margoliouth - the caliphate historically considered

7/28/2019 Margoliouth - The Caliphate Historically Considered

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THE CALIPHATE H I S l O R I C A L L YC O N S I D E R E D

T he word Caliph, K halifah, succession or substitu-tion, personified as successor or substitute, is fromits nature relative, requiring the mention of the personwho is succeeded or replaced. V ery often. such a personis mentioned; the Caliph himself might have a Caliphor deputy, as when the former lived in Samarra, and hada representative in Baghdad; and the historians fre-quently name Caliphs of governors, viziers and heads ofbureaux. W hen the title is given to the head of the Mos-lem community, it is implied that there is some one whosesubstitute or successor he is. But those who use it as theequivalent of sovereign prince ordinarily neglect thisdifficulty.T here are indeed those who think it should be renderednot as successor, but as to be succeeded; as applied toA dam in the K oran it might mean founder of the humanfamily. T hi s theory is not easy to accommodate to thefacts, and the most familiar interpretation of Caliph isCaliph of God. Against this piety protests, because suc-cession and substitution imply death or absence. Y et thetheory that i t means successor of or substitute for theProphet is not much easier. F or the K oran asserts thatM ohammed is the seal of the Prophets, and is not thefather of any of your men.3 Clearly there can be no in-heritance of the prophetic office, nor indeed any otherform of inheritance from the Prophet. Those who con-sider the Caliph the Prophets substitute confine hisactivity to the maintenance of Islam and the protectionof the community.A question which arises is whether a Caliphate in thesense of a successorship to the Prophet can still exist.

ITabari iii. 1410.rQalqashandi, Subh al-Arha, v . 444 .Oxxxiii. 40.4J ahiz. Bayan ed. 2. i. 201. 332


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T H E CA L I PH A TE HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 333T here is a tradition that the Prophet said: T he Caliphateafter me i n my nation is thirty years; then (8 kingdomafter that.' T hi s doubtless means that the Caliphateterminated with A l i ;" and this transition from Caliphateto monarchy is sometimes assumed by historians to havebeen a fact." I t has this evident nucleus of truth, thatwith the transference of the center of I slam from M e-dinah, its first capital, to other countries, the continuity ofthe government founded by the Prophet was severed.A view which is more widely accepted is that the Cali-phate terminated when Baghdad was sacked by the M on-gols in 656 A. H., and the connection of the institutionwith that city came to an end. T hus in the TabaqirtiAkbari, in the proceedings connected wi th Akbar's at-tempt at preaching in the M osque, those who followed the'Abbasid Caliphs are called "Sultarrs seated on thethrone." T he historian of the fall of Baghdad, Wassii f,speaks of the Caliphate terminating with the execution ofthe last 'Abbasid.'A question which is intimately connected with this lastis whether there can or cannot be more than one Caliphat the same time. Theoretically there can only be one;for the Cal iph is the person whom God has charged withthe interests of H is servants in East and West, on sea andland, country and town, plain and mountain.' T here is aTradition according to which i f two Caliphs are pro-claimed, one of them is to be slain. Theory, however, i nthese matters does not always accord with practice. T heEmperor Frederick I at different times maintained thatjust as there was only one God, so there could only beone Emperor ; and that the Byzantine potentate might callhimself Emperor oi the Romanians, whilst he(F rederick) was sole Emperor of the Romans." I tmight be difficult to find in the whole history of Islamafter the Prophet's decease any period at which there- Recorded by Ahmad, Abir Dhvird: T irmidhi and others.;.O his son Hasan.albn K haldun Hirtoirc d n Berbh-s, I. t .7P. 76 ed. H;mmer.Utabari iii. 2675.SVon Raumer, Crrcbichtr drr Hokrnrtoiifrn, 1857. ii. 88 and 088.

Sc e the dfonor. xxiii. 165 .Qalqashandi. 1. ,e.


