Sermons and Flag Raising

December 20, 2008

Reading Freedom at Midnight, a classic account of the rough birth of independent India and Pakistan in 1947, I came across a passage concerning the response of one elderly English woman to independence:

To friends who suggested it was now time to leave, she replied: 'My dear, whatever would I do in England? I don't even know how to boil the water for a cup of tea.' And so, while the former summer capital of the Raj celebrated, she sat at home weeping, unable to bear the sight of another nation's flag going up that pole where her beloved Union Jack had flown. [340]

Reading that passage we instantly understand her emotional response to the raising of another flag in place of the Union Jack. We become accustomed at an early age to feel the symbolic value of a flag.. and its instant message: this building or ship is under the authority of such and such nation. The flag is the ever present sign of the nation state; our soldiers die to raise a victorious flag on enemy soil.

As with many of the accoutrements of the modern nation state, it is important to forget about flags when reading medieval Arabic histories. The idea of weeping at the raising of a new flag is unimaginable since the flag is not the important symbol of authority. The modern reader has to be careful to find the emotional points of reference for the medieval writers.

Reading Maqrizi's account of Salah al-Din, I found this passage pointing to a very different type of symbol:

When the Fatimid Caliph al-Adid died, Salah al-Din dropped his name from the sermon and enjoined the preachers to mention instead the name of Mustadi' bi-Nur-Allah, the Abbasid Caliph... Imad al-Din al-Isfahani... wrote a message of good tidings to be read in the presence of the Caliph al-Mustadi' bi-Nur-Allah in Baghdad, which he sent by the hand of the Qadi... The Qadi departed and left no town or village in which he did not read the proclamation, and at last reached Baghdad, where the citizens came out to meet him. [after translation by R.J.C. Broadhurst, 37]

At a major transition of power (from Shi'i Fatimids to Sunni Ayyubids in 1171 AD) there is no mention of flags being taken down and new ones pulled up. The emphasis is entirely centered on the change of the name read out in the Friday sermon. That verbal symbol held such importance that a messenger was sent to announce the change to village after village.. and finally to the Caliph in Baghdad.

That change in the sermon brought with it all the emotional and symbolic weight that we associate with flags. One of the most important lessons to be learned about reading ancient texts is that the symbolic values of different acts and conventions diverge widely. Arabic travel literature (Ibn Fadlan and Ibn Jubayr come to mind) is full of citations and discussion of the names used in the benediction of the Friday sermon. The modern reader is tempted to glance over these passages as extraneous wastes of space, but the medieval writers are actually communicating something important about the political world they are seeing; they just do it through a different set of symbols.

This is also an example of why it is so much easier to read contemporary literature. The emotional response to the final lowering of a flag is grasped by everyone today, but the importance of mentioning the Abbasid Caliph in the sermon is tougher for us to connect with. That gap in immediacy necessitates extra work and attention from the reader.

Freedom at Midnight. Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. Vikas Publishing, 1997 (new edition).
A History of the Ayyubid Sultans of Egypt. Al-Maqrizi, trans. R.J.C. Broadhurst. Twayne Publishers.