Page:Thomas Walker Arnold - The Caliphate (1924).pdf/15

picked up with the minimum of effort, by the rival empires of Persia and Rome, exhausted as they were by the age-long struggle in which they had endeavoured to tear one another to pieces, and in the case of the Roman empire, distracted by the acerbity of the theological antagonisms of rival Churches, still more embittered by racial antipathy. No one at the beginning of the seventh century, least of all an Arab, could have anticipated in imagination the vast extent, the immense wealth and power, which were to be under the control of the Successor of the Prophet when he reigned in Damascus or Baghdad. Unlike the Holy Roman Empire, the Caliphate was no deliberate imitation of a pre-existent form of civilization or political organization. It was the outgrowth of conditions that were entirely unfamiliar to the Arabs, and took upon itself a character that was exactly moulded by these conditions. The Caliphate as a political institution was thus the child of its age, and did not look upon itself as the revival of any political institution of an earlier date.

The theory as embodied in the works of Muhammadan theologians and jurists was elaborated in order to suit already operating facts; the history of the development of this theory is obscure, but it certainly does not make its appearance in literature until after the Arab empire had become an accomplished reality. As we know it, this theory first finds expression in the Traditions, which claim to be the utterances of the Prophet