The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of...

Islam was first introduced into Africa by the Arab army that invaded Egypt under the command of ʻAmr b. al-ʻĀṣ in A.D. 640. Three years later the withdrawal of the Byzantine troops abandoned the vast Christian population into the hands of the Muslim conquerors. The rapid success of the Arab invaders was largely due to the welcome they received from the native Christians, who hated the Byzantine rule not only for its oppressive administration, but also—and chiefly—on account of the bitterness of theological rancour. The Jacobites, who formed the majority of the Christian population, had been very roughly handled by the Orthodox adherents of the court and subjected to indignities that have not been forgotten by their children even to the present day.1 Some were tortured and then thrown into the sea; many followed their Patriarch into exile to escape from the hands of their persecutors, while a large number disguised their real opinions under a pretended acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon.2 To these Copts, as the Jacobite Christians of Egypt are called, the Muhammadan conquest brought a freedom of religious life such as they had not enjoyed for a century.

On payment of the tribute, ʻAmr left them in undisturbed possession of their churches and guaranteed to them autonomy in all ecclesiastical matters, thus delivering them from the continual interference that had been so grievous a burden under [103]the previous rule; he laid his hands on none of the property of the churches and committed no act of spoliation or pillage.3 In the early days of the Muhammadan rule then, the condition of the Copts seems to have been fairly tolerable,4 and there is no evidence of their widespread apostasy to Islam being due to persecution or unjust pressure on the part of their new rulers. Even before the conquest was complete, while the capital, Alexandria, still held out, many of them went over to Islam,5 and a few years later the example these had set was followed by many others.6 In the reign of ʻUt͟hmān (A.D. 643–655), the revenue derived from Egypt amounted to twelve millions; a few years later, in the reign of Muʻāwiyah (661–679), it had fallen to five millions owing to the enormous number of conversions: under ʻUmar II (717–720) it fell still lower, so that the governor of Egypt7 proposed that in future the converts should not be exempted from the payment of the capitation-tax, but this the pious caliph refused to allow, saying that God had sent Muḥammad to call men to a knowledge of the truth and not to be a collector of taxes.8

But later rulers recognised that for fiscal reasons such a policy was ruinous to the state, and insisted on the converts continuing to pay taxes as before; there was, however, no continuity in such a policy, and individual governors acted in an arbitrary and irregular manner.9 When Ḥafṣ b. al-Walīd, who was governor of Egypt in A.D. 744, promised that all those who became Muslims would be exempted [104]from the payment of jizyah, as many as 24,000 Christians are reported to have accepted Islam.10 A similar proclamation is said to have been made by al-Saffāḥ, the first of the ʻAbbāsid caliphs, soon after his accession in A.D. 750, for “he wrote to the whole of his dominions saying that every one who embraced his religion and prayed according to his fashion, should be quit of the jizyah, and many, both rich and poor, denied the faith of Christ by reason of the magnitude of the taxation and the burdens imposed upon them.”11 In fact many of the Christians of Egypt seem to have abandoned Christianity as lightly and as rapidly as, in the beginning of the fourth century, they had embraced it.

Prior to that period, a very small section of the population of the valley of the Nile was Christian, but the sufferings of the martyrs in the persecution of Diocletian, the stories of the miracles they performed, the national feeling excited by the sense of their opposition to the dictates of the foreign government,12 the assurance that a paradise of delights was opened to the martyr who died under the hands of his tormentors,—all these things stirred up an enthusiasm that resulted in an incredibly rapid spread of the Christian faith. “Instead of being converted by preaching, as the other countries of the East were, Egypt embraced Christianity in a fit of wild enthusiasm, without any preaching, or instruction being given, with hardly any knowledge of the new religion beyond the name of Jesus, the Messiah, who bestowed a life of eternal happiness on all who confessed Him.”13

