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 Fatimite 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 Shî'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.

The Zaidites, who settled in Yemen from the ninth century on, are really
Shî'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