The Foundations of the Arab State
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The Foundations of the Arab State

Ghassan Salame, Ghassan Salame

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The Foundations of the Arab State

Ghassan Salame, Ghassan Salame

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The Foundations of the Arab State deals with the conceptual, historical, and cultural environment in which the contemporary Arab state system was established and has evolved.

With contributions from established scholars in the field, this volume addresses the major issues posed by the emergence of contemporary Arab states, by their consolidation, the role played by foreign powers in their creation, and their future within the region.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781136877094

Part One

1

The Origins of the Arab State System

Iliya Harik

THE PRE-COLONIAL ERA

Introduction

The Arab world today consists of twenty-one states, officially members of the Arab League. Three of them, Mauritania, Somalia and Djibouti, are peripheral, with the latter two more African than Arab. The remaining eighteen, to which this discussion will be limited, have gained their political independence only recently. The earliest Arab state to achieve independence was the Yemen (San'a) in 1918 and the most recent was the United Arab Emirates at the end of 1971. From the Atlantic to the Gulf, only the territory known as Najd, of what is today Saudi Arabia, has not known direct foreign rule in some form or another.
The Arab states manifest a considerable degree of diversity amongst themselves, more so than the diversity that exists amongst ethnically heterogeneous states as in Western Europe, for instance. Five of the Arab oil-producing countries enjoy a per capita income of over $10,000, while the poorest, such as the two Yemens, Oman, Egypt and the Sudan, all rank below $800 per capita. The mode of life varies from disintegrating tribalism, particularly in Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, to sophisticated urban life such as can be witnessed in the supermarkets and theatres of pre-1975 Beirut, Cairo and Tunis. Yet, despite these outstanding differences there is something important in common to these states, something of which they are strongly self-conscious. They speak the same language and basically share the same religion.
Language and religion have, through the ages, generated a unified high culture which bequeathes to them a sense of collective identity. From their language present-day Arabs have drawn their sense of national identity and from Islam they have drawn a collective sense of unity that often overlaps with nationalism. Both nationalism and Islam generate a sense of identification that cuts across state boundaries and supersedes, on the ideological level, local considerations.

THE NATION-STATE PROBLEM

Herein lies the paradox in Arab politics and history. Eighteen Arab states find themselves formally independent and sovereign and yet hardly any of them unconditionally accepts the legitimacy of its own statehood. The fact of the matter is that these states have, for a good part of the twentieth century, been caught up in the pull and push of conflicting forces, some coming from domestic centrifugal sources such as ethnic and sectarian divisions and some from the universal forces of pan-Arabism and pan-Islam, both of which draw away from the legitimacy of statehood enjoyed by these countries.
Under the Wahhabis of Arabia, the idea of a state system was seriously challenged by the universal principle of pan-Islam. In the 1950s and 1960s, Arab nationalism under Nasser seriously challenged the state system from a nationalist perspective. Though no other universalist movement since the expansionist periods of Wahhabism and Nasserism has seriously threatened the state system, the growing strength of fundamentalist Islam at present is a continuous reminder of the precarious status of the state system and secularist trends.
Arab nationalism as an ideology, more so than Islam, denies legitimacy to the state system. The true and natural state is considered to be the national state whose authority is coterminous with the nation, the nation being defined as the people of one language and culture, i.e. the Arab people whose area of habitation extends from Morocco on the Atlantic to the Yemen on the Indian Ocean. Using this ideological yardstick, the eighteen states just alluded to are to be considered one nation-state. The term ‘nation’ (umma) has throughout the Islamic era referred to the universal Muslim community (Haim, 1962; Sharabi 1966; Hourani, 1962).
Around the end of the nineteenth century, however, the term umma started to appear in the political literature of the time in reference to the universal Arab community, thus acquiring a preponderantly secular meaning. Though Arab Christians figured prominently in pursuing this course, the new terminology was not limited to them (Antonius, 1955; Zeine, 1958). Arab nationalists, overwhelmingly Muslim, insist on this usage and stubbornly resist applying the term to the people of a single one of the Arab states. Even in the constitutions of these states, the term umma is avoided, as it is also in official usage. The name of the state, say Syria, or the term ‘people’ (ash-sha'b) are used instead. It is because of these conventional Arab usages of the words that the term ‘nation-state’ was avoided in the title of this chapter, for many would question my terminology and some would dispute it outright. It would be pointless to quibble about terms, for words have conventional or given definitions and one gains nothing by violating this understanding. I shall accept therefore the objection that these countries are not nation-states and just refer to the whole set as the ‘state system’ for each of them is undeniably a state in the formal sense.
The Committee on New Nations at the University of Chicago published in the 1960s a book called Old Societies and New States (Geertz, 1963). While this nomenclature seems reasonable, it tends to be misleading. The illusion of state novelty in the Third World among students of development may be due to the disinclination of modernisation theory to delve into historical inquiry. Social scientists have a particularly significant role in re-examining history and relating it to the present.
A quick look at the history of the eighteen Arab countries clearly shows not only that they are old societies but also old states. Except for three of them — Iraq, Syria and Jordan — they all go back to the nineteenth century or a much earlier period. The traditional state should not be overlooked or dismissed because of a modern outlook or other biases. Those who ignore it do so because of a formalistic definition of the state, and/or because of their limited historical curiosity. Indeed, very few, if any, have engaged in a study of comparative history to assess the origins and records of the state structures of the Middle East and North Africa.
An attempt will be made in this discussion to show that the states of the eighteen Arab countries under consideration are not only quite old (and in some cases extremely old) but also have within themselves the sources of their own legitimacy and that this fact cannot be brushed aside by nationalists or scholars. Arab nationalists have ignored and belittled the state system as baseless and as a creation of colonialism (Haim, 1962). They have done so at their own risk and have paid a high price for their historical misperceptions.
The contempt heaped by nationalist ideologues on the state system has discouraged a detached inquiry. It is, however, to the credit of Elbaki Hermassi (1972), that he has looked at three Maghrebi states in the light of comparative history and given the state system its proper credit. Curiously enough, he received help in his endeavour from another Tunisian, that great historian of the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun.
I shall maintain here that fifteen of the contemporary Arab states are the product of indigenous and regional forces mostly unrelated to European colonialism, and in most cases predate it. Moreover, almost all of the fifteen states mentioned have enjoyed legitimacy in terms of the values of their peoples and times. That we may have a different set of values at present in terms of which we judge the right to rule, should not deny other people of other eras the right to their own moral judgement and its worth. However, the strength and time-honoured legitimacy of these states in the eyes of their peoples are in no way to be construed as grounds for their continued survival. States may come and go, sometimes by the will of their own people, at other times through external forces or historical accident. The traditional state of the Hijaz, for instance, did disappear (Baker, 1979). Most traditional states, however, have survived to the present day, even though with much-changed political institutions.

