the Turks to subdue them or to make a compromise with them have had no
lasting results. This is the principal obstacle against their being
included in the orthodox community, although their admission is defended,
even under present circumstances, by many non-political Moslim scholars.
The Zaidites are the remnant of the original Arabian Shî'ah, which for
centuries has counted adherents in all parts of the Moslim world, and some
of whose tenets have penetrated Mohammedan orthodoxy. The almost general
veneration of the sayyids and sherîfs, as the descendants of Mohammed are
entitled, is due to this influence.

The Shî'ah outside Arabia, whose adherents used to be persecuted by the
official authorities, not without good cause, became the receptacle of all
the revolutionary and heterodox ideas maintained by the converted peoples.
Alongside of the _visible_ political history of Islâm of the first
centuries, these circles built up their evolution of the _unseen_
community, the only true one, guided by the Holy Family, and the reality
was to them a continuous denial of the postulates of religion. Their first
_imâm_ or successor of the Prophet was Alî, whose divine right had been
unjustly denied by the three usurpers, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othmân, and who
had exercised actual authority for a few years in constant strife with
Khârijites and Omayyads. The efforts of his legitimate successors to assert
their authority were constantly drowned in blood; until, at last, there
were no more candidates for the dangerous office. This prosaic fact was
converted by the adherents of the House of Mohammed into the romance,
that the last _imâm_ of a line of _seven_ according to some, and _twelve_
according to others, had disappeared in a mysterious way, to return at the
end of days as Mahdî, the Guided One, who should restore the political
order which had been disturbed ever since Mohammed's death. Until his
reappearance there is nothing left for the community to do but to await
his advent, under the guidance of their secular rulers (e.g., the shâhs of