Lessons by a Syrian Islamist from the life of the Prophet Muhammad

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Notes

This article is dedicated to my teacher and colleague Professor Moshe Ma'oz upon his retirement from teaching. Professor Ma'oz's pioneering studies of Ottoman and twentieth-century Syria have accompanied my own work from my graduate student years until today. Although Moshe has ‘retired’, I look forward to his future endeavours in a wide variety of fields.

1. M. al-Siba^ci, Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya: Durus wa- ^c Ibar (Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi^c wa-al-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 1636 A.H.), pp.38–9/M. Sibai, Life of the Prophet, trans. A.R. Kidwai (Delhi: Hindustan Publications, 1985), pp.31–2. I would like to thank Wasfi al-Kaylani, a fellow of the Truman Institute for Peace Research, for obtaining a copy of an Arabic edition for me. The English-language 1994 edition was obtained through Islamic Publications International, Teaneck, New Jersey, USA. On the distribution of the work, see below.

2. For gender analysis of some of these works, in the full sense of the term including masculinity, see: R. Roded, ‘Gendered Domesticity in the Life of the Prophet: Tawfiq al-Hakim's Muhammad’, Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol.47 (Spring, 2002), pp.67–95; ‘Modern Gendered Illustrations of the Life of the Prophet of Allah – Étienne Dinet and Sliman Ben Ibrahim (1918)’, Arabica, Vol.49 (2002), pp.325–59; ‘Gender in an Allegorical Life of Muhammad: Mahfouz's Children of Gebelawi’, The Muslim World, Vol.93 (2003), pp.117–34; ‘Alternate Images of the Prophet Muhammad's Virility’, in L. Ouzgane (ed.), Studies in Islamic Masculinities (London: Zed, 2006), pp.57–71; ‘Bint al-Shati's Wives of the Prophet: Feminist or Feminine?’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.33 (2006), pp.69–84.

3. C.W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology (New Delhi: Vikes, 1978), pp.28–31. Ahmad Khan's work was composed in response to William Muir's four-volume The Life of Mahomet (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1858–61) with introductory chapters on the original sources for the biography of the Prophet. S.A. Ali, The Spirit of Islam: A History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islam with a Life of the Prophet (London: Methuen, 1922; first published in 1891).

4. A. Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857–1964 (London: Oxford University, 1967), p.87; W. Cantwell Smith, ‘Amir ^cAli’, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Vol.1 (1986), p.443.

5. M.H. Haykal, Hayat Muhammad (Cairo: Matba^cat Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, 1935); The Life of Muhammad, trans. I.R.A. al-Faruqi (Delhi: North American Trust Publications, 1976); M.M. Badawi, ‘Islam in Modern Egyptian Literature’, in Modern Arabic Literature and the West (London: Ithaca Press for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, 1985; originally published in 1971); A. Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muhammad: A Critical Study of Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Hayat Muhammad (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972). Haykal's work began as a response to É. Dermenghem, La vie de Mahomet (Paris: Plon, 1929); trans. A. York. The Life of Mahomet (London: George Routledge & Son, 1930); A.R. al-Sharqawi, Muhammad Rasul al-Hurriyya (Cairo: Al-Asr al-Hadith lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi^c, 1986; originally published in 1961). Naguib Mahfouz, Awlad Haratina (1959) (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1967); Children of Gebelawi, trans. Philip Stewart (London: Heinemann, 1981).

6. R.P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, republished in 1993); G. Kepel, The Prophet and Pharoah: Muslim Extremism in Egypt, trans. J. Rothschild (London: Al Saqi Books, 1985).

7. U.F. Abd-Allah, The Islamic Struggle in Syria (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1983), pp.101–13.

8. Abd-Allah, p.125, ideology and programme of the Syrian Islamic Front in chapter five, and the text of the proclamation of the Islamic Revolution in Syria in the appendix.

9. Albert Hourani defined this phenomenon as the ‘politics of notables’, spawning a number of studies that documented, explicated and challenged his paradigm, ‘Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables’, in W.R. Polk and R. Chambers (eds.), Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp.44–64. On the Syrian notables under Ottoman rule, see: R. Roded, ‘Tradition and Change in Syria during the Last Decades of Ottoman Rule: The Urban Elite of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama, 1876–1918’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Denver, 1984); and ‘Ottoman Service as a Vehicle for the Rise of New Upstarts among the Urban Elite Families of Syria in the Last Decades of Ottoman Rule’, in G.R. Warburg and G.G. Gilbar (eds.), Studies in Islamic Society: Contributions in Memory of Gabriel Baer (Haifa: Haifa University Press, 1984), pp.63–94.

10. R. Bayley-Winder, ‘Syrian Deputies and Cabinet Ministers, 1919–1959’, Middle East Journal, Vol.16 (Autumn 1962), pp.407–29; Vol.17 (Winter 1963), pp.35–45.

11. P.S. Khoury, ‘Syrian Urban Politics in Transition: The Quarters of Damascus during the French Mandate’, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.16, No.4 (1984), pp.507–40.

