Table Of ContentMiddle East
Monarchies
M E
IDDLE AST
M
ONARCHIES
The Challenge of Modernity
EDITED BY
Joseph Kostiner
boulder
london
Published in the United States of America in 2000 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
www.rienner.com
and in the United Kingdom by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU
© 2000 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Middle East monarchies : the challenge of modernity / edited by Joseph Kostiner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55587-862-8 (hc : alk. paper)
1. Monarchy—Middle East. 2. Middle East—Politics and government. I. Kostiner,
Joseph.
JQ1758.A58 M53 2000
321'.6'0956—dc21
99-051384
British Cataloging in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
∞ of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction
Joseph Kostiner 1
PART ONE CONTEXT
2 Monarchy in the Middle East
Bernard Lewis 15
3 Post-Ottoman Arab Monarchies: Old Bottles, New Labels?
Ami Ayalon 23
4 Why Did Arab Monarchies Fall? An Analysis of Old and
New Explanations
Bruce Maddy-Weitzman 37
5 Dynasts and Nationalists: Why Monarchies Survive
Lisa Anderson 53
6 Patterns of Monarchy in the Middle East
Gabriel Ben-Dor 71
PART TWO CASE STUDIES
7 The Jordanian Monarchy: The Hashemite Success Story
Asher Susser 87
8 The Moroccan Monarchy: A Political System in
Quest of a New Equilibrium
Remy Leveau 117
v
vi CONTENTS
9 State-Formation and the Saudi Monarchy
Joseph Kostiner and Joshua Teitelbaum 131
10 The Kuwaiti Royal Family in the Postliberation Period:
Reinstitutionalizing the “First Among Equals”
System in Kuwait
Uzi Rabi 151
11 The Persistence of Monarchy in the Arabian Peninsula:
A Comparative Analysis
F. Gregory Gause III 167
12 The Throne in the Sultanate of Oman
Joseph A. Kechichian 187
13 The Persian Monarchy and the Islamic Republic
David Menashri 213
PART THREE CHALLENGES
14 Gulf Monarchies as Rentier States: The Nationalization
Policies of the Labor Force
Onn Winckler 237
15 Good Counsel to the King: The Islamist Opposition
in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco
Gudrun Krämer 257
16 Monarchies in the Middle East: A Concluding Appraisal
Fred Halliday 289
Bibliography 305
The Contributors 327
Index 331
About the Book 341
Acknowledgments
The encouragement and assistance afforded by Asher Susser and Martin
Kramer, the previous and current directors of the Moshe Dayan Center for
Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, were a continuous
source of support and inspiration for the creation of this volume. The Ade-
nauer Foundation, Israel branch, generously held the international conference
that was the basis for the book.
The good advice and intellectual support of Gad Gilbar, at Haifa Univer-
sity, is much valued. Paul Rivlin’s contribution was very helpful. The Dayan
Center’s administrative staff—Amira Margalith, Lydia Gareh, and Roslyn
Loon—helped to bring this work to conclusion. Gill Dibner, David Med-
nikoff, Benzion Philiba, and Avi Muallem provided essential editorial assis-
tance.
Last, but not least, the cooperation of all the contributors to this volume
is duly acknowledged.
—Joseph Kostiner
vii
1
Introduction
Joseph Kostiner
Eight active, quasi-absolutist monarchical regimes prevail in the Middle East.
Several others that existed by the mid-twentieth century have since collapsed.
Understanding of Middle East monarchies—the failure of some and preva-
lence of others—merits a special study, which is the focus of this volume.
