The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (10 page)

Consultation is recommended in the Qur'an and was practiced from time to time by sovereigns with their counselors, officials, and courtiers. The nineteenth century brought the first attempts to extend and institutionalize it. The French had set an example by appointing several consultative bodies during their occupation of Egypt. In 1829 Muhammad 'Ali Pasha set up a council of consultation (majlis mashwara) of 156 members, all nominated. They consisted of 33 high officials of the central government, 24 provincial officials, and 99 notables. They met only once a year, for a day or longer if necessary, and discussed such topics as agriculture, education, and taxes. When Muhammad 'Ali occupied Palestine and Syria, his governors appointed a consultative council of notables (majlis shura) in each of the main towns, with advisory and some judicial functions. In 1845 the Ottoman sultan, Abdiilmejid, also experimented with an assembly of provincial representatives. Two were to be chosen from each province, "from among those who are respected and trusted, are people of intelligence and knowledge, who know the requisites of prosperity and the characteristics of the pop- ulation."3 Despite these high qualifications the experiment produced no results and was abandoned. A similar and equally inconclusive experiment was held in Persia shortly after.

While sultans and pashas experimented with nominated advisory bodies, some of their subjects began to play with more radical ideas. In classical Islamic usage, hurriyya (freedom) was primarily a legal term denoting the legal status of the free person, as opposed to that of the slave. The first references to political freedom in Muslim writings are hostile and suspicious; it is something foolish and evil, much the same as libertinism and anarchy. But soon a more positive attitude appears. In the 1820s and 1830s, young Muslims began to travel to Europe in search of enlightenment and of the elusive secret of Western power. In the Europe of that time there was no lack of voices to commend the merits of liberalism, the cause of idealists and businessmen alike-and what, to the alien visitor, could have seemed more extraordinary, more distinctive of the West than constitutional and representative government? It is not surprising that many of them decided that this was the talisman they sought.

One of the first Middle Easterners to argue the merits of parliamentary government was an Egyptian, the Azhari Sheikh Rifa`a Rafi` al-Tahtawi. In 1826, at the age of twenty-five, he accompanied the Egyptian student mission to Paris and stayed there until 1831. He was not himself a member of the mission, but was their religious preceptor. He seems, however, to have learned more than did any of his wards. His book, containing an account of what he saw in France, was published in Arabic in 1834 and in a Turkish translation in 1839. It contains a description of parliamentary government, the purpose of which is to secure government under law and to protect the subjects from tyranny-or rather, as he acutely observes, to give the subjects the opportunity to protect themselves. Sheikh Rifa`a witnessed and explained the 1830 revolution in which, he says, the king was removed for violating the constitution and attempting to curtail the freedoms that it ensured. He attached great importance to the press, "the sheets called newspapers [al-waraqat ... a]- musammat bi'l-jurnalat wa'1-gazetat]j4 as a safeguard against misrule and a medium for the communication of knowledge and ideas. The book includes a complete translation of the French constitution, with comments.

Sheikh Rifa`a was no liberal revolutionary, but a loyal servant of Muhammad `Ali and his successors, whom he served with distinction for many years. His political teachings, after his return to Egypt, tended to be cautious and conservative; the sovereign must rule as well as reign, but should use his power wisely and justly, with proper respect for the law and for the rights of the subject, a position closer to the enlightened despots than to the revolution. Such exhortations to the sovereign to govern with justice were in the classical tradition of Islamic political writings; what was new was the idea that the subject has a right to justice, and that some sort of apparatus might be set up to secure that right. The same kind of modified conservatism can be found in an essay written by Sadik Rifat Pasha, the Turkish ambassador in Vienna in 1837, perhaps under the influence of Metternich. He too speaks of the "rights of the people" and "the rights of freedom," by which he meant freedom from oppressive and arbitrary government.'

But in fact the government was becoming more and not less oppressive. The creation of a modern administrative apparatus, on the one hand, and the introduction of modern methods of com munication and coercion, on the other, were tightening the screws of government; the old limiting intermediate powers of the religious, military, and landowning interests were abrogated or enfeebled, leaving the state with nothing but its own edicts and charters to restrain it. Little understood by the people, halfheartedly applied by the officials, supported by no strong body of either interest or opinion, these charters of civil rights, however well intentioned, could have but little effect.

