The Goth might ravage Italy, but the Goth came forth purified from the
flames which he himself had kindled. The Saxon swept Britain, but the music
of the Celtic heart softened his rough nature, and wooed him into less
churlish habits. Visigoth and Frank, Heruli and Vandal, blotted out their
ferocity in the very light of the civilisation they had striven to
extinguish. Even the Hun, wildest Tartar from the Scythian waste, was
touched and softened in his wicker encampment amid Pannonian plains; but
the Turk--wherever his scymitar reached--degraded, defiled, and defamed;
blasting into eternal decay Greek, Roman and Latin civilisation, until,
when all had gone, he sat down, satiated with savagery, to doze for two
hundred years into hopeless decrepitude. Lieut.-Col. W. F. Butler, C.B., in
_Good Words_ for September 1880.

[34] "The Muslim everywhere, after a brilliant passage of prosperity, seems
to stagnate and wither, because there is nothing in his system or his
belief which lifts him above the level of a servant, and on that level
man's life in the long run must not only stagnate but decay. The Christian,
on the other hand, seems everywhere in the last extremity to bid
disorganization and decay defiance, and to find, Antaeus-like, in the earth
which he touches, the spring of a new and fruitful progress. For there is
that in his belief, his traditions, and in the silent influences which
pervade the very atmosphere around him, which is ever moving him, often in
ways that he knows not, to rise to the dignity and to clothe himself with
the power which the Gospel proposes as the prize of his Christian calling.
The submissive servant of Allah is the highest type of Moslem perfection;
the Christian ideal is the Christ-like son."--_British Quarterly, No._
cxxx.

[35] A Mukallif is one who is subject to the Law. A Ghair-i-Mukallif is one
not so subject, such as a minor, an idiot, &c. The term Mukallif is thus
equivalent to a consistent Muslim, one who takes trouble (taklif) in his
religious duties.

[36] Commentators on the Quran.

[37] The Traditionists.

[38] Plural of Faqih, a theologian.

[39] I have given the dates of their death.

[40] Osborn's Islam under the Khalifs p. 72.

[41] Dabistan, p. 214.

[42] pp. 508-510.

[43] "It (the Quran) is simply an instruction for all mankind" (Sura xii.
104).

[44] Zawabit-al-Quran, pp. 110, 111.

[45] The opinion of Von Hammer, quoted by Sir W. Muir, in his life of
Muha