12. K.D. Watenpaugh, ‘Middle-Class Modernity and the Persistence of the Politics of Notables in Inter-War Syria’, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.35 (2003), pp.257–89. Watenpaugh regards Christians and Jews as part of a middle stratum who were new actors in Syrian urban politics. I would argue that the kind of co-optation he describes, and perhaps cooperation between the Sunni Muslim urban elite and prominent Christians and Jews occurred in the Ottoman period as well.

13. Watenpaugh, p.278.

14. L.Z. Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).

15. Y. Oron, ‘The Arab Socialist Renaissance Party – Its History and Ideas’ (in Hebrew), HaMizrach HeHadash, Vol.9 (1959), pp.241–63; S.G. Haim, Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), pp.61–72, 233–41; K.S.A. Jaber, The Arab Ba ^c th Socialist Party: History, Ideology, and Organization (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1966); G.H. Torrey, ‘The Ba^cth – Ideology and Practice’, Middle East Journal, Vol.23 (1969), pp.455–70; H. Batatu, ‘The Old Ba^cth’, in Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of its Lesser Rural Notables, and their Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp.133–43.

16. P. Seale, The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Politics, 1945–1958 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1986), pp.159–63, 178–9, 315–8.

17. G.H. Torrey, Syrian Politics and the Military, 1945–1958 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964), p.215; Seale, pp.122–4, 126–31; ‘The Platform of the Arab Liberation Movement’ (in Hebrew) HaMizrakh HeHadash, Vol.4 (1952–53), p.134.

18. Torrey, pp.90–100, 121–237, 248–64; A. Carleton, ‘The Syrian Coups d'Etat of 1949’, Middle East Journal, Vol.4 (Winter 1950), pp.1–11; Seale.

19. Torrey, pp.331–83; M. Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958–1967, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1967); M. Palmer, ‘The United Arab Republic: An Assessment of Its Failure’, Middle East Journal, Vol.20 (1966), pp.50–67.

20. Man huwa fi suriya (Damascus: al-Matba^cat al-Ahliyya, 1949), p.199; Man huwa fi suriya (Damascus: Matba^cat al-^cUIum wal-Adab, 1951), p.352; Who's Who in the Arab World, 1967–1968, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Les Éditions Publitec, 1968), p.839; Abd-Allah, p.96. On the Siba^ci family of Homs, see Roded, ‘Tradition and Change in Syria during the Last Decades of Ottoman Rule’.

21. Roded, ‘Tradition and Change in Syria during the Last Decades of Ottoman Rule’, p.132.

22. E. Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp.103–6; P.S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1987), pp.607–8; Abd-Allah, p.97.

23. Abd-Allah, p.97.

24. Abd-Allah, pp.97–8. According to Mitchell, p.13, in 1933 the Egyptian Muslim Brothers were involved in combating Christian missionary activity and building its organization from Banna's base in Cairo. The Rashid Ali putsch in Iraq took place in May 1941, and in its wake, Hasan al-Banna was transferred by the ministry of education to Upper Egypt under an Egyptian military order. In October 1941, Banna and several other members of the Muslim Brothers were arrested for the first time and imprisoned for a month, Mitchell, p.23. If Siba^ci was in fact arrested in those years as Abd-Allah reports, then apparently it was unrelated to the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, but perhaps to the general tenor in Egypt at the time.

25. According to Ishaq Musa Husaini, the Shabab Muhammad, which was actually a front-name for the Muslim Brotherhood branches in Greater Syria, held their fourth conference in Homs in 1943, although he does not mention Siba^ci in this context, The Moslem Brethren: The Greatest of Modern Islamic Movements (Beirut: Khayat, 1956), p.76. Siba^ci may still have been in prison at this time. On the relations between the Syrian and the Egyptian Islamist movements, see below.

26. Abd-Allah, p.98; Thompson, pp.106, 276.

27. Husaini, p.75, claimed that the first branch of Hasan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood outside of Egypt was founded in Damascus is 1937 by young men from the Syrian University and students of Shari^ca. Fearing the French mandatory authorities, they used various names throughout Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

28. Thompson, pp.106, 277. Husaini, pp.75–6, admits that the first licensed society established by the Syrian students who exported the Muslim Brothers from Egypt was the Dar al-Arqam in Aleppo but regards the various associations founded under different names in Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Jerusalem, Hama, Beirut, Tripoli, Dayr al-Zor and Latakia (as well as in some western countries) as one group. Moreover, at a convention of these societies in 1938, it was decided that Aleppo would be the headquarters and it remained so until 1944, when a central committee was apparently formed in Damascus headed by Siba^ci. Needless to say, it is extremely difficult to reconstruct the history of a popular, semi-legal movement in a heterogeneous region like Syria from different perspectives of time, place and sources.

