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Chapter 8
Fundamentals of Capital Budgeting

I. Chapter Outline
The chapter outline below is correlated to the PowerPoint Lecture Slides. The PowerPoint slides are
referenced in bold.
Alternative Examples to selected textbook examples are available in the PowerPoint Lecture Slides.
Alternative Examples are referenced in bold in the chapter outline below.
8.1 Forecasting Earnings (Slide 6)
• Revenue and Cost Estimates (Slides 7–8)
• Incremental Earnings Forecast (Slide 9)
– Capital Expenditures and Depreciation (Slide 10)
– Interest Expenses (Slide 11)
– Taxes (Slide 12)
– Unlevered Net Income Calculation (Slide 13)
• Example 8.1 Taxing Losses for Projects in Profitable Companies (Slides 14–15)
• PowerPoint Alternative Example 8.1 (Slides 16–18)
• Indirect Effects on Incremental Earnings (Slides 19, 24–26)
– Opportunity Costs
– Project Externalities
• Example 8.2 The Opportunity Cost of HomeNet’s Lab Space (Slides 20–21)
• PowerPoint Alternative Example 8.2 (Slides 22–23)
• Common Mistake: The Opportunity Cost of an Idle Asset
• Sunk Costs and Incremental Earnings (Slides 27–30)
– Fixed Overhead Expenses
– Past Research and Development Expenditures
– Unavoidable Competitive Effects
• Real-World Complexities (Slide 31)
• The Sunk Cost Fallacy
• Example 8.3 Product Adoption and Price Changes (Slides 32–33)
8.2 Determining Free Cash Flow and NPV (Slide 34)
• Calculating the Free Cash Flow from Earnings (Slides 35–38)
– Capital Expenditures and Depreciation
– Net Working Capital (NWC)
• Example 8.4 Net Working Capital with Changing Sales (Slides 39–40)
• PowerPoint Alternative Example 8.4 (Slides 41–42)
• Calculating Free Cash Flow Directly (Slide 43)

©2014 Pearson Education, Inc.

24 Berk/DeMarzo • Corporate Finance, Third Edition

• Calculating the NPV (Slide 44)

• Using Excel: Capital Budgeting Using a Spreadsheet Program
8.3 Choosing Among Alternatives (Slides 45–50)
– Evaluating Manufacturing Alternatives
– Comparing Free Cash Flows for Cisco’s Alternatives
8.4 Further Adjustments to Free Cash Flow (Slides 51, 56, 59, 62)
– Other Non-cash Items
– Timing of Cash Flows
– Accelerated Depreciation
• Example 8.5 Computing Accelerated Depreciation (Slides 52–53)
• PowerPoint Alternative Example 8.5 (Slides 54–55)
– Liquidation or Salvage Value
• Example 8.6 Adding Salvage Value to Free Cash Flow (Slides 57–58)
– Terminal or Continuation Value
• Example 8.7 Continuation Value with Perpetual Growth (Slides 60–61)
– Tax Carryforwards
• Example 8.8 Tax Loss Carryforwards (Slides 63–64)
• Global Financial Crisis: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
8.5 Analyzing the Project (Slides 65–75)
• Break-Even Analysis (Slides 65–66)
• Sensitivity Analysis (Slides 67–68)
• Interview with David Holland
• Figure 8.1 HomeNet’s NPV Under Best- and Worst-Case Parameter Assumptions (Slide 69)
• Example 8.9 Sensitivity to Marketing and Support Costs (Slides 70–71)
• PowerPoint Alternative Example 8.9 (Slides 72-75)
• Scenario Analysis (Slide 76)
• Figure 8.2 Price and Volume Combinations for HomeNet with Equivalent NPV (Slide 77)
• Using Excel: Project Analysis Using Excel
Chapter 8 Appendix MACRS Depreciation

II. Learning Objectives

8.1 Given a set of facts, identify relevant cash flows for a capital budgeting problem.
8.2 Explain why opportunity costs must be included in cash flows, while sunk costs and interest
expense must not.
8.3 Calculate taxes that must be paid, including tax loss carryforwards and carrybacks.
8.4 Calculate free cash flows for a given project.
8.5 Illustrate the impact of depreciation expense on cash flows.
8.6 Describe the appropriate selection of discount rate for a particular set of circumstances.
8.7 Use breakeven analysis, sensitivity analysis, or scenario analysis to evaluate project risk.

©2014 Pearson Education, Inc.

 Berk/DeMarzo • Corporate Finance, Third Edition 25

III. Chapter Overview

Chapter 7 described the use of NPV (and some other tools) to make investment decisions. Chapter 8
demonstrates how to derive the cash flows for a given project in order to determine which projects or
investments a firm should undertake.
8.1 Forecasting Earnings
The chapter teaches the concept of forecasting earnings by considering a hypothetical capital
budgeting decision faced by managers of the Linksys division of Cisco. The project is called
HomeNet. The issues addressed are summarized here:
• The company has already conducted a feasibility study, which cost $300,000.
• Sales are expected to be 100,000 units per year.
• The project is estimated to have a four-year life.
• It will retail for $375, with an expected wholesale price of $260.
• Engineering and design costs will be $5 million.
• Actual production will cost $110 per unit.
• Software development will require 40 software engineers at $200,000 per year, each.
• Lab facilities are already available, but will require $7.5 million of new equipment.
• The software and hardware design will be completed and the lab will be operational at the end
of one year. At that time, HomeNet will be ready to ship.
• The company will spend $2.8 million per year on marketing and support.
• The lab equipment will be depreciated straight line over a five-year period.
• The marginal corporate tax rate is 40%.
The net income from the project is in Table 8.1 Spreadsheet. Additional issues addressed in this
section of the chapter are:
• Interest income is not included—the investment decision is separate from the financing
decision.
• Project externalities affect cash flows. These include cannibalization and opportunity costs.
• Sunk costs, such as the study already conducted and paid for, should not be included.
• Fixed overhead expenses should be included only if they are in addition to those that would be
incurred without the project.
8.2 Determining Free Cash Flow and NPV
This section shows how to convert net income to free cash flow. Free cash flow is calculated directly
by using the following formula:
Insert equation 8.5
When free cash flow is calculated for a period shorter than the horizon of the project, a terminal or
continuation value must be calculated. This can be calculated as a constant growth perpetuity. That
value must then be discounted back to the present, along with the remaining cash flows.
8.3 Choosing Among Alternatives
Because not launching a project produces an additional NPV of zero for the firm, launching a project
is the best decision for the firm, if its NPV is positive. In many situations, however, we must compare
mutually exclusive alternatives, each of which has consequences for the firm’s cash flows. In such
cases we can make the best decision by choosing the alternative with the highest NPV.

©2014 Pearson Education, Inc.

