'slam Ass e

The Advent of t h e 41 11111'

rnar

MARTIN KRAMER
I.

ISLAM ASSEMBLED
TheAdvent of the Muslim Congresses MARTIN KRAMER

New York Columbia University Press 1 9 8 6

To my parents, Anita and Alvin

CONTENTS
Preface i x

ONE T H E COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU. Pan-Islamic Ideals 1 TWO THREE FOUR A CHALLENGE TO AUTHORITY. T h e CongressIdea 1 0

A N IDEA REFINED. Fi r s t Proposals from Cairo 2 6 A

PRACTICAL PLAN. Th e Gasprinskii Initiative of 1907 and Sequel 3 6 FIVE H O L Y WAR. Th e Wartime Initiatives 5 SIX B E T W E E N BOLSHEVISM AN D ISLAM. TheLeague of Islamic Revolutionary Societies,

SEVEN K E

1920 M A L I S T TURKEY AN D MUSLIM 1921 EMPIRE. T h e Society of Unitarians and 6 9 Aftermath, 1919

EIGHT N E- W CALIPH IN ARABIA. T h e Pilgrimage 1 9 2 3 1924 Congress, 8 0 7 NINE T H E CALIPHATE GRAIL. Th e General 3 Islamic Congress for the Caliphate in Egypt, 1926 8 6 TEN T H E FATE OF MECCA. Th e Congress of the Islamic World, 1926 1 0 6

ELEVEN I N DEFENSE OF JERUSALEM. T h e General Islamic Congress, 1931 1 2 3 TWELVE S W I S S EXILE. Th e European Muslim Congress,
1935 1 4 2

THIRTEEN CONGRESSES OF COLLABORATION. Islam and the Axis, 1 9 3 8 1945 1 5 4

viii

S 166

FOURTEEN C ON C L U SION S Appendixes 1 7 1 Abbreviations 1 9 5 Notes 1 9 7 Bibliography 2 2 7 Index 2 4 3

PREFACE

" I f a scheme on these pr inciples coul d be carried i nto effect, i t w oul d be the greatest event ever k now n i n the annals of M oham m edan hi stor y." Shaykh M ustafa al - M ar aghi , on his congress pr oposal of 1915.

L guage, A and history, rst thought to make their world whole by assembling T in congress. The expansion of the West into Muslim lands awakened E within Muslims a shared sense of subjugation. Then steamer, rail, and I telegraph made possible an animated discourse among Muslim centers Nlinked in the past by tenuous ties. From this exchange emerged a loose T network of Mus lim cosmopolitans, men of common conviction who shared a critique of the West, and a vision of a revitalized Islam. H After numerous failed initiatives, they nally did meet in an irregular E succession of Mus lim congresses between the two world wars. These l the earliest occasions on which Muslims, assembled from various were a of the Muslim world, discussed and resolved on issues of common parts s concern. They were perhaps the broadest attempt by a group of subject t peoples to ward off the West. c uneasy rst encounters made tful progress. The earliest practical The e proposals, and then the congresses themselves, emerged and disappeared in rapid n succession. They followed one another in no sequential order, and t they bore no formal relationship to one another. Many hands were at work, often at cross-purposes, and no renowned individual made his u name r synonymous with the broken string of congresses. The initiative moved from continent to continent, and the action unfolded not only y in Mecca, Cairo, and Jerusalem, but in the unlikely settings of Moscow, , Geneva, and Tokyo. So scattered was the evidence that no attempt was M made to study Mus lim congresses in an integrated fashion, to weigh u them against one another, and to measure their cumulative effects. Some s of the leading contemporary IslamicistsMassignon, Gibb, Hartmann l believed that the advent of the congresses was a signicant development i m s , s e p a r

