Is the Sultan of the Turks the Caliph of 
 the Mussulmans and Successor 
 
 of the Prophet ? 
 
 READ AT A MEETING OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY 
 
 PN yVlONDAY, yVlAY 1 4, 1 8 7 7 
 
 BY 
 
 NEIL B. E. BAILLIE, M.R.A.S. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 ‘THE MOOHUMMUDAN LAW OF INHERITANCE’ ‘the LAND TAX OF INDIA ACCORDING 
 
 TO THE MOOHUMMUDAN LAW ’ ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1877 
 
I 
 
 
 
 
 
i U Vv. 
 
 the Sultan of the Turks the Caliph of 
 the Mussulmans and the Successor 
 
 of the Prophet ? 
 
 The atrocities in Bulgaria have brought a scandal 
 on Mohammedanism, to which there''seems to be 
 some disposition to ascribe them, rather than to any- 
 thing peculiarly ferocious in the character of the per¬ 
 petrators. This may be owing in some degree to 
 the prevalence of two opinions : one that the Mo¬ 
 hammedan religion is so essentially intolerant as to 
 be quite inconsistent with impartial government over 
 a mixed population of believers and unbelievers ; 
 and the other that the sovereigns of Turkey are 
 the true Imams or heads of that religion, as the 
 
 representatives of the Caliphs or Successors of the 
 Prophet. 
 
 Both these opinions I believe to be erroneous • 
 but I confine myself at present to an attempt to re- 
 ute the latter, as involving issues which extend be¬ 
 yond the Turkish empire, and in particular may 
 afiect a large proportion of her Majesty’s Moham 
 medan subjects in India. 
 
 Before adverting to the authorities which I think 
 fully bear out the refutation of the second opinion I 
 will give a brief history of the Imamut or office of 
 
■0 
 
 4 
 
 Imam , so far as I have been able to trace it from its 
 institution down to the present time. 
 
 We are told by Maverdy in his ‘ Political Con¬ 
 stitutions,’ 1 that the object or purport of the institu¬ 
 tion was to provide for the Khilafut or succession 
 to the Prophet in the guardianship of religion and 
 the government of the world. 
 
 The office is held by the Soonnees to be elec¬ 
 tive ; but by the Sheeahs it is held to be heredi¬ 
 tary in the family of Aly. 
 
 The person first selected to succeed the Pro¬ 
 phet assumed the title of Khaleefah , or Successor 
 to the Apostle of God. The person next in suc¬ 
 cession was in like manner styled the Khaleefah 
 of the Khaleefah of the Apostle of God. But as 
 the title, if continued in the same way, would soon 
 have become too cumbersome, Ameer-ool-Moomineen , 
 or Commander of the Faithful, was, with universal 
 consent, substituted for it, and ever after continued 
 to be the title of the occupants of the Khilafut. 
 
 The Turks, as well as the great mass of the 
 Mussulmans of India, are supposed to be Soonnees 
 of the school of Aboo Huneefa, and concur with 
 the Soonnees of the other schools in recognising 
 the four first successors of the Prophet, together 
 with the princes of the House of Ommiyah, who 
 reigned at Damascus, and those of the House of 
 Abbas, who reigned first at Cufa, and afterwards at 
 Baghdad, down to its capture by the Tartars, as the 
 only true and legitimate Imams and successors of 
 the Prophet to that time. 
 
 Baghdad was taken in the year 656 of the 
 Hegira, corresponding to a.d. 1258, and for a short 
 
