in the same proportion as that for the Prophet himself; and moreover, there were at all times malcontents, whose advantage would be in joining any revolution against the existing government. Yet the Alids never succeeded in accomplishing anything against the dynasties of the Omayyads, the Abbasids, and the Ottomans, except in a few cases of transitory importance only.
The Faṭimite dynasty, of rather doubtful descent, which ruled a part of Northern Africa and Egypt in the tenth century A.D., was completely suppressed after some two and a half centuries. The sherîfs who have ruled Morocco for more than 950 years were not chiefs of a party that considered the legality of their leadership a dogma; they owe their local Khalifate far more to the out-of-the-way position of their country which prevented Abbasids and Turks from meddling with their affairs. Otherwise, they would have been obliged at any rate to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Great Lord of Constantinople. This was the case with the sherîfs of Mecca, who ever since the twelfth century have regarded the sacred territory as their domain. Their principality arose out of the general political disturbance and the division of the Mohammedan empire into a number of kingdoms, whose mutual strife prevented them from undertaking military operations in the desert. These Sherîfs raised no claim to the Khalifate; and the Shîʿitic tendencies they displayed in the Middle Ages had no political sig-
