preceding one, or it recognized the right of both opinions.
Though the dogmatic differences were not necessarily so dangerous to
unity as were political ones, yet they were more apt to cause schism than
discussions about the law. It was essential to put an end to dissension
concerning the theological roots of the whole system of Islam. Mohammed had
never expressed any truth in dogmatic form; all systematic thinking was
foreign to his nature. It was again the non-Arabic Moslims, especially
those of Christian origin, who suggested such doctrinal questions. At first
they met with a vehement opposition that condemned all dogmatic discussion
as a novelty of the Devil. In the long run, however, the contest of the
conservatives against specially objectionable features of the dogmatists'
discussions forced them to borrow arms from the dogmatic arsenal. Hence a
method with a peculiar terminology came in vogue, to which even the boldest
imagination could not ascribe any connection with the Sunnah of Mohammed.
Yet some traditions ventured to put prophetic warnings on Mohammed's lips
against dogmatic innovations that were sure to arise, and to make him
pronounce the names of a couple of future sects. But no one dared to make
the Prophet preach an orthodox system of dogmatics resulting from the
controversies of several centuries, all the terms of which were foreign to
the Arabic speech of Mohammed's time.

Indeed, all the subjects which had given rise to dogmatic controversy
in the Christian Church, except some too specifically Christian, were
discussed by the _mutakallims_, the dogmatists of Islam. Free will or
predestination; God omnipotent, or first of all just and holy; God's word
created by Him, or sharing His eternity; God one in this sense, that His
being admitted of no plurality of qualities, or possessed of qualities,
which in all eternity are inherent in His being; in the world to come only
bliss and doom, or also an intermediate state for the neutral. We might
continue the enumeration and always show to the Christian church-historian
or theologian old acquaintances in Moslim garb. That is why Maracci and
Reland could understand Jews and Christians yielding to the temptation
of joining Islam, and that also explains why Catholic and Protestant
dogmatists could accuse each other of Crypto-mohammedanism.

Not until the beginning of the tenth century A.D. did the orthodox
Mohammedan dogma begin to emerge from the clash of opinions into its
definite shape. The Mu'tazilites had advocated man's free will; had given
prominence to justice and holiness in their conception of God, had denied
distinct qualities in God and the eternity of God's Word; had accepted a
place for the neutral between Paradise and Hell; and for some time the
favour of the powers in authority seemed to assure the victory of their
system. Al-Ash'ari contradicted all these points, and his system has in the
end been adopted by the great majority. The Mu'tazilite doctrines for a
long time still enthralled many minds, but they ended by taking refuge
in the political heresy of Shi'itism. In the most conservative circles,
opponents to all speculation were never wanting; but they were obliged
unconsciously to make large concessions to systematic thought; for in the
Moslim world as elsewhere religious belief without dogma had become as
impossible as breathing is without air.

Thus, in Islam, a whole system, which could not even pretend to draw its
authority from the Sunnah, had come to be accepted. It was not difficult
to justify this deviation from the orthodox abhorrence against novelties.
Islam has always looked at the world in a pessimistic way, a view expressed
in numberless prophetic sayings. The world is bad and will become worse and
worse. Religion and morality will have to wage an ever more hopeless war
against unbelief, against heresy and ungodly ways of living. While this
is surely no reason for entering into any compromise with doctrines which
depart but a hair's breadth from Qoran and Sunnah, it necessitates methods
of defence against heresy as unknown in Mohammed's time as heresy itself.
"Necessity knows no law" is a principle fully accepted in Islam; and heresy
is an enemy of the faith that can only be defeated with dialectic weapons.
So the religious truths preached by Mohammed have not been altered in
any way; but under the stress of necessity they have been clad in modern
armour, which has somewhat changed their aspect.

Moreover, Islam has a theory, which alone is sufficient to justify the
whole later development of doctrine as well as of law. This theory,
whose importance for the system can hardly be overestimated, and which,
nevertheless, has until very recent times constantly been overlooked by
Western students of Islam, finds its classical expression in the following
words, put into the mouth of Mohammed: "My community will never agree in an
error." In terms more familiar to us, this means that the Mohammedan Church
taken as a whole is infallible; that all the decisions on matters practical
or theoretical, on which it is agreed, are binding upon its members.
Nowhere else is the catholic instinct of Islam more clearly expressed.

A faithful Mohammedan student, after having struggled through a handbook of
law, may be vexed by a doubt as to whether these endless casuistic precepts
have been rightly deduced from the Qoran and the Sacred Tradition. His
doubt, however, will at once be silenced, if he bears in mind that Allah
speaks more plainly to him by this infallible Agreement (_Ijma'_) of the
Community than through Qoran and Tradition; nay, that the contents of both
those sacred sources, without this perfect intermediary, would be to a
great extent unintelligible to him. Even the differences between the
schools of law may be based on this theory of the Ijma'; for, does not the
infallible Agreement of the Community teach us that a certain diversity
of opinion is a merciful gift of God? It was through the Agreement that
dogmatic speculations as well as minute discussions about points of law
became legitimate. The stamp of Ijma' was essential to every rule of faith
and life, to all manners and customs.

All sorts of religious ideas and practices, which could not possibly be
deduced from Mohammed's message, entered the Moslim world by the permission
of Ijma'. Here we need think only of mysticism and of the cult of saints.

Some passages of the Qoran may perhaps be interpreted in such a way that we
hear the subtler strings of religious emotion vibrating in them. The chief
impression that Mohammed's Allah makes before the Hijrah is that of awful
majesty, at which men tremble from afar; they fear His punishment, dare
hardly be sure of His reward, and hope much from His mercy. This impression
is a lasting one; but, after the Hijrah, Allah is also heard quietly
reasoning with His obedient servants, giving them advice and commands,
which they have to follow in order to frustrate all resistance to His
authority and to deserve His satisfaction. He is always the Lord, the King
of the world, who speaks to His humble servants. But the lamp which Allah
had caused Mohammed to hold up to guide mankind with its light, was raised
higher and higher after the Prophet's death, in order to shed its light
over an ever increasing part of humanity. This was not possible, however,
without its reservoir being replenished with all the different kinds of oil
that had from time immemorial given light to those different nations. The
oil of mysticism came from Christian circles, and its Neo-Platonic origin
was quite unmistakable; Persia and India also contributed to it. There were
those who, by asceticism, by different methods of mortifying the flesh,
liberated the spirit that it might rise and become united with the origin
of all being; to such an extent, that with some the profession of faith
was reduced to the blasphemous exclamation: "I am Allah." Others tried to
become free from the sphere of the material and the temporal by certain
methods of thought, combined or not combined with asceticism. Here the
necessity of guidance was felt, and congregations came into existence,
whose purpose it was to permit large groups of people under the leadership
of their sheikhs, to participate simultaneously in the mystic union. The
influence which spread most widely was that of leaders like Ghazali, the
Father of the later Mohammedan Church, who recommended moral purification
of the soul as the only way by which men should come nearer to God. His
mysticism wished to avoid the danger of pantheism, to which so many others
were led by their contemplations, and which so often engendered disregard
of the revealed law, or even of morality. Some wanted to pass over the gap
between the Creator and the created along a bridge of contemplation; and
so, driven by the fire of sublime passion, precipitate themselves towards
the object of their love, in a kind of rapture, which poets compare with
intoxication. The evil world said that the impossibility to accomplish this
heavenly union often induced those people to imitate it for the time being
with the earthly means of wine and the indulgence in sensual love.

Characteristic of all these sorts of mysticism is their esoteric pride.
All those emotions are meant only for a small number of chosen ones. Even
Ghazali's ethical mysticism is not for the multitude. The development of
Islam as a whole, from the Hijrah on, has always been greater in breadth
than in depth; and, consequently, its pedagogics have remained defective.
Even some of the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to an
aristocracy, and accept the ignorance of the multitude as an irremediable
evil.

Throughout the centuries pantheistic and animistic forms of mysticism have
found many adherents among the Mohammedans; but the infallible Agreement
has persisted in calling that heresy. Ethical mysticism, since Ghazali, has
been fully recognized; and, with law and dogma, it forms the sacred trio of
sciences of Islam, to the study of which the Arabic humanistic arts
serve as preparatory instruments. All other sciences, however useful and
necessary, are of this world and have no value for the world to come. The
unfaithful appreciate and study them as well as do the Mohammedans; but,
on Mohammedan soil they must be coloured with a Mohammedan hue, and their
results may never clash with the three religious sciences. Physics,
astronomy, and philosophy have often found it difficult to observe this
restriction, and therefore they used to be at least slightly suspected in
pious circles.

Mysticism did not only owe to Ijma' its place in the sacred trio, but it
succeeded, better than dogmatics, in confirming its right with words of
Allah and His Prophet. In Islam mysticism and allegory are allied in the
usual way; for the _illuminati_ the words had quite a different meaning
than for common, every-day people. So the Qoran was made to speak the
language of mysticism; and mystic commentaries of the Holy Book exist,
which, with total disregard for philological and historical objections,
explain the verses of the Revelation as expressions of the profoundest soul
experiences. Clear utterances in this spirit were put into the Prophet's
mouth; and, like the canonists, the leaders on the mystic Way to God
boasted of a spiritual genealogy which went back to Mohammed. Thus the
Prophet is said to have declared void all knowledge and fulfillment of the
law which lacks mystic experience.

Of course only "true" mysticism is justified by Ijma' and confirmed by the
evidence of Qoran and Sunnah; but, about the bounds between "true" and
"false" or heretical mysticism, there exists in a large measure the
well-known diversity of opinion allowed by God's grace. The ethical
mysticism of al-Ghazali is generally recognized as orthodox; and the
possibility of attaining to a higher spiritual sphere by means of methodic
asceticism and contemplation is doubted by few. The following opinion has
come to prevail in wide circles: the Law offers the bread of life to all
the faithful, the dogmatics are the arsenal from which the weapons must be
taken to defend the treasures of religion against unbelief and heresy, but
mysticism shows the earthly pilgrim the way to Heaven.

It was a much lower need that assured the cult of saints a place in the
doctrine and practice of Islam. As strange as is Mohammed's transformation
from an ordinary son of man, which he wanted to be, into the incarnation
of Divine Light, as the later biographers represent him, it is still more
astounding that the intercession of saints should have become indispensable
to the community of Mohammed, who, according to Tradition, cursed the Jews
and Christians because they worshipped the shrines of their prophets.
Almost every Moslim village has its patron saint; every country has its
national saints; every province of human life has its own human rulers,
who are intermediate between the Creator and common mortals. In no other
particular has Islam more fully accommodated itself to the religions it
supplanted. The popular practice, which is in many cases hardly to be
distinguished from polytheism, was, to a great extent, favoured by the
theory of the intercession of the pious dead, of whose friendly assistance
people might assure themselves by doing good deeds in their names and to
their eternal advantage.

The ordinary Moslim visitor of the graves of saints does not trouble
himself with this ingenious compromise between the severe monotheism of his
prophet and the polytheism of his ancestors. He is firmly convinced, that
the best way to obtain the satisfaction of his desire after earthly or
heavenly goods is to give the saint whose special care these are what he
likes best; and he confidently leaves it to the venerated one to settle the
matter with Allah, who is far too high above the ordinary mortal to allow
of direct contact.

In support even of this startling deviation from the original, traditions
have been devised. Moreover, the veneration of human beings was favoured
by some forms of mysticism; for, like many saints, many mystics had their
eccentricities, and it was much to the advantage of mystic theologians if
the vulgar could be persuaded to accept their aberrations from normal
rules of life as peculiarities of holy men. But Ijma' did more even than
tradition and mysticism to make the veneration of legions of saints
possible in the temples of the very men who were obliged by their ritual
law to say to Allah several time daily: "Thee only do we worship and to
Thee alone do we cry for help."

In the tenth century of our era Islam's process of accommodation was
finished in all its essentials. From this time forward, if circumstances
were favourable, it could continue the execution of its world conquering
plans without being compelled to assimilate any more foreign elements.
Against each spiritual asset that another universal religion could boast,
it could now put forward something of a similar nature, but which still
showed characteristics of its own, and the superiority of which it could
sustain by arguments perfectly satisfactory to its followers. From that
time on, Islam strove to distinguish itself ever more sharply from its most
important rivals. There was no absolute stagnation, the evolution was not
entirely stopped; but it moved at a much quieter pace, and its direction
was governed by internal motives, not by influences from outside. Moslim
catholicism had attained its full growth.

We cannot within the small compass of these lectures consider the
excrescences of the normal Islam, the Shi'itic ultras, who venerated
certain descendants of Mohammed as infallible rulers of the world,
Ishma'ilites, Qarmatians, Assassins; nor the modern bastards of Islam, such
as the Sheikhites, the Babi's, the Beha'is--who have found some adherents
in America--and other sects, which indeed sprang up on Moslim soil, but
deliberately turned to non-Mohammedan sources for their inspirations. We
must draw attention, however, to protests raised by certain minorities
against some of the ideas and practices which had been definitely adopted
by the majority.

In the midst of Mohammedan Catholicism there always lived and moved more or
less freely "protestant" elements. The comparison may even be continued,
with certain qualifications, and we may speak also of a conservative and
of a liberal protestantism in Islam. The conservative Protestantism
is represented by the Hanbalitic school and kindred spirits, who most
emphatically preached that the Agreement (Ijma') of every period should be
based on that of the "pious ancestors." They therefore tested every dogma
and practice by the words and deeds of the Prophet, his contemporaries, and
the leaders of the Community in the first decades after Mohammed's death.
In their eyes the Church of later days had degenerated; and they declined
to consider the agreement of its doctors as justifying the penetration
into Islam of ideas and usages of foreign origin. The cult of saints was
rejected by them as altogether contradictory to the Qoran and the genuine
tradition. These protestants of Islam may be compared to those of
Christianity also in this respect, that they accepted the results of the
evolution and assimilation of the first three centuries of Islam, but
rejected later additions as abuse and corruption. When on the verge of our
nineteenth century, they tried, as true Moslims, to force by material means
their religious conceptions on others, they were combated as heretics by
the authorities of catholic Islam. Central and Western Arabia formed the
battlefield on which these zealots, called Wahhabites after their leader,
were defeated by Mohammed Ali, the first Khedive, and his Egyptian army.
Since they have given up their efforts at violent reconstitution of what
they consider to be the original Islam, they are left alone, and their
ideas have found adherents far outside Arabia, _e.g._, in British India and
in Northern and Central Africa.

In still quite another way many Moslims who found their freedom of thought
or action impeded by the prevailing law and doctrine, have returned to the
origin of their religion. Too much attached to the traditions of their
faith, deliberately to disregard these impediments, they tried to find in
the Qoran and Tradition arguments in favour of what was dictated to them by
Reason; and they found those arguments as easily as former generations had
found the bases on which to erect their casuistry, their dogma, and their
mysticism. This implied an interpretation of the oldest sources independent
from the catholic development of Islam, and in contradiction with the
general opinion of the canonists, according to whom, since the fourth or
fifth century of the Hijrah, no one is qualified for such free research. A
certain degree of independence of mind, together with a strong attachment
to their spiritual past, has given rise in the Moslim world to this sort
of liberal protestantism, which in our age has many adherents among the
Mohammedans who have come in contact with modern civilization.

That the partisans of all these different conceptions could remain together
as the children of one spiritual family, is largely owing to the elastic
character of Ijma', the importance of which is to some extent acknowledged
by catholics and protestants, by moderns and conservatives. It has never
been contested that the community, whose agreement was the test of truth,
should not consist of the faithful masses, but of the expert elect. In
a Christian church we should have spoken of the clergy, with a further
definition of the organs through which it was to express itself synod,
council, or Pope. Islam has no clergy, as we have seen; the qualification
of a man to have his own opinion depends entirely upon the scope of his
knowledge or rather of his erudition. There is no lack of standards, fixed
by Mohammedan authorities, in which the requirements for a scholar to
qualify him for Ijma' are detailed. The principal criterion is the
knowledge of the canon law; quite what we should expect from the history
of the evolution of Islam. But, of course, dogmatists and mystics had also
their own "agreements" on the questions concerning them, and through the
compromise between Law, Dogma, and Mysticism, there could not fail to
come into existence a kind of mixed Ijma'. Moreover, the standards and
definitions could have only a certain theoretical value, as there never has
existed a body that could speak in the name of all. The decisions of Ijma'
were therefore to be ascertained only in a vague and general way. The
speakers were individuals whose own authority depended on Ijma', whereas
Ijma' should have been their collective decision. Thus it was possible for
innumerable shades of Catholicism and protestantism to live under one roof;
with a good deal of friction, it is true, but without definite breach or
schism, no one sect being able to eject another from the community.

Moslim political authorities are bound not only to extend the domain of
Islam, but also to keep the community in the right path in its life and
doctrine. This task they have always conceived in accordance with their
political interests; Islam has had its religious persecutions but tolerance
was very usual, and even official favouring of heresy not quite exceptional
with Moslim rulers. Regular maintenance of religious discipline existed
nowhere. Thus in the bond of political obedience elements which might
otherwise have been scattered were held together. The political decay of
Islam in our a day has done away with what had been left of official power
to settle religious differences and any organization of spiritual authority
never existed. Hence it is only natural that the diversity of opinion
allowed by the grace of Allah now shows itself on a greater scale than ever
before.



III

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAM


In the first period of Islam, the functions of what we call Church and
what we call State were exercised by the same authority. Its political
development is therefore of great importance for the understanding of its
religious growth.

The Prophet, when he spoke in the name of God, was the lawgiver of his
community, and it was rightly understood by the later Faithful that his
indispensable explanations of God's word had also legislative power. From
the time of the Hijrah the nature of the case made him the ruler, the
judge, and the military commander of his theocratic state. Moreover, Allah
expressly demanded of the Moslims that they should obey "the Messenger
of God, and those amongst them who have authority."[1] We see by this
expression that Mohammed shared his temporal authority with others. His
co-rulers were not appointed, their number was nowhere defined, they were
not a closed circle; they were the notables of the tribes or other groups
who had arrayed themselves under Mohammed's authority, and a few who had
gained influence by their personality. In their councils Mohammed's word
had no decisive power, except when he spoke in the name of Allah; and we
know how careful he was to give oracles only in cases of extreme need.

[Footnote 1: Qoran, iv., 62.]

In the last years of Mohammed's life his authority became extended over a
large part of Arabia; but he did very little in the way of centralization
of government. He sent _'amils, i.e._, agents, to the conquered tribes
or villages, who had to see that, in the first place, the most important
regulations of the Qoran were followed, and, secondly, that the tax into
which the duty of almsgiving had been converted was promptly paid, and
that the portion of it intended for the central fund at Medina was duly
delivered. After the great conquests, the governors of provinces of the
Moslim Empire, who often exercised a despotic power, were called by the
same title of _'amils_. The agents of Mohammed, however, did not possess
such unlimited authority. It was only gradually that the Arabs learned the
value of good discipline and submission to a strong guidance, and adopted
the forms of orderly government as they found them in the conquered lands.

Through the death of Mohammed everything became uncertain. The combination
under one leadership of such a heterogeneous mass as that of his Arabs
would have been unthinkable a few years before. It became quite natural,
though, as soon as the Prophet's mouth was recognized as the organ of
Allah's voice. Must this monarchy be continued after Allah's mouthpiece had
ceased to exist? It was not at all certain. The force of circumstances and
the energy of some of Mohammed's counsellors soon led to the necessary
decisions. A number of the notables of the community succeeded in forcing
upon the hesitating or unwilling members the acceptance of the monarchy as
a permanent institution. There must be a khalif, a deputy of the Prophet in
all his functions (except that of messenger of God), who would be ruler
and judge and leader of public worship, but above all _amir al-mu'minin_,
"Commander of the Faithful," in the struggle both against the apostate
Arabs and against the hostile tribes on the northern border.

