Bokhara “the Noble” has always been the centre of religious influence since Islam first conquered it about A.D. 709 (Arabian invasion), and to-day it boasts a rigid adherence to the letter of the Koran, surpassing that of any other place. Before the Arabian invasion Central Asia was Christian. The Nestorian Church had established episcopal sees in Merv and Samarkand as early as the fifth century, and the whole country had practically adopted Christianity. After it had become Moslem the Mongols swept down upon it in the thirteenth century. “In Bokhara, so famed for its men of piety and learning, the Mongols stabled their horses in the sacred precincts of the mosques, and tore up the Korans to serve as litter; those of the inhabitants who were not butchered were carried away into captivity, and their city reduced to ashes. Such, too, was the fate of Samarkand, Balkh, and many another city of Central Asia.”[8] The Moslem faith, however, survived the storm. When the Arabian Mohammedan leadership had become weakened about the middle of the eleventh century it passed into the hands of the Turanians, and they now showed their power by winning their conquerors over to Islamism in a singularly short space of time. As one strolls through the streets of Bokhara to-day, one sees and hears nothing but Mohammedanism. The civil administration is entirely in the hands of the religious orders, and the madressahs, with the exception of El Azhar at Cairo, are the most important in the world. There are said to be 365 madressahs, but in reality there is not a third of that number. The dates of some of these are 1372 (Abdullah’s), 1426, 1529, 1582; and the Empress Catherine of Russia founded one in the eighteenth century. Vambéry says that nowhere in the East had he found the Moslems so punctilious about the externals of religion, even to repeating their prayers stark-naked for fear their clothes should have been defiled in any way without their being aware of it. Their ruling principle is “man must make a figure; no one cares for what he _thinks_!” We saw the shockingly dirty tanks where so much religious washing goes on, and they were revolting beyond words. The text of Islam says that where there are more than 120 pints of water it is “blind,” that is to say the dirt gets lost in it. Consequently you see people washing out their ears, noses, and mouths in the filthiest tanks adjoining mosques before reciting their prayers, which they do at least five times a day. The consequence of this is that the inhabitants constantly suffer from tapeworm, which the French call by the more pleasing name “solitare.”