Zaki al-Arsuzi
Encyclopedia
Zakī al-Arsūzī born Latakia
June 1899, died Damascus
July 1968) was a Syria
n political activist and writer, and is widely regarded as a main inspiration for the Ba'ath Party. He was an influential theoretician of Arab nationalism
.
family in Lattakia on the Syrian coast of the Ottoman Empire
, but moved soon afterwards to Iskandarun province
in the Sanjak of Alexandretta (now Hatay). He was educated in a religious school and a primary school in Antakya
and then received his secondary education in Konya
. After completing his education he was appointed a secondary school teacher in Antakya and later became director of education in Arsuz
province.
In 1927 al-Arsuzi traveled to Paris
to study in the Department of Philosophy in the Sorbonne
. During this period, he came under the intellectual influence of French
thinkers such as Henri Bergson
and of the German
idealists; he was also impressed by the works of Ibn Arabi
and Ibn Khaldun
.
and Deir ez-Zor. In this period he began his career of political militancy. In 1934 he was dismissed from his teaching post by the French
mandatory
authorities and returned to İskenderun
(İskandarun, also known as Alexandretta) province. At the time, there was considerable agitation over demands from the province's sizeable Turkish
minority that it be handed over to Turkey. Al-Arsuzi established his first political organisation, the National Action League
, in opposition to these demands, and was intensely active from 1936 to 1938 when the French authorities granted the province to Turkey.
In 1938 the League was dissolved, and al-Arsuzi founded the Arabism Club and opened a bookshop with the name "Al-Ba'th al-Arabi" (The Arab Renaissance). This appears to have been the first use of the term ba'th in Arab nationalist circles.
where he took up a new job, but he was dismissed before the end of the year and returned to Damascus, where according to some accounts in November he decided to establish a group under the name of the Arab Renaissance (al-ba'th al-'arabi). Historian Hanna Batatu
states that in 1944 some of al-Arsuzi's followers, led by Wahib al-Ghanim, deserted him, and later that in June 1945 they joined the Arab Resurrection (al-ihya al-'arabi) group led by Michel Aflaq
and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
. Thus, in Batatu's version, Arsuzi's part in the foundation of the Ba'th Party was of two kinds: his intellectual contribution in itself, and his role in mobilising an active group of young men, many of them refugees from Iskandarun like himself, who would form one of the nuclei of the new party. However, other writers suggest that al-Arsuzi played a direct role in the formation of the Ba'th organisation itself. When the Ba'th Party was formally established by 'Aflaq and Bitar in Damascus in 1947, Arsuzi was not a member.
and then in Aleppo
, and from 1952 until his retirement in 1959 he taught in a teacher training college. In 1963, in the wake of the Sixth National Congress of the Ba'th Party and the party's gradual alienation from its founders Aflaq and Bitar, Hafiz al-Asad arranged for Arsuzi to help with Ba'thist ideological formation in the army, and later ensured that he was granted a state pension.
Zaki al-Arsuzi died in Damascus in 1968.
Latakia
Latakia, or Latakiyah , is the principal port city of Syria, as well as the capital of the Latakia Governorate. In addition to serving as a port, the city is a manufacturing center for surrounding agricultural towns and villages...
June 1899, died Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
July 1968) was a Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
n political activist and writer, and is widely regarded as a main inspiration for the Ba'ath Party. He was an influential theoretician of Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism
Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world...
.
Early life and education
Zaki al-Arsuzi was born to an AlawiAlawi
The Alawis, also known as Alawites, Nusayris and Ansaris are a prominent mystical and syncretic religious group centred in Syria who are a branch of Shia Islam.-Etymology:...
family in Lattakia on the Syrian coast of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, but moved soon afterwards to Iskandarun province
Iskenderun
İskenderun is a city and urban district in the province of Hatay on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. The current mayor is Yusuf Hamit Civelek .-Names:...
in the Sanjak of Alexandretta (now Hatay). He was educated in a religious school and a primary school in Antakya
Antakya
Antakya is the seat of the Hatay Province in southern Turkey, near the border with Syria. The mayor is Lütfü Savaş.Known as Antioch in ancient times, the city has historical significance for Christianity, as it was the place where the followers of Jesus Christ were called Christians for the first...
and then received his secondary education in Konya
Konya
Konya is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. The metropolitan area in the entire Konya Province had a population of 1,036,027 as of 2010, making the city seventh most populous in Turkey.-Etymology:...
. After completing his education he was appointed a secondary school teacher in Antakya and later became director of education in Arsuz
Arsuz
- Geography :Arsuz at is a part of İskenderun district of Hatay Province. Distance to İskenderun is and to Antakya is . The population is 2214 as of 2010.- History :...
province.
In 1927 al-Arsuzi traveled to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to study in the Department of Philosophy in the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. During this period, he came under the intellectual influence of French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
thinkers such as Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
and of the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
idealists; he was also impressed by the works of Ibn Arabi
Ibn Arabi
Ibn ʿArabī was an Andalusian Moorish Sufi mystic and philosopher. His full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī .-Biography:...
and Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...
.
