heir masters', on tyranny and
extortion. The pashas, in turn, strove ceaselessly against unruly local
chiefs and swarms of brigands who infested the countryside. Beneath this
sinister hierarchy groaned the people, robbed, bullied, and ground into
the dust. Peasant and townsman had alike lost all incentive to labour or
initiative, and both agriculture and trade had fallen to the lowest
level compatible with bare survival.

As for religion, it was as decadent as everything else. The austere
monotheism of Mohammed had become overlaid with a rank growth of
superstition and puerile mysticism. The mosques stood unfrequented and
ruinous, deserted by the ignorant multitude, which, decked out in
amulets, charms, and rosaries, listened to squalid fakirs or ecstatic
dervishes, and went on pilgrimages to the tombs of "holy men,"
worshipped as saints and "intercessors" with that Allah who had become
too remote a being for the direct devotion of these benighted souls. As
for the moral precepts of the Koran, they were ignored or defied.
Wine-drinking and opium-eating were well-nigh universal, prostitution
was rampant, and the most degrading vices flaunted naked and unashamed.
Even the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, were sink-holes of iniquity,
while the "Hajj," or pilgrimage ordained by the Prophet, had become a
scandal through its abuses. In fine: the life had apparently gone out of
Islam, leaving naught but a dry husk of soulless ritual and degrading
superstition behind. Could Mohammed have returned to earth, he would
unquestionably have anathematized his followers as apostates and
idolaters.

Yet, in this darkest hour, a voice came crying out of the vast Arabian
desert, the cradle of Islam, calling the faithful back to the true path.
This puritan reformer, the famous Abd-el-Wahab, kindled a fire which
presently spread to the remotest corners of the Moslem world, purging
Islam of its sloth and reviving the fervour of olden days. The great
Mohammedan Revival had begun.

Mahommed ibn Abd-el-Wahab was born about the year A.D. 1700 in the heart
of the Arabian desert, the region known as the Nejd. The Nejd was the
one clean spot in the decadent Moslem world. We have already seen how,
with the transformation of the caliphate from a theocratic democracy to
an Oriental despotism, the free-spirited Arabs had returned scornfully
to their deserts. Here they had maintained their wild freedom. Neither
caliph nor sultan dared venture far into