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Updated: June 17, 2025
With the Ulema, however, it was necessary to be more precise; and we know that the question of the Ottoman right to the spiritual succession of the Prophet was one long and hotly debated in the schools.
As a rule the temporal government of Islam was intrusted to a Sadrazzam, or Grand Vizier, the spiritual duty of prayer to a Naïb, or deputy Imam, and the elaboration or interpretation of law and doctrine to such Ulema or Mujtaheddin as could command a following. The character of the Khalifeh, however, was still essentially sacred.
Dicky asked the ghaflir standing by what the youth had done. "It is no youth, but a woman," he answered "the latest wife of the Mudir. In a man's clothes " He paused, for the head sheikh of El Medineh, with two Ulema, entered the throng. The crowd fell back.
"This morning, dressed as a man, she went in secret to the sacred purple pillar for barren women in the Mosque of Amrar, by the Bahr-el-Yusef, and was found there with her tongue to it. What shall be done to this accursed tree in the garden of Mahomet?" "Cut it down!" shouted the crowd; and the Ulema standing beside the Sheikh-el-beled said: "Cut down for ever the accursed tree."
The sayings of the four first Caliphs, as collected in the first century of the Mohammedan era, they hold to be inspired and unimpeachable, as are to a certain extent the theological treatises of the four great doctors of Islam, the Imams Abu Hanifeh, Malek, Esh Shafy, and Hanbal, and after them, though with less and less authority, the "fetwas," or decisions of distinguished Ulema, down to the present day.
That all these changes might be logically effected by a process of reasoning from the traditions, and expanding or minimising the interpretation of the Koran, no one need doubt who remembers what fetwas have already been given on these very points by some of the Azhar Ulema.
Now, no such authority exists, either in the Ottoman Sultan, or in the Sherif, or in any Sheykh el Islam, Mufti, or body of Ulema in the world. None of these dare seriously meddle with the law. There is not even one universally recognized tribunal to which all Moslems may refer their doubts about the law's proper reading, and have their disputes resolved.
There is no common authority in the world acknowledged as superior to the rest, neither is there any office corresponding even remotely with the infallible Papacy. The Mohammedan nations have for the most part each its separate school, composed of its own Ulema and presided over by its own Grand Mufti or Sheykh el Islam, and these are independent of all external influence.
A very aged, tremulous, half paralyzed Ulema was there among them, the dervish Mohammed, and he it was who at length ventured to speak. "Oh, my master! who is valiant enough to speak with a raging lion, who hath wit enough to come to terms with the burning tempest of the Samum, or who would venture to go on an embassy to the tempest-tost sea and bandy words therewith?"
A newspaper in Arabic called the Jawaib was subsidized at Constantinople under the direction of one Achmet Faris, a convert to Islam and a man of great literary ability and knowledge of Arabic, who already had views on the subject of the Caliphate; and this organ henceforth consistently advocated the new policy of the Ulema.
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