their place. Even without supposing any such convulsion to the empire as
a loss of the Bosphorus, his reign will hardly be a long one. The Ulema
of Constantinople are by no means all on his side, and the party of
"Young Turkey," cowed for the moment by the terrorism which there
prevails, is his bitter enemy, and will not let him rest. It will
infallibly on the next danger from Europe, show its head again and take
its revenge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

CHAPTER IV.

A MOHAMMEDAN REFORMATION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     And thirty-one other signatures.

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND'S INTEREST IN ISLAM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MUSSULMAN CENSUS OF INDIA.

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

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

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

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

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

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