The idea of appropriate leadership was informed very early by the Sunni/Shi’a split. Muhammad’s son-in-law and cousin, ‘Ali, and then 'Ali's descendents, were authorised to replace Muhammad as a holy leadership family by Muhammad and the Qur’an according to the branch of Islam that became known as the Shi’a. The orthodox Muslims often led by Aisha, Muhammad’s young wife, and now called Sunnis, however, disputed this initially political assertion of authority although they did also choose the first Caliphs based on their status as members of Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe. ‘Ali, himself, eventually accepted the appointment of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, and is known to have given him advice. Nevertheless a Shi’a opposition to the early Caliphs remained which eventually formulated the idea that the family of Muhammad beginning with ‘Ali should be leaders of the Islamic community and could also be prophets. This last point especially added a definite religious dimension to Shi’a leadership theory which Sunni Caliphs, however pious, did not possess in Sunni theory. A group of Shi’a known as Khawarij further split from the Shi’a when ‘Ali, upon eventually becoming Caliph, failed to interest himself in finding and prosecuting the assassin responsible for the murder of ‘Uthman, his immediate predecessor in the role. He was occupied at the time with asserting the rule of law and order in the Caliphate, however, and soon died himself at the hands of the Khawarij themselves. ‘Ali’s family again accepted another new Sunni Caliph who established himself as the first Umayyad Caliph upon ‘Ali’s death (and the new Caliph’s near death, also at the hands of the Khawarij). On this occasion, however, they imposed a condition for their support (that ‘Ali’s son Husayn would be the next Caliph). When the first Umayyad died and his son became Caliph thus beginning an Umayyad dynasty, Husayn went to war against the new Caliph for the Shi’a principle. He was killed in this new civil war at Karbala in around 680. This allegedly self-less sacrifice and martyrdom thus established the religious credentials of the Shi’a brand and it left the living Shi’a with a sense of guilt at allowing the death to happen.
The Umayyads now thus established became the new model for Quraysh Sunni Islamic dynastic rule (with continuing Shi’a and Khawarij opposition) which the ‘Abbasid Caliphs, who had relied on Shi'a and Khawarij support while in opposition to the Umayyad Caliphs, later also followed. The split was formalised from around 660.
The Arab history books were thus written from the Sunni viewpoint (as history tends to be written by the winners). The one exception to Sunni rule of Caliphates was the period of Fatimid rule of a Shi’a Caliphate centred on Egypt and North Africa from the 10th to the 12th Centuries.
The theories of leadership on both sides, Sunni and Shi’a, reflect this unequal history. Piety was a highly regarded leadership quality on both sides but the Shi’a theory gave an emphasis to willingness to become a martyr as a leadership quality which the Sunni theory didn’t. The ability to maintain law and order was perhaps the most highly valued quality. The theories can be essentially pieced together from discussions of the merits of potential Caliphs throughout that history. Appropriate leadership, for the Sunni and Shi’a theorists, had thus been decided by both the history and the religious requirements of Caliphates.
Succession processes were also discussed. In the Shi’a tradition, the Imam (being the overall chief Shi'a Muslim in this context - Imam can also simply mean the local leader of a prayer group) nominated his successor (from among ‘Ali’s family, of course). The Sunni ideal tradition was more geared towards some form of election by the people, as had arguably occurred with at least the first four Caliphs. Once dynasties began to form, the theory began to be more untenable as an expression of the ideal reality.
Although the Khawarij still exist, they are a much less significant group in Islamic history and leadership theory having never formed a Caliphate themselves. They alone opined that any Muslim could be a Caliph provided he or she was pious and followed the best examples regardless of any tribal pedigree. They were also alone in reasoning that a Caliph should be removed violently as required to maintain the religious purity of the rule of the Caliphate.
