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Title: The Preaching of Islam - A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith
Author: Arnold, T. W.
Language: English
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THE
PREACHING OF ISLAM
A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith
BY
T. W. ARNOLD M.A. C.I.E.
PROFESSOR OF ARABIC, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1913
TO
SIR THEODORE MORISON, K.C.I.E.
TO WHOM THE FIRST EDITION OWES ITS EXISTENCE
THIS SECOND EDITION IS DEDICATED
IN TOKEN OF LONG FRIENDSHIP
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
It is with considerable diffidence that I publish these pages; the
subject with which they deal is so vast, and I have had to prosecute it
under circumstances so disadvantageous, that I can hope but for small
measure of success. When I may be better equipped for the task, and
after further study has enabled me to fill up the gaps [1] left in the
present work, I hope to make it a more worthy contribution to this
neglected department of Muhammadan history; and to this end I shall be
deeply grateful for the criticisms and corrections of any scholars who
may deign to notice the book. To such I would say in the words of St.
Augustine: “Qui hæc legens dicit, intelligo quidem quid dictum sit, sed
non vere dictum est; asserat ut placet sententiam suam, et redarguat
meam, si potest. Quod si cum caritate et veritate fecerit, mihique
etiam (si in hac vita maneo) cognoscendum facere curaverit, uberrimum
fructum laboris huius mei cepero.” [2]
As I can neither claim to be an authority nor a specialist on any of
the periods of history dealt with in this book, and as many of the
events referred to therein have become matter for controversy, I have
given full references to the sources consulted; and here I have thought
it better to err on the side of excess rather than that of defect. I
have myself suffered so much inconvenience and wasted so much time in
hunting up references to books indicated in some obscure or
unintelligible manner, that I would desire to spare others a similar
annoyance; and while to the general reader I may appear guilty of
pedantry, I may perchance save trouble to some scholar who wishes to
test the accuracy of a statement or pursue any part of the subject
further.
The scheme adopted in this book for the transliteration of Arabic words
is that laid down by the Transliteration Committee of the Tenth
International Congress of Orientalists, held at Geneva in 1894, with
the exception that the last letter of the article is assimilated to the
so-called solar letters. In the case of geographical names this scheme
has not been so rigidly applied—in many instances because I could not
discover the original Arabic form of the word, in others (e.g. Mecca,
Medina), because usage has almost created for them a prescriptive
title.
Though this work is confessedly, as explained in the Introduction, a
record of missionary efforts and not a history of persecutions, [3] I
have endeavoured to be strictly impartial and to conform to the ideal
laid down by the Christian historian [4] who chronicled the successes
of the Ottomans and the fall of Constantinople: οὔτε πρὸς χάριν οὔτε
πρὸς φθόνον, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ πρὸς μῖσος ἢ καὶ πρὸς εὔνοιαν συγγράφειν χρεών
ἐστι τὸν συγγράφοντα, ἀλλ’ ἱστορίας μόνον καὶ τοῦ μή λήθης βυθῷ
παραδοθῆναι, ἣν ὁ χρόνος οἶδε γεννᾶν, τὴν ἱστορίαν.
I desire to thank Her Excellency the Princess Barberini; His Excellency
the Prince Chigi; the Most Rev. Dr. Paul Goethals, Archbishop of
Calcutta; the Right Rev. Fr. Francis Pesci, Bishop of Allahabad; the
Rev. S. S. Allnutt, of the Cambridge Mission, Dehli; the Trustees of
Dr. Williams’s Library, Gordon Square, London, for the liberal use they
have allowed me of their respective libraries.
I am under an especial debt of gratitude to James Kennedy, Esq., late
of the Bengal Civil Service, who has never ceased to take a kindly
interest in my book, though it has almost exemplified the Horatian
precept, Nonum prematur in annum; to his profound scholarship and wide
reading I have been indebted for much information that would otherwise
have remained unknown to me, nor do I owe less to the stimulus of his
enthusiastic love of learning and his helpful sympathy. I am also under
a debt of gratitude to the kindness of Conte Ugo Balzani, but for whose
assistance certain parts of my work would have been impossible to me.
To the late Professor Robertson Smith I am indebted for valuable
suggestions as to the lines of study on which the history of the North
African Church and the condition of the Christians under Muslim rule,
should be worked out; the profound regret which all Semitic scholars
feel at his loss is to me intensified by the thought that this is the
only acknowledgment I am able to make of his generous help and
encouragement.
I desire also to acknowledge my obligations to Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān
Bahādur, K.C.S.I., LL.D.; to my learned friend and colleague, Shamsu-l
ʻUlamāʼ Mawlawī Muḥammad Shiblī Nuʻmānī, who has assisted me most
generously out of the abundance of his knowledge of early Muhammadan
history; and to my former pupil, Mawlawī Bahādur ʻAlī, M.A.
Lastly, and above all, must I thank my dear wife, but for whom this
work would never have emerged out of a chaos of incoherent materials,
and whose sympathy and approval are the best reward of my labours.
Aligarh, 1896.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The first edition of this book having been out of print for several
years and frequent inquiries having been made for copies, this new
edition has been prepared and an effort has been made to revise the
work in the light of the fresh materials that have accumulated during
the last sixteen years; but I can make no claim to have made myself
acquainted with the whole of the vast literature on the subject, in
upwards of ten different languages, which has been published during
this interval. The growing interest in Islam and the various branches
of study connected with it, may be estimated from the fact that since
1906 five periodicals have made their appearance devoted to
investigations cognate to the subject-matter of the present work, viz.
Revue du Monde Musulman, publiée par La Mission Scientifique du Maroc
(Paris, 1906– ); Der Islam, Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur des
islamischen Orients (Strassburg, 1910– ); The Moslem World, a quarterly
review of current events, literature, and thought among Mohammedans,
and the progress of Christian Missions in Moslem lands (London, 1911–
); Mir Islama (St. Petersburg, 1912– ); and Die Welt des Islams,
Zeitschrift der deutschen Gesellschaft für Islamkunde (Berlin, 1913– ).
The Christian missionary societies are also now devoting increased
attention to the subject of Muslim missionary activity and accordingly
it takes up a proportionately larger place in their publications than
before.
This second edition would have been completed several years ago but for
the illiberal policy which closes the Reading Room of the British
Museum at 7 o’clock and has thus made it practically inaccessible to me
except on Saturdays. [5] I therefore desire to express my grateful
thanks to those friends who have facilitated my labours by the loan of
books from the Libraries of the University of Leiden and the University
of Utrecht (through the kind offices of Professor Wensinck), and the
École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, Paris;—to Mr. J. A. Oldham,
editor of The International Review of Missions, I am indebted for the
loan of volumes of the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, a set of which
I have been unable to find in London; my thanks are specially due to
Dr. F. W. Thomas, who has allowed me to study for lengthy periods
(along with other books from the India Office Library) the monumental
Annali dell’ Islam by Leone Caetani, Principe di Teano,—a work of
inestimable value for the early history of Islam, but unfortunately
placed out of the reach of the average scholar by reason of its great
cost.
I am also much indebted for several valuable indications to those
scholars who reviewed the book when it first appeared,—above all, to
Professor Goldziher, whose sympathetic interest in this work has
encouraged me to continue it.
London, 1913.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION. PAGE
A missionary religion defined. Islam a missionary religion; its
extent. The Qurʼān enjoins preaching and persuasion, and forbids
violence and force in the conversion of unbelievers. The present
work a history of missions, not of persecutions 1
CHAPTER II.
STUDY OF THE LIFE OF MUḤAMMAD CONSIDERED AS A PREACHER OF ISLAM.
Muḥammad the type of the Muslim missionary. Account of his early
efforts at propagating Islam, and of the conversions made in Mecca
before the Hijrah. Persecution of the converts, and migration to
Medina. Condition of the Muslims in Medina: beginning of the
national life of Islam. Islam offered (a) to the Arabs, (b) to the
whole world. Islam declared in the Qurʼān to be a universal
religion,—as being the primitive faith delivered to Abraham.
Muḥammad as the founder of a political organisation. The spread of
Islam and the efforts made to convert the Arabs after the Hijrah.
The ideals of Islam and those of Pre-Islamic Arabia contrasted 11
CHAPTER III.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.
The Arab conquests and expansion of the Arab race after the death
of Muḥammad. Conversion of Christian Bedouins. Causes of the early
successes of the Muslims. Toleration extended to those who remained
Christian.—The settled population of the towns: failure of
Heraclius’s attempt to reconcile the contending Christian sects.
The Arab conquest of Syria and Palestine: their toleration: the
Ordinance of ʻUmar: jizyah paid in return for protection and in
lieu of military service. Condition of the Christians under Muslim
rule: they occupy high posts, build new churches: revival in the
Nestorian Church. Causes of their conversion to Islam: revolt
against Byzantine ecclesiasticism: influence of rationalistic
thought: imposing character of Muslim civilisation. Persecutions
suffered by the Christians. Proselytising efforts. Details of
conversion to Islam.—Account of conversions from among the
Crusaders.—The Armenian and Georgian Churches 45
CHAPTER IV.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF AFRICA.
Egypt: conquered by the Arabs, who are welcomed by the Copts as
their deliverers from Byzantine rule. Condition of the Copts under
the Muslims. Corruption and negligence of the clergy lead to
conversions to Islam.—Nubia: relations with Muhammadan powers:
gradual decay of the Christian faith.—Abyssinia: the Arabs on the
sea-board: missionary efforts in the fourteenth century: invasion
of Aḥmad Grāñ: conversions to Islam: progress of Islam in recent
years.—Northern Africa: extent of Christianity in North Africa in
the seventh century: the Christians are said to have been forcibly
converted: reasons for thinking that this statement is not true:
toleration enjoyed by the Christians: gradual disappearance of the
Christian Church 102
CHAPTER V.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.
Christianity in Spain before the Muslim conquest: miserable
condition of the Jews and the slaves. Early converts to Islam.
Corruption of the clergy. Toleration of the Arabs, and influence of
their civilisation on the Christians, who study Arabic and adopt
Arab dress and manners. Causes of conversion to Islam. The
voluntary martyrs of Cordova. Extent of the conversions 131
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS IN EUROPE UNDER THE
TURKS.
Relations of the Turks to their Christian subjects during the first
two centuries of their rule: toleration extended to the Greek
Church by Muḥammad II: the benefits of Ottoman rule: its
disadvantages, the tribute-children, the capitation-tax, tyranny of
individuals. Forced conversion rare. Proselytising efforts made by
the Turks. Circumstances that favoured the spread of Islam:
degraded condition of the Greek Church: failure of the attempt to
Protestantise the Greek Church: oppression of the Greek clergy:
moral superiority of the Ottomans: imposing character of their
conquests. Conversion of Christian slaves.—Islam in Albania,
conquest of the country, independent character of its people,
gradual decay of the Christian faith, and its causes;—in Servia,
alliance of the Servians with the Turks, conversions mainly from
among the nobles except in Old Servia;—in Montenegro;—in Bosnia,
the Bogomiles, points of similarity between the Bogomilian heresy
and the Muslim creed, conversion to Islam;—in Crete, conversion in
the ninth century, oppression of the Venetian rule, conquered by
the Turks, conversions to Islam 145
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN PERSIA AND CENTRAL ASIA.
Religious condition of Persia at the time of the Arab conquest.
Islam welcomed by many sections of the population. Points of
similarity between the older faiths and Islam. Toleration.
Conversions to Islam. The Ismāʻīlians and their missionary system.
Islam in Central Asia and Afghanistān 206
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE MONGOLS AND TATARS.
Account of the Mongol conquests. Buddhism, Christianity and Islam
in rivalry for the allegiance of the Mongols. Their original
religion, Shamanism, described. Spread of Buddhism, of
Christianity, and of Islam respectively among the Mongols.
Difficulties that stood in the way of Islam. Cruel treatment of the
Muslims by some Mongol rulers. Early converts to Islam. Baraka
Khān, the first Mongol prince converted. Conversion of the Īlkhāns.
Conversion of the Chaghatāy Mongols. History of Islam under the
Golden Horde: Ūzbek Khān: failure of attempts to convert the
Russians. Spread of Islam in modern times in the Russian Empire.
The conversion of the Tatars of Siberia 218
CHAPTER IX.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.
Distribution of the Muhammadan population. Part taken by the
Muhammadan rulers in the propagation of Islam: conversion of
Rajputs and others.—The work of the Muslim missionaries in India;
traditions of early missionary efforts in South India, forced
conversions under Ḥaydar ʻAlī and Tīpū Sulṭān, the Mappillas:—in
the Maldive Islands:—in the Deccan, early Arab settlements, labours
of individual missionaries:—in Sind, the rule of the Arabs, their
toleration, account of individual missionaries, conversion of the
Khojahs and Bohras:—in Bengal, the Muhammadan rule in this
province, extensive conversions of the lower castes, religious
revival in recent times.—Particular account of the labours of
Muslim missionaries in other parts of India. Propagationist
movements of modern times. Circumstances facilitating the progress
of Islam: the oppressiveness of the Hindu caste system, worship of
Muslim saints, etc.—Spread of Islam in Kashmīr and Tibet 254
CHAPTER X.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN CHINA.
Early notices of Islam in China. Intercourse of the Chinese with
the Arabs. Legendary account of the first introduction of Islam
into China. Muslims under the Tʼang dynasty: influence of the
Mongol conquest; Islam under the Ming dynasty. Relations of the
Chinese Muslims to the Chinese Government. Their efforts to spread
their religion 294
CHAPTER XI.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.
The Arabs in Northern Africa: conversion of the Berbers: the
mission of ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn. Introduction of Islam into the
Sudan: rise of Muhammadan kingdoms: account of missionary
movements, Danfodio, ʻUthmān al-Amīr Ghanī, the Qādiriyyah, the
Tijāniyyah, and the Sanūsiyyah. Spread of Islam on the West Coast:
Ashanti: Dahomey. Spread of Islam on the East Coast: early Muslim
settlements: recent expansion in German East Africa: the Galla: the
Somali. Islam in Cape Coast Colony. Account of the Muslim
missionaries in Africa and their methods of winning converts 312
CHAPTER XII.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.
Early intercourse between the Malay Archipelago and Arabia and
India. Methods of missionary work. History of Islam in Sumatra; in
the Malay Peninsula; in Java; in the Moluccas; in Borneo; in
Celebes; in the Philippine and the Sulu Islands; among the Papuans.
The Muslim missionaries: traders: ḥājīs 363
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
Absence of missionary organisation in Islam: zeal on the part of
individuals. Who are the Muslim missionaries? Causes that have
contributed to their success: the simplicity of the Muslim creed:
the rationalism and ritualism of Islam. Islam not spread by the
sword. The toleration of Muhammadan governments. Circumstances
contributing to the progress of Islam in ancient and in modern
times 408
APPENDIX I.
Letter of al-Hāshimī inviting al-Kindī to embrace Islam 428
APPENDIX II.
Controversial literature between Muslims and the followers of
other faiths 436
APPENDIX III.
Muslim missionary societies 438
Titles of Works cited by Abbreviated References 440
THE PREACHING OF ISLAM
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Ever since Professor Max Müller delivered his lecture in Westminster
Abbey, on the day of intercession for missions, in December, 1873, it
has been a literary commonplace, that the six great religions of the
world may be divided into missionary and non-missionary; under the
latter head fall Judaism, Brahmanism and Zoroastrianism, and under the
former Buddhism, Christianity and Islam; and he well defined what the
term,—a missionary religion,—should be taken to mean, viz. one “in
which the spreading of the truth and the conversion of unbelievers are
raised to the rank of a sacred duty by the founder or his immediate
successors.... It is the spirit of truth in the hearts of believers
which cannot rest, unless it manifests itself in thought, word and
deed, which is not satisfied till it has carried its message to every
human soul, till what it believes to be the truth is accepted as the
truth by all members of the human family.” [6]
It is such a zeal for the truth of their religion that has inspired the
Muhammadans to carry with them the message of Islam to the people of
every land into which they penetrate, and that justly claims for their
religion a place among those we term missionary. It is the history of
the birth of this missionary zeal, its inspiring forces and the modes
of its activity that forms the subject of the following pages. The 200
millions of Muhammadans scattered over the world at the present day are
evidences of its workings through the length of thirteen centuries.
The doctrines of this faith were first proclaimed to the people of
Arabia in the seventh century, by a prophet under whose banner their
scattered tribes became a nation; and filled with the pulsations of
this new national life, and with a fervour and enthusiasm that imparted
an almost invincible strength to their armies, they poured forth over
three continents to conquer and subdue. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North
Africa and Persia were the first to fall before them, and pressing
westward to Spain and eastward beyond the Indus, the followers of the
Prophet found themselves, one hundred years after his death, masters of
an empire greater than that of Rome at the zenith of its power.
Although in after years this great empire was split up and the
political power of Islam diminished, still its spiritual conquests went
on uninterruptedly. When the Mongol hordes sacked Baghdād (A.D. 1258)
and drowned in blood the faded glory of the ʻAbbāsid dynasty,—when the
Muslims were expelled from Cordova by Ferdinand of Leon and Castile
(A.D. 1236), and Granada, the last stronghold of Islam in Spain, paid
tribute to the Christian king,—Islam had just gained a footing in the
island of Sumatra and was just about to commence its triumphant
progress through the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In the hours of
its political degradation, Islam has achieved some of its most
brilliant spiritual conquests: on two great historical occasions,
infidel barbarians have set their feet on the necks of the followers of
the Prophet,—the Saljūq Turks in the eleventh and the Mongols in the
thirteenth century,—and in each case the conquerors have accepted the
religion of the conquered. Unaided also by the temporal power, Muslim
missionaries have carried their faith into Central Africa, China and
the East India Islands.
At the present day the faith of Islam extends from Morocco to Zanzibar,
from Sierra Leone to Siberia and China, from Bosnia to New Guinea.
Outside the limits of strictly Muhammadan countries and of lands, such
as China and Russia, that contain a large Muhammadan population, there
are some few small communities of the followers of the Prophet, which
bear witness to the faith of Islam in the midst of unbelievers. Such
are the Polish-speaking Muslims of Tatar origin in Lithuania, that
inhabit the districts of Kovno, Vilno and Grodno; [7] the
Dutch-speaking Muslims of Cape Colony; and the Indian coolies that have
carried the faith of Islam with them to the West India Islands and to
British and Dutch Guiana. In recent years, too, Islam has found
adherents in England, in North America, Australia and Japan.
The spread of this faith over so vast a portion of the globe is due to
various causes, social, political and religious: but among these, one
of the most powerful factors at work in the production of this
stupendous result, has been the unremitted labours of Muslim
missionaries, who, with the Prophet himself as their great ensample,
have spent themselves for the conversion of unbelievers.
The duty of missionary work is no after-thought in the history of
Islam, but was enjoined on believers from the beginning, as may be
judged from the following passages in the Qurʼān,—which are here quoted
in chronological order according to the date of their being delivered.
“Summon thou to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and with kindly
warning: dispute with them in the kindest manner. (xvi. 126.)
“They who have inherited the Book after them (i.e. the Jews and
Christians), are in perplexity of doubt concerning it.
“For this cause summon thou (them to the faith), and walk uprightly
therein as thou hast been bidden, and follow not their desires: and
say: In whatsoever Books God hath sent down do I believe: I am
commanded to decide justly between you: God is your Lord and our
Lord: we have our works and you have your works: between us and you
let there be no strife: God will make us all one: and to Him shall
we return.” (xlii. 13–14.)
Similar injunctions are found also in the Medinite Sūrahs, delivered at
a time when Muḥammad was at the head of a large army and at the height
of his power.
“Say to those who have been given the Book and to the ignorant, Do
you accept Islam? Then, if they accept Islam, are they guided
aright: but if they turn away, then thy duty is only preaching; and
God’s eye is on His servants, (iii. 19.)
“Thus God clearly showeth you His signs that perchance ye may be
guided;
“And that there may be from among you a people who invite to the
Good, and enjoin the Just, and forbid the Wrong; and these are they
with whom it shall be well. (iii. 99–100.)
“To every people have We appointed observances which they observe.
Therefore let them not dispute the matter with thee, but summon
them to thy Lord: Verily thou art guided aright:
“But if they debate with thee, then say: God best knoweth what ye
do!” (xxii. 66–67.)
The following passages are taken from what is generally supposed to be
the last Sūrah that was delivered.
“If any one of those who join gods with God ask an asylum of thee,
grant him an asylum in order that he may hear the word of God; then
let him reach his place of safety.” (ix. 6.)
With regard to the unbelievers who had broken their plighted word, who
“sell the signs of God for a mean price and turn others aside from His
way,” and “respect not with a believer either ties of blood or good
faith,” ... it is said:—
“Yet if they turn to God and observe prayer and give alms, then are
they your brothers in the faith: and We make clear the signs for
men of knowledge.” (ix. 11.)
Thus from its very inception Islam has been a missionary religion, both
in theory and in practice, for the life of Muḥammad exemplifies the
same teaching, and the Prophet himself stands at the head of a long
series of Muslim missionaries who have won an entrance for their faith
into the hearts of unbelievers. Moreover it is not in the cruelties of
the persecutor or the fury of the fanatic that we should look for the
evidences of the missionary spirit of Islam, any more than in the
exploits of that mythical personage, the Muslim warrior with sword in
one hand and Qurʼān in the other, [8]—but in the quiet, unobtrusive
labours of the preacher and the trader who have carried their faith
into every quarter of the globe. Such peaceful methods of preaching and
persuasion were not adopted, as some would have us believe, only when
political circumstances made force and violence impossible or
impolitic, but were most strictly enjoined in numerous passages of the
Qurʼān, as follows:—
“And endure what they say with patience, and depart from them with
a decorous departure.
“And let Me alone with the gainsayers, rich in the pleasures (of
this life); and bear thou with them yet a little while. (lxxiii.
10–11.)
“(My) sole (work) is preaching from God and His message. (lxxii.
24.)
“Tell those who have believed to pardon those who hope not for the
days of God in which He purposeth to recompense men according to
their deserts. (xlv. 13.)
“They who had joined other gods with God say, ‘Had He pleased,
neither we nor our forefathers had worshipped aught but Him; nor
had we, apart from Him, declared anything unlawful.’ Thus acted
they who were before them. Yet is the duty of the apostles other
than plain-spoken preaching? (xvi. 37.)
“Then if they turn their backs, still thy office is only
plain-spoken preaching. (xvi. 84.)
“Dispute ye not, unless in kindliest sort, with the people of the
Book; save with such of them as have dealt wrongfully (with you):
and say ye, ‘We believe in what has been sent down to us and hath
been sent down to you. Our God and your God is one, and to Him are
we self-surrendered.’ (xxix. 45.)
“But if they turn aside from thee, yet We have not sent thee to be
guardian over them. ’Tis thine but to preach. (xlii. 47.)
“But if thy Lord had pleased, verily all who are in the world would
have believed together. Wilt thou then compel men to become
believers? (x. 99.)
“And we have not sent thee otherwise than to mankind at large, to
announce and to warn.” (xxxiv. 27.)
Such precepts are not confined to the Meccan Sūrahs, but are found in
abundance also in those delivered at Medina, as follows:—
“Let there be no compulsion in religion. (ii. 257.)
“Obey God and obey the apostle; but if ye turn away, yet is our
apostle only charged with plain-spoken preaching. (lxiv. 12.)
“Obey God and obey the apostle: but if ye turn back, still the
burden of his duty is on him only, and the burden of your duty
rests on you. And if ye obey him, ye shall have guidance: but plain
preaching is all that devolves upon the apostle. (xxiv. 53.)
“Say: O men! I am only your plain-spoken (open) warner. (xxii. 48.)
“Verily We have sent thee to be a witness and a herald of good and
a warner,
“That ye may believe on God and on His apostle; and may assist Him
and honour Him, and praise Him morning and evening. (xlviii. 8–9.)
“Thou wilt not cease to discover the treacherous ones among them,
except a few of them. But forgive them and pass it over. Verily,
God loveth those who act generously.” (v. 16.)
It is the object of the following pages to show how this ideal was
realised in history and how these principles of missionary activity
were put into practice by the exponents of Islam. And at the outset the
reader should clearly understand that this work is not intended to be a
history of Muhammadan persecutions but of Muhammadan missions—it does
not aim at chronicling the instances of forced conversions which may be
found scattered up and down the pages of Muhammadan histories. European
writers have taken such care to accentuate these, that there is no fear
of their being forgotten, and they do not strictly come within the
province of a history of missions. In a history of Christian missions
we should naturally expect to hear more of the labours of St. Liudger
and St. Willehad among the pagan Saxons than of the baptisms that
Charlemagne forced them to undergo at the point of the sword. [9] The
true missionaries of Denmark were St. Ansgar and his successors rather
than King Cnut, who forcibly rooted out paganism from his dominions.
[10] Abbot Gottfried and Bishop Christian, though less successful in
converting the pagan Prussians, were more truly representative of
Christian missionary work than the Brethren of the Sword and other
Crusaders who brought their labours to completion by means of fire and
sword. The knights of the “Ordo fratrum militiæ Christi” forced
Christianity on the people of Livonia, but it is not to these militant
propagandists but to the monks Meinhard and Theodoric that we should
point as being the true missionaries of the Christian faith in this
country. The violent means sometimes employed by the Jesuit
missionaries [11] cannot derogate from the honour due to St. Francis
Xavier and other preachers of the same order. Nor is Valentyn any the
less the apostle of Amboyna because in 1699 an order was promulgated to
the Rajas of this island that they should have ready a certain number
of pagans to be baptised, when the pastor came on his rounds. [12]
In the history of the Christian church missionary activity is seen to
be intermittent, and an age of apostolic fervour may be succeeded by a
period of apathy and indifference, or persecution and forced conversion
may take the place of the preaching of the Word; so likewise does the
propaganda of Islam in various epochs of Muhammadan history ebb and
flow. But since the zeal of proselytising is a distinct feature of
either faith, its missionary history may fittingly be singled out as a
separate branch of study, not as excluding other manifestations of the
religious life but as concentrating attention on an aspect of it that
has special characteristics of its own. Thus the annals of propaganda
and persecution may be studied apart from one another, whether in the
history of the Christian or the Muslim church, though in both they may
be at times commingled. For just as the Christian faith has not always
been propagated by the methods adopted in Viken (the southern part of
Norway) by King Olaf Trygvesson, who either slew those who refused to
accept Christianity, or cut off their hands or feet, or drove them into
banishment, and in this manner spread the Christian faith throughout
the whole of Viken, [13]—and just as the advice of St. Louis has not
been made a principle of Christian missionary work,—“When a layman
hears the Christian law ill spoken of, he should not defend that law
save with his sword, which he should thrust into the infidel’s belly,
as far as it will go,” [14]—so there have been Muslim missionaries who
have not been guided in their propagandist methods by the savage
utterance of Marwān, the last of the ʻUmayyad caliphs: “Whosoever among
the people of Egypt does not enter into my religion and pray as I pray
and follow my tenets, I will slay and crucify him.” [15] Nor are
al-Mutawakkil, al-Ḥākim and Tīpū Sulṭān to be looked upon as typical
missionaries of Islam to the exclusion of such preachers as Mawlānā
Ibrāhīm, the apostle of Java, Khwājah Muʻīn al-Dīn Chishtī in India and
countless others who won converts to the Muslim faith by peaceful means
alone.
But though a clear distinction can be drawn between conversion as the
result of persecution and a peaceful propaganda by means of methods of
persuasion, it is not so easy to ascertain the motives that have
induced the convert to change his faith, or to discover whether the
missionary has been wholly animated by a love of souls and by the high
ideal set forth in the first paragraph of this chapter. Both in
Christianity and Islam there have been at all times earnest souls to
whom their religion has been the supreme reality of their lives, and
this absorbing interest in matters of the spirit has found expression
in that zeal for the communication of cherished truths and for the
domination of doctrines and systems they have deemed perfect, which
constitutes the vivifying force of missionary movements,—and there have
likewise been those without the pale, who have responded to their
appeal and have embraced the new faith with a like fervour. But, on the
other hand, Islam—like Christianity—has reckoned among its adherents
many persons to whom ecclesiastical institutions have been merely
instruments of a political policy or forms of social organisation, to
be accepted either as disagreeable necessities or as convenient
solutions of problems that they do not care to think out for
themselves; such persons may likewise be found among the converts of
either faith. Thus both Christianity and Islam have added to the number
of their followers by methods and under conditions—social, political
and economic—which have no connection with such a thirst for souls as
animates the true missionary. Moreover, the annals of missionary
enterprise frequently record the admission of converts without any
attempt to analyse the motives that have led them to change their
faith, and especially for the history of Muslim missions there is a
remarkable poverty of material in this respect, since Muslim literature
is singularly poor in those records of conversions that occupy such a
large place in the literature of the Christian church. Accordingly, in
the following sketch of the missionary activity of Islam, it has not
always been possible to discover whether political, social, economic or
purely religious motives have determined conversion, though occasional
reference can be made to the operation of one or the other influence.
CHAPTER II.
STUDY OF THE LIFE OF MUḤAMMAD CONSIDERED AS A PREACHER OF ISLAM.
It is not proposed in this chapter to add another to the already
numerous biographies of Muḥammad, but rather to make a study of his
life in one of its aspects only, viz. that in which the Prophet is
presented to us as a preacher, as the apostle unto men of a new
religion. The life of the founder of Islam and the inaugurator of its
propaganda may naturally be expected to exhibit to us the true
character of the missionary activity of this religion. If the life of
the Prophet serves as the standard of conduct for the ordinary
believer, it must do the same for the Muslim missionary. From the
pattern, therefore, we may hope to learn something of the spirit that
would animate those who sought to copy it, and of the methods they
might be expected to adopt. For the missionary spirit of Islam is no
after-thought in its history; it interpenetrates the religion from its
very commencement, and in the following sketch it is desired to show
how this is so, how Muḥammad the Prophet is the type of the missionary
of Islam. It is therefore beside the purpose to describe his early
history, or the influences under which he grew up to manhood, or to
consider him in the light either of a statesman or a general: it is as
the preacher alone that he will demand our attention.
When, after long internal conflict and disquietude, Muḥammad was at
length convinced of his divine mission, his earliest efforts were
directed towards persuading his own family of the truth of the new
doctrine. The unity of God, the abomination of idolatry, the duty laid
upon man of submission to the will of his Creator,—these were the
simple truths to which he claimed their allegiance. The first convert
was his faithful and loving wife, Khadījah,—she who fifteen years
before had offered her hand in marriage to the poor kinsman that had so
successfully traded with her merchandise as a hired agent,—with the
words, “I love thee, my cousin, for thy kinship with me, for the
respect with which thy people regard thee, for thy honesty, for the
beauty of thy character and for the truthfulness of thy speech.” [16]
She had lifted him out of poverty, and enabled him to live up to the
social position to which he was entitled by right of birth; but this
was as nothing to the fidelity and loving devotion with which she
shared his mental anxieties, and helped him with tenderest sympathy and
encouragement in the hour of his despondency.
Up to her death in A.D. 619 (after a wedded life of five and twenty
years) she was always ready with sympathy, consolation and
encouragement whenever he suffered from the persecution of his enemies
or was tortured by doubts and misgivings. “So Khadījah believed,” says
the biographer of the Prophet, “and attested the truth of that which
came to him from God and aided him in his undertaking. Thus was the
Lord minded to lighten the burden of His Prophet; for whenever he heard
anything that grieved him touching his rejection by the people, he
would return to her and God would comfort him through her, for she
reassured him and lightened his burden and declared her trust in him
and made it easy for him to bear the scorn of men.” [17]
Among the earliest believers were his adopted children Zayd and ʻAlī,
and his bosom friend Abū Bakr, of whom Muḥammad would often say in
after years, “I never invited any to the faith who displayed not
hesitation, perplexity and vacillation—excepting only Abū Bakr; who
when I told him of Islam tarried not, neither was perplexed.” He was a
wealthy merchant, much respected by his fellow citizens for the
integrity of his character and for his intelligence and ability. After
his conversion he expended the greater part of his fortune on the
purchase of Muslim slaves who were persecuted by their masters on
account of their adherence to the teaching of Muḥammad. Through his
influence, to a great extent, five of the earliest converts were added
to the number of believers, Saʻd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, the future conqueror of
the Persians; al-Zubayr b. al-ʻAwwām, a relative both of the Prophet
and his wife; Ṭalḥah, famous as a warrior in after days; a wealthy
merchant ʻAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʻAwf, and ʻUthmān, the third Khalīfah. The
last was early exposed to persecution; his uncle seized and bound him,
saying, “Dost thou prefer a new religion to that of thy fathers? I
swear I will not loose thee until thou givest up this new faith thou
art following after.” To which ʻUthmān replied, “By the Lord, I will
never abandon it!” Whereupon his uncle, seeing the firmness of his
attachment to his faith, released him.
With other additions, particularly from among slaves and poor persons,
the Prophet succeeded in collecting round him a little band of
followers during the first three years of his mission. Encouraged by
the success of these private efforts, Muḥammad determined on more
active measures and began to preach in public. He called his kinsmen
together and invited them to embrace the new faith. “No Arab,” he
urged, “has offered to his nation more precious advantages than those I
bring you. I offer you happiness in this world and in the life to come.
Who among you will aid me in this task?” All were silent. Only ʻAlī,
with boyish enthusiasm, cried out, “Prophet of God, I will aid thee.”
At this the company broke up with derisive laughter.
Undeterred by the ill-success of this preaching, he repeatedly appealed
to them on other occasions, but his message and his warnings received
from them nothing but scoffing and contempt.
More than once the Quraysh tried to induce his uncle Abū Ṭālib, as head
of the clan of the Banū Hāshim, to which Muḥammad belonged, to restrain
him from making such attacks upon their ancestral faith, or otherwise
they threatened to resort to more violent measures. Abū Ṭālib
accordingly appealed to his nephew not to bring disaster on himself and
his family. The Prophet replied: “Were the sun to come down on my right
hand and the moon on my left, and the choice were offered me of
abandoning my mission until God himself should reveal it, or perishing
in the achievement of it, I would not abandon it.” Abū Ṭālib was moved
and exclaimed, “Go and say whatever thou wilt: by God! I will never
give thee up unto thy enemies.”
The Quraysh viewed the progress of the new religion with increasing
dissatisfaction and hatred. They adopted all possible means, threats
and promises, insults and offers of worldly honour and aggrandisement
to induce Muḥammad to abandon the part he had taken up. The violent
abuse with which he was assailed is said to have been the indirect
cause of drawing to his side one important convert in the person of his
uncle, Ḥamzah, whose chivalrous soul was so stung to sudden sympathy by
a tale of insult inflicted on and patiently borne by his nephew, that
he changed at once from a bitter enemy into a staunch adherent. His was
not the only instance of sympathy for the sufferings of the Muslims
being aroused at the sight of the persecutions they had to endure, and
many, no doubt, secretly favoured the new religion who did not declare
themselves until the day of its triumph.
The hostility of the Quraysh to the new faith increased in bitterness
as they watched the increase in the numbers of its adherents. They
realised that the triumph of the new teaching meant the destruction of
the national religion and the national worship, and a loss of wealth
and power to the guardians of the sacred Kaʻbah. Muḥammad himself was
safe under the protection of Abū Ṭālib and the Banū Hāshim, who, though
they had no sympathy for the doctrines their kinsman taught, yet with
the strong clan-feeling peculiar to the Arabs, secured him from any
attempt upon his life, though he was still exposed to continual insult
and annoyance. But the poor who had no protector, and the slaves, had
to endure the cruelest persecution, and were imprisoned and tortured in
order to induce them to recant. It was at this time that Abū Bakr
purchased the freedom of Bilāl, [18] an African slave, who was called
by Muḥammad “the first-fruits of Abyssinia.” He had been cruelly
tortured by being exposed, day after day, to the scorching rays of the
sun, stretched out on his back, with an enormous stone on his stomach;
here he was told he would have to stay until either he died or
renounced Muḥammad and worshipped idols, to which he would reply only,
“There is but one God, there is but one God.” Two persons died under
the tortures they had to undergo. The constancy of a few gave way under
the trial, but persecution served only to re-kindle the zeal of others.
ʻAbd Allāh b. Masʻūd made bold to recite a passage of the Qurʼān within
the precincts of the Kaʻbah itself,—an act of daring that none of the
followers of Muḥammad had ventured upon before. The assembled Quraysh
attacked him and smote him on the face, but it was some time before
they compelled him to desist. He returned to his companions, prepared
to bear witness to his faith in a similar manner on the next day, but
they dissuaded him, saying, “This is enough for thee, since thou hast
made them listen to what they hated to hear.”
The virulence of the opposition of the Quraysh is probably the reason
why in the fourth year of his mission Muḥammad took up his residence in
the house of al-Arqam, one of the early converts. It was in a central
situation, much frequented by pilgrims and strangers, and here
peaceably and without interruption he was able to preach the doctrines
of Islam to all enquirers that came to him. Muḥammad’s stay in this
house marks an important epoch in the propagation of Islam in Mecca,
and many Muslims dated their conversion from the days when the Prophet
preached in the house of al-Arqam.
As Muḥammad was unable to relieve his persecuted followers, he advised
them to take refuge in Abyssinia, and in the fifth year of his mission
(A.D. 615), eleven men and four women crossed over to Abyssinia, where
they received a kind welcome from the Christian king of the country.
Among them was a certain Muṣʻab b. ʻUmayr whose history is interesting
as of one who had to endure that most bitter trial of the new
convert—the hatred of those he loves and who once loved him. He had
been led to embrace Islam through the teaching he had listened to in
the house of al-Arqam, but he was afraid to let the fact of his
conversion become known, because his tribe and his mother, who bore an
especial love to him, were bitterly opposed to the new religion; and
indeed, when they discovered the fact, seized and imprisoned him. But
he succeeded in effecting his escape to Abyssinia.
The hatred of the Quraysh is said to have pursued the fugitives even to
Abyssinia, and an embassy was sent to demand their extradition from the
king of that country. But when he heard their story from the Muslims,
he refused to withdraw from them his protection. In answer to his
enquiries as to their religion, they said: “O King, we were plunged in
the darkness of ignorance, worshipping idols, and eating carrion; we
practised abominations, severed the ties of kinship and maltreated our
neighbours; the strong among us devoured the weak; and so we remained
until God sent us an apostle, from among ourselves, whose lineage we
knew as well as his truth, his trustworthiness and the purity of his
life. He called upon us to worship the One God and abandon the stones
and idols that our fathers had worshipped in His stead. He bade us be
truthful in speech, faithful to our promises, compassionate and kind to
our parents and neighbours, and to desist from crime and bloodshed. He
forbade to do evil, to lie, to rob the orphan or defame women. He
enjoined on us the worship of God alone, with prayer, almsgiving and
fasting. And we believed in him and followed the teachings that he
brought us from God. But our countrymen rose up against us and
persecuted us to make us renounce our faith, and return to the worship
of idols and the abominations of our former life. So when they cruelly
entreated us, reducing us to bitter straits and came between us and the
practice of our religion, we took refuge in your country; putting our
trust in your justice, we hope that you will deliver us from the
oppression of our enemies.” Their prayer was heard and the embassy of
the Quraysh returned discomfited. [19] Meanwhile, in Mecca, a fresh
attempt was made to induce the Prophet to abandon his work of preaching
by promises of wealth and honour, but in vain.
While the result of the embassy to Abyssinia was being looked for in
Mecca with the greatest expectancy, there occurred the conversion of a
man, who before had been one of the most bitter enemies of Muḥammad,
and had opposed him with the utmost persistence and fanaticism—a man
whom the Muslims had every reason then to look on as their most
terrible and virulent enemy, though afterwards he shines as one of the
noblest figures in the early history of Islam, viz. ʻUmar b.
al-Khaṭṭāb. One day, in a fit of rage against the Prophet, he set out,
sword in hand, to slay him. On the way, one of his relatives met him
and asked him where he was going. “I am looking for Muḥammad,” he
answered, “to kill the renegade who has brought discord among the
Quraysh, called them fools, reviled their religion and defamed their
gods.” “Why dost thou not rather punish those of thy own family, and
set them right?” “And who are these of my own family?” answered ʻUmar.
“Thy brother-in-law Saʻīd and thy sister Fāṭimah, who have become
Muslims and followers of Muḥammad.” ʻUmar at once rushed off to the
house of his sister, and found her with her husband and Khabbāb,
another of the followers of Muḥammad, who was teaching them to recite a
chapter of the Qurʼān. ʻUmar burst into the room: “What was that sound
I heard?” “It was nothing,” they replied. “Nay, but I heard you, and I
have learned that you have become followers of Muḥammad.” Whereupon he
rushed upon Saʻīd and struck him. Fāṭimah threw herself between them,
to protect her husband, crying, “Yes, we are Muslims; we believe in God
and His Prophet: slay us if you will.” In the struggle his sister was
wounded, and when ʻUmar saw the blood on her face, he was softened and
asked to see the paper they had been reading: after some hesitation she
handed it to him. It contained the 20th Sūrah of the Qurʼān. When ʻUmar
read it, he exclaimed, “How beautiful, how sublime it is!” As he read
on, conviction suddenly overpowered him and he cried, “Lead me to
Muḥammad that I may tell him of my conversion.” [20]
The conversion of ʻUmar is a turning-point in the history of Islam: the
Muslims were now able to take up a bolder attitude. Muḥammad left the
house of al-Arqam and the believers publicly performed their devotions
together round the Kaʻbah. The situation might thus be expected to give
the aristocracy of Mecca just cause for apprehension. For they had no
longer to deal with a band of oppressed and despised outcasts,
struggling for a weak and miserable existence. It was rather a powerful
faction, adding daily to its strength by the accession of influential
citizens and endangering the stability of the existing government by an
alliance with a powerful foreign prince.
The Quraysh resolved accordingly to make a determined effort to check
the further growth of the new movement in their city. They put the Banū
Hāshim, who through ties of kindred protected the Prophet, under a ban,
in accordance with which the Quraysh agreed that they would not marry
their women, nor give their own in marriage to them; they would sell
nothing to them, nor buy aught from them—that dealings with them of
every kind should cease. For three years the Banū Hāshim are said to
have been confined to one quarter of the city, except during the sacred
months, in which all war ceased throughout Arabia and a truce was made
in order that pilgrims might visit the sacred Kaʻbah, the centre of the
national religion.
Muḥammad used to take advantage of such times of pilgrimage to preach
to the various tribes that flocked to Mecca and the adjacent fairs. But
with no success, for his uncle Abū Lahab used to dog his footsteps,
crying with a loud voice, “He is an impostor who wants to draw you away
from the faith of your fathers to the false doctrines that he brings,
wherefore separate yourselves from him and hear him not.” They would
taunt him with the words: “Thine own people and kindred should know
thee best: wherefore do they not believe and follow thee?” But at
length the privations endured by Muḥammad and his kinsmen enlisted the
sympathy of a numerous section of the Quraysh and the ban was
withdrawn.
In the same year the loss of Khadījah, the faithful wife who for
twenty-five years had been his counsellor and support, plunged Muḥammad
into the utmost grief and despondency; and a little later the death of
Abū Ṭālib deprived him of his constant and most powerful protector and
exposed him afresh to insult and contumely.
Scorned and rejected by his own townsmen, to whom he had delivered his
message with so little success for ten years, he resolved to see if
there were not others who might be more ready to listen, among whom the
seeds of faith might find a more receptive and fruitful soil. With this
hope he set out for Ṭāʼif, a city about seventy miles from Mecca.
Before an assembly of the chief men of the city, he expounded his
doctrine of the unity of God and of the mission he had received as the
Prophet of God to proclaim this faith; at the same time he besought
their protection against his persecutors in Mecca. The disproportion
between his high claims (which moreover were unintelligible to the
heathen people of Ṭāʼif) and his helpless condition only excited their
ridicule and scorn, and pitilessly stoning him with stones they drove
him from their city.
On his return from Ṭāʼif the prospects of the success of Muḥammad
seemed more hopeless than ever, and the agony of his soul gave itself
utterance in the words that he puts into the mouth of Noah: “O my Lord,
verily I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry only makes
them flee from me the more. And verily, so oft as I cry to them, that
Thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears and
wrap themselves in their garments, and persist (in their error), and
are disdainfully disdainful.” (lxxi. 5–6.)
It was the Prophet’s habit at the time of the annual pilgrimage to
visit the encampments of the various Arab tribes and discourse with
them upon religion. By some his words were treated with indifference,
by others rejected with scorn. But consolation came to him from an
unexpected quarter. He met a little group of six or seven persons whom
he recognised as coming from Medina, or, as it was then called,
Yathrib. “Of what tribe are you?” said he, addressing them. “We are of
the Khazraj,” they answered. “Friends of the Jews?” “Yes.” “Then will
you not sit down awhile, that I may talk with you?” “Assuredly,”
replied they. Then they sat down with him, and he proclaimed unto them
the true God and preached Islam and recited to them the Qurʼān. Now so
it was, in that God wrought wonderfully for Islam that there were found
in their country Jews, who possessed scriptures and wisdom, while they
themselves were heathen and idolaters. Now the Jews ofttimes suffered
violence at their hands, and when strife was between them had ever said
to them, “Soon will a Prophet arise and his time is at hand; him will
we follow, and with him slay you with the slaughter of ʻĀd and of
Iram.” When now the apostle of God was speaking with these men and
calling on them to believe in God, they said one to another: “Know
surely that this is the Prophet, of whom the Jews have warned us; come
let us now make haste and be the first to join him.” So they embraced
Islam, and said to him, “Our countrymen have long been engaged in a
most bitter and deadly feud with one another; but now perhaps God will
unite them together through thee and thy teaching. Therefore we will
preach to them and make known to them this religion, that we have
received from thee.” So, full of faith, they returned to their own
country. [21]
Such is the traditional account of this event which was the
turning-point of Muḥammad’s mission. He had now met with a people whose
antecedents had in some way prepared their minds for the reception of
his teaching and whose present circumstances, as afterwards appeared,
were favourable to his cause.
The city of Yathrib had been long occupied by Jews whom some national
disaster, possibly the persecution under Hadrian, had driven from their
own country, when a party of wandering emigrants, the two Arab clans of
Khazraj and Aws, arrived at Yathrib and were admitted to a share in the
territory. As their numbers increased they encroached more and more on
the power of the Jewish rulers, and finally, towards the end of the
fifth century, the government of the city passed entirely into their
hands.
Some of the Arabs had embraced the Jewish religion, and many of the
former masters of the city still dwelt there in the service of their
conquerors, so that it contained in Muḥammad’s time a considerable
Jewish population. The people of Yathrib were thus familiar with the
idea of a Messiah who was to come, and were consequently more capable
of understanding the claim of Muḥammad to be accepted as the Prophet of
God, than were the idolatrous Meccans to whom such an idea was entirely
foreign and especially distasteful to the Quraysh, whose supremacy over
the other tribes and whose worldly prosperity arose from the fact that
they were the hereditary guardians of the national collection of idols
kept in the sacred enclosure of the Kaʻbah.
Further, the city of Yathrib was distracted by incessant civil discord
through a long-standing feud between the Banū Khazraj and the Banū Aws.
The citizens lived in uncertainty and suspense, and anything likely to
bind the conflicting parties together by a tie of common interest could
not but prove a boon to the city. Just as the mediæval republics of
Northern Italy chose a stranger to hold the chief post in their cities
in order to maintain some balance of power between the rival factions,
and prevent, if possible, the civil strife which was so ruinous to
commerce and the general welfare, so the Yathribites would not look
upon the arrival of a stranger with suspicion, even though he was
likely to usurp or gain permission to assume the vacant authority.
On the contrary, one of the reasons for the warm welcome which Muḥammad
received in Medina would seem to be that the adoption of Islam appeared
to the more thoughtful of its citizens to be a remedy for the disorders
from which their society was suffering, by its orderly discipline of
life and its bringing the unruly passions of men under the discipline
of laws enunciated by an authority superior to individual caprice. [22]
These facts go far to explain how eight years after the Hijrah Muḥammad
could, at the head of 10,000 followers, enter the city in which he had
laboured for ten years with so meagre a result.
But this is anticipating. Muḥammad had proposed to accompany his new
converts, the Khazrajites, to Yathrib himself, but they dissuaded him
therefrom, until a reconciliation could be effected with the Banū Aws.
“Let us, we pray thee, return unto our people, if haply the Lord will
create peace amongst us; and we will come back again unto thee. Let the
season of pilgrimage in the following year be the appointed time.” So
they returned to their homes, and invited their people to the faith;
and many believed, so that there remained hardly a family in which
mention was not made of the Prophet.
When the time of pilgrimage again came round, a deputation from
Yathrib, ten men of the Banū Khazraj, and two of the Banū Aws, met him
at the appointed spot and pledged him their word to obey his teaching.
This, the first pledge of ʻAqabah, so called from the secret spot at
which they met, ran as follows:—“We will not worship any but the one
God; we will not steal, neither will we commit adultery or kill our
children; we will abstain from calumny and slander; we will obey the
Prophet in every thing that is right.” These twelve men now returned to
Yathrib as missionaries of Islam, and so well prepared was the ground,
and with such zeal did they prosecute their mission, that the new faith
spread rapidly from house to house and from tribe to tribe.
They were accompanied on their return by Muṣʻab b. ʻUmayr; though,
according to another account he was sent by the Prophet upon a written
requisition from Yathrib. This young man had been one of the earliest
converts, and had lately returned from Abyssinia; thus he had had much
experience, and severe training in the school of persecution had not
only sobered his zeal but taught him how to meet persecution and deal
with those who were ready to condemn Islam without waiting to learn the
true contents of its teaching; accordingly Muḥammad could with the
greatest confidence entrust him with the difficult task of directing
and instructing the new converts, cherishing the seeds of religious
zeal and devotion that had already been sown and bringing them to
fruition. Muṣʻab took up his abode in the house of Asʻad b. Zurārah,
and gathered the converts together for prayer and the reading of the
Qurʼān, sometimes here and sometimes in a house belonging to the Banū
Ẓafar, which was situated in a quarter of the town occupied jointly by
this family and that of ʻAbd al-Ashhal.
The heads of the latter family at that time were Saʻd b. Muʻādh and
Usayd b. Ḥuḍayr. One day it happened that Muṣʻab was sitting together
with Asʻad in this house of the Banū Ẓafar, engaged in instructing some
new converts, when Saʻd b. Muʻādh, having come to know of their
whereabouts, said to Usayd b. Ḥuḍayr: “Drive out these fellows who have
come into our houses to make fools of the weaklings among us; I would
spare thee the trouble did not the tie of kinship between me and Asʻad
prevent my doing him any harm” (for he himself was the cousin of
Asʻad). Hereupon Usayd took his spear and, bursting in upon Asʻad and
Muṣʻab, “What are you doing?” he cried, “leading weak-minded folk
astray? If you value your lives, begone hence.” “Sit down and listen,”
Muṣʻab answered quietly, “if thou art pleased with what thou hearest,
accept it; if not, then leave it.” Usayd stuck his spear in the ground
and sat down to listen, while Muṣʻab expounded to him the fundamental
doctrines of Islam and read several passages of the Qurʼān. After a
time Usayd, enraptured, cried, “What must I do to enter this religion?”
“Purify thyself with water,” answered Muṣʻab, “and confess that there
is no god but God and that Muḥammad is the apostle of God.” Usayd at
once complied and repeated the profession of faith, adding, “After me
you have still another man to convince” (referring to Saʻd b. Muʻādh).
“If he is persuaded, his example will bring after him all his people. I
will send him to you forthwith.”
With these words he left them, and soon after came Saʻd b. Muʻādh
himself, hot with anger against Asʻad for the patronage he had extended
to the missionaries of Islam. Muṣʻab begged him not to condemn the new
faith unheard, so Saʻd agreed to listen and soon the words of Muṣʻab
touched him and brought conviction to his heart, and he embraced the
faith and became a Muslim. He went back to his people burning with zeal
and said to them, “Sons of ʻAbd al-Ashhal, say, what am I to you?”
“Thou art our lord,” they answered, “thou art the wisest and most
illustrious among us.” “Then I swear,” replied Saʻd, “nevermore to
speak to any of you until you believe in God and Muḥammad, His
apostle.” And from that day, all the descendants of ʻAbd al-Ashhal
embraced Islam. [23]
With such zeal and earnestness was the preaching of the faith pushed
forward that within a year there was not a family among the Arabs of
Medina that had not given some of its members to swell the number of
the faithful, with the exception of one branch of the Banū Aws, which
held aloof under the influence of Abū Qays b. al-Aslat, the poet.
The following year, when the time of the annual pilgrimage again came
round, a band of converts, amounting to seventy-three in number,
accompanied their heathen fellow-countrymen from Yathrib to Mecca. They
were commissioned to invite Muḥammad to take refuge in Yathrib from the
fury of his enemies, and had come to swear allegiance to him as their
prophet and their leader. All the early converts who had before met the
Prophet on the two preceding pilgrimages, returned to Mecca on this
important occasion, and Muṣʻab their teacher accompanied them.
Immediately on his arrival he hurried to the prophet, and told him of
the success that had attended his mission. It is said that his mother,
hearing of his arrival, sent a message to him, saying: “Ah, disobedient
son, wilt thou enter a city in which thy mother dwelleth, and not first
visit her!” “Nay, verily,” he replied, “I will never visit the house of
any one before the Prophet of God.” So, after he had greeted and
conferred with Muḥammad, he went to his mother, who thus accosted him:
“Then I ween thou art still a renegade.” He answered, “I follow the
prophet of the Lord and the true faith of Islam.” “Art thou then well
satisfied with the miserable way thou hast fared in the land of
Abyssinia and now again at Yathrib?” Now he perceived that she was
meditating his imprisonment, and exclaimed, “What! wilt thou force a
man from his religion? If ye seek to confine me, I will assuredly slay
the first person that layeth hands upon me.” His mother said, “Then
depart from my presence,” and she began to weep. Muṣʻab was moved, and
said, “Oh, my mother! I give thee loving counsel. Testify that there is
no God but the Lord and that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger.”
But she replied, “By the sparkling stars! I will never make a fool of
myself by entering into thy religion. I wash my hands of thee and thy
concerns, and cleave steadfastly unto mine own faith.”
In order not to excite suspicion and incur the hostility of the
Quraysh, a secret meeting was arranged at ʻAqabah, the scene of the
former meeting with the converts of the year before. Muḥammad came
accompanied only by his uncle ʻAbbās, who, though he was still an
idolater, had been admitted into the secret. ʻAbbās opened the solemn
conclave, by recommending his nephew as a scion of one of the noblest
families of his clan, which had hitherto afforded the Prophet
protection, although rejecting his teachings; but now that he wished to
take refuge among the people of Yathrib, they should bethink themselves
well before undertaking such a charge, and resolve not to go back from
their promise, if once they undertook the risk. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr,
one of the Banū Khazraj, protesting that they were firm in their
resolve to protect the Prophet of God, besought him to declare fully
what he wished of them.
Muḥammad began by reciting to them some portions of the Qurʼān, and
exhorted them to be true to the faith they had professed in the one God
and the Prophet, His apostle; he then asked them to defend him and his
companions from all assailants just as they would their own wives and
children. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr, taking his hand, cried out, “Yea, by Him
who sent thee as His Prophet, and through thee revealed unto us His
truth, we will protect thee as we would our own bodies, and we swear
allegiance to thee as our leader. We are the sons of battle and men of
mail, which we have inherited as worthy sons of worthy forefathers.” So
they all in turn, taking his hand in theirs, swore allegiance to him.
As soon as the Quraysh gained intelligence of these secret proceedings,
the persecution broke out afresh against the Muslims, and Muḥammad
advised them to flee out of the city. “Depart unto Yathrib; for the
Lord hath verily given you brethren in that city, and a home in which
ye may find refuge.” So quietly, by twos and threes they escaped to
Yathrib, where they were heartily welcomed, their co-religionists in
that city vying with one another for the honour of entertaining them,
and supplying them with such things as they had need of. Within two
months nearly all the Muslims except those who were seized and
imprisoned and those who could not escape from captivity had left
Mecca, to the number of about 150. There is a story told of one of
these Muslims, by name Ṣuhayb, whom Muḥammad called “the first-fruits
of Greece” (he had been a Greek slave, and being set free by his master
had amassed considerable wealth by successful trading); when he was
about to emigrate the Meccans said to him, “Thou camest hither in need
and penury; but thy wealth hath increased with us, until thou hast
reached thy present prosperity; and now thou art departing, not thyself
only, but with all thy property. By the Lord, that shall not be;” and
he said, “If I relinquish my property, will ye leave me free to
depart?” And they agreed thereto; so he parted with all his goods. And
when that was told unto Muḥammad, he said, “Verily, Ṣuhayb hath made a
profitable bargain.”
Muḥammad delayed his own departure (with the intention, no doubt, of
withdrawing attention from his faithful followers) until a determined
plot against his life warned him that further delay might be fatal, and
he made his escape by means of a stratagem.
His first care after his arrival in Yathrib, or Medina as it was called
from this period—Madīnah al-Nabī, the city of the Prophet—was to build
a mosque, to serve both as a place of prayer and of general assembly
for his followers, who had hitherto met for that purpose in the
dwelling-place of one of their number. The worshippers at first used to
turn their faces in the direction of Jerusalem—an arrangement most
probably adopted with the hope of gaining over the Jews. In many other
ways, by constant appeals to their own sacred Scriptures, by according
them perfect freedom of worship and political equality, Muḥammad
endeavoured to conciliate the Jews, but they met his advances with
scorn and derision. When all hopes of amalgamation proved fruitless and
it became clear that the Jews would not accept him as their Prophet,
Muḥammad bade his followers turn their faces in prayer towards the
Kaʻbah in Mecca. (ii. 144.) [24]
This change of direction during prayer has a deeper significance than
might at first sight appear. It was really the beginning of the
National Life of Islam: it established the Kaʻbah at Mecca as a
religious centre for all the Muslim people, just as from time
immemorial it had been a place of pilgrimage for all the tribes of
Arabia. Of similar importance was the incorporation of the ancient Arab
custom of pilgrimage to Mecca into the circle of the religious
ordinances of Islam, a duty that was to be performed by every Muslim at
least once in his lifetime.
There are many passages in the Qurʼān that appeal to this germ of
national feeling and urge the people of Arabia to realise the privilege
that had been granted them of a divine revelation in their own language
and by the lips of one of their own countrymen.
“Verily We have made it an Arabic Qurʼān that ye may haply
understand. (xliii. 2–3.)
“And thus We have revealed to thee an Arabic Qurʼān, that thou
mayest warn the mother of cities and those around it. (xlii. 5.)
“And if We had made it a Qurʼān in a foreign tongue, they had
surely said, ‘Unless its verses be clearly explained (we will not
receive it).’ (xli. 44.)
“And verily We have set before men in this Qurʼān every kind of
parable that haply they be monished:
“An Arabic Qurʼān, free from tortuous (wording), that haply they
may fear (God). (xxxix. 28–29.)
“Verily from the Lord of all creatures hath this (book) come down,
... in the clear Arabic tongue. (xxvi. 192, 195.)
“And We have only made it (i.e. the Qurʼān) easy, in thine own
tongue, in order that thou mayest announce glad tidings thereby to
the God-fearing, and that thou mayest warn the contentious
thereby.” (xix. 97.)
But the message of Islam was not for Arabia only; the whole world was
to share in it. [25] As there was but one God, so there was to be but
one religion into which all men were to be invited. This claim to be
universal, to hold sway over all men and all nations, found a practical
illustration in the letters which Muḥammad is said to have sent in the
year A.D. 688 (A.H. 6) to the great potentates of that time. An
invitation to embrace Islam was sent in this year to the Emperor
Heraclius, the king of Persia, the governor of Yaman, the governor of
Egypt and the king of Abyssinia. The letter to Heraclius is said to
have been as follows:—“In the name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate, Muḥammad, who is the servant of God and His apostle, to
Hiraql the Qayṣar of Rūm. Peace be on whoever has gone on the straight
road. After this I say, Verily I call you to Islam. Embrace Islam, and
God will reward you twofold. If you turn away from the offer of Islam,
then on you be the sins of your people. O people of the Book, come
towards a creed which is fit both for us and for you. It is this—to
worship none but God, and not to associate anything with God, and not
to call others God. Therefore, O ye people of the Book, if ye refuse,
beware. We are Muslims and our religion is Islam.” However absurd this
summons may have seemed to those who then received it, succeeding years
showed that it was dictated by no empty enthusiasm. [26] These letters
only gave a more open and widespread expression to the claim to the
universal acceptance which is repeatedly made for Islam in the Qurʼān.
“Of a truth it (i.e. the Qurʼān) is no other than an admonition to
all created beings, and after a time shall ye surely know its
message. (xxxviii. 87–88.)
“This (book) is no other than an admonition and a clear Qurʼān, to
warn whoever liveth; and that against the unbelievers sentence may
be justly given. (xxxvi. 69–70.)
“We have not sent thee save as a mercy to all created beings. (xxi.
107.)
“Blessed is He who hath sent down al-Furqān upon His servant, that
he may be a warner unto all created beings. (xxv. 1.)
“And We have not sent thee otherwise than to mankind at large, to
announce and to warn. (xxxiv. 27.)
“He it is who hath sent His apostle with guidance and the religion
of truth, that He may make it victorious over every other religion,
though the polytheists are averse to it.” (lxi. 9.)
In the hour of his deepest despair, when the people of Mecca
persistently turned a deaf ear to the words of their prophet (xvi. 23,
114, etc.), when the converts he had made were tortured until they
recanted (xvi. 108), and others were forced to flee from the country to
escape the rage of their persecutors (xvi. 43, 111)—then was delivered
the promise, “One day we will raise up a witness out of every nation.”
(xvi. 86.) [27]
This claim upon the acceptance of all mankind which the Prophet makes
in these passages is further prophetically indicated in the words
“first-fruits of Abyssinia,” used by Muḥammad in reference to Bilāl,
and “first-fruits of Greece,” to Ṣuhayb; Salmān, the first Persian
convert, was a Christian slave in Medina, who embraced the new faith in
the first year of the Hijrah. Thus long before any career of conquest
was so much as dreamed of, the Prophet had clearly shown that Islam was
not to be confined to the Arab race. The following account of the
sending out of missionaries to preach Islam to all nations, points to
the same claim to be a universal religion: “The Apostle of God said to
his companions, ‘Come to me all of you early in the morning.’ After the
morning prayer he spent some time in praising and supplicating God, as
was his wont; then he turned to them and sent forth some in one
direction and others in another, and said: ‘Be faithful to God in your
dealings with His servants (i.e. with men), for whosoever is entrusted
with any matter that concerns mankind and is not faithful in his
service of them, to him God shuts the gate of Paradise: go forth and be
not like the messengers of Jesus, the son of Mary, for they went only
to those that lived near and neglected those that dwelt in far
countries.’ Then each of these messengers came to speak the language of
the people to whom he was sent. When this was told to the Prophet he
said, ‘This is the greatest of the duties that they owe to God with
respect to His servants.’” [28]
The proof of the universality of Islam, of its claim on the acceptance
of all men, lay in the fact that it was the religion divinely appointed
for the whole human race and was now revealed to them anew through
Muḥammad, “the seal of the prophets” (xxxiii. 40), as it had been to
former generations by other prophets.
“Men were of one religion only: then they disagreed one with
another and had not a decree (of respite) previously gone forth
from thy Lord, judgment would surely have been given between them
in the matter wherein they disagree. (x. 20.)
“I am no apostle of new doctrines. (xlvi. 8.)
“Mankind was but one people: then God raised up prophets to
announce glad tidings and to warn: and He sent down with them the
Book with the Truth, that it might decide the disputes of men: and
none disagreed save those to whom the book had been given, after
the clear tokens had reached them, through mutual jealousy. And God
guided those who believed into the truth concerning which they had
disagreed, by His will; and God guideth whom He pleaseth into the
straight path. (ii. 209.)
“And We revealed to thee, ‘follow the religion of Abraham, the
sound in faith, for he was not of those who join gods with God.’
(xvi. 124.)
“Say: As for me, my Lord hath guided me into a straight path: a
true faith, the religion of Abraham, the sound in faith; for he was
not of those who join gods with God. (vi. 162.)
“Say: Nay, the religion of Abraham, the sound in faith and not one
of those who join gods with God (is our religion). (ii. 129.)
“Say: God speaketh truth. Follow therefore the religion of Abraham,
he being a Ḥanīf and not one of those who join other gods with God.
“Verily the first temple that was set up for men was that which is
in Bakka, blessed and a guidance for all created beings. (iii. 89,
90.)
“And who hath a better religion than he who resigneth himself to
God, who doth what is good and followeth the faith of Abraham, the
sound in faith? (iv. 124.)
“He hath elected you, and hath not laid on you any hardship in
religion, the faith of your father Abraham. He hath named you the
Muslims.” (xx. 77.)
But to return to Muḥammad in Medina. In order properly to appreciate
his position after the Flight, it is important to remember the peculiar
character of Arab society at that time, as far at least as this part of
the peninsula was concerned. There was an entire absence of any
organised administrative or judicial system such as in modern times we
connect with the idea of a government. Each tribe or clan formed a
separate and absolutely independent body, and this independence
extended itself also to the individual members of the tribe, each of
whom recognised the authority, or leadership of his chief only as being
the exponent of a public opinion which he himself happened to share;
but he was quite at liberty to refuse his conformity to the (even)
unanimous resolve of his fellow clansmen. Further, there was no regular
transmission of the office of chieftain; but he was generally chosen as
being the oldest member of the richest and most powerful family of the
clan, and as being personally most qualified to command respect. If
such a tribe became too numerous, it would split up into several
divisions, each of which continued to enjoy a separate and independent
existence, uniting only on some extraordinary occasion for common
self-defence or some more than usually important warlike expedition. We
can thus understand how Muḥammad could establish himself in Medina at
the head of a large and increasing body of adherents who looked up to
him as their head and leader and acknowledged no other
authority,—without exciting any feeling of insecurity, or any fear of
encroachment on recognised authority, such as would have arisen in a
city of ancient Greece or any similarly organised community. Muḥammad
thus exercised temporal authority over his people just as any other
independent chief might have done, the only difference being that in
the case of the Muslims a religious bond took the place of family and
blood ties.
Islam thus became what, in theory at least, it has always remained—a
political as well as a religious system.
“It was Muḥammad’s desire to found a new religion, and in this he
succeeded; but at the same time he founded a political system of an
entirely new and peculiar character. At first his only wish was to
convert his fellow-countrymen to the belief in the One God—Allāh; but
along with this he brought about the overthrow of the old system of
government in his native city, and in place of the tribal aristocracy
under which the conduct of public affairs was shared in common by the
ruling families, he substituted an absolute theocratic monarchy, with
himself at the head as vicar of God upon earth.
“Even before his death almost all Arabia had submitted to him; Arabia
that had never before obeyed one prince, suddenly exhibits a political
unity and swears allegiance to the will of an absolute ruler. Out of
the numerous tribes, big and small, of a hundred different kinds that
were incessantly at feud with one another, Muḥammad’s word created a
nation. The idea of a common religion under one common head bound the
different tribes together into one political organism which developed
its peculiar characteristics with surprising rapidity. Now only one
great idea could have produced this result, viz. the principle of
national life in heathen Arabia. The clan-system was thus for the first
time, if not entirely crushed—(that would have been impossible)—yet
made subordinate to the feeling of religious unity. The great work
succeeded, and when Muḥammad died there prevailed over by far the
greater part of Arabia a peace of God such as the Arab tribes, with
their love of plunder and revenge, had never known; it was the religion
of Islam that had brought about this reconciliation.” [29]
Even in the case of death, the claims of relationship were set aside
and the bond-brother inherited all the property of his deceased
companion. But after the battle of Badr, when such an artificial bond
was no longer needed to unite his followers, it was abolished; such an
arrangement was only necessary so long as the number of the Muslims was
still small and the corporate life of Islam a novelty; moreover
Muḥammad had lived in Medina for a very short space of time before the
rapid increase in the number of his adherents made so communistic a
social system almost impracticable.
It was only to be expected that the growth of an independent political
body composed of refugees from Mecca, located in a hostile city, should
eventually lead to an outbreak of hostilities; and, as is well known,
every biography of Muḥammad is largely taken up with the account of a
long series of petty encounters and bloody battles between his
followers and the Quraysh of Mecca, ending in his triumphal entry into
that city in A.D. 630, and of his hostile relations with numerous other
tribes, up to the time of his death, A.D. 633.
To give any account of these campaigns is beyond the scope of the
present work, but it is important to show that Muḥammad, when he found
himself at the head of a band of armed followers, was not transformed
at once, as some would have us believe, from a peaceful preacher into a
fanatic, sword in hand, forcing his religion on whomsoever he could.
[30]
It has been frequently asserted by European writers that from the date
of Muḥammad’s migration to Medina, and from the altered circumstances
of his life there, the Prophet appears in an entirely new character. He
is no longer the preacher, the warner, the apostle of God to men, whom
he would persuade of the truth of the religion revealed to him, but now
he appears rather as the unscrupulous bigot, using all means at his
disposal of force and statecraft to assert himself and his opinions.
But it is false to suppose that Muḥammad in Medina laid aside his rôle
of preacher and missionary of Islam, or that when he had a large army
at his command, he ceased to invite unbelievers to accept the faith.
Ibn Saʻd gives a number of letters written by the Prophet from Medina
to chiefs and other members of different Arabian tribes, in addition to
those addressed to potentates living beyond the limits of Arabia,
inviting them to embrace Islam; and in the following pages will be
found instances of his having sent missionaries to preach the faith to
the unconverted members of their tribes, whose very ill-success in some
cases is a sign of the genuinely missionary character of their efforts
and the absence of an appeal to force. A typical example of such an
unsuccessful mission is that sent to preach Islam to the Banū ʻĀmir b.
Ṣaʻṣaʻah in the year A.H. 4. The chief of this tribe, Abū Barā ʻĀmir,
visited Muḥammad in Medina, listened to his teaching, but declined to
become a convert; he seemed, however, to be favourably disposed towards
the new faith and asked the Prophet to send some of his followers to
Najd to preach to the people of that country. The Prophet sent a party
of forty Muslims, most of them young men of Medina, who were skilled in
reciting the Qurʼān, and had been accustomed to meet together at night
for study and prayer. But in spite of the safe conduct given them by
Abū Barā ʻĀmir, they were treacherously murdered and three only of the
party escaped with their lives. [31]
The successes of the Muslim arms, however, attracted every day members
of various tribes, particularly those in the vicinity of Medina, to
swell the ranks of the followers of the Prophet; and “the courteous
treatment which the deputations of these various clans experienced from
the Prophet, his ready attention to their grievances, the wisdom with
which he composed their disputes, and the politic assignments of
territory by which he rewarded an early declaration in favour of Islam,
made his name to be popular and spread his fame as a great and generous
prince throughout the Peninsula.” [32]
It not unfrequently happened that one member of a tribe would come to
the Prophet in Medina and return home as a missionary of Islam to
convert his brethren; we have the following account of such a
conversion in the year 5 (A.H.).
The Banū Saʻd b. Bakr sent one of their number, by name Ḍimām b.
Thaʻlabah as their envoy to the Prophet. He came and made his camel
kneel down at the gate of the mosque and tied up its fore-leg. Then he
went into the mosque, where the Prophet was sitting with his
companions. He went up close to them and said, “Which among you is the
son of ʻAbd al-Muṭṭalib?” “I am,” replied the Prophet. “Art thou
Muḥammad?” “Yes,” was the answer. “Then, if thou wilt not take it
amiss, I would fain ask thee some weighty questions.” “Nay, ask what
thou wilt,” answered the Prophet. “I adjure thee by Allāh, thy God and
the God of those who were before thee and of those who are to come
after thee, hath Allāh sent thee as a prophet unto us?” Muḥammad
answered, “Yea, by Allāh.” He continued, “I adjure thee by Allāh, thy
God and the God of those who were before thee and of those who are to
come after thee, hath He commanded thee to bid us worship Him alone,
and to associate naught else with Him and to abandon these idols that
our fathers worshipped?” Muḥammad answered, “Yea, by Allāh.” Then he
questioned the Prophet concerning all the ordinances of Islam, one
after another, prayer and fasting, pilgrimage, etc., solemnly adjuring
him as before. At the end he said, “Then I bear witness that there is
no God save Allāh and I bear witness that Muḥammad is the Prophet of
Allāh, and I will observe these ordinances and shun what thou hast
forbidden, adding nothing thereto, and taking nothing away.” Then he
turned away and loosened his camel and returned unto his own people,
and when he had gathered them together, the first words he spoke unto
them were: “Vile things are Lāt and ʻUzzā.” They cried out, “Hold!
Ḍimām, take heed of leprosy or madness!” “Fie on you!” he replied. “By
Allāh! they can neither work you weal nor woe, for Allāh has sent a
Prophet and revealed to him a book, whereby he delivers you from your
evil plight; I bear witness that there is no God save Allāh alone and
that Muḥammad is His servant and His Prophet; and I have brought you
tidings of what he enjoins and what he forbids.” The story goes on that
ere nightfall there was not a man or woman in the camp who had not
accepted Islam. [33]
Another such missionary was ʻAmr b. Murrah, belonging to the tribe of
the Banū Juhaynah, who dwelt between Medina and the Red Sea. The date
of his conversion was prior to the Flight, in the same year (A.H. 5),
and he thus describes it: “We had an idol that we worshipped, and I was
the guardian of its shrine. When I heard of the Prophet, I broke it in
pieces and set off to Muḥammad, where I accepted Islam and bore witness
to the truth, and believed on what Muḥammad declared to be allowed and
forbidden. And to this my verses refer: ‘I bear witness that God is
Truth and that I am the first to abandon the gods of stones, and I have
girded up my loins to make my way to you over rough ways and smooth, to
join myself to him who in himself and for his ancestry is the noblest
of men, the apostle of the Lord whose throne is above the clouds.’” He
was sent by Muḥammad to preach Islam to his tribe, and his efforts were
crowned with such success that there was only one man who refused to
listen to his exhortations. [34]
When the truce of Ḥudaybiyyah (A.H. 6) made friendly relations with the
people of Mecca possible, many persons of that city, who had had the
opportunity of listening to the teaching of Muḥammad in the early days
of his mission, and among them some men of great influence, came out to
Medina, to embrace the faith of Islam.
The continual warfare carried on with the people of Mecca had hitherto
kept the tribes to the south of that city almost entirely outside the
influence of the new religion. But this truce now made communications
with southern Arabia possible, and a small band from the tribe of the
Banū Daws came from the mountains that form the northern boundary of
Yaman, and joined themselves to the Prophet in Medina. Even before the
appearance of Muḥammad, there were some members of this tribe who had
had glimmerings of a higher religion than the idolatry prevailing
around them, and argued that the world must have had a creator, though
they knew not who he was; and when Muḥammad came forward as the apostle
of this creator, one of these men, by name Ṭufayl b. ʻAmr, came to
Mecca to learn who the creator was.
Though warned by the Quraysh of the dangerous influence that Muḥammad
might exercise over him if he entered into conversation with him, he
followed the Prophet to his house one day, after watching him at prayer
by the Kaʻbah. Muḥammad expounded to him the doctrines of Islam, and
Ṭufayl left Mecca full of zeal for the new faith. On his return home he
succeeded in converting his father and his wife, but found his
fellow-tribesmen unwilling to abandon their old idolatrous worship.
Disheartened at the ill-success of his mission, he returned to the
Prophet and besought him to call down the curse of God on the Banū
Daws; but Muḥammad encouraged him to persevere in his efforts, saying,
“Return to thy people and summon them to the faith, but deal gently
with them.” At the same time he prayed, “Oh God! guide the Banū Daws in
the right way.” The success of Ṭufayl’s propaganda was such that in the
year A.H. 7 he came to Medina with between seventy and eighty families
of his tribesmen who had been won over to the faith of Islam, and after
the triumphal entry of Muḥammad into Mecca, Ṭufayl set fire to the
block of wood that had hitherto been venerated as the idol of the
tribe. [35]
In A.H. 7, fifteen more tribes submitted to the Prophet, and after the
surrender of Mecca in A.H. 8, the ascendancy of Islam was assured, and
those Arabs who had held aloof, saying, “Let Muḥammad and his
fellow-tribesmen fight it out; if he is victorious, then is he a
genuine prophet,” [36] now hastened to give in their allegiance to the
new religion. Among those who came in after the fall of Mecca were some
of the most bitter persecutors of Muḥammad in the earlier days of his
mission, to whom his noble forbearance and forgiveness now gave a place
in the brotherhood of Islam. The following year witnessed the martyrdom
of ʻUrwah b. Masʻūd, one of the chiefs of the people of Ṭāʼif, which
city the Muslims had unsuccessfully attempted to capture. He had been
absent at that time in Yaman, and returned from his journey shortly
after the raising of the siege. He had met the Prophet two years before
at Ḥudaybiyyah, and had conceived a profound veneration for him, and
now came to Medina to embrace the new faith. In the ardour of his zeal
he offered to go to Ṭāʼif to convert his fellow-countrymen, and in
spite of the efforts of Muḥammad to dissuade him from so dangerous an
undertaking, he returned to his native city, publicly declared that he
had renounced idolatry, and called upon the people to follow his
example. While he was preaching, he was mortally wounded by an arrow,
and died giving thanks to God for having granted him the glory of
martyrdom. A more successful missionary effort was made by another
follower of the Prophet in Yaman—probably a year later—of which we have
the following graphic account: “The apostle of God wrote to al-Ḥārith
and Masrūḥ, and Nuʻaym b. ʻAbd al-Kulāl of Ḥimyar: ‘Peace be upon you
so long as ye believe on God and His apostle. God is one God, there is
no partner with Him. He sent Moses with his signs, and created Jesus
with his words. The Jews say, “Ezra is the Son of God,” and the
Christians say, “God is one of three, and Jesus is the Son of God.”’ He
sent the letter by ʻAyyāsh b. Abī Rabīʻah al-Makhzūmī, and said: ‘When
you reach their city, go not in by night, but wait until the morning;
then carefully perform your ablutions, and pray with two prostrations,
and ask God to bless you with success and a friendly reception, and to
keep you safe from harm. Then take my letter in your right hand, and
deliver it with your right hand into their right hands, and they will
receive it. And recite to them, “The unbelievers among the people of
the Book and the polytheists did not waver,” etc. (Sūrah 98), to the
end of the Sūrah; when you have finished, say, “Muḥammad has believed,
and I am the first to believe.” And you will be able to meet every
objection they bring against you, and every glittering book that they
recite to you will lose its light. And when they speak in a foreign
tongue, say, “Translate it,” and say to them, “God is sufficient for
me; I believe in the Book sent down by Him, and I am commanded to do
justice among you; God is our Lord and your Lord; to us belong our
works, and to you belong your works; there is no strife between us and
you; God will unite us, and unto Him we must return.” If they now
accept Islam, then ask them for their three rods, before which they
gather together to pray, one rod of tamarisk that is spotted white and
yellow, and one knotted like a cane, and one black like ebony. Bring
the rods out and burn them in the market-place.’ So I set out,” tells
ʻAyyāsh, “to do as the Apostle of God had bid me. When I arrived, I
found that all the people had decked themselves out for a festival: I
walked on to see them, and came at last to three enormous curtains hung
in front of three doorways. I lifted the curtain and entered the middle
door, and found people collected in the courtyard of the building. I
introduced myself to them as the messenger of the Apostle of God, and
did as he had bidden me; and they gave heed to my words, and it fell
out as he had said.” [37]
In A.H. 9 a deputation of thirteen men from the Banū Kilāb, a branch of
the Banū ʻĀmir b. Ṣaʻṣaʻah, came to the Prophet and informed him that
one of his followers, Ḍaḥḥāk b. Sufyān, had come to them, reciting the
Qurʼān and teaching the doctrines of Islam, and that his preaching had
won over their tribe to the new faith. [38] Another branch of the same
tribe, the Banū Ruʼās b. Kilāb, was converted by one of its members,
named ʻAmr b. Mālik, who had been to Medina and accepted Islam, and
then returned to his fellow tribes and persuaded them to follow his
example. [39]
In the same year a less successful attempt was made by a new convert,
Wāthilah b. al-Asqaʻ, to induce his clan to accept the faith that he
himself had embraced after an interview with the Prophet. His father
scornfully cast him off, saying, “By God! I will never speak a word to
you again,” and none were found willing to believe the doctrines he
preached with the exception of his sister, who provided him with the
means of returning to the Prophet at Medina. [40] This ninth year of
the Hijrah has been called the year of the deputations, because of the
enormous number of Arab tribes and cities that now sent delegates to
the Prophet, to give in their submission. The introduction into Arab
society of a new principle of social union in the brotherhood of Islam
had already begun to weaken the binding force of the old tribal ideal,
which erected the fabric of society on the basis of blood-relationship.
The conversion of an individual and his reception into the new society
was a breach of one of the most fundamental laws of Arab life, and its
frequent occurrence had acted as a powerful solvent on tribal
organisation and had left it weak in the face of a national life so
enthusiastic and firmly-knit as that of the Muslims had become. The
Arab tribes were thus impelled to give in their submission to the
Prophet, not merely as the head of the strongest military force in
Arabia, but as the exponent of a theory of social life that was making
all others weak and ineffective. [41] Muḥammad had succeeded in
introducing into the anarchical society of his time a sentiment of
national unity, a consciousness of rights and duties towards one
another such as the Arabs had not felt before. [42] In this way, Islam
was uniting together clans that hitherto had been continually at feud
with one another, and as this great confederacy grew, it more and more
attracted to itself the weaker among the tribes of Arabia. In the
accounts of the conversion of the Arab tribes, there is continual
mention of the promise of security against their enemies, made to them
by the Prophet on the occasion of their submission. “Woe is me for
Muḥammad!” was the cry of one of the Arab tribes on the news of the
death of the Prophet. “So long as he was alive, I lived in peace and in
safety from my enemies;” and the cry must have found an echo far and
wide throughout Arabia.
How superficial was the adherence of numbers of the Arab tribes to the
faith of Islam may be judged from the widespread apostasy that followed
immediately on the death of the Prophet. Their acceptance of Islam
would seem to have been often dictated more by considerations of
political expediency, and was more frequently a bargain struck under
pressure of violence than the outcome of any enthusiasm or spiritual
awakening. They allowed themselves to be swept into the stream of what
had now become a great national movement, and we miss the fervent zeal
of the early converts in the cool, calculating attitude of those who
came in after the fall of Mecca. But even from among these must have
come many to swell the ranks of the true believers animated with a
genuine zeal for the faith, and ready, as we have seen, to give their
lives in the effort to preach it to their brethren.
“These men were the true moral heirs of the Prophet, the future
apostles of Islam, the faithful trustees of all that Muḥammad had
revealed unto the men of God. Into these men, through their constant
contact with the Prophet and their devotion to him, there had really
entered a new mode of thought and feeling, loftier and more civilised
than any they had known before; they had really changed for the better
from every point of view, and later on as statesmen and generals, in
the most difficult moments of the war of conquest they gave magnificent
and undeniable proof that the ideas and the doctrines of Muḥammad had
been seed cast on fruitful soil, and had produced a body of men of the
very highest worth. They were the depositaries of the sacred text of
the Qurʼān, which they alone knew by heart; they were the jealous
guardians of the memory of every word and bidding of the Prophet, the
trustees of the moral heritage of Muḥammad. These men formed the
venerable stock of Islam from whom one day was to spring the noble band
of the first jurists, theologians and traditionists of Muslim society.”
[43]
But for such men as these, so vast a movement could not have held
together, much less have recovered the shock given it by the death of
the founder. For it must not be forgotten how distinctly Islam was a
new movement in heathen Arabia, and how diametrically opposed were the
ideals of the two societies. [44] For the introduction of Islam into
Arab society did not imply merely the sweeping away of a few barbarous
and inhuman practices, but a complete reversal of the pre-existing
ideals of life.
Herein we have the most conclusive proof of the essentially missionary
character of the teaching of Muḥammad, who thus comes forward as the
exponent of a new scheme of faith and practice. Whatever may have been
the conditions favourable to the formation of a new political
organisation, Muḥammad certainly did not find the society of his day
prepared to receive his religious teaching and waiting only for the
voice that would express in speech the inarticulate yearnings of their
hearts. But it is just this spirit of expectancy that is wanting among
the Arabs—those at least of the Central Arabia towards whom Muḥammad’s
efforts were at first directed. They were by no means ready to receive
the preaching of a new teacher, least of all one who came with the (to
them unintelligible) title of apostle of God.
Again, the equality in Islam of all believers and the common
brotherhood of all Muslims, which suffered no distinctions between Arab
and non-Arab, between free and slave, to exist among the faithful, was
an idea that ran directly counter to the proud clan-feeling of the
Arab, who grounded his claims to personal consideration on the fame of
his ancestors, and in the strength of the same carried on the endless
blood-feuds in which his soul delighted. Indeed, the fundamental
principles in the teaching of Muḥammad were a protest against much that
the Arabs had hitherto most highly valued, and the newly-converted
Muslim was taught to consider as virtues, qualities which hitherto he
had looked down upon with contempt.
To the heathen Arab, friendship and hostility were as a loan which he
sought to repay with interest, and he prided himself on returning evil
for evil, and looked down on any who acted otherwise as a weak
nidering.
He is the perfect man who late and early plotteth still
To do a kindness to his friends and work his foes some ill.
To such men the Prophet said, “Recompense evil with that which is
better” (xxiii. 98); as they desired the forgiveness of God, they were
to pass over and pardon offences (xxiv. 22), and a Paradise, vast as
the heavens and the earth, was prepared for those who mastered their
anger and forgave others. (iii. 128.)
The very institution of prayer was jeered at by the Arabs to whom
Muḥammad first delivered his message, and one of the hardest parts of
his task was to induce in them that pious attitude of mind towards the
Creator, which Islam inculcates equally with Judaism and Christianity,
but which was practically unknown to the heathen Arabs. This
self-sufficiency and this lack of the religious spirit, joined with
their intense pride of race, little fitted them to receive the
teachings of one who maintained that “The most worthy of honour in the
sight of God is he that feareth Him most” (xlix. 13). No more could
they brook the restrictions that Islam sought to lay upon the licence
of their lives; wine, women, and song, were among the things most dear
to the Arab’s heart in the days of the ignorance, and the Prophet was
stern and severe in his injunctions respecting each of them.
Thus, from the very beginning, Islam bears the stamp of a missionary
religion that seeks to win the hearts of men, to convert them and
persuade them to enter the brotherhood of the faithful; and as it was
in the beginning, so has it continued to be up to the present day, as
will be the object of the following pages to show.
CHAPTER III.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.
After the death of Muḥammad, the army he had intended for Syria was
despatched thither by Abū Bakr, in spite of the protestations made by
certain Muslims in view of the then disturbed state of Arabia. He
silenced their expostulations with the words: “I will not revoke any
order given by the Prophet. Medina may become the prey of wild beasts,
but the army must carry out the wishes of Muḥammad.” This was the first
of that wonderful series of campaigns in which the Arabs overran Syria,
Persia and Northern Africa—overturning the ancient kingdom of Persia
and despoiling the Roman Empire of some of its fairest provinces. It
does not fall within the scope of this work to follow the history of
these different campaigns, but, in view of the expansion of the Muslim
faith that followed the Arab conquests, it is of importance to discover
what were the circumstances that made such an expansion possible.
A great historian [45] has well put the problem that meets us here, in
the following words: “Was it genuine religious enthusiasm, the new
strength of a faith now for the first time blossoming forth in all its
purity, that gave the victory in every battle to the arms of the Arabs
and in so incredibly short a time founded the greatest empire the world
had ever seen? But evidence is wanting to prove that this was the case.
The number was far too small of those who had given their allegiance to
the Prophet and his teaching with a free and heartfelt conviction,
while on the other hand all the greater was the number of those who had
been brought into the ranks of the Muhammadans only through pressure
from without or by the hope of worldly gain. Khālid, ‘that sword of the
swords of God,’ exhibited in a very striking manner that mixture of
force and persuasion whereby he and many of the Quraysh had been
converted, when he said that God had seized them by the hearts and by
the hair and compelled them to follow the Prophet. The proud feeling
too of a common nationality had much influence—a feeling which was more
alive among the Arabs of that time than (perhaps) among any other
people, and which alone determined many thousands to give the
preference to their countryman and his religion before foreign
teachers. Still more powerful was the attraction offered by the sure
prospect of gaining booty in abundance, in fighting for the new
religion and of exchanging their bare, stony deserts, which offered
them only a miserable subsistence, for the fruitful and luxuriant
countries of Persia, Syria and Egypt.”
These stupendous conquests which laid the foundations of the Arab
empire, were certainly not the outcome of a holy war, waged for the
propagation of Islam, but they were followed by such a vast defection
from the Christian faith that this result has often been supposed to
have been their aim. Thus the sword came to be looked upon by Christian
historians as the instrument of Muslim propaganda, and in the light of
the success attributed to it the evidences of the genuine missionary
activity of Islam were obscured. But the spirit which animated the
invading hosts of Arabs who poured over the confines of the Byzantine
and Persian empires, was no proselytising zeal for the conversion of
souls. On the contrary, religious interests appear to have entered but
little into the consciousness of the protagonists of the Arab armies.
[46] This expansion of the Arab race is more rightly envisaged as the
migration of a vigorous and energetic people driven by hunger and want,
to leave their inhospitable deserts and overrun the richer lands of
their more fortunate neighbours. [47] Still the unifying principle of
the movement was the theocracy established in Medina, and the
organisation of the new state proceeded from the devoted companions of
Muḥammad, the faithful depositaries of his teaching, whose moral weight
and enthusiasm kept Islam alive as the official religion, despite the
indifference of those Arabs who gave to it a mere nominal adherence.
[48] It is not, therefore, in the annals of the conquering armies that
we must look for the reasons which lead to the so rapid spread of the
Muslim faith, but rather in the conditions prevailing among the
conquered peoples.
The national character of this ethnic movement of migration naturally
attracted to the invading Arab hosts the outlying representatives of
the Arab race through whom the path of the conquering armies lay.
Accordingly it is not surprising to find that many of the Christian
Bedouins were swept into the rushing tide of this great movement and
that Arab tribes, who for centuries had professed the Christian
religion, now abandoned it to embrace the Muslim faith. Among these was
the tribe of the Banū Ghassān, who held sway over the desert east of
Palestine and southern Syria, of whom it was said that they were “Lords
in the days of the ignorance and stars in Islam.” [49] After the battle
of Qādisiyyah (A.H. 14) in which the Persian army under Rustam had been
utterly discomfited, many Christians belonging to the Bedouin tribes on
both sides of the Euphrates came to the Muslim general and said: “The
tribes that at the first embraced Islam were wiser than we. Now that
Rustam hath been slain, we will accept the new belief.” [50] Similarly,
after the conquest of northern Syria, most of the Bedouin tribes, after
hesitating a little, joined themselves to the followers of the Prophet.
[51]
That force was not the determining factor in these conversions may be
judged from the amicable relations that existed between the Christian
and the Muslim Arabs. Muḥammad himself had entered into treaty with
several Christian tribes, promising them his protection and
guaranteeing them the free exercise of their religion and to their
clergy undisturbed enjoyment of their old rights and authority. [52] A
similar bond of friendship united his followers with their
fellow-countrymen of the older faith, many of whom voluntarily came
forward to assist the Muslims in their military expeditions in the same
spirit of loyalty to the new government as had caused them to hold
aloof from the great apostasy that raised the standard of revolt
throughout Arabia immediately after the death of the Prophet. [53] It
has been suggested that the Christian Arabs who guarded the frontier of
the Byzantine empire bordering on the desert threw in their lot with
the invading Muslim army, when Heraclius refused any longer to pay them
their accustomed subsidy for military service as wardens of the
marches. [54]
In the battle of the Bridge (A.H. 13) when a disastrous defeat was
imminent and the panic-stricken Arabs were hemmed in between the
Euphrates and the Persian host, a Christian chief of the Banū Ṭayy
sprang forward like another Spurius Lartius to the side of an Arab
Horatius, to assist Muthannah the Muslim general in defending the
bridge of boats which could alone afford the means of an orderly
retreat. When fresh levies were raised to retrieve this disgrace, among
the reinforcements that came pouring in from every direction was a
Christian tribe of the Banū Namir, who dwelt within the limits of the
Byzantine empire, and in the ensuing battle of Buwayb (A.H. 13), just
before the final charge of the Arabs that turned the fortune of battle
in their favour, Muthannah rode up to the Christian chief and said: “Ye
are of one blood with us; come now, and as I charge, charge ye with
me.” The Persians fell back before their furious onslaught, and another
great victory was added to the glorious roll of Muslim triumphs. One of
the most gallant exploits of the day was performed by a youth belonging
to another Christian tribe of the desert, who with his companions, a
company of Bedouin horse-dealers, had come up just as the Arab army was
being drawn up in battle array. They threw themselves into the right on
the side of their compatriots; and while the conflict was raging most
fiercely, this youth, rushing into the centre of the Persians, slew
their leader, and leaping on his richly-caparisoned horse, galloped
back amidst the plaudits of the Muslim line, crying as he passed in
triumph: “I am of the Banū Taghlib. I am he that hath slain the chief.”
[55]
The tribe to which this young man boasted that he belonged was one of
those that elected to remain Christian, while other tribes of
Mesopotamia, such as the Banū Namir and the Banū Quḍāʻah, became
Muslim. The Banū Taghlib had sent an embassy to the Prophet as early as
the year A.H. 9. The heathen members of the deputation embraced Islam
and he made a treaty with the Christians according to which they were
to retain their old faith but were not to baptise their children. A
condition so entirely at variance with the usual tolerant attitude of
Muḥammad towards the Christian Arabs, who were allowed to choose
between conversion to Islam and the payment of jizyah and never
compelled to abandon their faith, has given rise to the conjecture that
this condition was suggested by the Christian families of the Banū
Taghlib themselves, out of motives of economy. [56] The long survival
of Christianity in this tribe shows that this condition was certainly
not observed. The caliph ʻUmar forbade any pressure to be put upon
them, when they showed themselves unwilling to abandon their old faith
and ordered that they should be left undisturbed in the practice of it,
but that they were not to oppose the conversion of any member of their
tribe to Islam nor baptise the children of such as became Muslims. [57]
They were called upon to pay the jizyah [58] or tax imposed on the
non-Muslim subjects, but they felt it to be humiliating to their pride
to pay a tax that was levied in return for protection of life and
property, and petitioned the caliph to be allowed to make the same kind
of contribution as the Muslims did. So in lieu of the jizyah they paid
a double Ṣadaqah or alms, [59]—which was a poor tax levied on the
fields and cattle, etc., of the Muslims. [60] It especially irked the
Muslims that any of the Arabs should remain true to the Christian
faith. The majority of the Banū Tanūkh had become Muslim in the year
A.H. 12, when with other Christian Arab tribes they submitted to Khālid
b. al-Walīd, [61] but some of them appear to have remained true to
their old faith for nearly a century and a half, since the caliph
al-Mahdī (A.H. 158–169) is said to have seen a number of them who dwelt
in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, and learning that they were Christians,
in anger ordered them to accept Islam—which they did to the number of
5000, and one of them suffered martyrdom rather than apostatise. [62]
But for the most part, details are lacking for any history of the
disappearance of Christianity from among the Christian Arab tribes of
Northern Arabia; they seem to have become absorbed in the surrounding
Muslim community by an almost insensible process of “peaceful
penetration”; had attempts been made to convert them by force when they
first came under Muhammadan rule, it would not have been possible for
Christians to have survived among them up to the times of the ʻAbbāsid
caliphs. [63]
The people of Ḥīrah had likewise resisted all the efforts made by
Khālid to induce them to accept the Muslim faith. This city was one of
the most illustrious in the annals of Arabia, and to the mind of the
impetuous hero of Islam it seemed that an appeal to their Arab blood
would be enough to induce them to enrol themselves with the followers
of the Prophet of Arabia. When the besieged citizens sent an embassy to
the Muslim general to arrange the terms of the capitulation of their
city, Khālid asked them, “Who are you? are you Arabs or Persians?” Then
ʻAdī, the spokesman of the deputation, replied, “Nay, we are
pure-blooded Arabs, while others among us are naturalised Arabs.” Kh.
“Had you been what you say you are, you would not have opposed us or
hated our cause.” ʻA. “Our pure Arab speech is the proof of what I
say.” Kh. “You speak truly. Now choose you one of these three things:
either (1) accept our faith, then your rights and obligations will be
the same as ours, whether you choose to go into another country or stay
in your own land; or (2) pay jizyah; or (3) war and battle. Verily, by
God! I have come to you with a people who are more desirous of death
than you are of life.” ʻA. “Nay, we will pay you jizyah.” Kh. “Ill-luck
to you! Unbelief is a pathless desert and foolish is the Arab who, when
two guides meet him wandering therein—the one an Arab and the other
not—leaves the first and accepts the guidance of the foreigner.” [64]
Due provision was made for the instruction of the new converts, for
while whole tribes were being converted to the faith with such
rapidity, it was necessary to take precautions against errors, both in
respect of creed and ritual, such as might naturally be feared in the
case of ill-instructed converts. Accordingly we find that the caliph
ʻUmar appointed teachers in every country, whose duty it was to
instruct the people in the teachings of the Qurʼān and the observances
of their new faith. The magistrates were also ordered to see that all,
whether old or young, were regular in their attendance at public
prayer, especially on Fridays and in the month of Ramaḍān. The
importance attached to this work of instructing the new converts may be
judged from the fact that in the city of Kūfah it was no less a
personage than the state treasurer who was entrusted with this task.
[65]
From the examples given above of the toleration extended towards the
Christian Arabs by the victorious Muslims of the first century of the
Hijrah and continued by succeeding generations, we may surely infer
that those Christian tribes that did embrace Islam, did so of their own
choice and free will. [66] The Christian Arabs of the present day,
dwelling in the midst of a Muhammadan population, are a living
testimony of this toleration; Layard speaks of having come across an
encampment of Christian Arabs at al-Karak, to the east of the Dead Sea,
who differed in no way, either in dress or in manners, from the Muslim
Arabs. [67] Burckhardt was told by the monks of Mount Sinai that in the
last century there still remained several families of Christian
Bedouins who had not embraced Islam, and that the last of them, an old
woman, died in 1750, and was buried in the garden of the convent. [68]
Many of the Arabs of the renowned tribe of the Banū Ghassān, Arabs of
the purest blood, who embraced Christianity towards the end of the
fourth century, still retain the Christian faith, and since their
submission to the Church of Rome, about two centuries ago, employ the
Arabic language in their religious services. [69]
If we turn from the Bedouins to consider the attitude of the settled
inhabitants of the towns and the non-Arab population towards the new
religion, we do not find that the Arab conquest was so rapidly followed
by conversions to Islam. The Christians of the great cities of the
eastern provinces of the Byzantine empire seem for the most part to
have remained faithful to their ancestral creed, to which indeed they
still in large numbers cling.
In order that we may fully appreciate their condition under the Muslim
rule, and estimate the influences that led to occasional conversions,
it will be well briefly to sketch their situation under the Christian
rule of the Byzantine empire which fell back before the Arab arms.
A hundred years before, Justinian had succeeded in giving some show of
unity to the Roman Empire, but after his death it rapidly fell asunder,
and at this time there was an entire want of common national feeling
between the provinces and the seat of government. Heraclius had made
some partially successful efforts to attach Syria again to the central
government, but unfortunately the general methods of reconciliation
which he adopted had served only to increase dissension instead of
allaying it. Religious passions were the only existing substitute for
national feeling, and he tried, by propounding an exposition of faith,
that was intended to serve as an eirenicon, to stop all further
disputes between the contending factions and unite the heretics to the
Orthodox Church and to the central government. The Council of Chalcedon
(451) had maintained that Christ was “to be acknowledged in two
natures, without confusion, change, division, or separation; the
difference of the natures being in nowise taken away by reason of their
union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved, and
concurring into one person and one substance, not as it were divided or
separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten,
God the Word.” This council was rejected by the Monophysites, who only
allowed one nature in the person of Christ, who was said to be a
composite person, having all attributes divine and human, but the
substance bearing these attributes was no longer a duality, but a
composite unity. The controversy between the orthodox party and the
Monophysites, who flourished particularly in Egypt and Syria and in
countries outside the Byzantine empire, had been hotly contested for
nearly two centuries, when Heraclius sought to effect a reconciliation
by means of the doctrine of Monotheletism: while conceding the duality
of the natures, it secured unity of the person in the actual life of
Christ, by the rejection of two series of activities in this one
person; the one Christ and Son of God effectuates that which is human
and that which is divine by one divine human agency, i.e. there is only
one will in the Incarnate Word. [70]
But Heraclius shared the fate of so many would-be peace-makers: for not
only did the controversy blaze up again all the more fiercely, but he
himself was stigmatised as a heretic and drew upon himself the wrath of
both parties.
Indeed, so bitter was the feeling he aroused that there is strong
reason to believe that even a majority of the orthodox subjects of the
Roman Empire, in the provinces that were conquered during this
emperor’s reign, were the well-wishers of the Arabs; they regarded the
emperor with aversion as a heretic, and were afraid that he might
commence a persecution in order to force upon them his Monotheletic
opinions. [71] They therefore readily—and even eagerly—received the new
masters who promised them religious toleration, and were willing to
compromise their religious position and their national independence if
only they could free themselves from the immediately impending danger.
Michael the Elder, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, writing in the latter
half of the twelfth century, could approve the decision of his
co-religionists and see the finger of God in the Arab conquests even
after the Eastern churches had had experience of five centuries of
Muhammadan rule. After recounting the persecutions of Heraclius, he
writes: “This is why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful,
and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever
He will, and uplifting the humble—beholding the wickedness of the
Romans who, throughout their dominions, cruelly plundered our churches
and our monasteries and condemned us without pity—brought from the
region of the south the sons of Ishmael, to deliver us through them
from the hands of the Romans. And, if in truth, we have suffered some
loss, because the catholic churches, that had been taken away from us
and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when
the cities submitted to the Arabs, they assigned to each denomination
the churches which they found it to be in possession of (and at that
time the great church of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away
from us); nevertheless it was no slight advantage for us to be
delivered from the cruelty of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath
and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves at peace.” [72]
When the Muslim army reached the valley of the Jordan and Abū ʻUbaydah
pitched his camp at Fiḥl, the Christian inhabitants of the country
wrote to the Arabs, saying: “O Muslims, we prefer you to the
Byzantines, though they are of our own faith, because you keep better
faith with us and are more merciful to us and refrain from doing us
injustice and your rule over us is better than theirs, for they have
robbed us of our goods and our homes.” [73] The people of Emessa closed
the gates of their city against the army of Heraclius and told the
Muslims that they preferred their government and justice to the
injustice and oppression of the Greeks. [74]
Such was the state of feeling in Syria during the campaign of 633–639
in which the Arabs gradually drove the Roman army out of the province.
And when Damascus, in 637, set the example of making terms with the
Arabs, and thus secured immunity from plunder and other favourable
conditions, the rest of the cities of Syria were not slow to follow.
Emessa, Arethusa, Hieropolis and other towns entered into treaties
whereby they became tributary to the Arabs. Even the patriarch of
Jerusalem surrendered the city on similar terms. The fear of religious
compulsion on the part of the heretical emperor made the promise of
Muslim toleration appear more attractive than the connection with the
Roman Empire and a Christian government, and after the first terrors
caused by the passage of an invading army, there succeeded a profound
revulsion of feeling in favour of the Arab conquerors. [75]
For the provinces of the Byzantine empire that were rapidly acquired by
the prowess of the Muslims found themselves in the enjoyment of a
toleration such as, on account of their Monophysite and Nestorian
opinions, had been unknown to them for many centuries. They were
allowed the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion with some
few restrictions imposed for the sake of preventing any friction
between the adherents of the rival religions, or arousing any
fanaticism by the ostentatious exhibition of religious symbols that
were so offensive to Muslim feeling. [76] The extent of this
toleration—so striking in the history of the seventh century—may be
judged from the terms granted to the conquered cities, in which
protection of life and property and toleration of religious belief were
given in return for submission and the payment of jizyah. [77]
The exact details of these agreements cannot easily be disentangled
from the accretions with which they have become overlaid, but whether
verbally authentic or not, they are significant as representing the
historic tradition accepted by the Muslim historians of the second
century of the Hijrah—a tradition that could hardly have become
established had there been extant evidence to the contrary. As an
example of such an agreement, the conditions [78] may be quoted that
are stated to have been drawn up when Jerusalem submitted to the caliph
ʻUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate! This is the security which ʻUmar, the servant of God,
the commander of the faithful, grants to the people of Ælia. He grants
to all, whether sick or sound, security for their lives, their
possessions, their churches and their crosses, and for all that
concerns their religion. Their churches shall not be changed into
dwelling places, nor destroyed, neither shall they nor their
appurtenances be in any way diminished, nor the crosses of the
inhabitants nor aught of their possessions, nor shall any constraint be
put upon them in the matter of their faith, nor shall any one of them
be harmed.” [79]
Tribute was imposed upon them of five dīnārs for the rich, four for the
middle class and three for the poor. In company with the Patriarch,
ʻUmar visited the holy places, and it is said while they were in the
Church of the Resurrection, as it was the appointed hour of prayer, the
Patriarch bade the caliph offer his prayers there, but he thoughtfully
refused, saying that if he were to do so, his followers might
afterwards claim it as a place of Muslim worship.
It is in harmony with the same spirit of kindly consideration for his
subjects of another faith, that ʻUmar is recorded to have ordered an
allowance of money and food to be made to some Christian lepers,
apparently out of the public funds. [80] Even in his last testament, in
which he enjoins on his successor the duties of his high office, he
remembers the dhimmīs (or protected persons of other faiths): “I
commend to his care the dhimmīs, who enjoy the protection of God and of
the Prophet; let him see to it that the covenant with them is kept, and
that no greater burdens than they can bear are laid upon them.” [81]
A later generation attributed to ʻUmar a number of restrictive
regulations which hampered the Christians in the free exercise of their
religion, but De Goeje [82] and Caetani [83] have proved without doubt
that they are the invention of a later age; as, however, Muslim
theologians of less tolerant periods accepted these ordinances as
genuine, they are of importance for forming a judgment as to the
condition of the Christian Churches under Muslim rule. This so-called
ordinance of ʻUmar runs as follows:—“In the name of God, the Merciful,
the Compassionate! This is a writing to ʻUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb from the
Christians of such and such a city. When you marched against us, we
asked of you protection for ourselves, our posterity, our possessions
and our co-religionists; and we made this stipulation with you, that we
will not erect in our city or the suburbs any new monastery, church,
cell or hermitage; [84] that we will not repair any of such buildings
that may fall into ruins, or renew those that may be situated in the
Muslim quarters of the town; that we will not refuse the Muslims entry
into our churches either by night or by day; that we will open the
gates wide to passengers and travellers; that we will receive any
Muslim traveller into our houses and give him food and lodging for
three nights; that we will not harbour any spy in our churches or
houses, or conceal any enemy of the Muslims; that we will not teach our
children the Qurʼān; [85] that we will not make a show of the Christian
religion nor invite any one to embrace it; that we will not prevent any
of our kinsmen from embracing Islam, if they so desire. That we will
honour the Muslims and rise up in our assemblies when they wish to take
their seats; that we will not imitate them in our dress, either in the
cap, turban, sandals, or parting of the hair; that we will not make use
of their expressions of speech, [86] nor adopt their surnames; that we
will not ride on saddles, or gird on swords, or take to ourselves arms
or wear them, or engrave Arabic inscriptions on our rings; that we will
not sell wine; that we will shave the front of our heads; that we will
keep to our own style of dress, wherever we may be; that we will wear
girdles round our waists; that we will not display the cross upon our
churches or display our crosses or our sacred books in the streets of
the Muslims, or in their market-places; [87] that we will strike the
bells [88] in our churches lightly; that we will not recite our
services in a loud voice when a Muslim is present, that we will not
carry palm-branches or our images in procession in the streets, that at
the burial of our dead we will not chant loudly or carry lighted
candles in the streets of the Muslims or their market-places; that we
will not take any slaves that have already been in the possession of
Muslims, nor spy into their houses; and that we will not strike any
Muslim. All this we promise to observe, on behalf of ourselves and our
co-religionists, and receive protection from you in exchange; and if we
violate any of the conditions of this agreement, then we forfeit your
protection and you are at liberty to treat us as enemies and rebels.”
[89]
The earliest mention of this document is made by Ibn Ḥazm, who died in
the middle of the fifth century of the Hijrah; its provisions represent
the more intolerant practice of a later age, and indeed were
regulations that were put into force with no sort of regularity, some
outburst of fanaticism being generally needed for any appeal to be made
for their application. There is abundant evidence to show that the
Christians in the early days of the Muhammadan conquest had little to
complain of in the way of religious disabilities. It is true that
adherence to their ancient faith rendered them obnoxious to the payment
of jizyah—a word which originally denoted tribute of any kind paid by
the non-Muslim subjects of the Arab empire, but came later on to be
used for the capitation-tax as the fiscal system of the new rulers
became fixed; [90] but this jizyah was too moderate to constitute a
burden, seeing that it released them from the compulsory military
service that was incumbent on their Muslim fellow-subjects. Conversion
to Islam was certainly attended by a certain pecuniary advantage, but
his former religion could have had but little hold on a convert who
abandoned it merely to gain exemption from the jizyah; and now, instead
of jizyah, the convert had to pay the legal alms, zakāt, annually
levied on most kinds of movable and immovable property. [91] The
pecuniary temptation to escape the incidence of taxation by means of
conversion was considerably lessened when financial considerations
compelled the Arab government, towards the end of the first century, to
insist on the new converts continuing to pay jizyah even after they had
been received into the community of the faithful. [92] On the other
hand it must be remembered that the non-Muslim sections of the
population always ran the risk of becoming the victims of fiscal
oppression when the state was in need of revenue.
The rates of jizyah levied by the early conquerors were not uniform,
[93] and the great Muslim doctors, Abū Ḥanīfah and Mālik, are not in
agreement on some of the less important details; [94] the following
facts taken from the Kitāb al-Kharāj, drawn up by Abū Yūsuf at the
request of Hārūn al-Rashīd (A.D. 786–809) may be taken as generally
representative of Muhammadan procedure under the ʻAbbāsid Caliphate.
