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Donald Trump, who was president at the time, declared the caliphate “obliterated.”

Since breaking with Al Qaeda, its goal has been limited to trying to establish fundamentalist Islamic rule in Syria rather than a wider caliphate, as Isis tried and failed to do.

The Islamic State once had a strong foothold in Iraq and Syria, but a US-led coalition of more than 70 countries largely drove them out from the physical caliphate they had created there.

It moved westward to the Middle East about 1200 years ago, a date that coincides with the expansion of trade and warfare by two Islamic caliphates, the Umayyad and the Abbasid.

“I am famous from the courts of Chang’an to the caliphate of Baghdad for my honesty. They speak of my bargains among the tongueless island tribes—they click about me, like you do, Rasseem.”