At this point a cleavage begins to appear between reformers and radicals-the Ottoman heirs of the Enlightenment and of the Revolution. The former, usually conservative and authoritarian in politics, sought to modernize in order to strengthen and enrich their countries, and used all the powers of the reinforced state for this purpose. The latter, including both reactionary and progressive elements, criticized the reforms and still more the manner of their application, and sought a remedy in constitutionalism, in ideas that they derived from European liberalism but often attributed to Qur- 'anic and other Islamic doctrines. These ideological differences were complicated-sometimes even motivated-by personal and political quarrels, and notably by the rivalry between Ottoman Istanbul and khedivial Cairo which, throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was an important element in Middle Eastern political life.

In the 1860s and 1870s, constitutionalism in the Middle East seemed to be taking important steps forward. In 1861 the bey of Tunis, then an autonomous monarchy under a loose Ottoman suzerainty, proclaimed a constitution, the first in any Islamic country. The bey remained head of the state and the faith and retained executive power for himself and his ministers, with whom, however, he was responsible to a Grand Council of sixty members, some appointed by the bey and some co-opted, for a term of five years. The judicial power was to be exercised by an independent judiciary, the legislative power shared by the council with the government. The Tunisian constitution was suspended in 1864, but the trend continued elsewhere. The year 1866 brought important developments in other lands under Ottoman suzerainty, nearer home. In Romania, a liberal constitution was proclaimed, based on the Belgian constitution of 1831. In Egypt, the khedive Ismail created a Consultative Assembly of Delegates (Majlis Shura al-Nuwwab), consisting of seventy-five delegates elected for a three-year term by a system of indirect, collegiate elections. The Young Ottoman constitutionalists who in 1867 sought refuge in England and France received financial support from the khedive's brother, Mustafa Fazil Pasha, and then from the khedive Ismail himself. After some setbacks, their cause seemed to triumph, when in 1876 an Ottoman constitution was promulgated in Istanbul by the new sultan, Ab- diilhamid II. This too was influenced by the liberal monarchical Belgian constitution, both directly and through the Prussian constitutional enactment of 1850, in which Belgian liberal principles were adapted in a number of respects to the more authoritarian traditions of Prussia. It provided for a parliament, consisting of a nominated senate and an elected chamber, with some, rather perfunctory, recognition of the principle of the separation of powers.

The effective life of the constitution was brief. After a general election, the first Ottoman parliament assembled in March 1877 and sat until June. New elections were then held, and a second parliament met in December. It soon began to show alarming vigor, and on 14 February was summarily dismissed by the sultan. The first Ottoman parliament had sat for two sessions, of about five months in all; it did not meet again for thirty years.

These early constitutional reforms were not only gestures of emulation toward Europe; they also had a quality of propitiation. They were intended to prove that their authors were also civilized and progressive by European standards and therefore worthy of respect-to qualify for loans and other forms of favorable consideration and, in extreme cases, to ward off interference and occupation. In these purposes they secured only fitful and limited success. Neither the short-lived Tunisian constitution nor the slightly longer Egyptian parliamentary experiment did anything to halt the downward plunge to bankruptcy, disorder, control, and occupation. Some observers thought they might even have helped it. In Turkey, Sultan Abdulhamid, the last of the great authoritarian reformers of the nineteenth century, decided to dispense with the trappings of democracy and to achieve modernization by more traditional methods.

