Caliphate

• 1. Introduction

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  The caliphate, an Islamic office led by a steward called a caliph, was still shaping a royal succession in 2015. That year Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta, in Indonesia, renounced any claim to it. He did so to let his daughter inherit the throne. Theological opinion at the time held that a woman could hold the secular office of sultan but not the spiritual office of caliph. The Yogyakarta sultan had long used the title Khalifatullah, meaning Caliph of God, as one of his names. So an office born from the death of a prophet reached into the twenty-first century through a single family's inheritance. How did a title meaning successor spread so far? Arab emirs, Berber reformers, Ottoman sultans and Mughal emperors all claimed it. Who was allowed to hold the office, and who got to decide? Why did most claims collapse, and what do Muslims mean today when they say the caliphate lies dormant? The answers begin in a courtyard in Medina, on the day the first successor had to be found.

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• 2. Successor to the Prophet

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  Before Islam, Arabian monarchs took the title malik, meaning king, or another word from the same Semitic root. The new office needed a different name. The word caliph comes from the Arabic khalifah, meaning successor, steward or deputy. Tradition treats it as a shortening of Khalifat rasul Allah, successor of the messenger of God. Studies of pre-Islamic texts suggest the phrase first meant a successor selected by God.

  The first test of the title came right after Muhammad died. The Ansar, the natives of Medina, gathered in the saqifa, or courtyard, of the Banu Sa'ida clan. The meeting was thought to be an attempt to choose a leader among themselves, shutting out the Muhajirun, the migrants from Mecca. Later debate has questioned that reading. Abu Bakr and Umar, both prominent companions of Muhammad, feared a coup and hurried to the gathering.

  Abu Bakr warned the crowd that picking a leader outside Muhammad's own tribe, the Quraysh, would bring dissension. Only the Quraysh, he said, commanded the needed respect. He then took Umar and Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah by the hand and offered them as candidates. Someone answered that the Quraysh and the Ansar should each choose a leader and rule jointly. The room grew heated and men began arguing. Umar abruptly grasped Abu Bakr's hand and swore allegiance, and the others followed.

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• 3. Rightly Guided, Then Divided

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  On his deathbed, Abu Bakr named Umar as his successor. Umar, the second caliph, was killed by a Persian slave called Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz. The third caliph, Uthman, was chosen by a council of electors known as the majlis, and a disaffected group later killed him. Ali then took power but was never universally accepted. He faced two major rebellions and was assassinated after a turbulent rule of only five years. This stretch is called the Fitna, the first Islamic civil war.

  The Battle of Siffin defined Ali's reign. It lasted several months and ended in a stalemate. To avoid more bloodshed, Ali agreed to negotiate with Mu'awiyah, the governor of Syria and a relative of Uthman. About 4,000 men were so unhappy with this choice that they abandoned the fight and became known as the Kharijites. Ali defeated them at the Battle of Nahrawan, yet the Kharijite Ibn Muljam later assassinated him. His son Hasan was proclaimed caliph but gave up the post within a few months in favour of Mu'awiyah.

  The names of the great factions come from this era. Followers of Ali became the Shi'a, from shiaat Ali, meaning partisans of Ali, and they reject the legitimacy of the first three caliphs. Followers of all four Rashidun caliphs became the Sunni majority.

  Mu'awiyah made the office hereditary and founded the Umayyad dynasty. Under the Umayyads the caliphate swallowed the Caucasus, Transoxiana, Sindh, the Maghreb and most of the Iberian Peninsula. At its greatest extent it covered about 5 million square miles, or 13 million square kilometres. That made it larger than the Roman Empire or Tang China. In lands once held by the Sasanian and Byzantine empires, the caliphs lowered taxes and gave governors more autonomy. They also allowed greater religious freedom to Jews and some local Christians, in regions worn down by decades of Byzantine-Persian warfare.

  Not everyone accepted the Umayyads. They were not chosen by shura, and some saw their behaviour as impious. Some people backed Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, while others wanted only the Banu Hashim or the descendants of Ali to rule. At the command of Yazid I, an army led by Umar ibn Sa'd and Shimr ibn Dhi 'l-Jawshan killed Husayn ibn Ali and his family at Karbala in 680. That killing solidified the Shia-Sunni split. Supporters of the Banu Hashim and of Ali's line finally united and toppled the Umayyads in 750. They were disappointed again, because the new Abbasid dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, and not from Ali.

