How vastly Islam was in advance of the pagan religions, which for the most part it replaced in Arabia, need not be mentioned here. From practising horrible rites of “fetich,” from the offering even of human sacrifices, from dissensions and religious tribal wars, the mission of Mahammed called the Arabs to something far higher—far above anything they had known before. Christianity had failed, in spite of repeated efforts, to attract them to anything more than the smallest extent; Judaism was out of date, and unsuited to the epoch they had reached. They were ready, were yearning, for a new religion, and Mahammed took the opportunity to found one. In place of hideous pagan rites, in place of a few converts to an unappreciated Christianity, in place of Judaic laws of which the people were weary, he brought amongst them a new inspiriting religion, lofty in its recognition of monotheism, higher than anything they had as yet known in its moral code. But from this simple form of monotheism numerous branches were destined to sprout; and just as Christianity is split up into innumerable sects, so is Islam divided into many differences and brotherhoods. It is with comparatively few, however, of these that we have to deal in regard to the Yemen,—for although in early times changes had begun to be apparent in the course of the religion, it is only comparatively lately that the enormous quantity of sectarian differences now existing sprang into life; and these, with few exceptions, have but to a very slight extent influenced the political aspect of the country. The first important dissension in the course of Islam occurred about the year 37 A.H., when the theocratic party, recognising that the existence of the Caliphs was likely to become, and was even at that time becoming, an excuse for power and a cause of strife, and that the religious influence was lapsing into an autocratic supremacy, stood aside and cried for an oath of allegiance to God alone, and an elected Council of State to regulate affairs. Revolting first against Ali, the nephew and son-in-law of the Prophet, we find them again and again all through the history of Islam bursting forth, egged on by such wild fanaticism as only men of those countries can know. High though, perhaps, the original motives of the Kharejites were, they were too often in after-times fanned by the aspirations of pretenders to power, and it needed all the force of temporal and spiritual rulers to check these outbursts of fanaticism. The Kharejites were again split up into many divisions, all more or less founded upon the idea of treating sin as infidelity, which it would be straying from the objects of this book to specially mention here, except that of the Obadites, who from time to time recur in the history of the Yemen.