Dynastic Periodization and its Limits: Historiography in Contemporary Arab Monarchies

DOI 10.1515/islam-2014-0006 Der Islam 2014; 91(1): 95–114

Jörg Matthias Determann1

Dynastic Periodization and its Limits: Historiography in Contemporary Arab MonarchiesAbstract: Over the last decades, a number of scholars have studied how historio-graphy served to legitimize different Arab regimes. These scholars have, however, given little attention to the role of periodization. By contrast, this study suggests that periodization has been a central element of historiography in the monar-chies. Many textbooks and other major works in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan, and Morocco follow two broad ten-dencies in terms of periodization. The first tendency is to merge dynastic and national periods and to start the history of the country essentially with the rise of the contemporary ruling family. The second tendency is to integrate the con-temporary dynasty into the history of a longer, sometimes perennial, monarchy. Nevertheless, official dynastic periodization has not determined all historical writing in the monarchies. Local and tribal historians often developed periodiza-tions centered on specific cities or tribes and also imagined a much longer history than that of the contemporary dynasty.

Keyword: historiography, periodization, legitimacy, nationalism, Arab world.¹

Jörg Matthias Determann: Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, [email protected]

1 I wrote most of the article while serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient and the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin. I thank Melania Savino and the two anonymous reviewers for Der Islam for their comments on earlier versions of the article. The article is based on a presentation at a workshop with the theme “What is in a Period? ‘Jāhiliyya’, ‘ʿAbbāsid’, and ‘Arab Spring’ in Arabic Historical Writing.” The workshop was part of the series “Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiography” and hosted by the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on 28 September 2012. I thank the organizers, Sarah Bowen Savant, Konrad Hirschler, and James McDougall, for inviting me to give this presen-tation and for editing this special issue of Der Islam. I am also grateful to the participants in the workshop for their feedback. Dina of FirstEditing.com copy-edited the article.

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96 Jörg Matthias Determann

Since at least the 1970s, scholars have been interested in the issue of the legiti-macy of the Middle Eastern states.² As part of this interest, a number of works analyzed historiography as a means for Arab regimes to create legitimacy and hegemony.³ However, most of these works focused on single countries without attempting to gain general conclusions about historiography in the Arab world as a whole or in different groups of Arab countries. The Arab Spring of 2011, however, invites us to study historiography in the Arab monarchies generally. These mon-archies appear to have been more successful in surviving the events of the Arab Spring. None of the monarchies has fallen, whereas five republics have witnessed regime-shaking crises: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria. Of course, exp-laining political stability in the monarchies would require taking many different factors into account. They include the distribution of rent and patronage, the demobilization of society, control over the military, and the coalitions between monarchs, clerics and tribal leaders. All these factors have been covered by other scholars⁴ and are beyond the scope of my article. Yet, the question arises whether historiography might have contributed to making the monarchies appear more legitimate than the republics. This added legitimacy could in turn have contribu-ted to regime stability.

My article looks at the issue of historiographical legitimization in the mon-archies through the lens of periodization. This volume of Der Islam aside, rela-tively few studies have been dedicated to periodization in Arabic historiography.⁵

2 Michael C. Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).3 James McDougall, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides, eds., Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991); Madawi Al-Rasheed, “Political Legitimacy and the Pro-duction of History: The Case of Saudi Arabia”, in New Frontiers in Middle East Security, edited by Lenore G. Martin (London: Macmillan Press, 1998).4 Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, eds., The Rentier State (London: Croom Helm, 1987); F. Gregory Gause III, “Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring,” lecture, London School of Economics and Political Science (5 March 2012); Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); Steffen Hertog, “Prelude to Revolution: How Arab Republics Tried, and Failed, to Turn Them-selves into Monarchies,” lecture, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (24 January 2012); Joseph Kostiner, ed., Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000).5 ʿAbd Allah al-ʿAskar, Tahqib al-Tarikh al-Islami (al-Riyad: Jamiʿat al-Malik Suʿud, 2009); Tarif Khalidi, “Reflections on Periodisation in Arabic Historiography,” The Medieval History Jour-nal 1, no. 1 (1998); Michael G. Morony, “Bayn al-Fitnatayn: Problems in the Periodization of


Dynastic Periodization and its Limits 97

Studies of historiography in Egypt and other Arab republics have, however, dealt with the content and labeling of different periods, especially the Ottoman period.⁶ Particularly, they have described how Arab historians have legitimized the newly independent nations by constructing a sharp break between the Arab “awaken-ing” (nahḍa) beginning in the nineteenth century and the preceding periods of decline under Ottoman and European rule. This break has often taken the name of “liberation” (taḥrīr) and has been commemorated not just in books, but also in public buildings and – now famously – squares.⁷ The break was particularly sharp in the Arab republics. In the twentieth century, they witnessed not only the end of colonial occupation but also of monarchical rule. Many republican histo-rians could thus speak not only of “liberation,” but also of “revolution” (thawra).

