Egypt’s position in the caliphate has generally been considered either as loosely tributary, with its governors running the province more or less as a personal possession, granting the caliph a... Show moreEgypt’s position in the caliphate has generally been considered either as loosely tributary, with its governors running the province more or less as a personal possession, granting the caliph a share of the province’s riches, as it pleased them, or as the outer rim of a radial system extending from the caliph’s capital and through which caliphal power was exercised by means of administrative control and military force. In this model – which looks from the center outwards – Egypt is located at the decision-making periphery of the Muslim empire, the recipient of directives and consumer of developments initiated at the imperial capital (first located in Medina, then Damascus, and finally Baghdad), where the sneezes that precipitated all of the caliphate’s colds occurred.This chapter takes a different view. By examining Egypt’s relationship to the imperial center between the Arab conquest and the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in Cairo in 969 CE, and the complex, ambiguous, and shifting processes of interdependency, caliphal ambition, and local self-assertion as they appear in the sources, I will argue that at all times Egypt’s centrality to the caliphate was a two-way relationship, in which Egypt occupied a key place in caliphal strategic thinking, and in which Egyptians saw themselves as intrinsic to the Muslim imperial project. Show less
This thesis argues that the age of steam and print—more specifically, increased access to the steamship, railway, printing press, and telegraph—played a crucial role in the extended dynamic... Show moreThis thesis argues that the age of steam and print—more specifically, increased access to the steamship, railway, printing press, and telegraph—played a crucial role in the extended dynamic challenges of the ideas of the Caliphate, Wahhabism and Mahdism vis-à-vis each other. It aims to illustrate how these three concepts took on global dimensions by spilling over Ottoman borders and how they affected the Ottoman centre’s reactions to these developments after the revolution in communications and transportation in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ideas about the Caliphate, Wahhabism and Mahdism had already existed for a long time. However, their spheres of influence had remained limited to a certain area and timeframe, not attaining a global scope until the advent of the new age. The centuries-old Islamic concept of the Caliphate assumed a new global dimension under the banner of Pan-Islamism, and the Ottoman Caliphate claimed spiritual sovereignty over all of the multinational Muslim communities that lived under the control of various authorities, including the British, Dutch, Russian, and French empires. Wahhabism, as the ideology of a doctrine-oriented movement that came into being in the previous century but had remained local, spread all around the world in this new era and thus became a global concern for state rulers. Likewise, the Mahdi creed had existed throughout Islamic history but it became a widespread ideology in the case of the Sudanese Mahdi movement, garnering attention in distant lands and drawing in many Muslims in a short period of time. Show less
