{"id":45057,"date":"2017-11-28T17:16:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T00:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=45057"},"modified":"2017-11-28T17:19:19","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T00:19:19","slug":"the-origin-of-the-caliphate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/the-origin-of-the-caliphate.html","title":{"rendered":"The origin of the “caliphate”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Umar<\/a>
An anonymous nineteenth-century illustration of the AD 638 conquest of Jerusalem by \u2018Umar, the second caliph. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continuing with my draft manuscript:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abu Bakr was the first man to bear the title of \u201ccaliph,\u201d to serve as the political successor of the Prophet.[1]<\/a> He lived for only two more years beyond the death of Muhammad, but it was during his rule that a series of small campaigns known as the \u201cWars of the Ridda\u201d reestablished the control of the new Islamic \u201cstate\u201d over the Arabian peninsula. Just before his death in 634 A.D., Abu Bakr nom\u00adinated Umar as his successor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Umar\u2019s leadership, the wars that had first been directed against \u201crebellious\u201d Arabian tribes went on. But now, with the entire Arabian peninsula pacified and back under Muslim control, the military and raiding energies of the Arabs had to be directed out\u00adward. Oddly enough, the Arab empire does not seem to have been planned. It simply happened. (Although perhaps no event in human history is really so simple as that. This one, the rise of an Arab empire, seems quite clearly to have fulfilled the words of the angel to Hagar, exiled in the desert and resigned to the death of her son Ishmael: \u201cArise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.\u201d)[2]<\/a> One weak state after another fell to the Arabs, who must have been as amazed at their good fortune as we are today in reading about it. Even the Byzantines and the Per\u00adsians, exhausted by their long war with one another, were no match for the upstarts from the desert.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arab armies conquered Syria easily (635-636), including Pales\u00adtine and Jerusalem itself. (The Arabs appear to have been welcomed by the local Jewish population there. After the conquest, the reason\u00ading seems to have gone, things could only get better for the Jews. And they did. Tiberias, the Galilean town where the so-called Jerus\u00adalem Talmud was completed, remained a center for Jewish study of the Bible and for the study of the Hebrew language for generations beyond the Arab conquest.) By 637, Arab forces occupied lower Iraq, and by 641 they had taken all of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. The Persian empire, where the Jews again welcomed the Arab liberators, also came under attack. By the 650s, it had ceased to exist. The Byzantines took heavy losses as well. In 642, Egypt, which had been the breadbasket of the Roman empire since the days of the first Caesars, fell to the Arabs. (The invaders were assisted by local Christians, furious at the treatment their denomi\u00adnation was receiving from the imperial governors sent from Con\u00adstantinople.) Garrison towns were established throughout the conquered territories, including such famous places as Basra and Kufa, and Fustat, which would eventually become the great city of Cairo.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> The word caliph<\/em> is usually pronounced KAY-liff<\/em> in English, although the Arabic is khalifa<\/em> (pronounced kha-LEE-fuh<\/em>). It means something like \u201cstand-in,\u201d or \u201cdeputy\u201d (to the Prophet).<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Genesis 21:18. Compare Genesis 17:20, already quoted.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Continuing with my draft manuscript: \u00a0 Abu Bakr was the first man to bear the title of \u201ccaliph,\u201d to serve as the political successor of the Prophet.[1] He lived for only two more years beyond the death of Muhammad, but it was during his rule that a series of small campaigns known as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe origin of the "caliphate"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Continuing with my draft manuscript:   Abu Bakr was the first man to bear the title of "caliph," to serve as the political successor of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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