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Updated: June 17, 2025
In India the mass of the Mussulman population is Shafite, especially in Hyderabad and the Bombay Presidency, where the Arab element is strongest, while Hanefism is the school of the great people who derive their origin from the Mogul conquests, and of many of the Ulema who are in the habit of making their religious education complete in the Hanefite schools of Bokhara.
I know this, and I know, too, that a vast array of learned Mohammedan opinion can be cited to prove this to be the case, and that very few of the modern Ulema of any school of divinity would venture openly to impugn its truth.
It may, however, give an idea of the kind of material in tradition which reformers are looking for, if I quote a document which was being circulated last spring among the Ulema of the Azhar. It purports to be the text of the Prophet's first treaty with the Christians of Arabia, though I do not vouch for its authenticity, and runs as follows:
He sent for the chief Ulema and asked them if all he heard was true; and, when he found their ideas to be entirely in unison with the advice just given him, he commissioned the Sheykh el Islam to push forward the doctrine of his spiritual leadership by all the means in his power.
It was generally employed to designate persons one of whose parents was an Arab and the other of a foreign race. At the time of Mahomed and afterwards there was in Yeman a great number of Abna whose fathers were Persians and whose mothers were Arabs. Dress of the Ulema.
Many tribes also who before had favored the Russians, or at least had not taken sides with the murids, now rallied around the new leader whose deeds were everywhere made the theme of declamation by the ulema and of song by the bards.
"A strong man was our Master the Sultan, and he listened carefully to all your Bashador said, still knowing in his heart that this country is not as the land of the Nazarenes, and could not be made like it in haste. His wazeers feared change, the Ulema opposed it so far as they dared, and that you know is very far, and nothing could be done rapidly after the fashion of the West.
The too venturous Arnaout was sent back to his vice-royalty in Egypt, and the House of Othman was entrusted with a new lease of spiritual sovereignty, if not yet of spiritual power. The reigns of Abd el Mejid and of Abd el Aziz are remarkable with Mussulmans as having witnessed a complete dissociation of interests between the Imperial Government and the Old Hanefite school of Ulema.
He even boldly offered to tell the pasha where half his own ill-gotten gains were hid, if he would let the bimbashi go. So it was that Selamlik talked to the Ulema, the holy men, who were there, and they urged him to clemency, as holy men will, even in Egypt at a price. So it was also that the bimbashi went back to his regiment with all his limbs intact.
Achmed gazed darkly, doubtfully upon the Ulema, and his face wore an expression of repressed despair. Sulali had compassion on the Sultan. "I will go to them," he said reassuringly; "remain here, oh, my master, till I return. Of a truth I tell thee that I will not come back till they have sworn to do what thou desirest." And now Ispirizade said that he also would go with Sulali.
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