the Khanates are from the general life of Islam, Bokhara can but vaguely represent the present religious power of Constantinople, and will be powerless to influence the general flow of Mohammedan thought.  Its influence could be exerted only through India, and would be supported by no political prestige.  So that it is far more likely in the future to follow than to lead opinion.  Otherwise isolation is its only fate.

The future of Shiite Mohammedanism in Persia proper is a still more doubtful problem.  Exposed like the rest of Central Asia to Russian conquest, the Persian monarchy cannot without a speedy and complete revolution of its internal condition fail to succumb politically.  The true Irani, however, have an unique position in Mohammedan Asia which may save them from complete absorption.  Unlike any Mohammedan race except the Arabian, they are distinctly national.  The Turk, conqueror though he has always been, repudiates still the name of Turk, calling himself simply a Moslem, and so likewise do the less distinguished races he has subjected.  But the Persian does not do this.  He is before all things Irani, and to the extent that he has made for himself a Mohammedanism of his own.  He boasts of a history and a literature older far than Islam, and has not consented to forget it as a thing belonging only to “the Age of Ignorance.”  He runs, therefore, little risk of being either Russianised or Christianised by conquest; and being of an intellectual fibre superior to that of the Russians, and, as far as the mass of the population is concerned, being physically as well gifted, it may be supposed that he will survive, if he cannot avert, his political subjugation.

There is at the present moment, I am informed, a last desperate effort making at Teheran for the re-organization of the Empire on a liberal basis of government, and though it would be folly to count much on its success, it may conceivably succeed.  Mohammedanism would not there, as at Constantinople, be found a barrier to reform, for Persian Shiism is an eminently elastic creed, and on the contrary may, it is thought, be made the instrument of a social reformation; only, as I have said it would be folly to count on its success; and there are certain moral defects in Persian character which do not encourage lookers-on.  Shiite Mohammedanism, however, whether Persia be absorbed or not by Russia, is of little importance in a general review of Islam’s future, and may safely be dismissed as not directly relevant to the main question before us.

Admitting, then, the probability, nay, the certainty, of considerable political and territorial losses northwards, caused by the violent pressure of a hostile Europe, let us see what yet remains to Islam as her certain heritage, and how the changes foreshadowed may affect her general life.  I cannot myself find any cause of despair for Mussulmans in the prospect of a curtailment of their religious area in the directions indicated,