power. Antioch, Seleucia, Apamea, Laodicea, and many other great cities sprang into existence as if by the wand of an enchanter. The country was regarded as an earthly paradise. The votaries of pleasure in every land longed for the delicious groves of Daphne (near Antioch). The pure sky and enchanting scenery remain; and the ruins that dot the country bear silent testimony to the wealth and splendour of former days.

When

"To the Seleucidæ succeeded the Romans. Hadrian divided Syria into three provinces, Antioch remained capital of the 'first,' which embraced the whole country under consideration.

"The decline of Northern Syria may be dated from the Saracenic conquest. Some of its cities were still populous when the Crusaders marched through the land.* The Mohammedan rule has since been fatal to almost all. Seleucia is deserted, Apamea is deserted, Arethusa is deserted, Larissa is deserted, and Antioch itself is dwindled down to a fourth-rate town of 6000 inhabitants. A great part of the country is desert."†

* Bertrand, who passed through the country in 1432, after the invasions of the Tartars, speaks of seeing in some places nothing but ruined houses between Hamah and Antioch. Travels in Palestine; ed. Wright: H. Bohn.

† Porter's Guide Book to Syria, (Murray,) vol. ii. p. 590.

25

CHAP. II.

HISTORY OF THE SECRET HERETICAL SECTS OF ISLAM.

BEFORE entering on the history of the Ansaireeh, it is necessary to give an account of some of the other heretical secret sects which sprang out of the bosom of Islam, such as the Karmatians, the Druses, and the Ismaeleeh or Assassins. Not only is it necessary to do this, for the sake of those who have not given much attention to the rise and progress of Mohammedanism, but as helping materially to the elucidation of the history of the Ansaireeh. This sect has never been of much note, and, consequently, Mohammedan authors only mention them now and then, and that slightly; while the Ansaireeh themselves are not only very ignorant, and possessed of few books, but also either entirely silent or designedly deceitful as to their origin; and few of their books have yet fallen into the hands of Europeans. The consequence is, that it is easier to write their history negatively than positively; to say what they are not, than to show what they are; and for this we must know something of those sects which have any relation to them.

It has been a common error to suppose, that, while Christianity has been split up into diverse sects, Mohammedanism has been comparatively free from heresy and schism. A saying imputed by tradition to Mohammed at once shows that this idea is without foundation. He is said to have declared, that whereas the Magians were divided into seventy sects, the Jews into seventy-one, the Christians into seventy-two, his own followers would be

man authors suppose only one to be entitled to salvation. And, in fact, if all the several heresies which sprang into existence after the death of Mohammed were enumerated one by one, the number would be found to exceed even the liberal allowance imputed to the prophet.*

As religion and civil government are intimately connected in the Mohammedan system, we find that these schisms had their first origin in political considerations, namely, the right of succession to the government of the Mohammedan state after the death of its founder.

Mohammed died in the house of his wife Ayesha; and she is said by the Schiites, or followers of Ali, to have suppressed his special designation, in favour of Ali, of the Caliphate or civil rule, and the Imamate or spiritual jurisdiction, of Islam or Mohammedanism. That is, they say that Mohammed intended that he should be both Emir-il-Moomeneen (prince of the true believers), and Imam-il-Muslemeen (high priest of the Mussulmans); and they maintain his indefeasible right to both offices, and that though he for a time, and his children afterwards, were by man's injustice deprived of the caliphate, no human power could take from them the imamate. And in truth, though the caliphate was voted to Abu-Becr, with the pretty general consent of the chief companions of Mohammed, Ali seems to have had a better claim. AbuBeer, indeed, was an early convert, and a favoured companion, and also father of Ayesha, wife of the prophet; but Ali was not only related by blood to Mohammed, who had been brought up and protected by Abu-Taleh, Ali's father and Mohammed's uncle, but had married his favourite daughter, Fatima, was one of his three earliest converts, and had contributed materially by his bravery to the success of his cousin. The subsequent conduct of Ali shows him too, to have been, according to the light

* See Sale's Introduction to Koran, sect. viii., for an account of some of these.

that was in him, of a mild and praiseworthy character, and he bore the preference given to rivals with an equanimity which was not shared by his zealous partisans.

When Abu-Becr died, the claims of Ali were postponed to those of the fierce Omar, and on his assassination, to those of the aged and feeble Othman, who had married two daughters of the prophet. It was only on the murder of Othman that the claims of Ali were recognised; and the Schiites as a body make a religious duty to curse those who had stood in his way-Abu-Becr, Omar, and Othman, especially Omar, who had forced Ali to give way to the first-named.

The opposition to Ali did not end with his succession to the caliphate. Telha and Zobeir, companions of Mohammed, and the determined enemy of Ali, Ayesha, took the field against him, but were defeated; Telha and Zobeir being slain and Ayesha made prisoner. But Moawiyah, who had been appointed by Omar governor of Syria, and had been deposed by Ali, proved a inore formidable antagonist. He was the son of that Abu-Sofian, who, at the head of the Koreish, had so long resisted Mohammed, and at length only professed Islam under the sword. Moawiyah continued to make progress in his rebellion against Ali, till Ali was assassinated, A.D. 661; when having forced Hasan, the eldest son of Ali, to resign, he became caliph, to the exclusion of the family of Mohammed. Moawiyah was the founder of the dynasty of the Omeyades (so called from Omeyah, one of his ancestors), which ruled the Mohammedan world till the accession of the Abbasides, caliphs of Bagdad, who were descended from Abbas, an uncle of Mohammed, and obtained the caliphate in A.D. 750. This dynasty proved as zealous enemies of the descendants of Ali as the former.

Ali married no one in the life of Fatima. By her he had three sons, Hasan, Hosein, and Mohsin, of whom the last-named died young. He afterwards had eight wives,

Hanefeyd, was one of the most noted, as reverenced by one of the numerous sects, which were characterised by the inordinate honour paid by them to the memory of Ali. It was difficult to extinguish so numerous a progeny; but the most important scions of the race were the sons of Hosein, reckoned among the twelve celebrated imams, of whom I proceed succinctly to give the history.

Hosein, led into rebellion and then deserted by the people of Cufa, near Bagdad, was surrounded with seventy brave followers at Kerbela, in the neighbourhood of those places, by the army of Yezid, son of Moawiyah. It is impossible to read without emotion the story of his bravery and death, and every year in Persia and India his martyrdom is celebrated with all the outward marks of extreme grief; and the Ansaireeh speak of him as the third imam, the martyr of Kerbela.

Ali, his son, the fourth imam, who was twelve years old at the death of his father, refused to take any share in public affairs, and died A.D. 712, leaving such a reputation for piety, that he is styled Zeyu-il-Aabideen, the "ornament of pious men."

Mohammed, the fifth imam, led as retired a life as his father. He devoted himself to study, and is called by the Schiites the "possessor of the secret," or Il Bakir, "the investigator." The Omeyade caliph of his day, alarmed at the progress of opinions which tended to strengthen the house of Ali, caused him to be poisoned A.D. 734.

His son Djaafar, the sixth imam, called Is-Sadik, or "the just," is especially celebrated and reverenced by the followers of Ali and his family. They say that he wrote the lesser Djifi, a book of astrological predictions, as Ali had been the author of the greater. Even at the present day, and especially since the Mohammedan community has been so rudely shaken in various parts of the world, this book is referred to as having foretold all that has and is to happen. He died A.D. 765, after the caliphate had passed. to the Abbasides, an event which, as we have inti