In Hadhramaut, the Sayyid people receive gestures of respect from the rest of population and each other in recognition of their descent from Muhammad.
This hand-kissing is performed even when the recipient is still a child or a person without any special distinction in terms of religious knowledge or piety, in recognition of the nobility of the bloodline rather than the merits of the particular individual.
[1] This tradition of Taqbil was called Shamma in Hadhramaut which means "sniffing" in Arabic as men kissing each other is deemed reprehensible in the Shafi'i school of law.
[2] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some members of the Sada continued to put forth justifications for their special treatment.
One of the prominent jurisprudents at the time, Abdurrahman bin Muhammad al-Mashhoor addressed the matter of the special status of the Sada in Hadhramaut.