The national idea is largely recognised to have arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. It first took root in the Empire’s Christian population, particularly in the Balkans, but later spread to other regions and...
moreThe national idea is largely recognised to have arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. It first took root in the Empire’s Christian population, particularly in the Balkans, but later spread to other regions and confessions. Religion continued to be an important factor in everyday life and administration, but it was also increasingly mixed with linguistic and ethnic factors, not least in the issues of education and local governance. Not all national movements were successful, however, and the Empire’s Syriac speakers are exemplary of this fact. Explanations based on confessional difference, linguistic fragmentation or the spread of secular education all find well-documented counter-examples among the peoples of the Empire to refute their theoretical saliency. It is my contention that state-sponsorship was the crucial variable for the emergence of a broad-based national idea among the peoples of the region. In this paper, I explore one factor in this broader argument. I examine a 1906 text, Kitāb al-Manāhiǧ fī’l Naḥwu wa’l Maʿānī ʿand as-Suriyān, by Ǧibrā’īl al-Qardāḥī, printed in Rome. The work is a grammar of Syriac and is intended for Arabic-speaking students of the language. In the preface, al-Qardāḥī tracks the origins and history of the Aramaic people, from their presence in the Bible until the present day. In doing so, I argue that he provided a template for a secular national consciousness of the former Syriac speakers, similar to writers from other ethno-linguistic groups in the Empire. In uniting history, religion and language, he followed patterns noted among other peoples suffering from diglossia by recasting an existing religious identity in a national light. I contend that, contrary to earlier beliefs that the former Syriac speakers of the region were devoid of quasi-secular approaches to identity, they did indeed have access to such argumentation, similar to other groups in the region. The exposure of the Syriac clergy to nationalist thought was evidently not sufficient to spur the same development of a national political movement, as it did among other ethno-linguistic groupings. In part, this was because of al-Qardāḥī’s—and other clerics’—view to the east, rather than the west, for the source of Aramaean identity. In embracing the Semitic nature of Maronites’ and Syriac-speakers’ past, the author undermined historiographical efforts at connecting the Lebanese to Europe, and, with it, their claims for Great Power support.