Caliphate

The caliphate (Arabic: khilafa) refers to the historical institution of centralized religiopolitical authority in Islam, particularly in its Sunni branch. Traditionally and symbolically, the jurisdiction of the caliph—the title assumed by the office holder—was global in scope, and his authority applied to all Muslims worldwide. Although formally abolished as an institution 1924, the concept has received attention in the contemporary global era as a result of the rise of transnational Islamic social and political movements in the context of globalization—including several groups who posit the revival of the caliphate as an explicit political objective.

The first caliph, or “successor,” was appointed in 632 at the time of the death of the prophet Muhammad. The question of who should lead the nascent Muslim state after Muhammad's passing prompted the initial manifestation of what would later become the main sectarian cleavage in Islam, between Sunni and Shī‘a. Where the latter felt that leadership of the community should be vested in the Prophet's family, the former—who soon prevailed—argued for a model of political succession based on seniority and merit.

Reflecting the belief, central to Islamic political theory, that sovereignty ultimately belongs to God alone, the caliph was understood to function as a viceregent charged with the worldly enforcement of divine law (Shari'a). The first four caliphs, collectively known as the rashidun (“rightly guided”), carry special significance insofar as their rule (632–661) is regarded as a period of relatively enlightened governance. Even in the 21st century, the time of the rashidun caliphs is considered by Muslims to exemplify a pure form of religious society and, hence, a model worthy of emulation. The passing of these early caliphs marked the beginning of Islamic dynastic rule. As the Muslim world expanded geographically and culturally, it inevitably fragmented politically. Although the caliph remained a nominal constant throughout the medieval and early modern periods, his effective political monopoly over the umma (the world community of believers) ended by the 10th century as the Muslim world began to splinter into kingdoms and empires.

During this time, the minority branch of Islam, the Shī‘a, recognized an entirely different line of leaders. The imamate was based on the aforementioned belief that the Prophet's family possessed superior religious authority. Beginning with ‘Ali (also recognized by Sunnis as the fourth and final rashidun caliph), the Shī‘a chart an alternative [Page 152]genealogy of religious authority that more closely approximates the Catholic apostolic tradition. Subdenominations of Shī‘a Islam recognize imamate lineages of varying scale, but the majority branch acknowledges 12, the last of whom is understood to have left the world and entered a state of occultation in the 10th century. Shī‘a in this tradition believe that the final imam will one day return in a messianic form known as the Mahdi to consolidate the rule of Islam around the world. Absent a living religiopolitical figurehead, authority in the contemporary Shī‘a world is vested in the guardianship of a group of geographically and nationally diverse senior religious scholars, the marja'iyya al-taqlid (“sources of emulation”).

Under the expansive and culturally diverse Ottoman Empire (1300–1922) the caliphate experienced a renewed period of cosmopolitanism. Ottoman Sultans carried the parallel title of caliph from the 16th century until the institution's abolition in 1924 at the hands of Mustafa Kemal with the founding of the modern Turkish republic. As a global civilization stretching from West Africa to the Malay archipelago, the geographic mandate of the caliphate took in much of what was soon to become the postcolonial world. Muslims of diverse backgrounds and political orientations, hence, took an interest in the fate of the caliphate in the years leading up to and immediately after World War I. In India, the Khilafat Movement, which would eventually play a far more significant role in the development of the nationalist movement in India, was founded initially to exert influence on the British to preserve the Ottoman formation of the caliphate after the war. Without invoking the institutional authority of the caliphate, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838–1897) established an anticolonial movement based on worldwide Muslim unity and “Pan-Islam.”

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