Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/312

 28o Persistence of Primitive Beliefs in Theology

Part I.

I. One of the most insoluble problems in religious history is the Shi'ite apotheosis of Ali the Caliph, a hero-worship of a martyred ruler which still divides the Muslim world into two hostile camps. The following remarks aim at showing that this is a result achieved to a great extent by the people or masses, that it is an absolute challenge flung down to orthodox Islam, and that many divers elements are fused to make up the composite figure. The Arabs w^ho supported the unlucky son-in-law of the Prophet were democratic tribesmen, some indeed professed re- publicans of the desert, who demanded that the captain of the holy armies should be freely elected and as freely deposed, in case of abuse of power or incompetence. But the Persian supporters of Ah were religious mystics (of the type which later produced the Sufis), genuine haters of the Arabs and champions of the old royahst legitimacy and divine right which gathered round the idealized and mythical Jamshid, and shed a halo on every legitimist king. With hardly an exception every antinomian sect among the Mushm has professed the greatest devotion to the memory of Ali and his two martyred sons — Carmathians, Fatimite Caliphs of Egypt, Ismailians, Assassins, ' Mula- hidas ' ; not to mention the peculiar pagan sectaries that survive to the present hour, Nosairis, Druzes, Kizil Bash, and perhaps the Yezidi of the Caucasus. It remains to ask why the name of a short-lived and unfortunate Caliph should have been the rallying-cry of the truly devout and of the highly antinomian elements in Islam down to modern times.^ The loyalty of His Highness the Aga Khan is a great asset to the British in India to-day, and he is the living representative of Shi'ism and a lineal descendant of

1 1 must refer the reader for a fuller survey of these anarchical sects, com- munistic States, or religious heresies to my forthcoming work on J^eligious Thought auJ Heresy, Robert Scott, 1917, pp. 346-37'. 431-438-