Islam. It is a reform movement whose trend is forward. The other two, to which we now come, are reform movements also, but their trend is backward. They look to the good old days of early Islam and try to restore them.

The first is that of the Wahhabites, so called from Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (Slave of the Bountiful), its founder, a native of Najd in central Arabia, who died in 1787. His aim was to bring Islam back to its primitive purity and to do away with all the usages and beliefs which had arisen to cloud its absolute monotheism. But attempts at reformation in Islam have never led to anything but the founding of new dynasties. They may begin with a saintly reformer, but in the first or the second generation there is sure to come the conquering disciple; religion and rule go together, and he who meddles with the one must next grasp at the other. The third stage is the extinction of the new dynasty and the vanishing of its party into a more or less secret sect, the vitality of which is again directed into religious channels. The Wahhabites were no exception. Their rule extended from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, touched al-Yaman and Hadramawt and included some districts of the Pashalik of Baghdad. That was early in the nineteenth century; but now, after many dynastic changes, the rule of the Wahhabites proper has almost ceased, although the Turks have not gained any new footing in Najd. There, a native Arab dynasty has sprung up which is free from Turkish control in every respect, and has its seat in Ha'il. But the zeal of the Wahhabites gave an impulse to

reform in the general body of Muslims which is not yet, by any means, extinct. Especially in India, their views have been widely spread by missionaries, and at one time there was grave fear of a Wahhabite insurrection. But dead parties in Islam seldom rise again, and the life of Wahhabism has passed into the Muslim Church as a whole. Politically it has failed, but the spirit of reform remains and has undoubtedly influenced the second reform movement to which we now come.

That is the Brotherhood of as-Sanusi, founded in 1837 by Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sanusi in order to reform and spread the faith. The tendency to organize has always been strong among Orientals, and in Islam itself there have risen, as we have seen, from the earliest times, secret societies for conspiracy and insurrection. But apart from these dubious organizations, religious feeling has also expressed itself in brotherhoods closely corresponding to the monastic orders of Europe, except that they were, and are, self-governing and under no relations but those of sentiment to the head of the Muslim Faith. Rather, these orders of darwishes have been inclined toward heresies of a mystical and pantheistic type more than toward the development and support of the severely scholastic theology of orthodox Islam. This is a side of Muhammadanism with which we shall have to deal in some detail hereafter. In the meantime, it is enough to say that the Brotherhood of as-Sanusi is one of the orders of darwishes, but distinguished from all its predecessors in its severely reforming and puritanic character. It has taken up