ite Muslims the doctrine of vicarious sacri- 
 fice, though rejected by the builders, has become 
 the chief corner stone of popular religion. The 
 great religious act of the year, which feeds the 
 
 ^ Lane, i. 357. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Relii^ion Today, 
 is full of illustrations of the survival under Islam of older 
 religious ideas. 
 
76 ISLA3I AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 flame of enthusiasm, is the commemoration of 
 the battle of Karbala, in which the Imam Hus- 
 sein, grandson of the Prophet, suffered death. 
 For ten days in every Shi'ite community the people 
 give themselves up to religious emotion, proces- 
 sions in the streets, dramatic representations of 
 the tragedy, recitals and sermons on the suffer- 
 ings of the Imams, culminating on the last day 
 in an orgy of frantic exhibitions of mourning. 
 The cries of the devotees, the bruised backs of 
 the flagellants, the ghastly aspect of the blood- 
 stained bands of men gashing themselves that 
 thus they may gain a share in the atoning blood 
 of the field of Karbala, all the sights and sounds 
 of that last and great day are such as never to 
 be forgotten. Even the details of the passion 
 bear traces of the imitation of the gospel story, 
 which was rejected by Muhammad. The motive, 
 the impelling force, in this strange ceremony is 
 the belief that the sufferings thus commemorated 
 are atoning. In popular belief, every tear shed 
 during those days is efficacious in washing away 
 guilt, while the blood of Hussein avails to bring 
 pardon on the last day to the guiltiest Muslim,^ 
 
 1 See S. G. Wilson, The Atoning Savior of the Shiahs, Presb. 
 and Reformed Review, xiii., No. 51, Also Matthew Arnold, 
 Essays in Criticism, A Persian Passion Play, 
 
 \ 
 
DEVEL0P3IENT OF 3IUSLIM THEOLOGY TJ 
 
 The doctrine of successive incarnations, or 
 rather manifestations, of God in different persons 
 belonging to different ages is a favorite belief of 
 the Persian sects, the last, and for the time at 
 least, most prominent of which is that of the 
 Babis or Behais. The resemblance to the Chris- 
 tian doctrine is more superficial than real, and it 
 may be doubted whether its origin is Christian, 
 even indirectly. In whatever way these influ- 
 ences, all tending to create a doctrine of recon- 
 ciliation, have reached Islam, it is significant 
 that there has been this instinctive effort to fill 
 up the deficiencies of the religion in the very 
 point where it stands in most marked contrast to 
 Christianity. We have a plain indication here 
 of the need felt for a Saviour, who is more than 
 a prophet and who brings an atonement as well 
 as a revelation. 
 
 Christian influences may also be traced in the 
 sects that have arisen in Islam, some to disap- 
 pear, some to be absorbed in the body of ortho- 
 doxy, and others to maintain a separate exist- 
 ence. One of the earliest of these is the Murjiite 
 heresy, which questioned the eternal punishment 
 of the wicked and another is that of the Qada- 
 rites, who emphasized the freedom of the human 
 
78 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 will. Both of these tendencies may easily have 
 come from the Greek or the heretical oriental 
 churches ; as also the belief in purgatory for 
 MusHms, which has become a dogma of Islam. 
 Reference has already been made to the Mutazi- 
 lites, (philosophical free thinkers), in connection 
 with the questions of the eternity of the Quran 
 and of the vision of God. The animating prin- 
 ciples of this sect were derived not from the 
 Christian writings but from those of Aristotle and 
 the Neoplatonists, which reached them through 
 Christian translators. Indeed the debt of the 
 Arab philosophy to the Christians is not 
 exaggerated by Bar Hebraeus when he says : 
 " There arose among them (/. e., the Arabs) 
 philosophers and mathematicians and physicians, 
 who excelled the ancients in the subtilty of 
 their understanding. They did not build, how- 
 ever, on new foundations but on Greek edifices, 
 and they perfected the great buildings of wisdom 
 with very ornamental phraseology and careful 
 investigations : hke us, from whom they re- 
 ceived the knowledge by translators who were 
 all Syrians," ^ The two characteristics here men- 
 tioned were true of all the Arab philosophers : 
 
 1 Bar Hebrasus, Chron. Syr., 98. 
 
DEVEL0P3IENT OF MUSLBI THEOLOGY 79 
 
 they were indebted to Greek thought, and they 
 knew the Greek writing only through Christian 
 translators. A passing trace of the spread of 
 Christian ideas is found in a notice by Bar He- 
 braeus of a sect in the time of Mamun in the 
 mountains north of Mosul headed by a man who 
 claimed to be the Mahdi and also Christ and the 
 Holy Spirit.^ There may have been others 
 under like influence whose names have been lost 
 to history. 
 
 Every religion has its mystics and in Islam 
 from the earliest times there have been mystics. 
 There were such among the Arabs who had a 
 share in the origins of Islam. They are found in 
 Muhammadan history in the beginning of the 
 second century of their era, and ever since they 
 have been numerous in the Muhammadan world. 
 Various influences have entered into their his- 
 tory ; the Neoplatonism just mentioned. Bud- 
 dhistic ideas from India, native Persian specula- 
 tions, Manicheistic teachings, and Christianity 
 also. The home of Sufiism, as this wing of 
 Islam has been called, is Persia. Many of its 
 leaders have been dervishes. These two facts, 
 Persian influence and the Jewish orders, will ex- 
 ^ Bar Hebrseus, Chron, Syr., 144. 
 
80 ISLABI AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 plain the meeting of so many diverse influences. 
 Persia is between the nearer and the farther East, 
 and before the Turkish conquests the area under 
 Persian influence was larger than now both to 
 the east and to the west. There were also large 
 bodies of Christians then in what is now south- 
 ern and eastern Persia, the old centers of Iranian 
 population. Persia has thus been open to di- 
 verse influences and the Persian mind is recep- 
 tive. Dervishes are wanderers. It is a com- 
 mon thing to-day to meet anywhere in the East 
 men of this class who have been all over the 
 Muslim world. Religion in the very broadest 
 sense is their business in life. 
 
 We are so in the habit of regarding Islam as a 
 monotonous and unchanging system that it is well 
 to emphasize the part played in it by the Persian 
 mind, which is speculative, creative, and acute, 
 and also the part played by an ever changing 
 indefinable movement, such as Sufiism. And if 
 it is not in good repute among the most ortho- 
 dox, it must be borne in mind that the persecu- 
 tion of Sufis ceased ages ago. In its beginnings 
 Sufiism was ascetic, and it still has the two 
 apparently contradictory phases that marked 
 Gnosticism, asceticism and license. In its ascetic 
 
DEVEL0P3IENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 81 
 
 phase, which gave rise to the name Sufi (woolen, 
 from the wool garment worn), we may connect 
 it with the Euchites, or in Syriac Msalyani, that is, 
 " Those who pray." These were devotees of both 
 sexes, who lived by begging and who by the repeti- 
 tion of prayers and by dancing brought themselves 
 into trances. The earliest Sufi mentioned was a 
 woman, Rabia, who died a. h. 135, and in all the 
 history of Sufiism women as well as men have 
 had a place. The vagrant lives of the early 
 Sufis brought down on them the reproofs of the 
 orthodox ; still the mendicant dervish with his 
 cocoanut bowl has become a ubiquitous and in- 
 fluential character among Muhammadans. The 
 Sufis still have their night vigils, dhikrs, in which 
 certain formulas are repeated till all sensation 
 melts away in ecstasy. Even the dancing der- 
 vishes, who amuse the sightseer in Constantinople, 
 have their predecessors among the Euchites. 
 The Euchites were found in Syria and in Meso- 
 potamia, where both Nestorians and Jacobites 
 had trouble with them at the close of the sixth 
 century of the Christian era. Under the name 
 of Marcianites they were perhaps found as far 
 east as Khurasan. They were Christian der- 
 vishes. The early literature of Sufiism shows that 
 
82 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the words of the Sermon on the Mount are 
 echoed in it, as is strikingly illustrated in the fol- 
 lowing sayings, the first of which is traditionally 
 ascribed to Muhammad and the second to Umar : 
 " Be trustful in God in truth and ye shall be fed, 
 as the birds are fed, who wake hungry in the 
 morning and by evening are satisfied." " In the 
 morning think not of the evening and in the 
 evening think not of the morrow, for you know 
 not your name to-morrow." ^ 
 
 Enough has been said to show that the long, 
 and in some respects not unfriendly, contact of 
 the faiths has left its impress on Islam, and this 
 in various ways : on the development of the 
 theology which best represents the true spirit of 
 Islam ; on the popular cult, full of magic and 
 superstition, with relics of older heathenism ; on 
 the accretions to the Islamic system, partly ac- 
 cepted in the orthodox theology and partly be- 
 longing to the heretical sects. The mutual 
 influence has been greatest in what has been 
 
 ' On Sufiism see Hughes' Dictionary, s. v. Sufi ; Sell, Faith 
 of Islam, I07ff. ; Essays on Islam, The Mystics of Islam ; On 
 the Euchites, see Diet, of Christ. Biog.; Bar Hebrasus, Chron. 
 iiV., i. 574 ; ii. 481, 573 ; Thomas of AlargajW&.'x.jCh. ttj. On 
 the relation of Sufis to Euchites, see Goldziher, Zeit. filr Kunde 
 des Morg., XIII, 39, 45f. A Euchite leader was Marcus, see 
 Diet. Chr. Biog. Marcians. 
 
DEVEL0P3IENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 83 
 
 called " religion of the second rank," the faith 
 and practice of the people, often in contradiction 
 to the official dogmas. As soothsayer and 
 writer of charms the priest or muUa is received 
 by those who would flee his doctrinal instruction. 
 In some respects Islam has approached Chris- 
 tianity. Yet in spirit, as we shall see later on, 
 the faiths have become more antagonistic with 
 the passage of the centuries ; and, in spite of all 
 that can be said, the influence, while marked, has 
 been limited. Christ is no more to the Muslim 
 theologian than he was to the Prophet. The 
 Bible is a half-closed book to one as to the other. 
 In the realm of the organization of the body of 
 believers and their worship the religions have 
 been entirely separated. The ethical standard 
 of Islam does not show Christian influence. 
 The conception of God remains substantially 
 what it was to Muhammad, analyzed and 
 minutely described, but unchanged in essence. 
 And while Christianity has left a permanent im- 
 press on Islam, the latter has influenced the 
 former far less. It is difficult to find traces of 
 such influence, unless it be in connection with 
 the iconoclastic controversy, in which the de- 
 fenders of images accused their opponents with 
 
84 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 being prompted by the Saracens.^ If so, the 
 influence was finally ineffectual. 
 
 There is much to admire in the way in which 
 the oriental Christians have never wavered in 
 the confession of Christ, the Son of God, and in 
 their faith in the Trinity. Perhaps we can ad- 
 mire almost more the maintenance of certain 
 principles of Christian morality, especially the 
 marriage law. To this they owe very largely 
 their higher average prosperity than the Muslims 
 of the same class of society. But in part their 
 firmness has been due to inertia and lifelessness, 
 and in part to national and partisan zeal. The 
 Nestorian was as set against the Jacobite doctrine 
 as against Muhammadanism. One author writes 
 a polemic that deals in turn with the Jews, 
 the Muhammadans, the Nestorians, and the 
 Jacobites ; while another writes against the 
 Muhammadans, Jews, Jacobites and Melchites.^ 
 The oriental Christians might have learned 
 lessons from the Muhammadans in zeal and in 
 freedom of worship and organization, but they 
 learned nothing. In general, the mutual in- 
 
 1 Harnack, History of Dogma, iv. 320 ; Lozer, Church and 
 Eastern Empire, 104. 
 
 "Assemani, Bib. Orient., iii. i, 303, 609. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY' 85 
 
 fluence of the faiths has been such as to give 
 httle encouragement to those who dream of a 
 fusion of rehgions. 
 
 It will perhaps be said that the reason Islam 
 and Christianity have not had more influence on 
 each other is that they are incompatible and that 
 the only possible relation between them is one 
 of opposition. There is truth in this. For one 
 thing Islam is submission to Muhammad and 
 Christianity is the acceptance of Christ as 
 supreme. However much this personal element 
 in religion is obscured, it cannot be eliminated. 
 Furthermore, the Quran contains a representa- 
 tion of Christ, which, as we have already seen, is 
 contradictory to the Christian history. This is 
 illustrated by an anecdote in the Ecclesiastical 
 Chronicle of Bar Hebraeus. Amr ibn Sad, 
 famous or infamous in history as one of the 
 murderers of Hussein, asked the Jacobite 
 patriarch to translate for him the gospel into 
 Arabic, but in such a way that Jesus should be 
 called by no divine title and there should be no 
 mention of baptism or of the cross. " And the 
 blessed John replied, ' Far be it from me to sub- 
 tract one jot or one tittle from the gospel, even if 
 all the darts and spears of your camp pierce me.' 
 
86 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 And seeing his courage, the other said, ' Go 
 and write as you please.' " ^ Even the modern 
 apologist for Islam, in spite of his repudiation 
 of Muslim theology, feels it incumbent on him 
 to marshal what arguments he can to show 
 that Jesus escaped the cross.^ Muhammadans 
 at least in the present day are accustomed to 
 call Christians Cross-worshipers, and the Cross, 
 with its historical and doctrinal impHcations, 
 has always been a barrier between the re- 
 ligions. Yet much of the failure must be laid 
 at the door of eastern Christianity. Its theology 
 had ceased to live and grow, and had entered be- 
 fore Islam on the stage of dead scholasticism. 
 More might be said on this, as on another phase 
 that certainly had much influence in preventing 
 Christianity from affecting Islam more than it 
 did. This is the political status of Islam. 
 Islam was not merely the state religion, but it 
 was the state. Christianity at best was a toler- 
 ated faith and they could not meet on equal 
 terms. The apology of Al Kindi is a bold 
 polemic against Muhammad, and speaks much 
 for the tolerance of Mamun and his court, but it 
 
 ' Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron., i. 275. 
 " Syed Ameer Ali, Spirit of Islam, 57. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 87 
 
 required a special guarantee from the Khalifa 
 and the invitation of a powerful courtier to make 
 it possible. 
 
 Islam must within the next few generations 
 meet a new crisis in its history. It is coming 
 into close contact with modern thought and civ- 
 ilization. It must meet these changed condi- 
 tions, if it is to hve, and the question arises 
 whether it can do this or not. History shows 
 that Islam is capable of great changes and of 
 flourishing under very varied conditions. It also 
 shows that it has received into its system from 
 the very beginning elements from outside, and it 
 is reasonable to suppose that this process may 
 go on. Two attempts have been made within 
 the last half of the nineteenth century to accom- 
 modate the religion to present conditions. These 
 are the Babi movement in Persia and that of the 
 so-called Mutazilites of India. Both have claimed 
 a hearing and have sought to gain converts in 
 Christian lands. The method followed is differ- 
 ent in each. Babism, while professing great 
 reverence for Muhammad and the Quran, substi- 
 tutes a new prophet and a new revelation. It 
 has a new and different system of theology and 
 a new code of morals. The liberal movement in 
 
88 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 India treats Muhammad and the Quran much as 
 the most advanced wing of Unitarians treats 
 Christ and the Bible. It practically repudiates 
 the past history of Islam, except to make a ver- 
 sion of Christian history to contrast with their 
 versions of Muhammadan history. The two 
 movements agree in being revolutionary. 
 
 However, the elements which have entered 
 Islam from outside in the past have not been 
 assimilated. The pilgrimage to Mecca with all 
 its rites is a useful bond of the Muhammadan 
 world, but it has no relation to Muslim theology. 
 So the intercession of Muhammad and the 
 saints is in contrast, and even in contradiction, 
 to the theory of forgiveness. This inability of 
 Islam to assimilate the elements received into it 
 has been made the reason for denying to it the 
 claim to be a universal religion, and the argu- 
 ment seems to be thoroughly valid.' In a sense 
 in this very fact lies much of its strength, its im- 
 mobility in essence along with a large toleration 
 of divergent or even contradictory doctrine. 
 But this is not progress. The religion itself is 
 not thus gaining power to hold and inspire high 
 
 • Natural Religions and Universal Religions^ Kuenen, 
 Hibbert Lectures, 1882; Lect. i. 
 
DEVEL0P3IENT OF MUSLIM THEOLOGY 89 
 
 and noble minds. For us as Christians, if we 
 believe that Islam is inevitably doomed by the 
 progress of mankind, the obligation is all the 
 greater to substitute for the imperfect that which 
 is perfect, and for the transitory the permanent. 
 At its highest and best Islam is the service of 
 God, but Christianity is Sonship. " The bond- 
 servant abideth not in the house forever : The 
 Son abideth forever." 
 
Third Lecture 
 
 THE RELATION OF MUHAMMADAN 
 
 GOVERNMENT TO THE ORIENTAL 
 
 CHURCHES 
 
General outline and periods of the history, A. D., 600-1500. 
 
 Toleration, in the strict sense, the characteristic of the policy of 
 Islam to other religions. The origin of the policy. Policies of 
 the eastern Empire and of Persia. Practice of Muhammad. 
 The history of the policy. The constitution of Umar, Arabian 
 Christianity, the attitude of the Christians to the Arab conquest, 
 maintenance of the status quo, Christianity under the Khalifas, 
 conditions under the Mongols, fanatical reaction. The effect 
 on the churches. Spiritual effect of limiting activity, effect of 
 governmental influence in ecclesiastical affairs. Dangers of 
 toleration. Compromise a characteristic of Islam. 
 
Third Lecture 
 
 THE RELATION OF MUHAMMADAN 
 
 GOVERNMENT TO THE ORIENTAL 
 
 CHURCHES 
 
 Impossible though it be, it seems necessary to 
 attempt to compress into a paragraph the main 
 outUnes of the history of western Asia for nine 
 centuries, from the time of Muhammad till the 
 rise of the empire of the Osmanli Turks and of 
 the kingdom of the Persian Shahs. In the place 
 of the divided rule of the Romans and the Per- 
 sians the Arabs within ten years after the 
 Prophet's death had established the supremacy 
 of his successors, the Khalifas, over the whole of 
 the Persian empire and over a large portion of 
 the Asiatic and African dominions of the Roman 
 empire. This supremacy was for a generation in 
 the hands of the great elective Khalifas, and then 
 for a century in those of the line of the Umay- 
 yads with the capital at Damascus. For over 
 five hundred years the Abbasid Khalifas of 
 Baghdad maintained the succession, until the 
 93 
 
94 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 last one was murdered in a. d., 1258 (a, h., 656) 
 by Hulagu Khan, the Mongol conqueror of 
 Baghdad ; but long before that time the empire 
 had fallen to pieces and the suzerainty of the 
 Khalifa had become a mere shadow. This dis- 
 integration began with the loss of Spain at the 
 commencement on the Abbasid Hne (a. d. 750, 
 A. H. 132), and in the next century independent, 
 or semi-independent, dynasties established them- 
 selves in Syria, in Egypt, and in the eastern 
 provinces of Persia and Transoxiana. Another 
 hundred years saw the Khalifa stripped of all real 
 authority even in his own capital. Turkish in- 
 roads had already begun and for the next three 
 hundred years western Asia was divided by the 
 ever-shifting boundaries of Turkish, Kurdish, and 
 Arab dynasties and of the kingdoms of the Cru- 
 saders. Greatest among these rulers were Sala- 
 din and his successors and some of the Seljuk 
 Turks. All rose and fell by the fortunes of war. 
 In the thirteenth Christian, and the seventh 
 Muslim, century the Mongols under Jingis Khan 
 and his successors obliterated the existing dy- 
 nasties and threatened to overwhelm Islam in 
 the common ruin. In Persia for a time Hulagu 
 and his successors were the masters of a vast 
 
MUHAMMADAN OOVERmiENT 95 
 
 territory, but they failed to build a lasting do- 
 minion. Timur, or Tamerlane, at the beginning 
 of the fifteenth Christian, and the ninth Muslim, 
 century swept like a destructive cyclone over 
 western Asia, establishing " a reign of terror, 
 and not an empire." After a short time the Os- 
 manlis reestablished and extended their rule in 
 the West, and, in the East, Persia became an in- 
 dependent kingdom. A new era began, in com- 
 parison with that which preceded an era of peace, 
 but not of stability or prosperity. In this 
 framework of external events must be woven a 
 complex history of religious development and 
 expansion, of magnificence, manufactures, and 
 commerce, of war and famine. There were, 
 roughly speaking, three hundred years of peace, 
 broken indeed by the wars of the Emperors and 
 the Khalifas and by bloody rebellions, but still 
 marked by great luxury and wealth and by the 
 culture of the arts and sciences ; and then six 
 hundred years of war and anarchy, interspersed 
 with the armed peace of military rulers and the 
 prosperity of short-lived courts. The actors in 
 the long and varied drama are nations rather 
 than men. First from the desert peninsula of 
 Arabia issued forth the warriors of Islam ; then for 
 
96 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 generations the walls and armies of Constantinople 
 -kept back from Europe the march of conquest; 
 again the mysterious tide of national migration 
 for half a millennium brought horde after horde 
 of savage Turks and Mongols from the heart of 
 Asia, and fire and blood reigned from the banks 
 of the Oxus to the shores of the Mediterranean, 
 while the mailed knights of the Crusades added 
 to the tale of carnage and of woe. The govern- 
 ment was Muslim for the most part. Asia 
 Minor, until the rise of the Seljuks and the 
 Osmanlis, was in large part subject to Constanti- 
 nople ; the unstable kingdoms of the Crusaders 
 interrupted Muslim rule in Syria for a time ; the 
 Armenians and Georgians in their mountainous 
 regions maintained a precarious independence ; 
 and the Mongols were at first pagans. Other- 
 wise Muslim supremacy was complete. Islam 
 was able to develop its policy toward other 
 faiths freely and with little fear of interference 
 from without. It was formulated in the golden 
 age of Islam, under the Khalifas who united the 
 faithful under one head. 
 
 Toleration is the distinguishing mark of the 
 policy of the Arabs toward Christianity : tolera- 
 tion in the strict sense of permitting other reli- 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 97 
 
 gions besides the dominant one to practice their 
 rites, but not toleration in the broader sense of 
 reHgious equaHty. Along with the Christians, 
 the Jews are also tolerated, as being possessors 
 of a revelation from God. There are three 
 possible policies with reference to religion, perse- 
 cution, toleration, and freedom. In the first 
 the attempt is made to compel all to accept 
 the dominant faith. This was the policy of 
 Islam with reference to Arabia and to idolaters 
 everywhere. History is full of examples of the 
 failure of compulsion and of the acceptance of 
 toleration in its stead. Protestantism has been 
 tolerated in Roman Catholic countries and Ro- 
 man Catholicism in Protestant countries. Per- 
 haps no nation has enforced it more consistently 
 and rigorously than Russia in our own times. 
 Islam accepted it from the beginning with refer- 
 ence to Christianity and Judaism, and it can claim 
 the credit due to the acceptance of toleration 
 rather than persecution and to the incorporation 
 of the principle in the foundations of the faith 
 and in the fundamental code of the State, which 
 is also the church. Practice has often been 
 more lenient than theory. The early Khalifas 
 to some extent destroyed the temples of the fire- 
 
98 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 worshipers in Persia, but the poUcy was not 
 rigorously carried out and Zoroastrianism became 
 practically a tolerated faith. The Manicheans 
 were also tolerated. In Mesopotamia Harran 
 was a center for idolaters, who were tolerated by 
 the government and from whom physicians rose 
 who rivaled the Christian physicians of Bagh- 
 dad.i 
 
 Probably no application of the principle of tol- 
 eration is more difficult than toleration of dissent- 
 ing forms of the prevailing cult. It has been so 
 in Islam. The wars of the Kharajite dissenters 
 were long and bloody, and the Khalifas most tol- 
 erant to Christians persecuted " heretics." Even 
 in this, however, toleration has become the prac- 
 tice of Islam. The great Shi'ite shrine at Kar- 
 bala is on Sunnite territory, while the only Shi'ite 
 monarch, the Shah of Persia, counts thousands of 
 Sunnites among his subjects. The Druzes and 
 Nusairiyeh of Syria, the Yezidees of Mesopo- 
 tamia, and the Ali Illahis and Babis of Persia are 
 all tolerated subjects of Muslim states. Tolera- 
 tion is capable of varying degrees of strictness 
 in application and is affected by the character of 
 
 • Muir, Caliphate, 363 ; Miiller, Isla/n im Morgen tmd Abend- 
 land, ii. 7; Von Kremer, Ciilturgeschichte, ii. 169-17 1. 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 99 
 
 the rulers. At best toleration is a compromise 
 and is dependent on the payment of a price. 
 That price is often outward and partial con- 
 formity to the faith of the state. What the 
 price has been in the case of Christianity we 
 shall see. The third policy, religious freedom 
 and equality, is based on a separation of state 
 and church utterly foreign to the constitution of 
 Islam. 
 