* * *
The monarchical legacy of earlier Middle East empires (in this book, meaning
the Arab and Ottoman Empires) inherited by their twentieth-century succes-
sors can be summarized by two main characteristics. First, monarchical princi-
ples were applied without official Islamic legitimacy. As is evident from
Bernard Lewis’s contribution to this volume (see Chapter 2), the title malik
(king) was regarded as non-Islamic and therefore unlawful and corrupt. Until
the twentieth century, Islamic rulers did not assume this title. A ruler’s empha-
sis was rather on fulfilling the task of a khalifa(the prophet’s substitute ruling
over a community of believers, or umma), claiming his right to rule according
to theshari‘a(holy law). However, throughout all of Islamic history, Muslim
rulers practiced at least two fundamentals of monarchic rule: individual-abso-
lutist and dynastic-hereditary. These fundamentals were often expressed in
two respective ruling principles: administrative and military apparati were es-
tablished to serve the individual ruler, and a social system based on kin, ethnic,
religious, and other solidarities was arrayed in hierarchical divisions. They
also adopted additional monarchical facets, such as royal entourages and
households. These basic principles marked the ruler’s paramount power and
position, the ruler wielding these prerogatives in hereditary fashion within a
family or a dynasty. Second, without an official religious sanction, adoption
and exercise of these qualities did not develop into a desired norm or into an
official doctrine of monarchical rule. Monarchical principles in the Arab and
Ottoman Empires evolved more haphazardly, typical of a regime created by a
forceful seizure of government, following Persian, Greek, and Byzantine ex-
amples as well as local practices and arbitrary rulers’ interests.
1
2 INTRODUCTION
Islamic monarchies had to cope with the continuous challenges inherited
in these characteristics: the need to legitimize and justify a rule, which, to
borrow Jürgen Habermas’s expression, was in a “legitimacy deficit,”1and the
need to balance absolutist rule, based on administrative and military arms,
with deference to ascriptive, religious, ethnic, and class divisions, to sustain
dynasty and factional dynamism.
In tackling these challenges, two practices evolved: there was the monar-
chical practice of the central Ottoman government, as it evolved over several
centuries and dominated the central provinces, notably the urban and village
areas. There was also the practice that emerged in the peripheral areas,
deserts, and nomadic regions, which were dominated by chiefdoms, namely,
confederacies of nomadic and sedenterized tribal groups.
The monarchical legacy of the central government included varying as-
pects. Monarchical rule originated mainly from seizure or appropriation of
rule by force (mulk), but it could then be legitimized by a vote of loyalty from
the bay‘a (people) and by a ruler’s policies and actions, tempered in the inter-
ests of Islam and the Islamic community. Likewise, the ruler’s edicts were
aimed at achieving state interests, but he could shape them through applica-
tion of the shari‘a and cooperation with ulama (religious sages). Thus,
seizure of power, directed to suit what was perceived as the common good for
society in general and put in Islamic terms, became a principle in the legacy
of classical monarchy.2
The ruler’s actual source of power hinged on his family, clan, or tribe,
namely, the extended kin-tie unit. As Ibn Khaldun (d. 1392) taught us, blood-
ties can produce an effective asabiyya(group solidarity), which may lead to
conquest, seizure of power, and the formation of an empire. Asabiyya can,
nevertheless, fade away or degenerate and, in a few generations, lead to an
empire’s downfall. However, as Cornell Fleischer showed, Ottoman rulers’
advisers and members of the intellectual elite (in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries) were familiar with Ibn Khaldun’s writings and their mean-
ing. Unlike Ibn Khaldun’s modeling, Islamic empires found ways to extend
their existence and overcome the degeneration of their asabiyya’s weak-
nesses. They did so by adopting what Ernest Gellner termed (very generally)
“the mamluksolution,” or the devising of military and administrative bodies
reliant on slave-soldiers and soldier-bureaucrats. Trained as useful tools for
the ruler, they could be trusted both for their professionalism and, as bearers
of slave status, for their personal subordination. First introduced during the
late phases of the abbasidperiod, this institution reached its highest effective-
ness during the classical age of the Ottoman Empire, as part of the devshirme
system (the cultivation of a slave-based elite). Subsequently, modern armies
and bureaucracies evolved to sustain the Ottoman Empire in its last 200
years.3 The monarch’s ability to transform his leaning post from kin-based
