The making of the Arab intellectual (1880–1960) : empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood [1 ed.] 9780415488341, 9780203080474

Table of contents :
Cover
The Making of the Arab Intellectual
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Note on transliteration
1 Introduction: the making of the Arab intellectual (1880–1960): empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood
2 Pharaoh’s revenge: translation, literary history and colonial ambivalence
3 Public deliberations of the self in fin-de-siècle Egypt
4 Inscribing socialism into the Nahḍa: al- Muqtaṭaf, al- Hilāl, and the construction of a Leftist reformist worldview, 1880–1914
5 From ‘ilm to Ṣiḥāfa or the politics of the public interest (maṣlaḥa): Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and his journal al- Manār (1898–1935)
6 Partitioned pasts: Arab Jewish intellectuals and the case of Esther Azharī Moyal (1873–1948)
7 The Mahjar as literary and political territory in the first decades of the twentieth century: the example of Amīn
Rīḥānī (1876–1940)
8 The generation of broad expectations: nationalism, education, and autobiography in Syria and Lebanon,
1930–1958
9 Waiting for the Superman: a new generation of Arab nationalists in 1930s Iraq
Bibliography
Periodicals consulted
Index

Citation preview

The Making of the Arab Intellectual

In the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s nineteenth-century reforms, as guilds waned and new professions emerged, the scholarly ‘estate’ underwent social differentiation. Some found employment in the state’s new institutions as translators, teachers and editors, whilst others resisted civil servant status. Gradually, the scholar morphed into the public writer. Despite his fledgling status, he catered for the public interest all the more so since new professionals such as doctors, engineers and lawyers endorsed this latest social role as an integral part of their own self-image. This dual preoccupation with self-definition and all things public is the central concern of this book. Focusing on the period after the tax-farming scholar took the bow and before the alienated intellectual prevailed on the contemporary Arab cultural scene, it situates the making of the Arab intellectual within the dysfunctional space of competing states’ interests known as the ‘Nahḍa’. Located between Empire and Colony, the emerging Arab public sphere was a space of over- and under-regulation, hindering accountability and upsetting allegiances. The communities that Arab intellectuals imagined, including the Pan-Islamic, Pan-Arab and socialist sat astride many a polity and never became contained by post-colonial states. Examining a range of canonical and less canonical authors, this interdisciplinary approach to The Making of the Modern Arab Intellectual will be of interest to students and scholars of the Middle East, history, political science, comparative literature and philosophy. Dyala Hamzah is Assistant Professor of Middle East History at the Université de Montréal. She holds an M. Phil. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne and a Ph.D. in History and Islamic Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin and the EHESS (Paris). She is currently completing a book entitled Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935) ou le “Tournant Salafiste”. Intérêt général, Islam et Opinion Publique dans l’Egypte Coloniale.

SOAS/Routledge studies on the Middle East Series Editors Benjamin C. Fortna SOAS, University of London

Ulrike Freitag Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

This series features the latest disciplinary approaches to Middle Eastern Studies. It covers the social sciences and the humanities in both the pre-modern and the modern periods of the region. While primarily interested in publishing singleauthored studies, the series is also open to edited volumes on innovative topics, as well as textbooks and reference works. 1 Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia The umma below the winds Michael Francis Laffan 2 Russian–Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus Alternative visions of the conflict between Imam Shamil and the Russians, 1830–1859 Edited and translated by Thomas Sanders, Ernest Tucker and G.M. Hamburg 3 Late Ottoman Society The intellectual legacy Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga 4 Iraqi Arab Nationalism Authoritarian, totalitarian and pro-Fascist inclinations, 1932–1941 Peter Wien 5 Medieval Arabic Historiography Authors as actors Konrad Hirschler 6 Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890–1908 Gökhan Çetinsaya 7 Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World The urban impact of religion, state, and society Edited by Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne

