up by the Turkish
conqueror.

These new rulers, who added the Byzantine Empire to Islam, who with Egypt
brought Southern and Western Arabia with the Holy Cities also under their
authority, and caused all the neighbouring princes, Moslim and Christian
alike, to tremble on their thrones, thought it was time to abolish the
senseless survival of the Abbasid glory. The prestige of the Ottomans was
as great as that of the Khalifate in its most palmy days had been; and they
would not be withheld from the assumption of the title. There is a doubtful
tale of the abdication of the Abbasids in their favour, but the question
is of no importance. The Ottomans owed their Khalifate to their sword; and
this was the only argument used by such canonists as thought it worth their
while to bring such an incontestable fact into reconciliation with the law.
This was not strictly necessary, as they had been accustomed for eight
centuries to acquiesce in all sorts of unlawful acts which history
demonstrated to be the will of Allah.

The sense of the tradition that established descent from the tribe of
Qoraish as necessary for the highest dignity in the community was capable
of being weakened by explanation; and, even without that, the leadership of
the irresistible Ottomans was of more value to Islam than the chimerical
authority of a powerless Qoraishite. In our own time, you can hear
Qoraishites, and even Alids, warmly defend the claims of the Turkish
sultans to the Khalifate, as they regard these as the only Moslim princes
capable of championing the threatened rights of Islam.

Even the sultans of Stambul could not think of restoring the authority of
the Khalif over the whole Mohammedan world. This was prevented not only
by the schismatic kingdoms, khalifates, or imamates like Shi'itic Persia,
which was consolidated just in the sixteenth century, by the unceasing
opposition of the Imams of Yemen, and Kharijite principalities at the
extremities of the Mohammedan world. Besides these, there were numerous
princes in Central Asia, in India, and in Central Africa, whom either the
Khalifate had always been obliged to leave to themselves, or who had become
so estranged from it that, unless they felt the power of the Turkish arms,
they preferred to remain as they were. Moreover, Islam had extended itself
not only by political means, but also by trade and colonization into
countries even the existence of which was hardly known in the political
ce