We open our eyes again in these early years of the twentieth century, when the history of a thousand years has been written, to see whereto this thing has grown, and what its achievements on behalf of mankind. The religion of Islam has more adherents than it had; its dominion is marked by three Moslem empires: Turkey, Persia, and Morocco; it is the religion of Arabia still; its followers predominate in Egypt, in Asia Minor, in Afghanistan, in the East Indies. It numbers many millions throughout Africa, India, China, Russia, and the Philippines; but nowhere, unless it be possibly in some of the most degraded districts of pagan Africa, do Moslems stand above their fellows in enlightenment, in morality, in progress. {115} Has Islam, then, failed to meet men? No, it has touched man, indeed, in some of the deeper regions of his consciousness. But it has met men on their own level, and so it has left them where they were. Why? How? QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VII 1. Sketch the successes of Islam for 100 years after the death of Mohammed. Why are they surprising? 2. Give the chief motives which inspired the Moslem hosts. To which of these motives do you attach most importance, and why? 3. Which of these motives are right for Christians? 4. Describe the settlement of conquered countries. 5. Give some account of Baghdad in its greatest days. [1] _The Intellectual Development of Europe_, vol. i. [2] This description applies more accurately only to the early centuries of Saracen conquests, e.g. in later years the treasuries of the Christian churches and monasteries of Spain were a temptation the Saracens could not refuse. And instances are common enough, even in the early centuries, of Christians persecuted--even to death--for their faith. {116} CHAPTER VIII ISLAM'S FAILURE 'As we conceive God, we conceive the Universe; a being incapable of loving is incapable of being loved.'--PRINCIPAL FAIRBAIRN. [Sidenote: Another View of Baghdad.] Before we set ourselves such questions as these, we should, perhaps, have peered a little more closely into the Caliph's palace. We might have gone round to the back door, and not to the front; we might (at the risk of our lives, though!) have watched him in his private life. We might have had an interview (if we could summon up the courage) with his ever-ready staff of state executioners, whose work was carried out at his caprice and not at the dictates of imperial justice, and have heard the tale of banquets where all the guests were murdered. We might have discovered in what fear he lived, how perilous a throne was his. Of the fifty-nine Caliphs of Baghdad, thirty-eight met violent deaths. We might have heard the confession of {117} Caliph Abdalrahman, who reigned for the record period of fifty years, perhaps the most splendid of all the line: