من الإمبراطورية إلى الدولة المحليّة: كيف أعاد العرب تدوير البنى السياسية العثمانية؟

From Empire to Local States: Recycling the Ottoman Order

Adam Mestyan offers a fresh analysis of the formation of the modern Arab states following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in his Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East

Ahmed Belal Al-Qutty^[1]

After the collapse of an empire, what comes next? Is the emergence of new political entities in the place of a bygone empire inevitable, or is there a historical-dialectical logic that brings together old and new political orders, forming complex frameworks within which old structures are repurposed to take on new shapes? What was peculiar about the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, as compared to other instances of imperial disintegration? And how did this peculiarity affect the creation of Arab political entities in the interwar Middle East? In his book Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East,^[2] historian Adam Mestyan attempts to answer these questions by going back a century or so to a period when colossal geopolitical changes were taking place, one that saw the emergence of new states and political entities and the withering away of others.

The predominant approach to the Arab political regimes following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire rests on colonial and post-colonial research frameworks. Its proponents are of the view that the emergence of these regimes was the product of European colonial strategies. However, going beyond that approach, Mestyan holds that their emergence was attributable to what he calls ‘recycling empire.’ Through the analysis of historical documents and the employment of the tools of microhistory and historical anthropology, he suggests that the post-WWI geopolitical map of the Middle East was the outcome of the then European colonial powers collaborating with the ex-Ottoman notables. It was this collaboration that, in effect, brought about the ‘reworking’ or ’repurposing’ of formerly Ottoman political entities, as well as the ‘recycling’ of formerly Ottoman uses of genealogy or descent (nasab), particularly the descendants of the Prophet (ashraf) and lords or masters (asyad), in addition to religion, in the creation of new political orders. Using previously unexamined Ottoman, French, Syrian, and Saudi archives, Mestyan questions the empire\nation-state paradigm. In so doing, he reiterates the view that the drastic political transformations that the Arab region underwent during this period are not to be perceived from the viewpoint of colonial impacts. Nor should they be looked at from the nation-state standpoint. Rather, they should be understood as giving rise to local polities having subordinated sovereignty and invoking religious, ethnic, and lineage-related sources from which to derive their legitimacy.

State formation cannot be approached in abstract terms that are detached from context. As a result, this book is an attempt to probe into the intellectual environment that gave rise to a theoretical basis for creating various political orders in the interwar Middle East. In doing so, it sheds light on the local role, and the role played by the Arab elites, in the creation of the often forgotten Kingdom of Hijaz (1916-1925), as well as the post-War regimes of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Kingdom of Syria (1918-1920) under Faysal ibn ash-Sharif al-Husayn (later King Faysal I of Iraq). It also examines the case of the First Syrian Republic, the first of the Muslim republics.^[3]

The book consists of nine chapters grouped into four parts. It aims to uncover the intricate historical, legal, and political processes underlying the configuration of the post-War Middle East and the transition from Ottoman imperial rule to the emergence of local sovereign states. Chapter 1, ‘Recycling Empire,’ serves as a theoretical introduction meant to present the reader with the concepts and methods used. It is followed by Part I (‘A Theory of Sovereign Local States’), the main focus of which is the transition from imperial rule to local states in the region. It is in this part that Mestyan introduces his theory of the imperial political order and introduces the idea of ‘governing without sovereignty’ to describe a new form of colonial domination highlighting the conflict between the sovereignty of the colonial empires and that of the new League of Nations.

In Part II of the book,‘Composite Routes out of Empire,’ the author provides an overview of the Ottoman political order. He explores the role played by the Arab ashraf and asyad, called ‘Ottoman grandees in the age of steam,’ in the emergence and evolution of local states and their interactions with one another following the dissolution of the Empire. Part III, ‘From Imperial to Local Muslim Authority,’ delves into the transition from empire to local states. In doing so, the author embarks on a micro-historical study of legal authority in Occupied Ottoman Damascus (often referred to as the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration).^[4] This section also touches on the transformation of imperial authority, as viewed from the standpoint of Islamic legal theory in post-Ottoman Egypt. Then comes the last section of the book, Part IV ‘Paths of Extrication,’ in which Mestyan discusses the making and dissolution of Arab states such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Syria, as perceived from international-law and sovereignty perspectives.

