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Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, by Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, editors
5. The Imposition of Nationalism on a Non-Nation State
The Case of Iraq During the Interwar Period, 1921-1941
Reeva S. Simon
An obvious example of an artificially created state, Iraq came into existence at the end of World War I at the behest of the British. New borders had to be created in the Middle East after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. As the victors, the British directed territorial design according to their own strategic concerns that now required a shift in policy. In order to protect their interests in India and later to control the oil discovered in Iraq, the British were determined to dominate a swath of territory from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
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They drew the new lines at the conference in Cairo in 1921 that created the country of Iraq out of the former Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul.
The new country of Iraq was a fragmented society, a territory of ethnic and religious diversity, where some groups worked for independence and some paid nominal allegiance to whoever collected the taxes. The Arab Shi'i of the central and southern part of the country were the largest group. Organized in tribes and tribal confederations, they made up 53 percent of the population in 1919 and 56 percent in 1932. 3 Recent converts to Shi'ism, the Iraqi Arab Shi'is by 1920 had developed a political ideology that promoted independence from foreign rule and an Islamic state from Kurdistan to the Persian Gulf. 4 The Kurds of the Mosul region, non-Arab Kurdish-speaking tribes were in a constant struggle for cultural autonomy at the minimum, with an independent Kurdistan their ultimate goal. Apolitical, the Jews traced their domicile in Iraq to ancient times. Most of the Jewish population lived in Baghdad by the 1930s, where they were the majority, had already begun the Westernization process, and filled the civil service jobs under the British and the early monarchy. Approximately 2 percent of the population, Christians who were Nestorians and Chaldeans for the most part, looked spiritually to Rome and lived in the Mosul area. They remained out of politics, unlike the Assyrians, non-Uniate Nestorians who, encouraged by the British during the war to attempt a rebellion against the Turks, fled to Iraq when it failed and remained under British protection. The Arab Sunnis of the Baghdad area, although not the majority, were first backed by the Ottomans and then supported by the British as the ruling political elite of the new country.
The British placed a monarch of their choice on the throne of the kingdom. Faysal, leader of the Arab revolt, respected by his Arab nationalist army officers, and by both Arab Sunnis and Shi'is for his religious lineage and his Arabness, came to Iraq after ignominious betrayal by the British and defeat in Syria at the hands of the French. Iraq was a consolation prize for him, and although most of his retinue consisted of Iraqi former Ottoman officers, the political situation in Iraq differed from that of Syria. Where Damascus was the center of Arab nationalism during the war, Baghdad remained a backwater province, its fate to be decided by the British as they advanced up the Tigris. Faysal's goal in Iraq was to create a nation while advancing Hashimite dynastic goals, both of which were incorporated into the pan-Arab ideology he and his successors imposed on the indigenous population. As late as 1933, just before his death, he wondered whether or not the creation of an Iraqi nation was really possible.
The question we can still ask today is whether or not he and the Arab nationalists were successful. Can a nation be forged from so many disparate elements or is a nation a natural configuration? Must a "nation" evolve or can nationalism be imposed from the top down?
Recently published theoretical studies of nationalism provide paradigmatic typologies that facilitate analyses of the creation and propagation of nationalist ideologies in newly emergent states. Iraq, for example, is a case study whose historical narrative meshes neatly with the theories of both Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith. 5 Iraq's "imagined community" was that of the Arabs, rather than Iraqis or Mesopotamians, Arabs whose identity and history were fashioned by Arab nationalist ideologues. These new elites, or "priesthood," teachers who taught from the textbooks commissioned and prescribed by the Ministry of Education in Baghdad, attempted to amalgamate the Sunni minority elite with the ethnic and religious minorities and the Shi'i majority via the glue of Arab nationalism in order to forge a pan-Arab identity for the Iraqis.
What needs to be examined in order to attempt an answer to the question of whether or not an imposed nationalism is possible is first, an analysis of the specific ideology or "imagined community" that the Sunni Arab elite created in an attempt to unify Iraq and the methodology they used to impose this dominant ideology.
Monitoring the politicization process, however, is more problematic. For the purposes of this essay, assessing the impact of the process of implementation of a nationalist ideology on Iraq in the short term--namely, during the interwar period--is possible. If we designate the "Rashid 'Ali coup" and the war with Britain in 1941 as the chronological end point of the study, we can monitor the impact of the propagation of Arab nationalism on Iraq by looking at first, the attempt to implement Arab nationalist goals via an activist pan-Arab foreign policy and the British reaction to these events. Second, we can look at the reactions of two non-Sunni groups in Iraqi society to the imposition of pan-Arabism as the dominant ideology for Iraq. The Shi'i majority and the Jewish minority, both subordinate populations, emerge from the interwar period with different reactions to Arabism.
The Sharifians arrived in Iraq with a definite, though not completely worked out political ideology of nationalism that drew upon a number of European models. From the nineteenth-century Italian and German political experience came the view that the Arabs, too, could unite around a powerful core. Iraq, because of its good prospects for early independence, could draw Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan around it like a strong magnet. In this scenario Faysal's dynastic goals of Hashimite unity based on British wartime promises to the Arabs coalesced with pan-Arab dreams of Arab unity.
The definition of "Arab nation" was provided by Sati' al-Husri, who became the primary ideologue of Arab nationalism. Adopting a view of history common in the 1930s, borrowed from the German "volk" historians, the theory of a primeval ancestor nation that transmitted civilization to the rest of the world during its meanderings from an original homeland to its present abode was Arabized. The nationalists extolled the historic role of the pre-Islamic Arabs and then looked to the geographic unity of the territory that was to incorporate the modern Arab nation. Its boundaries were the Taurus Mountains and Kurdistan, Iran, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Suez, and the Mediterranean Sea--or, the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent. Palestine and Syria were integral parts of this area. The Semites were the progenitors of the modern Arabs.
Husri was concerned less about borders than national identity. In short, his philosophy was that a common language and a common history were the basis of nation formation and nationalism. He maintained that
The history of the Arab nation was the history of the Arabs, not of Islam; Islam's role in history was to spread Arabism, to help to preserve the Arab identity of the Arabs. It played a subordinate role in the history of the Arabs, which began in pre-Islamic Arabia and spread with the Islamic conquest throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Thus, Arabism--or the acceptance of Arab culture and the history of the Arabs as the focus of loyalty despite one's religious belief--transcended religious and communal ties. 8 It could be accepted by Sunni and Shi'i, Christian and Jew. How the Kurds could become Arabs was an issue that did not seem of concern. Iraqi governments have always maintained that Kurdistan is part of Iraq.
