Blavatsky H.P. - The Akhund of Swat: Difference between revisions

Only the salient features of his career are known to Christendom. Watched, as he may have been, his private life, ambitions, aspirations for temporal as well as religious power, are almost a sealed book. But the one certain thing is, that he was the founder and chief of nearly every secret society worth speaking of among Mussulmans, and the dominant spirit in all the rest. His apparent antagonism to the Wahhabees was but a mask, and the murderous hand that struck Lord Mayo was certainly guided by the old Abdul. The Biktashee Dervishes <ref> To this day no Biktashee would be recognized as such unless he could claim possession of a certain medal with the seal of this “high-pontiff” of all the Dervishes, whether they belong to one sect or the other.</ref> and the howling, dancing, and other Moslem religious mendicants recognize his supremacy as far above that of the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the faithful. Hardly a political order of any importance issued from Constantinople or Teheran—heretics though the Persians are—without his having a finger in the pie directly or indirectly. As fanatical as Sixtus, but more cunning yet, if {{Page aside|371}} possible, instead of giving direct orders for the extermination of the Huguenots of Islam, the Wahhabees, he directed his curses and pointed his finger only at those among them whom he found in his way, keeping on the best, though secret, terms with the rest.