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The Sultans, neither of Egypt nor of India, nor till Selim's time of the Turkish Empire, ever claimed for themselves the title of Khalifeh, nor did the Sherifal family of Mecca, who alone of them might have claimed it legally as Koreysh. Neither did Tamerlane nor any of the Mussulman Mongols who reigned at Bagdad.
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.
In return for this he also is bound to transmit every year at the time of the pilgrimage sums of money collected by him from the revenues of the Wakaf within his dominions, lands settled by pious persons on the Sherifal family. These are said to amount to nearly half a million sterling, and are distributed amongst all the principal personages of Hejaz.
He established himself at Taïf, the summer residence of the Meccans; deposed the Grand Sherif Ghaleb, and appointed in his stead another member of the Sherifal family; declaring the Sultan sovereign of the country acts which the Meccans acquiesced in through dread of the Wahhabis, from whom Mehemet Ali promised to deliver them.
Between the two stools he hardly could avert a fall. Unless, then, some unexpected religious hero should appear in Eastern Asia, of which as yet there is no sign, we are driven to Arabia for a solution of the difficulty where to establish a Mussulman theocracy, and to the Sherifal family of Mecca itself for a new dynasty.
The Sherifal family, then, is surrounded with a halo of religious prestige which would make their acquisition of the supreme temporal title appear natural to all but the races who have been in subjection to the Ottomans; and were a man of real ability to appear amongst them he would, in the crisis we have foreseen, be sure to find an almost universal following.
The actual holder of the title was Ghaleb ibn Mesaad, and he, finding himself unable to contend against the Wahhabis, became himself a Wahhabi. Consequently, when Mehemet Ali appeared at Mecca in 1812, his first act was to depose this Ghaleb, in spite of his protest that he had returned to orthodoxy, and to appoint another member of the Sherifal House in his place.
He maintains intimate relations with one at least of the great Sherifal families, and sends a Mahmal yearly with an important surrah to Medina. Mohammed Towfik also has the deserved reputation of being a sincere Mussulman and an honest man, and it is certain that a large section of true liberal opinion looks to him as the worthiest supporter of its views.
But on the destruction of the Arabian Caliphate in 1259, the Sherifal family seems to have set itself up independently, relying only on the casual help of the Egyptian Sultans and the Imams of Sana to protect them against the Bedouins of Nejd and Assir, now hardly any longer, even in name, Mohammedans.
In the desert, where all are latitudinarian, they are the popular party; and, though themselves beyond a suspicion of unorthodoxy, they have always shown a tolerant spirit towards the Shiahs and other heretics, with whom the Sherifal authority necessarily comes in contact every year at the Haj.
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