Notwithstanding the brilliant effort of Ghazálí to harmonise dogmatic theology with mysticism, it soon became clear that the two parties were in essence irreconcilable. The orthodox clergy who held fast by the authority of the Koran and the> Traditions saw a grave danger to themselves in the esoteric revelation which the mystics claimed to possess; while the latter, though externally conforming to the law of Islam, looked down with contempt on the idea that true knowledge of God could be derived from theology, or from any source except the inner light of heavenly inspiration. Hence the antithesis of faqíh(theologian) and faqír(dervish), the one class forming a powerful official hierarchy in close alliance with the Government, whereas the Ṣúfís found their chief support among the people at large, and especially among the poor. We need not dwell further on the natural antagonism which has always existed between these rival corporations, and which is a marked feature in the modern history of Islam. It will be more instructive to spend a few moments with the last great Muḥammadan theosophist, ‘Abdu ’l-Wahháb Sha‘rání õ 1565 a.d.). al-Sha‘rání, a man who, with all his weaknesses, was an original thinker, and exerted an influence strongly felt to this day, as is shown by the steady demand for his books. He was born about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Concerning his outward life we have little information beyond the facts that he was a weaver by trade and resided in Cairo. At this time Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Sha‘rání contrasts the miserable lot of the peasantry under the new régimewith their comparative prosperity under the Mamelukes. So terrible were the exactions of the tax-gatherers that the fellah was forced to sell the whole produce of his land, and sometimes even the ox which ploughed it, in order to save himself and his family from imprisonment; and every lucrative business was crushed by confiscation. It is not to be supposed, however, that Sha‘rání gave serious attention to such sublunary matters. He lived in a world of visions and wonderful experiences. He conversed with angels and prophets, like his more famous predecessor, Muḥyi ’l-Dín Ibnu ’l-‘Arabí, whose Meccan Revelationshe studied and epitomised. His autobiography entitled Laṭá’ifu ’l-Minan displays the hierophant in full dress. It is a record of the singular spiritual gifts and virtues with which he was endowed, and would rank as a masterpiece of shameless self-laudation, did not the author repeatedly assure us that all his extraordinary qualities are Divine blessings and are gratefully set forth by their recipient ad majorem Dei gloriam. We should be treating Sha‘rání very unfairly if we judged him by this work alone. The arrogant miracle-monger was one of the most learned men of his day, and could beat the scholastic theologians with their own weapons. Indeed, he regarded theology ( fiqh) as the first step towards Ṣúfiism, and endeavoured to show that in reality they are different aspects of the same science. He also sought to harmonise the four great schools of law, whose disagreement was consecrated by the well-known saying ascribed to the Prophet: "The variance of my people is an act of Divine mercy" ( ikhtiláfu ummatí raḥmat ^un). Like the Arabian Ṣúfís generally, Sha‘rání kept his mysticism within narrow bounds, and declared himself an adherent of the moderate section which follows Junayd of Baghdád (õ 909-910 a.d.). For all his extravagant pretensions and childish belief in the supernatural, he never lost touch with the Muḥammadan Church.

In the thirteenth century Ibn Taymiyya had tried to eradicate the abuses which obscured the simple creed of Islam. He failed, but his work was carried on by others and was crowned, after a long interval, by the Wahhábite Reformation.857

Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahháb,858 from whom its name is Arabia. In his youth he visited the principal cities of the Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahháb and his successors. East, "as is much the practice with his countrymen even now,"859 and what he observed in the course of his travels convinced him that Islam was thoroughly corrupt. Fired by the example of Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings he copied with his own hand,860 Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahháb determined to re-establish the pure religion of Muḥammad in its primitive form. Accordingly he returned home and retired with his family to Ḍira‘iyya at the time when Muḥammad b. Sa‘úd was the chief personage of the town. This man became his first convert and soon after married his daughter. But it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the Wahhábís, under ‘Abdu ’l-‘Azíz, son of Muḥammad b. Sa‘úd, gained their first great successes. In 1801 they sacked Imám-Ḥusayn,861 a town in the vicinity of Baghdád, massacred five thousand persons, and destroyed the cupola of Ḥusayn's tomb; the veneration paid by all Shí‘ites to that shrine being, as Burckhardt says, a sufficient cause to attract the Wahhábí fury against it. Two years later they made themselves masters of the whole Ḥijáz, including Mecca and Medína. On the death of ‘Abdu ’l-‘Azíz, who was assassinated in the same year, his eldest son, Sa‘úd, continued the work of conquest and brought the greater part of Arabia under Wahhábite rule. At last, in 1811, Turkey despatched a fleet and army to recover the Holy Cities. This task was accomplished by Muḥammad ‘Alí, the Pasha of Egypt (1812-13), and after five years' hard fighting the war ended in favour of the Turks, who in 1818 inflicted a severe defeat on the Wahhábís and took their capital, Ḍira‘iyya, by storm. The sect, however, still maintains its power in Central Arabia, and in recent times has acquired political importance.

The Wahhábís were regarded by the Turks as infidels and authors of a new religion. It was natural that they should The Wahhábite Reformation. appear in this light, for they interrupted the pilgrim-caravans, demolished the domes and ornamented tombs of the most venerable Saints (not excepting that of the Prophet himself), and broke to pieces the Black Stone in the Ka‘ba. All this they did not as innovators, but as reformers. They resembled the Carmathians only in their acts. Burckhardt says very truly: "Not a single new precept was to be found in the Wahaby code. Abd el Waháb took as his sole guide the Koran and the Sunne (or the laws formed upon the traditions of Mohammed); and the only difference between his sect and the orthodox Turks, however improperly so termed, is, that the Wahabys rigidly follow the same laws which the others neglect, or have ceased altogether to observe."862 "The Wahhábites," says Dozy, "attacked the idolatrous worship of Mahomet; although he was in their eyes a Prophet sent to declare the will of God, he was no less a man like others, and his mortal shell, far from having mounted to heaven, rested in the tomb at Medína. Saint-worship they combated just as strongly. They proclaimed that all men are equal before God; that even the most virtuous and devout cannot intercede with Him; and that, consequently, it is a sin to invoke the Saints and to adore their relics."863 In the same puritan spirit they forbade the smoking of tobacco, the wearing of gaudy robes, and praying over the rosary. "It has been stated that they likewise prohibited the drinking of coffee; this, however, is not the fact: they have always used it to an immoderate degree."864

The Wahhábite movement has been compared with the Protestant Reformation in Europe; but while the latter was followed by the English and French Revolutions, the former has not yet produced any great political results. It has borne fruit in a general religious revival throughout the world of Islam and particularly in the mysterious Sanúsiyya The Sanúsís in Africa.Brotherhood, whose influence is supreme in Tripoli, the Sahara, and the whole North African Hinterland, and whose members are reckoned by millions. Muḥammad b. ‘Alí b. Sanúsí, the founder of this vast and formidable organisation, was born at Algiers in 1791, lived for many years at Mecca, and died at Jaghbúb in the Libyan desert, midway between Egypt and Tripoli, in 1859. Concerning the real aims of the Sanúsís I must refer the reader to an interesting paper by the Rev. E. Sell ( Essays on Islam, p. 127 sqq.). There is no doubt that they are utterly opposed to all Western and modern civilisation, and seek to regenerate Islam by establishing an independent theocratic State on the model of that which the Prophet and his successors called into being at Medína in the seventh century after Christ.