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• 4. Baghdad and Cairo

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  Baghdad, the Abbasid capital, grew into a centre of knowledge, culture and trade. Science, religion, art and music all flourished during the dynasty's rule. Yet real power slipped away early. By about 920 the Abbasids had lost effective control outside Iraq. In 945 the Buyids conquered Baghdad and all of Iraq, making the loss official. Local dynasties then ruled the fragments for roughly a century.

  Part of the cause was an army the Abbasids built in the ninth century. It was made up mostly of slaves of Turkic Cuman, Circassian and Georgian origin, known as Mamluks. At first they gave the government a stable force for domestic and foreign problems. But a foreign army, together with al-Mu'tasim's move of the capital from Baghdad to Samarra, opened a gap between the caliphs and the people they claimed to rule. Mamluk power kept growing until Ar-Radi, who reigned from 934 to 941, was forced to hand most royal functions to Muhammad ibn Ra'iq.

  In 1258 the Mongols under Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad. Three years later, in 1261, the Mamluk rulers of Egypt tried to borrow legitimacy by declaring the Abbasid caliphate re-established in Cairo. Its first caliph, Al-Mustansir, reigned only from June to November 1261. The Cairo caliphs kept the symbols of authority, but they had no political power and their sway was limited to religious matters.

  The line lasted until Al-Mutawakkil III, who ruled from 1508 to 1516. His predecessor, Al-Mustamsik, deposed him briefly in 1516, and he was restored in 1517. That same year the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk Sultanate. Al-Mutawakkil was captured with his family and taken to Constantinople as a prisoner with a ceremonial role. He died in 1543, after returning to Cairo. Long before his capture, rulers far from Baghdad had stopped waiting for its permission to claim the title.

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• 5. Rivals in the West

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  Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi Billah claimed the title of caliph in 909, creating a separate line of caliphs in North Africa. He led the Fatimid dynasty, Shia rulers who traced their descent from Muhammad through his daughter. They began in Algeria, Tunisia and Libya and spent the next 150 years taking Egypt and Palestine. The Fatimids founded the Tunisian city of Mahdia as their capital, then conquered Egypt and built Cairo in 969. At their height they also held Sicily, parts of the Levant and the Hejaz. The dynasty took its name from Fatima, the wife of Ali. Reports describe a degree of tolerance toward non-Ismaili Muslims, Jews, Maltese Christians and Copts. The scholar Louis Massignon called the tenth century the "Ismaili century in the history of Islam". The Fatimids ended in 1171, overtaken by Saladin of the Ayyubid dynasty.

  In Córdoba, Abd al-Rahman I had become emir in 756 after six years in exile, uniting local fiefdoms into one emirate. His successors used the titles emir or sultan until the tenth century. Then Abd al-Rahman III faced a possible Fatimid invasion and answered by claiming the caliphate himself, reclaiming it for the Umayyads in 929. The title brought him prestige, and it stayed after the Fatimids were repulsed. This period is seen as the heyday of Muslim presence in Iberia, with technology, trade and culture flourishing and many buildings of al-Andalus raised. The Córdoba caliphate was overthrown in 1031.

  The Almohad movement began with Ibn Tumart among the Masmuda tribes of southern Morocco. Its followers set up a Berber state at Tinmel in the Atlas Mountains around 1120. In 1147 Abd al-Mu'min conquered Marrakech and declared himself caliph. By 1172 all Islamic Iberia was under Almohad rule. Then in 1212 Muhammad al-Nasir was defeated at Las Navas de Tolosa by an alliance of Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Portugal. Córdoba fell to the Christians in 1236 and Seville in 1248. The last Almohad, Idris al-Wathiq, was murdered by a slave in Marrakesh in 1269.

  The Hafsids, former Almohad governors of Ifriqiya, declared independence in 1229. Muhammad I al-Mustansir took the title of caliph in 1253, and the Marinid sultan, the Sharif of Mecca and the Emir of Granada recognised him between 1258 and 1264. From 1535 the Hafsid state was caught between Ottoman and Spanish fronts, and in 1574 the Ottomans conquered it.

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• 6. The Ottoman Claim

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  Murad I, who reigned from 1362 to 1389, is the first Ottoman sultan associated with the caliphate. He recognised no authority in the Abbasid caliphs of Mamluk Cairo, and the seat of the caliphate moved to the Ottoman capital of Edirne. After Mehmed the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1453, the seat moved there, to present-day Istanbul. Selim I later became defender of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which strengthened the Ottoman claim. This stood against the hadiths that say a caliph must come from the Quraysh tribe. The early Ottoman caliphs did not even use the title in state documents, inscriptions or coinage.

