Mahommedans was a small army of 4000 Arab soldiers
sent by the caliph Abu Giafar[14] in 755 to aid in putting down a
rebellion. These soldiers had permission to settle in China, where
they married native wives; and four centuries later, with the
conquests of Jenghiz Khan, large numbers of Arabs penetrated into the
empire and swelled the Mahommedan community. Its members are now
indistinguishable from the general population; they are under no civic
disabilities, and are free to open mosques wherever they please, so
long as, in common with Buddhists and Taoists, they exhibit the tablet
of the emperor's sovereignty in some conspicuous position.

Nestorianism.

In A.D. 631 the Nestorians sent a mission to China and introduced
Christianity under the name of the Luminous Doctrine. In 636 they were
allowed to settle at Ch'ang-an; and in 638 an Imperial Decree was
issued, stating that Olopun, a Nestorian priest who is casually
mentioned as a Persian, had presented a form of religion which his
Majesty had carefully examined and had found to be in every way
satisfactory, and that it would henceforth be permissible to preach
this new doctrine within the boundaries of the empire. Further, the
establishment of a monastery was authorized, to be served by
twenty-one priests. For more than a century after this, Nestorian
Christianity seems to have flourished in China. In 781 the famous
Nestorian Tablet, giving a rough outline of the object and scope of
the faith, was set up at Ch'ang-an (the modern Si-gan Fu),
disappearing soon afterwards in the political troubles which laid the
city in ruins, to be brought to light again in 1625 by Father Semedo,
S.J. The genuineness of this tablet was for many years in dispute,
Voltaire, Renan, and others of lesser fame regarding it as a pious
Jesuit fraud; but all doubts on the subject have now been dispelled by
the exhaustive monograph of Pere Havret, S.J., entitled _La Stele de
Si-ngan_. The date of the tablet seems to mark the zenith of Nestorian
Christianity in China; after this date it began to decay. Marco Polo
refers to it as existing in the 13th century; but then it fades out of
sight, leaving scant traces in Chinese literature of ever having
existed.

Manichaeism.

The Manichaeans, worshippers of the Chaldaean Mani or Man[=e]s, who
died about A.D. 274, appear to have found their way to China in the
year