Table Of ContentHouses built on sand
Series editors: Simon Mabon, Edward Wastnidge and May Darwich
After the Arab Uprisings and the ensuing fragmentation of regime– society relations
across the Middle East, identities and geopolitics have become increasingly contested,
with serious implications for the ordering of political life at domestic, regional and
international levels, best seen in conflicts in Syria and Yemen. The Middle East is the
most militarised region in the world, where geopolitical factors remain predominant
in shaping political dynamics. Another common feature of the regional landscape
is the continued degeneration of communal relations as societal actors retreat into
substate identities, while difference becomes increasingly violent, spilling out beyond
state borders. The power of religion – and trans- state nature of religious views and
linkages – thus provides the means for regional actors (such as Saudi Arabia and
Iran) to exert influence over a number of groups across the region and beyond. This
series provides space for the engagement with these ideas and the broader political,
legal and theological factors to create space for an intellectual reimagining of
socio- political life in the Middle East.
Originating from the SEPAD project (www.sepad.org.uk), this series facilitates the
reimagining of political ideas, identities and organisation across the Middle East,
moving beyond the exclusionary and binary forms of identity to reveal the
contingent factors that shape and order life across the region.
Houses built on sand
Violence, sectarianism and revolution
in the Middle East
Simon Mabon
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Simon Mabon 2020
The right of Simon Mabon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND)
licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s)
and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 2646 7 hardback
ISBN 978 1 5261 2647 4 open access
First published 2020
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external
or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any
content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK
This book is dedicated to my wife, meri douniyeh, Swarnalatha.
It is also dedicated to my family: my parents Sally and George, and my
in- laws, Padmavati and Sumohan. Deda, you remain with us, forever.
Contents
Foreword viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 The politics of sovereignty and space 9
2 Letters and declarations 32
3 Ink on paper 62
4 The dawla and the umma 92
5 Building Beirut, transforming Jerusalem and breaking Basra 125
6 The people want the fall of the regime 149
7 The regime fights back 181
8 Houses built on sand 211
Conclusion: The end of the dream 235
Selected bibliography 245
Index 248
Foreword
Mehran Kamrava
Scholars have long had a tendency to operate in silos, and those focusing on the
Middle East have been no exception. Seldom, in fact, has there been fruitful dialogue
between related disciplines. Area studies, including Middle Eastern studies, has
been particularly guilty of this sin of omission, as very rarely has it engaged broader
theoretical debates about some of the core concepts it employs in its analysis. Concepts
such as ‘state’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘legitimacy’, ‘revolution’ and many others are often
employed freely and with little or no attention to their genealogies, their meaning and
use in other disciplines and some of the theoretical discussions surrounding them.
The present volume is an exception to the rule, situating its subject of study firmly at
the crossroads of Middle Eastern area studies and political theory, deftly also drawing
from international relations, history and political sociology.
In the pages to come, answers to three key questions are explored: what are the roots
of sovereign power and the supporting logic of governmentality in the Middle East;
the timing, means and reasons why sovereign power is contested; and implications
of the fragmentation of sovereign power for the ordering of space across the Middle
East. This ambitious task of interrogating the centrality of sovereignty at the heart of
the political history of contemporary Middle East is achieved through meticulous
employment of analytical tools from several disciplines. The manuscript begins with
an exploration of the links between domestic and regional developments, pointing
particularly to the importance of linkages of sovereignty, agency and human action,
and the state. Investigations of the region’s political history, the role of religion in
shaping politics and sovereignty, and pent-up social and political pressures and their
eruption in the 2010–11 mass uprisings follow. To bring the journey to a conclusion,
the book ends with the responses of local states to the uprisings, and how the ensuing
domestic repercussions continue to reverberate and to shape the region’s politics.
Trauma can be intergenerational, and from the earliest days of pan-Arabism in the
1950s up until today, the political history of the Middle East has been marked by one
traumatic experience after another. Structures and states are important, but so are the
memories of the individuals who experience and respond to them. Across the Middle
East, the states and political structures that proliferated were invariably authoritarian,
shaping both the ways the states sought to legitimise their rule and the responses they
elicited in their legitimation efforts. One of the most potent of the responses came from
the domain of religion and its articulation of competing claims to authority. Agency,
structures, states and conceptions of legitimacy at variance with each other have been
the defining forces of Middle East politics, giving rise to geo-sectarian politics and
creating zones of possibility and restriction.
Foreword ix
These zones, and the unfolding of politics more generally, occur in urban areas.
Urban design and architecture, intentional or accidental, and transformative processes
such as gentrification, shape both the ways in which life can be regulated and the
popular responses that structures and sources of authority elicit. These responses
have led to a long history of urban political unrest across the region, culminating with
unsurpassed contagion in what optimistically came to be called the Arab Spring. The
Spring was not to be, however, soon reversed by the forces of violence, war and army
coups. The outcome, ultimately, was no better than what had been replaced: houses
built on sand, geopolitical sectarianisation, realignments and an American president
globally plying his trade of commerce, his only trade, along with a young and ambitious
prince determined to put his mark on Middle Eastern history. Indeed ‘end of a dream’,
as the book soberly concludes.
What we have before us here is a rich text, informed by meticulous scholarship,
extensive fieldwork and meaningful engagement with existing scholarship in the
field. More importantly, the volume is theoretically informed, presenting new insights
and interpretations, and examines, in both subtle and overt manners, the struggle
over sovereignty, and its meaning and consequences, that has shaped so much of
contemporary politics in the Middle East. One only hopes the present volume becomes
a model for future generations of scholars to follow. As such, it serves as an excellent
inaugural volume for the Identities and Geopolitics in the Middle East series.
