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The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Rifaat Ali Abou-El-Haj
Rifaat Ali Abou-El-Haj
Affiliation:
California State UniversityLong Beach, California
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Extract

This study examines the structures of thought behind a representative selection of recent Arab historical and social scientific works on the Ottoman era of Arab history to elicit their historically bound social uses.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , May 1982 , pp. 185 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

Notes

Author's note: My work on this project has been supported by a Summer Fellowship from The California State University Foundation, Long Beach, and research leave in the form of partial released time from teaching assignments from The University since 1978. Some of the ideas developed here were presented to a social science colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley, in April, 1980. Readers who are familiar with the work of Eric, J. Hobsbawm (among others, “The Social Function of the Past,” Past and Present [Oxford, 1972], no. 55)Google Scholar and that of Abdullah, Laroui (The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual [Berkeley, 1974],Google ScholarThe History of the Maghrib [Princeton, 1977], and others) will immediately recognize my indebtedness to these authors and to their scholarship.Google Scholar

For their critical reading and valuable suggestions at various stages of the development of this study, I am especially grateful to Barbara F. Abou-El-Haj, Raymond Lindgren, Talal Asad, Peter Gran, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, Heath Lowry, Andreas Tietze, Suleyman Khalaf, Yves Schemeil, and Frej Stambuli.

David, C. Gordon (Self-Determination and History in the Third World [Princeton, 1971]) purports to include the scholarship of the Arab world in his assessment of the uses of history. The author, who is an American trained in the main as a European historian, is limited to French and English as his research tools. As a consequence his treatment is confined to secondary works in these two languages along with a limited amount of oral interviews with historians in Lebanon and Algeria. The ideological uses of recent Arab history and social science of the Ottoman period are not specifically treated. The work is limited not only by its lack of reference to any scholarhip in Arabic, but also by the fact that it is outdated.Google Scholar

1 The assessment of the scientific value, utility, and attainment of this scholarship are not the main focus of this study. Elsewhere I have critically assessed for Libyan history of the Ottoman period some of the existing recent scholarship in Arabic and suggested in outline an alternative program of research (“An Agenda for Rewriting Libyan History of the Ottoman Period,” Majallat al-Buḥūth al Thrīkhiyya [Tripoli, 1979], 1.2, 65–83).Google Scholar In “The Future Arab Personality between Communalism and Individualism,” Man and Society in the Arab Gulf (Basra, 1979), III, 79–87, I assessed some of the ahistorical work done in Arabic in the social sciences (especially psychology and sociology of the “Arab personality”).Google Scholar

· Work on this study is still in progress. When completed it will reflect the assessment of the whole range of the scholarship and the exploration step by step of alternative and practical models for research with examples illustrating the multifaceted uses of the heretofore unused archival, primary, and other sources in both Arabic and Ottoman Turkish among other languages.

2 My first encounter with the attitude that the study of Ottoman history was of little consequence to early modern and modern Arab history occurred when I was a graduate student in the mid-1950s. Nabih Fans, then dean of Arab historians at The American University. Beirut. an American-trained Ph.D. in history and visiting professor at Princeton, questioned the usefulness for someone of Arab descent devoting his graduate education to the study of Ottoman history.

3 This chronological approach was offered by Professor Abdul-ʿAziz al-Dūrī in a public lecture which he gave at the University of Jordan (the text was published in the progressive journal, Dirāsāt ʿArabiyya (Beirut), 9,2 (1972). He draws a fairly accurate picture of the status of research and historical scholarship on the Arab world by Arabs, pointing out that there is a dearth of “new ideas.” He attributes the gap in part to a lack of opportunity for research at the university level, concluding that the way for Arab historians to shed the mantle of imitation and repetition of imported ideas is to mandate and support research at the universities. Moral exhortation in and of itself, however, does not explain why inferior and derivative scholarship continues to be produced.Google Scholar

4 Although until recently the Young Turks had been viewed as a progressive movement, or by some scholars even as a revolutionary one, new research is beginning to force us to revise these interpretations. For example, Donald Quataert showed that the Young Turks came into power in the midst of an economic and social upheaval especially in Anatolia. Their removal of Abdul-Hamid could thus be interpreted as a defensive gesture to stem the tide of social revolution which could have threatened their status as members of the ruling elite. Quataert's work was reported at the Fall 1978 meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with comments by Abou-El-Haj, R. A. (notice in MESA Bulletin (07, 1979), pp. 22–29.Google Scholar

5 For a handy and compact study see Ibrahim, Abu-Lughod, The Arab Rediscovery of Europe (Princeton, 1963);Google ScholarZeine, N. Zeine, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism (Beirut, 1966).Google Scholar

6 In the West, most of the centers for the study of the Middle East had focused in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s on either the classical Islamic period or on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Precluded was study of the history of the Ottoman Arab provinces. Those who wished to be trained in that period had to fend for themselves, with disastrous results in most instances.

