title: Lil' Kim

text: Lil' Kim's music catalogue features undertones of sex-positive feminism and the importance of female pleasure, instead of the man as the "dominant priority," through explicit lyrics about sex. "Dazed" considered her "the first high-profile female rapper to flip the script on female objectification in the rap industry". For "NME"s editor Jordan Bassett, she "out-filthed the male rappers at every turn."


title: Lil' Kim

text: According to BBC News, "Hard Core" (1996) was the most successful debut album by a female hip hop artist at the time; the album saw her "inhabit the territory of sexual edginess and hardcore rap, traditionally the preserve inhabited by male artists." In 2000, "Los Angeles Times" writer Isaac Guzman expressed that the her debut solo album created a path for a new wave of female rappers, with her at the forefront of her generation, and established her as "the raunchiest, hardest, sexiest, most glamorous woman in all of hip-hop."


title: Lil' Kim

text: During that time, several new female hip hop artists modeled themselves after her stylistically. Placing "Hard Core" at number 80 on their list of "Best Rap Albums of the 90s", "Complex" stated, "when Lil Kim released her debut album—women in hip-hop finally had options, paths to follow and models [...] she was the raunchiest woman you ever heard on the mic." "The Village Voice" writer Joan Morgan considered that the album "transformed her into a cultural icon", and opined that it put an emphasis on sex appeal, looks, and packaging as a priority for female rappers. A "Camera Obscura" publication noted her as one of the late twentieth-century "self-marketers of female trouble" in music, along with Janet Jackson and Tina Turner.


title: Lil' Kim

text: Aside from music, Lil' Kim is also known for her risk-taking and luxurious approach to fashion that inspired many artists; she has been cited as a fashion icon, as well as one of the most influential rappers of all time by various media outlets. "Vogue" editor-at-large André Leon Talley called her "the black Madonna." Lil' Kim has been cited as an inspiration for designers such as Marc Jacobs, Versace, and Giorgio Armani, according to "Vogue." In 2020, "XXL" wrote that "twenty-five years later, no rapper is more influential to the new female rhymers".


title: Lil' Kim

text: Some artists who have credited Kim as influence include Rihanna, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Kash Doll, Bree Runway, Teyana Taylor, Doja Cat, Rosalía, Hitmaka, Casanova, Spice, Zaytoven, Stefflon Don, Flo Milli, Saweetie, and Erica Banks. Actress Taraji P. Henson has stated that Lil' Kim inspired her portrayal of "Empire" character Cookie Lyon.


title: Lil' Kim

text: Throughout her career, Lil' Kim has earned numerous honors and awards. Lil' Kim's debut album "Hard Core" was certified double platinum by the RIAA, and is considered a classic hip-hop album. As of 2007, Lil' Kim has sold over 15 million albums worldwide. Her songs "No Time", "Big Momma Thang" and "Ladies Night" were listed on Complex Magazine's "The 50 Best Rap Songs By Women", at number 24, 13, and 7, respectively. Her song "Lady Marmalade" with Pink, Christina Aguilera, and Mýa, is one of the best-selling singles of all time worldwide, with sales of over 5.1 million worldwide. "Lady Marmalade" went number one on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, making her the first female rapper to have a number one on that chart. The song won a 2002 Grammy Award in the category of "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals".


title: Lil' Kim

text: Lil' Kim was ranked as one of the top 50 greatest MCs of all time in Kool Moe Dee's 2003 book, "There's a God on the Mic". In 2012, Lil' Kim was honorably listed on VH1's "100 Greatest Women In Music" at number 45, making her the fourth highest position for a female rapper. In 2014, Lil' Kim was included in "Billboard"s list of the "31 Female Rappers Who Changed Hip-Hop". In 2016, VH1 honored Lil' Kim with VH1 Hip-Hop Honors and WEEN Award honored Kim with Icon Award because of her contribution to hip hop.


title: Lil' Kim

text: In June 2018, Lil' Kim was honored with a proclamation by the New York City Council's Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus (BLAC) as part of the annual African-American Music Appreciation Month for her contributions to hip-hop. Along with the proclamation, she also accepted the New York City 12th Council District Arts and Music Award and the city's Power Of Influence Award. In 2019, Lil' Kim was honored by BET Hip Hop Awards with the I Am Hip Hop Award.


title: Ferret

text: The ferret (Mustela furo) is a small, domesticated species belonging to the family Mustelidae. The ferret is most likely a domesticated form of the wild European polecat ("Mustela putorius"), evidenced by their interfertility. Other mustelids include the stoat, badger and mink.


title: Ferret

text: Physically, ferrets resemble other mustelids because of their long, slender bodies. Including their tail, the average length of a ferret is about ; they weigh between ; and their fur can be black, brown, white, or a mixture of those colours. In this sexually dimorphic species, males are considerably larger than females.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets may have been domesticated since ancient times, but there is widespread disagreement because of the sparseness of written accounts and the inconsistency of those which survive. Contemporary scholarship agrees that ferrets were bred for sport, hunting rabbits in a practice known as rabbiting. In North America, the ferret has become an increasingly prominent choice of household pet, with over five million in the United States alone. The legality of ferret ownership varies by location. In New Zealand and some other countries, restrictions apply due to the damage done to native fauna by feral colonies of polecat–ferret hybrids. The ferret has also served as a fruitful research animal, contributing to research in neuroscience and infectious disease, especially influenza.


title: Ferret

text: The domestic ferret is often confused with the black-footed ferret ("Mustela nigripes"), a species native to North America.


title: Ferret

text: The name "ferret" is derived from the Latin "furittus", meaning "little thief", a likely reference to the common ferret penchant for secreting away small items. In Old English (Anglo-Saxon), the animal was called a "meard" or "mearp." The word "fyret" seems to appear in Middle English in the 14th century from the Latin, with the modern spelling of "ferret" by the 16th century.


title: Ferret

text: The Greek word "íktis", Latinized as "ictis" occurs in a play written by Aristophanes, "The Acharnians", in 425 BC. Whether this was a reference to ferrets, polecats, or the similar Egyptian mongoose is uncertain.


title: Ferret

text: A male ferret is called a hob; a female ferret is a jill. A spayed female is a sprite, a neutered male is a gib, and a vasectomised male is known as a hoblet. Ferrets under one year old are known as kits. A group of ferrets is known as a "business", or historically as a "busyness". Other purported collective nouns, including "besyness", "fesynes", "fesnyng", and "feamyng", appear in some dictionaries, but are almost certainly ghost words.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets have a typical mustelid body-shape, being long and slender. Their average length is about including a tail. Their pelage has various colorations including brown, black, white or mixed. They weigh between and are sexually dimorphic as the males are substantially larger than females. The average gestation period is 42 days and females may have two or three litters each year. The litter size is usually between three and seven kits which are weaned after three to six weeks and become independent at three months. They become sexually mature at approximately 6 months and the average life span is 7 to 10 years. Ferrets are induced ovulators.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets spend 14–18 hours a day asleep and are most active around the hours of dawn and dusk, meaning they are crepuscular. If they are caged, they should be taken out daily to exercise and satisfy their curiosity; they need at least an hour and a place to play. Unlike their polecat ancestors, which are solitary animals, most ferrets will live happily in social groups. They are territorial, like to burrow, and prefer to sleep in an enclosed area.


title: Ferret

text: Like many other mustelids, ferrets have scent glands near their anus, the secretions from which are used in scent marking. Ferrets can recognize individuals from these anal gland secretions, as well as the sex of unfamiliar individuals. Ferrets may also use urine marking for sex and individual recognition.


title: Ferret

text: As with skunks, ferrets can release their anal gland secretions when startled or scared, but the smell is much less potent and dissipates rapidly. Most pet ferrets in the US are sold descented (with the anal glands removed). In many other parts of the world, including the UK and other European countries, de-scenting is considered an unnecessary mutilation.


title: Ferret

text: If excited, they may perform a behavior called the "weasel war dance", characterized by frenzied sideways hops, leaps and bumping into nearby objects. Despite its common name, it is not aggressive but is a joyful invitation to play. It is often accompanied by a unique soft clucking noise, commonly referred to as "dooking". When scared, ferrets will hiss; when upset, they squeak softly.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets are obligate carnivores. The natural diet of their wild ancestors consisted of whole small prey, including meat, organs, bones, skin, feathers, and fur. Ferrets have short digestive systems and a quick metabolism, so they need to eat frequently. Prepared dry foods consisting almost entirely of meat (including high-grade cat food, although specialized ferret food is increasingly available and preferable) provide the most nutritional value. Some ferret owners feed pre-killed or live prey (such as mice and rabbits) to their ferrets to more closely mimic their natural diet. Ferret digestive tracts lack a cecum and the animal is largely unable to digest plant matter. Before much was known about ferret physiology, many breeders and pet stores recommended food like fruit in the ferret diet, but it is now known that such foods are inappropriate, and may in fact have negative consequences for ferret health. Ferrets imprint on their food at around six months old. This can make introducing new foods to an older ferret a challenge, and even simply changing brands of kibble may meet with resistance from a ferret that has never eaten the food as a kit. It is therefore advisable to expose young ferrets to as many different types and flavors of appropriate food as possible.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets have four types of teeth (the number includes maxillary (upper) and mandibular (lower) teeth) with a dental formula of :


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets are known to suffer from several distinct health problems. Among the most common are cancers affecting the adrenal glands, pancreas, and lymphatic system.


title: Ferret

text: Adrenal disease, a growth of the adrenal glands that can be either hyperplasia or cancer, is most often diagnosed by signs like unusual hair loss, increased aggression, and difficulty urinating or defecating. Treatment options include surgery to excise the affected glands, melatonin or deslorelin implants, and hormone therapy. The causes of adrenal disease speculated to include unnatural light cycles, diets based around processed ferret foods, and prepubescent neutering. It has also been suggested that there may be a hereditary component to adrenal disease.


title: Ferret

text: Insulinoma, a type of cancer of the islet cells of the pancreas, is the most common form of cancer in ferrets. It is most common in ferrets between the ages of 4 and 5 years old.


title: Ferret

text: Lymphoma is the most common malignancy in ferrets. Ferret lymphosarcoma occurs in two forms -- "juvenile lymphosarcoma", a fast-growing type that affects ferrets younger than two years, and "adult lymphosarcoma", a slower-growing form that affects ferrets four to seven years old.


