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The means which served the Alids for the establishment only of an invisible dynasty of princes who died as martyrs, enabled the descendants of Mohammed's uncle Abbas to overthrow the Omayyads, and to found their own Khalifate at Bagdad, shining with the brilliance of an Eastern despotism.
The court of the Omayades at Cordova saw a literature blossom which did not disappear even after the fall of the Khalifate. On the contrary, it seemed to regain a new vigor in the small states which surged up about the Iberian Peninsula. The Christians, under the domination of the Mussulmans, allowed themselves to be seduced by the Arabian literature. "They loved to read their poems and romances.
The sacred tradition relates a saying of Mohammed: "The imams are from Qoraish," intended to confine the Khalifate to men from that tribe. History, however, shows that this edict was forged to give the stamp of legality to the results of a long political struggle.
For this kind of authority the legists have even invented a special name: "shaukah," which means actual influence, the authority which has spontaneously arisen in default of a chief who in one form or another can be considered as a mandatary of the Khalifate.
It seems strange that the Moslim peoples, although the theory of Islam never attributed an hereditary character to the Khalifate, attached so high a value to the Abbasid name, that they continued unanimously to acknowledge the Khalifate of Bagdad for centuries during which it possessed no influence.
Of late years Mohammedan statesmen in their intercourse with their Western colleagues are glad to take the latter's point of view; and, in discussion, accept the comparison of the Khalifate with the Papacy, because they are aware that only in this form the Khalifate can be made acceptable to powers who have Mohammedan subjects.
Compared to this irreparable disintegration of the empire, temporary schisms such as the Omayyad Khalifate in Spain, the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt, and here and there an independent organization of the Kharijites were of little significance.
The Zaidites, who settled in Yemen from the ninth century on, are really Shi'ites, although of the most moderate kind. Without striving after expansion outside Arabia, they firmly refuse to give up their own Khalifate and to acknowledge the sovereignty of any non-Alid ruler; the efforts of the Turks to subdue them or to make a compromise with them have had no lasting results.
When it is said that the Abbasid Khalifate maintained itself from 750 till the Mongol storm in the middle of the thirteenth century, that only refers to external appearance.
These Sherifs raised no claim to the Khalifate; and the Shi'itic tendencies they displayed in the Middle Ages had no political significance, although they had intimate relations with the Zaidites of Southern Arabia. As first Egypt and afterwards Turkey made their protectorate over the holy cities more effective, the princes of Mecca became orthodox.
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