justly denied by the three usurpers, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, and who
had exercised actual authority for a few years in constant strife with
Kharijites and Omayyads. The efforts of his legitimate successors to assert
their authority were constantly drowned in blood; until, at last, there
were no more candidates for the dangerous office. This prosaic fact was
converted by the adherents of the House of Mohammed into the romance,
that the last _imam_ of a line of _seven_ according to some, and _twelve_
according to others, had disappeared in a mysterious way, to return at the
end of days as Mahdi, the Guided One, who should restore the political
order which had been disturbed ever since Mohammed's death. Until his
reappearance there is nothing left for the community to do but to await
his advent, under the guidance of their secular rulers (e.g., the shahs of
Persia) and enlightened by their authoritative scholars (_mujtahids_), who
explain faith and law to them from the tradition of the Sacred Family.
The great majority of Mohammedans, as they do not accept this legitimist
theory, are counted by the Shi'ah outside Arabia as unclean heretics, if
not as unbelievers.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century this Shi'ah found its political
centre in Persia, and opposed itself fanatically to the Sultan of Turkey,
who at about the same time came to stand at the head of orthodox Islam.
All differences of doctrine were now sharpened and embittered by political
passion, and the efforts of single enlightened princes or scholars to
induce the various peoples to extend to each other, across the political
barriers, the hand of brotherhood in the principles of faith, all failed.
It is only in the last few years that the general political distress of
Islam has inclined the estranged relatives towards reconciliation.

Besides the veneration of the Alids, orthodox Islam has adopted another
Shiitic element, the expectation of the Mahdi, which we have just
mentioned. Most Sunnites expect that at the end of the world there will
come from the House of Mohammed a successor to him, guided by Allah, who
will maintain the revealed law as faithfully as the first four khalifs did
according to the idealized history, and who will succeed with God's help in
making Islam victorious over the whole world. That the chiliastic kingdom
of the Mahdi must in the end be destroyed by Anti-Christ, in order that
Jesus may be able once more to re-establish the