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334 T H E MOSLEk I WORLDwere not rival Caliphs; one Qatari, who died in the year76, had held the title of Caliph for thirtceri years.'"When the Umayyads, driven from the East, renewed theirdynasty in Spain, they at first called themselves Sons ofthe Caliphs, holding that the title Caliph belonged ofright to the sovereign who was in possession of the Sanctu-aries;" but in 929 (A . H. 316) the Umayyad 'A bd al-Rahmin I11 assumed the title officially-not, as Dozywith an anachronism suggests, '' because the Caliph ofBaghdad was now a puppet, for eight years had to elapsebefore he became one, but because his 'Ubaidid neigh-bour in A fri ca had assumed the title, and it would havebeen impolitic to be satisfied with anything less. A bout150years later the A l -M oravid Y usuf I bn Tashfin, havingbecome master of a mighty empire, was told by thesheikhs of his tribe that the title Emr was no longer ade-quate, since he was the Caliph of God on His earth, andshould call himself Emr al-Mu'niinin or Caliph. H e atfirst resisted, on the ground that this title belonged to the'Abbasibs in vi rtue of thei r descent and their possessionof the Sanctuaries ; ultimately, however, he had .to yieldand took this title,13 which was also taken by sovereignsof the succeeding, A l-M ohade, dynasty."It would be of little interest to enumerate the Spanishand African dynasties by which the Caliphate was claimedsimultaneously with the Caliphates of Egypt and Bagh-dad. Whereas, as we have seen, many supposed that thepossession of the Sanctuaries furnished a title to the office,on one occasion we find the doctrine reversed. W hen theCaliphate of Baghdad came to an end, the Sherif ofM ecca sent formal recognition to the Hafsid Caliph thenreigning in Tuni s, on the ground that he was the onlyCaliph who at the time possessed any real power;I5 ac-cording to this the Sanctuaries belonged to the mostpow-erful Islamic sovereign; i t was not the possession of them


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THE CALIPHATE HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED 335which formed the ground of his sovereignty. One mighthave expected more of the Sherifs of hlecca to claim theCaliphate than appear actually to have dotie so. I n fact,an abortive attempt of the kind was made by one A buI-Futiih in A . H. 381, and Quatiidah, founder of theexisting line of Sherifs, considered that he had the bestright to the office.T he North A fri can Cal iphate has its representative tothis day in the Sultan of M orocco; the Caliphate of Bagh-dad was nominally replaced after three years by theAbbasids, who maintained a shadow of the office in E gyptunder the M amluks. Ordinari ly these Cali phs kept inthe background ; when they tried to assert themselvesthey had reason to regret the attempt. I n 902A. H. theCaliph of the times ventured to appoint the well knownpolygraph J aliil ad-din Suyiiti supreme QHdi wi th theright to appoint and dismiss qiidis throughout the Islamicworld! T he qiidis of Cairo met and declared that whenthere was a Sultan, the Caliph had no right of binding orloosing, of appointment or dismissal of any sort. T hi smade the Caliph climb down, and throw the blame onSuyiiti. W ho, he said, am I? T he question was areasonable one; for he was a nonentity. If Suyiiti is tobe believed, the names of these Caliphs were not men-tioned in the Khutbah after 74.0 A.H.

These shadowy C aliphs might have remained inobscurity, but for an accident. T he fall of dynastiesclaiming the Caliphate was so famil iar an occurrence thatmethods for dealing wi th such a situation had arisen. Onewas to continue to recognize the last Caliph of the line,notwithstanding that he was in his grave; thus blustasimthe last of the Abbasids of Eaghdad, though he had beenmurdered in A . H.656, was mentioned in prayer as late asthe year 798 A. H., from every pulpit, i f K hazraji isto be believed. A second plan was, as has been seen,that adopted by the Sherif of illecca, to look out for

1oIbn Iyar, i i . 307.1TTarigh aLK htilafal*Tranolatcd IJY ccihottsc, i. I 10.


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336 T H E MOSLEM WORLDsome other Cali ph. Y et a third plan was to claim theCaliphate; for indeed this matter is mainly or entirelythe concern of princes, who are supposcd to derive theirpower from the Caliph; to other Moslems it is of littleimportance. I n I ndia after the fall of the 'Abbasids ofBaghdad all three methods found adherents.

