(NOTE: This article is the first in a series of long-form, deep-dive investigations into the development of Islamic political thought during the 20th and 21st centuries. The aim is to dig into these developments so that we can be much better equipped to face up to the reality of the struggle with Islamist dreams of world domination. We will, of course, get to ISIS and Al-Qaida eventually, but the first few episodes will explore earlier developments that directly fed into their rise. You may want to get a hot drink before tackling the pieces in this series, but hopefully it will be more than worth your valuable time! Also, please do not hesitate to let me know what you think of these articles)
As the fabled Simplon Express (a sister service of the even more famous Orient Express) pulled out of Istanbul’s main station on the 4th of March 1924 it took with it the last flickering ember of a dream 1,300 years in the making. On board, on that day was none other than Abdulmejid II. The last Caliph of Sunni Islam. Only he was not leaving Istanbul, as so many Caliphs before him, at the head of the conquering armies of Islam. Instead, he was going into exile, never to return.
We will return to the fate of Abdulmejid shortly. Allow me to first explain what the Caliphate was, and why its demise early in the 20th century was seen as such an unmitigated disaster by many of the world’s Muslims.
The Arabic word ‘Caliph’ means ‘successor’, which should go some way towards explaining why this title, and its holder, was held in such reverence by the Muslim faithful. The person who could place this title in front of his name was quite literally viewed as a successor of Muhammad himself. This should not be understood in terms of his prophetic office. Orthodox Muslims believe that this died with Muhammad. There can, therefore, be no prophet after him as the ‘seal of the prophets’.
Instead, the Caliph was primarily seen as Muhammad’s successor as ‘Commander of the Faithful’. In other words, a military leader tasked not only with leading the people but also with expanding the lands of Islam. This was obviously a coveted position and much of the earliest years of Islam was taken up with the jockeying for position among those who wanted to control the Caliphal office. This conflict was especially bloody and fractious because Muhammad left no clear succession plans. At least this was the view, of the group who would emerge as the Sunni’s. Shi’a Muslims believe that Muhammad appointed his cousin and son in law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, to succeed him.
Despite the endemic conflict associated with succession to Muhammad, many modern Muslims view the immediate post-Muhammad period as a vanished golden age, with some going as far as calling the first four Caliphs the ‘rightly guided ones’ (Arabic: ‘Rashidun’). For the record the four ‘rightly guided’ Caliphs were:
• Abu Bakr, reigned 632-634
• Umar ibn al-Khattab, reigned 634-644
• Uthman ibn ‘Affan, reigned 644-656
• Ali ibn Abi Talib, reigned 656-661
This is not the place to immerse ourselves in Islamic dynastic politics. It is, however, worth knowing that, as mentioned above, a certain group within the Muslim community believed that Muhammad appointed Ali to be his successor. They, therefore worked to get him into power with every change of Caliph. When he finally succeeded to becoming the ‘Commander of the Faithful’ this group believed that the divine plan to entrust leadership with the ‘household of Muhammad’ was complete. This group was known as the Shi’atu Ali (party of Ali) or Shi’a for short. Ali’s death led to a bloody civil war with the Shi’a on one side and those who believed that the Commander of the Faithful need not be related to Muhammad, this person should simply be one who follow the example (or ‘sunnah’, hence ‘Sunni’) of Muhammad. There are intense debates on the relative size of the two main groupings within Islam but there is a general consensus that there are vastly more Sunni’s (85-90%) than Shi’a (10-15%) within modern Islam.
After systematically killing off anyone on the Shi’a side who might conceivably have a claim to leading the Muslim community, including Ali’s sons Hassan and Hussein, a Sunni dynasty known as the Ummayads controlled the Muslim world from Damascus from 661 to 750 AD. The Shi’a would, of course, survive but they developed alternative leadership structures. It should be understood, considering this, that the title Caliph lived on primarily within Sunni Islam and thus continued to be a highly respected symbol of religious and political legitimacy for the vast majority of Muslims.
