312 REV. S. M. ZWEMER, F.R.G.S., ON THE WAHABIS: 
chap. vi, part 2). All these sects differed either in their 
ideas of Allah and his prophet’s revelation or split hairs on 
free-will and destiny. The Abadiyah held that Ali was 
divine. The Safatites taught the grossest anthropo- 
morphism. While Sufism, which arose in Persia, was so 
thoroughly pantheistic that it seems incredible to find 
monotheists carried away by its teachmg. The four 
orthodox imams were at agreement concerning most 
doctrines and differed chiefly in their genuflections and 
more or less lax interpretation of moral precepts. The 
germs of idolatry left by Mohammed in his system bore 
fruit. Saint-worship in some form or other was common all 
over Arabia, as well asin other Moslem lands. The Shiahs 
had made Kerbela the rival of Mecca and Medinah as a 
place of pilgrimage. There were local shrines of “holy 
men ” near every village. The whole world of thought was 
honeycombed with superstitions borrowed from every con- 
ceivable source; even Buddhism gave its rosary to Islam, 
and they had already passed it on to the West. The old- 
time simplicity of life and morals had given way to pride of 
life and sensuality. Burckhardt testifies regarding Mecca 
itself (which has always been to the pious Moslem the 
cynosure of his faith) that, just before the time of the 
Wahabi reformation, debauchery was fearfully common, 
harlotry and even unnatural vices were perpetrated openly 
in the sacred city. Almsgiving had grown obsolete: 
justice was neither swift nor impartial; effeminacy had 
displaced the martial spirit; and the conduct of the pilgrim 
caravans was scandalous in the extreme. 
Such was the condition of Arabia when Mohammed bin 
Abd el Wahab bin Mussherif was born at Wasit* in Nejd, 
1691 A.D. Before his death this great reformer, earnest as 
Luther and zealous as Cromwell, saw his doctrines accepted 
and his laws obeyed from the Persian Gulf to the Yemen 
frontier. As the result of his teaching, there sprang up, in 
the course of half a century, not only a new, widely 
extended, and important Moslem sect, but an independent 
and powerful state. Abd el Wahab was an incarnate 
* Palgrave says he was born at Horemelah (in his Travels) while in 
the article on Arabia (9th ed. Hncyclop. Britannica) he mentions Ayinah. 
This place is also given by Burckhardt, but he adds that it is uncertain. 
From a direct descendant of Abd el Wahab, an Arab at Bahrein, I learn 
that there is not the least doubt that he was born at neither of these 
places, but at Wastt ; some maps give Waseit. 