Faysal and his followers worked throughout the 1920s to dissipate both Sunni and Shi'i local Iraqi political leadership in order to ensure that the king and the Sharifian military that had begun to integrate with the landowning elite, though numerically a small number of individuals, achieved political dominance. Once the military-backed regime was in power, ethnic and religious minorities were subjugated via military suppression, cultural denigration, discriminatory legislation, or exile in order to ensure an Arab nationalist Sunni dominance.
At the same time the regime worked assiduously through the institution of state education both in military and government civilian schools to propagate Arabism as the locus of ideological conformity and the method for assimilation of the various groups into the Arab nationalist body politic. Teachers and textbooks were the vehicles for the transmission of nationalism; the military was to implement the goal of pan-Arabism through an activist foreign policy enacted once Iraq became independent.
The local allegiances and political aspirations that existed in the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul did not disappear with the lines drawn in Cairo. There remained strong opposition to Faysal as king by politicians who had first lobbied for local independence and then rebelled against British and British-imposed Arab Sunni rule. During the prewar period and the war years, there was no overwhelming support for the Arab nationalist cause, despite the propagation of al-'Ahd propaganda disseminated by Iraqi Ottoman army officers stationed in Iraq or on home visit. Many of the Iraqi officers who joined Faysal did so after they were captured by the British as they advanced from Basra to Baghdad. Given the choice of the Arab army or a British prisoner of war camp, some one hundred and thirty officers opted for Faysal. 9 Faysal's local competition, Sayyid Talib of Basra, for example, was summarily exiled by the British when his protests against Faysal became too overt.
The tribes and the Shi'i were another story altogether. Comprising more than one-half of the population in central and southern Iraq during Ottoman rule, the tribes of the south, mostly Shi'i, were organized in loose confederations headed by shaykhs who led these self-governing units that interacted with other tribes over control of trade routes and land. 10 Increasingly, the tribesmen became more an economic than a tribal base. The shaykhs joined the political elite when their goals converged, and a rift between the tribesmen and their leaders developed as the shaykhs were coopted by the government that provided them with seats in parliament (21 percent in 1933 11 ), tax immunity, and legislation passed for their benefit. 12 No longer dependent upon the tribesmen, the greater shaykhs, through the system of land tenure and parliamentary seats, became part of the ruling elite.
The method of divide and conquer so aptly described by specialists on tribes and class in Iraq cut more than one way. In Shi'i areas in particular, Faysal and his successors were also determined to destroy any real Shi'i political opposition. They tried to destroy any common purpose between the Iraqi Shi'i shaykhs and the Shi'i mujtahadin of al-Najaf and Karbala, and then, using the ethnic card, they called into question the loyalty of Shi'i Iraqis to the Iraqi state. These measures were designed to ensure that any effective Shi'i/tribal leadership would become neutralized and that the Sunni Arab minority operating out of Baghdad would control the country and become the focus of popular loyalty. Ironically, the successful suppression of the Shi'i was achieved despite the fact that it was Shi'i-Sharifian unity of purpose in the 1920 revolt that led to Faysal's accession of power.
The actual evaporation of Shi'i political power need only be summarized here. Faysal was alarmed at the prospect of Shi'i solidarity, the apex of which came during the war and the revolt against the British in 1920 that followed. By then the Shi'i mujtahidin, having developed a political program that opposed any foreign occupation of Iraq, called for an Islamic state, controlled al-Najaf and Karbala, and worked with the Sharifians. They opposed the British mandate and the Anglo-Iraqi treaty that was negotiated in 1922 and was due to be ratified in the Constituent Assembly. Angered by the lack of government response to Saudi Ikhwan incursions into southern Iraq and by a perception that Faysal, because of the treaty, was a British agent, the mujtahidin, headquartered in al-Najaf and Karbala, issued fatwas against participation in the elections. The Shi'i greater shaykhs had already been coopted by the government and supported the treaty. Frustrated with the inability to hold elections, Faysal had the mujtahidin arrested and exiled to Iran. He allowed them to return in 1926; but by that time all effective Arab Iraqi Shi'i leader ship had been broken as the mujtahidin had taken up residence in Iran and there was no "premier mujtahid" to follow. 13
Faysal was also able to thwart any overt Shi'i rebellion by the force of his personality and his ability to balance off the different groups in Iraqi society. He felt comfortable with the tribesmen and visited the tribal areas where he could function as a safety valve for Shi'i grievances. After his death this mechanism ceased, for his son, Ghazi, disliked this aspect of kingship and was rarely seen in the company of tribesmen. From 1933 on any effective Shi'i opposition to government policies could only be articulated by joining the opposition, which was ready to use tribal dissatisfaction as a means to gain power. The tribal rebellion of 1935, for example, was incited by opposition politicians Yasin al-Hashimi and Rashid 'Ali al-Kaylani in their attempt to come to power.
What rankled the Iraqi Shi'i more than the loss of political power was the ethnic denigration that was a natural concommitant of the imposition of the Arab nationalist ideology. The publication of Anis al-Nasuli's Sunni text, al-Dawla al-Umawiyya fi al-Sham (The Umayyad State in Syria), which glorified the Umayyads, sparked Shi'i demonstrations in 1927 and the demand that the Syrian teacher be relieved of his post. 14 With the publication of 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani's al-'Uruba fi al-Mizan (Arabism on the Scales), anti-Shi'ism became more blatant when the author criticized Shi'i Persian and sectarian loyalties. Fear over Iranian designs on the Shi'i holy sites and Shi'i opposition to pan-Arabism led to discriminatory practices against them. The Iraqi government forbade Shi'i proselytization, reduced the economic significance of al-Najaf by limiting its grain exports to Saudi Arabia, and passed Nationality Laws in 1924 and 1927 that prohibited employment by non-Iraqis in certain jobs generally held by Shi'is.
