pieces with an axe; the Christian priests then adopted Islam, and all their descendants are shaykhs of the tribe to the present day. [337] Other sections of the population of the northern districts of the country were similarly converted to Islam during the same period, because the priests had abandoned these districts and the churches had been suffered to fall into ruins,—apparently entirely through neglect, as the Muhammadans here are said to have been by no means fanatical nor to have borne any particular enmity to Christianity. [338] Similar testimony to the progress of Islam in the early part of the nineteenth century is given by other travellers, [339] who found numbers of Christians to be continually passing over to that faith. The Muhammadans were especially favoured by Ras ʻAlī, one of the vice-regents of Abyssinia and practically master of the country before the accession of King Theodore in 1853. Though himself a Christian, he distributed posts and even the spoils of the churches among the followers of Islam, and during his reign one half of the population of the central provinces of Abyssinia embraced the faith of the Prophet. [340] Such deep roots had this faith now struck in Abyssinia that its followers had in their hands all the commerce as well as all the petty trade of the country, enjoyed vast possessions, were masters of large towns and central markets, and had a firm hold upon the mass of the people. Indeed, a Christian missionary who lived for thirty-five years in this country, rated the success and the zeal of the Muslim propagandists so high as to say that were another Aḥmad Grāñ to arise and unfurl the banner of the Prophet, the whole of Abyssinia would become Muhammadan. [341] Embroilments with the Egyptian government (with which Abyssinia was at war from 1875 to 1882) brought about a revulsion of feeling against Muhammadanism: hatred of the foreign Muslim foe reacted upon their co-religionists within the border. In 1878, King John summoned a Convocation of the Abyssinian clergy, who proclaimed him supreme arbiter in matters of faith and ordained that there should be but one religion throughout the whole kingdom. Christians of all sects other than the Jacobite were given two years in which to become reconciled to the national Church; the Muhammadans were to submit within three, and the heathen within five, years. A few days later the king promulgated an edict that showed how little worth was the three years’ grace allowed to the Muhammadans; for not only did he order them to build Christian churches wherever they were needed and to pay tithes to the priests resident in their respective districts, but also gave three months’ notice to all Muhammadan officials to either receive baptism or resign their posts. Such compulsory conversion (consisting as it did merely of the rite of baptism and the payment of tithes) was naturally of the most ineffectual character, and while