Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

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CHOSROES. Arabic K͟husraw. The King of Persia to whom Muḥammad sent a letter inviting him to Islām. He is said to be Nausherwān. (See G͟hiyās̤u ʾl-Lug͟hāt, in loco; refer also to Muir’s Life of Mahomet, vol. ii. 54 n.)

CHRIST. [JESUS CHRIST.]

CHRISTIANITY and CHRISTIANS. Arabic, Naṣrānīyah, “Christianity”; the terms used for Christians being Naṣrān, pl. Naṣāra, or ʿĪsawī.

Christianity seems to have been widely diffused in Arabia at the time of Muḥammad. According to Caussin de Perceval, who quotes from Arabic writers, Christianity existed amongst the Banū Tag͟hlib of Mesopotamia, the Banū ʿAbdu ʾl-Qais, the Banū Hāris̤ of Najrān, the Banū G͟hassān of Syria, and other tribes between al-Madīnah and al-Kūfah.

The historian Philostorges (Hist. Eccles. lib. 1, c. 3) tells us that a monk named Theophilus, who was an Indian bishop, was sent by the Emperor Constance, A.D. 342, to the Ḥimyarite King of Yaman, and obtained permission to build three Christian churches for those who professed Christianity; one at Zafār, another at ʿAdan, and a third at Hurmuz on the Persian Gulf. According to the same author, the Christian religion was introduced into Najrān in the fifth century. A bishop sent by the Patriarch of Alexandria was established in the city of Zafār, and we are told by Muslim authors, quoted by Caussin de Perceval, that a Christian church was built at Ṣanʿāʾ which was the wonder of the age, the Roman Emperor and the Viceroy of Abyssinia furnishing the materials and workmen for the building. The Arabs of Yaman were ordered by the ruler of Abyssinia to perform a pilgrimage to this new church instead of to the Kaʿbah; an edict which is said to have been resisted and to have given rise to the “War of the Elephant,” when Abrahah, the Viceroy of Egypt, took an oath that he would destroy the Meccan temple, and marched at the head of an army of Abyssinians, mounted on an elephant. This “War of the Elephant” marks the period of Muḥammad’s birth. [MUHAMMAD.]