With the two former, as rulers of what were remote lands of Islam, Selim seems to have troubled himself little; but he made war on Egypt.  In 1516 he invaded Syria, its outlying province, and in 1517 he entered Cairo.  There he made prisoner the reigning Mameluke, Kansaw el Ghouri, and had him publicly beheaded, or according to another account, received his head from a soldier, who had killed him where he lay on the ground after falling (for the Sultan was an old man) from his horse.  He then, in virtue of a very doubtful cession made to him of his rights by one Motawakkel Ibn Omar el Hakim, a descendant of the house of Abbas, whom he found living as titular Caliph in Cairo, took to himself the following style and title:  Sultan es Salatin, wa Hakan el Hawakin, Malek el Bahreyn, wa Hami el Barreyn, Khalifeh Rasul Allah, Emir el Mumenin, wa Sultan, wa Khan—­titles which may be thus interpreted:  King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Monarch of the two seas (the Mediterranean and the Red Sea), and Protector of the two lands (Hejaz and Syria, the holy lands of Islam), Successor of the Apostle of God, Prince of the Faithful, and Emperor.  It is said that he first had the satisfaction of hearing his name mentioned in the public prayers as Caliph when he visited the great mosque of Zacharias at Aleppo on his return northwards in 1519.[10]

Such, in a few words, is historically the origin of the modern Caliphate, and such are the titles now borne by Selim’s descendant, Abd el Hamid.  It is difficult at this distance of time, and in the absence of detailed contemporary narratives, to do more than guess the effect on Mussulmans of his day of Selim’s religious pretensions.  To all alike, friends as well as foes, he must in the first instance have appeared as an usurper, for before him no man not of the house of Koreysh, and so a kinsman of their Prophet, had ever claimed to be his spiritual heir.  Indeed, it was a maxim with all schools of theology of all ages that descent from the Koreysh was the first title to the Caliphate; but we may reasonably suppose that within the limits of his own dominions, and even to the mass of the vulgar beyond them, the Ottoman Emperor’s sublime proceedings met with approval.

Selim was a portentous figure in Islam; and the splendour of his apparition in the north dazzled the eyes of all.  Mussulmans must have seen in him and his house the restorers of their political fortunes and the champion of their religion against Christendom; and a departure from established rule in his favour may well have seemed justified to pious persons as the best hope for the future of their creed.  Selim was already temporal lord of the greater part of Islam, and he might be expected thus to restore the spiritual sovereignty also.  Besides, to the ears of Mussulmans of the sixteenth century, the Caliphal title was no longer a familiar sound, and the title of Sultan which Selim already bore was that of the highest temporal authority they knew.