Arab nationalism is, put basically, the view that the Arabs are a single nation and most often expressed in a desire for a united Arab state. Arab nationalism began before the fall of the Ottoman empire. Many Arab intellectuals desired to be free of the Ottoman yoke, and their ideas were inspired by the incursion of Western European powers, particularly Napoleonic France, and later Britain into the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.

Aside from the desire to secede from the empire a further driving force behind the movement was the inefficiency of the empire, which was already beginning to crumble, and the perceived superiority of the Western states and their ideas of Nationalism.

Thus once the empire fell, these movements were quick to fill the vacuum. Britain and France strove to establish puppet regimes, absolute monarchies in almost all cases in the Arab states, but the nationalist movement was by then strong, and many of the revolutions in Arab states were nationalist driven.

The best example of this is Nasser in Egypt. Nasser was a pan-Arabist who sought to unite all the Arabs under a single nation state and made some progress with Syria in doing so, but ultimately failed.

Not so much effecting Arab Nationalism, but a key factor here is Political Islamism. There is a very interesting interplay in the Middle East between Islam and Arab nationalism, because not all Arabs are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arabs, and the two ideologies have always had to adjust for these factors.

A somewhat dated but very good book on the matter is The Arabs in History by Bernard Lewis. I also recommend reading The Dream Palace of the Arabs by Fouad Ajami.

Pan-Arab nationalism began in 632AD with the rise of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad managed to attract and convert the different Bedouin tribes of Arabia under the name of Islam. The two successive Arab dynasties, the Ummayid and Abbasayid, continued expanding the new Arabic empire and spreading Islam to places they conquered.

Just a disclaimer, everything I’m going to be talking about is excluding Asian Islamic cultures. I know they exist, I know they’re massive and important, just not for the purpose of this. There’s also a ton of building blocks to understand where Nasser and the Ba’ath party originated from. So please bear with this wall of text.

Eventually the directly controlled “Arab” empire stretched from the Levant to Spain. The key point with this is the concept of the “umma al-islamiyya,” the Islamic spiritual community bound together under the Islamic dynasties. Now, you’ve got to remember that these tribes were slammed together through force, conquest, and trade. They didn’t exactly have a huge amount in common other than religion and language. So, the “umma” was a brilliant idea, a confederation of Arabs bound together under Islam by Muhammad.

Even though it was more religious in meaning than temporal, the Caliph was conveniently both. The Abbasids took full advantage of that. Arabic became widely spoken, books were translated into it, and Arabic/Islamic became pretty much synonymous.

“. . . the power of the Caliph is, in principle, not absolute, since absolute power belongs only to God. All temporal power on the other hand, restricts the liberty and independence of the individual, attributes bestowed on him by God. Consequently the power of the ruler, which restricts individual freedom, must itself be restricted to the aims of tutelage and protection only. Moderation, kindness, temperateness are incumbent on the ruler. He must be just, and must follow strictly the prescriptions laid down in the Qur’an. Only thus does his power remain valid, and his edicts command obedience.” (Haim)

Enter the Ottomans. 1517, they won a war against the Mamluks, giving full control over the traditional Islamic and Arabic lands. Mainly Islamic holy sites. And trade routes. Ottomans take over the Caliphate.

Fast forward to the 19th and 20th centuries, Ottoman/Turkish nationalism kicks off. Arab provinces had been getting the short end of everything in this Istanbul-centric empire, but the Caliph is the proper ruler, right? Since the Ottomans were focused on Anatolia and really just co-opted Arabic/Islamic culture, they never became a part of the culture in any meaningful way other than providing the Caliph.

The increasing Turkish nationalism of the late 19th/early 20th centuries slowly began to alienate the Arab provinces even more. They’d already made it a point to take most of the resources and keep provincial investments limited, but not as much on a social level before. To quote one of the more prominent Arab nationalist scholars of the time, Rashid Rida, “if the Turks pursue a policy based on racial nationalism they stand to lose most, because they would end up restricting themselves to Anatolia.” (Haddad)

Rida’s argument was that nationalism based on ethnicity was a European concept and incompatible with the Islam and Ottoman Empire due to the wide variety of ethnicities in the Arabic world, and that the answer to the empire’s problems was to be found in unification under Islam. Before then, the majority of Arabic scholars had struggled to develop theories that would allow their needs for individualism to grow within the tenets of Islam and the Ottoman Empire. The reason for this is that Sunni scholars say, “the resistance of the umma to the tyrannical ruler must be carried on with wisdom, foresight, and care not to cause civil strife, and with the principle of following the course of the lesser evil.” (Haim)

