It must, then, have been an interesting and startling novelty with Mussulmans to hear of this new pretender to the ancient dignity—­interesting, because the name Khalifeh was connected with so many of the bygone glories of Islam; startling, because he who claimed it seemed by birth incapable of doing so.  The Hanefite Ulema, however, as I have said, undertook Selim’s defence, or rather that of his successors, for Selim himself died not a year afterwards, and succeeded in proving, to the satisfaction of the majority of Sunites, that the house of Othman had a good and valid title to the rank they had assumed.  Their chief arguments were as follows.  The house of Othman, they asserted, ruled spiritually by—­

1. The right of the sword, that is to say, the de facto possession of the sovereign title.  It was argued that, the Caliphate being a necessity (and this all orthodox Mussulmans admit), it was also necessary that the de facto holder of the title should be recognized as legally the Caliph, until a claimant with a better title should appear.  Now the first qualification of a claimant was that he should claim, and the second that he should be supported by a party; and Selim had both claimed the Caliphate and supported his pretensions at the head of an army.  He had challenged the world to produce a rival, and no rival had been found—­none, at least, which the Hanefite school acknowledged, for the Sultan of Morocco they had never accepted, and the last descendant of the Abbasides had waived his rights.  In support of the proposition that the sword could give a title they cited the examples of Mawiyeh, who thus established his right against the family of Ali, and of Abu el Abbas, who had thus established his against that of Mawiyeh.

2. Election, that is the sanction of a legal body of Elders.  It was argued that, as the Ahl el agde had been removed from Medina to Damascus, and from Damascus to Bagdad, and from Bagdad to Cairo, so it had been once more legally removed from Cairo to Constantinople.  Selim had brought with him to St. Sophia’s some of the Ulema of the Azhar mosque in Cairo, and these, in conjunction with the Turkish Ulema, had elected him or ratified his election.  A form of election is to the present day observed at Constantinople in token of this right; and each new Sultan of the house of Othman, as he succeeds to the temporal sovereignty of Turkey, must wait before being recognized as Caliph till he has received the sword of office at the hands of the Ulema.  This ceremony it is customary to perform in the mosque of Ayub.