THE MODERN QUESTION OF THE CALIPHATE.
About the year 1515 of our era (921 of the Hejra), Selim I., Padishah of
the Ottoman Turks and Emperor of Constantinople, finding himself the
most powerful prince of his day in Islam, and wishing still further to
consolidate his rule, conceived the idea of reviving in his own person
the extinct glories of the Caliphate. He had more than one claim to be
considered their champion by orthodox Mohammedans, for he was the
grandson of that Mahomet II. who had finally extinguished the Roman
Empire of the East, and he had himself just ended a successful campaign
against the heretical Shah of Persia, head of the Sect of Ali. His only
rivals among Sunite princes were the Sultan el Hind, or, as we call him,
the Great Mogul, the Sultan el Gharb, or Emperor of Morocco, and the
Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, then known to the world as _par excellence_
the Sultan.
With the two former, as rulers of what were remote lands of Islam,
Selim seems to have troubled himself little; but he made war on Egypt.
In 1516 he invaded Syria, its outlying province, and in 1517 he entered
Cairo. There he made prisoner the reigning Mameluke, Kansaw el Ghouri,
and had him publicly beheaded, or according to another account, received
his head from a soldier, who had killed him where he lay on the ground
after falling (for the Sultan was an old man) from his horse. He then,
in virtue of a very doubtful cession made to him of his rights by one
Motawakkel Ibn Omar el Hakim, a descendant of the house of Abbas, whom
he found living as titular Caliph in Cairo, took to himself the
following style and title: Sultan es Salatin, wa Hakan el Hawakin, Malek
el Bahreyn, wa Hami el Barreyn, Khalifeh Rasul Allah, Emir el Mumenin,
wa Sultan, wa Khan--titles which may be thus interpreted: King of Kings
and Lord of Lords, Monarch of the two seas (the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea), and Protector of the two lands (Hejaz and Syria, the holy
lands of Islam), Successor of the Apostle of God, Prince of the
Faithful, and Emperor. It is said that he first had the satisfaction of
hearing his name mentioned in the public prayers as Caliph when he
visited the great mosque of Zacharias at Aleppo on his return northwards
in 1519.[10]
Such, in a few words, is historically the origin of the modern
Caliphate, and such are the titles now borne by Selim's descendant, Abd
el Hamid. It is difficult at this distance of time, and in the absence
of detailed contemporary narratives, to do more than guess the effect on
Mussulmans of his day of Selim's religious pretensions. To all alike,
friends as well as foes, he must in the first instance have appeared as
an usurper, for before him no man not of the house of Koreysh, and so a
kinsman of their Prophet, had ever claimed to be his spiritual heir.
Indeed, it was a maxim with all schools of theology of all ages that
descent from the Koreysh was the first title to the Caliphate; but we
may reasonably suppose that within the limits of his own dominions, and
even to the mass of the vulgar beyond them, the Ottoman Emperor's
sublime proceedings met with approval.
Selim was a portentous figure in Islam; and the splendour of his
apparition in the north dazzled the eyes of all. Mussulmans must have
seen in him and his house the restorers of their political fortunes and
the champion of their religion against Christendom; and a departure from
established rule in his favour may well have seemed justified to pious
persons as the best hope for the future of their creed. Selim was
already temporal lord of the greater part of Islam, and he might be
expected thus to restore the spiritual sovereignty also. Besides, to the
ears of Mussulmans of the sixteenth century, the Caliphal title was no
longer a familiar sound, and the title of Sultan which Selim already
bore was that of the highest temporal authority they knew.
The Caliphate, if it existed at all, was in the modern world a less
imposing name than the Sultanate; and the two had since the destruction
of Bagdad become confused, as they still remain, in men's minds who do
not any more now make common use of the older title. Thus it was not
difficult for the new Sultan of Damascus and Cairo and Medina to impose
himself on the multitude--not merely as heir to the Caliphal
possessions, but to the title also of the Caliphs and their spiritual
rank. Advantage, too, seems to have been taken in the first instance, as
it has been subsequently, of the accidental resemblance of name between
Othman, Selim's ancestor, and Othman the third Caliph. The vulgar ear
caught the sound as one familiar to it, and was satisfied, for there is
all the world in a name.
With the Ulema, however, it was necessary to be more precise; and we
know that the question of the Ottoman right to the spiritual succession
of the Prophet was one long and hotly debated in the schools. Tradition
was formal on the point of excluding aliens to the Koreysh from this its
legal inheritance, for Mohammed himself had repeatedly distinguished his
own tribe as being the sole heirs to his authority; nor would any doctor
of the specially Arabian schools listen to a departure from ideas so
absolute. The Hanefite school, however, representing those chiefly
interested in accepting the Ottoman pretension, undertook its legal
defence, and succeeded, in spite of the one great obstacle of birth, in
making out a very tolerable case for themselves and the Beni Othman--a
case which, in the absence of any rival candidate to oppose to them, has
since been tacitly accepted by the majority of the Sunite Ulema.
The difficulty, however, was in practice settled by a compromise, and
the dispute itself had long been forgotten by all but the learned, until
within the present generation its arguments were once more dragged out
publicly to serve a political purpose. The Hanefite arguments are on
this account interesting, and I have been at pains to ascertain and
understand them; but perhaps before I state them in detail it will be
best first briefly to run over the Caliphal history of an earlier age
and describe the state of things which Selim's act superseded.
