THEIR ORIGIN, HISTORY, TENETS, AND INFLUENCE. 327 
alow plane. Slavery and concubinage exists everywhere ; 
polygamy and divorce are common. The conscience is 
petrified ; legality is the highest form of worship ; virtue is 
to be like the prophet. The Arabic language has no every- 
day word for conscience, and the present book-term does 
not even occur in the Koran. Intellectually, there has been 
little progress since “the time of ignorance,” when all the 
tribes gathered at Okatz to compete in poetry and eloquence. 
The Bedouins are allilliterate ; their only writing is the brand- 
mark on camels. Book-learning i in the towns is compressed 
into the narrow mould of Koran philosophy. Kufa, which was 
once the Oxford of Arabia, now has one day- school with 
twelve pupils! Fatalism, the philosophy of the masses, has 
paralysed progress. Hope perishes under the weight of this 
iron bondage. Injustice is stoically accepted. ‘[he bulk of 
the people are passive. No man bears another's burden, and 
there is no public spirit. Treachery and murder are the 
steps to petty thrones in free Arabia, and in the ‘Turkish 
provinces justice is sold to the highest bidder. Cruelty is. 
common. Lying is a fine art, and robbery a science. Islam 
and the Wahabis have made the hospitable Arabs hostile to: 
Christians and wary of strangers. Over all this hangs a. 
cloak of self-righteousness and formal observances. There 
is no soporific like the Koran; nothing so well designed to. 
hush all the heart’s questionings as a religion that denies the 
need of an atonement, and promises Paradise to those who 
accept the creed of eight words, no matter what their life 
may be. There is no hope for Arabia in Islam. It has been 
tried for thirteen hundred years, and piteously failed. ‘The 
Wahabis and their history only emphasize this fact. 
GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE SAoopD FAMILY. 
MoHAMMED BIN Saoop + Daughter of Mohammed 
bin Abd ul Wahab. 
Abd-el- Aziz. 
| 
Saood bin Abd-el- Aziz. 
| 
| 
| | aan 
Feysul. Nasir. Turki. Abdullah (the eldest). 
| 
| | 
Turki. Feysul. 
| 
| | 
Saood. Abdullah. 
