Nationalism arrived in the Middle East as a European import that local use transformed

Evidence

Nationalism, as we use the word today, is a 19th century importation to the Middle East. The idea and its content have been transformed in gradual stages as the concept of the linguistic and territorial nation percolated from Europe to the Islamic world, and in the process acquired a new shape and meaning. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 2004

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Said-adjacent representation cluster — the ‘percolation’ model of concept transfer from Europe to Islamic world, and the claim that concepts get reshaped in transit. Could corroborate or complicate existing claims about Orientalist framing of nationalism as derivative.