=4. Likenesses between Islam and Judaism.=――There was a kinship of religious thought, as well as of language and of race, between the Arab and the Jew. The Unity of God is the first principle of Islam as it is of Judaism. Abraham and Moses are the heroes of the Koran as of the Pentateuch, and the covenant of Abraham and the dietary laws of Moses are enjoined by Mahomed on his followers. =5. Differences between Islam and Judaism.=――But there were differences too, and these of a very vital sort. ‘Allah was God.’ That doctrine of the new faith, the Jews, worshippers of One, might agree with. That ‘Mahomed was His prophet’ was debatable. Moses, even, was not always unquestioningly obeyed. There was small hope for Mahomed. And much of the teaching of the new prophet soon showed that the deserts of Arabia, and not the heights of Sinai, inspired it. Judaism, for all its minute bodily observance, is essentially a spiritual religion. Future rewards are not mapped out after any human pattern, and such Hereafter as is hinted at is of a purely spiritual kind. ‘In My presence there is fulness of joy,’ is the nearest glimpse God vouchsafes of His heaven. ‘Allah’s’ promised paradise was of a quite different sort. Creature comforts, and very earthly delights, were to be the portion of believers in him, and in Mahomed his prophet. It was a programme likely to appeal to a lower class of mind, and the Jews remained unaffected by it. Mahomed was never able to count the Jews among his converts. From among the Jews of Arabia he met, indeed, at first with contempt and opposition. They would not grasp the hand that held the Koran, and so the other, the sword-arm, was lifted against them. There was some fighting, and much bad feeling, at first between the Jews and the followers of Mahomed. During the lifetime of the Prophet some Jews were oppressed and some were exiled, and some were forced to serve under the banner of Islam. But after his death, and as the tide of Mahomedan conquest swept on, the Jews found cause to rejoice in the more tolerant treatment which they experienced from the rulers who adopted the faith of Islam. CHAPTER XVIII. THE CONQUESTS OF THE KALIPHS: EFFECT, RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL, ON THE JEWS. (600‒800.)