Orthodox Mussulman writers recognize four distinct phases which the
office of Khalifeh has undergone, and four distinct periods of its
history. The word Khalifeh, derived from the Arabic root _khalafa_, to
"leave behind," signifies literally one left behind, and in the legal
sense the relict or successor of the prophet and heir to his temporal
and spiritual power.
The _first_ historical phase noticed is one of pure theocracy, in which
the Caliph or successor of Mohammed was saint as well as priest and
king, and was to a certain extent inspired. It lasted thirty years only,
and is represented by the four great Caliphs--Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman,
and Ali--who receive from the faithful when they speak of them the
title of Seydna, or Our Lord.
The _second_ phase, which lasted nearly six hundred years, is that of
the Arabian monarchy, in which the Caliphate took the shape of
hereditary temporal dominion. Its representatives are neither saints nor
doctors of the law, and stand on a quite different footing from those
who precede them. They begin with Mawiyeh ibn Ommiyah, founder of the
Ommiad dynasty, and end with Mostasem Billah, the last Sultan of the
Abbasides.
The _third_ period is a phase of temporal inter-regnum during which for
nearly three hundred years the Khalifeh exercised no sovereign rights,
and resided as a spiritual chief only, or as we should now say Sheykh el
Islam, at Cairo. The temporal authority of Islam, which is theoretically
supposed to have been continued without break even during this period,
was then in delegation with the Memluk Sultans of Egypt and other
Mussulman princes.
The _last_ phase is that of the Ottoman Caliphate.
As nearly all modern arguments respecting the Caliphate appeal to
examples in the earliest period, it will be well to consider the origin
of its institution and the political basis of Islam itself. Mohammedan
doctors affirm that the Apostle of God, Mohammed (on whose name be
peace), when he fled from Mecca, did so not as a rebellious citizen but
as a pretender to authority. He was by birth a prince of the princely
house of the Koreysh, itself the noblest tribe of Hejaz, and his
grandfather had been supreme ruler in Mecca. He established himself,
therefore, with his companions in exile as head of an independent
political community, following in this the ancient custom of Arabia
where sections constantly cut themselves off from the parent tribe and
form new nations under the separate leadership of one or another member
of their princely families. Islam, therefore, was from its commencement
a political as well as a religious body, and while Mohammed preached to
his disciples as a prophet, he also gave laws to them as their king and
governor. He was their Imam, the leader of their prayer, and he was
their Emir and Kadi, prince and magistrate. Thus the supreme temporal
and spiritual authority became linked, and Islam was from its beginning
a nation no less than a church.
As long as Mohammed lived, this state of things remained unquestioned,
and difficulties began only at his death. It is a point which has been
much disputed what were the prophet's intentions regarding this event.
In early times the sect of Ali maintained that he had appointed his
son-in-law his heir, and others have held that Abu Bekr had the
nomination; but Sunites are now mostly agreed that no individual
appointment was made, and that the choice of a successor was left to be
decided by election. In any case the procedure followed by Mohammed's
bereaved followers was elective, and its details were in strict
accordance with that Arabian custom on which the Koranic law is mainly
built.
Now, in an Arab tribe, when the Sheykh dies, the elders of the tribe,
heads of its great houses and sections, assemble in one of their
number's tent and, sitting in a circle, discuss the subject of his
succession. Theoretically, the choice of a successor is open to any one
of them, for the tribe, however large, is all one great family,
descended from a common ancestor, and though no one from without could
be admitted to the supreme rule, any one from within the tribe can hold
office. But in practice the choice is limited to a few persons. The
reverence of the Arabs for blood, and for selected strains of blood,
prevent them, except in very exceptional cases, from changing the
dynasty of their rulers. If the dead man has left behind him a son of
full age and respectable qualities, he will, without dispute, be
acknowledged Sheykh. If not, an uncle, a nephew, or a cousin will be
chosen. Only in extreme circumstances of general danger, or of failure
of heirs male, can the member of a new family reasonably aspire to
power. Moreover, there is no uniform law of election. The meeting does
not pretend to give a right, only to confirm one; for the right lies not
with the electors but with him who can maintain his election. There is,
therefore, no formal system of voting, but the elders having ascertained
who among the dead man's relations commands the strongest following,
proceed to acknowledge him by the ceremony of giving him their hands. He
then becomes their Sheykh. It sometimes happens, however, that parties
are so evenly divided between rival leaders that the tribe divides, one
section going this way and the other that, until one of the leaders
gives in his submission; otherwise the quarrel is decided by the sword.
All these features of the Arabian tribal system of succession may be
noticed in the first elections to the Caliphate. As soon as it was known
that Mohammed was indeed dead, a conclave composed of the elders and
chief men of Islam, self-constituted and recognizing no special popular
mandate, assembled in the house of Omar ibn el Khattub. This conclave is
known to jurists as the _Ahl el helli wa el agde_, the people of the
loosing and the knotting, because they assumed the duty of solving the
knotty question of succession. A nice point had to be decided, just such
a one as has in all ages been the cause of civil war in Arabia. The
Prophet had left no son, but more than one near relation. Moreover, at
that moment the new nation of Islam was in danger of internal
disruption, and the religious and the civil elements in it were on the
point of taking up arms against each other. The two chief candidates
were Ali ibn Abutaleb and Abu Bekr, the one son-in-law and cousin and
the other father-in-law of Mohammed--Ali represented the civil, Abu Bekr
the religious party; and as it happened that the latter party was
predominant at Medina, it was on Abu Bekr that the choice fell. He was
recognized as head of the more powerful faction, and the chiefs gave him
their hands; while civil war was only prevented by the magnanimous
submission of Ali.
