In that there are more planes of identification current in the Arab world than the identification with the sub-national state alone, [30] the weakening of the latter can lead to the enhancement of one or more of the other identification levels. [31] The first level is an over-arching identification with the Arab nation and/or the `Muslim nation'. The second is with a region, for example Greater Syria, the Gulf or the Nile Valley; a regionally nationalistic provincialism. The third is a lesser identification with a religious sect and/or an ethnic group, examples being Shi'iism, Maruonism or Druzism. These different levels of identification are not necessarily in continuous conflict. Sometimes two or more become integrated for periods of time; whether they are or not is wholly dependent on the structure of the Arab state and its nahdah project. Another factor is the power relationships between sub-national Arab states, relationships that influence the Arab world in different ways at different times.
The second reason for a discussion of nationalism and its variants is that a sub-national state's behaviour is dictated by the nahdah project that it upholds and propagates. This undermines loyalty to the state whilst promoting identification with the Arab nation and/or the `Muslim nation'. [32] Ghasan Salamé has said that the `...question of the successor to the Ottoman Empire is still a relevant one. Competition between the region's capital cities to be the successor to Istanbul is sharp'. [33]
What is a nation? This is a question that has been answered many ways, but there is no generally accepted answer, and certainly none where the Arab world is concerned. The complexities created by the different planes of identification make the task of defining `nation' appreciably harder for the Arab world than for Europe. Hudson describes it in the following manner: `Nowhere is the task of definition more difficult than in the Arab world where the multiplicity of primordial identifications includes kin group, sect, and universal religious community. In the industrialised West, these identifications are for the most part of only marginal significance to national politics and, in any event, are easily distinguished from nationalism. But in the Arab world all three are frequently closely related to national identity'. [34]
Theories concerning nation building in the Arab world are numerous. It is not necessary to run through them here, but it should be noted that most studies of the formation of nations in the Arab world are preoccupied with the provincial state, and thus direct their energies towards analysis of only one plane of identification, namely state nationalism. One result is that I have yet to come across a study that covers both the interaction of the different planes of identification, and its significance for regional politics in the Arab world in general and in the Arab East in particular. For this reason it is essential that I reiterate that nation-building in Europe is not the same as nation-building in the Arab world, a discussion of which now follows.
Samir Amin is one of those who have attempted to construct a theory of nation-building and Arab nationalism outwith the Euro-centric context. He stresses that analysis of the nation-building process is contingent upon seeing the Arab world `in its own context'. [35] Within his general centre-periphery theory of `unequal development' [36] he has emphasised that `the nation is a social phenomenon which can appear at every stage of history; it is not necessarily and exclusively a correlate of the capitalist mode of production'. [37] It is stressed that the nation and nation-building are considerably older than the capitalist epoch, something Ralf Rönnquist has shown empirically for Scottish nation-building. [38] All this makes it easier to understand how Arabs today can identify with their roots in an Arab nation, al-umma, [39] dating from the eighth century and sometimes even earlier than that.
In Europe ethnic origin has been an important element in the analysis of nation-building. In the case of Scotland, Rönnquist writes of an `etno-nationalism', defined as `ett etno-territorellt kollektivs strävan att kontrollera det territorium som de sätter i samband med den etniska identiteten och där etablera en självständig eller autonom politisk-administrativ entitet'. [40] (`...an ethno-territorial collective effort to control the territory which they associate with their ethnic identity, and there to establish an independent or autonomous politico-administrative entity'.) In the German model it is this stereotype - one people equals one nation equals one state - which is dominant.
