Caliphate, An Idea Throughout History: An Interview with Hugh Kennedy

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Sep 5, 2016
[Byzantine envoys before Caliph al-Mu`tasim (seated, right). Image of miniature from the \"Madrid Skylitzes\" via Wikimedia Commons] [Byzantine envoys before Caliph al-Mu`tasim (seated, right). Image of miniature from the \"Madrid Skylitzes\" via Wikimedia Commons]

Caliphate, An Idea Throughout History: An Interview with Hugh Kennedy

By : Taylan Güngör

What is a caliphate? Who can be caliph? What is the history of the idea? How can we interpret and use it today? These are the themes discussed in Hugh Kennedy’s new book, The Caliphate (Pelican Books), which aims to find the long-term historical context for the idea of caliphate. Tracing the history from the choosing of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, in the immediate aftermath of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632, through the orthodox (Rashidun) caliphs (632-661), the Umayyads (661-750), the Abbasids (750-1258) and the use of the idea of caliphate by the Ottomans, down to the emergence of another Abu Bakr as “caliph” of the “Islamic State” in 2014.

In Episode #240 of Ottoman History Podcast, we talk to Kennedy about his recent work and what motivated him to follow the idea from the early caliphates to its use in the contemporary moment. This idea of the caliph and of caliphate as a formative concept in the politics of Islam dates back to the Quran itself, and the earliest days of Islamic political society in the days immediately after the Prophet’s death. It remains a motive and inspirational force in the contemporary world. But the term is widely misunderstood by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Far from being a rigidly defined office with a clearly recognised series of rights, powers, and duties, it is a fluid concept which could be adopted and manipulated by different groups at different times.

Kennedy points to the title itself: “Khalifa, caliph in English, is an ambiguous word. It either means a deputy [khalīfat Allah fi arḍihi], somebody who substitutes for somebody else, or it means the successor [khalīfat rasūl Allah], and this gave rise to a lot of uncertainty when trying to work out what the office of caliph meant.”

Throughout, his discussion focuses on key issues of continuing relevance: who should be caliph, how should the caliph be chosen, what powers should the caliph have in the political sphere and in the sphere of law making and the sharia? The ninth-century Abbasid caliph Ma’mun supported the doctrine of the “createdness of the Quran,” provoking opposition in Baghdad among a group increasing in importance known as the ulama, the learned people. The ulama‘s counter view of the caliph as a lawmaker “that is the beginning of the undermining of the status and power of the caliphate. Because a ruler who can’t make laws is only half a ruler.”

With the Abbasid caliphate’s fragmentation and its end with the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, the title of the caliph is still used continued to be used in Cairo until the Ottoman conquest of 1517 after which the main claimants became the Ottoman dynasty. Sultan Selim assumed not the title of caliph but that of the Khadim al-haramayn alsharifayn (Guardian of the Two Noble Sanctuaries). The Ottomans used the title caliph only intermittently until the late nineteenth century, when Sultan Abd al-Hamid II used the office of caliph to create Muslim solidarity inside and outside of the Ottoman Empire.

Another Abu Bakr, “caliph” of the “Islamic State,” has most recently adopted the title. He dresses like an Abbasid caliph, wearing all black. Their propaganda, through their online publication Dabiq, has constant references to the early caliphs, using, manipulating, and inventing records of what the early caliphs did as a way of justifying themselves.

BIOS

Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at SOAS, London. He has been studying the history of the caliphate for almost fifty years and has written numerous books including “The Courts of the Caliphs” (2004) and “The Great Arab Conquests” (2007).

Taylan Güngör is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and Africa Studies (SOAS). His research interests center on Medieval and Pre-Modern Eastern Mediterranean trading circles. His dissertation research is on trade in Istanbul after 1453. 

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Sep 1, 2016 Lebanon
Chris Gratien By :
Chris Gratien

Neo-Ottoman Architecture and the Transnational Mosque: An Interview with Kishwar Rizvi

Mosques are enduring architectural and institutional features of Muslim communities throughout the world, and thus it is natural to encounter large mosque complexes that occupy prominent positions within the cityscapes of the Middle East and beyond. Yet among the many historical mosques and buildings in the region’s oldest cities, there are also buildings of surprisingly recent provenance and many old sites with newly renovated interiors and facades, such as the Blue Mosque in downtown Beirut or the Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara. These buildings are examples of what Kishwar Rizvi calls “the transnational mosque,” a particular place of worship constructed by nation states of the Middle East—namely Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—both at home and abroad as a vehicle of political expression and ideological influence.

In the inaugural episode of Ottoman History Podcast Season 6, we sat down with Professor Rizvi to explore this phenomenon and her new book The Transnational Mosque (UNC Press, 2015), which "aims to analyze the role of mosques in the construction of Muslim identity through the lens of their political, religious, and architectural history." For the naive traveler, the transnational mosque may be a novel artifact “hiding in plain sight” behind an historicist guise; for pious pilgrims and picnickers alike, these mosques are vital spaces intended to be received as expressions of political presence and sincere commitment to supporting Islam’s basic institutions. As Rizvi explains in her work, transnational mosques forge imagined and physical connections that cross political boundaries. Mosques built by the Turkish state in Germany foster understandings of nationalism and a link with the Ottoman past among Turkish migrants and their descendants. Mosque construction and renovation by Iran in Syria and elsewhere facilitates the expansion of Shi‘a pilgrimage networks and travel.

In our conversation, we focused heavily on the case of Turkey and what Rizvi identifies as a neo-Ottoman aesthetic. Much of the mosque construction supported by the Turkish state has taken as its prototype the classical Ottoman mosque, typified by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works of Mimar Sinan and his students. While Ottoman architectural style varied according to region and changed considerably over the course of many centuries, the current invocation of the monumental mosques associated with the height of Ottoman imperial prowess belies the political project of Turkey’s current government. But in a broader perspective, the example of the neo-Ottoman mosque demonstrates the surprisingly under-studied links between nationalism and religion in the Middle East not only in Turkey but also in states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where narrower conceptions of the nation-state seem inadequate to encompass local understandings of belonging and the increasingly transnational populations of the Gulf.

While written by an author specializing in the history of art and architecture, The Transnational Mosque raises important questions about the present for researchers interested in the intersections of space, identity, and religious practice among Muslims. It is a rare glimpse into the history of an architectural movement that is distinctively modernist while deeply rooted in an understanding of Islamic history and aesthetics. As Rizvi noted in our conversation, The Transnational Mosque may be a useful starting point for those interested in the ways in which non-state actors also participate in the ongoing redefinition of Islamic aesthetics, which while not limited to the realm of politics, is inextricable from the larger debates surrounding what it means to be Muslim today.

Bios:

Kishwar Rizvi is Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Yale University.  She writes on issues of religion, politics, and self-representation in the early modern period, as well as on the intersection of nationalism and architecture in the modern Middle East.

 

Chris Gratien holds a PhD from Georgetown University`s Department of History. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s.