Chapter VIII: The Gypsy in America (2)

The Koran--the only standard of divine Truth universally admitted by El Islam--consists of threefold matter: of historical and legendary lore, of principles moral and psychical, and of materials for a loose and scattered code of laws. And here, it may be observed, that, with perhaps the exception of the Pentateuch, which we have seen required its tradition, no code embodied in the sacred writings of any race has sufficed to govern it. What Christian nation has ever been ruled by Christian law? Even its codes are either of its own invention or borrowed from ancient custom or translated from Pagan legislation. No divine system yet promulgated to mankind has sufficed for the civil and criminal wants of future and more civilized generations. And thus it was with the Koran. The precepts of the Saving Faith were not fixed and definite enough for the sensuous and objective spirit of the East. In religion, as in politics, wherever public opinion is lax and impotent, law is, and must be, a mass of stringent ordinances so disposed as to provide for every contingency. Such codes cannot deal in principles and spirit; these must be extracted--by the few that require them--from a well-organized system of practical precepts. Thus the Muslim in the earliest ages sought to supply the imperfections of the code bequeathed to him. A remedy was at hand. The deceased Prophet’s sayings were still fresh in the minds of his wives and immediate descendants, of his companions, and his early successors. All lent their best endeavours to the pious task. The earliest traditions were of sensible and useful import. Presently the most trivial precepts and the most puerile practices were either forged or remembered by so-called saints who made this collection the business of their lives. Thus in course of time and by slow degrees appeared that bulky mass of traditional lore popularly known as the Ahadis or Sayings and the Sunnat or Doings of the Prophet.

By such arts were subtle practices and silly legends grafted by scholasticism upon the primitive annals and laws of El Islam. In that faith almost every tenet or practice to which the philosopher could object may be traced to the Sunnat and Ahadis; the Koran is wholly free from them. Amongst others, upon these, and upon these solely, must be charged the defect of making the system eminently perceptive. Muhammad, like all other Eastern lawgivers, had suited his ordinances to the genius of his people by addressing them as semi-civilized men. The schools degraded their Muslims to the intellectual rank of babes and sucklings.

Regarding these Sunnat and Ahadis, however, it must be borne in mind that they are purely sectarian. The four self-called orthodox schools hold to one tradition. The principal heresies, as the Shiahs and the Bayzawi, have their own recognized collections, whence all emanations from impure, that is to say, from other sources, have been carefully removed. But El Islam has existed, and can exist, independently of them. Had the Wahhabis, those Puritans or rather Reformers of the Saving Faith, succeeded in restoring to the Arabs their simple primitive belief, little of the Ahadis and the Sunnat would have been left to misguide and offend mankind.

Secondly, men object that the Saving Faith is one of pure sensuality. It is difficult to divine how this most erroneous estimate could have been formed except by the grossest ignorance. Possibly it was a vicious conclusion thus drawn: that as the Muslim’s Paradise is one of sense, consequently there is no limit to his sensuality in this world. But El Jannat, or the Heavenly Garden, has many mansions; the ignorant and savage, the hungry and sensual Bedawin will taste the flesh of birds, live in a golden house, command any number of angelic wives, and drink the nectars of Kafur and Zingibil. But, as in Christianity so in El Islam, eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath fancy conceived the spiritual joys of those who in mundane life have qualified themselves for heavenly futurity. The popular error that the Muslim Prophet denied immortal souls to women, and therefore degraded them to the mere instruments of man’s comfort and passions, might also have tended to represent El Islam as a scheme of sense. Possibly, again, the monogamic races of a Northern clime--for monogamy, polygamy, and polyandry are an affair of geography--shocked by the permission to marry four wives and to maintain an indefinite number of concubines, overlooked in characterizing Muhammad’s ordinances the strict limits therein laid down for luxury and pleasure. The Muslim may not take to himself a single spouse, unless able to make a settlement upon her, to support, clothe, and satisfy her. He must act with the most rigid impartiality towards the whole household, and strictly avoid showing undue preference. He is allowed four wives with a view of increasing and multiplying his tribe. Man in hot and enervating climates coming to maturity early, and soon losing the powers which he is tempted by moral as well as physical agencies to abuse, would never raise up a large family as the husband of only one wife. Like the Patriarchs, he must have handmaids. Like the Jews, he must be allowed polygamy and power of divorce. These, forbidden by the ascetic Essene, are necessary to the increase of mankind in the East, and no religion can consecrate an ordinance which, directly opposed to the first law given by the Creator to his creatures (Genesis), tends to check that natural increase of population which is the foundation of all progress and civilization.

Laying aside these considerations as too shallow for discussion, can we call that faith sensual which forbids a man to look upon a statue or a picture? Which condemns even the most moderate use of inebrients, and indeed is not certain upon the subject of coffee and tobacco? Which will not allow even the most harmless game of chance or skill? Which rigorously prohibits music, dancing, and even poetry and works of fiction upon any but strictly religious subjects? Above all things, which debars man from the charms of female society, making sinful a glance at a strange woman’s unveiled face? A religion whose votaries must pray five times a day at all seasons, in joy as in sorrow, in sickness as in health? A system which demands regular almsgiving and forbids all manner of interest upon money to those who would be saved? Whose yearly fast often becomes one of the severest trials to which the human frame can be exposed? To whom distant pilgrimage with all its trials and hardships is obligatory at least once in life? Whose Prophet exclaimed, like the Founder of Christianity, [Arabic: الفقر فخري: Al-faqru fakhary][217] (Poverty is my pride), and who taught his followers that two things ruin men, “much wealth and many words”?

