People & Histories
3 March 1924

Colonialism and the End of the Caliphate

After European powers carve up most of the Muslim world, the new Turkish Republic abolishes the Ottoman caliphate.

  • The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2015)
  • The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
  • Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 — Caroline Finkel, John Murray (2005)
  • Caliphate — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • A History of the Arab Peoples — Albert Hourani, Faber and Faber (1991)

Well established colonialismempirepolitics

From the late eighteenth century, European power overtook the Muslim world. Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. Britain took control of India, ending the Mughal line in 1857, and occupied Egypt in 1882. France seized Algeria from 1830, the Dutch ruled Indonesia, and Russia advanced into the Caucasus and Central Asia.

  • The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
  • A History of the Arab Peoples — Albert Hourani, Faber and Faber (1991)
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press
Muslim thinkers responded in different ways: reformers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh argued that Islam must be renewed through reason to resist the West, while others called for a return to the faith of the first generations.
  • A History of the Arab Peoples — Albert Hourani, Faber and Faber (1991)
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press

The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on Germany’s side, and the sultan-caliph declared a jihad that went largely unheeded. Britain and France had already agreed secretly, in the 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement, how to divide its Arab lands, and after the war they took them as League of Nations mandates. Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

  • The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2015)
  • The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)

In Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) led a nationalist war and founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The sultanate had already been abolished in 1922; on 3 March 1924 the Turkish parliament abolished the caliphate and sent the last caliph, Abdülmecid II, into exile.

  • Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 — Caroline Finkel, John Murray (2005)
  • The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2015)
  • Caliphate — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Four years later the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt, one of many movements that sought an Islamic answer to the new order.
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press
  • The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)

How it's seen
Turkish republican view

Abolishing the caliphate was part of building a modern, secular nation after the Ottoman collapse. Religion would be a private matter, not the business of the state.

  • Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 — Caroline Finkel, John Murray (2005)
  • The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2015)

Many Muslims elsewhere

The end of the last caliphate, however weak, felt like the loss of a symbol of Muslim unity. In India, the Khilafat movement had campaigned to save it; its abolition left a gap that thinkers and movements have argued over ever since.

  • Caliphate — Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Islam: The Straight Path — John L. Esposito, Oxford University Press

Why it matters today

Islam

The colonial era left borders, wounds and questions Muslims still argue over: how to be modern without becoming Western, and what political form, if any, Islam requires. Some Islamist groups still dream of restoring the caliphate, while most Muslims live comfortably in nation-states and reject those who claim the title by force.