 The origins of this policy of toleration are to be 
 found in the practice of Muhammad himself and in 
 the conditions existing at the time of the rise of 
 Islam. Muhammad was not a persecutor, if by that 
 is meant one who feels it his duty to force upon 
 others at the point of the sword the acceptance of 
 certain beliefs. As long as he was at Mecca, he and 
 his followers were in the minority and were perse- 
 cuted. Hence the development of the policy of 
 the Prophet toward other faiths belongs to the 
 later period, when he was in Medina, and was 
 the head of a city that grew into a state and 
 finally embraced the whole of Arabia. From 
 the earlier part of his career he brought a friend- 
 liness to Jews and Christians, the claim that his 
 religion was the fulfillment of theirs, and the ac- 
 knowledgment of the divine origin of their 
 
100 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 revelations. Medina was a place where he was 
 brought into contact with a large and established 
 body of the adherents of another religion, for 
 the earlier inhabitants were Jews, and the Arabs 
 who accepted Islam were later immigrants. He 
 was thus forced at the very beginning of his 
 political career to establish some sort of a basis 
 of political relationship with them. The original 
 enactments are still extant. In them Muham- 
 mad recognizes the status already existing 
 between the Jews, and Arabs of Medina, includ- 
 ing the toleration of the Jewish religion, the 
 civil rights of both, their alliance in war, and the 
 common obligation to meet its burdens ; but 
 reserving the supreme authority to himself. The 
 later history is not such as was contemplated. It 
 is one of assassination, war, confiscation, exile, 
 captivity, and massacre. We have the story 
 from Muslim sources only and they throw all the 
 blame on the Jews ; but the verdict of history is 
 not likely to exonerate the Prophet from a share 
 in the infraction of his ordinances. The fact is 
 plain on any version of the history that Muham- 
 mad felt it necessary in establishing his power to 
 treat with the utmost severity, not to say bar- 
 barity, the Jews of Medina and adjoining places. 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNBIENT lOl 
 
 His own spirit may be inferred from the language 
 of the Quran : — 
 
 Verily the worst of beasts in God's 
 eyes are those who misbelieve and will 
 not believe ; with whom if thou dost 
 make a league, they break their league 
 each time, for they fear not God ; but 
 shouldst thou ever catch them in war, 
 then make those who come after them 
 run by their example; haply they may 
 remember then. And shouldst thou 
 ever fear from any people treachery, 
 then throw it back to them in like man- 
 ner ; verily God loves not the treach- 
 erous.^ 
 
 These attacks were not for the purpose of 
 compelling the Jews to accept Islam and the let- 
 ter at least of the famous dictum delivered at an 
 earlier time, " There is no compulsion in religion," 
 was kept ; but then as always the acceptance of 
 Islam brought relief.^ 
 
 The conditions that determined the relation of 
 
 1 Sura, viii. 57-60. 
 
 2 Sura, ii. 257. Wellliausen, Skizzen unci Vorarbeiten , iv. ; 
 Muhammeds Gemeinde orduring von Medina. Arnold in tlie 
 Freachitjg of Islam passes over the subject. It is difficult to 
 see how his view of Muhammad's character is reconcilable 
 with the treatment of the Jews. Syed Ameer Ali {^Spirit of 
 Islam) makes the most he can of the perfidies of the Jews and 
 the political necessities of Muhammad. 
 
102 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Muhammad to the Christians were different from 
 those in the case of the Jews of Medina. Ac- 
 cordingly the history is different. The Christian 
 Arabs were probably more numerous than the 
 Jewish Arabs, but they were much less denation- 
 alized. On many of them Christianity sat very 
 lightly. The centers of Christianity were at a 
 distance from Medina, the political capital of 
 Islam. Muhammad came in contact with them 
 when his power was established, and when his 
 ruling purpose was not to entrench himself firmly 
 and at all hazards in a certain locality, but to win 
 all Arabia to his faith. He doubtless felt that 
 the Jews of Medina were a political menace, but 
 that the Christians were not. It was necessary, 
 however, that they should be not only allies but 
 also subjects, and consequently the terms offered 
 them and the remaining Jews in Arabia were less 
 liberal than those contained in the original 
 enactments for the Medina Jews. His policy 
 comes out clearly in the accounts of the em- 
 bassies that he sent and received to and from 
 every part of Arabia and is illustrated in the fol- 
 lowing quotations from his letters. 
 
 And Muhammad wrote to the bishop 
 of the Banu '1 Harith, Banu Kab, and 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 103 
 
 to the bishops of Najran and to their 
 priests and monks : There shall be 
 guaranteed to you the protection of 
 God and his apostles for the posses- 
 sion of your churches and your wor- 
 ship and your monasteries, and no 
 bishop or priest or monk shall be mo- 
 lested ... so long as you remain 
 true and fulfill your obligations. 
 
 And Muhammad wrote to Mar 
 Yuhanna ibn Ruba and to the chiefs of 
 the people of Ayla : Peace to you. I 
 commend you to God besides whom 
 there is no God. I would not war 
 against you without first writing to you. 
 Either accept Islam or pay the poll-tax. 
 And hearken to God and to his Apostle 
 and to these envoys. ... If you 
 turn my envoys back and are not 
 friendly to them, then will I accept no 
 reparation from you, but I will war 
 against you and will take the children 
 captive and will slay the aged. . . . 
 If you will hearken to my envoys, then 
 shall you be under God's protection and 
 Muhammad's and that of his allies. 
 
 The following to a Jewish tribe brings out a 
 little more baldly than most the tribute. 
 
 In the name of the gracious and 
 merciful God. This is a letter of Mu- 
 hammad, the Apostle of God, to the 
 Banu Uraid. Levy of the Apostle of 
 God : ten loads of flour, ten loads of 
 
104 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 barley at every harvest, fifty loads of 
 dates. They must be paid every year 
 at its time in full measure and in no- 
 wise held back. 
 
 In another case it is agreed that in the tribe 
 of Taghlib the adults should remain Christian 
 but the children should not be baptized.^ To 
 the heathen Arabs the alternatives offered were 
 two, the sword of Islam, and the threat of war 
 was no empty boast. Muhammad was in many 
 things an opportunist ready to compromise, if 
 that seemed to be the wisest way to accomplish 
 his ends. Religion and politics were so identi- 
 fied that he was necessarily controlled by consid- 
 erations that we would regard as political. The 
 policy that he bequeathed to his successors with 
 reference to other religions is clear. It was 
 toleration on the basis of paying tribute and 
 accepting the position of protected vassals. The 
 rights guaranteed are those of worship, not of 
 proselyting. Tradition says, and Muslims have 
 always believed, that on his deathbed Mu- 
 hammad enunciated another principle modify- 
 ing those already stated. Arabia should be for 
 
 * Wellhausen, S/cizzen, iv ; Miihaimnads Schreiben und die 
 Gesendschaften an Ihn, xiv. (p. lo6), xlv. (p. I20), xlvii. 
 (p. 121), c. (p. 156). 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 105 
 
 Muslims only, a land sacred to the true faith. 
 It may well be that as he felt that Medina must 
 be all MusHm in order to be a firm basis from 
 which to win Arabia, so Arabia must be unified 
 in order to win the earth. 
 
 How far Muhammad was acquainted with the 
 practice of other countries we do not know. He 
 may well have heard the complaints of Christian 
 refugees from the oppressive laws of the empire 
 and also the stories of the martyrs under the 
 Persian kings. In Arabia itself, the Arabs were 
 not persecutors of other faiths, due perhaps in 
 part to the absence of any strong religious or- 
 ganization. Jews and Christians in south Arabia 
 had set an example of intolerance by persecut- 
 ing one another. Christianity in that age was 
 intolerant, and the Nestorians and Jacobites 
 knew well the severity of the laws of Justinian 
 and other emperors against all but " orthodox " 
 Christians, the special definition of " orthodoxy " 
 depending on the personal belief of the emperor 
 as well as the creeds of the church. Persecution 
 was not necessarily a sign of religious bigotry. 
 It was as much the policy of the statesman as of 
 the prelate. Heraclius after his victories over 
 the Persians had made the union of the divided 
 
106 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 forces of Christendom in the East the main ob- 
 ject of his endeavors, not on the basis of equal 
 liberty, but by establishing a new and artificial 
 doctrinal standard. He failed and the Nestor- 
 ians and Monophysites welcomed the Arab con- 
 querors.^ In Persia the intolerant zeal of the 
 first Sassanians had cooled, and especially since 
 the times of the great Anushirvan the Christians, 
 particularly the Nestorians and the Jacobites, 
 enjoyed considerable freedom. Proselyting from 
 the religion of the state was bitterly opposed by 
 the Magian priests. From the time of the Parthian 
 kings the very numerous and powerful Jewish 
 community in Babylonia had been tolerated and 
 its community rights recognized, while a poll 
 tax was paid by them and such a tax was col- 
 lected by some, at least, of the Sassanian mon- 
 archs of the Christians also.^ It is possible that 
 we have here the origin of Muhammad's policy 
 of tribute, as we have assuredly the precedent 
 followed by his successors. 
 
 When Islam under Umar extended beyond 
 
 ' Finlay, //is/, of Greece Under Foreign Dominadon, i. 332, 
 382f., 394f., 421 ff.; Lozer, Church and Easter7i Empire, 36, 
 77ff. 
 
 5 Rawlinson, Seventh Oriental /Monarchy, ii,, ch. iv. ; Graetz 
 Hist, of Jews, ii., ch. xix. ; iii., ch. i. 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 107 
 
 Arabia into regions whose inhabitants were of a 
 different faith, a reorganization of the state weis 
 inevitable and the terms of this new order are 
 found in what is known in tradition as the 
 Constitution of Umar. This provided that the 
 Arabs, who had issued from Arabia, should be a 
 caste of warriors, forbidden to own land and 
 supported from the public treasury. The non- 
 Muslim inhabitants were left in possession of the 
 land, but were required to pay a poll tax while 
 a land tax was levied on the land. In case they 
 accepted Islam, they passed over into the class 
 of Muslims supported from the treasury, and the 
 land they had held was distributed among the 
 non-Muslims, the tax going with it. Within 
 Arabia none but Muslims were permitted to 
 live. In addition to the above fundamental 
 principles, tradition assigns to Umar other regu- 
 lations as to dress, use of horses, church build- 
 ings, etc., which are likely later in origin. This 
 code was too communistic to last long without 
 great modification, but the principle of toleration 
 accompanied by civil disabilities and financial 
 burdens persisted.^ 
 
 An immediate result of the policy of Umar 
 
 ' See Appendix, Constitution of Umar. 
 
108 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 was the practical extinction of Christianity in 
 Arabia. The process however, was gradual. 
 The force of national enthusiasm and the attrac- 
 tion of the rich spoils of conquest carried most of 
 the Christians over to Islam. Some preferred to 
 pay the poll tax and retain their faith. They 
 were compelled to emigrate. Thus the Chris- 
 tians of Najran, in spite of the promise of Mu- 
 hammad that they should be undisturbed, had to 
 leave Arabia and part settled in Syria and part 
 near Kufa.^ The Banu Taghlib held by the 
 faith, and Bar Hebraeus tells of two of their chief- 
 tains who later suffered martyrdom for it.^ The 
 Christian apologist in the time of Mamun boasts 
 of his pure Arab ancestry of the royal tribe of 
 Kindi. Jacobite and Nestorian bishops of the 
 Arabs are mentioned for several centuries, one 
 being bishop even of Sana and Yaman and 
 others of the border regions.^ Badawin Chris- 
 
 • Muir, Calif hate, 155; Arnold, Preaching of Islam, 44f. 
 
 'Bar Hebraeus, Chr. Syr., 112, 115. The persecutors were 
 Abd al Malik and Walid. Muir, Cal., 150. This tribe, how- 
 ever, lived in Mesopotamia rather than Arabia. Muir, Cal., 
 24, 62. 
 
 5 Bar Hebrieus, Ec. Chron., i. 303, George Bishop of Arabs 
 (686-724) but probably Syrian Christians in Mesopotamia; iii. 
 123, in list of dioceses under Maphriana, both Arabia and the 
 Clui.itian Arabs; iii. 193, bishop of Bahrein, c. A. D. 840; 
 
MUHABIMADAN GOVERNMENT 109 
 
 tians arc still to be found in Hauran. As 
 Arabic became the language of the Christians 
 generally in Syria and in the valleys of the 
 Euphrates and the Tigris, the remnants of Arab 
 Christianity would become indistinguishable 
 from the Christians of other races. 
 
 To the Christians who lived in the regions , 
 conquered by the Arabs the change of rulers 
 was a welcome one. This fact is remarked by 
 all the historians of the period. Finlay, the 
 great historian of the Byzantine Empire, calls 
 special attention to the fact that the first easy 
 conquests of the Arabs extended only over the 
 provinces that were most disaffected on account 
 of the religious policy of the emperors. Syria, 
 Egypt, and Mesopotamia were inhabited mainly 
 by " heretics," and they yielded. Asia Minor ' 
 was " orthodox " and it stoutly resisted.^ In the 
 same way the Christians in Persia treasured the 
 memory of the martyrs at the hands of the earlier 
 kings, and resented the interference of the later 
 kings in the affairs of the church. Anushirvan 
 had repeatedly exiled from the capital the Nes- 
 
 Thomas of Marga, ii. 448, Nestoiian bishops of Sana and 
 Yaman, c. A. D. 800. 
 
 ' Finlay, vol. i., ch. v., sect. ii. 
 
no ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 torian patriarch and had killed a Jacobite Maph- 
 irana, while Parviz had long prevented the 
 election of a patriarch.^ Christianity and Ma- 
 gianism had long been foes and the former might 
 well rejoice in the other's discomfiture by a new 
 monotheistic faith. 
 
 Add to all these the fact that Mesopotamia had 
 for generations been the battle field of the two 
 great empires and that the great Christian cities, 
 such as Edessa, Amid, and Nisibis, had passed 
 through siege after siege, and it is no wonder 
 that the Christians welcomed the advent of Islam. 
 The historian of the Jews tells us that they, too, 
 welcomed the release from Roman and Persian 
 rule.^ The Nestorian patriarch just after the 
 Arab conquest is very explicit in his testimony 
 as to the toleration practiced by the Arabs. He 
 says, writing to the Christians of Persia, " The 
 Arabs, to whom God has given the authority of 
 the world at this time, are with us, as you know, 
 and are not only not opposed to Christianity, but 
 they praise our faith and honor the priests and 
 saints of Our Lord and aid the churches and mon- 
 
 1 Thomas of Marga, i. Ixxiv-lxxvi, ii. 208 ; Bar Hebrgeus, 
 Ec. Chron., iii. 95-101. 
 
 * Graetz, Hist, of the Jews, iii., ch. iv. 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 111 
 
 asterics." He adds, however, that at Merv this tol- 
 eration was to be secured by the loss of half their 
 worldly goods. ^ Thomas of Marga in his Mon- 
 astic Chrojiicle makes no reference whatever to 
 the conquest, showing how retired was the life 
 of the monastery of Beth Abhe, not a hundred 
 miles from Mosul and also how little the outly- 
 ing districts were affected by it. Bar Hebraeus, 
 though he wrote much later, no doubt reflects 
 the sentiments of earlier writers when he con- 
 trasts the Arab with the Roman rule, to the dis- 
 advantage of the latter. His words are as fol- 
 lows : " On this account [i. c.^ the persecutions of 
 Heraclius) the God of vengeance by means of 
 the Ishmaelites delivered us from the hands of 
 the Romans. However, our churches {i. e., 
 Jacobite churches seized by the emperor) were 
 not returned to us, because under Arab domina- 
 tion each sect retained whatever was found in its 
 possession. Nevertheless we were better off for 
 being freed from the cruelty of the Romans and 
 from their bitter hatred to us." - One cannot but 
 bewail the shortsightedness of the Christians and 
 execrate the cruel folly of the emperors, but it is 
 
 1 Thomas of Marga, ii. 156. Ass. B. O. Ill, i, I28ff. 
 
 2 Bar H., Ec. Chron, p. 474, (ed. Abbeloos and Lamy). 
 
112 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 also abundantly clear that the favorable verdict 
 on the first Arabs was not altogether undeserved. 
 As one reads of the barbarities of other conquer- 
 ors and the untold sufferings that have devastated 
 Asia, this feeling of admiration for the Arabs 
 and their great leaders is increased. 
 
 The conquest proved to be one of the greatest 
 and most permanent revolutions in history and 
 resulted in a reorganization of society, but many 
 of the changes were gradual. In many things 
 the status quo was maintained. In Syria gov- 
 ernmental positions were in the hands of the 
 Christians, of course, and the Umayyad 
 Khahfas wisely made use of their services. 
 When the fanatical Umar II attempted to re- 
 move them from public service it was to the 
 detriment of the state. Apparently at first the 
 accounts were kept in Greek, for Bar Hebraeus 
 says that Walid directed that Arabic should be 
 substituted for Greek ; or m Persian and Greek, 
 for Abd al Malik displaced the former language 
 by Arabic.^ The earliest coins of the Arabs 
 illustrate the conditions. One of Khalid, 
 Umar's great general, is inscribed in Greek, has 
 
 •Bar Hebi-ffius, Syr. Chron., 115; Muir, Caliphate, 353; 
 Miiller, Islam iin Alorgen und Abendland, i, 395. 
 
MUHA3IMADAN G0VERN3IENT 113 
 
 the portrait of the emperor, and is embelhshed 
 with crosses. Another of Musa, the conqueror 
 of Africa, bears the cross and Roman letters. 
 One of Muawiya has the Hkeness of the last 
 Khusru with the fire altar and priests, the in- 
 scription being partly in Persian and partly in 
 Arabic.^ Similarly the Christians in Sassanian 
 times had attained eminence in the court as 
 physicians, and under the Arabs they maintained 
 and increased their prestige in this regard. The 
 principle of recognizing the law and dignitaries 
 of the separate religious communities and so to a 
 certain extent their autonomy was a part of 
 Sassanian policy and went over into the Arab 
 period. The principle of toleration was too 
 firmly embedded in the law of Muhammad and 
 the policy of Umar to be dependent on the will 
 of the monarch. Details and minor regulations 
 were so dependent and conditions varied ac- 
 cordingly. The right of worship was guaranteed 
 and respected, the only limitation being the pro- 
 hibition of bells, of the loud sounding of the 
 naqusha} and of street processions. Even these 
 would apply mainly to the cities, and the Chris- 
 
 • See engravings in Miiller, i. 276, 349, 422. 
 
 3 Board of hard wood, usually walnut, struck with a mallet. 
 
114 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 tians living in country villages separated from 
 the Muhammadan population would be free. 
 The rights of church property were protected 
 and the monastic establishments were not dis- 
 turbed. The building of new churches was 
 under special restrictions. In the traditional 
 code of Umar it is forbidden, new churches were 
 torn down by the more fanatical Khalifas, and 
 the notices in the Syriac chronicles seem to indi- 
 cate that permission was regarded as something 
 extraordinary and worthy of remark.' Schools and 
 literature do not appear to have been interfered 
 with. However, the restriction of literature is a 
 result of modern conditions and does not belong 
 to the age of manuscripts.* 
 
 In general the right of the church to regulate 
 its own affairs was respected. In one important 
 respect it was allowed a wider application than 
 would be permitted in European civilization. 
 The Muhammadan, and in general the oriental, 
 
 'Arnold {Preaching- of Is la ?n, 58f.) thinks that this regula- 
 tion was not usually enforced ; but the evidence points rather 
 the other way, though it shows that exceptions were not in- 
 frequent. 
 
 2 See Thomas of Marga, Bk. iii., ch. ii. One monk es- 
 tablished sixty schools. In the single diocese of Marga, (near 
 Mosu) twenty-six names are given. 
 
MUHAMBIADAN G0VERN3IENT 115 
 
 conception of religion includes within its sphere 
 matters that in the West would be amenable to 
 the civil law. Thus all questions relating to the 
 marriage contract belong to religious and not to 
 civil jurisdiction, and the same is true largely of 
 inheritance, even as regards the Christian and 
 Jewish communities. Theoretically in Islam it- 
 self there is no distinction between civil and 
 religious law, and the codes of canon law of the 
 oriental churches are very broad in their scope. 
 One result of this state of things is to give to 
 the separate religious communities a corporate 
 character unrecognized in the West and to the 
 heads of those communities a political as well 
 as a religious importance. The Jewish Resh 
 Galutha, or Exiliarch, and the Nestorian 
 Patriarch had long been powerful political per- 
 sonages, and the latter was recognized by the 
 Khalifas as in some sense the head of the whole 
 Christian comnmnity and not simply of the 
 membership of his own church. Finally, in the 
 beginning of the tenth Christian century the 
 Nestorian patriarch secured from the Khalifa the 
 exclusive right over the Jacobite Maphriana and 
 Greek Metropolitan to reside in Baghdad, the 
 
116 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Others being permitted only to visit there for a 
 limited time.^ 
 
 Under these circumstances one can see that 
 the requirement that the patriarch should receive 
 investiture at the hands of the Khalifa was a 
 reasonable regulation, prompted rather by the 
 necessities of effective civil administration than 
 by any desire to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 It is possible that Bar Hebraeus is right in the 
 statement that it was not until a. d. 987 (a. h. 
 377) that it was a fixed regulation for the patri- 
 archs to obtain from the Khalifa firmans 
 recognizing their election, but in principle the 
 practice was much older.^ In the time of 
 Marwan (a. d. 683) the Jacobite patriarch ob- 
 tained a diploma from the Khalifa, and from 
 very early times, in both the Nestorian and the 
 Jacobite churches, the voice of the Khalifa was 
 decisive in cases of disputed succession.^ Bar 
 HebrsEus tells of a case in which the Khalifa 
 Mamun extended the limits of toleration beyond 
 what seemed desirable to the Christians them- 
 selves. A quarrel among the Jews as to the 
 
 1 Bar Hebrjeus, Ec. C/iron., iii. 237f. The decision was re- 
 affirmed A. D. 1003, lb. 27 iff. 
 
 ^ Bar HebrKus, Ec. Chron., iii. 255. 
 
 3 See Appendix, The Khalifas and the Patriarchs. 
 
MUHA3I3IADAN G0VERN3IENT 117 
 
 Resh Galutha had occasioned an edict that any 
 ten persons, Jews, Christians, or Magians, might 
 associate themselves together and choose a head. 
 Soon after, the Jacobite bishop of Baghdad was 
 subjected to discipHne by his patriarch, but sup- 
 ported by part of his flock he refused to submit. 
 The case went before the KhaHfa and the patri- 
 arch himself came to Baghdad to support his 
 right to exercise discipline and to protest against 
 the edict as being subversive of the authority of 
 the church. After some discussion the Khalifa ac- 
 cepted the patriarch's view of the case, directed that 
 his discipline be enforced, and revoked the edict.' 
 Under these circumstances, the Christians 
 shared in the general fortune of the country, 
 good and bad, perhaps having more than their 
 proportionate share of the wealth, on account of 
 their higher culture and the superiority of Chris- 
 tianity in safeguarding the family and in spite 
 of the heavier burdens of taxation that they bore 
 and their lower position before the law. At any 
 rate there were wealthy men among them and 
 the church in its corporate capacity was possessed 
 of wealth. A physician in the court of Harun ar 
 Rashid is said to have had a professional income 
 
 • Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chrott., iii. 255. 
 
118 ISLAM AND TEE ORIENTAL CHUBCHE8 
 
 annually of 280,000 dirhams, equal to ;^35,000, 
 and an income from his property of 800,000 dir- 
 hams, or ^100,000. A contemporary describes 
 a visit to him and tells how he found him on a 
 hot summer day in a finely carpeted and orna- 
 mented room, warmly dressed in the most costly 
 stuffs and how his wonder at the unseasonable- 
 ness of his apparel was dissipated when he sat 
 down and found himself in a cold draft from a 
 hidden room filled with ice. Another time in 
 the winter he found him dressed in cool summer 
 clothes seated in a green house, like a garden 
 in extent.^ The goldsmiths, jewelers, money- 
 changers, and bankers were almost invariably 
 Christians and Jews.^ In the country districts 
 there were Christians among the wealthy land- 
 lord class, the Persian diJikans and sJiahrigans, 
 powerful before the advent of Islam and also af- 
 terwards. One of this class is said to have given 
 his portion in the feudal ownership of villages 
 to the monastery of Beth Ahbe.^ 
 
 I Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte,\\. lygff. He estimates the 
 dirham as equal to a franc. Budge [Thomas of Marga^ ii. 
 403) gives the value at sixpence, and this lower value has been 
 followed. 
 
 ' Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte, ii. l85f. 
 
 3 Thomas of Marga, ii. i8o, 256, 282, 309ff., 330ff., and fre- 
 quently. 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 119 
 
 A glimpse of landed property belonging to the 
 church is the mention of the act of the Khalifa 
 in returning to the Nestorian patriarch the vil- 
 lages belonging to the see that had been taken 
 possession of by the vizier. Similarly in later 
 Mongol times there were villages near Maragha 
 that belonged to the patriarchate.^ A melan- 
 choly exhibition of the wealth of the church and 
 the large income of the ecclesiastics is found in 
 the immense sums paid as bribes to the Muslim 
 authorities for aid in securing the election of the 
 patriarchate. In a. d. 961 (a. h. 350) a certain 
 Nestorian physician, Pithion by name, is said to 
 have offered the vizier 300,000 dirhams {$Z7r 
 500) if he would secure the patriarchate for him. 
 The bishops were unwilling to have him as patri- 
 arch and finally effected the enthronement of an- 
 other elected by themselves by paying 1 30,000 
 dirhams (^16,250). This sum was paid by selling 
 the church plate in order not to reveal the treas- 
 ure left by the defunct patriarch, said to amount 
 to 70,000 dinars in gold and 600,000 dirhams in 
 sih^er (^250,000). Still more incredible is the 
 amount, 45,000 gold dinars (;^i 12,500), said to 
 have been promised the Khalifa just before the 
 
 •Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron., ii. 215 ; Mar Jabalaha, 113. 
 
120 ISLAM AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 advent of the Mongols (a. d. 1256) in the course 
 of a prolonged rivalry over the Nestorian patri- 
 archal succession. Of the patriarch Mari (a. d. 
 987, A. H. '^'jy) Bar Hebrseus says that •' when he 
 first occupied the patriarchal chair he found in 
 the treasury not the value of a single dirham, but 
 he amassed an abundance and he bought for the 
 see large properties, villages, etc., and built fine 
 buildings onto the church and the residence of 
 the patriarch." Other patriarchs are said to have 
 left large amounts of wealth. ^ 
 
 It must be remembered that the wealth of 
 Asia flowed into Baghdad for generations, that 
 the court was one of the most magnificent and 
 lavish in history, and that the inhabitants of the 
 city would all share to some extent in the gen- 
 eral prosperity ; but with all allowance it is more 
 than likely that the Christians were more prosper- 
 ous than most of the subjects of the Khalifa. Two 
 classes were particularly prominent, the physi- 
 cians and the officials of lawyers. Throughout 
 the whole history from pre-Islamic times till the 
 times of the Mongols we read of the Christian 
 court physicians, men of great wealth and influ- 
 
 > Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte, ii. 192 ; Bar Hebr^us, Ec. 
 CAron., iii. 249f,, 423f., 255f. 
 
MUnAM3IADAN GOVERNMENT 121 
 
 ence ; and besides those whose names are pre- 
 served because of their special relation to the 
 Khalifas or their services to learning, there must 
 have been a multitude of others who were suc- 
 cessful in a less conspicuous way. Reference 
 has been made to the employment of Christians 
 in the financial and clerical departments of gov- 
 ernment employ. They were more rarely em- 
 ployed in administrative positions and sometimes 
 as envoys to Christian powers. 
 
 In spite of so much that can justly be said to 
 illustrate the degree of prosperity enjoyed by 
 the Christians under Arab rule, there was no 
 such thing as equality, either in religious or in 
 civil affairs. To abandon Islam for Christianity 
 was treason and punishable as such : to abandon 
 Christianity for Islam brought privilege and par- 
 don for past offenses. In civil affairs the 
 Christians were obliged to pay a special tax 
 and were subjected to other vexatious dis- 
 abilities. The acceptance of Islam by any 
 one resulted in the disinheriting of all non- 
 Muslim heirs. It is no valid defense to say that 
 such regulations were due not to " religious 
 exclusiveness " but to " political necessity," for 
 
122 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 religion and politics were inseparable.^ The 
 theory of Umar, by which the MusHms were all 
 supported from the treasury and the non-Muslims 
 paid the taxes and tilled the soil, broke down of 
 necessity, but not until the conversion of non- 
 Muslims to escape the burdens of taxation had 
 to be forbidden in order to maintain the income 
 of the state. The poll tax remained as a special 
 tax on the non-MusHms. It may be said that 
 ^ this was in lieu of military service ; but the early 
 Arabs certainly looked on military service as a 
 privilege rather than a burden. It is so regarded 
 to-day in the East, wherever there is no standing 
 army and where the status of soldier brings 
 special privileges. 
 
 The regulations that required Christians to 
 wear clothing that would distinguish them from 
 others, prohibited their riding horses, and im- 
 posed other marks of inferiority were no doubt 
 only occasionally and locally enforced, but their 
 existence is evidence of the feeling that Muslims 
 and non-Muslims were separate and unequal 
 castes. Occasionally this feeling broke out into 
 active persecution, as in the destruction of newly- 
 
 ^ For the law and the defense of it, see Syed Ameer Ali, Mo- 
 ha?nmedan Law, ii. 85, 96, 121. 
 
MUHABIMADAN GOVERmiENT 123 
 
 built churches by Mahdi, Harun ar Rashid, and 
 Mutasim and in the more general vexations of 
 Mutawakkil, enforcing the regulations of the so- 
 called Constitution of Umar.^ Fanatical hatred 
 of the Christians increased with the passage of 
 the years and as early as a. d. 837 a Christian 
 bishop describes the sleepless and tearful nights 
 that he passed on account of the growing hatred 
 of the Arabs toward the Christians, due, it is 
 likely, to the orthodox reaction that followed the 
 liberal regime of Mamun.^ Destruction of prop- 
 erty and attacks on the persons of Christians 
 become more frequent as the history progresses, 
 and testify alike to the weakening of the govern- 
 ment and the increase of popular fanaticism.^ 
 The legal status of the non-Muslims, or Dhim- 
 mis (Zimmis) was worse in some respects than 
 their actual condition and many of the privileges 
 that they had were due to the favor of the rulers or 
 to the services they rendered society rather than 
 to the guarantees of law.'* The employment of 
 
 ' Muir, Caliphate, 52iff.,377 ; Von 'K.r&meXjCultitrgesckichte, 
 ii. 167 ; Bar Hebroeus, Syr. Chron., 1 18, 126, 146, 155. 
 
 "^ Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron., i. 383. 
 
 3 See Appendix, Riots against Christians. 
 
 * See Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, s. v. Zimmi ; Sell, Essays 
 on Islafti^ The Status of the Zimmis. 
 
124 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Christians in the court was reconciled with their 
 subject condition by the fact that their services 
 were largely of a personal nature. While the 
 court physician was brought into intimate and 
 confidential relations with the Khalifa, he was 
 his personal servant and his office gave him 
 no authority over a single Muslim. The same is 
 to be said in very large measure of the account- 
 ants, the secretaries, and the clerks employed in 
 government offices. In Turkey and Persia at 
 the present time hundreds of Christians are em- 
 ployed in similar positions, but they are never- 
 theless on a lower legal plane than the Muslims. 
 There are cases now and have been in the past 
 in which Muslim rulers have employed Christians 
 as envoys to Christian states. The Sassanians 
 sent Nestorian bishops on embassies to Constan- 
 tinople and the Khalifa sent a Jacobite bishop 
 to the Georgians to negotiate the release of 
 Muslim captives.^ The cases in which Christians 
 were placed in positions that gave them rule over 
 Muslims were certainly very rare indeed.'^ A 
 
 1 Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron., iii. 353 ; Dionysius, Jacobite 
 Patriarch, was sent by Mamun (A. D. 829) as envoy to rebellious 
 Christians in Upper Egypt, Ibid., 373. 
 
 2 The only case given by Arnold is that of the prime minis- 
 ter of a Buwayhid prince in Persia (A. D. 949-982). 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 125 
 
 certain liberal governor was accused to the 
 Khalifa of partiality to the Christians and de- 
 fended himself as follows, " I have appointed 
 no Christian governors, except Umar ibn 
 Yusuf, whom I appointed governor of Anbar 
 (a city with large Christian population) and 
 except over the Jews and Magians of Jahabad, 
 and in these cases not because of partiality but 
 because of their faithfulness." The act required 
 a special defense. ^ 
 
 The Mongol conquerors at first were neither 
 MusHms nor Christians, but Shamamists. Jingis 
 counseled his sons " to tolerate all creeds, telling 
 them that it mattered little to the Divinity how 
 they honored him " ; but his code of laws was 
 scarcely tolerant, forbidding for superstitious 
 reasons washing the hands in running water or 
 washing in any way cooking or domestic vessels.^ 
 He and his first successors were tolerant in all 
 religious matters, not on principle opposed to 
 persecution, but not caring enough for the sub- 
 ject to persecute. Their attitude scarcely affects 
 our subject, at least before the acceptance of 
 Islam by them. The Christians were for a time 
 
 ' Assemani, Bibl. Orientalis, iii. i, 216. 
 * Ho worth, History of Mongols, i. III. 
 
126 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 raised to a precarious equality with the Mushms, 
 and in some respects were more favorably re- 
 garded. Some of the high officials were 
 Mongols of tribes that had accepted Christianity 
 long before, and in the royal harem a favorite 
 wife often helped the Christians. 
 
 With reference to the church the Mongol 
 <^rulers in Persia exercised the same right of in- 
 vestiture that had belonged to the Khalifa. Bar 
 Hebraeus, who as Maphriana or Exarch of the 
 Jacobite Church was in charge of affairs in the 
 East for his church, has left a picturesque account 
 of a visit paid by him to Hulagu Khan in com- 
 pany with his patriarch. A dissension had arisen 
 over the election of the patriarch and both par- 
 ties, the patriarch-elect with his supporters and 
 the dissident bishops, set out on the long journey 
 from Cilicia to the Mongol court in or near 
 Maragha in Persia. Arriving there, the patriarch 
 and Bar Hebrseus (who had gone from Maragha 
 as far as Erzingan in Armenia to meet his su- 
 perior) found their admission to the court pre- 
 vented by an order that forbade the reception of 
 monks, the reason being that an Armenian monk 
 had been caught stealing in the court. Fortu- 
 nately this order had prevented the other party 
 
MUHAMMADAN GOVERNMENT 127 
 
 from seeing " the king of kings," and the versa- 
 tile bishop found admittance as physician though 
 as a monk he was shut out. Later he secured an 
 audience for himself and the patriarch with the 
 great Khan and the desired papers were given, 
 while Hulagu graciously told how his ancestor, 
 Jingis Khan, had been instructed by men 
 such as they in the fear of God and right 
 laws.^ 
 
 This story illustrates the precarious favor the 
 Christians enjoyed in the barbarous court of the 
 conquerors. This is shown still more vividly in 
 the life of the Nestorian patriarch, Mar Yahbha- 
 laha, a younger contemporary of Bar Hebraeus. 
 Raised to the patriarchate because of his Turkish 
 descent and familiarity with Mongol customs, he 
 received the insignia of authority, the parasol 
 and royal tablet, from Abaqa, one of the most fa- 
 vorable of all to Christianity, who also granted the 
 church a fixed stipend. The next ruler, Ahmad, 
 was favorable to Islam and the patriarch's position 
 was exceedingly difficult and he was imprisoned 
 for some time. This short reign was followed by a 
 longer period of favor, especially under Arghun, 
 who employed the patriarch's special friend as 
 1 Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., ii. 753ff. 
 
128 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 his envoy to Europe, and marked honor was 
 shown and large gifts were given to the church 
 by the king. Then under Ghazan and his suc- 
 cessors Islam became supreme and between the 
 efforts of revengeful courtiers and the hatred of 
 the populace the patriarch was repeatedly in 
 danger of his life and the church was stripped 
 of its wealth and favor. The legal status reverted 
 to that which had obtained under the earlier 
 Muslim rulers, but with new influences that made 
 the condition of the Christians far more intoler- 
 able than before. The crusades had left a legacy 
 of hatred toward Christians. Turks and Mongols, 
 fierce and barbarous, had completely displaced 
 the Arabs. The fickle favor of the Mongols was 
 most disastrous, for the Armenians and Georgians 
 had been their active allies in their wars with the 
 Muslim rulers of Mesopotamia and especially of 
 Egypt. We shall have to return later to this 
 aspect of the subject. It is useless to speak of 
 governmental relations in the anarchies of the 
 fourteenth Christian century, which closed in the 
 desolation and ruin wrought by Tamerlane. 
 When order again emerged from chaos the rem- 
 nants of the two great Syrian churches were 
 again the subjects of Muslim rulers, under con- 
 
MUHABIMADAN GOVERNMENT 129 
 
 ditions theoretically the same as those in the his- 
 tory of the Khalifa. 
 
 The moral effect on church life and govern- 
 ment was most serious. In the first place, the 
 limitation of the preaching of the gospel and 
 the acceptance of that limitation was a surrender 
 of an essential characteristic not only of Chris- 
 tianity but of all truth. This phase of the subject 
 will be referred to again, but another demands 
 fuller consideration now. It has been pointed 
 out that the heads of the church were semi- 
 political officials, exercising a certain amount of 
 authority in affairs not properly spiritual and de- \ 
 pendent on the recognition of the Muslim gov- 
 ernment in order to enjoy the full exercise of their 
 functions. This had most demoralizing effects 
 on the church. The qualification for the highest 
 offices in the church was political ability rather 
 than spiritual character. The conditions and 
 duties of the episcopal office, especially in its 
 higher grades, developed astuteness and craft. 
 The position of the Khalifa as the court of high- ' 
 est appeal in matters connected with the election 
 of the patriarch wrought great mischief. Bribery 
 figured in the elections to a fearful extent. The 
 Syriac histories are full of illustrations of all 
 
130 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 these points. The beginnings of the interfer- 
 ence of the government in the election of patri- 
 archs and of the intrigues on the part of the 
 Christians are in the Sassanian period. Even 
 then the Christian court physicians played an 
 active part. Both of the Khusrus exerted their 
 influence to secure the election of their favorites, 
 and the opposition of the church to such inter- 
 ference in both these reigns, as on later occa- 
 sions, is marked by interregna in the succes- 
 sion. 
 
 In the time of the third Khalifa, Uthman, we 
 read that the Nestorian patriarch George was 
 imprisoned by the Arab governor of Kufa on 
 the complaint of his enemies, in order to extort 
 money from him.^ The Umayyad Khahfa Abd 
 al Malik, or perhaps his viceroy in the East, 
 Hajaj, first imprisoned the Nestorian patriarch 
 Khnanishu on account of an impolitic remark in 
 regard to Islam and finally enabled a rival, John 
 the metropolitan of Nisibis, to supplant him. 
 The power of the latter was short lived, for on 
 failing to pay the promised bribe to Hajaj, he 
 was imprisoned and Khnanishu resumed office.^ 
 
 1 Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron., iii. 131. 
 
 'Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron., iii. 1318"., 138, note 2. 
 
3IUHAMMADAN G0VEKN3IENT 131 
 
 A story of Mansur illustrates the lengths to 
 which the Khalifas sometimes went, the arbitrari- 
 ness of their acts, and the character, good and 
 bad, of the Christians themselves. Through the 
 machinations of Surin, who had occupied the 
 Nestorian patriarchal seat for a few months by- 
 force of the Khalifa's soldiers, the Nestorian, 
 Jacobite, and Greek patriarchs were all impris- 
 oned at Baghdad. One of the principal plotters 
 against them, a physician, Isa by name, at- 
 tempted to make use of his position to black- 
 mail other dignitaries of the church and so wrote 
 to the Nestorian metropolitan of Nisibis that the 
 Khalifa had heard of the costly plate belonging 
 to his church and desired to have it brought to 
 him in order that he might select such articles 
 for himself as he should desire, Isa also inti- 
 mated that for a consideration he could avert this 
 calamity. The bishop Cyprian had the courage 
 to go to court and, armed with the letter of 
 Isa, obtained an audience with the Khalifa. The 
 latter was so enraged at the presumption of Isa 
 that he confiscated all his property and released 
 the imprisoned ecclesiastics. They had, how- 
 ever, spent nine years in confinement. 
 
 The effect of such an episode on church affairs 
 
132 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 can be imagined.' The next Nestorian patriarch 
 owed his position to the fact that he rephed to 
 the satisfaction of the Khahfa Mahdi to the ques- 
 tion as to the kind of tree from which Moses' 
 rod had been cut, while his rival frankly ad- 
 mitted his ignorance.^ Then came Timothy, one 
 of the greatest of the Nestorian patriarchs, who for 
 fifty years guided the fortunes of a church whose 
 dioceses extended from the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean to the confines of China and at the 
 same time was a successful courtier in the reigns 
 of five great Khalifas, Mahdi, Hadhi, Rashid, 
 Amin and Mamun. It is said that he owed his 
 election to the influence of the governor of 
 Mosul and of his Christian secretary, Abu Nuh, 
 and to the money bags that were displayed to 
 the Nestorian lawyers. These were supposed to 
 contain gold and silver, but after his consecration 
 nothing was found in them but copper coin.^ 
 Instance after instance might be given from 
 Sassanian to Mongol times in which bribes were 
 given, the court physicians or the lawyers in- 
 
 1 Bar Hebraeus, £c. Chron., iii. I35f. 
 
 * Thomas of Marga, ii. 379. 
 
 3 Thomas of Marga, ii. 383. A similar story of a thirteenth 
 century Jacobite patriarch is given in Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron,, 
 ii. 651. 
 
MVHA3IMADAN GOVERNMENT 133 
 
 trigued, and even the armed forces of the Khah- 
 fas intervened.^ As the power of the Khahfas 
 dwindled and that of their viziers increased the 
 Nestorians intrigued with the latter ; while the 
 Jacobite patriarch living farther west depended 
 on the favor of the various dynasties that rose 
 and fell, Seljuks, Ayubits, and even Crusaders 
 being the recipients of their bribes. Schisms 
 were not infrequently made by rivals for the 
 patriarchate, and among the Jacobites one such 
 division was prolonged because the church was 
 partly under the rule of the Crusaders and partly 
 under that of the Muslim Emirs of Mesopotamia. 
 The great lesson of this history lies not in the ter- 
 rors of persecution but in the far more subtle and 
 ruinous effects of toleration, when it involves the 
 compromise of principles on the part of the 
 church and brings it into relation with a corrupt 
 political power. Christianity was given safety 
 at the price of abstaining from proselyting from 
 the dominant faith and accepted a relation to the 
 Muslim government that subjected the heads of 
 the church to constant temptation to unworthy 
 subservience and intrigue. We often read of 
 the corruption of Christianity through its rela- 
 ' See Appendix, Bribery. 
 
134 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 tion to Christian governments, beginning with 
 Constantine the Great ; but our study shows the 
 same tendency for the church to become secular- 
 ized through its relation to a non-Christian gov- 
 ernment. One of the difficult things in mission- 
 ary work is to maintain friendly relations with 
 such governments on the proper basis of their 
 gratitude for the benefits to society accruing 
 from the work and of common treaty rights but 
 without compromising principle. It is a still 
 greater temptation to feeble communities of na- 
 tive Christians to accept as inevitable the restric- 
 tions to the exercise of the missionary spirit and 
 to limit not merely their activities but their sym- 
 pathies also by the scanty concessions of an un- 
 friendly government. 
 
 History shows how difficult is the question of 
 the political status of missions and native Chris- 
 tians under Muslim governments. It shows that 
 conditions vary greatly according to the charac- 
 ter of the ruler and the temper of the people. It 
 shows also that the legal status of Christians so 
 far as their right to worship is concerned is in- 
 disputable. It shows also that toleration is con- 
 ditioned on the acceptance of an inferior status 
 and that this is the fundamental law of Islam, 
 
MUHAMMAD AN GOVERNMENT 135 
 
 going back to the Prophet and never changed. 
 It illustrates the menace of mob violence, directly- 
 proportionate to the weakness of the govern- 
 ment and increasing with time, which to-day is 
 an ever-present danger to the oriental Christians 
 living in Persia and Turkey. It makes it very 
 clear that Islam has been unable successfully to 
 guarantee the rights granted by its own constitu- 
 tion to other religions. It is difficult to see how 
 religious freedom can be granted and maintained 
 by a Muslim monarch, without virtually renounc- 
 ing the example of his Prophet and the whole past 
 of his religion. Christianity has been intolerant 
 during most of its history, but the Master founded 
 a kingdom not of this world and at last Christen- 
 dom is beginning to learn his charity. Islam has 
 been more consistent in its history. Muhammad 
 compromised on the basis of limited toleration and 
 his compromise has lasted throughout the cen- 
 turies, varying in application but not in essential 
 idea. This characteristic of compromise marks 
 all the relations of Islam to Christianity. It 
 seems to yield, but it never yields, the supremacy. 
 Honor is given to Christianity, but Islam is the 
 final faith. Christ is exalted, but his last coming 
 will only prepare the way for Muhammad's tri- 
 
136 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 umph. The Bible is praised and its circulation 
 is permitted. The direct persecution of Chris- 
 tians is contrary to the law of Islam and has but 
 little precedent in its history ; but the idea of re- 
 ligious equality before the law is foreign to the 
 system. Hence Islam is misjudged — sometimes 
 denounced as a bloody persecutor and sometimes 
 extolled as a patron of freedom. Neither is true 
 and neither can be, so long as the supreme au- 
 thority of Muhammad is acknowledged. 
 
 This history is an illustration of the general 
 fact of the importance of bringing our arguments 
 against other religions into strict conformity with 
 the facts, and of allowing to them every conces- 
 sion that generosity as well as truth requires. It 
 is weakness to denounce Islam as a persecuting 
 power in the usual sense of the words and to 
 parade the acts of exceptional monarchs as truly 
 representative of the faith. It is right and wise 
 to admit that the early Muslims were more tol- 
 erant than their Christian contemporaries, and 
 that the history of Christian Europe contains the 
 annals of more relentless religious persecution 
 than the history of Western Asia since the rise 
 of Islam. But after all this has been admitted, 
 it must also be remembered that what was an ad- 
 
MUHAMMADAN G0VEBN3IENT 137 
 
 vance in the seventh century is a hopeless bar- 
 rier in the twentieth, and that active persecution 
 in its very nature must run its course and cease, 
 while toleration is capable of permanency and is 
 for that very reason far more dangerous. The 
 strong argument is the true argument, and Islam 
 is condemned most conclusively by the fairest 
 judgment. 
 
Fourth Lecture 
 THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 
 
Difficulty of the subject. Some conditions of the expansion. 
 Character of the Muslim propaganda. Divisions of the sub- 
 ject. Converts to Christianity from Islam and Christian apolo- 
 gies. The Syriac-speaking peoples. Failure of Islam to gain 
 them, proselytes from them to Islam. The Iranians. Extent 
 of Christianity among them, extension after rise of Islam, means 
 of extension, Nestorian monasticism and monastic missions, 
 failure of Christianity to vi^in the Iranians, Muslim propaganda 
 and success. The Turks and Mongols. Christianity in China, 
 Uighurs, Keraits, means of extension, character of the Chris- 
 tians, failure of Christianity, propaganda and success of Islam. 
 The relation of Muslim missions to political movements. Esti- 
 mate of the Nestorian missions. Religious and national move- 
 ments. 
 
