Significance of the Caliphate

Due to the rise and fall of ISIS, the notion of the caliphate has been in the news recently and so I wanted to give you guys a primer on the history and the significance of this notion with reference to the Ottoman Empire, especially since it may play a role in our committee.

The caliphate first emerged as an institution in the wake of the death of Prophet Muhammed in 632. Since he did not nominate a successor, the Muslim community (ummah) designated its new leader, known as the ‘khalifa’ or ‘caliph’. However, with the passage of time and the spreading and fracturing of the ummah, the caliphate began to assume a more temporal and less religious significance, while also becoming a title of hereditary transmission, similar to a traditional monarchy. Throughout history, there have been 4 major caliphates: the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661), the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750), the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) and the Ottoman Empire (1517 onwards).

The Ottoman Empire, though nominally claiming to be the caliphate, did not place much religious significance on this fact until the mid 18th century, when the Sultan asserted his religious authority over Crimean Muslims during treaty negotiations with Russia. With the rise of the nation-state and of the Empire’s losses in Europe in the nineteenth century, Sultan Abdulhamid began to propagate the concept of the caliph as the pan-Islamic Muslim ‘Pope’ who has temporal and spiritual authority over all Muslims. This was encouraged by the British Empire, both to curry favor with Indian Muslims and to prevent Russia from advancing further down towards the Indian Subcontinent.

This later came to haunt the British when World War 1 broke out and the Sultan declared Jihad against the Christian invaders. In order to start the Arab Revolt, the British, through the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, promised to support the establishment of an Arab Caliphate controlling the holy places of Mecca and Medina. There was a fundamental misunderstanding here, with the British assuming that Hussein meant a religious position similar to the Pope with merely spiritual authority while Hussein wanted the temporal authority as well. With the end of the War and the surrender of the Ottoman Empire, Hussein now assumed that these earlier promises would be fulfilled.

Over the course of our committee, the question of whether the caliphate continues to exist will be resolved. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire stood as the last real Islamic power, with the Sultan claiming authority over all Muslims. However, this notion conflicts with the increasingly powerful ideal of secular, nation-states with the separation of religion and the state.

2. (Not related to our committee but an interesting read about ISIS’ ideology) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

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