Religious writers agree in condemning Mawiyeh for his revolt; and while his succession to Ali is accepted as legal, they place him on quite a different level from the four Caliphs who preceded him.  In Mawiyeh they see fulfilled that prediction of their Prophet which announced that Islam should be ruled for thirty years by an Imam, and ever after by a King.  Mawiyeh is, indeed, the type of all the later Mohammedan Emperors.  According to canon law, the head of the State is also head of the religion; but Mawiyeh ceased to exercise religious functions in person.  These, unlike his predecessors, he delegated to others, and neither led the prayer nor preached; nor was he held to be either the best or the most learned man in Islam, as Abu Bekr and the rest had been.  Moreover—­and this is the chief point noticed regarding him—­he introduced the system of dynastic heredity into the Caliphate, nominating his son Yezid his successor in his own lifetime.  The change, advantageous as it was politically, is regarded as a religious falling off.  Henceforth the Caliphs, whether of the Ommiad or afterwards of the Abbaside families, were not in reality elected, though the form of confirmation by the Ulema was gone through; and they affected to succeed by right of birth, not by the voice of the people.

During the whole period of the Arabian Caliphate we only notice one Prince of the Faithful who busied himself much with religious learning, and few who personally exercised the magisterial functions.  Only once we read of an Abbaside Caliph insisting on his right of leading the prayer, and this was probably the effect of an accidental jealousy.  As a rule the temporal government of Islam was intrusted to a Sadrazzam, or Grand Vizier, the spiritual duty of prayer to a Naib, or deputy Imam, and the elaboration or interpretation of law and doctrine to such Ulema or Mujtaheddin as could command a following.  The character of the Khalifeh, however, was still essentially sacred.  He was of the Koreysh and of the blood of the Prophet, and so was distinct from the other princes of the world.  As their political power decayed, the Abbasides fell indeed into the hands of adventurers who even occasionally used them as puppets for their own ambitious ends; but the office was respected, and neither the Kurdish Saladdin, nor Togral Bey, nor Malek Shah, nor any of the Seljukian Emirs el Amara dared meddle personally with the title of Caliph.

The Ommiad dynasty, founded by Mawiyeh, reigned at Damascus eighty-five years, and was then succeeded on a new appeal to the sword in A.D. 750 by the descendants of another branch of the Koreysh—­the Beni Abbas—­who transferred the capital of Islam to Bagdad, and survived as temporal sovereigns there for five hundred years.