In the seventh century Christianity had probably very little hold on a great mass of the people of Egypt. The theological catchwords that their leaders made use of, to stir up in them feelings of hatred and opposition to the Byzantine government, could have been intelligible to a very few, and the rapid spread of Islam in the early days of the Arab occupation was probably due less to definite efforts to attract than to the inability of such a Christianity to retain. The theological basis for the existence of the [105]Jacobites as a separate sect, the tenets that they had so long and at so great a cost struggled to maintain, were embodied in doctrines of the most abstruse and metaphysical character, and many doubtless turned in utter perplexity and weariness from the interminable controversies that raged around them, to a faith that was summed up in the simple, intelligible truth of the Unity of God and the mission of His Prophet, Muḥammad. Even within the Coptic Church itself at a later period, we find evidence of a movement which, if not distinctly Muslim, was at least closely allied thereto, and in the absence of any separate ecclesiastical organisation in which it might find expression, probably contributed to the increase of the converts to Islam. In the beginning of the twelfth century, there was in the monastery of St. Anthony (near Iṭfīḥ on the Nile), a monk named Balūṭus, “learned in the doctrines of the Christian religion and the duties of the monastic life, and skilled in the rules of the canon-law.

But Satan caught him in one of his nets; for he began to hold opinions at variance with those taught by the Three Hundred and Eighteen (of Nicæa); and he corrupted the minds of many of those who had no knowledge or instruction in the Orthodox faith. He announced with his impure mouth, in his wicked discourses, that Christ our Lord—to Whom be glory—was like one of the prophets. He associated with the lowest among the followers of his religion, clothed as he was in the monastic habit. When he was questioned as to his religion and his creed, he professed himself a believer in the Unity of God. His doctrines prevailed during a period which ended in the year 839 of the Righteous Martyrs (A.D. 1123); then he died, and his memory was cut off for ever.”14

Further, a theory of the Christian life that found its highest expression in asceticism of the grossest type15 could offer little attraction, in the face of the more human morality of Islam.16 On account of the large numbers of Copts that [106]from time to time have become Muhammadans, they have come to be considered by the followers of the Prophet as much more inclined to the faith of Islam than any other Christian sect, and though they have had to endure the most severe oppression and persecution on many occasions, yet the Copts that have been thus driven to abandon their faith are said to have been few in comparison with those who have changed their religion voluntarily,17 and even in the nineteenth century, when Egypt was said to be the most tolerant of all Muhammadan countries, there were yearly conversions of the Copts to the Muslim faith.18 Still, persecution and oppression have undoubtedly played a very large part in the reduction of the numbers of the Copts, and the story of the sufferings of the Jacobite Church of Egypt,—persecuted alike by their fellow Christians19 and by the followers of the dominant faith, is a very sad one, and many abandoned the religion of their fathers in order to escape from burdensome taxes and unendurable indignities. The vast difference in this respect between their condition and that of the Christians of Syria, Palestine and Spain at the same period finds its explanation in the turbulent character of the Copts themselves.

Their long struggle against the civil and theological despotism of Byzantium seems to have welded the zealots into a national party that could as little brook the foreign rule of the Arabs as, before, that of the Greeks. The rising of the Copts against their new masters in 646, when they drove the Arabs for a time out of Alexandria and opened the gates of the city to the Byzantine troops (who, however, treated the unfortunate Copts as enemies, [107]not having yet forgotten the welcome they had before given to the Muhammadan invaders), was the first of a long series of risings and insurrections,20—excited frequently by excessive taxation,—which exposed them to terrible reprisals, and caused the lot of the Jacobite Christians of Egypt to be harder to bear than that of any other Christian sect in this or other countries under Muhammadan rule. But the history of these events belongs rather to a history of Muhammadan persecution and intolerance than to the scope of the present work. It must not, however, be supposed that the condition of the Copts was invariably that of a persecuted sect; on the contrary there were times when they rose to positions of great affluence and importance in the state.

They filled the posts of secretaries and scribes in the government offices,21 farmed the taxes,22 and in some cases amassed enormous wealth.23 The annals of their Church furnish us with many instances of ecclesiastics who were held in high favour and consideration by the reigning princes of the country, under the rule of many of whom the Christians enjoyed the utmost tranquillity.24 To such a period of the peace of the Church belongs an incident that led to the absorption of many Christians into the body of the faithful.

