'The Supposed Spiritual Authority of the Caliph' [‎9r] (6/10)

the Khalifs as their leaders, because they walked in worldly ways, they have constknfwl
themselves independently beside and even above them; and the rulers have been
within iL 0 oZ limL a ' S eilt COntl " act Wlth tllem ' each Party binding itself to remain
II. M artin fl .vitmam (professor am Seminar fur orlentaUsehe Sprachen,
Berhn): Die Welt clcs I slams;' I. p. MS {Berlin 1913).
Translation.-—I have on several occasions pointed out how incorrect it is to
v r " ^ or-rtx 4 i G i -L^.^Hion oi me time ot Umar and m the Kitab-
a-mnm of Shafi i) ; if he ^ho exercises power, the Sultan, in the end leaves the
Caliph out m the cold and makes the dignity of Sultan hereditary in his own house
m a word, establishes a Sultan-dynasty side by side with the Caliph-dynasty, then the
iiindamentaJ position of .the Caliph as leader of the community is not thereby shaken
or altered, his functions only are restricted ; a comparison may possibly be made with
the Mayor or the la ace of the Merovingians; there is perhaps also a parallel in the
limitation lor a wnole century of the power of the Japanese Emperor bv the Shocnms ■
it was possible for the Caliph to be rendered powerless just for the very reason that
his power was a temporal (mundane) power ; this is not possible in the case of the
Pope, because his functions are not temporal (are super-mundane): for he has the
power of the keys and. the power of dogma. The Caliph .has nothing that can be in
any way compaied with this, and it is difficult to understand how the fable of the
spiritual power of the Caliphs can have arisen, and how it could have been
constantly extended further by scholars who are otherwise intelligent, though no
one is able to say what these spiritual functions actually consist of ; for the appoint
ment of judges and the conferring of high-sounding titles can certainly not be
considered as such,
III.—C. Snocck Huiigrokje : "Kederland en de Islam " {2d ed. Leiden, 1915),
pp. 67-8, 70.
Translation. —In the beginning, the Caliphs (as their name indicates) were the
"successors" of Mohammed, namely in the guidance and the government of the
community. In proportion as the conquests of Islam were extended and firmly
established, the Caliphate developed into a princely dynasty, which ruled over an
empire and theoretically made claim to the governance of the whole world. We have
already drawn attention to the deep roots this theory has struck in the system of
Islam and in the popular notions of its adherents. Even after the political dismem
berment, which quickly set in, had reached its furthest point, they still continued to
cling to the fiction of the unity, and the Caliphs deprived of all real power remained
the symbol of this unity, and at least set themselves with their diplomas to put the
seal on whatever had come into existence outside their influence.
In this fiction, however, the Caliphs kept the name of whatever their predecessors
had been in reality ; they were called rulers of all the lands occupied by Islam, and
never spiritual chiefs, whose interference was confined to specifically religious matters.
The system had indeed been complete from about the 10th century, and its further
application took place, just as before its first development, under the guidance of the
learned ; no one expected it of the central authority, whether real or fictitious. Neither
Muslim statesmen, scholars or laymen have ever seen in the Caliph anything else but
the lawful leader and ruler of all believers.
When for centuries the obvious impotency of the later Abbasid Caliphs seemed
to have put the arrogant doctrine of the Caliphate to shame, the Turks in the
16th century were able to restore to this dignity the unity of name and reality.
Strong by the might of their weapons, they compelled the majority of the orthodox
Muhammadans to recognise them as Caliphs, and they made men forget the conditions
1 That the Khalifate is in no way to be compared with the Papacy, that Islam has never regarded the
Khalif as its spiritual head, I have repeatedly explained since 1882 (in " Nieuwe Bijdragen tot de kennis
van den Islam," in Bijdr. tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederland Indie, Volgr. 4, Deel vi, in an
article, " De Islam," in De Gids, May, 1886, in Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales, 5me annee,
No. 106, &c. I am pleased to find the same views expressed by Professor M. Hartmanu in Die Welt des
Islams, Bd, I., pp. 147-8.
OT 24 B