8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

1/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

2/39

BOOK

DRENCHED

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

3/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

4/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

5/39

OXFORD PAMPHLETS ON WORLD AFFAIRSNo. 40

THE

A R A B SBY

H . A . R . G I B B

O X F O R DAT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1940

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

6/39

T H E Arab world described in this pamphlet, and surveyed region by region, stretches from the south-eastern

corner of Arabia, where the coastline of Oman facesKarachi, less than 500 miles across the Arabian Sea, tothe Atlantic seaboard of Morocco on the north-westernflank of Africa; a distance, from east to west, of nearly5,000 miles. In Asia it includes Arabia proper, I ra q ,Syria, Palestine1, and Transjordan; in Africa it includesEgypt, Libya , Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. T h e totalarea is some 3,300,000 square miles, considerably greaterthan that of the U. S .A . T h e total population is over 50millions.

The author describes the effect of the impact of theWest upon this huge cluster of Arab lands and the reawakening of Arab self-consciousness and Arab Nationalism. 'Gone is the lethargy, the political apathy, thecalm acceptance of good and evil as the Will of God.From end to end the Arab world is in travail.'

H. A. R. Gibb is Professor of Arabic in the Universityof Oxford and the author of several standard works onArabic history, culture, and literature. He edited thesymposium 'Whither Islam ?' (Gollancz, 1932).

' See Oxford Pamphlet No. 31, Palestine, by James Parkes.

Printed in Great Britain and published by

TH E OXFORD UN IVE RSI TY PRESSAmen House, E.C &LONDO N ED IN BU RG H GLASGOW NE W YORK TORO NTA

M I L I O U I X E CAP ETOWN BOM BAY CALUCA TTA M ADRAS

HUMPHREY MILFORDPublished to Un

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

7/39

THE ARABS

I. The Psychological Background

THE Arabs are a people clustered round anhistorical memory. Over thirteen hundred

years ago the Prophet Mohammed preached areligion of monotheism to the townsmen and tribesof Western Arabia . In 622 he founded a t iny stateat Med ina. W i t h i n eighty years the armies of that

state had spilled over the whole of Western Asiaup to the mountains of Afghanistan and acrossN o r th Af rica to the At lant ic . Wherever they went,they founded colonies which imposed their language, their racial consciousness, and to a largeextent their religion, on the conquered peoples;and from their fusion (though some resisted fusion)

a new and greater Ara b nation was born . To thequestion 'Who are the Arabs?' there iswhatever^ethnographers may sayonly one answer whichapproaches historic truth: all those are Arabs forwhom the central fact of history is the mission ofMohammed and the memory of the Arab Empireand who in addition cherish the Arabic tongue andits cultural heritage as their common possession.

Until little more than ahundred years ago.theArab peoples subsisted on this heritage of medievalMosl em culture . By its balance, balance social and economic interests and the religious sanction whichthey had acquired, the old "Moslem system fostereda sense of well-being and a rather apathetic attitudetowards politics and questions of government.Although the vitality of the system was graduallydiminishing, there was 30 incentive to changes

4655.40 3

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

8/39

THE ARABS

which might disturb the social harmony. Living inthe traditional way^jn^their self-contained world,

the Arabs knew nothing of the political and economic evdution of Europe, and still thought of theTranks* as a barbarian nation beyond the pale.infidels to whom the Sultan had condesecended togrant trading privileges in their cities.

It was consequently with a sense of shock andoutrage that they witnessed and suffered the intrusion of Europe. From the west and from the eastthe 'Franks' encircled the Arab countries. Theyimposed their will upon Sultans and upon lesserprinces and chiefs. 'Prankish' armies intervenedin their wars, 'Frankish' consuls, merchants, andcolonists in their local affairs and economic life.

