The Origins of Arab Nationalism

343 Pages·1993·5.06 MB·English

by  Rashid Khalidi et al. (eds.)

The Origins of
Arab Nationalism
Edited by
Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson,
Muhammad Muslih, and Reeva S. Simon
Columbia University Press new york
Note on Transcription
In the transliteration of Arabic and Turkish words, personal names, and place
names, we have been sparing in the use of diacritical marks and have used them
only when it was absolutely essential. Otherwise commonly accepted English
forms are used, especially for Arabic and Turkish place names. In titles of books
and articles and in quotations, we kept the transliteration of the original sources
intact. For words and names which have both Arabic and Turkish transcription
forms, we have inserted the other form of transcription in parentheses.
Columbia University Press
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 1991 Columbia University Press
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The origins of Arab nationalism / edited by Rashid Khalidi... [et
al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-07434-4
ISBN 0-231-07435-2 (pbk.)
1. Nationalism—Arab countries—History. 2. Arab countries—
Politics and government. I. Khalidi, Rashid.
DS63.6.075 1991
320.5'4'09174927—dc20 91-17101
CIP
Case bound editions of Columbia University Press books are
printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Contents
The Origins of Arab Nationalism: Introduction vii
Rashid Khalidi
Part 1. Issues in the Development of Early Arab Nationalism
1. The Origins of Arab Nationalism 3
C. Ernest Dawn
2. The Young Turks and the Arabs Before the Revolution
of 1908 31
M. §ukrii Hanioglu
3. Ottomanism and Arabism in Syria Before 1914:
A Reassessment 50
Rashid Khalidi
Part 2. Syria and Iraq
4. Shukri al- cAsali: A Case Study of a Political Activist 73
Samir Seikaly
5. cAbd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi: The Career and Thought of an
Arab Nationalist 97
Ahmed Tarabein
6. Iraq Before World War I: A Case of Anti-European Arab
Ottomanism 120
Mahmoud Haddad
VI Contents
7. The Education of an Iraqi Ottoman Army Officer 151
Reeva S. Simon
8. The Rise of Local Nationalism in the Arab East 167
Muhammad Muslih
Part 3. The Hijaz
9. Ironic Origins: Arab Nationalism in the Hijaz,
1882-1914 189
William Ochsenwald
10. The Hashemites, the Arab Revolt, and Arab
Nationalism 204
Mary C. Wilson
Part 4. Northeast Africa
11. The Development of Nationalist Sentiment in Libya,
1908-1922 225
Lisa Anderson
12. Egypt and Early Arab Nationalism, 1908-1922 243
James Jankowski
13. Mothers, Morality, and Nationalism in Pre-1919
Egypt 271
Beth Baron
Glossary 289
Bibliography 291
Index 313
The Origins of Arab Nationalism:
Introduction
Rashid Khalidi
For most of this century, Arab nationalism has been regarded
as the leading ideology in the Arab world. Recently, there has
been skepticism about ascribing such importance to Arab na­
tionalism, both in the present and in retrospect. This change
was a reflection of its decline as a political force, the growing
significance of nation-state nationalism, and the reemergence of
Islamic ideologies in the Middle East. As a result, some scholars
nowadays argue that even if not dead, Arab nationalism is a
spent force.1
Whether this will prove to be true or not will be settled by
future historians. The logic of raison d’dtat rather than raison de
la nation would certainly appear to be dominant in the Arab
world today,2 while religion has become a formidable chal­
lenger to all other ideologies. However, Arab nationalism, which
can be summarized as the idea that the Arabs are a people
linked by special bonds of language and history (and, many
would add, religion), and that their political organization should
in some way reflect this reality, still has force throughout the
Arabic-speaking world. Its corollary is that the Arab states form
a system that should function with a high degree of cohesion.
Although this system has never worked as its partisans might
have wished it to, its continued existence (as revealed for ex­
ample during Arab summit meetings and in the functioning of
the Arab League) is evidence that the bonds of Arabism are still
important today.
viii Rashid Khalidi
The rise and apparent decline of Arab nationalism as a polit­
ical force in the Arab world has influenced the study of its early
years: the period before the British and French mandates began
in the mashriq, or Arab East. This period encompasses the ear­
liest roots of the modem ideology of Arabism in the late nine­
teenth century, the crucial second Ottoman constitutional pe­
riod from 1908 to 1914, the events of World War I, and the brief
interlude of King Faysal's (Faisal's) Arab government in Damas­
cus from 1918 until 1920. Although much research has been
done on this subject by several generations of historians, there
remain many controversies between scholars with different ap­
proaches.
