Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome. So for those of you who have only joined the Middle East head of community since the age of the Investcorp Building, you won't have known that this was actually where we used to hold all of our seminars, Tuesdays and Fridays alike.
And there's something very nostalgic about getting a crowd. And here the loud buzz of the room, when we fill this room up, that makes it feel very much like a home the way home used to be before we had our beautiful new building at its peak lecture theatre. And in that sense, it's wonderful to be able to welcome professor at Invesco to be our speaker tonight, because Adam came to spend a year here in Oxford teaching modern history of the Middle East.
While I had a year of leave and was very much in that period of transition as the new building foundations were being laid, and while the activities of the Middle East that is still took place very much in this space. And so it's a double welcome home of not just to Oxford and the Middle East Centre, but to the room in which you would have seen and participated in the intellectual outreach of the centre at that time. Adam is, of course, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History at Duke.
He went to Duke after a brilliant post Oxford career at the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He has not been sitting on his laurels in the time since he was in Oxford. He has been churning out one remarkably great book after another, beginning with actually your first book, wasn't it? There is one. It's only 12 if our book. But I think Arab patriotism might be the first. Yes.
Yes. As to the ideology and culture of power in late Ottoman Egypt with Defoe primordial history, print capitalism and Egyptology in 19th century Cairo in 2021. And then today we get a chance to hear from Adam about his latest book. I would hold the book up for you, but as an even bigger copy of the cover on the overhead projection Modern Arab Kingship Remaking the Ottoman political order in the interwar Middle East.
Adam It is such a joy to welcome you back to your old home in the Middle East Centre and to hear you talk about this exciting project which resonates so strongly with the scholarship that has been coming out of the Middle East centre since I lived here on this date. So without further ado, the floor is yours. Thank you so much for this wonderful news. I think I just stand up right now for this wonderful introduction and thank you so much for this opportunity to to advertise my book.
And thank you, all of you, so much for coming today. I know it's it's Tuesday evening, so I really appreciate it that you came to to listen to this this little talk. And indeed, I have full memories of this centre, of this very room as well. And partly my education happened here. So thank you so much. As a follow up, because this is an Eastern European retired punk musician arriving to the talks for a name and after looks, we're going to becoming an elite, cosmopolitan, terrible academic.
So at this time, yeah, yeah. So thank you so much for this education and the opportunities. And indeed I enjoyed it. So indeed, as as Eugene just told us, I have been known as the, as and as the historian of late Ottoman Egypt, the social and cultural historian and most recently I am I am I mean was his in the last seven years I had the parallel project on on the Muslim fiscal bureaucracy in Egypt. And this is why I'm currently working in in Cairo and deeply buried in the archives.
But today we will discuss this book, indeed, The Modern Art of Kingship, which is a little bit of a different genre. So those of you who came today for culture history will be disappointed. I'm so sorry. So please leave because this book is more of a historical sociology, theoretical in intervention into certain debates, although it does contain some some micro histories and it does have a historical anthropological engagement with politics.
But it's heavily in political theory, social history of politics, constitutional history and so on and so forth. This book is not about the 19th century, although I started in 19th century. It's it's a heavily 1920s. So it is is this is what you have to look. So today you are using as me to talk about 40 minutes and I will do so I'm so sorry. First, I will describe the main argument. I try to be very concise because it's. A bit of an abstract, some of the theoretical contributions.
And then I will talk about just because of fusion rather than the the example of making 1920 Syria in, in, in this theoretical framework that I offer. Of course, everything that I will talk about today is just a humble footnote to the work of a fusion organ. So I'm really pleased that I can provide this as a humble footnote to the work of Albert Hourani. Well, it's no, I agree. Yeah, I think it's a little bit more than 100%.
But anyway, mine is just a number. Okay, So, so I start with the main arguments first. So those of you who do not know the Middle East, you happen to be at the news. This is the region and this is the time period that my book focuses on. We can see the late Ottoman Empire in 1914. The map is a little bit is a little bit lying because actually Libya is a part of the Ottoman Empire at this time. Still, 1914, just before the First World War.
And the in the other map, you can see the early 1920s arrangement. This is what is usually known in historiography as the unprecedented extension of European power in the Middle East after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. So in one you can see the Ottoman territories. Egypt is also part of it, although it's under British occupation at this time until 1914. And you can see that in the other map, the new newly formed.
