The chief obstacles, however, to a reformation of this sort would not be in the beginning, nor would they be wholly moral ones.  The full programme of the Mohdy needs that he should conquer Mecca; and the land road thither of an African reformer lies blocked by Egypt and the Suez Canal.  So that, unless he should succeed in crossing the Red Sea through Abyssinia (an invasion which, by the way, would fulfil another ancient prophecy, which states that the “Companions of the Elephant,” the Abyssinians, shall one day conquer Hejaz), he could not carry out his mission.  Nor, except as an ally against the Turk, would a fanatical reformer now find much sympathy in Arabia proper.  The Peninsular Arabs have had their Puritan reformation already, and a strong reaction has set in amongst them in favour of liberal thought.  They are in favour still of reform, but it is of another kind from that preached by Abd el Wahhab; and it is doubtful whether a new militant Islam would find many adherents amongst them.

The only strong advocate of such views at the present day among true Arabs in Arabia is the aged Sherif, Abd el Mutalleb, the Sultan’s nominee, who indeed has spared no pains, since he was installed at Mecca, to fan the zeal of the North Africans.  A Wahhabi in his youth, he is still a fierce Puritan; and it is possible that, should he live long enough (he is said to be ninety years old), he may be able to produce a corresponding zeal in Arabia.  But at present the mass of the Arabs in Hejaz, no less than in Nejd and Yemen, are occupied with more humane ideas.  Abd el Mutalleb’s chief supporters in Mecca are not his own countrymen, but the Indian colony, descendants many of them of the Sepoy refugees who fled thither in 1857, and who have the reputation of being the most fanatical of all its residents.  The true Arabs are in revolt against his authority.

Again, it is improbable that any enunciation of Puritan reform would find support among the northern races of Asia, which are uniformly sunk in gross sensuality and superstition; while Constantinople may be trusted to oppose all reform whatever.  Wahhabism, when it overspread Southern Asia, never gained a foothold further north than Syria, and broke itself to pieces at last against the corrupt orthodoxy of Constantinople.  And so too it would happen now.  Abd el Hamid, in spite of his zeal for Islam, would see in the preaching of a moral reform only a new heresy; and, as we have seen, the Mohdy’s mission is against all evil rule, the Sultan’s and Caliph’s not excepted.  So that, unless Abd el Hamid places himself openly at the head of the warlike movement in Africa and so forestalls a rival, he is not likely long to give it his loyal support.  Already there are symptoms of his regarding events in Tunis with suspicion, and on the first announcement of an inspired reformer he would, I believe, not hesitate to pronounce against him.  I understand the Turkish military reinforcements at Tripoli quite as much in the light of a precaution against Arab reform as against infidel France.