8 Subalterns and Social Protest History from below in the Middle East and North Africa Edited by Stephanie Cronin 9 Nazism in Syria and Lebanon The ambivalence of the German option, 1933–1945 Götz Nordbruch 10 Nationalism and Liberal Thought in the Arab East Ideology and practice Edited by Christoph Schumann 11 State-Society Relations in Ba‘thist Iraq Facing dictatorship Achim Rohde 12 Untold Histories of the Middle East Recovering voices from the 19th and 20th centuries Edited by Amy Singer, Christoph K. Neumann and Selçuk Akşin Somel 13 Court Cultures in the Muslim World Seventh to nineteenth centuries Edited by Albrecht Fuess and Jan-Peter Hartung 14 The City in the Ottoman Empire Migration and the making of urban modernity Edited by Ulrike Freitag, Malte Fuhrmann, Nora Lafi and Florian Riedler 15 Opposition and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire Conspiracy and political cultures Florian Riedler 16 Islam and the Politics of Secularism The Caliphate and Middle Eastern modernisation in the early 20th century Nurullah Ardiç 17 State-Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey Orthodox and Muslims, 1830–1945 Edited by Benjamin C. Fortna, Stefanos Katsikas, Dimitris Kamouzis and Paraskevas Konortas 18 The Making of the Arab Intellectual Empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood Edited by Dyala Hamzah

The Making of the Arab Intellectual Empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood

Edited by Dyala Hamzah

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Dyala Hamzah, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Dyala Hamzah to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The making of the Arab intellectual (1880–1960) : empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood / edited by Dyala Hamzah. p. cm. – (SOAS/Routledge studies on the Middle East ; 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Arab countries–Intellectual life–19th century. 2. Arab countries– Intellectual life–20th century. 3. Learning and scholarship–Social aspects–Arab countries–History–19th century. 4. Learning and scholarship–Social aspects–Arab countries–History–20th century. 5. Intellectuals–Arab countries–History–19th century. 6. Intellectuals– Arab countries–History–20th century. I. Hamzah, Dyala. DS36.88.M345 2012 305.5′520917492709041–dc23 2012023133 ISBN: 978-0-415-48834-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-08047-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

List of contributors Acknowledgments Note on transliteration 1

Introduction: the making of the Arab intellectual (1880–1960): empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood

ix xi xii

1

DYALA HAMZAH

2

Pharaoh’s revenge: translation, literary history and colonial ambivalence

20

SAMAH SELIM

3

Public deliberations of the self in fin-de-siècle Egypt

40

MICHAEL GASPER

4

Inscribing socialism into the Nahḍa: al-Muqtaṭaf, al-Hilāl, and the construction of a Leftist reformist worldview, 1880–1914

63

ILHAM KHURI-MAKDISI

5

From ʽilm to Ṣiḥāfa or the politics of the public interest (maṣlaḥa): Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and his journal al-Manār (1898–1935)

90

DYALA HAMZAH

6

Partitioned pasts: Arab Jewish intellectuals and the case of Esther Azharī Moyal (1873–1948) LITAL LEVY

128

viii Contents 7

The Mahjar as literary and political territory in the first decades of the twentieth century: the example of Amīn Rīḥānī (1876–1940)

164

LEYLA DAKHLI

8

The generation of broad expectations: nationalism, education, and autobiography in Syria and Lebanon, 1930–1958

188

CHRISTOPH SCHUMANN

9

Waiting for the Superman: a new generation of Arab nationalists in 1930s Iraq

212

PETER WIEN

Bibliography Periodicals consulted Index

245 268 270

Contributors

Leyla Dakhli is a CNRS researcher at IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence and Editorial Board member of the journal of social history Le Mouvement Social. She received her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from the University of Aix-enProvence in 2003. She is the author of Une génération d’intellectuels arabes. Syrie et Liban, 1908–1940 (Karthala-IISMM, Paris, 2009). Michael Gasper is Assistant Professor of History at Occidental College. He is the author of The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants & Islam in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept (Stanford University Press, 2011). His current project is on the history of everyday life in Lebanon during the Civil War of 1975–1990. Dyala Hamzah is Assistant Professor of Middle East History at the Université de Montréal. She holds a Ph.D. in History and Islamic Studies (Freie Universität, Berlin, EHESS Paris). She is currently completing a book entitled Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935) ou le “Tournant Salafiste”. Intérêt général, Islam et Opinion Publique dans l’Egypte Coloniale. Ilham Khuri-Makdisi is Associate Professor of Middle East and World History at Northeastern University, Boston. She is the author of The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (University of California Press, 2010). Lital Levy is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she specializes in modern Hebrew and Arabic literatures. Her two current book projects are on the intellectual history of Arab Jews and the poetics and politics of language choice in contemporary literature from Israel/ Palestine. Christoph Schumann is Professor of Middle East Politics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. His publications include Radical Nationalism in Syria and Lebanon, 1930–1958 (Hamburg: Orient-Institute, 2001, in German) and Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century until the 1960s (ed.) (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2008).

x

Contributors

Samah Selim is Assistant Professor of Arabic literature at Rutgers University and a translator of modern Arabic literature. She is the author of The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880–1986 (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). She is currently working on a book on the early twentieth century Egyptian fiction periodical The People’s Entertainments. Peter Wien is Associate Professor for Middle Eastern History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Bonn and master degrees from both the universities of Oxford and Heidelberg. He is the author of Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941 (Routledge, 2006).