Recycling Empire

‘The revolutionary, total eradication of the past is an exception in history,’^[5] Metyan says early on in his book. Instead, empires dissolve and decay, giving way to the emergence of new political and social entities to take their place and inherit their functions. These new bodies, emerging out of old ones, are transformed as part of the pursuit of ‘local’ legitimacy, giving rise to myriad forms of new political sovereignty. There is little room, given the bounds of existing structures, for maneuver with a view to bringing about change. Such changes that do occur take place in an atmosphere of political connections and competition between representatives of the old rule at the local level. At the regional and international levels, they are brought about by the colonial powers competing to come up with a new geopolitical scene.

By proposing a new state-making paradigm, Mestyan brings us closer to understanding and analyzing the circumstances surrounding this process. The micro-historical approach he employs enables researchers to explore several layers of the narrative. This paradigm functions as an alternative to the nation-state paradigm, which does not allow for a consideration of the hidden elements and units in the formation processes of complex political entities. Mestyan’s innovative analysis shows how an empire-based political theory can put us in a better position to understand the political dynamics that underlay the emergence of modern political orders throughout the 20th century.

The ‘empire recycling’ theory employed in the book is organically related to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction in the sense that it reuses existing elements and repurposes them to create a new pattern. Empire recycling, according to Mestyan, involves the rearrangement and repurposing of pre-existing political, religious, and economic bodies, giving rise to new structures based on the existing ones. Like Bourdieu’s theory, the ‘recycling’ theory entails some degree of transformation and adaptation, with an emphasis on continuity and evolution rather than a radical rupture with the past. It is this continuity that allows cultural, social, economic, and symbolic capital to pass down from generation to generation. Take the al-ashraf as an example: as part of his analysis of the recycling process, Mestyan cites this institution, among the key institutions created by the Ottomans, as having symbolic capital drawn from prophetic descent.

Another institution Mestyan highlights in his analysis is the Sharia Judiciary (al-qada ash-shar’i’), which is cited as an institution having religious authority and significant cultural and social capital. ‘It was the very reuse of once imperial Muslim bodies – for instance, the politicized descendants of the Prophet and the qadi courts – that brought about the obliteration of their Ottoman uses; so that in the virtual sense, there was no need for an actual caliph or “Ottoman” sultan if monarchy and religion were to remain constituent fictions in new local orders,’ Mestyan writes.^[6]

From Empire to local sovereignty

Deploying a groundbreaking methodology; one that is both conceptually rich and brimming with intellectual surprises, Mestyan investigates the restructuring of imperial Islam in a world where no Muslim empire existed. He underscores the peculiarity associated with the recycling and modification of imperial notions and systems by Arab elites and European agents. He does so by conducting an in-depth study of Egypt’s transition from a khedival to a monarchical regime, as well as of the intricate making of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Syria in the 1920s and 1930s. Another concept the author uses is Aufhebung, a German term simultaneously denoting annulment and preservation. He uses it to refer to a change into a new form by means of the repurposing and rearranging of pre-existing components.

Mestyan introduces the concept of ‘subordinated sovereignties’ as a framework through which to come up with a ‘very authentic’ reformulation of our understanding of the Middle East during this period. He also points up the role played by the League of Nations in laying down the ‘sovereign state’ notion as a way to consolidate Western colonial domination. In the same vein, he argues that the concept of sovereignty at this time became a strategic instrument that was utilized in contradictory positions. As a result, new forms of the legal utilization of the concept came on the scene, ultimately leading the colonial powers to oscillate between two different concepts: sovereignty and administration. Underlying this oscillation were the powers’ endeavors to evade falling into a legal conundrum, on the one hand, while in the meantime maintaining control and domination over the region’s newborn states, on the other, and to avoiding clashes with other colonial powers in the League. The author pinpoints a strategic, tactical utilization of the legal theory that fundamentally drove the colonial powers to give up sovereignty in favor of administration.