The rich were to pay forty-eight dirhams [95] a year, the middle
classes twenty-four, while from the poor, i.e. the field-labourers and
artisans, only twelve dirhams were taken. This tax could be paid in
kind if desired; cattle, merchandise, household effects, even needles
were to be accepted in lieu of specie, but not pigs, wine, or dead
animals. The tax was to be levied only on able-bodied males, and not on
women or children. [96] The poor who were dependent for their
livelihood on alms and the aged poor who were incapable of work were
also specially excepted, as also the blind, the lame, the incurables
and the insane, unless they happened to be men of wealth; this same
condition applied to priests and monks, who were exempt if dependent on
the alms of the rich, but had to pay if they were well-to-do and lived
in comfort. The collectors of the jizyah were particularly instructed
to show leniency, and refrain from all harsh treatment or the
infliction of corporal punishment, in case of non-payment. [97]
This tax was not imposed on the Christians, as some would have us
think, as a penalty for their refusal to accept the Muslim faith, but
was paid by them in common with the other dhimmīs or non-Muslim
subjects of the state whose religion precluded them from serving in the
army, in return for the protection secured for them by the arms of the
Musalmans. When the people of Hīrah contributed the sum agreed upon,
they expressly mentioned that they paid this jizyah on condition that
“the Muslims and their leader protect us from those who would oppress
us, whether they be Muslims or others.” [98] Again, in the treaty made
by Khālid with some towns in the neighbourhood of Hīrah, he writes: “If
we protect you, then jizyah is due to us; but if we do not, then it is
not due.” [99] How clearly this condition was recognised by the
Muhammadans may be judged from the following incident in the reign of
the Caliph ʻUmar. The Emperor Heraclius had raised an enormous army
with which to drive back the invading forces of the Muslims, who had in
consequence to concentrate all their energies on the impending
encounter. The Arab general, Abū ʻUbaydah, accordingly wrote to the
governors of the conquered cities of Syria, ordering them to pay back
all the jizyah that had been collected from the cities, and wrote to
the people, saying, “We give you back the money that we took from you,
as we have received news that a strong force is advancing against us.
The agreement between us was that we should protect you, and as this is
not now in our power, we return you all that we took. But if we are
victorious we shall consider ourselves bound to you by the old terms of
our agreement.” In accordance with this order, enormous sums were paid
back out of the state treasury, and the Christians called down
blessings on the heads of the Muslims, saying, “May God give you rule
over us again and make you victorious over the Romans; had it been
they, they would not have given us back anything, but would have taken
all that remained with us.” [100]
As stated above, the jizyah was levied on the able-bodied males, in
lieu of the military service they would have been called upon to
perform had they been Musalmans; and it is very noticeable that when
any Christian people served in the Muslim army, they were exempted from
the payment of this tax. Such was the case with the tribe of
al-Jurājimah, a Christian tribe in the neighbourhood of Antioch, who
made peace with the Muslims, promising to be their allies and fight on
their side in battle, on condition that they should not be called upon
to pay jizyah and should receive their proper share of the booty. [101]
When the Arab conquests were pushed to the north of Persia in A.H. 22,
a similar agreement was made with a frontier tribe, which was exempted
from the payment of jizyah in consideration of military service. [102]
We find similar instances of the remission of jizyah in the case of
Christians who served in the army or navy under the Turkish rule. For
example, the inhabitants of Megaris, a community of Albanian
Christians, were exempted from the payment of this tax on condition
that they furnished a body of armed men to guard the passes over Mounts
Cithæron and Geranea, which lead to the Isthmus of Corinth; the
Christians who served as pioneers of the advance-guard of the Turkish
army, repairing the roads and bridges, were likewise exempt from
tribute and received grants of land quit of all taxation; [103] and the
Christian inhabitants of Hydra paid no direct taxes to the Sultan, but
furnished instead a contingent of 250 able-bodied seamen to the Turkish
fleet, who were supported out of the local treasury. [104]
The Southern Rumanians, the so-called Armatoli, [105] who constituted
so important an element of strength in the Turkish army during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Mirdites, a tribe of
Albanian Catholics who occupied the mountains to the north of Scutari,
were exempt from taxation on condition of supplying an armed contingent
in time of war. [106] In the same spirit, in consideration of the
services they rendered to the state, the capitation-tax was not imposed
upon the Greek Christians who looked after the aqueducts that supplied
Constantinople with drinking water, [107] nor on those who had charge
of the powder-magazine in that city. [108] On the other hand, when the
Egyptian peasants, although Muslim in faith, were made exempt from
military service, a tax was imposed upon them as on the Christians, in
lieu thereof. [109]
Living under this security of life and property and such toleration of
religious thought, the Christian community—especially in the
towns—enjoyed a flourishing prosperity in the early days of the
Caliphate.
Muʻāwiyah (661–680) employed Christians very largely in his service,
and other members of the reigning house followed his example. [110]
Christians frequently held high posts at court, e.g. a Christian Arab,
al-Akhṭal, was court poet, and the father of St. John of Damascus,
counsellor to the caliph ʻAbd al-Malik (685–705). In the service of the
caliph al-Muʻtaṣim (833–842), there were two brothers, Christians, who
stood very high in the confidence of the Commander of the Faithful: the
one, named Salmūyah, seems to have occupied somewhat the position of a
modern secretary of state, and no royal documents were valid until
countersigned by him, while his brother, Ibrāhīm, was entrusted with
the care of the privy seal, and was set over the Bayt al-Māl or Public
Treasury, an office that, from the nature of the funds and their
disposal, might have been expected to have been put into the hands of a
Muslim; so great was the caliph’s personal affection for this Ibrāhīm,
that he visited him in his sickness, and was overwhelmed with grief at
his death, and on the day of the funeral ordered the body to be brought
to the palace and the Christian rites performed there with great
solemnity. [111]
ʻAbd al-Malik appointed a certain Athanasius, a Christian scholar of
Edessa, tutor to his brother, ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz. Athanasius accompanied his
pupil, when he was appointed governor of Egypt, and there amassed great
wealth; he is said to have possessed 4000 slaves, villages, houses,
gardens, and gold and silver “like stones”; his sons took a dīnār from
each of the soldiers when they received their pay, and as there were
30,000 troops then in Egypt, some idea may be formed of the wealth that
Athanasius accumulated during the twenty-one years that he spent in
that country. [112] At the close of the eighth century, a certain Abū
Nūḥ al-Anbārī was secretary to Abū Mūsạ̄ b. Muṣʻab, governor of Mosul,
and used his powerful influence for the benefit of his Christian
co-religionists. [113]
In the reign of al-Muʻtadid (892–902), the governor of Anbār, ʻUmar b.
Yūsuf, was a Christian, and the caliph approved of the appointment on
the ground that if a Christian were found to be competent, a post might
well be given to him, as there were better reasons for trusting a
Christian than either a Jew, a Muslim or a Zoroastrian. [114]
Al-Muwaffaq, who was virtual ruler of the empire during the reign of
his brother al-Muʻtamid (870–892), entrusted the administration of the
army to a Christian named Israel, and his son, al-Muʻtaḍid, had as one
of his secretaries another Christian, Malik b. al-Walīd. In a later
reign, that of al-Muqtadir (908–932), a Christian was again in charge
of the war office. [115]
Naṣr b. Hārūn, the Prime Minister of ʻAḍud al-Dawlah (949–982), of the
Buwayhid dynasty of Persia, who ruled over Southern Persia and ʻIrāq,
was a Christian. [116] For a long time, the government offices,
especially in the department of finance, were filled with Christians
and Persians; [117] to a much later date was such the case in Egypt,
where at times the Christians almost entirely monopolised such posts.
[118] Particularly as physicians, the Christians frequently amassed
great wealth and were much honoured in the houses of the great.
Gabriel, the personal physician of the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, was a
Nestorian Christian and derived a yearly income of 800,000 dirhams from
his private property, in addition to an emolument of 280,000 dirhams a
year in return for his attendance on the caliph; the second physician,
also a Christian, received 22,000 dirhams a year. [119] In trade and
commerce, the Christians also attained considerable affluence: indeed
it was frequently their wealth that excited against them the jealous
cupidity of the mob—a feeling that fanatics took advantage of, to
persecute and oppress them. Further, the non-Muslim communities enjoyed
an almost complete autonomy, for the government placed in their hands
the independent management of their internal affairs, and their
religious leaders exercised judicial functions in cases that concerned
their co-religionists only. [120] Their churches and monasteries were,
for the most part, not interfered with, except in the large cities,
where some of them were turned into mosques—a measure that could hardly
be objected to in view of the enormous increase in the Muslim and
corresponding decrease in the Christian population.
Recent historical criticism has demonstrated the impossibility of the
legend that when Damascus was taken by the Arabs, the churches were
equally divided between the Christians and the conquerors, on the plea
that while one Muslim general made his way into the city by the eastern
gate at the point of the sword, another at the western gate received
the submission of the governor of the city; a similar scrutiny of
historical documents as well as of the topography of the building has
shown that the great cathedral of St. John could never have been used
in the manner described by some Arabic historians as a common place of
worship for both Christians and Muslims. [121] But the very fact that
these historians should have believed that such an arrangement
continued for nearly eighty years, testifies to the early recognition
of the liberty granted to the Christians of practising the observances
of their religion.
The opinion of the Muhammadan legists is very diverse on this question,
from the more liberal Ḥanafī doctrine, which declares that, though it
is unlawful to construct churches and synagogues in Muhammadan
territory, those already existing can be repaired if they have been
destroyed or have fallen into decay, while in villages and hamlets,
where the tokens of Islam do not appear, new churches and synagogues
may be built—to the intolerant Ḥanbalite view that they may neither be
erected nor be restored when damaged or ruined. Some legists held that
the privileges varied according to treaty rights: in towns taken by
force, no new houses of prayer might be erected by dhimmīs, but if a
special treaty had been made, the building of new churches and
synagogues was allowed. [122] But like so many of the lucubrations of
Muhammadan legists, these prescriptions bore but little relation to
actual facts. [123] Schoolmen might agree that the dhimmīs could build
no houses of prayer in a city of Muslim foundation, but the civil
authority permitted the Copts to erect churches in the new capital of
Cairo. [124] In other cities also the Christians were allowed to erect
new churches and monasteries. The very fact that ʻUmar II (717–720), at
the close of the first century of the Hijrah, should have ordered the
destruction of all recently constructed churches, [125] and that rather
more than a century later, the fanatical al-Mutawakkil (847–861) should
have had to repeat the same order, shows how little the prohibition of
the building of new churches was put into force. [126] We have numerous
instances recorded, both by Christian and Muhammadan historians, of the
building of new churches: e.g. in the reign of ʻAbd al-Malik (685–705),
a wealthy Christian of Edessa, named Athanasius, erected in his native
city a fine church dedicated to the Mother of God, and a Baptistery in
honour of the picture of Christ that was reputed to have been sent to
King Abgar; he also built a number of churches and monasteries in
various parts of Egypt, among them two magnificent churches in Fusṭāṭ.
[127] Some Christian chamberlains in the service of ʻAbd al-ʻAziz b.
Marwān (brother of ʻAbd al-Malik), the governor of Egypt, obtained
permission to build a church in Ḥalwān, which was dedicated to St.
John, [128] though this town was a Muslim creation. In A.D. 711 a
Jacobite church was built at Antioch by order of the caliph al-Walīd
(705–715). [129] In the first year of the reign of Yazīd II (A.D. 720),
Mār Elias, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, made a solemn entry into
Antioch, accompanied by his clergy and monks, to consecrate a new
church which he had caused to be built; and in the following year he
consecrated another church in the village of Sarmada, in the district
of Antioch, and the only opposition he met with was from the rival
Christian sect that accepted the Council of Chalcedon. [130] In the
following reign, Khālid al-Qasrī, who was governor of Arabian and
Persian ʻIrāq from 724 to 738, built a church for his mother, who was a
Christian, to worship in. [131] In 759 the building of a church at
Nisibis was completed, on which the Nestorian bishop, Cyprian, had
expended a sum of 56,000 dīnārs. [132] From the same century dates the
church of Abū Sirjah in the ancient Roman fortress in old Cairo. [133]
In the reign of al-Mahdī (775–785) a church was erected in Baghdād for
the use of the Christian prisoners that had been taken captive during
the numerous campaigns against the Byzantine empire. [134] Another
church was built in the same city, in the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd
(786–809), by the people of Samālū, who had submitted to the caliph and
received protection from him; [135] during the same reign Sergius, the
Nestorian Metropolitan of Baṣrah, received permission to build a church
in that city, [136] though it was a Muslim foundation, having been
created by the caliph ʻUmar in the year 638, and a magnificent church
was erected in Babylon in which were enshrined the bodies of the
prophets Daniel and Ezechiel. [137] When al-Maʼmūn (813–833) was in
Egypt he gave permission to two of his chamberlains to erect a church
on al-Muqaṭṭam, a hill near Cairo; and by the same caliph’s leave, a
wealthy Christian, named Bukām, built several fine churches at Būrah in
Egypt. [138] The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, who died A.D. 820,
erected a church at Takrīt and a monastery at Baghdād. [139] In the
tenth century, the beautiful Coptic church of Abū Sayfayn was built in
Fusṭāṭ. [140] A new church was built at Jiddah in the reign of
al-Ẓāhir, the seventh Fāṭimid caliph of Egypt (1020–1035). [141] New
churches and monasteries were also built in the reign of the ʻAbbāsid,
al-Mustaḍī (1170–1180). [142] In 1187 a church was built at Fusṭāṭ and
dedicated to Our Lady the Pure Virgin. [143]
Indeed, so far from the development of the Christian Church being
hampered by the establishment of Muhammadan rule, the history of the
Nestorians exhibits a remarkable outburst of religious life and energy
from the time of their becoming subject to the Muslims. [144]
Alternately petted and persecuted by the Persian kings, in whose
dominions by far the majority of the members of this sect were found,
it had passed a rather precarious existence and had been subjected to
harsh treatment, when war between Persia and Byzantium exposed it to
the suspicion of sympathising with the Christian enemy. But, under the
rule of the caliphs, the security they enjoyed at home enabled them to
vigorously push forward their missionary enterprises abroad.
Missionaries were sent into China and India, both of which were raised
to the dignity of metropolitan sees in the eighth century; about the
same period they gained a footing in Egypt, and later spread the
Christian faith right across Asia, and by the eleventh century had
gained many converts from among the Tatars. [145]
If the other Christian sects failed to exhibit the same vigorous life,
it was not the fault of the Muhammadans. All were tolerated alike by
the supreme government, and furthermore were prevented from persecuting
one another. [146] In the fifth century, Barsauma, a Nestorian bishop,
had persuaded the Persian king to set on foot a fierce persecution of
the Orthodox Church, by representing Nestorius as a friend of the
Persians and his doctrines as approximating to their own; as many as
7800 of the Orthodox clergy, with an enormous number of laymen, are
said to have been butchered during this persecution. [147] Another
persecution was instituted against the Orthodox by Khusrau II, after
the invasion of Persia by Heraclius, at the instigation of a Jacobite,
who persuaded the King that the Orthodox would always be favourably
inclined towards the Byzantines. [148] But the principles of Muslim
toleration forbade such acts of injustice as these: on the contrary, it
seems to have been their endeavour to deal fairly by all their
Christian subjects: e.g. after the conquest of Egypt, the Jacobites
took advantage of the expulsion of the Byzantine authorities to rob the
Orthodox of their churches, but later they were restored by the
Muhammadans to their rightful owners when these had made good their
claim to possess them. [149]
In view of the toleration thus extended to their Christian subjects in
the early period of the Muslim rule, the common hypothesis of the sword
as the factor of conversion seems hardly satisfactory, and we are
compelled to seek for other motives than that of persecution. But
unfortunately very few details are forthcoming and we are obliged to
have recourse to conjecture. [150] In an age so prolific of theological
speculation, there may well have been some thinkers whose trend of
thought had prepared them for the acceptance of the Muhammadan
position. Such were those Shahrīghān or landed proprietors in Persia in
the eighth century, who were nominally Christians, but maintained that
Christ was an ordinary man and that he was as one of the Prophets.
[151] They appear at times to have given a good deal of trouble to the
Nestorian clergy, who were at great pains to draw them into the paths
of orthodoxy; [152] but their theological position was more closely
akin to Islam than to Christian doctrine, and they probably went to
swell the ranks of the converts after the Arab conquest of the Persian
empire.
Many Christian theologians [153] have supposed that the debased
condition—moral and spiritual—of the Eastern Church of that period must
have alienated the hearts of many and driven them to seek a healthier
spiritual atmosphere in the faith of Islam which had come to them in
all the vigour of new-born zeal. [154] For example, Dean Milman [155]
asks, “What was the state of the Christian world in the provinces
exposed to the first invasion of Mohammedanism? Sect opposed to sect,
clergy wrangling with clergy upon the most abstruse and metaphysical
points of doctrine. The orthodox, the Nestorians, the Eutychians, the
Jacobites were persecuting each other with unexhausted animosity; and
it is not judging too severely the evils of religious controversy to
suppose that many would rejoice in the degradation of their adversaries
under the yoke of the unbeliever, rather than make common cause with
them in defence of the common Christianity. In how many must this
incessant disputation have shaken the foundations of their faith! It
had been wonderful if thousands had not, in their weariness and
perplexity, sought refuge from these interminable and implacable
controversies in the simple, intelligible truth of the Divine Unity,
though purchased by the acknowledgment of the prophetic mission of
Mohammed.” Similarly, Caetani sees in the spread of Islam, among the
Christians of the Eastern Churches, a revulsion of feeling from the
dogmatic subtleties introduced into Christian theology by the
Hellenistic spirit. “For the East, with its love of clear and simple
concepts, Hellenic culture was, from the religious point of view, a
misfortune, because it changed the sublime and simple teachings of
Christ into a creed bristling with incomprehensible dogmas, full of
doubts and uncertainties; these ended with producing a feeling of deep
dismay and shook the very foundations of religious belief; so that when
at last there appeared, coming out suddenly from the desert, the news
of the new revelation, this bastard oriental Christianity, torn asunder
by internal discords, wavering in its fundamental dogmas, dismayed by
such incertitudes, could no longer resist the temptations of a new
faith, which swept away at one single stroke all miserable doubts, and
offered, along with simple, clear and undisputed doctrines, great
material advantages also. The East then abandoned Christ and threw
itself into the arms of the Prophet of Arabia.” [156]
Again, Canon Taylor [157] says: “It is easy to understand why this
reformed Judaism spread so swiftly over Africa and Asia. The African
and Syrian doctors had substituted abstruse metaphysical dogmas for the
religion of Christ: they tried to combat the licentiousness of the age
by setting forth the celestial merit of celibacy and the angelic
excellence of virginity—seclusion from the world was the road of
holiness, dirt was the characteristic of monkish sanctity—the people
were practically polytheists, worshipping a crowd of martyrs, saints
and angels; the upper classes were effeminate and corrupt, the middle
classes oppressed by taxation, [158] the slaves without hope for the
present or the future. As with the besom of God, Islam swept away this
mass of corruption and superstition. It was a revolt against empty
theological polemics; it was a masculine protest against the exaltation
of celibacy as a crown of piety. It brought out the fundamental dogmas
of religion—the unity and greatness of God, that He is merciful and
righteous, that He claims obedience to His will, resignation and faith.
It proclaimed the responsibility of man, a future life, a day of
judgment, and stern retribution to fall upon the wicked; and enforced
the duties of prayer, almsgiving, fasting and benevolence. It thrust
aside the artificial virtues, the religious frauds and follies, the
perverted moral sentiments, and the verbal subtleties of theological
disputants. It replaced monkishness by manliness. It gave hope to the
slave, brotherhood to mankind, and recognition to the fundamental facts
of human nature.”
Islam has, moreover, been represented as a reaction against that
Byzantine ecclesiasticism, [159] which looked upon the emperor and his
court as a copy of the Divine Majesty on high, and the emperor himself
as not only the supreme earthly ruler of Christendom, but as
High-priest also. [160] Under Justinian this system had been hardened
into a despotism that pressed like an iron weight upon clergy and laity
alike. In 532 the widespread dissatisfaction in Constantinople with
both church and state, burst out into a revolt against the government
of Justinian, which was only suppressed after a massacre of 35,000
persons. The Greens, as the party of the malcontents was termed, had
made open and violent protest in the circus against the oppression of
the emperor, crying out, “Justice has vanished from the world and is no
more to be found. But we will become Jews, or rather we will return
again to Grecian paganism.” [161] The lapse of a century had removed
none of the grounds for the dissatisfaction that here found such
violent expression, but the heavy hand of the Byzantine government
prevented the renewal of such an outbreak as that of 532 and compelled
the malcontents to dissemble, though in 560 some secret heathens were
detected in Constantinople and punished. [162] On the borders of the
empire, however, at a distance from the capital, such malcontents were
safer, and the persecuted heretics, and others dissatisfied with the
Byzantine state-church, took refuge in the East, and here the Muslim
armies would be welcomed by the spiritual children of those who a
hundred years before had desired to exchange the Christian religion for
another faith.
Further, the general adoption of the Arabic language throughout the
empire of the caliphate, especially in the towns and the great centres
of population, and the gradual assimilation in manners and customs that
in the course of about two centuries caused the numerous conquered
races to be largely merged in the national life of the ruling race, had
no doubt a counterpart in the religious and intellectual life of many
members of the protected religions. The rationalistic movement that so
powerfully influenced Muslim theology from the second to the fifth
century of the Hijrah may very possibly have influenced Christian
thinkers, and turned them from a religion, the prevailing tone of whose
theology seems at this time to have been Credo quia impossibile. A
Muhammadan writer of the fourth century of the Hijrah has preserved for
us a conversation with a Coptic Christian which may safely be taken as
characteristic of the general mental attitude of the rest of the
Eastern Churches at this period:—
“My proof for the truth of Christianity is, that I find its teachings
contradictory and mutually destructive, for they are repugnant to
reason and revolting to the intellect, on account of their
inconsistency and mutual contrariety. No reflection can strengthen
them, no discussion can prove them; and however thoughtfully we may
investigate them, neither the intellect nor the senses can provide us
with any argument in support of them. Notwithstanding this, I have seen
that many nations and mighty kings of learning and sound judgment, have
given in their allegiance to the Christian faith; so I conclude that if
these have accepted it in spite of all the contradictions referred to,
it is because the proofs they have received, in the form of signs and
miracles, have compelled them to submit to it.” [163]
On the other hand, it should be remembered that those who passed over
from Christianity to Islam, under the influence of the rationalistic
tendencies of the age, would find in the Muʻtazilite presentment of
Muslim theology, very much that was common to the two faiths, so that
as far as the articles of belief and the intellectual attitude towards
many theological questions were concerned, the transition was not so
violent as might be supposed. To say nothing of the numerous
fundamental doctrines, that will at once suggest themselves to those
even who have only a slight knowledge of the teachings of the Prophet,
there were many other common points of view, that were the direct
consequences of the close relationships between the Christian and
Muhammadan theologians in Damascus under the Umayyad caliphs as also in
later times; for it has been maintained that there is clear evidence of
the influence of the Byzantine theologians on the development of the
systematic treatment of Muhammadan dogmatics. The very form and
arrangement of the oldest rule of faith in the Arabic language suggest
a comparison with similar treatises of St. John of Damascus and other
Christian fathers. [164] The oldest Arab Ṣūfīism, the trend of which
was purely towards the ascetic life (as distinguished from the later
pantheistic Ṣūfīism) originated largely under the influence of
Christian thought. [165] Such influence is especially traceable in the
doctrines of some of the Muʻtazilite sects, [166] who busied themselves
with speculations on the attributes of the divine nature quite in the
manner of the Byzantine theologians: the Qadariyyah or libertarians of
Islam probably borrowed their doctrine of the freedom of the will
directly from Christianity, while the Murjiʼah in their denial of the
doctrine of eternal punishment were in thorough agreement with the
teaching of the Eastern Church on this subject as against the generally
received opinion of orthodox Muslims. [167] On the other hand, the
influence of the more orthodox doctors of Islam in the conversion of
unbelievers is attested by the tradition that twenty thousand
Christians, Jews and Magians became Muslims when the great Imām Ibn
Ḥanbal died. [168] A celebrated doctor of the same sect, Abu’l-Faraj b.
al-Jawzī (A.D. 1115–1201), the most learned man of his time, a popular
preacher and most prolific writer, is said to have boasted that just
the same number of persons accepted the faith of Islam at his hands.
[169]
Further, the vast and unparalleled success of the Muslim arms shook the
faith of the Christian peoples that came under their rule and saw in
these conquests the hand of God. [170] Worldly prosperity they
associated with the divine favour and the God of battle (they thought)
would surely give the victory only into the hands of his favoured
servants. Thus the very success of the Muhammadans seemed to argue the
truth of their religion.
The Islamic ideal of the brotherhood of all believers was a powerful
attraction towards this creed, and though the Arab pride of birth
strove to refuse for several generations the privileges of the ruling
race to the new converts, still as “clients” of the various Arab tribes
to which at first they used to be affiliated, they received a
recognised position in the community, and by the close of the first
century of the Hijrah they had vindicated for this ideal its true place
in Muslim theology and at least a theoretical recognition in the state.
[171]
But the condition of the Christians did not always continue to be so
tolerable as under the earlier caliphs. In the interests of the true
believers, vexatious conditions were sometimes imposed upon the
non-Muslim population (or dhimmīs), with the object of securing for the
faithful superior social advantages. Unsuccessful attempts were made by
several caliphs to exclude them from the public offices. Decrees to
this effect were passed by al-Manṣūr (754–775), al-Mutawakkil
(847–861), al-Muqtadir (908–932), and in Egypt by al-Āmir (1101–1130),
one of the Fāṭimid caliphs, and by the Mamlūk Sultans in the fourteenth
century. [172] But the very fact that these decrees excluding the
dhimmīs from government posts were so often renewed, is a sign of the
want of any continuity or persistency in putting such intolerant
measures into practice. In fact they may generally be traced either to
popular indignation excited by the harsh and insolent behaviour of
Christian officials, [173] or to outbursts of fanaticism which forced
upon the government acts of oppression that were contrary to the
general spirit of Muslim rule and were consequently allowed to lapse as
soon as possible.
The beginning of a harsher treatment of the native Christian population
dates from the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809) who ordered them to
wear a distinctive dress and give up the government posts they held to
Muslims. The first of these orders shows how little one at least of the
ordinances ascribed to ʻUmar was observed, and these decrees were the
outcome, not so much of any purely religious feeling, as of the
political circumstances of the time. The Christians under Muhammadan
rule have often had to suffer for the bad faith kept by foreign
Christian powers in their relations with Muhammadan princes, and on
this occasion it was the treachery of the Byzantine Emperor,
Nicephorus, that caused the Christian name to stink in the nostrils of
Hārūn. [174] Many of the persecutions of Christians in Muslim countries
can be traced either to distrust of their loyalty, excited by the
intrigues and interference of Christian foreigners and the enemies of
Islam, or to the bad feeling stirred up by the treacherous or brutal
behaviour of the latter towards the Musalmans. Religious fanaticism is,
however, responsible for many of such persecutions, as in the reign of
the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–861), under whom severe measures of
oppression were taken against the Christians. This prince took
advantage of the strong Orthodox reaction that had set in in Muhammadan
theology against the rationalistic and freethinking tendencies that had
had free play under former rulers,—and came forward as the champion of
the extreme orthodox party, to which the mass of the people as
contrasted with the higher classes belonged, [175] and which was eager
to exact vengeance for the persecutions it had itself suffered in the
two preceding reigns; [176] he sought to curry their favour by
persecuting the Muʻtazilites, forbidding all further discussions on the
Qurʼān and declaring the doctrine that it was created, to be heretical;
he had the followers of ʻAlī imprisoned and beaten, pulled down the
tomb of Ḥusayn at Karbalāʼ and forbade pilgrimages to be made to the
site. The Christians shared in the sufferings of the other heretics;
for al-Mutawakkil put rigorously into force the rules that had been
passed in former reigns prescribing a distinction in the dress of
dhimmīs and Muslims, ordered that the Christians should no longer be
employed in the public offices, doubled the capitation-tax, forbade
them to have Muslim slaves or use the same baths as the Muslims, and
harassed them with several other restrictions.
It is noteworthy that the historians of the Nestorian Church—which had
to suffer most from this persecution—describe it as something new and
individual to al-Mutawakkil, and as ceasing with his death. [177] One
of his successors, al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908–932), renewed these
regulations, which the lapse of half a century had apparently caused to
fall into disuse.
Other outbursts of fanaticism led to the destruction of churches and
synagogues, [178] and the terror of such persecution led to the
defection of many from the Christian Church. [179] But such oppression
was contrary to the tolerant spirit of Islam, and to the teaching
traditionally ascribed to the Prophet; [180] and the fanatical party
tried in vain to enforce the persistent execution of these oppressive
measures for the humiliation of the non-Muslim population. “The ʻulamaʼ
(i.e. the learned, the clergy) consider this state of things; they weep
and groan in silence, while the princes who had the power of putting
down these criminal abuses only shut their eyes to them.” [181] The
rules that a fanatical priesthood may lay down for the repression of
unbelievers cannot always be taken as a criterion of the practice of
civil governments: it is failure to realise this fact that has rendered
possible the highly-coloured pictures of the sufferings of the
Christians under Muhammadan rule, drawn by writers who have assumed
that the prescriptions of certain Muslim theologians represented an
invariable practice. Such outbursts of persecution seem in some cases
to have been excited by the alleged abuse of their position by those
Christians who held high posts in the service of the government; they
aroused considerable hostility of feeling towards themselves by their
oppression of the Muslims, it being said that they took advantage of
their high position to plunder and annoy the faithful, treating them
with great harshness and rudeness and despoiling them of their lands
and money. Such complaints were laid before the caliphs al-Manṣūr
(754–775), al-Mahdī (775–785), al-Maʼmūn (813–833), al-Mutawakkil
(847–861), al-Muqtadir (908–932), and many of their successors. [182]
They also incurred the odium of many Muhammadans by acting as the spies
of the ʻAbbāsid dynasty and hunting down the adherents of the displaced
Umayyad family. [183] At a later period, during the time of the
Crusades they were accused of treasonable correspondence with the
Crusaders [184] and brought on themselves severe restrictive measures
which cannot justly be described as religious persecution.
In proportion as the lot of the conquered peoples became harder to
bear, the more irresistible was the temptation to free themselves from
their miseries, by the words, “There is no god but God: Muḥammad is the
Apostle of God.” When the state was in need of money—as was
increasingly the case—the subject races were more and more burdened
with taxes, so that the condition of the non-Muslims was constantly
growing more unendurable, and conversions to Islam increased in the
same proportion. The dreary record of scandals, with which the pages of
the Christian historians of this later period are filled, would suggest
that the Christian Churches had failed to develop a moral fibre strong
enough to endure the stress of adverse conditions, and when persecution
came, the reason for the defection that followed might—as the historian
of the Nestorian Church suggests [185]—be sought for in the prevailing
negligence in the performance of religious duties and the evil life of
the clergy.
Further causes that contributed to the decrease of the Christian
population may be found in the fact that the children of the numerous
Christian captive women who were carried off to the harems of the
Muslims had to be brought up in the religion of their fathers, and in
the frequent temptation that was offered to the Christian slave by an
indulgent master, of purchasing his freedom at the price of conversion
to Islam. But of any organised attempt to force the acceptance of Islam
on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic persecution intended
to stamp out the Christian religion, we hear nothing. Had the caliphs
chosen to adopt either course of action, they might have swept away
Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of
Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestantism penal in France, or the Jews
were kept out of England for 350 years. The Eastern Churches in Asia
were entirely cut off from communion with the rest of Christendom,
throughout which no one would have been found to lift a finger on their
behalf, as heretical communions. So that the very survival of these
Churches to the present day is a strong proof of the generally tolerant
attitude of the Muhammadan governments towards them. [186]
Of the ancient Churches in Western Asia at the time of the Muhammadan
conquest, there still survive about 150,000 Nestorians, [187] and their
number would have been larger but for the proselytising efforts of
other Christian Churches; the Chaldees who have submitted to the Church
of Rome number 70,000, in 1898 the Nestorian Bishop Mār Jonan, with
several of the clergy and 15,000 Nestorians were received into the
Orthodox Russian Church; and numbers of Nestorians have also become
Protestants. [188] The Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch exercises
jurisdiction over about 80,000 members of this ancient Church, while
25,000 families of Uniat Jacobites obey the Syrian Catholic Patriarch.
[189] Belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, there are 28,836 families
under the Patriarch of Antioch and more than 15,000 persons under the
Patriarch of Jerusalem, [190] while the Melchites or Greek-Catholics
number about 130,000. [191] The Maronite Church, which has been in
union with the Roman Catholic Church since the year 1182, has a
following of 300,000. [192]
The marvel is that these isolated and scattered communities should have
survived so long, exposed as they have been to the ravages of war,
pestilence and famine, [193] living in a country that was for centuries
a continual battle-field, overrun by Turks, Mongols and Crusaders,
[194] it being further remembered that they were forbidden by the
Muhammadan law to make good this decay of their numbers by
proselytising efforts—if indeed they had cared to do so, for they seem
(with the exception of the Nestorians) even before the Muhammadan
conquest, to have lost that missionary spirit, without which, as
history abundantly shows, no healthy life is possible in a Christian
Church. It has also been suggested that the monastic ideal of
continence so widespread in the East, and the Christian practice of
monogamy, together with the sense of insecurity and their servile
condition, may have acted as checks on the growth of the Christian
population. [195]
Of the details of conversion to Islam we have hardly any information.
At the time of the first occupation of their country by the Arabs, the
Christians appear to have gone over to Islam in very large numbers.
Some idea of the extent of these early conversions in ʻIrāq for example
may be formed from the fact that the income from taxation in the reign
of ʻUmar was from 100 to 120 million dirhams, while in the reign of
ʻAbd al-Malik, about fifty years later, it had sunk to forty millions:
while this fall in the revenue is largely attributable to the
devastation caused by wars and insurrections, still it was chiefly due
to the fact that large numbers of the population had become Muhammadan
and consequently could no longer be called upon to pay the
capitation-tax. [196]
This same period witnesses the conversion of large numbers of the
Christians of Khurāsān, as we learn from a letter of a contemporary
ecclesiastic, the Nestorian Patriarch Īshōʻyabh III, addressed to
Simeon, the Metropolitan of Rev-Ardashīr and Primate of Persia. We
possess so very few Christian documents of the first century of the
Hijrah, and this letter bears such striking testimony to the peaceful
character of the spread of the new faith, and has moreover been so
little noticed by modern historians—that it may well be quoted here at
length. “Where are thy sons, O father bereft of sons? Where is that
great people of Merv, who though they beheld neither sword, nor fire or
tortures, captivated only by love for a moiety of their goods, have
turned aside, like fools, from the true path and rushed headlong into
the pit of faithlessness—into everlasting destruction, and have utterly
been brought to nought, while two priests only (priests at least in
name), have, like brands snatched from the burning, escaped the
devouring flames of infidelity. Alas, alas! Out of so many thousands
who bore the name of Christians, not even one single victim was
consecrated unto God by the shedding of his blood for the true faith.
Where, too, are the sanctuaries of Kirmān and all Persia? it is not the
coming of Satan or the mandates of the kings of the earth or the orders
of governors of provinces that have laid them waste and in ruins—but
the feeble breath of one contemptible little demon, who was not deemed
worthy of the honour of demons by those demons who sent him on his
errand, nor was endowed by Satan the seducer with the power of
diabolical deceit, that he might display it in your land; but merely by
the nod of his command he has thrown down all the churches of your
Persia.... And the Arabs, to whom God at this time has given the empire
of the world, behold, they are among you, as ye know well: and yet they
attack not the Christian faith, but, on the contrary, they favour our
religion, do honour to our priests and the saints of the Lord, and
confer benefits on churches and monasteries. Why then have your people
of Merv abandoned their faith for the sake of these Arabs? and that,
too, when the Arabs, as the people of Merv themselves declare, have not
compelled them to leave their own religion but suffered them to keep it
safe and undefiled if they gave up only a moiety of their goods. But
forsaking the faith which brings eternal salvation, they clung to a
moiety of the goods of this fleeting world: that faith which whole
nations have purchased and even to this day do purchase by the shedding
of their blood and gain thereby the inheritance of eternal life, your
people of Merv were willing to barter for a moiety of their goods—and
even less.” [197] The reign of the caliph ʻUmar II (A.D. 717–720)
particularly was marked with very extensive conversions: he organised a
zealous missionary movement and offered every kind of inducement to the
conquered peoples to accept Islam, even making them grants of money; on
one occasion he is said to have given a Christian military officer the
sum of 1000 dīnārs to induce him to accept Islam. [198] He instructed
the governors of the provinces to invite the dhimmīs to the Muslim
faith, and al-Jarrāḥ b. ʻAbd Allāh, governor of Khurāsān, is said to
have converted about 4000 persons. [199] He is even said to have
written a letter to the Byzantine Emperor, Leo III, urging on him the
acceptance of the faith of Islam. [200] He abrogated the decree passed
in A.D. 700 for the purpose of arresting the impoverishment of the
treasury, according to which the convert to Islam was not released from
the capitation-tax, but was compelled to continue to pay it as before;
even though the dhimmī apostatised the very day before his yearly
payment of the jizyah was due or while his contribution was actually
being weighed in the scales, it was to be remitted to the new convert.
[201] He no longer exacted the kharāj from the Muhammadan owners of
landed property, and imposed upon them the far lighter burden of a
tithe. These measures, though financially most ruinous, were eminently
successful in the way the pious-minded caliph desired they should be,
and enormous numbers hastened to enrol themselves among the Muslims.
[202]
It must not, however, be supposed that such worldly considerations were
the only influences at work in the conversion of the Christians to
Islam. The controversial works of St. John of Damascus, of the same
century, give us glimpses of the zealous Muslim striving to undermine
by his arguments the foundations of the Christian faith. The very
dialogue form into which these treatises are thrown, and the frequent
repetition of such phrases as “If the Saracen asks you,”—“If the
Saracen says ... then tell him” ...—give them an air of vraisemblance
and make them appear as if they were intended to provide the Christians
with ready answers to the numerous objections which their Muslim
neighbours brought against the Christian creed. [203] That the
aggressive attitude of the Muhammadan disputant is most prominently
brought forward in these dialogues is only what might be expected, it
being no part of this great theologian’s purpose to enshrine in his
writings an apology for Islam. His pupil, Bishop Theodore Abū Qurrah,
also wrote several controversial dialogues [204] with Muhammadans, in
which the disputants range over all the points of dispute between the
two faiths, the Muslim as before being the first to take up the
cudgels, and enabling us to form some slight idea of the activity with
which the cause of Islam was prosecuted at this period. “The thoughts
of the Agarenes,” says the bishop, “and all their zeal, are directed
towards the denial of the divinity of God the Word, and they strain
every effort to this end.” [205] The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus,
used to hold discussions on religious matters in the presence of the
caliphs, al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd, and embodied them in a work that
is now lost. [206] Timotheus had secured his election to the
patriarchate in the face of the active opposition of many of the most
powerful ecclesiastics of his own Church; among these was Joseph, the
metropolitan of Merv, who intrigued against him with the caliph,
al-Mahdī (775–785), but was persuaded by the caliph to accept Islam and
was rewarded for his apostasy with rich presents and an official
appointment in Baṣrah. [207]
These details from the first two centuries of the Hijrah are meagre in
the extreme and rather suggest the existence of proselytising efforts
than furnish definite facts. The earliest document of a distinctly
missionary character which has come down to us, would seem to date from
the reign of al-Maʼmūn (813–833), and takes the form of a letter [208]
written by a cousin of the caliph to a Christian Arab of noble birth
and of considerable distinction at the court, and held in high esteem
by al-Maʼmūn himself. In this letter he begs his friend to embrace
Islam, in terms of affectionate appeal and in language that strikingly
illustrates the tolerant attitude of the Muslims towards the Christian
Church at this period. This letter occupies an almost unique place in
the early history of the propagation of Islam, and has on this account
been given in full in an appendix. [209] In the same work we have a
report of a speech made by the caliph at an assembly of his nobles, in
which he speaks in tones of the strongest contempt of those who had
become Muhammadans merely out of worldly and selfish motives, and
compares them to the Hypocrites who while pretending to be friends of
the Prophet, in secret plotted against his life. But just as the
Prophet returned good for evil, so the caliph resolves to treat these
persons with courtesy and forbearance until God should decide between
them. [210] The record of this complaint on the part of the caliph is
interesting as indicating that disinterested and genuine conviction was
expected and looked for in the new convert to Islam, and that the
discovery of self-seeking and unworthy motives drew upon him the
severest censure.
Al-Maʼmūn himself was very zealous in his efforts to spread the faith
of Islam, and sent invitations to unbelievers even in the most distant
parts of his dominions, such as Transoxania and Farghānah. [211] At the
same time he did not abuse his royal power, by attempting to force his
own faith upon others: when a certain Yazdānbakht, a leader of the
Manichæan sect, came on a visit to Baghdād [212] and held a disputation
with the Muslim theologians, in which he was utterly silenced, the
caliph tried to induce him to embrace Islam. But Yazdānbakht refused,
saying, “Commander of the faithful, your advice is heard and your words
have been listened to; but you are one of those who do not force men to
abandon their religion.” So far from resenting the ill-success of his
efforts, the caliph furnished him with a bodyguard, that he might not
be exposed to insult from the fanatical populace. [213]
Some scanty references are made by Christian historians to cases of
ecclesiastical dignitaries who became Muhammadans, e.g. George, Bishop
of Baḥrayn, about the middle of the ninth century, having been deposed
from his office for some ecclesiastical offence, exchanged the
Christian faith for that of Islam, [214] and the conversion of a
brother of Gabriel, metropolitan of Fārs about the middle of the tenth
century, only receives mention because the fact of his having become a
Muslim was alleged as disqualifying Gabriel for election to the
patriarchate of the Nestorian church. [215]
In the early part of the same century, Theodore, the Nestorian Bishop
of Beth Garmai, became a Muslim, and there is no mention of any force
or compulsion by the ecclesiastical historian [216] who records the
fact, as there undoubtedly would have been, had such existed. Some
years later (between A.D. 962 and 979), Philoxenos, a Jacobite Bishop
of Ādharbayjān, also became a Muslim, [217] and in the following
century, in 1016, Ignatius, [218] the Jacobite Metropolitan of Takrīt,
who had held this office for twenty-five years, set out for Baghdād and
embraced Islam in the presence of the caliph al-Qādir, taking the name
of Abū Muslim. [219] It would be exceedingly interesting if an Apologia
pro Vita Sua had survived to reveal to us the religious development
that took place in the mind of either of these converts. The Christian
chronicler hints at immorality in the last three cases, but such an
accusation uncorroborated by any further evidence is open to suspicion,
[220] much as it would be if brought forward by a Roman Catholic when
recording the conversion of a priest of his own communion to the
Protestant faith. It is doubtless owing to their exalted position in
the Church that the conversion of these prominent ecclesiastics of two
hostile Christian sects has been handed down to us, while that of more
obscure individuals has not been recorded. As Barhebræus brings his
ecclesiastical chronicle nearer to his own time, he gives fuller
details of the career of such converts, e.g. in recording the public
lapse of some of the Jacobite bishops, in the middle of the twelfth
century he makes particular mention of Aaron, bishop of a town in
Khurāsān, as having become a Muhammadan after having been convicted of
some moral fault; repenting of this change, he wished to regain his
episcopal status, and when this was refused him, went to Constantinople
and abjured the Monophysite doctrines of the Jacobite Church; then
apparently dissatisfied with the reception he received in
Constantinople, he returned to the Jacobite Patriarch, but a second
time went over to Islam “without any reason”; then repenting again, he
finally ended his days among the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. [221] A
contemporary of Barhebræus, in the middle of the thirteenth
century—Daniel, Bishop of Khabur—who is said to have been proficient in
secular learning, sought to be appointed to the diocese of Aleppo, but
disappointed in this ambition, he abandoned the Christian faith and to
the grief and shame of all Christian people “became a Muslim; but God
(praise be to His grace!) soon consoled his afflicted people and took
away the shame from the redeemed, the redeemed of the Lord; for a few
months later that unhappy wretch died miserably in a caravanserai; his
name perished, he was taken away out of our midst, and no man knoweth
his abiding place.” [222]
But that these conversions were not merely isolated instances we have
the valuable evidence of Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre (1216–1225),
who thus speaks of the Eastern Church from his experience of it in the
Holy Land:—“Weakened and lamentably ensnared, nay rather grievously
wounded, by the lying persuasions of the false prophet and by the
allurements of carnal pleasure, she hath sunk down, and she that was
brought up in scarlet, hath embraced dunghills.” [223]
So far the Christian Churches that have been described as coming within
the sphere of Muhammadan influence, have been the Orthodox Eastern
Church and the heretical communions that had sprung out of it. But with
the close of the eleventh century a fresh element was added to the
Christian population of Syria and Palestine, in the large bodies of
Crusaders of the Latin rite who settled in the kingdom of Jerusalem and
the other states founded by the Crusaders, which maintained a
precarious existence for nearly two centuries. During this period,
occasional conversions to Islam were made from among these foreign
immigrants. In the first Crusade, for example, a body of Germans and
Lombards under the command of a certain knight, named Rainaud, had
separated themselves from the main body and were besieged in a castle
by the Saljūq Sultan, Arslān; on pretence of making a sortie, Rainaud
and his personal followers abandoned their unfortunate companions and
went over to the Turks, among whom they embraced Islam. [224]
The history of the ill-fated second Crusade presents us with a very
remarkable incident of a similar character. The story, as told by Odo
of Deuil, a monk of St. Denis, who, in the capacity of private chaplain
to Louis VII, accompanied him on this Crusade and wrote a graphic
account of it, runs as follows. While endeavouring to make their way
overland through Asia Minor to Jerusalem the Crusaders sustained a
disastrous defeat at the hands of the Turks in the mountain-passes of
Phrygia (A.D. 1148), and with difficulty reached the seaport town of
Attalia. Here, all who could afford to satisfy the exorbitant demands
of the Greek merchants, took ship for Antioch; while the sick and
wounded and the mass of the pilgrims were left behind at the mercy of
their treacherous allies, the Greeks, who received five hundred marks
from Louis, on condition that they provided an escort for the pilgrims
and took care of the sick until they were strong enough to be sent on
after the others. But no sooner had the army left, than the Greeks
informed the Turks of the helpless condition of the pilgrims, and
quietly looked on while famine, disease and the arrows of the enemy
carried havoc and destruction through the camp of these unfortunates.
Driven to desperation, a party of three or four thousand attempted to
escape, but were surrounded and cut to pieces by the Turks, who now
pressed on to the camp to follow up their victory. The situation of the
survivors would have been utterly hopeless, had not the sight of their
misery melted the hearts of the Muhammadans to pity. They tended the
sick and relieved the poor and starving with open-handed liberality.
Some even bought up the French money which the Greeks had got out of
the pilgrims by force or cunning, and lavishly distributed it among the
needy. So great was the contrast between the kind treatment the
pilgrims received from the unbelievers and the cruelty of their
fellow-Christians, the Greeks, who imposed forced labour upon them,
beat them and robbed them of what little they had left, that many of
them voluntarily embraced the faith of their deliverers. As the old
chronicler says: “Avoiding their co-religionists who had been so cruel
to them, they went in safety among the infidels who had compassion upon
them, and, as we heard, more than three thousand joined themselves to
the Turks when they retired. Oh, kindness more cruel than all
treachery! They gave them bread but robbed them of their faith, though
it is certain that contented with the services they performed, they
compelled no one among them to renounce his religion.” [225]
The increasing intercourse between Christians and Muslims, the growing
appreciation on the part of the Crusaders of the virtues of their
opponents, which so strikingly distinguishes the later from the earlier
chroniclers of the Crusades, [226] the numerous imitations of Oriental
manners and ways of life by the Franks settled in the Holy Land, did
not fail to exercise a corresponding influence on religious opinions.
One of the most remarkable features of this influence is the tolerant
attitude of many of the Christian Knights towards the faith of Islam—an
attitude of mind that was most vehemently denounced by the Church. When
Usāma b. Munqidh, a Syrian Amīr of the twelfth century, visited
Jerusalem, during a period of truce, the Knights Templar, who had
occupied the Masjid al-Aqṣā, assigned to him a small chapel adjoining
it, for him to say his prayers in, and they strongly resented the
interference with the devotions of their guest on the part of a
newly-arrived Crusader, who took this new departure in the direction of
religious freedom in very bad part. [227] It would indeed have been
strange if religious questions had not formed a topic of discussion on
the many occasions when the Crusaders and the Muslims met together on a
friendly footing, during the frequent truces, especially when it was
religion itself that had brought the Crusaders into the Holy Land and
set them upon these constant wars. When even Christian theologians were
led by their personal intercourse with the Muslims to form a juster
estimate of their religion, and contact with new modes of thought was
unsettling the minds of men and giving rise to a swarm of heresies, it
is not surprising that many should have been drawn into the pale of
Islam. [228] The renegades in the twelfth century were in sufficient
numbers to be noticed in the statute books of the Crusaders, the
so-called Assises of Jerusalem, according to which, in certain cases,
their bail was not accepted. [229]
It would be interesting to discover who were the Muslims who busied
themselves in winning these converts to Islam, but they seem to have
left no record of their labours. We know, however, that they had at
their head the great Saladin himself, who is described by his
biographer as setting before his Christian guest the beauties of Islam
and urging him to embrace it. [230]
The heroic life and character of Saladin seems to have exercised an
especial fascination on the minds of the Christians of his time; some
even of the Christian knights were so strongly attracted towards him
that they abandoned the Christian faith and their own people and joined
themselves to the Muslims; such was the case, for example, with a
certain English Templar, named Robert of St. Albans, who in A.D. 1185
gave up Christianity for Islam and afterwards married a grand-daughter
of Saladin. [231] Two years later, Saladin invaded Palestine and
utterly defeated the Christian army in the battle of Ḥiṭṭīn, Guy, king
of Jerusalem, being among the prisoners. On the eve of the battle, six
of his knights, “possessed with a devilish spirit,” deserted the king
and escaped into the camp of Saladin, where of their own accord they
became Saracens. [232] At the same time Saladin seems to have had an
understanding with Raymund III, Count of Tripoli, according to which he
was to induce his followers to abandon the Christian faith and go over
to the Muslims; but the sudden death of the Count effectually put a
stop to the execution of this scheme. [233]
The fall of Jerusalem and the successes of Saladin in the Holy Land
stirred up Europe to undertake the third Crusade, the chief incident of
which was the siege of Acre (A.D. 1189–1191). The fearful sufferings
that the Christian army was exposed to, from famine and disease, drove
many of them to desert and seek relief from the cravings of hunger in
the Muslim camp. Of these deserters, many made their way back again
after some time to the army of the Crusaders; on the other hand, many
elected to throw in their lot with the Muslims; some, taking service
under their former enemies, still remained true to the Christian faith
and (we are told) were well pleased with their new masters, while
others embracing Islam became good Muslims. [234] The conversion of
these deserters is recorded also by the chronicler who accompanied
Richard I upon this Crusade:—“Some of our men (whose fate cannot be
told or heard without grievous sorrow) yielding to the severity of the
sore famine, in achieving the salvation of the body, incurred the
damnation of their souls. For after the greater part of the affliction
was past, they deserted and fled to the Turks: nor did they hesitate to
become renegades; in order that they might prolong their temporal life
a little space, they purchased eternal death with horrid blasphemies. O
baleful trafficking! O shameful deed beyond all punishment! O foolish
man likened unto the foolish beasts, while he flees from the death that
must inevitably come soon, he shuns not the death unending.” [235]
From this time onwards references to renegades are not infrequently to
be met with in the writings of those who travelled to the Holy Land and
other countries of the East. The terms of the oath which was proposed
to St. Louis by his Muhammadan captors when he was called upon to
promise to pay the ransom imposed upon him (A.D. 1250), were suggested
by certain whilom priests who had become Muslims; [236] and while this
business of paying the ransom was still being carried on, another
renegade, a Frenchman, born at Provins, came to bring a present to the
king: he had accompanied King John of Jerusalem on his expedition
against Damietta in 1219 and had remained in Egypt, married a
Muhammadan wife and become a great lord in that country. [237] The
danger of the pilgrims to the Holy Land becoming converts to Islam was
so clearly recognised at this time that in a “Remembrance,” written
about 1266 by Amaury de la Roche, the master of the Knights Templar in
France, he requests the Pope and the legates of France and Sicily to
prevent the poor and the aged and those incapable of bearing arms from
crossing the sea to Palestine, for such persons either got killed or
were taken prisoners by the Saracens or turned renegades. [238] Ludolf
de Suchem, who travelled in the Holy Land from 1336 to 1341, speaks of
three renegades he found at Hebron; they had come from the diocese of
Minden and had been in the service of a Westphalian knight, who was
held in high honour by the Soldan and other Muhammadan princes. [239]
These scattered notices are no doubt significant of more extensive
conversions of Christians to Islam, of which no record has come down to
us: e.g. there were said to be about 25,000 renegades in the city of
Cairo towards the close of the fifteenth century, [240] and there must
have been many also to be found in the cities of the Holy Land after
the disappearance of the Latin princedoms of the East. But the
Muhammadan historians of this period seem to have been too busily
engaged in recording the exploits of princes and the vicissitudes of
dynasties, to turn their attention to religious changes in the lives of
obscure individuals; and (as far as I have been able to discover) they
as little notice the conversions of Christians to Islam as of those of
their own co-religionists to Christianity. Consequently, we have to
depend for our knowledge of both of these classes of events on
Christian writers, who, while they give us detailed and sympathetic
accounts of the latter, bear unwilling testimony to the existence of
instances of the former and represent the motives of the renegades in
the worst light possible. The possibility of any Christian becoming
converted to Islam from honest conviction, probably never entered into
the head of any of these writers, and even had such an idea occurred to
them they would hardly have ventured to expose themselves to the
thunders of ecclesiastical censure by giving open expression to it.
As an example of the rare instances of such a conversion being
recorded, the account may here be cited which Fürer von Haimendorf, who
was in Cairo in 1565, gives of the conversion of a German scholar who
had studied in the University of Leipzig. “Sed dum nos hanc moram Cairi
nectimus, accidit ut Justus quidam Stevenius Germanus Hamelensis qui in
iisdem ædibus nobiscum habitaverat, fide Christianorum abnegata
Turcarum religioni se initiandum atque circumcidendum obtulerit. Vir
erat doctus, qui diu se Witebergæ ac Lipsiæ studiis operam dedisse sæpe
nobis narrabat: verum de hoc facto interrogatus, peculiarem nunc sibi
Spiritum adesse ajebat, sine cujus instinctu nihil vel facere sibi, vel
cogitare fas esset; quæ hominis apostasia nimium quantum animos nostros
commovit, et ad fugam quasi excitavit. Eodem quoque die Judæus quidam,
qui paucis diebus ante religionem Mahumetanam amplexus fuerat,
triumphali pompa per urbem circumducebatur; quod idem cum Stevenio isto
futurum esse, Janissarii quidam nobis affirmabant.” [241]
From the historical sources quoted above, we have as little information
respecting the number of these converts as of the proselytising efforts
made to induce them to change their faith. A motive frequently assigned
for going over to Islam is the desire to escape the death penalty by
means of apostasy. European travellers make frequent mention of such
cases. A late example of such an account may be selected, for the
picturesqueness of its language, from the report of a Jesuit, who was
in Cairo in 1627; he saw a Copt who, having allowed himself to be
carried away “partly by passion and partly by the violence of an
indiscreet zeal, had killed his brother with his own hand, in
detestation of his having in a dastardly manner left Jesus Christ to
embrace Mahometanism, in order to deliver himself from the vexation of
the Turks. The poor man was at once seized in the heat of his crime,
and he boldly confessed that the renegade, unworthy of being his
brother, could only wipe out so black a spot by his blood. He was urged
to abandon his faith in order to save his life,” but he declared that
he was resolved to die a Christian; the cruel torments, however,
inflicted on him by the executioners, weakened his resolution and he
yielded at the last moment. “This disaster changed him in a moment from
a confessor into a renegade, from a martyr into an apostate, from a
saint into one of the damned, and from an angel into a veritable devil.
He made the profession of faith or rather of perfidy, after the manner
of the Mahometans ... he was set at liberty, the liberty not of the
sons of God, but of the sons of perdition.” Later on, the reproaches of
his conscience caused him again to recant and he was put to death by
the Muhammadans for his apostasy. [242]
The monk Burchard, [243] writing about 1283, a few years before the
Crusaders were driven out of their last strongholds and the Latin power
in the East came utterly to an end—represents the Christian population
as largely outnumbering the Muslims throughout the whole of the
Muhammadan world, the latter (except in Egypt and Arabia) forming not
more than three or four per cent. of the whole population. This
language is undoubtedly exaggerated and the good monk was certainly
rash in assuming that what he observed in the cities of the Crusaders
and of the kingdom of Little Armenia held good in other parts of the
East. But his words may be certainly taken to indicate that during the
period of the Crusades there had been no widespread conversion to
Islam, and that when the Muhammadans resumed their sovereignty over the
Holy Land, they extended the same toleration to the Christians as
before, suffering them to “purchase peace and quiet” by the payment of
the jizyah. The presumption is that the conversions that took place
were of individual Christians, who were persuaded in their own minds
before they took the final step. Instances have already been given of
Christians who took service under Muhammadan masters, in the full
enjoyment of their own faith, and the Assises of Jerusalem made a
distinction between “those who have denied God and follow another law”
and “all those who have done armed service to the Saracens and other
miscreants against the Christians for more than a year and a day.”
[244]
The native Christians certainly preferred the rule of the Muhammadans
to that of the Crusaders, [245] and when Jerusalem fell finally and for
ever into the hands of the Muslims (A.D. 1244), the Christian
population of Palestine seems to have welcomed the new masters and to
have submitted quietly and contentedly to their rule. [246]
This same sense of security of religious life under Muslim rule led
many of the Christians of Asia Minor, also, about the same time, to
welcome the advent of the Saljūq Turks as their deliverers from the
hated Byzantine government, not only on account of its oppressive
system of taxation, but also of the persecuting spirit of the Greek
Church, which had with such cruelty crushed the heresies of the
Paulicians and the Iconoclasts. In the reign of Michael VIII
(1261–1282), the Turks were often invited to take possession of the
smaller towns in the interior of Asia Minor by the inhabitants, that
they might escape from the tyranny of the empire; and both rich and
poor often emigrated into Turkish dominions. [247]
Some account still remains to be given of two other Christian Churches
of Western Asia, viz. the Armenian and the Georgian. Of the former it
may be said that of all the Eastern Churches that have come under
Muhammadan rule, the Armenian Church has probably given fewer of its
members (in proportion to the size of the community) to swell the ranks
of Islam, than any other. So in spite of the interest that attaches to
the story of the struggle of this brave nation against overwhelming
odds and of the fidelity with which it has clung to the Christian
faith—through centuries of warfare and oppression, persecution and
exile—it does not come within the scope of the present volume to do
more than briefly indicate its connection with the history of the
Muhammadans. The Armenian kingdom survived the shock of the Arab
conquest, and in the ninth century rose to be a state of some
importance and flourished during the decay of the caliphate of Baghdād,
but in the eleventh century was overthrown by the Saljūq Turks. A band
of fugitives founded the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, but this too
disappeared in the fourteenth century. The national life of the
Armenian people still survived in spite of the loss of their
independence, and, as was the case in Greece under the Turks, their
religion and the national church served as the rallying point of their
eager, undying patriotism. Though a certain number, under the pressure
of cruel persecution, have embraced Islam, yet the bulk of the race has
remained true to its ancient faith. As Tavernier [248] rather
unsympathetically remarks, “There may be some few Armenians, that
embrace Mahometanism for worldly interest, but they are generally the
most obstinate persons in the world, and most firm to their
superstitious principles.”
The Georgian Church (founded in the early part of the fourth century)
was an offshoot from the Greek Church, with which she has always
remained in communion, although from the middle of the sixth century
the Patriarch or Katholikos of the Georgian Church declared himself
independent. Torn asunder by internal discords and exposed to the
successive attacks of Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Turks and Mongols, the
history of this heroic warrior people is one of almost uninterrupted
warfare against foreign foes and of fiercely contested feuds between
native chiefs: the reigns of one or two powerful monarchs who secured
for their subjects brief intervals of peace, serving only to bring out
in more striking contrast the normally unsettled state of the country.
The fierce independent spirit of the Georgians that could not brook a
foreign rule has often exasperated well-nigh to madness the fury of
their Muhammadan neighbours, when they failed to impose upon them
either their civil authority or their religion. It is this
circumstance—that a change of faith implied loss of political
independence—which explains in a great measure the fact that the
Georgian Church inscribes the names of so many martyrs in her calendar,
while the annals of the Greek Church during the same period have no
such honoured roll to show.
It was not until after Georgia had been overrun by the devastating
armies of the Mongols, leaving ruined churches and monasteries and
pyramids of human heads to mark the progress of their destroying hosts,
and consequently the spiritual wants of the people had remained long
unprovided for, owing to the decline in the numbers and learning of the
clergy—that Christianity began to lose ground. [249] Even among those
who still remained Christian, some added to the sufferings of the
clergy by plundering the property of the Church and appropriating to
their own use the revenues of churches and monasteries, and thus
hastened the decay of the Christian faith. [250]
In 1400 the invasion of Tīmūr added a crowning horror to the sufferings
of Georgia, and though for a brief period the rule of Alexander I
(1414–1442) delivered the country from the foreign yoke and drove out
all the Muhammadans—after his death it was again broken up into a
number of petty princedoms, from which the Turks and the Persians
wrested the last shreds of independence. But the Muhammadans always
found Georgia to be a turbulent and rebellious possession, ever ready
to break out into open revolt at the slightest opportunity. Both Turks
and Persians sought to secure the allegiance of these troublesome
subjects by means of conversion to Islam. After the fall of
Constantinople and the increase of Turkish power in Asia Minor, the
inhabitants of Akhaltsikhé and other districts to the west of it became
Muhammadans. [251] In 1579 two Georgian princes—brothers—came on an
embassy to Constantinople with a large retinue of about two hundred
persons: here the younger brother together with his attendants became a
Musalman, in the hope (it was said) of thereby supplanting his elder
brother. [252] At a rather later date, the conquests of the Turks
brought some of the districts in the very centre of Georgia into their
power, the inhabitants of which embraced the creed of the conquerors.
[253] From this period Samtzkhé, the most western portion of Georgia,
recognised the suzerainty of Turkey: its rulers and people were allowed
to continue undisturbed in the Christian faith, but from 1625 the
ruling dynasty became Muhammadan and many of the chiefs and the
aristocracy followed their example.
Christianity retained its hold upon the peasants much longer, but when
the clergy of Samtzkhé refused allegiance to the Katholikos of Karthli,
there ceased to be regular provision made for supplying the spiritual
needs of the people: the nobles, even before their conversion, had
taken to plundering the estates of the Church, and after becoming
Musalmans they naturally ceased to assist it with their offerings, and
the churches and monasteries falling into decay were replaced by
mosques. [254]
The rest of Georgia had submitted to Persia, and when Tavernier visited
this part of the country, about the middle of the seventeenth century,
he found it divided into two kingdoms, which were provinces of the
Persian empire, and were governed by native Georgian princes who had to
turn Muhammadan before being advanced to this dignity. [255] One of the
first of such princes was the Tsarevitch Constantine, son of King
Alexander II of Kakheth, who had been brought up at the Persian court
and had there embraced Islam, at the beginning of the seventeenth
century. [256] The first Muhammadan king of Karthli, the Tsarevitch
Rustam (1634–1658), had also been brought up in Persia, and he and his
successors to the end of the century were all Muhammadans. [257]
Tavernier describes the Georgians as being very ignorant in matters of
religion and the clergy as unlettered and vicious; some of the heads of
the Church actually sold the Christian boys and girls as slaves to the
Turks and Persians. [258] From this period there seems to have been a
widespread apostasy, especially among the higher classes and those who
sought to win the favour of the Persian court. [259] In 1701 the
occupant of the throne of Georgia, Wakhtang VI, was a Christian: for
the first seven years of his reign he was a prisoner in Ispahan, where
great efforts were made to induce him to become a Muhammadan; when he
declared that he preferred to lose his throne rather than purchase it
at the price of apostasy, it is said that his younger brother, although
he was the Patriarch of Georgia, offered to abandon Christianity and
embrace Islam, if the crown were bestowed upon him, but though invested
by the Persians with the royal power, the Georgians refused to accept
him as their ruler, and drove him out of the kingdom. [260]
Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the king of Georgia placed
his people under the protection of the Russian crown. Hitherto their
intense patriotic feeling had helped to keep the Christian faith alive
among them so long as their foreign invaders had been Musalmans, but
now that the foreign power that sought to rob them of their
independence was Christian, this same feeling operated in some of the
districts north of the Caucasus to the advantage of Islam. In Daghistan
a certain Darvīsh Manṣūr endeavoured to unite the different tribes of
the Caucasus to oppose the Russians; preaching the faith of Islam he
succeeded in converting the princes and nobles of Ubichistan and
Daghistan, who have remained faithful to Islam ever since; many of the
Circassians, too, were converted by his preaching, and preferred exile
to submitting to the Russian rule. [261] But in 1791 he was taken
prisoner, and in 1800 Georgia was formally incorporated in the Russian
empire.
Darvīsh Manṣūr was not alone in his efforts to convert the Circassians.
When the treaty of Kūchak-Qaïnarji in 1774 had recognised the
independence of the Crimea and opened the Black Sea to Russian vessels,
the Turkish government became alarmed at the prospect of a further
movement of Russian domination along the eastern coast of the Black Sea
and resolved to make an attempt to stir the Circassians to resistance.
A Turkish officer, named Faraḥ ʻAlī, was sent in 1782 to establish a
military colony at Anāpa, near the outlet of the sea of Azov, and to
enter into relations with the Circassian tribes. Faraḥ ʻAlī’s first
care was to seek the hand of a daughter of one of the Circassian beys,
offering rich presents of arms, horses, etc., to her father; the
marriage was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, and Faraḥ ʻAlī
encouraged his soldiers to follow his example, by promising to defray
the expenses of their nuptials. The result was that a number of
Circassian women joined the little colony and accepted the religion of
their husbands, and with the zeal of new converts won over to Islam
their fathers and brothers. An active movement of proselytism began,
and the Circassians who came in contact with the Turkish colony appear
readily to have abandoned their pagan beliefs for the religion of the
Qurʼān, the mollas were kept busy in instructing the new Muslims, and
help had to be sought from Constantinople to deal with the increasing
number of conversions. [262] But the work of Faraḥ ʻAlī was
short-lived; he died in 1785 and his tomb was reverenced as that of a
saint, but his work perished with him. Anāpa passed into the hands of
the Russians in 1812, and when the resistance of the Circassians was
finally overcome in 1864, more than half a million Circassian
Muhammadans migrated into Turkish territory.
Under Russian law conversions to any faith other than that of the
Orthodox Church were illegal, and the further progress of Islam was
stayed until the promulgation of the edict of toleration in 1905. One
of the results of this in the Caucasus was a large accession to Islam
from among the Abkhazes, who had long been nominal converts to
Christianity, but now became Muhammadans in such numbers that the
Orthodox clergy became alarmed and founded a special society for the
distribution of religious tracts among them, in the hope of combating
Muhammadan influences. [263]
CHAPTER IV.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF AFRICA.
Islam was first introduced into Africa by the Arab army that invaded
Egypt under the command of ʻAmr b. al-ʻĀṣ in A.D. 640. Three years
later the withdrawal of the Byzantine troops abandoned the vast
Christian population into the hands of the Muslim conquerors. The rapid
success of the Arab invaders was largely due to the welcome they
received from the native Christians, who hated the Byzantine rule not
only for its oppressive administration, but also—and chiefly—on account
of the bitterness of theological rancour. The Jacobites, who formed the
majority of the Christian population, had been very roughly handled by
the Orthodox adherents of the court and subjected to indignities that
have not been forgotten by their children even to the present day.
[264] Some were tortured and then thrown into the sea; many followed
their Patriarch into exile to escape from the hands of their
persecutors, while a large number disguised their real opinions under a
pretended acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon. [265] To these Copts,
as the Jacobite Christians of Egypt are called, the Muhammadan conquest
brought a freedom of religious life such as they had not enjoyed for a
century. On payment of the tribute, ʻAmr left them in undisturbed
possession of their churches and guaranteed to them autonomy in all
ecclesiastical matters, thus delivering them from the continual
interference that had been so grievous a burden under the previous
rule; he laid his hands on none of the property of the churches and
committed no act of spoliation or pillage. [266] In the early days of
the Muhammadan rule then, the condition of the Copts seems to have been
fairly tolerable, [267] and there is no evidence of their widespread
apostasy to Islam being due to persecution or unjust pressure on the
part of their new rulers. Even before the conquest was complete, while
the capital, Alexandria, still held out, many of them went over to
Islam, [268] and a few years later the example these had set was
followed by many others. [269] In the reign of ʻUthmān (A.D. 643–655),
the revenue derived from Egypt amounted to twelve millions; a few years
later, in the reign of Muʻāwiyah (661–679), it had fallen to five
millions owing to the enormous number of conversions: under ʻUmar II
(717–720) it fell still lower, so that the governor of Egypt [270]
proposed that in future the converts should not be exempted from the
payment of the capitation-tax, but this the pious caliph refused to
allow, saying that God had sent Muḥammad to call men to a knowledge of
the truth and not to be a collector of taxes. [271]
But later rulers recognised that for fiscal reasons such a policy was
ruinous to the state, and insisted on the converts continuing to pay
taxes as before; there was, however, no continuity in such a policy,
and individual governors acted in an arbitrary and irregular manner.
[272] When Ḥafṣ b. al-Walīd, who was governor of Egypt in A.D. 744,
promised that all those who became Muslims would be exempted from the
payment of jizyah, as many as 24,000 Christians are reported to have
accepted Islam. [273] A similar proclamation is said to have been made
by al-Saffāḥ, the first of the ʻAbbāsid caliphs, soon after his
accession in A.D. 750, for “he wrote to the whole of his dominions
saying that every one who embraced his religion and prayed according to
his fashion, should be quit of the jizyah, and many, both rich and
poor, denied the faith of Christ by reason of the magnitude of the
taxation and the burdens imposed upon them.” [274] In fact many of the
Christians of Egypt seem to have abandoned Christianity as lightly and
as rapidly as, in the beginning of the fourth century, they had
embraced it. Prior to that period, a very small section of the
population of the valley of the Nile was Christian, but the sufferings
of the martyrs in the persecution of Diocletian, the stories of the
miracles they performed, the national feeling excited by the sense of
their opposition to the dictates of the foreign government, [275] the
assurance that a paradise of delights was opened to the martyr who died
under the hands of his tormentors,—all these things stirred up an
enthusiasm that resulted in an incredibly rapid spread of the Christian
faith. “Instead of being converted by preaching, as the other countries
of the East were, Egypt embraced Christianity in a fit of wild
enthusiasm, without any preaching, or instruction being given, with
hardly any knowledge of the new religion beyond the name of Jesus, the
Messiah, who bestowed a life of eternal happiness on all who confessed
Him.” [276]
In the seventh century Christianity had probably very little hold on a
great mass of the people of Egypt. The theological catchwords that
their leaders made use of, to stir up in them feelings of hatred and
opposition to the Byzantine government, could have been intelligible to
a very few, and the rapid spread of Islam in the early days of the Arab
occupation was probably due less to definite efforts to attract than to
the inability of such a Christianity to retain. The theological basis
for the existence of the Jacobites as a separate sect, the tenets that
they had so long and at so great a cost struggled to maintain, were
embodied in doctrines of the most abstruse and metaphysical character,
and many doubtless turned in utter perplexity and weariness from the
interminable controversies that raged around them, to a faith that was
summed up in the simple, intelligible truth of the Unity of God and the
mission of His Prophet, Muḥammad. Even within the Coptic Church itself
at a later period, we find evidence of a movement which, if not
distinctly Muslim, was at least closely allied thereto, and in the
absence of any separate ecclesiastical organisation in which it might
find expression, probably contributed to the increase of the converts
to Islam. In the beginning of the twelfth century, there was in the
monastery of St. Anthony (near Iṭfīḥ on the Nile), a monk named
Balūṭus, “learned in the doctrines of the Christian religion and the
duties of the monastic life, and skilled in the rules of the canon-law.
But Satan caught him in one of his nets; for he began to hold opinions
at variance with those taught by the Three Hundred and Eighteen (of
Nicæa); and he corrupted the minds of many of those who had no
knowledge or instruction in the Orthodox faith. He announced with his
impure mouth, in his wicked discourses, that Christ our Lord—to Whom be
glory—was like one of the prophets. He associated with the lowest among
the followers of his religion, clothed as he was in the monastic habit.
When he was questioned as to his religion and his creed, he professed
himself a believer in the Unity of God. His doctrines prevailed during
a period which ended in the year 839 of the Righteous Martyrs (A.D.
1123); then he died, and his memory was cut off for ever.” [277]
Further, a theory of the Christian life that found its highest
expression in asceticism of the grossest type [278] could offer little
attraction, in the face of the more human morality of Islam. [279] On
account of the large numbers of Copts that from time to time have
become Muhammadans, they have come to be considered by the followers of
the Prophet as much more inclined to the faith of Islam than any other
Christian sect, and though they have had to endure the most severe
oppression and persecution on many occasions, yet the Copts that have
been thus driven to abandon their faith are said to have been few in
comparison with those who have changed their religion voluntarily,
[280] and even in the nineteenth century, when Egypt was said to be the
most tolerant of all Muhammadan countries, there were yearly
conversions of the Copts to the Muslim faith. [281] Still, persecution
and oppression have undoubtedly played a very large part in the
reduction of the numbers of the Copts, and the story of the sufferings
of the Jacobite Church of Egypt,—persecuted alike by their fellow
Christians [282] and by the followers of the dominant faith, is a very
sad one, and many abandoned the religion of their fathers in order to
escape from burdensome taxes and unendurable indignities. The vast
difference in this respect between their condition and that of the
Christians of Syria, Palestine and Spain at the same period finds its
explanation in the turbulent character of the Copts themselves. Their
long struggle against the civil and theological despotism of Byzantium
seems to have welded the zealots into a national party that could as
little brook the foreign rule of the Arabs as, before, that of the
Greeks. The rising of the Copts against their new masters in 646, when
they drove the Arabs for a time out of Alexandria and opened the gates
of the city to the Byzantine troops (who, however, treated the
unfortunate Copts as enemies, not having yet forgotten the welcome they
had before given to the Muhammadan invaders), was the first of a long
series of risings and insurrections, [283]—excited frequently by
excessive taxation,—which exposed them to terrible reprisals, and
caused the lot of the Jacobite Christians of Egypt to be harder to bear
than that of any other Christian sect in this or other countries under
Muhammadan rule. But the history of these events belongs rather to a
history of Muhammadan persecution and intolerance than to the scope of
the present work. It must not, however, be supposed that the condition
of the Copts was invariably that of a persecuted sect; on the contrary
there were times when they rose to positions of great affluence and
importance in the state. They filled the posts of secretaries and
scribes in the government offices, [284] farmed the taxes, [285] and in
some cases amassed enormous wealth. [286] The annals of their Church
furnish us with many instances of ecclesiastics who were held in high
favour and consideration by the reigning princes of the country, under
the rule of many of whom the Christians enjoyed the utmost
tranquillity. [287] To such a period of the peace of the Church belongs
an incident that led to the absorption of many Christians into the body
of the faithful.
During the reign of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) (1169–1193) over Egypt, the
condition of the Christians was very happy under the auspices of this
tolerant ruler; the taxes that had been imposed upon them were
lightened and several swept away altogether; they crowded into the
public offices as secretaries, accountants and registrars; and for
nearly a century under the successors of Saladin, they enjoyed the same
toleration and favour, and had nothing to complain of except the
corruption and degeneracy of their own clergy. Simony had become
terribly rife among them; the priesthood was sold to ignorant and
vicious persons, while postulants for the sacred office who were unable
to pay the sums demanded for ordination, were repulsed with scorn, in
spite of their being worthy and fit persons. The consequence was that
the spiritual and moral training of the people was utterly neglected
and there was a lamentable decay of the Christian life. [288] So
corrupt had the Church become that when, on the death of John, the
seventy-fourth Patriarch of the Jacobites, in 1216, a successor was to
be elected, the contending parties who pushed the claims of rival
candidates, kept up a fierce and irreconcilable dispute for nearly
twenty years, and all this time cared less for the grievous scandal and
the harmful consequences of their shameless quarrels than for the
maintenance of their dogged and obstinately factious spirit. On more
than one occasion the reigning sultan tried to make peace between the
contending parties, refused the enormous bribes of three, five, and
even ten thousand gold pieces that were offered in order to induce him
to secure the election of one of the candidates by the pressure of
official influence, and even offered to remit the fee that it was
customary for a newly-elected Patriarch to pay, if only they would put
aside their disputes and come to some agreement,—but all to no purpose.
Meanwhile many episcopal sees fell vacant and there was no one to take
the place of the bishops and priests that died in this interval; in the
monastery of St. Macarius alone there were only four priests left as
compared with over eighty under the last Patriarch. [289] So utterly
neglected were the Christians of the western dioceses, that they all
became Muslims. [290] To this bald statement of the historian of the
Coptic Church, we unfortunately have no information to add, of the
positive efforts made by the Musalmans to bring these Christians over
to their faith. That such there were, there can be very little doubt,
especially as we know that the Christians held public disputations and
engaged in written controversies on the respective merits of the rival
creeds. [291] That these conversions were not due to persecution, we
know from direct historical evidence that during this vacancy of the
patriarchate, the Christians had full and complete freedom of public
worship, were allowed to restore their churches and even to build new
ones, were freed from the restrictions that forbade them to ride on
horses or mules, and were tried in law-courts of their own, while the
monks were exempted from the payment of tribute and granted certain
privileges. [292]
How far this incident is a typical case of conversion to Islam among
the Copts it is difficult to say; a parallel case of neglect is
mentioned by two Capuchin missionaries who travelled up the Nile to
Luxor in the seventeenth century, where they found that the Copts of
Luxor had no priest, and some of them had not gone to confession or
communion for fifty years. [293] Under such circumstances the decay of
their numbers can readily be understood.
A similar neglect probably contributed to the decay of the Nubian
Church which recognised the primacy of the Jacobite Patriarch of
Alexandria, as do the Abyssinians to the present day. The Nubians had
been converted to Christianity about the middle of the sixth century,
and retained their independence when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs;
a treaty was made according to which the Nubians were to send every
year three hundred and sixty slaves, with forty more for the governor
of Egypt, while the Arabs were to furnish them with corn, oil and
raiment. [294] In the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (833–842), ambassadors were
sent by the caliph renewing this treaty, and the king of Nubia visited
the capital, where he was received with great magnificence and
dismissed with costly presents. [295] In the twelfth century they were
still all Christian, [296] and retained their old independence in spite
of the frequent expeditions sent against them from Egypt. [297] In 1275
the nephew of the then king of Nubia obtained from the sultan of Egypt
a body of troops to assist him in his revolt against his uncle, whom he
by their help succeeded in deposing; in return for this assistance he
had to cede the two northernmost provinces of Nubia to the sultan, and
as the inhabitants elected to retain their Christian faith, an annual
tribute of one dīnār for each male was imposed upon them. [298] But
this Muhammadan overlordship was temporary only, and the Nubians of the
ceded provinces soon reasserted their independence. [299]
But settlements of Arabs had been established in Nubia for several
centuries earlier and the Arabs on the Blue Nile had so increased in
number and wealth in the tenth century that they were able to ask
permission to build a mosque in Soba, [300] the capital of the
Christian kingdom. [301] In the thirteenth and especially from the
beginning of the fourteenth century there began a general process of
interpenetration through the migration into Nubia of Arabs, especially
of the Juhaynah tribe, who intermarried with the women of the land and
gradually succeeded in breaking up the power of the Nubian princes.
[302] In the latter half of the fourteenth century Ibn Baṭūṭah [303]
tells us that the Nubians were still Christians, though the king of
their chief city, Dongola, [304] had embraced Islam in the reign of
Nāṣir (probably Nāṣir b. Qulāūn, one of the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt,
who died A.D. 1340); the repeated expeditions of the Muslims so late as
the fifteenth century had not succeeded in pushing their conquests
south of the first cataract, near which was their last fortified place,
[305] while Christianity seems to have extended as far up the Nile as
Sennaar.
The Christian Nubian kingdom appears to have come to an end partly
through internal dissensions and partly through the attacks of Arab and
Negro tribes on its borders, and finally by the establishment of the
powerful Fūnj empire in the fifteenth century. [306]
But it is probable that the progress of Islam in the country was all
this time being promoted by the Muhammadan merchants and others that
frequented it. Maqrīzī (writing in the early part of the fifteenth
century) quotes one of those missionary anecdotes which occur so rarely
in the works of Arabic authors; it is told by Ibn Salīm al-Aswāni, and
is of interest as giving us a living picture of the Muslim propagandist
at work. Though the convert referred to is neither a Christian nor a
Nubian, still the story shows that there was such a thing as conversion
to Islam in Nubia in the fifteenth century. Ibn Salīm says that he once
met a man at the court of the Nubian chief of Muqurrah, who told him
that he came from a city that lay three months’ journey from the Nile.
When asked about his religion, he replied, “My Creator and thy Creator
is God; the Creator of the universe and of all men is One, and his
dwelling-place is in Heaven.” When there was a dearth of rain, or when
pestilence attacked them or their cattle, his fellow-countrymen would
climb up a high mountain and there pray to God, who accepted their
prayers and supplied their needs before even they came down again. When
he acknowledged that God had never sent them a prophet, Ibn Salīm
recounted to him the story of the prophets Moses and Jesus and
Muḥammad, and how by the help of God they had been enabled to perform
many miracles. And he answered, “The truth must indeed have been with
them, when they did these things; and if they performed these deeds, I
believe in them.” [307]
Very slowly and gradually the Nubians seem to have drifted from
Christianity into Muhammadanism. [308] The spiritual life of their
Church had sunk to the lowest ebb, and as no movement of reform sprang
up in their midst, and as they had lost touch with the Christian
Churches beyond their borders, it was only natural that they should
seek for an expression of their spiritual aspirations in the religion
of Islam, whose followers had so long borne witness to its living power
among them, and had already won over some of their countrymen to the
acceptance of it. A Portuguese priest, who travelled in Abyssinia from
1520–1527, has preserved for us a picture of the Nubians in this state
of transition; he says that they were neither Christians, Jews nor
Muhammadans, but had come to be without faith and without laws; but
still “they lived with the desire of being Christians.” Through the
fault of their clergy they had sunk into the grossest ignorance, and
now there were no bishops or priests left among them; accordingly they
sent an embassy of six men to the king of Abyssinia, praying him to
send priests and monks to instruct them, but this the king refused to
do without the permission of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and as this
could not be obtained, the unfortunate ambassadors returned
unsuccessful to their own country. [309] The same writer was informed
by a Christian who had travelled in Nubia, that he had found 150
churches there, in each of which were still to be seen the figures of
the crucified Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and other saints painted on
the walls. In all the fortresses, also, that were scattered throughout
the country, there were churches. [310] Before the close of the
following century, Christianity had entirely disappeared from Nubia
“for want of pastors,” but the closed churches were to be found still
standing throughout the whole country. [311] The Nubians had yielded to
the powerful Muhammadan influences that surrounded them, to which the
proselytising efforts of the Muslims who had travelled in Nubia for
centuries past no doubt contributed a great deal; on the north were
Egypt and the Arab tribes that had made their way up the Nile and
extended their authority along the banks of that river; [312] on the
south, the Muhammadan state of the Belloos, separating them from
Abyssinia. These Belloos, in the early part of the sixteenth century,
were, in spite of their Muslim faith, tributaries of the Christian king
of Abyssinia; [313] and—if they may be identified with the Baliyyūn,
who, together with their neighbours, the Bajah (the inhabitants of the
so-called island of Meroe), are spoken of by Idrīsī, in the twelfth
century, as being Jacobite Christians, [314]—it is probable that they
had only a few years before been converted to Islam, at the same time
as the Bajah, who had been incorporated into the Muhammadan empire of
the Fūnj, when these latter extended their conquests in 1499–1530 from
the south up to the borders of Nubia and Abyssinia and founded the
powerful state of Sennaar. When the army of Aḥmad Grāñ invaded
Abyssinia and made its way right through the country from south to
north, it effected a junction about 1534 with the army of the sultan of
Maseggia or Mazaga, a province under Muhammadan rule but tributary to
Abyssinia, lying between that country and Sennaar; in the army of this
sultan there were 15,000 Nubian soldiers who, from the account given of
them, appear to have been Musalmans. [315] Fragmentary and insufficient
as these data of the conversion of the Nubians are, we may certainly
conclude from all we know of the independent character of this people
and the tenacity with which they clung to the Christian faith, so long
as it was a living force among them, that their change of religion was
a gradual one, extending through several centuries.
Let us now pass to the history of Islam among the Abyssinians, who had
received Christianity two centuries before the Nubians, and like them
belonged to the Jacobite Church.
The tide of Arab emigration does not seem to have set across the Red
Sea, the western shores of which formed part of the Abyssinian kingdom,
until many centuries after Arabia had accepted the faith of the
prophet. Up to the tenth century only a few Muhammadan families were to
be found residing in the coast towns of Abyssinia, but at the end of
the twelfth century the foundation of an Arab dynasty alienated some of
the coast-lands from the Abyssinian kingdom. In 1300 a missionary,
named Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad, made his way into Abyssinia, calling on
the people to embrace Islam, and in the following year, having
collected around him 200,000 men, he attacked the ruler of Amhara in
several engagements. [316] King Saifa Arʻād (1342–1370) took energetic
measures against the Muhammadans in his kingdom, putting to death or
driving into exile all those who refused to embrace Christianity. [317]
At the close of the same century the disturbed state of the country,
owing to the civil wars that distracted it, made it possible for the
various Arab settlements along the coast to make themselves masters of
the entire seaboard and drive the Abyssinians into the interior, and
the king, Baʼeda Māryām (1468–1478), is said to have spent the greater
part of his reign in fighting against the Muhammadans on the eastern
border of his kingdom. [318] In the early part of the sixteenth
century, while the powerful Muhammadan kingdom of Adal, between
Abyssinia and the southern extremity of the Red Sea, and some others
were bitterly hostile to the Christian power, there were others again
that formed peaceful tributaries of “Prester John”; e.g. in Massowah
there were Arabs who kept the flocks of the Abyssinian seigniors,
wandering about in bands of thirty or forty with their wives and
children, each band having its Christian “captain.” [319] Some
Musalmans are also mentioned as being in the service of the king and
being entrusted by him with important posts; [320] while some of these
remained faithful to Islam, others embraced the prevailing religion of
the country. What was implied in the fact of these Muhammadan
communities being tributaries of the king of Abyssinia, it is difficult
to determine. The Musalmans of Ḥadya had along with other tribute to
give up every year to the king a maiden who had to become a Christian;
this custom was in accordance with an ancient treaty, which the king of
Abyssinia has always made them observe, “because he was the stronger”;
besides this, they were forbidden to carry arms or put on war-apparel,
and, if they rode, their horses were not to be saddled; “these orders,”
they said, “we have always obeyed, so that the king may not put us to
death and destroy our mosques. When the king sends his people to fetch
the maiden and the tribute, we put her on a bed, wash her and cover her
with a cloth, and recite the prayers for the dead over her and give her
up to the people of the king; and thus did our fathers and our
grandfathers before us.” [321]
These Muhammadan tributaries were chiefly to be found in the low-lying
countries that formed the northern boundary of Abyssinia, from the Red
Sea westward to Sennaar, [322] and on the south and the south-east of
the kingdom. [323] What influence these Muhammadans had on the
Christian populations with which they were intermingled, and whether
they made converts to Islam as in the present century, is matter only
of conjecture. Certain it is, however, that when the independent
Muhammadan ruler of Adal, Aḥmad Grāñ—himself said to have been the son
of a Christian priest of Aijjo, who had left his own country and
adopted Islam in that of the Adals [324]—invaded Abyssinia from 1528 to
1543, many Abyssinian chiefs with their followers joined his victorious
army and became Musalmans, and though the Christian populations of some
districts preferred to pay jizyah, [325] others embraced the religion
of the conqueror. [326] But the contemporary Muslim historian himself
tells us that in some cases this conversion was the result of fear, and
that suspicions were entertained of the genuineness of the allegiance
of the new converts. [327] But such apparently was not universally the
case, and the widespread character of the conversions in several
districts give the impression of a popular movement. The Christian
chiefs who went over to Islam made use of their personal influence in
inducing their troops to follow their example. They were, as we are
told, in some cases very ignorant of their own religion, [328] and thus
the change of faith was a less difficult matter. Particularly
instrumental in conversions of this kind were those Muhammadan chiefs
who had previously entered the service of the king of Abyssinia, and
those renegades who took the opportunity of the invasion of the country
by a conquering Musalman army to throw off their allegiance at once to
Christianity and the Christian king and declare themselves Muhammadans
once more. [329]
One of these in 1531 wrote the following letter to Aḥmad Grāñ:—“I was
formerly a Muslim and the son of a Muslim, was taken prisoner by the
polytheists and made a Christian by force; but in my heart I have
always clung to the true faith and now I seek the protection of God and
of His Prophet and of thee. If thou wilt accept my repentance and
punish me not for what I have done, I will return in penitence to God;
and I will devise means whereby the troops of the king, that are with
me, may join thee and become Muslims;”—and in fact the greater part of
his army elected to follow their general; including the women and
children their numbers are said to have amounted to 20,000 souls. [330]
But with the help of the Portuguese, the Abyssinians succeeded in
shaking off the yoke of their Muhammadan conquerors and Aḥmad Grāñ
himself was slain in 1543. Islam had, however, gained a footing in the
country, which the troublous condition of affairs during the remainder
of the sixteenth and the following century enabled it to retain, the
rival Christian Churches being too busily engaged in contending with
one another, to devote much attention to their common enemy. For the
successful proselytising of the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic
missionaries and the active interference of the Portuguese in all civil
and political matters, excited violent opposition in the mass of the
Abyssinian Christians;—indeed so bitter was this feeling that some of
the chiefs openly declared that they would rather submit to a
Muhammadan ruler than continue their alliance with the Portuguese;
[331]—and the semi-religious, semi-patriotic movement set on foot
thereby, rapidly assumed such vast proportions as to lead (about 1632)
to the expulsion of the Portuguese and the exclusion of all foreign
Christians from the country. The condition of Abyssinia then speedily
became one of terrible confusion and anarchy, of which some tribes of
the Galla race took advantage, to thrust their way right into the very
centre of the country, where their settlements remain to the present
day.
The progress achieved by Islam during this period may be estimated from
the testimony of a traveller of the seventeenth century, who tells us
that in his time the adherents of this faith were scattered throughout
the whole of Abyssinia and formed a third of the entire population.
[332] During the following century the faith of the Prophet seems
steadily to have increased by means of the conversion of isolated
individuals here and there. The absence of any strong central
government in the country favoured the rise of petty independent
chieftains, many of whom had strong Muhammadan sympathies, though (in
accordance with a fundamental law of the state) all the Abyssinian
princes had to belong to the Christian faith; the Muhammadans, too,
aspiring to the dignity of the Abyssinian aristocracy, abjured the
faith in which they had been born and pretended conversion to
Christianity in order to get themselves enrolled in the order of the
nobles, and as governors of Christian provinces made use of all their
influence towards the spread of Islam. [333] One of the chief reasons
of the success of this faith seems to have been the moral superiority
of the Muslims as compared with that of the Christian population of
Abyssinia. Rüppell says that he frequently noticed in the course of his
travels in Abyssinia that when a post had to be filled which required
that a thoroughly honest and trustworthy person should be selected, the
choice always fell upon a Muhammadan. In comparison with the
Christians, he says that they were more active and energetic; that
every Muhammadan had his sons taught to read and write, whereas
Christian children were only educated when they were intended for the
priesthood. [334] This moral superiority of the Muhammadans of
Abyssinia over the Christian population goes far to explain the
continuous though slow progress made by Islam during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries; the degradation and apathy of the Abyssinian
clergy and the interminable feuds of the Abyssinian chiefs, have left
Muhammadan influences free to work undisturbed. Mr. Plowden, who was
English consul in Abyssinia from 1844 to 1860, speaking of the Ḥabāb,
three Tigrē tribes dwelling between 16° and 17° 30′ lat., the
north-west of Massowah, says that they have become Muhammadan “within
the last 100 years, and all, save the latest generation, bear Christian
names. They have changed their faith, through the constant influence of
the Muhammadans with whom they trade, and through the gradual and now
entire abandonment of the country by the Abyssinian chiefs, too much
occupied in ceaseless wars with their neighbours.” [335] They have a
tradition that one of their chiefs named Jāwej rejected Christianity
for Islam, in the belief that the latter faith brought good luck and
long life; he then said to his priest, “Break in pieces the Tābōt”;
[336] the priest answered, “I dare not break in pieces the Tābōt of
Mary”; so Jāwej seized the Tābōt with his own hands and cut it in
pieces with an axe; the Christian priests then adopted Islam, and all
their descendants are shaykhs of the tribe to the present day. [337]
Other sections of the population of the northern districts of the
country were similarly converted to Islam during the same period,
because the priests had abandoned these districts and the churches had
been suffered to fall into ruins,—apparently entirely through neglect,
as the Muhammadans here are said to have been by no means fanatical nor
to have borne any particular enmity to Christianity. [338] Similar
testimony to the progress of Islam in the early part of the nineteenth
century is given by other travellers, [339] who found numbers of
Christians to be continually passing over to that faith. The
Muhammadans were especially favoured by Ras ʻAlī, one of the
vice-regents of Abyssinia and practically master of the country before
the accession of King Theodore in 1853. Though himself a Christian, he
distributed posts and even the spoils of the churches among the
followers of Islam, and during his reign one half of the population of
the central provinces of Abyssinia embraced the faith of the Prophet.
[340] Such deep roots had this faith now struck in Abyssinia that its
followers had in their hands all the commerce as well as all the petty
trade of the country, enjoyed vast possessions, were masters of large
towns and central markets, and had a firm hold upon the mass of the
people. Indeed, a Christian missionary who lived for thirty-five years
in this country, rated the success and the zeal of the Muslim
propagandists so high as to say that were another Aḥmad Grāñ to arise
and unfurl the banner of the Prophet, the whole of Abyssinia would
become Muhammadan. [341] Embroilments with the Egyptian government
(with which Abyssinia was at war from 1875 to 1882) brought about a
revulsion of feeling against Muhammadanism: hatred of the foreign
Muslim foe reacted upon their co-religionists within the border. In
1878, King John summoned a Convocation of the Abyssinian clergy, who
proclaimed him supreme arbiter in matters of faith and ordained that
there should be but one religion throughout the whole kingdom.
Christians of all sects other than the Jacobite were given two years in
which to become reconciled to the national Church; the Muhammadans were
to submit within three, and the heathen within five, years. A few days
later the king promulgated an edict that showed how little worth was
the three years’ grace allowed to the Muhammadans; for not only did he
order them to build Christian churches wherever they were needed and to
pay tithes to the priests resident in their respective districts, but
also gave three months’ notice to all Muhammadan officials to either
receive baptism or resign their posts. Such compulsory conversion
(consisting as it did merely of the rite of baptism and the payment of
tithes) was naturally of the most ineffectual character, and while
outwardly conforming, the Muslims in secret protested their loyalty to
their old faith. Massaja saw some such go straight from the church in
which they had been baptised to the mosque, in order to have this
enforced baptism wiped off by some holy man of their own faith. [342]
These mass conversions were rendered the more ineffectual by being
confined to the men, for as the royal edict had made no mention of the
women they were in no way molested,—a circumstance that probably proved
to be of considerable significance in the future history of Islam in
Abyssinia, as Massaja bears striking testimony to the important part
the Muhammadan women have played in the diffusion of their faith in
this country. [343] By 1880 King John is said to have compelled about
50,000 Muhammadans to be baptised, as well as 20,000 members of one of
the pagan tribes and half a million of Gallas, [344] but as their
conversion went no further than baptism and the payment of tithes, it
is not surprising to learn that the only result of these violent
measures was to increase the hatred and hostility of both the Muslim
and the heathen Abyssinians towards the Christian faith. [345] The king
of the petty state of Kafa (which had almost always acknowledged the
supremacy of Abyssinia),—Sawo-Teheno,—took advantage of the
embarrassment of King John, who was threatened at once by the Italians
and the followers of the Mahdī, to assert his independence, and became
a Musalman, in order to do so more effectively. He successfully
resisted all attacks until 1897, when his state was reconquered and he
himself taken prisoner by the Emperor Menelik, the former king of Shoa,
who had established his authority over the whole of Abyssinia after the
death of King John in 1889. Christianity was re-established as the
state religion throughout Kafa and Christian worship renewed in the
churches, which had been left uninjured, being either shut up or turned
into mosques. [346] But these violent measures taken in the interests
of the Christian faith have failed to arrest the growing power of Islam
during the nineteenth century. Whole tribes that were once Christian
and still bear Christian names, such as Taklēs (“Plant of Jesus”),
Hebtēs (“Gift of Jesus”) and Temāryām (“Gift of Mary”), have become
Muslim. The two Mänsaʻ tribes which were entirely Christian about the
middle of the nineteenth century had become Muslim, for the most part,
at the beginning of the twentieth century; the propagandist efforts of
the Muslims who converted them appear to have been facilitated through
the ignorance of the Christian clergy. A similar Muhammadanising
process has been going on for some time among other tribes also. [347]
We must return now to the history of Africa in the seventh century,
when the Arabs were pushing their conquests from East to West along the
north coast. The comparatively easy conquest of Egypt, where so many of
the inhabitants assisted the Arabs in bringing the Byzantine rule to an
end, found no parallel in the bloody campaigns and the long-continued
resistance that here barred their further progress, and half a century
elapsed before the Arabs succeeded in making themselves complete
masters of the north coast from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. It was not
till 698 that the fall of Carthage brought the Roman rule in Africa to
an end for ever, and the subjugation of the Berbers made the Arabs
supreme in the country.
The details of these campaigns it is no part of our purpose to
consider, but rather to attempt to discover in what way Islam was
spread among the Christian population. Unfortunately the materials
available for such a purpose are lamentably sparse and insufficient.
What became of that great African Church that had given such saints and
theologians to Christendom? The Church of Tertullian, St. Cyprian and
St. Augustine, which had emerged victorious out of so many
persecutions, and had so stoutly championed the cause of Christian
orthodoxy, seems to have faded away like a mist.
In the absence of definite information, it has been usual to ascribe
the disappearance of the Christian population to fanatical persecutions
and forced conversions on the part of the Muslim conquerors. But there
are many considerations that militate against such a rough and ready
settlement of this question. First of all, there is the absence of
definite evidence in support of such an assertion. Massacres,
devastation and all the other accompaniments of a bloody and
long-protracted war, there were in horrible abundance, but of actual
religious persecution we have little mention, and the survival of the
native Christian Church for more than eight centuries after the Arab
conquest is a testimony to the toleration that alone could have
rendered such a survival possible.
The causes that brought about the decay of Christianity in North Africa
must be sought for elsewhere than in the bigotry of Muhammadan rulers.
But before attempting to enumerate these, it will be well to realise
how very small must have been the number of the Christian population at
the end of the seventh century—a circumstance that renders its
continued existence under Muhammadan rule still more significant of the
absence of forced conversion, and leaves such a hypothesis much less
plausibility than would have been the case had the Arabs found a large
and flourishing Christian Church there when they commenced their
conquest of northern Africa.
The Roman provinces of Africa, to which the Christian population was
confined, never extended far southwards; the Sahara forms a barrier in
this direction, so that the breadth of the coast seldom exceeds 80 or
100 miles. [348] Though there were as many as 500 bishoprics just
before the Vandal conquest, this number can serve as no criterion of
the number of the faithful, owing to the practice observed in the
African Church of appointing bishops to the most inconsiderable towns
and very frequently to the most obscure villages, [349] and it is
doubtful whether Christianity ever spread far inland among the Berber
tribes. [350] When the power of the Roman Empire declined in the fifth
century, different tribes of this great race, known to the Romans under
the names of Moors, Numidians, Libyans, etc., swarmed up from the south
to ravage and destroy the wealthy cities of the coast. These invaders
were certainly heathen. The Libyans, whose devastations are so
pathetically bewailed by Synesius of Cyrene, pillaged and burnt the
churches and carried off the sacred vessels for their own idolatrous
rites, [351] and this province of Cyrenaica never recovered from their
devastations, and Christianity was probably almost extinct here at the
time of the Muslim invasion. The Moorish chieftain in the district of
Tripolis, who was at war with the Vandal king Thorismund (496–524), but
respected the churches and clergy of the orthodox, who had been
ill-treated by the Vandals, declared his heathenism when he said, “I do
not know who the God of the Christians is, but if he is so powerful as
he is represented, he will take vengeance on those who insult him, and
succour those who do him honour.” [352] There is some probability that
the nomads of Mauritania also were very largely heathen.
But whatever may have been the extent of the Christian Church, it
received a blow from the Vandal persecutions from which it never
recovered. For nearly a century the Arian Vandals persecuted the
orthodox with relentless fury; sent their bishops into exile, forbade
the public exercise of their religion and cruelly tortured those who
refused to conform to the religion of their conquerors. [353] When in
534, Belisarius crushed the power of the Vandals and restored North
Africa to the Roman Empire, only 217 bishops met in the Synod of
Carthage [354] to resume the direction of the Christian Church. After
the fierce and long-continued persecution to which they had been
subjected the number of the faithful must have been very much reduced,
and during the century that elapsed before the coming of the
Muhammadans, the inroads of the barbarian Moors, who shut the Romans up
in the cities and other centres of population, and kept the mountains,
the desert and the open country for themselves, [355] the prevalent
disorder and ill-government, and above all the desolating plagues that
signalised the latter half of the sixth century, all combined to carry
on the work of destruction. Five millions of Africans are said to have
been consumed by the wars and government of the Emperor Justinian. The
wealthier citizens abandoned a country whose commerce and agriculture,
once so flourishing, had been irretrievably ruined. “Such was the
desolation of Africa, that in many parts a stranger might wander whole
days without meeting the face either of a friend or an enemy. The
nation of the Vandals had disappeared; they once amounted to an hundred
and sixty thousand warriors, without including the children, the women,
or the slaves. Their numbers were infinitely surpassed by the number of
Moorish families extirpated in a relentless war; the same destruction
was retaliated on the Romans and their allies, who perished by the
climate, their mutual quarrels, and the rage of the barbarians.” [356]
In 646, the year before the victorious Arabs advanced from Egypt to the
subjugation of the western province, the African Church that had
championed so often the purity of Christian doctrine, was stirred to
its depths by the struggle against Monotheletism; but when the bishops
of the four ecclesiastical provinces in the archbishopric of Carthage,
viz. Mauritania, Numidia, Byzacena and Africa Proconsularis, held
councils to condemn Monotheletism, and wrote synodal letters to the
Emperor and the Pope, there were only sixty-eight bishops who assembled
at Carthage to represent the last-mentioned province, and forty-two for
Byzacena. The numbers from the other two dioceses are not given, but
the Christian population had undoubtedly suffered much more in these
than in the two other dioceses which were nearer to the seat of
government. [357] It is exceedingly unlikely that any of the bishops
were absent on an occasion that excited so much feeling, when zeal for
Christian doctrine and political animosity to the Byzantine court both
combined in stimulating this movement, and when Africa took the most
prominent part in stirring up the opposition that led to the convening
of the great Lateran Council of 648. This diminution in the number of
the African bishops certainly points to a vast decrease in the
Christian population, and in consideration of the numerous causes
contributing to a decay of the population, too great stress even must
not be laid upon the number of these, because an episcopal see may
continue to be filled long after the diocese has sunk into
insignificance.
From the considerations enumerated above, it may certainly be inferred
that the Christian population at the time of the Muhammadan invasion
was by no means a large one. During the fifty years that elapsed before
the Arabs assured their victory, the Christian population was still
further reduced by the devastations of this long conflict. The city of
Tripolis, after sustaining a siege of six months, was sacked, and of
the inhabitants part were put to the sword and the rest carried off
captive into Egypt and Arabia. [358] Another city, bordering on the
Numidian desert, was defended by a Roman count with a large garrison
which bravely endured a blockade of a whole year; when at last it was
taken by storm, all the males were put to the sword and the women and
children carried off captive. [359] The number of such captives is said
to have amounted to several hundreds of thousands. [360] Many of the
Christians took refuge in flight, [361] some into Italy and Spain,
[362] and it would almost seem that others even wandered as far as
Germany, judging from a letter addressed to the diocese of St. Boniface
by Pope Gregory II. [363] In fact, many of the great Roman cities were
quite depopulated, and remained uninhabited for a long time or were
even left to fall to ruins entirely, [364] while in several cases the
conquerors chose entirely new sites for their chief towns. [365]
As to the scattered remnants of the once flourishing Christian Church
that still remained in Africa at the end of the seventh century, it can
hardly be supposed that persecution is responsible for their final
disappearance, in the face of the fact that traces of a native
Christian community were to be found even so late as the sixteenth
century. Idrīs, the founder of the dynasty in Morocco that bore his
name, is indeed said to have compelled by force Christians and Jews to
embrace Islam in the year A.D. 789, when he had just begun to carve out
a kingdom for himself with the sword, [366] but, as far as I have been
able to discover, this incident is without parallel in the history of
the native Church of North Africa. [367]
The very slowness of its decay is a testimony to the toleration it must
have received. About 300 years after the Muhammadan conquest there were
still nearly forty bishoprics left, [368] and when in 1053 Pope Leo IX
laments that only five bishops could be found to represent the once
flourishing African Church, [369] the cause is most probably to be
sought for in the terrible bloodshed and destruction wrought by the
Arab hordes that had poured into the country a few years before and
filled it with incessant conflict and anarchy. [370] In 1076, the
African Church could not provide the three bishops necessary for the
consecration of an aspirant to the dignity of the episcopate, in
accordance with the demands of canon law, and it was necessary for Pope
Gregory VII to consecrate two bishops to act as coadjutors of the
Archbishop of Carthage; but the numbers of the faithful were still so
large as to demand the creation of fresh bishops to lighten the burden
of the work, which was too heavy for these three bishops to perform
unaided. [371] In the course of the next two centuries, the Christian
Church declined still further, and in 1246 the bishop of Morocco was
the sole spiritual leader of the remnant of the native Church. [372] Up
to the same period traces of the survival of Christianity were still to
be found among the Kabils of Algeria; [373] these tribes had received
some slight instruction in the tenets of Islam at an early period, but
the new faith had taken very little hold upon them, and as years went
by they lost even what little knowledge they had at first possessed, so
much so that they even forgot the Muslim formula of prayer. Shut up in
their mountain fastnesses and jealous of their independence, they
successfully resisted the introduction of the Arab element into their
midst, and thus the difficulties in the way of their conversion were
very considerable. Some unsuccessful attempts to start a mission among
them had been made by the inmates of a monastery belonging to the
Qādiriyyah order, Sāqiyah al-ḥamrāʼ, but the honour of winning an
entrance among them for the Muslim faith was reserved for a number of
Andalusian Moors who were driven out of Spain after the taking of
Granada in 1492. They had taken refuge in this monastery and were
recognised by the shaykh to be eminently fitted for the arduous task
that had previously so completely baffled the efforts of his disciples.
Before dismissing them on this pious errand, he thus addressed them:
“It is a duty incumbent upon us to bear the torch of Islam into these
regions that have lost their inheritance in the blessings of religion;
for these unhappy Kabils are wholly unprovided with schools, and have
no shaykh to teach their children the laws of morality and the virtues
of Islam; so they live like the brute beasts, without God or religion.
To do away with this unhappy state of things, I have determined to
appeal to your religious zeal and enlightenment. Let not these
mountaineers wallow any longer in their pitiable ignorance of the grand
truths of our religion; go and breathe upon the dying fire of their
faith and re-illumine its smouldering embers; purge them of whatever
errors may still cling to them from their former belief in
Christianity; make them understand that in the religion of our lord
Muḥammad—may God have compassion upon him—dirt is not, as in the
Christian religion, looked upon as acceptable in the eyes of God. [374]
I will not disguise from you the fact that your task is beset with
difficulties, but your irresistible zeal and the ardour of your faith
will enable you, by the grace of God, to overcome all obstacles. Go, my
children, and bring back again to God and His Prophet these unhappy
people who are wallowing in the mire of ignorance and unbelief. Go, my
children, bearing the message of salvation, and may God be with you and
uphold you.”
The missionaries started off in parties of five or six at a time in
various directions; they went in rags, staff in hand, and choosing out
the wildest and least frequented parts of the mountains, established
hermitages in caves and clefts of the rocks. Their austerities and
prolonged devotions soon excited the curiosity of the Kabils, who after
a short time began to enter into friendly relations with them. Little
by little the missionaries gained the influence they desired through
their knowledge of medicine, of the mechanical arts, and other
advantages of civilisation, and each hermitage became a centre of
Muslim teaching. Students, attracted by the learning of the new-comers,
gathered round them and in time became missionaries of Islam to their
fellow-countrymen, until their faith spread throughout all the country
of the Kabils and the villages of the Algerian Sahara. [375]
The above incident is no doubt illustrative of the manner in which
Islam was introduced among such other sections of the independent
tribes of the interior as had received any Christian teaching, but
whose knowledge of this faith had dwindled down to the observance of a
few superstitious rites; [376] for, cut off as they were from the rest
of the Christian world and unprovided with spiritual teachers, they
could have had little in the way of positive religious belief to oppose
to the teachings of the Muslim missionaries.
There is little more to add to these sparse records of the decay of the
North African Church. A Muhammadan traveller, [377] who visited
al-Jarīd, the southern district of Tunis, in the early part of the
fourteenth century, tells us that the Christian churches, although in
ruins, were still standing in his day, not having been destroyed by the
Arab conquerors, who had contented themselves with building a mosque in
front of each of these churches. Ibn Khaldūn (writing towards the close
of the fourteenth century), speaks of some villages in the province of
Qastīliyyah, [378] with a Christian population whose ancestors had
lived there since the time of the Arab conquest. [379] At the end of
the following century there was still to be found in the city of Tunis
a small community of native Christians, living together in one of the
suburbs, quite distinct from that in which the foreign Christian
merchants resided; far from being oppressed or persecuted, they were
employed as the bodyguard of the Sultan. [380] These were doubtless the
same persons as were congratulated on their perseverance in the
Christian faith by Charles V after the capture of Tunis in 1535. [381]
This is the last we hear of the native Christian Church in North
Africa. The very fact of its so long survival would militate against
any supposition of forced conversion, even if we had not abundant
evidence of the tolerant spirit of the Arab rulers of the various North
African kingdoms, who employed Christian soldiers, [382] granted by
frequent treaties the free exercise of their religion to Christian
merchants and settlers, [383] and to whom Popes [384] recommended the
care of the native Christian population, while exhorting the latter to
serve their Muhammadan rulers faithfully. [385]
CHAPTER V.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.
In 711 the victorious Arabs introduced Islam into Spain: in 1502 an
edict of Ferdinand and Isabella forbade the exercise of the Muhammadan
religion throughout the kingdom. During the centuries that elapsed
between these two dates, Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest
pages in the history of mediæval Europe. Her influence had passed
through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into
birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that
Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they
had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the
Renaissance. But these triumphs of the civilised life—art and poetry,
science and philosophy—we must pass over here and fix our attention on
the religious condition of Spain under the Muslim rule.
