One of his first acts was to favour the very brutal Turkish soldiers and ruffians in his service, abasing the Persians and Arabs who had served his brother and predecessor. It was not sufficient for him to degrade thus the faithful servants about him; he went on--in the excess of orthodox zeal he displayed as a counterfoil to his drunkenness and debauchery--to defile and destroy the graves of the martyrs of the Shi’a section, to cause to be disgracefully ridiculed the memory of Ali, a saint revered by Sunni and Shi’a alike, and to murder countless adherents and admirers of those martyrs. Every degradation and disgrace he could thrust upon the Jews and Christians he did, causing them to wear garments of conspicuous and unpleasant hues, “parti-coloured badges, and caps, and girdles of certain ignoble patterns, to ride only on mules and asses, with wooden stirrups and saddles of strange construction, and to have placed over their houses effigies of devils.”[41] The college of Jund-i-Shapur, that Nushirvan had founded, was deprived by him of all its rights, and the director, one Bokht Yishu, banished to Bahrain. The churches of the Christians were destroyed or used as mosques, and various rules prevented their proclaiming their religion while living by any signs, or when dead by tombstones. In the long record of philosophers, literati, and authors of the earlier times of Islam it is hardly surprising to find almost a blank between the years 847 and 861, when Mutawakkil was murdered during a fit of drunkenness by the Turks, whom he had preferred to all others. All the persecution the Christians now suffered was not enough to extinguish their influence, and they partially regained their position in the 11th century under the Seljuq monarchs, and right up to the time of the terrible scourge of the Mongols under Chengiz Khan and Hulagu Khan, they still occupied positions of some importance, and were as yet a cognate church of some extent. Far beyond the bounds of Islam they were busy; busy upon a scheme which they hoped would crush Islam and exalt Christianity all over Asia, from Pekin to Syria. This scheme was no less than the invasion of Asia by the Tartar kings of Qarakorum, whose power was growing fast, and whose thirst for land was growing keener. The Christians, meanwhile, strove to make the religion of Jesus Christ the national faith before the day of conquest dawned, and had certainly made great progress among various Mongol people when the hordes poured out westwards. It will be remembered that in very early days missionaries had been sent to China and Turkistan, and they had acquired considerable influence over the Khans of Tartary, some of whom are said to have been converted to Christianity. The famous Prester John, whose name has been obscured behind many absurd legends, was one of these rulers.[42]