Fourth Lecture 
 
 THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 
 
 The topic of the expansion of Christianity and 
 Islam in Western Asia is a vast one, extending 
 over a long period of time and a broad expanse 
 of territory, dealing with the dark ages and un- 
 explored wilds, of Central Asia. That the Nes- 
 torian Church was a great missionary church is a 
 vague commonplace of hterature, but one seeks 
 in vain for an account of its missions. The fact 
 that Asia is Muhammadan from the Mediterra- 
 nean to the borders of China is patent to all, but 
 very few have any intelligent idea when and how 
 these millions of Asiatics accepted Muhammad 
 as their Prophet. Most, probably, regard the 
 sword as the instrument that converted these vast 
 regions to Islam ; but the truth is that in some 
 cases the religious dominion of Muhammad pre- 
 ceded the armies, while in other cases conversion 
 lagged long behind political conquest. Our own 
 age is proving beyond a doubt that the downfall 
 of Muhammadan governments is not followed by 
 141 
 
142 ISLASr AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the abandonment of Islam. It is difficult to as- 
 certain the facts of the history. The missionary 
 operations of both faiths were desultory, local, 
 often the result of individual effort rather than 
 corporate activity, and subsidiary to political and 
 commercial movements. Apart from the state, 
 Islam has no formal organization, and the gov- 
 ernment of the oriental churches was lax. The 
 darvish orders of Islam and the monastic orders 
 of Christianity were very loosely connected with 
 the acknowledged religious organization. Con- 
 sequently the records of the Khalifat and of the 
 Patriarchates alike refer only incidentally to con- 
 versions from other faiths. 
 
 In forming an estimate of the fundamental con- 
 ceptions that determine the character of the mis- 
 sionary operations of Islam we must go back to 
 the origins. Muhammad founded a religion and 
 a state, not as two cooperating bodies but as two 
 expressions of the same force. He preached 
 Islam in Mecca and in Medina and through others 
 all over Arabia. His followers have preached it 
 to the ends of the earth. Apologies and argu- 
 ments for the faith have been composed and pub- 
 lished. Christian missionaries are sometimes 
 earnestly invited to accept Islam for themselves. 
 
TEE EXPANSION OF TEE FAITES 143 
 
 As soon as opportunity offered, Muhammad es- 
 tablished a state ; and the spread of his rehgion 
 and the extension of his poHtical authority were 
 identical. To quote the modern apologetic his- 
 torian of The Preaching of Islam, " Muhammad 
 exercised temporal authority over his people just 
 as any other independent chief might have done, 
 the only difference being that in the case of the 
 Muslims a religious bond took the place of family 
 and blood ties. Islam thus became what, in 
 theory at least, it has always remained — a 
 political as well as a religious system." ^ One 
 consequence of this was that fighting for the 
 state became not merely a patriotic but a reli- 
 gious duty. 
 
 Moreover, in the first preaching of Islam the 
 option offered was the Quran or the sword, or 
 else the Quran, tribute, or the sword. Arnold, 
 the author just quoted, attempts to prove that 
 the doctrine of Jihad, the Holy War, in the sense 
 taught by the unanimous voice of the doctors of 
 Islam, " is wholly unauthorized by the Quran," 
 and maintains that it is due to them that it " came 
 to be interpreted as a religious war waged against 
 unbelievers, who might be attacked even though 
 1 Preaching of Islam, 27. 
 
144 ISLA3r AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 they were not the aggressors." ^ The point is 
 one of academic interest, for practically from the 
 earliest times, indeed from the time of Muham- 
 mad, war has had the sanction of religion placed 
 upon it and the refusal of the Arabs, Christian or 
 heathen, to accept Islam or pay the tribute was 
 sufficient casus belli. War is a missionary 
 method of Islam, not the only but an authorized 
 means of spreading the faith and the state. To 
 Christians and Jews and usually to others the 
 third alternative of tribute was offered. Hence 
 forced conversion was not the method used with 
 them for the spread of Islam. To the heathen 
 Arabs no alternative was offered to the Quran 
 but the sword ; and with other heathen the legal 
 proceeding would have been the same as with the 
 Arabs, but it does not seem to have been fol- 
 lowed. The motives that attracted converts to 
 Islam were very mixed from the beginning. The 
 Arabs were led by the force of newborn national 
 zeal as well as by the promise of rich booty to 
 join the armies and accept the creed of Islam. 
 The conditions cannot be more tersely put in 
 the following tradition : " A Christian followed 
 
 1 Preaching of Islam, Appendix I. See also Sell, Faith of 
 Islam, Appendix B. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 145 
 
 the Prophet and said, ' I wish to go with you to 
 fight and to get a share in the spoil.' The 
 Prophet said, ' Dost thou believe in God and 
 in his Prophet? ' • No,' he repUed. * Retire, for 
 I cannot accept the aid of a polytheist.' Three 
 times the man's appHcation was refused, but at 
 last he confessed his faith in Islam and was al- 
 lowed to join the expedition." * Afterwards un- 
 der Muslim government there was always ready 
 for the new convert rehef from taxation, a place, 
 of special privilege in comparison with his former 
 coreligionists, and in case of need amnesty for 
 crimes committed. No doubt these rewards, as 
 is the case to-day, were made to glitter as 
 brightly as possible in the eyes of the possible 
 proselyte, even though the gilt tarnished later 
 and riches took their flight.^ According to Al 
 Kindi the Khalifa Mamun spoke thus of some of 
 his courtiers, " They belong to a class who em- 
 brace Islam, not from any love of this our reli- 
 
 ' Sell, Essays on Islam, p. 193. 
 
 2 One meets not infrequently to-day in Persia apostates to 
 Islam reduced to poverty and bitterly regretting the irrevoca- 
 ble step they took. According to Bar Hebrsus {^Ec. Chron. 
 iii, 287f.), Ignatius, an apostate Jacobite Maphriana, ended his 
 days as a beggar and left behind him a penitential hymn. See 
 Appendix, Apostasy to Islam. 
 
146 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 gion, but thinking thereby to gain access to my 
 court and share in the honor, wealth, and power 
 of the realm ; they have no inner persuasion 
 of that which they outwardly profess." ^ Beyond 
 the bounds of Muslim government, such re- 
 wards could not be offered and the convert from 
 the Mongols or the Turks, except those who 
 were under Muslim rule, probably neither lost 
 nor gained by his change of faith. There does 
 not seem to have been conversion to Islam in the 
 face of persecution.^ It is hardly necessary to 
 draw the obvious contrast between the beginnings 
 of Christianity and those of Islam. 
 
 It is, no doubt, fortunate for the cause of lib- 
 erty that the first Christians had to propagate the 
 new faith in the face of social and political oppo- 
 sition. While in Europe political motives aided 
 in the extension of Christianity ; such has seldom 
 been the case in Asia outside the bounds of the 
 Roman empire and perhaps the precarious king- 
 doms of the Armenians and Georgians. Christi- 
 anity progressed after the rise of Islam by means 
 
 1 Muir, Al Kindy, p. xii. 
 
 ** The only possible exception to this statement would be con- 
 versions to Islam in the time of Mongol Emperors unfriendly 
 to Islam. But all the Mongol emperors had Muslim troops and 
 allies, and only Arghun dismissed high Muslim officials. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 147 
 
 of preaching, personal influence, example, and 
 (in the estimation of the Christians), by miracles. 
 Aided by the looseness of government, it was 
 propagated in out-of-the-way and remote dis- 
 tricts. In the chronicles of Thomas of Marga 
 one reads of heathen in the mountains within one 
 hundred and fifty miles of Mosul, to whom the 
 gospel was preached, showing how little Islam had 
 extended at that early time outside of the cities 
 and how in country places there was still an op- 
 portunity for Christian propaganda.^ 
 
 The main lines of the extension of the faiths 
 were racial. The conversion of Arabia to Islam 
 and the disappearance of Arab Christianity may 
 here be passed over, and the three great races 
 of Arameans, Iranians, and Turanians be con- 
 sidered. These terms are broad and somewhat 
 indefinite, but are sufficiently accurate for our 
 purposes. Perhaps it would be more accurate 
 to make the distinction one of language than 
 race. The three languages are Syriac, Persian, 
 and Turkish. Arabic was the sacred language 
 of Islam and went wherever Islam went, but it 
 has not become the vernacular of either Persians 
 or Turks. Syriac has been displaced very largely 
 
 ' Thomas of Marga, Bk. Ill, Ch. 3. Also ii. 653. 
 
148 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 as a vernacular by the Arabic, but has always 
 been the ecclesiastical and usually the literary 
 language of the Jacobite and Nestorian Churches. 
 With Persian must be grouped Kurdish and 
 various dialects spoken in Persia. The Mongol 
 language was displaced by the Turkish and even 
 in early times a dialect of Turkish (the Uighur) 
 appears to have been the written language for 
 the Mongols.^ Before taking up these main di- 
 visions it seems best to consider separately efforts 
 on the part of the Christians to convert Muham- 
 madans and to present and defend before them 
 their faith. 
 
 References in the Syriac literature to converts 
 from Islam to Christianity are very scanty indeed. 
 Bar Hebrseus relates that some of the prisoners 
 taken from the Arabs by the Byzantines were 
 baptized and afterwards preferred to remain Chris- 
 tians to returning to their old hbmes and faith, 
 just as at a later time prisoners taken from the 
 Crusaders are said to have accepted Islam.^ 
 More remarkable is the story of Arabs in the 
 region of Nisibis who in the tenth century emi- 
 
 ' The racial and linguistic distinction between Mongols and 
 Turks seems to have been of no historical importance. They 
 coalesced rapidly and easily. 
 
 ^ Bar Hebrseus, Chron. Syr., 159, 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 149 
 
 grated in large numbers to Byzantine territory in 
 order to escape the oppressions of their own 
 rulers and accepted the religion of their new 
 homes.^ One other instance is found of a Muslim, 
 who is said to have been converted by the mi- 
 raculous vision of a lamb in a Christian church 
 at the time of the Eucharist. He was impris- 
 oned by the Khalifa Harun ur Rashid and after 
 two years was executed, a martyr to his faith.'^ 
 There seems to have been less strictness in re- 
 gard to those who had once been Christians, as is 
 shown by the canons requiring the reordination 
 of repentant renegades ; and a few instances are 
 found in which such persons are mentioned by 
 name. Generally, however, they fled to lands 
 under Christian rule.^ The apology of Al Kindi 
 shows that the Khalifa Mamun permitted the dis- 
 cussion of the relative merits of the two religions, 
 but his court was notoriously liberal and fond of 
 religious discussion. About the same time the 
 patriarch Timothy is said to have explained to 
 every one of the five Khalifas under whom he 
 lived the doctrines of Christianity and to have 
 
 'Von Kremer, Culttirgeschichte, ii. 495. 
 ^ Bar Hebraeus, Syr. Chron., 132. 
 3 See Appendix, Apostates to Islam. 
 
150 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 left a written account of his disputations with 
 Mahdi ; but this is the safest kind of missionary- 
 work, for the position of the inquirer secured 
 him from annoyance. A few other instances of 
 Christian apologetics are mentioned in history, 
 and there may have been isolated cases of con- 
 versions.^ They were, at all events, few ; liberty 
 was never granted Muslims to change their faith, 
 and there was little effort on the part of the 
 Christians to secure conversions. 
 
 At the time of the rise of Islam Christianity 
 was dominant among the peoples speaking 
 Greek, Armenian, and Syriac, and these peoples 
 are still Christian. We are, perhaps, apt to for- 
 get this failure of Islam, the failure to attract and 
 convert peoples who have lived for twelve and a 
 half centuries under Muslim rule, accessible to 
 the efforts of Muhammadan teachers, with ma- 
 terial gain on the side of Islam ; and yet to-day 
 they are more averse to Islam than ever. It 
 would be difficult to point out any similar failure 
 of Christianity in its whole history. It is signifi- 
 cant that the nations that possessed in their own 
 language the Scriptures and the church liturgies, 
 and that had a national church and so were not 
 ' Appendix, Christian Apologetics. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 151 
 
 required to become members of a more or less 
 alien church, have persisted in their Christianity, 
 while others not so favored have lapsed. The 
 Armenian Church is intensely national and with 
 this nation patriotic aspirations have united with 
 religious zeal to hold them fast. The Nestorian 
 and Jacobite Churches have been less intensely 
 national and have never had a political center to 
 which they might rally. The Syriac-speaking 
 people has not been military and long ages ago 
 lost national aspirations, except such as are satis- 
 fied by the church and by literature. There were 
 members of both these churches belonging to 
 the Iranian race, as well as to the races of Central 
 Asia and of India, but Syriac was always and 
 everywhere the ecclesiastical language, and the 
 rulers of the church were usually Arameans. 
 
 It is the opinion of careful observers that a 
 portion of the Muhammadan population of the 
 Turkish empire are the descendants of Christian 
 ancestors, Greek, Armenian, and Syrian.^ The 
 evidence for this is largely inferential, and history 
 furnishes little direct testimony of such changes 
 of faith, except in the case of individuals. The 
 
 ' Hogarth, Nearer East, 176; Ramsay, Impressions of Tur- 
 key , 96. 
 
152 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 largest numbers doubtless accepted Islam under 
 the first Umayyids. The apology of Al Kindi 
 speaks with bitterness of the apostates to Islam, 
 implying that they were heretical Christians with 
 half-heathenish ideas, or that they were impelled 
 by unworthy motives, but there is nothing to 
 indicate that their number was large. The occa- 
 sional storms of persecution that broke the truce 
 of toleration drove some to abandon Christian- 
 ity. This is said to have been the case when 
 Mansur imprisoned the patriarchs of the three 
 sects. On another occasion Mahdi, angered by 
 the sight of large numbers of Christians in Aleppo 
 riding on horses, is said to have ordered them to 
 accept Islam, which was done by five thousand 
 persons.^ There was also a stream of conver- 
 sions, if we may apply that name to such cases, 
 of Christians who became Muslim in order to 
 escape punishment or for gain. Among these 
 there were not a few clergy of the lower ranks, 
 as is indicated by the canons regarding reordina- 
 tion of such apostates, and a number of bishops, 
 and even one Jacobite Maphriana and at a later 
 period two Jacobite patriarchs. The Christian 
 writers assign immorality as the cause in most of 
 ' Bar Hebiaeus, Syr. Chron., 127. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 153 
 
 these instances, and there is no sufficient reason 
 to doubt the statement in many cases at least.^ 
 
 Two stories in Bar Hebraeus may be quoted to 
 illustrate the incidents that would often be con- 
 nected with " conversions." They are such as 
 would be frequent whenever the country was dis- 
 turbed and rare when the government was strong, 
 and might easily be paralleled by modern in- 
 stances. One is that of a girl in the neighbor- 
 hood of Mosul in the twelfth century (a. d. i 159) 
 who was betrothed to a Christian. Her father, 
 born a Christian, had apostatized to Islam, the 
 rest of the family keeping their faith, and in con- 
 sequence opposition was made by the Muslims to 
 her marriage to a Christian. The Maphriana 
 who authorized the marriage ceremony was ar- 
 rested and the girl of course was brought before 
 the authorities. She persisted in the profession 
 of faith in Christianity. Finally her firmness 
 and that of the Maphriana, who was in prison 
 for forty days, won the day so far that she was 
 not compelled to accept Islam, but she could 
 not remain in her home and ended her days as a 
 
 • Arnold discredits the charge of immorality, but the easy 
 way for an immoral bishop under discipline to escape trouble 
 would be apostasy. 
 
154 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 nun in Jerusalem.^ The other case is that of a 
 company of armed men in Armenia, who, being 
 caught up with by a band of MusHm bandits, 
 feared for their hves and in order to secure their 
 safety declared that they were on their way to 
 the court in order to profess their faith in Islam, 
 thinking that they would make their escape with- 
 out fulfilling the promise. They were, however, 
 forced by the circumstances and by the avowal 
 of their intention to go to an Emir and were 
 taken by him into his military service and treated 
 with great favor. After a time they escaped and 
 resumed their former religion.^ A similar and 
 frequent occasion of change of rehgion, as to- 
 day, was the persuasion of girls to marry Muslim 
 husbands, or in troublous times their abduction. 
 Theoretically a Christian woman married to a 
 Muslim husband is not required to renounce her 
 faith, but practically such a marriage must have 
 that result, and in any case the children are 
 Muslim. Muslim tradition also claims the con- 
 version of large numbers of Christians and the 
 adherents of other religions as the results of 
 the efforts of the great doctors of Islam, twenty 
 
 • Bar Hebrseus, £c. CAron., iii. 347ff. 
 2 Bar Ilebrasus, Chron. Syr., 244. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 155 
 
 thousand each being ascribed to Ibn Hanbal and 
 another teacher. The Christian chroniclers make 
 no reference to such occurrences, but that per- 
 haps is not sufficient reason to reject them alto- 
 gether.^ All of these causes for the acceptance 
 of Islam by Christians are not sufficient to ac- 
 count for the great diminution in the number of 
 Nestorian and Jacobite Christians, and it may be 
 doubted whether they would more than balance 
 the natural increase of population in times of 
 peace. Why these churches have almost disap- 
 peared we shall see later. 
 
 Christianity at the time of the Arab conquest 
 had a firm hold in certain parts of Persia. In 
 Southern Persia, Khuzistan was one of the most 
 powerful metropolitan sees of the Nestorian 
 Church, no doubt in part because of its proximity 
 to Ctesiphon, Other proofs exist of the large 
 number of Christians in Khuzistan. In the time 
 of Ali (A. H. 40) Christian mountaineers of this 
 region are said to have joined with the Kharijites 
 in rebellion. On their defeat the number of 
 Christian captives taken into slavery was five 
 hundred. It is evident from this that Christianity 
 had gained a hold on the common people of the 
 
 1 Arnold, Preaching of Islam, 65. 
 
156 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 country.^ The adjoining metropolitan see of 
 Persia or Fars was also ancient. The Patriarch 
 Ishuyabh III (a. d. 660) writes of the large 
 number of apostates in that region to Islam in 
 his time. Christianity had before Muhammad's 
 time reached India and bishoprics had been 
 founded on the borders of the Persian Gulf, in 
 the islands, on the Arabian coast, and in Kir- 
 man.2 Khurasan contained a considerable Chris- 
 tian population, as is shown by the letters of 
 Ishuyabh. Here the metropolitan see of Merv 
 was older than the time of Islam and long re- 
 mained powerful in the Nestorian Church. Bar 
 Hebraeus states that shortly before the rise of 
 Islam the Jacobite sees of Khurasan, Seistan, and 
 Azarbaijan were established.^ A Nestorian met- 
 ropolitan of Samarkand, a far eastern outpost of 
 Iranian population, was appointed early in the 
 eighth century. Other sees that are mentioned 
 were those of Yezd, Ispahan, and Shiraz in South 
 Persia ; Hamadan and Rhai in Central Persia ; 
 Urumia and Ushnuk in Northern Persia; Barda 
 in Georgia ; and Dailom and Ghilan along the 
 
 ' Muir, Caliphate, 292. 
 
 2 These and other Nestorian bishoprics are mentioned by Bar 
 Hebrosus, Thomas of Marga, and Assemani. 
 •'Bar Ilebroeus, Ec. Ckrou., iii. 127. 
 
 / 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 157 
 
 Caspian. This list is not exhaustive, and out- 
 side the specifically Persian sees there were Ira- 
 nian Christians in the dioceses of Assyria and the 
 region about Baghdad. 
 
 The history of Christianity in the Sassanian 
 empire shows that there had been a very active 
 and successful propaganda among the Iranians. 
 We read of Christians among the landlord class 
 about Mosul and in the mountain region east of 
 that city. Some of the Christians were of high 
 rank. The last Khusru was killed in an insur- 
 rection headed by one of them, whose father 
 had been the chief financial officer of the realm. ^ 
 Some of the patriarchs of the Nestorian Church 
 were converts from Magianism or the sons of 
 such converts. While thus widespread, the Chris- 
 tians were not organized into a national Per- 
 sian Church. There were certain differences be- 
 tween the Persian Nestorians and those farther 
 west and there were the beginnings of ecclesias- 
 tical independence, but the patriarchs asserted 
 their authority in the end. Syriac was the eccle- 
 siastical and theological language and there was 
 at most in Persia a very scanty Christian litera- 
 ture, and the Scriptures had not been translated 
 
 ' Thotnas of JSIarga, ii. 112. 
 
158 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 into the vernacular.^ It is clear that Christianity- 
 was widely spread in Persia, that in some locali- 
 ties the numbers of Christians were considerable, 
 and that it continued to spread after the rise of 
 Islam. 
 
 Two forces had much to do with that spread. 
 One was commerce and the other monasticism. 
 From times before Islam Christian merchants had 
 a share in the wholesale trade of Asia. Trade 
 with India opened the way for the early intro- 
 duction of Christianity there. The hold Chris- 
 tianity had along the Persian Gulf was probably 
 connected with this trade route and those into 
 Arabia. The strong rule of the early Abbasid 
 Khalifas gave trade the opportunity to develop. 
 The position of the Christians in the capital as 
 bankers and merchants would lead them to share 
 in the trade. Artisans, and the goldsmiths and 
 jewelers who were Christians, would find employ- 
 ment in the large cities. In those days there 
 were no doubt settlements of Christian merchants 
 and artisans in the cities, just as to-day there are 
 Armenians in every large city in Persia and 
 
 1 Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., iii. i69f. The principal differ- 
 ence was that the bishops were from the married and not from 
 the celibate clergy. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 159 
 
 Chaldean merchants from Mosul and Baghdad 
 in many of them. The clergy would follow the 
 merchants in order to supply them with the ordi- 
 nances of the church, and so episcopal dioceses 
 would be established.' In the account of the 
 missions of the Nestorian monks, Thomas of 
 Marga relates that the patriarch Timothy sent 
 his missionary to Mughan on the Aras river in 
 the company of merchants. ^ 
 
 Monasticism was imported into Mesopotamia 
 in the fourth century by monks from Egypt. 
 The legendary account of Mar Awgin, or St. Eu- 
 genius, tells that his monastery near Nisibis con- 
 tained three hundred and fifty monks, while 
 seventy-two of his disciples each established a 
 monastery. The number of monasteries increased 
 rapidly in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the 
 sixth century there was a movement in the Nes- 
 torian church against the enforced celibacy of the 
 higher clergy and against celibate monks. Celi- 
 bacy, however, won the day and monasticism 
 was firmly established. The monks must have 
 been numbered by hundreds, if not thousands, for 
 
 * An earlier instance of non-Iranian Christians in Persia is 
 that of the colonists settled in Khurasan by Anushirvan. Bar 
 Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., iii. 125. 
 
 2 Thomas of Marga, ii, 506. 
 
16U JSLA3I AND TEE OBIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 in addition to the numerous monasteries in Meso- 
 potamia and in the regions north of the Tigris, 
 there were scattered monasteries in Persia and 
 Armenia. Besides the monks hving in com- 
 munities there were numerous sohtaries Hving in 
 caves or rude huts. These were influential 
 enough among the Qatrayi on the Persian Gulf 
 to call for a separate letter from the patriarch 
 Ishuyabh,^ Some of these monks must have 
 burned with real missionary zeal, but the prevail- 
 ing spirit of the institution was not missionary. 
 Quiet of the mind and repression of the body 
 were the two great aims of their life. The first 
 canon of Mar Abraham the Great, accepted 
 generally by the monks of the Nestorian Church 
 begins as follows, " First of all a life of tranquillity 
 according to the command of the Fathers and 
 according to the word of the Apostle which 
 he spake to the Thessalonians." This is more 
 picturesquely illustrated by the following story : 
 " Once when Abba Arsenius went to visit the 
 brethren in a certain place the wind whistled 
 through the reeds which grew there and he said, 
 ' What is this noise ? ' and they said, ' It is the 
 reeds shaken by the wind.' And he said, ' Ver- 
 1 Ibid., i68. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 161 
 
 ily, I say to you, if a man dwelling in a solitude 
 heareth only the chirp of a sparrow, his heart can- 
 not find that solitude which it requireth ; how 
 much less can ye who have all this noise of these 
 reeds ? ' " 
 
 One of the saints most approved by Thomas 
 of Marga is a bishop who was carried captive by 
 the nomad Arabs and contentedly spent his life 
 as their camel-herd, because, as he said, " I have 
 determined that this work is the will of our Lord, 
 and also that it does not in any way separate me 
 from a life of purity, and I am not brought in 
 contact with the Arabs, but am alone by myself 
 in the desert. I praise God continually." ^ 
 There is no indication that he was impelled to 
 preach the gospel to these Arabs. Similarly the 
 monks of Beth Abhe successfully resisted the pa- 
 triarch in an attempt to establish a school in con- 
 nection with their monastery, on the ground that 
 the boys would disturb their meditations.^ The 
 work of preaching to the heathen was conceived 
 of as a hardship, an ascetic exercise, rather than 
 a privilege of the gospel. Accordingly in the 
 accounts of their work as missionaries great stress 
 
 ' Thomas of Marga, Book ii., Ch. 41. The life of Malchus, 
 the captive monk, written by Jerome, also illustrates this point. 
 2 Ibid, Bk. ii, Ch. 7. 
 