When the Muhammadans first brought their religion into Spain they found
Catholic Christianity firmly established after its conquest over
Arianism. The sixth Council of Toledo had enacted that all kings were
to swear that they would not suffer the exercise of any other religion
but the Catholic, and would vigorously enforce the law against all
dissentients, while a subsequent law forbade any one under pain of
confiscation of his property and perpetual imprisonment, to call in
question the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Evangelical
Institutions, the definitions of the Fathers, the decrees of the
Church, and the Holy Sacraments. The clergy had gained for their order
a preponderating influence in the affairs of the state; [386] the
bishops and chief ecclesiastics sat in the national councils, which met
to settle the most important business of the realm, ratified the
election of the king and claimed the right to depose him if he refused
to abide by their decrees. The Christian clergy took advantage of their
power to persecute the Jews, who formed a very large community in
Spain; edicts of a brutally severe character were passed against such
as refused to be baptised; [387] and they consequently hailed the
invading Arabs as their deliverers from such cruel oppression, they
garrisoned the captured cities on behalf of the conqueror and opened
the gates of towns that were being besieged. [388]
The Muhammadans received as warm a welcome from the slaves, whose
condition under the Gothic rule was a very miserable one, and whose
knowledge of Christianity was too superficial to have any weight when
compared with the liberty and numerous advantages they gained, by
throwing in their lot with the Muslims.
These down-trodden slaves were the first converts to Islam in Spain.
The remnants of the heathen population of which we find mention as late
as A.D. 693, [389] probably followed their example. Many of the
Christian nobles, also, whether from genuine conviction or from other
motives, embraced the new creed. [390] Many converts were won, too,
from the lower and middle classes, who may well have embraced Islam,
not merely outwardly, but from genuine conviction, turning to it from a
religion whose ministers had left them ill-instructed and uncared for,
and busied with worldly ambitions had plundered and oppressed their
flocks. [391] Having once become Muslims, these Spanish converts showed
themselves zealous adherents of their adopted faith, and they and their
children joined themselves to the Puritan party of the rigid Muhammadan
theologians as against the careless and luxurious life of the Arab
aristocracy. [392]
At the time of the Muhammadan conquest the old Gothic virtues are said
by Christian historians to have declined and given place to effeminacy
and corruption, so that the Muhammadan rule appeared to them to be a
punishment sent from God on those who had gone astray into the paths of
vice; [393] but such a statement is too frequent a commonplace of the
ecclesiastical historian to be accepted in the absence of contemporary
evidence. [394]
But certainly as time went on, matters do not seem to have mended
themselves; and when Christian bishops took part in the revels of the
Muhammadan court, when episcopal sees were put up to auction and
persons suspected to be atheists appointed as shepherds of the
faithful, and these in their turn bestowed the office of the priesthood
on low and unworthy persons, [395] we may well suppose that it was not
only in the province of Elvira [396] that Christians turned from a
religion, the corrupt lives of whose ministers had brought it into
discredit, [397] and sought a more congenial atmosphere for the moral
and spiritual life in the pale of Islam.
Had ecclesiastical writers cared to chronicle them, Spain would
doubtless be found to offer instances of many a man leaving the
Christian Church like Bodo, a deacon at the French court in the reign
of Louis the Pious, who in A.D. 838 became a Jew, in order that (as he
said), forsaking his sinful life, he might “abide steadfast in the law
of the Lord.” [398]
It is very possible, too, that the lingering remains of the old Gothic
Arianism—of which, indeed, there had been some slight revival in the
Spanish Church just before the Arab conquest [399]—may have predisposed
men’s minds to accept the new faith whose Christology was in such close
agreement with Arian doctrine, [400] and a later age may have witnessed
parallels to that change of faith which is the earliest recorded
instance of conversion to Islam in western Europe and occurred before
the Arab invasion of Spain—namely the conversion of a Greek named
Theodisclus, who succeeded St. Isidore (ob. A.D. 636) as Archbishop of
Seville; he was accused of heresy, for maintaining that Jesus was not
one God in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but was rather
Son of God by adoption; he was accordingly condemned by an
ecclesiastical synod, deprived of his archbishopric and degraded from
the priesthood. Whereupon he went over to the Arabs and embraced Islam
among them. [401]
Of forced conversion or anything like persecution in the early days of
the Arab conquest, we hear nothing. Indeed, it was probably in a great
measure their tolerant attitude towards the Christian religion that
facilitated their rapid acquisition of the country. The only complaint
that the Christians could bring against their new rulers for treating
them differently to their non-Christian subjects, was that they had to
pay the usual capitation-tax of forty-eight dirhams for the rich,
twenty-four for the middle classes, and twelve for those who made their
living by manual labour: this, as being in lieu of military service,
was levied only on the able-bodied males, for women, children, monks,
the halt, and the blind, and the sick, mendicants and slaves were
exempted therefrom; [402] it must moreover have appeared the less
oppressive as being collected by the Christian officials themselves.
[403]
Except in the case of offences against the Muslim religious law, the
Christians were tried by their own judges and in accordance with their
own laws. [404] They were left undisturbed in the exercise of their
religion; [405] the sacrifice of the mass was offered, with the
swinging of censers, the ringing of the bell, and all the other
solemnities of the Catholic ritual; the psalms were chanted in the
choir, sermons preached to the people, and the festivals of the Church
observed in the usual manner. They do not appear to have been
condemned, like their co-religionists in Syria and Egypt, to wear a
distinctive dress as sign of their humiliation, and in the ninth
century at least, the Christian laity wore the same kind of costume as
the Arabs. [406] They were at one time even allowed to build new
churches. [407]
We read also of the founding [408] of several fresh monasteries in
addition to the numerous convents both for monks and nuns that
flourished undisturbed by the Muhammadan rulers. The monks could appear
publicly in the woollen robes of their order and the priest had no need
to conceal the mark of his sacred office, [409] nor at the same time
did their religious profession prevent the Christians from being
entrusted with high offices at court, [410] or serving in the Muslim
armies. [411]
Certainly those Christians who could reconcile themselves to the loss
of political power had little to complain of, and it is very noticeable
that during the whole of the eighth century we hear of only one attempt
at revolt on their part, namely at Beja, and in this they appear to
have followed the lead of an Arab chief. [412] Those who migrated into
French territory in order that they might live under a Christian rule,
certainly fared no better than the co-religionists they had left
behind. In 812 Charlemagne interfered to protect the exiles who had
followed him on his retreat from Spain from the exactions of the
imperial officers. Three years later Louis the Pious had to issue
another edict on their behalf, in spite of which they had soon again to
complain against the nobles who robbed them of the lands that had been
assigned to them. But the evil was only checked for a little time to
break out afresh, and all the edicts passed on their behalf did not
avail to make the lot of these unfortunate exiles more tolerable, and
in the Cagots (i.e. canes Gothi), a despised and ill-treated class of
later times, we probably meet again the Spanish colony that fled away
from Muslim rule to throw themselves upon the mercy of their Christian
co-religionists. [413]
The toleration of the Muhammadan government towards its Christian
subjects in Spain and the freedom of intercourse between the adherents
of the two religions brought about a certain amount of assimilation in
the two communities. Inter-marriages became frequent; [414] Isidore of
Beja, who fiercely inveighs against the Muslim conquerors, records the
marriage of ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz, the son of Mūsạ̄, with the widow of King
Roderic, without a word of blame. [415] Many of the Christians adopted
Arab names, and in outward observances imitated to some extent their
Muhammadan neighbours, e.g. many were circumcised, [416] and in matters
of food and drink followed the practice of the “unbaptized pagans.”
[417]
The very term Muzarabes (i.e. mustʻaribīn or Arabicised) applied to the
Spanish Christians living under Arab rule, is significant of the
tendencies that were at work. The study of Arabic very rapidly began to
displace that of Latin throughout the country, [418] so that the
language of Christian theology came gradually to be neglected and
forgotten. Even some of the higher clergy rendered themselves
ridiculous by their ignorance of correct Latinity. [419] It could
hardly be expected that the laity would exhibit more zeal in such a
matter than the clergy, and in 854 a Spanish writer brings the
following complaint against his Christian fellow-countrymen:—“While we
are investigating their (i.e. the Muslim) sacred ordinances and meeting
together to study the sects of their philosophers—or rather
philobraggers—not for the purpose of refuting their errors, but for the
exquisite charm and for the eloquence and beauty of their
language—neglecting the reading of the Scriptures, we are but setting
up as an idol the number of the beast. (Apoc. xiii. 18.) Where nowadays
can we find any learned layman who, absorbed in the study of the Holy
Scriptures, cares to look at the works of any of the Latin Fathers? Who
is there with any zeal for the writings of the Evangelists, or the
Prophets, or Apostles? Our Christian young men, with their elegant airs
and fluent speech, are showy in their dress and carriage, and are famed
for the learning of the gentiles; intoxicated with Arab eloquence they
greedily handle, eagerly devour and zealously discuss the books of the
Chaldeans (i.e. Muhammadans), and make them known by praising them with
every flourish of rhetoric, knowing nothing of the beauty of the
Church’s literature, and looking down with contempt on the streams of
the Church that flow forth from Paradise; alas! the Christians are so
ignorant of their own law, the Latins pay so little attention to their
own language, that in the whole Christian flock there is hardly one man
in a thousand who can write a letter to inquire after a friend’s health
intelligibly, while you may find a countless rabble of all kinds of
them who can learnedly roll out the grandiloquent periods of the
Chaldean tongue. They can even make poems, every line ending with the
same letter, which display high flights of beauty and more skill in
handling metre than the gentiles themselves possess.” [420]
In fact the knowledge of Latin so much declined in one part of Spain
that it was found necessary to translate the ancient Canons of the
Spanish Church and the Bible into Arabic for the use of the Christians.
[421]
While the brilliant literature of the Arabs exercised such a
fascination and was so zealously studied, those who desired an
education in Christian literature had little more than the materials
that had been employed in the training of the barbaric Goths, and could
with difficulty find teachers to induct them even into this low level
of culture. As time went on this want of Christian education increased
more and more. In 1125 the Muzarabes wrote to King Alfonso of Aragon:
“We and our fathers have up to this time been brought up among the
gentiles, and having been baptised, freely observe the Christian
ordinances; but we have never had it in our power to be fully
instructed in our divine religion; for, subject as we are to the
infidels who have long oppressed us, we have never ventured to ask for
teachers from Rome or France; and they have never come to us of their
own accord on account of the barbarity of the heathen whom we obey.”
[422]
From such close intercourse with the Muslims and so diligent a study of
their literature—when we find even so bigoted an opponent of Islam as
Alvar [423] acknowledging that the Qurʼān was composed in such eloquent
and beautiful language that even Christians could not help reading and
admiring it—we should naturally expect to find signs of a religious
influence: and such indeed is the case. Elipandus, bishop of Toledo
(ob. 810), an exponent of the heresy of Adoptionism—according to which
the Man Christ Jesus was Son of God by adoption and not by nature—is
expressly said to have arrived at these heretical views through his
frequent and close intercourse with the Muhammadans. [424] This new
doctrine appears to have spread quickly over a great part of Spain,
while it was successfully propagated in Septimania, which was under
French protection, by Felix, bishop of Urgel in Catalonia. [425] Felix
was brought before a council, presided over by Charlemagne, and made to
abjure his error, but on his return to Spain he relapsed into his old
heresy, doubtless (as was suggested by Pope Leo III at the time) owing
to his intercourse with the pagans (meaning thereby the Muhammadans)
who held similar views. [426] When prominent churchmen were so
profoundly influenced by their contact with Muhammadans, we may judge
that the influence of Islam upon the Christians of Spain was very
considerable, indeed in A.D. 936 a council was held at Toledo to
consider the best means of preventing this intercourse from
contaminating the purity of the Christian faith. [427]
It may readily be understood how these influences of Islamic thought
and practice—added to definite efforts at conversion [428]—would lead
to much more than a mere approximation and would very speedily swell
the number of the converts to Islam so that their descendants, the
so-called Muwallads—a term denoting those not of Arab blood—soon formed
a large and important party in the state, indeed the majority of the
population of the country, [429] and as early as the beginning of the
ninth century we read of attempts made by them to shake off the Arab
rule, and on several occasions later they come forward actively as a
national party of Spanish Muslims.
We have little or no details of the history of the conversion of these
New-Muslims. Instances appeared to have occurred right up to the last
days of Muslim rule, for when the army of Ferdinand and Isabella
captured Malaga in 1487, it is recorded that all the renegade
Christians found in the city were tortured to death with sharp-pointed
reeds, and in the capitulation that secured the submission of Purchena
two years later, an express promise was made that renegades would not
be forced to return to Christianity. [430] Some few apostatised to
escape the payment of some penalty inflicted by the law-courts. [431]
But the majority of the converts were no doubt won over by the imposing
influence of the faith of Islam itself, presented to them as it was
with all the glamour of a brilliant civilisation, having a poetry, a
philosophy and an art well calculated to attract the reason and dazzle
the imagination: while in the lofty chivalry of the Arabs there was
free scope for the exhibition of manly prowess and the knightly
virtues—a career closed to the conquered Spaniards that remained true
to the Christian faith. Again, the learning and literature of the
Christians must have appeared very poor and meagre when compared with
that of the Muslims, the study of which may well by itself have served
as an incentive to the adoption of their religion. Besides, to the
devout mind Islam in Spain could offer the attractions of a pious and
zealous Puritan party with the orthodox Muslim theologians at its head,
which at times had a preponderating influence in the state and
struggled earnestly towards a reformation of faith and morals.
Taking into consideration the ardent religious feeling that animated
the mass of the Spanish Muslims and the provocation that the Christians
gave to the Muhammadan government through their treacherous intrigues
with their co-religionists over the border, the history of Spain under
Muhammadan rule is singularly free from persecution. With the exception
of three or four cases of genuine martyrdom, the only approach to
anything like persecution during the whole period of the Arab rule is
to be found in the severe measures adopted by the Muhammadan government
to repress the madness for voluntary martyrdom that broke out in
Cordova in the ninth century. At this time a fanatical party came into
existence among the Christians in this part of Spain (for apparently
the Christian Church in the rest of the country had no sympathy with
the movement), which set itself openly and unprovokedly to insult the
religion of the Muslims and blaspheme their Prophet, with the
deliberate intention of incurring the penalty of death by such
misguided assertion of their Christian bigotry.
This strange passion for self-immolation displayed itself mainly among
priests, monks and nuns between the years 850 and 860. It would seem
that brooding, in the silence of their cloisters, over the decline of
Christian influence and the decay of religious zeal, they went forth to
win the martyr’s crown—of which the toleration of their infidel rulers
was robbing them—by means of fierce attacks on Islam and its founder.
Thus, for example, a certain monk, by name Isaac, came before the Qāḍī
and pretended that he wished to be instructed in the faith of Islam;
when the Qāḍī had expounded to him the doctrines of the Prophet, he
burst out with the words: “He hath lied unto you (may the curse of God
consume him!), who, full of wickedness, hath led so many men into
perdition, and doomed them with himself to the pit of hell. Filled with
Satan and practising Satanic jugglery, he hath given you a cup of
deadly wine to work disease in you, and will expiate his guilt with
everlasting damnation. Why do ye not, being endowed with understanding,
deliver yourselves from such dangers? Why do ye not, renouncing the
ulcer of his pestilential doctrines, seek the eternal salvation of the
Gospel of the faith of Christ?” [432] On another occasion two
Christians forced their way into a mosque and there reviled the
Muhammadan religion, which, they declared, would very speedily bring
upon its followers the destruction of hell-fire. [433] Though the
number of such fanatics was not considerable, [434] the Muhammadan
government grew alarmed, fearing that such contempt for their authority
and disregard of their laws against blasphemy, argued a widespread
disaffection and a possible general insurrection, for in fact, in 853
Muḥammad I had to send an army against the Christians at Toledo, who,
incited by Eulogius, the chief apologist of the martyrs, had risen in
revolt on the news of the sufferings of their co-religionists. [435] He
is said to have ordered a general massacre of the Christians, but when
it was pointed out that no men of any intelligence or rank among the
Christians had taken part in such doings [436] (for Alvar himself
complains that the majority of the Christian priests condemned the
martyrs [437]), the king contented himself with putting into force the
existing laws against blasphemy with the utmost rigour. The moderate
party in the Church seconded the efforts of the government; the bishops
anathematised the fanatics, and an ecclesiastical council that was held
in 852 to discuss the matter agreed upon methods of repression [438]
that eventually quashed the movement. One or two isolated cases of
martyrdom are recorded later—the last in 983, after which there was
none as long as the Arab rule lasted in Spain. [439]
But under the Berber dynasty of the Almoravids at the beginning of the
twelfth century, there was an outburst of fanaticism on the part of the
theological zealots of Islam in which the Christians had to suffer
along with the Jews and the liberal section of the Muhammadan
population—the philosophers, the poets and the men of letters. But such
incidents are exceptions to the generally tolerant character of the
Muhammadan rulers of Spain towards their Christian subjects.
One of the Spanish Muhammadans who was driven out of his native country
in the last expulsion of the Moriscoes in 1610, while protesting
against the persecutions of the Inquisition, makes the following
vindication of the toleration of his co-religionists: “Did our
victorious ancestors ever once attempt to extirpate Christianity out of
Spain, when it was in their power? Did they not suffer your forefathers
to enjoy the free use of their rites at the same time that they wore
their chains? Is not the absolute injunction of our Prophet, that
whatever nation is conquered by Musalman steel, should, upon the
payment of a moderate annual tribute, be permitted to persevere in
their own pristine persuasion, how absurd soever, or to embrace what
other belief they themselves best approved of? If there may have been
some examples of forced conversions, they are so rare as scarce to
deserve mentioning, and only attempted by men who had not the fear of
God, and the Prophet, before their eyes, and who, in so doing, have
acted directly and diametrically contrary to the holy precepts and
ordinances of Islam which cannot, without sacrilege, be violated by any
who would be held worthy of the honourable epithet of Musulman.... You
can never produce, among us, any bloodthirsty, formal tribunal, on
account of different persuasions in points of faith, that anywise
approaches your execrable Inquisition. Our arms, it is true, are ever
open to receive all who are disposed to embrace our religion; but we
are not allowed by our sacred Qurʼān to tyrannise over consciences. Our
proselytes have all imaginable encouragement, and have no sooner
professed God’s Unity and His Apostle’s mission but they become one of
us, without reserve; taking to wife our daughters, and being employed
in posts of trust, honour and profit; we contenting ourselves with only
obliging them to wear our habit, and to seem true believers in outward
appearance, without ever offering to examine their consciences,
provided they do not openly revile or profane our religion: if they do
that, we indeed punish them as they deserve; since their conversion was
voluntarily, and was not by compulsion.” [440]
This very spirit of toleration was made one of the main articles in an
account of the “Apostacies and Treasons of the Moriscoes,” drawn up by
the Archbishop of Valencia in 1602 when recommending their expulsion to
Philip III, as follows: “That they commended nothing so much as that
liberty of conscience, in all matters of religion, which the Turks, and
all other Muhammadans, suffer their subjects to enjoy.” [441]
What deep roots Islam had struck in the hearts of the Spanish people
may be judged from the fact that when the last remnant of the Moriscoes
was expelled from Spain in 1610, these unfortunate people still clung
to the faith of their fathers, although for more than a century they
had been forced to outwardly conform to the Christian religion, and in
spite of the emigrations that had taken place since the fall of
Granada, nearly 500,000 are said to have been expelled at that time.
[442] Whole towns and villages were deserted and the houses fell into
ruins, there being no one to rebuild them. [443] These Moriscoes were
probably all descendants of the original inhabitants of the country,
with little or no admixture of Arab blood; the reasons that may be
adduced in support of this statement are too lengthy to be given here;
one point only in the evidence may be mentioned, derived from a letter
written in 1311, in which it is stated that of the 200,000 Muhammadans
then living in the city of Granada, not more than 500 were of Arab
descent, all the rest being descendants of converted Spaniards. [444]
Finally, it is of interest to note that even up to the last days of its
power in Spain, Islam won converts to the faith, for the historian,
when writing of events that occurred in the year 1499, seven years
after the fall of Granada, draws attention to the fact that among the
Moors were a few Christians who had lately embraced the faith of the
Prophet. [445]
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS
IN EUROPE UNDER THE TURKS.
We first hear of the Ottoman Turks at the commencement of the
thirteenth century, when fleeing before the Mongols, to the number of
about 50,000, they came to the help of the Sultan of Iconium, and in
return for their services both against the Mongols and the Greeks, had
assigned to them a district in the north-west of Asia Minor. This was
the nucleus of the future Ottoman empire, which, increasing at first by
the absorption of the petty states into which the Saljūq Turks had
split up, afterwards crossed over into Europe, annexing kingdom after
kingdom, until its victorious growth received a check before the gates
of Vienna in 1683. [446]
From the earliest days of the extension of their kingdom in Asia Minor,
the Ottomans exercised authority over Christian subjects, but it was
not until the ancient capital of the Eastern empire fell into their
hands in 1453 that the relations between the Muslim Government and the
Christian Church were definitely established on a fixed basis. One of
the first steps taken by Muḥammad II, after the capture of
Constantinople and the re-establishment of order in that city, was to
secure the allegiance of the Christians, by proclaiming himself the
protector of the Greek Church. Persecution of the Christians was
strictly forbidden; a decree was granted to the newly elected patriarch
which secured to him and his successors and the bishops under him, the
enjoyment of the old privileges, revenues and exemptions enjoyed under
the former rule. Gennadios, the first patriarch after the Turkish
conquest, received from the hands of the Sultan himself the pastoral
staff, which was the sign of his office, together with a purse of a
thousand golden ducats and a horse with gorgeous trappings, on which he
was privileged to ride with his train through the city. [447] But not
only was the head of the Church treated with all the respect he had
been accustomed to receive from the Christian emperors, but further he
was invested with extensive civil power. The patriarch’s court sat to
decide all cases between Greek and Greek: it could impose fines,
imprison offenders in a prison provided for its own special use, and in
some cases even condemn to capital punishment: while the ministers and
officials of the government were directed to enforce its judgments. The
complete control of spiritual and ecclesiastical matters (in which the
Turkish government, unlike the civil power of the Byzantine empire,
never interfered), was left entirely in his hands and those of the
grand Synod which he could summon whenever he pleased; and hereby he
could decide all matters of faith and dogma without fear of
interference on the part of the state. As a recognised officer of the
imperial government, he could do much for the alleviation of the
oppressed, by bringing the acts of unjust governors to the notice of
the Sultan. The Greek bishops in the provinces in their turn were
treated with great consideration and were entrusted with so much
jurisdiction in civil affairs, that up to modern times they have acted
in their dioceses almost as if they were Ottoman prefects over the
orthodox population, thus taking the place of the old Christian
aristocracy which had been exterminated by the conquerors, and we find
that the higher clergy were generally more active as Turkish agents
than as Greek priests, and they always taught their people that the
Sultan possessed a divine sanction, as the protector of the Orthodox
Church. A charter was subsequently published, securing to the orthodox
the use of such churches as had not been confiscated to form mosques,
and authorising them to celebrate their religious rites publicly
according to their national usages. [448]
Consequently, though the Greeks were numerically superior to the Turks
in all the European provinces of the empire, the religious toleration
thus granted them, and the protection of life and property they
enjoyed, soon reconciled them to the change of masters and led them to
prefer the domination of the Sultan to that of any Christian power.
Indeed, in many parts of the country, the Ottoman conquerors were
welcomed by the Greeks as their deliverers from the rapacious and
tyrannous rule of the Franks and the Venetians who had so long disputed
with Byzantium for the possession of the Peloponnesos and some of the
adjacent parts of Greece; by introducing into Greece the feudal system,
these had reduced the people to the miserable condition of serfs, and
as aliens in speech, race and creed, were hated by their subjects,
[449] to whom a change of rulers, since it could not make their
condition worse, would offer a possible chance of improving it, and
though their deliverers were likewise aliens, yet the infidel Turk was
infinitely to be preferred to the heretical Catholics. [450] The Greeks
who lived under the immediate government of the Byzantine court, were
equally unlikely to be averse to a change of rulers. The degradation
and tyranny that characterised the dynasty of the Palæologi are
frightful to contemplate. “A corrupt aristocracy, a tyrannical and
innumerable clergy, the oppression of perverted law, the exactions of a
despicable government, and still more, its monopolies, its fiscality,
its armies of tax and custom collectors, left the degraded people
neither rights nor institutions, neither chance of amelioration nor
hope of redress.” [451] Lest such a judgment appear dictated by a
spirit of party bias, a contemporary authority may be appealed to in
support of its correctness. The Russian annalists who speak of the fall
of Constantinople bring a similar indictment against its government.
“Without the fear of the law an empire is like a steed without reins.
Constantine and his ancestors allowed their grandees to oppress the
people; there was no more justice in their law courts; no more courage
in their hearts; the judges amassed treasures from the tears and blood
of the innocent; the Greek soldiers were proud only of the magnificence
of their dress; the citizens did not blush at being traitors; the
soldiers were not ashamed to fly. At length the Lord poured out His
thunder on these unworthy rulers, and raised up Muḥammad, whose
warriors delight in battle, and whose judges do not betray their
trust.” [452] This last item of praise [453] may sound strange in the
ears of a generation that has constantly been called upon to protest
against Turkish injustice; but it is clearly and abundantly borne out
by the testimony of contemporary historians. The Byzantine historian
who has handed down to us the story of the capture of Constantinople
tells us how even the impetuous Bāyazīd was liberal and generous to his
Christian subjects, and made himself extremely popular among them by
admitting them freely to his society. [454] Murād II distinguished
himself by his attention to the administration of justice and by his
reforms of the abuses prevalent under the Greek emperors, and punished
without mercy those of his officials who oppressed any of his subjects.
[455] For at least a century after the fall of Constantinople a series
of able rulers secured, by a firm and vigorous administration, peace
and order throughout their dominions, and an admirable civil and
judicial organisation, if it did not provide an absolutely impartial
justice for Muslims and Christians alike, yet caused the Greeks to be
far better off than they had been before. They were harassed by fewer
exactions of forced labour, extraordinary contributions were rarely
levied, and the taxes they paid were a trifling burden compared with
the endless feudal obligations of the Franks and the countless
extortions of the Byzantines. The Turkish dominions were certainly
better governed and more prosperous than most parts of Christian
Europe, and the mass of the Christian population engaged in the
cultivation of the soil enjoyed a larger measure of private liberty and
of the fruits of their labour, under the government of the Sultan than
their contemporaries did under that of many Christian monarchs. [456] A
great impulse, too, was given to the commercial activity of the
country, for the early Sultans were always ready to foster trade and
commerce among their subjects, and many of the great cities entered
upon an era of prosperity when the Turkish conquest had delivered them
from the paralysing fiscal oppression of the Byzantine empire, one of
the first of them being Nicæa, which capitulated to Urkhān in 1330
under the most favourable terms after a long-protracted siege. [457]
Like the ancient Romans, the Ottomans were great makers of roads and
bridges, and thereby facilitated trade throughout their empire; and
foreign states were compelled to admit the Greek merchants into ports
from which they had been excluded in the time of the Byzantine
emperors, but now sailing under the Ottoman flag, they assumed the
dress and manners of Turks, and thus secured from the nations of
Western Europe the respect and consideration which the Catholics had
hitherto always refused to the members of the Greek Church. [458]
There is, however, one notable exception to this general good treatment
and toleration, viz. the tribute of Christian children, who were
forcibly taken from their parents at an early age and enrolled in the
famous corps of Janissaries. Instituted by Urkhān in 1330, it formed
for centuries the mainstay of the despotic power of the Turkish
Sultans, and was kept alive by a regular contribution exacted every
four years, [459] when the officers of the Sultan visited the districts
on which the tax was imposed, and made a selection from among the
children about the age of seven. The Muhammadan legists attempted to
apologise for this inhuman tribute by representing these children as
the fifth of the spoil which the Qurʼān assigns to the sovereign, [460]
and they prescribed that the injunction against forcible conversion
[461] should be observed with regard to them also, although the tender
age at which they were placed under the instruction of Muslim teachers
must have made it practically of none effect. [462] Christian Europe
has always expressed its horror at such a barbarous tax, and travellers
in the Turkish dominions have painted touching pictures of desolated
homes and of parents weeping for the children torn from their arms. But
when the corps was first instituted, its numbers were rapidly swelled
by voluntary accessions from among the Christians themselves, [463] and
the circumstances under which this tribute was first imposed may go far
to explain the apathy which the Greeks themselves appear to have
exhibited. The whole country had been laid waste by war, and families
were often in danger of perishing with hunger; the children who were
thus adopted were in many cases orphans, who would otherwise have been
left to perish; further, the custom so widely prevalent at that time of
selling Christians as slaves may have made this tax appear less
appalling than might have been expected. This custom has, moreover,
been maintained to have been only a continuation of a similar usage
that was in force under the Byzantine emperors. [464] It has even been
said that there was seldom any necessity of an appeal to force on the
part of the officers who collected the appointed number of children,
but rather that the parents were often eager to have their children
enrolled in a service that secured for them in many cases a brilliant
career, and under any circumstances a well-cared-for and comfortable
existence, since these little captives were brought up and educated as
if they were the Sultan’s own children. [465] This institution appears
in a less barbarous light if it be true that the parents could often
redeem their children by a money payment. [466] Metrophanes
Kritopoulos, who was Patriarch of Constantinople and afterwards of
Alexandria, writing in 1625, mentions various devices adopted by the
Christians for escaping from the burden of this tax, e.g. they
purchased Muhammadan boys and represented them to be Christians, or
they bribed the collectors to take Christian boys who were of low birth
or had been badly brought up or such as “deserved hanging.” [467]
Thomas Smith, among others, speaks of the possibility of buying off the
children, so impressed: “Some of their parents, out of natural pity and
out of a true sense of religion, that they may not be thus robbed of
their children, who hereby lie under a necessity of renouncing their
Christianity, compound for them at the rate of fifty or a hundred
dollars, as they are able, or as they can work upon the covetousness of
the Turks more or less.” [468] The Christians of certain cities, such
as Constantinople, and of towns and islands that had made this
stipulation at the time of their submission to the Turks, or had
purchased this privilege, were exempted from the operation of this
cruel tax. [469] These extenuating circumstances at the outset, and the
ease with which men acquiesce in any established usage—though serving
in no way as an excuse for so inhuman an institution—may help us to
understand what a traveller in the seventeenth century calls the
“unaccountable indifference” [470] with which the Greeks seem to have
fallen in with this demand of the new government, which so materially
improved their condition.
Further, the Christian subjects of the Turkish empire had to pay the
capitation-tax, in return for protection and in lieu of military
service. The rates fixed by the Ottoman law were 2½, 5 and 10 piastres
a head for every full-grown male, according to his income, [471] women
and the clergy being exempt. [472] In the nineteenth century the rates
were 15, 30 and 60 piastres, according to income. [473] Christian
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generally speak of
this tax as being a ducat a head, [474] but it is also variously
described as amounting to 3, 5 or 5⅞ crowns or dollars. [475] The
fluctuating exchange value of the Turkish coinage in the seventeenth
century is the probable explanation of the latter variations. To
estimate with any exactitude how far this tax was a burden to those who
had to pay it, would require a lengthened disquisition on the
purchasing value of money at that period and a comparison with other
items of expenditure. [476] But by itself it could hardly have formed a
valid excuse for a change of faith, as Tournefort points out, when
writing in 1700 of the conversion of the Candiots: “It must be
confessed, these Wretches sell their Souls a Pennyworth: all they get
in exchange for their Religion, is a Vest, and the Privilege of being
exempt from the Capitation-Tax, which is not above five Crowns a year.”
[477] Scheffler also, who is anxious to represent the condition of the
Christians under Turkish rule in as black colours as possible, admits
that the one ducat a head was a trifling matter, and has to lay stress
on the extraordinary taxes, war contributions, etc., that they were
called upon to pay. [478] The land taxes were the same both for
Christians and Musalmans, [479] for the old distinction between lands
on which tithe was paid by the Muhammadan proprietor, and those on
which kharāj was paid by the non-Muhammadan proprietor, was not
recognised by the Ottomans. [480] Whatever sufferings the Christians
had to endure proceeded from the tyranny of individuals, who took
advantage of their official position to extort money from those under
their jurisdiction. Such acts of oppression were not only contrary to
the Muhammadan law, but were rare before the central government had
grown weak and suffered the corruption and injustice of local
authorities to go unpunished. [481] There is a very marked difference
between the accounts we have of the condition of the Christians during
the first two centuries of the Turkish rule in Europe and those of a
later date, when the period of decadence had fully set in. But it is
noticeable that in those very times in which the condition of the
Christians had been most intolerable there is least record of
conversion to Islam. In the eighteenth century, when the condition of
the Christians was worse than at any other period, we find hardly any
mention of conversions at all, and the Turks themselves are represented
as utterly indifferent to the progress of their religion and
considerably infected with scepticism and unbelief. [482] A further
proof that their sufferings have been due to misgovernment rather than
to religious persecution is the fact that Muslims and Christians
suffered alike. [483] The Christians would, however, naturally be more
exposed to extortion and ill-treatment owing to the difficulties that
lay in the way of obtaining redress at law, and some of the poorest may
thus have sought a relief from their sufferings in a change of faith.
But if we except the tribute of the children, to which the conquered
Greeks seem to have submitted with so little show of resistance, and
which owed its abolition, not to any revolt or insurrection against its
continuance, but to the increase of the Turkish population and of the
number of the renegades who were constantly entering the Sultan’s
service, [484]—the treatment of their Christian subjects by the Ottoman
emperors—at least for two centuries after their conquest of
Greece—exhibits a toleration such as was at that time quite unknown in
the rest of Europe. The Calvinists of Hungary and Transylvania, and the
Unitarians of the latter country, long preferred to submit to the Turks
rather than fall into the hands of the fanatical house of Hapsburg;
[485] and the Protestants of Silesia looked with longing eyes towards
Turkey, and would gladly have purchased religious freedom at the price
of submission to the Muslim rule. [486] It was to Turkey that the
persecuted Spanish Jews fled for refuge in enormous numbers at the end
of the fifteenth century, [487] and the Cossacks who belonged to the
sect of the Old Believers and were persecuted by the Russian State
Church, found in the dominions of the Sultan the toleration which their
Christian brethren denied them. [488] Well might Macarius, Patriarch of
Antioch in the seventeenth century, congratulate himself when he saw
the fearful atrocities that the Catholic Poles inflicted on the
Russians of the Orthodox Eastern Church: “We all wept much over the
thousands of martyrs who were killed by those impious wretches, the
enemies of the faith, in these forty or fifty years. The number
probably amounted to seventy or eighty thousand souls. O you infidels!
O you monsters of impurity! O you hearts of stone! What had the nuns
and women done? What the girls and boys and infant children, that you
should murder them?... And why do I pronounce them (the Poles)
accursed? Because they have shown themselves more debased and wicked
than the corrupt worshippers of idols, by their cruel treatment of
Christians, thinking to abolish the very name of Orthodox. God
perpetuate the empire of the Turks for ever and ever! For they take
their impost, and enter into no account of religion, be their subjects
Christians or Nazarenes, Jews or Samarians: whereas these accursed
Poles were not content with taxes and tithes from the brethren of
Christ, though willing to serve them; but they subjected them to the
authority of the enemies of Christ, the tyrannical Jews, who did not
even permit them to build churches, nor leave them any priests that
knew the mysteries of their faith.” [489] Even in Italy there were men
who turned longing eyes towards the Turks in the hope that as their
subjects they might enjoy the freedom and the toleration they despaired
of enjoying under a Christian government. [490] It would seem, then,
that Islam was not spread by force in the dominion of the Sultan of
Turkey, and though the want of even-handed justice and the oppression
of unscrupulous officials in the days of the empire’s decline, may have
driven some Christians to attempt to better their condition by a change
of faith, such cases were rare in the first two centuries of the
Turkish rule in Europe, to which period the mass of conversions belong.
It would have been wonderful indeed if the ardour of proselytising that
animated the Ottomans at this time had never carried them beyond the
bounds of toleration established by their own laws. Yet it has been
said by one who was a captive among them for twenty-two years that the
Turks “compelled no one to renounce his faith.” [491] Similar testimony
is borne by others: an English gentleman who visited Turkey in the
early part of the seventeenth century, tells us that “There is seldom
any compulsion of conscience, and then not by death, where no criminal
offence gives occasion.” [492] Writing about thirty years later (in
1663), the author [493] of a Türcken-Schrifft says: “Meanwhile he (i.e.
the Turk) wins (converts) by craft more than by force, and snatches
away Christ by fraud out of the hearts of men. For the Turk, it is
true, at the present time compels no country by violence to apostatise;
but he uses other means whereby imperceptibly he roots out
Christianity.... What then has become of the Christians? They are not
expelled from the country, neither are they forced to embrace the
Turkish faith: then they must of themselves have been converted into
Turks.”
The Turks considered that the greatest kindness they could show a man
was to bring him into the salvation of the faith of Islam, [494] and to
this end they left no method of persuasion untried: a Dutch traveller
of the sixteenth century, tells us that while he was admiring the great
mosque of Santa Sophia, some Turks even tried to work upon his
religious feelings through his æsthetic sense, saying to him, “If you
become a Musalman, you will be able to come here every day of your
life.” About a century later, an English traveller [495] had a similar
experience: “Sometimes, out of an excess of zeal, they will ask a
Christian civilly enough, as I have been asked myself in the Portico of
Sancta Sophia, why will you not turn Musalman, and be as one of us?”
The public rejoicings that hailed the accession of a new convert to the
faith, testify to the ardent love for souls which made these men such
zealous proselytisers. The new Muslim was set upon a horse and led in
triumph through the streets of the city. If he was known to be
genuinely honest in his change of faith and had voluntarily entered the
pale of Islam, or if he was a person of good position, he was received
with high honour and some provision made for his support. [496] There
was certainly abundant evidence for saying that “The Turks are
preposterously zealous in praying for the conversion, or perversion
rather, of Christians to their irreligious religion: they pray
heartily, and every day in their Temples, that Christians may imbrace
the Alcoran, and become their Proselytes, in effecting of which they
leave no means unassaied by fear and flattery, by punishments and
rewards.” [497]
These zealous efforts for winning converts were rendered the more
effective by certain conditions of Christian society itself. Foremost
among these was the degraded condition of the Greek Church. Side by
side with the civil despotism of the Byzantine empire, had arisen an
ecclesiastical despotism which had crushed all energy of intellectual
life under the weight of a dogmatism that interdicted all discussion in
matters of morals and religion. The only thing that disturbed this
lethargy was the fierce controversial war waged against the Latin
Church with all the bitterness of theological polemics and race hatred.
The religion of the people had degenerated into a scrupulous observance
of outward forms, and the intense fervour of their devotion found an
outlet in the worship of the Virgin and the saints, of pictures and
relics. There were many who turned from a Church whose spiritual life
had sunk so low, and weary of interminable discussions on such subtle
points of doctrine as the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit, and
such trivialities as the use of leavened and unleavened bread in the
Blessed Sacrament, gladly accepted the clear and intelligible theistic
teaching of Islam. We are told [498] of large numbers of persons being
converted, not only from among the simple folk, but also learned men of
every class, rank and condition; of how the Turks made a better
provision for those monks and priests who embraced the Muslim creed, in
order that their example might lead others to be converted. While
Adrianople was still the Turkish capital (e.g. before 1453) the court
was thronged with renegades, and they are said to have formed the
majority of the magnates there. [499] Byzantine princes and others
often passed over to the side of the Muhammadans, and received a ready
welcome among them: one of the earliest of such cases dates from 1140
when a nephew of the emperor John Comnenes embraced Islam and married a
daughter of Masʻūd, the Sultan of Iconium. [500] After the fall of
Constantinople, the upper classes of Christian society showed much more
readiness to embrace Islam than the mass of the Greeks; among the
converts we meet with several bearing the name of the late imperial
family of the Palæologi, and the learned George Amiroutzes of Trebizond
abandoned Christianity in his declining years, and the names of many
other such individuals have found a record. [501] The new religion only
demanded assent to its simple creed, “There is no god but God: Muḥammad
is the apostle of God”; as the above-mentioned writer [502] says, “The
whole difficulty lies in this profession of faith. For if only a man
can persuade himself that he is a worshipper of the One God, the poison
of his error easily infects him under the guise of religion. This is
the rock of offence on which many have struck and fallen into the snare
that has brought perdition on their souls. This is the mill-stone that
hung about the necks of many has plunged them into the pit of despair.
For when these fools hear the Turks execrate idolatry and express their
horror of every image and picture as though it were the fire of hell,
and so continually profess and preach the worship of One God, there no
longer remains any room for suspicion in their minds.”
The faith of Islam would now be the natural refuge for those members of
the Eastern Church who felt such yearnings after a purer and simpler
form of doctrine as had given rise to the Paulician heresy so fiercely
suppressed a few centuries before. This movement had been very largely
a protest against the superstitions of the Orthodox Church, against the
worship of images, relics and saints, and an effort after simplicity of
faith and the devout life. As some adherents of this heresy were to be
found in Bulgaria even so late as the seventeenth century, [503] the
Muhammadan conquerors doubtless found many who were dissatisfied with
the doctrine and practice of the Greek Church; and as all the
conditions were unfavourable to the formation of any such Protestant
Churches as arose in the West, such dissentient spirits would doubtless
find a more congenial atmosphere in the religion of Islam. There is
every reason to think that such was the result of the unsuccessful
attempt to Protestantise the Greek Church in the beginning of the
seventeenth century. The guiding spirit of this movement was Cyril
Lucaris, five times Patriarch of Constantinople, from 1621 to 1638; as
a young man he had visited the Universities of Wittenberg and Geneva,
for the purpose of studying theology in the seats of Protestant
learning, and on his return he kept up a correspondence with doctors of
the reformed faith in Geneva, Holland and England. But neither the
doctrines of the Church of England nor of the Lutherans attracted his
sympathies so warmly as the teachings of John Calvin, [504] which he
strove to introduce into the Greek Church; his efforts in this
direction were warmly supported by the Calvinists of Geneva, who sent a
learned young theologian, named Leger, to assist the work by
translating into Greek the writings of Calvinist theologians. [505]
Cyril also found warm friends in the Protestant embassies at
Constantinople, the Dutch and English ambassadors especially assisting
him liberally with funds; the Jesuits, on the other hand, supported by
the Catholic ambassadors, tried in every way to thwart this attempt to
Calvinise the Greek Church, and actively seconded the intrigues of the
party of opposition among the Greek clergy, who finally compassed the
death of the Patriarch. In 1629 Cyril published a Confession of Faith,
the main object of which seems to have been to present the doctrines of
the Orthodox Church in their opposition to Roman Catholicism in such a
way as to imply a necessary accord with Protestant teaching. [506] From
Calvin he borrows the doctrines of Predestination and salvation by
faith alone, he denies the infallibility of the Church, rejects the
authority of the Church in the interpretation of Holy Scripture, and
condemns the adoration of pictures: in his account of the will and in
many other questions, he inclines rather to Calvinism than to the
teachings of the Orthodox Church. [507] The promulgation of this
Confession of Faith as representing the teaching of the whole Church of
which he was the spiritual head, excited violent opposition among the
mass of the Greek clergy, and a few weeks after Cyril’s death a synod
was held to condemn his opinions and pronounce him to be Anathema; in
1642 a second synod was held at Constantinople for the same purpose,
which after refuting each article of Cyril’s Confession in detail, as
the first had done, thus fulminated its curse upon him and his
followers:—“With one consent and in unqualified terms, we condemn this
whole Confession as full of heresies and utterly opposed to our
orthodoxy, and likewise declare that its compiler has nothing in common
with our faith, but in calumnious fashion has falsely charged his own
Calvinism on us. All those who read and keep it as true and blameless,
and defend it by written word or speech, we thrust out of the community
of the faithful as followers and partakers of his heresy and corruptors
of the Christian Church, and command that whatever be their rank and
station, they be treated as heathen and publicans. Let them be laid
under an anathema for ever and cut off from the Father, the Son and the
Holy Ghost in this life and in the life to come, accursed,
excommunicated, be lost after death, and be partakers of everlasting
punishment.” [508] In 1672 a third synod met at Jerusalem to repudiate
the heretical articles of this Confession of Faith and vindicate the
orthodoxy of the Greek Church against those who represented her as
infected with Calvinism. The attempt to Protestantise the Greek Church
thus completely failed to achieve success: the doctrines of Calvin were
diametrically opposed to her teachings, and indeed inculcated many
articles of faith that were more in harmony with the tenets of Muslim
theologians than with those of the Orthodox Church, and which moreover
she had often attacked in her controversies with her Muhammadan
adversaries. It is this approximation to Islamic thought which gives
this movement towards Calvinism a place in a history of the spread of
Islam: a man who inveighed against the adoration of pictures, decried
the authority and the very institution of the priesthood, maintained
the doctrines of absolute Predestination, denied freedom to the human
will and was in sympathy with the stern spirit of Calvinism that had
more in common with the Old than the New Testament—would certainly find
a more congenial atmosphere in Islam than in the Greek Church of the
seventeenth century, and there can be little doubt that among the
numerous converts of Islam during that century were to be found men who
had been alienated from the Church of their fathers through their
leanings towards Calvinism. [509] We have no definite information as to
the number of the followers of Cyril Lucaris and the extent of
Calvinistic influences in the Greek Church; the clergy, jealous of the
reputation of their Church, whose orthodoxy and immunity from heresy
were so boastfully vindicated by her children, and had thus been
impugned through the suspicion of Calvinism, wished to represent the
heretical patriarch as standing alone in his opinions. [510] But a
following he undoubtedly had: his Confession of Faith had received the
sanction of a synod composed of his followers; [511] those who
sympathised with his heresies were anathematised both by the second
synod of Constantinople (1642) and by the synod of Jerusalem (1672)
[512]—surely a meaningless repetition, had no such persons existed;
moreover the names of some few of these have come down to us:
Sophronius, Metropolitan of Athens, was a warm supporter of the
Reformation; [513] a monk named Nicodemus Metaras, who had brought a
printing-press from London and issued heretical treatises therefrom,
was rewarded with a metropolitan see by Cyril in return for his
services; [514] the philosopher Corydaleus, a friend of Cyril, opened a
Calvinistic school in Constantinople, and another Greek, Gerganos,
published a Catechism so as to introduce the teachings of Calvin among
his fellow-countrymen; [515] and Neophytus II, who was made Patriarch
in 1636, while Cyril was in exile in the island of Rhodes, was his
disciple and adopted son; he recalled his master from banishment and
resigned the patriarchal chair in his favour. [516] In a letter to the
University of Geneva (dated July, 1636), Cyril writes that Leger had
gained a large number of converts to Calvinism by his writings and
preaching; [517] in another letter addressed to Leger, he describes how
he had made his influence felt in Candia. [518] His successor [519] in
the patriarchal chair was banished to Carthage and there strangled by
the adherents of Lucaris in 1639. [520] The Calvinists are said to have
entertained hopes of Parthenius I (the successor of Cyril II), but his
untimely end (whether by poison or banishment is uncertain)
disappointed their expectations. [521] Parthenius II, who was Patriarch
of Constantinople from 1644 to 1646, was at heart a thorough Calvinist,
and though he did not venture openly to teach the doctrines of Calvin,
still his known sympathy with them caused him to be deposed, sent into
exile and strangled. [522] Thus the influence of Calvinism was
undoubtedly more widespread than the enemies of Cyril Lucaris were
willing to admit, and as stated above, those who refused to bow to the
anathemas of the synods that condemned their leader, had certainly more
in common with their Muhammadan neighbours than with the Orthodox
clergy who cast them out of their midst. There is no actual evidence,
it is true, of Calvinistic influences in Turkey facilitating conversion
to Islam, [523] but in the absence of any other explanation it
certainly seems a very plausible conjecture that such were among the
factors that so enormously increased the number of the Greek renegades
towards the middle of the seventeenth century—a period during which the
number of renegades from among the middle and lower orders of society
is said to have been more considerable than at any other time. [524]
Frequent mention is made of cases of apostasy from among the clergy,
and even among the highest dignitaries of the Church, such as a former
Metropolitan of Rhodes. [525] In 1676 it is said that in Corinth some
Christian people went over every day to “the Turkish abomination,” and
that three priests had become Musalmans the year before; [526] in 1679
is recorded the death of a renegade monk. [527] On the occasion of the
circumcision of Muṣṭafā, son of Muḥammad IV, in 1675, there were at
least two hundred proselytes made during the thirteen days of public
rejoicing, [528] and numerous other instances may be found in writings
of this period. A contemporary writer (1663) has well described the
mental attitude of such converts. “When you mix with the Turks in the
ordinary intercourse of life and see that they pray and sing even the
Psalms of David; that they give alms and do other good works; that they
think highly of Christ, hold the Bible in great honour, and the like;
that, besides, any ass may become parish priest who plies the Bassa
with presents, and he will not urge Christianity on you very much; so
you will come to think that they are good people and will very probably
be saved; and so you will come to believe that you too may be saved, if
you likewise become Turks. Herewith will the Holy Trinity and the
crucified Son of God, with many other mysteries of the faith, which
seem quite absurd to the unenlightened reason, easily pass out of your
thoughts, and imperceptibly Christianity will quite die out in you, and
you will think that it is all the same whether you be Christians or
Turks.” [529]
Thomas Smith, who was in Constantinople in 1669, speaks of the number
of Christian converts about this period, but assigns baser motives.
“’Tis sad to consider the great number of wretched people, who turn
Turks; some out of meer desperation; being not able to support the
burthen of slavery, and to avoid the revilings and insultings of the
Infidels; some out of a wanton light humour, to put themselves into a
condition of domineering and insulting over others ... some to avoid
the penalties and inflictions due to their heinous crimes, and to enjoy
the brutish liberties, that Mahomet consecrated by his own example, and
recommended to his followers. These are the great and tempting
arguments and motives of their apostasy, meer considerations of ease,
pleasure and prosperity, or else of vanity and guilt; for it cannot be
presumed, that any through conviction of mind should be wrought upon to
embrace the dotages and impostures of Turcisme.” [530] Records of
conversions after this period are rare, but Motraye gives an account of
several renegades, who became Muhammadans in Constantinople in 1703;
among them was a French priest and some other French Catholics, and
some priests from Smyrna. [531]
Another feature in the condition of the Greek Church that contributed
to the decay of its numbers, was the corruption and degradation of its
pastors, particularly the higher clergy. The sees of bishops and
archbishops were put up to auction to the highest bidders, and the
purchasers sought to recoup themselves by exacting levies of all kinds
from their flocks; they burdened the unfortunate Christians with taxes
ordinary and extraordinary, made them purchase all the sacraments at
exorbitant rates, baptism, confession, holy communion, indulgences, and
the right of Christian burial. Some of the clergy even formed an unholy
alliance with the Janissaries, and several bishops had their names and
those of their households inscribed on the list of one of their Ortas
or regiments, the better to secure an immunity for their excesses and
escape the punishment of their crimes under the protection of this
corporation which the weakness of the Ottoman rulers had allowed to
assume such a powerful position in the state. [532] The evidence of
contemporary eye-witnesses to the oppressive behaviour of the Greek
clergy presents a terrible picture of the sufferings of the Christians.
Tournefort in 1700, after describing the election of a new Patriarch,
says: “We need not at all doubt but the new Patriarch makes the best of
his time. Tyranny succeeds to Simony: the first thing he does is to
signify the Sultan’s order to all the Archbishops and Bishops of his
clergy: his greatest study is to know exactly the revenues of each
Prelate; he imposes a tax upon them, and enjoins them very strictly by
a second letter to send the sum demanded, otherwise their dioceses are
adjudg’d to the highest bidder. The Prelates being used to this trade,
never spare their Suffragans; these latter torment the Papas: the Papas
flea the Parishioners and hardly sprinkle the least drop of Holy Water,
but what they are paid for beforehand. If afterwards the Patriarch has
occasion for money, he farms out the gathering of it to the highest
bidder among the Turks: he that gives most for it, goes into Greece to
cite the Prelates. Usually for twenty thousand crowns that the clergy
is tax’d at, the Turk extorts two and twenty; so that he has the two
thousand crowns for his pains, besides having his charges borne in
every diocese. In virtue of the agreement he has made with the
Patriarch, he deprives and interdicts from all ecclesiastical
functions, those prelates who refuse to pay their tax.” [533] The
Christian clergy are even said to have carried off the children of the
parishioners and sold them as slaves, to get money for their simoniacal
designs. [534]
The extortions practised in the seventeenth have found their
counterpart in the nineteenth century, and the sufferings of the
Christians of the Greek Church in Bosnia, before the Austrian
occupation, exactly illustrate the words of Tournefort. The
Metropolitan of Serajevo used to wring as much as £10,000 a year from
his miserable flock—a sum exactly double the salary of the Turkish
Governor himself—and to raise this enormous sum the unfortunate
parishioners were squeezed in every possible way, and the Turkish
authorities had orders to assist the clergy in levying their exactions;
and whole Christian villages suffered the fate of sacked cities, for
refusing, or often being unable, to comply with the exorbitant demands
of Christian Prelates. [535] Such unbearable oppression on the part of
the spiritual leaders who should protect the Christian population, has
often stirred it up to open revolt, whenever a favourable opportunity
has offered itself. [536] It is not surprising then to learn that many
of the Christians went over to Islam, to deliver themselves from such
tyranny. [537]
Ecclesiastical oppression of a rather different character is said to
have been responsible for the conversion of the ancestors of a small
community of about 4000 Southern Rumanians, at Noanta in the Meglen
district of the vilayet of Salonika; they have a tradition that in the
eighteenth century the Patriarch of Constantinople persuaded the
reigning Sultan that only the Christians who spoke Greek could be loyal
subjects of the Turkish empire; the Sultan thereupon forbade the
Christians to speak anything but Greek, on pain of having their tongues
cut out; when the news of this reached Noanta, a part of the population
fled into the woods and founded fresh villages, but those who were left
behind went over to Islam, with their bishop at their head, in order
thereby to retain their mother-tongue. [538]
Though the mass of the parish clergy were innocent of the charges
brought against their superiors, [539] still they were very ignorant
and illiterate. At the end of the seventeenth century, there were said
to be hardly twelve persons in the whole Turkish dominions thoroughly
skilled in the knowledge of the ancient Greek language; it was
considered a great merit in the clergy to be able to read, while they
were quite ignorant of the meaning of the words of their service-books.
[540]
While there was so much in the Christian society of the time to repel,
there was much in the character and life of the Turks to attract, and
the superiority of the early Ottomans as compared with the degradation
of the guides and teachers of the Christian Church would naturally
impress devout minds that revolted from the selfish ambition, simony
and corruption of the Greek ecclesiastics. Christian writers constantly
praise these Turks for the earnestness and intensity of their religious
life; their zeal in the performance of the observances prescribed by
their faith; the outward decency and modesty displayed in their apparel
and mode of living; the absence of ostentatious display and the
simplicity of life observable even in the great and powerful. [541] The
annalist of the embassy from the Emperor Leopold I to the Ottoman Porte
in 1665–1666, especially eulogises the devoutness and regularity of the
Turks in prayer, and he even goes so far as to say, “Nous devons dire à
la confusion des Chrêtiens, que les Turcs têmoignent beaucoup plus de
soin et de zèle à l’exercice de leur Religion: que les Chrêtiens n’en
font paroître à la pratique de la leur.... Mais ce qui passe tout ce
que nous experimentons de dévot entre les Chrêtiens: c’est que pendant
le tems de la prière, vous ne voyez pas une personne distraite de ses
yeux: vous n’en voyez pas une qui ne soit attachée à l’objet de sa
prière: et pas une qui n’ait toute la révérence extérieure pour son
Créateur, qu’on peut exiger de la Créature.” [542]
Even the behaviour of the soldiery receives its meed of praise. During
the march of an army the inhabitants of the country, we are told by the
secretary to the Embassy sent by Charles II to the Sultan, had no
complaints to make of being plundered or of their women being
maltreated. All the taverns along the line of march were shut up and
sealed two or three days before the arrival of the army, and no wine
was allowed to be sold to the soldiers under pain of death. [543]
Many a tribute of praise is given to the virtues of the Turks even by
Christian writers who bore them no love; one such who had a very poor
opinion of their religion, [544] speaks of them as follows:—“Even in
the dirt of the Alcoran you shall find some jewels of Christian
Virtues; and indeed if Christians will but diligently read and observe
the Laws and Histories of the Mahometans, they may blush to see how
zealous they are in the works of devotion, piety, and charity, how
devout, cleanly, and reverend in their Mosques, how obedient to their
Priest, that even the great Turk himself will attempt nothing without
consulting his Mufti; how careful are they to observe their hours of
prayer five times a day wherever they are, or however employed? how
constantly do they observe their Fasts from morning till night a whole
month together; how loving and charitable the Muslemans are to each
other, and how careful of strangers may be seen by their Hospitals,
both for the Poor and for Travellers; if we observe their Justice,
Temperance, and other moral Vertues, we may truly blush at our own
coldness, both in devotion and charity, at our injustice, intemperance,
and oppression; doubtless these Men will rise up in judgment against
us; and surely their devotion, piety, and works of mercy are main
causes of the growth of Mahometism.”
The same conclusion is drawn by a modern historian, [545] who
writes:—“We find that many Greeks of high talent and moral character
were so sensible of the superiority of the Mohammedans, that even when
they escaped being drafted into the Sultan’s household as
tribute-children, they voluntarily embraced the faith of Mahomet. The
moral superiority of Othoman society must be allowed to have had as
much weight in causing these conversions, which were numerous in the
fifteenth century, as the personal ambition of individuals.”
A generation that has watched the decay of the Turkish power in Europe
and the successive curtailment of its territorial possessions, and is
accustomed to hearing it spoken of as the “sick man,” destined to a
speedy dissolution, must find it difficult to realise the feelings
which the Ottoman empire inspired in the early days of its rise in
Europe. The rapid and widespread success of the Turkish arms filled
men’s minds with terror and amazement. One Christian kingdom after
another fell into their hands: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Hungary
yielded up their independence as Christian states. The proud Republic
of Venice saw one possession after another wrested from it, until the
Lion of St. Mark held sway on the shores of the Adriatic alone. Even
the safety of the Eternal City itself was menaced by the capture of
Otranto. Christian literature of the latter half of the fifteenth and
of the sixteenth centuries is full of direful forebodings of the fate
that threatened Christian Europe unless the victorious progress of the
Turk was arrested; he is represented as a scourge in the hand of God
for the punishment of the sins and backslidings of His people, [546] or
on the other hand as the unloosed power of the Devil working for the
destruction of Christianity under the hypocritical guise of religion.
But—what is most important to notice here—some men began to ask
themselves, “Is it possible that God would allow the Muhammadans to
increase in such countless numbers without good reason? Is it
conceivable that so many thousands are to be damned like one man? How
can such multitudes be opposed to the true faith? since truth is
stronger than error and is more loved and desired by all men, it is not
possible for so many men to be fighting against it. How could they
prevail against truth, since God always helps and upholds the truth?
How could their religion so marvellously increase, if built upon the
rotten foundation of error?” [547] Such thoughts, we are told, appealed
strongly to the Christian peoples that lived under the Turkish rule,
and with especial force to the unhappy Christian captives who watched
the years drag wearily on without hope of release or respite from their
misery. Can we be surprised when we find such a one asking himself?
“Surely if God were pleased with the faith to which you have clung, He
would not have thus abandoned you, but would have helped you to gain
your freedom and return to it again. But as He has closed every avenue
of freedom to you, perchance it is His pleasure that you should leave
it and join this sect and be saved therein.” [548]
The Christian slave who thus describes the doubts that arose in his
mind as the slow-passing years brought no relief, doubtless gives
expression here to thoughts that suggested themselves to many a hapless
Christian captive with overwhelming persistency, until at last he broke
away from the ties of his old faith and embraced Islam. Many who would
have been ready to die as martyrs for the Christian religion if the
mythical choice between the Qurʼān and the sword had been offered them,
felt more and more strongly, after long years of captivity, the
influence of Muhammadan thought and practice, and humanity won converts
where violence would have failed. [549] For though the lot of many of
the Christian captives was a very pitiable one, others who held
positions in the households of private individuals, were often no worse
off than domestic servants in the rest of Europe. As organised by the
Muhammadan Law, slavery was robbed of many of its harshest features,
nor in Turkey at least does it seem to have been accompanied by such
barbarities and atrocities as in the pirate states of Northern Africa.
The slaves, like other citizens, had their rights, and it is even said
that a slave might summon his master before the Qāḍī for ill usage, and
that if he alleged that their tempers were so opposite, that it was
impossible for them to agree, the Qāḍī could oblige his master to sell
him. [550] The condition of the Christian captives naturally varied
with circumstances and their own capabilities of adapting themselves to
a life of hardship; the aged, the priests and monks, and those of noble
birth suffered most, while the physician and the handicraftsman
received more considerate treatment from their masters, as being
servants that best repaid the money spent upon them. [551] The
galley-slaves naturally suffered most of all, indeed the kindest
treatment could have but little relieved the hardships incident to such
an occupation. [552] Further, the lot of the slaves who were state
property was more pitiable than that of those who had been purchased by
private individuals. [553] As a rule they were allowed the free
exercise of their religion; in the state-prisons at Constantinople,
they had their own priests and chapels, and the clergy were allowed to
administer the consolations of religion to the galley-slaves. [554] The
number of the Christian slaves who embraced Islam was enormous; some
few cases have been recorded of their being threatened and ill-treated
for the very purpose of inducing them to recant, but as a rule the
masters seldom forced them to renounce their faith, [555] and put the
greatest pressure upon them during the first years of their captivity,
after which they let them alone to follow their own faith. [556] The
majority of the converted slaves therefore changed their religion of
their own free choice; and when the Christian embassies were never sure
from day to day that some of their fellow-countrymen that had
accompanied them to Constantinople as domestic servants, might not turn
Turk, [557] it can easily be understood that slaves who had lost all
hope of return to their native country, and found little in their
surroundings to strengthen and continue the teachings of their earlier
years, would yield to the influences that beset them and would feel few
restraints to hinder them from entering a new society and a new
religion. An English traveller [558] of the seventeenth century has
said of them: “Few ever return to their native country; and fewer have
the courage and constancy of retaining the Christian Faith, in which
they were educated; their education being but mean, and their knowledge
but slight in the principles and grounds of it; whereof some are
frightened into Turcism by their impatience and too deep resentments of
the hardships of the servitude; others are enticed by the blandishments
and flatteries of pleasure the Mahometan Law allows, and the
allurements they have of making their condition better and more easy by
a change of their Religion; having no hope left of being redeemed, they
renounce their Saviour and their Christianity, and soon forget their
original country, and are no longer looked upon as strangers, but pass
for natives.”
Much of course depended upon the individual character of the different
Christian slaves themselves. The anonymous writer, so often quoted
above, whose long captivity made him so competent to speak on their
condition, divides them into three classes:—first, those who passed
their days in all simplicity, not caring to trouble themselves to learn
anything about the religion of their masters; for them it was enough to
know that the Turks were infidels, and so, as far as their captive
condition and their yoke of slavery allowed, they avoided having
anything to do with them and their religious worship, fearing lest they
should be led astray by their errors, and striving to observe the
Christian faith as far as their knowledge and power went. The second
class consisted of those whose curiosity led them to study and
investigate the doings of the Turks: if, by the help of God, they had
time enough to dive into their secrets, and understanding enough for
the investigation of them and light of reason to find the
interpretation thereof, they not only came out of the trial unscathed,
but had their own faith strengthened. The third class includes those
who, examining the Muslim religion without due caution, fail to dive
into its depths and find the interpretation of it and so are deceived;
believing the errors of the Turks to be the truth, they lose their own
faith and embrace the false religion of the Muslims, hereby not only
compassing their own destruction, but setting a bad example to others:
of such men the number is infinite. [559]
Conversion to Islam did not, as some writers have affirmed, release the
slave from his captivity and make him a free man, [560] for
emancipation was solely at the discretion of the master; who indeed
often promised to set any slave free, without the payment of ransom, if
only he would embrace Islam; [561] but, on the other hand, would also
freely emancipate the Christian slave, even though he had persevered in
his religion, provided he had proved himself a faithful servant, and
would make provision for his old age. [562]
There were many others who, like the Christian slaves, separated from
early surroundings and associations, found themselves cut loose from
old ties and thrown into the midst of a society animated by social and
religious ideals of an entirely novel character. The crowds of
Christian workmen that came wandering from the conquered countries in
the fifteenth century to Adrianople and other Turkish cities in search
of employment, were easily persuaded to settle there and adopt the
faith of Islam. [563] Similarly the Christian families that Muḥammad II
transported from conquered provinces in Europe into Asia Minor, [564]
may well have become merged into the mass of the Muslim population by
almost imperceptible degrees, as was the case with the Armenians
carried away into Persia by Shāh ʻAbbās I (1587–1629), most of whom
appear to have passed over to Islam in the second generation. [565]
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there would seem to have
been a decay of the missionary spirit among the Turks, but the latter
years of the reign of Sultan ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd witnessed a renewed interest
in Muslim propaganda, and Turkish newspapers began to record instances
of conversion. Among the most noteworthy of such converts were some
eighteen amīrs of the princely family of Shihāb in Mount Lebanon, which
had been Christian for about a century; they are said to claim descent
from the Quraysh, and the Turks made every effort to bring them back to
the fold of Islam; those who became Muslims were appointed to lucrative
posts in the Turkish civil service. [566]
In the following pages it is proposed to give a more detailed and
particular account of the spread of Islam among the Christian
populations of Albania, Servia, Bosnia and Crete, as the history of
each of these countries after its conquest by the Ottomans presents
some special features of interest in the history of the propagation of
Islam.
The Albanians, with the exception of some settlements in Greece, [567]
inhabit the mountainous country that stretches along the east shore of
the Adriatic from Montenegro to the Gulf of Arta. They form one of the
oldest and purest-blooded races in Europe and are said to belong to the
Pelasgic branch of the Aryan stock.
Their country was first invaded by the Turks in 1387, but the Turkish
forces soon had to withdraw, and the authority of the Sultan was
recognised for the first time in 1423. For a short period Albania
regained its independence under George Kastriota, who is better known
under his Muhammadan name of Scanderbeg or Sikandarbeg. Recent
investigations have established the falsity of the romantic fictions
that had gathered round the story of his early days—how that as a boy
he had been surrendered as a hostage to the Turks, had been brought up
among them as a Muslim and had won the special favour of the Sultan.
The truth is, that the days of his youth were passed in his native
mountains and his warfare with the Turks began with the victory gained
over them in 1444; for more than twenty years he maintained a vigorous
and successful resistance to their invading forces, but after his death
in 1467, the Turks began again to take possession of Albania. Krūya,
the capital of the Kastriot dynasty, fell into their hands eleven years
later, and from this date there appears to have been no organised
resistance of the whole country, though revolts were frequent and the
subjection of the country was never complete. Some of the sea-port
towns held out much longer; Durazzo was captured in 1501, while
Antivari, the northernmost point of the sea-coast of Albania, did not
surrender until 1571. The terms of capitulation were that the city
should retain its old laws and magistrature, that there should be free
and public exercise of the Christian religion, that the churches and
chapels should remain uninjured and might be rebuilt if they fell into
decay; that the citizens should retain all their movable and immovable
property and should not be burdened by any additional taxation.
The Albanians under Turkish rule appear always to have maintained a
kind of semi-autonomy, and the several tribes and clans remained as
essentially independent as they were before the conquest. Though
vassals of the Sultans, they would not brook the interference of
Turkish officials in their internal administration, and there is reason
to believe that the Turkish Government has never been able to appoint
or confirm any provincial governor who was not a native of Albania, and
had not already established his influence by his arms, policy or
connections. [568] Their racial pride is intense, and to the present
day, the Albanian, if asked what he is, will call himself a Skipetar,
[569] before saying whether he is a Christian or a Muhammadan—a very
remarkable instance of national feeling obliterating the fierce
distinction between these two religions that so forcibly obtrudes
itself in the rest of the Ottoman empire. The Christian and Muhammadan
Albanians alike, just as they speak the same language, so do they
cherish the same traditions, and observe the same manners and customs;
and pride in their common nationality has been too strong a bond to
allow differences of religious belief to split the nation into separate
communities on this basis. [570] Side by side they served in the
irregular troops, which soon after the Turkish conquest became the main
dependence of the government in all its internal administration, and
both classes found the same ready employment in the service of the
local pashas, being accounted the bravest soldiers in the empire.
Christian Albanians served in the Ottoman army in the Crimean War,
[571] and though they have perhaps been a little more quiet and
agricultural than their Muslim fellow-countrymen, still the difference
has been small: they have always retained their arms and military
habits, have always displayed the same fierce, proud, untameable
spirit, and been animated with the same intense national feeling as
their brethren who had embraced the creed of the Prophet. [572]
The consideration of these facts is of importance in tracing the spread
of Islam in Albania, for it appears to have been propagated very
gradually by the people of the country themselves, and not under
pressure of foreign influences. The details that we possess of this
movement are very meagre, as the history of Albania from the close of
the fifteenth century to the rise of ʻAlī Pasha three hundred years
later, is almost a blank; what knowledge we have, therefore, of the
slow but continuous accession of converts to Islam during this period,
is derived from the ecclesiastical chronicles of the various dioceses,
[573] and the reports sent in from time to time to the Pope and the
Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. [574] But it goes without saying that
the very nature of these sources gives the information derived from
them the stamp of imperfection—especially in the matter of the motives
assigned for conversion. For an ecclesiastic of those times to have
even entertained the possibility of a conversion to Islam from genuine
conviction—much less have openly expressed such an opinion in writing
to his superiors—is well-nigh inconceivable.
During the sixteenth century, Islam appears to have made but little
progress, though the tide of conversion had already set in. In 1610 the
Christian population exceeded the Muhammadan in the proportion of ten
to one, [575] and as most of the villages were inhabited by Christians,
with a very small admixture of Muhammadans, [576] the conversions
appear to have been more frequent in the large towns. In Antivari, for
example, while many Christians elected to emigrate into the
neighbouring Christian countries, the majority of those who remained,
both high-born and low, went over gradually to the Muslim faith, so
that the Christian population grew less and less day by day. [577] As
the number of accessions to Islam increased, churches were converted
into mosques—a measure which, though contrary to the terms of the
capitulation, seems justified by the change in the religion of the
people. [578] In 1610 two collegiate churches only remained in the
hands of the Latin Christians, but these appear to have sufficed for
the needs of the community; [579] what this amounted to can only
roughly be guessed from the words of Marco Bizzi: “There are about 600
houses inhabited indiscriminately by Muhammadans and Christians—both
Latin and Schismatics (i.e. of the Orthodox Greek Church): the number
of the Muhammadans is a little in excess of the Christians, and that of
the Latins in excess of the Schismatics.”
In the accounts we have of the social relations between the Christians
and the Muslims, and in the absence of any sharp line of demarcation
between the two communities, we find some clue to the manner in which
Muhammadan influences gradually gained converts from among the
Christian population in proportion as the vigour and the spiritual life
of the Church declined.
It had become very common for Christian parents to give their daughters
in marriage to Muhammadans, and for Christian women to make no
objection to such unions. [580] The male children born of these mixed
marriages were brought up as Musalmans, but the girls were allowed to
follow the religion of their mother. [581] Such permission was rendered
practically ineffective by the action of the Christian ecclesiastics,
who ordered the mothers to be excluded from the churches and from
participation in the sacraments; [582] and consequently (though the
parish priests often disregarded the commands of their superiors) many
of these women embraced the faith of their husbands. But even then they
kept up a superstitious observance of the rite of baptism, which was
supposed to be a sovereign specific against leprosy, witches and
wolves, [583] and Christian priests were found ready to pander to this
superstition for any Muhammadan woman who wished to have her children
baptised. [584] This good feeling between the members of the two
religions [585] is similarly illustrated by the attendance of
Muhammadans at the festivals of Christian saints; e.g. Marco Bizzi says
that on the feast-day of St. Elias (for whom the Albanians appear to
have had a special devotion) there were as many Muhammadans present in
the church as Christians. [586] Even to the present day we are told
that Albanian Muhammadans revere the Virgin Mary and the Christian
saints, and make pilgrimages to their shrines, while Christians on the
other hand resort to the tombs of Muslim saints for the cure of
ailments or in fulfilment of vows. [587] In the town of Calevacci,
where there were sixty Christian and ten Muhammadan households, the
followers of the Prophet contributed towards the support of the parish
priest, as the majority of them had Christian wives. [588] Under such
circumstances it is hardly surprising to learn that many openly
professed Islam, while satisfying their consciences by saying that they
professed Christianity in their hearts. [589] Marco Bizzi has three
explanations to offer for such a lapse—the attraction of worldly
advantage, the desire to avoid the payment of tribute, and the want of
a sufficiently large number of intelligent clergy to supply the
spiritual needs of the country. [590] Conversions are frequently
ascribed to the pressure of the burden of taxation imposed upon the
Christians, and whole villages are said to have apostatised to avoid
payment of the tribute. As no details are given, it is impossible to
judge whether there was really sufficient ground for the complaint, or
whether this was not the apology for their conduct alleged by the
renegades in order to make some kind of excuse to their former
co-religionists—or indeed an exaggeration on the part of ecclesiastics
to whom a genuine conversion to Islam on rational grounds seemed an
absolute impossibility. A century later (in 1703) the capitation-tax
was six reals a head for each male and this (with the exception of a
tax, termed sciataraccio, of three reals a year) was the only burden
imposed on the Christians exclusively. [591] Men must have had very
little attachment to their religion to abandon it merely in order to be
quit of so slight a penalty, and with no other motive; and the very
existence of so large a body of Christians in Albania at the present
time shows that the burden could not have been so heavy as to force
them into apostasy without any other alternative.
If only we had something more than vague general complaints against the
“Turkish tyranny,” we should be better able to determine how far this
could have had such a preponderating influence as is ascribed to it:
but the evidence alleged seems hardly to warrant such a conclusion. The
vicious practice followed by the Ottoman Court of selling posts in the
provinces to the highest bidder and the uncertainty of the tenure of
such posts, often resulted in the occupants trying to amass as large a
fortune as possible by extortions of every kind. But such burdens are
said to have weighed as heavily on Muhammadans as Christians. [592]
Though certainly an avaricious and unjust official may have found it
easier to oppress the Christians than the Muslims, especially when the
former were convicted of treasonable correspondence with the Venetians
and other Christian states and were suspected of a wish to revolt.
However this may have been, there can be little doubt of the influence
exerted by the zealous activity and vigorous life of Islam in the face
of the apathetic and ignorant Christian clergy. If Islam in Albania had
many such exponents as the Mullā, whose sincerity, courtesy and
friendliness are praised by Marco Bizzi, with whom he used to discuss
religious questions, it may well have made its way. [593] The majority
of the Christian clergy appear to have been wholly unlettered: most of
them, though they could read a little, did not know how to write, and
were so ignorant of the duties of their sacred calling that they could
not even repeat the formula of absolution by heart. [594] Though they
had to recite the mass and other services in Latin, there were very few
who could understand any of it, as they were ignorant of any language
but their mother tongue, and they had only a vague, traditionary
knowledge of the truths of their religion. [595] Marco Bizzi considered
the inadequate episcopate of the country responsible for these evils,
as for the small numbers of the clergy, and their ignorance of their
sacred calling, and for the large number of Christians who grew old and
even died without being confirmed, and apostatised almost everywhere;
[596] and unless this were remedied he prophesied a rapid decay of
Christianity in the country. [597] Several priests were also accused of
keeping concubines, and of drunkenness. [598]
It may here be observed that the Albanian priests were not the
repositories of the national aspirations and ideals, as were the clergy
of the Orthodox Church in other provinces of the Turkish empire, who in
spite of their ignorance kept alive among their people that devotion to
the Christian faith which formed the nucleus of the national life of
the Greeks. [599] On the contrary, the Albanians cherished a national
feeling that was quite apart from religious belief, and with regard to
the Turks, considered, in true feudal spirit, that as they were the
masters of the country they ought to be obeyed whatever commands they
gave. [600]
There is a curious story of conversion which is said to have taken
place owing to a want of amicable relations between a Christian priest
and his people, as follows: “Many years since, when all the country was
Christian, there stood in the city of Scutari a beautiful image of the
Virgin Mary, to whose shrine thousands flocked every year from all
parts of the country to offer their gifts, perform their devotions, and
be healed of their infirmities. For some cause or other, however, it
fell out that there was dissension between the priest and the people,
and one day the latter came to the church in great crowds, declaring
that unless the priest yielded to them they would then and there abjure
the faith of Christ and embrace in its stead that of Muḥammad. The
priest, whether right or wrong, still remaining firm, his congregation
tore the rosaries and crosses from their necks, trampled them under
their feet, and going to the nearest mosque, were received by the
Mollah into the fold of the True Believers.” [601]
Through the negligence and apathy of the Christian clergy many abuses
and irregularities had been allowed to creep into the Christian
society; in one of which, namely the practice of contracting marriages
without the sanction of the Church or any religious ceremony, we find
an approximation to the Muhammadan law, which makes marriage a civil
contract. In order to remedy this evil, the husband and wife were to be
excluded from the Church, until they had conformed to the
ecclesiastical law and gone through the service in the regular manner.
[602]
In the course of the seventeenth century, the social conditions and
other factors, indicated above, bore fruit abundantly, and the numbers
of the Christian population began rapidly to decline. In the brief
space of thirty years, between 1620 and 1650, about 300,000 Albanians
are said to have gone over to Islam. [603] In 1624 there were only 2000
Catholics in the whole diocese of Antivari, and in the city itself only
one church; at the close of the century, even this church was no longer
used for Christian worship, as there were only two families of Roman
Catholics left. [604] In the whole country generally, the majority of
the Christian community in 1651 was composed of women, as the male
population had apostatised in such large numbers to Islam. [605]
Matters were still worse at the close of the century, the Catholics
being then fewer in number than the Muhammadans, the proportions being
about 1 to 1⅓, [606] whereas less than a hundred years before, they had
outnumbered the Muhammadans in the proportion of 10 to 1; [607] in the
Archbishopric of Durazzo the Christian population had decreased by
about half in twenty years, [608] in another town (in the diocese of
Kroia) the entire population passed from Christianity to Islam in the
course of thirty years. [609] In spite of the frequent protests and
regulations made by their ecclesiastical superiors, the parish priests
continued to countenance the open profession of Islam along with a
secret adherence to Christianity, on the part of many male members of
their flocks, by administering to them the Blessed Sacrament; the
result of which was that the children of such persons, being brought up
as Muhammadans, were for ever lost to the Christian Church. [610]
Similarly, Christian parents still gave their daughters in marriage to
Muhammadans, the parish priests countenancing such unions by
administering the sacrament to such women, [611] in spite of the
fulminations of the higher clergy against such indulgence. [612] Such
action on the part of the lower clergy can hardly, however, be taken as
indicating any great zeal on behalf of the spiritual welfare of their
flocks, in the face of the accusations brought against them; the
majority of them are accused of being scandalous livers, who very
seldom went to confession and held drunken revels in their parsonages
on festival days; they sold the property of the Church, frequently
absented themselves from their parishes, and when censured, succeeded
in getting off by putting themselves under the protection of the Turks.
[613] The Reformed Franciscans and the Observants who had been sent to
minister to the spiritual wants of the people did nothing but quarrel
and go to law with one another; much to the scandal of the laity and
the neglect of the mission. [614] In the middle of the seventeenth
century five out of the twelve Albanian sees were vacant; the diocese
of Pullati had not been visited by a bishop for thirty years, and there
were only two priests to 6348 souls. [615] In some parishes in the
interior of the country, there had been no priests for more than forty
years; and this was in no way due to the oppression of the “Turkish
tyrant,” for when at last four Franciscan missionaries were sent, they
reported that they could go through the country and exercise their
sacred office without any hindrance whatever. [616] The bishop of
Sappa, to the great prejudice of his diocese, had been long resident in
Venice, where he is said to have lived a vicious life, and had
appointed as his vicar an ignorant priest who was a notorious
evil-liver: this man had 12,400 souls under his charge, and, says the
ecclesiastical visitor, “through the absence of the bishop there is
danger of his losing his own soul and compassing the destruction of the
souls under him and of the property of the Church.” [617] The bishop of
Scutari was looked upon as a tyrant by his clergy and people, and only
succeeded in keeping his post through the aid of the Turks; [618] and
Zmaievich complains of the bishops generally that they burdened the
parishes in their diocese with forced contributions. [619] It appears
that Christian ecclesiastics were authorised by the Sultan to levy
contributions on their flocks. Thus the Archbishop of Antivari
(1599–1607) was allowed to “exact and receive” two aspers from each
Christian family, twelve for every first marriage (and double the
amount for a second, and quadruple for a third marriage), and one gold
piece from each parish annually, and it seems to have been possible to
obtain the assistance of the Turkish authorities in levying these
contributions. [620]
Throughout the whole of Albania there was not a single Christian
school, [621] and the priests were profoundly ignorant: some were sent
to study in Italy, but Marco Crisio condemns this practice, as such
priests were in danger of finding life in Italy so pleasant that they
refused to return to their native country. With a priesthood so
ignorant and so careless of their sacred duties, it is not surprising
to learn that the common people had no knowledge even of the rudiments
of their faith, and that numerous abuses and corruptions sprang up
among them, which “wrought the utmost desolation to this vineyard of
the Lord.” [622] Many Christians lived in open concubinage for years,
still, however, being admitted to the sacraments, [623] while others
had a plurality of wives. [624] In this latter practice we notice an
assimilation between the habits of the two communities—the Christian
and the Muslim—which is further illustrated by the admission of
Muhammadans as sponsors at the baptism of Christian children, while the
old superstitious custom of baptising Muhammadan children was still
sanctioned by the priests. [625]
Such being the state of the Christian Church in Albania in the latter
half of the seventeenth century, some very trifling incentive would
have been enough to bring about a widespread apostasy; and the
punishment inflicted on the rebellious Catholics in the latter half of
the century was a determining factor more than sufficient to consummate
the tendencies that had been drawing them towards Islam and to cause
large numbers of them to fall away from the Christian Church. The
rebellious movement referred to seems to have been instigated by
George, the thirty-ninth Archbishop of Antivari (1635–1644), who
through the bishops of Durazzo, Scodra and Alessio tried to induce the
leaders of the Christian community to conspire against the Turkish rule
and hand over the country to the neighbouring Christian power, the
Republic of Venice. As in his time Venice was at peace with the Turks a
fitting opportunity for the hatching of this plot did not occur, but in
1645 war broke out between Turkey and the Republic, and the Venetians
made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city of Antivari, which
before the Turkish conquest had been in their possession for more than
three centuries (1262–1571). The Albanian Catholics who had sided with
the enemy and secretly given them assistance were severely punished and
deprived of their privileges, while the Greek Christians (who had
everything to fear in the event of the restoration of the Venetian rule
and had remained faithful to the Turkish government) were liberally
rewarded and were lauded as the saviours of their country. Many of the
Catholics either became Muhammadans or joined the Greek Church. The
latter fact is very significant as showing that there was no
persecution of the Christians as such, nor any attempt to force the
acceptance of Islam upon them. The Catholics who became Muhammadans did
so to avoid the odium of their position after the failure of their
plot, and could have gained the same end and have at the same time
retained their Christian faith by joining the Greek Church, which was
not only officially recognised by the Turkish government but in high
favour in Antivari at this time: so that those who neglected to do so,
could have had very little attachment to the Christian religion. The
same remark holds good of the numerous conversions to Islam in the
succeeding years: Zmaievich attributes them in some cases to the desire
to avoid the payment of tribute, but, from what has been said above, it
is very unlikely that this was the sole determining motive.
In 1649 a still more widespread insurrection broke out, an Archbishop
of Antivari, Joseph Maria Bonaldo (1646–1654), being again the main
instigator of the movement; and the leading citizens of Antivari,
Scodra and other towns conspired to throw open their gates to the army
of the Venetian Republic. But this plot also failed and the
insurrection was forcibly crushed by the Turkish troops, aided by the
dissensions that arose among the Christians themselves. Many Albanians
whose influence was feared were transported from their own country into
the interior of the Turkish dominions; a body of 3000 men crossed the
border into Venetian territory; those who remained were overawed by the
erection of fortresses and the marching of troops through the
disaffected districts, while heavy fines were imposed upon the
malcontents. [626]
Unfortunately the Christian writers who complain of the “unjust
tributes and vexations” with which the Turks oppressed the Albanians,
so that they apostatised to Islam, [627] make use only of general
expressions, and give us no details to enable us to judge whether or
not such complaints were justified by the facts. Zmaievich prefaces his
account of the apostasy of 2000 persons with an enumeration of the
taxes and other burdens the Christians had to bear, but all these, he
says, were common also to the Muhammadans, with the exception of the
capitation-tax of six reals a year for each male, and another tax,
termed sciataraccio, of three reals a year. [628] He concludes with the
words: “The nation, wounded by these taxes in its weakest part, namely,
worldly interest, to the consideration of which it has a singular
leaning either by nature or by necessity, has given just cause for
lamenting the deplorable loss of about 2000 souls who apostatised from
the true faith so as not to be subject to the tribute.” [629] There is
nothing in his report to show that the taxes the Catholics had to pay
constituted so intolerable a burden as to force them to renounce their
creed, and though he attributes many conversions to Islam to the desire
of escaping the tribute, he says expressly that these apostasies from
the Christian faith are mainly to be ascribed to the extreme ignorance
of the clergy, [630] in great measure also to their practice of
admitting to the sacraments those who openly professed Islam while in
secret adhering to the Christian faith: [631] in another place he says,
speaking of the clergy who were not fit to be parish priests and their
practice of administering the sacraments to apostates and secret
Christians: “These are precisely the two causes from which have come
all the losses that the Christian Church has sustained in Albania.”
[632] There is very little doubt that the widespread apostasy at this
time was the result of a long series of influences similar to those
mentioned in the preceding pages, and that the deliverance from the
payment of the tribute was the last link in the chain.
What active efforts Muhammadans themselves were making to gain over the
Christians to Islam, we can hardly expect to learn from the report of
an ecclesiastical visitor. But we find mention of a district, the
inhabitants of which, from their intercourse with the Turks, had
“contracted the vices of these infidels,” and one of the chief causes
of their falling away from the Christian faith was their contracting
marriages with Turkish women. [633] There were no doubt strong
Muhammadan influences at work here, as also in the two parishes of
Biscascia and Basia, whose joint population of nearly a thousand souls
was “exposed to the obvious risk of apostatising through lack of any
pastor,” and were “much tempted in their faith, and needed to be
strengthened in it by wise and zealous pastors.” [634]
Zmaievich speaks of one of the old noble Christian families in the
neighbourhood of Antivari which was represented at that time by two
brothers; the elder of these had been “wheedled” by the prominent
Muhammadans of the place, who were closely related to him, into denying
his faith; the younger wished to study for the priesthood, in which
office “he would be of much assistance to the Christian Church through
the high esteem in which the Turks held his family; which though poor
was universally respected.” [635] This indeed is another indication of
the fact that the Muhammadans did not ill-treat the Christians, merely
as such, but only when they showed themselves to be politically
disaffected. Zmaievich, who was himself an Albanian, and took up his
residence in his diocese instead of in Venetian territory, as many of
the Archbishops of Antivari seem to have done, [636] was received with
“extraordinary honours” and with “marvellous courtesy,” not only by the
Turkish officials generally, but also by the Supreme Pasha of Albania
himself, who gave him the place of honour in his Divan, always
accompanying him to the door on his departure and receiving him there
on his arrival. [637] This “barbarian” who “showed himself more like a
generous-hearted Christian than a Turk,” gave more substantial marks of
good feeling towards the Christians by remitting—at the Archbishop’s
request—the tribute due for the ensuing year from four separate towns.
[638] If any of the Christian clergy were roughly treated by the Turks,
it seems generally to have been due to the suspicion of treasonable
correspondence with the enemies of the Turks; ecclesiastical visits to
Italy seem also to have excited—and in many cases, justly—such
suspicions. Otherwise the Christian clergy seem to have had no reason
to complain of the treatment they received from the Muslims; Zmaievich
even speaks of one parish priest being “much beloved by the principal
Turks,” [639] and doubtless there were parallels in Albania to the case
of a priest in the diocese of Trebinje in Herzegovina, who in the early
part of the eighteenth century was suspected, on account of his
familiar intercourse with Muhammadans, of having formed an intention to
embrace Islam, and was accordingly sent by his bishop to Rome under
safe custody. [640]
No subsequent period of Albanian history appears to have witnessed such
widespread apostasy as the seventeenth century, but there have been
occasional accessions to Islam up to more recent times. In Southern
Albania, the country of the Tosks, the preponderance of the Muhammadan
population placed the Christians at a disadvantage, and a story is told
of the Karamurtads, inhabitants of thirty-six villages near Pogoniani,
that up to the close of the eighteenth century they were Christians,
but finding themselves unable to repel the continual attacks of the
neighbouring Muhammadan population of Leskoviki, they met in a church
and prayed that the saints might work some miracle on their behalf;
they swore to fast till Easter in expectation of the divine assistance;
but Easter came and no miracle was wrought, so the whole population
embraced Islam; soon afterwards they obtained the arms they required
and massacred their old enemies in Leskoviki and took possession of
their lands. [641] Community of faith in Albania is never allowed to
stand in the way of a tribal feud. Even up to the nineteenth century
Albanian tribes and villages have changed their religion for very
trivial reasons; part of one Christian tribe is said to have turned
Muhammadan because their priest, who served several villages and
visited them first, insisted on saying mass at an unreasonably early
hour. [642]
At the present day the Muhammadans in Albania are said to number about
1,000,000 and the Christians 480,000, but the accuracy of these figures
is not certain. The Mirdites are entirely Christian; they submitted to
the Sultan on condition that no Muslim would be allowed to settle in
their territory, but adherents of both the rival creeds are found in
almost all the other tribes. Central Albania is said to be almost
entirely Muhammadan, and the followers of Islam form about sixty per
cent. of the population of Northern Albania; the Christian population
attains its largest proportion in Southern Albania, especially in the
districts bordering upon Greece.
The kingdom of Servia first paid tribute to the Ottomans in 1375 and
lost its independence after the disastrous defeat of Kossovo (1389),
where both the king of Servia and the Turkish sultan were left dead
upon the field. The successors of the two sovereigns entered into a
friendly compact, the young Servian prince, Stephen, acknowledged the
suzerainty of Turkey, gave his sister in marriage to the new sultan,
Bāyazīd, and formed with him a league of brotherhood. At the battle of
Nikopolis (1394), which gave to the Turks assured possession of the
whole Balkan peninsula, except the district surrounding Constantinople,
the Servian contingent turned the wavering fortune of the battle and
gave the victory to the Turks. On the field of Angora (1402), when the
Turkish power was annihilated and Bāyazīd himself taken prisoner by
Tīmūr, Stephen was present with his Servian troops and fought bravely
for his brother-in-law, and instead of taking this opportunity of
securing his independence, remained faithful to his engagement, and
stood by the sons of Bāyazīd until they recovered their father’s
throne. Under the successor of Stephen, George Brankovich, Servia
enjoyed a semi-independence, but when in 1438 he raised the standard of
revolt, his country was again overrun by the Turks. Then for a time
Servia had to acknowledge the suzerainty of Hungary, but the defeat of
John Hunyady at Varna in 1444 brought her once more under tribute, and
in 1459 she finally became a Turkish province.
It is not impossible that the Servians who had embraced Islam after the
battle of Kossovo had knowledge of the fate of the little Muslim
community that had been rooted out of Hungary about a century before,
and therefore preferred the domination of the Turks to that of the
Hungarians. Yāqūt gives the following account of his meeting, about the
year 1228, with some members of this group of followers of the Prophet
in mediæval Europe, who had owed their conversion to Muslims who had
settled among them. “In the city of Aleppo, I met a large number of
persons called Bashkirs, with reddish hair and reddish faces. They were
studying law according to the school of Abū Ḥanīfah (may God be well
pleased with him!) I asked one of them who seemed to be an intelligent
fellow for information concerning their country and their condition. He
told me, ‘Our country is situated on the other side of Constantinople,
in a kingdom of a people of the Franks called the Hungarians. We are
Muslims, subjects of their king, and live on the border of his
territory, occupying about thirty villages, which are almost like small
towns. But the king of the Hungarians does not allow us to build walls
round any of them, lest we should revolt against him. We are situated
in the midst of Christian countries, having the land of the Slavs on
the north, on the south, that of the Pope, i.e. Rome (now the Pope is
the head of the Franks, the vicar of the Messiah in their eyes, like
the commander of the faithful in the eyes of the Muslims; his authority
extends over all matters connected with religion among the whole of
them); on the west, Andalusia; on the east, the land of the Greeks,
Constantinople and its provinces.’ He added, ‘Our language is the
language of the Franks, we dress after their fashion, we serve with
them in the army, and we join them in attacking all their enemies,
because they only go to war with the enemies of Islam.’ I then asked
him how it was they had adopted Islam in spite of their dwelling in the
midst of the unbelievers. He answered, ‘I have heard several of our
forefathers say that a long time ago seven Muslims came from Bulgaria
and settled among us. In kindly fashion they pointed out to us our
errors and directed us into the right way, the faith of Islam. Then God
guided us and (praise be to God!) we all became Muslims and God opened
our hearts to the faith. We have come to this country to study law;
when we return to our own land, the people will do us honour and put us
in charge of their religious affairs.’” [643] Islam kept its ground
among the Bashkirs of Hungary until 1340, when King Charles Robert
compelled all his subjects that were not yet Christians to embrace the
Christian faith or quit the country. [644]
The Servian Muslims may, therefore, well have been pleased to escape
from the rule of Hungary, like their Christian fellow-countrymen, for
when these were given the choice between the Roman Catholic rule of
Hungary and the Muslim rule of the Turks, the devotion of the Servians
to the Greek Church led them to prefer the tolerance of the Muhammadans
to the uncompromising proselytising spirit of the Latins. An old legend
thus represents their feelings at this time:—The Turks and the
Hungarians were at war; George Brankovich sought out John Hunyady and
asked him, “If you are victorious, what will you do?” “Establish the
Roman Catholic faith,” was the answer. Then he sought out the sultan
and asked him, “If you come out victorious, what will you do with our
religion?” “By the side of every mosque shall stand a church, and every
man shall be free to pray in whichever he chooses.” [645] The treachery
of some Servian priests forced the garrison of Belgrade to capitulate
to the Turks; [646] similarly the Servians of Semendria, on the Danube,
welcomed the Turkish troops who in 1600 delivered them from the rule of
their Catholic neighbours. [647]
The spread of Islam among the Servians began immediately after the
battle of Kossovo, when a large part of the old feudal nobility, such
as still remained alive and did not take refuge in neighbouring
Christian countries, went over voluntarily to the faith of the Prophet,
in order to keep their old privileges undisturbed. [648] In these
converted nobles the sultans found the most zealous propagandists of
the new faith. [649] But the majority of the Servian people clung
firmly to their old religion through all their troubles and sufferings,
and only in Stara Serbia or Old Servia, [650] which now forms the
north-eastern portion of modern Albania, has there been any very
considerable number of conversions. Even here the spread of
Muhammadanism proceeded very slowly until the seventeenth century, when
the Austrians induced the Servians to rise in revolt and, after the
ill-success of this rising, the then Patriarch, Arsenius III
Tsernoïevich, in 1690 emigrated with 40,000 Servian families across the
border into Hungary; another exodus in 1739 of 15,000 families under
the leadership of Arsenius IV Jovanovich, well nigh denuded this part
of the country of its original Servian population. [651]
Albanian colonists from the south pressed into the country vacated by
the fugitives: these Albanians at the time of their arrival were Roman
Catholics for the most part, but after they settled in Old Servia they
gradually adopted Islam and at the present time the remnant of Roman
Catholic Albanians is but small, though from time to time it is
recruited by fresh arrivals from the mountains: the new-comers,
however, usually follow the example of their predecessors, and after a
while become Muhammadans. [652]
After this Albanian immigration, Islam began to spread more rapidly
among the remnant of the Servian population. The Servian clergy were
very ignorant and unlettered, they could only manage with difficulty to
read their service-books and hardly any had learned to write; they
neither preached to the people nor taught them the catechism,
consequently in whole villages scarcely a man could be found who knew
the Lord’s Prayer or how many commandments there were; even the priests
themselves were quite as ignorant. [653] After the insurrection of
1689, the Patriarch of Ipek, the ecclesiastical capital of Servia, was
appointed by the Porte, but in 1737, as the result of another
rebellion, the Servian Patriarchate was entirely suppressed and the
Servian Church made dependent upon the Greek Patriarch of
Constantinople. The churches were filled with Greek bishops, who made
common cause with the Turkish Beys and Pashas in bleeding the
unfortunate Christians: their national language was proscribed and the
Old Slavonic service-books, etc., were collected and sent off to
Constantinople. [654] With such a clergy it is not surprising that the
Christian faith should decline: e.g. in the commune of Gora (in the
district of Prizren), which had begun to become Muhammadanised soon
after the great exodus of 1690, the Servians that still clung to the
Christian faith, appealed again and again to the Greek bishop of
Prizren to send them priests, at least occasionally, but all in vain;
their children remained unbaptised, weddings and burials were conducted
without the blessing of the Church, and the consecrated buildings fell
into decay. [655] In the neighbouring district of Opolje, similarly,
the present Muslim population of 9500 souls is probably for the most
part descended from the original Slav inhabitants of the place. [656]
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Bizzi found in the city of
Jagnevo, 120 Roman Catholic households, 200 Greek and 180 Muhammadan;
[657] less than a hundred years later, every house in the city was
looked upon as Muhammadan, as the head of each family professed this
faith and the women only, with some of the children, were Christian.
[658] About the middle of the eighteenth century, the village of Ljurs
was entirely Catholic; in 1863 there were 90 Muslim and 23 Christian
families, but at the present day this village, together with the
surrounding villages, has wholly given up Christianity. [659] Until
recently some lingering survivals of their old Christian faith, such as
the burning of the Yule-log at Christmas, etc., were still to be met
with in certain villages, but such customs are now fast dying out.
After the battle of Kossovo and the downfall of the Servian empire, the
wild highlands of Montenegro afforded a refuge to those Servians who
would not submit to the Turks but were determined to maintain their
independence. It is not the place here to relate the history of the
heroic struggles of this brave people against overwhelming odds, how
through centuries of continual warfare, under the rule of their
prince-bishops, [660] they have kept alive a free Christian state when
all their brethren of the same race had been compelled to submit to
Muhammadan rule. While the very basis of their separate existence as a
nation was their firm adherence to the Christian faith it could hardly
have been expected that Islam would have made its way among them, but
in the seventeenth century many Montenegrins in the frontier districts
became Muhammadans and took service with the neighbouring Pashas. But
in 1703, Daniel Petrovich, the then reigning bishop, called the tribes
together and told them that the only hope for their country and their
faith lay in the destruction of the Muhammadans living among them.
Accordingly, on Christmas Eve, all the converted Montenegrins who would
not forswear Islam and embrace Christianity were massacred in cold
blood. [661]
To pass now to Bosnia:—in this country the religious and social
conditions of the people, before the Turkish conquest, merit especial
attention. The majority of the population belonged to a heretical
Christian sect, called Bogomiles, who from the thirteenth century had
been exposed to the persecution of the Roman Catholics and against whom
Popes had on several occasions preached a Crusade. [662] In 1325, Pope
John XXII wrote thus to the king of Bosnia: “To our beloved son and
nobleman, Stephen, Prince of Bosnia,—knowing that thou art a faithful
son of the Church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate the heretics
in thy dominion, and to render aid and assistance to Fabian, our
Inquisitor, forasmuch as a large multitude of heretics from many and
divers parts collected hath flowed together into the principality of
Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and dwell there in
safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old Fiend, and armed
with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of Catholics by
outward show of simplicity and the sham assumption of the name of
Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with
humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheep’s clothing,
covering their bestial fury as a means to deceive the simple sheep of
Christ.” In the fifteenth century, the sufferings of the Bogomiles
became so intolerable that they appealed to the Turks to deliver them
from their unhappy condition, for the king of Bosnia and the priests
were pushing the persecution of the Bogomiles to an extreme which
perhaps it had never reached before; as many as forty thousand of them
fled from Bosnia and took refuge in neighbouring countries; others who
did not succeed in making their escape, were sent in chains to Rome.
But even these violent measures did little to diminish the strength of
the Bogomiles in Bosnia, as in 1462 we are told that heresy was as
powerful as ever in this country. The following year, when Bosnia was
invaded by Muḥammad II, the Catholic king found himself deserted by his
subjects: the keys of the principal fortress, the royal city of
Bobovatz, were handed over to the Turks by the Bogomile governor; the
other fortresses and towns hastened to follow this example, and within
a week seventy cities passed into the hands of the Sultan, and Muḥammad
II added Bosnia to the number of his numerous conquests. [663]
From this time forth we hear but little of the Bogomiles; they seem to
have willingly embraced Islam in large numbers immediately after the
Turkish conquest, and the rest seem to have gradually followed later,
while the Bosnian Roman Catholics emigrated into the neighbouring
territories of Hungary and Austria. It has been supposed by some [664]
that a large proportion of the Bogomiles, at least in the earlier
period of the conquest, embraced Islam with the intention of returning
to their faith when a favourable opportunity presented itself; as,
being constantly persecuted they may have learnt to deny their faith
for the time being; but that, when this favourable opportunity never
arrived, this intention must have gradually been lost sight of and at
length have been entirely forgotten by their descendants. Such a
supposition is, however, a pure conjecture and has no direct evidence
to support it. We may rather find the reason for the willingness of the
Bogomiles to allow themselves to be merged in the general mass of the
Musalman believers, in the numerous points of likeness between their
peculiar beliefs and the tenets of Islam. They rejected the worship of
the Virgin Mary, the institution of Baptism and every form of
priesthood. [665] They abominated the cross as a religious symbol, and
considered it idolatry to bow down before religious pictures and the
images and relics of the saints. Their houses of prayer were very
simple and unadorned, in contrast to the gaudily decorated Roman
Catholic churches, and they shared the Muhammadan dislike of bells,
which they styled “the devil’s trumpets.” They believed that Christ was
not himself crucified but that some phantom was substituted in his
place: in this respect agreeing partially with the teaching of the
Qurʼān. [666] Their condemnation of wine and the general austerity of
their mode of life and the stern severity of their outward demeanour
would serve as further links to bind them to Islam, [667] for it was
said of them: “You will see heretics quiet and peaceful as lambs
without, silent, and wan with hypocritical fasting, who do not speak
much nor laugh loud, who let their beard grow, and leave their person
incompt.” [668] They prayed five times a day and five times a night,
repeating the Lord’s Prayer with frequent kneelings, [669] and would
thus find it very little change to join in the services of the mosque.
I have brought together here the many points of likeness to the
teachings of Islam, which we find in this Bogomilian heresy, but there
were, of course, some doctrines of a distinctly Christian character
which an orthodox Muslim could not hold; still, with so much in common,
it can easily be understood how the Bogomiles may gradually have been
persuaded to give up those doctrines that were repugnant to the Muslim
faith. Their Manichæan dualism was equally irreconcilable with Muslim
theology, but Islam has always shown itself tolerant of such
theological speculations provided that they did not issue in a schism
and that a general assent and consent were given to the main principles
of its theory and practice.
The Turks, as was their usual custom, offered every advantage to induce
the Bosnians to accept their creed. All who embraced Islam were allowed
to retain their lands and possessions, and their fiefs were exempt from
all taxation, [670] and it is probable that many rightful heirs of
ancient houses who had been dispossessed for heretical opinions by the
Catholic faction among the nobility, now embraced the opportunity of
regaining their old position by submission to the dominant creed. The
Bosnian Muhammadans retained their nationality and still for the most
part bear Serb names and speak only their national tongue; [671] at the
same time they have always evinced a lively zeal for their new faith,
and by their military prowess, their devotion to Islam and the powerful
influence they exercised, the Bosnian nobility rapidly rose into high
favour in Constantinople and many were entrusted with important offices
of state, e.g. between the years 1544 and 1611 nine statesmen of
Bosnian origin filled the post of Grand Vizier.
The latest territorial acquisition of the Ottoman conquests was the
island of Crete, which in 1669 was wrested from the hands of the
Venetian Republic by the capture of the city of Candia after a long and
desperate siege of nearly three years, which closed a struggle of
twenty-five years between these rival powers for the possession of the
island.
This was not the first time that Crete had come under Muslim rule.
Early in the ninth century the island was suddenly seized by a band of
Saracen adventurers from Spain, and it remained in their power for
nearly a century and a half (A.D. 825–961). [672] During this period
well nigh the whole population of the island had become Muslim, and the
churches had either fallen into ruins or been turned into mosques; but
when the authority of the Byzantine empire was once re-established
here, the people were converted again to their ancient faith through
the skilful preaching of an Armenian monk, and the Christian religion
became the only one professed on the island. [673] In the beginning of
the thirteenth century, the Venetians purchased the island from
Boniface, Duke of Montserrat, to whose lot it had fallen after the
partition of the Byzantine empire, and they ruled it with a heavy hand,
apparently looking upon it only in the light of a purchase that was to
be exploited for the benefit of the home government and its colonists.
Their administration was so oppressive and tyrannical as to excite
several revolts, which were crushed with pitiless severity; on one of
these occasions whole cantons in the provinces of Sfakia and Lassiti
were depopulated, and it was forbidden under pain of death to sow any
corn there, so that these districts remained barren and uncultivated
for nearly a century. [674] The terrific cruelty with which the
Venetian senate suppressed the last of these attempts at the beginning
of the sixteenth century added a crowning horror to the miserable
condition of the unhappy Cretans. How terrible was their lot at this
time we learn from the reports of the commissioners sent by the
Venetian senate in the latter part of the same century, in order to
inquire into the condition of the islanders. The peasants were said to
be crushed down by the cruelest oppression and tyranny on the part of
the Venetian nobles, their feudal lords, being reduced to a worse
condition than that of slaves, so that they never dared even to
complain of any injustice. Each peasant had to do twelve days’ forced
labour for his feudal lord every year without payment, and could then
be compelled to go on working for as long as his lord required his
services at the nominal rate of a penny a day; his vineyards were
mulcted in a full third of their produce, but fraud and force combined
generally succeeded in appropriating as much as two-thirds; his oxen
and mules could be seized for the service of the lord, who had a
thousand other devices for squeezing the unfortunate peasant. [675] The
protests of these commissioners proved ineffectual to induce the
Venetian senate to alleviate the unhappy condition of the Cretans and
put a stop to the cruelty and tyranny of the nobles: it preferred to
listen to the advice of Fra Paolo Sarpi who in 1615 thus addressed the
Republic on the subject of its Greek colonies: “If the gentlemen of
these Colonies do tyrannize over the villages of their dominion, the
best way is not to seem to see it, that there may be no kindness
between them and their subjects.” [676]
It is not surprising to learn from the same sources that the Cretans
longed for a change of rulers, and that “they would not much stick at
submitting to the Turk, having the example of all the rest of their
nation before their eyes.” Indeed, many at this time fled into Turkey
to escape the intolerable burden of taxation, following in the
footsteps of countless others, who from time to time had taken refuge
there. [677] Large numbers of them also emigrated to Egypt, where many
embraced Islam. [678] Especially galling to the Cretans were the
exactions of the Latin clergy who appropriated the endowments that
belonged of right to the Greek ecclesiastics, and did everything they
could to insult the Christians of the Greek rite, who constituted
nine-tenths of the population of the island. [679] The Turks, on the
other hand, conciliated their good-will by restoring the Greek
hierarchy. This, according to a Venetian writer, was brought about in
the following manner: “A certain papas or priest of Canea went to
Cusseim the Turkish general, and told him that if he desired to gain
the good-will of the Cretan people, and bring detestation upon the name
of Venice, it was necessary for him to bear in mind that the staunchest
of the links which keep civilised society from falling asunder is
religion. It would be needful for him to act in a way different from
the line followed by the Venetians. These did their utmost to root out
the Greek faith and establish that of Rome in its place, with which
interest they had made an injunction that there should be no Greek
bishops in the island. By thus removing these venerated and
authoritative shepherds, they thought the more easily to gain control
over the scattered flocks. This prohibition had caused such distress in
the minds of the Cretans that they were ready to welcome with joy and
obedience any sovereignty that would lend its will to the
re-institution of this order in their hierarchy—an order so essential
for the proper exercise of their divine worship. He added, that it
would be a further means of conciliating the people if they were
assured that they would not only be confirmed in the old privileges of
their religion, but that new privileges would be granted them. These
arguments seemed to Cusseim so plausible that he wrote at once to
Constantinople with a statement of them. Here they were approved, and
the Greek Patriarch was bidden to institute an archbishop who should be
metropole of the Province of Candia. Under the metropolitan seven other
bishops were also to be nominated.” [680]
The Turkish conquest seems to have been very rapidly followed by the
conversion of large numbers of the Cretans to Islam. It is not
improbable that the same patriotism as made them cling to their old
faith under the foreign domination of the Venetians who kept them at
arm’s length and regarded any attempt at assimilation as an
unpardonable indignity, [681] and always tried to impress on their
subjects a sense of their inferiority—may have led them to accept the
religion of their new masters, which at once raised them from the
position of subjects to that of equals and gave them a share in the
political life and government of their country. Whatever may have been
the causes of the widespread conversion of the Cretans, it seems almost
incredible that violence should have changed the religion of a people
who had for centuries before clung firmly to their old faith despite
the persecution of a hostile and a foreign creed. Whatever may have
been the means by which the ranks of Islam were filled, thirty years
after the conquest we are told that the majority of the Muslims were
renegades or the children of renegades, [682] and in little more than a
century half the population of Crete had become Muhammadan. From one
end of the island to the other, not only in the towns but also in the
villages, in the inland districts and in the very heart of the
mountains, were (and are still) found Cretan Muslims who in figure,
habits and speech are thoroughly Greek. There never has been, and to
the present day there is not, any other language spoken on the island
of Crete except Greek; even the few Turks to be found here had to adopt
the language of the country and all the firmans of the Porte and
decrees of the Pashas were read and published in Greek. [683] The
bitter feelings between the Christians and Muhammadans of Crete that
have made the history of this island during the nineteenth century so
sad a one, was by no means so virulent before the outbreak of the Greek
revolution, in days when the Cretan Muslims were very generally in the
habit of taking as their wives Christian maidens, the children of their
Christian friends. [684] The social communication between the two
communities was further signified by their common dress, as the Cretans
of both creeds dressed so much alike that the distinction was often not
even recognised by residents of long standing or by Greeks of the
neighbouring islands. [685]
Recent political events have brought about a considerable diminution in
the Muhammadan population of Crete. In 1881 the number of Muhammadans
in the island was 73,234; in 1909, in consequence of continual
emigrations, it had been reduced to 33,496. [686]
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN PERSIA AND CENTRAL ASIA.
In order to follow the course of the spread of Islam eastward into
Central Asia, we must retrace our steps to the period of the first Arab
conquests. By the middle of the seventh century, the great dynasty of
the Sāsānids had fallen, and the vast empire of Persia that for four
centuries had withstood the might of Rome and Byzantium, now became the
heritage of the Muslims. When the armies of the state had been routed,
the mass of the people offered little resistance; the reigns of the
last representatives of the Sāsānid dynasty had been marked by terrible
anarchy, and the sympathies of the people had been further alienated
from their rulers on account of the support they gave to the
persecuting policy of the state religion of Zoroastrianism. The
Zoroastrian priests had acquired an enormous influence in the state;
they were well-nigh all-powerful in the councils of the king and
arrogated to themselves a very large share in the civil administration.