This form of succession is held by most Sunite doctors to be the
authentic form intended by the Prophet, nor did the three following
elections differ from it in any essential point. It is only noticed that
Abu Bekr designated Omar as the most fitting person to succeed him, and
so in a measure directed the choice of the Ahl el agde. The Caliph was
in each instance elected by the elders at Medina, and the choice
confirmed by its general acknowledgment elsewhere.
In the time of Ali, however, a new principle began to make its
appearance, which foreshadowed a change in the nature of the Caliphate.
The election of Abu Bekr, as I have said, was determined by the
predominant religious feeling of the day. He was the holiest man in
Islam, and his government was throughout strictly theocratic. He not
only administered the religious law, but was its interpreter and
architect. He sat every day in the _mejlis_, or open court of justice,
and decided there questions of divinity as well as of jurisprudence. He
publicly led the prayer in the Mosque, expounded the Koran, and preached
every Friday from the pulpit. He combined in his person all the
functions now divided between the Sheykh el Islam, the grand Mufti, and
the executive authorities. He was king and priest and magistrate, doctor
of civil and religious law, and supreme referee on all matters whether
of opinion or practice; he was, in a word, the Pope of Islam. Nor did
his three successors abate anything of Abu Bekr's pretensions. The only
power they delegated was the command of the Mussulman armies, which were
then overrunning the world, and the government of the provinces these
had conquered.
Ali, however, when he at last succeeded to the Caliphate, found himself
opposed by the very party whose candidate he had once been, and this
party had gathered strength in the interval. With the conquest of the
world worldly ideas had filled the hearts of Mussulmans, and a strong
reaction also had set in in favour of those specially national ideas of
Arabia which religious fervour had hitherto held in check. It was
natural, indeed inevitable, that this should be the case, for many
conquered nations had embraced the faith of Islam, and, as Mussulmans,
had become the equals of their conquerors, so that what elements of
pride existed in these found their gratification in ideas of race and
birth rather than of religion, ideas which the conquered races could not
share, and which were the special inheritance of Arabia.
The national party, then, had been reinforced, at the expense of the
religious, among the Koreysh, who were still at the head of all the
affairs of State. Their leader was Mawiyeh Ibn Ommiyeh, a man of
distinguished ability and of that charm of manner which high-born Arabs
know so well how to use to their political ends. He had for some years
been Governor of Syria, and was more popular there than the pious Ali;
and Syria, though not yet the nominal, was already the real seat of the
Mussulman Government. Mawiyeh therefore refused to accept Ali's election
at Medina as valid, and finding himself supported by a rival Ahl el agde
at Damascus, made that appeal to the sword which Arabian usage sanctions
as the ultimate right of all pretenders.
Religious writers agree in condemning Mawiyeh for his revolt; and while
his succession to Ali is accepted as legal, they place him on quite a
different level from the four Caliphs who preceded him. In Mawiyeh they
see fulfilled that prediction of their Prophet which announced that
Islam should be ruled for thirty years by an Imam, and ever after by a
King. Mawiyeh is, indeed, the type of all the later Mohammedan Emperors.
According to canon law, the head of the State is also head of the
religion; but Mawiyeh ceased to exercise religious functions in person.
These, unlike his predecessors, he delegated to others, and neither led
the prayer nor preached; nor was he held to be either the best or the
most learned man in Islam, as Abu Bekr and the rest had been.
Moreover--and this is the chief point noticed regarding him--he
introduced the system of dynastic heredity into the Caliphate,
nominating his son Yezid his successor in his own lifetime. The change,
advantageous as it was politically, is regarded as a religious falling
off. Henceforth the Caliphs, whether of the Ommiad or afterwards of the
Abbaside families, were not in reality elected, though the form of
confirmation by the Ulema was gone through; and they affected to succeed
by right of birth, not by the voice of the people.
During the whole period of the Arabian Caliphate we only notice one
Prince of the Faithful who busied himself much with religious learning,
and few who personally exercised the magisterial functions. Only once we
read of an Abbaside Caliph insisting on his right of leading the prayer,
and this was probably the effect of an accidental jealousy. As a rule
the temporal government of Islam was intrusted to a _Sadrazzam_, or
Grand Vizier, the spiritual duty of prayer to a _Naïb_, or deputy Imam,
and the elaboration or interpretation of law and doctrine to such Ulema
or Mujtaheddin as could command a following. The character of the
Khalifeh, however, was still essentially sacred. He was of the Koreysh
and of the blood of the Prophet, and so was distinct from the other
princes of the world. As their political power decayed, the Abbasides
fell indeed into the hands of adventurers who even occasionally used
them as puppets for their own ambitious ends; but the office was
respected, and neither the Kurdish Saladdin, nor Togral Bey, nor Malek
Shah, nor any of the Seljukian Emirs el Amara dared meddle personally
with the title of Caliph.
The Ommiad dynasty, founded by Mawiyeh, reigned at Damascus eighty-five
years, and was then succeeded on a new appeal to the sword in A.D. 750
by the descendants of another branch of the Koreysh--the Beni Abbas--who
transferred the capital of Islam to Bagdad, and survived as temporal
sovereigns there for five hundred years.
