A History of Jeddah

The last century of the Ottoman state’s existence witnessed the transformation of the term “Ottoman” from an elite, class-based, and exclusive designation to one including and identifying all whose allegiances were tied to the state. Despite this semantic shift, the verdict is still out on the question of late-Ottoman inclusivity. Indeed, exclusivist is a term more frequently coupled with policy and law. Though the former can be considered exclusivist in many instances from the late 19th century through the dissolution of the empire, the designation does not fit the legal framework and terminology that articulated belonging. To recognize this, it is imperative to approach the 1869 Ottoman Nationality Law from a comparative perspective, especially, though not strictly, with reference to Great Power laws, since these legalities are the yardstick by which Ottoman rational modernity has been measured. This article considers access to actual and potential membership in various nationality laws in relation to their Ottoman counterpart and concludes that the exclusivist designation is questionable. Instead, Ottoman law does not present an anomaly and was in many instances both more expansive and more inclusive than others—even if it has been subjected to a different vocabulary than contemporaneous laws with similar stipulations.

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Worldmaking in the Hijaz: Muslims between South Asian and Soviet Visions of Managing Difference, 1919–1926

Bar Sadeh

2023

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Between the end of World War I and the Mecca World Muslim Congress of 1926, Soviet officials and Indian Muslim thinkers imagined the possibilities of a post-imperial world through the Hijaz. The All-India Khilafat Committee (AIKC; established 1919), an organization led by prominent Indian Muslim thinkers, and the Soviet Union promoted competing projects to protect the Hijaz, home to some of Islam’s holiest shrines, against European imperialism. Yet, far from limiting themselves to the question of who should rule the Hijaz, the AIKC and the Soviet state engaged in broader debates about religious and social difference, sovereignty, and minority rights. Whereas the AIKC imagined the Hijaz as an international Muslim republic and a place of refuge for Muslims worldwide, Soviet officials contended that the political future of Muslims should only be settled within the framework of ethno-territorial nation-states. Ironically, the programs of both the AIKC and the Soviet state denied the right of self-determination to Hijazis themselves, leaving the region’s inhabitants to choose between two forms of external oversight: a Soviet-supported Saudi ethno-territorialism or limited domestic autonomy under the management and inspection of an international Muslim Council. With very few exceptions, past scholarship on the Hijaz in this period has analyzed the region’s political fortunes through Saudi statecraft or European colonial influence. However, Soviet and Indian Muslim experimental engagement with the Hijaz ultimately proved just as crucial to the consolidation of Saudi governance over the region. The article arrives at these novel insights by bringing rare Soviet archival documents together with the Urdu proceedings of the AIKC’s delegation to the Hijaz, as well as Arabic sources from the period in question.

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A History of Jeddah

Cited by 13 publications

References 154 publications

From the Ottoman Twilight to the Roaring Twenties: The Early Career of Sharif Muhiuddin Haidar

From the Ottoman Twilight to the Roaring Twenties: The Early Career of Sharif Muhiuddin Haidar

Nation and Migration in Late-Ottoman Spheres of (Legal) Belonging: A Comparative Look at Laws on Nationality

Worldmaking in the Hijaz: Muslims between South Asian and Soviet Visions of Managing Difference, 1919–1926

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