Historiography in Arab monarchies, although less studied than republican historiography, is arguably more interesting in terms of periodization. In parti-cular, the construction of clear breaks in modern history was more complicated for historians in the monarchies. To be sure, monarchies also witnessed decol-onization. Morocco gained independence from France in 1956, and Britain for-mally withdrew from the Persian Gulf in 1971. Historians in the monarchies were also aware of the narratives of “awakening,” “liberation,” and “independence” produced elsewhere. At the same time, they could obviously not legitimize the monarchical regimes in terms of a popular “revolution.” Instead of focusing on a break, they had to deal with the apparent longevity and continuity of rule by the same family over sometimes hundreds of years. Because Ottoman rule had been less direct in the Arabian Peninsula and the Maghrib than in Egypt and the Levant, the definition of an “Ottoman period” and the paradigm of Ottoman decline were also less applicable.

In an age of nationalism, historians in the Arab monarchies also faced another interesting dilemma. The relationship of the monarchies with Arab and

Early Islamic History,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40, no. 3 (1981); Nils Riecken, “Periodiza-tion and the political: Abdallah Laroui’s analysis of temporalities in a postcolonial context,” ZMO Working Papers 6 (Berlin: Zentrum Moderner Orient, 2012).6 Maurus Reinkowski, Filastin, Filistin und Eretz Israel: Die späte osmanische Herrschaft über Palästina in der arabischen, türkischen und israelischen Historiographie (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1995); Ulrike Freitag, Geschichtsschreibung in Syrien 1920–1990: Zwischen Wissenschaft und Ideologie (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1991); Driss Abbassi, “Le traitement de la période coloniale dans les manuels scolaires tunisiens de 1980 à 1998: entre histoire et mémoire,”Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 40 (2002).7 See, e.g., Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation: Collective Mem-ory, Public Commemoration, and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2004).



local nationalism was more complicated than that of the republics. Most repub-lics in the Third World espoused nationalism. Their historians could thus easily claim the nation as the agent of history. Prasenjit Duara wrote that in such a national history, “the nation appears as the newly realized, sovereign subject of History embodying a moral and political force that has overcome dynasties, aris-tocracies, and ruling priests and mandarins, who are seen to represent merely themselves historically.”⁸ Arab nationalism also provided the monarchies with “Arabist languages of legitimacy.”⁹ At the same time, however, monarchist his-torians were keen to stress the agency of rulers rather than the people or nation. In the Arab monarchies, the nation could thus well be the frame in which histori-cal events are ordered.¹⁰ However, for history to legitimize a monarchical regime, its agents would have to be the monarchs. Thus, whereas republican historians could narrate how the nation moved through different periods of its history and eventually survived various monarchical regimes, royalist historians had to combine dynastic and national periodization in some form or another.

In the face of these complexities, my article asks what kinds of periodization historians employed to legitimize Arab monarchies and why those were chosen. I will also ask to what extent these kinds of periodization dominate historiogra-phy. To answer these questions, I analyze a number of monographs and textbooks produced in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Jordan and Morocco in the twentieth century.¹¹ These books mainly deal with the history of their respective countries; thus, they allow for an analysis of how dif-ferent kinds of dynastic and national periodization intersect and are combined.

The works studied in my article include standard texts used in Arab schools and universities as well as other foundational texts of national and dynastic historiography in the monarchies. Although sales and readership statistics are hard to come by, these works often went through multiple editions over several decades and have been widely available in local and foreign libraries and book-

8 Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 4.9 James McDougall, “Dream of Exile, Promise of Home: Language, Education, and Arabism in Algeria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43, no. 2 (2011), 253.10 On the distinction between “nation-as-frame” and not “nation-as-historical agent,” seeJ. Breuilly, “Nationalism and Historians: Some Reflections. The Formation of National(ist) His-toriographical Discourse,” in Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)Construction of the Past, edited by Claire Norton (Washington, DC: New Academia, 2007), 18.11 I thank the embassies of Morocco, Oman and Jordan in Vienna for providing me with some of these textbooks. Unfortunately, I was unable to access textbooks from Bahrain. This country thus remains unconsidered in this study.



stores. Many of the books were written by government officials or commissioned, produced, published, or subsidized by governments. They were primarily read nationally, but – sometimes in glossy formats – also distributed to foreign audi-ences through ministries of information and embassies. As governmental or semi-governmental publications, they also employed similar narratives as national museums, television, and other media. Although many of these books and their periodizations are thus prominent and influential in their countries, most of them have never been studied by scholars of historiography.

Merging dynastic and national periodsOne major tendency followed by historians in the monarchies was to merge dynastic and national periods. This created a periodization that situated the start of the country’s history at the onset of dynastic rule. This periodization became particularly prevalent in Saudi historiography. A pertinent example is the History of Saudi Arabia by Munir al-ʿAljani (1911–2004).¹² Al-ʿAjlani was an exiled poli-tician from Syria who advised the Saudi Ministry of Education. Besides his History of Saudi Arabia, he co-authored a textbook for primary schools, entitled Images of Modern History, which appeared in several editions in the 1960s.¹³ In his History of Saudi Arabia, published in 1965, al-ʿAjlani wrote that the kingdom’s “roots stretch back to the dawn of Arab history.” However, looking at Saudi Arabia’s “name, flag and ruling family, we say: it began in 1744.”¹⁴ Al-ʿAjlani explained that “this is the year in which Sheikh Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab migrated to al-Dirʿiyya and agreed with Emir Muhammad ibn Suʿud to call for monothe-ism, religion and the establishment of Islamic law. Thus, the first Saudi state was founded.”¹⁵ With this narrative, al-ʿAjlani not only inscribed the Islamic legiti-macy of the House of Saud; he also effectively merged the beginning of the history of the country with the rise to power by the ancestor of the House of Saud.

