76 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



trusion of a strange people into her territory and 

 sanctuaries. 



Perhaps there are few events in history more 

 impressive than the conversion of the wild and ig- 

 norant Arab tribes of the seventh century from stone- 

 worship to monotheism. The series of conquests 

 which followed had also, as an indirect and unfore- 

 seen result, effects of vast importance in the revival 

 and spread of Greek culture from the Tigris to the 

 Guadalquivir. It is not easy, neither does the in- 

 quiry fall within our present purpose, to discover the 

 special impulses which led Mohammed, the leader 

 of the movement, to preach a new faith whose one 

 creed, stripped of all subtleties, was the unity of God. 

 Large numbers of Jews and Christians had settled 

 in Arabia long before his time, and he had become 

 acquainted with the narrowness of the one, and with 

 the causes of the wranglings of the other, riven, as 

 these last-named were, into sects quarrelling over 

 the nature of the Person of Christ. These, and the 

 fetichism of his fellow-countrymen, may, perhaps, 

 have impelled him to start a crusade the mandate 

 for which he, in fanatic impulse, believed came from 

 heaven. The result is well known. The hitherto 

 untamed nomads became the eager instruments of 

 the prophet. Under his leadership, and that of the 

 able Khahfs who succeeded him, the flag of Islam 

 was carried from East to West, till within one hun- 

 dred years of the flight of Mohammed from Mecca 



