Caliphate Redefined by Hüseyin Yılmaz

Author:Hüseyin Yılmaz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400888047
Publisher: Princeton University Press

The Shadow of God on Earth

No appellative better illustrates the corollary between God’s government and the sultan’s rulership than “shadow of God.”24 Besides indiscriminate uses of the term as a metaphor and an honorific designation especially in literature, in political theory it was often used as a qualifier to distinguish between higher and lower levels of rulership. Unlike other titles, such as caliph, imam, and sultan, ẓill Allāh was rarely used individually but was mostly added to other titles as a distinctive attribute of rulership (i.e., al-sulṭān ẓill Allāh). For an author such as Lütfi Paşa, who was not concerned with distinguishing between superior and inferior forms of rulership, ẓill Allāh was only one of the titles that any ruler could claim the right to bear.25 In his view, the very existence of rulership and the status of the ruler in relation to his subjects made him the shadow of God over his creation, regardless of the ruler’s qualifications or the moral quality of his rulership. For him, being the shadow of God did not impose on rulership a moral imperative.

However, a more typical approach, voiced by such authors as Kınalızade and Taşköprizade, assessed rulership on the basis of the ruler’s moral and religious qualifications and promoted ẓill Allāh as a rank that could be achieved only by meeting certain conditions. But the question for the ruler was not whether he was entitled to be designated as the shadow of God but to what degree his rulership conformed to such a designation. In consensus view, even in the most rudimentary form of rulership, characterized by the sheer power to rule, the ruler could still enjoy the status of being ẓill Allāh for resembling God’s government in such traits as the unity of authority, might, and majesty. The quest then was to turn one’s rulership into a mirror image, a true shadow of God, as far as humanly possible by endowing the ruler with all the godly traits applicable to earthly rulership. In this sense, ẓill Allāh was envisioned to be a spiritual ascention of the ruler in an endless pursuit of perfection.

Conceiving rulership as being God’s shadow was largely based on a logical inference dictated by the semantic field of the metaphor itself, and interpreted mostly on the basis of mystical teachings about one’s relation to God. Unlike most other titles used to qualify the sultan, the term ẓill Allāh does not appear in the Qur’an. The evidential basis of the term came from certain well-known prophetic traditions that were commonly quoted in political literature. The Prophet’s praise of rulers as ẓill Allāh had certainly made it a popular designation among political writers since the earliest writings on political theory. In almost all cases, ẓill Allāh was used in reference to the prophetic traditions, which designated the ruler as the shadow of God. The most widely quoted tradition on the subject, circulating in different variants, was the one that portrayed the ruler as the shadow of God and advised all believers to pay him unconditional loyalty, regardless of the quality of his rulership.

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