What is the nation?

Number of pages: 376 Who is the Arab reader who does not understand the meaning of the nation? After more than a century of saturation with writings of the founders of Arab nationalism and their speeches, most Arab readers have become fully convinced that the question "What is the nation?" is an absurd question in itself, and that it is a matter of defining the definable by necessity, otherwise who would dare to doubt that Arabs have been a nation since they appeared on the stage of history 3000 years ago, and that they are "one nation," and "a timeless message"? This reference book does not aim to doubt anything, but it promises the reader an elaborate journey that will change his opinion on many matters, and will present him with a different perspective, and he will ultimately discover that the issue is more complex than initially imagined. Except for the first article, Johan G. Fichte's article, which is considered a reference text for all subsequent nationalist writings, and argues that the nation is a natural phenomenon existing independently, and that it exists apart from any human effort and historical circumstances, all other selected articles here defend an opposing thesis stating that the nation is a human creation, a product of processes of construction, shaping, even invention and fabrication carried out by humans in specific historical contexts, and that people are not born as a nation but become one over time and within specific historical contexts. This thesis will be echoed and reflected in various forms among thinkers of different orientations and backgrounds, from Ernst Renan's famous lecture "What is a Nation?" to Benedict Anderson's book "Imagined Communities," passing through writings of Joseph Stalin, Rabindranath Tagore, H. S. Watson, Ernst Gellner, Eli Kidor, Eric Hobsbawm, Clifford Geertz, Homi Bhabha, and Samuel Huntington.