In the year 750 AD the Umayyad dynasty was violently overthrown by a revolt that started in the territory that we now know as Iraq. A new dynasty, known as the Abbasids, would now claim the Caliphate and hold it for about five centuries. The Abbasids would eventually make Baghdad their capital and usher in a period of wealth and spectacular expansion for the Islamic world. The leaders of this dynasty gloried in the title of ‘Caliph’ and used it in preference to all others. The flourishing of culture, sciences and the arts ushered in by the Abbasids was brought to a shuddering halt by an invasion of the Mongols, a people from the East Asian steppes that were sweeping all before them. After a prolonged siege, Baghdad fell to the Mongol armies on 10 February 1258. Days of looting, mass killings and wanton destruction left the city a smouldering ruin. Baghdad would take centuries to recover, the Abbasid dynasty never did.
The Mongols did not manage to capture all the Abbasid domains. In one of the most consequential battles of world history the Islamic world was saved from being completely overrun by the Mongols. The army that handed the Mongols their first ever major defeat on their seemingly unstoppable march across Asia, at the battle of Ain Jalut (3 September 1260), was in fact attempting to stop the Mongols from leaving Asia. They were defending Egypt. It was at this moment that Cairo stepped into the role of de-facto Islamic capital. A position it would retain for more than two centuries.
The victors at Ain-Jalut were known as the Mamluks, a caste of slave-soldiers brought in to provide military muscle in Egypt, but who eventually took over the entire state. From this point on the history of the Caliphate gets rather convoluted, but the most widely accepted line of succession involves the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The actions of the Mongols in wiping the Abbasid Caliphate, who held the overlordship of Egypt, off the map and their own subsequent victory over the Mongols left the Mamluks with a very credible claim to the Caliphate. A claim that the Mamluk Sultans vigorously asserted over the next two and a half centuries.
In the West we are quite used to thinking of 1517 as a rather momentous year, as it was the year during which Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation. Interestingly it was also a red-letter-year for the Islamic world as it was the year when a rising Islamic empire defeated the Mamluks. The Ottomans, who will be at the center of Muslim history for the next five centuries, had arrived. From their origins on the plains of Anatolia (central Turkey) during the early 14th century, this collection of tribes grew ever stronger until it began to seriously threaten both the Mamluk and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The conquest of the Byzantine Empire would finally be completed with the fall of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) on 28 May 1453 to the forces of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II.
On 22 January 1517 it was the turn of the Egyptian Mamluks to finally bow the knee before the Ottomans, who mustered their largest ever military campaign to conquer Egypt and the rest of the Mamluk lands. This victory cemented the place of the Ottomans as the pre-eminent power in the Islamic world, and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Not only did the Ottoman Sultan, Selim I, now control two of the largest cities in the world (Constantinople and Cairo) he was also now the master of the ‘holy cities’, Mecca and Medina. This was obviously very beneficial as far as the project of assuming spiritual and political leadership over all Muslims was concerned.
The acquisition of the Mamluk territories did not spell an end to the efforts of the Ottoman’s to conquer as much territory as possible. In fact, there is clear evidence that several Ottoman sultans saw it as their God-given duty, as ‘Commanders of the Faithful’ to ride out to war every spring. As a result, much of Eastern Europe eventually came under Ottoman sway. The high-water mark of Ottoman expansionism was reached with an attempt to besiege and conquer Vienna. The Battle of Vienna (12 September 1683), where Ottoman forces were defeated by a coalition under the command of the Polish king Jan Sobieski II, is often seen as the point where Ottoman decline started to set in.
A key part of motivating the need for further Ottoman conquests was the conviction that the Ottoman Sultan was the legitimate holder of the title of Caliph. This title was emphasised and insisted upon, even as the Ottoman Empire began to lose its political and military edge. Thus, successive Ottoman emperors aggressively asserted their claim to be the legitimate successors to Muhammad, even as their state gradually became known as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’.
