Jacob Lassner - Middle Eastern Politics and Historical Memory: Martyrdom, Revolution, and Forging National Identities

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Middle Eastern Politics and
Historical Memory

Contents

1. i
2. iii
3. v
4. iv

Dedicatory Preface

It is customary for Hebrew speakers to wish those battling the actuarial statistics a fruitful life ad meia ve-esrim, that is, until 120. I began this project when Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Near East historians, celebrated his 100th birthday and completed it just before he died two weeks short of reaching the even riper age of 102. I regret that he will not have had the opportunity to read this Preface dedicated to him, a small return for the many years in which he offered me encouragement to pursue my interests in subjects he commanded so well.

I first met Bernard Lewis some sixty-five years ago on his initial visit to the United States, and encountered him again in 1965, when as a junior scholar I participated in a conference at the University of Oxford. He was then the celebrated historian at SOAS, the University of Londons prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. During a coffee break, he inquired as to my work and, following that, asked to see my dissertation. From that day forward, he was a mentor and valued friend, thus allowing me to enjoy a privileged status that I share with many who studied with him in London and Princeton. Above all, he led me to appreciate the effects of a past, whether real, massaged, or invented on contemporaneous belief and action, a learned and most valuable approach to Near Eastern history that I fully embrace, as can be seen in the essays to follow. It is with the deepest of gratitude that I dedicate this book to his memory.

Abbreviations

ABD	Anchor Bible Dictionary
AJSL	American Journal of Semitic Languages
AJSJ	Association for Jewish Studies Journal
AO	Acta Orientalia
ArO	Archiv Orientln
ArOr	Ars Orientalis
BA	Biblical Archaeologist
BAR	Biblical Archaeological Review
BI	Bibliotheca Islamica
BASOR	Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BSAOS	Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies
CBQ	Catholic Biblical Quarterly
EI	2Encyclopedia of Islam (Second edition)
EJ	Encyclopedia Judaica
GMS	Gibb Memorial Series
IC	Islamic Culture
IEJ	Israel Exploration Journal
IES	Israel Exploration Society
IJH	International Journal of History
IJMES	International Journal of Middle East Studies
IOS	Israel Oriental Studies
JA	Journal Asiatique
JAOS	Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBL	Journal of Biblical Literature
JARCE	Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
JBL	Journal of Biblical Literature
JESHO	Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient
JNES	Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JPS	Journal of Palestine Studies
JQ	Jerusalem Quarterly
JESAI	Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
JSOT	Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTsup	Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement
JSS	Journal of Semitic Studies
LOS	London Oriental Studies
MEQ	Middle East Quarterly
MW	Muslim World
NEA	Near Eastern Archaeology
OC	Oriens Christianus
OIP	Oriental Institute Publications
PMLA	Publication of the Modern Language Association
PAPS	Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
RMM	Revue du Monde Musulman
RSO	Revista degli Studi Orientali
SPDA	Studies in the Period of David and Solomon
SJOT	Swedish Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
VT	Vetus Testamentum
VTsup	Vetus Testamentum Supplement
WHJP	World History of the Jewish People
ZAH	Zeitschrift fr Althebraistik
ZDMG	Zeitschrift der Deutschen morganlndischen Gesellschaft

Introduction

This work consists of seven essays linked by a common theme, namely, the residual effects of a Near Eastern past on contemporaneous political culture. The initial focus is largely on Islamic history, with a special emphasis on the Arab heartland. It begins with the rise of Islam and continues until the present day. There are nonetheless necessary references to pre-Islamic times and other Near Eastern civilizations, as Muslim authors seeking to promote political agendas tend to scavenge for material along an extended historical landscape. They refer to the ancient peoples of pre-Islamic Arabia, Iran, the Graeco-Roman world, early Christianity, and more recently the indigenous peoples of Canaan. There are also extensive references to the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible, refracted largely through the prism of Rabbinic Judaism. Invoking these eras past serves as a template by which Muslims have measured the behavior of the other while considering their own political needs. For example, in modern times, the Muslim Tales of the Israelites (Israiliyat) are juxtaposed with the history of other ancient civilizations to blunt the Zionist challenge to Arab nationalism in general and Palestinian nationalism in particular.

As Islamic politics and the experiences of other Near Eastern societies are often linked, exploring the extensive scope of political culture in the region calls for probing a wide range of material. The past and present explored in this work require familiarity with the broad sweep of Islamic history; grounding in several Near Eastern languages; a literary sensibility to unpack highly tendentious sources; and a knowledge of current trends in biblical studies, Judaism, and SyroPalestinian archaeology, all subjects shedding light on modern Near Eastern history as well as distant eras. One is obliged to consider, therefore, the past, or more correctly perceptions of the past, whether one speaks of relations between Muslims and the other, or among Arab/Muslim political sects, parties, and polities from the rise of Islam until the present day.

With the emergence of modern nation states in the Near East, native historians have cast their net to promote territorial claims and a national consciousness to unite heterogeneous communities in common polity. For example, the Iraqi embrace of Ancient Mesopotamian civilization; Lebanese Maronite Christians linking their ancestors to the ancient Phoenicians; and Palestinian claims to be the descendants of the peoples subsumed under the label Canaanites. The Palestinian claim was forged to preempt Zionist efforts to reconstitute the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland in accordance with a long-received Jewish narrative of history, a tale that begins with Gods promise of the Holy Land to the progeny of the biblical patriarch Abraham.

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