They took advantage of their position to persecute all those religious
bodies—(and they were many)—that dissented from them. Besides the
numerous adherents of older forms of the Persian religion, there were
Christians, Jews, Sabæans and numerous sects in which the speculations
of Gnostics, Manichæans and Buddhists found expression. In all of
these, persecution had stirred up feelings of bitter hatred against the
established religion and the dynasty that supported its oppressions,
and so caused the Arab conquest to appear in the light of a
deliverance. [687] The followers of all these varied forms of faith
could breathe again under a rule that granted them religious freedom
and exemption from military service, on payment of a light tribute. For
the Muslim law granted toleration and the right of paying jizyah not
only to the Christians and Jews, but to Zoroastrians and Sabæans, to
worshippers of idols, of fire and of stone. [688] It was said that the
Prophet himself had distinctly given directions that the Zoroastrians
were to be treated exactly like “the people of the book,” i.e. the Jews
and Christians, and that jizyah might also be taken from them in return
for protection, [689]—a tradition that probably arose in the second
century of the Hijrah, when apostolic sanction was sought for the
toleration that had been extended to all the followers of the various
faiths that Arabs had found in the countries they had conquered,
whether such non-Muslims came under the category Ahl al-Kitāb or not.
[690]
To the distracted Christian Church in Persia the change of government
brought relief from the oppression of the Sāsānid kings, who had
fomented the bitter struggles of Jacobites and Nestorians and added to
the confusion of warring sects. Some reference has already [691] been
made to earlier persecutions, and even during the expiring agony of the
Sāsānid dynasty, Khusrau II, exasperated at the defeat he had suffered
at the hands of the Christian emperor, Heraclius, ordered a fresh
persecution of the Christians within his dominions, a persecution from
which all the various Christian sects alike had to suffer. These
terrible conditions may well have prepared men’s minds for that
revulsion of feeling that facilitates a change of faith. “Side by side
with the political chaos in the state was the moral confusion that
filled the minds of the Christians; distracted by such an accumulation
of disasters and by the moral agony wrought by the furious conflict of
so many warring doctrines among them, they tended towards that peculiar
frame of mind in which a new doctrine finds it easy to take root,
making a clean sweep of such a bewildering babel and striving to
reconstruct faith and society on a new basis. In other words the people
of Persia, and especially the Semitic races, were just in the very
mental condition calculated to make them welcome the Islamic revolution
and urge them on to enthusiastically embrace the new and rugged creed,
which with its complete and virile simplicity swept away at one stroke
all those dark mists, opened the soul to new, alluring and tangible
hopes, and promised immediate release from a miserable state of
servitude.” [692]
But the Muslim creed was most eagerly welcomed by the townsfolk, the
industrial classes and the artisans, whose occupations made them impure
according to the Zoroastrian creed, because in the pursuance of their
trade or occupations they defiled fire, earth or water, and who thus,
outcasts in the eyes of the law and treated with scant consideration in
consequence, embraced with eagerness a creed that made them at once
free men, and equal in a brotherhood of faith. [693] Nor were the
conversions from Zoroastrianism itself less striking: the fabric of the
National Church had fallen with a crash in the general ruin of the
dynasty that had before upheld it; having no other centre round which
to rally, the followers of this creed would find the transition to
Islam a simple and easy one, owing to the numerous points of similarity
in the old creed and the new. For the Persian could find in the Qurʼān
many of the fundamental doctrines of his old faith, though in a rather
different form: he would meet again Ahuramazda and Ahriman under the
names of Allāh and Iblīs; the creation of the world in six periods; the
angels and the demons; the story of the primitive innocence of man; the
resurrection of the body and the doctrine of heaven and hell. [694]
Even in the details of daily worship there were similarities to be
found and the followers of Zoroaster when they adopted Islam were
enjoined by their new faith to pray five times a day just as they had
been by the Avesta. [695] Those tribes in the north of Persia that had
stubbornly resisted the ecclesiastical organisation of the state
religion, on the ground that each man was a priest in his own household
and had no need of any other, and believing in a supreme being and the
immortality of the soul, taught that a man should love his neighbour,
conquer his passions, and strive patiently after a better life—such men
could have needed very little persuasion to induce them to accept the
faith of the Prophet. [696] Islam had still more points of contact with
some of the heretical sects of Persia, that had come under the
influence of Christianity.
In addition to the causes above enumerated of the rapid spread of Islam
in Persia, it should be remembered that the political and national
sympathies of the conquered race were also enlisted on behalf of the
new religion through the marriage of Ḥusayn, the son of ʻAlī with
Shāhbānū, one of the daughters of Yazdagird, the last monarch of the
Sāsānid dynasty. In the descendants of Shāhbānū and Ḥusayn the Persians
saw the heirs of their ancient kings and the inheritors of their
national traditions, and in this patriotic feeling may be found the
explanation of the intense devotion of the Persians to the ʻAlid
faction and the first beginnings of Shīʻism as a separate sect. [697]
That this widespread conversion was not due to force or violence is
evidenced by the toleration extended to those who still clung to their
ancient faith. Even to the present day there are some small communities
of fire-worshippers to be found in certain districts of Persia, and
though these have in later years often had to suffer persecution, [698]
their ancestors in the early centuries of the Hijrah enjoyed a
remarkable degree of toleration, their fire-temples were respected, and
we even read of a Muhammadan general (in the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim, A.D.
833–842), who ordered an imām and a muʼadhdhin to be flogged because
they had destroyed a fire-temple in Sughd and built a mosque in its
place. [699] In the tenth century, three centuries after the conquest
of the country, fire-temples were to be found in ʻIrāq, Fārs, Kirmān,
Sijistān, Khurāsān, Jibāl, Ādharbayjān and Arrān, i.e. in almost every
province of Persia. [700] In Fārs itself there were hardly any cities
or districts in which fire-temples and Magians were not to be found.
[701] Al-Shahrastānī also (writing as late as the twelfth century),
makes mention of a fire-temple at Isfīniyā, in the neighbourhood of
Baghdād itself. [702]
In the face of such facts, it is surely impossible to attribute the
decay of Zoroastrianism entirely to violent conversions made by the
Muslim conquerors. The number of Persians who embraced Islam in the
early days of the Arab rule was probably very large from the various
reasons given above, but the late survival of their ancient faith and
the occasional record of conversions in the course of successive
centuries, render it probable that the acceptance of Islam was both
peaceful and voluntary. About the close of the eighth century, Sāmān, a
noble of Balkh, having received assistance from Asad b. ʻAbd-Allāh, the
governor of Khurāsān, renounced Zoroastrianism, embraced Islam and
named his son Asad after his protector: it is from this convert that
the dynasty of the Sāmānids (A.D. 874–999) took its name. About the
beginning of the ninth century, Karīm b. Shahriyār was the first king
of the Qābūsiyyah dynasty who became a Musalman, and in 873 a large
number of fire-worshippers were converted to Islam in Daylam through
the influence of Nāṣir al-Ḥaqq Abū Muḥammad. In the following century,
about A.D. 912, Ḥasan b. ʻAlī, of the ʻAlid dynasty on the southern
shore of the Caspian Sea, who is said to have been a man of learning
and intelligence and well acquainted with the religious opinions of
different sects, invited the inhabitants of Ṭabaristān and Daylam, who
were partly idolaters and partly Magians, to accept Islam; many of them
responded to his call, while others persisted in their former state of
unbelief. [703] In the year A.H. 394 (A.D. 1003–1004), a famous poet,
Abu’l Ḥasan Mihyār, a native of Daylam, who had been a fire-worshipper,
was converted to Islam by a still more famous poet, the Sharīf al-Riḍā,
who was his master in the poetic art. [704]
It was probably about the same period that the grandfather of the great
geographer, Ibn Khūrdādbih, was converted through the influence of one
of the Barmecides, [705] whose ancestor had been likewise a Magian and
high priest of the great Fire Temple of Nawbahār at Balkh.
Scanty as these notices of conversion are, they appear to have been
voluntary, and the Zoroastrians would seem to have enjoyed on the whole
toleration for the exercise of their religion up to the close of the
ʻAbbāsid period. With the Mongol invasion a darker period in their
history begins, and the miseries which the Persian Muslims themselves
suffered seems to have generated in them a spirit of fanatical
intolerance which exposed the Zoroastrians at times to cruel
sufferings. [706]
In the middle of the eighth century, Persia gave birth to a movement
that is of interest in the missionary history of Islam, viz. the sect
of the Ismāʻīlians. This is not the place to enter into a history of
this sect or of the theological position taken up by its followers, or
of the social and political factors that lent it strength, but it
demands attention here on account of the marvellous missionary
organisation whereby it was propagated. The founder of this
organisation—which rivals that of the Jesuits for the keen insight into
human nature it displays and the consummate skill with which the
doctrines of the sect were accommodated to varying capacities and
prejudices—was a certain ʻAbd Allāh b. Maymūn, who early in the ninth
century infused new life into the Ismāʻīlians. He sent out his
missionaries in all directions under various guises, very frequently as
ṣūfīs but also as merchants and traders and the like; they were
instructed to be all things to all men and to win over different
classes of men to allegiance to the grandmaster of their sect, by
speaking to each man, as it were, in his own language, and
accommodating their teaching to the varying capacities and opinions of
their hearers. They captivated the ignorant multitude by the
performance of marvels that were taken for miracles and by mysterious
utterances that excited their curiosity. To the devout they appeared as
models of virtue and religious zeal; to the mystics they revealed the
hidden meaning of popular teachings and initiated them into various
grades of occultism according to their capacity. Taking advantage of
the eager looking-forward to a deliverer that was common to so many
faiths of the time, they declared to the Musalmans the approaching
advent of the Imām Mahdī, to the Jews that of the Messiah, and to the
Christians that of the Comforter, but taught that the aspirations of
each could alone be realised in the coming of ʻAlī as the great
deliverer. With the Shīʻah, the Ismāʻīlian missionary was to put
himself forward as the zealous partisan of all the Shīʻah doctrine, was
to dwell upon the cruelty and injustice of the Sunnīs towards ʻAlī and
his sons, and liberally abuse the Sunnī Khalīfahs; having thus prepared
the way, he was to insinuate, as the necessary completion of the Shīʻah
system of faith, the more esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlian sect. In
dealing with the Jew, he was to speak with contempt of both Christians
and Muslims and agree with his intended convert in still looking
forward to a promised Messiah, but gradually lead him to believe that
this promised Messiah could be none other than ʻAlī, the great Messiah
of the Ismāʻīlian system. If he sought to win over the Christian, he
was to dwell upon the obstinacy of the Jews and the ignorance of the
Muslims, to profess reverence for the chief articles of the Christian
creed, but gently hint that they were symbolic and pointed to a deeper
meaning, to which the Ismāʻīlian system alone could supply the key; he
was also cautiously to suggest that the Christians had somewhat
misinterpreted the doctrine of the Paraclete and that it was in ʻAlī
that the true Paraclete was to be found. Similarly the Ismāʻīlian
missionaries who made their way into India endeavoured to make their
doctrines acceptable to the Hindus, by representing ʻAlī as the
promised tenth Avatār of Viṣṇu who was to come from the West, i.e.
(they averred) from Alamūt. They also wrote a Mahdī Purāṇa and composed
hymns in imitation of those of the Vāmācārins or left-hand Śāktas,
whose mysticism already predisposed their minds to the acceptance of
the esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlians. [707]
By such means as these an enormous number of persons of different
faiths were united together to push forward an enterprise, the real aim
of which was known to very few. The aspirations of ʻAbd Allāh b. Maymūn
seem to have been entirely political, but as the means he adopted were
religious and the one common bond—if any—that bound his followers
together was the devout expectation of the coming of the Imām Mahdī,
the missionary activity connected with the history of this sect
deserves this brief mention in these pages. [708]
The history of the spread of Islam in the countries of Central Asia to
the north of Persia presents little in the way of missionary activity.
When Qutaybah b. Muslim went to Samarqand, he found many idols there,
whose worshippers maintained that any man who dared outrage them would
perish; the Muslim conqueror, undeterred by such superstitious fears,
set fire to the idols; whereupon a number of persons embraced Islam.
[709] There is, however, but scanty record of such conversions in the
early history of the Muslim advance into Central Asia; moreover the
people of this country seem often to have pretended to embrace Islam
for a time and then to have thrown off the mask and renounced their
allegiance to the caliph as soon as the conquering armies were
withdrawn, [710] and it was not until Qutaybah had forcibly occupied
Bukhārā for the fourth time that he succeeded in compelling the
inhabitants to conform to the faith of their conquerors.
In Bukhārā and Samarqand the opposition to the new faith was so violent
and obstinate that none but those who had embraced Islam were allowed
to carry arms, and for many years the Muslims dared not appear unarmed
in the mosques or other public places, while spies had to be set to
keep a watch on the new converts. The conquerors made various efforts
to gain proselytes, and even tried to encourage attendance at the
Friday prayers in the mosques by rewards of money, and allowed the
Qurʼān to be recited in Persian instead of in Arabic, in order that it
might be intelligible to all. [711]
The progress of Islam in Transoxania was certainly very slow: some of
the inhabitants accepted the invitation of ʻUmar II (A.D. 717–720) to
embrace Islam, [712] and large numbers were converted through the
preaching of a certain Abū Ṣaydā who commenced this mission in
Samarqand in the reign of Hishām (724–743), [713] but it was not until
the reign of Al-Muʻtaṣim (A.D. 833–842) that Islam was generally
adopted there, [714] one of the reasons probably being the more
intimate relations established at this time with the then capital of
the Muhammadan world, Baghdād, through the enormous numbers of Turks
that had flocked in thousands to join the army of the caliph. [715]
Islam having thus gained a footing among the Turkish tribes seems to
have made but slow progress until the middle of the tenth century, when
the conversion of some of their chieftains to Islam, like that of
Clovis and other barbarian kings of Northern Europe to Christianity,
led their clansmen to follow their example in a body.
Pious legends have grown up to supply the lack of sober historical
record of such conversions. The city of Khīva reveres as its national
saint a Muslim wrestler—Pahlavān—who was in the service of a heathen
king of Khwārizm. The king of India, hearing of the fame of this
Pahlavān, sent his own court wrestler with a challenge to the king of
Khwārizm. A day was fixed for the trial of strength and the nobles and
people of Khīva were summoned to view the spectacle; the vanquished man
was to have his head cut off. On the day before, the saintly Pahlavān
was praying in the mosque when he overheard the prayer of an old woman:
“O God, suffer not my son to be beaten by this invincible Pahlavān, for
I have no other child.” Touched with compassion for the mother,
Pahlavān lets the Indian wrestler win the day; the enraged king orders
his head to be cut off, but at that very moment the horse on which the
king is sitting, bolts, carrying his master straight towards a
dangerous precipice. Pahlavān springs forward, catches the horse and
rescues the king from a horrible death. In gratitude the king embraces
the true faith, and the saintly wrestler, full of joy, goes away into
the desert and becomes a hermit. [716]
A strange legend is told of the conversion of Sātūq Bughrā Khān, the
founder of the Muhammadan dynasty of the Īlik-Khāns of Kāshgar, about
the middle of the tenth century. A prince of the Sāmānid house, Khwājah
Abu’l-Naṣr Sāmānī, a man of great piety and humility of character,
finding no scope for the exercise of his talent for administration,
resolved to become a merchant, with the purpose of spreading the true
faith in the lands of the unbelievers. Instead of trying to acquire a
fortune by his commercial enterprises, he devoted all his gains to the
furtherance of his proselytising efforts. One night the Prophet
appeared to him in a dream, saying: “Arise, and go into Turkistan where
the prince Sātūq Bughrā Khān only awaits your coming to be converted to
Islam.” The young prince had in a similar manner been warned in a
vision to expect the arrival of an instructor in the faith, and when
some days later he met Abu’l-Naṣr Sāmānī he was prepared to accept his
teaching and become a Musalman. This legend would appear to have been
based on the historic fact that Islam made its way from the Sāmānid
kingdom into the neighbouring country of Turkistan, and the example of
the ruler seems to have been followed by his subjects, for in A.D. 960
as many as 200,000 tents of the Turks, i.e. probably the greater part
of the Turkish population of Bughrā Khān’s kingdom, professed the faith
of Islam. [717] Legend credits him with miraculous powers in his wars
against the heathen, when a devouring flame would issue from his mouth
and the sword that he brandished would become forty feet long. By the
time he had reached the age of ninety-six, the terror of his sword is
said to have converted the unbelievers from the banks of the Oxus in
the south to Qurāquram in the north, and just before his death he is
said to have led his victorious army into China, and spread Islam as
far as Turfan. [718] This picturesque account of a dynastic struggle
with the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan credits the hero with a measure of
success which was not really achieved until the fourteenth century. How
limited the success of Sātūq Bughrā Khān really was, may be judged from
the fact that when his successors among the Īlik-Khāns sought in 1026
to contract matrimonial alliances with princesses of the house of
Maḥmūd of Ghazna, Maḥmūd replied that he was a Musalman, while they
were unbelievers, and that it was not the custom to give the sisters
and daughters of Musalmans in marriage to unbelievers, but that, if
they would embrace Islam, the matter would be considered. [719] A few
years later, in 1041–1042, a number of Turks who were still heathen and
living in Tibetan territory sought permission from Arslān Khān b. Qadr
Khān to settle in his dominions, having heard of the justice and
mildness of his rule; when they arrived in the neighbourhood of
Bālāsāghūn [720] he sent a message to them urging them to accept Islam;
but they refused, and as he found them to be peaceable and obedient
subjects, he left them alone. There is no record of their conversion,
which probably ensued in course of time; but they can hardly be
identified with the group of ten thousand tents of infidel Turks who
embraced Islam in the following year, as these latter are expressly
stated to have harried and plundered the Musalmans before their
conversion. [721] The invasion of the Qarā Khitāy into Turkistan [722]
dealt a severe blow to the power of Islam, and as late as the
thirteenth century the reports of European travellers show that there
were still important groups of Buddhists, Manichæans and Christians in
these parts. [723]
Of supreme importance to Islam was the conversion of the Saljūq Turks,
but no record of their conversion remains beyond the statement that in
A.D. 956 Saljūq migrated from Turkistan with his clan to the province
of Bukhārā, where he and his people enthusiastically embraced Islam.
[724] This was the origin of the famous Saljūq Turks, whose wars and
conquests revived the fading glory of the Muhammadan arms and united
into one empire the Muslim kingdoms of Western Asia.
When at the close of the twelfth century, the Saljūq empire had lost
all power except in Asia Minor, and when Muḥammad Ghūrī was extending
his empire from Khurāsān eastward across the north of India, there was
a great revival of the Muslim faith among the Afghāns and their country
was overrun by Arab preachers and converts from India, who set about
the task of proselytising with remarkable energy and boldness. [725]
The traditions of the Afghāns represent Islam as having been peaceably
introduced among them. They say that in the first century of the Hijrah
they occupied the Ghūr country to the east of Herāt, and that Khālid b.
Walīd came to them there with the tidings of Islam and invited them to
join the standard of the Prophet; he returned to Muḥammad accompanied
by a deputation of six or seven representative men of the Afghan
people, with their followers, and these, when they went back to their
own country, set to work to convert their fellow-tribesmen. [726] This
tradition is, however, devoid of any historical foundation, and the
earliest authentic record of conversion to Islam from among the Afghans
seems to be that of a king of Kābul in the reign of al-Maʼmūn. [727]
His successors, however, seem to have relapsed to Buddhism, for when
Yaʻqūb b. Layth, the founder of the Ṣaffārid dynasty, extended his
conquests as far as Kābul in 871, he found the ruler of the land to be
an “idolater,” and Kābul now became really Muhammadan for the first
time, the Afghans probably being quite willing to take service in the
army of so redoubtable a conqueror as Yaʻqūb b. Layth, [728] but it was
not until after the conquests of Sabaktigīn and Maḥmūd of Ghazna that
Islam became established throughout Afghanistan.
Of the further history of Islam in Persia and Central Asia some details
will be found in the following chapter.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE MONGOLS AND TATARS.
There is no event in the history of Islam that for terror and
desolation can be compared to the Mongol conquest. Like an avalanche,
the hosts of Chingīz Khān swept over the centres of Muslim culture and
civilisation, leaving behind them bare deserts and shapeless ruins
where before had stood the palaces of stately cities, girt about with
gardens and fruitful corn-land. When the Mongol army had marched out of
the city of Herāt, a miserable remnant of forty persons crept out of
their hiding-places and gazed horror-stricken on the ruins of their
beautiful city—all that were left out of a population of over 100,000.
In Bukhārā, so famed for its men of piety and learning, the Mongols
stabled their horses in the sacred precincts of the mosques and tore up
the Qurʼāns to serve as litter; those of the inhabitants who were not
butchered were carried away into captivity and their city reduced to
ashes. Such too was the fate of Samarqand, Balkh and many another city
of Central Asia, which had been the glories of Islamic civilisation and
the dwelling-places of holy men and the seats of sound learning—such
too the fate of Baghdād that for centuries had been the capital of the
ʻAbbāsid dynasty.
Well might the Muhammadan historian shudder to relate such horrors;
when Ibn al-Athīr comes to describe the inroads of the Mongols into the
countries of Islam, “for many years,” he tells us, “I shrank from
giving a recital of these events on account of their magnitude and my
abhorrence. Even now I come reluctant to the task, for who would deem
it a light thing to sing the death-song of Islam and of the Muslims, or
find it easy to tell this tale? O that my mother had not given me
birth! ‘Oh, would that I had died ere this, and been a thing forgotten,
forgotten quite!’ [729] Many friends have urged me and still I stood
irresolute; but I saw that it was of no profit to forego the task and
so I thus resume. I shall have to describe events so terrible and
calamities so stupendous that neither day nor night have ever brought
forth the like; they fell on all nations, but on the Muslims more than
all; and were one to say that since God created Adam the world has not
seen the like, he would but tell the truth, for history has nothing to
relate that at all approaches it. Among the greatest calamities in
history is the slaughter that Nebuchadnezzar wrought among the children
of Israel and his destruction of the Temple; but what is Jerusalem in
comparison to the countries that these accursed ones laid waste, every
town of which was far greater than Jerusalem, and what were the
children of Israel in comparison to those they slew, since the
inhabitants of one of the cities they destroyed were greater in numbers
than all the children of Israel? Let us hope that the world may never
see the like again.” [730] But Islam was to rise again from the ashes
of its former grandeur and through its preachers win over these savage
conquerors to the acceptance of the faith. This was a task for the
missionary energies of Islam that was rendered more difficult from the
fact that there were two powerful competitors in the field. The
spectacle of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam emulously striving to win
the allegiance of the fierce conquerors that had set their feet on the
necks of adherents of these great missionary religions, is one that is
without parallel in the history of the world.
Before entering on a recital of this struggle, it will be well in order
to the comprehension of what is to follow briefly to glance at the
partition of the Mongol empire after the death of Chingīz Khān, when it
was split up into four sections and divided among his sons. His third
son, Ogotāy, succeeded his father as Khāqān and received as his share
the eastern portion of the empire, in which Qūbīlāy afterwards included
the whole of China. Chaghatāy the second son took the middle kingdom.
Bātū, the son of his first-born Jūjī, ruled the western portion as Khān
of the Golden Horde; Tulūy the fourth son took Persia, to which Hūlāgū,
who founded the dynasty of the Īlkhāns, added a great part of Asia
Minor.
The primitive religion of the Mongols was Shamanism, which while
recognising a supreme God, offered no prayers to Him, but worshipped a
number of inferior divinities, especially the evil spirits whose powers
for harm had to be deprecated by means of sacrifices, and the souls of
ancestors who were considered to exercise an influence on the lives of
their descendants. To propitiate these powers of the heaven and of the
lower world, recourse was had to the Shamans, wizards or medicine-men,
who were credited with possessing mysterious influence over the
elements and the spirits of the departed. Their religion was not one
that was calculated to withstand long the efforts of a proselytising
faith, possessed of a systematic theology capable of satisfying the
demands of the reason and an organised body of religious teachers, when
once the Mongols had been brought into contact with civilised races,
had responded to their civilising influences and begun to pass out of
their nomadic barbarism. It so happened that the civilised races with
which the conquest of the Mongols brought them in contact comprised
large numbers of Buddhists, Christians and Muhammadans, and the
adherents of these three great missionary faiths entered into rivalry
with one another for the conversion of their conquerors. When not
carried away by the furious madness for destruction and insult that
usually characterised their campaigns, the Shamanist Mongols showed
themselves remarkably tolerant of other religions, whose priests were
exempted from taxation and allowed perfect freedom of worship. Buddhist
priests held controversies with the Shamans in the presence of Chingīz
Khān; and at the courts of Mangū Khān and Qūbīlāy the Buddhist and
Christian priests and the Muslim Imāms alike enjoyed the patronage of
the Mongol prince. [731] In the reign of the latter monarch the Mongols
in China began to yield to the powerful influences of the surrounding
Buddhism, and by the beginning of the fourteenth century the Buddhist
faith seems to have gained a complete ascendancy over them. [732] It
was the Lamas of Tibet who showed themselves most zealous in this work
of conversion, and the people of Mongolia to the present day cling to
the same faith, as do the Kalmuks who migrated to Russia in the
seventeenth century.
Although Buddhism made itself finally supreme in the eastern part of
the empire, at first the influence of the Christian Church was by no
means inconsiderable and great hopes were entertained of the conversion
of the Mongols. The Nestorian missionaries in the seventh century had
carried the knowledge of the Christian faith from west to east across
Asia as far as the north of China, and scattered communities were still
to be found in the thirteenth century. The famous Prester John, around
whose name cluster so many legends of the Middle Ages, is supposed to
have been the chief of the Karaïts, a Christian Tartar tribe living to
the south of Lake Baikal. When this tribe was conquered by Chingīz
Khān, he married one of the daughters of the then chief of the tribe,
while his son Ogotāy took a wife from the same family. Ogotāy’s son,
Kuyūk, although he did not himself become a Christian, showed great
favour towards this faith, to which his chief minister and one of his
secretaries belonged. The Nestorian priests were held in high favour at
his court and he received an embassy from Pope Innocent IV. [733] The
Christian powers both of the East and the West looked to the Mongols to
assist them in their wars against the Musalmans. It was Hayton, the
Christian King of Armenia, who was mainly instrumental in persuading
Mangū Khān to despatch the expedition that sacked Baghdād under the
leadership of Hūlāgū, [734] the influence of whose Christian wife led
him to show much favour to the Christians, and especially to the
Nestorians. Many of the Mongols who occupied the countries of Armenia
and Georgia were converted by the Christians of these countries and
received baptism. [735] The marvellous tales of the greatness and
magnificence of Prester John, that fired the imagination of mediæval
Europe, had given rise to a belief that the Mongols were Christians—a
belief which was further strengthened by the false reports that reached
Europe of the conversion of various Mongol princes and their zeal for
the Christian cause. It was under this delusion that St. Louis sent an
ambassador, William of Rubruck, to exhort the great Khāqān to persevere
in his supposed efforts for the spread of the Christian faith. But
these reports were soon discovered to be without any foundation in
fact, though William of Rubruck found that the Christian religion was
freely tolerated at the court of Mangū Khān, and the adhesion of some
few Mongols to this faith made the Christian priests hopeful of still
further conquests. But so long as Latins, Greeks, Nestorians and
Armenians carried their theological differences into the very midst of
the Mongol camp, there was very little hope of much progress being
made, and it is probably this very want of union among the preachers of
Christianity that caused their efforts to meet with so little success
among the Mongols; so that while they were fighting among one another,
Buddhism and Islam were gaining a firm footing for themselves. The
haughty pretensions of the Roman Pontiff soon caused the proud
conquerors of half the world to withdraw from his emissaries what
little favour they might at first have been inclined to show, and many
other circumstances contributed to the failure of the Roman mission.
[736]
As for the Nestorians, who had been first in the field, they appear to
have been too degraded and apathetic to take much advantage of their
opportunities. Of the Nestorians in China, William of Rubruck [737]
says that they were very ignorant and could not even understand their
service books, which were written in Syriac. He accuses them of
drunkenness, polygamy and covetousness, and makes an unfavourable
comparison between their lives and those of the Buddhist priests. Their
bishop paid them very rare visits—sometimes only once in fifty years:
on such occasions he would ordain all the male children, even the
babies in their cradles. The priests were eaten up with simony, made a
traffic of the sacred rites of their Church and concerned themselves
more with money-making than with the propagation of the faith. [738]
In the western parts of the Mongol empire, where the Christians looked
to the newly-risen power to help them in their wars with the Musalmans
and to secure for them the possession of the Holy Land, the alliance
between the Christians and the Īlkhāns of Persia was short-lived, as
the victories of Baybars, the Mamlūk Sultan of Egypt (1260–1277) and
his alliance with Baraka Khān, gave the Īlkhāns quite enough to do to
look after their own interests. The excesses that the Christians of
Damascus and other cities committed during the brief period in which
they enjoyed the favour of this Mongol dynasty of Persia, did much to
discredit the Christian name in Western Asia. [739]
In the course of the struggle, the adherents of either faith were at
times guilty of much brutality. One example may be taken from the
middle of the thirteenth century as told by al-Jūzjānī, who claims to
have heard the story, while in Delhi, from the lips of a certain Sayyid
Ashraf al-Dīn who had come there from Samarqand. “The eminent Sayyid
thus related, that one of the Christians of Samarqand attained unto the
felicity of Islam, and the Musalmans of Samarqand, who are staunch in
their faith, paid him great honour and reverence, and conferred great
benefits upon him. Unexpectedly, one of the haughty Mongol infidels of
China, who possessed power and influence, and the inclinations of which
accursed one were towards the Christian faith, arrived at Samarqand.
The Christians of that city repaired to that Mongol, and complained
saying: ‘The Musalmans are enjoining our children to turn away from the
Christian faith and from serving Jesus—on whom be peace—and calling
upon them to follow the religion of Muṣṭafạ̄ [740]—on whom be peace—and,
in case that gate becomes unclosed, the whole of our dependents will
turn away from the Christian faith. By thy power and authority devise a
settlement of our case.’ The Mongol commanded that the youth, who had
turned Musalman, should be produced, and they tried with blandishment
and kindness, and money and wealth to induce the newly-converted
Musalman to recant, but he refused to recant, and put not off from his
heart and spirit that garment of freshness—the Muslim faith. The Mongol
ruler then turned over a leaf in his temper, and began to speak of
severe punishment; and every punishment, which it was in his power to
inflict, or his severity to devise, he inflicted upon the youth, who,
from his great zeal for the faith of Islam, did not recant, and did not
in any way cast away from his hand the sweet draught of religion
through the blow of infidel perverseness. As the youth continued firm
in the true faith, and paid no heed to the promises and threats of that
depraved company, the accursed Mongol commanded that they should bring
the youth to public punishment; and he departed from the world in the
felicity of religion—may God reward and requite him!—and the Musalman
community in Samarqand were overcome with despondency and consternation
in consequence. A petition was got up, and was attested with the
testimony of the chief men and credible persons of the Musalman
religion dwelling at Samarqand, and we proceeded with that petition to
the camp of Baraka Khān, and presented to him an account of the
proceedings and disposition of the Christians of that city. Zeal for
the Muslim religion was manifested in the mind of that monarch of
exemplary faith, and the defence of the truth became predominant in his
disposition. After some days, he showed honour to this Sayyid,
appointed a body of Turks and confidential persons among the chief
Musalmans, and commanded that they should slaughter the Christian
company who had committed that dire oppression, and despatch them to
hell. When that mandate had been obtained, it was preserved until that
wretched sect had assembled in the church, then they seized them all
together, and despatched the whole of them to hell, and reduced the
church again to bricks.” [741]
For Islam to enter into competition with such powerful rivals as
Buddhism and Christianity were at the outset of the period of Mongol
rule, must have appeared a well-nigh hopeless undertaking. For the
Muslims had suffered more from the storm of the Mongol invasions than
the others. Those cities that had hitherto been the rallying points of
spiritual organisation and learning for Islam in Asia, had been for the
most part laid in ashes: the theologians and pious doctors of the
faith, either slain or carried away into captivity. [742] Among the
Mongol rulers—usually so tolerant towards all religions—there were some
who exhibited varying degrees of hatred towards the Muslim faith.
Chingīz Khān ordered all those who killed animals in the Muhammadan
fashion to be put to death, and this ordinance was revived by Qūbīlāy,
who by offering rewards to informers set on foot a sharp persecution
that lasted for seven years, as many poor persons took advantage of
this ready means of gaining wealth, and slaves accused their masters in
order to gain their freedom. [743] During the reign of Kuyūk
(1246–1248), who left the conduct of affairs entirely to his two
Christian ministers and whose court was filled with Christian monks,
the Muhammadans were made to suffer great severities. [744]
A contemporary historian, al-Jūzjānī, gives the following account of
the kind of treatment to which a Muhammadan theologian might be exposed
at the court of Kuyūk. “Trustworthy persons have related that Kuyūk was
constantly being incited by the Buddhist priests to acts of oppression
towards the Musalmans and the persecution of the faithful. There was an
Imām in that country, one of the men of learning among the Muslims ...
named Nūr al-Dīn, al-Khwārazmī. A number of Christian laymen and
priests and a band of idol-worshipping Buddhist priests made a request
to Kuyūk, asking him to summon that Imām of the Musalmans that they
might hold a controversy with him and get him to prove the superiority
of the faith of Muḥammad and his prophetic mission—otherwise, he should
be put to death. The Khān agreed, the Imām was sent for, and a
discussion ensued upon the claim of Muḥammad to be a prophet and the
manner of his life as compared with that of other prophets. At length,
as the arguments of those accursed ones were weak and devoid of the
force of truth, they withdrew their hand from contradiction and drew
the mark of oppression and outrage on the pages of the business and
asked Kuyūk Khān to tell the Imām to perform two genuflexions in
prayer, according to the rites and ordinances of the Muhammadan law, in
order that his unbecoming movements in the performance of this act of
worship might become manifest to them and to the Khān.” Kuyūk gave the
order accordingly, and the Imām and another Musalman who was with him
performed the ritual of the prayer according to the prescribed forms.
“When the godly Imām and the other Musalman who was with him, had
placed their foreheads on the ground in the act of prostration, some
infidels whom Kuyūk had summoned, greatly annoyed them and knocked
their heads with force upon the ground, and committed other abominable
acts against them. But that godly Imām endured all this oppression and
annoyance and performed all the required forms and ceremonies of the
prayer and in no way curtailed it. When he had repeated the salutation,
he lifted up his face towards heaven and observed the form of ‘Invoke
your Lord with humility and in secret,’ and having asked permission to
depart, he returned unto his own house.” [745]
Arghūn (1284–1291) the fourth Īlkhān persecuted the Musalmans and took
away from them all posts in the departments of justice and finance, and
forbade them to appear at his court. [746]
In spite of all difficulties, however, the Mongols and the savage
tribes that followed in their wake [747] were at length brought to
submit to the faith of those Muslim peoples whom they had crushed
beneath their feet. Unfortunately history sheds little light on the
progress of this missionary movement and only a few details relating to
the conversion of the more prominent converts have been preserved to
us. Scattered up and down throughout the length and breadth of the
Mongol empire, there must have been many of the followers of the
Prophet who laboured successfully and unknown, to win unbelievers to
the faith. In the reign of Ogotāy (1229–1241), we read of a certain
Buddhist governor of Persia, named Kurguz, who in his later years
abjured Buddhism and became a Musalman. [748] In the reign of Tīmūr
Khān (1323–1328), Ānanda, a grandson of Qūbīlāy and viceroy of Kan-Su,
was a zealous Musalman and had converted a great many persons in Tangut
and won over a large number of the troops under his command to the same
faith. He was summoned to court and efforts were made to induce him to
conform to Buddhism, and on his refusing to abandon his faith he was
cast into prison. But he was shortly after set at liberty, for fear of
an insurrection among the inhabitants of Tangut, who were much attached
to him. [749]
The author of the Muntakhab al-Tawārīkh asserts that Ānanda built four
mosques in Khānbāligh (the modern Peking), which provided accommodation
for 1,000,000 men at the time of the Friday prayer; but no credence can
be given to this or to his other statements regarding the spread of
Islam in China, in view of the fact that he represents Ānanda to have
been the successor of Tīmūr Khān on the imperial throne and gives an
entirely fictitious account of his descendants, several of whom are
represented as having professed Islam, though none of the five had any
existence except in the imagination of the writer. [750]
The first Mongol ruling prince who professed Islam was Baraka Khān, who
was chief of the Golden Horde from 1256 to 1267. [751] According to
Abu’l-Ghāzī he was converted after he had come to the throne. He is
said one day to have fallen in with a caravan coming from Bukhārā, and
taking two of the merchants aside, to have questioned them on the
doctrines of Islam, and they expounded to him their faith so
persuasively that he became converted in all sincerity. He first
revealed his change of faith to his youngest brother, whom he induced
to follow his example, and then made open profession of his new belief.
[752] But, according to al-Jūzjānī, Baraka Khān was brought up as a
Musalman from infancy, and, as soon as he was old enough to learn, was
taught the Qurʼān by one of the ʻUlamā of the city of Khujand. [753]
The same author (who compiled his history during the lifetime of Baraka
Khān), states that the whole of his army was Musalman. “Trustworthy
persons have also related that, throughout his whole army, it is the
etiquette for every horseman to have a prayer-carpet with him, so that,
when the time for prayer arrives, they may occupy themselves in their
devotions. Not a person in his whole army takes any intoxicating drink
whatever; and great ʻUlamā, consisting of commentators, traditionists,
jurists, and disputants, are in his society. He has a great number of
religious books, and most of his receptions and debates are with
ʻUlamā. In his place of audience debates on ecclesiastical law
constantly take place; and, in his faith, as a Musalman, he is
exceedingly strict and orthodox.” [754] Baraka Khān entered into a
close alliance with the Mamlūk Sultan of Egypt, Rukn al-Dīn Baybars.
The initiative came from the latter, who had given a hospitable
reception to a body of troops, two hundred in number, belonging to the
Golden Horde; these men, observing the growing enmity between their
Khān and Hūlāgū, the conqueror of Baghdād, in whose army they were
serving, took flight into Syria, whence they were honourably conducted
to Cairo to the court of Baybars, who persuaded them to embrace Islam.
[755] Baybars himself was at war with Hūlāgū, whom he had recently
defeated and driven out of Syria. He sent two of the Mongol fugitives,
with some other envoys, to bear a letter to Baraka Khān. On their
return these envoys reported that each princess and amīr at the court
of Baraka Khān had an imām and a muʼadhdhin, and the children were
taught the Qurʼān in the schools. [756] These friendly relations
between Baybars and Baraka Khān brought many of the Mongols of the
Golden Horde into Egypt, where they were prevailed upon to become
Musalmans. [757]
In Persia, where Hūlāgū founded the dynasty of the Īlkhāns, the
progress of Islam among the Mongols was much slower. In order to
strengthen himself against the attacks of Baraka Khān and the Sultan of
Egypt, Hūlāgū accepted the alliance of the Christian powers of the
East, such as the king of Armenia and the Crusaders. His favourite wife
was a Christian and favourably disposed the mind of her husband towards
her co-religionists, and his son Abāqā Khān married the daughter of the
Emperor of Constantinople. Though Abāqā Khān did not himself become a
Christian, his court was filled with Christian priests, and he sent
envoys to several of the princes of Europe—St. Louis of France, King
Charles of Sicily and King James of Aragon—to solicit their alliance
against the Muhammadans; to the same end also, an embassy of sixteen
Mongols was sent to the Council of Lyons in 1274, where the spokesman
of this embassy embraced Christianity and was baptised with some of his
companions. Great hopes were entertained of the conversion of Abāqā,
but they proved fruitless. His brother Takūdār, [758] who succeeded
him, was the first of the Īlkhāns who embraced Islam. He had been
brought up as a Christian, for (as a contemporary Christian writer
[759] tells us), “he was baptised when young and called by the name of
Nicholas. But when he was grown up, through his intercourse with
Saracens of whom he was very fond, he became a base Saracen, and,
renouncing the Christian faith, wished to be called Muḥammad Khān, and
strove with all his might that the Tartars should be converted to the
faith and sect of Muḥammad, and when they proved obstinate, not daring
to force them, he brought about their conversion by giving them honours
and favours and gifts, so that in his time many Tartars were converted
to the faith of the Saracens.” This prince sent the news of his
conversion to the Sultan of Egypt in the following letter:—“By the
power of God Almighty, the mandate of Aḥmad to the Sultan of Egypt. God
Almighty (praised be His name!) by His grace preventing us and by the
light of His guidance, hath guided us in our early youth and vigour
into the true path of the knowledge of His deity and the confession of
His unity, to bear witness that Muḥammad (on whom rest the highest
blessings!) is the Prophet of God, and to reverence His saints and His
pious servants. ‘Whom God shall please to guide, that man’s breast will
He open to Islam.’ [760] We ceased not to incline our heart to the
promotion of the faith and the improvement of the condition of Islam
and the Muslims, up to the time when the succession to the empire came
to us from our illustrious father and brother, and God spread over us
the glory of His grace and kindness, so that in the abundance of His
favours our hopes were realised, and He revealed to us the bride of the
kingdom, and she was brought forth to us a noble spouse. A Qūriltāy or
general assembly was convened, wherein our brothers, our sons, great
nobles, generals of the army and captains of the forces, met to hold
council; and they were all agreed on carrying out the order of our
elder brother, viz. to summon here a vast levy of our troops whose
numbers would make the earth, despite its vastness, appear too narrow,
whose fury and fierce onset would fill the hearts of men with fear,
being animated with a courage before which the mountain peaks bow down,
and a firm purpose that makes the hardest rocks grow soft. We reflected
on this their resolution which expressed the wish of all, and we
concluded that it ran counter to the aim we had in view—to promote the
common weal, i.e. to strengthen the ordinance of Islam; never, as far
as lies in our power, to issue any order that will not tend to prevent
bloodshed, remove the ills of men, and cause the breeze of peace and
prosperity to blow on all lands, and the kings of other countries to
rest upon the couch of affection and benevolence, whereby the commands
of God will be honoured and mercy be shown to the people of God.
Herein, God inspired us to quench this fire and put an end to these
terrible calamities, and make known to those who advanced this proposal
(of a levy) what it is that God has put into our hearts to do, namely,
to employ all possible means for the healing of all the sickness of the
world, and putting off what should only be appealed to as the last
remedy. For we desire not to hasten to appeal to arms, until we have
first declared the right path, and will permit it only after setting
forth the truth and establishing it with proofs. Our resolve to carry
out whatever appears to us good and advantageous has been strengthened
by the counsels of the Shaykh al-Islām, the model of divines, who has
given us much assistance in religious matters. We have appointed our
chief justice, Qutb al-Dīn and the Atābak, Bahā al-Dīn, both
trustworthy persons of this flourishing kingdom, to make known to you
our course of action and bear witness to our good intentions for the
common weal of the Muslims; and to make it known that God has
enlightened us, and that Islam annuls all that has gone before it, and
that God Almighty has put it into our hearts to follow the truth and
those who practice it.... If some convincing proof be required, let men
observe our actions. By the grace of God, we have raised aloft the
standards of the faith, and borne witness to it in all our orders and
our practice, so that the ordinances of the law of Muḥammad may be
brought to the fore and firmly established in accordance with the
principles of justice laid down by Aḥmad. Whereby we have filled the
hearts of the people with joy, have granted free pardon to all
offenders, and shown them indulgences, saying, ‘May God pardon the
past!’ We have reformed all matters concerning the pious endowments of
Muslims given for mosques, colleges, charitable institutions, and the
rebuilding of caravanserais; we have restored their incomes to those to
whom they were due according to the terms laid down by the donors....
We have ordered the pilgrims to be treated with respect, provision to
be made for their caravans and for securing their safety on the pilgrim
routes; we have given perfect freedom to merchants, travelling from one
country to another, that they may go wherever they please; and we have
strictly prohibited our soldiers and police from interfering with them
in their comings or goings.” He seeks the alliance of the Sultan of
Egypt “so that these countries and cities may again be populated, these
terrible calamities be put down, the sword be returned to the scabbard;
that all peoples may dwell in peace and quietness, and the necks of the
Muslims be freed from the ills of humiliation and disgrace.” [761]
To the student of the history of the Mongols it is a relief to pass
from the recital of nameless horrors and continual bloodshed to a
document emanating from a Mongol prince and giving expression to such
humane and benevolent sentiments, which sound strange indeed coming
from such lips.
This conversion of their chief and the persecutions that he inflicted
on the Christians gave great offence to the Mongols, who, although not
Christians themselves, had been long accustomed to intercourse with the
Christians, and they denounced their chief to Qūbīlāy Khān as one who
had abandoned the footsteps of his forefathers. A revolt broke out
against him, headed by his nephew Arghūn, who compassed his death and
succeeded him on the throne. During his brief reign (1284–1291), the
Christians were once more restored to favour, while the Musalmans had
to suffer persecution in their turn, were dismissed from their posts
and driven away from the court. [762]
The successors of Takūdār were all heathen, until, in 1295, Ghāzān, the
seventh and greatest of the Īlkhāns, became a Musalman and made Islam
the ruling religion of Persia. During the last three reigns the
Christians had entertained great hopes of the conversion of the ruling
family of Persia, who had shown them such distinguished favour and
entrusted them with so many important offices of state. His immediate
predecessor, the insurgent Baydū Khān, who occupied the throne for a
few months only in 1295, carried his predilection for Christianity so
far as to try to put a stop to the spread of Islam among the Mongols,
and accordingly forbade any one to preach the doctrines of this faith
among them. [763]
Ghāzān himself before his conversion had been brought up as a Buddhist
and had erected several Buddhist temples in Khurāsān, and took great
pleasure in the company of the priests of this faith, who had come into
Persia in large numbers since the establishment of the Mongol supremacy
over that country. [764] He appears to have been naturally of a
religious turn of mind, for he studied the creeds of the different
religions of his time, and used to hold discussions with the learned
doctors of each faith. [765] Rashīd al-Dīn, his learned minister and
the historian of his reign, maintained the genuineness of his
conversion to Islam, the religious observances of which he zealously
kept throughout his whole reign, though his contemporaries (and later
writers have often re-echoed the imputation) represented him as having
only yielded to the solicitations of some Amīrs and Shaykhs. [766]
“Besides, what interested motive,” asks his apologist, “could have led
so powerful a sovereign to change his faith: much less, a prince whose
pagan ancestors had conquered the world?” His conversion, however,
certainly won over to his side the hearts of the Persians, when he was
contending with Baydū for the throne, and the Muhammadan Mongols in the
army of his rival deserted to support the cause of their
co-religionist. These were the very considerations that were urged upon
Ghāzān by Nawrūz, a Muhammadan Amīr who had espoused his cause and who
hailed him as the prince who, according to a prophecy, was to appear
about this time to protect the faith of Islam and restore it to its
former splendour: if he embraced Islam, he could become the ruler of
Persia: the Musalmans, delivered from the grievous yoke of the Pagan
Mongols, would espouse his cause, and God, recognising in him the
saviour of the true faith from utter destruction, would bless his arms
with victory. [767] After hesitating a little, Ghāzān made a public
profession of the faith, and his officers and soldiers followed his
example: he distributed alms to men of piety and learning and visited
the mosques and tombs of the saints and in every way showed himself an
exemplary Muslim ruler. His brother, Uljāytū, who succeeded him in
1304, under the name of Muḥammad Khudābandah, had been brought up as a
Christian in the faith of his mother and had been baptised under the
name of Nicholas, but after his mother’s death, while he was still a
young man, he became a convert to Islam through the persuasions of his
wife. [768] Ibn Baṭūṭah says that his example exercised a great
influence on the Mongols. [769] From this time forward Islam became the
paramount faith in the kingdom of the Īlkhāns.
The details that we possess of the progress of Islam in the Middle
Kingdom, which fell to the lot of Chaghatāy and his descendants, are
still more meagre. Several of the princes of this line had a Muhammadan
minister in their service, but they showed themselves unsympathetic to
the faith of Islam. Chaghatāy harassed his Muhammadan subjects by
regulations that restricted their ritual observances in respect of the
killing of animals for food and of ceremonial washings. Al-Jūzjānī says
that he was the bitterest enemy of the Muslims among all the Mongol
rulers and did not wish any one to utter the word Musalman before him
except with evil purpose. [770] Orghana, the wife of his grandson and
successor, Qarā-Hūlāgū, brought up her son as a Musalman, and under the
name of Mubārak Shāh he came forward in 1264 as one of the claimants of
the disputed succession to the Chaghatāy Khānate; but he was soon
driven from the throne by his cousin Burāq Khān, and appears to have
exercised no influence on behalf of his faith, indeed judging from
their names it would not appear that any of his own children even
adopted the religion of their father. [771] Burāq Khān is said to have
“had the blessedness of receiving the light of the faith” a few days
before his death in 1270, and to have taken the name of Sulṭān Ghiyāth
al-Dīn, [772] but he was buried according to the ancient funeral rites
of the Mongols, and not as a Musalman, and those who had been converted
during his reign relapsed into their former heathenism. It was not
until the next century that the conversion of Ṭarmāshīrīn Khān, about
1326, caused Islam to be at all generally adopted by the Chaghatāy
Mongols, who when they followed the example of their chief this time
remained true to their new faith. But even now the ascendancy of Islam
was not assured, for Būzun who was Khān in the next decade—the
chronology is uncertain—drove Ṭarmāshīrīn from his throne, and
persecuted the Muslims, [773] and it was not until some years later
that we hear of the first Musalman king of Kāshgar, which the break-up
of the Chaghatāy dynasty had erected into a separate kingdom. This
prince, Tūqluq Tīmūr Khān (1347–1363), is said to have owed his
conversion to a holy man from Bukhārā, by name Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn.
This Shaykh, in company with a number of travellers, had unwittingly
trespassed on the game-preserves of the prince, who ordered them to be
bound hand and foot and brought before him. In reply to his angry
question, how they had dared interfere with his hunting, the Shaykh
pleaded that they were strangers and were quite unaware that they were
trespassing on forbidden ground. Learning that they were Persians, the
prince said that a dog was worth more than a Persian. “Yes,” replied
the Shaykh, “if we had not the true faith, we should indeed be worse
than the dogs.” Struck with his reply, the Khān ordered this bold
Persian to be brought before him on his return from hunting, and taking
him aside asked him to explain what he meant by these words and what
was “faith.” The Shaykh then set before him the doctrines of Islam with
such fervour and zeal that the heart of the Khān that before had been
hard as a stone was melted like wax, and so terrible a picture did the
holy man draw of the state of unbelief, that the prince was convinced
of the blindness of his own errors, but said, “Were I now to make
profession of the faith of Islam, I should not be able to lead my
subjects into the true path. But bear with me a little; and when I have
entered into the possession of the kingdom of my forefathers, come to
me again.” For the empire of Chaghatāy had by this time been broken up
into a number of petty princedoms, and it was many years before Tūqluq
Tīmūr succeeded in uniting under his sway the whole empire as before.
Meanwhile Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn had returned to his home, where he fell
dangerously ill: when at the point of death, he said to his son Rashīd
al-Dīn, “Tūqluq Tīmūr will one day become a great monarch; fail not to
go and salute him in my name and fearlessly remind him of the promise
he made me.” Some years later, when Tūqluq Tīmūr had re-won the empire
of his fathers, Rashīd al-Dīn made his way to the camp of the Khān to
fulfil the last wishes of his father, but in spite of all his efforts
he could not gain an audience of the Khān. At length he devised the
following expedient: one day in the early morning, he began to chant
the call to prayers, close to the Khān’s tent. Enraged at having his
slumbers disturbed in this way, the prince ordered him to be brought
into his presence, whereupon Rashīd al-Dīn delivered his father’s
message. Tūqluq Khān was not unmindful of his promise, and said: “Ever
since I ascended the throne I have had it on my mind that I made that
promise, but the person to whom I gave the pledge never came. Now you
are welcome.” He then repeated the profession of faith and became a
Muslim. “On that morn the sun of bounty rose out of the east of divine
favour and effaced the dark night of unbelief.... They then decided
that for the propagation of Islam they should interview the princes one
by one, and it should be well for those who accepted the faith, but
those who refused should be slain as heathens and idolaters.” The first
to be examined was a noble named Amīr Tūlik. The Khān asked him, “Will
you embrace Islam?” Amīr Tūlik burst into tears and said: “Three years
ago I was converted by some holy men at Kāshgar and became a Musalman,
but from fear of you I did not openly declare it.” Then Tūqluq Khān
rose up and embraced him, and the three sat down again together. In
this manner they examined the princes one by one, and they all accepted
Islam, with the exception of one named Jarās, who suggested a trial of
strength between the Shaykh and his servant, an infidel who was above
the ordinary stature of man and so strong that he could lift a
two-year-old camel. The Shaykh accepted the challenge, saying: “If I do
not throw him, I will not require you to become a Musalman. If it is
God’s wish that the Mongols become honoured with the blessed state of
Islam, He will doubtless give me sufficient power to overcome this
man.” Tūqluq Khān and those who had become Musalmans with him tried to
dissuade the holy man, but he persisted in his purpose. “A large crowd
assembled, the infidel was brought in, and he and the Shaykh advanced
towards one another. The infidel, proud of his own strength, advanced
with a conceited air. The Shaykh looked very small and weak beside him.
When they came to blows, the Shaykh struck the infidel full in the
chest, and he fell senseless. After a little he came to again, and
having raised himself, fell again at the feet of the Shaykh, crying out
and uttering words of belief. The people raised loud shouts of
applause, and on that day 160,000 persons cut off the hair of their
heads and became Musalmans. The Khān was circumcised, and the lights of
Islam dispelled the shades of unbelief.” From that time Islam became
the established faith in the settled countries under the rule of the
descendants of Chaghatāy. [774] But many of the nomad Mongols appear to
have remained outside the pale of Islam up to the early part of the
fifteenth century, judging from the violent methods adopted for their
conversion by Muḥammad Khān, who was Khān of Mughalistān [775] about
1416. “Muḥammad Khān was a wealthy prince and a good Musalman. He
persisted in following the road of justice and equity, and was so
unremitting in his exertions, that during his blessed reign most of the
tribes of the Mongols became Musalmans. It is well known what severe
measures he had recourse to, in bringing the Mongols to be believers in
Islam. If, for instance, a Mongol did not wear a turban, a horseshoe
nail was driven into his head: and treatment of this kind was common.
May God recompense him with good.” [776]
Even such drastic measures were ineffectual in bringing about a general
acceptance of Islam, for as late as at the close of the following
century, [777] a dervish named Isḥāq Walī found scope for his
proselytising activities in Kāshgar, Yārkand and Khotan, where he spent
twelve years in spreading the faith; [778] he also worked among the
Kirghiz and Kazaks, from among whom he made 180 converts and destroyed
eighteen temples of idols. [779]
In the preceding pages some attempt has been made to indicate some of
the steps by which the Muslims won over to their faith the savage
hordes who had destroyed their centres of culture. By slow degrees,
Islam thus began to emerge out of the ruins of its former ascendancy
and take its place again as a dominant faith, after more than a century
of depression. In the course of the struggle between the followers of
rival creeds for the adherence of the Mongols, considerations of
political expediency undoubtedly operated in favour of the Muslim
party, and the intrigues of Western Christendom caused the Christians
to become suspect, as agents of a foreign power; but at the beginning
such of the Mongols as were Nestorians could put forward a better claim
to be the national party and could attack the Musalmans as adherents of
a foreign faith. Aḥmad Takūdār was denounced by Arghūn as a traitor to
the law of his fathers, in that he had followed the way of the Arabs
which none of his ancestors had known. [780] The insurrection that
caused Ṭarmāshīrīn to be driven into exile, gained strength from the
complaint that this monarch had disregarded the Yassāq or ancient code
of Mongol institutes. [781] But though the issue of the struggle long
remained doubtful, Islam gradually gained ground in the lands of which
it had been dispossessed. The means whereby this success was achieved
are obscure, and the scanty details set forth above leave much of the
tale untold, but enough has been recorded to indicate some of the
proselytising agencies that led to individual conversions. Ānanda drank
in Islam with his foster-mother’s milk; [782] and the remnant of the
faithful, especially the older families of Muhammadan Turks, exercised
an almost insensible influence on the Mongols who settled down in their
midst. But of special importance among the proselytising agencies at
work was the influence of the pīr and his spiritual disciples. In the
midst of the profound discouragement which filled the Musalmans after
the flood of the Mongol conquest had poured over them, their first
refuge was in mysticism, and the pīr, or spiritual guide, and religious
orders—such as the Naqshbandī, which in the fourteenth century entered
on a new period of its development—breathed new life into the Muslim
community and inspired it with fresh fervour. “In the hands of the pīr
and his monks, the Musalman in Asia came to be an agent, at first
passive and unconscious, later on the adherent of a party—the party of
the national faith, in opposition to the rule of the Mongols, which was
at once foreign, barbaric and secular.” [783]
Let us now return to the history of Islam in the Golden Horde. The
chief camping ground of this section of the Mongols was the grassy
plain watered by the Volga, on the bank of which they founded their
capital city Serai, whither the Russian princes sent their tribute to
the khān. The conversion of Baraka Khān, of which mention has been made
above, and the close intercourse with Egypt that subsequently sprang
up, contributed considerably to the progress of Islam, and his example
seems to have been gradually followed by those of the aristocracy and
leaders of the Golden Horde that were of Mongol descent. But many
tribes of the Golden Horde appear to have resented the introduction of
Islam into their midst, and when the conversion of Baraka Khān was
openly proclaimed, they sent to offer the crown, of which they
considered him now unworthy, to his rival Hūlāgū. Indeed, so strong was
this opposition, that it seems to have largely contributed to the
formation of the Nogais as a separate tribe. They took their name from
Nogāy, who was the chief commander of the Mongol forces under Baraka
Khān. When the other princes of the Golden Horde became Musalmans,
Nogāy remained a Shamanist and thus became a rallying point for those
who refused to abandon the old religion of the Mongols. His daughter,
however, who was married to a Shamanist, became converted to Islam some
time after her marriage and had to endure the ill-treatment and
contempt of her husband in consequence. [784]
To Ūzbek Khān, who was leader of the Golden Horde from 1313 to 1340,
and who distinguished himself by his proselytising zeal, it was said,
“Content yourself with our obedience, what matters our religion to you?
Why should we abandon the faith of Chingīz Khān for that of the Arabs?”
But in spite of the strong opposition to his efforts, Ūzbek Khān
succeeded in winning many converts to the faith of which he was so
ardent a follower and which owed to his efforts its firm establishment
in the country under his sway. [785] A further sign of his influence is
found in the tribes of the Ūzbeks of Central Asia, who take their name
from him and were probably converted during his reign. He is said to
have formed the design of spreading the faith of Islam throughout the
whole of Russia, [786] but here he met with no success. Indeed, though
the Mongols were paramount in Russia for two centuries, they appear to
have exercised very little influence on the people of that country, and
least of all in the matter of religion. It is noticeable, moreover,
that in spite of his zeal for the spread of his own faith, Ūzbek Khān
was very tolerant towards his Christian subjects, who were left
undisturbed in the exercise of their religion and even allowed to
pursue their missionary labours in his territory. One of the most
remarkable documents of Muhammadan toleration is the charter that Ūzbek
Khān granted to the Metropolitan Peter in 1313:—“By the will and power,
the greatness and mercy of the most High! Ūzbek to all our princes,
great and small, etc., etc. Let no man insult the metropolitan church
of which Peter is the head, or his servants or his churchmen; let no
man seize their property, goods or people, let no man meddle with the
affairs of the metropolitan church, since they are divine. Whoever
shall meddle therein and transgress our edict, will be guilty before
God and feel His wrath and be punished by us with death. Let the
metropolitan dwell in the path of safety and rejoice, with a just and
upright heart let him (or his deputy) decide and regulate all
ecclesiastical matters. We solemnly declare that neither we nor our
children nor the princes of our realm nor the governors of our
provinces will in any way interfere with the affairs of the church and
the metropolitan, or in their towns, districts, villages, chases and
fisheries, their hives, lands, meadows, forests, towns and places under
their bailiffs, their vineyards, mills, winter quarters for cattle, or
any of the properties and goods of the church. Let the mind of the
metropolitan be always at peace and free from trouble, with uprightness
of heart let him pray to God for us, our children and our nation.
Whoever shall lay hands on anything that is sacred, shall be held
guilty, he shall incur the wrath of God and the penalty of death, that
others may be dismayed at his fate. When the tribute or other dues,
such as custom duties, plough-tax, tolls or relays are levied, or when
we wish to raise troops among our subjects, let nothing be exacted from
the cathedral churches under the metropolitan Peter, or from any of his
clergy: ... whatever may be exacted from the clergy, shall be returned
threefold.... Their laws, their churches, their monasteries and chapels
shall be respected; whoever condemns or blames this religion, shall not
be allowed to excuse himself under any pretext, but shall be punished
with death. The brothers and sons of priests and deacons, living at the
same table and in the same house, shall enjoy the same privileges.”
[787]
That these were no empty words and that the toleration here promised
became a reality, may be judged from a letter sent to the Khān by Pope
John XXII in 1318, in which he thanks the Muslim prince for the favour
he showed to his Christian subjects and the kind treatment they
received at his hands. [788] The successors of Ūzbek Khān do not appear
to have been animated by the same zeal for the spread of Islam as he
had shown, and could not be expected to succeed where he failed. So
long as the Russians paid their taxes, they were left free to worship
according to their own desires, and the Christian religion had become
too closely intertwined with the life of the people to be disturbed,
even had efforts been made to turn them from the faith of their
fathers; for Christianity had been the national religion of the Russian
people for well-nigh three centuries before the Mongols established
themselves in Russian territory.
Another race many years before had tried to win the Russians to Islam
but had likewise failed, viz. the Muslim Bulgarians who were found in
the tenth century on the banks of the Volga, and who probably owed
their conversion to the Muslim merchants, trading in furs and other
commodities of the North; their conversion must have taken place some
time before A.D. 921, when the caliph al-Muqtadir sent an envoy to
confirm them in the faith and instruct them in the tenets and
ordinances of Islam. [789]
These Bulgarians attempted the conversion of Vladimir, the then
sovereign of Russia, who (the Russian chronicler tells us) had found it
necessary to choose some religion better than his pagan creed, but they
failed to overcome his objections to the rite of circumcision and to
the prohibition of wine, the use of which, he declared, the Russians
could never give up, as it was the very joy of their life. Equally
unsuccessful were the Jews who came from the country of the Khazars on
the Caspian Sea and had won over the king of that people to the Mosaic
faith. [790] After listening to their arguments, Vladimir asked them
where their country was. “Jerusalem,” they replied, “but God in His
anger has scattered us over the whole world.” “Then you are cursed of
God,” cried the king, “and yet want to teach others: begone! we have no
wish, like you, to be without a country.” The most favourable
impression was made by a Greek priest who, after a brief criticism of
the other religions, set forth the whole scheme of Christian teaching
beginning with the creation of the world and the story of the fall of
man and ending with the seven œcumenical councils accepted by the Greek
Church; then he showed the prince a picture of the Last Judgment with
the righteous entering paradise and the wicked being thrust down into
hell, and promised him the heritage of heaven, if he would be baptised.
But Vladimir was unwilling to make a rash choice of a substitute for
his pagan religion, so he called his boyards together and having told
them of the accounts he had received of the various religions, asked
them for their advice. “Prince,” they replied, “every man praises his
own religion, and if you would make choice of the best, send wise men
into the different countries to discover which of all the nations
honours God in the manner most worthy of Him.” So the prince chose out
for this purpose ten men who were eminent for their wisdom. These
ambassadors found among the Bulgarians mean-looking places of worship,
gloomy prayers and solemn faces; among the German Catholics religious
ceremonies that lacked both grandeur and magnificence. At length they
reached Constantinople: “Let them see the glory of our God,” said the
Emperor. So they were taken to the church of Santa Sophia, where the
Patriarch, clad in his pontifical robes, was celebrating mass. The
magnificence of the building, the rich vestments of the priests, the
ornaments of the altars, the sweet odour of the incense, the reverent
silence of the people, and the mysterious solemnity of the ceremonial
filled the savage Russians with wonder and amazement. It seemed to them
that this church must be the dwelling of the Most High, and that He
manifested His glory therein to mortals. On their return to Kief, the
ambassadors gave the prince an account of their mission; they spoke
with contempt of the religion of the Prophet and had little to say for
the Roman Catholic faith, but were enthusiastic in their eulogies of
the Greek Church. “Every man,” they said, “who has put his lips to a
sweet draught, henceforth abhors anything bitter; wherefore we having
come to the knowledge of the faith of the Greek Church desire none
other.” Vladimir once more consulted his boyards, who said unto him,
“Had not the Greek faith been best of all, Olga, your grandmother, the
wisest of mortals, would never have embraced it.” Whereupon Vladimir
hesitated no longer and in A.D. 988 declared himself a Christian. On
the day after his baptism he threw down the idols his forefathers had
worshipped, and issued an edict that all the Russians, masters and
slaves, rich and poor, should submit to be baptised into the Christian
faith. [791]
Thus Christianity became the national religion of the Russian people,
and after the Mongol conquest, the distinctive national characteristics
of Russians and Tatars that have kept the two races apart to the
present day, the bitter hatred of the Tatar yoke, the devotion of the
Russians to their own faith and the want of religious zeal on the part
of the Tatars, kept the conquered race from adopting the religion of
the conqueror. Especially has the prohibition of spirituous liquors by
the laws of Islam been supposed to have stood in the way of the
adoption of this religion by the Russian people.
It would appear that not until after the promulgation of the edict of
religious toleration in 1905 throughout the Russian empire and the
active Muslim propaganda that followed it, were cases observed of
Russians being converted to Islam, and those that have occurred are
ascribed to the strong attraction of the material help offered by the
Tatars to such converts and the influence of the moral strength of the
Muslims themselves. [792]
Not that the Tatars in Russia had been altogether inoperative in
promoting the spread of Islam during the preceding centuries. The
distinctly Hellenic type of face that is to be found among the
so-called Tatars of the Crimea has led to the conjecture that these
Muhammadans have absorbed into their community the Greek and Italian
populations that they found settled on the Crimean peninsula, and that
we find among them the Muhammadanised descendants of the indigenous
inhabitants, and of the Genoese colonists. [793] A traveller of the
seventeenth century tells us that the Tatars of the Crimea tried to
induce their slaves to become Muhammadans, and won over many of them to
this faith by promising them their liberty if they would be persuaded.
[794] Conversions to Islam from among the Tatars of the Crimea are also
reported after the proclamation of religious liberty in 1905. [795]
A brief reference may here be made to the Tatars in Lithuania, where
small groups of them have been settled since the early part of the
fifteenth century; these Muslim immigrants, dwelling in the midst of a
Christian population, have preserved their old faith, but (probably for
political reasons) do not appear to have attempted to proselytise. But
they have been in the habit of marrying Lithuanian and Polish women,
whose children were always brought up as Muslims, whereas no Muhammadan
girl was permitted to marry a Christian. The grand dukes of Lithuania
in the fifteenth century encouraged the marriage of Christian women
with their Tatar troops, on whom they bestowed grants of land and other
privileges. [796]
One of the most curious incidents in the missionary history of Islam is
the conversion of the Kirghiz of Central Asia by Tatar mullās, who
preached Islam among them in the eighteenth century, as emissaries of
the Russian government. The Kirghiz began to come under Russian rule
about 1731, and for 120 years all diplomatic correspondence was carried
on with them in the Tatar language under the delusion that they were
ethnographically the same as the Tatars of the Volga. Another
misunderstanding on the part of the Russian government was that the
Kirghiz were Musalmans, whereas in the eighteenth century they were
nearly all Shamanists, as a large number of them were still up to the
middle of the nineteenth century. At the time of the annexation of
their country to the Russian empire only a few of their Khāns and
Sulṭāns had any knowledge of the faith of Islam—and that very confused
and vague. Not a single mosque was to be found throughout the whole of
the Kirghiz Steppes, or a single religious teacher of the faith of the
Prophet, and the Kirghiz owed their conversion to Islam to the fact
that the Russians, taking them for Muhammadans, insisted on treating
them as such. Large sums of money were given for the building of
mosques, and mullās were sent to open schools and instruct the young in
the tenets of the Muslim faith: the Kirghiz scholars were to receive
every day a small sum to support themselves on, and the fathers were to
be induced to send their children to the schools by presents and other
means of persuasion. An incontrovertible proof that the Musalman
propaganda made its way into the Kirghiz Steppes from the side of
Russia, is the circumstance that it was especially those Kirghiz who
were more contiguous to Europe that first became Musalmans, and the old
Shamanism lingered up to the nineteenth century among those who
wandered in the neighbourhood of Khiva, Bukhārā and Khokand, though
these for centuries had been Muhammadan countries. [797]
This is probably the only instance of a Christian government
co-operating in the promulgation of Islam, and is the more remarkable
inasmuch as the Russian government of this period was attempting to
force Christianity on its Muslim subjects in Europe, in continuation of
the efforts made in the sixteenth century soon after the conquest of
the Khanate of Kazan.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century many of the Kirghiz dwelling
in the vast plains stretching southwards from the district of Tobolsk
towards Turkistan were still heathen, and the Russian government was
approached for permission for a Christian mission to be established
among them. But this request was not granted, on the ground that “these
people were as yet too wild and savage to be accessible to the Gospel.
But soon after other missionaries, not depending on the good-will of
any government, and having more zeal and understanding, occupied this
field and won the whole of the Kirghis tribe to the faith of Islam.”
[798]
After the conquest of Kazan by the Russians in the sixteenth century,
the occupation of the former Tatar Khanate was followed up by an
official Christian missionary movement, and a number of the heathen
population of the Khanate were baptised, the labours of the clergy
being actively seconded by the police and the civil authorities, but as
the Russian priests did not understand the language of their converts
and soon neglected them, it had to be admitted that the new converts
“shamelessly retain many horrid Tartar customs, and neither hold nor
know the Christian faith.” When spiritual exhortations failed, the
government ordered its officials to “pacify, imprison, put in irons,
and thereby unteach and frighten from the Tartar faith those who,
though baptised, do not obey the admonitions of the Metropolitan.”
In the eighteenth century the Russian government made fresh efforts to
convert the heathen tribes and the relapsed Tatars, and held out many
inducements to them to become baptised. Catherine II in 1778 ordered
that all the new converts should sign a written promise to the effect
that “they would completely forsake their infidel errors, and, avoiding
all intercourse with unbelievers, would hold firmly and unwaveringly
the Christian faith and its dogmas.” But in spite of all, these
so-called “baptised Tartars” were Christians only in name, and soon
began to try to escape from the propagandist efforts of the Orthodox
Church and abandoned Christianity for Islam, their so-called conversion
merely serving as a stepping-stone to their entrance into the faith of
the Prophet.
They may, indeed, have been inscribed in the official registers as
Christians, but they resolutely stood out against any efforts that were
made to Christianise them. In a semi-official article, published in
1872, the writer says: “It is a fact worthy of attention that a long
series of evident apostasies coincides with the beginning of measures
to confirm the converts in the Christian faith. There must be,
therefore, some collateral cause producing those cases of apostasy
precisely at the moment when the contrary might be expected.” The fact
seems to be that these Tatars having all the time remained Muhammadan
at heart, resisted the active measures taken to make their nominal
profession of Christianity in any way a reality. [799] But in the
latter part of the nineteenth century efforts were made to Christianise
these heathen and Muslim tribes by means of schools established in
their midst. In this way it was hoped to win the younger generation,
since otherwise it seemed impossible to gain an entrance for
Christianity among the Tatars, for, as a Russian professor said, “The
citizens of Kazan are hard to win, but we get some little folk from the
villages on the steppe, and train them in the fear of God. Once they
are with us they can never turn back.” [800] For the Russian criminal
code used to contain severe enactments against those who fell away from
the Orthodox Church, [801] and sentenced any person convicted of
converting a Christian to Islam to the loss of all civil rights and to
imprisonment with hard labour for a term varying from eight to ten
years. In spite, however, of the edicts of the government, Muslim
propagandism succeeded in winning over whole villages to the faith of
Islam, especially among the tribes of north-eastern Russia. [802]
The town of Kazan is the chief centre of this missionary activity; a
large number of Muslim publications are printed here every year, and
mullās go forth from the University to convert the pagans in the
villages and bring back to Islam the Tatars who have allowed themselves
to be baptised. The increasing number of these Christian Tatars, who
have gone to swell the ranks of Islam, has alarmed the clergy of the
Orthodox Church, but their efforts have failed to check the success of
the mullās. [803] Especially since the edict of toleration in 1905,
mass conversions have been reported, e.g. in 1909, ninety-one families
in the village of Atomva are said to have become Muhammadan, [804] and
as many as 53,000 persons between 1906 and 1910. [805] This propaganda
is said to owe much of its success to the higher moral level of life in
Muslim society, as well as to the stronger feeling of solidarity that
prevails in it; [806] moreover, the methods adopted by the Russian
clergy, supported by the government, to make the so-called Christian
Tatars more orthodox, have caused the Christian faith to become
unpopular among them. [807] On the other hand, the propaganda of Islam
is very zealously carried forward; “every simple, untaught Moslem is a
missionary of his religion, and the poor, dark, untaught heathen or
half-heathen tribes cannot resist their force. In many villages of
baptised aborigines the men go away for the winter to work as tailors
in Moslem villages. There they are converted to Islam, and they return
to their villages as fanatics bringing with them Moslem ideas with
which to influence their homes.” [808]
The tribes that have chiefly come under the influence of this
missionary movement are the Votiaks, the greater part of whom are
baptised Christians, but many became Muslims in the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth centuries; and the influence of Islam is
continually growing both among those that are Christian and among the
small remnant that is still heathen. The Cheremiss, like the Votiaks,
are a Finnish tribe, about a quarter of whom are still heathen, but
many have already embraced Islam and it is probable that most of them
will soon adopt the same religion. The movement of the Cheremiss
towards Islam made itself manifest in the nineteenth century and though
many of them were nominally Christian, whole villages of them became
Muhammadan despite the laws forbidding conversion except to the
Orthodox Church. [809] They became Muhammadan through their immediate
contact with the Bashkirs and Tatars, whose family and social customs
were very similar to their own. The process sometimes began with
intermarriages with Muhammadans—e.g. in one village a Cheremiss family
intermarried with some Bashkirs and adopted their faith; the converts
being persecuted as “circumcised dogs” in their own village, moved away
and founded a new settlement some miles off, some wealthy Bashkirs
helping them with money; but as they were officially registered as
heathen, they could not get permission for the building of a mosque, so
a few Bashkir families in the neighbourhood moved into the new
settlement, in order to make up the number requisite for obtaining the
necessary official permission. [810] A similar process has several
times occurred in other villages in which Muhammadans have come to
settle and have intermarried with Cheremiss. [811] In other cases there
has been a definite missionary movement—e.g. in the beginning of the
nineteenth century the village of Karakul was inhabited by Christian
Cheremiss, but shortly after the middle of the century some families
were converted to Islam by a Cheremiss who had become a mullā; on his
death he was succeeded by a Bashkir from another village. Later on, the
converts moved away to Tatar and Bashkir villages, their place being
taken by Tatars, until the whole village became practically Tatar, few
of the younger generation retaining any knowledge of the Cheremiss
language, and intermarriages taking place only with Tatars. [812] Apart
from this proselytising activity, there has been a very distinct spread
of Tatar influence in speech and manners among the Cheremiss. The Tatar
language has spread among them, bringing with it the moral and
religious ideas of Islam; the adoption of the Tatar dress is held to be
a sign of superior culture, and if a Cheremiss does not dress like a
Tatar he runs the risk of being laughed at by the first Tatar he meets
or by his fellow Cheremiss; all this cultural movement tends to the
ultimate adoption of the Tatar religion. [813] After their conversion,
the Cheremiss are said to be very zealous in the propagation of their
new faith and receive the assistance of wealthy Tatars; [814] on the
other hand, the Russians despise the Cheremiss as an inferior race and
apply opprobrious epithets even to those among them who are Christians.
[815] About one-fourth of the Cheremiss are still heathen, but Muslim
influences are so powerful among them that it is probable that in
course of time they will for the most part become Muhammadans. [816]
The Chuvash, who number about 1,000,000, have nearly all been baptised;
there are about 20,000 of them that are still heathen but these are
gradually being absorbed by Islam, while some of the Christian Chuvash
have become Muhammadans and the rest are coming under Muslim
influences. The extent of their zeal for their converts may be judged
from the instance of a Christian Chuvash village, the priest of which
had spent several years in collecting the 300 roubles necessary for the
repair of the church; eight Chuvash families became Muhammadan and in
the course of a few months 2000 roubles were collected for the building
of a mosque. [817] Such ready activity is characteristic of the Muslim
propaganda now being carried among the aboriginal tribes. Each family
that accepts Islam receives help either in money or in kind: a house is
built for one; a field, cattle, etc., are purchased for another; when
several families in a village are converted, a mosque is built for them
and a school established for their children. [818]
Of the spread of Islam among the Tatars of Siberia, we have a few
particulars. It was not until the latter half of the sixteenth century
that it gained a footing in this country, but even before this period
Muhammadan missionaries had from time to time made their way into
Siberia with the hope of winning the heathen population over to the
acceptance of their faith, but the majority of them met with a martyr’s
death. When Siberia came under Muhammadan rule, in the reign of Kūchum
Khān, the graves of seven of these missionaries were discovered by an
aged Shaykh who came from Bukhārā to search them out, being anxious
that some memorial should be kept of the devotion of these martyrs to
the faith: he was able to give the names of this number, and up to the
last century their memory was still revered by the Tatars of Siberia.
[819] When Kūchum Khān (who was descended from Jūjī Khān, the eldest
son of Chingīz Khān) became Khān of Siberia (about the year 1570),
either by right of conquest or (according to another account) at the
invitation of the people whose Khān had died without issue, [820] he
made every effort for the conversion of his subjects, and sent to
Bukhārā asking for missionaries to assist him in this pious
undertaking. One of the missionaries who was sent from Bukhārā has left
us an account of how he set out with a companion to the capital of
Kūchum Khān, on the bank of the Irtish. Here, after two years, his
companion died, and, for some reasons that the writer does not mention,
he went back again; but soon afterwards returned to the scene of his
labours, bringing with him another coadjutor, when Kūchum Khān had
appealed for help once more to Bukhārā. [821] Missionaries also came to
Siberia from Kazan. But the advancing tide of Russian conquest soon
brought the proselytising efforts of Kūchum Khān to an end before much
had been accomplished, especially as many of the tribes under his rule
offered a strong opposition to all attempts made to convert them.
But though interrupted by the Russian conquest, the progress of Islam
was by no means stopped. Mullās from Bukhārā and other cities of
Central Asia and merchants from Kazan were continually active as
missionaries of Islam in Siberia. In 1745 an entrance was first
effected among the Baraba Tatars (between the Irtish and the Ob), and
though at the beginning of the nineteenth century many were still
heathen, they have now all become Musalmans. [822] The conversion of
the Kirghiz has already been spoken of above: the history of most of
the other Muslim tribes of Siberia is very obscure, but their
conversion is probably of a recent date. Among the instruments of
Muhammadan propaganda at the present time, it is interesting to note
the large place taken by the folk-songs of the Kirghiz, in which,
interwoven with tale and legend, the main truths of Islam make their
way into the hearts of the common people. [823]
CHAPTER IX.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.
The Muhammadan invasions of India and the foundation and growth of the
Muhammadan power in that country, have found many historians, both
among contemporary and later writers. But hitherto no one has attempted
to write a history of the spread of Islam in India, considered apart
from the military successes and administrative achievements of its
adherents. Indeed, to many, such a task must appear impossible. For
India has often been picked out as a typical instance of a country in
which Islam owes its existence and continuance in existence to the
settlement in it of foreign, conquering Muhammadan races, who have
transmitted their faith to their descendants, and only succeeded in
spreading it beyond their own circle by means of persecution and forced
conversions. Thus the missionary spirit of Islam is supposed to show
itself in its true light in the brutal massacres of Brahmans by Maḥmūd
of Ghaznạ̄, in the persecutions of Aurangzeb, the forcible circumcisions
effected by Ḥaydar ʻAlī, Tīpū Sulṭān and the like.
But among the sixty-six millions of Indian Musalmans there are vast
numbers of converts or descendants of converts, in whose conversion
force played no part and the only influences at work were the teaching
and persuasion of peaceful missionaries. This class of converts forms a
very distinct group by itself which can be distinguished from that of
the forcibly converted and the other heterogeneous elements of which
Muslim India is made up. The entire community may be roughly divided
into those of foreign race who brought their faith into the country
along with them, and those who have been converted from one of the
previous religions of the country under various inducements and at many
different periods of history. The foreign settlement consists of three
main bodies: first, and numerically the most important, are the
immigrants from across the north-west frontier, who are found chiefly
in Sind and the Panjāb; next come the descendants of the court and
armies of the various Muhammadan dynasties, mainly in Upper India and
to a much smaller extent in the Deccan; lastly, all along the west
coast are settlements probably of Arab descent, whose original founders
came to India by sea. [824] But the number of families of foreign
origin that actually settled in India is nowhere great except in the
Panjāb and its neighbourhood. More than half the Muslim population of
India has indeed assumed appellations of distinctly foreign races, such
as Shaykh, Beg, Khān, and even Sayyid, but the greater portion of them
are local converts or descendants of converts, who have taken the title
of the person of highest rank amongst those by whom they were converted
or have affiliated themselves to the aristocracy of Islam on even less
plausible grounds. [825] Of this latter section of the community—the
converted natives of the country—part no doubt owed their change of
religion to force and official pressure, but by far the majority of
them entered the pale of Islam of their own free will. The history of
the proselytising movements and the social influences that brought
about their conversion has hitherto received very little attention, and
most of the commonly accessible histories of the Muhammadans in India,
whether written by European or by native authors, are mere chronicles
of wars, campaigns and the achievements of princes, in which little
mention of the religious life of the time finds a place, unless it has
taken the form of fanaticism or intolerance. From the biographies of
the Muslim saints, however, and from local traditions, something may be
learned of the missionary work that was carried on quite independently
of the political life of the country. But before dealing with these it
is proposed to give an account of the official propagation of Islam and
of the part played by the Muhammadan rulers in the spread of their
faith.
From the fifteenth year after the death of the Prophet, when an Arab
expedition was sent into Sind, up to the eighteenth century, a series
of Muhammadan invaders, some founders of great empires, others mere
adventurers, poured into India from the north-west. While some came
only to plunder and retired laden with spoils, others remained to found
kingdoms that have had a lasting influence to the present day. But of
none of these do we learn that they were accompanied by any
missionaries or preachers. Not that they were indifferent to their
religion. To many of them, their invasion of India appeared in the
light of a holy war. Such was evidently the thought in the minds of
Maḥmūd of Ghaznạ̄ and Tīmūr. The latter, after his capture of Dehli,
writes as follows in his autobiography:—“I had been at Dehli fifteen
days, which time I passed in pleasure and enjoyment, holding royal
Courts and giving great feasts. I then reflected that I had come to
Hindustān to war against infidels, and my enterprise had been so
blessed that wherever I had gone I had been victorious. I had triumphed
over my adversaries, I had put to death some lacs of infidels and
idolaters, and I had stained my proselyting sword with the blood of the
enemies of the faith. Now this crowning victory had been won, and I
felt that I ought not to indulge in ease, but rather to exert myself in
warring against the infidels of Hindustān.” [826] Though he speaks much
of his “proselyting sword,” it seems, however, to have served no other
purpose than that of sending infidels to hell. Most of the Muslim
invaders seem to have acted in a very similar way; in the name of
Allāh, idols were thrown down, their priests put to the sword, and
their temples destroyed; while mosques were often erected in their
place. It is true that the offer of Islam was generally made to the
unbelieving Hindus before any attack was made upon them. [827] Fear
occasionally dictated a timely acceptance of such offers and led to
conversions which, in the earlier days of the Muhammadan invasion at
least, were generally short-lived and ceased to be effective after the
retreat of the invader. An illustration in point is furnished by the
story of Hardatta, a rāʼīs of Bulandshahr, whose submission to Maḥmūd
of Ghaznạ̄ is thus related in the history of that conqueror’s campaigns
written by his secretary. “At length (about A.D. 1019) he (i.e. Maḥmūd)
arrived at the fort of Barba, [828] in the country of Hardat, who was
one of the rāʼīs, that is “kings,” in the Hindī language. When Hardat
heard of this invasion by the protected warriors of God, who advanced
like the waves of the sea, with the angels around them on all sides, he
became greatly agitated, his steps trembled, and he feared for his
life, which was forfeited under the law of God. So he reflected that
his safety would best be secured by conforming to the religion of
Islam, since God’s sword was drawn from the scabbard, and the whip of
punishment was uplifted. He came forth, therefore, with ten thousand
men, who all proclaimed their anxiety for conversion and their
rejection of idols.” [829]
These new converts probably took the earliest opportunity of
apostatising presented to them by the retreat of the conqueror—a kind
of action which we find the early Muhammadan historians of India
continually complaining of. For when Quṭb al-Dīn Ībak attacked Baran in
1193, he was stoutly opposed by Chandrasen, the then Rājā, who was a
lineal descendant of Hardatta and whose very name betrays his Hindu
faith: nor do we hear of there being any Musalmans remaining under his
rule. [830]
But these conquerors would appear to have had very little of that “love
for souls” which animates the true missionary and which has achieved
such great conquests for Islam. The Khiljīs (1290–1320), the Tughlaqs
(1320–1412), and the Lodīs (1451–1526) were generally too busily
engaged in fighting to pay much regard to the interests of religion, or
else thought more of the exaction of tribute than of the work of
conversion. [831] Not that they were entirely lacking in religious
zeal: e.g. the Ghakkars, a barbarous people in the mountainous
districts of the North of the Panjāb, who gave the early invaders much
trouble, are said to have been converted through the influence of
Muḥammad Ghorī at the end of the twelfth century. Their chieftain had
been taken prisoner by the Muhammadan monarch, who induced him to
become a Musalman, and then confirming him in his title of chief of
this tribe, sent him back to convert his followers, many of whom having
little religion of their own were easily prevailed upon to embrace
Islam. [832] According to Ibn Baṭūṭah, the Khiljīs offered some
encouragement to conversion by making it a custom to have the new
convert presented to the sultan, who clad him in a robe of honour and
gave him a collar and bracelets of gold, of a value proportionate to
his rank. [833] But the monarchs of the earlier Muhammadan dynasties as
a rule evinced very little proselytising zeal, and it would be hard to
find a parallel in their history to the following passage from the
autobiography of Fīrūz Shāh Tughlaq (1351–1388): “I encouraged my
infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the Prophet, and I
proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Musalman
should be exempt from the jizyah, or poll tax. Information of this came
to the ears of the people at large and great numbers of Hindus
presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus
they came forward day by day from every quarter, and, adopting the
faith, were exonerated from the jizyah, and were favoured with presents
and honours.” [834]
As the Muhammadan power became consolidated, and particularly under the
Mughal dynasty, the religious influences of Islam naturally became more
permanent and persistent. These influences are certainly apparent in
the Hindu theistic movements that arose in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and Bishop Lefroy has conjectured that the positive
character of Muslim teaching attracted minds that were dissatisfied
with the vagueness and subjectivity of a Pantheistic system of thought.
“When Mohammedanism, with its strong grasp of the reality of the Divine
existence and, as flowing from this, of the absolutely fixed and
objective character of truth, came into conflict with the haziness of
Pantheistic thought and the subjectivity of its belief, it necessarily
followed, not only that it triumphed in the struggle, but also that it
came as a veritable tonic to the life and thought of Upper India,
quickening into a fresh and more vigorous life many minds which never
accepted for themselves its intellectual sway.” [835]
A powerful incentive to conversion was offered, when adherence to an
idolatrous system stood in the way of advancement at the Muhammadan
courts; and though a spirit of tolerance, which reached its culmination
under the eclectic Akbar, was very often shown towards Hinduism, and
respected even, for the most part, the state endowments of that
religion; [836] and though the dread of unpopularity and the desire of
conciliation dictated a policy of non-interference and deprecated such
deeds of violence and such outbursts of fanaticism as had characterised
the earlier period of invasion and triumph, still such motives of
self-interest gained many converts from Hinduism to the Muhammadan
faith. Many Rajputs became converts in this way, and their descendants
are to this day to be found among the landed aristocracy. The most
important perhaps among these is the Musalman branch of the great
Bachgoti clan, the head of which is the premier Muhammadan noble of
Oudh. According to one tradition, their ancestor Tilok Chand was taken
prisoner by the Emperor Bābar, and to regain his liberty adopted the
faith of Islam; [837] but another legend places his conversion in the
reign of Humāyūn. This prince having heard of the marvellous beauty of
Tilok Chand’s wife, had her carried off while she was at a fair. No
sooner, however, was she brought to him than his conscience smote him
and he sent for her husband. Tilok Chand had despaired of ever seeing
her again, and in gratitude he and his wife embraced the faith “which
taught such generous purity.” [838] These converted Rajputs are very
zealous in the practice of their religion, yet often betray their Hindu
origin in a very striking manner. In the district of Bulandshahr, for
example, a large Musalman family, which is known as the Lālkhānī
Paṭhāns, still (with some exceptions) retains its old Hindu titles and
family customs of marriage, while Hindu branches of the same clan still
exist side by side with it. [839] In the Mirzapur district, the
Gaharwār Rajputs, who are now Muslim, still retain in all domestic
matters Hindu laws and customs and prefix a Hindu honorific title to
their Muhammadan names. [840]
Official pressure is said never to have been more persistently brought
to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern
districts of the Panjāb, there are many cases in which the ancestor of
the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed
his religion in the reign of this zealot, “in order to save the land of
the village.” In Gurgaon, near Dehli, there is a Hindu family of Banyās
who still bear the title of Shaykh (which is commonly adopted by
converted Hindus), because one of the members of the family, whose line
is now extinct, became a convert in order to save the family property
from confiscation. [841] Many Rajput landowners, in the Cawnpore
district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason. [842] In
other cases the ancestor is said to have been carried as a prisoner or
hostage to Dehli, and there forcibly circumcised and converted. [843]
It should be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions
is family or local tradition, and no mention of such (as far as I have
been able to discover) is made in the historical accounts of
Aurangzeb’s reign. [844] It is established without doubt that forced
conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable
that Aurangzeb’s well-known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many
families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been
forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily
assignable cause. Similarly in the Deccan, Aurangzeb shares with Ḥaydar
ʻAlī and Tīpū Sulṭān (these being the best known of modern Muhammadan
rulers) the reputation of having forcibly converted sundry families and
sections of the population, whose conversion undoubtedly dates from a
much earlier period, from which no historical record of the
circumstances of the case has come down. [845]
Tīpū Sulṭān is probably the Muhammadan monarch who most systematically
engaged in the work of forcible conversion. In 1788 he issued the
following proclamation to the people of Malabar: “From the period of
the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a
turbulent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your
rainy season, you have caused numbers of our warriors to taste the
draught of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter you
must proceed in an opposite manner, dwell quietly and pay your dues
like good subjects; and since it is the practice with you for one woman
to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters
unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in
adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of
the field, I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and
to be like the rest of mankind; and if you are disobedient to these
commands, I have made repeated vows to honour the whole of you with
Islam and to march all the chief persons to the seat of Government.”
This proclamation stirred up a general revolt in Malabar, and early in
1789 Tīpū Sulṭān prepared to enforce his proclamation with an army of
more than twenty thousand men, and issued general orders that “every
being in the district without distinction should be honoured with
Islam, that the houses of such as fled to avoid that honour should be
burned, that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that
all means of truth and falsehood, force or fraud should be employed to
effect their universal conversion.” Thousands of Hindus were
accordingly circumcised and made to eat beef; but by the end of 1790
the British army had destroyed the last remnant of Tīpū Sulṭān’s power
in Malabar, and this monarch himself perished early in 1799 at the
capture of Seringapatam. Most of the Brahmans and Nayars who had been
forcibly converted, subsequently disowned their new religion. [846]
How little was effected towards the spread of Islam by violence on the
part of the Muhammadan rulers may be judged from the fact that even in
the centres of the Muhammadan power, such as Dehli and Agra, the
Muhammadans in modern times in the former district hardly exceeded
one-tenth, and in the latter they did not form one-fourth of the
population. [847] A remarkable example of the worthlessness of forced
conversion is exhibited in the case of Bodh Mal, Raja of Majhauli, in
the district of Gorakhpur; he was arrested by Akbar in default of
revenue, carried to Dehli, and there converted to Islam, receiving the
name of Muḥammad Salīm. But on his return his wife refused to let him
into the ancestral castle, and, as apparently she had the sympathy of
his subjects on her side, she governed his territories during the
minority of his son Bhawāni Mal, so that the Hindu succession remained
undisturbed. [848] Until recently there were some strange survivals of
a similarly futile false conversion, noticeable in certain customs of a
Hindu sect called the Bishnois, the principal tenet of whose faith is
the renunciation of all Hindu deities, except Viṣṇu. They used recently
to bury their dead, instead of burning them, to adopt Ghulām Muḥammad
and other Muhammadan names, and use the Muslim form of salutation. They
explained their adoption of these Muhammadan customs by saying that
having once slain a Qāḍī, who had interfered with their rite of
widow-burning, they had compounded for the offence by embracing Islam.
They have now, however, renounced these practices in favour of Hindu
customs. [849]
But though some Muhammadan rulers may have been more successful in
forcing an acceptance of Islam on certain of their Hindu subjects than
in the last-mentioned cases, and whatever truth there may be in the
assertion [850] that “it is impossible even to approach the religious
side of the Mahomedan position in India without surveying first its
political aspect,” we undoubtedly find that Islam has gained its
greatest and most lasting missionary triumphs in times and places in
which its political power has been weakest, as in Southern India and
Eastern Bengal. Of such missionary movements it is now proposed to
essay some account, commencing with Southern India and the Deccan, then
after reviewing the history of Sind, Cutch and Gujarāt, passing to
Bengal, and finally noticing some missionaries whose work lay outside
the above geographical limits. Of several of the missionaries to be
referred to, little is recorded beyond their names and the sphere of
their labours; accordingly, in view of the general dearth of such
missionary annals, any available details have been given at length.
The first advent of Islam in South India dates as far back as the
eighth century, when a band of refugees, to whom the Mappillas trace
their descent, came from ʻIrāq and settled in the country. [851] The
trade in spices, ivory, gems, etc., between India and Europe, which for
many hundred years was conducted by the Arabs and Persians, caused a
continual stream of Muhammadan influence to flow in upon the west coast
of Southern India. From this constant influx of foreigners there
resulted a mixed population, half Hindu and half Arab or Persian, in
the trading centres along the coast. Very friendly relations appear to
have existed between these Muslim traders and the Hindu rulers, who
extended to them their protection and patronage in consideration of the
increased commercial activity and consequent prosperity of the country,
that resulted from their presence in it, [852] and no obstacles were
placed in the way of proselytising, the native converts receiving the
same consideration and respect as the foreign merchants, even though
before their conversion they had belonged to the lowest grades of
society. [853]
The traditionary account of the introduction of Islam into Malabar, as
given by a Muhammadan historian of the sixteenth century, represents
the first missionaries to have been a party of pilgrims on their way to
visit the foot-print of Adam in Ceylon; on their arrival at Cranganore
the Raja sent for them and the leader of the party, Shaykh Sharaf b.
Mālik, who was accompanied by his brother, Mālik b. Dīnār, and his
nephew, Mālik b. Ḥabīb, took the opportunity of expounding to him the
faith of Islam and the mission of Muḥammad, “and God caused the truth
of the Prophet’s teaching to enter into the king’s heart and he
believed therein; and his heart became filled with love for the Prophet
and he bade the Shaykh and companions come back to him again on their
return from their pilgrimage to Adam’s foot-print.” [854] On the return
of the pilgrims from Ceylon, the king secretly departed with them in a
ship bound for the coast of Arabia, leaving his kingdom in the hand of
viceroys. Here he remained for some time, and was just about to return
to his own country, with the intention of erecting mosques there and
spreading the faith of Islam, when he fell sick and died. On his
death-bed he solemnly enjoined on his companions not to abandon their
proposed missionary journey to Malabar, and to assist them in their
labours, he gave them letters of recommendation to his viceroys, at the
same time bidding them conceal the fact of his death. Armed with these
letters, Sharaf b. Mālik and his companions sailed for Cranganore,
where the king’s letter secured for them a kindly welcome and a grant
of land, on which they built a mosque. Mālik b. Dīnār decided to settle
there, but Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out on a missionary tour with the object
of building mosques throughout Malabar. “So Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out for
Quilon with his worldly goods and his wife and some of his children,
and he built a mosque there; then leaving his wife there, he went on to
Hīlī Mārāwī, [855] where he built a mosque”; and so the narrative
continues, giving a list of seven other places at which the missionary
erected mosques, finally returning to Cranganore. Later on, he visited
all these places again to pray in the mosque at each of them, and came
back “praising and giving thanks to God for the manifestation of the
faith of Islam in a land filled with unbelievers.” [856]
In spite of the circumstantial character of this narrative, there is no
evidence of its historicity. Popular belief puts the date of the events
recorded as far back as the lifetime of the Prophet; with a mild
scepticism Zayn al-Dīn thought that they could not have been earlier
than the third century of the Hijrah; [857] but there is no more
authority for the one date than for the other, or for the common
Mappilla tradition of the existence of the tomb of a Hindu king at
Zafār, on the coast of Arabia, bearing the inscription, “ʻAbd al-Raḥmān
al-Sāmirī, arrived A.H. 212, died A.H. 216”; [858] and the mosque at
Madāyi, said to have been founded by Mālik b. Dīnār, bears an
inscription commemorating its erection in A.D. 1124. [859]
But the legend certainly bears witness to the peaceful character of the
proselytising influences that were at work on the Malabar coast for
centuries. The agents in this work were chiefly Arab merchants, but Ibn
Baṭūṭah makes mention of several professed theologians from Arabia and
elsewhere, whom he met in various towns on the Malabar coast. [860] The
Zamorin of Calicut, who was one of the chief patrons of Arab trade, is
said to have encouraged conversion to Islam, in order to man the Arab
ships on which he depended for his aggrandisement, and to have ordered
that in every family of fishermen in his dominion one or more of the
male members should be brought up as Muhammadans. [861] At the
beginning of the sixteenth century the Mappillas were estimated to have
formed one-fifth of the population of Malabar, spoke the same language
as the Hindus, and were only distinguished from them by their long
beards and peculiar head-dress. But for the arrival of the Portuguese,
the whole of this coast would have become Muhammadan, because of the
frequent conversions that took place and the powerful influence
exercised by the Muslim merchants from other parts of India, such as
Gujarāt and the Deccan, and from Arabia and Persia. [862]
But there would appear to be no record of the individuals who took part
in the propaganda, except in the case of the historian ʻAbd al-Razzāq,
who has himself left an account of his unsuccessful mission to the
court of the Zamorin of Calicut. He was sent on this mission in the
year 1441 by the Tīmūrid Shāh Rukh Bahādur, in response to an appeal
made by an ambassador who had been sent by the Zamorin of Calicut to
this monarch. The ambassador was himself a Musalman and represented to
the Sultan how excellent and meritorious an action it would be to send
a special envoy to the Zamorin, “to invite him to accept Islam in
accordance with the injunction ‘Summon thou to the ways of thy Lord
with wisdom and with kindly warning,’ [863] and open the bolt of
darkness and error that locked his benighted heart, and let the
splendour of the light of the faith and the brightness of the sun of
knowledge shine into the window of his soul.” ʻAbd al-Razzāq was chosen
for this task and after an adventurous journey reached Calicut, but
appears to have met with a cold reception, and after remaining there
for about six months abandoned his original purposes and made his way
back to Khurāsān, which he reached after an absence of three years.
[864]
Another community of Musalmans in Southern India, the Ravuttans, [865]
ascribe their conversion to the preaching of missionaries whose tombs
are held in veneration by them to the present day. The most famous of
these was Sayyid Nathar Shāh [866] (A.D. 969–1039) who after many
wanderings in Arabia, Persia and Northern India, settled down in
Trichinopoly, where he spent the remaining years of his life in prayer
and works of charity, and converted a large number of Hindus to the
faith of Islam; his tomb is much resorted to as a place of pilgrimage
and the Muhammadans re-named Trichinopoly Natharnagar, after the name
of their saint. [867] Sayyid Ibrāhīm Shahīd (said to have been born
about the middle of the twelfth century), whose tomb is at Ervadi, was
a militant hero who led an expedition into the Pandyan kingdom,
occupied the country for about twelve years, but was at length slain;
his son’s life was, however, spared in consideration of the beneficent
rule of his father, and a grant of land given to him, which his
descendants enjoy to the present day. The latest of these saints, Shāh
al-Ḥamīd (1532–1600), was born at Manikpur in Northern India, and spent
most of his life in visiting the holy shrines of Islam and in
missionary tours chiefly throughout Southern India; he finally settled
in Nagore, where the descendants of his adopted son are still in charge
of his tomb. [868]
Another group of Muhammadans in Southern India, the Dudekulas, who live
by cotton cleaning (as their name denotes) and by weaving coarse
fabrics, attribute their conversion to Bābā Fakhr al-Dīn, whose tomb
they revere at Penukonda. Legend says that he was originally a king of
Sīstān, who abdicated his throne in favour of his brother and became a
religious mendicant. After making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina,
he was bidden by the Prophet in a dream to go to India; here he met
Nathar Shāh, of Trichinopoly, and became his disciple and was sent by
him in company with 200 religious mendicants on a proselytising
mission. The legend goes on to say that they finally settled at
Penukonda in the vicinity of a Hindu temple, where their presence was
unwelcome to the Raja of the place, but instead of appealing to force
he applied several tests to discover whether the Muhammadan saint or
his own priest was the better qualified by sanctity to possess the
temple. As a final test, he had them both tied up in sacks filled with
lime and thrown into tanks. The Hindu priest never re-appeared, but
Bābā Fakhr al-Dīn asserted the superiority of his faith by being
miraculously transported to a hill outside the town. The Raja hereupon
became a Musalman, and his example was followed by a large number of
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and the temple was turned into a
mosque. [869]
The history of Islam in Southern India by no means always continued to
be of so peaceful a character, but it does not appear that the forcible
conversions of the Hindus and others to Islam which were perpetrated
when the Muhammadan power became paramount under Ḥaydar ʻAlī
(1767–1782) and Tīpū Sulṭān (1782–1799), can be paralleled in the
earlier history of this part of India. However this may be, there is no
reason to doubt that constant conversions by peaceful methods were made
to Islam from among the lower castes, [870] as is the case at the
present day when accessions to Islam from time to time occur from among
the Tiyans, who are said to form one of the most progressive
communities in India, the Mukkuvans or fisherman caste, as well as from
the Cherumans or agricultural labourers, and other serf castes, to whom
Islam brings deliverance from the disabilities attaching to the
outcasts of the Hindu social system; occasionally, also, converts are
drawn from among the Nayars and the native Christians. In Ponnani, the
residence of the spiritual head of the majority of the Muhammadans of
Malabar, there is an association entitled Minnat al-Islām Sabhā, where
converts are instructed in the tenets of their new faith and material
assistance rendered to those under instruction; the average number of
converts received in this institution in the course of the first three
years of the twentieth century, was 750. [871] So numerous have these
conversions from Hinduism been, that the tendency of the Muhammadans of
the west as well as the east coast of Southern India has been to
reversion to the Hindu or aboriginal type, and, except in the case of
some of the nobler families, they now in great part present all the
characteristics of an aboriginal people, with very little of the
original foreign blood in them. [872] In the western coast districts
the tyranny of caste intolerance is peculiarly oppressive; to give but
one instance, in Travancore certain of the lower castes may not come
nearer than seventy-four paces to a Brahman, and have to make a
grunting noise as they pass along the road, in order to give warning of
their approach. Similar instances might be abundantly multiplied. What
wonder, then, that the Musalman population is fast increasing through
conversion from these lower castes, who thereby free themselves from
such degrading oppression, and raise themselves and their descendants
in the social scale?
In fact the Mappillas on the west coast are said to be increasing so
considerably through accessions from the lower classes of Hindus, as to
render it possible that in a few years the whole of the lower races of
the west coast may become Muhammadans. [873]
It was most probably from Malabar that Islam crossed over to the
Laccadive and Maldive Islands, the population of which is now entirely
Muslim. The inhabitants of these islands owed their conversion to the
Arab and Persian merchants, who established themselves in the country,
intermarrying with the natives, and thus smoothing the way for the work
of active proselytism. The date of the conversion of the first
Muhammadan Sultan of the Maldive Islands, Aḥmad Shanūrāzah, [874] has
been conjectured to have occurred about A.D. 1200, but it is very
possible that the Muhammadan merchants had introduced their religion
into the island as much as three centuries before, and the process of
conversion must undoubtedly have been a gradual one. [875] No details,
however, have come down to us.
At Mālē, the seat of government, is found the tomb of Shaykh Yūsuf
Shams al-Dīn, a native of Tabrīz, in Persia, who is said to have been a
successful missionary of Islam in these islands. His tomb is still held
in great veneration, and always kept in good repair, and in the same
part of the island are buried some of his countrymen who came in search
of him, and remained in the Maldives until their death. [876]
The introduction of Islam into the neighbouring Laccadive Islands is
attributed to an Arab preacher, known to the islanders by the name of
Mumba Mulyaka; his tomb is still shown at Androth and as the present
qāḍī of that place claims to be twenty-sixth in descent from him, he
probably reached these islands some time in the twelfth century. [877]
The Deccan also was the scene of the successful labours of many Muslim
missionaries. It has already been pointed out that from very early
times Arab traders had visited the towns on the west coast; in the
tenth century we are told that the Arabs were settled in large numbers
in the towns of the Konkan, having intermarried with the women of the
country and living under their own laws and religion. [878] Under the
Muhammadan dynasties of the Bahmanid (1347–1490) and Bījāpūr
(1489–1686) kings, a fresh impulse was given to Arab immigration, and
with the trader and the soldier of fortune came the missionaries
seeking to make spiritual conquests in the cause of Islam, and win over
the unbelieving people of the country by their preaching and example,
for of forcible conversions we have no record under the early Deccan
dynasties, whose rule was characterised by a striking toleration. [879]
One of these Arab preachers, Pīr Mahābīr Khamdāyat, came as a
missionary to the Deccan as early as A.D. 1304, and among the
cultivating classes of Bījāpūr are to be found descendants of the Jains
who were converted by him. [880] About the close of the same century a
celebrated saint of Gulbarga, Sayyid Muḥammad Gīsūdarāz, [881]
converted a number of Hindus of the Poona district, and twenty years
later his labours were crowned with a like success in Belgaum. [882] At
Dahanu still reside the descendants of a relative of one of the
greatest saints of Islam, Sayyid ʻAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī of Baghdād; he
came to Western India about the fifteenth century, and after making
many converts in the Konkan, died and was buried at Dahanu. [883] In
the district of Dharwar, there are large numbers of weavers whose
ancestors were converted by Hāshim Pīr Gujarātī, the religious teacher
of the Bījāpūr king, Ibrāhīm ʻĀdil Shāh II, about the close of the
sixteenth century. These men still regard the saint with special
reverence and pay great respect to his descendants. [884] The
descendants of another saint, Shāh Muḥammad Ṣādiq Sarmast Ḥusaynī, are
still found in Nasik; he is said to have been the most successful of
Muhammadan missionaries; having come from Medina in 1568, he travelled
over the greater part of Western India and finally settled at Nasik—in
which district another very successful Muslim missionary, Khwājah
Khunmir Ḥusaynī, had begun to labour about fifty years before. [885]
Two other Arab missionaries may be mentioned, the scene of whose
proselytising efforts was laid in the district of Belgaum, namely
Sayyid Muḥammad b. Sayyid ʻAlī and Sayyid ʻUmar ʻAydrūs Basheban. [886]
Another missionary movement may be said roughly to centre round the
city of Multan. [887] This in the early days of the Arab conquest was
one of the outposts of Islam, when Muḥammad b. Qāsim had established
Muhammadan supremacy over Sind (A.D. 714). During the three centuries
of Arab rule there were naturally many accessions to the faith of the
conquerors. Several Sindian princes responded to the invitation of the
Caliph ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz to embrace Islam. [888] The people of
Sāwandari—who submitted to Muḥammad b. Qāsim and had peace granted to
them on the condition that they would entertain the Musalmans and
furnish guides—are spoken of by al-Balādhurī (writing about a hundred
years later) as professing Islam in his time; and the despatches of the
conqueror frequently refer to the conversion of the unbelievers.
That these conversions were in the main voluntary, may be judged from
the toleration that the Arabs, after the first violence of their
onslaught, showed towards their idolatrous subjects. The people of
Brahmanābād, for example, whose city had been taken by storm, were
allowed to repair their temple, which was a means of livelihood to the
Brahmans, and nobody was to be forbidden or prevented from following
his own religion, [889] and generally, where submission was made,
quarter was readily given, and the people were permitted the exercise
of their own creeds and laws.
During the troubles that befell the caliphate in the latter half of the
ninth century, Sind, neglected by the central government, came to be
divided among several petty princes, the most powerful of whom were the
Amīrs of Multan and Mansūra. Such disunion naturally weakened the
political power of the Musalmans, which had in fact begun to decline
earlier in the century. For in the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (A.D. 833–842),
the Indians of Sindān [890] declared themselves independent, but they
spared the mosque, in which the Musalmans were allowed to perform their
devotions undisturbed. [891] The Muhammadans of Multan succeeded in
maintaining their political independence, and kept themselves from
being conquered by the neighbouring Hindu princes, by threatening, if
attacked, to destroy an idol which was held in great veneration by the
Hindus and was visited by pilgrims from the most distant parts. [892]
But in the hour of its political decay, Islam was still achieving
missionary successes. Al-Balādhurī [893] tells the following story of
the conversion of a king of ʻUsayfān, a country between Kashmīr and
Multan and Kābul. The people of this country worshipped an idol for
which they had built a temple. The son of the king fell sick, and he
desired the priests of the temple to pray to the idol for the recovery
of his son. They retired for a short time, and then returned saying:
“We have prayed and our supplications have been accepted.” But no long
time passed before the youth died. Then the king attacked the temple,
destroyed and broke in pieces the idol, and slew the priests. He
afterwards invited a party of Muhammadan traders, who made known to him
the unity of God; whereupon he believed in the unity and became a
Muslim. A similar missionary influence was doubtless exercised by the
numerous communities of Muslim merchants who carried their religion
with them into the infidel cities of Hindustan. Arab geographers of the
tenth and twelfth centuries mention the names of many such cities, both
on the coast and inland, where the Musalmans built their mosques, and
were safe under the protection of the native princes, who even granted
them the privilege of living under their own laws. [894] The Arab
merchants at this time formed the medium of commercial communication
between Sind and the neighbouring countries of India and the outside
world. They brought the produce of China and Ceylon to the sea-ports of
Sind and from there conveyed them by way of Multan to Turkistan and
Khurāsān. [895]
It would be strange if these traders, scattered about in the cities of
the unbelievers, failed to exhibit the same proselytising zeal as we
find in the Muhammadan trader elsewhere. To the influence of such
trading communities was most probably due the conversion of the Sammas,
who ruled over Sind from A.D. 1351 to 1521. While the reign of Nanda b.
