Introduction Part 1: Arguing Sayyids and Sharfs 1. How to Behave Toward Sayyids And Sharfs: A Trans-Sectarian Tradition of Dream Accounts 2. Qur'nic Commentary on the Verse of Khums (al-Anfl VIII:41) 3. Debate on the Status of Sayyid/sharfs in the Modern Era: The 'Alaw-Irshd Dispute and Islamic Reformists in the Middle East Part 2: Sayyids and Sharfs in the Middle East 4. Genealogy, Marriage, and the Drawing of Boundaries among the 'Alids (Eighth-Twelfth Centuries) 5. A Historical Atlas on the 'Alids: a Proposal and a Few Samples 6. The Reflection of Islamic Tradition on Ottoman Social Structure: The Sayyids and Sharfs 7. The Ashrf and the Naqb Al-Ashrf in Ottoman Egypt and Syria: A Comparative Analysis Part 3: Sayyids and Sharfs beyond the Middle East 8. Shuraf in the Last Years of al-Andalus and in the Morisco Period: Laylat Al-Mawlid and Genealogies of the Prophet Muhammad 9. The Role of the Masharifu on the Swahili Coast in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 10. Dihqns and Sacred Families in Central Asia 11. Sacred Descent and Sufi Legitimation in a Genealogical Text from Eighteenth-Century Central Asia: The Sharaf At' Tradition in Khwrazm 12. Trends of Ashrfization in India 13. The Sayyids as Commodities: The Islamic Periodical Alkisah and the Sayyid Community in Indonesia