This second period of Islam, though containing her greatest glories and
her highest worldly prosperity, is held to be less complete by divines
than the first thirty years which had preceded it. Islam was no longer
one. To say nothing of the Persian and Arabian schisms, the orthodox
world itself was divided, and rival Caliphs had established themselves
independently in Spain and Egypt. Moreover, during the last two
centuries the temporal power of the Caliphs was practically in
delegation to the Seljuk Turks, who acted as mayors of the palace, and
their spiritual power was unsupported by any show of sanctity or
learning. It was terminated forcibly by the pagan Holagu, who at the
head of the Mongols sacked Bagdad in 1258.
The third period of Caliphal history saw all temporal power wrested from
the Caliphs. Islam, on the destruction of the Arabian monarchy, resolved
itself into a number of separate States, each governed by its own Bey or
Sultan, who in his quality of temporal prince was head also of religion
within his own dominions. The Mongols, converted to the Faith of Mecca,
founded a Mohammedan empire in the east; the Seljuk Turks, replaced by
the Ottoman, reigned in Asia Minor; the Barbary States had their own
rulers; and Egypt was governed by that strange dynasty of slaves, the
Mameluke Sultans. Nowhere was a supreme temporal head of Islam to be
seen, and the name of Khalifeh as that of a reigning sovereign ceased
any longer to be heard of in the world. Only the nominal succession of
the Prophet was obscurely preserved at Cairo, whither the survivors of
the family of Abbas had betaken themselves on the massacre of their
house at Bagdad.
It is difficult to ascertain the precise position of these titular
Caliphs under the Mameluke monarchy in Egypt. That they were little
known to the world in general is certain; and one is sometimes tempted
to suspect the complete authenticity of the succession preserved through
them. Contemporary Christian writers do not mention them, and it is
evident from Sir John Mandeville and others that in Egypt the Egyptian
Sultan himself was talked of as head of the Mussulman religion. I have
heard their position compared with that of the present Sheykhs el Islam
at Constantinople--that is to say, they were appointed by the Sultan,
and were made use of by him as a means of securing Mussulman
allegiance--and I believe this to have been all their real status. They
are cited, however, as in some sense sovereigns by Hanefite teachers,
whose argument it is that the succession of the Prophet has never
lapsed, or Islam been without a recognized temporal head. The Sultans,
neither of Egypt nor of India, nor till Selim's time of the Turkish
Empire, ever claimed for themselves the title of Khalifeh, nor did the
Sherifal family of Mecca, who alone of them might have claimed it
legally as Koreysh. Neither did Tamerlane nor any of the Mussulman
Mongols who reigned at Bagdad. The fact is, we may assume the Caliphate
was clean forgotten at the time Selim bethought him of it as an
instrument of power.
It must, then, have been an interesting and startling novelty with
Mussulmans to hear of this new pretender to the ancient
dignity--interesting, because the name Khalifeh was connected with so
many of the bygone glories of Islam; startling, because he who claimed
it seemed by birth incapable of doing so. The Hanefite Ulema, however,
as I have said, undertook Selim's defence, or rather that of his
successors, for Selim himself died not a year afterwards, and succeeded
in proving, to the satisfaction of the majority of Sunites, that the
house of Othman had a good and valid title to the rank they had assumed.
Their chief arguments were as follows. The house of Othman, they
asserted, ruled spiritually by--
1. _The right of the sword_, that is to say, the _de facto_ possession
of the sovereign title. It was argued that, the Caliphate being a
necessity (and this all orthodox Mussulmans admit), it was also
necessary that the _de facto_ holder of the title should be recognized
as legally the Caliph, _until a claimant with a better title should
appear_. Now the first qualification of a claimant was that he should
claim, and the second that he should be supported by a party; and Selim
had both claimed the Caliphate and supported his pretensions at the head
of an army. He had challenged the world to produce a rival, and no rival
had been found--none, at least, which the Hanefite school acknowledged,
for the Sultan of Morocco they had never accepted, and the last
descendant of the Abbasides had waived his rights. In support of the
proposition that the sword could give a title they cited the examples of
Mawiyeh, who thus established his right against the family of Ali, and
of Abu el Abbas, who had thus established his against that of Mawiyeh.
2. _Election_, that is the sanction of a legal body of Elders. It was
argued that, as the Ahl el agde had been removed from Medina to
Damascus, and from Damascus to Bagdad, and from Bagdad to Cairo, so it
had been once more legally removed from Cairo to Constantinople. Selim
had brought with him to St. Sophia's some of the Ulema of the Azhar
mosque in Cairo, and these, in conjunction with the Turkish Ulema, had
elected him or ratified his election. A form of election is to the
present day observed at Constantinople in token of this right; and each
new Sultan of the house of Othman, as he succeeds to the temporal
sovereignty of Turkey, must wait before being recognized as Caliph till
he has received the sword of office at the hands of the Ulema. This
ceremony it is customary to perform in the mosque of Ayub.
3. _Nomination._ Sultan Selim, as has been already said, obtained from
Mutawakkel, a descendant of the Abbasides and himself titularly Caliph,
a full cession of all the Caliphal rights of that family. The fact, as
far as it goes, is historical, and the only flaw in the argument would
seem to be that Mutawakkel had no right thus to dispose of a title to an
alien, which was his own only in virtue of his birth. The case, indeed,
was very much as though the Emperor of Germany, having possessed himself
of London, should obtain from Don Carlos a cession of the throne of
Spain; or as though Napoleon should have got such a cession of the
Papacy, in 1813, from Pius VII. Still it is insisted upon strongly by
the Hanefite divines as giving a more permanent dynastic title than
either of the previous pleas. As a precedent for nomination they cite
the act of Abu Bekr, who on his death-bed recommended Omar as his
successor in the Caliphate.
