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In June the leader of Islamic State declared the creation of a caliphate stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself the caliph or leader. Edward Stourton examines the historical parallels and asks what is a caliphate, and what is its appeal?

The last caliphate - that of the Ottomans - was officially abolished 90 years ago this spring. Yet in a 2006 Gallup survey of Muslims living in Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan, two-thirds of respondents said they supported the goal of "unifying all Islamic countries" into a new caliphate

"Seventy years after the Prophet's death, this Muslim world stretched from Spain and Morocco right the way to Central Asia and to the southern bits of Pakistan, so a huge empire that was all… under the control of a single Muslim leader," says historian Prof Hugh Kennedy. "And it's this Muslim unity, the extent of Muslim sovereignty, that people above all look back to."

The radical Islamist group ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, is intent on establishing a new Sunni Muslim caliphate.

To some traditionalist Sunni Arabs, this caliphate was so debased that it is not even legitimate. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and a new secular, modernizing government took power in Turkey. 

In 1924, without consulting anyone in the Arab world, Turkey's secularist leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the office of the caliph entire

The group's rise in Iraq -- and its capture of thousands of square miles of land -

"We have not defeated the idea," he is reported to have said. "We do not even understand the idea."

A global caliphate secured through a global war. To that end it speaks of "remaining and expanding" its existing hold over much of Iraq and Syria. It aims to replace existing, man-made borders, to overcome what it sees as the Shiite "crescent" that has emerged across the Middle East, to take its war -- Islam's war -- to Europe and America, and ultimately to lead Muslims toward an apocalyptic battle against the "disbelievers."

Hugh Kennedy’s political history of Islam from Muhammad to the Ottomans.

it’s not a history of an idea for the simple reason that it has little to say about what was new about the caliphate or why it was different from all other empires.

questions soon arose. If a caliph was just a deputy, then whom was he a deputy of – Muhammad or God himself?  How was a caliph to be chosen – by election, descent, or some different way altogether? What should his qualifications be, and what was he supposed to do once he took office?  Amass treasure and territory or concentrate on spreading the word of God?

Islam arose as a religious and socio-political force in Arabia in the 7th century CE (610 CE onwards).

The Islamic Prophet Muhammad (l. 570-632 CE), despite facing resistance and persecution, amassed a huge following and started building an empire

After he died in 632 CE, his friend Abu Bakr (l. 573-634 CE) laid the foundation of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE), which continued the imperial expansion.

ISIS steps up attacks far from its 'caliphate'

A year ago, ISIS was focused almost exclusively on carving out its self-declared caliphate. Overseas terror attacks in the style of al Qaeda did not appear high on the agenda

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is spreading its wings as it comes under greater pressure in its Iraqi-Syrian heartland

Islam is the second largest religion in the world after Christianity, with about 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide.

7th century

Islam started in Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, during the time of the prophet Muhammad’s life.

self-proclaimed caliphate

By comparison, al-Qaida often favored major symbols such as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the Sept. 11 attacks, and U.S. embassies in Africa in a pair of 1998 bombings.

3. Europe's Vulnerability: The Paris attacks point to weaknesses France and other European countries face in combating terrorism.

Certain years leap out as turning points in world history: 1517, 1776 and 1917. These are years when powerful ideas strode onto the world stage: the Reformation, democratic capitalism and revolutionary Communism.

The period around 1979 was another such dawn. Political Islam burst onto global consciousness with the Iranian revolution, the rise of the mujahedeen after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamization program in Pakistan and the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world.

By 2006, in an essay called “The Master Plan,” Lawrence Wright could report in The New Yorker how Al Qaeda had operationalized these dreams into a set of sweeping, violent strategies. The plans were epic in scope: expel the U.S. from Iraq, establish a caliphate, overthrow Arab regimes, initiate a clash with Israel, undermine Western economies, create “total confrontation” between believers and nonbelievers, and achieve “definitive victory” by 2020, transforming world history.

Islamic State (IS) is a radical Islamist group that has seized large swathes of territory in eastern Syria and across northern and western Iraq.

The group aims to establish a "caliphate", a state ruled by a single political and religious leader according to Islamic law, or Sharia.

