Tatar_Nobility

Introduction

The mainstream conception today in the imperial core that the Middle East had always been a breeding ground for religious backwardness and reaction, is, to say the least, an inaccurate depiction of the region and what it represented in the 20th century. Back then, the Middle East from Egypt to Iran was a beacon of progressive and leftist thought, and had been debating issues that are still relevant today like gender, queerness, secularism, social justice and so forth. Indeed, these discussions were even more prevalent yesteryear than in the contemporary era, wherein the human-rights discourse represented by so-called “International” organisations—the likes of the UN, Amnesty, Legal Action—tries to force the narrative of a Middle Eastern “awakening” that was only possible by means of market liberalisation.

Rather, the East’s historical trajectory in the 19th and 20th centuries was moving in tandem with the West’s—particularly due to colonialism. And, just like in the West, the Middle East is witnessing a “crisis of secularism” consisting of the distrust in secular, liberal institutions’ capacity to ensure social justice. In particular there has been a surge in political Islamist thought—what has been labeled as the new Islamist movement—across the region, from Iran to Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Palestine. The neo-Islamic current’s relationship with modernity is a complicated one: on the one hand it is supportive of efforts to modernise the technology of the state as a defensive measure against Western imperialism; yet on the other hand it holds a nostalgic and arguably false vision of pre-modern Islam which is seen as civilisationally in conflict with the Occident, propagated in part by Orientalist studies (Ahmad, 2003; Cagaptay, 2020; Hallaq, 2012).

Palestine was once the home of a prominent, leftist movement which ideologically tied itself to the anti-colonial struggle. Until the end of the 20th century, the secular current, headed by Fatah, dominated the national liberation movement. However, although the Fatah-led PLO is technically the ruling entity, this isn’t apparent, especially with the latest conflict being framed as a war between Israel and Hamas, an Islamist political movement whose covenant explicitly positions Islam as the “frame of reference” which “determines its principles, objectives and means.” Therefore one has to ask: how did political Islamism take over the narrative of Palestinian national liberation?

The present article will addres the foundational principles of the Palestinian resistance by situating the role of the leftist movement within its framework. The article recounts the history of Palestinian leftists groups, namely the PFLP and its breakaways, the Palestine People’s Party and the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, from their rise in the wake of the 1967 Naksa to their decline and subsequent replacement with the Islamic Resistance Movement. The organisation of Fatah will be excluded from the scope of this article because it is a bourgeois nationalist party and its historical evolution differs from that of the leftist movement despite the two sharing common characteristics. The article’s aim is to study the causes that led to the fall of the Palestinian left and how said causes affected their ideology and political position in the context of national liberation.

I. The Palestinian Resistance and the Left

A.Historical Roots of the Resistance

The Palestinian resistance movement predates the 1948 Nakba events, initiated by the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel. In its earliest, embryonic form, the resistance was part of the Arab nationalist movement directed against European colonialism and its policies, namely the partition of the Arab World and the encouragement of Zionist settlements in Palestine (Valensi, 2017). Its main pillar was the national emancipation and self-determination of the Arab people, which was expressed by the King-Crane Commission on the destiny of the post-WWI Ottoman Empire.

The Palestinian resistance of the 1950’s and 60’s is the spiritual continuation of the interwar efforts to liberate Palestine, notably the Arab Revolt of 1936 which started as a general strike by Arab port workers. The Revolt was in part rooted in class struggle: worker and peasant fighters cancelled debts and reappropriated farmlands they were evicted from following land transfers between Zionist settlers and the Arab elite (Akram-Boshar, 2023).

In reaction to the UN partition and the 1948 war, the All-Palestine Government was established under the leadership of Amin al-Husseini. However, Husseini’s attempt to create a secular state in Palestine ended in failure following Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank and the establishment of the State of Israel (Beinin & Hajjar, 2014).

