Rise Of Arab Nationalism Research Articles

Striving for National Identity: Syrian and Iraqi Turkomans in Search of a Homeland

The Turkomans are considered to be the integral part of a political space often reflexively labeled as “Turkic World.” Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkoman communities in Syria and Iraq have undergone a complex evolution leading to their current status as politically organized distinct ethnic groups. This transformation has been predetermined by the policies of the colonial powers and the rise of Arab nationalism that was aimed to establish the united “Arab Homeland.” It was only with the decline of Baathist regimes that Turkomans started to gain political recognition. How have the Turkomans in Syria and Iraq evolved culturally and politically over time? Do they perceive their future as being closely linked to their Arab “host” countries, or do they harbor aspirations of coming back to their historical Turkic legacy? What support do they receive from Turkey, and what is offered by Syrian and Iraqi authorities? We have analyzed the Turkoman issue through a structural and identity-based lens, examining how these communities have navigated their relationships with the Arab states they reside in and their historical ties to Turkey. The framework proposed by R. Brubaker, which examines the interactions between marginalized ethnic minorities, nationalizing states, and external homelands, provides a valuable tool for understanding the complex dynamics involving Turkoman communities in Syria and Iraq. The research findings indicate that Turkoman identity remains robust, albeit with a notable shift towards a more inclusive national-state dimension. Despite constituting a minority group, Turkomans in both countries are actively advocating for recognition within society and asserting their cultural rights. The primary Turkoman political factions in both countries have garnered backing from Turkey, although the nature of this support is complex. In Iraq, Turkomans are inclined towards seeking Turkish patronage while also demonstrating a willingness to engage with the Iraqi government. Conversely, in Syria, Turkomans residing along the border have successfully established a self-governing region with the Turkey’s assistance. Furthermore, a segment of Turkomans place emphasis on their religious affiliations, such as identifying as Shiite or Alawite.

Revisiting Nasserite Egyptianness in Leila Ahmed’s Memoir A Border Passage: From Cairo to America ‒ A Woman’s Journey

Abstract: The rise of Arab Nationalism during 1950s Egypt as an anti-colonial ideology has deeply impacted the narrative of Egyptianness. As a result of the ideologization of national identity narrative mainly during the rule of Nasser’s rule, the concept of Egyptianness has evolved into more a exclusionary label as it has become fully anchored to Arabness. In opposition to the institutional ideologization of Egyptianness, counter-Nasserite discourses have emerged since the 1960s and principally led by the opponents of the regime. Diasporic Egyptian literature has become a significant site of contestation whereby these counter-Nasserite discourses of Egyptianness have been articulated. This paper explores the counter-hegemonic narrative of Egyptianness introduced by the Egyptian writer Leila Ahmed in her autobiographical work A Border Passage: From Cairo to America: A Woman’s Journey. It particularly sheds light on the contesting apprehensions of Egyptian identity articulated in the text from an alternative perspective.

Race and Racism in Historical Fiction: The Case of Jurji Zaydan’s Novels

This paper analyzes the conceptualization of ideas of race in three historical novels in the fictional work of Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914), a Syrian Christian intellectual who wrote on the Golden Ages of Islamic History through serialized, popular works of historical fiction. In the novels analyzed, Fath al-Andalus (Conquest of Andalusia), Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid (The Caliph’s Sister), and al-Amin wa al-Ma’mun (The Caliph’s Heirs), Zaydan depicts hierarchies of race that are delineated by certain features and categories, especially within the Abbasid among household slaves, and also centers the conflict within the novels around issues of differences in race and lineage. Zaydān shows the importance of rifts in Islamic history stemming from categorizations and distinctions between Arab and non-Arab, or Arab and Persian, or mawāli. The novels also reflect the self-conceptualization of Egyptians in relation to their perceptions of the Sudanese, at a time of the rise of Arab nationalism, in late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Подъем арабского национализма и кризис исламистских идей в 50—60-е годы XX века