The Kurds and the Assyrians, both deemed political threats to the regime, were suppressed militarily. Incorporated into the new Iraqi state despite their own nationalist aspirations, the Kurds rebelled against Iraqi authority from the early 1920s and were held in check during the 1920s and 1930s by the RAF planes that the British provided the Iraqis in order to maintain control of the north. 15 Once Mosul and its oil potential were absorbed into the Iraqi state, there was no possibility of an independent Kurdistan. Kurdish rebellions against the Baghdad government have occurred throughout most of this century, ceasing for short periods of time when cultural autonomy and political inclusion seemed possible.
The Assyrians, protected by the British, were seen as a thorn in the side of the Iraqi Arab nationalists and were dealt with in 1933. Bakr Sidqi's military campaign, resulting in the decimation of the inhabitants of the village of Symayl, was viewed as a nationalist enterprise and was accompanied by demonstrations and fundraising. In May--June 1933, the Ministry of Education solicited funds from students and teachers to purchase a tank and the Ministry of Defense requested employees to donate two days of salary to a fund to buy a plane. Nationalists in southern Syria, desiring to express their appreciation for the Iraqi military, proposed to donate to the Iraqi army a tank or a plane to be named "Southern Syria." 16 Bakr returned to Baghdad a national hero.
Faysal understood that the political trappings of the state--king and parliament--were the "democratic" facade that the British had imposed on Iraq so that their Mandate could pass muster as an example to the world of enlightened tutelage. Faysal also recognized that education and control of the military were the keys to the creation of a nation. The education portfolio, always given to a nominal Shi'i, was, in reality under the direct control of Arab nationalists within the ministry, who wrote and imposed the curriculum, imported and hired Arab nationalist teachers from Syria and Palestine, and directed the publication of course syllabi and textbooks that would be used not only in Iraq but throughout the Arab world.
Faysal invited Sati' al-Husri to direct education in Iraq. A renowned Ottoman pedagogue, Husri became an Arab nationalist just before the war and joined Faysal in Damascus. In Iraq it was Husri's job to work out accommodation to League of Nations requirements for the inclusion of ethnic and religious diversity within a national education system while at the same time pursuing an Arab nationalist agenda under the nose of the omnipresent British advisors. Husri came into conflict with the Shi'i, especially with Muhammad Fadil al-Jamali, who succeeded him as Director General within the Ministry of Education and whose goal was the advancement of Shi'i education and the decentralization of authority. Ironically, however, both Husri and Jamali pursued a pan-Arab goal in education.
During his tenure in Iraq from 1921-1941, Husri remained aloof from local party politics and attended to what he considered to be "higher politics" or the achievement of fundamental national goals, among them the fostering of patriotism and nationalism. "I will employ every means," he said, "to strengthen the feeling of nationalism among the sons of Iraq to spread the belief in the unity of the Arab nation. And I shall do this without joining any of the political parties which will eventually be formed." 17
The school, instead of the home and family, would become the social and cultural educator. It would teach the superiority of the community, order, discipline, cooperation, love of fatherland, and the role of the individual in service to the nation. The school was to be not only a place for study but also the theater of a new life, the mechanism for social change, by which Husri meant the indoctrination in an Arab nationalist culture. To Husri, compulsory education and universal military conscription were the two most important mechanisms for the cohesion of the nation, military service being a further stage in the assimilation process of the individual to the nation. 18
Military conscription was to be used not only as a means to strengthen the army but also as a method to achieve national cohesion. It also became the "litmus test" for nationalist allegiance. During the parliamentary debate on the issue of conscription in 1927, Ja'far al-'Askari, took conscription past military defense when he said that an army based on universal military conscription "will be more inclusive of the racial qualities and national virtues with which the Iraqi nation is graced than an army built on any other basis." Yasin al-Hashimi advocated induction as cheaper than a volunteer army and maintained that, in theory, conscription did not have to be limited to those under twenty for military service but could be applied equally to all citizens for the exploitation of natural and industrial resources. 19 Despite Shi'i contributions to Ottoman paramilitary forces during World War I, to them the army remained a Sunni preserve. Officers remained Sunni and conscripts were drawn from Shi'i tribesmen from the south. 20 Shi'is saw national conscription as means for the Sunnis to dominate and to increase the Baghdad central authority's control. During the turbulent year of 1927, and again in 1932, the Shi'i opposed military conscription legislation that was to be passed in 1934. They could not sustain their opposition after Iraq became independent when conscription became a key nationalist issue. 21
When the army advocated that the military was to be a school for the nation, guided by an Arab nationalist officer corps,this was a natural extension of the ideology developed by the Prussian officer corps, adopted by the French, and later transmitted to the Iraqi Arabs via German military advisors at the Ottoman military academy. 22 The officers who came to power after 1936 were of a generation that did not go through the process of national self-definition while in the Ottoman army but were trained in nationalism by officers who had undergone the throes of Ottomanism versus Arabism.
The pan-Arab military was buttressed by the schools that mandated the teaching of nationalism. Husri's curriculum, like the French model he incorporated into the Iraqi version, emphasized the study of language and history. Arabic, Middle Eastern, and European history, as well as geography and civics, accounted for about half the hours the Iraqi child spent in primary school. 23 Intermediate and secondary school curricula were not completed until the mid 1930s, but throughout the interwar period, despite the plethora of subjects in the course of study, more than 15 percent of the curriculum was devoted to history, geography, and civics. 24 There was no compulsory education law in Iraq, so Husri took into account the strong attrition rate as the students progressed via the state-administered examinations at every level and designed his program to inculcate nationalism in primary school and reinforce it in the upper grades. Like the French curriculum, nationalist sub jects in the Iraqi course of study were presented in simplified narrative in the early grades with more detail added as the students progressed. 25
Husri left the Ministry of Education in 1936 because of disagreements over method and altercations with subordinates, but his work was continued by his successors Muhammad Fadil al-Jamali and Sami Shawkat, who retained and expanded on Husri's curriculum. Jamali actively recruited Syrian and Palestinian teachers in the 1930s, placing them in administrative positions, appointing them as history teachers, and commissioning their history textbooks for use in Iraqi schools. 26 In Iraq the pan-Arabs emphasized Arab political issues rather than Iraqi local concerns.
