conquered peoples to accept Islam, even making them grants of money; on one occasion he is said to have given a Christian military officer the sum of 1000 dīnārs to induce him to accept Islam. [198] He instructed the governors of the provinces to invite the dhimmīs to the Muslim faith, and al-Jarrāḥ b. ʻAbd Allāh, governor of Khurāsān, is said to have converted about 4000 persons. [199] He is even said to have written a letter to the Byzantine Emperor, Leo III, urging on him the acceptance of the faith of Islam. [200] He abrogated the decree passed in A.D. 700 for the purpose of arresting the impoverishment of the treasury, according to which the convert to Islam was not released from the capitation-tax, but was compelled to continue to pay it as before; even though the dhimmī apostatised the very day before his yearly payment of the jizyah was due or while his contribution was actually being weighed in the scales, it was to be remitted to the new convert. [201] He no longer exacted the kharāj from the Muhammadan owners of landed property, and imposed upon them the far lighter burden of a tithe. These measures, though financially most ruinous, were eminently successful in the way the pious-minded caliph desired they should be, and enormous numbers hastened to enrol themselves among the Muslims. [202] It must not, however, be supposed that such worldly considerations were the only influences at work in the conversion of the Christians to Islam. The controversial works of St. John of Damascus, of the same century, give us glimpses of the zealous Muslim striving to undermine by his arguments the foundations of the Christian faith. The very dialogue form into which these treatises are thrown, and the frequent repetition of such phrases as “If the Saracen asks you,”—“If the Saracen says ... then tell him” ...—give them an air of vraisemblance and make them appear as if they were intended to provide the Christians with ready answers to the numerous objections which their Muslim neighbours brought against the Christian creed. [203] That the aggressive attitude of the Muhammadan disputant is most prominently brought forward in these dialogues is only what might be expected, it being no part of this great theologian’s purpose to enshrine in his writings an apology for Islam. His pupil, Bishop Theodore Abū Qurrah, also wrote several controversial dialogues [204] with Muhammadans, in which the disputants range over all the points of dispute between the two faiths, the Muslim as before being the first to take up the cudgels, and enabling us to form some slight idea of the activity with which the cause of Islam was prosecuted at this period. “The thoughts of the Agarenes,” says the bishop, “and all their zeal, are directed towards the denial of the divinity of God the Word, and they strain every effort to this end.” [205] The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, used to hold discussions on religious matters in the presence of the