162 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 is laid on their self-denying sufferings and on the 
 miracles they wrought. The monasteries were 
 not leagued together in orders, but each was in- 
 dependent of the others, ruled by its own superior 
 and subject in some degree to the higher episco- 
 pal authorities. Consequently there was nothing 
 like a concerted missionary movement or any 
 close control or direction of such work. Another 
 result of this is that there were no comprehensive 
 records of such work.^ 
 
 Thomas of Marga, who is referred to so often 
 in these lectures, was the abbot of the monastery 
 of Beth Abhe, sixty or seventy miles northeast of 
 Mosul. He wrote a history of that monastery 
 from the middle of the sixth century till the mid- 
 dle of the ninth. In this work he gives an ac- 
 count of the missionary work done by the monks 
 of the monastery. In passing it may be re- 
 marked that other monasteries might no doubt 
 have furnished histories of similar efforts. The 
 regions in which these monks of Beth Abhe 
 preached the gospel were among the most inac- 
 cessible and barbarous of those inhabited by the 
 
 ' For a general account of Monasticism in the Nestorian 
 Church, from which the above facts are taken, see Thomas of 
 Marga i, cxvii ff. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 163 
 
 Iranians, a fact due to the freedom in such re- 
 gions from interference from MusHm government 
 and to the monastic conception of missionary- 
 work as a part of asceticism. It was altogether 
 among the pagans and not the Muhammadans. 
 This missionary propaganda occurred at about 
 the end of the eighth century. The patriarch 
 Timothy sent a monk named Shaukhalishu to 
 carry the gospel to the regions of Ghilan and 
 Dailom along the shores of the Caspian and in 
 the adjoining mountain regions. He was selected 
 because of his knowledge of Arabic and Persian 
 and was provided with funds by the wealthy 
 Christians so as to make " his entrance with ex- 
 ceeding great splendor, for barbarian nations 
 need to see a little worldly pomp and show to 
 attract them and make them draw nigh willingly 
 to Christianity." In this one can see the hand of 
 the courtier in the Khalifa's court. With him 
 were a number of disciples and they taught, 
 preached, baptized, and worked all kinds of mira- 
 cles, turning to the truth not heathen only but 
 also Manichees and Marcionites.^ Finally he lost 
 his life at the hands of robbers, and Timothy ap- 
 pointed two new metropolitans, one of Ghilan and 
 * Or perhaps Marcianites, or Marcians, i. e., Euchites. 
 
164 ISLA31 AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 one of Dailom, sending with them fifteen assist- 
 ants. These brothers, Kardagh and Yahbhalaha, 
 carried on the work with great success, ordaining 
 not only priests but also bishops. The progress 
 in these regions led to sending another mission- 
 ary to Mughan, or Moqan, along the lower course 
 of the Aras. This was a holy solitary, ignorant 
 of learning but famous for the austerity of his 
 life and appropriately named Elijah. His fame, 
 like that of Boniface in far-off Europe a century 
 earlier, was made by hewing down a great sacred 
 tree. This was followed by the conversion of 
 many heathen and by a long career of successful 
 work. It is difficult to separate fact and exag- 
 geration in these accounts, although they were 
 written only a few years after the events ; but at 
 any rate there was a successful pioneer work in 
 very difficult regions. The Christianity taught 
 could not have been better than that of the teachers 
 and it probably partook more of the magical ele- 
 ments than of those of real spiritual value.^ 
 
 Another evidence of the spread of Christianity 
 among the Iranians is to be found in the tradi- 
 tions of certain Kurdish tribes that their ances- 
 
 1 For the histories summarized, see Thotnas of Marga, Book 
 V, Chs. i-xi. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 165 
 
 tors were once Christian, though they do not in- 
 dicate when they were converted to Christianity.^ 
 
 But in spite of all, Christianity failed, and Islam 
 succeeded in gaining the Iranian race. There 
 was doubtless the same process of gradual and 
 individual conversion to Islam already described 
 with reference to the Aramean Christians. Very 
 possibly there were larger numbers of converts 
 among the newly converted and imperfectly in- 
 structed Christians of Persia than among those 
 farther west. In the letters of Ishuyabh soon after 
 the Arab conquest, he reproaches the Christians 
 of Fars and of Khurasan for having accepted Islam 
 in large numbers, partly in order to avoid the loss 
 of property entailed by steadfastness in the faith.^ 
 
 The first Arabs attempted the forcible conver- 
 sion of the Zoroastrians to Islam and their fire 
 temples were destroyed. Doubtless under this 
 stress numbers went over to the new faith ; and 
 
 1 This is true of several tribes on the border of Turkey and 
 Persia near Urumia. In the regions of Bohtan, Midyat and 
 Sassun there are Muhammadan Kurds who are said by tradi- 
 tion to have once been Cliristian. Those in Sassun are called 
 the " Cross deniers." 
 
 ^ Thomas of Alar/^a, n. 154. The language used is very 
 strong to the effect that thousands of Christians had embraced 
 Islam without any force being laid on them and that churches 
 were deserted because of the apostasy. 
 
166 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the lower classes, especially the heretical sects 
 among the fire-worshipers, are said to have done 
 so gladly. Finally, however, the Muslims adopted 
 a more conciliatory attitude, and toleration dis- 
 placed persecution in the policy toward the re- 
 maining fire-worshipers. The forces of gradual 
 and individual conversion along with the exter- 
 minating forces of anarchy and famine reduced 
 the followers of the old Persian faith to a mere 
 handful. Islam was strengthened in its influence 
 over the Persians by the existence from early 
 times of a strong Persian element within itself and 
 finally by the evolution of a distinctively Persian 
 type of faith and doctrine. It thus became iden- 
 tified, as Christianity never was, with the genius 
 of the race. Heathenish ideas persisted, how- 
 ever, in the strange half-secret and very imper- 
 fectly known sects that are found in Persia even 
 to-day. The conquering faith paid an indemnity 
 of war, and a heavy one, to the conquered. 
 
 The failure of Christianity is not wholly due to 
 the success of Islam. In the form and the method 
 of Christianity, as presented to the Iranians, there 
 was that which made it unable to accomplish the 
 conquest of the race. One great reason prob- 
 ably was that it was never given sufficient inde- 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 167 
 
 pendence to develop along its own lines and be- 
 come really indigenous. It may also be that the 
 dogmatic character of the Christianity offered, 
 treating the great themes of theology as closed 
 questions, defined and determined, and not as 
 great truths to feed the intellect as well as to be 
 the objects of faith, had something to do with 
 the failure to win this race. It failed, and to-day 
 only a few ruined churches and some others con- 
 verted into mosques remain as memorials of 
 Iranian Christianity. 
 
 The history of the missionary activity of the 
 Nestorian Church in the farther East is a subject 
 on which the available sources of information 
 are exceedingly scanty. The extant records of 
 that church give very little light, a circumstance 
 not so surprising when one reads that the more 
 distant metropolitans were required to report to 
 the patriarch only once in six years. The sources 
 that we have are scattered notices in Syriac 
 works, the narratives of Mediaeval European 
 travelers, and the references to Mongol and Turk- 
 ish Christians in the Muslim and Christian his- 
 tories of the Mongols.^ 
 
 ' These are all collected in Howorth's History of the Mongols, 
 a work which is drawn on constantly for facts used in the fol- 
 lowing pages. 
 
168 ISLA31 AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 There are two routes from Western to Eastern 
 Asia, by sea and by land. Both were used from 
 early times for trade and Christianity followed 
 both, as did Islam. There is good proof that 
 Christianity entered Southern China through the 
 merchants that traded by the sea-route via India, 
 but this lies outside our subject. The starting 
 point from which Christianity spread by land into 
 Central and Eastern Asia was naturally the East- 
 ern region of Iranian culture and of Arab rule 
 in Merv, Bukhara, Balkh, and Samarkand. The 
 war of Iran and Turan is as old as history and 
 long before Muhammad Christianity had reached 
 the boundaries of these titantic rivals ; and it is 
 possible that it had even overstepped the bounda- 
 ries, for Theophylact tells of Turkish mercena- 
 ries of Khusru Parviz who bore the cross tattooed 
 on their breasts as a charm against the plague.^ 
 
 In passing it may be remarked that this story 
 illustrates the fact, to our history of very great 
 importance, that the Turkish migrations west- 
 ward were as old as Islam itself. Political con- 
 ditions opened the trade routes from Khurasan 
 and Transoxiana to China. Christianity entered 
 these open doors, for the famous Nestorian mon- 
 
 ' Theophylact, 225. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 169 
 
 ument of Si-ngan-fu in China tells of the advent 
 in A. D. 635, three years after the death of Mu- 
 hammad, of a Nestorian teacher from the West 
 called Olopun and how he brought his faith to 
 the favorable notice of the emperor. It then 
 recounts the gracious toleration of Christianity 
 by the emperors till the time the monument was 
 erected in a. d. 781.^ From Chinese sources it 
 appears that in a. d, 845 Christianity and other 
 foreign faiths, especially the far more prevalent 
 Buddhism, were persecuted and that three thou- 
 sand Christian monks and other Western teach- 
 ers, were forced to return to the ordinary walks 
 of life.^ From Syriac records we learn that about 
 the beginning of the ninth century a metropolitan 
 of China was appointed by the patriarch 
 Timothy. ' 
 
 The connection of this early Christianity in 
 northwestern China with that of Samarkand and 
 Balkh is shown by the mention of a priest from 
 Balkh on the Nestorian monument. But Chris- 
 tianity did not reach China at a leap, nor did 
 it cross the thousands of miles of intervening 
 
 • See Legge's Edition and Essay. 
 ^Nestorian Monument, Legge, 50, 
 " Thomas of Mar ^a, ii. 448, 
 
170 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 territory without making some impression. The 
 road that the monk traveled was the same that 
 the merchants followed, either over high passes 
 to Kashgar and thence along the Tarim Val- 
 ley, or farther north over lower passes by Kulja 
 to the Tarim, and thence on to Northern 
 China. The population of Turkish and Mongol 
 tribes in this region was ever shifting. Among 
 them, however, and perhaps less barbarous than 
 most were the Uighurs — " village-dwellers " their 
 name is said to mean — and in this tribe Chris- 
 tianity enrolled many converts. Many among 
 them were Christians — how many and when and 
 through whose efforts they became such we do 
 not know, but that they were numerous is 
 shown by frequent references to Uighur Chris- 
 tians in the Hterature of the Mongol period, and 
 also by their graves. At Pishpek in Russian 
 Turkestan, near the Chinese border and about 
 three hundred miles east of the city of Tashkend, 
 is a cemetery of Christian graves, eight acres in 
 extent, with Syriac inscriptions on the stones. 
 Here Christians were buried for about five hun- 
 dred years, from a. d. 850 to a. d. 1330, some 
 with Turkish and some with Syriac names, old 
 men and maidens, laymen and priests — one of the 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 171 
 
 latest Shlikha, " renowned interpreter of the Scrip- 
 tures and preacher, who filled all the monasteries 
 with light, the son of Peter the expounder. He 
 was celebrated for wisdom and his voice was 
 sonorous as a trumpet." Thirty miles away is 
 another cemetery. How many more are lost in 
 the wilds of this wild country time may reveal 
 in part and only the Great Resurrection in full- 
 ness.^ An alphabet was adapted from the Syriac 
 by these Turks, which was used extensively by 
 the Mongol conquerors and is still in use by the 
 Mongols of Eastern Asia. The Uighurs were 
 the scribes, the high officials, and often the gen- 
 erals of the Mongols. One of them, Kitibuka by 
 name, a Christian at least by descent, was the 
 commander and viceroy of Hulagu in Syria and 
 Cilicia. To their influence was due in large part 
 the measure of mercy shown the Christians in 
 the merciless wars. 
 
 Another closely related line of evidence begins 
 with a statement of Bar Hebrseus, who relates 
 that in A. d. 1007 messengers came from a 
 king, or chief, of a tribe called Keraits to the 
 Metropolitan of Merv, asking for a priest to bap- 
 tize him and his people. He had lost his way 
 ' Lansdcll, Chinese Central Asia, i. 109. 
 
172 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 while hunting and had been guided home by a 
 saint, or holy apparition. Thus attracted to 
 Christianity, he had been more fully instructed 
 by Christian merchants in his capital city and 
 had received from them a copy of the gospels, 
 which he is said to have worshiped daily. Priests 
 were sent and in view of the fare on which the 
 people lived permission was given to use milk 
 during the Lenten fast.^ Unk Khan, the chief 
 of the Keraits, was first the friend and later 
 the enemy of Jingis Khan. He is said to have 
 been known as King John, and he finally for- 
 sook Christianity.^ There can be little doubt 
 that Ho worth is right in accepting these state- 
 ments and in finding in Unk, or Wang, Khan, 
 who figures prominently in the earlier history 
 of Jingis Khan, the original of Prester John of 
 mediseval legend.^ We have accounts of these 
 Keraits from Marco Polo and the Roman Cath- 
 olic missionaries, who in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury visited the dominions of the successors of 
 Jingis Khan, which then included a large part 
 of China. These found Christians in various 
 
 ^ Bar HebriEus, Ec. Chron., iii. 279f. 
 
 2 Howorth, History of the Mongols, i. 54lff. 
 
 •* History of the Mongols, Vol. i, Ch. x. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 173 
 
 cities in Tangut and especially in the region of 
 Tanduc along the northern bend of the Hoang 
 Ho or Yellow river. The princes of this city, 
 they say, were of the line of Prester John and 
 always married from the family of the Great 
 Khan. This last statement is corroborated by 
 the history of the Mongols and explains the pres- 
 ence in the royal harem of Christian wives of 
 Mongol extraction. One of these princes of 
 Tanduc became a Roman Catholic and with his 
 aid the friars prospered greatly in their mission 
 work, but on his death the family relapsed into 
 Nestorianism. In the lists of the Nestorian dio- 
 ceses of the twelfth century and in the later his- 
 tory the metropolitan see of Tangut is mentioned. 
 The evidence is barely summarized here, but it 
 is clear that Nestorian Christianity was widely 
 extended among the Turks and Mongols of the 
 Uighur and Kerait tribes from the regions ad- 
 joining Samarkand to Northern China and Man- 
 churia. It may be that the Christians in China 
 were all Mongols or Turks rather than Chinese, 
 even in the earlier period of the monument of 
 Si-ngan-fu, for the dynasty at that time is de- 
 scribed as being " Turkish by alliance, character, 
 and temperament," and it is evident from the 
 
174 ISLAM AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 monument itself that the favor of these emperors 
 was a great factor in the progress of Christianity.^ 
 If the extent of Christianity in Central Asia is 
 very imperfectly known, the means of its exten- 
 sion are still more obscure. We may be sure 
 that commerce was an important factor. It has 
 been remarked that Christianity followed the 
 great trade routes in its progress eastward. They 
 were merchants already in Tanduc, who told 
 Prester John, or his ancestor, the contents of 
 the Christian faith. In the times of Mongol 
 dominion in Persia we read of a wealthy Christian 
 merchant from the region of Mosul, accompanied 
 by a Mongol Christian of high rank, who died in 
 Khurasan on his way home from the far East. 
 His sons were befriended by the Mongol and one 
 of them was afterwards appointed governor of 
 Mosul, a position that he long held. * Other 
 agents in the extension of Christianity were the 
 monks. A considerable part of the Si-ngan-fu 
 monument is taken up with a description and 
 eulogy of the monastic life. The supposedly 
 supernatural guide of the Kerait chieftain sug- 
 gests a hermit, living such a life as Mar Yahbhal- 
 
 1 Cahun, Turcs et Mongols, 121. 
 '•* Bar Hebraeus, C/iron. Syr., 582f. 
 
TEE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 175 
 
 aha and his companion Rabban Sauma passed 
 before they came west, having their home in a 
 cave in a lonely mountain in the country of the 
 Keraits. 
 
 The estimate of the character of these Turkish 
 Christians derived from their part in Mongol 
 history is very low. There is nothing to indicate 
 that they were less inhuman than their comrades 
 in war, pillage, and massacre. In one instance 
 we read of the Christians of Arbil being pro- 
 tected in the celebration of their rites by a squad 
 of Christian Mongols, who bore crosses suspended 
 from the points of their spears.^ The queens 
 who carried chapels about with them in the 
 nomad courts of the Khans were the inmates of 
 polygamous harems, and the Christianity of their 
 children, some of whom were baptized, was very 
 lightly laid aside when policy required it. The 
 travelers from Europe give an account of the 
 Nestorians that is far from flattering, telling how 
 their priests were in the habit of taking part in 
 the Mongol festivities, blessing the cattle and 
 using charms and magic. Indeed, they are repre- 
 sented as being very eminent as magicians. 
 
 It would be necessary, even if we had no more 
 
 1 Bar Hebrseus, Chron. Syr., 575f. 
 
176 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 favorable testimony to the character of the Mon- 
 gol Christians to allow for the prejudice of Ro- 
 man Catholic monks in speaking of Nestorian 
 heretics. One cannot but wonder how much bet- 
 ter Roman Catholic Christianity would be under 
 similar conditions of isolation. Fortunately we 
 have another and very valuable source of testimony 
 in the life of Mar Yahbhalaha, Nestorian patriarch 
 from A. D. 1 28 1 to A. D. 1 317. The account be- 
 gins with the story of two Uighur hermits of the 
 region of Tanduc, whose zeal led them to deter- 
 mine to visit the sacred shrines of the West and 
 especially Jerusalem. Their friends and relatives, 
 native Christians of that region, strove to dis- 
 suade them, as did the Christian rulers of the 
 country ; but they were unshaken in their deci- 
 sion and finally were provided by wealthy core- 
 ligionists with funds for the way and by the 
 rulers with letters of introduction and safe-con- 
 duct. The long journey across the great conti- 
 nent of Asia was made and they reached the 
 Persian court of the Mongols and visited the 
 heads of their church, but the disturbed condition 
 of the country prevented their visiting Jerusalem. 
 The patriarch made our hero metropolitan bishop 
 and his companion visitor-general of their native 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 177 
 
 regions, but soon after his death left the patri- 
 archal seat vacant and the patriarchate was filled 
 by the election of Mar Yahbhalaha, chosen on 
 account of his race and relation to the Mongol 
 Khans and in spite of his ignorance of Syriac. 
 The vicissitudes of the thirty-five years during 
 which he occupied the patriarchal throne and dur- 
 ing which his companion was sent on an ex- 
 tended embassy to the Christian courts of Europe, 
 tested thoroughly the simple, unselfish character of 
 both, their genuine devotion to Christianity, and 
 also their frank superstitious faith in saints and 
 relics. Mar Yahbalaha suffered himself and was 
 a true shepherd of his flock in a troubled time, 
 ready to lay down his life if need be for them. 
 One is glad to believe that there were others of 
 like faith unknown to history, who lived and died 
 in true and simple obedience. 
 
 But whatever Christianity did for individuals, 
 it failed to hold and influence the destiny of the 
 Turkish race. In the sixteenth century the 
 Jesuits who went to North China found only the 
 memory of the Nestorian Christians.^ Persecu- 
 tion by the Chinese emperors had rooted them 
 out. In Central Asia both internal and external 
 
 1 Yule, Cathay, c. 
 
178 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 causes can be found for the failure of Christianity. 
 It did not take hold of the Turkish language and 
 create such a literature as should be the fruit of 
 five hundred years of opportunity. It was iso- 
 lated by the terrible distances, by the uncertain 
 political relations of the East and the West, and 
 by the loose organization and administration of 
 the Nestorian Church. It was cut off entirely 
 from the Christianity of Europe and when 
 Roman Catholicism came it was not a friend but 
 a rival. Finally the Christianity that was 
 preached had lost much of its power. Its crown 
 was no longer the loving and faithful walk of 
 men among men but the life of the hermit apart 
 from men. It relied on relics rather than on the 
 living Spirit of God, on miracles rather than the 
 Gospel of Jesus, and on saints rather than on the 
 ascended Christ. 
 
 The accounts of the eastward extension of Is- 
 lam into Central Asia and to China are as scanty 
 as those of Christianity in the same regions. 
 Before the acceptance of Islam by the great 
 Mongol Khans its history is much like that of 
 Christianity, except that it was connected more 
 closely with political matters, the Khalifas and 
 the Chinese emperors having diplomatic relations 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 179 
 
 from early times and Islam being a political force 
 on the western borders of Central Asia and grad- 
 ually advancing its bounds. It entered both 
 Southern and Northern China by the trade routes, 
 the former apparently at the very beginning of 
 the foreign extension of Islam, and the latter a 
 century later. By the middle of the tenth cen- 
 tury Islam had a hold on the borders of Northern 
 China as a political and a persecuting power, tol- 
 erating, however, Nestorian Christianity. It too 
 gained a hold among the Uighurs. We read of 
 Muslim merchants among the Mongols and of 
 mosques at the court of the Mongol Khans. It 
 appears likely that the Muslims in North China 
 are of Mongol and Tartar descent, and that the 
 immigration of peoples of these races especially 
 in connection with the Mongol supremacy was 
 the cause of the extension of Islam there. Be- 
 sides the Mongol troops, Khubilai Khan in the 
 thirteenth century made large use of Arab and 
 Persian officials in the administration of his 
 Chinese dominions. 
 
 But the real history of the extension of Islam 
 among the Turks and Mongols has far more to 
 do with the westward movements of the hordes 
 than with any missionary or political efforts to 
 
180 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 carry Islam to them. The use of Turkish mer- 
 cenaries had begun in Sassanian times and the 
 Abbasids early adopted it. The Turks thus en- 
 tering into the territories of the Khalifas and of 
 the Muslim dynasties of the East naturally ac- 
 cepted the religion professed by the princes who 
 employed them and by the large majority of the 
 people among whom they settled. This gradual 
 process went on for centuries and powerful dynas- 
 ties of Turks arose. They became the dominant 
 race, even the Khalifa being a puppet in the 
 hands of his Turkish guards and viziers. The 
 political conquest of the Turks over the Arabs 
 and the religious conquest of the Arabs over the 
 Turks were both so gradual that we are apt to 
 forget how complete and momentous they were. 
 When the inroads of the heathen hordes of the 
 Mongols took place in the thirteenth century, in 
 all the regions they conquered from those of the 
 Sultan of Khwarizm in Transoxiana to the Seljuk 
 dominions on the Mediterranean, they found 
 Muslims of kindred race, language, and civiliza- 
 tion. The religious attitude of the Mongol rulers 
 was such that there was no obstacle to the em- 
 ployment of Muslims in offices of state nor to the 
 intercourse of the immigrants with the conquered 
 
THE EXPANSION OF TEE FAITHS 181 
 
 Muhammadans. They married freely from them. 
 The conquerors were thus the easy conquest of 
 the vanquished and about the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century the far-sighted Ghazan Khan 
 saw that it was the best poUcy of state to accept 
 Islam and to establish his kingdom on that basis. 
 This change was opposed by the conservatives, 
 who had blocked a similar attempt of Ahmad 
 Khan shortly before and who still clung to the 
 Shamamism and the religious indifference of 
 the earlier Khans ; but the people had been 
 won by Islam and the state must follow. 
 Christianity played only a minor part in the 
 question.^ 
 
 The history of the branch of the descendants 
 of Jingis Khan who ruled in Transoxiana was 
 similar, except that the opposition to the adoption 
 of Islam was strengthened by the hordes of the 
 steppes, some of them Christian, and Islam was 
 not firmly established till the conquests of Timur. 
 He was a Mussulman before he rose to power 
 in Transoxiana with his capital at Samarkand, 
 whence he made Islam supreme in Central Asia. 
 
 ' This is evident from the history of Mar Yahbhalaha. He 
 had no influence in national affairs, though he was personally 
 favored by the Khans. 
 
182 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Christianity in that part of Asia disappeared be- 
 fore his terrible sword.' 
 
