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The question, whether the family to which Mohammed belonged, was regarded as noble amongst the Qoraishites, the ruling tribe in Mecca, is answered in the affirmative by many; but by others this answer is questioned not without good grounds. The matter is not of prime importance, as there is no doubt that Mohammed grew up as a poor orphan and belonged to the needy and the neglected.
For at Mohammed's death the Medinese began fiercely contesting the claims of the Qoraishites; and during the reign of Ali, the fourth Khalif, the Kharijites rebelled, demanding, as democratic rigorists, the free election of khalifs without restriction to the tribe of Qoraish or to any other descent.
The institution of the Khalifate had hardly been agreed upon when the question of who should occupy it became the subject of violent dissension. The first four khalifs, whose reigns occupied the first thirty years after Mohammed's death, were Qoraishites, tribesmen of the Prophet, and moreover men who had been his intimate friends.
In our own time, you can hear Qoraishites, and even Alids, warmly defend the claims of the Turkish sultans to the Khalifate, as they regard these as the only Moslim princes capable of championing the threatened rights of Islam. Even the sultans of Stambul could not think of restoring the authority of the Khalif over the whole Mohammedan world.
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