Ottoman Empire
Several historians such as British historian Edward Gibbon and the Greek historian Dimitri Kitzikis have argued that after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman state took over the machinery of the Roman state, and that in essence the Ottoman Empire was a continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire under a thin Turkish Islamic guise. Kitzikis called the Ottoman state "a Greek-Turkish condominium". The American historian Speros Vryonis wrote that the Ottoman state was centered on "a Byzantine-Balkan base with a veneer of the Turkish language and the Islamic religion". Other historians have followed the lead of the Austrian historian Paul Wittek who emphasized the Islamic character of the Ottoman state, seeing the Ottoman state as a "Jihad state" dedicated to expanding the world of Islam. Another group of historians led by the Turkish historian M. Fuat Koprulu championed the ""gazi" thesis" that saw the Ottoman state as a continuation of the way of life of the nomadic Turkic tribes who had come from East Asia to Anatolia via Central Asia and the Middle East on a much larger scale, and argued that the most important cultural influences on the Ottoman state came from Persia. More recently, the American historian Heath Lowry called the Ottoman state a "predatory confederacy" led in equal parts by Turks and Greeks converted to Islam.
Arab Revolt
At this stage, Arab nationalism was not yet a mass movement, even in Syria where it was strongest. Many Arabs gave their primary loyalty to their religion or sect, their tribe, or their own particular governments. The ideologies of Ottomanism and Pan-Islamism provided strong competition for Arab nationalism. The vast majority of the Arabs living in the Ottoman Empire were primarily loyal to their own families, clans, and tribes and in terms of broader loyalties, saw themselves as Muslims rather than as Arabs, which in practical terms meant support for the Ottoman Empire, whose sultan also claimed to be the caliph. Traditional Islamic theory preaches the message that all Muslims, regardless of their ethnicity or race, should live together in the "Ummah", where usually been interpreted to mean one state, and for centuries Muslims living under Ottoman rule, whether they be Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Albanians, and so forth all saw themselves as united by a common religion and state. In the Ottoman Empire, Sunni Islam was the state religion, and the sultan-caliph was the supreme religious-political leader, thus making the crown and the faith one and the same. Before 1914, of the ten million or so Arabs living under Ottoman rule, only a mere 350 were involved in various feuding nationalist groups, most of whom wanted only autonomy rather than independence.