Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt. Blunt Wilfrid Scawen

in a prophet whose doctrines were identical with those of Jesus Christ, and who, like Him, was crucified. Christianity is but one of these hundred Asiatic preachings, brought into notice through its adoption by the Greek mind and given a logical form and a material complexion. If it had remained an Asiatic faith it would long ago have perished, as a hundred moral and mystic teachings have perished before and after it. When I was a young man I, too, as I told you, founded a religion which at one time numbered 30,000 devotees. I was born an Armenian Christian, but I was brought up among Mohammedans, and my tone of thought is theirs. I was foster-brother to the Shah and when he came to the throne he made me his Prime Minister. At the age of twenty I was practically despotic in Persia. I saw the abuses of government, the decline of material prosperity in the country, and I was bitten with the idea of reform. I went to Europe and studied there the religious, social, and political systems of the West. I learned the spirit of the various sects of Christendom, and the organization of the secret societies and freemasonries, and I conceived a plan which should incorporate the political wisdom of Europe with the religious wisdom of Asia. I knew that it was useless to attempt a remodelling of Persia in European forms, and I was determined to clothe my material reformation in a garb which my people would understand, the garb of religion. I therefore, on my return, called together the chief persons of Teheran, my friends, and spoke to them in private of the need which Islam had of purer doctrine. I appealed to their moral dignity and pride of birth. There are in Persian two words, each signifying Man —insan, from the Arabic, and adhem (Adam), more strictly Persian in derivation. The second signifies Man as a genus, a particular kind of animal – the first man as an intellectual and distinguished being (the homo and vir of Latin). You all, I said, pride yourselves that you are more than adhem; you are also insan. And it is to enable you to justify that pretension that I will advise you to do this and that. They all found my reasoning good, and in a short time I had got together 30,000 followers. Under the name of a Reformation of Islam I thus introduced what material reforms I could. To my doctrine is due the telegraph, the reorganization of the administrative departments, and many another attempted improvement since gone to ruin. I had, however, no intention at the outset of founding a religion. The character of saint and prophet was forced on me by my followers. They gave me the title of "Holy Ghost," and the Shah that of "Reformer of Islam." I wrote a book, a bible of my creed, and enthusiasts maintained that I worked miracles. At last the Shah was alarmed at my power, which in truth had become superior to his own. He sought, in spite of our old friendship, to kill me, and my followers sought to kill him. For two months we both lived in great fear of assassination, and then we came to an explanation. I loved and revered the Shah, and I asked permission to travel. My followers took leave of me with tears, even the Mollahs kissing my feet. I went to Constantinople, thinking to get permission from the Sultan to reside at Bagdad, and I in fact went there and gained new converts from among the resident Persian and Bagdad Shiahs. But the Turks deceived me, and I had to leave my work unfinished. My followers in Persia urged me to return, but I was deterred through several motives; first, I feared to find my death for a religion in which I did not believe, secondly, my health broke down, and, thirdly, I had married a wife. I wrote to the Shah, who replied, offering me any appointment I would, so I would remain abroad; and I accepted the position of Ambassador-General to all the Courts of Europe.' It was strange to hear this little old man, in European clothes and talking very good French, recounting a tale so purely Oriental. I walked home with him afterwards (he lived on the other side of Hyde Park), and he detailed to me his ideas about the East and West, both of which he knows, and knows thoroughly. I left him with the impression that he was the most remarkable man I had ever met, and more convinced than ever of the superior intelligence of the Eastern mind. Who is there in Europe that could have made one thus feel like a child?"

