nd, when he
found their ideas to be entirely in unison with the advice just given
him, he commissioned the Sheykh el Islam to push forward the doctrine of
his spiritual leadership by all the means in his power. Missionaries
were consequently despatched to every part of the Mussulman world, and
especially to India and the Barbary States, to explain the Hanefite
dogma of the Caliphate; and though at first these met with little
success they eventually gained their object in those countries where
believers were obliged to live under infidel rule, so much so that in a
few years the Ottoman Caliphate became once more a recognized "question"
in the schools. They were aided in this by a powerful instrument, then
first employed in Turkey, the press.[12] A newspaper in Arabic called
the _Jawaib_ was subsidized at Constantinople under the direction of
one Achmet Faris, a convert to Islam and a man of great literary ability
and knowledge of Arabic, who already had views on the subject of the
Caliphate; and this organ henceforth consistently advocated the new
policy of the Ulema.

The official clique in Stamboul were, however, at that time still intent
on other projects, and only half understood the part to be played by
religion in their scheme of administrative reform for the Empire.
Besides--and this was the chief hindrance to the Ulema--Abd el Aziz was
not a man capable of seriously carrying out a great political idea,
being little else than a man of pleasure. He and his government
consequently soon drifted back into the groove of his predecessors'
material policy, which relied for its strength on the physical force of
arms, foreign loans, and the intrigues of officials. The only practical
action taken by Ottoman ministers in the line indicated were the twin
crusades proclaimed against the Wahhabis of Hasa and the heretical Imams
of Sana. But the Hanefite Ulema were not thus to be satisfied. They had
determined on carrying out the idea they had adopted, and on forcing the
Sultan to put himself openly at the head of a religious and reactionary
movement; and when they found that Abd el Aziz could not be made to act
consistently as Caliph, they deposed him, and thus opened a way for the
true hero of their idea, the present Sultan, Abd el Hamid.

The advent of this latest scion of the house of Othman to the spiritual
succession of the Prophet, though a godsend in appearance to religious
Moslems, cannot but be regarded by all who wis