Discursive battle lines: Al Qadisiyya and the politics of time and reception

Abstract

Abstract In the midst of the Iran‒Iraq war of the early 1980s, the Iraqi Film Institute produced one of the most expensive films in the history of Arab cinema, and certainly the most ambitious film projects in Iraqi cinema history. Al Qadisiyya (Salah Abu Seif, 1981), depicted the victory of Arab Muslim leader Saad Ibin Abi Waqqas in a battle with the Persian army fought in the year 636 ce. The battle signalled a watershed in Arab Muslim history, paving the road for their later expansion through North Africa, Spain, and across South Asia. The film presents a key example of how Arab political discourse at the time began to advocate an Arab alliance in the face of an assumed existential and growing Iranian threat. This article discusses how the pan-Arab discourse of Al Qadisiyya both complements and parts with chauvinistic interpretations of Arab nationalism at the time. In the same breadth, the paper considers how various discursive thematic and textual elements within the film also inform subsequent and more current shifts in regional hegemonic politics. As such, the article describes precursor signifiers of shifts from anti-colonial/anti-imperialist nationalist discourse, to sectarian-based Shiite/Sunni approximation of the Arab/Iran relationship.