Authority, Society and Political Work In Basra at the End of the Ottoman Reign

Abstract

Authority, Society and Political Work In Basra at the End of the Ottoman Reign السلطة والمجتمع والعمل السياسي في البصرةأواخر العهد العثمانيAuthority, Society, Political Work, Ottoman Reignالسلطة، المجتمع، والعمل السياسي، العهد العثمانيThe study explains that political work in Basra had complicated forms of expression. This can be seen clearly at the beginning of the Ottoman reign when it used to take the religious framework and to be corresponding to the state policy since it was one of its political agencies in the Basri area. Then, political work in Basra started to move away from the Ottoman state policy when it found that this policy was based on controlling and dominating the nonturkish people. A number of factors had their own great influence on forming the political awareness, which in its turn started to think of the state reformation. Such an awareness started to obviously appear at the end of the Ottoman era when the Basri people began to compare between their life in an area enjoying high economical circumstances and low political awareness and the areas where people live in conditions less than Basra, yet enjoying political welfare. This caused the state deterioration because of the capital negligence to the city of Basra. And here people started to think of making the capital feel of how the Basri person was living. Consequently, Basri people joined social and political organizations, thinking such entities might help them achieve what they looked for. However, they noticed that these organizations would not be able to do that because of the Ottomans policy. Hence, they were directed to the provincial area where they held conferences in Muhamra and Kuwait so as to be in touch with the Arabic society. Because the Ottoman empire enjoyed high levels of capabilities comparing to those of the resistance in Basra, the latter needed an ally to help them against the Ottoman state since they did not care but for their own interests. And here came the role of England , which showed its readiness to do so. From this point, the British entered the war and Basra region was completely prepared because of the false promises they made to the Basri people in the previous negotiations