 1 A1 Ahkam As-Sultaniyah. 
 
5 
 
 time the Khilafut remained entirely vacant. But 
 about two-and-a-half years after that event, accord¬ 
 ing to some reports, a person named Ahmed was 
 brought to Bibars, the reigning Mameluke sovereign 
 of Egypt, by certain Arabs, who declared him to be 
 the lawful son of the Khaleefah Dhaher Ben Nasser, 
 of the House of Abbas. This Dhaher Ben Nasser, 
 who had assumed the title of Dhaher Billah, was 
 the penultimate Caliph of Baghdad, and died in the 
 623rd year of the Hegira, or nearly forty years 
 before the appearance of Ahmed in Egypt. Bibars, 
 the Mameluke sovereign, nevertheless, is said to 
 have convoked an assembly of the Imams and 
 Doctors of Mohammedanism in Syria and Egypt, 
 concerning his condition and person. In his appear¬ 
 ance there was nothing to indicate that he was of 
 the blood of Abbas, but the assembly having ex¬ 
 amined witnesses, and carefully considered the re¬ 
 cords of the family, pronounced him, under the 
 authority of Bibars, to be by birth, and by the death 
 of Mostadem, the true and lawful Caliph of the 
 Mussulmans, and gave him the title of Mostanser 
 Billah , which signifies ‘ seeking assistance of God.’ 
 Being thus installed, he was generally acknowledged 
 throughout the Mameluke dominions in Egypt and 
 Syria, but without any temporal authority; for no¬ 
 where was he or any of his successors regarded as 
 anything more than as the Imams or chiefs of the 
 Mussulman religion. Even in that limited capacity 
 they were elected and deposed at the pleasure of 
 the Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt. 1 Still they 
 were held in reverence, and made use of by them, 
 to confirm or strengthen by religious sanctions 
 
 D’Herbelot, Bib. Or. pp. 633, 987. 
 
 1 
 
6 
 
 their own authority over their people. They were 
 even recognised, nominally at least, as the source 
 of temporal dignities, and were used by the Mame¬ 
 luke soldiery to deprive of regal authority the 
 sovereigns whom they deposed. We have one in¬ 
 stance of such recognition by a foreign sovereign, 
 in the case of Bayezeed, commonly called Bajazet, 
 a ruler of the Ottoman Turks, who is said to have 
 sent presents and an embassy to one of these Caliphs, 
 in the year 797 of the Hegira, praying him to 
 confer on him the royal dignity by his letters 
 patent. 1 This incident is related by Gibbon, as 
 follows : ‘ The humble title of Emir was no longer 
 suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet con¬ 
 descended to accept a patent of Sultan from the 
 Caliphs, who served in Egypt under the yoke of 
 the Mamelukes ; a last and frivolous homage that 
 was yielded by force to opinion by the Turkish con¬ 
 querors to the House of Abbds, and the successors 
 of the Prophet.’ These Caliphs or Successors, such 
 as they were, were put an end to in the person of 
 Motawakkel Billah, the second of that name, when 
 Egypt was conquered by the Turkish emperor, 
 Selim I. That event took place in the 923rd year 
 of the Hegira, and Motawakkel was carried captive 
 to Constantinople, where he remained till after the 
 death of Selim, a.h. 926, corresponding to a.d. 1519, 
 when he returned to Egypt, and is said to have 
 lived till a.h. 945, or a.d. 1538, but without any re¬ 
 corded attempt to resume the religious functions of 
 the Khilafut . 2 
 
 Nor is there any mention of any subsequent 
 Caliphs in the ‘ Bibliotheque Orientale,’ by M. d’Her- 
 
 1 D’Herbelot, Bib. Or. p. 987. 3 Ibid. 643. 
 
7 
 
 belot, or the ‘Modern Universal History/ or, indeed* 
 in any other authentic history with which I am ac¬ 
 quainted. But we are told by M. D’Ohson, in his 
 ‘ Tableau General de l’Empire Othomane/ that, at 
 the time of the conquest of Egypt by the Turks, a 
 formal renunciation was made of the Khilafut, 
 by the House of Abbas, in favour of the Ottoman 
 Sultans, and that, by virtue of such renunciation* 
 the right to it was transferred to and acquired by 
 the latter in the person of Selim I. according to 
 the unanimous opinion of modern jurists. M. 
 D’Ohson does not mention who the jurists were, nor 
 does he appear to quote any authority for the facts 
 stated by him. But assuming these, for the sake of 
 argument, to be true, and that the formal renuncia¬ 
 tion alleged by him actually took place: further, also, 
 assuming that Mostanser Billah was a true scion of 
 the blouse of Abbas, which, besides the death of 
 Mostadem, the last legitimate Caliph, was the only 
 ground of his recognition by the Council of Bibars, 
 let us now consider the legal effect of these trans¬ 
 actions, and whether they were sufficient to carry 
 on the true Apostolical succession from Mohammed 
 to the present Head of the Turkish empire, who is 
 broadly asserted in the new constitution to be the 
 Caliph of the Mussulmans, and who is now about 
 to unfurl, as he is reported to have said, the flag of 
 the Khilafut and Sultanut. 
 
