22 MAY 1886, Page 19

A DICTIONARY OF ISLAM" Or the hundred and seventy-five millions

of Muslims that according to Mr. Blunt, constitute the population of Islam, nearly fifty millions acknowledge the authority or influence of this country. Yet Islam is known to a few specialists only, and even these are interested rather in the literature of Arabic- using peoples than in the creeds and traditions which govern the action of so important a section of the human race. Perhaps the reason of this indifference may be traced in some

• A Dictionary of Islam. By Thomas Patrick Hughes, B.D. With numerous Illustrations. London : Allen and Do. 1885. measure to the paucity of the sources of information which are open to the reader, who would willingly learn the secrets of the

ever-attractive East, but lacks either the time or the inclination to master one of the most difficult of Oriental languages. There are, it is true, bulky treatises enough, and lengthy translations to boot, which he might consult ; but they are for the most part repellent, save to professed scholars. The theology of Islam has hitherto lain remoter from ordinary knowledge than the theology of Buddhism, despite its pre- eminent importance as a political factor throughout all Western and South-Western Asia and the adjacent tracts of Africa, and the enormous interest it possesses as a key to the solution of the Eastern Question. The work before us, the main feature of which is its theological copiousness, meets, therefore, a long-felt need ; and so well has Mr. Hughes executed his difficult and important task, that he has earned the gratitude equally of the politician, the missionary, the cultured reader, and—it may be fairly added—the Oriental scholar, to whom the Dictionary will render ample and various service.

It is, however, not merely a political interest, which, after all, is of a transitory nature, that attaches to the work of the great prophet of the Koreish. Islam is one of the strangest facts in the history of man ; under some aspects, stranger even than Christianity itself. Christendom only partially acknowledges the influence of Christianity. The civilisation of Christendom is not Christian but Roman in origin ; its science and literature are Greek, its social systems mainly feudal and Teutonic. But the religion and civilisation of Islam are one ; the Koran is the standard of its literature ; and the Muslim desires no further explanation of the mysteries of man and Nature than what is given in the book dictated by God's own angel, and in the traditions of its early commentators. No other faith has ever succeeded in so perfectly interweaving itself with the acts and needs of common life as well as with the requirements of the State, and it subsists from age to age without a rriesthood and without a church. The Muslim holds imme- diate communion with Allah, and the imam, aided by no ritual, simply leads the prayers of the assembled fathful, and declares, theologian-wise, not the will or mercy of God, but the meaning and application of his revealed Word. Islam is not an attrac- tive faith ; to the conquered it contemptuously offers life and liberty upon the payment of tribute, enforcing a mutual tolerance among the varieties of unbelievers which they have always bitterly resented. The very opposite of Buddhism, it originally made its way by the sword, and by the sword achieved per- manent results. Yet it has shown none of the exclusiveness of Judaism, and has welcomed, though without warmth, every race that has chosen to embrace the faith. Its founder was the faith incarnate, strong-willed and visionary, self-controlled and volup- tuous, peopling the universe with spiritual beings, yet enduing them with merely earthly attributes and passions. Islam, lastly, was no development of an older faith, but a totally new religion if the continued worship of the Caaba be excepted), founded upon a stern monotheism from which it has never deviated. From this monotheism all the articles of the creed of Islam are deducible ; its theology is simply the amplification of this creed, began by Mahomet himself, and carried to extraordinary lengths by his disciples and the doctors who succeeded them, many of whom had Greek blood in their veins, and were adepts in the later Greek philosophy.

The biographical portion of the Dictionary consists for the most part of excerpts from Slane's translation of the great w3rk of Ibn Khallikiin, and many of the descripti3ns of Muslim manners and customs are taken from Lane, Palgrave, and other European, rather than Muslim, writers. Of Mahomet himself a very full and impartial account is given, the interest of which is greatly heightened by a series of extracts from the works of various Oriental scholars bearing on his life and char- acter, and by a summary of the Muslim traditions relating to his personal appearance and habits. But, as we have already said, the principal value of this carefully executed survey of Islam attaches to the theological articles it contains. It is, h )wever, obviously impossible to do more than notice briefly a few of the most important among them.

None is more so than the article dealing, with all needful amplitude and impartiality, with the God of Islam. It is curious that nearly all the ninety-nine names of Allah refer to his government of men, and only some half-dozen of them, which may be regarded as variants of the name al-Khalig, or the Creator, to his comical supremacy. The account of the Creation, indeed, given in the Koran is merely an awkward, hearsay summary of the magnificent " proem " recently so acutely dis- cussed. But the Traditions tell us that the earth was created on Saturday, the hills on Sunday, the trees on Monday, "unpleasant things" on Tuesday, the light on Wednesday, the beasts on Thursday, and Adam at the hour of afternoon prayers on Friday,—a description which reads almost like a burlesque of the Pentateuchal story. Of Allah, however, a magnificent conception was formed by the collectors of the Traditions ; an anthropomorphic one, it is true, but in a high spiritual sense that does not sacrifice majesty to definiteness. The power, rather than the goodness, of God is insisted upon, and this is the characteristic and fundamental attitude of Muslim theology, which does not venture to ascribe any moral quality whatever to the will of God. It is sufficient for man to know that will and obey it ; it is not necessary that he should understand it, and to pass judgment upon it is an impiety.