In the case of Saudi historiography, the merger of dynastic and national periods also included another narrative element. This was the exclusion of

12 Munir al-ʿAjlani, Tarikh al-Bilad al-ʿArabiyya al-Suʿudiyya, vol. 1 (Bayrut: Dar al-Katib al-ʿArabi, 1965).13 Munir al-ʿAjlani, Muhammad al-Tamimi and Muhammad al-ʿAmil, Suwar min al-Tarikh al-Hadith (al-Riyad: Wazarat al-Maʿarif, 1965); Munir al-ʿAjlani, Muhammad al-Tamimi, and Muham-mad al-ʿAmil, Suwar min al-Tarikh al-Hadith, al-tabʿa al-rabiʿa (al-Riyad: Wazarat al-Maʿarif, 1969).14 Al-ʿAjlani, Tarikh (1965), 63.15 Ibid., 23.



intermittent periods without dynastic rule from national history. In his History of Saudi Arabia, al-ʿAjlani wrote that “most historians agree to divide Saudi history into three stages, and we abide by this in this book.”¹⁶ The first stage was the “first Saudi state” from 1744 to 1817. The second stage was the “second Saudi state” from 1824 to 1891. The third stage was the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” since 1902.¹⁷ Al-ʿAjlani thus excluded the periods between 1817 and 1824 and between 1891 and 1902 from “Saudi history.” During these two periods, central Arabia was ruled by the Egyptians and the House of Rashid instead of the House of Saud. This periodization of Saudi history into three Saudi states remained the standard in subsequent historiography.¹⁸

Although this periodization of the three Saudi states was very specific to the Saudi dynasty, Saudi historians also used idioms drawn from wider Arab and Muslim historiography. One of these idioms was the notion of al-jāhiliyya, “the age of ignorance,” which is commonly used to refer to the pre-Islamic period. Munir al-ʿAjlani applied this notion to the period before the establishment of the first Saudi state in 1744. In his textbook, Images of Modern History, he wrote, “the situation of Arabia until the eighteenth century was like the situation in the age of ignorance before the mission of the Prophet. Ignorance was prevailing and idola-try spread to all parts so that the people were devoted to graves, stones and trees, beseeched them and claimed that they bring them closer to God. They asked them to fulfill their needs and sought refuge with them in times of hardship.”¹⁹ This description of the pre-Wahhabi period as jāhiliyya derived from a historical dis-course common among Wahhabi scholars since the eighteenth century.²⁰

The merger of dynastic and national history was probably facilitated by the fact that Saudi Arabia is identified with its ruling family through its very name. However, this tendency can also be found in historiography in some of the smaller Gulf states, whose names do not refer to a specific family. This is true for Kuwait, whose name either refers to a “small fort” built by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century or to a number of “small wells” near the modern town.²¹ One of the earli-

16 Ibid., 23.17 Ibid., 23–24.18 ʿAbd Allah al-ʿUthaymin, Tarikh al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Suʿudiyya, vol. 1 (al-Riyad, 1984).19 Munir al-ʿAjlani et al., Suwar (1969), 25.20 See my PhD thesis, “Globalization, the State, and Narrative Plurality: Historiography in Saudi Arabia” (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2012).21 R. M. Burrell, “al-Kuwayt,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 2012. http://reference-works.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/al-kuwayt-COM_0552 (accessed 19 July 2012).



est examples of Kuwaiti historiography is the History of Kuwait by ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Rashid (1887–1938). He is often considered “the first historian of Kuwait.” Al-Rashid studied in Kuwait, at the grand mosque of Medina and at al-Azhar in Cairo. Later, he became a teacher at the Mubarakiyya School, one of Kuwait’s first modern educational institutions. In 1926, he published his History of Kuwait through a press in Baghdad (in the absence of local presses).²² It remained a refer-ence work on the history of Kuwait for many decades and was republished several times.²³

Al-Rashid began his History with a chapter entitled “When was Kuwait founded?” He connected this foundation to the settlement of the House of Sabah. He found it most plausible that Kuwait was founded in the early eighteenth century under its first ruler, Sabah.²⁴ The author maintained that “Kuwait before the arrival of the House of Sabah was a poor land that was only inhabited by a group of tribes belonging to Ibn ʿUrayʿir. The first who erected stone houses there were the House of Sabah who made it their home.”²⁵ Al-Rashid put the rulers of this family at the center of his History. At the start of his core chapter, entitled “Kuwait’s Rulers,” he wrote, “ten rulers came to power in Kuwait, all of them from the House of Sabah, since its foundation until the present day. I will mention here the stories and events about them that have reached me.”²⁶ Al-Rashid used the reigns of these ten rulers as the basis of his periodization. He began with an account of “the first ruler, Sabah I” and continued with “the second ruler, ʿAbd Allah I,” etc. The author ended with “the tenth ruler Sheikh Ahmad ibn Jabir Al al-Sabah.” As usual among dynastic histories of the time, these accounts mainly focused on political and military events.²⁷