 ‘I argue that between the 1880s and 1940s British and French jurists and politicians experimented with an alternative framework of legal control, one that did not involve the idea of occupation. I characterize this alternative legal framework as “governing without sovereignty.” By this I mean the enduring administrative management of a region and its legally sovereign local government, usually following military occupation and an agreement among other imperial powers,’ he says.^[7]

By examining the transition from imperial to local authority, the author places the emergence of the local Arab sovereign states in the context of legal debate over sovereignty and League of Nations interventions. The goal underlying this analysis is to disprove the long-established narrative that often takes Sharif Husayn’s 1916 rebellion as its starting point, meanwhile emphasizing that the reason why that ‘Arab Revolt’ fell short of its objectives was owing to the French invasion in 1920. According to Mestyan, the post-Ottoman Arabs did not hold the view that they were living under sovereign governments. Rather, they endured the Franco-British control imposed on them through military occupation and League resolutions. He reiterates that the historical uses of administrative law for political subordination should be a crucial field for future research, given that the colonial powers sought to rule through non-sovereign means, such as contracts and military occupations. And it is in this historical context that Mestyan accentuates the importance of understanding the authority- and sovereignty-associated mechanisms underlying the coming-into-being of the Arab states amid the aforementioned legal debate in addition to the external colonial factors.

Religion and genealogy 

Modern Arab Kingship recognizes religion and genealogy as having made substantial contributions to the imperial recycling process and the making of the modern Arab kingdoms. In the 1870s and 1880s, descendants of the Prophet (ashraf) and provincial notables were integrated into the modern Ottoman political order in a way that attracted the attention of British and French observers. By the mid-1920s, most Muslim Arab religious scholars had reached the conclusion that dynastic rule alone could preserve Islam, and this, too, had its impact on the evolution of the modern Arab monarchies. The creation of the local Arab polities could also be viewed as a response to the purging of religious institutions in countries such as the new Republic of Turkey and the USSR. Religion and genealogy proved to be two fundamental elements in the rise of the new polities in the Arab world.

‘The use of genealogical authority and the reuse of Ottoman attributes in the making of new legal and political institutions pose larger questions about government and the political order after the empire,’ Mestyan writes. ‘Unlike Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the new Turkish army, who, after 1922, decided to abolish revealed law as a source of authority in the new constitutional order, former Ottoman patricians and the French and British occupiers continued to uphold revealed law in the 1920s Arab regions.’^[8]

Aiming to substantiate the major historical role played by religion and genealogy in the formation of the modern kingdoms, Mestyan goes as far back in time as the early Islamic period (dubbed the Dawn of Islam) to explore how important genealogy was in the Arab societies at that time. He also investigates how lineages were used as markers of affiliation to ruling groups, and how the self-legitimation of early Muslim dynasties (the Umayyads and Abbasids) was premised on lineages and prophetic kinship. The examples the author gives are many: from 18th-century Indian Muslim scholars criticizing forged genealogies, to the creation of genealogical Websites by Meccan ashraf to tighten the grip of the rulers over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to claiming prophetic descent by such political figures as Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the King of Morocco as a means to legitimize their authority, maintain order, and boost public appeal.

The conception of the ‘state’ in the Arab region is a problematic one. In theory, it is an entity distinct from the other entities surrounding it. Drawing on his extensive theoretical knowledge, expertise in the dynamics of Muslim political architecture, access to various archival sources, as well as his profound theoretical awareness, Mestyan presents in his seminal book a new conception of the making of the modern Arab state and places it in a historical and global perspective. The concept of the ‘state’ in our region, as in similar regions in the Global South, is complex and composite – no surprise, given that it came into existence during the interwar colonial period. Nevertheless, it leans on long-established traditions, as well as intricate reproduction and restructuring processes of foregoing political bodies and symbolic elements, all of which make it deserving of further research.