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Workshops & seminars

Speaker Series - *Postponed* Ex–Ottoman Syrians and Saudi Patronage in the post-WW1 Middle East


Date & time
Friday, October 31, 2014
12 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.
Speaker(s)

Prof. Laila Parsons - Department of History, McGill University

Cost

This event is free

Organization

Department of History

Where

McConnell Library Building
1400 De Maisonneuve W.
Room LB-1014

Wheel chair accessible

Yes

***Please note that this talk has been postponed.  Please check back towards the end of this semester for an update.***

 

 

The defeat of the Ottomans in WW1 left many Arab army officers and civil servants without the professional futures they had expected. Some of these men went on to build new national institutions in Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. Others became transnational rebels, organizing and fighting in the anti-colonial revolts that broke out across Bilad al-Sham after the British and French occupations. The end of the Sultanate/Caliphate in 1923 and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey cut these men off from their former Ottoman professional networks, which centered on Istanbul. Many turned south, to the independent Kingdom of Ibn Sa‘ud, for support and patronage, spending years living in exile in Saudi Arabia following the French suppression of the Syrian Revolt in 1927. Drawing on Arabic memoirs and documents from the Syrian and British archives, this paper examines the evolving relations between these ex-Ottoman Syrian rebels and the emerging Saudi state in the late 1920s and 1930s.

Laila Parsons is an Associate Professor at McGill University, where she holds a joint position in the Department of History and Classical Studies and the Institute of Islamic Studies. She is the author of a book and a number of articles on the 1948 War for Palestine, and has just completed her second book, Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Independence, 1914-1948, which will be published in 2015. The book draws on Qawuqji’s own archive to tell a detailed story about his role in the Great Syrian Revolt (1925), the Palestine Revolt (1936), The Iraqi Revolt (1941), and the War for Palestine (1948).  


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