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and elevate themselves above Mohammedans? Shall they be constrained to obey the royal command by conforming to the said patriarch or bishop? And if they disobey the command of our master the Sultan, and elevate themselves above Mohammedans, shall they be considered untolerated, their covenant of toleration be regarded as broken, the treatment of the untolerated be inflicted upon them, their blood be shed with impunity, and their property and their children be a lawful prey to Mohammedans? Favor with an answer, and yours be the reward."

A few explanatory remarks upon this question may be proper before we proceed to the answer.

1. The terms "tolerated" and "untolerated," by which I have translated the Arabic dhimmy and harby, relate to the two classes into which Mohammedan law divides all non-Mohammedans. One consists of those, who, by submission and paying the capitation tax, become entitled to toleration; as is the case with Turkish rayahs. The other includes all who resist Mohammedan authority and refuse the tax. Upon these, it is one of the cardinal duties of Mohammedanism to make war, and their lives, property and children are a lawful prey to any Mohammedan.

2. The worst construction is evidently attempted to be put upon the proceedings of the Aleppine dissenters, as if the case had been made out by an enemy.

3. The right of seceding from a church over which an ecclesiastic has been appointed by authority of the Sultan, is one of the points brought into question—a point which covers the case of a removal of relations from one acknowledged church to another, even in Constantinople.

4. Joining with a foreign sect and worshipping with Franks, is adduced as an aggravation of the charge. This, in case of the seceders in question, had reference to their adherence to Roman Catholic missionaries. But it is equally applicable to converts to Protestantism. The latter are no more chargeable with seeking a foreign ecclesiastical alliance, and thereby joining an unacknowledged sect, than were the former.

5. The calling of the Aleppine seceders, Greeks and strangers, does not imply that they were not Turkish subjects. That they were understood to be subjects, is distinctly shown by the answer. They were in fact Arabs by nation, and the term Greek is here used only with reference to church relationship.

We will now proceed with our fetna.

"Answer.-Praise be to God the author of rectitude. You are acquainted with what is manifest in the standard books of the Doctors of the school of our Imam en-Naaman, their comments and fetnas; that infidelity is all of one sect. So that if a Christian embraces the religion of a Jew, or a Jew the religion of a Christian, or of a Frank, it shall not break his covenant of toleration. As is declared by the author of the Kunz, and others of our respected Doctors, the covenant of a tolerated person is broken, only by his retiring to a country of the untolerated, or by victory over such a country. Now if you understand what we have affirmed, you will see, that if a portion of the tolerated Christians unite with the Franks, and adopt their religion, and pray in their churches, it is not disobedience in them, nor an attempt to elevate them

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1846.]

Points decided by the Fetna.

395

selves above Mohammedans. Nor can we say that they have gone from one religion to another; as we have already affirmed that all religions opposed to Mohammedanism, are infidelity of an equal degree. Wherefore their covenant of toleration is not to be broken, nor are they to suffer the treatment of the untolerated. Inasmuch as the untolerated Franks, if they enter the country of Mohammedans under an assurance of safety, are secured. If they remain a year and do not return to their country, they become tolerated, and are to receive the treatment of those who are tolerated. It is not lawful to shed their blood, nor to take any of their property, while they are in our country; as is manifest from what has been already said. Nor does their not paying tribute render any such thing allowable; nor is our not taking tribute from the Franks who live among us a fault on our part. Even if they refuse to pay it, according to the declaration of the author of the Kunz, their covenant of toleration is not broken by their refusal of tribute, nor can we call them untolerated. Wherefore it is not lawful for us to shed the blood of the Franks aforesaid, in our country, nor to take any of their property without right. Much more is it not lawful in reference to the tolerated who are subject to our laws. It is not lawful for any one who believes in God and the last day, to interfere with the portion of the tolerated, be they Aleppines, Damascenes, or others, or to demand of them obedience to the patriarchs or bishops professing infidelity. Especially as it is affirmed in the dogmas of the professors of the Sunneh, that to approve of infidelity is infidelity; from which may God defend us. We have appointed over them a magistrate with a royal edict from his Highness our master the Sultan, which does not forbid them to adopt the religion of others. And if there be anything in the royal edict which directs to conformity to the patriarch or bishop, it must have occurred by oversight, arranged at the suggestion of the patriarch or bishop, it being impossible that it should have occurred by intention of the Sultan; may God most high establish him in victory. Wherefore it shall be meritorious for his Excellency our master the Vizier, and the magistrates of Mohammedans, to prevent the tolerated person, patriarch or bishop, from interfering with the tolerated strangers. This is the answer, well considered and decreed. Let no other be considered or attended to. And God knows best.

