CHAPTER III
The problem of the Abbasids; the House of Barmak; the crumbling of the empire; the Prætorians of Baghdad; the Buwayhids; the situation of the Khalifa under them; the Saljuqs; the possibilities of development under them; the Mongols and the Abbasid end; the Egyptian Abbasids; the Ottoman Sultans, their heirs; theory of the Khalifate; the modern situation; the signs of sovereignty for Muslims; five grounds of the claim of the Ottoman Sultan; the consequences for the Sultan; other Muslim constitutions; the Shi‘ites; the Ibadites; the Wahhabites; the Brotherhood of as-Sanusi.
WE must now return to the Abbasids, whose empire we left crumbling away. It was a shrewd stroke of policy on the part of its founder to put the new capital, Baghdad, on the Tigris, right between Persia, Syria and Arabia. For the only hope of permanence to the empire lay in welding these into a unity. For a short time, in the hands of the first vigorous rulers, and, especially, during fifty years of guidance by the House of Barmak--Persians who flung in their lot with the Abbasids and were their stay till the madness of Harun ar-Rashid cast them down--this seemed to be succeeding; but, just as the empire of Charlemagne melted under his sons, so did the empire of al-Mansur and al-Ma’mun. The Bedawi tribes fell back into the desert and to the free chaos of the old pre-Islamic life. As the great philosophical historian, Ibn Khaldun, has remarked, the Arabs by their nature are incapable of founding an
de facto right; the Ottoman Sultan won his title by the sword and holds it by the sword. Second, election; this form has been already described. Third, nomination by the last Abbasid Khalifa of Egypt; so Abu Bakr nominated Umar to succeed him, and precedent is everything in Islam. Fourth, possession and guardianship of the two Harams, or Sacred Cities, Mecca and al Madina. Fifth, possession of some relies of the Prophet saved from the sack of Baghdad and delivered to Sultan Salim, on his conquest of
p. 105) comes in and must be reckoned with. These very traditions are probably an expression in concrete form of popular agreement. The Khalifate itself is confessedly based upon agreement. The canon lawyers state the case thus: The Imamites and Isma‘ilians hold that the appointment of a leader is incumbent upon God. There is only the difference that the Imamites say that a leader is necessary in order to maintain the laws unimpaired, while the Isma‘ilians regard him as essential in order to give instruction about God. The Kharijites, on the other hand, recognize no fundamental need of an Imam; he is only allowable. Some of them held that he should be appointed in time of public trouble to do away with the trouble, thus a kind of dictator; others, in time of peace, because only then can the people agree. The Mu‘tazilites and the Zaydites held that it was for man to appoint, but that the necessity was based on reason; men needed such a leader. Yet some Mu‘tazilites taught that the basis was partly reason and partly obedience to tradition. On the other hand, the Sunnites hold that the appointment of an Imam is incumbent upon men and that the basis is obedience to the tradition of the Agreement of the Muslim world from the earliest times. The
