Nationalism

The pressures making for the break up of the Ottoman Empire into would be 'national’ units were part and parcel of the more general European develop ment ushered in by the French Revolution and Romanticism. The ideological and political forces that would lead to the break up of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the creation of Germany and Italy were equally at work in the Ottoman Empire, beginning in the majority Christian areas of the Balkans. The reconfiguration of group identity and political ties basic to nationalism is illustrated in the case of Greece which achieved independence from Ottoman rule in the 1820s. Those intellectuals who wrote the script for that emerging ideology discovered a glorious Greek past, championed the role of the com mon man and aspired to a more cohesive political community made up of citizens, not subjects, with rulers coming from the (Greek) people, not posted from a remote imperial capital. And on a more down to earth level the bold dream of those leaders who would revolt against empire to achieve nation became a reality given European support. Yet, the independent Greek state, brought finally into existence by European diplomacy (1829 30) that followed European military intervention, contained a population of some 800,000 while well over 2 million Greeks (defined by language and religion) remained under foreign rule a sobering commentary on the difficulties of fitting would be 'historical nations’ into recalcitrant geography.

To counter this threat of European supported separatist nationalism the Ottomans strove to create an Ottoman patriotism shared by all. This was consistent with the stated aims of the Tanzimat for political equality of Muslims and non Muslims. With, however, losses to independence move ments in the Balkans and to European colonialism in the Arab world the population remaining under direct Ottoman control was becoming increas ingly Muslim. This facilitated the idea of a common 'Muslimness’ as the base of political community, and this helps to explain the ideology of pan Islam. There also emerged Arab and Turkish nationalist ideologies.

As for Arab nationalism this move 'from Ottomanism to Arabism’1 is an outstanding example of the 'constructed’ or 'imagined’ nature of nationalist movements as illustrated by the Greek case. Arabism also involved a reconfi guration of group identity not religious but ethno linguistic. That reconfig ured group the Arabs were to realise their proper destiny only by having their own political community, their own nation state. This necessarily involved a rewriting not just of group identities and loyalties but of history. The Arabs over the centuries of Ottoman rule had not seen themselves as a colonised people dominated by alien 'Turks’ (the age old European tendency to describe the Ottoman Empire as 'Turkey’ and its rulers as 'Turks’ has contributed to this anachronistic confusion). Indeed, pace the still influential but faulted argument presented by George Antonius in The Arab Awakening (1938), most Arabs accepted Ottoman rule to the end.

The Arabism that was 'constructed’ had at hand eflective building materi als. The ideological underpinnings came from the Arab literary and cultural awakening (the Nahd. a) that drew on the body of ideas from the European Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Romanticism, all of which served to increase among Arabs the sense of Arab distinctiveness. The very popular histories and historical novels of Jurji Zaydan (1861 1914) ofler one striking example of a constructed nationalist pedigree.

The Islamic aspect of Arab nationalism is mixed. Arabism’s ideologues early and late have included a disproportionate number of Christian Arabs (e. g. Zaydan), and this movement was clearly intended to foster a political community that transcended the Muslim/non Muslim divide. In retrospect, Arabism can be seen as a plausible next step for Arab Christians as the idea of Ottomanism faded.

I C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the origins of Arab nationalism (Urbana, 1973).

At the same time, Islam could be 'nationalised’ into Arabism. That God’s Revelation had been delivered in Arabic by an Arab to Arabs made it easy for advocates to see no conflict between Islam and Arabism. Adding to the conflating of Arabism and Islam was the prime importance that 'Abduh’s Salafiyya attributed to those earliest years when the umma was indeed an Arabo Muslim entity. So, too, did the political writings of such figures as 'Abd al Raltman al Kawakibi (1854 1902) who combined his attacks on the pre sumed tyranny of the Ottomans with an appeal for an Arab caliphate. Even the Idad’ith of the Prophet Muhiammad affirming that 'love of the homeland (hubb al watan) is an article of faith’ served to elide nationalism and Islam.

Arabism was at first largely confined to the Fertile Crescent. Egypt, whose land and people make up surely the most nearly 'natural’ nation imaginable, had its own national awakening advanced by, among others, 'Abdallah al Nadim (1844 96) and the leader of the Watani Party, Mustafa Kamil (Mustafa Kamil) (1874 1908). Yet, Kamil’s strand of Egyptian nationalism was in one way diluted, for he played the pro Ottoman card at times in his confrontation with the British occupation of Egypt (since 1882). Only later did Arab nationalism extend to Egypt (peaking during the years of Gamal Abd al Nasser) and to other Arab countries. Even so, there has remained in Egypt’s political thinking a strong sense of Egyptianness.

Arab nationalism expanded over time to embrace the entire Arab world winning out over contending ideologies such as the idea of Greater Syria championed by Antun Sa'adah (1904 49), a Christian Arab. Arabism became the dominant political discourse in the Arab world following the First World War (the Wilsonian idea of the self determination of nations and the Allied plan to break up the Ottoman Empire into presumed natural nations being yet another indicator of the Western intellectual contribution to Middle Eastern nationalisms).

A full throated Arab nationalism came later fTom the pen of Sati' al I-fusri (1880 1968). Turkish was his mother tongue, Arabic a second language and to the end ofhis life he spoke Arabic with a heavy Turkish accent. It was as late as 1919 when he took his own road to Damascus to join the Arab movement. The Ba'th Party founded in Syria in the early 1940s provided other ideological spokesmen including Michel 'Aflaq (1910 89) (another Christian) and Salah al Din al Baytar (1912 80) who integrated what may be described as a mix of European Romanticism plus socialist and fascist ideas into their programme.