Ottoman Caliphate

The Ottoman Caliphate, under the Ottoman dynasty of the Ottoman Empire, was the last Sunni Islamic caliphate of the late medieval and the early modern era. During the period of Ottoman growth, Ottoman rulers claimed caliphal authority since Murad I's conquest of Edirne in 1362. Later Selim I, through conquering and unification of Muslim lands, became the defender of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina which further strengthened the Ottoman claim to caliphate in the Muslim world.

The demise of the Ottoman Caliphate took place because of a slow erosion of power in relation to Western Europe, and because of the end of the Ottoman state in consequence of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the League of Nations mandate. Abdülmecid II, the last Ottoman caliph, held his caliphal position for a couple of years after the partitioning, but with Mustafa Kemal's secular reforms and the subsequent exile of the royal Osmanoğlu family from the Republic of Turkey in 1924, the caliphal position was abolished.

Since the 14th century, the caliphate was claimed by the Turkish sultans of the Ottoman Empire starting with Murad I, and they gradually came to be viewed as the de facto leaders and representative of the Islamic world. From Edirne and later from Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the Ottoman sultans ruled over an empire that, at its peak, covered Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and extended deep into Eastern Europe.

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