Abstract
It has already been shown that Arab nationalism first emerged in Greater Syria, and that it was confined to that part of the Middle East in its early years. It originated among Syro-Lebanese intellectuals, who were primarily Christian, and who had been educated in European and American mission schools. For these nationalists, the Arab nation consisted exclusively of Arab Asians’, a definition already implied in the title of a work by the early Arab nationalist Najib Azouri, La Réveil de la Nation Arabe dans l’Asie Turque.1 The first links between the ‘Asian’ Arab nationalists and Arab North Africa were established during the period of Muhammad ‘Ali’s conquest of Syria between 1831 and 1840,2 although they were disrupted by the intervention of the colonial powers, especially Britain.
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Notes
Negib Azoury, La Réveil de la Nation Arabe dans l’Asie Turque (Paris, 1905).
On Muhammad ‘Ali’s policy in Syria see Mehmet Sinasi, Studien zur Geschichte der syrischen Politik Mehmed Alis von Ägypten, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Göttingen, 1936),
and George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, 2nd ed. (London, 1938) Chapter II, and the introduction to Chapter 5 above.
See H. Dodwell, The Founder of Modern Egypt, A Study of Muhammad ’Ali (Cambridge, 1931) passim., and Chapter 4 above.
On the ’Urabi Revolt, see L. Rathmann, Neue Aspekte des ’Arabi-Aufstandes 1879 bis 1882 in Ägypten (Berlin, 1968);
Ibrahim Abu Lughod, ‘The Transformation of the Egyptian Elite: Prelude to the ’Urabi Revolt’, Middle East Journal, XXI (1967) No. 3, 325–44;
R. Tignor, ‘Some Materials for a History of the ’Arabi Revolution’, Middle East Journal, XVI (1962) 239–48;
also B. Tibi, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Militär und kolonialem Nationalismus am Beispiel der arabischen Länder’, Sozialistische Politik, I (1969) No. 4, 4–19. The ’Urabi revolt was in fact directed simultaneously against the ruling alien feudal caste and the beginnings of British colonial hegemony in Egypt. It was the occasion of the first participation by middle ranking officers in the national progressive movement: ’Urabi himself was a colonel. M. Rifaat is merely repeating colonial propaganda when he says that the Revolt was the reason for the British occupation of Egypt, without understanding that it provided the perfect pretext for the occupation:
see M. Rifaat, The Awakening of Modern Egypt (London, 1947) pp. 172 ff.
On British colonial rule in Egypt see Theodore Rothstein, Die Engländer in Ägypten, Ergänzungsheft zur Neuen Zeit, No. 10 (Stuttgart, 1911); John Marlowe, Anglo-Egyptian Relations 1800–1953 (London, 1954) pp. 112 ff.;
R. L. Tignor, Modernisation and British Colonial Rule in Egypt 1882–1914 (Princeton, 1966),
and Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, Egypt and Cromer, a Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations (New York and London, 1968).
Fritz Steppat, ‘Nationalismus und Islam bei Mustafa Kamil, ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte des ägyptischen Nationalismus’, Die Welt des Islams, n.s. IV (1956) 241–341; here p. 258.
Walther Braune, ‘Die Entwicklung des Nationalismus bei den Arabern’, in R. Hartmann (ed.), BASI (Leipzing, 1944) pp. 425–38; here p. 434.
The changes in Egyptian attitudes towards Pan-Arabism have been studied by Anwar Chejne, ‘Egyptian Attitudes Towards Pan-Arabism’, Middle East Journal, XI (1957) 253–67.
See also M. Colombe, L’Évolution de l’Égypte 1924–1950 (Paris, 1951) pp. 160 ff
See N. Safran, Egypt in Search of a Political Community, an Analysis of the Intellectual and Political Evolution of Egypt, 1804–1952 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961) pp. 62 ff.,
and J. M. Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London, 1960).
For the crisis of Egyptian liberalism see N. Safran, op. cit., pp. 181 ff., especially pp. 187 ff. Safran also shows how the liberal-democratic intelligentsia were forced to bow to archaic and conservative forces; see pp. 209 ff. There was also a change from democratic liberalism to archaic religious thought within the Egyptian middle class, which is documented in the life and work of Muhammad Husain Haikal. The development of his thought has been traced in Baber Johansen’s Muhammad Husain Haikal, Europa und der Orient im Weltbild eines ägyptischen Liberalen (Beirut and Wiesbaden, 1967). Haikal was one of the founders of the Liberal Constitutional Party and a pupil of Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid.
As the liberalism of the Westernised bourgeois intelligentsia became weaker, fundamentalist Islamic tendencies became stronger. This is reflected in the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1929, which was very powerful until the Free Officers’ coup in 1952. Christina Phelps Harris has studied this phenomenon in Nationalism and Revolution in Egypt, The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood (The Hague and London, 1964) especially pp. 111–42. See also E. I. J. Rosenthal, Islam in the Modern National State, (Cambridge, 1965) p. 103, which presents the Muslim Brotherhood’s critique of all varieties of nationalism.
See the various references to al-Misri’s role in the early Pan-Arab movement in G. Antonius, op. cit., and Richard Hartmann (ed.), BASI (Leipzig, 1944) pp. 439–67, especially pp. 461 ff. For a more detailed treatment, see Majid Khadduri, Aziz ’Ali al-Misri and the Arab Nationalist Movement’, St. Antony’s Papers, (1960) 140–63, and the well-documented but somewhat prejudiced work of E. Be’eri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society (London and New York, 1970) pp. 41–8, 78 ff., which also discusses al-Misri’s influence on the Free Officers. Of course Pan-Arabism had emerged before the Free Officers, although it was not particularly influential: see here Anwar Chejne, op. cit., pp. 257 ff. Chejne shows that Pan-Arabism was first able to take root in Egypt with the advent to power of the Free Officers, ibid., pp. 262 ff.
