Thither, after the Roman conquest of Palestine, vast numbers of Jews escaped; thither, immediately after his conversion, St.Paul tells the Galatians that he retired.

The deserts were now filled with Christian anchorites, and among the chief tribes of the Arabs many proselytes had been made.

Here and there churches had been built.

The Christian princes of Abyssinia, who were Nestorians, held the southern province of Arabia--Yemen--in possession.
By the monk Bahira, in the convent at Bozrah, Mohammed was taught the tenets of the Nestorians; from them the young Arab learned the story of their persecutions.

It was these interviews which engendered in him a hatred of the idolatrous practices of the Eastern Church, and indeed of all idolatry; that taught him, in his wonderful career, never to speak of Jesus as the Son of God, but always as "Jesus, the son of Mary." His untutored but active mind could not fail to be profoundly impressed not only with the religious but also with the philosophical ideas of his instructors, who gloried in being the living representatives of Aristotelian science.