Islamic Flags - The Pan-Arab Flag and Colours

The Pan-Arab Flag and Colours

Traditionally, early Arab flags were of one colour only, usually black or white, and charged with a religious inscription. It is thought that Muhammad himself used such flags, and it is said that his followers fought under a white flag.

White was also traditionally the colour of the Umayyad Dynasty. The Abbasid Dynasty which succeeded them used a black flag. The Fatimid Dynasty of caliphs, meanwhile, had green as their traditional colour, while the Hashemites used red.

In 1911, at a meeting in Istanbul, it was decided that a modern flag to represent all Arabs should include all four of these colours. Three years later, al-Fatat (the Young Arab Society), decreed that a future independent Arab state should use a flag of these colours, and on May 30, 1917 Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, leader of the Hejaz Revolt replaced his plain red flag with one horizontally striped in black, green, and white with a red triangular area at the hoist. This was seen as the birth of the pan-Arab flag.

Since that time, many Arab nations, upon achieving independence or upon change of political regime, have used a combination of these colours in a design reflecting the Hejaz Revolt flag. These flags include the current flags of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Palestinian National Authority, Algeria, and Sudan, and former flags of Iraq and Libya.

Other Arab or predominantly Muslim nations have kept single colour flags, often with some symbol or script. These flags include those of Libya, Turkey, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan's flag can also be considered alongside this group.

Where a symbol is used, most frequently it is the star and crescent. Script takes one of two forms, either the Shahada or Allahu Akbar ("God is great"). Iraq uses the pan-Arab colours with the addition of Allahu Akbar—in recognizable form on Iraq's flag. Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan use the Shahadah, a declaration of faith: lā ilāha illā-llāh, wa muħammadan rasūlu-llāh in Arabic, translation "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet".