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THE FUTURE OF ISLAM

BY

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT


     "La taknatu addurru yontharu akduhu
     Liauda ahsana fin nithami wa ajmala."

     "Fear not. Often pearls are unstrung
     To be put in better order."


_Published by permission of the Proprietors of the "Fortnightly Review"_

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1882




PREFACE.


These essays, written for the _Fortnightly Review_ in the summer and
autumn of 1881, were intended as first sketches only of a maturer work
which the author hoped, before giving finally to the public, to complete
at leisure, and develop in a form worthy of critical acceptance, and of
the great subject he had chosen. Events, however, have marched faster
than he at all anticipated, and it has become a matter of importance
with him that the idea they were designed to illustrate should be given
immediate and full publicity. The French, by their invasion of Tunis,
have precipitated the Mohammedan movement in North Africa; Egypt has
roused herself for a great effort of national and religious reform; and
on all sides Islam is seen to be convulsed by political portents of
ever-growing intensity. He believes that his countrymen will in a very
few months have to make their final choice in India, whether they will
lead or be led by the wave of religious energy which is sweeping
eastwards, and he conceives it of consequence that at least they should
know the main issues of the problem before them. To shut their eyes to
the great facts of contemporary history, because that history has no
immediate connection with their daily life, is a course unworthy of a
great nation; and in England, where the opinion of the people guides the
conduct of affairs, can hardly fail to bring disaster. It should be
remembered that the modern British Empire, an agglomeration of races
ruled by public opinion in a remote island, is an experiment new in the
history of the world, and needs justification in exceptional
enlightenment; and it must be remembered, too, that no empire ever yet
was governed without a living policy. The author, therefore, has
resolved to publish his work, crude as it is, without more delay, in the
hope that it may be instrumental in guiding the national choice. He is,
nevertheless, fully aware of its defects both in accuracy and
completeness, and he can only hope that they may be pardoned him in view
of the general truth of the picture he has drawn.

Since the last of these essays was written, their author has returned to
Egypt, and has there had the satisfaction of finding the ideas, vaguely
foreshadowed by him as the dream of some few liberal Ulema of the Azhar,
already a practical reality. Cairo has now declared itself as the home
of progressive thought in Islam, and its university as the once more
independent seat of Arabian theology. Secured from Turkish interference
by the national movement of the Arabs, the Ulema of the Azhar have
joined heart and soul with the party of reform. The importance of this
event can hardly be overrated; and if, as now seems probable, a liberal
Mohammedan Government by a free Mohammedan people should establish
itself firmly on the Nile, it is beyond question that the basis of a
social and political Reformation for all Islam has been laid. It is more
than all a hopeful sign that extreme moderation with regard to the
Caliphate is observed by the Egyptian leaders. Independence, not
opposition, is the motto of the party; and no rent has been made or is
contemplated by them in the orthodox coat of Islam. Abd el Hamid Khan is
still recognized as the actual Emir el Mumenin, and the restoration of a
more legitimate Caliphate is deferred for the day when its fate shall
have overtaken the Ottoman Empire. This is as it should be. Schism would
only weaken the cause of religion, already threatened by a thousand
enemies; and the premature appearance of an Anti-Caliph in Egypt or
Arabia, however legitimate a candidate he might be by birth for the
office, would divide the Mohammedan world into two hostile camps, and so
bring scandal and injury on the general cause. In the meantime, however,
liberal thought will have a fair field for its development, and can
hardly fail to extend its influence wherever the Arabic language is
spoken, and among all those races which look on the Azhar as the centre
of their intellectual life. This is a notable achievement, and one which
patience may turn, perhaps in a very few years, to a more general
triumph. There can be little doubt now that the death of Abd el Hamid,
or his fall from Empire, will be the signal for the return of the
Caliphate to Cairo, and a formal renewal there by the Arabian mind of
its lost religious leadership.

To Mohammedans the author owes more than a word of apology. A stranger
and a sojourner among them, he has ventured on an exposition of their
domestic griefs, and has occasionally touched the ark of their religion
with what will seem to them a profane hand; but his motive has been
throughout a pure one, and he trusts that they will pardon him in virtue
of the sympathy with them which must be apparent in every line that he
has written. He has predicted for them great political misfortunes in
the immediate future, because he believes that these are a necessary
step in the process of their spiritual development; but he has a supreme
confidence in Islam, not only as a spiritual, but as a temporal system
the heritage and gift of the Arabian race, and capable of satisfying
their most civilized wants; and he believes in the hour of their
political resurgence. In the meantime he is convinced that he serves
their interests best by speaking what he holds to be the truth regarding
their situation. Their day of empire has all but passed away, but there
remains to them a day of social independence better than empire.
Enlightened, reformed and united in sympathy, Mussulmans need not fear
political destruction in their original homes, Arabia, Egypt, and North
Africa; and these must suffice them as a Dar el Islam till better days
shall come. If the author can do anything to help them to preserve that
independence they may count upon him freely within the limits of his
strength, and he trusts to prove to them yet his sincerity in some
worthier way than by the publication of these first essays.

CAIRO, _January 15th, 1882_.




CONTENTS.
                                          PAGE
CHAPTER I.
CENSUS OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD. THE HAJ      1

CHAPTER II.
THE MODERN QUESTION OF THE CALIPHATE        48

CHAPTER III.
THE TRUE METROPOLIS--MECCA                  90

CHAPTER IV.
A MOHAMMEDAN REFORMATION                   132

CHAPTER V.
ENGLAND'S INTEREST IN ISLAM                174




THE FUTURE OF ISLAM.




CHAPTER I.

CENSUS OF THE MOHAMMEDAN WORLD.

THE HAJ.


In the lull, which we hope is soon to break the storm of party strife in
England, it may not perhaps be impossible to direct public attention to
the rapid growth of questions which for the last few years have been
agitating the religious mind of Asia, and which are certain before long
to present themselves as a very serious perplexity to British statesmen;
questions, moreover, which if not dealt with by them betimes, it will
later be found out of their power to deal with at all, though a vigorous
policy at the present moment might yet solve them to this country's very
great advantage.

The revival which is taking place in the Mohammedan world is indeed
worthy of every Englishman's attention, and it is difficult to believe
that it has not received anxious consideration at the hands of those
whose official responsibility lies chiefly in the direction of Asia; but
I am not aware that it has hitherto been placed in its true light before
the English public, or that a quite definite policy regarding it may be
counted on as existing in the counsels of the present Cabinet. Indeed,
as regards the Cabinet, the reverse may very well be the case. We know
how suspicious English politicians are of policies which may be
denounced by their enemies as speculative; and it is quite possible that
the very magnitude of the problem to be solved in considering the future
of Islam may have caused it to be put aside there as one "outside the
sphere of practical politics." The phrase is a convenient one, and is
much used by those in power amongst us who would evade the labour or the
responsibility of great decisions. Yet that such a problem exists in a
new and very serious form I do not hesitate to affirm, nor will my
proposition, as I think, be doubted by any who have mingled much in the
last few years with the Mussulman populations of Western Asia. There it
is easily discernible that great changes are impending, changes perhaps
analogous to those which Christendom underwent four hundred years ago,
and that a new departure is urgently demanded of England if she would
maintain even for a few years her position as the guide and arbiter of
Asiatic progress.

It was not altogether without the design of gaining more accurate
knowledge than I could find elsewhere on the subject of this Mohammedan
revival that I visited Jeddah in the early part of the past winter, and
that I subsequently spent some months in Egypt and Syria in the almost
exclusive society of Mussulmans. Jeddah, I argued, the seaport of Mecca
and only forty miles distant from that famous centre of the Moslem
universe, would be the most convenient spot from which I could obtain
such a bird's-eye view of Islam as I was in search of; and I imagined
rightly that I should there find myself in an atmosphere less provincial
than that of Cairo, or Bagdad, or Constantinople.

Jeddah is indeed in the pilgrim season the suburb of a great metropolis,
and even a European stranger there feels that he is no longer in a world
of little thoughts and local aspirations. On every side the politics he
hears discussed are those of the great world, and the religion
professed is that of a wider Islam than he has been accustomed to in
Turkey or in India. There every race and language are represented, and
every sect. Indians, Persians, Moors, are there,--negroes from the
Niger, Malays from Java, Tartars from the Khanates, Arabs from the
French Sahara, from Oman and Zanzibar, even, in Chinese dress and
undistinguishable from other natives of the Celestial Empire, Mussulmans
from the interior of China. As one meets these walking in the streets,
one's view of Islam becomes suddenly enlarged, and one finds oneself
exclaiming with Sir Thomas Browne, "Truly the (Mussulman) world is
greater than that part of it geographers have described." The permanent
population, too, of Jeddah is a microcosm of Islam. It is made up of
individuals from every nation under heaven. Besides the indigenous Arab,
who has given his language and his tone of thought to the rest, there is
a mixed resident multitude descended from the countless pilgrims who
have remained to live and die in the holy cities. These preserve, to a
certain extent, their individuality, at least for a generation or two,
and maintain a connection with the lands to which they owe their origin
and the people who were their countrymen. Thus there is constantly
found at Jeddah a free mart of intelligence for all that is happening in
the world; and the common gossip of the bazaar retails news from every
corner of the Mussulman earth. It is hardly too much to say that one can
learn more of modern Islam in a week at Jeddah than in a year elsewhere,
for there the very shopkeepers discourse of things divine, and even the
Frank Vice-Consuls prophesy. The Hejazi is less shy, too, of discussing
religious matters than his fellow Mussulmans are in other places.
Religion is, as it were, part of his stock-in-trade, and he is
accustomed to parade it before strangers. With a European he may do this
a little disdainfully, but still he will do it, and with less disguise
or desire to please than is in most places the case. Moreover--and this
is important--it is almost always the practical side of questions that
the commercial Jeddan will put forward. He sees things from a political
and economical point of view, rather than a doctrinal, and if fanatical,
he is so from the same motives, and no others, which once moved the
citizens of Ephesus to defend the worship of their shrines.

In other cities, Cairo and Constantinople excepted, the Ulema, or
learned men, of whom a stranger might seek instruction, would be found
busying themselves mainly with doctrinal matters not always interesting
at the present day, old-world arguments of Koranic interpretation which
have from time immemorial occupied the schools. But here even these are
treated practically, and as they bear on the political aspect of the
hour. For myself, I became speedily impressed with the advantage thus
afforded me, and neglected no opportunity which offered itself for
listening and asking questions, so that without pretending to the
possession of more special skill than any intelligent inquirer might
command, I obtained a mass of information I cannot but think to be of
great value--while this in its turn served me later as an introduction
to such Mussulman divines as I afterwards met in the North. Jeddah then
realized all my hopes and gratified nearly all my curiosities. I will
own, too, to having come away with more than a gratified curiosity, and
to having found new worlds of thought and life in an atmosphere I had
fancied to be only of decay. I was astonished at the vigorous life of
Islam, at its practical hopes and fears in this modern nineteenth
century, and above all at its reality as a moral force; so that if I had
not exactly come to scoff, I certainly remained, in a certain sense, to
pray. At least I left it interested, as I had never thought to be, in
the great struggle which seemed to me impending between the parties of
reaction in Islam and reform, and not a little hopeful as to its
favourable issue. What this is likely to be I now intend to discuss.

First, however, it will I think be as well to survey briefly the actual
composition of the Mohammedan world. It is only by a knowledge of the
elements of which Islam is made up that we can guess its future, and
these are less generally known than they should be. A stranger from
Europe visiting the Hejaz is, as I have said, irresistibly struck with
the vastness of the religious world in whose centre he stands.
Mohammedanism to our Western eyes seems almost bounded by the limits of
the Ottoman Empire. The Turk stands in our foreground, and has stood
there from the days of Bajazet, and in our vulgar tongue his name is
still synonymous with Moslem, so that we are apt to look upon him as, if
not the only, at least the chief figure of Islam. But from Arabia we see
things in a truer perspective, and become aware that beyond and without
the Ottoman dominions there are races and nations, no less truly
followers of the Prophet, beside whom the Turk shrinks into numerical
insignificance. We catch sight, it may be for the first time in their
real proportions, of the old Persian and Mogul monarchies, of the forty
million Mussulmans of India, of the thirty million Malays, of the
fifteen million Chinese, and the vast and yet uncounted Mohammedan
populations of Central Africa. We see, too, how important is still the
Arabian element, and how necessary it is to count with it, in any
estimate we may form of Islam's possible future. Turkey, meanwhile, and
Constantinople, retire to a rather remote horizon, and the Mussulman
centre of gravity is as it were shifted from the north and west towards
the south and east.

I was at some pains while at Jeddah to gain accurate statistics of the
Haj according to the various races and sects composing it, and with them
of the populations they in some measure represent. The pilgrimage is of
course no certain guide as to the composition of the Mussulman world,
for many accidents of distance and political circumstance interfere with
calculations based on it. Still to a certain extent a proportion is
preserved between it and the populations which supply it; and in default
of better, statistics of the Haj afford us an index not without value of
the degree of religious vitality existing in the various Mussulman
countries. My figures, which for convenience I have arranged in tabular
form, are taken principally from an official record, kept for some years
past at Jeddah, of the pilgrims landed at that port, and checked as far
as European subjects are concerned by reference to the consular agents
residing there. They may therefore be relied upon as fairly accurate;
while for the land pilgrimage I trust in part my own observations, made
three years ago, in part statistics obtained at Cairo and Damascus. For
the table of population in the various lands of Islam I am obliged to go
more directly to European sources of information. As may be supposed, no
statistics on this point of any value were obtainable at Jeddah; but by
taking the figures commonly given in our handbooks, and supplementing
and correcting these by reference to such persons as I could find who
knew the countries, I have, I hope, arrived at an approximation to the
truth, near enough to give a tolerable idea to general readers of the
numerical proportions of Islam. Strict accuracy, however, I do not here
pretend to, nor would it if obtainable materially help my present
argument.

The following is my table:--


TABLE OF THE MECCA PILGRIMAGE OF 1880.

                                         |        |        | Total of
  Nationality of Pilgrims.               |Arriving|Arriving| Mussulman
                                         |by Sea. |by Land.| population
                                         |        |        | represented.
-----------------------------------------+--------+--------+------------
Ottoman subjects including pilgrims from |        |        |
  Syria and Irak, but not from Egypt or  |        |        |
  Arabia proper                          |  8,500 |  1,000 | 22,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Egyptians                                |  5,000 |  1,000 |  5,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Mogrebbins ("people of the West"), that  |        |        |
  is to say Arabic-speaking Mussulmans   |        |        |
  from the Barbary States, Tripoli,      |        |        |
  Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco. These are |        |        |
  always classed together and are not    |        |        |
  easily distinguishable from each other |  6,000 |  ...   | 18,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Arabs from Yemen                         |  3,000 |  ...   |  2,500,000
                                         |        |        |
 "      "    Oman and Hadramaut          |  3,000 |  ...   |  3,000,000
                                         |        |        |
 "      "    Nejd, Assir, and Hasa, most |        |        |
              of them Wahhabites         |  ...   |  5,000 |  4,000,000
                                         |        |        |
 "      "    Hejaz, of these perhaps     |        |        |
              10,000 Meccans             |  ...   | 22,000 |  2,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Negroes from Soudan                      |  2,000 |  ...   | 10,000,000(?)
                                         |        |        |
 "        "    Zanzibar                  |  1,000 |  ...   |  1,500,000
                                         |        |        |
Malabari from the Cape of Good Hope      |    150 |  ...   |
                                         |        |        |
Persians                                 |  6,000 |  2,500 |  8,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Indians (British subjects)               | 15,000 |  ...   | 40,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Malays, chiefly from Java and Dutch      |        |        |
  subjects                               | 12,000 |  ...   | 30,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Chinese                                  |    100 |  ...   | 15,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Mongols from the Khanates, included in   |        |        |
  the Ottoman Haj                        |  ...   |  ...   |  6,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Lazis, Circassians, Tartars, etc.        |        |        |
  (Russian subjects), included in the    |        |        |
  Ottoman Haj                            |  ...   |  ...   |  5,000,000
                                         |        |        |
Independent Afghans and Beluchis,        |        |        |
  included in the Indian and Persian     |        |        |
  Hajs                                   |  ...   |  ...   |  3,000,000
                                         |-----------------|------------
Total of Pilgrims present at Arafat      |     93,250      |
                                     Total Census of Islam |175,000,000


The figures thus roundly given require explanation in order to be of
their full value as a bird's-eye view of Islam. I will take them as
nearly as possible in the order in which they stand, grouping them,
however, for further convenience sake under their various sectarian
heads, for it must be remembered that Islam, which in its institution
was intended to be one community, political and religious, is now
divided not only into many nations, but into many sects. All, however,
hold certain fundamental beliefs, and all perform the pilgrimage to
Mecca, where they meet on common ground, and it is to this latter fact
that the importance attached to the Haj is mainly owing.

The main beliefs common to all Mussulmans are--

1. A belief in one true God, the creator and ordainer of all things.

2. A belief in a future life of reward or punishment.

3. A belief in a divine revelation imparted first to Adam and renewed at
intervals to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, and to Jesus Christ, and last
of all in its perfect form to Mohammed. This revelation is not only one
of dogma, but of practice. It claims to have taught an universal rule
of life for all mankind in politics and legislation as well as in
doctrine and in morals. This is called Islam.

4. A belief in the Koran as the literal word of God, and of its inspired
interpretation by the Prophet and his companions, preserved through
tradition (Hadith).[1]

These summed up in the well-known "Kelemat" or act of faith, "There is
no God but God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God," form a common
doctrinal basis for every sect of Islam--and also common to all are the
four religious acts, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and pilgrimage,
ordained by the Koran itself. On other points, however, both of belief
and practice, they differ widely; so widely that the sects must be
considered as not only distinct from, but hostile to, each other. They
are nevertheless, it must be admitted, less absolutely irreconcileable
than are the corresponding sects of Christianity, for all allow the rest
to be distinctly within the pale of Islam, and they pray on occasion in
each other's mosques and kneel at the same shrines on pilgrimage.
Neither do they condemn each other's errors as altogether
damnable--except, I believe, in the case of the Wahhabites, who accuse
other Moslems of polytheism and idolatry. The census of the four great
sects may be thus roughly given--

     1.  The Sunites or Orthodox Mohammedans    145,000,000
     2.  The Shiites or Sect of Ali              15,000,000
     3.  The Abadites (Abadhiyeh)                 7,000,000
     4.  The Wahhabites                           8,000,000

The _Sunites_, or People of the Path, are of course by far the most
important of these. They stand in that relation to the other sects in
which the Catholic Church stands to the various Christian heresies, and
claim alone to represent that continuous body of tradition political and
religious, which is the sign of a living church. In addition to the
dogmas already mentioned, they hold that, after the Prophet and his
companions, other authorised channels of tradition exist of hardly less
authority with these. The sayings of the four first Caliphs, as
collected in the first century of the Mohammedan era, they hold to be
inspired and unimpeachable, as are to a certain extent the theological
treatises of the four great doctors of Islam, the Imams Abu Hanifeh,
Malek, Esh Shafy, and Hanbal, and after them, though with less and less
authority, the "fetwas," or decisions of distinguished Ulema, down to
the present day. The collected body of teaching acquired from these
sources is called the Sheriat (in Turkey the Sheriati Sherifeh) and is
the canon law of Islam. Nor is it lawful that this should be gainsaid;
while the Imams themselves may not inaptly be compared to the fathers of
our Christian Church. It is a dogma, too, with the Sunites that they are
not only an ecclesiastical but a political body, and that among them is
the living representative of the temporal power of the Prophet, in the
person of his Khalifeh or successor, though there is much division of
opinion as to the precise line of succession in the past and the
legitimate ownership of the title in the present. But this is too
intricate and important a matter to be entered on at present.

The Sunites are then the body of authority and tradition, and being more
numerous than the other three sects put together in a proportion of four
and a half to one, have a good right to treat these as heretics. It must
not, however, be supposed that even the Sunites profess absolutely
homogeneous opinions. The path of Orthodox Islam is no macadamised road
such as the Catholic Church of Christendom has become, but like one of
its own Haj routes goes winding on, a labyrinth of separate tracks, some
near, some far apart, some clean out of sight of the rest. All lead, it
is true, in the same main direction, and here and there in difficult
ground where there is a mountain range to cross or where some defile
narrows they are brought together, but otherwise they follow their own
ways as the idiosyncrasy of race and disposition may dictate. There is
no common authority in the world acknowledged as superior to the rest,
neither is there any office corresponding even remotely with the
infallible Papacy.

The Mohammedan nations have for the most part each its separate school,
composed of its own Ulema and presided over by its own Grand Mufti or
Sheykh el Islam, and these are independent of all external influence. If
they meet at all it is at Mecca, but even at Mecca there is no college
of cardinals, no central authority; and though occasionally cases are
referred thither or to Constantinople or Cairo, the fetwas given are not
of absolute binding power over the faithful in other lands. Moreover,
besides these national distinctions, there are three recognized schools
of theology which divide between them the allegiance of the orthodox,
and which, while not in theory opposed, do in fact represent as many
distinct lines of religious thought. These it has been the fashion with
European writers to describe as sects, but the name sect is certainly
inaccurate, for the distinctions recognisable in their respective
teachings are not more clearly marked than in those of our own Church
parties, the high, the low, and the broad. Indeed a rather striking
analogy may be traced between these three phases of English church
teaching and the three so-called "orthodox sects" of Islam. The three
Mohammedan schools are the Hanefite, the Malekite, and the Shafite,
while a fourth, the Hanbalite, is usually added, but it numbers at the
present day so few followers that we need not notice it.[2] A few words
will describe each of these.

The _Hanefite_ school of theology may be described as the school of the
upper classes. It is the high and dry party of Church and State, if such
expressions can be used about Islam. To it belongs the Osmanli race, I
believe without exception, the ruling race of the north, and their
kinsmen who founded Empires in Central and Southern Asia. The official
classes, too, in most parts of the world are Hanefite, including the
Viceregal courts of Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis, and it would seem the
courts of most of the Indian princes. It is probably rather as a
consequence of this than as its reason that it is the most conservative
of schools, conservative in the true sense of leaving things exactly as
they are. The Turkish Ulema have always insisted strongly on the dogma
that the _ijtahad_, that is to say the elaboration of new doctrine, is
absolutely closed; that nothing can be added to or taken away from the
already existing body of religious law, and that no new _mujtahed_, or
doctor of Islam, can be expected who shall adapt that law to the life of
the modern world. At the same time, while obstinate in matters of
opinion, Hanefism has become extremely lax as to practice. Its moral
teaching is held, and I believe justly, to be adapted only too closely
to the taste of its chief supporters. It is accused by its enemies of
having given the sanction of its toleration to the moral disorders
common among the Turks, their use of fermented drinks, their immoderate
concubinage and other worse vices. It is, in fact, the official school
of Ottoman orthodoxy. It embraces most of those who at the present day
support the revived spiritual pretensions of Constantinople.

The pilgrimage then described in our table as Ottoman is mostly made up
of men of this theological school. It must not, however, be supposed
that anything like the whole number either of the 8500 pilgrims, or of
the 22,000,000 population they represent, is composed of Turks. The true
Ottoman Turk is probably now among the rarest of visitors to Mecca, and
it is doubtful whether the whole Turkish census in Europe and in Asia
amounts to more than four millions. With regard to the pilgrimage there
is good reason why this should be the case. In Turkey, all the
able-bodied young men, who are the first material of the Haj, are taken
from other duties for military service, and hardly any now make their
tour of the Kaaba except in the Sultan's uniform. Rich merchants, the
second material of the Haj in other lands, are almost unknown among the
Turks; and the officials, the only well-to-do class in the empire, have
neither leisure nor inclination to absent themselves from their worldly
business of intrigue.

Besides, the official Turk is already too civilized to put up readily
with the real hardships of the Haj. In spite of the alleviations
effected by the steam navigation of the Red Sea, pilgrimage is still no
small matter, and once landed at Jeddah, all things are much as they
were a hundred years ago, while the Turk has changed. With his modern
notion of dress and comfort he may indeed be excused for shrinking from
the quaint nakedness of the pilgrim garb and the bare-headed march to
Arafat under a tropical sun. Besides, there is the land journey still of
three hundred miles to make before he can reach Medina, and what to some
would be worse hardship, a wearisome waiting afterwards in the unhealthy
ports of Hejaz. The Turkish official, too, has learned to dispense with
so many of the forms of his religion that he finds no difficulty in
making himself excuses here. In fact, he seldom or never now performs
the pilgrimage.

The mass of the Ottoman Haj is made up of Kurds, Syrians, Albanians,
Circassians, Lazis, and Tartars from Russia and the Khanates, of
everything rather than real Turks. Nor are those that come distinguished
greatly for their piety or learning. The school of St. Sophia at
Constantinople has lost its old reputation as a seat of religious
knowledge; and its Ulema are known to be more occupied with the pursuit
of Court patronage than with any other science. So much indeed is this
the case that serious students often prefer a residence at Bokhara, or
even in the heretical schools of Persia, as a more real road to
learning. Turkey proper boasts at the present day few theologians of
note, and still fewer independent thinkers.

The Egyptian Haj is far more flourishing. Speaking the language of
Arabia, the citizen of Cairo is more at home in the holy places than any
inhabitant of the northern towns can be. The customs of Hejaz are very
nearly his own customs, and its climate not much more severe than his.
Cairo, too, can boast a far more ancient political connection with Mecca
than Constantinople can, for as early as the twelfth century the Sultans
of Egypt were protectors of the holy places, while even since the
Ottoman conquest, the Caliph's authority in Arabia has been almost
uninterruptedly interpreted by his representative at Cairo. So lately as
1840 this was the position of things at Mecca, and it is only since the
opening of the Suez Canal that direct administration from Constantinople
has been seriously attempted. To the present day the Viceroy of Egypt
shares with the Sultan the privilege of sending a mahmal, or camel
litter, to Mecca every year with a covering for the Kaaba. Moreover the
Azhar mosque of Cairo is the great university of Arabic-speaking races,
and its Ulema have the highest reputation of any in Islam. Egyptian
influence, therefore, must be reckoned as an important element in the
forces which make up Mohammedan opinion. The late Khedive, it is true,
did much to impair this by his infidelity and his coquetteries with
Europe, and under his reign the Egyptian Haj fell to a low level; but
Mohammed Towfik, who is a sincere, though liberal Mussulman, has already
restored much of his country's prestige at Mecca, and it is not unlikely
that in time to come Egypt, grown materially prosperous, may once more
take a leading part in the politics of Islam.[3] But of this later.

All three schools of theology are taught in the Azhar mosque, and
Egyptians are divided, according to their class, between them. The
Viceroy and the ruling clique, men of Ottoman origin, are Hanefites, and
so too are the descendants of the Circassian Beys, but the leading
merchants of Cairo and the common people of that city are Shafites,
while the fellahin of the Delta are almost entirely Malekite. Malekite,
too, are the tribes west of the Nile, following the general rule of the
population of Africa.[4]

The _Malekite_ school of religious thought differs widely from the
Hanefite. If the latter has been described as the high Church party of
Islam, this must be described as the low. It is puritanical, fierce in
its dogma, severe in its morals, and those who profess it are
undoubtedly the most fervent, the most fanatical of believers. They
represent more nearly than any other Mussulmans the ancient earnestness
of the Prophet's companions, and the sword in their hand is ever the
sword of God. Piety too, ostensible and sincere, is found everywhere
among the Malekites. Abd el Kader, the soldier saint, is their type;
and holy men by hereditary profession abound among them.

