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OTTOMAN MODERNITY, COLONIALISM, AND INSURGENCY IN THE INTERWAR ARAB EAST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2011

Michael Provence
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Abstract

The foundations of both Arab and Turkish nationalism lay in the late Ottoman mass education and conscription project and in the region-wide struggle against colonial rule in the 1920s and 1930s. The anticolonial insurgencies of the 1920s and 1930s have passed into history as the formative expressions of new nations: the Turkish War of Independence, the Iraqi revolt of 1920, the Syrian Battle of Maysalun, the Great Syrian Revolt, and the Palestinian uprisings of 1920, 1929, and 1936. But all insurgents of the 1920s had been Ottoman subjects, and many and probably most had been among the nearly three million men mobilized into the Ottoman army between 1914 and 1918. The Ottoman State, like all 19th-century European powers, had made mass education and conscription a centerpiece of policy in the decades before the Great War.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Special Issue 2: Relocating Arab Nationalism , May 2011 , pp. 205 - 225
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Peter Wien, Hasan Kayalı, Laila Parsons, Mesut Uyar, and the IJMES anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

1 British Government Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 371/20030, Royal Air Force (hereafter RAF) Secret Intelligence Summary, 26 February 1936. The translated text renders “Ottoman State” as “during the regime of the Turkish Government,” almost certainly a mistranslation.

2 See Schleifer, Abdullah, “Izz al-Din al-Qassam: Preacher and Mujtahid,” in Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East, 2nd ed., ed. Burke, Edmund III and Yaghoubian, David (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006), 137–51Google Scholar. Khalidi, Rashid, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 115Google Scholar, explains the significance of al-Qassam in Palestinian history.

3 FO 371/20031, RAF Secret Intelligence Summary, 21 October 1920; “Battle Near Bethlehem,” The Palestine Post, 9 October 1936.

4 George Antonius’ seminal exposition of the emergence of Arab nationalism, for example, has almost nothing to say about the revolts against colonial rule of the 1920s. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (London: Hamish Hamiliton, 1938). Compare Gökalp, Ziya, Türkçülüğün Esasları (Ankara: n.p., 1920)Google Scholar, trans. by Robert Devereux as The Principles of Turkism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), with the proclamations of Mustafa Kemal in 1919, to be discussed in this article. Gökalp claims the wide resonance of “Turkism,” while Kemal, at literally the same historical moment, mobilizes ex-Ottoman conscripts with calls to Islamic solidarity and familiar calls for sacrifice for the Ottoman nation.

5 The best treatment of the ideological underpinnings of late Ottoman education is Fortna, Benjamin, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

6 Qarqut, Dhuqan, Tatawwur al-Haraka al-Wataniyya fi Suriya, 1920–1939 (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa, 1975)Google Scholar. For a corrective, see al-Azmeh, Aziz, “Nationalism and the Arabs,” Arab Studies Quarterly 17 (1995): 1–17Google Scholar.

7 Carney, Gavin E. S. et al. , “Imperial Self-Portrait: The Ottoman Empire as Revealed in the Sultan Abdul Hamid II's Photographic Albums,” Journal of Turkish Studies XII (1988), special issueGoogle Scholar. See also Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 151–52Google Scholar.

8 Library of Congress (hereafter LC), Abdul-Hamid collection, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/ahii (accessed 23 February 2011). See also Yıldız Saray Photo Archive, IRCICA, Istanbul. Istanbul University Archival Collection (hereafter IU), Salname-i Nezaret-i Maarif-i Umumiyye, h1316 (Administrative Yearbook of the Ministry of Education, 1899). Mekatib-i Askeriyye Şakirdanının Umumi, İmtihanlarının Neticeleri, h1318 (Military School Gazette and Student Log Books, 1901), indicating all enrolled students, their cadet grade level, class standing, and marks in individual courses. I thank Dr. Mesut Uyar for his untiring help in locating and gaining access to these sources. This IU collection is based on the contents of the personal library of Sultan ʿAbd al-Hamid in the Yıldız Palace.

9 Husayn, Abdul-Rahim Abu, “‘The Lebanon Schools,’ (1853–1873): A Local Venture in Rural Education,” in The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation in Bilad al-Sham from the 18th to the 20th Century, ed. Philipp, Thomas and Schäbler, Birgit (Stuttgart, Germany: F. Steiner, 1998), 205–20Google Scholar.

10 See Fortna, Imperial Classroom; and Findley, Carter, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 154–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, 104–106.

12 ʿAwad, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Muhammad, al-Idara al-ʿUthmaniyya fi Wilayat Suriya, 1864–1914 (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1969), 254–56Google Scholar.

