To become a legitimate member of the community of nations, states need not only internationally recognized boundaries, but also their own insignia – a flag, an emblem, an anthem and, no less important, a national calendar. The yearly calendar is dotted with holidays and other commemorative events that tell and sanctify the story of the state and its community. In the Arab world, since most states were artificially created by the colonial powers after World War I, their Arab elites found it crucial to build or invent all the necessary attributes of recognized models of the nation-state – celebrations and memorials, rituals and symbols.

The in-depth analysis of the five case studies – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia – undertaken in this volume sheds light on the role of state celebrations in the processes of nation building and state formation in the Arab world, as well as on state–society relations. The comparisons among different regimes attest to the complexity of the phenomenon and to the fact that no uniform model of state celebrations has emerged in the Arab world.

With the exception of Egypt, a well-defined state historically and geographically, the new Arab states needed boundary mechanisms for reinforcing the territorial delineation and clarifying the distinction between “us” and “them”; Anthony Smith termed this the “territorialization of memory.”