The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died

by Philip Jenkins

Dhimmis were dismissed from public employment and were forced to wear distinctive clothing—blue turbans for Christians, yellow for Jews. In a powerful statement of their symbolic inferiority, dhimmis were forced to ride donkeys rather than mares or mules, and even then they had to dismount when a Muslim approached. Travelers still commented on the enforcement of these rules into the nineteenth century.