to exercise religious functions in person. These, unlike his predecessors, he delegated to others, and neither led the prayer nor preached; nor was he held to be either the best or the most learned man in Islam, as Abu Bekr and the rest had been. Moreover and this is the chief point noticed regarding him-he introduced the system of dynastic heredity into the Caliphate, nominating his son Yezid his successor in his own lifetime. The change, advantageous as it was politically, is regarded as a religious falling off. Henceforth the Caliphs, whether of the Ommiad or afterwards of the Abbaside families, were not in reality elected, though the form of confirmation by the Ulema was gone through; and they affected to succeed by right of birth, not by the voice of the people.

During the whole period of the Arabian Caliphate we only notice one Prince of the Faithful who busied himself much with religious learning, and few who personally exercised the magisterial functions. Only once we read of an Abbaside Caliph insisting on his right of leading the prayer, and this was probably the effect of an accidental jealousy. As a rule the temporal government of Islam was intrusted to a Sadrazzam, or Grand Vizier, the spiritual duty of prayer to a Naïb, or

deputy Imam, and the elaboration or interpretation of law and doctrine to such Ulema or Mujtaheddin as could command a following. The character of the Khalifeh, however, was still essentially sacred. He was of the Koreysh and of the blood of the Prophet, and so was distinct from the other princes of the world. As their political power decayed, the Abbasides fell indeed into the hands. of adventurers who even occasionally used them as puppets for their own ambitious ends; but the office was respected, and neither the Kurdish Saladdin, nor Togral Bey, nor Malek Shah, nor any of the Seljukian Emirs el Amara dared meddle personally with the title of Caliph.

The Ommiad dynasty, founded by Mawiyeh, reigned at Damascus eighty-five years, and was then succeeded on a new appeal to the sword in A.D. 750 by the descendants of another branch of the Koreysh-the Beni Abbas-who transferred the capital of Islam to Bagdad, and survived as temporal sovereigns there for five hundred years.

This second period of Islam, though containing her greatest glories and her highest worldly prosperity, is held to be less complete by divines than the first thirty years which had preceded it. Islam was no longer one. To say nothing of the Persian

and Arabian schisms, the orthodox world itself was divided, and rival Caliphs had established themselves independently in Spain and Egypt. Moreover, during the last two centuries the temporal power of the Caliphs was practically in delegation to the Seljuk Turks, who acted as mayors of the palace, and their spiritual power was unsupported by any show of sanctity or learning. It was terminated forcibly by the pagan Holagu, who at the head of the Mongols sacked Bagdad in 1258.

The third period of Caliphal history saw all temporal power wrested from the Caliphs. Islam, on the destruction of the Arabian monarchy, resolved itself into a number of separate States, each governed by its own Bey or Sultan, who in his quality of temporal prince was head also of religion within his own dominions. The Mongols, converted to the Faith of Mecca, founded a Mohammedan empire in the east; the Seljuk Turks, replaced by the Ottoman, reigned in Asia Minor; the Barbary States had their own rulers; and Egypt was governed by that strange dynasty of slaves, the Mameluke Sultans. Nowhere was a supreme temporal head of Islam to be seen, and the name of Khalifeh as that of a reigning sove

reign ceased any longer to be heard of in the world. Only the nominal succession of the Prophet was obscurely preserved at Cairo, whither the survivors of the family of Abbas had betaken themselves on the massacre of their house at Bagdad.

It is difficult to ascertain the precise position of these titular Caliphs under the Mameluke monarchy in Egypt. That they were little known to the world in general is certain; and one is sometimes tempted to suspect the complete authenticity of the succession preserved through them. Contemporary Christian writers do not mention them, and it is evident from Sir John Mandeville and others that in Egypt the Egyptian Sultan himself was talked of as head of the Mussulman religion. I have heard their position compared with that of the present Sheykhs el Islam at Constantinople -that is to say, they were appointed by the Sultan, and were made use of by him as a means of securing Mussulman allegiance-and I believe this to have been all their real status. They are cited, however, as in some sense sovereigns by Hanefite teachers, whose argument it is that the succession of the Prophet has never lapsed, or Islam been without a recognized temporal head.

F

The Sultans, neither of Egypt nor of India, nor till Selim's time of the Turkish Empire, ever claimed for themselves the title of Khalifeh, nor did the Sherifal family of Mecca, who alone of them might have claimed it legally as Koreysh. Neither did Tamerlane nor any of the Mussulman Mongols who reigned at Bagdad. The fact is, we may assume the Caliphate was clean forgotten at the time Selim bethought him of it as an instrument of power.

It must, then, have been an interesting and startling novelty with Mussulmans to hear of this new pretender to the ancient dignity—interesting, because the name Khalifeh was connected with so many of the bygone glories of Islam; startling; because he who claimed it seemed by birth incapable of doing so. The Hanefite Ulema, however, as I have said, undertook Selim's defence, or rather that of his successors, for Selim himself died not a year afterwards, and succeeded in proving, to the satisfaction of the majority of Sunites, that the house of Othman had a good and valid title to the rank they had assumed. Their chief arguments were as follows. The house of Othman, they asserted, ruled spiritually by

1. The right of the sword, that is to say, the de