who invented egyptian pt2

8/8/2019 Who Invented Egyptian Pt2

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460 Ralph M. Couryunity was propounded as one solution by the press and leaders of variousparties. Muhammad Husain Haikal, for example, known in the twenties as anexponent of a separate Egyptian nationalism, in 1927 called in the LiberalConstitutionalist newspaper al-Siyasa for the strengthening of economic andcultural ties with the countries of the Arab East, citing specifically the need forofficials in all branches of .work in these coun tries, a need which he thoughtEgypt could supply.134 The possibilities of Egyptian employment within the Arabworld did not remain theoretical. In Iraq, in particular, many recent Egyptiangraduates of the university worked as teachers in secondary and higher schools.It was Sanhuri and other Egyptians, for example, who organized the School ofLaw in Baghdad in the mid-30s.135 The interwar period also witnessed the firstdiscussions of the possibilities of inducing rural emigration as an outlet for theincreasing mass of landless and impoverished peasants.1362. The Arab world came to be regarded as a potential market for newEgyptian industry and a field for other forms of economic activity. Bank Misrestablished a bank in Syria and Lebanon in 1927 and the Misr group was activein other countries of the Mashriq, especially Saudi Arabia. In the 20s it boughtsteamships for the transfer of pilgrims, built the Misr Hotel in Suez and anumber of projects in the Hijaz, and established Air Misr between Cairo,Khartoum, Damascus and Baghdad.137 As Abdel-Malek notes, Talat Harb haddiscovered the Arab East nearly twenty years before the Alexandria Protocol.Lamenting the destruction of unity between Syria and Egypt through greatpower intervention in 1840 ("God alone knows how the fate of the people of theEast might have improved if this had not occurred"),138 he told an audience inBeirut in July, 1925, that "We Egyptians, who consider Egypt and Syria twosisterly nations linked by the Arabic language and many cultural ties, share yourfeelings and desires for prosperity and nationalist aspirations."139 And inDamascus a few days later he told members of the Arab Language Academy,"We Egyptians will continue to fulfill our obligations in the service of ourcommon Arab culture. Perhaps then we shall see other (Arab) nations organizingto add their efforts to ours, so that out of this meeting there will come a body ofknowledge and basis for exploration through which the mind of the East can besustained."140In particular, the interwar period marked the further development of a processthat had begun before World War I, that is, the export of cultural products-books, newspapers, magazines, and films by which the Egyptianization ofpopular Arab middle class culture began. In this respect, as in others, Egyptian-Arab relations contained a dialectical element, for the Egyptianization of Arabculture worked in turn toward the Arabization of an Egyptian literary andcultural production (in which, of course, many Arabs of non-Egyptian originparticipated) aimed at an audience transcending Egypt.

141One result of the everincreasing cultural and social contacts during the interwar period is the fact thatthe term Arab, used generally in the nineteenth centuryand this was true ofother Arab countries as wellto refer mainly to the bedouin, came to be usedfor all Arabic speakers, including Egyptians. We often see writers and speakersfirst using the term ahl al-arabiyya or abna al arabiyya.w Such usage reflectseither a conscious effort to educate audiences to a new sense of unity or a


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 461transition through which these leaders of opinion were themselves passing. Harbis a case in point. In 1925 we find him speaking of the sons of the Arabiclanguage but also of the Arab peoples and Arab countries; 143 then, in 1936, ofthe sons of Arabism;144 and, finally, in 1939, in an unequivocal context, of Arabnations which constitute a single entity.145

3. Various political movements within the Arab world increasingly soughtEgypt's political, financial, and moral support in their struggle against colonial-ism. Nationalists traveled to Cairo or established permanent residency there topublish newspapers and form organizations that would familiarize Egyptianswith Arab causes.146 Although these nationalists argued in terms of religious andlinguistic-cultural ties, a persistent theme was that Egyptian identity with theArab world would benefit Egypt's political and economic interests. In a letterwritten to Sha kib Arslan in 1921, for example, R ashid Rida asked him "to beardow n on the E gy ptia ns" and fault them for their isolation and separateness fromtheir brethren among the Arabs. "You should show them," he said, "and remindthem that the neighbouring Arab states will insist, if independence is given to all,to be dependencies of Egypt."147 Or here is Riyad al-Sulh, addressing MakramUbaid on the la tter's visit to Le ba no n in 1 931: "If there is any sacrifice in Egyptaccepting the leadership of the Arab countries, it is our sacrifice and if there is abenefit it will be for Egypt alon e w hether in negotia tions or rev olutio n. . . If thenegotiator with whom Egypt is negotiating . . . knows that Egypt is supported byall the Arab countries and that they are influenced by her, then the position ofthe Egyptian negotiator will be stronger than if he spoke in Egypt's name alone.Likewise, in revolution we will be with Egypt if Egypt is Arab." 148

Such themes, in which Egypt is looked upon as a leader or savior, testify bothto the Eastern Arabs' recognition that Egypt's size made it the natural leader inany form of greater unity and to the relative (in comparison to Egypt) weaknessof the ruling classes in the Fertile Crescent area, the feebleness of internalcohesion in the countries over which they presided, as well as their need to drawupon Egyptian strength in their response to the more direct threat of Zionismand the domination of an imperialism that had in some cases not yet grantedthem even formal independence.149

4. Egyptians of varying orientations began to perceive the possibility of alarger ensemble within which Egypt might take leadership and gain politicaladvantage. Such an idea was reinforced as the growing weakness of the im-perialist states became more apparent as a result of the First World War and theGrea t D epression , and after the Treaty of 1936 defined Egypt's inte rnatio nalposition and gave her somewhat more leeway in an inter-Arab context. "TheEgyptian revolution has failed," Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini asserted in an article inal-Risala in 1935, "because we have walled in our nationalism in walls similar tothe walls of Chi na . I say this because I believe in wh at 1 call Arab natio nalis mand I believe that it is political nonsense that each Arab country should beseparated in its efforts without the cooperation of its brethren." 150 And inSeptember, 1939, in an essay entitled "The Egyptians are Arabs," Ubaid wrotethat Arab unity already existed but that it was in need of organization in orderto form a front to resist imperialism and to develop Arab economic capacity."We are brothers in our struggle to liberate our nations and to attain our


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462 Ralph M. Couryfreedom and if disaster strengthens the union of those who must sacrifice, whatof nations which are linked by language, traditions and essential social ties?" 151Ubaid spoke of struggle but for him struggle meant political maneuvering andthe application of diplomatic pressure on the great powers. As I have alreadysaid of the ruling class as a whole, the Wafdist leadership accepted the principleof political independence by stages, and, within this gradualist framework,sought to obtain real but often only formal concessions. In such a contextgreater unity was seen as providing the potential for greater leverage and agreater ability to bluff. The creation of an Egyptian sphere of influence withinthe Arab circle (an actual federation or state did not necessarily have to becreated) might be a bargaining chip for the pitifully weaker side. "It is within thecapacity of Egypt and one of its obligations," Azzam wrote as editor of theWafdist al-Kashshaf in 1928, "to exploit Egypt's central position in the Arabworld to a great extent in its relationships with all the Western nations so thatthese will know that if Egypt is satisfied the Near East as a whole is satisfied."152It was in such terms that politicians were to argue both publicly and privately inthe next decade. Thus al-Nahhas spoke of the Treaty of 1936 between Egypt andBritain as inaugurating an era of peace and brotherhood, not simply betweenBritain and Egypt but between Britain and all the peoples of the Middle East. 1535. Palestine forced representatives of the Egyptian ruling class to think withinan Arab context. The following reasons may be given:a. Progressives and patriotic nationalists sympathized with the struggle of thePalestinian people and saw Zionist colonization as part of the strategy forgreater political control over the Middle East and/or another means by whichWestern economic interests could exploit the region.b. Fear of the specific dangers to Egypt inherent in the establishment of aZionist state also became a strong element in Egyptian opposition.Al-Nahhas protested to the British on the basis of what he called threeanglesArab, Muslim and Egyptian. From the Arab standpoint, he told Kellyon August 9, 1937, Palestine "belonged to the hereditary population, whetherChristians, Moslems or Jewish," and all these were Palestinian. New Jewishimmigrants from the United States or Poland were "as much foreigners inPalestine as they would be in Egypt, despite Moses's connection with the latter."From a Muslim angle, permanent protection of the holy places by Britain wasintolerable. From an Egyptian angle, he said, there was danger in having astrong Jewish state as a neighbor, "with the inevitable tendency to expand owingto powerful resources."154 Who could say that the Jews, he asked Lampson onJuly 25, 1937, would not claim Sinai next and provoke trouble am ong the Jewishcommunity within Egypt itself? The only solution, he urged, was the creation ofan independent Arab state, with the fullest guarantees of religious and racialtoleration for Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike. Jewish immigrationshould be strictly limited to normal absorptive capacity and "Arabs should notbe plucked up by the roots to make way for strangers in their native land." 155 AsI have already pointed out, such private entreaties on al-Nahhas's part werefrequent. Thus, throughout 1936, according to Kelly, he had taken "everyopportunity of passionately advocating the Arab cause in private conversation,using on one occasion the phrase 'We, too, are Arabs.'"15 6 Such concern about


