Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Revolt in Arabia (1917).djvu/47

 30 the Moslem world as obligatory for the Caliphs to be able to trace their descent from the Arabic line of Koreish, the line from which Mohammed sprang. The pretensions advanced by the Sultans since the sixteenth century have never been generally approved. That they did not excite any vehement open opposition was partly owing to the imposing puissance of the Turkish Empire at the moment when the Sultans decorated themselves with the name, and partly to the circumstance that the usurped dignity had no practical sequence. The Caliph added no patch of ground to the territory that the Sultan had conquered with the sword, and spiritual authority has never been ascribed to the Caliph by the Moslem congregations. With the assumption of the highest appellation that could be worn by a Moslem regent after Mohammed, these Sultans simply announced