y rapidity of Islam's expansion turned against it,
now that the well-springs of that expansion were dried up. Islam had
made millions of converts, of many sects and races, but it had digested
them very imperfectly. Mohammed had really converted the Arabs, because
he merely voiced ideas which were obscurely germinating in Arab minds
and appealed to impulses innate in the Arab blood. When, however, Islam
was accepted by non-Arab peoples, they instinctively interpreted the
Prophet's message according to their particular racial tendencies and
cultural backgrounds, the result being that primitive Islam was
distorted or perverted. The most extreme example of this was in Persia,
where the austere monotheism of Mohammed was transmuted into the
elaborate mystical cult known as Shiism, which presently cut the
Persians off from full communion with the orthodox Moslem world. The
same transmutive tendency appears, in lesser degree, in the
saint-worship of the North African Berbers and in the pantheism of the
Hindu Moslems--both developments which Mohammed would have
unquestionably execrated.

These doctrinal fissures in Islam were paralleled by the disruption of
political unity. The first formal split occurred after the accession of
the Abbasides. A member of the deposed Ommeyyad family fled to Spain,
where he set up a rival caliphate at Cordova, recognized as lawful not
only by the Spanish Moslems, but by the Berbers of North Africa. Later
on another caliphate was set up in Egypt--the Fatimite caliphate,
resting its title on descent from Mohammed's daughter Fatima. As for the
Abbaside caliphs of Bagdad, they gradually declined in power, until they
became mere puppets in the hands of a new racial element, the Turks.

Before describing that shift of power from Neo-Arab to Turkish hands
which was so momentous for the history of the Islamic world, let us
first consider the decline in cultural and intellectual vigour that set
in concurrently with the disruption of political and religious unity
during the later stages of the Neo-Arab period.

The Arabs of Mohammed's day were a fresh, unspoiled people in the full
flush of pristine vigour, eager for adventure and inspired by a high
ideal. They had their full share of Semitic fanaticism, but, though
fanatical, they were not bigoted, that is to say, they possessed, not
closed, but open minds. They held firmly to the tenets of their
religion, but this religion was extremely simple. The core