CHAPTER IV.
THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG
THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF AFRICA.
Islam was first introduced into
Africa by the Arab army that invaded Egypt under the command of 'Amr b. al-Āṣ
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, 'Amr 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 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 ‘Uthmān (A.D. 643-655), the revenue derived from Egypt amounted to
twelve millions; a few years later, in the reign of Mu'āwiyah (661-679), it had
fallen to five millions owing to the enormous number of conversions : under
'Umar II (717-720) it fell still lower, so that the governor of Egypt[7]
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 Muhammad 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 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 'Abbāsid 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 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 Balūtus,
"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 type[15]
could offer little attraction, in the face of the more human morality of Islam.[16]
On account of the large numbers of Copts that 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 Christians[19]
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, 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 Salāh 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 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 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-Mu'tasim (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, 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 dinar 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 Baṭūṭah[40]
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
Mamluk 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 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 Muhammad, 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 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. 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 Ahmad Grān 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.
Let us now pass to
the history of Islam among the Abyssinians, who had received Christianity two
centuries before the Nubians, and like them belonged to the Jacobite Church.
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 'Abd Allāh Muhammad, made his way into Abyssinia, calling
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 Ar'ād (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, Ba'eda 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 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 Grān—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 Adals[61]—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 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 Ahmad Grān :—" 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 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 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 Habāb,
three Tigrē tribes dwelling between 16° and 17° 30’ lat., to 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 shaykhs
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 'Alī, one of the vice-regents
of Abyssinia and practically master of the country before the accession 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 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") and
Temāryām ("Gift of Mary"), have become Muslim. The two Mänsa' 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 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 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.
But whatever may
have been the extent of the Christian Church, it received a blow from the
Vandal persecutions from which it never recovered. For nearly a century the
Arian Vandals persecuted the orthodox with relentless fury; sent their bishops
into exile, forbade the public exercise of their religion and cruelly tortured
those who refused to conform to the religion of their conquerors.[90]
When in 534, Belisarius crushed the power of the Vandals and restored North
Africa to the Roman Empire, only 217 bishops met in the Synod of Carthage[91]
to resume the direction of the Christian Church. After the fierce and
long-continued persecution to which they had been subjected the number of the
faithful must have been very much reduced, and during the century that elapsed
before the coming of the Muhammadans, the inroads of the barbarian Moors, who
shut the Romans up in the cities and other centres of population, and kept the
mountains, the desert and the open country for themselves,[92]
the prevalent disorder and ill-government, and above all the desolating plagues
that signalised the latter half of the sixth century, all combined to carry on
the work of destruction. Five millions of Africans are said to have been
consumed by the wars and government of the Emperor Justinian. The wealthier
citizens abandoned a country whose commerce and agriculture, once so
flourishing, had been irretrievably ruined. " Such was the desolation of
Africa, that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days without meeting
the face either of a friend or an enemy. The nation of the Vandals had
disappeared; they once amounted to an hundred and sixty thousand warriors,
without including the children, the women, or the slaves. Their numbers were
infinitely surpassed by the number of Moorish families extirpated in a
relentless war; the same destruction was retaliated on the Romans and their
allies, who perished by the climate, their mutual quarrels, and the rage of the
barbarians."[93]
In 646, the year
before the victorious Arabs advanced from Egypt to the subjugation of the
western province, the African Church that had championed so often the purity of
Christian doctrine, was stirred to its depths by the struggle against
Monotheletism; but when the bishops of the four ecclesiastical provinces in the
archbishopric of Carthage, viz. Mauritania, Numidia, Byzacena and Africa
Proconsularis, held councils to condemn Monotheletism, and wrote synodal
letters to the Emperor and the Pope, there were only sixty-eight bishops who
assembled at Carthage to represent the last-mentioned province, and forty-two
for Byzacena. The numbers from the other two dioceses are not given, but the
Christian population had undoubtedly suffered much more in these than in the
two other dioceses which were nearer to the seat of government.[94]
It is exceedingly unlikely that any of the bishops were absent on an occasion
that excited so much feeling, when zeal for Christian doctrine and political
animosity to the Byzantine court both combined in stimulating this movement,
and when Africa took the most prominent part in stirring up the opposition that
led to the convening of the great Lateran Council of 648. This diminution in
the number of the African bishops certainly points to a vast decrease in the
Christian population, and in consideration of the numerous causes contributing
to a decay of the population, too great stress even must not be laid upon the
number of these, because an episcopal see may continue to be filled long after
the diocese has sunk into insignificance.
