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so soon to transfer themselves from the little circle of Mecca and al-Madina and to
fight themselves out on the broad field of Muslim history. For, in truth, in the
development of no other state have little causes produced such great effects as here. For
example, it may be said, broadly and yet truly, that the seclusion of Muslim women, with
all its disastrous effects at the present day for a population of two hundred millions,
runs back to the fact that A'isha, the fourteen-year-old wife of Muhammad, once lost a
necklace under what the gossips of the time thought were suspicious circumstances. As to
the point now in hand, it is quite certain that Muslim history for several hundred years
was conditioned and motived by the quarrels of Meccan families. The accompanying genealogy
will give the necessary starting-point. The mythical ancestor is Quraysh; hence "the
Quraysh," or "Quraysh " as a name for the tribe. Within the tribe, the two
most important families are those of Hashim and Umayya; their rivalries for the succession
of the Prophet fill the first century and a half of Muslim history, and the immediately
pre-Islamic history of Mecca is similarly filled with a contest between them as to the
guardianship of the Ka'ba and the care of the pilgrims to that sanctuary. Whether this
earlier history is real, or a reflection from the later Muslim times, we need not here
consider. The next important division is that between the families of al-Abbas and Abu
Talib, the uncles of the Prophet. From the one were descended the Abbasids, as whose
heir-at-law the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire now claims the Khalifate, and from
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