During the reign of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) (1169–1193) over Egypt, the condition of the Christians was very happy under the auspices of this tolerant ruler; the taxes that had been imposed upon them were lightened and several swept away altogether; they crowded into the public offices as secretaries, accountants and registrars; and for nearly a century under the successors of Saladin, they enjoyed the same toleration and favour, and had nothing to complain of except the corruption and degeneracy of their own clergy. Simony had become terribly rife among them; the priesthood was sold to ignorant and vicious persons, while postulants for the sacred office who were unable to pay the sums demanded for ordination, were repulsed with scorn, in spite of their [108]being worthy and fit persons. The consequence was that the spiritual and moral training of the people was utterly neglected and there was a lamentable decay of the Christian life.25 So corrupt had the Church become that when, on the death of John, the seventy-fourth Patriarch of the Jacobites, in 1216, a successor was to be elected, the contending parties who pushed the claims of rival candidates, kept up a fierce and irreconcilable dispute for nearly twenty years, and all this time cared less for the grievous scandal and the harmful consequences of their shameless quarrels than for the maintenance of their dogged and obstinately factious spirit.

On more than one occasion the reigning sultan tried to make peace between the contending parties, refused the enormous bribes of three, five, and even ten thousand gold pieces that were offered in order to induce him to secure the election of one of the candidates by the pressure of official influence, and even offered to remit the fee that it was customary for a newly-elected Patriarch to pay, if only they would put aside their disputes and come to some agreement,—but all to no purpose. Meanwhile many episcopal sees fell vacant and there was no one to take the place of the bishops and priests that died in this interval; in the monastery of St. Macarius alone there were only four priests left as compared with over eighty under the last Patriarch.26 So utterly neglected were the Christians of the western dioceses, that they all became Muslims.27 To this bald statement of the historian of the Coptic Church, we unfortunately have no information to add, of the positive efforts made by the Musalmans to bring these Christians over to their faith.

That such there were, there can be very little doubt, especially as we know that the Christians held public disputations and engaged in written controversies on the respective merits of the rival creeds.28 That these [109]conversions were not due to persecution, we know from direct historical evidence that during this vacancy of the patriarchate, the Christians had full and complete freedom of public worship, were allowed to restore their churches and even to build new ones, were freed from the restrictions that forbade them to ride on horses or mules, and were tried in law-courts of their own, while the monks were exempted from the payment of tribute and granted certain privileges.29

How far this incident is a typical case of conversion to Islam among the Copts it is difficult to say; a parallel case of neglect is mentioned by two Capuchin missionaries who travelled up the Nile to Luxor in the seventeenth century, where they found that the Copts of Luxor had no priest, and some of them had not gone to confession or communion for fifty years.30 Under such circumstances the decay of their numbers can readily be understood.

A similar neglect probably contributed to the decay of the Nubian Church which recognised the primacy of the Jacobite Patriarch of Alexandria, as do the Abyssinians to the present day. The Nubians had been converted to Christianity about the middle of the sixth century, and retained their independence when Egypt was conquered by the Arabs; a treaty was made according to which the Nubians were to send every year three hundred and sixty slaves, with forty more for the governor of Egypt, while the Arabs were to furnish them with corn, oil and raiment.31 In the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim (833–842), ambassadors were sent by the caliph renewing this treaty, and the king of Nubia visited the capital, where he was received with great magnificence and dismissed with costly presents.32 In the twelfth century they were still all Christian,33 and retained their old independence in spite of the frequent expeditions sent against them from Egypt.34 In 1275 the nephew of the then king of Nubia obtained from the sultan of Egypt a body of troops to assist him in his revolt against his uncle, [110]whom he by their help succeeded in deposing; in return for this assistance he had to cede the two northernmost provinces of Nubia to the sultan, and as the inhabitants elected to retain their Christian faith, an annual tribute of one dīnār for each male was imposed upon them.35 But this Muhammadan overlordship was temporary only, and the Nubians of the ceded provinces soon reasserted their independence.36

But settlements of Arabs had been established in Nubia for several centuries earlier and the Arabs on the Blue Nile had so increased in number and wealth in the tenth century that they were able to ask permission to build a mosque in Soba,37 the capital of the Christian kingdom.38 In the thirteenth and especially from the beginning of the fourteenth century there began a general process of interpenetration through the migration into Nubia of Arabs, especially of the Juhaynah tribe, who intermarried with the women of the land and gradually succeeded in breaking up the power of the Nubian princes.39 In the latter half of the fourteenth century Ibn Baṭūṭah40 tells us that the Nubians were still Christians, though the king of their chief city, Dongola,41 had embraced Islam in the reign of Nāṣir (probably Nāṣir b. Qulāūn, one of the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt, who died A.D. 1340); the repeated expeditions of the Muslims so late as the fifteenth century had not succeeded in pushing their conquests south of the first cataract, near which was their last fortified place,42 while Christianity seems to have extended as far up the Nile as Sennaar.

