locals and the forced conversion of non-Christians, Barsauma managed to convert Samaritans by conducting demonstrations of healing. Jacob, an ascetic healer living in a cave near Porphyreon, Mount Carmel in the 6th century CE, attracted admirers, including Samaritans who later converted to Christianity. Under growing government pressure, many Samaritans who refused to convert to Christianity in the sixth century may have preferred paganism and even Manicheism. Under a charismatic, messianic figure named Julianus ben Sabar (or ben Sahir), the Samaritans launched a war to create their own independent state in 529. With the help of the Ghassanids, Emperor Justinian I crushed the revolt; tens of thousands of Samaritans died or were enslaved. The Samaritan faith, which had previously enjoyed the status of religio licita, was virtually outlawed thereafter by the Christian Byzantine Empire; from a population once at least in the hundreds of thousands, the Samaritan community dwindled to tens of thousands. The Samaritan population in Samaria did, however, survive the revolts. During a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 570 CE, a Christian pilgrim from Piacenza travelled through Samaria and recorded the following: "From there we went up past a number of places belonging to Samaria and Judaea to the city of Sebaste, the resting-place of the Prophet Elisha. There were several Samaritan cities and villages on our way down through the plains, and wherever we passed along the streets they burned away our footprints with straw, whether we were Christians or Jews, they have such a horror of both". A change in the local population's identity throughout the Byzantine period is not indicated by the archeological findings either. Early Islamic period By the time of the Muslim conquest of the Levant, apart from Palestine, small dispersed communities of Samaritans were living also in Arab Egypt, Syria, and Iran. According to Milka Levy-Rubin, many Samaritans converted under Abbasid and Tulunid rule (878-905 CE), having been subjected to harsh hardships such as droughts, earthquakes, persecution by local governors, high taxes on religious minorities and anarchy. Like other non-Muslims in the empire, such as Jews, Samaritans were often considered to be People of the Book, and were guaranteed religious freedom. Their minority status was protected by the Muslim rulers, and they had the right to practice their religion, but, as dhimmi, adult males had to pay the jizya or "protection tax". This however changed during late Abbasid period, with increasing persecution