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 463Palestine was also widely shared among sections of the ruling class which weremuch more moderate. In August of 1938 Shaikh al-Maraghi told Smart, theOriental Secretary, that "the feeling in Egypt regarding Palestine was genuineand widespread, and that the Egyptians viewed with alarm the establishment of aJewish state on their frontier." "The Jews," he noted, "were an intelligent andcapable people, backed by vast financial resources and international connections"and "Egypt and the Arab states feared that such a Jewish state would eventuallyoverflow its borders and imperil the independence of the surrounding Moslemstates." 157

This theme of the specific threat of a Zionist state to Egypt grew stronger asthe 30s drew to a close, but it was not novel. In the Chamber of Deputies adecade before, Mustafa al-Shurbaji and Shaikh Abd al-Wahhab Sulaiman askedthe foreign minister about alleged reports that Sinai was to be annexed toPalestine in exchange for the movement of British troops from the west to theeast of the canal. They cautioned the governmment to be wary of a strongmovementthey did not mention its namewhich was trying to influencegovernments to bring this about. Sinai had gold, coal and oil, they argued, notto mention its strategic importance, and Egypt could not give it up. 158

c. The Egyptian ruling class was directed to seek an inter-Arab solution to thePalestine question because of the fear of a Palestinian popular revolution whichmight inspire a radicalization of Egypt. In his memoirs, Muhammad HusainHaikal writes that men of importance supported the Palestinian cause forreligious reasons or because they feared that a Jewish state would threatenEgypt's economic and political life. "Furthermore," he adds, "the immigration ofa people into a country in spite of the will of its inhabitants would . . . push themto revolt against these immigrants, a revolt that would have far-reachinginfluence and whose results would bear the greatest of dangers." 159

d. A Zionist state was looked upon as a threat to Egypt's special economicposition within the Arab world and to her chances of becoming that world'sindu strial, techno logical, and financial center. Th us M uh am ma d AH Alluba, oneof the principal representatives of the Misr group, wrote in 1942 in his MabadifiUsul al-Siyasa al Misriyya, "A wound to Palestine is a wound to Egypt and itsnot remaining Arab a limitation to Egypt itself in its independence and economicexisten ce. If Zionism is established in Palestine . . . its harm will not be limited toPalestine alone. Rather, it will immediately extend to affect the destiny of all theneighbouring countries, to place limits on their economies, industries, trade,wealth and independence." 160 Lampson echoed the fears of Alluba and otherswhen he wro te, in Jan ua ry 1939, "It mu st not be suppo sed th at religiousfanaticism is alone responsible for Egyptian support of the Palestinian Arabs.Practically all Egyptians sympathize with the Arabs in their struggle, and moreinformed classes are apprehensive of Jewish encroachments on the nations andeconomy of the Near East. Egyptians are afraidperhaps not without reasonthat a powerful and neighboring Jewish state would seriously affect Egypt'seconomic primacy in the Near East."16 1

6. The emergence of new political forces within the interwar period focusedEgyptian attention on Arab questions. During the interwar period the leadershipof the Wafd, as well as other representatives of the Egyptian ruling class, was


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464 Ralph M. Courygradualist in its orientation. It sought, as I have already pointed out, to channelnationalist currents within a framework which operated under the assumptionthat national problems could be solved by applying pressure to Britain andby gradual internal reforms. The thirties, however, witnessed the beginningsof what has been called a radicalization and polarization of political life andideology. The rank and file of the Wafd's members, those who provided itsactivists and cadres, were drawn from the middle and lower middle classes.Beginning in the mid-30s and continuing into and after the Second World War,these strata provided the rank and file of new political groupings, both within(al-Talia al-Wafdiyya) and outside the Wafd that diverged, or had the tendencyto diverge, from the thought and practices of the traditional leadership.162 Thecomplex problem of the causes of the formation of these groups lies beyond thescope of this paper. Certainly pressures upon the material life of the middle andlower middle classes, particularly after the Second World War, are of greatsignificance. What must be emphasized here is that these groups, whether of theleft or of the right, the communists or the Muslim Brotherhood, attached, albeitfrom greatly differing ideological perspectives, new importance to the Arabworld and the Palestinian problem. In 1931 the Egyptian Communist Party, thefirst Egyptian party to do so, included a clause within its program calling forstruggle on behalf of the liberation of all Arab peoples from imperialism, as wellas the achievement of a complete Arab unity that would include all free Arabs.And two years later, Misr al-Fatat, which looked upon communism as one of itsprincipal enemies, included a clause about Egypt's unity with the Arab world inits own program.163 I cannot go into the varying relationship between the rankand file of these political movements and the different branches of the nation'sleaders. Efforts were made to co-opt, court, or crush the new forces that wereemerging. What can be briefly said, however, is that the rank and file of thesevarious movements provided the "pressure of the masses"164 upon which menlike al-Nahhas and Muhammad Mahmud sought to draw but to which they alsohad to respond. However, to assume that pressure from below made al-Nahhasor others firmer in relation to the Palestinian or other Arab issues does notmean, of course, that their own professed interest was merely rhetorical orgeared solely to gain them popular support. Here, as in respect to other issues,the Egyptian leadership in its various branches would seek to channel and harnessthe Arabist tendency according to its own liking, purposes, and needs.What the future might hold in this respect was speculated upon with remark-ably forthright cynicism by Hafiz Ramadan, leader of the Nationalist Party, asearly as 1928. The situation, Ramadan told Smart, the Oriental Secretary, inNovember of that year, was exactly as it had been in 1909, after the death ofMustafa Kamil. That year marked the end of a myth which had greatly stirredthe Egyptian people, and the fortunes of the Nationalist Party started to decline.In 1918 a new myth appeared to replace the old one but now it (the Zaghlulistone) was also at an end. "II faut empecher la naissance des mythes," hecontinued . If the presently discomfitted elements of the Wafd were simply left tothemselves and nothing were done to captivate the Egyptian imagination, it wasinevitable that sooner or later another myth would arise that would be to themutual danger of both British and Egyptians, for the latter also suffered from


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 465these upheavals. Something had to be done to harmonize Egyptian nationalismwith. British policy. In this respect Ramadan advised that the whole problem ofthe Middle East should be examined. Federationist tendencies, he argued, wereinevitable among the region's Arabic speaking units, especially in reaction towhat he took to be the inevitable formation of a northern bloc, militarily strongbut economically and administratively immature, between Turkey, Persia, andAfghanistan. If such an Arab federation were formed Egypt could play a greatrole. She could supply the money and the technicians necessary for the develop-ment of the less advanced Arab countries. The North African countries would beexcluded from the scheme, as unity of the spoken language was essential. In anycase, this federative development was impossible without the aegis of Englandwhich alone could provide security against encroachment. England alone couldovercome the differences that arose among the Arabic units, although thisactivity would have to be generally and discreetly invisible, only to appear atjunctures in which its beneficent action would be apparent to those whoexperienced it. Thus gradually Egypt and her Arab consorts would come to lookon Britain as a necessary element in the scheme of their mutual development.With that gradual realization the "myth danger" would be avoided. The taskwould take twenty to thirty years but would not require great men. "They weredangerous," Ramadan concluded, "for they merely intoxicated the crowd anddid nothing effective." What the task did require was a major political state,composed of men of action working steadily toward their goal.165