From the
considerations enumerated above, it may certainly be inferred that the
Christian population at the time of the Muhammadan invasion was by no means a
large one. During the fifty years that elapsed before the Arabs assured their
victory, the Christian population was still further reduced by the devastations
of this long conflict. The city of Tripolis, after sustaining a siege of six
months, was sacked, and of the inhabitants part were put to the sword and the
rest carried off captive into Egypt and Arabia.[95]
Another city, bordering on the Numidian desert, was defended by a Roman count
with a large garrison which bravely endured a blockade of a whole year; when at
last it was taken by storm, all the males were put to the sword and the women
and children carried off captive.[96]
The number of such captives is said to have amounted to several hundreds of
thousands.[97]
Many of the Christians took refuge in flight,[98]
some into Italy and Spain,[99]
and it would almost seem that others even wandered as far as Germany, judging
from a letter addressed to the diocese of St. Boniface by Pope Gregory II.[100]
In fact, many of the great Roman cities were quite depopulated, and remained
uninhabited for a long time or were even left to fall to ruins entirely,[101]
while in several cases the conquerors chose entirely new sites for their chief
towns.[102]
As to the
scattered remnants of the once flourishing Christian Church that still remained
in Africa at the end of the seventh century, it can hardly be supposed that
persecution is responsible for their final disappearance, in the face of the
fact that traces of a native Christian community were to be found even so late
as the sixteenth century. Idrīs, the founder of the dynasty in Morocco that
bore his name, is indeed said to have compelled by force Christians and Jews to
embrace Islam in the year A.D. 789, when he had just begun to carve out a
kingdom for himself with the sword,[103]
but, as far as I have been able to discover, this incident is without parallel
in the history of the native Church of North Africa.[104]
The very slowness
of its decay is a testimony to the toleration it must have received. About 300
years after the Muhammadan conquest there were still nearly forty bishoprics
left,[105]
and when in 1053 Pope Leo IX laments that only five bishops could be found to
represent the once flourishing African Church,[106]
the cause is most probably to be sought for in the terrible bloodshed and
destruction wrought by the Arab hordes that had poured into the country a few
years before and filled it with incessant conflict and anarchy.[107]
In 1076, the African Church could not provide the three bishops necessary for
the consecration of an aspirant to the dignity of the episcopate, in accordance
with the demands of canon law, and it was necessary for Pope Gregory VII to
consecrate two bishops to act as coadjutors of the Archbishop of Carthage; but
the numbers of the faithful were still so large as to demand the creation of
fresh bishops to lighten the burden of the work, which was too heavy for these
three bishops to perform unaided.[108]
In the course of the next two centuries, the Christian Church declined still
further, and in 1246 the bishop of Morocco was the sole spiritual leader of the
remnant of the native Church.[109]
Up to the same period traces of the survival of Christianity were still to be
found among the Kabils of Algeria;[110] these tribes had received some slight
instruction in the tenets of Islam at an early period, but the new faith had
taken very little hold upon them, and as years went by they lost even what
little knowledge they had at first possessed, so much so that they even forgot
the Muslim formula of prayer. Shut up in their mountain fastnesses and jealous
of their independence, they successfully resisted the introduction of the Arab
element into their midst, and thus the difficulties in the way of their
conversion were very considerable. Some unsuccessful attempts to start a
mission among them had been made by the inmates of a monastery belonging to the
Qādiriyyah order, Sāqiyah al-hamrā', but the honour of winning an entrance
among them for the Muslim faith was reserved for a number of Andalusian Moors
who were driven out of Spain after the taking of Granada in 1492. They had
taken refuge in this monastery and were recognised by the shaykh to be
eminently fitted for the arduous task that had previously so completely baffled
the efforts of his disciples. Before dismissing them on this pious errand, he
thus addressed them : "It is a duty incumbent upon us to bear the torch of
Islam into these regions that have lost their inheritance in the blessings of