7 On folklore, e.g., al-Turāth al-Shaʿbī (Folkloric Heritage), published in Baghdad since 1970.

8 lrmingard Staeuble (Free University, Berlin), “Some Consideration on the Formation of Psychology,” paper delivered at the XV International Congress of the History of Science, Edinburgh, August, 1977.

9 Edward, Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978)Google Scholar is mainly concerned with Western internal (even psychological) reasons for the adoption of the Orientalist and modernization paradigms. He does not treat the internal dynamics for the adoption by Near Eastern scholars of the Orientalist approach. In a recent, wide-ranging critique of Said's study, Sadik Jalal al-ʿAzm singles out for description the phenomenon of adoption by Near Eastern Arab intellectuals (e.g., Anouar, Abdul-Malek, Adonis, among others) of what he calls Ontological Orientalism in Reverse (i.e., essentialist view) as a means by which to understand their own societies. For leaving this phenomenon out of his study Said is faulted. The author does point out that Said himself at some points in his study actually resorts to these so-called essentialist Orientalist categories of thinking. Al-ʿAzm himself, however, neither ties the expropriation of the Orientalist paradigm for understanding of history and self to Near Eastern internal, specific, social dynamics, nor delineates its specific ideological purposes (“Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” Khamsin, 4 (1981), 5–26.Google Scholar

10 Elsewhere (see n. 1, above) I have written an alternative model for a research program for rewriting the history of one of the Arab Ottoman provinces.

11 On the role of the historical moment in the shaping of the historian and his writings, see Carr, E. H., What Is History? (New York, 1962).Google Scholar

12 “Started publication in 1975, at Baghdad.

13 Started publication in 1973 at Tripoli, Libya.

14 Started publication in 1978 by the Centre for Arab Unity Studies, Beirut.

15 Saʿd, ad-Dīn Ibrahim, “Ittijahat al-Ra⊃ī al-ʿAm al-ʿArabi nahwa ʿAqabāt al-Wihda…” (Tendencies in the General Arab Attitudes toward the Obstacles for (Arab) Unity…) al-Mustaqbal alʿArabī 14 (1980), 6–21 and subsequent issues.Google Scholar

16 The UAH has published the journal al-Mu⊃arikh al-ʿArabī in Baghdad since 1973.

17 Nābiyya, al-Isfahanī, “Taṭawur al-Ḥaraka al-Siyāsiyya fi MinḤaqat al-Maghreb al-ʿArabī” (Development of the Political Movement in the Arab Maghreb,” al-Mustaqbal al-ʿArabī, 14 (1980), 82–98, esp. p. 95.Google Scholar

18 E.g.. see the work of the Tunisian historian, Abdul-Jalil al-Tamimi.

19 Toynbee, A. J., A Study of History (Oxford, 1951–1955).Google Scholar

20 There is a general survey of critics of Toynbee in Arabic by Jamal, Z. Kasem, “Arnuld Toynbi wa nuqadihi,” Majallatal-Buḥūth wal-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabiyya, 9 (1978), 221–244. Kasem explains that Toynbee's hostility to nationalism is attributable to “his humanism [and] comes out quite clearly in his attack on nationalism” (p. 239, n. 22).Google Scholar

21 Toynbee, , A Study of History, Vol. VII (1954).Google Scholar

22 Ibid., table iv, after p. 772, where he has a chart of the seven religions and their derivatives.

23 Sousa, A. and Tikrit, H., eds., A. J. Toynbee Presentation Volume (Baghdad, 1979).Google Scholar

24 Muhammad, Anis, Madrast al-Tarikh al-Misrī fil-ʿAsr al-ʿuthmanī (Cairo, 1962), esp. pp. 10ff.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 8, 36–37.

26 For al-ʿAttar see Peter, Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism (Austin, 1979).Google Scholar Al-Khafaji's full name is Shihab ad-Din Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Omar al-Khafajī. His autobiography can be found in his work. Rīḥānat al-ʿAlbāb wa-Zahrat al-Ḥayaiul-Dunyā, Abdul-Fattah, M. al-Hilu, ed. (Cairo, 1967).Google Scholar This is but one of twenty known “publications” by Khafaji. An unpublished version of the “Rihanat” in the Manuscripts Collection of the University of California, Los Angeles, Collection 898, MS 177, which has some significant variants from the Cairo edition. (I am grateful to Andreas Tietze for having drawn my attention to this manuscript.) Incidentally, at no point does al-Khafaji identify himself as an “Egyptian.” At one point he differentiates between people in terms of how well they had mastered the Arabic language. His name can be found in two Ottoman biographical dictionaries: in printed version in Mehmed, Süreyya, Sijil-i Osmani (Istanbul 1308/1890–1891), III, 176–177,Google Scholar and in major unpublished one, Shaykhi, , “Vekayʿ ul-fuzela,” Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, HO. 126, vol. I, ff. 140a-b.Google Scholar

