K͟HĀLIDŪN (خالدون), pl. of k͟hālid, “Everlasting.” A term used to express the everlasting character of the joys of heaven and the torments of hell. It is used fifty times in the Qurʾān in this sense. [[ETERNAL PUNISHMENT].]
K͟HALĪFAH (خليفة), pl. K͟hulafāʾ, from k͟half, “to leave behind.” Anglice, “Caliph.” A successor; a lieutenant; a vicegerent, or deputy. The word is used in the Qurʾān for Adam, as the vicegerent of the Almighty on earth.
[Sūrah ii. 28]: “And when thy Lord said to the angels, ‘I am about to place a vicegerent (k͟halīfah) on the earth,’ they said, ‘Wilt Thou place therein one who will do evil therein and shed blood?’ ”
And also for David:—
[Sūrah xxxviii. 25]: “O David! verily We have made thee a vicegerent (k͟halīfah); judge then between men with truth.”
In Muḥammadanism it is the title given to the successor of Muḥammad, who is vested with absolute authority in all matters of state, both civil and religious, as long as he rules in conformity with the law of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīs̤. The word more frequently used for the office in Muḥammadan works of jurisprudence, is Imām (leader), or al-Imāmu ʾl-Aʿz̤am (the great leader). It is held to be an essential principle in the establishment of the office, that there shall be only one K͟halīfah at the same time; for the Prophet said: “When two K͟halīfahs have been set up, put the last to death and preserve the other, for the last is a rebel.” (Mishkāt, book xvi. ch. i.)
According to all Sunnī Muḥammadan books, it is absolutely necessary that the K͟halīfah be “a man, an adult, a sane person, a free man, a learned divine, a powerful ruler, a just person, and one of the Quraish (i.e. of the tribe to which the Prophet himself belonged).
The Shīʿahs hold that he should be one of the descendants of the Prophet’s own family; but this is rejected by the Sunnīs and Wahhābīs.
The condition that the K͟halīfah should be of the Quraish is very important, for thereby the present Ottoman Sultāns fail to establish their claims to the K͟halīfate (Arabic K͟hilāfah). The four immediate successors of Muḥammad are entitled the K͟hulafāʾu ʾr-Rāshidūn, or “the well-directed K͟halīfahs.” According to the Bag͟hyatu ʾr-Raid, only the first five K͟halīfahs, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUs̤mān, ʿAlī, and al-Ḥasan, are entitled to the distinction of K͟halīfah, the others being merely Amīrs, or Governors. After the deaths of the first five K͟halīfahs, the K͟halīfate, which is allowed by all parties to be elective and not hereditary, passed successively to the Umayades (Banū Umayah). The first K͟halīfah of this dynasty was Muʿāwiyah, the grandson of Umaiyah of the Quraish tribe, who received the K͟halīfate from al-Ḥasan. Of the Umayades, there were fourteen K͟halīfahs who reigned at Damascus, extending over a period from A.H. 41 to A.H. 132 (A.D. 661 to A.D. 750). The title then passed to Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās, the fourth in descent from al-ʿAbbās, the uncle of Muḥammad, and the Abbaside K͟halīfahs, thirty-seven in number, who reigned at Bag͟hdād from A.H. 132 to A.H. 656 (A.D. 750 to A.D. 1258).
The temporal power of the Abbaside K͟halīfahs was overthrown by Halāk K͟hān, grandson of the celebrated Chenjiz K͟hān, A.D. 1258; but for three centuries, certain descendants of the Abbaside, or Bag͟hdād K͟halīfahs, resided in Egypt, and asserted their claim to the spiritual power. The founder of the present dynasty of Turkish Sult̤āns was ʿUs̤mān (Othmān), a chieftain descended from the Orghuz Turks (born at Sakut, A.D. 1259), who was at first the ruler of a small territory in Bithynia, but who in 1299 invaded the whole country of Makkah, and subsequently extended his conquests to the Black Sea, and whose successor, Salīm (ninth in descent), obtained the title of K͟halīfah from one of the Abbaside K͟halīfahs in Egypt. About the year A.D. 1515 (A.H. 921), Salīm I., ruler of the Ottoman Turks and Emperor of Constantinople, finding himself the most powerful prince of his day in Islām, and wishing still further to consolidate his rule, conceived the idea of reviving in his own person the extinct glories of the K͟halīfate. He had more than one claim to be considered their champion by orthodox Muḥammadans, for he was the grandson of that Muḥammad II. who had finally extinguished the Roman Empire of the East; and he had himself just ended a successful campaign against the heretical Shah of Persia. His only rivals among Sunnī princes were the Muslim Emperors in India, the Emperor of Morocco, and the Mameluke ruler of Egypt, then known to the world as par excellence, “the Sultan.” With the two former, as rulers of what were remote lands of Islām, Salīm seems to have troubled himself little, but he made war on Egypt. In A.D. 1516 he invaded Syria, its outlying province, and in A.D. 1517 he entered Cairo. There he made prisoner the reigning Mameluke, Qansau ʾl-G͟haurī, and had him publicly beheaded.