But territorial arrangements, one policy that is usually forgotten and I will talk a little bit about it is the Kingdom of the Hejaz, which is today the main part of Saudi Arabia with the capital of Mecca, is a very interesting little quality at the time. And I do I do discuss a bit more of that. So this is the the region and this is the time period. The book is most about 1920, 19 tens, 1920s. The problem that the book deals with is this great transformation.
What happens after an empire is gone? This question came to my to my engagement with late Ottoman Egypt, which was a subordinate Muslim basically polity if you want, under Ottoman and then under British and Ottoman rule. And I was wondering that usually we we have these vocabulary from usually from political science that we talk either about nation states or we talk about colonies. But there are all other kind of polities in modern history, although other kind of statuses.
And I was dissatisfied by the theoretical framework that was presently offered to describe these these strange something strange governments sometimes existing in various subordination, sometimes autonomy such as that and so on and so forth. The other question or problem came to me from from two types of narratives.
So one is the narrative of this European expansion, the European control over the first Ottoman territories at this time, which is well known in this college, the Britain's moment in the Middle East, in Britain, right in France, it is actually the the French mandate is is less the French rule is that is understudied a little bit, but it's still there. So how the allied powers after the First World War try to perpetuate their their rule in these territories.
And of course saying this colonisation of Palestine was part of of this, of this project and we can talk a little bit more of that. So there is this narrative and there's another narrative which is the Arab nationalist narrative, either each Arab, both Ottoman out of national government has their own stories of origin or we have the big band Arab nationalist narrative that. Professor O'Hagan knows a lot about it. But I was wondering that what if we start with the Ottoman context?
What if we look at this period, the 1920s, not from the European, and is not through the Arab nationalist forces, but from from this very strange empire, the late Ottoman Empire. What can we gain from this, from this, from these lenses? And this is I tried to some of the main argument of the book in this concept. So the argument is that there is a operation in the 1920s which we can call reciting Empire.
I call it reciting empire, recasting of previous imperial institutions in politics, in economy, in culture, in religion. And that giant operation defines the period in the Ottoman territories as well, and in the perceptible territories, of course, as well in Eastern Europe. And I would even argue in China as well in the 1920s, 1930s.
So unfortunately I'm very immodest and I this argument is, is a large theoretical argument proposing this this approach to the 1920s in general after the First World War as a as a general paradigm of of Ford for the history of defeated people who who who are denied of that their empires. And I suggest in terms of politics that this operation produces not necessary nation states, but what I call sovereign local states and newly imperial projects.
And I will talk a little bit more about what I mean on on local state, exactly what an important issue in the book as well. It I actually I spend a lot of time is that sovereignty in my formulation is not contradictory to to being subordinated so to talking about subordinated sovereign states a subordinated sovereign government and if you are interested, we can we can discuss that. That as well. This is the table of contents of the book.
I cannot go through each chapter, but as you can see, the first three chapters are theoretical chapters, very heavily theoretical. And then I go into into various moments, moments I quote constituent events in in in each chapter, and I reach roughly the Second World War. Obviously, the book does not want to give the last word on on any of these problems and even the storylines.
But I try to open certain questions and I try to suggest certain vocabularies to describe to describe this very complex moment. So the book itself is provides or suggests or offers a framework for interpretation for state making in new imperial history. Who knows new imperial history here. Have you heard about this term recently? No new member of history. Jane Burbank. Fred Cooper Little bit. So anyway, so I'm very much belonging to that current.
I was very inspired by a people who were often called labelled as new imperial historians, although I am also sceptical about a lot. So I put that question under the book of offer. Secondly, micro histories of these, what I call constituent events or relatively short moments when groups which are claiming certain forms or certain forms of constituent power would impose their own vision to these successor societies, usually in the form of a written constitution.
And I go very deep in sometimes they use micro history tools, and it is partly a study also of legal authority in changing Muslim regimes. So I used a lot of Sharia courts, of course, for instance, indeed, a book which is about creating new political regimes and new political orders is a very boring book in the sense that it deals with it's very heavily male inflected. Right.
The monarchs and or displaced Ottoman military man and the European, British and French embraced us Italian, of course, imperialist in the background. Later, of course, Mussolini is very keen, for instance, to acquire sea and so forth. So I turned to the sheriff of court records of Damascus to bring in some female voices from the late 19 tens, early 1920s.
And the show. Of course. Of course, of course. Are very good for that, because by this time, 60 70% of the litigants are female in the Sharia courts. And so I was very interested how they frame, for instance, in the moment of the fall of the Ottoman Empire there to whom they belong now, who are whose citizens they are, whose legal authority they they apply for, and so on and so forth. So one chapter is based on sharing of court records.