4. _The guardianship of the two shrines_, that is to say of Mecca and
Jerusalem, but especially of Mecca. It has been asserted by some of the
Ulema, and it is certainly a common opinion at the present day, that the
sovereignty of Hejaz is in itself sufficient title to the Caliphate. It
seems certainly to have been so considered in the first age of Islam,
and many a bloody war was then fought for the right of protecting the
Beyt Allah; but the connection of Hejaz with the Empire of the Caliphs
has been too often broken to make this a very tenable argument. In the
tenth century it was held by the Karmathian heretics, in the thirteenth
by the Imams of Sana, and for seven years in the present century by the
Wahhabis. Still the _de facto_ sovereignty of the Harameyn, or two
shrines, was one of Selim's pleas; and it is one which has reappeared in
modern arguments respecting the Caliphal rights of his descendants.
5. _Possession of the Amanat_ or sacred relics. This last was a plea
addressed to the vulgar rather than to the learned; but it is one which
cannot be passed by unnoticed here, for it exercises a powerful
influence at the present day over the ignorant mass of Mussulmans. It
was asserted, and is still a pious belief, that from the sack of Bagdad,
in 1258, certain relics of the Prophet and his companions were saved and
brought to Cairo, and thence transferred by Selim to Constantinople.
These were represented to constitute the Imperial insignia of office,
and their possession to give a title to the Caliphal succession. They
consisted of the cloak of the Prophet borne by his soldiers as a
standard, of some hairs from his beard, and of the sword of Omar. The
vulgar believe them to be still preserved in the mosque of Ayub; and
though the Ulema no longer insist on their authenticity, they are often
referred to as an additional test of the Sultan's right.
Such, then, were the arguments of the Hanefite school, who defended
Selim's claim, and such they are with regard to his successors of the
house of Othman. By the world at large they seem to have been pretty
generally accepted, the more so as the Turkish Sultans, having only a
political end in view, were satisfied with their formal recognition by
their own subjects, and did not bring the question to an issue with
their independent neighbours. Neither the Mogul Emperors at Delhi nor
the Sheriffs of Morocco were called upon to acknowledge temporal or
spiritual supremacy in the Ottoman Sultans, nor did these affect an
every-day use of the ancient title they had assumed.
In India the head of the house of Othman was still known to Moslems as
Padishah or Sultan er Roum, the Roman Emperor, the most powerful of
Mussulman princes, but not in any special manner the head of their
religion, certainly not their sovereign. The Ulema, indeed, such as were
Hanefites, admitted him to be legally Khalifeh; but many of the Shafite
school denied this, pleading still that as an alien to the Koreysh his
claim was illegal, while to the ignorant mass of the people out of his
dominions his spiritual title remained almost unknown. The Sultans
themselves were doubtless to blame for this, seeing that the spiritual
functions of their new office were left almost entirely unperformed. For
it cannot be too strongly insisted on that the assumption of the
Caliphate was to the house of Othman only a means to an end, viz. the
consolidation of its worldly power upon a recognized basis, and that,
once that end obtained, the temporal dignity of Sultan was all that they
really considered. Thus they never sought to exercise the right
appertaining to the Caliphal office of appointing Naïbs, or Deputy
Imams, in the lands outside their dominions, or to interfere with
doctrinal matters at home, except where such might prejudice the
interests of their rule. With regard to these, the theologians of
Constantinople, having satisfactorily settled the Caliphal dispute, and
pronounced the house of Othman for ever heirs to the dignity they had
assumed, were recommended by the head of the State to busy themselves no
further with doctrinal matters, and to consider the _ijtahad_, or
development of new dogma, altogether closed for the future in their
schools. Soliman the Magnificent, Selim's heir, especially insisted upon
this. He had already promulgated a series of decrees affecting the civil
administration of his empire, which he had declared to be immutable; and
an immutability, too, in dogma he thought would still further secure the
peace and stability of his rule. Nor did he meet with aught but approval
here from the Hanefite divines.
The Turkish Ulema, ever since their first appearance in the Arabian
schools in the eleventh century, finding themselves at a disadvantage
through their ignorance of the sacred language, and being
constitutionally adverse to intellectual effort, had maintained the
proposition that mental repose was the true feature of orthodoxy, and in
their _fetwas_ had consistently relied on authority and rejected
original argument. They therefore readily seconded the Sultan in his
views. Argument on first principles was formally forbidden in the
schools; and for the interpretation of existing law two offices were
invented--the one for dogmatic, the other for practical decisions, those
of the Sheykh el Islam and the Great Mufti. This closing of doctrinal
inquiry by the Ottoman Sultans, and the removal of the seat of supreme
spiritual government from the Arabian atmosphere of Cairo to the Tartar
atmosphere of the Bosphorus, was the direct and immediate cause of the
religious stagnation which Islam suffered from so conspicuously in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
We have now brought the history of the Caliphate down to the period
described in the last chapter as one of intellectual torpor for Islam.
