It
seems certainly to have been so considered in the first age of Islam,
and many a bloody war was then fought for the right of protecting the
Beyt Allah; but the connection of Hejaz with the Empire of the Caliphs
has been too often broken to make this a very tenable argument. In the
tenth century it was held by the Karmathian heretics, in the thirteenth
by the Imams of Sana, and for seven years in the present century by the
Wahhabis. Still the _de facto_ sovereignty of the Harameyn, or two
shrines, was one of Selim's pleas; and it is one which has reappeared in
modern arguments respecting the Caliphal rights of his descendants.
5. _Possession of the Amanat_ or sacred relics. This last was a plea
addressed to the vulgar rather than to the learned; but it is one which
cannot be passed by unnoticed here, for it exercises a powerful
influence at the present day over the ignorant mass of Mussulmans. It
was asserted, and is still a pious belief, that from the sack of Bagdad,
in 1258, certain relics of the Prophet and his companions were saved and
brought to Cairo, and thence transferred by Selim to Constantinople.
These were represented to constitute the Imperial insignia of office,
and their possession to give a title to the Caliphal succession.
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