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The “Politics of Notables” Forty Years After

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016

James L. Gelvin*
Affiliation:
UCLA

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Type
Forty Years of MESA
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2006

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References

1Hourani,Albert, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” inThe Modern Middle East, ed.Hourani,Albert,Khoury,Philip S., andWilson,Mary C. (Berkeley:University of California Press,1993), p.87.Google Scholar All further citations of “Ottoman Reform” are from this volume.

2Roniger,Luis, “Clientalism and Patron-Client Relations: A Bibliography,” inPolitical Clientalism, Patronage and Development, ed.Eisenstadt,S.N. andLemarchand,René (Beverly Hills:Sage,1981), pp.297330.Google Scholar

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4Hourani,Albert, “The Present State of Islamic and Middle Eastern Historiography,” inEurope and the Middle East (Berkeley:University of California Press,1980), p.191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5Hourani,, “Ottoman Reform,” p.87.Google Scholar

6 Until recently, a correspondent affliction affected Ottoman imperial historians as well. SeeFaroqhi,Suraiya, “Coping with the Central State, Coping with Local Power: Ottoman Regions and Notables from the Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century,” inThe Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography, ed.Adanir,Fikret andFaroqhi,Suraiya (Leiden:Brill,2002), pp.351–81.Google Scholar

7 See,inter alia,Khoury,Philip S., “Continuity and Change in Syrian Political Life: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,”American Historical Review96:5 (December1991):1374–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Muslih,Muhamma,The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York:Columbia University Press,1989)Google Scholar;Khalaf,Samir, “Changing Forms of Political Patronage,” inLebanon’s Predicament (New York:Columbia University Press,1987), pp.73101.Google Scholar

8 SeeNaff,Thomas,Paths to the Middle East: Ten Scholars Look Back (Albany:SUNY Press,1993), p.48.Google Scholar The categories “foreigners,” “notables,” and “common people” are Lapidus’s. SeeLapidus,Ira, “Muslim Urban Society in Mamluk Syria,” inThe Islamic City: A Colloquium, ed.Hourani,A.H. andStern,S.M. (Oxford:Bruno Cassirer,1970), pp.195205.Google Scholar

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10Naff,,Paths, pp.28,45.Google Scholar See alsoOwen,Roger, “Albert Hourani the Historian,” inMiddle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within, ed.Pappé,Ilan andMa’oz,Moshe (London:Tauris,1997), p.9Google Scholar;Gallagher,Nancy,Approaches to the History of the Middle East: Interviews with Leading Middle East Historians, (Ithaca Press,1994), p.36.Google Scholar

11 For the debt modernization theory owed to struc-func, see, for example,Latham,Michael E.,Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press,2000), pp.3940.Google Scholar

12 SeeShils,,Center and Periphery, pp. xii,313Google Scholar;Eisenstadt,S.N. andCurelaru,M.The Form of Sociology: Paradigms and Crises (New York:John Wiley and Sons,1976), pp.179–82.Google Scholar

13Owen,, “Albert Hourani,” p.14.Google Scholar

14Hourani,, “The Present State,” p.187–88.Google Scholar

15Naff,,Paths, p.48.Google Scholar

16Eisenstadt,S.N. andRoniger,Luis, “The Study of Patron-Client Relations and Recent Developments in Sociological Theory,” inPolitical Clientalism,275Google Scholar;Eisenstadt, andCurelaru,,The Form of Sociology, pp.194–98.Google Scholar

17Lemarchand,René, “Comparative Political Clientalism: Structure, Process and Optic,” inPolitical Clientalism, Patronage and Development, ed.Eisenstadt,S.N. andLemarchand,René (Beverly Hills:Sage,1981), p.9.Google Scholar

18 According to E.P. Thompson, for example, “No thoughtful historian should characterize a whole society as paternalist or patriarchal. But paternalism can, as in Tsarist Russia, Meiji Japan, or in certain slave-holding societies, be a profoundly important component not only of ideology but of the actual institutional mediation of social relations.”Thompson,E.P., “Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle Without Class?,”Social History3:2 (May1978):137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 135.

20 Ibid., p. 145;Gilsenan,Michael, “Against Patron-Client Relations,” inPatrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies, ed.Gellner,Ernest andWaterbury,John (London:Duckworth,1977), pp.167–68, 179–80Google Scholar;Waterbury,John, “An Attempt to Put Patrons and Clients in their Place,” inPatrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies, pp.329, 332–33.Google Scholar

21Thompson,, “Eighteenth-Century English Society,” p.136.Google Scholar

22Gilsenan,, “Against Patron-Client Relations,” p.181.Google Scholar

23Toledano,Ehud, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A Framework for Research,” inMiddle Eastern Politics and Ideas, p.146.Google Scholar

24Hourani,Albert, “The Ottoman Background of the Modern Middle East,” inThe Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley:University of California Press,1981), pp.23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See, for example,Hathaway,Jane, “The Military Household in Modern Egypt,”International Journal of Middle East Studies27 (February1995):3952CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Toledano,, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites,” pp.145–62Google Scholar;Khoury,Dina Rizk,State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul 1540–1834 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2002).Google Scholar

26Toledano,, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites,” p.155.Google Scholar

27 See,inter alia,Dawn,C. Ernest,From Ottomanism to Arabismi Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urban:University of Illinois Press,1973)Google Scholar;Khoury,Philip S.,Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28Hourani,Albert, “The Arab Awakening Forty Years After,” inHourani, (ed.),The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (Berkeley:University of California Press,1981), pp.201–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29Hourani,, “Ottoman Reform,” p.100Google Scholar;Kedourie,Elie, “Pan-Arabism and British Policy,” inThe Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies (Chicago:Ivan R. Dee,2004), p.213.Google Scholar

30Hourani,, “The Arab Awakening,” p.202.Google Scholar

31 SeeKhoury,, “The Urban Notables Paradigm,” p.224.Google Scholar

32 For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see my “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?: Reassessing the Lineages of Nationalism in Bilad al-Sham,” inPhilipp,Thomas andSchumann,Christoph (eds.),From the Syrian Land to the State of Syria (Würtzburg:ERGON Verlag,2004), pp.127–44Google Scholar; “Modernityand Its Discontents: On the Durability of Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,”Nations and Nationalism 5:1 (January 1999): 71–89;Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

33Dawn,, “From Ottomanism to Arabism,” p.377.Google Scholar

34 A more thorough discussion of this phenomenon can be found inGelvin,, “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?” andGelvin,,The Modern Middle East: A History (New York:Oxford University Press,2004), pp.197201.Google Scholar

35Hourani,, “The Arab Awakening” p.199.Google Scholar