It was a lethargy from which there seemed no awakening, and which to
contemporaries, Voltaire among the rest, seemed closely approximating to
the death of unbelief. In spite of Soliman's eternal arrangements, the
temporal power of the house of Othman was wofully diminished, and the
spiritual prestige of the Sultans was gone with Mussulmans. By the
middle of the last century the title of Caliph, even in their own
dominions, was all but forgotten, and the Court of Constantinople was
become a byword for its vice and infidelity. It can therefore be well
imagined that the awakening of religious feeling, which I also described
as having been produced by the Wahhabite movement, especially menaced
the Sultan in his Caliphal pretensions. By the beginning of the present
century the serious world of Islam was already ripening for a change,
and the title of the Caliphate seemed open to whoever should re-invent
and prove himself worthy to wear it. Two men certainly then dreamed of
its acquisition, both men of supreme genius, and holding the elements of
success in their hands. Nor can it be doubted that either of them would
have achieved his ambition but for the appearance against them of a
material power greater than their own, and which then, for the first
time, began to make itself felt as paramount in Asia. That power was
England, and the ambitions she thwarted there were those of Bonaparte
and Mehemet Ali.
It is not, I believe, sufficiently understood how vast a scheme was
overthrown by the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon's mind was formed for
dominion in the East, and where he failed in Europe he would have
infallibly succeeded in Asia. There little policies are useless, and
great ones root themselves in a congenial soil; and he was possessed
with an idea which must have flourished. His English opponents, judging
him only by the scale of their own thoughts, credited him with the
inferior design of invading India through Persia, and called it a mad
one; but India was, in fact, a small part only of his programme. When he
publicly pronounced the Kelemat at Cairo, and professed the faith of
Islam, he intended to be its Head, arguing rightly that what had been
possible three hundred years before to Selim was possible also then to
him. Nor would the Mussulman world have been much more astonished in
1799 at being asked to accept a Bonaparte for Caliph, than it was in
1519 at being asked to accept an Ottoman. With Napoleon's genius for
war, and but for the disastrous sea fight on the Nile, all this might
have been, and more; and it is conceivable that Europe, taken in
reverse by a great Moslem multitude, might have suffered worse disasters
than any the actual Napoleonic wars procured her, while a more durable
empire might have been founded on the Nile or Bosphorus than the
Bonapartes were able to establish on the Seine. As it was, it was an
episode and no more, useful only to the few who saw it near enough to
admire and understand.[11]
Among these who saw and understood was Mehemet Ali, the Albanian
adventurer, who undertook the government of Egypt when England restored
it to the Porte. Bonaparte from the first was his model, and he
inherited from him this vision of a new Caliphate, the greatest of the
Napoleonic ideas, and worked persistently to realize it. He was within
an ace of succeeding. In 1839 Mehemet Ali had Mecca, Cairo, and
Jerusalem in his hands, and he had defeated the Sultan at Konia, and was
advancing through Asia Minor on Constantinople. There, without doubt, he
would have proclaimed himself Caliph, having all the essential elements
of the Sultan's admitted right on which to found a new claim.
Nor is it probable that he would have found much religious opposition to
the realization of his scheme from the Turkish Ulema. These, already
alarmed by Sultan Murad's administrative reforms, would hardly have
espoused the Sultan's defence with any vigour; and though Mehemet Ali
himself was open to a charge of latitudinarianism, he had the one great
claim upon orthodox Islam of having delivered the Holy Cities of Mecca
and Medina from the Wahhabis. The house of Othman, indeed, at this time
had begun to stink--not only in the nostrils of the outside world, but
in that of the Hanefite school itself; and as these had formerly
accepted Selim, so they might very well, in 1839, have accepted Mehemet
Ali. But this attempt, too, was stopped by England in pursuance of a
policy which it is difficult now not to regret. The too venturous
Arnaout was sent back to his vice-royalty in Egypt, and the House of
Othman was entrusted with a new lease of spiritual sovereignty, if not
yet of spiritual power.
The reigns of Abd el Mejid and of Abd el Aziz are remarkable with
Mussulmans as having witnessed a complete dissociation of interests
between the Imperial Government and the Old Hanefite school of Ulema. I
have no space here to discuss the nature of the reforms attempted and
partly effected in the Ottoman Empire between the years 1839 and 1869 as
a concession to the clamour of Europe. They were instituted not by and
through religion, as they should have been, but in defiance of it, and
so failed to find acceptance anywhere with religious people. All changes
so attempted must fail in Islam because they have in them the inevitable
vice of illegality, and I hope to have an opportunity of explaining
later the manner in which alone a true reform can hope to find
acceptance. For the present I only note the promulgation of the Hatti
Humayoum and its kindred decrees as points in the history of the Ottoman
Caliphate's decline, and as direct reasons for the reactionary change of
front which we now witness in the policy of Constantinople.
Abd el Mejid for his ill-judged attempts gained with Mussulmans the name
of an unbeliever, and his son was deposed in the way we all know as a
breaker of the religious law. For a moment, however, Abd el Aziz seems
to have seen the true nature of his position and to have had some idea
of the _rôle_ required of him, as the following incident will show. It
marks at any rate the epoch pretty exactly when a revival of the
Sultan's spiritual pretensions, as a settled policy, was first resolved
on in Turkey. The circumstances have been narrated to me as follows:--
Quite in the early days of Abd el Aziz's reign a certain statesman, a
man of original genius and profoundly versed in the knowledge both of
Europe and of the East, and especially of the religious history of
Islam, came to Constantinople. He was a friend of Rushdi Pasha, then the
Grand Vizier, and of others of the party of Young Turkey, men who were
seeking by every means, fair and foul, to reorganize and strengthen the
central authority of the Empire. To these, and subsequently, in an
interview, to the Sultan himself, he urged the advantage which might
accrue to the Ottoman Government both as a means of controlling the
provinces and as a weapon against European diplomacy if the spiritual
authority of the Sultan as Caliph were put more prominently forward. He
suggested especially to Abd el Aziz that his real strength lay in the
reorganization not of his temporal but of his spiritual forces; and he
expressed his wonder that so evident a source of strength had been so
little drawn on. He pointed out the importance of the Mussulman
populations outside the Empire to the Sultan, and urged that these
should be brought as much as possible within the sphere of
Constantinople influence. The Barbary States, Mussulman India, and
Central Asia might thus become to all intents and purposes, save that of
tribute, subjects of the Porte.
