The mass of the Ottoman Haj is made up of Kurds, Syrians, Albanians, Circassians, Lazis, and Tartars from Russia and the Khanates, of everything rather than real Turks.  Nor are those that come distinguished greatly for their piety or learning.  The school of St. Sophia at Constantinople has lost its old reputation as a seat of religious knowledge; and its Ulema are known to be more occupied with the pursuit of Court patronage than with any other science.  So much indeed is this the case that serious students often prefer a residence at Bokhara, or even in the heretical schools of Persia, as a more real road to learning.  Turkey proper boasts at the present day few theologians of note, and still fewer independent thinkers.

The Egyptian Haj is far more flourishing.  Speaking the language of Arabia, the citizen of Cairo is more at home in the holy places than any inhabitant of the northern towns can be.  The customs of Hejaz are very nearly his own customs, and its climate not much more severe than his.  Cairo, too, can boast a far more ancient political connection with Mecca than Constantinople can, for as early as the twelfth century the Sultans of Egypt were protectors of the holy places, while even since the Ottoman conquest, the Caliph’s authority in Arabia has been almost uninterruptedly interpreted by his representative at Cairo.  So lately as 1840 this was the position of things at Mecca, and it is only since the opening of the Suez Canal that direct administration from Constantinople has been seriously attempted.  To the present day the Viceroy of Egypt shares with the Sultan the privilege of sending a mahmal, or camel litter, to Mecca every year with a covering for the Kaaba.  Moreover the Azhar mosque of Cairo is the great university of Arabic-speaking races, and its Ulema have the highest reputation of any in Islam.  Egyptian influence, therefore, must be reckoned as an important element in the forces which make up Mohammedan opinion.  The late Khedive, it is true, did much to impair this by his infidelity and his coquetteries with Europe, and under his reign the Egyptian Haj fell to a low level; but Mohammed Towfik, who is a sincere, though liberal Mussulman, has already restored much of his country’s prestige at Mecca, and it is not unlikely that in time to come Egypt, grown materially prosperous, may once more take a leading part in the politics of Islam.[3] But of this later.

All three schools of theology are taught in the Azhar mosque, and Egyptians are divided, according to their class, between them.  The Viceroy and the ruling clique, men of Ottoman origin, are Hanefites, and so too are the descendants of the Circassian Beys, but the leading merchants of Cairo and the common people of that city are Shafites, while the fellahin of the Delta are almost entirely Malekite.  Malekite, too, are the tribes west of the Nile, following the general rule of the population of Africa.[4]