Announcement to the Arabs Sons of Qahtan

Background:
Of all the non-Turkish ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs were the sultan’s least troublesome during the nineteenth century.  Attached to the Ottoman state through deeply ingrained habits of loyalty and the perception of the sultan/caliph as protector of the Islamic community, or umma, the Arabs, unlike the Balkan Christians, Kurds, and Armenians, experienced no surge of nationalism and made no demands for independence or grater autonomy.  This changed in the years directly preceding the outbreak of World War I, when Arab nationalism suddenly intensified.  It gained strength during the Arab revolt against the ottomans in World War I and has continued to be a significant part of the region’s politics to the present day.
Although Arab nationalism became a political force only on the eve of World War I, its roots can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when publicantions of Arabic language printing houses and the establishment of schools and universities in major Arab cities under the auspices of French Jesuit and American Prostestant missionaries sparked renewed interest in Arab history and literature.  These same missionary schools also introduced Arab students to Western science and Western ideas of constitutionalism and liberalism.  Continued Ottoman misrule and military losses in the Balkans also encouraged the growth of Arab consciousness.  The Ottoman Empire, some suggested, was no longer capable of defending the interests of Islam, and a few went further to suggest that the Islamic community would continue to decline until its founders and natural leaders, the Arabs, regained control. 
Arab discontent intensified after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.  Although many Arabs had supported the Young Turks’ political agenda before the revolution, they turned against the new regime after it replaced Arab officials with Turks,  stripped many old Arab families of their local authority, mandated the use of Turkish throughout the empire, and encouraged the further secularization of education and the law.  Arab political organizations formed in Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Aleppo. And some advocating greater Arab autonomy within the empire, and others demanding Arab independence.
Independence clearly was the goal of the author or authors of the following “announcement” to the Arabs, which appeared to Cairo in the summer of 1914.  It may have been written by a supporter of Major Aziz Ali-al-Misri, a decorated Arab officer in the Ottoman Army and founder of the Covenant, an organization of Arab officers dedicated to Arab independence.  Arrested and condemned to death by Ottoman officials in early 1914, he was released later in the year and allowed to go to Cairo as a result of foreign pressure and public outcry among the Arabs.

O Sons of Qahtan! O Descendants of Adnan!1 Are you asleep? And how long will you remain asleep?…When will you realize the truth?  When will you know that your country has been sold to the foreigners?  See how your natural resources have been alienated from you and have come into the possession of England, France, and Germany.  Have you no right to these resources?  You have become humiliated slaves in the hands of the usurping tyrant; the foreigner unjustly dispossesses you of the fruit of your work and labor and leaves you to suffer the pangs of hunger.  How long will it be before you understand that you have become a plaything in the hand of him who has no religion but to kill the Arabs and forcibly to seize their possessions?  The Country is yours, and they say that rule belongs to the people, but those who exercise rule over you in the name of the Constitution2  do not consider you part of the people, for they inflict on you all kinds of suffering, tyranny, and persecution.  How, then, can they concede to you any political rights?  In their eyes you are but a flock of sheep whose wool is to be clipped, whose milk is to be drunk, and whose meat is to be eaten…
The Armenians, small as their numbers are when compared to yours, have won their administrative autonomy in spite of the opposition of the Turkish state, and they will presently become independent.3  Their people will then become self-governing, free, and advanced, free and active in the social organization of humanity, in contrast to you, who will remain ever enslaved to the descendants of Genghis and Hulagu 4 who brought to an end your advanced Arab government in Baghdad, the Abode of Peace; and to the descendants of Tamrlan5 who built a tower composed of the heads of eighty thousand Arabs in Aleppo.  Till when will you go on acquiescing in this utter humiliation, when your honor is made free of, you wives pared, your children orphaned, your habitations destroyed, so that the Byzantine capital should be defended, your money taken to be spent in the palaces of Constantinople, full as they are with intoxicating drink, musical instruments, and all kinds of wealth and luxury, and your young men driven to fight your Arab brethren…Has your Arab blood become congealed in your veins, and has it changed into dirty water?  You have become, by God, a byword among the nations, a laughing stock of the world, a subject of mockery and derision among the peoples.  You have almost become proverbial in your humility, weakness, and acquiescence in great loss.
Compare how well the Turks treat the Armenians and how they seek to humor them, with the harsh treatment which they reserve for you Arabs.  See how the Turkish government adopts the stance of obedience before them, how it humbly begs them to accept more than their due share of parliamentary representation.  As for you, O how we grieve for you! The government directs against you those armies which had been defeated on the Russian front and in the Balkans,6 on order to kill you, destroy your liberty, destroy your noble Arab race, and finally to finish you off, as though it can have no power but over you…
O sons of Qahtan! Do you not know that man is meant to live here on earth a goodly life, in honor and prosperity, a life full of spiritual values, and that he founds states which safeguard these things, the most precious gift of God to the sons of Adam, to which they hold very fast? What , then, is the value of life, when honor is stained, possessions robbed, and souls destroyed?  What is the meaning of a life spent in humiliation and subjection, without honor, without possessions, without enjoyment of liberty and independence?…
O ye Arabs! Warn the people of the Yemen, of Asir, of Nejid, and of Iraq7 against the intrigues of your enemies. Be united, in the Syrian and Iraqi provinces, with the members of your race and fatherland.  Let the Muslims, the Christians, and the Jews be as one in working for the interest of the nation and of the country.  You all dwell in one land, you speak one language, so be also one nation and one land.  Do not become divided against yourselves according to the designs and purposes of the troublemakers who feign Islam, while Islam is really innocent of their misdeeds…
Unite then and help one another, and do not say, O ye Muslims: This is a Christian, and this is a Jew, for you all are God’s dependents, and religion is for God alone.  God has commanded us, in his precious Arabic Book and at the hand of his equality, to deal faithfully with him who does not fight us, even though his religion is different, and to fight him who uses us tyrannously.  Who, then, have tyrannized over the Arabs?  Have the Christian Arabs or any others sent armed expeditions to the Yemen, to Nejd, or to Iraq?  Is it not the band of Constantinople who fight you and seek to exterminate some of the Arabs by means of sword and fire, and others by means of quarrels and dissensions, following the maxim “divide and rule”?…
Every tyrannical government is an enemy and a foe to Islam; how more so, then, if the government destroys Islam, considers it lawful to shed the blood of the people of the Prophet of Islam, and seeks to kill the language of Islam in the name of Islamic government and the Islamic caliphate?…Therefore, he who supports these unionists8 because he considers them Muslims is in clear error, for none of them have done a good deed for Islam…Fanatic in its cause, they fight the Quran and the tradition of the Arabic Prophet.  Is it the Islam which it is incumbent on them to respect?  It is not notorious that they seek to kill the Arabic language?  Did they not write books to show that it must be abandoned, and that prayers and the call to prayers should be made in Turkish?  And if Arabic dies, how can the Quran and the traditions live?  And if the Book of the traditions cease to be known, what remains of Islam?
And O ye Christian and Jewish Arabs, combine with your brethren the Muslim Arabs, and do not follow in the footsteps of him who says to you, whether he be one of you or not: The Arab Muslims are sunk in religious fanaticism, therefore we prefer the irreligious Turks.  This is nonsensical speech which proceed from an ignorant man who knows neither his own nor his people’s interest…Our ancestors were not fanatical in this sense, for Jews and Christians used to study in the mosques of Baghdad and the Andalus like brethren.  Let them, both sides, aim at tolerance and at the removal of these ugly fanaticisms.  For you must know that those who do not speak your tongue are more harmful to you than the ignorant fanatics among the Arabs, since you can reach understanding with the Arabs who are your brethren in patriotism and race, while it is difficult for you to reach agreement with these contemptible creatures who are at the same time your enemies and the enemies of the Muslim Arabs.  See how, when you are friendly to them, they maltreat you, look down on you, and with hold your rights.  Combine with your fellow countrymen and your kin, and know that ugly fanaticism will inevitably disappear.  A day will come when fanaticism will disappear from our country, leaving no trace, and that day shall be when our affairs will be in our own hands, and when our affairs, our learning, and the verdicts of our courts will be conducted in our own language.  If we are united, such a day is not far off…
The reform of which we speak is not on the principle of decentralization coupled with allegiance to the minions of Constantinople, but on the principle of complete independence and the formation of a decentralized Arab state which will revive our ancient glories and rule the country on autonomous lines, according to the needs of each province.

