the hair from the Moslems; that, in fact, they should be as the Qur'an says, "humbled". Founding also on another Qur'an verse which forbids taking non-Moslems as friends, the later legalists held it unlawful for a Dhimmi to be employed in the service of the State as a clerk or other official. In one case, that of the Bani Taghlib, we even find it laid down that they should not baptize their children. That, however, is an exceptional condition, and if ever it was imposed was not kept. It was not, however, until Abbaside times that these humiliating conditions were enforced, and even then not always strictly. Instances of Christians in the public service could be found much later. In Omayyad times it was quite common. Untrained in the management of a huge empire, the Arabs in fact could not avoid taking over Christian officials. The actual work of Government offices was, as we know, performed during the first century by Christians, Jews, and Persians. With regard to the use of bells (or tom-toms) in connection with the churches, no mention is made of that in the capitulation, for instance, of Damascus, and Goldziher 1 cites a story to the effect that the Caliph Mu'awiya in his old age was troubled in his sleep by the noise of the church bells, and applied to Constantinople to have it stopped. (I have read somewhere of a soldier of the Moslem army in Damascus being also a bell-ringer in a Christian church.)

The Arab conquest was in fact a business proposition more than a religious crusade, and the Omayyad Caliphs were Arab Emperors rather

than heads of a Moslem religious community. So long as the Christians paid the tribute and accepted Moslem (or Arab) rule they were regarded simply as ordinary subjects, and were not much if any worse treated than the Arabs themselves. They seem to have had free access even to the Court, and the favourite poet of the Omayyad Caliphs of the first century, al-Akhtal, was a Christian of the Bani Taghlib. It was when Islam as a religion came to be taken seriously, as it was by the Abbasides, at least in their public policy, and when perhaps the influx of converted Christians had carried into it some of their own heretic-baiting spirit, that the Christian population within Moslem territory began to feel the weight of persecution and humiliation as such. But even then we find Abbaside Caliphs employing Christian doctors, in whom they displayed the utmost confidence, and encouraging Christians to translate Greek philosophy and other literature into Arabic. On the whole, the relations between Moslem and Christian seem for centuries to have been normal and friendly.

To what extent then did the population of formerly Christian countries remain Christian? Definite statistics would be difficult to come by. The most that I can attempt is a general outline of what happened.

In Arabia the great mass of the Christian Arabs seem in a very short time to have gone over to Islam. 'The Caliph Omar is said to have expelled all Jews and Christians from Arabia, the idea probably being that the Peninsula should be the recruiting ground for the Arab armies of Islam.