Also historians in the United Arab Emirates had the tendency to merge the history of the dynasty and nation to even define the nation through the dynasty and thus to start the history of the nation in comparatively recent times. A perti-nent example is the book Rashid: The Man Behind Dubai, which can be described as half-biography and half-history. It was promoted as the first history of Dubai written by an Emirati national. It was published in English and Arabic in 1990. The author, Abbas Abdullah Makki, was a researcher and contributor to the Dubai-based English language newspaper Khaleej Times. Since his childhood,

22 ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Rashid, Tarikh al-Kuwayt (Baghdad: al-Matbaʿa al-ʿAsriyya, 1926).23 For example, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Rashid, Tarikh al-Kuwayt, tabʿa munaqqaha (Bayrut: Dar Mak-tabat al-Hayat, 1978).24 ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Rashid, Tarikh al-Kuwayt (Bayrut: Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, n.d.), 29.25 Ibid., 31.26 Ibid., 87.27 Ibid., 87–230.



he had known Sheikh Rashid al-Maktum, the ruler of Dubai between 1958 and 1990. The book can be considered an official history as the author was encour-aged by Dubai’s director of information. The author also dedicated his book to the late Sheikh Rashid and published it in Dubai with the permission of the UAE Ministry of Information and Culture. The author aimed to provide an “assessment of the achievements of Dubai’s remarkable Ruler.” He also hoped that the book would provide “an outline of the history of the emirate which will be useful to the general public as well as history students.”²⁸

Makki used a similar periodization as al-ʿAjlani and al-Rashid did in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The author made a quick reference that “Dubai was used by groups of fishermen who lived in the desert nearby or came from Oman from times immemorial.” However, he described Dubai’s history as effectively beginning with the arrival of the ancestor of the House of Maktum in the early nineteenth century. Makki wrote that Dubai “assumed some importance with the migration of about 800 members of the Al Bufalasah section of the Bani Yas tribe from Abu Dhabi in 1833. They were led by Shaikh Obeid bin Saeed, who died soon thereafter, and Shaikh Maktoum bin Butti, who then assumed the leadership.”²⁹

After having synchronized Dubai’s history with the history of the House of Maktum, Makki divided this history mainly into periods that were defined by the reigns of its rulers – as al-Rashid did with Kuwait. He gave some attention to Sheikh Rashid’s father Saʿid ibn Maktum, who reigned between 1912 and 1958, mainly to illustrate how this reign was an “apprenticeship” for the young Rashid. Makki wrote, “during his long reign of 46 years, Shaikh Saeed bin Maktoum managed to lay the foundations of the stability, progress and prosperity of Dubai.”³⁰ However, the most important period for Makki was Rashid’s own reign from 1958 onwards. This reign comprised “the era of development” following the “discovery of oil in the 1960s.” Makki wrote that oil provided “the necessary resources for Dubai to embark on ambitious development projects to take it from the age of dhows to that of container ships, and to open its air gates to the four corners of the globe.”³¹

Makki’s emphasis on “development” also shows that even though Gulf his-torians tailored their national periods to the specific reigns of local dynasties, they also filled these periods with global concepts. This is also true in the case

28 Abbas Abdullah Makki, Rashid: The Man Behind Dubai (Dubai: Reading for All, 1990), 1.29 Ibid., 4. I am quoting the English edition, including Makki’s own transliteration of the names, as the author first wrote the book in English and then translated it into Arabic.30 Ibid., 14.31 Ibid., 37.



of Qatari historiography, where the global category of “independence” – which was so important for historiography in Egypt and elsewhere – gained impor-tance in periodization. A pertinent example is the book Chapters of Qatar’s Political History. It was published in Doha in 1999 by Ahmad al-Shilq (b. 1948), an Egyptian historian who served as the head of the Department of History at Qatar University in the 1990s. Al-Shilq’s book covered Qatar’s history exclusively during a time when it was ruled by the contemporary dynasty of the House of Thani. Yet, his periodization also pays attention to “independence.” Al-Shilq’s account starts with the “departure of the Ottoman garrison from the coast of Doha in 1915,” leaving the British influence alone in Qatar. It ends “with an important turn,” when Qatar “became a free, independent country with sovereignty in September 1971.”³²

Integrating dynastic periods into the perennial monarchyThe second tendency followed by historians in the Arab monarchies is to inte-grate periods of the contemporary dynasty into a longer and sometimes perennial monarchy. Thus, the monarchical system appears as legitimate and appropriate for a country that has not known any other system. This tendency is especially prevalent in countries that, unlike the smaller Gulf states and central Arabia, pos-sessed a long tradition of dynastic historiography prior to the appearance of the contemporary royal family. Many of these traditional writings feature a division of early Islamic history into the period of the “rightly guided” (rāshidūn) caliphs, the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. By naming periods after dynasties, these writ-ings assumed the centrality of the rulers’ personalities and policies. In such his-tories, as Michael Morony states, “everything from administrative appointments to economic prosperity or disaster tends to be explained in terms of the personal-ity of the ruler and everything else is explained in terms of reactions to a ruler’s policies, approval or disapproval, support or opposition, i. e., history is reduced to the personality of the ruler.”³³ The essentially dynastic approach of traditional historiography thus provides a pattern that contemporary dynastic historians could easily continue.

32 Ahmad al-Shilq, Fusul min Tarikh Qatar al-Siyasi (al-Dawha: Matabiʿ al-Dawha al-Haditha, 1999), 7.33 Morony, “Bayn al-Fitnatayn” (1981), 247.