Acknowledgments

This book has been too long in the making, for reasons that are better kept untold. I am deeply grateful for the invaluable support, patience and confidence granted me by the contributors at a time when it seemed the boat would sink. My full gratitude goes next to the series editors, Ben Fortna and Ulrike Freitag, who welcomed and supported the project with enthusiasm. My admiration and thanks to Christian Kübler, student assistant at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, who provided crucial technical assistance, and who went through the style sheets of Routledge with valiance and a rare esprit de système. To Sunniva Greve and Joy Adapon, for the wonderful job they did in language editing. Last but not least, to the anonymous reviewer who provided constructive criticism and to the editor, Joe Whiting, and his assistant, Suzanne Richardson, who made it all happen.

Note on transliteration

It is next to impossible to provide complete consistency in the transliteration of Arabic, Hebrew and Ottoman into English. Regarding Arabic and the occasional Ottoman Turkish terms, we have resorted to the system of transliteration used by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. However, in an endeavor to balance out a philologically accurate transliteration and mainstream usages, we chose not to transliterate well-known place names (e.g. Beirut, Cairo, etc.) or terms which have made their way into English dictionaries (e.g. ulema, fatwa, sharia, etc.). Where this has still happened is usually only in quotations. Transliteration of Hebrew is based on the Library of Congress system with minor modifications to approximate contemporary usage (no ‘h’ for final ‘heh’; diacritical dot used only to distinguish between het and heh).

1

Introduction The making of the Arab intellectual (1880–1960): empire, public sphere and the colonial coordinates of selfhood Dyala Hamzah

During the long Ottoman nineteenth century, as guilds waned, new professions started to appear in a bid to second the Empire’s reforming drive (later framing its colonized former provinces). The protracted process of social differentiation that gripped the scholarly and scribal ‘estate’ brought some of its members in the employ of the centralizing state’s new institutions (as translators, teachers, editors and correctors of printed books, etc.), while it pitted others against the publicity and commodification that sanctioned the new occupations. Another fringe resolutely engaged in both ‘old’ and ‘new’, copying and glossing manuscripts, but also printing or editing books, if not in one breath, at least within one generation and often within the same family. This fact of modern Middle East history complicates our apprehension of print culture, not so much however in the sense of relativizing its revolutionary effect,1 as in highlighting the significance of the overlaps it enabled. As the tax-farming scholar (ʽālim multazim) was taking a bow, and before the alienated figure of the modern intellectual (muthaqqaf ) came to prevail on the cultural scene of contemporary Arab societies,2 novel types of intellectuals began to emerge and differentiate. Gradually or less so, the scholar (ʽālim) and/or the man of Letters (adīb) morphed into the journalist (ṣiḥāfī) and/or the public writer (kātib ʽāmm).3 Despite the still fledgling status of the publicist and popularizing writer, this morphing resolutely led to a wholesale assumption of this new social role which catered for the public interest. Even more remarkably perhaps, it brought cohorts from among the new professionals (doctors, engineers, teachers and lawyers, but also functionaries) to endorse this new public role as an integral part of their own self-image. This dual preoccupation with self-definition and with all things public (and the manner with which each affected the other) lies at the heart of this volume. The Arab intellectual mapped his/her public and defined his/her interest and was ‘made’ in return. The making of the modern Arab intellectual, like any other, obtained therefore in the public sphere, i.e. in that legal-social realm where modern political subjectivities usually negotiate rights and obligations. The public sphere of his/her making was however fitted in an interstice between

