were.  Moreover, Islam had extended itself not only by political means, but also by trade and colonization into countries even the existence of which was hardly known in the political centres of Islam, e.g., into Central Africa or the Far East of Asia.  Without thinking of rivalling the Abbasids or their successors, some of the princes of such remote kingdoms, e.g., the sherifs of Morocco, assumed the title of Commander of the Faithful, bestowed upon them by their flatterers.  Today, there are petty princes in East India under Dutch sovereignty who decorate themselves with the title of Khalif, without suspecting that they are thereby guilty of a sort of arrogant blasphemy.

Such exaggeration is not supported by the canonists; but these have devised a theory, which gives a foundation to the authority of Mohammedan princes, who never had a real or fictitious connection with a real or fictitious Khalifate.  Authority there must be, everywhere and under all circumstances; far from the centre this should be exercised, according to them, by the one who has been able to gain it and who knows how to hold it; and all the duties are laid upon him, which, in a normal condition, would be discharged by the Khalif or his representative.  For this kind of authority the legists have even invented a special name:  “shaukah,” which means actual influence, the authority which has spontaneously arisen in default of a chief who in one form or another can be considered as a mandatary of the Khalifate.

Now, it is significant that many of those Mohammedan governors, who owe their existence to wild growth in this way, seek, especially in our day, for connection with the Khalifate, or, at least, wish to be regarded as naturally connected with the centre.  The same is true of such whose former independence or adhesion to the Turkish Empire has been replaced by the sovereignty of a Western state.  Even amongst the Moslim peoples placed under the direct government of European states a tendency prevails to be considered in some way or another subjects of the Sultan-Khalif.  Some scholars explain this phenomenon by the spiritual character which the dignity of Khalif is supposed to have acquired under the later Abbasids, and retained since that time, until the Ottoman princes combined it again with the temporal dignity of sultan.  According to this view the later Abbasids were a sort of popes of Islam; while the temporal authority, in the central districts as well as in the subordinate kingdoms, was in the hands of various sultans.  The sultans of Constantinople govern, then, under this name, as much territory as the political vicissitudes allow them to govern—­i.e., the Turkish Empire; as khalifs, they are the spiritual heads of the whole of Sunnite Islam.

Though this view, through the ignorance of European statesmen and diplomatists, may have found acceptance even by some of the great powers, it is nevertheless entirely untrue; unless by “spiritual authority” we are to understand the empty appearance of worldly authority.  This appearance was all that the later Abbasids retained after the loss of their temporal power; spiritual authority of any kind they never possessed.