In both Arab and European scholarship, historical narratives first identified an overall homogenous process of modernisation taking place in the Arab Middle East, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Modernity, it was argued, was the result of an encounter between European influences and the Nahda (Arabic cultural revival). In this perspective, the notion of modernity was reduced to its Western and Arab national expressions. However, for the last fifteen years, in an attempt to provincialize Europe, scholars have given more attention to the Ottoman roots of modernity in the Arab Middle East – but also to the nature of its colonialism and orientalism. The strong impact of Ottoman expressions of modernity on Arab societies, it was shown, was a natural outcome of the complex process of re-Ottomanisation of the structures of power that took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the Turkish victory over the Mamluks at the beginning of the 19th century, Iraqi provinces were particularly affected by re-Ottomanisation. Its impact on Iraqi society was significant and long-lasting. Until the outburst of World War I, Iraqi provinces were known as “Turkish Arabia” in the British administration. Education was provided in Turkish for a long time, and Arab nationalist figures still mastered Turkish better than Arabic, long after the establishment of the Hashemite kingdom in 1921 and the introduction of Arabic as an official language. The Syrian ideologue of Pan-Arabism Sati‘ al-Husri was invited by King Faisal of Iraq to Baghdad, where he became Director-General of the Ministry of Education. His task was to “arabize” (ta‘rib) the structures of power and implement Arab consciousness (al-wa‘y al-qawmi) among its citizens. By examining writings produced by and about leading actors of the Iraqi Arab national movements, this contribution seeks to redefine modernity by taking into account its hybrid influences; Ottoman, Western and transregional.