26 Berk/DeMarzo • Corporate Finance, Third Edition

8.4 Further Adjustments to Free Cash Flow

We must also consider tax carryforwards and carrybacks when calculating NPV, which allow
corporations to take losses during a current year and offset them against gains in nearby years. In
addition, other non-cash items, the timing of the cash flows, accelerated depreciation, liquidation or
salvage value, and the terminal or continuation value must be considered when calculating NPV.
8.5 Analyzing the Project
Finally, there are several tools to analyze the project’s sensitivity to assumptions used in deriving the
cash flows. Break-even analysis can be done for each input. This involves solving for the break-even
level of that input—the level that makes NPV equal zero. If there is a great deal of uncertainty
regarding that input, this provides valuable information. IRR is the breakeven point for the cost of
capital.

The chapter summarizes sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis. The Appendix to the chapter
provides detail regarding MACRS depreciation.

IV. Spreadsheet Solutions in Excel

The following Problems for Chapter 8 have spreadsheet versions of the problems available: 8-5, 8-7,
8-10, 8-11, 8-13, 8-14, 8-21, 8-23, and 8-24.
These spreadsheets are available on the Instructor's Resource CD-ROM or can be downloaded
from the Instructor's Resource Center at: www.pearsonhighered.com/berk_demarzo. If you do not
have a login and password for this Web site, contact your Prentice Hall sales representative.

©2014 Pearson Education, Inc.

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
by the sense of their opposition to the dictates of the foreign
government, 12 the assurance that a paradise of delights was opened
to the martyr who died under the hands of his tormentors,—all these
things stirred up an enthusiasm that resulted in an incredibly rapid
spread of the Christian faith. “Instead of being converted by
preaching, as the other countries of the East were, Egypt embraced
Christianity in a fit of wild enthusiasm, without any preaching, or
instruction being given, with hardly any knowledge of the new
religion beyond the name of Jesus, the Messiah, who bestowed a life
of eternal happiness on all who confessed Him.” 13

In the seventh century Christianity had probably very little hold on a

great mass of the people of Egypt. The theological catchwords that
their leaders made use of, to stir up in them feelings of hatred and
opposition to the Byzantine government, could have been intelligible
to a very few, and the rapid spread of Islam in the early days of the
Arab occupation was probably due less to definite efforts to attract
than to the inability of such a Christianity to retain. The theological
basis for the existence of the [105]Jacobites as a separate sect, the
tenets that they had so long and at so great a cost struggled to
maintain, were embodied in doctrines of the most abstruse and
metaphysical character, and many doubtless turned in utter
perplexity and weariness from the interminable controversies that
raged around them, to a faith that was summed up in the simple,
intelligible truth of the Unity of God and the mission of His Prophet,
Muḥammad. Even within the Coptic Church itself at a later period,
we find evidence of a movement which, if not distinctly Muslim, was
at least closely allied thereto, and in the absence of any separate
ecclesiastical organisation in which it might find expression, probably
contributed to the increase of the converts to Islam. In the
beginning of the twelfth century, there was in the monastery of St.
Anthony (near Iṭfīḥ on the Nile), a monk named Balūṭus, “learned in
the doctrines of the Christian religion and the duties of the monastic
life, and skilled in the rules of the canon-law. But Satan caught him
in one of his nets; for he began to hold opinions at variance with
those taught by the Three Hundred and Eighteen (of Nicæa); and he
corrupted the minds of many of those who had no knowledge or
instruction in the Orthodox faith. He announced with his impure
mouth, in his wicked discourses, that Christ our Lord—to Whom be
glory—was like one of the prophets. He associated with the lowest
among the followers of his religion, clothed as he was in the
monastic habit. When he was questioned as to his religion and his
creed, he professed himself a believer in the Unity of God. His
doctrines prevailed during a period which ended in the year 839 of
the Righteous Martyrs (a.d. 1123); then he died, and his memory
was cut off for ever.” 14

Further, a theory of the Christian life that found its highest

expression in asceticism of the grossest type 15 could offer little
attraction, in the face of the more human morality of Islam. 16 On
account of the large numbers of Copts that [106]from time to time
have become Muhammadans, they have come to be considered by
the followers of the Prophet as much more inclined to the faith of
Islam than any other Christian sect, and though they have had to
endure the most severe oppression and persecution on many
occasions, yet the Copts that have been thus driven to abandon their
faith are said to have been few in comparison with those who have
changed their religion voluntarily, 17 and even in the nineteenth
century, when Egypt was said to be the most tolerant of all
Muhammadan countries, there were yearly conversions of the Copts
to the Muslim faith. 18 Still, persecution and oppression have
undoubtedly played a very large part in the reduction of the
numbers of the Copts, and the story of the sufferings of the Jacobite
Church of Egypt,—persecuted alike by their fellow Christians 19 and
by the followers of the dominant faith, is a very sad one, and many
abandoned the religion of their fathers in order to escape from
burdensome taxes and unendurable indignities. The vast difference
in this respect between their condition and that of the Christians of
Syria, Palestine and Spain at the same period finds its explanation in
the turbulent character of the Copts themselves. Their long struggle
against the civil and theological despotism of Byzantium seems to
have welded the zealots into a national party that could as little
brook the foreign rule of the Arabs as, before, that of the Greeks.
The rising of the Copts against their new masters in 646, when they
drove the Arabs for a time out of Alexandria and opened the gates of
the city to the Byzantine troops (who, however, treated the
unfortunate Copts as enemies, [107]not having yet forgotten the
welcome they had before given to the Muhammadan invaders), was
the first of a long series of risings and insurrections, 20—excited
frequently by excessive taxation,—which exposed them to terrible
reprisals, and caused the lot of the Jacobite Christians of Egypt to be
harder to bear than that of any other Christian sect in this or other
countries under Muhammadan rule. But the history of these events
belongs rather to a history of Muhammadan persecution and
intolerance than to the scope of the present work. It must not,
however, be supposed that the condition of the Copts was invariably
that of a persecuted sect; on the contrary there were times when
they rose to positions of great affluence and importance in the state.
They filled the posts of secretaries and scribes in the government
offices, 21 farmed the taxes, 22 and in some cases amassed enormous
wealth. 23 The annals of their Church furnish us with many instances
of ecclesiastics who were held in high favour and consideration by
the reigning princes of the country, under the rule of many of whom
the Christians enjoyed the utmost tranquillity. 24 To such a period of
the peace of the Church belongs an incident that led to the
absorption of many Christians into the body of the faithful.

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 [108]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 [109]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

How far this incident is a typical case of conversion to Islam among

the Copts it is difficult to say; a parallel case of neglect is mentioned
by two Capuchin missionaries who travelled up the Nile to Luxor in
the seventeenth century, where they found that the Copts of Luxor
had no priest, and some of them had not gone to confession or
communion for fifty years. 30 Under such circumstances the decay of
their numbers can readily be understood.