From the Arab point of view, the nineteenth century is a tale of increasing European penetration,of increasing dislocation of the old order of thingsand, amongst the politically minded and the moreeducated, of bewildered effort to grasp the secret ofEurope'ssuccessand turn it toaccount. But whathurt most of all was that the Moslem Arabs, whohad always looked upon Islam as the ultimate revelation of truth and upon themselves as the patternfor other nations, were now for the first timethrown into contact with peoples who despisedthem and all that they stood for. In this, muchmore than in the political and economic revolution,

lay the seeds of future conflict.At first, the Western tide seemed to cany every

thing before it. While the great majority of thepeople were only dimly conscious of the changes

4

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

9/39

THE ARABS

taking place around them, new generations passedthrough schools organized and directed by Western

agencies or on Western models, and entered intoa public life whose institutions and ideals werealmost wholly borrowed from the West. Aboveall, a new Arabic press spread the new ideas farand wide, and combined with the rapid increase ofpersonal contacts with the West to form a newmentality, set against the background of the oldsocial and religious tradition. However imperfectly the new institutions might work, especiallyin the territories still governed from Istanbul,there could be no going back to the old order inpolitics, at least.

But in the deeper things of the spirit the Western

invasion, here as everywhere, brought about a conflict which has grown sharper with every decade.To the young, the active, the ambitious, the self-assertive, the seeker after novelty, and the reformer,the West opened up new vistas. Their impatience,their lack of experience, the contempt or hostilityof some of them towards the old institutions, allthese stirred up resentment; and a real and well-

justified fear of the social and intellectual effects ofwesternization has succeeded so far in curbing thethreatened revolution. A long and tenacious battlewas engaged between the two philosophies, which,now in one shape, now in another, continues to

play a vital part in the inner life of the Arabpeoplesand shows no signs of abating. But one thing wasand is shared by the partisans of both causes.Thecomingof the West had shaken the Arabs out

5

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

10/39

THE ARABS

of their long medieval lethargy. Slowly at first, butwith increasing force and in ever-widening range,

the national consciousness revived to serve asrallying-point and inspiration in the effort to avoidcomplete surrender to the spiritual and materialforces of the West.

I I . The Human Elements

The area of Greater Arabia has suffered littlechange since the conquests of the seventh century.From the Persian Gulf and the foot-hills of theIranian mountains it extends westwards throughSyria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeriato Morocco and the Atlantic Ocean. At the heightof their power the Arabs were masters also of Iran,

Sicily, and most of Spain and Portugal. To-dayonly the Arabic-speaking (but not Arab) populationof Malta remains to witness to their former seapower in the Mediterranean. In the Indian Oceanthey founded colonies, which still exist, on theeast coast of Africa and in the Dutch East Indies.But the only effective extension of Arab territoryin the last thousand years has been into the northernSudan.

A peculiar feature common to all the Arab landsis that they are bounded by deserts, which oftenseparate them from one another. It is perhapslargely for this reason that the Arabs as a whole

are pictured in the popular imagination as Bedouins,that is to say, as camel-rearing nomads. But intruth the Arabs are dividedand so far as we knowhave always been dividedinto two main social6

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

11/39

THE ARABS

groups: the settled townsmen and the nomad herdsmen, with a fluctuating intermediate body of culti

vators, half settled and half nomadic. It is not thenomad, but the townsman, who has in all agesguided the political destinies of the Arabs and beenthe standard-bearer of Arab culture. On rare occasions the energy of the Bedouins has been harnessedby the sagacity of political leaders, and they haveplayed a valuable role as a reservoir of fresh forcescounteracting the physical degeneration to whichthe settled Arab has often been exposed. But leftto themselves they constitute an elemental force ofdestruction, always menacing the security and culture of the settled lands. The settled communitiesformed, as it were, oases of civilization, engaged in

a perpetual struggle to maintain themselves againstthe ceaseless pressure and infiltration of the nomadsand exposed to repeated fluctuations of fortune.And, broadly speaking, for several centuries priorto 1800 the nomads had steadily encroached onthe settled lands, in some regions, such as Iraqand Algeria, destroying the works of civilization

outside a few walled cities, in all sapping theireconomic strength and impoverishing their cultural life. The Ottoman Turkish Sultans, thesuzerains of all the Arab lands (except Morocco)since the sixteenth century, could do little ornothing to arrest this process; the most that lay

within their powerand this they didwas toprevent the total relapse of Arab Asia and Egyptinto barbarism.

