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as Janissaries, until the whole of the Janissaries were disbanded one day by the
Sultan's command.
When the reviser of these pages was in Persia, near Isfahan, he had a Muslim
acquaintance there who dwelt in a neighbouring village. This Persian said to him:
"When I was a little boy some fifty years ago, my parents and I and all the people in
our village were Zoroastrians. One day the chief Mujtahid of the city of Isfahan issued a
decree, commanding us all to embrace Islam. We petitioned the Prince-Governor of the
province, we refused to change our religion, we offered bribes to leading Muslim nobles
and 'Ulama. They took our money, but did not help us at all. The Mujtahid gave us until
midday on the following Friday to be converted, declaring that we should all be put to
death if we did not at that time at latest become Muslims. That morning all the lowest
ruffians from the city surrounded our village, each with some deadly weapon in his hand,
awaiting the appointed hour to permit him to begin the work of plunder and murder. We
waited in vain until it was almost midday, hoping that our enemy would relent. As he did
not, just before noon we all accepted Islam, and thus saved our lives."
In the same country until quite recently there was still in force the law that, if any
single member of a Christian family, even the youngest son could be induced to embrace
Islam, all the property of the family was at once handed over to him; his father, mother,
brothers and sisters being turned out of their home and left destitute. When we consider
the cruelty and oppression which for about 1,300 years has been the lot of Dhimmis
in all Muslim lands, the marvel is that any of them have been able to resist the
inducements and the pressure brought upon them to become hypocrites.
We have now finished our examination of Islam's claims to be God's final Revelation of
His Will. When
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