From Asabiyya to Nation-State: The Middle East as an Orientalist Cliché

Edward Said famously observed that the ‘East’ exists not as a geographical fact but as a constructed image in the Western imagination. Thi...

Edward Said famously observed that the ‘East’ exists not as a geographical fact but as a constructed image in the Western imagination.

This image continues to permeate the contemporary political discourse.

The following words by Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Ankara and Special Representative for Syria, reignited debates over the sociopolitical foundations of Middle Eastern politics:

“There is no such thing as the Middle East. There are tribes and villages in the region. The British and French created nation-states in 1916. However, the Middle East does not function in this manner. Everything begins with the individual, the family, the village, the tribe, the community, and religion.”

Barrack's statement is a contemporary version of the approach criticized by Edward Said in Orientalism, which reads the Middle East through the lens of pre-modern tribal structures detached from modern political institutions.

With these words, Barrack implies that the nation-state in the Middle East was established through external coercion. He disregards the entire body of work on modernization and instead focuses on the role of the state in the modernization

Modernization can certainly be read as an external imposition, but Barrack is pointing to something else:

It is a correct observation that the nation-state in the Middle East was established “from above” through partition agreements such as the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, but it is incomplete.

For example, the literature is full of empirical data that refute Barrack's argument.

It is well known that many bottom-up factors, such as anti-colonial movements, social mobilization, and local currents, influenced the formation of the modern state in the Middle East.

Local elites and social classes are known to have played a pioneering role in state-building. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a more sensitive approach to the phenomenon of historical socio-political transformation rising from the bottom.

Although countries such as Iraq and Syria were initially established as Barrack indicated, local and ideological mobilization subsequently came to the fore.

These movements did in fact served as platforms for regional movements such as the BAAS.

Therefore, the argument that the Middle East’s multilayered affiliations invalidate the nation-state is incorrect.

Such identities are often intertwined, with individuals choosing cooperation over competition.

One could argue, for instance, that the failure of movements such as the BAAS, which advocated Arab unity, was due to the prevailing nation-state interests of countries such as Egypt.

Approaching the Middle East through the lens of nation-states rather than tribes and sects disregards the region’s modernization experiences.

For example, compulsory military service, modern education systems, and language policies have produced collective identities that transcend tribal or sectarian ones.

Barrack’s remarks invite a reconsideration of that we need to reconsider the concept of asabiyya, which Ibn Khaldun discussed centuries ago in his Muqaddimah.

Asabiyya is the source of social solidarity, but it is temporary, dissolving over time and giving way to centralized authority.

In a sense, tribalism is not an alternative to the nation-state but rather a historical stage that paved the way for its emergence in the modern world.

Asabiyya (عصبية) derives from the Arabic root word ‘asab’ (bond, kinship, solidarity).

It has meanings such as social solidarity, group consciousness, and collective loyalty. According to Ibn Khaldun, a group with a strong asabiyya establishes centralizeded authority. Thus, tribal solidarity is the core of power.

Ibn Khaldun defines asabiyya through blood ties, but it is not limited to this. Protection, friendship, and alliance also contribute to asabiyya.

Thus, asabiyya can arise even in the absence of blood ties.

In the Middle East, tribal and sectarian ties become prominent when the state weakens. However, this phenomenon does not render the nation-state insignificant; on the contrary, it may point to its irreplaceability in the global order.

In short, Barrack's words may seem, at first glance, like a ‘realist’ assessment of the social structure of the region, but they are a cliché that trivializes and oversimplifies the region's complex history rather than explaining it.

Therefore, the states in the Middle East are not merely a cartographic conception of Europe's borders, as in the 1916 Sykes–Picot example, but also a process of transformation exposed to the effects of local nationalism and modernization projects.

As Said also pointed out, the real issue is not so much understanding the reality of the Middle East as questioning the narratives built upon it.

Let us conclude with another quote from Said: ‘It is the intellectual’s role to break down the stereotypes and reductive categories that inhibit human communication and understanding.’