religion; for these unhappy Kabils are wholly unprovided with schools, and have
no shaykh to teach their children the laws of morality and the virtues of
Islam; so they live like the brute beasts, without God or religion. To do away
with this unhappy state of things, I have determined to appeal to your
religious zeal and enlightenment. Let not these mountaineers wallow any longer
in their pitiable ignorance of the grand truths of our religion; go and breathe
upon the dying fire of their faith and re-illumine its smouldering embers;
purge them of whatever errors may still cling to them from their former belief
in Christianity; make them understand that in the religion of our lord Muḥammad—
may God have compassion upon him—dirt is not, as in the Christian religion,
looked upon as acceptable in the eyes of God.[111]
I will not disguise from you the fact that your task is beset with
difficulties, but your irresistible zeal and the ardour of your faith will
enable you, by the grace of God, to overcome all obstacles. Go, my children,
and bring back again to God and His Prophet these unhappy people who are
wallowing in the mire of ignorance and unbelief. Go, my children, bearing the
message of salvation, and may God be with you and uphold you."
The missionaries
started off in parties of five or six at a time in various directions; they
went in rags, staff in hand, and choosing out the wildest and least frequented
parts of the mountains, established hermitages in caves and clefts of the
rocks. Their austerities and prolonged devotions soon excited the curiosity of
the Kabils, who after a short time began to enter into friendly relations with
them. Little by little the missionaries gained the influence they desired
through their knowledge of medicine, of the mechanical arts, and other
advantages of civilisation, and each hermitage became a centre of Muslim
teaching. Students, attracted by the learning of the new-comers, gathered round
them and in time became missionaries of Islam to their fellow-countrymen, until
their faith spread throughout all the country of the Kabils and the villages of
the Algerian Sahara.[112]
The above incident
is no doubt illustrative of the manner in which Islam was introduced among such
other sections of the independent tribes of the interior as had received any
Christian teaching, but whose knowledge of this faith had dwindled down to the
observance of a few superstitious rites;[113]
for, cut off as they were from the rest of the Christian world and unprovided
with spiritual teachers, they could have had little in the way of positive
religious belief to oppose to the teachings of the Muslim missionaries.
There is little
more to add to these sparse records of the decay of the North African Church. A
Muhammadan traveller,[114]
who visited al-Jarīd, the southern district of Tunis, in the early part of the
fourteenth century, tells us that the Christian churches, although in ruins,
were still standing in his day, not having been destroyed by the Arab
conquerors, who had contented themselves with building a mosque in front of
each of these churches. Ibn Khaldūn (writing towards the close of the
fourteenth century), speaks of some villages in the province of Qastīliyyah,[115]
with a Christian population whose ancestors had lived there since the time of
the Arab conquest.[116]
At the end of the following century there was still to be found in the city of
Tunis a small community of native Christians, living together in one of the
suburbs, quite distinct from that in which the foreign Christian merchants
resided; far from being oppressed or persecuted, they were employed as the
bodyguard of the Sultan.[117]
These were doubtless the same persons as were congratulated on their perseverance
in the Christian faith by Charles V after the capture of Tunis in 1535.[118]
This is the last
we hear of the native Christian Church in North Africa. The very fact of its so
long survival would militate against any supposition of forced conversion, even
if we had not abundant evidence of the tolerant spirit of the Arab rulers of
the various North African kingdoms, who employed Christian soldiers,[119]
granted by frequent treaties the free exercise of their religion to Christian
merchants and settlers,[120]
and to whom Popes [121]
recommended the care of the native Christian population, while exhorting the
latter to serve their Muhammadan rulers faithfully.[122]
[1]
Amélineau, p. 3; Caetani, vol. iv. p. 81 sq. Justinian is said to have
had 200,000 Copts put to death in the city of Alexandria, and the persecutions
of his successors drove many to take refuge in the desert. (Wansleben: The
Present State of Egypt, p. 11.) (London, 1678.)
