or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire they are
distinguished by a green turban; receive a stipend from the treasury;
are judged only by their chief; and, however debased by fortune or
character, still assert the proud preeminence of their birth. A family
of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph
Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve
centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of their
native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian
race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty
of the kings of the earth. [186]

[Footnote 181: The general article of Imam, in D'Herbelot's
Bibliotheque, will indicate the succession; and the lives of the twelve
are given under their respective names.]

[Footnote 182: The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but the
Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every religion, (Sale's
Preliminary Discourse, p. 80, 82.) In the royal stable of Ispahan, two
horses were always kept saddled, one for the Mahadi himself, the other
for his lieutenant, Jesus the son of Mary.]

[Footnote 183: In the year of the Hegira 200, (A.D. 815.) See
D'Herbelot, p. 146]

[Footnote 184: D'Herbelot, p. 342. The enemies of the Fatimites
disgraced them by a Jewish origin. Yet they accurately deduced their
genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam; and the impartial Abulfeda
allows (Annal. Moslem. p. 230) that they were owned by many, qui absque
controversia genuini sunt Alidarum, homines propaginum suae gentis
exacte callentes. He quotes some lines from the celebrated Scherif or
Rahdi, Egone humilitatem induam in terris hostium? (I suspect him to
be an Edrissite of Sicily,) cum in Aegypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii,
quocum ego communem habeo patrem et vindicem.]

[Footnote 185: The kings of Persia in the last century are descended
from Sheik Sefi, a saint of the xivth century, and through him, from
Moussa Cassem, the son of Hosein, the son of Ali, (Olearius, p. 957.
Chardin, tom. iii. p. 288.) But I cannot trace the intermediate degrees
in any genuine or fabulous pedigree. If they were truly Fatimites, they
might draw their origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in
the ixth century, (D'Herbelot, p. 96.)]

[Footnote 186: The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali is
most accurately described by Demet