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ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING. 
WAS HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE, ON 
MONDAY, APRIL 27th, 1908. 
Lieut.-Colonel Mackinlay, in the Chair. 
The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed. 
The following candidates were elected : — 
Associate. — Rev. T. Stanley Treanor, M.A. (Dub.). 
Library Associates.— The John Rylands’ Library, Manchester ; The 
Royal Dublin Society Library, Dublin. 
The following paper was then read : — 
THE SHIA TURKS. 
By Rev. G. E. White, Dean of Anatolia College, Turkey. 
OHAMMEDANISM is sometimes praised by onlookers for 
presenting a united front in contrast with Christianity, 
which is rent into many sects more or less discordant with one 
another. The fact is, however, that one great seam runs through 
the Mohammedan world, not to speak now of minor factions, 
and their mutual antipathies are most intense where the two 
wings come into closest relation with each other. These 
parties are the Sunnite, which is reckoned orthodox by the 
doctors of Islam, and the Shiite, also called Alevi and Redhead, 
whose adherents are admittedly sectaries. 
The Persians are known as a Shiite nation, and we hear that 
a few Arabs and Indians, many Albanians and others in 
European Turkey, the Nusariyeh in Syria, and scattered 
individuals and communities from the Cape of Good Hope to 
China belong to the same nonconformist faction. As the most 
authoritative expounders of the Mohammedan faith are Sunnite 
Arabs, so its most valiant defenders are the Sunnite Turks. 
Yet in the stronghold of Turkish power, the fair provinces of 
Asia Minor, about one-fourth of the people are not Mohammedan 
at all but Eastern Christians, and of the Mohammedan 
