Reviews of A Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862-63 by William Gifford Palgrave, Published 1865 [‎4r] (7/42)

Palgrave'5 Arabia.
185
as he had been before his conquests such he became again,
and such he is now, ' a wild man, whose hand is against every
man, and every man's hand against him.'
While the Kalifs still reigned in Bagdad there appeared occa
sionally in Eastern Arabia men actuated by religious enthusiasm,
or ambition, or by both:—no unusual combination—who for a
season were successful in exciting a popular reaction against
Mahomedanism, and in propagating new doctrines. Of these
the most successful was Karmat, or Karmath, who about a.d. 900
had gathered around him, in his native district of Koofa, a large
body of devoted disciples. Amongst other innovations he permitted
the use of wine, and dispensed with ablutions, two changes which
must have been almost equally acceptable to his followers. This
sect waged war for several years with the Kalifs; sacked Bussora ;
took Koofa; threatened Damascus, which escaped capture by
paying a ransom; ravaged Balbek, putting to death most of the
inhabitants; seized Hajar (El Haza), which they made their
capital; and plundered the caravans of pilgrims to Mekka.
Having been joined by the inhabitants of Bahrein and Haza,
who had adopted the tenets of Karmat, they marched in force
against Mekka, which they took. There they slaughtered thirty
thousand persons; pillaged the city; sacked the Kaaba; filled
the holy well of Zemzem with dead bodies; defiled the most
revered of Mahomedan temples, by interring in it a thousand
corpses; carried off the sacred black stone, which every devout
Mahomedan pilgrim desires to kiss, and converted it to an obscene
use : but a few vears after the death of their most successful mili-
^
tary leader, Aboo Taher, they restored the stone; and according
to the Mahomedan tradition, a single camel, which was lean
when it left Koofa, and got fat on the journey, sufficed to carry
it back to Mekka; whereas forty strong camels had hardly been
able to carry it away, and had all been reduced to skin and bone
by the effort, before they conveyed it to Koofa. Having endured
for about sixty years, from the date of its first rise, the Kar-
mathite 4 heresy' declined and ceased to excite much attention,
though it still survived in obscurity at Aleppo, Kateef, and some
other places. It appears to have been a sect of mystics, such as
are common in the East, under the generic designation of Soofees,
and in which the leader and his followers stand in the relations
of Morsheed and Moreed. The Morsheed is supposed by his de
voted disciples, or Moreeds, to be the vicegerent of God on earth,
whose mandates they are bound blindly to obey. The Ismaelees
of Alamoot in Persia—the disciples or Moreeds of Hassan Sub-
bah, 4 the old man of the mountain' (from whose name our term
c assassin' is derived), were a sect of this class ; and the stories
related