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The Hanefite Ulema, however, as I have said, undertook Selim's defence, or rather that of his successors, for Selim himself died not a year afterwards, and succeeded in proving, to the satisfaction of the majority of Sunites, that the house of Othman had a good and valid title to the rank they had assumed. Their chief arguments were as follows.
But this is too intricate and important a matter to be entered on at present. The Sunites are then the body of authority and tradition, and being more numerous than the other three sects put together in a proportion of four and a half to one, have a good right to treat these as heretics. It must not, however, be supposed that even the Sunites profess absolutely homogeneous opinions.
"Je me permets de vous prier d'avoir l'extreme obligeance de m'indiquer le nombre total des habitants de Tristan da Cunha avec Dependances et la quantite de ceux qui appartiennent a la religion mahometane, avec l'indication du nombre des Sunites ou Chuetes et de leur nationalite respective.
Till as late as the last century the Imamate was an elective office among them, but with the accession of the Abu Saïd dynasty it became hereditary in that family. They reject all communion with the Sunites, but I have not been able to discover that they hold any doctrines especially offensive to the mass of Moslems.
The King of the Moonites shall pay to the King of the Sunites, annually, a tribute of ten thousand jars of dew, and give ten thousand hostages of his subjects. The high contracting parties shall found the colony of Lucifer in common, and shall permit persons of any other nationality to join the same.
It is a dogma, too, with the Sunites that they are not only an ecclesiastical but a political body, and that among them is the living representative of the temporal power of the Prophet, in the person of his Khalifeh or successor, though there is much division of opinion as to the precise line of succession in the past and the legitimate ownership of the title in the present.
The Sunites shall demolish the party-wall, shall make no further incursion into the Moon, and shall hold their captives to ransom at a fixed rate. The Moonites shall restore to the other stars their autonomy, shall not bear arms against the Sunites, and shall conclude with them a mutual defensive alliance.
Thus it is related of Abu Bekr that in one instance he set aside a law called the Mota, though based directly on some sentences of the Koran, declaring it not conformable to the better tradition; and that Ali again reversed this ruling, which has, nevertheless, been adhered to by the Sunites.
But, as the Zeïdites are accustomed to conceal the fact of their heresy and to pass themselves when on pilgrimage as Sunites, I could learn little about them. They were, till ten years ago, independent under the Imams of Sana, and it is certain that they repudiate the Califate.
They also and this is their great doctrinal quarrel with the unitarian Sunites believe in a series of incarnations of the twelve qualities of God in the persons of the "twelve Imams," and in the advent of the last of them as a Messiah, or "Móhdy," doctrines which are especially advanced by the Sheykhi school of Shiism and minimized by the Mutesharreh or orthodox.
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