3. Nomination. Sultan Selim, as has been already said, obtained from Mutawakkel, a descendant of the Abbasides and himself titularly Caliph, a full cession of all the Caliphal rights of that family.  The fact, as far as it goes, is historical, and the only flaw in the argument would seem to be that Mutawakkel had no right thus to dispose of a title to an alien, which was his own only in virtue of his birth.  The case, indeed, was very much as though the Emperor of Germany, having possessed himself of London, should obtain from Don Carlos a cession of the throne of Spain; or as though Napoleon should have got such a cession of the Papacy, in 1813, from Pius VII.  Still it is insisted upon strongly by the Hanefite divines as giving a more permanent dynastic title than either of the previous pleas.  As a precedent for nomination they cite the act of Abu Bekr, who on his death-bed recommended Omar as his successor in the Caliphate.

4. The guardianship of the two shrines, that is to say of Mecca and Jerusalem, but especially of Mecca.  It has been asserted by some of the Ulema, and it is certainly a common opinion at the present day, that the sovereignty of Hejaz is in itself sufficient title to the Caliphate.  It seems certainly to have been so considered in the first age of Islam, and many a bloody war was then fought for the right of protecting the Beyt Allah; but the connection of Hejaz with the Empire of the Caliphs has been too often broken to make this a very tenable argument.  In the tenth century it was held by the Karmathian heretics, in the thirteenth by the Imams of Sana, and for seven years in the present century by the Wahhabis.  Still the de facto sovereignty of the Harameyn, or two shrines, was one of Selim’s pleas; and it is one which has reappeared in modern arguments respecting the Caliphal rights of his descendants.

5. Possession of the Amanat or sacred relics.  This last was a plea addressed to the vulgar rather than to the learned; but it is one which cannot be passed by unnoticed here, for it exercises a powerful influence at the present day over the ignorant mass of Mussulmans.  It was asserted, and is still a pious belief, that from the sack of Bagdad, in 1258, certain relics of the Prophet and his companions were saved and brought to Cairo, and thence transferred by Selim to Constantinople.  These were represented to constitute the Imperial insignia of office, and their possession to give a title to the Caliphal succession.  They consisted of the cloak of the Prophet borne by his soldiers as a standard, of some hairs from his beard, and of the sword of Omar.  The vulgar believe them to be still preserved in the mosque of Ayub; and though the Ulema no longer insist on their authenticity, they are often referred to as an additional test of the Sultan’s right.