Take again the history of the Saracenic schools and parties, on which I have already touched. Mr. Southgate considers the absence of religious controversy among the Turks, contrasted with its frequency of old among the Saracens, as a proof of the decay of the spirit of Islam. I should rather refer the present apathy to the national temperament of the Turks, and set it down, with other instances I shall mention presently, as a result of their barbarism. Saracenic Mahometanism, on the contrary, gives me an apposite illustration of what I mean by an "interior" people, if I may borrow a devotional word to express a philosophical idea. A barbarous nation has no "interior," but the Saracens show us what a national "interior" is. "In former ages," says the author to whom I have referred, Mr. Southgate, "the bosom of Islamism was riven with numerous feuds and schisms, some of which have originated from religious controversy, and others from political ambition. During the first centuries of its existence, and while Mussulman learning flourished under the patronage of the Caliphs, religious questions were discussed by the learned with all the proverbial virulence of theological hatred. The chief of these questions respected the origin of the Koran, the nature of God, predestination and free will, and the grounds of human salvation. The question, whether the Koran was created or eternal, rent for a time the whole body of Islamism into twain, and gave rise to the most violent persecutions.... Besides these religious contentions, which divided the Mussulmans into parties, but seldom gave birth to sects, there have sprung up, at different periods, avowed heresies, which flourished for a time, and for the most part died with their authors. Others, stimulated by ambition only, have reared the standard of revolt, and under cover of some new religious dogma, propounded only to shield a selfish end, have sought to raise themselves to power. Most of these, whether theological disputes, heresies, or civil rebellions, cloaked under the name of religion, arose previously to the sixteenth century."[87]
Such is that internal peculiarity, the presence of which constitutes a civilized, the absence a barbarous people; which makes a people great, and small again; and which, just consistently with the notion of their being barbarians, I cannot discern, for strength or for weakness, in the Turks. On the contrary, almost all the elements of their success, and instruments of their downfall, are external to themselves. For instance, their religion, one of their principal bonds, owes nothing to them; it is, not only in substance, but in concrete shape, just what it was when it came to them. I cannot find that they have commented upon it; I cannot find that they are the channels of any of those famous traditions by which the Koran is interpreted, and which they themselves accept; or that they have exercised their minds upon it at all, except so far as they have been obliged, in a certain degree, to do so in the administration of the law. It is true also that they have been obliged to choose to be Sunnites and not Shiahs; but, considering the latter sect arose in Persia, since the date of the Turkish occupation of Constantinople, it was really no choice at all. They have but remained as they were. Besides, the Shiahs maintain the hereditary transmission of the Caliphate, which would exclude the line of Othman from the succession--good reason then the Turks should be Sunnites; and the dates of the two events so nearly coincide, that one could even fancy that the Shiahs actually arose in consequence of the Sultan Selim's carrying off the last of the Abassides from Egypt, and gaining the transference of the Caliphate from his captive. Besides, if it is worth while pursuing the point, did they not remain Sunnites, they would have to abandon the traditional or oral law, and must cease to use the labours of its four great doctors, which would be to bring upon themselves an incalculable extent of intellectual toil; for without recognized comments on the Koran, neither the religion nor the civil state could be made to work.