Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:21:00.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SAUDI ARABIA, EGYPT, AND THE LONGUE DURÉE STRUGGLE FOR ISLAM'S HOLIEST PLACES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2017

JOSHUA TEITELBAUM Open the ORCID record for JOSHUA TEITELBAUM [Opens in a new window]
JOSHUA TEITELBAUM*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University
*
Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars inquiring into Saudi–Egyptian or Hijazi–Egyptian relations, or the history of modern Saudi state formation, have been tempted to concentrate on the June 1926 attack by the tribal Ikhwan on the Egyptian Maḥmal, or pilgrimage caravan, as the key to understanding these relations. But such a courte durée, sometimes known as the événementielle approach, leaves out much rich depth. In fact, when placed within the wider time frame of the longue durée of relations between Egypt and the Hijaz, which is Arabia's western littoral region and home to Islam's holiest places, its historical significance becomes more about ending Egyptian claims of primacy in the Hijaz than achieving internal Saudi state consolidation. It is the longue durée that should command attention, for the only way that Ibn Saud could refashion to his own favour the historical connections that defined Islamic legitimacy in a political form was to cut the Gordian knot between Egypt and the Hijaz. He had to break up the Red Sea littoral system, and tie the holy places instead to the Saudi heartland of Najd. At the Red Sea's expense, the Arabian Peninsula, dominated by Saudi Arabia, became the new geo-political feature of the region.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 1017 - 1039
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hogarth, David, ‘Hejaz and Egypt’, Arab Bulletin, no. 68, 7 Nov. 1917Google Scholar.

2 Carr, Edward, What is history? (London, 1961), p. 38Google Scholar.

3 Holden, David and Johns, Richard, The house of Saud: the rise and rule of the most powerful dynasty in the Arab world (New York, NY, 1982), p. 88Google Scholar; Joseph Kostiner, ‘The making of Saudi Arabia, 1917–1936’ (Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1982), p. 276; Lawrence Goldrup, ‘Saudi Arabia: the development of a Wahhabi society, 1902–1932’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1971), pp. 400–1; Lacey, Robert, The kingdom: Arabia and the house of Saud (New York, NY, 1982), p. 202Google Scholar.

4 The ‘urtext’ on the longue durée, is, of course, Braudel, Fernand, ‘History and the social sciences: the longue durée’, Review, 32 (2009) pp. 171–203Google Scholar. Braudel's original article appeared in Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 13 (1958), pp. 725–53Google Scholar.

5 Wick, Alexis, The Red Sea: in search of lost space (Berkeley, CA, 2016), pp. 28–9, at p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Qurʾan quote 14:37, https://quran.com/14/37. While the study of the Red Sea as a system is quite recent, one should remember that seas and oceans as cultural and economic systems have been well studied. On the Mediterranean, see Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world (Los Angeles, CA, 1996)Google Scholar. The study of the Red Sea is really an offshoot of the study of the Indian Ocean; see, inter alia, Green, Nile, Bombay Islam: the religious economy of the west Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar; and McPherson, Kenneth, The Indian Ocean: a history of people and the sea (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar.

6 Mackay, Christopher, Ancient Rome: a military and political history (Cambridge, 2004), p. 214Google Scholar.

7 Peters, Francis, Mecca: a literary history of the Muslim holy land (Princeton, NJ, 1994), p. 133Google Scholar.

8 Meloy, John, Imperial power and maritime trade: Mecca and Cairo in the later middle ages (Chicago, IL, 2010), p. 79Google Scholar.

9 Wick, Red Sea, pp. 39–40. On pre-Roman Egyptian–Arabian Red Sea trade, see Tomber, Roberta, ‘From the Roman Red Sea to beyond the empire: Egyptian ports and their trading partners’, British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan, 18 (2012), pp. 201–15Google Scholar.

