202 • 12 THE RISE OF NATIONALISMonly to youths who had lost their religion because of Western education.
Even when they reached a wider public, their success was due to popular
misunderstandings. The uneducated majority often mistook the national¬
ist triumphs for Muslim victories. And these were few indeed.
You may wonder why we told you so much about these unsuccessful na¬
tionalist movements. Why learn about them? History is not just the story
of winners; sometimes we study losers whose grandchildren would be
winners. History is more than a collection of mere facts, names, and dates;
we must also look at the way in which the peoples we care about view their
own past. Ahmad Urabi and Mustafa Kamil are heroes to the Egyptian
people today; Khedive Isma'il and Lord Cromer are not. In Istanbul, you
can buy postcards that bear pictures of the leading New Ottomans. Every
Turkish student sees the Young Turks as a link in the chain of national re¬
generators going from Selim III to Kemal Ataturk. The 1906 constitution
remained the legal basis of Iran's government until 1979, and the Islamic
Republic still honors the Shi'i leaders and bazaar merchants who fought
together against the shah to make the older constitution a reality. For the
peoples of the Middle East, these early nationalist movements were the
prologue for the revolutionary changes yet to come.