In 1964, the Arab League established the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as “a mobilizing leadership of the forces of the Palestinian Arab people to wage the battle of liberation.” One of the main pillars of the organisation, as expressed in the Palestinian National Charter, is the national unity of Palestinians regardless of confession under a secular Palestinian state. Although the Charter was supportive of Arab unity, it nevertheless affirmed the Palestinian national identity within the Nation-State framework that the British mandate imposed, and which was a matter of contention among the early resistance movement.

B. The Rise of the Palestinian Left

The advent of the political left in Palestine has its roots primarily in the catastrophic failure of Arab armies in the Six-Day War in 1967 (Bzour, 2015; Hilal, 2009). The Nasserist regime in Egypt took a heavy blow and its regional influence shrank, particularly in the Palestinian theatre. The nationalist Fatah party wasn’t the only actor to take advantage of the Egyptian void; Marxists also took the opportunity to consolidate their political presence. Several left-wing organisations joined the PLO and contested Fatah’s exclusive authority over the mational liberation movement (Leopardi, 2024).

One of the organisations in question is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist militant group. Founded in the aftermath of the Naksa, the PFLP quickly became a notorious organisation carrying military operations across the region and the Arab World. As a matter of fact, the leaders of the PFLP believed in the wider socialist revolution extending beyond the simple liberation of a Palestinian nation. The Popular Front recruited guerilla fighters from the Palestinian territories and even among the diaspora communities in Lebanon and Jordan by infiltrating university campuses (Anderson, 2011). However, quickly after its creation, several groups split from the mother organisation due to ideological and political differences: the Syrian-backed PFLP - General Command in 1967, the maoist Popular Democratic FLP (later shortened to DFLP) in 1968, and the Popular Revolutionary FLP (PRFLP). Despite the splits, the PFLP remained the leading force of the leftist movement and the second biggest organisation in the PLO.

While the PFLP’s leaders and members mostly belonged to the educated bourgeoisie, the Palestine Communist Party (CPC) was more so involved in the class struggle and labor movement in the occupied territories. Originally founded in 1919, the Communist Party was dissolved following the annexations of Palestinian territories in 1948 between Israel, Jordan and Egypt; communists in the West bank joined the Jordanian Communist Party while those in the Gaza strip established their own organisation. Palestinian communists reunited in 1982 to reestablish the party and five years later joined the PLO. The PCP’s popularity stems from its central role in mobilising grassroots support in the first Intifada (Gresh, 1989).

Another organisation that emerged from the defeat of 1967 was the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPFS). The party was originally Marxist-Leninist in inspiration, yet it later aligned itself with Fatah only to fall out with the latter soon after. The organisation’s main supporter was the Baathist regime in Syria. The PPSF is an outlier in the leftist movement considering its perplexing political positions and contradictory ideals despite perceiving itself as “left-wing.”

In sum, the leftist movement—which in reality is a broad umbrella term used for diverse ideologies of different degrees of radicalism (Muallem, 2008)—formed half of the membership of the PLO. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, the impact of the movement was felt in the occupied territories, in the Arab World and overseas. However, this wasn’t to last for too long.

II. Turmoil of the Left: Causes and Consequences

A. Decline of the Palestinian Left in its Local and Global Contexts

The very first parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories were held in January 1996. Out of three and a half million votes, the left collectively acquired less than six percent. But the causes behind such dismal results are older than the elections themselves.

There are of course the internal issues that generally plague leftist movements, namely infighting and lack of unity. There were up to seven groups representing the political left, the majority of them being the product of splits and breakaways: The PFLP-GC and DFLP broke away from the PFLP, and the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA) itself split from the DFLP. Furthermore, the leftist movement was underfunded, its biggest financial source being the Palestinian National Fund which is controlled by Fatah (Muallem, 2008).