title: Ferret

text: A high proportion of ferrets with white markings which form coat patterns known as a blaze, badger, or panda coat, such as a stripe extending from their face down the back of their head to their shoulder blades, or a fully white head, have a congenital deafness (partial or total) which is similar to Waardenburg syndrome in humans. Ferrets without white markings, but with premature graying of the coat, are also more likely to have some deafness than ferrets with solid coat colors which do not show this trait. Most albino ferrets are not deaf; if deafness does occur in an albino ferret, this may be due to an underlying white coat pattern which is obscured by the albinism.


title: Ferret

text: Health problems can occur in unspayed females when not being used for breeding. Similar to domestic cats, ferrets can also suffer from hairballs and dental problems. Ferrets will also often chew on and swallow foreign objects which can lead to bowel obstruction.


title: Ferret

text: In common with most domestic animals, the original reason for ferrets being domesticated by human beings is uncertain, but it may have involved hunting. According to phylogenetic studies, the ferret was domesticated from the European polecat ("Mustela putorius"), and likely descends from a North African lineage of the species. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggests that ferrets were domesticated around 2,500 years ago. It has been claimed that the ancient Egyptians were the first to domesticate ferrets, but as no mummified remains of a ferret have yet been found, nor any hieroglyph of a ferret, and no polecat now occurs wild in the area, that idea seems unlikely. The American Society of Mammalogists classifies "M. furo" as a distinct species.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets were probably used by the Romans for hunting. Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, is recorded as using ferrets in a gigantic hunt in 1221 that aimed to purge an entire region of wild animals.


title: Ferret

text: Colonies of feral ferrets have established themselves in areas where there is no competition from similarly sized predators, such as in the Shetland Islands and in remote regions in New Zealand. Where ferrets coexist with polecats, hybridization is common. It has been claimed that New Zealand has the world's largest feral population of ferret–polecat hybrids. In 1877, farmers in New Zealand demanded that ferrets be introduced into the country to control the rabbit population, which was also introduced by humans. Five ferrets were imported in 1879, and in 1882–1883, 32 shipments of ferrets were made from London, totaling 1,217 animals. Only 678 landed, and 198 were sent from Melbourne, Australia. On the voyage, the ferrets were mated with the European polecat, creating a number of hybrids that were capable of surviving in the wild. In 1884 and 1886, close to 4,000 ferrets and ferret hybrids, 3,099 weasels and 137 stoats were turned loose. Concern was raised that these animals would eventually prey on indigenous wildlife once rabbit populations dropped, and this is exactly what happened to New Zealand's bird species which previously had had no mammalian predators.


title: Ferret

text: For millennia, the main use of ferrets was for hunting, or "ferreting". With their long, lean build, and inquisitive nature, ferrets are very well equipped for getting down holes and chasing rodents, rabbits and moles out of their burrows. The Roman historians Pliny and Strabo record that Caesar Augustus sent "" from Libya to the Balearic Islands to control rabbit plagues there in 6 BC; it is speculated that "" could refer to ferrets, mongooses, or polecats. In England, in 1390, a law was enacted restricting the use of ferrets for hunting to the relatively wealthy:


title: Ferret

text: In the United States, ferrets were relatively rare pets until the 1980s. A government study by the California State Bird and Mammal Conservation Program estimated that by 1996 about 800,000 domestic ferrets were being kept as pets in the United States.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets are an important experimental animal model for human influenza, and have been used to study the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) virus. Smith, Andrews, Laidlaw (1933) inoculated ferrets intra-nasally with human naso-pharyngeal washes, which produced a form of influenza that spread to other cage mates. The human influenza virus (Influenza type A) was transmitted from an infected ferret to a junior investigator, from whom it was subsequently re-isolated.


title: Ferret

text: Most ferrets are either albinos, with white fur and pink eyes, or display the typical dark masked sable coloration of their wild polecat ancestors. In recent years fancy breeders have produced a wide variety of colors and patterns. Color refers to the color of the ferret's guard hairs, undercoat, eyes, and nose; pattern refers to the concentration and distribution of color on the body, mask, and nose, as well as white markings on the head or feet when present. Some national organizations, such as the American Ferret Association, have attempted to classify these variations in their showing standards.


title: Ferret

text: There are four basic colors. The sable (including chocolate and dark brown), albino, dark eyed white (DEW, also known as black eyed white or BEW), and silver. All the other colors of a ferret are variations on one of these four categories.


title: Ferret

text: Ferrets with a white stripe on their face or a fully white head, primarily blazes, badgers, and pandas, almost certainly carry a congenital defect which shares some similarities to Waardenburg syndrome. This causes, among other things, a cranial deformation in the womb which broadens the skull, white face markings, and also partial or total deafness. It is estimated as many as 75 percent of ferrets with these Waardenburg-like colorings are deaf.


title: Ferret

text: White ferrets were favored in the Middle Ages for the ease in seeing them in thick undergrowth. Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Lady with an Ermine" is likely mislabelled; the animal is probably a ferret, not a stoat, (for which "ermine" is an alternative name for the animal in its white winter coat). Similarly, the ermine portrait of Queen Elizabeth the First shows her with her pet ferret, which has been decorated with painted-on heraldic ermine spots.


title: Ferret

text: "The Ferreter's Tapestry" is a 15th-century tapestry from Burgundy, France, now part of the Burrell Collection housed in the Glasgow Museum and Art Galleries. It shows a group of peasants hunting rabbits with nets and white ferrets. This image was reproduced in "Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500", by Jacqueline Herald, Bell & Hyman.


