Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Martin Pettit and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of
public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital
Libraries.)
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.