Perhaps the only country in the Arabian peninsula where an earlier local tra-dition of dynastic historiography was continued was Oman. In the 1980s, the gov-ernment even published chronicles that dealt with Oman in periods before the rise of the contemporary ruling family, the House of Saʿid or Busaʿid, in the eight-eenth century. In 1980, the Omani Ministry of National Heritage and Culture pub-lished an edition of a nineteenth-century chronicle under the title History of the People of Oman. This chronicle dealt with pre-Islamic and early Islamic times and then followed the history of Omani rulers from the tenth century until Ahmad ibn Saʿid (reigned 1744–1783), the ancestor of the House of Busaʿid. Despite the word “people” in its title, the edition divided the history of the country mainly accord-ing to different dynasties and rulers: Chapters on “Oman during the Umayyad age” and “Oman during the Abbasid age” are followed by chapters with titles such as “The imams of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries” and “The last kings of the Banu Nabhan.”³⁴

Based on this nineteenth-century chronicle and other works, twentieth-century Omani historians could easily integrate the Busaʿid period into a longer dynastic history of Oman. This was in contrast to Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, where such a previous historiographical tradition did not exist. It was also in contrast to Saudi Arabia, where the previous Najdi and Hejazi historiography was suppressed under Saudi rule.³⁵ In Oman, Salim al-Sayyabi (1908–1993), a scholar, writer and judge from Muscat, wrote another major work that covered centuries of pre-Busaʿid history. In 1982, he completed a four-volume work entitled Oman over the Course of History. The Omani Ministry of National Heritage and Culture published it in five editions until 2001.³⁶ Unlike historians of Saudi Arabia, al-Sayyabi did not begin his history in 1744 – which was inci-dentally not only the year in which the first Saudi state was founded but also the year in which Ahmad ibn Saʿid took over the rule. Instead, al-Sayyabi started his account with a chapter entitled “The beginning of Islam in Oman until the end of the four caliphs.”³⁷ He thus followed traditional Muslim periodization. Subsequently, he followed the fate of one ruler or imam after another and the transfer of power from one dynasty to the next until Sultan ibn Ahmad ibn Saʿid (reigned 1792–1804), the second ruler from the House of Busaʿid.

34 Saʿid ʿAshur, Tarikh Ahl ʿUman (Masqat: Wazarat al-Turath al-Qawmi wa-l-Thaqafa, 1980).35 See my previously mentioned thesis, “Globalization” (2012).36 Salim al-Sayyabi, ʿUman ʿabra al-Tarikh (Masqat: Wazarat al-Turath al-Qawmi wa-l-Thaqafa, 1982); Salim al-Sayyabi, ʿUman ʿabra al-Tarikh, al-tabʿa al-khamisa (Masqat: Wazarat al-Turath al-Qawmi wa-l-Thaqafa, 2001).37 Al-Sayyabi, ʿUman, vol. 1(2001), 105.



In the 2000s, the Omani government made greater efforts to distinguish the Busaʿid era from previous periods. A pertinent example is a textbook in Social Studies that was published by the Omani Ministry of Education and authored by a committee following a ministerial decree in 2003.³⁸ The book contained a special unit on the “Busaʿid state.”³⁹ Similar to Saudi historiography of the pre-Wahhabi period, the book described the pre-Busaʿid situation in a negative way. The text-book stated that “shortly before the establishment of the Busaʿid state … Oman witnessed a turbulent political situation.”⁴⁰ The textbook continued that “the constant clashes between the Omanis and the Persians led the people of Oman to seek to unify their efforts and to mobilize towards a higher goal: the removal of the Persians and the national reunification of the country.” Finally, “Ahmad ibn Saʿid al-Busaʿidi, the governor of Sohar at the time, was the victorious leader whom the Omanis recognized as imam in 1744. This was out of recognition of his tireless efforts that were crowned by liberation and national unity when the al-Busaʿid state was established.”⁴¹

Not surprisingly, the Social Studies textbook also made clear that the Busaʿid period was the best in Omani history. It gave the following description of the reign of Ahmad’s successor Saʿid ibn Sultan (1804–1856): “Historians consider the era of Sayyid Saʿid ibn Sultan the golden age in the modern history of Oman.” He “formed a vast empire in Asia that comprised Oman and parts of the coast of the Arabian Gulf. In Africa, it comprised the east coast of Africa from Mogadishu in the north to Mozambique in the south.”⁴² Later, a special section summarized the “civilizational achievements of the Busaʿid state.” The textbook stated that “in the political and military field, the Busaʿid state laid the foundation of national unity. Imam Ahmad ibn Saʿid could unite the Omani people under one banner through wisdom, tolerance and equality.”⁴³ In “the economic and social field,” the state “was able to build a strong economic power with a strong interest in agriculture, irrigation, fishing, ports and domestic and external trade routes.”⁴⁴

The narrative of the House of Busaʿid bringing national unity is similar to the tendency to merge dynastic and national periods in the other Gulf states. However, given the lively tradition of pre-Busaʿid historiography, periods before