It was only in the nineteenth century that the

7

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

12/39

THE ARABS

tide turned. The strong centralized governmentset up in Egypt by Mohammed Ali (1805-49) not

only broke up the Bedouin confederations in thebasin of the Nile but also the powerful nomadicempire of the Wahhabis in Arabia, which hadthreatened to overrun Iraq and Syria. A little laterthe Ottoman Government, with its new militaryforces organized on European models, took up thetask of restoring the foundations of law and orderin its Arab territories. The difficulties with whichit was confronted were far greater than those inEgypt, and the means at its disposal were sadlyinsufficient, but it succeeded, even if only to alimited extent, in curbing the nomad and givingsome security to the townsman and the cultivator.

The measure of its achievement can be more fullyappreciated when it is remembered how manyyears of labour, and what sacrifices in lives andtreasure, it cost the far more powerful FrenchGovernment to pacify and settle Algeria after itsoccupation in 1830. To the very end of Ottomanrule, however, the recovery of Arab Asia remainedprecarious, and it was not until the period after thewar of 1914-18 that the menace of the nomad begandefinitely to recede.

When we take up our survey of the Arab countries region by region, therefore, we must bear inmind the paradox which every one of them presents

in greater or less degree. All are heirs of a highly developed civilization, with a rich tradition of spiritualand intellectual culture, but all are emerging froma condition of political, economic, and even moral

8

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

13/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

14/39

THE ARABS

the terms of our definition, constitute the foundation of Arab national consciousness.

But even amongst the Arabs themselves thereexist other lines of division, whose origins andcauses are intimately connected with the historicalfoundations of the Arab movement, and which aretherefore the more resistant to well-meant effortsto heal the breach or seek a compromise. Outwardly, the division between Sunni and Shi'itegoes back to a dynastic quarrel over the politicalsuccession to the Prophet Mohammed. The Sunnismaintained the rightness of the historical order ofsuccessionAbu Bekr, Omar, Othman, and thenA l i ; the Shi'ites maintained that A l i , the cousinand son-in-law of the Prophet, was the only legiti

mate successor and that the others were usurpers.But the quarrel perpetuated itself by developinginto a religious schism, to produce at length differentmentalities. Broadly speaking, Sunnism stood forthe tolerant, compromising, Erastian outlook ofestablished orthodoxy, while Shi'ism took on thecharacter of a secretive and often intolerant sectarianism. The schism is sti ll a live issue in Iraq,where the Shi'ite tribesmen and population of thetowns of Najaf, Kerbela, and Kadhimayn actuallyoutnumber the Sunnis, and in Arabia, whereShi'ism is the dominant power in the Yemen. InSyria the position is complicated by the survival of

three separate communities, each professing a distinct form of heterodox Shi'ismDruse, Nusairi,and Isma'iliwith peculiar local traditions andcharacteristics.

10

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

15/39

THE ARABS

Elsewhere in the Arab world Shi'ism is nonexistent, but North-west Africa and Oman in

Arabia still harbour remnants of another schismwhich broke out in the century after the death ofMohammed . T h e Kharijites ('Seceders') were anextreme militant and puritanical sect, who wagedwar on their more complaisant fellow-Moslems,and their present-day successors in the AlgerianM'zab and in Oman are still distinguished by theirpuritanical habits and outlook. T h e Wahhabis ofCentral Arabia constitute in one sense an intermediate group between the orthodox Sunnis andthe Kharijites, with whom, indeed, they wereidentified by the orthodox on their first appearance.But they claim to belong to a puritan movement

of later origin which was reckoned one of the four'schools' of orthodox Sunnism, and this claim hasbeen allowed by other Moslems generally.

It is a delicate matter to assess the influence of

such sectarian divisions upon the political andsocial problems of the Arab countries to-day. T h e

extremer Nationalists either ignore or minimizethem, and can point to many instances wherefollowers of the different sects have united indemonstrations or political activities. But althoughunity of feeling on external questions is real andundeniable, it has only a secondary and indirecteffect on the vital problem of internal stability.

And in this connexion the doctrinal differences areinfinitely less important than the inherited traditions, customs, and outlook which distinguish thevarious groups.

