The Ottoman Origins of Arab Patriotism
This chapter discusses the Ottoman origins of Arab patriotism. The construction of a new political community as related to a new regime type in Ottoman Egypt can be defined by two problems in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first was the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its Egyptian province under the rule of Mehmed Ali. The second was the relationship between the governor and the local elites. These problems were interrelated in the legitimacy structure of power, and provided the conditions for the rise of political nation-ness in Arabic. It was the Crimean War, in which Egypt and other Arab provinces participated, that forcefully brought to the surface patriotism in Arabic as a discursive strategy of constituting political solidarity in public. The idea of the homeland became a means to make sense of new politics through old media and new media, such as the modern Arabic theater in Ottoman Beirut.