The people who joined Muhammad’s religion were called Muhammadans or Muslims, and they went everywhere making as many converts as they could, by fair means or foul. They had learnt that there was one God, but they knew nothing of the Bible; they only knew the Quran, the book which Muhammad was revealing, and they knew nothing of the example of Jesus Christ: their only example was Muhammad, who was a murderer. You may wonder what all this has to do with Persian children. One of the first countries conquered by the Muhammadans was Persia--and the Persian children to-day are themselves Muhammadans. CHAPTER II PERSIA There is a story that when the Muhammadans took Persia and killed the Parsee king Yazdigird, their _Khalif_ ‘Omar asked Yazdigird’s son where he would like to live. He said he would like to settle in Persia out of reach of any cultivated spot. ‘Omar accordingly sent him off with an escort of soldiers to find a suitable place. After three years he returned and said he could not find any place such as he had asked for. ‘Omar saw that he was doing all this with some purpose, and asked him what it was. Yazdigird’s son answered that he wanted to show ‘Omar how prosperous and well cultivated the land had become in the hands of the Parsees, and begged him to see to it that it remained so under the Muhammadans. But it did not, and to-day a great deal of Persia has relapsed into desert. In our country all is green, and stones have to be put up to show where one village ends and the next begins. In most parts of Persia you may look over the plain and see the villages quite distinct--each a little green blot on a vast sheet of sand or dry earth. The very fruitfulness of the ground makes it less green than it would otherwise have to be to support the population, for when three crops can be got off the same piece of land in one year, only a third of the amount of land that you would expect to be needed to support the village is under cultivation. The villages vary very much. Some count their population by hundreds, while one village, marked on the map, contains just two families, seven persons in all, including two children. Their nearest neighbours live six miles off, over the sand.