ثورة فلسطين - أسبابها ونتائجها
The Palestine Revolt: Its Causes and Consequencesby Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā

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إسقاط حرمة الخلافة وإضاعتها

(5) كان إسقاط حرمة الخلافة أولاً بقتل الخليفة الثالث، ثم بالخروج على الرابع، من مقدمات سقوط وحدة السلطة العربية التي انتهت بتعدد السلاطين ودول الطوائف، وكان اتساع دائرة الفتوحات في الشرق والغرب وصعوبة المواصلات مما يتعذر معه وحدة السلطة بدون خضوع ديني لمقام الخلافة يملك على النفس وجدانها وعملها، فيحول بذلك دون الخروج على الحكومة والاستبداد دونها، ولئن رتق بنو أمية ما فتقوا بتمكنهم من جمع الكلمة، وتوحيد السلطة، وتوجيه المسلمين إلى الجهاد في الكفار، وفتح الأمصار، وحمد لهم الجمهور هذا على كراهته لفسوق أكثرهم، فلقد كان رتقهم له بالعصبية مع الإسراف في الترف والتفريط في العلم والتقوى رتقًا واهيًا، ولمقام الخلافة منافيًا، ولذلك كان أمده قريبًا.

قضى بنو العباس على بني أمية بقوة العصبية التي ابتدعوها، ثم قضوا بها على خلافة النبوة التي تقلدوها، واعتمدوا فيها على الأعاجم فكانت بذلك شرًّا مما قبلها، وإنما امتاز أوائلهم بالعلم، فبلغ الذروة في عهد المأمون، كما كان لهم مزيد حرمة عند الأمة بقرابة الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم؛ ولكن شان عِلمَ المأمون نصرُه للبدعة، وما كان ينبغي للخليفة أن يتعدى حدود قطعيات الكتاب والسنة، ويضطهد حرية الاجتهاد في العلم والدين، بنصر فريق على فريق من الباحثين، فالملك يجب أن يكون - كما يقول ساسة هذا العصر - بمعزل عن المذاهب والأحزاب، ثم ما زال يضعف العلم ويتضاءل نفوذ النسب، وتتفرق قوى العرب، وتحل محلها عصبية العجم، حتى صار الخليفة شبحًا من أشباح اللعب، يُزين بالحرير والذهب، ويُستنطق بما لا يريد أو بما لا يفهم، ويوقع على ما لا يقرأ أو على ما لا يعلم، ويتحرك بتحريك البطانة والحاشية والحرس، وإنما يُعظَّم تعظيمًا صوريًّا، ويُمَكَّن من اللذات البدنية ما دام مواتيًا، فإن نبا أو أبى قتلوه ونصبوا شبحًا آخر مكانه، لا يرى وسيلة لاستدامة اللذة والفخفخة والزينة، إلا التجرد من الأمر والنهي والرأي والإرادة.

English
translation

The loss of the caliphate's standing and its disappearance

(5) The first blow to the sanctity of the caliphate was the killing of the third caliph, followed by rebellion against the fourth. These were among the steps toward the loss of united Arab authority, which ended in many sultans and petty states. As conquests spread east and west and travel remained difficult, authority could not remain united without religious submission to the office of the caliphate that governed people's conscience and conduct, preventing rebellion against the government or seizure of its authority. The Umayyads did mend what they had torn by gathering the community, uniting authority, directing Muslims to struggle against unbelievers, and conquering cities. The public praised them for this despite its dislike of the misconduct of most of them. Yet their repair rested on group partisanship, excess in luxury, and neglect of knowledge and piety. It was a frail repair, at odds with the office of the caliphate, and so it did not last long.

The Abbasids defeated the Umayyads through the force of group partisanship they had created, then used it to destroy the prophetic caliphate they had taken up. They relied on non-Arabs, making their caliphate worse than the one before it. Their early rulers did stand out for learning, which reached its height under al-Mamun, and they enjoyed greater standing among the community through their kinship with the Messenger, God's blessing and peace be upon him. But al-Mamun's support for religious innovation marred his learning. A caliph should not have gone beyond the certain teachings of the Book and Sunna and suppressed freedom of independent inquiry in knowledge and religion by supporting one group of researchers against another. Rulers must, as politicians of this age say, stand apart from sects and parties. Knowledge then continued to weaken, the influence of ancestry diminished, Arab power divided, and non-Arab group partisanship took its place. The caliph became a figure like a plaything, dressed in silk and gold, made to say what he did not want to say or did not understand, and made to sign what he did not read or know. His inner circle, courtiers, and guards moved him at will. He received only ceremonial respect and was allowed bodily pleasures so long as he complied. If he resisted or refused, they killed him and put another figure in his place, one who saw no way to keep his pleasure, pomp, and adornment except to give up command, prohibition, judgment, and will.

Analysis

Riḍā traces the loss of the caliphate's standing from the killing of the third caliph through Umayyad and Abbasid rule. He argues that shared religious submission once held a wide empire together, and that luxury, partisan power, and interference with inquiry weakened it.

His criticism of al-Ma'mun has a specific historical basis in the miḥna. Nimrod Hurvitz's Oxford Handbook study says al-Ma'mun initiated the policy in 833 and ordered the interrogation of jurists and hadith scholars about whether the Qur'an was created. Hurvitz interprets its aim as lowering the standing of the hadith scholars and raising the theologians to intellectual and religious leadership. This supports Riḍā's claim that the caliph imposed one side in a religious dispute. His language of “freedom of independent inquiry” and his judgment that al-Ma'mun supported innovation remain Riḍā's normative framing.

The image of a caliph dressed in silk and gold but controlled by courtiers is part of his judgment about decline. This page is evidence of his theory of legitimate rule, not an independent account of each reign.

Martin Hinds describes the murder of ʿUthmān as a turning point and traces the combined opposition that brought about his death. This supports the narrow historical core of Riḍā's opening sequence before the civil conflict under ʿAlī. It does not establish his long causal chain from those events to the loss of unified Arab authority and the later decline of the caliphate.

The Abbasids did rely on constituencies beyond the older Arab tribal levies, but the history is more mixed than Riḍā's ethnic sequence suggests. Encyclopaedia Iranica describes the Khorasanian military base as both Arab and Persian and notes a growing Persian role in administration. “Khorasanian” marked place of origin rather than one race. This supports a change in the army and bureaucracy without turning it into proof of one foreign ethnic plot against Arab rule.

Riḍā's image of caliphs controlled and replaced by guards also has a narrower Samarra-period basis. Tayeb El-Hibri describes an increasingly assertive Turkish military whose officers manipulated caliphs and policy after al-Wāthiq. A Cambridge history records al-Mutawakkil's murder by the Turkish guard in 861 at his son's instigation. These events support the claim that military factions could control succession and kill a caliph. They do not establish that every later caliph was a passive puppet or that Turkish ethnicity alone caused the institutional crisis.