  In the late eighteenth century the sultans found a practical use for it. The Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 was a disaster that cost the Ottomans large territories, including Crimea. Under Abdul Hamid I, they still claimed a diplomatic victory, because the peace treaty let them remain religious leaders of Muslims in now-independent Crimea. Russia in return became protector of Christians in Ottoman lands. According to Barthold, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 was the first time the Ottomans used the title as a political one rather than a symbolic religious one.

  Others found uses for it too. The British affirmed the Ottoman claim and had sultans, including Selim III and Abdulmejid I, urge Muslims in British India to support British rule. Around 1880 Sultan Abdul Hamid II reasserted the title to counter Russian expansion into Muslim lands, and Sunni Muslims in British India accepted it most fervently. In 1899 John Hay, the American Secretary of State, asked Ambassador Oscar Straus to approach the sultan. Abdul Hamid II wrote a letter, sent through Mecca, telling the Tausug of the Sultanate of Sulu in the Philippines to accept American military rule. By the eve of World War I, the Ottoman state was the largest and most powerful independent Islamic political entity.

  The war broke that position. After the Armistice of Mudros in October 1918, the occupation of Constantinople and the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 imposed a partition of the empire. In 1920 Muslims in British India launched the Khilafat Movement to defend the Ottoman Caliphate. Its leaders included Mohammad Ali Jouhar, his brother Shawkat Ali and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and Mohandas Gandhi sat on its Central Khilafat Committee. On the 3rd of March 1924, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Turkish Republic, constitutionally abolished the caliphate. The Khilafat Movement lost momentum, then splintered and disbanded. Atatürk offered the title to Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi on the condition that he live outside Turkey. Senussi declined and confirmed his support for Abdulmejid. The title next passed to Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca.

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• 7. Beyond the Heartlands

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  A gold coin struck under the Mughal emperor Akbar called him the "great sultan, the exalted khalifah". The Mughals called their capital Dar-ul-khilafat, the abode of the caliphate. Akbar's letter to Suleiman the Magnificent praised the sultan as having reached the rank of the caliphate, while naming Akbar's own realm the "Khilafat of realms of Hind and Sind". Shah Jahan also laid claim to the title. Aurangzeb is often regarded as one of the few caliphs to rule the Indian peninsula. A memoriser of the Quran, he drew his personal income from sewing caps and selling copies of the Quran he had written, and he was compared to Umar and Saladin. Mughal emperors continued to be addressed as caliphs until Shah Alam II.

  In West Africa, Mai Ali I Gaji of Bornu took the title around 1470, and Askia Mohammad I of Songhai did so at about the same time. The Bornu mais held it until 1846, when a new lineage took the title shehu instead. The Sokoto Caliphate, led by Usman dan Fodio, arose in what is now Nigeria and lasted from 1804 to 1903. It was founded during the Fulani War and survived European conquest with reduced power. Its current head is Sa'adu Abubakar. The Toucouleur Empire and the Massina Empire were two other Fulani jihad states, and the French annexed the former. After the Ottoman jihad proclamation of 1914, France planned to name Sultan Yusef of Morocco the "Caliph of the West". The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 ended that plan.

  Some caliphates were never political at all. Sufi orders are led by spiritual leaders who appoint local khalifas to organise their lodges and spread the teachings of the order. The Ahmadiyya Community, founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, took a similar course. After his death in 1908, Hakeem Noor-ud-Din became the first caliph, with the title Khalifatul Masih. Mirza Mahmud Ahmad then led for over 50 years, followed by Mirza Nasir Ahmad and Mirza Tahir Ahmad. The current caliph, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, lives in London.

  Ahmadis hold that a khalifa need not rule a state, since the office is primarily spiritual. He is elected, but they believe God directs believers' hearts toward the individual. He consults the Shura but need not accept its advice. They also teach that a caliphate built on human effort alone is bound to fail.

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• 8. Law, Consent, and Conscience

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  The Quran uses the word khalifa twice. In Surah Al-Baqara, God creates humanity as his khalifa on Earth. In Surah Sad, King David is addressed as God's khalifa and reminded to rule with justice. Neither verse describes an institution, so scholars built the office from other material.