[3]
John, Jacobite bishop of Nikiu (second half of seventh century), p. 584.
Caetani, vol. iv. pp. 515-16.
[4]
Bell, p. xxxvii. But the exactions and hardships that, according to
Maqrīzī, the Copts had to endure about seventy years after the conquest hardly
allow us to extend this period so far as Von Ranke does: "Von Aegypten
weiss man durch die bestimmtesten Zeugnisse, dass sich die Einwohner in den
nächsten Jahrhunderten unter der arabischen Herrschaft in einem erträglichen
Zustand befunden haben." (Weltgeschichte, vol. v. p. 153, 4th ed.)
[5]
John of Nikiu, p. 560.
[6]
Id. p. 585. "Or beaucoup des Égyptiens, qui étaient de faux
chrétiens, reniérent la sainte religion orthodoxe et le baptême qui donne la
vie, embrassèrent la religion des Musulmans, les ennemis de Dieu, et
acceptèrent la détestable doctrine de ce monstre, c'est-à-dire de Mahomet; ils
partagèrent l'égarement de ces idolâtres et prirent les armes contre les
chrétiens."
[7]
Qurra b. Sharīk (governor of Egypt from 709 to 714), or his predecessor,
appears to have insisted on the converts continuing to pay jizyah. (Beckeṛ Papyri Schott-Reinhardt, p. 18.)
[8]
Ibn Sa'd, Ṭabaqāt, vol. v. p. 283.
[9]
Caetani, vol. iv, p. 6l8; vol. v. pp. 384-5.
[10]
Severus, pp. 172-3.
[11]
Id. pp. 205-6.
[12]
“Sans aucun doute il y eut
dans la multiplicité des martyrs une sorte de résistance nationale contre les
gouverneurs étrangers." (Amélineau, p. 58.)
[13]
Amélineau, pp. 57-8.
[14] Abū Ṣalīḥ, pp. 163-4.
[15]
Amélineau, pp. 53-4, 69-70.
[16]
Abū Ṣalīḥ gives an account of some monks who embraced the faith of the Prophet,
and these are probably representative of a larger number of whom the historian
has left no record, as lacking the peculiar circumstances of loss to the
monastery or of recantation that made such instances of interest to him (pp.
128, 142).
[17] Lane, pp. 546, 549.
[18] Lüttke (1), vol. i. pp. 30, 35. Dr. Andrew Watson writes: "No year has
passed during my residence of forty-four years in the Nile valley without my
hearing of several instances of defection.
The causes are, chiefly, the hope of worldly gain of various kinds,
severe and continued persecution, exposure to the cruelty and rapacity of
Moslem neighbours, and personal indignities as well as political disabilities
of various kinds." (Islam in Egypt: Mohammedan World, p. 24.)
[19] Severus, pp. 122, 126, 143. One of the very first
occasions on which they had to complain of excessive taxation was when Menas,
the Christian prefect of Lower Egypt,
extorted from the city of Alexandria 32,057 pieces of gold,
instead of 22,000 which 'Amr had fixed as the amount to be levied. (John of Nikiu, p. 585.) Renaudot (p. 168) says that after the
restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy, about seventy years after the Muhammadan
conquest, the Copts suffered as much at its hands as at the hands of the
Muhammadans themselves.