This book is a response to these controversies, and to the
continuing relevance of Arab nationalism, and brings together
several of these differing perspectives, although it does not cover
all parts of the Arab world or all aspects of the subject. It grew
out of informal discussions initiated by Lisa Anderson, Muham­
mad Muslih, and Reeva Simon, whose individual research on
the Maghrib (Maghreb), Palestine, and Iraq approached the
question of pre-World War I Arabism from different historic
and geographic perspectives. In November 1986, the Middle
East Institute of Columbia University, under the directorship of
Richard Bulliet, sponsored an international conference, whose
goal was to broaden the political and geographic scope of in­
quiry. The present volume includes revised versions of most
papers presented at the conference, with two additional essays.
The essays were revised by their authors in light of discussion
during the conference, and we would like to acknowledge here
the contributions of those who participated, particularly L. Carl
Brown, Leila Fawaz, J. C. Hurewitz, Hasan Kayali, Philip Khoury,
Martin Kramer, Suleiman Musa, Salim Nasr, Abdul Karim
Rafeq, Bassam Tibi, and the late R. Bayly Winder. The editors
would also like to acknowledge the special assistance of Mah­
moud Haddad, and of Kate Wittenberg of Columbia University
Press in the preparation of this book. The essays are comple­
mented by a glossary and bibliography specially prepared for
this publication, so as to make it more useful to students and
researchers alike.
Among the problems concerning early Arab nationalism central
to the conference and addressed in many essays are the chang­
Introduction ix
ing conceptual boundaries and political implications of the no­
tion itself. The term Arabism was first made current by C. Er­
nest Dawn, who used it to describe early Arab nationalism and
contrasted it with Ottomanism, the ideology prevalent in the
late Ottoman period. It has since been pointed out that there
were several diverse way stations between Ottomanism and
Arabism, and that the two ideologies were by no means mu­
tually exclusive. Thus, Arabists could also be believers in the
Ottomanist ideal, and before World War I most were. In this,
there was a clear difference before 1914 between the majority
of Arabists, whose emphasis on Arab identity was linked to
continued loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, and the tiny minority
of extreme Arab nationalists who called for secession from the
empire. Dawn himself has noted that since his first seminal
articles on the subject appeared nearly thirty years ago,3 he has
come to recognize the fluidity of opinions possible between the
poles of his "ideal types" of Ottomanism and Arabism.
We also asked ourselves which sources can best be used for
study of this subject. There are many difficulties inherent in
the use of foreign diplomatic sources, as Lisa Anderson noted
during discussions at the conference, pointing out that foreign
observers often see what they want in local autonomy move­
ments. C. Ernest Dawn and Martin Kramer questioned some
uses of the local press, in particular by modem historians of
what Kramer called the "Beirut school": scholars at the Ameri­
can University of Beirut who have utilized the Arabic-language
press extensively in their work.4 Casting doubt on the relia­
bility of the press as a source, they pointed to censorship,
self-censorship, and the vexing issue of how representative the
press actually is: as Dawn noted, it is difficult to infer what
people are thinking from newspaper articles. Samir Seikaly and
Rashid Khalidi argued that identical problems exist with other
sources, whose utility depends on the careful checking of one
type of source against another. They added that while the press
has flaws as a source, it has the advantage of having been a
vehicle for the expression of ideas among key sectors of the
politicized elite, whose views are often hard to discern other­
wise.
Several other questions that arose at the conference form the
backdrop of the essays in this volume. The first is the extent to
which Turkish nationalism contributed to the evolution of Arab
x Rashid Khalidi
nationalism. How much was the Committee of Union and Prog­
ress (CUP), which dominated Ottoman politics for the decade
after 1908, influenced by Turkish nationalism? What in turn
was the impact of the so-called "Turkification" policies it pur­
sued in the Arab provinces of the empire? How were these
things perceived by Arab elites? C. Ernest Dawn argues that the
Turkish nationalism of the CUP has been overemphasized and
that the party's ideology remained basically Ottomanist, refor­
mist, and Islamic until 1918. M. §ukrii Hanioglu, utilizing his
discoveries of the private papers of several secretaries of the
CUP's secret Central Committee, suggests, however, that the
CUP was a more intensely Turkish nationalist organization from
an earlier date than many historians have suspected. The lan­
guage used in their secret correspondence by key leaders and
founders of the CUP identified them without question as Turk­
ish nationalists, for whom the term Ottomanist had a very
narrow meaning.
Recent research on Arab-Turkish relations during the three
Ottoman parliaments elected before World War I shows that it
is important to distinguish between imperial law and local
practice where "Turkification" was concerned.5 Often all this
process amounted to was the replacement of incumbent offi­
cials for political reasons. Thus in 1908-1909 many of Sultan
cAbdulhamid II's Arab appointees in Syria and Libya were re­
placed by reliable CUP members, mainly Turks. This was the
first of several waves of administrative changes that took place
as the CUP solidified its hold over the empire's administration,
alienating many Arab notables in the process. The intense neg­
ative reaction to these changes was based in part on the fact
that the CUP's inner circle was made up entirely of Turks. As a
result, many in the empire came to identify it, rightly or wrongly,
with Turkish nationalism. William Ochsenwald notes that in
many respects the CUP's policies were not dissimilar to those of
cAbdulhamid, although the Sultan had been less effective, more
reliant on religion as an ideological support (the avowedly sec­
ular CUP could not credibly claim to be motivated by religion
in its policies) and better able to rely on high-ranking Arab
officials, many of whom were Damascenes. Throughout the Arab
provinces, therefore, demands for decentralization and reform
were in fact a response not to "Turkification" per se, but rather
to a new variety of centralization, which in practice meant
Introduction xi
domination by a stronger central government controlled by the
CUP, whose leadership was largely Turkish.