A similar neglect probably contributed to the decay of the Nubian

Church which recognised the primacy of the Jacobite Patriarch of
Alexandria, as do the Abyssinians to the present day. The Nubians
had been converted to Christianity about the middle of the sixth
century, and retained their independence when Egypt was
conquered by the Arabs; a treaty was made according to which the
Nubians were to send every year three hundred and sixty slaves,
with forty more for the governor of Egypt, while the Arabs were to
furnish them with corn, oil and raiment. 31 In the reign of al-Muʻtaṣim
(833–842), ambassadors were sent by the caliph renewing this
treaty, and the king of Nubia visited the capital, where he was
received with great magnificence and dismissed with costly
presents. 32 In the twelfth century they were still all Christian, 33 and
retained their old independence in spite of the frequent expeditions
sent against them from Egypt. 34 In 1275 the nephew of the then
king of Nubia obtained from the sultan of Egypt a body of troops to
assist him in his revolt against his uncle, [110]whom he by their help
succeeded in deposing; in return for this assistance he had to cede
the two northernmost provinces of Nubia to the sultan, and as the
inhabitants elected to retain their Christian faith, an annual tribute of
one dīnār for each male was imposed upon them. 35 But this
Muhammadan overlordship was temporary only, and the Nubians of
the ceded provinces soon reasserted their independence. 36

But settlements of Arabs had been established in Nubia for several

centuries earlier and the Arabs on the Blue Nile had so increased in
number and wealth in the tenth century that they were able to ask
permission to build a mosque in Soba, 37 the capital of the Christian
kingdom. 38 In the thirteenth and especially from the beginning of the
fourteenth century there began a general process of interpenetration
through the migration into Nubia of Arabs, especially of the
Juhaynah tribe, who intermarried with the women of the land and
gradually succeeded in breaking up the power of the Nubian
princes. 39 In the latter half of the fourteenth century Ibn Baṭūṭah 40
tells us that the Nubians were still Christians, though the king of
their chief city, Dongola, 41 had embraced Islam in the reign of Nāṣir
(probably Nāṣir b. Qulāūn, one of the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt, who
died a.d. 1340); the repeated expeditions of the Muslims so late as
the fifteenth century had not succeeded in pushing their conquests
south of the first cataract, near which was their last fortified place, 42
while Christianity seems to have extended as far up the Nile as
Sennaar.
The Christian Nubian kingdom appears to have come to an end
partly through internal dissensions and partly [111]through the
attacks of Arab and Negro tribes on its borders, and finally by the
establishment of the powerful Fūnj empire in the fifteenth century. 43

But it is probable that the progress of Islam in the country was all
this time being promoted by the Muhammadan merchants and
others that frequented it. Maqrīzī (writing in the early part of the
fifteenth century) quotes one of those missionary anecdotes which
occur so rarely in the works of Arabic authors; it is told by Ibn Salīm
al-Aswāni, and is of interest as giving us a living picture of the
Muslim propagandist at work. Though the convert referred to is
neither a Christian nor a Nubian, still the story shows that there was
such a thing as conversion to Islam in Nubia in the fifteenth century.
Ibn Salīm says that he once met a man at the court of the Nubian
chief of Muqurrah, who told him that he came from a city that lay
three months’ journey from the Nile. When asked about his religion,
he replied, “My Creator and thy Creator is God; the Creator of the
universe and of all men is One, and his dwelling-place is in Heaven.”
When there was a dearth of rain, or when pestilence attacked them
or their cattle, his fellow-countrymen would climb up a high
mountain and there pray to God, who accepted their prayers and
supplied their needs before even they came down again. When he
acknowledged that God had never sent them a prophet, Ibn Salīm
recounted to him the story of the prophets Moses and Jesus and
Muḥammad, and how by the help of God they had been enabled to
perform many miracles. And he answered, “The truth must indeed
have been with them, when they did these things; and if they
performed these deeds, I believe in them.” 44

Very slowly and gradually the Nubians seem to have drifted from
Christianity into Muhammadanism. 45 The spiritual life of their Church
had sunk to the lowest ebb, and as no movement of reform sprang
up in their midst, and as they had lost touch with the Christian
Churches beyond their borders, it was only natural that they should
seek for an expression of their spiritual aspirations in the [112]religion
of Islam, whose followers had so long borne witness to its living
power among them, and had already won over some of their
countrymen to the acceptance of it. A Portuguese priest, who
travelled in Abyssinia from 1520–1527, has preserved for us a
picture of the Nubians in this state of transition; he says that they
were neither Christians, Jews nor Muhammadans, but had come to
be without faith and without laws; but still “they lived with the desire
of being Christians.” Through the fault of their clergy they had sunk
into the grossest ignorance, and now there were no bishops or
priests left among them; accordingly they sent an embassy of six
men to the king of Abyssinia, praying him to send priests and monks
to instruct them, but this the king refused to do without the
permission of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and as this could not be
obtained, the unfortunate ambassadors returned unsuccessful to
their own country. 46 The same writer was informed by a Christian
who had travelled in Nubia, that he had found 150 churches there,
in each of which were still to be seen the figures of the crucified
Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and other saints painted on the walls. In
all the fortresses, also, that were scattered throughout the country,
there were churches. 47 Before the close of the following century,
Christianity had entirely disappeared from Nubia “for want of
pastors,” but the closed churches were to be found still standing
throughout the whole country. 48 The Nubians had yielded to the
powerful Muhammadan influences that surrounded them, to which
the proselytising efforts of the Muslims who had travelled in Nubia
for centuries past no doubt contributed a great deal; on the north
were Egypt and the Arab tribes that had made their way up the Nile
and extended their authority along the banks of that river; 49 on the
south, the Muhammadan state of the Belloos, separating them from
Abyssinia. [113]These Belloos, in the early part of the sixteenth
century, were, in spite of their Muslim faith, tributaries of the
Christian king of Abyssinia; 50 and—if they may be identified with the
Baliyyūn, who, together with their neighbours, the Bajah (the
inhabitants of the so-called island of Meroe), are spoken of by Idrīsī,
in the twelfth century, as being Jacobite Christians, 51—it is probable
that they had only a few years before been converted to Islam, at
the same time as the Bajah, who had been incorporated into the
Muhammadan empire of the Fūnj, when these latter extended their
conquests in 1499–1530 from the south up to the borders of Nubia
and Abyssinia and founded the powerful state of Sennaar. When the
army of Aḥmad Grāñ invaded Abyssinia and made its way right
through the country from south to north, it effected a junction about
1534 with the army of the sultan of Maseggia or Mazaga, a province
under Muhammadan rule but tributary to Abyssinia, lying between
that country and Sennaar; in the army of this sultan there were
15,000 Nubian soldiers who, from the account given of them, appear
to have been Musalmans. 52 Fragmentary and insufficient as these
data of the conversion of the Nubians are, we may certainly
conclude from all we know of the independent character of this
people and the tenacity with which they clung to the Christian faith,
so long as it was a living force among them, that their change of
religion was a gradual one, extending through several centuries.

Let us now pass to the history of Islam among the Abyssinians, who
had received Christianity two centuries before the Nubians, and like
them belonged to the Jacobite Church.