I n Bengal the name of M usta'sim appears on coins aslate as the year 722 A.H.; in Delhi as late as 695;'' thiswas the first of the three expedients enumerated. Doubt-less the news of the death of the Caliph would not at oncereach these remote regions; but even this distance wouldbe covered in less than forty years. T he thi rd method wasthat adopted by the Sul tan Qutb al-din M ubi rakshah(716-720A.H.; 1316-1320A.D.) T hi s monarch callshimself on his coin Supreme I mam, C aliph of the Lordof the Worlds, and took a title in the style of the Caliphs,Al -Wnthiq bil lah, "The reliant on God."

T he remaining expedient, looking out for a Cal iph, wastried by the Sultan M ohammed I bn T ughlaq, whoreigned from 725-752A.H., 1324-1351A .D. T his devoutman, having come to the conclusion that. no Sultan wasauthorized without investiture by an 'A bbasid Caliph,made numerous inquiries as to the existence of persons ofthat line; and finally heard from numerous travellers thatthere was an 'Abbasid Caliph in Egypt. H e accordinglysent an embassy to this personage, requesting investiture,which the Egyptian Caliph was delighted to bestow; andfrom this time the name of the Egypti an Caliph figures onIndian coins. One specimen of a diploma conferringsovereignty on an I ndian prince is preserved in the re-cently published diplomatic encyclopaedia of Qalqa-shandi, who asserts that i t is the only diploma known tohim that had been made out for any but an Egypti an Sultanin the name of one of the Caliphs." It is clear, however,that this was not the only document of the kind sent toI ndia, since we have records of others both earl ier and

~

1BSee E. Thomas, Chronicler of the Pathair Ki i igr of Dcllti, 1871.2oSirbk al-A'sha X. 129.


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THE CAL IPHATE HISTORICAL LY CONSIDERED 337later. Thi s particular document was composed by a weI1-known belle-lettrist, I bn H ij jah, in Damascus, 813A.H.,141 A.D. T he person onwhom it confers the realm oflndia with capital Delhi is M uzaffar-Shah, who, as i trecords, destroyed Somnath a second time in 1395, andtook the fort of Diu." H e appears to have been the mostpowerful M oslem sovereign in India at the time, and tohave settled who should reign in Delhi ; but does not ap-pear to have reigned there himself. T he latest notice ofan Egyptian investiture is in the history of I bn IyHs, whowitnessed the Ottoman conquest of his country. I n theyear 876-1471 there arrived, he says, an envoy from theK ing Ghiyath ad-din, soliciting investiture with the sov-ereignty of I ndia in place of his predecessor, and bringinggifts for the Egyptian Sultan as well as for the Caliph."T hi s Ghiyath ad-din must be the Sultan Malwa, who ac-cording to the Chronicle, translated by Bayley, ascendedthe throne in 873-1469,~ and in a coin reproduced byThomas calls himself the person on whom authority hasbeen conferred by the Caliph of the time in the

I n 922-1517 the final disaster occurred to the relics ofthe 'Abbasid Caliphate. Egypt was conquered by theOttoman Sultan Selim I ; the Caliph was carried off toConstantinople, whence he was presently sent back toEgypt to die there in obscurity. Some date the assump-tion of the Caliphate by the Ottoman Sultans from thisevent; yet it is noticeable that the Ottoman historian Sa'dal-din calls Constantinople D i r aI-Khilifah, seat of theCaliphate" before the conquest of Egypt;2s and the con-queror Selim in his dispatch to his son, while enumeratingthe various glories of his exploit, says nothing about hisseizure of the Caliph.*' T o the. Indian potentates whohad recognized the Egyptian Caliphs the three courseswhich have been mentioned were again open. T hat ofneglecting the destruction of the Caliphate was practised

ZL Bayley, History of Cujcrat. pp. 76 and 80.??Chroniclr, ii . 131.23P. 186.24P. 349.26ConatantinopIe 1279 ii . 328.ZOEdited and transladd by Wickerhauser, Chrcsfomathic, Vienna, 1853.


