(ii) The Jacobites or Monophysites who were the chief influences in introducing neo-Platonic speculations and mysticism. (iii) The Zoroastrians of Persia and especially the school of Junde-Shapur, although this had a strong Nestorian element. (iv) The Pagans of Harran who came forward at a later stage. (v) The Jews who, in this connection, occupy a somewhat peculiar position: they had no contact with the tradition of Aristotelian philosophy, their academies at Sora and Pumbaditha were concerned with their own traditional law and Bible exegesis only. Jewish philosophical studies began later and were themselves derived from the Arabic philosophers. But they shared with the Nestorians an inclination towards medical studies so that Jewish physicians appear in the early days of Baghdad. Yet they come distinctly second to the Nestorians. Thus amongst the medical writers mentioned by Dr. Leclerc in his _Histoire de la médecine arabe_ (Paris, 1876) we find amongst the names cited for the tenth cent. A.D. that there are 29 Christians, 3 Jews, and 4 pagans of Harran, though in the next century only 3 Christians appear, as against 7 Jews, the work then passing very largely into Muslim hands. CHAPTER II THE ARAB PERIOD Islam in its earlier form was entirely an Arab religion. The temporal side of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission shows him engaged in an effort to unite the tribes of the Hijaz in a fraternal union, to limit the custom of the _razzia_ (_ghazza_) or marauding foray, and to form an orderly community. These temporal aims were due to the influence of Madina on the Prophet and to the conviction that it was only in such a community that his religious teaching could obtain a serious attention. In Mecca he had been faced with constant opposition chiefly due to the tribal jealousies and strife which formed the normal condition of a Bedwin community. Madina was a city in a sense quite different from that in which the term could be applied to Mecca. It had developed a civic life, rudimentary no doubt but very far in advance of the Meccan conditions, and had inherited a constitutional tradition from Aramaean and Jewish colonists. At Madina the Prophet began to perceive the difference produced by the association of men in an ordered communal life as contrasted with the incoherence of the older tribal conditions, and the accompanying difference of attitude towards religion. This last was not really due to civic life but more directly to Jewish influence, although no doubt the conditions of city life were more favourable to the evolution of speculative theology than those of the wilder tribes. The older Arabs seem to have accepted the idea of one supreme God, but speculated little about him: they did not regard the supreme deity as at all entering into their personal interests, which were concerned only with the minor tribal deities who were expected to attend diligently to tribal affairs and were sharply censured when