THE LONG AND INTRICATE FUNERAL OF YASIN AL-HASHIMI: PAN-ARABISM, CIVIL RELIGION, AND POPULAR NATIONALISM IN DAMASCUS, 1937
Peter Wien
THE LONG AND INTRICATE FUNERAL OF YASIN AL-HASHIMI: PAN-ARABISM, CIVIL RELIGION, AND POPULAR NATIONALISM IN DAMASCUS, 1937 - Volume 43 Issue 2
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After his premature death in exile in Beirut in 1937, the body of former Iraqi prime minister Yasin al-Hashimi became a matter of contention between the Syrian and Iraqi governments, as did his legacy as an avid Pan-Arabist. When the coffin with the deceased stopped in Damascus on its promised transfer to Baghdad, the Syrian National Bloc government used the opportunity to stage a solemn republican funeral to bolster its Arab nationalist credentials. Syrian conflicts with the Iraqi government that had removed al-Hashimi in a military coup in the previous year ultimately made Yasin's return impossible, however, and he was buried in Damascus, next to Saladin's mausoleum at the Umayyad Mosque. Unfortunately for the National Bloc, the funeral coincided with the first clashes over the Alexandretta crisis. The resulting street protests destroyed all public confidence that the bloc had gained during the funeral, underlining the volatile nature of nationalist politics at the time.

18 See Khoury, Philip S., Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Baʿthists, and Free Officers (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Eppel, Michael, “The Elite, the Effendiyya, and the Growth of Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in Hashemite Iraq, 1921–1958,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30 (1998): 227–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 See: “Sûreté Damas, 31.12.36, Agitation Sociale,” Beyrouth, 4 January 1937, box 1918, CADN; “Sûreté Damas, 29.12.36, Agitation sociale,” Beyrouth, 4 January 1936 [should be: 1937], box 1918, CADN; and “Sûreté Damas, 4.1.36 [should be 37], Grève des chauffeurs,” Beyrouth, 4 January 1936 [should be 1937], box 1918, CADN. (Also see similar reports for 8, 9, 12, etc. January and for other towns.)

88 A French report says that it did not attract more than 2,000 persons. “Sûreté Damas 29-1-37, manifestation contre les accords concernant Alexandrette,” 30 January 1937, box 1918, CADN. Most of the details of the following account are taken from this report. “Al-Muzahara al-Shaʿbiyya al-Kubra amama Dar al-Hukuma,” al-Qabas, 29 January 1937, 4, noted, faithful to the National Bloc, that the students gathered in the Tekkiye again with a “great part” deciding to join the government demonstration.

96 Gershoni and Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation, 141ff.; Coury, Ralph M., “The Politics of the Funereal: The Tomb of Saad Zaghlul,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 29 (1992): 191–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baron, Egypt as a Woman, 97–98; Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James P., Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 188ff.Google Scholar; and Hourani, Albert Habib, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 202CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Compare the participation of scouts and students in Farid's cortege in Gershoni and Jankowski, Commemorating the Nation, 167.