And I was also lucky in the source basis because the Apostle papers on the Council was one of the high commissioners of the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon, and also because just became available for research while I was doing this, this project and the LaCour, another archivist in Paris, were kind enough to even Vidal cataloguing the papers and officially being available. They allowed me to to use them. And I was also likely to be in Riyadh and deal with the Alcazar collection.
And because there was a sheikh at the city and Sheikh and I will talk a little bit more about him in the so-called dramatic ABDELAZIZ Which is a very contested archive in space. But, but I was lucky to get some access, some access to to these papers. So this was their use. When I say used, of course, all other archival or usual suspects.
I will not go into into various details but the major terms of the as we citing empire, which is there's also an approach to historical change that I talk a lot about in chapter two. And I will not go into detail, but essentially I think we usually think about historical change as somehow related to revolution. But unfortunately this is not the case often. So often, actually what we see is no revolutionary will explicitly come to a revolutionary change, especially in the 1920s.
Many of these closer to an moments are not coming out of a revolutionary movement, but from some sort of other constellation. I think a major concept that a. Offer to the international relations and political theory is governing without a sovereign entity. I do think that especially Middle East studies, but also in other fields, the engagement with Soviet entity is is a bit misleading.
I think for the 20th century history of the Middle East especially, we have to engage with how non non-sovereign forms of power are there, especially administrative forms. And I do think that governing without solidarity is a major problem. Since the 19 tens for strong states until today. Why? Because territorial acquisition by force is no more allowed in international law.
So strong states which do occupy other territories cannot exercise sovereign powers attributes of sovereignty, but usually in legal terms describe. So they have to govern without sovereignty. And this is the case in, I don't know, two days in Ukrainian occupied territories. Of course, in the Palestinian occupied territories and perhaps in Gaza, it would be again the case that strong states for military occupation have to find out how to govern their territory without sovereignty.
So the in the 1920s, of course, the League of Nations mandates Category two class a mandate, Category four for Syria and Lebanon and for Palestine, the ERA, and also experiments with forms of governing without sovereignty. And of course, military occupation is the is the par excellence form of sovereignty. This was the case, for instance, at the time in Britain, and the British Empire was what the military occupied after 1932. I suspend the concept of the nation state.
I don't use it. I don't like it. I don't think it's useful and I don't think it's useful to talk. And instead, I talk about sovereign local states, as I said, states which use in their political order all kinds of positive variable particles. And I say particles because some of the theoretical basis of my book is actually from art history. Do you know the concept of spoliation? Have you ever heard about spoliation?
Spoliation is this operation when, for instance, there is an old building and the part of it is even built into a new building? It can be a matter of form. Literally, a window is built into a new building, or it can be in style as though the old style is continuous in a new context. I think this happens actually in terms of politics, very much a spoliation process in the 1920s.
So all the imperial institutions wanted monarchy, religion, including practices which are slow Sharia courts, which are all belonging to the Ottoman, were at this time built into the new framework of of local governments, including in their constitution and political order. So I quote, I think the term local is much more useful than national because it also indicates that they are still in a subordinate position.
So they are still, of course, in this period through the mandate, they are subordinated to France or the League of Nations. If you want to use the League of Nations, this is a new imperial power in a way. Internationalism is a new substituting set of functions of the previous imperial Sovereign can be thought of and good today. Perhaps so. So. So I use this concept to to study nationalism as well. Nationalism is very important, but I talk about national projects than than than the nation state.
I talk about successive societies and those who talk about success of diaspora. So this is the moment when, of course, the disappearance of Empire does not leave behind only the peoples in their own regions, but also leaves behind large groups outside of the previous empire. So is there a success of diasporas in this sense in the Americas and in Europe and even in the region? There is a eastern Mediterranean region, a diaspora as well, and they are politically very active.
This is the moment also when actually the political importance of this for us to to to feed back somehow and to form the new politics in their imagined homelands are starting actually. And I think what characterises the period in terms of constitutionalism is not necessarily the national one, but some form of imperial constitutionalism still from below and from above, actors advocating and not necessarily for democratic representation, but for all kinds of all kinds of other.
Integrating for oil or other kinds of sources of authority, religion, monarchy, dynasty, and, of course, ethno national principles. And importantly, they imagine some of these qualities as federations. I think the federated idea is very important at this time.
