de on asses, in the attitude of women. Their
public and private building were measured by a diminutive standard; in
the streets or the baths it is their duty to give way or bow down before
the meanest of the people; and their testimony is rejected, if it may
tend to the prejudice of a true believer. The pomp of processions, the
sound of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in their worship; a
decent reverence for the national faith is imposed on their sermons
and conversations; and the sacrilegious attempt to enter a mosch, or to
seduce a Mussulman, will not be suffered to escape with impunity. In a
time, however, of tranquillity and justice, the Christians have never
been compelled to renounce the Gospel, or to embrace the Koran; but the
punishment of death is inflicted upon the apostates who have professed
and deserted the law of Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the
sentence of the cadhi, by the public confession of their inconstancy,
or their passionate invectives against the person and religion of the
prophet. [218]

[Footnote 214: Absit (said the Catholic to the vizier of Bagdad) ut pari
loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum praeter Arabas nullus alius rex est, et
Graecos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello non desistunt, &c. See in
the Collections of Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 94-101) the
state of the Nestorians under the caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more
concisely exposed in the Preliminary Dissertation of the second volume
of Assemannus.]

[Footnote 215: Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384, 387, 388. Renaudot,
Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 205, 206, 257, 332. A taint of the Monothelite
heresy might render the first of these Greek patriarchs less loyal to
the emperors and less obnoxious to the Arabs.]

[Footnote 216: Motadhed, who reigned from A.D. 892 to 902. The Magians
still held their name and rank among the religions of the empire,
(Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97.)]

[Footnote 217: Reland explains the general restraints of the Mahometan
policy and jurisprudence, (Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 16-20.) The
oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel, (A.D. 847-861,) which are
still in force, are noticed by Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 448,) and
D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 640.) A persecution of the caliph Omar
II. is related, and most probably magnified, by the Greek Theophanes
(Chron p. 334.)]

[Footnote 218: The martyrs of Cordova (A.D. 850, &c.) are commemorated
and justified