My research question seeks to answer how Arab Ottoman military officers who served both the Ottoman Empire and its successor nation-states of the Modern Middle East claimed leadership and authority in dynamic political and social spaces that bridged the end of empire, as narrated in their memoirs. This paper argues that Arab-Ottoman officers developed subjectivities possessing self-evident claims to political leadership based on what they framed as a distinctively modern education, providing expertise in the tools and practices of modernity, combined with a concomitant “Arab” authenticity. Neither of these core components would have been sufficient on their own, but it was these officers’ ability to portray an embrace of both, through accumulated cultural capital in each, that provided them with the ability to challenge opponents and claim authority themselves. These officers’ ability to demonstrate their ‘modernity’ and ‘authenticity’ can be recognized through Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital. Arab Ottoman officer memoirs contain self-portrayals as idealized knightly, masculine, ‘Arab’ tribal warriors, following in the footsteps of earlier generations, while at the same time as technical experts in ‘modern’ warfare and in the scientific work of bringing ‘modern’ infrastructure and education to the population of the empire and successor nation-states. My research examines memoirs and select secondary sources of twelve Arab Ottoman military officers whose careers spanned the late Ottoman through modern Middle East periods. My research identifies specific anecdotes in officer memoirs and analyzes them as claims of social and cultural capital, shaping their overall habitus. My research also reveals a striking continuity in these officers’ subjectivities despite the dramatic social, political, and economic disruptions of the wartime and post-war period. These continuities support recent scholarship by Hasan Kayalı, Talha Çiçek, and others regarding Ottoman continuities across the “end of empire.” The findings also connect Lucie Ryzova’s work on the construction of ‘modern’ subjectivity by Egyptian civilian Efendiyya to Michael Provence’s exploration of the shared trajectories of Ottoman-educated Arab officers in the interwar period, as well as Mostafa Minawi’s illumination of Arab Ottoman imperialists who utilized social and cultural capital to carry out imperial policies in the Arab provinces. Connecting these works and centering the experiences of officers whose trajectories and memoir narratives bridged the “end of empire” reveals how a powerful group of individuals mobilized concepts of modernity and tradition in a generally consistent manner to navigate a period of unprecedented upheaval and disruption.