And some of my theoretical background coming actually from from from from India, from the India context, Indian context, as well as South Asia and and and also, of course, the Americas, where there are all kinds of alternative imaginations to the to the nations there. I will not describe some of my theoretical courses, but I belong to Paris, where we can discuss transit policy. So actually, I also take some concepts from post-Soviet sociologists.
And I do think is this I mean, the not the same, of course, but this solution of a large political unit is is the same in the 1920s, in the Palestinian territories as it is in the post-Soviet and in post-colonial Africa, for instance, and so on and so forth. And as I said, my major inspiration is is new history. But I am also a bit sceptical about about everything that they do. The book is in in a dialogue with a number of books recently published.
And as I learned during my my, my writing, that would be forthcoming a couple of other books. Now there is this new domain, the post and studies domain. So that was the Ottoman studies that we know very well. And now we have a temporal, temporally defined historical figure, the first Ottoman studies. Some of the titles are listed here and I am not going to this is very I hope my little book is a little contribution to this large wave and who knows what will happen.
The relevance of the book for today is is is really tackling this this problem I facing this moment of the dissolution of large political systems. Also bringing forth to the post-Soviet and post-colonial African examples. I point out the modular logic of state making, especially the federative composites associated and that colour religious and other projects instead of the nation state the norm of the nation state. And so today, very human societies reorganise the game.
We are constantly reorganised. We, we we can again think about federations and blocs and actually we can see blocs emerging again in, in, in, in Europe and elsewhere. All right. That was the theory part. I just realised if you're still alive, then I would. I would continue as you may. And in about 15 minutes I would describe the making of Syria based on this, based on this little exercise.
So how how does the making of the state of Syria look like if we approach through these theoretical answers? The state of Syria in the ninth is is created in 1925 as an administrative project, first of all. And it becomes in 1930 a republic with a muslim president. If you want actually the state of Syria is the first Muslim republic according to Soviet and local state. And in during the story, we can also consider the importance of diaspora.
Why do I tell you the story of Syria, which is a republic for advertising the book, which is called Modern Arab Kingship? It is because through my two words, if you want, we can see that the making of this state, this new government, was not as smooth as we learn either from the nationalist narrative or from the critical European colonial narratives. We will see that actually there are a number of monarchical projects about making Syria into not a muslim republic but into a muslim monarchy.
If we start the making of Syria, we shouldn't start some imagined Arab nationalist movement. But it should start from this moment in the 19 tens when there are a number of discussions about how to transform the Ottoman Empire.
So instead of looking at the nationalist ideas of certain actors which are certainly there, we should also look at how some of the groups advocate for transforming into a perhaps Ottoman federation instead of a of of a centralised which in this at a time it was called the decentralisation project was discussed in Istanbul and in many Arab provinces.
Finally, the Ottoman central government's answer to this advocacy was a law the general administrative temporary law provinces that even media related can one not conceive which was which was promising local elections, especially in the Arab provinces, based on certain forms of representation, male voters and so on and so forth? It never became implemented because of the First World War. But after the war, it became very important for the French authorities.
This this was the law based on which they organised the first elections and so on and so forth. There are some luminaries in this moment, like the more or less famous flashes read, a muslim activist print entrepreneur in Cairo who was a Syrian sheik, and in 1915 he offers a project to the British authorities about a new Arab empire, which was supposed to be a caliphate republic. Actually, the caliph in Mecca, that's the emir of Mecca.
And the president in Damascus is some sort of federation among Muslim emirs. This is an entire Ottoman new imperial project and vision, which was never accepted, of course, by the British. And he himself changed his mind after the war, especially after 1922. His he becomes a very much of a monarchist. But at this time, he this is one of one very interesting project among the many other projects.
And indeed, we have an Arab nationalist story that we know about Sharif Hussein and the making of the announcement of the Arab kingdom. And here you must know very well that the story of Lawrence of Arabia, blue eyes in the desert and so on and so forth. But in this perspective, actually, the Arab kingdom is bringing together the Sharif Film project, which is a religious project, in a sense, the Sharif's descendants of the Prophet Mohammed.
And they claim leadership based on their religious capital, if you want. Although Sherif al Hussein, the emir of Mecca, is presented as Arab nationalist. Of course, we know that he was an integrated member of the Ottoman elite. He was born in Istanbul. One of his wives was Turkish. He was commuting for around 30 years between Mecca and Istanbul and so on and so forth. That is an argument also has been already made about him.