10 W. Watt et al., ‘Makka’, Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill Online).

11 Peters, Mecca, p. 291; Faroqhi, Suraiya, Pilgrims and sultans: the hajj under the Ottomans (London, 1994), p. 6Google Scholar. This seems to be the first recorded instance of this system, and it happened in Egypt. See Lev, Yaacov, ‘The ethics and practice of Islamic medieval charity’, History Compass, 5 (2007), pp. 603–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ashtor, Eliyahu, ‘The wheat supply of the Mamluk kingdom’, in Kedar, Benjamin, ed., East–West trade in the medieval Mediterranean (London, 1986), pp. 283–95Google Scholar.

12 Shaw, Stanford, The financial and administrative organization and development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798 (Princeton, NJ, 1962), pp. 254–8Google Scholar; Faroqhi, Pilgrims, pp. 56–7.

13 Faroqhi, Pilgrims, p. 89.

14 Jane Hathaway, ‘Amīr al-ḥajj – Brill reference’, Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill Academic Publishers, n.d.).

15 Watt et al., ‘Makka’; Ochsenwald, William, Religion, society, and the state in Arabia: the Hijaz under Ottoman control, 1840–1908 (Columbus, OH, 1984), p. 170Google Scholar.

16 Ochsenwald, Religion, pp. 171–4.

17 Miran, Jonathan, ‘Space, mobility, and translocal connections across the Red Sea area since 1500’, Northeast African Studies, 12 (2012), pp. ix–xxviCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Teitelbaum, Joshua, The rise and fall of the Hashimite kingdom of Arabia (New York, NY, 2001), pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

19 See İnalcık, Halil and Quataert, Donald, eds., An economic and social history of the Ottoman empire, 1300–1914 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1997), iiGoogle Scholar.

20 Teitelbaum, Rise and fall, p. 153.

21 See the annual British pilgrimage reports in The National Archives (TNA), FO 195, FO 371.

22 Ankawi, Abdullah, ‘The pilgrimage to Mecca in Mamluk times’, Arabian Studies, 1 (1974), pp. 146–70Google Scholar; Hathaway, ‘Amīr al-ḥajj – Brill reference’.

23 The Israelite ark of the covenant was carried in this manner.

24 Porter, Venetia, ‘The mahmal revisited’, in Porter, Venetia and Saif, Liana, eds., The hajj: collected essays (London, 2013), pp. 195–205Google Scholar; Buhl, Fr. and Jomier, Jacques, ‘Maḥmal – Brill reference’, Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill Academic Publishers, 2016)Google Scholar; Jomier, Jacques, Le Maḥmal et la caravane égyptienne des pèlerins de la Mekke (Cairo, 1953), p. 27Google Scholar.

25 Meloy, Imperial power, p. 13.

26 Ahmad, Yusuf, Al-Mahmal w-al-Hajj (Cairo, 1937), p. 261Google Scholar.

27 Jomier, Le Maḥmal, p. 34.

28 Meloy, Imperial power, pp. 14–15. Qansuh counted his blessings too soon, for he led the Mamluks to defeat at the hands of the Ottomans. The development of the pageantry of the Maḥmal in Cairo and in the Hijaz in the Mamluk period is detailed in Jomier, Le Maḥmal, pp. 35–56.

29 Meloy, Imperial power, p. 15.

30 Maria Sardi, ‘Weaving for the hajj under the Mamluks’, in Porter and Saif, eds., The hajj, pp. 169–74.

31 Faroqhi, Pilgrims, p. 39.

32 Jomier, Le Maḥmal, p. 66.

33 Edelman, Murray, Constructing the political spectacle (Chicago, IL, 1988)Google Scholar.

34 Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Maurice, ‘Le voile de La Ka'ba’, Studia Islamica, 2 (1954), pp. 5–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Jomier, Le Maḥmal, pp. 143–6; Buhl and Jomier, ‘Maḥmal – Brill reference’; Traboulsi, Samer, ‘“I entered Mecca…and destroyed all the tombs”: some remarks on Saudi–Ottoman correspondence’, in Ahmed, Asad, Sadeghi, Behnam, and Bonner, Michael, eds., The Islamic scholarly tradition: studies in history, law and thought in honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook (Leiden, 2011), pp. 197–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Winder, Bayly, Saudi Arabia in the nineteenth century (New York, NY, 1965), p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Peters, Mecca, p. 329.

