MIDDLE-CLASS MODERNITY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF THE POLITICS OF NOTABLES IN INTER-WAR SYRIA

Extract

From Paris in June 1928, Edmond Rabbath (1901–91) sent to Saעdallah al-Jabiri (1893–1947) his recently published L'évolution politique de la Syrie sous mandat. While the book is an early exploration of the legal underpinnings of the French Mandate, it is also the first nationalist history of Syria. Adopting a now familiar historiographical trope that the Ottoman past was a period of decadence and unjust alien rule, Rabbath organized recent episodes from the turbulent history of the Eastern Mediterranean since World War I, including Faysal's Arab kingdom, the Syrian Arab Congress, the rebellions of Salih al-עAlawi and Ibrahim Hananu, and the Great Syrian Revolt, into a linear narrative of an unfolding modern national consciousness.¹ With a Preface by a prominent figure from pre-war Ottoman politics in the Levant, Shakib al-Arslan, the book outlined the logic in which much of inter-war Syrian opposition to French colonialism would be phrased:² France must adhere to the letter and spirit of the League of Nations' mandate and emancipate the Syrians upon their achievement of national maturity. With some reservations, Rabbath argued that this maturity had already been attained.³