For the next thirty years, the only place in the Middle East where parliamentary institutions of any kind existed was Egypt. The assembly of 1866 held its prescribed three terms and was succeeded by further, similar assemblies, elected in 1869, 1876, and 1881. In 1882, during the `Urabi revolt, the assembly prepared and promulgated a draft parliamentary constitution. The draft was abrogated and the assembly dismissed when `Urabi failed. A new start was made after the British occupation of 1882, when Lord Dufferin, who was sent to Egypt to reorganize the government of the country, wrote to the foreign secretary, Lord Granville, in London that the British occupation should be based on "national independence and constitutional government."6 The first objective, because of changing circumstances, received less attention than it required, though more than is sometimes allowed. The second was a matter of continuing concern to the British authorities, in both London and Cairo, who made a serious attempt to place the government of the country on a constitutional basis and allowed the press a measure of freedom that, though limited, was sufficient to attract creative and critical writers from neighboring territories enjoying full independence but no freedom. The new Organic Law for Egypt, promulgated in May 1883, provided for two quasi-parliamentary bodies. The first was a legislative council of thirty members, fourteen nominated and permanent, sixteen indirectly elected for six years. The second, the General Assembly, consisted of the khedive's ministers, the members of the legislative council, and forty-six others elected for six years. These bodies, with their restricted and apathetic electorates, their limited and advisory powers, their brief and infrequent meetings, must have seemed a poor substitute for the constitutional aspirations of the liberals. They functioned, however, regularly and not altogether ineffectively, from 1883 to 1912 and were able on more than one occasion to take an independent line, asserting their views and rights against the khedive and sometimes against the occupying power. Their growing authority was recognized in 1913 when they were merged in a new and more powerful body, called the Legislative Assembly. This consisted of the ministers, seventeen nominated and sixty-six elected members, indirectly elected for a term of six years, one-third every two years. This rule of rotation was perhaps due to American influence. The first elections were in October 1913; the first session lasted from January to June 1914. There were no more elections or assemblies until after the war.

Meanwhile, far more radical developments had been taking place farther north. In 1905 a thrill of exultation passed through Asia when for the first time an Asian power, Japan, was able to defeat a European great power, Russia, in battle on both land and sea. There were some who made the further observation that the oriental victor was the only Asian country that had adopted a form of parliamentary and constitutional government, while the European loser was the only European power that had refused to do so. In Russia, the czar himself, faced with revolution, seemed to concede the point by granting a form of constitution and convening the first Duma. In Egypt, the nationalist leader Mu~tafa Kamil wrote a book called The Rising Sun, showing by the example of Japan how an Oriental nation could achieve self-renewal and success. In Turkey, two officers wrote a five-volume illustrated history of the Russo-Japanese war, and a minor civil servant, who was also a part-time dervish, noted in his diary that his fervent prayers had helped achieve the Japanese victory. In Iran, in the summer of 1906, a constitutional revolution forced the shah to convene a national assembly which drafted a liberal constitution. Two years later, the Young Turk revolutionary officers, fearing-mistakenly as it turned out-that the meeting of the British and Russian sovereigns at Reval portended the demise of the Sick Man of Europe, decided on an immediate dose of the constitutional elixir and forced the reluctant sultan to restore the constitution of 1876, thus inaugurating the second, somewhat longer, and far stormier interlude of constitutional government in Turkey.

The victory of the allied and associated powers over their somewhat less democratic opponents in 1918, with the collapse of the only autocracy in the allied camp, seemed to provide final proof of the proposition that democracy makes a state healthy, wealthy, and strong. In Damascus, Prince Faysal's Syrian Congress drafted a constitution for a limited, parliamentary monarchy. It was abandoned with the arrival of the French on 19 July 1920. The British and French, as mandatary powers, created constitutional republics and monarchies in their own image in the countries under their control. Elsewhere, too, in the years following the victory, constitutions and parliaments spread all over the Middle East in what seemed a universal triumph of liberal and democratic principles.

Until very recently, it seemed that this great experiment had ended in almost unrelieved failure. The longest-lived constitutional regime in the Middle East was that of Iran, where the constitution promulgated after the liberal revolution of 1906 remained in force, though barely in effect, until the Islamic revolution of 1979, when it was formally abrogated. The oldest surviving parliamentary regime now is that of Lebanon, where the 1926 constitution, despite many vicissitudes and fairly drastic emendations, has remained technically in force, though civil war and external interference have undermined and perhaps nullified its working. Elsewhere, all the constitutions adopted in the democratic millennium of the 1920s were abandoned or replaced by more or less violent processes.