made request for a man or men to instruct him and his people in Christianity. The request was gladly granted, and a bishop was sent from Alexandria with several companions. Fell further connects this with the Abyssinian legend of the nine saints by whom a revival of Christianity was brought about, and sets the date about A.D. 480. In any case, the real Christianising of Abyssinia belongs to about this period, and it was brought about by Monophysite Christians. From that period the Church in Abyssinia was certainly Monophysite. But as to its further condition and history we know practically nothing. It is some six centuries thereafter before we begin again to get much light upon Abyssinia. But though history has little to say of it at the time of Muhammad's appearance, it is well to remember that there was, on the other side of the Red Sea, this Christian country, with which the trading community of Mecca had probably fairly frequent communication.

LECTURE II

CHRISTIANITY IN SOUTH ARABIA AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE ARABS IN GENERAL

COMING now a little nearer to the actual cradle of Islam, we have to consider how far a knowledge of Christianity had penetrated into the Arabian peninsula itself. The first fact that strikes us here is that Christianity had established itself in the south, and especially in the south-west corner of the peninsula. In a way the existence of a Christian Church here belongs to the Christian encirclement of Arabia rather than to the history of Christianity in Arabia itself. For South Arabia had long been distinct from the actual land of the nomads. For centuries it had been a land of civilisation and the seat of well-established government. How far back its civilisation goes is not yet agreed amongst investigators. But the evidences of Sabæan hegemony go back at least to 800 B.C. About the second century A.D. the Himyarites (the classical Homeritæ) established themselves as the ruling race.

There are various accounts of the introduction of Christianity into this corner of Arabia. Much uncertainty is caused by the vague and general