L’adieu au califat ?

Abstract Since the revolutionary period of the “Arab Spring”, which began in 2011, the question of the Caliphate and its persistence has been the subject of renewed interest, due to new forms of expression of the Caliphate. Implicit in this is the question of its evanescence. When, on 3 March 1924, the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara voted to abolish the caliphate, shockwaves swept through the Muslim world. Our contribution looks at the contextualisation of this decision, which in a way took on a ‘revolutionary’ dimension in a Middle Eastern scene undergoing profound reconfiguration. We will highlight the dynamics at work, and how this decision was part of the genealogy of institutional changes in the Ottoman Empire, in successive strata. After the abolition of the sultanate on 1 November 1922, the dual title of sultan-caliph disappeared, leaving the caliphate in potential remission.