2

D. Hamzah

Empire and Colony, i.e. in a dysfunctional space of competing raisons d’Etat, a space of over and under-regulation all at once, which hindered accountability and upset allegiances. The community that the Arab intellectual eventually imagined sat astride many a polity and never became contained by postcolonial states. This was partly because Pan-Islam or Pan-Arabism never fully realized the institutions of their inclusive ambitions, partly because the nation-states that eventually took over were reluctant/unable to overcome, within their sovereign borders, the initial fault line of the imperial-colonial public sphere. The impotence (ʽajz) described by E. Kassab as characterizing the contemporary Arab intellectual is surely grounded in the present political deadlocks but also in the fact that the horizon of possibility and expectations had, until recently (and still perhaps beyond the Arab Spring: the winner of the Tunisian elections is, after all, a party called al-Nahḍa!), its coordinates in the colonial past. A witness to this is the enduring centrality of (an idealized) Egypt; and the (incomprehensibly) resilient trope of reform (iṣlāḥ). The public sphere paradigm does not only seem to provide a significant frame for understanding the colonial-imperial predicament of the Arab Middle East. With its rooting of identity in the dynamics of public engagement, it waives the ‘impact’ paradigms, whether in their soft or hard guise (respectively, the ‘Coming of the West’, the ‘Clash of Civilizations’). Why this has not served as the basis for, or operative paradigm in, a renewed intellectual history of the Middle East is a question that might be answered by taking a journey into the historiography of Middle East Studies.

Arabic thought in the colonizing age: of historiography and paradigms The sequential contribution of intellectual and social histories to the field of (modern) Middle East Studies had been, up until the close of the last (half ) century, a structuring feature of its historiography. Roughly speaking, while the 1950s through the early 1970s saw the surge and triumphant establishment of a Lovejoyan history of ideas in the field, the 1980s and 1990s brought workers and peasants, women and minorities, the poor and the marginal to the fore of scholarship, gradually but ever forcefully relegating ‘great men’ to the sound and the fury of political and military history. By contrast, the defining mood of the first decade of the present century is one of a fusion of sorts between intellectual and social histories, what with the conspiring of multifarious approaches from cultural studies, critical theory or comparative literature, among others. More accurately, it is one of the reclaiming by social historians of intellectual history. Indeed, and thanks no doubt to its focus on the non-elite, Middle East social history has finally also stumbled on urbanites of the middle walks of life and on their mouthpiece. So, while the famous ‘middle class’ that had gone missing so long from accounts of Middle East modernity was finally gaining recognition, in the words of Keith Watenpaugh, as a ‘fact of late-Ottoman and interwar Eastern Mediterranean urban

Introduction 4

3

society’, the door was being opened for a reclaiming of Middle Eastern ideas, if not exactly ‘from below’, at least ‘from within’ Numbed by the Orientalism watershed, Middle East intellectual history, contrary to its European and even South Asian counterparts, never truly recovered as a paradigm.5 It is doubtful that it ever will or even should. A look at its past practice, structure and icons will help us see why a recovery is not desirable and how the current reclaiming is the most adequate antidote against the unrepentant upholding of such categories as ‘high’ and ‘low’ intellectual history, or ‘secondand third-level ideational activity’,6 as much as against the wholesale identification of its modern field with the Enlightenment project.7 When they had not remained contained in biographies as self-explanations or adornments therein, of the individual lives they sprang from,8 ideas, ideologies and intellectual movements of the Middle East had usually fuelled histories of ideas that were, by and large, and despite often highly erudite scholarship, unconcerned with the social mooring of those concepts at work in their articulation.9 It had always been a case of either/or, whereby one charted either the ‘intellectual origins’ of an idea or its ‘social roots’. Only when genealogies were downplayed or roughly expedited, have the politics of a social category succeeded in contextually illuminating its ideas;10 but where genealogies were given the foreground, ‘Middle Eastern ideas’ have invariably failed the acid test of originality, their imprint but the parochial expression of a derived intellect. In exemplary fashion, here were nationalisms modularly imagined; the common good, a shaky transcript of some Lockean commonweal or Benthamite utility; Pan-movements, belated emulations of their Continental counterparts. It was not only that Middle Eastern ideas could never rival with the Canons of Thought, but that regardless of how ‘classical’ they were in their own abode, they needed, beyond the confines of Area Studies and Postcolonial Studies even, constant introducing and rehearsing in order to be simply heard.11 Notwithstanding its diehard beauty, or rather, precisely because of it, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age remains to this day an iconic exercise in introduction and rehearsal (of modern Arabic ideas to the Western student). It is here, however, that the Nahḍa was enduringly locked within a dialectics of impact and reaction. It is here that the defining trope of its historiography, imitation (and its corollary: failure), was engineered. Even after the linguistic and cultural turns in the humanities and social sciences, we still cannot think of that period without due reference, and respect, to Hourani’s work. Masterful counter-narratives of resistance, subversion and creation have unfailingly returned to dock at its shores, either to balance the ‘impact’ of the West with an Eastern, i.e. local, one12 or to relativize or dilute its Western and liberal quality with global and radical ramifications.13 Another no less admirable trend has been to engage and wrestle even further with Hourani’s thesis (derivative liberalism). First, by questioning its premise (rather than as an import, liberalism in the Middle East came about from local collective and singular experiences with authoritarianism); second, by seeking for its Huntingtonian defacement (modernization without liberalism; hence: failure, silence, absence) objective reasons in flawed methodologies and paucity of sources.14

