One of, if not the most important problems that arose in the Muslim empire after [the death of] Mohamed was that of the legitimacy of the ruler, his relationship with Allah, the Prophet and the Muslim community (that is, whom he deputised for or represented), together with the conditions of his selection and suitability. It comes as no surprise that the early formation of sects and the civil wars of the late seventh century were mainly motivated by deeply-held differences of opinion on these matters. The Khārijites and the Shicites formed views of the caliph (khalifa) and the idea of the imām that differed widely from those of the murji'a or of Sunnite Islam as it took shape. It is known that Mohamed did not deal with the problem of succession (nor could anything be found in the Koran that might serve as a basis for resolving the matter). Naturally, this incurable state of the beginnings was closely connected to the distinctively charismatic nature of Mohamed's commission: Mohamed derived his charisma from his charge as a prophet, and the various aspects of his leadership (law-giving, organisation of the community, military leadership, the ad hoc delegation of various tasks etc.) flowed from the divine mandate. This charisma could obviously not be bequeathed; the divine mandate bore a unique and unrepeatable seal which could not be passed on, just as Moses' unique charisma could not be transferred to Saul. As the problem with the institution of the Jewish kingship was that it had come into being as a historically formed part of the growth of the nation in order to perform an ad hoc historical task, and in later years the charisma could not be institutionalised and made use of to legitimate the dynastic principle, so in Islam also (which in this respect too can be compared with Jewish kingship2) it presented an insuperable contradiction that after Mohamed's death the leader of the developing umma (whatever we are to call him) could not be either the successor to Mohamed nor his successor as Prophet (everyone can have a successor, but a successor-prophet is self-contradictory because Mohamed was "the seal of the prophets" (khātam an-nabíyyīn, see Koran 33:44), as Allah cannot have a successor either.3 In fact, if we consider the reigns of the first four caliphs and those of the first Umayyads we see that they display numerous characteristics of pre-Islamic tribal society, and naturally it is not the Prophet's kharizma that is maintained,4 and to such a degree that there was always trouble over their legitimacy (in the case of the cAbbasids, insistence on their descent from the Prophet's uncle enabled them to be regarded as his successors). In connection with al-Ghazālī's understanding of imām and khalifa, Lambton refers to the reversal of the link between actual power and authority:5 in the Umayyad and early cAbbasid periods, less emphasis was placed on authority in the possession of power, and the loss of the former was increasingly accompanied by over-emphasis on the role of guardian of sharica and therefore on that of the imām.