This surprisingly commonplace end of the Fatimids is a striking comment on their history. As organised by ʿAbdullah b. Maymun the Ismaʿilian sect was a secret society, and this society had established an empire in which it ruled over subjects who, though loyal to their rulers as political sovereigns, were totally out of sympathy with the society’s known or supposed aims. So far as these had become prominent from time to time they had only produced difficulties and friction, most pronounced in the incidents connected with al-Hakim; the wiser and saner advisers of the throne undoubtedly made it their aim to push the sectarian element into the background, or get rid of it altogether. Yet all through the history of Egypt, at least up to the time of al-Mustansir, that sectarian element was very distinctly present and the Fatimid Khalif as the pontiff of the Ismaʿilians was visited by pilgrims from Persia, Arabia, and other parts. As a sectarian movement the Fatimid adventure had two off-shoots which are still to some extent living forces. The Druses of the Lebanon still form a vigorous and flourishing community of no small political importance. Their religious tenets have been long a secret, though many details have leaked forth; but now there is a “modernist” party, chiefly of the younger men, amongst the Druses, and these desire to reveal their religious beliefs more fully feeling that secrecy has only tended to misrepresentation of their community, and believing that the moral ideals which they hold together with their combination of agnostic and pantheistic doctrine furnishes a religious system likely to gain many converts at the present time. How far these modernists will succeed in divulging their beliefs, and how far their movement will receive the sympathy of the heads of the sect remains to be seen. It is understood that Dr. Bliss of Beirut will be the probable intermediary of communication with the western world if this disclosure takes place.