Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism

Abstract

No idea has captured the imagination or expressed the hopes of Arabs in the twentieth century as has Arab nationalism, and perhaps no subject has received so much attention from historians of the Middle East. But, while many historians have explored its intellectual sources, few have considered the social and political environment in which Arab nationalism evolved as an ideological movement. This study attempts to correct the imbalance and, in the process, provides a fascinating interpretation of the rise of the ideology of nationalism within the Arab world. The book focuses on the social and political life of the great notable families of Ottoman Damascus, who, before World War I, played a crucial part in translating the idea into political action. Dr Khoury explains how such long-term factors as the Ottoman reformation, European economic expansion and agrarian commercialization in Syria encouraged rival and socially differentiated networks of influential families to merge into a cohesive upper class. Under the umbrella of a reinvigorated Ottoman central authority, this class of landowners and bureaucrats produced a new urban leadership, which dominated local politics after 1860.

Religious regimes and prospects for liberal politics: Futures of Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia

“…In this new nationalist discourse, Syrian and Iraqi political ideologues departed from the liberal views of Arabist Abdul Rahman al-Kawakibi to support the glorification of the Arab people and the subordination of the idea of individual freedom to the idea of self-sacrifice for the cause of national liberation in the work of Sati' al-Husri (1880-1968). The British occupation of Egypt in 1882 contributed to the rise of territorial nationalism among Egyptians in the first quarter of the twentieth century [3,4,7,8,9,10,11,15,16,18,19,20,22,25,26,29,30,31].…”

Reflections on Arab nationalism

“…In Syria the urban political leadership remained loyal to their Ottoman suzerain: 'Many retained their administrative posts Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 23:31 01 November 2014 throughout the War and viewed the rebellion to the south with alarm and disdain, and even as treason.' 56 The same applied to Palestine where the Ottoman proclamation of Jihad was met with great enthusiasm. Not even the repressive measures in the Levant, taken by Djemal Pasha from the autumn of 1915 onwards, turned the local population against the sultan.…”

Foreign Occupation and National Pride: The Case of Iraq

“…This perception in turn contributed to the rise of pan Arab nationalism. In this new nationalist discourse, Syrian and Iraqi political ideologues departed from the liberal views of such Arabists as al-Kawakibi to support the glorification of the Arab people and the subordination of the idea of individual freedom to the idea of self-sacrifice for the cause of national liberation (Haim 1962;Cleveland 1971;Wendell 1972;Zeine 1973;Dawn 1973Dawn , 1988Hourani 1983;Khoury 1983Khoury , 1987Khalidi et al 1991;Chartouni-Dubarry 1993;Gershoni and Jankowski 1995;Marsot Tripp 2000;Dawisha 2003;Moaddel 2005).…”