History was the most important tool used to inculcate national awareness in the younger generation. "History for history's sake," Shawkat preached to a meeting of history teachers in Baghdad, "has no place in our present society: it is a matter for the specialist and for those who devote themselves to learning alone. The histories which are written with this aim in view are buried and nobody reads them." 27 Teachers were provided, therefore, with explicit instructions on how to teach history detailed in the curriculum guides provided by the Ministry of Education. The "study of history is glorious," they were told, "filled with life, great and exciting tales, sentiments to awaken national pride, free from complexities, not loaded with names, dates, and facts which oppress the memory in such a manner as to restrict the understanding of the course of history." 28
The Iraqi curriculum used biographical sketches to introduce elementary school children to the history of the Arabs. Heroes were to be taught in terms of their "glorious historical exploits through bravery, courage, determination, endurance, and noble deeds" 29 and teachers were to emphasize the virtuous and pious characters of the personalities and their service to the nation. It is worth taking a detailed look at the personalities chosen, as the lists of heroes change throughout the 1930s. It is illustrative of the shift from an inclusive Arab nationalism imposed by Husri to a more secular Syrian/Palestinian approach that became law by 1940.
In the curriculum for the 1920s there were twenty-eight names on the list of heroes, including six women. 30 In 1936 the number increased to forty and included such modern personalities as King Ghazi, Faysal, King Husayn of the Hijaz, and recent Middle Eastern rulers or Muslim leaders from the Middle East and North Africa who led revolts against the Europeans. The Kurd Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi was studied as were the significant Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphs, governors of Iraq, the Four Righteous Caliphs, and the Prophet Muhammad. In addition, students were to know of the deeds of pre-Islamic heroes that included the Jewish poet, al-Samwa'il, and important women: Khadija, 'Aisha, al-Khinsa, Bilqis, and Zenobia. 31
From 1936 to 1940 a change occurred that emphasized the pan-Arab and more secular nature of the curriculum. The heroes became "Arab" heroes, non-Arabs and North African personalities were replaced by Arab conquerors of Syria and Palestine, and there was a change in the description of Muhammad. In 1936 the syllabus referred to "The Prophet Muhammad, God bless him and grant him salvation," while in 1940, conforming to Akram Zu'aytir's nationalist text, Ta'rikhuna bi Uslub Qisasi (Our History in Story Form), which teachers were advised to use for reference, Muhammad was identified as Sayyidna Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah. In their instructions, teachers were told to stress to the students the greatness of the Prophet Muhammad, the "Commander" [za'im], emphasizing, in a departure from the norm, the historical Muhammad, the "leader of the nation and the source of its power in the past, in the present, and in the future." 32
By the end of the 1930s there was a definite shift away from the treatment of the Islamic and the multiethnic composition of Iraqi society to the emphasis on an Iraq that was part of an anti-British, pan-Arab union. During the 1920s when he was implementing the educational system, Husri dithered over the establishment of teaching in the vernacular in Kurdish areas, a requirement of the League and a criticism the American observers of the Monroe Commission noted in their report on education in Iraq issued in 1932. He opposed opening a secondary school in al-Najaf and a teacher training school in Hilla and decided to abolish the Directorate of Education for the middle Euphrates region in 1925. 33
The nationalists' control over education was capped by the Public Education Law of 1940 advocated by Jamali, which was the culmination of the "pan-Arabization" policy initiated in the schools during the 1920s. Its object was to synchronize by law the teaching of "nationalist subjects"--history, geography, the Arabic language and literature--in nongovernment schools. The goal of the policy was to ensure that students received information in a prescribed manner from a pan-Arab nationalist approach, delivered by teachers appointed or approved by the Iraqi Ministry of Education. By the mid 1930s, many of them were Syrians and Palestinians, who were strong advocates for Palestine within the context of the Arabism they were teaching.
This law, like similar laws passed during the interwar years in Argentina, Japan, Germany, and long in effect in France, was to be the means of assurance that in the multiethnic and multireligious state of Iraq, nationalism could be fully propagated. Any deviation in curriculum, textbooks, or teaching not in the spirit of the law was prohibited. 34 Budgets of all private schools had to be cleared with the Ministry of Education, and every student took the same mandated state-administered examination.
This legislated conformity to Arab nationalist goals in the curriculum coincided with political events that put the implementation of the nationalist ideology to a real test. Iraqi foreign policy at the end of the 1930s, when the government was dominated by political and military pan-Arabists, was directed along the lines already set in motion by Faysal. The "Rashid 'Ali Coup" and the war with Britain in 1941 were the practical culmination of the designated ideological process.
Faysal initiated an activist approach to Arab nationalist aspirations through his involvement in Syrian politics during the 1920s in attempts to convince politicians of the efficacy of Hashimite unity. With Iraqi independence in 1932, plans for a pan-Arab congress backed by Syrians and Palestinians who had supported Faysal in 1918-1920 to be held in Baghdad were underway. Though his death in 1933 delayed the Hashimite approach to Arab unity, the pan-Arab policy was taken up by the military that had been politicized during the 1930s and resulted in the hostilities that broke out between Iraq and Great Britain on May 2, 1941.
The war that resulted lasted until May 30, when, as British troops were on the outskirts of Baghdad, the military leaders sued for peace and fled the country for Teheran, Istanbul, and Berlin. In an attempt to bring to fruition the goal of Arab unity under Iraqi hegemony by aligning with the Axis powers when Britain, in the spring of 1941, seemed on the verge of defeat, the pan-Arab military officers who had taken control of the government, together with the Jerusalem Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husayni and his Syrian and Palestinian supporters who followed him to exile in Baghdad after 1937, sought to oust the British not only from Iraq but from the Middle East entirely. 35
These were the officers, exemplified by Salah al-Din al-Sabbagh, who attended the Baghdad Military College in the 1930s where Arabism was the mark of solidarity. Although theoretically the military college was open to all ethnic and communal groups, more and more entering cadets were from Arab Sunni backgrounds; fewer non-Sunnis attended as cadets and were gauged on their feelings of "'Uruba" (Arabness). And while the totalitarian regimes of Europe in the 1930s certainly impressed the officers, they had no interest in social or economic reform. 36 Their goals were to rearm Iraq and to achieve Palestine's independence from British control. To that end al-Sabbagh joined the pan-Arab clubs like al-Muthanna, was one of those who trained the paramilitary Futuwwa units in Iraqi schools, and became the leader of the "Golden Square"--the officers who backed the Mufti and Rashid 'Ali in their abortive war against the British.
