The Future of Islam

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

CHAPTER II.

THE MODERN QUESTION OF THE CALIPHATE.

About the year 1515 of our era (921 of the Hejra), Selim I., Padishah of the Ottoman Turks and Emperor of Constantinople, finding himself the most powerful prince of his day in Islam, and wishing still further to consolidate his rule, conceived the idea of reviving in his own person the extinct glories of the Caliphate. He had more than one claim to be considered their champion by orthodox Mohammedans, for he was the grandson of that Mahomet 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, head of the Sect of Ali. His only rivals among Sunite princes were the Sultan el Hind, or, as we call him, the Great Mogul, the Sultan el Gharb, or Emperor of Morocco, and the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, then known to the world as par excellence the Sultan.

With the two former, as rulers of what were remote lands of Islam, Selim seems to have troubled himself little; but he made war on Egypt. In 1516 he invaded Syria, its outlying province, and in 1517 he entered Cairo. There he made prisoner the reigning Mameluke, Kansaw el Ghouri, and had him publicly beheaded, or according to another account, received his head from a soldier, who had killed him where he lay on the ground after falling (for the Sultan was an old man) from his horse. He then, in virtue of a very doubtful cession made to him of his rights by one Motawakkel Ibn Omar el Hakim, a descendant of the house of Abbas, whom he found living as titular Caliph in Cairo, took to himself the following style and title: Sultan es Salatin, wa Hakan el Hawakin, Malek el Bahreyn, wa Hami el Barreyn, Khalifeh Rasul Allah, Emir el Mumenin, wa Sultan, wa Khan—titles which may be thus interpreted: King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Monarch of the two seas (the Mediterranean and the Red Sea), and Protector of the two lands (Hejaz and Syria, the holy lands of Islam), Successor of the Apostle of God, Prince of the Faithful, and Emperor. It is said that he first had the satisfaction of hearing his name mentioned in the public prayers as Caliph when he visited the great mosque of Zacharias at Aleppo on his return northwards in 1519.[10]

Such, in a few words, is historically the origin of the modern Caliphate, and such are the titles now borne by Selim's descendant, Abd el Hamid. It is difficult at this distance of time, and in the absence of detailed contemporary narratives, to do more than guess the effect on Mussulmans of his day of Selim's religious pretensions. To all alike, friends as well as foes, he must in the first instance have appeared as an usurper, for before him no man not of the house of Koreysh, and so a kinsman of their Prophet, had ever claimed to be his spiritual heir. Indeed, it was a maxim with all schools of theology of all ages that descent from the Koreysh was the first title to the Caliphate; but we may reasonably suppose that within the limits of his own dominions, and even to the mass of the vulgar beyond them, the Ottoman Emperor's sublime proceedings met with approval.

Selim was a portentous figure in Islam; and the splendour of his apparition in the north dazzled the eyes of all. Mussulmans must have seen in him and his house the restorers of their political fortunes and the champion of their religion against Christendom; and a departure from established rule in his favour may well have seemed justified to pious persons as the best hope for the future of their creed. Selim was already temporal lord of the greater part of Islam, and he might be expected thus to restore the spiritual sovereignty also. Besides, to the ears of Mussulmans of the sixteenth century, the Caliphal title was no longer a familiar sound, and the title of Sultan which Selim already bore was that of the highest temporal authority they knew.

The Caliphate, if it existed at all, was in the modern world a less imposing name than the Sultanate; and the two had since the destruction of Bagdad become confused, as they still remain, in men's minds who do not any more now make common use of the older title. Thus it was not difficult for the new Sultan of Damascus and Cairo and Medina to impose himself on the multitude—not merely as heir to the Caliphal possessions, but to the title also of the Caliphs and their spiritual rank. Advantage, too, seems to have been taken in the first instance, as it has been subsequently, of the accidental resemblance of name between Othman, Selim's ancestor, and Othman the third Caliph. The vulgar ear caught the sound as one familiar to it, and was satisfied, for there is all the world in a name.

With the Ulema, however, it was necessary to be more precise; and we know that the question of the Ottoman right to the spiritual succession of the Prophet was one long and hotly debated in the schools. Tradition was formal on the point of excluding aliens to the Koreysh from this its legal inheritance, for Mohammed himself had repeatedly distinguished his own tribe as being the sole heirs to his authority; nor would any doctor of the specially Arabian schools listen to a departure from ideas so absolute. The Hanefite school, however, representing those chiefly interested in accepting the Ottoman pretension, undertook its legal defence, and succeeded, in spite of the one great obstacle of birth, in making out a very tolerable case for themselves and the Beni Othman—a case which, in the absence of any rival candidate to oppose to them, has since been tacitly accepted by the majority of the Sunite Ulema.

The difficulty, however, was in practice settled by a compromise, and the dispute itself had long been forgotten by all but the learned, until within the present generation its arguments were once more dragged out publicly to serve a political purpose. The Hanefite arguments are on this account interesting, and I have been at pains to ascertain and understand them; but perhaps before I state them in detail it will be best first briefly to run over the Caliphal history of an earlier age and describe the state of things which Selim's act superseded.

Orthodox Mussulman writers recognize four distinct phases which the office of Khalifeh has undergone, and four distinct periods of its history. The word Khalifeh, derived from the Arabic root khalafa, to "leave behind," signifies literally one left behind, and in the legal sense the relict or successor of the prophet and heir to his temporal and spiritual power.