38 Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, al-Dirasat al-Ijtimaʿiyya: li-l-Saff al-Thamin, vol. 1, al-tabʿa al-tajribiyya (Masqat: Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, 2005), 2.39 Ibid., 53.40 Ibid., 54.41 Ibid., 55.42 Ibid., 60.43 Ibid., 62.44 Ibid., 64.



the eighteenth century did not disappear from Omani textbooks. Instead, the textbooks legitimated the monarchy rather by celebrating previous imams along-side the later Busaʿid ruler. Another textbook in Social Studies by the Omani Ministry of Education included a chapter of “prominent people of Oman.”⁴⁵ This chapter did not include Busaʿid princes but imams from the early Islamic period. They include the Ibadi imam al-Julandi ibn Masʿud, about who the text-book states that he “was from an ancient Omani family, whose grandfather was king of Oman before Islam.” The textbook maintains that “Imam al-Julandi ibn Masʿud’s reign was distinguished by justice, wisdom and sincerity.” When al-Julandi died in a battle against the Abbasids in 751, “the people of Oman were extremely saddened.”⁴⁶

Integrating the period of the contemporary dynasty into a longer monarchi-cal history was also a tendency followed in Morocco. As earlier dynasties often ruled territories larger than the contemporary ʿAlawid dynasty, this integration involved adapting national periodization to a wider Maghribi scheme. In this case, the double meaning of the official name al-Mamlaka al-Maghribiyya as “Kingdom of Morocco” and “Kingdom of the Maghrib” facilitated the integration of centuries of wider North African history into the longer history of the nation state. In addition, the Maghrib possessed a much richer and longer tradition of historiography than even Oman did. This traditional historiography has also seen rulers and dynasties as the primary actors in Islamic history. Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), for instance, arguably one of the most influential Maghribi histori-ans of all times, put the constant rise, fall, and renewal of dynasties at the center of his historical theory.⁴⁷

In the twentieth century, not only native Moroccans, but also foreign authors continued this tradition. One of the most important was Charles-André Julien (1891–1991), a French historian who had great opportunity to shape Moroccan historiography. At the request of King Mohammed V, he created the Faculty of Letters in Rabat and served as its first dean between 1957 and 1961. He wrote the widely read History of North Africa that appeared in French, English, and Arabic over several decades. Like Ibn Khaldun and other previous historians, Julien portrayed Maghribi history as the succession of different dynasties. In his book, the “Arab conquest and the Kharijite kingdoms” are followed by the “Arab and Berber dynasties (ninth–eleventh centuries)” and the “Berber empires” of the

45 Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, al-Dirasat al-Ijtimaʿiyya: li-l-Saff al-Thalith, vol. 2, al-tabʿa al-thaniya (Masqat: Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, 2005), 97.46 Ibid., 106–8. 47 Khalidi, “Reflections” (1998), 113.



Almoravids and the Almohads. Later chapters deal with the “return to Berber kingdoms” and the “Sharifian empire” between 1553 and 1830.⁴⁸ This periodiza-tion was adopted by one of Julien’s students named Ibrahim Harakat (b. 1929), a native of Casablanca and one of the first graduates of the Faculty of Letters in Rabat. Harakat worked as a teacher and official in the Ministry of National Education for many years and authored numerous textbooks. These textbooks include the three-volume work The Maghrib over the Course of History, published in 1965, and based on numerous Arabic and French works, including Julien’s History of North Africa. Following this tradition, Harakat focused on the deeds of the different Muslim dynasties, including the Idrisids, Almoravids, and Almohads, all the way to the twentieth century.⁴⁹

Such a long view of Moroccan and Maghribi dynastic history has remained the standard in Moroccan historiography. A pertinent example is the textbook The Beneficiary of Morocco’s History. It tries to legitimize the contemporary ʿAlawid dynasty by placing it in a long history of Maghribi dynasties who all created unity and prosperity. After an account of ancient North Africa and the Muslim con-quest, it describes the establishment of the Umayyad dynasty in Iberia by ʿ Abd al-Rahman I (reigned 756–88). The textbook emphasizes ʿAbd al-Rahman’s “efforts for stability and unity” and “the manifestations of culture and knowledge during his age.”⁵⁰ Later, the book discusses the Almohads under the similar heading “for the sake of the unity of North Africa.”⁵¹ Finally, the ʿAlawid period is described as “the era of evolution and stability” and “the era of prosperity.”⁵² This prosper-ity began when Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah “was recognized as king in 1757.” He maintained the “security of the country and united the ranks of the nation.”⁵³

Similarly, in Jordan, historians tried to legitimize the contemporary dynasty by inserting it into a longer history of Arab monarchies. This was facilitated by the alleged ancestry of the ruling Hashemites from the Prophet Muḥammad. Texts could thus easily integrate the Hashemites into a long chain of Arab monarchs. An early example is the textbook Our Modern History, which was published by the Jordanian Ministry of Education in 1959. Its foreword quoted King Hussein (reigned 1952–99) who connected his own deeds to those of previous Arab mon-archs. Hussein stated that “we have struggled and we have fought from the begin-

48 Charles-André Julien, History of North Africa (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970).49 Ibrahim Harakat, al-Maghrib ʿabr al-Tarikh (al-Dar al-Baydaʾ: Dar al-Sulami, 1965).50 Muhammad, Muhammad al-Amin and Muhammad ʿAli al-Rahmani, al-Mufid fi Tarikh al-Maghrib (al-Dar al-Baydaʾ: Dar al-Katib, n.d.), 71, 74.51 Ibid., 137.52 Ibid., 212, 223.53 Ibid., 223.



