THE Sympathy expressed by our Mussulman fellow-subjects in India with the Porte in its present struggle with Russia has, during the past few weeks, provoked considerable newspaper and other discussion of the ground on which this sentiment rests-namely, the title of the Sultan to the Caliphate, or supreme spiritual headship of Islâm. But the pronouncements of the chief parties to the controversy have been so conflicting that -it may without disrespect be saidpopular confusion on the point has been rather worse confounded, and to unscientific outsiders the problem, instead of being in any way solved, has been made obscurer than ever. The learned fog, however, which has been thus thrown round the subject may, I venture to think, be dispersed by a simple reference to the historical facts, which are as accessible to anyone who can read D'Herbelot, D'Ohsson, and Gibbon as to the pundits who, armed with Abulfeda and Elmacin, have waged bloodless but still angry war over a topic that involves in reality no problem at all.

The word 'Caliph' (Arab. Khalifah), meaning 'vicar' or 'successor,' was the modest title assumed by Aboubekr, the father-in-law and first successor of Mohammed, on the death of the latter in A.D. 632. As the first link in the chain of what is by some called the canonicity of the title, it should be remarked that in his case the succession was by popular election; but in that of Omar, who followed, it was by nomination by Aboubekr on his death-bed, after a short reign of less than two and a half years. As the title of 'successor of the successor,' which was properly that of the new sovereign, would soon have become reiteratively inconvenient, it was now changed for that of Emir-almoumenin (Commander of the Faithful), which-although the original style of Caliph was also retained -thenceafterwards became, and still remains, the more specific designation of the chief Mussulman sovereign. Again, before his death Omar named six persons to succeed him, in order of their election

by lot or their own collective vote. These were called Ahel-alschoura, or heirs presumptive, and the offer of one of them (Abd-al-rahman) to renounce his chance on condition of the other five permitting him to choose Omar's immediate successor having been agreed to, he named Othman (another of the six), who accordingly became the third Caliph. On his death, in A.D. 655, Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, succeeded to the vacant dignity-by election of the people of Mecca and Medina, acting on his previous nomination as one of the six selected by Omar. Of this most famous of the first four 'successors' nothing more need be said than that he removed the seat of the Caliphate to Cufa, and long after his death (in 661) became the cause of the great schism that has since divided the Mohammedan world into the bitterly opposing sects of Soonis and Shiites-the former of which includes the Turks, most of the Arabs, and the great majority of the Mussulmans of India and China, while the latter comprises the Persians and some tribes along the Gulf, who regard the first three Caliphs as usurpers and Ali as the only legitimate successor of the Prophet. These first four princes are called by Mussulman theologians Khulefaï ráshidin, or 'true Caliphs,' as distinguished from their Ommiade and Abbasside successors, who, though recognised as legitimate and orthodox, are styled 'imperfect.' Of the two sons of Ali, Hassan and Hussein-who with their father form what may be called the trinity of the Shiite calendar-the former succeeded to the Caliphate, apparently by mere herditary right, as nothing is recorded of his election; but his title was disputed by Moawiyah, a near relative of Othman, and governor of Syria at the time, who had equally refused to recognise Ali, and shortly after the accession of the latter had himself been proclaimed Caliph by his own partisans at Damascus. After a few months' feeble tenure of the Cufa sovereignty, therefore, Hassan abdicated in favor of the usurper, and found sanc

tuary at the Prophet's tomb till poisoned by his wife at the instigation, it was said, of Moawiyah.

Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, was the first to salute the new monarch, and divulged, says Gibbon-quoting the language of Tacitus in another connection -the dangerous secret that the Arabian Caliphs might be created elsewhere than in the city of the Prophet. Moawiyah belonged to the tribe of the Beni-Ommiyah, and so founded the first dynasty of the Ommiades, which for nearly a century wielded the sceptre of Islâm in virtue of a purely hereditary right. In A.D. 750 the succession passed to the BeniAbbas, in the person of Abul Abbas, surnamed Al-Saffah (the Bloodshedder), who, in a battle fought near Mosul, defeated Caliph Marwan II., the last of the Ommiade sovereigns, and, as was thought, totally exterminated their lineage. One member, however, of the family survived Abd-al-rahman, a grandson of the Caliph Heschiam-and managed to escape into Spain, where his name procured him a favorable reception, and enabled him to found a new Ommiade line, which for nearly three centuries ruled both spiritually and secularly over the eight Mohammedan provinces into which the Peninsula was then divided.