title: Ferret

text: "Gaston Phoebus' Book of the Hunt" was written in approximately 1389 to explain how to hunt different kinds of animals, including how to use ferrets to hunt rabbits. Illustrations show how multicolored ferrets that were fitted with muzzles were used to chase rabbits out of their warrens and into waiting nets.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 gothic supernatural horror film directed by Tim Burton. It is a film adaptation loosely based on Washington Irving's 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", and stars Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, with Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, Christopher Lee and Jeffrey Jones in supporting roles. The plot follows police constable Ichabod Crane (Depp) sent from New York City to investigate a series of murders in the village of Sleepy Hollow by a mysterious Headless Horseman.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Development began in 1993 at Paramount Pictures, with Kevin Yagher originally set to direct Andrew Kevin Walker's script as a low-budget slasher film. Disagreements with Paramount resulted in Yagher being demoted to prosthetic makeup designer, and Burton was hired to direct in June 1998. Filming took place from November 1998 to May 1999. The film was an international co-production between Germany and the United States.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: The film had its world premiere at Mann's Chinese Theatre on November 17, 1999, and was released in the United States on November 19, 1999, by Paramount Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the performances, direction, screenplay and musical score, as well as its dark humor, visual effects and atmosphere. It grossed approximately $207 million worldwide. "Sleepy Hollow" won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: In 1799, Ichabod Crane, a New York City police constable criticized for his favoritism of scientific methods, is dispatched to the upstate Dutch hamlet of Sleepy Hollow, which has been plagued by a series of brutal decapitations: a wealthy father and son, Peter and Dirk Van Garrett, and a widow, Emily Winship. Received by the insular town elders—wealthy businessman Baltus Van Tassel, town doctor Thomas Lancaster, the Reverend Steenwyck, notary James Hardenbrook, and magistrate Samuel Philipse—Ichabod learns that locals believe the killer is the undead apparition of a headless Hessian mercenary from the American Revolutionary War who rides a black steed in search of his missing head.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Ichabod, however, is skeptical of the paranormal due to his family past. Boarding at the home of Baltus Van Tassel and his second wife, Lady Van Tassel, he is taken with Baltus' spiritual daughter, Katrina, from his first marriage. When a fourth victim, Jonathan Masbath, a servant in the Van Garrett household, is killed, Ichabod takes the victim's son, Young Masbath, under his wing. Ichabod and Masbath exhume the victims on a tip from Philipse, learning that the widow died pregnant. The horseman decapitates Philipse next. Ichabod, Young Masbath, and Katrina venture into the Western Woods to look for the Horseman's grave. They find a crone witch living in a cave, who reveals that the Horseman's grave is at the "Tree of the Dead." Ichabod digs up the Horseman's grave and discovers the skull has been taken, deducing that it has been stolen by someone who now controls him. The tree is his portal into the living world and the Horseman will continue to take people's heads until his skull is restored to him.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: That night, the Horseman kills village midwife Beth Killian and her family, as well as Katrina's suitor Brom Van Brunt when he attempts to intervene; Ichabod is wounded by the Horseman, but survives. Ichabod hypothesizes that the Horseman is attacking targets linked by a conspiracy. Hardenbrook reveals that the first victim, Peter Van Garrett, had secretly married the widow, writing a new will that left his estate to her and her unborn child. Ichabod deduces that all the victims (except Brom) were either beneficiaries or witnesses to this new will, and that the Horseman's master is the person who would have otherwise inherited the estate: Baltus, a Van Garrett relative.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Upon discovering the accusation, Katrina angrily burns the evidence. Hardenbrook commits suicide, and Steenwyck convenes a town meeting at the church to discredit Ichabod, but Baltus bursts in, announcing that the Horseman has killed Lady Van Tassel. The Horseman attacks the church, but is unable to enter. In the chaos, the remaining elders turn on each other; Steenwyck kills Lancaster and is in turn killed by Baltus, who is harpooned and decapitated by the Horseman.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Initially concluding that Katrina controls the Horseman, Ichabod discovers that the diagram she drew beneath his bed and in the church, which he believed summoned the Horseman, is really one of protection. He finds that a wound on "Lady Van Tassel's" decapitated body was caused post-mortem. Van Tassel, alive and well, reveals herself as the master of the Horseman. She faked her death and killed the Van Tassel's servant girl, Sarah, to plant her body as hers. She takes Katrina to the windmill, where she explains her true heritage. She and her twin sister were members of the impoverished Archer family who were evicted years ago by Peter Van Garrett, when he favored Baltus and his family instead. She swore revenge against Van Garrett and all who had wronged her family, pledging herself to Satan if he would raise the Horseman to avenge her by killing them, which would allow her to claim the Van Garrett and Van Tassel estates uncontested. Manipulating her way into the Van Tassel household, she used fear, blackmail, and lust to manipulate the other elders into her plot. Having eliminated all other heirs and witnesses, as well as her sister – the crone witch – for aiding Ichabod, she summons the Horseman to finish Katrina, the last person remaining in the way of the will.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Ichabod and Masbath rush to the windmill as the Horseman arrives. After an escape that destroys the windmill and a subsequent chase to the Tree of the Dead, Ichabod retrieves the Horseman's skull from Van Tassel and returns it to him, breaking the curse, and setting the Horseman free from Van Tassel's control. With his head restored, the Horseman spares Katrina and instead abducts Van Tassel, giving her a bloody kiss and returning to Hell via the Tree of the Dead with her in tow, fulfilling her end of the 'deal'. With the case solved, Ichabod returns to New York City with Katrina and Young Masbath, just in time for the new century.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Other roles include Michael Feast as Spotty Man, Jamie Foreman as Thuggish Constable, Philip Martin Brown as a Constable, and an uncredited Martin Landau as Peter Van Garrett, Sleepy Hollow's chief citizen until his death at the hands of the Headless Horseman.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: In 1993, Kevin Yagher, a make-up effects designer who had turned to directing with "Tales from the Crypt", had the notion to adapt Washington Irving's short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" into a feature film. Through his agent, Yagher was introduced to Andrew Kevin Walker; they spent a few months working on a film treatment that transformed Ichabod Crane from a schoolmaster from Connecticut to a banished New York City detective. Yagher and Walker subsequently pitched "Sleepy Hollow" to various studios and production companies, eventually securing a deal with producer Scott Rudin, who had been impressed with Walker's unproduced spec script for "Seven". Rudin optioned the project to Paramount Pictures in a deal that had Yagher set to direct, with Walker scripting; the pair would share story credit. Following the completion of "", Yagher had planned "Sleepy Hollow" as a low-budget production—"a pretentious slasher film with a spectacular murder every five minutes or so." Paramount disagreed on the concept and demoted Yagher's involvement to prosthetic makeup designer. "They never really saw it as a commercial movie," producer Adam Schroeder noted. "The studio thinks 'old literary classic' and they think "The Crucible". We started developing it before horror movies came back."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing revived studio interest in 1998. Schroeder, who shepherded Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" as a studio executive at 20th Century Fox in 1990, suggested that Burton direct the film. Francis Ford Coppola's minimal production duties came from American Zoetrope; Burton only became aware of Coppola's involvement during the editing process when he was sent a copy of "Sleepy Hollow"s trailer and saw Coppola's name on it. Burton, coming off the troubled production of "Superman Lives", was hired to direct in June 1998. "I had never really done something that was more of a horror film," he explained, "and it's funny, because those are the kind of movies that I like probably more than any other genre." His interest in directing a horror film influenced by his love for Hammer Film Productions and "Black Sunday"—particularly the supernatural feel they evoked as a result of being filmed primarily on sound stages. As a result, "Sleepy Hollow" is a homage to various Hammer Film Productions, including "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde", and other films such as "Frankenstein", "Bride of Frankenstein", various Roger Corman horror films, "Jason and the Argonauts", and "Scream Blacula Scream". The image of the Headless Horseman had fascinated Burton during his apprenticeship as a Disney animator at CalArts in the early 1980s. "One of my teachers had worked on the Disney version as one of the layout artists on the chase, and he brought in some layouts from it, so that was exciting. It was one of the things that maybe shaped what I like to do." Burton worked with Walker on rewrites, but Rudin suggested that Tom Stoppard rewrite the script to add to the comical aspects of Ichabod's bumbling mannerisms, and emphasize the character's romance with Katrina. His work went uncredited through the WGA screenwriting credit system.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: While Johnny Depp was Burton's first choice for the role of Ichabod Crane, Paramount required him to consider Brad Pitt, Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis. Depp was cast in July 1998 for his third collaboration with Burton. The actor wanted Ichabod to parallel Irving's description of the character in the short story. This included a long prosthetic snipe nose, huge ears, and elongated fingers. Paramount turned down his suggestions, and after Depp read Tom Stoppard's rewrite of the script, he was inspired to take the character even further. "I always thought of Ichabod as a very delicate, fragile person who was maybe a little too in touch with his feminine side, like a frightened little girl," Depp explained. He did not wish to portray the character as a typical action star would have, and instead took inspiration by Angela Lansbury's performance in "Death on the Nile". "It's good," Burton reasoned, "because I'm not the greatest action director, or the greatest director in any genre, and he's not the greatest action star, or the greatest star in any genre." Depp modeled Ichabod's detective personality from Basil Rathbone in the 1939 "Sherlock Holmes" film series. He also studied Roddy McDowall's acting for additional influence. Burton added that "the idea was to try to find an elegance in action of the kind that Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing or Vincent Price had." "Sleepy Hollow" also reunited Burton with Jeffrey Jones (from "Beetlejuice" and "Ed Wood") as Reverend Steenwyck, Christopher Walken (Max Shreck in "Batman Returns") as the Hessian Horseman, Martin Landau ("Ed Wood") in a cameo role, and Hammer veteran Michael Gough (Alfred in Burton's "Batman" films), whom Burton tempted out of retirement. The Hammer influence was further confirmed by the casting of Christopher Lee in a small role as the Burgomaster who sends Crane to Sleepy Hollow.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: The original intention had been to shoot "Sleepy Hollow" predominantly on location with a $30 million budget. Towns were scouted throughout Upstate New York along the Hudson Valley, and the filmmakers decided on Tarrytown for an October 1998 start date. The Historic Hudson Valley organization assisted in scouting locations, which included the Philipsburg Manor House and forests in the Rockefeller State Park Preserve. "They had a wonderful quality to them," production designer Rick Heinrichs reflected on the locations, "but it wasn't quite lending itself to the sort of expressionism that we were going for, which wanted to express the feeling of foreboding." Disappointed, the filmmakers scouted locations in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and considered using Dutch colonial villages and period town recreations in the Northeastern United States. When no suitable existing location could be found, coupled with a lack of readily available studio space in the New York area needed to house the production's large number of sets, producer Scott Rudin suggested the UK.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Rudin believed Britain offered the level of craftsmanship in period detail, painting and costuming that was suitable for the film's design. Having directed "Batman" entirely in Britain, Burton agreed, and designers from "Batman"s art department were employed by Paramount for "Sleepy Hollow". As a result, principal photography was pushed back to November 20, 1998, at Leavesden Film Studios, which had been recently vacated by "". The majority of filming took place at Leavesden, with studio other work at Shepperton Studios, where the massive Tree of the Dead set was built using Stage H. Production then moved to the Culden Faw Estate, Hambleden for a month-long shoot in March, where the town of Sleepy Hollow was constructed. "We came to England figuring we would find a perfect little town," producer Adam Schroeder recalled, "and then we had to build it anyway." Filming in Britain continued through April, and a few last minute scenes were shot using a sound stage in Yonkers, New York the following May.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Responsible for the film's production design was Rick Heinrichs, whom Burton intended to use on "Superman Lives". While the production crew was always going to build a substantial number of sets, the decision was made early on that optimally fulfilling Burton's vision would necessitate shooting "Sleepy Hollow" in a totally controlled environment at Leavesden Film Studios. The production design was influenced by Burton's love for Hammer Film Productions and the film "Black Sunday" (1960)—particularly the supernatural feel they evoked as a result of being filmed primarily on sound stages. Heinrichs was also influenced by American colonial architecture, German Expressionism, Dr. Seuss illustrations, and Hammer's "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave".


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: One sound stage at Leavesden was dedicated to the "Forest to Field" set, for the scene in which the Headless Horseman races out of the woods and into a field. This stage was then transformed into, variously, a graveyard, a corn field, a field of harvested wheat, a churchyard, and a snowy battlefield. In addition, a small backlot area was devoted to a New York City street and waterfront tank.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Burton was impressed by the cinematography in "Great Expectations" (1998) and hired Emmanuel Lubezki as "Sleepy Hollow"s director of photography. Initially, Lubezki and Burton contemplated shooting the film in black and white, and in old square Academy ratio. When that proved unfeasible, they opted for an almost monochromatic effect which would enhance the fantasy aspect. Burton and Lubezki intentionally planned the over-dependency of smoke and soft lighting to accompany the film's sole wide-angle lens strategy. Lubezki also used Hammer horror and Mexican lucha films from the 1960s, such as "Santo Contra los Zombis" and "Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro". Lighting effects increased the dynamic energy of the Headless Horseman, while the contrast of the film stock was increased in post-production to add to the monochromatic feel.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Leavesden Studios, a converted airplane factory, presented problems because of its relatively low ceilings. This was less of an issue for "The Phantom Menace", in which set height was generally achieved by digital means. "Our visual choices get channeled and violent," Heinrichs elaborated, "so you end up with liabilities that you tend to exploit as virtues. When you've got a certain ceiling height, and you're dealing with painted backings, you need to push atmosphere and diffusion." This was particularly the case in several exteriors that were built on sound stages. "We would mitigate the disadvantages by hiding lights with teasers and smoke."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: The majority of "Sleepy Hollow"s 150 visual effects shots were handled by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), while Kevin Yagher supervised the human and creature effects. Framestore also assisted on digital effects, and The Mill handled motion control photography. In part a reaction to the computer-generated effects in "Mars Attacks!", Burton opted to use as limited an amount of digital effects as possible. Ray Park, who served as the Headless Horseman stunt double, wore a blue ski mask for the chroma key effect, digitally removed by ILM. Burton and Heinrichs applied to "Sleepy Hollow" many of the techniques they had used in stop motion animation on "Vincent"—such as forced perspective sets.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: The windmill was a 60-foot-tall forced-perspective exterior (visible to highway travellers miles away), a base and rooftop set and a quarter-scale miniature. The interior of the mill, which was about 30 feet high and 25 feet wide, featured wooden gears equipped with mechanisms for grinding flour. A wider view of the windmill was rendered on a Leavesden soundstage set with a quarter-scale windmill, complete with rotating vanes, painted sky backdrop and special-effects fire. "It was scary for the actors who were having burning wood explode at them," Heinrichs recalled. "There were controls in place and people standing by with hoses, of course, but there's always a chance of something going wrong." For the final shot of the burning mill exploding, the quarter-scale windmill and painted backdrop were erected against the outside wall of the "flight shed", a spacious hangar on the far side of Leavesden Studios. The hangar's interior walls were knocked down to create a 450-foot run, with a 40-foot width still allowing for coach and cameras. Heinrichs tailored the sets so cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki could shoot from above without seeing the end of the stage.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Actor Ian McDiarmid, who portrayed Dr. Lancaster, had just finished another Leavesden production with "". He compared the aesthetics of the two films, stating that physical sets helped the actors get into a natural frame of mind. "Having come from the blue-screen world of "Star Wars" it was wonderful to see gigantic, beautifully made perspective sets and wonderful clothes, and also people recreating a world. It's like the way movies used to be done"