Then, in 1908, the Sultan lost absolute power. Things fell apart pretty quickly after that and by 1923 the Ottoman Empire was gone. Massive power vacuum and also a loss of overall identity since there wasn’t a Caliph any longer. Everyone had been Ottoman and Islamic for so long that, well. What next? Who am I? Am I Arab? Islamic? A member of my tribe? Do we really want to just fall back on tribal relations? Life seems like it was really good back in the days of the Prophet so why don’t we look at the Quran for an answer?

Wait, what about the umma?

An influential Syrian Arab nationalist (early 20th century), Sati’ al-Husri, wrote the following about the umma: “Fortunate is the umma . . . every member of which works for the good of everybody (al-kull), aiming at nothing which contradicts their aim, neglecting nothing which pertains to the umma. Then they will be like a firm structure, shaken neither by tempests nor by earth quakes. It is from the strength of everyone that the umma gathers its strength . . . This is the umma in which virtues have prevailed.” (Haim)

The passage shows that there was a good understanding of the necessity of unification, as well as the importance of civic responsibility. Each person has an obligation to perform tasks to uphold the group. What remained is for them to define for themselves and translate European thoughts on nationalism into Arabic. The problem with the translation came in the reliance of the Arabic language to use religious terms to define activities that many believed should be secular. Umma, as previously stated, has primarily religious meanings so wasn’t really what they were looking for in this new, secular role.

The first word that needed to be translated into Arabic was the word, ‘nation.’ The word chosen for this was, ‘watan.’ In the late 1870’s, Husain al-Marsafi defines the word watan in his tract Al-kilam al-thaman as “the land where the umma lives, but specifically watan means a habitation.” (Haim)

Muhammad ‘Abduh further defined watan, tying it to the support of the homeland and moving closer to the ideal of nationalism: “. . . there are three things in a watan which compel love, solicitude, and vigilance for it. They are as follows: First, watan is the abode where there is food, protection, kin, and children; Second, it is the place of rights and duties, which are the focal points of political life and the importance of which if obvious; Third, it is the place with which one is associated and through which man is exalted and honoured, or cast down and humbled.” (Haim)

Answering your question, Pan-Arab nationalism falls more under umma (empire, for lack of a better word) while watan would be the state/province/region/tribal area of birth. It’s just really tricky concepts.

So then you’re asking about Egyptian nationalism vs Western nationalism. Again that’s just a really blurred line since nationalism really breaks down to Civic and Ethnic. Civic nationalism is where a group comes together out of shared beliefs or responsibility. Ethnic nationalism refers to the creation of a group based simply on shared genetic similarities. Regardless of the type, nationalism involves bringing a distinct identity to a large group and encouraging cooperation among smaller, more anonymous groups. Since it is impossible for a member of a nation to meet every other member of the nation, there must be a unifying aspect that encourages unity. This unifying aspect, real or imagined is key because, “… regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.” (Calhoun) So in the Arabic world that unifying aspect is . . . Islam, which falls more under civic. But there’s still very strong national ties. How do these two reconcile?

The truth is that they haven’t. The big push of Egyptian/Syrian/Iraqi nationalism under the Ba’ath Party and Nasser, cumulating in the United Arab Republic was a horrible failure because it was secular in focus instead of religious. Like I said above if there’s no unifying aspect . . . no success. In effect we’re back at stage one with heavily ethnic divisions splintering along tribal lines.

The post Ottoman period in the Middle East had a ton of rapid Arab political theory development that I didn’t even really begin to touch on, specifically secular Ba’athism. It’s run the gamut between democracy/monarchy/despotism and now experimenting with another Caliphate since none of the others have worked particularly well.

TLDR; Wind direction has an effect on Arab nationalism since it seems to change direction every 10 years. Sorry if I ended up causing more questions than answers but the bottom line is that it's still up in the air for what "Arab nationalism" will actually end up being. Civic or ethnic.

Arab Nationalism is an amazing subject. Just for clarity, before I go off on a long tangental rant, do you mean Pan-Arab Nationalism or Western style nationalism? I might get impatient and start typing about both :(