Those who best know El Islam, instead of charging it with sensuality, lament its leaven of asceticism. They regret to see men investing these fair nether scenes with mourning hues; “the world is the Muslim’s prison, the tomb his stronghold, and Paradise his journey’s end.” But this could not be otherwise. Asceticism and celibacy are the wonted growth of hot and Southern climates, where man appears liable to a manner of religious monomania. The Brahman householder, after doing his duty to mankind by becoming a husband and the father of a family, ought by the law of Menu to leave the world and to end life a Sanyasi amongst the beasts of the jungle. No religion is more monastic than Buddhism; yet it is atheistic. Thus the votaries of this organized system of selfishness, this vast scheme of profits and losses, reduced to regularity, are deprived of all hope in death, and yet live the most comfortless and unnatural of lives. “The world knows nothing of its greatest men,” is true in more views than one. To the Muslim, time is but a point in illimitable eternity, life is but a step from the womb to the tomb. He passes from this world directly into the other, but not into a new existence; its every aspect and circumstance is as familiar to his mind as is the routine of earthly existence. He has no great secret to learn. The Valley of Death has no shadow for him;[218] no darkness of uncertainty and doubt horrifies his fancy. So it came to pass that, although Muhammad expressly and repeatedly declared, “There is no monkery in El Islam,” few schemes have produced a more systematic or rigid asceticism. Even before his death monasticism began to appear; and now the Muslim world is overrun with Sufis and Kalandars, with Fakirs and Derwayshes, with Santons and recluses.

The third error is that the Founder of the Saving Faith began his ministry as an enthusiast and ended as an impostor. This is the improved modern fashion of treating the “perjuryose lying Machomete” of our forefathers. We are less gross and dogmatical than they were, though scarcely more charitable or philosophical. The recognized proofs of “imposition” seem to be:

Firstly, the convenient appearance of the Ayát, or inspired Versets. But what would have been their use had they not descended when wanted to solve a difficulty or convey a precept? Do we doubt the Books of Moses because Revelation is conducted upon precisely the same principle? And who will deny that enthusiasm would have produced them more effectually than fraud? It is a general rule that to deceive others well we must first deceive ourselves. He that would be believed in by others must thoroughly believe in himself. Is it likely that such men as Abubekr and Umar would become the victims of a mere fraud, so palpable to every petty annalist and compiler in this our modern day? Neither they nor Muhammad even at his dying hour seem to have doubted his inspiration. The Prophet’s last words were, “Prayer! Prayer!” And, according to the Shiahs, a few minutes before breathing his last he called for an inkholder and a pen to write the name of his successor. Is this the death-bed scene of a hypocrite or an impostor?

Secondly, the delivery of the inspiration by the Archangel Gabriel, and the frequent visions of heaven and heavenly beings recorded by the Muslim Prophet. Without having recourse to any other explanation, are not instances of the kind perpetually recorded in the history of mankind? And granting that such apparitions are purely subjective, shall we charge with fraud all those subject to them? How often has the Founder of Christianity appeared to the highly imaginative races of Southern Europe? How frequently have fervent Muslims been favoured with “a call” by Muhammad and Ali? Physicians and men of science have accounted for these seemingly marvellous apparitions by natural causes. Why then, unless by the action of mere prejudice, should we determine the same thing to be imposture in one man and yet regard it with reverence in another? Who also has even ventured to decide what the _modus inspirandi_ or the divine afflatus really is? The most ancient theory apparently is that angels ([Greek: αγγελοι: angeloi]) were used as messengers between God and man; and thus the Muslims, whose tenets are identical in this point with the Jews, rank angelic below human nature.

Thirdly, the change from peaceful to warlike language, from the arts of eloquence and persuasion to the propagandism of fire and steel. But did not the Founder of Christianity declare, “I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matt, x. 34)? And did Moses disdain to place carnal weapons in the hands of his people? The great Lawgiver of Israel sanctioned the murder in cold blood of women and childish captives. Even kings were hewed in pieces before the Lord. These atrocities were strictly forbidden by Muhammad. Even forcible proselytism was not allowed. The _protégé_ of El Islam paid a small capitation tax, and was allowed to practise his faith and to worship his God as his law directed. Had, moreover, the Prophet forged the fresh order to propagate his scheme by the sword, surely he was not so shallow an impostor as to leave behind him those peaceful revelations which might so easily have been cast into the fire. No; the man honestly believed, like Moses, that the voice of Allah spoke within him.