38 Ochsenwald, Religion, pp. 54–5, 160–1.

39 Porter, ‘Mahmal revisited’.

40 Slight, John, The British empire and the hajj: 1865–1956 (Cambridge, MA, 2015), p. 186CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Watt et al., ‘Makka’.

42 Hurgronje, Christian Snouck, ‘Qatadah's policy of spendid isolation of the Hijaz’, in Arnold, Thomas, ed., A volume of oriental studies presented to Edward G. Browne (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 439–44Google Scholar.

43 Abir, Mordechai, ‘The “Arab rebellion” of Amir Ghālib of Mecca (1788–1813)’, Middle Eastern Studies, 7 (1971), pp. 185–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Teitelbaum, Rise and fall, p. 47.

45 On the British subsidy to Sharif Husayn, see ibid., pp. 152–6.

46 Teitelbaum, Joshua, ‘Sharif Husayn Ibn Ali and the Hashemite vision of the post-Ottoman order: from chieftaincy to suzerainty’, Middle Eastern Studies, 34 (1998), pp. 103–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 TNA, FO 686/20, entire file.

48 Grafftey-Smith (Jeddah) to high commissioner (Cairo), no. 545.M, 7 June 1923, TNA, FO 371/8955, and further correspondence in FO 686/125.

49 Jeddah Report for 10–19 Aug. 1920, TNA, FO 686/26.

50 Jeddah Report for 30 May – 30 June 1923, TNA, FO 686/28.

51 Allenby (Cairo) to FO, no. 192, 2 July 1923, TNA, FO 371/8944; clipping from Times, 15 July 1923, TNA, FO 371/8944; Paris, Timothy, Britain, the Hashemites and Arab rule: the sherifian solution (London, 2004), pp. 305–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slight, British empire and the hajj, pp. 216–17.

52 Bullard (Jeddah) to FO, no. 59, 5 July 1923, TNA, FO 371/8955.

53 Jeddah Report for 5 May – 20 June 1923, TNA, FO 371/8946; Jeddah Report for 1–29 July 1923, TNA, FO 371/8946; al-Qibla, no. 706, 30 July 1923; Pilgrimage Report for 1923, TNA, FO 371/9999/E 25/11/91.

54 Pilgrimage Report for 1924, TNA, FO 371/10812/E 1779/25/91; Scott (Ramleh) to Curzon, no. 660, 22 Sept. 1923, TNA, FO 406/52; Allenby (Ramleh) to MacDonald, no. 405, 21 June 1924, TNA, FO 371/10000; Slight, British empire and the hajj, p. 217; Kerr (Ramleh) to MacDonald, no. 539, 24 Aug. 1924, TNA, FO 371/10016.

55 Jeddah Report, 29 June – 30 July 1924, TNA, FO 371/10006.

56 Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: the search for Egyptian nationhood, 1900–1930 (Oxford, 1987), p. 240Google Scholar.

57 Scott (Ramleh) to Curzon, no. 681, 5 Aug. 1921, TNA, FO 686/81, contains voluminous correspondence on this issue.

58 Kedourie, Elie, ‘Egypt and the caliphate 1915–1946’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 3/4 (1963), pp. 208–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Jordan (Jeddah) to FO, no. 123, 3 Aug. 1924, TNA, FO 371/10809.

60 FO to Kerr (Cairo), no. 870, 21 Aug. 1924, TNA FO 371/10007. For more on Fuʾad's caliphate ambitions, see Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, pp. 55–74.

61 Kerr (Alexandria) to Foreign Office, no. 330, 11 Oct. 1924, TNA, FO 371/10014.

62 ʿAli to Fuʾad, enclosed in Jeddah to FO, no. 73, 10 Aug. 1925, TNA, FO 686/81.

63 Kramer, Martin, ‘Shaykh Maraghi's mission to the Hijaz, 1925’, Asian and African Studies, 16 (1982), pp. 121–36Google Scholar.