I I

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

16/39

THE ARAB WORLD

Country

E G Y P T

IRAQ

S Y H I A -

L H S A N O N

PALESTINE

THANSJORDAN

SA'UDI

ARABIA

YESMEN

Status Area(sq. miles)

OMAN

Independent State inalliance with GreatBritain

Independent State inalliance with Great 'Britain

French mandated territories

British mandated terri tory

Mandated territory intreaty relations withGreat Britain

Independent State

Independent State

Independent State intreaty relations withGreat Britain

383.000'

116,600

57,000

10,429

34.740

About800,000

75.000

82,000

Population

193715.004.525

Exports Imports

Annual Revenue 1937 1937

(see note at foot) (millions of gold

dollars)

Remarks

19353,560,456

19383,342,000

19331.435.285*

About300,000

1930-40L.E. 40.594 .S00 115 6

1938-0Dinars 5,795.530* 16 3

1933Fes. 551.147.180 2 5 0

1938-9L.Pal. 5.937,280 170

1938L.Pal. 529,615*

About4,500,000

About3,500,000

About500,000

1 of which only 13,600111-a are cult ivate d

* exclusive of oil royml-27 9 ties (din ars

1.977.458)

2 including about46 4 400 .00 0 Jews

4 including a grant-in-aid from the I m

perial Treasury

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

17/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

18/39

THE ARABS

III. Egypt

Geography and history have combined to makethe fortunes of the different Arab countries veryunequal, and their inequality was enhanced, ratherthan lessened, during the nineteenth century,chiefly as a result of the varying intensity of theWestern impact and of the local reactions to it. Intwo regions, Egypt and Lebanon, which werelargely autonomous and in which Western influences were continuous and far-reaching, there wasa rapid expansion of material and intellectual culture, and in both the seeds of nationalism hadbegun to bear fruit well before the end of thecentury. In the directly administered Arab pro

vinces, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, progress waslimited by the slow and often reactionary methodsof the Ottoman Empire, and Western influenceswere mainly filtered through the muddy vessel ofTurkish administration. Arabia, little affected bythe outside world, pursued its immemorial waysuntil the war of 1914-18. Finally, North-westAfrica, after several centuries of decay and disorderunder Turkish corsairs and Moroccan Sultans, hasonly in the last two generations seen a new regime

built up under direct French control.

Thus in the Arab family Egypt occupies theplace of elder brother. Its population is not far

short of all the others put together, and in itseconomic, social, and cultural progress it has faroutdistanced them. Yet at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was a poor and largely derelict

14

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

19/39

THE ARABS

country with a population of some three millions.The factors which have brought about this spec

tacular advance are worth examining, since it is inthe light of what Egypt has accomplished that thepotentialities of the other Arab countries can bemost fairly estimated.

The freedom from Turkish control which Egypthas enjoyed in its internal affairs since MohammedAli founded the reigning dynasty in 1805 was ofimportance in enabling it to develop on its ownlines. But this in itself would have meant little hadnot the Khedives taken advantage of Western skilland technique to develop its resources, a processcontinued and extended after the British occupationin 1882. The wealth of Egypt has hitherto lain in

its agriculture, and its increasing prosperity hasbeen due primarily to the great extension andimprovement of its irrigation system by diggingnew canals, building barrages and dams to formreservoirs, and by scientific methods of drainingoff the surplus water. One consequence of specialimportance was the expansion of economic crops,particularly cotton and sugar, on which the economic well-being of Egypt now depends. It isonly quite recently that steps have been taken toround off the economic progress of Egypt byfostering industries to utilize the raw materialsagricultural and mineralavailable in the country.

Since physical conditions set a limit to the extension of cultivable land, it is mainly on this industrial movement that the solution of its populationproblems and its increase in wealth must depend.

15

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

20/39

THE ARABS

This, however, involves a difficult question ofways and means. The economic advance of Egypt

during the last hundred years would have beenseriously crippled without the freedom of entryenjoyed by foreign capital. Even at the presentday, by far the largest volume of liquid capital inthe country is in foreign hands. But foreigncapital has acquired in the minds of Egyptians andother Eastern peoples a sinister political significance, and the general tendency is to look to theState to mobilize capital for industrial purposes.Although the State may be able to do so to a certainextent, and although Egyptian enterprise has in thelast twenty years played an important part inindustrial development, yet the rate of progress

in the future will necessarily be affected by thepresence or absence of Western co-operation inmeeting the larger economic issues.

