Note 214 — Chapter III · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.

Tavernier describes the Georgians as being very ignorant in matters of religion and the clergy as unlettered and vicious; some of the heads of the Church actually sold the Christian boys and girls as slaves to the Turks and Persians.214 From this period there seems to have been a widespread apostasy, especially among the higher classes and those who sought to win the favour of the Persian court.215 In 1701 the occupant of the throne of Georgia, Wakhtang VI, was a Christian: for the first seven years of his reign he was a prisoner in Ispahan, where great efforts were made to induce him to become a Muhammadan; when he declared that he preferred to lose his throne rather than purchase it at the price of apostasy, it is said that his younger brother, although he was the Patriarch of Georgia, offered to abandon Christianity and embrace Islam, if the crown were bestowed upon him, but though invested by the Persians with the royal power, the Georgians refused to accept him as their ruler, and drove him out of the kingdom.216