The diversity of views on the caliphate is the most striking aspect about this chapter and makes an important contribution to our understanding of modern Islamic thought with reference to the caliphate. Hassan's examination of Muslims' collective memory of the caliphate and the grammar of mourning provides an understanding of the importance that Muslims attached to the caliphate that we have not had up to this point. The ways in which Muslims remembered the caliphate in terms of the past tells us about how contemporary religious communities related to their tradition in the present and held out possibilities for its future potential. It is in these terms that her epilogue should be understood; this chapter provides a quick overview of contemporary movements that seek to restore the caliphate with a comparison to movements in other religious traditions yearning to restore the past. Some may approach this chapter seeking to learn more about contemporary political movements; the point is not to catalog their ideas but rather to show the role of memory in thinking about religious communities. Hassan's work reveals the importance of considering memory for our understanding of the development of a religious tradition and the conceptualization of religious communities; her method is to use history to locate the collective memory. In doing so, she has expanded our understanding of the caliphate beyond the political. Other categories of analysis that the field has taken for granted await a similar treatment. Longing for the Lost Caliphate is impressive in its use of sources and geographic and temporal coverage. The work is broad in scope, which is one of its strengths in terms of providing a comprehensive overview of its topic. Such works usually fall victim to criticisms of not considering the various social and political contexts more carefully but, in this case, such criticisms would be a misunderstanding of Hassan's project. She was not writing a history of the caliphate (a fair amount of work has been done on this topic for the medieval period but more needs to be done on it for the late Ottoman period). What Hassan is doing is showing how the collective memory in different moments of crisis and tragedy reveal about how Muslims forge links with their tradition through the grammar of the caliphate. Her work opens up possibilities for the use of other memories (such as that of lost love) in order to study Islam. This book is an excellent study that represents a significant contribution to our understanding about the caliphate, and Hassan's use of memory in the study of religion provides a methodological model of inquiry for scholars to follow.
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