Bābiniyyah of this dynasty is specially mentioned as one of such “peace
and security, that never was this prince called upon to ride forth to
battle, and never did a foe take the field against him,” [896] it is at
the same time described as being “remarkable for its justice and an
increase of Islam.” This increase could thus only have been brought
about by peaceful missionary methods. One of the most famous of these
missionaries was the celebrated saint, Sayyid Yūsuf al-Dīn, a
descendant of ʻAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī, who was bidden in a dream to leave
Baghdād for India and convert its inhabitants to Islam. He came to Sind
in 1422 and after labouring there for ten years, he succeeded in
winning over to Islam 700 families of the Lohāna caste, who followed
the example of two of their number, by name Sundarjī and Hansrāj; these
men embraced Islam, after seeing some miracles performed by the saint,
and on their conversion received the names of Adamjī and Tāj Muḥammad
respectively. Under the leadership of the grandson of the former, these
people afterwards migrated to Cutch, where their numbers were increased
by converts from among the Cutch Lohānas. [897]
Sind was also the scene of the labours of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, an Ismāʻīlī
missionary, who was head of the Khojah sect about the year 1430. In
accordance with the principles of accommodation practised by this sect,
he took a Hindu name and made certain concessions to the religious
beliefs of the Hindus whose conversion he sought to achieve, and
introduced among them a book entitled Dasavatār in which ʻAlī was made
out to be the tenth Avatār or incarnation of Viṣṇu; this book has been
from the beginning the accepted scripture of the Khojah sect, and it is
always read by the bedside of the dying and periodically at many
festivals; it assumes the nine incarnations of Viṣṇu to be true as far
as they go, but to fall short of the perfect truth, and supplements
this imperfect Vaiṣṇav system by the cardinal doctrine of the
Ismāʻīlians, the incarnation and coming manifestation of ʻAlī. Further,
he made out Brahmā to be Muḥammad, Viṣṇu to be ʻAlī and Adam Siva. The
first of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn’s converts were won in the villages and towns
of Upper Sind: he preached also in Cutch and from these parts the
doctrines of this sect spread southwards through Gujarāt to Bombay; and
at the present day Khojah communities are to be found in almost all the
large trading towns of Western India and on the seaboard of the Indian
Ocean. [898]
Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn was not however the first of the Ismāʻīlian
missionaries who came into India. He was preceded by ʻAbd Allāh, a
missionary sent from Yaman about 1067; he is said to have been a man of
great learning, and is credited with the performance of many miracles,
whereby he convinced a large number of Hindus of the truth of his
religion. [899] The second Ismāʻīlī missionary, Nūr al-Dīn, generally
known by the Hindu name he adopted, Nūr Satāgar, was sent into India
from Alamūt, the stronghold of the Grand Master of the Ismāʻīlīs, and
reached Gujarāt in the reign of the Hindu king, Siddhā Rāj (A.D.
1094–1143). [900] He adopted a Hindu name but told the Muhammadans that
his real name was Sayyid Saʻādat; he is said to have converted the
Kanbīs, Khārwās and Korīs, low castes of Gujarāt. [901]
As Nūr Satāgar is revered as the first missionary of the Khojahs, so is
ʻAbd Allāh believed by some to have been the founder of the sect of the
Bohras, a large and important community of Shīʻahs, mainly of Hindu
origin, who are found in considerable numbers in the chief commercial
centres of the Bombay Presidency. But others ascribe the honour of
being the first Bohra missionary to Mullā ʻAlī, of whose proselytising
methods the following account is given by a Shīʻah historian: “As the
people of Gujarāt in those days were infidels and accepted as their
religious leader an old man whose teaching they blindly followed, Mullā
ʻAlī saw no alternative but to go to the old man and ask to become his
disciple, intending to set before him such convincing arguments that he
would become a Musalman, and afterwards to attempt the conversion of
others. He accordingly spent some years in the service of the old man,
and having learned the language of the people of the country, read
their books and acquired a knowledge of their sciences. Step by step he
unfolded to the enlightened mind of the old man the truth of the faith
of Islam and persuaded him to become a Musalman. After his conversion,
some of his disciples followed the old man’s example. Finally, the
chief minister of the king of that country became aware of the old
man’s conversion to Islam, and going to see him submitted to his
spiritual guidance and likewise became a Musalman. For a long time, the
old man, the minister and the rest of the converts to Islam, kept the
fact of their conversion concealed and through fear of the king always
took care to prevent it coming to his knowledge; but at length the king
received a report of the minister’s having adopted Islam and began to
make inquiries. One day, without giving previous notice, he went to the
minister’s house and found him bowing his head in prayer and was vexed
with him. The minister recognised the purpose of the king’s visit, and
realised that his displeasure had been excited by suspicions aroused by
his prayer, with its bowing and prostrations; but the guidance of God
and divine grace befitting the occasion, he said that he was making
these movements because he was watching a serpent in the corner of the
room. When the king turned towards the corner of the room, by divine
providence he saw a snake there, and accepted the minister’s excuse and
his mind was cleared of all suspicions. In the end the king also
secretly became a Musalman, but for reasons of state concealed his
change of mind; when however, the hour of his death drew near, he gave
orders that his body was not to be burnt, as is the custom of the
infidels. Subsequently to his decease, when Sulṭān Z̤afar, one of the
trusty nobles of Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh, king of Dehlī, conquered Gujarāt,
some of the Sunnī nobles who accompanied him used arguments to make the
people join the Sunnī sect of the Muslim faith; so some of the Bohras
are Sunnīs, but the greater part remain true to their original faith.”
[902]
Several small groups of Musalmans in Cutch and Gujarāt trace their
conversion to Imām Shāh of Pīrāna, [903] who was actively engaged in
missionary work during the latter half of the fifteenth century. He is
said to have converted a large body of Hindu cultivators, by bringing
about a fall of rain after two seasons of scarcity. On another occasion
meeting a band of Hindu pilgrims passing through Pīrāna on their way to
Benares, he offered to take them there; they agreed and in a moment
were in the holy city, where they bathed in the Ganges and paid their
vows; they then awoke to find themselves still in Pīrāna and adopted
the faith of the saint who could perform such a miracle. He died in
1512 and his tomb in Pīrāna is still an object of pilgrimage for Hindus
as well as for Muhammadans. [904]
Many of the Cutch Musalmans that are of Hindu descent reverence as
their spiritual leader Dāwal Shāh Pīr, whose real name was Malik ʻAbd
al-Laṭīf, [905] the son of one of the nobles of Maḥmūd Bīgarah
(1459–1511), the famous monarch of the Muhammadan dynasty of Gujarāt,
to whose reign popular tradition assigns the date of the conversion of
many Hindus. [906]
It is in Bengal, however, that the Muhammadan missionaries in India
have achieved their greatest success, as far as numbers are concerned.
A Muhammadan kingdom was first founded here at the end of the twelfth
century by Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khiljī, who conquered Bihar and Bengal
and made Gaur the capital of the latter province. The long continuance
of the Muhammadan rule would naturally assist the spread of Islam, and
though the Hindu rule was restored for ten years under the tolerant
Rājā Kāns, whose rule is said to have been popular with his Muhammadan
subjects, [907] his son, Jatmall, renounced the Hindu religion and
became a Musalman. After his father’s death in 1414 he called together
all the officers of the state and announced his intention of embracing
Islam, and proclaimed that if the chiefs would not permit him to ascend
the throne, he was ready to give it up to his brother; whereupon they
declared that they would accept him as their king, whatever religion he
might adopt. Accordingly, several learned men of the Muslim faith were
summoned to witness the Raja renounce the Hindu religion and publicly
profess his acceptance of Islam: he took the name of Jalāl al-Dīn
Muḥammad Shāh, and according to tradition numerous conversions were
made during his reign. [908] Many of these were however due to force,
for his reign is signalised as being the only one in which any
wholesale persecution of the subject Hindus is recorded, during the
five centuries and a half of Muhammadan rule in Eastern Bengal. [909]
Conversions, however, often took place at other times under pressure
from the Muhammadan government. The Rajas of Kharagpur were originally
Hindus, and became Muhammadans because, having been defeated by one of
Akbar’s generals, they were only allowed to retain the family estates
on the condition that they embraced Islam. The Hindu ancestor of the
family of Asad ʻAlī Khān, in Chittagong, was deprived of his caste by
being forced to smell beef and had perforce to become a Muhammadan, and
several other instances of the same kind might be quoted. [910]
Murshid Qulī Khān (son of a converted Brahman), who was made governor
of Bengal by the Emperor Aurangzeb at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, enforced a law that any official or landlord, who failed to
pay the revenue that was due or was unable to make good the loss,
should with his wife and children be compelled to become Muhammadans.
Further, it was the common law that any Hindu who forfeited his caste
by a breach of regulations could only be reinstated by the Muhammadan
government; if the government refused to interfere, the outcast had no
means of regaining his position in the social system of the Hindus, and
would probably find no resource but to become a Musalman. [911]
The Afghān adventurers who settled in this province also appear to have
been active in the work of proselytising, for besides the children that
they had by Hindu women, they used to purchase a number of boys in
times of scarcity, and educate them in the tenets of Islam. [912] But
it is not in the ancient centres of the Muhammadan government that the
Musalmans of Bengal are found in large numbers, but in the country
districts, in districts where there are no traces of settlers from the
West, and in places where low-caste Hindus and outcasts most abound.
[913] The similarity of manners between these low-caste Hindus and the
followers of the Prophet, and the caste distinctions which they still
retain, as well as their physical likeness, all bear the same testimony
and identify the Bengal Musalmans with the aboriginal tribes of the
country. Here Islam met with no consolidated religious system to bar
its progress, as in the north-west of India, where the Muhammadan
invaders found Brahmanism full of fresh life and vigour after its
triumphant struggle with Buddhism; where, in spite of persecutions, its
influence was an inspiring force in the opposition offered by the
Hindus, and retained its hold on them in the hour of their deepest
distress and degradation. But in Bengal the Muslim missionaries were
welcomed with open arms by the aborigines and the low castes on the
very outskirts of Hinduism, despised and condemned by their proud Aryan
rulers. “To these poor people, fishermen, hunters, pirates, and
low-caste tillers of the soil, Islam came as a revelation from on high.
It was the creed of the ruling race, its missionaries were men of zeal
who brought the Gospel of the unity of God and the equality of men in
its sight to a despised and neglected population. The initiatory rite
rendered relapse impossible, and made the proselyte and his posterity
true believers for ever. In this way Islam settled down on the richest
alluvial province of India, the province which was capable of
supporting the most rapid and densest increase of population.
Compulsory conversions are occasionally recorded. But it was not to
force that Islam owed its permanent success in Lower Bengal. It
appealed to the people, and it derived the great mass of its converts
from the poor. It brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler
idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of
Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu
community, a free entrance into a new social organisation.” [914]
The existence in Bengal of definite missionary efforts is said to be
attested by certain legends of the zeal of private individuals on
behalf of their religion, and the graves of some of these missionaries
are still honoured, and are annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.
[915] One of the earliest of these was Shaykh Jalāl al-Dīn Tabrīzī, who
died in A.D. 1244. He was a pupil of the great saint, Shihāb al-Dīn
Suhrawardī. In the course of his missionary journeys he visited Bengal,
where a shrine to which is attached a rich endowment was erected in his
honour, the real site of his tomb being unknown. Many miracles are
ascribed to him; among others, that he converted a Hindu milkman to
Islam by a single look. [916]
In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable revival of the
Muhammadan religion in Bengal, and several sects that owe their origin
to the influence of the Wahhābī reformation, have sent their
missionaries through the province purging out the remnants of Hindu
superstitions, awakening religious zeal and spreading the faith among
unbelievers. [917]
Some account still remains to be given of Muslim missionaries who have
laboured in parts of India other than those mentioned above. One of the
earliest of these is Shaykh Ismāʻīl, one of the most famous of the
Sayyids of Bukhārā, distinguished alike for his secular and religious
learning; he is said to have been the first Muslim missionary who
preached the faith of Islam in the city of Lahore, whither he came in
the year A.D. 1005. Crowds flocked to listen to his sermons, and the
number of his converts swelled rapidly day by day, and it is said that
no unbeliever ever came into personal contact with him without being
converted to the faith of Islam. [918]
The conversion of the inhabitants of the western plains of the Panjāb
is said to have been effected through the preaching of Bahā al-Ḥaqq of
Multan [919] and Bābā Farīd al-Dīn of Pakpattan, who flourished about
the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries.
[920] A biographer of the latter saint gives a list of sixteen tribes
who were won over to Islam through his preaching, but unfortunately
provides us with no details of this work of conversion. [921]
One of the most famous of the Muslim saints of India and a pioneer of
Islam in Rajputana was Khwājah Muʻīn al-Dīn Chishtī, who died in Ajmīr
in A.D. 1234. He was a native of Sajistān to the east of Persia, and is
said to have received his call to preach Islam to the unbelievers in
India while on a pilgrimage to Medina. Here the Prophet appeared to him
in a dream and thus addressed him: “The Almighty has entrusted the
country of India to thee. Go thither and settle in Ajmīr. By God’s
help, the faith of Islam shall, through thy piety and that of thy
followers, be spread in that land.” He obeyed the call and made his way
to Ajmīr which was then under Hindu rule and idolatry prevailed
throughout the land. Among the first of his converts here was a Yogī,
who was the spiritual preceptor of the Raja himself: gradually he
gathered around him a large body of disciples whom his teachings had
won from the ranks of infidelity, and his fame as a religious leader
became very widespread and attracted to Ajmīr great numbers of Hindus
whom he persuaded to embrace Islam. [922] On his way to Ajmīr he is
said to have converted as many as 700 persons in the city of Delhi.
Of immense importance in the history of Islam in India was the arrival
in that country of Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn, who is said to have been born
at Bukhārā in 1199. He settled in Uch, now in the Bahawalpur territory,
in 1244, and converted numbers of persons in the neighbourhood to
Islam; he died in 1291, and his descendants, many of whom are also
revered as saints, have remained as guardians of his shrine up to the
present day and form the centre of a widespread religious influence.
His grandson, Sayyid Aḥmad Kabīr, known as Makhdūm-i-Jahāniyān, is
credited with having effected the conversion of several tribes in the
Punjab. [923] About a mile to the east of Uch is situated the shrine of
Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn, son of Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn, who was a contemporary
of Jalāl-al-Dīn; both father and son are said to have made many
converts, and such was the influence attributed to Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn
that it was said as soon as his glance fell upon any Hindu, the latter
would accept Islam. [924]
Rather later in the same century, a native of Persian ʻIrāq, by name
Abū ʻAlī Qalandar, came into India and took up his residence at
Panipat, where he died at the ripe age of 100, in A.D. 1324. The Muslim
Rajputs of this city, numbering about 300 males, are descended from a
certain Amīr Singh who was converted by this saint. His tomb is still
held in honour and is visited by many pilgrims.
Another such was Shaykh Jalāl al-Dīn, a Persian who came into India
about the latter half of the fourteenth century and settled down at
Silhaṭ, in Lower Assam, in order to convert the people of these parts
to Islam. He achieved a great reputation as a holy man, and his
proselytising labours were crowned with eminent success. [925]
In more recent years there have been abundant witnesses for Islam
seeking to spread this faith in India—and with very considerable
success; the second half of the nineteenth century especially witnessed
a great revival of missionary activity, the number of annual
conversions being variously estimated at ten, fifty, one hundred and
six hundred thousand. [926] But it is difficult to obtain accurate
information on account of the peculiarly individualistic character of
Muslim missionary work and the absence of any central organisation or
of anything in the way of missionary reports, and the success that
attends the labours of Muslim preachers is sometimes much exaggerated,
e.g. in the Panjāb a certain Ḥājī Muḥammad is said to have converted as
many as 200,000 Hindus, [927] and a mawlavī in Bangalore boasted that
in five years he had made as many as 1000 converts in this city and its
suburbs. But that there are Muslim missionaries engaged in active and
successful propagandist labours is undoubted, and the following
examples are typical of the period referred to.
Mawlavī Baqā Ḥusayn Khān, an itinerant preacher, in the course of
several years converted 228 persons, residents of Bombay, Cawnpore,
Ajmīr, and other cities. Mawlavī Ḥasan ʻAlī converted twenty-five
persons, twelve in Poona, the rest in Ḥaydarabad and other parts of
India. [928] In the district of Khandesh, in the Bombay Presidency, the
preaching of the Qāḍī of Nasirabad, Sayyid Safdar ʻAlī, won over to
Islam a large body of artisans, who follow the trade of armourers or
blacksmiths. [929] A number of persons of the same trade, who form a
small community of about 200 souls in the district of Nasik, were
converted in a curious way about 1870. The Presbyterian missionaries of
Nasik had for a long time been trying to convert them from Hinduism,
and they were in a state of hesitation as to whether or not to embrace
Christianity when a Muhammadan faqīr from Bombay, who was well
acquainted with their habits of thought, expounded to them the
doctrines of Islam and succeeded in winning them over to that faith.
[930]
In Patiala, Mawlavī ʻUbayd Allāh, a converted Brahman of great
learning, proved himself to be a zealous preacher of Islam, and in
spite of the obstacles that were at first thrown in his way by his
relatives, achieved so great a success that his converts almost filled
an entire ward of the city. He wrote controversial works, which have
passed through several editions, directed against the Christian and
Hindu religions. In one of these books he thus speaks of his own
conversion: “I, Muḥammad ʻUbayd Allāh, the son of Munshi Koṭā Mal,
resident of Payal, in the Patiala State, declare that this poor man in
his childhood and during the lifetime of his father was held in the
bondage of idol-worship, but the mercy of God caught me by the hand and
drew me towards Islam, i.e. I came to know the excellence of Islam and
the deficiencies of Hinduism, and I accepted Islam heart and soul and
counted myself one of the servants of the Prophet of God (peace be upon
him!). At that time intelligence, which is the gift of God, suggested
to me that it was mere folly and laziness to blindly follow the customs
of one’s forefathers and be misled by them and not make researches into
matters of religion and faith, whereon depend our eternal bliss or
misery. With these thoughts I began to study the current faiths and
investigated each of them impartially. I thoroughly explored the Hindu
religion and conversed with learned Paṇḍits, gained a thorough
knowledge of the Christian faith, read the books of Islam and conversed
with learned men. In all of them I found errors and fallacies, with the
exception of Islam, the excellence of which became clearly manifest to
me; its leader, Muḥammad the Prophet, possesses such moral excellences
that no tongue can describe them, and he alone who knows the beliefs
and the liturgy, and the moral teachings and practice of this faith,
can fully realise them. Praise be to God! So excellent is this religion
that everything in it leads the soul to God. In short, by the grace of
God, the distinction between truth and falsehood became as clear to me
as night and day, darkness and light. But although my heart had long
been enlightened by the brightness of Islam and my mouth fragrant with
the profession of faith, yet my evil passions and Satan had bound me
with the fetters of the luxury and ease of this fleeting world, and I
was in evil case because of the outward observances of idolatry. At
length, the grace of God thus admonished me: ‘How long wilt thou keep
this priceless pearl hidden within the shell and this refreshing
perfume shut up in the casket? thou shouldest wear this pearl about thy
neck and profit by this perfume.’ Moreover the learned have declared
that to conceal one’s faith in Islam and retain the dress and habits of
infidels brings a man to Hell. So (God be praised!) on the ʻĪd al-Fiṭr
1264 the sun of my conversion emerged from its screen of clouds, and I
performed my devotions in public with my Muslim brethren.” [931]
Many Muhammadan preachers have adopted the methods of Christian
missionaries, such as street preaching, tract distribution, and other
agencies. In many of the large cities of India, Muslim preachers may be
found daily expounding the teachings of Islam in some principal
thoroughfare. In Bangalore this practice is very general, and one of
these preachers, who was the imām of the mosque about the year 1890,
was so popular that he was even sometimes invited to preach by Hindus:
he preached in the market-place, and in the course of seven or eight
years gained forty-two converts. In Bombay a Muhammadan missionary
preaches almost daily near the chief market of the city, and in
Calcutta there are several preaching-stations that are kept constantly
supplied. Among the converts are occasionally to be found some
Europeans, mostly persons in indigent circumstances; the mass, however,
are Hindus. [932] Some of the numerous Anjumans that have of recent
years sprung up in the chief centres of Musalman life in India, include
among their objects the sending of missionaries to preach in the
bazaars; such are the Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām of Lahore, and the
Anjuman Ḥāmī Islām of Ajmīr. These particular Anjumans appoint paid
agents, but much of the work of preaching in the bazaars is performed
by persons who are engaged in some trade or business during the working
hours of the day and devote their leisure time in the evenings to this
pious work.
Much of the missionary zeal of the Indian Musalmans is directed towards
counteracting the anti-Islamic tendencies of the instruction given by
Christian missionaries and the preachers of the Ārya Samāj, and the
efforts made are thus defensive rather than directly proselytising.
Some preachers too turn their attention rather to the strengthening of
the foundation already laid, and endeavour to rid their ignorant
co-religionists of their Hindu superstitions, and instil in them a
purer form of faith, such efforts being in many cases the continuation
of earlier missionary activity. The work of conversion has indeed been
often very imperfect. Of many, nominally Muslims, it may be said that
they are half Hindus: they observe caste rules, they join in Hindu
festivals and practise numerous idolatrous ceremonies. In certain
districts also, e.g. in Mewāt and Gurgaon, large numbers of Muhammadans
may be found who know nothing of their religion but its name; they have
no mosques, nor do they observe the hours of prayer. This is especially
the case among the Muhammadans of the villages or in parts of the
country where they are isolated from the mass of believers; but in the
towns the presence of learned religious men tends, in great measure, to
counteract the influence of former superstitions, and makes for a purer
and more intelligent form of religious life. In recent years, however,
there has been, speaking generally, a movement noticeable among the
Indian Muslims towards a religious life more strictly in accordance
with the laws of Islam. The influence of the Christian mission schools
has also been very great in stimulating among some Muhammadans of the
younger generation a study of their own religion and in bringing about
a consequent awakening of religious zeal. Indeed, the spread of
education generally, has led to a more intelligent grasp of religious
principles and to an increase of religious teachers in outlying and
hitherto neglected districts. This missionary movement of reform (from
whatever cause it may originate), may be observed in very different
parts of India. In the eastern districts of the Panjāb, for example,
after the Mutiny, a great religious revival took place. Preachers
travelled far and wide through the country, calling upon believers to
abandon their idolatrous practices and expounding the true tenets of
the faith. Now, in consequence, most villages, in which Muhammadans own
any considerable portion, have a mosque, while the grosser and more
open idolatries are being discontinued. [933] In Rajputana also, the
Hindu tribes who have been from time to time converted to Islam in the
rural districts, are now becoming more orthodox and regular in their
religious observances, and are abandoning the ancient customs which
hitherto they had observed in common with their idolatrous neighbours.
The Merāts, for example, now follow the orthodox Muhammadan form of
marriage instead of the Hindu ritual they formerly observed, and have
abjured the flesh of the wild boar. [934] A similar revival in Bengal
has already been spoken of above.
Such movements and the efforts of individual missionaries are, however,
quite inadequate to explain the rapid increase of the Muhammadans of
India, and one is naturally led to inquire what are the causes other
than the normal increase of population, [935] which add so enormously
to their numbers. The answer is to be found in the social conditions of
life among Hindus. The insults and contempt heaped upon the lower
castes of Hindus by their co-religionists, and the impassable obstacles
placed in the way of any member of these castes desiring to better his
condition, show up in striking contrast the benefits of a religious
system which has no outcasts, and gives free scope for the indulgence
of any ambition. In Bengal, for example, the weavers of cotton
piece-goods, who are looked upon as vile by their Hindu
co-religionists, embrace Islam in large numbers to escape from the low
position to which they are otherwise degraded. [936] A very remarkable
instance of a similar kind occurs in the history of the north-eastern
part of the same province. Here in the year 1550 the aboriginal tribe
of the Kocch established a dynasty under their great leader, Haju; in
the reign of his grandson, when the higher classes in the state were
received into the pale of Hinduism, [937] the mass of the people
finding themselves despised as outcasts, became Muhammadans. [938]
The escape that Islam offers to Hindus from the oppression of the
higher castes was strikingly illustrated in Tinnevelli at the close of
the nineteenth century. A very low caste, the Shanars, had in recent
years become prosperous and many of them had built fine houses; they
asserted that they had the right to worship in temples, from which they
had hitherto been excluded. A riot ensued, in the course of which the
Shanars suffered badly at the hands of Hindus of a higher caste, and
they took refuge in the pale of Islam. Six hundred Shanars in one
village became Muslims in one day, and their example was quickly
followed in other places. [939]
Similar instances might be given from other parts of India. A Hindu who
has in any way lost caste and been in consequence repudiated by his
relations and by the society of which he has been accustomed to move,
would naturally be attracted towards a religion that receives all
without distinction, and offers to him a grade of society equal in the
social scale to that from which he has been banished. Such a change of
religion might well be accompanied with sincere conviction, but men
also who might be profoundly indifferent to the number or names of the
deities they were called upon to worship, would feel very keenly the
social ostracism entailed by their loss of caste, and become Muhammadan
without any religious feelings at all. The influence of the study of
Muhammadan literature also, and the habitual contact with Muhammadan
society, must often make itself insensibly felt. Among the Rajput
princes of the nineteenth century in Rajputana and Bundelkhand, such
tendencies towards Islamism were to be observed, [940] tendencies
which, had the Mughal empire lasted, would probably have led to their
ultimate conversion. They not only respected Muhammadan saints, but had
Muhammadan tutors for their sons; they also had their food killed in
accordance with the regulations laid down by the Muhammadan law, and
joined in the Muhammadan festivals dressed as faqīrs, and praying like
true believers. On the other hand, it has been conjectured that the
present position of affairs, under a government perfectly impartial in
matters religious, is much more likely to promote conversions among the
Hindus generally than was the case under the rule of the Muhammadan
kingdoms, when Hinduism gained union and strength from the constant
struggle with an aggressive enemy. [941] Hindus, too, often flock in
large numbers to the tombs of Muslim saints on the day appointed to
commemorate them, and a childless father, with the feeling that prompts
a polytheist to leave no God unaddressed, will present his petition to
the God of the Muhammadans, and if children are born to him, apparently
in answer to this prayer, the whole family will in such a case (and
examples are not infrequent) embrace Islam. [942]
Love for a Muhammadan woman is occasionally the cause of the conversion
of a Hindu, since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an unbeliever is
absolutely forbidden by the Muslim law. Hindu children, if adopted by
wealthy Musalmans, would be brought up in the religion of their new
parents; and a Hindu wife, married to a follower of the Prophet, would
be likely to adopt the faith of her husband. [943] As the contrary
process can rarely take place, the number of Muhammadans is bound to
increase in proportion to that of the Hindus. Hindus, who for some
reason or other have been driven out of their caste; the poor who have
become the recipients of Muhammadan charity, or women and children who
have been protected when their parents have died or deserted them—(such
cases would naturally be frequent in times of famine)—form a continuous
though small stream of additions from the Hindus. [944] There are often
local circumstances favourable to the growth of Islam; for example, it
has been pointed out [945] that in the villages of the Terai, in which
the number of Hindus and Muhammadans happen to be equally balanced, any
increase in the predominance of the Muhammadans is invariably followed
by disputes about the killing of cows and other practices offensive to
Hindu feeling. The Hindus gradually move away from the village, leaving
behind of their creed only the Chamār ploughman in the service of the
Muhammadan peasants. These latter eventually adopt the religion of
their masters, not from any conviction of its truth, but from the
inconvenience their isolation entails.
Some striking instances of conversions from the lower castes of Hindus
are also found in the agricultural districts of Oudh. Although the
Muhammadans of this province form only one-tenth of the whole
population, still the small groups of Muhammadan cultivators form
“scattered centres of revolt against the degrading oppression to which
their religion hopelessly consigns these lower castes.” [946] The
advantages Islam holds out to such classes as the Korīs and Chamārs,
who stand at the lowest level of Hindu society, and the deliverance
which conversion to Islam brings them, may be best understood from the
following passage descriptive of their social condition as Hindus.
[947] “The lowest depth of misery and degradation is reached by the
Korīs and Chamārs, the weavers and leather-cutters to the rest. Many of
these in the northern districts are actually bond-slaves, having hardly
ever the spirit to avail themselves of the remedy offered by our
courts, and descend with their children from generation to generation
as the value of an old purchase. They hold the plough for the Brahman
or Chhattri master, whose pride of caste forbids him to touch it, and
live with the pigs, less unclean than themselves, in separate quarters
apart from the rest of the village. Always on the verge of starvation,
their lean, black, and ill-formed figures, their stupid faces, and
their repulsively filthy habits reflect the wretched destiny which
condemns them to be lower than the beast among their fellow-men, and
yet that they are far from incapable of improvement is proved by the
active and useful stable servants drawn from among them, who receive
good pay and live well under European masters. A change of religion is
the only means of escape open to them, and they have little reason to
be faithful to their present creed.”
It is this absence of class prejudices which constitutes the real
strength of Islam in India, and enables it to win so many converts from
Hinduism.
To complete this survey of Islam in India, some account still remains
to be given of the spread of this faith in Kashmīr and thence beyond
the borders of India into Tibet. Of all the provinces and states of
India (with the exception of Sind) Kashmīr contains the largest number
of Muhammadans (namely 70 per cent.) in proportion to the whole
population; but unfortunately historical facts that should explain the
existence in this state of so many Musalmans, almost entirely of Hindu
or Tibetan origin, are very scanty. But all the evidence leads us to
attribute it on the whole to a long-continued missionary movement
inaugurated and carried out mainly by faqīrs and dervishes, among whom
were Ismāʻīlian preachers sent from Alamūt. [948]
It is difficult to say when this Islamising influence first made itself
felt in the country. The first Muhammadan king of Kashmīr, Ṣadr al-Dīn,
[949] is said to have owed his conversion to a certain Darwesh Bulbul
Shāh in the early part of the fourteenth century. This saint was the
only religious teacher who could satisfy his craving for religious
truth when, dissatisfied with his own Hindu faith, he looked for a more
acceptable form of doctrine. Towards the end of the same century (in
1388) the progress of Islam was most materially furthered by the advent
of Sayyid ʻAlī Hamadānī, a fugitive from his native city of Hamadān in
Persia, where he had incurred the wrath of Tīmūr. He was accompanied by
700 Sayyids, who established hermitages all over the country and by
their influence appear to have assured the acceptance of the new
religion. Their advent appears, however, to have also stirred up
considerable fanaticism, as Sultan Sikandar (1393–1417) acquired the
name of Butshikan from his destruction of Hindu idols and temples, and
his prime minister, a converted Hindu, set on foot a fierce persecution
of the adherents of his old faith, but on his death toleration was
again made the rule of the kingdom. [950] Towards the close of the
fifteenth century, a missionary, by name Mīr Shams al-Dīn, belonging to
a Shīʻah sect, came from ʻIrāq, and, with the aid of his disciples, won
over a large number of converts in Kashmīr.
When under Akbar, Kashmīr became a province of the Mughal empire, the
Muhammadan influence was naturally strengthened and many men of
learning came into the country. In the reign of Aurangzeb, the Rajput
Raja of Kishtwar was converted by the miracles of a certain Sayyid Shāh
Farīd al-Dīn and his conversion seems to have been followed by that of
the majority of his subjects, and along the route which the Mughal
emperors took on their progresses into Kashmīr we still find Rajas who
are the descendants of Muhammadanised Rajputs. [951]
To the north and north-east of Kashmīr, the provinces of Baltistan and
Ladakh are inhabited by a mixed Tibetan race, among whom Islam has been
firmly established for several centuries, but the date and manner of
its introduction is unknown. The Muhammadans of Baltistan tell of four
brothers who came from Khurāsān and brought about a revival of the
faith, but appear to have no tradition regarding the earliest
propagandists. [952] Up to the middle of the nineteenth century Islam
appeared to be making progress, but this tendency was counteracted by
the encouragement which Maharaja Ranbir Singh gave to the followers of
the Buddhist faith. In Ladakh there are a number of half-castes, called
Arghons, [953] born of Tibetan mothers and Muhammadan fathers, traders
who have come to Leh and persuaded the Tibetan women they marry to
accept Islam. These Arghons are all Musalmans and, like their fathers,
marry Tibetan wives; they are said to be increasing in numbers more
rapidly than the pure Tibetan stock. [954] Islam has also been carried
into Tibet Proper by Kashmīrī merchants. Settlements of such merchants
are to be found in all the chief cities of Tibet; they marry Tibetan
wives, who often adopt the religion of their husbands; and there are
now said to be as many as 2000 Muhammadan families in Lhasa. [955]
Islam has made its way into Tibet also from Yunnan, [956] and at
Su-ching, on the border of the Sze-chwan province and Tibet, converts
are being won from among the Tibetan inhabitants. [957] Muhammadan
influences are also said to have come from Persia [958] and from
Turkestan. [959]
CHAPTER X.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN CHINA.
Tradition ascribes to Muḥammad the saying, “Seek for knowledge, even
unto China.” [960] Though there is no historical evidence for these
words having ever been uttered by the Prophet, it is not impossible
that the name of this country may have been known to him, for
commercial relations between Arabia and China had been established long
before his birth. It was through Arabia, in great measure, that Syria
and the ports of the Levant received the produce of the East. In the
sixth century, there was a considerable trade between China and Arabia
by way of Ceylon, and at the beginning of the seventh century the
commerce between China, Persia and Arabia was still further extended,
the town of Sīrāf on the Persian Gulf being the chief emporium for the
Chinese traders. It was at this period, at the commencement of the
Tʼang dynasty (618–907) that mention is first made of the Arabs in the
Chinese Annals; [961] they note the rise of the Muslim power in Medina
and briefly describe the religious observances of the new faith.
The Annals of Kwangtung thus record the coming of the first Muslims
into China:—“At the beginning of the Tʼang dynasty there came to Canton
a large number of strangers, from the kingdoms of Annam, Cambodia,
Medina and several other countries. These strangers worshipped heaven
(i.e. God) and had neither statue, idol nor image in their temples. The
kingdom of Medina is close to that of India, and it is in this kingdom
that the religion of these strangers, which is different to that of
Buddha, originated. They do not eat pork or drink wine, and they regard
as unclean the flesh of any animal not killed by themselves. They are
nowadays called Hui Hui. [962]... Having asked and obtained from the
emperor permission to reside in Canton, they built magnificent houses
of a style different to that of our country. They were very rich and
obeyed a chief chosen by themselves.” [963] Though direct historical
evidence is lacking, [964] it is most probable that Islam was first
introduced into China by merchants who followed the old-established sea
route. But the earliest record we can trust refers to diplomatic
relations carried on by land, through Persia. When Yazdagird, the last
Sāsānid king of Persia, had perished, his son, Fīrūz, appealed to China
for help against the Arab invaders; [965] but the emperor replied that
Persia was too far distant for him to send the required troops. But he
is said to have despatched an ambassador to the Arab court to plead the
cause of the fugitive prince—probably also with instructions to
ascertain the extent and power of the new kingdom that had arisen in
the West, and the caliph ʻUthmān is said to have sent one of the Arab
generals to accompany the Chinese ambassador on his return in 651, and
this first Muslim envoy was honourably received by the emperor. In the
reign of Walīd (705–715), the famous Arab general, Qutaybah b. Muslim,
having been appointed governor of Khurāsān, crossed the Oxus and began
a series of successful campaigns, in which he successively subjugated
Bukhārā, Samarqand and other cities, and carried his conquests up to
the western frontier of the Chinese empire. In 713 he sent envoys to
the emperor, who (according to Arab accounts) dismissed them with
valuable presents. A few years later, the Chinese Annals make mention
of an ambassador, named Sulaymān, who came from the caliph Hishām in
726 to the Emperor Hsuan Tsung. These diplomatic relations between the
Arab and the Chinese empires assumed a new importance at the close of
this emperor’s reign, when, driven from his throne by a usurper, he
abdicated in favour of his son, Su Tsung (A.D. 756). The latter sought
the help of the ʻAbbāsid caliph, al-Manṣūr, who responded to this
appeal by sending a body of Arab troops, and with their assistance the
emperor succeeded in recovering his two capitals, Si-ngan-fu and
Ho-nan-fu, from the rebels. At the end of the war, these Arab troops
did not return to their own country, but married and settled in China.
Various reasons are assigned for this action on their part; one account
represents them as having returned to their native land but, being
refused permission to remain on the ground that they had been so long
in a land where pork was eaten, they went back again to China;
according to another account they were prepared to embark for Arabia,
at Canton, when they were taunted with having eaten pork during their
campaign, and in consequence they refused to return home and run the
risk of similar taunts from their own people; when the governor of
Canton tried to compel them, they joined with the Arab and Persian
merchants, their co-religionists, and pillaged the principal commercial
houses in the city; the governor saved himself by taking refuge on the
city wall, and was only able to return after he had obtained from the
emperor permission for these Arab troops to remain in the country;
houses and lands were assigned to them in different cities, where they
settled down and intermarried with the women of the country. [966]
The Chinese Muhammadans have a legend that their faith was first
preached in China by a maternal uncle of the Prophet, and his reputed
tomb at Canton is highly venerated by them. But there is not the
slightest historical base for this legend, and it appears to be of late
growth. [967] It doubtless arose from a desire to connect the history
of the faith in their own land as closely as possible with apostolic
times—a fruitful source of legends in countries far removed from the
centres of Muslim history. [968] But of the existence of Muslims in
China, especially of merchants in the port towns, during the Tʼang
dynasty there is clear evidence. The Chinese annalist of this period
(A.D. 713–742) says that “the barbarians of the West came into the
Middle Kingdom in crowds, like a deluge, from a distance of at least
1000 leagues and from more than 100 kingdoms, bringing as tribute their
sacred books, which were received and deposited in the hall set apart
for translations of sacred and canonical books, in the imperial palace:
from this period the religious doctrines of these different countries
were thus diffused and openly practised in the empire of Tʼang.” [969]
An Arab geographer, writing about the year 851, describes these
settlements and the mosques which these merchants were allowed to build
for their religious exercises; [970] he states that he knew of no
Chinaman having embraced Islam, but as he makes the same remark of the
people of India, it may be that he was as ill-informed in the one case
as the other. [971]
But there is certainly no distinct evidence of any proselytising
activity on the part of the Muslims in China, and indeed very little
information about them at all until the period of Mongol conquests, in
the thirteenth century. These conquests resulted in a vast immigration
of Musalmans of various nationalities, Arabs, Persians, Turks and
others into the Chinese empire. [972] Some came as merchants, artisans,
soldiers or colonists, others were brought in as prisoners of war. A
large number of them settled permanently in the country and developed
into a populous and flourishing community, which gradually lost its
original racial peculiarities through intermarriage with Chinese women.
Several Muhammadans occupied high posts under the Mongol rulers, e.g.
ʻAbd al-Raḥmān, who in 1244 was appointed head of the Imperial finances
and allowed to farm the taxes imposed upon China, [973] and ʻUmar Shams
al-Dīn, commonly known as Sayyid Ajall, a native of Bukhārā, to whom
Qūbīlāy Khān, on his accession in 1259, entrusted the management of the
Imperial finances; he was subsequently governor of Yunnan, after this
province had been conquered and added to the Chinese empire. [974]
Sayyid Ajall died in 1270, leaving behind him a reputation as an
enlightened and upright administrator; he built Confucian temples as
well as mosques in Yunnan city. [975]
The descendants of Sayyid Ajall played a great part in the establishing
of Islam in China; it was his grandson who in 1335 obtained from the
emperor the recognition of Islam as the “True and Pure Religion”—a name
which it has kept to the present day,—and another descendant of Sayyid
Ajall was authorised by the emperor in 1420 to build mosques in the
capitals, Si-ngan-fu and Nan-kin. [976]
The Chinese historians of the reign of Qūbīlāy Khān make it a ground of
complaint against this monarch that he did not employ Chinese officials
in place of the immigrant Turks and Persians. [977] The exalted
position occupied by Sayyid Ajall and the facilities of communication
between China and the West established by Mongol conquest, attracted a
number of such persons into the north of China, and it was probably as
a result of these immigrations that those scattered Muhammadan
communities began to be formed, which have grown to large proportions
in most of the provinces of China. Marco Polo, who enjoyed the favour
of Qūbīlāy Khān and lived in China from 1275 to 1292, notes the
presence of Muhammadans in various parts of Yunnan. [978] At the
beginning of the fourteenth century, all the inhabitants of Talifu, the
capital of Yunnan, are said by a contemporary historian to have been
Musalmans; [979] and Ibn Baṭūṭah, who visited several coast towns in
China towards the middle of the fourteenth century, speaks of the
hearty welcome he received from his co-religionists, [980] and reports
that “In every town there is a special quarter for the Muslims,
inhabited solely by them, where they have their mosques; they are
honoured and respected by the Chinese.” [981]
Up to this period the Muhammadans appear to have been looked upon as a
foreign community in China, but after the expulsion of the Mongol
dynasty in the latter part of the fourteenth century they received no
fresh addition to their numbers from abroad, in consequence of the
policy of isolation which the Chinese government now adopted; and being
thus cut off from communication with their co-religionists in other
countries, they tended, in most parts of the empire, gradually to
become merged into the mass of the native population, through their
marriages with Chinese women and their adoption of Chinese habits and
manners. The founder of the new Ming dynasty, the emperor Hungwu,
extended to them many privileges, and their flourishing condition
during the period that this dynasty lasted (1368–1644) is shown by the
large number of mosques erected.
The emperors of this dynasty cultivated friendly relations with the
Muhammadan princes on their western frontier, and there was a frequent
interchange of embassies between them and the Tīmūrid princes. One of
these is of interest in the missionary history of Islam, inasmuch as
Shāh Rukh Bahādur in 1412 took advantage of the arrival of a Chinese
embassy at his court in Samarqand, to include in his answer an
invitation to the emperor to embrace Islam. He sent with his envoy, who
accompanied the Chinese ambassadors on their return, two letters, the
first of which, written in Arabic, was to the following effect:—“In the
name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no god save God:
Muḥammad is the Apostle of God. The Apostle of God, Muḥammad (peace be
on him!) said: ‘There shall not cease to be in my church a people
abiding in the commandments of God; whosoever fails to help them or
opposes them, shall never prosper, until the commandment of the Lord
cometh.’ When the Most High God purposed to create Adam and his race,
he said ‘I was a hidden treasure, but it was my pleasure to become
known; I therefore created man that I might be known’; It is manifest
from hence that the divine purpose (great is His power and exalted is
His word!) in the creation of man was to make Himself known and uplift
the banners of right guidance and faith. Wherefore He sent His Apostle
with guidance and the religion of truth that it might prevail over all
other faiths, though the polytheists turn away from it, that he might
make known the laws and the ordinances and the observances of what is
lawful and unlawful, and He gave him the holy Qurʼān miraculously that
thereby he might put to silence the unbelievers and stop their mouths
when they discussed and disputed with him, and by His perfect grace and
His all-pervading guidance He has caused it to remain even unto the day
of judgment. By His power He hath established in all ages and times and
in all parts of the world, in east and west, and in China, a mighty
monarch, lord of great armies and authority, to administer justice and
mercy and spread the wings of peace and security over the heads of men;
to enjoin upon them righteousness and warn them against evil and
disobedience and lift up among them the banners of the noble religion;
and he drives away idolatry and infidelity from among them through
belief in the unity of God. The Most High God thus disposeth our hearts
by His past mercies and His ensuing grace to strive for the
establishing of the laws of pure religion and the continuance of the
ordinances of the shining path. He also bids us administer justice to
our subjects in all suits and cases in accordance with the religion of
the Prophet and the ordinances of the Chosen One, and build mosques and
colleges and monasteries and hermitages and places of worship, that the
teaching of the sciences and the schools of learning may not cease nor
the memorials and injunctions of religion be swept away. Seeing that
the continuance of worldly prosperity and dominion, and the permanence
of authority and rule depend upon the assistance given to truth and
righteousness and the extirpation of the evils caused by idolatry and
unbelief from the earth, in the expectation of blessing and reward, we,
therefore, hope that your Majesty and the nobles of your realm will
agree with us in these matters and join us in strengthening the
foundations of the established law.” The other letter, written in
Persian, makes a more direct appeal, without the rhetorical
embellishments of the Arabic:—“The Most High God, having in the depth
of His wisdom and the perfection of His power created Adam (peace be
upon him!), made some of his sons prophets and apostles and sent them
among men to summon them to the truth. To certain of these prophets,
such as Abraham, Moses, David and Muḥammad (peace be upon them!) He
gave a book and taught a law, and He bade the people of their time
follow the law and the religion of each of them. All these apostles
invited men to faith in the unity and to the worship of God and forbade
the adoration of the sun, moon and stars, of kings and idols; and
though each one of these apostles had a separate law, yet they were all
agreed in the doctrine of the unity of the Most High God. At length,
when the apostolic and prophetic office devolved on the Apostle
Muḥammad Muṣṭafạ̄ (the peace and blessing of God be upon him!) all other
systems of law were abrogated. He was the apostle and the prophet of
the latter age, and it behoves the whole world—lords and kings and
ministers, rich and poor, small and great,—to observe his law and
forsake all past creeds and laws. This is the true and perfect faith
and is called Islam. Some years ago, Chingīz Khān took up arms and sent
his sons into various countries and kingdoms—Jūjī Khān to the confines
of Sarāy, Qrim and Dasht Qafchāq, where some monarchs, such as Ūzbek
Khān, Chānī Khān and Urus Khān, became Musalmans and observed the law
of Muḥammad (peace be upon him!). Hūlāgū Khān was set over Khurāsān,
ʻIrāq and the neighbouring countries, and some of his sons who
succeeded him received into their hearts the light of the law of
Muḥammad (peace be upon him!), and in like manner became Musalmans, and
honoured with the blessedness of Islam passed into the other world,
such as the truthful king, Ghāzān, and Uljāytū Sulṭān and the fortunate
king, Abū Saʻīd Bahādur, until my honoured father, Amīr Tīmūr Gūrgān,
succeeded to the throne. He too observed the law of Muḥammad (peace be
upon him!) in all the countries under his rule, and throughout his
reign the followers of the faith of Islam enjoyed complete prosperity.
Now that by the goodness and favour of God this Kingdom of Khurāsān,
ʻIrāq, Mā-warāʼ-al-nahr, etc., has passed into my hands, the
administration is carried on throughout the whole kingdom in accordance
with the pure law of the Prophet; righteousness is enjoined and wrong
forbidden, and the Yarghū and the institutes of Chingīz Khān have been
abolished. Since, then, it is sure and certain that salvation and
deliverance in the day of judgment, and sovereignty and felicity in the
present world, depend upon true faith and Islam, and the favour of the
Most High God, it is incumbent upon us to treat our subjects with
justice and equity. I hope that by the bounty and benevolence of God
you too will observe the law of Muḥammad, the Apostle of God (peace be
upon him!) and strengthen the religion of Islam, so that you may
exchange the transitory sovereignty of this world for the sovereignty
of the world to come.” [982]
It is not improbable that these letters gave rise to the later legend
of one of the Chinese emperors having become a convert to Islam. [983]
This legend is referred to, among others, by a Muhammadan merchant,
Sayyid ʻAlī Akbar, who spent some years in Peking at the end of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century; he speaks of the
large number of Musalmans who had settled in China; in the city of
Kenjanfu there were as many as 30,000 Muslim families; they paid no
taxes and enjoyed the favour of the emperor, who gave them grants of
land; they enjoyed complete toleration for the exercise of their
religion, which was favourably viewed by the Chinese, and conversions
were freely permitted; in the capital itself there were four great
mosques and about ninety more in other provinces of the empire,—all
erected at the cost of the emperor. [984]
Up to the establishment of the Manchu dynasty in 1644 there is no
record of any Muhammadan uprising, and the followers of Islam appear to
have been entirely content with the religious liberty they enjoyed; but
difficulties arose soon after the advent of the new ruling power, and
an insurrection in the province of Kansu in 1648 was the first occasion
on which any Muhammadans rose in arms against the Chinese government,
though it was not until the nineteenth century that any such revolt
entailed very disastrous consequences, or seriously interrupted the
amicable relations that had subsisted from the beginning between the
Chinese Muslims and their rulers. The official view of the Chinese
Government of these relations is set forth in an edict published by the
emperor Yung Chen in 1731:—“In every province of the empire, for many
centuries past, have been found a large number of Muhammadans who form
part of the people whom I regard as my own children just as I do my
other subjects. I make no distinction between them and those who do not
belong to their religion. I have received from certain officials secret
complaints against the Muhammadans on the ground that their religion
differs from that of the other Chinese, that they do not speak the same
language, and wear a different dress to the rest of the people. They
are accused of disobedience, haughtiness, and rebellious feelings, and
I have been asked to employ severe measures against them. After
examining these complaints and accusations, I have discovered that
there is no foundation for them. In fact, the religion followed by the
Musalmans is that of their ancestors; it is true their language is not
the same as that of the rest of the Chinese, but what a multitude of
different dialects there are in China. As to their temples, dress and
manner of writing, which differ from those of the other Chinese—these
are matters of absolutely no importance. These are mere matters of
custom. They bear as good a character as my other subjects, and there
is nothing to show that they intend to rebel. It is my wish, therefore,
that they should be left in the free exercise of their religion, whose
object is to teach men the observance of a moral life, and the
fulfilment of social and civil duties. This religion respects the
fundamental basis of Government, and what more can be asked for? If
then the Muhammadans continue to conduct themselves as good and loyal
subjects, my favour will be extended towards them just as much as
towards my other children. From among them have come many civil and
military officers, who have risen to the very highest ranks. This is
the best proof that they have adopted our habits and customs, and have
learned to conform themselves to the precepts of our sacred books. They
pass their examinations in literature just like every one else, and
perform the sacrifices enjoined by law. In a word, they are true
members of the great Chinese family and endeavour always to fulfil
their religious, civil and political duties. When the magistrates have
a civil case brought before them, they should not concern themselves
with the religion of the litigants. There is but one single law for all
my subjects. Those who do good shall be rewarded, and those who do evil
shall be punished.” [985]
About thirty years later, his successor, the Emperor Kʼien Lung, showed
distinguished marks of his favour towards the Muhammadans by ennobling
two Turkī Begs who had materially helped in suppressing a revolt in the
north-west and Kāshgar, and building palaces for them in Peking; he
also erected a mosque for the use of the Turkī Begs who visited the
Imperial court and for the prisoners of war who had been brought to the
capital from Kāshgar. Among these prisoners was a beautiful girl who
became a favourite concubine of the emperor, and it is stated that for
love of her he built this mosque immediately opposite his own palace
and erected a pavilion within the palace grounds, from which the
concubine could watch her fellow-countrymen at prayer and could join in
their devotions. This mosque was built in the years 1763–1764 and
contains an inscription in four languages, the Chinese text of which
was written by the emperor himself. [986]
After crushing the revolt in Zungaria, this same emperor Kʼien Lung, in
1770 transported thither from other parts of China ten thousand
military colonists, who were followed by their families and other
persons, to re-people the country, and they are all said to have
embraced the religion of the surrounding Muhammadan population. [987]
Whether such mass conversions occurred in other parts of the empire
also, we have no means of telling, but the existence of a considerable
Muhammadan population in every province of China can hardly be
explained merely by reference to foreign immigration and the natural
growth of population, [988] though the numbers are larger in those
provinces in which foreign Muhammadans have settled. [989] It is
unlikely that the Muhammadans in China during the many centuries of
their residence in this country, in the enjoyment of religious freedom
and the liberal patronage of several of the emperors, should have been
entirely devoid of that proselytising zeal which modern observers have
noted in their descendants at the present day. [990] To such direct
proselytising efforts must have been due the conversion of Chinese Jews
to Islam; their establishment in this country dates from an early
period, they held employments under the Government and were in
possession of large estates; but by the close of the seventeenth
century a great part of them had been converted to Islam. [991] Such
propaganda must have been quite quiet and unobtrusive, and indeed more
public methods might have excited suspicions on the part of the
Government, as is shown by an interesting report which was sent to the
Emperor Kʼien Lung in 1783 by a governor of the province of Khwang-Se.
It runs as follows: “I have the honour respectfully to inform your
Majesty that an adventurer named Han-Fo-Yun, of the province of
Khwang-Se, has been arrested on a charge of vagrancy. This adventurer
when interrogated as to his occupation, confessed that for the last ten
years he had been travelling through the different provinces of the
Empire in order to obtain information about his religion. In one of his
boxes were found thirty books, some of which had been written by
himself, while others were in a language that no one here understands.
These books praise in an extravagant and ridiculous manner a Western
king, called Muḥammad. The above-mentioned Han-Fo-Yun, when put to the
torture, at last confessed that the real object of his journey was to
propagate the false religion taught in these books, and that he
remained in the province of Shen-Si for a longer time than anywhere
else. I have examined these books myself. Some are certainly written in
a foreign language; for I have not been able to understand them: the
others that are written in Chinese are very bad, I may add, even
ridiculous on account of the exaggerated praise given in them to
persons who certainly do not deserve it, because I have never even
heard of them. Perhaps the above-mentioned Han-Fo-Yun is a rebel from
Kan-Su. His conduct is certainly suspicious, for what was he going to
do in the provinces through which he has been travelling for the last
ten years? I intend to make a serious inquiry into the matter.
Meanwhile, I would request your Majesty to order the stereotyped
plates, that are in the possession of his family, to be burnt, and the
engravers to be arrested, as well as the authors of the books, which I
have sent to your Majesty desiring to know your pleasure in the
matter.” [992]
This report bears testimony to the activity of at least one Muhammadan
missionary in the eighteenth century, and the growth of Islam, which
the Jesuit missionaries [993] noted in the eighteenth century, was
probably not so little connected with direct proselytism as some of
them supposed. Du Halde, in one of the few passages he devotes to the
Muhammadans in his great work, [994] attributes the increase in their
numbers largely to their habit of purchasing children in times of
famine. “The Mahometans have been settled for more than six hundred
years in various provinces, where they live quite quietly, because they
do not make any great efforts to spread their doctrines and gain
proselytes, and because in former times they only increased in numbers
by the alliances and marriages they contracted. But for several years
past they have continued to make very considerable progress by means of
their wealth. They buy up heathen children everywhere; and the parents,
being often unable to provide them with food, have no scruples in
selling them. During a famine that devastated the Province of Chantong,
they bought more than 10,000 of them. They marry them, and either
purchase or build for them separate quarters in a town, or even whole
villages; gradually in several places they gain such influence that
they do not let any one live among them who does not go to the mosque.
By such means they have multiplied exceedingly during the last
century.”
Similarly, in the famine that devastated the province of Kwangtung in
1790, as many as ten thousand children are said to have been purchased
by the Muhammadans from parents who, too poor to support them, were
willing to part with them to save them from starvation; these were all
brought up in the faith of Islam. [995] A Chinese Musalman, from
Yunnan, named Sayyid Sulaymān, who visited Cairo in 1894 and was there
interviewed by the representative of an Arabic journal, [996] declared
that the number of accessions to Islam gained in this way every year
was beyond counting. Similar testimony is given by M. d’Ollone, who
reports that this practice of buying children in times of famine
prevails among the Muhammadans throughout the whole of China to the
present day; in the same way, they purchased the children of Christian
parents who were massacred by the Boxers in 1900, and brought them up
as Musalmans. [997]
The Muhammadans in China tend to live together in separate villages and
towns or to form separate Muhammadan quarters in the towns, where they
will not allow any person to dwell among them who does not go to the
mosque. [998] Though they thus in some measure hold themselves apart,
they are careful to avoid the open exhibition of any specially
distinguishing features of the religious observances of their faith,
which may offend their neighbours, and they have been careful to make
concessions to the prejudices of their Chinese fellow-countrymen. In
their ordinary life they are completely in touch with the customs and
habits that prevail around them; they wear the pigtail and the ordinary
dress of the Chinese, and put on a turban, as a rule, only in the
mosque. To avoid offending against a superstitious prejudice on the
part of the Chinese, they also refrain from building tall minarets,
wherever they build them at all. [999] But for the most part, their
mosques conform to the Chinese type of architecture, often with nothing
to distinguish them from an ordinary temple or dwelling. [1000] Every
mosque is obliged by law to have a tablet to the emperor, with the
inscription on it, “The emperor, the immortal, may he live for ever,”
and the Muhammadans prostrate themselves before it in accordance with
the regular Chinese custom, though with various expedients to satisfy
their consciences and avoid the imputation of idolatry. [1001] Even in
Chinese Tartary, where the special privilege is allowed to the Musalman
soldiers, of remaining unmixed, and of forming a separate body, the
higher Muhammadan officials wear the dress prescribed to their rank,
long moustaches and the pigtail, and on holidays they perform the usual
homage demanded from officials, to a portrait of the emperor, by
touching the ground three times with their forehead. [1002] Similarly
all Muhammadan mandarins and other officials in other provinces perform
the rites prescribed to their official position, in the temples of
Confucius on festival days; in fact every precaution is taken by the
Muslims to prevent their faith from appearing to be in opposition to
the state religion, and hereby they have succeeded in avoiding the
odium with which the adherents of foreign religions, such as Judaism
and Christianity are regarded. They even represent their religion to
their Chinese fellow-countrymen as being in agreement with the
teachings of Confucius, with only this difference, that they follow the
traditions of their ancestors with regard to marriages, funerals, the
prohibition of pork, wine, tobacco, and games of chance, and the
washing of the hands before meals. [1003] Similarly the writings of the
Chinese Muhammadans treat the works of Confucius and other Chinese
classics with great respect, and where possible, point out the harmony
between the teachings contained therein and the doctrines of Islam.
[1004]
The Chinese government, in its turn, has always given to its Muhammadan
subjects (except when in revolt) the same privileges and advantages as
are enjoyed by the rest of the population. No office of state is closed
to them; and as governors of provinces, generals, magistrates and
ministers of state they enjoy the confidence and respect both of the
rulers and the people. Not only do Muhammadan names appear in the
Chinese annals as those of famous officers of state, whether military
or civil, but they have also distinguished themselves in the mechanical
arts and in sciences such as mathematics and astronomy. [1005]
The Chinese Muhammadans are also said to be keen men of business and
successful traders; they monopolise the beef trade and carry on other
trades with great success. [1006] They are thus in touch with every
section of the national life and have every opportunity for carrying on
a propaganda, but the few Christian missionaries who have concerned
themselves with this matter are of opinion that they are not animated
with any particular proselytising zeal. [1007] Still, many recent
converts are to be met with, and the fact that a large number of
Chinese Muslims can cite the name of the particular ancestor who first
embraced Islam points to a continuous process of conversion. [1008]
Apparently the Muslims are not allowed to preach their faith in the
streets, as Protestant missionaries do, [1009] but (as we have seen
above) [1010] they do not fail to make use of such opportunities as
present themselves for adding to the number of their sect. One of their
religious text-books, “A Guide to the Rites of the True Religion”
(published in Canton in 1668), commends the work of proselytising and
makes reference to such as may have recently become converts from among
the heathen. [1011] The fundamental doctrines of Islam are taught to
the new converts by means of metrical primers, [1012] and to the
influence of the religious books of the Chinese Muslims, Sayyid
Sulaymān attributes many of the conversions made in recent years.
[1013] The Muslim seminary at Hochow in Kansu is said to train
theological students who return to their several provinces, at the
completion of their studies, to promulgate their faith there, [1014]
and in upwards of ten provinces centres are said to have been started
where mullās are to be trained for Muslim propaganda. [1015] Military
officers convert many of the soldiers serving under them, to Islam, and
Muslim mandarins take advantage of the authority they enjoy, to win
converts, but as they are frequently transferred from one place to
another, they are not able to exercise so much influence as Muslim
military officers. [1016] Conversions may also occasionally occur,
which are not the result of a direct propagandist appeal, e.g. a
Turkish traveller who visited Peking in 1895 reported that he found
thirty mosques there, among them one that had originally been a temple;
this had been the family temple of a wealthy Chinaman, whose life had
been saved during the Boxer insurrection by the Mufti Wa-Ahonad (ʻAbd
al-Raḥmān); as a token of his gratitude, he embraced the faith of his
deliverer. [1017]
Turkish and other Muslim missionaries have in recent years been
visiting China and endeavouring to stir up among the Chinese Muslims a
more thorough knowledge of their faith and to awaken their zeal, but
their efforts seem so far to have borne but little fruit. [1018]
In 1867 a Russian writer, [1019] in a remarkable work on Islam in
China, expressed the opinion that it was destined to become the
national faith of the Chinese empire and thereby entirely change the
political conditions of the Eastern world. Nearly half a century has
elapsed since this note of alarm was sounded, but nothing has occurred
since to verify these prognostications. On the contrary, it would
appear that Islam has been losing rather than gaining ground during the
last century, since the wholesale massacres that accompanied the
suppression of the Panthay risings in Yunnan from 1855 to 1873 and the
Tungan rebellion in Shen-si and Kan-su in 1864–1877 and 1895–1896,
reduced the Muhammadan population by millions. [1020] The establishment
of the new Republic has given to the Chinese Muslims a freedom of
activity unknown under any preceding government, but it is too early
yet to discover how far they are likely to avail themselves of the
opportunities offered by the altered conditions of life. The
proselytism that still goes on, restricted as its sphere may be,
indicates a still cherished hope of expansion. Though four centuries
have elapsed since a Muslim traveller [1021] in China could discuss the
possibility of the conversion of the emperor being followed by that of
his subjects, it was still possible for a Chinese Muslim of the present
generation to state that his co-religionists in that country looked
forward with confidence to the day when Islam would be triumphant
throughout the length and breadth of the Chinese empire. [1022]
CHAPTER XI.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN AFRICA.
The history of Islam in Africa, covering as it does a period of
well-nigh thirteen centuries and embracing two-thirds of this vast
continent, with its numerous and diverse tribes and races, presents
especial difficulties in the way of systematic treatment, as it is
impossible to give a simultaneous account in chronological order of the
spread of this faith in all the different parts of the continent. Its
relations to the Christian Churches of Egypt and the rest of North
Africa, of Nubia and Abyssinia have already been dealt with in a former
chapter; in the present chapter it is proposed to trace its progress
first among the heathen population of North Africa, then throughout the
Sudan and along the West coast, and lastly along the East coast and in
Cape Colony. [1023]
The information we possess of the spread of Islam among the heathen
population of North Africa is hardly less meagre than the few facts
recorded above regarding the disappearance of the Christian Church. The
Berbers offered a vigorous resistance to the progress of the Arab arms,
and force seems to have had more influence than persuasion in their
conversion. Whenever opportunity presented itself, they rebelled
against the religion as well as the rule of their conquerors, and Arab
historians declare that they apostasised as many as twelve times.
[1024] In the annals of the long struggle a few scanty references to
conversions are to be found. These would appear sometimes to have been
prompted by the recognition of the fact that further resistance to the
Arab arms was useless. When in 703 the Berbers made their last stand
against the invaders, their intrepid leader and prophetess, al-Kāhinah,
[1025] foreseeing that the fortune of battle was to turn against them,
sent her sons into the camp of the Muslim general with instructions
that they were to embrace Islam and make common cause with the enemy;
she herself elected to fall fighting with her countrymen in the great
battle that crushed the political power of the Berbers and gave
Northern Africa into the hands of the Arabs. Peace was made on
condition that the Berbers would furnish 12,000 combatants to the ranks
of the Arab troops, and of these men two army-corps were formed, each
of which was placed under the command of one of the sons of al-Kāhinah.
[1026] By this device of enlisting the Berbers in their armies, the
Arab generals hoped to win them to their own religion by the hope of
booty.
The army of seven thousand Berbers that sailed from Africa in 711 under
the command of Ṭāriq (himself a Berber) to the conquest of Spain, was
composed of recent converts to Islam, and their conversion is expressly
said to have been sincere: learned Arabs and theologians were
appointed, “to read and explain to them the sacred words of the Qurʼān,
and instruct them in all and every one of the duties enjoined by their
new religion.” [1027] Mūsạ̄, the great conqueror of Africa, showed his
zeal for the progress of Islam by devoting the large sums of money
granted him by the caliph ʻAbd al-Malik to the purchase of such
captives as gave promise of showing themselves worthy children of the
faith: “for whenever after a victory there was a number of slaves put
up for sale, he used to buy all those whom he thought would willingly
embrace Islam, who were of noble origin, and who looked, besides, as if
they were active young men. To these he first proposed the embracing of
Islam, and if, after cleansing their understanding and making them fit
to receive its sublime truths, they were converted to the best of
religions, and their conversion was a sincere one, he then would, by
way of putting their abilities to trial, employ them. If they evinced
good disposition and talents he would instantly grant them liberty,
appoint them to high commands in his army, and promote them according
to their merits; if, on the contrary, they showed no aptitude for their
appointments, he would send them back to the common depôt of captives
belonging to the army, to be again disposed of according to the general
custom of drawing out the spoil by arrows.” [1028]
How superficial the conversion of the Berbers was may be judged from
the fact that when the pious ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz in A.H. 100 (A.D.
718) appointed Ismāʻīl b. ʻAbd Allāh governor of North Africa, ten
learned theologians were sent with him to instruct the Muslim Berbers
in the ordinances of their faith, since up to that time they do not
seem to have recognised that their new religion forbade to them
indulgence in wine. The new governor is said to have shown great zeal
in inviting the Berbers to accept Islam, but the statement that his
efforts were crowned with such success that not a single Berber
remained unconverted is certainly not correct. [1029] For the
conversion of the Berbers was undoubtedly the work of several
centuries; even to the present day they retain many of their primitive
institutions which are in opposition to Muslim law. [1030] Islam took
no firm root among them until it assumed the form of a national
movement and became connected with the establishment of native
dynasties, under which many Berbers came within the pale of Islam who
before had looked upon the acceptance of this faith as a sign of loss
of political independence. Of these various changes of political
condition it is not the place to speak here, but in a history of Muslim
propaganda the rise of the Almoravids deserves special mention as a
great national movement that attracted a great many of the Berber
tribes to join the Muslim community. In the early part of the eleventh
century, Yaḥyạ̄ b. Ibrāhīm, a chief of the Ṣanhāja, one of the Berber
tribes of the Sahara, on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca, sought
in the religious centres of Northern Africa for a learned and pious
teacher, who should accompany him as a missionary of Islam to his
benighted and ignorant tribesmen: at first he found it difficult to
find a man willing to leave his scholarly retreat and brave the dangers
of the Sahara, but at length he met in ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn the fit
person, bold enough to undertake so difficult a mission, pious and
austere in his life, and learned in theology, law and other sciences.
So far back as the ninth century the preachers of Islam had made their
way among the Berbers of the Sahara and established among them the
religion of the Prophet, but this faith had found very little
acceptance there, and ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn found even the professed
Muslims to be very lax in their religious observances and given up to
all kinds of vicious practices. He ardently threw himself into the task
of converting them to the right path and instructing them in the duties
of religion; but the sternness with which he rebuked their vices and
sought to reform their conduct, alienated their sympathies from him,
and the ill-success of his mission almost drove him to abandon this
stiff-necked people and devote his efforts to the conversion of the
Sudan. Being persuaded, however, not to desert the work he had once
undertaken, he retired with such disciples as his preaching had
gathered around him, to an island in the river Senegal, where they
founded a monastery and gave themselves up unceasingly to devotional
exercises. The more devout-minded among the Berbers, stung to
repentance by the thought of the wickedness that had driven their holy
teacher from their midst, came humbly to his island to implore his
forgiveness and receive his instructions in the saving truths of
religion. Thus day by day there gathered around him an increasing band
of disciples, especially from among the Lamṭūna, a branch of the
Ṣanhāja clan, whose numbers swelled at length to about a thousand. ʻAbd
Allāh b. Yāsīn then recognised that the time had come for launching out
upon a wider sphere of action, and he called upon his followers to show
their gratitude to God for the revelation he had vouchsafed them, by
communicating the knowledge of it to others: “Go to your
fellow-tribesmen, teach them the law of God and threaten them with His
chastisement. If they repent, amend their ways and accept the truth,
leave them in peace; if they refuse and persist in their errors and
evil lives, invoke the aid of God against them, and let us make war
upon them until God decide between us.” Hereupon each man went to his
own tribe and began to exhort them to repent and believe, but without
success: equally unsuccessful were the efforts of ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn
himself, who left his monastery in the hope of finding the Berber
chiefs more willing now to listen to his preaching. At length in 1042
he put himself at the head of his followers, to whom he had given the
name of al-Murābiṭīn (the so-called Almoravids)—a name derived from the
same root as the ribāṭ [1031] or monastery on his island in the
Senegal,—and attacked the neighbouring tribes and forced the acceptance
of Islam upon them. The success that attended his warlike expeditions
appeared to the tribes of the Sahara a more persuasive argument than
all his preaching, and they very soon came forward voluntarily to
embrace a faith that secured such brilliant successes to the arms of
its adherents. ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn died in 1059, but the movement he
had initiated lived after him and many heathen tribes of Berbers came
to swell the numbers of their Muslim fellow-countrymen, embracing their
religion at the same time as the cause they championed, and poured out
of the Sahara over North Africa and later on made themselves masters of
Spain also. [1032]
It is not improbable that the other great national movement that
originated among the Berber tribes, viz. the rise of the Almohads at
the beginning of the twelfth century, may have attracted into the
Muslim community some of the tribes that had up to that time still
stood aloof. Their founder, Ibn Tūmart, popularised the sternly
Unitarian tenets of this sect by means of works in the Berber language
which expounded from his own point of view the fundamental doctrines of
Islam, and he made a still further concession to the nationalist spirit
of the Berbers by ordering the call to prayer to be made in their own
language. [1033]
Some of the Berber tribes, however, remained heathen up to the close of
the fifteenth century, [1034] but the general tendency was naturally
towards an absorption of these smaller communities into the larger.
The sixteenth century witnessed the birth of a movement of active
proselytising in the Maghrib, which has been traced to the reaction
excited by the successes of the Christian powers in Spain and North
Africa. This gave an immense impulse to the institution of the
“marabouts,” [1035] and large numbers of them set out from the monastic
settlements in the south of Morocco to carry a peaceful missionary
campaign throughout the Maghrib, renewing the faith of the lukewarm
adherents of Islam and converting their heathen neighbours. [1036] To
this proselytising movement the Muslim refugees from Spain contributed
their part, as has been shown above (p. 127), coming to the aid of the
Shurafāʼ or descendants of Idrīs b. ʻAbd Allāh, who had fled to Morocco
to escape the wrath of Hārūn al-Rashīd. [1037]
From the Sahara the knowledge of Islam first spread among the Negroes
of the Sudan. The early history of this movement is wrapped in
obscurity, but there seems little doubt that it was the Berbers who
first introduced Islam into the lands watered by the Senegal and the
Niger; here they came in contact with pagan kingdoms, some of them
(e.g. Ghāna and Songhay) of great antiquity. [1038] The two Berber
tribes, the Lamṭūna and the Jadāla, belonging to the Ṣanhāja clan,
especially distinguished themselves by their religious zeal in the work
of conversion, [1039] and through their agency the Almoravid movement
reacted on the pagan tribes of the Sudan. The reign of Yūsuf b.
Tāshfīn, the founder of Morocco (A.D. 1062) and the second amīr of the
Almoravid dynasty, was very fruitful in conversions, and many Negroes
under his rule came to know of the doctrines of Muḥammad. [1040] In
1076 the Berbers who had been spreading Islam in the kingdom of Ghāna
for some time, drove out the reigning dynasty, which was probably
Fulbe, and this ancient kingdom became throughout Muhammadan; at the
beginning of the thirteenth century it lost its independence and was
conquered by the Mandingos. [1041]
Of the introduction of Islam into the ancient kingdom of Songhay, which
is said to have been in existence as early as A.D. 700, we have only
the record that the first Muhammadan king was named Zā-kassi, the
fifteenth monarch of the Zā dynasty; his conversion took place in the
year A.H. 400 (A.D. 1009–1010), and in the Songhay language he was
styled Muslim-dam, which implied that he had adopted Islam of his own
free will and not by compulsion, but there is no mention of the
influences to which he owed his conversion. [1042]
In the same century there were founded on the Upper Niger two cities,
destined in succeeding centuries to exercise an immense influence on
the development of Islam in the Western Sudan,—Jenne, [1043] founded in
A.H. 435 (A.D. 1043–1044), [1044] and destined to become an important
trading centre, and Timbuktu, the great emporium for the caravan trade
with the north, founded about the year A.D. 1100. The king of Jenne,
Kunburu, became a Muslim towards the end of the sixth century of the
Hijrah (i.e. about A.D. 1200) and his example was followed by the
inhabitants of the city; when he had made up his mind to embrace Islam,
he is said to have collected together all the ʻulamāʼ in his kingdom,
to the number of 4200—(however exaggerated this number may be, the
story would seem to imply that Islam had already made considerable
progress in his dominions)—and publicly in their presence declared
himself a Muslim and exhorted them to pray for the prosperity of his
city; he then had his palace pulled down and built a great mosque
[1045] in its place. [1046] Timbuktu, on the other hand, was a
Muhammadan city from the beginning; “never did the worship of idols
defile it, never did any man prostrate himself on its soil except in
prayer to God the Merciful.” [1047] In later years it became
influential as a seat of Muhammadan learning and piety, and students
and divines flocked there in large numbers, attracted by the
encouragement and patronage they received. Ibn Baṭūṭah, who travelled
through this country in the middle of the fourteenth century, praises
the Negroes for their zeal in the performance of their devotions and in
the study of the Qurʼān: unless one went very early to the mosque on
Friday, he tells us, it was impossible to find a place, so crowded was
the attendance. [1048] In his time, the most powerful state of the
Western Sudan was that of Melle or Māllī, which had risen to importance
about a century before, after the conquest of Ghāna by the Mandingos,
one of the finest races of Africa: Leo Africanus [1049] calls them the
most civilised, the most intellectual and most respected of all the
Negroes, and modern travellers praise them for their industry,
cleverness and trustworthiness. [1050] These Mandingos have been among
the most active missionaries of Islam, which has been spread by them
among the neighbouring peoples. [1051]
According to the Kano Chronicle it was the Mandingos who brought the
knowledge of Islam to the Hausa people; the date is uncertain, [1052]
as are most dates connected with the history of the Hausa states,
because the Fulbe, who conquered them at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, destroyed most of their historical records. But the
importance of the adoption of Islam by the Hausas cannot be
exaggerated; they are an energetic and intelligent people, and their
remarkable aptitude for trade has won for them an immense influence
among the various peoples with whom they have come in contact; their
language has become the language of commerce for the Western Sudan, and
wherever the Hausa traders go—and they are found from the coast of
Guinea to Cairo—they carry the faith of Islam with them. References to
their missionary activity will be found in the following pages. But of
their own adoption of the faith, as well as of the rise of the seven
Hausa states and their dependencies, [1053] historical evidence is
almost entirely wanting; [1054] one of the missionaries of Islam to
Kano and Katsena would certainly seem to have been a learned and pious
teacher from Tlemsen, Muḥammad b. ʻAbd al-Karīm b. Muḥammad al-Majīlī,
who flourished about the year 1500; [1055] possibly they were affected
by the great wave of Muhammadan influence which moved southward from
Egypt in the twelfth century. [1056] The merchants of Kordofan and in
the Eastern Sudan generally, boast that they are descended from Arabs
who made their way thither after the fall of the Fāṭimid caliphate of
Egypt in 1171. But there were probably still earlier instances of
Muslim influence coming into Central Africa from the north-east. It was
from Egypt that Islam spread into Kanem, a kingdom on the N. and N.E.
of Lake Chad, which shortly after the adoption of Islam rose to be a
state of considerable importance and extended its sway over the tribes
of the Eastern Sudan to the borders of Egypt and Nubia; the first
Muhammadan king of Kanem is said to have reigned either towards the
close of the eleventh or in the first half of the twelfth century.
[1057] But the details we possess of the spread of Islam from the
north-east are even more scanty than those already given for the
history of the states of the Western Sudan. The mere dates of the
conversion of kings and the establishment of Muhammadan dynasties tell
us very little; but one fact stands out clearly from this meagre
record, namely the extreme slowness of the process. The survival of
considerable groups of fetish-worshippers in the midst of territories
which for centuries were under Muhammadan rule, would seem to indicate
that the influence of Islam was long confined to the towns and only by
degrees made its way among the pagan population, if indeed it did not
meet with such stubborn resistance as has kept the Bambara pagan,
though (dwelling between the Upper Senegal and the Upper Niger) they
have been hemmed in by a Muhammadan population for centuries.
An unsuccessful attempt to convert the Bambara was made by a marabout,
named ʻUmaru Kaba, early in the twentieth century. This man had founded
a new religious confraternity, connected with the Qādiriyyah, and
having failed to attract his co-religionists to it, he turned his
attention to the pagan Bambara, and endeavoured to convert them to
Islam and enrol them in his order. He seemed to be on the road to
success and had already converted a pagan village in the province of
Sansanding, when the chief of the province drove the missionary across
the frontier and ordered the newly-converted Bambara to return to their
old religious observances. [1058]
Where intermarriages with such races as Arabs and Berbers have been
frequent, a steady process of infiltration has gone on, and this, added
to the propagandist activities of those races—Fulbe, Hausa and
Mandingo—who have distinguished themselves for their zeal on behalf of
their religion, would have contributed to the more rapid growth of a
Muhammadan population, had it not been for the internecine wars that
caused one Muhammadan state to work the destruction of another. Melle
rose on the ruins of Ghāna in the thirteenth century, to be crushed at
the beginning of the sixteenth by Songhay, which in its turn was
desolated by the Moors a century later. As these Muhammadan empires
declined, with the wholesale massacres characteristic of warfare in the
Sudan, fetishism regained much of the ground it had lost; and as in the
Christian, so in the Muhammadan world, there have been periods when
missionary zeal has sunk to a low ebb, and Muhammadans in some parts of
the Sudan have been content to leave the paganism that surrounded them
untouched by any proselytising efforts.
In the fourteenth century the Tunjar Arabs, emigrating south from
Tunis, made their way through Bornu and Wadai to Darfur; others came in
later from the east; [1059] one of their number named Aḥmad met with a
kind reception from the heathen king of Darfur, who took a fancy to
him, made him director of his household and consulted him on all
occasions. His experience of more civilised methods of government
enabled him to introduce a number of reforms both into the economy of
the king’s household and the government of the state. By judicious
management, he is said to have brought the unruly chieftains into
subjection, and by portioning out the land among the poorer inhabitants
to have put an end to the constant internal raids, thereby introducing
a feeling of security and contentment before unknown. The king having
no male heir gave Aḥmad his daughter in marriage and appointed him his
successor,—a choice that was ratified by the acclamation of the people,
and the Muhammadan dynasty thus instituted has continued down to the
present century. The civilising influences exercised by this chief and
his descendants were doubtless accompanied by some work of proselytism,
but these Arab immigrants seem to have done very little for the spread
of their religion among their heathen neighbours. Darfur only
definitely became Muhammadan through the efforts of one of its kings
named Sulaymān who began to reign in 1596, [1060] and it was not until
the sixteenth century that Islam gained a footing in the other kingdoms
lying between Kordofan and Lake Chad, such as Wadai and Baghirmi. The
first Muhammadan king of Baghirmi was Sultan ʻAbd Allāh, who reigned
from 1568 to 1608, but the chief centre of Muhammadan influence at this
time was the kingdom of Wadai, which was founded by ʻAbd al-Karīm about
A.D. 1612, and it was not until the latter part of the eighteenth
century that the mass of the people of Baghirmi were converted to
Islam. [1061]
But the history of the Muhammadan propaganda in Africa during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is very slight and wholly
insignificant when compared with the remarkable revival of missionary
activity during the present century. Some powerful influence was needed
to arouse the dormant energies of the African Muslims, whose condition
during the eighteenth century seems to have been almost one of
religious indifference. Their spiritual awakening owed itself to the
influence of the Wahhābī reformation at the close of the eighteenth
century; whence it comes that in modern times we meet with some
accounts of proselytising movements among the Negroes that are not
quite so forbiddingly meagre as those just recounted, but present us
with ample details of the rise and progress of several important
missionary enterprises.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable man, Shaykh
ʻUthmān Danfodio, [1062] arose from among the Fulbe [1063] as a
religious reformer and warrior-missionary. From the Sudan he made the
pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he returned full of zeal and enthusiasm for
the reformation and propagation of Islam. Influenced by the doctrines
of the Wahhābīs, who were growing powerful at the time of his visit to
Mecca, he denounced the practice of prayers for the dead and the honour
paid to departed saints, and deprecated the excessive veneration of
Muḥammad himself; at the same time he attacked the two prevailing sins
of the Sudan, drunkenness and immorality.
Up to that time the Fulbe had consisted of a number of small scattered
clans living a pastoral life; they had early embraced Islam, and
hitherto had contented themselves with forming colonies of shepherds
and planters in different parts of the Sudan. The accounts we have of
them in the early part of the eighteenth century, represent them to be
a peaceful and industrious people; one [1064] who visited their
settlements on the Gambia in 1731 speaks of them thus: “In every
kingdom and country on each side of the river are people of a tawny
colour, called Pholeys (i.e. Fulbe), who resemble the Arabs, whose
language most of them speak; for it is taught in their schools, and the
Koran, which is also their law, is in that language. They are more
generally learned in the Arabic, than the people of Europe are in
Latin; for they can most of them speak it; though they have a vulgar
tongue called Pholey. They live in hordes or clans, build towns, and
are not subject to any of the kings of the country, tho’ they live in
their territories; for if they are used ill in one nation they break up
their towns and remove to another. They have chiefs of their own, who
rule with such moderation, that every act of government seems rather an
act of the people than of one man. This form of government is easily
administered, because the people are of a good and quiet disposition,
and so well instructed in what is just and right, that a man who does
ill is the abomination of all.... They are very industrious and frugal,
and raise much more corn and cotton than they consume, which they sell
at reasonable rates, and are so remarkable for their hospitality that
the natives esteem it a blessing to have a Pholey town in their
neighbourhood; besides, their behaviour has gained them such reputation
that it is esteemed infamous for any one to treat them in an
inhospitable manner. Though their humanity extends to all, they are
doubly kind to people of their own race; and if they know of any of
their body being made a slave, all the Pholeys will unite to redeem
him. As they have plenty of food they never suffer any of their own
people to want; but support the old, the blind, and the lame, equally
with the others. They are seldom angry, and I never heard them abuse
one another; yet this mildness does not proceed from want of courage,
for they are as brave as any people of Africa, and are very expert in
the use of their arms, which are the assagay, short cutlasses, bows and
arrows and even guns upon occasion.... They are strict Mahometans; and
scarcely any of them will drink brandy, or anything stronger than
water.”
Danfodio united into one powerful organisation these separate
communities, scattered throughout the various Hausa states. The first
outbreak occurred in the year 1802, in the still pagan kingdom of
Gober, which had gained ascendancy over the northernmost of the Hausa
states; the attempt of the king of Gober to check the growing power of
the Fulbe in his dominions caused Danfodio to raise the standard of
revolt; he soon found himself at the head of a powerful army, which
attacked not only the pagan tribes, forcing upon them the faith of the
Prophet, but also the Muhammadan Hausa states. These fell one after
another and the whole of Hausaland came under the rule of Danfodio
before his death in 1816. His grave in Sokoto is still an object of
reverence to large numbers of pilgrims. He divided his kingdom among
his two sons, who still further extended the boundary of Fulbe rule;
Adamaua, founded in 1837 on the ruins of several pagan kingdoms, marks
the limit of their conquests to the south-east; and the city of Ilorin,
in the Yoruba country, founded in the lifetime of Danfodio, was the
bulwark of the Pul empire to the south-west. With varying fortunes the
dominant power remained throughout the nineteenth century in the hands
of the Fulbe, who showed themselves cruel and fanatical propagandists
of Islam, until British administration was established in Nigeria in
1900.
The introduction of law and order into Southern Nigeria has favoured
the propaganda of Islam as in other parts of Africa that have come
under European rule. The Hausa Muslims, some of whom belong to the
Tijāniyyah order, have been able to move freely about the country and
to penetrate among pagan tribes which had hitherto kept all Muhammadan
influences rigidly at bay. In the Yoruba country particularly Islam is
said to be rapidly gaining ground. There is a legend of an unsuccessful
attempt made by a Muslim missionary as early as the eleventh or twelfth
century; he was a Hausa who came to Ife, the religious capital of the
pagan Yoruba country, and used to call the people together and read
them passages from the Qurʼān; he could only speak the Yoruba language
imperfectly, and with a foreign accent he would repeat to his
listeners, “Let us worship Allāh: He created the mountain, He created
the lowland, He created everything, He created us.” He did this from
time to time without succeeding in winning a single convert, and died a
few months after his arrival in Ife. After his death his Qurʼān was
found hanging on a peg in the wall of his room, and it came to be
worshipped as a fetish. [1065] Where this early apostle of the faith
failed, his modern co-religionists have achieved a remarkable success.
During the period of anarchy before the British occupation, the Muslims
were for the most part congregated in large, walled towns, but under
the new conditions of security they are able to reside permanently in
villages, and near the scenes of their agricultural labours, and
Muhammadan influences have thus become more widely extended over the
country. As in German East Africa, the presence of Muhammadans among
the native troops has been found to be favourable to the extension of
their faith, and the pagan recruits often adopt Islam in order to
escape ridicule and gain in self-respect. [1066] In the Ijebu country
also, in Southern Nigeria, a quite recent propagandist movement has
been observed; Islam was only introduced into this part of the country
in 1893, and in 1908 there was one town with twenty, and another with
twelve mosques. [1067] This rapid spread of the Muslim faith is
particularly noticeable along the banks of the river Niger in Southern
Nigeria; a Christian missionary reports: “When I came out in 1898 there
were few Mohammedans to be seen below Iddah. [1068] Now they are
everywhere, excepting below Abo, and at the present rate of progress
there will scarcely be a heathen village on the river-banks by 1910.”
[1069]
There has thus been much missionary work done for Islam in this part of
Africa by men who have never taken up the sword to further their
end,—the conversion of the heathen. Such have been the members of some
of the great Muhammadan religious orders, which form such a prominent
feature of the religious life of Northern Africa. Their efforts have
achieved great results during the nineteenth century, and though
doubtless much of their work has never been recorded, still we have
accounts of some of the movements initiated by them.
Of these one of the earliest owed its inception to Sī Aḥmad b. Idrīs,
[1070] who enjoyed a wide reputation as a religious teacher in Mecca
from 1797 to 1833, and was the spiritual chief of the Khaḍriyyah;
before his death in 1835 he sent one of his disciples, by name Muḥammad
ʻUthmān al-Amīr Ghanī, on a proselytising expedition into Africa.
Crossing the Red Sea to Kossayr, he made his way inland to the Nile;
here, among a Muslim population, his efforts were mainly confined to
enrolling members of the order to which he belonged, but in his journey
up the river he did not meet with much success until he reached Aṣwān;
from this point up to Dongola, his journey became quite a triumphant
progress; the Nubians hastened to join his order, and the royal pomp
with which he was surrounded produced an impressive effect on this
people, and at the same time the fame of his miracles attracted to him
large numbers of followers. At Dongola Muḥammad ʻUthmān left the valley
of the Nile to go to Kordofan, where he made a long stay, and it was
here that his missionary work among unbelievers began. Many tribes in
this country and about Sennaar were still pagan, and among these the
preaching of Muḥammad ʻUthmān achieved a very remarkable success, and
he sought to make his influence permanent by contracting several
marriages, the issue of which, after his death in 1853, carried on the
work of the order he founded—called after his name the Amīrghaniyyah.
[1071]
A few years before this missionary tour of Muḥammad ʻUthmān, the troops
of Muḥammad ʻAlī, the founder of the present dynasty of Egypt, had
begun to extend their conquests into the Eastern Sudan, and the
emissaries of the various religious orders in Egypt were encouraged by
the Egyptian government, in the hope that their labours would assist in
the pacification of the country, to carry on a propaganda in this
newly-acquired territory, where they laboured with so much success,
that the recent insurrection in the Sudan under the Mahdī has been
attributed to the religious fervour their preaching excited. [1072]
In the West of Africa two orders have been especially instrumental in
the spread of Islam, the Qādiriyyah and the Tijāniyyah. The former, the
most widespread of the religious orders of Islam, was founded in the
twelfth century by ʻAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, said to be the most popular
and most universally revered of all the saints of Islam, [1073]—and was
introduced into Western Africa in the fifteenth century, by emigrants
from Tuat, one of the oases in the western half of the Sahara; they
made Walata the first centre of their organisation, but later on their
descendants were driven away from this town, and took refuge in
Timbuktu, further to the east. In the beginning of the nineteenth
century the great spiritual revival that was so profoundly influencing
the Muhammadan world, stirred up the Qādiriyyah of the Sahara and the
Western Sudan to renewed life and energy, and before long, learned
theologians or small colonies of persons affiliated to the order were
to be found scattered throughout the Western Sudan from the Senegal to
the mouth of the Niger. The chief centres of their missionary
organisation are in Kanka, Timbo (Futah-Jallon) and Musardu (in the
Mandingo country). [1074] These initiates formed centres of Islamic
influence in the midst of a pagan population, among whom they received
a welcome as public scribes, legists, writers of amulets, and
schoolmasters: gradually they would acquire influence over their new
surroundings, and isolated cases of conversion would soon grow into a
little band of converts, the most promising of whom would often be sent
to complete their studies at the chief centres of the order, or even to
the schools of Kairwan or Tripoli, or to the universities of Fez and
al-Azhar in Cairo. [1075] Here they might remain for several years,
until they had perfected their theological studies, and would then
return to their native place, fully equipped for the work of spreading
the faith among their fellow-countrymen. In this way a leaven has been
introduced into the midst of fetish-worshippers and idolaters, which
has gradually spread the faith of Islam surely and steadily, though by
almost imperceptible degrees. Up to the middle of the nineteenth
century most of the schools in the Sudan were founded and conducted by
teachers trained under the auspices of the Qādiriyyah and their
organisation provided for a regular and continuous system of propaganda
among the heathen tribes. The missionary work of this order has been
entirely of a peaceful character, and has relied wholly on personal
example and precept, on the influence of the teacher over his pupils,
and on the spread of education. [1076] In this way the Qādiriyyah
missionaries of the Sudan have shown themselves true to the principles
of their founder and the universal tradition of their order. For the
guiding principles that governed the life of ʻAbd al-Qādir were love of
his neighbour and toleration: though kings and men of wealth showered
their gifts upon him, his boundless charity kept him always poor, and
in none of his books or precepts are to be found any expressions of
ill-will or enmity towards the Christians; whenever he spoke of the
people of the Book, it was only to express his sorrow for their
religious errors, and to pray that God might enlighten them. This
tolerant attitude he bequeathed as a legacy to his disciples, and it
has been a striking characteristic of his followers in all ages. [1077]
The Tijāniyyah, belonging to an order founded in Algiers towards the
end of the eighteenth century, have, since their establishment in the
Sudan about the middle of the nineteenth century, pursued the same
missionary methods as the Qādiriyyah, and their numerous schools have
contributed largely to the propagation of the faith; but, unlike the
former, they have not refrained from appealing to the sword to assist
in the furtherance of their scheme of conversion, and, unfortunately
for a true estimate of the missionary work of Islam in Western Africa,
the fame of their Jihāds or religious wars has thrown into the shade
the successes of the peaceful propagandist, though the labours of the
latter have been more effectual towards the spread of Islam than the
creation of petty, short-lived dynasties. The records of campaigns,
especially when they have interfered with the commercial projects or
schemes of conquest of the white men, have naturally attracted the
attention of Europeans more than the unobtrusive labours of the
Muhammadan preacher and schoolmaster. But the history of such movements
possesses this importance, that—as has often happened in the case of
Christian missions also—conquest has opened out new fields for
missionary activity, and forcibly impressed on the minds of the
faithful the existence of large tracts of country whose inhabitants
still remained unconverted.
The first of these militant propagandist movements on the part of the
members of the Tijāniyyah order owes its inception to al-Ḥājj ʻUmar,
who had been initiated into this order by a leader of the sect whose
acquaintance he made in Mecca. He was born in 1797, near Podor on the
Lower Senegal, and appears to have been a man of considerable
endowments and personal influence, and of a commanding presence. He was
the son of a marabout and received a careful religious education; he
was already famed for his learning and piety when he set out on the
pilgrimage to Mecca in 1827. He did not return to his own country until
1833, when he commenced an active propaganda of the teaching of the
Tijāniyyah order, fiercely attacking his co-religionists for their
ignorance and their lukewarmness, especially the adepts of the
Qādiriyyah order, whose toleration particularly excited his wrath. He
traversed the Central Sudan, winning many adherents and receiving
honour as a new prophet, until about 1841 he reached Futah-Jallon,
where he armed his followers and commenced a series of proselytising
expeditions against those tribes that still remained pagan about the
Upper Niger and the Senegal. It was in one of these expeditions that he
met his death in 1865. His son, Aḥmadu Shaykhu, succeeded in holding
together the various provinces of his father’s kingdom for a few years
only; internal conflicts and the advance of the French broke up the
Tijāniyyah empire, and their territories passed under the rule of
France. [1078]
Some mention has already been made of the introduction of Islam into
this part of Africa. The seed planted here by ʻAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn and
his companions, was fructified by continual contact with Muhammadan
merchants and teachers, and with the Arabs of the oasis of al-Ḥawḍ and
others. A traveller of the fifteenth century tells how the Arabs strove
to teach the Negro chiefs the law of Muḥammad, pointing out how
shameful a thing it was for them, being chiefs, to live without any of
God’s laws, and to do as the base folk did who lived without any law at
all. From which it would appear that these early missionaries took
advantage of the imposing character of the Muslim religion and
constitution to impress the minds of these uncivilised savages. [1079]
We have ampler details of a more recent movement of the same kind,
which had been set on foot in the south of Senegambia by a Mandingo,
named Ṣamudu, commonly known by the name Samory, a pagan soldier of
fortune born about 1846, who became a Muhammadan early in the course of
his career and founded an empire, south of Senegambia, in the country
watered by the upper basin of the Niger and its tributaries. An Arabic
account of the career of Samory, written by a native chronicler, gives
us some interesting details of his achievements. It begins as follows:
“This is an account of the Jihād of the Imām Aḥmadu Ṣamudu, a
Mandingo.... God conferred upon him His help continually after he began
the work of visiting the idolatrous pagans, who dwell between the sea
and the country of Wasulu, with a view of inviting them to follow the
religion of God, which is Islam. Know all ye who read this—that the
first effort of the Imām Ṣamudu was a town named Fulindiyah. Following
the Book and the Law and the Traditions, he sent messengers to the king
at that town, Sindidu by name, inviting him to submit to his
government, abandon the worship of idols and worship one God, the
Exalted, the True, whose service is profitable to His people in this
world and in the next; but they refused to submit. Then he imposed a
tribute upon them, as the Qurʼān commands on this subject; but they
persisted in their blindness and deafness. The Imām then collected a
small force of about five hundred men, brave and valiant, for the
Jihād, and he fought against the town, and the Lord helped him against
them and gave him the victory over them, and he pursued them with his
horses until they submitted. Nor will they return to their idolatry,
for now all their children are in schools being taught the Qurʼān, and
a knowledge of religion and civilisation. Praise be to God for this.”
[1080] It is not possible here to trace the course of his conquests,
which were marked by wholesale massacres and devastation. [1081] He
reached the height of his power about 1881, shortly after which he came
in conflict with the French, who took him prisoner in 1898 after a
series of harassing campaigns. He died in 1900. Though the effect of
his conquests was the destruction of large numbers of pagans who were
massacred by his ruthless armies, while others were terrified into a
nominal acceptance of Islam, he does not appear to have put before him
the same distinctly religious aim as al-Ḥājj ʻUmar did. [1082] He left
to the Qādiriyyah marabouts the task of propaganda, and they with their
accustomed traditions of toleration are said to have done much to
mitigate the savagery of his proceedings. [1083] They opened schools in
the conquered towns, established there the organisation of their order,
and both instructed the new converts and sought to win fresh ones.
With regard to these militant movements of Muhammadan propagandism, it
is important to notice that it is not the military successes and
territorial conquests that have most contributed to the progress of
Islam in these parts; for it has been pointed out that, outside the
limits of those fragments of the empire of al-Ḥājj ʻUmar that have
definitively remained in the hands of his successors, the forced
conversions that he made have quickly been forgotten, and in spite of
the momentary grandeur of his successes and the enthusiasm of his
armies, very few traces remain of this armed propaganda. [1084] The
real importance of these movements in the missionary history of Islam
in Western Africa is the religious enthusiasm they stirred up, which
exhibited itself in a widespread missionary activity of a purely
peaceful character among the heathen populations. These Jihāds, rightly
looked upon, are but incidents in the modern Islamic revival and are by
no means characteristic of the forces and activities that have been
really operative in the promulgation of Islam in Africa: indeed, unless
followed up by distinctly missionary efforts they would have proved
almost wholly ineffectual in the creation of a true Muslim community.
In fact, the devastating wars and cruel violence of conquerors such as
al-Ḥājj ʻUmar and Samory and especially the emissaries of the
Tijāniyyah have caused the faith of Islam to be bitterly hated by the
pagan tribes of the Sudan in the countries watered by the Senegal and
the Niger. Hostility to the Muslim faith has almost assumed with them
the form of a national movement, but still this Muhammadan propaganda
has spread the faith of the Prophet in many parts of Guinea and
Senegambia, to which the Fulbe [1085] and merchants from the Hausa
country in their frequent trading expeditions have brought the
knowledge of their religion, and have succeeded during the last and the
present century in winning large numbers of converts. Especially
noteworthy is the activity of those Qādiriyyah preachers and Muslim
traders who have won fresh converts to their faith since the French
occupation has brought peace to the country; this peaceful penetration
has been facilitated in the French Sudan, as in other parts of Africa
that have recently come under the sway of European powers, by the
consideration shown by French officials to the educated classes, who
are of course all Muhammadans, and by the open contempt with which the
degraded habits and superstitions of the pagan fetish-worshippers are
regarded. [1086]
But the proselytising work of the order that is now to be described has
never in any way been connected with violence or war and has employed
in the service of religion only the arts of peace and persuasion. In
1837 a religious society was founded by an Algerian jurisconsult, named
Sīdī Muḥammad b. ʻAlī al-Sanūsī, with the object of reforming Islam and
spreading the faith; before his death in 1859, he had succeeded in
establishing, by the sheer force of his genius and without the shedding
of blood, a theocratic state, to which his followers render devoted
allegiance and the limits of which are every day being extended by his
successors. [1087] The members of this sect are bound by rigid rules to
carry out to the full the precepts of the Qurʼān in accordance with the
most strictly monotheistic principles, whereby worship is to be given
to God alone, and prayers to saints and pilgrimages to their tombs are
absolutely interdicted. They must abstain from coffee and tobacco,
avoid all intercourse with Jews or Christians, contribute a certain
portion of their income to the funds of the society, if they do not
give themselves up entirely to its service, and devote all their
energies to the advancement of Islam, resisting at the same time any
concessions to European influences. This sect is spread over the whole
of North Africa, having religious houses scattered about the country
from Egypt to Morocco, and far into the interior, in the oases of the
Sahara and the Sudan. The centre of its organisation was in the oasis
of Jaghabūb [1088] in the Libyan desert between Egypt and Tripoli,
where every year hundreds of missionaries were trained and sent out as
preachers of Islam to all parts of northern Africa. It is to the
religious house in this village that all the branch establishments
(said to be 121 in number) looked for counsel and instruction in all
matters concerning the management and extension of this vast theocracy,
which embraced in a marvellous organisation thousands of persons of
numerous races and nations, otherwise separated from one another by
vast differences of geographical situation and worldly interests. For
the success that has been achieved by the zealous and energetic
emissaries of this association is enormous; convents of the order are
to be found not only all over the north of Africa from Egypt to
Morocco, throughout the Sudan, in Senegambia and Somaliland, but
members of the order are to be found also in Arabia, Mesopotamia and
the islands of the Malay Archipelago. [1089] Though primarily a
movement of reform in the midst of Islam itself, the Sanūsiyyah sect is
also actively proselytising, and several African tribes that were
previously pagan or merely nominally Muslim, have since the advent of
the emissaries of this sect in their midst, become zealous adherents of
the faith of the Prophet. Thus, for example, the Sanūsī missionaries
laboured to convert that portion of the Baele (a tribe inhabiting the
hill country of Ennedi, E. of Borku) which was still heathen, and
communicated their own religious zeal to such other sections of the
tribe as had only a very superficial knowledge of Islam, and were
Muhammadan only in name; [1090] the Tedas of Tu or Tibesti, in the
Sahara, S. of Fezzan, who were likewise Muhammadans only in name when
the Sanūsiyyah came among them, also bear witness to the success of
their efforts. [1091] The missionaries of this sect also carry on an
active propaganda in the Galla country and fresh workers are sent
thither every year from Harar, where the Sanūsiyyah are very strong and
include among their numbers all the chiefs in the court of the Amīr
almost without exception. [1092] In the furtherance of their
proselytising efforts these missionaries open schools, form settlements
in the oases of the desert, and—noticeably in the case of the
Wadai—they have gained large accessions to their numbers by the
purchase of slaves, who have been educated at Jaghabūb and when deemed
sufficiently well instructed in the tenets of the sect, enfranchised
and then sent back to their native country to convert their brethren.
[1093] It would appear, however, that the influence of this order is
now on the decline. [1094]
Slight as these records are of the missionary labours of the Muslims
among the pagan tribes of the Sudan, they are of importance in view of
the general dearth of information regarding the spread of Islam in this
part of Africa. But while documentary evidence is wanting, the
Muhammadan communities dwelling in the midst of fetish-worshippers and
idolaters, as representatives of a higher faith and civilisation, are a
living testimony to the proselytising labours of the Muhammadan
missionaries, and (especially on the south-western borderland of
Islamic influence) present a striking contrast to the pagan tribes
demoralised by the European gin traffic. This contrast has been well
indicated by a modern traveller, [1095] in speaking of the degraded
condition of the tribes of the Lower Niger: “In steaming up the river
(i.e. the Niger), I saw little in the first 200 miles to alter my
views, for there luxuriated in congenial union fetishism, cannibalism
and the gin trade. But as I left behind me the low-lying coast region,
and found myself near the southern boundary of what is called the
Central Sudan, I observed an ever-increasing improvement in the
appearance of the character of the native; cannibalism disappeared,
fetishism followed in its wake, the gin trade largely disappeared,
while on the other hand, clothes became more voluminous and decent,
cleanliness the rule, while their outward more dignified bearing still
further betokened a moral regeneration. Everything indicated a
leavening of some higher element, an element that was clearly taking a
deep hold on the negro nature and making him a new man. That element
you will perhaps be surprised to learn is Mahommedanism. On passing
Lokoja at the confluence of the Benué with the Niger, I left behind me
the missionary outposts of Islam, and entering the Central Sudan, I
found myself in a comparatively well-governed empire, teeming with a
busy populace of keen traders, expert manufacturers of cloth, brass
work and leather; a people, in fact, who have made enormous advances
towards civilisation.”
In order to form a just estimate of the missionary activity of Islam in
Nigritia, it must be borne in mind that, while on the coast and along
the southern boundary of the sphere of Islamic influence, the
Muhammadan missionary is the pioneer of his religion, there is still
left behind him a vast field for Muslim propaganda in the inland
countries that stretch away to the north and the east, though it is
long since Islam took firm root in this soil. Some sections of the
Fūnj, the predominant Negro race of Sennaar, are partly Muhammadan and
partly heathen, and Muhammadan merchants from Nubia are attempting the
conversion of the latter. [1096]
The pagan tribe of the Jukun, [1097] whose once powerful kingdom
disappeared before the victorious development of the Fulbe, has
withstood the advancing influence of Muhammadanism, though the foreign
minister of their king has always been a Muslim and colonies of Hausas
and other Muhammadans have settled among them; but these Muslim
settlers do not succeed in making any converts from among the Jukun,
whose traditions of their past greatness make them cling to the
national faith whose spiritual headship is vested in their king. [1098]
It would be easy also to enumerate many sections of the population of
the Sudan and Senegambia, that still retain their heathen habits and
beliefs, or cover these only with a slight veneer of Muhammadan
observance even though they have been (in most cases) surrounded for
centuries by the followers of the Prophet. The Konnohs, an offshoot of
the great tribe of the Mandingos, are still largely pagan, and it is
only in recent years that Islam has been making progress among them.
[1099] Consequently, the remarkable zeal for missionary work that has
displayed itself among the Muhammadans of these parts during the
present century, has not far to go in order to find abundant scope for
its activity. Hence the importance, in the missionary history of Islam
in this continent, of the movements of reform in the Muslim religion
itself and the revivals of religious life, to which attention has been
drawn above.
The West Coast is another field for Muhammadan missionary enterprise
where Islam finds itself confronted with a vast population still
unconverted, in spite of the progress it has made on the Guinea Coast,
in Sierra Leone and Liberia, in which last there are more Muhammadans
than heathen. One of the earliest notices of Muslim missionary activity
in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone is to be found in a petition for
the dissolution of the Sierra Leone Company, ordered to be printed by
the House of Commons, on the 25th May, 1802. “Not more than seventy
years ago, a small number of Mahomedans established themselves in a
country about forty miles to the northward of Sierra Leone, called from
them the Mandingo Country. As is the practice of the professors of that
religion they formed schools, in which the Arabic language and the
doctrines of Mahomet were taught, and the customs of Mahomedans,
particularly that of not selling any of their own religion as slaves,
were adopted. Laws founded on the Koran were introduced. Those
practices which chiefly contribute to depopulate the coast were
eradicated, and in spite of many intestine convulsions, a great
comparative degree of civilisation, union and security were introduced.
Population, in consequence, rapidly increased and the whole power of
that part of the country in which they are settled has gradually fallen
into their hands. Those who have been taught in their schools are
succeeding to wealth and power in the neighbouring countries, and carry
with them a considerable portion of their religion and laws. Other
chiefs are adopting the name assumed by these Mahomedans, on account of
the respect which attends it; and the religion of Islam seems likely to
diffuse itself peaceably over the whole district in which the colony is
situated, carrying with it those advantages which seem ever to have
attended its victory over Negro superstition.” [1100] In the Mendi
country, about one hundred miles south of Sierra Leone, Islam appears
to have found an entrance only in the present century, but to be now
making steady progress. “The propagandism is not conducted by any
special order of priests set apart for the purpose, but every Musalman
is an active missionary. Some half a dozen of them, more or less,
meeting in a town, where they intend to reside for any length of time,
soon run up a mosque and begin work. They first approach the chief of
the town and obtain his consent to their intended act, and perhaps his
promise to become an adherent. They teach him their prayers in Arabic,
or as much as he can, or cares to, commit to memory. They put him
through the forms and ceremonies used in praying, forbid him the use of
alcoholic beverages—a restriction as often observed as not—and lo! the
man is a convert.” [1101] On the Guinea Coast, Muslim influences are
spread chiefly by Hausa traders who are to be found in all the
commercial towns on this coast; whenever they form a settlement, they
at once build a mosque and by their devout behaviour, and their
superior culture, they impress the heathen inhabitants; whole tribes of
fetish-worshippers pass over to Islam as the result of their imitation
of what they recognise to be a higher civilisation than their own,
without any particular efforts being necessary for persuading them.
[1102]
In Ashanti there was a nucleus of a Muhammadan population to be found
as early as 1750 and the missionaries of Islam have laboured there ever
since with slow but sure success, [1103] as they find a ready welcome
in the country and have gained for themselves considerable influence at
the court; by means of their schools they get a hold on the minds of
the younger generation, and there are said to be significant signs that
Islam will become the predominant religion in Ashanti, as already many
of the chiefs have adopted it. [1104] In Dahomey and the Gold Coast,
Islam is daily making fresh progress, and even when the heathen
chieftains do not themselves embrace it, they very frequently allow
themselves to come under the influence of its missionaries, who know
how to take advantage of this ascendancy in their labours among the
common people. [1105] Dahomey and Ashanti are the most important
kingdoms in this part of the continent that are still subject to pagan
rulers, and their conversion is said to be a question of a short time
only. [1106] In Lagos there are well-nigh 10,000 Muslims, and all the
trading stations of the West Coast include in their populations numbers
of Musalmans belonging to the superior Negro tribes, such as the Fulbe,
the Mandingos and the Hausa. When these men come down to the cities of
the coast, as they do in considerable numbers, either as traders or to
serve as troops in the armies of the European powers, they cannot fail
to impress by their bold and independent bearing the Negro of the
coast-land; he sees that the believers in the Qurʼān are everywhere
respected by European governors, officials and merchants; they are not
so far removed from him in race, appearance, dress or manners as to
make admission into their brotherhood impossible to him, and to him too
is offered a share in their privileges on condition of conversion to
their faith. [1107] As soon as the pagan Negro, however obscure or
degraded, shows himself willing to accept the teachings of the Prophet,
he is at once admitted as an equal into their society, and admission
into the brotherhood of Islam is not a privilege grudgingly granted,
but one freely offered by zealous and eager proselytisers. For, from
the mouth of the Senegal to Lagos, over two thousand miles, there is
said to be hardly any town of importance on the seaboard in which there
is not at least one mosque, with active propagandists of Islam, often
working side by side with the teachers of Christianity. [1108]
We must now turn to the history of the spread of Islam on the other
side of the continent of Africa, the inhabitants of which were in
closer proximity to the land where this faith had its birth. The facts
recorded respecting the early settlements of the Arabs on the East
Coast are very meagre; according to an Arabic chronicle which the
Portuguese found in Kiloa [1109] when that town was sacked by Don
Francisco d’Almeïda in 1505, the first settlers were a body of Arabs
who were driven into exile because they followed the heretical
teachings of a certain Zayd, [1110] a descendant of the Prophet, after
whom they were called Emozaydij (probably أمّة زيديّة or people of
Zayd). The Zayd here referred to is probably Zayd b. ʻAlī, a grandson
of Ḥusayn and so great-grandson of ʻAlī, the nephew of Muḥammad: in the
reign of the caliph Hishām he claimed to be the Imām Mahdī and stirred
up a revolt among the Shīʻah faction, but was defeated and put to death
in A.H. 122 (A.D. 740). [1111]
They seem to have lived in considerable dread of the original pagan
inhabitants of the country, but succeeded gradually in extending their
settlements along the coast, until the arrival of another band of
fugitives who came from the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, not far
from the island of Baḥrayn. These came in three ships under the
leadership of seven brothers, in order to escape from the persecution
of the king of Lasah, [1112] a city hard by the dwelling-place of their
tribe. The first town they built was Magadaxo, [1113] which afterwards
rose to such power as to assume lordship over all the Arabs of the
coast. But the original settlers, the Emozaydij, belonging as they did
to a different Muhammadan sect, being Shīʻahs, while the new-comers
were Sunnīs, were unwilling to submit to the authority of the rulers of
Magadaxo, and retired into the interior, where they became merged into
the native population, intermarrying with them and adopting their
manners and customs. [1114]
Magadaxo was founded about the middle of the tenth century and remained
the most powerful city on this coast for more than seventy years, when
the arrival of another expedition from the Persian Gulf led to the
establishment of a rival settlement further south. The leader of this
expedition was named ʻAlī, one of the seven sons of a certain Sultan
Ḥasan of Shiraz: because his mother was an Abyssinian, he was looked
down upon with contempt by his brothers, whose cruel treatment of him
after the death of their father, determined him to leave his native
land and seek a home elsewhere. Accordingly, with his wife and children
and a small body of followers, he set sail from the island of Ormuz,
and avoiding Magadaxo, whose inhabitants belonged to a different sect,
and having heard that gold was to be found on the Zanzibar coast, he
pushed on to the south and founded the city of Kiloa, where he could
maintain a position of independence and be free from the interference
of his predecessors further north. [1115]
In this way a number of Arab towns sprang up along the east coast from
the Gulf of Aden to the Tropic of Capricorn, on the fringe of what was
called by the mediæval Arab geographers the country of the Zanj.