There are also factors that are special to the Palestinian left. Firstly, Israel saw the leftist movement as one of the biggest threats to its national security. While Arafat and the nationalists were keen on peace agreements (as the Oslo accords clearly evince), the left was adamantly opposed to any agreement with the Zionist entity. This pushed Israel to take strong measures against leftist movements since their inception: from arrests to exiles and assassinations. The leadership was sent into exile in the early seventies; in 1982 the leftist student movement was targeted for thwarting Israel’s plans to undermine the PLO; and in the first Intifada of 1987, the leftit movements were the first targets of Israeli extermination policies (Muallem, 2008). Secondly, some authors observed the ideological duplicity of the Palestinian left which couldn’t rid itself of nationalist (see pan-Arabist) tendencies. According to Al Bzour (2015), “the [Palestinian] leftist ideology was not in its foundation a response of a class reality.” The leadership failed to go beyond “mere ulcation and indoctrination of the popular base,” and its “real crisis lays in the difference between thought and practice.”

On the global stage, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the last decade of the 20th century took a heavy toll on leftist movements around the world. Even if the Soviets were not directly involved in the leftist movements of Palestine, the Soviet Union was the symbolical and ideological leader thereof; and its dissolution was followed by a trend of de-radicalisation. In 1991, the Communist Party, renamed to the Palestinian People’s Party, rebranded itself as a social democratic party, sidelining the class struggle for an indefinite amount until national liberation is complete. In the same year, the social democratic FIDA split from the DFLP.

The fall of the USSR has led the Western narrative to shift from a civilisational clash with the Communist East to a clash with the Islamic East.

B. Hamas and the Ascent of Political Islamism into Power

For the longest time, Islamists were marginalised in the Arab World. To survive persecution, they were forced to identify with the nationalist and pan-Arabist movements. Islamic groups’ activity in the first half of the 20th century focused on social and cultural issues; they established mosques and schools meant to nurture a “new Islamic Generation.” However, following the defeats of the sixties and the disillusionment with the national liberation movement, the political Islamists managed to gain traction, particularly in the Gaza strip where Hamas saw its establishment.

Hamas (acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement”) was born out of the first Intifada in 1987 during which the organisation gained credibility for its active participation. Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, presented itself as an alternative to the secular liberation movement of the PLO, at a time when the latter was backtracking on its objectives. Article 11 of the 1988 Hamas Covenant reads:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [endowement] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.

This opposition to the relinqushing of Palestinian land is evidenced in Hamas’ rejection of the Madrid talks in 1991 and then the Oslo Accords in 1996 and finally its boycott of the 1996 elections. Despite this marginalisation, its popular base was growing like never before. Hamas took advantage of the void created by the nationalist’s unpopularity and the leftist’s degeneration, to further expand its message and activity politically and militarily. The al-Qassam Brigades were established in 1991, and its impact was especially felt in the second Intifada in 2000. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Hamas candidates amassed 44 percent of the votes, gaining 74 seats out of 132 seats; meanwhile Fatah gained only 44 seats. The fear that the shocking results incurred in the Fatah leadership as well as in the Israelis led since then to a complete interference and shutting down of every initiative to organise new elections (Abu Amer, 2021; Barron 2019), the last attempt being in 2021 which ended in an indefinite postponement by the President Mahmoud Abbas.

Concluding Remarks: Class Struggle “Lost” to Islamism?

Of course, the endemic problems and strategic failures of the Palestinian left, especially after the end of the cold war, has pushed the working class to seek justice in the Islamist narrative, particularly in a marginalised and isolated Gaza strip. Once a legitimate political actor to be contended with, the left has virtually lost all influence it had on the Palestinian people, more so among the native population, and became overshadowed by the nationalist-Islamist rivalry. Hamas and the other Islamist groups have succeeded in mobilising the hopeless masses for a bigger cause.

That being said, we should not look at the above predicament from a pessimistic lens. For Islam, and generally religion, should not necessarily be seen as antagonistic to the leftist cause, that is, the emancipation of the working class. We have seen several movements who successfully integrated religion into Marxism; most notable cases being liberation theology in South America (Morales-Franceschini, 2018) and Sufi Sibghatullah’s “mystical Marxism” in South Asia (Raza, 2022).