As should be obvious from my remarks in Part 1, I am not contending that bythe end of the interwar period a sense of Arab unity and interest in Arabproblems had assumed as much importance in Egypt as they had in other partsof the Arab East. If a significant number of politicians, litterateurs, ulama andbusinessmen had discovered their Arabness and the Arab world around them,many others remained indifferent, unknowing, or even hostile. Certainly anumber of sources, both British and Arab, could be invoked to illustrate thegeneral isolationism of Egyptians in comparison with their brethren to the east.When the Iraqi Tawfiq al-Suwaidi passed through Egypt in August of 1938 onhis way to a meeting of the League of Nations, he noted that the averageeducated Egyptian knew much more of Europe and America than of the landseast of Suez, that Egypt had long been preoccupied with her own political,administrative, and cultural affairs and that, although the Palestinian questionwas one of the principal topics of discussion, Egyptians lacked sufficient knowl-edge of its intricacies.166 In explanation, it is necessary to point out that anumber of the political and economic factors to which I have referred remainedrelatively weak in this period. The sphere of operations of Egyptian industrialand commercial establishments, for example, remained limited. In 1938, Egypt'sexports to Iraq, Palestine, and Syria amounted to 0.2 percent, 0.3 percent, and0.7 percent, respectively, of her total exports, whereas her imports from themamounted to 0.4 percent, 0.7 percent and 0.6 percent.167 And, although Egyptiansdid indeed increasingly regard Zionist colonization as a real threat, they did notlook upon it as being as direct a danger to their material life as did the rulingclasses of Iraq or Syria.168 Moreover, various influences and tendencies continued


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466 Ralph M. Couryto inhibit the development of Egyptian Arabism. In this respect one mightmention Egypt's long history as a separate and relatively unified political entity,as well as the wealth and stability of an Egyptian ruling class which, while moreaware of its chances within a wider Arab circle, was much more content andhence perhaps even more timid than some of its counterparts to the east.Certainly representatives of this class, during the period between the wars andlater, generally continued to conceive and speak of Arab unity in terms of theunified and coordinated action of a community of independent states, whereas inthe Arab East the Arab nation states were often characterized as artificialcreations imposed by foreigners and standing in the way of an already existingArab nation. Thinkers like Azzam and Alluba spoke of the Arab "nation" as asupra-national entity which already existed but this entity, particularly in thepolitical form that it might eventually receive, was perceived as the sum ofdiscreet parts added to one another. Despite the existence of romantic andorganic theories of Arab nationalism in Egypt, the emphasis upon the ultimatenecessity of the disintegration of all borders remained more common among thepoliticians of the Mashriq.Nevertheless, the fact remains that the seeds of future developments, such asthe formation of the Arab League (which, of course, did not effectively limitindividual sovereignty) were sown in this period. In September of 1936 Kellywrote that it had hitherto seemed that Egyptian interests in the neighboring Arabstates had been superficial, but that there were "definite signs of a changingoutlook in this respect," and that there was "no doubt whatever that but for thetreaty negotiations this change would have become very manifest in connectionwith affairs in Palestine." He remarked that although the Arab movement"might be vague and theoretical when it came to concrete action" it was a"sufficiently definite and shaping state of mind" which might hold considerablefuture significance.169 Even Lampson, who remained uneasily skeptical in thesummer of 1936, maintaining that the pan-Arab movement had "little realstrength in Egypt," wrote in August of the same year that "Egypt has longaspired to exercise a moral and cultural influence over the Moslem nations of theNear East" and that "this desire will probably be increased when her fullindependence is consecrated by the Anglo-Egyptian treaty settlement."170 Inparticular, he could not see how Egyptian governments could refrain fromaddressing themselves to the Palestinian problem. By February 1937, he was toobserve that it "seemed inevitable that Egypt and the neighboring Arabiccountries must sooner or later get together with a view to international co-operation" and that "in principle it would seem undesirable to oppose tendencieswhich have in them such elements of inevitability."171In the interwar period, then, Egyptians began to identify themselves as Arabs,and became increasingly involved in the Arab world. I do not believe that suchidentity and involvement can be understood apart from the factors to which Ihave pointed. As Abdel-Malek has noted, from the late thirties until therevolution of 1952, a sense of Arab unity as an historical and cultural necessity,as an instrument of political and economic realism, and as the complement tothe individual growth of Egypt, began to develop. Here, again, is Azzam, whowas to be the first Secretary General of the Arab League, and to whom Kedourie


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 467and others have attributed so important a role: "Our future life will becomesuccessful if we become an industrial people. It will be almost impossible to existas a military state, a state that guarantees its own military defenses first of alland assures its inhabitants of subsistence, without carrying out a thoroughindustrial revolution. That revolution in itself obliges us to have living space.This living space consists in our brothers, who understand us and who offer usan advantage in relation to others. On the economic level we need the Arabstates, which, as has been demonstrated, possess the richest resources and theraw materials essential to our future industry and which at the same timeconstitute the only market open to our future life."172To speak of the influences I have dealt with above, a number of which must beunderstood in terms of the political economy of Egypt and her neighbors duringthe interwar period, does not exclude the importance of other factors, such asdynastic or individual ambitions, especially if we are seeking to analyze themotives and developments leading up to a particular event. Surely an explanationof the formation of the Arab League should be able to accomm odate al-Nah has'alleged desire for glory, his eagerness "to please the British" or to thwart Nurial-Said, with the more general tendencies to which I have referred. In this respectwe must seek to differentiate and relate the long-term trends of a society andmovements that are occasional, immediate or almost accidental. It is, of course,only in terms of long-term tendencies that one can explain the persistence ofArab nationalism either as a buttress for conservatism or as a principle of actionfor either the Arab ruling classes or Arab radicals.What remains to be considered, if only briefly, are the factors that have ledmany scholars of Egyptian Arab nationalism to neglect or hardly touch upon theelements 1 have emphasized. I believe that the shortcomings of many works onEgyptian Arab nationalism or Arab nationalism in general stem from a sharedidealism and atomism that conceives of Arab nationalism in abstract terms andwhich does not meaningfully or systematically relate this nationalism to a largersocial and political environment. Arab nationalism has often been perceived interms of an autonomously decisive essence that is everywhere the same in itspainful deficiencies and inadequacies. Arab nationalism as such has again andagain been portrayed as authoritarian and despotic, as extremist and tending toviolence, and as a form of mythological thinking that distorts history andexisting political realities. Thus, as I have mentioned, Kedourie speaks of theEgyptian and Syrian Arab nationalists as rigid doctrinaires who lacked "a senseof concrete difficulties" and who possessed faith in "sedition and violence and acontempt for moderation." And such views are clearly shared by Vatikiotis who,in his survey of modern Egypt, contrasts the sentimental enthusiasm of Nasser'sArab-Islamic nationalism to the rational nationalism of liberals like Lutfi al-Sayyid and who, in another context, speaks of all revolutionary ideology, ofwhich Arab nationalism of the "sentimental" sort is apparently an example, as in"direct conflict with . . . man's rational, biological and psychological makeup."173

Moreover, the deficiencies of Arab nationalism have often been seen as linkedto millennial deficiencies in Arab-Islamic thought and political culture whichmay have been temporarily or somewhat offset by the influence of Westernscience and liberalism but which have been ever ready to reassert themselves in a


