Moreover, during the last two
centuries the temporal power of the Caliphs was practically in
delegation to the Seljuk Turks, who acted as mayors of the palace, and
their spiritual power was unsupported by any show of sanctity or
learning. It was terminated forcibly by the pagan Holagu, who at the
head of the Mongols sacked Bagdad in 1258.
The third period of Caliphal history saw all temporal power wrested from
the Caliphs. Islam, on the destruction of the Arabian monarchy, resolved
itself into a number of separate States, each governed by its own Bey or
Sultan, who in his quality of temporal prince was head also of religion
within his own dominions. The Mongols, converted to the Faith of Mecca,
founded a Mohammedan empire in the east; the Seljuk Turks, replaced by
the Ottoman, reigned in Asia Minor; the Barbary States had their own
rulers; and Egypt was governed by that strange dynasty of slaves, the
Mameluke Sultans. Nowhere was a supreme temporal head of Islam to be
seen, and the name of Khalifeh as that of a reigning sovereign ceased
any longer to be heard of in the world. Only the nominal succession of
the Prophet was obscurely preserved at Cairo, whither the survivors of
the family of Abbas had betaken themselves on the massacre of their
house at Bagdad.
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