In early times it had been a duty of the Caliphs to appoint in all the
provinces of Islam Imams or deputies to represent their spiritual
authority, and it was suggested that these should once more be
appointed. An Imam, or leader of their public prayer, is a necessity
with orthodox Mussulmans, and in default of legal appointment from the
Caliph, who is himself the supreme Imam, the faithful had been
constrained to apply either to the local governments for such
appointment or to elect the functionary themselves. This they
acknowledged to be illegal, and would willingly revert to the more
legitimate system; while the re-establishment of such a hierarchy would
bring an enormous accession of spiritual power to Constantinople. It was
also shown to Abd el Aziz how all-important Arabia was to his position,
and how greatly the means of influence there had been neglected.
I am informed by one present at this interview that Abd el Aziz was not
only delighted at the idea, but profoundly astonished. He seems to have
had no notion previously either of the historical dignity of the
spiritual office he held nor of its prerogatives, and for a while his
thoughts were turned in the direction pointed out to him. He sent for
the chief Ulema and asked them if all he heard was true; and, when he
found their ideas to be entirely in unison with the advice just given
him, he commissioned the Sheykh el Islam to push forward the doctrine of
his spiritual leadership by all the means in his power. Missionaries
were consequently despatched to every part of the Mussulman world, and
especially to India and the Barbary States, to explain the Hanefite
dogma of the Caliphate; and though at first these met with little
success they eventually gained their object in those countries where
believers were obliged to live under infidel rule, so much so that in a
few years the Ottoman Caliphate became once more a recognized "question"
in the schools. They were aided in this by a powerful instrument, then
first employed in Turkey, the press.[12] A newspaper in Arabic called
the _Jawaib_ was subsidized at Constantinople under the direction of
one Achmet Faris, a convert to Islam and a man of great literary ability
and knowledge of Arabic, who already had views on the subject of the
Caliphate; and this organ henceforth consistently advocated the new
policy of the Ulema.
The official clique in Stamboul were, however, at that time still intent
on other projects, and only half understood the part to be played by
religion in their scheme of administrative reform for the Empire.
Besides--and this was the chief hindrance to the Ulema--Abd el Aziz was
not a man capable of seriously carrying out a great political idea,
being little else than a man of pleasure. He and his government
consequently soon drifted back into the groove of his predecessors'
material policy, which relied for its strength on the physical force of
arms, foreign loans, and the intrigues of officials. The only practical
action taken by Ottoman ministers in the line indicated were the twin
crusades proclaimed against the Wahhabis of Hasa and the heretical Imams
of Sana. But the Hanefite Ulema were not thus to be satisfied. They had
determined on carrying out the idea they had adopted, and on forcing the
Sultan to put himself openly at the head of a religious and reactionary
movement; and when they found that Abd el Aziz could not be made to act
consistently as Caliph, they deposed him, and thus opened a way for the
true hero of their idea, the present Sultan, Abd el Hamid.
The advent of this latest scion of the house of Othman to the spiritual
succession of the Prophet, though a godsend in appearance to religious
Moslems, cannot but be regarded by all who wish Islam well as a very
great misfortune. It is almost certain that if Abd el Mejid and Abd el
Aziz had been succeeded by another of those senseless monarchs who have
so often filled the Imperial throne, the Ottoman Caliphate would already
have been a thing of the past, at least as regards the larger and more
intelligent part of Islam. In the collapse of its physical power in
1879, the official camarilla of Constantinople would have been unable to
control the movement of revolt against the spiritual and temporal
sovereignty of the Sultan, and something would have taken its place
offering a more possible foundation for true religious reform. Arabia
would in all probability have by this time asserted its independence,
and under a new Caliphate of the Koreysh would have been attracting the
sympathies and the adhesion of the Eastern world. There might have been
schisms and religious convulsions, but at least there would have been
life; and what Islam requires is to live. But unfortunately Abd el Hamid
was neither a mere voluptuary nor an imbecile, and catching, by an
instinct which one cannot but admire, the one rope of safety which
remained for him and his house, he placed himself at the head of the
extreme reactionary party of Islam, and thus put back for a while the
hour of fate.
It is difficult to gain accurate information as to Abd el Hamid's
character and religious opinions, but I believe it may be safely
asserted that he represents in these latter the extremest Hanefite
views. In youth he was, for a prince, a serious man, showing a taste for
learning, especially for geography and history; and though not an _alem_
he has some knowledge of his religion. It may therefore be taken for
granted that he is sincere in his belief of his own spiritual
position--it is easy to be sincere where one's interest lies in
believing; and I have it from one who saw him at the time that on the
day soon after his accession, when, according to the custom already
mentioned, he received the sword at the mosque of Ayub, he astonished
his courtiers with the sudden change in his demeanour. All the afternoon
of that day he talked to them of his spiritual rank in language which
for centuries had not been heard in the precincts of the Seraglio. It is
certain, too, that his first act, when delivered from the pressure of
the Russian invasion, was to organize afresh the propagandism already
begun, and to send out new missionaries to India and the Barbary States
to preach the doctrine of his own Caliphal authority to the Moslems _in
partibus infidelium_. His language, too, to strangers from external
Islam was from the first that of a spiritual rather than a temporal
prince, and with the European Ambassadors he has used this position
consistently and most effectually.
