[137] “Degol is the first village of Zebák ... which is ruled by Shah Abdur-Rahim, a Sayad of the Shiah sect, worshipped by all the Shiahs of Kashkar, (Chitrál), Yarkand, and Khokand. They also worship Shah Bombáy, Shah Madkasan, who is learned, good-natured, and friendly to travellers.... The people give a tenth of their income to their preceptors; if one has ten children, he consecrates one to Shah Abdur-Rahim.... The inhabitants are strong and hardy; the women do not cover their faces from strangers. Although Shiahs, they have no mosques and repeat no prayers. Abdur-Rahim has one in his village, where he prays. Every morning at Chasht (the middle hour between sunrise and noon) he sits in the assembly and distributes breads of wheat among the members, followed by the servants handing round tea in porcelain cups in which each one soaks his bread, and, after eating it, lifts his hand to bless the giver, a custom also followed by the nobles on entering the assembly. If Shah Abdur-Rahim addresses any of them, he rises from his seat and answers as if he were reading a ruka’t at the time of praying, and then returns to his place, and sits on his knees, for to sit otherwise is reckoned a sin amongst these men.” In other words, the only worship of the prayerless Muláis is to their Pîr, to whom they address the ruka’t given by real Muhammadans in prayers to God [bowing, whilst standing, with hands resting on the knees].
[138] The Druses are divided into “Juhelá” = “uninitiated,” or the Laity, and “U’qalá” = the “initiated.”
[139] It should be noticed that this apotheosis of “Al-Hákim,” the mad Fatimite Khalifa of Cairo (A.D. 996-1020), who was the head and originator of the special Ismailian sect, which became subsequently known to the Crusaders under the name of the “Assassins”—a corruption of “Hashishin,” or drinkers of Hashish (Canabis Indica)—commences with titles of governorship or Age which would seem (to the uninitiated) to be compatible with his subordination to the Deity, although, for practical purposes, Al-Hákim is the “ruler of this world,” whether for good or for evil. He is, therefore, the Prince of this world, if not Apollyon, and the fact that the words “Valî” = a deputed governor or “Hákim” = a governor, may cause him to be confounded with either an ordinary ruler, or be merely ringing the changes on his own name of “Al-Hákim,” it is clear, at any rate to the initiated, that the only Deity worth caring for is thereby meant, and that he began with the Khalifa Al-Hákim, who lives for ever. In the titles “Maula” and “Valî” there is also an allusion to A’li, who is “next to God,” and from whom Al-Hákim was descended. The Mauláis or Muláis of the Hindukush use similar titles for their spiritual head, whether dead, or continuing in his lineal descendant, Agha Khan of Bombay. The “Kelám-i-Pîr,” or “the Logos or word of the Pîr or ancient sage,” mainly refers to the sayings attributed to the “Sheikh-ul-Jabl,” or “Old Man of the Mountain.” In Hunza itself, the Muláis equally address their practical Deity as “The Ancient of the Age,” or “Pîr-uz-Zamán.”
[140] The contract is thus repeated from a written document.
[141] Many Shiahs call A’li “the light” of God.
[142] There are five books of the Sheikh-ul-A’ql, “or old man of the intelligence,” or of the “initiated,” and also apparently a book of investigation and of the unity of the Godhead for the “initiated of the retirement” = “U’qala al Khalwat.” There are five “Maulas” or Mulas of “the initiated,” which I take to be the names of five books, namely: (1) the Mula of the A’ql, or Mind, or of the body-corporate of the “U’qalá” or “the initiated”; (2) the Mula of the Nafs, or Breath; (3) the Mula of the Zeman, or the Age; (4) the Mula of the Kalima, or the Word; (5) the Mula of Al-Hákim, or the founder of the sect. Numbers 3 and 4 are probably the Kelám-i-Pîr and other dicta of the Mulais of the Hindukush, to which I have already referred.
[143] This holy roll among extreme Shiahs has five names, namely, God, Ali, Fatima, Hasan, and Husain, which positively excludes the prophet Muhammad, but includes his son-in-law (Ali), his daughter, Fatima, and the martyred grandsons of Ali, namely Hasan and Husain. As a rule, however, the ordinary orthodox “Panjtan” among Shiahs (and even in some Sunni Mosque inscriptions) are: “Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husain.” “Panjtan” means “the five (holy) bodies.”
[144] There are five main sects among the Shiahs, or, rather, “Adelias,” or advocates of “the rightful” and hereditary succession to the Apostleship of Muhammad, in opposition to the elective principle by the consensus fidelium of the Sunnis. The two sects that now concern us are the African Ismailians, and the Ismailians of the Lebanon and of the Hindukush. The number of Shiah sects is estimated variously from 3 to 72.
[145] I use the word “Mulái” to include not only the virtuous Druses with their self-denying “initiated” or “U’qelá” leaders, but also the Ismailians generally, whether religious or not, (as in impious Hunza) and of whatever degree of conformity or scepticism. As a rule, an ordinary Mulái will outwardly practise Sunni rites and hold Shiah doctrines.
[146] In discussion, whenever expedient, with a Brahmin, or even Buddhist, the belief in a modified metempsychosis would form a bond of sympathy (see last A. Q. R.), whilst the survival “of the most adapted,” rather than that of “the best,”—without, however, the loss of any individual or type,—would be connected with the notion of a certain fixed number of souls in evolution from “the beginning” and ever recurrent in living form. “The beginning,” however, would be a mere term applying to this or that revealed condition, for behind what may be called “the terrestrial gods,” behind Allah in whatever form, Deity or Deities, there was The Being that existed without a beginning and whose first manifestation was the “Word” with its Replica as the type of the apostle and his fellow that ever succeeded itself throughout the generations of this world. If the visible Deity, preferring to show itself in human, rather than any other, form, is incorporated in the lineal descendant of the 7th Imám, it is, apparently, because humanity requires such an unbroken link in order to convert into certainty its hope of the deliverer, the Messiah, the Mahdi, the second [advent of] Jesus, who will similarly be the Deity in the shape of a man, reconciling the various expectations of all religions in one manifestation. That few, if any, Muláis, or even the most “initiated” Druses, should know every variety of their belief, is natural, not only in consequence of varying degrees of mental ability and of corresponding “initiation,” but also because of varied historical or national surroundings, circumstances which underlie the guiding principle of all Mulái belief and practice. I venture to indicate, as purely my personal impression, that this principle, which need not be further explained in this place, is the real secret of that faith. In my humble opinion, the disjecta membra, so to speak, of that faith form, if reconstituted, an embodiment of the religious thought of the World that seeks to reconcile all differences in one Philosophy and in one Policy.