The fourth error is that Muhammad, unable to abolish certain superstitious rites and customs of the ancient and Pagan Arabs, incorporated them into his scheme, and thus propitiated many that before avoided him. We have seen that the same might be objected to Moses. But Muhammad may surely have believed in the defilement of Allah’s holy places by Pagans, and have restored them to their pure original purposes. Thus the Kaabah, that Pantheon of the idolater, was given to El Islam as the house built by Abraham and Ishmael. And what antiquary so wise as to declare that the Friend of God did not visit Mecca and there lay the foundations of a mosque and an abode?[219] The gigantic tombs of Adam and Eve at Mecca and Jeddah were in the olden times places of litholatry. Yet might not the numerous Arab Christians, in whose religion Muhammad believed before the old dispensation was abrogated by a new scheme, have had traditions concerning the meeting of our first parents on the Mount of Arafat, and their sepulture in the Holy Land? Mecca was at that time consecrated by no less than five religions. The Guebre had established there the Shrine of Saturn. The Hindu had made it the residence of the third person of his triad. The Pagan Arabs had erected there a gigantic Pantheon. The Jews revered it because, as Ibn Shaybat relates, Moses and Aaron performed pilgrimages there; when the famous Tobba Judaized, he invested the house with a splendid curtain. And, finally, the Christians, according to some authors, had procured admission into the Kaabah for the images of the Virgin and Child. Colonists and expatriated men readily connect the remarkable events and incidents of their religion and history with the strange objects revered in foreign lands. The Muslims in Sindh, as an instance, have occupied in force most of the sacred places of the Hindus; often, too, both Monotheist and Polytheist worship at the same shrine. The original Yoni becomes a Da'asah, or footprint of Hazrat Ali; and the sacred alligator of the Hindus is revered as the creation of a Muslim saint. Thus in Ceylon Buddha’s retreat has become Adam’s Peak. The description of St. Mary and the Holy Infant resting in the shade of the sycamore tree of Heliopolis in the old apocryphal gospels is clearly borrowed from the old Egyptian symbol, Isis with Horus in her lap sitting under the Hiero-sycaminon. In the incorporations of traditions then current amongst the Arab Christians there is no valid reason for charging Muhammad with fraud.

To rank the Saving Faith amongst the religions of the world, it is necessary briefly to relate what its founder did for mankind. A youth of noble origin, but fallen fortunes, as was the Prophet of Nazareth, he was strengthened like the Jewish Lawgiver Moses by travel, solitude, and meditation. Jebel Hira was his Mount Horeb. But though surrounded by learned Jew and Christian, his education was defective; and though, a genuine Arab, he thought strongly and clearly, and he was a perfect master of eloquence, he had none of that knowledge which passes for a preternaturalism amongst a barbarous people. His probity won for him in early manhood the surname of El Amin, or the Trusty, and his noble qualities enabled him to marry the wealthy widow in whose service he had lived a hireling.

After a long course of meditation, fired with anger by the absurd fanaticism of the Jews, the superstitions of the Syrian and Arabian Christians, and the horrid idolatries of his unbelieving countrymen, an enthusiast too--and what great soul has not been an enthusiast?--he determined to reform those abuses which rendered revelation contemptible to the learned and prejudicial to the vulgar. He introduced himself as one inspired to a body of his relations and fellow-clansmen. The step was a failure, except that it won for him a proselyte worth a thousand sabres in the person of Ali, son of Abu Talib. With an uncommon mixture of prudence and energy he pursued his task till he overcame the hate, the ridicule, and the persecution of such men as Abubekr, Umar, and Usman. Expelled by the violence of his enemies, he fled his native city--a wonderful contrast to the fierceness and the impatience of his race. But after a long course of meekness and longsuffering in the work of proselytizing, his spirit, like that of Moses, rose high against violence and oppression, and at last--for he was an Arab--abrogating his peaceful precepts he appealed to the God of Battles in his combat for a righteous cause. Heroes and mighty men like Hamzah Khalid and Amru el Ays flocked to his standard, and his personal valour and high qualities as a guerilla soldier soon led him on to fortune. After several years’ exile, he re-entered as a visitor the walls of his native city, whence he had fled persecuted and proscribed. And he lived long enough to witness the splendid success of his early projects.

Abolishing all belief in a local or personal God, he announced to his Arabs the One Supreme, now in terms as terrible as man could bear, then in words so lofty and majestic that they sank for ever into the heart-core of his followers. He broke to pieces with his own hand the images of the Kaabah, and he witnessed the total extinction of a gigantic idolatry--a work of itself sufficient to immortalize the memory of one reformer. He said of the Deity, “He is not enclosed by the bonds of space or by the limits of time; he hath no form which requireth a former from whom he is free; and whatever concerning him entereth thy mind to that he is the contrary.” He preached Allah, the God unapprehensible, incomprehensible, omnipotent, all-beneficent, spiritual, and eternal.

He revived the earliest scheme of Mosaicism and the pristine simplicity of Christianity by making every man priest and patriarch of his own household. Preceding faiths had attempted to elevate human nature above itself, and had, as might be expected, degraded the object of their endeavours. He inculcated the dignity of man instead of perpetually preaching human degradation, he respected mortal nature, and therefore he made his scheme eminently practical with something of a higher flight. He did away with the incestuous marriage with a father’s widow; he abolished the Wad el Banat, or the murderous inhumation of female children. He corrected the laxity and immorality of the age by making drinking and gambling penal offences, and by forbidding modest women to appear in public unveiled. Finally, to mention no other great and good works, by the enunciation of a modified Fatalism--they greatly err who confound it with an absolute Predestination--he attempted to check that tendency of self-mortification which he could not wholly expel from the affections of his countrymen. He died, not like an enthusiast or an impostor, but as one true to the tenets and practices of his life; and he bequeathed to the world a Law and a Faith than which none has been more firmly or more fervently believed in by mankind, whose wide prevalence--wider indeed than that of any other creed--alone suffices to prove its extrinsic value to the human family. This much did Muhammad for his fellow-creatures.

