wever, 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 sovereign 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 m