And what we can see is that what he what they really propose is not to recycle the younger government, but rather the previous Abdul Hamid Mian principles at this time, at least in my interpretation. The Allied powers, of course, do not acknowledge this claim, and they only acknowledge him as the King of the Hejaz of this new polity. What comes from the federalist ideas?
And this Sharif in what they call genealogical monarchy, is this very well-known moment in Damascus, 1919, when the Syrian Assembly proposes to a visiting commission, the making of the Syrian Federation, which is a monarchical federation with one of the sons of Sherif Hussein Faisal as the king. In some interpretations, this is a somehow the United States of Syria is an imitation of the US system.
But based on the Ottoman matrix, we know very well that it is a book of local imagination also about in a way continuing the the the Ottoman federative project and only for using it all. And I have this little clip. This is a. Previously unknown French army movie, still the property of the French army about 1919 May when Sherif Faisal is coming back from the Paris Peace Conference and it's a unique movie and arrives in Damascus, first in Beirut and then in the west coast.
And we can see some of the elements, some of the moments of this meeting of the Ottoman bourgeoisie in the in Damascus with with the Sharif an idea. This is the the people waiting for for face time the moment they will arrive. Of course, they are preparing for sacrifice. To give credit for this.
And here he is. And in his enterprise, of course, you can see the later famous figures in the 20th century, like Nuria say, the later prime minister of Iraq, Askari and other famous Arab figures, Amin Faisal is not yet a king. He's not voted as a king, but he's treated as a king. This is also a fascinating moment when you can see the mixture of this post war moment when perhaps legally speaking, Damascus is still an Ottoman city, but it's kind of clear that it's going somewhere else.
And, of course, Faisal is a would be king. The first thing he does is greets the representatives of the religious. Sects, minorities can see the mufti of Damascus there as well. And the French soldiers, British soldiers. It's a fascinating 17 minute silent movie and we have a little project on that. And hopefully if the French army allows us, then we will also furnish the results with the number of people anyway I can. It's a great movie. Anyway, okay.
The project, of course, of the United States of Syria never comes through because the French government decides to invade Damascus. Famously killed the leader of the Ottoman Arab army, philosopher Asma. And this is the map that usually. No, no. This is the domain name system in the Middle East sanctified by the Treaty of Rome. But if we go with the federative and post-imperial idea which we see emerging below, this is large, a large control. What we see are actually federative projects.
One is the federation. But there are still is it a Syrian federation of the Syrian state, which is actually establish in actually existing polity. It's a very fascinating story. There is there is actually a federative government. It's usually framed that the French it was a French army project to divide Syria. But if we really start from the late autumn and federalist eighties, we can.
And it's very clear to us in the documents that it is demanded by the Syrians themselves, this is a continuation or of the head of the French answer to the previous Ottoman Arab projects. The other federate federation is the Sharif in Federation, which we can see as a mobility polity, the kingdom of the Hejaz here, then the beginning of Imam of the 10th Jordanian Great and the transferred Emir Faisal to Baghdad.
Yet without Mosul, this is how in the early 1920s, the new sheriff and project look like, of course, thankfully without Palestine. But these two federative projects actually define the moment. And then we know that, of course, Sharif Hussein even became assume the caliphate in 1924 before his for But for the story of the Syrian state, this group of exiled activists are the most important is of the success of diaspora outside of the French mandate. They are all mostly Damascene Aleppo notables.
Schaffer Kassab, one of my main heroes, is sitting in the middle. They are called the Istiklal Group. The Independent is Hezbollah. The crown is that they are mostly a Rendon group of people, not they're not everybody sticking together. They are post-mortem and bourgeois elites. They are they are Muslim activists and they are. But their main goal is to somehow get back Damascus from the fringe.
And they are commuting between Amman, Mecca, Jerusalem, Haifa and trying to organise themselves and trying to gain money, because in 1925, the French created this new state, the state of Syria, by joining the Aleppo and Damascus government. And the big question is what would happen with the constitution of the state, what kind of state this administrative polity will be? And there is a struggle over interpretation. The French saying that the constitution is actually an administrative thing.
It is an law of the imperial instrument, the so-called city organic, which can be just declared by the French powers and perhaps the local populations agree. The Syrians, many Syrians will think otherwise. They think it's actually a national cause. It expresses their self-determination, they are real, and so on and so forth. The struggle over this constitution defines the late 1920s. The secularists really want to imitate Ataturk in in Turkey.
