On the other hand, it has been shown that the loyalty, such as there is, which Abd el Hamid inspires is due to him solely as incumbent of the Caliphal office, and not as the representative of any race or dynasty.  The House of Othman, as such, represents nothing sacred to Mussulmans; and the Turkish race is very far from being respected in Islam.  The present Caliphal house is unconnected in blood with the old traditional line of “successors;” and even with the Turks themselves inspires little modern reverence.  Moreover, the actual incumbent of the office is thought to be not even a true Ottoman, being the offspring of the Seraglio rather than of known parents; Abd el Hamid’s sole title to spiritual consideration is his official name.  This he has had the sense to set prominently forward.  Reduced to a syllogism, Mussulman loyalty may be read thus:  There must be a Caliph, and the Caliphate deserves respect; there is no other Caliph but Abd el Hamid; ergo, Abd el Hamid deserves respect.

It has been pointed out, however, that, if the Sultan’s recent revival of spiritual pretensions is his present strength, it may also in the immediate future become his weakness.  The challenge which the Constantinople school of Hanefism threw down ten years ago to the world has been taken up; and all the learned world now knows the frailty of the House of Othman’s spiritual position.  The true history of the Caliphate has been published and set side by side with that Turkish history which the ignorance of a previous generation had come to confound with it.  At the present day nobody with any instruction doubts that Abd el Hamid and his house might be legally displaced by the first successful rival, and that the only right of Constantinople to lead Islam is the right of the sword.  As long as the Ottoman Empire is maintained and no counter Caliph appears, so long will the Sultan be the acknowledged head of religion; but not a day longer.  The Caliphate, for one alien as Abd el Hamid is to the Koreysh, must be constantly maintained in arms, and on the first substantial success of a new pretender his present following would fall off from him without compunction, transferring to this last their loyalty on precisely the same ground on which Abd el Hamid now receives it.  Abd el Hamid would then be legitimately deposed and disappear, for it is unlikely that he would find any such protector in his adversity as the legitimate Caliphs found in theirs six hundred years ago.  So fully is this state of things recognized by the Ulema, that I found the opinion last year to be nearly universal that Abd el Hamid was destined to be the last Caliph of the House of Othman.

It becomes, therefore, a question of extreme interest to consider who among Mussulman princes could, with any chance of being generally accepted by orthodox Islam, put in a claim to replace the Ottoman dynasty as Caliph when the day of its doom shall have been reached.  It is a question which ought certainly to interest Englishmen, for on its solution the whole problem of Mussulman loyalty or revolt in India most probably depends, and though it would certainly be unwise, at the present moment, for an English Government to obtrude itself violently in a religious quarrel not yet ripe, much might be done in a perfectly legitimate way to influence the natural course of events and direct it to a channel favourable to British interests.