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338 THE MOSLEM WORLDin I ndi a for a certain number of years; the phrase, I n ihetimc, of ihc Caliph, was retained on Indi an coins sometime after the Caliphate had ceased to exist. Not, how-ever, very long; the plan of assuming the Caliphate wasthat whi ch found favor. I n an anonymous coin of theyear 937-1530, fifteen years after the termination of theEgyptian Caliphate, A gra is called Seut of the Cali-phate,* and in others of the following three years the sametitle is given to L ahore. Cities of I ndia claimed that titlefrom 1530 to at least 1842, he date of the latest silver Mo-ghul coin mentioned in L ane Pooles Catalogue.

From the former date, then, I ndi a has a seat of theCaliphate, and the title Caliph was actually taken by Sher-Shah ( 540- I 545) , and his successor I slam-Shah ( 545-1552) , who calls himself on a coin Caliph of the Time,*@and assum.es an imperial title al-Adil the J ust. WithA kbar, however, (1556-1605) he I ndian Caliphate maybe said to be definitely established. T hi s potentate wasvery much in earnest i n his assumption of the title Caliph,as appears from his pronouncing the Khutbah in the styleof the Pious Caliphs and their successors, the Abbasids;and in the fatwi which he obtained f rom the I ndian juristshe is styled Em r al-Murninin.It is likely that Akbars assumption of the title was inpart dictated by conscious rivalry to the Ottoman Caliph,and of this we have a hint in a story told by Badaoni.When A kbar wished to substitute for the second sentenceof the Moslem creed the formula Akbar i s the Caliph ofGod,he was asked what the provincial rulers, such as the

Padishah of Rum (Ottoman Sultan) would think of it;and he charged some one who objected with being a secretagent of that potentate, with whom he hoped to curryfavour by such conduct, and to whom he was told to go.Indeed one may well wonder that the world was largeenough for two such sovereigns as Sulaiman the M agnifi-27Thomas. p. 38s foll.28Thotiiar p. 413.% G e e Vi&nt Smith. AC bar t l rc Great Youirl, 11. 179.Wii. 273 (Persian te x t . )


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T H E CAL I PHATE HISTOK ICALL Y CONSIDERED 339cent and A kbar. T he possession of the Sanctuarieswould seem to be sufficient occasion for a quarrel; andindeed Sher-Shah ( 1540- 145) entrusted an intending pil-grim with a message to the Ottoman Sultan, wherein herequested that one of the two Sanctuaries might be as-signed to him (the I ndian Caliph) ;" a message which isunlikely to have been delivered. Nevertheless the IndianCaliphate was not unknown in Mecca. I n a letter tothe Ashrrff (nobles) of this place Akbar's secretary,A bu '1-Fadl, calls A gra "the seat of the sublime Cali -phate.** Similarly in another to the Uzbek Sultan hespeaks of a prince destroying himself when after capturehe was being brought to the threshold of the Caliphate(i.e. Akbar's capital.)" I n another, soliciting the visit ofa man of letters from Shiraz, he speaks of the fortieth yearof Akbar's Caliphate.84A kbar and his secretary had virtual ly abandoned Is-lam; but this was not the case with A kbar's successors,and they figure as Caliphs in history and diplomacy aswell as in numismatics. I n the M emoirs of Akbar's suc-cessor, J ahangir, a letter is produced wherein the PersianShah 'Abbiis uses the word Caliphate for the empire ofIndia; T he world-conquering standard of the Caliphatein the person of J ahangir is said to have cast the shade ofequity over the inhabitants of the worl d. I n the lettersent by the next M oghul Emperor, Shah J ahan, to theShah 'Abb2s I 1 in 1646,the house which adorns the Cal-iphate (i.e. the Indian dynasty) is contrasted with the Per-sian S~l tanate.~". he princes of this Emperor's familyare regularly called the E ldest J ewel i n the casket of theCal iphate, the Cypress of the Ri ver of the Cal iphate, andthe like. I n 1709,when the Emperor Shah 'A lam I. hadordered the name of the Fourth Caliph in public prayerto be followed by the title Wasiyy (trustee or legatee)which belongs to the Shi'ah doctrine, there were riots in~ 3lBadaoni i. 370.32hfuutakhabdt L ucknow 1Rb9, p. 46 .XxM autakhabdt'witk Urdii tranrlafion, 11. 27 .94Ibid p 111.8:Tran';lation of Roners and Beveridge, p. 195.J OB adishrh-nameh, ii . 496.


