Arabs (104 page)

I have used material from the book-in-progress for my lectures in modern Arab history at Oxford and am very grateful to our astute students for their feedback. I would
like to thank Reem Abou El Fadl, Nick Kardahji, and Nadia Oweidat for their help with research for the book.

Over the years of writing this book I have exploited family and friends, specialists and nonspecialists alike, to read and comment on draft chapters along the way. Their encouragement and critiques did more to see the book through to completion than they might believe. I wish to acknowledge my debt to Peter Airey, Tui Clark, Foulath Hadid—my tutor in Iraqi history, Tim Kennedy, Dina Khoury, Joshua Landis, Ronald Nettler, Tom Orde, Thomas Philipp—who first inspired me to study the history of the Arabs, Gabi Piterberg, Tariq Ramadan, my brother Grant Rogan, Kevin Watkins, and my brilliant wife Ngaire Woods.

I wish to give special thanks to my most persistent and dedicated reader—Margaret Rogan, my mother. She read every chapter of the book from beginning to end without letting a mother’s love blind her to the mistakes that she, a life-long student of the Middle East, found along the way.

I am indebted to Serge Fouchard of the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn in Boulogne-Billancourt for making copies of the extraordinary autochromes from the Albert Kahn collection available for publication. I am also most grateful to Victoria Hogarth of the Bridgeman Art Library and Jeff Spurr of the Harvard Fine Arts Library for their help with images for the book.

The book would never have happened without the particular genius of my literary agent Felicity Bryan. I am especially grateful to Felicity for breaking her own rule not to represent her friends. I will ever be indebted to George Lucas for agreeing to represent me in New York and for treating me to an unforgettable introduction to New York’s publishing world. Together they found the very best publishing houses for this book.

My deepest thanks at Basic Books go to my editor, Lara Heimert, who through humor and insight has cajoled a better book from me than ever I could have written on my own. Brandon Proia has shared his editorial talents and helped with finding the right images for the book. Kay Mariea and Michelle Asakawa were heroic at copyediting at break-neck speed. At Penguin, I have benefited throughout the writing of the book from Simon Winder’s deep knowledge and penetrating engagement with the manuscript.

My family have been my strength and inspiration at every point in writing this book. To Ngaire, our son Richard and daughter Isabelle, I owe the sanity that counterbalances the madness of taking on such a project. Thank you.

1. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images/ The Bridgeman Art Library

2. Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images/ The Bridgeman Art Library

3. Photograph by Bonfils. Harvard College Library, Fine Arts Library, HSM 664

4. Chateau de Versailles, France/ Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library

5. Private collection/ © The Fine Art Society, London, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library

6. Harvard College Library, Fine Arts Library, HSM 620

7. Chateau de Versailles, France/ Lauros/ Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library

8. Musée Condé, Chantilly, France/ Giraudon/ The Bridgeman Art Library

9. Musée Albert-Kahn–Département des Hauts-de-Seine, A15488

10. Musée Albert-Kahn–Département des Hauts-de-Seine, A15562

11. Musée Albert-Kahn–Département des Hauts-de-Seine, A51046

12. Private Collection/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library. All best efforts have been made to contact the copyright holder of this anonymous Moroccan work.

13. Musée Albert-Kahn–Département des Hauts-de-Seine, A19031

14. Frédéric Gadmer, Musée Albert-Kahn–Département des Hauts-de-Seine, A19747

15. Owen Tweedy Collection, PA 7/216, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

16. Sir Edmund Allenby Collection, PA 5/8, Middle East Centre Archive, St Antony’s College, Oxford

17. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France/ Archives Charmet/ The Bridgeman Art Library

