Ian Morris: A dark ancient warning about a new caliphate

The Isis leader Abu Bakral-Baghdadi is working from a 1,400-year-old playbook and has learned its lessons well

Growing threat: Militant Islamist fighters during a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa celebrating their declaration of an Islamic caliphate

Ian Morris

1 July 2014

Thirteen centuries ago an Islamic caliphate stretched from Portugal to Pakistan, ruling one-fifth of the world’s population. Now the caliphate is back.

Admittedly, the caliphate proclaimed on Sunday by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (Isis) is not much to look at. It commands just a few thousand poorly armed fanatics in ragtag bands. The great powers could crush it in a few days if they made the effort.

Yet the original caliphate was not much to look at either — to start with, anyway. The original caliphs also commanded just a few thousand fanatics. They began infiltrating out of the Arabian Desert in the 630s AD, fuelled by the new faith of Islam. The great powers — Persia and Byzantium —could have crushed the uprising with ease if they had made the effort.

But they didn’t make the effort. Each great power thought that acting would cost too much. Or that crushing the insurgents would rebound to the other great power’s advantage. Or that its subjects were weary of war. With so many reasons not to act, neither great power did anything.

Cut adrift, local resistance to the insurgents simply melted away, just as the Iraqi army did at Mosul three weeks ago. In the year 639 the whole of Egypt surrendered to just 4,000 Muslim insurgents — roughly the same number that Isis currently commands. The entire Persian Empire collapsed just a few years after.

Right now, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the 21st-century caliph, does not look so dangerous. Isis is full of rival factions. Even al Qaeda has rejected it. Much the same was true, though, of the first caliph. This man, also called Abu Bakr, invented the job of “caliph” in the critical hours after the prophet Mohammed died in 632.

Islam was then just a chaotic insurgency, and its anarchic Arab warlords wanted nothing to do with a king. A caliph was a different matter. The Arabic word “khalifa” means “deputy” (to Allah) and “successor” (to Mohammed), but not “ruler”, and so Abu Bakr set himself up as a caliph.

The downside was that Abu Bakr could not force anyone to do what he said — but that had never been a possibility anyway. The upside was that his religious authority could inspire insurgent cells to share the same enemies. Alliances could shift, bands of fanatics could join in or drop out, but the fight would go on.

The new caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, understands all this. He also knows that being a caliph has always been as much about fighting other Muslims as Christians or Jews. In 680, Mohammed’s grandson Husayn rebelled against the caliphs. Only Mohammed’s blood relatives, Husayn claimed, had the right to lead Islam. Non-relatives who called themselves caliphs were tyrants to be overthrown.

Husayn was soon killed, but Muslims began splitting into two camps — the Shiites, who belonged to a faction (in Arabic, a shi‘a) following Husayn, and the Sunni, who followed custom (in Arabic, sunna). A Sunni caliph’s first task is to kill Shiites, and so Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has gone on a rampage of amputations, beheadings, and even crucifixions.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is working from a 1,400-year-old playbook, and has learned its lessons well. If we want to stop him, we must also learn from history. We must act now.

Ian Morris is Professor of Classics at Stanford University and author of War: What is it Good For? (Profile, 2014).

Ian Morris: A dark ancient warning about a new caliphate

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