13 Kassab, Sawsan Agha and Tadmori, Omar, Beirut & the Sultan: 200 Photographs from the Albums of Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909) (Beirut: Editions Terre du Liban, 2002), 60Google Scholar.

14 Kassab and Tadmori, Beirut, 60; and Antonius, Arab Awakening, 41.

15 Somel, Selçuk Akşin, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839–1908: Islamization, Autocracy and Discipline (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 24–29Google Scholar.

16 Tibawi, Abdul-Latif, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901: A Study of Educational, Literary and Religious Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 68–69Google Scholar. Thanks to Professor John Meloy for details on Tankiz. The mosque was also the birthplace of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The Syrian government razed and rebuilt the structure after a fire in the 1960s, and today only the tomb and minaret are original. A model of the original building is on display in the Museum of Damascus History adjoining the Syrian National Archives.

17 Somel, Modernization, 23.

18 LC, Abdul-Hamid collection, “Statistical abstract of third-year military high schools for adolescents.” This is actually a list with enrollments and opening dates of provincial idadi askeriyye schools in 1893, LOT 9519, no. 4, LC-USZ62–81073 (black and white film copy negative).

19 Somel, Modernization, appendices 4–6 (curricula of İbtidai, Rüşdiyye, and İdadi schools 1904), 297–309; and ʿAli, Tahsin, Mudhakkirat Tahsin ʿAli 1890–1980 (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2003), 15Google Scholar.

20 Midhat, Life of Midhat Pasha, 49–50; and al-Zawra (Baghdad newspaper), no. 1, 5 Rabiʿ al-Awwal, 1286 AH (1869), quoted in Abdul-Wahhab Abbas al-Qaysi, “The Impact of Modernization on Iraqi Society During the Ottoman Era: A Study of Intellectual Development in Iraq, 1869–1917” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1958), 34.

21 Qaysi, Impact, 58–59.

22 IU, Maarif Nezareti Salnamesi, 1316 AH (1898 CE).

23 Ibid.

24 Hanssen, Jens, “The Birth of an Educational Quarter,” in History, Space and Social Conflict in Beirut, ed. Gebhardt, Hans et al. (Wuerzburg, Germany: Beirut Orient Institut, 2005)Google Scholar. Cioeta, Donald, “Islamic Benevolent Societies and Public Education in Ottoman Syria, 1875–1882,” Islamic Quarterly 26 (1982): 46–47Google Scholar.

25 LC, Abdul-Hamid collection, “Statistical abstract of fourth-year military high schools for adolescents Rusdiyye.” This is actually a list of rüşdiyye askeriyye schools in 1893, LOT 9519, no. 1, LC-USZ62–81070 (black and white film copy negative).

26 Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, 100–101.

27 LC, Abdül-Hamid photo collection, “Statistical abstract of fourth year.”

28 Merwin Griffiths, “The Reorganization of the Ottoman Army under Abdül-Hamid II 1880–1907” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1966), 115.

29 IU, Maarif Nezareti Salnamesi, 1318 AH (1901).

30 IU, Mekatib-i Askeriyye, 1318 AH (1901).

31 IU, Maarif Nezareti Salnamesi, 1318 AH (1901), 1180–84.

32 Tahsin ʿAli, Mudhakirrat, 15. al-ʿAskari, Jaʿfar, Mudhakkirat Jaʿfar al-ʿAskari (Surrey, U.K.: Dar al-Lam, 1988), 25–26Google Scholar.

33 Rogan, Eugene, “Aşiret Mektebi: Abdülhamid II's School for Tribes (1892–1907),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 83–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rogan's article is the best investigation of the Tribal School.

34 IU, Mekatib-i Askeriyye, 1318 AH (1901), 35.

35 IU, Mekatib-i Askeriyye, 1318 AH (1901).

36 Griffiths, “Reorganization of the Ottoman Army,” Annex I, 175–77. Born in Libya and retired in Istanbul, Fehmi Doğrusöz served in combat continuously between 1910 and 1923. Merwin Griffiths interviewed him in the 1950s.

37 al-Faris, Jurj, Man Hum fi al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi (Damascus: Maktab al-Dirasat al-Suriyya wa-l-ʿArabiyya, 1957), 344–45Google Scholar; al-ʿAs, Saʿid, Safahat min al-Ayyam al-Hamraʾ: Mudhakkirat al-Qaʾid Saʿid al-ʿAs 1889–1936 (Jerusalem 1935; reprint, Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 1988), 109Google Scholar; Rogan, “Aşiret Mektebi,” table 1, 88. Shallash is listed in the first graduating class.