1. Norman Mayers Collection album 1/40, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

2. John Poole Collection 115/5, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

3. John Poole Collection 114/16, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

4. Sir Edward Spears Collection, Album 8/28, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

5. Sir Edward Spears Collection, Album 9/75, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

6. Desmond Morton Collection, 13/1/1, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

7. Desmond Morton Collection, 13/1/2, Middle East Centre Archive, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

8. AP Images

9. © Bettmann/Corbis

10. © Bettmann/Corbis

11. © Bettmann/Corbis

12. © Bettmann/Corbis

13. © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

14. © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

15. © Bettmann/Corbis

16. © Bettmann/Corbis

1. © Genevieve Chauvel/Sygma/Corbis

2. © Bride Lane Library/Popperfoto/Getty Images

3. © Christian Simonpietri/Sygma/Corbis

4. © Bettmann/Corbis

5. © Bettmann/Corbis

6. © Alain DeJean/Sygma/Corbis

7. © Kevin Fleming/Corbis

8. © AFP/Getty Images

9. © Dominique Faget/epa/Corbis

10. © Gérard Rancinan/Sygma/Corbis

11. © Michel Philippot/Sygma/Corbis

12. © Françoise de Mulder/Corbis

13. © Françoise de Mulder/Corbis

14. © Peter Turnley/Corbis

15. © Reuters/Corbis

16. © Reuters/Corbis

17. © Peter Turnley/Corbis

18. © Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters/Corbis

1
Walid Jumblatt repeated Hariri’s remarks to a journalist from the
New York Times
, “Behind Lebanon Upheaval, 2 Men’s Fateful Clash,” March 20, 2005.

2
Samir Kassir,
Being Arab
(London: Verso, 2006), from the author’s introduction.

3
Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann, eds.,
‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti’s History of Egypt
, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), p. 7.

4
Reproduced in Robert Fisk,
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
(London: Fourth Estate, 2005), p. 172.

5
Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani,
al-’Iraq fi dawray al-ihtilal wa’l-intidab
, vol. 1 [Iraq in the occupation and the mandate eras] (Sidon: Al-Irfan, 1935), pp. 117–118.

6
Kassir,
Being Arab
, p. 4.

1
The death of the Prophet Muhammad gave rise to one of the earliest splits in Islam as his followers disagreed over how to choose his successor, or caliph, to head the Muslim community. One group of Muslims argued for succession within the family of the Prophet and championed the candidacy of Ali ibn Abu Talib, who, as first cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, was his closest relative. This faction came to be known in Arabic as
Shi‘at ’Ali
, or “the Party of Ali,” from which the word Shiite is derived. The majority of Muslims, however, argued that the caliph should be the most pious Muslim best able to uphold the
sunna
, or practices and beliefs of the Prophet Muhammad; these came to be known as the Sunnis. For most of Islamic history, the Sunnis have been the dominant majority of the community of believers, particularly in the Arab and Turkish world, with variants of Shi’ite Islam taking root in South Arabia, Persia, and South Asia.

2
The chronicles of Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Iyas (c. 1448–1524),
Bada’i‘ al-zuhur fi waqa’i’ al-duhur
[The most remarkable blossoms among the events of the age], were first published in Cairo in 1893–1894. There is an English translation of excerpts relating to the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Egypt: W. H. Salmon,
An Account of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt in the Year A.H. 922 (A.D. 1516)
(London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1921); and a full translation by Gaston Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire: Chronique d’Ibn Iyâs
, vol. 2 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1960). This account is found in Salmon,
Account of the Ottoman Conquest
, pp. 41–46, and in Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, pp. 65–67.

3
Salmon,
Account of the Ottoman Conquest
, pp. 92–95; Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, pp. 117–120.

4
Salmon,
Account of the Ottoman Conquest
, pp. 111–113; Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, pp. 137–139.

5
Salmon,
Account of the Ottoman Conquest
, pp. 114–117; Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, pp. 140–43.

6
Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, pp. 171–172.

7
Ibid., p. 187.

8
The Rightly Guided Caliphs were the first four successors of the Prophet Muhammad—Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ’Uthman, and ‘Ali—who ruled the early Islamic community in the seventh century. They were followed by the Umayyad dynasty, which ruled from Damascus between 661–750 CE.

