Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/103

 Khalif refused to be treated as a god and cast their leaders into prison: the members of the sect, and many other of their fellow-countrymen, considered that a Khalif was no valid sovereign who refused to be recognised as a deity. From the second century of the Hijra down to modern times there has been a continuous stream of pseudo-prophets who have claimed to be gods, or successful leaders who have been deified by their followers. The latest of these appears in the earlier phases of the Babi movement, A.D. 1844–1852, though the doctrines of re-incarnation and of the presence of the divine spirit in the leader seem to be less emphasized in present day Babism, at least in this country and America.

The most prevalent form of these ideas occurs in the essentially Persian movement known as the Shi'a or "schismatics." These are divided into two types, both alike holding that the succession of the Prophet is confined to the hereditary descendants of 'Ali the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet to whom alone was given the divine right of the Imamate or leadership. The two types differ in the meaning of this Imamate, the one group contenting itself with maintaining that 'Ali and his descendants have a divine authority whereby the Imams are the only legitimate rulers of Islam and its infallible guides; of this moderate type of Shi'a is the religion of Morocco and the form prevalent about San'a in South Arabia. The other group presses the claim that the Imam is the incarnation of a divine spirit,