Abdullah Quilliam (Henri De Léon) and Marmaduke Pickthall 81
Thus Quilliam’s version of pan-Islamism differed radically from that ex-
pressed by the rising tide of Arab nationalists, who were seeking separation
from the Ottoman yoke. This resulted in a twentieth-century version of Pan-
Arabism, which argued that the fortunes of the Arab world would be better
served by an Arab alliance that modified the ultra-nationalist creed of loyalty
to the watan (nation-state) and sought closer ties and even unions. However,
the development of Arab nationalism and the subsequent creation of Middle
Eastern nation states arose alongside the Ottoman decline and British political
and military intervention during the First World War. Quilliam’s version of pro-
Ottoman Pan-Islamism was increasingly divorced from the move towards na-
tionalism in Pan-Arabism. Pickthall’s lack of personal religious allegiance to the
Sunni caliph permitted him to have sympathies for the Pan-Arabists’ Turkish
equivalents, the Young Turks. Both these groups of nationalist reformers were
anathema to Quilliam, as they sought the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.
Although Turkish nationalism was one of the last to appear in the troubled
Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century, its impact on the survival of
the last Muslim empire and the Sunni caliphate was emphatic. In the same
year that Quilliam and his eldest son left Liverpool to take up residence in
Constantinople as guests of the Sultan, the Young Turks took part in a revolu-
tion that was potentially threatening to the Ottoman caliphate. In July 1908,
Sultan Abdul Hamid ii, who was destined to become the last caliph with any
real power, was forced to restore a constitutional form of government that
had first been adopted in 1876 and then suspended in 1878. In 1909, one year
after Quilliam’s arrival, his beloved Sultan was forced to abdicate, and be-
tween 1908 and 1913 the Ottoman state lost most of its European territories. On
17th November 1922, the last Ottoman sultan was forced into exile and, on 29th
October 1923, the caliphate was officially abolished by the new Turkish state
under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Both Pickthall and Quilliam would, however,
have been at ease with the convictions expressed in Quilliam’s words in The
Crescent written in 1898,
Our excellent Caliph ascended the throne during turbulent times when
the Christians of Bosnia and Herzegovina, forgetting the tolerance
extended to them by their magnanimous rulers, openly rebelled and
murdered many innocent, law-abiding Muslims. In 1876 Serbia declared
war against the Porte, Prince Nikita declared holy war on the Turks in
front of an assembled Montenegrin army.2929 tc 295, 7 September 1898.