Religion has, in all ages, and in all parts of the world, been made the mask of ambition, for which its powerful influence over the minds of the ignorant so well qualifies it. But the political influence of religion among the calmer and more reasoning nations of Europe is slight compared with its power over the more ardent and susceptible natives of Asia. Owing to the effects of this principle the despotism of the East has never been of that still, undisturbed nature which we might suppose to be its character. To say nothing of the bloody wars and massacres which have taken place under the pretext of religion in the countries from Japan to the Indus, the Mohammedan portion of the East has been, almost without ceasing, the theatre of sanguinary dramas, where ambition, under the disguise of religion, sought for empire; and our own days have seen, in the case of the Wahabees, a bold though unsuccessful attempt of fanaticism to achieve a revolution in a part of the Ottoman empire. It was this union of religion with policy which placed the Suffavee family on the throne of Persia in the fifteenth century; and it was this also which, at a much earlier period, established the dominion of the Fatimite khalifs of Egypt. The progress of this last event is thus traced by oriental historians[15]:-- [Footnote 15: Lari and Macrisi, quoted by Hammer.] The encouragement given to literature and science by the enlightened Al-Mamoon had diffused a degree of boldness of speculation and inquiry hitherto unknown in the empire of the Arabs. The subtile philosophy of the Greeks was now brought into contact with the sublime but corrupted theology of the Persians, and the mysticism of India secretly mingled itself with the mass of knowledge. We are not, perhaps, to give credit to the assertion of the Arab historian that it was the secret and settled plan of the Persians to undermine and corrupt the religion, and thus sap the empire, of those who had overcome them in the field; but it is not a little remarkable that, as the transformation of the Mosaic religion into Judaism may be traced to Persia, and as the same country sent forth the monstrous opinions which corrupted the simplicity of the Gospel, so it is in Persia that we find the origin of most of the sects which have sprung up in Islam. Without agreeing with those who would derive all knowledge from India, it may be held not improbable that the intricate metaphysics and mysticism of that country have been the source of much of the corruption of the various religions which have prevailed in Cis-Indian Asia. It is at least remarkable that the north-east of Persia, the part nearest to India, has been the place where many of the impostors who pretended to intercourse with the Deity made their appearance. It was here that Mani (_Manes_), the head of the Manichæans, displayed his arts, and it was in Khorasan (_Sun-land_) that Hakem, who gave himself out for an incarnation of the Deity, raised the standard of