The tide of Arab emigration does not seem to have set across the
Red Sea, the western shores of which formed part of the Abyssinian
kingdom, until many centuries after Arabia had accepted the faith of
the prophet. Up to the tenth century only a few Muhammadan
families were to be found residing in the coast towns of Abyssinia,
but at the end of the twelfth century the foundation of an Arab
dynasty alienated some of the coast-lands from the Abyssinian
kingdom. In 1300 a missionary, named Abū ʻAbd Allāh Muḥammad,
made his way into Abyssinia, calling [114]on the people to embrace
Islam, and in the following year, having collected around him
200,000 men, he attacked the ruler of Amhara in several
engagements. 53 King Saifa Arʻād (1342–1370) took energetic
measures against the Muhammadans in his kingdom, putting to
death or driving into exile all those who refused to embrace
Christianity. 54 At the close of the same century the disturbed state of
the country, owing to the civil wars that distracted it, made it
possible for the various Arab settlements along the coast to make
themselves masters of the entire seaboard and drive the Abyssinians
into the interior, and the king, Baʼeda Māryām (1468–1478), is said
to have spent the greater part of his reign in fighting against the
Muhammadans on the eastern border of his kingdom. 55 In the early
part of the sixteenth century, while the powerful Muhammadan
kingdom of Adal, between Abyssinia and the southern extremity of
the Red Sea, and some others were bitterly hostile to the Christian
power, there were others again that formed peaceful tributaries of
“Prester John”; e.g. in Massowah there were Arabs who kept the
flocks of the Abyssinian seigniors, wandering about in bands of thirty
or forty with their wives and children, each band having its Christian
“captain.” 56 Some Musalmans are also mentioned as being in the
service of the king and being entrusted by him with important
posts; 57 while some of these remained faithful to Islam, others
embraced the prevailing religion of the country. What was implied in
the fact of these Muhammadan communities being tributaries of the
king of Abyssinia, it is difficult to determine. The Musalmans of
Ḥadya had along with other tribute to give up every year to the king
a maiden who had to become a Christian; this custom was in
accordance with an ancient treaty, which the king of Abyssinia has
always made them observe, “because he was the stronger”; besides
this, they were forbidden to carry arms or put on war-apparel, and,
if they rode, their horses were not to be saddled; “these orders,”
they said, “we have always obeyed, so that the [115]king may not put
us to death and destroy our mosques. When the king sends his
people to fetch the maiden and the tribute, we put her on a bed,
wash her and cover her with a cloth, and recite the prayers for the
dead over her and give her up to the people of the king; and thus
did our fathers and our grandfathers before us.” 58

These Muhammadan tributaries were chiefly to be found in the low-

lying countries that formed the northern boundary of Abyssinia, from
the Red Sea westward to Sennaar, 59 and on the south and the south-
east of the kingdom. 60 What influence these Muhammadans had on
the Christian populations with which they were intermingled, and
whether they made converts to Islam as in the present century, is
matter only of conjecture. Certain it is, however, that when the
independent Muhammadan ruler of Adal, Aḥmad Grāñ—himself said
to have been the son of a Christian priest of Aijjo, who had left his
own country and adopted Islam in that of the Adals 61—invaded
Abyssinia from 1528 to 1543, many Abyssinian chiefs with their
followers joined his victorious army and became Musalmans, and
though the Christian populations of some districts preferred to pay
jizyah, 62 others embraced the religion of the conqueror. 63 But the
contemporary Muslim historian himself tells us that in some cases
this conversion was the result of fear, and that suspicions were
entertained of the genuineness of the allegiance of the new
converts. 64 But such apparently was not universally the case, and
the widespread character of the conversions in several districts give
the impression of a popular movement. The Christian chiefs who
went over to Islam made use of their personal influence in inducing
their troops to follow their example. They were, as we are told, in
some cases very ignorant of their own religion, 65 and thus the
change of faith was a less difficult matter. Particularly instrumental in
conversions of this kind were those Muhammadan chiefs who had
previously entered the service of the king of Abyssinia, and those
renegades who took the opportunity of the invasion of the country
by a conquering Musalman [116]army to throw off their allegiance at
once to Christianity and the Christian king and declare themselves
Muhammadans once more. 66

One of these in 1531 wrote the following letter to Aḥmad Grāñ:—“I

was formerly a Muslim and the son of a Muslim, was taken prisoner
by the polytheists and made a Christian by force; but in my heart I
have always clung to the true faith and now I seek the protection of
God and of His Prophet and of thee. If thou wilt accept my
repentance and punish me not for what I have done, I will return in
penitence to God; and I will devise means whereby the troops of the
king, that are with me, may join thee and become Muslims;”—and in
fact the greater part of his army elected to follow their general;
including the women and children their numbers are said to have
amounted to 20,000 souls. 67

But with the help of the Portuguese, the Abyssinians succeeded in

shaking off the yoke of their Muhammadan conquerors and Aḥmad
Grāñ himself was slain in 1543. Islam had, however, gained a footing
in the country, which the troublous condition of affairs during the
remainder of the sixteenth and the following century enabled it to
retain, the rival Christian Churches being too busily engaged in
contending with one another, to devote much attention to their
common enemy. For the successful proselytising of the Jesuits and
other Roman Catholic missionaries and the active interference of the
Portuguese in all civil and political matters, excited violent opposition
in the mass of the Abyssinian Christians;—indeed so bitter was this
feeling that some of the chiefs openly declared that they would
rather submit to a Muhammadan ruler than continue their alliance
with the Portuguese; 68—and the semi-religious, semi-patriotic
movement set on foot thereby, rapidly assumed such vast
proportions as to lead (about 1632) to the expulsion of the
Portuguese and the exclusion of all foreign Christians from the
country. The condition of Abyssinia then speedily became one of
terrible confusion and anarchy, of which some tribes of the Galla
race took [117]advantage, to thrust their way right into the very
centre of the country, where their settlements remain to the present
day.