The Christian Nubian kingdom appears to have come to an end partly through internal dissensions and partly [111]through the attacks of Arab and Negro tribes on its borders, and finally by the establishment of the powerful Fūnj empire in the fifteenth century.43

But it is probable that the progress of Islam in the country was all this time being promoted by the Muhammadan merchants and others that frequented it. Maqrīzī (writing in the early part of the fifteenth century) quotes one of those missionary anecdotes which occur so rarely in the works of Arabic authors; it is told by Ibn Salīm al-Aswāni, and is of interest as giving us a living picture of the Muslim propagandist at work. Though the convert referred to is neither a Christian nor a Nubian, still the story shows that there was such a thing as conversion to Islam in Nubia in the fifteenth century. Ibn Salīm says that he once met a man at the court of the Nubian chief of Muqurrah, who told him that he came from a city that lay three months’ journey from the Nile. When asked about his religion, he replied, “My Creator and thy Creator is God; the Creator of the universe and of all men is One, and his dwelling-place is in Heaven.” When there was a dearth of rain, or when pestilence attacked them or their cattle, his fellow-countrymen would climb up a high mountain and there pray to God, who accepted their prayers and supplied their needs before even they came down again. When he acknowledged that God had never sent them a prophet, Ibn Salīm recounted to him the story of the prophets Moses and Jesus and Muḥammad, and how by the help of God they had been enabled to perform many miracles. And he answered, “The truth must indeed have been with them, when they did these things; and if they performed these deeds, I believe in them.”44

Very slowly and gradually the Nubians seem to have drifted from Christianity into Muhammadanism.45 The spiritual life of their Church had sunk to the lowest ebb, and as no movement of reform sprang up in their midst, and as they had lost touch with the Christian Churches beyond their borders, it was only natural that they should seek for an expression of their spiritual aspirations in the [112]religion of Islam, whose followers had so long borne witness to its living power among them, and had already won over some of their countrymen to the acceptance of it. A Portuguese priest, who travelled in Abyssinia from 1520–1527, has preserved for us a picture of the Nubians in this state of transition; he says that they were neither Christians, Jews nor Muhammadans, but had come to be without faith and without laws; but still “they lived with the desire of being Christians.” Through the fault of their clergy they had sunk into the grossest ignorance, and now there were no bishops or priests left among them; accordingly they sent an embassy of six men to the king of Abyssinia, praying him to send priests and monks to instruct them, but this the king refused to do without the permission of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and as this could not be obtained, the unfortunate ambassadors returned unsuccessful to their own country.46 The same writer was informed by a Christian who had travelled in Nubia, that he had found 150 churches there, in each of which were still to be seen the figures of the crucified Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and other saints painted on the walls.

In all the fortresses, also, that were scattered throughout the country, there were churches.47 Before the close of the following century, Christianity had entirely disappeared from Nubia “for want of pastors,” but the closed churches were to be found still standing throughout the whole country.48 The Nubians had yielded to the powerful Muhammadan influences that surrounded them, to which the proselytising efforts of the Muslims who had travelled in Nubia for centuries past no doubt contributed a great deal; on the north were Egypt and the Arab tribes that had made their way up the Nile and extended their authority along the banks of that river;49 on the south, the Muhammadan state of the Belloos, separating them from Abyssinia. [113]These Belloos, in the early part of the sixteenth century, were, in spite of their Muslim faith, tributaries of the Christian king of Abyssinia;50 and—if they may be identified with the Baliyyūn, who, together with their neighbours, the Bajah (the inhabitants of the so-called island of Meroe), are spoken of by Idrīsī, in the twelfth century, as being Jacobite Christians,51—it is probable that they had only a few years before been converted to Islam, at the same time as the Bajah, who had been incorporated into the Muhammadan empire of the Fūnj, when these latter extended their conquests in 1499–1530 from the south up to the borders of Nubia and Abyssinia and founded the powerful state of Sennaar.

