In the desert, where all are latitudinarian, they are
the popular party; and, though themselves beyond a suspicion of
unorthodoxy, they have always shown a tolerant spirit towards the Shiahs
and other heretics, with whom the Sherifal authority necessarily comes
in contact every year at the Haj. They have even maintained friendly
terms with the European element at Jeddah, and as long as they remained
in power the relations between India and Mecca were of an amicable
nature.
Abdallah ibn Aoun, the son of Mohammed, who succeeded his father in
1858, and reigned for nineteen years, was a man of considerable ability,
and he is credited with having had views of so advanced a nature as to
include the opening of Hejaz to European trade. Nor was his brother, who
in 1877 became Grand Sherif, of a less liberal mind. Though of less
ability than Abdallah, he is described as eminently humane and virtuous,
and it is certain that, with the exception of his hereditary enemies,
the Zeyds, he was universally beloved by the Hejazi. So much was this
the case that, in the year following the disastrous Russian war, when
Constantinople seemed on the point of dissolution, the Arabs began to
talk openly of making El Husseyn ibn Aoun Caliph in the Sultan's place.
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