Dictionary of Modern Arab History Dictionary of Modern Arab History
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DICTIONARY OF MODERN ARAB HISTORY DICTIONARY OF MODERN ARAB HISTORY AN A TO Z OF OVER 2,000 ENTRIES FROM 1798 TO THE PRESENT DAY ROBIN BIDWELL WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. REX SMITH ~ ~~~1~;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1998 by Kegan Paul International This edition first published in 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Estate of Robin Bidwell, 1998 Transferred to Digital Printing 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 10: 0-7103-0505-2 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0505-3 (hbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. To Leila, with love PREFACE The publication of the late Robin Bidwell's Dictionary of Modern Arab History comes as good news. The publishers are to be commended for having, with the aid and support of Professor Rex Smith, persevered in bringing this book into the public domain in spite of the tragic death of its compiler only a short time after the manuscript had been submitted. Knowing Bidwell's meticulous care over such details as dates, locations and various contacts of political and diplomatic significance, for which he had an exceptionally sharp eye, clearly his Dictionary will provide a work of reference as useful as it is needed by all those concerned the better to understand modern Arab history. Henceforth they, and, in the field of diplomacy, commerce, stra tegic studies, and cultural exchanges, they are many, will have at hand the work of a man who, as Professor Smith reminds us in his Introduction, had visited and known every Arab land. The fact that, as Rex Smith also mentions, the ground work ofthe Dictionary was entirely Bidwell's, so that the work is that of, not a committee, but one individual, endows it with a special kind of liveliness. As a human document, its achievement owed to one man's dedication, it is idiosyncratic and, since Robin Bidwell was always firm in his opinions and extremely honest in expressing them, this means that there will probably be entries by which some of those who refer to the book will be riled. Never mind, for not only is this book idiosyncratic, it also happens to be the accomplishment of a man almost unique -I can only think of one or two others - in his knowledge of Arabian personalities. Such knowledge as this is of peculiar importance for students of the regions with which the Dictionary is concerned. For in areas where, in a modern and secular sense, politics have not become by any means entirely institutionalised, the role, character and individual attitudes of prominent personalities remain very important. Hence, one of the main reasons why this wqrk is so welcome rests on Bidwell's unusual degree of familiarity with leading political figures in the modern history ofa world which was rudely awakened from the dream ofIslamic invulnerability when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, the opening date of Dr. Bidwell's encyclopaedic compilation. Cambridge, March 1998 Peter Avery vii INTRODUCTION When Robin Bidwell died suddenly at his desk in Coney Weston in Suffolk in June 1994, he had already spent fourteen years at work on his Dictionary. Bidwell was educated at Downside and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he gained a first in History. His first taste of the Middle East came when he was posted to the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt as a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. In 1955 he became a political officer in the Western Aden Protectorate, serving in such places as Subaihi country, Ahwar and Lodar. His real Middle Eastern travels began after 1959 when he left Aden for a post as Oxford University Press travelling editor and it was his proud boast when he returned to Cambridge in 1965 that he had visited every single Middle Eastern country without excep tion. Back in Cambridge, he worked for his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of the late Professor Bob Serjeant. He took the degree in 1968, his thesis being on the subject of the French administration in Morocco. From 1968 until his retirement in 1990, Bidwell held the dual office of Secretary and Librarian of the Middle East Centre in Cambridge. His achievements there were many: he created the Centre library; he taught an undergraduate course in modern Arab history; he successfully supervised a steady stream of Ph.D. students; he insti tuted a thriving seminar programme; he was a founding editor with Serjeant of Arabian Studies in 1974 and of New Arabian Studies in 1993. Wholly committed and enthusiastic as he was for the task in hand, Bidwell never made any secret of the problems of organisation and presentation which the Dictionary constantly threw in his path. Other major decisions too had to be taken: who to put in - and thus who to leave out? When should the line be drawn chronologically, bearing in mind that many subjects are still alive and still in the process of making history? How much space should be spent on so-and-so or such-and-such and is the balance right? Whether Bidwell got the answers to these questions right or not is left to the decision ofthe reader. The organisational and presentational problems he bequeathed to the editorial team which has dealt with the work since his death. It is indeed difficult to state precisely how ready the text was for publication. We can safely say that all the entries were there, although some were incomplete in the sense that they existed wholly or partially in note form. All these latter have now been completed relying solely on Bidwell's notes. It is clear too that some entries are more polished than others and it is highly probable that he was intending to come back to the less well polished before submission to the publishers. No attempt has been made to 'improve' them since his death. With the exception of the completed notes, the texts of the entries are entirely those which Bidwell himself produced, just as all the hard viii work and research over the years and the interpretation of the material are Bidwell's also. Bidwell himself clearly had an individualistic and rather complicated presen tation in mind for his Dictionary. He appears to have had in mind the idea of grouping entries with a comprehensive cross-referencing system rather than presenting them all together in alphabetical order. He may well have determined on indices also. The decision has had to be taken to simplify this process which could not be fully understood from what notes he left behind. The reader will now find all entries together in a single alphabetical order and in a book already bursting at the seams it has also been decided to exclude indices. By far the most difficult editorial problem has been the spelling of certain words and phrases - mostly Arabic - contained in the Dictionary. They are for the most part names of people and places, but there are the names of parties, groups and institutions also. Bearing in mind that Bidwell dealt with sources for the most part in European languages and that, in any case, he writes for the general as much as for the academic reader, spellings of proper names have in most cases been left as he produced them. The only changes are minor and are made simply to bring about consistency throughout the work. Spellings ofArabic technical terms or Arabic phrases have been adjusted to represent the original as closely as possible without any attempt at some formal system of transliteration. For fourteen years, then, Bidwell laboured on the Dictionary, almost to the exclusion of all other academic activity. He ransacked the spate of scholarly and not so scholarly - books and articles which poured forth over the years; he devoured any organ of the press which proved of relevance, whether published in Europe, North America or in the Middle East; he met and sometimes formally interviewed some of the players on the Middle Eastern scene. All this material he digested and interpreted as only he could to present this Dictionary to the interested public. The work will for many years to come stand as a worthy monument to Bidwell's scholarly achievement in modern Middle Eastern history. It will be also a constant reminder of his profound love for, and understanding of, the Middle East and above all ofhis great affection for its people with whom he spent so many happy times. G. REX SMITH April I996 ix • .::::: :~:~: ~:~:~:~:~:~ :~:::::: .. • ABANE, Ramdane (I92o-S7) ABBAS, Farhat (I899-I986) Algerian Revolutionary Leader. He came from a poor Algerian nationalist leader. He came from a family of Kabyle family but educated himself to get his baccalau notables of Kabyle origin and was born near Con reat and gain a post as a municipal clerk in a commune stantine where he attended secondary school before mixte.