The Ottoman Caliphate’s fall: A story which lives on in Islamic memories
RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – On March 3, 1924, the Turkish Parliament voted to abolish the caliphate, of which Abdülmecid II (1868-1944) was the 101st caliph. It was the end of a myth: that of the Ottoman magistracy over the ummah, the community of faithful Muslims with a universal vocation.
But it was also the end of an illusion, since the Ottoman caliph had lost all worldly power with the abolition of the sultanate in 1922, and the proclamation of the Turkish Republic the following year, with Mustapha Kemal (1881-1938) as its first president. It was not until 1934 that the founder of modern Turkey was conferred the title Atatürk, Father of the Turks, by Parliament.
For more than two centuries, the dignity of caliph had been of minor importance to the Ottoman sultans, who were more attached to their effective power (sulta) than to the succession (khilafa) of the prophet Muhammad.
The fiction of the Ottoman caliphate
In 1517, Sultan Selim I brought the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil III, a distant descendant of the Abbasids who were expelled from Baghdad in 1258, from Cairo to Istanbul.
But unlike the Mamluks of Egypt, who had Friday prayers performed in the name of a caliph who had no real authority, the Ottoman sultans had long since organized this rite, which was fundamental to their legitimacy, in their own name.
Source: Le Monde