Raymond Lull - And Six Centuries of Islam #231462

At the time of Raymond Lull's birth in 1235, the great series of campaigns which we know as the Crusades were drawing towards their close. More than six centuries had passed since Mohammed died in 632. He had brought the pagans of Arabia to the worship of one God, and his successors went forth to other lands, at first mostly Christian, to enforce the same message and to proclaim that Mohammed had superseded all previous prophets, including the Christ. Their armies came with this message against peoples whose Christianity was largely corrupted and divided into warring sects, some of which helped the invader. The alterna tive to acceptance of Islam was for pagans the sword, for Jews and Christians the payment of a yearly poll-tax and a degraded position in state and society, for, wherever the faith of Islam con quered, there the law of the Koran must govern the land no less than the religion.