ChChapter 2: Origins and influences of nationality law who issued Decree No. 15 on Lebanese Nationality – comprising the rules which to this day regulate acquisition and loss of Lebanese nationality.50 Furthermore, it should be noted that French law had also been a significant source of inspiration for the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869 and was thereby an indirect influence for the emerging nationality codes across other parts of the MENA region, while many Arab scholars also completed their doctoral studies in France and contributed to the feeding of French thought into the region. Therefore, there is for instance a bias for basing acquisition of nationality on descent (jus sanguinis) and the inclusion of rules based on the doctrine of “double” jus soli51 stemmed in part from these French connections and from their presence in the French Civil Code of the time.52 The manner in which British law and legal thought spread to the MENA region was similar, in particular through the British occupation of Egypt, the establishment of a British Mandate under the League of Nations over Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan, and colonial rule in the Persian Gulf (including what is now UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar). A comprehensive study of 50 - M. El-Khoury and T. Jaulin, Country Report: Lebanon, EUDO Citizenship Observatory, September 2012, available at: http://eudo-citizenship.eu/docs/ CountryReports/Lebanon.pdf. 51 - See section 2.2 below. 52 - G. Parolin, Citizenship in the Arab World. Kin, Religion and Nation State, Amsterdam University Press, 2009, from page 77. 47