Concise info about Islamic caliphates was surprisingly hard to find, but I think I was able to find the four “great” caliphates of Muslim history, can someone please correct me if I’m off on anything here?
There were four great caliphates:
Rashidun
Umayyad
Abbasid
??? (what’s the 4th?)
Was the Abbasid considered the “greatest,” by being the largest geographically in size and having the largest population?
Do Arabs look back on these four caliphates like the way Westerners regard the ancient Roman Empire?
Was the Rashidun Caliphate ruled by the four leaders called Rashidun - Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali? Is the modern-day ISIS terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named after that ancient caliph, Abu Bakr?
Do modern-day Muslims consider those four great caliphate empires to have been rather secular, not really abiding by Islamic tenets?
(This is information cobbled together in my head from multiple sources, so maybe it’s contradictory or I’m misreading the info.)
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The fourth may be said to be the Ottoman caliphate. The Ottoman state picked up the status of caliphate when they incorporated Egypt into their empire in 1517. The ‘Abbasid caliphate had been in abeyance since 1258 when Baghdad was destroyed. A figurehead successor in the ‘Abbasid line was living in Mamluk Egypt, albeit with no authority whatsoever. But it was enough to transfer the mantle of caliph to the Ottoman sultan all legal-like. The Ottoman Empire was taken off life support in 1922 and Turkey became a republic. The Ottoman caliphate as a religious office lasted another 2 years, but in 1924 the Turkish parliament voted to abolish it.
Rāshidūn means the rightly-guided ones. It just means the first four caliphs are considered special and are revered for being exemplary Muslim leaders (which the Umayyads were decidedly not)
They are mainly revered for being Sahabah, or Companions of the Prophet, men who had known and accompanied Mohammed while he was alive. Some Muslims include the fifth caliph, Hasan ibn Ali, Mohammed’s grandson, as one of the Rashidun although I’m not sure whether he’s counted as a Companion too, he may have been too young when the prophet was alive. I believe the sixth caliph, Mu’awiyah I, was the first not to have known Mohammed.
Nope, he was born 30 years before Muhammad died and purportedly served as his personal scribe. However his son and successor Yazid I was born after Muhammad had died.
As for there being “four great caliphates” I’m not really sure what tradition that stems from. You can add up much higher numbers if count rival claimants like the Fatimids, the Spanish Umayyads ( sometimes referred to as anti-Caliphs in opposition to the Abbasids ), the Almohades, or the Mamluks of Egypt’s pet line of purported Abbasids and there are several others. Heck the Ahmadiyya claim a Caliphate as we speak.
If you just want to pick the four lines who wielded the greatest political power at one time or another, I suppose tabbing the Rashidun set, Umayyads, Abbasids and Ottomans might work. But the Ottomans really treated the title ( once they claimed it essentially by conquest ) as an ancillary ceremonial frippery throughout most of their existence, really only beginning to emphasize it very late in their history in the early modern era as the state became truncated.
Greatest? Eh, the Rashidun were the most united internally up until Ali and the first fitna, but were functionally a rather parasitic conquest state in an administrative sense. The Umayyad state was technically the largest in area, but were Arabocentric like the Rashidun. The Abbasids were more ethnically inclusive and administratively sophisticated. Kind of depends what criteria you want to use.
As to who is regarded as “secular” vs. a proper leader of the faithfull, it kinda depends on what Caliph you’re talking about and which Muslim you ask. For example there was one tradition that regard the Umayyads as a whole as a bunch of mere maliks ( “kings” ) with the exception of the saintly Umar II, regarded as a genuine pious religious leader and proper Caliph. I’m pretty sure that was the view favored by the Abbasids that overthrew them ;). But an Is’maili Shi’a would give an entirely different answer, which wouldn’t be the same as a Zaydi Shi’a, etc.
Thank you, I didn’t know that. He would seem to be eminently qualified to be counted as a Companion of the Prophet but none of the sites I checked list him as such.
In rankings of Companions, Mu’awiyah would occupy the lowest tier - as a young man he was part of the Meccan opposition that expelled Muhammad. He only became a Muslim in the last few years of Muhammad’s life, after his triumph.
In the UK at least, Al Jaazira has been screening a 3 part documentary called The Caliph.
I’ve not seen it all and the few minutes I saw of episode 3 seemed a bit off track, but what I have seen of the earlier episodes was interesting.