The Future of Islam

it, and with them of the populations they in some measure represent. The pilgrimage is of course no certain guide as to the composition of the Mussulman world, for many accidents of distance and political circumstance interfere with calculations based on it. Still to a certain extent a proportion is preserved between it and the populations which supply it; and in default of better, statistics of the Haj afford us an index not without value of the degree of religious vitality existing in the various Mussulman countries. My figures, which for convenience I have arranged in tabular form, are taken principally from an official record, kept for some years past at Jeddah, of the pilgrims landed at that port, and checked as far as European subjects are concerned by reference to the consular agents residing there. They may therefore be relied upon as fairly accurate; while for the land pilgrimage I trust in part my own observations, made three years ago, in part statistics obtained at Cairo and Damascus. For the tabl