Note 9 — Chapter I

The same independence from the yoke of a foreign ruler is still preserved to the present day by the Arabians. The Sultan of Turkey exercises but a nominal sovereignty over Hedjaz and Neged; and the rise and exploits of that formidable sect of religious reformers, the Wahabys, during the latter half of the last and in the present century, indicate sufficiently that it may only require the appearance of a great man among the Arabs, or the occurrence of some great event, to unite the wild sons of the desert once more into a mighty nation that may make its influence felt in the destinies of the world. Had not Egypt’s great ruler, Mehemet Ali, and his warlike son Ibrahim, stemmed for a time the progress, and crippled the power of the Wahabys, who knows but that the champion of Greek orthodoxy might have found his present ambitious projects opposed by a fiercer and more formidable antagonist than the effete race of Osman?