When it comes to the Arab world a similar equation has been prevalent, as for example when the Ba'athists in Syria and Iraq stress their common ethnic origin. Hasan al-Alawi writes that `Ba'athists, in their Arab national concept, were more inspired by Turkish nationalism', [41] which in its turn was inspired by German nationalism. Another idea present within Arab nationalism is Nasserism or the Arab nationalist movement, which stresses the multi-ethnic origins of the Arab nation. This concept takes its historical inspiration from Egyptian, and principally Egyptian Islamic, history. Egypt is the world's oldest nation state with a history stretching back to 3400 B.C., when the God-King Minos united the Nile Valley's two kingdoms, Upper and Lower Egypt, each with its own very distinct population, into one kingdom with Memphis as capital city. Those who travel through Egypt today can still find, despite more than five thousand years of union, ethnographic, linguistic - in the form of different Arab dialects - and cultural nuances. In the Muslim tradition the relationship between the concepts `nation' and `people' has itself been changed since the formation of the Arab nation. Linguistically, al-umma means that every group is formed around something, be it religion, place or time. It isn't necessary for the group to be human; it can be of animals or even of flies. [42] The classic Muslim authors al-Farabi (c. 878 - 950) and Ibn Khaldon (1332 - 1402) never bothered to define terms such as nation, al-umma, or the people, el-shaab. Right up to the beginning of the nineteenth century el-shaab alluded to many quam, which in turn is an term meaning `many clans'. The nation, al-umma, is an umbrella term meaning `numerous people'. [43] It is this difference that leads the Ba'athists to speak of an Arab people that make up the Arab nation, while the Nasserites speak of the Arab people.
Thus the thing that differentiates nation-building in Europe from the corresponding process in the Arab world is the identification in Europe in the first instance with the ethno-territorial state. In the Arab world, however, ethnicity is not such an integral part of nationalism, particularly in the Arab Maghreb and in nationalism in the Nasser tradition. Ba'athism is very much an exception to the rule.
Identification with the sub-national state does not necessarily preclude identification with the Arab nation, nor yet the wider Islamic community. Self-identification with the territorial state may well bring identification with the Arab nation and/or the Muslim community in its train. When an Arab nation finds itself disintegrating, and there is no rallying point, the different planes of identification may end up on a collision course, but not necessarily. In Amin's words, `on the other hand some, but not all, of its [the Arab world's] constituent regions were already nations when they were Arabised; Egypt, for example'. [44]
Amin sees the relations between the different planes of identity within the Arab world as a dynamic process: `The phenomenon of nationhood is a reversible process: it can develop and grow stronger or, on the contrary, it can weaken and fade away, according to whether the social class in question reinforces it unificatory power or loses it altogether'. [45]
Amin stands for a renewal of Marxism with the aim of making the theory a world
theory rather than one anchored in European thought, but he gives one
particular class, the merchants and military, the principal role in the
formation of the historical course of events. One aim of my study is to look at
the historical process in terms of social structure, which in so doing
introduces class, religion, culture and geo-political position in relation to
their surroundings as equally valid components of the historical process. What
follows here as a subject for discussion is the provincial state and its
socio-economic and politico-cultural structure; the state's nahdah
project.
3. The nahdah dilemma and the concept of the political nahdah project
The political nahdah project is one of the central concepts for this
study. It is important to first define the meaning of the word nahdah
before proceeding to a discussion of its genesis and implications. Thereafter I
will attempt to explain the provincial state's regional policies in terms of
its political nahdah project. I am planning to use the same approach,
although naturally one limited by the paucity of sources, to our understanding
of non-Arab neighbouring states, Israel and Iran.
The word nahdah is actually nothing more than a direct translation to Arabic of the well established European word `Renaissance'; one that had already entered Arabic usage by the start of the nineteenth century. The renowned Egyptian thinker, Refa'ah el-Tahtawi (1801 - 1873) travelled to France as the envoy, shaikh, for the first Egyptian student mission. El-Tahtawi succeeded, in his well-known account of France, in presenting and translating into Arabic a whole swathe of political concepts well established in the European community, terms such as `citizen', `citizenship', `parliament', `constitution', `reformation', `the Enlightenment' and `the Renaissance'. These terms had no equivalent in Arab life and history, which meant that a term such as `Renaissance' came straight into Arab political usage without translation. However, it was not long before a new tendency emerged either to attempt to `Arabise' the terms, or to find other home-grown expressions from Arab-Islamic history, thus shoura for democracy and tanwer for the Enlightenment. Thus, because of `Arabising', it turned out that the term nahdah, which in the beginning was used to describe events in Europe and for which the phrase European nahdah had been coined, also came to be used for events underway in Egypt, events denoted by the phrase Islamic-Arab nahdah.