 First, then, is the Khilafut hereditary ? There 
 is no doubt that the four first successors to Moham¬ 
 med were elected, and in some of the cases after 
 rather stormy discussion. Moreover, the succession 
 is expressly stated by Maverdy to be matter for 
 ikhtiyar or choice, and certain qualifications are 
 
8 
 
 specified as being necessary for both electors and 
 elected. It is true that for about eighty years the 
 office remained in the family of Ommiyah, and for 
 five hundred more in that of Abbas. But that is 
 not inconsistent with the office being elective, for 
 there might be nothing (as in law there was not) to 
 prevent the selection of a son, or any other member 
 of the family of the last occupant, to be his succes¬ 
 sor. And, indeed, as the Mohammedan Law does 
 not recognise primogeniture, and there cannot be 
 two Imams at the same time, the rule of strict here¬ 
 ditary succession would be inapplicable if the last 
 Caliph happened to leave two or more sons, or 
 persons in the same degree of kindred to him. 
 
 There are two ways of supplying a vacancy in 
 the Khilafut when it occurs, one by the choice of 
 properly qualified electors, and the other by appoint¬ 
 ment of the last Caliph. With regard to the first mode 
 some have had an idea that there ought to be a con¬ 
 currence of all the qualified electors in every city : 
 so that there might be an universal agreement in 
 the appointment of the Imam. But this opinion is 
 repelled by the fact that Aboobekr was elected by 
 those who were present at the first meeting for the 
 purpose of choosing a successor to the Prophet, 
 without waiting for any absentees. 1 There still, 
 however, remains the question, how many are re¬ 
 quired to give validity to the election. On this 
 point there is no other guide than precedent, and 
 most of the lawyers of Basrah are agreed that the 
 concurrence of not less than five qualified persons 
 is required for that purpose, founding their opinion 
 on two facts. The first is the election of Aboobekr, 
 
 1 Maverdy, p. 6. 
 
9 
 
 which was by five persons, and was generally as¬ 
 sented to by the whole community; the second is, 
 that Omar when dying appointed a Council of six 
 persons, so that one should nominate to the Khilafut, 
 with the consent of the other five. 1 Those who 
 happen to be present in the city of the Imam have 
 no preferential right to appoint his successor, though 
 they may usually do so, as having the first intelli¬ 
 gence of his death. And when two Imams have 
 been appointed in different cities, though some are 
 of opinion that the preference should be given to 
 the appointment by the city in which his predecessor 
 died, the valid opinion is, being that of the best 
 lawyers, that the office belongs to the person first 
 appointed. 2 
 
 With regard to the second mode of appointing 
 an Imam, namely, by his predecessor, there is a 
 general agreement as to its legality, which has been 
 established by the Mussulman community having 
 acted upon it on two occasions; first, by confirming 
 the nomination of Omar by Aboobekr, and secondly 
 by accepting the Council of six persons nominated 
 by Omar to select his successor. 8 When an Imam 
 has nominated the person to succeed him, it is neces¬ 
 sary that the person appointed should accept the 
 appointment, which according to some ought not to 
 be done till after the death of the appointer, but 
 according to others, and theirs is the valid opinion, 
 should be between the appointment and the death, 
 in order that the transfer of the office may be com¬ 
 pleted by acceptance. It is to be observed that the 
 appointment once made and accepted cannot be 
 cancelled without the resignation of the Wulee-ahd 
 
 1 Maverdy, p. 7. 2 Ibid. p. 10. 3 Ibid. p. 12. 
 
or person nominated, and that if a second appoint¬ 
 ment were made without such resignation, the ap¬ 
 pointment would be void. 1 
 
 Having now stated, on what I believe to be 
 unimpeached authority, the rules by which the 
 Khilafut or succession to Mohammed is regulated, 
 I proceed to remark that there is no evidence that 
 either of the two modes of appointment was ob¬ 
 served at the inauguration of Ahmed, otherwise 
 called Mostanser Billah, or of any of his successors 
 in what has been called the second Abasside dynasty. 
 The Council summoned by Bibars, the Mameluke 
 Sultan of Egypt, seems to have proceeded solely on 
 the erroneous supposition that the Khilafut was 
 hereditary in the family of Abbas, and the successors 
 of Ahmed were set up^ apparently without any pre¬ 
 tence of election, and deposed at the pleasure of the 
 Mameluke Sultans, down to the extinction of their 
 own dynasty by the conquest of Selim I. With 
 regard, again, to the alleged renunciation by the 
 last of these so-called Caliphs, it was not merely in 
 favour of Selim, but in that of the Ottoman Sultans 
 generally; so that each one of that family, so soon 
 as he is promoted to the civil and military dignity 
 of Sultan of the Turks, becomes de jure Imam, that 
 is, religious head of the whole Mussulman com¬ 
 munity. M. D’Ohson has not cited any precedent 
 or authority for this extraordinary doctrine, but the 
 opinion of certain unknown jurists (l’opinion unanime 
 des juristes modernes) and the homage received by 
 Selim from the Shereef of Mecca, who presented to 
 him in a silver dish the keys of the Caaba. Leaving 
 to others to determine whether that renunciation 
 
