Pan-Arab colors explained

The pan-Arab colors are black, white, green and red. Individually, each of the four pan-Arab colors were intended to represent a certain aspect of the Arab people and their history.^[1]

History

The black represents the Black Standard used by the Rashidun and Abbasid Caliphates, while white was the dynastic color of the Umayyad Caliphate.^[2] Green is a color associated with the primary religion of Islam – and therefore also a color representative of the caliphates.^{[3] [4]} Green is also identified as the color of the Fatimid Caliphate by some modern sources,^{[2] [5]} despite their dynastic color having been white.^{[6] [7] [8]} Finally, red was the Hashemite dynastic color. The four colors also derived their potency from a verse by 14th century Arab poet Safi al-Din al-Hilli: "White are our acts, black our battles, green our fields, and red our swords."^[9]

Pan-Arab colors, used individually in the past, were first combined in 1916 in the flag of the Arab Revolt or Flag of Hejaz.^[10] Many current flags are based on Arab Revolt colors, such as the flags of Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and the United Arab Emirates.

In the 1950s, a subset of the Pan-Arab colors, the Arab Liberation colors, came to prominence. These consist of a tricolor of red, white and black bands, with green given less prominence or not included. The Arab Liberation tricolor or the Arab Liberation Flag was mainly inspired by the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and Egypt's official flag under president Mohamed Naguib.^[11] which became the basis of the current flags of Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Syria and Yemen (and formerly in the flags of the rival states of North Yemen and South Yemen), and in the short-lived Arab unions of the United Arab Republic and the Federation of Arab Republics.^[12]

Current flags with Pan-Arab colors

Flags of first-level administrative divisions

See also

• Black Standard
• Islamic flags
• Green in Islam
• List of Arab flags
• Pan-African colors
• Pan-Arabism
• Pan-Slavic colors
• Pan-Iranian colors
• Tricolor

External links

• Pan-Arab colors
• Evolution of the Arab Flag, by Mahdi Abdul-Hadi (in Arabic)

Notes and References

1. Abū Khaldūn Sati' al-Husri, The days of Maysalūn: A Page from the Modern History of the Arabs, Sidney Glauser Trans. (Washington D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1966), 46.
2. Edmund Midura . Flags of the Arab World . Saudi Aramco World . March–April 1978 . 4–9.
3. Book: Teitelbaum, Joshua . The rise and fall of the Hashimite kingdom of Arabia . New York University Press . New York . 2001 . 1-85065-460-3 . 45247314 . 205.
4. Book: Marshall, Tim . A flag worth dying for : the power and politics of national symbols . Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc . New York, NY . 2017 . 978-1-5011-6833-8 . 962006347 . 110–111.
5. Book: Znamierowski, Alfred . The World Encyclopedia of Flags: The Definitive Guide to International Flags, Banners, Standards and Ensigns, with Over 1400 Illustration . 2013 . Lorenz Books . 978-0-7548-2629-3 . 122.
6. Book: Hathaway, Jane . [{{Gbook|L-lPC7DgepEC|plainurl=y}} A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen ]. Albany, New York . State University of New York Press . 2003 . 978-0-7914-5883-9 . 97 . The Ismaili Shi'ite counter-caliphate founded by the Fatimids took white as its dynastic color, creating a visual contrast to the Abbasid enemy..
7. Book: The Oxford History of Islam . Esposito . John L. . John Esposito . Oxford . Oxford University Press . 1999 . 0-19-510799-3 . Sheila S. . Blair . Jonathan M. . Bloom . Art and Architecture: Themes and Variations . 215–267 . ...white was also the color associated with the Fatimid caliphs, the opponents of the Abbasids..
8. Book: Sanders, Paula A. . Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo . SUNY series in Medieval Middle East History . SUNY Press . 1994 . 0-7914-1781-6 . 44 . ...wore white (the Fatimid color) while delivering the sermon (khuṭba) in the name of the Fatimid caliph..
9. Muhsin Al-Musawi, Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict (I. B. Tauris 2006), p. 63
10. I. Friedman, British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915–1922, Transaction Publ., 2011, p. 135
11. M. Naguib, Egypt's Destiny, 1955
12. Book: Znamierowski. Alfred. Illustrated Book of Flags. 2003. Southwater. 1-84215-881-3. 123. 22 November 2014. The designs of these flags were later modified, but the four pan-Arab colors were retained and were adopted by Transjordan (1921), Palestine (1922), Kuwait (1961), the United Arab Emirates (1971), Western Sahara (1976) and Somaliland (1996)..