29. Husaini, pp.77–9, states that the goals of the Syrian Muslim Brothers differed from their Egyptian counterparts.

30. The Syrian Islamists apparently decided to form paramilitary organizations in 1943 and the Brotherhood set up a military training camp in 1946, Husaini, p.76. It would appear, however, that this tendency was far less prominent than the Egyptian Muslim Brothers' extra-parliamentary activities. The promotion of youth movements and athletics appears to have been a primary goal of the Syrian Islamists and Siba^ci in particular from the outset – in keeping with the spirit of the times – and was formally expressed in resolutions adopted in 1946, Husaini, p.76.

31. E.g. Torrey, ff.; Seale, pp.79, 85, 180.

32. Thompson, p.277; Torrey, pp.91–100; Seale, p.31. J. Teitelbaum, ‘The Muslim Brotherhood and the “Struggle for Syria”, 1947–1958: Between Accommodation and Ideology’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.40, No.3 (2004), pp.134–58 focuses on the formal relationship of Islam to the Syrian state and Syria's position between the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war.

33. Abd-Allah, pp.150, 165–7, 173–4.

34. Husaini, p.140.

35. Husaini, p.22.

36. Torrey, pp.121–39; Seale, p.62.

37. Torrey, pp.143–58; ‘Electoral Law of Syria, Decree No. 17 of September 10, 1949’, H. Miller Davis, Constitutions, Electoral Laws, 2nd ed. (Durham, 1953), pp.434–44; Seale, p.83. Election results differ from source to source because many candidates not only of the notable parties but of the ideological ones as well ran as independents.

38. Torrey, pp.161–202; Seale, pp.84–99.

39. Torrey, pp.161–79; Seale, pp.100–102, 112.

40. M. Ma'oz, ‘Attempts at Creating a Political Community in Modern Syria’, Middle East Journal (1972), pp.389–404.

41. Torrey, pp.205–44; Seale, p.180.

42. Husaini, p.152; Abd-Allah, p.100.

43. Torrey, pp.352–3.

44. Abd-Allah, pp.100, 99, 101.

45. A. Shariati, A Visage of Prophet Mohammad, trans. A.A. Sachadin (Lahore: Nor. Oqalam Publications, 1983); http://www.shariati.com

46. Siba^ci planned to dictate an additional four chapter from his lectures but did not manage to do so before his death, Siba^ci, Arabic p.163/English p.96.

47. Siba^ci, A pp.7–15/E pp.11–16.

48. Siba^ci, A p.17/E p.18.

49. Siba^ci, A pp.100, 110, 129–30, 131/E pp.68, 73, 82, 83.

50. See, for example, Siba^ci, A pp.33, 36, 161–2/E pp.28, 30, 94–5.

51. Siba^ci, A pp.29, 30/E pp.25, 26.

52. Siba^ci, A pp.58–9, 160/E pp.45, 94.

53. Siba^ci, A pp.59–60, 91, 102, 104–5, 126–7/E pp.45–6, 63, 69, 70, 80–1.

54. Siba^ci, A pp.150, 31, 102–3/E pp.90, 26, 69.

55. Siba^ci, A p.57/E p.44; E. Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).

56. Siba^ci, A pp.39, 107/E pp.32, 72.

57. Siba^ci, A p.136/E p.85.

58. Siba^ci, A pp.82, 94–5, 12, 110, 135, 125, 133, 150/E pp.59, 65–6, 14, 73, 85, 80, 84, 90.

59. Siba^ci, A pp.76–7, 79–81, 85/E pp.55, 57–8, 61.

60. Siba^ci, A p.8/E p.11; cf. H. Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992) especially ‘Muslim Arguments against the Bible’, pp.19–49.

61. Siba^ci, A pp.63, 105–6, 111, 113/E pp.47, 71, 73–4.

62. Siba^ci, A pp.112–3/E p.74.

63. P. Khoury, ‘Divided Loyalties: Syria and the Question of Palestine, 1919–1939’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.21 (July 1985), pp.324–48; I. Rabinovich, The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp.65–110.

64. Siba^ci, A p.65/E p.48.

65. Siba^ci, A pp.48, 158/E pp.37–8, 93.

66. Siba^ci, A pp.39, 146–7, 159/E pp.32, 89, 94.

67. Siba^ci, A p.10/E p.13.

68. Siba^ci, A p.41/E p.33.

69. Siba^ci, A p.97/E p.67.

70. Siba^ci, A pp.66, 46/E pp.48, 24.

71. Siba^ci, A p.54/E p.42.

72. Siba^ci, A p.67/E p.49.

73. Siba^ci, A p.152/E p.91.

74. U. Furman, Islamiyyun: Dat veHevra beMishnatam shel Ne'manei HaIslam Bnei Zemanenu (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot, 2002), pp.199–249.

75. Abd-Allah, p.145.

76. Abd-Allah, p.161.

77. Siba^ci, A p.163/E p.96.

78. M. al-Siba^ci, Al-Sira al-nabawiyya: Durus wa-'Ibar (Beirut & Damascus: Al-Maktab al-Islami, 1970); (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Arabiyya, 1972); (Cairo: Dar al-Tawzi‘ wa-al-Nashr al-Islamiyya, 1988).

79. At http://www.islampub.com