Of Kings and Caliphs: Itinerant Ideas at the End of Empire, 1914–25

Although Egypt was severed from the Ottoman Empire in 1914— after the former had been a province of the latter for four centuries— it was only after the declaration of Egyptian independence in 1922 that the prospect of self-rule seemed, for the first time, attainable. While intellectuals had reflected for decades on what it would mean for Egypt to be sovereign, their debate remained theoretical. In these exchanges, they devoted little attention to the figure of their ruler himself, the presence of whom they considered a mere practical necessity; hamstrung by the British, he was not truly sovereign.

But when two years after independence, the Caliphate itself was finally abolished, the role of the ruler would come under unprecedented scrutiny, especially as Egypt’s king, competing with other Muslim monarchs, sought to claim the title for himself. After all, he reasoned, it was in Egypt that the keys to the caliphate had been seized in the sixteenth century; it is to there that they should return.

This paper does not chart the diplomatic history of that moment, but instead examines the ideas it generated. The contest over the caliphate forced Egyptians to reconsider the sixty-year political arrangement that had defined their relationship to the ruling family— and to question its compatiblity with their demands for popular sovereignty. As they debated these matters, they produced original, sophisticated and largely forgotten arguments about the nature of political authority. Appearing in fragments, op-eds or speeches, rather than as coherent treatises, the ideas were articulated by practitioners rather than theoreticians of politics. As such they were expressed in practical, rather than abstract or normative terms. By reconstructing them, the paper provides an alternative account of Arab political thought— one which focuses not on the origins of ideas but on understanding their appeal and plausibility.