The progress achieved by Islam during this period may be estimated

from the testimony of a traveller of the seventeenth century, who
tells us that in his time the adherents of this faith were scattered
throughout the whole of Abyssinia and formed a third of the entire
population. 69 During the following century the faith of the Prophet
seems steadily to have increased by means of the conversion of
isolated individuals here and there. The absence of any strong
central government in the country favoured the rise of petty
independent chieftains, many of whom had strong Muhammadan
sympathies, though (in accordance with a fundamental law of the
state) all the Abyssinian princes had to belong to the Christian faith;
the Muhammadans, too, aspiring to the dignity of the Abyssinian
aristocracy, abjured the faith in which they had been born and
pretended conversion to Christianity in order to get themselves
enrolled in the order of the nobles, and as governors of Christian
provinces made use of all their influence towards the spread of
Islam. 70 One of the chief reasons of the success of this faith seems
to have been the moral superiority of the Muslims as compared with
that of the Christian population of Abyssinia. Rüppell says that he
frequently noticed in the course of his travels in Abyssinia that when
a post had to be filled which required that a thoroughly honest and
trustworthy person should be selected, the choice always fell upon a
Muhammadan. In comparison with the Christians, he says that they
were more active and energetic; that every Muhammadan had his
sons taught to read and write, whereas Christian children were only
educated when they were intended for the priesthood. 71 This moral
superiority of the Muhammadans of [118]Abyssinia over the Christian
population goes far to explain the continuous though slow progress
made by Islam during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the
degradation and apathy of the Abyssinian clergy and the
interminable feuds of the Abyssinian chiefs, have left Muhammadan
influences free to work undisturbed. Mr. Plowden, who was English
consul in Abyssinia from 1844 to 1860, speaking of the Ḥabāb, three
Tigrē tribes dwelling between 16° and 17° 30′ lat., the north-west of
Massowah, says that they have become Muhammadan “within the
last 100 years, and all, save the latest generation, bear Christian
names. They have changed their faith, through the constant
influence of the Muhammadans with whom they trade, and through
the gradual and now entire abandonment of the country by the
Abyssinian chiefs, too much occupied in ceaseless wars with their
neighbours.” 72 They have a tradition that one of their chiefs named
Jāwej rejected Christianity for Islam, in the belief that the latter faith
brought good luck and long life; he then said to his priest, “Break in
pieces the Tābōt”; 73 the priest answered, “I dare not break in pieces
the Tābōt of Mary”; so Jāwej seized the Tābōt with his own hands
and cut it in pieces with an axe; the Christian priests then adopted
Islam, and all their descendants are shayk͟ hs of the tribe to the
present day. 74

Other sections of the population of the northern districts of the

country were similarly converted to Islam during the same period,
because the priests had abandoned these districts and the churches
had been suffered to fall into ruins,—apparently entirely through
neglect, as the Muhammadans here are said to have been by no
means fanatical nor to have borne any particular enmity to
Christianity. 75 Similar testimony to the progress of Islam in the early
part of the nineteenth century is given by other travellers, 76 who
found numbers of Christians to be continually passing over to that
faith. The Muhammadans were especially favoured by Ras ʻAlī, one
of the vice-regents of Abyssinia and practically master of the country
before the accession [119]of King Theodore in 1853. Though himself
a Christian, he distributed posts and even the spoils of the churches
among the followers of Islam, and during his reign one half of the
population of the central provinces of Abyssinia embraced the faith
of the Prophet. 77 Such deep roots had this faith now struck in
Abyssinia that its followers had in their hands all the commerce as
well as all the petty trade of the country, enjoyed vast possessions,
were masters of large towns and central markets, and had a firm
hold upon the mass of the people. Indeed, a Christian missionary
who lived for thirty-five years in this country, rated the success and
the zeal of the Muslim propagandists so high as to say that were
another Aḥmad Grāñ to arise and unfurl the banner of the Prophet,
the whole of Abyssinia would become Muhammadan. 78 Embroilments
with the Egyptian government (with which Abyssinia was at war
from 1875 to 1882) brought about a revulsion of feeling against
Muhammadanism: hatred of the foreign Muslim foe reacted upon
their co-religionists within the border. In 1878, King John summoned
a Convocation of the Abyssinian clergy, who proclaimed him
supreme arbiter in matters of faith and ordained that there should
be but one religion throughout the whole kingdom. Christians of all
sects other than the Jacobite were given two years in which to
become reconciled to the national Church; the Muhammadans were
to submit within three, and the heathen within five, years. A few
days later the king promulgated an edict that showed how little
worth was the three years’ grace allowed to the Muhammadans; for
not only did he order them to build Christian churches wherever they
were needed and to pay tithes to the priests resident in their
respective districts, but also gave three months’ notice to all
Muhammadan officials to either receive baptism or resign their
posts. Such compulsory conversion (consisting as it did merely of the
rite of baptism and the payment of tithes) was naturally of the most
ineffectual character, and while outwardly conforming, the Muslims
in secret protested their loyalty to their old faith. Massaja saw some
such go straight from the church [120]in which they had been
baptised to the mosque, in order to have this enforced baptism
wiped off by some holy man of their own faith. 79 These mass
conversions were rendered the more ineffectual by being confined to
the men, for as the royal edict had made no mention of the women
they were in no way molested,—a circumstance that probably
proved to be of considerable significance in the future history of
Islam in Abyssinia, as Massaja bears striking testimony to the
important part the Muhammadan women have played in the
diffusion of their faith in this country. 80 By 1880 King John is said to
have compelled about 50,000 Muhammadans to be baptised, as well
as 20,000 members of one of the pagan tribes and half a million of
Gallas, 81 but as their conversion went no further than baptism and
the payment of tithes, it is not surprising to learn that the only result
of these violent measures was to increase the hatred and hostility of
both the Muslim and the heathen Abyssinians towards the Christian
faith. 82 The king of the petty state of Kafa (which had almost always
acknowledged the supremacy of Abyssinia),—Sawo-Teheno,—took
advantage of the embarrassment of King John, who was threatened
at once by the Italians and the followers of the Mahdī, to assert his
independence, and became a Musalman, in order to do so more
effectively. He successfully resisted all attacks until 1897, when his
state was reconquered and he himself taken prisoner by the
Emperor Menelik, the former king of Shoa, who had established his
authority over the whole of Abyssinia after the death of King John in
1889. Christianity was re-established as the state religion throughout
Kafa and Christian worship renewed in the churches, which had been
left uninjured, being either shut up or turned into mosques. 83 But
these violent measures taken in the interests of the Christian faith
have failed to arrest the growing power of Islam during the
nineteenth century. Whole tribes that were once Christian and still
bear Christian names, such as Taklēs (“Plant of Jesus”), Hebtēs
(“Gift of Jesus”) [121]and Temāryām (“Gift of Mary”), have become
Muslim. The two Mänsaʻ tribes which were entirely Christian about
the middle of the nineteenth century had become Muslim, for the
most part, at the beginning of the twentieth century; the
propagandist efforts of the Muslims who converted them appear to
have been facilitated through the ignorance of the Christian clergy. A
similar Muhammadanising process has been going on for some time
among other tribes also. 84

We must return now to the history of Africa in the seventh century,

when the Arabs were pushing their conquests from East to West
along the north coast. The comparatively easy conquest of Egypt,
where so many of the inhabitants assisted the Arabs in bringing the
Byzantine rule to an end, found no parallel in the bloody campaigns
and the long-continued resistance that here barred their further
progress, and half a century elapsed before the Arabs succeeded in
making themselves complete masters of the north coast from Egypt
to the Atlantic Ocean. It was not till 698 that the fall of Carthage
brought the Roman rule in Africa to an end for ever, and the
subjugation of the Berbers made the Arabs supreme in the country.

