indeed guided by what appeared feasible and profitable, but the policy itself was never relinquished. With what vigour the champions of Islam pursued their anti-Christian designs from the first, is made apparent by what Moslem historians record in honour of Mohammed's second successor, Omar, namely, that during his brief Califate of only ten years' duration, 1036 towns were conquered, 4000 Christian churches destroyed, and 4000 mosques erected in their stead.

With the Mussulmans all wars of conquest are at the same time also religious wars, intended to promote the interests, and to effect the propagation, of Islam. Hence every Moslem warrior who falls in such a foreign war is held to be a martyr for the Faith. As in Mohammed's own case, religion was a stepping-stone to worldly dominion, so in the case of his followers, the secular power they possessed and extended was used as a means for spreading their religion, which, in turn, had to support their power. In any war against Christians, the Moslems were bound first to invite them to embrace Islam; and they seconded their invitation by the offer of all the privileges of the conquerors. Then, in case of refusal, they indeed might permit them to retain their religion, but at the cost of a full surrender, without fighting, and the payment of a perpetual capitation tax in token of their political dependence and subjugation. But if the decision was left to the sword, they were to seize all the women and children as slaves, and to slay the men, or otherwise dispose of them. It is self-evident that the first and third of these military canons were calculated directly to effect a reduction in the number of Christians, and an increase of Moslems at their expense; whereas the second annihilated the political independence and social liberty of those to whom it was applied, and further tended indirectly to a gradual diminution of the Christians and a corresponding increase of the Mohammedans.

The subjugated Christians in the Mussulman State were placed under the most humiliating and irksome disabilities. They had to submit to Mohammedan courts of law, where their testimony was not received against a Moslem, and the judge considered it a religious duty to favour the party belonging to his own Faith. In social life they had to defer

to the meanest Mussulman as their superior in rank. In their mode of travelling, in their dress, in their dwellings, and even in their graves, they were to be marked by a badge of inferiority. For the maintenance of their religious institutions, and the instruction of their children, they received no help whatever from a Government whose revenues they had to swell. Many of their churches were demolished or converted into mosques, and those permitted them were not allowed to be increased in number by the building of new ones. The exercise of their religion was deprived of its publicity, and of everything which might have appeared as a recognition or sanction of Christianity by Government. Hence all religious processions had to be discontinued, the church-bells were to be destroyed or silenced, and all the crosses removed from the top of ecclesiastical edifices, or any other place where they might have offended the Moslem eye. In short, the Christian communities could not become organic parts of a Mohammedan State, and were not even counted worthy to bear arms and to defend the common country on an equal footing with the Moslems.

The Christians were treated as if they formed a mere colony of helots within the State, tolerated and protected by the ruling class and for their benefit, on about the same principle on which domestic animals are kept and fostered by their masters. Accordingly, the poll-tax, collected from every male adult of the Christians, was designated by a word (jizyeh) properly signifying 'ransom, satisfaction,' because it was, as it were, generously accepted in lieu of their lives, which in the eyes of Islam had legally been forfeited. The land-tax they had to pay was called by a word (kharaj) which had originally been employed as a designation of that portion of a slave's earning which he had to pay to his master for being allowed to exercise a trade on his own account. So, likewise, the term Raya, ordinarily applied to the Christian section of the population under a Mohammedan Government, has its meaning thus rendered in Lane's well-known Arabic-English Lexicon, 'Cattle pasturing, cattle kept, tended, or pastured; especially cattle kept or pastured for the Sultan, and upon which are his brands and marks.'