the way, he was to insinuate, as the necessary completion of the Shīʻah system of faith, the more esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlian sect. In dealing with the Jew, he was to speak with contempt of both Christians and Muslims and agree with his intended convert in still looking forward to a promised Messiah, but gradually lead him to believe that this promised Messiah could be none other than ʻAlī, the great Messiah of the Ismāʻīlian system. If he sought to win over the Christian, he was to dwell upon the obstinacy of the Jews and the ignorance of the Muslims, to profess reverence for the chief articles of the Christian creed, but gently hint that they were symbolic and pointed to a deeper meaning, to which the Ismāʻīlian system alone could supply the key; he was also cautiously to suggest that the Christians had somewhat misinterpreted the doctrine of the Paraclete and that it was in ʻAlī that the true Paraclete was to be found. Similarly the Ismāʻīlian missionaries who made their way into India endeavoured to make their doctrines acceptable to the Hindus, by representing ʻAlī as the promised tenth Avatār of Viṣṇu who was to come from the West, i.e. (they averred) from Alamūt. They also wrote a Mahdī Purāṇa and composed hymns in imitation of those of the Vāmācārins or left-hand Śāktas, whose mysticism already predisposed their minds to the acceptance of the esoteric doctrines of the Ismāʻīlians. [707] By such means as these an enormous number of persons of different faiths were united together to push forward an enterprise, the real aim of which was known to very few. The aspirations of ʻAbd Allāh b. Maymūn seem to have been entirely political, but as the means he adopted were religious and the one common bond—if any—that bound his followers together was the devout expectation of the coming of the Imām Mahdī, the missionary activity connected with the history of this sect deserves this brief mention in these pages. [708] The history of the spread of Islam in the countries of Central Asia to the north of Persia presents little in the way of missionary activity. When Qutaybah b. Muslim went to Samarqand, he found many idols there, whose worshippers maintained that any man who dared outrage them would perish; the Muslim conqueror, undeterred by such superstitious fears, set fire to the idols; whereupon a number of persons embraced Islam. [709] There is, however, but scanty record of such conversions in the early history of the Muslim advance into Central Asia; moreover the people of this country seem often to have pretended to embrace Islam for a time and then to have thrown off the mask and renounced their allegiance to the caliph as soon as the conquering armies were withdrawn, [710] and it was not until Qutaybah had forcibly occupied Bukhārā for the fourth time that he succeeded in compelling the inhabitants to conform to the faith of their conquerors.