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The almost general veneration of the sayyids and sherifs, as the descendants of Mohammed are entitled, is due to this influence. The Shi'ah outside Arabia, whose adherents used to be persecuted by the official authorities, not without good cause, became the receptacle of all the revolutionary and heterodox ideas maintained by the converted peoples.
The Kurds are of Persian race, speaking an old and barbarous Iranian tongue and often of the Shi'ah sect. They claim affinity with the English in the East, because both races always inhabit the highest grounds they can find. Burckhardt, who suffered from them, gives a long account of their treachery and utter absence of that Arab "pundonor" which is supposed to characterise Arab thieves.
After the third Khalif, Othman, had been murdered by his political opponents, Ali became his successor; but he was more remote than any of his predecessors from enjoying general sympathy. At that time the Shi'ah, the "Party" of the House of the Prophet, gradually arose, which maintained that Ali should have been the first Khalif, and that his descendants should succeed him.
This is the principal obstacle against their being included in the orthodox community, although their admission is defended, even under present circumstances, by many non-political Moslim scholars. The Zaidites are the remnant of the original Arabian Shi'ah, which for centuries has counted adherents in all parts of the Moslim world, and some of whose tenets have penetrated Mohammedan orthodoxy.
The reaction of the non-Arabian converts against the suppression of their own culture by the Arabian conquerors found support in the opposition parties, above all with the Shi'ah. The Abbasids, cleverer politicians than the notoriously unskillful Alids, made use of the Alid propaganda to secure the booty to themselves at the right moment.
The orthodox Mahdi differs from that of the Shi'ah in many ways. He is not an imam returning after centuries of disappearance, but a descendant of Mohammed, coming into the world in the ordinary way to fulfill the ideal of the Khalifate.
This jealousy was increased in the heart of Bairám by religious differences, for Bairám belonged to the Shí'áh division of the Muhammadan creed, and Tardí Beg was a Sunní. On the arrival of the latter at Sirhind, then, Bairám summoned him to his tent and had him assassinated. Akbar was greatly displeased at this act of violence, and Bairám did not succeed in justifying himself.
The great majority of Mohammedans, as they do not accept this legitimist theory, are counted by the Shi'ah outside Arabia as unclean heretics, if not as unbelievers. At the beginning of the fifteenth century this Shi'ah found its political centre in Persia, and opposed itself fanatically to the Sultan of Turkey, who at about the same time came to stand at the head of orthodox Islam.
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