The Ottoman Caliphate (Ottoman Turkish: خلافت مقامى, romanized: hilâfet makamı, lit. 'office of the caliphate') was the claim of the heads of the Turkish Ottoman dynasty, rulers of the Ottoman Empire, to be the caliphs of Islam during the late medieval and early modern era.
Ottoman rulers first assumed the style of caliph in the 14th century, though did at that point not claim religious authority beyond their own borders. After the conquest of Mamluk Egypt by Sultan Selim I in 1517 and the abolition of the Mamluk-controlled Abbasid Caliphate, Selim and his successors ruled one of the strongest states in the world and gained control of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, the religious and cultural centers of Islam. The claim to be caliphs transitioned into a claim to universal caliphal authority, similar to that held by the Abbasid Caliphate prior to the sack of Baghdad in 1258. Further Ottoman victories, the dynasty's geopolitical dominance in the 16th–17th centuries, and the lack of rival claimants strengthened the Ottoman claim to be the leaders of the Muslim world.
Following territorial losses in the 18th and 19th centuries, the use of caliphal authority by the Ottomans reached its height under Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909), who attempted to cultivate support for the Ottoman Empire through a Pan-Islamist foreign policy. Abdul-Hamid's absolutist rule came to an end through the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. The caliphal office was weakened in domestic politics, though was retained due to its usefulness in international diplomacy. At the beginning of World War I, Sultan Mehmed V proclaimed a jihad against the Entente, though this was largely ineffectual. The legitimacy and authority of the Ottoman Caliphate was damaged by the Great Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the end of the war, which saw the empire lose all of its Arab territories.
The Ottoman Empire came to an end following the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), which established the modern Republic of Turkey. The last Ottoman caliph, Abdülmecid II, retained his position under the republic until the abolition of the caliphate on 3 March 1924, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's secular reforms. The imperial Osmanoğlu family was also exiled from Turkey.
With the establishments of Sufi orders like the Bayramiyya and Mawlawiyya under the Ottoman Caliphate, the mystical side of Islam, Sufism, flourished.
History
Assumption of the caliphate (1362–1517)
Early claims to caliphate
Several early Ottoman sultans claimed the style of caliph. Murad I (r. 1362–1389) was notably often referred to by this title from his conquest of Adrianople in the 1360s onwards. Murad achieved some international recognition of this title, for instance from the Karamanids in correspondence. The title was used consistently by sultans from at least the time of Murad II (r. 1421–1444; 1446–1451) onwards. Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446; 1451–1481) was referred to as a caliph in contemporary sources and he used the typically caliphal title of amir al-Mu'minin. Prior to 1517, Selim I had ordered that the khutbah be recited in his name as Ottoman caliph several times, for instance at Tabriz in 1514 and at Aleppo in 1516.
Although some Sunni Muslims in Iran and Central Asia recognized the Ottomans as religious leaders of Islam in the 15th and 16th centuries, their use of the caliphal title did for the most part not carry real religious or political significance. The Ottomans were not the only Muslim rulers to use the title and in the eyes of most contemporary Muslim jurists, the caliphate had come to an end with the death of the Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim during the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. The Abbasid Caliphate was restored in Cairo under the Mamluk Sultanate in 1261, when Sultan Baybars named Al-Mustansir II, who claimed Abbasid descent, as caliph. This second line of Abbasid caliphs however had no significant authority in Egypt or elsewhere. The use of the title of caliph by other Muslim rulers was a development that also began after 1258; in-line with the ideas of the theologian Jalal al-Din Davani, a solution to the end of the universal Abbasid Caliphate was that Muslim rulers take power as imams (religious leaders) within their own domains. Such "caliphs" were thus only caliphs in their own territories, not claiming universal religious authority.
Conquest of Egypt
In 1517, Selim I conquered the Mamluk Sultanate in the Ottoman–Mamluk War. The Sharif of Mecca submitted himself to Selim and sent the keys of the Kaaba to the sultan. Selim thus assumed the title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The conquest of Egypt made the Ottoman Empire one of the largest states in the world, and it had also gained control of Mecca and Medina, the religious and cultural centers of Islam.