38 Rogan notes in his article that most students entered the Tribal School between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Shallash's self-reported birth date of 1869 and his appearance in the first class (1892–98) make him twenty-three years old at the beginning of his eight-year Istanbul education. It is likely that his biographical dictionary entry contains a misprint, and he was born in 1879 or later. Faris, Man Hum, 344; and Rogan, “Aşiret Mektebi,” 86.

39 IU, Mekatıb-i Askeriyye, 1318 AH (1901). Seventy-four entering students out of a class of 811 failed and washed out.

40 Faris, Man Hum, 345.

41 Pasha, Ahmad Djemal, Memories of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–1919 (New York: George H. Doran, 1922), 63Google Scholar.

42 Faris, Man Hum, 344.

43 Breasted, James Henry, “The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago—A Beginning and a Program,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures XXXVIII (July 1922): 265Google Scholar. For his Kemalist enthusiasm, see Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Archives Diplomatiques-Nantes, carton 1704, BR 213, 7 November 1925.

44 U.K. Colonial Office (hereafter CO), 730/150/06, “Profiles and Assessments,” 1932; and Phebe Marr, “Yasin al-Hashimi: The Rise and Fall of a Nationalist (A Study of the Nationalist Leadership in Iraq, 1920–1936)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1966). Peter Wien's article in this issue of IJMES updates the record on al-Hashimi.

45 Marr, “Yasin al-Hashimi,” 54.

46 From statistics compiled by Griffiths, “Reorganization of the Ottoman Army,” 105.

47 The cadet books show class standing and marks of individual cadets. IU, Mekatıb-i Askeriyye, 1318 AH (1901). Cemal Paşa mentions him with admiration as well as exasperation in his memoir. Djemal Pasha, Memories, 60–61.

48 Phebe Marr interviewed Taha al-Hashimi in 1959. Marr, “Yasin al-Hashimi,” 63. Majid Khadduri interviewed al-Misri in the 1950s in Cairo. Al-Misri confirmed his Unionist membership. See Khadduri, , “ʿAziz ʿAli al-Misri and the Arab Nationalist Movement,” Hourani, Albert, ed., Middle Eastern Affairs, no. 4 (London: St. Antony's Papers, No. 17, 1965), 140–63Google Scholar. For Kemal, see Ramsaur, Ernest E., The Young Turks: Prelude to the Revolution of 1908 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 95Google Scholar. For al-ʿAzma, see al-Jundi, Adham, Taʾrikh al-Thawrat al-Suriyya fi ʿAhd al-Intidab al-Fransi (Damascus: Matbaʿat al-Ittihad, 1960), 168Google Scholar.

49 Marr, “Yasin al-Hashimi,” 68.

50 Khadduri, “ʿAziz ʿAli al-Misri,” 149.

51 CO 730/150/6, “Profiles and Assessments,” Yasin Pasha Al Hashimi, 1932.

52 al-Saʿid, Nuri, Mudhakkirat Nuri al-Saʿid ʿan al-Harakat al-ʿAskariyya li-l-Jaysh al-ʿArabi fi al-Hijaz wa-Suriya, 1916–1918: al-Fariq al-Rukn Nuri al-Saʿid ʿala Tullab Kulliyyat al-Arkan bi-Baghdad fi Mayis 1947 (Beirut: al-Dar al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Mawsuʿat, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Marr, “Yasin al-Hashimi,” 71.

53 See Parsons, Laila, “Soldiering for Arab Nationalism: Fawzi al-Qawuqji in Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 36 (2007): 33–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ramsaur, Young Turks, 95.

55 Jundi, Taʾrikh, 253–56; and al-ʿAs, Muhammad Saʿid, al-Tajarib al-Harbiyya fi Harb al-Thawra al-Suriyya (Beirut: Dar Fikr li-l-Abhath wa-l-Nashr, 1990)Google Scholar. For al-Misri, see Khadduri, “ʿAziz ʿAli al-Misri,” 147.

56 Jundi, Taʾrikh, 253–54; CO 730/150/6, “Profiles and Assessments,” Yasin Pasha Al Hashimi.

57 Sara, Fayiz, Saʿid al-ʿAs, 1889–1936: Hayatahu-Kifahahu (Damascus: Wizarat al-Thaqafa, 1993), 35Google Scholar.

58 Jundi, Taʾrikh, 254.

59 See Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Many of the memoirs and sources cited in this article attest to these basic themes. See, for example, Cemal Paşa's memoirs, interviews with Taha al-Hashimi and ʿAziz ʿAli al-Misri, and the memoirs of Saʿid al-ʿAs, Fawzi al-Qawuqji, and many others. See also the Ottoman history textbooks used in the military academy. Murat, Mizanci Mehmet, Muhtasar Tarih-I Umumi (Istanbul: Kitabçı Garabet, 1884)Google Scholar.

