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Updated: June 11, 2025
On the watershed of the Helmund and Indus dwell the independent Pathans and Biluchis. The Persian-speaking Kizilbashis in Kabul, comprise 3,000,000 of Shiahs, who are not Afghans, many of whose 30,000 fighting men are in the Ameer's regular army. The Tajiks about 10,000 men are chiefly in the Kabul and Ghazni districts.
Further up the Persian Gulf missionaries have long been established on the islands of Bahrein, which are under British protection. Continuing our journey eastward, we can dismiss the Shiahs of Persia as outside our pan-Islamic calculations, for their pilgrim-centre is at Kerbela, some twenty odd miles west of the Euphrates and the site of ancient Babylon.
The Seventh of the Nine Bars says that a man may not marry one of the idolaters? Is that truth? Both Shiahs and Sunnis say that a Musalman may not marry one of the idolaters? Is the Sahib a priest, then, that he knows so much? I will tell him something that he does not know.
All Mahometans believe in a coming mahdi, a messiah, who shall restore right and prepare for the second advent of Mahomet and the tribunal of the last day; but the Shiahs turned the expectation to special account.
They formed a new party of Ismailians, and in 908 a chief of this sect, Mahomet, surnamed el-Mahdi, or the Leader a title of the Shiahs for their imams revolted in Africa. He called himself a descendant of Ismail and claimed to be the legitimate imam. He aimed at the temporal power of a caliph, and soon established a rival caliphate in Africa, where he had obtained a considerable sovereignty.
It is true also that they have been obliged to choose to be Sunnites and not Shiahs; but, considering the latter sect arose in Persia, since the date of the Turkish occupation of Constantinople, it was really no choice at all. They have but remained as they were.
Shiahs of the grimmest and most uncompromising persuasion; Sufis who had lost all belief in the Prophet and retained but little in God; wandering Hindu priests passing southward on their way to the Central India fairs and other affairs; Pundits in black gowns, with spectacles on their noses and undigested wisdom in their insides; bearded headmen of the wards; Sikhs with all the details of the latest ecclesiastical scandal in the Golden Temple; red-eyed priests from beyond the Border, looking like trapped wolves and talking like ravens; M. A.'s of the University, very superior and very voluble all these people and more also you might find in the white room.
In 1892 a bazaar quarrel in Herat between Sunni and Shiah traders grew to a disturbance, and culminated in some of the latter, Persian subjects, being slain and their goods plundered, the Moullas solemnly pronouncing their judgment that it was 'lawful' for Sunnis to take the lives as well as the property of the heretical Shiahs.
The sixth imam, Jaffer, upon the death of his eldest son, Ismail, appointed another son, Moussa or Moses, his heir; but a large body of the Shiahs denied the right of Jaffer to make a new nomination, declaring the imamate to be strictly hereditary.
Shiahs of the grimmest and most uncompromising persuasion; Sufis who had lost all belief in the Prophet and retained but little in God; wandering Hindu priests passing southward on their way to the Central India fairs and other affairs; Pundits in black gowns, with spectacles on their noses and undigested wisdom in their insides; bearded headmen of the wards; Sikhs with all the details of the latest ecclesiastical scandal in the Golden Temple; red-eyed priests from beyond the Border, looking like trapped wolves and talking like ravens; M.A.'s of the University, very superior and very voluble all these people and more also you might find in the white room.
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