Mahomet's monotheistic fervour was born, doubtless, of his intercourse with the Jews, and perhaps increased by the spectacle of the contemporary Eastern Church lost in interminable Trini- tarian polemics. How he got hold of the notion that the Virgin was regarded by Christians as one of the Persons of the Trinity, it is impossible to discover ; but the doctrine that the relation of the Father to the Son was of a carnal nature, too often formed the theme of the stormy discussions that rent the Christian Churches of the East up to the time of the great schism. It was the Trinitarian doctrine thus misapprehended and debased that repelled the founder of Islam, who, had fortune brought him into contact with a better form of Christianity than he had the oppor- tunity of knowing, might have become a pillar of early Christen- dom. It is certain that Mahomet regarded Christianity with no unkindly sentiment. The Jews he came to hate, as they have usually been hated, as irreconcileables ; but the Koran is fall of expressions favourable to the followers of the Nazarene. "Of all

men," the prophet is told (Sarah, v. 85)," thou wilt certainly find

the Jews to be the most intense in hatred of those who believe; and thou shalt certainly find those to be nearest in affection to them who say, We are Christians,' and who have priests and monks, and are not proud." While the Koran, again, reproaches Moses with his murder of the Egyptian, and Abraham with his three lies, neither the Scripture nor the Traditions of Islam, though admitting the imperfection of Mahomet, breathe a word against the sinlessness of Christ. It was not, indeed, until the Crusades threw bigotry into the quarrel that the relations between Muslims and Christians became embittered, despite their almost constant wars, as is abundantly

clear from the tone of the most elaborate and most interesting of the tales collected in the Alf laylat wa /aylat,—one of the many which Mr. Lane, for reasons not wholly sufficient, left untranslated.

Throughout the East, modes of spiritual asceticism, identical in essence under diversity of forms, have from very early times drawn the subtler and nobler souls from the sensual religions and commonplace philosophies accepted by the multitude. Thus, Taoism was a revolt from the moralities that culminated in the comfortable worldliness of Confucius, Buddhism expressed the loathing of a lofty mind for Brahmanic grossness, and Salim breathed spirituality into the stern and frigid formulism of Islam almost from the moment of its promulgation. A few centuries later, Nanak, an uneducated Hindoo, born near Lahore in 1469, founded the religion still professed by the Sikhs. An excellent account of Sufiism is given by Mr. Hughes, and an original and exhaustive essay on Sikhism is contributed by a well-known scholar, Mr. Frederic Pincott. Sikhism may be defined as Sufiism with a strong infusion of Buddhism, the traces of which

have never been obliterated in the Punjaub. Of both systems the doctrine may be said to have three stages in view,—

renunciation of the world, contemplation of a wholly spiritual God devoid of every vestige of anthropomorphism, absorption of the soul into the essence of an ineffable Deity. But it would be unjust to attempt any presentment here of these scholarly and striking essays. Snfiism produced such poets as Hafiz and Firdusi, and is still a moving force in Islam ; while the life of the first of the Gurus, given in ample detail by Mr. Pincott, is a noble and touching record of an earnest soul struggling towards the light. On these grounds alone, Suffism and Sikhism deserve an attentive study, which should be completed by a perusal of the articles on the Faqirs, or Darwishes, and their Zikr, or Memorial Dances, so often witnessed by tourists without the least notion of their signifi- cance. Among the many other excellent articles contained in this volume, the one dealing with the Koran merits a special mention. Its main feature is a capital summary of that extra- ordinary medley of good-sense and superstition, triviality and eloquence, cold formulism and enthusiasm, legal rules and travestied Judaic and Christian traditions, opportunism and monotheistic principle; to which Mr. Hughes has wisely added a review of the estimates formed by various Oriental scholars of the literary merits and moral value of the Gabrielic message. In connection with the article on the Koran should be read those on the Traditions, or Hadith, and on the life and work of the Prophet himself, subjects amply treated, but not too learnedly for the general reader. In the article on the Khalifate, the important conclusion is arrived at that the Sultan of Turkey is a mere usurper when he styles himself the Commander of the Faithful and the Head of Islam, titles which became extinct with the Abbasid dynasty. Dr. Steingass's contribution on Arabic writing is also well worthy of attention ; and the articles on women, conversation, Da'wah, philosophy, marriage, and slavery, afford a vivid picture of the mental and social life of Islam. The volume, in fine, is one which no library with any pretensions to completeness should lack, and is a veritable mine of information on all subjects connected with Islam, its founders and followers.