bites 8,000,000

The _Sunites_, or People of the Path, are of course by far the most
important of these. They stand in that relation to the other sects in
which the Catholic Church stands to the various Christian heresies, and
claim alone to represent that continuous body of tradition political and
religious, which is the sign of a living church. In addition to the
dogmas already mentioned, they hold that, after the Prophet and his
companions, other authorised channels of tradition exist of hardly less
authority with these. The sayings of the four first Caliphs, as
collected in the first century of the Mohammedan era, they hold to be
inspired and unimpeachable, as are to a certain extent the theological
treatises of the four great doctors of Islam, the Imams Abu Hanifeh,
Malek, Esh Shafy, and Hanbal, and after them, though with less and less
authority, the "fetwas," or decisions of distinguished Ulema, down to
the present day. The collected body of teaching acquired from these
sources is called the Sheriat (in Turkey the Sheriati Sherifeh) and is
the canon law of Islam. Nor is it lawful that this should be gainsaid;
while the Imams themselves may not inaptly be compared to the fathers of
our Christian Church. It is a dogma, too, with the Sunites that they are
not only an ecclesiastical but a political body, and that among them is
the living representative of the temporal power of the Prophet, in the
person of his Khalifeh or successor, though there is much division of
opinion as to the precise line of succession in the past and the
legitimate ownership of the title in the present. But this is too
intricate and important a matter to be entered on at present.

The Sunites are then the body of authority and tradition, and being more
numerous than the other three sects put together in a proportion of four
and a half to one, have a good right to treat these as heretics. It must
not, however, be supposed that even the Sunites profess absolutely
homogeneous opinions. The path of Orthodox Islam is no macadamised road
such as the Catholic Church of Christendom has become, but like one of
its own Haj routes goes winding on, a labyrinth of separate tracks, some
near, some far apart, some clean out of sight of the rest. All lead, it
is true, in the same main direction, and here and there in difficult
ground where there is a mountain range to cross or where some defile
narrows they are brought together, but