The advance in material culture was paralleledby the progress in intellectual culture during thisperiod. And just as Egypt's economic development

caused no breach with the past, but was rather arebuilding and modernization of its old economywith the aid of Western technique and capital, sointellectually it has developed in the main bymodernizing the medieval Arabic culture with theaid of some European concepts and methods. Anextremely valuable contribution in this sense was

made in the decades before and after 1900 by immigrants from Lebanon, which, under the stimulus ofeducational missions from the West, had experienced a sudden uprush of vital energy. The out-

16

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

21/39

THE ARABS

come was to confer on Egypt an undisputed primacy in the Arabic world, both in the fields of tradi

tional Moslem culture and in the newer scientificliterary fields, a primacy which has been maintained and increased in the years since 1918. Inparticular, the wide circulation of the Egyptianpress in other Arab and Moslem countries constitutes one of its main international assets.

The growing confidence and self-reliance calledout by all these signs of progress inevitablystrengthened Egyptian self-consciousness. A l though conservative Moslem feeling and the newforces produced by the ferment of Western ideashave often come into conflict on internal questions,they readily join in alliance against external pres

sure. The first Nationalist movement, which brokeout in 1878, was suppressed in a military sense bythe British occupation. But Nationalism had takenfirm root and grew until it triumphed over a somewhat half-hearted British opposition in 1922, andat length in 1936 a full settlement and alliance wasnegotiated with Great Britain.

To sum up, then, the progress of Egypt has beendue to a long and uninterrupted process of modernizing its economic assets with assistance fromforeign capital, to a wide tolerance in matters ofeducation and intellectual culture, which has permitted the rise of an enlightened and instructed

middle class, and to the growth of a spirit ofpatriotism in all sections of the population. Butit must be remembered that Egypt started with therare advantage of being a homogeneous unit,

17

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

22/39

THE ARABS

physically, economically, cu ltu ra lly , and polit ically.The only apparent exception to this uniformity is the

existence of a small minority of Coptic Christians.But the Copts have so far identified themselveswith the interests of their Moslem fellow citizensthat fr ic tion has been reduced to a mini r t iu m and theunity of the nation is in fact unbroken.

The advantages enjoyed by Egypt in its unityand relative self-sufficiency, and the comparativelylong and slow process of its moral and materialregeneration have, however, produced an outlookwhich is sharply distinguished from that of theother Arab countries . T he eyes of Egyptians arefocused on Egypt, and while they do not denyEgypt's kinship with the Arab world and interest

in its fortunes, they regard Egypt as a separate andindependent unit . If we ho ld to our definition ofArabs, we must exclude from them large sectionsof Egyptians, for whom the re-emergence of Egyptis a more important fact than the memory of theArab Empire, and who tend to set the glories of

Rameses II alongside the mission of Mohammedas equal elements in the ir tr ad it ion. Th is att itudemay perhaps be modified substantially in the courseof the present conflict, but whatever the outcomethe relations of Egyptian Nationalism with ArabNationalism will be one of the decisive factors inthe future of the Near and Middle East.

IV. Arab Asia

For the spirit which animates Arab Asia is uncompromisingly Arab, glorying in the Arab tradi-

18

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

23/39

THE ARABS

tion and the Arab Empire and dreaming of theirrevival. In the long lethargy of the Ottoman period

it seemed that this spirit was dead, and only thepersistent survival of the Arabic language and theArabic literary heritage distinguished the Arabfrom the Turk. But the ferment of ideas whichstirred Lebanon roused it to new life, first of allamongst both Christians and Moslems there, andthen, as the yoke of Turkish centralization grewheavier, among the Moslems of Inner Syria andIraq. Many leading Arabs, as officers in the Turkish army and administration, or as professionalmen in Istanbul, were exposed to the same currentsof thought as were moulding Turkish nationalism.Their opportunity came in the war of 1914-18 when,

with British and French support mediated throughthe Sharif of Mecca, the leaders of Arab Nationalismjoined in the movement to shake off Turkish rule,and visualized the creation of a united Arab State.