in Islam, but the appreciations which they published were brief and tentative. study, based upon sources which were beyond the reach of contem1 poraries. T h e My method has been to trace the congress idea through its early to examine the rst and largely unsuccessful initiatives, p a evolution, s and to assess the congresses convened between the two world wars. s a g My e purpose has been to establish the persistence of Muslim attachment to o the political concept of a united Islam, even as Muslim empire and caliphate waned. f As the West began to divest itself of its Mus lim possessions, and t Muslim peoples achieved independence, the congress movement lost i much of its appeal. It is here that I have drawn the account to a close, m with an examination of the activities of the leading Mus lim cosmoe politans during the last world war. The later revival of the congresses h as diplomatic arenas for independent Muslim states occurred in a very a different world, and warrants a very different approach. But here I am s concerned with how an idea circulated by Muslims of radical political m religious persuasions rst won general acceptance, and how it fared and a when rst put into practice, for the most part by statesmen without d states. It is a study of rst encounters, of the moments when Muslims rst e equated the sheer expanse of Islam with political power in the modern world. p I have striven to present a cosmopolitan appraisal, as informed about o the s expansive world of Muslim activism as were the Mus lim cosmopolitans themselves. For the congresses soon proved larger than they s appeared. Their effects were felt in parts of the Mus lim world far rei moved from the center of initiative. To study those effects, I have had b to venture across the boundaries established to divide the Muslim world l for the convenience of foreign scholarship. This has led me at times e through unfamiliar terrain. And so I am particularly indebted to those a whose own cosmopolitan knowledge of Muslim history served for me c as a guide. I owe much to Professor Bernard Lewis, who supervised this o study through an earlier incarnation as a Princeton University doctoral m dissertation. I have never succeeded in exhausting his store of knowlp edge, references, and anecdotes on this or any Muslim subject. And he r given me ample opportunity to try. has e Parts of the manuscript were read and commented upon by Professors Benedict Anderson, Shaul Bakhash, L. Carl Brown, William Cleveland, h Charles Issawi, and Edward Lazzerini, and I thank them all. A constant e companion of this work has been Professor Itamar Rabinovich, now my n colleague at Tel Aviv University, who rst set my sights on the Muslim s congresses, and followed with countless encouragements. To the various i v e

PREFACE

archivists and librarians from whose collections I cite, I am most indebted. For special courtesies, I wish to offer special thanks to the Right Hon. Viscount Knebworth for permission to examine the Oriental correspondence of Wilfred Scawen Blunt, at the West Sussex County and Diocesan Record Ofce; to the Mohamed Ali Foundation and the Keeper of Oriental Books at the Durham University Library, for permission to consult the Abbas H ilmi II Papers; to Dr. Muhammed cAmira, Chief Librarian of the Azhar Mosque Library, for permission to study the les of the Cairo caliphate congress; to Mr . Abu al-Futuh Hamid cAwda, Director of the Archives of the Presidency of the Republic in Cairo, for permission to examine the Egyptian royal archives; to Mr. Daniel Bourgeois o f the Swiss Federal Archives, for his k ind assistance; to Mr . Yitzhak Oron, Director of Research at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, for permission to study the wartime papers of Hajj Amin al-Husayni; to the French Embassy in Cairo, for permission to consult the Embassy post records; to Dr. P. A. Alsberg, Director of the Israel State Archives, for providing Arabic documentation concerning the Jerusalem congress; and to the staff of the India Ofce Records, for exceptional efforts on my behalf. The initial research was made possible through grants from the Princeton Program in Near Eastern Studies, the United States Information Service through the American Research Center in Egypt, and the BenGurion Fund. For the opportunity to revise and publish the work, I acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Bronfman Program for the Study of Jewish-Arab Relations. I am also grateful for k ind acts of hospitality to Professor Shimon Shamir and the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo, and to Paulette and David Spiro of Princeton. It was my good fortune that Leslie Bialler of Columbia University Press undertook to copy-edit the manuscript. Edna Liftman guided the book past treacherous bureaucratic shoals. Then there is my wife Sandra, who learned that scholarship somehow does qualify as work, and then made the decisive contribution.

Transliteration has proved a thorny problem in a work which includes names and terms drawn from most major Mus lim languages. My approach has been to avoid unsightly Arabicization in transliterating other Muslim languages, and to omit diacriticals and vowel quantities. In this manner, I hope to satisfy even readers who reach this book from opposite ends of the Muslim world, with their own conventions of transliteration. Within each Mus lim language, my method has been simpli ed but consistent, and its principles will be readily evident to the specialist.

