Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920 (Cambridge Middle East Library, Series Number 3) by Philip S. Khoury

Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920 (Cambridge Middle East Library, Series Number 3) Reviews

• 
  Paul

  Philip S. Khoury’s Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism is a brief and easily intelligible book on Arab nationalism, but this belies its importance in presenting an innovative perspective on its subject, at least for the time. The author’s aim is to study the phenomenon from “the social and political environment in which Arab nationalism evolved as an ideological movement”, using Damascus as his case study because “the great notable families of that city […] were to play a disproportionate role in politically activating the Arab nationalist idea before World War I”. Both his preface and his conclusion clearly express what he is attempting to argue, making it easy to follow his train of thought.
  
  Organized in a chronological fashion, Khoury traces the history of the urban notables, or the “land-owning bureaucratic class”, as being one of the two holders of power in the 19th century Ottoman Empire, the other being the Ottoman state itself. The notables acted as intermediaries between the empire and the locals, able to draw the palace’s attention to the issues of their constituents, while at the same time facilitating the directives of the empire and its non-Arabic speaking governors. Prior to the 1860s, these notables were drawn from individuals in high-ranking religious positions, but the crisis of 1860 and the rise of landownership transferred power to secular dignitaries, who slowly gained the upper hand through the expansion of hereditary tax farms and intermarriage with Ottoman power holders. Khoury argues that there were twelve families, five whose power derived from religious positions and seven from secular ones, who held all of the most important posts and the lion’s share of the region’s wealth.
  
  The crisis of 1860 and changes brought by Ottoman Tanzimat reforms led to a shift in the power balance, wherein the notables became more closely aligned with the empire and could exercise greater control over the local, popular power base that had once been essential in maintaining their position. This new dynamic made them strong supporters of Ottomanism, but their position was threatened with the rise of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and the restoration of the constitution. The notables opposed the creeping Turkism and centralization instituted by the CUP and Arabism was coopted as an opposition movement, although not a secessionist one. The crisis was “the failure of the ruling élite in Istanbul to defend Islamic civilization against Western economic, cultural and political penetration”, but the majority opinion was that a solution could be worked out within the framework of the empire. It is these notables, Khoury argues, that are most responsible for politicizing and spreading Arabism, to the limited extent that it was popular prior to World War I.
  
  Until the war Damascus, and Syria as a whole, had played an important part in the development of Arabism, but they had a much smaller role during the Arab Revolt. The Damascenes, whose prior power had derived from their relationship with the Ottoman Empire, were reluctant to give up on Ottomanism until the war had been won, and even then adopted Arabism only as a tool for survival under Faisal’s rule of an Arab Syria. Faisal, struggling to meet the demands of nationalists while at the same time protecting himself from the French through diplomacy, called for an elected congress in hopes of gaining more support. While the conservative faction won in Damascus, the congress became mostly nationalistic and an obstacle to reconciliation with the French, causing Faisal to lose his nation to Europe in 1920, which marked the end of the Arabist experiment.
  
  Khoury’s argument is straightforward, clearly expressed in multiple locations, and supported by evidence that is informative, but not overwhelming. His book has become somewhat of a staple for understanding Arab nationalism, and not without good reason. While other works provide an intellectual and high political background, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism is an excellent supplement that helps explain the social context behind the limited popularity Arabism received prior to World War I, and how the idea came to be sufficiently popular for Sharif Husain to engage with it during the Arab Revolt.
  
• 
  Muhammed Elsukkeri

  إضاءات تفصيلية لفليب ماقبل ولادة الدولة السورية وبعدها ، حيث يقف فيليب عند الأسباب التي أدت للاضرابات في باب توما في دمشق ويغوص أكثر بعلاقة المركزية العثمانية بالمحلية السورية في الحقبة الحميدية ورصانة هذه العلاقة بعد احداث ١٨٦٠ وخاصةً بعد ولادة البيروقراطين الجدد بدلاً من الأعيان القدامى ، ويحاول خوري في القسم الاخير أن يشرح مراحل تحول العربية من فكرة الى أيدولوجية ومن ثم الى مشروع فدولة وينهي عند تجربة الدولة وسقوطها .