[from Frank Salameh – Syria: the
history of a name]
BEGIN.
…modern Syria – as a concept, as a name
and as a geographic entity – is the outcome of European fancy, European
geography and European conceptions of the Eastern Mediterranean. Isabel Burton,
wife of famed British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, summed up the ethnic
conundrum of Damascus (in her times an Ottoman vilayet, and not the capital of
today’s Syria) as “various religions and sects [living] together more or less,
and [practicing] their conflicting worships in close proximity.”
Burton noted that, “Outwardly, you do
not see much, but in their hearts [the inhabitant of the State of Damascus]
hate one another. The Sunnites excommunicate the Shiahs, and both hate the
Druse; all detest the Ansariyyehs [Alawites]; the Maronites do not love anybody
but themselves, and are duly abhorred by all; the Greek Orthodox abominate the
Greek Catholics and the Latins; all despise the Jews.”
Writing along those same lines in 1907,
another British traveler, Gertrude Bell, noted that Syria was “merely a
geographical term corresponding to no national sentiment.” This view was
echoed by many Levantine contemporaries of Bell, most of whom maintain that there
has never been a distinct Syrian society historically speaking; that what
Europeans referred to as Syria had always been a bevy of disparate groups and
loose geographic entities brought together by conquest and ruled
forcibly through terror and tyranny; in sum, “a society based on a
despotism of brutal force modeled on that of the ruler.”
Only “Europeanized Syrians” – that is
to say Arabic-speaking urban Christians and Jews – who were familiar with the
languages and concepts of Europe, began describing the lands of their birth
collectively as Syria, and began viewing themselves as Syrians, to be
distinguished from Turks, Arabs or Ottomans.
STILL, THIS European concept of Syria
is similar to the way one may refer to something approximating “the Balkans,”
or “the Alps,” or “the Mediterranean.” Eyebrows would be raised in discontent
should analysts in our time venture to write about the Alps as some concrete,
coherent political entity. Yet, this is the kind of discourse dominating the
debate on Syria, the finality of Syria and the uniformity of Syria.
END.
**
Amazing
to read such an article. It’s almost the same country as ours:
[…but in their hearts [the inhabitant
of the State of Damascus] hate one another…]
Khartoum
was built as a small outpost in the 1820’s, by the Egyptian occupier, and for
the Egyptian occupier, to administer properly the middle third of their 19th
century empire that is today North Sudan. It took in Egyptian and Turkish
officials, businessmen from Egypt and the Levant, sheikhs and scholars taught
in al-Azhar University – mostly native Jallaba, Sephardic Jews coming from all
over the Arab world, and a few soldiers also drawn from the native Jallaba. It
was partially destroyed by the Mahdi’s soldiers in 1885, but those who settled
in Khartoum, no matter where they originated from, stayed put in their place.
General Kitchener took back Khartoum from the 19th century Taliban
rulers in 1898, and the people of Khartoum lived to see better times.
Then,
Gordon College (today the University of Khartoum) was opened, and the Jallaba
sent their children to study there. And the graduates set up their different professions
in Khartoum. By then, Khartoum began to have a significant Jallaba population. And
post-independence in 1956, the city expanded and grew larger, soon overwhelming
the multi-ethnic make-up and becoming a Jallabi city. Southerners, the peoples
of Darfur, the Nuba, the Bejas and the Berta and Kuka were conspicuously absent
from the populace. But they would soon come as refugees of war and famine, and
their numbers would overwhelm the Jallaba.
Refugees
from Darfur have been settling here from the 1980s, and many had children here.
And the children grew up here and had children of their own. They are
Khartoumites, speaking a slang of Sudanese Arabic – that developed in the 1990s
from the accents and speaking manner of the Fur and Zaghawa – that has come to
symbolize Khartoum’s people. From time to time they visit their hometowns in
Darfur, and that is all they know of their native land. They speak their native
language at home, and Arabic to one another. These are the older refugees, and
the more recent refugees from 2003 onwards are one generation behind the trend.
What
once used to be squatter camps are now entire satellite towns with multiple
neighborhoods. I’ve seen them so many times. They are miserable and sordid, and
the people in it are just as miserable. The architecture is distinctly
Darfurese, but there is no development beyond the neighborhood’s own
contributions, notwithstanding a few clinics and markets. Some of the youths
have spent their entire lives there, and have never tasted dignity. They are desperate
for a better tomorrow, perhaps at any cost.