The first Sunni jurist and theorist I will consider, Abu Jusuf (d. 798), was a major disciple of Abu Hanifa. He was a chief judge (Qadi) in the time of the ‘Abbasid Caliph, Harun ar-Rashid. His book of government principles, Kharāj, discussed the duties of leadership in the context of an ‘Abbasid concern to return to moral principles and the ideal of moderation that it was thought had been left behind by at least the most recent Umayyad Caliphs. Abu Jusuf stressed the value of the pursuit of a sense of justice as central to good leadership and thus set a trend which other jurists took up. The maintenance of a just legal system could thus rehabilitate a leader regardless of how he had arrived in power. This effectively suited his ‘Abbasid masters because it made just dynastic rule feasibly Islamic (provided ‘Abbasid rulers could live up to their promise of just rule) while shafting what had been generally regarded as the manifestly unjust Umayyad dynasty.
A major opposing strand in Sunni political thinking began with the jurist, Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (750 – 855). He led a school of thought known as Ahl al-Hadith and is famous for proposing to his students that they keep strictly out of the game of politics and of massaging the political egos of the powerful and politicians. He also rated the ability to maintain community harmony and unity over either the justness or legitimacy of the rule of a ruler thus lending support to particularly authoritarian forms of government. He thought essentially that any ruler could be acceptable provided his subjects could freely practice Islam. These kinds of ideas which valued community unity above all were popular with many scholars who came after Ibn Hanbal. His school of thought produced Ibn Taymiyyah (see below and in later posts for more details) and the 18th Century thinker Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (also discussed later), whose ideas, in principle, form the basis for the modern state of Saudi Arabia. The group tended to seek answers to all problems in the example of the Prophet based on the Hadith, hence their name, People of the Hadith, but also in examples of the Prophet’s Companions and some of the earliest Caliphs.
Arkoun suggests that the failure of Muhammad’s political example to materialise into a succeeding successful and undivided religious polity led to the question of authority assuming a great importance the only answer to which appeared to be the Qur’an and Hadith. The certainty of the merit of returning to earlier models of the Shi’a also ensured the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979's success, he suggests. He suggests further that the Sunni tradition generally has been to accept no combined political-religious authority despite the ideal rule proposed by the Hanbali School in particular.
Mawardi (d. 1058) was a Shafi’i jurist and government advisor. He wrote Al-Akham as-Sultaniyya (Rules or Judgment of the Political Authority) and Adab ad-Dunya wa ad-Din (Etiquette of the World and Religion). Based on these works, he was probably the most political of the jurists. He had the idea that the people ought to at least be consulted in the choice of their leader or even choose their leader. Nevertheless, true choice was a mere ideal for Mawardi; as he recognised its essential unreality in his contemporary political circumstances, he settled for consultation. He formally approved of the system of the three Caliphates of his own time on the condition that they all remained at peace with one another. The second title above was concerned with harmonising the morals of religion with those of the world and its politics.
Ghazali (d. 1111) was also a Shafi’i jurist (at first) although he is also known as a major Sufi thinker and mystic, a theologian and for his polymathic abilities. He worked for the Saljuq dynasty and wrote Advice to the Kings (Nasihat al-Muluk, written in Persian despite the Arabic title), his only known work in Persian. The Saljuqs sought to justify Sunnism in a time when the Shi’a Fatimid Caliphate sought to win the hearts and minds of the Sunni subjects of the Saljuqs. His focus was on law and order but also on justice.
Ibn Hanbal’s ideas were expanded upon by the Damascene Hanbali jurist, Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263 – 1328). He disagreed with Ibn Hanbal both on unjust rule being permissible and on jurists keeping out of politics. He lived while the Mongols and Mamluks were in power and oppressing their populations. However he finally agreed with Ibn Hanbal that the greater values were still law and order, Islam being able to be practiced and community unity. In fact, he stressed the point that leaders were to continue to be obeyed as long as they permitted Islam to be freely practiced. He was apparently well educated in Greek methods of logic which he used with success to further his own arguments.
In line with his school’s atavistic style, he, too, strictly referred all actions back to the Qur’an and the Sunna for confirmation of their acceptability. He was intolerant of the Shi’a, ‘Alawites, Christians, Jews, those who venerated ‘saints’ excessively and Sufis. He was also strictly Salafi, meaning he referred only to the Qur’an, the Prophet and the Companions of the Prophet for examples of how to live and make law.
