LATER ISLAMITE MOVEMENTS The Arabs of Arabia (as has been said before) have long since lost the place in the history of the world which they once occupied under circumstances wholly exceptional. Only twice since then has a strong movement made itself felt in at least the nearest of Islamite lands. In the tenth century the Karmates, a secret sect of Persian origin, hostile to the Abbasid caliphs and, at bottom, to Islam altogether, established themselves firmly in a part of northeastern Arabia, very difficult of access. Their leaders succeeded in winning over many Bedouins by the prospect of booty, and thus caravans of pilgrims were frequently massacred or robbed of all they possessed; some of the large cities of Babylonia were several times captured and pillaged; Mecca itself was taken during the pilgrim festival; the sacrosanct Black Stone carried off (930), and an end put to pilgrimages for a time. These proceedings were accomplished by much bloodshed. The Black Stone was ultimately restored after an interval of twenty-one years, on payment of a heavy ransom. The Karmates were secretly in league with the Fatimites, the anti-caliph dynasty in Africa, which claimed descent from Ali and Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed. They sank back into insignificance by slow degrees.[28] A connection of some sort exists between the above-mentioned occurrences and the migration of certain Bedouin tribes, under the auspices of the Fatimites, from Arabia to Upper Egypt and remoter parts of northern Africa, where they committed great ravages (eleventh century). And in the eighteenth century the puritanic movement of Abd al-Wahhab arose in the heart of Arabia, with the object of restoring Islam to its pristine purity and repudiating all innovations that had crept in by lapse of time, from the veneration of the tombs of saints to the smoking of tobacco. The Wahhabees brought the greater part of Arabia, inclusive of the holy cities, under their influence for a while, exacted a minute observation of the precepts of religion, bore strict rule in all things, and established a condition of peace such as that country, predestinate to lawlessness, had not known since the days of the caliphate. The Wahhabees were heretics inasmuch as they did not regard the “catholic” principle, which had won acceptance in Islam, that all things adopted by the consensus of the whole church were binding upon all men; though of course the fiction was kept up that this consensus was invariably in harmony with the original character of the faith. They, on the contrary, held in all seriousness the principle, which was universally recognised in theory, that every innovation in the sphere of religion was wholly reprehensible.