الْخِلَافَةُ بَعْدِي ثَلَاثُونَ سَنَةً
The caliphate after me will last thirty years.
The explanation focuses on a particular type of caliphate because later rulers were also sometimes called caliphs. If every subsequent political succession were counted in exactly the same sense, the stated thirty-year limit would be hard to interpret.
The distinction between political succession in a broad sense and the prophetic-model caliphate explains the apparent difficulty.
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The Companions’ Disputes, Ijtihād, and the Rightly Guided Caliphate
الْخِلَافَةُ بَعْدِي ثَلَاثُونَ سَنَةً
The caliphate after me will last thirty years.
The explanation focuses on a particular type of caliphate because later rulers were also sometimes called caliphs. If every subsequent political succession were counted in exactly the same sense, the stated thirty-year limit would be hard to interpret.
The distinction between political succession in a broad sense and the prophetic-model caliphate explains the apparent difficulty.