But for the military success of the first khalifs Islam would never have
become a universal religion. Every exertion was made to keep the troops of
the Faithful complete. The leaders followed only Mohammed's example
when they represented fighting for Allah's cause as the most enviable
occupation. The duty of military service was constantly impressed upon the
Moslims; the lust of booty and the desire for martyrdom, to which the Qoran
assigned the highest reward, were excited to the utmost. At a later period,
it became necessary in the interests of order to temper the result of this
excitement by traditions in which those of the Faithful who died in the
exercise of a peaceful, honest profession were declared to be witnesses to
the Faith as well as those who were slain in battle against the enemies of
God,--traditions in which the real and greater holy war was described as
the struggle against evil passions. The necessity of such a mitigating
reaction, the spirit in which the chapters on holy war of Mohammedan
lawbooks are conceived, and the galvanizing power which down to our own day
is contained in a call to arms in the name of Allah, all this shows that
in the beginning of Islam the love of battle had been instigated at the
expense of everything else.

The institution of the Khalifate had hardly been agreed upon when the
question of who should occupy it became the subject of violent dissension.
The first four khalifs, whose reigns occupied the first thirty years after
Mohammed's death, were Qoraishites, tribesmen of the Prophet, and moreover
men who had been his intimate friends. The sacred tradition relates a
saying of Mohammed: "The _imams_ are from Qoraish," intended to confine the
Khalifate to men from that tribe. History, however, shows that this edict
was forged to give the stamp of legality to the results of a long political
struggle. For at Mohammed's death the Medinese began fiercely contesting
the claims of the Qoraishites; and during the reign of Ali, the fourth
Khalif, the Kharijites rebelled, demanding, as democratic rigorists, the
free election of khalifs without restriction to the tribe of Qoraish or to
any other descent. Their standard of requirements contained only religious
and moral qualities; and they claimed for the community the continual
control of the chosen leader's behaviour and the right of deposing him
as soon as they found him failing in the fulfilment of his duties. Their
anarchistic revolutions, which during more than a century occasionally gave
much trouble to the Khalifate, caused Islam to accentuate the aristocratic
character of its monarchy. They were overcome and reduced to a sect, the
survivors of which still exist in South-Eastern Arabia, in Zanzibar, and in
Northern Africa; however, the actual life of these communities resembles
that of their spiritual forefathers to a very remote degree.

Another democratic doctrine, still more radical than that of the
Kharijites, makes even non-Arabs eligible for the Khalifate. It must have
had a considerable number of adherents, for the tradition which makes the
Prophet responsible for it is to be found in the canonic collections. Later
generations, however, rendered it harmless by exegesis; they maintained
that in this text "commander" meant only subordinate chiefs, and not "the
Commander of the Faithful." It became a dogma in the orthodox Mohammedan
world, respected up to the sixteenth century, that only members of the
tribe of Qoraish could take the place of the Messenger of God.

The chance of success was greater for the legitimists than for the
democratic party. The former wished to make the Khalifate the privilege
of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and his descendants. At
first the community did not take much notice of that "House of Mohammed";
and it did not occur to any one to give them a special part in the
direction of affairs. Ali and Fatima themselves asked to be placed in
possession only of certain goods which had belonged to Mohammed, but which
the first khalifs would not allow to be regarded as his personal property;
they maintained that the Prophet had had the disposal of them not as owner,
but as head of the state. This narrow greed and absence of political
insight seemed to be hereditary in the descendants of Ali and Fatima; for
there was no lack of superstitious reverence for them in later times, and
if one of them had possessed something of the political talent of the best
Omayyads and Abbasids he would certainly have been able to supplant them.

After the third Khalif, Othman, had been murdered by his political
opponents, Ali became his successor; but he was more remote than any of his
predecessors from enjoying general sympathy. At that time the Shi'ah, the
"Party" of the House of the Prophet, gradually arose, which maintained that
Ali should have been the first Khalif, and that his descendants should
succeed him. The veneration felt for those descendants increased in the
same proportion as that for the Prophet himself; and moreover, there
were at all times malcontents, whose advantage would be in joining any
revolution against the existing government. Yet the Alids never succeeded
in accomplishing anything against the dynasties of the Omayyads, the
Abbasids, and the Ottomans, except in a few cases of transitory importance
only.

