The appearance of Jesus in this environment leaves no doubt as to whence these things came to the Moslems. In some of these traditions it is further stated that Jesus will rule as a just Imam. One of those from which I have been quoting above, after telling of the overthrow of the Dajjal goes on as follows: "The Messenger of God said 'Isa b. Maryam will be a just judge and a well-conducted Imam among my people, making smooth the rough things, slaying the pigs, remitting the jizya, and leaving off taking the sadaqa. Tax will not be levied upon sheep or camel. Envy and enmity will be taken away. The poison of every poisonous animal will be removed, so that a little boy may put his hand in the mouth of a snake, and it will not harm him, and a little girl may put a lion to flight and it will not harm her. The wolf will be among the flocks like their dog, and the earth shall be full of Moslems as the vessel is full of water. The creed shall be one, and there shall be no worship but that of Allah. War shall cease its ravages, and the Quraish shall be deprived of their kingdom. The earth will be like an ingot of silver, and will bring forth its vegetation as in the days of Adam'" and so on.¹

The kinship of that, with Christian millennial ideas and with the eleventh chapter of Isaiah hardly needs to be pointed out. But I want to call attention to the phrase, "the Quraish shall be deprived of their kingdom". That transports us at once into the situation before the fall of the Omayyad dynasty when the populations were being ground by unjust governors and the Mawali

(those not of Arab race who had come over to Islam), were being denied what they were beginning to learn were their just claims-freedom from the Jizya, and equal rights with other Moslems. There is no doubt that these Messianic beliefs played some considerable part in preparing the way for the uprising of the Mawali which overthrew the Omayyads, and that they were used by the adroit politicians of the Abbaside family to maintain an atmosphere of expectation and hope of better things when a ruler belonging to the Prophet's family should attain to power. The underground scheming and whispered propaganda of that time can only be guessed at. But we know that when the time came there was among the converted populations — especially in Iraq — not only widespread discontent, but also a widespread disposition to accept a ruler of the Prophet's family. Properly speaking, that ought to have helped the House of Ali to power, but the Abbasides had known how to play upon that sentiment, and to keep their own pretensions secret from all but the initiated till the victory was practically secure. The Ali'ites thus disappointed remained, under the Abbasides, a troublesome element. Rebellion after rebellion, of which some member of the ill-fated family was made the figure-head, had to be slaked in blood. The Shi'a, the party of Ali, gradually drew apart from orthodox Islam, a difference of doctrine and of spirit growing out of the political cleavage. It was with the Shi'a and with the extreme sects which grew out of the same root that the Messianic expectations were at first most closely associated.