Подъем арабского национализма и кризис исламистских идей в 50—60-е годы XX века

Book Review: Social Media Go to War: Rage, Rebellion and Revolution in the Age of Twitter, edited by Ralph D. Berenger

Social Media Go to War: Rage, Rebellion and Revolution in the Age of Twitter. Ralph D. Berenger, ed. Spokane, WA: Marquette Books, 2013. 531 pp. $49.95 pbk.This third book in a trilogy from Marquette Books examines the uses and impact of social media in conflicts throughout the world, particularly in Northern Africa and the Middle East. The volume consists of twenty-eight essays from thirty-nine authors, and as with the first two books in the series (Global Media Go to War and Cybermedia Go to War), this volume draws on scholars with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Some of the con- tributors are graduate students; some are journalists. Many are scholars who live and work in the Middle East. Berenger, who also edited the other volumes in the series, is a professor of mass communication at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and author of numerous studies on media behavior in times of crisis.Five essays in Part 1 consider the theoretical constructs and ideologies that help explain the impact social media had on world uprisings from 2008 until 2013. An essay by the late John C. Merrill leads off the section with a look at ideological forces driving political upheavals. Steven Dick and Katharine R. Allen contribute essays that consider how existing mass communication theories might be applied to social media. Sohail Dahdal explores how Al Jazeera, a popular television series, and social media contributed to the rise of Arab Nationalism. Lt. Col. Jennifer A. Berenger concludes the section with a look at U.S. Department of Defense policies concerning soldiers' use of social media.Part 2 presents case studies of social media use prior to the Arab Spring. This sec- tion includes Byron T. Scott and Ellada Gamreklidze's report on how social media was used during Georgia's war with Russia in 2008; Basma Botros and Melanie Mills' look at the contribution of Facebook to an Egyptian youth movement in 2008; Martin A. Parlett's report of how Barack Obama used social media during the 2008 election; Katherine R. Allen's report on a Cuban blogger; and Catherine Cassara's essay on Tunisian citizen journalists. The section also includes essays by Melissa Wall and Treepon Kirdnak who look at the use of YouTube videos in Thailand; Tim Macafee and J. J. De Simone, who studied social media use during the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; and Margaret D'Silva, Siobhan Smith, and Girish Nikam, who discuss how social media helped free an Indian civil rights activist.Part 3 focuses on Iran's presidential election protests in 2009. The five essays in this section include a historical overview by Irfan Raja, a report from Cora Werwitzke and Jurgen Wilke on social media use during the mass demonstrations of June 2009, Emily A. …

The Province of Syria and the Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon (1866-1880)

The establishment of the autonomous Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon in 1861 introduced a major factor into the political life of Syria. The Porte under Ali and Fuad Paşas responded to the challenge that the Mutasarrifiyya posed by uniting the two provinces of Damascus and Saida into one. Appointed governor general Mehmed Rashid Paşa aimed to bring the province and the Mutasarrifiyya closer. Rashid stimulated the “Nahda” and helped to promote the concept of Syria as a fatherland. After the death of Ali Paşa in 1871 Rashid was recalled and the behaviour of the new governors general resulted in disaffection and agitation for joining the Mutasarrifiyya or having a similar status, as is clear in the placards of 1880. Antonius regarded these placards as evidence of the rise of Arab nationalism. Actually, they were no more than agitation against mal-administration and a wish to join the Mountain.

MICHAEL PROVENCE. The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. (Modern Middle East Series, number 22.) Austin: University of Texas Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 209. Cloth $50.00, paper $21.95

MICHAEL PROVENCE. The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. (Modern Middle East Series, number 22.) Austin: University of Texas Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 209. Cloth $50.00, paper $21.95