64 Jordan (Jeddah) to Chamberlain, no. 103, 29 Oct. 1925, TNA, FO 371/10810.

65 Kramer, ‘Shaykh Maraghi’; Henderson (Alexandria) to FO, no. 352, 6 Oct. 1925, TNA, FO 371/10809; Sayed, Ashraf, ‘Friendship & cooperation treaty between the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the kingdom of Egypt May–November 1936’, Liwa: Journal of the National Archives, 6 (2014), pp. 27–52Google Scholar.

66 Kramer, ‘Shaykh Maraghi’.

67 Jordan (Jeddah) to Cairo, no. 327 M., enclosing correspondence with King Abd al-Aziz, 18 May 1926, in King Abdul Aziz: political correspondence, 1904–1953 (4 vols., Cambridge, 1996), iii, pp. 97–9Google Scholar.

68 Kramer, Martin, Islam assembled: the advent of the Muslim congresses (New York, NY, 1986), pp. 86–105Google Scholar.

69 Sayed, ‘Friendship & cooperation’; Kramer, Islam assembled, p. 93.

70 Kramer, Islam assembled, pp. 106–22.

71 See, for example, the account of the arrival of the Maḥmal at Jeddah in 1918, in al-Qibla, no. 213, 3 Dhu al-Hijjah, 1336 (9 Sept. 1918).

72 Slight, British empire and the hajj, p. 239.

73 Jeddah Report for Mar. 1926, Jeddah Report for May 1926, TNA, FO 371/11442. Ibn Saud's diplomatic efforts to get the Maḥmal escort to comply with his wishes are detailed in Umm al-Qura, no. 72, 21 May 1926. Ibn Saud had already outlawed smoking by residents of the Hijaz. See Jeddah Report for Apr. 1926, citing an official proclamation in Umm al-Qura, TNA, FO 371/11442.

74 Bin Saud (Mecca) to acting British agent (Jeddah), 9 May 1926, enclosed in Jordan (Jeddah) to FO, no. 61, 12 May 1926, TNA, FO 371/11436.

75 Joshua Teitelbaum, ‘The hajj in Saudi–Hashemite relations’ (MA thesis, Tel Aviv, 1988), pp. 99–100.

76 Umm al-Qura, no. 72, 21 May 1926.

77 Umm al-Qura, no. 73, 28 May 1926.

78 Umm al-Qura, no. 75, 11 June 1926.

79 Pilgrimage Report for 1926, TNA, FO 371/11436; Jeddah Report for June 1926, TNA, FO 371/11442; Toynbee, Arnold, Survey of international affairs, 1925, i: The Islamic world since the Peace Settlement (London, 1927), p. 319Google Scholar.

80 Kostiner, Joseph, ‘On instruments and their designers: the Ikhwan of Najd and the emergence of the Saudi state’, Middle Eastern Studies, 21 (1985), pp. 298–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Podeh, Elie, ‘The emergence of the Arab state system reconsidered’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 9 (1998), pp. 50–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, pp. 243–4.

82 Jeddah Report for July 1926, Jeddah Report for Aug. 1926, TNA, FO 371/11442; Jomier, Le Maḥmal, p. 68.

83 Wahba, Hafiz, Jazirat Al-ʻArab fi al-Qarn al-ʻIshrin (Cairo, 1935), p. 320Google Scholar.

84 See the compilation of pilgrimage statistics, based on the annual British Pilgrimage Reports, in Slight, British empire and the hajj, pp. 243–4.

85 Pilgrimage Report for 1927, TNA, FO 371/12247.

86 Jeddah Report for Mar. 1929, Jeddah Report for Apr. 1929, Jeddah Report for June 1929, India Office Records (IOR), L/P&S/10/1115.

87 Report on the Pilgrimage of 1930, TNA, FO 371/15290; Annual Report on Hejaz–Nejd for 1930, TNA, FO 371/15300; Muhammad Al-Jazairi, ‘Saudi Arabia: a diplomatic history’ (Ph.D. thesis, Utah, 1971), pp. 93–5.

88 Jeddah Report for July–Aug. 1931, TNA, FO 371/15291; Pilgrimage Report for 1931, TNA, FO 371/15291.

89 Annual Report on Hejaz–Nejd for 1931, FO 371/16022.

90 Podeh, ‘Emergence’.

91 On Harb and Banque Misr, see Davis, Eric, Challenging colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian industrialization, 1920–1941 (Princeton, NJ, 2014)Google Scholar.

