Note 104 — Chapter V · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.

The Christian slave who thus describes the doubts that arose in his mind as the slow-passing years brought no relief, doubtless gives expression here to thoughts that suggested themselves to many a hapless Christian captive with overwhelming persistency, until at last he broke away from the ties of his old faith and embraced Islam. Many who would have been ready to die as martyrs for the Christian religion if the mythical choice between the Qurʼān and the sword had been offered them, felt more and more strongly, after long years of captivity, the influence of Muhammadan thought and practice, and humanity won converts where violence would have failed.104 For though the lot of many of the Christian captives was a very pitiable one, others who held positions in the households of private individuals, were often no worse off than domestic servants in the rest of Europe. As organised by the Muhammadan Law, slavery was robbed of many of its harshest features, nor in Turkey at least does it seem to have been accompanied by such barbarities and atrocities as in the pirate states of Northern Africa. The slaves, like other citizens, had their rights, and it is even said that a slave might summon his master before the Qāḍī for ill usage, and that if he alleged that their tempers were so opposite, that it was impossible for them to agree, the Qāḍī could oblige his master to sell him.105 The condition of the Christian captives naturally varied with circumstances and their own capabilities of adapting themselves to a life of hardship; the aged, the priests and monks, and those of noble birth suffered most, while the physician and the handicraftsman received more considerate treatment from their masters, as being servants that best repaid the money spent upon them.106 The galley-slaves naturally suffered most of all, indeed the kindest treatment could have but little relieved the hardships incident to such an occupation.107 Further, the lot of the slaves who were state property was more pitiable than that of those who had been purchased by private individuals.108 As a rule they were allowed the free exercise of their religion; in the state-prisons at Constantinople, they had their own priests and chapels, and the clergy were allowed to administer the consolations of religion to the galley-slaves.109 The number of the Christian slaves who embraced Islam was enormous; some few cases have been recorded of their being threatened and ill-treated for the very purpose of inducing them to recant, but as a rule the masters seldom forced them to renounce their faith,110 and put the greatest pressure upon them during the first years of their captivity, after which they let them alone to follow their own faith.111 The majority of the converted slaves therefore changed their religion of their own free choice; and when the Christian embassies were never sure from day to day that some of their fellow-countrymen that had accompanied them to Constantinople as domestic servants, might not turn Turk,112 it can easily be understood that slaves who had lost all hope of return to their native country, and found little in their surroundings to strengthen and continue the teachings of their earlier years, would yield to the influences that beset them and would feel few restraints to hinder them from entering a new society and a new religion. An English traveller113 of the seventeenth century has said of them: “Few ever return to their native country; and fewer have the courage and constancy of retaining the Christian Faith, in which they were educated; their education being but mean, and their knowledge but slight in the principles and grounds of it; whereof some are frightened into Turcism by their impatience and too deep resentments of the hardships of the servitude; others are enticed by the blandishments and flatteries of pleasure the Mahometan Law allows, and the allurements they have of making their condition better and more easy by a change of their Religion; having no hope left of being redeemed, they renounce their Saviour and their Christianity, and soon forget their original country, and are no longer looked upon as strangers, but pass for natives.”