The PFLP has made a step in the right direction by strengthening its ties with Hamas and collaborating in military operations. As of July 2022, the PFLP, along with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were taking steps to create a National Liberation Front in an attempt to address internal divisions and to cooperate with and to rebuild the PLO. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP’s military wing) have also been involved in the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Given the Palestinian left’s current fragility, ideological purity should be forsaken in favor of pragmatism and effective praxis.

It only takes a minute of your time to copy your important files to a drive or the cloud. I (potentially) lost one year of progress on a book I'm writing because of my negligence.

So please don't be like me.

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The term "neoliberalism" gets thrown a lot in intellectual and political discourse, yet with seldom clarity to what it entails. Some may loosely relate it to the de-politicisation of the economy, the weakening of the State in favor of private corporations, or even the revival of laissez-faire capitalism. While one cand find some truth in those assumptions, they inevitably stray from the ideology as conceived by the neoliberal intellectuals of the past century.

Besides narrating the marriage of neoliberalism and human rights (which we will cover later), this book sheds a light on what actually neoliberalism stood for. Whyte contends that what the neoliberals envisaged through their numerous gatherings following the second world war, was a new, global economic order premised on what they have termed the “morals of the market.”

[T]he ‘morals of the market’ were a set of individualistic, commercial values that prioritised the pursuit of self-interest above the development of common purposes. A market society required a moral framework that sanctioned wealth accumulation and inequality, promoted individual and familial responsibility, and fostered submission to the impersonal results of the market process at the expense of the deliberate pursuit of collectively formulated ends. It also required that moral obligations are limited to the requirement that we refrain from harming others, and do not require positive obligations to others. (Intro.)

Far from the early liberal concept of the "invisible hand" or the criticisms by opponents of “amoral economics,” what the neoliberals proposed was state interference for the sake of maintaining individualistic freedom in the market. Neoliberalism is what it is: it is not a return to the old fin de siècle liberal economy, but a solution to the problems that the latter faced.

In developing their moral order, neoliberal intellectuals played with notions of "civilisation" and "anti-totalitarianism." The Mont Pèlerin Society of 1947 met in the context of two fatidical events: the decolonisation movement in the Third World, and the drafting of an international human rights charter. The neoliberal discourse evolved in relation to colonialism and human rights throughout the decades. For instance, while neoliberal intellectuals were critical of the British administration of the colonies for obstructing the competitive market, they saw the decolonial movements as a turn towards "communist totalitarianism" which must be stopped in order to secure global free trade and the extraction of natural resources, in other words "neocolonialism".

Similarly, the intellectuals at Mont Pèlerin Society invoked many critical remarks regarding the UDHR. In particular, they sought to undermine the "superfluous" rights and prerogatives which it included, namely social, economic and cultural rights that, in the eyes of MPS, was a stepping stone for totalitarianism: welfare policies lead to socialism, socialism to communism and finally towards totalitarianism. Their criticism for human rights accrued in degree with the drafting of the human rights covenants which accentuated social and economic rights. However, the neoliberal criticism was not directed towards human rights per se, but the scope of said human rights. These intellectuals adopted a Lockean conception of human rights that limited itself to the protection of individualistic freedom and private property.

The theoretical doctrines of the neoliberals contended with the real-life events in an intriguing manner. Neoliberals supported several undemocratic regimes, namely in Pinochet's Chile where they enacted economic reforms and even defended the political crackdown of the Pinichet regime. This weird stance did not invalidate their defense of human rights and freedom:

Friedman’s argument in Chile was not that political freedom and economic freedom were ‘entirely unrelated’, as Letelier and Klein both argue.40 Rather, he argued that they were intimately related: property rights are the essential foundation of all other human rights, he contended, and a free market is necessary for realising the ‘equal right to freedom’. (Ch. 4)

In addition, the showdown between the neoliberals and human rights NGOs' investigating Pinochet's violations wa sless radical than what it seemed. NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Liberté Sans Frontières originated from a similar human rights discourse to that of the neoliberals, which limited the scope of human rights that are worth protecting.

