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Loftus received the first hint of his suggestion from what he himself saw at Nedjef and at Kerbela, where he met funeral processions more than once on the roads of Irak-Arabi. From every town in Persia the bodies of Shiite Mussulmans, who desire to repose near the mortal remains of Ali and his son, are transported after death into Mesopotamia.
Though Mecca is forbidden to non-Moslems, a few Europeans have managed to make the Hajj in disguise, and have written their impressions. Also see Burton and Burckhardt. The Shiite Persians of course refused to recognize any Sunnite or orthodox caliphate; while the Moors pay spiritual allegiance to their own Shereefian sultans. The Turkish name for Constantinople.
Of these the most notable without contestation is the Shiite, or Sect of Ali, which traces its origin to the very day of the Prophet's death, when Abu Bekr was elected Caliph to Ali's exclusion. I will not here renew the arguments urged in this old dispute more than to say that the dispute still exists, though it has long ceased to be the only cause of difference between Shiah and Suni.
The Ismailians may be best regarded as one of the several sects of Shiites, who originally were simply the partisans of Ali against Omar, but by degrees they became identified as the upholders of the Koran against the validity of the oral tradition, and when, later, the whole of Persia espoused the cause of Ali, the Shiite belief became tinged with all kinds of mysticism.
In Tripoli there is indeed a saint of very high pretensions, one known as the Sheykh Es Snusi, who has a large religious following, and who has promised to come forward shortly as the Móhdy or guide expected by a large section of the Sunite as well as the Shiite Mussulmans. But as yet we know nothing of him but his name and the fact of his sanctity, which is of Wahhabite type.
Beginning merely as a political schism, the Shiite sect is now distinctly a heresy, and one which has wandered far from the orthodox road.
Even Islam in this region includes a number of incompatible sects, such as the Ansariye, the Metawali, and the Druses in the Syrian mountains, Shiite Arabs on the Gulf coast and the Persian border, with pagan Kurds and Yezidis in the latter region and north Mesopotamia.
The Shiite views of jurisprudence, as of theology, prevailed in Persia; the "Futawa Alumgeeree" is strictly Sunnite. It is not difficult to account for this. The Mahometan conquerors of India were mainly of Turkish or Tartar race; they came from Turan, a region which from time immemorial has stood in antagonistic relations to Iran or Persia.
They are said to be far more honest and trustworthy than the Persians, who, as Shiite Mohammedans, consider themselves the holiest people on earth; or the Armenians, who hug the flattering unction of being Christians and not Mohammedans to their souls, and expect all Christendom to regard them benignly on that account.
On the Oxus and further East the old Turan the Sunnite sect was sufficiently strong to defy the efforts of the Shiite sovereigns of Persia to eradicate it. Accordingly, we find the authorities excerpted in the "Futawa Alumgeeree" consist almost exclusively of two classes; they are either the immediate disciples of Hanifa at Kufah and Bagdad, or the jurists of Samarkand and Bokhara.
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