Perhaps we ought not to leave this subject without discussing rather more fully the assertion which has been made about the Persian Shiahs, that they have changed the doctrine of the unity of God for a loose pantheism, and have dethroned the Quran for the utterance of Sufi poets. That the Persians as a race have an extreme veneration for Sufi poetry, which contains expressions of questionable orthodoxy, cannot well be called in question; but before discussing the more serious part of the allegation, it is necessary to thoroughly understand about whom it is stated; for there are small Shiah sects, of whom it is quite true that they are only half Mussulman, but these are very different from the sect which is at present predominant in Persia, and which in Yezd at any rate does not appear to lack veneration for the Quran. One point, however, must be granted, and that is, that all Persian Mussulmans, orthodox or otherwise, are often led to express acquiescence in a statement which appears to be in itself correct, however opposed it may be to the general tenor of their other beliefs. The fact is that they do not easily see a contradiction, and this has made it possible for the Shiah to accept poetry which he would otherwise have absolutely rejected. I do not myself know a single Christian doctrine to which I could not get most Shiahs to agree, if I was careful to state it in language with which they were familiar, and not to dwell on its divergence from the Mussulman idea. But doctrines so allowed to pass, whether Christian or Sufi, would have no strength against the system of Islam, which most Yezdis have grasped as an integral whole. The general plan of Mussulman doctrine, constructed as it was for inhabitants of a desert, is peculiarly comprehensible to people like the Yezdis, who are accustomed to isolated objects and ideas, and are slow at grasping a too elaborately connected argument. For the system of Islam is not elaborately connected: that there is a general consistency in it, is true, but the consistency is like that of a certain housewife’s accounts, in which a large number of items were entered under the heading of “forgets.” The accounts were true and accurate, but they were not highly instructive. Similarly in Islam a large variety of commandments have been labelled, “commandments for the age of Moses,” or “commandments for the age of Mohammed,” and the doctrine of the _paighambari_ is so formulated as to make further systematisation unnecessary. This being a scheme of arrangement which a Persian can understand, it has laid hold of his mind to a peculiar degree. Phrases and expressions that are opposed to it, he will often accept, but their influence on his behaviour is exceedingly small. The thing which dominates him, and will, unless explicitly resisted and combated, always continue to dominate him, is Islam and Islam alone.