The succession of Al-Saffah by his brother Mansour, after a contest with his uncle and nephew, whose claims were also strongly supported, would further seem to show that neither law nor usage had established any fixed rule according to which the joint spiritual and temporal sovereignty then descended. It passed, in fact, to the strongest, who was generally the oldest male relative of the deceased Caliph, and so, under the Abbassides as under the Ommiades, became practically hereditary in the order which is still canonical in the family of the Ottoman Sultans. Al-Mansour it was who removed the seat of the Caliph-, ate from Damascus to Baghdad, which he founded. Under Haroun-al-raschid, his grandson, and our old friend of the Arabian Nights, the Mohammedan dominion reached its golden age, from which it gradually declined till, during the reign of Caliph Rahdi (934-41), the twentieth of the Abbasside line, the whole central executive power had been gradually usurped by the Emirs-al-Omara

the commandants of the Turcoman and Tartar militia, who, from being at first mere slaves or mercenaries imported from Northern Asia, had become, like the Mamlouks of Egypt, the dominant military class-while most of the provinces had segregated into independent principalities, whose sultans, for the greater part, acknowledged the spiritual sovereignty of the Caliph, but nothing more. Thus arose the provincial dynasties of the Aglabites, the Edrisites, the Taberites, the Soffarides, the Hamadanites, and others, who for nearly five centuries, simultaneously or in succession, divided between them the dominion of Asia and Africa from the Oxus to Tangier. In 1056 Baghdad itself was occupied by the Seljuks, who assumed and for two hundred years wielded the power previously held by the usurping Emirs. During this term, again, the order of succession was frequently broken by the secular princes, who deposed and set up Caliphs at their will, though still selecting from the Abbasside line. The divided sovereignty thus exercised at length came to an end in 1258, when the Tartars under Holagou, the grandson of Zenghis Khan, overran the empire, sacked Baghdad, and extinguished the Arabian Caliphate in the blood of Mostasem, the last of this illustrious dynasty.

In the mean time two other Caliphates each claiming co-ordinate supremacy with the parent pontificate of Baghdad, but the legitimacy of both of which is repudiated by Mussulman canonistshad been established in Northern Africa and Spain. In the latter country Abdal-rahman, a grandson of the Ommiade Caliph Heschiam, had, in A.D. 755, as already mentioned, refounded the line of his house in a new dynasty, which for nearly three centuries equalled, if it did not surpass, in wealth and splendor its rivals on the Tigris. Since the extinction of these Spanish Ommiades, in 1036, there has been no Caliphate amongst the Moors; but the Emperor of Morocco, though a Sooni, claims to be Imâm within his own dominions, and as such has never recognized the spiritual headship of the Sultan.

A century and a half later than the foundation of this Spanish Caliphate, Obeidallah, who claimed to be a descendant of Ali, with the help of the Emir of

Sicily drove the Aglabites out of Cairoan -the ancient Cyrene-and established the Fatimite dynasty in Africa in A.D. 908. Moêz, the fourth of this line, having reduced Egypt, transferred the seat of his sovereignty to Cairo-then newly built by his general Gowher-in or about 972; and before his death, three years later, his name was substituted in the mosque prayers for that of Al-Motée (the contemporary Baghdad Caliph) from Tunis to Medina, Mecca being the only place of importance in Arabia that persisted in recognizing the house of Abbas. This Fatimite line, in which the succession was no whit more regular than among the Ommiades and Abbassides, lasted, with diminished power, till 1171, when it was suppressed and its Caliphate extinguished by Saladin (then vizier of Adhed, its last representative), who usurped the secular sovereignty and reproclaimed the spiritual supremacy of the Baghdad Abbassides. The Spanish Ommiades being also now extinct, these latter thus again became the sole recognized Vicars of the Prophet throughout the orthodox Mussulman world, and so continued till their sanguinary extermination by Holagou.

We now reach the first of the three doubtful links in this tangled chain of succession on which the religious title of Sultan Abdul Hamid depends. Some three years after the Mogul capture of Baghdad a young Arab named Ahmed, calling himself a survivor of the slaughtered Abbasside house, made his appearance at Cairo, and claimed to be a son of Dhaher, the last Caliph but one of the line. D'Herbelot tells the story of his claim in language that plainly hints doubt as to its soundness, and the only recorded evidence in support of it is its recognition by the Mamlouk Sultan Bibars after consultation with his doctors of the law. In the person, therefore, of this alleged scion of the sacred house-who received the name of Mostanserbillahthe Abbasside dynasty, extinguished on the Tigris, was revived on the Nile. A few months after his enthronement he was sent with a strong force to drive the Tartars from Baghdad, but being met by them on his way, was killed in the fight that followed. Opportunely, yet another survivor of Holagou's massacre turned up, and was promoted to the vacant dignity with even scantier enquiry into his

