Origins Throughout the late 19th century, beginning in the 1860s, a sense of loyalty to the "Fatherland" developed in intellectual circles based in the Levant and Egypt, but not necessarily an "Arab Fatherland". It developed from observance of the technological successes of Western Europe which they attributed to the prevailing of patriotism in those countries. During this period, a heavy influx of Christian missionaries and educators from
Western countries provided what was termed the "Arab political revival", resulting in the establishment of secret societies within the empire. The former was also possible with the influence of the intellectual movement produced by the expansion of journalism using a unifying language, with the creation of newspapers in Arabic, as well as the publication of an Arabic dictionary and an encyclopedia during the late 1860s and the early 1870s. This allowed the questioning (albeit limited), of Ottoman power. Accordingly, in the 1860s, literature produced in the
Mashriq (the Levant and
Mesopotamia) which was under Ottoman control at the time, contained emotional intensity and strongly condemned the
Ottoman Turks for "betraying Islam" and the Fatherland to the Christian West. In the view of Arab patriots, Islam had not always been in a "sorry state" and attributed the military triumphs and cultural glories of the Arabs to the advent of the religion, insisting that European modernism itself was of Islamic origin. The Ottomans, on the other hand, had deviated from true Islam and thus suffered decline. The reforming Ottoman and Egyptian governments were blamed for the situation because they attempted to borrow Western practices from the Europeans that were seen as unnatural and corrupt. The Arab patriots' view was that the Islamic governments should revive true Islam that would in turn, pave way for the establishment of constitutional representative government and freedom which, though Islamic in origin, was manifested in the West at the time. (1847–1906) Arabism and regional patriotism (such as in Egypt or in the Levant) mixed and gained predominance over
Ottomanism among some Arabs in
Syria and
Lebanon.
Ibrahim al-Yaziji, a Lebanese Christian philosopher, called for the Arabs to "recover their lost ancient vitality and throw off the yoke of the Turks" in 1868. A secret society promoting this goal was formed in the late 1870s, with al-Yazigi as a member. The group placed placards in
Beirut calling for a rebellion against the Ottomans. Meanwhile, other Lebanese and
Damascus-based notables, mostly Muslims, formed similar secret movements, although they differed as Christian groups who disfavoured Arabism called for a completely independent Lebanon while the Muslim Arab societies generally promoted an autonomous
Greater Syria still under Ottoman rule. As early as 1870, Syrian Christian writer
Francis Marrash distinguished the notion of fatherland from that of nation; when applying the latter to
Greater Syria, he pointed to the role played by language, besides customs and belief in common interests, in defining national identity. This distinction between fatherland and nation was also made by Hasan al-Marsafi in 1881. By the beginning of the 20th century, groups of Muslim Arabs embraced an Arab nationalist "self-view" that would provide the basis of the Arab nationalist ideology of the 20th century. This new version of Arab patriotism was directly influenced by the Islamic modernism and revivalism of
Muhammad Abduh, the
Egyptian Muslim scholar, and
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Iranian political activist. They both shared their thoughts on reform for Islamic societies by publishing in the journal
al-Urwah al-Wuthqa. Abduh believed the Arabs' Muslim ancestors bestowed "rationality on mankind and created the essentials of modernity," borrowed by the West. Thus, while Europe advanced from adopting the modernist ideals of true Islam, the Muslims failed, corrupting and abandoning true Islam. Abduh influenced modern Arab nationalism in particular, because the revival of true Islam's ancestors (who were Arabs) would also become the revival of Arab culture and the restoration of the Arab position as the leaders of the Islamic world. One of Abduh's followers,
Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, openly declared that the Ottoman Empire should be both Turkish and Arab, with the latter exercising religious and cultural leadership. due to their historical role in the
early Muslim community. In the first few years of its existence, al-Fatat called for greater autonomy within a unified Ottoman state rather than Arab independence from the empire. Al-Fatat hosted the
