OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 393 princes ; and the most eminent were supposed to excel the per- fection of angels. But their adverse fortune and the wide extent of the Musulman empire allowed an ample scope for every bold and artful impostor who claimed affinity with the holy seed ; the sceptre of the Almohades in Spain and Afric, of the Fatimites in Egypt and Syria, -^i of the Sultans of Yemen and of the Soph is of Persia/'"- has been consecrated by this vague and ambiguous title. Under their reigns it might be dangerous to dispute the legitimacy of their birth ; and one of the Fatimite caliphs silenced an indiscreet question by drawing his scymetar : "This,' said Moez, "is my pedigree; and these," casting an handful of gold to his soldiers, "and these are my kindred and my children ". In the various conditions of princes, or doctors, or nobles, or merchants, or beggars, a swarm of the genuine or fictitious descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honoured with the appellation of sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire, they are distinguished by a green turban, receive a stipend from the treasury, are judged only by their chief, and, however debased by fortune or character, still assert the proud pre-eminence of their birth. A family of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is ])resei-ved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody of the temple and the sovereignty of their native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty of the kings of the earth.-'*-' 201 D'Herbelot, p. 342. The enemies of the Fatimites disgraced them by a Jewish origin. Yet they accurately deduced their genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam ; and the impartial Abulfeda allows (Anna). Moslem, p. 230) that they were owned by many, qui absque controversia genuini sunt Alidarum, homines propagi- num sua^ gentis exacte callentes. He quotes some lines from the celebrated Shcrif or Radhi, Egone humilitatcm induam in terris hostium? (I suspect him to be an Edrissite of Sicily) cum in /Egypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii, quocum ego communem habeo patrem et vindicem. 20- The kings of Persia of the last dynasty are descended from Sheik Sefi [Safi], a saint of the fourteenth century, and through him from Moussa Cassem [Miisa al-Kazam], the son [not son, but son's great-grandson] of Hosein, the son of Ali (Olearius, p. 957 ; Chardin, torn. iii. p. 288). But I cannot trace the intermediate degrees in any genuine or fabulous pedigree. If they were truly Fatimites, they might draw their origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in the ixth century (d'Herbelot, p, 96). [See Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole's Mohanmiadan Dynasties, p. 255. J '-0'*The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali is most accurately de- scribed by Demetrius Cantemir (Hist, of the Othman Empire, p. 94), and Niebuhr (Description de I'Arabie, p. 9-16, 317, &c.). It is much to be lamented that the Danish traveller was unable to purchase the chronicles of Arabia.
