Caliphate: The History of an Idea

In Caliphate, Arab historian Hugh Kennedy offers a grand history of the caliphate since the death of the prophet Mohammed to its modern Islamist incarnations. He begins by vividly describing the political and cultural legacies of the Arab caliphates that shaped the Islamic Golden Age. From the seventh-century Rashiduns and Ummayyads to the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Abbasids and Fatimids, we explore the tolerant rule of Umar, witness the traumatic murder of the tyrannical caliph Uthman, and revel in the flourishing arts of the Moors of Andalucia. Kennedy then delves into the modern fate of the caliphate, from the British political schemes to spur dissent against the Ottomans in the twentieth century to the ominous calls of Islamist leaders for a new Muslim caliphate in the twenty-first.

An authoritative new account of the dynasties of Arab leaders, Caliphate traces the history—and misappropriations—of one of the world’s most potent political ideas.