The influence of the Crusades and their results upon the mind and life of mediæval Europe cannot possibly be exaggerated
their liberty by professing Mahommedanism, or else continue, as tributaries, in the unmolested exercise of their old faith, being confounded by the uninquisitive conqueror under the general name of Infidels. * "The sects of Egypt and Syria," says Gibbon, "enjoyed a free toleration under the shadow of the Arabian Caliphs," and therefore may reasonably be supposed to have maintained their peculiar notions and observances down to the time of the Crusades. Of such protracted existence we have the most convincing proof at the present day in the numerous sect, the Mandaites, or Nazarenes of the Shat-el-Arab, and Bassora; veritable Gnostics, holding a creed, the true image of that of Manes, in their 'Book of Adam;' and detested by their Christian and Moslem neighbours alike.
Now, inasmuch as these Sufi were composed exclusively of the learned amongst the Persians and Syrians, at a time when learning signified little else than proficiency in medicine and astrology (the two points that brought the Eastern sages into amicable contact with their barbarous invaders from the West), it is easy to see how the latter may have imbibed the esoteric doctrines simultaneously with the other teaching of those who were their sole instructors in all matters pertaining to science and art. Now the Sufi doctrine was based on that grand idea--one universal creed that could be secretly held under the outward profession of any established religion--taking, in fact, virtually the same view of all religious systems as that in which the philosophers of old had regarded them. Such too had been a striking feature in the Gnostic teaching: the Naaseni, or Ophites, says Hippolytus, boasted in language truly Masonic, "We of all men are the only Christians, standing in the third gate, and anointed with the ineffable unction out of the horn like David, not out of the earthen vessel like Saul, who consorted with the evil spirit of carnal concupiscence." These same genuine Christians at the same time zealously celebrated all the Mysteries of Paganism, affirming that in their higher knowledge they possessed the only key to the one truth locked up under those superstitious ceremonies. And in our day the acknowledgment
of one universal religion by the Freemasons, as expressed by their requiring from the candidate for admission nothing more than the declaration of his belief in one God, is denounced with pious horror by the bigots of every variety of the Christian scheme.
This recognition of one universal religion in fact pervades all the works of the lights of Mohammedan literature. In the Makamat of Hariri the sermons preached by his hero the Dervish are full of a sentiment more sublime when touching upon things pertaining unto God--a sentiment harmonising infinitely more closely with those of enlightened religious men of our times upon the same subject--in a word, these sermons breathe a spirit in every respect more Christian (to use the modern phrase) than characterises any writings of the actual Christian divines, the contemporaries of the author. * But this is necessarily so, Hariri and Mohammedans like him being guided by the traditions of the old philosophy still secretly maintained amongst them, whilst the spirit of modern Christianity is strongly, though unconsciously, directed by precisely the same influence revived, though under a different name, and professedly contemning its real source.
Again, the greatest of all Mohammedan sovereigns, the Mogul Akbar, was a true Sufi; equally so was his prime minister and historian, Abul Farez. It would be difficult to find in a modern Christian prayer-book, much less in any one composed in his age, an address to the Deity so sublime, so consonant with our present notions, as the invocation opening his Ayeen-Akbari. In all such outpourings of Oriental adoration no allusion whatever to their special lawgiver is to be detected, nothing to betray any distinctive sectarian prejudice; the reader, if unacquainted with the history of the author, would admire, but know not to what creed to adjudge the composition. Akbar, according to his vizier, "made a point of never ridiculing or condemning any form of religion." He had thus, perhaps without knowing it, reverted to the grand and distinguishing feature of the religion of Greece and Rome in their best times that discerned the same great truth, the real basis of universal
toleration, that all religious systems were but expressions of the same idea,
415:* The semi-Magian Abdallah and his new Ismaelites have a strong family resemblance to Weishaupt and his illuminati in the last century. 416:* He flourished in the ninth century.
Footnotes