When the army of Aḥmad Grāñ invaded Abyssinia and made its way right through the country from south to north, it effected a junction about 1534 with the army of the sultan of Maseggia or Mazaga, a province under Muhammadan rule but tributary to Abyssinia, lying between that country and Sennaar; in the army of this sultan there were 15,000 Nubian soldiers who, from the account given of them, appear to have been Musalmans.52 Fragmentary and insufficient as these data of the conversion of the Nubians are, we may certainly conclude from all we know of the independent character of this people and the tenacity with which they clung to the Christian faith, so long as it was a living force among them, that their change of religion was a gradual one, extending through several centuries.

The tide of Arab emigration does not seem to have set across the Red Sea, the western shores of which formed part of the Abyssinian kingdom, until many centuries after Arabia had accepted the faith of the prophet. Up to the tenth century only a few Muhammadan families were to be found residing in the coast towns of Abyssinia, but at the end of the twelfth century the foundation of an Arab dynasty alienated some of the coast-lands from the Abyssinian kingdom. In 1300 a missionary, named Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad, made his way into Abyssinia, calling [114]on the people to embrace Islam, and in the following year, having collected around him 200,000 men, he attacked the ruler of Amhara in several engagements.53 King Saifa Arʻād (1342–1370) took energetic measures against the Muhammadans in his kingdom, putting to death or driving into exile all those who refused to embrace Christianity.54 At the close of the same century the disturbed state of the country, owing to the civil wars that distracted it, made it possible for the various Arab settlements along the coast to make themselves masters of the entire seaboard and drive the Abyssinians into the interior, and the king, Baʼeda Māryām (1468–1478), is said to have spent the greater part of his reign in fighting against the Muhammadans on the eastern border of his kingdom.55 In the early part of the sixteenth century, while the powerful Muhammadan kingdom of Adal, between Abyssinia and the southern extremity of the Red Sea, and some others were bitterly hostile to the Christian power, there were others again that formed peaceful

tributaries of “Prester John”; e.g. in Massowah there were Arabs who kept the flocks of the Abyssinian seigniors, wandering about in bands of thirty or forty with their wives and children, each band having its Christian “captain.”56 Some Musalmans are also mentioned as being in the service of the king and being entrusted by him with important posts;57 while some of these remained faithful to Islam, others embraced the prevailing religion of the country. What was implied in the fact of these Muhammadan communities being tributaries of the king of Abyssinia, it is difficult to determine. The Musalmans of Ḥadya had along with other tribute to give up every year to the king a maiden who had to become a Christian; this custom was in accordance with an ancient treaty, which the king of Abyssinia has always made them observe, “because he was the stronger”; besides this, they were forbidden to carry arms or put on war-apparel, and, if they rode, their horses were not to be saddled; “these orders,” they said, “we have always obeyed, so that the [115]king may not put us to death and destroy our mosques. When the king sends his people to fetch the maiden and the tribute, we put her on a bed, wash her and cover her with a cloth, and recite the prayers for the dead over her and give her up to the people of the king; and thus did our fathers and our grandfathers before us.”58

These Muhammadan tributaries were chiefly to be found in the low-lying countries that formed the northern boundary of Abyssinia, from the Red Sea westward to Sennaar,59 and on the south and the south-east of the kingdom.60 What influence these Muhammadans had on the Christian populations with which they were intermingled, and whether they made converts to Islam as in the present century, is matter only of conjecture. Certain it is, however, that when the independent Muhammadan ruler of Adal, Aḥmad Grāñ—himself said to have been the son of a Christian priest of Aijjo, who had left his own country and adopted Islam in that of the Adals61—invaded Abyssinia from 1528 to 1543, many Abyssinian chiefs with their followers joined his victorious army and became Musalmans, and though the Christian populations of some districts preferred to pay jizyah,62 others embraced the religion of the conqueror.63 But the contemporary Muslim historian himself tells us that in some cases this conversion was the result of fear, and that suspicions were entertained of the genuineness of the allegiance of the new converts.64 But such apparently was not universally the case, and the widespread character of the conversions in several districts give the impression of a popular movement. The Christian chiefs who went over to Islam made use of their personal influence in inducing their troops to follow their example. They were, as we are told, in some cases very ignorant of their own religion,65 and thus the change of faith was a less difficult matter.