Whatever efforts may have been made by the Muhammadan settlers to
convert the Zanj, no record of them seems to have survived. There is a
curious story preserved in an old collection of travels written
probably in the early part of the tenth century, which represents Islam
as having been introduced among one of these tribes by the king of it
himself. An Arab trading vessel was driven out of its course by a
tempest in the year A.D. 922 and carried to the country of the
man-eating Zanj, where the crew expected certain death. On the
contrary, the king of the place received them kindly and entertained
them hospitably for several months, while they disposed of their
merchandise on advantageous terms; but the merchants repaid his
kindness with foul treachery, by seizing him and his attendants when
they came on board to bid them farewell, and then carrying them off as
slaves to Omam. Some years later the same merchants were driven by a
storm to the same port, where they were recognised by the natives who
surrounded them in their canoes; giving themselves up for lost this
time, they repeated for one another the prayers for the dead. They were
taken before the king, whom they discovered to their surprise and
confusion to be the same they had so shamefully treated some years
before. Instead, however, of taking vengeance upon them for their
treacherous conduct, he spared their lives and allowed them to sell
their goods, but rejected with scorn the rich presents they offered.
Before they left, one of the party ventured to ask the king to tell the
story of his escape. He described how he had been taken as a slave to
Baṣrah and thence to Baghdād, where he was converted to Islam and
instructed in the faith; escaping from his master, he joined a caravan
of pilgrims going to Mecca, and after performing the prescribed rites,
reached Cairo and made his way up the Nile in the direction of his own
country, which he reached at length after encountering many dangers and
having been more than once enslaved. Restored once again to his
kingdom, he taught his people the faith of Islam; “and now I rejoice in
that God hath given to me and to my people the knowledge of Islam and
the true faith; to no other in the land of the Zanj hath this grace
been vouchsafed; and it is because you have been the cause of my
conversion, that I pardon you. Tell the Muslims that they may come to
our country, and that we—Muslims like themselves—will treat them as
brothers.” [1116]
From the same source we learn that even at this early period, this
coast-land was frequented by large numbers of Arab traders, yet in
spite of centuries of intercourse with the followers of Islam, the
original inhabitants of this coast (with the exception of the Somalis)
have been remarkably little influenced by this religion. Even before
the Portuguese conquests of the sixteenth century, what few conversions
had been made, seem to have been wholly confined to the sea-border, and
even after the decline of Portuguese influence in this part of the
world, and the restoration of Arab rule under the Sayyids of Omam,
hardly any efforts were made until the twentieth century to spread the
knowledge of Islam among the tribes of the interior, with the exception
of the Galla and Somali. As a modern traveller has said: “During the
three expeditions which I conducted in East Central Africa I saw
nothing to suggest Mohammedanism as a civilising power. Whatever living
force might be in the religion remained latent. The Arabs, or their
descendants, in these parts were not propagandists. There were no
missionaries to preach Islam, and the natives of Muscat were content
that their slaves should conform, to a certain extent, to the forms of
the religion. They left the East African tribes, who indeed, in their
gross darkness, were evidently content to remain in happy ignorance.
Their inaptitude for civilisation was strikingly shown in the strange
fact that five hundred years of contact with semi-civilised people had
left them without the faintest reflection of the higher traits which
characterised their neighbours—not a single good seed during all these
years had struck root and flourished.” [1117] Given up wholly to the
pursuits of commerce or to slave-hunting, the Arabs in Eastern Africa
exhibited a lukewarmness in promoting the interests of their faith,
which is in striking contrast to the missionary zeal displayed by their
co-religionists in other parts of Africa.
A notable exception is the propagandist activity of the Arab traders
who were admitted into Uganda in the first half of the nineteenth
century; they probably recognised that the sturdy independence of the
Baganda made slave-raiding among them impossible, so they sought to
gain their confidence by winning them over to their own faith. Many of
the Baganda became Muhammadans during the reign of King Mutesa, but
Stanley’s visit to this monarch in 1875 led to the introduction of
Christian missions in the following year, and the power of the
Muhammadans in the state declined with the rapid increase in the
numbers of the Christian converts and the establishment of a British
Protectorate. [1118] But a number of Muhammadans still hold important
positions in Uganda, and it is stated that there is a possibility of
the Eastern Province becoming Muslim. In the rich tributary country of
Busoga, to the north of Uganda, a large number of those in authority
were said, in 1906, to be Muhammadans. [1119] But with this exception
Islam in East Equatorial Africa was up to the latter part of the
nineteenth century confined to the coast-lands and the immediately
adjoining country. The explanation would appear to be that it was not
to the interests of the slave-dealers to spread Islam among the heathen
tribes from among whom they obtained their unhappy victims; for, once
converted to Islam, the native tribes would enter into the brotherhood
of the faith and could not be raided and carried off as slaves. [1120]
The suppression of the slave-trade, with the extension of European rule
over East Equatorial Africa, was followed by a remarkable expansion of
Muslim missionary activity; peace and order were established in the
interior, railways and high roads were made, and the peaceful Muslim
trader could now make his way into districts hitherto closed to him.
The administration selected its officials from among the more
cultivated Muhammadan section of the population; thousands of posts
were created by the government of German East Africa and given to
Muhammadan officials, whose influence was used to bring over whole
villages to Islam. [1121] The teachers of the state schools were
likewise Muhammadans, and as early as the last decades of the
nineteenth century Swahili schoolmasters were observed to be carrying
on a lively and successful mission work among the people of Bondëi and
the Wadigo (who dwell a little inland from the coast) in German East
Africa. [1122] But it was in the beginning of the twentieth century,
especially after the suppression of the insurrection of 1905 in German
East Africa, that the activity of this new missionary movement became
strikingly noticeable in the interior. [1123] This movement of
expansion has especially followed the railroads and the great trade
routes, and has spread right across German East Africa to its western
boundary on Lake Tanganyika, northward from Usambara to the Kilimanjaro
district, and southward to Lake Nyasa. [1124] The workers in this
propaganda are merchants, especially Swahilis from the coast, soldiers
and government officials. [1125] The acceptance of Islam is looked upon
as a sign of an elevation to a higher civilisation and social status,
and the ridicule with which the pagans are regarded by the Muhammadans
is said often to be a determining factor in their conversion. [1126] An
instance of the operation of this feeling may be taken from West
Usambara, which was said in 1891 to be still closed to Islam; the
feeling of both chiefs and people was hostile to the Muhammadans, who
were hated and feared as slave-dealers; but when the days of the
slave-trade were over and an ordered administration was established,
the first native officials appointed were almost entirely Muhammadans;
they impressed upon the chiefs and other notables who came in touch
with them that it was the correct thing for those who moved in official
circles to be Muhammadans, and thereby achieved the conversion of some
of the greater chiefs, who afterwards exercised a similar influence on
chiefs of an inferior degree. [1127] There seems to be little evidence
of the activity of professional missionaries or of any of the religious
orders, but there are not wanting evidences of systematic efforts, such
as those of a Muslim teacher, who is reported to have regularly visited
a district in the Kilimanjaro country every week for five months,
preaching the faith of Islam; his ministrations were welcomed by the
people, whom he entertained with feasts of rice, etc. [1128] In this
zealous propaganda it is noticeable that the preachers of Islam do not
confine their attention to pagans only, but seek also to win converts
from among the native Christians. [1129]
Islam made its way into Nyasaland also from the East Coast, having been
introduced by the slave-raiding Arabs and their allies the Yaos, whose
ancestors came from near the East Coast where they had long since
accepted Islam. It is said that an Arab is now seldom seen in
Nyasaland, but the Yaos constitute one of the most powerful native
tribes in Nyasaland, and look upon Islam as their national faith.
Though there appears to be no organised propaganda, Islam has spread
very rapidly during the first decade of the twentieth century, and that
among some of the most intelligent tribes in the country. [1130]
Islam has achieved a similar success among the Galla and the Somali.
Mention has already been made of the Galla settlements in Abyssinia;
these immigrants, who are divided into seven principal clans, with the
generic name of Wollo-Galla, were probably all heathen at the time of
their incursion into the country, [1131] and a large part of them
remain so to the present day. After settling in Abyssinia they soon
became naturalised there, and in many instances adopted the language,
manners and customs of the original inhabitants of the country. [1132]
The story of their conversion is obscure: while some of them are said
to have been forcibly baptised into the Christian faith, the absence of
any political power in the hands of the Muhammadans precludes the
possibility of any converts to Islam having been made in a similar
fashion. In the eighteenth century, those in the south were said to be
mostly Muhammadans, those to the east and west chiefly pagans. [1133]
More recent information points to a further increase in the number of
the followers of the Prophet, and in 1867 Munzinger prophesied that in
a short time all the Galla tribes would be Muhammadan, [1134] and as
they were said to be “very fanatical,” we may presume that they were by
no means half-hearted or lukewarm in their adherence to this religion.
[1135]
The Galla freedman whom Doughty met at Khaybar certainly exhibited a
remarkable degree of zeal for his own faith. He had been carried off
from his home when a child and sold as a slave in Jiddah; when Doughty
asked him whether no anger was left in his heart against those who had
stolen him and sold his life to servitude in the ends of the earth,
“Yet one thing,” he answered, “has recompensed me,—that I remained not
in ignorance with the heathen!—Oh, the wonderful providence of Ullah!
whereby I am come to this country of the Apostle, and to the knowledge
of the religion!” [1136] “Oh! what sweetness is there in believing!
Trust me, dear comrade, it is a thing above that which any heart may
speak; and would God thou wert come to this (heavenly) knowledge; but
the Lord will surely have a care of thee, that thou shouldst not perish
without the religion. Ay, how good a thing it were to see thee a
Moslem, and become one with us; but I know that the time is in God’s
hand: the Lord’s will be done.” [1137]
Among the Galla tribes of the true Galla country, the population is
partly Muhammadan (some tribes having been converted about 1500) [1138]
and partly heathen, with the exception of those tribes immediately
bordering on Abyssinia who in the latter part of the nineteenth century
were forced by the king of that country to accept Christianity. [1139]
Among the mountains, the Muhammadans are in a minority, but on the
plains the missionaries of Islam have met with striking success, and
their teaching found a rapidly increasing acceptance during the last
century. Antonio Cecchi, who visited the petty kingdom of Limmu in
1878, gives an account of the conversion of Abba Baghibò, [1140] the
father of the then reigning chieftain, by Muhammadans who for some
years had been pushing their proselytising efforts in this country in
the guise of traders. His example was followed by the chiefs of the
neighbouring Galla kingdoms and by the officers of their courts; part
of the common people also were won over to the new faith, and it
continued to make progress among them, but the greater part cling
firmly to their ancient cult. [1141] These traders received a ready
welcome at the courts of the Galla chiefs, inasmuch as they found them
a market for the commercial products of the country and imported
objects of foreign manufacture in exchange. As they made their journeys
to the coast once a year only, or even once in two years, and lived all
the rest of the time in the Galla country, they had plenty of
opportunities, which they knew well how to avail themselves of, for the
work of propagating Islam, and wherever they set their foot they were
sure in a short space of time to gain a large number of proselytes.
[1142] Islam here came in conflict with Christian missionaries from
Europe, whose efforts, though winning for Christianity a few converts,
have been crowned with very little success, [1143]—even the converts of
Cardinal Massaja (after he was expelled from these parts) either
embraced Islam or ended by believing neither in Christ nor in Allāh,
[1144]—whereas the Muslim missionaries achieved a continuous success,
and pushed their way far to the south, and crossed the Wābi river.
[1145] The majority of the Galla tribes dwelling in the west of the
Galla country were still heathen towards the end of the nineteenth
century, but among the most westerly of them, viz. the Lega, [1146] the
old nature worship appeared to be on the decline and the growing
influence of the Muslim missionaries made it probable that within a few
years the Lega would all have entered into the pale of Islam. [1147]
The North-East Africa of the present day presents indeed the spectacle
of a remarkably energetic and zealous missionary activity on the part
of the Muhammadans. Several hundreds of missionaries come from Arabia
every year, and they have been even more successful in their labours
among the Somali than among the Galla. [1148] The close proximity of
the Somali country to Arabia must have caused it very early to have
been the scene of Muhammadan missionary labours, but of these
unfortunately little record seems to have survived. The people of
Zaylaʻ were said by Ibn Ḥawqal [1149] in the second half of the ninth
century to be Christians, but in the first half of the fourteenth
century Abu’l-Fidā speaks of them as being Musalmans. [1150] The new
faith was probably brought across the sea by Arab merchants or
refugees. The Somalis of the north have a tradition of a certain Arab
of noble birth who, compelled to flee his own country, crossed the sea
to Adel, where he preached the faith of Islam among their forefathers.
[1151] In the fifteenth century a band of forty-four Arabs came as
missionaries from Ḥaḍramawt, landing at Berberah on the Red Sea, and
thence dispersed over the Somali country to preach Islam. One of them,
Shaykh Ibrāhīm Abū Zarbay, made his way to the city of Harar about A.D.
1430, and gained many converts there, and his tomb is still honoured in
that city. A hill near Berberah is still called the Mount of Saints in
memory of these missionaries, who are said to have sat there in solemn
conclave before scattering far and wide to the work of conversion.
[1152] Islam gradually became predominant throughout the whole of
North-East Africa, but the growing power of the Emperor Menelik and his
occupation of Harar in 1886 resulted in a certain number of conversions
to Christianity. [1153]
In order to complete this survey of Islam in Africa, it remains only to
draw attention to the fact that this religion has also made its
entrance into the extreme south of this continent, viz. in Cape Colony.
These Muhammadans of the Cape are descendants of Malays, who were
brought here by the Dutch [1154] either in the seventeenth or
eighteenth century; [1155] they speak a corrupt form of the Boer
dialect, with a considerable admixture of Arabic, and some English and
Malay words. A curious little book published in this dialect and
written in Arabic characters was published in Constantinople in 1877 by
the Turkish minister of education, to serve as a handbook of the
principles of the Muslim faith. [1156] The thoroughly Dutch names that
some of them bear, and the type of face observable in many of them,
point to the probability that they have at some time received into
their community some persons of Dutch birth, or at least that they have
in their veins a considerable admixture of Dutch blood. They have also
gained some converts from among the Hottentots. Very little notice has
been taken of them by European travellers, [1157] or even by their
co-religionists until recently. In 1819 Colebrooke had drawn attention
to the growth of Islam in some interesting notes he wrote on the Cape
Colony: “Mohammedanism is said to be gaining ground among the slaves
and free people of colour at the Cape; that is to say, more converts
among negroes and blacks of every description are made from Paganism to
the Musleman, than to the Christian religion, notwithstanding the
zealous exertions of pious missionaries. One cause of this perversion
is asserted to be a marked disinclination of slave owners to allow
their slaves to be baptized; arising from some erroneous notions or
over-charged apprehensions of the rights which a baptized slave
acquires. Slaves are certainly impressed with the idea that such a
disinclination subsists, and it is not an unfrequent answer of a slave,
when asked his motives for turning Musleman, that ‘some religion he
must have, and he is not allowed to turn Christian.’ Prejudices in this
respect are wearing away; and less discouragement is now given to the
conversion of slaves than heretofore. Masters, it is affirmed, begin to
find that their slaves serve not the worse for instruction received in
religious duties. Missionaries who devote themselves especially to the
religious instruction of slaves (and there is one in each of the
principal towns) have increasing congregations, and hope that their
labours are not unfruitful. But the Musleman priest, with less
exertion, has a greater flock.” [1158] During the last fifty years the
Muhammadans in Cape Colony have been visited by some zealous
co-religionists from other countries, and more attention is now paid by
them to education, and a deeper religious life has been stirred up
among them, and they are said to carry on a zealous propaganda,
especially among the coloured people at the Cape and to achieve a
certain success. [1159] This proselytising movement is especially
strong in the western part of Cape Colony. It is said that there is a
movement on foot for the founding of a college at Claremont, in the
vicinity of Cape Town, which shall become a centre for the propagation
of Islam. One of the methods at present employed is the adoption of
neglected or abandoned children, who are brought up in the Muslim
faith. [1160] Every year some of them make the pilgrimage to Mecca,
where a special Shaykh has been appointed to look after them. [1161]
The Indian coolies that come to work in the diamond fields of South
Africa are also said to be propagandists of Islam. [1162]
On account of its isolated position, 220 to 540 miles from the
mainland, the island of Madagascar calls for separate mention. The only
tribe that has adopted Islam is that of the Antaimorona, occupying a
part of the south-east coast; they undoubtedly owed their conversion to
missionaries from Arabia, but the date at which this change of faith
took place is entirely unknown; tradition would carry it back to the
very days of Muḥammad himself, but it is not until the sixteenth
century that we get, in the works of Italian and Portuguese
geographers, authentic mention of Muhammadans on the island. [1163]
From the historical sketch given above it may be seen that peaceful
methods have largely characterised the Muhammadan missionary movement
in Africa, and though Islam has often taken the sword as an instrument
to further its spiritual conquests, such an appeal to violence and
bloodshed has in most cases been preceded by the peaceful efforts of
the missionary, and the preacher has followed the conqueror to complete
the imperfect work of conversion. It is true that the success of Islam
has been very largely facilitated in many parts of Africa by the
worldly successes of Muhammadan adventurers, and the erection of
Muhammadan states on the ruins of pagan kingdoms, and fire and
bloodshed have often marked the course of a Jihād, projected for the
extermination of the infidel. The words of the young Arab from Bornu
whom Captain Burton [1164] met in the palace of the King of Abeokuta
doubtless express the aspirations of many an African Muhammadan: “Give
those guns and powder to us, and we will soon Islamise these dogs”: and
they find an echo in the message that Mungo Park [1165] gives us as
having been sent by the Muslim King of Futah Toro to his pagan
neighbour: “With this knife Abdulkader will condescend to shave the
head of Damel, if Damel will embrace the Mahommedan faith; and with
this other knife Abdulkader will cut the throat of Damel, if Damel
refuses to embrace it; take your choice.”
But much as Islam may have owed to the martial prowess of such fanatics
as these, there is the overwhelming testimony of travellers and others
to the peaceful missionary preaching, and quiet and persistent labours
of the Muslim propagandist, which have done more for the rapid spread
of Islam in modern Africa than any violent measures: by the latter its
opponents may indeed have been exterminated, but by the former chiefly,
have its converts been made, and the work of conversion may still be
observed in progress in many regions of the coast and the interior.
[1166] Wherever Islam has made its way, there is the Muhammadan
missionary to be found bearing witness to its doctrines,—the trader, be
he Arab, Pul or Mandingo, who combines proselytism with the sale of his
merchandise, and whose very profession brings him into close and
immediate contact with those he would convert, and disarms any possible
suspicion of sinister motives; such a man when he enters a pagan
village soon attracts attention by his frequent ablutions and regularly
recurring times of prayer and prostration, in which he appears to be
conversing with some invisible being, and by his very assumption of
intellectual and moral superiority, commands the respect and confidence
of the heathen people, to whom at the same time he shows himself ready
and willing to communicate his high privileges and knowledge;—the ḥājī
or pilgrim who has returned from Mecca full of enthusiasm for the
spread of the faith, to which he devotes his whole energies, wandering
about from place to place, supported by the alms of the faithful who
bear witness to the truth in the midst of their pagan neighbours;—the
student who, in consequence of his knowledge of Islamic theology and
law, receives honour as a man of learning: sometimes, too, he practises
medicine, or at least he is in great requisition as a writer of charms,
texts from the Qurʼān, which are sewn up in pieces of leather or cloth
and tied on the arms, or round the neck, and which he can turn to
account as a means of adding to the number of his converts: for
instance, when childless women or those who have lost their children in
infancy, apply for these charms, as a condition of success the
obligation is always imposed upon them of bringing up their future
children as Muhammadans. [1167] These religious teachers, or marabouts,
or alūfas as they are variously termed, are held in the highest
estimation. In some tribes of Western Africa every village contains a
lodge for their reception, and they are treated with the utmost
deference and respect: in Darfur they hold the highest rank after those
who fill the offices of government: among the Mandingos they rank still
higher, and receive honour next to the king, the subordinate chiefs
being regarded as their inferiors in point of dignity: in those states
in which the Qurʼān is made the rule of government in all civil
matters, their services are in great demand, in order to interpret its
meaning. So sacred are the persons of these teachers esteemed, that
they pass without molestation through the countries of chiefs, not only
hostile to each other, but engaged in actual warfare. Such deference is
not only paid to them in Muhammadan countries, but also in the pagan
villages in which they establish their schools, where the people
respect them as the instructors of their children, and look upon them
as the medium between themselves and Heaven, either for securing a
supply of their necessities, or for warding off or removing calamities.
[1168] Many of these teachers have studied in the mosques of Qayrwān,
Fas, Tripoli [1169] and other centres of Muslim learning; but
especially in the mosque of al-Azhar in Cairo. Students flock to it
from all parts of the Muslim world, and among them is often to be found
a contingent from Negro Africa,—students from Darfur, Wadai and Bornu,
and some who even make their way on foot from the far distant West
Coast; when they have finished their courses of study in Muslim
theology and jurisprudence, there are many of them who become
missionaries among the heathen population of their native land. Schools
are established by these missionaries in the towns they visit, which
are frequented by the pagan as well as the Muslim children. They are
taught to read the Qurʼān, and instructed in the doctrines and
ceremonies of Islam. Having thus gained a footing, the Muhammadan
missionary, by his superior knowledge and attainments, is not slow to
obtain great influence over the people among whom he has come to live.
In this he is aided by the fact that his habits and manner of life are
similar in many respects to their own, nor is he looked upon with
suspicion, inasmuch as the trader has already prepared the way for him;
and by intermarriage with the natives, being thus received into their
social system, his influence becomes firmly rooted and permanent, and
so in the most natural manner he gradually causes the knowledge of
Islam to spread among them.
His propagandist efforts are further facilitated by the fact that the
deism which forms the background of the religious consciousness of many
fetish-worshippers may pass by an easy transition into the theism of
Islam, together with some other aspects of their theology, while their
general outlook upon life and several of their religious institutions
are capable of taking on a Muslim colouring and of being transferred to
the new system of faith without undergoing much modification. [1170]
The arrival of the Muhammadan in a pagan country is also the beginning
of the opening up of a more extensive trade, and of communication with
great Muhammadan trading centres such as Jenne, Segu or Kano, and a
share in the advantages of this material civilisation is offered,
together with the religion of the Prophet. Thus “among the uncivilised
negro tribes the missionary may be always sure of a ready audience: he
can not only give them many truths regarding God and man which make
their way to the heart and elevate the intellect, but he can at once
communicate the Shibboleth of admission to a social and political
communion, which is a passport for protection and assistance from the
Atlantic to the Wall of China. Wherever a Moslem house can be found
there the negro convert who can repeat the dozen syllables of his
creed, is sure of shelter, sustenance and advice, and in his own
country he finds himself at once a member of an influential, if not of
a dominant caste. This seems the real secret of the success of the
Moslem missionaries in West Africa. It is great and rapid as regards
numbers, for the simple reason that the Moslem missionary, from the
very first profession of the convert’s belief, acts practically on
those principles regarding the equality and brotherhood of all
believers before God, which Islam shares with Christianity; and he does
this, as a general rule, more speedily and decidedly than the Christian
missionary, who generally feels bound to require good evidence of a
converted heart before he gives the right hand of Christian fellowship,
and who has always to contend with race prejudices not likely to die
out in a single generation where the white Christian has for
generations been known as master, and the black heathen as slave.”
[1171]
It is important, too, to note that neither his colour nor his race in
any way prejudice the Negro in the eyes of his new co-religionists. The
progress of Islam in Negritia has no doubt been materially advanced by
this absence of any feeling of repulsion towards the Negro—indeed Islam
seems never to have treated the Negro as an inferior, as has been
unhappily too often the case in Christendom. [1172]
This consideration goes partly to explain the success of Muslim as
contrasted with Christian missions among the Negro peoples. It has
frequently been pointed out that the Negro convert to Christianity is
apt to feel that his European co-religionists belong to a stratum of
civilisation alien to his own habits of life, whereas he feels himself
to be more at home in a Muslim society. This has been well stated by a
modern observer, in the following passage:—“Islam, despite its
shortcomings, does not, from the Nigerian point of view, demand race
suicide of the Nigerian as an accompaniment of conversion. It does not
stipulate revolutionary changes in social life, impossible at the
present stage of Nigerian development; nor does it undermine family or
communal authority. Between the converter and converted there is no
abyss. Both are equal, not in theory, but in practice, before God. Both
are African; sons of the soil. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man
is carried out in practice. Conversion does not mean for the converted
a break with his interests, his family, his social life, his respect
for the authority of his natural rulers.... No one can fail to be
impressed with the carriage, the dignity of the Nigerian—indeed of the
West African—Mohammedan; the whole bearing of the man suggests a
consciousness of citizenship, a pride of race which seems to say: ‘We
are different, thou and I, but we are men.’ The spread of Islam in
Southern Nigeria which we are witnessing to-day is mainly social in its
action. It brings to those with whom it comes in contact a higher
status, a loftier conception of man’s place in the universe around him,
release from the thraldom of a thousand superstitious fears.” [1173]
According to Muhammadan tradition Moses was a black man, as may be seen
from the following passages in the Qurʼān. “Now draw thy hand close to
thy side: it shall come forth white, but unhurt:—another sign!” (xx.
23). “Then drew he forth his hand, and lo! it was white to the
beholders. The nobles of Pharaoh’s people said: ‘Verily this is an
expert enchanter’” (vii. 105–6). The following story also, handed down
to us from the golden period of the ʻAbbāsid dynasty, is interesting as
evidence of Muhammadan feeling with regard to the Negro. Ibrāhīm, a
brother of Hārūn al-Rashīd and the son of a negress, had proclaimed
himself Caliph at Baghdād, but was defeated and forgiven by al-Maʼmūn,
who was then reigning (A.D. 819). He thus describes his interview with
the Caliph:—“Al-Maʼmūn said to me on my going to see him after having
obtained pardon: ‘Is it thou who art the Negro khalīfah?’ to which I
replied:—‘Commander of the faithful! I am he whom thou hast deigned to
pardon; and it has been said by the slave of Banuʼl-Ḥasḥās:—“When men
extol their worth, the slave of the family of Ḥasḥās can supply, by his
verses, the defect of birth and fortune.” Though I be a slave, my soul,
through its noble nature, is free; though my body be dark, my mind is
fair.’ To this al-Maʼmūn replied: ‘Uncle! a jest of mine has put you in
a serious mood.’ He then repeated these verses: ‘Blackness of skin
cannot degrade an ingenious mind, or lessen the worth of the scholar
and the wit. Let darkness claim the colour of your body: I claim as
mine your fair and candid soul.’” [1174]
Thus, the converted Negro at once takes an equal place in the
brotherhood of believers, neither his colour nor his race nor any
associations of the past standing in the way. It is doubtless the ready
admission they receive, that makes the pagan Negroes willing to enter
into a religious society whose higher civilisation demands that they
should give up many of their old barbarous habits and customs; at the
same time the very fact that the acceptance of Islam does imply an
advance in civilisation and is a very distinct step in the
intellectual, moral and material progress of a Negro tribe, helps very
largely to explain the success of this faith. The forces arrayed on its
side are so powerful and ascendant, that the barbarism, ignorance and
superstition which it seeks to sweep away have little chance of making
a lengthened resistance. What the civilisation of Muslim Africa implies
to the Negro convert, is admirably expressed in the following words:
“The worst evils which, there is reason to believe, prevailed at one
time over the whole of Africa, and which are still to be found in many
parts of it, and those, too, not far from the Gold Coast and from our
own settlements—cannibalism and human sacrifice and the burial of
living infants—disappear at once and for ever. Natives who have
hitherto lived in a state of nakedness, or nearly so, begin to dress,
and that neatly; natives who have never washed before begin to wash,
and that frequently; for ablutions are commanded in the Sacred Law, and
it is an ordinance which does not involve too severe a strain on their
natural instincts. The tribal organisation tends to give place to
something which has a wider basis. In other words, tribes coalesce into
nations, and, with the increase of energy and intelligence, nations
into empires. Many such instances could be adduced from the history of
the Soudan and the adjoining countries during the last hundred years.
If the warlike spirit is thus stimulated, the centres from which war
springs are fewer in number and further apart. War is better organised,
and is under some form of restraint; quarrels are not picked for
nothing; there is less indiscriminate plundering and greater security
for property and life. Elementary schools, [1175] like those described
by Mungo Park a century ago, spring up, and even if they only teach
their scholars to recite the Koran, they are worth something in
themselves, and may be a step to much more. The well-built and
neatly-kept mosque, with its call to prayer repeated five times a day,
its Mecca-pointing niche, its Imām and its weekly service, becomes the
centre of the village, instead of the ghastly fetish or Juju house. The
worship of one God, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and
compassionate, is an immeasurable advance upon anything which the
native has been taught to worship before. The Arabic language, in which
the Mussulman scriptures are always written, is a language of
extraordinary copiousness and beauty; once learned it becomes a lingua
franca to the tribes of half the continent, and serves as an
introduction to literature, or rather, it is a literature in itself. It
substitutes moreover, a written code of law for the arbitrary caprice
of a chieftain—a change which is, in itself, an immense advance in
civilisation. Manufactures and commerce spring up, not the dumb trading
or the elementary bartering of raw products which we know from
Herodotus to have existed from the earliest times in Africa, nor the
cowrie shells, or gunpowder, or tobacco, or rum, which still serve as a
chief medium of exchange all along the coast, but manufactures
involving considerable skill, and a commerce which is elaborately
organised; and under their influence, and that of the more settled
government which Islam brings in its train, there have arisen those
great cities of Negroland whose very existence, when first they were
described by European travellers, could not but be half discredited. I
am far from saying that the religion is the sole cause of all this
comparative prosperity. I only say it is consistent with it, and it
encourages it. Climatic conditions and various other influences
co-operate towards the result; but what has Pagan Africa, even where
the conditions are very similar, to compare with it? As regards the
individual, it is admitted on all hands that Islam gives to its new
Negro converts an energy, a dignity, a self-reliance, and a
self-respect which is all too rarely found in their Pagan or their
Christian fellow-countrymen.” [1176]
The words above quoted were written before the partition of the greater
part of Africa among the governments of Christian Europe—England,
France and Germany—but the imposing character of Muslim civilisation
has not ceased to impress the Negro mind, or to operate as one of the
influences favourable to the conversion of the African
fetish-worshippers. Brought suddenly into contact with European
culture, these have received an impulse to advance in the path of
civilisation, but being unable to bridge over the gulf that separates
them from their foreign rulers, they find in Islam a culture
corresponding to their needs and capable of understanding their
requirements and aspirations. [1177] So far, therefore, from the
extension of European domination tending to hamper the activities of
Muhammadan propagandists, it has to a very remarkable degree
contributed towards the progress of Islam. The bringing of peace to
countries formerly harassed by wars of extermination or the raids of
slave-hunters, the establishment of ordered methods of government and
administration, and the increased facilities of communication by the
making of roads and the building of railways, have given a great
stimulus to trade and have enabled that active propagandist, the Muslim
trader, to extend his influence in districts previously untrodden, and
traverse familiar ground with greater security. Further, the
suppression of the slave-trade has removed one of the great obstacles
to the spread of Islam in pagan Africa, because it was to the interest
of the Arab and other Muhammadan slave-dealers not to narrow the field
of their operations by admitting their possible victims into the
brotherhood of Islam. [1178] Converts are now won from pagan tribes
which in the days of the slave-trade were untouched by missionary
effort. To this result the European governments have contributed by
employing Muhammadans to fill the subordinate posts in the civil
administration (since among the Muhammadans alone were educated persons
to be found) and distributing them throughout pagan districts, by
employing Muhammadan teachers in the Government schools, and by
recruiting their armies from among Muhammadan tribes; they have thus
added to the prestige of Islam in the eyes of the pagan Africans—a
circumstance that the Muslims have not been slow to make use of, to the
advantage of their own faith. [1179]
So little truth is there in the statement that Islam makes progress
only by force of arms, [1180] that on the contrary the partition of
Africa among the European powers, who have wrested the sword from the
hands of the Muslim chiefs now under their control, has initiated a
propaganda which seems likely to succeed where centuries of Muhammadan
domination have failed.
CHAPTER XII.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.
The history of the Malay Archipelago during the last 600 years
furnishes us with one of the most interesting chapters in the story of
the spread of Islam by missionary efforts. During the whole of this
period we find evidences of a continuous activity on the part of the
Muhammadan missionaries, in one or other at least of the East India
islands. In every instance, in the beginning, their work had to be
carried on without any patronage or assistance from the rulers of the
country, but solely by the force of persuasion, and in many cases in
the face of severe opposition, especially on the part of the Spaniards.
But in spite of all difficulties, and with varying success, they have
prosecuted their efforts with untiring energy, perfecting their work
(more especially in the present day) wherever it has been partial or
insufficient.
It is impossible to fix the precise date of the first introduction of
Islam into the Malay Archipelago. It may have been carried thither by
the Arab traders in the early centuries of the Hijrah, long before we
have any historical notices of such influences being at work. This
supposition is rendered the more probable by the knowledge we have of
the extensive commerce with the East carried on by the Arabs from very
early times. In the second century B.C. the trade with Ceylon was
wholly in their hands. At the beginning of the seventh century of the
Christian era, the trade with China, through Ceylon, received a great
impulse, so that in the middle of the eighth century Arab traders were
to be found in great numbers in Canton; while from the tenth to the
fifteenth century, until the arrival of the Portuguese, they were
undisputed masters of the trade with the East. [1181] We may therefore
conjecture with tolerable certainty that they must have established
their commercial settlements on some of the islands of the Malay
Archipelago, as they did elsewhere, at a very early period: though no
mention is made of these islands in the works of the Arab geographers
earlier than the ninth century, [1182] yet in the Chinese annals, under
the date A.D. 674, an account is given of an Arab chief, who from later
notices is conjectured to have been the head of an Arab settlement on
the west coast of Sumatra. [1183]
Missionaries must also, however, have come to the Malay Archipelago
from the south of India, judging from certain peculiarities of
Muhammadan theology adopted by the islanders. Most of the Musalmans of
the Archipelago belong to the Shāfiʻiyyah sect, which is at the present
day predominant on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts, as was the case
also about the middle of the fourteenth century when Ibn Baṭūṭah
visited these parts. [1184] So when we consider that the Muhammadans of
the neighbouring countries belong to the Ḥanafiyyah sect, we can only
explain the prevalence of Shāfiʻiyyah teachings by assuming them to
have been brought thither from the Malabar coast, the ports of which
were frequented by merchants from Java, as well as from China, Yaman
and Persia. [1185] From India, too, or from Persia, must have come the
Shīʻism, of which traces are still found in Java and Sumatra. From Ibn
Baṭūṭah we learn that the Muhammadan Sultan of Samudra had entered into
friendly relations with the court of Dehli, and among the learned
doctors of the law whom this devout prince especially favoured, there
were two of Persian origin, the one coming from Shiraz and the other
from Ispahan. [1186] But long before this time merchants from the
Deccan, through whose hands passed the trade between the Musalman
states of India and the Malay Archipelago, had established themselves
in large numbers in the trading ports of these islands, where they
sowed the seed of the new religion. [1187]
It is to the proselytising efforts of these Arab and Indian merchants
that the native Muhammadan population, which we find already in the
earliest historical notices of Islam in these parts, owes its
existence. Settling in the centres of commerce, they intermarried with
the people of the land, and these heathen wives and the slaves of their
households thus formed the nucleus of a Muslim community which its
members made every effort in their power to increase. The following
description of the methods adopted by these merchant missionaries in
the Philippine Islands, gives a picture of what was no doubt the
practice of many preceding generations of Muhammadan traders:—“The
better to introduce their religion into the country, the Muhammadans
adopted the language and many of the customs of the natives, married
their women, purchased slaves in order to increase their personal
importance, and succeeded finally in incorporating themselves among the
chiefs who held the foremost rank in the state. Since they worked
together with greater ability and harmony than the natives, they
gradually increased their power more and more, as having numbers of
slaves in their possession, they formed a kind of confederacy among
themselves and established a sort of monarchy, which they made
hereditary in one family. Though such a confederacy gave them great
power, yet they felt the necessity of keeping on friendly terms with
the old aristocracy, and of ensuring their freedom to those classes
whose support they could not afford to dispense with.” [1188] It must
have been in some such way as this that the different Muhammadan
settlements in the Malay Archipelago laid a firm political and social
basis for their proselytising efforts. They did not come as conquerors,
like the Spanish in the sixteenth century, or use the sword as an
instrument of conversion; nor did they arrogate to themselves the
privileges of a superior and dominant race so as to degrade and oppress
the original inhabitants, but coming simply in the guise of traders
they employed all their superior intelligence and civilisation in the
service of their religion, rather than as a means towards their
personal aggrandisement and the amassing of wealth. [1189] With this
general statement of the subsidiary means adopted by them, let us
follow in detail their proselytising efforts through the various
islands in turn.
Tradition represents Islam as having been introduced into Sumatra from
Arabia. But there is no sound historical basis for such a belief, and
all the evidence seems to point to India as the source from which the
people of Sumatra derived their knowledge of the new faith. Active
commercial relations had existed for centuries between India and the
Malay Archipelago, and the first missionaries to Sumatra were probably
Indian traders. [1190] There is, however, no historical record of their
labours, and the Malay chronicles ascribe the honour of being the first
missionary to Atjeh, in the north-west of Sumatra, to an Arab named
ʻAbd Allāh ʻĀrif, who is said to have visited the island about the
middle of the twelfth century; one of his disciples, Burhān al-Dīn, is
said to have carried the knowledge of the faith down the west coast as
far as Priaman. [1191] Untrustworthy as this record is, it may yet
possibly indicate the existence of some proselytising activity about
this period; for the Malay chronicle of Atjeh gives 1205 as the date of
the accession of Jūhan Shāh, the traditionary founder of the Muhammadan
dynasty. He is said to have been a stranger from the West, [1192] and
to have come to these shores to preach the faith of the Prophet; he
made many proselytes, married a wife from among the people of the
country, and was hailed by them as their king, under the half-Sanskrit,
half-Arabic title of Srī Padūka Sulṭān. For some time the new faith
would in all probability have been confined to the ports at which
Muhammadan merchants touched, and its progress inland would be slower,
as here it would come up against the strong Hindu influences that had
their centre in the kingdom of Menangkabau.
Marco Polo, who spent five months on the north coast of Sumatra in
1292, speaks of all the inhabitants being idolaters, except in the
petty kingdom of Parlāk on the north-east corner of the island, where,
too, only the townspeople were Muhammadans, for “this kingdom, you must
know, is so much frequented by the Saracen merchants that they have
converted the natives to the Law of Mahommet,” but the hill-people were
all idolaters and cannibals. [1193] Further, one of the Malay
chronicles says that it was Sultan ʻAlī Mughāyat Shāh, who reigned over
Atjeh from 1507 to 1522, who first set the example of embracing Islam,
in which he was followed by his subjects. [1194] But it is not
improbable that the honour of being the first Muslim ruler of the state
has been here attributed as an added glory to the monarch who founded
the greatness of Atjeh and began to extend its sway over the
neighbouring country, and that he rather effected a revival of, or
imparted a fresh impulse to, the religious life of his subjects than
gave to them their first knowledge of the faith of the Prophet. For
Islam had certainly set firm foot in Sumatra long before his time.
According to the traditionary account of the city of Samudra, the
Sharīf of Mecca sent a mission to convert the people of Sumatra. The
leader of the party was a certain Shaykh Ismāʻīl: the first place on
the island at which they touched, after leaving Malabar, was Pasuri
(probably situated a little way down the west coast), the people of
which were persuaded by their preaching to embrace Islam. They then
proceeded northward to Lambri and then coasted round to the other side
of the island and sailed as far down the east coast as Aru, nearly
opposite Malacca, and in both of these places their efforts were
crowned with a like success. At Aru they made inquiries for Samudra, a
city on the north coast of the island, which seems to have been the
special object of their mission, and found that they had passed it.
Accordingly they retraced their course to Parlāk, where Marco Polo had
found a Muhammadan community a few years before, and having gained
fresh converts here also, they went on to Samudra. This city and the
kingdom of the same name had lately been founded by a certain Mara
Silu, who was persuaded by Shaykh Ismāʻīl to embrace Islam, and took
the name of al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ. He married the daughter of the king of
Parlāk, by whom he had two sons, and in order to have a principality to
leave to each, he founded the Muhammadan city and kingdom of Pasei,
also on the north coast. [1195]
The king, al-Malik al-Z̤āhir, whom Ibn Baṭūṭah found reigning in Samudra
when he visited the island in 1345, was probably the elder of these two
sons. This prince displayed all the state of Muhammadan royalty, and
his dominions extended for many days’ journey along the coast; he was a
zealous and orthodox Muslim, fond of holding discussions with
jurisconsults and theologians, and his court was frequented by poets
and men of learning. Ibn Baṭūṭah gives us the names of two
jurisconsults who had come thither from Persia and also of a noble who
had gone on an embassy to Dehli on behalf of the king—which shows that
Sumatra was already in touch with several parts of the Muhammadan
world. Al-Malik al-Z̤āhir was also a great general, and made war on the
heathen of the surrounding country until they submitted to his rule and
paid tribute. [1196]
Islam had undoubtedly by this time made great progress in Sumatra, and
after having established itself along the coast, began to make its way
inland. The mission of Shaykh Ismāʻīl and his party had borne fruit
abundantly, for a Chinese traveller who visited the island in 1413,
speaks of Lambri as having a population of 1000 families, all of whom
were Muslims “and very good people,” while the king and people of the
kingdom of Aru were all of the same faith. [1197] It was either about
the close of the same century or in the fifteenth century, that the
religion of the Prophet found adherents in the great kingdom of
Menangkabau, whose territory at one time extended from one shore to
another, and over a great part of the island, north and south of the
equator. [1198] Though its power had by this time much declined, still
as an ancient stronghold of Hinduism it presented great obstacles in
the way of the progress of the new religion. Despite this fact, Islam
eventually took firmer root among the subjects of this kingdom than
among the majority of the inhabitants of the interior of the island.
[1199] It is very remarkable that this, the most central people of the
island, should have been more thoroughly converted than the inhabitants
of so many other districts that were more accessible to foreign
influences. To the present day the inhabitants of the Batak country are
still, for the most part, heathen; but Islam has gained a footing among
them, e.g. some living on the borders of Atjeh have been converted, by
their Muhammadan neighbours, [1200] others dwelling in the mountains of
the Rau country on the equator have likewise become Musalmans; [1201]
on the east coast also conversions of Bataks, who come much in contact
with Malays, are not uncommon. [1202]
The fanatical Padris (p. 372) made strenuous efforts, in vain, to force
Islam upon the Bataks at the point of the sword, laying waste their
country and putting many to death; but these violent methods did not
win converts. When, however, the Dutch Government suppressed the Padri
rising and annexed the southern part of the Batak country, Islam began
to spread by peaceful means, chiefly through the zealous efforts of the
native subordinate officials of the new régime, who were all Muhammadan
Malays, [1203] but also through the influence of the traders who
wandered through the country, whose proselytising activity was followed
up by the ḥājīs and other recognised teachers of the faith. It is a
remarkable fact that the Bataks, who for centuries had offered a
pertinacious resistance to the entrance of Islam into their midst,
though they were hemmed in between two fanatical Muhammadan
populations, the Achinese on the north and the Malays on the south,
have in recent years responded with enthusiasm to the peaceful efforts
made for their conversion. An explanation would appear to be found in
the breaking down of their exclusive national characteristics through
the Dutch occupation and the conquest opening up their country to
foreign influences, which implied the commencement of a new era in
their cultural development, as well as in the skilful procedure of the
exponents of the new faith, who knew how to accommodate their teachings
to the existing beliefs of the Bataks and their deep-rooted
superstitions. [1204] A considerable impulse seems to have been given
to Muslim propaganda by the establishment of Christian missions among
the Bataks in 1897, and they appear even to have paved the way for its
success. Two Batak villages, the entire population of which had been
baptised, are said to have gone over in a body to Islam shortly
afterwards. [1205]
In Central Sumatra there is still a large heathen population, though
the majority of the inhabitants are Muslims; but these latter are very
ignorant of their religion, with the exception of a few ḥājīs and
religious teachers: even among the people of Korintji, who are for the
most part zealous adherents of the faith, there are certain sections of
the population who still worship the gods of their pagan ancestors.
[1206] Efforts are, however, being made towards a religious revival,
and the Muslim missionaries are making fresh conquests from among the
heathen, especially along the west coast. [1207] In the district of
Sipirok a religious teacher attached to the mosque in the town of the
same name, in a quarter of a century, converted the whole population of
this district to Islam, with the exception of the Christians who were
to be found there, mostly descendants of former slaves, [1208] and a
later missionary movement in the first decade of the twentieth century
succeeded in winning over to Islam many of the Christians of this
district, even some living in the centre of the sphere of influence of
the Christian mission. [1209]
Islam is traditionally represented to have been introduced into
Palembang about 1440 by Raden Raḥmat, of whose propagandist activity an
account will be given below (p. 381). But Hindu influences appear to
have been firmly rooted here, and the progress of the new faith was
slow. Even up to the nineteenth century the Muslims of Palembang were
said to know little of their religion except the external observances
of it, with the exception of the inhabitants of the capital who come
into daily contact with Arabs; [1210] but in the first decade of the
twentieth century there would appear to have been a revival of the
religious life and a growing propaganda, as the Colonial Reports of the
Dutch Government draw attention to the continual spread of Islam among
the heathen population of various districts of Palembang. [1211]
It was from Java that Islam was first brought into the Lampong
districts which form the southern extremity of Sumatra, by a chieftain
of these districts, named Minak Kamala Bumi. About the end of the
fifteenth century he crossed over the Strait of Sunda to the kingdom of
Bantam on the west coast of Java, which had accepted the teachings of
the Muslim missionaries a few years before the date of his visit; here
he, too, embraced Islam, and after making the pilgrimage to Mecca,
spread the knowledge of his newly adopted faith among his
fellow-countrymen. [1212] This religion has made considerable progress
among the Lampongs, and most of the villages have mosques in them, but
the old superstitions still linger on in parts of the interior. [1213]
In the early part of the nineteenth century a religious revival was set
on foot in Sumatra, which was not without its influence in promoting
the further propagation of Islam. In 1803 three Sumatran ḥājīs returned
from Mecca to their native country: during their stay in the holy city
they had been profoundly influenced by the Wahhābī movement for the
reformation of Islam, and were now eager to introduce the same reforms
among their fellow-countrymen and to stir up in them a purer and more
zealous religious life. Accordingly they began to preach the strict
monotheism of the Wahhābī sect, forbade prayers to saints, drinking and
gambling and all other practices contrary to the law of the Qurʼān.
They made a number of proselytes both from among their co-religionists
and the heathen population. They later declared a Jihād against the
Bataks, and in the hands of unscrupulous and ambitious men the movement
lost its original character and degenerated into a savage and bloody
war of conquest. In 1821 these so-called Padris came into conflict with
the Dutch Government and it was not until 1838 that their last
stronghold was taken and their power broken. [1214]
All the civilised Malays of the Malay Peninsula trace their origin to
migrations from Sumatra, especially from Menangkabau, the famous
kingdom mentioned above, which is said at one time to have been the
most powerful on the island; some of the chiefs of the interior states
of the southern part of the Malay Peninsula still receive their
investiture from this place. At what period these colonies from the
heart of Sumatra settled in the interior of the Peninsula, is matter of
conjecture, but Singapore and the southern extremity of the Peninsula
seem to have received a colony in the middle of the twelfth century, by
the descendants of which Malacca was founded about a century later.
[1215] From its advantageous situation, in the highway of eastern
commerce it soon became a large and flourishing city, and there is
little doubt but that Islam was introduced by the Muhammadan merchants
who settled here. [1216] The Malay chronicle of Malacca assigns the
conversion of this kingdom to the reign of a certain Sulṭān Muḥammad
Shāh who came to the throne in 1276. He is said to have been reigning
some years before a ship commanded by Sīdī ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz came to
Malacca from Jiddah, and the king was persuaded by the new-comers to
change his faith and to give up his Malay name for one containing the
name of the Prophet. [1217] But the general character of this document
makes its trustworthiness exceedingly doubtful, [1218] in spite of the
likelihood that the date of so important an event would have been
exactly noted (as was done in many parts of the Archipelago) by a
people who, proud of the event, would look upon it as opening a new
epoch in their history. A Portuguese historian gives a much later date,
namely 1384, in which year, he says, a Qāḍī came from Arabia and having
converted the king, gave him the name of Muḥammad after the Prophet,
adding Shāh to it. [1219]
In the annals of Queda, one of the northernmost of the states of the
Malay Peninsula, we have a curious account of the introduction of Islam
into this kingdom, about A.D. 1501, [1220] which (divested of certain
miraculous incidents) is as follows: A learned Arab, by name Shaykh
ʻAbd Allāh, having come to Queda, visited the Raja and inquired what
was the religion of the country. “My religion,” replied the Raja, “and
that of all my subjects is that which has been handed down to us by the
people of old. We all worship idols.” “Then has your highness never
heard of Islam, and of the Qurʼān which descended from God to Muḥammad,
and has superseded all other religions, leaving them in the possession
of the devil?” “I pray you then, if this be true,” said the Raja, “to
instruct and enlighten us in this new faith.” In a transport of holy
fervour at this request, Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh embraced the Raja and then
instructed him in the creed. Persuaded by his teaching, the Raja sent
for all his jars of spirits (to which he was much addicted), and with
his own hands emptied them on the ground. After this he had all the
idols of the palace brought out; the idols of gold, and silver, and
clay, and wood were all heaped up in his presence, and were all broken
and cut to pieces by Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh with his sword and with an axe,
and the fragments consumed in the fire. The Shaykh asked the Raja to
assemble all his women of the fort and palace. When they had all come
into the presence of the Raja and the Shaykh, they were initiated into
the doctrines of Islam. The Shaykh was mild and courteous in his
demeanour, persuasive and soft in his language, so that he gained the
hearts of the inmates of the palace. The Raja soon after sent for his
four aged ministers, who, on entering the hall, were surprised at
seeing a Shaykh seated near the Raja. The Raja explained to them the
object of the Shaykh’s coming; whereupon the four chiefs expressed
their readiness to follow the example of his highness, saying, “We hope
that Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh will instruct us also.” The latter hearing these
words, embraced the four ministers and said that he hoped that, to
prove their sincerity, they would send for all the people to come to
the audience hall, bringing with them all the idols that they were wont
to worship and the idols that had been handed down by the men of former
days. The request was complied with and all the idols kept by the
people were at that very time brought down and there destroyed and
burnt to dust; no one was sorry at this demolition of their false gods,
all were glad to enter the pale of Islam. Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh after this
said to the four ministers, “What is the name of your prince?” They
replied, “His name is Pra Ong Mahāwāngsā.” “Let us change it for one in
the language of Islam,” said the Shaykh. After some consultation, the
name of the Raja was changed at his request to Sultan Muzlaf al-Shāh,
because, the Shaykh averred, it is a celebrated name and is found in
the Qurʼān. [1221]
The Raja now built mosques wherever the population was considerable,
and directed that to each there should be attached forty-four of the
inhabitants at least as a settled congregation, for a smaller number
would have been few for the duties of religion. So mosques were erected
and great drums were attached to them to be beaten to call the people
to prayer on Fridays. Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh continued for some time to
instruct the people in the religion of Islam; they flocked to him from
all the coasts and districts of Queda and its vicinity, and were
initiated by him into its forms and ceremonies.
The news of the conversion of the inhabitants of Queda by Shaykh ʻAbd
Allāh reached Atjeh, and the Sultan of that country and a certain
Shaykh Nūr al-Dīn, an Arab missionary, who had come from Mecca, sent
some books and a letter, which ran as follows:—“This letter is from the
Sultan of Atjeh and Nūr al-Dīn to our brother the Sultan of Queda and
Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh of Yaman, now in Queda. We have sent two religious
books, in order that the faith of Islam may be firmly established and
the people fully instructed in their duties and in the rites of the
faith.” A letter was sent in reply by the Raja and Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh,
thanking the donors. So Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh redoubled his efforts, and
erected additional small mosques in all the different villages for
general convenience, and instructed the people in all the rules and
observances of the faith. The Raja and his wife were constantly with
the Shaykh, learning to read the Qurʼān. The royal pair searched also
for some maiden of the lineage of the Rajas of the country, to be the
Shaykh’s wife. But no one could be found who was willing to give his
daughter thus in marriage because the holy man was about to return to
Baghdād, and only waited until he had sufficiently instructed some
person to supply his place. Now at this time the Sultan had three sons,
Raja Muʻaz̤z̤am Shāh, Raja Muḥammad Shāh, and Raja Sulaymān Shāh. These
names had been borrowed from the Qurʼān by Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh and
bestowed upon the princes, whom he exhorted to be patient and slow to
anger in their intercourse with their slaves and the lower orders, and
to regard with pity all the servants of God, and the poor and needy.
[1222]
It must not be supposed that the labours of Shaykh ʻAbd Allāh were
crowned with complete success, for we learn from the annals of Atjeh
that a Sultan of this country who conquered Queda in 1649, set himself
to “more firmly establish the faith and destroy the houses of the Liar”
or temples of idols. [1223] Thus a century and a half elapsed before
idolatry was completely rooted out.
We possess no other details of the history of the conversion of the
Malays of the Peninsula, but in many places the graves of the Arab
missionaries who first preached the faith to them are honoured by these
people. [1224] Their long intercourse with the Arabs and the Muslims of
the east coast of India has made them very rigid observers of their
religious duties, and they have the reputation of being the most
exemplary Muhammadans of the Archipelago; at the same time their
constant contact with the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and pagans of
their own country has made them liberal and tolerant. They are very
strict in the keeping of the fast of Ramaḍān and in performing the
pilgrimage to Mecca. The religious interests of the people are always
considered at the same time as their temporal welfare; and when a
village is found to contain more than forty houses and is considered to
be of a size that necessitates its organisation and the appointment of
the regular village officers, a public preacher is always included
among the number and a mosque is formally built and instituted. [1225]
In the north, where the Malay states border on Siam, Islam has
exercised considerable influence on the Siamese Buddhists; those who
have here been converted are called Samsams and speak a language that
is a mixed jargon of the languages of the two people. [1226] Converts
are also made from among the wild tribes of the Peninsula. [1227]
The history of the spread of Islam in Indo-China is obscure; Arab and
Persian merchants probably introduced their religion into the sea-port
towns from the tenth century onwards, but its most important expansion
was due to the immigrations of Malays which began at the close of the
fourteenth century. [1228]
We must now go back several centuries in order to follow out the
history of the conversion of Java. The preaching and promulgation of
the doctrines of Islam in this island were undoubtedly for a long time
entirely the result of the labours of individual merchants or of the
leaders of small colonies, for in Java there was no central Muhammadan
power to throw in its influence on the side of the new religion or
enforce the acceptance of it by warlike means. On the contrary, the
Muslim missionaries came in contact with a Hindu civilisation, that had
thrust its roots deep into the life of the country and had raised the
Javanese to a high level of culture and progress—expressing itself
moreover in institutions and laws radically different to those of
Arabia. Even up to the present day, the Muhammadan law has failed to
establish itself absolutely, even where the authority of Islam is
generally predominant, and there is still a constant struggle between
the adherents of the old Malayan usages and the Ḥājīs, who having made
the pilgrimage to Mecca, return enthusiastic for a strict observance of
Muslim Law. Consequently the work of conversion must have proceeded
very slowly, and we can say with tolerable certainty that while part of
the history of this proselytising movement may be disentangled from
legends and traditions, much of it must remain wholly unknown to us. In
the Malay Chronicle, which purports to give us an account of the first
preachers of the faith, what was undoubtedly the work of many
generations and must have been carried on through many centuries, is
compressed within the compass of a few years; and, as frequently
happens in popular histories, a few well-known names gain the fame and
credit that belongs of right to the patient labours of their unknown
predecessors. [1229] Further, the quiet, unobtrusive labours of many of
these missionaries would not be likely to attract the notice of the
chronicler, whose attention would naturally be fixed rather on the
doings of kings and princes, and of those who came in close
relationship to them. But failing such larger knowledge, we must fain
be content with the facts that have been handed down to us.
In the following pages, therefore, it is proposed to give a brief
sketch of the establishment of the Muhammadan religion in this island,
as presented in the native chronicle, which, though full of
contradictions and fables, has undoubtedly a historical foundation, as
is attested by the inscriptions on the tombs of the chief personages
mentioned and the remains of ancient cities, etc. The following account
therefore may, in the want of any other authorities, be accepted as
substantially correct, with the caution above mentioned against
ascribing too much efficacy to the proselytising efforts of
individuals.
The first attempt to introduce Islam into Java was made by a native of
the island about the close of the twelfth century. The first king of
Pajajaran, a state in the western part of the island, left two sons; of
these, the elder chose to follow the profession of a merchant and
undertook a trading expedition to India, leaving the kingdom to his
younger brother, who succeeded to the throne in the year 1190 with the
title of Prabu Munding Sari. In the course of his wanderings, the elder
brother fell in with some Arab merchants, and was by them converted to
Islam, taking the name of Ḥājī Purwa.
On his return to his native country, he tried with the help of an Arab
missionary to convert his brother and the royal family to his new
faith; but, his efforts proving unsuccessful, he fled into the jungle
for fear of the king and his unbelieving subjects, and we hear no more
of him. [1230]
In the latter half of the fourteenth century, a missionary movement,
which was attended with greater success, was instituted by a certain
Mawlānā Malik Ibrāhīm, who landed on the east coast of Java with some
of his co-religionists, and established himself near the town of
Gresik, opposite the island of Madura. He is said to have traced his
descent to Zayn al-ʻĀbidīn, a great-grandson of the Prophet, and to
have been cousin of the Raja of Chermen. [1231] Here he occupied
himself successfully in the work of conversion, and speedily gathered a
small band of believers around him. Later on, he was joined by his
cousin, the Raja of Chermen, who came in the hope of converting the
Raja of the Hindu Kingdom of Majapahit, and of forming an alliance with
him by offering his daughter in marriage. On his arrival he sent his
son, Ṣādiq Muḥammad, to Majapahit to arrange an interview, while he
busied himself in the building of a mosque and the conversion of the
inhabitants. A meeting of the two princes took place accordingly, but
before the favourable impression then produced could be followed up, a
sickness broke out among the people of the Raja of Chermen, which
carried off his daughter, three of his nephews who had accompanied him,
and a great part of his retinue; whereupon he himself returned to his
own kingdom. These misfortunes prejudiced the mind of the Raja of
Majapahit against the new faith, which he said should have better
protected its votaries: and the mission accordingly failed. Mawlānā
Ibrāhīm, however, remained behind, in charge of the tombs [1232] of his
kinsfolk and co-religionists, and himself died twenty-one years later,
in 1419, and was buried at Gresik, where his tomb is still venerated as
that of the first apostle of Islam to Java.
A Chinese Musalman, who accompanied the envoy of the Emperor of China
to Java in the capacity of interpreter, six years before the death of
Mawlānā Ibrāhīm, i.e. in 1413, mentions the presence of his
co-religionists in this island in his “General Account of the Shores of
the Ocean,” where he says, “In this country there are three kinds of
people. First the Muhammadans, who have come from the west, and have
established themselves here; their dress and food is clean and proper;
second, the Chinese who have run away and settled here; what they eat
and use is also very fine, and many of them have adopted the Muhammadan
religion and observe its precepts. The third kind are the natives, who
are very ugly and uncouth, they go about with uncombed heads and naked
feet, and believe devoutly in devils, theirs being one of the countries
called devil-countries in Buddhist books.” [1233]
We now approach the period in which the rule of the Muhammadans became
predominant in the island, after their religion had been introduced
into it for nearly a century; and here it will be necessary to enter a
little more closely into the details of the history in order to show
that this was not the result of any fanatical movement stirred up by
the Arabs, but rather of a revolution carried out by the natives of the
country themselves, [1234] who (though they naturally gained strength
from the bond of a common faith) were stirred up to unite in order to
wrest the supreme power from the hands of their heathen
fellow-countrymen, not by the preaching of a religious war, but through
the exhortations of an ambitious aspirant to the throne who had a wrong
to avenge. [1235]
The political condition of the island may be described as follows:—The
central and eastern provinces of the island, which were the most
wealthy and populous and the furthest advanced in civilisation, were
under the sway of the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit. Further west were
Cheribon and several other petty, independent princedoms; while the
rest of the island, including all the districts at its western
extremity, was subject to the King of Pajajaran.
The King of Majapahit had married a daughter of the prince of Champa, a
small state in Cambodia, east of the Gulf of Siam. [1236] She being
jealous of a favourite concubine of the King, he sent this concubine
away to his son Arya Damar, governor of Palembang in Sumatra, where she
gave birth to a son, Raden Patah, who was brought up as one of the
governor’s own children. This child (as we shall see) was destined in
after years to work a terrible vengeance for the cruel treatment of his
mother. Another daughter of the prince of Champa had married an Arab
who had come to Champa to preach the faith of Islam. [1237] From this
union was born Raden Raḥmat, who was carefully brought up by his father
in the Muhammadan religion and is still venerated by the Javanese as
the chief apostle of Islam to their country. [1238]
When he reached the age of twenty, his parents sent him with letters
and presents to his uncle, the King of Majapahit. On his way, he stayed
for two months at Palembang, as the guest of Arya Damar, whom he almost
persuaded to become a Musalman, only he dared not openly profess Islam
for fear of the people who were strongly attached to their ancient
superstitions. Continuing his journey Raden Raḥmat came to Gresik,
where an Arab missionary, Shaykh Mawlānā Jumāda ’l-Kubrạ̄, hailed him as
the promised Apostle of Islam to East Java, and foretold that the fall
of paganism was at hand, and that his labours would be crowned by the
conversion of many to the faith. At Majapahit he was very kindly
received by the King and the princess of Champa. Although the King was
unwilling himself to become a convert to Islam, yet he conceived such
an attachment and respect for Raden Raḥmat, that he made him governor
over 3000 families at Ampel, on the east coast, a little south of
Gresik, allowed him the free exercise of his religion and gave him
permission to make converts. Here after some time he gained over most
of those placed under him, to Islam.
Ampel was now the chief seat of Islam in Java, and the fame of the
ruler who was so zealously working for the propagation of his religion,
spread far and wide. Hereupon a certain Mawlānā Isḥāq came to Ampel to
assist him in the work of conversion, and was assigned the task of
spreading the faith in the kingdom of Balambangan, in the extreme
eastern extremity of the island. Here he cured the daughter of the
King, who was grievously sick, and the grateful father gave her to him
in marriage. She ardently embraced the faith of Islam and her father
allowed himself to receive instruction in the same, but when the
Mawlānā urged him to openly profess it, as he had promised to do, if
his daughter were cured, he drove him from his kingdom, and gave orders
that the child that was soon to be born of his daughter, should be
killed. But the mother secretly sent the infant away to Gresik to a
rich Muhammadan widow [1239] who brought him up with all a mother’s
care and educated him until he was twelve years old, when she entrusted
him to Raden Raḥmat. He, after learning the history of the child, gave
him the name of Raden Paku, and in course of time gave him also his
daughter in marriage. Raden Paku afterwards built a mosque at Giri, to
the south-west of Gresik, where he converted thousands to the faith;
his influence became so great, that after the death of Raden Raḥmat,
the King of Majapahit made him governor of Ampel and Gresik. [1240]
Meanwhile several missions were instituted from Gresik. Two sons of
Raden Raḥmat established themselves at different parts of the
north-east coast and made themselves famous by their religious zeal and
the conversion of many of the inhabitants of those parts. Raden Raḥmat
also sent a missionary, by name Shaykh Khalīfah Ḥusayn, across to the
neighbouring island of Madura, where he built a mosque and won over
many to the faith.
We must now return to Arya Damar, the governor of Palembang. (See p.
380.) He appears to have brought up his children in the religion which
he himself feared openly to profess, and he now sent Raden Patah, when
he had reached the age of twenty, together with his foster-brother,
Raden Ḥusayn, who was two years younger, to Java, where they landed at
Gresik. Raden Patah, aware of his extraction and enraged at the cruel
treatment his mother had received, refused to accompany his
foster-brother to Majapahit, but stayed with Raden Raḥmat at Ampel
while Raden Ḥusayn went on to the capital, where he was well received
and placed in charge of a district and afterwards made general of the
army.
Meanwhile Raden Patah married a granddaughter of Raden Raḥmat, and
formed an establishment in a place of great natural strength called
Bintara, in the centre of a marshy country, to the west of Gresik. As
soon as the King of Majapahit heard of this new settlement, he sent
Raden Ḥusayn to persuade his brother to come to the capital and pay
homage. This Raden Ḥusayn prevailed upon him to do, and he went to the
court, where his likeness to the king was at once recognised, and where
he was kindly received and formally appointed governor of Bintara.
Still burning for revenge and bent on the destruction of his father’s
kingdom, he returned to Ampel, where he revealed his plans to Raden
Raḥmat. The latter endeavoured to moderate his anger, reminding him
that he had never received anything but kindness at the hands of the
king of Majapahit, his father, and that while the prince was so just
and so beloved, his religion forbade him to make war upon or in any way
to injure him. However, unpersuaded by these exhortations (as the
sequel shows), Raden Patah returned to Bintara, which was now daily
increasing in importance and population, while great numbers of people
in the surrounding country were being converted to Islam. He had formed
a plan of building a great mosque, but shortly after the work had been
commenced, news arrived of the severe illness of Raden Raḥmat. He
hastened to Ampel, where he found the chief missionaries of Islam
gathered round the bed of him they looked upon as their leader. Among
them were the two sons of Raden Raḥmat mentioned above (p. 382), Raden
Paku of Giri, and five others. A few days afterwards Raden Raḥmat
breathed his last, and the only remaining obstacle to Raden Patah’s
revengeful schemes was thus removed. The eight chiefs accompanied him
back to Bintara, where they assisted in the completion of the mosque,
[1241] and bound themselves by a solemn oath to assist him in his
attempt against Majapahit. All the Muhammadan princes joined this
confederacy, with the exception of Raden Ḥusayn, who with all his
followers remained true to his master, and refused to throw in his lot
with his rebellious co-religionists.
A lengthy campaign followed, into the details of which we need not
enter, but in 1478, [1242] after a desperate battle which lasted seven
days, Majapahit fell and the Hindu supremacy in eastern Java was
replaced by a Muhammadan power. A short time after, Raden Ḥusayn was
besieged with his followers in a fortified place, compelled to
surrender and brought to Ampel, where he was kindly received by his
brother. A large number of those who remained faithful to the old Hindu
religion fled in 1481 to the island of Bali, where the worship of Siva
is still the prevailing religion. [1243] Others seem to have formed
small kingdoms, under the leadership of princes of the house of
Majapahit, which remained heathen for some time after the fall of the
great Hindu capital.
Even under Muslim chiefs the population of central Java long remained
heathen, and the progress of Islam southward from the early centres of
missionary effort on the north coast was the work of centuries; even to
the present day the influence of their old Hindu faith is strikingly
manifest in the religious notions of the Muslim population of central
Java. One remarkable evidence of the deep roots that Hinduism had
struck in this part of the island is the fact that it was not until
1768 that the authority of the Hindu law-books, particularly the code
of Manu, gave way before a code of laws more in accordance with the
spirit of Muslim legislation. [1244]
Islam was introduced into the eastern parts of the island some years
later, probably in the beginning of the following century, through the
missionary activity of Shaykh Nūr al-Dīn Ibrāhīm of Cheribon. He won
for himself a great reputation by curing a woman afflicted with
leprosy, with the result that thousands came to him to be instructed in
the tenets of the new faith. At first the neighbouring chiefs tried to
set themselves against the movement, but finding that their opposition
was of no avail, they suffered themselves to be carried along with the
tide and many of them became converts to Islam. [1245] Shaykh Nūr
al-Dīn Ibrāhīm of Cheribon sent his son, Mawlānā Ḥasan al-Dīn, to
preach the faith of Islam in Bantam, the most westerly province of the
island, and a dependency of the heathen kingdom of Pajajaran. Here his
efforts were attended with considerable success, among the converts
being a body of ascetics, 800 in number. It is especially mentioned in
the annals of this part of the country that the young prince won over
those whom he converted to Islam, solely by the gentle means of
persuasion, and not by the sword. [1246] He afterwards went with his
father on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and on his return extended his power
over the neighbouring coast of Sumatra, without ever having to draw the
sword, and winning converts to the faith by peaceful methods alone.
[1247]
But the progress of Islam in the west of Java seems to have been much
slower than in the east; a long struggle ensued between the worshippers
of Siva and the followers of the Prophet, and it was probably not until
the middle of the sixteenth century that the Hindu kingdom of
Pajajaran, which at one period of the history of Java seems to have
exercised suzerainty over the princedoms in the western part of the
island, came to an end, [1248] while other smaller heathen communities
survived to a much later period, [1249]—some even to the present day.
The history of one of these—the so-called Baduwis—is of especial
interest; they are the descendants of the adherents of the old
religion, who after the fall of Pajajaran fled into the woods and the
recesses of the mountains, where they might uninterruptedly carry out
the observances of their ancestral faith. In later times, when they
submitted to the rule of the Musalman Sultan of Bantam, they were
allowed to continue in the exercise of their religion, on condition
that no increase should be allowed in the numbers of those who
professed this idolatrous faith; [1250] and strange to say, they still
observe this custom, although the Dutch rule has been so long
established in Java and sets them free from the necessity of obedience
to this ancient agreement. They strictly limit their number to forty
households, and when the community increases beyond this limit, one
family or more has to leave this inner circle and settle among the
Muhammadan population in one of the surrounding villages. [1251]
But, though the work of conversion in the west of Java proceeded more
slowly than in the other parts of the island, yet, owing largely to the
fact that Hinduism had not taken such deep root among the people here
as in the centre of the island, the victory of Islam over the heathen
worship which it supplanted was more complete than in the districts
which came more immediately under the rule of the Rajas of Majapahit.
The Muhammadan law is here a living force and the civilisation brought
into the country from Arabia has interwoven itself with the government
and the life of the people; and it has been remarked that at the
present day the Muhammadans of the west of Java, who study their
religion at all or have performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, form as a
rule the most intelligent and prosperous part of the population. [1252]
We have already seen that large sections of the Javanese remained
heathen for centuries after the establishment of Muhammadan kingdoms in
the island; at the present day the whole population of Java, with some
trifling exceptions, is Muhammadan, and though many superstitions and
customs have survived among them from the days of their pagan
ancestors, still the tendency is continually in the direction of the
guidance of thought and conduct in accordance with the teaching of
Islam. This long work of conversion has proceeded peacefully and
gradually, and the growth of Muslim states in this island belongs
rather to its political than to its religious history, since the
progress of the religion has been achieved by the work rather of
missionaries than of princes.
While the Musalmans of Java were plotting against the Hindu Government
and taking the rule of the country into their own hands by force, a
revolution of a wholly peaceful character was being carried on in other
parts of the Archipelago through the preaching of the Muslim
missionaries who were slowly but surely achieving success in their
proselytising efforts. Let us first turn our attention to the history
of this propagandist movement in the Molucca islands.
The trade in cloves must have brought the Moluccas into contact with
the islanders of the western half of the Archipelago from very early
times, and the converted Javanese and other Malays who came into these
islands to trade, spread their faith among the inhabitants of the
coast. [1253] The companions of Magellan brought back a curious story
of the way in which these men introduced their religious doctrines
among the Muluccans. “The kings of these islands [1254] a few years
before the arrival of the Spaniards began to believe in the immortality
of the soul, induced by no other argument but that they had seen a very
beautiful little bird, that never settled on the earth nor on anything
that was of the earth, and the Mahometans, who traded as merchants in
those islands, told them that this little bird was born in paradise,
and that paradise is the place where rest the souls of those that are
dead. And for this reason these seignors joined the sect of Mahomet,
because it promises many marvellous things of this place of the souls.”
[1255]
Islam seems first to have begun to make progress here in the fifteenth
century. A heathen king of Tidor yielded to the persuasions of an Arab,
named Shaykh Manṣūr, and embraced Islam together with many of his
subjects. The heathen name of the king, Tjireli Lijatu, was changed to
that of Jamāl al-Dīn, while his eldest son was called Manṣūr after
their Arab teacher. [1256] It was the latter prince who entertained the
Spanish expedition that reached Tidor in 1521, shortly after the
ill-fated death of Magellan. Pigafetta, the historian of this
expedition, calls him Raia Sultan Mauzor, and says that he was more
than fifty-five years old, and that not fifty years had passed since
the Muhammadans came to live in these islands. [1257]
Islam seems to have gained a footing on the neighbouring island of
Ternate a little earlier. The Portuguese, who came to this island the
same year as the Spaniards reached Tidor, were informed by the
inhabitants that it had been introduced a little more than eighty
years. [1258]
According to the Portuguese account [1259] also the Sultan of Ternate
was the first of the Muluccan chieftains who became a Muslim. The
legend of the introduction of Islam into this island tells how a
merchant, named Datu Mullā Ḥusayn, excited the curiosity of the people
by reading the Qurʼān aloud in their presence; they tried to imitate
the characters written in the book, but could not read them, so they
asked the merchant how it was that he could read them, while they could
not; he replied that they must first believe in God and His Apostle;
whereupon they expressed their willingness to accept his teaching, and
became converted to the faith. [1260] The Sultan of Ternate, who
occupied the foremost place among the independent rulers in these
islands, is said to have made a journey to Gresik, in Java, in order to
embrace the Muhammadan faith there, in 1495. [1261] He was assisted in
his propagandist efforts by a certain Pati Putah, who had made the
journey from Hitu in Amboina to Java in order to learn the doctrines of
the new faith, and on his return spread the knowledge of Islam among
the people of Amboina. [1262] Islam, however, seems at first to have
made but slow progress, and to have met with considerable opposition
from those islanders who clung zealously to their old superstitions and
mythology, so that the old idolatry continued for some time crudely
mixed up with the teachings of the Qurʼān, and keeping the minds of the
people in a perpetual state of incertitude. [1263] The Portuguese
conquest also made the progress of Islam slower than it would otherwise
have been. They drove out the Qāḍī, whom they found instructing the
people in the doctrines of Muḥammad, and spread Christianity among the
heathen population with some considerable, though short-lived success.
[1264] For when the Muluccans took advantage of the attention of the
Portuguese being occupied with their own domestic troubles, in the
latter half of the sixteenth century, to try to shake off their power,
they instituted a fierce persecution against the Christians, many of
whom suffered martyrdom, and others recanted, so that Christianity lost
all the ground it had gained, [1265] and from this time onwards, the
opposition to the political domination of the Christians secured a
readier welcome for the Muslim teachers who came in increasing numbers
from the west. [1266] The Dutch completed the destruction of
Christianity in the Moluccas by driving out the Spanish and Portuguese
from these islands in the seventeenth century, whereupon the Jesuit
fathers carried off the few remaining Christians of Ternate with them
to the Philippines. [1267]
From these islands Islam spread into the rest of the Moluccas; though
for some time the conversions were confined to the inhabitants of the
coast. [1268] Most of the converts came from among the Malays, who
compose the whole population of the smaller islands, but inhabit the
coast-lands only of the larger ones, the interior being inhabited by
Alfurs. But converts in later times were drawn from among the latter
also. [1269] Even so early as 1521, there was a Muhammadan king of
Gilolo, a kingdom on the western side of the northern limb of the
island of Halemahera. [1270] In modern times the existence of certain
regulations, devised for the benefit of the state-religion, has
facilitated to some extent the progress of the Muhammadan religion
among the Alfurs of the mainland, e.g. if any one of them is discovered
to have had illicit intercourse with a Muhammadan girl, he must marry
her and become a Muslim; any of the Alfur women who marry Muhammadans
must embrace the faith of their husbands; offences against the law may
be atoned for by conversion to Islam; and in filling up any vacancy
that may happen to occur among the chiefs, less regard is paid to the
lawful claims of a candidate than to his readiness to become a
Musalman. [1271]
Similarly, Islam in Borneo is mostly confined to the coast, although it
had gained a footing in the island as early as the beginning of the
sixteenth century. About this time, it was adopted by the people of
Banjarmasin, a kingdom on the southern side, which had been tributary
to the Hindu kingdom of Majapahit, until its overthrow in 1478; [1272]
they owed their conversion to one of the Muhammadan states that rose on
the ruins of the latter. [1273] The story is that the people of
Banjarmasin asked for assistance towards the suppression of a revolt,
and that it was given on condition that they adopted the new religion;
whereupon a number of Muhammadans came over from Java, suppressed the
revolt and effected the work of conversion. [1274] On the north-west
coast, the Spaniards found a Muhammadan king at Brunai, when they
reached this place in 1521. [1275] A little later, 1550, it was
introduced into the kingdom of Sukadana, [1276] in the western part of
the island, by Arabs coming from Palembang in Sumatra. [1277] The
reigning king refused to abandon the faith of his fathers, but during
the forty years that elapsed before his death (in 1590), the new
religion appears to have made considerable progress. His successor
became a Musalman and married the daughter of a prince of a
neighbouring island, in which apparently Islam had been long
established; [1278] during his reign, a traveller, [1279] who visited
the island in 1600, speaks of Muhammadanism as being a common religion
along the coast. The inhabitants of the interior, however, he tells us,
were all idolaters—as indeed they remain for the most part to the
present day. The progress of Islam in the kingdom of Sukadana seems now
to have drawn the attention of the centre of the Muhammadan world to
this distant spot, and in the reign of the next prince, a certain
Shaykh Shams al-Dīn came from Mecca bringing with him a present of a
copy of the Qurʼān and a large hyacinth ring, together with a letter in
which this defender of the faith received the honourable title of
Sultan Muḥammad Ṣafī al-Dīn. [1280]
In the latter part of the eighteenth century one of the inland tribes,
called the Idaans, dwelling in the interior of north Borneo, is said to
have looked upon the Muhammadans of the coast with very great respect,
as having a religion which they themselves had not yet got. [1281]
Dalrymple, who obtained his information on the Idaans of Borneo during
his visit to Sulu from 1761 to 1764, tells us that they “entertain a
just regret of their own ignorance, and a mean idea of themselves on
that account; for, when they come into the houses, or vessels, of the
Mahometans, they pay them the utmost veneration, as superior
intelligences, who know their Creator; they will not sit down where the
Mahometans sleep, nor will they put their fingers into the same chunam,
or betel box, but receive a portion with the utmost humility, and in
every instance denote, with the most abject attitudes and gesture, the
veneration they entertain for a God unknown, in the respect they pay to
those who have a knowledge of Him.” [1282] These people appear since
that time to have embraced the Muhammadan faith, [1283] one of the
numerous instances of the powerful impression that Islam produces upon
tribes that are low down in the scale of civilisation. From time to
time other accessions have been gained in the persons of the numerous
colonists, Arabs, Bugis and Malays, as well as Chinese (who have had
settlements here since the seventh century), [1284] and of the slaves
introduced into the island from different countries; so that at the
present day the Muhammadans of Borneo are a very mixed race. [1285]
Many of these foreigners were still heathen when they first came to
Borneo, and of a higher civilisation than the Dyaks whom they conquered
or drove into the interior, where they mostly still remain heathen,
except in the western part of the island, in which from time to time
small tribes of Dyaks embrace Islam. [1286] When the pagan Dyaks change
their faith, it is more commonly the case that they yield to the
persuasions of the Muhammadan rather than to those of the Christian
missionary, or, having first embraced Christianity they then pass over
to Islam, and the Muhammadans are making zealous efforts to win
converts both from among the heathen and the Christian Dyaks. [1287]
In the island of Celebes we find a similar slow growth of the
Muhammadan religion, taking its rise among the people of the coast and
slowly making its way into the interior. Only the more civilised
portion of the inhabitants has, however, adopted Islam; this is mainly
divided into two tribes, the Macassars and the Bugis, who inhabit the
south-west peninsula, the latter, however, also forming a large
proportion of the coast population on the other peninsulas. The
interior of the island, except in the south-west peninsula where nearly
all the inhabitants are Muhammadan, is still heathen and is populated
chiefly by the Alfurs, a race low in the scale of civilisation, who
also form the majority of the inhabitants of the north, the east and
the south-east peninsulas; at the extremity of the first of these
peninsulas, in Minahassa, they have in large numbers been converted to
Christianity; the Muhammadans did not make their way hither until after
the Portuguese had gained a firm footing in this part of the island,
and the Alfurs whom they converted to Roman Catholicism were turned
into Protestants by the Dutch, whose missionaries have laboured in
Minahassa with very considerable success. But Islam is slowly making
its way among the heathen tribes of Alfurs in different parts of the
island, both in the districts directly administered by the Dutch
Government, and those under the rule of native chiefs. [1288]
When the Portuguese first visited the island about 1540, they found
only a few Muhammadan strangers in Gowa, the capital of the Macassar
kingdom, the natives being still unconverted, and it was not until the
beginning of the seventeenth century that Islam began to be generally
adopted among them. The history of the movement is especially
interesting, as we have here one of the few cases in which Christianity
and Islam have been competing for the allegiance of heathen people. One
of the incidents in this contest is thus admirably told by an old
compiler: “The discovery of so considerable a country was looked upon
by the Portuguese as a Matter of Great Consequence, and Measures were
taken to secure the Affections of those whom it was not found easy to
conquer; but, on the other hand, capable of being obliged, or rendered
useful, as their allies, by good usage. The People were much braver,
and withal had much better Sense than most of the Indians; and
therefore, after a little Conversation with the Europeans, they began,
in general, to discern that there was no Sense or Meaning in their own
Religion; and the few of them who had been made Christians by the care
of Don Antonio Galvano (Governor of the Moluccas), were not so
thoroughly instructed themselves as to be able to teach them a new
Faith. The whole People, in general, however, disclaimed their old
Superstitions, and became Deists at once; but, not satisfied with this,
they determined to send, at the same time, to Malacca and to Achin,
[1289] to desire from the one, Christian Priests; and from the other,
Doctors of the Mohammedan Law; resolving to embrace the Religion of
those Teachers who came first among them. The Portugeze have hitherto
been esteemed zealous enough for their Religion; but it seems that Don
Ruis Perera, who was then Governor of Malacca, was a little deficient
in his Concern for the Faith, since he made a great and very
unnecessary delay in sending the Priests that were desired. On the
other hand, the Queen of Achin being a furious Mohammedan no sooner
received an Account of this Disposition in the people of the Island of
Celebes than she immediately dispatched a vessel full of Doctors of the
Law, who in a short time, established their Religion effectually among
the Inhabitants. Some time after came the Christian Priests, and
inveighed bitterly against the Law of Mohammed but to no Purpose; the
People of Celebes had made their Choice, and there was no Possibility
of bringing them to alter it. One of the Kings of the Island, indeed,
who had before embraced Christianity, persisted in the Faith, and most
of his Subjects were converted to it; but still, the Bulk of the People
of Celebes continued Mohammedans, and are so to this Day, and the
greatest Zealots for their Religion of any in the Indies.” [1290]
This event is said to have occurred in the year 1603. [1291] The
frequent references to it in contemporary literature make it impossible
to doubt the genuineness of the story. [1292] In the little
principality of Tallo, to the north of Gowa, with which it has always
been confederated, is still to be seen the tomb of one of the most
famous missionaries to the Macassars, by name Khaṭīb Tungal. The prince
of this state, after his conversion proved himself a most zealous
champion of the new faith, and it was through his influence that it was
generally adopted by all the tribes speaking the Macassar language. The
sequel of the movement is not of so peaceful a character. The Macassars
were carried away by their zeal for their newly adopted faith, to make
an attempt to force it on their neighbours the Bugis. The king of Gowa
made an offer to the king of Boni to consider him in all respects as an
equal if he would worship the one true God. The latter consulted his
people on the matter, who said, “We have not yet fought, we have not
yet been conquered.” They tried the issue of a battle and were
defeated. The king accordingly became a Muhammadan and began on his own
account to attempt by force to impose his own belief on his subjects
and on the smaller states, his neighbours. Strange to say, the people
applied for help to the king of Macassar, who sent ambassadors to
demand from the king of Boni an answer to the following
questions,—Whether the king, in his persecution, was instigated by a
particular revelation from the Prophet?—or whether he paid obedience to
some ancient custom?—or followed his own personal pleasure? If for the
first reason, the king of Gowa requested information; if for the
second, he would lend his cordial co-operation; if for the third, the
king of Boni must desist, for those whom he presumed to oppress were
the friends of Gowa. The king of Boni made no reply and the Macassars
having marched a great army into the country defeated him in three
successive battles, forced him to fly the country, and reduced Boni
into a province. After thirty years of subjection, the people of Boni,
with the assistance of the Dutch, revolted against the Macassars, and
assumed the headship of the tribes of Celebes, in the place of their
former masters. [1293] The propagation of Islam certainly seems to have
been gradual and slow among the Bugis, [1294] but when they had once
adopted the new religion, it seems to have stirred them up to action,
as it did the Arabs (though this newly-awakened energy in either case
turned in rather different directions),—and to have made them what they
are now, at once the bravest men and the most enterprising merchants
and navigators of the Archipelago. [1295] In their trading vessels they
make their way to all parts of the Archipelago, from the coast of New
Guinea to Singapore, and their numerous settlements, in the
establishment of which the Bugis have particularly distinguished
themselves, have introduced Islam into many a heathen island: e.g. one
of their colonies is to be found in a state that extends over a
considerable part of the south coast of Flores, where, intermingling
with the native population, which formerly consisted partly of Roman
Catholics, they have succeeded in converting all the inhabitants of
this state to Islam. [1296]
In their native island of Celebes also the Bugis have combined
proselytising efforts with their commercial enterprises, and in the
little kingdom of Bolaäng-Mongondou in the northern peninsula [1297]
they have succeeded, in the course of the present century, in winning
over to Islam a Christian population whose conversion dates from the
end of the seventeenth century. The first Christian king of
Bolaäng-Mongondou was Jacobus Manopo (1689–1709), in whose reign
Christianity spread rapidly, through the influence of the Dutch East
India Company and the preaching of the Dutch clergy. [1298] His
successors were all Christian until 1844, when the reigning Raja,
Jacobus Manuel Manopo, embraced Islam. His conversion was the crown of
a series of proselytising efforts that had been in progress since the
beginning of the century, for it was about this time that the zealous
efforts of some Muhammadan traders—Bugis and others—won over some
converts to Islam in one of the coast towns of the southern kingdom,
Mongondou; from this same town two trader missionaries, Ḥakīm Bagus and
Imām Tuwéko by name, set out to spread their faith throughout the rest
of this kingdom. They made a beginning with the conversion of some
slaves and native women whom they married, and these little by little
persuaded their friends and relatives to embrace the new faith. From
Mongondou Islam spread into the northern kingdom Bolaäng; here, in
1830, the whole population was either Christian or heathen, with the
exception of two or three Muhammadan settlers; but the zealous
preachers of Islam, the Bugis, and the Arabs who assisted them in their
missionary labours, soon achieved a wide-spread success. The
Christians, whose knowledge of the doctrines of their religion was very
slight and whose faith was weak, were ill prepared with the weapons of
controversy to meet the attacks of the rival creed; despised by the
Dutch Government, neglected and well-nigh abandoned by the authorities
of the Church, they began to look on these foreigners, some of whom
married and settled among them, as their friends. As the work of
conversion progressed, the visits of these Bugis and Arabs,—at first
rare,—became more frequent, and their influence in the country very
greatly increased, so much so that about 1832 an Arab married a
daughter of the king, Cornelius Manopo, who was himself a Christian;
many of the chiefs, and some of the most powerful among them, about the
same time, abandoned Christianity and embraced Islam. In this way Islam
had gained a firm footing in his kingdom before Raja Jacobus Manuel
Manopo became a Muslim in 1844; this prince had made repeated
applications to the Dutch authorities at Manado to appoint a successor
to the Christian schoolmaster, Jacobus Bastiaan,—whose death had been a
great loss to the Christian community—but to no purpose, and learning
from the resident at Manado that the Dutch Government was quite
indifferent as to whether the people of his state were Christians or
Muhammadans, so long as they were loyal, openly declared himself a
Musalman and tried every means to bring his subjects over to the same
faith. An Arab missionary took advantage of the occurrence of a
terrible earthquake in the following year, to prophecy the destruction
of Bolaäng-Mongondou, unless the people speedily became converted to
Islam. Many in their terror hastened to follow this advice, and the
Raja and his nobles lent their support to the missionaries and Arab
merchants, whose methods of dealing with the dilatory were not always
of the gentlest. Nearly half the population, however, still remains
heathen, but the progress of Islam among them, though slow, is
continuous and sure. [1299]
The neighbouring island of Sambawa likewise probably received its
knowledge of this faith from Celebes, through the preaching of
missionaries from Macassar between 1540 and 1550. All the more
civilised inhabitants are true believers and are said to be stricter in
the performance of their religious duties than any of the neighbouring
Muhammadan peoples. This is largely due to a revivalist movement set on
foot by a certain Ḥājī ʻAli after the disastrous eruption of Mount
Tambora in 1815, the fearful suffering that ensued thereon being made
use of to stir up the people to a more strict observance of the
precepts of their religion and the leading of a more devout life.
[1300] At the present time Islam still continues to win over fresh
converts in this island. [1301]
The Sasaks of the neighbouring island of Lombok also owed their
conversion to the preaching of the Bugis, who form a large colony here,
having either crossed over the strait from Sambawa or come directly
from Celebes: at any rate the conversion appears to have taken place in
a peaceable manner. [1302] The population of Lombok falls into two
distinct divisions, the Sasaks and the Balinese; the first of these,
consisting of the Muhammadan Sasaks, the original inhabitants of the
island, far outnumbers the second, but about the middle of the
eighteenth century they came under the rule of the Balinese and soon
found their island overrun by swarms of the Hindu neighbours. [1303]
The rule of the Balinese was very oppressive, and they made
efforts—though with little success—to bring their Muslim subjects over
to Hinduism; the Sasaks tried in vain to shake off the yoke of their
oppressors, and more than once appealed to the Dutch Government, before
the expedition of 1894 brought peace to the island and established an
orderly administration under Dutch rule. The new government brought
with it a large number of native Muhammadan officials, who throw in
their influence on the side of their own faith, and it is thus expected
that one of the results of the Dutch conquest of Lombok will be to give
a great impetus to Islam in this island. [1304]
In the Philippine Islands we find a struggle between Christianity and
Islam for the allegiance of the inhabitants, somewhat similar in
character to that in Celebes, but more stern and enduring, entangling
the Spaniards and the Muslims in a fierce and bloody conflict, even up
to the nineteenth century. It is uncertain when Islam first reached
these islands. [1305] The traditionary annals of Mindanao represent
Islam as having been introduced from Johore, in the Malay Peninsula, by
a certain Sharīf Kabungsuwan, who settled with a number of followers in
the island and married there. He is said to have refused to land until
the men who came to meet him on his arrival promised to embrace Islam,
and these early records give the impression that the landing of
Kabungsuwan and the conversion of the people of Mindanao at first
proceeded quite peacefully; but after he had established his power, he
began to conquer the neighbouring chiefs and tribes, and they accepted
his religion in submitting to his authority. [1306] The Spaniards who
discovered them in 1521, found the population of the northern islands
to be rude and simple pagans, while Mindanao and the Sulu Islands were
occupied by more civilised Muhammadan tribes. [1307] The latter up to
the close of the nineteenth century successfully resisted for the most
part all the efforts of the Christians towards conquest and conversion,
so that the Spanish missionaries despaired of ever effecting their
conversion. [1308] The success of Islam as compared with Christianity
has been due in a great measure to the different form under which these
two faiths were presented to the natives. The adoption of the latter
implied the loss of all political freedom and national independence,
and hence came to be regarded as a badge of slavery. The methods
adopted by the Spaniards for the propagation of their religion were
calculated to make it unpopular from the beginning; their violence and
intolerance were in strong contrast to the conciliatory behaviour of
the Muhammadan missionaries, who learned the language of the people,
adopted their customs, intermarried with them, and melting into the
mass of the people, neither arrogated to themselves the exclusive
rights of a privileged race nor condemned the natives to the level of a
degraded caste. The Spaniards, on the other hand, were ignorant of the
language, habits and manners of the natives; their intemperance and
above all their avarice and rapacity brought their religion into odium;
while its propagation was intended to serve as an instrument of their
political advancement. [1309] It is not difficult therefore to
understand the opposition offered by the natives to the introduction of
Christianity, which indeed only became the religion of the people in
those parts in which the inhabitants were weak enough, or the island
small enough, to enable the Spaniards to effect a total subjugation;
the native Christians after their conversion had to be forced to
perform their religious duties through fear of punishment, and were
treated exactly like school-children. [1310] Up to the time of the
American occupation of the Philippine Islands the independent
Muhammadan kingdom of Mindanao was a refuge for those who wished to
escape from the hated Christian government; [1311] the island of Sulu,
also, though nominally a Spanish possession since 1878, formed another
centre of Muhammadan opposition to Christianity, Spanish-knowing
renegades even being found here. [1312]
We have no certain historical evidence as to how long the inhabitants
of the Sulu Islands had been Muhammadan, before the arrival of the
Spaniards. The annals of Sulu give the name of Sharīf Karīm al-Makhdūm
as the first missionary of Islam in these islands. He is said to have
been an Arab who went to Malacca about the middle of the fourteenth
century and converted Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh and the people of Malacca to
Islam. Continuing his journey eastward, he reached Sulu about the year
1380 and settled in Bwansa, [1313] the old capital of Sulu, where the
people built a mosque for him and many of the chiefs accepted his
teachings. He is said to have visited almost every island of the
Archipelago and to have made converts in many places; his grave is said
to be on the island of Sibutu. [1314] The next missionary is said to
have been Abū Bakr, who is also stated to have been an Arab, and to
have commenced his missionary labours in Malacca and to have made his
way to Palembang and Brunei, and reached Sulu about 1450; he built
mosques and carried on a successful propaganda. The Muslim king of
Bwansa, Raja Baginda, gave him his daughter in marriage, and appointed
him his heir, and Abū Bakr is credited with having organised the
government and legislation of Sulu on orthodox Muslim lines as far as
local custom would allow. [1315] Though so long converted, the people
of Sulu are far from being rigid Muhammadans, indeed, the influence of
the numerous Christian slaves that they carried off from the
Philippines in their predatory excursions used to be so great that it
was even asserted [1316] that “they would long ere this have become
professed Christians but from the prescience that such a change, by
investing a predominating influence in the priesthood, would inevitably
undermine their own authority, and pave the way to the transfer of
their dominions to the Spanish yoke, an occurrence which fatal
experience has too forcibly instructed all the surrounding nations that
unwarily embrace the Christian persuasion.” Further, the aggressive
behaviour of the Spanish priests who established a mission in Sulu
created in the mind of the people a violent antipathy to the foreign
religion. [1317]
Since the American occupation of the Philippines, the influence of
Islam has been considerably restricted, and is now confined to the
island of Palawan, the south coast of Mindanao and the archipelago of
Sulu. [1318] But it is said to be seeking to extend its propaganda
among the northern islands, and to have made a beginning of missionary
activity even in Manila. Certain conditions are said to favour its
success, especially the fact that the Filipinos are prejudiced against
Christianity on account of the abuses that led them to take up arms
against the Spanish friars. [1319]
As has been already mentioned, Islam has been most favourably received
by the more civilised races of the Malay Archipelago, and has taken but
little root among the lower races. Such are the Papuans of New Guinea,
and the islands to the north-west of it, viz. Waigyu, Misool, Waigama
and Salawatti. These islands, together with the peninsula of Onin, on
the north-west of New Guinea, were in the sixteenth century subject to
the Sultan of Batjan, [1320] one of the kings of the Moluccas. Through
the influence of the Muhammadan rulers of Batjan, the Papuan chiefs of
these islands adopted Islam, [1321] and though the mass of the people
in the interior have remained heathen up to the present day, the
inhabitants of the coast are Muhammadans largely no doubt owing to the
influence of settlers from the Moluccas. [1322] In New Guinea itself,
very few of the Papuans seem to have become Muhammadans. Islam was
introduced into the west coast (probably in the peninsula of Onin) by
Muhammadan merchants, who propagated their religion among the
inhabitants, as early as 1606. [1323] But it appears to have made very
little progress during the centuries that have elapsed since then,
[1324] and the Papuans have shown as much reluctance to become
Muhammadans as to accept the teachings of the Christian missionaries,
who have laboured among them without much success since 1855. The
Muhammadans of the neighbouring islands have been accused of holding
the Papuans in too great contempt to make efforts to spread Islam among
them. [1325] The name of one missionary, however, is found, a certain
Imām Dikir (? Dhikr), who came from one of the islands on the
south-east of Ceram about 1856 and introduced Islam into the little
island of Adi, south of the peninsula of Onin; after fulfilling his
mission he returned to his own home, resisting the importunities of the
inhabitants to settle among them. [1326] Muhammadan traders from Ceram
and Goram are reported to have made a number of converts from among the
heathen during the first decade of the twentieth century. [1327]
Similar efforts are being made to convert the Papuans of the
neighbouring Kei Islands. In the middle of the nineteenth century there
were said to be hardly any Muhammadans on these islands, with the
exception of the descendants of immigrants from the Banda Islands; some
time before, missionaries from Ceram had succeeded in making some
converts, but the precepts of the Qurʼān were very little observed,
both forbidden meats and intoxicating liquors being indulged in. The
women, however, were said to be stricter in their adherence to their
faith than the men, so that when their husbands wished to indulge in
swine’s flesh, they had to do so in secret, their wives not allowing it
to be brought into the house. [1328] But in 1887 it was noted that
there had been a revival of religious life among the Kei islanders, and
the number of Muhammadans was daily increasing. Arab merchants from
Madura, Java, and Bali proved themselves zealous propagandists of Islam
and left no means untried to win converts, sometimes enforcing their
arguments by threats and violence, and at other times by bribes: as a
rule new converts were said to get 200 florins’ worth of presents,
while chiefs received as much as a thousand florins. [1329] At the
close of the nineteenth century about 8000 of the Kei islanders were
said to be Muhammadan out of a total population of 23,000. [1330]
The above sketch of the spread of Islam from west to east through the
Malay Archipelago comprises but a small part of the history of the
missionary work of Islam in these islands. Many of the facts of this
history are wholly unrecorded, and what can be gleaned from native
chronicles and the works of European travellers, officials and
missionaries is necessarily fragmentary and incomplete. But there is
evidence enough to show the existence of peaceful missionary efforts to
spread the faith of Islam during the last six hundred years: sometimes
indeed the sword has been drawn in support of the cause of religion,
but preaching and persuasion rather than force and violence have been
the main characteristics of this missionary movement. The marvellous
success that has been achieved has been largely the work of traders,
who won their way to the hearts of the natives, by learning their
language, adopting their manners and customs, and began quietly and
gradually to spread the knowledge of their religion by first converting
the native women they married and the persons associated with them in
their business relations. Instead of holding themselves apart in proud
isolation, they gradually melted into the mass of the population,
employing all their superiority of intelligence and civilisation for
the work of conversion and making such skilful compromises in the
doctrines and practices of their faith as were needed to recommend it
to the people they wished to attract. [1331] In fact, as Buckle said of
them, “The Mahometan missionaries are very judicious.” [1332]
Beside the traders, there have been numbers of what may be called
professional missionaries—theologians, preachers, jurisconsults and
pilgrims. The latter have, in recent years, been especially active in
the work of proselytising, in stirring up a more vigorous and
consistent religious life among their fellow-countrymen, and in purging
away the lingering remains of heathen habits and beliefs. The number of
those who make the pilgrimage to Mecca from all parts of the
Archipelago is constantly on the increase, and there is in consequence
a proportionate growth of Muhammadan influence and Muhammadan thought.
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the Dutch Government tried
to put obstacles in the way of the pilgrims and passed an order that no
one should be allowed to make the pilgrimage to the holy city without a
passport, for which he had to pay 110 florins; and any one who evaded
this order was on his return compelled to pay a fine of double that
amount. [1333] Accordingly it is not surprising to find that in 1852
the number of pilgrims was so low as seventy, but in the same year this
order was rescinded, and since then, there has been a steady increase.
The average number of pilgrims during the last decade of the nineteenth
century was 7000—during the first decade of the twentieth, 7300; [1334]
but the numbers vary considerably from year to year, the largest
recorded number from the Dutch Indies being 14,234 in 1910. [1335]
Such an increase is no doubt largely due to the increased facilities of
communication between Mecca and the Malay Archipelago, but, as a
Christian missionary has observed, this by no means “diminishes the
importance of the fact, especially as the Hadjis, whose numbers have
grown so rapidly, have by no means lost in quality what they gained in
quantity; on the contrary, there are now amongst them many more
thoroughly acquainted with the doctrines of Islam, and wholly imbued
with Moslem fanaticism and hatred against the unbelievers, than there
formerly were.” [1336] The reports of the Dutch Government and of
Christian missionaries bear unanimous testimony to the influence and
the proselytising zeal of these pilgrims who return to their homes as
at once reformers and missionaries. [1337] Beside the pilgrims who
content themselves with merely visiting the sacred places and
performing the due ceremonies, and those who make a longer stay in
order to complete their theological studies, there is a large colony of
Malays in Mecca at the present time, who have taken up their residence
permanently in the sacred city. These are in constant communication
with their fellow-countrymen in their native land, and their efforts
have been largely effectual in purging Muhammadanism in the Malay
Archipelago from the contamination of heathen customs and modes of
thought that have survived from an earlier period. A large number of
religious books is also printed in Mecca in the various languages
spoken by the Malay Muhammadans and carried to all parts of the
Archipelago. Indeed Mecca has been well said to have more influence on
the religious life of these islands than on Turkey, India or Bukhārā.
[1338]
As might be anticipated from a consideration of these facts, there has
been of recent years a very great awakening of missionary activity in
the Malay Archipelago, and the returned pilgrims, whether as merchants
or religious teachers, become preachers of Islam wherever they come in
contact with a heathen population. The religious orders moreover have
extended their organisation to the Malay Archipelago, [1339] even the
youngest of them—the Sanūsiyyah—finding adherents in the most distant
islands, [1340] one of the signs of its influence being the adoption of
the name Sanūsī by many Malays, when in Mecca they change their native
for Arabic names. [1341]
The Dutch Government has been accused by Christian missionaries of
favouring the spread of Islam; however this may have been, it is
certain that the work of the Muslim missionaries is facilitated by the
fact that Malay, which is spoken by hardly any but Muhammadans, has
been adopted as the official language of the Dutch Government, except
in Java; and as the Dutch civil servants are everywhere attended by a
crowd of Muhammadan subordinate officials, political agents, clerks,
interpreters and traders, they carry Islam with them into every place
they visit. All persons that have to do business with the Government
are obliged to learn the Malay language, and they seldom learn it
without at the same time becoming Musalmans. In this way the most
influential people embrace Islam, and the rest soon follow their
example. [1342] Thus Islam is at the present time rapidly driving out
heathenism from the Malay Archipelago.
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
To the modern Christian world, missionary work implies missionary
societies, paid agents, subscriptions, reports and journals; and
missionary enterprise without a regularly constituted and continuous
organisation seems a misnomer. The ecclesiastical constitution of the
Christian Church has, from the very beginning of its history, made
provision for the propagation of Christian teaching among unbelievers;
its missionaries have been in most cases, regularly ordained priests or
monks; the monastic orders (from the Benedictines downwards) and the
missionary societies of more modern times have devoted themselves with
special and concentrated attention to the furthering of a department of
Christian work that, from the first, has been recognised to be one of
the prime duties of the Church. But in Islam the absence of any kind of
priesthood or any ecclesiastical organisation whatever has caused the
missionary energy of the Muslims to exhibit itself in forms very
different to those that appear in the history of Christian missions:
there are no missionary societies, [1343] no specially trained agents,
very little continuity of effort. The only exception appears to be
found in the religious orders of Islam, whose organisation resembles to
some extent that of the monastic orders of Christendom. But even here
the absence of the priestly ideal, of any theory of the separateness of
the religious teacher from the common body of believers or of the
necessity of a special consecration and authorisation for the
performance of religious functions, makes the fundamental difference in
the two systems stand out as clearly as elsewhere.
Whatever disadvantages may be entailed by this want of a priestly
class, specially set apart for the work of propagating the faith, are
compensated for by the consequent feeling of responsibility resting on
the individual believer. There being no intermediary between the Muslim
and his God, the responsibility of his personal salvation rests upon
himself alone: consequently he becomes as a rule much more strict and
careful in the performance of his religious duties, he takes more
trouble to learn the doctrines and observances of his faith, and thus
becoming deeply impressed with the importance of them to himself, is
more likely to become an exponent of the missionary character of his
creed in the presence of the unbeliever. The would-be proselytiser has
not to refer his convert to some authorised religious teacher of his
creed who may formally receive the neophyte into the body of the
Church, nor need he dread ecclesiastical censure for committing the sin
of Korah. Accordingly, however great an exaggeration it may be to say,
as has been said so often, [1344] that every Muhammadan is a
missionary, still it is true that every Muhammadan may be one, and few
truly devout Muslims, living in daily contact with unbelievers, neglect
the precept of their Prophet: “Summon them to the way of thy Lord with
wisdom and with kindly warning.” [1345] Thus it is that, side by side
with the professional propagandists,—the religious teachers who have
devoted all their time and energies to missionary work,—the annals of
the propagation of the Muslim faith contain the record of men and women
of all ranks of society, from the sovereign [1346] to the peasant, and
of all trades and professions, who have laboured for the spread of
their faith,—the Muslim trader, unlike his Christian brother, showing
himself especially active in such work. In a list of Indian
missionaries published in the journal of a religious and philanthropic
society of Lahore [1347] we find the names of schoolmasters, Government
clerks in the Canal and Opium Departments, traders (including a dealer
in camel-carts), an editor of a newspaper, a book-binder and a workman
in a printing establishment. These men devote the hours of leisure left
them after the completion of the day’s labour, to the preaching of
their religion in the streets and bazaars of Indian cities, seeking to
win converts both from among Christians and Hindus, whose religious
beliefs they controvert and attack.
It is interesting to note that the propagation of Islam has not been
the work of men only, but that Muslim women have also taken their part
in this pious task. Several of the Mongol princes owed their conversion
to the influence of a Muslim wife, and the same was probably the case
with many of the pagan Turks when they had carried their raids into
Muhammadan countries. The Sanūsiyyah missionaries who came to work
among the Tūbū, to the north of Lake Chad, opened schools for girls,
and took advantage of the powerful influence exercised by the women
among these tribes (as among their neighbours, the Berbers), in their
efforts to win them over to Islam. [1348] In German East Africa, the
pagan natives who leave their homes for six months or more, to work on
the railways or plantations, are converted by the Muhammadan women with
whom they contract temporary alliances; these women refuse to have
anything to do with an uncircumcised kāfir, and to escape the disgrace
attaching to such an appellation, their husbands become circumcised and
thus receive an entry into Muslim society. [1349] The progress of Islam
in Abyssinia during the first half of the last century has been said to
be in large measure due to the efforts of Muhammadan women, especially
the wives of Christian princes, who had to pretend a conversion to
Christianity on the occasion of their marriage, but brought up their
children in the tenets of Islam and worked in every possible way for
the advancement of that faith. [1350] On the western frontier of
Abyssinia, there is a pagan tribe called the Boruns; some of these men
who had enlisted in a negro regiment, under the Anglo-Egyptian
government of the Sudan, were converted to Islam by the wives of the
black soldiers while the battalion was returning to Khartum. [1351] The
Tatar women of Kazan are said to be especially zealous as propagandists
of Islam. [1352] The professed devotee, because she happens to be a
woman, is not thereby debarred from taking her place with the male
saint in the company of the preachers of the faith. The legend of the
holy women, descended from ʻAlī, who are said to have flown through the
air from Karbalāʼ to Lahore, and there by the influence of their devout
lives of prayer and fasting to have won the first converts from
Hinduism to Islam, [1353] could hardly have originated if the influence
of such holy women were a thing quite unknown. One of the most
venerated tombs in Cairo is that of Nafīsah, the great-granddaughter of
Ḥasan (the martyred son of ʻAlī), whose theological learning excited
the admiration even of her great contemporary, Imām al-Shāfiʻī, and
whose piety and austerities raised her to the dignity of a saint: it is
related of her that when she settled in Egypt, she happened to have as
her neighbours a family of dhimmīs whose daughter was so grievously
afflicted that she could not move her limbs but had to lie on her back
all day. The parents of the poor girl had to go one day to the market
and asked their pious Muslim neighbour to look after their daughter
during their absence. Nafīsah, filled with love and pity, undertook
this work of mercy; and when the parents of the sick girl were gone,
she lifted up her soul in prayer to God on behalf of the helpless
invalid. Scarcely was her prayer ended than the sick girl regained the
use of her limbs and was able to go to meet her parents on their
return. Filled with gratitude, the whole family became converts to the
religion of their benefactor. [1354]
Even the Muslim prisoner will on occasion embrace the opportunity of
preaching his faith to his captors or to his fellow-prisoners. The
first introduction of Islam into Eastern Europe was the work of a
Muslim jurisconsult who was taken prisoner, probably in one of the wars
between the Byzantine empire and its Muhammadan neighbours, and was
brought to the country of the Pechenegs [1355] in the beginning of the
eleventh century. He set before many of them the teachings of Islam and
they embraced the faith with sincerity, so that it began to be spread
among this people. But the other Pechenegs who had not accepted the
Muslim religion, took umbrage at the conduct of their fellow-countrymen
and finally came to blows with them. The Muslims, who numbered about
twelve thousand, successfully withstood the attack of the unbelievers,
though they were more than double their number, and the remnant of the
defeated party embraced the religion of the victors. Before the close
of the eleventh century the whole nation had become Muhammadan and had
among them men learned in Muslim theology and jurisprudence. [1356] In
the reign of the Emperor Jahāngīr (1605–1628) there was a certain Sunnī
theologian, named Shaykh Aḥmad Mujaddid, who especially distinguished
himself by the energy with which he controverted the doctrines of the
Shīʻahs: the latter, being at this time in favour at court, succeeded
in having him imprisoned on some frivolous charge; during the two years
that he was kept in prison he converted to Islam several hundred
idolaters who were his companions in the same prison. [1357] In more
recent times, an Indian mawlavī, who had been sentenced to
transportation for life to the Andaman Islands by the British
Government, because he had taken an active part in the Wahhābī
conspiracy of 1864, converted many of the convicts before his death. In
Central Africa, an Arab chief condemned to death by the Belgians, spent
his last hours in trying to convert to Islam the Christian missionary
who had been sent to bring him the consolations of religion. [1358]
Such being the missionary zeal of the Muslims, that they are ready to
speak in season and out of season,—as Doughty, with fine insight, says,
“Their talk is continually (without hypocrisy) of religion, which is of
genial devout remembrance to them,” [1359]—let us now consider some of
the causes that have contributed to their success.