 Imperfectly and in outline the long process has 
 been sketched, in which Christianity gained only 
 to lose again and Islam became supreme from the 
 Mediterranean to the Chinese Wall. Much re- 
 mains obscure and some must always so remain ; 
 but it is clear that here is a section of the history 
 of Christianity too important to be dismissed 
 with a general eulogy of the missionary spirit of 
 the Nestorian Church or with a condemnation of 
 Islam for using the sword. 
 
 One cannot but be impressed with the political 
 character of the triumph of Islam. It is not 
 meant that Islam has been propagated altogether 
 by political means, nor that its victory is due to 
 the forcible suppression of other faiths. What 
 is meant is that, just as in the foundation of Islam 
 religion and state were united, so in its propaga- 
 tion political motives and means have been inex- 
 tricably joined with those more spiritual in char- 
 acter. Take for example the greatest conquest 
 Islam ever made, that of the Turkish race. It 
 began in the hiring of mercenaries and it ended 
 in the wars of Timur. The claim is sometimes 
 
 ^ Cahun, Turcs et Mongols y 475-480. 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 183 
 
 made that this has changed, and that the pres- 
 ent extension of Islam is not pohtical. The 
 Wahabi movement is pointed out as a great spir- 
 itual movement in modern Islam " one of the two 
 chief factors making for missionary activity in the 
 Mussulman world," and we are assured that it has 
 " lost all political significance outside of Najd." ^ 
 Such a statement flies in the face of history, for 
 Wahabism is a Puritanical return to the ideals of 
 early Islam and a rejection of the accretions and 
 modifications of subsequent history. If it be true 
 to its purpose, it will be spiritual and religious, 
 but it will also be political ; for such were the 
 ideals of the Prophet and his companions. The 
 political element may be obscured by circum- 
 stances and may be latent for a long time, but it 
 is difficult to see how it can be eliminated. 
 
 A true estimate of the missionary activity of 
 the Nestorian Church must contain much of ad- 
 miration, for surely nothing less is due to such 
 vast expansion as that which marks its history, 
 especially in view of the difficulties encountered. 
 The preaching of the gospel must have been at 
 the cost of great privation and suffering, and the 
 old monks who carried the faith into barbarous re- 
 
 ' Arnold, Fr caching of Is la?/!, 345 
 
184 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 gions were true heroes. At the same time a 
 sense of the inadequacy of the work is inevitable 
 — its inadequacy in motive, in method, and in the 
 gospel preached. This appears not only in com- 
 parison with the more developed but purer and 
 simpler Christianity that we know, but even in 
 some respects in comparison with Islam itself. 
 Two closely related points may be specified here ; 
 the equality of believers in respect both to privi- 
 lege and to obligation, and the freedom and sim- 
 plicity of organization as realized in Islam, The 
 idea of ritual observances and ascetic exercises is 
 a part of the original constitution of Islam and 
 hence obligatory on all in an equal degree ; but 
 while oriental Christianity required fasting of all, 
 the monastic ideal offered a higher degree of holi- 
 ness to be attained by some by a special rule of 
 life. It is true that the darvish orders correspond 
 somewhat to the monastic orders, but they are 
 freer and have never become an essential element 
 in the organization of Islam, as monasticism is in 
 oriental Christianity. In Islam each believer has 
 equal access to the One God without any human 
 mediation, not the perfect access that is the ideal 
 of Christianity, but equal access for all. No rites 
 are indispensable. Simple confession of faith 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 185 
 
 constitutes one a Muslim and he is the peer of 
 every other Mushm. In Christianity along with 
 the priestly conception of religion went the hier- 
 archical form of government. In Islam no ex- 
 ternal authorization or connection is necessary to 
 the organization of a company of believers, while 
 in oriental Christianity the necessity of the epis- 
 copal bond and succession was enforced. Much 
 more might be said in criticism and might be 
 said with profit, if the motive be to learn how 
 best to do our duty. Otherwise we have no right 
 to criticise those who fought even though they 
 failed to win the victory. 
 
 One lesson is assuredly the inseparable relation 
 between religious and national movements. Mis- 
 sions have for their primary and unalterable aim 
 the making known to the individual the gospel 
 of Christ in order that he individually may come 
 into living fellowship with God the Father of all 
 through Christ his Son. This aim is inevitably 
 bound up in the conception of religion embodied 
 in Christianity and emphasized by the Protestant 
 Reformation. All other results of Christian mis- 
 sions depend upon the realization of this aim. 
 The method to accomplish other changes is first 
 to change the individual. At the same time, in 
 
186 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 order to be a permanent and effective force 
 Christianity must lay hold of the nation and must 
 itself be so organized in its outward form and 
 in its intellectual character as to become an in- 
 tegral part of the life of the nation. The perma- 
 nency of Christianity in the life of a nation, its 
 power to mold its destiny, is dependent on the 
 possession of the moral and intellectual leader- 
 ship. The lower, more ignorant, and supersti- 
 tious forms of Christianity are the least perma- 
 nent. In other words Christianity must enter 
 into the intellectual hfe of the people and, if there 
 is no such life, it must create it. The fathers of 
 the church who gave their lives to the creation 
 of Greek theology did more than bring into ex- 
 istence a literature, a new culture, and a system 
 of thought. They bound up with Christianity 
 the destinies of the Greek race, and great as the 
 needs are of reviving and reforming the religious 
 life of that nation, its Christian position is as- 
 sured and has never been shaken by the on- 
 slaughts of Islam. 
 
 The same service was done with equal effec- 
 tiveness and without the aid of political bonds 
 by the Syrian Fathers of Edessa. The truth we 
 are considering is enforced equally by the perma- 
 
THE EXPANSION OF THE FAITHS 187 
 
 nence of Christianity among the Syrians and Ar- 
 menians and by its transitoriness among the 
 Arabs, Persians, and Turks. Christian schools, 
 the Bible and other Christian literature in the 
 vernacular, the creation of a truly national cul- 
 ture, are indispensable to the conquest of the na- 
 tions. The great aim of such work is not the 
 impartation of a foreign culture and the arts of 
 civilization, nor is it to attract people to Christi- 
 anity. It is to entrench Christianity in the life 
 of the nation through leaders and in the thought 
 of the people. Islam did this with the Arabs, 
 Persians, and Turks. Under Islam each of these 
 peoples has produced a literature and had an in- 
 tellectual life. Another truth writ large in this 
 history is that missions must not lag behind po- 
 litical changes. No better missionary appeal for 
 immediate work in China could be made than 
 the title of a secular work, " China in Transfor- 
 mation." It is folly and it is disobedience to the 
 voice of history not to make every effort to an- 
 ticipate the political and social revolutions that 
 are taking place so rapidly and that must ere 
 long include, the whole non-Christian world. 
 How much harder it is to-day to evangelize 
 Arabia or Persia than it was fifteen hundred 
 
188 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 years ago ! What a loss to the world that the 
 Turks have been entrenched in Muhammadan- 
 ism instead of having been won for Christianity ! 
 Is the church to-day more clear-sighted in its 
 views of current history than were the Christians 
 who rejoiced in the early conquests of Islam ? 
 
Fifth Lecture 
 
 THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY IN 
 - THE COMMON RUIN 
 
Tragic character of the course of the history and the relation 
 of the Christians to it. Geographical distribution of the Chris- 
 tians and the fortunes of the centers of Christian population. 
 Service of faith in the dark days. 
 
 / 
 
Fifth Lecture 
 
 THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY IN 
 THE COMMON RUIN 
 
 There is one cause for the ruin of the oriental 
 churches that might in itself be considered suffi- 
 cient to account for their downfall. Many differ- 
 ent causes have operated to bring about that 
 result. The force of national spirit and destiny, 
 the grinding inequality of toleration, violent per- 
 secution, outbursts of fanatical and envious mobs, 
 internal disorganization, spiritual apathy, vol- 
 untary apostasy, and the active propaganda of 
 Islam may be mentioned ; but more than all else 
 the numerical decrease is due to anarchy, pesti- 
 lence, famine and war. The population of 
 Western Asia is undoubtedly far smaller to-day 
 than it was a thousand years ago, and this in 
 spite of the immigration of the Turks. The ruin 
 has been a common ruin of the whole land and of 
 all its inhabitants, and in it Christianity has shared.^ 
 
 ' An illustration of this general fact is to be found in tlie 
 pitiful handful of Jews now in Mesopotamia and Babylonia 
 compared with the large numbers in Sassanian and Arab times. 
 191 
 
192 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 The tragic character of the whole history may 
 be iUustrated by a rapid survey of the wars that 
 marked its course. The first conquest of Islam 
 was rapid and the leaders were self-restrained. 
 Hence these wars were less destructive than later 
 ones and than those of Heraclius and Khusru in 
 the generation preceding. Twenty-five years 
 after the conquest the civil wars of Islam began 
 in the struggle between Ali and Muawiya and at 
 the same time began the Kharijite rebellions that 
 by turn smoldered and burst into flame for cen- 
 turies. The last years of the Umayyids were 
 marked by insurrections out of which rose the 
 new Abbasid line. Even in the palmy days of 
 Harun ur Rashid we read of rebellions that rav- 
 aged Azarbaijan, Mosul, and Mesopotamia ; while 
 after his death the empire was thrown into con- 
 fusion by the struggle between his sons, in the 
 course of which Baghdad itself was for a whole 
 year in a state of siege. Other civil wars that 
 were terribly destructive were the insurrection of 
 Babek in Persia and the Zenj slave insurrections 
 in the eighth century and the wars of the fanat- 
 ical Qarmatians about the beginning of the 
 ninth. Most of the wars with the emperors were 
 waged in the territory of the Greeks, but the 
 
THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY 193 
 
 tenth century witnessed inroads as far as Edessa 
 in what had long been Arab territory. From 
 the ninth century to the end of the twelfth the 
 history is made up of the rise and fall of dynas- 
 ties, most of them petty and local but some, as 
 the Saljuks and the Ghaznivids, embracing vast 
 territories, and of the wars of the Crusaders. 
 The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were 
 those of Mongol invasion and dominion, closing 
 with Timur. Pages might be taken up with the 
 catalogue of raids, campaigns, sieges, and battles, 
 and as time passed they were more and more 
 barbarous, more terrible in destruction, and 
 wanton in the sacrifice of life. The wars of the 
 Mongols were unutterably savage. The invaders 
 announced themselves to be the scourges of God 
 to punish the world. In China it is said that 
 the slain numbered seventeen and a half millions. 
 In the sack of Baghdad eight hundred thousand 
 human beings are said to have perished. Such 
 numbers are incomprehensible, but not altogether 
 incredible when we remember that the conquer- 
 ors sometimes required the whole population of 
 a city to go outside and there await the butcher's 
 sword. The terror is shown by such stories as 
 this of Maragha, where a single Mongol alone 
 
194 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 went down a street and butchered a hundred peo- 
 ple without any one raising a hand against him. 
 Another Mongol in Mesopotamia, having left his 
 sword behind him, commanded a victim to lie 
 still till he fetched it, and he was obeyed. No 
 wonder the Muslim historian Ibn al Athir, who 
 was an eyewitness of what he depicted, says that 
 for many years he could not bring himself to 
 describe the catastrophe that to him seemed the 
 destruction of Islam and the most terrible event 
 in all history from the time of Adam till the 
 great day when the race shall stand before God's 
 throne.^ Yet after Ibn al Athir came the most 
 terrible scourge of all, Timur. It has been said 
 that it was his mournful service to have swept 
 away the vestiges of the past and that after him 
 out of the chaos a new era began.^ 
 
 In all these wars the Nestorian and Jacobite 
 Christians were non-combatants, and during a 
 part of the Mongol period they had some favor 
 at the hands of the heathen kings. ^ The former 
 
 ' Miiller, Islam in Morgen-und Abendland, ii. 199. 
 
 2 Ibid, ii. 311. 
 
 3 The only exceptions, so far as I know, to the statement that 
 the Nestorians and Jacobites were non-combatants are the 
 Christian mountaineers of Ahwaz, who fought with the Khari- 
 jites against the Khalifas (Muir, Caliphate, 292) and the 
 
THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY 195 
 
 fact availed little to save them and the latter was 
 a curse. They were perhaps the most civilized 
 part of the population, either settled farmers liv- 
 ing in villages, or merchants, artisans, and physi- 
 cians living in the cities They belonged to the 
 class that would gather the wealth which would 
 attract marauders and that would be least able to 
 defend themselves. Along with war and in its 
 wake came plague, cholera, fever and famine. 
 In long continued war and especially in periods 
 of anarchy the least part of the sufferings are 
 those endured on the field of battle. Disease and 
 hunger slay more than the sword. ^ In all these 
 Christians shared. The favor of the Mongols to 
 the Christians was vacillating and unreliable ; the 
 
 mountaineers of the region north of Mosul. These last are 
 mentioned by Thomas of Marga as being given to raids. He 
 gives (ii. 523) the name of a village whose inhabitants had 
 such a character. The name as well as the location is the 
 same as that of a modern village in Tiari on the Zab. He 
 gives the name as Zarn. The modern name is Zarni, In 
 later times they were called Qayaje (Turkish, rock-dwellers) 
 and figured largely in the siege of Arbil in the life of Mar 
 Yahbhalaha. 
 
 'Von Kremer {^Cultiirgeschichte, ii. 490ff.) has compiled a 
 list of pestilences and famines during the first four centuries of 
 Islam. It contains thirty-five pestilences and eleven famines 
 or times of scarcity in regions that are directly related to our 
 history. 
 
196 JSLA3I AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 control of the armies was slight and in massacre 
 distinctions of creed would be obliterated ; the 
 number of Muhammadans in high position was 
 almost always larger than that of Christians and 
 in the rank and file they were far more numer- 
 ous ; and, finally, the Muhammadan reaction in 
 hatred and revenge was exceedingly bitter. The 
 Christians were most numerous in those portions 
 of Western Asia that suffered most in the wars, 
 because they were the most fertile, the most 
 populous, the least defensible and on the great 
 highways of the march of armies. A rapid sur- 
 vey of the regions containing Christian popula- 
 tion will make this clearer. 
 
 The Jacobites were numerous in Cilicia, in 
 Northern Syria, and in Western Mesopotamia. 
 These regions were the scenes of the wars of the 
 Khalifas and the emperors, to some extent of the 
 Crusades, and of the conflict between the Mon- 
 gols and the Mamluks of Egypt. In the first of 
 these large numbers of prisoners were taken by 
 both armies, and the Jacobites were not regarded 
 as friends by the Greeks. ^ The lives of eastern 
 
 1 Bar Hebraeus complains bitterly of the treatment of the 
 Jacobites by the Byzantines in the eleventh century. Ec. 
 Chron., i. 41 if., 42iff., 433, 444 ; ii. 459f. 
 
THE DOWNFALL OF CHlillSTIANITY 197 
 
 Christians lost through famine and by the sword 
 in the sieges and counter-sieges of the Crusaders' 
 principahty at Edessa must have been many times 
 over those of the European soldiery. In the 
 wars of the Mongols and the Mamluks, both 
 sides ravaged again and again the cities and 
 plains of Syria and Cilicia, while Egyptian raids 
 extended into Mesopotamia. In these wars the 
 Christians must have suffered terribly ; for while 
 Muslims fought in both armies, Mongol and 
 Egj'ptian, the Georgian and Armenian allies of 
 the Mongol Khan were his great reliance and 
 accordingly the Egyptians wreaked their ven- 
 geance on the Jacobites and other Christians. * 
 
 Central and eastern Mesopotamia had a very 
 large Christian population of both the Syrian 
 Churches. In the civil wars from early times the 
 Arabs swept back and forth across this region. 
 The rebels who occasioned these wars were often 
 Muslims of the most fanatical sort who rejected 
 the rule of lukewarm Khalifas. At their hands 
 
 ^ Bar Hebrseus, Syr. Chroti., 523, Ec. C/iron., ii. 729. " At 
 this time (C. 1259 A. D.) war, famine, and pestilence prevailed 
 in the whole country, especially in the region of Miletene, 
 which was devastated by the Agagrian Turkomans, so that all 
 Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were fdled with 
 Christian slaves and maidens." — Cf. IlijJ., 771,817, and iii. 431, 
 
198 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Christians would receive little mercy. With the 
 fall of the power of the Khalifas the petty dynas- 
 ties that rose were so oppressive that at one time 
 twelve thousand of the Arab subjects of the 
 princes of Nisibis fled to Byzantine territory, 
 changing their religion, and thence raiding the 
 country they had left. ^ Every Mongol army 
 going to Syria and many who campaigned in 
 Mesopotamia itself left behind it waste and deso- 
 lation. The population of Mosul and the adjoin- 
 ing region was so largely Christian that the Mon- 
 gols appointed Christian governors, but this 
 probably brought only temporary relief from the 
 growing hatred of the Muslims and ultimately in- 
 creased the ruin. In a. d. 1262 Mosul was at- 
 tacked by troops under a Christian general, and 
 after a siege of six months the town capitulated. 
 The whole population, except the artisans, was 
 put to death. The latter were carried away 
 captive. Later a thousand fugitives, who had 
 fled to the mountains, returned to the city, only 
 to be set on and massacred. Shortly before this 
 the ruler of Mosul had cruelly persecuted the 
 Christians, compelling them to abjure their faith, 
 which was done by many, and at the same time 
 
 ^ Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte, ii, 495. 
 
THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY 199 
 
 the Kurds harassed the Christians in the villages 
 and monasteries in the adjoining country. 
 
 That the Christians were not spared in the 
 massacres of the Mongol troops is indicated by 
 the successful efforts of the Nestorian bishop of 
 Jezira to save the lives of its inhabitants, when 
 his city was captured by the same army and the 
 same general that had treated Mosul so cruelly, 
 unless the bishop was interceding with the great 
 Khan for his Muslim enemies only. ^ The feeling 
 against the Christians was so bitter, partly due to 
 the attempts of the Nestorian patriarch to carry 
 things with a high hand, that he had first to leave 
 Baghdad, then Arbil, and finally to fix his resi- 
 dence in Ushnuk in Azerbaijan, and this in the 
 reign of Abaqa Khan, one of the most favorable 
 of the Mongols to Christianity. '^ During the 
 reign of Arghun, who was the most favorable of 
 all to Christianity, Mosul was occupied for some 
 time by a marauding band of Kurds and Turko- 
 mans from Egypt and the Muslims of the city 
 made every endeavor to turn their fury against 
 the Christians alone. All, Muslims, Jews and 
 Christians, suffered robbery, rape, and murder. 
 
 ' Bar Hebroeus, Syr. Chron., 516, Sigf. 
 3/^/^.. 525, 571ft-. 
 
200 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 During the same reign, the Christian governor 
 Masud being disgraced and murdered, the Mus- 
 Hm mobs of the city had their own way with the 
 Christians. In recording it, Bar Hebrseus, a con- 
 temporary, breaks out as he seldom does in his 
 history," The cruel persecutions which the people 
 of Mosul suffered during these two months tongue 
 cannot describe nor pen indite. Awake, O 
 Lord, and do not sleep ! Look at the blood of 
 thy servants, shed without mercy. Have pity on 
 thy church and flock, which are being torn by 
 persecution." ^ 
 
 In Baghdad the state of things was similar — 
 the massacres of the Mongols, the passing favor 
 to the Christians, and the fanatical hatred of the 
 mobs. Southern Persia, including the regions of 
 Fars and Khuzistan, where the Nestorians had 
 been numerous, escaped largely the Mongol in- 
 roads, and during the period of their domination 
 were ruled by petty dynasties. Yet the Chris- 
 tians disappear from history. It is easy to under- 
 stand how this would be the case in the anarchy 
 and the general bitterness against Christians after 
 the Mongols. Khurasan was devastated in the 
 first and most terrible onslaught of the Mongols 
 
 > Bar Hebrffius, Syr. C/iron., 558, 565f. 
 
THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY 201 
 
 under Jingis Khan himself. Hovvorth says that 
 " from the banks of the Oxus to Asterabad every 
 town of any importance was reduced to ruins and 
 its inhabitants slaughtered." ^ In Merv one author 
 says there were 1,300,000 corpses and another 
 that there were 700,000. In Nishapur all were 
 decapitated, lest the living should hide under the 
 dead. The only Christians that Mar Yahbha- 
 laha and his companion mention in connection 
 with their long journey westward, in a. d. 1278, 
 were at Tus in Khurasan. One can only wonder 
 that any were left. The facts so far have all been 
 drawn from the history previous to Timur, and 
 to understand fully the tragedy of the history, 
 we must add to all the ruin described the fearful 
 raid of that great scourge over all these regions, 
 remembering that to native savagery he added 
 the fanaticism nurtured in Islam by the Mongol 
 atrocities and that the people at large were in- 
 flamed against the Christians with an unreason- 
 ing revenge. So perished Christianity utterly in 
 many regions, while in others but an insignificant 
 remnant was left. It was swept away not by de- 
 liberate persecution but by war and pestilence 
 and by the passions born of violence and bloodshed. 
 
 1 History of Mou^'ols, i. 92. 
 
202 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Let US not forget the services it rendered in 
 the dark days of its downfall, the faith and hope 
 it gave to thousands, the courage with which 
 some refused to save themselves by denying their 
 Lord, and the heroism of others who strove to 
 save the weak and imperiled. The lights and 
 shades of the picture are vividly portrayed in the 
 account of the siege of Arbil in the life of Mar 
 Yahbhalaha. We see the Christians who held 
 the castle, hardened, reckless, and ready to fight, 
 part of them inhabitants of the place and part 
 of them wild mountaineers. There are the com- 
 mon peasantry, inoffensive and helpless, the vic- 
 tims of massacre. On the other side are the 
 treacherous Muslims, Kurds and Arabs, plotting 
 to destroy the Christians. The Mongol court in 
 Persia is distant, the communications uncertain, 
 and the control loose. Two figures stand out in 
 true heroism. One is that of the patriarch, vainly 
 counseling the Christian hot-heads to give up their 
 mad designs, trusting old friendships with some 
 of the Muslims and the respect due to his honor 
 and position, a man of peace and a faithful shep- 
 herd, making unavailing efforts to avert disaster 
 and seeing his flock butchered before his eyes. 
 The other figure is that of the Metropolitan of 
 
THE DOWNFALL OF CHRISTIANITY 203 
 
 Arbil, making long journeys on foot and in dan- 
 gerous regions, once to Baghdad and again to 
 Hamadan and on to Sultania, hundreds of miles, 
 in order to bring influences to bear at the court 
 to save the lives of his Catholicus and his flock, 
 knowing, as the writer says, that otherwise " he 
 would be guilty under the rule of truth and the 
 law of Christ, because if he was a shepherd and 
 a friend it was right to devote and give himself 
 to death and to despise his life and bear all 
 crosses." Finally he got orders for their protec- 
 tion, but they were of little avail. The patriarch 
 escaped, but many others were killed. The hol- 
 low honor paid to the metropolitan and to the 
 patriarch by the king and his courtiers was only 
 an aggravation.^ Syrians living to-day in the 
 mountains of Kurdistan and in the plains of Per- 
 sia have the tradition that their ancestors were 
 refugees from Arbil at this time. It was a trag- 
 edy that was no doubt repeated many times over 
 in the troubled ages and can be paralleled in the 
 events of more recent years in Turkey. 
 
 Though the Muslims trembled for Islam in 
 those terrible days, and though the destructive 
 forces were barbarous and not religious, neverthe- 
 
 ' Alar Jabalaha, Ch. xviii. 
 
204 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 less much must be laid to the charge of Islam. 
 These regions had been in its keeping for cen- 
 turies. Many of the atrocities were committed 
 by Muslims of races under the control of Islam for 
 generations — and some, too, by Christian allies 
 of the Barbarians. Muslim princes opened the 
 doors of the eastern provinces to the Turks, and 
 the Khalifas gave them employment. The dan- 
 ger was no new one. It was the old battle of 
 Iran and Turan. In earlier ages the forces of 
 civilization had held their own, but somehow they 
 were so weakened under Islam that they could 
 no longer defend themselves. 
 
Sixth Lecture 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE PAST ON THE 
 FUTURE MISSIONARY CONFLICT 
 
Incentives from the failures of the past. Place of the ori- 
 ental churches. The missionary character of the Syrian 
 Churches. Our duty to them. The Christianity that can con- 
 quer. Its methods, its theological character, its vital relation 
 to Christ. 
 
