ing his will for man through inspired prophetic individuals, which was the basis of it all, and to which the Semitic genius had all along held fast.

So religious spirits amongst the Arabs may well have argued. But probably considerations of that kind weighed little. What did weigh was the appeal of Islam to the national spirit, backed as it soon came to be by the immense plunder which fell to the Moslem armies as they gained success outside the Peninsula. With his political genius Muhammad had indeed discerned a strong bond of national unity and kinship underlying the superficial appearance of perpetual feud and enmity among the Arabs, and the Moslem conquest was as much an outburst of Arab nationality as a religious movement. Christian Arabs fought in the Moslem armies, and fought with as much bravery and vigour as the tribes that had accepted Islam before the wars of conquest had begun: witness the case of the Bani Namr who joined Muthanna's army before the Battle of Buwaib.¹ The appeal to kinship was no doubt brought to bear upon the settled populations within both the Persian and the Roman Empire. Witness what is reported as to Khalid's conversation with the representatives of the people of Hira when the place capitulated.² When they refused to accept Islam, " Beshrew the fools," he exclaimed, "here two guides are offered, an Arab and a stranger, and of the two they choose the stranger."

The most curious example of the effect of

the sentiment of Arab patriotism is perhaps the story of the Bani Taghlib¹ — if the story can be accepted. It has been set down as a later invention by a recent investigator. They were Christians, and refused to accept Islam, though the Moslems had overrun their territory, and they were strongly urged to do so by the Moslem general. But they also objected to pay the Jizya, and rather than do so proposed to migrate into Roman territory. They agreed, however, ultimately to pay double the Sadaqa which was paid by Moslems. Their objection evidently was not so much to the amount as to paying under a different name from other Arabs.

The population of the towns seem to have retained their religion and agreed to pay the Jizya. The same applies to the settled agricultural populations of the Sawad, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. They settled down under Arab rule, and in all these places Christian Churches have survived down even to the present day. But how sadly diminished in numbers and in pride of place! It is not my intention at present to follow their history very far, but only to indicate what happened in the first century or so of Islam. Within that period there was a very rapid passing over of these populations to Islam. The reason probably did not lie in any specifically religious persecution directed against them. We hear of very few cases of forced conversion to the new faith once the tide of conquest had swept over a country and passed beyond it. The Omayyad Caliphs were