Khartoum
is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city that now holds 5 million people, and
it is a ticking time bomb. The different peoples do not get along, the Coptic
Christians are withdrawn and are always suspicious of a Jallabi talking
to them, the Nuba keep to themselves, the Fur keep to themselves, the descendants
of Egyptians and Levantines – known as the Halab – keep to themselves and hold
a strong contempt for the Jallaba, as I have consistently seen from them. The
Turkish community keep to themselves – and after being around them for a few
instances, I now understand why the Slavs of Eastern Europe and the Kurds hate
them as they do. The foreigners coming as refugees from South Sudan, Iraq,
Syria, Yemen, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia keep to themselves. All
interactions are kept to a minimum beyond incidental friendship. There is a
seething resentment, a desire for revenge and a need for change from everybody
– but the Jallaba.
You
can see it, you can hear it when you care to hear. Every one of every ethnic
group laughs at and mocks the Jallaba, when they do not resent them deeply.
They know that the Jallaba do not fight back and submit to any power that rules
over them. They know that the Jallaba are extremely lazy and the Jallaba get
upset when they hear that. They know that the Jallaba have extremely bad habits
that make them primitive and ignorant, and that they are sensitive to every
word spoken. They see the Jallabi bow down and kiss the feet of any Arab leader
and any Arab people, and they resent it like fire on their bellies. They know
that the Jallaba are the first and the last to check any progress or positive development,
perhaps because they want everyone to be as worthless and as absolutely
pathetic and as devoid of any honor or pride as they are.
Everyone
who is not Jallabi hates the Jallabi with a consuming rage. And given the
opportunity to exact their revenge, they will. In the event of a US occupation
(which is very likely), or a coup that brings a non-Jallabi to power, everyone
knows what to expect. Gang members, criminals and psychopaths will come of
their homes, with axes and machetes, looking for Jallaba to kill. In the span
of a few days, a few thousand Jallabis will be killed if nothing is done about
it. What the current regime inflicted on Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the
South, for daring to rebel against their rule, has remained in their hearts as
an open wound. At the very first instance of the Jallaba’s weakness, they will
turn their suffering back on the Jallaba, perhaps in the same coin, knowing
full well that the Jallaba are cowards of the highest caliber and are quick to
fold to any display of courage.
**
[…merely a geographical term
corresponding to no national sentiment:]
[…brought together by conquest:]
In
1821, an ambitious ruler in Egypt, Mohammed Ali Pasha, sought to build an
empire, by expanding southwards. He conquered the Funj sultanate, the
independent Shayqi state, the Beja sheikhdoms, Kordofan and the Kingdom of
Darfur, the Kingdom of Bahr-al-Ghazal, the Dinka and Nuer and Shilluk lands and
the lands of the Fertit and Azande and Murle and Toposa between 1823 and 1876,
having a glorious empire to extract wealth and summon brave African soldiers
from. In 1882, amidst oppressive taxes and brutal rule, a certain Mohammed
Ahmed abdul-Rahman, teaming up with Abdullah al-Ta3ayshi, proclaimed himself to
be the Mahdi and led a revolt against the Egyptian rulers. Khartoum, the capitol
of its region was taken in 1885, and the Sudanese Caliphate was declared. He
took 4/5ths of that empire under his own rule. The Caliphate’s borders were
exactly that of post-1956 Sudan.
When
Haykal, the Egyptian political analyst, said that Sudan is nothing more than a
stretch of geography, he was right. But the Jallaba were upset on hearing this,
as the truth to them is something they can never handle.
There
are so many nations enclosed by the common border of Sudan, who are so
different from one another and cover altogether so vast a region, that this
country could not have been sustained without being an empire, much like Napoleon’s
or ancient Rome. To make it a republic that idealizes democracy and secular
law, and then give it to confused Arabized Nubians who idealize the caliphate, rule
by sheikhs and imams, and Shariah law, was perhaps the biggest mistake ever
done in this part of Africa.
**
[…ruled forcibly through terror and
tyranny:]
1956 –
1958
(2y) First Republic, weak and plagued by sectarianism.
ABBOUD’S
COUP
1958 –
1964
(6y) Abboud’s rule, not as brutal as
successors but imprisoned politicians.
OCTOBER
REVOLUTION
1965 –
1969
(4y) Second Republic, strong and effective under al-Azhari, but
overthrown.
MAY
COUP
1969 –
1985
(26y) May
Regime, socialist and secular, brutal and corrupt to the bone.
APRIL
INTIFADA
1986 –
1989
(3y) Third Republic, weak and failed.
JUNE
30 COUP
1989 – Now (25y) June 30
regime, Islamist, the worst regime to have ruled Sudan, short of the
Mahdi Caliphate.
**
Shout-out
to Lebanoniznogood.
No comments:
Post a Comment