The Fatimite dynasty, of rather doubtful descent, which ruled a part
of Northern Africa and Egypt in the tenth century A.D., was completely
suppressed after some two and a half centuries. The Sherifs who have ruled
Morocco for more than 950 years were not chiefs of a party that considered
the legality of their leadership a dogma; they owe their local Khalifate
far more to the out-of-the-way position of their country which prevented
Abbasids and Turks from meddling with their affairs. Otherwise, they would
have been obliged at any rate to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Great
Lord of Constantinople. This was the case with the Sherifs of Mecca, who
ever since the twelfth century have regarded the sacred territory as their
domain. Their principality arose out of the general political disturbance
and the division of the Mohammedan empire into a number of kingdoms, whose
mutual strife prevented them from undertaking military operations in the
desert. These Sherifs raised no claim to the Khalifate; and the Shi'itic
tendencies they displayed in the Middle Ages had no political significance,
although they had intimate relations with the Zaidites of Southern Arabia.
As first Egypt and afterwards Turkey made their protectorate over the holy
cities more effective, the princes of Mecca became orthodox.

The Zaidites, who settled in Yemen from the ninth century on, are really
Shi'ites, although of the most moderate kind. Without striving after
expansion outside Arabia, they firmly refuse to give up their own Khalifate
and to acknowledge the sovereignty of any non-Alid ruler; the efforts of
the Turks to subdue them or to make a compromise with them have had no
lasting results. This is the principal obstacle against their being
included in the orthodox community, although their admission is defended,
even under present circumstances, by many non-political Moslim scholars.
The Zaidites are the remnant of the original Arabian Shi'ah, which for
centuries has counted adherents in all parts of the Moslim world, and some
of whose tenets have penetrated Mohammedan orthodoxy. The almost general
veneration of the sayyids and sherifs, as the descendants of Mohammed are
entitled, is due to this influence.

The Shi'ah outside Arabia, whose adherents used to be persecuted by the
official authorities, not without good cause, became the receptacle of all
the revolutionary and heterodox ideas maintained by the converted peoples.
Alongside of the _visible_ political history of Islam of the first
centuries, these circles built up their evolution of the _unseen_
community, the only true one, guided by the Holy Family, and the reality
was to them a continuous denial of the postulates of religion. Their first
_imam_ or successor of the Prophet was Ali, whose divine right had been
unjustly denied by the three usurpers, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, and who
had exercised actual authority for a few years in constant strife with
Kharijites and Omayyads. The efforts of his legitimate successors to assert
their authority were constantly drowned in blood; until, at last, there
were no more candidates for the dangerous office. This prosaic fact was
converted by the adherents of the House of Mohammed into the romance,
that the last _imam_ of a line of _seven_ according to some, and _twelve_
according to others, had disappeared in a mysterious way, to return at the
end of days as Mahdi, the Guided One, who should restore the political
order which had been disturbed ever since Mohammed's death. Until his
reappearance there is nothing left for the community to do but to await
his advent, under the guidance of their secular rulers (e.g., the shahs of
Persia) and enlightened by their authoritative scholars (_mujtahids_), who
explain faith and law to them from the tradition of the Sacred Family.
The great majority of Mohammedans, as they do not accept this legitimist
theory, are counted by the Shi'ah outside Arabia as unclean heretics, if
not as unbelievers.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century this Shi'ah found its political
centre in Persia, and opposed itself fanatically to the Sultan of Turkey,
who at about the same time came to stand at the head of orthodox Islam.
All differences of doctrine were now sharpened and embittered by political
passion, and the efforts of single enlightened princes or scholars to
induce the various peoples to extend to each other, across the political
barriers, the hand of brotherhood in the principles of faith, all failed.
It is only in the last few years that the general political distress of
Islam has inclined the estranged relatives towards reconciliation.

Besides the veneration of the Alids, orthodox Islam has adopted another
Shiitic element, the expectation of the Mahdi, which we have just
mentioned. Most Sunnites expect that at the end of the world there will
come from the House of Mohammed a successor to him, guided by Allah, who
will maintain the revealed law as faithfully as the first four khalifs did
according to the idealized history, and who will succeed with God's help in
making Islam victorious over the whole world. That the chiliastic kingdom
of the Mahdi must in the end be destroyed by Anti-Christ, in order that
Jesus may be able once more to re-establish the holy order before the
Resurrection, was a necessary consequence of the amalgamation of the
political expectations formed under Shi'itic influence, with eschatological
conceptions formerly borrowed by Islam from Christianity.

The orthodox Mahdi differs from that of the Shi'ah in many ways. He is not
an _imam_ returning after centuries of disappearance, but a descendant of
Mohammed, coming into the world in the ordinary way to fulfill the ideal of
the Khalifate. He does not re-establish the legitimate line of successors
of the Prophet; but he renews the glorious tradition of the Khalifate,
which after the first thirty years was dragged into the general
deterioration, common to all human things. The prophecies concerning his
appearance are sometimes of an equally supernatural kind as those of the
Shiites, so that the period of his coming has passed more and more
from the political sphere to which it originally belonged, into that of
eschatology. Yet, naturally, it is easier for a popular leader to make
himself regarded as the orthodox Mahdi than to play the part of the
returned _imam_. Mohammedan rulers have had more trouble than they cared
for with candidates for the dignity of the Mahdi; and it is not surprising
that in official Turkish circles there is a tendency to simplify the
Messianic expectation by giving the fullest weight to this traditional
saying of Mohammed "There is no mahdi but Jesus," seeing that Jesus must
come from the clouds, whereas other mahdis may arise from human society.

