Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE UMMA t 145
trine until the return of the Imam-Mahdi. One of his more desperate,
or optimistic, successors went considerably beyond that: the
Mahdi had returned; the eschatological resurrection (qiyama) was
at hand, and with it the abrogation of traditional Islam. It brought
climax but no satisfaction. The entire movement went down under
the deluge of the Mongol invasion.
The Sultanate
At the height of their power, the Ismaili Fatimids had extended
their call from their base in Egypt westward across North Africa to
Morocco—the Umayyad declaration in Spain that theirs was a
genuine caliphate was a reaction to the approach of the Fatimids
across the straits—and eastward through Palestine and parts of
Syria that they held. Their agents were spreading the revolutionary
message at the very heart of the caliphate in Iraq and Iran in the
eleventh century. Sunni, caliphal Islam was under a grave threat
and was likely saved by the arrival on the scene of intrepid warrior
bands who were as loyal to Sunnism and the caliph as they were
implacable soldiers. But they also brought a new element of power
into the Abode of Islam: if the Turks saved the caliphate, the caliph
had thenceforth to share his throne with the newcomers.
Sultan is a quranic term meaning simply power or authority, and
early in Islam it came to be applied without a great deal of technical
precision to sovereign political authority, frequently as a synonym
of mulk, “possession,” hence “kingship” or “sovereignty.”
The Abbasids used it that way, and it is noteworthy that they
spoke of conferring sultan on the “amir of amirs.” In the latter
office, that of Grand Amir or commander-in-chief, lay the true origins
of the sultanate as a distinct and autonomous power in Islam.
In 936 the caliph al-Radi formally appointed as the first tenant of
that office the Turkish general Ibn al-Raiq and so vested in him the
highest civil and military functions of the state, functions that were
formerly divided between a civilian vizier or prime minister and a
military amir or commander. The grand amirate passed to succes-