Is it possible to translate the term nahdah back into the original, European idea of the term `Renaissance'? No, I believe not, for although in previous articles I have, depending on the nature of the piece, for simplicity's sake translated nahdah as Renaissance, I now have misgivings. Both terms have a very different meaning and historical context, and for this reason I will here use nahdah to describe the communal process set in train at the start of the nineteenth century in the Arab East. With all certainty nahdah, because of its genesis and meaning in Arab history, conveys something very different to the word Renaissance in Sweden.
Another problem with the word nahdah is the breadth of its scope in time and place. This connects with what Ghalioun has stressed, `...that, practically speaking, the nahdah problem conceals another no less important problem, that of identity'. [46] If one identifies with the sub-national state then one limits the nahdah epoch to the time when nahdah began to make headway in the territory that was later to become an independent state. It is for this reason that in Arab or Islamic literature, depending on what the author identifies with, one will find talk of an Islamic nahdah, an Arab nahdah, an Arab-Islamic nahdah, an Islamic-Arab nahdah, a Sha'amist nahdah or an Egyptian-cum-Iraqi nahdah. [47] If one links these definitions of nahdah to the planes of identification discussed earlier, then the different nahdah definitions do not automatically conflict with each other. Adherents of an Iraqi nahdah can easily assert that it also brings with it an Arab or an Islamic nahdah. Those that emphasise an Arab nahdah maintain that it will lead to an Islamic nahdah.
I have meanwhile arrived at a use of the word nahdah which describes the process that began with the French expedition to the strategically important Ottoman province of Egypt in 1798. One can neither describe what occurred during Muhammed Ali's time as exclusively Egyptian or Arab, nor can one study the nahdah process in the rest of the Arab East, irrespective of which of the aforementioned identifications one takes as one's the departure point, without bearing in mind the events of Muhammed Ali's time in Egypt.
Those researchers who use the territorial state both as the framework for and departure point of their work make a division, for example, between the circumstances of the Egyptian nahdah that began with Muhammed Ali in the 1810s and the Sha'amist nahdah, which for them starts in the second half of the nineteenth century. [48] But this rendering itself forces them again and again to draw into their accounts Ibrahim Basha and his reforms when he was regent for the al-Shaam area and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army. [49]
The French expedition to Egypt in 1798 was one of the most serious incursions made into the Ottoman Empire's territory. The Ottoman Empire had already begun to loose ground in the middle of the eighteenth century, principally to Russia and Austria, which meant that by the end of the eighteenth century it was already well on the way to becoming a shadow of its former self. Muslims in general and Arabs in particular within the Ottoman Empire were shocked that a European, Christian power had made landfall in one of the most important of the Empire's provinces. But the French expeditionary force was not merely a traditional military undertaking; it was equipped with scholars of all possible disciplines. The French expedition displayed just how wide the `civilisation gap' between the Muslim Empire and Europe was, in particular in relation to societal development and technology.
