Ottomans and Arabs

From: Daut Dauti

Against the Ottoman Empire, before the Saudis, the Yemenis rose up and later others in the Arab countries. Even in Yemen, the uprising was so powerful that the Sultan sent Albanian units to quell it. This was not only because the Albanians were an elite unit, but the sultan did this action also in order to remove the Albanian soldiers from the Balkans, where the Albanian nationalist movement was taking off.

The Sultan was the caliph, but among the Arabs, this role was very faded. In fact, the Arabs did not even consider the Sultan as a Muslim, nor did they consider the Ottoman Empire as such. And, they had reason that neither the sultan nor the empire was interested in religion. Of the 36 Ottoman sultans who ruled the empire from 1299 to the last one in 1922, none of them went on pilgrimage. I mean no sultan has fulfilled one of the five essential conditions for being a Muslim. I mean such was the ignorance of the sultans about Islam, in the eyes of the Arabs indignant with his power. However, the war of the Arabs against the Ottomans could not have a religious character. The war of the Arabs, like the Albanians, was motivated by nationalism and not by religion. However, among the Arabs even today there is an anti-Ottoman feeling, but this is not necessarily anti-Turkish and anti-Islamic, as is manifested today in the case of the Balkan countries.

The Arabs have always looked down on the Ottomans. The Ottomans had no more than a powerful army and the ability to establish administration and collect taxes. In the Arab countries, the Ottomans did not have the opportunity to impose culture and art, because they did not have more than the Arabs. The Ottomans did not have the opportunity for the Arabs to even build something (mosques, public buildings or infrastructure) better than the Arabs had. The Ottoman cultural influence on the Arabs was almost zero. Therefore, today the Arabs do not notice any significant Ottoman traces.

A friend of mine who lives in Saudi Arabia, one day told me that in this country the anti-Ottoman feeling is so present that it makes you wonder if the Ottomans are still there ruling or have just left. So this feeling still exists today, even though more than a century has passed since the Ottomans left. The Arabs did not fare well under Ottoman rule either. The Arabs today are divided into several states, just like the Albanians. This is the reason, and the Ottomans are not entirely innocent in this regard, even though external intervention (the mixture of European powers) played a primary role. /Telegraph/