Can we wonder that the Arabian Prophet, finding himself, despite the accidents of fortune, of time, and place, so much in advance of his age, so solitary a being amongst the fanatic, the superstitious, and the debased, fondly believed himself Allah’s Apostle, and the chosen instrument of man’s regeneration? Considering the ardent temperament of the Arab, his high development of veneration, and his discerning the divine hand in every human work and change, can we marvel that he attributed the fire of his soul and the strong workings of his mind to a something preternatural--an inspiration or a revelation? The celebrated mystic Mansur el Hallaj was stoned by the crowd for using the words, “I am Truth” (_i.e._ the Lord). But his Sufi confraternity still explain away the apparent irreverence of the saying, and believe him to have been, as was said of Spinoza, a God-intoxicated man.

Muhammad’s mission, then, was one purely of reform. He held that four dispensations had preceded his own, and that his object was to restore their pristine purity. But the Adamical had been obsoletized by the Noachian scheme; and this by the Mosaic, which in its turn becoming defunct, had left all its powers and prerogatives to Christianity; thus also the latter dispensation in the fulness of time had been superseded by the revelations of El Islam, the Saving Faith. All the past was now effete and abrogated. All the future would be mere imposture; for his was the latest of religions, he the Soul of the Prophets. He accused the Jews and Christians of entire corruption, of spiritual death, and preached to them with fervour a new faith, a doctrine of life. He openly charged them with having altered and remodelled their sacred writings.[220] Nor could this charge be denied. It is now, and was then, impossible to discover what Moses wrote or what was written for him by Ezra the scribe and other compilers. The difference of style and language, the frequent changes from the first person to the third, and finally the account of the Lawgiver’s death and burial conclusively prove that the Pentateuch had in its present state more than one author. Probably the original draught was concise and short.

Even the Koran contained little that was new. With the exception of some legends, the addition of some regulations touching the daily prayers and the purification of property, with a few ordinances as that of Diyat or blood-money, disallowed by the Pentateuch (Numb. xxxv. and Deut. xix.), but rendered necessary by the state of Arab society, and some dietetic modifications--the camel for instance and the horse were recognized as pure food,--the Koran might almost be extracted from the Mosaic and Rabbinical writings, from the Evangelists and apocryphalists of the Christian era. There is also but little to commend in it, except its fiery and commanding eloquence. As a code of laws it is eminently defective. He who could write such a work could have written much better. Muhammad, however, relied for the success of his mission upon far higher claims than any book.

Muhammad laid no claims to prophecy or to miracles. He called himself El Rasúl, and El Nabbi, the announcer of good tidings from Allah to the Adamites. He did not give his name to a new system of belief; his ordinances were designated in a mass as El Islam, the Salvation or the Saving Faith. His night journey to heaven, the subject of so much opprobrious declamation, was either a vision or a dream. The splitting of the moon, a tale so monstrously told by his posterity, rests upon no broader basis than a line in the Koran which might properly be translated: “The hour [of Judgment] shall come, and the moon shall cleave asunder.” Probably this absurdity was the invention of followers who determined to dispute for their lawgiver with Joshua’s command over the host of heaven. An ignorant Afghan is said to have boasted that his Pir, or spiritual pastor, the celebrated poet Abd el Kahman, was in the habit of making night journeys like Muhammad to Paradise, and to have bastinadoed the holy man severely when, taxed with impiety, he denied the irreverent assertion. Such a Muhaddis, or relater of the Prophet’s sayings, as Abu Hurayrah, the Father of the Kitten, may fairly, to judge him by his recognized writings, be suspected of such a forgery. Muhammad the more especially disdained the claim to miraculous powers which, as those who know Eastern lands, belong to every petty saint and village santon. The “most extraordinary of ordinary men,” the historian Hume, inferred that, because he himself had never seen a miracle, no one else ever saw a miracle. The Oriental traveller will disbelieve in miracles for the opposite reason--because he has seen so many.

The rapid and extensive spread of El Islam, considered by the Faithful a remarkable instance of divine aid, is to be accounted for without the intervention of a Deity. The Arabs poured forth from their great centre, till the whole surplus population was exhausted. Everywhere they appeared as liberators of slaves, especially in Turkey and Persia, where an artificial and over-refined state of society had produced tyrannical despots, an innumerable and insatiable nobility, and a people robbed and spoiled. Another circumstance favoured the growth of “the Religion of the Heavens and the Earth.” Whether we consider the Arabs to have been the aborigines of their native wilds, or, as the modern theory is, we derive them from the Highlands of Æthiopia, it is certain that their great success lay amongst a kindred people speaking cognate languages. From the earliest times, indeed, Arabia had sent forth several extensive streams of emigration. Essentially an Asiatic form of belief, El Islam could not progress beyond the barriers opposed to it by geography. Not having a St. Paul to modify, to change it, the Saving Faith broke upon the rock of a new race.

