wearer of it. From this point of view the analogy with Christianity will appear extremely striking, but it is something more than an analogy: the Oriental Hellenism of antiquity was to Christianity that which the Christian Oriental Hellenism of a few centuries later was to Islam. We must now attempt to realise the nature of this event so important in the history of the world. A nomadic people, recently united, not devoid of culture, but with a very limited range of ideas, suddenly gains supremacy over a wide and populous district with an ancient civilisation. These nomads are as yet hardly conscious of their political unity and the individualism of the several tribes composing it is still a disruptive force: yet they can secure domination over countries such as Egypt and Babylonia, with complex constitutional systems, where climatic conditions, the nature of the soil and centuries of work have combined to develop an intricate administrative system, which newcomers could not be expected to understand, much less to recreate or to remodel. Yet the theory has long been held that the Arabs entirely reorganised the constitutions of these countries. Excessive importance has been attached to the statements of Arab authors, who naturally regarded Islam as the beginning of all things. In every detail of practical life they regarded the prophet and his contemporaries as their ruling ideal, and therefore naturally assumed that the constitutional practices of the prophet were his own invention. The organisation of the conquering race with its tribal subordination was certainly purely Arab in origin. In fact the conquerors seemed so unable to adapt themselves to the conditions with which they met, that foreigners who joined their ranks were admitted to the Muhammedan confederacy only as clients of the various Arab tribes. This was, however, a mere question of outward form: the internal organisation continued unchanged, as it was bound to continue unless chaos were to be the consequence. In fact, pre-existing administrative regulations were so far retained that the old customs duties on the former frontiers were levied as before, though they represented an institution wholly alien to the spirit of the Muhammedan empire. Those Muhammedan authors, who describe the administrative organisation, recognise only the taxes which Islam regarded as lawful and characterise others as malpractices which had crept in at a later date. It is remarkable that these so-called subsequent malpractices correspond with Byzantine and Persian usage before the conquest: but tradition will not admit the fact that these remained unchanged. The same fact is obvious when we consider the progress of civilisation in general. In every case the Arabs merely develop the social and economic achievements of the conquered races to further issues. Such progress could indeed only be modified by a general upheaval of existing conditions and no such movement ever took place.