See also Fatimid dynasty; imam; government,
islamic; ottoman dynasty; sUnnism; Umayyad
caliphate.
Heather N. KeaneyFurther reading: Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds,
God’s Caliph (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986); Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the
Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the
Eleventh Century (London: Longman Press, 1986);
Wilfred Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
caliphate
The caliphate is the office of religious and political
ruler in Islamdom. It went through several stages
of historical development. The first four caliphs
make up what is regarded by Muslims as the
Rashidun, or the caliphate of the rightly guided
(r. 632–661). These caliphs were all early converts
to islam and close companions oF the prophet
Muhammad. For the most part, they continued to
model the ideals of Islamic government: uphold-
ing proper religious practice and social justice. It
was during this period that Islam experienced its
most rapid expansion into syria, iraq, persia, and
North Africa
The period of the rightly guided caliphate
ended in civil war, and the capital of the Islamic
empire and the caliphate moved from Medina
to damascUs. There the Umayyad caliphate (r.
661–750) became increasingly secular, exercis-
ing authority based on the power of the military
rather than moral or religious aUthority. The
tension between religious legitimacy and secular
authority eventually led to the overthrow of the
Umayyads in the eighth century by the Abbasids,
who moved the capital to baghdad, Iraq. The
early abbasid caliphate (750–1258) is regarded as
the golden age of Islamicate civilization.
In addition to its wealth and power, the
caliphate symbolized the united Muslim com-
munity (umma), living proof that despite blood-
shed and civil war, God had not abandoned his
community. When the caliphate’s political power
began to decline, the Muslim community held
even more tightly to the symbolic significance
of the caliphate. Starting in the 10th century,
a series of military commanders seized control
of the military and political workings of the
empire. Eventually, authority was divided up
among these commanders, who were known
as amirs or sUlta ns. Due to the symbolic and
religious significance of the caliphate, however,
sultans claimed to rule on its behalf. Throughout
the medieval period, the caliphate and sultan-
ate complemented each other, with the former
lending religious legitimacy to the latter, while
the sultanate provided the political and military
power to defend Islamdom.
The sultans proved incapable, however, of
defending Islam and the caliphate from the Mon-
gols, who destroyed Baghdad and the Abbasid
Caliphate in 1258. Even though the mamlUk
sultans of egypt attempted to continue the caliph-
ate in cairo through an Abbasid survivor, the
caliphate no longer carried the same religious
significance. When the Ottoman Turks defeated
the Mamluks in 1517, they absorbed the caliphate
into their sultanate.
When the Turkish nationalist mUs taFa kemal
atatUrk (d. 1938) dismantled the Ottoman Empire
and established tUrkey as a modern, secular
nation-state, he formally abolished the caliphate
in 1924. This marked the symbolic end of an era
and made official what had in many ways been a
longstanding reality. Today there are still reform-
ers who call for a restoration of the caliphate,
believing that it is necessary for enforcing sharia
and establishing God’s government on Earth.
See also imam; Fatimid dynasty; khilaFat move-
ment; ottoman dynasty.
Heather N. KeaneyFurther reading: Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire:
The Classical Age 1300–1600 (London: Phoenix Press,K 126 caliphate