92 Jeddah Report for Dec. 1933, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073; Calvert (Jeddah) to Simon (FO), no. 338, 22 Nov. 1933, IOR, L/P&S/12/2074; Calvert (Jeddah) to Simon (FO), no. 360, 12 Dec. 1933, IOR, L/P&S/12/2074; Annual Report for Saudi Arabia for 1933, TNA, FO 371/17941.

93 Jeddah Report for Feb. 1934, IOR, L/P&S/2073; Jeddah Report for Nov. 1934, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073; Calvert (Jeddah) to Simon (FO), no. 360, 4 Dec. 1934, IOR, L/P&S/12/2074; Annual Report on Saudi Arabia for 1934, IOR, L/P&S/12/2085; Pilgrimage Report for 1934, TNA, FO 371/17932; Report on the Pilgrimage of 1935, TNA, FO 371/19002; Jeddah Report for Feb. 1935; Jeddah Report for Oct. 1935, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073; Jeddah Report for Dec. 1935, quoting a statement by Harb to al-Ahram, 13 Dec. 1935, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073.

94 Annual Report on the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for 1935, IOR, L/P&S/12/2085.

95 Annual Report on the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for 1936, TNA, FO 371/20843.

96 Jeddah Report for May 1936, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073; Annual Report on Saudi Arabia for 1936, TNA, FO 371/20843.

97 Annual Report on Saudi Arabia for 1936, TNA, FO 371/20843.

98 Ahmad, al-Mahmal, pp. 269–71.

99 Jeddah Report for Nov. 1936, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073; Annual Report on Saudi Arabia for 1936, TNA, FO 371/20843; Bullard (Jeddah) to Eden (FO), no. 308, 25 Nov. 1936, TNA, FO 371/20838; Sayed, ‘Friendship & cooperation’.

100 Kedourie, ‘Egypt and the caliphate’; Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James, Redefining the Egyptian nation, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 159–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Jeddah Report for Feb. 1937, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073; Times, 11 Feb. 1937; Umm al-Qura, no. 637, 22 Feb. 1937; Jeddah Report for Oct. 1937, IOR, L/P&S/12/2073.

102 Pilgrimage Report for 1938, IOR, R/15/1/576; Fish (Cairo), no. 1215, to Washington, 25 Feb. 1938, in Rashid, Ibrahim, Saudi Arabia enters the modern world: secret U.S. documents on the emergence of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a world power, 1936–1949, iv (Salisbury, NC, 1980), pp. 13–16Google Scholar.

103 Sayed, ‘Friendship & cooperation’.

104 Jomier, Le Maḥmal, p. 72.

105 Ibid., p. 73.

106 Nahla Nasar, ‘Dar al-kiswa al-sharifa: administration and production’, in Porter and Saif, eds., The hajj, pp. 175–83.

107 On this process, see Ochsenwald, William, ‘Islam and loyalty in the Saudi Hijaz, 1926–1939’, Die Welt Des Islams, 47 (2007), pp. 7–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sluglett, Marion and Sluglett, Peter, ‘The precarious monarchy: Britain, Abd Al-Aziz Ibn Saud and the establishment of the kingdom of Hijaz, Najd and its dependencies, 1925–1932’, in Niblock, Tim, ed., State, society and economy in Saudi Arabia (London, 1982), pp. 36–57Google Scholar.

108 ‘Egypt’s Sisi rejects criticism of Saudi Arabia over hajj tragedy', Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 5 Oct. 2015.

109 Braudel, ‘Longue durée’, pp. 173, 181.

110 Besserman, Lawrence, ‘The challenge of periodization: old paradigms and new perspectives’, in Besserman, Lawrence, ed., The challenge of periodization: old paradigms and new perspectives (London, 1996), pp. 3–28Google Scholar.

111 Braudel, ‘Longue durée’, p. 174.

112 Ibid., p. 175.

113 Ibid., p. 182.