Tradition
was formal on the point of excluding aliens to the Koreysh from this its
legal inheritance, for Mohammed himself had repeatedly distinguished his
own tribe as being the sole heirs to his authority; nor would any doctor
of the specially Arabian schools listen to a departure from ideas so
absolute. The Hanefite school, however, representing those chiefly
interested in accepting the Ottoman pretension, undertook its legal
defence, and succeeded, in spite of the one great obstacle of birth, in
making out a very tolerable case for themselves and the Beni Othman--a
case which, in the absence of any rival candidate to oppose to them, has
since been tacitly accepted by the majority of the Sunite Ulema.
The difficulty, however, was in practice settled by a compromise, and
the dispute itself had long been forgotten by all but the learned, until
within the present generation its arguments were once more dragged out
publicly to serve a political purpose. The Hanefite arguments are on
this account interesting, and I have been at pains to ascertain and
understand them; but perhaps before I state them in detail it will be
best first briefly to run over the Caliphal history of an earlier age
and describe the state of things which Selim's act superseded.
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