Page:The Moslem World Vol XI.djvu/117

Rh acme in the flourishing reigns of Akbar and Shahjehan. Yet, within little more than two centuries after its foundation, it withered—a fair plant with shallow roots—under the successors of Aurangzeb. It has left, to commemorate the departed glory of its capitals, such unrivalled creations as the Jama Musjid at Delhi, and at Agra, the loveliest mausoleum ever reared by man—the Taj Mahal.^

The Turkish Empire, of course, is the latest and most conspicuous product and patron of Moslem culture in modern times. It presents no departure from the common story. A horde of nomads settled in northern Anatolia in the thirteenth century. Their natural vigor kindled by fierce Islamic zeal, they hurled their barbaric might successfully against Mongol and Christian. Supplanting the waning Seljuks in the East, they swept westward into Europe, subduing and assimilating everything to the structure of their extending rule. The maximum came in the sixteenth century with Suleiman the Magnificent, whose dominion over 50,000,000 people of many races reached from Azov to Aden, from the Caspian to the Danube and the western Mediterranean. Constantinople was the crowning jewel of it all. Schools of Turkish literature and art arose, devoid of originality—inspired by Persia and Europe. But as Dr. Mann himself observes, "immediately from the highest pinnacle of success the downfall of the Empire ensued" (p. 119). From the death of Suleiman onward there was gradual degeneration into the Turkey of today.

The general historical result in indigenous culture is inferior to that set forth by the author (ch. V). With Turkey now disgraced and dismembered, and Persia reduced to vassalage, not a single free, independent Moslem state remains, with any sign or promise of permanence or cultural resurgence, apart from some dynamic not of its own making. If we have spoken of church and state in a single breath, it is because the Moslem system makes them logically inseparable. Neither past nor present will sustain the vision of the future painted in this book.

Dr. Mann's confidence that Islam can fashion out of "its own spirit and foundations" a modernized culture of emancipation and progress—■ which shall be distinctively Oriental and still essentially Moslem, he rests chiefly on the reform movements with which Islam has bristled since almost its beginnings, and especially upon the newer movements now active in various countries. He fails to note that, with the exception of Wahhabiism, Sanussism, and some forms of Mahdiism, these "stirrings and strivings" of the Moslem heart are, not so much reforms of Islam, as revolts away from it. This is certainly true of sufiism. Dr. Mann does not seem to know that the present Baha'l movement, which he hails as the capital proof of his "development" thesis, has openly broken with Islam. Its mystical eclecticism and broad universal ism are utterly irreconcilable with the Koran. Nor can the Panjabic Ahmadiyya movement, whose founder announced himself at once Krishnaite Avatar, Moslem Mahdi and Christian Messiah, be claimed as a purely Islamic way-mark of indigenous culture, despite the anti-Christian declamations of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed. The Ahmadiyya, the politico-religious propaganda of the Aga Kahn and the Indian Ismailis, the newer movements in education, such as are centered in the Mohammedan College at Aligarh, and many other reforming circles, are directly traceable to Christian, or, at least, Western, impact. Lord Cromer says: "Reformed Islam is Islam no longer."

In Islam the most hopeful developments are away from the Koran and Mohammed. In Christianity progress lies in a closer following of the »Cf. Vincent A, Smith: Oxford History of India, pp. 217-468.