The _Seids_, also known as _Emirs_ or _Sherifs_, were a class apart among the Ottomans. They were not properly members of the _Ulema_, unless, like others, they passed through the schools; they owed their distinction rather to a real or assumed genealogy which carried their ancestry back to the Prophet Mohammed. They alone were privileged to wear a green turban. They were numerous; but the claims of many were doubted, and some of them seem to have possessed reputations that were far from savory.[656] They constituted the only hereditary nobility among the Ottomans, but their privileges appear to have been personal rather than financial: they were not to be struck, for example, on penalty of severe punishment, and they had their own justice. Great honor was shown to two members of this nobility, descendants of the Prophet: to the _Mir-Alem_, the sultan’s standard-bearer, who was regularly a _Seid_, and had precedence of all the officers of the army; and to the _Nakib ol-Eshraf_, head of the _Seids_, who ranked second in the Moslem Institution, and at the ceremonies of Bairam had precedence even of the _Mufti_. The _Nakib ol-Eshraf_ was appointed by the sultan for life; that member of the _Ulema_ who was a _Seid_ and who ranked highest when the place fell vacant was ordinarily chosen. He had a staff of officers and clerks in the capital and the provinces, and was head of the separate jurisdiction of the _Seids_. Under the sultan he held despotic authority over all _Seids_; and, when the sovereign ordered the punishment or death of one of them, the _Nakib ol-Eshraf_ was commissioned to carry out the execution. Dervishes also were not members of the _Ulema_. They were of many orders, though sixteenth-century observers seem to have been impressed with but four.[657] They represented in Islam the monks, the hermits, and the begging friars of Christianity. Through them heresies spread, uprisings were concocted, mobs were gathered, and holy war was preached. On more than one occasion they endangered the power of the government.[658] Many were honest, God-fearing folk, while others were scarcely more than tramps and wandering thieves. Clergy, _Seids_, and dervishes represented the merely religious side of the Moslem Institution. Islam was fundamentally a religion without priests, monks, or nobles; and these persons never grew to possess permanent influence and power in the Ottoman state.[659] JURISTS AND THE MUFTI