Why not? The all the other groups are advocating actually for some type of guarantee in Syria. My favourite project is Ahmed. Name is he was a Circassian, an ottoman notable with significant landholdings around Aleppo and in 1926 he was the clear favourite of the French to become the king of of Syria. And actually he was the clear favourite of some Syrian elites as well. To become the king of Syria, you have to do that. That petition is actually there was a pact secret that actually made.
Between Ahmed NAMI and DiGiovanni on the day he debuted, declaring it would have been a kind of Ottoman Franco monarchy, perhaps in a loose association in Lebanon. My favourite project is of course the Istiklal Project, which is which is making Syria a Saudi monarchy using another face. The second son of the new Saudi king, Abdulaziz, who later believed in the 1960s the king king facade of Saudi Arabia. But this time he's a young man and Oka sahib and many other Muslim activists think that.
This emir would be the proper king for the new kingdom of Syria. In the book, I describe these projects in greater detail. They are excised from Damascus, so they only only have means of press propaganda and letters and so on and so forth. But they are very, very forceful and they. What happens is that finally the secularist Republicans have to concede and there is a secret meeting actually among them.
And out of this came out of this secret meeting, comes out with this solution that this is their network. Even a hour screen, actually the cream conditioner of an American millionaire give them money. So and of course, I mean Hussein in the mufti of Jerusalem was was part of them. And yes, so out of this negotiation from there is the clearly Saudi monarchies and the Security Council comes out with this idea that, okay, let's make a republic, but it must be with the Muslim president.
And that negotiation, of course, under close French surveillance and I will finish in a moment, is actually not only a it's not only a symbolic act that the president can be Muslim. It means that all the previous Sharia institutions of the Ottoman Empire survive and must survive. So the Sharia courts continue, personal law continues, the religious foundations, the base foundations continue.
So in the economic life and the interest in the individual life, all these previously Ottoman and Sharia related institutions must continue in this new polity as opposed to Turkey, for instance, in the indeed, for to just to finish the international legal part of the constitution of the French state becomes part of an international law and with all the other state that's in the mandate. So actually the. The Constitution. The series, the state of Syria is part in this way of international system.
Until today, these are these are I mean, of course, many of these are overwritten by recent events, but these provide precedents for how a state's making can happen in international law. And these were deposited at the League of Nations in Arabic and in French and in English, and became part of the international order. So I conclude this is what I mean on recycling and fire.
We can see the the various routes out of empire, not necessarily through making of this, through following the nationalist ideology or nationalist movements or not even by Islamism, but how groups actually are super interested and are striving for for for government to impose their own visions on successive societies, for participate even from abroad in excluded in in new states formation, and indeed preserving some previously Muslim imperial particles in the new in the new, in the new polities.
I do think that it is useful to think about monarchy and religion at large in modern state formation in the 20th century in other parts of the world. As I said, I'm terrible. So I do think that my theory is also useful for Eastern Europe and post-colonial territories and for us also Asia and Africa. European is feeling hates. This idea to suspending the nation state is a useful concept, but I suggest it.
I think it's healthy. I think federations and blocs is an all new way to think about statehood, perhaps in the next stage with polarisation. So today, and I do hope that the these ideas may provide some, some, some, some routes, new routes for the Middle East in the future. Thank you very much for your attention. Adam, thank you so much. It was actually wonderful to get a tour through the book.
What the driving concepts that address the issue of the Post on World as you would like us to rethink this. And you're doing so against a tableau that has seen a lot of new scholarship.
There was a time when our partner, Albert Hourani, we're talking about the influences of the modern Middle East, and then I think the subject is that drop and there seems to be a reversion and it's a way of trying to maybe centre Europe and its role in the shaping of the post Ottoman world and maybe looking at either the traces of Ottoman influences or else influences that came from within the region itself, that might give us a new way to reckon with the way in which sovereign entities emerge,
not to fall into the bestiary of models that I learned will not find favour with your talk tonight. Know I propose these things and I'm. I know that everybody accepts my ideas. There are a couple of books that have been addressing elements of your subject that I'd like to bring to the conversation.
And one is Aziz Ansari. Oh yeah, because Aziz had a way of trying to abstract the meaning of kingship, going right back to earliest Islamic history, but with an eye towards its relevance toward modern times as well. And I just wonder whether you engage at all with Aziz in your framework. And of course, Aziz is very important for several reasons for the book. So Aziz, yes, he has his event, this book on early Islam, this Muslim kitchen.
