One maintains that Ali is the true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre.

This denies the eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and prayers.

The Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine; the Hakemite preaches the transmigration of souls.

Thus they make up the number of seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this contestation, every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to himself, and taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against them its sanguinary zeal.

And their religion, which celebrates a mild and merciful God, the common father of all men,--changed to a torch of discord, a signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred years to deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the ancient hemisphere from centre to circumference.** * The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an account of more than eighty,--all equally wise and important.
** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its doctrine.