pedigree than had been made in the case of Ahmed. But the Caliphate thus restored was from the first a purely spiritual office, without secular power or attributes of any kind, and during the two centuries and a half that intervened to the Turkish conquest the sacred puppets were appointed and deposed at will by the temporal Sultans, with even less ceremony than had previously been observed by the Seljuks at Baghdad. The relation of the Pope to the King of Italy would be in some way analogous to that of these Vicars of the Prophet to the Sultans of the Baharite and Borghite dynasties, but that Pius IX. enjoys a hundredfold more liberty and independence than was accorded to the Caliphs of this Abbasside line in Egypt. Still, the prestige of a great sanctity attached to their office, and their secular colleagues made use of them, as Mr. Baillie observes, to confirm by religious sanctions their own authority over the people. They were even recognized as the source of temporal dignities, and were used by the Mamlouk soldiery-as the Sheikh-ulIslâm was the other day by the Porte pashas at Constantinople-to deprive of legal authority the sovereigns whom they deposed. Nor was this recognition of their high religious authority confined to Egypt and its Mamlouk princes. Both D'Herbelot and Gibbon tell how Sultan Bayazid, when at the height of his power, besought from the Prophet's Vicar at Cairo the confirmation of his royal dignity. The humble title of Emir,' says Gibbon, 'was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of Sultan from the Caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamlouks—a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian Prophet.' In the enjoyment of this purely pontifical rank and authority the dynasty lasted for two centuries and a half-till 1517, when Egypt was conquered by the Ottomans under Selim I., who killed Toman Bey, the last Borghite Sultan, and carried off Caliph Motowakkel to Constantinople,* where he forced him to renounce, or as

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he was permitted to return to Cairo, where he lived as a private individual till his own death in 1543.

* After the death of Selim, three years later,

sumed, without renunciation, the Caliphate in his stead-for the point, though of importance, is not historically clear. Before pursuing it, however, the remark already incidentally made may here be repeated-that it clearly results from what precedes that up to this advanced point in the history of the office no specific rule of succession had been established. The sequence of its first four occupants had virtually been elective, while that of the legitimate Ommiade and Abbasside dynasties that followed was in the main hereditary, the catenation being, however, in later years frequently broken by the arbitrary choice of the temporal Sultans, who only so far respected legitimacy as to select their nominees from the sacred lineage, without regard to their degree of relationship to the preceding Caliph. The fact too that, besides these arbitrary disposals of the dignity, there were, after Ali, three separate descents of it to as many different dynasties-with a lacuna of nearly four years between the extinction of the Abbassides at Baghdad and the revival of their line at Cairo-is fatal to any theory of apostolical succession in the office, for which, down to the suggested usurpation of Selim I., Mr. Baillie seems to contend. As little circumstantial support, however, is there for the contention that the office throughout its history was, and still is, elective. The apostolical current (to speak in the modern language of electricians) clearly ended with the last of the four 'true' Caliphs and election equally then ceased to be the rule in all three of the legitimate dynasties that followed-as à fortiori it has never been with the Ottoman Sultans, with whom the succession to both spiritual and temporal sovereignty is by descent to the eldest agnate of the family. Their title to the Caliphate must, therefore, be tried by other tests.

D'Ohsson,* without citing any contemporary authority, asserts the renunciation, and says that, according to the unanimous opinion of modern jurists' whom, however, he does not mentionthe right of legitimate succession was thereby acquired by the Sultans. 'Selim I.,' he adds, 'further received in the same year the homage of the Schérif of

* Tableau général de l'Empire Ottoman, i. 269.

Mecca, who presented to him on a silver dish the keys of the Caaba; and this full and entire surrender of the rights of the Imåneth, made on the one hand by an Abbasside Caliph, and on the other by a Schérif of Mecca-both descendants of the Koreïsh, the one by the Haschim branch and the other by that of Ali-compensated in the Ottoman Sultans for the defect of birth or of the extraction required by the law to qualify for the legitimate exercise of the pontificate.' He furnishes, however, a practically much better argument for this legitimacy in the accommodating pronouncement of the Foussoul-Isteroucheny, a canonical commentary of great repute. 'The authority of a prince who has even usurped the supreme priesthood by force and violence must still be recognized as legitimate, since the sovereign power is now reputed to vest in the person of the strongest ruler, whose right to command is founded on his arms.' In other words, in sacerdotalism as in politics:

He may take who has the power,
And he may keep who can.

