Pan-Arab union was explicitly defined against the Ottoman Caliphate model.

Evidence

A memorandum presented by the Society to the Chief of the Royal Cabinet in March 1942 explaining the aims of the Society referred to this declaration and set forth the limits of the proposed Arab Union. It would include Egypt and the Sudan, the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Leb­ anon, Palestine, Transjordan, and also North Africa and all other Arabic-speaking countries. It would, the memorandum went on, exclude non-Arabic speaking Muslims and therefore also the idea of a Caliphate “of which no Arab country can today bear the heavy burdens, discharge the momentous responsibilities, or pay the exorbitant price.” These ideas were approved by the King and led directly to the preliminary talks, as a result of which the Arab League was established. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 899

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what Arab unity was and, crucially, was NOT — the terms that demarcated the pan-Arab project from the previous Caliphate-based legitimacy framework.
• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘Islam-West representation’ cluster: this is a moment where Arabs themselves designed a successor category to the Caliphate, relevant to how ‘the Arab world’ became a legible unit for Western (and Arab) audiences.