4

D. Hamzah

A reign of a hundred years was once foreseen for Hourani’s work15: were this prophecy to hold true, another half century worth of defensive scholarship will be further produced before the father is eventually killed. One way of averting that course (not the parricide, but the wait) is to call for a paradigm shift from precisely within a discussion of methodology and sources. It could however be objected that the paradigm shift has already happened over twenty years ago, with Timothy Mitchell’s call on Foucauldian archaeologies.16 With brilliance, Colonizing Egypt unravelled the ‘machineries of truth’ in which both colonizer and colonized were locked, demonstrating how the technologies of (modern) power were actually developed in the colony. In so doing, was the ‘impact and reaction’ framework actually loosened, rendered irrelevant, or rather reinforced? One critique levelled at Mitchell’s work concerns the hegemonic nature of the system of representation spelled out by bio-power, which could neither account for dissent or plain exteriority to this system of representation, nor explain how/why resistance was eventually mounted by those very local actors who initially helped create and operate this system.17 The point is well taken and hinges on the assumption that something is amiss in the Foucauldian framework. As a consequence perhaps, the legacy of Colonizing Egypt has been diffuse, its heirs few and far between. What is more, most were critical while only a few were straight intellectual historians. For example, Khaled Fahmy’s 1997 All the Pasha’s Men, an account of the making of the first Middle Eastern standing army, is a work of social history that sees the technologies of power at work within the Ottoman context, i.e. not only before the colonial state but outside of the Egyptian nationalist project.18 A decade on, Omnia El Shakry’s 2007 The Great Social Laboratory is an admirable inquiry into the institutional and discursive establishment of the social sciences in colonial and postcolonial Egypt, i.e. into the production of positivist knowledge for the purpose of disciplining and controlling that partook in the colonial and anti-colonial projects. As such, it partially answers the aforementioned critique lodged with Mitchell’s work, in that it shows how and why the colonial system of governance was perpetuated within the postcolonial nation-state.19 Within the spectrum of works that explicitly champion Mitchell’s approach, recent studies in social and cultural history either partially engage with some of its tropes (Michael Gasper’s The Power of Representation)20 or implicitly cry out to that ‘something amiss’ in this approach (Ziad Fahmy’s Ordinary Egyptians).21 By contrast, Yoav Di-Capua’s Gatekeepers of the Past, an account of the acculturation of the idea of historicism in colonial Egypt which stands alone in its claim to strict intellectual history, neither relies on the Foucauldian framework nor denounces its inadequacies in conceptualizing the making of the modern Arab intellectual. A perplexing feature, given it is centrally concerned with the defeat of Islamic historiography by the modern discipline of history, its institutions and its professional and amateur champions.22 At stake are the public fora of cultural production and intellectual representations, elite and non-elite, which were simultaneously the lieu of translation of,