That their vision was not immediately realizedwas due partly to the political rivalries of the victors, partly to deeper causes. The British andFrench Governments had in fact come to an agreement in 1916 on the division of the northern Arablands between them, partly as directly administeredareas, partly as zones of influence. This divisionwas substantially maintained in the form of Mandates'Iraq and Palestine, with Transjordan, being

allotted to Great Britain, Lebanon and Inner Syria,with the Jazirah (Upper Mesopotamia), to France.There were Nationalist risings in Iraq in 1920 andin Syria in 1925-6, but both were suppressed.

19

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

24/39

THE ARABS

Looking beneath the surface, however, it is verydoubtful whether in the conditions of 1918 and the

following years a united State of Iraq, Syria, andPalestine would have been practicable, except underthe control of a single European Power. A l l wereregions of sparse population, and not only backward and unorganized in their economy but stillhalf nomadic in their social structure. The vitalityof Lebanon had been drained, mainly by mass emigrations to the Americas. There were no industriesto speak of, few exportable crops, and no mineralresources except the recently discovered oil-fieldsof Iraq. T he crying need of capital for even theprimary necessities of reconstruction could nothave been met unless a regime which promised

some measure of stability had been set up.But poverty was not the only hindrance. Real as

were the enthusiasm and devotion of the Nationalistleaders, the great mass of the people had no politicalexperience and could not yet shake off the longtradition of local rivalries. Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis

and Shi'ites in Iraq, in Syria Moslems, CatholicMaronites, Orthodox, and Druzes not to speak ofnarrower but still more intense lines of divisionhad still to learn the art of mutual tolerance andco-operation. Everywhere, except in Lebanon, theeducation which would broaden their outlook andtit them to be citizens was in a rudimentary stage,

and even in Lebanon education, though morehighly developed, was dominated by the spirit ofsectarianism.

But twenty years have brought about far-reaching20

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

25/39

THE ARABS

changes, especially in Iraq, since 1932 an independent State in alliance with Great Britain. Many

years must pass before all economic weaknesses canbe eliminated, but sound foundations have beenlaid, with the help of royalties on Iraq i oil . Education and political responsibility have advanced at arapid rate. Local and sectarian rivalries, if not yeta thing of the past, have lost much of their sharpness. Part of the credit for these advances mustfairly be given to the Mandatory Power, and muchto King Faysal and his advisers. But amongst thepeople the incentive has come from their faith inthe national destiny, and they have striven with afierce intensity (which has sometimes led them intoexcesses) to overcome all the obstacles in its way.

In Syria-Palestine this faith is not less strong,but progress has been slower. An arbitrary divisioninto four StatesPalestine, Transjordan, Lebanon,and (Inner) Syriaand several autonomous regionshas blocked political co-operation, intensified localrivalries and sectarian feeling, and hindered any

rational economic reconstruction. In Lebanon anextremist section of the Maronites has been encouraged to maintain an irreconcilable attitude, andin the Jazirah a wedge has been driven betweenSyria and Iraq by the settlement of non-Arabrefugees. Serious as the minorities problems are inMiddle and Northern Syria, however, their gravity

and the violence of Arab reaction are much less thanthose raised by the mass immigration of Jews intoPalestine to form the Jewish National Home foreshadowed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

21

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

26/39

THE ARABS

To this policy Arab opposition has been unrelenting, not only in Palestine, but throughout the

Arab world and not least in Iraq, Not that theArabs of Asia are 'anti-Semite' (as is sometimesgrotesquely said), though there is a real danger thatthe local antagonism engendered in Palestine between Jew and Arab may spread to the other Arabcountries. They would probably still agree to theestablishment of a Jewish National HomeasFaysal agreed to it provisionally in 1919if theycould be certain that it would not impede thepolitical and economic development of the Arabworld. But there is widespread fear of Jewish economic penetration and the power of Jewish finance,and this fear reinforces their determination to frus

trate any design to set up a Zionist State in Palestine. For the Arabs are firmly convinced that theArab countries are destined to unite together sooneror later, and that a united Arab State was in factpromised by the British and French Governmentsin 1916; and, believing this, they cannot afford tosee a foreign State set up in the strategic linkbetween Arab Asia and Egypt, especially whenthey fear that, under pressure from European refugees, the policy of that State would be an expansionist one. And if it may be truly said that theyunderrate the vital and spiritual driving force ofZionism, the chances of reaching a peaceful solution

of the problem have been sadly diminished bydelay, timidity, and prejudice in the handling of it.For nearly twenty years bitter feelings, made morebitter by the repression of repeated risings and

22

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

27/39

THE ARABS

disturbances, were allowed to grow almost unchecked. Only wi th the issue of the 'White Paper1

of April 1939 have the foundations been laid of astable policy which may serve to reconcile the localinterests of both Jew and Arab, pending a settlement which will embrace the whole or the greaterpart of Arab Asia.

