A Study of the Role of the Education System and Arab Nationalists in Propagating the Ideology of Nationalism in Iraq (1921-1941)

• Main Authors: Shokrollah Khakrand, siavash yadollahi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Persian
• Published: University of Isfahan 2019
• Subjects: keywords pan-arabism; nationalism; iraq; education system; sati' al-husri; fazel jamali; sami shawkat; History (General) and history of Europe; D; History of Asia; DS1-937; Medley; sami
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.22108/jhr.2020.119251.1821; https://doaj.org/article/4dd37261bb3c4ece9535b0be0aa57ab8

Abstract Since its establishment in 1921, Iraq’s borders were incorporated by a diverse medley of people who had not been joined into a single political community with a common sense of identity. For the Iraqi rulers, the education system was the most important and the best tool for expanding a common national identity. As a result, a centralized education system was created, new schools were developed, and new education with nationalist content was spread from Baghdad to other parts of the country. In the present study, the descriptive-analytical method was used and the data were collected through library sources to answer two research questions: how nationalism and the infusion of national identity were started and expanded in the Iraqi society? And what goals and motives did the nationalists have to promote nationalism in Iraq? The results showed that Arab nationalists, such as Sati' al-Husri, Fazel Jamali and Sami Shawkat, along with Syrian and Palestinian nationalists, who taught in Iraq, played an important role in the development of national identity. They expanded a common national identity with the foundation of Arabism by teaching the common Arabic history and the language developed for the curriculum. Ultimately, the spread of nationalism pursued two important goals: to create a shared identity in Iraq's multi-ethnic society and to emphasize its role in Arab unity. Introduction After World War I, it was a period of Arab political intellectual ferment. The concept of Arab ethnicity and unity came into existence, and the consciousness of being an Arab was established. To many Arab nationalists, Iraq seemed best equipped to fill the heroic role played by Prussia in uniting the German-speaking people into a unified German nation-state. The Nationalists would look back to the past; the period when Baghdad was the cradle of civilization during the time of the Abbasids at a time when the West languished in the darkness of its medieval ages. Arab nationalists set out to make Iraq the beacon from which Arab ...