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: The film score was written and produced by Danny Elfman. It won the Golden Satellite Award and was also nominated by the Las Vegas Film Critics.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: To promote "Sleepy Hollow", Paramount Pictures featured the film's trailer at San Diego Comic-Con International in August 1999. The following October, the studio launched a website, which "Variety" described as being the "most ambitious online launch of a motion picture to date." The site (sleepyhollowmovie.com) offered visitors live video chats with several of the filmmakers hosted by Yahoo! Movies and enabled them to send postcards, view photos, trailers and a six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette edited from a broadcast that aired on "Entertainment Tonight". Extensive tours of 10 sets were offered, where visitors were able to roam around photographs, including the sets for the entire town of Sleepy Hollow, forest, church, graveyard and covered bridge. Arthur Cohen, president of worldwide marketing for Paramount, explained that the "Web-friendly" pre-release reports from websites such as Ain't It Cool News and Dark Horizons encouraged the studio to create the site. In the weeks pre-dating the release of "Sleepy Hollow", a toy line was marketed by McFarlane Toys. Simon & Schuster also published "The Art of Sleepy Hollow" (), which included the film's screenplay and an introduction by Tim Burton. A novelization, also published by Simon & Schuster, was written by Peter Lerangis.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: "Sleepy Hollow" was released in the United States on November 19, 1999, in 3,069 theaters, grossing $30,060,467 in its opening weekend at the No. 2 spot behind "The World Is Not Enough". "Sleepy Hollow" eventually earned $101,068,340 in domestic gross, and $106 million in foreign sales, coming to a worldwide total of $207,068,340. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family criticized the film's financial success from the exaggeration of gore. "The real impact is not so much that violent images create violent behavior," Walsh explained, "but that they create an atmosphere of disrespect." Burton addressed the concerns as a matter of opinion. "Everyone has a different perception of things. When I was a kid," Burton continued, "I was probably more scared by seeing John Wayne or Barbra Streisand on the big screen than by seeing violence."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Paramount Home Video first released "Sleepy Hollow" on DVD in the United States on May 23, 2000. The HD DVD release came in July 2006, while the film was released on Blu-ray Disc two years later, in June 2008.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: An unofficial video game adaptation of the film titled "Cursed Fates: The Headless Horseman" was released by Fenomen Games and Big Fish Games on January 6, 2013. For the 20th anniversary, Paramount Home Entertainment released a Blu-ray digibook with a photobook containing the original story on September 24, 2019.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 70% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 123 reviews with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's critics consensus states, "It isn't Tim Burton's best work, but "Sleepy Hollow" entertains with its stunning visuals and creepy atmosphere." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on 35 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "generally favorable". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Roger Ebert praised Johnny Depp's performance and Tim Burton's methods of visual design. "Johnny Depp is an actor able to disappear into characters," Ebert continued, "never more readily than in one of Burton's films." Richard Corliss wrote, in his review for "Time", "Burton's richest, prettiest, weirdest [film] since "Batman Returns". The simple story bends to his twists, freeing him for an exercise in high style."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: David Sterritt of "The Christian Science Monitor" highly praised Burton's filmmaking and the high-spirited acting of cast, but believed Andrew Kevin Walker's writing was too repetitious and formulaic for the third act.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Owen Gleiberman from "Entertainment Weekly" wrote "Sleepy Hollow" is "a choppily plotted crowd-pleaser that lacks the seductive, freakazoid alchemy of Burton's best work." Gleiberman compared the film to "The Mummy", and said "it feels like every high-powered action climax of the last 10 years. Personally, I'd rather see Burton so intoxicated by a movie that he lost his head."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Andrew Johnston of "Time Out New York" wrote: "Like the best of Burton's films, "Sleepy Hollow" takes place in a world so richly imagined that, despite its abundant terrors, you can't help wanting to step through the screen."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Mick LaSalle, writing in the "San Francisco Chronicle", criticized Burton's perceived image as a creative artist. "All "Sleepy Hollow" has going for it is art direction, and even in that it falls back on cliché."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Doug Walker linked the film to the Hammer Films style of horror cinematography, considering it an homage to those movies, comparing the usage of dignified British actors, choices in color and movie sets and character relations. Walker gave it the merit of recreating the "very specific genre" of Hammer Films, citing the skill and "clever casting" Burton used to manage this.


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: Jonathan Rosenbaum from the "Chicago Reader" called "Sleepy Hollow" "a ravishing visual experience, a pretty good vehicle for some talented American and English actors," but concluded that the film was a missed opportunity to depict an actual representation of the short story. "Burton's fidelity is exclusively to the period feeling he gets from disreputable Hammer horror films and a few images culled from "Ichabod and Mr. Toad". When it comes to one of America's great stories, Burton obviously couldn't care less."


title: Sleepy Hollow (film)

text: On June 10, 2022, Paramount has developed the reboot of "Sleepy Hollow" with Lindsey Beer planned to write and direct it.


title: Caliphate

text: A caliphate or khilāfah (, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of the entire Muslim world (ummah). Historically, the caliphates were polities based on Islam which developed into multi-ethnic trans-national empires. During the medieval period, three major caliphates succeeded each other: the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), and the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258). In the fourth major caliphate, the Ottoman Caliphate, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire claimed caliphal authority from 1517. Throughout the history of Islam, a few other Muslim states, almost all hereditary monarchies such as the Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo) and Ayyubid Caliphate, have claimed to be caliphates.


title: Caliphate

text: The first caliphate, the Rashidun Caliphate, was established in 632 immediately after Muhammad's death. It was followed by the Umayyad Caliphate and the Abbasid Caliphate. The last caliphate, the Ottoman Caliphate, existed until it was abolished in 1924 by the Turkish Republic. Not all Muslim states have had caliphates, and only a minority of Muslims recognize any particular caliph as legitimate in the first place. The Sunni branch of Islam stipulates that, as a head of state, a caliph should be elected by Muslims or their representatives. Followers of Shia Islam, however, believe a caliph should be an Imam chosen by God from the Ahl al-Bayt (the "Household of the Prophet").


title: Caliphate

text: In the early 21st century, following the failure of the Arab Spring and related protests, some have argued for a return to the concept of a caliphate to better unify Muslims. The caliphate system was abolished in Turkey in 1924 during the secularization of Turkey as part of Atatürk's Reforms.


title: Caliphate

text: Before the advent of Islam, Arabian monarchs traditionally used the title "malik "(King, ruler), or another from the same root.


title: Caliphate

text: The term "caliph" (), derives from the Arabic word "" (, ), which means "successor", "steward", or "deputy" and has traditionally been considered a shortening of "Khalīfat Rasūl Allāh" ("successor of the messenger of God"). However, studies of pre-Islamic texts suggest that the original meaning of the phrase was "successor "selected by" God".


title: Caliphate

text: In the immediate aftermath of the death of Muhammad, a gathering of the Ansar (natives of Medina) took place in the "Saqifah" (courtyard) of the Banu Sa'ida clan. The general belief at the time was that the purpose of the meeting was for the Ansar to decide on a new leader of the Muslim community among themselves, with the intentional exclusion of the Muhajirun (migrants from Mecca), though this has later become the subject of debate.


title: Caliphate

text: Nevertheless, Abu Bakr and Umar, both prominent companions of Muhammad, upon learning of the meeting became concerned of a potential coup and hastened to the gathering. Upon arriving, Abu Bakr addressed the assembled men with a warning that an attempt to elect a leader outside of Muhammad's own tribe, the Quraysh, would likely result in dissension as only they can command the necessary respect among the community. He then took Umar and another companion, Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah, by the hand and offered them to the Ansar as potential choices. He was countered with the suggestion that the Quraysh and the Ansar choose a leader each from among themselves, who would then rule jointly. The group grew heated upon hearing this proposal and began to argue amongst themselves. Umar hastily took Abu Bakr's hand and swore his own allegiance to the latter, an example followed by the gathered men.


title: Caliphate

text: Abu Bakr was near-universally accepted as head of the Muslim community (under the title of Caliph) as a result of Saqifah, though he did face contention as a result of the rushed nature of the event. Several companions, most prominent among them being Ali ibn Abi Talib, initially refused to acknowledge his authority. Ali may have been reasonably expected to assume leadership, being both cousin and son-in-law to Muhammad. The theologian Ibrahim al-Nakha'i stated that Ali also had support among the Ansar for his succession, explained by the genealogical links he shared with them. Whether his candidacy for the succession was raised during Saqifah is unknown, though it is not unlikely. Abu Bakr later sent Umar to confront Ali to gain his allegiance, resulting in an altercation which may have involved violence. However, after six months the group made peace with Abu Bakr and Ali offered him his fealty.


title: Caliphate

text: Abu Bakr nominated Umar as his successor on his deathbed. Umar, the second caliph, was killed by a Persian slave called Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz. His successor, Uthman, was elected by a council of electors (majlis). Uthman was killed by members of a disaffected group. Ali then took control but was not universally accepted as caliph by the governors of Egypt and later by some of his own guard. He faced two major rebellions and was assassinated by Abd-al-Rahman ibn Muljam, a Khawarij. Ali's tumultuous rule lasted only five years. This period is known as the Fitna, or the first Islamic civil war. The followers of Ali later became the Shi'a ("shiaat Ali", partisans of Ali.) minority sect of Islam and reject the legitimacy of the first 3 caliphs. The followers of all four Rāshidun Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali) became the majority Sunni sect.


