Jeddah then
realized all my hopes and gratified nearly all my curiosities. I will
own, too, to having come away with more than a gratified curiosity, and
to having found new worlds of thought and life in an atmosphere I had
fancied to be only of decay. I was astonished at the vigorous life of
Islam, at its practical hopes and fears in this modern nineteenth
century, and above all at its reality as a moral force; so that if I had
not exactly come to scoff, I certainly remained, in a certain sense, to
pray. At least I left it interested, as I had never thought to be, in
the great struggle which seemed to me impending between the parties of
reaction in Islam and reform, and not a little hopeful as to its
favourable issue. What this is likely to be I now intend to discuss.
First, however, it will I think be as well to survey briefly the actual
composition of the Mohammedan world. It is only by a knowledge of the
elements of which Islam is made up that we can guess its future, and
these are less generally known than they should be. A stranger from
Europe visiting the Hejaz is, as I have said, irresistibly struck with
the vastness of the religious world in whose centre he stands.
Mohammedanism to our Western eyes seems almost bounded by the limits of
the Ottoman Empire.
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