A hundred years since the last Caliph left Constantinople

Exactly a century ago – on 4 March 1924- the last Caliph of the Muslim world viz. Abdul Mejid II was bundled out of his palace in Constantinople (Istanbul). Consequently, an institution that had allegedly endured for almost thirteen centuries, from the morrow of the demise of the Prophet on Islam in Medina in June, 632 AD came to a tame end. From the Turkish point of view it was the logical corollary of the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate on 1 November 1922 and the subsequent proclamation of the Turkish republic on 29 October 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Kemal Ataturk).

Maulavi Mohammed Barakatullah of Bhopal, a globe-trotting Pan-Islamist associated with Ghadar movement, in his book The Khilafet (1924) describes the scene of deposition of Caliph Abdul Mejid II.

On Saturday, the first of March 1924 A.D., the 8th of Pisces, 1302 S.H., and 26th of Rajeb, 1342 L.H. Ghazi Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the President of the Angora Republic, proposed the abolition of the institution of Khilafet, the expulsion of Khalifal family, and the confiscation of their property; on Monday the Grand National Assembly passed the Bill by an overwhelming majority; and at two o’clock Tuesday morning the Vali of Constantinople and the Director General of Public Security, accompanied by police, proceeded to Dolma Bagcheh Palace, where they ordered the Khalif to seat himself upon the throne, whereupon the decree declaring his deposition was read. The Khalif was then commanded to descend from the throne and make arrangements for his immediate departure. An hour later, accompanied by his two wives and his son, he was conveyed by motor car to Chatalja, where a special train was in readiness for his departure (The Khilafet, P.1)

Thus no sentimentalism was displayed, nor was any pension or privy purse granted. The last Caliph, who was not a Sultan, which became an oxymoron, was forced to leave Turkey immediately. Yet, it was this institution for which Muslims in India shed copious tears in the early 1920s. There ran a Khilafat Movement, piloted by Ali brothers, and supported by the Indian National Congress. Though the Caliphate was as different from Swaraj, as the chalk from the cheese, yet the Congress integrated the Khilafat Movement into the Non Cooperation Movement for Swaraj.

“In modern times” – said Gandhi while addressing the Kathiawad Political Conference on 8 January 1925 – “the first Caliphs may be said to have established Rama Rajya. Abubaker and Hazrat Umar collected revenue running into crores and yet personally they were as good as fakirs” (MGCW Vol-30, P.62). Gandhi of course ignored the fact that most of this tax came from jiziya, levied upon the non-Muslim subject population.

The Shankaracharya of Sharada Peeth, Dwarka, Gujarat stood trial in Karachi Criminal Sessions Court (1921) along with the Ali brothers in connection with Khilafat movement. The Congress launched the Ulema into Indian politics, from which the Muslim League had refrained. Yet, gratitude from the Muslim side was scarce. Whereas the Moplah massacres (1921) were staged during the heydays of the Khilafat Movements, the abject failure of the movement made Muslims more revengeful upon the Hindus. “It will take some time”, Gandhi admitted, “before the average Hindu ceases to be a coward and the average Muslim ceases to be a bully” (MGCW Vol-29, P.145).

What was the institution of the Caliphate (Khilafat), for retention of which India witnessed a massive agitation in the 1920s? The Caliph is an anglicised version of the Arabic word Khalifa, which literally meant a substitute. Successive Caliphs have acted as the temporal leaders of the Muslim community since the demise of the Prophet of Arabia in June, 632. They could administer, but they could not legislate, informs D.S. Margoliouth. This was evidently because the Prophet of Arabia was considered the last Prophet in Islam. Thus he could have no ‘substitute’ as a recipient of divine revelation. However, he was also the leader of the incipient Muslim community, and it was this position that the Caliphs were called in to fill.

Abu Bakr, who was the Prophet’s father-in-law, was elected as the first Caliph. The first four Caliphs viz. Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Ali are recognised and hailed as ‘rightly guided Caliphs’. They were also related to the Prophet of Arabia in one way or the other. “The first two were fathers-in-law” says Professor Margoliouth (1925), “the second two sons-in-law; the fifth a brother-in-law. The ‘substitute’ was in each of the cases a member of the Prophet’s family; the last of this series founded a dynasty” (John R. Mott, Ed. The Moslem World of To-Day, P.34-35).