The fourth Syrian State, Transjordan, is an improvised creation of the British Colonial Office,dating from 1922. Transjordan is the meeting-place of Syria and the Arabian desert, and oscillatesfrom the one to the other according to the generalstate of affairs in the Near East. Almost whollynomadic a few years ago, it has made, under theAmir Abdullah, considerable progress in settle

ment, security, and education, but it obviouslycannot remain an independent unit in perpetuity.It was only in the nineteen-twenties that the

chronic internal rivalries and tribal feuds of Arabiaproper were supplanted by a single State, embracingthe whole peninsula excepting its southern andsouth-eastern fringes. This was the work of oneman, Abdul-Aziz Ibn Sa'ud, the restorer of theWahhabi power (see p. 8). Unification was attained by military conquest, which involved theexpulsion in 1924-5 of the rival power of theSharifs of Mecca, known as the Hashimids. Anunfortunate consequence of this episode was to

strain still further relations between the Sa'udikingdom and Iraq and Transjordan, in both ofwhich the ruling family is Hashimid. Open hostilities between them were averted only bythe good

23

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

28/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

29/39

THE ARABS

of the once heretical but now almost orthodoxKharijite sect (see p. n ) . Between the Yemen

and Oman, in the Aden and Hadhramaut Protectorates, as well as along the Arabian coast of thePersian Gulf up to the islands of Bahrain, and atKuwait on the borders of Iraq, a multitude ofancient ruling houses, whose heads bear the titleof Sultan or Shaykh, recalls the former mosaic of

Arabian political life, except that all now live inmutual peace under British protection.

V. The Maghreb

Passing over the thinly populated and mainlydesert provinces of Cyrenaica and Tripoli, whoseArab population has declined still more sinceItalian colonization succeeded to Turkish neglect,we reach the three French-controlled regions ofTunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, collectively calledthe Maghreb. For all their apparent unity on themap, they present a number of complex problems.The small province of Tunisia, with a mainly Arab

population, never wholly lost the traditions of Arabculture, and has rapidly and deeply absorbed thespirit of the Arab renaissance. Algeria, with anArabicized Berber and formerly nomadic population, owes its political unity and its economic andcultural regeneration entirely to the French. Mo

rocco has a long history of independence, with aSultanate ruling over a relatively small proportionof sedentary Arab and Arabicized tribes, andendeavouring, without much success, to maintainits authority over the refractory Arab and Rerber;

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

30/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

31/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

32/39

THE ARABS

from their old moorings, anxiously ask whitherthey are steering. Their Arab self-consciousness is

aroused and expectant, and their intellectual leadersare struggling to define the political and culturalideals of the Arabs in the modern world.

Like all other forms of Nationalism, Arab Nationalism is based upon a community of sentiment. Thegeneral content of that sentiment has been indicatedin the first section: pride in the historic mission ofIslam, in the achievement of the Arab Empire, andin the cultural tradition enshrined in Arabic literature, together with envy of the material supremacyof the West and resentment at its assumption ofmoral superiority. These feelings are almost universal amongst Arabs in all countries, and it is both

false and dangerous to assume that they are notshared by the 'illiterate peasantry*.