The British and the restored Hashimite regime understood the war to be an Arab nationalist attack on the British; the subsequent government report, which assessed blame for the war and the attack on the Jewish community of Baghdad by retreating Iraqi soldiers, bedouin, and youth gangs, focused on the politicization of the military through the education process in Iraq during the interwar period. 37
As a result officers suspected of harboring pro-Axis sentiments were pensioned off or interned in camps located in southern Iraq while older, demonstrably promonarchy officers were brought out of retirement. Rashid 'Ali and the Golden Square were tried in absentia and, as the military perpetrators of the war were gradually extradited, they were returned for execution in Iraq. It was not until the end of the war that Nuri al-Sa'id, prime minister since the fall of 1941, realized that the future security needs of the country required a revitalized army and a British military mission was brought in to provide training.
But military activists were a small minority in Iraq. The tribes did not participate in the revolt and though the hostilities reached the capital, the war was short-lived. Iraqi casualties were some five hundred officers and enlisted men. Thus the British, who had relinquished all authority to Iraqis in the Ministry of Education in the 1920s, now undertook to repair the damage in what they saw as the anti-British, Arab nationalist institution.
Though the British had warned of the danger of a politicized student body as early as the late 1920s and had foreseen the consequences of lenient punishment meted out to students demonstrators, no prophylactic action was taken. Those who demonstrated at the Ministry of Education against the expulsion of Anis al-Nasuli and the retraction of his pro-Syrian Sunni history of the Umayyads in 1927 were duly noted by the British. The police dispersed the student agitators. Student leaders and their mentors, among them Darwish al-Miqdadi, were expelled from school. Nevertheless, despite Shi'i grievances, when tensions subsided all were reinstated. The British commented that "the Ministry of Education must apparently reconcile itself to the fact that in a crisis, it cannot trust either the commonsense or the loyalty of teachers." 38
Teachers encouraged students to give eloquent anti-British speeches, especially on national holidays such as Renaissance Day, which commemorated the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks. In the 1930s the British government became the target of the rhetoric, which extolled the virtues of all who opposed the Anglo-Iraqi treaty and now condemned politicians such as Nuri al-Sa'id and Ja'far al-'Askari who, despite their sponsorship of the treaty, had actually participated in the revolt on the Arab side.
The anti-British political climate, partly derived from anti-British sections in al-Miqdadi's texts that stressed themes such as British imperialism and noted that it was British cowardice as opposed to Iraqi bravery in the revolt of 1920 that resulted in Iraqi independence. These ideas were reinforced in the classroom, a student wrote to the British, so that one retained the view that the British "cried during the battles like children," that they "won the war only through their money and mean diplomacy." The Arabs, on the other hand, "captured British cannons and artillery when they were armed only with clubs" and "machine-gun nests . . . with sticks only." 39
In 1941-1942, the British and Nuri's government specifically ordered the alteration of textbooks and the expulsion of nationalist teachers. Although the order to excise anti-British material from the end of Darwish al-Miqdadi's text was given almost as soon as Nuri returned to power in the fall of 1941, in February 1942 the British lamented the noncooperation of the civil servants and the teachers in the Ministry of Education. Not until both Jamali and Shawkat left the ministry and a British advisor was installed in 1942, however, did the process of decentralization within the ministry begin and the installation of new cadres of teachers take place.
But, in a comment noted on a "Security Summary," the author noted that in reality it was "almost impossible to insist on the suppression of all anti-British references in school books objectionable as these are, the interference involved in their enforced suppression would possibly be more to our disadvantage than their remaining." He noted that anti-British teachers were stated
| to have shed tears when pausing at a deleted passage, the effect being more impressive than the reading of the passage! There is no escaping the fact that we and the French in Syria, are not popular in Arab nationalist circles, and no amount of censoring schoolbooks will alter the fact. What we can justly object to is Arab discrimination in favour of the Axis in such books: condemnation of our methods in Palestine and the French in North Africa and Syria without mentioning the Italians in Libya. 40 |
Despite Sati' al-Husri's policy of benign neglect in Shi'i areas and the anti-Shi'i tone of the Sunni/Syrian authored texts, Shi'i began to attend government school in larger numbers due for the most part to the championing of Shi'i interests by Jamali. 41 As young Shi'i realized the importance of secular education in achieving goals of equal opportunity, power-sharing in a Sunni dominated state, and working toward the eradication of the belief propagated by Arab nationalists that Shi'ism was a subversive heresy motivated by Persian hatred for the Arabs and a threat to Arab nationalism, 42 the curriculum became less of an issue. The religious dilemma inherent in cooperating with a political regime deemed illegitimate by orthodox Shi'ism, however, remained below the surface. 43
Jamali, a Shi'i and an ardent and outspoken Arab nationalist, used his tenure in the Ministry of Education for the advocacy of Shi'i mobility. It was largely due to his efforts that Shi'i inclusion into the Iraqi sociopolitical mainstream already became evident in the mid 1940s. He encouraged and accepted more Shi'i students as foreign mission students; assured their entrance into the Higher Teachers Training College, which charged no tuition; established a secondary school in al-Najaf; and eased requirements for students in the provinces to enter secondary schools. 44
Shi'is began to attend government schools in order to prepare themselves to fill government posts in proportion to their numbers in the Iraqi population. They were concerned with the nature of education in the state school system and many went on to become professional educators, where after World War II, they entered the teaching profession in large numbers. 45 Between 1930 and 1945 the number of students in Iraqi schools tripled and there were secondary schools in all of the districts. Much of the expansion, including an increase in the numbers of foreign mission students and those attending the Higher Teachers Training College, came from Shi'i areas. 46
Many intellectuals submerged their Shi'i identity and became Arab nationalists. The historian 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani rarely mentions Shi'i grievances in his multivolume history of Iraqi cabinets and was a supporter of the Rashid 'Ali government, whose failure resulted in Hasani's incarceration for four years in an internment camp in southern Iraq. Young Shi'is used education in order to fit into Iraqi society, for to become professional Shi'i smacked of sectarianism [al-ta'ifiyya] and diluted their loyalty to the regime. These were the young men who began to fill the government posts after 1945, became teachers, and who, by the early 1950s, filled the middle-class slots left vacated by the Jewish emigration in 1950-1951. 47 Physical hostility by the regime against the Shi'i would come under the Ba'th.
