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