es and
the champion of their religion against Christendom; and a departure from
established rule in his favour may well have seemed justified to pious
persons as the best hope for the future of their creed. Selim was
already temporal lord of the greater part of Islam, and he might be
expected thus to restore the spiritual sovereignty also. Besides, to the
ears of Mussulmans of the sixteenth century, the Caliphal title was no
longer a familiar sound, and the title of Sultan which Selim already
bore was that of the highest temporal authority they knew.

The Caliphate, if it existed at all, was in the modern world a less
imposing name than the Sultanate; and the two had since the destruction
of Bagdad become confused, as they still remain, in men's minds who do
not any more now make common use of the older title. Thus it was not
difficult for the new Sultan of Damascus and Cairo and Medina to impose
himself on the multitude--not merely as heir to the Caliphal
possessions, but to the title also of the Caliphs and their spiritual
rank. Advantage, too, seems to have been taken in the first instance, as
it has been subsequently, of the accidental resemblance of name between
Othman, Selim's ancestor, and Othman the third Caliph. The vulgar ear
caught the sound as one familiar to it, and was satisfied, for there is
all the world in a name.

With the Ulema, however, it was necessary to be more precise; and we
know that the question of the Ottoman right to the spiritual succession
of the Prophet was one long and hotly debated in the schools. Tradition
was formal on the point of excluding aliens to the Koreysh from this its
legal inheritance, for Mohammed himself had repeatedly distinguished his
own tribe as being the sole heirs to his authority; nor would any doctor
of the specially Arabian schools listen to a departure from ideas so
absolute. The Hanefite school, however, representing those chiefly
interested in accepting the Ottoman pretension, undertook its legal
defence, and succeeded, in spite of the one great obstacle of birth, in
making out a very tolerable case for themselves and the Beni Othman--a
case which, in the absence of any rival candidate to oppose to them, has
since been tacitly accepted by the majority of the Sunite Ulema.

The difficulty, however, was in practice settled by a compromise, and
the dispute itself had long been forgotten by all but the learned, until
within the present generation its arguments we