title: Caliphate

text: Under the Rāshidun each region (Sultanate, Wilayah, or Emirate) of the Caliphate had its own governor (Sultan, Wāli or Emir). Muāwiyah, a relative of Uthman and governor ("Wali") of Syria, succeeded Ali as Caliph. Muāwiyah transformed the caliphate into a hereditary office, thus founding the Umayyad dynasty.


title: Caliphate

text: In areas which were previously under Sasanian Empire or Byzantine rule, the Caliphs lowered taxes, provided greater local autonomy (to their delegated governors), greater religious freedom for Jews, and some indigenous Christians, and brought peace to peoples demoralised and disaffected by the casualties and heavy taxation that resulted from the decades of Byzantine-Persian warfare.


title: Caliphate

text: Ali's reign was plagued by turmoil and internal strife. The Persians, taking advantage of this, infiltrated the two armies and attacked the other army causing chaos and internal hatred between the companions at the Battle of Siffin. The battle lasted several months, resulting in a stalemate. In order to avoid further bloodshed, Ali agreed to negotiate with Mu'awiyah. This caused a faction of approximately 4,000 people, who would come to be known as the Kharijites, to abandon the fight. After defeating the Kharijites at the Battle of Nahrawan, Ali was later assassinated by the Kharijite Ibn Muljam. Ali's son Hasan was elected as the next caliph, but abdicated in favor of Mu'awiyah a few months later to avoid any conflict within the Muslims. Mu'awiyah became the sixth caliph, establishing the Umayyad Dynasty, named after the great-grandfather of Uthman and Mu'awiyah, Umayya ibn Abd Shams.


title: Caliphate

text: Beginning with the Umayyads, the title of the caliph became hereditary. Under the Umayyads, the Caliphate grew rapidly in territory, incorporating the Caucasus, Transoxiana, Sindh, the Maghreb and most of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) into the Muslim world. At its greatest extent, the Umayyad Caliphate covered 5.17 million square miles (13,400,000 km), making it the largest empire the world had yet seen and the sixth-largest ever to exist in history.


title: Caliphate

text: Geographically, the empire was divided into several provinces, the borders of which changed numerous times during the Umayyad reign. Each province had a governor appointed by the caliph. However, for a variety of reasons, including that they were not elected by Shura and suggestions of impious behaviour, the Umayyad dynasty was not universally supported within the Muslim community. Some supported prominent early Muslims like Zubayr ibn al-Awwam; others felt that only members of Muhammad's clan, the Banu Hashim, or his own lineage, the descendants of Ali, should rule.


title: Caliphate

text: There were numerous rebellions against the Umayyads, as well as splits within the Umayyad ranks (notably, the rivalry between Yaman and Qays). At the command of Yazid son of Muawiya, an army led by Umar ibn Saad, a commander by the name of Shimr Ibn Thil-Jawshan killed Ali's son Hussein and his family at the Battle of Karbala in 680, solidifying the Shia-Sunni split. Eventually, supporters of the Banu Hashim and the supporters of the lineage of Ali united to bring down the Umayyads in 750. However, the "Shi‘at ‘Alī", "the Party of Ali", were again disappointed when the Abbasid dynasty took power, as the Abbasids were descended from Muhammad's uncle, ‘Abbas ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib and not from Ali.


title: Caliphate

text: In 750, the Umayyad dynasty was overthrown by another family of Meccan origin, the Abbasids. Their time represented a scientific, cultural and religious flowering. Islamic art and music also flourished significantly during their reign. Their major city and capital Baghdad began to flourish as a center of knowledge, culture and trade. This period of cultural fruition ended in 1258 with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu Khan. The Abbasid Caliphate had however lost its effective power outside Iraq already by c. 920. By 945, the loss of power became official when the Buyids conquered Baghdad and all of Iraq. The empire fell apart and its parts were ruled for the next century by local dynasties.


title: Caliphate

text: In the 9th century, the Abbasids created an army loyal only to their caliphate, composed predominantly of Turkic Cuman, Circassian and Georgian slave origin known as Mamluks. By 1250 the Mamluks came to power in Egypt. The Mamluk army, though often viewed negatively, both helped and hurt the caliphate. Early on, it provided the government with a stable force to address domestic and foreign problems. However, creation of this foreign army and al-Mu'tasim's transfer of the capital from Baghdad to Samarra created a division between the caliphate and the peoples they claimed to rule. In addition, the power of the Mamluks steadily grew until Ar-Radi (934–41) was constrained to hand over most of the royal functions to Muhammad ibn Ra'iq.


title: Caliphate

text: In 1261, following the Mongol conquest of Baghdad, the Mamluk rulers of Egypt tried to gain legitimacy for their rule by declaring the re-establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in Cairo. The Abbasid caliphs in Egypt had little political power; they continued to maintain the symbols of authority, but their sway was confined to religious matters. The first Abbasid caliph of Cairo was Al-Mustansir (r. June–November 1261). The Abbasid caliphate of Cairo lasted until the time of Al-Mutawakkil III, who ruled as caliph from 1508 to 1516, then he was deposed briefly in 1516 by his predecessor Al-Mustamsik, but was restored again to the caliphate in 1517.


title: Caliphate

text: The Ottoman Great Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk Sultanate and made Egypt part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Al-Mutawakkil III was captured together with his family and transported to Constantinople as a prisoner where he had a ceremonial role. He died in 1543, following his return to Cairo.


title: Caliphate

text: The Abbasid dynasty lost effective power over much of the Muslim realm by the first half of the tenth century.


title: Caliphate

text: The Umayyad dynasty, which had survived and come to rule over Al-Andalus, reclaimed the title of Caliph in 929, lasting until it was overthrown in 1031.


title: Caliphate

text: During the Umayyad dynasty, the Iberian Peninsula was an integral province of the Umayyad Caliphate ruling from Damascus. The Umayyads lost the position of Caliph in Damascus in 750, and Abd al-Rahman I became Emir of Córdoba in 756 after six years in exile. Intent on regaining power, he defeated the existing Islamic rulers of the area who defied Umayyad rule and united various local fiefdoms into an emirate.


title: Caliphate

text: Rulers of the emirate used the title "emir" or "sultan" until the 10th century, when Abd al-Rahman III was faced with the threat of invasion by the Fatimid Caliphate. To aid his fight against the invading Fatimids, who claimed the caliphate in opposition to the generally recognised Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, Al-Mu'tadid, Abd al-Rahman III claimed the title of caliph himself. This helped Abd al-Rahman III gain prestige with his subjects, and the title was retained after the Fatimids were repulsed. The rule of the Caliphate is considered as the heyday of Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula, before it fragmented into various taifas in the 11th century. This period was characterised by a flourishing in technology, trade and culture; many of the buildings of al-Andalus were constructed in this period.


title: Caliphate

text: The Almohad Caliphate (, from Arabic "", "the Monotheists" or "the Unifiers") was a Moroccan Berber Muslim movement founded in the 12th century.


title: Caliphate

text: The Almohad movement was started by Ibn Tumart among the Masmuda tribes of southern Morocco. The Almohads first established a Berber state in Tinmel in the Atlas Mountains in roughly 1120. The Almohads succeeded in overthrowing the Almoravid dynasty in governing Morocco by 1147, when Abd al-Mu'min (r. 1130–1163) conquered Marrakech and declared himself Caliph. They then extended their power over all of the Maghreb by 1159. Al-Andalus followed the fate of Africa and all Islamic Iberia was under Almohad rule by 1172.


title: Caliphate

text: The Almohad dominance of Iberia continued until 1212, when Muhammad al-Nasir (1199–1214) was defeated at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena by an alliance of the Christian princes of Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Portugal. Nearly all of the Moorish dominions in Iberia were lost soon after, with the great Moorish cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248, respectively.


title: Caliphate

text: The Almohads continued to rule in northern Africa until the piecemeal loss of territory through the revolt of tribes and districts enabled the rise of their most effective enemies, the Marinid dynasty, in 1215. The last representative of the line, Idris al-Wathiq, was reduced to the possession of Marrakesh, where he was murdered by a slave in 1269; the Marinids seized Marrakesh, ending the Almohad domination of the Western Maghreb.


title: Caliphate

text: The Fatimid Caliphate was an Isma'ili Shi'i caliphate, originally based in Tunisia, that extended its rule across the Mediterranean coast of Africa and ultimately made Egypt the centre of its caliphate. At its height, in addition to Egypt, the caliphate included varying areas of the Maghreb, Sicily, the Levant and the Hejaz.


title: Caliphate

text: The Fatimids established the Tunisian city of Mahdia and made it their capital city, before conquering Egypt and building the city of Cairo there in 969. Thereafter, Cairo became the capital of the caliphate, with Egypt becoming the political, cultural and religious centre of the state. Islam scholar Louis Massignon dubbed the 4th century AH /10th century CE as the "Ismaili century in the history of Islam".


title: Caliphate

text: The term "Fatimite" is sometimes used to refer to the citizens of this caliphate. The ruling elite of the state belonged to the Ismaili branch of Shi'ism. The leaders of the dynasty were Ismaili imams and had a religious significance to Ismaili Muslims. They are also part of the chain of holders of the office of the Caliphate, as recognised by some Muslims. Therefore, this constitutes a rare period in history in which the descendants of Ali (hence the name Fatimid, referring to Ali's wife Fatima) and the Caliphate were united to any degree, excepting the final period of the Rashidun Caliphate under Ali himself.


title: Caliphate

text: The caliphate was reputed to exercise a degree of religious tolerance towards non-Ismaili sects of Islam as well as towards Jews, Maltese Christians and Copts.


title: Caliphate

text: The Shiʻa Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi Billah of the Fatimid dynasty, who claimed descent from Muhammad through his daughter, claimed the title of Caliph in 909, creating a separate line of caliphs in North Africa. Initially controlling Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, the Fatimid caliphs extended their rule for the next 150 years, taking Egypt and Palestine, before the Abbasid dynasty was able to turn the tide, limiting Fatimid rule to Egypt. The Fatimid dynasty finally ended in 1171 and was overtaken by Saladin of the Ayyubid dynasty.


title: Caliphate

text: The Ayyubid Empire overtook the Fatimids by incorporating the empire into the . However, Saladin himself has been a widely celebrated caliph in Islamic history.


