The Shaping of the Modern Middle East Read Online Free PDF Page B

Holocaust were able to reintegrate more or less successfully into their former homelands. No such simple solution was available in Eastern Europe, where the survivors of the Holocaust who endeavored to return to their former homes found themselves confronting old and renewed prejudice, aggravated by a new political order. In the Nazi era and its immediate aftermath, great numbers of Jews from Europe made their way to Palestine, often illegally and despite the efforts of the mandatary authorities, sensitive to Arab hostility, to keep them out.
    By 1948, the number of Jews had increased to more than half a million, and when the British government renounced the mandate and the United Nations voted for the creation of Jewish and Arab states in the former mandated territories, the Jews took up their option and proclaimed the state of Israel-the first Jewish state in the Holy Land since the destruction of the ancient Jewish polity by the Roman Empire. An incidental consequence of the establishment of this state was to complete the virtual liquidation-by sometimes voluntary and sometimes forced emigration-of the ancient Jewish communities in the Arab lands, whose position had already been undermined by the new and often intolerant nationalism.
    The rise of Jewish nationalism and the emergence of the Jewish state were accompanied by the revival of Hebrew, which had previously survived only as a language of religion, scholarship, and literature and as a medium of communication among learned Jews of different nationalities. In Israel it has become the national language, with Arabic as the second official language. Apart from a few isolated communities of Aramaic-speaking Christian villagers in Syria and in the region around Lake Urmia, the other ancient languages of the Middle East have died out almost completely. In general, the Christian and Jewish minorities in the Arab lands speak Arabic; the Jews of Persia, Persian. The Greek- and Armenianspeaking Christians and Spanish-speaking Jews of Turkey constitute exceptions to the general pattern of linguistic assimilation.

    Only one linguistic and ethnic minority of any importance has survived in the central lands of Middle Eastern Islam: the Kurds, who number many millions. The largest Kurdish populations are to be found in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran; there are smaller groups in Syria and Transcaucasia. The Kurdish presence in these lands is well attested throughout the Islamic period, and there is evidence that they have been there since remote antiquity. Although soon converted and deeply committed to Islam, to which Kurdish soldiers, statesmen, and scholars made a significant contribution, they retained their own language and identity. Linguistically, Kurdish is related to Persian; culturally, it is heavily indebted to Arabic, but it remains distinct from both. In medieval times, the Kurds, like the other peoples of the region, defined no national territory and established no national state. There were Islamic dynasties of Kurdish as of other ethnic origins, the most notable of which was that founded by the great Saladin. In an Islamic state, religion, not language or ethnicity, defines political identity, and the Kurds were for the most part content to be Muslims in a Muslim polity. In more recent times, however, the emergence of nationalist ideologies and the attempt to create national states have transformed them into minoritiessome of them would say oppressed minorities-in their homelands, and a Kurdish nationalist movement has won increasing support for the argument that the Kurds, like other nations, are entitled to selfdetermination and national independence, or at least autonomy.
    On the fringes of the Middle East zone, a number of other languages remain in use. Afghanistan has two official languages, Pashto and Persian. In North Africa, the indigenous Berber languages are still spoken by very small groups in Libya and Tunisia and by more important minorities in Algeria and