Since the fall of Ibn Zubair the political position of Mecca has always been dependent on the movements of the greater Mahommedan world. In the splendid times of the caliphs immense sums were lavished upon the pilgrimage and the holy city; and conversely the decay of the central authority of Islam brought with it a long period of faction, wars and misery, in which the most notable episode was the sack of Mecca by the Carmathians at the pilgrimage season of A.D. 930. The victors carried off the "black stone," which was not restored for twenty-two years, and then only for a great ransom, when it was plain that even the loss of its palladium could not destroy the sacred character of the city. Under the Fatimites Egyptian influence began to be strong in Mecca; it was opposed by the sultans of Yemen, while native princes claiming descent from the Prophet--the Hashimite amirs of Mecca, and after them the amirs of the house of Qatada (since 1202)--attained to great authority and aimed at independence; but soon after the final fall of the Abbasids the Egyptian overlordship was definitely established by sultan Bibars (A.D. 1269). The Turkish conquest of Egypt transferred the supremacy to the Ottoman sultans (1517), who treated Mecca with much favour, and during the 16th century executed great works in the sanctuary and temple. The Ottoman power, however, became gradually almost nominal, and that of the amirs or sherifs increased in proportion, culminating under Ghalib, whose accession dates from 1786. Then followed the wars of the Wahhabis (see ARABIA and WAHHABIS) and the restoration of Turkish rule by the troops of Mehemet 'Ali. By him the dignity of sherif was deprived of much of its weight, and in 1827 a change of dynasty was effected by the appointment of Ibn 'Aun. Afterwards Turkish authority again decayed. Mecca is, however, officially the capital of a Turkish province, and has a governor-general and a Turkish garrison, while Mahommedan law is administered by a judge sent from Constantinople. But the real sovereign of Mecca and the Hejaz is the sherif, who, as head of a princely family claiming descent from the Prophet, holds a sort of feudal position. The dignity of sherif (or grand sherif, as Europeans usually say for the sake of distinction, since all the kin of the princely houses reckoning descent from the Prophet are also named sherifs), although by no means a religious pontificate, is highly respected owing to its traditional descent in the line of Hasan, son of the fourth caliph 'Ali. From a political point of view the sherif is the modern counterpart of the ancient amirs of Mecca, who were named in the public prayers immediately after the reigning caliph. When the great Mahommedan sultanates had become too much occupied in internecine wars to maintain order in the distant Hejaz, those branches of the Hassanids which from the beginning of Islam had retained rural property in Arabia usurped power in the holy