Between Ruler and Rogue: Sayyid Talib al-Naqib and the British in Early Twentieth-century Basra
Between Ruler and Rogue: Sayyid Talib al-Naqib and the British in Early Twentieth-century Basra
Sayyid Talib al-Naqib was born in Basra in the late 1860s to a family of nuqabāʾ, traditional leaders and marshals of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (ashrāf). After he was shortly considered a serious candidate for the crown of Iraq, his candidacy was eventually rejected in favor of Faysal, son of Husayn of Mekka. While Talib’s story has often been relegated to the margins of national and colonial histories, British sources give a stunning impression of the complexity of Talib’s strategies, and the challenges he presented for British administrations in Iraq, Egypt and India. By exploring British correspondence and reports on Talib – from Basra, Baghdad, Istanbul, Cairo, Damascus, Delhi and Bombay – as well as Iraqi historiography, press and memoirs, this chapter shows Talib’s deliberate use of his liminal position – between rogue and ruler – to maintain the balance of power in his favour. I use his story to show how the presumably clear-cut distinction between rogue and ruler, or the law and the outlaw characteristic of Hobsbawmian reading of social banditry, can prove to be problematic.
Keywords: Basra, Iraq, British, Ottoman, Naqīb al-Ashrāf, India, Egypt
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