[20] Maqrīzī mentions five other risings of the Copts that
had to be crushed by force of arms, within the first century of the Arab
domination. (Maqrīzī (2), pp. 76-82.)
[27] Wansleben, p. 30. Wansleben mentions another instance
(under different circumstances) of the decay of the Coptic Church, in the
island of Cyprus, which was formerly under the jurisdiction of the Coptic
Patriarch: here they were so persecuted by the Orthodox clergy, who enjoyed the
protection of the Byzantine emperors, that the Patriarch could not induce
priests to go there, and consequently all the Copts on the island either
accepted Islam or the Council of Chalcedon, and their churches were all shut
up. (Id. p. 31.)
[28] Renaudot, p. 377.
[29] Renaudot, p. 575.
[30] Relation du voyage du Sayd ou de la Thebayde fait en
1668, par les PP. Protais et Charles-François d'Orleans, Capuchins
Missionaires, p. 3. (Thevenot, vol. ii.)
[31] Caetani, vol. iv. p. 520.
[32] Ishok, of Romgla, pp. 272-3.
[33] Idrīsī, p. 32.
[34] Maqrīzī (2), tome i. 2me partie, p. 131.
[35] Maqrīzī, pp. 128-30.
[36] Burckhardt (1), p. 494.
[37] About twelve miles above the modern Khartum.
[38] Artin, pp. 62, 144.
[39]
Becker, Geschichte des östlichen Sūdān, p. 160.
[40]
Vol. iv. p. 396.
[41]
Slatin Pasha records a tradition
current among the Danagla Arabs
that this town was founded by their ancestor, Dangal, who called it after his
own name. (This however is impossible, inasmuch as Dongola was in existence in
ancient Egyptian times, and is mentioned on the monuments. See Vivien de
Saint-Martin, vol. ii. p. 85.) According to their tradition, this Dangal,
though a slave, rose to be ruler of Nubia, but paid tribute to Bahnesa, the Coptic bishop of the entire district
lying between the present Sarras and Debba. (Fire and Sword in the Sudan, p.
13.) (London, 1896.)
[43]
Budge, vol. ii. p. 199. Artin, p. 144.
[46] Lord Stanley of Alderley in his translation of Alvarez'
Narrative from the original Portuguese, gives the answer of the king as
follows: " He said to them that he had his Abima from the country of the
Moors, that is to say from the Patriarch of Alexandria; .... how then could he
give priests and friars since another gave them " (p. 352). (London,
1881.)
[47] Viaggio nella
Ethiopia al Prete Ianni fatto par Don Francesco Alvarez Portughese
(1520-1527). (Ramusio, tom. i.
pp. 200, 250.)
[48] Wansleben, p.
30. For descriptions of the
ruins that still remain, see Budge, vol. ii. p. 299 sqq., and G. S. Nileham,
Churches in Lower Nubia. (Philadelphia, 1910.)
[49] Burckhardt (1). p. 133.
[50] Alvarez, p. 250.
[51] Idrīsī, p. 32.
[52] Arabfaqīh, p. 323.
[53] Maqrīzī (2), tome ii. 2me partie, p. 183.
[54] Basset, p. 240.
[55] Id., p. 247.
[56] Alvarez. (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 218, 242, 249.)
[57] ‘Arabfaqīh,
pp. 83, 191.
[58] ‘Arabfaqīh, p.
275-6.
[59] Id. pp. 319, 324.
[60] Id. pp. 28, 129, 275.
[61] Plowden, p. 36.
[62] ‘Arabfaqīh,
pp. 321, 335, 343.
[63] Id. passim.
[64] Id. pp. 175, 195, 248.
[65] Id. p. 178.
[66] ‘Arabfaqīh,
pp. 34-5, 120-1, 182-3, 244, 327.
[67] ‘Arabfaqīh,
pp. 181-2, 186.
[68]
Iobi Ludolfi ad suam Historiam Æthiopicam Commentarius, p. 474. Frankfurt a. M., 1691.)
