I. The 6rst and most innocuous of the sects which

maintained the rights of the family of Ali were the Keissane*, so named from Keissan, one of his freed- men. These, who were subdivided into several branches, held that Ali's rights descended, not lo Hassan or Hu-ssein, but to their brother, Mohammed- beu-Hanfee. One of these branch-sects maintained that the imamat remavied* in the person of this Mohammed, who had never died, but had since appeared, from time lo time, on earth, under various names. Another branch, named the Hashemites, held that the imamat descended from Mohammed- bcii-Hanfee to his son Aboo-Hashem, who trans- mitted it to Mohammed, of ihe family of Abhfts,from whom it descended lo Saffah, the founder of the Abbasside dynasty of khatilsT. It is quite evident
• Hence they were named the SfandiQu ((fo^/yn*).
t Abbas, the anceulai of this family, was one of the uncles
THE ABSASSINS.
that the object of this eect was to cive a colour to the claims of the family of Abbas, who stigmatized the family of Ommiyah as usurpers, and insisted that the khalifat belonged of right to themselves. Aboo-Moslem, the great general who first gave do- minion (o the family of Abbas, was a real or pre- tended maintainer of the tenets of this sect, the only branch, by the way, oi' the SheShs which supported the house ol' Abbus,