eed him, and
so in a measure directed the choice of the Ahl el agde. The Caliph was
in each instance elected by the elders at Medina, and the choice
confirmed by its general acknowledgment elsewhere.

In the time of Ali, however, a new principle began to make its
appearance, which foreshadowed a change in the nature of the Caliphate.
The election of Abu Bekr, as I have said, was determined by the
predominant religious feeling of the day. He was the holiest man in
Islam, and his government was throughout strictly theocratic. He not
only administered the religious law, but was its interpreter and
architect. He sat every day in the _mejlis_, or open court of justice,
and decided there questions of divinity as well as of jurisprudence. He
publicly led the prayer in the Mosque, expounded the Koran, and preached
every Friday from the pulpit. He combined in his person all the
functions now divided between the Sheykh el Islam, the grand Mufti, and
the executive authorities. He was king and priest and magistrate, doctor
of civil and religious law, and supreme referee on all matters whether
of opinion or practice; he was, in a word, the Pope of Islam. Nor did
his three successors abate anything of Abu Bekr's pretensions. The only
power they delegated was the command of the Mussulman armies, which were
then overrunning the world, and the government of the provinces these
had conquered.

Ali, however, when he at last succeeded to the Caliphate, found himself
opposed by the very party whose candidate he had once been, and this
party had gathered strength in the interval. With the conquest of the
world worldly ideas had filled the hearts of Mussulmans, and a strong
reaction also had set in in favour of those specially national ideas of
Arabia which religious fervour had hitherto held in check. It was
natural, indeed inevitable, that this should be the case, for many
conquered nations had embraced the faith of Islam, and, as Mussulmans,
had become the equals of their conquerors, so that what elements of
pride existed in these found their gratification in ideas of race and
birth rather than of religion, ideas which the conquered races could not
share, and which were the special inheritance of Arabia.

The national party, then, had been reinforced, at the expense of the
religious, among the Koreysh, who were still at the head of all the
affairs of State. Their leader was Mawiyeh Ibn Ommiyeh, a man of
distinguished ability and of that