1 DRAFT VERSION. PUBLISHED VERSION CITATION BELOW: “Echoes of the Caliphate in al-Farabi’s Reconceptualization of Plato’s Decline of the Regimes,” History of Political Thought, 40:2, 2019 Abstract: Scholarship on al-Farabi interprets his theoretical analysis of politics apart from its historical context, which results in a failure to understand how his political philosophy is useful for understanding Islamic politics. This paper brings al-Farabi’s theory of the regimes into dialogue with Islamic political history. Al- Farabi modifies the political thought of Plato and Aristotle to illuminate the rise and decline of the caliphate according to Islamic principles. For al-Farabi, the mechanism of the decline of the caliphate rests in excessive material desire satisfaction and the misuse of wealth for the aggrandizement of political elites. Echoes of the Caliphate in al-Farabi’s Reconceptualization of Plato’s Decline of the Regimes Introduction With the rise and decline of the Islamic State’s territorial control, the “caliphate” has become a familiar word around the world. While most scholars agree that the Islamic State does not reflect the authentic principles of the Muslim community, many still want to know what the restoration of a truly legitimate caliphate would look like. Since the caliphate’s dissolution in 1924, scholars have attempted to accurately understand the historical record of the caliphate and ponder its destiny in the modern world. 1 In addition to the caliphate becoming a familiar word amongst non-Muslims, open dialogue about the return of the caliphate is being discussed in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and 1 Salman Sayyid has raised this issue in Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order (London, 2014).