Hugh Kennedy - Caliphate: The History of an Idea

Copyright 2016 by Hugh Kennedy

Published in the United States by Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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First published in 2016 in the United Kingdom by Pelican Books, Penguin Books, Penguin Random House.

Designed by Jack Lenzo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kennedy, Hugh (Hugh N.), author.

Title: Caliphate: the history of an idea / Hugh Kennedy.

Description: First edition. | New York: Basic Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016029769 (print) | LCCN 2016032016 (ebook) | ISBN 9780465094394 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: CaliphateHistory. | CaliphsHistory. | Islamic EmpireHistory622661. | Islamic EmpireHistory661750. | Islamic EmpireHistory7501258. | Islamic EmpireKings and rulers.

Classification: LCC BP166.9 .K36 2016 (print) | LCC BP166.9 (ebook) | DDC 909/.09767dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029769

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To my young grandchildren, Ferdie, Ronja and Aurora in the hope that they may grow up in a world where people of different religions and cultures can live together in peace and mutual respect.

Table of Contents

Contents

W HAT IS CALIPHATE? What does the term mean? What is the history of the idea? Is it an ancient irrelevance, only interesting as a voice from a past which is safely consigned to history? Or is it a concept that we can interpret and use today? In this book I shall try to answer these questions. The concept of caliphate has had many different interpretations and realizations through the centuries, as we shall see, but fundamental to them all is that it offers an idea of leadership which is about the just ordering of Muslim society according to the will of God. Some have argued that the caliph is the shadow of God on earth, a man whose authority is semi-divine and whose conduct is without blame; many more would accept that the caliph was, so to speak, the chief executive of the umma, the Muslim community, an ordinary human with worldly powers, and there is a wide spectrum of ideas in between. All are informed by the desire to see Gods will worked out among all Muslims.

This is not a book, primarily, about contemporary politics. It is rather a history book and much of the historical material it deals with dates to the period which historians in the Anglo-Saxon tradition call the early Middle Ages or even the Dark Ages, the four centuries between the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 and the coming of the Crusaders to the Middle East in 1097, though some of the narrative discussion goes through to the twenty-first century. It is easy to imagine that this period has little or no bearing on the position we, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, find ourselves in today and indeed most accounts of the so-called Islamic State, for example, begin with recent history and see the movement as a response to western influence and twenty-first-century pressures. I would argue, on the contrary, that in order to understand Islamic States idea of caliphate, and why it should prove relevant and important to many, we have to understand its roots deep in the Muslim tradition. Islamic State has made the revival of the caliphate a centrepiece, a keystone of its project for Islamic renewal, and the response this has generated shows the potency of the idea almost fourteen centuries since it first emerged. For modern Islamists searching for a basis to construct a viable political vision for the revival of the Muslim umma, the events of these centuries are at once an inspiration and a justification.

These events continue to be an inspiration partly because they recall a world in which the caliphate was the most powerful and advanced polity in the whole of western Eurasia, when Baghdad had a population of some half a million while London and Paris could only boast a few thousand inhabitants, when the caliphate administered huge areas with a standing army and a literate and numerate bureaucracy and Baghdad and Cairo were huge centres of trade and culture. To anyone within the Muslim tradition or outside it, knowledge of the history of this period can encourage that cultural self-confidence which is essential to any civilization if it is to live at peace with itself and with its neighbours. At this level my book is aimed at Muslims and non-Muslims who want to inform themselves, as everyone should, about the real glories and achievements of a vibrant civilization.

But it goes further than that. For some Muslims, the history of the caliphate points to a time when Muslims were God-fearing and devout, puritanical and self-disciplined, and always willing to sacrifice their lives in the path of Allah. This vision is not simply a nostalgic memory. To a degree not found in any other contemporary political discourse, this ancient past justifies the present for certain Islamist groups. Reading such contemporary propaganda as the Islamic State periodical Dabq, it is impossible not to be struck by the constant references to the acts of the Prophet Muhammad, the sahba who were his companions and disciples, and the early caliphs. If they did something, the argument goes, then we should follow their example. No further justification is needed, and even the most apparently cruel and barbaric actions require no further legitimization if they can be shown to be following the examples of such great heroes. We cannot understand what these loud and insistent voices are saying, still less argue against them, unless we too go down the road into the ancient past.

History has a power for this tradition which we do not find elsewhere. No one in Britain looks to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a work which dates from the same centuries as the early Arabic sources, and uses it as a way of justifying political behaviour today. It may intrigue us, it may give important insights into the ways our ancestors conducted themselves and the deeds of King Alfred may even, in a general way, be inspirational, but they will not be normative, nor will they provide instructions or excuses for todays and tomorrows behaviour. That is why any discussion of the concept of caliphate has to be a history book, and why we need to properly understand these complex memories and traditions.