The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Any reader of MichaelProvence’s study of the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 might be forgiven suchcynicism. Here is a fine and well-documented example of an earlier attemptby a western power to come to grips with the Middle East – with unfortunateresults. It involved foreigners infallibly confident in themselves andtheir mission, compliant local elites out for self-aggrandizement, insurgentspreaching religious-inflected nationalism, the gulf between all three, and theensuing horror. The Great Syrian Revolt was a pivotal event both for Syriaand for Arabs at large. It allowed the former to conceptualize themselves asa nation while serving as an exemplar for the latter, thereby playing a formativerole in the development of national consciousness in the region. Byinfluencing the Baathist movement two decades later, it had ramificationsfar beyond its failure.Provence devotes much of the first chapter to staking out interesting theoreticalground. Rejecting the notion of insurrection as being largely a battleof ideas directed by intellectuals, he argues persuasively for an approachto the rebellion centered on a rural, rather than an urban, setting and for acasus belli founded on French misrule and economic relations between differingclasses of Syrian society. His central thesis is that the grain tradebetween the Druze in the fertile Hawran region of southern Syria andmiddle-class merchants, mostly from the Maydan quarter of Damascus, wasthe central axis upon which the revolt turned.Such an approach has its drawbacks, namely, the paucity of documentaryevidence from contemporary rural Syria. Much of the latter half of thefirst chapter is devoted to this difficulty. In casting a judicious eye over therange of primary source material, both French and Arabic, Provence ...

I TZCHAK W EISMANN , Taste of Modernity, Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in Late Ottoman Damascus, Islamic History and Civilization (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001). Pp. 355. $86.00 cloth.

Itzchak Weismann's recent book on reform movements in late Ottoman Damascus illustrates how contemporary Islamic reform movements such as the Salafiyya have their origins in the efforts of Damascene religious men of learning and mysticism. These men attempted to construct reform movements that adhered to Islamic ideals while accommodating changed circumstances brought about by Western penetration into the region. Sufi ulama movements that made claims to both orthodoxy and reform in this early period provided much of the intellectual and social fodder for what Weismann calls modern Islamic movements. The combination of עilm and taṣawwuf , according to Weismann, allowed these early scholars to carve a reformist, yet orthodox, path that avoided the rigidity of the traditional ulama, who ignored mystic thought, and the popular Sufis, who neglected religious learning. Further, the story of these early reform movements illustrates how the path to modernity in the Muslim world is not simply the tale of an all-out adoption of Western rationalism by a centralized Ottoman bureaucracy; rather, it reflects a deep commitment by local Muslim intellectuals to contend with their changing world in terms that reflect the depth of their Islamic tradition. Through an investigation of the teachings and participants of three distinct reform movements in late Ottoman Damascus, Weismann illustrates the tensions within the movements and with the central Ottoman government—all of which pushed many of these reformers gradually to rely on more local avenues of expression, thereby paving the way for the rise of Arab nationalism.

WRITING THE NATION: THE EMERGENCE OF EGYPT IN THE MODERN ARABIC NOVEL

AbstractThis essay focuses on the oft-neglected relationship between the beginnings of the modern Arabic novel and the rise of Arab nationalism. Taking George Antonius's classic work on the nahda as my point of departure, I first argue for the historical and ideological significance of this relationship and suggest the reasons for its neglect. I then turn to a close comparative analysis of two seminal novels, Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Zainab (1913) and Tawiq al-Hakim's 'Awdat al-ruh (Return of the Spirit [1933]) —bookends of a sort for Egypt's, and the Arab world's, first phase of cultural nationalism. I show how these works, in effect, "announce" their own modernness by encoding in their narratives signs of the emergent nationalist discourse of the time; and I argue that an attentive reading of such texts can thereby offer valuable insight into the rhetoric of nationalism, as well as its contradictions, elisions, and limits as a guiding agent of sociopolitical change. In particular, this essay explores how the narrative articulation of the nation in each novel implicates a male intellectual elite as its primary agent while working to contain the potentially disruptive forces of class and gender that mark its context.

