We must not forget that Al-Ghazali came into close touch with Oriental Christians from his boyhood.[7] Christianity was established in Persia at the time of the Moslem conquest, and the Nestorian Church withstood its terrific impact when Zoroastrianism was almost destroyed. The coming of the Arabs meant to the Christians only a change of masters. The Nestorians became the _rayah_, “people of protection,” of the Caliphs. They did not immediately sink into their present deplorable condition. They still conducted foreign missions and during the entire Abbasside period remained a very important factor of civilization in the East. They were permitted to restore their Churches, but not to build new ones; they were forbidden to bear arms or ride a horse, save in case of necessity, and they even then had to dismount on meeting a Moslem; they were subject to the usual poll-tax. Yet the Nestorians were the most powerful non-Moslem community while the Caliphs reigned at Bagdad (750-1258), and had a higher tradition of civilization than their masters. They were used at court as physicians, scribes, and secretaries, and thus gained great influence, having much freedom in canonical matters, elected Patriarchs, etc. The Arab scholarship which came to Spain, and was a great factor in mediæval learning, begins in great part with the Nestorians of Bagdad. They handed on to their Arab masters the Greek culture which was inherited in Syriac translations. So we find the Caliphs treating them as chief of the Christian communities, and at times civil authority over all Christians had been given to the Nestorian Patriarch. Early in the eleventh century Al-Biruni, a Moslem writer from Khiva, mentions the Nestorians as the most civilized of the Christian communities under the Caliph. He says that there are three sects of Christians—Melchites, Nestorians and Jacobites. “The most numerous of them are the Melchites and Nestorians; because Greece and the adjacent countries are all inhabited by Melchites, whilst the majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Irak and Mesopotamia and Khorasan are Nestorians.”[8] Al-Ghazali spent his first twenty years in Khorasan. Did he ever become acquainted with Christianity through perusal of the Gospel? We know that Arabic, if not Persian, translations existed at this period; and not only are there many references to Christ and His teaching in Al-Ghazali’s works, but there are some very few passages accurate enough to be called quotations. He himself states as we shall see later: “I have read in the Gospel.”