world

I don't mean to interrupt, AK_m_f, but please allow me to respond as well.

For one thing, as I perhaps imperfectly recall the historians Edward Gibbon and Will Durant as having said -and as it relates in this case specifically to Christians- some of the dhimmis were at times protected from each other.  Consider, for example, the conflicts (doctrinal maelstroms) which, early on, raged between the Trinitarians and the monophysites and which, by the time of the Islamic Advent and the rise of Muhammad, had involved regions from Abyssinia upwards and outwards into Syria Euphoratensis -regions, by the way, much in contact with, and at times later subjugated to, Islam.  There were, in other and fewer words, some warring Christian factions which quite readily accepted the Pax Islamica, paid the jizya and thereafter enjoyed the relative peace, far, far from home (and Rome) and no longer (presumably) paying Peter's Pence.

I would provide a more specific reference and quotations but my books, alas, are off in storage and I am made to rely upon what sometimes proves an increasingly faulty memory.  Therefore, unless and until I can provide more concrete references and direct quotes from said historians, this post should be either taken or left on face value alone .

Serv