[W. H. S.]
For an account of Muhammadan sects, see section viii of the
Preliminary Dissertation in Sale's Koran, entitled, 'Of the Principal
Sects among the Muhammadans; and of those who have pretended to
Prophecy among the Arabs, in or since the Time of Muhammad'; and T.
P. Hughes, _Dictionary of Islam_ (1885). The chief sects of the
Sunnis, or Traditionists, are four in number. 'The principal sects of
the Shias are five, which are subdivided into an almost innumerable
number.' The court of the kings of Oudh was Shia. In most parts of
India the Sunni faith prevails.
The relation between genius and insanity is well expressed by Dryden
(_Absalom and Achitopfel_):
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
The treatise of Professor Cesare Lombroso, entitled _The Man of
Genius_ (London edition, 1891), is devoted to proof and illustration
of the proposition that genius is 'a special morbid condition'. He
deals briefly with the case of Muhammad at pages 31, 39, and 325,
maintaining that the prophet, like Saint Paul, Julius Caesar, and
many other men of genius, was subject to epileptic fits.
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