V

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

"The history of Christianity. We will write many things. But the revelation of the prophets and the apostles, and this revelation in that angel and the martyrs."

At the end of the tenth century, an entire people embraced Christianity. It is in Turkestan or Tartary that this conversion occurred through the efforts of the Archbishop of Merv. We find the account of this in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Barhebræus, sec. II, col. 279:

"And at that time (1007 A.D.), a letter from the Metropolitan of Merv, one of the cities of Khorasan, informed the Patriarch (Mar John VIII) that the king of the Keraits a tribe in Central Asia had been wandering in one of the high mountains of his country. Before his greatness, while he was searching for something that had been lost for a long time, a thought occurred to his soul, and he stood in his place without any thought. As he extended his hope toward a new life, one of the saints appeared to him in a vision and said to him: 'If you believe in Christ, I will lead you, so that you may not be lost.' And when he promised that he would be a shepherd for the Christian church, he guided him and brought him out to his country.

"And when he met Christian merchants, he called them to the place where his thought was, and asked them about the faith. They said to him: 'It is not completed except through baptism.' He took a Gospel from them and worshiped it every day. He began to send requests to you to send him either a man of great faith who would baptize him. He also asked how he should be as a shepherd, how he should eat food, how the martyr and the king would reconcile, and how he should fast. And he said that he was eating with many thousands of those who were attached to him.

"The Patriarch wrote to the Metropolitan of Merv to send two deacons and priests, and they should set up a prepared altar. And how they should baptize all those who believed, and teach them the customs of Christianity. And during the fast..."