ABSTRACT
It has been suggested that the era between World Wars I and II may constitute the formative years of Arab nationalism. In the historiography of Arab nationalism, the interwar years were represented as the period in which the region’s borders were conceptualized and demarcated, and as a “golden age” in which liberal national thinking reached its zenith, only to be replaced by authoritarian officers’ regimes. Scholars, ranging from Albert Hourani (especially in his classic Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age)1 to the contributors to the much-acclaimed collection Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East,2 have thus emphasized the significance of a generation of pioneers, such as Taha Husayn in Egypt, Sati al-Husri in Iraq, and George Antonius in Palestine, whose theories and concepts shaped Arab national discourses. The Egyptian case study, in particular, was studied in depth, since its leading thinkers often proclaimed their uncontested commitment to the ideas of liberal democracy.3
