Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/688

 660 SUNNITES [SUNNITES. and faith in what is written in Koran and tradition was enjoined without question as to how these things were true (bila kaifa). Freer allegorical views, however, were admitted on some specially perplexing points, such as the doctrine of the eternity of the Koran, the crude anthropo- morphisms of the sacred text, &c. ; and, since Mo'tazilite views had never taken deep root among the masses, while the caliphs required the help of the clergy, and from the time of Motawakkil (847 A.D.) became ever more closely bound to orthodox views, the freethinking tendency was thoroughly put down, and to the present day no rational- izing movement has failed to be crushed in the bud. Philosophy still means no more than scholastic dialectic, and is the humble servant of orthodoxy, no man venturing on devious paths except in secret. In the years 1872-78 the Afghan Jamal al-Dln, a professor in the Azhar mosque at Cairo, attempted to read Avicenna with his scholars, and to exercise them in things that went beyond theology, bringing, for example, a globe into the mosque to explain the form of the earth. But the other professors rose in arms, forbade him to enter the mosque, and in 1879 pro- cured his exile on the pretext that he entertained demo- cratic and revolutionary ideas. Thus the later movements of thought in Islam never touch on the great questions that exercised Mohammedanism in its first centuries, e.g., the being and attributes of God, the freedom of the will, sin, heaven and hell, &c. Religious earnestness, ceasing to touch the higher problems of speculative thought, has expressed itself in later times exclusively in protest against the extravagances of the dervishes, of the worship of saints, and so forth, and has thus given rise to movements ana- logous to Puritanism. Ulema. That even in early times the masses were never shaken in their attachment to the traditional faith, with all its crude and grotesque conceptions, is due to the zeal of the ulema, or clergy, for the protection of Islam from every alien influence. Mohammedanism has no priesthood stand- ing between God and the congregation, but Koran and Sunna are full of minute rules for the details of private and civil life, the knowledge of which is necessarily in the hands of a class of professed theologians. These are the 'fewz<2("knowers," singular *dlim), theology being briefly named "the knowledge" ('Urn). Their influence is still enormous and hardly has a parallel in the history of re- ligions. For it is not supported by temporal agencies like the spiritual authority of the Christian priesthood in the Middle Ages, but is a pure power of knowledge over the ignorant masses, who do nothing without consulting their spiritual advisers. When the vigorous Spanish sultan Mansur b. Abi 'Amir proposed to confiscate a religious foundation and the assembled ulema refused to approve the act, and were threatened by his vizier, one of them replied, " All the evil you say of us applies to yourself ; you seek unjust gains and support your injustice by threats; you take bribes and practise ungodliness in the world. But we are guides on the path of righteousness, lights in the darkness, and bulwarks of Islam ; we decide what is just or unjust and declare the right ; through us the pre- cepts of religion are maintained. We know that the sultan will soon think better of the matter ; but, if he persists, every act of his government will be null, for every treaty of peace and war, every act of sale and purchase, is valid only through our testimony." With this answer they left the assembly, and the sultan's apology overtook them before they had passed the palace gate. 1 The same consciousness of independent authority and strength still survives among the ulema. Thus the sheikhu '1-Islam 'Abbasi (who was deposed by the professors of the Azhar in 1882) had in 1 Vou Kremer, Gesch. d. herrschenden Ideen d. Islams, Leipsic, 1868, p. 464. the first period of his presidency a sharp conflict with 'AbbAs Pasha, viceroy of Egypt, who asked of him an unjust legal opinion in matters of inheritance. When bribes and threats failed, the sheikh was thrown into chains and treated with great severity, but it was the pasha who finally yielded, and 'Abbasi was recalled to honours and rich rewards. The way in which the ulema are recruited and formed into a hierarchy with a vigorous esprit de corps throws an instructive light on the "whole subject before us. The brilliant days are past when the universities of Damascus, Baghdad, Nishdpur, Cairo, Kairowan (Kairwan), Seville, Cordova, were thronged by thousands of students of theo- logy, when a professor had often hundreds or even, like Bokharf, thousands of hearers, and when vast estates in the hands of the clergy fed both masters and scholars. Of the great universities but one survives the Azhar mosque at Cairo where thousands of students still gather to follow a course of study which gives an accurate picture of the Mohammedan ideal of theological education. 2 The students of theology generally begin their course in Tlieo- early youth, but not seldom in riper years. Almost all lg' ca l come from the lowest orders, a few from the middle classes, s and none from the highest ranks of society, a fact which in itself excludes all elements of freer and more refined education. These sons of poor peasants, artisans, or trades- men are already disposed to narrow fanaticism, and gener- ally take up study as a means of livelihood rather than from genuine religious interest. The scholar appears before the president's secretary with his poor belongings tied up in a red handkerchief, and after a brief interrogatory is entered on the list of one of the four orthodox rites, Shdfi'ite, Hanafite, Malikite, and Hanbalite. If he is lucky he gets a sleeping-place within the mosque, a chest to hold his things, and a daily ration of bread. The less fortunate make shift to live outside as best they can, but are all day in the mosque, and are seldom deserted by Moslem charity. Having kissed the hands of the sheikh and teachers of his school, the pupil awaits the beginning of the lectures. For books a few compendiums suffice him. Professors and students gather every morning for the daily prayer ; then the professors take their seats at the foot of the pillars of the great court and the students crouch on mats at their feet. The beginner takes first a course in the grammar of classical Arabic, for he has hitherto learned only to read, write, and count. The rules of grammar are read out in the memorial verses of the Ajnimfya, and the teacher adds an exposition, generally read from a printed commentary. The student's chief task is to know the rules by heart ; this accomplished, he is dismissed at the end of the year with a certificate (ijdza), entered in his text-book, which permits him to teach it to others. The second year is devoted to dogmatic (kaldm and tawhid), taught in the same mechanical way. The dogmas of Islam are not copious, and the attributes of God are the chief subject taken up. They are demonstrated by scholastic dialectic, and at the end of his second year the student, receiving his certificate, deems himself a pillar of the faith. The study of law (fikh which rests on Koran and tradition, is more difficult and complex, and begins, but is often not com- pleted, in the third year. The student had learned the Koran by heart at school and has often repeated it since, but only now is the sense of its words explained to him. Of the traditions of the Prophet he has learned something incidentally in other lectures ; he is now regularly intro- duced to their vast and artificial system. From these two sources are derived all religious and civil laws, for Islam is a political as well as a religious institution. The five main points of religious law, " the pillars of Islam," have been 2 Of the 126 madrasa or colleges which once belonged to the uni- versity of Damascus but five remained in 1880.