The Malekites believe with earnest faith in things supernatural,
dreaming prophetic dreams, and seeing miracles performed as every-day
occurrences. With the Arabs of Africa, unlike their kinsmen in Arabia
itself, to pray and fast is still a severe duty, and no class of
Mussulmans are more devout on pilgrimage. In Algiers and Morocco it is
as common for a young man of fortune to build a mosque as it is for him
to keep a large stud of horses. To do so poses him in the world, and a
life of prayer is strictly a life of fashion. With regard to morals he
is severe where the Koran is severe, indulgent where it indulges. Wine
with him is an abomination, and asceticism with regard to meat and
tobacco is often practised by him. On the whole he is respectable and
respected; but the reforms he would impose on Islam are too purely
reactive to be altogether acceptable to the mass of Mohammedans or
suited to the urgent necessities of the age. It is conceivable, however,
that should the revival of Islam take the form of a religious war, the
races of Africa may be found taking the leading part in it. Tripoli,
Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco contain hardy races of fighting men who may
yet trouble Europe; and fifty years of rule have not yet assimilated the
French Sahara.

It is difficult to gain accurate statistics as to the proportion of
pilgrims sent to Mecca by these various States, but it would seem the
Algerian pilgrimage is the smallest. This is due mainly to hindrances
raised by the French Government, whose policy it is to isolate their
province from the rest of the Mussulman world. An Algerian pilgrim is
called upon to produce the sum of 1000 francs before he is permitted to
embark for Jeddah, and he is subjected to various other needless
formalities. Still the number sent is large and their fervour undoubted,
though the upper classes, from a fear of losing credit with the French
authorities, rather hold aloof.

The mainstay of the Mogrebbin Haj are the Moors. These have an immense
name for zeal and religious courage at Mecca, and for the great
scrupulosity with which they perform their religious duties. There is
too among the Moors a far wider level of theological education than
among most Mussulmans. I made acquaintance while at Jeddah with a young
Arab from Shinghiat in Senegal who, Bedouin as he was, was an Alem, and
one sufficiently well versed in the Sheriat to be referred to more than
once in my presence on points of religious law and literature. I
expressed my surprise at finding a Bedouin thus learned, for he was
evidently an Arab of the Arabs, but he told me his was no exceptional
position, and that most Bedouins in Southern Morocco could read the
Koran. The Moors would have a still higher position in Islam than that
already given them were it not that they are on one point at variance
with the mass of Sunites. They do not acknowledge the modern Caliphate.
Those therefore of the Sunites who have acknowledged the Ottoman claim
are at issue with the Moors. On all other points, however, the Moors are
Sunites of the Sunites.

From the Moor to the negro is but a step, though it is a step of race,
perhaps of species. The political and religious connection of Morocco
with the Soudan is a very close one, and, whatever may be the future of
the Mediterranean provinces fronting the Spanish coast, it cannot be
doubted that the Moorish form of Mohammedanism will be perpetuated in
Central Africa. It is there, indeed, that Islam has the best certainty
of expansion and the fairest field for a propagation of its creed.
Statistics, if they could be obtained, would, I am convinced, show an
immense Mohammedan progress within the last hundred years among the
negro races, nor is this to be wondered at. Islam has so much to offer
to the children of Ham that it cannot fail to win them--so much more
than any form of Christianity or European progress can give.

The Christian missionary makes his way slowly in Africa. He has no true
brotherhood to offer the negro except in another life. He makes no
appeal to a present sense of dignity in the man he would convert. What
Christian missionary takes a negress to wife or sits with the negro
wholly as an equal at meat? Their relations remain at best those of
teacher with taught, master with servant, grown man with child. The
Mohammedan missionary from Morocco meanwhile stands on a different
footing. He says to the negro, "Come up and sit beside me. Give me your
daughter and take mine. All who pronounce the formula of Islam are equal
in this world and in the next." In becoming a Mussulman even a slave
acquires immediate dignity and the right to despise all men, whatever
their colour, who are not as himself. This is a bribe in the hand of the
preacher of the Koran, and one which has never appealed in vain to the
enslaved races of the world.[5] Central Africa then may be counted on as
the inheritance of Islam at no very distant day. It is already said to
count ten millions of Moslems.

The _Shafite_ school, the third of the four "orthodox sects," is the
most flourishing of all in point of numbers, and it has characteristics
which mark it out as the one best adapted to survive in the struggle
which is impending between the schools of religious thought in Islam.
The Shafites may be compared to our broad Church, though without its
immediate tendency to infidelity. With the Shafites there is a
disposition to widen rather than to narrow the area of theology. The
Hanefites and Malekites proclaim loudly that inquiry has been closed and
change is impossible, but the Shafites are inclined to seek a new
mujtahed who shall reconcile Islam with the modern conditions of the
world. They feel that there is something wrong in things as they are,
for Islam is no longer politically prosperous, and they would see it
united once more and reorganized even at the expense of some dogmatic
concessions. I know that many even of the Shafites themselves will deny
this, for no Mussulman will willingly acknowledge that he is an advocate
of change; but it is unquestionable that among members of their school
such ideas are more frequently found than with the others.

Among the Shafites, too, ideas of a moral reformation find a footing,
and they speak more openly than the rest their suspicion that the house
of Othman, with its fornications and its bestialities and contempt of
justice, has been the ruin of Islam. Arabian custom is the basis of its
ideas upon this head, for most Arabs out of Africa if anything are
Shafites; and it is the school of the virtuous poor rather than of the
licentious rich. It is more humane in its bearing towards Jews and
Christians, finding a common ground with them in the worship of the one
true God, the moral law propounded at various times to man, and the
natural distinction between right and wrong. I may exaggerate this,
perhaps, but something of it certainly exists, and it is a feeling that
is growing.

Shafism has its stronghold at Cairo, where the Sheykh el Islam has
always belonged to this rite, but it is also the prevailing school in
Asia wherever Mohammedanism has been introduced through the
instrumentality of Arabian missionaries. In India the mass of the
Mussulman population is Shafite, especially in Hyderabad and the Bombay
Presidency, where the Arab element is strongest, while Hanefism is the
school of the great people who derive their origin from the Mogul
conquests, and of many of the Ulema who are in the habit of making their
religious education complete in the Hanefite schools of Bokhara.
Wahhabism, too, in the present century has taken great hold of the
poorer classes, and within the last few years a Turkish propaganda has
been at work among them with some success. But of this again later.

The Indian Haj is the most numerous, and represents the largest
population of all on our list, and it is besides the most wealthy. The
Indian Mussulman has less to fear from the climate of Arabia than the
native of more northern lands, and few who can afford it fail to perform
this religious duty at least once in their lives. The English Government
neither checks nor encourages the Haj, and indeed of late years has
shown a rather culpable negligence as to the interests of British
subjects on pilgrimage. Such at least is the opinion I heard constantly
given at Jeddah, and several recent incidents seem to prove that a
little closer attention to this matter would be advisable. That ugly
story which was told in our newspapers more than a year ago of the
abandonment of a pilgrim ship in the Red Sea by her British captain is,
I am sorry to say, a true one, and I heard it confirmed with every
circumstance which could aggravate the charges made. The captain in a
fit of panic left the ship without any substantial excuse, and if it had
not been for the good conduct of a young man, his nephew, who, though
ordered to leave too, refused out of humanity, there is little doubt
that the vessel would have been lost. A very painful impression was
produced on the Jeddans while I was there by the news that this English
captain had been sentenced for all punishment by an English court to two
years' suspension of his certificate. Indian pilgrims have besides been
very roughly treated in Hejaz by the authorities during the last year
because they were British subjects, and this without obtaining any
redress. Such at least is the gossip of the town. However this may be,
it seems to me astonishing that so important a matter as the Indian Haj
should be left, as it now is, entirely in the hands of chance.

The Dutch do not so leave the management of their pilgrimage from Java,
which, it will be remarked, stands second only to India on my list in
respect of numbers. Their policy is a very definite one and seems
justified by results. There is no disillusion, they argue, for a
Mussulman greater than to have visited Mecca, and they say that a
returned hajji is seldom heard to complain in Java of his lot as the
subject of a Christian power. Besides the disappointment which all
pilgrims are wont to feel who come with exalted hopes and find their
holy lands undistinguishable from the other lands of the world, the
pilgrim to Mecca certainly has to encounter a series of dangers and
annoyances which he cannot but recognize to be the result of Mussulman
misgovernment. From the moment of his landing on the holy shore he finds
himself beset with dangers. He is fleeced by the Turkish officials,
befooled by the religious touts of the towns, and sometimes robbed
openly by actual highway robbers. The religious government of the land
has no redress to offer him, and the Turkish guardians of the peace who
affect to rule are only potent in demanding fees. At every step he is
waylaid and tricked and ill-treated. He finds the Hejazi, the keepers of
the holy places and privileged ciceroni of the shrines, shrewder as men
of business than devout as believers, and he returns to his home a
sadder and, the Dutch say, a wiser man. I do not affirm that the Dutch
are right; but this is the principle they act on, and they boast of its
success.

We in India, as I have said, in our grand careless way, leave all these
things to chance. India, nevertheless, still holds the first rank in the
Haj, and, all things considered, is now the most important land where
the Mohammedan faith is found. In the day of its greatness the Mogul
Empire was second to no State in Islam, and though its political power
is in abeyance, the religion itself is by no means in decay. India has
probably a closer connection at the present moment with Mecca than any
other country, and it is looked upon by many there as the Mussulman land
of the future. Indeed, it may safely be affirmed that the course of
events in India will determine more than anything else the destiny of
Mohammedanism in the immediate future of this and the next generation.

The Malays, though holding no very high position in the commonwealth of
Islam, are important from their numbers, their commercial prosperity,
and, more than all to an European observer, from the fact that so many
of them are Dutch subjects. Holland, if any lesson for the future can
be learned in history, must in a few years find her fate linked with
that of Germany, and so too her colonies. I will not now enlarge upon
the prospect thus opened, but it is a suggestive one, and worthy of all
possible attention. For the moment the Malays stand rather apart from
other pilgrims at the shrines. They boast no great school of theology or
particular religious complexion; and as pilgrims they are held in rather
low esteem from their penurious ways. But they are a dark element in the
future, which it is equally easy to under as to over rate. Originally
converted by, and to a certain degree descended from, Arabs, they are,
as far as I could learn, followers of the Shafite teaching, and inclined
to the broad rather than the narrow ways of Islam. They number,
according to the Dutch consular agent at Jeddah, thirty million souls,
and are increasing rapidly both in Java and in the other islands of the
Malay archipelago.

Another enigma are the Chinese. I saw a few of them in the streets, and
made inquiries as to them. But I could gain no certain information. I
have heard them estimated as high as twenty millions and as low as five,
but it is certain that they are very numerous.[6] They established
themselves in China, it is said, about the second century of Islam, and
their missionaries were men of Arab race. They are found scattered in
groups all over China, but principally inland, and have full enjoyment
of their religion, being a united body which is respectable and makes
itself respected--so much so that the "Houi-tse," or people of the
resurrection, as they are called, are employed in the highest offices of
the Chinese State.[7] It is plain, however, that they are hardly at all
connected with the modern life of Islam, for it is only within the last
few years that any of them have performed the pilgrimage; and if I
include them in my lists as Sunites and Shafites it is in default of
other classification. They probably hold to the Mussulman world a
position analogous in its isolation to that of the Abyssinian Church in
Christendom. They too, however, may one day make their existence felt;
for China is no dead nation, only asleep. And with them our survey of
orthodox Islam ends.

The heretical sects remain to us. Of these the most notable without
contestation is the Shiite, or Sect of Ali, which traces its origin to
the very day of the Prophet's death, when Abu Bekr was elected Caliph to
Ali's exclusion. I will not here renew the arguments urged in this old
dispute more than to say that the dispute still exists, though it has
long ceased to be the only cause of difference between Shiah and Suni.

Beginning merely as a political schism, the Shiite sect is now
distinctly a heresy, and one which has wandered far from the orthodox
road. Their principal features of quarrel with the Sunites are--first, a
repudiation of the Caliphate and of all hierarchical authority
whatsoever; secondly, the admission of a right of free judgment in
individual doctors on matters of religion; and thirdly, a general
tendency to superstitious beliefs unauthorized by the Koran or by the
written testimony of the Prophet's companions. They also--and this is
their great doctrinal quarrel with the unitarian Sunites--believe in a
series of incarnations of the twelve qualities of God in the persons of
the "twelve Imams," and in the advent of the last of them as a Messiah,
or "Móhdy," doctrines which are especially advanced by the Sheykhi
school of Shiism and minimized by the Mutesharreh or orthodox. These
last matters, however, are rather excrescences than necessary parts of
Shiism. They owe their prevalence, without doubt, to the Persian mind,
which is equally prone to scepticism and credulity, and where Shiism has
always had its stronghold.

The religious constitution of the sect of Ali has been described to me
by a member of it who knows Europe well as resembling in its
organization the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. That is to say, it
acknowledges no head, temporal or spiritual, and each congregation
represents a separate unit of authority in itself. There is no such
functionary in Persia as Sheykh el Islam, or Grand Mufti, and the Shah
claims to be neither Imam nor Caliph. Each Shiite doctor who has taken
his degree at Kerbela or Ispahan may deliver his fetwa or opinion on
points of doctrine, and the only test of his authority to preach or lead
the prayer in mosque is his power of attracting a congregation. It is
strange that in a sect which had its origin in an assertion of
hereditary right to the Caliphate everything hereditary should be now
rigidly excluded.

In theory, I believe the Shias still hold that there is an Imam and
Caliph, but they will not tolerate the pretension of any one now in
authority to the title, and leave it in abeyance until the advent of the
Móhdy, or guide, who is to reunite Islam and restore its fortunes. So
much is this the case that, sovereign though he be and absolute master
in Persia, the Shah is to the present day looked upon by the Persians as
a usurper, and he himself acknowledges the fact in a rather curious
ceremony. It is a maxim with Mussulmans of all sects that prayer is not
valid if made in another man's house without his permission, and this
being so, and the Shah admitting that his palaces of right belong not to
himself but to the Móhdy, he is obliged to lease them according to legal
form from an alem or mujtahed, acting for the supposed Móhdy, before he
can pray in them to his spiritual profit.

It will be readily understood that, with such an organization and with
such tendencies to deductive reasoning, a wide basis is given for
divergence of opinion among the Shiites, and that while the more highly
educated of their mollahs occasionally preach absolute pantheism, others
consult the grosser inclinations of the vulgar, and indulge their
hearers with the most extravagant tales of miracle and superstition.
These are a constant source of mockery to the Sunites. Among the more
respectable Shiite beliefs, however, there seems to be a general
conviction in Persia that a reform of Islam is at hand, and that a new
leader may be expected at any moment and from any quarter, so that
enthusiasts are constantly found simulating the gifts of inspiration and
affecting a divine mission. The history of the Babites, so well
described by M. de Gobineau in his _Religions of Asia_, is a case in
point, and similar occurrences are by no means rare in Persia.

I met at Jeddah a highly educated Persian gentleman, who informed me
that he had himself been witness when a boy to a religious prodigy,
notorious, if I remember rightly, at Tabriz. On that occasion, one of
these prophets being condemned to death by the supreme government, was
bound to a cross with two of his companions, and after remaining
suspended thus for several hours, was fired at by the royal troops. It
then happened that, while the companions were dispatched at the first
volley, the prophet himself remained unhurt, and, incredible to relate,
the cords which bound him were cut by the bullets, and he fell to the
ground on his feet. "You Christians," said another Persian gentleman
once to me, "talk of your Christ as the Son of God and think it
strange, but with us the occurrence is a common one. Believe me we have
'sons of God' in nearly all our villages."

Thus, with the Shiites, extremes meet. No Moslems more readily adapt
themselves to the superficial atheisms of Europe than do the Persians,
and none are more ardently devout, as all who have witnessed the miracle
play of the two Imams will be obliged to admit. Extremes, too, of
morality are seen, fierce asceticisms and gross licentiousnesses. By no
sect of Islam is the duty of pilgrimage more religiously observed, or
the prayers and ablutions required by their rule performed with a
stricter ritual. But the very pilgrims who go on foot to Mecca scruple
not to drink wine there, and Persian morality is everywhere a byword.

In all these circumstances there is much to fear as well as to hope on
the side of the Shiite sect; but their future only indirectly involves
that of Islam proper. Their whole census does not probably exceed
fifteen millions, and it shows no tendency to increase. Outside Persia
we find about one million Irâki Arabs, a few in Syria and Afghanistan,
and at most five millions in India. One small group still maintains
itself in the neighbourhood of Medina, where it is tolerated rather than
acknowledged, and a few Shiites are to be found in most of the large
cities of the west, but everywhere the sect of Ali stands apart from and
almost in a hostile attitude to the rest of Islam. It is noticeable,
however, that within the last fifty years the religious bitterness of
Shiite and Sunite is sensibly in decline.

The next most important of the heretical sects is the Abadiyeh. These,
according to some, are the religious descendants of the Khawarij, a sect
which separated itself from the Califate in the time of the Seyid Ali,
and, after a severe persecution in Irak, took refuge at last in Oman.
Whatever their present doctrines, they seem at first to have been like
the Shiites, political schismatics. They maintained that any Mussulman,
so long as he was not affected with heresy, might be chosen Imam, and
that he might be deposed for heresy or ill-conduct, and indeed that
there was no absolute necessity for any Imam at all. They are at present
only found in Oman and Zanzibar, where they number, it is said, about
four millions. Till as late as the last century the Imamate was an
elective office among them, but with the accession of the Abu Saïd
dynasty it became hereditary in that family.[8] They reject all
communion with the Sunites, but I have not been able to discover that
they hold any doctrines especially offensive to the mass of Moslems.
Their differences are mainly negative, and consist in the rejection of
Califal history and authority later than the reign of Omar, and of a
vast number of traditions now incorporated in the Sunite faith.

Allied to them but, as I understood, separate, are the Zeïdites of
Yemen, who are possibly also descended from the Khawarij. But, as the
Zeïdites are accustomed to conceal the fact of their heresy and to pass
themselves when on pilgrimage as Sunites, I could learn little about
them. They were, till ten years ago, independent under the Imams of
Sana, and it is certain that they repudiate the Califate. In former
times, before the first conquest of Arabia by the Turks, these Imams
were all powerful in Hejaz, and on the destruction of the Bagdad
Califate assumed the title of Hami el Harameyn, protector of the holy
places. The Turks, however, now occupy Sana, and the office of Imam is
in abeyance. The Zeïdites can hardly number more than two millions, and
their only importance in the future lies in the fact of their
geographical proximity to Mecca, and in the fact that their sympathies
lie on the side of liberality in opinion and reform in morals. Neither
Zeïdites nor Abadites have any adherents out of their own countries.

Of the Wahhabites a more detailed account is needed, as although their
numbers are small and their political importance less than it formerly
was, the spirit of their reform movement still lives and exercises a
potent influence on modern Mohammedan ideas. I have described
elsewhere[9] the historical vicissitudes of the sect in Arabia, and the
decline of its fortunes in Nejd, but a brief recapitulation of these may
be allowed me.

The early half of the last century was a period of religious stagnation
in Islam, almost as much as it was in Christendom. Faith, morals, and
religious practice were at the lowest ebb among Mussulmans, and it
seemed to Europeans who looked on as though the faith of Mecca had
attained its dotage, and was giving place to a non-curantist infidelity.
Politically and religiously the Mussulman world was asleep, when
suddenly it awoke, and like a young giant refreshed stood once more
erect in Arabia. The reform preached by Abd el Wahhab was radical. He
began by breaking with the maxim held by the mass of the orthodox that
inquiry on matters of faith was closed. He constituted himself a new
mujtahed and founded a new school, neither Hanafite, Malekite, nor
Shafite, and called it the school of the Unitarians, Muwaheddin, a name
still cherished by the Wahhabites. He rejected positively all traditions
but those of the companions of the Prophet, and he denied the claims of
any but the first four Caliphs to have been legitimately elected. The
Koran was to be the only written law, and Islam was to be again what it
had been in the first decade of its existence. He established it
politically in Nejd on precisely its old basis at Medina, and sought to
extend it over the whole of Arabia, perhaps of the world. I believe it
is hardly now recognised by Mohammedans how near Abd el Wahhab was to
complete success.

Before the close of the eighteenth century the chiefs of the Ibn Saouds,
champions of Unitarian Islam, had established their authority over all
Northern Arabia as far as the Euphrates, and in 1808 they took Mecca and
Medina. In the meanwhile the Wahhabite doctrines were gaining ground
still further afield. India was at one time very near conversion, and
in Egypt, and North Africa, and even in Turkey many secretly subscribed
to the new doctrines. Two things, however, marred the plan of general
reform and prevented its full accomplishment.

In the first place the reform was too completely reactive. It took no
account whatever of the progress of modern thought, and directly it
attempted to leave Arabia it found itself face to face with difficulties
which only political as well as religious success could overcome. It was
impossible, except by force of arms, to Arabianise the world again, and
nothing less than this was in contemplation. Its second mistake, and
that was one that a little of the Prophet's prudence which always went
hand in hand with his zeal might have avoided, was a too rigid
insistance upon trifles. Abd el Wahhab condemned minarets and tombstones
because neither were in use during the first years of Islam. The
minarets therefore were everywhere thrown down, and when the holy places
of Hejaz fell into the hands of his followers the tombs of saints which
had for centuries been revered as objects of pilgrimage were levelled to
the ground. Even the Prophet's tomb at Medina was laid waste and the
treasures it contained distributed among the soldiers of Ibn Saoud. This
roused the indignation of all Islam, and turned the tide of the
Wahhabite fortunes. Respectable feeling which had hitherto been on their
side now declared itself against them, and they never after regained
their position as moral and social reformers.

Politically, too, it was the cause of their ruin. The outside Mussulman
world, looking upon them as sacrilegious barbarians, was afraid to visit
Mecca, and the pilgrimage declined so rapidly that the Hejazi became
alarmed. The source of their revenue they found cut off, and it seemed
on the point of ceasing altogether. Then they appealed to
Constantinople, urging the Sultan to vindicate his claim to be protector
of the holy places. What followed is well known. After the peace of
Paris Sultan Mahmud commissioned Mehemet Ali to deliver Mecca and Medina
from the Wahhabite heretics, and this he in time effected. The war was
carried into Nejd; Deriyeh, their capital, was sacked, and Ibn Saoud
himself taken prisoner and decapitated in front of St. Sophia's at
Constantinople. The movement of reform in Islam was thus put back for,
perhaps, another hundred years.

Still the seed cast by Abd el Wahhab has not been entirely without
fruit. Wahhabism, as a political regeneration of the world, has failed,
but the spirit of reform has remained. Indeed, the present unquiet
attitude of expectation in Islam has been its indirect result. Just as
the Lutheran reformation in Europe, though it failed to convert the
Christian Church, caused its real reform, so Wahhabism has produced a
real desire for reform if not yet reform itself in Mussulmans. Islam is
no longer asleep, and were another and a wiser Abd el Wahhab to appear,
not as a heretic, but in the body of the Orthodox sect, he might play
the part of Loyola or Borromeo with success.

The present condition of the Wahhabites as a sect is one of decline. In
India, and I believe in other parts of Southern Asia, their missionaries
still make converts and their preachers are held in high esteem. But at
home in Arabia their zeal has waxed cold, giving place to liberal ideas
which in truth are far more congenial to the Arabian mind. The Ibn Saoud
dynasty no longer holds the first position in Nejd, and Ibn Rashid who
has taken their place, though nominally a Wahhabite, has little of the
Wahhabite fanaticism. He is in fact a popular and national rather than a
religious leader, and though still designated at Constantinople as a
pestilent heretic, is counted as their ally by the more liberal Sunites.
It is probable that he would not withhold his allegiance from a Caliph
of the legitimate house of Koreysh. But this, too, is beyond the subject
of the present chapter.

With the Wahhabites, then, our census of Islam closes. It has given us,
as I hope, a fairly accurate view of the forces which make up the
Mohammedan world, and though the enumeration of these cannot but be dull
work, I do not think it will have been work done in vain. Without it
indeed it would be almost impossible to make clear the problem presented
to us by modern Islam or guess its solution. More interesting matter,
however, lies before us, and in my next chapter I propose to introduce
my reader to that burning question of the day in Asia, the Caliphate,
and explain the position of the House of Othman towards the Mohammedan
world.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The following is a formula of the faith:--

1. That thou believest in God, the one God and none other with Him, and
that thou believest that Mohammed is His servant and His Apostle.

2. That thou believest in the Holy Angels and the Holy Books, the
Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels and the Koran.

3. That thou believest in the Last Day, and in the Providence of God
both for good and for evil.

[2] The Hanbali ritual is now almost entirely confined to Medina and
Kasim in Central Arabia.

[3] This was written before the events of last September, which have
given a new impulse to liberalism in Egypt, though it has taken the
direction of Mohammedan thought there out of the hands of the Khedive.

[4] The exact composition of the Azhar university is as follows. Of the
five hundred and odd sheykhs or professors, two hundred are Shafite, two
hundred Malekite, one hundred Hanefite, and five Hanbalite. Each of
these sections has a supreme sheykh, chosen by itself, whose fetwa on
questions concerning the school is decisive. There is, moreover, a
Sheykh el Islam, also elected, who decides religious questions of
general importance, and a Grand Mufti appointed by the Government who
gives fetwas on matters of law. The latter is Hanefite, the former at
the present moment Shafite, as are the bulk of the students. These
number about fifteen hundred.

[5] It is the secret of the rapid conversions in ancient days among the
poor of the Roman and Persian Empires, and it is the secret of those now
taking place among the low-caste Indians.

[6] The Mohammedan revolts in Yunan and Kashgar, repressed with great
ferocity by the Chinese, have in late years temporarily diminished the
Mohammedan census; but there seems good reason to believe that they are
making steady progress in the Empire.

[7] Compare M. Huc's account of their origin.

[8] Compare Dr. Badger's History of Oman and Sale's Koran.

[9] Lady Anne Blunt's _Pilgrimage to Nejd_. Appendix.




CHAPTER II.

THE MODERN QUESTION OF THE CALIPHATE.


About the year 1515 of our era (921 of the Hejra), Selim I., Padishah of
the Ottoman Turks and Emperor of Constantinople, finding himself the
most powerful prince of his day in Islam, and wishing still further to
consolidate his rule, conceived the idea of reviving in his own person
the extinct glories of the Caliphate. He had more than one claim to be
considered their champion by orthodox Mohammedans, for he was the
grandson of that Mahomet II. who had finally extinguished the Roman
Empire of the East, and he had himself just ended a successful campaign
against the heretical Shah of Persia, head of the Sect of Ali. His only
rivals among Sunite princes were the Sultan el Hind, or, as we call him,
the Great Mogul, the Sultan el Gharb, or Emperor of Morocco, and the
Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, then known to the world as _par excellence_
the Sultan.

