In the East, however, the Wali or Chief Commissioner can reckon more or less upon the unsalaried assistance of society:  the cities are divided into quarters shut off one from other by night, and every Moslem is expected, by his law and religion, to keep watch upon his neighbours, to report their delinquencies and, if necessary, himself to carry out the penal code.  But in difficult cases the guardians of the peace were assisted by a body of private detectives, women as well as men:  these were called Tawwabun = the Penitents, because like our Bow-street runners, they had given up an even less respectable calling.  Their adventures still delight the vulgar, as did the Newgate Calendar of past generations; and to this class we owe the Tales of Calamity Ahmad, Dalilah the Wily One, Saladin with the Three Chiefs of Police (vol. iv. 271), and Al-Malik al-Zahir with the Sixteen Constables (Bresl.  Edit. xi. pp. 321- 99).  Here and in many other places we also see the origin of that “picaresque” literature which arose in Spain and overran Europe; and which begat Le Moyen de Parvenir. [FN#314]

I need say no more on this heading, the civilisation of Baghdad contrasting with the barbarism of Europe then Germanic, The Nights itself being the best expositor.  On the other hand the action of the state-religion upon the state, the condition of Al-Islam during the reign of Al-Rashid, its declension from the primitive creed and its relation to Christianity and Christendom, require a somewhat extended notice.  In offering the following observations it is only fair to declare my standpoints.

1.  All forms of “faith,” that is, belief in things unseen, not subject to the senses, and therefore unknown and (in our present stage of development) unknowable, are temporary and transitory:  no religion hitherto promulgated amongst men shows any prospect of being final or otherwise than finite.

2.  Religious ideas, which are necessarily limited, may all be traced home to the old seat of science and art, creeds and polity in the Nile-Valley and to this day they retain the clearest signs of their origin.

3.  All so-called “revealed” religions consist mainly of three portions, a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less falsified and a moral code more or less pure.

Al-Islam, it has been said, is essentially a fighting faith and never shows to full advantage save in the field.  The faith and luxury of a wealthy capital, the debauchery and variety of vices which would spring up therein, naturally as weeds in a rich fallow, and the cosmopolitan views which suggest themselves in a meeting-place of nations, were sore trials to the primitive simplicity of the “Religion of Resignation”—­the saving faith.  Harun and his cousin-wife, as has been shown, were orthodox and even fanatical; but the Barmecides were strongly suspected of heretical leanings; and while the many- headed showed itself, as usual, violent, and ready to do battle about an Azan-call, the learned, who sooner or later leaven the masses, were profoundly dissatisfied with the dryness and barrenness of Mohammed’s creed, so acceptable to the vulgar, and were devising a series of schisms and innovations.