ning, and on behalf of a message, just as our fathers and grandfathers fought beforehand, in defense of their message, the message of unity, the message of freedom, the message of strength, the message of building, the message of pro-tecting our sacred things and our sacred land, and the message of protecting the land of the Arabs for the unity of the Arabs.”⁵⁴

Later Jordanian textbooks in Social and National Education also told a long history of Arab monarchs culminating in the contemporary Kingdom of Jordan. A textbook from 1995 includes a unit that told the “history of the Arabs and Muslims” from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods onward.⁵⁵ A com-plementary textbook in the same subject picks up the “history of a nation and leadership” at the “Great Arab Revolt” during the First World War. Focusing on Jordan proper, it centers on the “the stages of the foundation of the emirate and independence.” The textbooks’ periodization ended with “the modern awaken-ing during the reign of His Majesty King Abdullah II.”⁵⁶

Local histories, tribal histories and the limits of dynastic periodizationThe governmental and semi-governmental textbooks legitimizing Arab monar-chies probably outstripped any other historical works in reaching Arab popula-tions. One may, of course, speculate to what extent the majority of these popula-tions accepted monarchist forms of periodization and other elements of official historiography on a psychological level. The naming of certain periods after dynasties, like the “Abbasids,” “Ottomans,” or “Saudis” was certainly pervasive. Nevertheless, at least in some monarchies, certain authors preferred a periodiza-tion centered on a city or region rather than the contemporary ruling dynasty. Most of these authors did not offer an alternative periodization for national history, yet their works are an indication that despite authoritarianism, official historiogra-phy did not dominate the historical imagination of Arab societies totally.⁵⁷

54 Quoted in: Betty Anderson, “Writing the Nation: Textbooks of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, nos. 1–2 (2001), 5.55 Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, al-Tarbiya al-Ijtimaʿiyya wa-l-Wataniyya: al-Saff al-Khamis, vol. 1 (ʿAmman: Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, 1995).56 Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, al-Tarbiya al-Ijtimaʿiyya wa-l-Wataniyya: al-Saff al-Rabiʿ, vol. 2 (ʿAmman: Wazarat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Taʿlim, 2005), 19–44.57 See also James McDougall, “The Fetishism of Identity: Empire, Nation and the Politics of Subjectivity in Algeria,” in Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, edited by John Chal-



One group of authors who challenged monarchist periodizations by using their own periodizations consisted of local historians. They counteracted the attempt to merge dynastic with national periods and to start the history of the country with the rise of the contemporary dynasty. This challenge was especially strong in Saudi Arabia, where certain cities, like Mecca and Medina, possessed a far longer and richer tradition of historiography than the ruling dynasty and its heartland Najd did. An early example of one such local author is the writer Ahmad al-Khiyari (1903/4–61). A native from Medina, he had studied in the city’s grand mosque and later worked as director of the mosque’s library. He thus had access to numerous sources on the past of the city. These sources include, for instance, ʿAli al-Samhudi’s (1440–506) chronicle The Fulfilment of Faithfulness (Wafaʾ al-Wafaʾ). Al-Khiyari wrote several books on Medina’s history, including one entitled History of Medina’s Ancient and Modern Landmarks. It was first published posthu-mously by the Medina Literary Club in 1990 and was republished several times.⁵⁸

Al-Khiyari’s History is typical in celebrating not a dynasty but a locality. In his introduction, he gives a long list of reasons why he wants to write Medina’s “great ancient and modern history.” Medina, according to him, was “the angels’ place of descent,” “the house of the faithful spirit and the abode of the support-ers of the Prophet Muḥammad and the people, who migrated with him there.” Medina is also the “center of the caliphate of the righteous caliphs” and “the center of interest of the world, and I do not say of the Muslim world only, but of the world.”⁵⁹ Unlike Saudi textbooks, al-Khiyari thus did not begin his history of Medina with the rise of the Saudi dynasty and Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wah-hab. Instead, he followed the history of the rulers of the city from the time of the Prophet Muḥammad to the Ottoman period, the “age of the Sharifs” and finally the “Saudi age.” The “Saudi age,” however, did not begin in 1744 with the estab-lishment of the first Saudi state, as in official textbooks. Instead, Al-Khiyari claims it started in 1925, when the Saudi prince Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz “took over Medina from ʿ Abd al-Majid Pasha, the commander of the garrison, and Sharif Ahmad ibn Mansur.”⁶⁰ Al-Khiyari thus used a city-centered instead of a dynasty-centered periodization.

craft and Yaseen Noorani, 49–71 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Al-Rasheed, “Politi-cal Legitimacy” (1998).58 Ahmad al-Khiyari, Tarikh Maʿalim al-Madina al-Munawwara Qadiman wa-Hadithan (al-Madina: Nadi al-Madina al-Munawwara al-Adabi, 1990); Tarikh Maʿalim al-Madina al-Munaw-wara Qadiman wa-Hadithan (al-Riyad: al-Amana al-ʿAmma li-l-Ihtifal bi-Murur Miʾat ʿAm ʿala Taʾsis al-Mamlaka, 1999).59 al-Khiyari, Tarikh (1999), 13–14.60 Ibid., 388–89.