But this I claim for El Islam.

The recurring purpose which runs through the world is chiefly manifested by the higher esteem in which man holds man. David made him little lower than the angels. Christianity, a system of asceticism, confirmed this estimate: we are fallen beings, fallen not through our own fault; condemned to eternal death, not by our own demerits; ransomed by a Divine Being, not through our own merits. El Islam, on the contrary, raised man from this debased status, and with the sound good sense which characterizes the creed inspired and raised him in the scale of creation by teaching him the dignity of human nature. Thus modern Spiritualism is giving a shock to Christianity, whereas El Islam has power to resist it.

But, however El Islam prospered amongst the kindred races, it fell flat elsewhere. No power of propagandism availed in China. In Southern Spain the faith maintained itself for a long time; its letter and spirit, however, were almost lost. The Zegris and Abencerrages were European knights, not Eastern. And when pushed forward into a Northern people, a single destructive defeat sufficed to set for it bounds which it has never attempted to cross. In Hungary and Austria again, with a tenfold power, it failed to establish a footing; and when “Holy Russia” became sufficiently united to be powerful, El Islam was cast out like a corpse.

Again, what reconciled the ancient Muslim and endears the modern to his creed is its noble simplicity. The votary has little or nothing comparatively speaking to pay for his moral and spiritual necessary--religion. He has no tithes, and few fees. His places of worship are built and maintained by religious bequests, carefully guarded by law and custom. Muhammad Ali, it is true, confiscated the “Wakf” left to many of the Cairene mosques and tombs. He also, following the example of Turkey, substituted at Mecca and El Medinah yearly pensions for the produce of their ancient extensive church lands. But he carried out these measures among Egyptians, a race of men whose languor and apathy require repeated inducements to fight for the faith; in Kabul and Bokhara the boldest and most powerful extortioners would hardly venture upon such a sacrilege. The Islam Muslim, moreover, has no priesthood; those whose duty it is to preach and pray to the people are not churchmen; they temporarily receive from the Wahil, or mosque-warden, a few piastres per month; but all must live by some honest secular calling. Even the Sultan, the Defender of the Faith, the Representative of the Khalifs, and the Vicegerent of Allah upon earth, does not disdain handicraft, to make and sell toothpicks. Finally, the Muslim has no baptism; he is circumcised by a barber; he can marry himself with a reason for deviating from popular custom; and he can be bathed, buried, and prayed over by any lay fellow-religionist.

It is generally believed in Europe that El Islam is on the decline; and the old prejudices bequeathed by Crusades tend to make the assertion popular. It is based upon insufficient grounds. With as much correctness might the Muslim predict the present fall of Christianity by the heresies and schisms that distract the Church, from the wide spread of visionary Swedenborgians and of the shallow imposture Mormonism.[221] Turkey and Egypt may show traces of latitudinarianism, even as France and Germany have done; no Muslim people, however, has yet ventured to abolish El Islam by law. But Arabia and Afghanistan still stand firm as in the first ages of the faith. Generally it may be remarked that in Eastern religions the propagandism and missioning of the West has tended to strengthen and confirm the tenets against which they have been directed. Thus Hinduism, after giving a few outcasts to Christianity, has entrenched itself behind the stronghold of Vedantism; the learned are pure Deists, the ignorant pure idolaters. Buddhism remains untouched, and the very nature of its encyclopedian tenets renders it unassailable. Even the sect of Guebres has been strengthened by polemical arguments, and bids fair to rival its antagonists in disputative theology. In spite of the mighty force brought against it, the Parsee converts to Christianity might be numbered on a man’s fingers. Nor can these faiths yield to compulsion. The laws of Menu, of Zoroaster, and of Muhammad have still bulwarks not easily to be battered down. And should Christianity, as it has often threatened, ever meet the Saving Faith in mortal conflict, and the Cross assail the Crescent in the latest of crusades, the Muslim scimitar, rusty as it is with the rust of ages, will prove the good metal of which it was in the beginning forged.

Supposing, however, El Islam abolished by civilization, underminded by the slow action of the Christian Powers closing around it, or become decrepit from old age, what would be the result? Some renewal essentially the same, formally different; some revival of its eternal principle, Monotheism, disguised under a fresh garb of those outward accidents that constitute a religion. Such has ever been the history of the world’s creeds. At all times

emerging from the storm,
Primeval faith uplifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pile on wings of flame,
And soars and shines another and the same.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[211] Existence of God is not “the common and almost universal belief of mankind.” The truth that there is a God is usually thus demonstrated:

1. Physical argument, in which effects and events are traced to causes, till arrival at a First Cause, uncaused.

2. Argument from final causes and design, of which innumerable evidences in physical and mental worlds point to a Great Original Designer.

3. Moral argument, based upon innate feeling of obligation and responsibility.

4. Historical argument and the consensus of mankind.

[212] The idea that man is a compound being, consisting partly of spirit and partly of matter, mysteriously linked together, and acting and reacting upon each other, is a neocosmic dream. Savages hold mind to be a property of matter, like philosophers.

[213] [Chap i. 46.]

[214] Deuteronomy ix. 9. The term was forty days and nights. Amongst Muslims this has become the recognized period of isolation for those who are being initiated in mystical and magical practices. It is, however, directly opposed to the spirit and letter of El Islam.