Arab Congress of 1913 in Paris, the purpose of which was to discuss desired reforms with other dissenting individuals from the Arab world. They also requested that Arab conscripts to the Ottoman army not be required to serve in non-Arab regions except in time of war. However, as the Ottoman authorities cracked down on the organization's activities and members, al-Fatat went underground and demanded the complete independence and unity of the Arab provinces. Nationalist individuals became more prominent during the waning years of Ottoman authority, but the idea of Arab nationalism had virtually no impact on the majority of Arabs as they considered themselves loyal subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The British, for their part, incited the
Sharif of Mecca to launch the
Arab Revolt during the First World War. The Ottomans were defeated and the rebel forces, loyal to the Sharif's son
Faysal ibn al-Husayn entered Damascus in 1918. By now, Faysal along with many Iraqi intellectuals and military officers had joined al-Fatat which would form the backbone of the newly created Arab state that consisted of much of the Levant and the
Hejaz. To further tensions, a rift formed between the older nationalist members of various Syrian urban-class families and the generally younger nationalists who became close to Faysal, namely, his Hejazi troops, Iraqi and Syrian military officers, and Palestinian and Syrian intellectuals. The older guard was mainly represented by
Rida Pasha al-Rikabi, who served as Faysal's prime minister, while the younger guard did not have one particular leader. During the war, Britain had been a major sponsor of Arab nationalist thought and ideology, primarily as a weapon to use against the power of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Arab forces were promised a state that included much of the Arabian Peninsula and the
Fertile Crescent, the secret
Sykes–Picot Agreement between Britain and France provided for the territorial division of much of that region between the two imperial powers. During the interwar years and the
British Mandate period, when Arab lands were under French and British control, Arab nationalism became an important anti-imperial opposition movement against European rule.
Growth of the movement In the short-lived kingdom, Faysal's government used the press to promote the new nationalist vocabulary and a specifically nationalist history of the wartime revolt. The
Halab newspaper, out of Aleppo, published a proclamation requiring "Turks" to register with authorities, which historian Keith Watenpaugh sees as "part of a drive to cleanse the city of now "unnatural" elements". Watenpaugh also describes how
Halab equated "Arab" with "Arabic speaking" despite the prevalance of bi- and trilingualism in Aleppo at the time. A number of Arab revolts against the European powers took place following the establishment of the British and French mandates. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a new form of colonial control arose. As the
mandate system allowed for Britain and France to continue their presence in the region. Resentment of British rule culminated in the
Iraqi Revolt of 1920. The uprising which was carried out by the urban population as well as the rural tribes of Iraq ended in 1921, after which the British role was virtually reduced to an advisory one. In 1925, the
Druze of southern Syria under the leadership of
Sultan al-Atrash revolted against French rule. The revolt subsequently spread throughout Syria, particularly in Damascus. The French responded by systematically bombarding the city, resulting in thousands of deaths. The revolt was put down by the end of the year, but it is credited with forcing the French to take more steps towards Syrian independence. In
Egypt, resentment of British hegemony led to wide-scale
revolts across the country in 1919. As a result of three-year negotiations following the uprising, the British agreed to allow Egypt's official independence in 1922, but their military still held great influence in the country. The political leaders of the Egyptian revolution espoused
Egyptian nationalism, rather than an Arab nationalist alternative. The relative independence of Egypt, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia and
North Yemen encouraged Arab nationalists to put forward programs of action against colonial powers in the region. Notably,
Orit Bashkin observes how
Jewish communities in the newly established Arab states embraced these emerging anti-colonial narratives, and in the interwar period many Jewish intellectuals played a role in the formation of the new national language. In these early years, Jews formed an integral part of political institutions in various Arab states. According to historian Youssef Choueiri, the "first public glimmerings" of a pan-Arab approach occurred in 1931, during the convention of