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468 Ralph M. Courysociety that remains true to its essential, traditional nature: to its supposedlyaberrant mentality, its rigidity and intellectual impoverishment, its allegedbrutality and despotism. Thus Safran sees the crisis of Egyptian intellectuals asproceeding from their inability to meet modern challenges by overcoming thepersistent and centuries-old Islamic intellectual traditions of finding perfection inthe past, of denying man and nature any efficacy, and of taking the facts ofhistory as norms.174 Given what is taken to be the persistence of Islamic"patterns," Arab nationalist thinking that differentiates between imperialists andanti-imperialists is seen as a "disconcerting echo of facile dichotomies betweenthe East and West and 'the abode of Islam and the abode of war,'" and thefoundation of the Arab League as well as that of the U.A.R. are viewed as theproducts of a broad, popular, religiously inspired sense of Muslim solidarity thatis given outward expression in secular and political terms by Egypt's leaders.175In a similar fashion, albeit uneasily, Mitchell sees the violence of some of theMuslim Brotherhood, who, he shows, were drawn to Mahir and other architectsof pan-Arab and pan-Islamic policy, as proceeding from an inherent Islamicpotential for Mahdism, whose "heresy," and here Mitchell quotes Gibb, is thebelief that "not only the minds and wills of men can be dominated by force butthat truth can be demonstrated by the edge of the sword."176What I have called idealism is, of course, intimately linked to atomism, theinability to transcend ideas or individuals. To the extent that any effort is madeto link ideology with wider concrete realities, it is to see Arab ideology as adefense mechanism, as the deviant and irrational response of frustrated ormarginal intellectuals and officials to economic failure or political, intellectual,and psychological humiliation, or as an abortive attempt to provide a system ofcentral values to replace the religious ideology that once held Middle Easternpeoples together. Or it is sometimes seen, at least at the level of the state, as themeans by which powerful individuals or elite groups (not considered in any wayrepresentative of their class, to say nothing of their peoples as a whole)manipulate the masses solely for the purpose of their own aggrandizement. Thetendency, as Bryan Turner points out, is to reduce ideological structures andpractices to an account of the biography of the belief of individuals. ThusKedourie instinctively seeks an explanation for Egypt's entrance into the ArabLeague negotiations mainly in terms of al-Nahhas' desire to please the King, todamage his opponents, or to win the approval of the British. Sylvia Haim seesMakram Ubaid's expressions of interest in Arab and Islamic affairs as merely theshrewd strategy of a Copt who felt that he had to make such professions to winMuslim sympathy.177 And Heyworth-Dunne explains the Arab nationalism of theAzzam family, and hence their role of helping Egypt "discover Arabism," to thisfamily's alleged consciousness of being different from other Egyptians (a con-sciousness which, in fact, the Azzams did not possess) because of their Arabiandescent and their maintenance of Arab habits and customs.178

Such atomistic idealism has been the subject of much critical commentary inrecent years and it is not my purpose to further elaborate upon a critique whichhas been forcefully undertaken by many scholars.179 My own presuppositionsshould be fairly obvious. I have proceeded under the assumption that Arabnationalist ideology in Egypt is not pure illusion and that it has not proceeded


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 469from a sort of fate that compels Arab consciousness to differ from reality. Onthe contrary, I have seen this ideology (as it was embraced and manipulated byrepresentatives of the Egyptian ruling class in the interwar period and later) asan inextricable mixture of illusory, deceptive representations and scientificinsight, as the vehicle of distortion and suppression but also of sound thinking.I recognize, of course, that individual Arab nationalist thinkers and politicianswho made up the governing elite did indeed compete for influence and posts atthe state level, but I believe that at the same time they have served as the nucleithrough which the interests of broader groups and classes have found expression.Berque has written that the political practice of an entire generation of nationalistleaders in the interwar period was dominated by a characteristically bourgeoisphenomenon which combined the most inveterate spirit of intrigue with loyaltyto one's class. It is necessary to realize that the class loyalty one finds in the morepurely Egyptian nationalism of the early period is no less characteristic of thelater Egyptian Arab nationalism that was to transcend Egypt's borders. I havealready spoken of the pressure from below which tended to make members ofthe Egyptian political elite firmer in respect to Arab questions. Yet it is also clearthat the Arabism adopted by this elite made increasingly good sense from theperspective of the bourgeoisie which they especially represented, including thatupper or haute bourgeoisie of land-owners, merchants, financiers, and indus-trialists whose influence played so large a role in politics before Nasserism. Azzamand other members of the political elite undoubtedly sought, according to theirown orientations, to serve the Egyptian nation as a whole, or at least it is in suchterms that their nationalism (Egyptian, Arab, or otherwise) was invariablypresented. But this does not mean that their Egyptianism or Arabism was notalso marked by a kind of special class pleading, by what might be described as amystical representation of the ruling class's latent tendencies and future evolu-tion, as well as (often explicitly and at a formal level) a rational calculation ofits possibilities and objective necessities. If considered from this perspective,then even the mythological and romantic themes of Azzam and others (whichhave often been presented as primarily arising from the need of individuals toheal the "w ounds" suffered through their encounter with the West's superiorculture)180 can be viewed as having had a functional and strategic value in theconcrete and local struggles waged by the Egyptian ruling class. The consideredmode of thought of many of these nationalists, as is true of the Slavophiles whospoke of Russia as a "god-bearer" or of Americans who spoke of the UnitedStates as a "new Jerusalem," may have been erroneous, contradictory andfantastic, but if we look at a deeper level we can discern certain functionalrationalities and unities, and not simply those which arose from the need torespond to humiliation or decay.

In the thirties and forties, for example, Azzam claimed that the Arabs had anhistoric mission to redeem the world because of their ancient and uniquelyinhering liberal, democratic, and peace-loving spiritual and cultural qualities, orelse because of their sheer rawness, their youth and vitality in comparison to anold and crippled West. The Arabs' "mission," he argued in various contexts,would not only insure that peace, moderation, humanity, and justice wouldprevail internationally, between colonizers and colonized or among great powers,


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470 Ralph M. Couryit would also inspire and sustain domestic arrangements that would exemplifythe Arabs' special capacity to find a "middle ground" and achieve socialequilibrium among the classes. Such equilibrium would be won not onlythrough the intervention of the state to provide social welfare and to promoteeconomic development and social mobility, but also through the maintenance ofhierarchical arrangements analogous to those within the family and through thepromulgation of the belief that duties should take precedence over rights, thatperfection of the social order is not possible, and that the way to freedom andjustice rests less upon external law, institutions, and structures than it does uponthe spontaneous good will and self-denial of rulers and ruled.181An Arabism defined in terms of such conservatism surely aimed to limit theexpression of revolutionary impulses and to secure the dominance of theEgyptian and other Arab ruling classes and the political position of theirregimes. It was an Arabism that sought to channel discontent, in respect to bothdomestic and foreign affairs, within the governing elite's traditionally gradualist,peaceful, and meliorist framework. Yet, if this type of Arabism can be perceivedas supporting the "holding action" of a ruling class aware of revolutionarystirrings, its emphasis upon youth, vitality, and mission, and upon the special rolethat Egyptians and other Arabs were uniquely destined and qualified to playin the world of the future, can also be regarded as the reflection and rein-forcement of a kind of bourgeois self-exultation. Such self-exaltation need notbe taken as a turning back upon the self to seek solace in illusions, as a grandbut impotent gesture of defiance vis-a-vis a superior West. It can rather beregarded as a testimony, mythical to be sure, but no more fantastic than manynational mythologies the world over, to the rising fortunes and potentials of aruling class whose most perspicacious representatives remained alert, as Azzamsaid of Ubaid, to the winds of historical opportunity. Egypt may have indeedexperienced decay from'its contact with the West but the causes of such decay,as Eric Davis points out, were materialistic rather than intellectual and culturalforces, and they more adversely affected the peasantry than the bourgeoisie. 182The ruling Egyptian bourgeoisie had in fact made material and cultural gainsthat it wished to consolidate and expand. It was a class that had enjoyed stableand significant growth since the nineteenth century and its representatives werebecoming ever more conscious of its chances and responsibilities as the EasternArab world's dominant indigenous political and economic force.To understand these various functions of Arabism is to understand how thisideology, at least as adopted and manipulated by representatives of the Egyptianruling class, would simultaneously seek to excite and restrain, to lead forwardand withdraw.183 Accepting certain domestic and international frameworks asgiven, Egypt's leadership would proceed to maneuver according to certainlegalities and peaceful methods and the Egyptian masses, as Berque shows,would be used and directed but held back and never unleashed. The result was tobe what the French scholar has termed a politics of "dynamic uncertainty," inwhich there was a disparity between acts and words, realities and formula-tions.184 In this respect the Egyptian and Arab people of whom Azzam andothers speak were not to be the Egyptian and Arab community of those inpower, although they were admitted into this community verbally, to be drawn


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 471upon and invoked. And if these masses ever were to take the initiative toovercome their material and spiritual alienation in order to share in the com-munity of power, their enemies would say that they were in fact destroying thatcommunity.