Nationalist activity in Iskandarun
Al-Arsuzi returned to Syria in 1930 and worked as a teacher in Antakya, AleppoAleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
and Deir ez-Zor. In this period he began his career of political militancy. In 1934 he was dismissed from his teaching post by the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
mandatory
League of Nations mandate
A League of Nations mandate was a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the internationally agreed-upon terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League...
authorities and returned to İskenderun
Iskenderun
İskenderun is a city and urban district in the province of Hatay on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. The current mayor is Yusuf Hamit Civelek .-Names:...
(İskandarun, also known as Alexandretta) province. At the time, there was considerable agitation over demands from the province's sizeable Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
minority that it be handed over to Turkey. Al-Arsuzi established his first political organisation, the National Action League
National Action League
The Nationalist Action League is a Syrian nationalist political party, created in 1932-1933 by a lawyer of Homs, Abderrazak al-Dandashli.This party was created in response to particular referred to the Turkish Sanjak of Alexandretta...
, in opposition to these demands, and was intensely active from 1936 to 1938 when the French authorities granted the province to Turkey.
In 1938 the League was dissolved, and al-Arsuzi founded the Arabism Club and opened a bookshop with the name "Al-Ba'th al-Arabi" (The Arab Renaissance). This appears to have been the first use of the term ba'th in Arab nationalist circles.
1940s and the formation of the Baath Movement
In 1940 al-Arsuzi travelled to BaghdadBaghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
where he took up a new job, but he was dismissed before the end of the year and returned to Damascus, where according to some accounts in November he decided to establish a group under the name of the Arab Renaissance (al-ba'th al-'arabi). Historian Hanna Batatu
Hanna Batatu
Hanna Batatu was a Palestinian American Marxist historian specialising in the history of Iraq and the modern Arab east. His work on Iraq is widely considered the pre-eminent study of modern Iraqi history.Born in Jerusalem in 1926, Hanna Batatu emigrated to the United States in 1948, the year of...
states that in 1944 some of al-Arsuzi's followers, led by Wahib al-Ghanim, deserted him, and later that in June 1945 they joined the Arab Resurrection (al-ihya al-'arabi) group led by Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, who is credited with being the ideological founder of ba'athism, a hybrid of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.-Early life:...
and Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah al-Din al-Bitar
Salah ad-Din al-Bitar , was a Syrian politician who, with Michel Aflaq, founded the Arab Ba'th Party in the early 1940s. During their student days in Paris in the early 1930s, the two worked together to formulate a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism...
. Thus, in Batatu's version, Arsuzi's part in the foundation of the Ba'th Party was of two kinds: his intellectual contribution in itself, and his role in mobilising an active group of young men, many of them refugees from Iskandarun like himself, who would form one of the nuclei of the new party. However, other writers suggest that al-Arsuzi played a direct role in the formation of the Ba'th organisation itself. When the Ba'th Party was formally established by 'Aflaq and Bitar in Damascus in 1947, Arsuzi was not a member.
The Ideology of Arab nationalism
Al-Arsuzi paid considerable attention to cultural matters, and Batatu records that the only condition of membership in his organisation was "to write or translate a book contributing to the resurrection (ba'th) of Arab heritage." He has been described as a proponent of the "linguistic image of Arab nationalism", and in 1942 published one of his most important works, Abqariyyat al-'arabiyya fi lisaniha (The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue). His approach was distinguished by its emphasis on philology, but he did also pay attention to problems of the modern state and to questions of democracy and the locus of power. Batatu has also described al-Arsuzi as having a racialist outlook which proved in the end intellectually sterile and unsatisfactory to his followers, and as having been deeply influenced in his thought by the tenets of his Alawi religious background. Other writers have been more positive in their assessment of al-Arsuzi's contribution to the ideology of Arab nationalism.Later life
After his return from Baghdad in 1940 al-Arsuzi had gained a position teaching philosophy but he was soon dismissed from it. From 1945 until 1952 he worked again as a secondary teacher, first in HamaHama
Hama is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in west-central Syria north of Damascus. It is the provincial capital of the Hama Governorate. Hama is the fourth-largest city in Syria—behind Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs—with a population of 696,863...
and then in Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, and from 1952 until his retirement in 1959 he taught in a teacher training college. In 1963, in the wake of the Sixth National Congress of the Ba'th Party and the party's gradual alienation from its founders Aflaq and Bitar, Hafiz al-Asad arranged for Arsuzi to help with Ba'thist ideological formation in the army, and later ensured that he was granted a state pension.
Zaki al-Arsuzi died in Damascus in 1968.
Sources
- Keith D. Watenpaugh,(Keith David WatenpaughKeith David WatenpaughKeith David Watenpaugh is an Associate Professor ofModern Islam, Human Rights and Peace at the University of California, Davis...
) "Creating Phantoms: Zaki al-Arsuzi, The Alexandretta Crisis and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria," in The International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28 (1996), 363-389. - Charif, Maher, Rihanat al-nahda fi'l-fikr al-'arabi, Damascus, Dar al-Mada, 2000.
- Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and New Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, London, al-Saqi BooksSaqi BooksSaqi Books is an independent UK publisher co-founded in 1984 by author and feminist Mai Ghoussoub to "print quality academic and general interest books on the Middle East". It now claims to be "the UK's largest publisher of Middle Eastern and Arabic titles"...
, 2000. ISBN 0-86356-520-4 - Seale, Patrick, Asad: the Struggle for the Middle East, Berkely, University of California Press, 1988