1 Qahtan, or Kahtan, was supposedly the ancient ancestor of all south Arabs; Adnan was the ancestor of north Arabs.
2 The Constitution of 1876, restored for the time by the Young Turks.
3 These claims are exaggerated.  Slightly more than 1 million Armenians were Ottoman subjects, with most of them living in eastern Anatolia.  An upsurge in Armenian nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century led to a proliferation of Armenian political groups, antigovernment terrorism, and public demonstrations against Turkish rule.  Abdul Hamid’s government responded by ordering, or at least condoning, massacres of perhaps as many as one hundred thousand Armenians by Ottoman troops and mobs between 1894 and 1897.  Another massacre of approximately twenty thousand Armenians took place in the village of Adana in 1909.  Such atrocities outraged world opinion, and European governments pressured the Ottomans to implement reforms on behalf of the Armenians.  A plan worked out in 1914 that established two large provinces with heavy Armenian populations in eastern Anatolia and placed them under the administrative authority of Europeans was agreed upon by the Ottoman government and Europeans powers.  With the outbreak of World War I, however, the plan was dropped.  During the war government-ordered evacuations of Armenians from their homelands and attacks on Armenian communities resulted in more than a million Armenian deaths.
4 Chinggis Khan (1167-1227) was the Mongol ruler who conquered northern China, central Asia and Persia; his grandson Hulagu, or Hulegu, led the armies that sacked Baghdad in 1258, killing an estimated two hundred thousand inhabitants and bringing an end to the Abbasid Dynasty.
5 Tamerland (ca. 1336-1405) was a conqueror of Turko-Mongol ancestry.  His armies carved out a short-lived empire that stretched from Asia Minor to India.  His most notorious custom was to pile his victims’ skulls in huge pyramids after a city had been sacked.
6 The Ottoman government had been fighting and losing wars in the Balkans since the 1820s; their most recent defeat had come in the Balkan War of (1912-1913. The last major war with Russia had been fought in 1877 and 1878 with disastrous results for the Ottoman.
7Yemen, Asir, and Nejd are all regions of the Arabian Peninsula; Iraq was a province centered on the Tigris/Euphrates rivers.  The Ottoman government had sent troops to all these regions to quell disturbances or control local Arab rulers.
8 Refers to the Committee of Union and Progress, the political party of the Young Turks.

Questions:

1. The author’s nationalism is directed against both the Turks and the West.  What, specifically, are his views of each?
2. Does he have a deeper aversion for the Turks or for the Western nations?  Why?
3. In the view of the author, what lessons can the Arabs learn from the Armenians?
4. How does the author define “Arab”?
5. What role does religion play in connection with the author’s nationalism? How committed is he is Islam?
6. What are the author’s goals for the Arab people?  How does he believe these goals can be attained?