Abstract
Studying any political, cultural or ideological tendency in the Middle East is vain if one decides to look at it at the domestic scale. Indeed, the area must rather be regarded as a regional political entity in itself. Such approach is necessary for anyone who desires to understand correctly the political trends of the Middle East, whose Arab nationalism. Indeed the idea that Arab people belong to the same nation and should gather into a single federation or state is not new; but it received great impetus in the 20th century with the end of the Ottoman domination in the Middle East and the emergence of new political boundaries in the aftermath of the First World War.
Giving an accurate definition to what the idea of "nation" refers to may sound tricky, and to some extent, pretentious. Hence one may prefer to rely on the Syrian scholar Sati al-Husri's statement that "the Arab nation consists of all who speak Arabic as their mother-tongue, no more, no less" (Hourani: 1983; 313). He acknowledges in addition the weight of a common history shared by the Arab people as important in the development of a national feeling.