The reigns of the Caliphs witnessed speedy expansion of the Islamic rule across the Middle East, Persia and North Africa etc during the 7th century. Needless to say this was achieved through military campaigns rather than any peaceful method of evangelism. However, such rapid expansion, created its own set of complications not merely for the vanquished population but the victors as well. Garrison towns were first established during the reign of second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (r.634-644), whereby entire tribes came to settle in the newly acquired territories, often accentuating previous clannish rivalries under a new garb.

The third Caliph viz. Uthman ibn ‘Affan (r.644-656), was eventually murdered in Medina by disaffected Arab tribesmen from the garrisons of Kuffa, Basra and Egypt. “The murder of Uthman”- informs Muahmmed Qasim Zaman (2004)- “inaugurated a series of bitter conflicts within the Muslim community that are collectively known as fitna - a highly evocative term suggesting a time of temptation and trial, dissension and chaos. This civil war, Islam’s first, was to continue throughout the reign of Uthman’s successor Ali ibn Abi Talib (r. 656-661), and it ended with the latter’s assassination and the rise of the Umayyad dynasty (r.661-750). The events of these years were debated by Muslims for centuries. It is to these events that later Muslims looked in explaining and arguing over their sectarian divisions, some of which were to prove permanent” (Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World- Caliphate- P.117).

The fifth Caliph Mu’awiya ibn Abu Sufiyan (r. 661-680), who ruled from Damascus, was the first to convert the Caliphate into a hereditary monarchy. It is commonly referred to as the Umayyad Caliphate.

As Hugh Kenney explains, Mu’awiya nominated his son Yazid as his succor as monarch and Caliph. This scandalised a large section of Muslims, who wanted the Caliphate to revert to the Family of the Prophet and power restored to Kufa. Though Ali’s elder son al-Hassan had abandoned his claim to Caliphate, his younger brother al-Husayn was prepared to take up the cause. He forayed from Medina along with a small band of family and friends, in order to reach Kufa by trekking across the desert. He had planned to join his supporters at Kufa, to press forward his claims. However, the governor of Iraq viz. Ubayd-Allah, was waiting to prevent the party from entering into the country. After a short battle that ensued, al-Husayn and his entourage were decimated, and perished out of thirst at Karbala on 10 October 680 AD. The Kufans made no attempt to support him. Al-Husyan’s memory lived on in Islamic narrative, as a symbol of suffering of all weak and defenceless people. His martyrdom is celebrated by the Shias, though the sect developed much later (The Prophet and the Age of Caliphates, Second Edition, P.89).

As the Umayyad dynasty collapsed in 750 AD, the power centre moved back to Iraq. Abu’l-Abbas, who was publicly acknowledged as a new Caliph at a mosque in Kufa in October, 749 AD lent its name to the Abbasid Caliphate. He was succeeded by his brother Al-Mansur, who is credited with building the imperial capital of Baghdad. Baghdad, the Round City, continued to be the centre of Abbasid Caliphate for close to five centuries, until their downfall in 1258 AD due to Mongol invasion. The Mongol invasion led to destruction of large parts of the eastern Islamic world.

The Caliphate was revived, and the Mongol invasion was contained by the Mamluks of Syria and Egypt. But the Abbasid caliphs of the Mamluk era based in Cairo, observes Muahmmed Qasim Zaman, never enjoyed the prestige or even the symbolic capital possessed by their predecessors in Baghdad. The Mamluk era ended, along with the shadow of Abbasid Caliphate, with the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 AD (Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World- Caliphate- P.121).

Sir William Muir, the biographer of the Prophet, and historian of Caliphate, maintains that Al-Musta’sim (r. 1242-1258) was the last Caliph, who was put to death by the Mongols. He calls the Caliphate in Cairo under Mamluks as, “the so-called Caliphate” (The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline and Fall, P.593). Muir does not care to venture into the Ottoman chapter of Caliphate at all. Hugh Kennedy also refrains from investigating into the Ottoman Era of Caliphates in The Prophet and the Age of Caliphates (1986).

Sir Thomas W. Arnold’s (1924) explanation provides an agreeable middle ground. He says that by the 16th century, the title of Khalifah (Caliph) appears to have assumed a new significance; it certainly no longer implied descent from the house of Abbas or any claim to belong to the tribe of the Quraysh. The Muslim monarch now claimed to derive his authority directly from God, to be the vicegerent of Allah, not mere successor of the Prophet (The Caliphate, P.129).