With the two former, as rulers of what were remote lands of Islam,
Selim seems to have troubled himself little; but he made war on Egypt.
In 1516 he invaded Syria, its outlying province, and in 1517 he entered
Cairo. There he made prisoner the reigning Mameluke, Kansaw el Ghouri,
and had him publicly beheaded, or according to another account, received
his head from a soldier, who had killed him where he lay on the ground
after falling (for the Sultan was an old man) from his horse. He then,
in virtue of a very doubtful cession made to him of his rights by one
Motawakkel Ibn Omar el Hakim, a descendant of the house of Abbas, whom
he found living as titular Caliph in Cairo, took to himself the
following style and title: Sultan es Salatin, wa Hakan el Hawakin, Malek
el Bahreyn, wa Hami el Barreyn, Khalifeh Rasul Allah, Emir el Mumenin,
wa Sultan, wa Khan--titles which may be thus interpreted: King of Kings
and Lord of Lords, Monarch of the two seas (the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea), and Protector of the two lands (Hejaz and Syria, the holy
lands of Islam), Successor of the Apostle of God, Prince of the
Faithful, and Emperor. It is said that he first had the satisfaction of
hearing his name mentioned in the public prayers as Caliph when he
visited the great mosque of Zacharias at Aleppo on his return northwards
in 1519.[10]

Such, in a few words, is historically the origin of the modern
Caliphate, and such are the titles now borne by Selim's descendant, Abd
el Hamid. It is difficult at this distance of time, and in the absence
of detailed contemporary narratives, to do more than guess the effect on
Mussulmans of his day of Selim's religious pretensions. To all alike,
friends as well as foes, he must in the first instance have appeared as
an usurper, for before him no man not of the house of Koreysh, and so a
kinsman of their Prophet, had ever claimed to be his spiritual heir.
Indeed, it was a maxim with all schools of theology of all ages that
descent from the Koreysh was the first title to the Caliphate; but we
may reasonably suppose that within the limits of his own dominions, and
even to the mass of the vulgar beyond them, the Ottoman Emperor's
sublime proceedings met with approval.

Selim was a portentous figure in Islam; and the splendour of his
apparition in the north dazzled the eyes of all. Mussulmans must have
seen in him and his house the restorers of their political fortunes and
the champion of their religion against Christendom; and a departure from
established rule in his favour may well have seemed justified to pious
persons as the best hope for the future of their creed. Selim was
already temporal lord of the greater part of Islam, and he might be
expected thus to restore the spiritual sovereignty also. Besides, to the
ears of Mussulmans of the sixteenth century, the Caliphal title was no
longer a familiar sound, and the title of Sultan which Selim already
bore was that of the highest temporal authority they knew.

The Caliphate, if it existed at all, was in the modern world a less
imposing name than the Sultanate; and the two had since the destruction
of Bagdad become confused, as they still remain, in men's minds who do
not any more now make common use of the older title. Thus it was not
difficult for the new Sultan of Damascus and Cairo and Medina to impose
himself on the multitude--not merely as heir to the Caliphal
possessions, but to the title also of the Caliphs and their spiritual
rank. Advantage, too, seems to have been taken in the first instance, as
it has been subsequently, of the accidental resemblance of name between
Othman, Selim's ancestor, and Othman the third Caliph. The vulgar ear
caught the sound as one familiar to it, and was satisfied, for there is
all the world in a name.

With the Ulema, however, it was necessary to be more precise; and we
know that the question of the Ottoman right to the spiritual succession
of the Prophet was one long and hotly debated in the schools. Tradition
was formal on the point of excluding aliens to the Koreysh from this its
legal inheritance, for Mohammed himself had repeatedly distinguished his
own tribe as being the sole heirs to his authority; nor would any doctor
of the specially Arabian schools listen to a departure from ideas so
absolute. The Hanefite school, however, representing those chiefly
interested in accepting the Ottoman pretension, undertook its legal
defence, and succeeded, in spite of the one great obstacle of birth, in
making out a very tolerable case for themselves and the Beni Othman--a
case which, in the absence of any rival candidate to oppose to them, has
since been tacitly accepted by the majority of the Sunite Ulema.

The difficulty, however, was in practice settled by a compromise, and
the dispute itself had long been forgotten by all but the learned, until
within the present generation its arguments were once more dragged out
publicly to serve a political purpose. The Hanefite arguments are on
this account interesting, and I have been at pains to ascertain and
understand them; but perhaps before I state them in detail it will be
best first briefly to run over the Caliphal history of an earlier age
and describe the state of things which Selim's act superseded.

Orthodox Mussulman writers recognize four distinct phases which the
office of Khalifeh has undergone, and four distinct periods of its
history. The word Khalifeh, derived from the Arabic root _khalafa_, to
"leave behind," signifies literally one left behind, and in the legal
sense the relict or successor of the prophet and heir to his temporal
and spiritual power.

The _first_ historical phase noticed is one of pure theocracy, in which
the Caliph or successor of Mohammed was saint as well as priest and
king, and was to a certain extent inspired. It lasted thirty years only,
and is represented by the four great Caliphs--Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman,
and Ali--who receive from the faithful when they speak of them the
title of Seydna, or Our Lord.

The _second_ phase, which lasted nearly six hundred years, is that of
the Arabian monarchy, in which the Caliphate took the shape of
hereditary temporal dominion. Its representatives are neither saints nor
doctors of the law, and stand on a quite different footing from those
who precede them. They begin with Mawiyeh ibn Ommiyah, founder of the
Ommiad dynasty, and end with Mostasem Billah, the last Sultan of the
Abbasides.

The _third_ period is a phase of temporal inter-regnum during which for
nearly three hundred years the Khalifeh exercised no sovereign rights,
and resided as a spiritual chief only, or as we should now say Sheykh el
Islam, at Cairo. The temporal authority of Islam, which is theoretically
supposed to have been continued without break even during this period,
was then in delegation with the Memluk Sultans of Egypt and other
Mussulman princes.

The _last_ phase is that of the Ottoman Caliphate.

As nearly all modern arguments respecting the Caliphate appeal to
examples in the earliest period, it will be well to consider the origin
of its institution and the political basis of Islam itself. Mohammedan
doctors affirm that the Apostle of God, Mohammed (on whose name be
peace), when he fled from Mecca, did so not as a rebellious citizen but
as a pretender to authority. He was by birth a prince of the princely
house of the Koreysh, itself the noblest tribe of Hejaz, and his
grandfather had been supreme ruler in Mecca. He established himself,
therefore, with his companions in exile as head of an independent
political community, following in this the ancient custom of Arabia
where sections constantly cut themselves off from the parent tribe and
form new nations under the separate leadership of one or another member
of their princely families. Islam, therefore, was from its commencement
a political as well as a religious body, and while Mohammed preached to
his disciples as a prophet, he also gave laws to them as their king and
governor. He was their Imam, the leader of their prayer, and he was
their Emir and Kadi, prince and magistrate. Thus the supreme temporal
and spiritual authority became linked, and Islam was from its beginning
a nation no less than a church.

As long as Mohammed lived, this state of things remained unquestioned,
and difficulties began only at his death. It is a point which has been
much disputed what were the prophet's intentions regarding this event.
In early times the sect of Ali maintained that he had appointed his
son-in-law his heir, and others have held that Abu Bekr had the
nomination; but Sunites are now mostly agreed that no individual
appointment was made, and that the choice of a successor was left to be
decided by election. In any case the procedure followed by Mohammed's
bereaved followers was elective, and its details were in strict
accordance with that Arabian custom on which the Koranic law is mainly
built.

Now, in an Arab tribe, when the Sheykh dies, the elders of the tribe,
heads of its great houses and sections, assemble in one of their
number's tent and, sitting in a circle, discuss the subject of his
succession. Theoretically, the choice of a successor is open to any one
of them, for the tribe, however large, is all one great family,
descended from a common ancestor, and though no one from without could
be admitted to the supreme rule, any one from within the tribe can hold
office. But in practice the choice is limited to a few persons. The
reverence of the Arabs for blood, and for selected strains of blood,
prevent them, except in very exceptional cases, from changing the
dynasty of their rulers. If the dead man has left behind him a son of
full age and respectable qualities, he will, without dispute, be
acknowledged Sheykh. If not, an uncle, a nephew, or a cousin will be
chosen. Only in extreme circumstances of general danger, or of failure
of heirs male, can the member of a new family reasonably aspire to
power. Moreover, there is no uniform law of election. The meeting does
not pretend to give a right, only to confirm one; for the right lies not
with the electors but with him who can maintain his election. There is,
therefore, no formal system of voting, but the elders having ascertained
who among the dead man's relations commands the strongest following,
proceed to acknowledge him by the ceremony of giving him their hands. He
then becomes their Sheykh. It sometimes happens, however, that parties
are so evenly divided between rival leaders that the tribe divides, one
section going this way and the other that, until one of the leaders
gives in his submission; otherwise the quarrel is decided by the sword.

All these features of the Arabian tribal system of succession may be
noticed in the first elections to the Caliphate. As soon as it was known
that Mohammed was indeed dead, a conclave composed of the elders and
chief men of Islam, self-constituted and recognizing no special popular
mandate, assembled in the house of Omar ibn el Khattub. This conclave is
known to jurists as the _Ahl el helli wa el agde_, the people of the
loosing and the knotting, because they assumed the duty of solving the
knotty question of succession. A nice point had to be decided, just such
a one as has in all ages been the cause of civil war in Arabia. The
Prophet had left no son, but more than one near relation. Moreover, at
that moment the new nation of Islam was in danger of internal
disruption, and the religious and the civil elements in it were on the
point of taking up arms against each other. The two chief candidates
were Ali ibn Abutaleb and Abu Bekr, the one son-in-law and cousin and
the other father-in-law of Mohammed--Ali represented the civil, Abu Bekr
the religious party; and as it happened that the latter party was
predominant at Medina, it was on Abu Bekr that the choice fell. He was
recognized as head of the more powerful faction, and the chiefs gave him
their hands; while civil war was only prevented by the magnanimous
submission of Ali.

This form of succession is held by most Sunite doctors to be the
authentic form intended by the Prophet, nor did the three following
elections differ from it in any essential point. It is only noticed that
Abu Bekr designated Omar as the most fitting person to succeed him, and
so in a measure directed the choice of the Ahl el agde. The Caliph was
in each instance elected by the elders at Medina, and the choice
confirmed by its general acknowledgment elsewhere.

In the time of Ali, however, a new principle began to make its
appearance, which foreshadowed a change in the nature of the Caliphate.
The election of Abu Bekr, as I have said, was determined by the
predominant religious feeling of the day. He was the holiest man in
Islam, and his government was throughout strictly theocratic. He not
only administered the religious law, but was its interpreter and
architect. He sat every day in the _mejlis_, or open court of justice,
and decided there questions of divinity as well as of jurisprudence. He
publicly led the prayer in the Mosque, expounded the Koran, and preached
every Friday from the pulpit. He combined in his person all the
functions now divided between the Sheykh el Islam, the grand Mufti, and
the executive authorities. He was king and priest and magistrate, doctor
of civil and religious law, and supreme referee on all matters whether
of opinion or practice; he was, in a word, the Pope of Islam. Nor did
his three successors abate anything of Abu Bekr's pretensions. The only
power they delegated was the command of the Mussulman armies, which were
then overrunning the world, and the government of the provinces these
had conquered.

Ali, however, when he at last succeeded to the Caliphate, found himself
opposed by the very party whose candidate he had once been, and this
party had gathered strength in the interval. With the conquest of the
world worldly ideas had filled the hearts of Mussulmans, and a strong
reaction also had set in in favour of those specially national ideas of
Arabia which religious fervour had hitherto held in check. It was
natural, indeed inevitable, that this should be the case, for many
conquered nations had embraced the faith of Islam, and, as Mussulmans,
had become the equals of their conquerors, so that what elements of
pride existed in these found their gratification in ideas of race and
birth rather than of religion, ideas which the conquered races could not
share, and which were the special inheritance of Arabia.

The national party, then, had been reinforced, at the expense of the
religious, among the Koreysh, who were still at the head of all the
affairs of State. Their leader was Mawiyeh Ibn Ommiyeh, a man of
distinguished ability and of that charm of manner which high-born Arabs
know so well how to use to their political ends. He had for some years
been Governor of Syria, and was more popular there than the pious Ali;
and Syria, though not yet the nominal, was already the real seat of the
Mussulman Government. Mawiyeh therefore refused to accept Ali's election
at Medina as valid, and finding himself supported by a rival Ahl el agde
at Damascus, made that appeal to the sword which Arabian usage sanctions
as the ultimate right of all pretenders.

Religious writers agree in condemning Mawiyeh for his revolt; and while
his succession to Ali is accepted as legal, they place him on quite a
different level from the four Caliphs who preceded him. In Mawiyeh they
see fulfilled that prediction of their Prophet which announced that
Islam should be ruled for thirty years by an Imam, and ever after by a
King. Mawiyeh is, indeed, the type of all the later Mohammedan Emperors.
According to canon law, the head of the State is also head of the
religion; but Mawiyeh ceased to exercise religious functions in person.
These, unlike his predecessors, he delegated to others, and neither led
the prayer nor preached; nor was he held to be either the best or the
most learned man in Islam, as Abu Bekr and the rest had been.
Moreover--and this is the chief point noticed regarding him--he
introduced the system of dynastic heredity into the Caliphate,
nominating his son Yezid his successor in his own lifetime. The change,
advantageous as it was politically, is regarded as a religious falling
off. Henceforth the Caliphs, whether of the Ommiad or afterwards of the
Abbaside families, were not in reality elected, though the form of
confirmation by the Ulema was gone through; and they affected to succeed
by right of birth, not by the voice of the people.

During the whole period of the Arabian Caliphate we only notice one
Prince of the Faithful who busied himself much with religious learning,
and few who personally exercised the magisterial functions. Only once we
read of an Abbaside Caliph insisting on his right of leading the prayer,
and this was probably the effect of an accidental jealousy. As a rule
the temporal government of Islam was intrusted to a _Sadrazzam_, or
Grand Vizier, the spiritual duty of prayer to a _Naïb_, or deputy Imam,
and the elaboration or interpretation of law and doctrine to such Ulema
or Mujtaheddin as could command a following. The character of the
Khalifeh, however, was still essentially sacred. He was of the Koreysh
and of the blood of the Prophet, and so was distinct from the other
princes of the world. As their political power decayed, the Abbasides
fell indeed into the hands of adventurers who even occasionally used
them as puppets for their own ambitious ends; but the office was
respected, and neither the Kurdish Saladdin, nor Togral Bey, nor Malek
Shah, nor any of the Seljukian Emirs el Amara dared meddle personally
with the title of Caliph.

The Ommiad dynasty, founded by Mawiyeh, reigned at Damascus eighty-five
years, and was then succeeded on a new appeal to the sword in A.D. 750
by the descendants of another branch of the Koreysh--the Beni Abbas--who
transferred the capital of Islam to Bagdad, and survived as temporal
sovereigns there for five hundred years.

This second period of Islam, though containing her greatest glories and
her highest worldly prosperity, is held to be less complete by divines
than the first thirty years which had preceded it. Islam was no longer
one. To say nothing of the Persian and Arabian schisms, the orthodox
world itself was divided, and rival Caliphs had established themselves
independently in Spain and Egypt. Moreover, during the last two
centuries the temporal power of the Caliphs was practically in
delegation to the Seljuk Turks, who acted as mayors of the palace, and
their spiritual power was unsupported by any show of sanctity or
learning. It was terminated forcibly by the pagan Holagu, who at the
head of the Mongols sacked Bagdad in 1258.

The third period of Caliphal history saw all temporal power wrested from
the Caliphs. Islam, on the destruction of the Arabian monarchy, resolved
itself into a number of separate States, each governed by its own Bey or
Sultan, who in his quality of temporal prince was head also of religion
within his own dominions. The Mongols, converted to the Faith of Mecca,
founded a Mohammedan empire in the east; the Seljuk Turks, replaced by
the Ottoman, reigned in Asia Minor; the Barbary States had their own
rulers; and Egypt was governed by that strange dynasty of slaves, the
Mameluke Sultans. Nowhere was a supreme temporal head of Islam to be
seen, and the name of Khalifeh as that of a reigning sovereign ceased
any longer to be heard of in the world. Only the nominal succession of
the Prophet was obscurely preserved at Cairo, whither the survivors of
the family of Abbas had betaken themselves on the massacre of their
house at Bagdad.

It is difficult to ascertain the precise position of these titular
Caliphs under the Mameluke monarchy in Egypt. That they were little
known to the world in general is certain; and one is sometimes tempted
to suspect the complete authenticity of the succession preserved through
them. Contemporary Christian writers do not mention them, and it is
evident from Sir John Mandeville and others that in Egypt the Egyptian
Sultan himself was talked of as head of the Mussulman religion. I have
heard their position compared with that of the present Sheykhs el Islam
at Constantinople--that is to say, they were appointed by the Sultan,
and were made use of by him as a means of securing Mussulman
allegiance--and I believe this to have been all their real status. They
are cited, however, as in some sense sovereigns by Hanefite teachers,
whose argument it is that the succession of the Prophet has never
lapsed, or Islam been without a recognized temporal head. The Sultans,
neither of Egypt nor of India, nor till Selim's time of the Turkish
Empire, ever claimed for themselves the title of Khalifeh, nor did the
Sherifal family of Mecca, who alone of them might have claimed it
legally as Koreysh. Neither did Tamerlane nor any of the Mussulman
Mongols who reigned at Bagdad. The fact is, we may assume the Caliphate
was clean forgotten at the time Selim bethought him of it as an
instrument of power.

It must, then, have been an interesting and startling novelty with
Mussulmans to hear of this new pretender to the ancient
dignity--interesting, because the name Khalifeh was connected with so
many of the bygone glories of Islam; startling, because he who claimed
it seemed by birth incapable of doing so. The Hanefite Ulema, however,
as I have said, undertook Selim's defence, or rather that of his
successors, for Selim himself died not a year afterwards, and succeeded
in proving, to the satisfaction of the majority of Sunites, that the
house of Othman had a good and valid title to the rank they had assumed.
Their chief arguments were as follows. The house of Othman, they
asserted, ruled spiritually by--

1. _The right of the sword_, that is to say, the _de facto_ possession
of the sovereign title. It was argued that, the Caliphate being a
necessity (and this all orthodox Mussulmans admit), it was also
necessary that the _de facto_ holder of the title should be recognized
as legally the Caliph, _until a claimant with a better title should
appear_. Now the first qualification of a claimant was that he should
claim, and the second that he should be supported by a party; and Selim
had both claimed the Caliphate and supported his pretensions at the head
of an army. He had challenged the world to produce a rival, and no rival
had been found--none, at least, which the Hanefite school acknowledged,
for the Sultan of Morocco they had never accepted, and the last
descendant of the Abbasides had waived his rights. In support of the
proposition that the sword could give a title they cited the examples of
Mawiyeh, who thus established his right against the family of Ali, and
of Abu el Abbas, who had thus established his against that of Mawiyeh.

2. _Election_, that is the sanction of a legal body of Elders. It was
argued that, as the Ahl el agde had been removed from Medina to
Damascus, and from Damascus to Bagdad, and from Bagdad to Cairo, so it
had been once more legally removed from Cairo to Constantinople. Selim
had brought with him to St. Sophia's some of the Ulema of the Azhar
mosque in Cairo, and these, in conjunction with the Turkish Ulema, had
elected him or ratified his election. A form of election is to the
present day observed at Constantinople in token of this right; and each
new Sultan of the house of Othman, as he succeeds to the temporal
sovereignty of Turkey, must wait before being recognized as Caliph till
he has received the sword of office at the hands of the Ulema. This
ceremony it is customary to perform in the mosque of Ayub.

3. _Nomination._ Sultan Selim, as has been already said, obtained from
Mutawakkel, a descendant of the Abbasides and himself titularly Caliph,
a full cession of all the Caliphal rights of that family. The fact, as
far as it goes, is historical, and the only flaw in the argument would
seem to be that Mutawakkel had no right thus to dispose of a title to an
alien, which was his own only in virtue of his birth. The case, indeed,
was very much as though the Emperor of Germany, having possessed himself
of London, should obtain from Don Carlos a cession of the throne of
Spain; or as though Napoleon should have got such a cession of the
Papacy, in 1813, from Pius VII. Still it is insisted upon strongly by
the Hanefite divines as giving a more permanent dynastic title than
either of the previous pleas. As a precedent for nomination they cite
the act of Abu Bekr, who on his death-bed recommended Omar as his
successor in the Caliphate.

4. _The guardianship of the two shrines_, that is to say of Mecca and
Jerusalem, but especially of Mecca. It has been asserted by some of the
Ulema, and it is certainly a common opinion at the present day, that the
sovereignty of Hejaz is in itself sufficient title to the Caliphate. It
seems certainly to have been so considered in the first age of Islam,
and many a bloody war was then fought for the right of protecting the
Beyt Allah; but the connection of Hejaz with the Empire of the Caliphs
has been too often broken to make this a very tenable argument. In the
tenth century it was held by the Karmathian heretics, in the thirteenth
by the Imams of Sana, and for seven years in the present century by the
Wahhabis. Still the _de facto_ sovereignty of the Harameyn, or two
shrines, was one of Selim's pleas; and it is one which has reappeared in
modern arguments respecting the Caliphal rights of his descendants.

5. _Possession of the Amanat_ or sacred relics. This last was a plea
addressed to the vulgar rather than to the learned; but it is one which
cannot be passed by unnoticed here, for it exercises a powerful
influence at the present day over the ignorant mass of Mussulmans. It
was asserted, and is still a pious belief, that from the sack of Bagdad,
in 1258, certain relics of the Prophet and his companions were saved and
brought to Cairo, and thence transferred by Selim to Constantinople.
These were represented to constitute the Imperial insignia of office,
and their possession to give a title to the Caliphal succession. They
consisted of the cloak of the Prophet borne by his soldiers as a
standard, of some hairs from his beard, and of the sword of Omar. The
vulgar believe them to be still preserved in the mosque of Ayub; and
though the Ulema no longer insist on their authenticity, they are often
referred to as an additional test of the Sultan's right.

Such, then, were the arguments of the Hanefite school, who defended
Selim's claim, and such they are with regard to his successors of the
house of Othman. By the world at large they seem to have been pretty
generally accepted, the more so as the Turkish Sultans, having only a
political end in view, were satisfied with their formal recognition by
their own subjects, and did not bring the question to an issue with
their independent neighbours. Neither the Mogul Emperors at Delhi nor
the Sheriffs of Morocco were called upon to acknowledge temporal or
spiritual supremacy in the Ottoman Sultans, nor did these affect an
every-day use of the ancient title they had assumed.

In India the head of the house of Othman was still known to Moslems as
Padishah or Sultan er Roum, the Roman Emperor, the most powerful of
Mussulman princes, but not in any special manner the head of their
religion, certainly not their sovereign. The Ulema, indeed, such as were
Hanefites, admitted him to be legally Khalifeh; but many of the Shafite
school denied this, pleading still that as an alien to the Koreysh his
claim was illegal, while to the ignorant mass of the people out of his
dominions his spiritual title remained almost unknown. The Sultans
themselves were doubtless to blame for this, seeing that the spiritual
functions of their new office were left almost entirely unperformed. For
it cannot be too strongly insisted on that the assumption of the
Caliphate was to the house of Othman only a means to an end, viz. the
consolidation of its worldly power upon a recognized basis, and that,
once that end obtained, the temporal dignity of Sultan was all that they
really considered. Thus they never sought to exercise the right
appertaining to the Caliphal office of appointing Naïbs, or Deputy
Imams, in the lands outside their dominions, or to interfere with
doctrinal matters at home, except where such might prejudice the
interests of their rule. With regard to these, the theologians of
Constantinople, having satisfactorily settled the Caliphal dispute, and
pronounced the house of Othman for ever heirs to the dignity they had
assumed, were recommended by the head of the State to busy themselves no
further with doctrinal matters, and to consider the _ijtahad_, or
development of new dogma, altogether closed for the future in their
schools. Soliman the Magnificent, Selim's heir, especially insisted upon
this. He had already promulgated a series of decrees affecting the civil
administration of his empire, which he had declared to be immutable; and
an immutability, too, in dogma he thought would still further secure the
peace and stability of his rule. Nor did he meet with aught but approval
here from the Hanefite divines.

The Turkish Ulema, ever since their first appearance in the Arabian
schools in the eleventh century, finding themselves at a disadvantage
through their ignorance of the sacred language, and being
constitutionally adverse to intellectual effort, had maintained the
proposition that mental repose was the true feature of orthodoxy, and in
their _fetwas_ had consistently relied on authority and rejected
original argument. They therefore readily seconded the Sultan in his
views. Argument on first principles was formally forbidden in the
schools; and for the interpretation of existing law two offices were
invented--the one for dogmatic, the other for practical decisions, those
of the Sheykh el Islam and the Great Mufti. This closing of doctrinal
inquiry by the Ottoman Sultans, and the removal of the seat of supreme
spiritual government from the Arabian atmosphere of Cairo to the Tartar
atmosphere of the Bosphorus, was the direct and immediate cause of the
religious stagnation which Islam suffered from so conspicuously in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

We have now brought the history of the Caliphate down to the period
described in the last chapter as one of intellectual torpor for Islam.
It was a lethargy from which there seemed no awakening, and which to
contemporaries, Voltaire among the rest, seemed closely approximating to
the death of unbelief. In spite of Soliman's eternal arrangements, the
temporal power of the house of Othman was wofully diminished, and the
spiritual prestige of the Sultans was gone with Mussulmans. By the
middle of the last century the title of Caliph, even in their own
dominions, was all but forgotten, and the Court of Constantinople was
become a byword for its vice and infidelity. It can therefore be well
imagined that the awakening of religious feeling, which I also described
as having been produced by the Wahhabite movement, especially menaced
the Sultan in his Caliphal pretensions. By the beginning of the present
century the serious world of Islam was already ripening for a change,
and the title of the Caliphate seemed open to whoever should re-invent
and prove himself worthy to wear it. Two men certainly then dreamed of
its acquisition, both men of supreme genius, and holding the elements of
success in their hands. Nor can it be doubted that either of them would
have achieved his ambition but for the appearance against them of a
material power greater than their own, and which then, for the first
time, began to make itself felt as paramount in Asia. That power was
England, and the ambitions she thwarted there were those of Bonaparte
and Mehemet Ali.

It is not, I believe, sufficiently understood how vast a scheme was
overthrown by the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon's mind was formed for
dominion in the East, and where he failed in Europe he would have
infallibly succeeded in Asia. There little policies are useless, and
great ones root themselves in a congenial soil; and he was possessed
with an idea which must have flourished. His English opponents, judging
him only by the scale of their own thoughts, credited him with the
inferior design of invading India through Persia, and called it a mad
one; but India was, in fact, a small part only of his programme. When he
publicly pronounced the Kelemat at Cairo, and professed the faith of
Islam, he intended to be its Head, arguing rightly that what had been
possible three hundred years before to Selim was possible also then to
him. Nor would the Mussulman world have been much more astonished in
1799 at being asked to accept a Bonaparte for Caliph, than it was in
1519 at being asked to accept an Ottoman. With Napoleon's genius for
war, and but for the disastrous sea fight on the Nile, all this might
have been, and more; and it is conceivable that Europe, taken in
reverse by a great Moslem multitude, might have suffered worse disasters
than any the actual Napoleonic wars procured her, while a more durable
empire might have been founded on the Nile or Bosphorus than the
Bonapartes were able to establish on the Seine. As it was, it was an
episode and no more, useful only to the few who saw it near enough to
admire and understand.[11]

Among these who saw and understood was Mehemet Ali, the Albanian
adventurer, who undertook the government of Egypt when England restored
it to the Porte. Bonaparte from the first was his model, and he
inherited from him this vision of a new Caliphate, the greatest of the
Napoleonic ideas, and worked persistently to realize it. He was within
an ace of succeeding. In 1839 Mehemet Ali had Mecca, Cairo, and
Jerusalem in his hands, and he had defeated the Sultan at Konia, and was
advancing through Asia Minor on Constantinople. There, without doubt, he
would have proclaimed himself Caliph, having all the essential elements
of the Sultan's admitted right on which to found a new claim.

