Caliphate

A caliphate is an Islamic political and religious institution of governance headed by a caliph, khalifa, meaning successor or deputy, understood traditionally as the legitimate political and, to varying degrees, religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad as leader of the worldwide Muslim community, the ummah. The institution began with the Rashidun Caliphate, from 632 to 661 CE, comprising the first four caliphs traditionally regarded by Sunni Muslims as rightly guided successors chosen following Muhammad's death, and continued through the hereditary Umayyad Caliphate, from 661 to 750, based first in Damascus, and the Abbasid Caliphate, from 750 to 1258, based in Baghdad, under which Islamic civilization reached a major cultural and scientific flowering before the Mongol sack of Baghdad ended Abbasid political power. The Ottoman sultans claimed the caliphate from the sixteenth century onward, and the institution in its historical form ended formally in 1924, when the Republic of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the Ottoman caliphate, an event that has remained a significant point of reference in subsequent Islamist political thought calling for the caliphate's restoration. Sunni and Shia Islamic traditions differ fundamentally on the legitimate basis of succession to the caliphate, with Shia Islam instead recognizing a distinct line of imams descended from Muhammad's family, a foundational theological and political division within Islam dating to the original succession dispute following Muhammad's death.