years, at the end of which time of gloom and desolation it was restored in the person of Jesu-Jabus.[1] who lived to see the fall of the royal house of the Sassanidæ (a.d. 651). During the patriarchate of Jesu-Jabus, Persia was overwhelmed by the Mohammedan tide of conquest, the consequence of which was oppression under a more anti-Christian tyranny than that of the Zoroastrian rulers it superseded. But this has not always been equally severe. The catholicos obtained from the caliph an assurance of protection for the Christians, with a right to practise their religion on the usual condition of paying tribute. He even got better terms from Omar at a later time, having the tribute remitted. The next caliph, Ibn Abi Taleb, confirmed these privileges in a charter which expressed polite esteem for the Christianity of the Nestorians. No doubt, like his predecessors the Persian kings, he was astute enough to perceive the wisdom of favouring the heretics, both for the sake of weakening the Christian cause by means of divisions, and on account of the close alliance between the orthodox Church, which repudiated them, and the Byzantine Empire. In the year 762, under the enlightened caliphate of Bagdad, the Nestorian catholicos removed to that city, then a centre of learning and science, and there the Christian prelate lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot.[2]
During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognised institution within the territory of Islam. Then came the terrible barbaric invasions, which threatened to sweep civilisation away in the regions of the Greek Empire, and which brought a night of three centuries on the opening day of Russian Christianity. Their influence on the Mohammedan countries has not been noted with so much concern, and yet it would have been tremendous if these conquering heathen hordes had not been rapidly absorbed into Islam, with the ultimate result that the Turkish superseded the Arab rule
