usly asked of each other by thoughtful Mussulmans in every corner
of the east, I now propose to consider and, as far as it is in my power,
to answer.

I have said that Islam is already well prepared for change. Whatever
Europeans may think of a future for the Ottoman Empire, Mussulmans are
profoundly convinced that on its present basis it will not long survive.
Even in Turkey, the thought of its political regeneration as an European
Empire has been at last abandoned, and no one now contemplates more than
a few years further tenure of the Bosphorus. Twenty years ago it was not
so, nor perhaps five, but to-day all are resigned to this.

Ancient prophecy and modern superstition alike point to a return of the
Crescent into Asia as an event at hand, and to the doom of the Turks as
a race which has corrupted Islam. A well-known prediction to this
effect, which has for ages exercised its influence on the vulgar and
even the learned Mohammedan mind, gives the year 1883 of our era as the
term within which these things are to be accomplished, and places the
scene of the last struggle in Northern Syria, at Homs, on the Orontes.
Islam is then finally to retire from the north, and the Turkish rule to
cease. Such prophecies often work their own fulfilment, and the feeling
of a coming catastrophe is so deeply rooted and so universal that I
question whether the proclamation of a Jehad by the Sultan would now
induce a thousand Moslems to fight voluntarily against the Cross in
Europe.

The Sultan himself and the old Turkish party which supports him, while
clinging obstinately in appearance to all their ground, really have
their eyes turned elsewhere than on Adrianople and Salonica and the city
of the Roman Emperors. It is unlikely that a new advance of the
Christian Powers from the Balkan would meet again with more than formal
opposition; and Constantinople itself, unsupported by European aid,
would be abandoned without a blow, or with only such show of resistance
as the Sheriat requires for a cession of territory.[14] The Sultan
would, in such an event, pass into Asia, and I have been credibly
informed that his own plan is to make not Broussa, but Bagdad or
Damascus his capital. This he considers would be more in conformity with
Caliphal traditions, and the Caliphate would gain strength by a return
to its old centres. Damascus is surnamed by theologians _Bab el Kaaba_,
Gate of the Caaba; and there or at Bagdad, the traditional city of