[215] A modern philosopher was accustomed to say: “And as for that Christianity which is such, according to the fashion of modern philosophers and pantheists, without a personal God, without immortality, without an individuality of man, without historical faith--it may be a very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no Christianity at all” (Niebuhr).

[216] Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, Act III., scene ii.

[217] [_The program you use to display the Arabic may reverse the word order. Reading right to left, the first word is_ الفقر.--_Transcriber_.]

[218] “I think,” said Captain Wyatt, “the Red Indians die better than white men; perhaps from having less fear about the future.” An acute conjecture!

[219] Some geographers identify Massa, the town and castle of the seventh son of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 14), with Mecca.

[220] Muhammad probably little thought how much more directly this charge was to be brought against his own revelations. The Ayát, or inspired versets, were jotted down without order or time in the Musnad character, which admitted no “vowel points,” upon palm leaves, shoulder blades of sheep, and similar wild substitutes for paper. In this state they were cast into a box, and consigned to the keeping of Hafsah, one of the “Mothers of the Muslims.” After the Prophet’s death they were drawn from their concealment in a state of disorder, which explains their present confusion. An edition of the Ayát was first published by Abubekr, who called it the Koran, or “What shall be read.” This work was full of errors. The second issue was from the hands of Usman, one of whose modern titles is “Scribe of the Koran.” His subjects, however, put him to death, though he had surrounded himself with a rampart of sacred writings, for his impiety in meddling with inspiration. Finally, Ali the Khalif, who was more of a scholar than most Arabs, who wrote poetry, indited proverbs, and according to some improved the syllabarium by the invention of vowel points, recalled all others, and issued his own. The Shiah schism to the present day declare that a whole Juz, or section, of which the Koran now contains thirty, was omitted and destroyed by the Khalifs hostile to Ali as it was in his praise. Some passages from the lost revelation are actually quoted in their theological works. It is true that nothing in the sacred writings of the Muslims, not a jot or tittle, can be altered, added, or omitted. Like the Jews, they have numbered and recorded every letter and vowel point. Unfortunately they have taken this wise step too late; as the Eastern proverb is, they have looked to halter and heel-ropes after the horse is stolen.

[221] [In his _City of the Saints_, written after his visit to Salt Lake City, and published in 1861, Burton takes a different view of Mormonism.]

INDEX

N.B.--Numbers printed in italics refer to the footnotes.

Abbott, William, 18.

Abyssinians, the, 321.

_Academy_, Burton’s letter to the, 136-143.

_Academy_, Bataillard’s letter to the, 144-166.

Africa, the Gypsies of, 233-262.

Algeria, the Gypsies of, 258-261.

America, the Gypsies in, 282-285.

Arabshah, 190.

Armenians, the, 321.

Arnim, Count, 17.

_Arubim_, _79_.

Arya, 180.

Ascheri, 110.

Ascoli, 180.

Ashkenazím, the, 46-56.

Asia, the Gypsies in, 211-232.

Asia Minor, the Gypsies of, 219.

Aviabron, 18.

Bactriana, 180.

Baramaki, the, 231, 236.

Barbary, 260, 261.

Bartalus, M., 174-176.

Basnage, 15.

Bataillard, Paul, letter to the _Academy_, 144-156;
_list of works by_, _157_, _158_;
claim to priority in discovering identity of Gypsy and Jat
answered, 164-171;
his reviews reviewed, 171-201.

_Bauer_, _17_.

Bavaria, 203.

Bearnary, 17.

Bedawin, the, 174, 199, 200, 217, 219, 230, _234_, 236, 254.

Belochis, the, 139, 142, 169, 170.

Belochistan, the Jats of, 215-217.

Belochki dialect, the, 142, 166.

Beni Aros, the, 260.

Berber (Barbar), 181.

Berbruger, M., 198.

Beth Yusuf, 111.

Black Jews, the, 58.

Bocthor, Ellious, 146, 149.

Borrow, George (quoted), _158_, _161_, 163, 165, _169_, _170_, 190,
192, _241_, 260, 261, 269, 281.

Boudin, Dr., 12.

Braham, 17.

Brazil, 282-285.

Brosset, 185.

Bunyan, John, supposed to be of Gypsy descent, 163.

Burnouf, Émile, 188.

Cairo, 238, 240.

Cantemir, Count, 17.

Caraïtes, the. _See_ Karaïtes.

Chinganeh, 134, 219, 220.

Ciga, 190.

Cingani, 181.

Cohen, M. J., 92 ff.

Cordova, Francisca de, _203_, 270, 271.

Crosse, A. F., _264_, 267.

Cushite theory, the, 155.

Damascus, 231, 232.

Darfur, 239.

Das, 182.

Davis, Dr. J. B., 143.

Denman, Major, 262.

Denmark, the Gypsy in, 203, 209.

Derush, 97.

“Diním,” the, 111.

Djat, the, 141, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 165, 183, 195.

Doba, Capt. S. de, 268.

Dunsterville, Col., 214.

Eben ha-Azar, 111.

Ebionites, the, 54.

Egypt, the Gypsy in, 233-257.

Egyptian religion, the, 296, 297, 298, 300, 320.

