The sacred pilgrimages to Najaf and Karbilá, the holiest shrines of the _Sh_í’ih world, are reduced in number and made increasingly difficult, preventing thereby many a greedy mullá from indulging in his time-honored habit of charging double for making those pilgrimages as a substitute for the religious-minded. The disuse of the veil which the mullás fought tooth and nail to prevent; the equality of sexes which their law forbade; the erection of civil tribunals which superseded their ecclesiastical courts; the abolition of the sí_gh_ih (concubinage) which, when contracted for short periods, is hardly distinguishable from quasi-prostitution, and which made of the turbulent and fanatical Ma_sh_had, the national center of pilgrimage, one of the most immoral cities in Asia; and finally, the efforts which are being made to disparage the Arabic tongue, the sacred language of Islám and of the Qur’án, and to divorce it from Persian—all these have successively lent their share to the acceleration of that impelling process which has subordinated to the civil authority the position and interests of Muslim clericals to a degree undreamt of by any mullá. Well might the once lofty-turbaned, long-bearded, grave-looking áqá (mullá), who had so insolently concerned himself with every department of human activity, as he sits, hatless, clean shaven, in the seclusion of his home, and perhaps listening to the strains of western music, blared upon the ethers of his native land, pause to reflect for a while on the vanished splendors of his defunct empire. Well might he muse upon the havoc which the rising tide of nationalism and skepticism has wrought in the adamantine traditions of his country. Well might he recollect the halcyon days when, seated on a donkey, and parading through the bázárs and maydáns of his native town, an eager but deluded multitude would rush to kiss with fervor not only his hands, but also the tail of the animal on which he rode. Well might he remember the blind zeal with which they acclaimed his acts, and the prodigies and miracles they ascribed to their performance. He might indeed look back further, and call to mind the reign of those pious Safaví monarchs, who delighted to call themselves “dogs of the threshold of the Immaculate Imáms,” how one of those kings was induced to go on foot before the mujtahid as he rode through the maydán-i-_Sh_áh, the main square of Iṣfáhán, as a mark of royal subservience to the favorite minister of the Hidden Imám, a minister who, as distinct from the _Sh_áh’s title, styled himself “the servant of the Lord of Saintship (Imám ‘Alí).”