Chapter 313: The Caliph of the Muslims

On the third of March, 1924, in Ankara, The Grand National Assembly deposed the caliph And abolished the office. The law said the office was already contained In the meaning of the government and the republic. The sentence is the assembly's. It is not a verse. The prophet died at Medina. The revelation does not contain this statute. After the death the community gave its answers, And the answers were more than one. The house of Osman carried one of them. The name was caliph, a successor. The law of 1924 is a state's answer to that name. It does not erase the question. On the first of November, 1922, the same assembly Abolished the sultanate. It kept the caliphate, and kept it in the house, To be given to the one most fit in learning and character. It did not say that Mehmed VI had been elected to it. On the third of November, a Friday, He went out to the prayer under both names, Sultan and caliph. On the sixteenth the assembly decided to charge him With treason against the homeland. That night, the sixteenth into the seventeenth, He left Istanbul on a British warship. On the nineteenth of November the assembly elected Abdülmecid II. He painted. One of the canvases is Beethoven in the palace. The assembly did not give him the old title, Commander of the faithful. It gave him caliph of the Muslims. He asked to be called also servant of the two sanctuaries. He did not hold Mecca. He did not hold Medina. He asked to wear the turban of Mehmed the Conqueror. Mustafa Kemal answered that a frock coat would do. Later he signed in the manner of a sultan's son. The signature was heard as the reign, trying to return. On the twenty-fourth of November, at Topkapı, In the room where the prophet's cloak was kept, The allegiance was given. The prayer that day was in Turkish. At the Fatih Mosque a sermon was read in Turkish, In the new caliph's name. It took the sentence about the greater struggle And read the struggle as the one against ignorance. From the twenty-first to the twenty-seventh of December, A caliphate conference in India accepted him. On the third of January, 1923, Indian Muslims gave Mustafa Kemal a title: Saviour of the caliphate. On the twenty-ninth of October the assembly proclaimed the republic And elected him president. The caliph stayed in Istanbul. An office without the state sat in the old capital. The state without that office sat in Ankara. On the fifth of December the papers printed a letter To the prime minister, İsmet Pasha, From Aga Khan and from Amir Ali. It asked that the office be kept, And that the caliph's standing be given back. On the night of the eighth the assembly, sitting in closed session, Decided to send an independence tribunal to Istanbul. On the third of March the bill was brought by Saffet Efendi, deputy for Urfa, and fifty-three with him. Seyyid Bey, the minister of justice, Had taught the law of the religion, and had studied at al-Azhar. He told the chamber the caliphate was not a creed. It was a worldly question, among the public affairs of the people. Zeki Bey, the deputy from Gümüşhane, spoke against the closing. The article passed. The president approved the law the same day. It was numbered four hundred and thirty-one. The same day the assembly closed the ministry Of religious affairs and pious foundations, And set up a presidency of religious affairs, Charged with the faith and the worship. The schools were brought under one ministry of education. The universal name came down. A bureau of the nation stood up in its hour. That night he was taken by car to Çatalca. The next evening he boarded the train. With him were his son Ömer Faruk, His daughter Dürrüşehvar, Two of the women of the house, And the tutor, the secretary, and the doctor. An envelope from the governor held two thousand pounds And visas that let them out. They had wired a hotel at Territet, on the lake, in Switzerland. The house was banned from living in the republic. On the eleventh of March he answered. He said the assembly's decision was void. He asked for a religious council, And for help to revive the office. Within the week Switzerland told him The Turkish government had objected, And that he would not be permitted the work. In that same March, Hussein ibn Ali, King of the Hejaz, who held Mecca, Was proclaimed caliph. The day of it is not one day in the records. The proclamation did not reopen the office Ankara had closed. Holding a sanctuary is not the succession. He died in Paris on the twenty-third of August, 1944, While the city was being taken back. Dürrüşehvar came and was given a promise. The body was not brought. On the thirtieth of March, 1954, he was buried at al-Baqi, In Medina. The grave is in the prophet's city. The grave is not the office. Do not say the republic contained the caliphate Because the statute said contained. The statute closed an office this assembly had filled, And had titled with the lesser name. Do not say the train refutes the religion. A painter was put into the office, and then put on a train. The person is not the argument. Do not say the bureau for worship is the succession. It is a state keeping the rites it will administer. Hold that keeping. Refuse the consolation that a closed office was never an office. Refuse the consolation that a grave in Medina restores one. The question of who succeeds is older than this law. The community has given more than one answer. This answer is a vote and a signature, on a Monday in Ankara. The man they called saviour of the caliphate signed the paper that ended it. The man they called caliph of the Muslims died without the name. Count the office closed on the day the law says. Keep the question. It was not in the statute.