The details of these campaigns it is no part of our purpose to

consider, but rather to attempt to discover in what way Islam was
spread among the Christian population. Unfortunately the materials
available for such a purpose are lamentably sparse and insufficient.
What became of that great African Church that had given such saints
and theologians to Christendom? The Church of Tertullian, St.
Cyprian and St. Augustine, which had emerged victorious out of so
many persecutions, and had so stoutly championed the cause of
Christian orthodoxy, seems to have faded away like a mist.
In the absence of definite information, it has been usual to ascribe
the disappearance of the Christian population to fanatical
persecutions and forced conversions on the part of the Muslim
conquerors. But there are many considerations that militate against
such a rough and ready settlement of this question. First of all, there
is the absence [122]of definite evidence in support of such an
assertion. Massacres, devastation and all the other accompaniments
of a bloody and long-protracted war, there were in horrible
abundance, but of actual religious persecution we have little
mention, and the survival of the native Christian Church for more
than eight centuries after the Arab conquest is a testimony to the
toleration that alone could have rendered such a survival possible.

The causes that brought about the decay of Christianity in North

Africa must be sought for elsewhere than in the bigotry of
Muhammadan rulers. But before attempting to enumerate these, it
will be well to realise how very small must have been the number of
the Christian population at the end of the seventh century—a
circumstance that renders its continued existence under
Muhammadan rule still more significant of the absence of forced
conversion, and leaves such a hypothesis much less plausibility than
would have been the case had the Arabs found a large and
flourishing Christian Church there when they commenced their
conquest of northern Africa.

The Roman provinces of Africa, to which the Christian population

was confined, never extended far southwards; the Sahara forms a
barrier in this direction, so that the breadth of the coast seldom
exceeds 80 or 100 miles. 85 Though there were as many as 500
bishoprics just before the Vandal conquest, this number can serve as
no criterion of the number of the faithful, owing to the practice
observed in the African Church of appointing bishops to the most
inconsiderable towns and very frequently to the most obscure
villages, 86 and it is doubtful whether Christianity ever spread far
inland among the Berber tribes. 87 When the power of the Roman
Empire declined in the fifth century, different tribes of this great
race, known to the Romans under the names of Moors, Numidians,
Libyans, etc., swarmed up from the south to ravage and destroy the
wealthy cities of the coast. These invaders were certainly heathen.
The Libyans, whose devastations are so pathetically bewailed [123]by
Synesius of Cyrene, pillaged and burnt the churches and carried off
the sacred vessels for their own idolatrous rites, 88 and this province
of Cyrenaica never recovered from their devastations, and
Christianity was probably almost extinct here at the time of the
Muslim invasion. The Moorish chieftain in the district of Tripolis, who
was at war with the Vandal king Thorismund (496–524), but
respected the churches and clergy of the orthodox, who had been ill-
treated by the Vandals, declared his heathenism when he said, “I do
not know who the God of the Christians is, but if he is so powerful
as he is represented, he will take vengeance on those who insult
him, and succour those who do him honour.” 89 There is some
probability that the nomads of Mauritania also were very largely
heathen.

But whatever may have been the extent of the Christian Church, it
received a blow from the Vandal persecutions from which it never
recovered. For nearly a century the Arian Vandals persecuted the
orthodox with relentless fury; sent their bishops into exile, forbade
the public exercise of their religion and cruelly tortured those who
refused to conform to the religion of their conquerors. 90 When in
534, Belisarius crushed the power of the Vandals and restored North
Africa to the Roman Empire, only 217 bishops met in the Synod of
Carthage 91 to resume the direction of the Christian Church. After the
fierce and long-continued persecution to which they had been
subjected the number of the faithful must have been very much
reduced, and during the century that elapsed before the coming of
the Muhammadans, the inroads of the barbarian Moors, who shut
the Romans up in the cities and other centres of population, and
kept the mountains, the desert and the open country for
themselves, 92 the prevalent disorder and ill-government, and above
all the desolating plagues that signalised the latter half of the sixth
century, all combined to carry on the work of destruction. Five
millions of Africans are said to have been consumed by the wars and
government of the Emperor Justinian. The wealthier [124]citizens
abandoned a country whose commerce and agriculture, once so
flourishing, had been irretrievably ruined. “Such was the desolation
of Africa, that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days
without meeting the face either of a friend or an enemy. The nation
of the Vandals had disappeared; they once amounted to an hundred
and sixty thousand warriors, without including the children, the
women, or the slaves. Their numbers were infinitely surpassed by
the number of Moorish families extirpated in a relentless war; the
same destruction was retaliated on the Romans and their allies, who
perished by the climate, their mutual quarrels, and the rage of the
barbarians.” 93

In 646, the year before the victorious Arabs advanced from Egypt to
the subjugation of the western province, the African Church that had
championed so often the purity of Christian doctrine, was stirred to
its depths by the struggle against Monotheletism; but when the
bishops of the four ecclesiastical provinces in the archbishopric of
Carthage, viz. Mauritania, Numidia, Byzacena and Africa
Proconsularis, held councils to condemn Monotheletism, and wrote
synodal letters to the Emperor and the Pope, there were only sixty-
eight bishops who assembled at Carthage to represent the last-
mentioned province, and forty-two for Byzacena. The numbers from
the other two dioceses are not given, but the Christian population
had undoubtedly suffered much more in these than in the two other
dioceses which were nearer to the seat of government. 94 It is
exceedingly unlikely that any of the bishops were absent on an
occasion that excited so much feeling, when zeal for Christian
doctrine and political animosity to the Byzantine court both
combined in stimulating this movement, and when Africa took the
most prominent part in stirring up the opposition that led to the
convening of the great Lateran Council of 648. This diminution in the
number of the African bishops certainly points to a vast decrease in
the Christian population, and in consideration of the numerous
causes contributing to a decay of the population, too great
[125]stress even must not be laid upon the number of these, because
an episcopal see may continue to be filled long after the diocese has
sunk into insignificance.

From the considerations enumerated above, it may certainly be

inferred that the Christian population at the time of the
Muhammadan invasion was by no means a large one. During the
fifty years that elapsed before the Arabs assured their victory, the
Christian population was still further reduced by the devastations of
this long conflict. The city of Tripolis, after sustaining a siege of six
months, was sacked, and of the inhabitants part were put to the
sword and the rest carried off captive into Egypt and Arabia. 95
Another city, bordering on the Numidian desert, was defended by a
Roman count with a large garrison which bravely endured a
blockade of a whole year; when at last it was taken by storm, all the
males were put to the sword and the women and children carried off
captive. 96 The number of such captives is said to have amounted to
several hundreds of thousands. 97 Many of the Christians took refuge
in flight, 98 some into Italy and Spain, 99 and it would almost seem
that others even wandered as far as Germany, judging from a letter
addressed to the diocese of St. Boniface by Pope Gregory II. 100 In
fact, many of the great Roman cities were quite depopulated, and
remained uninhabited for a long time or were even left to fall to
ruins entirely, 101 while in several cases the conquerors chose entirely
new sites for their chief towns. 102

As to the scattered remnants of the once flourishing Christian

Church that still remained in Africa at the end [126]of the seventh
century, it can hardly be supposed that persecution is responsible for
their final disappearance, in the face of the fact that traces of a
native Christian community were to be found even so late as the
sixteenth century. Idrīs, the founder of the dynasty in Morocco that
bore his name, is indeed said to have compelled by force Christians
and Jews to embrace Islam in the year a.d. 789, when he had just
begun to carve out a kingdom for himself with the sword, 103 but, as
far as I have been able to discover, this incident is without parallel in
the history of the native Church of North Africa. 104

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 [127]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 shayk͟ h 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 [128]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 shayk͟ h 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.”