In the orthodox expectation of the Mahdi the Moslim theory has most sharply
expressed its condemnation of the later political history of Islam. In the
course of the first century after the Hijrah the Qoran scholars (_garis_)
arose; and these in turn were succeeded by the men of tradition (_ahl
al-hadith_) and by the canonists (_faqihs_) of later times. These learned
men (_ulama'_) would not endure any interference with their right to state
with authority what Islam demanded of its leaders. They laid claim to an
interpretative authority concerning the divine law, which bordered upon
supreme legislative power; their agreement (Ijma') was that of the
infallible community. But just as beside this legislative agreement, a
dogmatic and a mystic agreement grew up, in the same way there was a
separate Ijma' regarding the political government, upon which the canonists
could exercise only an indirect influence. In other words since the
accession of the Omayyad khalifs, the actual authority rested in the hands
of dynasties, and under the Abbasids government assumed even a despotic
character. This relation between the governors and governed, originally
alien to Islam, was not changed by the transference of the actual power
into the hands of _wezirs_ and officers of the bodyguard; nor yet by
the disintegration of the empire into a number of small despotisms, the
investiture of which by the khalif became a mere formality. Dynastic and
political questions were settled in a comparatively small circle, by court
intrigue, stratagems, and force; and the canonists, like the people, were
bound to accept the results. Politically inclined interpreters of the law
might try to justify their compulsory assent to the facts by theories about
the Ijma' of the notables residing in the capital, who took the urgent
decisions about the succession, which decisions were subsequently confirmed
by general homage to the new prince; but they had no illusions about the
real influence of the community upon the choice of its leader. The most
independent scholars made no attempt to disguise the fact that the course
which political affairs had taken was the clearest proof of the moral
degeneration which had set in, and they pronounced an equally bold and
merciless criticism upon the government in all its departments. It became
a matter of course that a pious scholar must keep himself free from all
intercourse with state officials, on pain of losing his reputation.

The bridge across the gulf that separated the spiritual from the temporal
authorities was formed by those state officials who, for the practice
of their office, needed a knowledge of the divine law, especially the
_qadhis_. It was originally the duty of these judges to decide all legal
differences between Mohammedans, or men of other creeds under Mohammedan
protection, who called for their decision. The actual division between the
rulers and the interpreters of the law caused an ever-increasing limitation
of the authority of the _qadhis_. The laws of marriage, family, and
inheritance remained, however, their inalienable territory; and a number
of other matters, in which too great a religious interest was involved to
leave them to the caprice of the governors or to the customary law outside
Islam, were usually included. But as the _qadhis_ were appointed by the
governors, they were obliged in the exercise of their office to give due
consideration to the wishes of their constituents; and moreover they were
often tainted by what was regarded in Mohammedan countries as inseparable
from government employment: bribery.

On this account, the canonists, although it was from their ranks that the
officials of the _qadhi_ court were to be drawn, considered no words too
strong to express their contempt for the office of _qadhi_. In handbooks
of the Law of all times, the _qadhis "of our time"_ are represented as
unscrupulous beings, whose unreliable judgments were chiefly dictated by
their greed. Such an opinion would not have acquired full force, if it
had not been ascribed to Mohammed; in fact, the Prophet, according to a
tradition, had said that out of three _qadhis_ two are destined to
Hell. Anecdotes of famous scholars who could not be prevailed upon
by imprisonment or castigation to accept the office of _qadhis_ are
innumerable. Those who succumbed to the temptation forfeited the respect of
the circle to which they had belonged.

I once witnessed a case of this kind, and the former friends of the _qadhi_
did not spare him their bitter reproaches. He remarked that the judge,
whose duty it was to maintain the divine law, verily held a noble office.
They refuted this by saying that this defence was admissible only for
earlier and better times, but not for "the _qadhis_ of our time." To which
he cuttingly replied "And ye, are ye canonists of the better, the ancient
time?" In truth, the students of sacred science are just as much "of our
time" as the _qadhis_. Even in the eleventh century the great theologian
Ghazali counted them all equal.[1] Not a few of them give their
authoritative advice according to the wishes of the highest bidder or
of him who has the greatest influence, hustle for income from pious
institutions, and vie with each other in a revel of casuistic subtleties.
But among those scholars there are and always have been some who, in
poverty and simplicity, devote their life to the study of Allah's law with
the sole object of pleasing him; among the _qadhis_ such are not easily to
be found. Amongst the other state officials the title of _qadhi_ may count
as a spiritual one, and the public may to a certain extent share this
reverence; but in the eyes of the pious and of the canonists such glory is
only reflected from the clerical robe, in which the worldling disguises
himself.