Ali Muhafzah thinks that since then `...the question of development and renewal has been the most important to be put to the Arab world. Each question derives from it, and each answer strives to enrich the nahdah struggle. In reality, the general population uses the word nahdah much more than the politicians or the intellectual élite. Each inauguration of a sports club, industrial venture or dam is used to remind the hearers of the nahdah struggle. The worst accusation one person can make against another is to describe them as reactionary and backward'. [50]
Nahdah's meaning can be defined as a collective awareness amongst Muslims and/or Arabs of their backwardness, which awakened a yearning for a renewal of the Arab-Islamic Golden Age. Muslims and/or Arabs were conscious that a Golden Age society would only be achieved through comprehensive reform. Ali Omleil suggests that the only question that all advocates of reform could agree on was `...that backwardness was bound up with the nature of the political structure [of the Islamic state] and above all its absolutism'. [51] Accordingly, this meant that the need for reform became the dominant political question not only for the Ottoman Empire during the whole of the nineteenth century, but also for the sub-national Arab states up to the present day.
It is important to differentiate at this point between two different types of awareness of and craving for reform. As a consequence, one may arrive at two separate explanations for nahdah's significance. The first is what Omelil calls the `old reform' which, according to him, has existed for the whole of Islamic history. The significance of this old reform has been `...an awareness, a conviction that a `defect' had sprung up between normative Islam and social Islam, which meant that they tallied less and less with each other. The defect could only be rectified if Muslims returned to Islam. Thus the defect was conceived of the significant feature and therefore the reform as `enciption'. The second reform was the `modern Islamic reform' which developed from an awareness of a deficiency in the conformity between Islamic society and Islam, but at the same time of an alteration in the relationship with Europe from a position of advance to one of backwardness'. [52]
Around the question of how Arabs and/or Muslims should set in train competition with Europe, and how reform should be formulated in the powerful provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Cairo, Nadjed, Mecca, Baghdad and Damascus developed different political projects for the purpose of bringing about nahdah. These are called the political nahdah projects.
Omleil thinks that it was the advocates of the modern reform who looked on Europe for the first time not merely as a threat to Islam but also as a source of new ideas on how Muslims could set about reform. It is this that distinguished the modern reform, which began to take shape after the selection of Muhammed Ali as regent or waly of Egypt in 1805, from the old reform as practised, for example, in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the eighteenth century, or from the reform that was attempted in the middle of the eighteenth century by the al-Mouahedyn movement with the al-Saud family as prime mover. The modern reform's advocates thus stood for transition to a civil society, one strongly influenced by French social structure, as a necessary precondition for nahdah. This was a departure from the old reform's supporters, who advocated a return to the social structure of the time of the Prophet Muhammed and the first four Caliphs. The spirit of the modern reform can be traced in the actions of the then illiterate Muhammed Ali. [53] He sent numerous groups of students to Paris in order that they should learn of modern European science and technology. At the same time he gave Napoleon's officers refuge in Cairo so that they could be used later to build up a modern army and machinery of government.
The second half of the term `nahdah project' is Latin and means a planned undertaking that is in hand but is also on the point of realisation. I believe that there is a difference between a nahdah vision and a nahdah project as the term will be used here. A nahdah vision is an concept of what the future should be, something many religious or political movements have in a more or less concrete form; a concept of what a reformed society should be. The purpose of this study is not to study all the visions of reform that have been developed by different political movements in the Arab East over the last two hundred years. Instead, I will focus only on those political movements that succeeded in seizing political power with the intention of making a nahdah vision a reality, either in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire or in one of the states that were created in the wake of the Empire's collapse. This limitation means that important political movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, will not be considered here.
A nahdah project can be formed by one or more social groups that have control over the political power either in a province or in a state. It is not necessary that the social group or groups should have a particularly well developed reforming vision or ideology. Historical events show that a social group or groups are quite capable of developing their nahdah vision after seizing power. Muhammed Ali's or Nasser's nahdah projects are examples of how a coalition of social groups formed their own particular nahdah visions only after coming to power. On the other hand, in the first period the al-Mouahedyn and in the second the Ba'ath movement both had well thought-through reform visions.
