Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/691

 SHf'lTES.] SUNNITES 663 Nakshbendiya, now the most important in the khanates of Turkestan, whose founder died 719 A.H. (1319), the Sa'diya (736 A.H.; 1335), the Bektashiya (758 A.H.; 1357), the Khahvatiya (800 A.H. ; 1397). 1 The modern dervishes have sunk as low as the modern ulema. The idea of absorbed contemplation of the divine being, freed from all earthly conceptions, and of mortifica- tion of the flesh in order to become one with God is grossly caricatured in the insane howlings hu 1m ("he, he") and self-torture with red-hot knives, &c., practised by the " howling" Rifa'iya and in the dizzy whirling of the " dancing " Mawlawiya. Very pestilent too is their tradi- tional reputation for holiness with the common people, while ecstatic piety easily passes into deceit where it is still generally believed that a saint (wait) can work miracles. The wandering dervishes especially, who move constantly from place to place, are noted for all sorts of juggling im- postures, by the aid of which, like the Yogis of India, they live at the cost of the people. 2 But they are no longer trusted or held in much esteem even by the populace, whereas the conventual orders are usually regarded as pious and inspired men. Sheikh Ahmad, the founder of the Badawiya, is the national saint of Egypt, and his tomb at Tanta is a great place of pilgrimage. The ulema dislike these rivals, but can do little against their influence. The bright side in the modern world of Islam is found among the lower classes. The ruling classes of Turkey are utterly corrupt, and for centuries their one art of administration has been to suck the provinces dry. Taxes are exorbitant and bad laws check the production of wealth, while what remains of the useful institutions and public works of old time daily decays. . To this is added the recklessness born of a more or less clear consciousness that things cannot last as they are. The effendi of Constanti- nople has lost faith in his religion and the future of his race ; as for a sense of honour, as we understand it, that does not exist in the East. In Egypt things have not been quite so bad since Mohammed 'All destroyed the Mamelukes and founded a state with some pretensions to order and solidity ; selfish as he was, he saw that to main- tain the revenue it was necessary to stimulate production, and to this end, amid many mistakes, he took not a few useful steps. His successors were less wise and skilful, yet prosperity increased, and for the first time for centuries national feeling began to assert itself. But this movement fell into the hands of the ignorant and fanatical 'Orabi Pasha (1882) and led to the English occupation and the entire disorganization of the country, so that Cairo is now little better than Constantinople. Poorer Yet with all this the poorer classes have not lost their classes, vigour, and among them Islam has still a deep-rooted strength. The common Turk of Roumelia or Asia Minor is still a solid sober honest fellow and a brave soldier, always ready to make every sacrifice for his religion. In Egypt the morality of the people has suffered from the great foreign immigration, which has introduced many evil ele- ments as well as some good ; yet even here the great mass of both townsmen and peasants are loyal to the old faith and to the traditional sobriety and parsimony which the nature of the country itself prescribes. These qualities taken with the undoubted intelligence of the Arabian population give hope of a revival of prosperity on the Nile under more favourable political conditions. The people have a persuasion of the superiority of their religion, which, 1 The best account of the dervishes is still that in D'Ohsson, Tableau General de I'Emp. Ottoman, vol. ii., Paris, 1790. 2 These mendicants belong in part to orders like the Bektashiya and Rifa'iya, whose other members live in convents (Khangah, Takiya) ; in part they are Kalanderiya (Calauders), i.e., bound by the rule of Kalauder, a disciple of Bektash, which enjoins constant wandering. while it often makes necessary reforms difficult, prevents them from losing national individuality and self-reliance, and the belief in predestination gives a certain dignity and self-possession under calamities, without excluding foresight and activity in daily duty. But whether all this is enough to secure the political revival of the Sunnite commonwealths is doubtful in face of the preponderating influence on all the coasts of the Levant of Western civiliza- tion, which as yet is almost entirely a disintegrating force and seems certain to prevent a redintegration of Islam in Turkey, and probably also in Egypt. The khanates, again, are sunk in incredible moral corruption cloaked by blind fanaticism, while most of the Bedouin tribes of Arabia have known little about Koran and religion for the last eight centuries. 3 Islam has certainly still a great future in Central Africa ; but this can hardly lead to veritable reformation of its system. Still there are many evidences that the faith is not yet dead even in its old realms. We lay no stress on the existence of various sects opposed to the current Sunnite orthodoxy, such as the puritanical Wahhabites of Arabia and India, or the DRUSES (q.v.), Nosairiya, Isma'ilfya, and Metwaliya of Syria, who are tinged with Shi'ite views and belong only politically to the Sunnite section of Islam. But in India there are still living seeds of further development within Islam proper. Under English control the ulema are unable to maintain the same spiritual tyranny over men's minds as elsewhere, and we find more mutual toleration between Sunna and Shfa, an easy accommodation to local traditior, 4 and even an ability to leave the grooves of Al-Ash'ari's scholasticism and approach the ideas of the old rationalistic Mo'tazilites. Movements in this direction have come to light quite recently ; but their further growth need not here be specu- lated on. 5 SH FIXES. The extreme Shi'ite view that 'All is to be regarded as an incarnation of the Godhead (see vol. xvi. pp. 568, 592) maintained its predominance only in times when and places where the opposition to the sovereignty of the Omayyads and 'Abbasids was intense, or where pantheistic influences from India were at work. From the first there existed also a milder form of Shi'ite faith, which soon was at open war with the fanatical Isma'iliya and their disciples, the Fatimites and Assassins (vol. xvi. p. 593 sq.). G It was through the moderate Shi'ites that the caliph Shi'ite Ma'mun thought to reconcile his dynasty with the house dynas- of 'Ali (vol. xvi. p. 584), and it was this party that became dominant in Persia in the 10th Christian century under the Biiyids. When they conquered Baghddd the Biiyids abstained from interfering with the Sunnite orthodoxy of the populations of the capital and Arabian 'Irak, but the Shi'ite faith was openly professed in their courts at Eai, Shiniz, and Kirrnan. But in the next century the power of the Shi'ite dynasty crumbled and fell before the Ghaz- nevids and Seljuks, who as Turks were Sunnites, and repressed the opposing views. In the 13th century the Mohammedan East was overrun by the Mongols, who at first were indifferent to all religion, and gave the Persian Shi'ites perfect liberty; later on the great-grandson of Jenghis Khan, Mohammed Khodahbende Oeljitu (1303-16), 3 Sefer Natneh, ed. Schefer, Paris, 1881, pp. 30 sq., 233. See Garcin de Tossy, " Sur les particularites de la rel. mus. dans 1'Inde," reprinted in L'Mamisme, 3d ed., Paris, 1874, pp. 21 ) sq., 296 sq. The Wahhabites protest against this laxity. s See Syed Ameer 'Ali, Personal Law of Mohammedans, London, 1880. preface. 6 When the Fatimite lords of Egypt tried to enter into relations with the moderate Shi'ite Biiyids in Baghdad they were met with polite reserve, and subsequently public protests against them emanated from the 'Alide circles of that city (Wiistenfekl, Geschichte der fati- miden-Ckalifen, Gottingen, 1881, pp. 197, 387).