title: Caliphate

text: The caliphate was claimed by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire beginning with Murad I (reigned 1362 to 1389), while recognising no authority on the part of the Abbasid caliphs of the Mamluk-ruled Cairo. Hence the seat of the caliphate moved to the Ottoman capital of Edirne. In 1453, after Mehmed the Conqueror's conquest of Constantinople, the seat of the Ottomans moved to Constantinople, present-day Istanbul. In 1517, the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated and annexed the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo into his empire. Through conquering and unifying Muslim lands, Selim I became the defender of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, which further strengthened the Ottoman claim to the caliphate in the Muslim world. Ottomans gradually came to be viewed as the "de facto" leaders and representatives of the Islamic world. However, the earlier Ottoman caliphs did not officially bear the title of caliph in their documents of state, inscriptions, or coinage. It was only in the late eighteenth century that the claim to the caliphate was discovered by the sultans to have a practical use, since it allowed them to counter Russian claims to protect Ottoman Christians with their own claim to protect Muslims under Russian rule.


title: Caliphate

text: The outcome of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 was disastrous for the Ottomans. Large territories, including those with large Muslim populations, such as Crimea, were lost to the Russian Empire. However, the Ottomans under Abdul Hamid I claimed a diplomatic victory by being allowed to remain the religious leaders of Muslims in the now-independent Crimea as part of the peace treaty; in return Russia became the official protector of Christians in Ottoman territory. According to Barthold, the first time the title of "caliph" was used as a political instead of symbolic religious title by the Ottomans was the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca with the Russian Empire in 1774, when the Empire retained moral authority on territory whose sovereignty was ceded to the Russian Empire.


title: Caliphate

text: The British supported and propagated the view that the Ottomans were Caliphs of Islam among Muslims in British India and the Ottoman Sultans helped the British by issuing pronouncements to the Muslims of India telling them to support British rule from Sultan Ali III and Sultan Abdülmecid I.


title: Caliphate

text: Around 1880 Sultan Abdul Hamid II reasserted the title as a way of countering Russian expansion into Muslim lands. His claim was most fervently accepted by the Muslims of British India. By the eve of World War I, the Ottoman state, despite its weakness relative to Europe, represented the largest and most powerful independent Islamic political entity. The sultan also enjoyed some authority beyond the borders of his shrinking empire as caliph of Muslims in Egypt, India and Central Asia.


title: Caliphate

text: In 1899 John Hay, U.S. Secretary of State, asked the American ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, Oscar Straus, to approach Sultan Abdul Hamid II to use his position as caliph to order the Tausūg people of the Sultanate of Sulu in the Philippines to submit to American suzerainty and American military rule; the Sultan obliged them and wrote the letter which was sent to Sulu via Mecca. As a result, the "Sulu Mohammedans ... refused to join the insurrectionists and had placed themselves under the control of our army, thereby recognizing American sovereignty."


title: Caliphate

text: After the Armistice of Mudros of October 1918 with the military occupation of Constantinople and Treaty of Versailles (1919), the position of the Ottomans was uncertain. The movement to protect or restore the Ottomans gained force after the Treaty of Sèvres (August 1920) which imposed the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and gave Greece a powerful position in Anatolia, to the distress of the Turks. They called for help and the movement was the result. The movement had collapsed by late 1922.


title: Caliphate

text: On 3 March 1924, the first President of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as part of his reforms, constitutionally abolished the institution of the caliphate. Atatürk offered the caliphate to Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi, on the condition that he reside outside Turkey; Senussi declined the offer and confirmed his support for Abdulmejid. The title was then claimed by Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and Hejaz, leader of the Arab Revolt, but his kingdom was defeated and annexed by ibn Saud in 1925.


title: Caliphate

text: Egyptian scholar Ali Abdel Raziq published his 1925 book "Islam and the Foundations of Governance". The argument of this book has been summarized as "Islam does not advocate a specific form of government". He focussed his criticism both at those who use religious law as contemporary political proscription and at the history of rulers claiming legitimacy by the caliphate. Raziq wrote that past rulers spread the notion of religious justification for the caliphate "so that they could use religion as a shield protecting their thrones against the attacks of rebels".


title: Caliphate

text: A summit was convened at Cairo in 1926 to discuss the revival of the caliphate, but most Muslim countries did not participate and no action was taken to implement the summit's resolutions. Though the title "Ameer al-Mumineen" was adopted by the King of Morocco and by Mohammed Omar, former head of the Taliban of Afghanistan, neither claimed any legal standing or authority over Muslims outside the borders of their respective countries.


title: Caliphate

text: Since the end of the Ottoman Empire, occasional demonstrations have been held calling for the re-establishment of the caliphate. Organisations which call for the re-establishment of the caliphate include Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood.


title: Caliphate

text: After the Umayyad campaigns in India and the conquest on small territories of the western part of the Indian peninsula, early Indian Muslim dynasties were founded by the Ghurid dynasty and the Ghaznavids, most notably the Delhi Sultanate. The Indian sultanates did not extensively strive for a caliphate since the Ottoman Empire was already observing the caliphate. Although the Mughal Empire is not recognised as a caliphate, its sixth emperor Muhammad Alamgir Aurangzeb has often been regarded as one of the few Islamic caliphs to have ruled the Indian peninsula. He received support from Ottoman Sultans such as Suleiman II and Mehmed IV. As a memorizer of Quran, Aurangzeb fully established sharia in South Asia via his Fatawa 'Alamgiri. He re-introduced jizya and banned Islamically unlawful activities. However, Aurangzeb's personal expenses were covered by his own incomes, which included the sewing of caps and trade of his written copies of the Quran. Thus he has been compared to the 2nd Caliph Umar bin Khattab and Kurdish conqueror Saladin. Other notable rulers such as Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji, Alauddin Khilji, Firuz Shah Tughlaq, Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah, Babur, Sher Shah Suri, Nasir I of Kalat, Tipu Sultan, and the Nawabs of Bengal were popularly given the term Khalifa.


title: Caliphate

text: The Bornu Caliphate, which was headed by the Bornu Emperors, began in 1472. A rump state of the larger Kanem-Bornu Empire, its rulers held the title of Caliph until 1893, when it was absorbed into the British Colony of Nigeria and Northern Cameroons Protectorate. The British recognized them as the 'Sultans of Bornu', one step down in Muslim royal titles. After Nigeria became independent, its rulers became the 'Emirs of Bornu', another step down.


title: Caliphate

text: The Indonesian Sultan of Yogyakarta historically used "Khalifatullah" (Caliph of God) as one of his many titles. In 2015 sultan Hamengkubuwono X renounced any claim to the Caliphate in order to facilitate his daughter's inheritance of the throne, as the theological opinion of the time was that a woman may hold the secular office of sultan but not the spiritual office of caliph.


title: Caliphate

text: The Sokoto Caliphate was an Islamic state in what is now Nigeria led by Usman dan Fodio. Founded during the Fulani War in the early 19th century, it controlled one of the most powerful empires in sub-Saharan Africa prior to European conquest and colonisation. The caliphate remained extant through the colonial period and afterwards, though with reduced power. The current head of the Sokoto Caliphate is Sa'adu Abubakar.


title: Caliphate

text: The Toucouleur Empire, also known as the Tukular Empire, was one of the Fulani jihad states in sub-saharan Africa. It was eventually pacified and annexed by the French Republic, being incorporated into French West Africa.


title: Caliphate

text: The Khilafat Movement was launched by Muslims in British India in 1920 to defend the Ottoman Caliphate at the end of the First World War and it spread throughout the British colonial territories. It was strong in British India where it formed a rallying point for some Indian Muslims as one of many anti-British Indian political movements. Its leaders included Mohammad Ali Jouhar, his brother Shawkat Ali and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Barrister Muhammad Jan Abbasi. For a time it was supported by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was a member of the Central Khilafat Committee. However, the movement lost its momentum after the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924. After further arrests and flight of its leaders, and a series of offshoots splintered off from the main organisation, the Movement eventually died down and disbanded.


title: Caliphate

text: The Sharifian Caliphate () was an Arab caliphate proclaimed by the Sharifian rulers of Hejaz in 1924 previously known as Vilayet Hejaz, declaring independence from the Ottoman Caliphate. The idea of the Sharifian Caliphate had been floating around since at least the 15th century. Toward the end of the 19th century, it started to gain importance due to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which was heavily defeated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. There is little evidence, however, that the idea of a Sharifian Caliphate ever gained wide grassroots support in the Middle East or anywhere else in the Muslim world.


title: Caliphate

text: Though non-political, some Sufi orders and the Ahmadiyya movement define themselves as caliphates. Their leaders are thus commonly referred to as "khalifas" (caliphs).


title: Caliphate

text: In Sufism, tariqas (orders) are led by spiritual leaders (khilafah ruhaniyyah), the main khalifas, who nominate local khalifas to organize zaouias.


title: Caliphate

text: Sufi caliphates are not necessarily hereditary. Khalifas are aimed to serve the "silsilah" in relation to spiritual responsibilities and to propagate the teachings of the tariqa.


title: Caliphate

text: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a self-proclaimed Islamic revivalist movement founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India, who claimed to be the promised Messiah and Mahdi, awaited by Muslims. He also claimed to be a follower-prophet subordinate to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The group are traditionally shunned by the majority of Muslims.


title: Caliphate

text: After Ahmad's death in 1908, his first successor, Hakeem Noor-ud-Din, became the caliph of the community and assumed the title of "Khalifatul Masih" (Successor or Caliph of the Messiah). After Hakeem Noor-ud-Din, the first caliph, the title of the Ahmadiyya caliph continued under Mirza Mahmud Ahmad, who led the community for over 50 years. Following him were Mirza Nasir Ahmad and then Mirza Tahir Ahmad who were the third and fourth caliphs respectively. The current caliph is Mirza Masroor Ahmad, who lives in London.


title: Caliphate

text: Once the subject of intense conflict and rivalry amongst Muslim rulers, the caliphate lay dormant and largely unclaimed since the 1920s. For the vast majority of Muslims the caliph, as leader of the ummah, "is cherished both as memory and ideal" as a time when Muslims "enjoyed scientific and military superiority globally". The Islamic prophet Muhammad is reported to have prophesied:


title: Caliphate

text: The "" ("Caliphate State") was the name of an Islamist organization in Germany that was proclaimed at an event in Cologne in 1994 and banned in December 2001 after an amendment to the Association Act, which abolished the religious privilege. However, this caliphate was never institutionalized under international law, but only an intention for an Islamic "state within the state".


