... behind a new composite project that, some thought, should entail the establishment of a non-Ottoman Arab caliph. Advocates of the Arab caliphate believed in a universal Muslim umma, where membership would be open to anyone who accepted the truth of divine revelation, but where...

...This chapter analyzes the vibrant discussions of the early twentieth century over how to revive a caliphate best suited to the post-war era. While some advocated preservation of a traditional caliphal figurehead, many Muslim intellectuals were greatly persuaded by new models of internationalism...

...How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? This book explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups...

.... Instead, both dynasties used their contact with the other as part of a wider range of strategies to legitimize themselves in the eyes of a domestic audience. ʿAbd al Malik caliph annals Frankish Caliphate diplomacy Egypt Lombards Pippin II mayor of the palace Saracen Syria Aquitaine Byzantine...

..., appropriation of Arabic, and the Persian corpora on Islamic political theory; and its exposure to indigenous practices of authority constituted an integral part of state formation and ruling ideology that redefined rulership in general, and the caliphate in particular. Having been founded at the western fringes...

...This chapter analyzes the views on the nature of authority in Islam, diverse visions of the caliphate and its relation to sultanate as a political regime, and portrayals of the perfect ruler through archetype-building and reinterpretation of Islamic history. The emergence of Turko-Mongolian...

...This chapter discusses the mystification of the Ottoman caliphate and the apocalyptic-messianic reconstruction of imperial ideology in the context of the long Ottoman–Safavid conflict of the sixteenth century. Current studies in the main treat the Ottoman–Safavid conflict as no more than...

...The medieval theory of the caliphate, epitomized by the Abbasids (750–1258), was the construct of jurists who conceived it as a contractual leadership of the Muslim community in succession to the Prophet Muhammed's political authority. This book traces how a new conception of the caliphate emerged...

...In the United States and Europe, the word “caliphate” has conjured historically romantic and increasingly pernicious associations. Yet the caliphate's significance in Islamic history and Muslim culture remains poorly understood. This book explores the myriad meanings of the caliphate for Muslims...

...This book examines how Christian leaders adopted and adapted the political practices and ideas of their Muslim rulers between 750 and 850 in the Abbasid caliphate in the Jazira (modern eastern Turkey and northern Syria). Focusing on the writings of Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, the patriarch...

...This chapter details the post-Abbasid trajectory of the caliphate and its Sufistic reconstruction. With the fall of Baghdad in 1258, the historical caliphate, embodied by the Abbasid Empire, formally ended with traumatic consequences that, in response, facilitated the rise of a new wave of self...

...This chapter examines the Ottoman political discourse from its origins in the early fifteenth century to the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Views on the caliphate were expressed through a diversified corpus of works on government and rulership across various genres and disciplines...

...This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the complex constellations of meanings and networks that shaped Muslim reactions to the remarkably unexpected disappearance of an Islamic caliphate in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. It probes...

...This chapter considers problematic questions of political and legal legitimacy for premodern Muslim states in the wake of the Abbasid Caliphate's demise. Similar to the self-image of Byzantium as a Second Rome or the way that medieval rulers in western Europe appropriated Roman symbols, the Mamluk...

...This chapter investigates the political conditions of the civil war between al-Amin and al-Maʾmun, the so-called fourth fitna. It details how Al Maʾmun defeated his brother using troops from Khurasan in the east of the caliphate, noting that the war created further opportunities for easterners...

... with the caliphs. It also recounts the war against Byzantium after al-Maʾmun's death and succession by his brother al-Muʿtasim, which meant that the Christians of the caliphate also came under suspicion. The chapter talks about the reign of the new caliph that led to the unravelling of Dionysius' political...

...This chapter establishes the intense desire and nostalgia for Baghdad as the Abbasid Caliphate's cosmopolitan capital and its centrality in the Muslim imaginary, among the near and the far. Poetry, historical chronicles, and scholarly literature from Muslim Spain in the west, Yemen in the south...

...This chapter begins with a discussion of how the embodied practice of the earliest generations of Muslims was essential in consolidating a nearly universal Islamic consensus upon the obligation of appointing a leader for the Muslim community. As such, the caliphate was incorporated into Sunni...

... created divergent interpretations of the Ottoman Caliphate's significance, even among those Muslim elites who shared an intense devotion to defending its legacy. For Mustafa Sabri, who hailed from the Ottoman religious hierarchy, the abolition of the caliphate meant a loss of the primacy of Islamic law...

...This chapter explores the contentious debates among modernist and traditional Muslim scholars in the Turkish Republic and Egypt over the future of the caliphate. Scholars and intellectuals on both sides of the divide faced serious consequences for their positions: İsmail Şükrü's publisher...