1832.] the followers of Syed Ahmed. 483 



standard of the Amir-ul Mominin, or Leader of the Faithful, the 

 title which he had now assumed to himself; and his emissaries gathered 

 large contributions of money and jewels, even from our own distant 

 Presidencies, and from the principal Mahommedan towns of the Dek- 

 han. The prominent occurrences of the war, the perseverance with 

 which it was kept up, the temporary and occasional successes which 

 Syed Ahmed met with, and his ultimate death in battle, are well 

 known. With his death, the struggle appears to have entirely ceased. 

 That event, as was to be expected, is one which the people of his sect 

 have been very reluctant to believe, and reports are still every now 

 and then circulated among them, that he has been seen or heard of 

 alive, and that the Sikhs are yet to have a rough wakino- from the 

 dream, in which they are vainly indulging themselves, that they have 

 got for ever rid of this inveterate antagonist. 



But the notice of Syed Ahmed's personal fortunes has extended 

 perhaps further than the subject merited. The account contained in the 

 treatise, from which chiefly this paper has been compiled, of his rapid 

 progress in spiritual illumination, deserves however to be adverted to 

 as affording a curious insight into the state of opinions among Mahom- 

 medans on such subjects at the present day ; and an abstract of it will 

 be given, in referring to the portions of the work which relate more 

 especially to speculative or Sufi practices. The following string of 

 questions, translated from a risdleh or tract, composed in refutation 

 of Syed Ahmed's peculiar doctrines and pretensions, by an anony- 

 mous " Fdzili Madrasi" or learned man of Madras, furnishes a con- 

 venient summary of the more important of them, and forms an appro- 

 priate introduction to the more lengthy statements of the Sirat-ul 

 Mustaqim. 



The questions are given with the short preface which precedes 

 them in the original. " To the skilled in religion and law, these que- 

 ries are submitted, in the hope that the perplexing doubts which have 

 in this age seduced the more illiterate among the faithful into the 

 thorny ways of error may by their sound explanations be removed, 

 that right doctrine may be distinguished from deluding falsehood, and 

 the actual relations and bearings of the truth, made clear to those 

 now lost about and wandering in uncertainty." 



Queries 1, 2, and 3. " Can any one properly lay claim to be the 

 founder of a new and independent sect of law and morals, (to be a 

 31ujtahid-i-musluqill) after the time of the four chief Mujtahids, 

 (the heads of the four legal sects, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii, and 

 Hanbali,) and before the appearance of the Imam Mehdf ? Has any 