For the Jewish community, the Public Education Law of 1940 brought out into the open basic questions of the relationship between the Jewish community and the Iraqi regime. What the law actually did was legalize nationalist conformity and, by doing so, expose Jews in all Iraqi schools to the inherent political conflict between Zionism and Arab nationalism.
The community was divided in its approach to the government of the new state. Those who had developed commercial links with British interests welcomed the Mandate, while Jews who served as professionals and civil servants under the Ottomans looked forward to an Iraqi regime. Political communal solidarity also began to weaken as Jews began to attend government schools to receive a completely secular education and acquired aspirations for full social, intellectual, and political participation in Iraqi society.
Groups of secularly educated Jewish youth identified themselves as citizens of Arab Iraq, loyal to the country of their birth. They became part of the newly emerging Iraqi Arab intelligentsia of the interwar years. They edited books, started Arabic literary journals and newspapers, and wrote poetry extolling their homeland. Murad Michael's first poem, published in 1922, was an ode of praise and love for Iraq. Many also joined liberal opposition movements. To these Jews there was no conflict between the Jewish religion and Iraqi nation ality. They considered themselves to be Jewish Arabs and did not identify with Zionism. 48
Jews began attending government schools in large numbers during the 1930s even if there was a Jewish school in the area. School was free and government schools had night classes. A high school diploma from a government school was the ticket to a job in the civil service or teaching, guaranteeing economic security. Husri's Arabization curriculum meant an emphasis on Arabic and preparation for the government administered examinations required for entrance to high school. So long as the government needed Jews to fill government posts, Jews attended and completed secondary school in numbers far exceeding their proportion of the population. 49 A diploma was also the gateway for study at the Law College and admission to the American University at Beirut. For those interested in a European university education, the Alliance school, because of its strong English component, was the track to study in England.
Matriculation in a government-accredited secondary school also meant exemption from military conscription. Though there were Jews in the police force and in the army in the mid 1930s, educated Jews, like the Shi'i, tried to avoid military service that would place them in the army as inductees under Sunni Muslim officers. In order to counteract the flow of Jews to completely secular schools, the Jewish community established a number of Jewish secondary schools that provided religious instruction, were staffed by Jewish and Muslim teachers, and were accredited by the state. These, too, came under the jurisdiction of the 1940 education law. 50
The distinctions made by early Arab nationalists between the Jewish religion and political Zionism began to blur in the early 1930s, especially after 1936, with the infiltration of Nazi propaganda and when Iraqi support for the Palestine Arabs coalesced with its pan-Arab foreign policy. During this period, al-Samaw'il, the pre-Islamic Jewish Arab, was dropped from the list of heroes taught in Iraqi schools. Jews were requested to openly declare their loyalty to the Iraqi regime, which they did: "We are Arabs before we are Jews," Ezra Menahem Daniel proclaimed in 1936 after a bomb exploded in a Jewish area on Yom Kippur. 51 Anwar Sha'ul and other literary figures published notices of their loyalty to the Iraqi regime in the press, which elicited a response from Palestinian Akram Zu'aytir who was visiting Baghdad. He approved of Sha'ul's views but pressed him to be even "more emphatic in his condemnation of Zionism." 52
Though officially apolitical with regard to the events in Palestine and evincing little to no support for political Zionism, the Jewish community had to walk a fine line after Faysal's death in 1933. By the mid 1930s Zionist activity was officially banned in Iraq, the importation of Hebrew books and newspapers from Palestine was interdicted, and the last Jewish teachers of the Hebrew language who had come from Palestine were expelled. 53 The Iraqi government also forbade the teaching of Jewish history and the Hebrew language in Jewish schools under the pretext of nondissemination of ideology of Zionism. 54 Prayers and the Bible could be read in the original Hebrew but not translated into Arabic for discussion. When Ezra Haddad, headmaster of the Shamash School, tried to obtain permission to publish a handbook for the teaching of the Bible, he was refused. Studying a version of history in which teachers railed against Jews in Palestine during the fighting there from 1936 to 1939, and attending classes where funds and support were solicited actively for the Palestine Defense Fund whose monies were allocated for Arab martyrs in Palestine, caused serious conflicts for the Jewish students who saw matriculation as the only means to remain economically secure in an increasingly volatile political atmosphere. They accommodated themselves to the political situation by closing schools when demonstrations were expected to occur and by conforming to government regulation to the letter. As Iraqi Muslims became available for civil service positions, they began to replace Jews working for the government. Layoffs of Jewish civil servants in the Ministry of Economics began to occur in 1934. Jews found jobs in the private sector.
So long as the community was not physically threatened, Jews could live with the political exigencies. Everyone, however--Jews, the British, and Iraqis--was shocked by the farhud in Baghdad that occurred in June 1941 when more than one hundred and fifty Jews were killed and Jewish property was looted. 55 More than any other event, the farhud resulted in a new phase of Jewish history in Iraq, which led to an obfuscation of the Jewish role in Iraqi society by implying doubts about Jewish loyalty. For many who rode the waves of sporadic anti-Jewish feeling in Iraq during the 1930s, not questioning their loyalties and allegiances, the events of 1941 caused a shift in thinking. Insecurity and doubt about their future role in Iraq politicized the community. Jews joined liberal opposition groups, the Communist Party, and the Zionist movement. Ultimately, virtually the entire Jewish population of Iraq emigrated.
The attempt to impose nationalism from the top down by the Iraqi Arab nationalists during the interwar period resulted in foreign policy operations that failed to implement the goals of Arab unity. After Faysal's death, the flag of Hashimite hegemony over the Arab world was transmuted into a program for a pan-Arab [Iraqi, Syrian, Palestinian] union dominated by Iraqi pan-Arab military officers and the Jerusalem Mufti. When it was clear that the Iraqi-British War of 1941 had ended in defeat for the nationalist cause, the Hashimite banner was passed to TransJordan. As heir to the legacy, 'Abdullah began to the reconstitution of the Arab monarchy in 1948 through his acquisition of the old city of Jerusalem and the West Bank. But Syria would lie beyond his grasp. Meddling in Syrian politics during the 1950s became the idée fixe of the Iraqi regent 'Abd al-Ilah, who needed assurances of a throne once Faysal II reached his majority. 56 The revolution in 1958 ended Hashimite unity goals. The pan-Arab ideology, however, would be reconstituted by the Ba'th party.
