shepherd, scattered in little groups here and there among a growing
Christian population, and shut out from the fold of their belief.

Constantinople is the assembling place of pilgrimage for all
Mohammedans west of the Ural Mountains, who reach it by the Black Sea,
and could never be replaced to them by any new centre further south
among the Arab races, with whom they have little sympathy or direct
religious connection. A Caliph at Mecca or in Egypt could do little for
them, and the Turkish-speaking Sunites would have no university open to
them nearer than Bokhara. In this respect they would find themselves in
a far worse position than the Moors, however universally these may
become subject to Europe, and their religious disintegration would be a
mere question of time. I believe, therefore, that Islam must be prepared
for a loss, not only of political power in Europe and in Western Asia,
but also of the Mohammedan population in the Ottoman lands absorbed by
Russia. It will be a strange revenge of history if the Ottoman Turks,
whom Europe has for so many centuries held to be the symbolic figure of
Mohammedanism, shall one day cease to be Mohammedan. Yet it is a revenge
our children or our grandchildren may well live to see.

How far eastward the full results of this religious disintegration may
extend, it is perhaps fanciful to speculate. The north-western
provinces of Persia, which are inhabited by Mussulmans of mixed race
speaking the Turkish language and largely interfused with Christian
Armenians, would, I am inclined to think, follow the destiny of the
West, and ultimately accept Christianity as a dominant religion. But,
east of the Caspian, Sunite Islam, though severely shaken, may yet hope
to survive and hold its ground for centuries.

The present policy of Russia, whatever it may be in Europe, is far from
hostile to Mohammedanism in Central Asia. As a religion it is even
protected there, and it is encouraged by the Government in its
missionary labours among the idolatrous tribes of the Steppes, and among
the Buddhists, who are largely accepting its doctrines in the extreme
East. Hitherto there has been no Christian colonization in the direction
of the Khanates, nor is there any indigenous form of Christianity.
Moreover, Central Asia, though connected by ties of sympathy with
Constantinople, has never been politically or even religiously dependent
on it. It has a university of its own in Bokhara, a seat of learn