 1 Maverdy, pp. 13, 14. 
 
and homage were sufficient to justify the pretensions 
 of the Grand Signor, if there were no other objec¬ 
 tion to them, I have further to remark that there is 
 an objection, which appears to me to be fatal to these 
 pretensions altogether. 
 
 Hitherto, I have said nothing of the qualifica¬ 
 tions that are required for the Khilafut . With one 
 exception they may all be summed up in the justice 
 and piety of the individuals. The exception is 
 confined to the elected, in whom it is required, in 
 addition to the other personal qualifications, that he 
 shall, by nusub or lineage, be of the Arab tribe of 
 Koreish. For this exception there is Nuss or 
 express authority, in a saying of the Prophet him¬ 
 self. 1 And all the Caliphs of the Houses of 
 Ommiyah and Abbas belonged to that tribe, as 
 did also the four first Caliphs. Now, it was upon 
 the authority of that saying of the Prophet, that, at 
 the meeting for the choice of his successor, Aboobekr 
 was preferred to Saad-Ben-Abad, who was put 
 forward by the Ansars , or Helpers of Medina, as 
 their candidate for the Khilafut? To assert, then, 
 that anyone who is confessedly not of the tribe of 
 Koreish can be a vicegerent of the Prophet, and 
 the Imam, or religious head of the Mussulman com¬ 
 munity, is little short of flying in the face of the 
 Prophet himself, and, by inference at least, stigma¬ 
 tising as usurpers all his successors in the long 
 chain of Caliphs down to the taking of Baghdad by 
 the Tartars. But this is what M. D’Ohson has 
 done, for he actually quotes the saying in question 
 as ‘ cette parole du Prophete : Les Imams doivent 
 etre de la race des Coreyshites,’ and admits that ‘ la 
 
 1 Maverdy, p. 5 . 2 Ibid. p. 6 . 
 
I 2 
 
 maison Othomane n’a plus l’avantage d’etre du 
 meme sang, comme exige la loi canonique pour 
 avoir droit a rimamut.’ Yet he tells us that never¬ 
 theless (cependant) according to the unanimous 
 opinion of modern jurists, the right has been ac¬ 
 quired to them by the formal renunciation made in 
 their favour in the person of Selim I. I have 
 already said that he has not informed us who the 
 jurists were ; and I will now put it to the Mussul¬ 
 man lawyers in Bengal and the North-Western 
 Provinces of India, whether a renunciation, sup¬ 
 ported by no other authority than the opinion of 
 unknown jurists, is sufficient in their opinion to 
 override the authority of an express tradition of 
 their Prophet, the authenticity of which is not called 
 in question. 
 
 In a petition to her Majesty from the Mussul¬ 
 mans of Bombay, it is stated that the sovereign of 
 the Turks is looked upon by the vast majority of 
 her Mohammedan subjects as the vicegerent of the 
 Prophet, and the recognised religious head of forty 
 millions of her subjects. 
 
 Mussulmans generally all over the world are 
 supposed to consist almost entirely of two sects, 
 called Soonnees and Sheeahs; and both have been 
 supposed to agree, with perhaps some exceptions, 
 that the Imam or religious head of the community 
 must be of the tribe of Koreish , though the Sheeahs 
 have added to the qualification, that he must also be 
 of the family of Aly. But if the assertion of the 
 Bombay petitioners be correct, the vast majority of 
 the Mussulmans of India must have relapsed into 
 the heresy of the Kharejites—a sect that was almost 
 exterminated by a victory obtained over them by 
 