Foremost among these is the simplicity [1360] of the Muslim creed,
There is no god but God; Muḥammad is the Apostle of God. Assent to
these two simple doctrines is all that is demanded of the convert, and
the whole history of Muslim dogmatics fails to present any attempt on
the part of ecclesiastical assemblies to force on the mass of believers
any symbol couched in more elaborate and complex terms. This simple
creed demands no great trial of faith, arouses as a rule no particular
intellectual difficulties and is within the compass of the meanest
intelligence. Unencumbered with theological subtleties, it may be
expounded by any, even the most unversed in theological expression. The
first half of it enunciates a doctrine that is almost universally
accepted by men as a necessary postulate, while the second half is
based on a theory of man’s relationship to God that is almost equally
wide-spread, viz. that at intervals in the world’s history God grants
some revelation of Himself to men through the mouthpiece of inspired
prophets. This, the rationalistic character of the Muslim creed, and
the advantage it reaps therefrom in its missionary efforts, have
nowhere been more admirably brought out than in the following sentences
of Professor Montet:—
“Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic in the widest
sense of this term considered etymologically and historically. The
definition of rationalism as a system that bases religious beliefs on
principles furnished by the reason, applies to it exactly. It is true
that Muḥammad, who was an enthusiast and possessed, too, the ardour of
faith and the fire of conviction, that precious quality he transmitted
to so many of his disciples,—brought forward his reform as a
revelation: but this kind of revelation is only one form of exposition
and his religion has all the marks of a collection of doctrines founded
on the data of reason. To believers, the Muhammadan creed is summed up
in belief in the unity of God and in the mission of His Prophet, and to
ourselves who coldly analyse his doctrines, to belief in God and a
future life; these two dogmas, the minimum of religious belief,
statements that to the religious man rest on the firm basis of reason,
sum up the whole doctrinal teaching of the Qurʼān. The simplicity and
the clearness of this teaching are certainly among the most obvious
forces at work in the religion and the missionary activity of Islam. It
cannot be denied that many doctrines and systems of theology and also
many superstitions, from the worship of saints to the use of rosaries
and amulets, have become grafted on to the main trunk of the Muslim
creed. But in spite of the rich development, in every sense of the
term, of the teachings of the Prophet, the Qurʼān has invariably kept
its place as the fundamental starting-point, and the dogma of the unity
of God has always been proclaimed therein with a grandeur, a majesty,
an invariable purity and with a note of sure conviction, which it is
hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam. This fidelity to the
fundamental dogma of the religion, the elemental simplicity of the
formula in which it is enunciated, the proof that it gains from the
fervid conviction of the missionaries who propagate it, are so many
causes to explain the success of Muhammadan missionary efforts. A creed
so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and
consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding, might be
expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvellous power of
winning its way into the consciences of men.” [1361]
Bishop Lefroy considers that the “secret of the extraordinary power for
conquest and advance which Islam has in its best ages evinced” is to be
found in its recognition of the Existence of God rather than the Unity
of God. “Not so much that God is one as that God IS—that His existence
is the ultimate fact of the universe—that His will is supreme—His
sovereignty absolute—His power limitless ... the conviction that,
amidst all the chaos and confusion and disorders of the world which so
fearfully obscure it, there is nevertheless, an ultimate Will,
resistless, supreme, and that man is called to be a minister of that
Will, to promulgate it, to compel—if necessary by very simple and
elementary means indeed—obedience to that Will—this it was which welded
the Mohammedan hosts into so invincible an engine of conquest, which
inspired them with a spirit of military subordination and discipline,
as well as with a contempt of death, such as has probably never been
surpassed in any system—this it is which, so far as it is still in any
true sense operative amongst Mohammadans, gives at once that backbone
of character, that firmness of determination and strength of will, and
also that uncomplaining patience and submission in the presence of the
bitterest misfortune, which characterise and adorn the best adherents
of the creed.” [1362]
When the convert has accepted and learned this simple creed, he has
then to be instructed in the five practical duties of his religion: (1)
recital of the creed, (2) observance of the five appointed times of
prayer, (3) payment of the legal alms, (4) fasting during the month of
Ramaḍān, and (5) the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The observance of this last duty has often been objected to as a
strange survival of idolatry in the midst of the monotheism of the
Prophet’s teaching, but it must be borne in mind that to him it
connected itself with Abraham, whose religion it was his mission to
restore. [1363] But above all—and herein is its supreme importance in
the missionary history of Islam—it ordains a yearly gathering of
believers, of all nations and languages, brought together from all
parts of the world, to pray in that sacred place towards which their
faces are set in every hour of private worship in their distant homes.
No fetch of religious genius could have conceived a better expedient
for impressing on the minds of the faithful a sense of their common
life and of their brotherhood in the bonds of faith. Here, in a supreme
act of common worship, the Negro of the west coast of Africa meets the
Chinaman from the distant east; the courtly and polished Ottoman
recognises his brother Muslim in the wild islander from the farthest
end of the Malayan Sea. At the same time throughout the whole
Muhammadan world the hearts of believers are lifted up in sympathy with
their more fortunate brethren gathered together in the sacred city, as
in their own homes they celebrate the festival of ʻĪd al-Aḍḥạ̄ or (as it
is called in Turkey and Egypt) the feast of Bayrām. Their visit to the
sacred city has been to many Muslims the experience that has stirred
them up to “strive in the path of God,” and in the preceding pages
constant reference has been made to the active part taken by the ḥājīs
in missionary work.
Besides the institution of the pilgrimage, the payment of the legal
alms is another duty that continually reminds the Muslim that “the
faithful are brothers” [1364]—a religious theory that is very
strikingly realised in Muhammadan society and seldom fails to express
itself in acts of kindness towards the new convert. Whatever be his
race, colour or antecedents he is received into the brotherhood of
believers and takes his place as an equal among equals.
It is not, however, true, as some European writers have maintained,
that if an unbeliever is the slave of a Muslim his conversion to Islam
procures for him his manumission, for, according to Muhammadan law, the
conversion of a slave does not affect the prior state of bondage;
[1365] and the condition of the Muslim slave has varied much according
to the character of his master. But freedom is in many instances the
reward of conversion, and devout minds have even recognised in
enslavement God’s guidance to the true faith, as the negroes from the
Upper Nile countries, whom Doughty met in Arabia. “In those Africans
there is no resentment that they have been made slaves ... even though
cruel men-stealers rent them from their parentage. The patrons who paid
their price have adopted them into their households, the males are
circumcised and—that which enfranchises their souls, even in the long
passion of home-sickness—God has visited them in their mishap; they can
say ‘it was His grace,’ since they be thereby entered into the saving
religion. This, therefore, they think is the better country, where they
are the Lord’s free men, a land of more civil life, the soil of the two
Sanctuaries, the land of Mohammed:—for such they do give God thanks
that their bodies were sometime sold into slavery!” [1366]
Very effective also, both in winning and retaining, is the ordinance of
the daily prayers five times a day. Montesquieu [1367] has well said,
“Une religion chargée de beaucoup de pratiques attache plus à elle
qu’une autre qui l’est moins; on tient beaucoup aux choses dont on est
continuellement occupé.” The religion of the Muslim is continually
present with him and in the daily prayer manifests itself in a solemn
and impressive ritual, which cannot leave either the worshipper or the
spectator unaffected. Saʻīd b. Ḥasan, an Alexandrian Jew, who embraced
Islam in the year 1298, speaks of the sight of the Friday prayer in a
mosque as a determining factor in his own conversion. During a severe
illness he had had a vision in which a voice bade him declare himself a
Muslim. “And when I entered the mosque” (he goes on) “and saw the
Muslims standing in rows like angels, I heard a voice speaking within
me, ‘This is the community whose coming was announced by the prophets
(on whom be blessings and peace!)’; and when the preacher came forth
clad in his black robe, a deep feeling of awe fell upon me ... and when
he closed his sermon with the words, ‘Verily God enjoineth justice and
kindness and the giving of gifts to kinsfolk, and He forbiddeth
wickedness and wrong and oppression. He warneth you; haply ye will be
mindful.’ [1368] And when the prayer began, I was mightily uplifted,
for the rows of the Muslims appeared to me like rows of angels, to
whose prostrations and genuflections God Almighty was revealing
Himself, and I heard a voice within me saying, ‘If God spake twice unto
the people of Israel throughout the ages, verily He speaketh unto this
community in every time of prayer,’ and I was convinced in my mind that
I had been created to be a Muslim.” [1369]
If Renan could say, “Je ne suis jamais entré dans une mosquée sans une
vive émotion, le dirai-je? sans un certain regret de n’être pas
musulman,” [1370] it can be readily understood how the sight of the
Muslim trader at prayer, his frequent prostrations, his absorbed and
silent worship of the Unseen, would impress the heathen African, endued
with that strong sense of the mysterious such as generally accompanies
a low stage of civilisation. Curiosity would naturally prompt inquiry,
and the knowledge of Islam thus imparted might sometimes win over a
convert who might have turned aside had it been offered unsought, as a
free gift. Of the fast during the month of Ramaḍān, it need only be
said that it is a piece of standing evidence against the theory that
Islam is a religious system that attracts by pandering to the
self-indulgence of men. As Carlyle has said, “His religion is not an
easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas,
prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not succeed
by being an easy religion.”
Bound up with these and other ritual observances, but not encumbered or
obscured by them, the articles of the Muslim creed are incessantly
finding outward manifestation in the life of the believer, and thus,
becoming inextricably interwoven with the routine of his daily life,
make the individual Musalman an exponent and teacher of his creed far
more than is the case with the adherents of most other religions.
[1371] Couched in such short and simple language, his creed makes but
little demand upon the intellect, and the definiteness, positiveness,
and minuteness of the ritual leave the believer in no doubt as to what
he has to do, and these duties performed, he has the satisfaction of
feeling that he has fulfilled all the precepts of the Law. In this
union of rationalism and ritualism, we may find, to a great extent, the
secret of the power that Islam has exercised over the minds of men. “If
you would win the great masses give them the truth in rounded form,
neat and clear, in visible and tangible guise.” [1372]
Many other circumstances might be adduced that have contributed towards
the missionary success of Islam—circumstances peculiar to particular
times and countries. Among these may be mentioned the advantage that
Muhammadan missionary work derives from the fact of its being so
largely in the hands of traders, especially in Africa and other
uncivilised countries where the people are naturally suspicious of the
foreigner. For, in the case of the trader, his well-known and harmless
avocation secures to him an immunity from any such feelings of
suspicion, while his knowledge of men and manners, his commercial
savoir-faire, gain for him a ready reception, and remove that feeling
of constraint which might naturally arise in the presence of the
stranger. He labours under no such disadvantages as hamper the
professed missionary, who is liable to be suspected of some sinister
motive, not only by people whose range of experience and mental horizon
are limited and to whom the idea of any man enduring the perils of a
long journey and laying aside every mundane occupation for the sole
purpose of gaining proselytes, is inexplicable, but also by more
civilised men of the world who are very prone to doubt the sincerity of
the paid missionary agent.
The circumstances are very different when Islam has not to appear as a
suppliant in a foreign country, but stands forth proudly as the
religion of the ruling race. In the preceding pages it has been shown
that the theory of the Muslim faith enjoins toleration and freedom of
religious life for all those followers of other faiths who pay tribute
in return for protection, and though the pages of Muhammadan history
are stained with the blood of many cruel persecutions, still, on the
whole, unbelievers have enjoyed under Muhammadan rule a measure of
toleration, the like of which is not to be found in Europe until quite
modern times. Forcible conversion was forbidden, in accordance with the
precepts of the Qurʼān:—“Let there be no compulsion in religion” (ii.
257). “Wilt thou compel men to become believers? No soul can believe
but by the permission of God” (x. 99, 100). The very existence of so
many Christian sects and communities in countries that have been for
centuries under Muhammadan rule is an abiding testimony to the
toleration they have enjoyed, and shows that the persecutions they have
from time to time been called upon to endure at the hands of bigots and
fanatics, have been excited by some special and local circumstances
rather than inspired by a settled principle of intolerance. [1373]
At such times of persecution, the pressure of circumstances has driven
many unbelievers to become—outwardly at least—Muhammadans, and many
instances might be given of individuals who, on particular occasions,
have been harassed into submission to the religion of the Qurʼān. But
such oppression is wholly without the sanction of Muhammadan law,
either religious or civil. The passages in the Qurʼān that forbid
forced conversion and enjoin preaching as the sole legitimate method of
spreading the faith have already been quoted above (Introduction, pp.
5–6), and the same doctrine is upheld by the decisions of the
Muhammadan doctors. When Moses Maimonides, who under the fanatical rule
of the Almohads had feigned conversion to Islam, fled to Egypt and
there openly declared himself to be a Jew, a Muslim jurisconsult from
Spain denounced him for his apostasy and demanded that the extreme
penalty of the law should be inflicted on him for this offence; but the
case was quashed by al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, ʻAbd al-Raḥīm b. ʻAlī, [1374] one
of the most famous of Muslim judges, and the prime minister of the
great Saladin, who authoritatively declared that a man who had been
converted to Islam by force could not be rightly considered to be a
Muslim. [1375] In the same spirit, when Ghāzān (1295–1304) discovered
that the Buddhist monks who had become Muhammadans at the beginning of
his reign (when their temples had been destroyed) only made a pretence
of being converted, he granted permission to all those who so wished to
return to Tibet, where among their Buddhist fellow-countrymen they
would be free once more to follow their own faith. [1376] Tavernier
tells us a similar story of some Jews of Ispahan who were so grievously
persecuted by the governor “that either by force or cunning he caused
them to turn Mahometans; but the king (Shāh ʻAbbās II) (1642–1667),
understanding that only power and fear had constrained them to turn,
suffer’d them to resume their own religion and to live in quiet.”
[1377] A story of a much earlier traveller [1378] in Persia, in 1478,
shows how even in those turbulent times a Muhammadan governor set
himself to severely crush an outburst of fanaticism of the same
character. A rich Armenian merchant of the city of Tabrīz was sitting
in his shop one day when a Ḥājī, [1379] with a reputation for sanctity,
coming up to him importuned him to become a Musalman and abandon his
Christian faith; when the merchant expressed his intention of remaining
steadfast in his religion and offered the fellow alms with the hope of
getting rid of him, he replied that what he wanted was not his alms but
his conversion; and at length, enraged at the persistent refusal of the
merchant, suddenly snatched a sword out of the hand of a bystander and
struck the merchant a mortal blow on the head and then ran away. When
the Governor of the city heard the news, he was very angry and ordered
the murderer to be pursued and captured; the culprit having been
brought into his presence, the governor stabbed him to death with his
own hand and ordered his body to be cast forth to be devoured by dogs,
saying: “What! is this the way in which the religion of Muḥammad
spreads?” At nightfall, the common people took up the body and buried
it, whereupon the Governor, enraged at this contempt of his order, gave
up the place for three or four hours to be sacked by his soldiers and
afterwards imposed a fine as a further penalty; also he called the son
of the merchant to him and comforted him and caressed him with good and
kindly words. Even the mad al-Ḥākim (996–1020), whose persecutions
caused many Jews and Christians to abandon their own faith and become
Musalmans, afterwards allowed these unwilling converts to return again
to their own religion and rebuild their ruined places of worship.
[1380] Neglected as the Eastern Christians have been by their Christian
brethren in the West, unarmed for the most part and utterly
defenceless, it would have been easy for any of the powerful rulers of
Islam to have utterly rooted out their Christian subjects or banished
them from their dominions, as the Spaniards did the Moors, or the
English the Jews for nearly four centuries. It would have been
perfectly possible for Salīm I (in 1514) or Ibrāhīm (in 1646) to have
put into execution the barbarous notion they conceived of exterminating
their Christian subjects, just as the former had massacred 40,000
Shīʻahs with the aim of establishing uniformity of religious belief
among his Muhammadan subjects. The muftis who turned the minds of their
masters from such a cruel purpose, did so as the exponents of Muslim
law and Muslim tolerance. [1381]
Still, though the principle that found so much favour in Germany in the
seventeenth century [1382]—Cuius regio eius religio,—was never adopted
by any Muhammadan potentate, it is obvious that the fact of Islam being
the state religion could not fail to have had some influence in
increasing the number of its adherents. Persons on whom their religious
faith sat lightly would be readily influenced by considerations of
worldly advantage, and ambition and self-interest would take the place
of more laudable motives for conversion. St. Augustine made a similar
complaint in the fifth century, that many entered the Christian Church
merely because they hoped to gain some temporal advantage thereby:
“Quam multi non quaerunt Iesum, nisi ut illis faciat bene secundum
tempus! Alius negotium habet, quaerit intercessionem clericorum; alius
premitur a potentiore, fugit ad ecclesiam; alius pro se vult
interveniri apud eum apud quem parum valet: ille sic, ille sic;
impletur quotidie talibus ecclesia.” [1383]
Moreover, to the barbarous and uncivilised tribes that saw the glory
and majesty of the empire of the Arabs in the heyday of its power,
Islam must have appeared as imposing and have exercised as powerful a
fascination as the Christian faith when presented to the Barbarians of
Northern Europe, when “They found Christianity in the
Empire—Christianity refined and complex, imperious and
pompous—Christianity enthroned by the side of kings, and sometimes
paramount above them.” [1384]
Added to this must often have been the slow, persistent influence of
daily contact with Muslim life and thought, such as led even a
Nestorian writer of the twelfth century to add words of blessing to the
mention of the name of the Prophet and the early caliphs, [1385] and to
pray for the mercy of God on the caliph ʻUmar b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz. [1386]
In modern times Christian missionaries complain that the system of
public instruction in Egypt under the British occupation, according to
which “Christian boys are often compelled to sit and listen to the
Koran and Dîn (religious teaching) being taught to their Moslem
companions when there is no room where they can be separated,” [1387]
tends to give the Muhammadans a preponderating influence over their
Christian fellow-students. One of the most active of the followers of
the late Muftī Muḥammad ʻAbduh was originally a Coptic medical student,
who had been won over to Islam through the influence of the religious
instruction he had heard given in school hours. [1388]
But the recital of such motives as little accounts for all cases of
conversion in the one religion as in the other, and they should not
make us lose sight of other factors in the missionary life of Islam,
whose influence has been of a more distinctly religious character.
Foremost among these is the influence of the devout lives of the
followers of Islam. Strange as it may appear to a generation accustomed
to look upon Islam as a cloak for all kinds of vice, it is nevertheless
true that in earlier times many Christians who have come into contact
with a living Muslim society have been profoundly impressed by the
virtues exhibited therein; if these could so strike the traveller and
the stranger, they would no doubt have some influence of attraction on
the unbeliever who came in daily contact with them. Ricoldus de Monte
Crucis, a Dominican missionary who visited the East at the close of the
thirteenth century, thus breaks out in praise of the Muslims among whom
he had laboured: “Obstupuimus, quomodo in lege tante perfidie poterant
opera tante perfectionis inveniri. Referemus igitur hic breviter opera
perfectionis Sarracenorum.... Quis enim non obstupescat, si diligenter
consideret, quanta in ipsis Sarracenis sollicitudo ad studium, devocio
in oratione, misericordia ad pauperes, reverencia ad nomen Dei et
prophetas et loca sancta, gravitas in moribus, affabilitas ad
extraneos, concordia et amor ad suos?” [1389] William Petit of Newburgh
in similar manner, towards the end of the twelfth century, praised the
sobriety of the Saracens as the outcome of the teaching of their
Prophet and as inspiring them with a sense of moral superiority over
the Christians: “Gulosos vero atque ebriosos, orbi terrarum graves
abominatus, sobrietatem docuit, ciborum delicias sugillavit, vini usum,
praeterquam paucis certisque diebus solemnibus, interdixit [Macometus].
Inde est, quod cum Sarraceni in fluxu libidinum de sui, ut dictum est,
seductoris indulgentia probentur esse spurcissimi; nostris, proh dolor!
in frugalitate superiores esse videntur, nobisque, proh pudor!
comessationum et ebrietatum sordes improperant. Denique malleus
Christiani nominis Saladinus ante annos aliquot, cum nostrorum mores
explorans, audisset quod pluribus in prandio ferculis uterentur,
dixisse fertur, ‘tales Terra Sancta indignos esse.’ Unde constat, quod
luxus nostrorum conspectus Agarenos, de frugalitate gloriantes, contra
nos incitet animetque tanquam dicentes; ‘Deus dereliquit crapulatos
istos, persequamur et comprehendamus, quia non est qui eripiat.’”
[1390]
The literature of the Crusades is rich in such appreciations of Muslim
virtues, while the Ottoman Turks in the early days of their rule in
Europe received many a tribute of praise from Christian lips, as has
already been shown in a former chapter.
At the present day there are two chief factors (beyond such of the
above-mentioned as still hold good) that make for missionary activity
in the Muslim world. The first of these is the revival of religious
life which dates from the Wahhābī reformation at the end of the
eighteenth century; though this new departure has long lost all
political significance outside the confines of Najd, as a religious
revival its influence is felt throughout Africa, India and the Malay
Archipelago even to the present day, and has given birth to numerous
movements which take rank among the most powerful influences in the
Islamic world. In the preceding pages it has already been shown how
closely connected many of the modern Muslim missions are with this
wide-spread revival: the fervid zeal it has stirred up, the new life it
has infused into existing religious institutions, the impetus it has
given to theological study and to the organisation of devotional
exercises, have all served to awake and keep alive the innate
proselytising spirit of Islam.
Side by side with this reform movement, is another of an entirely
different character—for, to mention one point of difference only, while
the former is strongly opposed to European civilisation, the latter is
rather in sympathy with modern thought and offers a presentment of
Islam in accordance therewith,—viz. the Pan-Islamic movement, which
seeks to bind all the nations of the Muslim world in a common bond of
sympathy. Though in no way so significant as the other, still this
trend of thought gives a powerful stimulus to missionary labours; the
effort to realise in actual life the Muslim ideal of the brotherhood of
all believers reacts on collateral ideals of the faith, and the sense
of a vast unity and of a common life running through the nations
inspirits the hearts of the faithful and makes them bold to speak in
the presence of the unbelievers.
What further influence these two movements will have on the missionary
life of Islam, the future only can show. But their very activity at the
present day is a proof that Islam is not dead. The spiritual energy of
Islam is not, as has been so often maintained, commensurate with its
political power. [1391] On the contrary, the loss of political power
and worldly prosperity has served to bring to the front the finer
spiritual qualities which are the truest incentives to missionary work.
Islam has learned the uses of adversity, and so far from a decline in
worldly prosperity being a presage of the decay of this faith, it is
significant that those very Muslim countries that have been longest
under Christian rule show themselves most active in the work of
proselytising. The Indian and Malay Muhammadans display a zeal and
enthusiasm for the spread of the faith, which one looks for in vain in
Turkey or Morocco.
APPENDIX I.
LETTER OF AL-HĀSHIMĪ INVITING AL-KINDĪ TO EMBRACE ISLAM.
The following is the text of al-Hāshimī’s letter inviting al-Kindī to
embrace Islam:—“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. I
have begun this letter with the salutation of peace and blessing after
the fashion of my lord and the lord of the prophets, Muḥammad, the
Apostle of God (may the peace and mercy of God be upon him!). For those
trustworthy, righteous and truthful persons who have handed down to us
the traditions of our Prophet (peace be upon him!) have related this
tradition concerning him that such was his habit and that whenever he
began to converse with men he would commence with the salutation of
peace and blessing and made no distinction of dhimmīs and illiterate,
between Muslims and polytheists, saying ‘I am sent to be kind and
considerate to all men and not to deal roughly or harshly with them,’
and quoting the words of God, ‘Verily God is kind and merciful to
believers.’ Likewise I have observed that those of our Khalīfahs that I
have met, followed the footsteps of their Prophet in courtesy,
nobility, graciousness and beneficence, and made no distinctions in
this matter and preferred none before another. So I have followed this
excellent way and have begun my letter with the salutation of peace and
blessing, that I be blamed of none who sees my letter.
“I have been guided therein by my affection towards you because my lord
and prophet, Muḥammad (may the peace and mercy of God be upon him!)
used to say that love of kinsmen is true piety and religion. So I have
written this to you in obedience to the Apostle of God (may the peace
and mercy of God be upon him!), feeling bound to show gratitude for the
services you have done us, and because of the love and affection and
inclination that you show towards us, and because of the favour of my
lord and cousin the Commander of the Faithful (may God assist him!)
towards you and his trust in you and his praise of you. So in all
sincerity desiring for you what I desire for myself, my family and my
parents, I will set forth the religion that we hold, and that God has
approved of for us and for all creatures and for which He has promised
a good reward in the end and safety from punishment when unto Him we
shall return.... So I have sought to gain for you what I would gain for
myself; and seeing your high moral life, vast learning, nobility of
character, your virtuous behaviour, lofty qualities and your extensive
influence over your co-religionists, I have had compassion on you lest
you should continue in your present faith. Therefore I have determined
to set before you what the favour of God has revealed to us and to
expound unto you our faith with good and gentle speech, following the
commandment of God, ‘Dispute not with the people of the book except in
the best way.’ (xxix. 45.) So I will discuss with you only in words
well-chosen, good and mild; perchance you may be aroused and return to
the true path and incline unto the words of the Most High God which He
has sent down to the last of the Prophets and lord of the children of
Adam, our Prophet Muḥammad (the peace and blessing of God be upon
him!). I have not despaired of success, but had hope of it for you from
God who showeth the right path to whomsoever He willeth, and I have
prayed that He may make me an instrument to this end. God in His
perfect book says ‘Verily the religion before God is Islam’ (iii. 17),
and again, confirming His first saying, ‘And whoso desireth any other
religion than Islam, it shall by no means therefore be accepted from
him, and in the next world he shall be among the lost’ (iii. 79), and
again He confirms it decisively, when He says, ‘O believers, fear God
as He deserveth to be feared; and die not without having become
Muslims.’ (iii. 97.)
“And you know—(May God deliver you from the ignorance of unbelief and
open your heart to the light of faith!)—that I am one over whom many
years have passed and I have sounded the depths of other faiths and
weighed them and studied many of their books especially your books.”
[Here he enumerates the chief books of the Old and New Testaments, and
explains how he has studied the various Christian sects.] “I have met
with many monks, famous for their austerities and vast knowledge, have
visited many churches and monasteries, and have attended their
prayers.... I have observed their extraordinary diligence, their
kneeling and prostrations and touching the ground with their cheeks and
beating it with their foreheads and humble bearing throughout their
prayers, especially on Sunday and Friday nights, and on their festivals
when they keep watch all night standing on their feet praising and
glorifying God and confessing Him, and when they spend the whole day
standing in prayer, continually repeating the name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost, and in the days of their retreats which they call Holy
Week when they stand barefooted in sackcloth and ashes, with much
weeping and shedding of tears continually, and wailing with strange
cries. I have seen also their sacrifices, with what cleanliness they
keep the bread for it, and the long prayers they recite with great
humility when they elevate it over the altar in the well-known church
at Jerusalem with those cups full of wine, and I have observed also the
meditations of the monks in their cells during their six fasts,—i.e.
the four greater and the two less, etc. On all such occasions I have
been present and observant of the people. Also I have visited their
Metropolitans and Bishops, renowned for their learning and their
devotion to the Christian faith and extreme austerity in the world, and
have discussed with them impartially, seeking for the truth, laying
aside all contentiousness, ostentation of learning and imperiousness in
altercation and bitterness and pride of race. I have given them
opportunity to maintain their arguments and speak out their minds
without interruption or browbeating, as is done by the vulgar and
illiterate and foolish persons among our co-religionists who have no
principle to work up to or reasons on which to rest, or religious
feeling or good manners to restrain them from rudeness; their speech is
but browbeating and proud altercation and they have no knowledge or
arguments except taking advantage of the rule of the government.
Whenever I have held discussions with them and asked them to speak
freely as their reason, their creed and their conclusion prompted, they
have spoken openly and without deception of any kind, and their inward
feelings have been laid bare to me as plainly as their outward
appearance. So I have written at such length to you (may God show you
the better way!) after long consideration and profound inquiry and
investigation, so that none may suspect that I am ignorant of the
things whereof I write and that all into whose hands this letter may
come, may know that I have an accurate knowledge of the Christian
faith.
“So, now (may God shower His blessings upon you!) with this knowledge
of your religion and so long-standing an affection (for you), I invite
you to accept the religion that God has chosen for me and I for myself,
assuring you entrance into Paradise and deliverance from Hell. And it
is this,—You shall worship the one God, the only God, the Eternal, He
begetteth not, neither is He begotten, who hath no consort and no son,
and there is none like unto Him. This is the attribute wherewith God
has denominated Himself, for none of His creatures could know Him
better than He Himself. I have invited you to the worship of this the
One God, whose attribute is such, and in this my letter I have added
nothing to that wherewith He has denominated Himself (high and exalted
be His name above what they associate with Him!). This is the religion
of your father and our father, Abraham (may the blessings of God rest
upon him!), for he was a Ḥanīf and Muslim.
“Then I invite you (may God have you in His keeping!) to bear witness
and acknowledge the prophetic mission of my lord and the lord of the
sons of Adam, and the chosen one of the God of all worlds and the seal
of the prophets, Muḥammad ... sent by God with glad tidings and
warnings to all mankind. ‘He it is who hath sent His Apostle with the
guidance and a religion of the truth, that He may make it victorious
over every other religion, albeit they who assign partners to God be
averse from it.’ (ix. 33.) So he invited all men from the East and from
the West, from land and sea, from mountain and from plain, with
compassion and pity and good words, with kindly manners and gentleness.
Then all these people accepted his invitation, bearing witness that he
is the apostle of God, the Creator of the worlds, to those who are
willing to give heed to admonition. All gave willing assent when they
beheld the truth and faithfulness of his words, and sincerity of his
purpose, and the clear argument and plain proof that he brought, namely
the book that was sent down to him from God, the like of which cannot
be produced by men or Jinns. ‘Say: Assuredly if mankind and the Jinns
should conspire to produce the like of this Qurʼān, they could not
produce its like, though the one should help the other.’ (xvii. 91.)
And this is sufficient proof of his mission. So he invited men to the
worship of the One God, the only God, the Self-sufficing, and they
entered into his religion and accepted his authority without being
forced and without unwillingness, but rather humbly acknowledging him
and soliciting the light of his guidance, and in his name becoming
victorious over those who denied his divine mission and rejected his
message and scornfully entreated him. So God set them up in the cities
and subjected to them the necks of the nations of men, except those who
hearkened to them and accepted their religion and bore witness to their
faith, whereby their blood, their property and their honour were safe
and they were exempt from humbly paying jizyah.” [He then enumerates
the various ordinances of Islam, such as the five daily prayers, the
fast of Ramaḍān, Jihād; expounds the doctrine of the resurrection of
the dead and the last judgment, and recounts the joys of Paradise and
the pains of Hell.] “So I have admonished you: if you believe in this
faith and accept whatever is read to you from the revealed Word of God,
then you will profit from my admonition and my writing to you. But if
you refuse and continue in your unbelief and error and contend against
the truth, I shall have my reward, having fulfilled the commandment.
And the truth will judge you.” [He then enumerates various religious
duties and privileges of the Muslim, and concludes.] “So now in this my
letter I have read to you the words of the great and high God, which
are the words of the Truth, whose promises cannot fail and in whose
words there is no deceit. Then give up your unbelief and error, of
which God disapproves and which calls for punishment, and speak no more
of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, these words that you yourself admit to
be so confusing: and give up the worship of the cross which brings loss
and no profit, for I wish you to turn away from it, since your learning
and nobility of soul are degraded thereby. For the great and high God
says: ‘Verily, God will not forgive the union of other gods with
Himself; but other than this will He forgive to whom He pleaseth. And
whoso uniteth gods with God, hath devised a great wickedness.’ (iv.
51.) And again: ‘Surely now are they infidels who say, “God is the
Messiah, Son of Mary;” for the Messiah said, “O children of Israel!
worship God, my Lord and your Lord.” Verily, those who join other gods
with God, God doth exclude from Paradise, and their abode the Fire; and
for the wicked no helpers! They surely are infidels who say, “God is a
third of three:” for there is no god but one God; and if they refrain
not from what they say, a grievous chastisement shall assuredly befall
such of them as believe not. Will they not, therefore, turn unto God,
and ask pardon of Him? since God is Forgiving, Merciful! The Messiah,
Son of Mary, is but an Apostle; other Apostles have flourished before
him; and his mother was a just person; they both ate food.’ (v. 76–9.)
Then leave this path of error and this long and stubborn clinging to
your religion and those burdensome and wearisome fasts which are a
constant trouble to you and are of no use or profit and produce nothing
but weariness of body and torment of soul. Embrace this faith and take
this, the right and easy path, the true faith, the ample law and the
way that God has chosen for His favoured ones and to which He has
invited the people of all religions, that He may show His kindness and
favour to them by guiding them into the true path by means of His
guidance, and fill up the measure of His goodness unto men.
“So I have advised you and paid the debt of friendship and sincere
love, for I have desired to take you to myself, that you and I may be
of the same opinion and the same faith, for I have found my Lord saying
in his perfect Book: ‘Verily the unbelievers among the people of the
Book and among the polytheists, shall go into the fire of Hell to abide
therein for ever. Of all creatures they are the worst. But they verily
who believe and do the things that are right—these of all creatures are
the best. Their recompense with their Lord shall be gardens of Eden,
’neath which the rivers flow, in which they shall abide for evermore.
God is well pleased with them, and they with Him. This, for him who
feareth his Lord.’ (xcviii. 5–8.) ‘Ye are the best folk that hath been
raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin what is just, and ye forbid what is
evil, and ye believe in God: and if the people of the book had
believed, it had surely been better for them. Believers there are among
them, but most of them are disobedient.’ (iii. 106.) So I have had
compassion upon you lest you might be among the people of Hell who are
the worst of all creatures, and I have hoped that by the grace of God
you may become one of the true believers with whom God is well pleased
and they with Him, and they are the best of all creatures, and I have
hoped that you will join yourself to that religion which is the best of
the religions raised up for men. But if you refuse and persist in your
obstinacy, contentiousness and ignorance, your infidelity and error,
and if you reject my words and refuse the sincere advice I have offered
you (without looking for any thanks or reward)—then write whatever you
wish to say about your religion, all that you hold to be true and
established by strong proof, without any fear or apprehension, without
curtailment of your proofs or concealment of your beliefs; for I
purpose only to listen patiently to your arguments and to yield to and
acknowledge all that is convincing therein, submitting willingly
without refusing or rejecting or fear, in order that I may compare your
account and mine. You are free to set forth your case; bring forward no
plea that fear prevented you from making your arguments complete and
that you had to put a bridle on your tongue, so that you could not
freely express your arguments. So now you are free to bring forward all
your arguments, that you may not accuse me of pride, injustice or
partiality: for that is far from me.
“Therefore bring forward all the arguments you wish and say whatever
you please and speak your mind freely. Now that you are safe and free
to say whatever you please, appoint some arbitrator who will
impartially judge between us and lean only towards the truth and be
free from the empery of passion: and that arbitrator shall be Reason,
whereby God makes us responsible for our own rewards and punishments.
Herein I have dealt justly with you and have given you full security
and am ready to accept whatever decision Reason may give for me or
against me. For ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (ii. 257) and I
have only invited you to accept our faith willingly and of your own
accord and have pointed out the hideousness of your present belief.
Peace be with you and the mercy and blessings of God!”
There can be very little doubt but that this document has come down to
us in an imperfect condition and has suffered mutilation at the hands
of Christian copyists: the almost entire absence of any refutation of
such distinctively Christian doctrines as that of the Blessed Trinity,
and the references to such attacks to be found in al-Kindī’s reply,
certainly indicate the excision of such passages as might have given
offence to Christian readers. [1392]
APPENDIX II.
CONTROVERSIAL LITERATURE BETWEEN MUSLIMS AND
THE FOLLOWERS OF OTHER FAITHS.
Although Islam has had no organised system of propaganda, no tract
societies or similar agencies of missionary work, there has been no
lack of reasoned presentments of the faith to unbelievers, particularly
to Christians and Jews. Of these it is not proposed to give a detailed
account here, but it is of importance to draw attention to their
existence if only to remove the wide-spread misconception that mass
conversion is the prevailing characteristic of the spread of Islam and
that individual conviction has formed no part of the propagandist
schemes of the Muslim missionary. The beginnings of Muhammadan
controversy against unbelievers are to be found in the Qurʼān itself,
but from the ninth century of the Christian era begins a long series of
systematic treatises of Muhammadan Apologetics, which has been actively
continued to the present day. The number of such works directed against
the Christian faith has been far more numerous than the Christian
refutations of Islam, and some of the ablest of Muslim thinkers have
employed their pens in their composition, e.g. Abū Yūsuf b. Isḥāq
al-Kindī (A.D. 813–873), al-Masʻūdī (ob. A.D. 958), Ibn Ḥazm (A.D.
994–1064), al-Ghazālī (ob. A.D. 1111), etc. It is interesting also to
note that several renegades have written apologies for their change of
faith and in defence of the Muslim creed, e.g. Ibn Jazlah in the
eleventh century, Yūsuf al-Lubnānī and Shaykh Ziyādah b. Yaḥyạ̄ in the
thirteenth, ʻAbd Allāh b. ʻAbd Allāh in the fifteenth, Darwesh ʻAlī in
the sixteenth, Aḥmad b. ʻAbd Allāh, an Englishman born at Cambridge, in
the seventeenth century, etc. These latter were all Christians before
their conversion, but Jewish renegades also, though fewer in number,
have been among the apologists of Islam. In India, besides many
Muhammadan books written against the Christian religion, there is an
enormous number of controversial works against Hinduism: as to whether
the Muhammadans have been equally active in other heathen countries, I
have no information.
The reader will find a vast store of information on Muslim
controversial literature in the following writings: Moritz
Steinschneider: Polemische und apologetische Litteratur in arabischer
Sprache, zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden. (Leipzig, 1877); Ignaz
Goldziher: Über Muhammedanische Polemik gegen Ahl al-kitâb (Z.D.M.G.,
vol. 32, p. 341 ff. 1878); Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte der Polemik
zwischen Juden und Muhammedanern (Z.D.M.G., vol. 42, p. 591 ff. 1888);
W. A. Shedd: Islam and the Oriental Churches, pp. 252–3; Carl
Güterbock: Der Islam in Lichte der byzantinischen Polemik. (Berlin,
1912.)
APPENDIX III.
MUSLIM MISSIONARY SOCIETIES.
The formation of societies for carrying on a propaganda in an organised
and systematic manner is a recent development in the missionary history
of Islam—as indeed it is comparatively recent in the history of
Christian missions. Such Muslim missionary societies would appear to
have been formed in conscious imitation of similar organisations in the
Christian world, and are not in themselves the most characteristic
expressions of the missionary spirit in Islam. In the Western world
there is very little to note. No attempt seems to have been made to
form such a society before the latter half of the nineteenth century,
and the earliest efforts were attended with little success. When H. M.
Stanley in 1875 urged in the English Press the sending of a Christian
mission to King Mutesa of Uganda, the wide-spread attention paid to his
appeal led to the formation of a missionary society in Constantinople
for the propagation of Islam in that country, but no Muhammadan
missionaries were ever sent to Uganda, and the outbreak of the
Russo-Turkish war in 1878 diverted the attention of the Turks from any
such enterprise. [1393] A similar failure to establish organised
missionary effort was manifested when the Anglo-Egyptian Government of
the Sudan marked out zones of influence for various Christian
missionary societies in districts the natives of which were heathen;
some Muslims of Cairo claimed that a part of the territory should be
allotted to the followers of Islam; whereupon the Government replied
that all they had to do was to send the missionaries and the same
facilities would be afforded to them as to the Christian missionaries;
but the necessary organisation was lacking and the matter was allowed
to drop. [1394] In 1910 Shaykh Rashīd, the editor of al-Manār, founded
a missionary society in Cairo, the object of which is to establish a
college (entitled Dār al-daʻwah waʼl-irshād) for the training of
missionaries and apologists for Islam, who are to be sent primarily
into heathen and Christian lands, but also into those Muhammadan
countries in which attempts are being made to induce the Muhammadans to
abandon their faith. [1395]
But it is in India that there has been the greatest expansion of such
organisations. One of the best organised of these is probably the
Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām of Lahore, but propagandist work forms only a
small part of the wide field of its activities and it cannot therefore
be described as a missionary society pure and simple. The original
purpose for which the Anjuman Ḥāmī Islām of Ajmer was founded was to
answer the objections urged against Islam by the members of the Ārya
Samāj, but it included among its objects the preaching of Islam and the
providing of food and clothing to new converts. [1396] The Anjuman
Waʻz̤-i-Islām, as its name denotes, concentrated its efforts on the
preaching of Islam, and, while Mawlavī Baqā Ḥusayn Khān (p. 283) was
its Secretary, published lists of the converts gained—as did also the
Anjuman-i-Islām and the Anjuman Tablīgh-i-Islām (which aimed at the
conversion of the Hindu untouchables) established in Ḥaydarabad
(Deccan), but it does not appear that either of these societies
continues to exist. [1397] Among the societies that have been
established in the twentieth century are the Madrasa Ilāhiyyāt at
Cawnpore, for the training of missionaries and the publication of
tracts in defence of Islam and in refutation of attacks made upon it;
and the Anjuman Ishāʻat wa Taʻlīm-i-Islām at Baṭālah in the Panjāb,
with similar objects. But the largest of these organisations is the
Anjuman Hidāyat al-Islām of Dehlī, to which as many as twenty-four
other societies, [1398] in various parts of India, are affiliated; this
Anjuman sends out missionaries to preach the doctrines of Islam and to
hold controversies with non-Muslims, and publishes controversial
literature, especially in refutation of the attacks made by the members
of the Ārya Samāj.
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NOTES
[1] E.g. The spread of Islam in Sicily and the missionary labours of
the numerous Muslim saints.
[2] De Trinitate, i. 5. (Migne, tom. xlii, p. 823.)
[3] Accordingly the reader will find no account of the recent history
of Armenia or Crete, or indeed of any part of the empire of the Turks
during the present century—a period singularly barren of missionary
enterprise on their part.
[4] Phrantzes, p. 5.
[5] The student of the literature of Science or of the Fine Arts finds
the libraries at South Kensington open till 10 o’clock on three
evenings every week, but the one library in this country that aims at
any completeness is available only to such students as are at leisure
during the day-time.
[6] A note on Mr. Lyall’s article: “Missionary Religions.” Fortnightly
Review, July, 1874.
[7] Reclus, vol. v. p. 433; Gasztowtt, p. 320 sqq.
[8] This misinterpretation of the Muslim wars of conquest has arisen
from the assumption that wars waged for the extension of Muslim
domination over the lands of the unbelievers implied that the aim in
view was their conversion. Goldziher has well pointed out this
distinction in his Vorlesungen über den Islam: “Was Muhammed zunächst
in seinem arabischen Umkreise getan, das hinterlässt er als Testament
für die Zukunft seiner Gemeinde: Bekämpfung der Ungläubigen, die
Ausbreitung nicht so sehr des Glaubens als seiner Machtsphäre, die die
Machtsphäre Allahs ist. Es ist dabei den Kämpfern des Islams zunächst
nicht so sehr um Bekehrung als um Unterwerfung der Ungläubigen zu tun.”
(p. 25.)
[9] See Enhardi Fuldensis Annales, A.D. 777. “Saxones post multas cædes
et varia bella afflicti, tandem christiani effecti, Francorum dicioni
subduntur.” G. H. Pertz: Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, vol. i. p. 349.
(See also pp. 156, 159.)
[10] “Tum zelo propagandæ fidei succensus, barbara regna iusto
certamine aggressus, devictas subditasque nationes christianæ legi
subiugavit.” (Breviarium Romanum. Iun. 19.)
[11] Mathurin Veyssière de la Croze: Histoire du Christianisme des
Indes, pp. 529–531. (The Hague, 1724.)
[12] Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, vol. xi. p. 89.
[13] Konrad Maurer: Die Bekehrung des norwegischen Stammes zum
Christenthume, vol. i. p. 284. (München, 1855.)
[14] Jean, Sire de Joinville: Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. N. de
Wailly, p. 30 (§ 53).
[15] Severus, p. 191 (ll. 21–22).
[16] Ibn Isḥāq, p. 120.
[17] Id. p. 155.
[18] He is famous throughout the Muhammadan world as the first
muʼadhdhin.
[19] Ibn Isḥāq, p. 219–220. Ṭabarī makes no mention of this mission and
Caetani (i. p. 278) accordingly suggests that it is a later invention.
[20] Ibn Isḥāq, pp. 225–6.
[21] Ibn Isḥāq, pp. 286–7.
[22] Caetani, vol. i. pp. 334–5.
[23] Ibn Isḥāq, p. 291 sq.
[24] The appointment of the fast of Ramaḍān (Qurʼān ii. 179–84), is
doubtless another sign of the breaking with the Jews, the fast on the
Day of Atonement being thus abolished.
[25] “Aber Gottes Botschaft ist nicht auf die Araber beschränkt. Sein
Wille gilt für alle Creatur, es heischt unbedingten Gehorsam von aller
Menschheit, und dass Muhammed als sein Bote denselben Gehorsam zu
heischen berechtigt und verpflichtet sei, scheint von Anfang an ein
integrirender Bestandtheil seines Gedankensystem gewesen zu sein.”
(Sachau, pp. 293–4.) Goldziher (Vorlesungen über den Islam, p. 25 sqq.)
and Nöldeke (WZKM, vol. xxi. pp. 307–8) express a similar opinion.
[26] On the doubtful authenticity of these letters, see Caetani, vol.
i. p. 725 sqq.
[27] It seems strange that in the face of these passages, some have
denied that Islam was originally intended by its founder to be a
universal religion. Thus Sir William Muir says, “That the heritage of
Islam is the world, was an afterthought. The idea, spite of much
prophetic tradition, had been conceived but dimly, if at all, by
Mahomet himself. His world was Arabia, and for it the new dispensation
was ordained. From first to last the summons was to Arabs and to none
other.... The seed of a universal creed had indeed been sown; but that
it ever germinated was due to circumstance rather than design.” (The
Caliphate, pp. 43–4.) Caetani is the latest exponent of this view.
(Annali dell’Islām, vol. v. pp. 323–4.)
[28] Ibn Saʻd, § 10. This story may indeed be apocryphal, but is
significant at least of the early realisation of the missionary
character of Islam.
[29] A. von Kremer (3), pp. 309, 310.
[30] This would seem to be acknowledged even by Muir, when speaking of
the massacre of the Banū Qurayẓah (A.H. 6): “The ostensible grounds
upon which Mahomet proceeded were purely political, for as yet he did
not profess to force men to join Islam, or to punish them for not
embracing it.” (Muir (2), vol. iii. p. 282.)
[31] Ibn Isḥāq, p. 648 sq.
[32] Muir (2), vol. iv. pp. 107–8. See also Caetani, vol. i. p. 663.
“Assai più che tutte le prediche del Profeta, assai più che tutta la
bontà delle dottrine islamiche, siffatti vantaggi militari
contribuirono al aumentare il numero dei seguaci. La rapidità della
diffusione dell’Islām divenne in special modo sensibile per il contegno
et per lo spirito di tolleranza, di libertà, e di opportunismo, che
diresse il Profeta nei suoi rapporti con i convertiti.”
[33] Ibn Isḥāq, p. 943–4. (This story rests on somewhat doubtful
authority, cf. Caetani, vol. i. p. 610.)
[34] Ibn Saʻd, § 118.
[35] Ibn Isḥāq, pp. 252–4.
[36] Caetani, vol. ii. t. i. p. 341.
[37] Ibn Saʻd, § 56.
[38] Ibn Saʻd, § 85.
[39] Id. § 86.
[40] Id. § 91.
[41] See Sprenger, vol. iii. pp. 360–1.
[42] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 433.
[43] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 429.
[44] This has been nowhere more fully and excellently brought out than
in the scholarly work of Prof. Ignaz Goldziher (Muhammedanische
Studien, vol. i.), from which I have derived the following
considerations.
[45] Döllinger, pp. 5–6.
[46] Caetani, Studi di Storia Orientale, I, p. 365 sqq. (Milano, 1911.)
[47] This interpretation of the Arab conquests as the last of the great
Semitic migrations has been worked out in a masterly manner by Caetani,
vol. ii. pp. 831–61.
[48] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 455; vol. v. p. 521. (“In Madīnah si formò un
considerevole nucleo religioso, composto d’elementi eterogenei, ma
forse in maggioranza madinesi, i quali presero l’Islām molto sul serio
e cercarono sinceramente di osservare la nuova dottrina, per la
convinzione che, così agendo facevan bene, ed in devoto omaggio alla
volontà del Profeta.”)
[49] Masʻūdī, tome iv. p. 238.
[50] Muir’s Caliphate, pp. 121–2.
[51] Caetani, vol. iii. p. 814 (§ 323).
[52] Caetani, vol. ii. pp. 260, 299, 351.
[53] Id. pp. 792–3; vol. iii. p. 253 (§ 8).
[54] Id. pp. 1112–15.
[55] Muir, Caliphate, pp. 90–4.
[56] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 299. Wellhausen, iv. p. 156 (n. 5).
[57] Ṭabarī, Prima Series, p. 2482.
[58] For an exhaustive study of the jizyah, with a masterly array and
critical examination of all the available historical materials, see
Caetani, vol. v. p. 319 sqq.; for Egypt during the first century of
Muslim rule, see Bell, p. 167 sqq., and Becker, Beiträge zur Geschichte
Aegyptens unter dem Islam, p. 81 sqq.
[59] Caetani (vol. iv. p. 227) believes that this story is the
invention of a later epoch, to explain the fiscal anomaly of a
Christian tribe being treated as if it were Muslim.
[60] The few meagre notices of this tribe in the works of Arabic
historians have been admirably summarised by Lammens: Le Chantre des
Omiades. (J. A., ix. sér., tome iv. pp. 97–9, 438–59.) See also
Caetani, vol. iv. p. 227 sqq.
[61] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 1180.
[62] Barhebræus (3), pp. 134–5.
[63] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 828.
[64] Ṭabarī, i. p. 2041.
[65] Masʻūdī, tome iv. p. 256.
[66] “Gli Arabi nei primi anni non perseguitarono invece alcuno per
ragioni di fede, non si diedero pena alcuna per convertire chicchessia,
sicchè sotto l’Islām, dopo le prime conquiste, i cristiani Semiti
goderno d’una tolleranza religiosa quale non si era mai vista da varie
generazioni.” (Caetani, vol. v. p. 4.)
[67] Sir Henry Layard: Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and
Babylonia, vol. i. p. 100. (London, 1887); R. Hartmann: Die Herrschaft
von al-Karak. (Der Islam, vol. ii. p. 137.)
[68] Burckhardt (2), p. 564.
[69] W. G. Palgrave: Essays on Eastern Questions, pp. 206–8. (London,
1872.)
[70] I. A. Dorner: A System of Christian Doctrine, vol. iii. pp.
215–16. (London, 1885.) J. C. Robertson: History of the Christian
Church, vol. ii. p. 226. (London, 1875.)
[71] That such fears were not wholly groundless may be judged from the
emperor’s intolerant behaviour towards many of the Monophysite party in
his progress through Syria after the defeat of the Persians in 627.
(See Michael the Elder, vol. ii. p. 412, and Caetani, vol. ii. p.
1049.) For the outrages committed by the Byzantine soldiers on their
co-religionists in the reign of Constans II (642–668), see Michael the
Elder, vol. ii. p. 443.
[72] Michael the Elder, vol. ii. pp. 412–13. Barhebræus, about a
century later, wrote in a similar strain. (Chronicon Ecclesiasticum,
ed. J. B. Abbeloos et Lamy, p. 474.)
[73] Azdī, p. 97.
[74] Balādhurī, p. 137.
[75] Caetani, vol. iii. p. 813; vol. v. p. 394. (“Gli abitanti
accettarono con non celato favore il mutamento di governo, appena
ebbero compreso che gli Arabi avrebbero rispettato i loro diritti
individuali, ed avrebbero lasciata completa libertà di coscienza in
materia religiosa. In Siria, città ed interi distretti si affrettarono
a trattare con gli Arabi anche prima della rotta finale dei Greci. Nel
Sawād si lasciarono passivamente sopraffare accettando il nuovo dominio
senza pattuire condizioni di sorta; è probabile che anche in Siria
questo fosse il caso per molte regioni remote dalle grandi vie di
comunicazioni.”)
[76] Gottheil has brought together a valuable collection of documentary
evidence as to the condition of the protected peoples under Muslim rule
in his “Dhimmīs and Moslems in Egypt.”
[77] Balādhurī, pp. 74 (ad fin.), 116, 121 (med.).
[78] For a discussion of this document, see Caetani, vol. iii. p. 952
sqq.
[79] Ṭabarī, i. p. 2405.
[80] Balādhurī, p. 129.
[81] Ibn Sʻad, III, i. p. 246.
[82] Mémoire sur la conquête de la Syrie, p. 143 sq.
[83] Annali dell’Islām, vol. iii. p. 957.
[84] Some authorities on Muhammadan law held that this rule did not
extend to villages and hamlets, in which the construction of churches
was not to be prevented. (Hidāyah, vol. ii. p. 219.)
[85] “The ʻUlamāʼ are divided in opinion on the question of the
teaching of the Qurʼān: the sect of Mālik forbids it: that of Abū
Ḥanīfah allows it; and Shāfiʻī has two opinions on the subject: on the
one hand, he countenances the study of it, as indicating a leaning
towards Islam; and on the other hand, he forbids it, because he fears
that the unbeliever who studies the Qurʼān being still impure may read
it solely with the object of turning it to ridicule, since he is the
enemy of God and the Prophet who wrote the book; now as these two
statements are contradictory, Shāfiʻī has no formally stated opinion on
this matter.” (Belin, p. 508.)
[86] Such as the forms of greeting, etc., that are only to be used by
Muslims to one another.
[87] Abū Yūsuf (p. 82) says that Christians were to be allowed to go in
procession once a year with crosses, but not with banners; outside the
city, not inside where the mosques were.
[88] The nāqūs, lit. an oblong piece of wood, struck with a rod.
[89] Gottheil, pp. 382–4, where references are given to the various
versions of this document.
[90] There is evidence to show that the Arab conquerors left unchanged
the fiscal system that they found prevailing in the lands they
conquered from the Byzantines, and that the explanation of jizyah as a
capitation-tax is an invention of later jurists, ignorant of the true
condition of affairs in the early days of Islam. (Caetani, vol. iv. p.
610 (§ 231); vol. v. p. 449.) H. Lammens: Ziād ibn Abīhi. (Rivista
degli Studi Orientali, vol. iv. p. 215.)
[91] Goldziher, vol. i. pp. 50–7, 427–30. Caetani, vol. v. p. 311 sqq.
[92] Caetani, vol. v. pp. 424 (§ 752), 432.
[93] Balādhurī, pp. 124–5.
[94] A. von Kremer (1), vol. i. pp. 60, 436.
[95] A dirham is about fivepence.
[96] Bell, pp. xxv, 173.
[97] Abū Yūsuf, pp. 69–71.
[98] Ṭabarī, Prima Series, p. 2055.
[99] Id. p. 2050.
[100] Abū Yūsuf, p. 81.
[101] Balādhurī, p. 159.
[102] Ṭabarī, Prima Series, p. 2665.
[103] Marsigli, vol. i. p. 86 (he calls them “Musellim”).
[104] Finlay, vol. vi. pp. 30, 33.
[105] Lazăr, p. 56.
[106] De la Jonquière, p. 14.
[107] Thomas Smith, p. 324.
[108] Dorostamus, p. 326.
[109] De la Jonquière, p. 265.
[110] Lammens, p. 13.
[111] Ibn Abī Usaybiʻah, vol. i. p. 164.
[112] Michael the Elder, vol. ii. p. 475.
[113] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 71 (l. 16). Abū Nūḥ al-Anbārī wrote a
refutation
of the Qurʼān and other theological works (Wright, p. 191 n. 3).
[114] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 84.
[115] Hilāl al-Ṣābī, p. 95.
[116] Ibn al-Athīr, vol. ix. p. 16.
[117] Von Kremer (1), vol. i. pp. 167–8. Lammens, p. 11.
[118] Renaudot, pp. 430, 540.
[119] Von Kremer (1), vol. ii. pp. 180–1.
[120] Von Kremer (1), vol. i. p. 183.
[121] Caetani, vol. iii. pp. 350 sq., 387 sqq.
[122] Gottheil, pp. 360–1. Goldziher: Zur Literatur des Ichtilâf
al-maḏâhib, ZDMG., vol. 38, pp. 673–4.
[123] On this theoretical character of much of Muslim legal literature,
see Snouck Hurgronje: Mohammedanisches Recht in Theorie und
Wirklichkeit.
[124] Gottheil, p. 363.
[125] Gottheil, pp. 358–9, however, doubts whether there is evidence
for attributing this intolerance to ʻUmar II.
[126] Journal Asiatique, IVme série, tome xviii. (1851), pp. 433, 450.
Ṭabarī, III, p. 1419.
[127] Michael the Elder, vol. ii. p. 476. Renaudot, p. 189.
[128] Eutychius, II, p. 41 init. Severus (p. 139) says “two churches.”
[129] Von Kremer (1), vol. ii. p. 175.
[130] Michael the Elder, vol. ii. pp. 490, 491.
[131] Ibn Khallikān, vol. i. p. 485.
[132] Elias of Nisibis, p. 128.
[133] A. J. Butler: The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, vol. i. p.
181. (Oxford, 1884.)
[134] Yāqūt, vol. ii. p. 662.
[135] Yāqūt, vol. ii. p. 670.
[136] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 73.
[137] Ishok of Romgla, p. 266.
[138] Eutychius, II, p. 58.
[139] Von Kremer (1), vol. ii. pp. 175–6.
[140] Butler: Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, vol. i. p. 76.
[141] Renaudot, p. 399.
[142] Ishok of Romgla, p. 333.
[143] Abū Ṣāliḥ, p. 92.
[144] A Dominican monk from Florence, by name Ricoldus de Monte Crucis,
who visited the East about the close of the thirteenth and the
beginning of the fourteenth century, speaks of the toleration the
Nestorians had enjoyed under Muhammadan rule right up to his time: “Et
ego inveni per antiquas historias et autenticas aput Saracenos, quod
ipsi Nestorini amici fuerunt Machometi et confederati cum eo, et quod
ipse Machometus mandauit suis posteris, quod Nestorinos maxime
conseruarent. Quod usque hodie diligenter obseruant ipsi Sarraceni.”
(Laurent, p. 128.)
[145] J. Labourt: De Timotheo I, Nestorianorum Patriarcha, p. 37 sqq.
(Paris, 1904.)
[146] E. von Dobschütz, p. 390–1.
[147] Michael the Elder, vol. ii. p. 439–40.
[148] Makīn, p. 12. J. Labourt: Le Christianisme sous la dynastie
sassanide, p. 139 sq. (Paris, 1904.)
[149] Renaudot, p. 169.
[150] Von Kremer well remarks: “Wir verdanken dem unermüdlichen
Sammelfleiss der arabischen Chronisten unsere Kenntniss der politischen
und militärischen Geschichte jener Zeiten, welche so genau ist als dies
nur immer auf eine Entfernung von zwölf Jahrhunderten der Fall sein
kann; allein gerade die innere Geschichte jener denkwürdigen Epoche,
die Geschichte des Kampfes einer neuen, rohen Religion gegen die alten
hochgebildeten, zum Theile überbildeten Culte ist kaum in ihren
allgemeinsten Umrissen bekannt.” (Von Kremer (2), pp. 1–2.)
[151] Thomas of Margā, vol. ii. p. 309 sq.
[152] Thomas of Margā, vol. ii. pp. 310, 324 sq.
[153] Cf. in addition to the passages quoted below, MʻClintoch &
Strong’s Cyclopædia, sub art. Mohammedanism, vol. vi. p. 420. James
Freeman Clarke: Ten Great Religions, Part ii. p. 75. (London, 1883.)
[154] Thus the Emperor Heraclius is represented by the Muhammadan
historian as saying, “Their religion is a new religion which gives them
new zeal.” (Ṭabarī, p. 2103.)
[155] History of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 216–17.
[156] Caetani, vol. ii. pp. 1045–6.
[157] A paper read before the Church Congress at Wolverhampton, October
7th, 1887.
[158] For the oppressive fiscal system under the Byzantine empire, see
Gfrörer: Byzantinische Geschichten, vol. ii. pp. 337–9, 389–91, 450.
[159] “Der Islam war ein Rückstoss gegen den Missbrauch, welchen
Justinian mit der Menschheit, besonders aber mit der christlichen
Religion trieb, deren oberstes geistliches und weltliches Haupt er zu
sein behauptete. Dass der Araber Mahomed, welcher 571 der christlichen
Zeitrechnung, sechs Jahre nach dem Tode Justinians, das Licht der Welt
erblickte, mit seiner Lehre unerhörtes Glück machte, verdankte er
grossentheils dem Abscheu, welchen die im Umkreise des byzantinischen
Reiches angesessenen Völker, wie die benachbarten Nationen, über die
von dem Basileus begangenen Greuel empfanden.” (Gfrörer: Byzantinische
Geschichten, vol. ii. p. 437.)
[160] Id. vol. ii. pp. 296–306, 337.
[161] Id. vol. ii. pp. 442–4.
[162] Id. vol. ii. p. 445.
[163] Masʻūdī, vol. ii. p. 387.
[164] Von Kremer (2), p. 8.
[165] Id. p. 54 and (3), p. 32. Nicholson, p. 231.
[166] Among the Muʻtazilite philosophers, Muḥammad b. al-Huzayl, the
teacher of al-Maʼmūn, is said to have converted more than three
thousand persons to Islam. (Aḥmad b. Yaḥyạ̄ b. al-Murtaḍạ̄, p. 26, l. 7.)
[167] Von Kremer (2), pp. 3, 7–8. C. H. Becker: Christliche Polemik und
islamische Dogmenbildung (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xxvi. 1912).
[168] Ibn Khallikān, vol. i. p. 45.
[169] Wüstenfeld, p. 103.
[170] Michael the Elder, vol. ii. pp. 412–13. Caetani, vol. v. p. 508.
(“Le vittorie sui Greci e sui Persiani non solamente erano il trionfo
della razza araba sulle popolazioni delle provincie conquistate, ma
nella mente orientale che vede in tutto la mano di Dio, costituivano un
trionfo del principio islamico su quello cristiano e mazdeista, ma
sovrattutto sul cristiano.”)
[171] Goldziher, vol. i. chaps. 3 and 4.
[172] The last of these was prompted by the discovery of an attempt on
the part of the Christians to burn the city of Cairo. (De Guignes, vol.
iv. pp. 204–5.) Gottheil, p. 359, Journal Asiatique, IVme série, tome
xviii. (1851), pp. 454, 455, 463, 484, 491.
[173] Assemani, tom. iii. pars. 2, p. c. Renaudot, pp. 432, 603, 607.
[174] Muir: The Caliphate, p. 475.
[175] Von Kremer (3), p. 246.
[176] Muir (1), pp. 508, 516–17.
[177] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 79 sq. Ṣalībā b. Yuḥannā, p. 71.
[178] Gottheil, p. 364 sqq.
[179] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 114 (ll. 14–16).
[180] This tradition appears in several forms, e.g. “Whoever wrongs one
with whom a compact has been made (i.e. a dhimmī) and lays on him a
burden beyond his strength, I will be his accuser.” (Balādhurī, p. 162,
fin.) (Yaḥyā b. Ādam, p. 54 (fin.), adds the words, “till the day of
judgment.”) “Whoever does violence to a dhimmī who has paid his jizyah
and evidenced his submission—his enemy am I.” (Usd al-Ghāba, quoted by
Goldziher, in the Jewish Encyclopædia, vol. vi. p. 655.) The Christian
historian al-Makīn (p. 11) gives, “Whoever torments the dhimmīs,
torments me.”
[181] Journal Asiatique, IVme série, tome xix. p. 109. (Paris, 1852.)
See also R. Gottheil: A Fetwa on the appointment of Dhimmīs to office.
(Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. xxvi. p. 203 sqq.)
[182] Belin, pp. 435–40, 442, 448, 456, 459–61, 479–80.
[183] Id. p. 435, n. 2.
[184] Id. p. 478.
[185] Mārī b. Sulaymān (p. 115, ll. 1–2) offers this explanation of the
defections that followed the persecution towards the close of the tenth
century: واسلم خلق كثير وكان اصل ذلك تجوّز الناس في اديانہم وقبح سيرة
الكہنة في المذبح والبيع ونيوت المقدس
[186] The Caliph of Egypt, al-Ḥākim (A.D. 996–1020), did in fact order
all the Jews and Christians to leave Egypt and emigrate into the
Byzantine territory, but yielded to their entreaties to revoke his
orders. (Maqrīzī (1), p. 91.) It would have been quite possible,
however, for him to have enforced its execution as it would have been
for the ferocious Salīm I (1512–1520), who with the design of putting
an end to all religious differences in his dominions caused 40,000
Shīʻahs to be massacred, to have completed this politic scheme by the
extermination of the Christians also. But in allowing himself to be
dissuaded from this design, he most certainly acted in accordance with
the general policy adopted by Muhammadan rulers towards their Christian
subjects. (Finlay, vol. v. pp. 29–30.)
[187] Silbernagl, p. 268.
[188] Id. p. 354.
[189] Id. pp. 307, 360.
[190] Id. p. 25–6.
[191] Id. p. 335.
[192] Id. p. 384.
[193] See A. von Kremer (1), vol. ii. pp. 490–2.
[194] The sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 may be taken
as a type of the treatment that the Eastern Christians met with at the
hands of the Latins. Barhebræus complains that the monastery of Harran
was sacked and plundered by Count Goscelin, Lord of Emessa, in 1184,
just as though he had been a Saracen or a Turk. (Barhebræus (1), vol.
ii. pp. 506–8.)
[195] H. H. Milman, vol. ii. p. 218.
[196] A. von Kremer (1), vol. i. p. 172.
[197] Assemani, tom. iii. Pars Prima, pp. 130–1.
[198] Ibn Saʻd, Ṭabaqāt, vol. v. p. 258.
[199] Id. p. 285.
[200] Maḥbūb al-Manbijī, p. 358 (ll. 2–3).
[201] Ibn Saʻd, Ṭabaqāt, vol. v. p. 262.
[202] August Müller, vol. i. p. 440.
[203] Migne: Patr. Gr., tom. 96, pp. 1336–48.
[204] Migne: Patr. Gr., tom. 97, pp. 1528–9, 1548–61.
[205] Id. p. 1557.
[206] ʻAmr b. Mattai, p. 65.
[207] Id. p. 72.
[208] Risālah ʻAbd Allāh b. Ismāʻīl al-Hāshimī ilạ̄ ʻAbd al-Masīḥ b.
Isḥāq al-Kindī, pp. 1–37. (London, 1885.)
[209] Appendix I. For an account of Muslim controversial literature,
see Appendix II.
[210] Kindī, pp. 111–13.
[211] Balādhurī, pp. 430.
[212] It is very probable that the occasion of this visit of
Yazdānbakht to Baghdād was the summoning of a great assembly of the
leaders of all the religious bodies of the period, by al-Maʼmūn, when
it had come to his ears that the enemies of Islam declared that it owed
its success to the sword and not to the power of argument: in this
meeting, the Muslim doctors defended their religion against this
imputation, and the unbelievers are said to have acknowledged that the
Muslims had satisfactorily proved their point. (Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b.
al-Murtaḍạ̄: Al-munyah wa’l-amal fī sharḥ kitāb al-milal wa’l-niḥal.
British Museum, Or. 3937, fol. 53 (b), ll. 9–11.)
[213] Kitāb al-Fihrist, vol. i. p. 338.
[214] Barhebræus (1), vol. iii. p. 194.
[215] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 101 (ll. 3–4).
[216] Barhebræus (1), vol. iii. p. 230.
[217] Id., (1), vol. iii. p. 248.
[218] All the Jacobite Patriarchs assumed the name of Ignatius; before
his consecration he was called Mark bar Qīqī.
[219] Barhebræus (1), vol. iii. pp. 288–90. Elias of Nisibis, pp.
153–4. He returned to the Christian faith, however, before his death,
which took place about twenty years later. Two similar cases are
recorded in the annals of the Jacobite Patriarchs of Antioch in the
sixteenth century: of these one, named Joshua, became a Muhammadan in
1517, but afterwards recanting fled to Cyprus (at that time in the
hands of the Venetians), where prostrate at the door of a church in
penitential humility he suffered all who went in or out to tread over
his body; the other, Niʻmat Allāh (flor. 1560), having abjured
Christianity for Islam, sought absolution of Pope Gregory XIII in Rome.
(Barhebræus (1), vol. ii. pp. 847–8.)
[220] In fact Elias of Nisibis, the contemporary chronicler of the
conversion of the Jacobite Patriarch, makes no mention of such a
failing, nor does Mārī b. Sulaymān (pp. 115–16), the historian of the
rival Nestorian Church, though he accuses him of plundering the sacred
vessels and ornaments of the churches. As Wright (Syriac Literature, p.
192) says of Joseph of Merv, “We need not believe all the evil that
Barhebræus tells us of this unhappy man.”
[221] Barhebræus (1), vol. ii. p. 518.
[222] Id. vol. ii. p. 712 sq.
[223] Historia Orientalis, C. 15 (p. 45).
[224] De Guignes, tome ii. (Seconde Partie), p. 15.
[225] Odo de Diogilo. (De Ludovici vii. Itinere. Migne, Patr. Lat.,
tom. cxcv. p. 1243.) “Vitantes igitur sibi crudeles socios fidei, inter
infideles sibi compatientes ibant securi, et sicut audivimus plusquam
tria millia iuvenum sunt illis recedentibus sociati. O pietas omni
proditione crudelior! Dantes panem fidem tollebant, quamvis certum sit
quia, contenti servitio, neminem negare cogebant.”
[226] Guizot: Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, p. 234. (Paris,
1882.)
[227] Usāma b. Munqidh, p. 99.
[228] Prutz, pp. 266–7.
[229] Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois. (Recueil des historiens des
Croisades, Assises de Jérusalem, tome ii. p. 325.)
[230] Bahā al-Dīn, p. 25.
[231] Roger Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 307.
[232] Benedict of Peterborough, vol. ii. pp. 11–12.
[233] Id., vol. ii. pp. 20–1. Roger Hoveden, vol. ii. pp. 316, 322.
[234] Abū Shāmah, p. 150.
[235] Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Richardi, p. 131.
(Chronicles and Memorials of the reign of Richard I. Edited by William
Stubbs.) (London, 1864.)
[236] Joinville, p. 238.
[237] Id. p. 262.
[238] Mas Latrie (1), vol. ii. p. 72.
[239] Ludolf de Suchem, p. 71.
[240] Lionardo Frescobaldi, quoted in the preface of Defrémery and
Sanguinetti’s edition of Ibn Baṭūṭah, vol. i. p. xl.
[241] Christophori Füreri ab Haimendorf Itinerarium Ægypti, p. 42.
(Norimbergæ, 1620.)
[242] Le Voyage en Ethiopie entrepris par le Père Aymard Guérin.
(Rabbath, pp. 17–18.)
[243] “Notandum autem in rei veritate, licet quidam contrarium
senciant, qui ea volunt asserere, que non viderunt, quod oriens totus
ultra mare Yndiam et Ethiopiam nomen Christi confitetur et predicat,
preter solos Sarracenos et quosdam Turcomannos, qui in Cappadocia sedem
habent, ita quod pro certo assero, sicut per memet ipsum vidi et ab
aliis, quibus notum erat, audivi, quod semper in omni loco et regno
preterquam in Egypto et Arabia, ubi plurimum habitant Sarraceni et alii
Machometum sequentes, pro uno Sarraceno triginta vel amplius invenies
Christianos. Verum tamen, quod Christiani omnes transmarini natione
sunt orientales, qui licet sint Christiani, quia tamen usum armorum non
habent multum, cum impugnantur a Sarracenis, Tartaris, vel aliis
quibuscumque, subiciuntur eis et tributis pacem et quietem emunt, et
Sarraceni sive alii, qui eis dominantur, balivos suos et exactores in
terris illis ponunt. Et inde contigit, quod regnum illud dicitur esse
Sarracenorum, cum tamen in rei veritate sunt omnes Christiani preter
ipsos balivos et exactores et aliquos de familia ipsorum, sicut oculis
meis vidi in Cilicia et Armenia minori, que est subdita dominio
Tartarorum.” (Burchardi de Monte Sion, Descriptio Terræ Sanctæ, p. 90.)
[244] Recueil des historiens des Croisades. (Assises de Jérusalem, tome
i. p. 325.)
[245] Prutz, pp. 146–7, 150.
[246] The prelates of the Holy Land wrote as follows, in 1244,
concerning the invasion of the Khwarizmians, whom Sultan Ayyūb had
called in to assist him in driving out the Crusaders:—“Per totam terram
usque ad partes Nazareth et Saphet libere nullo resistente discurrunt,
occupantes eandem, et inter se quasi propriam dividentes, per villas et
cazalia Christianorum legatos et bajulos præficiunt, suscipientes a
rusticis redditus et tributa, quæ Christianis præstare solebant, qui
jam Christianis hostes effecti et rebelles dictis Corosminis
universaliter adhæserunt.” (Matthei Parisiensis Chronica Majora, ed. H.
R. Luard, vol. iv. p. 343.) (London, 1872–83.)
[247] Finlay, vol. iii. pp. 358–9. J. H. Krause: Die Byzantiner des
Mittelalters, p. 276. (Halle, 1869.)
[248] Tavernier (1), p. 174.
[249] Joselian, p. 125. All the Abkhazes, Djikhethes, Ossetes, Kabardes
and Kisthethes fell away from the Christian faith about this time.
[250] Id. p. 127.
[251] Id. p. 143.
[252] David Chytræus, p. 49.
[253] Joselian, p. 157.
[254] Brosset, IIe partie, Ire livraison, pp. 227–35. Description
géographique de la Géorgie par le Tsarévitch Wakhoucht, p. 79. (St.
Petersburg, 1842.)
[255] The Six Voyages, p. 123.
[256] Joselian, p. 149.
[257] Id. pp. 160–1.
[258] Tavernier (1), pp. 124, 126. He estimates the number of
Muhammadans at about twelve thousand. (Id. p. 123.)
[259] Brosset, IIe partie, Ire livraison, pp. 85, 181.
[260] Documens originaux sur les relations diplomatiques de la Géorgie
avec la France vers la fin du règne de Louis XIV, recueillis par M.
Brosset jeune. (J. A. 2me série, tome ix. (1832), pp. 197, 451.)
[261] Mackenzie, p. 7. Garnett, p. 194.
[262] Barbier de Meynard, p. 45 sqq.
[263] R. du M. M., VII, p. 320 (1909).
[264] Amélineau, p. 3; Caetani, vol. iv. p. 81 sq. Justinian is said to
have had 200,000 Copts put to death in the city of Alexandria, and the
persecutions of his successors drove many to take refuge in the desert.
(Wansleben: The Present State of Egypt, p. 11.) (London, 1678.)
[265] Renaudot, p. 161. Severus, p. 106.
[266] John, Jacobite bishop of Nikiu (second half of seventh century),
p. 584. Caetani, vol. iv. pp. 515–16.
[267] Bell, p. xxxvii. But the exactions and hardships that, according
to Maqrīzī, the Copts had to endure about seventy years after the
conquest hardly allow us to extend this period so far as Von Ranke
does: “Von Aegypten weiss man durch die bestimmtesten Zeugnisse, dass
sich die Einwohner in den nächsten Jahrhunderten unter der arabischen
Herrschaft in einem erträglichen Zustand befunden haben.”
(Weltgeschichte, vol. v. p. 153, 4th ed.)
[268] John of Nikiu, p. 560.
[269] Id. p. 585. “Or beaucoup des Égyptiens, qui étaient de faux
chrétiens, renièrent la sainte religion orthodoxe et le baptême qui
donne la vie, embrassèrent la religion des Musulmans, les ennemis de
Dieu, et acceptèrent la détestable doctrine de ce monstre, c’est-à-dire
de Mahomet; ils partagèrent l’égarement de ces idolâtres et prirent les
armes contre les chrétiens.”
[270] Qurra b. Sharīk (governor of Egypt from 709 to 714), or his
predecessor, appears to have insisted on the converts continuing to pay
jizyah. (Becker, Papyri Schott-Reinhardt, p. 18.)
[271] Ibn Saʻd, Ṭabaqāt, vol. v. p. 283.
[272] Caetani, vol. iv. p. 618; vol. v. pp. 384–5.
[273] Severus, pp. 172–3.
[274] Id. pp. 205–6.
[275] “Sans aucun doute il y eut dans la multiplicité des martyrs une
sorte de résistance nationale contre les gouverneurs étrangers.”
(Amélineau, p. 58.)
[276] Amélineau, pp. 57–8.
[277] Abū Ṣāliḥ, pp. 163–4.
[278] Amélineau, pp. 53–4, 69–70.
[279] Abū Ṣāliḥ gives an account of some monks who embraced the faith
of the Prophet, and these are probably representative of a larger
number of whom the historian has left no record, as lacking the
peculiar circumstances of loss to the monastery or of recantation that
made such instances of interest to him (pp. 128, 142).
[280] Lane, pp. 546, 549.
[281] Lüttke (1), vol. i. pp. 30, 35. Dr. Andrew Watson writes: “No
year has passed during my residence of forty-four years in the Nile
valley without my hearing of several instances of defection. The causes
are, chiefly, the hope of worldly gain of various kinds, severe and
continued persecution, exposure to the cruelty and rapacity of Moslem
neighbours, and personal indignities as well as political disabilities
of various kinds.” (Islam in Egypt: Mohammedan World, p. 24.)
[282] Severus, pp. 122, 126, 143. One of the very first occasions on
which they had to complain of excessive taxation was when Menas, the
Christian prefect of Lower Egypt, extorted from the city of Alexandria
32,057 pieces of gold, instead of 22,000 which ʻAmr had fixed as the
amount to be levied. (John of Nikiu, p. 585.) Renaudot (p. 168) says
that after the restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy, about seventy
years after the Muhammadan conquest, the Copts suffered as much at its
hands as at the hands of the Muhammadans themselves.
[283] Maqrīzī mentions five other risings of the Copts that had to be
crushed by force of arms, within the first century of the Arab
domination. (Maqrīzī (2), pp. 76–82.)
[284] Renaudot, pp. 189, 374, 430, 540.
[285] Id. p. 603.
[286] Id. pp. 432, 607. Nāṣir-i-Khusrau: Safar-nāmah, ed. Schefer, pp.
155–6.
[287] Renaudot, pp. 212, 225, 314, 374, 540.
[288] Renaudot, p. 388.
[289] Id. pp 567, 571, 574–5.
[290] Wansleben, p. 30. Wansleben mentions another instance (under
different circumstances) of the decay of the Coptic Church, in the
island of Cyprus, which was formerly under the jurisdiction of the
Coptic Patriarch: here they were so persecuted by the Orthodox clergy,
who enjoyed the protection of the Byzantine emperors, that the
Patriarch could not induce priests to go there, and consequently all
the Copts on the island either accepted Islam or the Council of
Chalcedon, and their churches were all shut up. (Id. p. 31.)
[291] Renaudot, p. 377.
[292] Renaudot, p. 575.
[293] Relation du voyage du Sayd ou de la Thebayde fait en 1668, par
les PP. Protais et Charles-François d’Orleans, Capuchins Missionaires,
p. 3. (Thevenot, vol. ii.)
[294] Caetani, vol. iv. p. 520.
[295] Ishok of Romgla, pp. 272–3.
[296] Idrīsī, p. 32.
[297] Maqrīzī (2), tome i. 2me partie, p. 131.
[298] Maqrīzī, pp. 128–30.
[299] Burckhardt (1), p. 494.
[300] About twelve miles above the modern Khartum.
[301] Artin, pp. 62, 144.
[302] Becker, Geschichte des östlichen Sūdān, p. 160.
[303] Vol. iv. p. 396.
[304] Slatin Pasha records a tradition current among the Danagla Arabs
that this town was founded by their ancestor, Dangal, who called it
after his own name. (This however is impossible, inasmuch as Dongola
was in existence in ancient Egyptian times, and is mentioned on the
monuments. See Vivien de Saint-Martin, vol. ii. p. 85.) According to
their tradition, this Dangal, though a slave, rose to be ruler of
Nubia, but paid tribute to Bahnesa, the Coptic bishop of the entire
district lying between the present Sarras and Debba. (Fire and Sword in
the Sudan, p. 13.) (London, 1896.)
[305] Ibn Salīm al-Aswānī, quoted by Maqrīzī: Kitāb al-Khiṭaṭ, vol. i.
p. 190. (Cairo, A.H. 1270.)
[306] Budge, vol. ii. p. 199. Artin, p. 144.
[307] Maqrīzī: Kitāb al-Khiṭaṭ, vol. i. p. 193.
[308] Morié, vol. i. pp. 417–18.
[309] Lord Stanley of Alderley in his translation of Alvarez’ Narrative
from the original Portuguese, gives the answer of the king as follows:
“He said to them that he had his Abima from the country of the Moors,
that is to say from the Patriarch of Alexandria; ... how then could he
give priests and friars since another gave them” (p. 352). (London,
1881.)
[310] Viaggio nella Ethiopia al Prete Ianni fatto par Don Francesco
Alvarez Portughese (1520–1527). (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 200, 250.)
[311] Wansleben, p. 30. For descriptions of the ruins that still
remain, see Budge, vol. ii. p. 299 sqq., and G. S. Nileham, Churches in
Lower Nubia. (Philadelphia, 1910.)
[312] Burckhardt (1), p. 133.
[313] Alvarez, p. 250.
[314] Idrīsī, p. 32.
[315] ʻArabfaqīh, p. 323.
[316] Maqrīzī (2), tome ii. 2me partie, p. 183.
[317] Basset, p. 240.
[318] Id., p. 247.
[319] Alvarez. (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 218, 242, 249.)
[320] ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 83, 191.
[321] ʻArabfaqīh, p. 275–6.
[322] Id. pp. 319, 324.
[323] Id. pp. 28, 129, 275.
[324] Plowden, p. 36.
[325] ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 321, 335, 343.
[326] Id. passim.
[327] Id. pp. 175, 195, 248.
[328] Id. p. 178.
[329] ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 34–5, 120–1, 182–3, 244, 327.
[330] ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 181–2, 186.
[331] Iobi Ludolfi ad suam Historiam Æthiopicam Commentarius, p. 474.
(Frankfurt a. M., 1691.)
[332] Histoire de la Haute Ethiopie, par le R. P. Manoel d’Almeïda, p.
7. (Thevenot, vol. ii.)
[333] Massaja, vol. ii. pp. 205–6. “Ognuno comprende che movente di
queste conversioni essendo la sete di regnare, nel fatto non si
riducevano che ad una formalità esterna, restando poi i nuovi
convertiti veri mussulmani nei cuori e nei costumi. E perciò accadeva
che, elevati alla dignità di Râs, si circondavano di mussulmani, dando
ad essi la maggior parte degli impieghi e colmandoli di titoli,
ricchezze e favori: e così l’Abissinia cristiana invasa e popolata da
questa pessima razza, passò coll’andar del tempo sotto il giogo
dell’islamismo.” (Id. p. 206.)
[334] Rüppell, vol. i. pp. 328, 366.
[335] Plowden, p. 15.
[336] Tābōt, the ark of the covenant.
[337] Littmann, pp. 69–70.
[338] Plowden, pp. 8–9.
[339] Beke, pp. 51–2. Isenberg, p. 36.
[340] Reclus, vol. x. p. 247. Massaja, vol. xi. p. 125.
[341] Massaja, vol. xi. p. 124.
[342] Massaja, vol. xi. pp. 77–8.
[343] Id. pp. 124, 125.
[344] Oppel, p. 307. Reclus, tome x. p. 247.
[345] Massaja, vol. xi. pp. 79, 81.
[346] Morié, vol. ii. p. 449.
[347] Littmann, pp. 68–70. K. Cederquist: Islam and Christianity in
Abyssinia, p. 154 (The Moslem World, vol. ii.).
[348] Gibbon, vol. i. p. 161.
[349] Id. vol. ii. p. 212.
[350] C. O. Castiglioni: Recherches sur les Berbères atlantiques, pp.
96–7. (Milan, 1826.)
[351] Synesii Catastasis. (Migne: Patr. Gr., tom. lxvi. p. 1569.)
[352] Neander (2), p. 320.
[353] Gibbon, vol. iv. pp. 331–3.
[354] Id. vol. v. p. 115.
[355] Tijānī, p. 201. Gibbon, vol. v. p. 122.
[356] Gibbon, vol. v. p. 214.
[357] Neander (1), vol. v. pp. 254–5. J. E. T. Wiltsch: Hand-book of
the geography and statistics of the Church, vol. i. pp. 433–4. (London,
1859.) J. Bournichon: L’Invasion musulmane en Afrique, pp. 32–3.
(Tours, 1890.)
[358] Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 70, D.)
[359] “Deusen, una città antichissima edificata da Romani dove confina
il regno di Buggia col diserto di Numidia.” (Id. p. 75, F.)
[360] Pavy, vol. i. p. iv.
[361] “Tous ceux qui ne se convertirent pas à l’islamisme, ou qui
(conservant leur foi) ne voulurent pas s’obliger à payer la capitation,
durent prendre la fuite devant les armées musulmanes.” (Tijānī, p.
201.)
[362] Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 7.)
[363] “Afros passim ad ecclesiasticos ordines (procedentes)
prætendentes nulla ratione suscipiat (Bonifacius), quia aliqui eorum
Manichæi, aliqui rebaptizati sæpius sunt probati.” Epist. iv. (Migne:
Patr. Lat., tom. lxxxix, p. 502.)
[364] Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, pp. 65, 66, 68, 69, 76.)
[365] Qayrwān or Cairoan, founded A.H. 50; Fez, founded A.H. 185;
al-Mahdiyyah, founded A.H. 303; Masīlah, founded A.H. 315; Marocco,
founded A.H. 424. (Abū’l-Fidā, tome ii. pp. 198, 186, 200, 191, 187.)
[366] Ibn Abī Zarʻ, p. 16.
[367] A doubtful case of forced conversion is attributed to ʻAbd
al-Muʼmin, who conquered Tunis in 1159. See De Mas Latrie (2), pp.
77–8. “Deux auteurs arabes, Ibn-al-Athir, contemporain, mais vivant à
Damas au milieu de l’exaltation religieuse que provoquaient les
victoires de Saladin, l’autre El-Tidjani, visitant l’Afrique orientale
au quatorzième siècle, ont écrit que le sultan, maître de Tunis, força
les chrétiens et les juifs établis dans cette ville à embrasser
l’islamisme, et que les réfractaires furent impitoyablement massacrés.
Nous doutons de la réalité de toutes ces mesures. Si l’arrêt fatal fut
prononcé dans l’emportement du triomphe et pour satisfaire quelques
exigences momentanées, il dut être éludé ou révoqué, tant il était
contraire au principe de la liberté religieuse respecté jusque-là par
tous les princes maugrebins. Ce qu’il y a de certain, c’est que les
chrétiens et les juifs ne tardèrent pas à reparaître à Tunis et qu’on
voit les chrétiens avant la fin du règne d’Abd-el-Moumen établis à
Tunis et y jouissant comme par le passé de la liberté, de leurs
établissements, de leur commerce et de leur religion.... ‘Accompagné
ainsi par Dieu même dans sa marche, dit un ancien auteur maugrebin, il
traversa victorieusement les terres du Zab et de l’Ifrikiah, conquérant
le pays et les villes, accordant l’aman à ceux qui le demandaient et
tuant les récalcitrants.’ Ces derniers mots confirment notre sentiment
sur sa politique à l’égard des chrétiens qui acceptèrent l’arrêt fatal
de la destinée.”
[368] De Mas Latrie (2), pp. 27–8.
[369] S. Leonis IX. Papæ Epist. lxxxiii. (Migne: Patr. Lat., tom.
cxliii. p. 728.) This letter deals with a quarrel for precedence
between the bishops of Gummi and Carthage, and it is quite possible
that the disordered condition of Africa at the time may have kept the
African bishops ignorant of the condition of other sees besides their
own and those immediately adjacent, and that accordingly the
information supplied to the Pope represented the number of the bishops
as being smaller than it really was.
[370] A. Müller, vol. ii. pp. 628–9.
[371] S. Gregorii VII. Epistola xix. (Liber tertius). (Migne: Patr.
Lat., tom. cxlviii. p. 449.)
[372] De Mas Latrie, p. 226. A number of Spanish Christians, whose
ancestors had been deported to Morocco in 1122, were to be found there
as late as 1386, when they were allowed to return to Seville through
the good offices of the then sultan of Morocco. (Whishaw, pp. 31–4.)
[373] C. Trumelet: Les Saints de l’Islam, p. xxxiii. (Paris, 1881.)
[374] Compare the articles published by a Junta held at Madrid in 1566,
for the reformation of the Moriscoes; one of which runs as follows:
“That neither themselves, their women, nor any other persons should be
permitted to wash or bathe themselves either at home or elsewhere; and
that all their bathing houses should be pulled down and demolished.”
(J. Morgan, vol. ii. p. 256.)
[375] C. Trumelet: Les Saints de l’Islam, pp. xxvi–xxxvii.
[376] Leo Africanus says that at the end of the fifteenth century all
the mountaineers of Algeria and of Buggia, though Muhammadans, painted
black crosses on their cheeks and palms of the hand (Ramusio, i. p.
61); similarly the Banū Mzab to the present day still keep up some
religious observances corresponding to excommunication and confession
(Oppel, p. 299), and some nomad tribes of the Sahara observe the
practice of a kind of baptism and use the cross as a decoration for
their stuffs and weapons. (De Mas Latrie (2), p. 8.)
[377] Tijānī, p. 203.
[378] The modern Touzer, in Tunis.
[379] Taʼrīkh al-duwal al-islāmiyyah biʼl maghrib, I. p. 146. (ed. De
Slane. Alger, 1847.)
[380] Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 67.)
[381] Pavy, vol. i. p. vii.
[382] De Mas Latrie (2), pp. 61–2, 266–7. L. del Marmol-Caravajal: De
l’Afrique, tome ii. p. 54. (Paris, 1667.)
[383] De Mas Latrie (2), p. 192.
[384] e.g. Innocent III, Gregory VII, Gregory IX and Innocent IV.
[385] De Mas Latrie (2), p. 273.
[386] Baudissin, p. 22.
[387] Helfferich, p. 68.
[388] Makkarī, vol. i. pp. 280–2.
[389] Baudissin, p. 7.
[390] Dozy (2), tome ii. pp. 45–6.
[391] A. Müller, vol. ii. p. 463.
[392] Dozy (2), tome ii. pp. 44–6.
[393] So St. Boniface (A.D. 745, Epist. lxii.). “Sicut aliis gentibus
Hispaniæ et Provinciæ et Burgundionum populis contigit, quæ sic a Deo
recedentes fornicatæ sunt, donec index omnipotens talium criminum
ultrices pœnas per ignorantiam legis Dei et per Saracenos venire et
sævire permisit.” (Migne: Patr. Lat., tom. lxxxix. p. 761.) Eulogius:
lib. i. § 30. “In cuius (i.e. gentis Saracenicæ) ditione nostro
compellente facinore sceptrum Hispaniæ translatum est.” (Migne: Patr.
Lat., tom. cxv. p. 761.) Similarly Alvar (2), § 18. “Et probare nostro
vitio inlatum intentabo flagellum. Nostra hæc, fratres, nostra desidia
peperit mala, nostra impuritas, nostra levitas, nostra morum obscœnitas
... unde tradidit nos Dominus qui institiam diligit, et cuius vultus
æquitatem decernit, ipsi bestiæ conrodendos” (pp. 531–2).
[394] Dozy (3), tome i. pp. 15–20. Whishaw, pp. 38, 44.
[395] Samson, pp. 377–8, 381.
[396] Dozy (2), tome ii. p. 210.
[397] Bishop Egila, who was sent to Southern Spain by Pope Hadrian I,
towards the end of the eighth century, on a mission to counteract the
growing influence of Muslim thought, denounces the Spanish priests who
lived in concubinage with married women. (Helfferich, p. 83.)
[398] Alvari Cordubensis, Epist. xix. “Ob meritum æternæ retributionis
devovi me sedulum in lege Domini consistere.” (Migne: Patr. Lat., tom.
cxxi. p. 512.)
[399] Helfferich, pp. 79–80.
[400] “Bedenkt man nun, wie wichtig gerade die alttestamentliche Idee
des Prophetenthums in der Christologie des germanischen Arianismus
nachklang und auch nach der Annahme des katholischen Dogmas in dem
religiösen Bewusstsein der Westgothen haften blieb, so wird man es sehr
erklärlich finden, dass unmittelbar nach dem Einfall der Araber die
verwandten Vorstellungen des Mohammedanismus unter den geknechteten
Christen auftauchten.” (Helfferich, p. 82.)
[401] Lucæ Diaconi Tudensis Chronicon Mundi. (Andreas Schottus:
Hispaniæ Illustratæ, tom. iv. p. 53.) (Francofurti, 1603–8.)
[402] Dozy (2), tome ii. p. 41. Whishaw, p. 17.
[403] Dozy (2), tome ii. p. 39.
[404] Baudissin, pp. 11–13, 196.
[405] Eulogius: Mem. Sanct., lib. i. § 30, “inter ipsos sine molestia
fidei degimus” (p. 761). Id., ib., lib. i. § 18, “Quos nulla
præsidialis violentia fidem suam negare compulit, nec a cultu sanctæ
piæque religionis amovit” (p. 751). John of Gorz (who visited Spain
about the middle of the tenth century) § 124, “(Christiani), qui in
regno eius libere divinis suisque rebus utebantur.”
A Spanish bishop thus described the condition of the Christians to John
of Gorz. “Peccatis ad hæc devoluti sumus, ut paganorum subiaceamus
ditioni. Resistere potestati verbo prohibemur apostoli. Tantum hoc unum
relictum est solatii, quod in tantæ calamitatis malo legibus nos
propriis uti non prohibent; qui quos diligentes Christianitatis
viderint observatores, colunt et amplectuntur, simul ipsorum convictu
delectantur. Pro tempore igitur hoc videmur tenere consilii, ut quia
religionis nulla infertur iactura, cetera eis obsequamur, iussisque
eorum in quantum fidem non impediunt obtemperemus” § 122 (p. 302).
[406] Baudissin, pp. 16–17.
[407] Eulogius, ob. 859 (Mem. Sanct. lib. iii. c. 3) speaks of churches
recently erected (ecclesias nuper structas). The chronicle falsely
ascribed to Luitprand records the erection of a church at Cordova in
895 (p. 1113).
[408] Eulogius: Mem. Sanct., lib. iii. c. 11 (p. 812).
[409] Baudissin, p. 16.
[410] Id. p. 21, and John of Gorz, § 128 (p. 306).
[411] Whishaw, pp. 272, 301.
[412] Dozy (2), tome ii. p. 42.
[413] Baudissin, pp. 96–7.
[414] See the letter of Pope Hadrian I to the Spanish bishops: “Porro
diversa capitula quæ ex illis audivimus partibus, id est, quod multi
dicentes se catholicos esse, communem vitam gerentes cum Iudæis et non
baptizatis paganis, tam in escis quamque in potu et in diversis
erroribus nihil pollui se inquiunt: et illud quod inhibitum est, ut
nulli liceat iugum ducere cum infidelibus, ipsi enim filias suas cum
alio benedicent, et sic populo gentili tradentur.” (Migne: Patr. Lat.,
tome xcviii. p. 385.)
[415] Isidori Pacensis Chronicon, § 42 (p. 1266).
[416] Alvar: Indic. Lum., § 35 (p. 53). John of Gorz, § 123 (p. 303).
[417] Letter of Hadrian I, p. 385. John of Gorz, § 123 (p. 303).
[418] Some Arabic verses of a Christian poet of the eleventh century
are still extant, which exhibit considerable skill in handling the
language and metre. (Von Schack, II. 95.)
[419] Abbot Samson gives us specimens of the bad Latin written by some
of the ecclesiastics of his time, e.g. “Cum contempti essemus
simplicitas christiana,” but his correction is hardly much better,
“contenti essemus simplicitati christianæ” (pp. 404, 406).
[420] Alvar: Indic. Lum., § 35 (pp. 554–6).
[421] Von Schack, vol. ii. p. 96.
[422] Orderic Vitalis, p. 928.
[423] Alvar: Ind. Lum., § 29. “Compositionem verborum, et preces omnium
eius membrorum quotidie pro eo eleganti facundia, et venusto confectas
eloquio, nos hodie per eorum volumina et oculis legimus et plerumque
miramur.” (Migne: Patr. Lat., tome cxxi. p. 546.)
[424] Enhueber, § 26, p. 353.
[425] Helfferich, p. 88.
[426] “Postmodum transgressus legem Dei, fugiens ad paganos
consentaneos, periuratus effectus est.” Frobenii dissertatio de hæresi
Elipandi et Felicis, § xxiv. (Migne: Patr. Lat., tome ci. p. 313.)
[427] Pseudo-Luitprandi Chronicon, § 341 (p. 1115). “Basilius Toletanum
concilium contrahit; quo providetur, ne Christiani detrimentum
acciperent convictu Saracenorum.”
[428] There is little record of such, but they seem referred to in the
following sentences of Eulogius (Liber Apologeticus Martyrum, § 20), on
Muḥammad: “Cuius quidem erroris insaniam, prædicationis deliramenta, et
impiæ novitatis præcepta quisquis catholicorum cognoscere cupit,
evidentius ab eiusdem sectæ cultoribus perscrutando advertet. Quoniam
sacrum se quidpiam tenere et credere autumantes, non modo privatis, sed
apertis vocibus vatis sui dogmata prædicant.” (Migne: Patr. Lat., tome
cxv. p. 862.)
[429] Dozy (2), tome ii. p. 53.
[430] Lea, The Moriscos, pp. 17, 18.
[431] Samson, p. 379.
[432] Eulogius: Mem. Sanct. Pref., § 2. (Migne, tom. cxv. p. 737.)
[433] Id. c. xiii. (p. 794.)
[434] The number of the martyrs is said not to have exceeded forty. (W.
H. Prescott: History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. i. p.
342, n.) (London, 1846.)
[435] Dozy (2), tome ii. pp. 161–2.
[436] Eulogius: Mem. Sanct. I, iii. c. vii. (p. 805). “Pro eo quod
nullus sapiens, nemo urbanus, nullusque procerum Christianorum huiusce
modi rem perpetrasset, idcirco non debere universos perimere
asserebant, quos non præit personalis dux ad prælium.”
[437] Alvar: Ind. Lum., § 14. “Nonne ipsi qui videbantur columnæ, qui
putabantur Ecclesiæ petræ, qui credebantur electi, nullo cogente,
nemine provocante, iudicem adierunt, et in præsentia Cynicorum, imo
Epicureorum, Dei martyres infamaverunt? Nonne pastores Christi,
doctores Ecclesiæ, episcopi, abbates, presbyteri, proceres et magnati,
hæreticos eos esse publice clamaverunt? et publica professione sine
desquisitione, absque interrogatione, quæ nec imminente mortis
sententia erant dicenda, spontanea voluntate, et libero mentis
arbitrio, protulerunt?” (Migne: tom. cxxi. p. 529.)
[438] Alvar: Indic. Lum., § 15. “Quid obtendendum est de illis quos
ecclesiastice interdiximus, et a quibus ne aliquando ad martyrii
surgerent palmam iuramentum extorsimus? quibus errores gentilium
infringere vetuimus, et maledictum ne maledictionibus impeterent?
Evangelio et cruce educta vi iurare improbiter fecimus, imo feraliter
et belluino terrore coegimus, minantes inaudita supplicia, et
monstruosa promittentes truncationum membrorum varia et horrenda dictu
audituve flagella?” (Migne: tom. cxxi. p. 530.)
[439] Baudissin, p. 199.
[440] Morgan, vol. ii. pp. 297–8, 345.
[441] Id. p. 310.
[442] Lea, The Moriscos, p. 259.
[443] Morgan, vol. ii. p. 337.
[444] Id. p. 289.
[445] Stirling-Maxwell, vol. i. p. 115.
[446] This is no place to give a history of these territorial
acquisitions, which may be briefly summed up thus. In 1353 the Ottoman
Turks first passed over into Europe and a few years later Adrianople
was made their European capital. Under Bāyazīd (1389–1402), their
dominions stretched from the Ægæan to the Danube, embracing all
Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly and Thrace, with the exception of
Chalkidike and the district just round Constantinople. Murād II
(1421–1451) occupied Chalkidike and pushed his conquests to the
Adriatic. Muḥammad II (1451–1481) by the overthrow of Constantinople,
Albania, Bosnia and Servia, became master of the whole South-Eastern
peninsula, with the exception of the parts of the coast held by Venice
and Montenegro. Sulaymān II (1520–1566) added Hungary and made the
Ægæan an Ottoman sea. In the seventeenth century Crete was won and
Podolia ceded by Poland.
[447] Phrantzes, pp. 305–6.
[448] Finlay, vol. iii. p. 522. Pitzipios, seconde partie, p. 75. M.
d’Ohsson, vol. iii. p. 52–4. Arminjon, vol. i. p. 16.
[449] A traveller who visited Cyprus in 1508 draws the following
picture of the tyranny of the Venetians in their foreign possessions:
“All the inhabitants of Cyprus are slaves to the Venetians, being
obliged to pay to the state a third part of all their increase or
income, whether the product of their ground or corn, wine, oil, or of
their cattle, or any other thing. Besides, every man of them is bound
to work for the state two days of the week wherever they shall please
to appoint him: and if any shall fail, by reason of some other business
of their own, or for indisposition of body, then they are made to pay a
fine for as many days as they are absent from their work: and which is
more, there is yearly some tax or other imposed on them, with which the
poor common people are so flead and pillaged that they hardly have
wherewithal to keep soul and body together.” (The Travels of Martin
Baumgarten, p. 373.) See also the passages quoted by Hackett, History
of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, p. 183.
[450] Finlay, vol. iii. p. 502.
[451] Urquhart, quoted by Clark: Races of European Turkey, p. 82.
[452] Karamsin, vol. v. p. 437.
[453] Martin Crusius writes in the same spirit: “Et mirum est, inter
barbaros, in tanta tantæ urbis colluvie, nullas cædes audiri, vim
iniustam non ferri, ius cuivis dici. Ideo Constantinopolin Sultanus,
Refugium totius orbis scribit: quod omnes miseri, ibi tutissime latent:
quodque omnibus (tam infimis quam summis: tam Christianis quam
infidelibus) iustitia administretur.” (Turcogræcia, p. 487.) (Basileæ,
1584.)
[454] Phrantzes, p. 81.
[455] Phrantzes, p. 92.
[456] Finlay, vol. v. pp. 5, 123. Adeney, p. 311. Gerlach, writing in
the year 1577, says: “Wo Christen oder Juden in den Orten wohnen, da es
Kadi oder Richter und Subbassi oder Vögte hat, dass die gemeinen
Türcken nicht ihres Gefallens mit ihnen umbgehen dörffen, sind sie viel
lieber unter den Türcken, dann unter den Christen. Wann sie Jährlich
ihren Tribut geben, sind sie hernach frey. Aber in der Christenheit ist
das gantze Jahr des Gebens kein Ende.” (Tage-Buch, p. 413.)
[457] Hertzberg, pp. 467, 646, 650.
[458] Finlay, vol. v. pp. 156–7.
[459] This interval was, however, not a fixed one; at first, the levy
took place every seven or five years, but later at more frequent
intervals according to the exigencies of the state. (Menzel, p. 52.)
Metrophanes Kritopoulos, writing in 1625, states that the collectors
came to the cities every seventh year and that each city had to
contribute three or four, or at least two boys (p. 205).
[460] Qurʼān, viii. 42.
[461] Id. x. 99. 100.
[462] “On ne forçait cependant pas les jeunes Chrétiens à changer de
foi. Les principes du gouvernement s’y opposaient aussi bien que les
préceptes du Cour’ann; et si des officiers, mus par leur fanatisme,
usaient quelquefois de contrainte, leur conduite à cet égard pouvait
bien être tolérée; mais elle n’était jamais autorisée par les chefs.”
(M. d’Ohsson, tome iii. pp. 397–8.)
[463] Hertzberg, p. 472.
[464] “Sed hoc tristissimum est, quod, ut olim Christiani imperatores,
ex singulis oppidis, certum numerum liberorum, in quibus egregia
indoles præ cæteris elucebat, delegerunt: quos ad publica officia
militiæ togatæ et bellicæ in Aula educari curarunt: ita Turci, occupato
Græcorum imperio, idem ius eripiendi patribus familias liberos ingeniis
eximiis præditos, usurpant.” (David Chytræus, pp. 12–14.)
[465] Creasy, p. 99. M. d’Ohsson, tome iii. p. 397. Menzel, p. 53.
Thomas Smith, speaking of such parents, says: “Others, to the great
shame and dishonour of the Religion, Christians only in name, part with
them freely and readily enough, not only because they are rid of the
trouble and charge of them, but in hopes they may, when they are grown
up, get some considerable command in the government.” (An Account of
the Greek Church, p. 12. London, 1680.) In the reign of Murād I,
Christian troops were employed in collecting this tribute of Christian
children. (Finlay, vol. v. p. 45.)
[466] “Verum tamen hos (liberos) pecunia redimere a conquisitoribus
sæpe parentibus licet.” (David Chytræus, p. 13.) De la Guilletière
mentions it in 1669 as one of the privileges of the Athenians. (An
Account of a Late Voyage to Athens, p. 272. London, 1676.)
[467] Confessio, p. 205.
[468] An Account of the Greek Church, p. 12. (London, 1680.)
[469] Menzel, p. 52. Thomas Smith: De Moribus ac Institutis Turcarum,
p. 81. (Oxonii, 1672.)
[470] Hill, p. 174.
[471] Joseph von Hammer (2), vol. ii. p. 151. Hans Schiltberger, who
was captured by the Turks in 1396 and returned home to Munich after
thirty-two years’ captivity, states that the tax the Christians had to
pay did not amount to more than two pfennig a month. (Reisebuch, p.
92.)
[472] Soli Sacerdotes, quasi in honorem sacri illius, quo funguntur,
Deo ita ordinante, ministerii hoc factum sit, una cum fœminis, ab hoc
tributo pendendo immunes habentur. (De Græcæ Hodierno Statu Epistola,
authore Thoma Smitho, p. 12.) (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1698.)
[473] Silbernagl, p. 60.
[474] Martin Crusius, p. 487; Sansovino, p. 67; Georgieviz, p. 98–9;
Scheffler, § 56; Hertzberg, p. 648; De la Jonquière, p. 267. A work
published in London in 1595, entitled “The Estate of Christians living
under the subjection of the Turke,” states the capitation-tax for male
children to have been eight shillings (p. 2). Michel Baudin says one
sequin a head for every male. (Histoire du Serrail, p. 7. Paris, 1662.)
[475] Georgirenes, p. 9; Tournefort, vol. i. p. 91; Tavernier (3), p.
11.
[476] In a work published by Joseph Georgirenes, Archbishop of Samos,
in 1678, during a visit to London, he gives us an account of the income
of his own see, the details of which are not likely to have been
considered extortionate, as they were here set down for the benefit of
English readers: in comparing the sums here mentioned, it should be
borne in mind that he speaks of the capitation-tax as being three
crowns or dollars (pp. 8–9). “At his (i.e. the Archbishop’s) first
coming, the Papas or Parish Priest of the Church of his Residence
presents him fifteen or twenty dollers, they of the other Churches
according to their Abilities. The first year of his coming, every
Parish Priest pays him four dollers, and the following year two. Every
Layman pays him forty-eight aspers”—(In the commercial treaty with
England, concluded in the year 1675, the value of the dollar was fixed
at eighty aspers (Finlay, v. 28))—“and the following years twenty-four.
The Samians pay one Doller for a Licence; all Strangers two; but he
that comes after first marriage for a Licence for a second or third,
pays three or four” (pp. 33–4).
[477] Tournefort, vol. i. p. 91.
[478] Scheffler, § 56. “Was aber auch den Ducaten anbelangt, so werdet
ihr mit demselben in eurem Sinn ebener massen greulich betrogen. Denn
es ist zwar wahr, dass der Türckische Käyser ordentlich nicht mehr nimt
als vom Haupt einen Ducaten: aber wo bleiben die Zölle und
ausserordentliche Anlagen? nehmen dann seine Königliche Verweser und
Hauptleute nichts? muss man zu Kriegen nichts ausser ordentlich
geben?... Was aber die ausser ordentliche Anlagen betrifft; die steigen
und fallen nach den bösen Zeiten, und müssen von den Türckischen
Unterthanen so wohl gegeben werden als bey uns.”
[479] Finlay, vol. v. pp. 24–5. H. von Moltke: Brief über Zustände und
Begebenheiten in der Türkei aus den Jahren 1835 bis 1839, pp. 274, 354.
(5th ed., Berlin, 1891.)
[480] Hammer (2), vol. i. p. 346.
[481] “The hard lot of the Christian subjects of the Sultan has at all
times arisen from the fact that the central authority at Constantinople
has but little real authority throughout the Empire of Turkey. It is
the petty tyranny of the village officials, sharpened by personal
hatred, which has instigated those acts of atrocity to which, both in
former times, and still more at the present day, the Christians in
Turkey are subjected. In the days of a nation’s greatness justice and
even magnanimity towards a subject race are possible; these, however,
are rarely found to exist in the time of a nation’s decay.” (Rev. W.
Denton: Servia and the Servians, p. 15. London, 1862.) Gerlach, pp. 49,
52.
[482] Businello, pp. 43–4.
[483] “The central government of the Sultan has generally treated its
Mussulman subjects with as much cruelty and injustice as the conquered
Christians. The sufferings of the Greeks were caused by the insolence
and oppression of the ruling class and the corruption that reigned in
the Othoman administration, rather than by the direct exercise of the
Sultan’s power. In his private affairs, a Greek had a better chance of
obtaining justice from his bishop and the elders of his district than a
Turk from the cadi or the voivode.” (Finlay, vol. vi. pp. 4–5.)
“It would be a mistake to suppose that the Christians are the only part
of the population that is oppressed and miserable. Turkish
misgovernment is uniform, and falls with a heavy hand upon all alike.
In some parts of the kingdom the poverty of the Mussulmans may be
actually worse than the poverty of the Christians, and it is their
condition which most excites the pity of the traveller.” (William
Forsyth: The Slavonic Provinces South of the Danube, pp. 157–8. London,
1876.)
“All this oppression and misery (i.e. in the north of Asia Minor) falls
upon the Mohammedan population equally with the Christian.” (James
Bryce: Transcaucasia and Ararat, p. 381.)
