well have been the teaching influence in this department of life as in
others. Moreover at all times and especially in the first century the
position of Christians has been very tolerable, even though the
Muslims regarded them as an inferior class, Christians were able to
rise to the highest offices of state, even to the post of vizier,
without any compulsion to renounce their faith. Even during the period
of the crusades when the religious opposition was greatly intensified,
again through Christian policy, Christian officials cannot have been
uncommon: otherwise Muslim theorists would never have uttered their
constant invectives against the employment of Christians in
administrative duties. Naturally zealots appeared at all times on the
Muhammedan as well as on the Christian side and occasionally isolated
acts of oppression took place: these were, however, exceptional. So
late as the eleventh century, church funeral processions were able to
pass through the streets of Bagdad with all the emblems of
Christianity and disturbances were recorded by the chroniclers as
exceptional. In Egypt, Christian festivals were also regarded to some
extent as holidays by the Muhammedan population. We have but to
imagine these conditions reversed in a Christian kingdom of the early
middle ages and the probability of my theory will become obvious.

The Christians of the East, who had broken for the most part with the
orthodox Church, also regarded Islam as a lesser evil than the
Byzantine established Church. Moreover Islam, as being both a
political and ecclesiastical organisation, regarded the Christian
church as a state within a state and permitted it to preserve its own
juridical and at first its own governmental rights. Application was
made to the bishops when anything was required from the community and
the churches were used as taxation offices. This was all in the
interests of the clergy who thus found their traditional claims