9
Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann, eds.,
’Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti’s History of Egypt
, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), p. 33.

10
Salmon,
Account of the Ottoman Conquest
, pp. 46–49; Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, pp. 69–72.

11
The chronicle of Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn ‘Ali Ibn Tulun (c. 1485–1546), “Background Information on the Turkish Governors of Greater Damascus,” has been edited and translated by Henri Laoust,
Les Gouverneurs de Damas sous les Mamlouks et les premiers Ottomans (658–1156/1260–1744)
(Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1952).

12
Bruce Masters,
The Origins of Western Economic Dominance in the Middle East: Mercantilism and the Islamic Economy in Aleppo, 1600–1750
(New York: New York University Press, 1988).

13
Laoust,
Les Gouverneurs de Damas
, p. 151.

14
Salmon,
Account of the Ottoman Conquest
, p. 49; Wiet,
Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire
, p. 72.

15
Laoust,
Les Gouverneurs de Damas
, pp. 154–157.

16
From the chronicle of Ibn Jum’a (d. after 1744), in Laoust,
Les Gouverneurs de Damas
, p. 172.

17
The accounts of Ibn Jum‘a and Ibn Tulun are almost identical, the later chronicler repeating almost verbatim points of Ibn Tulun’s narrative. Laoust,
Les Gouverneurs de Damas
, pp. 154–159 and 171–174.

18
Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis,
Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 3–18.

19
Muhammad Adnan Bakhit,
The Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth Century
(Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1982), pp. 91–118.

20
I. Metin Kunt,
The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 32–33.

21
Philipp and Perlmann,
Al-Jabarti’s History of Egypt
, vol. 1, p. 33.

22
Michael Winter,
Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 1517–1798
(London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 16–17.

23
Bakhit,
Ottoman Province of Damascus
, pp. 105–106.

24
Sayyid Murad’s sixteenth-century manuscript
Ghazawat-i Khayr al-Din Pasha
[Conquests of Khayr al-Din Pasha] has been published in an abridged French translation by Sander Rang and Ferdinand Denis,
Fondation de la régence d’Alger: Histoire de Bar-berousse
(Paris: J. Angé, 1837). This account is found in vol. 1, p. 306.

25
John B. Wolf,
The Barbary Coast: Algeria Under the Turks
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 20.

26
Cited in ibid., p. 27.

27
Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Khalidi al-Safadi,
Kitab tarikh al-Amir Fakhr al-Din alMa’ ni
[The book of history of the Amir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma‘ni], edited and published by Asad Rustum and Fuad al-Bustani under the title
Lubnan fi ’ahd al-Amir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma‘ni al-Thani
[Lebanon in the age of Amir Fakhr al-Din II al-Ma’ni] (Beirut: Editions St. Paul, 1936, reprinted 1985).

28
Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn,
Provincial Leaderships in Syria, 1575–1650
(Beirut: American University in Beirut Press, 1985) pp. 81–87.

29
Al-Khalidi al-Safadi,
Amir Fakhr al-Din
, pp. 17–19.

30
Ibid., pp. 214–215.

31
Ibid., pp. 150–154.

32
Daniel Crecelius and ‘Abd al-Wahhab Bakr, trans.,
Al-Damurdashi’s Chronicle of Egypt, 1688–1755
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), p. 286.

33
Ibid., p. 291.

34
Ibid., p. 296.

35
Ibid., pp. 310–312.

36
Winter,
Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule
, p. 24.

1
Ahmad al-Budayri al-Hallaq,
Hawadith Dimashq al-Yawmiyya
[Daily events of Damascus]
1741–1762
(Cairo: Egyptian Association for Historical Studies, 1959), p. 184; and George M. Haddad, “The Interests of an Eighteenth Century Chronicler of Damascus,”
Der Islam
38 (June 1963): 258–271.