1869 - 1946
Lebanese poet, journalist, and political activist.
Shakib Arslan was a Druze notable from the Shuf region of Lebanon. He was dedicated to the preservation of the Ottoman Empire and to the social order of Islam. Between World War I and II, he became an anti-imperial activist and a relentless campaigner for the cause of Islamic solidarity. His voluminous writings, his well-connected network of associates, and his knack for attracting publicity made him one of the most visible Arab figures of this era.
The Arslans were a powerful Druze family whose members had the right to bear the title of amir (roughly equivalent to prince). Shakib's somewhat eclectic education - he studied at both the Maronite College and the Ottoman government school in Beirut - was designed to prepare him to carry on the family tradition of political leadership in changing times; his primary interest as a young man, however, was literature. He published his first volume of poetry at seventeen and continued to engage in literary pursuits for the next several years, earning for himself the honorific title "the prince of eloquence," by which he was known throughout his life. Eventually, he assumed the role expected of an Arslan amir by serving as qa'immaqam of the Shuf - in 1902 and from 1908 to 1911. He was elected to the Ottoman parliament in 1914 and spent the years of World War I defending the Ottoman cause - to hold the empire together. He disavowed the Arab Revolt of 1916, branded its leader Sharif Husayn ibn Ali a traitor to Islam, and predicted that an Allied victory would lead to the division and occupation of the Arab provinces by the forces of European imperialism.
When this prediction was realized, Arslan became an exile, barred by British and French authorities from entering the Arab states that came under their control through League of Nations mandates. Instead of being marginalized by his changed circumstances, Arslan emerged as an international figure during the period between the world wars. His residence in Geneva, Switzerland, served as a gathering point for Arab and Muslim activists, and his position as the unofficial representative of the Syro-Palestinian delegation to the League of Nations afforded him opportunities to present the Arab case to the European community. His influence was expanded through the journal La Nation Arabe (1930 - 1938), which he founded and edited with Ihsan al-Jabiri. La Nation Arabe attacked all aspects of European imperialism but devoted special attention to French policies in the Maghrib (North Africa) and to Zionism in Palestine.
Notwithstanding his Druze origins, Arslan made his reputation as a staunch defender of mainstream Sunni Islam. He contributed frequent articles to such Islamic-oriented Egyptian journals as al-Shura and al-Fath; wrote biographies of his friends Rashid Rida and Ahmad Shawqi; compiled a history of Arab rule in Spain; and wrote other books on Islamic subjects. The purpose of his writing was to awaken among Muslims an awareness of their shared Islamic heritage and to summon them to action in the name of Islamic unity against the Western occupation. He believed in the primacy of an Islamic-inspired social order, and his interwar writings refuted all who challenged that belief, from the Egyptian liberal nationalists to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding president of the new secular Republic of Turkey.
More than any other figure of the era, Arslan endeavored to bring together the leaders of the North African and eastern Arab independence movements. He played an especially important role as political strategist and personal mentor to the group of young Moroccans associated with the Free School movement, and his orchestration of their international Islamic propaganda campaign against the French decree known as the Berber Dahir (1930) was certainly one of the most successful Arab protest movements of this period.
Arslan's final reputation was diminished by his World War II association with the Axis powers; at the peak of his popularity, he endeavored to coordinate an Italo - German alliance with the Arab world in order to generate leverage against Britain and France. His pro-Axis stance during the war served to discredit him, and his death in Beirut in 1946 attracted little notice.
Bibliography
Arslan, Shakib. Our Decline and Its Causes, translated by M. A. Shakoor. Lahore, Pakistan: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1962.
Cleveland, William L. Islam against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
— WILLIAM L. CLEVELAND