NOTES
IN T R OD U C T ION 1. Loui s M assignon, " L' entente islamique inter nationale et les deux congres musulmans de 1926" ; H . A. R. Gi bb, Whither Islam? 354- 64; Richar d H ar tm ann, " Z um Gedanken des 'Kongresses' i n den R efor m bestr ebungen des islamischen Or i ents."

1. T H E C O S M O P O LI T A N M I L I E U 1. T he novel w ent thr ough m any editions. It is summarized by F. A. Tansel, ed. Namik Kemalin mektuplan, 2: 177- 79. For m or e details on the publ i cati on of the book , see Om er Famk A k an, " N am i k Kem al ' i n Ki t ap H al i ndek i Eser ler inin I l k N esi r l er i ." F or N am i k Kemal's appeal for M usl i m sol i dar i ty i n hi s ow n era, see M us tafa Ozon, Namdc Kemal ve

Ibret Gazetesi, 74-78.

2. T he gather i ng was called a majlis; t he dialogue, muhawara.

3. 'Abdallah Efendi ibn Husayn al-Suwaydi, al-Hunaj al-qat 'iyya li-ittilaq al-raq al-islamiyya,
22 Eighteenth C entur y," 294- 96. 2 74. E. G. Br ow ne, "Pan- Islam ism ," 323. . 5. T ex t of pr ocl am ati on i n Revue du monde musulman ( 1 9 1 4 13: 385- 86. D etai l s on the C attitudes of Iraq' s Shl' i scholars to the Ottom an state are pr ovi ded by Abdul - H adi Hair i, Ski f 'ism and Constitutionalism in Iran. . 6. E. G. Br ow ne (Cambridge) t o W i l fr i d Scawen Bl unt, Febr uar y 16,1911, i n Bl untChichester, l e 9, " Edw ar d G. Br ow ne." L . 7. O n the or igins of thi s cur r ent of thought, see D w i ght E. Lee, " T he Or i gi ns of PanIslamism," and N i k k i R. Keddi e, "Pan- Isl am as Pr oto- N ati onal i sm ." L o 8. H . A. R. Gi bb, " Lut Pasa on the Ottom an C al i phate," and Fritz Steppat, " Khal i fat, c Dar al-Istam und die loyalitat der Ar aber zum osmanischen Reich bei Hana tischen Juristen k des 19. Jahr hunder ts." h 9. See Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam, 1 4 1 a 10. H al i l inalcik, " T he Socio-Political Effects of the D i ffusi on of Fire-arms in the M i ddl e E as r 5 t," 0.2 0 2 t 11. Ant hony Reid, " Si xteenth C entur y Tur kish In uence i n W estern Indonesia"; Seljuk 10. , Affan, "Relations Betw een the Ottom an Empire and the M usl i m Ki ngdom s i n the M al ayN Indonesian Ar chi pel ago" ; and docum ents publ i s hed b y R azaul hak Sah, " A c i Padisahi a Sultan Al aeddi n' i n KanunI Sul tan Silleym an' a M ek tubu." d 12. Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, 27-28. i 13. B. G. M ar ti n, " M ai Idris o f Bor nu and the Ottom an Tur ks, 1576- 78," 478- 79. A r more com pl ete set o f docum ents w as publ i shed by C engi z Or honl u, " Osm anl i - Bor nu S miinasebetine ai d belgeler ." h 14. T hi s reassertion i s descr ibed b y Ber nar d Lew i s, " O t t om an Em pi r e i n t he M i da N i neteenth C entur y: A R evi ew ," 2 9 0 h - 15. F or Al ger i an i m m i gr ati on see Char les- Rober t Ager on, Les Algfriens musulmans et la ,9 4 . ( 1 8 7 1 France 2 3919) , 1 3 2 : ; 0 7 9 1 a 9 2 ; n s e d e H a l a s o m J i .