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This chapter discusses the mystification of the Ottoman caliphate and the apocalyptic-messianic reconstruction of imperial ideology in the context of the long Ottoman–Safavid conflict of the sixteenth century. Current studies in the main treat the Ottoman–Safavid conflict as no more than a sectarian conflict between two expanding Muslim empires. The Ottomans, however, perceived it as an apocalyptic conflict between primordial forces of faith and disbelief, often expressed in manicheistic dichotomies. Being one of the most aggressively fought religious wars in Islamic history, it profoundly altered both Sunni and Shiite conceptions of history and rulership. The Safavids, being at once a Turkoman chieftainship, a Shiite dynasty, and a Sufi order, were better endowed with esoteric image-making skills than the Ottomans, whose juristic and theological arguments against heresy were, simply, by definition nullified. Despite the Ottoman military might that overwhelmed the Safavids in multiple battles, the Safavid–Shiite call resonated much more strongly among the vast Turkoman diaspora from Central Asia to the Balkans, particularly among popular mystical orders of the countryside.

This chapter considers a protracted poetic debate between one of the last Ottoman şeyhülislams Mustafa Sabri and the Egyptian Prince of Poets Aṭmad Shawqī, conducted through the Egyptian press in the 1920s, to illustrate how modern regional contexts and professional affiliations created divergent interpretations of the Ottoman Caliphate's significance, even among those Muslim elites who shared an intense devotion to defending its legacy. For Mustafa Sabri, who hailed from the Ottoman religious hierarchy, the abolition of the caliphate meant a loss of the primacy of Islamic law, whereas for Aṭmad Shawqī, who assailed the British with his poetic pen, it meant the loss of the last great Muslim power in an age of colonialism.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the complex constellations of meanings and networks that shaped Muslim reactions to the remarkably unexpected disappearance of an Islamic caliphate in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. It probes the collective memories encircling the caliphate, as an institution enmeshed with the early history of Islam, which circulated widely across Afro-Eurasia and created a shared sense of community among disparate peoples at the same time as it gave rise to differing and competing visions of the community's past, present, and future. The book asks two essential questions: What did Muslims imagine to be lost with the disappearance of the Abbasid and Ottoman caliphates in 1258 and 1924 respectively? And how did they attempt to recapture that perceived loss, and in doing so redefine the caliphate for their times, under shifting circumstances?

Chapter 2 scrutinizes the contours of the Muslim unity project. Through interview data it demonstrates how the belief in “Islam as cement” comes to life in the discourses of several religious elites who characterize Sunni Islam as an overarching supranational identity and see Muslim fraternity as the only solution to the Kurdish conflict. Citing certain hadiths and verses from the Qur’an, they reproduce the belief that Sunni Islam could indeed bridge the ethnic divide between Kurds and Turks. To provide some historical context, the chapter goes on to analyze this discourse in relation to the Muslim ummah and Ottoman pan-Islamism. Finally, building on systematic analysis of statements by AKP cadres—mostly by President Erdoğan—it demonstrates how the AKP came to embrace a pan-Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict, what steps it took toward accomplishing it, and how its attitude toward Kurds compares to that of the Ottomans toward their Muslim subjects.