ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the origins and evolution of Arab nationalism by focusing on the life story of Fu'ad al-Khatib, a poet, revolutionary, politician, diplomat, and a very stubborn man. It highlights some of the breaks and fissures of Arab society and its political culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Al-Khatib moved in a nationalist universe that was only gaining shape in the years around World War I. He was born into a rural notable family in the village of Shhim in the Lebanese Shuf mountains, south of Beirut. His grandfather, Shaykh Yusuf al-Khatib, was qadi al-qudat, chief judge, of Mount Lebanon. A number of photographs in al-Khatib's biography give visual expression to the generational change that was going on in the poet's family between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Al-Khatib married during his stint in Khartoum and had a son. The al-Khatib family story fit into the grand narrative of the rise of Arab nationalism.