TYPOLOGY OF THE ARAB STATE SYSTEM

I shall try here to present a typology of the traditional Arab states according to the bases of their authority, a step which will take us to periods earlier than the nineteenth century. Then I shall discuss the impact of European influences and colonialism on these states during the nineteenth century, taking into account another dimension, namely, the emergence of new social forces that by and large reinforced the state system.
The principles which explain the emergence of the Arab state system are ideology, traditions and dominion. While the forces of ideology, traditions and dominion overlap, one can still clearly argue a predominance of one or the other of these principles in different types of Arab states. This approach may seem to ignore economic factors in explaining political formations. That is not the case. The economy of Arab states which can be traced back to the medieval period was based on subsistence and a limited exchange of goods. The lack of change in the economy during earlier centuries rules out economic factors as an explanatory principle in the formation of the multifarious state system. Thus, in the first part of this discussion, economic factors will not be considered. In the second part, the money market economy will be considered as a fourth principle affecting state institutions. One can, of course, argue that the traditional economies of distant times invariably explain the authoritarian political structures that prevailed then. Nevertheless the traditional state system of the Arab world showed considerable structural diversity, as will be made clear below.
First, let me briefly indicate here that when I use the term state I am not bound by the formal definition that would qualify the designated body for membership of the United Nations. I simply mean to refer to an established authority which enjoys jurisdiction over a core territory and people for an extended period of time, stretching over at least several generations. The jurisdiction includes powers to implement the law, impose taxation, and demand military service, loyalty and allegiance to the established authority.
The traditional Arab states, viewed from this perspective, will be found to have differed in structure, power base, legitimacy and traditions. I have been able to identify the following types, classified in accordance with these criteria and with a view to their origins.
1. The imam-chief system. Authority is invested in a sanctified leader. In this group of countries we find two sub-types: (a) the dissenter communities and (b) the mainstream orthodox communities. The first includes the states of Yemen, (San'a), Oman, Cyrenaica (Libya), and the second is comprised of Hijaz and Morocco.
2. The alliance system of chiefs and imams. In this case authority is invested in a tribal chief supported and awarded a legitimate authority beyond the confines of his tribe by virtue of his identification and/or alliance with a prominent religious leader and his teachings. The main case in this category is Saudi Arabia.
In these two types, ideology plays a predominant role in state formation, while force and traditions come next in order of importance.
3. The traditional secular system. Here authority is invested in a dynasty free from religious attributes. This group includes Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, the People's Democratic Republic of the Yemen and Lebanon. The role of traditions in these cases is pre-eminent, while state hegemony is cemented further by the possession of coercive power in the hands of a cohesive group.
4. The bureaucratic-military oligarchy type. In this case, authority originates in urban-based garrison commanders, who in time develop an extensive bureaucratic apparatus. This group of countries includes Algeria, Tunisia, Tripolitania (Libya) and Egypt. Monopoly of the means of coercion in the hands of an administrative-military ‘caste’ is the major feature of this state type.
5. The colonially-created state system. Here we come to the modern era which will be discussed in detail in the second part of this chapter, and will only be identified briefly at this point. This category is distinctive in that it refers to states that have been carved out from the defunct Ottoman empire on the basis of foreign imperial interests and in the absence of any credible local base of authority upon which to erect the new structures. The group includes Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. (To the extent that Lebanon was radically changed by the same imperial powers, it may be included in this context as well.) Colonialism left a serious impact on most Arab states, but in only the above-mentioned cases can one maintain that the state system itself was created by the colonial powers.
Since it is not possible to discuss all fifteen cases in this limited essay, I shall focus on some archetypes and touch briefly on the others.

