Another democratic doctrine, still more radical than that of the Kharijites, makes even non-Arabs eligible for the Khalifate.  It must have had a considerable number of adherents, for the tradition which makes the Prophet responsible for it is to be found in the canonic collections.  Later generations, however, rendered it harmless by exegesis; they maintained that in this text “commander” meant only subordinate chiefs, and not “the Commander of the Faithful.”  It became a dogma in the orthodox Mohammedan world, respected up to the sixteenth century, that only members of the tribe of Qoraish could take the place of the Messenger of God.

The chance of success was greater for the legitimists than for the democratic party.  The former wished to make the Khalifate the privilege of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and his descendants.  At first the community did not take much notice of that “House of Mohammed”; and it did not occur to any one to give them a special part in the direction of affairs.  Ali and Fatima themselves asked to be placed in possession only of certain goods which had belonged to Mohammed, but which the first khalifs would not allow to be regarded as his personal property; they maintained that the Prophet had had the disposal of them not as owner, but as head of the state.  This narrow greed and absence of political insight seemed to be hereditary in the descendants of Ali and Fatima; for there was no lack of superstitious reverence for them in later times, and if one of them had possessed something of the political talent of the best Omayyads and Abbasids he would certainly have been able to supplant them.

After the third Khalif, Othman, had been murdered by his political opponents, Ali became his successor; but he was more remote than any of his predecessors from enjoying general sympathy.  At that time the Shi’ah, the “Party” of the House of the Prophet, gradually arose, which maintained that Ali should have been the first Khalif, and that his descendants should succeed him.  The veneration felt for those descendants increased in the same proportion as that for the Prophet himself; and moreover, there were at all times malcontents, whose advantage would be in joining any revolution against the existing government.  Yet the Alids never succeeded in accomplishing anything against the dynasties of the Omayyads, the Abbasids, and the Ottomans, except in a few cases of transitory importance only.

The Fatimite dynasty, of rather doubtful descent, which ruled a part of Northern Africa and Egypt in the tenth century A.D., was completely suppressed after some two and a half centuries.  The Sherifs who have ruled Morocco for more than 950 years were not chiefs of a party that considered the legality of their leadership a dogma; they owe their local Khalifate far more to the out-of-the-way position of their country which prevented Abbasids and Turks from meddling with their affairs.  Otherwise, they would have been