On 2 June 1517, Selim brought the last Abbasid caliph of Cairo, al-Mutawakkil III, to Constantinople as a prisoner. According to later tradition, al-Mutawwakil then transferred the caliphate to Selim in a ceremony in Constantinople. There is no contemporary evidence for such a ceremony and no historian references it until Ignatius Mouradgea d'Ohsson in 1790 (273 years later). There is thus doubt whether this occurred; some historians dismiss al-Mutawwakil's surrender of the caliphate to Selim as a forgery, perhaps invented by d'Ohsson, that was used by later Ottoman politicians and intellectuals to bolster the Ottoman claim to the caliphate. A contradictory story, likewise without contemporary evidence and thus questioned by historians, claims that al-Mutawakkil instead transferred the title of caliph to Suleiman I in 1538.
In any case, Ottomans sultans starting with Selim sometimes made use of the new title "great caliph" (Halife-i Uzma) in official documents and asked other Muslim rulers to be recognized as the true caliphs of the entire Muslim world. The title had thus become an explicit claim to a universal caliphate similar to that of the Abbasids prior to 1258. Whether a formal transfer ceremony with al-Mutawakkil took place is irrelevant for the legality of the Ottoman Caliphate. No ceremony of this kind had ever taken place prior to Selim and given that al-Mutawakkil did not possess any real religious authority, he would not have been able to transfer anything significant to the sultan. Later critics of the Ottoman caliphs at no point delegitimized them through questioning the transfer to Selim on the grounds of whether there was a ceremony, but rather in pointing out the ethnic background of the Ottoman dynasty. Critics argued that the Ottomans did not belong to one of the Quraysh tribes, which they alleged was a requirement for caliphal authority per one of the hadiths. Defenders of the Ottoman Caliphate, such as Grand Vizier Lütfi Pasha (1539–1541), argued that this requirement only applied to the first four (Rashidun) caliphs and that the Ottomans could justly claim to be caliphs since they combined in themselves the "principle of the maintenance of faith with justice, command of the good and prohibition of evil, and general leadership".
Selim I to Abdulaziz (1517–1876)
Caliphate during the apex of Ottoman power
At the height of its power in the 16th–17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents, controlling parts of Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and most of North Africa. Due to being rooted in both Islamic and Roman (see Ottoman claim to Roman succession) traditions, historians have sometimes referred to the Ottoman Empire as a "universal empire". Since there was virtually no strong rival challenger to the Ottomans (their main Muslim rivals, the Safavids of Iran, were Shia), the Ottoman Caliphate was rarely questioned in the 16th–18th centuries. In the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, various Turkish princes in Central Asia recognized the Ottoman sultans as caliphs. In the 18th century, some princes in the Indian subcontinent, including the Mughals, likewise recognized Ottoman caliphal authority.
Suleiman I (r. 1520–1566) made frequent use of the title of caliph, including in the versions "caliph of the whole world" and "caliph of all the Muslims in the world". It was in Suleiman's reign that Grand Vizier Lütfi Pasha argued that the former universal caliphate had been fully revived, on the basis of Suleiman's "power and protection of Islam in the world". The universal caliphal claims of Suleiman I were the most explicit such claims in the Muslim world since 1258. The Ottoman jurist Ebussuud Efendi called both Suleiman and his son Selim II (r. 1566–1574) "caliph to the apostle of the lord of the worlds".
Sultans after Suleiman I until Abdul Hamid I (r. 1774–1789) used the title of caliph so rarely that some historians have suggested that the sultans forgot their association with the title. The title was however demonstrably still used during this period. For instance, in a speech in 1632, following various conspiracies in the empire, Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) recited a verse of the Quran and stated that he was the caliph.