Nor is it probable that he would have found much religious opposition to
the realization of his scheme from the Turkish Ulema. These, already
alarmed by Sultan Murad's administrative reforms, would hardly have
espoused the Sultan's defence with any vigour; and though Mehemet Ali
himself was open to a charge of latitudinarianism, he had the one great
claim upon orthodox Islam of having delivered the Holy Cities of Mecca
and Medina from the Wahhabis. The house of Othman, indeed, at this time
had begun to stink--not only in the nostrils of the outside world, but
in that of the Hanefite school itself; and as these had formerly
accepted Selim, so they might very well, in 1839, have accepted Mehemet
Ali. But this attempt, too, was stopped by England in pursuance of a
policy which it is difficult now not to regret. The too venturous
Arnaout was sent back to his vice-royalty in Egypt, and the House of
Othman was entrusted with a new lease of spiritual sovereignty, if not
yet of spiritual power.

The reigns of Abd el Mejid and of Abd el Aziz are remarkable with
Mussulmans as having witnessed a complete dissociation of interests
between the Imperial Government and the Old Hanefite school of Ulema. I
have no space here to discuss the nature of the reforms attempted and
partly effected in the Ottoman Empire between the years 1839 and 1869 as
a concession to the clamour of Europe. They were instituted not by and
through religion, as they should have been, but in defiance of it, and
so failed to find acceptance anywhere with religious people. All changes
so attempted must fail in Islam because they have in them the inevitable
vice of illegality, and I hope to have an opportunity of explaining
later the manner in which alone a true reform can hope to find
acceptance. For the present I only note the promulgation of the Hatti
Humayoum and its kindred decrees as points in the history of the Ottoman
Caliphate's decline, and as direct reasons for the reactionary change of
front which we now witness in the policy of Constantinople.

Abd el Mejid for his ill-judged attempts gained with Mussulmans the name
of an unbeliever, and his son was deposed in the way we all know as a
breaker of the religious law. For a moment, however, Abd el Aziz seems
to have seen the true nature of his position and to have had some idea
of the _rôle_ required of him, as the following incident will show. It
marks at any rate the epoch pretty exactly when a revival of the
Sultan's spiritual pretensions, as a settled policy, was first resolved
on in Turkey. The circumstances have been narrated to me as follows:--

Quite in the early days of Abd el Aziz's reign a certain statesman, a
man of original genius and profoundly versed in the knowledge both of
Europe and of the East, and especially of the religious history of
Islam, came to Constantinople. He was a friend of Rushdi Pasha, then the
Grand Vizier, and of others of the party of Young Turkey, men who were
seeking by every means, fair and foul, to reorganize and strengthen the
central authority of the Empire. To these, and subsequently, in an
interview, to the Sultan himself, he urged the advantage which might
accrue to the Ottoman Government both as a means of controlling the
provinces and as a weapon against European diplomacy if the spiritual
authority of the Sultan as Caliph were put more prominently forward. He
suggested especially to Abd el Aziz that his real strength lay in the
reorganization not of his temporal but of his spiritual forces; and he
expressed his wonder that so evident a source of strength had been so
little drawn on. He pointed out the importance of the Mussulman
populations outside the Empire to the Sultan, and urged that these
should be brought as much as possible within the sphere of
Constantinople influence. The Barbary States, Mussulman India, and
Central Asia might thus become to all intents and purposes, save that of
tribute, subjects of the Porte.

In early times it had been a duty of the Caliphs to appoint in all the
provinces of Islam Imams or deputies to represent their spiritual
authority, and it was suggested that these should once more be
appointed. An Imam, or leader of their public prayer, is a necessity
with orthodox Mussulmans, and in default of legal appointment from the
Caliph, who is himself the supreme Imam, the faithful had been
constrained to apply either to the local governments for such
appointment or to elect the functionary themselves. This they
acknowledged to be illegal, and would willingly revert to the more
legitimate system; while the re-establishment of such a hierarchy would
bring an enormous accession of spiritual power to Constantinople. It was
also shown to Abd el Aziz how all-important Arabia was to his position,
and how greatly the means of influence there had been neglected.

I am informed by one present at this interview that Abd el Aziz was not
only delighted at the idea, but profoundly astonished. He seems to have
had no notion previously either of the historical dignity of the
spiritual office he held nor of its prerogatives, and for a while his
thoughts were turned in the direction pointed out to him. He sent for
the chief Ulema and asked them if all he heard was true; and, when he
found their ideas to be entirely in unison with the advice just given
him, he commissioned the Sheykh el Islam to push forward the doctrine of
his spiritual leadership by all the means in his power. Missionaries
were consequently despatched to every part of the Mussulman world, and
especially to India and the Barbary States, to explain the Hanefite
dogma of the Caliphate; and though at first these met with little
success they eventually gained their object in those countries where
believers were obliged to live under infidel rule, so much so that in a
few years the Ottoman Caliphate became once more a recognized "question"
in the schools. They were aided in this by a powerful instrument, then
first employed in Turkey, the press.[12] A newspaper in Arabic called
the _Jawaib_ was subsidized at Constantinople under the direction of
one Achmet Faris, a convert to Islam and a man of great literary ability
and knowledge of Arabic, who already had views on the subject of the
Caliphate; and this organ henceforth consistently advocated the new
policy of the Ulema.

The official clique in Stamboul were, however, at that time still intent
on other projects, and only half understood the part to be played by
religion in their scheme of administrative reform for the Empire.
Besides--and this was the chief hindrance to the Ulema--Abd el Aziz was
not a man capable of seriously carrying out a great political idea,
being little else than a man of pleasure. He and his government
consequently soon drifted back into the groove of his predecessors'
material policy, which relied for its strength on the physical force of
arms, foreign loans, and the intrigues of officials. The only practical
action taken by Ottoman ministers in the line indicated were the twin
crusades proclaimed against the Wahhabis of Hasa and the heretical Imams
of Sana. But the Hanefite Ulema were not thus to be satisfied. They had
determined on carrying out the idea they had adopted, and on forcing the
Sultan to put himself openly at the head of a religious and reactionary
movement; and when they found that Abd el Aziz could not be made to act
consistently as Caliph, they deposed him, and thus opened a way for the
true hero of their idea, the present Sultan, Abd el Hamid.

The advent of this latest scion of the house of Othman to the spiritual
succession of the Prophet, though a godsend in appearance to religious
Moslems, cannot but be regarded by all who wish Islam well as a very
great misfortune. It is almost certain that if Abd el Mejid and Abd el
Aziz had been succeeded by another of those senseless monarchs who have
so often filled the Imperial throne, the Ottoman Caliphate would already
have been a thing of the past, at least as regards the larger and more
intelligent part of Islam. In the collapse of its physical power in
1879, the official camarilla of Constantinople would have been unable to
control the movement of revolt against the spiritual and temporal
sovereignty of the Sultan, and something would have taken its place
offering a more possible foundation for true religious reform. Arabia
would in all probability have by this time asserted its independence,
and under a new Caliphate of the Koreysh would have been attracting the
sympathies and the adhesion of the Eastern world. There might have been
schisms and religious convulsions, but at least there would have been
life; and what Islam requires is to live. But unfortunately Abd el Hamid
was neither a mere voluptuary nor an imbecile, and catching, by an
instinct which one cannot but admire, the one rope of safety which
remained for him and his house, he placed himself at the head of the
extreme reactionary party of Islam, and thus put back for a while the
hour of fate.

It is difficult to gain accurate information as to Abd el Hamid's
character and religious opinions, but I believe it may be safely
asserted that he represents in these latter the extremest Hanefite
views. In youth he was, for a prince, a serious man, showing a taste for
learning, especially for geography and history; and though not an _alem_
he has some knowledge of his religion. It may therefore be taken for
granted that he is sincere in his belief of his own spiritual
position--it is easy to be sincere where one's interest lies in
believing; and I have it from one who saw him at the time that on the
day soon after his accession, when, according to the custom already
mentioned, he received the sword at the mosque of Ayub, he astonished
his courtiers with the sudden change in his demeanour. All the afternoon
of that day he talked to them of his spiritual rank in language which
for centuries had not been heard in the precincts of the Seraglio. It is
certain, too, that his first act, when delivered from the pressure of
the Russian invasion, was to organize afresh the propagandism already
begun, and to send out new missionaries to India and the Barbary States
to preach the doctrine of his own Caliphal authority to the Moslems _in
partibus infidelium_. His language, too, to strangers from external
Islam was from the first that of a spiritual rather than a temporal
prince, and with the European Ambassadors he has used this position
consistently and most effectually.

It is no mean proof of Abd el Hamid's ability that he should have
invented the Mussulman _non possumus_ with which he has disconcerted our
diplomacy. In private life he is said to be regular at his prayers,
though it is also said that he conforms to the custom of Turkish Sultans
in avoiding legal marriage. He is at the same time a liberal patron of
dervishes, workers of miracles, and holy men. These he is at pains to
seek out and receive honourably. In his administration he conforms,
wherever he is himself the actor, strictly to the Sheriat, and on
doubtful points consults always the mufti or Sheykh el Islam. He has
shown no inconsiderable firmness in resisting European demands when they
contravened the canon law.[13]

For all these reasons it will be readily understood that Abd el Hamid
has gained not only the support of his own Turkish Ulema, but the
sympathy of a very considerable section of opinion outside his
dominions. From a traitor to the cause of religion the Ottoman Sultan
has come to be looked upon, east and west, as once more its champion;
and with the old-fashioned reactionary school Abd el Hamid is fast
growing into a hero. A year ago, when I was at Jeddah, this was not yet
the case, but it would seem to be so now. Then even the people of his
own party spoke of him doubtfully, and he certainly excited no
enthusiasm among them. They did not understand him, and thought that he
was playing a part. He was said to be of Armenian parentage (on his
mother's side) and his sincerity as a Moslem was suspected. It seemed
impossible one born in Abd el Mejid's Seraglio should be a serious man.
Besides, he had not yet shown his strength, and to be strong is to be a
hero everywhere.

But within the last eight months, events have marched rapidly. Abd el
Hamid has played his cards successfully in Greece, in Albania, and with
the Kurds. He has not been afraid of England and has shown a bold front
against infidel reforms. He has had the courage under the eyes of Europe
to arrest their _protégé_, Midhat, and to try him for murder. Lastly,
the French have played into his hands in Tunis, and he has thus gained a
footing of sympathy with the Mussulmans of North Africa, a population
which has for centuries opposed his claims. Twenty years ago it would
have been absolutely impossible for an Ottoman Sultan to awaken any
loyal feeling in any Arab breast. Tunis then specially boasted her
independence of the Porte, and all but the Hanefite rulers of the
sea-coast towns of Africa would have scouted the idea of fighting for
the Turk. Now the Malekites themselves, the puritans of Kerwan, are
moving at Abd el Hamid's nod. He would seem, too, to be stirring with
some success in Egypt, and Indian Mussulmans are praying for him
publicly in their mosques. Everywhere the reactionary party is standing
to its arms, and is beginning to recognize a leader in this supple
Armenian Khalifeh, who is defying Europe, and seems willing, if
necessary, to lead them one day on a Jehad.

With all this, however, it must not be supposed that Orthodox Islam is
by any means yet won back to Constantinople. Turkey, I have shown, and
the Hanefite school, are far from being the whole of the Mohammedan
world; and side by side with the fanatical obduracy of the Ottoman State
party and the still fiercer puritanism of the Melkites there exists an
intelligent and hopeful party favourable to religious reform. Shafite
Egypt is its stronghold, but it is powerful too in Arabia and further
East. With it a first article of faith is that the House of Othman has
been and is the curse of Islam, and that its end is at hand.

In spite of Abd el Hamid's pious appeals to the Sheriat they look upon
him as one who troubleth Islam. He is the representative of the party
most bitterly opposed to all of good. They know that as long as there is
an Ottoman Caliph, whether his name be Abd el Aziz or Abd el Hamid,
moral progress is impossible, that the ijtahad cannot be re-opened, and
that no such reformation of doctrine and practice can be attempted as
would alone enable their faith to cope with modern infidelity. They see
moreover that, notwithstanding his affected legality, Abd el Hamid's
rule is neither juster nor more in accordance with the Mussulman law
than that of his predecessors. The same vices of administration are
found in it, and the same recklessness for his Mussulman subjects'
welfare. Of all the lands of Islam his own are probably those where Abd
el Hamid has now the most scanty following. Constantinople is after all
his weak point, for the Young Turkish school is far from dead, the
vicissitudes of life and death follow each other closely on the
Bosphorus, and the liberal party can better afford than the reactionary
to wait. The death or fall of Abd el Hamid, whenever it may happen,
would immediately decide a movement counter to the Ottoman Caliphate.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] I do not vouch for the entire accuracy of these dates. Turkish
historians place Selim's death in 926 A.H., which should correspond with
our 1520. It would seem doubtful too whether Selim himself took any
higher title with regard to the Holy Places than Khadam el Harameyn,
Servant of the two shrines, though his successors are certainly called
Hami. It was not till five years after Selim's death that Mecca
acknowledged the Ottoman Caliphate.

[11] The original diary of Lascaris, Napoleon's agent with the Arabs,
has, I understand, within the last two years been discovered at Aleppo
and purchased by the French Government. Its publication, whenever that
may be decided on, will, if I am not quite mistaken, throw new and
important light on Napoleon's Egyptian career.

[12] The _Jawaib_ was first started about the year 1860.

[13] In the recent trial of the murderers of Abd el Aziz, Abd el Hamid
has departed from his usual adherence to the Sheriat. It is a lapsus
which may one day be taken hold of against him, should the Ulema need to
depose him. He is said to have yielded to the advice of an European
confidant who directs the details of his diplomacy with Europe.




CHAPTER III.

THE TRUE METROPOLIS--MECCA.


In the last chapter the position of the Ottoman Sultans towards the mass
of Orthodox Islam was sketched, and the foundations were shown on which
their tenure of the Caliphal title rested. These I explained to be
neither very ancient nor very securely laid in the faith and affections
of the faithful; and, though at the present moment a certain reaction in
favour of Constantinople had set in, it was due to accidental
circumstances, which are unlikely to become permanent, and was very far
indeed from being universal. It may be as well to recapitulate the
position.

The Sunite or Orthodox Mohammedan world holds it as a dogma of faith
that there must be a Khalifeh, the ex-officio head of their religious
polity, and the successor of their prophet. In temporal matters, whoever
holds this office is theoretically king of all Islam; and in spiritual
matters he is their supreme religious authority. But, practically, the
Caliph's temporal jurisdiction has for many centuries been limited to
such lands as he could hold by arms; while in spiritual matters he has
exercised no direct authority whatever. Nevertheless, he represents to
Mussulmans something of which they are in need, and which they are bound
to respect; and it cannot be doubted that in proper hands, and at the
proper moment, the Caliphate might once more become an instrument for
good or evil of almost universal power in Islam. Even now, were there to
be an apprehension of general and overwhelming danger for religion, it
is to the Caliph that the faithful would look to defend their interests;
and, as we have seen, a moderate show of piety and respect for the
sacred law has been sufficient, in spite of a violent political
opposition, to secure for the actual holder of the title a degree of
sympathy which no other Mussulman prince could at any cost of good
government have obtained.

On the other hand, it has been shown that the loyalty, such as there is,
which Abd el Hamid inspires is due to him solely as incumbent of the
Caliphal office, and not as the representative of any race or dynasty.
The House of Othman, as such, represents nothing sacred to Mussulmans;
and the Turkish race is very far from being respected in Islam. The
present Caliphal house is unconnected in blood with the old traditional
line of "successors;" and even with the Turks themselves inspires little
modern reverence. Moreover, the actual incumbent of the office is
thought to be not even a true Ottoman, being the offspring of the
Seraglio rather than of known parents; Abd el Hamid's sole title to
spiritual consideration is his official name. This he has had the sense
to set prominently forward. Reduced to a syllogism, Mussulman loyalty
may be read thus: There must be a Caliph, and the Caliphate deserves
respect; there is no other Caliph but Abd el Hamid; ergo, Abd el Hamid
deserves respect.

It has been pointed out, however, that, if the Sultan's recent revival
of spiritual pretensions is his present strength, it may also in the
immediate future become his weakness. The challenge which the
Constantinople school of Hanefism threw down ten years ago to the world
has been taken up; and all the learned world now knows the frailty of
the House of Othman's spiritual position. The true history of the
Caliphate has been published and set side by side with that Turkish
history which the ignorance of a previous generation had come to
confound with it. At the present day nobody with any instruction doubts
that Abd el Hamid and his house might be legally displaced by the first
successful rival, and that the only right of Constantinople to lead
Islam is the right of the sword. As long as the Ottoman Empire is
maintained and no counter Caliph appears, so long will the Sultan be the
acknowledged head of religion; but not a day longer. The Caliphate, for
one alien as Abd el Hamid is to the Koreysh, must be constantly
maintained in arms, and on the first substantial success of a new
pretender his present following would fall off from him without
compunction, transferring to this last their loyalty on precisely the
same ground on which Abd el Hamid now receives it. Abd el Hamid would
then be legitimately deposed and disappear, for it is unlikely that he
would find any such protector in his adversity as the legitimate Caliphs
found in theirs six hundred years ago. So fully is this state of things
recognized by the Ulema, that I found the opinion last year to be nearly
universal that Abd el Hamid was destined to be the last Caliph of the
House of Othman.

It becomes, therefore, a question of extreme interest to consider who
among Mussulman princes could, with any chance of being generally
accepted by orthodox Islam, put in a claim to replace the Ottoman
dynasty as Caliph when the day of its doom shall have been reached. It
is a question which ought certainly to interest Englishmen, for on its
solution the whole problem of Mussulman loyalty or revolt in India most
probably depends, and though it would certainly be unwise, at the
present moment, for an English Government to obtrude itself violently in
a religious quarrel not yet ripe, much might be done in a perfectly
legitimate way to influence the natural course of events and direct it
to a channel favourable to British interests.

Is there then in Islam, east, or west, or south, a man of sufficient
eminence and courage to proclaim himself Caliph, in the event of Abd el
Hamid's political collapse or death? What would be his line of action to
secure Mahommedan acceptance? Where should he fix his capital, and on
what arms should he rely? Whose flag should he display? Above all--for
this is the question that interests us most--could such a change of
rulers affect favourably the future thought and life of Islam, and lead
to an honest Moslem reformation? These questions, which are being
cautiously asked of each other by thoughtful Mussulmans in every corner
of the east, I now propose to consider and, as far as it is in my power,
to answer.

I have said that Islam is already well prepared for change. Whatever
Europeans may think of a future for the Ottoman Empire, Mussulmans are
profoundly convinced that on its present basis it will not long survive.
Even in Turkey, the thought of its political regeneration as an European
Empire has been at last abandoned, and no one now contemplates more than
a few years further tenure of the Bosphorus. Twenty years ago it was not
so, nor perhaps five, but to-day all are resigned to this.

Ancient prophecy and modern superstition alike point to a return of the
Crescent into Asia as an event at hand, and to the doom of the Turks as
a race which has corrupted Islam. A well-known prediction to this
effect, which has for ages exercised its influence on the vulgar and
even the learned Mohammedan mind, gives the year 1883 of our era as the
term within which these things are to be accomplished, and places the
scene of the last struggle in Northern Syria, at Homs, on the Orontes.
Islam is then finally to retire from the north, and the Turkish rule to
cease. Such prophecies often work their own fulfilment, and the feeling
of a coming catastrophe is so deeply rooted and so universal that I
question whether the proclamation of a Jehad by the Sultan would now
induce a thousand Moslems to fight voluntarily against the Cross in
Europe.

The Sultan himself and the old Turkish party which supports him, while
clinging obstinately in appearance to all their ground, really have
their eyes turned elsewhere than on Adrianople and Salonica and the city
of the Roman Emperors. It is unlikely that a new advance of the
Christian Powers from the Balkan would meet again with more than formal
opposition; and Constantinople itself, unsupported by European aid,
would be abandoned without a blow, or with only such show of resistance
as the Sheriat requires for a cession of territory.[14] The Sultan
would, in such an event, pass into Asia, and I have been credibly
informed that his own plan is to make not Broussa, but Bagdad or
Damascus his capital. This he considers would be more in conformity with
Caliphal traditions, and the Caliphate would gain strength by a return
to its old centres. Damascus is surnamed by theologians _Bab el Kaaba_,
Gate of the Caaba; and there or at Bagdad, the traditional city of the
Caliphs, he would build up once more a purely theocratic empire.

Such, they say, is his thought; and such doubtless would be the empire
of the future that Mussulmans would choose. Only it is improbable that
it would continue to be in any sense Ottoman, or that Abd el Hamid would
have the opportunity of himself establishing it. The loss of
Constantinople would be a blow to his prestige he could not well recover
from, and no new empire ever yet was founded on defeat. What is far more
likely to happen is that, in such an event, Abd el Hamid and his house
would disappear, and an entirely new order of Caliphal succession take
their place. Even without supposing any such convulsion to the empire as
a loss of the Bosphorus, his reign will hardly be a long one. The Ulema
of Constantinople are by no means all on his side, and the party of
"Young Turkey," cowed for the moment by the terrorism which there
prevails, is his bitter enemy, and will not let him rest. It will
infallibly on the next danger from Europe, show its head again and take
its revenge.

It is said to be the programme of this party, when it next comes to
power, to separate the spiritual functions of the Caliphate from those
of the head of the State, copying, in so far, the modern practice of
Europe towards the Papacy. I suppose that it would be attempted to
restore that state of things, which as we have already seen, existed at
Cairo in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and it is just
conceivable that, as far as Turkey itself was concerned, such an
arrangement might, for a time, succeed. There would then be two powers
at Constantinople, a Maire du Palais who would reign, and a Caliph who
would be head of religion;--a separation of offices which would
certainly facilitate the sort of reform that Midhat and his friends
desire. But to the world at large the event would only signify that
Constantinople had formally abdicated her claim to leadership, and Islam
would never acknowledge as Caliph the mere puppet of an irreligious
clique of officials, because he happened to be a member of the Beni
Othman. His political power is the only thing that reconciles Islam with
an Ottoman Caliph, and without sovereignty he would be discarded. In
whatever way, therefore, that we look at it, there seems justification
in probability for the conviction already cited that after Abd el Hamid
a new order of Caliphal succession will be seen.

It seems to be an universal opinion at the present day among those who
think at all upon the matter, that whatever change may be impending for
Islam, it will be in the direction of concentration rather than of
extension. All parties see that the day of outside conquest is at an
end, and that the utmost that Islam can look forward to politically is
the maintenance of its present positions, and as an extreme possibility
the emancipation of its lost provinces in India and North Africa from
Christian rule. There is, therefore, a conviction that the removal of
the seat of supreme authority, when made, will be towards the centre,
not to any new extremity of Islam. Constantinople, even if all Islam
were combined for its defence, is felt to be too near the infidel
frontier to be safe, and cosmopolitan city as it has become, it is by
many looked upon itself as infidel. A position further removed from
danger and more purely Mohammedan is the necessity of the day; and it
can hardly be doubted that, when the time comes, the possession of some
such vantage ground will be recognized as a first qualification with
whoever shall assume the leadership of Islam.

We have seen that Abd el Hamid dreams of Damascus or Bagdad. But others
dream of Cairo as the new seat of the Caliphate; and to the majority of
far-sighted Mussulmans it is rapidly becoming apparent that the retreat,
once begun, must be conducted further still, and that the only true
resting-place for theocracy is in Arabia, its birthplace and the
fountain head of its inspiration. There, alone in the world, all the
conditions for the independent exercise of religious sovereignty are to
be found. In Arabia there are neither Christians nor Jews nor infidels
of any sort for Islam to count with, nor is it so rich a possession that
it should ever excite the cupidity of the Western Powers. A Caliph there
need fear no admonition from Frank ambassadors in virtue of any
capitulations; he would be free to act as the Successor of the Apostle
should, and would breathe the pure air of an unadulterated Islam. A
return, therefore, to Medina or Mecca is the probable future of the
Caliphate.

The importance of Arabia has of late years been fully recognized both at
Constantinople and elsewhere. It has been the sustained policy of Abd
el Hamid at all cost and by whatsoever means to maintain his influence
there; and he knows that without it his spiritual pretensions could have
no secure foundations. Arabia, he perceives, is the main point of the
Caliphal problem; and whether or not the future holder of the office
reside in Hejaz, it is certain that by its tenure alone the Mohammedan
world will judge of his right to be their leader. It will, therefore,
before we go further, be interesting to examine the relations existing
in the past and present between Mecca and the Caliphate, and to
ascertain the position now held by Abd el Hamid in Arabia. On this point
I believe that I can offer information which will be both valuable and
new.

The political constitution of the Moslem Holy Land is one of the most
anomalous in the world. Like every district of Arabia proper, Hejaz has
a town and a nomad population, but almost no intermediate agricultural
class. The townsmen I have already described--a multitude of mixed
origin, descended from such pilgrims as from every quarter of the globe
have visited the Holy Places, and have remained to marry and die in
them. The Nomads, on the contrary, are a pure race of a peculiarly noble
type, and unchanged in any essential feature of their life from what
they were in the days of Mohammed. They are warlike, unquiet, Bedouins,
camel-riders (for they have no horses), and armed with matchlocks; and
they are proud of their independence, and tenacious of their rights. No
serious attempt has ever been made, except by Mehemet Ali, to subdue
them, and none at all has succeeded. Unlike the generality of Peninsular
Bedouins, however, they are professed Sunite Mohammedans, if not of a
very pious type; and they acknowledge as their chief the head of their
most noble tribe, the Grand Sherif of the Koreysh, who is also Prince of
Mecca.

The Koreysh is still a distinct nomadic tribe, inhabiting the immediate
neighbourhood of Mecca; not numerous, but not in decay. They are divided
into several sections, each governed by its Sheykh, the chief of which,
the Abadleh, has for several centuries supplied the reigning family of
Hejaz. This last traces its descent from Ali ibn Abutaleb, the fourth
Caliph, through his son Hassan, and through Ali's wife, Fatmeh, from
Mohammed himself. It is probably the oldest authentic male descent in
the world, and certainly the most sacred. All the members of this
Abadleh family enjoy the title of Sherif, the head of it only being
distinguished as the Sherif el Kebir, the Great or Grand Sherif. The
rest of the Koreysh, not being descended from Fatmeh, do not receive the
title. All alike wear the Bedouin dress of abba and kefiyeh, even the
Prince himself, standing in this strikingly in contrast with the Hejazi
citizens, who affect the turban and gombaz.

The district of Medina is occupied by the Harb Bedouins, a larger and
more powerful tribe than the Koreysh, who also recognize the Sherif, but
their allegiance is precarious; while to the east and south of Mecca the
Ateybeh and Assir, more powerful still, are wholly independent. It has
always been a difficult matter to keep these unruly elements at peace
with each other and with the citizens, nor could the Sherif hope to
effect it were he not himself of Bedouin and noble blood.

