aracterizes certain of his courtiers accused as secret
adherents of the Zoroastrian faith:

"Though professing Islam, they are free from the same. This they do
to be seen of me, while their convictions, I am well aware, are
just the opposite of that which they profess. They belong to a
class which embrace Islam, not from any love of this our faith, but
thinking thereby to gain access to our court, and share in the
honor, wealth, and power of the realm. They have no inward
persuasion of that which they outwardly profess."[53]

[Sidenote: Converts from sordid motives.]
Again, speaking of the various classes brought over to Islam by sordid
and unworthy motives, Al Kindy says:

Moreover, there are the idolatrous races--Magians and Jews--low
people aspiring by the profession of Islam to raise themselves to
riches and power and to form alliances with the families of the
learned and honorable. There are, besides, hypocritical men of the
world, who in this way obtain indulgences in the matter of marriage
and concubinage which are forbidden to them by the Christian faith.
Then we have the dissolute class given over wholly to the lusts of
the flesh. And lastly there are those who by this means obtain a
more secure and easy livelihood.[54]

[Sidenote: Al Kindy contrasts the Christian confessor with the Moslem
"martyr."
The Christian confessor and the Moslem martyr.]
Before leaving this part of our subject it may be opportune to quote a
few more passages from Al Kindy, in which he contrasts the inducements
that, under the military and political predominance of Islam, promoted
its rapid spread, and the opposite conditions under which Christianity
made progress, slow, indeed, comparatively, but sure and steady. First,
he compares the Christian confessor with the Moslem "martyr:"

I marvel much, he says, that ye call those _martyrs_ that fall in
war. Thou hast read, no doubt, in history of the followers of
Christ put to death in the persecutions of the kings of Persia and
elsewhere. Say, now, which are the more worthy to be called
martyrs, these, or thy fellows that fall fighting for the world and
the power thereof? How diverse were the barbarities and kinds of
death inflicted on the Christian confessors! The more they were
slain the more rapidly spread the faith; in place of one sprang up
a hundred. On a