Caliphate
CALIPHATE. The office of "successor" to the prophet Muḥammad as the leader of the Muslim community is a uniquely Islamic institution. Hence the anglicization caliphate is preferable to inadequate translations of the term khilāfah. (This article will not address the concept of khilāfah in Islamic mysticism.)
Upon Muḥammad's death in AH 11/632 CE there was in existence a self-governing, powerful Islamic community, or ummah. It had been shaped by the Prophet in conformity with the revelations he had received, and by the end of his life, his temporal as well as his spiritual authority was unassailable: he was the governor of the ummah, an arbitrator of disputes within it, the commander of its military forces, and its principal strategist. He had deputized others as his representatives to distant tribes and regions. The term khilāfah in the pre-Islamic sense of "deputy" was apparently used in reference to these assignees.
To the ummah the Prophet's death was a shocking, even inconceivable event. The Muslims were suddenly bereft of divine guidance, the source of Muḥammad's charismatic authority. Yet they were sufficiently imbued with the Islamic vision to persevere in efforts to shape the ideal society embodied in that moral imperative.
But who was to lead this society? What was to be his authority? The caliphate, the expression of the temporal leadership of all Muslims conceived as a single community, was the institutional answer.
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