The early history of the Sherifate is exceedingly obscure. When the
Caliphs definitely abandoned Medina as their capital in the fortieth
year of Islam (A.D. 662), they for a time left deputies of the Sherifal
family behind them to govern in their name, and, as long as the Ommiad
and Abbaside dynasties continued at Damascus and Bagdad, their
sovereignty was acknowledged in Hejaz. But on the destruction of the
Arabian Caliphate in 1259, the Sherifal family seems to have set itself
up independently, relying only on the casual help of the Egyptian
Sultans and the Imams of Sana to protect them against the Bedouins of
Nejd and Assir, now hardly any longer, even in name, Mohammedans. The
Egyptian Sultan, however, was the titular protector of the Holy Places,
and it was he who transmitted the Surrah, or religious contributions
made by the Faithful, and provided escort for the yearly pilgrimage made
to the shrines. Thus we read of Kaïd Beg having rebuilt the Mosque of
Medina in 1476, and having sent a yearly subsidy of 7500 ardebs of corn
for the townspeople. Other princes, however, contributed their offerings
too, and received titles of honour connected with the Holy Land, the
Shahs of Persia, the Moguls, and the Ottomans. The first connection of
the latter with Mecca that I can find was in 1413, when the Padishah
Mohammed Khan I., having sent a surrah, or bag of gold, to the Sherif to
be distributed in alms, received from him the title of Khaddam el
Harameyn, servant of the two shrines; and the gift being continued
annually by the Ottoman Padishahs may very likely have paved the way to
their recognition later as Caliphs.

It would seem singular at first sight that the Sherifs, being
themselves of the sacred family whose special inheritance the Caliphate
was, should ever thus have recognized a stranger as its legal heir. But
the political weakness of the Meccan Government in the sixteenth century
must be taken into account as the all-sufficient reason. The Grand
Sherif could hardly have stood alone as an independent sovereign, for he
was continually menaced on the one side by the dissenting Omani, and on
the other by the unbelieving tribes of Nejd, against whom his frontier
was defenceless. He could not, with his own resources, protect the
pilgrim routes from plunder--and on the pilgrimage all the prosperity of
Hejaz depended. It therefore was a necessity with the Meccans to have a
protector of some sort; and Sultan Kansaw having fallen, they accepted
Sultan Selim.

The Ottoman Sultans then became protectors of the Holy Places, and were
acknowledged Caliphs without any appeal to arms at Mecca and Medina.
Their weapons were, in fact, the gold and silver pieces with which they
subsidized the Sherifs. Sultan Selim at once, on being acknowledged,
ordered an additional annuity of 5000 ardebs to be paid to Mecca, and he
and his immediate successors carried out at their own expense such
public works as the shrines required in the way of repairs or
improvements. Subsequently the seaport of Jeddah, formerly occupied by
the Egyptians, received a Turkish contingent, but the interior of Hejaz
was never subjugated, nor was any tax at any time levied. Only once a
year an Ottoman army appeared before the walls of Medina, conducting the
pilgrims from Damascus and convoying the surrah. The state of things at
Mecca in the last century has been clearly sketched by Niebuhr. The
Sherifs were in reality independent princes, but they "gratified the
vanity of the Grand Signior" by calling him their suzerain, he on his
side occasionally exercising the right of power by deposing the reigning
Sherif and appointing another of the same family. No kind of
administration had then been attempted by the Turks in Hejaz.

Mehemet Ali's occupation of Hejaz in 1812 first brought foreign troops
inland. He established himself at Taïf, the summer residence of the
Meccans; deposed the Grand Sherif Ghaleb, and appointed in his stead
another member of the Sherifal family; declaring the Sultan sovereign of
the country--acts which the Meccans acquiesced in through dread of the
Wahhabis, from whom Mehemet Ali promised to deliver them. The Egyptian
and Turkish Governments have thus, during the present century, exercised
some of the functions of sovereignty in Hejaz.

At the present moment Sultan Abd el Hamid's position in the country is
this. His troops occupy Jeddah and Yembo, the two seaports, and the
towns of Medina and Taïf in the interior. He is acknowledged by the
Sherifs as sovereign, except in Mecca; and he appoints to all the
principal offices of State, including the supreme office of the Grand
Sherifate itself. He is represented by a Pasha who resides alternately
at Jeddah and Taïf according to the season, but who has not the right of
entering Mecca without the Grand Sherif's leave, or of sending troops
there. The total garrison of the Turks in Hejaz last winter was from
8000 to 10,000 men, of whom 4000 only were regulars (Nizams), and
efficient. While I was at Jeddah, the Medina garrison of 2000 regulars,
having been long unpaid and unrationed, was said to be living on public
charity. On the other hand the Hejazi Bedouins do not acknowledge any
sovereignty but that of the Sherif, nor could the Sultan pretend to keep
order outside the towns except through the Sherif's interposition. The
Sultan levies no tax in the interior or impost of any kind, and the sole
revenue he receives in Hejaz comes from Customs duties of Jeddah and
Yembo, which may amount to £40,000.

In return for this he also is bound to transmit every year at the time
of the pilgrimage sums of money collected by him from the revenues of
the Wakaf within his dominions, lands settled by pious persons on the
Sherifal family. These are said to amount to nearly half a million
sterling, and are distributed amongst all the principal personages of
Hejaz. The transmission of the Wakaf income, in which the Sultan
constitutes himself, so to say, the Sherif's agent, is in fact the real
bond which unites Hejaz with the Caliphate, and its distribution gives
the Sultan patronage, and with it power in the country. The bond,
however, is one of interest only. The Sherifs, proud of their sacred
ancestry, look upon the Turkish Caliphs as barbarians and impostors,
while the Sultans find the Hejaz a heavy charge upon their revenue.
Either hates and despises the other, the patron and the patronized; and,
save that their union is a necessity, it would long ago have, by mutual
consent, been dissolved. The Sherif depends upon the Sultan because he
needs a protector, and needs his Wakaf. The Sultan depends upon the
Sherif, because recognition by Hejaz as the protector is a chief title
to his Caliphate. Mecca, in fact, is a necessity to Islam even more than
a Caliph; and whoever is sovereign there is naturally sovereign of the
Mussulman world.

Outside Hejaz the Sultan holds what he holds of Arabia merely by force.
I have described already the growing power of Ibn Rashid, the Prince of
Nejd; and since that time, two years ago, he has sensibly extended and
confirmed his influence there. He has now brought into his alliance all
the important tribes of northern Arabia, including the powerful Ateybeh,
who, a few months ago, were threatening Mecca; and in Hejaz his name is
already as potent as the Sultan's. He offered, while I was at Jeddah, to
undertake the whole convoy of the Damascus pilgrimage with his own
troops, as already he convoys that from Persia; while I have quite
recent information of a campaign against his own rivals, the Ibn Saouds,
which he has just brought to a successful conclusion. In Yemen, the
other neighbour of the Meccans, 20,000 Turkish troops are required to
garrison the few towns the Sultan calls his own, and were it not for
the facility given him by the possession of the sea-coast, these could
not long hope to hold their ground. Every day I am expecting news from
there of a revolt, and the first sign of weakness at Constantinople will
certainly precipitate a war of independence in that part of Arabia.

We may expect, therefore, in the event of such a break-up as I have
suggested to be likely of the Ottoman power--either through loss of
territory or by the growing impoverishment of the empire, which needs
must, in a few decades, end in atrophy--to see among Mussulman princes a
competition for the right of protecting the Holy Places, and with it of
inheriting the Caliphal title. The Sultan reduced to Asia Minor, even if
he retain Armenia and Kurdistan (which is extremely improbable), would
be quite unable to afford himself the expensive luxury of holding his
Arabian conquests and buying the patronage of Mecca. He would be unable
any longer to overawe the Red Sea, or secure the pilgrim routes. The
Princes of Nejd would certainly not tolerate the presence of Turkish
soldiers at Medina, and the Sherifs of Mecca would have to make terms
with them and with the restored Imams of Yemen till such time as they
should find a new protector elsewhere. Above all, the half million of
Wakaf income would no longer be forthcoming, and a Turkish Emir el Haj
arriving empty-handed at Mecca would bring his master to a climax of
derision. Hejaz then would infallibly look out for a new potentate whom
she could dignify with the title of Hami el Harameyn and Emir el
Mumenin; and if there were none forthcoming would herself proclaim a
Caliphate. Let us look, therefore, at the lands of Islam to see in which
of them a competent Prince of the Faithful is likely to appear.

It is possible, though to European eyes it will seem far from probable,
that out of the ferment which we are now witnessing in the Barbary
States, some leader of real power and religious distinction may arise
who shall possess the talent of banding together into an instrument of
power the immense but scattered forces of Islam in Northern Africa, and
after achieving some signal success against the new French policy,
establish himself in Tripoli or Tunis in independent sovereignty. Were
such another man as Abd el Kader to arise, a saint, a preacher, and a
soldier, indifferent to the petty aims of local power and gifted with
military genius, true piety, and an eloquent tongue, I believe at the
present day he might achieve at least a partial success.

The French army is weak in discipline and confidence compared to what
it was in Abd el Kader's day, and it has a far more difficult frontier
to defend; while the Government at home is but half resolute, and the
Arabs command much floating sympathy in Europe and elsewhere. I do not
say the thing is likely, but it is conceivable; and Africa contains the
elements of a possible new sovereignty for some Mussulman prince which
might eventually lead him on the road to Mecca. It is undoubted that
with the prestige of success against a Christian Power, and backed by
the vast populations of Soudan and the fierce military fervour of the
Malekite Arabs, an Abd el Kader or an Abd-el-Wahhab would attract the
sympathy of Islam, and might aspire to its highest dignity. But enormous
postulates must be granted before we can look on any one now known to
fame in Africa as a probable candidate for the future Caliphate.

The present leaders of the Arabs are but local heroes, and as yet they
have achieved nothing which can command respect. In Tripoli there is
indeed a saint of very high pretensions, one known as the Sheykh Es
Snusi, who has a large religious following, and who has promised to come
forward shortly as the Móhdy or guide expected by a large section of
the Sunite as well as the Shiite Mussulmans. Next year he will attain
the age of forty (the legal age of a prophet), and he may be expected to
take a prominent part in any general movement that may then be on foot.
But as yet we know nothing of him but his name and the fact of his
sanctity, which is of Wahhabite type. Moreover, even supposing all that
may be supposed of a possible success, there yet lies Egypt and the Suez
Canal between the Barbary State and Mecca, so that I think we may be
justified in these days of steam fleets and electric cables and European
concerts, if we treat North Western Africa as out of probable
calculations in considering the future of the Caliphate. It is
remarkable that the Sultan of Morocco has taken as yet no apparent part
in the religious movement of modern Barbary.

The Mussulman princes of India hold a very similar position. Opposed as
they soon may be, indeed must be if the unintelligent English policy of
the last twenty years be persevered in, to an European Government in
arms, they will have the chance of making themselves a leading position
in the eyes of Islam; and should a Mohammedan empire arise once more at
Delhi or Hyderabad, India would certainly become _par excellence_ the
Dar el Islam. It would then be by far the richest and most populous of
Mohammedan states, and able to outbid any other with the surrah it could
send to Mecca.

The Wakaf property in India at the present day is supposed to be as
valuable as that in the Ottoman empire, and it would then become a
source of patronage with the Government, instead of being privately
remitted as now. If money alone could buy the Caliphate, a successful
leader of revolt against the English in India might dictate his terms to
Islam. But again the insuperable obstacle intervenes of distance and the
sea. Mussulman India could never give that protection to Mecca that
Islam needs, and could not assert its sovereignty anywhere but at home,
in arms. Even this is assuming, as in the case of Barbary, an enormous
postulate--success.

Neither India, then, nor Western Africa can reasonably be expected to
supply that substitute for the House of Othman which we need. A more
apparent and in the opinion of some a likely candidate for the Caliphate
succession may be looked for in the Viceregal family of Egypt. Mohammed
Towfik, if he were a man of genius like his grandfather, or if, honest
man as he is, he plays his cards with success, might in a few years
become an important rival at Mecca to the Sultan. To say nothing of its
traditional connection with the Caliphate, Egypt has the more modern
recollection of Mehemet Ali to urge upon the Hejazi in its favour as the
protecting State of Islam.

Mehemet Ali's name and that of his successor Ibrahim Pasha, if not
precisely popular, are at least respected at Mecca; and the latter
possesses a great title to Sunite gratitude in having destroyed the
Wahhabite empire in 1818. I have mentioned Mehemet Ali's ambition; and a
similar ambition would seem to have occurred to Ismaïl, the late
Khedive. He, in the plenitude of his financial power, is stated to have
expended large sums of money in subsidising the Sherifs with a view to
possible contingencies at Constantinople. But unfortunately for him the
opening of the Suez Canal, on which he had counted for securing him the
support of Europe, proved the precise instrument of ruin for his scheme.

The Porte in 1871, scenting danger to its own Caliphal pretensions from
this quarter, occupied the Red Sea in force, reinforced its garrisons in
Jeddah and Yembo, advanced to Taïf, and threw a large army into Yemen.
This was alone made possible by the Canal, and Ismaïl to his chagrin
found himself "hoist with his own petard." Mohammed Towfik, therefore,
would have some excuse in family tradition if he indulged occasionally
in dreams of a similar nature. His connection with Mecca is at the
present day second only to that of Constantinople; the Egyptian
Khedivieh line of steamers ply constantly between Suez and Jeddah; and
the Haj the Khedive sends to Mecca, including as it does most of the
Mogrebbin pilgrims, is more numerous than the Sultan's. He maintains
intimate relations with one at least of the great Sherifal families, and
sends a Mahmal yearly with an important surrah to Medina. Mohammed
Towfik also has the deserved reputation of being a sincere Mussulman and
an honest man, and it is certain that a large section of true liberal
opinion looks to him as the worthiest supporter of its views. With all
this I doubt if he be big enough a man to aspire as yet with success to
Abd el Hamid's succession.

The present Viceroy's financial position, though we may hope sounder in
its base, is not so immediately powerful as his father's; and much ready
money will be required by an aspirant to the Caliphate. His fighting
power, too, is small, and he would have to proclaim himself in arms.
Moreover--and this I fear will remain an insuperable difficulty--he is
hampered with the control of Europe. Islam would hardly obey another
Caliph who was himself obedient to Christendom; and the same causes
which have ruined the House of Othman, would also ruin him. A Caliph, as
things stand, cannot legally govern, except by the old canon law of the
Sheriat, and though a lapsus from strict observance may be tolerated in
an ordinary prince, or even in a well established Caliph, a new Caliph
putting forward a new claim would be more strictly bound. How could
Mohammed Towfik's necessity to Islam be reconciled to his necessity to
Europe? Between the two stools he hardly could avert a fall.[15]

Unless, then, some unexpected religious hero should appear in Eastern
Asia, of which as yet there is no sign, we are driven to Arabia for a
solution of the difficulty where to establish a Mussulman theocracy, and
to the Sherifal family of Mecca itself for a new dynasty.

The family of the Sherifs has this vast advantage over any other
possible competitor to the supreme title of Islam, that it is of the
acknowledged blood of that tribe of Koreysh which Mohammed himself
designated as his heirs. Amongst many other passages of authority which
bear upon the rights of the Koreysh the following seem to me the most
explicit and the best worth quoting: "The prophet," says a tradition of
Omm Hani, daughter of Abutaleb, "exalted the Koreysh by conferring on
them seven prerogatives: the first, the _Nebbuwat_ (the fact that they
had given birth to a prophet); the second, the _Khalafat_ (the
succession); the third, the _Hejabat_ (the guardianship of the Kaaba);
the fourth, the _Sikayat_ (the right of supplying water to the Haj); the
fifth, the _Refadat_ (the right of entertaining the Haj); the sixth, the
_Nedwat_ (the right of counsel, government); and the seventh, the _Lewa_
(possession of the banner, with the right of proclaiming war)." The
prophet also, according to another tradition, said, "As long as there
remains one man of the Koreysh, so long shall that man be my successor;"
and as to the Arab race, "If the Arab race falls Islam shall fall." All
the world knows these things, and to the popular mind, especially, the
Sherif is already far more truly the representative of spiritual rank
than any Sultan or Caliph is.

The vast populations of Southern and Eastern Asia send out their
pilgrims, not to Constantinople but to Mecca, and it is the Sherif whom
they find there supreme. The Turkish Government in Hejaz holds a
comparatively insignificant position, and the Sultan's representative at
Jeddah is hardly more than servant to the Prince of Mecca. It is he who
is the descendant of their prophet, not the other, and though the
learned may make distinctions in favour of the Caliph the Haj only hears
of the Sherif. Even at Constantinople, by immemorial custom, the Sultan
rises to receive members of the sacred family; and at Mecca it is
commonly said that should a Sultan make the Haj in person he would be
received by the Grand Sherif as an inferior. The Sherifal family, then,
is surrounded with a halo of religious prestige which would make their
acquisition of the supreme temporal title appear natural to all but the
races who have been in subjection to the Ottomans; and were a man of
real ability to appear amongst them he would, in the crisis we have
foreseen, be sure to find an almost universal following.

That the Ottoman Government is perfectly aware of this is certain. Even
in the days of its greatest power it always showed its jealousy and
distrust of Mecca, and was careful when any of the Grand Sherifs
acquired what was considered dangerous influence, to supplant him by
setting up a rival. Its physical power enabled it to do this, and though
it could not abolish the office of the Grand Sherifate, it could
interfere in the order of succession. Family feuds have, therefore, been
at all times fostered by the Turks in Hejaz, and will be, as long as
their presence there is tolerated. An excellent example of their system
has recently been given in the episode of the late Grand Sherif's death,
and the story of it will serve also to show the fear entertained by the
present Sultan of this his great spiritual rival. To tell it properly I
must go back to the epoch of the Wahhabite invasion of Hejaz in 1808.

At that time, and for the latter half of the previous century, the
supreme dignity of the Sherifal House was held by a branch of it known
as the Dewy Zeyd (the word _Dewy_ is used in Hejaz, as are elsewhere
_Beni_ or _Ahl_, meaning _people_, _family_, _house_), which had
replaced in 1750 the Barakat branch, mentioned by Niebuhr as in his day
supreme. The actual holder of the title was Ghaleb ibn Mesaad, and he,
finding himself unable to contend against the Wahhabis, became himself a
Wahhabi. Consequently, when Mehemet Ali appeared at Mecca in 1812, his
first act was to depose this Ghaleb, in spite of his protest that he had
returned to orthodoxy, and to appoint another member of the Sherifal
House in his place.

The Sherif chosen was Yahia ibn Serur, of a rival branch, the Dewy Aoun,
and a bitter animosity was, by this means, engendered between the two
families of Aoun and Zeyd, which is continued to the present day. Nor,
as may be supposed, was this lessened by the subsequent changes rung by
the Turkish and Egyptian Governments in their appointments to the
office, for, in 1827, we find Abd el Mutalleb, the son of the deposed
Wahhabite Ghaleb, reappointed, and in the following year again,
Mohammed, the son of Yahia ibn Aoun, an intrigue which brought on a
civil war. Then in 1848 a new intrigue reinstated Abd el Mutalleb and
the Zeyds; and then, in 1853, these were again deposed for rebellion,
and an Aoun was placed in power. From 1853 till 1880 the Aouns retained
the Grand Sherifate and were supreme in Hejaz. Coming into power at a
time when Liberal ideas were in the ascendant they have consistently
been Liberal, and still represent the more humane and progressive party
among the Meccans. In the desert, where all are latitudinarian, they are
the popular party; and, though themselves beyond a suspicion of
unorthodoxy, they have always shown a tolerant spirit towards the Shiahs
and other heretics, with whom the Sherifal authority necessarily comes
in contact every year at the Haj. They have even maintained friendly
terms with the European element at Jeddah, and as long as they remained
in power the relations between India and Mecca were of an amicable
nature.

Abdallah ibn Aoun, the son of Mohammed, who succeeded his father in
1858, and reigned for nineteen years, was a man of considerable ability,
and he is credited with having had views of so advanced a nature as to
include the opening of Hejaz to European trade. Nor was his brother, who
in 1877 became Grand Sherif, of a less liberal mind. Though of less
ability than Abdallah, he is described as eminently humane and virtuous,
and it is certain that, with the exception of his hereditary enemies,
the Zeyds, he was universally beloved by the Hejazi. So much was this
the case that, in the year following the disastrous Russian war, when
Constantinople seemed on the point of dissolution, the Arabs began to
talk openly of making El Husseyn ibn Aoun Caliph in the Sultan's place.
I have not been able to ascertain that El Husseyn himself indulged the
ambitious project of his friends, for he was eminently a man of peace,
and the Caliphal title would hardly have given him a higher position
than he held. But it is certain that his popularity gave umbrage at
Constantinople, the more so as Abd el Hamid could not and dared not
depose him. El Husseyn, too, became specially obnoxious to the
reactionary party, when it resolved at last to quarrel with England, for
he and his family persisted in remaining on friendly terms with the
British Government on all occasions when the interests of Indian
subjects of her Majesty's came in question at the Haj. For this reason,
principally, it would seem his death was resolved on to make room for
the agent of a new policy.

On the 14th of March, 1880, Jeddah was the scene of a solemn pageant.
The Haj was just over, and the seaport of Mecca crowded with pilgrims
was waiting for the Grand Sherif, the descendant of the prophet and the
representative of the Sacred House of Ali, to give the blessing of his
presence to the last departing votaries. Travelling by night from Mecca,
El Husseyn and his retinue appeared at dawn outside the city walls, and
when it was morning, mounted on a white mare from Nejd, and preceded by
his escort of Koreysh Arabs and the Sultan's guard of honour, he rode
into the town. The streets of Jeddah are narrow and tortuous, and the
way from the gate to the house of Omar Nassif, his agent, where he was
accustomed to alight, was thronged with pious folk, who struggled for
the privilege of kissing his feet and the hem of his Arab cloak. He had
nearly reached the place when an old beggar from the crowd pushed his
way forward asking loudly for alms in the name of God. It was an appeal
not to be denied, and as the Sherif turned to those near him to order a
contribution from the bag kept for such distributions, the old man rose
upon him, and drawing a ragged knife (so it was described to me) struck
him in the belly. At first, even those who saw the deed hardly knew what
had happened, for El Husseyn did not fall or dismount, and without
speaking rode on to the house. There he was lifted from his mare and
carried to an upper chamber, and in the course of some hours he expired.

Those nearest him, meanwhile, had seized and cudgelled the old man, and
some of the escort had taken him to the guard-house. When it became
known what had happened, a great cry arose in Jeddah, and old and young,
and women and children, and citizens and strangers wept together. I have
heard the scene described as one beyond description moving, and the
women shrieked and wailed the whole night long. El Husseyn was beloved,
and he was taken in the flower of his manhood.

No satisfactory judicial investigation seems to have been made of the
deed, though a formal mejlis was held at Mecca whither the assassin was
immediately transferred, and on the fourth day he was publicly executed.
Who and what he was it is difficult to determine. The Turkish bulletin
on the event described him as a Persian fanatic, but no one confessed to
having known him, and those who saw and spoke to him while in custody
maintain that he was an Afghan and a Sunite. He seems to have given
half-a-dozen contradictory accounts of himself; but the general
impression remains that he came from Turkey, and was by profession a
dervish. He had not come with the Haj, but had been first noticed as a
beggar at Mecca ten days before, when he had asked and received an alms
of the Sherif, and had since been several times found obtrusively in El
Husseyn's path. No one at Jeddah holds the Turkish Governor to have been
cognisant of the crime. He was personally on good terms with El Husseyn,
and has since been disgraced; but all point to the Stamboul Camarilla
and even the Sultan himself as its author. It is known that Abd el Hamid
constantly employs dervishes as his spies and private agents, and some
who pretend to know best affirm that the old man received his mission
directly from the Caliph. I do not affect to decide upon the point, but
think the _onus probandi_ to lie with those who would deny it.

Assassination of a dangerous rival or of too powerful a chieftain has
been the resource time out of mind of the Ottoman sovereigns, and they
can hardly claim indulgence now from public opinion. The Sheykh of the
Dervishes is all powerful with his fanatical followers, and he is the
Sultan's servant; a word from him would doubtless have secured the
services of twenty such devotees. One circumstance points decidedly to
Constantinople. It is known in Jeddah that El Husseyn's successor, who
had long been resident at Constantinople, sent orders to his agent at
Jeddah to prepare for his return as Grand Sherif two months before El
Husseyn, who was a young man, died; and that he had, moreover,
dispatched most of his baggage in anticipation.

The last words of the old assassin are curious. Having done his deed he
seemed quite happy, and neither ate nor drank, but prepared for the next
world. A little while before he was executed he related a story. "There
was once," he said, "an elephant, a great and noble beast, and to him
God sent a gnat, the smallest thing which is. It stung him on the trunk
and the elephant died. Allah Kerim: God is merciful."

El Husseyn's successor, the man for whom room was made, and who knew
beforehand that it was to be made, was none other than the aged and
twice deposed Abd el Mutalleb, the son of the Wahhabite Ghaleb, the
fiercest fanatic of the Dewy Zeyd.

I have not room here to describe in detail the effect of this coup de
Jarnac on the political aspect of Hejaz. For the moment the reactionary
party is in power at Mecca, as it is at Constantinople. Abd el Mutalleb
is supported by Turkish bayonets, and the Aoun family and the Liberals
are suffering persecution at Mecca, while the Sherifal Court, which had
hitherto been most friendly to England, has become the focus of Indian
discontent. Outside the town all is disorder. It is sufficient for the
present if I have shown that there is in Hejaz an element of spiritual
power already existing side by side with the Sultan, of which advantage
may one day be taken to provide him with a natural successor. If no new
figure should appear on the political horizon of Islam when the Ottoman
empire dies, sufficiently commanding to attract the allegiance of the
Mussulman world (and of such there is as yet no sign), it is certainly
to the Sherifal family of Mecca that the mass of Mohammedans would look
for a representative of their supreme headship, and of that Caliphate of
which they stand in need.

The transfer of the seat of spiritual power from Constantinople to Mecca
would be an easy and natural one, and would hardly disturb the existing
ideas of the vulgar, while it would harmonize with all the traditions of
the learned. Mecca or Medina would, on the extinction of Constantinople,
become almost of necessity the legal home of the Ahl el Agde, and might
easily become the acknowledged centre of spiritual power. All whom I
have spoken to on the subject agree that the solution would be an
acceptable one to every school of Ulema except the distinctly Turkish
schools. Indeed "Mecca, the seat of the Caliphate" is, as far as I have
had an opportunity of judging, the cry of the day with Mussulmans; nor
is it one likely to lose strength in the future. Like the cry of "Roma
capitale," it seems to exercise a strong influence on the imagination of
all to whom it is suggested, and when to that is added "a Caliphate from
the Koreysh," the idea is to Arabs at least irresistible. How indeed
should it be otherwise when we look back on history?

For my own part, though I do not pretend to determine the course events
will take, I consider this notion of a return to Mecca decidedly the
most probable of all the contingencies we have reviewed, and the one
which gives the best promise of renewed spiritual life for Islam.
Politically the Caliph at Mecca would of course be less important than
now on the Bosphorus; but religiously he would have a far more assured
footing. Every year the pilgrimage from every part of the world would
visit him, and instead of representing a mere provincial school of
thought, he would then be a true metropolitan for all schools and all
nations.

The Arabian element in Islam would certainly support such a nomination,
and it must be remembered that Arabia extends from Marocco to Bushire;
and so would the Indian and the Malay--indeed every element but the
Turkish, which is day by day becoming of less importance. I have even
heard it affirmed that a Caliphate of the Koreysh at Mecca would go far
towards reconciling the Schismatics, Abadhites, and Shiahs with
orthodoxy; and I have reason to believe that it would so affect the
liberal three-quarters of Wahhabism. To the Shiahs, especially, a
descendant of Ali could not but be acceptable; and to the Arabs of Oman
and Yemen a Caliph of the Koreysh would be at least less repugnant than
a Caliph of the Beni Othman. There certainly have of late years been
symptoms of less bitterness between these schismatics and their old
enemies, the Sunites; and such a change in the conditions of the
Caliphate might conceivably bring about a full reconciliation of all
parties. Mussulmans can no longer afford to fight each other as of old;
and I know that a reunion of the sects is already an idea with advanced
thinkers. Lastly, the Caliphate would in Arabia be freed from the
incubus of Turkish scholasticism and the stigma of Turkish immorality,
and would have freer scope for what Islam most of all requires, a moral
reformation.

