Mohammedanism/Chapter 3

by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje

Ill

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
OF ISLÂM

In the first period of Islâm, the functions of what we call Church and what we call State were exercised by the same authority. Its political development is therefore of great importance for the understanding of its religious growth.

The Prophet, when he spoke in the name of God, was the lawgiver of his community, and it was rightly understood by the later Faithful that his indispensable explanations of God's word had also legislative power. From the time of the Hijrah the nature of the case made him the ruler, the judge, and the military commander of his theocratic state. Moreover, Allah expressly demanded of the Moslims that they should obey "the Messenger of God, and those amongst them who have authority."^[1] We see by this expression that Mohammed shared his temporal authority with others. His co-rulers were not appointed, their number was nowhere defined, they were not a closed circle; they were the notables of the tribes or other groups who had arrayed themselves under Mohammed's authority, and a few who had gained influence by their personality. In their councils Mohammed's word had no decisive power, except when he spoke in the name of Allah; and we know how careful he was to give oracles only in cases of extreme need.

In the last years of Mohammed's life his authority became extended over a large part of Arabia; but he did very little in the way of centralization of government. He sent ʿâmils, i. e., agents, to the conquered tribes or villages, who had to see that, in the first place, the most important regulations of the Qorân were followed, and, secondly, that the tax into which the duty of almsgiving had been converted was promptly paid, and that the portion of it intended for the central fund at Medina was duly delivered. After the great conquests, the governors of provinces of the Moslim Empire, who often exercised a despotic power, were called by the same title of ʿâmils. The agents of Mohammed, however, did not possess such unlimited authority. It was only gradually that the Arabs learned the value of good discipline and submission to a strong guidance, and adopted the forms of orderly government as they found them in the conquered lands.

Through the death of Mohammed everything became uncertain. The combination under one leadership of such a heterogeneous mass as that of his Arabs would have been unthinkable a few years before. It became quite natural, though, as soon as the Prophet’s mouth was recognized as the organ of Allah's voice. Must this monarchy be continued after Allah's mouthpiece had ceased to exist? It was not at all certain. The force of circumstances and the energy of some of Mohammed’s counselors soon led to the necessary decisions. A number of the notables of the community succeeded in forcing upon the hesitating or unwilling members the acceptance of the monarchy as a permanent institution. There must be a khalîf, a deputy of the Prophet in all his functions (except that of messenger of God), who would be ruler and judge and leader of public worship, but above all amîr al-muʾminîn, "Commander of the Faithful," in the struggle both against the apostate Arabs and against the hostile tribes on the northern border.

But for the military success of the first khalîfs Islâm would never have become a universal religion. Every exertion was made to keep the troops of the Faithful complete. The leaders followed only Mohammed’s example when they represented fighting for Allah’s cause as the most enviable occupation. The duty of military service was constantly impressed upon the Moslims; the lust of booty and the desire for martyrdom, to which the Qorân assigned the highest reward, were excited to the utmost. At a later period, it became necessary in the interests of order to temper the result of this excitement by traditions in which those of the Faithful who died in the exercise of a peaceful, honest profession were declared to be witnesses to the Faith as well as those who were slain in battle against the enemies of God,—traditions in which the real and greater holy war was described as the struggle against evil passions. The necessity of such a mitigating reaction, the spirit in which the chapters on holy war of Mohammedan lawbooks are conceived, and the galvanizing power which down to our own day is contained in a call to arms in the name of Allah, all this shows that in the beginning of Islâm the love of battle had been instigated at the expense of everything else.

The institution of the Khalifate had hardly been agreed upon when the question of who should occupy it became the subject of violent dissension. The first four khalîfs, whose reigns occupied the first thirty years after Mohammed’s death, were Qoraishites, tribesmen of the Prophet, and moreover men who had been his intimate friends. The sacred tradition relates a saying of Mohammed: "The imâms are from Qoraish," intended to confine the Khalifate to men from that tribe. History, however, shows that this edict was forged to give the stamp of legality to the results of a long political struggle. For at Mohammed’s death the Medinese began fiercely contesting the claims of the Qoraishites; and during the reign of Alî, the fourth Khalîf, the Khârijites rebelled, demanding, as democratic rigorists, the free election of khalîfs without restriction to the tribe of Qoraish or to any other descent. Their standard of requirements contained only religious and moral qualities; and they claimed for the community the continual control of the chosen leader's behaviour and the right of deposing him as soon as they found him failing in the fulfilment of his duties. Their anarchistic revolutions, which during more than a century occasionally gave much trouble to the Khalifate, caused Islâm to accentuate the aristocratic character of its monarchy. They were overcome and reduced to a sect, the survivors of which still exist in South-Eastern Arabia, in Zanzibar, and in Northern Africa; however, the actual life of these communities resembles that of their spiritual forefathers to a very remote degree.

