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The Sherif chosen was Yahia ibn Serur, of a rival branch, the Dewy Aoun, and a bitter animosity was, by this means, engendered between the two families of Aoun and Zeyd, which is continued to the present day.
Abdallah ibn Aoun, the son of Mohammed, who succeeded his father in 1858, and reigned for nineteen years, was a man of considerable ability, and he is credited with having had views of so advanced a nature as to include the opening of Hejaz to European trade. Nor was his brother, who in 1877 became Grand Sherif, of a less liberal mind.
So much was this the case that, in the year following the disastrous Russian war, when Constantinople seemed on the point of dissolution, the Arabs began to talk openly of making El Husseyn ibn Aoun Caliph in the Sultan's place.
For the moment the reactionary party is in power at Mecca, as it is at Constantinople. Abd el Mutalleb is supported by Turkish bayonets, and the Aoun family and the Liberals are suffering persecution at Mecca, while the Sherifal Court, which had hitherto been most friendly to England, has become the focus of Indian discontent. Outside the town all is disorder.
Nor, as may be supposed, was this lessened by the subsequent changes rung by the Turkish and Egyptian Governments in their appointments to the office, for, in 1827, we find Abd el Mutalleb, the son of the deposed Wahhabite Ghaleb, reappointed, and in the following year again, Mohammed, the son of Yahia ibn Aoun, an intrigue which brought on a civil war.
Then in 1848 a new intrigue reinstated Abd el Mutalleb and the Zeyds; and then, in 1853, these were again deposed for rebellion, and an Aoun was placed in power. From 1853 till 1880 the Aouns retained the Grand Sherifate and were supreme in Hejaz.
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