Their [humanitarian NGOs] special contribution was to pioneer a distinctly neoliberal human rights discourse, for which a competitive market order accompanied by a liberal institutional structure was truly the last utopia. (Ch.5)

Whyte's critique of human rights and neoliberalism is very essential in this day and age, especially in a Third World inflitrated by humanitarian NGOs whose agenda serves the interests of global capital and reproduces the injustices of the past century's colonialism and coercive interventions in the affairs of postcolonial polities. Whyte's reference to postcolonial intellectuals such as Fanon and Nkrumah is also very much cherished.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18017207

I heard a lot of praise for Bulgakov's oeuvre in the past, so I decided to give it a go.

I have read Russian literature in the past by recommendation of family and friends who always showed much interest in it; be it Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov or Pushkin.

But recently I noticed that knowledge of Russian literature virtually stops at the onset of the revolution. When it comes to the Soviet era, there is a sort of intentional silence regarding the literature of that time, at least in the West and its colonized peripheries. Anecdotally, I once had a conversation with my mother during which she claimed that the Soviet period was a dark time to be living in Russia. When I asked her what's the basis of her statement, she said this is based on the novels she read, citing Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The awkward smile on her face after telling her that these authors died decades before the revolution was priceless; bless her heart, but I am digressing.

When a few exceptions of Soviet literature emerge out of the iron curtain, it turns out to be some anticommunist rambling, just like Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

Considering the critical acclaim, it feels wrong to say that I found it to be average. Was I supposed to cheer for the devil and his retinue as they terrorize Moscow? Maybe it's my ideological orientation which prevents me from fully engaging with the novel, and I'm alright with that. Though I did enjoy the chapters narrating Pontius Pilate's encounter with Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

Anyhow, was Soviet literature ever popular? Did it die out after the collapse of the union? Or has it always been curtailed in the West?

I heard a lot of praise for Bulgakov's oeuvre in the past, so I decided to give it a go.

I have read Russian literature in the past by recommendation of family and friends who always showed much interest in it; be it Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov or Pushkin.

But recently I noticed that knowledge of Russian literature virtually stops at the onset of the revolution. When it comes to the Soviet era, there is a sort of intentional silence regarding the literature of that time, at least in the West and its colonized peripheries. Anecdotally, I once had a conversation with my mother during which she claimed that the Soviet period was a dark time to be living in Russia. When I asked her what's the basis of her statement, she said this is based on the novels she read, citing Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The awkward smile on her face after telling her that these authors died decades before the revolution was priceless; bless her heart, but I am digressing.

When a few exceptions of Soviet literature emerge out of the iron curtain, it turns out to be some anticommunist rambling, just like Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

Considering the critical acclaim, it feels wrong to say that I found it to be average. Was I supposed to cheer for the devil and his retinue as they terrorize Moscow? Maybe it's my ideological orientation which prevents me from fully engaging with the novel, and I'm alright with that. Though I did enjoy the chapters narrating Pontius Pilate's encounter with Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

Anyhow, was Soviet literature ever popular? Did it die out after the collapse of the union? Or has it always been curtailed in the West?

When I asked my friend how she found the book to be, she described it as “a jumble of thoughts that felt familiar.”

As Orientals, they indeed feel familiar to us. Although I never picked up the book before now, I couldn't say I have not read it. I read it on the faces of Western "political experts". I read it in laws of counterterrorism and anti-immigration. I read it in the newspapers, listen to it on the radio, and watch it on the TV. But most crucially, I read it when I look into the mirror, this self perception of being an “Oriental”, an inferiority complex transfused throughout the years from teachers and professors, intellectuals and celebrities, family and friends, and especially strangers.

“Oriental students (and Oriental professors) still want to come and sit at the feet of American Orientalists, and later to repeat to their local audiences the clichés I have been characterizing as Orientalist dogmas.” (Ch.3, IV).

