ld as _par excellence_
the Sultan.

With the two former, as rulers of what were remote lands of Islam,
Selim seems to have troubled himself little; but he made war on Egypt.
In 1516 he invaded Syria, its outlying province, and in 1517 he entered
Cairo. There he made prisoner the reigning Mameluke, Kansaw el Ghouri,
and had him publicly beheaded, or according to another account, received
his head from a soldier, who had killed him where he lay on the ground
after falling (for the Sultan was an old man) from his horse. He then,
in virtue of a very doubtful cession made to him of his rights by one
Motawakkel Ibn Omar el Hakim, a descendant of the house of Abbas, whom
he found living as titular Caliph in Cairo, took to himself the
following style and title: Sultan es Salatin, wa Hakan el Hawakin, Malek
el Bahreyn, wa Hami el Barreyn, Khalifeh Rasul Allah, Emir el Mumenin,
wa Sultan, wa Khan--titles which may be thus interpreted: King of Kings
and Lord of Lords, Monarch of the two seas (the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea), and Protector of the two lands (Hejaz and Syria, the holy
lands of Islam), Successor of the Apostle of God, Prince of the
Faithful, and Emperor. It is said that he first had the satisfaction of
hearing his name mentioned in the public prayers as Caliph when he
visited the great mosque of Zacharias at Aleppo on his return northwards
in 1519.[10]

Such, in a few words, is historically the origin of the modern
Caliphate, and such are the titles now borne by Selim's descendant, Abd
el Hamid. It is difficult at this distance of time, and in the absence
of detailed contemporary narratives, to do more than guess the effect on
Mussulmans of his day of Selim's religious pretensions. To all alike,
friends as well as foes, he must in the first instance have appeared as
an usurper, for before him no man not of the house of Koreysh, and so a
kinsman of their Prophet, had ever claimed to be his spiritual heir.
Indeed, it was a maxim with all schools of theology of all ages that
descent from the Koreysh was the first title to the Caliphate; but we
may reasonably suppose that within the limits of his own dominions, and
even to the mass of the vulgar beyond them, the Ottoman Emperor's
sublime proceedings met with approval.

Selim was a portentous figure in Islam; and the splendour of his
apparition in the north dazzled the eyes of all. Mussulmans must have
seen in him and his house the restorers of their political fortun