Note 105 — Chapter IV · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN NATIONS OF AFRICA.

The very slowness of its decay is a testimony to the toleration it must have received. About 300 years after the Muhammadan conquest there were still nearly forty bishoprics left,105 and when in 1053 Pope Leo IX laments that only five bishops could be found to represent the once flourishing African Church,106 the cause is most probably to be sought for in the terrible bloodshed and destruction wrought by the Arab hordes that had poured into the country a few years before and filled it with incessant conflict and anarchy.107 In 1076, the African Church could not provide the three bishops necessary for the consecration of an aspirant to the dignity of the episcopate, in accordance with the demands of canon law, and it was necessary for Pope Gregory VII to consecrate two bishops to act as coadjutors of the Archbishop of Carthage; but the numbers of the faithful were still so large as to demand the creation of fresh bishops to lighten the burden of the work, which was too heavy for these three bishops to perform unaided.108 In the course of the next two centuries, the Christian Church declined still further, and in 1246 the bishop of Morocco was the sole spiritual leader of the remnant of the native Church.109 Up to the same period traces of the survival of Christianity were still to be found among the Kabils of Algeria;110 these tribes had received some slight instruction in the tenets of Islam at an early period, but the new faith had taken very little hold upon them, and as years went by they lost even what little knowledge they had at first possessed, so much so that they even forgot the Muslim formula of prayer. Shut up in their mountain fastnesses and jealous of their independence, they successfully resisted the introduction of the Arab element into their midst, and thus the difficulties in the way of their conversion were very considerable. Some unsuccessful attempts to start a mission among them had been made by the inmates of a monastery belonging to the Qādiriyyah order, Sāqiyah al-ḥamrāʼ, but the honour of winning an entrance among them for the Muslim faith was reserved for a number of Andalusian Moors who were driven out of Spain after the taking of Granada in 1492. They had taken refuge in this monastery and were recognised by the shayk͟h to be eminently fitted for the arduous task that had previously so completely baffled the efforts of his disciples. Before dismissing them on this pious errand, he thus addressed them: “It is a duty incumbent upon us to bear the torch of Islam into these regions that have lost their inheritance in the blessings of religion; for these unhappy Kabils are wholly unprovided with schools, and have no shayk͟h to teach their children the laws of morality and the virtues of Islam; so they live like the brute beasts, without God or religion. To do away with this unhappy state of things, I have determined to appeal to your religious zeal and enlightenment. Let not these mountaineers wallow any longer in their pitiable ignorance of the grand truths of our religion; go and breathe upon the dying fire of their faith and re-illumine its smouldering embers; purge them of whatever errors may still cling to them from their former belief in Christianity; make them understand that in the religion of our lord Muḥammad—may God have compassion upon him—dirt is not, as in the Christian religion, looked upon as acceptable in the eyes of God.111 I will not disguise from you the fact that your task is beset with difficulties, but your irresistible zeal and the ardour of your faith will enable you, by the grace of God, to overcome all obstacles. Go, my children, and bring back again to God and His Prophet these unhappy people who are wallowing in the mire of ignorance and unbelief. Go, my children, bearing the message of salvation, and may God be with you and uphold you.”