As stated above, the jizyah was levied on the able-bodied males, in lieu of the military service they would have been called upon to perform had they been Musalmans; and it is very noticeable that when any Christian people served in the Muslim army, they were exempted from the payment [[62]]of this tax. Such was the case with the tribe of al-Jurājimah, a Christian tribe in the neighbourhood of Antioch, who made peace with the Muslims, promising to be their allies and fight on their side in battle, on condition that they should not be called upon to pay jizyah and should receive their proper share of the booty.[57] When the Arab conquests were pushed to the north of Persia in A.H. 22, a similar agreement was made with a frontier tribe, which was exempted from the payment of jizyah in consideration of military service.[58]
We find similar instances of the remission of jizyah in the case of Christians who served in the army or navy under the Turkish rule. For example, the inhabitants of Megaris, a community of Albanian Christians, were exempted from the payment of this tax on condition that they furnished a body of armed men to guard the passes over Mounts Cithæron and Geranea, which lead to the Isthmus of Corinth; the Christians who served as pioneers of the advance-guard of the Turkish army, repairing the roads and bridges, were likewise exempt from tribute and received grants of land quit of all taxation;[59] and the Christian inhabitants of Hydra paid no direct taxes to the Sultan, but furnished instead a contingent of 250 able-bodied seamen to the Turkish fleet, who were supported out of the local treasury.[60]
The Southern Rumanians, the so-called Armatoli,[61] who constituted so important an element of strength in the Turkish army during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Mirdites, a tribe of Albanian Catholics who occupied the mountains to the north of Scutari, were exempt from taxation on condition of supplying an armed contingent in time of war.[62] In the same spirit, in consideration of the services they rendered to the state, the capitation-tax was not imposed upon the Greek Christians who looked after the aqueducts that supplied Constantinople with drinking water,[63] nor on those who had charge of the powder-magazine in that city.[64] On the other hand, when the Egyptian [[63]]peasants, although Muslim in faith, were made exempt from military service, a tax was imposed upon them as on the Christians, in lieu thereof.[65]
Living under this security of life and property and such toleration of religious thought, the Christian community—especially in the towns—enjoyed a flourishing prosperity in the early days of the Caliphate.
Muʻāwiyah (661–680) employed Christians very largely in his service, and other members of the reigning house followed his example.[66] Christians frequently held high posts at court, e.g. a Christian Arab, al-Ak͟hṭal, was court poet, and the father of St. John of Damascus, counsellor to the caliph ʻAbd al-Malik (685–705). In the service of the caliph al-Muʻtaṣim (833–842), there were two brothers, Christians, who stood very high in the confidence of the Commander of the Faithful: the one, named Salmūyah, seems to have occupied somewhat the position of a modern secretary of state, and no royal documents were valid until countersigned by him, while his brother, Ibrāhīm, was entrusted with the care of the privy seal, and was set over the Bayt al-Māl or Public Treasury, an office that, from the nature of the funds and their disposal, might have been expected to have been put into the hands of a Muslim; so great was the caliph’s personal affection for this Ibrāhīm, that he visited him in his sickness, and was overwhelmed with grief at his death, and on the day of the funeral ordered the body to be brought to the palace and the Christian rites performed there with great solemnity.[67]
ʻAbd al-Malik appointed a certain Athanasius, a Christian scholar of Edessa, tutor to his brother, ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz. Athanasius accompanied his pupil, when he was appointed governor of Egypt, and there amassed great wealth; he is said to have possessed 4000 slaves, villages, houses, gardens, and gold and silver “like stones”; his sons took a dīnār from each of the soldiers when they received their pay, and as there were 30,000 troops then in Egypt, some idea may be formed of the wealth that Athanasius accumulated during [[64]]the twenty-one years that he spent in that country.[68] At the close of the eighth century, a certain Abū Nūḥ al-Anbārī was secretary to Abū Mūsạ̄ b. Muṣʻab, governor of Mosul, and used his powerful influence for the benefit of his Christian co-religionists.[69]
In the reign of al-Muʻtadid (892–902), the governor of Anbār, ʻUmar b. Yūsuf, was a Christian, and the caliph approved of the appointment on the ground that if a Christian were found to be competent, a post might well be given to him, as there were better reasons for trusting a Christian than either a Jew, a Muslim or a Zoroastrian.[70] Al-Muwaffaq, who was virtual ruler of the empire during the reign of his brother al-Muʻtamid (870–892), entrusted the administration of the army to a Christian named Israel, and his son, al-Muʻtaḍid, had as one of his secretaries another Christian, Malik b. al-Walīd. In a later reign, that of al-Muqtadir (908–932), a Christian was again in charge of the war office.[71]
Naṣr b. Hārūn, the Prime Minister of ʻAḍud al-Dawlah (949–982), of the Buwayhid dynasty of Persia, who ruled over Southern Persia and ʻIrāq, was a Christian.[72] For a long time, the government offices, especially in the department of finance, were filled with Christians and Persians;[73] to a much later date was such the case in Egypt, where at times the Christians almost entirely monopolised such posts.[74] Particularly as physicians, the Christians frequently amassed great wealth and were much honoured in the houses of the great. Gabriel, the personal physician of the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, was a Nestorian Christian and derived a yearly income of 800,000 dirhams from his private property, in addition to an emolument of 280,000 dirhams a year in return for his attendance on the caliph; the second physician, also a Christian, received 22,000 dirhams a year.[75] In trade and commerce, the Christians also attained considerable affluence: indeed it was frequently their wealth that excited against them the jealous [[65]]cupidity of the mob—a feeling that fanatics took advantage of, to persecute and oppress them. Further, the non-Muslim communities enjoyed an almost complete autonomy, for the government placed in their hands the independent management of their internal affairs, and their religious leaders exercised judicial functions in cases that concerned their co-religionists only.[76] Their churches and monasteries were, for the most part, not interfered with, except in the large cities, where some of them were turned into mosques—a measure that could hardly be objected to in view of the enormous increase in the Muslim and corresponding decrease in the Christian population.