World Islamic Congress in
Jerusalem which highlighted Muslim fears of the increasing growth of
Zionism in Palestine. Arab delegates held a separate conference and for the first time delegates from North Africa, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent convened together to discuss Arab matters. A
pan-Arabist covenant was proclaiming the Arab countries form an indivisible whole, denouncing and resisting colonialism as incompatible with the dignity and paramount aims of the Arab nation. The
Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama founded in 1931 was a major Islamist and Arab nationalist movement in
French Algeria. Its motto was "Islam is our religion, Algeria is our homeland, Arabic is our language", and emphasized an Arab-Islamic national identity in Algeria. Its founder
Abdelhamid ibn Badis identified Islam, Arabism, and nationalism as the three main components of the Algerian national character distinct from France, while his fellow 'alim Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani (1889–1983) later wrote extensive historical writings celebrating the Muslim and Arab ancestors of Algeria. This also drew Algerian public attention to what was happening in
Mandatory Palestine, describing the events in 1936 as an "insult to all Muslim countries and a degradation of Arabism" and events in 1947 as "test set up by God in order to examine the Muslims and the Arabs' faith". It also stressed the view that Palestine belongs to all Arabs and not only to
Palestinians. In 1955, it joined the Arab nationalist
National Liberation Front's insurgency against France in the
Algerian War. Plans for a near-future conference were made, but never came into play due to Faysal's death in 1933 and fierce British opposition. However, the
Arab Independence Party was formed by Palestinian and Iraqi activists from al-Fatat as a direct result of the Jerusalem conference on 13 August 1932. Most of the AIP's activities were centered in the Palestinian political field, but the party also worked towards achieving Arab unity and solidarity as a means to strengthen Arab resistance against the British Mandate in Palestine and increased Jewish settlement occurring there. In August 1933, the
League of Nationalist Action (LNA) was founded in
Lebanon by Western-educated professional civil service groups with the aims of creating a common Arab market and industrial base as well as the abolishment of customs barriers between the Arab countries. By proposing agrarian reforms to limit the power of landowners, abolishing what they considered "
feudalism" and promoting the growth of an industry, the LNA sought to undermine the
absentee landlords in the Levant who tended to encourage local nationalism and were open to working with European authorities or Jewish land purchasers. The LNA enjoyed a level of popularity throughout the 1930s, but did not survive into the 1940s. According to
Ella Shohat, the idea of Arabness and Jewishness as mutually exclusive gradually came to be shared by both Zionist and Arab nationalist discourse. Following the killing of the Syrian Arab guerrilla leader
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam by British forces in
Ya'bad, Arab-Jewish tensions in Palestine reached a climax.
Anti-Zionist sentiments reached a boiling point on 15 April 1936, when an armed group of Arabs killed a Jewish civilian after intercepting his car near the village of
Bal'a. After Jews retaliated by killing two Arab farmers near
Jaffa, this sparked an
Arab revolt in Palestine. The AIP along with Palestinian notables selected popular leader and
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Amin al-Husseini to lead the uprising. The
Arab Higher Committee (AHC), a national committee bringing together Arab factions in Palestine, was established to coordinate the uprising. To protest increased
Jewish immigration, a
general strike was declared and a political, economic, and social boycott of Jews soon ensued. , 1936; clockwise,
Jamal al-Husayni,
Hussein Khalidi,
Yaqub al-Ghusayn,
Fuad Saba, Alfred Roke, Abdul Latif Es-Salah,
Ahmed Hilmi,
Amin al-Husseini, and
Raghib al-Nashashibi.|250x250px The events in Palestine followed similar anti-colonial activities in Egypt, Syria and Algeria which helped inspire the uprising. In Egypt, week-long anti-British demonstrations had eventually resulted in the restoration of the Egyptian constitution while in Syria, a general strike held in January–February 1936 led to major negotiations for an independence deal with the French government. In Algeria, hostility towards the Jewish community saw an attack in