Introduction

5

and resistance to, both the colonial and nationalist projects. This is not to say that Colonizing Egypt ignores the existence and operations of public spaces – these were after all the physical sites par excellence of the ‘world as exhibition’. Public spaces however by no means exhaust the existence, significance and operations of a public sphere – a legal–political site which is bound territorially by the nation-state and sanctioned by law, and where society, come together as various collectives or diverse individual citizens, assembles and confers about the public interest and challenges its definition by the State. Colonizing Egypt’s disregard for the Habermassian theory of the public sphere could explain its hesitant legacy – in other words, why it did not manage a paradigm overhaul. Yet another factor could lie in its at times a-historical approach. One such instance is Mitchell’s reading of what he calls ‘the order of the text’, insofar as this reading does not allow for a proper understanding and witnessing of the contemporaneous emergence of professions and modern intellectuals.23 The introduction of the modern school (where the master was morally and physically distinguished from the pupil) and of the printing press (which signed the death warrant of the occupation of the scribe) fundamentally modified the relationship to knowledge and time, Tim Mitchell argues justly. Whether he is right to say that pre-colonial scholarly practice bound master and pupil in a fellowship that was conceived of as a craft (ṣināʽa) is quite another matter. It is actually quite doubtful that the representation of the dispensation of knowledge as a craft – indeed, as a profession – developed before the Nahḍa. It is the scholars-turnedpublicists of that era who precisely defined journalism and publishing as novel occupations, the pedagogical mission of which entailed henceforth the textual reproduction of tradition (theology and law) as well as the textual production of positivist knowledge (science and news). In his thorough description of the emergence and development of madrasas in the classical period of the Islamicate, George Makdisi nowhere mentions this term of ‘craft’, except in his description of the occupation of notary (shāhid). Even so, the shāhid only partook in the dispensation of law, not in its teaching.24 Ahmadnagari’s technical dictionary of terms Dustūr al-ʽulamā’ does not define ʽilm in terms of craft either (whether ṣināʽa or ḥirfa).25 Now the evidence Mitchell invokes in order to justify his reading is as prestigious as poor, quoting as he does from the sole Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn.26 The Nahḍawis’ own reference to the fourteenth-century ‘father of Arab sociology’ cannot seriously exempt analytical perusal of the vast expanse of literature that separates Ibn Khaldun (1332–1408) from, say, Marṣafī (1815–1890). The bounds of this introduction do not allow a journey into 500 years’ worth of Ottoman chronicles and treatises. Suffice it to suggest that a more relevant source for Mitchell’s argument would have been the scholarly contemporaries of the ‘father of modern Egypt’, Mehmet Ali, since his military schemes did so much by way of disrupting the traditional institutions of learning. For example, the great Azhari chronicler ʽAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, and scornful critic of Mehmet Ali, does not define in terms of ṣināʽa the dispensation of ʽilm proper. Rather, he laments the loss to Istanbul of ‘fifty crafts’, after the Ottoman invasion

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and goes to great length in detailing those adjuvant crafts that some ulema also mastered, the likes of calligraphy or astronomical craftsmanship.27 Jabartī writes: Know that history is a discipline that seeks to learn the changing conditions of peoples, their countries, their laws, their customs, their crafts, their lineage, and dates of death. Its subject is the circumstances (of the lives) of such past figures as prophets, saints, scholars, wise men, poets, kings, and sultans.28 Seemingly stuck between a recognition that what makes the stuff of history is trade and craft;29 the upholding of corporate loyalties to his scholarly class; and the neo-Platonic political cosmology that percolates down to his age from the depth of al-Fārābī’s writings even if with a twist,30 Jabartī chronicles in great detail those craftsmen associated to ʽilm through their crafts, thus elevating them and adding them to his list of subjects of history.31 To therefore establish and appreciate the change in the representation of scholarship and scholars that indeed took place during the course of the nineteenth century, one would need to determine the extent to which the bureaucrats/educators/ideologues of the khedival dynasty (the Ṭahṭāwīs, Marṣafīs, Mubāraks, etc.) were responsible for this process and, more crucially, how this transition was negotiated by their forerunners – by figures like Ḥasan al-ʽAṭṭār, an Azhari in tune with the reforming schemes of the Pasha (or was it the other way round?), but not as yet a ‘bureaucrat’ of the modernizing state.32 Whether Colonizing Egypt did not achieve a full-fledged paradigm shift because it wrote out large representative portions of Egyptian actors and thinkers (where do Sufis fit in, for instance? To what extent were they colonized?) or because it could not account for and/or historicize the making of the modern and public intellectual is, in the end, irrelevant. The fact is, because it did not, Arabic Thought still looms large. How to bring about this necessary shift then?33 I suggested earlier that this can best accrue from within a discussion of methodology and sources. After having discussed some of the methodological and source issues in Mitchell’s work, it is due time to return to Hourani’s. Reflecting on Arabic Thought’s legacy twenty years after its publication, Donald Reid had singled out style and content as the primary reasons for its enduring success. Forty years on, it might be time to recognize that the beautiful style and the rich, textured depth of the work are precisely what constitute its predicament, and that, when and if it is finally laid to rest, it is rather its formidable empathy and its unique scope that will endure. Written almost like a story, the work reads just too well, the narration flows just too smoothly, as if language were what it precisely is not – a transparent medium of thought. The quasi fictional quality of the work emanates from a contextualization so abstract and so individualized as to appear only remotely social. Compare, for instance, the painstaking reconstructions of the social worlds of Delanoue’s Moralistes et politiques;34 consider whether his relative neglect in Anglo-Saxon scholarship is due to the abrupt juxtapositions and complications of his biographies, i.e. to a

