n
opinion, divided into opposite and hostile sects. One maintains that Ali
is the true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre. This
denies the eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and
prayers. The Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine;
the Hakemite preaches the transmigration of souls. Thus they make up
the number of seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this
contestation, every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to
himself, and taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against
them its sanguinary zeal. And their religion, which celebrates a mild
and merciful God, the common father of all men,--changed to a torch of
discord, a signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred
years to deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the
ancient hemisphere from centre to circumference.**

* The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I
read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an
account of more than eighty,--all equally wise and
important.

** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you
will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the
wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of
Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its
doctrine. Caesar has been supposed to have destroyed three
millions of men: it would be interesting to make a similar
calculation respecting every founder of a religious system.

Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their broad
sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas, and the
Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed bonnets, and the
Santons with dishevelled hair. Behold with what vehemence they recite
their professions of faith! They are now beginning a dispute about
the greater and lesser impurities--about the matter and the manner of
ablutions,--about the attributes of God and his perfections--about the
Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,--about death, the resurrection,
the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of the narrow
bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains of hell,
and the joys of paradise.

Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
same God with the Mussulmans, foundin