The Jewish‐Arab conflict: the first Jewish underground defence organizations and the Arabs

This article deals with the attitude of 'Bar-Giora' and 'Ha'shomer', the first Jewish underground defence organizations in Palestine, towards the Arabs in the years 1907-20. It is based on relevant historical evidences reflecting the perception of their political mother party 'Poalei-Zion', and the abundant recollections of pertinent members involved in these two associations. From its foundation in late 1905 until 1908, Poalei-Zion, the first Jewish socialist-Marxist party in Palestine, adopted the Borochovist' view of the political developments that might be envisaged in Palestine. According to this doctrine, eventually a Jewish rebellion against the Turkish rule in the country was likely to break out. The Palestinian Jewish workers' class would be the fighting avant-garde in this rebellion. In the end, owing to international intervention, Jewish national autonomy would be established in Palestine, which would remain within the heterogeneous and multinational Ottoman Empire.2 Ideologically, prior to the 'Young Turk' revolution of 1908, the party did not regard the Arabs as competitors against the Jewish national movement for dominance in the future Palestinian autonomy. It was assumed that this Palestinian autonomy, which would be won through armed struggle against the Turks, would be Jewish in quality and controlled by the Jews. Moreover, the lack of discernment, and hence recognition, of the existence of Arab nationalism in Palestine caused PoaleiZion serious doubts about adopting the principle of 'Jewish labour' (to employ only Jewish workers by Jewish employers), which seemed to contradict the Marxist-socialist world-view. The ideological turning point for Poalei-Zion party came in the wake of the Young Turk revolution of 1908.3 This upheaval was followed by the rise of Arab nationalism throughout a region that encompassed the Arabs of Palestine. It could no longer be ignored; the awakening bore an all-Arab stamp, and as yet no separate Palestinian consciousness existed. Furthermore, it was clear that the Palestinian Arabs regarded themselves as the exclusive ruling element in the country. In view of this, the party began to retreat from the political goal it had set itself, namely the attainment of

Canada, the Great Powers, and the Middle Eastern Arms Race, 1950–1956

1950s saw many transitions in the international and regional politics of the Middle East : among them the surrender of AngloFrench hegemony to the superpowers, the entrenchment of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the rise of Arab nationalism. These transitions were accelerated by the flow of advanced technology into the region communications equipment, for example, but above all weapons. The sale of weapons, first by the western powers and later by the Soviet Union, to Middle Eastern states became a contentious issue in the international relations of the 1950s; how contentious was illustrated in the policies of Canada, as she was drawn into the Middle Eastern arms race. In the period immediately following the Second World War, the sale of arms to the Middle East was the exclusive purview of Great Britain and France, which had agreed to respect one another's 'habitual source' status in various parts of the region. Thus, Great Britain would supply states with which she had made bilateral treaties Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and the Gulf states -while France would supply the states formerly under her mandate, Syria and Lebanon.1 By 1950, however, the United States had emerged as a potential competitor for Middle Eastern arms markets. US penetration of this European monopoly was spurred by her arms industry, greatly expanded by the Second World War and now the Korean War, and facilitated by her control over the sale of 'offshore procurement', that is, arms manufactured abroad but financed and licensed by the United States, and earmarked for use by NATO. With the decline of their economies, and the rise of production costs, Great Britain and France had increasingly to resort to offshore procurement to meet their own need for weapons,

Egypt and the Arabs: Foreign Policy and the Search for National Identity

The geographic and historic setting Egypt responds to the West - Pan-Islam, Egyptian nationalism and Arabism Nasser and the rise of Arab nationalism in Egypt Sadat and his early foreign policy the October War and its aftermath oil diplomacy and Arab reconciliation eight players in search of a peace conference - the Geneva preparations of 1977 the road to Jerusalem Camp David and its consequences the making of a new Arab coalition foreign policy and the search for national identity Arab politics and the peace process.

Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860-1920

List of maps Note on transcription Preface Introduction 1. The political configuration of Damascus in 1860 2. The consolidation of leadership in Damascus after 1860 3. Damascus notables and the rise of Arab nationalism before World War I 4. Notables, nationalists and faysal's Arab government in Damascus, 1918-1920 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Glossary of Arabic, Persian and Turkish terms Index.