IS can trace its roots back to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who set up Tawhid wa al-Jihad in 2002.

Obama has carefully not organized a large part of his foreign policy around a war against jihadism. The foreign policy vision he describes is, as you’d expect from a former law professor, built around reverence for certain procedures: compromise, inclusiveness, rules and norms. The threat he described in his West Point speech was a tactic, terrorism, not an ideology, jihadism. His main argument was against a means not an end: the efficacy of military action.

Obama is notably cautious, arguing that the U.S. errs when it tries to do too much. The cast of his mind is against intervention. Sometimes, when the situation demands it, he goes against his natural temperament (he told Friedman that he regrets not getting more involved in Libya), but it takes a mighty shove, and he is resistant all the way. In his West Point speech, he erected barriers to action. He argued, for example, that the U.S. could take direct action only when “there is near certainty of no civilian casualties.” (This is not a standard Franklin Roosevelt would have applied.)

Obama and Clinton represent different Democratic tendencies. In their descriptions of the current situation in Iraq, Clinton emphasizes that there cannot be inclusive politics unless the caliphate is seriously pushed back, while Obama argues that we will be unable to push back the caliphate unless the Iraqis themselves create inclusive politics. The Clinton language points toward some sort of intervention. Obama’s points away from it, though he may be forced by events into being more involved.

Obama has called the Islamic State the "face of evil"

Pope Francis suggests the West already is at war -- a kind of "third world war."

We are effectively at war with ISIS right now. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing targets in Syria and Iraq for over a year, and in recent months Russia has been doing the same.

She took the name Umm Jihad, or “Mother of Jihad.” Home alone as her husband went out to fight, she posted toxic tweets under her pseudonym. “Hats off to the mujs in Paris,” she said in one of them, using an abbreviation for “mujahedeen” on the day in 2015 when jihadists stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people at the satirical magazine.She also urged others to join the terror organization. “There are soooo many Aussies and Brits here but where are the Americans, wake up u cowards,” she posted.And she used her account to help incite attacks in the West, including in the United States. “Americans wake up!” she wrote on March 15, 2015. “You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping! Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them.”

By the time Ms. Polman arrived in the caliphate, its crimes were well documented, including beheading journalists, enslaving and systematically raping women from the Yazidi minority and burning prisoners alive. Both she and Ms. Muthana were evasive when asked about that brutality.

In her telling, Ms. Muthana began to pull away from the terrorist group in her second year in the caliphate. She was married to a second fighter and was pregnant. Anemic from an iron deficiency, she spent much of her time in bed.“I started having doubts,” she said in an account that The Times could not verify. “I was pregnant. Very emotional, because I missed my family,” she said. “I thought — what am I doing?

People use the phrase “Middle Ages” to describe Europe between the fall of Rome in 476 CE and the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th century.

The phrase “Middle Ages” tells us more about the Renaissance that followed it than it does about the era itself.

European thinkers, writers and artists began to look back and celebrate the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.

‘Islamic State’ Turning Into a Guerrilla Army, Top General Warns

The capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq is now under assault. But ISIS isn’t going anywhere. Instead, the terror group is beginning to rebrand itself from a “caliphate” to an insurgency

It could well mean that there will be no “lasting defeat” of ISIS, even if it loses control of Iraq’s second-largest city, despite Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s claim of such a victory just four days ago

S military officials expect that senior leaders of ISIS may try to flee Mosul, the capital of ISIS' self-styled caliphate in Iraq, as their control of the city comes under attack from Iraqi forces

ISIS leaders will likely take women and children as human shields, or will pose as refugees leaving the battle for the city, according to those officials

Their targets include IED construction facilities; the sources of ISIS financing, such as oil-related facilities, and also the group's media production entities, such as ISIS' news agency, Amaq, according to US military officials.

The Iraqi army was trying on Thursday to reach a town south of Mosul where Islamic State has reportedly executed dozens to deter the population against any attempt to support the U.S.-led offensive on the jihadists' last major city stronghold in Iraq.

slamic State fighters are keeping up their fierce defense of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.

The fall of Mosul would mark Islamic State's effective defeat in Iraq.