[70] Massaja, vol. ii. pp.
205-6. " Ognuno comprende che
movente di queste conversioni essendo la sete di regnare, nel fatto non si
riducevano che ad una formalità esterna, restando poi i nuovi convertiti veri
mussulmani nei cuori e nei costumi. E perciò accadeva che, elevati alla dignità
di Râs, si circondavano di mussulmani, dando ad essi la maggior parte degli
impieghi e colmandoli di titoli, ricchezze e favori : e così 1'Abissinia
cristiana invasa e popolata da questa pessima razza, passò coll' andar del
tempo sotto il giogo dell' islamismo." (Id. p. 206.)
[71] Rüppell, vol. i. pp. 328, 366.
[72] Plowden. p. 15.
[73]
Tābōt, the ark of the covenant.
[74] Littmann, pp. 69-70.
[75] Plowden, pp. 8-9.
[80] Id. pp. I24, I25.
[81] Oppel, p. 307. Reclus, tome x. p. 247.
[82] Massaja, vol. xi. pp. 79, 81.
[83] Morié, vol. ii. p. 449.
[84] Littmann, pp. 68-70. K. Cederquist: Islam and Christianity in
Abyssinia, p. 154 (The Moslem World, vol. ii.).
[85]
Gibbon, vol. i. p. 161.
[86]
Id. vol. ii. p. 212.
[87]
C. O. Castiglioni: Recherches sur les Berbères atlantiques, pp. 96-7
(Milan, 1826.)
[88]
Synesii Catastasis. (Migne: Patr. Gr., tom. lxvi. p. 1569.)
[89]
Neander (2), p. 320.
[90]
Gibbon, vol. iv. pp. 331-3.
[91]
Id. vol. v. p. 115.
[92] Tijānī, p. 201. Gibbon, vol. v. p. 122.
[93] Gibbon, vol. v. p. 214.
[94] Neander (1), vol. v. pp. 254-5. J. E. T. Wiltsch:
Hand-book of the geography and statistics of the Church, vol. i. pp. 433-4. (London,
1859.) J. Bournichon: L'lnvasion musulmane en Afrique, pp. 32-3. (Tours, 1890.)
[96]
"Deusen, una città antichissima edificata da Romani dove confina il regno di Buggia col diserto di
Numidia." (Id. p. 75, F.)
[97]
Pavy, vol. i. p. iv.
[98]"Tous ceux qui ne se convertirent pas à I'islamisme,
ou qui (conservant leur foi) ne voulurent pas s'obliger à payer la capitation, durent prendre la fuite devant les armées musulmanes.” (Tijānī, p. 201.)
[99]
Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, tom. i. p. 7.)
[100]"Afros passim ad ecclesiasticos ordines
(procedentes) prætendentes nulla
ratione suscipiat (Bonifacius), quia aliqui eorum Manichæi, aliqui
rebaptizati sæpius sunt probati." Epist. Iv. (Migne: Patr, Lat., tom. lxxxix, p. 502.)
[101]
Leo Africanus. (Ramusio, pp. 65, 66, 68, 69, 76.)
[102]
Qayrwān or Cairoan,
founded A.H. 50; Fez, founded A.H. 185; al-Mahdiyyah, founded A.H. 303; Masīlah, founded A.H. 315; Marocco,
founded A.H. 424. (Abū-l Fidā, tome ii. pp. 198, 186, 200, 191, 187.)
[103]
Ibn Abī Zar', p. 16.
[104]
A doubtful case of forced
conversion is attributed to 'Abd al-Mu'min, who conquered Tunis in 1159.
See De Mas Latrie (2), pp. 77-8.