Sir Thomas W Arnold’s views actually concur with William Muir or later day historian Hugh Kennedy. He argues that Ottoman Sultans themselves were never in the habit of using the title ‘Khalifa’. They specifically avoided the ancient titles like ‘Khalifa’ and ‘Amir ul-Muminin’ and ‘Imam’ etc for two hundred years. The possible reason, he cites, Hanafi legists belonging to the school of law which Ottoman Sultans had taken under their protection, had come to adopt the view that Khilafat had only lasted for thirty years i.e. up to the death of Ali and afterwards there was only government by the kings. Such was the view of Nasafi (1068-1141), one of the greatest legists of Hanafi school, whose exposition of Muslim doctrine was accepted as text-book in Turkey, and was commented upon by many scholars there (The Caliphate, P.163).

Sir Thomas W. Arnold makes a vital observation that the Ottoman Sultans began to claim the title of Caliph only in the beginning of the eighteenth century aimed at foreign consumption. He identifies the first occasion the designation Caliph was used for the Ottoman Sultan in a diplomatic document was the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774. The treaty was solemnised between Sultan Abdul Hamid I and Empress Catherine II of Russia, in which the Sultan was forced to recognise the complete independence of the Tartars of the Crimea and of Kuban, countries that had hitherto formed part of the Ottoman Empire.

Since the Empress of Russia claimed to be the patroness of the Christians of the Orthodox Church dwelling in the Ottoman territory, the Ottoman Plenipotentiaries thought it expedient to extend a similar claim for their Sultan on the Muslim subjects in the Czarina’s territory. The treaty exists in three separate versions – Turkish, Italian and French- and though the language used is not exactly the same the term Caliph (Khalifa) appears in each (The Caliphate, P.165).

The Caliphate of Islam, even if it were a fiction according to historians, was recognized by the Ankara-based Turkish National Party (led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha) when it signed the Turkish National Pact on 28 January 1920. The Turkish National Assembly held an exceptional session in Constantinople as demanded by the victorious Allied Power. It was a sort of attempted patch up between the Sultan and National Assembly, at the insistence of the Allied Powers, but who soon aborted the experiment. Thereupon the Ankara-based “Great Turkish National Assembly”, having popular support, consolidated all political power. Its unanimous resolution on 1 November 1922 abolished the monarchy as inconsistent with republican goals of Turkey. However, ironically, in the same resolution it upheld the Caliphate. It not merely upheld the Caliphate, but acknowledged the same as a family property.

The Caliphate belongs to the Dynasty of the House of Osman. The member of the Dynasty who is most eligible in respect of knowledge and character is elected Caliph by the Turkish National Assembly. The Turkish State is the emplacement on which the Caliphate rests (Turkey, Arnold J. Toynbee, P.150).

Though the deposed Sultan Mehmed VI Vahideddin was not sent to exile, he was forced to flee soon after the National Assembly initiated charges of high treason against him and his Cabinet Ministers. Vahideddin realising that discretion was better part of the valour fled with his family rather than facing the trial. On 18 November 1922 the cousin of deposed Sultan viz Abdul Mejid was elected as the Caliph (but not Sultan) by the National Assembly. At the investiture the prayers were said for the first time in Turkish, instead of Arabic. He was also the first to receive the Caliph’s mantle without political power. The Caliph had no power, either political or spiritual, and became a figurehead, whose functions were to receive visits and attend weekly ceremony in the Selamlik (part of the Ottoman Palace) and of public prayer.

At this juncture, Agha Khan and Ameer Ali, two stalwart Muslim leaders of India appealed to the Turkish government to define clearly the powers and authority of Caliph. Their mild and courteous appeal was published in the form of a letter in certain Turkish newspapers. The Turkish government immediately denounced this ‘foreign interference’ in Turkey’s internal affairs. Arnold J. Toynbee informs that as the writers of this letter viz. Agha Khan and Ameer Ali were outside the reach of the Turkish government, the editors who published their letter were prosecuted before the newly created tribunal at Constantinople. They served a mild form of penal servitude. However, Lutfi Bey, President of Constantinople Bar, received five years of penal sentence for writing an open letter in Tanin, a leading Turkish newspaper, addressed to Caliph advising him not to be misled by certain propaganda about his contemplated deposition from the office (Turkey, P.189-190). This was how the Turkish republic brought an end to the office of Caliphate, though in the process betraying its authoritarian character.

The writer is author of the book “The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India” (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.