THE period of the Caliphate (Khiláfat) began when Abú Bakr succeeded the Prophet as his Khalífa (Caliph, vice- Definition of the period of the Caliphate. gerent, or vicar) in June, A.D. 632; and ended when, in A.D. 1258, Hulágú Khán, at the head of his Mongol hordes, seized and sacked Baghdad, and put to death the last Caliph, al-Musta'ṣim bi'lláh. The title, it is true, was, as Sir Edward Creasy says,* “perpetuated for three centuries longer in eighteen descendants of the House of 'Abbás, who dwelt in Egypt with titular pomp, but no real power, in the capital of the Mameluke rulers, like the descendants of the Great Mogul in British India,” until A.D. 1517, when the Ottoman Sultan Selím the First, having overthrown the Mameluke dynasty, induced the puppet-Caliph to transfer to him the title and visible insignia of the Caliphate, the sacred standard, sword, and mantle of the Prophet. Since that time the Ottoman Sultans claim “the sacred position of Caliph, Vicar of the Prophet of God, Commander of the Faithful, and Supreme Imám of Islám”; but whatever advantage they may derive from these high titles, the Caliphate, as a historical actuality, ceased to exist, after enduring 626 years, in A.D. 1258.

This period falls into three well-marked but very unequal divisions, viz.:—

1. That of the Orthodox Caliphs (al-Khulafá'u'r-Ráshidún) Abú Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthmán, and 'Alí (632-661 A.D.), which may be briefly The three periods of the Caliphate. characterised as the Theocracy of Islám.

2. That of the Umayyad Caliphs (or Kings, for the spiritual rank of Caliph is often denied to them by later Muslim historians), the Banú Umayya, who, fourteen in number, ruled from A.D. 661 to 749. This may be defined as the period of Arabian Imperialism and Pagan Reaction.

3. That of the 'Abbásid Caliphs, the Banu'l-'Abbás, thirty-seven in number, who held sway from A.D. 749, when, on October 30th, Abu'l-'Abbás 'Abdu'lláh, called aṣ-Ṣaffáḥ, “the Shedder of Blood,” was proclaimed Caliph at Kúfa, till the sack of Baghdad and murder of al-Musta'ṣim by Hulágú and his Mongols in A.D. 1258. This may be defined as the period of Persian Ascendancy, and of Philosophical and Cosmopolitan Islám.

During the first period, Madína was the centre of govern­ment; during the second, Damascus; during the third, The Mongol Invasion the great turning­point in the in­tellectual as well as in the political history of Islám. Baghdad. The Mongol Invasion of the thirteenth century, and the destruction of the Caliphate which it entailed, put an end to the formal unity of the Muhammadan Empire in the East and the palmy days of Islám, and is by far the most important event in the history of Asia since the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. Long before this catastrophe, indeed, the power of the Caliphate had been reduced to a mere shadow of what it was in what Tennyson calls “the golden prime of good Haroun Alraschid”; but, though the Empire of the Caliphs was for the most part portioned out amongst dynasties and rulers whose allegiance, when yielded at all, was as a rule the merest lip-service, Baghdad remained until that fatal day the metropolis of Islám and the centre of learning and culture, while Arabic maintained its position not only as the language of diplomacy and learning, but of polite society and belles lettres. The scientific and critical spirit which we so admire in Muhammadan writers antecedent to the Mongol period becomes rapidly rarer in the succeeding years, and hence it is that Persian literature (that is, the literature written in the Persian language), which falls for the most part in the later days of the Caliphate and in the period subsequent to its fall, cannot, for all its beauties, compare in value or interest with that literature which, though written in Arabic, was to a large extent the product of non-Arab and especially Persian minds. The Mongol invasion was not less an intellectual than a political disaster, and a difference, not only of degree but of kind, is to be observed between what was written and thought before and after it.