      This chance meeting, at a fine lady's house in Belgravia in the middle of the London season, affected me profoundly, and to a certain extent revolutionized my ideas. I trace to it, and to other talks which I had later with this singular personage, the conviction which rapidly overcame me that in all my thought of freeing and reforming the East I had begun at the wrong end, and that, if I was to effect anything either for the Arabs or for any other of the Moslem peoples subject to the Turks, I must first make myself thoroughly acquainted with their religious ideas. As yet I had passed among them, in spite of my political sympathy, as a stranger to their more serious thought; without religious prejudice myself of the ordinary Christian kind, I had learned to respect Islam, but I did not comprehend it, nor had I ever discussed its teachings with any one learned in its law or conversant with its modern thought. I saw at once the weakness, nay the absurdity of my position, and I resolved before I went any farther to devote the following winter to a study of at least the main features of the Mohammedan doctrines as they affected Mohammedan politics. With this view I made my plans for the winter. My thought was to go to Jeddah at or about the time of the pilgrimage, and there inform myself as I best could, and then take any occasion that might offer for further action. I wished to penetrate once more into Arabia, if possible through Hejaz, or perhaps Yemen to Nejd. I had an idea that among the Wahhabis I might find a teacher who would give me the Arabian as opposed to the Ottoman view of Islam, and that I might devise with him a movement of reform in which I should suggest the political, he the religious elements. It was a sufficiently wild idea, but I entertained it seriously at the time, and the confession of having done so will explain to Egyptian readers how it came about that I took the line I did at Cairo a year later.

      I was influenced, too, at that time in London by another learned Oriental, one Sabunji, whose acquaintance I had made in the character of Arabic teacher. He, too, like Malkum Khan, was of Christian origin, a member of one of the Catholic sects of Syria, and he had even taken priest's orders and served the Congregation of the Propaganda at Rome; but he had latterly thrown off the cassock and, like the Ambassador, was much more in sympathy with Islam than with his own faith. As an Arabic scholar he was very remarkable, and he had a wide acquaintance with the questions, half political, half religious, which were being discussed just then among Mohammedans. He had done the main work for the late Dr. Badger in compiling the Arabic-English Dictionary which goes by Dr. Badger's name, and in 1880 was carrying on in London an Arabic newspaper called "El Nakhleh," the Bee, in which religious reform was preached to Mohammedans once a month, on the most advanced lines of modern thought. There was a mystery about the financing of this little journal, and the motives prompting its issue, which I never quite fathomed. His own account of it was that his chief patron was the Sultan of Zanzibar, a very enlightened and liberal-minded ruler. But I was never quite satisfied with this explanation, and I have since had reason to believe that the funds to support it, and the suggestion of its politics came, in part at least, from the ex-Khedive Ismaïl. Ismaïl was at that time very angry with the Sultan for his betrayal of him to Europe, and the "Bee" was violent against Abdul Hamid, and denounced him especially as an usurper of the title of Emir el Mumenin and Caliph. I do not well remember whether it was from this Sabunji or from Malkum Khan that I first came to understand the historical aspect of the caliphal question and its modern aspects, but, opposed as I was to Ottoman rule, it struck me at once as one of high importance to the kind of reform I was beginning now to look for. There is notice in my journal of my having sent in a memorandum to Mr. Gladstone on the subject, and I have a letter from Hamilton, showing that the idea was considered one of importance by members of the Cabinet and generally in Downing Street.

      "July 3.– A tea party at A.'s, a 'collection of mystics,' old Rolland, Dunraven, and Oliphant. The two latter and I had a conference in a back room which resulted in our agreeing to act in common on the Eastern question, so as to influence public opinion in England. We are to have a preliminary meeting at Dunraven's on Thursday."

      "July 8.– Called on Percy Wyndham and converted him to my political creed. Also received a visit on the same subject from Mr. Boyce, M. P. Dined with Dunraven, Oliphant, Otway, Percy Wyndham, Harry Brand, and Whittaker, editor of the 'Levant Herald,' at Limmer's Hotel, to arrange a course of action with a view to influencing public opinion in England respecting Asia. Nothing more definite settled than the formation of a committee for receiving news. Later to Bryce's, where I met one Robertson Smith, who has been lately in the Hejaz." (This was the well-known professor.)

      "July 13.– Went to a party at Mrs. Gladstone's. We arrived early, before other people had come, and I had twenty minutes' conversation with the great man. I detailed to him my ideas about the regeneration