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The Elite, the Effendiyya, and the Growth of Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in Hashemite Iraq, 1921–1958

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Michael Eppel
Michael Eppel
Affiliation:
Lecturer in the Department of Middle East History, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel.
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Extract

One of the basic characteristics of the social conditions that marked political life in the Arab states in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s was the complex relationship between the politicians from among the elites of traditional notables of the Fertile Crescent cities and the effendiyya, or Westernized middle stratum. These elites consisted not only of traditional notable families, but also of families newly risen since the Tanzimat reforms in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. Since the end of World War I, these elites had stood at the center of the new states established by the Western powers—Great Britain and France—and it was now the politicians from within those elites who headed the struggle of those states for independence. This relationship, as well as the character of the elite of notables and the effendiyya, constituted an important element in the social conditions characterizing the political and ideological environment in which the Iraqi politicians from the elite of notables had operated, and in which Arab nationalism and Pan-Arab ideology became a highly influential factor.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , May 1998 , pp. 227 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Israel Gershoni, Haggai Erlich, and Sharon Neeman for their useful comments.

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38 The nationalist–rightist al-Istiqlāl and the National Democratic Party reorganized in 1946, following the lifting of the prohibition against party–political activity, which had been imposed following the Rashid ʿAli movement.

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