The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Independence, 1914–1948

In this mesmerizing look at Arab military leader Fawzi al-Qawuqji, Parsons (The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, 1947–1949), a professor of history and Islamic studies at McGill University, fashions an unconventional biography of a divisive figure in the early 20th-century struggle for Arab sovereignty. Al-Qawuqji was a chameleonlike player in the drawn-out battle over the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, fighting against the British in Iraq, the French in Syria, the British again in Palestine, and finally leading the Arab Liberation Army against Israeli forces in 1948. Avoiding any semblance of hagiography, Parsons uses her recounting of al-Qawuqji’s tumultuous life to describe the Arab Middle East “from the inside out.” She argues that the rakish figure of al-Qawuqji—an Arab nationalist to the core but an ardent Germanophile, an anticolonial fighter but a former loyal Ottoman subject—embodied the contradictory pull of forces that convulsed the Middle East after WWI. Parsons occasionally focuses her lens too narrowly, leaving the reader to unpack the broader themes of al-Qawuqji’s life, but the narrative is taut and fluid. Gliding along seamlessly, with a whole world unfurling like a carpet, al-Qawuqji emerges from these pages as an enigmatic, complex figure worthy of sustained scholarly attention. Illus. (Sept.)