“Now, today, in Europe and the United States, most citizens expect their states to be in at least some degree Democratic and Republican and Constitutional. So when people in the West look at the earliest Islamic Empire, we have a way of imagining Caliphs as Kings because like, you know, we had Kings. But caliphs were important in different ways. For starters, they were the Successor to the Prophet. Maybe that’s similar to what the Roman Catholic papacy became over time. But it’s not like a king.So this combination of political and religious authority is important, as is that at least initially, there was no hereditary succession of caliphs.”