Another democratic doctrine, still more radical than that of the Khârijites, makes even non-Arabs eligible for the Khalifate. It must have had a considerable number of adherents, for the tradition which makes the Prophet responsible for it is to be found in the canonic collections. Later generations, however, rendered it harmless by exegesis; they maintained that in this text "commander" meant only subordinate chiefs, and not “the Commander of the Faithful.” It became a dogma in the orthodox Mohammedan would, respected up to the sixteenth century, that only members of the tribe of Qoraish could take the place of the Messenger of God.

The chance of success was greater for the legitimists than for the democratic party. The former wished to make the Khalifate the privilege of Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and his descendants. At first the community did not take much notice of that "House of Mohammed"; and it did not occur to any one to give them a special part in the direction of affairs. Alî and Fâṭima themselves asked to be placed in possession only of certain goods which had belonged to Mohammed, but which the first khalîfs would not allow to be regarded as his personal property; they maintained that the Prophet had had the disposal of them not as owner, but as head of the state. This narrow greed and absence of political insight seemed to be hereditary in the descendants of Alî and Fâṭima; for there was no lack of superstitious reverence for them in later times, and if one of them had possessed something of the political talent of the best Omayyads and Abbasids he would certainly have been able to supplant them.

After the third Khalîf, Othmân, had been murdered by his political opponents, Alî became his successor; but he was more remote than any of his predecessors from enjoying general sympathy. At that time the Shîʿah, the "Party" of the House of the Prophet, gradually arose, which maintained that Alî should have been the first Khalîf, and that his descendants should succeed him. The veneration felt for those descendants increased in the same proportion as that for the Prophet himself; and moreover, there were at all times malcontents, whose advantage would be in joining any revolution against the existing government. Yet the Alids never succeeded in accomplishing anything against the dynasties of the Omayyads, the Abbasids, and the Ottomans, except in a few cases of transitory importance only.

The Faṭimite dynasty, of rather doubtful descent, which ruled a part of Northern Africa and Egypt in the tenth century A.D., was completely suppressed after some two and a half centuries. The sherîfs who have ruled Morocco for more than 950 years were not chiefs of a party that considered the legality of their leadership a dogma; they owe their local Khalifate far more to the out-of-the-way position of their country which prevented Abbasids and Turks from meddling with their affairs. Otherwise, they would have been obliged at any rate to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Great Lord of Constantinople. This was the case with the sherîfs of Mecca, who ever since the twelfth century have regarded the sacred territory as their domain. Their principality arose out of the general political disturbance and the division of the Mohammedan empire into a number of kingdoms, whose mutual strife prevented them from undertaking military operations in the desert. These Sherîfs raised no claim to the Khalifate; and the Shîʿitic tendencies they displayed in the Middle Ages had no political significance, although they had intimate relations with the Zaidites of Southern Arabia. As first Egypt and afterwards Turkey made their protectorate over the holy cities more effective, the princes of Mecca became orthodox.

The Zaidites, who settled in Yemen from the ninth century on, are really Shîʿites, although of the most moderate kind. Without striving after expansion outside Arabia, they firmly refuse to give up their own Khalifate and to acknowledge the sovereignty of any non-Alid ruler; the efforts of the Turks to subdue them or to make a compromise with them have had no lasting results. This is the principal obstacle against their being included in the orthodox community, although their admission is defended, even under present circumstances, by many non-political Moslim scholars. The Zaidites are the remnant of the original Arabian Shîʿah, which for centuries has counted adherents in all parts of the Moslim world, and some of whose tenets have penetrated Mohammedan orthodoxy. The almost general veneration of the sayyids and sherîfs, as the descendants of Mohammed are entitled, is due to this influence.

The Shîʿah outside Arabia, whose adherents used to be persecuted by the official authorities, not without good cause, became the receptacle of all the revolutionary and heterodox ideas maintained by the converted peoples. Alongside of the visible political history of Islâm of the first centuries, these circles built up their evolution of the unseen community, the only true one, guided by the Holy Family, and the reality was to them a continuous denial of the postulates of religion. Their first imâm or successor of the Prophet was Alî, whose divine right had been unjustly denied by the three usurpers, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othmân, and who had exercised actual authority for a few years in constant strife with Khârijites and Omayyads. The efforts of his legitimate successors to assert their authority were constantly drowned in blood; until, at last, there were no more candidates for the dangerous office. This prosaic fact was converted by the adherents of the House of Mohammed into the romance, that the last imâm of a line of seven according to some, and twelve according to others, had disappeared in a mysterious way, to return at the end of days as Mahdî, the Guided One, who should restore the political order which had been disturbed ever since Mohammed’s death. Until his reappearance there is nothing left for the community to do but to await his advent, under the guidance of their secular rulers (e. g., the shâhs of Persia) and enlightened by their authoritative scholars (mujtahids), who explain faith and law to them from the tradition of the Sacred Family. The great majority of Mohammedans, as they do not accept this legitimist theory, are counted by the Shîʿah outside Arabia as unclean heretics, if not as unbelievers.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century this Shîʿah found its political centre in Persia, and opposed itself fanatically to the Sultan of Turkey, who at about the same time came to stand at the head of orthodox Islâm. All differences of doctrine were now sharpened and embittered by political passion, and the efforts of single enlightened princes or scholars to induce the various peoples to extend to each other, across the political barriers, the hand of brotherhood in the principles of faith, all failed. It is only in the last few years that the general political distress of Islâm has inclined the estranged relatives towards reconciliation.

Besides the veneration of the Alids, orthodox Islâm has adopted another Shîʿitic element, the expectation of the Mahdî, which we have just mentioned. Most Sunnites expect that at the end of the world there will come from the House of Mohammed a successor to him, guided by Allah, who will maintain the revealed law as faithfully as the first four khalîfs did according to the idealized history, and who will succeed with God's help in making Islâm victorious over the whole world. That the chiliastic kingdom of the Mahdî must in the end be destroyed by Anti-Christ, in order that Jesus may be able once more to re-establish the holy order before the Resurrection, was a necessary consequence of the amalgamation of the political expectations formed under Shîʿitic influence, with eschatological conceptions formerly borrowed by Islâm from Christianity.

The orthodox Mahdî differs from that of the Shiʿah in many ways. He is not an imâm returning after centuries of disappearance, but a descendant of Mohammed, coming into the world in the ordinary way to fulfil the ideal of the Khalifate. He does not re-establish the legitimate line of successors of the Prophet; but he renews the glorious tradition of the Khalifate, which after the first thirty years was dragged into the general deterioration, common to all human beings. The prophecies concerning his appearance are sometimes of an equally supernatural kind as those of the Shîʿites, so that the period of his coming has passed more and more from the political sphere to which it originally belonged, into that of eschatology. Yet, naturally, it is easier for a popular leader to make himself regarded as the orthodox Mahdî than to play the part of the returned imâm. Mohammedan rulers have had more trouble than they cared for with candidates for the dignity of the Mahdî; and it is not surprising that in official Turkish circles there is a tendency to simplify the Messianic expectation by giving the fullest weight to this traditional saying of Mohammed: "There is no mahdî but Jesus," seeing that Jesus must come from the clouds, whereas other mahdîs may arise from human society.

In the orthodox expectation of the Mahdî the Moslim theory has most sharply expressed its condemnation of the later political history of Islâm. In the course of the first century after the Hijrah the Qorân scholars (qârîs) arose; and these in turn were succeeded by the men of tradition (ahl al-hadîth) and by the canonists (faqîhs) of later times. These learned men (ulamâʾ) would not endure any interference with their right to state with authority what Islâm demanded of its leaders. They laid claim to an interpretative authority concerning the divine law, which bordered upon supreme legislative power; their agreement (Ijmâʿ) was that of the infallible community. But just as beside this legislative agreement, a dogmatic and a mystic agreement grew up, in the same way there was a separate Ijmâʿ regarding the political government, upon which the canonists could exercise only an indirect influence. In other words since the accession of the Omayyad khalîfs, the actual authority rested in the hands of dynasties, and under the Abbasids government assumed even a despotic character. This relation between the governors and governed, originally alien to Islâm, was not changed by the transference of the actual power into the hands of wezîrs and officers of the bodyguard; nor yet by the disintegration of the empire into a number of small despotisms, the investiture of which by the khalîf became a mere formality. Dynastic and political questions were settled in a comparatively small circle, by court intrigue, stratagems, and force; and the canonists, like the people, were bound to accept the results. Politically inclined interpreters of the law might try to justify their compulsory assent to the facts by theories about the Ijmâʿ of the notables residing in the capital, who took the urgent decisions about the succession, which decisions were subsequently confirmed by general homage to the new prince; but they had no illusions about the real influence of the community upon the choice of its leader. The most independent scholars made no attempt to disguise the fact that the course which political affairs had taken was the clearest proof of the moral degeneration which had set in, and they pronounced an equally bold and merciless criticism upon the government in all its departments. It became a matter of course that a pious scholar must keep himself free from all intercourse with state officials, on pain of losing his reputation.

The bridge across the gulf that separated the spiritual from the temporal authorities was formed by those state officials who, for the practice of their office, needed a knowledge of the divine law, especially the qâdhîs. It was originally the duty of these judges to decide all legal differences between Mohammedans, or men of other creeds under Mohammedan protection, who called for their decision. The actual division between the rulers and the interpreters of the law caused an ever-increasing limitation of the authority of the qâdîs. The laws of marriage, family, and inheritance remained, however, their inalienable territory; and a number of other matters, in which too great a religious interest was involved to leave them to the caprice of the governors or to the customary law outside Islâm, were usually included. But as the qâdhîs were appointed by the governors, they were obliged in the exercise of their office to give due consideration to the wishes of their constituents; and moreover they were often tainted by what was regarded in Mohammedan countries as inseparable from government employment: bribery.

On this account, the canonists, although it was from their ranks that the officials of the qâdhî court were to be drawn, considered no words too strong to express their contempt for the office of qâdhî. In handbooks of the Law of all times, the qâdhîs “of our time” are represented as unscrupulous beings, whose unreliable judgments were chiefly dictated by their greed. Such an opinion would not have acquired full force, if it had not been ascribed to Mohammed; in fact, the Prophet, according to a tradition, had said that out of three qâdhîs two are destined to Hell. Anecdotes of famous scholars who could not be prevailed upon by imprisonment or castigation to accept the office of qâdhî are innumerable. Those who succumbed to the temptation forfeited the respect of the circle to which they had belonged.

I once witnessed a case of this kind, and the former friends of the qâdhi did not spare him their bitter reproaches. He remarked that the judge, whose duty it was to maintain the divine law, verily held a noble office. They refuted this by saying that this defence was admissible only for earlier and better times, but not for “the qâdhîs of our time.” To which he cuttingly replied: “And ye, are ye canonists of the better, the ancient time?” In truth, the students of sacred science are just as much “of our time” as the qâdhîs. Even in the eleventh century the great theologian Ghazâlî counted them all equal.^[2] Not a few of them give their authoritative advice according to the wishes of the highest bidder or of him who has the greatest influence, hustle for income from pious institutions, and vie with each other in a revel of casuistic subtleties. But among those scholars there are and always have been some who, in poverty and simplicity, devote their life to the study of Allah's law with the sole object of pleasing him; among the qâdhîs such are not easily to be found. Amongst the other state officials the title of qâdhîs may count as a spiritual one, and the public may to a certain extent share this reverence; but in the eyes of the pious and of the canonists such glory is only reflected from the clerical robe, in which the worldling disguises himself.

To the muftî criticism is somewhat more favourable than to the qâdhî. A muftî is not necessarily an official; every canonist who, at the request of a layman, expounds to him the meaning of the law on any particular point and gives a fatwa, acts as a muftî. Be the question in reference to the behaviour of the individual towards God or towards man, with regard to his position in a matter of litigation, in criticism of a state regulation or of a sentence of a judge, or out of pure love of knowledge, the scholar is morally obliged to the best of his knowledge to enlighten the enquirer. He ought to do this for the love of God; but he must live, and the enquirer is expected to give him a suitable present for his trouble. This again gives rise to the danger that he who offers most is attended to first; and that for the liberal rich man a dish is prepared from the casuistic store, as far as possible according to his taste. The temptation is by no means so great as that to which the qâdhî is exposed; especially since the office of judge has become an article of commerce, so that the very first step towards the possession of it is in the direction of Hell. Moreover in "these degenerate times"—which have existed for about ten centuries—the acceptance of an appointment to the function of qâdhî is not regarded as a duty, while a competent scholar may only refuse to give a fatwa under exceptional circumstances. Still, an unusually strong character is needed by the muftî, if he is not to fall into the snares of the world.

Besides qâdhîs who settle legal disputes of a certain kind according to the revealed law, the state requires its own advisers who can explain that law, i. e., official muftîs. Firstly, the government itself may be involved in a litigation; moreover in some government regulations it may be necessary to avoid giving offence to canonists and their strict disciples. In such cases it is better to be armed beforehand with an expert opinion than to be exposed to dangerous criticism which might find an echo in a wide circle. The official muftî must therefore be somewhat pliable, to say the least. Moreover, any private person has the right to put questions to the state muftî; and the qâdhî court is bound to take his answers into account in its decisions. In this way the muftîs have absorbed a part of the duties of the qâdhîs, and so their office is dragged along in the degradation that the unofficial canonists denounce unweariedly in their writings and in their teaching.

The way in which the most important muftî places are filled and above all the position which the head-muftî of the Turkish Empire, the Sheikh-ul-Islâm, holds at any particular period, may well serve as a touchstone of the influence of the canonists on public life. If this is great, then even the most powerful sultan has only the possibility of choice between a few great scholars, put forward or at all events not disapproved of by their own guild, strengthened by public opinion. If, on the other hand, there is no keen interest felt in the Sharîʿah (Divine Law), then the temporal rulers can do pretty much what they like with these representatives of the canon law. Under the tyrannical sway of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, the Sheikh-ul-Islâm was little more than a tool for him and his palace clique, and for their own reasons, the members of the Committee of Union and Progress, who rule Constantinople since 1908, made no change in this: each new ministry had its own Sheikh-ul-Islâm, who had to be, above everything, a faithful upholder of the constitutional theory held by the Committee. The time is past when the Sultan and the Porte, in framing even the most pressing reform, must first anxiously assure themselves of the position that the hojas, tolbas, softas, the theologians in a word, would take towards it, and of the influence that the Sheikh-ul-Islâm could use in opposition to their plans. The political authority makes its deference to the canonists dependent upon their strict obedience.

This important change is a natural consequence of the modernization of Mohammedan political life, a movement through which the expounders of a law which has endeavoured to remain stationary since the year 1000 must necessarily get into straits. This explains also why the religious life of Mohammedans is in some respects freer in countries under non-Mohammedan authority, than under a Mohammedan government. Under English, Dutch, or French rule the ʿulamâs are less interfered with in their teaching, the muftîs in their recommendations, and the qâdhîs in their judgments of questions of marriage and inheritance than in Turkey, where the life of Islâm, as state religion, lies under official control. In indirectly governed "native states" the relation of Mohammedan "Church and State" may much more resemble that in Turkey, and this is sometimes to the advantage of the sovereign ruler. Under the direct government of a modern state, the Mohammedan group is treated as a religious community, whose particular life has just the same claim to independence as that of other denominations. The only justifiable limitation is that the program of the forcible reduction of the world to Mohammedan authority be kept within the scholastic walls as a point of eschatology, and not considered as a body of prescriptions, the execution of which must be prepared.

The extensive political program of Islâm, developed during the first centuries of astounding expansion, has yet not prevented millions of Mohammedans from resigning themselves to reversed conditions in which at the present time many more Mohammedans live under foreign authority than under their own. The acceptance of this change was facilitated by the historical pessimism of Islâm, which makes the mind prepared for every sort of decay, and by the true Moslim habit of resignation to painful experiences, not through fatalism, but through reverence for Allah’s inscrutable will. At the same time, it would be a gross mistake to imagine that the idea of universal conquest may be considered as obliterated. This is the case with the intellectuals and with many practical commercial or industrial men; but the canonists and the vulgar still live in the illusion of the days of Islâm’s greatness.

