Besides--and this was the chief hindrance to the Ulema--Abd el Aziz was
not a man capable of seriously carrying out a great political idea,
being little else than a man of pleasure. He and his government
consequently soon drifted back into the groove of his predecessors'
material policy, which relied for its strength on the physical force of
arms, foreign loans, and the intrigues of officials. The only practical
action taken by Ottoman ministers in the line indicated were the twin
crusades proclaimed against the Wahhabis of Hasa and the heretical Imams
of Sana. But the Hanefite Ulema were not thus to be satisfied. They had
determined on carrying out the idea they had adopted, and on forcing the
Sultan to put himself openly at the head of a religious and reactionary
movement; and when they found that Abd el Aziz could not be made to act
consistently as Caliph, they deposed him, and thus opened a way for the
true hero of their idea, the present Sultan, Abd el Hamid.
The advent of this latest scion of the house of Othman to the spiritual
succession of the Prophet, though a godsend in appearance to religious
Moslems, cannot but be regarded by all who wish Islam well as a very
great misfortune.
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