brought into his presence, the governor stabbed him to death with his own hand and ordered his body to be cast forth to be devoured by dogs, saying: “What! is this the way in which the religion of Muḥammad spreads?” At nightfall, the common people took up the body and buried it, whereupon the Governor, enraged at this contempt of his order, gave up the place for three or four hours to be sacked by his soldiers and afterwards imposed a fine as a further penalty; also he called the son of the merchant to him and comforted him and caressed him with good and kindly words. Even the mad al-Ḥākim (996–1020), whose persecutions caused many Jews and Christians to abandon their own faith and become Musalmans, afterwards allowed these unwilling converts to return again to their own religion and rebuild their ruined places of worship. [1380] Neglected as the Eastern Christians have been by their Christian brethren in the West, unarmed for the most part and utterly defenceless, it would have been easy for any of the powerful rulers of Islam to have utterly rooted out their Christian subjects or banished them from their dominions, as the Spaniards did the Moors, or the English the Jews for nearly four centuries. It would have been perfectly possible for Salīm I (in 1514) or Ibrāhīm (in 1646) to have put into execution the barbarous notion they conceived of exterminating their Christian subjects, just as the former had massacred 40,000 Shīʻahs with the aim of establishing uniformity of religious belief among his Muhammadan subjects. The muftis who turned the minds of their masters from such a cruel purpose, did so as the exponents of Muslim law and Muslim tolerance. [1381] Still, though the principle that found so much favour in Germany in the seventeenth century [1382]—Cuius regio eius religio,—was never adopted by any Muhammadan potentate, it is obvious that the fact of Islam being the state religion could not fail to have had some influence in increasing the number of its adherents. Persons on whom their religious faith sat lightly would be readily influenced by considerations of worldly advantage, and ambition and self-interest would take the place of more laudable motives for conversion. St. Augustine made a similar complaint in the fifth century, that many entered the Christian Church merely because they hoped to gain some temporal advantage thereby: “Quam multi non quaerunt Iesum, nisi ut illis faciat bene secundum tempus! Alius negotium habet, quaerit intercessionem clericorum; alius premitur a potentiore, fugit ad ecclesiam; alius pro se vult interveniri apud eum apud quem parum valet: ille sic, ille sic; impletur quotidie talibus ecclesia.” [1383]