13 
 
 Aly, in the thirty-eighth year of the Hegira. Their 
 heresy consisted chiefly in affirming that a man 
 might be promoted to the dignity of Imam, though 
 he was not of the tribe of Koreish 1 —a doctrine which 
 we have seen was in direct contravention of an un¬ 
 doubted saying of the Prophet himself. But they 
 also held that there was no necessity at all for 
 an Imam in the world. On this point there is no 
 recorded decision of the Prophet, and the opinion 
 may, it would seem, be entertained by Soonnees 
 without exposing themselves to the charge of heresy. 
 Indeed, that opinion, though it may not have been 
 openly avowed in theory, has been practically acted 
 upon to a great extent by Mussulmans all over the 
 world, with the exception, perhaps, of those subject 
 to or under the influence of the Ottoman Turks. 
 For instance, the Persians and a considerable body 
 in India who are Sheeahs, have held, since ‘ The 
 Imam Muhudy, their twelfth and last spiritual, as 
 well as temporal leader, retired from human obser¬ 
 vation,’ that ‘ the temporal as well as spiritual govern¬ 
 ment have devolved, during his absence ’ (he is 
 supposed to be still alive), ‘ upon the Moojtuhids or 
 enlightened teachers of the law, as his vicegerents 
 on earth,’ and consequently every assumption of 
 ‘ power by any earthly potentate is considered by 
 this sect to be tyrannical and unjust.’ 2 With regard 
 again to the Soonnees—during a residence of up¬ 
 wards of twenty years in India, where I had con¬ 
 siderable converse with persons of that sect, I do 
 not remember to have ever heard so much as an 
 allusion to any religious head of their community. 
 
 1 Modern Universal History, vol. i. p. 388. 
 
 3 Baillie’s Digest of Law according to the Twelve Imams , p. 143. 
 
Nor have I met with any such allusion in my reading 
 (perhaps not very extensive) of Indian History. 
 Further, I have not met with anything on the sub¬ 
 ject of the Imamut in the Hidayah—a leading 
 authority on Mohammedan Law, though one whole 
 volume of the original text is taken up with religious 
 observances, and a considerable part of another 
 volume is occupied with Jihad , or religious warfare, 
 and other kindred subjects. The same remark is 
 applicable to the great Digest of Mohammedan Law 
 prepared in India, and called the Futawa Alum- 
 geeree, a great part of which is occupied in the same 
 manner. 
 
 For these reasons I have come to the conclusion 
 that there has not been any generally acknowledged 
 Imam or religious head of the Mussulman commu¬ 
 nity since the taking of Baghdad by the Tartars. 
 
 Be this, however, as it may, it is beside the ques¬ 
 tion at the head of this paper, to which I believe 
 no other answer can be given than this : That the 
 Sultan of the Turks is not , whoever else may be, 
 the Caliph of the Mussulmans, and the successor 
 of their Prophet. 
 
 This answer, which is in strict conformity with 
 the Mohammedan Law, is confirmed by the opinion 
 of Gibbon, who has said expressly that ‘ The Otto¬ 
 mans cannot style themselves, like the Arabian 
 Caliphs, the descendants or successors of the Apostle 
 of God.’ And it is farther strengthened by the pre¬ 
 cedent given by Mr. Lane of the Khootbeh pro¬ 
 nounced on Fridays in the great mosques at 
 Cairo, in which the Turkish sovereign is mentioned 
 only as the ‘adored King, our master the Sultan,’ 
 while the four first successors of the Prophet are 
 
i5 
 
 styled * Khaleefahs ’ and 4 orthodox heads of high 
 dignity and illustrious honour.’ 
 
 I have already referred to the declaration of the 
 Turkish Sultan, that he is about to display the flag 
 of the Sultanut and Khilafut. Sultanut means 
 government, and, if the word stood alone, the flag 
 would be only an appeal to his subjects generally, 
 on their loyalty to him as their temporal sovereign, 
 to combine in the defence of their common country 
 against a foreign aggressor. Khilafut has a wider 
 significance, and a banner with that word inscribed 
 upon it would be an appeal to Mohammedans all over 
 the world, and a call on their spiritual allegiance to 
 join in a sacred warfare for the defence of their re¬ 
 ligion. It would, in fact, be tantamount to the procla¬ 
 mation of a Jihad , and might have a most disastrous 
 effect on the Mohammedans of India, in the present 
 excited state of their minds. In these circumstances, 
 I have thought it right to put them on their guard 
 against a delusion by which they might be betrayed 
 into a course inconsistent with their duty as the 
 subjects of a neutral power. 
 
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