Constantine in the summer of 1934 in which a number of Jews were killed, in response to the events in Palestine. According to author Adeeb Dawisha, although the uprising had been quelled by 1939, it greatly "contributed to the growth of Arab nationalist sentiment" and began the development of "solidarity" between Arab governments. Meanwhile, a clandestine Arab nationalist society was formed in Iraq in 1938 which came to be known as Arab Nationalist Party (ANP). The ANP typically confined itself to influencing events and leaders in Iraq rather than taking the lead of a mass nationalist movement. King
Ghazi of Iraq was one such leader. Ghazi intended to build a strong Iraqi army and actively sought to annex
Kuwait. Many Arab nationalist politicians from Kuwait, who favored independence particularly after the discovery of oil there in 1938, were provided safe haven in Iraq after being repressed by the quasi-rulers of the
sheikhdom, the
Al Sabah family (Kuwait was still a British territory at the time). Ghazi died in a car accident in 1939, prompting a number of his army officers to allege the king was assassinated by British forces. That same year, al-Husayni arrived in Baghdad after escaping from Lebanon, giving a morale boost to the pan-Arab dimension in Iraqi politics. The prime minister at the time,
Nuri al-Said and the regent king
Abd al-Ilah, did not harbor the pan-Arabist sympathies Ghazi espoused. In one of the mufti's speeches he asked Arabs to unite and "kill the Jews wherever you find them." Throughout World War II, the Nazi government, seeking to take advantage of widespread anti-imperialist feelings in the Middle East, had broadcast
antisemitic messages tailored to Arabic-speaking Muslims in the Middle East via radio. The conflict in Iraq provoked anger and frustration throughout the Arab world and the British acknowledged the rapid growth of Arab nationalist feeling among the Arab population, British Foreign Secretary,
Anthony Eden, officially stated Britain's support of strong pan-Arab ties in a bid to ease anti-British sentiments in the region. The events of the region influenced the creation of the Arab Union Club in Egypt in 1942 which called for developing stronger ties between Egypt and the Arab world. Branches were subsequently opened in Baghdad, Beirut, Jaffa and Damascus, and Egyptian Prime Minister
Mostafa el-Nahas adopted its platform, pledging to help protect "the interests and rights" of the "sister Arab nations" and explore the "question of Arab unity." Afterward the
Levantine state and Iraq would form an "Arab League," to which other Arab states could join, that would oversee matters of defense, foreign policy, customs, currency and the safeguarding of minorities. The proposal reflected a combination of factors, namely the expansionist ambitions of the Hashemites, the attempt by Iraq's political establishment to secure the mantle of Arab leadership in their rivalry with Egypt and a genuine embrace of Arab identity by Iraq's leaders. Reasons for this ranged from the antipathy of the
Saudi royal family and the Damascus political establishment to the leadership ambitions of the rival Hashemite family to the belief by Lebanon's Maronite Christian community that Egypt's plan would not require conceding future independence. Between 25 September-8 October 1944, the leaders of Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Transjordan, Yemen and the Palestinian Arab community convened in
Alexandria, Egypt in a meeting hosted by the Egyptian government which ended with an agreement known as the "
Alexandria Protocol."
Peak under Egyptian leadership returns to cheering crowds in
Cairo after announcing the nationalization of the
Suez Canal Company, August 1956.|250x250px After the Second World War,
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of Egypt, was a significant player in the rise of Arab nationalism. He provided financial, diplomatic and military support to the
National Liberation Front, and based the
Algerian provisional government in Cairo. Albert Camus argued that
Algerian nationalism was closely tied to
Nasserism and Pan-Arabism in an essay titled 'Algeria 1958'. Algerian president
Houari Boumédiène, who pursued
Arab socialist and Pan-Arabist policies, drafted a new Algerian constitution in 1976 which declared "the unity of the Arab people is written in the community of the destinies of these people. When there will be the conditions for a unity based on the liberation of the popular masses, Algeria will engage itself in the promotion of the formulas of union, integration or fusion that may fully respond to the legitimate and deep aspirations of the Arab people". Like his predecessor
Ahmed Ben Bella, he imposed
Arab socialism as the state ideology and declared Islam the state religion, however he was more assertive than Ben Bella in carrying out
Arabization to reverse French colonization, especially between 1970 and 1977.
