Note 106 — Chapter III · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.

In view of the toleration thus extended to their Christian subjects in the early period of the Muslim rule, the common hypothesis of the sword as the factor of conversion seems hardly satisfactory, and we are compelled to seek for other motives than that of persecution. But unfortunately very few details are forthcoming and we are obliged to have recourse to conjecture.106 In an age so prolific of theological speculation, there may well have been some thinkers whose trend of thought had prepared them for the acceptance of the Muhammadan position. Such were those Shahrīghān or landed proprietors in Persia in the eighth century, who were nominally Christians, but maintained that Christ was an ordinary man and that he was as one of the Prophets.107 They appear at times to have given a good deal of trouble to the Nestorian clergy, who were at great pains to draw them into the paths of orthodoxy;108 but their theological position was more closely akin to Islam than to Christian doctrine, and they probably went to swell the ranks of the converts after the Arab conquest of the Persian empire.