512 MOHAMMEDISM 



former customs and manners." Allah and the Prophet take a promi- 

 nent place in their religious ceremonies, yet still inferior to Zana- 

 hatry and Angatra, their national divinities. Their life continues to 

 be ruled by the observation of their tabu views, called fady in their 

 language, and their magicians pursue undisturbed the pagan cus- 

 toms of their ancestors, with the only difference that this sorcery is 

 practiced under the standard of Alldh akbar. 1 



This sort of paganism surviving under the shield of a Muhammadan 

 exterior is one of the most decisive factors in the individual formation 

 of provincial Islam, and has resisted all exertions of clerical influence 

 enforcing itself from abroad. The following fact, observed in the 

 Caucasian Ingush tribe, can be considered as typical for the coating 

 of pagan reminiscences with the superficial forms of Islam. We 

 choose our examples with intention from parts of the Muhammadan 

 world separated from each other by great distances. The Ingush are 

 Muhammadans in name ; but as with most peoples inhabiting moun- 

 tains, their ancient paganism has conserved itself under their exte- 

 rior Islam. Hahn, who is best acquainted with the customs of these 

 populations, reports that the worship of the idol Gushmile is almost 

 universal among them and explains how this worship can agree very 

 well with that of Allah. The Muhammadan Galgai (in the Caucasus) 

 pray only by night in front of quadrangular stone columns of the 

 height of a man, erected on hills and in cemeteries. Remarkable is 

 the worship of skeletons in an ossuary near Nasran. The skeletons are 

 said to come from their Narthes (ancestors) and to have begun to 

 decay only since the arrival of the Russians. These objects of 

 worship are covered with green shawls from Mekka.* This green shawl 

 from Mekka, with which the objects and forms of the old traditional 

 worship are covered, interprets very fittingly the ethno-psychological 

 process involved in the Islamification of such populations. Green is 

 the Prophet's color. Under the "green shawl " the old national relig- 

 ious 'Ad&t continue to live. 



Even in places where the Islamic ingredients have opposed the 

 popular creed with greater force, this national element lends an 

 individual living color, reflecting the special character of Islam in the 

 different provinces to which it extends, and rendering prominent its 

 locally defined peculiarities. 



The minute observation of such facts, on the other hand, has also 

 been useful in reconstructing elements of ethnical religions, which 

 were extinct long ago in their original form, but have been pre- 

 served under a superficial Muhammadan veil up to the present day. 

 Following this method Samuel Ives Curtiss, the distinguished professor 



1 Les Musulmans a Madagascar et aux iles Comores, in (Paris, 1902), p. 80 ff. 

 1 Hahn, Bei de,n Pschaven, Chevsuren, Kisten und Inguschen, in Beilage no. 101, 

 Milnchener Allgem. Zeitung, 1898. 



