=1. Jews in the East.=――With Persia and Mesopotamia under the sway of the Mahomedans, the _kallahs_ of Sora and Pumbaditha flourished, the Gaonim pursued their studies, and the Head of the Captivity had his settled rank as one of the many vassals and tributaries of the kaliphate. The position of the Jews was much improved. In the time of Omar, the second kaliph, the coinage, which was of course a very important trust, was given into the charge of a Jew. Early in the next century, the ninth, under the famous kaliph, Haroun al-Raschid, a Jew named Isaac was employed as ambassador, and sent on a delicate diplomatic mission from the court at Bagdad to Charlemagne of Germany. But nevertheless, although individual Jews rose to eminence, and Jewish institutions were unmolested, some amount of prejudice against the nation still lingered in the East. Perhaps the remembrance of the opposition which their Prophet had met with from the Jews had a stronger influence on his successors among the scenes where he had personally moved; for the early kaliphs or sultans, as they are indifferently called, were not always so favourably inclined towards their Jewish subjects as was Omar and the great Haroun al-Raschid. In the beginning of the eighth century a Mahomedan ruler named Mutavakel was very hard upon Jews and Christians both. He made them wear a leathern girdle, to distinguish them in their dress from his ‘faithful’ followers, and neither Jew nor Christian in his dominions was allowed to ride on horses, only on donkeys or mules. This sultan would certainly seem to have been an all-round persecutor, and rather an exceptional one. The insecure position, however, of the Jews in the East at this period was due as much to dissensions from within as to persecutions from without. More and more the office of רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא grew to be a stumblingblock and an offence. The succession was a constant cause of quarrel among the Jews, and these squabbles made it impossible for the kaliphs to either respect the dignity or to ignore it, either of which attitudes on the part of the Mahomedan sovereign would have been a comfortable one for his Jewish vassals.