In Figure 1 the interaction between provincial power structures and the provinces' relations with both the central power and other provinces in the Ottoman Empire are set out. Figure 2 presents the interaction between a province's power structure and its foreign policy. Such a structural arrangement can give an comprehensive picture of internal Arab politics both for the Ottoman Empire and later for the territorial states. This structural arrangement derives from the province's, and similarly the sub-national state's, power structure and encompasses the following elements, which are each of equal importance to the whole:
It is important to note that foreign policy is created from its nahdah project's aim in its entirety.
Before inter-Arab conflict escalated into open war between Iraq and Kuwait, the region had been characterised by shifting power structures. Each period has been stamped by a special balance of power between the historic capital cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and Riyadh, [55] which each at some point during the period covered by this study attempted, and still attempt, to push through their own political nahdah projects.
The Ottoman Empire's hold on the present-day Arab East had already begun to loosen by the middle of the eighteenth century. One of the sources of weakness was the Empire's political system. This required that a person wishing to be appointed as a waly had to pay bribes, and because his mandate over the wilaya was limited to one year, it was necessary for new waly to direct most of his energies into collecting as many taxes as possible to recover his outlay and to make a little extra for himself. Even at the start of the eighteenth century the central authorities in Istanbul realised that it was essential to modernise the Empire's administrative apparatus. This realisation found a home in the previously described `new reform'. The sweeping administrative reforms of 1929, the tanzimat or Great Reform, can be seen as the fruit of new reformist thinking. [56]
In the old reform's tracks, in the middle of the Nadjed area in the western region of what is now Saudi Arabia, a significant religio-political movement grew under the leadership of Muhammed Ibn Abdel-Wahhab (1703 - 1792). Al-Mouahedyn, `the Reuniters', [57] was what the movement's followers called themselves. By others they were called the Wahhabi after their first spiritual leader. Ibn Abdel-Wahhab urged a return to true Islam by paring away everything that did not derive either from the Koran or from the Prophet's teachings. The al-Mouahedyn threw into question Istanbul's legitimacy and right to lead Muslims, as well as to function as the central power for the Islamic Empire. The movement therefore demanded that the Caliphate, along with the central organs of power, should be moved back to one of the Arab-Islamic historic capitals. An alternative, to found an independent Islamic state in Nadjed, was also proposed. [58] With the large and powerful al-Saud clan giving collective support to the movement, the el-Dariaayh Emirate, which the al-Sauds controlled, became the kernel of the first Saudi state under the leadership of Muhammed Ibn Saud al-Saud. With the al-Saud clan as the social basis, with control of the state apparatus as medium, and with the al-Mouhedyn's vision of an Islamic state, the Saudi political nahdah project came into existence with the goal of setting in motion the renewal of society as it existed during the Arab-Islamic Golden Age, that of the Prophet and the first four Caliphs. [59]
The Nadjed region, the springboard of the first Saudi state, was in no way subordinate to the Caliph in Istanbul or to any of the waly in the Empire's provinces. The new state attempted to build a strong Islamic-Arab state grounded in Hanbaleitist principles [60] as Ibn Abdel-Wahhab interpreted them. With Riyadh as the centre, the whole Arab Peninsula and particularly the province of Hedjaz, in which the two holy cities Medina and Mecca lay, were to make up the sphere of interest it aspired to. Hedjaz was at that time under the administrative control of the Egyptian waly. The state's economic structure was built on trade inspired by an Islamic-based economy. The state was marked by a Bedouin social structure and a traditional-cum-fundamentalist Islamic cultural relationship with its surroundings.
