Note 25 — Chapter III · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.

During the reign of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) (1169–1193) over Egypt, the condition of the Christians was very happy under the auspices of this tolerant ruler; the taxes that had been imposed upon them were lightened and several swept away altogether; they crowded into the public offices as secretaries, accountants and registrars; and for nearly a century under the successors of Saladin, they enjoyed the same toleration and favour, and had nothing to complain of except the corruption and degeneracy of their own clergy. Simony had become terribly rife among them; the priesthood was sold to ignorant and vicious persons, while postulants for the sacred office who were unable to pay the sums demanded for ordination, were repulsed with scorn, in spite of their being worthy and fit persons. The consequence was that the spiritual and moral training of the people was utterly neglected and there was a lamentable decay of the Christian life.25 So corrupt had the Church become that when, on the death of John, the seventy-fourth Patriarch of the Jacobites, in 1216, a successor was to be elected, the contending parties who pushed the claims of rival candidates, kept up a fierce and irreconcilable dispute for nearly twenty years, and all this time cared less for the grievous scandal and the harmful consequences of their shameless quarrels than for the maintenance of their dogged and obstinately factious spirit. On more than one occasion the reigning sultan tried to make peace between the contending parties, refused the enormous bribes of three, five, and even ten thousand gold pieces that were offered in order to induce him to secure the election of one of the candidates by the pressure of official influence, and even offered to remit the fee that it was customary for a newly-elected Patriarch to pay, if only they would put aside their disputes and come to some agreement,—but all to no purpose. Meanwhile many episcopal sees fell vacant and there was no one to take the place of the bishops and priests that died in this interval; in the monastery of St. Macarius alone there were only four priests left as compared with over eighty under the last Patriarch.26 So utterly neglected were the Christians of the western dioceses, that they all became Muslims.27 To this bald statement of the historian of the Coptic Church, we unfortunately have no information to add, of the positive efforts made by the Musalmans to bring these Christians over to their faith. That such there were, there can be very little doubt, especially as we know that the Christians held public disputations and engaged in written controversies on the respective merits of the rival creeds.28 That these conversions were not due to persecution, we know from direct historical evidence that during this vacancy of the patriarchate, the Christians had full and complete freedom of public worship, were allowed to restore their churches and even to build new ones, were freed from the restrictions that forbade them to ride on horses or mules, and were tried in law-courts of their own, while the monks were exempted from the payment of tribute and granted certain privileges.29