This procedure may seem entirely natural in the department of economic
life, but by no means inevitable where intellectual progress is
concerned. Yet a similar course was followed in either case, as may be
proved by dispassionate examination. Islam was a rising force, a faith
rather of experience than of theory or dogma, when it raised its
claims against Christianity, which represented all pre-existing
intellectual culture. A settlement of these claims was necessary and
the military triumphs are but the prelude to a great accommodation of
intellectual interests. In this Christianity played the chief part,
though Judaism is also represented: I am inclined, however, to think
that Jewish ideas as they are expressed in the Qoran were often
transmitted through the medium of Christianity. There is no doubt that
in Medina Muhammed was under direct Jewish influence of extraordinary
power. Even at that time Jewish ideas may have been in circulation,
not only in the Qoran but also in oral tradition, which afterwards
became stereotyped: at the same time Muhammed's utterances against the
Jews eventually became so strong during the Medina period, for
political reasons, that I can hardly imagine the traditions in their
final form to have been adopted directly from the Jews. The case of
Jewish converts is a different matter. But in Christianity also much
Jewish wisdom was to be found at that time and it is well known that
even the Eastern churches regarded numerous precepts of the Old
Testament, including those that dealt with ritual, as binding upon
them. In any case the spirit of Judaism is present, either directly or
working through Christianity, as an influence wherever Islam
accommodated itself to the new intellectual and spiritual life which
it had encountered. It was a compromise which affected the most
trivial details of life, and in these matters religious scrupulosity
was carried to a ridiculous point: here we may see the outcome of that
Judaism which, as has been said, was then a definite element in