Sunni political thought and the Caliphate discourse consolidated during the early medieval (or classical) period at the hands of Ash`ari theologians such as Baqillani, Mawardi, and Ghazali. The choices that classical theorists made were influenced by the new intellectual challenges posed by the Hellenistic philosophical and Persian socio-political traditions. The consequent intellectual posture was marked by elitism and cynicism towards commonsense and practical reason. The common believer’s encounter with scripture produced no worthwhile action or knowledge: the theologian knew God’s nature, the jurist God’s will, and the mystic God’s secrets. The ruler could often claim God’s shadow. The Community (umma) was left out in the sun. Ibn Taymiyya challenged the classical tradition in both intellectual and political domains. His central critique of classical political thought was that he rejected not the obligation of the Caliphate, as often thought, but the elitist epistemology that underpinned classical thought. As an alternative to both theological speculation (nazar) and mystical (kashf), he offered fitra (divinely endowed human nature) as a way of knowing the divine nature as well as ethical truths. Natural human reason, he contended, had far more potential for recognizing truth and justice than classical Sunni theology had conceded. To this end, he transformed the theological centrality of the Community that Sunni Islam had been based on into a socio-political tenet, cautiously bolstering the epistemic authority of the common believers’ (including the law rulers’) interpretation of scriptures vis-à-vis that of the Ulama and the political authority of the subjects (including the Ulama) vis-à-vis that of the rulers. I examine his contentions in his discourse on rebellion, the issue of ijtihad and taqlid, and the role and qualifications of the Muslim ruler to illustrate how his subversion of intellectual and political elitism was calculated to try and revive the political life of the Community.