  In his 1981 book The Early Islamic Conquests, Fred Donner argued that Arabian practice was for the prominent men of a tribe to gather after a leader died and choose one of their own. There was no fixed procedure for this shura. Candidates usually shared the dead leader's lineage but were not necessarily his sons, and capable men were preferred over an ineffectual heir. Traditionally, Sunni schools agreed that the caliph must descend from the Quraysh. Yet every caliphate since the Umayyads has been dynastic. Sunnis came to see the caliph as a temporal ruler bound by Sharia, while legal specialists called the Ulama adjudicated orthodoxy and law.

  Shia belief runs the other way. With the exception of the Zaidis, Shia Muslims hold that rulers are imams chosen by God from the family of the Prophet, and not by election. They point to the hadith of the pond of Khumm as showing that Muhammad had picked Ali. Twelvers revere Ali and eleven of his descendants as the only valid rulers. Ismailis also follow the imamate, and the Nizari still have a living imam, the Aga Khan. The Taiyabi Ismailis have followed the imam's chief officer, the Dai al-Mutlaq, since 1130. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini developed rule by an Islamic jurist, the system established in Iran, but it is not accepted by all Shia.

  Medieval scholars including Al-Mawardi, Ibn Hazm and Al-Sha'rani said the Muslim world could have only one leader at a time. Reports say Abu Bakr told the courtyard crowd the same. Al-Ghazali warned that without a caliph, judges would be suspended and provinces nullified. Al-Mawardi required members of the majlis to be just, knowledgeable and wise, and said an unjust or ineffective caliph must be impeached. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani went further and called rebellion an obligation if a caliph disregarded Islamic law.

  The rule of law also bound the office. A hadith from Aisha tells of a noblewoman of Bani Makhzum who stole. Muhammad refused to let anyone intercede for her, and he said even his daughter Fatima would face punishment. Jurists held that no person was above the law and that a qadi could not discriminate by religion, race or colour. During a drought in the Rashidun Caliphate, capital punishment was suspended. Some caliphs had to appear before judges. Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, argues that this system of jurists was replaced when the Ottoman Empire codified Sharia in the early nineteenth century.

  Hussein bin Ali was proclaimed caliph in March 1924, but he had waited for the Ottoman caliphate to be abolished first. He did not want to split the ummah with a second caliph. He even supported the exiled Ottoman family financially. Britain, Zionists and Wahhabis opposed him, while a large part of the Muslim population and Mehmed VI supported him. He lost the Hejaz, which ibn Saud annexed in 1925. The British exiled and imprisoned him on Cyprus. He kept the title until he died in 1931.

  In 1925 the Egyptian scholar Ali Abdel Raziq published Islam and the Foundations of Governance. His argument has been summarised as "Islam does not advocate a specific form of government". He wrote that rulers had spread the idea of a religious justification for the caliphate so they could shield their thrones from rebels. A summit in Cairo in 1926 discussed reviving the caliphate. Most Muslim countries stayed away, and no action followed. The King of Morocco and Mohammed Omar, former head of the Taliban, adopted the title Ameer al-Mumineen. Neither claimed authority over Muslims outside his own country.

  One attempt to revive the office came from Muhammad bin Isa bin Musa al Rifai, known as Abu Issa. On the 3rd of April 1993, on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a small number of his followers swore him their loyalty. He was born in Zarqa, Jordan, and unlike them could trace ancestry to the Quraysh. He tried to unite quarrelling jihadis and met mockery and then force. His fatwas sanctioned drug use, and he banned paper currency and ordered men to burn their passports. His territory never extended beyond a few small towns in Kunar province, and the Taliban took even that in the late 1990s. His group moved to London and recruited Yahya al-Bahrumi and Abu Umar al-Kuwaiti, both of whom later joined the Islamic State. Abu Issa died in 2014, after spending most of his final years in prison in London.

  The Islamic State grew from Al-Qaeda in Iraq and rose during the Syrian Civil War. In the summer of 2014 it seized Mosul, and on the 29th of June 2014 it declared a caliphate under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. No prominent Muslim scholar supported the declaration. At its height it held about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq. By December 2017 it had lost 95 percent of that territory, including Mosul and its capital, Raqqa. Its last holdout, Al-Baghuz Fawqani, fell on the 23rd of March 2019, and American forces killed al-Baghdadi on the 26th of October 2019.

  Other groups made the goal central. Al-Qaeda listed a caliphate in its stated aims, and in 2005 its leaders called it "phase five". Hizb ut-Tahrir pursues the same aim through what it calls a non-violent political and intellectual struggle. One account says that for most Muslims, the caliph "is cherished both as memory and ideal".

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