ntres of Islam, e.g., into Central Africa or the Far East of Asia.
Without thinking of rivalling the Abbasids or their successors, some of the
princes of such remote kingdoms, e.g., the sherifs of Morocco, assumed the
title of Commander of the Faithful, bestowed upon them by their flatterers.
Today, there are petty princes in East India under Dutch sovereignty who
decorate themselves with the title of Khalif, without suspecting that they
are thereby guilty of a sort of arrogant blasphemy.

Such exaggeration is not supported by the canonists; but these have devised
a theory, which gives a foundation to the authority of Mohammedan princes,
who never had a real or fictitious connection with a real or fictitious
Khalifate. Authority there must be, everywhere and under all circumstances;
far from the centre this should be exercised, according to them, by the
one who has been able to gain it and who knows how to hold it; and all the
duties are laid upon him, which, in a normal condition, would be discharged
by the Khalif or his representative. For this kind of authority the
legists have even invented a special name: "_shaukah,_" which means actual
influence, the authority which has spontaneously arisen in default of a
chief who in one form or another can be considered as a mandatary of the
Khalifate.

Now, it is significant that many of those Mohammedan governors, who owe
their existence to wild growth in this way, seek, especially in our day,
for connection with the Khalifate, or, at least, wish to be regarded as
naturally connected with the centre. The same is true of such whose former
independence or adhesion to the Turkish Empire has been replaced by the
sovereignty of a Western state. Even amongst the Moslim peoples placed
under the direct government of European states a tendency prevails to be
considered in some way or another subjects of the Sultan-Khalif. Some
scholars explain this phenomenon by the spiritual character which the
dignity of Khalif is supposed to have acquired under the later Abbasids,
and retained since that time, until the Ottoman princes combined it again
with the temporal dignity of sultan. According to this view the later
Abbasids were a sort of popes of Islam; while the temporal authority, in
the central districts as well as in the subordinate kingdoms, was in the
hands of various sultans. The sultans of Constantinople govern, then, under
this name, as much territory as the political vicissitudes a