The missionaries started off in parties of five or six at a time in

various directions; they went in rags, staff in hand, and choosing out
the wildest and least frequented parts of the mountains, established
hermitages in caves and clefts of the rocks. Their austerities and
prolonged devotions soon excited the curiosity of the Kabils, who
after a short time began to enter into friendly relations with them.
Little by little the missionaries gained the influence they desired
through their knowledge of medicine, of the mechanical arts, and
other advantages of civilisation, and each hermitage became a
centre of Muslim teaching. [129]Students, attracted by the learning of
the new-comers, gathered round them and in time became
missionaries of Islam to their fellow-countrymen, until their faith
spread throughout all the country of the Kabils and the villages of
the Algerian Sahara. 112

The above incident is no doubt illustrative of the manner in which

Islam was introduced among such other sections of the independent
tribes of the interior as had received any Christian teaching, but
whose knowledge of this faith had dwindled down to the observance
of a few superstitious rites; 113 for, cut off as they were from the rest
of the Christian world and unprovided with spiritual teachers, they
could have had little in the way of positive religious belief to oppose
to the teachings of the Muslim missionaries.
There is little more to add to these sparse records of the decay of
the North African Church. A Muhammadan traveller, 114 who visited
al-Jarīd, the southern district of Tunis, in the early part of the
fourteenth century, tells us that the Christian churches, although in
ruins, were still standing in his day, not having been destroyed by
the Arab conquerors, who had contented themselves with building a
mosque in front of each of these churches. Ibn K͟ haldūn (writing
towards the close of the fourteenth century), speaks of some
villages in the province of Qastīliyyah, 115 with a Christian population
whose ancestors had lived there since the time of the Arab
conquest. 116 At the end of the following century there was still to be
found in the city of Tunis a small community of native Christians,
living together in one of the suburbs, quite distinct from that in
which the foreign Christian merchants resided; far from being
oppressed or persecuted, they were employed as the bodyguard of
the Sultan. 117 These were doubtless [130]the same persons as were
congratulated on their perseverance in the Christian faith by Charles
V after the capture of Tunis in 1535. 118

This is the last we hear of the native Christian Church in North

Africa. The very fact of its so long survival would militate against any
supposition of forced conversion, even if we had not abundant
evidence of the tolerant spirit of the Arab rulers of the various North
African kingdoms, who employed Christian soldiers, 119 granted by
frequent treaties the free exercise of their religion to Christian
merchants and settlers, 120 and to whom Popes 121 recommended the
care of the native Christian population, while exhorting the latter to
serve their Muhammadan rulers faithfully. 122 [131]

Amélineau, p. 3; Caetani, vol. iv. p. 81 sq. Justinian is said to have had 200,000
1
Copts put to death in the city of Alexandria, and the persecutions of his
successors drove many to take refuge in the desert. (Wansleben: The Present
State of Egypt, p. 11.) (London, 1678.) ↑
 Renaudot, p. 161. Severus, p. 106. ↑
2
John, Jacobite bishop of Nikiu (second half of seventh century), p. 584.
3
Caetani, vol. iv. pp. 515–16. ↑
Bell, p. xxxvii. But the exactions and hardships that, according to Maqrīzī, the
4 Copts had to endure about seventy years after the conquest hardly allow us to
extend this period so far as Von Ranke does: “Von Aegypten weiss man durch die
bestimmtesten Zeugnisse, dass sich die Einwohner in den nächsten Jahrhunderten
unter der arabischen Herrschaft in einem erträglichen Zustand befunden haben.”
(Weltgeschichte, vol. v. p. 153, 4th ed.) ↑
John of Nikiu, p. 560. ↑
5
Id. p. 585. “Or beaucoup des Égyptiens, qui étaient de faux chrétiens,
6
renièrent la sainte religion orthodoxe et le baptême qui donne la vie,
embrassèrent la religion des Musulmans, les ennemis de Dieu, et acceptèrent la
détestable doctrine de ce monstre, c’est-à-dire de Mahomet; ils partagèrent
l’égarement de ces idolâtres et prirent les armes contre les chrétiens.” ↑
Qurra b. Sharīk (governor of Egypt from 709 to 714), or his predecessor,
7 appears to have insisted on the converts continuing to pay jizyah. (Becker,
Papyri Schott-Reinhardt, p. 18.) ↑
Ibn Saʻd, Ṭabaqāt, vol. v. p. 283. ↑
8
Caetani, vol. iv. p. 618; vol. v. pp. 384–5. ↑
9
Severus, pp. 172–3. ↑
10
Id. pp. 205–6. ↑
11
“Sans aucun doute il y eut dans la multiplicité des martyrs une sorte
12
de résistance nationale contre les gouverneurs étrangers.”
(Amélineau, p. 58.) ↑
Amélineau, pp. 57–8. ↑
13
Abū Ṣāliḥ, pp. 163–4. ↑
14
Amélineau, pp. 53–4, 69–70. ↑
15
Abū Ṣāliḥ gives an account of some monks who embraced the faith of
16
the Prophet, and these are probably representative of a larger number
of whom the historian has left no record, as lacking the peculiar circumstances of
loss to the monastery or of recantation that made such instances of interest to him
(pp. 128, 142). ↑
Lane, pp. 546, 549. ↑
17
Lüttke (1), vol. i. pp. 30, 35. Dr. Andrew Watson writes: “No year has passed
18
during my residence of forty-four years in the Nile valley without my hearing
of several instances of defection. The causes are, chiefly, the hope of worldly gain
of various kinds, severe and continued persecution, exposure to the cruelty and
rapacity of Moslem neighbours, and personal indignities as well as political
disabilities of various kinds.” (Islam in Egypt: Mohammedan World, p. 24.) ↑
Severus, pp. 122, 126, 143. One of the very first occasions on which they had
19 to complain of excessive taxation was when Menas, the Christian prefect of
Lower Egypt, extorted from the city of Alexandria 32,057 pieces of gold, instead of
22,000 which ʻAmr had fixed as the amount to be levied. (John of Nikiu, p. 585.)
Renaudot (p. 168) says that after the restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy, about
seventy years after the Muhammadan conquest, the Copts suffered as much at its
hands as at the hands of the Muhammadans themselves. ↑
Maqrīzī mentions five other risings of the Copts that had to be crushed by force
20 of arms, within the first century of the Arab domination. (Maqrīzī (2), pp. 76–
82.) ↑
Renaudot, pp. 189, 374, 430, 540. ↑
21
Id. p. 603. ↑
22
Id. pp. 432, 607. Nāṣir-i-K͟ husrau: Safar-nāmah, ed. Schefer, pp. 155–6. ↑
23
Renaudot, pp. 212, 225, 314, 374, 540. ↑
24
Renaudot, p. 388. ↑
25
Id. pp 567, 571, 574–5. ↑
26
Wansleben, p. 30. Wansleben mentions another instance
27
(under different circumstances) of the decay of the Coptic
Church, in the island of Cyprus, which was formerly under the jurisdiction of the
Coptic Patriarch: here they were so persecuted by the Orthodox clergy, who
enjoyed the protection of the Byzantine emperors, that the Patriarch could not
induce priests to go there, and consequently all the Copts on the island either
accepted Islam or the Council of Chalcedon, and their churches were all shut up.
(Id. p. 31.) ↑
Renaudot, p. 377. ↑
28
Renaudot, p. 575. ↑
29
Relation du voyage du Sayd ou de la Thebayde fait en 1668, par les PP.
30 Protais et Charles-François d’Orleans, Capuchins Missionaires, p. 3.
(Thevenot, vol. ii.) ↑
Caetani, vol. iv. p. 520. ↑
31
Ishok of Romgla, pp. 272–3. ↑
32
Idrīsī, p. 32. ↑
33
Maqrīzī (2), tome i. 2me partie, p. 131. ↑
34
Maqrīzī, pp. 128–30. ↑
35
Burckhardt (1), p. 494. ↑
36
About twelve miles above the modern Khartum. ↑
37
Artin, pp. 62, 144. ↑
38
Becker, Geschichte des östlichen Sūdān, p. 160. ↑
39
Vol. iv. p. 396. ↑
40
Slatin Pasha records a tradition current among the
41
Danagla Arabs that this town was founded by
their ancestor, Dangal, who called it after his own name. (This however is
impossible, inasmuch as Dongola was in existence in ancient Egyptian times, and
is mentioned on the monuments. See Vivien de Saint-Martin, vol. ii. p. 85.)
According to their tradition, this Dangal, though a slave, rose to be ruler of Nubia,
but paid tribute to Bahnesa, the Coptic bishop of the entire district lying between
the present Sarras and Debba. (Fire and Sword in the Sudan, p. 13.) (London,
1896.) ↑
Ibn Salīm al-Aswānī, quoted by Maqrīzī: Kitāb al-K͟ hiṭaṭ, vol. i. p. 190. (Cairo,
42
a.h. 1270.) ↑