Sixth Lecture 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE PAST ON THE 
 FUTURE MISSIONARY CONFLICT 
 
 The Christian looks backward in order to look 
 forward with greater clearness and in order to 
 press forward with greater certainty. Our study- 
 will certainly be incomplete unless it be brought 
 into some relation to the present duty and future 
 course of the church in its missionary activity 
 in Muslim lands. If history be the judgment 
 of the world, the revelation of the relation of 
 human actions and human character to the 
 principles of divine righteousness, its verdict on 
 the great religions must be of the highest value. 
 If it be the revelation of the method of change 
 and progress among men, the missionary must 
 find in it much to guide him in his work. 
 
 Surely one lesson of the past is that a conflict 
 is inevitable. These two great faiths have been 
 in close contact for centuries and from its very 
 inception Islam has been influenced by Christian- 
 ity, but they have remained distinct and antago- 
 207 
 
208 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 nistic. It was said long ago by a Nestorian 
 apologist for Christianity that the faiths differed 
 only in the acceptance of Muhammad by Mus- 
 lims, and the same in substance is often said in 
 our own time, the inference being that a conflict 
 is unnecessary and that some sort of compromise 
 may be reached, or some common ground found, 
 so that the faiths may become cooperating forces. 
 History shows no such tendency to agreement. 
 The antagonism has grown sharper and the 
 dazed and wondering welcome accorded the first 
 Muslims has changed to sullen and bitter hatred. 
 The very toleration accorded by Muslims to 
 Christianity is a proof of the living power of 
 Muhammad who established this law rather than 
 an expression of the feeling of the Muslim 
 Church to-day. 
 
 History shows that the limits set by Muham- 
 mad in the Quran to the acceptance of Christian 
 teaching and the limits set in his practice to the 
 .principle of religious freedom are permanent and 
 iessential elements of Islam. It shows, further- 
 more, that while Islam is capable of very great 
 modification, the supremacy of Muhammad is 
 challenged only by those outside its pale. Shi'ite 
 and Sunnite, Sufi and Wahabi, alike accept the 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE FAST 209 
 
 permanent authority of the Quran and the abid- 
 ing apostolate of Muhammad, although they 
 differ in other things. And does Christ have less 
 honor among his followers ? Can we yield his 
 unique and absolute authority ? In other words, 
 the point of conflict is one of the first impor- 
 tance to both religions. Because the differences 
 are defined and limited, the conflict is the 
 sharper. Neither faith can compromise. The 
 ultimate question is the personal supremacy of 
 Muhammad or of Christ. 
 
 We find in the history incentives to active 
 effort. One such is the very difificulty of the 
 task. If Islam be, as is so often said, the most 
 formidable enemy that the church meets in the 
 battle-field of missions, if history shows that for 
 long centuries Christianity and Islam have been 
 face to face, and if the apparent victory rests 
 with the Prophet who challenged the supremacy 
 of the Christ, surely these are reasons for in- 
 creased courage and activity. Because the con- 
 flict has been and, so far as we can see, will be 
 one of special difficulty, the greater is the in- 
 centive. 
 
 The measure of success reached by Christianity 
 and the courageous persistence with which ori- 
 
210 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 ental Christians have held the faith is another in- 
 centive to effort. If a divided, distracted Chris- 
 tianity, tied down in its organization and the- 
 ology to the divisive disputes of the past, cut off 
 from the communion and aid of the church in 
 other lands, reduced to a position of civil inferi- 
 ority, and in the midst of anarchy and revolution, 
 could do what the Nestorian Church did, what 
 should we not be able to do in this age? The 
 faithful confession of the name of Christ by the 
 ancient Christian churches of the East is an in- 
 spiration to us who have known more of the full- 
 ness of that holy name. And the failures of the 
 past urge us on, the double failure — that of Chris- 
 tianity to hold and to gain the supremacy and 
 that of Islam to make right use of victory gained, 
 so as to preserve the heritage of the past and to 
 effect the moral regeneration of society. Nothing 
 can be gained by attempting to conceal the fail- 
 ure of Christianity in Western Asia. Much is to 
 be gained by learning the causes of its failure. 
 Much more is to be hoped for by the realization 
 of the fact that its failure in the past places us 
 under obligations to prove its right to rule by its 
 ability to overcome. And if the failure of Chris- 
 tianity is an incentive to effort, what shall we say 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 211 
 
 of the failure of Islam ? Nothing reveals charac- 
 ter more surely than success, and no failure is so 
 fundamental as failure in success. Islam has so 
 failed. Modern research is revealing more clearly 
 year by year the ancient civilizations of Western 
 Asia, and we are learning how highly developed 
 they were, how magnificent were their cities, and 
 how vast was the population. The glories of the 
 early Khalifat and of the other Muslim dynasties 
 that have ruled in more short-lived magnificence 
 are but the relics of these ancient civilizations 
 and not a new creation. In its glory Islam built 
 Baghdad out of the ruins of Seleucia and Ctesi- 
 phon and in its decadence the Sultan worships in 
 the church of the Emperors. Islam has failed to 
 preserve the heritage of antiquity. The destruc- 
 tive forces have been barbarous and not religious, 
 but Islam has failed to regenerate them. The 
 nomad Arab is the same to-day as in the days of 
 ignorance before Muhammad, and Arabia is still 
 unknown and unexplored. The Turk has been 
 supreme in Western Asia for nine hundred years, 
 and for that period and longer Islam has been 
 the rehgion of the Turkish conquerors, except 
 for less than a century of the domination of 
 heathen Mongols. In Europe Christianity con- 
 
212 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 verted the barbarians, and since their conver- 
 sion they have risen to heights of civilization 
 never known before. It conquered the invaders 
 and they became the benefactors of the world. 
 In Western Asia, Islam also conquered the in- 
 vaders, and they have learned some of the arts of 
 civilization ; but nevertheless the Turk remains a 
 menace to the world. The most civilized and the 
 most industrious portions of the population of 
 Muhammadan lands are the Christians; Syrians, 
 Armenians, Greeks, and Copts. A thousand 
 years ago Islam was more tolerant than Christian- 
 ity, but to-day Christendom is leaving tolera- 
 tion behind, a relic of the past, and grants free- 
 dom. The failure of Islam calls for the gospel. 
 
 A question very closely related to the history 
 that we have studied is that of the relation of 
 missionary work to the oriental churches. There 
 are three different policies toward these churches 
 in practice among missionaries. One is that of 
 absorbing them into some larger church body. 
 This has been practiced by the Church of Rome 
 for centuries, and is the policy of the Orthodox 
 Church of Russia toward all except the Greek 
 branch of the Orthodox Eastern Church, which 
 is of course its mother church. A second policy 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE FAST 213 
 
 is that of ma^intaining the old churches in their 
 present organization. This is the poUcy of the 
 Anglicans, embodied especially in the mission 
 of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Assyrian 
 Christians (/. e., the Nestorians) ; but even with 
 them it is not carried out rigorously, for in obedi- 
 ence to their theory of the church, the oriental 
 churches, except the Orthodox Greek Church, 
 are heretical and schismatic and accordingly 
 ought to return to their mother church. They 
 are thus led to sympathize with the aim of the 
 Russian Church, but not with that of the Church 
 of Rome. The third attitude is that of recogniz- 
 ing the necessity of a reformation which shall 
 embody the positive results of the Protestant 
 Reformation, even if the accomplishment of this 
 end requires division and separation from the old 
 church. Protestant missionaries began their work 
 in these oriental churches with an earnest attempt 
 to avoid any division in them. Perhaps it was 
 attempting a difficult task without realizing the 
 difficulties of the situation, but it was honest. It 
 failed, and independent bodies have been or- 
 ganized, having polities allied to those of the 
 churches sending the missionaries, but in theory 
 entirely self-governing. It is not the purpose to 
 
214 ISLAM AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 discuss these various policies, except to point out 
 what seem to be the right deductions from the 
 history as to general principles and aims, for such 
 a discussion would involve the different views of 
 the essential character and organization of the 
 church and the content of Christian doctrine, 
 loyalty to which is the basis of much of the di- 
 vergence in missionary policy. Very much of 
 sympathy and mutual appreciation of services 
 done is possible where formal cooperation is im- 
 possible, and in the relations of the different 
 Christian missions much is gained by the recog- 
 nition of the fundamental differences that make 
 the outward divergences inevitable. 
 
 The history of the past gives the oriental 
 churches a right to consideration and sympathy. 
 What they have done and what they have suf- 
 fered alike demand this. We have no right to 
 cut the children off from the memory and herit- 
 age of their fathers. They have a past full of 
 inspiration and heroism to which they must be 
 true. That same history also shows the necessity 
 of reformation. The Church exists not for itself 
 but for its Master and to accomplish the work 
 which he came to do. The oriental churches 
 have shown their inability to accomplish the 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 215 
 
 work that is theirs. This inabihty, so far as it is 
 due to isolation calls for our cooperation. So far 
 as it is due to an inadequate conception of Chris- 
 tian truth or to spiritual deadness, it calls for our 
 aid and inspiration to higher things. The great 
 aim of all efforts in their behalf is not to preserve 
 them but to enable them to accomplish more fully 
 the manifest duty and privilege that is theirs be- 
 cause of their situation and opportunity. To aid 
 them merely for their own sake is not missionary 
 work in a true sense, and much less is it a suffi- 
 cient motive to work for them in order to prose- 
 lyte them to our particular form of Christian 
 teaching or church order. The supreme aim of 
 work for them must be to enable them to accom- 
 plish their historic mission, which is distinctly 
 missionary. All work for them and all methods 
 of work should be subordinated to this great aim. 
 The truest loyalty to the past is to carry forward 
 to completion its highest endeavors. If the mis- 
 sion of the oriental churches can best be accom- 
 plished by a change in their form of organization, 
 surely that is warrant enough for such a course. 
 What has just been said as to the endeavors of 
 the past applies in a special way to the two Syr- 
 ian Churches whose history we have been con- 
 
216 ISLA3I AND TEE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 sidering. They have been the missionary- 
 churches of the past in Asia, Even the Arme- 
 nians owe their Christianity to them. They, too, 
 have suffered most from Islam and from the an- 
 archy of Asiatic history. The very absence of 
 national ambitions and hopes makes them more 
 easily moved by missionary appeals and makes 
 their religion freer from political color. Their 
 adaptation to missionary work, in the case of in- 
 dividuals, is one of the proven facts of the mod- 
 ern Protestant missionary endeavor in Persia. It 
 is evident that in the accomplishment of this 
 mission the oriental churches will need the best 
 equipment possible, the strongest spiritual endue- 
 ment, and the best training. The duty that rests 
 upon us is not measured by their needs in them- 
 selves but by their needs in relation to the 
 broader mission to which they have been called. 
 Nor does the accomplishment of this mission de- 
 pend necessarily on the reformation of the whole 
 body. In missionary work from the beginning 
 individuals have played a great part and if the 
 net result of missions among these oriental 
 churches be the raising up from them of single 
 workers who accomplish great things for God, 
 that is no small result. It is possible also that 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 217 
 
 members of any one of the oriental churches, 
 having a new vision of the gospel of Christ and 
 of the mission of the church, may do the great- 
 est good when separated from the parent body. 
 I do not believe that such separation should be 
 sought, but experience shows that it is inevitable. 
 The reformation of the old churches themselves 
 may be hastened by the presence alongside of 
 them of bodies of Christians practising a simpler 
 and more active faith. Furthermore, the active 
 proselyting efforts of the Roman Catholic and 
 the Russian Orthodox Churches are tending con- 
 stantly to the disintegration of the oriental 
 churches, and practically, by force of theological 
 theory and in spite of a real reluctance, the work 
 of the Anglican Church tends in the same 
 direction. 
 
 It is not too much to say that the only hope 
 of national ecclesiastical existence and the ac- 
 complishment of their religious mission by the 
 Syrian Churches is to be found in a Protestant 
 reformation embodied in free churches. While 
 holding this conviction, we can rejoice in the evi- 
 dence, especially in the national Armenian 
 Church, of regenerating influences and in the 
 efforts of enlightened, devoted members of the 
 
218 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 English-speaking Episcopal Churches to arouse 
 a new spiritual life in the ancient churches under 
 the conditions of their inherited forms of wor- 
 ship and church order. In brief, the policy of 
 the Protestant missionaries in permitting sepa- 
 ration from the ancient churches is justified by the 
 fact of history that Christianity as expressed and 
 limited by the forms of beUef and organization 
 of the oriental churches has failed to conquer 
 Islam and that a reformation consequently is im- 
 perative in order to do so. 
 
 No lesson of the history is plainer than that it 
 is not every form of Christianity that can meet 
 Islam with success, and the question arises ; What 
 is the character of the Christianity that shall win 
 the victory for the faith ? It is not meant that 
 we can ,i should mold our religion altogether 
 to suit the needs of a particular conflict or that 
 the fundamentals of faith can be tested in this 
 way ; but it is true that we should carefully ex- 
 amine our faith and not load it down with what 
 is not essential in content or method. It is not 
 oriental Christianity alone that has failed to meet 
 adequately the needs of this great conflict, for 
 Roman and Greek Catholicism have failed also. 
 Both have been and are in contact with Islam 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 219 
 
 and have made very little impression on it. 
 Roman Catholic missions in Turkey and Persia 
 go back to the times of the Crusaders and of the 
 Mongols, and they have very little to show for 
 those centuries beside the proselyting of a con- 
 siderable number of oriental Christians. Protes- 
 tant missions are much more recent, the oldest 
 not yet a century old, and it can at least be 
 claimed confidently that they have made more 
 impression on Islam than have the Roman 
 Catholics. But there is no room for self-com- 
 placent comparison. The Christianity to meet 
 Islam must be the best and strongest possible. 
 
 In method we can perhaps learn from both the 
 faiths in their past conflict. One such lesson is 
 the importance of enlisting in the service of mis- 
 sions the great force of commerce. The i. dern 
 expansion of Christianity owes much to com- 
 merce, though commerce owes a heavier debt to 
 missions. Christian merchants, however, are not 
 yet reckoned among the active forces of missions, 
 and yet why should they not be? In the work 
 of the church at home and especially in the great 
 cities the part taken by laymen is great and is 
 increasing. Why should it not be so in the for- 
 eign field also ? Why should not men go out 
 
220 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 into the great roads of trade and the great marts 
 of commerce to build up the kingdom of God, as 
 the Empire of Britain has been built up by mer- 
 chants ? So also, while the part of physicians in 
 the direct work of missions is very great, the 
 kingdom of Christ owes but little so far to the 
 services of physicians practising in foreign lands 
 on their own account. Why, again, should there 
 not be many such ? In some respects they could 
 do a work that no agent of a foreign missionary 
 society could possibly do. Again, it may be 
 questioned whether the modern missionary move- 
 ment of Protestantism has availed itself as it 
 ought of the monastic organization. A distinc- 
 tion may rightly be drawn between monasticism 
 as a life, an ideal of spiritual attainment in itself, 
 and monasticism as a method. Something can 
 be said for the disciphne of community Hfe, but 
 altogether aside from this, why should the 
 method of community life, by which it is possi- 
 ble for men to live and work where the condi- 
 tions make the establishment of families unadvis- 
 able, not be adopted and used by Protestants? 
 The services of monks and darvishes alike sug- 
 gest this lesson and it is folly to cast it aside be- 
 cause of its association with Roman Catholicism. 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 221 
 
 The Avork is so great, the needs so pressing, and 
 the difficulties such that new forces and new 
 methods are called for. The example and ideal 
 of the Christian home with its practical illustra- 
 tion of the dignity and worth of womanhood are 
 indispensable in Muslim lands ; but there is a 
 work of widespread evangelization that it would 
 seem can best be accomplished by some adapta- 
 tion of the principle of monastic organization. 
 
 The importance of freedom in organization is 
 another lesson of the history. In this Islam had 
 the great advantage over the developed form of 
 Christianity. It was free and had no elaborate 
 gradation in rank and in niceties of church order 
 to enforce on new converts. Along with the 
 simplicity of organization went a simplicity of 
 statement of doctrine. Modern Christianity has 
 learned in large measure the necessity of present- 
 ing the gospel in its simplest terms to new con- 
 verts, but it may be doubted whether in educa- 
 tional and church work the same lesson has been 
 so well learned. The sense of brotherhood, free- 
 dom, and equality within the pale of the faith has 
 been a great force in Muslim expansion as it was 
 in early Christianity. That feeling is obscured 
 by anything which places a barrier between the 
 
222 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHUBCHES 
 
 missionary and the people, or between part of 
 the people and the rest. The difference in civili- 
 zation, in kind as well as in degree, between the 
 missionary and the people is a barrier, and is 
 one reason that wide evangelization must be ac- 
 complished largely by a native agency. An 
 elaborate and rigid organization of the church is 
 another barrier. In educational work a system, 
 a curriculum, too large a number of students, 
 may be such barriers and may prevent the fellow- 
 ship that is the very soul of discipleship. There 
 is scarcely a better test, from the missionary's 
 point of view, of the rightfulness of any method 
 of church organization than that of the reali- 
 zation through it of equal fellowship in Christ. 
 Such fellowship implies an equal share in the 
 duties as well as in the privileges of the Christian 
 life, if such a distinction be at all permissible. It 
 makes the members, as no mere plan of organi- 
 zation can, individual forces in the expansive 
 work, a consummation which more than any 
 other one thing is the secret of rapid evangeliza- 
 tion. When one reads of the rapid spread of 
 Islam in Central Africa and in the East Indies, 
 and realizes that its extension makes the work of 
 Christian evangelization many times more slow 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 223 
 
 and difficult, it is impossible to repress the feel- 
 ing that the Church of Christ needs not only a 
 new baptism of zeal but also a new enduement 
 of wisdom in order to meet the demands of the 
 time. The great brotherhoods of darvishes are 
 preaching Islam, unpaid and with little machin- 
 ery, while the great Church of Christ moves 
 ponderously. 
 
 Theologically Christianity will conquer Islam 
 not because of what is common to the two re- 
 ligions, but because of what is different. It is 
 folly to suppose that men will accept a new faith 
 for anything except for its superiority over that 
 which they possess ; and the great superiority 
 of Christianity is in those things which Islam 
 does not have. Christ is greater than Muhammad 
 because he is divine, and the Christian hope of 
 life is more blessed than that of Islam because 
 its foundations are different. It is based on an 
 Atonement and is made possible by an Incarna- 
 tion. The Christian idea of God is higher be- 
 cause of those elements and those facts that have 
 led to the formulation of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity. 
 
 Furthermore, the Christianity that can conquer 
 Islam will hold these doctrines with no doubtful 
 
224 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 assent but as living forces feeding the springs of 
 life and answering the soul's deepest needs. 
 They will be more than dogmas. Within the 
 growing body of the church itself and on its 
 outskirts, we must surely look for the same kind 
 of development that is found in the early history 
 of Christianity and in the history of Islam. I 
 mean the springing up of variations and even 
 perversions of doctrine. The almost entire ab- 
 sence of such phenomena, which marks the his- 
 tory of the oriental churches after a certain era, 
 is an evidence of their weakness ; and the recur- 
 rence of such events in the history of missions 
 should be a cause of encouragement. The church 
 to-day should have attained to a clearness in the 
 apprehension of truth as well as to a charity in 
 its relation to divergences in expressing it that 
 will enable it to guide wisely the growth of belief 
 in mission lands. It is inconceivable that an 
 elaborate system of theology such as Islam pos- 
 sesses can be at once replaced by a system of 
 Christian theology. A process must intervene 
 and in that process variations must arise. No 
 fact in modern Persian life is more truly full of 
 encouragement than the way in which the Bible 
 is entering into the intellectual life of the coun- 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE PAST 225 
 
 try. It is perplexing to meet a keen Babi contro- 
 versialist and to find how he can turn to his own 
 ends the statements of prophecy and of doctrine 
 in the Bible, but it is also to be welcomed as a 
 proof that Christianity has a hold on the mind 
 of the people beyond the narrow limits of direct 
 missionary influence. The Christianity that will 
 conquer must be able to take hold of the simple, 
 ignorant folk, and also to enter into the thought 
 and life of the cultured and intellectual. It must 
 be able to replace a false philosophy with a true 
 and to grapple with the metaphysical problems 
 that hold the oriental mind. 
 
 Finally, it must realize that the real conqueror 
 is Christ and the real force is his Spirit. The 
 truths that Islam lacks are found in him — the 
 Incarnation by which God has brought man into 
 living union with himself, the forgiveness on the 
 basis of an Atonement, the Fatherhood of God, 
 at once righteous and merciful. The contrast of 
 Islam and Christianity is the contrast between 
 Christ and Muhammad, that is, the contrast of 
 the ideals to which the religions are tending, ob- 
 scured in history but fixed in the foundations of 
 the faiths and inalienable from them. I do not 
 see how any man, Christian in even the remotest 
 
226 ISLA3r AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 sense, can fail to acknowledge the superiority, 
 nay the indispensableness, of Christianity, if the 
 question be brought to this test, whether he 
 would be willing himself or could counsel any 
 other to put Muhammad where he holds Christ. 
 In this point of view, one cannot but agree with 
 Joseph Parker in saying, " There are comparative 
 religions, but Christianity is not one of them." 
 The story of Jesus Christ, his character, his love, 
 his death, denied by the Prophet in shallow flat- 
 tery — the preaching of these shall win men to 
 him. The character of Christ, exemplified in the 
 purity of the home, in the tenderness of the phy- 
 sician, in the righteous life and preaching of the 
 missionary, shall lead men to realize something 
 of holiness and of sin. And the patience of 
 Christ, his self-devotion, his love to the very end, 
 these shall give us the power to endure, though 
 the conflict be long and difficult. And Christ, 
 the living Son of God, shall himself be with us 
 and lead us on to victory. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 A. D. A. H. 
 
 Council of Ephesus, Condemnation of 
 
 Nestorius 431 
 
 Council of Chalcedon, Monophysitism 
 
 condemned 453 
 
 Organization of Nestorianism in Persian 
 
 Empire ca. 490 
 
 Organization of Jacobite Church ... oe. 550 
 
 Birth of Muhammad 570 
 
 Wars of Heraclius and Khusru . . . 610 — 626 
 Beginning of Muhammad's prophetic 
 
 career 611 
 
 The Flight to Medina, the Hijra , . , 622 I 
 
 The Death of Muhammad 632 II 
 
 Four " Orthodox " Khalifas, Abu Bakr, 
 
 Umar, Uthman, Ali 632 — 661 II — 40 
 
 Conquest of Jerusalem, Syria 637 16 
 
 Conquest of Persia 642 21 
 
 Umayyid Khalifas of Damascus . . . 661 — 750 41 — 132 
 
 John of Damascus 700 — 750 
 
 Abbasid Khalifas of Baghdad .... 756-1258 132 — 656 
 
 Harun ur Rashid 786 — 809 170 — 193 
 
 Mamun, Khalifa 813 — 833 198 — 218 
 
 Timothy, Nestorian Patriarch .... 780 — 820 163 — 205 
 Samanids, rulers of Khurasan and Trans- 
 
 oxiana 874 — 999 261 — 389 
 
 Buwayhids, rulers of Baghdad .... 945 — 1055 334 — 447 
 
 Sultans of Ghazna, rulers of Persia . . 997 — 1040 387 — 431 
 
 Seljuk Turks . 1037 — 1300 429 — 700 
 
 227 
 
228 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Saladin 1 169 — 1193 5^4 — 5^9 
 
 Crusades • . . . . iioo — 1250 
 
 Mongol rule in Persia, etc 1220 — 1349 617 — 750 
 
 Jingis Khan 1206 — 1227 603 — 624 
 
 Hulagu Khan 1256 — 1265 654 — 663 
 
 Sack of Baghdad and murder of Khalifa 1258 658 
 
 Ghazan Khan 1295 — 1304 694 — 703 
 
 Timur (Tamerlane) 1369 — 1405 771 — 807 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Note. — The following list makes no preten- 
 sions to be exhaustive in any sense, or even to 
 contain the names of all the works quoted in the 
 foregoing pages or consulted in their preparation. 
 It is "intended merely to suggest some of the most 
 useful books. FuU bibhographies may be found 
 in Zwemer's Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, and in 
 Arnold's The Preaching of Islam. 
 
 Lives of Aluhammad. 
 Sir William Muir, 
 
 Johnstone's Muhammad and His Power, 
 Sprenger's Life — (in German). 
 
 The Quran. 
 