Particularly instrumental in conversions of this kind were those Muhammadan chiefs who had previously entered the service of the king of Abyssinia, and those renegades who took the opportunity of the invasion of the country by a conquering Musalman [116]army to throw off their allegiance at once to Christianity and the Christian king and declare themselves Muhammadans once more.66

One of these in 1531 wrote the following letter to Aḥmad Grāñ:—“I was formerly a Muslim and the son of a Muslim, was taken prisoner by the polytheists and made a Christian by force; but in my heart I have always clung to the true faith and now I seek the protection of God and of His Prophet and of thee. If thou wilt accept my repentance and punish me not for what I have done, I will return in penitence to God; and I will devise means whereby the troops of the king, that are with me, may join thee and become Muslims;”—and in fact the greater part of his army elected to follow their general; including the women and children their numbers are said to have amounted to 20,000 souls.67

But with the help of the Portuguese, the Abyssinians succeeded in shaking off the yoke of their Muhammadan conquerors and Aḥmad Grāñ himself was slain in 1543. Islam had, however, gained a footing in the country, which the troublous condition of affairs during the remainder of the sixteenth and the following century enabled it to retain, the rival Christian Churches being too busily engaged in contending with one another, to devote much attention to their common enemy. For the successful proselytising of the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic missionaries and the active interference of the Portuguese in all civil and political matters, excited violent opposition in the mass of the Abyssinian Christians;—indeed so bitter was this feeling that some of the chiefs openly declared that they would rather submit to a Muhammadan ruler than continue their alliance with the Portuguese;68—and the semi-religious, semi-patriotic movement set on foot thereby, rapidly assumed such vast proportions as to lead (about 1632) to the expulsion of the Portuguese and the exclusion of all foreign Christians from the country. The condition of Abyssinia then speedily became one of terrible confusion and anarchy, of which some tribes of the Galla race took [117]advantage, to thrust their way right into the very centre of the country, where their settlements remain to the present day.

The progress achieved by Islam during this period may be estimated from the testimony of a traveller of the seventeenth century, who tells us that in his time the adherents of this faith were scattered throughout the whole of Abyssinia and formed a third of the entire population.69 During the following century the faith of the Prophet seems steadily to have increased by means of the conversion of isolated individuals here and there. The absence of any strong central government in the country favoured the rise of petty independent chieftains, many of whom had strong Muhammadan sympathies, though (in accordance with a fundamental law of the state) all the Abyssinian princes had to belong to the Christian faith; the Muhammadans, too, aspiring to the dignity of the Abyssinian aristocracy, abjured the faith in which they had been born and pretended conversion to Christianity in order to get themselves enrolled in the order of the nobles, and as governors of Christian provinces made use of all their influence towards the spread of Islam.70 One of the chief reasons of the success of this faith seems to have been the moral superiority of the Muslims as compared with that of the Christian population of Abyssinia. Rüppell says that he frequently noticed in the course of his travels in Abyssinia that when a post had to be filled which required that a thoroughly honest and trustworthy person should be selected, the choice always fell upon a Muhammadan.

In comparison with the Christians, he says that they were more active and energetic; that every Muhammadan had his sons taught to read and write, whereas Christian children were only educated when they were intended for the priesthood.71 This moral superiority of the Muhammadans of [118]Abyssinia over the Christian population goes far to explain the continuous though slow progress made by Islam during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the degradation and apathy of the Abyssinian clergy and the interminable feuds of the Abyssinian chiefs, have left Muhammadan influences free to work undisturbed. Mr. Plowden, who was English consul in Abyssinia from 1844 to 1860, speaking of the Ḥabāb, three Tigrē tribes dwelling between 16° and 17° 30′ lat., the north-west of Massowah, says that they have become Muhammadan “within the last 100 years, and all, save the latest generation, bear Christian names.

