The good understanding between the Jews and the Arabs with the gradual process of time gave place to an ill-concealed hostility, and at the beginning of the twelfth century there seems even to have been a project formed for forcing the Jews to become Moslems on the ground of a promise made by their forefathers to Mohammed that, if in five centuries their Messiah had not appeared, they would be converted to Mohammedanism.[1] Perhaps this was only a pretext on the part of the Moslems for extorting money; at all events the Jews only succeeded in evading the alternative by paying a large sum of money. Even in the early years of the conquest they were subject to the rapacity of their rulers, for when, on the rumour of the Messiah having appeared in Syria, many of the Spanish Jews, leaving their goods, started off to join him, the Moslem governor, Anbasa, seized the property so left, and refused to restore it on the return of the disappointed emigrants. From their contact with Arabs and Christians the Jews seem to have lost many of their distinctive beliefs, and in the twelfth century Maimonides,[2] the greatest name among the Spanish Jews, wrote against their errors. One of these seems to have been that the books of Moses were written before the Creation;[3] another, that there was a series of hells in the next world.[4] Many Jews attained to very high positions among the Arabs, and we hear of a certain Hasdai ibn Bahrut, who was inspector of customs to Abdurrahman III., ambassador to the King of Leon in 955, and the king's confidential messenger to the monk, John of Gorz, a few years later. He was also distinguished as a physician.[5] [1] Conde, ii. 326. [2] Fleury, v. 409. [3] Cp. the Moslem belief about the Koran. Sale, Introduc., p. 50. (Chandos Classics.) [4] _Ibid._, p. 72. [5] Al Makk., i., App. v. p. xxiv. Note by De Gayangos. While the Arabs still retained their hold on the fairest provinces of Spain, the lot of the Jews, even in Christian territories, was by no means unendurable. They were sometimes advanced to important and confidential posts, and it was the murder of Alfonso VI.'s Jewish ambassador by the King of Seville which brought about the introduction of the Almoravides into Spain.