m, and throwing into such confusion, the ancient institutions of
mankind.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE CALIPHATE

These same forces, operating in a collateral field, have effected a still
more remarkable, and a more radical, revolution, culminating in the
collapse and fall of the Muslim Caliphate, the most powerful institution
of the whole Islamic world. This event of portentous significance has,
moreover, been followed by a formal and definite separation of what was
left of the Sunni faith in Turkey from the state, and by the complete
secularization of the Republic that has arisen on the ruins of the Ottoman
theocratic empire. This catastrophic fall, that stunned the Islamic world,
and the avowed, the unqualified, and formal divorce between the spiritual
and temporal powers, which distinguished the revolution in Turkey from
that which occurred in Persia, I now proceed to consider.

Sunni Islam has sustained, not through the action of a foreign and
invading Power, but at the hands of a dictator, avowedly professing the
Faith of Muhammad, a blow more grievous than that which fell, almost
simultaneously, upon its sister-sect in Persia. This retributive act,
directed against the archenemy of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, recalls a
similar disaster precipitated through the action of a Roman emperor,
during the latter part of the first century of the Christian era--a
disaster that razed to its foundations the Temple of Solomon, destroyed
the Holy of Holies, laid waste the city of David, uprooted the Jewish
hierarchy in Jerusalem, massacred thousands of the Jewish people--the
persecutors of the religion of Jesus Christ--dispersed the remainder over
the surface of the earth, and reared a pagan colony on Zion.

The Caliph, the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of Islam, exercised a
spiritual sovereignty, and was invested with a sacred character, which the
_Sh_ah of Persia neither claimed nor possessed. Nor should it be forgotten
that the sphere of his spiritual jurisdiction extended to countries far
beyond the confines of his own empire, and embraced the overwhelming
majority of Muslims throughout the world. He was, moreover, in his
capacity as the Prophet's representative on earth, regarded as the
protector of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the defender and
propagator of Islam, and the commander of its followers in any holy war
they might be called upon to wage.

So potent, so august, so sacred a personage was at first