No more vivid illustration of such ideological presuppositions could beprovided than that given by Saad Zaghlul in his address to the union of tramwayworkers in Cairo on July 4, 1924. In this address, the Wafd's leader took theexistence of the special economic interests of the Egyptian upper class forgranted as a regrettable evil while he praised the masses for strengthening thenational movement through their disavowal of any such interests of their own:1 am very happy and joyful every time I perceive that this movement is not made up solelyof what is called the upper class. Instead, it also draws its origin, or, rather, it especiallydraws its origin, from the class which those envious of us call 'the herd' (al-racTya). And Iam proud to be from 'the herd ,'jus t like you. If this movement were limited to the upperclass it would not have had the base it has had and it would not have spread as it has andthe nationalist principles would not have been victorious. This is true because the class of'the herd' is the class of the greatest numbers in the nation. It is the class which has nospecial interests. And it is the class whose principles are always steadfastits principles ofcomplete independence for Egypt and the Sudan. For if the wealthy man or the official ina high post says 'Long live the nation' he might also say 'Long live my office' or 'myinterests.' For this reason the opinion of many of those who have such interests or postsreverse themselves or change. But 'the herd,' like you, does not change and does notexchange its beliefs."'85Zaghlul here speaks of the masses in terms of the Egyptian nation but his visionas to what constitutes their proper role would be shared by an Egyptianleadership which, in the thirties, would begin to speak in the name of the Arabsand Islam.

Men like Azzam, Mahir, and others can be seen as successors to Zaghlul and, atthe same time, as precursors who to some extent anticipated the ideological and,in certain instances, the economic and political forms of a Nasserism that did notradically transform the indigenous Egyptian class structure and that ultimatelyfavored, for all its real breaks with the past, the interests of a reconstitutedbourgeoisie that followed "a policy of prudent compromise and carefully con-trolled initiative" both inside and outside of Egypt.18 6

The rational dimensions of the Arab nationalist ideology that members of theintellectual and political elite began to adopt during the interwar period do not,however, have to be extricated through explication and the deciphering of classinterests and perspectives expressed in romantic terms. Political leaders such asMakram Ubaid or influential litterateurs such as Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini orMahmud Azmi remained as explicitly rationalist, utilitarian and liberal as Arabnationalists as they had been when they were Egyptian nationalists and saw noconflict between the two orientations. They recognized the realities that unitedthe Arab world and sought to build upon these for rational ends. Thus al-Mazini, in an article published in al-Risala in 1935, argued tha t even if the Ara bshad not been united for centuries by linguistic, cultural and emotional ties, suchunity would have to be created in the present. Al-Mazini believed that this unitywas needed for utilitarian reasons, because the Arabic-speaking countries could


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472 Ralph M. Courynot hope to win and maintain their political rights or develop their economicstrength as small, weak states.187 Even the Copt Salama Musa, whose Fabianismand uncompromising secularism set him apart from the mainstream of establishedinfluential thinkers and politicians, certainly to the left of Ubaid and al-Mazini,to say nothing of men such as Azzam and Mahir, could write as if Arabism werethe only larger tie, outside of Egyptianism, that were consistent with the rational-ity and realism that he always championed. "One of the truths about bonds ofunity," Musa wrote in the mid-twenties, "is that they arise naturally and withoutbeing forced. If they do not exist in the first place it is foolish to seek to createthem willfully. National unity, for example, exists in Egypt. No one thinks offorming an organization to strengthen this tie, even if we might form anassociation to organize national activities or to direct national efforts to aspecific goal. Likewise, the tie of language exists in the Arab world. It is basedupon ancient and modern Arabic literature, the Arabic press and that Arabiclanguage which we speak. We do not need to strengthen this tie, even if we needto organize it and form a public opinion among the Arab nations that can bedrawn upon for their common good, so that they can obtain their independenceand constitutional governments, that is, so that they can repulse both foreignand domestic usurpers." Musa proceeded to argue that he did not understandwhy Shaikh Muhammad Najib was planning the formation of an organizationcalled al-Rabita al-Sharqiyya. Musa felt bound to the Chinese and Japanese by acommon humanity and, perhaps, by the fact that, as "Eastern" nations, theirfortunes vis-a-vis the great Western powers affected the fortunes of Egypt. Yetthe cultural and emotional links that bound Egyptians to Russians or otherEuropeans simply did not exist in respect to the Japanese or Chinese. Howdifferent it was with the Arabs! It was the Arabic language, he wrote, and thesense of "brotherhood" which it creates, that "makes us burn with angerwhenever we read news of the struggle of the Tunisians or the Syrians forindependence and of their battle against this foreign imperialism that nowunleashes its dogs among them and that desires to destroy the ties that link us. Ifone of us sat in Tangier in Morocco he would not feel that he was a stranger, forhe would find people speaking his language and their souls stamped by the sametaste in which he was raised. And this is, at the least, what I have felt. Al-Ustadhal-Zahawi, an intellectual from Baghdad, is now in Egypt. If an Egyptian satwith him he would feel only that he was in the presence of an Egyptian."188Although one might wish that Musa had here displayed greater foresight forthe potentials of Third Worldism, the point that I seek to make in this context isthat the Arabist orientation which began to develop in the twenties was not themonopoly of romanticists from the political and intellectual right. It is perhapsof even greater importance to note, however, that even when we turn to thisright, to those whose Arab nationalism was more likely to be tinged with areligious coloring and who were more prone to speak in terms of eternallyinhering vocations, we find the romantic and explicitly utilitarian, the pre-posterous and realistic, juxtaposed. Thus a writer like Alluba opposed theestablishment of a Zionist state.on the basis of the need to resist what he took tobe the inherent evil and racism of the Jewish religion,189 but also, as we haveseen, he opposed it on the basis of the geopolitical and economic needs of the


