Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/117

 110 which history demonstrated to be the will of Allah.

The sense of the tradition that established descent from the tribe of Qoraish as necessary for the highest dignity in the community was capable of being weakened by explanation; and, even without that, the leadership of the irresistible Ottomans was of more value to Islâm than the chimerical authority of a powerless Qoraishite, In our time, you can hear Qoraishites, and even Alids, warmly defend the claims of the Turkish sultans to the Khalifate, as they regard these as the only Moslim princes capable of championing the threatened rights of Islâm.

Even the sultans of Stambul could not think of restoring the authority of the Khalîf over the whole Mohammedan world. This was prevented not only by the schismatic kingdoms, khalifates, or imâmates like Shîʿitic Persia, which was consolidated just in the sixteenth century, by the unceasing opposition of the Imâms of Yemen, and Khârijite principalities at the extremities of the Mohammedan world. Besides these, there were numerous princes in Central Asia, in India, and in Central Africa, whom either the Khalifate had always been obliged to leave to themselves, or who had become so estranged from it that, unless they felt the power of the Turkish arms, they preferred to remain as they were. Moreover, Islâm had extended itself not only by political means, but also by trade and colonization