Orientalism, according to Said, is not merely a scientific, objective field as it has always been characterised by the Orientalist himself. Rather, it is a subjectivity: that is, the Orientalist does not study the Orient, but he “comes to terms” with an Orient “that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.” Though the same may be said about the Occident which does not just exist as an inert fact of nature, for such divide is a social construct first and foremost, and does not translate smoothly into a physical or geographical classification.

Orientalism reflects a history of colonial exploitation. By scrutinising, interpreting and classifying the Orient, the Orientalist justified (in advance and after the fact) the West's right to dominate, restructure and have authority over the Orient.

Although the otherisation of the Oriental has already existed for millenia, Said traces back the changing point of Orientalism to the onset of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. It is at this point in time that Orientalism was institutionalised and 'scientisized'. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the majority of Orientalists were philologists and anthropologists. Yet, the core values of the scientific method—objectivity, disinterest, mutability—notwithstanding, Orientalism preserved, see “secularized,” the mythic discourses of premodernity.

“the scientific categories informing late-nineteenth-century Orientalism are static: there is no recourse beyond “the Semites” or “the Oriental mind”; these are final terminals holding every variety of Oriental behavior within a general view of the whole field. As a discipline, as a profession, as specialized language or discourse, Orientalism is staked upon the permanence of the whole Orient, for without “the Orient” there can be no consistent, intelligible, and articulated knowledge called “Orientalism.”” (Ch.3, II).

Although Science, as an ideal of truth should theoretically be prone to change, admits proof and counterproof; the scientist still holds on his shoulders the overwhelming weight of his predecessors and their values. He is impelled to follow their path, avoid uncertainty and existentiality, to reproduce mythic discourses. And this is especially relevant to Orientalism.

From an existential standpoint, the gaze of the White Man makes of the Oriental man “first an Oriental [essence] and only second a man [existence].” Dehumanised, otherised and silenced; the Oriental is a piece of mold that can be shaped by the Orientalist according to the zeitgeist of his epoch on the one hand, and to the eccentric tendencies of his personality.

In the second half of the twentieth century, which coincides with the decolonisation movement and the zenith of American hegemony, Orientalism went through major transformations. European focus on philology was superseded by a jejune, American obsession in “Social Sciences”. The Orient became then the experimental laboratory of the American social scientist.

“No longer does an Orientalist try first to master the esoteric languages of the Orient; he begins instead as a trained social scientist and “applies” his science to the Orient, or anywhere else.” (Ch.3, IV).

Late (read: American) Orientalism was shaped by government and corporate interests in the non-Western world, and fueled by the Cold War and competition with the Soviet Union. This is why very perverse and polemical "studies" of Islam were mass-published (especially by Zionists). Islam, according to the modern Orientalist, is a volatile and purely political religion, a force “contending with the American idea for acceptance by the Near East” along with communism. All this whilst maintaining the early myths of “Oriental despotism.”

“The legendary Arabists in the State Department warn of Arab plans to take over the world. ... the passive Muslims are described as vultures for “our” largesse and are damned when “we lose them” to communism, or to their unregenerate Oriental instincts: the difference is scarcely significant.” (Ch.3, IV).

Edward Said's magnum opus is a seminal and well-acclaimed work. Yet it had its fair share of critics. Apart from the Zionists and Orientalists themselves (which we shall dusregard), some scholars criticised Said's dealing with the Middle East as a monolithic category consisting of pure Muslim Arabs. It is not entirely incorrect to say that Said did not leave much space to the other constituents of the region; however, Said is very well aware of the cultural and ethnic diversity characterising West Asia and North Africa. Rather, their virtual absence from the big picture is a better reflection of the Orientalist's vision of what the Near East is, in which non-Arabs and non-Muslims hold a peripheral, if not silent, role. Britain and France, Said contends, viewed themselves as the protectors of Christian minorities from the evils of Islamic "barbarism."

Moreover, Islam is equally simplified by Orientalists and reduced to Islamic Orthodoxy. In the Islamic Orient, everything cannot but be perceived as Islamic, even modernisation and the adoption of European technologies and institutions is itself Islamic. To reiterate a previous thought, the essence precedes existence.