" Deux auteurs arabes, Ibn-al-Athir, contemporain, mais
vivant à Damas au milieu de l'exaltation religieuse que provoquaient
les victoires de Saladin, l'autre
El-Tidjani, visitant 1'Afrique
orientale au quatorzième siècle, ont écrit que le sultan, maître de Tunis, força les chretiéns et les juifs établis dans cette ville à
embrasser 1'islamisme, et que les réfractaires furent impitoyablement
massacrés. Nous doutons de la réalité de toutes ces mesures. Si l'arrêt fatal fut prononcé dans 1'emportement du triomphe et pour satisfaire
quelques exigences momentanées, il dut être éludé ou révoqué, tant il était contraire au principe de la liberté religieuse
respecté jusque-là par tous les princes maugrebins. Ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que
les chrétiens et les juifs ne tardèrent
pas à reparaître à Tunis et qu'on voit les chrétiens avant la fin du règne
d'Abd-el-Moumen etablis à Tunis et y jouissant comme par le passé
de la liberté, de leurs établissements, de leur commerce et de leur
religion . . . . ‘Accompagné ainsi par Dieu même dans sa marche, dit un ancien auteur maugrebin, il traversa
victorieusement les terres du Zab et de 1'Ifrikiah, conquérant le pays et les villes, accordant 1'aman à
ceux qui le demandaient et tuant les
récalcitrants.' Ces derniers mots confirment notre sentiment sur sa politique à l'egard des chrétiens qui acceptèrent 1'arrêt fatal de la destinée.
[105]
De Mas Latrie (2), pp. 27-8.
[106]
S. Leonis IX. Papæ Epist. lxxxiii. (Migne: Patr. Lat., tom. cxliii. p. 728.) This letter
deals with a quarrel for precedence between the bishops of Gummi and Carthage,
and it is quite possible that the disordered condition of Africa at the time
may have kept the African bishops ignorant of the condition of other sees
besides their own and those immediately adjacent, and that accordingly the
information supplied to the Pope represented the number of the bishops as
being smaller than it really was.
[108]
S. Gregorii VII. Epistola xix. (Liber tertius). (Migne: Patr. Lat., tom. cxlviii. p. 449.)
[109]
De Mas Latrie, p. 226. A number
of Spanish Christians, whose ancestors had been deported to Morocco in 1122,
were to be found there as late as 1386, when they were allowed to return to
Seville through the good offices of
the then sultan of Morocco. (Whishaw, pp. 31-4.)
[110]
C. Trumelet: Les Saintes de
1'Islam, p. xxxiii. (Paris, 1881.)
[111]
Compare the articles published
by a Junta held at Madrid in 1566. for the reformation of the Moriscoes; one of
which runs as follows : " That neither themselves, their women, nor any
other persons should be permitted to wash or bathe themselves either at home or
elsewhere; and that all their bathing houses should be pulled down and
demolished." (J. Morgan, vol. ii. p. 256.)
[112]
C. Trumelet: Les Saints de
1'Islam, pp. xxviii-xxxvi.
[113]
Leo Africanus says that at the
end of the fifteenth century all the mountaineers of Algeria and of Buggia,
though Muhammadans, painted black crosses on their cheeks and palms of
the hand (Ramusio, i. p. 61); similarly
the Banū Mzab to the present day
still keep up some religious observances corresponding to excommunication and
confession (Oppel, p. 299), and
some nomad tribes of the Sahara observe the practice of a kind of baptism and
use the cross as a decoration for their stuffs and weapons. (De Mas
Latrie (2), p. 8.)
[114]
Tijānī, p. 203.
[115]
The modern Touzer, in Tunis.
[116]
Ta'rīkh al-duwal al-islāmiyyah
bi'l maghrib, I. p. 146. (ed. De Slane. Alger, 1847.)
[118]
Pavy, vol. i. p. vii.
[119] De
Mas Latrie (2), pp. 61-2, 266-7. L. del
Marmol-Caravajal: De 1'Afrique, tome ii. p. 54. (Paris, 1667.)
[120]
De Mas Latrie (2), p. 192.
[121]
e.g. Innocent III, Gregory VII,
Gregory IX and Innocent IV.
[122]
De Mas Latrie (2), p. 273.
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