The White Prophet, Volume II (of 2)

Indeed, those who gaze into the future as into a crystal say that the time is near when the long drama of dissension that has been played between Arabs and Turks will end in the establishment of a vast Arabic Empire, extending from the Tigris and the Euphrates Valley to the Mediterranean, and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as its capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its lord and protector. No one can foreshadow the future, but this was Napoleon's greatest dream, and the nation that can realise it will hold the peace of the world in the palm of its almighty hand.

And Ishmael?

After he left Cairo he was never seen again by any one who could positively identify him. Some say he returned to the home of his childhood on the Libyan desert, and that he died there; others that he went back to Khartoum and thence to the heart of the Sahara, and that he is still alive. However this may be, it is certain that his disappearance has had the effect of death, that it has deepened the impression of his life, and that a huge shadow of him remains on those among whom he lived and laboured.

It was said on the day of his departure that Black Zogal, who followed him to the last with the fidelity of a human dog, kept close at his heels until he came to the top of the Mokattam Hills, where the Master sent him back after strictly charging him to tell no one which way he was going. Since then, however, Zogal has given it out (with every appearance of believing his own story) that he saw Ishmael ascend to heaven from the Gebel Mokattam in a blinding whirlwind of celestial light, a flight of angels carrying him away.

A Saint's House has been built for Black Zogal on the spot on which he says he saw the ascent; the half-crazy Soudanese inhabits it, and its outer walls are almost covered with the small flags which devotees have brought and fixed to them in their childlike effort to show reverence.

Nothing could exceed the boundless affection which is still felt for Ishmael by those who came into immediate contact with him. He seems to have inspired them with a love which survives absence and could even conquer death. Everybody who ever spoke to him has a story to tell of his wisdom, his power, and his tenderness. The number of his "miracles" has increased tenfold, and though not described as sinless, he is always talked of as if he were divine.

His Mouled (his birthday, a conjectural date) is celebrated by ceremonies which almost outrival the "Nights of the Prophet." About the Saint's House on the Mokattam Hills a huge encampment of tents is made, and there, under the blaze of thousands of dazzling lights, the Dervishes hold their Zikrs amid scenes of frantic excitement due to exhibitions of hypnotic suggestion which even include the gift of tongues, while more serious-minded Sheikhs repeat a long record of Ishmael's genealogy. This is a very circumstantial story, with a vague resemblance to something which Christians speak of with bated breath – how, when his mother, who was a virgin, was bearing him, an angel appeared to her in a dream and said, "You carry the Lord of Man," and how, when the child was delivered, three great Sheikhs came from Mecca to pay reverence to him, having seen a star in the sky which told them where he was to be born.

In the course of years a great body of Ishmael's "Sayings" have been gathered up. Some of them are authentic, but most of them are out of the wisdom of the ages, and not a few are directly borrowed from the Christian gospels which the Moslems, as a whole, do not know. Whatever their sources, they are deeply treasured. Women chant them to the children at their knees, and men lisp them, with their last breath and then die with brave faces.

Besides the impression he has produced upon the people, which is strong and likely to be enduring, Ishmael seems to have an almost unaccountable fascination for Arabic scholars and theologians. A number of the professors at El Azhar are already deep in metaphysical disputations about the inner significance of the words attributed to him, and it is whispered that the venerable Chancellor (now nearly a hundred years of age) is compiling a book, half biography and half commentary, that is full of mystical meanings.

More extraordinary still, it seems probable that a large and gorgeous mosque will be built in Ishmael's honour, and that he who loved best to worship in that temple of the open desert whereof the dome is the sky, he who cared so little about dogmatic theology that he never even wrote a line, may, by the wild irony of fate, become the founder of a sect in Islam which will teach everything he fought against and practise everything he condemned.

Chief among the subjects of disputation is Ishmael's expectation of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, though the Ulema, less concerned with the spirit than with the letter of the prophet's hope, are divided as to the source of it. Some say it is plainly indicated in the Koran and the traditions; others, more widely read, say it is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible, while a few refer it to a vague and misty antiquity.

Hardly less interesting to the theologians is the question of Ishmael's identity. Nearly all agree that there was an element of the supernatural about him, so hard is it to attribute to men of ordinary human passions the great movements that affect the world. But while there are those who believe him to have been the Mahdi, sent expressly to earth to destroy Anti-Christ, that is to say, the Consul-General, an influential group hold to the opinion that he was, and is, Seyidna Isa – our Lord Jesus.

About this latter view there gathers a strange and not unimpressive theory – that Jesus (who, according to the Islamic faith, did not die on the cross) reappears at intervals among different races – now among the Jews, now among the Indians, now among the Arabs – and that He will continue to make these manifestations until the world is ready for the greatest happiness obtainable by man – the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

But not all the disputations of the wise heads of El Azhar can rob the humble of the object of their veneration. Ishmael came from the people, and with the people he will always remain. His blameless life, his touching history, his deep humanity, his simple teaching, and above all his lofty hopes, have made him Sultan of a vast empire of souls – the empire of the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, and the broken-hearted. From the central heart of the East his spirit came as a ray of sunlight, inspiring men in the dark places to live nobly, to die bravely, and to keep up their courage to the last.

And what of Ishmael's influence in the West?

Nothing! European historians have written since his time without saying a word about him. One of them, who devotes long chapters to accounts of the bombardment of Alexandria, the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the craven flight of Arabi and his theatrical scene with the Khedive in Abdeen Square, and yet other chapters to the building of the Assouan dam and the construction of the Cape-to-Cairo railway, dismisses Ishmael's pilgrimage from Khartoum in five lines of a section dealing with "Mahdism and Sedition in the Soudan."

And indeed, so hard do we find it, in spite of our civilisation and Christianity, to believe that the things of the spirit may be more helpful in sustaining our steps and shaping our destinies than any forces we can weigh, measure, and calculate, that it is difficult to think of any real welcome in the cities of the West for one whose only teaching was that great wealth is an inheritance taken by force from the Almighty; that property beyond the proper needs of civilised human life is pillage; and that God so loves the world that He will come in person to govern it and to save mankind from its suffering and the consequences of its sins.

Certainly the mere thought of any one holding these opinions, least of all an Arab, the son of a boat-builder, born on the Libyan desert, brought up in the depths of the Soudan, educated in the stagnant schools of El Azhar, wearing sandals and a turban, and probably eating with his fingers – the mere thought of such a one, in the present year of grace, forcing his way into the Cathedrals and Parliament Houses of Westminster, Washington, Rome, Berlin, and Paris, where Archbishops officiate in embroidered copes and Ministers prepare budgets towards the re-paganisation of the world, would at least provoke a smile.

Nevertheless there are some who think that the world is not ruled by its great men but by its great ideas; that these ideas are few and very old; that when humanity needs to renew itself it has only to go back to them; and that it is not so often in the "sick hurry" of civilised communities as out of the calm solitude of the desert that we hear the sublime but simple notes of the World's One Voice.

THE END