It will be readily understood that, with such an organization and with such tendencies to deductive reasoning, a wide basis is given for divergence of opinion among the Shiites, and that while the more highly educated of their mollahs occasionally preach absolute pantheism, others consult the grosser inclinations of the vulgar, and indulge their hearers with the most extravagant tales of miracle and superstition.  These are a constant source of mockery to the Sunites.  Among the more respectable Shiite beliefs, however, there seems to be a general conviction in Persia that a reform of Islam is at hand, and that a new leader may be expected at any moment and from any quarter, so that enthusiasts are constantly found simulating the gifts of inspiration and affecting a divine mission.  The history of the Babites, so well described by M. de Gobineau in his Religions of Asia, is a case in point, and similar occurrences are by no means rare in Persia.

I met at Jeddah a highly educated Persian gentleman, who informed me that he had himself been witness when a boy to a religious prodigy, notorious, if I remember rightly, at Tabriz.  On that occasion, one of these prophets being condemned to death by the supreme government, was bound to a cross with two of his companions, and after remaining suspended thus for several hours, was fired at by the royal troops.  It then happened that, while the companions were dispatched at the first volley, the prophet himself remained unhurt, and, incredible to relate, the cords which bound him were cut by the bullets, and he fell to the ground on his feet.  “You Christians,” said another Persian gentleman once to me, “talk of your Christ as the Son of God and think it strange, but with us the occurrence is a common one.  Believe me we have ‘sons of God’ in nearly all our villages.”

Thus, with the Shiites, extremes meet.  No Moslems more readily adapt themselves to the superficial atheisms of Europe than do the Persians, and none are more ardently devout, as all who have witnessed the miracle play of the two Imams will be obliged to admit.  Extremes, too, of morality are seen, fierce asceticisms and gross licentiousnesses.  By no sect of Islam is the duty of pilgrimage more religiously observed, or the prayers and ablutions required by their rule performed with a stricter ritual.  But the very pilgrims who go on foot to Mecca scruple not to drink wine there, and Persian morality is everywhere a byword.

In all these circumstances there is much to fear as well as to hope on the side of the Shiite sect; but their future only indirectly involves that of Islam proper.  Their whole census does not probably exceed fifteen millions, and it shows no tendency to increase.  Outside Persia we find about one million Iraki Arabs, a few in Syria and Afghanistan, and at most five millions in India.  One small group still maintains itself in the neighbourhood of Medina, where it is tolerated rather than acknowledged, and a few Shiites are to be found in most of the large cities of the west, but everywhere the sect of Ali stands apart from and almost in a hostile attitude to the rest of Islam.  It is noticeable, however, that within the last fifty years the religious bitterness of Shiite and Sunite is sensibly in decline.