The condition of the Jews in the East during this century does not call for much remark; indeed, little has been recorded respecting it. The treatment they received at the hands of the Mussulmans, both princes and people, was curiously different from that which they experienced from the Christian populations of Europe. The first named did not regard the Jews with any particular favour or respect,—in fact, the disdain they evinced for them was even greater than that entertained by their Christian contemporaries,—but there was no _active_ enmity. They looked on with scornful indifference while the Israelites plied their busy trade, aware though they might be that the wealth they accumulated was in a great measure drawn from their own coffers. They would spit in contempt as they passed a Jewish synagogue, but they would not raise a finger to cause its demolition or prevent any number of worshippers from crowding into it. All over Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, some Jews were to be found in every town, where they were allowed to live and thrive, unless they broke some law or offended some faithful Islamite. But if they did either of these things, they were apt to experience scant ceremony and sharp punishment. The reader has heard, in a previous chapter, of the massacre perpetrated by Shah Abbas II., which appears to have occurred about A.D. 1666. It is said to have lasted three years, and to have almost exterminated the Jews in his dominions. It is, however, involved in great obscurity, the dates given by different writers varying considerably. But in this year, 1666, not the Jews of the East only, but all over the world, were greatly excited by the appearance of the most persistent and successful impostor that had arisen among them from the time of Barchochebas. Sabbathai Sevi, a native of Smyrna, and son of a poulterer in that city, was born in 1625. He was sent to school, where he made such rapid progress that he was appointed a Rabbi when he was only eighteen years of age. He early attracted attention and had many followers, who believed in the pretensions which, even then, he put forward, of being the expected Messiah. At the age of twenty he married a woman of great beauty and rank; but the marriage was only a nominal one, as he lived entirely apart from her. He was compelled to give a divorce, and soon afterwards made a second similar marriage, with the same result. He practised strict asceticism, fasting six days in every week, and bathing continually in the sea at midnight. At twenty-four, his reputation had increased so greatly, that he ventured to put forth publicly his pretensions to be thought the Messiah, and, in proof of these, ventured to pronounce publicly the name of Jehovah, which is absolutely forbidden to the Jews. The Rabbins were horror-struck at his impiety, and declared him to be worthy of death. He was compelled to fly from Smyrna, and took refuge in one city after another, until in Gaza he made an important