Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/151

Rh history and aims of religious sects and confraternities and in the lives of the saints.

While talking of the sciences taught in Kairween, the professor unconsciously turned the conversation into the channels that most interested him. From his talk I discovered that the learned teachers of the medersa often revert to the century-long dispute between the Sunnites and the Shiites regarding the descendants of Mahomet and the proper succession to the caliphate, that is, the religious and moral direction of the Moslem world. They occupy themselves with critical studies of the Hadith, looking for apochryphal passages. When referring to the well-known works of the Arabian scholars, Avenzoar, Averroës, Aviocenna, Abu'l-Kasim, Rashi and others, he spoke also of the revered magi, Jafar and Hermes el-Monshelleth, whom Edmond Doutté identifies as Hermes Trismegistus of Iflatoun, who was none other than Plato, and of Aristotalis, that is, Aristotle, whose theories formed a part of the system of Moslem science. These learned men of the faculty also study the theosophists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such as Sohraverdi and Ibn el-Arabi, and read mystic and vulgar poets, among them Omar Khayyám, Hafiz and Omar el-Feridh.

"In what are the scholars of the faculty in Kairween particularly interested at present?" I asked the mullah in a pause.

"Of what nation are you?" he came back at me, question for question. When I began to explain to him the location of Poland, he interrupted with: