Longing for the Lost Caliphate: A Transregional History, by Mona Hassan

Abstract

The idea of caliphate has been very much in the news in the last three years, often with sinister and threatening overtones. The ideologues of the so-called Islamic state have made it their clarion call, arguing that to get back to that original and pure form of Islamic government is the only way to resolve the obvious failures of political process in the Middle East. Despite this, the history of caliphate as an institution has attracted little scholarly attention since Sir Thomas Arnold’s book on the subject published in 1921. Clearly caliphate, its history, how it is remembered and how it is used in contemporary political debate is a major issue. This book by Mona Hassan is a superb example of how historical scholarship can illuminate some of these questions. This is very much a book of two halves. In the first section, the author discusses the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258 and the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad which, for all Muslims, had been a vital part of the structure of Islam since its inception in 750: it was, in a well-known phrase, ‘the tent pegs of Islam’ without which the whole edifice of Muslim society would collapse. Modern historians have tended to dismiss the significance of the 1258 event, arguing that the caliphate had long ceased to be a major force in the Islamic world and that most Muslims hardly noticed its passing. It is one of the achievements of Hassan’s book to show, by a careful reading of a large amount of contemporary and near-contemporary evidence, that this was not the case. As she says, ‘The world without a caliph—this disruption of the natural order of things—therefore boded the imminent end of time,’ and this apprehension was reinforced by a spectacular volcanic eruption in the neighbourhood of the holy city of Medina in 1256 and the coincidental destruction of the Prophet’s mosque in a great fire: omens and portents indeed.