If this were so beyond question, and independently of race, the title of the Ottoman Sultans would be indisputable, since for more than three centuries and a half they have been the chief Mussulman sovereigns of the world. But the historical precedents are all opposed to such a doctrine. It was indeed in a sense by force of arms that both the Ommiade and first Abbasside dynasties were founded; but their princes were of the pure Arab blood, and could claim descent, more or less direct, from one or other of the first sacred four; nor is there, as Dr. Badger-who stoutly affirms the spuriousness of the Ottoman pontificate-observes, any instance on record, or any authority whatever, sanctioning the transfer of the office by an individual, or its bestowal on one of an alien race. But Mr. Baillie goes beyond this negative evidence, and quotes D'Ohsson in support of his averment that Mohamined himself declared that the Imáms must be of the race of the Koreïsh'-the very pure-blooded Arab tribe to which the first four Caliphs and their Ommiade and Abbasside successors belonged-a condition which, if essential, is of course fatal to the claim of the Padishahs.

Mr.

and Zanzibar, and their subjects-though Soonis-have never recognized the validity of Motowakkel's act, and so regard this Ottoman pontificate as heretical and corrupt. But they are only a handful amongst the many millions of the orthodox faithful who, from the Danube to Borneo, now reverence Abdul Hamid as Vicar of the Prophet; and neither their petty recusancy nor the greater schism of the Shiites-who have never recognized any Caliph since Hassan, the son of Ali-materially affects the value of a title which, whatever may have been its original flaws, has been otherwise generally acknowledged for three hundred and sixty years. Even Dr. Badger, therefore, while arguing against the claim, perforce admits that 'the Ottoman Khalifate, in fact, as distinct from the Sultanate, stands in the same position towards Islâm as the Popedom does towards Christendom'-a measure of legitimacy and practical authority which most politicians at least will think sufficient.

Redhouse, however-who defends the Ottoman title, but whose logic in the controversy is not quite equal to his zeal -throws doubt on the authenticity of this dictum, and, without combating the fact that it figures in the abridgment of Omer Nessefy, which holds the place of a catechism in the Mussulman schools, says 'it would seem to be a safe conclusion that there never was a Prophetic injunction to this effect.' But the safety of this conclusion is not quite apparent in view of its direct rebuttal by an authority whom D'Ohsson regards as 'the soul and essence of Mussulman doctrine.' Certain it is, too, that the whole of the Arab dynasties-including the anti-Caliphates of the Fatimites and the Spanish Abbassides-claimed descent from the Koreïsh tribe, a fact that supports a presumption at least in favor of the limitation contended for by Mr. Baillie. If, therefore, the question were being argued on the morrow of the event, judicial logic would on this ground alone compel a rejection of the Ottoman claim; for the whole weight of the evidence is in favor of the dictum cited by Mr. Baillie, and in a theocratic system founded on such utterances its great authority must be admitted. But, in matters of dogma as with matters of fact, time and circumstances effect and legitimize important changes. In both Christianity and Islâm many points of now accepted doctrine would have been rank heresy one, two, three, or five centuries ago, just as in secular affairs we all know how often success has sanctified treason. Selim not only obtained from Motowakkel the forced or voluntary renunciation of his office, but, as already mentioned, induced the Schérif of Mecca-the next highest religious authority of the Mussulman world, and himself of the pure Koreïsh blood-to openly recognize the validity of the transfer. Nor was this all: through the influence of this venerated personage he won to his allegiance most of the chief Desert tribes, and from Suez to Aden was everywhere acknowledged as both Caliph and King. Since then the temporal authority of the Sultans along the Arabian coast, and inland over Yemen, has greatly fluctuated, but their claim to religious supremacy has never been substantially disputed. True it is that the Imâms, or Sultans, of Muscat

To gather up and restate, therefore, the elements of this so-called problemthe office of Caliph was, in the case of its first four universally acknowledged occupants, elective; in that of both the Ommiade and Abbasside dynasties that followed, and which are similarly recognized by all Mussulmans except the schismatic Sniites, it was virtually hereditary; then followed, as has been said, a lacuna of some four years, during which the line of succession was wholly broken, to be re-established in the historically doubtful founder of the Egyptian Abbassides, who was partly nominated by the Mamlouk Sultan and partly chosen by his Ulema, as was also his immediate successor. Thence on till the extinction of this dynasty, again, the rule of descent was also in effect hereditary, though not always in the direct line. But throughout this long succession of nearly a thousand years these Caliphs, from Aboubekr to Motowakkel, were or claimed to be members of what may be termed the Levitical Koreïsh tribe, to which there is strong authority for saying Mohammed himself declared every occupant of the sacred office must belong. Up to this point, too, there is, as has been observed, no instance on record of the office having been transferred by an individual oc