churches, but not build new ones, they were not allowed to bear arms nor to ride a horse, save in case of necessity, and they must even then dismount on meeting a Moslem; they had to pay the usual poll-tax. Yet they were favoured rather more than other ḏimmis. For one thing, when the Khalif reigned at Bagdad (750–1258) the Nestorians were the most powerful non-Moslem community at hand. Moreover, they were very useful. They had a higher tradition of civilization than their masters. Nestorians were used at court as physicians, scribes, secretaries, as Copts were in Egypt under the Fatimids (p. 227). This body of Nestorian officials at court got much influence, and eventually had a great voice in canonical matters, elected Patriarchs, and so on. They formed a kind of guild or corporate society,the "learned men" who had the Khalif's ear. Indeed, the line of Arab scholarship which came to Spain, and was a great factor in mediæval learning, begins in great part with the Nestorians at Bagdad. The Nestorians had inherited Greek culture in Syriac translations. Now they handed it on to their Arab masters. So we find Khalifs treating the Nestorians as the chief of Christian communities. At one time (in the 13th century), the diploma given by the Khalif to the newly appointed Nestorian Patriarch[1] says: "The Sublime Authority empowers thee to be installed at Bagdad as Katholikos of the Nestorians, as also for the other Christians in Moslem lands, as representative in these lands of the Rūm (sc. Orthodox), Jacobites, Melkites."[2] This means, at any rate sometimes, civil authority over all Christians given to the Nestorian Patriarch.[3]
As usual, under Moslem rule, this tolerance, even favour, was liable to be broken by intervals of sharp persecution. At any time a fanatical Khalif could start harrying his non-Moslem subjects as much as he liked. The Khalif Al-Mahdi (Mohammed Abū-‘abdullah, 775–785) made a short but frightful persecution, as a result of his war against the empire. Christian women received a
- ↑ Namely, the barā‘ah (commonly called berat), which he received from the Government.
- ↑ Published in the Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenlandsgesellschaft, vii. (1853), pp. 221–223.
- ↑ So the Turks have often made the head of one religious body civil head of others too (the Gregorian Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople over Uniate Armenians, etc.), to the great disadvantage of these.