The Arab nationalists also failed to create a coherent inclusive ideology that could weld the fragments of Iraqi society to the Sunni Arab nationalist regime in Baghdad. As a secular umbrella, the ideology of Arab nationalism could theoretically accommodate sectarian ethnic and religious identification so long as the adherents professed loyalty to the state and adopted "Arab culture" as their own. There was room for separation of religion and nationality. The definition of Arabism, however, became narrower as Iraqi foreign policy adopted the Palestinian Arab cause. With Syrian and Palestinian emigres in charge of education and the means of dissemination of political discourse through the schools, pan-Arabism took on a Syrian "Umayyad" caste in opposition to an Iraqi "Abbasid" definition that could incorporate Shi'is and Jews. Because of Palestine, religious and political identification blurred and Jews, no matter how vociferous their loyalty as Jewish Iraqi Arabs and denials of Zionist partisanship, were the targets of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism--the latter disseminated through the German legation in Baghdad.
Kurds, Jews, and Shi'i found themselves excluded from social and political incorporation in the new Iraq. For Kurds the response would be almost continuous rebellion against the regime in power. 57 For Jews the political solution to exclusion meant emigration.
By 1944 Shi'i schools in the south were overcrowded, the Shi'i leadership was demanding more government schools in the area, and parents pushed their children to prepare for government positions. The Sunni government responded to Shi'i demands for inclusion of more Shi'is in government by expanding the numbers of bureaucratic and government posts to allow for more Shi'is but also to ensure Sunni dominance of the state mechanism. By 1949 the Shi'i had their first Iraqi prime minister, Salih Jabr, but not only was his tenure short-lived, he spent the rest of his political career in opposition to the perennial prime minister, Nuri al-Sa'id. Shi'i frustration over their inability to achieve political parity in Baghdad and failure to have their needs addressed led many to join opposition movements. Both the Communist Party and radical Islamic groups that would play a greater role after the revolution of 1958 attracted Shi'i adherents during the last years of the monarchy. 58
Thus Arab nationalism in Iraq during the early monarchy failed to translate the political legacies of the Ottoman Empire--ethnicity and communal identity--into an operative nationalist concept that could incorporate the indigenous ethnic and religious fragments within the borders of the ter ritory allocated to the the new state into an inclusive nation. 59
Notes
Note 1: A. Schölch, "Britain in Palestine 1838-1882: The Roots of the Balfour Policy," Journal of Palestine Studies 22 (1992): 39-56; Mayir Vereté, "The Balfour Declaration and Its Makers," in Norman Rose (ed.), From Palmerston to Balfour: Collected Essays of Mayir Vereté (London, 1992). Back.
Note 2: Mosul was later incorporated to ensure Iraqi/British control of its petroleum. Back.
Note 3: Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi'is of Iraq (Princeton, 1994), 13. Back.
Note 4: Elie Kedourie, "The Iraqi Shi'is and Their Fate," in Martin Kramer (ed.), Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution, (Boulder, 1987), 135-158. Back.
Note 5: Anderson, Imagined Communities; Smith, Ethnic Origins. Back.
Note 6: Simon, Iraq, 101; see Dawn, "Formation," on the influence of James Breasted on the formation of an Arab nationalist ideology. Back.
Note 7: Tibi, Arab Nationalism, 122. The quote is from Husri. Back.
Note 8: Cleveland, Making, 123-126. Back.
Note 9: Briton Busch, Britain, India, and the Arabs 1914-1921 (Berkeley, 1971), 175-176. Back.
Note 10: Samira Haj, "The Problems of Tribalism: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Iraqi History," Social History 16 (1991): 45-58. Back.
Note 11: Nakash, Shi'is, 89. Back.
Note 12: For example, the Law Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators of 1933 made the peasant "responsible for almost every disaster that might befall a crop" and kept them on the land as long as they were in debt. Marion Farouq-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, "Labor and National Liberation: The Trade Union Movement in Iraq, 1920-1958," Arab Studies Quarterly 5 (1983): 139-154. Back.
Note 13: Nakash, Shi'is, 83-96. Back.
Note 14: Great Britain, Colonial Office, Report by His Britannic Majesty's Government to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of 'Iraq for the Year 1927 (London, 1928), 19. Back.
Note 15: C. J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks, and Arabs: Politics, Travel, and Research in North-Eastern Iraq, 1919-1925 (London, 1957); Edmund Ghareeb, The Kurdish Question in Iraq (Syracuse, 1981). Back.
Note 16: US Dept of State, 890g.00 General Conditions/5, Knabenshue to Secretary of State, Baghdad, May 3, 1933; 890g.00 General Conditions/6, Knabenshue to Secretary of State, Baghdad, May 24, 1933. Back.
Note 17: Cleveland, Making, 62. Back.
Note 18: Sati' al-Husri, "al-Khidma al-'Askariyyah wa-al-Tarbiyya al-'Amma," al-Mu'allim al-Jadid 1 (1936): 273-278. Back.
Note 19: Phebe A. Marr, "Yasin al-Hashimi: The Rise and Fall of a Nationalist" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1966), 173-175. Back.
Note 20: Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, 1985), 37. In 1936, of the eighty top officers in the Iraqi army, there were one Shi'i, two Christians, and not more than seven Kurds (Mohammad A. Tarbush, The Role of the Military in Politics: A Case Study of Iraq to 1941 (London, 1982), 78-79. Back.
Note 21: Nakash, Shi'is, 115-116; Tarbush, Role, 73-79. Back.
Note 22: Reeva S. Simon, "The Education of an an Iraqi Ottoman Army Officer," in Khalidi, et al., Origins, 151-166. Back.
Note 23: Matta Akrawi, Curriculum Construction in the Public Primary Schools of Iraq (New York, 1943), 180. Back.
Note 24: Abdul Amir al-Rubaiy, "Nationalism and Education: A Study of Nationalistic Tendencies in Iraqi Education," (Ph.D. dissertation, Kent State University, 1972), 88. Back.
Note 25: Akrawi, Curriculum Construction, 165-169. Back.
Note 26: For an analysis of the textbooks used in Iraqi schools see Simon, Iraq, 75-114; Marr, "Development," 96-97. Back.
Note 27: Shawkat, "Ta'rikhna al-Qawmi," in Hadhihi Ahdahfuna (Baghdad, 1939), 43. The translation is from Haim, Arab Nationalism, 182. Back.
