The Rise and Decline of the Muslim Civilization 23
were being attracted to Islam by reason of the social prestige and
freedom from taxation that it conferred, to such an extent that
under the later Umayyads of the early eighth century new legis-
lation compelled Muslims acquiring land, and non-Arab converts
to Islam, to continue to pay the appropriate tax.
Nevertheless, the majority of the inhabitants of Syria and
Lower Egypt were still Christian in the ninth century, and Bagh-
dad itself is stated to have had as late as A.D. 900 a Christian popula-
tion of 40-50,000. Except for the brief reigns of two bigoted
Umayyad caliphs the still influential Christian Church was
tolerated. The adoption of the Arabic language and of Islam seems
to have been most rapid in Iraq, where the Semitic mass of the
population had been comparatively little affected by Greek in-
fluences. In Syria and Palestine the process was slower, and
Aramaic remained the principal language there till the ninth
century. In Persia with its strong national culture Arabization was
very superficial, and the Arabic language was adopted only tem-
porarily and by a small proportion of the population for official
purposes. Islam had made considerable headway in Persia by 750,
and a reliable class of Muslim Persian officials had come into
being; but Persia did not become completely Muslim till the tenth
or eleventh century. In conservative Egypt the official adoption of
the Arabic language under Abd ul-Malik affected only the smallest
fraction of the population; but the language of their Arab rulers
was gradually adopted, and by the tenth century a Coptic ecclesi-
astic had to write in Arabic to be understood by his coreligionaries.
'The chief factor in the spread of Arab culture in Egypt, which
gave it so much greater effect than the preceding Hellenism, was
the gradual settlement of the country districts by Arab nomads....
Sections, or even whole tribes, gradually succumbed to the ad-
vantages of settled life, and thus a strong strain of Arab blood was
constantly being added to that of the Copts. It was apparently a
considerable migration, which even sent offshoots as far as the
Sudan.... The ancient civilization of the Nile Valley assimilated
these nomad Arabs, and only their Arabic language remained.
The Arabs became Nilotized, but also the Copts were Arabicized,
and it is inexplicable that the essentially conservative Copts should
have adopted another language without a great deal of mixing.'l
The Umayyad caliphs were descendants and representatives of
1 C. H, Becker, Encyclopaedia of Islam, art, Egypt.
n