of the Arabs from this side. That it established itself far in the heart of the country we cannot say. Missionary activity was apt to arouse the suspicion of the Persian Government. We hear, however, of Pethion, an active missionary (martyred A.D. 447), who worked chiefly in the mountainous district to the east, but also preached in the district of Maisan on the Arabian side of the head of the Persian Gulf, and we know that the Church spread southwards along the Arabian shore of that sea. But the main evidence of the influence of Christianity upon the Arabs of this district is the Church of Hira. Hira was the seat of the Lakhmide dynasty, the tributary sovereigns of the Arabs friendly to the Persian Empire corresponding to the Ghassanides in the Roman Syrian borders. The name Hira, or Hertha as Nöldeke ¹ has pointed out, probably means a movable camp, and that may imply that those princes were originally simply nomad chiefs. But their hertha or camp developed into a fixed town near the situation of the later Kufa. The Christians of Hira were called 'Ibad (servants or worshippers). 2 At what date a Christian Church was founded there we do not know, but already in 410 a bishop of Hira is mentioned as attending a Synod of the Mesopotamian Church. The Lakhmide rulers of Hira did not, however, adopt Christianity. Unlike their Ghassanide rivals they were tributaries of a non-Christian Empire. Several cases of human sacrifices are mentioned in connection with them, and as late

as the early part of the sixth century al-Mundhir, the Arab king of Hira, sacrificed to al-'Uzza a number of Christian nuns. One of his wives, however, Hind bint Nu'man, was the daughter of a Ghassanide prince, and remained faithful to Christianity. Her son, 'Amr b. Mundhir, who ruled in Hira from A.D. 554 to 569, was a professed Christian. Hind founded a convent in Hira, a dedicatory inscription from which has been handed down by Yaqut 1 attesting her piety and that of her son the king. 'Amr's successors, however, did not follow his example. There is evidence that Nu'man, one of the later kings of Hira, offered human sacrifice to al-'Uzza.

This subsidiary kingdom of Hira was not maintained by the Persians in its pristine independence down to the time of the Moslem invasion. They planted in Hira a Persian Governor to whom the Arab ruler was made subject. The disaffection thus produced opened the way for the incursion of the Moslems and contributed to the ease with which they overran this part of Persian territory.

Christianity had thus in the north-east made some progress amongst the Arab tribes, though it is difficult to estimate the extent of it. Certain tribes are known to have adopted Christianity at least in name, amongst them the Taghlib and certain sections of the great tribe of Bakr b. Wa'il, who later gave their name to Diyarbakr in the north of Mesopotamia, but about the time of Muhammad's appearance seem to have been living in Bahrain at the head of the Persian Gulf.