THE KHALIFATE.
[To rat EDITOR OP PRI eerecrerea.-] Sire—In your article on the above subject in your number of May 1st you say that " Mohammedans themselves must, of course, choose their Khalif." But no machinery exists which could enable Musalmans to choose a Khalifa. The office was originally elective, and the electoral power was vested in the congregation of Islam, and exercised by its leaders, the elders and chiefs of the Arab tribes ; but in the natural order of things the title soon became hereditary, and was claimed by more than one ruler. At one period there were three Khalifas —the Abbaside at Baghdad, the Fatimite at Cairo, and the Ommiade at Cordova. The first-named was the most widely acknowledged, and his sway lasted the longest: after his expulsion from Baghdad by the Pagan Moguls of Hulaku Khan, he resided at Cairo as a pensioner of the Mameluke Sultan, and for more than two centuries the titular Khalifa bad no temporal power. I do not think that the majority of Musalmans accept the Sultan of Turkey as Khalifa except as a matter of courtesy. Most of them with whom I have conversed on the subject regarded the assumption of the Khalifate by Sultan Selim I. as a usurpation. All the Shiya sect, which includes all Persians and many Arabs and Indians, refuse to acknowledge the spiritual authority of Stamboul at all. As you say, it is no business of ours. But I do not think it necessary to say so in an official manifesto. Knowing how auspicious Orientals are, and how (like many of us) prone to judge others by themselves, I fear the publication of such a manifesto would have exactly the contrary effect to that which it was intended to produce. We had much better say nothing at all on the matter, as we intend to do nothing at
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