It is no mean proof of Abd el Hamid's ability that he should have
invented the Mussulman _non possumus_ with which he has disconcerted our
diplomacy. In private life he is said to be regular at his prayers,
though it is also said that he conforms to the custom of Turkish Sultans
in avoiding legal marriage. He is at the same time a liberal patron of
dervishes, workers of miracles, and holy men. These he is at pains to
seek out and receive honourably. In his administration he conforms,
wherever he is himself the actor, strictly to the Sheriat, and on
doubtful points consults always the mufti or Sheykh el Islam. He has
shown no inconsiderable firmness in resisting European demands when they
contravened the canon law.[13]
For all these reasons it will be readily understood that Abd el Hamid
has gained not only the support of his own Turkish Ulema, but the
sympathy of a very considerable section of opinion outside his
dominions. From a traitor to the cause of religion the Ottoman Sultan
has come to be looked upon, east and west, as once more its champion;
and with the old-fashioned reactionary school Abd el Hamid is fast
growing into a hero. A year ago, when I was at Jeddah, this was not yet
the case, but it would seem to be so now. Then even the people of his
own party spoke of him doubtfully, and he certainly excited no
enthusiasm among them. They did not understand him, and thought that he
was playing a part. He was said to be of Armenian parentage (on his
mother's side) and his sincerity as a Moslem was suspected. It seemed
impossible one born in Abd el Mejid's Seraglio should be a serious man.
Besides, he had not yet shown his strength, and to be strong is to be a
hero everywhere.
But within the last eight months, events have marched rapidly. Abd el
Hamid has played his cards successfully in Greece, in Albania, and with
the Kurds. He has not been afraid of England and has shown a bold front
against infidel reforms. He has had the courage under the eyes of Europe
to arrest their _protégé_, Midhat, and to try him for murder. Lastly,
the French have played into his hands in Tunis, and he has thus gained a
footing of sympathy with the Mussulmans of North Africa, a population
which has for centuries opposed his claims. Twenty years ago it would
have been absolutely impossible for an Ottoman Sultan to awaken any
loyal feeling in any Arab breast. Tunis then specially boasted her
independence of the Porte, and all but the Hanefite rulers of the
sea-coast towns of Africa would have scouted the idea of fighting for
the Turk. Now the Malekites themselves, the puritans of Kerwan, are
moving at Abd el Hamid's nod. He would seem, too, to be stirring with
some success in Egypt, and Indian Mussulmans are praying for him
publicly in their mosques. Everywhere the reactionary party is standing
to its arms, and is beginning to recognize a leader in this supple
Armenian Khalifeh, who is defying Europe, and seems willing, if
necessary, to lead them one day on a Jehad.
With all this, however, it must not be supposed that Orthodox Islam is
by any means yet won back to Constantinople. Turkey, I have shown, and
the Hanefite school, are far from being the whole of the Mohammedan
world; and side by side with the fanatical obduracy of the Ottoman State
party and the still fiercer puritanism of the Melkites there exists an
intelligent and hopeful party favourable to religious reform. Shafite
Egypt is its stronghold, but it is powerful too in Arabia and further
East. With it a first article of faith is that the House of Othman has
been and is the curse of Islam, and that its end is at hand.
In spite of Abd el Hamid's pious appeals to the Sheriat they look upon
him as one who troubleth Islam. He is the representative of the party
most bitterly opposed to all of good. They know that as long as there is
an Ottoman Caliph, whether his name be Abd el Aziz or Abd el Hamid,
moral progress is impossible, that the ijtahad cannot be re-opened, and
that no such reformation of doctrine and practice can be attempted as
would alone enable their faith to cope with modern infidelity. They see
moreover that, notwithstanding his affected legality, Abd el Hamid's
rule is neither juster nor more in accordance with the Mussulman law
than that of his predecessors. The same vices of administration are
found in it, and the same recklessness for his Mussulman subjects'
welfare. Of all the lands of Islam his own are probably those where Abd
el Hamid has now the most scanty following. Constantinople is after all
his weak point, for the Young Turkish school is far from dead, the
vicissitudes of life and death follow each other closely on the
Bosphorus, and the liberal party can better afford than the reactionary
to wait. The death or fall of Abd el Hamid, whenever it may happen,
would immediately decide a movement counter to the Ottoman Caliphate.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] I do not vouch for the entire accuracy of these dates. Turkish
historians place Selim's death in 926 A.H., which should correspond with
our 1520. It would seem doubtful too whether Selim himself took any
higher title with regard to the Holy Places than Khadam el Harameyn,
Servant of the two shrines, though his successors are certainly called
Hami. It was not till five years after Selim's death that Mecca
acknowledged the Ottoman Caliphate.
[11] The original diary of Lascaris, Napoleon's agent with the Arabs,
has, I understand, within the last two years been discovered at Aleppo
and purchased by the French Government. Its publication, whenever that
may be decided on, will, if I am not quite mistaken, throw new and
important light on Napoleon's Egyptian career.
[12] The _Jawaib_ was first started about the year 1860.
[13] In the recent trial of the murderers of Abd el Aziz, Abd el Hamid
has departed from his usual adherence to the Sheriat. It is a lapsus
which may one day be taken hold of against him, should the Ulema need to
depose him. He is said to have yielded to the advice of an European
confidant who directs the details of his diplomacy with Europe.