'Turkish Arabia: Being an Account of an Official Tour in Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, 1886-87' [‎30v] (58/72)

a saint and " martyr/' This tragical ending to an unfortunate life gave him a place for ever
among the heroes of Isl&m. With all his knightly qualities and devotion, the AH who died
at Cufa probably bore about as much, or as little, resemblance to the Ali still living in two
hundred millions of hearts as the prince who turned back at Derby and fled at Culloden
did to the " Young Chevalier " of Jacobite song. All the more unique therefore the place
now occupied by him, in spite of his name having so long formed the shibboleth both of
religious schism and political party. Palgrave, it is true, in his article Arabia in ninth
edition of Encyclopcedia Britannica, can find no better epithets for him than "ambitious,"
" unprincipled/' " blood-stained."* But, on the other hand, an English missionary clergy
man of High Church views, just now on a visit to Baghdad, declares himself so much en
rapport with the politico-religious system distinctive of Ali's sect that he too could make
pilgrimage to the splendid mausoleum, enriched with princely gifts, which, as will appear
presently, Shia piety has erected over his tomb at Najaf. Muslim parents call their
children after Ali almost as often as after Muhammad. Even his charger lives in nume
rous Arthurian legends; and his two-edged sword Dhu'l fakart is the Excalibur of Persian
and Arabian romance. But all this developed itself afterwards.
At the time of his death, as has been seen, Ali was almost out of it, Muawia being
H defacto master of the Arab empire. In vain the people of
Ir4k chose Ali's eldest son Hasan Caliph. This grandson
of the Prophet had inherited none of! the stronger qualities of his race. Declining the
champion's role he went into inglorious retirement at Madina, where he died, as is gene
rally believed of poison. As long as Mu&wia lived he was able to put down internal intrigue
with the one hand, while with the other making the arms of Islam victorious towards,
on the west the Nile, on the east the Indus and Oxus. On his death the Caliphate passed
as he had desired to his son Yazid.
The subjective and imaginative genius of Persia had all this time been fast assimilating
Ali's tenets. Not alone had the summary methods in which
Rapid spread of Shia doctrines m T i . i i .i , , i i r ,
p ers i a- Islamism had there been propagated left the masses, as
usual, almost unchanged ; but the essential incompatibility
between the religious conceptions of Aryan and Semitic races (Jew and Gentile) had even
then begun to show itself in those religious exaggerations and aberrations, from Sufiism
down to " BS.bism," J for which Persia is so remarkable. If within the Sunnite system there
lay the germ of what has come to be called Erastianism, or the theology of the " family
living" school, still more inevitably did the Shute, or "spiritual Headship" dogma lead to
the inordinate elevation of demagogues, popular preachers, and fanatics. Among the
Ahddith, or sayings addressed by the Prophet to his disciples, and collected after his
death, was one directed against the " praying in front of tomb." This may have been
suggested to him by a consciousness of the lengths to which a practice not in itself objec
tionable would be carried once it was begun. How far it has spread among SMas does not
require to be told. What Mariolatry has been all these centuries in Roman Europe, some
thing very like the adoration of Ali soon became in Persia; and in Arabia wherever Persian
influences extended.
While Mu&wia's death was thought to afford to the rival party the opportunity, his
Husain, successor's persecution of Hasan's younger brother, Husain,
that is the little Hasan, acted on them as the stimulus.
When it was known in distant Cufa that Husain had fled from Madina to Mecca, a thrill
went through it, and all Irak invited, or was supposed to invite, Ali's son to come and strike
another blow for the " divine right " of heredity, or so-called legitimacy. In an evil moment
he yielded to the temptation, and taking all his family with him turned his head towards
the Euphrates. Nothing but the most discouraging intelligence met him by the way.
When with his retinue he reached the plain of Karbalci, four thousand horsemen sent out
by Yazid's governor of Bussorah brought him to a halt and on 10th Muharram A. H. 61
» Alluding, of course, to his alleged part in the murder of his immediate predecessor in the Caliphate, Othmftn.
Not the least of Ah s misfortunes was his being pursued all the best years of his life by the enmity of a vindictive
and formidable woman, A-i-sha, one of the Prophet's widows. That she and others were not slow to bring this
charge against him is certain. But it is less so that he was guilty of it: and at the present time among the Sunni
doctors of Baghdad none has been met with who thinks he was so.
t Literally, possessor of vertebra, possibly from its high degree of temper and flexibility; more probably
because scolloped at the edges, for the more easy cleaving of coats of mail. A trophy and favourite weapon of the
Prophet, it formed a present from him to Ali. Fakir, vertebrated: hence humble, is but another form of word fak<kr,
X For an account of this extraordinary movement, vide *' Religions of Asia," by M. deGobineau.