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340 T H E MOSLEM WORLDA kbarabad (A gra) and Shahjahanabad (Delhi ), theSeats.of the Caliphate of the I ndian Emperors. A ppel-lants who tried to obtain remission from this edict weretold that they must read prayer according to the commandof the Caliph," i.e. Shah 'A lam.T he Ottoman Cali ph then had an Indian Cali ph reign-ing beside him in the East as well as an A fri can Cali phreigning to the West of his dominions. T he title was cer-tainly claimed by the Ottoman rul er: Mustafi i 11,who as-cended the Ottoman throne in 1695, asserted in hisproclamation that God had bestowed on this poor sinnerthe Caliphate of the L ikewise the Sa'dianSherifs in N. A frica were styled Caliph and Emir ul-Mu'minirz;'' and these titles were retained by their suc-cessors the Hasani Sherifs." Recognition of the possibil-ity of more than one Caliph reigning at one time wasactually made by the Ottoman court in 1726, n the case oftheir realms being separated by such an interval as theIndian Ocean; whereby perhaps the A rabian Sea ismeant, the intention being to avoid disputes with theIndian Caliphs." For indeed ordinarily these twoCaliphates appear to have made up their minds to liveand let live, whence references to India in Ottoman his-torians and to the Ottoman E mpi re in I ndi an historiansare rare. I n 1640there is an exceptional case of soine-thing like diplomatic relations between the two empires.An agent who was sent by Shah J ahan to buy horses wasbrought to M osul into the presence of the OttomanSultan M urad I V , who received his presents, and sentan envoy of his own, one A rslan Agha, to the I ndianpotentate, who decorated him, repeatedly bestowed richpresents on him and his staff, and after a year allowedhim to return. T he I ndian historian who records thisevent calls the Ottoman Sultan, Qaisar-i-Rum, "Byzan-tine Emperor "" On the other hand, in the record of the

87Khafi K han, ii. 664.88Von Hammer vi. 600. original verified.SnNicshat al.Hodf nassiii;.4~~A rrhi r-csaroraines ix. sy .41VOn Hnmmer vii. 134.4'lBadisliah-natneh ii. ; W z i S .


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T H E CAL IPHATE HISTORICAL LY CONSIDERED 341affair by the Ottoman historian Na'irna4' the proud title ofthe Indian emperor "K ing of the World" does not appear.

T he M oghul Caliphate was overthrown as other Cali -phates had been overthrown. Shah 'A lam 11,after hav-ing been kept in rigorous confinement by the M ahrattas,on their defeat by the English in 1803, applied to theBritish Government for protection, which was accorded,and from that time the titular kings of Delhi became pen-sioned subjects of the British." Unti l 1835, however, thecurrent coin of I ndia continued to bear the M oghul super-scription." T here were three courses open as before tothose who had lost their Caliph. T here is no evidencethat the loss was felt at the time, nor was it till near theend of the century that any attempt was made to replace it.T he facts which have been collected wi l l enable thereader to form a judgment on the question of the Caliph-ate. One matter which emerges is that the existence ornon-existence of a Caliph makes little if any difference tothe ordinary M oslem. T he real function of a Cali ph isto give authorization to a Sultan; and the Sultans who

required this were ordinarily foreigners who ruled overA rabic-speaking peoples. Where there were nativerulers, whether Arabs or non-A rabs, an apology of thissort was not requi red; and those rulers who esteemed i tof value were anxious to have the Caliph from whom theyostensibly derived their authori ty in their power. Henceeven the Sul tan who introduced the name of the Egyptian'Abbasid into the legendsof I ndi an coins regretted that hehad not reserved his allegiance for a Caliph whom hecould himself contr01.'~ A ny king might count as theCaliph (viceroy) of God;" no ki ng could replace theProphet.I t was left to some of the Sufis to work out a theorywhich should take account of this latter point. T he realCaliph is one who takes his orders direct from God as the

4 iii. 357.4rK aye and Mallcson. I t i d b r i Urrliriy, 1889, v. 323.45I bid. ii . 7.4flThom.w. i. c. p. 257 .4?J ahir, L i rm de la Coirrorine. p. 86 .


