A religious persecution had driven from Persia many who professed the religion of the ancient Magi. The Jews also were early settlers in Arabia. Seven centuries before the death of Mohammed they had firmly established themselves there. The destruction of Jerusalem brought still greater numbers of these industrious exiles, who at once erected synagogues, and to protect the wealth they rapidly acquired, built and garrisoned strongly fortified towns in various portions of the wilderness. The Bible had at an early day been translated into the Arabic tongue. Christian missionaries were not wanting, and their active zeal was eminently successful. Several of the Arab tribes had become converts. There were Christian churches in Yemen; the states of Hira and Gassan were under the jurisdiction of Jacobite and Nestorian bishops. The various heretical sects found shelter and safety among the hospitable Arabs. But this very fact proved detrimental to the progress of the Christian religion, and opened the path for the creed of Mohammed. So many and various were the Christian sects that crowded together in that country, and so widely departed from the true spirit of Christianity were some of them, that bitter hostilities sprung up among them, and their religion fell into contempt. The Eastern Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism, one of the sects (the Collyridian heretics) had even gone so far as to invest the virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess. This is what the author alludes to in saying that Christianity was losing favor in Arabia at the time of the appearance of Mohammed.--H. [189] The student of ecclesiastical history knows what a number of sects had sprung up about that time to distress and harass the Church. It is not so generally appreciated, however, that for the first hundred years, the progress of Islamism was almost exclusively at the expense of Christianity. The whole of the present Ottoman empire, and almost the whole northern coast of Africa were previously Christian countries. Whether the loss is greatly to be regretted, I know not, for the Syrians and Egyptians, from being very indifferent Christians, became good Mohammedans. These populations were to the Christian Church like a cankered limb, the lopping off of which may have been ordained by an all-wise Providence for the salvation of what was yet sound in the body.--H. [190] W. Von Humboldt. _Ueber die Karo-Sprache, Einleitung_, p. 243. "Durch die Richtung auf diese Bildung und durch innere Stammes-verwandschaft wurden sie wirklich für griechischen Geist und griechische Sprache empfänglich, da die Araber vorzugsweise nur an den wissenschaftlichen Resultaten griechischer Forschung hiengen." CHAPTER XV. MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE GREAT VARIETIES.