It is surely not beyond the flight of sane imagination to suppose, in
the last overwhelming catastrophe of Constantinople, a council of Ulema
assembling at Mecca, and according to the legal precedent of ancient
days electing a Caliph. The assembly would, without doubt, witness
intrigues of princes and quarrels among schoolmen and appeals to
fanaticism and accusations of infidelity. Money, too, would certainly
play its part there as elsewhere, and perhaps blood might be shed. But
any one who remembers the history of the Christian Church in the
fifteenth century, and the synods which preceded the Council of Basle,
must admit that such accompaniments of intrigue and corruption are no
bar to a legal solution of religious difficulties. It was above all else
the rivalries of Popes and Anti-popes that precipitated the Catholic
Reformation.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] According to Canon Law the Caliph cannot cede any portion of the
lands of Islam except on physical compulsion.

[15] This too was written before the events of September, 1881. These
have immensely added to the chance of Cairo's becoming once more the
seat of the Caliphate, though not perhaps of Mohammed Towfik's being the
Caliph elected.




CHAPTER IV.

A MOHAMMEDAN REFORMATION.


It is with considerable doubt of my ability to do justice to so very
difficult a subject that I now approach the most important point of all
in this inquiry, namely, the question on which in reality every other
depends: "Is there a possibility of anything like general reform for
Islam in her political and moral life?"

It is obvious that, unless we can answer this in the affirmative, none
of the changes I have been prefiguring will very much affect her
ultimate fortunes--neither the solution of her legal deadlock with the
Ottoman Caliphate, nor the transfer of her metropolis to a new centre,
nor even the triumph of her arms, if such were possible, in Africa or
India. These by themselves could, at best, only delay her decline. They
might even precipitate her ruin. Islam, if she relies only on the sword,
must in the end perish by it, for her forces, vast as they are, are
without physical cohesion, being scattered widely over the surface of
three continents and divided by insuperable accidents of seas and
deserts; and the enemy she would have to face is intelligent as well as
strong, and would not let her rest. Already what is called the "Progress
of the World" envelopes her with its ships and its commerce, and, above
all, with its printed thought, which she is beginning to read. Nor is it
likely in the future to affect her less. Every year as it goes by
carries her farther from the possibility of isolation, and forces on her
new acquaintances, not only her old foes, the Frank and Muscovite, but
the German, the Chinaman, and the American, with all of whom she may
have in turn to count. If she would not be strangled by these influences
she must use other arms than those of the flesh, and meet the
intellectual invasion of her frontiers with a corresponding
intelligence. Otherwise she has nothing to look forward to but a gradual
decay, spiritual as well as political. Her law must become little by
little a dead letter, her Caliphate an obsolete survival, and her creed
a mere opinion. Islam as a living and controlling moral force in the
world would then gradually cease.

In expressing my conviction that Islam is not thus destined yet awhile
to perish I believe that I am running counter to much high authority
among my countrymen. I know that it is a received opinion with those
best qualified to instruct the public that Islam is in its constitution
unamenable to change, and by consequence to progressive life, or even,
in the face of hostile elements, to prolonged life at all. Students of
the Sheriat have not inaptly compared the Koranic law to a dead man's
hand, rigid and cold, and only to be loosened when the hand itself shall
have been cut away. It has been asserted that the first rule of
Mohammedan thought has been that change was inadmissible, and
development of religious practice, either to right or left of the narrow
path of mediæval scholasticism, absolutely precluded. I know this, and I
know, too, that a vast array of learned Mohammedan opinion can be cited
to prove this to be the case, and that very few of the modern Ulema of
any school of divinity would venture openly to impugn its truth. Nor
have I forgotten the repeated failure of attempts made in Turkey within
the last fifty years to gain religious assent to the various legal
innovations decreed by Sultan after Sultan in deference to the will of
Europe, nor the fate which has sometimes overtaken those who were the
advocates of change. I know, according to all rule written and spoken by
the orthodox, that Islam cannot move, and yet in spite of it I answer
with some confidence in the fashion of Galileo, "E pur si muove."

The fact is, Islam does move. A vast change has come upon Mohammedan
thought since its last legal Mujtahed wrote his last legal opinion; and
what was true of orthodox Islam fifty and even twenty years ago is no
longer true now. When Urquhart, the first exponent of Mohammedanism to
Englishmen, began his writing, the Hanefite teaching of Constantinople
had not begun to be questioned, and he was perfectly justified in citing
it as the only rule recognized by the mass of the orthodox. No such
thing as a liberal religious party then existed anywhere, and those who
broke the law in the name of political reform were breakers of the law
and nothing more. Every good man was their enemy, and if any spoke of
liberty he was understood as meaning licence. It was not even conceived
then that the Sheriat might be legally remodelled. Now, however, and
especially within the last ten years, a large section of godly and
legal-minded men have ranged themselves on the side of liberal opinion,
and serious attempts have been made to reconcile a desire of improvement
with unabated loyalty to Islam.

A true liberal party has thus been formed, which includes in its ranks
not merely political intriguers of the type familiar to Europe in Midhat
Pasha, but men of sincere piety, who would introduce moral as well as
political reforms into the practice of Mohammedans. These have it in
their programme to make the practice of religion more austere while
widening its basis, to free the intelligence of believers from
scholastic trammels, and at the same time to enforce more strictly the
higher moral law of the Koran, which has been so long and so strangely
violated. In this they stand in close resemblance to the "Reformers" of
Christianity; and some of the circumstances which have given them birth
are so analogous to those which Europe encountered in the fifteenth
century that it is impossible not to draw in one's own mind a parallel,
leading to the conviction that Islam, too, will work out for itself a
Reformation.

The two chief agents of religious reform in Europe were the misery of
the poor and the general spread of knowledge. It is difficult at this
distance of time to conceive how abject was the general state of the
European peasantry in the days of Louis XI. of France and Frederick III.
of Germany. The constant wars and almost as constant famines, the
general insecurity of the conditions of life, the dependence of a vast
majority of the poor on capricious patrons, the hideous growth of
corruption and licentiousness in the ruling classes, and the impotence
of the ruled to obtain justice, above all, the servile acquiescence of
religion, which should have protected them, in the political
illegalities daily witnessed--all these things, stirring the hearts of
men, caused them to cry out against the existing order of Church
discipline, and inclined them to Reform. On the other hand, as we all
know, the invention of printing had caused men to read and the invention
of the New World to travel. Moreover, in the fifteenth century the
Ottoman Turks, then an irresistible power, were invading Europe, and a
new element of contact with an outside world was created, and a new
fear. Christendom certainly at that time was in danger of political
annihilation, or fancied itself to be so, and the apprehensions of
devout persons in Central Europe were roused to a vivid consciousness of
impending evil by the thought that this was perhaps another authorized
scourge of God.

I will not strain the parallel further than it will bear, but I would
suggest that causes somewhat analogous to these are now at work among
the Mussulmans of the still independent states of Islam, and that they
are operating somewhat in the same direction. The Mussulman peasantry,
especially of the Ottoman Empire, are miserable, and they know that they
are so, and they look in vain to their religion to protect them, as in
former days, against their rulers. They find that all their world now is
corrupt--that the law is broken daily by those who should enforce the
law; that the illegalities of those who ruin them are constantly
condoned by a conniving body of the Ulema; that for all practical
purposes of justice and mercy religion has abdicated its claim to direct
and govern. They have learned, too, by their intercourse with strangers,
and in the towns by the newspapers which they now eagerly read, that
this has not been always so, and that servitude is not the natural state
of man or acquiescence in evil the true position of religion, and they
see in all they suffer an outrage inflicted on the better law of Islam.
I was much struck by hearing the Egyptian peasantry last year attribute
the lighter taxes they were then enjoying to the fact that their new
ruler was "a man who feared God."

At the same time the learned classes are shocked and alarmed at the
political decline of Islam and the still greater dangers which stare her
in the face, and they attribute them to the unchecked wickedness and
corruption with which the long rule of Constantinople has pervaded every
class of society, even beyond its own territorial borders. They complain
now that they have been led astray, and believe that the vengeance of
Heaven will overtake them if they do not amend their ways. In all this,
I say, there is something of the spirit which once goaded Christians
into an examination of the bases on which their belief rested, and of
the true nature of the law which tolerated such great corruption.

Nor must we suppose that any part of this dissatisfaction is
attributable as yet to a decay of faith, such as we now witness among
ourselves. Islam as yet shows hardly a taint of infidelity. The
Mussulman of the present day, whatever his rank in life, believes with
as absolute a faith as did the Christian of the period just referred to.
With the exception of here and there a false convert or, as a very rare
case, an Europeanized infidel of the modern type, there is no such
thing as a Mohammedan sceptic, that is to say, a Moslem who does not
believe in the divine mission of Mohammed. He may neglect every duty of
his profession, be guilty of every crime, have broken every law--he may
be the worst and the most depraved of men--or, on the other hand, he may
have adopted the language and to a certain extent the tone of thought of
Europe, and, a thing far more rare, he may be even a scoffer and
blasphemer;--still I do not imagine that in his heart he any the less
firmly believes that the Koran is the book of truth, or that at the day
of judgment he shall be found with those who have escaped Jehannem
through their professed acknowledgment of God and of His apostle.

I have heard strange stories in corroboration of this from persons whom
I could not doubt, and about persons whom all the world knew. Thus, one
who was with Fuad Pasha, the most European of Ottoman diplomatists, in
his last days at Nice, assures me that his whole time was spent in a
recitation of the Koran, learning it by heart. Another, who was called
the Voltaire of Islam, performed his prayers and prostrations with
scrupulous regularity whenever he found himself in private; and a
third, equally notorious as a sceptic, died of religious mania. All,
too, who have mingled much with Mussulmans, must have been struck with
the profound resignation with which even thoughtless and irreligious men
bear the ills of life, and the fortitude with which they usually meet
their end--with the large proportion that they see of men who habitually
pray and fast, and who on occasion, at great risk and sacrifice, make
the pilgrimage, and with the general absence of profanity, and the fact
that an avowal of religion is never proffered apologetically as with us,
nor met in any society with derision. These things are, perhaps, not in
themselves evidence of belief, for hypocrites have everywhere their
reward, but the fact even of hypocrisy proves the general spirit to be
one of avowed belief.

The truly devout are doubtless rare, but where we find them it is
evident that their belief pervades their lives in as strict a sense as
it does devout persons among ourselves. It would probably be difficult
to point out in Europe men who in the world--I do not speak of
ecclesiastics or persons in religious orders--lead more transparently
religious lives than do the pious Moslems of the better class whom one
may find in almost any oriental town, or men who more closely follow
the ideal which their creed sets before them. To doubt the sincerity and
even, in a certain sense, the sanctity of such persons, would be to
doubt all religion. In any case it is notorious that the faith of Mecca
is still the living belief of a vast number of the human race, the rule
of their lives, and the explanation to them of their whole existence.
There is no sign as yet that it has ceased to be a living faith.

Neither in considering its future is it easy for a candid English mind
to escape the admission that, for all purposes of argument, the
Mohammedan creed must be treated as no vain superstition but a true
religion, true inasmuch as it is a form of the worship of that one true
God in whom Europe, in spite of her modern reason, still believes. As
such it is entitled to whatever credit we may give true religions of
prolonged vitality; and while admitting the eternal truth of
Christianity for ourselves, we may be tempted to believe that in the
Arabian mind, if in no other, Islam too will prove eternal.

In its simplest form Islam was but an emphatic renewal of the immemorial
creed of the Semites, and as long as a pure Semitic race is left in the
world, the revelation of Mecca may be expected to remain a necessary
link in their tradition. No modern arguments of science are ever likely
to affect the belief of Arabia that God has at sundry times and in
sundry places spoken to man by the mouth of his prophets; and among
these prophets Mohammed will always be the most conspicuous because the
most distinctly national. Also the law of Islam--I am not speaking
merely of the Sheriat as we now see it--will always remain their law
because it is the codification of their custom, and its political
organization their political organization because it is founded on a
practice coeval with their history.

Lastly, Semitic thought is a strong leaven which everywhere pervades the
minds of nations, aliens though they be, who have once admitted it; and
it will not easily be cast out. We have seen in Europe, even in England,
a land never brought physically into contact with Arabia, how long
Arabian thought, filtered as it was through France and Spain to our
shores, has dominated our ideas. Chivalry, a notion purely Bedouin, is
hardly yet extinct among us. Romance, the offspring of pre-Islamic
Arabia, is still a common motive of our action, and our poets express it
still, to the neglect of classic models, in the rhymed verse of Yemen.
The mass of our people still pray to the God of Abraham, and turn
eastwards towards that land which is Arabia's half-sister, the Holy Land
of the Jews.

If then we, who are mere aliens, find it impossible to escape this
subtle influence, what must it be for those races wholly or half Arabian
who have for centuries been impregnated with Islam, the quintessence of
Arabian thought? Who shall fix the term of its power, and say that it
cannot renew itself and live? "Send forth," says a famous English
writer, who was also a famous English statesman, "a great thought, as
you have done before, from Mount Sinai, from the villages of Galilee,
from the deserts of Arabia, and you may again remodel all men's
institutions, change their principles of action, and breathe a new
spirit into the scope of their existence."

But I must not lose myself in generalities or forget that it is for
practical Englishmen that I am writing. To be precise, I see two ways in
which it is probable that Islam will attempt to renew her spiritual
life, and two distinct lines of thought which according to external
circumstances she may be expected to follow--the first a violent and
hardly a permanent one, the second the true solution of her destiny.

Among the popular beliefs of Islam--and it is one common to every sect,
Shiite and Abadite, as well as Sunite--is this one, that in the latter
days of the world, when the power of God's worshippers shall have grown
weak and their faith corrupted, a leader shall arise who shall restore
the fortunes of the true believers. He shall begin by purging the earth
of injustice, fighting against oppressors wherever he shall find them,
Mohammedan as well as Infidel, and he shall teach the people a perfect
law which they shall have forgotten, and he shall reign over Islam in
place of their Khalifeh, being called the Móhdy, or guide. To this some
add that he will arise of a sudden in some distant corner of the earth,
and that he will march towards Mecca, and that everywhere the blood of
Moslems shall be shed like water, and that he shall enter Mecca when the
streets shall run with blood. In support of this coming of the Móhdy
many traditions exist which are held to be authentic by the Ulema. Thus
it is related on the authority of Abdallah ibn Messaoud that he heard
the Prophet say, "When there shall remain but one day of the days of the
earth, God shall prolong that day, and shall send forth from my house a
man bearing my name and the name of my father (Mohammed ibn Abdallah),
and he shall purify the earth from injustice and fill it with that which
is right." The same was heard also by Ali Ibn Abu Taleb, the Prophet's
son-in-law, and by Hadhifat Ibn el Yaman, who relates that this prophecy
was delivered by Mohammed one Friday at the Khotbah, or sermon, in
Medina. Salman el Faris, another witness, declares that he afterwards
approached the Prophet and stood before him and asked him, "From which
of thy descendants, O Apostle of God, shall the Móhdy be?" And the
Prophet answered, stretching his hand towards his grandson Huseyn, "From
this child shall he come."

Besides this general belief, which, though not a positive dogma of their
faith, is common to all Mussulmans, the Shiites, always prone to
exaggerate and embellish, maintain that the Móhdy's duty is not limited
to teaching, guiding, and purifying the law, but also that he shall
revenge the blood unjustly shed of the Imams; and they cite in support
of this a tradition of Ali ibn Abu Taleb, who thus addressed his son,
Huseyn, the same who was afterwards martyred at Kerbela, "I swear to
thee, O my son," he said, "I swear by my soul, and by my offspring, and
by Kerbela, and by its temple, that the day shall come in which our
beards shall be dyed with blood. And I swear that afterwards God shall
raise up a man, the Móhdy, who shall stand in our place, the lord of
mankind. He it is who shall avenge us, nay, he shall avenge thy blood
also, O Huseyn. Therefore have patience. For the blood of one man he
shall shed the blood of a thousand; and he will not spare them who have
helped our enemies."

The Shiites say also that this Móhdy will be no new personage, but that
he lives already in the flesh, being no other than the twelfth and last
of their recognized Imams, who was born in the year 260 of the Hejira,
and whose name was Mohammed ibn El Hassan, Abul Kassem, El Móhdy, Lord
of the Command and Lord of Time; and who, while yet a child, disappeared
from the world, retaining nevertheless his authority. This Móhdy they
expect _when the Turkish rule is in decay_. After accomplishing his
vengeance and re-establishing justice he shall rule for an undetermined
period, when Jesus the Son of Mary also shall come, and the Apostle
Mohammed, an apparition which will announce the end of the world.[16]

It would seem, therefore, exceedingly probable that out of the religious
ferment which we now see agitating Africa some enthusiast will arise who
will announce himself as this Móhdy, and head an active movement of
reform. Already, indeed, two such personages have made their appearance,
one in Tripoli, of whom I heard much talk a year ago, and who is now
said to be marching to join the defenders of Keruan; and a second quite
recently in Soudan. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of
reformation such an inspired Guide would preach. Indeed his rôle is
marked out for him in the prophecies just quoted. He would purge the
earth of injustice with the sword, and, breaking with all authority but
that of the Koran he would seek to renew a kingdom of heaven on the
model of Islam militant. It would be a repetition, but on a grander
scale, of the Wahhabite movement of the eighteenth century, and, having
a wider base of operations in the vast fanatical masses of North Africa,
might achieve far more important results.

Even without pretending to the rank of an inspired guide, it is certain
that a man of zeal and character might in the present crisis easily
persuade the Malekite Arabs to reform their moral practice, if necessary
to asceticism, by proving to them that they would thus regain their
ascendancy in arms. On this basis a reformation would be easy; but it
would be analogous to that of the Hussites and Anabaptists in Europe,
rather than of the true Church reformation which succeeded these, and
would hardly be universal or permanent.

I once heard a most distinguished Alem describe the qualifications of
one who should preach a reform of this kind:--"The man," said he, "who
would persuade us to reform must come, in the first place, of a
well-recognized family. He must be either a prince, or a Sherif, or an
hereditary saint. This would secure him from a first personal attack on
the ground of seeming impiety. He must secondly be an Arab, gifted with
the pure language of the Koran, for the Arabian Ulema would not listen
to a barbarian; and he must possess commanding eloquence. A reformer
must before all else be a preacher. Thirdly, he must be profoundly
learned, that is to say, versed in all the subtleties of the law and in
all that has been written in commentary on the Koran; and he must have a
ready wit, so that in argument he may be able constantly to oppose
authority with authority, quotation with quotation. Granted these three
qualifications and courage and God's blessing, he may lead us where he
will."

The chief obstacles, however, to a reformation of this sort would not be
in the beginning, nor would they be wholly moral ones. The full
programme of the Móhdy needs that he should conquer Mecca; and the land
road thither of an African reformer lies blocked by Egypt and the Suez
Canal. So that, unless he should succeed in crossing the Red Sea through
Abyssinia (an invasion which, by the way, would fulfil another ancient
prophecy, which states that the "Companions of the Elephant," the
Abyssinians, shall one day conquer Hejaz), he could not carry out his
mission. Nor, except as an ally against the Turk, would a fanatical
reformer now find much sympathy in Arabia proper. The Peninsular Arabs
have had their Puritan reformation already, and a strong reaction has
set in amongst them in favour of liberal thought. They are in favour
still of reform, but it is of another kind from that preached by Abd el
Wahhab; and it is doubtful whether a new militant Islam would find many
adherents amongst them.

The only strong advocate of such views at the present day among true
Arabs in Arabia is the aged Sherif, Abd el Mutalleb, the Sultan's
nominee, who indeed has spared no pains, since he was installed at
Mecca, to fan the zeal of the North Africans. A Wahhabi in his youth, he
is still a fierce Puritan; and it is possible that, should he live long
enough (he is said to be ninety years old), he may be able to produce a
corresponding zeal in Arabia. But at present the mass of the Arabs in
Hejaz, no less than in Nejd and Yemen, are occupied with more humane
ideas. Abd el Mutalleb's chief supporters in Mecca are not his own
countrymen, but the Indian colony, descendants many of them of the Sepoy
refugees who fled thither in 1857, and who have the reputation of being
the most fanatical of all its residents. The true Arabs are in revolt
against his authority.

Again, it is improbable that any enunciation of Puritan reform would
find support among the northern races of Asia, which are uniformly sunk
in gross sensuality and superstition; while Constantinople may be
trusted to oppose all reform whatever. Wahhabism, when it overspread
Southern Asia, never gained a foothold further north than Syria, and
broke itself to pieces at last against the corrupt orthodoxy of
Constantinople. And so too it would happen now. Abd el Hamid, in spite
of his zeal for Islam, would see in the preaching of a moral reform only
a new heresy; and, as we have seen, the Móhdy's mission is against all
evil rule, the Sultan's and Caliph's not excepted. So that, unless Abd
el Hamid places himself openly at the head of the warlike movement in
Africa and so forestalls a rival, he is not likely long to give it his
loyal support. Already there are symptoms of his regarding events in
Tunis with suspicion, and on the first announcement of an inspired
reformer he would, I believe, not hesitate to pronounce against him. I
understand the Turkish military reinforcements at Tripoli quite as much
in the light of a precaution against Arab reform as against infidel
France.

Puritanism, then, on a militant basis, even if preached by the Móhdy
himself, could hardly be either general or lasting, and its best result
would probably be, that after a transient burst of energy, which would
rouse the thought of Islam and renew her spiritual life, a humaner
spirit, as in Arabia would take its place, and lead to a more lasting,
because a more rational, reform.

But it was not to such a Puritan reformation that I was pointing when I
expressed my conviction that Islam would in the end work out her
salvation, nor do I hold it necessary that she should find any such
_deus ex machinâ_ as an inspired guide to point her out her road. Her
reformation is indeed already begun, and may be gradually carried to its
full results, by no violent means, and in a progressive, not a
reactionary spirit. This only can be the true one, for it is a law of
nations and of faiths, no less than of individuals, that they cannot
really return upon their years, and that all beneficial changes for them
must be to new conditions of life, not to old ones--to greater
knowledge, not to less--to freedom of thought, not to its enslavement.
Nor is there anything in the true principles of Islam to make such
progress an unnatural solution of her destiny.

Mohammedanism in its institution, and for many centuries after its
birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason
as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs. If we
examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this. The
Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of
Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans
live. At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity
of God, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and
the revelation of God's claims on man. Psalms, many of them sublime,
occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to
believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional
history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only
in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly
be classed as law. Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its
earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident
that to it, and not to the Koran's dogmatic theology, Islam owed its
great and long career of triumph in the world.

Now this law was not, like the Koran, brought down full-fledged from
heaven. At first it was little more than a confirmation of the common
custom of Arabia, supplemented indeed and corrected by revelation, but
based upon existing rules of right and wrong. When, however, Islam
emerged from Arabia in the first decade of her existence, and embracing
a foreign civilization found herself face to face with new conditions of
life, mere custom ceased to be a sufficient guide; and, the voice of
direct revelation having ceased, the faithful were thrown upon their
reason to direct them how they were to act. Revelation continued,
nevertheless, to be the groundwork of their reasoning, and the teaching
of their great leader the justification of each new development of law
as the cases requiring it arose. The Koran was cited wherever it was
possible to find a citation, and where these failed tradition was called
in. The companions of the Prophet were in the first instance consulted,
and their recollections of his sayings and doings quoted freely; while
afterwards, when these too were gone, the companions of the companions
took their place, and became in their turn cited.

Thus by a subtle process of comparison and reasoning, worked out through
many generations, the Mohammedan law as we see it was gradually built
up, until in the third century of Islam it was embodied by order of the
Caliph into a written code. The Fakh ed Din and the Fakh esh Sheriat of
Abu Hanifeh, the doctor intrusted with this duty, was a first attempt to
put into reasoned form the floating tradition of the faithful, and to
make a digest of existing legal practice. He and his contemporaries
examined into and put in order the accumulated wealth of authority on
which the law rested, and, taking this and rejecting that saying of the
Fathers of Islam, founded on them a school of teaching which has ever
since been the basis of Mohammedan jurisprudence.

Abu Hanifeh's code, however, does not appear to have been intended, at
the time it was drawn up, to be the absolute and final expression of all
lawful practice for the faithful. It included a vast amount of tradition
of which either no use was made by its compiler, or which stood in such
contradiction with itself that a contrary interpretation of it to his
could with equal logic be deduced. Abu Hanifeh quoted and argued rather
than determined; and as long as the Arabian mind continued to be supreme
in Islam the process of reasoning development continued.

The Hanefite code was supplemented by later doctors, Malek, Esh Shafy,
and Ibn Hanbal, and even by others whose teaching has been since
repudiated, all in the avowed intention of suiting the law still
further to the progressive needs of the faithful, and all following the
received process of selecting and interpreting and reasoning from
tradition. These codes were, for the then existing conditions of life,
admirable; and even now, wherever those conditions have remained
unaltered, are amply sufficient for the purposes of good government and
the regulation of social conduct. They would, nevertheless, have been
but halting places in the march of Mohammedan legislation, had the
destinies of Islam remained permanently in the hands of its first
founders.

Unfortunately, about the eleventh century of our era, a new and
unfortunate influence began to make itself felt in the counsels of the
Arabian Ulema, which little by little gaining ground, succeeded at last
in stopping the flow of intellectual progress at the fountain head. The
Tartar, who then first makes his appearance in Mohammedan politics,
though strong in arms, was slow to understand. He had no habit of
thought, and, having embraced Islam, he saw no necessity for further
argument concerning it. The language of the Koran and the traditions was
a science sealed to him; and the reasoning intelligence of the Arab
whose dominion he had invaded was a constant reproof to him. He dared
not venture his barbarian dignity in the war of wit which occupied the
schools; and so fortified his unintelligence behind a rampart of
dogmatic faith. Impotent to develop law himself, he clutched blindly at
that which he found written to his hand. The code of Abu Hanifeh seemed
to him a perfect thing, and he made it the resting place of his legal
reason. Then, as he gradually possessed himself of all authority, he
declared further learning profane, and virtually closed the schools. His
military triumphs in the sixteenth century sealed the intellectual fate
of Islam, and from that day to our own no light of discussion has
illumined Moslem thought, in any of the old centres of her intelligence.
Reason, the eye of her faith in early times, has been fast shut--by
many, it has been argued, blind.

It is only in the present generation, and in the face of those dangers
and misfortunes to which Islam finds herself exposed, that recourse has
once more been had to intellectual methods; and it is precisely in those
regions of Islam where Arab thought is strongest that we now find the
surest symptoms of returning mental life. Modern Arabia, wherever she
has come in contact with what we call the civilization of the world, has
shown herself ready and able to look it in the face; and she is now
setting herself seriously to solve the problem of her own position and
that of her creed towards it.

In North Africa, indeed, civilization for the moment presents itself to
her only as an enemy; but where her intelligence has remained unclouded
by the sense of political wrong she has proved herself capable, not only
of understanding the better thought of Europe, but of sympathizing with
it as akin to her own. Thus at Cairo, now that the influence of
Constantinople has been partially removed, we find the Arabian Ulema
rapidly assimilating to their own the higher principles of our European
thought, and engrafting on their lax moral practice some of the better
features of our morality. It is at no sacrifice of imagined dignity, as
with the Turks, that Egypt is seeking a legal means for universal
religious toleration, or from any pressure but that of their own
intelligence that her chief people are beginning to reform their
domestic life, and even, in some instances, to adopt the practice of
monogamy. The truth would seem to be that the same process is being
effected to-day in their minds as was formerly the case with their
ancestors. In the eighth century, the Arabs, brought into contact with
Greek philosophy, assimilated it by a natural process of their reasoning
into the body of their own beliefs; and now in the nineteenth they are
assimilating a foreign morality into their own system of morals.

