By Julie McWilliams

The Middle East uprisings a few years ago during what has become known as the Arab Spring weren’t the first calls for democratic representation, inclusion and equality in that region. That’s the conclusion University of Pennsylvania senior Anwar Akrouk reached while researching his honors thesis, “The Last Jihad: Arab Nationalism, the Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Minorities.”

“There’s a tremendous comparison between what they wanted to achieve then and now 100 years later,” he says.

“A lot of what we saw in the Arab Spring such as calls for accountable government was present in Greater Syria,” says Akrouk, who explains that Greater Syria encompassed present-day Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. “If not for European colonialism, it might have succeeded.”

As he writes in his senior thesis the, “first modern Arab state fashioned itself as a democratic, constitutional monarchy that attempted to respect the rights of all within its borders. Accordingly, the demands that have emerged during the Arab Spring of democratic rule, accountable politics and civil liberties have been part of the Arab political fabric ever since West Asian Arabs had their brief taste of self-rule in the immediate years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.”

Akrouk, an American-born Jordanian, started on this path because of his interest in how World War I affected the Ottoman Empire.

“World War I would prove to be the final nail in the coffin,” Akrouk writes in his paper, which looks at the ethnic makeup of the Ottoman Empire, the regions it ruled as well as the geo-political history.

“The topic that interested me was World War I, and to some extent the idea and manifestation of nationalism that had emerged from the French Revolution in the previous century and the history of the colonies in the war,” says Akrouk, whose step great grandfather died in the Balkans in the first world war. “From India to Africa to the Middle East, the colonized peoples’ service in these conflicts was an aspect of history that felt glossed over, not particularly well-documented.”

Akrouk takes his readers back through a brief history of the 900-year Ottoman Empire’s rule in Greater Syria. He explores what united the disparate regions, mainly religion, and what ultimately broke it apart and led to that two-year period of self-rule in Greater Syria along with language and Arab peoples’ inclusivity of various ethnic and religious groups.

As he researched further, Akrouk says that he wanted to understand the Arab nationalist movement that emerged at that time under the Ottoman Empire and culminated with the founding of Greater Syria as an independent Arab state.

“I found that the research covering 1908-18 did not really discuss the diverse nationalities that made up the Arab movement,” he says.

With an eye for detail, Akrouk writes about the rise of Arabism, a proto-nationalist movement in Greater Syria stoked by the Young Turks rebellion and the resulting Committee of Union of Progress. Also, he concludes that the CUP’s oppressive “Turkification,” including its imposing Turkish as the official language in this Arab-speaking region, united the Greater Syria peoples.

Expanding his time frame to 1920, he then describes at length the two-year period of self-rule during the years 1918-20 that ended with France and England dividing the region between the two countries as outlined under a 1917 accord at the end of World War I.

Akrouk who is fluent in Arabic and English, researched original documents in both languages in Washington and London and at the Van Pelt Library on the Penn campus. His work was supported in part by a grant he received through the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, particularly a College Alumni Society Grant, and support from other Penn-affiliated organizations that funded his travels and personal expenses.

Ann Vernon-Grey, CURF’s associate director for undergraduate research, says, “Whether a student goes on to be a banker or a physician or whatever, research is fundamental in that goal. The subject matter isn’t as important as how you develop your thinking skills: how to be a skeptic, what’s a reasonable response to conflicting data?

“We rely heavily on faculty to bring awareness to students of CURF resources,” Vernon-Grey says. “It’s a gateway to student research.

“The Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship program allows faculty to post projects that they would like to have undergraduates assist them with,” she says. “Last year, we had 182 faculty members apply, and over the years we’ve had some 400.”

History professor Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet has been one such mentor to Akrouk.

Kashani-Sabet, who served as his thesis advisor, says, “Mr. Akrouk worked in numerous archives to secure his sources. In trying to estimate the population of Arabs in the Ottoman Empire, he used not only on secondary works but also British annual reports and U.S. Department of State correspondence. In addition, he read several Arabic newspapers to verify his assertions and to provide yet another key perspective on the subject.

“He grounded his arguments not only in new historical documents gathered from these archives but also engaged with the theoretical literature on nationalism. The result of his careful research is the completion of an excellent and thoughtful thesis that spurs the ongoing scholarly debate on Arab nationalism in modern Middle East Studies.”

Arouck concludes that the political rhetoric of 1908-18 translated into action between 1918 and 1920.

“By the early 20th century, an Arab national sentiment, encompassing several religious groups and inclusive of individuals of non-Arab heritage, was taking hold,” he writes in his thesis. “I postulate that Arabism was able to prevail because the religious bonds that had kept the primarily Sunni Muslim Arabs in the Greater Syria region loyal to the Ottoman Sultan ... were slowly being overshadowed by their linguistic and cultural affinity with their fellow Arabs.”

However, the inclusivity of Christians, Jews and other religious groups as well as other ethnic Arab-speaking groups into a representative government during that short time is the opposite of what is going on in 2015.

“It is heartbreaking, disappointing to see how the dream was actualized but was not sustainable because of colonialization,” he says.

A history major, Akrouk presented his findings at two CURF symposiums and submitted the paper as his senior thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for his bachelor of arts with honors.

Akrouk was educated in Egypt, Poland, Jordan and Bahrain, and his family now splits their time living in both London and Jordan. After graduation, though, he will not travel far geographically. He has accepted a position with the Philadelphia consultant company Accenture and will stay in the city.