Recent historical criticism has demonstrated the impossibility of the legend that when Damascus was taken by the Arabs, the churches were equally divided between the Christians and the conquerors, on the plea that while one Muslim general made his way into the city by the eastern gate at the point of the sword, another at the western gate received the submission of the governor of the city; a similar scrutiny of historical documents as well as of the topography of the building has shown that the great cathedral of St. John could never have been used in the manner described by some Arabic historians as a common place of worship for both Christians and Muslims.[77] But the very fact that these historians should have believed that such an arrangement continued for nearly eighty years, testifies to the early recognition of the liberty granted to the Christians of practising the observances of their religion.
The opinion of the Muhammadan legists is very diverse on this question, from the more liberal Ḥanafī doctrine, which declares that, though it is unlawful to construct churches and synagogues in Muhammadan territory, those already existing can be repaired if they have been destroyed or have fallen into decay, while in villages and hamlets, where the tokens of Islam do not appear, new churches and synagogues may be built—to the intolerant Ḥanbalite view that they may neither be erected nor be restored when damaged or ruined. Some legists held that the privileges varied according to treaty rights: in towns taken by force, [[66]]no new houses of prayer might be erected by d͟himmīs, but if a special treaty had been made, the building of new churches and synagogues was allowed.[78] But like so many of the lucubrations of Muhammadan legists, these prescriptions bore but little relation to actual facts.[79] Schoolmen might agree that the d͟himmīs could build no houses of prayer in a city of Muslim foundation, but the civil authority permitted the Copts to erect churches in the new capital of Cairo.[80] In other cities also the Christians were allowed to erect new churches and monasteries. The very fact that ʻUmar II (717–720), at the close of the first century of the Hijrah, should have ordered the destruction of all recently constructed churches,[81] and that rather more than a century later, the fanatical al-Mutawakkil (847–861) should have had to repeat the same order, shows how little the prohibition of the building of new churches was put into force.[82] We have numerous instances recorded, both by Christian and Muhammadan historians, of the building of new churches: e.g. in the reign of ʻAbd al-Malik (685–705), a wealthy Christian of Edessa, named Athanasius, erected in his native city a fine church dedicated to the Mother of God, and a Baptistery in honour of the picture of Christ that was reputed to have been sent to King Abgar; he also built a number of churches and monasteries in various parts of Egypt, among them two magnificent churches in Fusṭāṭ.[83] Some Christian chamberlains in the service of ʻAbd al-ʻAziz b. Marwān (brother of ʻAbd al-Malik), the governor of Egypt, obtained permission to build a church in Ḥalwān, which was dedicated to St. John,[84] though this town was a Muslim creation. In A.D. 711 a Jacobite church was built at Antioch by order of the caliph al-Walīd (705–715).[85] In the first year of the reign of Yazīd [[67]]II (A.D. 720), Mār Elias, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, made a solemn entry into Antioch, accompanied by his clergy and monks, to consecrate a new church which he had caused to be built; and in the following year he consecrated another church in the village of Sarmada, in the district of Antioch, and the only opposition he met with was from the rival Christian sect that accepted the Council of Chalcedon.[86] In the following reign, K͟hālid al-Qasrī, who was governor of Arabian and Persian ʻIrāq from 724 to 738, built a church for his mother, who was a Christian, to worship in.[87] In 759 the building of a church at Nisibis was completed, on which the Nestorian bishop, Cyprian, had expended a sum of 56,000 dīnārs.[88] From the same century dates the church of Abū Sirjah in the ancient Roman fortress in old Cairo.[89] In the reign of al-Mahdī (775–785) a church was erected in Bag͟hdād for the use of the Christian prisoners that had been taken captive during the numerous campaigns against the Byzantine empire.[90] Another church was built in the same city, in the reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809), by the people of Samālū, who had submitted to the caliph and received protection from him;[91] during the same reign Sergius, the Nestorian Metropolitan of Baṣrah, received permission to build a church in that city,[92] though it was a Muslim foundation, having been created by the caliph ʻUmar in the year 638, and a magnificent church was erected in Babylon in which were enshrined the bodies of the prophets Daniel and Ezechiel.[93] When al-Maʼmūn (813–833) was in Egypt he gave permission to two of his chamberlains to erect a church on al-Muqaṭṭam, a hill near Cairo; and by the same caliph’s leave, a wealthy Christian, named Bukām, built several fine churches at Būrah in Egypt.[94] The Nestorian Patriarch, Timotheus, who died A.D. 820, erected a church at Takrīt and a monastery at Bag͟hdād.[95] In the tenth century, the beautiful Coptic church of Abū [[68]]Sayfayn was built in Fusṭāṭ.[96] A new church was built at Jiddah in the reign of al-Ẓāhir, the seventh Fāṭimid caliph of Egypt (1020–1035).[97] New churches and monasteries were also built in the reign of the ʻAbbāsid, al-Mustaḍī (1170–1180).[98] In 1187 a church was built at Fusṭāṭ and dedicated to Our Lady the Pure Virgin.[99]