208 • 13 THE ROOTS OF ARAB BITTERNESSwere not Arabs, let alone members of the Quraysh tribe. Actually, they had
seldom used the title of caliph before the late nineteenth century. Sultan
Abdulaziz (r. 1861-1876) had done so, as part of his campaign to increase
his support from Ottoman Muslims and to counter the harmful effects of
Russian pan-Slavism. Sultan Abdulhamid exploited the caliphate even
more, trying to win the backing of Egyptian and Indian Muslims ruled by
Britain—one of the reasons for his bad reputation in Western history
books. Britain's rising hostility to the Ottoman sultan may have stimulated
Kawakibi's nationalism. Whatever the cause, his idea of an Arab caliphate
did gain support from the non-Ottoman amirs in Arabia and even from
Egypt's Khedive Abbas. Although the khédives were descendants of Meh-
met Ali, originally an Albanian, they often tried to win Arab support away
from the Ottoman sultans. In short, Kawakibi's campaign to free the Arabs
from Turkish rule mattered more as a power ploy for diplomats, khédives,
and amirs than for its popular following at the time.
The Arabs and the Young Turks
The first breakthrough for Arab nationalism was the 1908 Young Turk rev¬
olution, which restored the long-suspended Ottoman constitution. Sud¬
denly, men living in Beirut and Damascus, Baghdad and Aleppo, Jaffa and
Jerusalem, were choosing representatives to an assembly in Istanbul.
Hopes were raised for Arab-Turkish friendship and for progress toward
liberal democracy in the Ottoman state. An Arab-Ottoman Friendship So¬
ciety opened branches in many cities of the empire. Some of the Syrian in¬
tellectuals who had fled from Abdulhamid's tyranny to Egypt or the New
World packed their bags to return home.
Arab hopes soon faded, though. The Arab-Ottoman Friendship Society
was closed down by the Committee of Union and Progress in 1909, al¬
though an Arabic literary society was allowed to meet in Istanbul as long
as it avoided politics. Representation in Parliament favored Turks against
the empire's many ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. Moreover,
the elections were rigged to ensure that most of the deputies belonged to
the CUP. The Young Turk regime, imperiled by European imperialism and
Balkan nationalism, resumed the centralizing policies of earlier Ottoman
reformers. Consequently, the Arabs began to fear that their liberties, pre¬
served by the weakness or indifference of earlier governments, would now
be in danger. The imposition of Turkish as the language of administration
and education (plus the apparent shift from pan-Islam to pan-Turanism)
especially angered the Arabs.