“L’Europe s’imagine que les chrétiens seuls sont soumis, en Turquie, à
l’arbitraire, aux souffrances, aux avilissements de toute nature, qui
naissent de l’oppression; il n’en est rien! Les musulmans, précisément
parce que nulle puissance étrangère ne s’intéresse à eux, sont
peut-être plus indignement spoliés, plus courbés sous le joug que ceux
qui méconnaissent le prophète.” (De la Jonquière, p. 507.)
“To judge from what we have already observed, the lowest order of
Christians are not in a worse condition in Asia Minor than the same
class of Turks; and if the Christians of European Turkey have some
advantages arising from the effects of the superiority of their numbers
over the Turks, those of Asia have the satisfaction of seeing that the
Turks are as much oppressed by the men in power as they are themselves;
and they have to deal with a race of Mussulmans generally milder, more
religious, and better principled than those of Europe.” (W. M. Leake:
Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor, p. 7. London, 1824.)
Cf. also Laurence Oliphant: The Land of Gilead, pp. 320–3, 446.
(London, 1880.)
[484] It was in the sixteenth century that the tribute of children fell
into desuetude, and the last recorded example of its exaction was in
the year 1676.
[485] De la Jonquière, p. 333. Scheffler, § 45–6. Gasztowtt, p. 51.
[486] “Denn ich höre mit grosser Verwunderung und Bestürtzung, dass
nicht allein unter den gemeinen Pövel Reden im Schwange gehn, es sey
unter dem Türcken auch gut wohnen: wann man einen Ducaten von Haupt
gebe, so wäre man frey; Item er liesse die Religion frey; man würde die
Kirchen wieder bekommen; und was vergleichen: sondern dass auch andre,
die es wol besser verstehen sollten, sich dessen erfreuen, und über ihr
eigen Unglück frolocken! welches nicht allein Halssbrüchige, sondern
auch Gottlose Vermessenheiten seynd, die aus keinem andrem Grunde, als
aus dem Geist der Ketzerey, der zum Auffruhr und gäntzlicher Ausreitung
des Christenthumbs geneigt ist, herkommen.” (Scheffler, § 48.)
[487] Hertzberg, p. 650.
[488] De la Jonquière, p. 34. A similar contrast was made in 1605 by
Richard Staper, an English merchant who had been in Turkey as early as
1578: “And notwithstanding that the Turks in general be a most wicked
people, walking in the works of darkness ... yet notwithstanding do
they permit all Christians, both Greeks and Latins, to live in their
religion and freely to use to their conscience, allowing them churches
for their divine service, both in Constantinople and very many other
places, whereas to the contrary by proof of twelve years’ residence in
Spain I can truly affirm, we are not only forced to observe their
popish ceremonies, but in danger of life and goods” (M. Epstein: The
Early History of the Levant Company, p. 57. London, 1908.)
[489] Macarius, vol. i. pp. 183, 165. Cf. the memorial presented by
Polish refugees from Russia to the Sublime Porte, in 1853. (Gasztowtt,
p. 217.)
[490] “Alii speciem sibi quandam confixerunt stultam libertatis ...
quod quum sub Christiano consequuturos se desperent, ideo vel Turcam
mallent: quasi is benignior sit in largienda libertate hac, quam
Christianus.” (Ioannis Ludovici Vivis De Conditione Vitæ Christianorum
sub Turca, pp. 220, 225.) (Basileæ, 1538.) “Quidam obganniunt, liberam
esse sub Turca fidem.” (Othonis Brunfelsii ad Principes et Christianos
omnes Oratio, p. 133.) (Basileæ, 1538.) Ubertus Folieta, a noble of
Genoa, writing about 1577, says, “Sæpe mecum quaesivi ... qua re fiat,
ut tot de nostris hominibus ad illos continenter transfugiant,
Christianaque religione eiurata Mahumetanæ sectæ nomina dent.” (De
Causis Magnitudinis Turcarum Imperii, col. 1209.) (Thesaurus
Antiquitatum et Historiarum Italiæ, curâ Joannis Georgii Grævii, tom.
i. Lugduni Batavorum, 1725.)
[491] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xvii. (a).
[492] Blount, vol. i. p. 548.
[493] Scheffler, §§ 51, 53.
[494] Dousa, p. 38. Busbecq, p. 190.
[495] Thomas Smith, p. 32.
[496] Thomas Smith, p. 42. Blount, vol. i. p. 548. Georgieviz, p. 20.
Schiltberger, pp. 83–4. Baudier, pp. 149, 313.
[497] Alexander Ross, p. ix. Baudier, p. 317. Cf. also Rycaut, vol. i.
p. 276. “On croit meriter beaucoup que de faire un Proselyte, il n’y a
personne assez riche pour avoir un esclave qui n’en veüille un jeune,
qui soit capable de recevoir sans peine toutes sortes d’impressions, et
qu’il puisse appeller son converti, afin de meriter l’honneur d’avoir
augmenté le nombre des fidèles.” Thomas Smith relates how the old man
who showed him the tomb of Urkhān at Brusa “ingenti cum fervore, oculis
ad Cælum elevatis, Deum precatus est ut nos ad fidem Musulmannicam suo
tempore tandem convertere dignaretur: Hoc nimirum est summum erga nos
affectus testimonium, qui ex isto falso et imperitissimo zelo solet
profluere.” (Epistolæ duae, quarum altera De Moribus ac Institutis
Turcarum agit, p. 20.) (Oxonii, 1672.)
[498] By an anonymous writer who was a captive in Turkey from 1436 to
1458. Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xvii. (a).
[499] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xi. (b). Lionardo of Scio,
Archbishop of Mitylene, who was present at the taking of
Constantinople, speaks of the large number of renegades in the
besieging army: “Chi circondò la città, e chi insegnò a’ turchi
l’ordine, se non i pessimi christiani? Io son testimonio, che i Greci,
ch’i Latini, che i Tedeschi, che gli Ungari, e che ogni altra
generation di christiani, mescolati co’ turchi impararono l’opere e la
fede loro, i quali domenticatisi della fede christiana, espugnavano la
città. O empij che rinegasti Christo. O settatori di antichristo,
dannati alle pene infernali, questo è hora il vostro tempo.”
(Sansovino, p. 258.)
[500] J. H. Krause: Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters, pp. 385–6. (Halle,
1869.)
[501] Hertzberg, p. 616. Finlay, vol. v. p. 118.
[502] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xix. (a).
[503] Rycaut, vol. i. pp. 710–11. Bizzi, fol. 49 (b).
[504] Pichler, pp. 164, 172.
[505] Id. p. 143.
[506] Pichler, p. 148. It is doubtful, however, whether Cyril was
really the author of this document bearing his name. (Kyriakos, p.
100.)
[507] Id. pp. 183–9.
[508] Id. p 226.
[509] As regards the Christian captives the Protestants certainly had
the reputation among the Turks of showing a greater inclination towards
conversion than the Catholics. (Gmelin, p. 21.)
[510] Pichler, pp. 211, 227.
[511] Id. pp. 181, 228.
[512] Id. pp. 222, 226.
[513] Pichler, p. 173.
[514] Id. pp. 128, 132, 143.
[515] Id. p. 143.
[516] Le Quien, tom. i. col. 334.
[517] Pichler, p. 172.
[518] Hefele, vol. i. p. 473.
[519] Cyril II of Berrhœa.
[520] Le Quien, tom. i. col. 335.
[521] Id. tom. i. col. 336.
[522] Id. tom. i. col. 337.
[523] However, in an earlier attempt made by the Protestant theologians
of Tübingen (1573–77) to introduce the doctrines of the Reformed Church
into the Eastern Church, the Vaivode Quarquar of Samtskheth in Georgia
embraced the Confession of Augsburg, but in 1580 became a Muslim.
(Joselian, p. 140.)
[524] Scheffler, §§ 53–6. Finlay, vol. v. pp. 118–19.
[525] Hammer (1), vol. vi. p. 94.
[526] Spon, vol. ii. p. 57.
[527] Hammer (1), vol. vi. p. 364.
[528] Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant, edited by J. Theodore
Bent, p. 210. (London, 1893.) Similarly, Michel Baudier concludes his
description of the festivities in Constantinople on the occasion of the
circumcision of Muḥammad III in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, with an account of the conversion of a large number of
Christians. “During the spectacles of this solemnity, the wretched
Grecians ran by troupes in this place to make themselves Mahometans;
Some abandoned Christianitie to avoid the oppression of the Turkes,
others for the hope of private profit.... The number of these
cast-awayes was found to be above foure thousand soules.” (The History
of the Serrail, and of the Court of the Grand Seigneur Emperour of the
Turkes, pp. 93–4. (London, 1635.) Histoire generale du Serrail, et de
la Cour du Grand Seigneur, Empereur des Turcs, pp. 89–90. (Paris,
1631.))
[529] Scheffler, § 55.
[530] Thomas Smith: An Account of the Greek Church, pp. 15–16. (London,
1680.)
[531] A. de la Motraye: Voyages en Europe, Asie et Afrique, vol. i. pp.
306, 308. (La Haye, 1727.)
[532] Pitzipios, Seconde Partie, pp. 83–7. Pichler, p. 29.
[533] Tournefort, vol. i. p. 107. Spon uses much the same language,
vol. i. p. 56.
[534] Gaultier de Leslie, p. 137.
[535] A. J. Evans, p. 267. Similarly Mackenzie and Irby say: “In most
parts of Old Serbia the idea we found associated with a bishop, was
that of a person who carried off what few paras the Turks had left” (p.
258). A similar account of the clergy of the Greek Church is given by a
writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes (tome 97, p. 336), who narrates the
following story: “Au début de ce siècle, à Tirnova, un certain pope du
nom de Joachim, adoré de ses ouailles, détesté de son évêque, reçut
l’ordre, un jour, de faire la corvée du fumier dans l’écurie
épiscopale. Il se rebiffa: aussitôt la valetaille l’assaillit à coups
de fourche. Mais notre homme était vigoureux: il se débattit, et,
laissant sa tunique en gage, s’en fut tout chaud chez le cadi. Le
soleil n’était pas couché qu’il devenait bon Musulman.”
[536] Pitzipios, Seconde Partie, p. 87.
[537] Id. Seconde Partie, p. 87. Pichler, p. 29.
[538] Lazăr, p. 223.
[539] Finlay, vol. iv. pp. 153–4.
[540] Tournefort, vol. i. p. 104. Cf. Pichler, pp. 29, 31. Spon, vol.
i. p. 44.
[541] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xiii. (b); fol. xv. (b);
fol. xvii. (b); fol. xx. (a). Veniero, pp. 32, 36. Busbecq, p. 174.
[542] Gaultier de Leslie, pp. 180, 182.
[543] Rycaut, vol. i. p. 689. See also Georgieviz, pp. 53–4, and
Menavino, p. 73.
[544] Alexander Ross, p. ix.; he calls the Qurʼān a “gallimaufry of
Errors (a Brat as deformed as the Parent, and as full of Heresies, as
his scald head was of scurf),”—“a hodg podge made up of these four
Ingredients. 1. Of Contradictions. 2. Of Blasphemy. 3. Of ridiculous
Fables. 4. Of Lyes.”
[545] Finlay, vol. v. p. 29.
[546] Schiltberger, p. 96.
[547] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xii. (b), xiii. (a).
[548] Id. fol. xxvii. (a).
[549] “Dum corpora exterius fovendo sub pietatis specie non occidit:
interius fidem auferendo animas sua diabolica astutia occidere
intendit. Huius rei testimonium innumerabilis multitudo fidelium esse
potest. Quorum multi promptissimi essent pro fide Christi et suarum
animarum salute in fide Christi mori: quos tamen conservando a morte
corporali: et ductos in captivitatem per successum temporis suo
infectos veneno fidem Christi turpiter negare facit.” Turchicæ
Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. i.; cf. fol. vi. (a).
[550] Menavino, p. 96. John Harris: Navigantium atque Itinerantium
Bibliotheca, vol. ii. p. 819. (London, 1764.)
[551] “Dieses muss man den Türken nachsagen, dass sie die Diener und
Sclaven, durch deren Fleiss und Bemühung sie sich einen Nutzen schaffen
können, sehr wol und oft besser, als die Christian die ihrige, halten
... und wann ein Knecht in einer Kunst erfahren ist, gehet ihm nichts
anders als die Freyheit ab, ausser welche er alles andere hat, was ein
freyer Mensch sich nur wünschen kan.” (G. C. von den Driesch, p. 132.)
[552] Sir William Stirling-Maxwell says of these: “The poor wretches
who tugged at the oar on board a Turkish ship of war lived a life
neither more nor less miserable than the galley-slaves under the sign
of the Cross. Hard work, hard fare, and hard knocks were the lot of
both. Ashore, a Turkish or Algerine prison was, perhaps, more noisome
in its filth and darkness than a prison at Naples or Barcelona; but at
sea, if there were degrees of misery, the Christian in Turkish chains
probably had the advantage; for in the Sultan’s vessels the oar-gang
was often the property of the captain, and the owner’s natural
tenderness for his own was sometimes supposed to interfere with the
discharge of his duty.” (Vol. i. pp. 102–3.)
[553] Gmelin, p. 16.
[554] Id. p. 23.
[555] John Harris: Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, vol. ii.
p. 810.
[556] “Die ersten Jahre sind für solche unglückliche Leute am
beschwehrlichsten, absonderlich wenn sie noch jung, weil die Türken
selbige entweder mit Schmeicheln, oder, wann dieses nichts verfangen
will, mit der Schärfe zu ihren Glauben zu bringen suchen; wann aber
dieser Sturm überwunden, wird man finden, dass die Gefangenschaft
nirgend erträglicher als bey den Türken seye.” (G. C. von den Driesch,
p. 132.) Moreover Georgieviz says that those who persevered in the
Christian faith were set free after a certain fixed period. “Si in
Christiana fide perseveraverint, statuitur certum tempus serviendi, quo
elapso liberi fiunt ... Verum illis qui nostram religionem abiurarunt,
nec certum tempus est serviendi, ned ullum ius in patriam redeundi,
spes libertatis solummodo pendet a domini arbitrio” (p. 87). Similarly
Menavino, p. 65. Cantacuzenos gives this period as seven years:—“Grata
è la compagnia che essi fanno a gli schiavi loro, percioche Maumetto
gli ha fra l’altre cose comandato che egli non si possa tener in
servitù uno schiavo più che sette anni, et perciò nessuno o raro è
colui che a tal comandamento voglia contrafare” (p. 128).
[557] “Fromme Christen, die nach der Türkei oder in andere
muhamedanische Länder kamen, hatten Anlass genug zur Trauer über die
Häufigkeit des Abfalls ihrer Glaubensgenossen, und besonders die
Schriften der Ordensgeistlichen sind voll von solchen Klagen. Bei den
Sclaven konnte sich immer noch ein Gefühl des Mitleids dem der
Missbilligung beimischen, aber oft genug musste man die bittersten
Erfahrungen auch an freien Landsleuten machen. Die christlichen
Gesandten waren keinen Tag sicher, ob ihnen nicht Leute von ihrem
Gefolge davon liefen, und man that gut daran, den Tag nicht vor dem
Abend zu loben.” (Gmelin, p. 22.) Cf. Von den Driesch, p. 161.
[558] Thomas Smith, pp. 144–5.
[559] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xxxv. (a).
[560] M. d’Ohsson, vol. iii. p. 133. Georgieviz, p. 87 (quoted above).
Menavino, p. 95.
[561] Von den Driesch, p. 250.
[562] Id. p. 131–2.
[563] Turchicæ Spurcitiæ Suggillatio, fol. xi.
[564] Hertzberg, p. 621.
[565] “The old People dying, the young ones generally turn Mahumetans:
so that now (1655) you can hardly meet with two Christian Armenians in
all those fair Plains, which their fathers were sent to manure.”
Tavernier (1), p. 16.
[566] H. H. Jessup: Fifty-three Years in Syria, vol. ii. p. 658. (New
York, 1910.)
[567] For a list of these, see Finlay, vol. vi. pp. 28–9.
[568] Leake, p. 250.
[569] The name by which the Albanians always call themselves, lit.
rock-dwellers.
[570] One of themselves, an Albanian Christian, speaking of the enmity
existing between the Christians and Muhammadans of Bulgaria, says:
“Aber für Albanien liegen die Sachen ganz anders. Die Muselmänner sind
Albanesen, wie die Christen; sie sprechen dieselbe Sprache, sie haben
dieselben Sitten, sie folgen denselben Gebräuchen, sie haben dieselben
Traditionen; sie und die Christen haben sich niemals gehasst, zwischen
ihnen herrscht keine Jahrhunderte alte Feindschaft. Der Unterschied der
Religion war niemals ein zu einer systematischen Trennung treibendes
Motiv; Muselmänner und Christen haben stets, mit wenigen Ausnahmen, auf
gleichem Fusse gelebt, sich der gleichen Rechte erfreuend, dieselben
Pflichten erfüllend.” (Wassa Effendi: Albanien und die Albanesen, p.
59.) (Berlin, 1879.)
[571] Finlay, vol. v. p. 46.
[572] Clark, pp. 175–7. The Mirdites, who are very fanatical Roman
Catholics (in the diocese of Alessio), will not suffer a Muhammadan to
live in their mountains, and no member of their tribe has ever abjured
his faith; were any Mirdite to attempt to do so, he would certainly be
put to death, unless he succeeded in making good his escape from
Albania. (Hecquard: Histoire de la Haute Albanie, p. 224.)
[573] Published in Farlati’s Illyricum Sacrum.
[574] Alessandro Comuleo, 1593. Bizzi, 1610. Marco Crisio, 1651. Fra
Bonaventura di S. Antonio, 1652. Zmaievich, 1703.
[575] Bizzi, fol. 60, b.
[576] Bizzi, fol. 35, a.
[577] Farlati, vol. vii. pp. 104, 107.
[578] It is also complained that the Archbishop’s palace was
appropriated by the Muhammadans, but it had been left unoccupied for
eight years, as Archbishop Ambrosius (flor. 1579–1598) had found it
prudent to go into exile, having attacked Islam “with more fervour than
caution, inveighing against Muḥammad and damning his Satanic
doctrines.” (Farlati, vol. vii. p. 107.)
[579] Bizzi, fol. 9, where he says, “E comunicai quella mattina quasi
tutta la Christianità latina.” From a comparison with statistics given
by Zmaievich (fol. 227) I would hazard the conjecture that the Latin
Christian community at this time amounted to rather over a thousand
souls.
[580] Bizzi, fol. 27, b; 38, b.
[581] Veniero, fol. 34. This was also the custom in some villages of
Albania as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century; see W. M.
Leake: Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 49. (London, 1835): “In
some villages, Mahometans are married to Greek women, the sons are
educated as Turks, and the daughters as Christians; and pork and mutton
are eaten at the same table.”
[582] Bizzi, fol. 38, b. Farlati, tom. vii. p. 158.
[583] Bizzi, fol. 10, b. Veniero, fol. 34.
[584] Shortly after Marco Bizzi’s arrival at Antivari a Muhammadan lady
of high rank wished to have her child baptised by the Archbishop
himself, who tells us that she complained bitterly to one of the
leading Christians of the city that “io non mi fossi degnato di far a
lei questo piacere, il qual quotidianamente vien fatto dai miei preti a
richiesta di qualsivoglia plebeo” (fol. 10, b).
[585] For modern instances of the harmonious relations subsisting
between the followers of the two faiths living together in the same
village, see Hyacinthe Hecquard: Histoire et description de la Haute
Albanie (pp. 153, 162, 200). (Paris, 1858.)
[586] Bizzi, fol. 38, a.
[587] Garnett, p. 267.
[588] Bizzi, fol. 36, b.
[589] Id. fol. 38, b; 37, a.
[590] Bizzi, fol. 38, b; 61, a; 37, a; 33, b.
[591] Zmaievich, fol. 5. The Venetian real in the eighteenth century
was equal to a Turkish piastre. (Businello, p. 94.)
[592] Bizzi, fol. 12–13. Zmaievich, fol. 5.
[593] Bizzi, fol. 10–11.
[594] Id. fol. 31, b.
[595] Id. fol. 60, b.
[596] Id. fol. 33, b. “Qui deriva il puoco numero de Sacerdoti in
quelle parti e la puoca loro intelligenza in quel mestiero; il gran
numero de’ Christiani, che invecchiano, et anco morono senza il
sacramento della Confermatione et apostatano della fede quasi per
tutto.”
[597] “Se l’Albania non riceverà qualche maggior agiuto in meno di anni
anderà a male quasi tutta quella Christianità per il puoco numero dei
Vescovi e dei Sacerdoti di qualche intelligenza.” (Id. fol. 61, a.)
[598] Id. fol. 36, a. Id. fol. 64, b.
[599] Finlay, vol. v. pp. 153–4. Clark, p. 290.
[600] “E quei miseri hanno fermata la conscientia in creder di non
peccar per simil coniuntioni (i.e. the giving of Christian girls in
marriage to Muhammadans) per esser i turchi signori del paese, e che
però non si possa, nè devea far altro che obbedirli quando comandano
qualsivoglia cosa.” (Bizzi, fol. 38, b.)
[601] Garnett, p. 268.
[602] Bizzi, fol. 38, b; 63, a.
[603] Kyriakos, p. 12.
[604] Farlati, tom. vii. pp. 124, 141.
[605] Marco Crisio, p. 202.
[606] Zmaievich, fol. 227.
[607] Bizzi, fol. 60, b.
[608] Zmaievich, fol. 137.
[609] Zmaievich, fol. 157.
[610] Zmaievich, fol. 11, 159.
[611] Zmaievich, fol. 13.
[612] Bizzi, fol. 38, b. Farlati, vol. vii. p. 158.
[613] Zmaievich, fol. 13–14.
[614] Informatione circa la missione d’Albania, fol. 196.
[615] Crisio, fol. 204.
[616] Fra Bonaventura, fol. 201.
[617] Marco Crisio, fol. 202, 205.
[618] Id. fol. 205.
[619] Zmaievich, fol. 13.
[620] Farlati, tom. vii. p. 109. Bizzi, fol. 19, b.
[621] Marco Crisio, fol. 205.
[622] Zmaievich, fol. 11.
[623] Id. fol. 32.
[624] Crisio, fol. 204.
[625] Zmaievich, fol. 11. Farlati, vol. vii. p. 151.
[626] Farlati, vol. vii. pp. 126–32. Zmaievich, fol. 4–5, fol. 20.
[627] “Plerique, ut se iniquis tributis et vexationibus eximerent,
paullatim a Christiana religione deficere coeperunt.” (Farlati, tom.
vii. p. 311.)
[628] Zmaievich fol. 5.
[629] Id. fol. 5.
[630] Zmaievich, fol. 15, 197.
[631] Id. fol. 11.
[632] Id. fol. 137.
[633] Id. fol. 149.
[634] Id. fol. 143–4.
[635] Zmaievich, fol. 22.
[636] Farlati, tom. vii. p. 141.
[637] Zmaievich, fol. 7, 17.
[638] Id. fol. 9.
[639] Id. fol. 141.
[640] Farlati, vol. vi. p. 317.
[641] Eliot, p. 401.
[642] Id. p. 392.
[643] Yāqūt, vol. i. p. 469 sq.
[644] Géographie d’Aboulféda, traduite par M. Reinaud, tome ii. pp
294–5.
[645] Enrique Dupuy de Lôme: Los Esclavos y Turquía, pp. 17–18.
(Madrid, 1877.)
[646] De la Jonquière, p. 215.
[647] Id. p. 290.
[648] Kanitz, p. 37.
[649] Id. pp. 37–8.
[650] A map of this country is given by Mackenzie and Irby (p. 243): it
contains Prizren, the old Servian capital, Ipek, the seat of the
Servian Patriarch, and the battle-field of Kossovo.
[651] Kanitz, p. 37.
[652] Mackenzie and Irby, pp. 250–1.
[653] Farlati, vol. vii. pp. 127–8.
[654] Mackenzie and Irby, pp. 374–5. Kanitz, p. 39.
[655] Id. pp. 39–40.
[656] Kanitz, p. 38.
[657] Bizzi, fol. 48, b.
[658] Zmaievich, fol. 182.
[659] Kanitz, p. 38.
[660] Montenegro was ruled by bishops from 1516 to 1852.
[661] E. L. Clark, pp. 362–3.
[662] Honorius III in 1221, Gregory IX in 1238, Innocent IV in 1246,
Benedict XII in 1337. The Inquisition was established in 1291.
[663] Asboth, pp. 42–95. Evans, pp. xxxvi–xlii.
[664] Asboth, pp. 96–7.
[665] “They revile the ceremonies of the church and all church
dignitaries, and they call orthodox priests blind Pharisees, and bay at
them as dogs at horses. As to the Lord’s Supper, they assert that it is
not kept according to God’s commandment, and that it is not the body of
God, but ordinary bread.” (Kosmas, quoted by Evans, pp. xxx–xxxi.)
[666] Sūrah iv. 156.
[667] Cf. the admiration of the Turks for Charles XII of Sweden. “Son
opiniâtreté à s’abstenir du vin, et sa régularité à assister deux fois
par jour aux prières publiques, leur faisaient dire: C’est un vrai
musulman.” (Œuvres de Voltaire, tome 23, p. 200.) (Paris, 1785.)
[668] Kosmas, quoted by Evans, p. xxxi.
[669] Asboth, p. 36. Wetzer und Welte, vol. ii. p. 975.
[670] Olivier, pp. 17–18.
[671] Olivier, p. 113.
[672] Amari, vol. i. p. 163; vol. ii. p. 260.
[673] Cornaro, vol. i. pp. 205–8.
[674] Perrot, p. 151.
[675] Pashley, vol. i. p. 30; vol. ii. pp. 284, 291–2.
[676] Id. vol. ii. p. 298.
[677] Pashley, vol. ii. p. 285.
[678] Id. vol. i. p. 319.
[679] Perrot, p. 151.
[680] Charles Edwardes: Letters from Crete, pp. 90–2. (London, 1887.)
[681] Pashley, vol. ii. pp. 151–2.
[682] Id. vol. i. p. 9.
[683] Perrot, p. 159.
[684] Pashley, vol. i. pp. 10, 195.
[685] T. A. B. Spratt: Travels and Researches in Crete, vol. i. p. 47.
(London, 1865.)
[686] R. du M. M. vii. p. 99.
[687] Caetani, vol. ii. pp. 910–11. A. de Gobineau (1), pp. 55–6.
[688] Abū Yūsuf: Kitāb al-Kharāj, p. 73.
[689] Id. p. 74 and Balādhurī, pp. 71 (fin.), 79, 80.
[690] Caetani, vol. v. pp. 361 (§ 611 n. 1), 394–5, 457.
[691] pp. 68–9.
[692] Caetani, vol. ii. p. 910.
[693] A. de Gobineau (2), pp. 306–10.
[694] Dozy (1), p. 157.
[695] Haneberg, p. 5.
[696] Dozy (1), p. 191. A. de Gobineau (1), p. 55.
[697] Les croyances Mazdéennes dans la religion Chiite, par Ahmed-Bey
Agaeff. (Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of
Orientalists, vol. ii. pp. 509–11. London, 1893.) For other points of
contact, see Goldziher: Islamisme et Parsisme. (Revue de l’Histoire des
Religions, xliii. p. 1. sqq.)
[698] Dosabhai Framji Karaka: History of the Parsis, vol. i. pp. 56–9,
62–7. (London, 1884.) Nicolas de Khanikoff says that there were 12,000
families of fire-worshippers in Kirmān at the end of the 18th century.
(Mémoire sur la partie méridionale de l’Asie centrale, p. 193. Paris,
1861.)
[699] Chwolsohn, vol. i. p. 287.
[700] Masʻūdī, vol. iv. p. 86.
[701] Iṣṭakhrī, pp. 100, 118. Ibn Ḥawqal, pp. 189–190.
[702] Kitāb al-milal waʼl-niḥal, edited by Cureton, part i. p. 198.
[703] Masʻūdī, vol. viii. p. 279; vol. ix. pp. 4–5.
[704] Ibn Khallikān, vol. iii. p. 517.
[705] Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Flügel, p. 149 (l. 2).
[706] For a comprehensive sketch of their condition under Muslim rule,
see D. Menant: Les Zoroastriens de Perse. (R. du M. M. iii. pp. 193
sqq., p. 421 sqq.)
[707] Khojā Vrittānt, pp. 141–8. For a further account of Ismāʻīlian
missionaries in India, see chap. ix.
[708] Le Bon Silvestre De Sacy: Exposé de la Religion des Druzes, tome
i. pp. lxvii–lxxvi, cxlviii–clxii.
[709] Balādhurī, p. 421.
[710] Narshakhī, p. 46.
[711] Id. p. 47.
[712] Balādhurī, p. 426.
[713] Ṭabarī, ii. pp. 1507 sqq.
[714] Balādhurī, p. 431.
[715] August Müller, vol. i. p. 520.
[716] Cahun, p. 150.
[717] Ibn al-Athīr, vol. viii. p. 396 (ll. 19–20.) Grenard, pp. 7 sq.,
42–3.
[718] Grenard, pp. 9–10. “D’une guerre d’ambition [la tradition] fait
une guerre sainte, elle attribue à Satoḳ Boghra Khân une conquête qui a
été accomplie réellement par son douzième successeur; par une confusion
absurde, elle donne le nom de ce dernier à l’oncle infidèle de Satoḳ.
Non contente de réduire deux personnages en un seul, elle prête au même
prince une marche sur Tourfân, c’est-à-dire contre les Ouigour, qui est
en effet l’œuvre d’un troisième.” (Id. p. 50.)
[719] Raverty, p. 905.
[720] This was the capital of the Khāns of Turkistan during the tenth
and eleventh centuries, but the exact site is uncertain.
[721] Narshakhī, pp. 234–5.
[722] Raverty, pp. 925–7.
[723] Grenard, p. 76.
[724] Raverty, p. 117.
[725] Bellew, p. 96.
[726] Id. pp. 15–16.
[727] Balādhurī, p. 402.
[728] August Müller, vol. ii. p. 29.
[729] Qurʼān, xix. 23.
[730] Ibn al-Athīr, vol. xii. pp. 233–4.
[731] William of Rubruck, pp. 182, 191. C. d’Ohsson, tome ii. p. 488.
[732] De Guignes, tome iii. pp. 200, 203.
[733] Id. vol. iii. p. 115.
[734] Id. p. 125. Cahun, p. 391.
[735] Klaproth, p. 204.
[736] C. d’Ohsson, tome ii. pp. 226–7. Cahun, p. 408 sq.
[737] Of this writer Yule says, “He gives an unfavourable account of
the literature and morals of their clergy, which deserves more weight
than such statements regarding those looked upon as schismatics
generally do; for the narrative of Rubruquis gives one the impression
of being written by a thoroughly honest and intelligent person.”
(Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. i. p. xcviii.)
[738] William of Rubruck, pp. 158–9.
[739] Maqrīzī (2), tome i. 1re partie, pp. 98, 106.
[740] The Chosen One—Muḥammad.
[741] Jūzjānī, pp. 448–50. Raverty, pp. 1288–90.
[742] So notoriously brutal was the treatment they received that even
the Chinese showmen in their exhibitions of shadow figures exultingly
brought forward the figure of an old man with a white beard dragged by
the neck at the tail of a horse, as showing how the Mongol horsemen
behaved towards the Musalmans. (Howorth, vol. i. p. 159.)
[743] Raverty, p. 1146. Howorth, vol. i. pp. 112, 273. This edict was
only withdrawn when it was found that it prevented Muhammadan merchants
from visiting the court and that trade suffered in consequence.
[744] Howorth, vol. i. p. 165.
[745] Jūzjānī, pp. 404–5. Raverty, p. 1160 sqq.
[746] De Guignes, vol. iii. p. 265.
[747] In the thirteenth century, three-fourths of the Mongol hosts were
Turks. (Cahun, p. 279.)
[748] C. d’Ohsson, vol. iii. p. 121.
[749] Rashīd al-Dīn, pp. 600–2.
[750] Blochet, pp. 74–7.
[751] It is of interest to note that Najm al-Dīn Mukhtār al-Zāhidī in
1260 compiled for Baraka Khān a treatise which gave the proofs of the
divine mission of the Prophet, a refutation of those who denied it, and
an account of the controversies between Christians and Muslims.
(Steinschneider, pp. 63–4.)
[752] Abu’l-Ghāzī, tome ii. p. 181.
[753] Jūzjānī, p. 447. Raverty, pp. 1283–4.
[754] Jūzjānī, p. 447. Raverty, pp. 1285–6.
[755] Maqrīzī (2), tome i. pp. 180–1, 187.
[756] Maqrīzī (2), tome i. p. 215.
[757] Id. p. 222.
[758] Waṣṣāf calls him Nikūdār before, and Aḥmad after, his conversion.
[759] Hayton. (Ramusio, tome ii. p. 60, c.)
[760] Qurʼān, vi. 125.
[761] Waṣṣāf, pp. 231–4.
[762] De Guignes, vol. iii. pp. 263–5.
[763] C. d’Ohsson, tome iv. pp. 141–2.
[764] Id. ib. p. 148.
[765] Id. ib. p. 365.
[766] Id. ib. pp. 148, 354. Cahun, p. 434.
[767] C. d’Ohsson, tome iv. pp. 128, 132.
[768] Hammer-Purgstall: Geschichte der Ilchanen, vol. ii. p. 182. It is
not improbable that the captive Muslim women took a considerable part
in the conversion of the Mongols to Islam. Women appear to have
occupied an honoured position among the Mongols, and many instances
might be given of their having taken a prominent part in political
affairs, just as already several cases have been mentioned of the
influence they exercised on their husbands in religious matters.
William of Rubruck tells us how he found the influence of a Muslim wife
an obstacle in the way of his proselytising labours: “On the day of
Pentecost a certain Saracen came to us, and while in conversation with
us, we began expounding the faith, and when he heard of the blessings
of God to man in the incarnation, the resurrection of the dead, the
last judgment, and the washing away of sins in baptism, he said he
wished to be baptised; but while we were making ready to baptise him,
he suddenly jumped on his horse saying he had to go home to consult
with his wife. And the next day talking with us he said he could not
possibly venture to receive baptism, for then he could not drink
cosmos” (mare’s milk). (Rubruck, pp. 90–1.)
[769] Ibn Baṭūṭah, vol. ii. p. 57.
[770] Jūzjānī, pp. 381, 397. Raverty, pp. 1110, 1145–6.
[771] Rashīd al-Dīn, pp. 173–4, 188.
[772] Abu’l-Ghāzī, tome ii. p. 159.
[773] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iii. p. 47.
[774] Abu’l-Ghāzī, tome ii. pp. 166–8. Muḥammad Ḥaydar, pp. 13–15.
[775] When the power of the Chaghatāy Khāns declined, a portion of the
eastern division of their realm became practically independent under
the name of Mughalistān, a pastoral country suited to the habits of
nomad herdsmen, in what is now known as Chinese Turkistan.
[776] Muḥammad Ḥaydar, pp. 57–8.
[777] In the reign of ʻAbd al-Karīm, who was Khān of Kāshgar from A.H.
983 to 1003 (A.D. 1575–1594).
[778] Martin Hartmann: Der Islamische Orient, vol. i. p. 203. (Berlin,
1899.)
[779] Id. p. 202.
[780] Assemani, tome iii. pars. ii. p. cxvi.
[781] Ibn Baṭūṭah, vol. iii. p. 40.
[782] Rashīd al-Dīn, p. 600, l. 1.
[783] Cahun, p. 410.
[784] Howorth, vol ii. p. 1015.
[785] Abū’l-Ghāzī, tome ii. p. 184.
[786] De Guignes, vol. iii. p. 351.
[787] Karamsin, vol. iv. pp. 391–4.
[788] Hammer-Purgstall: Geschichte der Goldenen Horde in Kiptschak, p.
290.
[789] De Baschkiris quae memoriae prodita sunt ab Ibn-Foszlano et
Jakuto, interprete C. N. Fraehnio. (Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale
des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, tome viii. p. 626. 1822.)
[790] Abū ʻUbayd al-Bakrī, pp. 470–1.
[791] Karamsin, tome i. pp. 259–71.
[792] Bobrovnikoff, p. 13.
[793] Reclus, tome v. p. 831. R. du M. M., tome iii. pp. 76, 78.
[794] Relation des Tartares, par Jean de Luca, p. 17. (Thevenot, tome
i.)
[795] Islam and Missions, p. 257.
[796] Gasztowtt, pp. 321–3. R. du M. M., xi. (1910), pp. 287 sqq.
[797] The Russian Policy regarding Central Asia. An historical sketch.
By Prof. V. Grigorief. (Eugene Schuyler: Turkistan, vol. ii. pp. 405–6.
5th ed. London, 1876); Franz von Schwarz: Turkestan, p. 58. (Freiburg,
1910.)
[798] Islam and Missions, pp. 251–2, 255.
[799] D. Mackenzie Wallace: Russia, vol. i. pp. 242–4. (London, 1877,
4th ed.) R. du M. M., vol. ix. (1909), p. 249. Bobrovnikoff, p. 5 sqq.
[800] W. Hepworth Dixon: Free Russia, vol. ii. p. 284. (London, 1870.)
[801] E.g. “En 1883, des paysans Tatars du village d’Apozof étaient
poursuivis, devant le tribunal de Kazan, pour avoir abandonné
l’orthodoxie. Les accusés déclaraient avoir toujours été musulmans;
sept d’entre eux n’en furent pas moins condamnés, comme apostats, aux
travaux forcés.... Beaucoup de ces relaps ont été déportés en Sibérie.”
Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu: L’Empire des Tsars et les Russes, tome iii. p.
645. (Paris, 1889–93.)
[802] D. Mackenzie Wallace: Russia, vol. i. p. 245.
[803] Palmieri, pp. 85–6. R. du M. M., i. (1907), pp. 162 sq.
[804] R. du M. M., ix. (1909), p. 294.
[805] Id. x. (1910), p. 413. Id. i. (1907), p. 273.
[806] Id. ix. p. 252.
[807] Id. p. 249.
[808] Bobrovnikoff, p. 12.
[809] Reclus, tome v. pp. 746, 748.
[810] Eruslanov, pp. 3, 6.
[811] Id. pp. 7–8.
[812] Id. pp. 5–6.
[813] Eruslanov, pp. 9, 13.
[814] Id. pp. 17, 20, 36.
[815] Id. pp. 38–9.
[816] Bobrovnikoff, p. 22.
[817] Id. pp. 21–2, 31.
[818] Id. p. 13. Islam and Missions, p. 257.
[819] G. F. Müller: Sammlung Russischer Geschichte, vol. vii. p. 191.
[820] Id. vol. vii. pp. 183–4.
[821] Radloff, vol. i. p. 147.
[822] Jadrinzew, p. 138. Radloff, vol. i. p. 241.
[823] Radloff, vol. i. pp. 472, 497.
[824] Census of India, 1891. General Report by J. A. Baines, p. 167.
(London, 1893.)
[825] Id. pp. 126, 207.
[826] Elliot, vol. ii. p. 448.
[827] Muḥammad b. Qāsim invited the Hindu princes to embrace Islam, and
the invaders who followed him were probably equally observant of the
religious law. (Elliot, vol. i. pp. 175, 207.)
[828] Or Baran, the old name of Bulandshahr.
[829] Elliot, vol. ii. pp. 42–3.
[830] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. iii. part ii. p. 85.
[831] “The military adventurers, who founded dynasties in Northern
India and carved out kingdoms in the Dekhan, cared little for things
spiritual; most of them had indeed no time for proselytism, being
continually engaged in conquest or in civil war. They were usually
rough Tartars or Moghals; themselves ill-grounded in the faith of
Mahomed, and untouched by the true Semitic enthusiasm which inspired
the first Arab standard bearers of Islam. The empire which they set up
was purely military, and it was kept in that state by the half success
of their conquests and the comparative failure of their spiritual
invasion. They were strong enough to prevent anything like religious
amalgamation among the Hindus, and to check the gathering of tribes
into nations; but so far were they from converting India, that among
the Mahommedans themselves their own faith never acquired an entire and
exclusive monopoly of the high offices of administration.” (Sir Alfred
C. Lyall: Asiatic Studies, p. 289.) (London, 1882.)
[832] Firishtah, vol. i. p. 184.
[833] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iii. p. 197.
[834] Elliot, vol. iii. p. 386.
[835] Mankind and the Church, p. 286. (London, 1907.)
[836] Sir Richard Temple: India in 1880, p. 164. (London, 1881.) Punjab
States Gazetteers, vol. xxxvi A, Bahawalpur, p. 183.
[837] Manual of Titles for Oudh, p. 78. (Allahabad, 1889.)
[838] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. p. 466.
[839] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. iii. part ii. p. 46.
[840] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. xiv. part ii. p. 119. In the
Cawnpore district, the Musalman branch of the Dikhit family observes
Muhammadan customs at births, marriages, and deaths, and, though they
cannot, as a rule, recite the prayers (namāz), they perform the
orthodox obeisances (sijdah). But at the same time they worship Chachak
Devī to avert small-pox, and keep up their friendly intercourse with
their old caste brethren, the Thakurs, in domestic occurrences, and are
generally called by common Hindu names. (Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol.
vi. p. 64.)
[841] Ibbetson, p. 163.
[842] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. vi. p. 64. Compare also id. vol.
xiv. part iii. p. 47. “Muhammadan cultivators are not numerous; they
are usually Nau-Muslims. Most of them assign the date of their
conversion to the reign of Aurangzeb, and represent it as the result
sometimes of persecution and sometimes as made to enable them to retain
their rights when unable to pay revenue.”
[843] Ibbetson, p. 163.
[844] Indeed Firishtah distinctly says: “Zealous for the faith of
Mahommed, he rewarded proselytes with a liberal hand, though he did not
choose to persecute those of different persuasions in matters of
religion.” (The History of Hindostan, translated from the Persian, by
Alexander Dow, vol. iii. p. 361.) (London, 1812.)
[845] The Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xxii. p. 222; vol. xxiii. p. 282.
[846] Innes, pp. 72–3, 190.
[847] Sir W. W. Hunter: The Religions of India. (The Times, February
25th, 1888.)
[848] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. vi. p. 518.
[849] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. v. part i. pp. 302–3.
[850] Sir Alfred C. Lyall: Asiatic Studies, p. 236.
[851] A tomb in the cemetery of Pantalāyini Kollam bears an inscription
with the date A.H. 166. (Innes, p. 436.)
[852] Zayn al-Dīn, pp. 34–5.
[853] Id. p. 36 (init.).
[854] Id. p. 21.
[855] The modern Madāyi.
[856] Zayn al-Dīn, pp. 23–4.
[857] Id. p. 25.
[858] Innes, p. 41.
[859] Id. p. 398.
[860] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. pp. 82, 88, etc.
[861] Innes, p. 190.
[862] Oboardo Barbosa, p. 310.
Similarly it has been conjectured that but for the arrival of the
Portuguese, Ceylon might have become a Muhammadan kingdom. For before
the Portuguese armaments appeared in the Indian seas, the Arab
merchants were undisputed masters of the trade of this island (where
indeed they had formed commercial establishments centuries before the
birth of the Prophet), and were to be found in every sea-port and city,
while the facilities for commerce attracted large numbers of fresh
arrivals from their settlements in Malabar. Here as elsewhere the
Muslim traders intermarried with the natives of the country and spread
their religion along the coast. But no very active proselytising
movement would seem to have been carried on, or else the Singhalese
showed themselves unwilling to embrace Islam, as the Muhammadans of
Ceylon at the present day appear mostly to be of Arab descent. (Sir
James Emerson Tennent: Ceylon, vol. i. pp. 631–3.) (5th ed., London,
1860.)
[863] Qurʼān, xvi. 126.
[864] ʻAbd al-Razzāq: Maṭlaʻ al-saʻdayn, fol. 173.
[865] They are found chiefly in the Tamil-speaking districts of Madura,
Tinnevelly, Coimbatore, North Arcot and the Nilgiris.
[866] The Imperial Gazetteer of India (vol. xxiv. p. 47) spells his
name Nādir Shāh; Qādir Ḥusayn Khān calls him Nathad Vali.
[867] Madras District Gazetteers. Trichinopoly, vol. i. p. 338.
(Madras, 1907.) Qādir Ḥusayn Khān: South Indian Musalmans, p. 36.
(Madras, 1910.)
[868] Qādir Ḥusayn Khān, pp. 36–8.
[869] Qādir Ḥusayn Khān, op. cit. pp. 39–42. Madras District
Gazetteers. Anantapur, vol. i. pp. 193–4. (Madras, 1905.)
[870] Zayn al-Dīn, pp. 33 (l. 4), 36 (l. 1).
[871] Innes, p. 190. Census of India, 1911. Vol. xii. Part. I. p. 54.
[872] Report on the Census of the Madras Presidency, 1871, by W. R.
Cornish, pp. 71, 72, 109. (Madras, 1874.)
[873] Report of the Second Decennial Missionary Conference held at
Calcutta 1882–3 (pp. 228, 233, 248). (Calcutta, 1883.)
[874] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. p. 128. Ibn Baṭūṭah resided in the Maldive
Islands during the years 1343–4 and married “the daughter of a Vizier
who was grandson of the Sulṭān Dāʼūd, who was a grandson of the Sulṭān
Aḥmad Shanūrāzah” (tome iv. p. 154); from this statement the date A.D.
1200 has been conjectured.
[875] H. C. P. Bell: The Maldive Islands, pp. 23–5, 57–8, 71. (Colombo,
1883.)
[876] Memoir on the Inhabitants of the Maldive Islands. By J. A. Young
and W. Christopher. (Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society
from 1836 to 1838, p. 74. Bombay, 1844.)
[877] Innes, pp. 485, 492.
[878] Masʻūdī, tome ii. pp. 85–6.
[879] The Bombay Gazetteer, vol. x. p 132; vol. xvi. p. 75.
[880] Id. vol. xxiii. p. 282.
[881] Sometimes called Sayyid Makhdūm Gīsūdarāz.
[882] The Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xviii. p. 501; vol. xxi. pp. 218, 223.
[883] Id. vol. xiii. part i. p. 231.
[884] Id. vol. xxii. p. 242.
[885] Id. vol. xvi. pp. 75–6.
[886] Id. vol. xxi. p. 203.
[887] At the time of the Arab conquest the dominions of the Hindu ruler
of Sind extended as far north as this city, which is now no longer
included in this province.
[888] Balādhurī, p. 441 (fin.)
[889] Elliot, vol. i. pp. 185–6.
[890] Probably the Sindān in Abrāsa, the southern district of Cutch.
[891] Balādhurī, p. 446.
[892] Iṣṭakhrī, pp. 173–4.
[893] Balādhurī, p. 446.
[894] Iṣṭakhrī, loc. cit. Ibn Ḥawqal, p. 230 sq. Idrīsī (Géographie
d’Édrisi, traduite par P. A. Jaubert, vol. i. p. 175 sqq.).
[895] Masʻūdī, vol. i. p. 207.
[896] Elliot, vol. i. p. 273.
[897] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. i. p. 93.
[898] Khojā Vṛttānt, p. 208. Sir Bartle Frere: The Khojas: the
Disciples of the Old Man of the Mountain. Macmillan’s Magazine, vol.
xxxiv. pp. 431, 433–4. (London, 1876.)
[899] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii. p. 26.
[900] K. B. Fazalullah Lutfullah conjectures that Nūr Satāgar came to
India rather later, in the reign of Bhīma II (A.D. 1179–1242.) (Bombay
Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii. p. 38.)
[901] Khojā Vṛttānt, p. 154–8.
[902] Nūr Allāh al-Shūshtarī: Majālis al-Muʼminīn, fol. 65. (India
Office MS. No. 1400.)
[903] A town ten miles south-west of Ahmadabad.
[904] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii. pp. 66, 76.
[905] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. v. p. 89.
[906] Id. vol. ii. p. 378; vol. iii. pp. 36–7.
[907] So Firishtah, but see H. Blochmann: Contributions to the
Geography and History of Bengal. (J. A. S. B., vol. xlii. No. 1, pp.
264–6. 1873.)
[908] J. H. Ravenshaw: Gaur: its ruins and inscriptions, p. 99.
(London, 1878.) Firishtah, vol. iv. p. 337.
[909] Wise, p. 29.
[910] Census of India, 1901, vol. vi. part i. p. 170.
[911] Id. p. 30.
[912] Charles Stewart: The History of Bengal, p. 176. (London, 1813.)
H. Blochmann: Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal. (J.
A. S. B., vol. xlii. No. 1, p. 220. 1873.)
[913] The Indian Evangelical Review, p. 278. (January 1883.)
[914] Sir W. W. Hunter: The Religions of India. (The Times, February
25, 1888.) See also Wise, p. 32.
[915] Wise, p. 37.
[916] Blochmann, op. cit. p. 260.
[917] Wise, pp. 48–55.
[918] Ghulām Sarwar: Khazīnat al-Aṣfīyā, vol. ii. p. 230.
[919] Otherwise known as Shaykh Bahā al-Dīn Zakariyyā.
[920] Ibbetson, p. 163.
[921] Aṣghar ʻAlī: Jawāhir-i-Farīdī (A.H. 1033), p. 395. (Lahore,
1884.)
[922] Elliot, vol. ii. p. 548.
[923] Punjab States Gazetteers, vol. xxxvi A. Bahawalpur State.
(Lahore, 1908), p. 160 sqq. The names of some of the tribes who ascribe
their conversion to Makhdūm-i-Jahāniyān are given on p. 162.
[924] Id. p. 171.
[925] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. p. 217. Yule, p. 515.
[926] The Indian Evangelical Review, vol. xvi, pp. 52–3. (Calcutta,
1889–90.) The Contemporary Review, February 1889, p. 170. The
Spectator, October 15, 1887, p. 1382.
[927] Garcin de Tassy: La Langue et la Littérature Hindoustanies de
1850 à 1869, p. 343. (Paris, 1874.)
[928] Mawlavī Ḥasan ʻAlī furnished me with these figures some years
before his death in 1896. In an obituary notice published in “The
Moslem Chronicle” (April 4, 1896), the following quaint account is
given of his life: “In private and school life, he was marked as a very
intelligent lad and made considerable progress in his scholastic career
within a short time. He passed Entrance at a very early age and
received scholarship with which he went up to the First Art, but
shortly after his innate anxiety to seek truth prompted him to go
abroad the world, and abandoning his studies he mixed with persons of
different persuasions, Fakirs, Pandits, and Christians, entered
churches, and roamed over wilderness and forests and cities with
nothing to help him on except his sincere hopes and absolute reliance
on the mercy of the Great Lord; for one year he wandered in various
regions of religion until in 1874 he accepted the post of a head master
in a Patna school.... As he was born to become a missionary of the
Moslem faith, he felt an imperceptible craving to quit his post, from
which he used to get Rs. 100 per mensem. He tendered his resignation,
much to the reluctance of his friends, and maintained himself for some
time by publishing a monthly journal, ‘Noorul Islam.’ He gave several
lectures on Islam at Patna, and then went to Calcutta, where he
delivered his lecture in English, which produced such effect on the
audience that several European clergymen vouchsafed the truth of Islam,
and a notable gentleman, Babu Bepin Chandra Pal, was about to become
Musalman. He was invited by the people at Dacca, where his preachings
and lectures left his name imbedded in the hearts of the citizens. His
various books and pamphlets and successive lectures in Urdu and in
English in the different cities and towns in India gave him a historic
name in the world. Some one hundred men became Musalmans on hearing his
lectures and reading his books.” His missionary zeal manifested itself
up to the last hour of his life, when he was overheard to say, “Abjure
your religion and become a Musalman.” On being questioned, he said he
was talking to a Christian.
[929] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xii. p. 126.
[930] Id. vol. xvi. p. 81.
[931] Tuḥfat al-Hind, p. 3. (Dehli, A.H. 1309.)
[932] The Indian Evangelical Review, 1884, p. 128. Garcin de Tassy: La
Langue et la Littérature Hindoustanies de 1850 à 1869, p. 485. (Paris,
1874.) Garcin de Tassy: La Langue et la Littérature Hindoustanies en
1871, p. 12. (Paris, 1872.)
[933] Ibbetson, p. 184.
[934] The Rajputana Gazetteer, vol. i. p. 90; vol. ii. p. 47.
(Calcutta, 1879.)
[935] On these as they affect the Muhammadans, see the Census of India,
1901. Vol. vi. p. 172.
[936] E. T. Dalton, p. 324.
[937] For an account of such Hinduising of the aboriginal tribes see
Sir Alfred Lyall: Asiatic Studies, pp. 102–4.
[938] E. T. Dalton, p. 89.
[939] The Missionary Review of the World, N.S. vol. xiii, pp. 72–3.
(New York, 1900.)
[940] Sir Alfred Lyall (Asiatic Studies, p. 29) speaks of the
perceptible proclivity towards the faith of Islam occasionally
exhibited by some of the Hindu chiefs.
[941] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. p. xix.
[942] To give one instance only: in Ghātampur, in the district of
Cawnpore, one branch of a large family is Muslim in obedience to the
vow of their ancestor, Ghātam Deo Bais, who while praying for a son at
the shrine of a Muhammadan saint, Madār Shāh, promised that if his
prayer were granted, half his descendants should be brought up as
Muslims. (Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. vi. pp. 64, 238.)
The worship of Muhammadan saints is so common among certain low-caste
Hindus that in the Census of 1891, in the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh alone, 2,333,643 Hindus (or 5·78 per cent. of the total Hindu
population of these provinces) returned themselves as worshippers of
Muhammadan saints. (Census of India, 1891, vol. xvi. part i. pp. 217,
244.) (Allahabad, 1894.)
[943] Instances of such causes of conversion are given in the Census of
India, 1901. Vol. vi. Bengal, part. i, Appendix II.
[944] Report on the Census of the N.W.P. and Oudh, 1881, by Edward
White, p. 62. (Allahabad, 1882.)
[945] Id. p. 63.
[946] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. p. xix.
[947] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. pp. xxiii–xxiv.
[948] Khojā Vṛttānt, p. 141.
[949] Or Shams al-Dīn, according to another account, see Muḥammad
Haydar, p. 433 (n. 2).
[950] Firishtah, vol. iv. pp. 464, 469.
[951] F. Drew: The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories, pp. 58, 155.
(London, 1875.)
[952] Drew, op. cit. p. 359.
[953] On this word see Yule’s Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 290.
[954] Aḥmad Shāh: Four years in Tibet, pp. 45, 74. (Benares, 1906.)
[955] Broomhall, p. 206. Tu Wen-siu, the leader of the Panthay
rebellion from 1856 to 1873, who for sixteen years was practically
Sultan of half the province of Yunnan, issued a proclamation in Lhasa
itself, at the outset of his revolt, in order to gain Muhammadan
recruits. (Id. p. 132.)
[956] Mission d’Ollone, pp. 207, 226, 233.
[957] Broomhall, p. 206.
[958] A. Bastian: Die Geschichte der Indochinesen, p. 159. (Leipzig,
1866.)
[959] R. du M. M., tome i. p. 275. (1907.)
[960] Kanz al-ʻUmmāl, vol. v. p. 202.
[961] Bretschneider (2), p. 6.
[962] On the origin of this name, see Devéria, p. 311; Mission
d’Ollone, p. 420 sqq.
[963] De Thiersant, vol. i. pp. 19–20.
[964] D’Ollone gives the following warning as to the uncertainty of our
knowledge of Islam in China:—“Or rien n’est moins connu que l’Islam
chinois. On ne sait exactement ni comment il s’est propagé dans
l’Empire, ni combien d’adeptes il a réunis, ni si sa doctrine est pure,
ni quelle est son organisation, ni s’il possède des relations avec le
reste du monde musulman.” (Mission d’Ollone, p. 1.) The references to
China in Arabic and Persian writers have been collected by Schefer,
“Notice sur les relations des peuples musulmans avec les Chinois.”
[965] Chavannes, p. 172.
[966] De Thiersant, vol. i. pp. 70–1.
[967] This legend has been exhaustively discussed by Broomhall: Islam
in China, cap. iv, vii.
[968] Thus the people of Khotan claim that Islam was first brought to
their land by Jaʻfar, a cousin of the Prophet (Grenard: Mission
Dutreuil de Rhins, t. iii. p. 2), and the Chams of Cambodia ascribe
their conversion to one of the fathers-in-law of Muḥammad. (R. du M.
M., vol. ii. p. 138.)
[969] De Thiersant, vol. i. p. 153.
[970] Reinaud: Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans
dans l’Inde et à la Chine, i. pp. 13, 64. (Paris, 1845.)
[971] Id. p. 58.
[972] That there was some migration westward also of Chinese into the
conquered countries of Islam, where they would come within the sphere
of its religious influence, we learn from the diary of a Chinese monk
who travelled through Central Asia to Persia in the years 1221–4;
speaking of Samarqand, he says, “Chinese workmen are living
everywhere.” (Bretschneider (1), vol. i. p. 78.)
[973] Howorth, vol. i. p. 161.
[974] For Chinese biographies of Sayyid Ajall, see R. du M. M., viii.
p. 344 sqq. and xi. p. 3 sqq.; Mission d’Ollone, p. 25 sqq.
[975] Broomhall, p. 127.
[976] Mission d’Ollone, pp. 435–6.
[977] Howorth, vol. i. p. 257.
[978] Marco Polo, vol. i. pp. 219, 274; vol. ii. p. 66.
[979] Rashīd al-Dīn (Yule’s Cathay, p. 9).
[980] Vol. iv. pp. 270, 283.
[981] Id. p. 258.
[982] ʻAbd al-Razzāq al-Samarqandī: Maṭlaʻ al-saʻdayn, foll. 60–1.
(Blochet, pp. 249–52.)
[983] Zenker, pp. 798–9. Mélanges Orientaux, p. 65. (Publications de
l’École des Langues Orientales Vivantes, Sér. ii. t. 9.) (Paris, 1883.)
[984] Schefer, pp. 29–30. Zenker, p. 796.
[985] De Thiersant, tome i. pp. 154–6.
[986] Broomhall, p. 92 sqq. Devéria: Musulmans et Manichéens chinois.
(J. A. 9me Sér., tome x. p. 447 sqq.)
[987] De Thiersant, tome i. pp. 163–4.
[988] The Muhammadans are said to be more prolific than the ordinary
Chinese, and the Chinese census, which counts according to families,
estimates six for a Muhammadan family and five for the ordinary
Chinese. (Broomhall, pp. 197, 203.)
[989] Broomhall, in chap. xii. of his Islam in China, gives the total
as between five and ten millions. D’Ollone puts it as low as four
millions (p. 430).
[990] Vide infra, pp. 309–310.
[991] Clark Abel: Narrative of a journey in the interior of China, p.
361. (London, 1818.)
[992] De Thiersant, tome ii. pp. 361–3.
[993] One missionary, writing from Peking in 1721, says, “La secte des
Mahométans s’étend de plus en plus.” (Lettres édifiantes et curieuses,
tome xix. p. 140.)
[994] J. B. du Halde: Description géographique, historique,
chronologique, politique et physique de l’Empire de la Chine, tome iii.
p. 64. (Paris, 1735.)
[995] Anderson, p. 151. Grosier, tome iv. p. 507.
[996] Thamarāt al-Funūn, 17th Shawwāl, p. 3. (Bayrūt, A.H. 1311.)
[997] Mission d’Ollone, p. 279. R. du M. M., tome ix. pp. 577, 578.
[998] Broomhall, p. 226. Grosier, tome iv. p. 508.
[999] Vasil’ev, p. 15.
[1000] Broomhall, p. 237.
[1001] Id. pp. 186, 228.
[1002] Arminius Vambéry: Travels in Central Asia, p. 404. (London,
1864.)
[1003] Vasil’ev, p. 16.
[1004] De Thiersant, tome ii. pp. 367, 372.
[1005] De Thiersant, tome i. p. 247. Thamarāt al-Funūn, 28th Shaʻbān,
p. 3.
[1006] Broomhall, p. 224.
[1007] Du Halde, loc. cit. Broomhall, p. 282.
[1008] Mission d’Ollone, pp. 210, 431.
[1009] Broomhall, pp. 274, 282.
[1010] P. 307.
[1011] Broomhall, pp. 231–2.
[1012] W. J. Smith, p. 175. Mission d’Ollone, p. 407 sqq.
[1013] Thamarāt al-Funūn, loc. cit.
[1014] Broomhall, p. 240.
[1015] The Missionary Review of the World, vol. xxv. p. 786 (1912).
[1016] Mission d’Ollone, p. 431.
[1017] R. du M. M., iii. p. 124 (1907).
[1018] Broomhall, pp. 242, 286, 292 sqq.
[1019] Vasil’ev, pp. 3, 5, 14, 17.
[1020] For a longer list of Muhammadan insurrections, see Mission
d’Ollone, p. 436.
[1021] Sayyid ʻAlī Akbar: Khitāy Nāmah, p. 83. “If the emperor of China
embraces Islam, his subjects must inevitably become Muslims too,
because they all worship him to such an extent that they accept
whatever he says, and when that light coming from the West grows in
strength, the unbelievers of the East will come flocking into Islam
without showing any contention, because they are free from all
fanaticism in matters of religion.”
[1022] Thamarāt al-Funūn, 26th Shawwāl, p. 3. (A.H. 1311.)
[1023] An excellent map of the extent of Islam in Africa is to be found
in “The International Review of Missions,” vol. i. p. 652.
[1024] Fournel, vol. i. p. 271.
[1025] i.e. the diviner or priestess; her real name is unknown.
[1026] Fournel, vol. i. p. 224.
[1027] Makkarī, vol. i. p. 253.
[1028] Makkarī, vol. i. p. lxv.
[1029] Fournel, vol. i. p. 270.
[1030] For these and the heretical movements that reveal survivals of
the earlier Berber faith, see Goldziher, Materialien zur Kenntniss der
Almohadenbewegung in Nordafrika (Z D M G, vol. xli, p. 37 sqq.).
[1031] On this word, see Doutté, Notes sur l’Islam maghribin. (Revue de
l’histoire des religions, tom. xli. p. 24–6.)
[1032] Ibn abī Zarʻ, pp. 168–73. A. Müller, vol. ii. pp. 611–13.
[1033] Ibn abī Zarʻ, p. 250. Goldziher, op. laud., p. 71.
[1034] Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 11.)
[1035] مرابط.
[1036] Doutté, xl. p. 354; xli. pp. 26–7.
[1037] Depont et Coppolani, p. 127 sq.
[1038] It is not the place here to deal with the rise and political
history of the various kingdoms of the Western Sudan; this has been
done most fully for the English reader by Lady Lugard in her work
entitled, “A Tropical Dependency. An Outline of the Ancient History of
the Western Sudan, with an Account of the Modern Settlement of Northern
Nigeria.” (London, 1905.) See also H. F. Helmolt: The World’s History,
vol. iii. chap. ix. (London, 1903.)
[1039] Blau, p. 322.
[1040] Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 7, 77.)
[1041] Meyer, p. 91.
[1042] Taʼrīkh al-Sūdān, p. 3.
[1043] Jinnī or Dienné.
[1044] So Meyer following Barth; the Taʼrīkh al-Sūdān (p. 12) places
the date about three centuries earlier.
[1045] Félix Dubois gives a plan and reconstruction of this mosque,
which was destroyed by order of Shaykhu Aḥmadu about 1830, in
“Tombouctou la Mystérieuse,” chap. ix.
[1046] Taʼrīkh al-Sūdān, pp. 12–13.
[1047] Taʼrīkh al-Sūdān, p. 21.
[1048] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. pp. 421–2.
[1049] Ramusio, tom. i. p. 78.
[1050] Winwood Reade describes them as “a tall, handsome,
light-coloured race, Moslems in religion, possessing horses and large
herds of cattle, but also cultivating cotton, ground-nuts, and various
kinds of corn. I was much pleased with their kind and hospitable
manners, the grave and decorous aspect of their women, the cleanliness
and silence of their villages.” (W. Winwood Reade: African Sketchbook,
vol. i. p. 303.)
[1051] Waitz, IIer Theil, pp. 18–19.
[1052] Palmer (p. 59) places its introduction into Kano between A.D.
1349 and 1385, another Hausa chronicle makes the reign of the first
Muhammadan king of Zozo begin about 1456. (Journal of the African
Society, vol. ix. p. 161.)
[1053] For the various enumerations of these, see Meyer, p. 27.
[1054] As in other parts of the Muslim world, tradition places the
first introduction of Islam in the lifetime of the founder and gives
the name of al-Fazāzī, a reputed companion of the Prophet, as the
apostle of the Hausa people. (J. Lippert: Sudanica. MSOS, iii. part 3,
p. 204. Berlin, 1900.)
[1055] Mischlich and Lippert, pp. 138–9.
[1056] Meyer, loc. cit. Artin Pasha (p. 62) puts the beginning of this
infiltration of Muslim Arabs as early as the eighth century.
[1057] Becker, Geschichte des östlichen Sūdān, p. 162–3. Blau, p. 322.
Oppel, p. 289. At the close of the fourteenth century ʻUmar b. Idrīs
moved his capital to the west of Lake Chad in the territory of Bornu,
by which name the kingdom of Kanem became henceforth known.
[1058] Maurice Delafosse, p. 87.
[1059] Becker: Geschichte des östlichen Sūdān, pp. 161–2.
[1060] R. C. Slatin Pasha: Fire and Sword in the Sudan, pp. 38, 40–2.
(London, 1896.)
[1061] Westermann, p. 628.
[1062] Oppel, p. 292. Meyer, pp. 36–7. Westermann, pp. 629–30.
[1063] Fulbe (sing. Pul) is the name by which these people call
themselves; upwards of a hundred variants are applied to them by their
neighbours, the commonest of which are Fulah and Fulani. (Meyer, p.
28.)
[1064] Francis Moore, pp. 75–7.
[1065] R. E. Dennett: Nigerian Studies, pp. 12, 75. (London, 1910.)
[1066] Islam and Missions, pp. 71–3. The Moslem World, pp. 296–7, 351.
[1067] Church Missionary Review (1908), p. 640.
[1068] A town on the Niger, just south of the northern boundary of
Southern Nigeria.
[1069] Church Missionary Society Intelligencer (1902), p. 353.
[1070] Rinn, pp. 403–4.
[1071] Le Chatelier (1), pp. 231–3.
[1072] Le Chatelier (2), pp. 89–91.
[1073] Rinn, p. 175.
[1074] Bonet-Maury, p. 239.
[1075] Id. p. 230.
[1076] Le Chatelier (2), pp. 100–9.
[1077] Rinn, p. 174.
[1078] Oppel, pp. 292–3. Blyden, p. 10. Le Chatelier (3), p. 167 sqq.
[1079] Delle Navigationi di Messer Alvise da Ca da Mosto. (A.D. 1454.)
Ramusio, tome i. p. 101.
[1080] Blyden, pp. 357–60.
[1081] This has been set forth in detail by Le Chatelier (3), p. 225
sqq.
[1082] Le Chatelier (3), p. 237. “Samory n’intervint pas directement
dans la question religieuse.” L. G. Binger arrived at the same
conclusion, as the result of personal acquaintance with Samory. (Le
Péril de l’Islam, p. 20.) (Paris, 1906.)
[1083] Le Chatelier (3), pp. 238–40.
[1084] Le Chatelier (2), p. 112. R. du M. M., vol. xii. p. 22.
[1085] “The Fulanis are all fervent Mohammedans. Wherever there are
Fulanis there will be found a mosque.” (Haywood, p. 200.)
[1086] Le Chatelier (3), pp. 231, 273, 303. Westermann, pp. 632–3.
[1087] Muḥammad b. ʻUthmān al Ḥashāʼishī, p. 84 sqq.
[1088] In 1895 Sīdī al-Mahdī, the son and successor of Sīdī Muḥammad
al-Sanūsī, migrated to Kufra, as being more central than Jaghabūb
(Muḥammad b. ʻUthmān al-Ḥashāʼishī, pp. 111–15), but later went further
south to the region of Borku and Tibesti, where he died in 1902. The
head of the order in 1908 was Sīdī Aḥmad, a relative of the founder.
(J. C. E. Falls: Drei Jahre in der Libyschen Wüste, p. 274.) (Freiburg,
1911.)
[1089] Riedel (1), pp. 7, 59, 162.
[1090] G. Nachtigal: Sahara und Sudan, vol. ii. p. 175. (Berlin,
1879–81.)
[1091] Duveyrier, p. 45.
[1092] Paulitschke, p. 214.
[1093] H. Duveyrier: La Confrérie musulmane de Sîdi Mohammed Ben ʼAlî
Es-Senousî, passim. (Paris, 1886.) Louis Rinn: Marabouts et Khouans,
pp. 481–513. N. Slousch: Les Senoussiya en Tripolitaine. (R. du M. M.,
vol. i. p. 169 sqq.). For a bibliography of the Sanūsiyyah movement,
see Der Islam, iii. pp. 141–2, 312.
[1094] R. du M. M., vol. i. p. 181; vol. viii. pp. 64–5.
[1095] Joseph Thomson (2), p. 185.
[1096] Oppel, p. 303.
[1097] In the Muri Province of Northern Nigeria.
[1098] Journal of the African Society, vol. vii. pp. 379–81.
[1099] Haywood, p. 33.
[1100] Claude George: The Rise of British West Africa, pp. 120–1.
(London, 1902.)
[1101] Islam and Missions, pp. 73–4.
[1102] Lippert: Über die Bedeutung der Haussanation für unsere Togo-
und Kamerunkolonie, p. 200. MSOS, Band x. (1907), Abteilung III.
[1103] Waitz: IIer Theil, p. 250.
[1104] C. S. Salmon, p. 891.
[1105] Pierre Bouche, p. 256.
[1106] Blyden, p. 357.
[1107] C. S. Salmon, p. 887.
[1108] Blyden, p. 202. Westermann, pp. 633–4.
[1109] Situated on an island about 2° S. of Zanzibar.
[1110] “Hum Mouro chamado Zaide, que foi neto de Hocem filho de Ale o
sobrinho de Mahamed.” (De Barros, Dec. i. Liv. viii. cap. iv. p. 211.)
[1111] Ibn Khaldūn, vol. iii. pp. 98–100.
[1112] Possibly a mistake for al-Ḥasā. See Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome ii. pp.
247–8.
[1113] Or (to give it its Arabic name) Maqdishū.
[1114] J. de Barros: Dec. i. Liv. viii. cap. iv. pp. 211–12.
[1115] De Barros, id. pp. 224–5. See also Justus Strandes: Die
Portugiesenzeit von Deutsch- und Englisch-Ostafrika, p. 81 sqq.
(Berlin, 1899.)
[1116] Kitāb ʻajāʼib al-Hind ou Livre des Merveilles de l’Inde, publié
par P. A. van der Lith, pp. 51–60. (Leiden, 1883.)
[1117] Mohammedanism in Central Africa, by Joseph Thomson, p. 877.
[1118] Roscoe, p. 229 sq.
[1119] Zwemer, p. 236. Gairdner (p. 26) gives the number of Muhammadans
as 200,000 out of a population of four millions, but he does not state
from what source he derives these figures. Roscoe (p. 6) gives the
total population of Uganda as about one million only.
[1120] Richter, pp. 146–7, 154. Merensky, p. 156. Klamroth, p. 4.
[1121] R. du M. M., vol. ix. (1909), p. 322.
[1122] Oscar Baumann: Usambara und seine Nachbargebiete, pp. 141, 153.
(Berlin, 1891.)
[1123] Becker, Islam in Deutsch-Ostafrika, p. 10.
[1124] Id. p. 13 sqq. Klamroth, pp. 14–28.
[1125] Id. p. 53.
[1126] Klamroth, pp. 21, 25, 54.
[1127] Id. pp. 23–4.
[1128] Id. p. 26.
[1129] Id. p. 67.
[1130] Becker: Islam in Deutsch-Ostafrika, p. 14. The Moslem World,
vol. ii. p. 3 sqq.
[1131] A contemporary Ethiopic account of these tribes,—Geschichte der
Galla. Bericht eines abessinischen Mönches über die Invasion der Galla
in sechzehnten Jahrhundert. Text und Übersetzung hrsg. von A. W.
Schleichler (Berlin, 1893),—seems certainly to represent them as
heathen, though no detailed account is given of their religion. Reclus
(tome x. p. 330), however, supposes them to have been Muhammadan at the
time of their invasion.
[1132] Henry Salt: A Voyage to Abyssinia, p. 299. (London, 1814.)
[1133] James Bruce: Travels to discover the source of the Nile, 2nd ed.
vol. iii. p. 243. (Edinburgh, 1805.)
[1134] Munzinger, p. 408.
[1135] I. L. Krapf: Reisen in Ost-Africa, ausgeführt in den Jahren
1837–55, vol. i. p. 106. (Kornthal, 1858.)
[1136] Arabia Deserta, vol. ii. p. 168.
[1137] Id., vol. ii. p. 109.
[1138] Morié, vol. ii. p. 248.
[1139] Reclus, tome. x. p. 309. Basset, pp. 270–1.
[1140] When the Roman Catholics opened a mission among the Gallas in
1846, Abba Baghibò said to them: “Had you come thirty years ago, not
only I, but all my countrymen might have embraced your religion; but
now it is impossible.” (Massaja, vol. iv. p. 103.)
[1141] Da Zeila alle frontiere del Caffa, vol. ii. p. 160. (Rome,
1886–7.) Massaja, vol. iv. p. 103; vol. vi. p. 10.
[1142] Massaja, vol. iv. p. 102.
[1143] Speaking of the failure of Christian missions, Cecchi says: “di
ciò si deve ricercare la causa nello espandersi che fece quaggiù in
questi ultimi anni l’islamismo, portato da centinaja di preti e
mercanti musulmani, cui non facevano difetto i mezzi, l’astuzia e la
piena conoscenza della lingua.” (Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 342.)
[1144] Id., p. 343.
[1145] Reclus, tome xiii. p. 834.
[1146] The Lega are found in long. 9° to 9° 30′ and lat. E. 34° 35′ to
35°.
[1147] Reclus, tome x. p. 350.
[1148] Paulitschke, pp. 330–1.
[1149] Ibn Ḥawqal, p. 41.
[1150] Abu’l-Fidā, tome ii. 1re partie, pp. 231–2.
[1151] Documents sur l’histoire, la géographie et le commerce de
l’Afrique Orientale, recueillis par M. Guillain. Deuxième partie, tome
i. p. 399. (Paris, 1856.)
[1152] R. F. Burton: First Footprints in East Africa, pp. 76, 404.
(London, 1856.)
[1153] R. du M. M., vi. p. 288. (1908.)
[1154] The Cape of Good Hope was in the possession of the Dutch from
1652 to 1795; restored to them after the Peace of Amiens in 1802, it
was re-occupied by the British as soon as war broke out again.
[1155] Among these was Shaykh Yūsuf, a religious teacher of great
influence in Java and the last champion of the independence of Bantam;
in 1694 he was removed by the Dutch to Cape Colony as a prisoner of
state, together with his family and numerous attendants; his tomb is
still regarded as a holy place. (G. M. Theal: History and Ethnography
of Africa south of the Zambesi, vol. ii. p. 263.) (London, 1909.)
[1156] M. J. de Goeje: Mohammedaansche Propaganda, pp. 2, 6.
(Overgedrukt uit de Nederlandsche Spectator, No. 51, 1881.)
[1157] Attention was drawn to them in 1814 by a Mr. Campbell. See
William Adams: The Modern Voyager and Traveller, vol. i. p. 93.
(London, 1834.)
[1158] Sir T. E. Colebrooke: The Life of H. T. Colebrooke, p. 335.
(London, 1873.)
[1159] F. Coillard: Au Cap de Bonne Espérance. (Journal des missions
évangéliques, avril 1899, p. 265.)
[1160] Kumm, p. 233.
[1161] C. Snouck Hurgronje (3), vol. ii. pp. 296–7.
[1162] Jacques Bonzon: Les Missionaires de l’Islam en Afrique. (Revue
Chrétienne, tome xiii. p. 295.) (Paris, 1893.)
[1163] G. Ferrand, Les Musulmans à Madagascar, pp. 19, 50 sqq., 138.
(Paris, 1891.) Id. Les Migrations musulmanes et juives à Madagascar.
(Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, vol. lii. p. 381 sqq.)
[1164] Richard F. Burton (1), vol. i. p. 256.
[1165] Travels in the Interior of Africa, chap. xxv. ad fin.
[1166] D. J. East, pp. 118–20. W. Winwood Reade, vol. i. p. 312.
Blyden, pp. 13, 202.
[1167] Bishop Crowther on Islam in Western Africa. (Church Missionary
Intelligencer, p. 254, April 1888.)
[1168] D. J. East, pp. 112–13. Blyden, p. 202.
[1169] It is said that over a thousand missionaries of Islam leave
Tripoli every year to work in the Sudan. (Paulitschke, p. 331.)
[1170] For a detailed examination of these points of contact, see
Forget, p. 28 sqq. Merensky, p. 155.
[1171] Sir Bartle Frere (1), pp. 18–19.
[1172] E. W. Blyden, pp. 18–24. E. Allégret, p. 200. Westermann, pp.
644–5.
In a very interesting, but now forgotten, debate before the
Anthropological Society of London, on the Efforts of Missionaries among
Savages, a case was mentioned of a Christian missionary in Africa who
married a negress: the feeling against him in consequence was so strong
that he had to leave the colony. The Muslim missionary labours under no
such disadvantage. (Journal of the Anthropological Society of London,
vol. iii. 1865.)
The contrast between the way in which Christianity and Islam present
themselves to the African is well brought out by one who is himself a
Negro, in the following passage:—“Tandis que les missions renvoient à
une époque indéfinie l’établissement du pastorat indigène, les prêtres
musulmans pénètrent dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique, trouvent un accès
facile chez les païens et les convertissent à l’islam. De sorte
qu’aujourd’hui les nègres regardent l’islam comme la religion des
noirs, et le christianisme comme la religion des blancs. Le
christianisme, pensent-ils, appelle le nègre au salut, mais lui assigne
une place tellement basse que, découragé, il se dit: ‘Je n’ai ni part
ni portion dans cette affaire.’ L’islam appelle le nègre au salut et
lui dit: ‘Il ne dépend que de toi pour arriver aussi haut que
possible.’ Alors, le nègre enthousiasmé se livre corps et âme au
service de cette religion.” L’islam et le christianisme en Afrique
d’après un Africain. (Journal des Missions Évangéliques. 63e année, p.
207.) (Paris, 1888.)
[1173] E. D. Morel: Nigeria, its people and its problems, pp. 216–17.
(London, 1911.)
[1174] Ibn Khallikān, vol. i. p. 18.
[1175] “Extracts from the Koran form the earliest reading lessons of
children, and the commentaries and other works founded upon it furnish
the principal subjects of the advanced studies. Schools of different
grades have existed for centuries in various interior negro countries,
and under the provision of law, in which even the poor are educated at
the public expense, and in which the deserving are carried on many
years through long courses of regular instruction. Nor is the system
always confined to the Arabic language, or to the works of Arabic
writers. A number of native languages have been reduced to writing,
books have been translated from the Arabic and original works have been
written in them. Schools also have been kept in which native languages
are taught.” Condition and Character of Negroes in Africa. By Theodore
Dwight. (Methodist Quarterly Review, January 1869.)
Dr. Blyden (pp. 206–7) mentions the following books as read by Muslims
in Western Africa: Maqāmāt of Ḥarīrī, portions of Aristotle and Plato
translated into Arabic, an Arabic version of Hippocrates, and the
Arabic New Testament and Psalms issued by the American Bible Society.
For the literature of the Muslims in East Africa, see Becker: Islam in
Deutsch Ostafrika, p. 18 sqq.
[1176] Mohammedanism in Africa, by R. Bosworth Smith. (The Nineteenth
Century, December 1887, pp. 798–800.)
[1177] Le Chatelier, (3), p. 348.
[1178] Forget, p. 95. Merensky, p. 156. (“Den Vertretern des Islam aber
stand ihr Vorteil, der Gewinn, den die Unterdrückung der Eingeborenen
bringt, höher als die Ausbreitung ihres Glaubens. Hätte man die Völker
Afrikas durch die Macht geistiger Waffen unter gütigem Entgegenkommen
zu Mohammedanern gemacht, so wären sie Glaubensgenossen,
gleichberechtigte Brüder, die man nicht mehr berauben, zu Sklaven
machen, oder als Sklaven nur Arbeit ausnutzen könnte.”)
[1179] Westermann, p. 643. L. de Contenson, p. 244. Kumm, p. 122.
[1180] Thus Merensky, discussing the failure of Islam to dominate the
whole of Africa after centuries of occupation says:—“Wir sehen die
Ursache für diese merkwürdige Erscheinung in den Beziehungen, in denen
bei den Mohammedanern die äussere Gewalt zum Islam und zur Ausbreitung
des Islam steht. Beides steht und fällt miteinander, dringt miteinander
vor und geht miteinander auch wieder zurück.” (p. 156.)
[1181] Niemann, p. 337.
[1182] Reinaud: Géographie d’Aboulféda, tome i. p. cccxxxix.
[1183] Groeneveldt, pp. 14, 15.
[1184] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. pp. 66, 80.
[1185] Veth (3), vol. i. p. 231. Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. p. 89.
[1186] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. pp. 230, 234.
[1187] Snouck Hurgronje (1), pp. 8–9.
[1188] Padre Gainza, quoted by C. Semper, p. 67.
[1189] Crawfurd (2), vol. ii. p. 265.
[1190] Snouck Hurgronje: L’Arabie et les Indes Néerlandaises. (Revue de
l’Histoire des Religions, vol. lvii. p. 69 sqq.)
[1191] De Hollander, vol. i. p. 581. Veth (1), p. 60.
[1192] This vague reference would fit either Arabia, Persia or India;
but if such a person as Jūhan Shāh ever existed, he probably came from
the Coromandel or Malabar coast. (Chronique du Royaume d’Atcheh,
traduite du Malay par Ed. Dulaurier, p. 7.)
[1193] Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 284.
[1194] Veth (1), p. 61.
[1195] Yule’s Marco Polo, vol. ii. pp. 294, 303.
[1196] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. pp. 230–6.
[1197] Groeneveldt, p. 94.
[1198] At the height of its power, it stretched from 2° N. to 2° S. on
the west coast, and from 1° N. to 2° S. on the east coast, but in the
sixteenth century it had lost its control over the east coast. (De
Hollander, vol. i. p. 3.)
[1199] Marsden, p. 343.
[1200] J. H. Moor. (Appendix, p. 1.)
[1201] Marsden, p. 355.
[1202] Godsdienstige verschijnselen en toestanden in Oost-Indië. (Uit
de Koloniale Verslagen van 1886 en 1887.) Med. Ned. Zendelinggen. vol.
xxxii. pp. 175–6. (1888.) In 1909, out of a total of 500,000 Bataks,
300,000 were still pagan, but 125,000 were Muslim and 80,000 Christian.
(R. du M. M., vol. viii. p. 183.)
[1203] J. Warneck: Die Religion der Batak, p. 122. (Leipzig, 1909.)
[1204] G. R. Simon: Die Propaganda des Halbmondes. Ein Beitrag zur
Skizzierung des Islam unter den Batakken, pp. 425, 429–430. (Allgemeine
Missions-Zeitschrift, vol. xxvii. 1900.)
[1205] R. du M. M., vol. viii. (1909), p. 183.
[1206] A. L. van Hassalt, pp. 55, 68.
[1207] Med. Ned. Zendelinggen. id. p. 173. (Koloniaal Verslag van 1911,
p. 26; 1912, p. 17.)
[1208] Uit het Koloniaal Verslag van 1889. (Med. Ned. Zendelinggen.
vol. xxxiv. p. 168.) (1890.)
[1209] Koloniaal Verslag van 1910, p. 30.
[1210] De Hollander, vol. i. p. 703.
[1211] Koloniaal Verslag van 1904, p. 80; 1905, p. 46; 1909, p. 47;
1910, p. 33; 1911, p. 29; 1912, p. 21.
[1212] Canne, p. 510.
[1213] Marsden, p. 301.
[1214] Niemann, pp. 356–9.
[1215] J. H. Moor, p. 255.
[1216] “Depois que estes de induzidos por os Mouros Parseos, e
Guzarates (que alli vieram residir por causa do commercio), de Gentios
os convertêram á secta de Mahamed. Da qual conversão por alli
concorrerem varias nações, começou laurar esta inferna peste pela
virzinhança de Malaca.” (De Barros, Dec. ii. Liv. vi. cap. i. p. 15.)
[1217] Aristide Marre: Malâka. Histoire des rois malays de Malâka.
Traduit et extrait du Livre des Annales malayses, intitulé en arabe
Selâlet al Selâtyn, p. 8. (Paris, 1874.)
[1218] Crawfurd (1), pp. 241–2.
[1219] De Barros, Dec. iv. Liv. ii. cap. 1.
[1220] Barbosa, writing in 1516, speaks of the numerous Muhammadan
merchants that frequented the port of Queda. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 317.)
[1221] The form مزلف does not actually occur in the Qurʼān; reference
is probably made to some such passage as xxvi. 90: وَأزْلِفَتِ آلْجَنَّةُ
اِلْمُتَّقِينَ “And paradise shall be brought near the pious.”
[1222] A translation of the Keddah Annals, by Lieut.-Col. James Low,
vol. iii. pp. 474–7.
[1223] A translation of the Keddah Annals, by Lieut.-Col. James Low,
vol. iii. p. 480.
[1224] Newbold, vol. i. p. 252.
[1225] McNair, pp. 226–9.
[1226] J. H. Moor, p. 242.
[1227] Newbold, vol. ii. pp. 106, 396.
[1228] R. du M. M., tome ii (1907), pp. 137–8.
[1229] Snouck Hurgronje (1), p. 9.
[1230] Veth (3), vol. i. p. 215. Raffles (ed. of 1830), vol. ii. pp.
103, 104, 183.
[1231] The situation of Chermen is not certain. Veth (3), vol. i. p.
230, conjectures that it may have been in India, but Rouffaer (p. 115n)
gives good reasons for placing it in Sumatra.
[1232] A description of the present condition of these tombs, on one of
which traces of an inscription in Arabic characters are still visible,
is given by J. F. G. Brumund, p. 185.
[1233] Groeneveldt, pp. vii. 49–50.
[1234] Kern, p. 21.
[1235] Veth (3), vol. i. pp. 233–42. Raffles, vol. ii. pp. 113–33.
[1236] Rouffaer, however, places this Champa, not in Cambodia, but on
the north coast of Atjeh and identifies it with the modern Djeumpa.
(Encyclopaedie van N.-I., vol. iv. p. 206.)
[1237] Remains of minarets and Muhammadan tombs are still to be found
in Champa. (Bastian, vol. i. pp. 498–9.)
[1238] This genealogical table will make clear these relationships, as
well as others referred to later in the text:—
King of Champa.
|
+---------+----------+
| |
a daughter a daughter = an
named Arab missionary
A concubine = Angka Wijāya = Dārāwati |
| king of Majapahit | |
| | |
| Arya Damar |
| | Raden Raḥmat.
| Raden Ḥusayn |
| |
| +--------------------------------------+-----+
| | |
| --- a daughter =
| | Raden Paku
Raden Patah = a daughter
[1239] The memory of this woman is held in great honour by the
Javanese, and many come to pray by her grave. See Brumund, p. 186.
[1240] Veth (3), vol. i. pp. 235–6.
[1241] This mosque is still standing and is looked upon by the Javanese
as one of the most sacred objects in their island.
[1242] There seems little doubt that this date is too early. A study of
the Portuguese authorities points to the conclusion that Majapahit did
not fall until forty years later. (Rouffaer, p. 144.)
[1243] The people of the Bali to the present day have resisted the most
zealous efforts of the Muhammadans to induce them to accept the faith
of Islam, though from time to time conversions have been made and a
small native Muhammadan community has been formed, numbering about 3000
souls out of a population of over 862,000. The favourable situation of
the island for purposes of trade has always attracted a number of
foreigners to its shores, who have in many cases taken up a permanent
residence in the island. While some of these settlers have always held
themselves aloof from the natives of the country, others have formed
matrimonial alliances with them and have consequently become merged
into the mass of the population. It is owing to the efforts of the
latter that Islam has made this very slow but sure progress, and the
Muhammadans of Bali are said to form an energetic and flourishing
community, full of zeal for the promotion of their faith, which at
least impresses their pagan neighbours, though not successful in
persuading them to deny their favourite food of swine’s flesh for the
sake of the worship of Allāh. (Liefrinck, pp. 241–3.)
[1244] Encyclopaedie van N.-I., vol. ii. p. 523.
[1245] Veth (3), vol. i. pp. 245, 284.
[1246] Raffles, vol. ii. p. 316.
[1247] Veth (3), vol. i. pp. 285–6.
[1248] Veth (3), vol. i. pp. 305, 318–9.
[1249] A traveller in Java in 1596 mentions two or three heathen
kingdoms with a large heathen population. (Niemann, p. 342.)
[1250] Raffles, vol. ii. pp. 132–3.
[1251] Metzger, p. 279.
[1252] L. W. C. van den Berg (1), pp. 35–6. C. Poensen, pp. 3–8.
[1253] De Barros, Dec. iii. Liv. v. Cap. v. pp. 579–80. Argensola, p.
11 B.
[1254] At this period, the Moluccas were for the most part under the
rule of four princes, viz. those of Ternate, Tidor, Gilolo and Batjan.
The first was by far the most powerful: his territory extended over
Ternate and the neighbouring small islands, a portion of Halemahera, a
considerable part of the Celebes, Amboina and the Banda islands. The
Sultan of Tidor ruled over Tidor and some small neighbouring islands, a
portion of Halemahera, the islands lying between it and New Guinea,
together with the west coast of the latter and a part of Ceram. The
territory of the Sultan of Gilolo seems to have been confined to the
central part of Halemahera and to a part of the north coast of Ceram;
while the Sultan of Batjan ruled chiefly over the Batjan and Obi
groups. (De Hollander, vol. i. p. 5.)
[1255] Massimiliano Transilvano. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 351 D.)
[1256] P. J. B. C. Robidé van der Aa, p. 18.
[1257] Pigafetta, tome i. pp. 365, 368.
[1258] “Segundo a conta que elles dam, ao tempo que os nossos
descubriram aquellas Ilhas, haveria pouco mais de oitenta annos, que
nellas tinha entrada esta peste.” (J. de Barros: Da Asia, Dec. iii.
Liv. v. Cap. v. p. 580.)
[1259] De Barros, id. ib.
[1260] Simon, p. 13.
[1261] Bokemeyer, p. 39.
[1262] Simon, p. 13.
[1263] Argensola, pp. 3–4.
[1264] Id. p. 15 B.
[1265] Id. pp. 97, 98.
[1266] Id. pp. 155 and 158, where he calls Ternate “este receptaculo de
setas, donde tienen escuela todas las apostasias; y particularmente los
torpes sequazes de Mahoma. Y desde el anno de mil y quinientos y
ochenta y cinco, en que los Holandeses tentaron aquellos mares, hasta
este tiempo no han cessado de traer sectarios, y capitanes pyratas.
Estos llevan las riquezas de Assia, y en su lugar dexan aquella falsa
dotrina, con que hazen infrutuosa la conversion de tantas almas.”
[1267] Their descendants are still to be found in the province of
Cavité in the island of Luzon. (Crawfurd (1), p. 85.)
[1268] W. F. Andriessen, p. 222.
[1269] T. Forrest, p. 68.
[1270] Pigafetta. (Ramusio, vol. i. p. 366.)
[1271] Campen, p. 346. Koloniaal Verslag van 1910, p. 56; 1911, p. 52.
[1272] Dulaurier, p. 528.
[1273] Damak, on the north coast of Java, opposite the south of Borneo.
[1274] Hageman, pp. 236–9.
[1275] Pigafetta. (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 363–4.)
[1276] This kingdom had been founded by a colony from the Hindu kingdom
of Majapahit (De Hollander, vol. ii. p. 67), and would naturally have
come under Muslim influence after the conversion of the Javanese.
[1277] Dozy (1), p. 386.
[1278] Veth (2), vol. i. p. 193.
[1279] Olivier de Noort. (Histoire générale des voyages, vol. xiv. p.
225.) (The Hague, 1756.)
[1280] i.e. Pure in Religion; he died about 1677; his father does not
seem to have taken a Muhammadan name, at least he is only known by his
heathen name of Panembahan Giri-Kusuma. (Netscher, pp. 14–15.)
[1281] Thomas Forrest, p. 371.
[1282] Essay towards an account of Sulu, p. 557.
[1283] B. Panciera, p. 161.
[1284] J. Hageman, p. 224.
[1285] Veth (2), vol. i. p. 179.
[1286] De Hollander, vol. ii. p. 61.
[1287] Coolsma, p. 556. Koloniaal Verslag van 1911, pp. 38, 41; 1912,
p. 30.
[1288] Med. Ned. Zendelinggen. vol. xxxii. p. 177; vol. xxxiv. p. 170.
[1289] i.e. Atjeh.
[1290] A Compleat History of the Rise and Progress of the Portugeze
Empire in the East Indies. Collected chiefly from their own Writers.
John Harris: Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, vol. i. p.
682. (London, 1764.)
[1291] Crawfurd (1), p. 91. The Encyclopaedie van N.-I. (vol. i. p.
216) gives 1606 as the date.
[1292] Fernandez Navarette, a Spanish priest, who went to the
Philippine Islands in 1646. (Collection of Voyages and Travels, p. 236.
London, 1752.)
Tavernier, who visited Macassar in 1648. (Travels in India, p. 193.)
(London, 1678.)
Itinerarium Orientale R. P. F. Philippi à SSma. Trinitate Carmelitae
Discalceati ab ipso conscriptum, p. 267. (Lugduni, 1649.)
[1293] Crawfurd (2), vol. ii. pp. 385–9.
[1294] “No extraordinary exertion seems for a long time to have been
made on behalf of the new religion. An abhorrence of innovation and a
most pertinacious and religious adherence to ancient custom,
distinguish the people of Celebes beyond all the other tribes of the
Eastern isles; and these would, at first, prove the most serious
obstacles to the dissemination of Mahometanism. It was this, probably,
which deferred the adoption of the new religion for so long a period,
and till it had recommended itself by wearing the garb of antiquity.”
(Crawfurd (2), vol. ii. p. 387.)
[1295] Crawfurd (1), p. 75. De Hollander, vol. ii. p. 212.
[1296] Id. vol. ii. p. 666. Riedel (2), p. 67.
[1297] To the east of Minahassa, between long. 124° 45′ and 123° 20′,
with a population that has been variously estimated at 35,000 and
50,000. (De Hollander, vol. ii. p. 247.)
[1298] Wilken (1), pp. 42–4.
[1299] Wilken (2), pp. 276–9. Koloniaal Verslag van 1910, p. 52; 1911,
p. 47.
[1300] Zollinger (2), pp. 126, 169.
[1301] Med. Ned. Zendelinggen. xxxii. p. 177; xxxiv. p. 170.
[1302] Zollinger (1), p. 527.
[1303] De Hollander (in 1882) gave the numbers as 20,000 Balinese and
380,000 Sasaks. (Vol. i. p. 489.)
[1304] Encyclopaedie van N.-I. vol. ii. pp. 432–4, 524.
W. Cool: With the Dutch in the East. An outline of the military
operations in Lombok, 1894. (London, 1897.)
[1305] Captain Thomas Forrest, writing in 1775, says that Arabs came to
the island of Mindanao 300 years before and that the tomb of the first
Arab, a Sharīf from Mecca, was still shown—“a rude heap of coral rock
stones” (pp. 201, 313).
[1306] N. N. Saleeby: Studies in Moro History, Law and Religion, pp.
24–5, 53–5. (Manila, 1905.)
[1307] Relatione di Ivan Gaetan del discoprimento dell’Isole Molucche.
(Ramusio, tom. i. p. 375 E.)
[1308] “Se muestran tan obstinados á la gracia de Dios y tan aferrados
á sus creencias, que es casi moralmente imposible su conversion al
cristianismo.” (Cartas de los PP. de la Compañia de Jesús de la Missión
de Filipinas, 1879, quoted by Montero y Vidal, tom. i. p. 21.)
[1309] Crawfurd (2), vol. ii. pp. 274–280.
[1310] “Ils sont peu soigneux de satisfaire au devoir du Christianisme
qu’ils ont receu, et il les y faut contraindre par la crainte du
chastiment, et gouverner comme des enfans à l’escole.” Relation des
Isles Philippines, Faite par un Religieux, p. 7. (Thevenot, vol. i.)
[1311] “A Mindanao, les Tagal de l’Est, fuyant le joug abhorré de leurs
maîtres catholiques, se groupent chaque jour davantage autour des chefs
des dynasties nationales. Plus de 360,000 sectateurs du coran y
reconnaissent un sultan indépendant. Aux jésuites chassés de l’île, aux
représentants du culte officiel, se substituent comme maîtres religieux
et éducateurs de la population, les missionnaires musulmans de la Chine
et de l’Inde, qui rénovent ainsi la propagande, commencée par les
invasions arabes.” (A. le Chatelier (2), p. 45.)
[1312] Montero y Vidal, vol. i. p. 86.
[1313] Situated three miles west of Jolo, the present capital.
[1314] N. M. Saleeby: The History of Sulu, pp. 150, 158–9. (Manila,
1908.)
[1315] N. M. Saleeby: The History of Sulu, pp. 150, 162–3.
[1316] J. H. Moor. (Appendix, p. 37.)
[1317] Dalrymple, p. 549.
[1318] R. du M. M., vii. pp. 115–16. (1909.)
[1319] The Missionary Review of the World, N.S., vol. xiv. p. 877. (New
York, 1901.)
[1320] The first prince of Batjan who became a Muhammadan was a certain
Zayn al-ʻĀbidīn, who was reigning in 1521 when the Portuguese first
came to the Moluccas.
[1321] Robidé van der Aa, pp. 350, 352–3.
[1322] Id. p. 147 (Misool), “De strandbewoners zijn allen
Mahomedanen.... De bergbewoners zijn heidenen.” Id. p. 53 (Salawatti),
“Een klein deel der bevolking van het eiland belijdt de leer van
Mahomed. Het grootste deel bestaat echter uit Papoesche heidenen,
eenige tot het Mahomedaansche geloof zijn overgegaan, althans den
schijn daarvan aannemen.” Id. p. 290 (Waigyu).
Some of the Papuans of the island of Gebi, between Waigyu and
Halemahera, have been converted by the Muhammadan settlers from the
Moluccas. (Crawfurd (1), p. 143.)
[1323] Robidé van der Aa, p. 352.
[1324] Captain Forrest, however, in 1775, tells us that “Many of the
Papuas turn Musselmen.” (Voyage to New Guinea, p. 68.)
[1325] Robidé van der Aa, p. 71. “De Papoe is te woest van aard, om
behoefte aan godsdienst te gevoelen. Evenmin als de Christelijke leer
tot nog toe ingang bij hem heeft kunnen vinden, zou de Mahomedaansche
godsdienst slagen, wanneer daartoe bij deze volksstammen poging gedaan
werd. Voorzoover mij is gebleken op vijf reizen naar dit land, hebben
noch Tidoreezen, noch Cerammers of anderen ooit ernstige pogingen
gedaan, om de leer van Mahomed hier in te voeren.... Slechts zeer
weinige hoofden, zooals de Radja Ampat van Waigeoe, Salawatti, Misool
en Waigama, mogen als belijders van die leer aangemerkt worden; zij en
eenige hunner bloedverwanten vervullen sommige geloofsvormen, doordien
zij meermalen te Tidor geweest zijn en daar niet gaarne als gewone
Papoes beschouwd worden. Onder de eigenlijke bevolking is nooit
gepoogd, den Islam intevoeren, misschien wel uit eerbied voor dien
godsdienst, die te verheven is voor de Papoes.”
[1326] Robidé van der Aa, p. 319.
[1327] Koloniaal Verslag van 1906, p. 70; 1911, p. 52.
[1328] The Journal of the Indian Archipelago, vol. vii. pp. 64, 71.
(Singapore, 1853.)
[1329] G. W. W. C. Baron von Hoëvell, p. 120. Krieger, p. 436.
[1330] Encyclopaedie van N.-I., vol. ii. p. 210.
[1331] Crawfurd (2), pp. 275, 307.
[1332] Buckle’s Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, edited by Helen
Taylor, vol. i. p. 594. (London, 1872.)
[1333] Neimann, pp. 406–7.
[1334] C. Snouck Hurgronje: De hadji-politiek der Indische Regeering,
p. 12. (Overdruk uit Onze Eeuw, 1909.)
[1335] Id.: Notes sur le mouvement du pèlerinage de la Mecque aux Indes
Néerlandaises. (R. du M. M., vol. xv. pp. 409, 412.)
[1336] Report of Centenary Conference on Protestant Missions, vol. i.
p. 21. Niemann, p. 407.
[1337] Med. Ned. Zendelinggen. vols. xxxii., xxxiv. passim.
[1338] Snouck Hurgronje (3), vol. ii. pp. xv. 339–393. Encyclopaedie
van N.-I., vol. ii. pp. 576–9.
[1339] e.g. the Qādiriyyah, Naqshbandiyyah and Sammāniyyah. (C. Snouck
Hurgronje (2), p. 186.) Id. (3) vol. ii. p. 372, etc.
[1340] J. G. F. Riedel (1), pp. 7, 59, 162.
[1341] Snouck Hurgronje (3), vol. ii. p. 323.
[1342] Hauri, p. 313. Encyclopaedie van N.-I., vol. ii. p. 524.
[1343] Organisations based on the model of Christian missionary
societies do not begin to make their appearance until the twentieth
century; some account of these is given in Appendix III.
[1344] “À tout musulman, quelque mondain qu’il soit, le prosélytisme
semble être en quelque sorte inné.” (Snouck Hurgronje, Revue de
l’Histoire des Religions, vol. lvii. p. 66.) “Der Muslim ist von Natur
Missionär ... Er treibt Mission auf eigne Faust und Kosten.”
(Munzinger, p. 411.) Snouck Hurgronje (1), p. 8; Lüttke (2), p. 30;
Julius Richter, p. 152; Merensky, p. 154.
[1345] Qurʼān, xvi. 126.
[1346] See the interesting letter addressed by Mawlāʼī Ismāʻīl, Sharīf
of Morocco, in 1698 to King James II, inviting him to embrace Islam.
(Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, vol. xlvii. p. 174 sqq.)
[1347] Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām kā māhwārī risālah, pp. 5–13. (Lahore,
October 1889.)
[1348] Duveyrier, p. 17.
[1349] Klamroth, p. 12.
[1350] Massaja, vol. xi. pp. 124–5.
[1351] Artin, p. 119.
[1352] R. du M. M., ix. (1909), p. 252.
[1353] Ghulām Sarwar: Khazīnat al-Aṣfīyā, vol. ii. p. 407–8.
[1354] Goldziher, vol. ii. pp. 303–4.
[1355] The Pechenegs at that time occupied the country between the
lower Danube and the Don, to which they had migrated from the banks of
the Ural at the end of the ninth century. (Karamsin, vol. i. pp.
180–1.)
[1356] Abū ʻUbayd al-Bakrī (died 1094), pp. 467–8.
[1357] Ghulām Sarwar: Khazīnat al-Aṣfīyā, vol. i. p. 613.
[1358] D. Crawford: Thinking Black, p. 202. (London, 1913.)
[1359] Doughty, vol. ii. p. 39.
[1360] This was emphasised by Marracci in the seventeenth century. “Si
ethnicus mysteria humani intellectus captum excedentia, vel naturali
conditioni et imbecillitati difficillima, si non impossibilia, cum
Alcoranica doctrina comparaverit, statim ab his refugiet, et ad illa
obviis ulnis accurret.” (Alcorani textus ... translatus, p. 9. Patavii,
1698.)
[1361] Edouard Montet: La propagande chrétienne et ses adversaires
musulmans, pp. 17–18. (Paris, 1890.)
[1362] Mankind and the Church, p. 283–4. (London, 1907.)
[1363] Qurʼān, ii. 118–26.
[1364] Qurʼān, xlix. 10.
[1365] W. H. Macnaghten: Principles and Precedents of Moohummudan Law,
p. 312. (Madras, 1882.)
[1366] Arabia Deserta, vol. i. pp. 554–5.
[1367] De l’Esprit des Lois, livre xxv. chap. 2.
[1368] Qur., chap. xvi. v. 92.
[1369] Goldziher, Saʻīd b. Ḥasan d’Alexandrie. (Revue des Études
Juives, tome xxx. pp. 17–18.) (Paris, 1895.)
[1370] Ernest Renan: L’Islamisme et la Science, p. 19. (Paris, 1883.)
This has been emphasised by many observers, but it will be enough here
to quote the words of an eminent Christian bishop. “No one who comes in
contact for the first time with Mohammedans can fail to be struck by
this aspect of their faith.... Wherever one may be, in open street, in
railway station, in the field, it is the most ordinary thing to see a
man, without the slightest touch of Pharisaism or parade, quietly and
humbly leaving whatever pursuit he may be at the moment engaged in, in
order to say his prayers at the appointed hour. On a larger scale, no
one who has ever seen the courtyard of the Great Mosque at Delhi on the
last Friday in the fast-month (Ramazan) filled to overflowing with,
perhaps, 15,000 worshippers, all wholly absorbed in prayer, and
manifesting the profoundest reverence and humility in every gesture,
can fail to be deeply impressed by the sight, or to get a glimpse of
the power which underlies such a system; while the very regularity of
the daily call to prayer, as it rings out at earliest dawn, before
light commences, or amid all the noise and bustle of the business
hours, or again as the evening closes in, is fraught with the same
message.” (Dr. G. A. Lefroy: Mankind and the Church, pp. 287–8.
(London, 1907.))
[1371] “One may notice and admire the kind of chivalrous pride which
the average Mohammedan takes in his faith.” (Bishop Lefroy: Mankind and
the Church, p. 289.)
[1372] A. Kuenen: National Religions and Universal Religions, p. 35.
(London, 1882.)
[1373] e.g. The persecution, under al-Mutawakkil, by the orthodox
reaction against all forms of deviation from the popular creed: in
Persia and other parts of Asia about the end of the thirteenth century
in revenge for the domineering and insulting behaviour of the
Christians in the hour of their advancement and power under the early
Mongols. (Maqrīzī (2), Tome i. Première Partie, pp. 98, 106.) Assemani
(tom. iii. pars. ii. p.c.), speaking of the causes that have excited
the persecution of the Christians under Muhammadan rule, says:—“Non
raro persecutionis procellam excitarunt mutuae Christianorum ipsorum
simultates, sacerdotum licentia, praesulum fastus, tyrannica magnatum
potestas, et medicorum praesertim scribarumque de supremo in gentem
suam imperio altercationes.” During the crusades the Christians of the
East frequently fell under the suspicion of favouring the invasions of
their co-religionists from the West, and in modern Turkey the movement
for Greek Independence and the religious sympathies it excited in
Christian Europe contributed to make the lot of the subject Christian
races harder than it would have been, had they not been suspected of
disloyalty and disaffection towards their Muhammadan ruler. De Gobineau
has expressed himself very strongly on this question of the toleration
of Islam: “Si l’on sépare la doctrine religieuse de la nécessité
politique qui souvent a parlé et agi en son nom, il n’est pas de
religion plus tolérante, on pourrait presque dire plus indifférente sur
la foi des hommes que l’Islam. Cette disposition organique est si forte
qu’en dehors des cas où la raison d’État mise en jeu a porté les
gouvernements musulmans à se faire arme de tout pour tendre à l’unité
de foi, la tolérance la plus complète a été la règle fournie par le
dogme.... Qu’on ne s’arrête pas aux violences, aux cruautés commises
dans une occasion ou dans une autre. Si on y regarde de près, on ne
tardera pas à y découvrir des causes toutes politiques ou toutes de
passion humaine et de tempérament chez le souverain ou dans les
populations. Le fait religieux n’y est invoqué que comme prétexte et,
en réalité, il reste en dehors.” (A. de Gobineau (1), pp. 24–5.)
[1374] For a biography of him, see Ibn Khallikān, vol. ii. pp. 111–15.
[1375] Barhebræus (2), pp. 417–18.
[1376] C. d’Ohsson, vol. iv. p. 281.
[1377] Tavernier (1), p. 160.
[1378] Viaggio di Iosafa Barbero nella Persia. (Ramusio, vol. ii. p.
111.)
[1379] If indeed by Azi is meant Ḥājī.
[1380] Makīn, p. 260. Similarly, about a century before, al-Muqtadir
(A.D. 908–932) gave orders for the rebuilding of some churches at
Ramlah in Palestine which had been destroyed by Muhammadans during a
riot, the cause of which is not recorded. (Eutychius, ii. p. 82.) Abū
Ṣāliḥ makes mention of the rebuilding of a great many churches and
monasteries in Egypt which had either been destroyed in time of war
(e.g. during the invasion of the Ghuzz and the Kurds in 1164) (pp. 91,
96, 112, 120), been wrecked by fanatics (pp. 85–6, 182, and Maqrīzī
quoted in the Appendix pp. 327–8), or fallen into decay (pp. 5, 87,
103–4).
[1381] A. de la Jonquière, pp. 203, 213, 312.
[1382] E. Charvériat: Histoire de la Guerre de Trente Ans, tome ii. pp.
615, 625. (Paris, 1878.)
[1383] In Ioannis Evangelium Tractatus, xxv. § 10.
[1384] C. Merivale: The Conversion of the Northern Nations, p. 102.
(London, 1866.)
[1385] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 62 (ll. 4, 6, 13). The learned Maronite,
Yūsuf Simʻān al-Simʻānī, in the eighteenth century, thus expressed his
horror at such a concession to Muslim sentiment: “Mahometi eiusque
sectariorum laudes persequitur, et quod sine horrore dici nequit,
illius pseudo-prophetae nomen es adiuncto praeconio memorat, quo
Mahometani solent, nimirum عليه السّلام.” (Assemani, tom. iii, pars. i.
p. 585.)
[1386] Mārī b. Sulaymān, p. 65 (l. 16).
[1387] Methods of Mission Work among Moslems, p. 62.
[1388] Id. pp. 61–4.
[1389] Laurent, p. 131.
[1390] Historia Rerum Anglicarum Willelmi Parvi de Newburgh, ed. Hans
Claude Hamilton, vol. ii. p. 158. (London, 1856.)
[1391] Frederick Denison Maurice was giving expression to one of the
most commonly received opinions regarding this faith when he said, “It
has been proved that Mahometanism can only thrive while it is aiming at
conquest.” (The Religions of the World, p. 28.) (Cambridge, 1852.)
[1392] Similarly, the Spanish editor of the controversial letters that
passed between Alvar and “the transgressor” (a Christian convert to
Judaism), adds the following note after Epist. xv.: “Quatuordecim in
hac pagina ita abrasae sunt liniae, ut nec verbum unum legi possit.
Folium subsequens exsecuit possessor codicis, ne transgressoris
deliramenta legerentur.” (Migne, Patr. Lat., tom. cxxi. p. 483.)
[1393] Richter, pp. 164–5.
[1394] Artin, p. 35.
[1395] The Moslem World, vol. i. p. 441.
R. du M. M., vol. xv. p. 374; vol. xviii. pp. 216, 224.
[1396] Rajputana Herald, April 17, 1889.
[1397] Mohammedan World of To-day, p. 183.
[1398] A list of these is given on p. 19 of the Annual Report for the
year 1328 H.
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