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474 Ralph M. Couryoften been associated with rural peoples who till the soil in simplicity andfreedom. In the Arab world and elsewhere in the Middle East it is the desert thathas traditionally lent itself to a similar idealization. That the Arab or bedouin iscourageous, freedom-loving, generous (karim al-nafs), eloquent (baligh al-lisan),and strong are common motifs in belles-lettres or such folk tales as those ofAntar or Abu Zaid al-Hilali.194 Furthermore, such motifs are not solely literary.They have left their traces in proverbs and daily usage. It is simply not true thatthe term Arab "as used in current speech"and here I assume that Haim isreferring to those who do not speak of Arabs in the modern sense"is invariablyor predominantly, derogatory." "Let us be Arabs together," says the Faiyumi,when he wishes to call upon his fellows to engage in serious deliberations.195 If aman is generous in the Said he is complimented by being referred to as ibn arab.Conversely, if the individual is niggardly, he is reproached for having come todwell within walls (sakant al-hayt), for having left the tents of the desert andtheir generosity.196 Besides virtues such as courage, generosity, and physicalprowess, the bedouin, or more particularly, the bedouin shaikh or sayyid, is saidto possess hiltna mature and sober self-control that enables him to workpatiently for the maintenance of justice, order and the reconciliation of opposites.The bedouin is seen as anarchic and impetuous but, conversely, his society isassociated with mechanisms (such as the great tribal councils in which a neutraland prestigious sayyid or group of men representing a neutral clan arbitrate andmake peace between warring individuals or factions) that work for the restora-tion of social peace. In Silwa the assemblies convoked for the purpose ofarbitration are referred to as "Arab councils" and a man seeking arbitration or ajust solution to some dispute pleads for an "Arab verdict."197 To be sure, theinhabitants of Silwa take pride in describing themselves as descendents of Arabstock related to the Prophet. But the fact that some of their traditions andinstitutions (such as the council of arbitration) rather than others should bepointedly designated Arab is neither insignificant nor accidental.The Arab nationalist ideology that the Egyptian ruling class began to adopt inthe interwar period according to its own prudent and cautious orientation mayhave been developed by thinkers and politicians who, save for the socialistswho accepted class struggle, remained loyal to the essential bourgeois values,interests and perspectives of the strata to which they had belonged. Yet theEgyptian and other Arab middle classes, including that upper bourgeoisie forwhom Azzam, Mahir, and others in the political elite especially spoke, were notthe bourgeoisie in an abstract sense. They were, rather, bourgeoisies with theirparticular cultures and structures, called upon to act in specific Arab (andEgyptian, Syrian, etc.) and international situations.198 Their representatives mayhave "invented" a form of Arab nationalist ideology. They did not "invent" theArab world, the Arab people, or the positive values and characteristics withwhich Arabness has been associated.HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT

NOTESEDITOR'S NOTE: Part 1 of this article appeared in IJMES, 14 (1982), 249-281.


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 475' "Be r q u e , Imperialism and Revolution, pp. 456-457; Marius Deeb, Parly Politics in Egypt: The

Wafd and Its Rivals. 1919-1939 (London, 1979), pp. 315-324.l3 4Quoted in Ramadan, Tatawwur, II, 346.l 3 5 For Egyptians in Iraq see Sayigh, al-Fikra al-Arabiyya, p. 184; al-Ahram, Oct. 20, 1936 and July

2, 1937; and Ja lal al-Sayyid, "Mus tafa Wa kil: Misri Fi Bagh dad: 1941," Afaq Arabiyya, 5 (Jan.,1976), 132-139. Wakil, a member of Misr al-Fatat, and an important contact between this party andyouthful Iraqi nationalists, was a teacher of sports in the school for secondary teachers in Baghdad.

' " S e e al-Ahram, Sept. 26, 1935; and Sami S haw kat, Ahdafuna (Baghdad, 1939), p. 90.'"Harb's activities within the Arab world are discussed in Abdel-Malek, Egypt: Military Society,

pp . 251-252; Hafiz Mahmud, Kamil a l-Falaki , and Mahmud Fathi Umar, Talat Harb (Cairo, 1936),pp. 113-123; and Fa thi Radw an, Talat Harb Bahth ft Uzma (Cairo, 1970), pp. 82-87.

' "Ta l a t H a r b , Majmuat Khutab (Cairo, 1927), p. 127.'"Ib id . , p . 131.l4 0Ibid., p. 140.m T h e newspaper industry is a good exam ple. In the twenties a number of Egyptian papers had an

"Eastern" (really dealing only with the Arabs) page, often written by a Syrian or Lebanese who livedin Egypt, al-Ahram had Asad Daghir , al-Muqattam, Amin Said; al-Jihad, Sami Sarra j ; al-Balagh,Tawfiq Diyab; al-Hilal, Habib Jamati ; and Kawkab al-Sharq, Ahmad Hafiz Awad. Initially, thesepages seem to have been directed more to non-Egyptians than Egyptians but they were neverthelessto play their role in the Arabization of Egyptian opinion. The Journalist Hafiz Mahmud, forexample, says that he never looked at such papers until he heard the Syrian Dr. Abd al-RahmanShahbandar speak in Cairo and say that Egypt would be the capital of the future united Arab East.After that he began to follow Shahbandar about to hear his speeches and to follow, with his friends,the Arab pages that he had not looked at before. See Hafiz Mahmud, al-Maarik fi al-Sahafa waal-Siyasa wa al-Fikr. 1919-1932 (Cairo, 1967), pp. 56-57. For the earliest cultural contacts betweenEgypt and the Arab East see Muhammad Yusif Najam, "al-Silat al-Thaqafiyya bain Misr wa Lubnanfi a l-Nahda a l-Haditha ," al-Adab, 6 (June, 1962), 1-3, and 66-69.

l4 2The term "sons of the Arabs" was, as we saw, used by Makram in addressing the Iraqi visitors in1936. See note 22.

l4 3In a speech in Dam ascu s given July 7, 1925. See Ha rb, Majmuat Khutab, pp. 136, 139.l4 4In a speech in Baghdad, quoted in Mahmud, al-Maarik, p. 115.l 4 5 Harb, "al-Taawun al-Iqtisadi bain al-Umam al-Arabiyya," in a special edition of al-Hilal, "al-

Arab wa al-Islam," April, 1939, p. 34.l4 6The activities of such organizations are referred to frequently in many of the works 1 have cited.

See, in particular, Daghir, Mudhakkirati, pp. 93-98, and 152-174; and Sayigh, al-Fikra al-Arabiyya,pp . 175-180.

U 7al-S ayy id Rashid Rid a, in a letter of Ja n. 30, 1923, found in Amir Sh akib A rslan, Akha ArbainSana (Damascus, 1938), p. 323.

l4 8Quoted in Tahir, Nazarat, p. 132.l4 9Such a comparison draws its inspiration from Amin, The Arab Nation, pp. 33-49; and Abdel-

Malek, Egypt: Military Society, pp. 246-287.l5 0Abd al Qadir a l-Mazini , "a l-Qawmiyya a l-Arabiyya," al-Risala, ed. 112, Aug. 26, 1935, p. 1363.1 5 lMakram Ubaid, "al-Misriyyun Arab," in a special edition of al-Hilal, "al-Arab wa al-lslam,"

April 1939, p. 32.' "Abd a l Rahman Azzam, al-Kashshaf, Jan. 21, 1928.'"Cited in Berque, Imperialism and Revolution, p. 153.I 5 4 F.O . 406/7 5 4694 no. 63 E 46 68 /22 /31 . Kelly, Alexandria, to Halifax, F.O ., Aug. 9, 1937.' " F . O . 406/75 4694 E 4320 /22/31 no. 427. Lampso n, Cair o, to Eden, F.O ., July 25, 1937.' " F . O . 406/74 no. 108, E. 5831/381/63. Kelly, Ramleh, to the F. O., Sept. 4, 1936.1 !7 F .O. 406/76 E 5015/10/31, no. 74. Bateman, Cairo, to Halifax, F.O., on a conversation between

al-Maraghi and Smart, the Oriental Secretary, on August. 20, 1938. Al-Maraghi's fears were shared bya good friend, Muhammad Mahmud, leader of the Liberal Constitutionalists and Prime Minister, whotold the British that the Parliamentary Conference for the Defense of Palestine was a great nuisanceto himself and that it would get no official recognition, but who was, in his own right, neverthelessvery concerned abou t the question of Palestine. See F.O. 406 /76/ E 465 8/1 0/3 1, Halifax F.O., toBateman, Cairo, Aug. 4, 1938.

'"Minutes of Session 62, Chamber of Deputies, May 12, 1927, pp. 953-954.


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476 Ralph M. Coury15 9From a manuscript of Haikal 's unpublished memoirs, which Dr. Charles Smith of San Diego

State University has allowed me to quote. Haikal's fears were to be expressed in his paper al-Siyasa,and particularly at the time of the Palestinian crisis of 1929. On Sept. 21, 1929 one of the paper'sleading writers, Muhammad Abd Allah Anan, urged the Palestinians to show restraint, arguing thatit was within the power of the Arabs to win by a peaceful, continuous struggle and that they shouldproceed without shedding blood.