The legists continue to ground their appreciation of every actual political condition on the law of the holy war, which war ought never to be allowed to cease entirely until all mankind is reduced to the authority of Islâm—the heathen by conversion, the adherents of acknowledged Scripture by submission. Even if they admit the improbability of this at present, they are comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms; and they fervently join with the Friday preacher, when he pronounces the prayer, taken from the Qorân: “And lay not on us, O our Lord, that for which we have not strength, but blot out our sins and forgive us and have pity upon us. Thou art our Master; grant us then to conquer the unbelievers!" And the common people are willingly taught by the canonists and feed their hope of better days upon the innumerable legends of the olden time and the equally innumerable apocalyptic prophecies about the future. The political blows that fall upon Islâm make less impression upon their simple minds than the senseless stories about the power of the Sultan of Stambul, that would instantly be revealed if he were not surrounded by treacherous servants, and the fantastic tidings of the miracles that Allah works in the Holy Cities of Arabia which are inaccessible to the unfaithful.

The conception of the Khalifate still exercises a fascinating influence, regarded in the light of a central point of union against the unfaithful. Apart from the ʿâmils, Mohammed's agents amongst the Arabian tribes, the Khalifate was the only political institution which arose out of the necessity of the Moslim community, without foreign influence. It rescued Islâm from threatening destruction, and it led the Faithful to conquest. No wonder that in historic legend the first four occupiers of that leadership, who, from Medina, accomplished such great things, have been glorified into saints, and are held up to all the following generations as examples to put them to shame. In the Omayyads the ancient aristocracy of Mecca came to the helm, and under them, the Mohammedan state was above all, as Wellhausen styled it, "the Arabian Empire." The best khalîfs of this house had the political wisdom to give the governors of the provinces sufficient independence to prevent schism, and to secure to themselves the authority in important matters. The reaction of the non-Arabian converts against the suppression of their own culture by the Arabian conquerors found support in the opposition parties, above all with the Shîʿah. The Abbasids, cleverer politicians than the notoriously unskilled Alids, made use of the Alid propaganda to secure the booty to themselves at the right moment. The means which served the Alids for the establishment only of an invisible dynasty of princes who died as martyrs, enabled the descendants of Mohammed's uncle Abbas to overthrow the Omayyads, and to found their own Khalifate at Bagdad, shining with the brilliance of an Eastern despotism.

When it is said that the Abbasid Khalifate maintained itself from 750 till the Mongol storm in the middle of the thirteenth century, that only refers to external appearance. After a brief success, the actual power of these khalîfs was transferred to the hands, first, of the captains of their bodyguard, then of sultan-dynasties, whose forcibly acquired powers were legalized by a formal investiture. In the same way the large provinces developed into independent kingdoms, whose rulers considered the nomination-diplomas from Bagdad in the light of mere ornaments. Compared to this irreparable disintegration of the empire, temporary schisms such as the Omayyad Khalifate in Spain, the Fatimid Khalifate in Egypt, and here and there an independent organization of the Khârijites were of little significance.

It seems strange that the Moslim peoples, although the theory of Islâm never attributed an hereditary character to the Khalifate, attached so high a value to the Abbasid name, that they continued unanimously to acknowledge the Khalifate of Bagdad for centuries during which it possessed no influence. But the idea of hereditary rulers was deeply rooted in most of the peoples converted to Islâm, and the glorious period of the first Abbasids so strongly impressed itself on the mind of the vulgar, that the appearance of continuation was easily taken for reality. Its voidness would sooner have been realized, if lack of energy had not prevented the later Abbasids from trying to recover the lost power by the sword, or if amongst their rivals who could also boast of a popular tradition—e. g., the Omayyads, or still more the Alids—a political genius had succeeded in forming a powerful opposition. But the sultans who ruled the various states did not want to place all that they possessed in the balance on the chance of gaining the title of Khalîf. The Moslim world became accustomed to the idea that the honoured House of the Prophet's uncle Abbas existed for the purpose of lending an additional glory to Mohammedan princes by a diploma. Even after the destruction of Bagdad by the Mongols in 1258, from which only a few Abbasids escaped alive, Indian princes continued to value visits or deeds of appointment granted them by some begging descendant of the "Glorious House." The sultans of Egypt secured this luxury permanently for themselves by taking a branch of the family under their protection, who gave the glamour of their approval to every new result of the never-ending quarrels of succession, until in the beginning of the sixteenth century Egypt, together with so many other lands, was swallowed up by the Turkish conqueror.