Note 28: Iraq, Ministry of Education, Manhaj al-Dirasa al-Ibtida'iyya (Baghdad, Government Press, 1940), 65-66. Back.
Note 29: Sati' al-Husri, Mudhakkirati fi al-'Iraq (Beirut, 1966-1968), 1:215. Back.
Note 30: Akrawi, Curriculum Development, 187. He does not list the names. Back.
Note 31: Manhaj (1936), 46. Back.
Note 32: Manhaj (1940), 66; Akram Zu'aytir and Darwish al-Miqdadi, Ta'rikhuna bi Uslub Qisassi (Baghdad, 1939), 3. Back.
Note 33: Nakash, Shi'is, 112. Back.
Note 34: Memo by Sami Shawkat published in al-Zaman, June 9, 1939. US National Archives, Record Group 84: "Notification from the Directorate General of Education to all the Native and Denominational Schools Concerning the Use of Books Prejudicial to the National Spirit." Back.
Note 35: The revolution of 1941 occupies a major place in the Ba'thi narrative of Iraqi pan-Arab history. In his foreword to The Encyclopedia of Modern Iraq (Baghdad, n.d.) Khairallah Telfah, Saddam Husayn's uncle and mentor and a participant in the Rashid 'Ali movement, singles out Iraq's role in the revolution as an act by a "true Arab country." Back.
Note 36: Mahmud al-Durrah, al-Harb al-'Iraqiyya al-Britaniyya 1941 (Beirut, 1969), 47-52; Hiya 'Iraqi (Cairo, 1976), 36-41. Back.
Note 37: The report can be found in 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani, Ta'rikh al-Wizarat al-'Iraqiyya (Sidon, 1953-1967) 5:272-282; see also FO 624/32/292 Cornwallis to Eden, Baghdad, 20 April 1943, for a summary of attempted reform of Iraqi education. Back.
Note 38: Great Britain, Report . . . 1927, 159. Back.
Note 39: FO624/24; Germany: Propaganda 448/3/41. Back.
Note 40: Great Britain, War Office 208/1561, Security Summary Middle East #22, 20 February 1942; see also the comment by Palestinian Jewish emissary to Iraq, Enzo Sereni, in his dispatch of 25 September 1942 (Central Zionist Archives S 6/1960). Back.
Note 41: Harry J. Almond, Iraqi Statesman: A Portrait of Mohammed Fadhel Jamali (Salem, Oregon, 1993). Back.
Note 42: Nakash, Shi'is, 110-113. This view has persisted to this day. See for example the study of Persian and Jewish education in Iraq by Fadil al-Barrak, al-Madaris al-Yahudiyya wa al-Iraniyya fi al-'Iraq (Baghdad, 1984) and Khairallah Talfah's infamous Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies. Jews and Shi'i are placed in the same category. Back.
Note 43: Shi'i had already begun to avail themselves of secular education as early as 1909 when the Madrasa al-Ja'fariyya opened under the authorization of a noted Shi'i mujtahid who understood the importance of preparing Shi'i "to assume positions and provide services hitherto fulfilled mainly by Jews" (Nakash, Shi'is, 52, 111). Back.
Note 44: Marr, "Development," 99. Back.
Note 45: Many followed in Jamali's footsteps and attended Teachers College, Columbia University. One of the first, Matta Akrawi, wrote his thesis in 1942 on curriculum construction in Iraqi primary schools. It is an important resource for study of Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s. Back.
Note 46: Marr, "Development," 99. Back.
Note 47: Kedourie, "Iraqi Shi'is," 135-158. Back.
Note 48: Yosef Me'ir, Ha-hitpathut ha-hevratit-tarbutit shel Yehudei 'Iraq me'az 1830 ve-ad yameinu (Jerusalem, 1989), 411-418. Back.
Note 49: In 1934 the Iraqi government initiated mass layoffs and firings of Jews from the Ministry of Economics. These employment terminations and later informal quotas on numbers of Jews allowed in institutions of higher education reflected not only the politicization of the regime but also evidence of the availability of Muslim candidates for these positions. Back.
Note 50: In the 1930s the Jewish community supported four types of schools: religious schools with elementary studies in Arabic, Alliance schools for boys and for girls, Jewish schools following the government syllabus, and the Shamash school, established in 1928 to teach the English curriculum (Report of the Jewish Schools Committee on the Jewish Schools in Baghdad 1930, 6). Back.
Note 51: Nancy E. Berg, "Israeli Writers From Iraq: Exile From Exile" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), 38. Back.
Note 52: Cited from Zu'aytir's memoirs in Elie Kedourie, "The Break Between Muslims and Jews in Iraq," in Mark R. Cohen and Abraham L. Udovitch (eds.), Jews Among Arabs: Contacts and Boundaries (Princeton, 1989), 29. Back.
Note 53: Hayyim J. Cohen, Ha-Pe'ilut ha-Zionit be-'Iraq (Jerusalem, 1969), 85-152. Back.
Note 54: Hebrew University, Institute for Contemporary Jewry, Oral History Division, interview by Hayyim Cohen with Murad Michael, 22 August 1963. Back.
Note 55: Hayyim J. Cohen, "The Anti-Jewish Farhud in Baghdad, 1941," Middle Eastern Studies 3 (1966-67): 2-17; Walid M. S. Hamdi, Rashid Ali al-Gailani and the Nationalist Movement in Iraq, 1939-1941 (London, 1987); Shulamit Binah, "The Anti-Jewish Farhud in Baghdad 1941: Jewish and Arab Perspectives" (M.A. thesis, CUNY, 1989). Back.
Note 56: Reeva S. Simon, "The Hashimite 'Conspiracy': Hashimite Unity Attempts, 1921-1958," International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 314-327. Back.
Note 57: Ghareeb, Kurdish Question. Back.
Note 58: Nakash, Shi'is, 126-138. Back.
Note 59: For analyses along these lines see Kemal Karpat, "The Ottoman Ethnic and Confessional Legacy in the Middle East," in Milton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich (eds.), Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca, 1988); and Sami Zubaida, "Community, Class, and Minorities in Iraqi Politics," in Robert A. Fernea and Roger Owen, (eds.), The Iraqi Revolution of 1958: The Old Social Classes Revisited, (London, 1991). Back.
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