The Rightly-Guided Caliphate

See also Chapter 29, 'Abu Bakr' in The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality

The reign of the first four caliphs of Islam is collectively called Khilafat-i-Rashidah, or the Rightly-Guided Caliphate (sometimes also “the Pious Caliphate”), especially among the Sunni historians. These four caliphs are Abu Bakr “Siddique” (573-634), who succeeded the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) in 632; Umar bin Khattab “al-Farooq” (c.590-644); Usman bin Affan “al-Ghani” (c.579-565); and Ali bin Abu Talib (c.600-661).

The rightly-guided caliphs receive glowing tributes in the works of Iqbal – the first, second and fourth are mentioned quite frequently. However, Iqbal’s perception of the matter may differ from those who propose that modern Muslim societies should revert back to the precedents of the early caliphs in a literal sense. Instead, Iqbal seems to believe that the rightly-guided caliphs carried forward the cultural forces set into motion by the Prophet, which may not have been fully understood by some other contemporaries: “Early Muslims emerging out of the spiritual slavery of pre-Islamic Asia were not in a position to realize the true significance of this basic idea. Let the Muslim of to-day appreciate his position, reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles, and evolve, out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam, that spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam” (6th lecture in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam; 1930-1934).

Hence, the rightly-guided caliphs may have envisioned the world as we know it today, and as it may develop in the future, owing to the historical processes initiated by them: in the second chapter of Javid Nama (see Chapter 70 in A Novel of Reality), an unborn world of the future is described as “so fair that the effluence of one glance planted the seed of it in Umar’s soul”.