ENTER THE TURKS 121The Three Khalifates
cities, busy bazaars, liberal policies, lots of cultural and intellectual activity-
was true of this khalifate as well. Rich as it was, however, Egypt represented
yet another fragmentation of what was, in theory, a single universal commu-
nity. In short, as the millennium approached, the Islamic world was divided
into three parts.
Each khalifate asserted itself to be the one and only true khalifate-
"one and only" being built into the very meaning of the word khalifote.
But since the khalifas were really merely secular emperors by this time, the
three khalifates more or less coexisted, just like three vast secular states.
The Abbasids had the most territory (at first), and theirs was the rich-
est capital, but the very size of their holdings made them, in some ways,
the weakest of the three khalifates. Just as Rome grew too big to adminis-
ter from any single place by any single ruler, so, too, did the Abbasid khal-
ifate. A vast bureaucracy that developed to carry out the khalifa's orders
encrusted into permanence. The khalifa disappeared into the stratosphere
above this machinery of state until he became invisible to his subjects.
Just like the Roman emperors, the Abbasid khalifas surrounded them-
selves with a corps of bodyguards, which became the tail that wagged the