But there is a I would say it's about Muslim emperors, if I may say so. It's it's about the universe and Muslim empire that he but he describes and it's a historical apology of of those ideas and that which in the seventh and ninth or 10th century. So this is one trick of Aziz. And I think in the 1920s we have we don't have that kind of ontological or you have some symbols and people do think about monarchical form, but I do not. These are not these are real political choices.
And it's very clear, for instance, one Rashid reader argues for a Saudi king in Damascus. He says that it's not because of Islam, it's it's to manage the diversity of this of the country. He thinks a muslim king is much better than a president first.
Second, because he can as a as a Bedouin, he can also a good be good against the ruling the nomads of the Syrian desert so he can create security and and and further the if if if if if it happens that the constituent assembly would not vote for this project, then the president is better. Hmm. So.
So either this either a Saudi king or then democratically, that he definitely doesn't want the new sheriff in king, which I mean, of course the the Ashraf are very much they also have their own advocates and actually there are like free I don't know, I think a monarchical project in the late 1920s as a continuity for the 1930s from Syria.
Okay so so this is about kingship. But Aziz also has another track which was very inspiring me and he has elected me, has a lecture once I am an atheist, first in error and I think first in English and then in Arabic. And he asks, he turns to his he mentioned it to an audience and ask what happened that our our course has been meaning the Arabs concepts the the that we lost the the the Soviet term, the talking. We describe our history in terms of the European of.
So we use the we don't use the Ottomans of the Ottoman conceptual framework at all. And what happened when did it happen. Why why did it happen? How did it happen? And I do think that this moment in the 1920s is the moment where this great transformation happens. Also in ideological terms, a new new a new Islam is forming as well. New secular ideologies that are also born in terms really changed their meanings at this moment. So as his work was very, very inspirational and.
He did actually some version of the book and he was nicely critical and he agreed that should be in budget. But should we? And then then we went along. Yes, But, you know, his his take was, of course, that kingship is inimical to Islamic values. It is an illegitimate form as.
And so I think the interesting thing is you look at sovereign entities coming out of the Ottoman experience and the recycling of empire, as you stress it is not just the Ottoman imperial imperial experience, but it will be the concept of the Arab imperial experience emerging from the Arab conquests.
If one looks for the antecedents of Arab kingship and you mentioned eight different projects, I mean, the ones that stand out for us are going to be the Saudi project and the Hashemite Project, you know, which is a claim for Arab kingship. This is the terms in which he frames it to the British. And so the antecedents for that model, if they think about it, how you grounded in a barrister who might experience and the kind of older notions of kingship that Aziz was struggling with.
So, I mean, I know that there's a time gap between the one and the other, but the idea of kingship is certainly not European, monarchical, a constitutional monarchy or whatever. Is something coming from Arab experience that this will be a valid and not a an illegitimate form of government. So, you know, is there something another element of this argument to to address here? You know, I'm not really a royalist, so I must confess, I think these are.
You've written the book. Yeah, but this is that. It is. It is a book about kings. That is not not true. I hope it's clear that it is. It's not a normative book. I don't. And it's not a book for, you know, how to govern society. But the monarchy is better than anybody, and I'm not interested in that. I am very sceptical indeed, in the time this is you and on my addict's memory that I use. But I'm very sceptical of a thousand year experience.
You know that some people in Damascus, I mean there is a revival in the late 19th century romanticisation of diamond rule, partly due to Orientalist influence, partly due to their own interest. That's true. But whether the viable I mean, this is really that this becomes a there is a monarchical ideology in that sense. I don't see that. I didn't see that in in the documents I'd add or in the newspaper.
So in the sources I didn't see that it's, it's sometimes on the stage as in theatre, it's sometimes there are new historical moment. So the historical imagination does emerge, which is sometimes royalist, sometimes unseen. But whether it feeds into the political sphere, I'm not sure there's a huge debate in Damascus in this period really about the republic and monarchy. And very rarely is the argument, you know, the omens, but also monarchs.
So we should actually make a monarchy. The French imperial administrators, they do see sometimes some slightly essentialist argument that, yes, yeah, you you only only kings can you do my duty. So why not make a monarchy? They are not. It's a misunderstanding that the free French want to create republics in the region. They actually don't care. The only thing they care is that the there should be no revolts and they should stability.
