assacre 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. 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 facto_ possession
of the sovereign title. It was argued that, the Caliphate being a
necessity (and this all orthodox Mussulmans admit), it was also
necessary that the _de facto_ holder of the title should be recognized
as legally the Caliph, _until a claima