A second group of authors challenging monarchist periodization were tribal authors. In the late 1970s, a new market emerged for writings about tribes in Jordan⁶¹ as well as other Arab countries. This was driven by increasing literacy and wealth among tribespeople. Literacy and wealth allowed tribal historians to search for the history of their tribes in travel writing and other sources and to pay for the publication of their findings. In addition, interest in the tribes was upheld by the continuing importance of tribal descent and values in the symbolic economy of the monarchies. Although many states destroyed or weakened tribal independence, monarchs still recognized the tribal hierarchy by paying stipends to tribal leaders and forming coalitions, including marriage alliances, with them. In the 1990s and 2000s, the number of tribal writings further increased. Between 1996 and 2005 alone, 507 books on tribal history and genealogy were published in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia headed the list with 117 books, followed by Lebanon with 75 books, Syria with 68 books, Jordan with 45 books, and Kuwait with 40 books.⁶² Gulf authors commissioned some of the publications in Lebanon as well, where they were less likely to suffer from censorship.

A prominent representative of tribal historiography is the Jordanian author Ahmad al-ʿAbbadi.⁶³ In 1982, he completed a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Subsequently, he worked as a writer and member of the Jordanian House of Representatives. In 2004, he published his magnum opus, The Jordanian Tribes: Land, Man, and History. This book excluded the ruling Hashemites, but covered many Jordanian tribes and their branches and praised some tribespeople for their “long history [of good] judgment, horsemanship and generosity.”⁶⁴ The book did not use the periodization offered by the Jordanian textbooks. Al-ʿAbbadi did not divide his book into the periods of the “Great Arab Revolt,” “the foun-dation of the emirate,” or write of the “independence” and “awakening” under royal leadership. Instead, the author used a different a periodization for every tribe, which usually began with its “first ancestor.” He then put the tribal sheikhs at the center of his history. For instance, al-ʿAbbadi wrote how “the sheikh of the

61 Andrew J. Shryock, “Popular Genealogical Nationalism: History Writing and Identity among the Balga Tribes of Jordan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 2 (1995), 325.62 Faʾiz al-Harbi, Zahirat al-Taʾlif fi al-Qabaʾil wa-l-Ansab: al-Asbab wa-l-Dawabit al-Matluba (al-Riyad: Dar al-Badrani li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʿ, 2006), 97.63 On al-ʿAbbadi, see Andrew Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).64 Ahmad al-ʿAbbadi, al-ʿAshaʾir al-Urdunniyya: al-Ard wa-l-Insan wa-l-Tarikh: Mudhakkirat wa-Wathaʼiq wa-Murasalat, 1850–2004m (ʿAmman: Maktabat al-Muhtasib, 2004), 89.



sheikhs of the ʿAbbad” led the tribe through the “days of war and peace” in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.⁶⁵

ConclusionsMany historians in Arab monarchies followed two broad tendencies of periodiza-tion that aimed at legitimizing the regimes. The first tendency was to merge dynas-tic with national history. The primary feature of this tendency was to start the history of the country essentially with the rise of the contemporary ruling family. The tendency sometimes also excluded intermittent periods without dynastic rule from the country’s history. This tendency was especially prevalent in Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states of Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These countries often lacked a rich historiographical tradition before the appearance of the contemporary dynasties from the seventeenth century onward.

The second tendency was to integrate the contemporary dynasty into the history of a longer and sometimes perennial monarchy. This tendency legitimized the specific dynasty in power more indirectly by emphasizing the endurance and, by extension, appropriateness of the monarchical system in a country that has not known any other system. This tendency was particularly strong in Morocco, Oman and Jordan. In Morocco and Oman, it was facilitated by a long tradition of previous ruler- and dynasty-centered historiography. In Jordan, such a tradition was absent, just as in Kuwait and Qatar before the appearance of the contem-porary ruling families. Yet, the Hashemites could easily connect their own con-temporary history in Jordan to their previous role in the Arab revolt against the Ottomans and, as sharifs, to centuries of wider Arab and Islamic dynastic history.

These two tendencies dominate many of the official textbooks produced in Arab monarchies. In addition, some unofficial writings on local history also name periods after dynasties, like the Ottomans and Saudis. Nevertheless, official dynas-tic periodization has not shaped all historical writing in the monarchies. Historians of places with a long historical heritage, like Mecca and Medina, could and did imagine a much longer history than that of the contemporary dynasty. More impor-tantly, perhaps, local and tribal historians also developed periodizations centered on specific cities or tribes. In focusing on sub-national units, they mostly did not, however, develop new national periodizations that would be an alternative to the dynasty-centered national periodizations offered by the textbooks.

65 Ibid., 247.



My study of historiography in the Arab monarchies has many limitations. In this article, I have only given examples of a few history books – albeit very prominent and influential ones – per country. Much more research needs to be undertaken regarding the extent to which dynasty-centered historiography legiti-mized the political system and whether it did so more successfully than the more people- and nation-centered historiographies in the Arab republics. Nevertheless, my study suggests that periodization is a central element of historiography in the monarchies. Periodization should thus be given more attention by future studies on history and political legitimacy in the Middle East.

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Dynastic Periodization and its Limits: Historiography in Contemporary Arab Monarchies

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