2 43. THE CONQUESTS OF ISLAM. 173
in 1492 — the same year in which Columbus discovered a new Continent — Ferdinand defeated the last Moslem, army in Spain at the gates of Granada and drove them back to Africa. The palace and citadel of the Alhambra, with its court of lions, its delicate arabesques and fretwork, and its aromatic gardens and groves, still remains, a gorgeous ruin of the power of the Moor ish kings.
In the East the Moslems made new conquests. In the ninth century they subdued Persia, Afghanistan, and a large part of India. They reduced the followers of Zoroaster to a few scattered communities, and conquered a vast territory of Brahminism and Buddhism even beyond the Ganges. The Scliuk Turks in the eleventh century, and the Mongols in the thirteenth, adopted the religion of the Califs whom they conquered. Constantinople fell at last into the hands of the Turks in 1453, and the magni ficent church of St. Sophia, the glory of Justinian's reign, was turned into a mosque where the Koran is read instead of the Gospel, the reader holding the drawn scimetar in his hand. From Constantinople the Turks threatened the German empire, and it was not till 1683 that they were finally defeated by Sobieski at the gates of Vienna and driven back across the Danube.
"With the senseless fury of fanaticism and pillage the Tartar Turks have reduced the fairest portions of Eastern Europe to desolation and ruin. With sovereign contempt for all other religions, they subjected the Christians to a condition of virtual servitude, treating them like " dogs/' as they call them. They did not intermeddle with their internal affairs, but made merchandise of ecclesiastical offices. The death penalty was suspended over every attempt to convert a Mussulman. Apostasy from the faith is also treason to the state, and merits the severest punishment in this world, as well as everlasting damnation in the world to come.
After the Crimean war in 1856, the death penalty for apostasy was nominally abolished in the dominions of the Sultan, and in the Berlin Treaty of 1878 liberty of religion (more than mere toleration) was guaranteed to all existing sects in the Turkish
174 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
empire, but the old fanaticism will yield only to superior force ; and the guarantee of liberty is not understood to imply the liberty of propaganda among Moslems. Christian sects have liberty to prey on each other, but woe to them if they invade the sacred province of Islam.1
A Mohammedan tradition contains a curious prophecy that Christ, the son of Mary, will return as the last Calif to judge the world.2 The impression is gaining ground among the Mos lems that they will be unable ultimately to withstand the steady progress of Christianity and Western civilization. The Sultan, the successor of the Califs, is a mere shadow on the throne trembling for his life. The dissolution of the Turkish empire* which may be looked for at no distant future, will break the backbone of Islam, and open the way for the true solution of the Eastern question — the moral regeneration of the Lands of the Bible by the Christianity of the Bible.
§ 44. The Koravij and the Bible.
" Mohammed's truth lay in a sacred Book, Christ's in a holy Life." — MILNES (Palm- Leaves).
The Koran3 is the sacred book, the Bible of the Mohamme dans. It is their creed, their code of laws, their liturgy. It claims to be the product of divine inspiration by the arch-
1 If Protestant missionaries enjoy more toleration and liberty in Turkey than in Koman Catholic Austria and in Greek Catholic Eussia, it must be understood with the above limitation. Turkish toleration springs from proud contempt of Christianity in all its forms ; Russian and Austrian intolerance, from despotism and bigoted devotion to a particular form" of Christianity.
2 Among the traditional sayings of Mohammed is this (Gerock, I. c., p. 132) : "I am nearest to Jesus, both as to the beginning and the end; for there is no prophet between me and Jesus ; and at the end of time he will be my repre sentative and my successor. The prophets are all brethren, as they have one father, though their mothers are different. The origin of all their religions is the same, and between me and Jesus there is no other prophet."
3 Arabic qurdn, i. e. the reading or that which should be read, the book. It is read over and over again in all the mosques and schools.