The question of Palestine and opposition to
Zionism became a rallying point for Arab nationalism from both a religious perspective and a military perspective. The fact that the Zionists were Jewish promoted a religious flavor to the xenophobic rhetoric and strengthened Islam as a defining feature of Arab nationalism. The humiliating defeat in the
1948 Arab–Israeli War strengthened the Arabs' resolve to unite in favor of a
pan-Arab nationalist ideal. Pan-Arabism was initially a
secular movement. Arab nationalists generally rejected religion as a main element in political identity, and promoted the unity of Arabs regardless of sectarian identity. However, the fact that most Arabs were Muslims was used by some as an important building block in creating a new Arab national identity. An example of this was
Michel Aflaq, founder along with
Salah al-Din al-Bitar and
Zaki al-Arsuzi of the Ba'ath Party in Syria in the 1940s. were implacably opposed to nationalism as a European pollution intended to weaken Islamic unity, al-Banna "had regarded the transfer of power to non-Arabs after the first four '
Rightfully Guided' caliphs as the true reason for the decline of Islam." Meanwhile, King
Faisal of Saudi Arabia sought to counter the influences of Arab nationalism and communism in the region by promoting
pan-Islamism as an alternative. He called for the establishment of the Muslim World League, visiting several Muslim countries to advocate the idea. He also engaged in a propaganda and media war with Nasser.
Women and nationalism Women were active participants in the nationalist mobilizations. Arab nationalism became an opportunity for women to appear in public spaces –which were traditionally reserved for men, not only as protesters but also as founders of their own unions and organizations. One example is
Hoda Sha'rawi, who marched with other women during the 1919 revolution against the British and would then create the
Egyptian Feminist Union. (Male) Islamic modernists Muhammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, along with Egyptian judge and intellectual
Qasim Amine, are considered precursors of women's ideological discussion due to their reflections on the role of women in Islamic reforms. However, women themselves also contributed to the intellectual foundations of the ideology by publishing articles where they made demands, such as the expansion of education, in journals dedicated to Arab history and culture.
Hind Nawfal established the first Arab women's magazine,
Al-Fatat, in Egypt. This title became the foremother of a subsequent group of publications that came to be known as women's journals. In this context, it has been argued that women's participation was used as an ideological instrument by Arab nationalism. They were considered "bearers of the nation", because they not only had the biological capability to give birth to future generations, but their own preparation signified a better education for their children. The former was a consequence of the creation of a "maternalist frame" for national and historical symbols, which women themselves adopted to construct their activism. Nermin Allam proposes the term "domestication of female public bravery" to refer to how women's participation has been reduced in the imaginary of the struggle to constrain their questioning of hierarchies. Women were important to the movement in relation to the family unit. But women's presence in the nationalist pursuit was crucial considering that "building a nation-state required the mobilization of the entire population, both male and female". The former can also be seen in Palestine, where women partaken in a demonstration in opposition to the heavy flow of Zionist immigrants in 1921, or with their gradual participation in Algeria's War of Independence as nurses, cooks, and even carrying bombs. In July 1957,
Djamila Bouhired was tried for allegedly bombing a cafe, which killed 11 civilians inside. Moreover, female political involvement has been considered by several authors as a necessary dimension of Arab nationalism, because it is, in essence, a "gendered discourse". The community that was imagined by nationalist groups was largely dependent on the status they assigned to women: modernist nationalists considered their inclusion in the public space as a necessary measure to achieve modernity, while conservative nationalists would vindicate their traditional roles as symbols of Islamic culture. In this sense, the connection of the "ideal Arab woman" to the conceptions of modernity made women "markers of cultural borders". Consistent with this logic would be the discussion on the unveiling of women, which came to be used as a symbol of progress in the early twentieth century by Egypt. Additionally, Tunisian women protested its usage for the first time during the 1920s and the 1930s. However, this image "...was not much different from that of a tractor, an industrial complex, or a new railroad in symbolizing the modern, the development, the progress"; its value was not related to any notion of emancipation. The question of women became more complex to deal with once the requirement of women's political involvement needed to coexist with the continuity of tradition. When Arab nationalism directly challenged Western cultural influence, women's compliance with Arab values was key to distinguish themselves from Europe, or not to become Western-like. The former can be exemplified by how the use of the veil was reintroduced as a nationalist symbol during the
