This
ceremony it is customary to perform in the mosque of Ayub.
3. _Nomination._ Sultan Selim, as has been already said, obtained from
Mutawakkel, a descendant of the Abbasides and himself titularly Caliph,
a full cession of all the Caliphal rights of that family. The fact, as
far as it goes, is historical, and the only flaw in the argument would
seem to be that Mutawakkel had no right thus to dispose of a title to an
alien, which was his own only in virtue of his birth. The case, indeed,
was very much as though the Emperor of Germany, having possessed himself
of London, should obtain from Don Carlos a cession of the throne of
Spain; or as though Napoleon should have got such a cession of the
Papacy, in 1813, from Pius VII. Still it is insisted upon strongly by
the Hanefite divines as giving a more permanent dynastic title than
either of the previous pleas. As a precedent for nomination they cite
the act of Abu Bekr, who on his death-bed recommended Omar as his
successor in the Caliphate.
4. _The guardianship of the two shrines_, that is to say of Mecca and
Jerusalem, but especially of Mecca. It has been asserted by some of the
Ulema, and it is certainly a common opinion at the present day, that the
sovereignty of Hejaz is in itself sufficient title to the Caliphate.
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