their religious
dogmas, is full of incorrect and inconsistent notions on the subject.

The most important of these mistakes was that the Christians worshipped
a Trinity of Deities--God, Christ, Mary.[5] The inclusion of the Virgin
Mary into this Trinity was perhaps due to the fact that worship was paid
to her even at that early date, as it certainly is among the Roman
Catholics at this day. As will have been seen from a passage quoted
above,[6] something very like adoration was already paid to the Virgin
in the churches of Spain.

[1] Sale, Introduction to Koran, p. 91.

[2] Alvar, "Ind. Lum.," sec. 25.

[3] _Ibid._, sec. 21.

[4] _Ibid._, sec. 53.

[5] See Koran, v. ad fin.:--"And when God shall say unto Jesus
at the last day: O Jesus, son of Mary, hast thou said unto men,
Take me and my mother for two Gods, beside God? he shall
answer, Praise be unto thee! it is not for me to say that which
I ought not."

[6] P. 56.

But the following extract from a treatise on Religions, by Ali ibn
Hazm,[1] the prime minister of Abdurrahman V. (Dec. 1023-March 1024),
will show that some educated Moslems knew enough of the Christian creed
to appreciate its difficulties:--"We need not be astonished," says Ibn
Hazm, "at the superstition of men. Look at the Christians! They are so
numerous that God only knows their numbers. They have among them men of
great intelligence, and princes of great ability. Nevertheless they
believe that three is one, and one is three; that one of the three is
the Father, another the Son, another the Spirit; that the Father is, and
is not, the Son; that a man is, and is not, God; that the Messiah is God
in every respect, and yet not the same as God; that He who has existed
from all eternity has been created.

"One of their sects, the members of which they call Jacobites, and which
number hundreds of thousands, believes even that the Creator Himself was
scourged, crucified, and put to death; so that the Universe for three
days was deprived of its Governor."

Another extract from an Arabic writer will show us what the Moslems
thought of the worship of St James, the patron saint of Spain, round
whose shrine rallied the religious revival in the north of the
Peninsula. It is Ibn Hayyan,[2] who, in his account of Almanzor's
fiftieth expedition against the Christians, says:--"Shant Yakoh
(Santiago)[3] is one of the sanctuaries most frequented, not only by the
Chri