WorkShop 12: Pre-Modern Attachment to Lands - In the Islamic Middle East and North Africa

Pre-Modern Attachment to Lands
In the Islamic Middle East and North Africa

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Abstract

Scholars of nationalism and historians of the modern Middle East and North Africa assume that the countries and national movements of these regions are entirely modern phenomena, the result of European ideas and the colonial partitions of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This workshop is inspired, instead, by a growing body of scholarship that demonstrates the strength of attachments to lands or territories—among them, but not limited to, al-Maghrib (Morocco), Misr (Egypt), Bilad al-Sham (Syria), Filastin (Palestine), and Bilad al-Akrad (Kurdistan)—among peoples of the pre-modern Middle East and North Africa. The implications of this research are wide ranging and touch upon academic debates about pre-modern and modern loyalties as well as on the nature of the impact of Europe on the creation of the states of the modern Middle East and North Africa in addition to currently contentious issues as the roots of Palestinian and Kurdish nationalisms and the fragmentation of Iraq following the U.S. invasion of 2003.

We envision assembling a group of scholars of pre-modern attachments to lands or territories who study Muslim as well as non-Muslims of the “Islamicate” Middle East and North Africa. Our period of interest extends from the 9th century CE to the beginning of the 19th century. Though the majority of scholars invited to participate in this forum will have pre-modern areas of expertise, we are also interested in participants whose focus is modern and who demonstrate an interest in pre-modern antecedents to modern loyalties

Workshop Description

It is a commonplace among scholars of nationalism and historians of the modern Middle East and North Africa—not to mention political scientists and journalists—that the countries and nationalist movements of the modern Middle East and North Africa are entirely modern phenomena. Modernists consider these countries and movements the result of ideas imported from the West or borders imposed by the colonial powers during the 19^th century and after World War I. This workshop is inspired, conversely, by a growing body of scholarship that demonstrates the strength of attachments to lands or territories, such as al-Maghrib (Morocco), Misr (Egypt), Bilad al-Sham (geographical Syria), Filastin (Palestine), and Bilad al-Akrad (Kurdistan), among peoples of the pre-modern Islamic Middle East and North Africa. The implications of this research are wide ranging and touch upon academic debates about pre-modern and modern loyalties as well as on the nature of the impact of Europe on the creation of the states of the modern Middle East and North Africa in addition to currently contentious issues as the roots of Palestinian and Kurdish nationalisms and the fragmentation of Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

 Modernist scholars view nations—which they define as coalescing around ethnic groups and territorial boundaries—as purely modern phenomena and, for all intents and purposes, products of European modernity.[1] Historians of Middle Eastern and North African nationalisms have tended to stick to the modernist paradigm ever since, even if they don’t agree on much else.[2] They run the gamut from Bernard Lewis’ influential interpretation of the rise of the modern Turkish republic to the work of Rashid Khalidi, a critic of Lewis, on Arab and Palestinian nationalism.[3] They run the gamut from Bernard Lewis’ influential interpretation of the rise of the modern Turkish republic to the work of Rashid Khalidi, a critic of Lewis, on Arab and Palestinian nationalism. Historians of Middle Eastern and North African nationalisms have tended to stick to the modernist paradigm ever since, even if they don’t agree on much else. They run the gamut from Bernard Lewis’ influential interpretation of the rise of the modern Turkish republic to the work of Rashid Khalidi, a critic of Lewis, on Arab and Palestinian nationalism.

 Events of the 20^th century also buttressed the claim that modern Middle Eastern and North African nations are artificial creations. The British and French officials who drew most of the boundaries at Versailles and subsequent conferences considered their creations in need of incubation through “mandates” given by the League of Nations to prepare these “childlike” nations for independence. Critics of imperialism emphasize the arbitrary nature of modern polities in the region by acknowledging the precedents established by the colonial powers.[4] Egyptian, Turkish, Arab and other nationalisms have been discredited by overzealous claims and by the failures of states established by their proponents as well as by the rise of alternative loci of identity and political mobilization such as Islamism. Egyptian, Turkish, Arab and other nationalisms have been discredited by overzealous claims and by the failures of states established by their proponents as well as by the rise of alternative loci of identity and political mobilization such as Islamism.

The inspiration for this workshop is motivated by an entirely different approach to attachments to lands and territories: a growing—if unacknowledged—body of scholarship that demonstrates the strength of such attachments among peoples of the pre-modern Islamic Middle East and North Africa. This scholarship challenges the widespread assumption in scholarly and more popular circles that attachment to territory was negligible if non-existent prior to the advent of modern nationalism in the nineteenth century. The implications of this research are significant for our understanding of loyalties in pre-modern times as well as for the continuities between pre-modern and modern history.