These new rulers, who added the Byzantine Empire to Islâm, who with Egypt brought Southern and Western Arabia with the Holy Cities also under their authority, and caused all the neighbouring princes, Moslim and Christian alike, to tremble on their thrones, thought it was time to abolish the senseless survival of the Abbasid glory. The prestige of the Ottomans was as great as that of the Khalifate in its most palmy days had been; and they would not be withheld from the assumption of the title. There is a doubtful tale of the abdication of the Abbasids in their favour, but the question is of no importance. The Ottomans owed their Khalifate to their sword; and this was the only argument used by such canonists as thought it worth their while to bring such an incontestable fact into reconciliation with the law. This was not strictly necessary, as they had been accustomed for eight centuries to acquiesce in all sorts of unlawful acts which history demonstrated to be the will of Allah.

The sense of the tradition that established descent from the tribe of Qoraish as necessary for the highest dignity in the community was capable of being weakened by explanation; and, even without that, the leadership of the irresistible Ottomans was of more value to Islâm than the chimerical authority of a powerless Qoraishite, In our time, you can hear Qoraishites, and even Alids, warmly defend the claims of the Turkish sultans to the Khalifate, as they regard these as the only Moslim princes capable of championing the threatened rights of Islâm.

Even the sultans of Stambul could not think of restoring the authority of the Khalîf over the whole Mohammedan world. This was prevented not only by the schismatic kingdoms, khalifates, or imâmates like Shîʿitic Persia, which was consolidated just in the sixteenth century, by the unceasing opposition of the Imâms of Yemen, and Khârijite principalities at the extremities of the Mohammedan world. Besides these, there were numerous princes in Central Asia, in India, and in Central Africa, whom either the Khalifate had always been obliged to leave to themselves, or who had become so estranged from it that, unless they felt the power of the Turkish arms, they preferred to remain as they were. Moreover, Islâm had extended itself not only by political means, but also by trade and colonization into countries even the existence of which was hardly known in the political centres of Islâm, e. g., into Central Africa or the Far East of Asia. Without thinking of rivalling the Abbasids or their successors, some of the princes of such remote kingdoms, e. g., the sherîfs of Morocco, assumed the title of Commander of the Faithful, bestowed upon them by their flatterers. Today, there are petty princes in East India under Dutch sovereignty who decorate themselves with the title of Khalîf, without suspecting that they are thereby guilty of a sort of arrogant blasphemy.

Such exaggeration is not supported by the canonists; but these have devised a theory, which gives a foundation to the authority of Mohammedan princes, who never had a real or fictitious connection with a real or fictitious Khalifate. Authority there must be, everywhere and under all circumstances; far from the centre this should be exercised, according to them, by the one who has been able to gain it and who knows how to hold it; and all the duties are laid upon him, which, in a normal condition, would be discharged by the Khalîf or his representative. For this kind of authority the legists have even invented a special name: "shaukah," which means actual influence, the authority which has spontaneously arisen in default of a chief who in one form or another can be considered as a mandatary of the Khalifate.

Now, it is significant that many of those Mohammedan governors, who owe their existence to wild growth in this way, seek, especially in our day, for connection with the Khalifate, or, at least, wish to be regarded as naturally connected with the centre. The same is true of such whose former independence or adhesion to the Turkish Empire has been replaced by the sovereignty of a Western state. Even amongst the Moslim peoples placed under the direct government of European states a tendency prevails to be considered in some way or another subjects of the Sultan-Khalîf. Some scholars explain this phenomenon by the spiritual character which the dignity of Khalîf is supposed to have acquired under the later Abbasids, and retained since that time, until the Ottoman princes combined it again with the temporal dignity of sultan. According to this view the later Abbasids were a sort of popes of Islâm; while the temporal authority, in the central districts as well as in the subordinate kingdoms, was in the hands of various sultans. The sultans of Constantinople govern, then, under this name, as much territory as the political vicissitudes allow them to govern—i. e., the Turkish Empire; as khalîfs, they are the spiritual heads of the whole of Sunnite Islâm.

Though this view, through the ignorance of European statesmen and diplomatists, may have found acceptance even by some of the great powers, it is nevertheless entirely untrue; unless by "spiritual authority" we are to understand the empty appearance of worldly authority. This appearance was all that the later Abbasids retained after the loss of their temporal power; spiritual authority of any kind they never possessed.

