Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. MAHOMETANISM IN THE LEVANT—Concluded. [published In ' Fbaseb's Magazine,' October, 1870.] We now come to that class the members of which are sometimes, but most erroneously, denominated in European writings, French especially, the ' Mahometan Clergy.' How far they are in fact removed from anything to which Western and Christian nomenclature assigns the title of Clergy we shall soon see. This class comprehends 'Mollas/ 'Kadees, ' 'Muftees, ' 'Imams, ' ' Khateebs,' ' Sheykhs,' and some other professions of minor importance. Of the names now given, the first, ' Molla,' more correctly ' Mawla,' literally ' Master/ is generic, and applies to all who have gone through a regular course of legal study, and received a diploma. The attributions of a ' Kadee, ' analogous to rather than identical with those of a judge, are sufficiently known to all readers of Oriental tales; the ' Muftee' is a Q.C. or Sultan's Counsel, to speak correctly, for Turkey; 'Imam' is best rendered by Precentor ; 'TAateeb' by Preacher; ' Sheykh' is a vaguer term of religious, but not of hierarchical, qualification. Among these six categories, to which some minor ones of subordinate office are attached, the first three represent the legislative, and the latter three the doctrinal element of Islam. And as the legislative element is immeasurably the more copious and complicated of the two, so also the professions which it has originated take a decided preference over the others in the social scale. None of them can, however, be, with any propriety of speech, designated as priestly, whether that term imply hereditary caste, like the Levites of independent Palestine, and the more enduring Brahmins of the Indian peninsula; or sacerdotal consecration, after the fashion of Roman and Protestant Christianity. ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.