economic thought of the rightly guided caliphs 93with no deviation from the Qur"ànic rules or Sunnah ideals—a
difficult and ambitious task when the socio-economic changes were
to appear well after the completion of the revelation and the death
of the Prophet. But the Caliphs, the de facto economists and jurists
of the day, carried out the responsibility and provided the ummah
with the most needed self-exerted judgment that was based on the
Qur"àn and Sunnah. This covered a wide variety of situations of
different degrees of complexities.
The CaliphateThe year 632 A.C. witnessed one of the most dramatic changes in
Muslims’ life: the death of the Prophet. Although the death of Prophet
Muœammad was inevitable, and indeed expected, as the Qur"àn
reminds Muslims that he is but a man and only a messenger pre-
ceded by others and warns them against any setback that might
erupt after his “death” (Qur"àn, 3:144), Muslims were severely shocked.
A close companion, Umar, later second caliph, believed that he had
only gone away for a while, as Prophet Moses did, and will come
back, and threatened any one who might dare to promote the
“rumour” that the Prophet died (Al- ̨abarì). It was Abù-Bakr, the
Prophet’s close companion and father-in-law, who announced
the passing away of Muœammad. He reminded the Prophet’s followers
of the Qur"ànic verses, however, and preached, “Whoever worshipped
Muœammad, Muœammad is dead, but whoever worshipped God,
God would never die”. Umar later said that when he heard Abù-
Bakr reciting these verses, he felt as if he had heard them for the
first time. The shock was severe but there was an eternal hope.
The death of the Prophet produced an inevitable problem which
Muslims were to face for centuries to come: the caliphate, or who
would succeed the Prophet as the head of state? In his capacity as
the messenger of God, the Prophet was not to be replaced, that was
well accepted, but in his role as the head of state, he would have
to be succeeded, and the successor was not always agreed upon.
From the day of the Prophet’s death to the present day, even after
the Kemalist Turks abolished the last titular caliphate in March
1924, which was last held by the Ottoman caliph Abd-al-Majid II,
the political debate over the caliphate has been a crucial issue (Hitti,
1963). The debate over the caliphate started as early as the day of