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342 THE hIOSLEhl WORLDProphet did. T here may be a multiplicity of ostensibleCaliphs, but there can be only one real Caliph at a time,he being the Qutb, or Pole. Such a Caliph may or maynot exercise his powers. T hus Abd al-Qadir Gi lani ex-ercised his, whereas Abu I-Suud Shalbi refrained fromexercising his.8 T he former according to the more mod-erate of his adherents 150years after his demise was thelord of mankind after God in his time only; according tothe more enthusiastic he was that absolutely. It is ratherinteresting that the Indian Caliph Shah A lam I. claimeddescent from this personage, who is styled the best ofman kind.Our result is a negative one, but that is because in thiscase law must be deduced f rom history; and from his-tory we can infer that Moslem nations can exist withouta Caliph, that numerous Caliphs can reign simultaneously,without conscious rivalry, and that a dead Caliph can dis-charge the duties of the office, whatever they may be; ifwe follow I bn A rabi, we may add that a man may con-sciously discharge the duties of the office wi thout theknowledge of his contemporaries; for history is silentabout A bd al-Qadir Gi lani s Caliphate. W e may, i f welike, take the view that no genuine Caliph ever reigned;for Abu Bakr (the first of the series) is said to have de-clined the title, and the same is narrated of his successor.

T hi s view has the advantage that i t renders the treat-ment by the Moslems of their Caliphs more excusable. I tis well known that the second, the thi rd and the fourth ofthe Pious Caliphs were slain by Moslem hands; many ofthose who afterwards bore the title were victims of vio-lence; one at least took to begging for bread. M uqtadir,the last of the Baghdad Caliphs who ruled over an em-pire, was slain fighting against his Commander-in-chief,though he wore at the time the insignia which he was sup-posed to have inherited from the Prophet; insignia whi chwere lost at the time, but were presently replxced. If

4nFiirilh Plakkiyralr ii . 40;. Fiizilr al-Hikaiii, I 16.491bn Taimiyyah. BaghFat o l 4 f r i r t o d . p. I 24 .ZOKhafi K haii. i i. 604.


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1HE CALI PH AIE H 1SlY )K ICALLY CON S DERE L> 343such treatment by Believers of either the Successor of theProphet or of Gods representative is shocking in the ex-treme, itmust be added that the conduct of these Caliphswas often little calculated to inspire reverence for theiroffice.W i th those in our time who hold that because an Is-lamic prince has the title Caliph, the Western powersshould give him effective authority, i t is not easy to sym-pathize, whether they be Moslems or non-Moslems. IfWestern civilization means anything, it means that no manmay be subjected to disabilities because of the creed whichhe professes or adopts; I slam by its maxims subjects thosewho do not profess it to disabilities and those who abandonit to outlawry. How can any one who claims religioustoleration demand that such a system should have a newlease of political power? M oreover I slam obtained itspower of imposing religious disabilities by force only; formen do not willingly submit to them. T hat whi ch waswon by force can be lost by force. T he height of ab-surdity seems to have been reached by that advocate ofthe Caliphate who asserted that unless the head of Islambe an independent potentate, the prayers of Moslems arenot valid. If that be so, they must have been invalid dur-ing many centuries; for he who represents the AbbasidCaliphs as independent rulers under Buwaihid, Seljuq orM amluk Sultans, wilfully perverts history; further heputs it in the power of the Unbeliever to render the Be-lievers prayers useless! If Islam be so contemptible asuperstition as this argument involves, it seems to requiremissionaries rather than Caliphs.Oxford, England. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH.

margoliouth - the caliphate historically considered

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