Born to an aristocratic Lebanese family in 1869, Shakib Arslan’s journalism and books established him as one of the twentieth-century’s leading Arab public intellectuals. For Mehdi Sajid, author of a recent study of Arslan’s contributions to the Cairo newspaper al-Fath, Arslan is “not only a person, but a transnational network of relations”, his long career affording “a summary of the transformation of Muslim-majority societies and Middle Eastern societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” In this conversation, recorded on 20 June 2023, Mehdi focuses on Arslan’s role in helping fellow Muslims navigate the many options on the table in the early 1920s, not least nationalism.

Arslan acknowledged the region’s gravitational pull towards “Europe”, and spent much of his life living in Switzerland, as the “eyes and ears of the Arabs” at the League of Nations, He sought to help the global community of Muslims recognize that “Europe” was neither a monolith (the German model, for example, was different from the Anglo-French one), nor internally consistent: despite the identification of “the West” with secularisation, Arslan noted, Christianity remained powerful in western societies. Indeed, he contended that Western calls for secularisation were part of a broader plan to convert the Muslim world. A keen Ottomanist, in the years immediately following World War One Arslan urged those attending the 1921 Syrian-Palestinian Congress in Geneva to ally with Turkey, or perhaps Russia. When this failed, Mehdi notes, Arslan “tried to channel all his dreams and all his political aspirations into what would become Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism – he tried to combine the two.” Although Arslan would become the ideological father of Moroccan nationalism and shape debates over Egyptian identity, the “Ottoman Dream” never quite left him.

Episode 35 – The Ottoman Dream

Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.

MAIN IMAGE: SHAKIB ARSLAN, SECOND FROM THE RIGHT, COURTESY MEHDI SAJID.