organized even at the expense of some dogmatic
concessions. I know that many even of the Shafites themselves will deny
this, for no Mussulman will willingly acknowledge that he is an advocate
of change; but it is unquestionable that among members of their school
such ideas are more frequently found than with the others.

Among the Shafites, too, ideas of a moral reformation find a footing,
and they speak more openly than the rest their suspicion that the house
of Othman, with its fornications and its bestialities and contempt of
justice, has been the ruin of Islam. Arabian custom is the basis of its
ideas upon this head, for most Arabs out of Africa if anything are
Shafites; and it is the school of the virtuous poor rather than of the
licentious rich. It is more humane in its bearing towards Jews and
Christians, finding a common ground with them in the worship of the one
true God, the moral law propounded at various times to man, and the
natural distinction between right and wrong. I may exaggerate this,
perhaps, but something of it certainly exists, and it is a feeling that
is growing.

Shafism has its stronghold at Cairo, where the Sheykh el Islam has
always belonged to this rite, but it is also the prevailing school in
Asia wherever Mohammedanism has been introduced through the
instrumentality of Arabian missionaries. In India the mass of the
Mussulman population is Shafite, especially in Hyderabad and the Bombay
Presidency, where the Arab element is strongest, while Hanefism is the
school of the great people who derive their origin from the Mogul
conquests, and of many of the Ulema who are in the habit of making their
religious education complete in the Hanefite schools of Bokhara.
Wahhabism, too, in the present century has taken great hold of the
poorer classes, and within the last few years a Turkish propaganda has
been at work among them with some success. But of this again later.

The Indian Haj is the most numerous, and represents the largest
population of all on our list, and it is besides the most wealthy. The
Indian Mussulman has less to fear from the climate of Arabia than the
native of more northern lands, and few who can afford it fail to perform
this religious duty at least once in their lives. The English Government
neither checks nor encourages the Haj, and indeed of late years has
shown a rather culpable negligence as to the interests of British
subjects on pilgrimage. Such at least is the opinion I