(Signed,)

SOLEIMAN EL-MANSURY, of the school of Hanifeh.

The Imam en-Naaman, mentioned above, is the founder of the school of Hanîfeh, the one of the four orthodox schools of the Mohammedan law which prevail at Constantinople and in Turkey proper. The Kunz is a standard work in Mohammedan law. The professors of the Sunneh, are the dominant sect of Turkey in distinction from that of Persia. A believer in God and the last day is only another phrase for a Mohammedan. With these explanations, this fetna is a very intelligible document. By it the following points are clearly decided.

1. A Christian transgresses no law of Mohammedanism by going from one acknowledged sect to another. As soon as he declares that he no longer belongs to his former sect, the authority of the head of that sect over him ceases. Nor may a Mohammedan magistrate force him to re

turn to his obedience. On the contrary, it is a commendable act in such a magistrate to shield the seceder from all persecution.

2. The profession of a foreign form of Christianity is no aggravation of the case, and does not change the unexceptionable character of the act of dissent. The necessity of belonging to a sect having an acknowledged head, does not seem to have been felt by the writer of the document. No allusion is made to it, either in the question or the answer. 3. The grounds of this liberty of dissent, are no acknowledgment of the rights of conscience. They consist of two principles characteristically Mohammedan. First, all forms of unbelief are equally wrong, and therefore constituting, in the eye of Mohammedanism, but one sect. To punish unbelievers, therefore, for going from sect to sect, would be a manifest inconsistency. Second, to force a dissenter back into a sect he had left, would imply an approval of the doctrines of that sect; and this approval would be an act of infidelity, the very greatest of all sins. I. may add, that if this latter reason be valid against forcing persons back from the Romish Church to the Greek-churches equally idolatrous— how much more weight must it have, in the judgment of a Mohammedan, against forcing a convert back from Protestantism, in which no idolatry exists, into a sect which worships pictures and images?

These grounds for the toleration of dissent, are certainly not to our taste; but the conclusions to which they lead, when acted upon, practically give to non-Mohammedans in Turkey, more freedom of conscience than is enjoyed under almost any government in Continental Europe. Accordingly in Syria, where they have had the freest scope, Christians have always had the liberty of going from one existing sect to another; often, indeed, not without temporary persecutions, but persecutions originating, not in the law, but in bribery and other sinister influences. New sects, too, have risen up. The Greek Catholic sect obtained a settled existence through the influence of this fetna. There are also Syrian Catholics, and Armenian Catholics; and each of the three sects has its patriarch. It is to be noticed, also, that the Armenian Catholic sect was in existence and had its patriarch in Syria, long before the same sect was acknowledged at Constantinople. None of these sects, moreover, has ever had a representative-head, or been officially acknowledged, at Constantinople; and the same is true of the Maronites, a sect that was in existence when the Osmanly Turks first took the country. The Maronite patriarch did indeed, in 1841, through British influence, receive the authority to have his kapu-kakhiya, or official agent, at the seat of government; but he immediately involved himself in political and belligerent intrigues, which threw him into disgrace, and this agent is probably no longer known. The Greek Catholic patriarch, also, has been for some two or three years, at Constantinople; but only temporarily, to carry on a lawsuit with the patriarch of the Greeks. Protestantism bas, in the eye of the law, as good a chance as papacy. And lately, in the trial, the Hasbeiyans had only to declare that they were no longer Greeks but Protestants, and the Greek patriarch could not touch them; nor did the authorities, on the other hand, charge them with taking an illegal step.

Such is the toleration extended to us in Syria, by Mohammedan law.

1846.]

Relation of Christianity to civil Authority.

