286 chapter seven
the overthrown of the Mamlùks in Egypt assured the Ottomans of
their military hegemony and made them the custodians and defend-
ers of the faith.
By 1550, the Ottoman Empire extended from the Persian Gulf to
the south of the Caspian Sea and Georgia in the east, Moldavia and
Hungary up to the Adriatic Sea in the north, the African Coast
including Algeria in the west and Egypt and al-Hijaz in the Arabian
Peninsula in the south. Soon, the Ottomans transferred the caliphate
capital to Constantinople, which had become Istanbùl. Baghdad was
no longer the centre of power and Cairo was not seen as Baghdad’s
replacement as it once was during the Fatimids and the Mamlùks.
In their zeal to make Constantinople the centre of power, the Ottoman
caliph-flulňns ensured that the new capital was enriched with tal-
ents from different nations and races. Some of the best talent of the
conquered lands were mobilised and channelled to the capital; there
they were to be utilised for the glory and advancement of the impe-
rial state (Hitti, 1964).
The Ottomanisation of the Caliphate
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Islamic state is observed
to have moved into a state of political decay beginning from the
reign of the Abbasìd caliph al-Must’asim (833–842) who was over-
powered by his Turkish bodyguard. The culmination of the politi-
cal decay became more distinct, however, with the murder of the
al-Mùtawakkil (847–861) by his bodyguards, and from that time
onward caliphs were appointed and removed at the will of the state’s
military rulers—the flul≈àns. This marked the introduction of the
dualistic formula of the caliphate whereby the Abbasìd caliph’s func-
tion was confined to spiritually religious ceremonial matters, while the
actual governing of the state rested in the hands of the flulňns. The
religion was for the caliph while the government was for the flulňns.
In practice the caliph ceased to be a source of any effective power.
The Mamlùks of Egypt did the same with the Abbasìd caliph.
The last of the Abbasìd caliphs, al-Mùtawakkil (another Mùtawakkil,
died in 1543) only played a symbolic role in Cairo under the patron-
age of the Mamlùk flul≈àn in Egypt. That practice continued until
the Ottoman flul≈àn Salìm, on crushing the Egyptian Mamlùk Sùltanate
in 1517, took al-Mùtawakkil to Constantinople and reinstated him
as the caliph. Nevertheless, al-Mùtawakkil was later to be accused
of the misuse of trust funds, and was held prisoner until the death