They have changed their faith, through the constant influence of the Muhammadans with whom they trade, and through the gradual and now entire abandonment of the country by the Abyssinian chiefs, too much occupied in ceaseless wars with their neighbours.”72 They have a tradition that one of their chiefs named Jāwej rejected Christianity for Islam, in the belief that the latter faith brought good luck and long life; he then said to his priest, “Break in pieces the Tābōt”;73 the priest answered, “I dare not break in pieces the Tābōt of Mary”; so Jāwej seized the Tābōt with his own hands and cut it in pieces with an axe; the Christian priests then adopted Islam, and all their descendants are shayk͟hs of the tribe to the present day.74

Other sections of the population of the northern districts of the country were similarly converted to Islam during the same period, because the priests had abandoned these districts and the churches had been suffered to fall into ruins,—apparently entirely through neglect, as the Muhammadans here are said to have been by no means fanatical nor to have borne any particular enmity to Christianity.75 Similar testimony to the progress of Islam in the early part of the nineteenth century is given by other travellers,76 who found numbers of Christians to be continually passing over to that faith. The Muhammadans were especially favoured by Ras ʻAlī, one of the vice-regents of Abyssinia and practically master of the country before the accession [119]of King Theodore in 1853. Though himself a Christian, he distributed posts and even the spoils of the churches among the followers of Islam, and during his reign one half of the population of the central provinces of Abyssinia embraced the faith of the Prophet.77 Such deep roots had this faith now struck in Abyssinia that its followers had in their hands all the commerce as well as all the petty trade of the country, enjoyed vast possessions, were masters of large towns and central markets, and had a firm hold upon the mass of the people.

Indeed, a Christian missionary who lived for thirty-five years in this country, rated the success and the zeal of the Muslim propagandists so high as to say that were another Aḥmad Grāñ to arise and unfurl the banner of the Prophet, the whole of Abyssinia would become Muhammadan.78 Embroilments with the Egyptian government (with which Abyssinia was at war from 1875 to 1882) brought about a revulsion of feeling against Muhammadanism: hatred of the foreign Muslim foe reacted upon their co-religionists within the border. In 1878, King John summoned a Convocation of the Abyssinian clergy, who proclaimed him supreme arbiter in matters of faith and ordained that there should be but one religion throughout the whole kingdom. Christians of all sects other than the Jacobite were given two years in which to become reconciled to the national Church; the Muhammadans were to submit within three, and the heathen within five, years. A few days later the king promulgated an edict that showed how little worth was the three years’ grace allowed to the Muhammadans; for not only did he order them to build Christian churches wherever they were needed and to pay tithes to the priests resident in their respective districts, but also gave three months’ notice to all Muhammadan officials to either receive baptism or resign their posts. Such compulsory conversion (consisting as it did merely of the rite of baptism and the payment of tithes) was naturally of the most ineffectual character, and while outwardly conforming, the Muslims in secret protested their loyalty to their old faith.

Massaja saw some such go straight from the church [120]in which they had been baptised to the mosque, in order to have this enforced baptism wiped off by some holy man of their own faith.79 These mass conversions were rendered the more ineffectual by being confined to the men, for as the royal edict had made no mention of the women they were in no way molested,—a circumstance that probably proved to be of considerable significance in the future history of Islam in Abyssinia, as Massaja bears striking testimony to the important part the Muhammadan women have played in the diffusion of their faith in this country.80 By 1880 King John is said to have compelled about 50,000 Muhammadans to be baptised, as well as 20,000 members of one of the pagan tribes and half a million of Gallas,81 but as their conversion went no further than baptism and the payment of tithes, it is not surprising to learn that the only result of these violent measures was to increase the hatred and hostility of both the Muslim and the heathen Abyssinians towards the Christian faith.82 The king of the petty state of Kafa (which had almost always acknowledged the supremacy of Abyssinia),—Sawo-Teheno,—took advantage of the embarrassment of King John, who was threatened at once by the Italians and the followers of the Mahdī, to assert his independence, and became a Musalman, in order to do so more effectively.