The imam-chief type

The state of the religious chief is mainly found in a dissenter type which seeks survival in rough mountain and desert terrains on the periphery of the Arab heartland, i.e. at a considerable distance from the centre of the empire. Oman and Yemen are examples par excellence of this type of state.
Oman (Phillips, 1967), the forgotten backwater of the Arab world that hardly ever figures in Arab nationalist literature, enjoys one of the longest continuous statehoods in the Arab world, rivalled only by Egypt. The state started in the eighth century (its first Ibadi imam was elected in 751 A.D.) by a radical dissident Muslim group (al-Khawarij), which broke away from the first Arab empire of the four pious Caliphs, Al-Rashidun.
The sect found refuge in the desert- and sea-protected mountains of Oman, and there sought to live the pious life in a commonwealth based on faith. This is not, as might be thought, a state by default, but rather the product of a conscious and determined effort to design a political system consistent with the religious beliefs of the Ibadi Muslim faith. The Ibadis broke away from the body of Islam over the very issue of proper government and the legitimate election of the head of state. They believed that the right to govern Muslims lies only in a pious Muslim who is elected by the people.
The electoral process consisted of two steps. First, the learned and notables in the community would meet at Nazwa, in the hinterland of Oman, and nominate a person; then in the second stage, they would present the nominee to the people who had the right to approve or reject the nomination. Should the imam prove unworthy of his office and unjust, the people had the right to depose him, a right that was used promptly to depose the first imam of the Ibadi state soon after he was elected.
The Ibadis, without any doubt, laid down the most free principles of elections to be found in the history of the Islamic theory of state. Curiously enough, they were completely dogmatic and very narrow, even more so than the Wahhabis. Moreover, once properly elected, the imam (the chosen of God) and his acts assumed a holy character, a principle accentuated in later years by resort to a dual system based on the hereditary principle in conjunction with elections.
Like the others ruled by religious chiefs, with time the Ibadi state incorporated the principle of hereditary rights to power along with that of election. By the time the Bousa'd dynasty took over in the middle of the eighteenth century, the hereditary principle had gained ascendancy over election and a separation of the imamate from the office of sultan followed. The Bousa'd dynasty, it is worth noting, under whom Oman reached the apex of its power, is the same dynasty which is still governing Oman today under Sultan Qaboos.
Oman was not a small, isolated state, but a great one whose ships dominated the seas in the latter part of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century from Kenya, Zanzibar and enclaves on the Iranian and Baluchi coasts. Its merchant fleet was the most important in the region, until it was made obsolete by British steamships in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Yemen (Abadha, 1975) is the second important case of a state whose origins lie in the imam-chief system. The state of Yemen was founded in 900 A.D. by a descendant of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph of Islam. The founder, Yahya ibn al-Husayn, was a believer in the doctrine of Imam Zayd ibn ‘Ali, which makes the Yemen state a Shi'i one, though, unlike the Persian Shi'a, who believe in the twelfth imam, the Zaydis believe in a continuing line of imams. Imam Yahya began proselytising in the city of Su'da in the nothern part of the country, where he also established his state. Later the capital moved to San'a.
The Zaydi doctrine is one of the more moderate versions of Shi'i Islam and is closer to the Sunni doctrine than that of any other Shi'i sect. Unlike extreme Shi'a (al-ghulat), the Zaydis moderate the claim of sanctity attributed to ‘Ali and his descendants. Also unlike the Ibadi doctrine of Oman where every Muslim is entitled to hold the office, authority in Yemen is vested in the descendants of ‘Ali and Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Zaydi state of Yem...

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