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Bokhara may lose its political independence, but there is no probability for many generations to come of its being Christianized as Constantinople certainly must be, and it may even on the fall of the latter become the chief centre of Sunite orthodoxy of the existing Hanefite type, remaining so perhaps long after the rest of Islam shall have abandoned Hanefism.
The Turkish bulletin on the event described him as a Persian fanatic, but no one confessed to having known him, and those who saw and spoke to him while in custody maintain that he was an Afghan and a Sunite. He seems to have given half-a-dozen contradictory accounts of himself; but the general impression remains that he came from Turkey, and was by profession a dervish.
Among the popular beliefs of Islam and it is one common to every sect, Shiite and Abadite, as well as Sunite is this one, that in the latter days of the world, when the power of God's worshippers shall have grown weak and their faith corrupted, a leader shall arise who shall restore the fortunes of the true believers.
The Sunite or Orthodox Mohammedan world holds it as a dogma of faith that there must be a Khalifeh, the ex-officio head of their religious polity, and the successor of their prophet. In temporal matters, whoever holds this office is theoretically king of all Islam; and in spiritual matters he is their supreme religious authority.
Will they accept it? ... Yesterday I saw a Schiah and a Sunite meet, and the old hate darkened their faces as they looked at each other. Between them there is only a feud of Islamites; how much greater is their feud with Christians? How immeasurably greater the feud between Christian and Jew? ... My heart misgives me! Lord! Can it be I am but cherishing a dream?"
Moreover, Central Asia, though connected by ties of sympathy with Constantinople, has never been politically or even religiously dependent on it. It has a university of its own in Bokhara, a seat of learning still renowned throughout Asia, and it is thither and not to St. Sophia that the Sunite Mussulmans east of the Caspian proceed for their degrees.
I have the authority of the most enlightened of modern Asiatic statesmen in support of my opinion that it would be the certain deathblow of Mohammedanism as a permanent religious faith in all the lands west of the Caspian, and that even among the Tartar races of the far East, the Sunite Mussulmans of Siberia and the Khanates, and as far as the Great Wall of China, it would be a shock from which Sunism in its present shape would with difficulty recover.
It is noticeable, however, that within the last fifty years the religious bitterness of Shiite and Sunite is sensibly in decline. The next most important of the heretical sects is the Abadiyeh.
Their differences are mainly negative, and consist in the rejection of Califal history and authority later than the reign of Omar, and of a vast number of traditions now incorporated in the Sunite faith. Allied to them but, as I understood, separate, are the Zeïdites of Yemen, who are possibly also descended from the Khawarij.
The Sunite left at once broke without awaiting the onset of the Horse-vultures, and we pursued, slaying them. On the other hand, their right had the better of our left, the Sky-gnats pressing on right up to our infantry. When these joined in, however, they turned and fled, chiefly owing to the moral effect of our success on the other flank.
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