#caliph

“By the Lord of the Kaaba, I have succeeded.”

It's a good question and there are a number of complex reasons why that didn't/doesn't happen which require a much deeper dive, but I'll try to give a simplified answer. First of all, the caliph was the spiritual leader of the entire Muslim world and while the caliphs also had a political role as successors to Muhammad, that role changed dramatically through the centuries as the Muslim world grew, Islamic empires rose and fell, and Islam itself branched into different sects. The last widely-recognized caliphs were the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, but even in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, there were disagreements throughout the Muslim world about the legitimacy of anyone's claim on the caliphate. The two main branches of Islam -- Sunni and Shia -- have entirely different ideas on how a caliph should be chosen and who the caliph is chosen by.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the end of World War I, the Sharif of Mecca -- Hussein, a direct descendant of Muhammad as the leader of Hashemite dynasty (and great-great grandfather of the current Jordanian King Abdullah II) -- attempted to declare himself the new caliph, but was not accepted. In many ways, it was like a modern European monarch suddenly declaring himself the Pope; that's just not how most Muslims believed the spiritual leader of the Islamic faith should be determined. Plus, Hussein only had a tenuous hold on Islam's holiest sites (Mecca, Medina, and, at the time, Jerusalem) following World War I, and Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud was in the process of taking control of what is now Saudi Arabia. Once Ibn Saud became King of Saudi Arabia, he took over as "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" (Mecca and Medina), but the idea of declaring himself caliph was out of the question. Ibn Saud and the vast majority of his supporters were members of the deeply conservative, puritanical Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam and they believed that the caliph was chosen by all Muslims, not declared by one person. As the guardian of Islam's two holiest sites, the King of Saudi Arabia is responsible for ensuring that all Muslims capable of making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca (and the lesser pilgrimage to Medina) can do so. Unilaterally declaring himself the caliph would undoubtedly have alienated many Muslims, particularly those from countries outside of Saudi Arabia and especially Shiites. In other words, it's not within the power of the King of Saudi Arabia to give himself (or any other individual) the title of caliph, and he'd probably get just as much resistance from his fellow Saudis if he tried to do so. There's no way that the Ikhwan -- the ascetic tribes and Bedouins who largely acted as Ibn Saud's military forces as he conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula in the first half of the 20th Century -- would have remained loyal to the first Saudi King if he had unilaterally proclaimed himself the caliph.

Atmosphere on 13th Rajab at the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali (ع) on his birth anniversary.