title: Caliphate

text: The caliphate emerged in 1994 from the "Federated Islamic State of Anatolia" (, AFİD), which existed in Germany from 1992 to 1994 as the renaming of the Association of Islamic Associations and Municipalities (İCCB). In 1984 the latter split off from the Islamist organization Millî Görüş. The leader of the association proclaimed himself the caliph, the worldwide spiritual and worldly head of all Muslims. Since then, the organization has seen itself as a "Caliphate State" (). From an association law perspective, the old name remained.


title: Caliphate

text: The leader was initially , who was nicknamed "Khomeini of Cologne" by the German public. In Turkish media he was referred to as the "Dark Voice" (). At an event in honor of Kaplan in 1993, the German convert to Islam publicly "regretted" in front of hundreds of listeners that the Germans had not completely destroyed the Jews: "Like the Turks, we Germans have often had a good cause in history fought, although I have to admit that my grandfathers weren't thorough with our main enemy."


title: Caliphate

text: A contemporary effort to re-establish the caliphate by supporters of armed jihad that predates Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State and was much less successful, was "the forgotten caliphate" of Muhammad bin ʿIssa bin Musa al Rifaʿi ("known to his followers as Abu ʿIssa"). This "microcaliphate" was founded on 3 April 1993 on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, when Abu Issa's small number of "Afghan Arabs" followers swore loyalty (bay'ah) to him. Abu Issa, was born in the city of Zarqa, Jordan and like his followers had come to Afghanistan to wage jihad against the Soviets. Unlike them he had ancestors in the tribe of Quraysh, a traditional requirement for a caliph. The caliphate was ostensibly an attempt to unite the many other jihadis who were not his followers and who were quarrelling amongst each other. It was not successful. Abu Issa's efforts to compel them to unite under his command were met "with mockery and then force". Local Afghans also despised him and his followers. Like the later Islamic State he tried to abolition of infidel currency and rejected nationalism. According to scholar Kevin Jackson,


title: Caliphate

text: "Abu ʿIssa issued 'sad and funny' fatwas, as Abu al-Walid puts it, notably sanctioning the use of drugs. A nexus had been forged between [Abu Issa's group] and local drug smugglers. (The fatwa led one jihadist author to dismiss Abu Issa as the 'caliph of the Muslims among drug traffickers and takfir') Abu ʿIssa also prohibited the use of paper currency and ordered his men to burn their passports."


title: Caliphate

text: The territory under his control "did not extend beyond a few small towns" in Afghanistan's Kunar province. Eventually he did not even control this area after the Taliban took it over in the late 1990s. The caliphate then moved to London, where they "preaching to a mostly skeptical jihadi intelligentsia about the obligation of establishing a caliphate". They succeeded in attracting some jihadis (Yahya al-Bahrumi, Abu Umar al Kuwaiti) who later joined the Islamic State.


title: Caliphate

text: Abu Issa died in 2014, "after spending most of his final years in prison in London" Abu Umar al Kuwaiti became a judge for the Islamic state but was later executed for extremism after he "took takfir to new levels... pronouncing death sentences for apostasy on those who were ignorant of scripture – and then pronouncing takfir on those too reluctant to pronounce takfir."


title: Caliphate

text: The group Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) formed as an affiliate of Al-Qaeda network of Islamist militants during the Iraq War. The group eventually expanded into Syria and rose to prominence as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during the Syrian Civil War. In the summer of 2014, the group launched the Northern Iraq offensive, seizing the city of Mosul. The group declared itself a caliphate under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on 29 June 2014 and renamed itself as the "Islamic State". ISIL's claim to be the highest authority of Muslims has been widely rejected. No prominent Muslim scholar has supported its declaration of caliphate; even Salafi-jihadist preachers accused the group of engaging in political showmanship and bringing disrepute to the notion of Islamic state.


title: Caliphate

text: ISIL has been at war with armed forces including the Iraqi Army, the Syrian Army, the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, Syrian Democratic Forces, and Iraqi Kurdistan's "Peshmerga" and People's Protection Units (YPG) along with a 60 nation coalition in its efforts to establish a "de facto" state on Iraqi and Syrian territory. At its height in 2014, the Islamic State held "about a third of Syria and 40 percent of Iraq". By December 2017 it had lost 95% of that territory, including Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, its "capital". It's caliph, Al-Baghdadi, was killed in a raid by U.S. forces on October 26, 2019, its "last holdout", the town of Al-Baghuz Fawqani, fell to Syrian Democratic Forces on March 23, 2019.


title: Caliphate

text: The members of the Ahmadiyya community believe that the Ahmadiyya Caliphate (Arabic: "Khilāfah") is the continuation of the Islamic caliphate, first being the "Rāshidūn" (rightly guided) Caliphate (of Righteous Caliphs). This is believed to have been suspended with Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad and re-established with the appearance of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908, the founder of the movement) whom Ahmadis identify as the Promised Messiah and Mahdi.


title: Caliphate

text: Ahmadis maintain that in accordance with Quranic verses (such as ) and numerous ahadith on the issue, "Khilāfah" can only be established by God Himself and is a divine blessing given to "those who believe and work righteousness" and uphold the unity of God, therefore any movement to establish the "Khilāfah" centered on human endeavours alone is bound to fail, particularly when the condition of the people diverges from the ‘precepts of prophethood’ and they are as a result disunited, their inability to establish a "Khilāfah" caused fundamentally by the lack of righteousness in them. Although the khalifa is elected it is believed that God himself directs the hearts of believers towards an individual. Thus the khalifa is designated neither necessarily by right (i.e. the rightful or competent one in the eyes of the people at that time) nor merely by election but primarily by God.


title: Caliphate

text: According to Ahmadiyya thought, a khalifa need not be the head of a state; rather the Ahmadiyya community emphasises the spiritual and organisational significance of the Khilāfah. It is primarily a religious/spiritual office, with the purpose of upholding, strengthening and spreading Islam and of maintaining the high spiritual and moral standards within the global community established by Muhammad – who was not merely a political leader but primarily a religious leader. If a khalifa does happen to bear governmental authority as a head of state, it is incidental and subsidiary in relation to his overall function as khalifa which is applicable to believers transnationally and not limited to one particular state.


title: Caliphate

text: Ahmadi Muslims believe that God has assured them that this Caliphate will endure to the end of time, depending on their righteousness and faith in God. The Khalifa provides unity, security, moral direction and progress for the community. It is required that the Khalifa carry out his duties through consultation and taking into consideration the views of the members of the "Shura" (consultative body). However, it is not incumbent upon him to always accept the views and recommendations of the members. The Khalifatul Masih has overall authority for all religious and organisational matters and is bound to decide and act in accordance with the Qur'an and sunnah.


title: Caliphate

text: A number of Islamist political parties and mujahideen called for the restoration of the caliphate by uniting Muslim nations, either through political action (e.g., Hizb ut-Tahrir), or through force (e.g., al-Qaeda). Various Islamist movements gained momentum in recent years with the ultimate aim of establishing a Caliphate. In 2014, ISIL/ISIS made a claim to re-establishing the Caliphate. Those advocating the re-establishment of a Caliphate differed in their methodology and approach. Some were locally oriented, mainstream political parties that had no apparent transnational objectives.


title: Caliphate

text: Abul A'la Maududi believed the caliph was not just an individual ruler who had to be restored, but was man's representation of God's authority on Earth:


title: Caliphate

text: The Muslim Brotherhood advocates pan-Islamic unity and the implementation of Islamic law. Founder Hassan al-Banna wrote about the restoration of the Caliphate.


title: Caliphate

text: One transnational group whose ideology was based specifically on restoring the caliphate as a pan-Islamic state is Hizb ut-Tahrir (literally, "Party of Liberation"). It is particularly strong in Central Asia and Europe and is growing in strength in the Arab world. It is based on the claim that Muslims can prove that God exists and that the Qur'an is the word of God. Hizb ut-Tahrir's stated strategy is a non-violent political and intellectual struggle.


title: Caliphate

text: In Southeast Asia, groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah aimed to establish a Caliphate across Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and parts of Thailand, the Philippines and Cambodia.


title: Caliphate

text: Al-Qaeda has as one of its clearly stated goals the re-establishment of a caliphate. Its former leader, Osama bin Laden, called for Muslims to "establish the righteous caliphate of our umma". Al-Qaeda chiefs released a statement in 2005, under which, in what they call "phase five" there will be "an Islamic state, or caliphate". Al-Qaeda has named its Internet newscast from Iraq "The Voice of the Caliphate". According to author and Egyptian native Lawrence Wright, Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's mentor and al-Qaeda's second-in-command until 2011, once "sought to restore the caliphate... which had formally ended in 1924 following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but which had not exercised real power since the thirteenth century." Zawahiri believes that once the caliphate is re-established, Egypt would become a rallying point for the rest of the Islamic world, leading the "jihad" against the West. "Then history would make a new turn, God willing", Zawahiri later wrote, "in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government".


title: Caliphate

text: Scholar Olivier Roy writes that "early on, Islamists replace the concept of the caliphate ... with that of the emir." There were a number of reasons including "that according to the classical authors, a caliph must be a member of the tribe of the Prophet (the Quraysh) ... moreover, caliphs ruled societies that the Islamists do not consider to have been Islamic (the Ottoman Empire)." This is not the view of the majority of Islamist groups, as both the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir view the Ottoman state as a caliphate.


title: Caliphate

text: The Quran uses the term "khalifa" twice. First, in al-Baqara, 30, it refers to God creating humanity as his "khalifa" on Earth. Second, in Sad, 26, it addresses King David as God's "khalifa "and reminds him of his obligation to rule with justice.


title: Caliphate

text: In addition, the following excerpt from the Quran, known as the 'Istikhlaf Verse', is used by some to argue for a Quranic basis for Caliphate:


title: Caliphate

text: In the above verse, the word "Khulifa" (the plural of "Khalifa") has been variously translated as "successors" and "ones who accede to power".


title: Caliphate

text: Several schools of jurisprudence and thought within Sunni Islam argue that to govern a state by Sharia is, by definition, to rule via the Caliphate and use the following verses to sustain their claim.