At the end of the eighteenth century this basically religious movement evolved into a strong political power turned against the central authority in Istanbul. In 1799 the Saudi al-Mouahedyn undertook their first military expedition against Iraq, and succeeded in taking control of Karbala which they plundered in the grand Bedouin style. Four years later they seized Mecca and in 1805 Medina. The al-Mouhedyn's military campaign against Iraq and al-Shaam was pursued several times in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Around 1810 the Saudi al-Mouahedyn state had increased its power to the point where it had almost total control of the Arab Peninsula apart from the South West. [61]
Immediately after Muhammed Ali's appointment as Egypt's waly in 1805 and up to 1811 he directed all his energies into establishing himself firmly in Egypt. His victory over the British expeditionary force in 1807 gave him the chance to do away with popular leaders like Omar Makram who had led the popular revolt that had made Muhammed Ali waly. The only political and military might that exceeded Muhammed Ali's was the Mameluke's. Muhammed Ali became unchallenged ruler of Egypt after the bloodiest showdown in the history of modern Egypt, when he invited nearly eleven thousand Mamelukes into the Citadel, el-Kala'a, had the doors locked and all within murdered.
The close contact Egypt had had with European civilisation during the French expedition was to stamp the reform and modernisation processes that began to take shape in the 1810s. Because of the emphasis on civil society as a foundation of the state this movement should be seen as belonging to the `new reform' stable. Under Muhammed Ali, Cairo became once again the centre of a planned, sweeping renewal of the Islamic empire which had the al-Shaam and Hedjaz regions as its hoped-for sphere of interest. [62]
Opinions in the Arab world about Muhammed Ali's goals vary depending on which plane of identification one chooses as an analytical tool. There are researchers who see Muhammed Ali as a power-hungry ruler, others who see in his reform programme a precursor of a general reform of the Islamic state, while for another group he is the founder of modern Egypt. Those who tend to see in Muhammed Ali's Egypt or the Saudi al-Mouahedyn the first expressions of Arab-Islamic nahdah are fewer and farther between, but this interpretation has occasionally been put forward. More often the beginnings of the Arab nahdah are said to lie in the great Arab Revolt of 1916.
With the help of Napoleon's generals that fled France after his fall in 1814 and many of the French St. Simone socialist movement's followers, Muhammed Ali set in train a broad programme of reform. New schools were opened with curricula that mirrored both the Ottoman and French. A complete overhaul of the administrative apparatus brought an increasing demand for an educated workforce, which in turn was to became the kernel of the later peculiarly Egyptian bureaucracy. Local councils made up of five members - three Muslims, a Christian and a Jew - , were appointed not by the central authorities but by a vote taken amongst all citizens, Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. These councils in their turn sent representatives to a provincial council that chose the Mashuora council to advise Muhammed Ali in Cairo. All this was based in no small measure on the principles of a civil society. Soliman Muosa has pointed out that `...in Syria Ibrahim Basha, as the representative of central authority, pronounced equality between all sects. Before the Egyptians arrived in Syria it was not permissible for non-Muslims to dress in a manner similar to Muslims. Nor were non-Muslims allowed to bear arms or ride horses. They were forced to dress in blue robes, black turban and black shoes'. [63]
With the help of modern European technology, a new iron and weaving industry developed. This happened within the framework of a comprehensive industrialisation that was first and foremost tailored to meet the needs of the army. Muhammed Ali's state became, following land reform, the owner of practically all agricultural land. At the same time the state grew to become the biggest employer within the industrial sector, as it collected more and more industries together into large combines. A form of economic system developed that would later be called a planned economy. The army was made up by national service which was much disliked, especially by farmers. The cultural milieu of Muhammed Ali's state was urban-agrarian, and was generally an open one, especially towards Europe.
The Sultan in Istanbul was as much concerned by the al-Mouhedyn's success as by Muhammed Ali's control of Egypt. Both posed serious threats to the Sultan's spiritual and temporal rule over the Empire. The one was named waly of Egypt against the Sultan's will and the other, ensconced in the Arab Peninsula, was totally independent of central authority. The Sultan could not hit on a better means of disposing of them than by pitting one against the other. It was to this end that the Sultan directed Muhammed Ali, who was still nominally at his command, that if possible he should arrange an expedition to reinstate the Caliphate's control over the two holy cities, Mecca and Medina. This fitted in nicely with Ali's plans. I believe that the fact that Muhammed Ali agreed to this shows the competition that arose between Cairo and Riyadh, because the two historic capital cities, each pressing forward with own very different nahdah projects, aspired to make Hedjaz and al-Shaam their sphere of influence. The consequences of such a clash are described in the Egyptian saying, Two overweening rulers cannot live in the same street, for if they do there will be war! [64]
The first military expedition to the Arab Peninsula led by Tomson, Muhammed Ali's second son, did not meet with much success. When Muhammed Ali finally did away with the Mamelukes, he ordered his eldest son, Ibrahim, to lead another military force to reinforce his brother's. The Egyptian army defeated the al-Mouahedyn after a long war (1811 - 1820). In November 1831 Muhammed Ali ordered to Egyptian army to move against Palestine. Thereafter Ibrahim conquered the whole al-Shaam region. At the start of the 1830s Muhammed Ali was, following the Sultan appointment of him as waly over all of Syria, the unchallenged lord not just of the whole al-Shaam but of the Sudan and the whole Arab Peninsula, including Yemen. [65]
Since Muhammed Ali's ambition was to control the whole of the Ottoman Empire, he ordered his son Ibrahim to march on the Empire's capital Istanbul. The idea was to make Cairo the capital of the reformed state. Britain, Prussia, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russia did not relish the prospect of a new, strong, modern and altogether too dominant state overthrowing the weakened Ottoman Empire's in the Mediterranean's eastern region. Such a state would have threatened their interests in the region far more than the crumbling Empire, which was soon being referred to as the sick man of Europe. For this reason they backed the Sultan in Istanbul against Muhammed Ali. Despite the fact that the Empire's army suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Ibrahim's army, the latter was forced, once defeated by the European coalition's forces that had landed in Lebanon, to accept the conditions of the London Treaty of 1841. This gave Muhammed Ali and his family the acknowledged right to Egypt and Sudan, but demanded that the Egyptian army be reduced from 240,000 men to 18,000. [66] Amin believes that despite everything Egypt, after Muhammed Ali's nahdah `attempt' and during subsequent `attempts' during the reigns of the Egyptian kings at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth and during the Nasser period, `occupies a key position. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has regained its status as the centre of the Arab world, the place where the fate of the area is decided. The first of these goes back to Mohammed Ali, in the first half of the century'. [67]
The political map of the Arab East was changed after Muhammed Ali's defeat by the European powers in the following ways. The Saudi al-Mouahedyn regained control of Riyadh and founded the Nadjed sultanate, while Yemen ended up under al-Zaidy Imam's control. The whole al-Shaam was returned to the Ottoman Empire. The British got a foothold in Aden and Bahrain in the 1830s. For the rest of the nineteenth century Muhammed Ali's successors limited their activities to Egypt and Sudan. Hedjaz was ruled by a Hashemite Sherif and was under the nominal control of the Sultan.
The Nadjed sultanate was included, then, in the Arab region that al-Sherif Hussein had envisaged in his deal with the British. The Saudi al-Mouahedyn, who were unaware of the agreement, also gave their support to the Alliance but not in conjunction with the Arab revolutionary movement with al-Sherif Hussein at its head.
In June 1916 the great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire broke out under the leadership of al-Sherif Hussein and his sons Faisal and Abdallah. That the Revolt succeeded in capturing a large part of Greater Syria was mostly down to the help of British units that acted in concert with Arab forces. The Revolt also managed to reduce the importance of the idea of Holy War that the Ottomans had been counting on.