""Muhammad Al i Al luba , Mabadi fi U sul al-Siyasa al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1942), p. 284. Haikalexpressed the same views in an article of al-Siyasa (July 17, 1937) about the effect of theestablishment of a Zionist state on Egypt's economic position and political leadership.

" ' F . O . 371/23304/ J 377/1/16. Lampson, Cairo, to the F.O., Jan. 16, 1939.I6 2I say "tendency" to diverge because I feel that the "revolutionary" nature of some of these

groupings must be kept in perspective. I believe that Mahmud Hussein is correct when he says thatthe Brotherhood (and this would be true of Misr al-Fatat) wished to rely on its mass base andunderground apparatus to exert decisive pressures on the regime and that its leadership was hostile tospontaneous, uncontrolled mass action and a popular upsurge. Thus, the Brotherhood's policy at thetop, Hussein says, was to maneuver between the various currents of the ruling class and even, at onetime, to flirt with the occupying power. See Hussein, Class Conflict, pp. 72-87.

'" T h e interest of the M uslim Brotherhood and Misr al-Fatat in Palestine and the Arabs is wellknown. What has been given less attention is the growing interest of the radical and Marxist left. SeeFajr al-Jadid, May 16, Jun e 16, and t hro ugh out Ju ly, 1945; and Rifat al-Said, al-Sahafa al- Yasariyya

fi Misr. 1925-1945 (Beiru t, 1974), pp. 137-1 43, 171 -173; also, passim, al-Yasar al-M isri w a al-Qadiyya al-Filisliniyya (Beirut, 1974).

' " F o r a discussion of political life between the wars and the role of the "press ure of the mass es,"see Hassan Riad, L'Egypte Nasserienne (Paris, 1964), pp. 203-219.

16 5F.O. 371/13123/1744/ J 3130/4/16. R. H. Hoare, acting High Commissioner to LordCashendun, F.O., Nov. 5, 1928.

'"Tawfiq a l-Suwaidi , Mudhakkirati (Beirut, 1969), pp. 292-293.16 7A. A. J. El-Gritly, The Structure of Modern Industry in Egypt (Cairo, 1948), p. 566.16 8For Ismail Sidqi's refusal to believe that a Jewish state might be a threat to Egypt, see Tahir,

Mutaqal Hakstib, p. 493. Even A zzam, who u nderstood Ara b realities much better than Sidqi, seemsto have awakened to the seriousness of the Zionist project rather slowly. For example, in his speechon the Italians in Libya given at the General Islamic Conference in Jerusalem, he said that the Jewswere "weak" and "dependent upon funds which they received" but that the Italian colonist inLibyawhose aims were the samedealt with Muslims through bayonets. "If there is danger whichall Moslems should unite to combat," he said, "it is the Italian danger." Such remarks can beattributed, in part, to Azzam's generally pro-British moderation, and contrast with his later estimateof the potential danger of Zionism.

" ' F . O . 406/74 no. 108, E 5831/381/65. Kelly, Ramleh, to the F.O., Sept. 4, 1936."F.O. 406/74 4694 no. 94, E 5207/94/31. Lampson, Cairo, to Eden, F.O., Aug. 18, 1936." 'F .O . 371/20801/17 83 E 987. Lam pson, Cairo , to the F.O., Feb. I, 1937.' "Q uo ted by Abde l -Malek , Egypt: Military Society, p. 251, from a passage w hich originally

appeared in Sati al-Husri, al-Uruba Awwalan (Beirut, 1961), pp. 121-122. The statement was madein 1950 but the sentiments existed long before. For example, in an article of al-Hilal of Feb., 1934,Azzam argued: "We are in the age of the cartel and trust. Do the Iraqis or the Syrians or theEgyptians believe that they can reach an honorable life without unity? Let the leaders of opinion andthe perceptive recall that there can be no existence for the state before rebirth and no endurance for itwithout security and safety and there is no security without strength." Quoted in Anwar al-Jundi,al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith fi al-Muqaw ama wa al-Tajammu (Cairo, 1959), p. 515.

" 3 P . J. Vatikiotis, Revolution in the Middle East and O ther Case Studies (London, 1972), pp. 8-9,proceedings of a seminar.17 4Safran, Egypt in Search, pp. 7-25.'"Ib id . , pp . 257-258." 'Mi tche l l , Muslim Brothers, p. 327. I say that Mitchell writes in this manner "uneasily" because

of note 93 which he affixes to the passage I have cited: "We have qualified with the word 'potential'because of uncertainty about the apparently purely religious implication [for Mahdism] as used byGibb , Modern Trends, pp . 121 and 113 ff." Mitchell adds th at "even in Smith [Wilfred C antw ell] the


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 Alltendency to tie activism and violence (which gives rise to the labels) too specifically to the religiousphenomenon, Islam, does some violence to the very mundane drives which inspire much of theferment in the modern Muslim world. Much more rapidly than we believed possible when this studywas begun, it will become increasingly difficult to isolate the religious aspect for purposes ofanalyzing modern Muslims."'"Sylvia Haim, Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, 1964), p. 52.

'"James Heyw orth-Dunne, "Egypt Discovers Arabism: the Role of the Azzams," Jewish Observerand Orient Review, 14, (March 26, 1965), 20.

'"See, for example, Review of Middle East Studies, I (1975), 2 (1976), and 3 (1978); Edward Said,Orientalism, (New York, 1978); and Bryan S. Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism (London,1978).

"See, for example, Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism (Urbana, 111., 1973), pp. 122-147.""See, for example, Abd al-Rahman Azzam, "al-Arab Umma al-Mustaqbal," al-Fath, 28 Jamada

al-Ula, 1351 (Sept. 19, 1932), p. 9; passim, "Wahda al-Thaqafa al-Islamiyya," al-Fath, 29 Shaban,1352 (Dec. 17, 1933), p. 4; "Muqarana bain al-Sharq wa al-Gharb bi Munasaba Muahada al-Taif,"al-Fath, 9 Rab i al-Aw wa l, 1353 (June 22 , 1934), p. 15; "Darura al-Wahda a l-Arabiyya lil Salamal-Alami," al-Rabita al-Arabiyya, March 24, 1937; "al-Wahda al-Arabiyya wa al-Wahda al-Alamiyya," address given in Ewart Hall, American University of Cairo, Cairo, Jan. 4, 1946; "al-Malik Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud Kama Araftahu," in al-Malik Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud wa al Mam lakaal-Arabiyya al-Saudiyya, Abd Allah Husain, ed. (Cairo, 1948), pp. 104-107; passim, al-Risala al-Khalida, 2d edition (Cairo, 1954), pp. 215-250, an exact reprint of the 1946 edition which was basedon radio broadcasts given in the 1940s. There is an expanded English translation of this work entitledThe Eternal Message of Muhammad, Cesar Farah, trans. (New York, 1964).

18 2For a discussion of the development and stability of this bourgeoisie see Eric Davis, "PoliticalDevelopment or Political Economy?: Political Theory and the Study of Social Change in Egypt andthe Third World," Review of Middle East Studies, I (1975), 41-61. According to Davis, approachingEgyptian society in terms of an undifferentiated social structure does n ot allow for an understandingof social change in Egypt during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. "A political economyappr oach . . . wou ld significantly modify the 'decay thesis." Wh ile Egypt certainly did experien cedecay as a result of its contact with the West, the causes of this decay were materialist rather thanidealist forces. We would argue that this decay most adversely affected the peasantry, rather than thebourgeoisie, as reflected in the rise of rents, the difficulty of small land holders in obtaining credit, aninflation in food prices, the fragmentation of land holdings and the dispossession of a large numberof small holders of their land. For the landowning bourgeoisie which grew out of the rural notablestratum . . . the nineteenth century was an ever-increasing accumulation of capital and the displace-ment of the Turco-Circassian ruling class as a major indigenous economic and political force. Withthe weakening of European colonia lism . . . the Egyptian bourgeoisie found itself a junior partner inthe extraction of surplus for the world market. Thus Egyptian politics during the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries witnessed a consolidation of the native bourgeoisie's hold over Egyptian society"(here p. 58).

