The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

sultan

The word “sultan” in Arabic means, literally, “authority.” The term appears in the Qur’an 37 times, both in the straightforward sense of authority or power over others (e.g., Q. 14:22; 17:33; 69:29) as well as in the sense of authentication, permission, or proof that a claim is true (e.g., Q. 27:21; 30:35; 37:157; 55:33), and in both cases is usually seen as granted by God. On seven occasions, “sultan” is something possessed by Moses (e.g., Q. 11:96: “We had indeed sent Moses with Our signs and a manifest authority”; similarly, Q. 23:45; 4:153; 28:35; 40:23; 44:19; 51:38). The term is never used in explicit personal attribution to any other apostolic figure in the Qur’an.

The Concretization of “Sultan” in the Early Islamic Period

With the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate, a process beginning in the mid-ninth century and completed in the first part of the tenth century, governing authority devolved upon a series of autonomous rulers, and, as caliphal authority devolved, so (more slowly) did the epithets associated with the caliphal position. By the late tenth century, the term “sultan” had begun to be applied as an appellation, not an official title, to various noncaliphal rulers; it was never used as a title on the coinage or on official inscriptions before the Seljuqs.

“Sultan” as a Title

The autonomous Sunni Muslim potentates who arose and arrogated power to themselves in the central caliphal lands from the mid-ninth century through the early 11th century were faced with a dilemma regarding the title they should adopt for themselves: mainstream Islamic law and theology at this time left no theoretical room for any sovereign ruler other than the caliph, and the Arabic term for king, malik, is a negative one in Islamic political parlance.

Thus most of the autonomous Sunni rulers of the ninth and much of the tenth century were known officially as amirs or commanders in order to maintain the pious fiction that their power and authority were delegated by the universal caliph, although the Buyids, for instance, adopted the slightly more descriptive title amīr al-umarā’ (“commander of the commanders,” a parallel construction to the caliphal “commander of the faithful”). Terms based on the ancient Iranian titles of shāh or pādishāh (king) and shāhānshāh (king of kings) were also employed, both by the Buyids and other dynasties, but these Persian titles obviously lacked a Qur’anic resonance and aura of Islamic legitimation.

Many of the literary sources attribute to Mahmud of Ghazna (r. 998–1030) the first adoption of the title “sultan.” It is probably more correct, however, to state that he is the first ruler named to whom this term is applied as a title, although he himself never employed it in self-reference. That is, before the mid-11th century this use of the term “sultan” as a title meaning “ruler” was limited to speech, literary works, and documents addressed to the ruler. Independent rulers did not at the time use “sultan” as a title when referring to themselves in the official titulature of coins and inscriptions, nor in official documents they issued. The Fatimid caliphs are also addressed by this epithet in a late tenth centuryliterary dedication.

The Adoption of the Title by the Seljuqs

A major change in the use of the term “sultan” came about in the mid-11th century with the coming of the Seljuq Turkmen dynasty, who conquered the Islamic heartlands and became the first Sunni dynasty to rule directly over the Abbasid caliphs. The Seljuqs soon made the epithet “sultan” into the official title of the ruler and the preferred one on their official coinage and inscriptions—an example that was followed shortly thereafter by their rivals the Ghaznavids, whose rule was now confined largely to India.

The Seljuqs apparently used this caliphal epithet as an official title in a deliberate fashion, in order to stake their claim to universal political authority as a counterpart to the caliph’s universal but symbolic religious headship as imam of the Muslim ecumene. The Seljuq reordering of the Islamic world, signaled by their adoption of the title “sultan,” heralded a new political reality: it was no longer possible to maintain that some powerful Sunni would one day restore rule to the caliph. Although they were unquestionably a Sunni dynasty, the Seljuqs made no pretense that they were simply one among the caliph’s many commanders, holding delegated authority over a limited area at the caliph’s behest and positing that the caliph would, at least theoretically, one day be freed from outside control.

Rather, the Seljuqs actually did “free” the caliphs from heterodox control—and, far from restoring rule to the caliph’s hands, they promptly placed him under their own sway while arrogating to themselves all political power. Moreover, the Seljuq sultans openly aimed at a universal, independent, and dual caliphal-sultanic authority, in which the caliph was deprived of all temporal power and the sultans actually ruled. The title “sultan” in Seljuq hands, therefore, constituted a usurpation not only of the title but also of the substance of caliphal political authority; it signaled a claim to be the temporal counterpart to a caliphal role that was meant to be limited thenceforth purely to the spiritual sphere.

This constituted a decisive break with Islamic political theory up until that time and a de facto separation of the temporal and spiritual roles of government. This disturbing new political reality elicited in response the writing of a flurry of innovative works of political philosophy—most notably those of Juwayni (d. 1085), Ghazzali (d. 1111), and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209)—during the Seljuq era and shortly thereafter, all of which attempted to supply a theological rationale for the new division of power and authority in the Islamic lands. Historically, this division of authority and rule between the caliphate and sultanate resulted in perpetual tension and even outright hostility between the representatives of the two institutions and to the unremitting efforts of the Abbasid caliphs to reassert their political sway.

Given this new definition of the role of a sultan, it is unsurprising that the Seljuqs themselves used the term “sultan” only for princes of the blood. Since their empire was ruled as a family confederation, however, there were always numerous sultans at any given time. They distinguished therefore between “sultan” (in the sense of ruler or the embodiment of authority) or subordinate regional prince on the one hand and the great sultan or Sulṭān al-mu‘aẓẓam (the sovereign ruler or the most powerful embodiment of authority) on the other.

The appropriation of erstwhile caliphal epithets by and for the Seljuqs was not limited to the term “sultan” but also extended to such titles as ẓill Allāh fī al-arḍ (the shadow of God on Earth) and khalīfat Allāh (God’s deputy) to the sultans. This trend only accelerated after the extinction of the caliphate in the mid-13th century, reaching its logical culmination in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when the title most closely associated with the caliphal office, amīr al-mu’minīn (Commander of the Faithful), was officially employed by Ottoman sultans such as Bayazid II and Süleiman I in formal inscriptions on public edifices, including, for instance, the Grand Mosque of Medina and the Jerusalem Citadel.

The Later Middle Ages and Modern Times

With the disintegration of Seljuq rule in the 12th century, the title “sultan” became universal, and by the 13th century, from Anatolia and Egypt to India, Central Asia, and Sumatra, it was used to denote any independent Muslim ruler. With the exception of the Mongol polities, which invariably preferred Turkic and Persian titles, most of the major late medieval Muslim principalities—including the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, the Delhi Sultanate, and the Ottoman Sultanate—employed this title for their governing figure. By the 16th century, it came to be used even in Shi‘i Iran, where the Safavid and Qajar rulers, while preferring to be known by the Persian title of “shah,” are occasionally called “sultan” on their coins. At the Western end of the Islamic world, the title was adopted for the first time, in the 18th century, by the rulers of Morocco.

In the 20th century, however, as a result of European influence and the desire to accrue prestige on the broader world stage, many Muslim rulers exchanged traditional Muslim titles such as amir, sultan, and sharif, for the previously eschewed “king.” These include the current and former ruling dynasties of, for instance, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, although one still finds a small handful of Muslim rulers, such as the sultans of Brunei and Oman, who continue to employ the more traditional Islamic term.

It is important to note that all the earlier meanings of the term, particularly both the abstract concept of “authority” and the impersonal reified use of “sultan” for “the authorities,” at all times continued and still continue to coexist with the later personalized and titular significations.