Waṭan before Waṭaniyya: Loyalty to Land in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Syria

Abstract

This article argues that the term waṭan (“homeland”) was used in new ways in Arabic texts describing Syria from the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. The authors of these texts understood waṭan in its older sense as an affective attachment to land but assigned it new meaning as a territorial category of political and religious belonging. By analysing first the use of waṭan in Arabic literature from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries and...