Monday marked the 100th anniversary of the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate—the formal successor to the prophet Mohammad and the nominal leader of Islam—by the secular Turkish government. Martin Kramer reproduces some firsthand accounts of the event itself, and analyzes its consequences:

The last century has witnessed the occasional attempt to revive the caliphate. Indeed, it began as soon as Turkey abolished it. There was a pop-up caliphate in Arabia in 1924 (it didn’t last long), and a caliphate congress in Cairo in 1926 (it ended in an impasse). . . . So far, the fringe attempt to revive the caliphate has sputtered, and it seems doubtful that a caliphate could gain momentum in modern conditions. But its absence remains a cruel reminder to some Muslims of just how far they’ve fallen away from the unity and power they enjoyed in their golden age.

The late Bernard Lewis called the caliphate “a potent symbol of Muslim unity, even identity,” adding that since its abolition, “many Muslims are still painfully conscious of this void.” Just how many remains an open question.

Yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the end of the Ottomans, given their own history, was this: their passing didn’t exact even one drop of blood.

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.