To write a detailed history of the Caliphs forms no part of the plan on which this book is conceived, especially as this has already been admirably done in German by Dr. Gustav Weil (1846-1862) and in English by Sir William Muir.* Nor, indeed, are these excellent works amongst the European sources on which we shall chiefly draw in endeavouring to delineate in broad outlines the characteristics of each period, especially as regards its Persian manifestations in the fields of religious and philosophical speculation, culture, politics, and science. For this purpose the most valuable and suggestive books written in European languages are the following: A. von Kremer's Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams (1868); Idem, Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams (1873); Idem, Culturgeschichte des Orients unter dem Chalifen (2 vols., 1875-1877); Dozy's Het Islam (1863) translated into French by Victor Chauvin under the title Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Islamisme (1879); Idem, Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne; Goldziher's Muhammedanische Studien (2 vols., 1889-1890); Van Vloten's Recherches sur la Domination arabe, le Chiitisme et les Croyances Messianiques sous le Khalifat des Omayades (1894); Idem, Opkomst der Abbasiden; T. W. Arnold's Preaching of Islam (1896), and other similar works by Caussin de Perceval, Schmölders, Dugat, &c., to which must be added numerous valuable monographs, such as those of Brünnow on the Khárijites, Goldziher on the Záhirites, de Goeje on the Carmathians, Steiner on the Mu'tazilites, Spitta on the School of al-Ash'arí, and many others.

In the two histories of Persia with which Englishmen are most familiar, those of Sir John Malcolm and Clements Markham, the transition period intervening between the Arab Conquest in the seventh century of our era, and the formation of the first independent or semi-independent post-Muhammadan Persian dynasties in the ninth, is rather cursorily and inadequately treated, as though, like the period which separates the fall of the Achæmenian from the rise of the Sásánian dynasties (B.C. 330—A.D. 226), it were a mere interruption of the national life, instead of being, as in many ways it actually was, the most interesting, and intellectually, the most fruitful of all the periods into which Persian history can be divided. For this reason it will here be discussed with some fulness, especially in what concerns the origin of the first sects whereby Islám was torn asunder.

Although the Umayyad Caliphate, strictly speaking, began with the death of 'Alí and the accession of Mu'áwiya in A.D. 661, the tendencies which led to its establishment go back to the rule of 'Uthmán (A.D. 644-656), the third of the four “Orthodox Caliphs.” We have seen that the creation of a common national feeling amongst the Arabs, nay more, of a common religious feeling among all Muslims, in place of the narrow clannishness of the heathen Arabs, was one of the greatest and most notable results of the Prophet's mission. But such counsels of perfection were from the first hard to follow, being too radically opposed to ancient and deeply-rooted national instincts, and even the Prophet's partiality for Mecca, his native city, and the Quraysh, his own tribe, had on several occasions given rise to some dis­content and murmuring on the part of his allies of Madína (the Anṣár, or “Helpers”) to whose timely aid his cause owed so much. Still, on the whole, this ideal of equality amongst all Muslims was fairly maintained until the death of 'Umar in A.D. 644. That it was the ideal is apparent from numerous passages both in the Qur'án and in Tradition, such as “the noblest of you in the sight of God is he who most feareth God” (Qur'án, xlix, 13); “the believers are but brethren, so make peace between your two brothers” (Qur'án, xlix, 10); “O man! God hath taken away from you the arrogance of heathen days and the ancient pride in ancestry; an Arab hath no other precedence over a barbarian than by virtue of the fear of God; ye are all the progeny of Adam, and Adam himself is of the earth” (Tradition).* At this time, it is true, there were but a very few non-Arabs or “barbarians” who had embraced Islám, and it is doubtful whether, even in his moments of greatest optimism, the Prophet ever dreamed of his religion extending much beyond the Arabian peninsula; but here at least is the idea, clearly expressed, of a potential equality amongst believers, and an aristocracy not of birth but of faith.

With the accession of 'Uthmán, however, the old nepotism and clannish feeling once more became very evident; and dangers of sedition and schism, already imminent by reason of the jealousies between Mecca and Madína, between the Muhájirún (“Exiles”) and the Anṣár (“Helpers”), between the Háshimite and Umayyad factions of the Prophet's tribe of Quraysh, and between this tribe and the other Arabs, who regarded its ascendancy with ill-concealed discontent, were brought to a head by the new Caliph's irresolution and weakness, obstinacy, and undisguised furtherance of the interests of his Umayyad kinsmen, even of those whose attachment to Islám was most open to doubt. To make clearer what follows, two genealogical tables from Stanley Lane-Poole's most useful manual on the Muhammadan Dynasties (1894) are here inserted. Of these, the first shows the sub­divisions of the tribe of Quraysh and the general connection of the lines of Caliphs.