Modern · a Light

The caliphate was ended by a vote in March 1924

On 3 March 1924 the Grand National Assembly in Ankara abolished the caliphate, an institution that had existed in some form since 632, and the last caliph, Abdulmecid II, left Istanbul by train the following night. The office had been almost powerless for centuries and had already been separated from the sultanate in 1922, but its ending mattered far beyond Turkey. In India it had already produced the Khilafat movement, one of the first mass political campaigns on the subcontinent. Muslims elsewhere held congresses in Cairo and Makkah to consider what to do, and agreed on nothing. The question of who, if anyone, speaks for the whole community has been open since that day.

Ankara · 3 March 1924