Bearing in mind that at the outset nationalism inthe Moslem world was religious rather than racial,these ideas and reactions dictated of themselves itsfirst objectives: the driving out of the 'Franks', the

reconstitution of the Islamic Empire of the earlyCaliphs, and the reassertion before the world ofthe spiritual and moral values of Islam. The firstmodification came when Turkish and Iraniannationalism disrupted the pan-Islamic ideal, anddrove the Arab Nationalists to adopt a pan-Arabideal instead. But this involved only a slight re

adjustment of the second objective, which nowbecame the restoration of such an Arab Empire asthe Caliphs of Damascus had ruled over in theseventh and eighth centuries (excluding Iran, of

28

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

33/39

THE ARABS

course; but some romantic spirits even dreamed ofregaining Cordova and Granada). And down to the

present day this mirage still floats before the visionof the more simple-minded Nationalists.In recent years, however, a more realistic per

ception of political and economic facts, a clearerunderstanding of the processes of history, and amore profound evaluation of Western culturalideals has begun to show itself amongst Arabstatesmen and intellectuals. To take the last pointfirst, the naive and uncritical Trankicism' of someearlier reformers has practically disappeared, andamong the younger generation there is considerablerespect for the Islamic tradition, both in itself andas a vital element in the national consciousness.

On the other hand, the uncritical rejection of allthat the West stands for is also disappearing,except amongst some conservative professionaltheologians and the ignorant masses. All enlightened Moslems are trying to steer a middle course,described as 'selecting the best elements from boththe East and the West*. By this they mean theeffort to cut away the dead wood of medieval tradition, and at the same time to protect the Moslemworld from the destructive forces in Western civilization. From them there will come in due time theformulation of the new ideals of Arabic culture,but that time is not yet.

There is, however, a growing conviction that thehistoric basis of Arab Nationalism is no longersufficient. Common memories and common pridein the past will always have their place. The Arabs

29

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

34/39

THE ARABS

can never make a clean breach with the past as theTurks have done, unless under pressure of some

terrible national calamity. And Islam is so mucha part of that past that the Arab ideal can neverbe fully dissociated from it. But the past byitself is bound up with the historic causes ofseparatism, and to overstress the religious tiesalienates Shi'ites and Christians, amongst whom aremany of the most fervent Nationalists. Besides, asthe new societies develop in the Arab lands, withtheir many interests in the world around them, thepast loses some of the intensity of its emotionalappeal. If Arab Nationalism is to overcome itspresent elements of weakness, to discipline thenative individualism of the Arab and to trans

form the 'cluster' into an organic unity, it must lookto the future no less than to the past and planaccordingly.

The experience of the last quarter of a centuryhas shown very clearly that the division of the Arabworld into a number of small and individually weakStates is a standing offence to Arab feeling. But itis equally clear that wider unity, whether bymerger or federation, must be achieved on a regional basis. Though each Arab country, as wehave seen, has its own inner problems of unity,stability, and economic reconstruction, many ofthese can be met only by planning on a wide scale,

and by an outlook which transcends the petty issuesof local politics. The mutual interest of neighbouring countries in removing possible causes of conflict has brought some progress in co-operation

30

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

35/39

THE ARABS

(see p. 24), and it is probable that further effortswill be made on these lines. But, if Arab history is

any guide, the final achievement of unity will notbe a gradual, but a cataclysmic process.It must always be remembered that the Arabs

of to-day are very different from the Arabs of 1915.What they have achieved in the intervening yearswould be incredible to those who have not beenwarned by their past history how swift is theirresponse to changing circumstances and how sudden their political development. Nevertheless, inthe conditions of the modern world, and especiallyin view of the long period which will be requiredfor the rebuilding of their economic structure, eventhe strongest union of Arab countries which can be

envisaged would scarcely be strong enough to standentirely on its own feet. Some form of associationwith the Western world would seem to be indispensable for their continued political and economicprogress. The more far-sighted and responsible ofArab statesmen have always accepted this as apolitical necessity. But they are determined that

it shall not be an association between master andsubject on the political plane, nor of exploitationand gearing-in to a more powerful economicmachine on the economic side.

The task which this imposes upon both Araband Western leaders is one to test their powers

of statesmanship. As the Arab world continues toevolve towards a regrouping of its political forcesand the rebuilding of its inner life, constant readjustment will be called for in its relations with

31

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

36/39

THE ARABS

the Western world. T h e old feud still rankles, buta stable friendship and co-operation between themcan be achieved at long last if each steadfastlyrespects the interests and the moral status of theother.

32

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

37/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

38/39

8/12/2019 216713_The_Arabs

39/39