greater degree by the later Turkish wars. The Muhammedan fanatics of
the wars of conquest, whose reputation was famous among later
generations, felt but a very scanty interest in religion and
occasionally displayed an ignorance of its fundamental tenets which we
can hardly exaggerate. The fact is fully consistent with the impulses
to which the Arab migrations were due. These impulses were economic
and the new religion was nothing more than a party cry of unifying
power, though there is no reason to suppose that it was not a real
moral force in the life of Muhammed and his immediate contemporaries.

Anti-Christian fanaticism there was therefore none. Even in early
years Muhammedans never refused to worship in the same buildings as
Christians. The various insulting regulations which tradition
represents Christians as forced to endure were directed not so much
against the adherents of another faith as against the barely tolerated
inhabitants of a subjugated state. It is true that the distinction is
often difficult to observe, as religion and nationality were one and
the same thing to Muhammedans. In any case religious animosity was a
very subordinate phenomenon. It was a gradual development and seems to
me to have made a spasmodic beginning in the first century under the
influence of ideas adopted from Christianity. It may seem paradoxical
to assert that it was Christian influence which first stirred Islam to
religious animosity and armed it with the sword against Christianity,
but the hypothesis becomes highly probable when we have realised the
indifferentism of the Muhammedan conquerors.

We shall constantly see hereafter how much they owed in every
department of intellectual life to the teaching of the races which
they subjugated. Their attitude towards other beliefs was never so
intolerant as was that of Christendom at that period. Christianity may