found it prudent to have himself crowned by Pius VII. [Sidenote: SOVEREIGNTY OF KHALIFATE] But a wave was soon to break in and sweep away all these forms. It came with the Mongols under Hulagu, who passed from the destruction of the Assassins to the destruction of Baghdad and the Khalifate. In A.H. 656 (A.D. 1258), the city was taken and the end of the Abbasids had come. An uncle of the reigning Khalifa escaped and fled to Egypt, where the Mamluk Sultan received him and gave him a spiritual court and ecclesiastical recognition. He found it good to have a Khalifa of his own to use in any question of legitimacy. The name had yet so much value. Finally, in 1517, the Mamluk rule went down before the Ottoman Turks, and the story told by them is that the last Abbasid, when he died in 1538, gave over his rights to their Sultan, Sulayman the Great. Since then, the Ottoman Sultan of Constantinople has claimed to be the Khalifa of Muhammad and the spiritual head of the Muslim world. Such were the fates of the Commanders of the Faithful. We have traced them through a long and devious course, full of confusions and complications. Leaving aside the legitimist party, the whole may be summed in a word. The theoretical position was that the Imam, or leader, must be elected by the Muslim community, and that position has never, theoretically, been abandoned. Each new Ottoman sovereign is solemnly elected by the Ulama, or canon lawyers and divines of Constantinople. His temporal sovereignty comes by blood; in bestowing this spiritual sovereignty the Ulama act as representatives of the People of Muhammad. Thus the theoretical position was liable to much modification in practice. The Muslim community resolves itself into the people of the capital; still further, into the body-guard of the dead Khalifa; and, finally, as now, into the peculiar custodians of the Faith. Among the Ibadites the position from the first seems to have been that only those learned in the law should act as electors. Along with this, the doctrine developed that it was the duty of the people to recognize _un fait accompli_ and to do homage to a successful usurper—until another more successful should appear. They had learned that it was better to have a bad ruler than no ruler at all. This was the end of the democracy of Islam. [Sidenote: CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION OF TO-DAY]