Having a fair admixture of Malay blood in him and sufficient Arabian energy and enthusiasm to push on, he came and conquered and soon found himself at home in Mindanao as well as at Juhur. There was no racial prejudice to contend against and the language of the new land was akin to his own. But true to his religion, as he was true to his ancestry, his faith suffered no defeat. No submission was accepted without conversion, and no friendship was cultivated with the unfaithful. He married in the land of his conquest, and the ties of faith were soon strengthened by the ties of blood and kinship; and as the first generation passed and the second generation followed, the conqueror and the conquered became one in blood and sympathy, one in faith, and one in purpose. A new dynasty which stood for Islam, for progress, and for civilization arose on the ruins of barbarism and heathenism. Savage and fierce as the Moros look, they are greatly superior to the surrounding pagans who inhabit the hills and the interior of Mindanao. Once their equals and kinsmen, they have vastly surpassed them now and are preëminently above them. With Mohammedanism came art and knowledge, and communication with the outside world was established. For four centuries two different agencies of civilization have been at work in the Philippine Islands. One started in the north and worked its way south, continually progressing and constantly growing in power and improving in character. The other began in the south and extended north, but it soon reached a definite limit, and like a tree stunted in its growth it reverted to its wild nature and grew thorny and fruitless. The first graft of the tree of Magindanao was not aided by later irrigation. The first wave of immigration was not reënforced, and with an ebb tide it lost most of its size and force. The Moros of Mindanao figured very prominently in the history of the Philippines. They were never united under one flag, but they formed different sultanates, some of which attained considerable power and fame. In the fullness of his glory, the sultan of Magindanao ruled over the whole southern coast of Mindanao from Point Tugubum, east of Mati, to Zamboanga, and beyond this latter point to the outskirts of Dapitan. All the pagan tribes living around the Gulf of Davao and in the Sarangani country, and all the Subanos west of Tukurun and Dapitan submitted to his power and paid him tribute. In the upper Rio Grande Valley the power of the rajas of Bwayan was felt and respected as far as the watershed of the Cagayan Valley on the north and the inaccessible slopes of Mount Apo on the east. The Ranao Moros controlled the whole country and the seacoast west of Cagayan de Misamis and north of the Illana Bay.