ABSTRACT
The disintegration of the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, culminating in the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, was a major turning point in the history of the Arab Middle East in the twentieth century. This process caused a great trauma among the Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims in the Fertile Crescent in particular. It was inconceivable to them that the traditional world order, which had been sanctified by their ancestors for generations, guided their way of life, and determined their religious self-identity, could have irretrievably disappeared.