27 The most recent of the consequences of this type of thinking can be found in the quasi popular and pseudohistorical works of Fawzi, H., al-Sindibād al-Miṣrī (Cairo, 1961),Google Scholar and Sadat, A., In Search of an Identity (New York, 1978).Google Scholar Although neither author would claim his study to be a work of scholarship, both present their studies as historical analysis of the uniqueness of Egyptian history, and are meant to be a justification of Egypt's separate identity and nationality. Fawzi visited Jerusalem recently and delivered a lecture on “The Continuity of the Egyptian Personality,” subsequently published in The Jerusalem Quarterly (1980). This lecture, its place of publication, and the implied revival of separatism and the revival of a qutrī nationalism and identity have come as logical expression of the unilateral trends that the Camp David Agreements represent. The new departure which this trend has started is the more drastic when it is recalled that Egypt had been in recent history in the vanguard, championing a united Arab nation and identity. In a different context, but along somewhat parallel lines, Anouar Abdul-Malik treats Egyptian history mainly in terms of the continuities it displays rather than the dynamics of the historical moment for the continuity. The most recent rendition of this view was expressed in December, 1980. See al-Mustaqbal al-ʿArabī, 22 (1980), 135–139.Google Scholar

28 Ali, al-Wardi, Dirasāt fī tabiʿat al-Mujtamaʿ al-ʿIraqī (A Study of the Nature of Iraqi Society: A Preliminary Attempt at the Study of the Larger Arab Society in Light of Modern Sociology) (Baghdad, 1965). The long title reflects al-Wardi's purposes.Google Scholar

29 Al-Wardi wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on lbn Khaldun in 1950 for the University of Texas. Later he published Mantiq ibn Khaldun fi Daw⊃ Haḍaratih wa-Shakhsiyyatih (Ibn Khaldun's Logic in Light of His Culture and His Personality) (Cairo, 1962).Google Scholar In a monumental series (six volumes, some with supplementary volumes) al-Wardi tries to give a panoramic view through a synopsis of mainly historical episodes illustrating the differentiation of Iraqi society from others. In the introductory volume, which sets the tone for the rest, the author resorts to ad hoc and commonsensical explanations. Again no historical explanations are given for the persistence of “tribal practis.” The introduction seems to be based on late nineteenth- and twentieth-century hearsay. Volume I is based on Longrigg, S. H., Birge, J. K., Creasy, E. S., Brockelmann, C., and Browne, E. G. (idem, Lamaḥāt ljtimāʿiyyah min Tarīkh al-ʿIraq al-Ḥadith [Baghdad, 1972–1979]).Google Scholar

30 Al-Wardi, , Dirasat, pp. 18 ff. Although he bewails the dependence of other scholars on external models and categories of thinking for their studies, al-Wardi himself is not averse to using them himself, expecially Toynbee and William Wilicox.Google Scholar

31 Discussion of al-Wardi's treatment of Iraqi society in Ahmad, Abu-Zayd, “Kabil wa Habil: Qiṣat al-ṣiraʿ al-ḥadar wal-bidāwa fil-ʿAlam alʿArabī” (Abel and Cain: The Story of the Conflict between the Settled and the Nomad in the Arab World), Majallat Maʿhad al-Buhūth wal-Dirāsat at-ʿArabiyyah (Cairo), 1, 1–2 (1961), 339–420.Google Scholar

32 The commonalities and the complementarities could perhaps best be illustrated by the focus of a whole generation of Western scholars on Muslim and Arab liberals and on the “liberal age” of Arab history. To my mind, at least, the incisiveness and insights of these studies come as much from the understanding of self by these scholars as from an understanding of the very limited number of their counterparts and fellow liberals in modern Arab history. What I have in mind are Western scholars who have as their primary focus the study of such figures as Abdo and Afghani. Albert Hourani, to his great credit, has begun to disengage from the relevance and importance that his book Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age had given to liberals and the faith in liberalism. In a lecture given in Los Angeles late in the 1970s, he voiced his growing doubts about the significance or relevance of the liberal focus in his own research. His host, assuming that Hourani was merely being modest, began to remonstrate with him in public about the continued relevance of Mr. Hourani's liberal focus for the understanding of modern Arab history.