ing
still renowned throughout Asia, and it is thither and not to St. Sophia
that the Sunite Mussulmans east of the Caspian proceed for their
degrees.

Mohammedanism, therefore, in Eastern Asia is not exposed to such
immediate danger as in the West. Bokhara may lose its political
independence, but there is no probability for many generations to come
of its being Christianized as Constantinople certainly must be, and it
may even on the fall of the latter become the chief centre of Sunite
orthodoxy of the existing Hanefite type, remaining so perhaps long after
the rest of Islam shall have abandoned Hanefism. It is obvious, however,
that cut off geographically as the Khanates are from the general life of
Islam, Bokhara can but vaguely represent the present religious power of
Constantinople, and will be powerless to influence the general flow of
Mohammedan thought. Its influence could be exerted only through India,
and would be supported by no political prestige. So that it is far more
likely in the future to follow than to lead opinion. Otherwise isolation
is its only fate.

The future of Shiite Mohammedanism in Persia proper is a still more
doubtful problem. Exposed like the rest of Central Asia to Russian
conquest, the Persian monarchy cannot without a speedy and complete
revolution of its internal condition fail to succumb politically. The
true Irani, however, have an unique position in Mohammedan Asia which
may save them from complete absorption. Unlike any Mohammedan race
except the Arabian, they are distinctly national. The Turk, conqueror
though he has always been, repudiates still the name of Turk, calling
himself simply a Moslem, and so likewise do the less distinguished races
he has subjected. But the Persian does not do this. He is before all
things Irani, and to the extent that he has made for himself a
Mohammedanism of his own. He boasts of a history and a literature older
far than Islam, and has not consented to forget it as a thing belonging
only to "the Age of Ignorance." He runs, therefore, little risk of being
either Russianised or Christianised by conquest; and being of an
intellectual fibre superior to that of the Russians, and, as far as the
mass of the population is concerned, being physically as well gifted, it
may be supposed that he will survive, if he cannot avert, his political
subjugation.

There is at the present moment, I am informed, a last desperate effort
making at Teheran for the re-org