60 I owe this revisionist insight to the work of Aksakal, Mustafa, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Zürcher, Erik-Jan, “The Vocabulary of Muslim Nationalism,” International Journal of the Sociology of Science 137 (1999): 81–92Google Scholar

62 Dr. Mesut Uyar has demonstrated definitively that officers of Arab origin served with loyalty and distinction in the Ottoman army and that many fought in the first insurgency of the era, the “Turkish War of Independence.”

63 Khoury, Philip S., Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 98Google Scholar.

64 Gelvin, James, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics at the Close of Empire (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 20–22Google Scholar.

65 al-Qawuqji, Fawzi, Mudhakkirat Fawzi al-Qawuqji, 2 vols., ed. Qasimiyya, Khayriyya (1975; reprint, Damascus: Dar al-Numayr, 1995), 15–20Google Scholar.

66 al-Husri, Satiʿ, Yawm al-Maysalun: Safahat min Taʾrikh al-ʿArab al-Hadith (Beirut: Maktabat al-Kishaf, n.d. [ca. 1947]), 83Google Scholar.

67 Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 99–105.

68 Circulars recovered in Aleppo, FO 406/41, no. 191, 2 December 1919. Both were translated into English from the Ottoman original. Kemal's “misunderstanding” was surely the Arab Revolt.

69 See al-Husri, Yawm Maysalun.

70 Faris, Man Hum, 344.

71 British Government, Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1920), 135Google Scholar.

72 FO 371/5033 and FO 371/5034.

73 Al-Husri, Yawm Maysalun, 123.

74 For the makeup of rebels forces, see FO 371/5229, 12 July 1920, report of Lt. Col. Leachman, who was killed a month later near Falujah, and the secret telegram on the cost of suppression, 30 August 1920.

75 U.K., War Office, 33/969, SECRET: An Examination of the Causes of the Outbreak in Mesopotamia, October 1920, 25.

76 FO 371/5119, Interim Report on the Events of 4th April 1920; biographical detail on al-ʿArif from al-Zirikli, Khayr al-Din, al- Aʿlam: Qamus Tarajim li-Ashhar al-Rijal wa-l-Nisaʾ min ʿArab wa-l-Mustaʿribin al-Mustashriqin (Beirut: Dar al-ʿIlm li-l-Malayin, 1990), 3: 245–56Google Scholar.

77 The Jewish Chronicle, 27 February 1920, “Zangwill on Weizmann,” with cover letter from the Zionist Organization, in FO 371/5117. Zangwill argued immigration alone could never make a Jewish majority in Palestine and that the only solution was the expulsion of the Arabs by force or persuasion. The article was evidently reported in Arabic translation.

78 CO, 730/150/6, “Profiles and Assessments,” Yasin Pasha Al Hashimi.

79 al-Hashimi, Taha, Mudhakkirat Taha al-Hashimi, 1919–1943 (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa, 1967), 66–69Google Scholar.

80 For al-ʿAs, see Jundi, Taʾrikh, 254. For Shallash, see Tauber, Eliezer, “The Struggle for Dayr al-Zur: The Determination of the Borders Between Syria and Iraq,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991): 379Google Scholar.

81 The main Damascus nationalist daily, al-Muqtabas, ran a weekly column during the 1920s titled “News from Istanbul,” and in April and May 1926 al-Muqtabas ran an eight-part, serialized front-page feature titled “Mudhakkirat Mustafa Kamal.”

82 See Provence, Michael, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2005), 116Google Scholar.

83 Faris, Man Hum, 345.

84 Professor Khayriyya Qasimiyya, editor of al-Qawuqji's memoirs, related this story to me. Al-Qawuqji's memoirs mention a trip to seek help in Anatolia, but he does not mention his visit with Kemal, although Munir al-Rayyis documents the visit. See al-Qawuqji, Mudhakkirat, 115. al-Rayyis, Munir, al-Kitab al-Dhahabi li-l-Thawrat al-Wataniyya fi al-Mashriq al-ʿArabi: al-Thawra al-Suriyya al-Kubra (Beirut: Dar al-Talicca, 1969), 93Google Scholar.

85 Laila Parsons, “Soldiering for Arab Nationalism,” 41.

86 For al-Hashimi's legacy and the circumstances of his death in exile, see the contribution of Peter Wien in this special issue of IJMES.

87 See, for example, Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Mosse, George, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: H. Fertig, 1975)Google Scholar; and Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Fahmy, Khaled, All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar traces the effect of conscription and military modernization on Egypt.