El Islam, 216, 218, 255, 321-346;
popular errors concerning, 322-334.

England, Gypsy in, 208.

Essene School, the, 319.

Europe, Gypsy of, 202-210, 263-281.

_Excommunication, Jewish forms of_, _82_.

Fagnan, M., 188, 195.

Falashas, the, 116.

Ferdoussy, 145, 148.

Fetissism, 291, 292, 293, 296, 301, 302.

Fez, 260.

Fleischer, Prof., 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 165, 184.

France, the Gypsy in, 203, 204, 209, 265, 269.

Frascator, 13.

Gavbar, the, 218.

Gemara, the, 100, 101, 102, 103.

Getæ, the, 134, 141, 150, 165, 216.

Ghagar, the, 198, 200, 233-257.

Ghawázi, the, 236, 237, 252.

Gházieh, the, 181.

Gill’s _Notices of the Jews_, 3.

Goeje, Prof. de, 136, 144, 150, 151, 152, 153, 165, 183, 188, 191,
192, 195, 196.

Goldsmids, the, 18.

Gondomar, 18.

Goths, the, 134, 141.

Grellman, 202, _241_.

Greece, 177, 182, 299.

Grisi, 17.

Gypsy, the, of Africa, 233-262;
of Algeria, 258-261;
of America, 282-285;
of Asia, 211-232;
of Barbary, 260, 261;
of Bavaria, 203;
of Belochistan, 215-217;
of Brazil, 282-285;
compared with the Jat, 133, 134, 137, 139 ff;
compared with the Jew, 5, _17_, 161, 162;
of Damascus, 231, 232;
of Denmark, 203, 209;
dress of, 277;
of Egypt, 233-257;
of England, 208;
of Europe, 202-210, 263-281;
famous Gypsies, 163;
of France, 203, 204, 209, 265, 269;
of Germany, 203-208;
of Hungary, 202, 263-269;
Indian affinities of, 136-143;
of Italy, 205, 206, 265;
language of, 134, 240, 279, 280;
of Morocco, 258-261;
of the Netherlands, 209;
of the Panjab, 211-215;
of Persia, 217-219;
of Rome, 206;
of Said, 237;
of Spain, 203, 207, 265, 269-281;
of Sweden, 203, 209;
of Switzerland, 203;
of Syria, 219-224.

_Ha-fraká fast_, _10_.

Hagadah, the, 98.

Halakah, the, 98.

Halevi, 18.

Hamza Ispahani, 146, 148, 150, 151.

Hasse, hypothesis of, 179, 185.

Hawi, the, 234, 235.

Heine, 17.

Helebis, the, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257.

Herklots, Dr., 258.

_Hermann_, _17_.

Hillel, 101.

Horus, 297.

Hoshen Mishpat, 111.

Hughes, A. W., 215.

Hungary, 202, 263-269.

India, 296, 297, 298, 303.

Indian mythology, 297.

Irby, O. P., 22.

Ishaz al Fasi, Rabbi, 110.

Isis, 296.

Islam. _See_ El Islam.

Ispahani, Hamza. _See_ Hamza.

Italy, 205, 206, 265.

Játaki language, the, 137-140, 180, 215.

Jats, the. _See_ Gypsy.

_Jerusalem, population of_, _68_.

Jesus, 313-316.

Jews, the, acclimatization, 13;
atrocities among, 115-129;
cause of vitality, 9, 10;
compared with Gypsy, 5, _17_, 161, 162;
consanguinity, 7;
cupidity, 18, 26, 27, 28;
fecundity, 5;
future prospects, 62-71;
general character of, 20-45;
illustrious, 17;
immorality, 8;
of the Holy Land, 46-62;
longevity, 14;
mental characteristics of, 6, 7;
mutable character and physique of, 6;
physical appearance of the Eastern, 59;
physique of, 6, 7;
_population_, _25_;
vitality, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13.

Jin-tchi, the, 134, 142.

“Jore Déah,” 111, 113.

Joseph Karo, Rabbi, 111.

Judophobic opinion of the Jew, 62, 63.

_Jurisdiction, Jewish_, _90_.

Kamûz, the, 146, 148, 151, 165.

Kaoli, the, 218.

Karaïtes, the, 56, 57.

Khabad, the, 54, 55.

Khasidím, the, 53, 54, 55.

Koran, the, 324, 340, 341.

Kremer, Von (quoted), _199_, 234-250, 252.

Kurbat, the, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 250, 256.

Kurbat words, vocabulary of, 224-228.

Kushite theory, 194, 195.

Lane, _234_, 258.

Lemnos, 184.

“Liberal” opinion of Jewish future, 62.

Luri, the, 145, 146, 165.

Macaulay, Lord, speech of, 18, 19.

MacGregor’s _Rob Roy on the Jordan_, 31.

Mackenzie, G. Muir, 22.

Maghribí, the, 239.

Maimonides, 110.

Massena, 17.

Massorah, the, 97.

McCaul, Dr. Alexander, _37_, _75_, _85_, 88.

Mendelssohn, 17.

Mendizelal, Señor, 17.

Metempsychosis, 295.

Meyerbeer, 17.

Mezzofanti, 269.

Midrash, the, 96.

Miklosich, 156, 177, 178, 179.

Mills’ _British Jew_, 37.

