Of the other 12 countries, most rely on one of the four colours, usually red or green, while nine use Islamic symbols, such as the star, crescent or sword, on their flags. Of the 22 members of the Arab League, 10 use the green, white, black and red. And this is unique to the Arab world in general.” And whenever there is a change of government or whatever, they might also change the symbolism. “So it says something about the fact that the symbolism is to changes, and sometimes it depends on the owners on the narrative. Even Egypt, the biggest country, always has a very strong identity, they have changed the flag. “Now, if you look at Iraq and Syria, Lebanon is an exception, Jordan is an exception, the UAE has not changed. “Also, it is very important to know, I think, that there were, in the past at least, frequent changes in the flags. It is very much relevant to the history and the identity. It goes back to the Prophet Mohammed, the green and the red goes to the Ottomans. When we talk about the traditional Arab colours, it's not only pan-Arab, but it's also Islamic colours. “That's very much relevant also to the UAE because the flag consists of the traditional Arab colours. “It indicates a certain symbolism, that there is a connection, a similarity, there is a commonality between the people in the area now. “There is a certain commonality between many of the Arab states,” Prof Podeh told The National. It is thought the colours were first combined in 1916 in the flag of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was designed by British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes. One oft-cited reason is that these four pan-Arab colours each represent a different period of Arab history, with the black used by the Rashidun and Abbasid caliphates, the white of the Umayyads, the green of the Fatimids and the Rashidun successors of the Prophet Mohammed - and Islam generally - and the red of the Hashemite dynasty.Īnother theory comes from a 14th-century verse by Iraqi poet Safi al-Din al-Hilli, which reads: “White are our acts, black our battles, green our fields, and red our swords.” Why are the pan-Arab colours so widely used? Here is a look at how some of the flags of the region were chosen. When is UAE Flag Day 2022 and why is it celebrated?įlags often show regional similarity, such as the crosses of Scandinavia and the multicoloured flags of Africa, said Prof Elie Podeh, lecturer in the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.īut why do the same four colours appear so regularly in the flags of the Arab world?
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