The caliphs coming after the Senior Caliphs...

The caliphs coming after the Senior Caliphs, both the Umayyad and the ‘Abbasid, and the other persons who appeared in the history of Islam as caliphs and their caliphate was accepted by the people, such as the Mamluk caliphs in Egypt or the sultans of the second period in the Ottoman empire, in order to consolidate their position, needed to attach a religious status to themselves and to make the people accept this.

The best means was to give a religious status, not to themselves, but to the position they were in so as to legalize themselves and make themselves accepted. In order to do this, they had to raise the position of the caliphs after the Prophet (S) and introduce their caliphate as a divine and religious position while further highlighting the supporters of the caliphs and the caliphate.

In general, they had to give a religious definition to and sanctify the history of those times because, this way, their position of caliphate would be religiously necessary, and this would include the status on which they relied.[^3] In fact, the Umayyad caliphs were not so willing to be identified as caliphs because they neither needed this nor was their Bedouin, pre-Islamic, negligent and reckless nature consistant with such formalities.

However, the ‘Abbasid could not remain on the scene without relying on it. Although their being in power for more than five hundred years was for a major part formal and apparent, yet it continued by resorting to such titles and, for many reasons, they developed the current that Mu‘awiyah had founded.

Although many of Mu‘awiyah’s policies and, in general, those of the Umayyad were denied in the ‘Abbasid era, this was one of the exceptions that was approved because the holy and divine respect to the caliphs after the Prophet (S) directly helped sanctify the concept and system of caliphate and the one who was in charge of it.[^4] The other factor that reinforced such a view was the need to confront Shi‘ites and the Rebels.

The most important opponents of the caliphs, both Umayyad and ‘Abbasid, during the first two or even three centuries, were the Shi‘ites. Both of them had a critical attitude towards the early history of Islam. The Shi‘ite view is well-known, in which they considered it to be a period like the other parts of the history of Islam, without any difference or distinction.