Mishnah, the, 96-106.

_Montefiore, Sir Moses_, _32_, _33_.

_Mormons, the_, _97_.

Morocco, 258-261.

Moses, 302-313.

Moses of Cordova, 112.

Moses of Trani, 111.

Movers, 194.

Muhammad, attempt to poison, 33, 116;
life of, 334-337.

Nat'h, the, 143.

Nawar, the, 220, 228, 230, 231, 250, 257.

Neander, Prof., 17.

Netherlands, the, 209.

Neufville, De, 14.

Newbold, Capt., 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, _238_, _239_, _240_,
_242_, _243_, _247_, 250, 251, 252, 253, 256.

_Noachidæ, the_, _79_, _80_.

Noachidæ, code of the, 78, 79.

Nott’s _Physical History of the Jewish Race_, 3.

Offenbach, 17.

Orach Chaüin, 111.

Oral law, Jewish, 72-92, 99, 102, 117.

Osiris, 296.

Palestine, 219.

_Palgrave_, _17_.

Panjab, 137, 139, 140, 141, 168, 211-215.

Pantheism, 295, 298.

Parushím, the, 53, 55.

Paspati, A. G., _160_, 173, 174, 178, 182, 185, 191.

Pasquier, 269.

Pasta, 17.

Paul, 317, 318.

Perier, 159.

Persia, 217-219.

Persians, religion of the ancient, 294, 295, 297.

Peshat, the, 97.

Physician, the Jewish, 113, 114.

_Pococke, Bishop_, _219_.

Polytheism, 295.

_Postans Capt._, _167_.

Pott, Prof., 136, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 154, 165, 181.

_Proselytes, Jewish_, _79_.

Quasimus, 114.

Rabanu Jacob Be-Rab, 110, 111, 113.

Rabbinical law, 72-114.

Rachel, 17.

Rasscho, Shaykh, 220, 222.

_Ratisbonne, De_, _17_.

“Reformed British Jews,” the, 58.

Reinaud, 147, 149, 150, 151, 165.

Religion, earliest forms of, 289-302.

Remiz, the, 97.

Ricardos, the, 18.

_Roberts, Samuel_, _276_.

Rödiger, 150.

Rogers, Consul E. T., 231, 232.

Romá, the, 160, 164, 172, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 186, 187,
198, 202, 221, 228, 233, 252, 261.

Roman Catholic view of Jewish future, 62, 63.

Romani-chíb, 181, 197.

Rome, 206.

Rossini, 17.

Rothschilds, the, 18.

Rouhers, the, 18.

Rumeli, 220.

Russia and the Holy Land, 66, 67, 70.

Sabbath, the Jewish, 74-77, 86.

_Sabbath Services, the Jewish_, _76_.

Sadík, 11.

Safed, School of, 68, 92, 106-114.

Said, 251.

Saint-Martin, V. de, 185.

Samaritans, the, 57, 58.

Sanhedrin, the, 94, 95, 96.

Santa, Dr. de Pietra, 258-260.

Saracens, 203, 205.

Scotland, 172, 178, 213, 282.

Segor, 181.

Sephardím, the, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 56.

Shahnameh, the, 146, 148, 150, 165.

Shalomon Alkabez, Rabbi, 111.

Shammai, 101.

Sicani, the, 180, 185.

Sidi Hamed au Muza, 260.

Siginnoi, the, 185.

Sím, El, 240, 241.

Sindh, 138, 139.

Singani, 181.

Sinties, the, 184, 185.

Sleeman, W. H., 141, 165, 211, 231.

Sochæus, 11.

Sod, 98.

Soult, Marshal, 17.

Spain, 178.

Spinoza, 17, _70_, _95_.

Sweden, 203, 209.

Syria, 219-224, 228-232, 250, 320.

Talmud Babli, 101, 102.

Talmudic law, 72-114, 118.

Tchangar, the, 156.

Theism, 302.

Tiberias, School of, 92-106.

Ticknor, 271.

Torlonias, the, 18.

Trumpp, Dr. Ernest, 137, 156, _168_, 197.

Tschudi, 13.

Tsigans, the, 147, 152, 153, 175, 183, 185, 189, 190, 193, 198, 201,
263 ff.

Ukayl, 137.

“White Jews,” the, 58.

Wohl, 17.

_Wolff_, _17_.

Xapol, 18.

Yad ha-Hazaka, 110.

Yahuda, Rabbi, 94, 95.

_Yom ha-Kippur_, _65_.

Zengi, the, 150.

Zigeuner, the, 150, 151, 165, 192, 219, 234, _241_, 268.

Zincali, the, 187, 192, 219.

Zingaro, derivation of, 190.

Zuth, the, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 165, 231, _239_.

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Archaic, obsolete and inconsistent spellings are maintained from the original book. There were no obvious misspellings. No changes were made to the text with the following exceptions:

--some footnotes inserted to comment about transliterations,

--for words in the Arabic alphabet (including Arabic, Persian,
Sindhi, etc.) or Devangari (Sanskrit, Hindi, etc.), I have included
a transliteration if one was not already in the text,

--all footnotes moved to the end of their chapter,

--CONTENTS, PREFACE, INDEX, and TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE added to the Table
of Contents, and

--added this note.