These observations raise the related problem of the extent to
which early Arab nationalism was a response to a combination
of Turkish nationalism and CUP-inspired centralization, or to
the empire's decline under the pressure of the imperialist Eu­
ropean powers. In the Arab periphery of the empire, which was
vulnerable to European designs, this external pressure was often
the main concern of the populace, whose attitude toward the
state, and their self-definition, were largely determined by how
well it defended them against external dangers. At the same
time, as analyses of the cases of Libya, the Hijaz (Hejaz) and
Iraq demonstrate, there were great variations between different
regions pn the empire's periphery.
Thus, Lisa Anderson stresses that in Libya during this period
the primary preoccupation was Italian ambition in the north
and French designs in the south, rather than centralization or
“Turkification." The empire was seen as a vital shield against
the European powers, and there was thus little growth of Arab­
ism before 1914. In the Hijaz, by contrast, opposition to central­
ization, rather than nationalism per se, was the primary con­
cern during this period, according to William Ochsenwald. This
view is supported by Mary C. Wilson, who argues that the
Hashemites were initially little influenced by the relatively de­
veloped Arabism of the urban elites in the Fertile Crescent.
In Iraq, Mahmoud Haddad discerns a pattern of opposition
to foreign, and in particular British, expansion. Significantly,
he finds this more important than any anticentralization ten­
dency. Opposition to the CUP arose essentially because it was
perceived as being insufficiently active in defense of Iraq against
foreign powers, and it was even accused of complicity in facili­
tating foreign penetration. In the face of European ambitions,
certain Arab political forces thus embraced both Arabism and
Ottomanism. This pattern is also noted in Syria by Ahmed
Tarabein and Samir Seikaly, whose studies of the leading Ar­
abists Shaykh cAbd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi (Abdulhamid el-Zeh-
ravi) and Shukri al-cAsali reveal them to be deeply concerned
about European ambitions, and show that they faulted the CUP
for failing to resist them. They and others point out the signifi­
cance of differences within regions, such as those between Bei­
rut and Damascus in bilad al-sham.
xii Rashid Khalidi
A final issue emerges from several papers: the religious tone
that pervaded the writings of many of the political ideologies of
the day. Some scholars have thus stressed that an Islamic focus
of identity, such as Ottomanism, or the Hashemites' Islamic-
based Hijazi regional patriotism, was stronger during these
years than the largely secular appeal of Arab nationalism. Oth­
ers argue that the CUP's perceived secularism and favoring of
Turkish nationalism robbed Ottomanism of much of its Islamic
content, at least for the politicized elite, pushing many of them
toward Arabism. Moreover, Arabism was by no means entirely
secular, of course, but included both Islamic and secular ele­
ments, depending on the individual who espoused it and his
background. Religious influences were apparent in the writings
of some leading Arabists, and in the Arabist newspapers and
journals they edited, while such influences played little or no
role in the thinking of others.
The initial essay in part 1, by C. Ernest Dawn, sums up the
conclusions of his pioneering research over more than three
decades, adding to it a wealth of new material. Dawn here
provides perhaps the most convincing clarification of a question
that has long vexed historians of Arab nationalism: what was
the impact of the nineteenth-century literary nahda, or renais­
sance, on Arab nationalism, and in particular the contribution
of the mainly Lebanese Christians who played such a large part
in this literary revival? Dawn conclusively shows that Muslim
Turks and Arabs played the primary role in forming a national­
ist self-view in the Middle East, pointing particularly to the role
of Islamic modernists who became Arab nationalists. Dawn
then goes on to dispute conclusions reached by other research­
ers since the publication of his seminal From Ottomanism to
Arabism. He introduces a variety of new data, much of it from
Turkish and Ottoman sources, to show that Arabism was not a
response to "Turkification," and that it remained a minority
tendency in Syria and the Arab world generally until 1918.
Dawns essay is followed by that of M. §ukrii Hanioglu, whose
recent research in the Albanian State Archives and elsewhere
has unearthed the private papers of two secretaries of the secret
Central Committee of the CUP, Ishak Siikuti and Bahaeddin
Sakir Bey. Comparing their correspondence with data culled
from the better-known Ottoman and European diplomatic ar­