The great powers, and above all Britain and France, had come to an agreement during the War on what should be done with the Arab lands that belonged to the Ottoman Empire in the event of victory. In this treaty, later known as the Sykes-Bicot Treaty, Britain and France divided the Arab region into three zones: a French zone; a British zone; and an Arab zone under al-Sherif Hussein. This went against the promise given to al-Sherif Hussein. A single Arab kingdom that should have replaced the Ottoman Empire in the Arab-speaking lands had become undesirable to the British. One reason may have been the increased strategic significance of the Syrian coastal strip, and Palestine in particular, after Ottoman defeat in the War forced it to retreat enabled Britain from its base in Palestine to seize the Suez Canal. [70]
In its attempts to secure victory in the War, the British Government believed that it was in its interest to seek the support of international Jewry. From 1914 Herbert Samuel, the first British Cabinet member of Jewish origin, worked towards some sort of British annexation of Palestine. By these means Samuel hoped that the Zionists' assistance to Britain would secure their position in this important region by filling the vacuum that would be created in Palestine after Turkey's withdrawal. The Zionist movement had proposed that Palestine should become a national home for the Jews, to which end they demanded the whole of Palestine. The British Balfour Declaration, however, merely set out that the Jews should have a national home within Palestine, and not Palestine as a whole. [71]
Despite the fact that Sykes-Picot Treaty was made public by the Bolsheviks in December 1917, the Arabs still hoped that the British would keep their promise. But Britain had actually promised Palestine to two of its allies, and a part of Greater Syria to France. The Arabs, for their part, were convinced that Palestine was included in the area in which McMahon had promised to recognised Arab independence. The Arabs pointed out that Palestine didn't lie to the west of Damascus, the most southerly point that McMahon had named. [72]
The newly created Arab kingdom, with Damascus as capital city, went to war under the command of el-emir Faisal against the French, who wanted to bring Damascus within their Mandate. Faisal was defeated by the French in Damascus, and the Arab Government of September 1918 to July 1920 became a short footnote in modern Arab history. [73]
The Ottoman Empire's final collapse after the War, and the Arab Government's defeat in Damascus, gave the great powers a free hand in the disposition of the Arab East. Another result was the increased power of the Saudi state over its Arab rivals in Hedjaz and Cairo. [74]
The victors' agreement at the Paris peace conference laid the ground for the creation of the independent sovereign Arab states that appeared on the political scene by degrees during the 1920s. New borders were drawn around the former Ottoman provinces in a way that prevented any further expansion by the existing regional power centres in the Arab East. The colonial powers in this way ignored the populations' wishes in the creation of the new states. Similarly, the ground was well prepared for serious border disputes between nearly all the newly created states.
The Arab Revolt, with its Hashemite leadership, did not get anything like the Arab state that they had been fighting for. Despite this, three independent Arab kingdoms were created, ruled by al-Sherif Hussein's sons, Faisal, Abdallah and Ali. El-Emir Faisal became King of Iraq, a country made up of the three wilayat of Baghdad, Basra and Muosel. El-Emir Abdallah became King of Trans-Jordan, the desert region of Greater Syria. The remainder of Greater Syria, Lebanon and Syria, formed the French Mandate, while Palestine came under the British Mandate. El-Emir became King of Hedjaz and guardian of the holy cities Mecca and Medina.
The Nadjed sultanate was still ruled by Abdel-Aziz Ibn Saud, who began to look towards control the holy cities. In 1927 the Saudi al-Mouahedyn managed to capture Hedjaz with the help of the al-Ikhwan, a powerful and well-organised army of committed Muslim Bedouins. After the capture of Hedjaz the second Saudi state was founded, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. [75]
Nahdah continued to be the dominant issue for the newly created states; and not only its attainment within their new borders but also within the whole of the Arab region. King Fouad of Egypt, for example, had serious plans in the 1920s to recreate the Caliphate in Cairo.
In the 1920s the modernisation process in Iran and Turkey had taken on new, nationalistic overtones. This development meant that the sphere of influence both states aspired to was only comprised the Turkish or Iranian inhabitants of the region respectively. This differentiated them from previous states, which had hoped to make all Muslims their sphere of influence along with a concomitantly larger region. Border disputes were unavoidable, especially in transitional areas which contained mixed populations. The province of Mousel, the Bay of Iskandron and the Kurdish region provide just a few examples.
