58 



PEOr. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, D.LITT., ON 



dry, and, especially in the first three quarters of the nineteenth 

 century, there were many movements in Asia and Africa which 

 seemed to promise it new life and extended conquests. A 

 writer* who framed a careful survey of tlie Mohammedan 

 world in 1888, declared that in India and China, Islam only 

 develops, whereas the other native religions are in decadence,, 

 while those introduced from Europe barely exist. It was 

 asserted by a leadiug Orientalistf that Islam must at some time 

 become the religion of the whole of India ; and great accessions- 

 of converts, said to have adopted Islam in order to be freed 

 from the caste-system, were adduced as proof of this. A fornii 

 of this prophecy appears as late as 1899, in the Asiatic studies- 

 of Sir Alfred Lyall,t who states that individual conversions are 

 still frequent, though the extension of Islam has naturally 

 slackened with the rapid decline and dilapidation of the 

 political dominion with which the faith was at one time bound 

 up ; he holds, however, that it may yet be the destiny of Islam 

 to provide India with a national religion, while acknowledging 

 that it is fast losing the chance of doing so, whicli, if neglected,, 

 will not recur. In China the growth of Mohammedanism in 

 recent years was such as to cause alarm to European observers,^ 

 who feared that China might be the source of a fresh crusade 

 against civilization in favour of Islam. Those fears have not 

 as yet been near realization ; yet so recent a writer on China, 

 as A. Colquliounll warns his readers that Mohammedan 

 discontent in that country may break out into a blaze. In 

 India, China, and the Dutch colonies, where Islam is also said 

 to have made great progress,1i proselytism was in the main 

 carried on by peaceful methods ; in Africa it was carried on 

 partly by peaceful methods, but also in many places by force. 

 Mohammedan progress on an enormous scale is reported from 

 various parts of that continent ; but since Lord Kitchener's 

 victories in the Sudan, that progress is said to have been 

 checked, if not entirely arrested.** Yet other movements, even 

 after the crushing of Malidism by the British, seem still to 

 continue, and are occasionally depicted in the language of 

 alarm.ft Although then writers of very recent date declare that 



^ Chatelier, L' Islam au XlXme Siecle. 



t Von Kremer : see Krimskiy, Mohammedanism and its Future 

 (Russian), Moscow, 1899, p. 106. 



% p. 321. § Sell, Essays on Islam, p. 204. 



II The Overland Route to China, 1900. IT Krimskiy, p. 107. 



Atterbury, Islam in Africa, p. 182. 

 tt Saturday Review, Aug. 16, 1902, p. 193. 