Historians of the pre-modern Islamic world emphasize broad religious and institutional affiliations (such as to the international community of Muslims, al-umma; to the major legal rites, madhhabs; to Sufi confraternities, tariqas; or to the state, al-dawla) and local “primordial” attachments to neighborhood, town, village, tribe or lineage. This workshop will bring together an international group of scholars who focus on “lands”, such as al-Diyar al-Misriyya (Egypt) or Bilad al-Sham (Syria), which occupy an intermediate position between the global, on the one hand, and the parochial, on the other. We envision assembling a group of scholars who specialize in these and other such territories, who study Muslims as well as non-Muslims of the Islamicate world (to use Marshall Hodgson’s more religiously neutral term).[5] Our period of interest extends from the beginning of significant literary production in the Islamicate world in the 9^th century to the beginning of the 19^th century. Though the majority of scholars invited to participate in this forum will have pre-modern areas of expertise, we will consider participants whose focus is modern and who demonstrate an interest in pre-modern antecedents to modern loyalties. We anticipate gathering a rich enough body of innovative work in this relatively new field of work to warrant publication as a collection of essays. Our period of interest extends from the beginning of significant literary production in the Islamicate world in the 9 century to the beginning of the 19 century. Though the majority of scholars invited to participate in this forum will have pre-modern areas of expertise, we will consider participants whose focus is modern and who demonstrate an interest in pre-modern antecedents to modern loyalties. We anticipate gathering a rich enough body of innovative work in this relatively new field of work to warrant publication as a collection of essays.

Egypt and Syria, the two areas of expertise of the organizers, illustrate the broad contours of the theoretical and empirical significance of this project. One of the distinctive features of Egyptian history has been the presence of the Nile as an economic and communications artery that has allowed for centralized government and relative political autonomy since ancient times. Nevertheless, it is an article of faith among Western and many Egyptian historians that Muslim Egyptians were not interested in their pre-Islamic past. Recent research challenges this assumption.[6] It turns out that members of the Muslim scholarly class, the ulama (s. alim), were deeply interested in their pre-Islamic heritage, practiced archeology, sought to decipher hieroglyphs, wrote about mummies, and discussed ancient Egyptian scientific and political practices. The interest in Egyptian alims in their pre-Islamic history testifies to a sense of historical consciousness which connected them to their pre-Islamic predecessors and to the land of the It turns out that members of the Muslim scholarly class, the (s. ), were deeply interested in their pre-Islamic heritage, practiced archeology, sought to decipher hieroglyphs, wrote about mummies, and discussed ancient Egyptian scientific and political practices. The interest in Egyptian s in their pre-Islamic history testifies to a sense of historical consciousness which connected them to their pre-Islamic predecessors and to the land of the Egypt as whole.

The study of Syria as a geographical unit has been dominated by historians interested in the origins of modern Syrian nationalism. With significant variation in emphasis, these scholars agree in giving credit for the creation of modern Syrian nationalism to late 18^th- and early 19^th-century Christian intellectuals of Mt. Lebanon.[7] The implication of this scholarship is that there was no conception of the territorial integrity of geographical The implication of this scholarship is that there was no conception of the territorial integrity of geographical Syria during the Islamic period until the period of Westernization in the 19^th century. Medieval scholars, however, have long recognized the importance of Bilad al-Sham (as geographical Syria was known to Arabic-speakers) to Muslim geographers, litterateurs, and members of the ulama more generally. This information has only recently been examined fully to make the case for the territorial integrity of Bilad al-Sham for medieval Syrian writers as well as their attachment to it.[8]

Other lands and evidence for territorial consciousness come from pre-modern Maghrib, Ottoman Palestine, Abbasid Iraq, and medieval Kurdistan, just to mention work the organizers are familiar with.[9] Scholars have recently put the fada’il, or virtues of cities and lands, literature to new uses and have rediscovered the meaning and significance of the ancient concept of hanin lil-watan, “longing for the homeland”. The rich work of medieval Arabic geographical compendia and biographical dictionaries arranged by region have led to new assertions about regional consciousness in the pre-modern Islamic world, including the Scholars have recently put the , or virtues of cities and lands, literature to new uses and have rediscovered the meaning and significance of the ancient concept of , “longing for the homeland”. The rich work of medieval Arabic geographical compendia and biographical dictionaries arranged by region have led to new assertions about regional consciousness in the pre-modern Islamic world, including the Middle East and North Africa.

There remain, however, serious problems for medievalists grappling with this literature including rethinking a range of pre-modern loyalties. What was the relationship, for example, between notions of legitimacy and/or religious or administrative practices and attachments to land? How did large empires and/or their subjects negotiate center-periphery tensions by means of expressing attachment to land? What was the relationship between ethnicity (in the case of Arabs or Kurds) and territory? What was the relationship between major cities such as Fez, Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad and the broader territories in which they belonged?

These and other questions will be at the heart of presentations and conversations as we explore the depth and breadth of attachments to lands and territories in the pre-modern Middle East and North Africa. The primary concern of the organizers is to develop this line of research with an eye, if not a focus, on the significant implications of this research for more recent times. Ultimately, the results of this workshop should provide a corrective to modernist assumptions about the Western origins of contemporary movements and polities in the region and bolster our collective understanding of the continuities and, therefore, the rootedness of contemporary attachments to these lands.