One of the Free Officers has recorded details of these contacts: see Anwar El-Sadat, Revolt on the Nile (London, 1957).
On the Free Officers, see Jean Ziegler, Politische Soziologie des neuen Afrika (Munich, 1966) pp. 216 ff. The group was formally founded in 1938, with only three members, Nasser, Sadat, and Muhi al-Din; see here el-Sadat, op. cit., and in a wider context,
Lothar Rathmann, ‘Uber die Rolle der Armee in der ägyptischen Revolution’, Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte, VII (1968) No. 2, 167–82, especially pp. 172 ff.; also E. Be’eri, op. cit., pp. 76 ff. Fritz Steppat has given a profile of Nasser, the leader of the Free Officers, and an outline of his political ideas in ‘Gamal ‘Abdannasir’, in R. Kerschagl (ed.), Die geistig politischen Profile der Gegenwart in Asien (Vienna, 1964, on behalf of the Austrian Commission to UNESCO) pp. 32–50; see also idem., ‘Nassers Revolution’, Europa Archiv, XVII (1962) No. 5, 163–73.
El-Sadat. op. cit. In the same way that the francophile and anglophile nationalists were unable to distinguish between the emancipating and colonising aspects of British and French activity in the early stages of the national movement, the germanophile Arab nationalists failed to see that Germany had colonial interests just as much as Britain and France, and had pursued a colonial policy since the time of Bismarck. See here Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bismarck und der deutsche Imperialismus (Cologne, 1969) pp. 227 ff.,
and Lothar Rathmann, ‘Zur Ägyptenpolitik des deutschen Imperialismus vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Walter Markov (ed.), Geschichte und Geschichtsbild Afrikas (Berlin, 1960) pp. 73–99; idem., ‘Zur Legende vom “antikolonialen” Charakter der Baghdadbahnpolitik in der wilhelminischen Ära’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, IX, supplementary volume (1961) 246–70. Wehler’s work is superior to Rathmann’s in that it is factual and not polemical: Rathmann occasionally has difficulty in distinguishing between analysis and propaganda.
See J. Heyworth-Dunne, ‘Printing and Translations under Muhammad ’Ali of Egypt, The Foundation of Modern Arabic’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic-Society, (1940) 325–49, and Walther Braune, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte des neuarabischen Schrifttums’, Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen, XXXVI (1933) No. 2, 117–40.
Taha Husain, Mustaqbal al-Thaqafa fi Misr (Cairo, 1938), Eng. transl., The Future of Culture in Egypt. (Washington, 1950). Page references below are to the Arabic text.
Ibid., pp. 65 ff. According to al-Husri, the Egyptians have four possible affiliations besides the Arab one: (1) the African, (2) the Mediterranean, (3) the Pharaonic, and (4) the Islamic. al-Husri debates these four forms of affiliation with a number of Egyptian writers who have asked to which sphere Egypt belongs (see al-Husri, vol. XI, pp. 77–138). al-Husri rejects the affiliation with Africa, since belonging to a continent cannot be a political act (pp. 91, 93, 95). Belonging to the Mediterranean cultural area is simply a myth perpetrated by the French to enable them to establish their hegemony on the ideological pretext of this non-existent cultural sphere (pp. 96, 99). Belonging to Pharaonic culture is also untenable, since this is part of classical history: there is nothing left of the Pharaohs besides the Pyramids and other monuments, while modern Egyptian culture is quite clearly Arab (pp. 113 ff., and al-Husri, vol. VIII, p. 90). Finally, al-Husri rejects the idea that Egypt is a Muslim country, since some two million Christians live there as well as Muslims: a weighty argument, when one considers that al-Husri does not consider religion to be a political bond (see al-Husri, vol. XI, pp. 100, 107). Thus the Arab bond emerges as the only viable variety of cultural affiliation (pp. 108, 110). The whole question of whether in fact Egypt is Arab is a central problem for Pan-Arab authors, who have to oppose the Egyptian nationalists as well as the Pan-Syrian nationalists, who disparage the Egyptians as the successors of the Pharaohs. Among a large number of works on this topic is the influential study by the Pan-Arab historian Muhammad ’Izzat Darwaza, ’Uruba Misr fi’l-Qadim wa’l-Hadith, aw Qablal-Islam wa Ba’dahu (Arabism in Egypt Past and Present, or Before and After Islam), 2nd ed. (Beirut, 1963);
see also Anis al Sayigh, al-Fikra al-’Arabiyya fi Misr (Arabic Thought in Egypt) (Beirut, 1959),
and the relevant chapter in ’Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, Hadhihi Qawmiyyatuna (This is our Nationalism), 2nd ed. (Cairo, 1964) pp. 397 ff.
On the Wafd Party see the monograph by Zaheer M. Quraishi, Liberal Nationalism in Egypt, The Rise and Fall of the Wafd Party (Delhi, 1967),
and Ernst Klingmüller, ‘Geschichte der Wafd-Partei im Rahmen der gesamtpolitischen Läge Ägyptens’, Ph.D. thesis (Berlin, 1937); Marcel Colombe, L’Évolution de l’Égypte, 1924–1950, pp. 53 ff., and
Jacob M. Landau, Parliaments and Parties in Egypt (Tel Aviv, 1953) pp. 148 ff.
See here B. Tibi (ed.), Die arabische Linke (Frankfurt/Main. 1969) pp. 31 ff., with references and bibliography in the appendix: see also the Postscript below.
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Tibi, B. (1997). Pan-Arab versus Local Nationalism I: al-Husri and the Egyptian Nationalists. In: Arab Nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376540_10
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