Thus we can see that essentially "academic but pious" lawyers willingly played an occasional role in providing timely political advice for good government to rulers especially in the area of succession and the duty to rule well. The less temporal word for leadership, imama, was usually employed rather than the more temporal word, khilafa, related as it is to the temporal term, khalifa (Caliph), meaning both deputy and successor. They thus sought to clothe the raw power of their leaders with idealised legitimacy as required.
The concept of bay’a, originally apparently meaning simply a contract of sale, was useful in this regard. ‘Representative’ subjects of the sovereign came to be called before the sovereign to give him formal ‘assent’ to rule (and commit to his rule) by means of a handshake (the bay'a).
Meanwhile, the temporal Caliphates were never features of Islam which were timeless, far-reaching or long-lasting in the way certain Islamists today who aim for a united world Caliphate suggest that they were. Members of today’s Hizb ut-Tahrir, for example, seem to regard the period between the time of the Prophet and the 20th century official end of the Ottoman ‘Caliphate’ as an unbroken period of paradise on earth under a united Caliphate. They were actually rulerships based on the temporary acquisition of power over a territorial sphere by formally Islamic rulers at least as much as on perfect religious rule. The Caliphate in the central Islamic lands actually ended in 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad. Following this, family members of the last ‘Abbasid Caliph were co-opted as mere figureheads by Mamluk rulers of mainly Egypt until around 1517. The ‘Caliph’ thus chosen was formally prayed for each Friday at khutba in Mamluk lands but his likeness did not appear on Mamluk coinage. The term ‘Caliph’ was also sometimes used by local rulers after the fall of the ‘Abbasids at Baghdad such as in Sudan and West Africa but not systematically and only accepted locally as a synonym for an Islamic king or Emir. Several major Islamic rulers deliberately chose not to adopt the title because of the competition such a high title might promote in much the same way the grand title of Emperor as opposed to king might in the West. The king of Morocco goes some small way to calling for the status of Caliph without taking this risk of naming himself Caliph by styling himself ‘Commander of the Faithful’, a styling adopted by most of what I will call the ‘true’ Caliphs, whose rule ended in 1258.
The Ottoman Sultans and Emperors saw no need to use the title "Caliph" while the Empire was strong. In 1517 the empire had consumed the territory of the Mamluks and their ‘Caliphs’ without taking any interest in the Caliphs of the Mamluks themselves, though they did take with them a mantle reputed to have been worn by Muhammad that had been worn by those "Caliphs" on ceremonial occasions. Over the long period of Ottoman rule, only two Sultans actually used the title, ‘Abdül Hamid I (r. 1774 – 1789) and ‘Abdül Hamid II (r. 1876 – 1909). Mehmed II and Selim I (who conquered the Mamluks) may also have used the title to justify their conquests of other Islamic lands.
‘Abdül Hamid I was clearly seeking to promote common Muslim feeling in his large empire as he fought Arab nationalism and sought to promote the unpopular measures of modernisation, opening of markets to the West and relative non-discrimination against Christian minorities, while Muhammad 'Ali (formally his inferior) was being relatively successful in his Arab Ottoman province of Egypt. In between the two ‘Abdül Hamids, Selim III found another way to gain Islamic credibility (he took control of the Holy Shrines of the Hijaz) and so never apparently felt the need to use the title, Caliph.
The title availed ‘Abdül Hamid II little however as he was soon deposed by republican, Atatürk. Following ‘Abdül Hamid’s deposition, ‘Abdul Mejid II was briefly ‘elected’ a figurehead Caliph before the position was finally abolished by the Turkish Republic in 1924. Following this, the Sharif of Mecca claimed the title but it lapsed upon his death in the 1930s and has not been re-used by either the Saudi royal family or the family of the Sharif. The title was never used on Ottoman coinage.
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