397

It is liable, indeed, to very great infringements from arbitrary and covert proceedings of corrupt magistrates, and from the violence of a fanatical populace. And there is danger of an extension over the country of the ecclesiastical municipal system prevalent at the capital; especially under the influences that are coming in upon Turkish institutions from the neighboring governments of Continental Europe. Were it secure from these contingencies, we in Syria are prepared to say, that we are content with the toleration Mohammedan law affords us, in our labors for the salvation of the nominally Christian population of the country. The extent of this toleration ought to be known to the credit of the law which grants it; and every influence from abroad, tending to curtail it, is highly to be deprecated.

It is sure, that we should have less liberty under any European government that might be extended over the country, unless it were that of one or two of the most tolerant of the Protestant powers. Were any of the native sects, Christian or Jewish, to be put in possession of the government, they would be sure to exclude us from laboring among them. And from the acknowledged toleration of Protestantism as a sect, with an official head and municipal organization, about which there has been some talk, and perhaps negotiation of late, we have, if I mistake not, more to apprehend than to hope. It could hardly fail to be accompanied with the corruption and intolerance of an establishment-a corruption the greater for its being the creature and necessarily the tool of a Mohammedan government; and an intolerance the more overbearing for the want of enlightened views of the rights of conscience in the country where it would exist. The power with which such an establishment would be invested, we do not need. To worldly churches, admitting within their bosom the ignorant, the vicious and the refractory, in a word, the whole community, it would be of use, and in fact necessary, for purposes of government and discipline, if government and discipline be exercised. Our system is wholly different. Purely spiritual in its character, admitting only such as are spiritual to the rights of membership, it needs no aid from the civil power in the management of its internal concerns. Aiming, moreover, at no widely extended organization, it has not to encounter, and make terms with, the jealousy which would be felt by Government toward such an organization, even if it were of a spiritual character. Wherever it finds, or succeeds in raising up, a company of true believers, it regards them as a church of Christ, competent to manage among themselves all their ecclesiastical affairs. It changes in no respect their relation to Government; but leaves them to pay their taxes in the way they have ever done, or in any other way that may be prescribed to them; and in a word, places them before the authorities as simple dutiful subjects, and nothing else. This simple, spiritual form of religion originally worked its way in that same country, amid sore embarrassments and persecutions. It is also specially adapted for introduction there again. And if it be animated with its pristine vitality, it will find openings left by the laws of the land wide enough for it to enter, and spread its spiritual leaven, until the whole mass of society shall be wrought upon by its unpretending, and yet transforming influences.

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ARTICLE IX.

GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON PALESTINE.

By Rev. Samuel Wolcott, Longmeadow, Mass.

The Coast of the Dead Sea.

In a short notice of some recent Maps of Palestine, in a former Number of this Journal,1 we referred incidentally to a locality on the western coast of the Dead Sea, towards its southern extremity, the ancient Masada, which the writer had visited, in company with an English artist, during his residence in Palestine. The excursion led us to traverse a portion of the coast of that sea, which no modern traveller had passed over. The position just named was found to command a complete view of the sea; the map of which, in Robinson's Biblical Researches, was subjected to the severe test of being compared with the object itself, as it lay directly under our eye, more than a thousand feet below us. The testimony which has been given to the public, respecting the credit with which the work sustained that test, need not be repeated here. It is certainly surprising that it should have been left for American research, at so late a period, to define with any degree of correctness the shape of this singular sheet of water; as it is gratifying that it has finally been done so accurately. The annexed sketch gives more minutely and correctly the portion of the coast already referred to, which had not before come under personal examination. It is merely a general outline, drawn from the individual recollections of the writer, and without any reference to bearings and distances noted at the time and subsequently published by Professor Robinson, and which, with a more particular description of the localities, can be consulted by the reader.2 We subjoin a few explanations, and cannot forbear expressing a hope that the time may be near, when some enterprising traveller will execute an undertaking which combines so much, both of scientific and sacred interest, and explore the shores and sound the depths of this remarkable sea. The Wadys here given are all dry in the summer season. During the rains, the sands are washed down and form projecting points in the sea. We observed drift wood in various places along the coast, indicating the different stages at which the water had stood. The Birket el-Khûlil, ('Pool of the Friend,'

a name given to Abraham, and hence to Hebron, to which this probably refers,) is a mere depression in the sand, into which the waters flow when they are raised by the winter torrents, and evaporating, leave a saline deposit, which the natives gather for domestic use. The coast north

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