Not only in Egypt,--in Oman and Peninsular Arabia, generally there is a
real feeling of cordiality between the Mohammedan and his Christian
"guest." The abolition of slavery in Zanzibar was a concession to
European opinion at least as much as to European force; and a moral
sympathy is acknowledged between a Moslem and a Christian State which
has its base in a common sense of right and justice. I have good reason
to believe that, were the people of Yemen to effect their deliverance
from Constantinople, the same humane feeling would be found to exist
among them; and I know that it exists in Nejd; while even in Hejaz,
which is commonly looked upon as the hot-bed of religious intolerance, I
found all that was truly Arabian in the population as truly liberal.
Under the late Grand Sherif, Abd el Hamid's reputed victim, these ideas
were rapidly gaining ground; and had it not been for his untimely end, I
have high authority for stating that the Mohammedan Holy Land would now
be open to European intercourse, and slavery, or at least the slave
trade, be there abolished.

There is, therefore, some reason to hope that, were Arabian thought once
more supreme in Islam, its tendency would be in the direction of a wider
and more liberal reading of the law, and that in time a true
reconciliation might be effected with Christendom, perhaps with
Christianity. The great difficulty which, as things now stand, besets
reform is this: the Sheriat, or written code of law, still stands in
orthodox Islam as an _unimpeachable_ authority. The law in itself is an
excellent law, and as such commends itself to the loyalty of honest and
God-fearing men; but on certain points it is irreconcilable with the
modern needs of Islam, and it cannot legally be altered.

When it was framed it was not suspected that Mohammedans would ever be
subjects of a Christian power, or that the Mohammedan State would ever
need to accommodate itself to Christian demands in its internal policy.
It contemplated, too, mainly a state of war, and it accepted slavery and
concubinage as war's natural concomitants. It did not understand that
some day Islam would have to live at peace with its neighbours, if it
would live at all, or that the general moral sense of the world would
be brought to bear upon it with such force that the higher instincts of
Moslems themselves should feel the necessity of restricting its old and
rather barbarous licence as to marriage and divorce. Yet these things
have come to pass, or are rapidly coming; and the best thinkers in Islam
now admit that changes in the direction indicated must sooner or later
be made. Only they insist that these should be legally effected, not
forced on them by an overriding of the law.

What they want is _a legal authority to change_. Now, no such authority
exists, either in the Ottoman Sultan, or in the Sherif, or in any Sheykh
el Islam, Mufti, or body of Ulema in the world. None of these dare
seriously meddle with the law. There is not even one universally
recognized tribunal to which all Moslems may refer their doubts about
the law's proper reading, and have their disputes resolved. A fetwa, or
opinion, is all that can be given, and it applies only to the land where
it is issued. The fetwa of this great Alem in one Moslem state may be
reversed by the fetwa of another in that. The Sheykh el Islam at
Constantinople may be appealed against to the Mufti at Mecca or Cairo,
or these again, it may be, to Bokhara. None absolutely overrides the
rest. Thus while I was at Jeddah there came a deputation of Mussulmans
from Bengal, being on their way to Mecca to ask a fetwa on the disputed
point whether believers were permitted or not to use European dress. A
previous fetwa had been asked at Constantinople, but the deputation was
dissatisfied, alleging that the Sheykh el Islam there could not be
trusted and that they preferred the Meccan Mufti. Thus legal-minded
Moslems who would see their way to improvement are constantly faced with
a legal bar, the want of authority. _As things stand_ there is no remedy
for this.

An opinion, however, seems now to be gaining ground among the learned,
that a legal issue may one day be found in the restoration to the
Caliphate of what is called by them the _Saut el Haï_, the living voice
of Islam, which in its first period, and indeed till the destruction of
the Abbaside dynasty by Holagu, belonged to the successors of the
Prophet. It is certain that in the first four reigns of Abu Bekr, Omar,
Othman, and Ali, such a living power to legislate was accorded to the
Caliphs; and that on their own authority they modified at will the yet
unwritten law.

Thus it is related of Abu Bekr that in one instance he set aside a law
called the Mota, though based directly on some sentences of the Koran,
declaring it not conformable to the better tradition; and that Ali again
reversed this ruling, which has, nevertheless, been adhered to by the
Sunites. Later, too, the Ommiad and Abbaside Caliphs exercised this
right of legislation by deputy; it was in their names that the
Mujtaheddin, Abu Hanifeh and the rest, framed their first codes of law;
and to the last the words of their mouth were listened to, as in some
measure inspired utterances, by the faithful.

It was only when the sacred office passed from the sacred and legitimate
House that this feeling of reverence ceased, and the living voice of the
Caliph was disregarded in Islam. The Ottoman conqueror, when he took
upon him the title of Emir el Mumenin, did not venture to claim for
himself the power to teach, nor would Moslems have listened to any such
pretension. The House of Othman was from the first sunk in degrading
vices, and was too untaught to teach. The account given us by Bertrandon
de la Brocquière in the fifteenth century of the court and habits of the
"Grand Turk" is evidently no exaggeration; and it is easy to conceive by
the light of it how impossible it must have been for the Arabian Ulema
to connect the notion of inspiration in any way with such personages as
the Sultans then were. As a fact the Saut el Haï was not claimed by
Selim, nor has it ever been accorded to his descendants.

The want of some voice of authority is, nevertheless, becoming daily
more generally felt by orthodox Mohammedans; and it seems to me certain
that, in some shape or other, it will before long be restored to general
recognition. Abd el Hamid, whose spiritual ambition I have described,
has, quite recently, caused a legal statement of his Caliphal rights to
be formally drawn up, and it includes this right of the _Saut el
Haï_;[17] and, though it is improbable that the faithful will, at the
eleventh hour of its rule, invest the House of Othman with so sublime a
prerogative, it is extremely likely that, when a more legitimate holder
of the title shall have been found, he will be conceded all the rights
of the sacred office. Then the legal difficulty will at last be
overcome. The dead hand of the law will be no longer dead, but will be
inspired by a living voice and will.

Since we are imagining many things we may imagine this one too,--that
our Caliph of the Koreysh, chosen by the faithful and installed at
Mecca, should invite the Ulema of every land to a council at the time of
the pilgrimage, and there, appointing a new Mujtahed, should propound to
them certain modifications of the Sheriat, as things necessary to the
welfare of Islam, and deducible from tradition. No point of doctrine
need in any way be touched, only the law. The Fakh ed din would need
hardly a modification. The Fakh esh Sheriat would, in certain chapters,
have to be rewritten. Who can doubt that an Omar or an Haroun, were they
living at the present day, would authorize such changes, or that the
faithful of their day would have accepted them as necessary and
legitimate developments of Koranic teaching?

It would be an interesting study to pursue this inquiry further, and to
see how it might be worked out in detail. The crying necessity of
civilized Islam is a legal _modus vivendi_ with Europe, and such an
adaptation of its law on points where Europe insists as shall suffice to
stave off conflict. It is evident that legal equality must now be
accorded to Christians living under Mohammedan law, and that conformity,
on the other hand, in certain points to foreign law must be allowed to
Moslems living under Christian rule.

Again, slavery must, by some means, be made illegal; and a stricter
interpretation of the Koranic permission be put on marriage,
concubinage, and divorce. That all these changes might be logically
effected by a process of reasoning from the traditions, and expanding or
minimising the interpretation of the Koran, no one need doubt who
remembers what fetwas have already been given on these very points by
some of the Azhar Ulema. At present these decisions are unsatisfactory
to the faithful at large, because those issuing them have no recognized
authority to strain the law, but with authority the same decisions would
meet with general approval. At least such is the impression of modern
Mohammedan opinion made on me by my conversation with Mohammedans. It
would be interesting to work out these points; and I hope some day to
have an opportunity of doing so, but for the present I have neither the
time nor the knowledge sufficient for the purpose. I must be content
with having suggested the method; I cannot work out the details of a
reformation.

It may, however, give an idea of the kind of material in tradition which
reformers are looking for, if I quote a document which was being
circulated last spring among the Ulema of the Azhar. It purports to be
the text of the Prophet's first treaty with the Christians of Arabia,
though I do not vouch for its authenticity, and runs as follows:--

     "Covenant of God's Apostle, Mohammed, with the Christian people,
     their monks and their bishops."--(A.D. 625.)

     "Mohammed, the Apostle of God, sent with a message of peace to all
     mankind, dictateth the words of this covenant that the cause of God
     may be a written document between him and the people of Christ.

     "He who keepeth this covenant, let him be called a true Moslem
     worthy of the religion of God, and he who departeth from it let him
     be called an enemy, be he king or subject, great or small.

     "To this have I pledged myself: I will fence in their lands with my
     horsemen, and my footmen, and my allies, throughout the world; and
     I will care for their safety and the safety of their temples, their
     churches, their oratories, and their convents, and the places of
     their pilgrimage, wheresoever I shall find them, whether by the
     land or by the sea, in the east or in the west, on the mountain or
     in the plain, in the desert or in the city. There will I stand
     behind them that no harm shall reach them, and my followers shall
     keep them from evil. This is my covenant with them. I will exempt
     them in all matters wherein the Moslems are exempt. I command also
     that no one of their bishops be expelled from his see, nor shall
     any Christian be forced from his religion, nor shall a monk be
     forced from his convent, nor a hermit from his cell. It is my will
     that none of their holy buildings be destroyed or taken from them
     for Mosques by my people or for their dwellings. Whosoever
     despiseth this command is guilty before God and despiseth the
     pledge of His Apostle. All monks and bishops, and the dependents of
     these, I declare exempt from tribute, except such as they shall of
     their free will bring. Nor shall Christian merchants, doing
     business by sea, or diving for pearls, or working in the mines for
     gold, or silver, or jewels, even the wealthy and the mighty, pay
     more than twelve drachmas of yearly tribute. This, for such
     Christian merchants as shall live in Arabia; but for travellers and
     strangers in the land, they are exempt. Likewise such as have lands
     and gardens bearing fruit, and fields for corn, shall pay no more
     than it is in their power to bring.

     "And the people to whom I have pledged my word shall not be
     required to fight for themselves. But the Moslems shall protect
     them, asking them neither for arms, nor rations, nor horses for the
     war, except such as each shall choose to bring. But if any shall
     bring money, or help the Moslems in war, it must be acknowledged
     them with thanks.

     "And this is my command. No Moslem shall molest a follower of
     Christ; and if he dispute with him it shall be with good manners.
     And if a Christian do any man wrong it shall be a duty with Moslems
     to stay the avenger and make peace between them, paying the ransom
     if the wrong demand a ransom. And it is my wish that Christians
     should not be disregarded by my followers, for I have pledged my
     word unto them before God that they shall be as Moslems in my
     sight, sharing and partaking of all things with the rest. And in
     their marriages they shall not be troubled No Moslem shall say to a
     Christian, 'Give me thy daughter,' nor take her unless he be
     willing. And if a Christian woman become a slave to a Moslem he
     shall be bound by this covenant to leave her her religion, nor
     shall he compel her to disobey her religious chiefs. This is the
     command of God, and whosoever shall deny it and disobey God shall
     hold him for a liar.

     "Moreover it shall be a duty with my followers to repair the
     churches of the Christians, rendering them the service not as a
     debt, but for God's sake and for the keeping of the covenant, made
     to them by the Apostle of God.

     "No Christian shall be compelled to go forth in time of war as an
     envoy or spy against his people.

     "These are the privileges which Mohammed, the Apostle of God, hath
     granted to the followers of Christ. In return he requested them to
     deal with him and with the Moslems as follows:--

     "1. None of them in time of war shall give assistance, either
     openly or in secret, to the enemies of Islam.

     "2. They shall not give asylum in their churches or in their houses
     to the enemies of Islam.

     "3. They shall not help them with arms, or rations, or horses, or
     men.

     "4. They shall not keep counsel with the declared enemies of Islam,
     nor receive them in their houses, nor deposit money with them.

     "5. They shall grant to all Moslems seeking their hospitality
     entertainment for at least three days. But no Moslem shall require
     of them to make special cooking for him, and he shall eat of the
     common food with his host.

     "6. If a Moslem seek asylum with a Christian, the Christian shall
     not refuse to shelter him, and shall not deliver him to his
     enemies.

     "What Christian soever shall refuse these my requests, he shall not
     partake of the privileges of this covenant which I have made with
     the bishops, monks, and the rest, the followers of Christ. And I
     call God to witness with my followers and command them to keep
     faithful to this my precept, now and till the day of judgment.

     "The above was written in the presence of the under-signed persons,
     dictated by the Apostle of God, and written down by Mawiyeh Ibn Abu
     Sofian, on Monday, at the end of the fourth month, of the fourth
     year, of the Hejira, in Medina, peace be upon its Lord.

                             (Signed)   "ABU BEKR ES SADIK.
                                        "OMAR IBN EL KHOTTUB.
                                        "OTHMAN IBN AFFAN.
                                        "ALI IBN ABU TALEB.


     And thirty-one other signatures.

     "God be witness of what hath been said in this treaty. Praised be
     God the Lord of the Earth."

In conclusion, I would urge that while it is to Mohammedans themselves
that we must look to work out their ultimate regeneration according to
the rules of their own law and conscience, Christendom can still do much
to influence immediate results. The day of religious hatred between
Moslem and Christian as such is, I hope, nearly at an end; and though
political strife is unfortunately renewing the old quarrel in North
Africa, there is no danger now of its becoming on Europe's part a
crusade. Christendom has pretty well abandoned her hopeless task of
converting Islam, as Islam has abandoned hers of conquering Europe; and
it is surely time that moral sympathy should unite the two great bodies
of men who believe in and worship the same God.

England, at least, may afford now to acknowledge Mohammedanism as
something not to be merely combated and destroyed, but to be accepted by
her and encouraged--accepted as a fact which for good or evil will exist
in the world whether she will or no--encouraged because it has in it
possibilities of good which she cannot replace by any creed or
philosophy of her own. She can do much to help these possibilities, for
they depend for the moment on her political action. There is a good
cause and a bad in Islam as elsewhere in the world, and though hitherto
England's physical help has been given all to evil, it has been through
ignorance of the issues at stake; and I am confident that as she learns
these, she will acknowledge the wrong she has unconsciously been doing,
and repair while there is yet time her error.

In my next and concluding chapter I propose to sketch a policy towards
Islam worthy of England's high sense of duty, and conformable to her
true interests.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] A remarkable coincidence of prediction, Christian and Mohammedan,
has been pointed out to me in Rohrbacher's History of the Church,
published in 1845, where by an elaborate calculation based on the Old
Testament prophecies he arrives at the conclusion that the Turkish
Empire will fall in 1882, the date assigned it also by the Mohammedan
prediction quoted in my last chapter--that is to say A.H. 1300.

[17] This claim has been endorsed by Abd el Mutalleb, who is issuing a
_Resalat rayiyeh_, or pastoral letter, this year to the pilgrims in
support of Abd el Hamid's Caliphate.




CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND'S INTEREST IN ISLAM.


Nothing now remains for me but to point the moral which these essays
were designed to draw. It will have been observed that hitherto I have
avoided as much as possible all allusion to the direct political action
which Christendom is exercising, and must ever more and more exercise,
upon the fortunes of Islam; and in this I have been guided by two
motives. I have wished, first, to give prominence to the fact that in
all great movements of the human intellect the force of progression or
decay should be looked for mainly from within, not from without; and,
secondly, to simplify my subject so as to render it more easily
intelligible to the reading public. We have reached, however, the point
now when it will be necessary to take different ground, and look at
Islam no longer as regards her internal economy, but as she is being
affected by the world at large. We must inquire what influence the
material pressure of Europe is likely to have on her in the Levant, and
what in Africa and Central Asia; and, above all, we must examine closely
our own position towards her, and the course which duty and interest
require us to pursue in regard to the vast Mussulman population of our
Indian Empire.

I take it the sentiment generally of Continental Europe--I do not speak
of England--towards Mohammedanism is still much what it has always been,
namely, one of social hostility and political aggression. In spite of
all the changes which have affected religious thought in Catholic
Europe, and of the modern doctrine of tolerance in matters of opinion,
none of the nations by which Islam is immediately confronted to the
north and west have really changed anything of their policy towards her,
since the days when they first resolved on the recovery of "Christian
lands lost to the infidel." It is true that most of them no longer put
forward religious zeal as the motive of their action, or the possession
of the Holy Sepulchre as its immediate object; but under the name of
"civilization" their crusade is no less a continuous reality, and the
direction of their efforts has not ceased to be the resumption by Europe
of political control in the whole of the provinces once forming the
Roman Empire. The sentiment in its origin was a just one, and, though
now become for the most part selfish with the various Christian states,
who see in the advantage to Christendom only an advantage to themselves,
it appeals to an ancient and respectable moral sanction which is in
itself no inconsiderable power. It is certain that the national
conscience neither of France, nor Spain, nor Italy, nor Austria would
repudiate an aggression, however unprovoked, upon any of the still
independent Mussulman states of the Mediterranean, and that the only
judgment passed on such an act by public opinion would be one dependent
on its failure or success.

Thus in estimating the future of Islam as a political body, and in view
of the disparity proved to exist at all points between modern Europe and
its ancient rival in the matter of physical strength, we must be
prepared to see the latter submit at no distant date to great
territorial losses along the whole line of its European frontier. Few, I
think, to begin from the extreme west, will be inclined to doubt that,
should the French succeed in thoroughly crushing the Arab movement which
they have provoked in Tunis, and which will in all probability be
extended next summer to Morocco and Tripoli, the beginning of the next
century will see what is left of the Barbary Coast in their possession,
or in that of Spain or Italy; and the greater part of the cultivable
lands fronting the Mediterranean occupied by their immigrants. What
France has done or attempted to do in Algiers her two neighbours may
possibly achieve with even more success in Morocco and western Tripoli,
for the Spaniards and Italians are both eminently colonizing races, and
the hill country of Barbary is little different in climate from their
own. Tripoli, on the break up of the Ottoman Empire, will certainly
tempt Italian statesmen, and Spain has already a footing on the African
coast in Tetuan. It is therefore conceivable that the better lands on
the seaboard will receive a flood of such agriculturists from either
country as now seek their fortunes on the River Plate and elsewhere.
Should such be the case, the Mohammedan population may be ousted from
their possession of the soil, and driven southwards, at least for a
time, and a considerable decrease of the political strength of Islam be
witnessed in that quarter. I do not, however, conceive that Europe will
ever obtain a sure colonial footing south of the Atlas, or that the
Mussulmans of the Sahara will lose anything of their present religious
character. At worst, Southern Morocco and Fezzan will always remain
independent Mohammedan States, the nucleuses of religious life in
Barbary, and links between the Mussulmans of Northern and Central
Africa, while further east the growing influence of Egypt will make
itself felt intellectually to the advantage of believers. It is,
however, to Central Africa that Islam must in the future look for a
centre of religious gravity westwards. There, in the conversion of the
negro race of the Tropics, already so rapidly proceeding, she has good
prospect of compensation for all losses on the Mediterranean coast; and,
screened by the Sahara and by a climate unsuited to European life, she
may retain for centuries her political as well as her religious
independence. The negro races will not only be Mohammedanised; they will
also be Arabised; and a community of language and of custom will thus
preserve for Soudan its connection with Mecca, and so with the general
life of Islam. The losses, then, to Islam in Africa will be rather
apparent than real, and may even in the end prove a source of new
strength.

Nor must we lose sight of the possibility of a French defeat I believe
that at no time during the past forty years has the military position of
"our allies" been in a graver peril in their colony than now, or the
resources of their antagonists greater. It is a weakness of the French
system in Africa that it has made no attempt to assimilate the native
population; and it is the strength of that population, in as far as it
is Arab, that it does assimilate French thought to its own advantage. It
is far from certain whether the conquest of Algiers may not some day
have for its effect the renewal of Mohammedan political vitality in all
the Barbary Coast.

A more absolute and immediate loss must be anticipated in Europe and
Western Asia. There it is pretty certain that in a very few years
Ottoman rule will have ceased, and the Turkish-speaking lands composing
the Empire been absorbed by one or other of the powerful neighbours who
have so long coveted their possession. Austria, in person or by deputy,
may be expected by the end of the present century to have inherited the
European, and Russia the Asiatic, provinces of Turkey proper, while the
fate of Syria and Egypt will only have been averted, if averted it be,
by the intervention of England. That a dissolution of the Empire may
and will be easily accomplished I have myself little doubt. The military
power of Constantinople, though still considerable for the purposes of
internal control, will hardly again venture to cope single-handed with
any European State, nor is it in the least probable that the Sultan will
receive further Christian support from without. The fall of Kars has
laid Asia Minor open to the Russian arms, and the territorial cessions
of San Stefano and Berlin have laid Roumelia open to the Austrian. On
the first occasion of a quarrel with the Porte a simultaneous advance
from both quarters would preclude the chance of even a serious struggle,
and the subjugation of the Turkish-speaking races would be effected
without more difficulty.

The weakness of the Empire from a military point of view is, that it is
dependent wholly on its command of the sea, a position which enables it
to mass what troops it has rapidly on the points required, but which
even a second-rate Mediterranean power could wrest from it. Its
communication cut by a naval blockade, the Empire would almost without
further action be dissolved. Whatever loyalty the Sultan may have lately
achieved outside his dominions, there is not only no spirit of national
resistance in Asia Minor itself, but the provinces, even the most
Mussulman, would hail an invading army as a welcome deliverer from him.
Left to themselves they would abandon without compunction the Sultan's
cause, and the next war of an European state with Turkey will not only
be her last, but it will in all likelihood hardly be fought out by her.

Nor do I conceive that the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the annexation
of its Turkish provinces would be a mere political loss of so much
territory to Islam. It would involve moral consequences far greater than
this for the whole Mussulman world of North-Western Asia. I have the
authority of the most enlightened of modern Asiatic statesmen in support
of my opinion that it would be the certain deathblow of Mohammedanism as
a permanent religious faith in all the lands west of the Caspian, and
that even among the Tartar races of the far East, the Sunite Mussulmans
of Siberia and the Khanates, and as far as the Great Wall of China, it
would be a shock from which Sunism in its present shape would with
difficulty recover. What has hitherto supported the religious constancy
of orthodox believers in those lands, formerly Ottoman, which have
become subject to Russia, has been throughout the consciousness that
there was still upon the Russian border a great militant body of men of
their own faith, ruled by its acknowledged spiritual head.

The centre of their religious pride has been Constantinople, where the
Sultan and Caliph has sat enthroned upon the Bosphorus, commanding the
two worlds of Europe and Asia, and securing to them communication with
the holy places of their devotion and the living body of true believers.
Their self-respect has been maintained by this feeling, and with it
fidelity to their traditions. Moreover, the school of St. Sophia has
been a fountain-head of religious knowledge, the university at which the
Ulema of Kazan and Tiflis and Astrachan have received their spiritual
education; while at all times religious personages from Constantinople
have travelled among them, keeping alive the recollection of their lost
allegiance. On this basis their faith has retained what it has of
loyalty in spite of the political Russianising they have undergone; but
with their political centre destroyed, they would be as sheep without a
shepherd, scattered in little groups here and there among a growing
Christian population, and shut out from the fold of their belief.

Constantinople is the assembling place of pilgrimage for all
Mohammedans west of the Ural Mountains, who reach it by the Black Sea,
and could never be replaced to them by any new centre further south
among the Arab races, with whom they have little sympathy or direct
religious connection. A Caliph at Mecca or in Egypt could do little for
them, and the Turkish-speaking Sunites would have no university open to
them nearer than Bokhara. In this respect they would find themselves in
a far worse position than the Moors, however universally these may
become subject to Europe, and their religious disintegration would be a
mere question of time. I believe, therefore, that Islam must be prepared
for a loss, not only of political power in Europe and in Western Asia,
but also of the Mohammedan population in the Ottoman lands absorbed by
Russia. It will be a strange revenge of history if the Ottoman Turks,
whom Europe has for so many centuries held to be the symbolic figure of
Mohammedanism, shall one day cease to be Mohammedan. Yet it is a revenge
our children or our grandchildren may well live to see.

How far eastward the full results of this religious disintegration may
extend, it is perhaps fanciful to speculate. The north-western
provinces of Persia, which are inhabited by Mussulmans of mixed race
speaking the Turkish language and largely interfused with Christian
Armenians, would, I am inclined to think, follow the destiny of the
West, and ultimately accept Christianity as a dominant religion. But,
east of the Caspian, Sunite Islam, though severely shaken, may yet hope
to survive and hold its ground for centuries.

The present policy of Russia, whatever it may be in Europe, is far from
hostile to Mohammedanism in Central Asia. As a religion it is even
protected there, and it is encouraged by the Government in its
missionary labours among the idolatrous tribes of the Steppes, and among
the Buddhists, who are largely accepting its doctrines in the extreme
East. Hitherto there has been no Christian colonization in the direction
of the Khanates, nor is there any indigenous form of Christianity.
Moreover, Central Asia, though connected by ties of sympathy with
Constantinople, has never been politically or even religiously dependent
on it. It has a university of its own in Bokhara, a seat of learning
still renowned throughout Asia, and it is thither and not to St. Sophia
that the Sunite Mussulmans east of the Caspian proceed for their
degrees.

Mohammedanism, therefore, in Eastern Asia is not exposed to such
immediate danger as in the West. Bokhara may lose its political
independence, but there is no probability for many generations to come
of its being Christianized as Constantinople certainly must be, and it
may even on the fall of the latter become the chief centre of Sunite
orthodoxy of the existing Hanefite type, remaining so perhaps long after
the rest of Islam shall have abandoned Hanefism. It is obvious, however,
that cut off geographically as the Khanates are from the general life of
Islam, Bokhara can but vaguely represent the present religious power of
Constantinople, and will be powerless to influence the general flow of
Mohammedan thought. Its influence could be exerted only through India,
and would be supported by no political prestige. So that it is far more
likely in the future to follow than to lead opinion. Otherwise isolation
is its only fate.

The future of Shiite Mohammedanism in Persia proper is a still more
doubtful problem. Exposed like the rest of Central Asia to Russian
conquest, the Persian monarchy cannot without a speedy and complete
revolution of its internal condition fail to succumb politically. The
true Irâni, however, have an unique position in Mohammedan Asia which
may save them from complete absorption. Unlike any Mohammedan race
except the Arabian, they are distinctly national. The Turk, conqueror
though he has always been, repudiates still the name of Turk, calling
himself simply a Moslem, and so likewise do the less distinguished races
he has subjected. But the Persian does not do this. He is before all
things Irâni, and to the extent that he has made for himself a
Mohammedanism of his own. He boasts of a history and a literature older
far than Islam, and has not consented to forget it as a thing belonging
only to "the Age of Ignorance." He runs, therefore, little risk of being
either Russianised or Christianised by conquest; and being of an
intellectual fibre superior to that of the Russians, and, as far as the
mass of the population is concerned, being physically as well gifted, it
may be supposed that he will survive, if he cannot avert, his political
subjugation.