[Footnote 1: Ghazali, _Ihya_, book i., ch. 6, quotes the words of a pious
scholar of the olden time: "The 'ulama' will (on the Day of judgment)
be gathered amongst the prophets, but the _qadhis_ amongst the temporal
rulers." Ghazali adds "alike with these _qadhis_ are all those canonists
who make use of their learning for worldly purposes."]

To the _mufti_ criticism is somewhat more favourable than to the _qadhi_. A
mufti is not necessarily an official; every canonist who, at the request of
a layman, expounds to him the meaning of the law on any particular point
and gives a _fatwa_, acts as a _mufti_. Be the question in reference to the
behaviour of the individual towards God or towards man, with regard to his
position in a matter of litigation, in criticism of a state regulation or
of a sentence of a judge, or out of pure love of knowledge, the scholar is
morally obliged to the best of his knowledge to enlighten the enquirer. He
ought to do this for the love of God; but he must live, and the enquirer is
expected to give him a suitable present for his trouble. This again gives
rise to the danger that he who offers most is attended to first; and that
for the liberal rich man a dish is prepared from the casuistic store, as
far as possible according to his taste. The temptation is by no means so
great as that to which the _qadhi_ is exposed; especially since the office
of judge has become an article of commerce, so that the very first step
towards the possession of it is in the direction of Hell. Moreover in
"these degenerate times"--which have existed for about ten centuries--the
acceptance of an appointment to the function of _qadhi_ is not regarded as
a duty, while a competent scholar may only refuse to give a _fatwa_ under
exceptional circumstances. Still, an unusually strong character is needed
by the _mufti_, if he is not to fall into the snares of the world.

Besides _qadhis_ who settle legal disputes of a certain kind according to
the revealed law, the state requires its own advisers who can explain
that law, i.e., official _muftis_. Firstly, the government itself may be
involved in a litigation; moreover in some government regulations it may be
necessary to avoid giving offence to canonists and their strict disciples.
In such cases it is better to be armed beforehand with an expert opinion
than to be exposed to dangerous criticism which might find an echo in a
wide circle. The official _mufti_ must therefore be somewhat pliable, to
say the least. Moreover, any private person has the right to put questions
to the state _mufti_; and the _qadhi_ court is bound to take his answers
into account in its decisions. In this way the _muftis_ have absorbed a
part of the duties of the _qadhis_, and so their office is dragged along in
the degradation that the unofficial canonists denounce unweariedly in their
writings and in their teaching.

The way in which the most important _mufti_ places are filled and above
all the position which the head-_mufti_ of the Turkish Empire, the
Sheikh-ul-Islam, holds at any particular period, may well serve as a
touchstone of the influence of the canonists on public life. If this is
great, then even the most powerful sultan has only the possibility of
choice between a few great scholars, put forward or at all events not
disapproved of by their own guild, strengthened by public opinion. If, on
the other hand, there is no keen interest felt in the Shari'ah (Divine
Law), then the temporal rulers can do pretty much what they like with these
representatives of the canon law. Under the tyrannical sway of Sultan
Abd-ul-Hamid, the Sheikh-ul-Islam was little more than a tool for him and
his palace clique, and for their own reasons, the members of the Committee
of Union and Progress, who rule at Constantinople since 1908, made no
change in this: each new ministry had its own Sheikh-ul-Islam, who had to
be, above everything, a faithful upholder of the constitutional theory
held by the Committee. The time is past when the Sultan and the Porte,
in framing even the most pressing reform, must first anxiously assure
themselves of the position that the _hojas, tolbas, softas_, the
theologians in a word, would take towards it, and of the influence that
the Sheikh-ul-Islam could use in opposition to their plans. The political
authority makes its deference to the canonists dependent upon their strict
obedience.

This important change is a natural consequence of the modernization of
Mohammedan political life, a movement through which the expounders of a
law which has endeavoured to remain stationary since the year 1000 must
necessarily get into straits. This explains also why the religious life of
Mohammedans is in some respects freer in countries under non-Mohammedan
authority, than under a Mohammedan government. Under English, Dutch, or
French rule the 'ulamas are less interfered with in their teaching, the
_muftis_ in their recommendations, and the _qadhis_ in their judgments of
questions of marriage and inheritance than in Turkey, where the life of
Islam, as state religion, lies under official control. In indirectly
governed "native states" the relation of Mohammedan "Church and State" may
much more resemble that in Turkey, and this is sometimes to the advantage
of the sovereign ruler. Under the direct government of a modern state, the
Mohammedan group is treated as a religious community, whose particular life
has just the same claim to independence as that of other denominations. The
only justifiable limitation is that the program of the forcible reduction
of the world to Mohammedan authority be kept within the scholastic walls as
a point of eschatology, and not considered as a body of prescriptions, the
execution of which must be prepared.

The extensive political program of Islam, developed during the first
centuries of astounding expansion, has yet not prevented millions of
Mohammedans from resigning themselves to reversed conditions in which at
the present time many more Mohammedans live under foreign authority than
under their own. The acceptance of this change was facilitated by the
historical pessimism of Islam, which makes the mind prepared for every
sort of decay, and by the true Moslim habit of resignation to painful