The spiritual authority in catholic Islâm reposes in the legists, who in this respect are called in a tradition the "heirs of the prophets." Since they could no longer regard the khalîfs as their leaders, because they walked in worldly ways, they have constituted themselves independently beside and even above them; and the rulers have been obliged to conclude a silent contract with them, each party binding itself to remain within its own limits.^[3] If this contract be observed, the legists not only are ready to acknowledge the bad rulers of the world, but even to preach loyalty towards them to the laity.

The most supremely popular part of the ideal of Islâm, the reduction of the whole world to Moslim authority, can only be attempted by a political power. Notwithstanding the destructive criticism of all Moslim princes and state officials by the canonists, it was only from them that they could expect measures to uphold and extend the power to Islâm; and on this account they continually cherished the ideal of the Khalifate.

In the first centuries it was the duty of Mohammedans who had become isolated, and who had for instance been conquered by "unbelievers," to do "hijrah," i. e., emigration for Allah's sake, as the converted Arabs had done in Mohammed's time by emigrating to Medina to strengthen the ranks of the Faithful. This soon became impracticable, so that the legists relaxed the prescription by concessions to "the force of necessity." Resignation was thus permitted, even recommended; but the submission to non-Mussulmans was always to be regarded as temporary and abnormal. Although the partes infidelium have grown larger and larger, the eye must be kept fixed upon the centre, the Khalifate, where every movement towards improvement must begin. A Western state that admits any authority of a khalif over its Mohammedan subjects, thus acknowledges, not the authority of a pope of a Moslim Church, but in simple ignorance is feeding political programs, which, however vain, always have the power of stirring Mohammedan masses to confusion and excitement.

Of late years Mohammedan statesmen in their intercourse with their Western colleagues are glad to take the latter's point of view; and, in discussion, accept the comparison of the Khalifate with the Papacy, because they are aware that only in this form the Khalifate can be made acceptable to powers who have Mohammedan subjects. But for these subjects the Khalîf is then their true prince, who is temporarily hindered in the exercise of his government, but whose right is acknowledged even by their unbelieving masters.

In yet another respect the canonists need the aid of the temporal rulers. An alert police is counted by them amongst the indispensable means of securing purity of doctrine and life. They count it to the credit of princes and governors that they enforced by violent measures seclusion and veiling of the women, abstinence from drinking, and that they punished by flogging the negligent with regard to fasting or attending public worship. The political decay of Islâm, the increasing number of Mohammedans under foreign rule, appears to them, therefore, doubly dangerous, as they have little faith in the proof of Islâm's spiritual goods against life in a freedom which to them means license.

They find that every political change, in these terrible times, is to the prejudice of Islâm, one Moslim people after another losing its independent existence; and they regard it as equally dangerous that Moslim princes are induced to accommodate their policy and government to new international ideas of individual freedom, which threaten the very life of Islâm. They see the antagonism to all foreign ideas, formerly considered as a virtue by every true Moslim, daily losing ground, and they are filled with consternation by observing in their own ranks the contamination of modernist ideas. The brilliant development of the system of Islâm followed the establishment of its material power; so the rapid decline of that political power which we are witnessing makes the question urgent, whether Islâm has a spiritual essence able to survive the fall of such a material support. It is certainly not the canonists who will detect the kernel; "verily we are God's and verily to Him do we return," they cry in helpless amazement, and their consolation is in the old prayer: "And lay not on us, O our Lord, that for which we have no strength, but blot out our sins and forgive us and have mercy upon us. Thou art our Master; grant us then to conquer the Unbelievers!"

1. Qorân, iv., 62.
2. Ghazâlî, Iḥya, book i., ch. 6, quotes the words of a pious scholar of the olden time: “The ʿulamâʾ will [on the Day of Judgment] be gathered amongst the prophets, but the qâdhîs amongst the temporal rulers.” Ghazâlî adds: “alike with these qâdhîs are all those canonists who make use of their learning for worldly purposes.”
3. That the Khalifate is no way to be compared with the Papacy, that Islâm has never regarded the Khalîf as its spiritual head, I have repeatedly explained since 1882 (in "Nieuwe Bijdragen tot de kennis van den Islam," in Bijdr. tot de Taal-, Landen Volkenkunde van Nederl. Indië, Volgr. 4, Deel vi, in an article, "De Islam," in De Gids, May, 1886, in Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales, 5me année, No. 106, etc.). I am pleased to find the same views expressed by Prof. M. Hartmann in Die Welt des Islams, Bd. i., pp. 147–8.