There is at the present moment, I am informed, a last desperate effort
making at Teheran for the re-organization of the Empire on a liberal
basis of government, and though it would be folly to count much on its
success, it may conceivably succeed. Mohammedanism would not there, as
at Constantinople, be found a barrier to reform, for Persian Shiism is
an eminently elastic creed, and on the contrary may, it is thought, be
made the instrument of a social reformation; only, as I have said it
would be folly to count on its success; and there are certain moral
defects in Persian character which do not encourage lookers-on. Shiite
Mohammedanism, however, whether Persia be absorbed or not by Russia, is
of little importance in a general review of Islam's future, and may
safely be dismissed as not directly relevant to the main question before
us.

Admitting, then, the probability, nay, the certainty, of considerable
political and territorial losses northwards, caused by the violent
pressure of a hostile Europe, let us see what yet remains to Islam as
her certain heritage, and how the changes foreshadowed may affect her
general life. I cannot myself find any cause of despair for Mussulmans
in the prospect of a curtailment of their religious area in the
directions indicated, or any certain reason of exultation for their
enemies in the thought that with the fall of Constantinople Islam, too,
will have fallen. On the contrary, I see in the coming destruction of
the Ottoman supremacy, and in the exclusion of the northern races, even
at the cost of their religious support, from the counsels of the
faithful, an element of hope in the future far outweighing the immediate
chagrin which may be caused by loss of sovereignty or loss of
population.

The Mohammedan population which the fall of Constantinople would
conceivably cut off from the main body could not at most number more
than some twenty millions, and when we remember that this is no more
than a tithe of the whole Mussulman census, and that the proportion is a
constantly decreasing one, it will be evident that there is little
ground for looking at the loss as one necessarily fatal to religion. The
northern races still give to Mohammedanism an appearance of physical
strength; but it is an appearance only, and it is given at the cost of
its intellectual vigour. The political success of the Turks has for
centuries thrown Islam off its moral equilibrium, and their
disappearance from its supreme counsels will give weight to races more
worthy of representing religious interests. Constantinople will be
replaced by Cairo or Mecca, and the Tartar by the Arab--an exchange
which, intellectually considered, no lover of Islam need deplore.

One great result the fall of Constantinople certainly will have, which I
believe will be a beneficial one. It will give to Mohammedanism a more
distinctly religious character than it has for many centuries possessed,
and by forcing believers to depend upon spiritual instead of temporal
arms will restore to them, more than any political victories could do,
their lost moral life. Even independently of considerations of race as
between Turk and Arab, I believe that the fall of the Mussulman Empire,
as a great temporal dominion, would relieve Islam of a burden of
sovereignty which she is no longer able in the face of the modern world
to support. She would escape the stigma of political depravity now
clinging to her, and her aims would be simplified and intensified. I
have already stated my opinion that it is to Arabia that Mussulmans must
in the future look for a centre of their religious system, and a return
of their Caliphate to Mecca will signify more than a mere political
change. It is obvious that empire will be there impossible in the sense
given to it at Constantinople, and that the display of armies and the
mundane glory of vast palaces and crowds of slaves will be altogether
out of place.

The Caliph of the future, in whatever city he may fix his abode, will be
chiefly a spiritual and not a temporal king, and will be limited in the
exercise of his authority by few conditions of the existing material
kind. He will be spared the burden of despotic government, the odium of
tax-gathering and conscription over unwilling populations, the constant
struggle to maintain his authority in arms, and the as constant intrigue
against rival Mohammedan princes. It is probable that all these would
readily acknowledge the nominal sovereignty of a Caliph who could not
pretend to coerce them physically, and that the spiritual allegiance of
orthodox believers everywhere would accrue to him as other Mohammedan
sovereignty relaxed its hold. Thus the dream of what is called
Pan-islamism may yet be fulfilled, though in another form from that in
which it is now presented to the faithful by Abd el Hamid and the Ulema
of Constantinople.

That Islam in this spiritual form may achieve more notable triumphs than
by arms in Eastern and Southern Asia we may well believe, and even that
it may establish itself one day as the prevailing religion of the
Continent. Its moral advance within recent times in the Malay
Archipelago, in China, in Tartary, and in India, encourages the
supposition that under alien rule Mohammedanism will be able to hold its
own, and more than own, against all rivals, and that in the decay of
Buddhism it, and not Christianity, will be the form under which God will
eventually be worshipped in the Tropics. Its progress among the Malays
under Dutch rule is certainly an astonishing phenomenon, and, taken in
connection with a hardly less remarkable progress in Equatorial Africa,
may well console those Mussulmans who see in the loss of their temporal
dominions northwards signs of the decay of Islam. Could such a
reformation as was suggested in my last chapter be indeed effected, the
vigour of conversion would doubtless be redoubled, independently of any
condition of political prosperity in the ancient seats of Mohammedan
dominion. I do not, therefore, see in territorial losses a sign of
Islam's ruin as a moral and intellectual force in the world.

It is time, however, to consider the special part destined to be played
by England in the drama of the Mussulman future. England, if I
understand her history rightly, stands towards Islam in a position quite
apart from that of the rest of the European States. These I have
described as continuing a tradition of aggression inherited from the
Crusades, and from the bitter wars waged by the Latin and Greek Empires
against the growing power of the Ottoman Turks. In the latter England
took no part, her religious schism having already separated her from the
general interests of Catholic Europe, while she had withdrawn from the
former in the still honourable stage of the adventure, and consequently
remained with no humiliating memories to avenge. She came, therefore,
into her modern relations with Mohammedans unprejudiced against them,
and able to treat their religious and political opinions in a humane and
liberal spirit, seeking of them practical advantages of trade rather
than conquest. Nor has the special nature of her position towards them
been unappreciated by Mohammedans.

In spite of the deceptions on some points of late years, and recent
vacillations of policy towards them, the still independent nations of
Islam see in England something different from the rest of Christendom,
something not in its nature hostile to them, or regardless of their
rights and interests. They know at least that they have nothing to dread
from Englishmen on the score of religious intolerance, and there is even
a tendency with some of them to exaggerate the sympathy displayed
towards them by supposing a community of beliefs on certain points
considered by them essential. Thus the idea is common among the
ignorant in many Mussulman countries that the English are _Muwahedden_,
or Unitarians, in contradistinction to the rest of Christians, who are
condemned as _Musherrakin_, or Polytheists; and the Turkish alliance is
explained by them on this supposition, supplemented in the case of the
Turks themselves with the idea that England is itself a part of Islam,
and so its natural ally.[18] These are of course but ideas of the
vulgar. Yet they represent a fact which is not without importance,
namely, that England's is accepted by Mussulmans as a friendly not a
hostile influence, and that her protection is sought without that
suspicion which is attached to the friendly offices of other powers.
Even in India, where Englishmen have supplanted the Mussulmans as a
ruling race, the sentiment towards British rule is not, as far as I can
learn, and compared with that of other sections of the Indian community,
a hostile one.

The Mussulmans of Delhi and the Punjab would no doubt desire a
resumption by themselves of practical authority in the country where
they were till lately masters; but they are conscious that they are not
strong enough now to effect this, and their feeling towards English rule
is certainly less bitter than towards the Hindoos, their former
subjects, now their rivals. Were they in any way specially protected in
their religious interests by the Indian Government, they would, I am
confident, make not only contented but actively loyal subjects.

As things stand, therefore, it would seem natural that, in the general
disruption which will follow the fall of Constantinople, it is to
England the various nations of Islam should look mainly for direction in
their political difficulties. The place of adviser and protector,
indeed, seems pointed out for her. With the disappearance of the Ottoman
Sultan there will be no longer any great Mussulman sovereignty in the
world, and the Mohammedan population of India, already the wealthiest
and most numerous, will then assume its full importance in the counsels
of believers. It will also assuredly be expected of the English Crown
that it should then justify its assumption of the old Mohammedan title
of the Moguls, by making itself in some sort the political head of
Islam. Her Majesty will be left its most powerful sovereign, and it
will be open to her advisers, if they be so minded, to exercise
paramount influence on all its affairs. I do not say that they will be
so minded, but they will have the power and the opportunity to a degree
never yet presented to any Christian Government of directing the tone of
thought of Mussulmans throughout the world, and of utilizing the
greatest religious force in Asia for the purposes of humanity and
progress. I am myself profoundly convinced that on England's acceptance
or refusal of this mission the future of her dominion in India will
mainly depend, and with it the whole solution of the problem she has set
to herself of civilizing Southern Asia.

Let us see what our actual relations with Mohammedanism are, and what is
the value of its goodwill to us in Asia. And first as to India. I find
in _Hunter's Gazetteer_, our latest authority, the following figures:--

MUSSULMAN CENSUS OF INDIA.

Bengal                      19,553,831
Assam                        1,104,601
North-West Provinces         4,189,348
Ajmere                          47,310
Oudh                         1,197,724
Punjab                       9,337,685
Central Provinces              233,247
Berar                          154,951
Mysore                         208,991
Coorg                           11,304
British Burmah                  99,846
Madras                       1,857,857
Bombay                       2,870,450
                           -----------
Total                       40,867,145

These are large figures taken merely as they stand, but in point of fact
they represent far more than is apparent. To understand them at their
full value it must be remembered--First, that the Mussulman population
is a largely increasing one, not only in actual numbers, but in its
proportion to the other races and sects of the Peninsula, a fact which I
believe the census returns of 1881, when published, will amply prove.
Secondly, that its geographical distribution coincides pretty closely
with that of the political life and energy of the country. The Punjab
and the North-West Provinces alone contain an aggregate of thirteen
million Mussulmans. Thirdly, that it is homogeneous to a degree shown by
no other Indian community. Though less numerous by two-thirds than the
whole Hindoo population, it is far more so than any coherent section of
that population, and is thus the largest body of opinion in the Empire.
Fourthly, it is also the most generally enlightened. It is the only
section of the community which knows its own history and preserves the
tradition of its lost political importance; and if it has held itself
aloof hitherto from competition with other races for the public service,
it has been through pride rather than inability. What Mussulmans there
are who have entered the service of Government have been men of
distinguished capacity. And lastly, it is no isolated body, but remains
in close communication with the mass of its fellow-believers throughout
the world. The Mohammedan population of India is, therefore, an
exceptional as well as a large one.

Our second interest in Mohammedanism lies in Egypt. Here, standing at
the threshold of our commerce with the East, we find another large
community almost wholly Mussulman, for whose well-being we are already
to a certain extent pledged, and in whose political future we perceive
our own to be involved. A hostile Egypt we rightly hold to be an
impossibility for our position; and religious antagonism at Cairo, even
if controlled by military occupation, would be to us a constant menace.
Nor must it be supposed that Egypt, like the Barbary coast, will, into
whose hands soever it falls, change its religious aspect. The population
of the Delta is too industrious, too sober, and content with too little,
to fear competition as agriculturists with either Italians, Greeks, or
Maltese; and the conditions of life under a torrid sun will always
protect Egypt from becoming an European colony. The towns may, indeed,
be overrun by foreigners, but the heart of the country will remain
unchanged, and, like India, will refuse to remodel itself on any foreign
system of civilization. Mohammedanism, therefore, will maintain itself
in Egypt intact, and its good-will will remain our necessity.[19]

A third interest lies in Asiatic Turkey. This we have guaranteed by
treaty against foreign invasion; and though our pledge is nominally to
the Sultan, not to the people of the Empire, and though that pledge is
contingent upon an impossibility, administrative reform, and is
therefore not strictly binding, it is impossible to escape the
admission that we have a moral obligation towards the Mussulmans of
Asia Minor and Syria. How far we may be disposed or able to fulfil it
remains to be seen. I do not myself anticipate any further intervention
on the part of England in defence of the Turkish-speaking lands. These,
from their geographical position, lie outside our effective military
control, and, dishonourable as a retreat from our engagements will be to
us, it may be a necessity.

It is difficult to understand how an English army could effectively
protect either Asia Minor or Mesopotamia from Russian invasion. The
occupation of Kars has given Russia the command of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and with them of Armenia, Kurdistan and Irak, so that our
protection could hardly be extended beyond the sea-coast of Asia Minor
and the Persian Gulf. No such inability, however, applies to Syria.
There, if we _will_, we certainly _can_ carry out our engagements. A
mere strip of seaboard, backed by the desert, and attackable only from
the north on a narrow frontier of some hundred miles, Syria is easily
defensible by a nation holding the sea. It is probable that a railway
run from the Gulf of Scanderun to the Euphrates, and supported by a
single important fortress, would be sufficient to effect its military
security at least for many years; and Syria might thus have given to it
a chance of self-government, and some compensation for misfortunes in
which we have had no inconsiderable share. But this is an interest of
honour rather than of political necessity to England; and he must
possess a sanguine mind who, in the present temper of Englishmen, would
count greatly on such motives as likely to determine the action of their
Government. If, however, it should be otherwise, it is evident that the
success of such a protectorate would depend principally upon the
Mohammedan element in Syria, which so greatly preponderates over any
other.

A fourth interest, also a moral one, but connected with an accepted fact
of English policy, is the attempted abolition of the African slave
trade. Now, though it is unquestionable that Mohammedanism permits, and
has hitherto encouraged, slavery as a natural condition of human
society, it is no less true that without the co-operation of the various
Mussulman princes of the African and Arabian coasts its abolition cannot
be effected. Short of the occupation by European garrisons of all the
villages of the Red Sea, and from Gardafui southwards to Mozambique, or,
on the other hand, of the subjection of all independent Moslem
communities in Arabia and elsewhere, a real end, or even a real check,
cannot be put on the traffic except through the co-operation of
Mussulmans themselves. The necessity has, indeed, been completely
recognized in the numerous treaties and arrangements made with the
Sultans of Turkey, Zanzibar, and Oman, and with the Viceroy of Egypt;
and, though I am far from stating that these arrangements are wholly
voluntary on the part of any of the princes, yet their good-will alone
can make the prevention efficient. An excellent proof of this is to be
found in the case of the Turkish Government, which, since its quarrel
with the English, has given full license to the traffic in the Red Sea,
which no means at the disposal of the latter can in any measure check.

At no modern period has a larger number of slaves been imported into
Hejaz and Yemen than during the last eighteen months, and until friendly
relations with the Porte, or whatever Mussulman authority succeeds the
Porte in those provinces, are restored, slave-trading will continue. I
do not myself entirely sympathize with anti-slave-trade ideas as applied
to Mohammedan lands, knowing as I do how tolerable and even advantageous
the social condition of the negroes is in them. But still I wish to see
slavery discontinued, and I believe that a firm but friendly attitude
towards Mussulmans will have completely extinguished it in another two
generations. A rupture with them can only prolong and aggravate its
existence.

Lastly, we may perhaps find a prospective interest for England in the
probability of a Caffre conversion to Mohammedanism at no very remote
period, and the extension of Islam to her borders in South Africa. It is
of course premature to be alarmed at this, as it is a contingency which
can hardly happen in the lifetime of any now living; but Mohammedanism
is not a creed which a hundred or two hundred years will see
extinguished in Africa or Asia, and already it has passed considerably
south of the Equator. Cape Colony at this day numbers some fifteen
thousand Mussulmans.

It would seem, then, on all these grounds difficult for England to ally
herself, in dealing with Islam, with what may be called the Crusading
States of Europe. Her position is absolutely distinct from that of any
of them, and her interests find no parallel among Christian nations,
except perhaps the Dutch. For good as for evil, she has admitted a vast
body of Mohammedans into her social community, and contracted
engagements from which she can hardly recede towards others among them,
so that it is impossible she should really work in active antagonism to
them. As Christians, Englishmen may regret this; but as practical men,
they would surely be wise to recognize the fact, and to accept the
duties it entails. Nor can these be discharged by a mere policy of
inaction. England should be prepared to do more than assert a general
doctrine of tolerance and equality for all religions in respect of this
one. Mohammedanism is not merely an opinion; a certain political
organization is a condition of its existence, and a certain geographical
latitude; and, moreover, it is a force which cannot remain
neutral--which will be either a friend or a foe. To do nothing for
Mussulmans in the next ten years will be to take cause against them. The
circumstances of their case do not admit of indifference, and they are
approaching a crisis in which they will, on two points at least, require
vigorous political protection. Their Caliphate in some form of temporal
sovereignty, though perhaps not of empire, will have to be maintained;
and short of securing this to them, and their free access as pilgrims to
Mecca, it will be idle to pretend to Mussulmans that we are protecting
their interests, or doing any part of our sovereign duty towards them.
It can hardly be argued that the Indian doctrine of religious equality
will suffer from doing political justice to Mohammedans.

On the downfall, therefore, of the Ottoman Empire, whenever that event
shall occur, the _rôle_ of England in regard to Islam seems plainly
marked out. The Caliphate--no longer an empire, but still an independent
sovereignty--must be taken under British protection, and publicly
guaranteed its political existence, undisturbed by further aggression
from Europe. On the Bosphorus no such guarantee can now be reasonably
given, because there it lies in a position militarily indefensible.
England is a naval power, and the seat of the Caliphate must be one
secured from all attack by land. It will then be for Mohammedans, and
especially for the Mohammedans of India, to decide upon the new
metropolis of their faith, the conditions of their choice lying within
the narrow limits of their still independent lands. If Syria be still
free, that metropolis may be Damascus; if Irak, Bagdad; or it may be in
Egypt, or Arabia, or Central Asia.

It is manifest, however, that as far as British protection against
Europe is concerned, the further it is removed from Christendom the
better, and the more easily accessible by sea. I have already given it
as my opinion that the move, when made will be one southwards, and
ultimately to Arabia. But it may well happen that its first stage will
be no further than Cairo. The Caliphate reached Constantinople through
Egypt, and may return by the same road, and there are certain quite
recent symptoms which seem to point in the direction of such a course
being the one taken. The events of the last year in Egypt are
significant. For the first time in its modern history a strong national
party has arisen on the Nile, and has found full support from the Azhar
Ulema, who are now the most powerful body of religious opinion in Islam.
They are politically hostile to the Sultan, and though they have no
design as yet of repudiating his Caliphal title, they are unlikely to be
faithful to his broken fortunes, and on the downfall of Constantinople
will doubtless proclaim a Caliph of their own. The family of Mohammed
Ali, if popular, may then hope for their suffrages, or it may be some
seyyid, or sherif, of the legitimate house of Koreysh. In any case, a
Caliphate at Cairo is a possibility which we must contemplate; and one
which, under the political direction and sole guarantee of England, but
enjoying full sovereignty there, might be a solution of the difficulty
acceptable to Mohammedans, and not unfavourable to English interests. It
seems to me, however, that it would be but a make-shift arrangement, not
a permanent settlement, and this from the complexity of foreign
interests in Egypt, which would keep the Mohammedan pontiff there under
restraints irksome to the religious sense of Mussulmans. It would be in
fact but the prelude to that final return to Arabia which Arabian
thought, if no other, destines for the Caliphate. The Sherif of Mecca
would hardly tolerate any further subjection to an Emir el Mumenin shorn
of his chief attributes of power, and unable, it might be, any longer to
enforce his authority. Sooner or later the Caliphate, in some form or
another, would return to its original seat, and find there its final
resting-place.

Established at Mecca, our duty of protecting the head of the Mussulman
religion would be comparatively a simple one. Hejaz for all military
purposes is inaccessible by land for Europeans; and Mecca, were it
necessary at any time to give the Caliph a garrison of Mussulman
troops, is within a night's march of the coast. In Arabia no Christian
rights need vindication, nor could any European power put in a claim of
interference. Yemen, the only province capable of attracting European
speculation, would, I know, gladly accept an English protectorate, such
as has been already given with such good results to Oman; and other
points of the Arabian shore might equally be declared inviolable.
Arabia, in fact, might be declared the natural appanage of the
Caliphate, the Stati Pontificali of the supreme head of the Mussulman
religion. In its internal organization we should have no cause to
interfere; nor would its protection from without involve us in any
outlay.

It has already been shown how favourable an action an Arabian Caliphate
may be expected to exercise on the progressive thought of Islam. That it
could not be a hostile power to England is equally certain. Whether or
not the Caliph reside at Mecca, the Grand Sherifate must always there
exist and the pilgrimage be continued; and we may hope the latter may
then be principally under English auspices. The regulation of the Haj
is, indeed, an immediate necessary part of our duty and condition of
our influence in the Mussulman world; and it is one we should be grossly
in error to neglect. It will have been seen by the table given in the
first chapter that nearly the whole pilgrimage to Arabia is now made by
sea, and that the largest number of pilgrims sent there by any nation
comes from British territory. With the protectorate, therefore, in the
future of Egypt, and, let us hope, of Syria, England would be in the
position of exercising a paramount influence on the commercial fortune
of the Holy Cities.

The revenue of Hejaz derived from the Haj is computed at three millions
sterling, a figure proved by the yearly excess of imports over exports
in her seaports, for she produces nothing, and the patronage of half, or
perhaps two-thirds, of this great revenue would make England's a
position there quite unassailable. An interdiction of the Haj, or the
threat of such for a single year, would act upon every purse among the
Hejazi and neutralize the hostility of the most recalcitrant of resident
caliphs or sherifs; while a systematic development of the pilgrimage as
a Government undertaking, with the construction of a railway from Jeddah
to Mecca, and the establishment of thoroughly well-ordered lines of
steamers from the principal Mohammedan ports, all matters which would
amply repay their cost, would every year add a new prestige to English
influence. This might be still further enhanced by the very simple
measure of collecting and transmitting officially the revenue of the
Wakaf property, entailed on the sherifs, in India. This is said to
amount to half a million sterling, and might, as in Turkey, take the
form of a government subsidy. At present it is collected privately, and
reaches the sherifs reduced, as I have been told, by two-thirds in the
process of collection, so that the mere assumption of this perfectly
legitimate duty by the Indian authorities would put a large sum into the
hands of those in office at Mecca, and a proportionate degree of power
into the hands of its collectors. This, indeed, would be no more than is
being already done by our Government for the Shia Shrines of Kerbela and
Meshed Ali, with results entirely beneficial to English popularity and
influence.

With regard to the pilgrimage, I will venture to quote the opinion of
one of the most distinguished and loyal Mohammedans in India, who has
lately been advocating the claims of his co-religionists on the Indian
Government for protection in this and other matters. Speaking of Sultan
Abd el Hamid's Pan-islamic schemes, which he asserts have not as yet
found much favour in India, he continues, "I may, however, add that by
far the most formidable means which can be adopted for propagating such
ideas, or for rousing a desire for Islamic union, would be the
distribution of pamphlets to the pilgrims at Mecca. The annual Haj at
Mecca draws the more religious from all parts of India, and the Hajjis
on their return are treated with exceptional respect and visited by
their friends and neighbours, who naturally inquire about the latest
news and doctrines propounded in the Holy Cities; so that for the
dissemination of their views the most effective way would be for the
propagandists to bring the Hajjis under their influence. I call it
_effective_, because the influence of what the Hajjis say goes to the
remotest villages of the Mofussil." He then advocates as a
counter-acting influence the undertaking by Government of the transport
of the Haj to Jeddah, and the appointment of an agent, a native of
India, to look after their interests while in the Holy Land. "By
making," he concludes, "the arrangements I have suggested, the English
Government will gain, not only the good-will of the whole Mohammedan
population of India, but they will also inspire the Hajjis with the
wholesome feeling that they owe allegiance to, and can claim protection
from, an empire other than that to which the people of Arabia are
subject (the Turkish).

"The proposed help would stand in very favourable contrast to the
sufferings which the pilgrims undergo from maladministration at Mecca
and in their journey to Medina. Moreover, practically the assistance
rendered by the Government would be the most effective way of resisting
such influences as the propagandists might bring to bear upon the Hajjis
with a view to animate them with hostility to the British supremacy in
India.... I believe if the Indian Government only wished to make some
such arrangement it would pay its own way. I am absolutely certain that
it would have a disproportionately beneficial effect on the political
feelings of the Mohammedans towards British rule."

Such, or some such, is the line of action which England, looking merely
to her own interests, may, it is hoped, pursue in the next century, and
begin in this. Her Asiatic interests she must recognize to be peace and
security in Mussulman India, good-will in Egypt, and the healthy growth
of the humaner thought of Islam everywhere; and these she can only
secure by occupying the position marked out for her by Providence of
leading the Mohammedan world in its advance towards better things. The
mission is a high one, and well worthy of her acceptance, and the means
at her disposal are fully sufficient for its discharge. Nor will her
refusal, if she refuse, be without grave and immediate danger. The
Mohammedan world is roused as it has never been in its history to a
sense of its political and moral dangers, and is looking round on all
sides for a leader of whatsoever name or nation to espouse its cause. We
can hardly doubt that the position of directing so vast a force, if
abandoned by England, will be claimed by some more resolute neighbour.

The British Empire in Asia is cause of envy to the world at large, and
its prosperity has many enemies, who will certainly make the distress of
Islam an engine in their hands against it. Neglected by the power which
they hold bound to protect their interest, the Mussulmans of India will
certainly become its bitterest enemies, and though they may not
immediately be able to give effect to their hostility, the day of
embarrassment for us can hardly fail to come, and with it their
opportunity. At best the enmity of Islam will make the dream of
reconciling the Indian populations to our rule for ever an
impossibility. Leaders they will look for elsewhere--in Russia, maybe,
in Germany, or even France, jealous of our interests in Egypt--not
leaders such as we might have been for their good, but for our evil, and
in pursuance of their own designs. The Caliphate is a weapon forged for
any hand--for Russia's at Bagdad, for France's at Damascus, or for
Holland's (call it one day Germany's) in our stead at Mecca. Protected
by any of these nations the Caliphate might make our position
intolerable in India, filling up for us the measure of Mussulman
bitterness, of which we already are having a foretaste in the
Pan-islamic intrigues at Constantinople.

But enough of this line of reasoning, which after all is selfish and
unworthy. The main point is, that England should fulfil the trust she
has accepted of developing, not destroying, the existing elements of
good in Asia. She cannot destroy Islam, nor dissolve her own connection
with her. Therefore, in God's name, let her take Islam by the hand and
encourage her boldly in the path of virtue. This is the only worthy
course, and the only wise one, wiser and worthier, I venture to assert,
than a whole century of crusade.

In conclusion, I would say to Mohammedans that if I have drawn a gloomy
picture of their immediate political fortunes, it is not that I despair
even of these. Their day of empire in the world seems over, but their
day of self-rule may well dawn again, though under changed conditions
from any we now witness. I foresee for them the spiritual inheritance of
Africa and Southern Asia, and as the intelligence of the races they
convert shall have risen to the level of their present rulers, and
Europe, weary of her work, shall have abandoned the task of Asiatic and
African government, the temporal inheritance too. How long this shall be
delayed we know not. Their prophet has foretold that Islam shall not
outlive two thousand years before the Móhdy shall come, and the thirteen
hundredth is just commencing; nor do I believe their deliverance will be
so very long delayed. A "man of justice" may yet restore their fortunes;
but it will hardly be by present violence or by wading to Mecca through
seas of blood; and when the end of their humiliation shall have come,
it may be found that his true mission has commenced already, and that
the battle he was to fight has been long waging in the hearts of those
who have striven to reform their ways and purify their law, rather than
lament their broken power and the corrupt vanities of their temporal
empire.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] The Arabs believe that the Beni Ghassan, the Christian Bedouin
tribe which opposed the Caliph Omar, migrated to Great Britain on the
Mohammedan conquest of Syria.

[19] Since this was written astonishing evidence of political vitality
has been given to Europe by Egypt, and there is now, I trust, little
doubt that she will be left to work out her salvation in her own way.
The phenomenon opens too large a vista to the imagination to be treated
of in a note, but the Author would invite attention to it as a fact
worthy of more consideration than all his arguments.




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End of Project Gutenberg's The Future of Islam, by Wilfred Scawen Blunt