He successfully resisted all attacks until 1897, when his state was reconquered and he himself taken prisoner by the Emperor Menelik, the former king of Shoa, who had established his authority over the whole of Abyssinia after the death of King John in 1889. Christianity was re-established as the state religion throughout Kafa and Christian worship renewed in the churches, which had been left uninjured, being either shut up or turned into mosques.83 But these violent measures taken in the interests of the Christian faith have failed to arrest the growing power of Islam during the nineteenth century. Whole tribes that were once Christian and still bear Christian names, such as Taklēs (“Plant of Jesus”), Hebtēs (“Gift of Jesus”) [121]and Temāryām (“Gift of Mary”), have become Muslim. The two Mänsaʻ tribes which were entirely Christian about the middle of the nineteenth century had become Muslim, for the most part, at the beginning of the twentieth century; the propagandist efforts of the Muslims who converted them appear to have been facilitated through the ignorance of the Christian clergy. A similar Muhammadanising process has been going on for some time among other tribes also.84

We must return now to the history of Africa in the seventh century, when the Arabs were pushing their conquests from East to West along the north coast. The comparatively easy conquest of Egypt, where so many of the inhabitants assisted the Arabs in bringing the Byzantine rule to an end, found no parallel in the bloody campaigns and the long-continued resistance that here barred their further progress, and half a century elapsed before the Arabs succeeded in making themselves complete masters of the north coast from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. It was not till 698 that the fall of Carthage brought the Roman rule in Africa to an end for ever, and the subjugation of the Berbers made the Arabs supreme in the country.

The details of these campaigns it is no part of our purpose to consider, but rather to attempt to discover in what way Islam was spread among the Christian population. Unfortunately the materials available for such a purpose are lamentably sparse and insufficient. What became of that great African Church that had given such saints and theologians to Christendom? The Church of Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, which had emerged victorious out of so many persecutions, and had so stoutly championed the cause of Christian orthodoxy, seems to have faded away like a mist.

In the absence of definite information, it has been usual to ascribe the disappearance of the Christian population to fanatical persecutions and forced conversions on the part of the Muslim conquerors. But there are many considerations that militate against such a rough and ready settlement of this question. First of all, there is the absence [122]of definite evidence in support of such an assertion. Massacres, devastation and all the other accompaniments of a bloody and long-protracted war, there were in horrible abundance, but of actual religious persecution we have little mention, and the survival of the native Christian Church for more than eight centuries after the Arab conquest is a testimony to the toleration that alone could have rendered such a survival possible.

The causes that brought about the decay of Christianity in North Africa must be sought for elsewhere than in the bigotry of Muhammadan rulers. But before attempting to enumerate these, it will be well to realise how very small must have been the number of the Christian population at the end of the seventh century—a circumstance that renders its continued existence under Muhammadan rule still more significant of the absence of forced conversion, and leaves such a hypothesis much less plausibility than would have been the case had the Arabs found a large and flourishing Christian Church there when they commenced their conquest of northern Africa.

The Roman provinces of Africa, to which the Christian population was confined, never extended far southwards; the Sahara forms a barrier in this direction, so that the breadth of the coast seldom exceeds 80 or 100 miles.85 Though there were as many as 500 bishoprics just before the Vandal conquest, this number can serve as no criterion of the number of the faithful, owing to the practice observed in the African Church of appointing bishops to the most inconsiderable towns and very frequently to the most obscure villages,86 and it is doubtful whether Christianity ever spread far inland among the Berber tribes.87 When the power of the Roman Empire declined in the fifth century, different tribes of this great race, known to the Romans under the names of Moors, Numidians, Libyans, etc., swarmed up from the south to ravage and destroy the wealthy cities of the coast. These invaders were certainly heathen. The Libyans, whose devastations are so pathetically bewailed [123]by Synesius of Cyrene, pillaged and burnt the churches and carried off the sacred vessels for their own idolatrous rites,88 and this province of Cyrenaica never recovered from their devastations, and Christianity was probably almost extinct here at the time of the Muslim invasion.

The Moorish chieftain in the district of Tripolis, who was at war with the Vandal king Thorismund (496–524), but respected the churches and clergy of the orthodox, who had been ill-treated by the Vandals, declared his heathenism when he said, “I do not know who the God of the Christians is, but if he is so powerful as he is represented, he will take vengeance on those who insult him, and succour those who do him honour.”89 There is some probability that the nomads of Mauritania also were very largely heathen.