The classical, political, social and the proposed after the current you know, the after the 1860s the there was a concept of an Arab kingship in Syria that it himself forced himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Proposed. Yeah, yeah. So it's just, you know, if you were looking for examples of role models for the idea of kingship in 1920, Middle Eastern North Africa, you know, no one used that title.
I mean, in Egypt, it wasn't a monarchy until the British decided first to make it a footnote, and then it was a debate. Yeah, but it was a monarchy. It's. It didn't seem like a princely state. No, it was. I mean, it's without question. Well, I mean, it is with question because obviously it's an alternative to the sultan. Live is not a sovereign monarch in the same way because it is a sort of place for vice regal role. Yeah. In terms of its value, in terms of Islamic rule, Yes.
I just was struck with the idea of recycling empire. And so Nubian culture, this is something important. And the concept of kingship is, in a funny way, alien to the region in the 1920s. So there is this English word kingship, but this suggests something to the English reader. Right. But I mean, what we do mean is that there are monarchical imaginations.
So this is the title King. We can also discuss it, but that is just a part of of what's what you're talking about is is is, is, is weathering the political order that there is a function for a dynasty of imagination or not. And I think that I mean, not only the Middle East, but in all kinds of Muslim empires or local states, we have, I mean, an immense amount, an immense variety of these dynastic, monarchical imaginations.
You don't have to go back to the alliance to find the ruling Muslim dynasty who are either subordinate or they consider themselves sovereign in terms of experience of entity. So I think the you know, I see this there is this historical imagination about, as I said, emerging in the late 19th century. But but actually, there are these practices which are there from and from Indonesia to to to Africa, everywhere where there are Muslim societies and Muslim faces, states and governments.
And this is this is what is a main is a main influence at the time. And indeed, this, for instance, the Indian princely states are very much influential at the time in the region. Oh, really? Yeah. Room for error. Yeah. I mean, Rashid read that before the war and he goes to India and circulates and so the already we have this this this the Federation of Empires is is based on this idea that these are all separate prehistory to basically states 1920s China the little kings of China.
You know, these are bad role models. If one thinks about a sovereign power these are these are the have diminished. But I don't want to belabour the nomenclature because these guys are going to want to ask you questions to give me one more quick. You are very legally oriented in your approach and you're looking at courts and constitutions as foundational institutions for the project that interest you and in the exercise of sovereignty without this free exercise authority.
So. Since you brought up Syria and since you've disagreed with. Let me talk. So I just want to know what you thought happened to the project of the Rasheed with the Constitution for the Kingdom of Syria. And I haven't seen whether you engage with it in the book or not.
We talked about it at the manuscript days. And and I just was wondering where where you've gone with because she argues there was one and that this was what was stolen by the French mandate from what would it be in a democratic order in Syria. But as you rightly say, there was no. How about when you said Thomson is Elizabeth? Elizabeth Thomson? Yes. Well, how the Western democracy works. Sorry, I didn't. That was my bad. And always I talk too much otherwise.
Could you tell us where you stand on you know, did received with the draft the constitution. That was considered for the kingdom of Syria, the face of Syria. And why do we not find a copy of it? How do they all have been destroyed? So first of all, there is there are constitutional rights before that moment that, for instance, this United States of Syria, it is a constitutional order written by Syrians much before she arrives in Damascus from through Cairo and actually Lebanon.
Yes, some family foundation. First, it takes care of his economic business and then goes to Damascus to do some politics. So by the time actually, they actually did arrange that under the previous constitutional draft, first of all, those that are available, they have a depreciation of support. What does that did for the period? Yes, 1990, some 19 much before Rita arrives. You got the old excited. So the so it's I mean, but there are other debts as well.
It's exact I haven't found the draft and I, I looked quite seriously. So my answer is I don't know my profession. And since I don't know that, I mean, very, very likely there was a draft of Russian leader. Whether it is important, I don't know, because I haven't seen it. Yes, we have a copy published by someone in the 1930s, and this is what comes on base argument. We don't know where is the origin of we don't know if this is accurate, whether it is true or not.
There is no mention before the publication of this, so we don't know. Yeah, and this is my answer. I don't know. I don't know. But honestly, it's not for me. It's not really. I mean, it's a detail which is not really important in my in my opinion, it doesn't really matter because as I said, by the time with the rise and it's it's very late he arrives late 1920 spring and basically she has he has three months to to participate in the constituent assembly.
All the things are falling apart. It's it's it's it's a very late moment actually in in both of them as Syrian constitutionalism so.