'"This apparently contradictory quality has been identified and brilliantly analyzed in Berque'sfine work on modern Egypt. Berque recognizes the class dimensions of an ideology which seems toexcite and restrain but he seeks to relate it, as well, to millennial traditions within the Arab world, to"a process which seems to arise from the remote depths of Middle Eastern history." See hiscomments upon a manifesto issued by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1947. In Berque, Imperialism andRevolution, p. 601.

" 4 lbid., pp. 386-387, where he speaks of the Wafd's efforts to canalize the anger of the masses.'"Cited in Anis, Thawra, pp. 119-120.l! 6For this prudent policy, see Maxime Rodinson, The Arabs, (Chicago, 1981), pp. 110-115. For

Mahir's economic orientation with which Azzam was in sympathy see Berque, Imperialism andRevolution, pp. 464-465. According to Berque, Mahir was one of the first to be concerned with thecontrol of social development: "He recommended an 'orientation,' taujih, which was to be revived ina revolutionary form after 1952, but which this tactician of the monarchy was already planning in1936. He declared: 'Our evolution must be given a direction, one adapted to the specific character ofthe Egyptian people, to its customs and capacities, just as we must match our social institutions tothe results of this evolution of material progress and of innovation, in all fields of work, of the


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478 Ralph M. Couryeconomy and of the circumstances of modern life.'" Berque realizes that Mahir's aim was to "stranglethe revolutionary impulse." In this respect it is relevant to po int out that as early as January, 1927, ina debate in the Egyptian Chamber of Deputies, Azzam advocated government interference tomitigate the effects of capitalist development on the poor peasantry. He cited with approval a law ofMussolini's which sought to "determine the relation between landlords and peasants" through thesetting up of a process of arbitration in which courts made up of representatives of each wouldliquidate outstanding disputes and discuss conflicts between owners and peasants on the land. Azzamsaid that he chose Mussolini as an example because "he was able to get rid of communism in hiscountry and because he is the best example for those who have defended individual own ership." Seeminutes of session 8, Cham ber of Deputies, January 10, 1927, pp. 240-241. For a view of Nasserismwhich emphasizes the socio-economic continuities that link the pre- and post-1952 periods, see Davis,"Political Development or Political Economy? Political Theory and the Study of Social Change inEgypt and the Third World," pp. 56-57. Davis writes: "Rather than destroying the Egyptianbourgeoisie, the 1952 Revolution strengthened it. This statement should not be interpreted inindividual but in class terms. In other words, while many individual landowners and businessmenmay have been ex propriated, this does not imply a radical transformation in the mode of p roduction(semi-capitalist in agriculture and state capitalism in industry) or the indigenous class structure. Whatcan be effectively argued, 1 think, is that the change entailed by the 1952 Revolution consisted of thereplacement of the upper levels of the Egyptian bourgeoisie by its lower level elements. The situationof peasants and workers remained appreciably the same since relations of production experienced nodrastic change" (p. 56).I8 'al-Mazini, "al-Qawmiyya al-Arabiyya," p. 1363.l88Salama Musa, "al-Rabita al-Sharqiyya wa Sair al-Rawabit," in Mukhtarat Salama Musa,(Beirut, 1963), pp. 127-130. That Musa should have expressed such sentiments may come as asurprise to those who associate him with a vigorous Egyptianism that adamantly opposed Arabidentity and nationalism. Musa's thoughts and formulations in respect to the Arabs seem to havefluctuated from period to period and according to various contexts. I nevertheless believe that a pe-rusal of his work as a whole would support the view that he was not opposed in principle to the idea ofArab identity or even Arab nationalism as long as these were not associated with values and practicesthat were incompatible with the egalitarianism, democracy and scientific modernity that hechampioned. Those who see him as an irrevocable enemy of Arabism have pointed to passages suchas that found in al-Yawm w a al-Ghad (1927) in which he declares that Egyptians owe no fidelity tothe Arabs. Yet a careful reading of the context in which this and similar statements occur wouldshow that when Musa spoke of the "A rab s" in this way he was referring to the Arabs of ancient andmedieval times whose cultural, social and political values were, in his view, alien and unsuitable forcontemporary Egyptians. He did not reject the concept of a common modern and scientific Arabculture as such. Thus in al-Hayat wa al-Adab (1930), in an article entitled "Misr, Markaz, al-Thaqafaal-Arabiyya," he wrote, "All of us desire that the A rab world be united through the Arabic language.However, we do not wish to sacrifice our personality through this unity, nor do we want unitybetween us and the rest of the Arab countries to be only linguistic. Rather, we wish to be linked tothese countries in a modern culture, based upon science and industry. It will be a culture that unitesall of us through ties of sedentary civilization (al-hadara) and not of bedouinism (al-badawa). Thepath of our coming to know each other better and of our achieving mutual accord must be builtupon modern views of government, marriage, and social reform, upon scientific discoveries andinventions. In other w ords, we must be united by the ties of modern civilization and modern cu ltureso that our social sentiments and goals of reform will [also] unite." See al-Hayat wa al-Adab (Cairo,n.d., [1930]), pp. 101-102."'Muhammad Ali Alluba, Filistin wa Damir al-Insani (Cairo, 1964),pp. 171-173.

"See, for example, his arguments against Taha Husain, quoted in Ahmad Shuqairi, Hiwar waAsrar Maa al-Muluk wa al-Ruasa (Beirut, n.d.), pp. 48-50." 'Haim, Anthology, p. 52."2Ahmad Amin, Qamus al-Adat w a Taqalid wa Taabir al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1953), pp. 49-50.'"Gabriel Baer has written of this struggle on the basis of his study of Kitab al-Dhakhair waal-Tuhaffi Bir al-Sanai wa al-Hiraf, an Egyptian m anuscript written at the end of the sixteenth or inthe seventeenth century and kept in the Landes-bibliothek of Gotha. According to Baer, "Thisstruggle is reflected throughout the Gotha manuscript, and to judge by this source it assumed the


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Who "Invented" Egyptian Arab Nationalism? Part 2 479character of antagonism between Arabs (Egyptians) and Ottomans. The Ottomans are not onlyaccused of having caused the decline of the guilds but of having practiced discrimination againstawlad al-arab, whose tekyes they destroyed while keeping intact those of the Ottomans. This seems tohave generated fervent hatred of the Turks; they are described as beasts and accused of beingsodomites (luwat). It is not only the nakib of the guilds that is superior to the governor, but Arabs ingeneral are superior to Turksand therefore Arab sheikhs of guilds to Turkish ones." He thenquotes a passage of the manuscript which says that the shaikhs of guilds should be from the sons ofthe Arabs (abna al-arab) because "they are superior" and "only the Arabs possess learning andeloquence." See Gabriel Baer, The Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 14-15.1MAmin, The Arab Nation, p. 21; William Polk, The Un ited States and the Arab World (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 28-29; and Khalduft S. al-Husry, Three Reformers (Beirut, 1966), pp. 94-95,where he criticizes Haim for writing that al-Kawakabi must have derived his ideas about the nobilityof the bedouin from Blunt."5A conversation with Madame Nihad Sirhan, a native of Faiyum and an anthropologist fromIndiana University, Cairo, April 21, 1971.

'"A conversation with Dr. Ahmad Shams al-Din al-Hijazi, lecturer at the Institute for Drama,Cairo, and a native of Luxor, Cairo, April 4, 1971.'"Hamed Ammar, Growing Up in an Egyptian Village (New York, 1966), pp. 58-60."8Th e necessity of differentiating the particular histories, cultures and structures of each of theWestern (and Third World) bourgeoisies is, of course, one of the lessons to be drawn from Gramsci.See Lynne Lawner's introduction to Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison (New York, 1973), p. 52.

who invented egyptian pt2

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