Diplomatic use and recognition
In the eighteenth century, the role of caliph became a prominent part of Ottoman diplomacy. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, the Russian Empire asserted that they had to protect the Orthodox Christians who lived under Ottoman rule. To counter this, the Ottomans made a similar claim about the Muslims living in Russia. In the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (21 July 1774), the Russian Empire thus recognized the Ottoman sultan as the "Supreme Muhammedan Caliph" and as the religious leaders of the Muslim Crimean Tatars. Although this was arguably a token gesture, since the treaty also severed the centuries-old political ties between the Ottomans and the Crimean Khanate, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca is nevertheless significant in that it was the first document in which the Ottoman Caliphate was recognized by a Western power.
From 1774 onwards, the style of caliph was frequently used by sultans to bolster their prestige and legitimacy. This increased as their legitimacy began to be challenged in the Arabian Peninsula itself, for instance in the Wahhabi war (1811–1818). The Ottomans continued to justify their position as caliphs through their long history as a ruling dynasty, their historical and contemporary military prowess, their possession of Mecca and Medina, and because the Ottoman Empire remained the most powerful Muslim state in the age of European imperialism.
In the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire initiated a period of modernization known as the Tanzimat, which transformed the nature of the Ottoman state, greatly increasing its power despite the empire's territorial losses. Despite the success of its self-strengthening reforms, the empire was largely unable to match the military strength of its main rival, the Russian Empire, and suffered a severe defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. The Ottoman state defaulted on its loans in 1875–76, part of a wider financial crisis affecting much of the globe.
The British government supported the view that the Ottomans were caliphs of Islam among Muslims in British India and the Ottoman sultans in return helped the British by issuing pronouncements to the Muslims of India, which extolled them to support British rule. Such pronouncements were issued by sultans Selim III (r. 1789–1807) and sultan Abdülmecid I (r. 1839–1861). Sultan Abdulaziz (r. 1861–1876) occasionally invoked his role as caliph to bolster support from Muslims outside his empire.
Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909)
"Reinvention of tradition"
Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) began his reign with a loss in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, which caused one of the worst territorial losses in Ottoman history. Although disastrous for the Ottoman Empire, the loss galvanized support for the Ottoman dynasty from Muslims outside of the empire. Religious conflict and conflict with various Western powers plagued much of Abdul Hamid's first two decades on the throne, including massive interreligious violence in the Balkans after the conclusion of the war, the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia in 1878, the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the massacres of Armenian Christians in 1894–97, and the war with Greece in 1897.
In light of these developments, the greatest attempt to revive the classical idea of the caliph as both the religious and political leader of the Muslim ummah occurred in Abdul Hamid's reign. Abdul Hamid sought to project Islamic authority in order to foster support from Muslims both within and outside his empire. His Pan-Islamist ideology was described as a "reinvention of tradition" and emphasized Abdul Hamid's role as caliph. The policy can be seen as a reaction to the policies pursued by the Western Great Powers; the West had long misinterpreted the role of caliph as a "Muslim pope" of sorts and had increasingly interfered in Ottoman affairs in support of the empire's Christian population. Abdul Hamid thus sought to cultivate such a role and concerned himself with the welfare of Muslim subjects worldwide, including those who were subjects of the West's colonial empires. It further made sense to embrace Pan-Islamism since the empire's territorial losses, most notably in the predominantly Christian Balkan Peninsula, had made the Ottoman Empire an overwhelmingly Muslim state. By emphasizing his position as caliph, Abdul Hamid could continue to claim religious authority over the Muslims who lived in territories the empire had lost, such as in the Balkans and North Africa.
The Islamic official identity of the Ottoman Empire was much more pronounced under Abdul Hamid than in earlier periods. All civil and military members of the state were taught "the sacredness of their duty". The loss of Ottoman territory under Abdul Hamid, as well as his Pan-Islamist efforts, galvanized support for the Ottomans abroad, particularly among the Muslims in India. Abdul Hamid's personal popularity was further increased through the construction of the Hejaz railway (completed in 1900), which made pilgrimage significantly cheaper, quicker, and easier. Abdul Hamid supported Muslim religious figures and was alert to any gestures of acts that would enhance his role as a Muslim world leader. He did not try to go further than this; Abdul Hamid at no point tried to decide religious doctrine and did not attempt to exercise tighter control over Muslim religious authorities.