‘GAZETTEER OF PERSIA VOL. I Comprising the Provinces of ASTARÁBÁD, SHÁHRUD-BÚSTAN, KHÚRÁSÁN, AND SÍSTÁN’ [‎240v] (487/722)

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opinion, that as it is acknowledged there is only one path of truth, it
becomes evident, that if the followers of Hamfah or any other of the Sunni
saints are right, those of the remaining three sects must be wrong. And
after all, they ask—“Is it not better to trust to what we have received
from those who lived at the period of his mission, and have transmitted his
sayings, than to give our minds over to these pretending doctors of divinity
and of law, and by doing so constitute their fallible works into the stand
ard of our faith and the rule of our lives/-’
The difference which exists on these points between the Sunni and the
Shiah sects is at once rancorous and irreconcileable. It is one in which the
passions are easily arrayed; for it relates to no speculative or abstruse points
of faith that are difficult to be comprehended, but is interwoven with the
history of their general religion. Names which are never mentioned but
with blessings by one sect are hourly cursed by the other. The hypocrisy,
ingratitude, and disobedience of the three first khalifahs are the essential dog
mas of the Shiah doctrine; while the leading principle of the Sunni is that,
next to the Prophet, these rulers were, beyond all others, the most entitled to
the regard and veneration of posterity. It is evident, therefore, that the
Sunni and Shiah faith can never exist in any concord with each other. A
stranger to the name of Muhammad is more acceptable to a zealous man of
either of these religions than the opposite sectary, who insults him with an
hourly attack of his favourite tenets ; and their disagreement, as has been
before stated, relates to matters of faith, or rather opinion, more than of
practice. The differences in their mode of worship and customs are slight,
and have wholly arisen out of the hate they bear each other and their dis
like to have any usage in common. Innumerable volumes have been
written on the subject of the disputes between the Shiah and Sunni sects.
Their effect has been similar to that of most works on religious controversy:
they have oftener irritated than convinced. But it is justice to their authors
to observe that these productions frequently display an union of taste and of
learning. Every effort is made in them to arrest the attention of the reader.
The arguments are often shaped into a dramatic form, to render them more
attractive ; and the zealous writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. condescends to amuse the fancy, in the
hope that his doing so may aid his object of informing the judgment.
It has been before observed, that the religion and the laws of a
Muhammadan nation always flow from the same fountain ; and the con
sequence is, that they regard with feelings of sacred veneration all those by
whom their laws are made or expounded. These must, generally speaking,
be acknowledged as saints before they are recognised as lawgivers; and an
attack upon the sanctity of their character strikes at once at the faith and
the jurisprudence of the countries where their authority is acknowledged.
It has ever been one of the greatest disputes between the Sunnis and Shiahs,
that the latter deny all respect and confidence to the four great lawgivers
on whom the whole superstructure of the usages and ordinances, if not the
religion, of the former depends. It will elucidate this subject to state some
of the objections which they make to the dogmas of these reputed saints.
“ Hanifah, who lived in the first century of the Hijra, and who is repre
sented to have been a man that united great modesty and piety with a
plain, solid understanding, and whose tenets are praised on account of their
being founded more upon reason than upon traditions, is accused by the
Shiahs of ignorance and presumption. They assert that, among other devia
tions from the true path, he departed from the obvious text of "the Kuran in