Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/140

 Kizilbashis]] form the only other non-Afghan race worth mentioning. They are Persianized Turks, and, like the Hazaras, of the Shiah persuasion, but owing to their influential position at Kabul as traders and clerks, they have been more fortunate than the Hazaras in escaping persecution.

The Afghans style themselves "Bani Israel," and trace their descent, generation by generation, from King Saul, supposing that their ancestors were among the captives taken by the Kings of Assyria and subsequently deported by them to some part of Afghanistan, which was on the eastern confines of their dominions. To open up the vexed and much-discussed question of the truth of this tradition would need an article by itself, and I shall content myself by ^ajding that there is little doubt that the origin of the Afghans is a mixed one, in which the predominant element is a Turco-Iranian one with Semitic commixture, first from Israelitish sources and afterwards from Arabian. With the exception of a few thousand Hindu traders and shopkeepers, all the inhabitants of Afghanistan and all the Afghan tribes in British India and in independent territory are Mohammedans to a man. Islam is the state religion, the law is the law of Islam, and the people vie with their rulers in their zeal for their faith.

Some of the Pathan tribes on the North-west frontier of India are probably to be reckoned the most blindly fanatical followers of Islam to be found on the face of the earth. Yet their religious ignorance is on a par with their fanaticism, and though every little village has its mullah and its mosque, yet the mass of the people know only the most elementary facts of their religion. The religion of these untutored tribes may be summed up in this: a constant repetition in season and out of season of the Kalima ("There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God"), punctilious observance of the five prayers, fasting during Ramadhan, giving tithes to their mullahs, and regarding all non-Moslems as blasphemers and infidels, whom to rob is a pious act, and to murder in cold blood a sure passport to Paradise. Some of the more remote mountain tribes have receded even