In practical terms, the Ottoman Caliphate attempted to assert its religious authority over the Muslim faithful of the world in the following ways:
· The Ottoman Caliphs claimed the title of ‘Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’. This role was related to the maintenance and protection of the mosques in Mecca and Medina. A key part of this role was to ensure that pilgrimage to these holy sites could continue unhindered.
· The Ottoman Caliphs claimed that they should be recognized as the protectors of Muslims, wherever they lived in the world. These claims were most aggressively asserted on behalf of Muslims living in British India and Russia.
· Muslims, especially those living under non-Islamic legal systems, could request that Ottoman officials intervene in disputes and could even appeal cases to the Ottoman court.
· In international forums the Caliphs asserted the right to speak as the leaders of the world’s Muslims. This claim was accepted by both Muslim and non-Muslim entities.
All of this brings us full circle to Abdulmajid II on the platform of Istanbul’s main station, ready to depart for Switzerland. How did he get there, and why did his departure represent a tremendous turning point in the history of Islam?
By the beginning of the 20th century the Ottoman Empire had endured centuries of decline (as evidenced by its ‘Sick Man of Europe’ title) but those who predicted its imminent demise at various points during the previous two centuries obviously got it wrong. Somehow, the Ottomans managed to soldier on. That was until they picked the losing side in World War I. Siding with Germany and Austro-Hungary meant that Ottoman territories ended up on the chopping block once the war was over. This effectively reduced the Ottoman Empire to something resembling the modern state of Turkey, with vast amounts of acreage shorn off and given to the British and French as League of Nations mandates.
Many openly wondered whether the sultan/caliph would be able to weather the dismemberment of a once proud and expansive empire. It turned out that he could not. A revolution led by a group known as the ‘Young Turks’, made up of mid-ranking military officers, deposed Sultan Mehmed VI on 1 November 1922 and proclaimed a Turkish republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. It was all over for the Ottomans as Sultans, but curiously not as Caliphs.
Recognising the fact that the title of Caliph transcended national boundaries, since the Caliph is supposed to be the leader of all Muslims, the Turkish government offered the position to Abdulmejid II (brother of the last Sultan). He did not have long to enjoy his newfound prominence, however. The new Turkish state was avowedly secular, and many of its leaders seriously questioned the wisdom of supporting a prestigious religious office that could act as a focus for resistance to the new republic.
Thus, it was that the Caliphate was formally voted out of existence by the Turkish Parliament on 3 March 1924. Word was sent to Abdulmejid II that he was now surplus to requirements, and he was escorted to the Simplon Express, bound for Switzerland, early the next morning. He would never set foot in Turkey again, and he died during the Nazi occupation of Paris on 23 August 1944. He was initially buried in the grounds of the Grand Mosque of Paris, but his body was later transferred to the Al-Baqi cemetery in Medina in recognition of his status as the last Caliph of Islam.
That phrase, ‘last caliph’, would come to cast very long shadows over Islamic politics during the 20th and 21st centuries. For some within the Muslim world, Islam can never again rise to greatness unless it has a great leader, a new ‘Commander of the Faithful’, marching ahead of them. For them, the dream of a world empire presided over by a successor to Muhammad, cannot have died through something as prosaic as a vote in a secular parliament.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire, therefore, immediately ushered in one of the key dreams and objectives of Islamist political thinking: The restoration of the caliphate. It was an idea with a very long life ahead of it.
An idea that would animate Muslim people from the mountains of Afghanistan to Speakers Corner in London, to the plains of Syria.
Next time we will see how a revivalist movement used the imagery and ideas embedded in the Caliphate to agitate for ‘pure’ Islamic societies, with consequences echoing into our own times.
For a book length discussion of the questions that can be asked about the earliest years of Islam, please see my book ‘The Mecca Mystery - Probing the Black Hole at the Heart of Muslim History’
If you have not done so already, please click on the ‘Subscribe now’ button to receive future articles.
Please help me get the word out by clicking the ‘Share’ button. Thanks!