 Translations with introductions and notes, especially Pal- 
 mer's, Rodwell's, and Sale's, 
 Sell's Historical Development of the Quran, 
 Poole's Selections from the Koran. 
 
 General Account of Islam. 
 
 Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, 
 
 Sell, Faith of Islam, Essays on Islam, 
 
 Ameer Syed Ali, Life and Teachings of Mohammed or The 
 
 Spirit of Islam, 
 Zwemer, Arabia, the Cradle of Islam, 
 Lane, Modern Egyptians. 
 
 229 
 
230 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Oriental Christianity. 
 
 Harnack's History of Christian Dogma, 
 
 (Also general works on Church History and Encyclopedias), 
 
 (For special investigation, Assemani Bibliotheca Orien- 
 
 talis, Abbeloos et Lamy, Gregorii Heberjei Chronicon 
 
 Ecclesiasticum, 
 Bedjan, Gregorii Hebersi Chronicon Syriacum, 
 Chabot, Histoire de Mar Jabalaha HI.) 
 
 Origins of Islam. 
 
 Deutsch, Literary Remains, 
 
 Geiger, Judaism and Islam, 
 
 Wellhausen, Skizzen and Vorarbeiten, iii., 
 
 Smith, Bible and Islam, 
 
 St. Clair-Tisdall, Sources of Islam. 
 
 History of Islam. 
 
 Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Jurispru- 
 dence, and Constitutional Theory, 
 Muir, The Caliphate, 
 Freeman, History of the Saracens, 
 Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients, 
 Miiller, Der Islam im Morgen-und Abendland, 
 Howorth, History of the Mongols. 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 THE DIVISIONS OF ORIENTAL CHRISTIANITY 
 
 The following brief statement is inserted for 
 the benefit of readers who may not have access 
 to church histories, 
 
 Christianity in its first spread took hold of the 
 Greek and the Syrian peoples and very soon 
 after of the inhabitants of Egypt. During the 
 first five Christian centuries the Armenians and 
 Abyssinians as peoples and considerable num- 
 bers of Persians and Arabs accepted Christianity. 
 Various causes gave rise to the theological con- 
 troversies that make up so much of the history of 
 the church. These controversies gave occasion 
 and furnished leaders for divisions which followed 
 linguistic and racial lines. Thus the Greeks 
 formed the great body of the Orthodox or Greek 
 Eastern Church, the Syrians divided between the 
 Nestorian and Jacobite Churches and later the 
 Maronite Church, the bulk of the people of Egypt 
 formed the Coptic Church, while the Abyssinians 
 and Armenians form the national churches of 
 231 
 
832 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 those names. In fact, wherever Christianity be- 
 came the national faith one or more national 
 churches were formed. The ruling conception 
 of the church and the temper of Christianity 
 made schism the natural way for the formation 
 of such churches. The persecuting policy of the 
 emperors tended to widen and embitter differ- 
 ences in theological belief. The condemnation 
 of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in a. d. 
 431 was a blow at the Antiochian school of the- 
 ology, which was already dominant at Edessa 
 and further East. The Persian kings were some 
 of them bitter persecutors of Christianity and 
 the Christians living within the Persian Empire 
 were suspected of treasonable intentions to aid 
 the Roman power when engaged in war with 
 Persia. The leaders of the Persian Church, 
 especially Barsumas, bishop of Nisibis, saw that 
 by espousing the Nestorian cause they would re- 
 move this suspicion and gain a more favorable 
 position in the Persian kingdom. The Jacobite 
 writers charge that the Persian authorities fa- 
 vored the Nestorians so far as to persecute in 
 their interest. A minority of the Christians in 
 the Persian Empire, however, refused to accept 
 Nestorianism. Some of these were later identified 
 
APPENDIX III 233 
 
 with the Jacobite Church, while others remained 
 faithful to the Orthodox Church and were called 
 Melchites, z. e., adherents of the (Greek) king. 
 The process that resulted in the organization of 
 the Nestorian Church was completed about sixty 
 years after the Council of Ephesus. 
 
 The peculiar Christological teaching that be- 
 came the distinguishing mark of the Nestorian 
 Church introduces a third term into the formula 
 that defines the Person of Christ and says that in 
 ^ his single person he possesses not only two dis- 
 tinct natures but also two hypostases or person- 
 alities, one divine and one human, insisting that 
 an impersonal nature is inconceivable. Syria, 
 purged by the government of Nestorianism, re- 
 fused to accept the " Orthodox " faith and the 
 mass of the people joined the opposite wing and 
 accepted Monophysitism, maintaining not merely 
 the union but also the fusion of the divine and 
 human natures. It is unnecessary here to men- 
 tion the various subdivisions of Monophysite 
 teaching. In spite of opposition by the govern- 
 ment, Monophysitism held its own and finalh', 
 about a century after its condemnation by the 
 Council of Chalcedon (a. d. 451), was organized 
 by Jacob Baradai into what has been known as 
 
234 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 the Jacobite Church. It was in reahty the na- 
 tional Syrian Church within the bounds of the 
 Eastern Empire. The growth of the Arab 
 power speedily brought them for the most part, 
 though not entirely, under Muslim rule. Aside 
 from the Christological differences, the Nestorian 
 and Jacobite Churches differed from each other 
 in that the former was simpler in its worship and 
 practices. Its liturgy is briefer and more primi- 
 tive. The differences are important merely be- 
 cause they furnished boundaries and barriers. 
 The other churches do not enter into the scope 
 of this work and cannot be discussed here. Their 
 development was along national lines and in the 
 case of the Armenians especially the theological 
 difference seems to have been entirely fortuitous. 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF UMAR 
 (^Fro7n Arnold's Freaching of Islam, ^sf.") 
 
 " The So-Called Ordinance of Uniar. 
 
 " This formula is traditionally said to have been 
 the one adopted by the Christian cities that sub- 
 mitted to the Muslim army ; but none of the 
 earliest Muhammadan historians give it, and Sir 
 WiUiam Muir doubts its authenticity and consid- 
 ers that it contains oppressive terms that are 
 more characteristic of later times than of the 
 reign of the tolerant Umar. • In the name of 
 God, the Merciful, the Compassionate I This is 
 the writing from the Christians of such and such 
 a city to Umar ibnu-1 Khattab. When you 
 marched against us, we asked of you protection 
 for ourselves, our families, our possessions and 
 our coreligionists ; and we made this stipulation 
 with you, that we will not erect in our city or the 
 suburbs any new monastery, church, cell or her- 
 mitage ; 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 
 235 
 
236 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 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 pas- 
 sengers and travelers ; that we will receive any 
 Muslim traveler into our houses and give him 
 food and lodging for three nights ; that we will 
 not harbor any spy in our churches or houses, or 
 conceal any enemy of the Muslims ; that we will 
 not teach our children the Quran ; 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 honor 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, 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 inscrip- 
 tions 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 
 
APPENDIX IV 237 
 
 our churches or display our crosses or our sacred 
 books ill the streets of the MusHms, or in their 
 market-places ; that we will strike the bells in our 
 churches lightly; that we will not recite our 
 services in a loud voice, when a Muslim is pres- 
 ent, that we will not carry pahn-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 coreligionists, 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.' " 
 
 But Von Kremer, the best historian of the Arab 
 rule, takes a much more unfavorable view of 
 Umar's character and says, " So Umar established 
 that fanatical, intolerant attitude, which for more 
 than a thousand years has been an essential char- 
 acteristic of Islam. It was his inflexible, strong 
 spirit, full of scorn and contempt toward all non- 
 
238 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Muslims in the conquered lands, which Umar in- 
 spired into Islam, and this spirit has worked on 
 through a long course of centuries as its chief 
 force and life principle." ^ 
 
 ' Geschichte des Herrschenden Ideen des hlaviSy 333, 
 
APPENDIX V 
 
 THE RELATION OF THE PATRIARCHS TO THE 
 KHALIFAS 
 
 The following historical incidents will serve to 
 illustrate what this relation was : 
 /. hi Sassanian Times. 
 
 About 425 Marabokht was ordained patri- 
 arch at the command of Bahram's generalissimo, 
 whom he had bribed. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., 
 ii. 20, ed. Abbeloos-Lamy, n., p. 54. 
 
 During the patriarchate of Elisha (520-532) a 
 rival Narses intrigued for the support of the 
 king. The former was aided by the royal phy- 
 sician and the king finally put Narses in prison, 
 where he died. — Assemani, Bib. Orientalis, III. 
 I : 167 ; De Catliolicis, 23. 
 
 Joseph (552-555) was elected patriarch by the 
 aid of Khusru Anushirvan. He was later de- 
 posed, and during his time a synod passed a canon 
 against ecclesiastics who obtained preferment 
 through the influence of kings or of others in au- 
 thority. — Assemani, De Catholicis, 29, 
 239 
 
240 ISLA3I AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 The same statements are made of his successor, 
 Ezekiel (567-580). — De Catholicis, 31. 
 
 Khusru Parviz interfered to secure the election 
 and later the deposition of Gregory (a. d. 604- 
 608) and to his opposition was due the interreg- 
 num from 608 till 628, De Catholicis, 3 1 . — Thomas 
 of Marga, ii. SQf. 
 
 These incidents show that the Sassanian kings 
 were accustomed to exercise some right of con- 
 trol in the election of patriarchs and that the 
 Arabs in their policy followed an already exist- 
 ing precedent. 
 2. The Diplomas Granted to the Patriarchs. 
 
 The Nestorian writers claim that Ishuyabh II. 
 (628-647) received a firman of some sort from 
 Muhammad and again from Umar, De Catholicis, 
 41 ff., Thomas of Marga, II., 123, note. Also that 
 his successor Marameh obtained one from Ali, 
 De Catholicis, 43f. 
 
 Bar Hebr^us in his Ecclesiastical Chronicle 
 mentions a number of instances in which such 
 diplomas were given to Jacobite patriarchs : 
 A. D. 744 to John by Marwan (i. 309), a. d. 755 to 
 Isaac by Mansur (i. 317), A. d. 755 to Sandal by 
 Mansur (i, 319), a. d. 762 to David, while a rival 
 George was tortured for assuming office without 
 
APPENDIX V 241 
 
 such authority (i. 325), a. d. 1095 to Athanasius 
 by Ahu Jafar (ii. 465), a. d. 1208 to John by Sul- 
 tan Iz-ed Din (ii. 625), also to a patriarch from 
 the Khalifa a. d. 1080 (iii. 307). Similar mention 
 is made of the Jacobite Maphriana a. d. 1112 
 (iii. 317) and of the Nestorian patriarch Abraham 
 III. A. D. 905 (iii. 229). The practice passed over 
 into Mongol times, when the Jacobite patriarch 
 and Maphriana received papers from the Mongol 
 king, A. D. 1264 (iii. 433). Such papers were also 
 given to the Nestorian patriarch Mar Yahbhalaha. 
 J. Violent Interference of the Government in 
 Church Affairs. 
 
 George, the Nestorian patriarch (660-680) was 
 imprisoned by an Arab governor to extort money. 
 — Bar Hebrseus, Ec. CJiron., 131. Above p. 130. 
 
 Khnanishu, Nestorian patriarch (685-699), im- 
 prisoned by Abd al Malik in interest of a rival 
 John, who was himself later imprisoned by the 
 KhaHfa. — Bar Hebrseus, Ec. Chron.^ i3ifir. 
 Above p. 1 30. 
 
 Imprisonment of three patriarchs by Mansur. 
 See above p. 152 for narrative. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. 
 Chron., I35f. 
 
 Theodosius, Nestorian patriarch (852-858) was 
 imprisoned by Mutawakkil on account of the 
 
242 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Khalifa's anger against Bokhtishu, a Nestorian 
 patriarch. — Bar Hebraeus, iii. 191 f. 
 
 George, Jacobite patriarch, imprisoned and tor- 
 tured in A. D. 762 by Mansur and his rival David 
 made patriarch. Later Mahdi released George. 
 — Syriac Chronicle y edited by Brooks, Z D M G 
 ii. 587, Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., i. 333. 
 
 Marwan imprisoned John, Jacobite patriarch, 
 at the instigation of certain bishops in order to 
 extort money from him. — Bar Hebrasus, Ec. 
 Chron., i. 309, 
 
 In A. D. 755 Mansur compelled the Jacobite 
 bishops to elect one Isaac patriarch because of 
 his supposed medical skill, but on the exposure 
 of his ignorance he was killed by the Khalifa. — 
 Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., i. 315. 
 
 The next Jacobite patriarch. Sandal, was set 
 up by the force of the Khalifa and later killed by 
 the Christians. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chro7i., i. 319. 
 
 Other Nestorian patriarchs said by Bar Hebraeus 
 to have been elected by the aid and sometimes 
 the violent interference of the government are 
 Mari (a. d. 987, iii. 255), John II. (a. d. iooo, iii. 
 261), Ishuyabh (a. d. 1020, iii. 285), Saurishu 
 (a. d. 1061, iii. 301), Yahbhalaha (a. d. 1190, 
 iii. 371). 
 
APPENDIX V 243 
 
 Assemani mentions also the following as hav- 
 ing been elected through the influence of the 
 Khalifas and usually the intrigues of the royal 
 physicians : Joshua bar Nun (820-824), B. O. ii. 
 435 ; George (825-829), B. O. ii. 435 ; Abraham 
 II. (836-841) De Catholicis 94; Abraham III. 
 (a. h. 292-325), B. O. ii. 440. 
 
 Two orthodox patriarchs of Antioch were 
 killed by the Khalifas. After the death of the 
 first of these there was a vacancy of forty years 
 on account of the opposition of the Khalifa. 
 These were Alexander II., 695-702, and Chris- 
 topher, 960-966 (Cf. Bar Hebraeus, Syv. Chron., 
 190). Neale's Patriarchate of Antioch, i67ff. 
 See also Appendix VII. 
 
APPENDIX VI 
 
 MOBS AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS 
 
 The following examples of mobs will illustrate 
 the troubles that must have assailed the Chris- 
 tians whenever the government was weak, as it 
 was the most of the time. They are all taken 
 from the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Bar Hebrseus. 
 
 A Mardin Christian having been caught in 
 adultery with an Arab woman was tortured and 
 all his goods confiscated. A church built by him 
 was changed into a mosque. About the same 
 time a monk apostatized to Islam but repenting 
 fled to Jerusalem. In consequence the Chris- 
 tians of Mardin, and especially his brothers, 
 suffered severe exactions. — ii. 56if. 
 
 The Monastery of Mar Cyriacus on the upper 
 Euphrates was sacked by an apostate to Islam, 
 whose father, a wealthy physician named Shimon, 
 had founded it. — ii. 72 3f. 
 
 About A. D. 830. A Jacobite of Takrit being 
 
 accused of reviling the prophet was seized by a 
 
 mob, taken to Baghdad, and put to death by the 
 
 government on refusing to apostatize. — iii. 183. 
 244 
 
APPENDIX VI 245 
 
 A. D. 832. Five churches in Basra were de- 
 stroyed by a mob. — iii. 189. 
 
 A. D. 885. A mob sacked the Nestorian 
 patriarchal residence, disinterring the preceding 
 patriarch's body and carrying it about the streets. 
 The occasion was a charge of insult to a Muslim 
 corpse made by beggars who had been turned off 
 from the patriarchal door. — iii. 209f. 
 
 A. D. 990. Mobs destroyed Christian churches 
 in Baghdad and continued for some time to rav- 
 age the Christian quarter in spite of the attempts 
 of the government to quiet them. — iii. 25 /f., 
 261-269. 
 
 A. D. 1057. The Nestorian patriarchal resi- 
 dence in Baghdad sacked by troops from Khu- 
 rasan. — iii. 299. 
 
 A. D. 1075. The Jacobite Church in Takrit 
 robbed by the Turks. — iii. 303. 
 
 The churches of Takrit destroyed by mobs 
 and the Christians of the place scattered. — iii. 
 309. About twenty years later they returned 
 and an Armenian was appointed governor of the 
 place. — iii. 317. 
 
 During the twelfth century devastations by 
 Kurds in the region of Mosul, a Jacobite bishop 
 killed in his cell, churches and monasteries de- 
 
246 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 stroyed, and in the mountains four hundred 
 Nestorian villages ravaged. — iii. 361, 363ff. 
 
 A. D. 1 21 5. Mobs in Takrit stopped only by 
 the payment by the Christians of 20,000 gold 
 dinars. — iii. 391. 
 
 A. D. 1 231. The Kurds of Tur Abdin rav- 
 aged the Christian villages of the region and the 
 Jacobite Maphriana killed in an attack. — iii. 405. 
 
 Of course these incidents are scattered over a 
 very long period, but they are doubtless typical 
 of what were not infrequent occurrences. 
 
 In his Syriac Chronicle Bar Hebraeus gives the 
 following additional instances of mobs. 
 
 C. 885. The Monastery in Baghdad sacked, 
 also new additions to church in Tarsus. — p. 164. 
 
 C. 920. Mobs sacked residence of Abdullah, 
 a Christian physician and of Christian lawyers. — 
 
 p. 174- 
 
 C. 971. Two Arabs were killed near a Nes- 
 torian monastery in Mosul and the Christians 
 escaped only by the payment of 120,000 dirhams. 
 —p. 192. 
 
APPENDIX VII 
 
 BRIBERY AND OTHER EVIDENCES OF WEALTH 
 OF THE CHRISTIANS 
 
 The following instances are from Bar Hebraeus' 
 Ecclesiastical Chronicle. 
 
 Ishuyabh III., Nestorian patriarch 647-657, is 
 said to have resorted to bribing the Arab author- 
 ities in order to prevent the Jacobites building a 
 church in Mosul. — iii. 127. 
 
 John, Jacobite patriarch (a. d. 744), is said to 
 have taken fifty camel-loads of presents to Mar- 
 wan. — i. 307. 
 
 John bar Bukhtishu, Nestorian bishop of 
 Mosul (C. A. D. 900), used to go about his diocese 
 in great state with a crowd of Greek and Nubian 
 servants in livery fit for a king and with a train 
 of baggage that required six camels, besides a 
 number of mules. — iii. 233. 
 
 About the same time the Nestorian patriarch 
 spent 30,000 dinars in accomplishing the expul- 
 sion from Baghdad of the patriarchs and metro- 
 politans of the other sects. — iii. 237. 
 247 
 
248 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 Abraham, Nestorian patriarch (C. A. d. 912), 
 said to have received 100,000 dirhams for the 
 ordination of a bishop of Baghdad, 100,000 for 
 the ordination of one of Mosul, and 700,000 for 
 the ordination of one of Nisibis. — iii. 241. 
 
 Ishuyabh, Nestorian patriarch (C. a. d. 1190), 
 secured his place by a bribe of 5,000 dinars (iii. 
 285), and Yahbhalaha by one of 7,000 dinars 
 (iii. 371), and his successor Saurishu by a like 
 sum. — iii. 370. 
 
 The Jacobite Maphriana of Mosul (C. a. d 
 1 189) paid 3,000 dinars in order to be recognized 
 by the governor of Mosul and permitted to enter 
 that city. — iii. 381. 
 
 A bribe of 6,000 dinars was promised the 
 prince of Amid in behalf of a candidate for the 
 Jacobite patriarchate, but the intrigue was frus- 
 trated by the Metropolitan of Amid. — ii. 609. 
 
 During a long continued rivalry and schism in 
 the Jacobite Church (a. d. 1252-1261) bribes 
 were paid to the Franks, the Seljuk Sultan, and 
 the Mongols in behalf of both candidates. — ii. 
 709-727, 733ff. 
 
APPENDIX VIII 
 
 APOSTATES FROM CHRISTIANITY TO ISLAM 
 
 When Mansur imprisoned the three Christian 
 patriarchs (above p. 152) many Christians became 
 Muslim. — Assemani, De CatJiolicis, 67-69. 
 
 Mahdi, being angered, brought force to bear on 
 the Christians of Aleppo and 5,000 apostatized. 
 (Above p. 152). — Bar Hebraeus, Syr. Chrou., 127. 
 
 C. A. D. 780. Joseph, bishop of Merv, an unsuc- 
 cessful aspirant to the Nestorian patriarchate was 
 persuaded by the Khalifa Mahdi to embrace 
 Islam, but he later fled to Roman territory, no 
 doubt to escape Islam. — Assemani, De CatJiolicis, 
 7"/, B. O. iii. : i, 160; Thomas of Marga, ii. 383. 
 
 Bar Hebraeus states that the cause of his 
 apostasy was the charge of sodomy. — Ec. Chron., 
 iii. 171. 
 
 C. A. D. 798. A general apostasy to Islam in 
 the region of Aleppo. — Ec. Chron., i. 335. 
 
 C. 900. Theodore, Nestorian bishop of Beth 
 
 Garmai, deposed for immorality, later caught in 
 
 adultery with an Arab woman, became Muslim. 
 
 — Ec. Chro?i., iii. 227f. 
 
 249 
 
250 ISLAM AND THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES 
 
 C. 840. It was proven that Enoch, a disciple 
 and protege of the Nestorian patriarch Abraham 
 II had at one time apostatized to Islam. He was 
 freed from annoyance only by the payment of a 
 large sum of money to the government and had 
 to give up his ecclesiastical offices. — Assemani, 
 De Catholicis, 94, B. O. iii. : i, 508. 
 ' A. D. 962. Gabriel, Metropolitan of Persia, 
 failed to be elected Nestorian patriarch because 
 of the apostasy of his brother to Islam. — B. O., 
 iii. : I, 199. 
 
 A. D. 962. Philoxenus, Jacobite Bishop of 
 Azerbaijan, became Muslim because of immo- 
 rality. — Bar Hebraeus, iii. : i, 247. 
 
 C. A. D. 1050. Ignatius, the Jacobite Maphri- 
 ana, being convicted of adultery, apostatized to 
 Islam. Later he was reduced to poverty and be- 
 came a beggar. He left behind him a penitential 
 hymn. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chron., iii. 287f. 
 
 C. A. D. 1080. Cyzicus, the Jacobite bishop of 
 Amid, became Muslim. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. 
 Chron., i. 453. 
 
 C. A. D. 1 155. Aaron, Jacobite bishop of 
 Khdetha, became Muslim, having been caught in 
 adultery. His after life was checkered. Became 
 Christian again and wandered in various places 
 
APPENDIX VIII 251 
 
 and joined various sects. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. 
 Chron., ii. Si/f. 
 
 C. A. D. 1252. David, Jacobite bishop of 
 Khabur, failing in his ecclesiastical ambitions, 
 accepted Islam. — Ec. Chron., ii. 711. 
 
 C. A. D. 15 17. The Jacobite patriarch became 
 Muslim, afterwards repented and went to Cyprus, 
 where he resumed the patriarchal office. — Ec. 
 Chron., ii. 847. 
 
 C. A. D. 1560. The Jacobite patriarch became 
 Muslim, repented of it, and finally went to Rome. 
 — Ec. Chron., ii. 848. 
 
APPENDIX IX 
 
 CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS 
 
 I have found the following references to such 
 writings : John of Damascus and Theodore 
 Abuqara, Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte, ii. 
 402. 
 
 Abraham, a monk of Beth Khale (C. a. d. 
 670) is mentioned in the catalogue of Audishu 
 as having written a treatise against the Arabs. — 
 B. O., iii. : i, 205. 
 
 C. 800. Abu Nuh wrote a work on the 
 Quran. — B. O., iii. : 1,212. 
 
 C. 820. The Nestorian patriarch Timothy- 
 left a work of debates with the Khalifas. — B. O., 
 iii.: I, 162. 
 
 Elijah of Nisibis (eleventh century) wrote a 
 disputation with Abulkasim on the subject of re- 
 ligion. — B. O,, iii.: i, 270. 
 
 Another anonymous tract against Muslims, 
 Jews, Jacobites, and Melchites is mentioned. — B. 
 O., iii.: I, 303. 
 
 C. A. D. 1 171. Dionysius Bar Slibhi wrote a 
 252 
 
APPENDIX IX 253 
 
 tract against Arabs, Jews, Nestorians, Chalcedo- 
 nians, and Armenians. — Bar Hebraeus, Ec. Chroii., 
 ii. 562, n. I, B. O., ii. 2io. 
 
VUABJA. 
 
 ADJACENT COUNTRIES 
 
 about 700 A.D. 
 WITH Mais TBIDE BOIITKS 
 
BP172.S54 
 
 Islam and the oriental churches, their 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00010 3251 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 GAYLORD #3523PI Printed in USA