t of Caligula or Nero--was now raised to the place of a
divinity by one Ismail Darazi, a Turk who in 1016 announced in a mosque
in Cairo that the Khalifa should be made an object of worship. Hakim,
who "believed that divine reason was incarnate in him," four years later
proclaimed himself a deity, and the cult was finally established by one
of his viziers, the Persian mystic Hamza ibn Ali. Hakim's cruelties,
however, had so outraged the people of Egypt that a year later he was
murdered by a band of malcontents, led, it is said, by his sister, who
afterwards concealed his body--a circumstance which gave his followers
the opportunity to declare that the divinity had merely vanished in
order to test the faith of believers, but would reappear in time and
punish apostates. This belief became the doctrine of the Druses of
Lebanon, whom Darazi had won over to the worship of Hakim.

It is unnecessary to enter into the details of this strange religion,
which still persists to-day in the range of Lebanon; suffice it to say
that, although the outcome of the Ismailis, the Druses do not appear to
have embraced the materialism of Abdullah ibn Maymun, but to have
grafted on a primitive form of Nature-worship and of Sabeism the avowed
belief of the Ismailis in the dynasty of Ali and his successors, and
beyond this an abstruse, esoteric creed concerning the nature of the
Supreme Deity. God they declare to be "Universal Reason," who manifests
Himself by a series of "avatars." Hakim was the last of the divine
embodiments, and "when evil and misery have increased to the predestined
height he will again appear, to conquer the world and to make his
religion supreme."

It is, however, as a secret society that the Druses enter into the scope
of this book, for their organization presents several analogies with
that which we now know as "masonic." Instead of the nine degrees
instituted by the Lodge of Cairo, the Druses are divided into only
three--Profanes, Aspirants, and Wise--to whom their doctrines are
gradually unfolded under seal of the strictest secrecy, to ensure which
signs and passwords are employed after the manner of Freemasonry. A
certain degree of duplicity appears to enter into their scheme, much
resembling that enjoined to the Ismaili Dais when enlisting proselytes
belonging to other religions: thus in talking to Mohammedans, the Druses
profess to be followers of the Prophet; with Christians, they pretend to
hold the doctrines of