The Politics of the Khilafa, Old and New

This chapter briefly addresses the historical intra-Muslim debates over the concept of caliphate (“Islamic” governance), demonstrating how crucial Islamic concepts such as the caliphate cannot be understood meaningfully without situating them in relation to specific times and places. The author argues that the establishment of the caliphate was not informed by any “universalist dogma,” but by pressing communal issues such as tribal and communal rivalries. The caliphate—both as a concept and as an institution—underwent various historical metamorphoses. By showing how caliphate politics was closely linked to the rise of nationalism and anti-colonialism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the author challenges the common assumption—in the scholarship on Ottoman history—that Islam was a hindrance to ethnic self-consciousness. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.