Budge, vol. ii. p. 199. Artin, p. 144. ↑

43
Maqrīzī: Kitāb al-K͟ hiṭaṭ, vol. i. p. 193. ↑
44
Morié, vol. i. pp. 417–18. ↑
45
Lord Stanley of Alderley in his translation of Alvarez’ Narrative from the
46
original Portuguese, gives the answer of the king as follows: “He said
to them that he had his Abima from the country of the Moors, that is to say from
the Patriarch of Alexandria; … how then could he give priests and friars since
another gave them” (p. 352). (London, 1881.) ↑
Viaggio nella Ethiopia al Prete Ianni fatto par Don Francesco Alvarez Portughese
47 (1520–1527). (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 200, 250.) ↑
 Wansleben, p. 30. For descriptions of the ruins that still remain, see Budge, vol.
48
ii. p. 299 sqq., and G. S. Nileham, Churches in Lower Nubia. (Philadelphia,
1910.) ↑
Burckhardt (1), p. 133. ↑
49
Alvarez, p. 250. ↑
50
Idrīsī, p. 32. ↑
51
ʻArabfaqīh, p. 323. ↑
52
Maqrīzī (2), tome ii. 2me partie, p. 183. ↑
53
Basset, p. 240. ↑
54
Id., p. 247. ↑
55
Alvarez. (Ramusio, tom. i. pp. 218, 242, 249.) ↑
56
ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 83, 191. ↑
57
ʻArabfaqīh, p. 275–6. ↑
58
Id. pp. 319, 324. ↑
59
Id. pp. 28, 129, 275. ↑
60
Plowden, p. 36. ↑
61
ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 321, 335, 343. ↑
62
Id. passim. ↑
63
Id. pp. 175, 195, 248. ↑
64
Id. p. 178. ↑
65
ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 34–5, 120–1,
66
182–3, 244, 327. ↑
ʻArabfaqīh, pp. 181–2, 186. ↑
67
Iobi Ludolfi ad suam Historiam Æthiopicam Commentarius, p. 474.
68
(Frankfurt a. M., 1691.) ↑
Histoire de la Haute Ethiopie, par le R. P. Manoel d’Almeïda, p. 7. (Thevenot,
69 vol. ii.) ↑
Massaja, vol. ii. pp. 205–6. “Ognuno comprende che movente di queste
70
conversioni essendo la sete di regnare, nel fatto non si riducevano che ad una
formalità esterna, restando poi i nuovi convertiti veri mussulmani nei cuori e nei
costumi. E perciò accadeva che, elevati alla dignità di Râs, si circondavano di
mussulmani, dando ad essi la maggior parte degli impieghi e colmandoli di titoli,
ricchezze e favori: e così l’Abissinia cristiana invasa e popolata da questa pessima
razza, passò coll’andar del tempo sotto il giogo dell’islamismo.” (Id. p. 206.) ↑
Rüppell, vol. i. pp. 328, 366. ↑
71
Plowden, p. 15. ↑
72
Tābōt, the ark of the covenant. ↑
73
Littmann, pp. 69–70. ↑
74
Plowden, pp. 8–9. ↑
75
Beke, pp. 51–2. Isenberg, p. 36. ↑
76
Reclus, vol. x. p. 247. Massaja, vol. xi. p. 125. ↑
77
Massaja, vol. xi. p. 124. ↑
78
Massaja, vol. xi. pp. 77–8. ↑
79
Id. pp. 124, 125. ↑
80
Oppel, p. 307. Reclus, tome x. p. 247. ↑
81
Massaja, vol. xi. pp. 79, 81. ↑
82
Morié, vol. ii. p. 449. ↑
83
Littmann, pp. 68–70. K. Cederquist:
84
Islam and Christianity in Abyssinia, p.
154 (The Moslem World, vol. ii.). ↑
Gibbon, vol. i. p. 161. ↑
85
Id. vol. ii. p. 212. ↑
86
C. O. Castiglioni: Recherches sur les Berbères atlantiques, pp. 96–7.
87 (Milan, 1826.) ↑
Synesii Catastasis. (Migne: Patr. Gr., tom. lxvi. p. 1569.) ↑
88
Neander (2), p. 320. ↑
89
Gibbon, vol. iv. pp. 331–3. ↑
90
Id. vol. v. p. 115. ↑
91
Tijānī, p. 201. Gibbon, vol. v. p. 122. ↑
92
Gibbon, vol. v. p. 214. ↑
93