Algerian War of Independence, in response to the strong French campaign against its use during the 1930s. Following this logic, the laws that regulated the private sphere became stricter, or tightened. Conversely, this assertion has been nuanced by Deniz Kandiyoti, under the argument that the relationship between Islam and women's rights is "politically convergent" and should not be generalized nor simplified without a proper study of each case. Because of this, the expansion of women's political and economic rights was achieved under nationalist regimes, but it was deficient when it came to questioning their domestic limitations, such as polygamy, divorce, and the minimum age for marriage. In Egypt, the 1956 Constitution granted women the right to vote for the first time in history, as well as their right to education and employment. Nasser also guaranteed economic rights to the working class and the peasantry regardless of gender. The Algerian constitution also acknowledged equal rights to all citizens, but until 1984 no changes were made in personal status codes, and social attitudes toward women receiving education beyond the primary level or going to work were restrictive. Associated is the phenomenon of
state-feminism, which refers to the state's co-option of women's agenda to gain political legitimacy and constrict female mobilization. This was a strategy used by Nasser, who banned the creation of autonomous organizations and formulated women's demands as social welfare issues, leading to a recession of Egyptian feminist activism.
Decline After the defeat of the Arab coalition by Israel during the 1967
Six-Day War—which the reigning Arab nationalist leader Nasser had dubbed
al-Ma‘raka al-Masiriya (the battle of destiny)—the Arab nationalist movement is said to have suffered an "irreversible" slide towards "political marginality". From the mid-1960s onward, the movement was further weakened by factional splits and ideological infighting. The formerly pro-Nasser
Arab Nationalist Movement, publicly abandoned
Nasserism in favor of
Marxism–Leninism and fell apart soon after. In 1966, the
Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party split into rival factions based in
Baghdad and
Damascus, respectively, though both the
Iraqi and
Syrian parties engaged in
demographic engineering against non-Arab populations. Most notably, the
Ba'athist Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq culminated in the
Anfal campaign, while the
Arab Belt project in Syria involved the expulsion of Kurds from public land used as pasture, and the settlement of Arabs, in their place. while
Fred Halliday cites the “failure of the secular state, in its economic, social, and state-building roles, as well as in foreign policies, that led to the rejection of nationalism, and associated ideas of socialism and revolution, in much of the Arab world”. Other factors given for the decline include: regional attachments such as Iraqi president
Abdul-Karim Qasim's "Iraq first" policy, suspicion of Arab unity by minority groups such as
Kurds in Iraq who were non-Arab, or
Shia Arabs in Iraq who feared Arab nationalism was actually "a
Sunni project" to establish "Sunni hegemony", the
Islamic revival, which grew as Arab nationalism declined, and whose Islamist adherents were very hostile towards nationalism in general, believing it had no place in Islam, and lack of interest by the movement in
pluralism,
separation of powers,
freedom of political expression and other
democratic concepts which might have "resuscitated" the ideology in its moment of weakness. However, Halliday notes how many ideas and goals of the emerging Islamist movements resembled, and even derived from, the programmes of the earlier, secular nationalists. He says, “the Islamist movements were beneficiaries and inheritors of the secular nationalist agenda”. Dawisha states the "irrelevance of secular nationalism to the concerns of the twenty-first century paved the way for increasingly violent competition between the state and political Islam for the loyalty, as well as for the hearts and minds of the Arab citizen", observing Arab nationalism has no role in this struggle. ==Attempts at unity==