He asserts that power and authority were joined in the Orthodox Caliphate.

He asserts that power and authority were joined in the Orthodox Caliphate.[^1] Ideally, of course, power should reside with the immediate source of authority in the community. The relation of the caliphate to the Shari‘ah is more difficult to define than that of the ‘ulama’ or the community. During the whole of the Umayyad and the early part of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate, the Caliph is much more the exponent of power than of authority.

In the last centuries of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate the Caliph could hardly be considered the exponent of power either. Was he then the most immediate representative of authority? With the exception of the Qur’anic Law, the caliphate and the Shari‘ah developed pari passu . The Sunnah of the Prophet did not become constitutive until treated as such by the successors of the Prophet. Ijma‘ and qiyas are certainly later accretions.

This historical fact has tended to complicate the relationship of the Caliph and the Shari‘ah . In the main, the Caliph is the executive of the Shari‘ah , the commander-in-chief of the Muslim army, and the leader in formal religious observances prescribed by the Shari‘ah . Above all, the Caliph is the head of the religious institution in Islam, only of the formalized part of it. Since religion was an all-inclusive concept, he was also the political institution.

The sub-ordination of the Caliph to the Shari‘ah was most clearly expressed as a by-product of early political controversy in the attacks on the piety and personal behaviour of the Umayyad Caliphs.[^2] That the political behaviour of the caliph must be in accordance with the Shari‘ah , was implicit in ‘Abbasid religious policy.

The theoretical implications of this policy were limited only to the function of the Caliph once appointed and as a consequence fail to define the authority for the appointment of a particular Caliph, or the authority for the institution itself. The circumstantial authority arising out of the contention that the Caliphs were properly executing the function of the Caliphate did not exhaust the ‘Abbasid theory.

Their personal claim to the office itself was based both on agnate descent from the Prophet and the action of divine Providence. This theory of constitutive authority was never denied by Sunni theorists, but it was certainly omitted in the heavy casuistical overlay which attempted to camouflage the fact of dynastic succession.