title: Caliphate

text: The following "hadith" from Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal can be understood to prophesy two eras of Caliphate (both on the lines/precepts of prophethood).


title: Caliphate

text: In the above, the first era of Caliphate is commonly accepted by Muslims to be that of the Rashidun Caliphate.


title: Caliphate

text: Hisham ibn Urwah reported on the authority of Abu Saleh on the authority of Abu Hurairah that Muhammad said:


title: Caliphate

text: Many Islamic texts, including several ahadith, state that the Mahdi will be elected caliph and rule over a caliphate. A number of Islamic figures titled themselves both "caliph" and "al-Mahdi", including the first Abbasid caliph As-Saffah.


title: Caliphate

text: Al-Habbab Ibn ul-Munthir said, when the Sahaba met in the wake of the death of Muhammad, (at the thaqifa hall) of Bani Sa’ida: Upon this Abu Bakr replied:


title: Caliphate

text: The Sahaba agreed to this and selected Abu Bakr as their first Khaleef. Habbab ibn Mundhir who suggested the idea of two Ameers corrected himself and was the first to give Abu Bakr the Bay'ah. This indicates an Ijma as-Sahaba of all of the Sahaba. Ali ibni abi Talib, who was attending the body of Muhammad at the time, also consented to this.


title: Caliphate

text: Scholars like Al-Mawardi, Ibn Hazm, Ahmad al-Qalqashandi, and Al-Sha`rani stated that the global Muslim community can have only one leader at any given time. Al-Nawawi and Abd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad declared it impermissible to give oaths of loyalty to more than one leader.


title: Caliphate

text: Shia scholars have expressed similar opinions. However, the Shia school of thought states that the leader must not be appointed by the Islamic ummah, but must be appointed by God.


title: Caliphate

text: Al-Qurtubi said that the caliph is the "pillar upon which other pillars rest", and said of the Quranic verse, "Indeed, man is made upon this earth a Caliph":


title: Caliphate

text: In his book "The Early Islamic Conquests" (1981), Fred Donner argues that the standard Arabian practice during the early Caliphates was for the prominent men of a kinship group, or tribe, to gather after a leader's death and elect a leader from amongst themselves, although there was no specified procedure for this shura, or consultative assembly. Candidates were usually from the same lineage as the deceased leader, but they were not necessarily his sons. Capable men who would lead well were preferred over an ineffectual direct heir, as there was no basis in the majority Sunni view that the head of state or governor should be chosen based on lineage alone. Since the Umayyads, all caliphates have been dynastic.


title: Caliphate

text: Traditionally, Sunni Muslim madhhabs all agreed that a Caliph must be a descendant of the Quraysh. Al-Baqillani has said that the leader of the Muslims simply should be from the majority.


title: Caliphate

text: Following the death of Muhammad, a meeting took place at Saqifah. At that meeting, Abu Bakr was elected caliph by the Muslim community. Sunni Muslims developed the belief that the caliph is a temporal political ruler, appointed to rule within the bounds of Islamic law (Sharia). The job of adjudicating orthodoxy and Islamic law was left to mujtahids, legal specialists collectively called the Ulama. Many Muslims call the first four caliphs the Rashidun, meaning the Rightly-Guided, because they are believed to have followed the Qur'an and the sunnah (example) of Muhammad.


title: Caliphate

text: With the exception of Zaidis, Shi'ites believe in the Imamate, a principle by which rulers are Imams who are divinely chosen, infallible and sinless and must come from the "Ahl al-Bayt" regardless of majority opinion, shura or election. They claim that before his death, Muhammad had given many indications, in the hadith of the pond of Khumm in particular, that he considered Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, as his successor. For the Twelvers, Ali and his eleven descendants, the twelve Imams, are believed to have been considered, even before their birth, as the only valid Islamic rulers appointed and decreed by God. Shia Muslims believe that all the Muslim caliphs following Muhammad's death to be illegitimate due to their unjust rule and that Muslims have no obligation to follow them, as the only guidance that was left behind, as ordained in the hadith of the two weighty things, was the Islamic holy book, the Quran and Muhammad's family and offspring, who are believed to be infallible, therefore able to lead society and the Muslim community with complete justice and equity. The Prophet's own grandson, and third Shia Imam, Hussain ibn Ali led an uprising against injustice and the oppressive rule of the Muslim caliph at the time at the Battle of Karbala. Shia Muslims emphasise that values of social justice, and speaking out against oppression and tyranny are not merely moral values, but values essential to a persons religiosity.


title: Caliphate

text: After these Twelve Imams, the potential Caliphs, had passed, and in the absence of the possibility of a government headed by their Imams, some Twelvers believe it was necessary that a system of Shi'i Islamic government based on the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist be developed, due to the need for some form of government, where an Islamic jurist or faqih rules Muslims, suffices. However this idea, developed by the marja' Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and established in Iran, is not universally accepted among the Shia.


title: Caliphate

text: Ismailis believe in the Imamate principle mentioned above, but they need not be secular rulers as well.


title: Caliphate

text: The Majlis al-Shura (literally "consultative assembly") was a representation of the idea of consultative governance. The importance of this is premised by the following verses of the Qur'an:


title: Caliphate

text: The majlis is also the means to elect a new caliph. Al-Mawardi has written that members of the majlis should satisfy three conditions: they must be just, have enough knowledge to distinguish a good caliph from a bad one and have sufficient wisdom and judgement to select the best caliph. Al-Mawardi also said that in emergencies when there is no caliphate and no majlis, the people themselves should create a majlis and select a list of candidates for caliph; then the majlis should select a caliph from the list of candidates.


title: Caliphate

text: In an analysis of the shura chapter of the Qur'an, Islamist author Sayyid Qutb argues that Islam only requires the ruler to consult with some of the representatives of the ruled and govern within the context of the Sharia. Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, the founder of a transnational political movement devoted to the revival of the Caliphate, writes that although the Shura is an important part of "the ruling structure" of the Islamic caliphate, "(it is) not one of its pillars", meaning that its neglect would not make a Caliph's rule un-Islamic such as to justify a rebellion. However, the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic movement in Egypt, has toned down these Islamist views by accepting in principle that in the modern age the Majlis al-Shura is democracy but during its governance of Egypt in 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood did not put that principle into practice.


title: Caliphate

text: Al-Mawardi said that if the rulers meet their Islamic responsibilities to the public the people must obey their laws, but a Caliph or ruler who becomes either unjust or severely ineffective must be impeached via the Majlis al-Shura. Al-Juwayni argued that Islam is the goal of the ummah, so any ruler who deviates from this goal must be impeached. Al-Ghazali believed that oppression by a caliph is sufficient grounds for impeachment. Rather than just relying on impeachment, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani stated that the people have an obligation to rebel if the caliph begins to act with no regard for Islamic law. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani said that to ignore such a situation is "haraam" and those who cannot revolt from inside the caliphate should launch a struggle from outside. Al-Asqalani used two ayahs from the Qur'an to justify this:


title: Caliphate

text: Islamic lawyers commented that when the rulers refuse to step down after being impeached through the Majlis, becoming dictators through the support of a corrupt army, if the majority is in agreement they have the option to launch a revolution. Many noted that this option is to be exercised only after factoring in the potential cost of life.


title: Caliphate

text: The following hadith establishes the principle of rule of law in relation to nepotism and accountability


title: Caliphate

text: Various Islamic lawyers, however, place multiple conditions and stipulations on the execution of such a law, making it difficult to implement. For example, the poor cannot be penalised for stealing out of poverty, and during a time of drought in the Rashidun caliphate, capital punishment was suspended until the effects of the drought passed.


title: Caliphate

text: Islamic jurists later formulated the concept that all classes were subject to the law of the land, and no person is above the law; officials and private citizens alike have a duty to obey the same law. Furthermore, a Qadi (Islamic judge) was not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion, race, colour, kinship or prejudice. In a number of cases, Caliphs had to appear before judges as they prepared to render their verdict.


title: Caliphate

text: According to Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard University, the system of legal scholars and jurists responsible for the rule of law was replaced by the codification of Sharia by the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century:


title: Caliphate

text: During the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, the Caliphate understood that real incentives were needed to increase productivity and wealth and thus enhance tax revenues. A social transformation took place as a result of changing land ownership giving individuals of any gender, ethnic or religious background the right to buy, sell, mortgage and inherit land for farming or any other purpose. Signatures were required on contracts for every major financial transaction concerning agriculture, industry, commerce and employment. Copies of the contract were usually kept by both parties involved.


title: Caliphate

text: Early forms of proto-capitalism and free markets were present in the Caliphate, since an early market economy and early form of merchant capitalism developed between the 8th and 12th centuries, which some refer to as "Islamic capitalism". A vigorous monetary economy developed based on the circulation of a stable high-value currency (the dinar) and the integration of previously independent monetary areas. Business techniques and forms of business organisation employed during this time included early contracts, bills of exchange, long-distance international trade, early forms of partnership ("mufawada") such as limited partnerships ("mudaraba") and early forms of credit, debt, profit, loss, capital ("al-mal"), capital accumulation ("nama al-mal"), circulating capital, capital expenditure, revenue, cheques, promissory notes, trusts ("waqf"), startup companies, savings accounts, transactional accounts, pawning, loaning, exchange rates, bankers, money changers, ledgers, deposits, assignments, the double-entry bookkeeping system, and lawsuits. Organisational enterprises similar to corporations independent from the state also existed in the medieval Islamic world. Many of these concepts were adopted and further advanced in medieval Europe from the 13th century onwards.


title: Caliphate

text: "Zakat" (charity), one of the Five Pillars of Islam, since the time of the first Islamic State, established by Allah's Messenger at Medina. The taxes (including "Zakat" and "Jizya") collected in the treasury ("Bayt al-mal") of an Islamic government were used to provide income for the needy, including the poor, elderly, orphans, widows and the disabled.


title: Caliphate

text: During the Caliphate of Abu Bakr, a number of the Arab tribes, who had accepted Islam at the hand of The Prophet Muhammad, rebelled and refused to continue to pay the Zakat, leading to the Ridda Wars. Caliph Umar added to the duties of the state an allowance, paid on behalf of every man woman and child, starting at birth, creating the world's first state run social welfare program.