It is important to note that this book was released decades before the 9/11 attacks which spurred another Orientalist wave. Although today the formal, academic field is almost nonexistent, its essentialist doctrines are still being disseminated into the masses, both in the West and the East. The face of Western progressivism has shown a grim, and not entirely unfamiliar face, especially amid the genocide in Gaza. The struggle against dehumanisation and exploitation is not over yet.

P.S. Take a shot every time you read the word Orient.

Disclaimer: there is no English translation of this book

The setting is 14th century Syria witnessing a stand-off between the usurping Mameluke Sultanate, and the Mongol Ilkhan whose forefathers invaded from the East, and who, having converted to Islam, is seeking to govern the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

However, amid the grusomeness of the scenes delicately described and narrated, there is an overarching theme which the author fixated on: that is History.

The author does not accept history at face value. There are political ramifications at play that go largely unnoticed by positivist scholarship in the field. For the production of history is neither an objective nor symmetrical process: not everyone has the privilege of writing history, not even one's own history for that matter. The historian's discretionary power in selectively choosing what to convey and what to silence from the past precludes him from being a disinterested observer. History does not merely transmit events and happenings, but rather imposes lessons, ideologies, philosophies and entire worldviews. More precisely, the production of history translates, depending on the context, into the reproduction of the status quo.

The Mongol invasion is exemplary of this particularity of History. This event went down in history as the most horrific massacre in the premodern age; indeed, some historians go as far as to equate it with the Holocaust. This evaluation has been widely accepted and deemed uncontroversial by the scholarship of the last few decades, both in the East and the West.

However, since the twenty-first century, there have been efforts by some scholars to dissect those ramifications of history mentioned earlier within the widely-accepted narrative of “Mongol genocide.” Anja Pistor-Hatam for instance argues that the collective memory of the societies which experienced the invasion has to a certain extent exaggerated the degree of violence commited by the Mongols. What the premodern historians have transmitted secondhand in their books do not conform to archaeological evidence. Though if the extent of the destruction brought by the Mongols is not as significant as it was thought to be, “the trauma was very real” (Lane, 2008). The idea of foreign invasion was more fatal than the act itself, sending the affacted civilisations into existential crisis. The paranoia of the Foreign, the Other, is very well evinced by Al-Zahabi when the novel's characters who pondered on many occasions about the nature of the Monhol soldiers, concluding every time that they were not humans but mythical animals.

While endless literature is dedicated to the Mongol invasion itself, its aftermath and the cultural legacy of the Mongols in Iran and Iraq is rarely acknowledged. The Ilkhanids in fact contributed a lot to the enrichment of art and architecture, one of the perks of the cosmopolitan and diverse constituencies of the Mongol courts. Among the rulers' servants and elite were not only Muslims, but also Christians, Zoroastrians and Buddhists; for the Mongol rulers were more concerned about one's loyalty to the empire rather than religious or ethnic affiliation. Yet, especially in the Muslim world, this perspective remains ignored.

Reviving the bygone past, Al-Zahaby vividly shows the Ilkhan's fear of history, or more accurately his concern over the image that will be left of him by the chroniclers to the later generations:

History is an invincible enemy, for when life creeps into it one would be buried in the ground, stripped of awe and undesired.

The Mameluke Sultan knew of the Ilkhan's weakness and thus surrounded himself with historians and chroniclers, his strongest soldiers against the imminent invasion. He gasps and declares:

O God, may History be my friend and not my enemy.

Bibliography / Further Reading

Al-Zahaby, Khairy. “The Trap of Names” (2009).

Lane, George. “The Mongols in Iran” (2008).

Pistor-Hatam, Anja. “History and its meaning in the Islamic Republic of Iran: The case of the Mongol invasion(s) and rule” (2012).

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. “Silencing the Past:Power nd the Production of History” (1995).

An Iranian film directed by Bahram Beyzai. A dramatic retelling of the death of the Persian king Yazdgerd III amid the Muslim invasion of Iran.