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disavowal of the Houranian narrative flow, rather than just to the pedestrian issue of language barrier;35 last but not least, contemplate his typologies, which give precedence to genre over content if not chronology36 (and ask why these typologies, which are so inclusive of the local, if not of the popular, have not allowed Delanoue to occupy in the field of intellectual history the place taken by, say, Gelvin in that of social history). What Hourani’s magnetic prose does, in contrast, is homogenize the prose of the numerous others it writes about. This it principally does by ignoring: (1) the social and epistemological significance of the genres in which this prose is couched, and (2) the importance of professionalization in the unfolding worldviews of its authors, as well as in their choice of the most adequate genre to articulate this worldview. While ‘style’ reveals, or rather conceals, Arabic Thought’s problematic methodology, ‘content’ points to its monolithic sources: the sole writings of the Liberal Age’s actors. True, rarely has anyone read as much and as closely such literature – a feat, considering its labelling as weak and second-rank. Yet the period that here concerns us is replete with sources of such heretofore unprecedented variety that an analytical recognition of such qualitative difference would have shed quite another contextual light on the material considered by Albert Hourani. Besides the court records and petitions, chronicles and advice literature, fatwās and commentaries of the preceding, yet overlapping, century of the Ottoman Empire, a whole new range of writings, artefacts, institutions and modes of social organization appeared as of the Tanzimat (1839–1879) and around the turn of the century, which evidenced the reforming state’s enormous engagements with, and society’s negotiations of, all things modern. Scores of translations, editions as well as compositions, of philosophical and literary, legal and administrative, scientific and technical works were produced in Turkish, Arabic and other imperial languages. There were also new literary, as well as academic, genres, foremost among which novels and plays, biographies, memoirs and histories. Hourani’s intimate knowledge of this material, which burst onto the scene of the colonized or soon-to-be colonized Arab provinces of the Empire in the pedagogical guise of periodical serialization, printed manuals or compilations, only matches his sheer disregard for the social significance of the two central agents that materially produced and effectively disseminated this whole new range of writings: the printing press and the periodical/daily press. A number of studies have stressed of course the importance of print and publishing as agents of change, though no equivalent to E. Eisenstein’s monumental survey exists for the Middle Eastern context.37 Why? While histories of the Arab press have mapped its territories,38 and more recent symposia revisited its canons or explored its lesser known aspects,39 none however have come so close as to write a history of the emergence and structural transformation of the Middle Eastern public sphere.40 Even though the recourse to the Habermassian theory in Middle East studies is now past its teens, and already showing signs of fatigue, this recourse interestingly never really made its way out of sociology.41 The quasi concomitance between the birth of both presses and the emergence of a public sphere, for instance, has generated no scholarship. Neither have the

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far-reaching consequences of that protracted moment of tension and reorganization between centre and periphery, which, before it eventually dissolved into an exit from Empire and colonization,42 enduringly shaped the relationship between the new ‘national’ citizens of the former Ottoman Arab provinces and the new Arab States.43 In her monumental work on the journal al-Muqtaṭaf, Dagmar Glaß came closest to problematizing the neglect of the institution of the press in Middle East history when she described the press as having been disregarded as a source in its own right and plundered as a ‘quarry’, a bottomless reservoir of ideas – a disregard she termed ‘Steinbruchprinzip’.44 Why was this crucial agent of social change denied analytical dignity? The contemporaries and actors of the emergent public sphere themselves all spoke endlessly and reflexively of its novelty and effects, in its very columns as well as in chronicles, essays and fiction. As early as 1834, Ṭahṭāwī (1801–1873) introduced into Arabic the phonetically translated neologism of jurnāl; Muwayliḥī (1868–1930) then entrusted his ‘Isā with instructing the Pasha into the meaning of this new social institution; at the turn of the century, Yāzijī (1847–1906) would deliver a scathing attack of his contemporaries’ linguistic abuses in the emerging language of the press; Zaydān (1861–1914) would produce a history of the Arab press, while the editors of alManār and al-Muqtaṭaf would spell out the deontology of public debating.45 By reading the thought of the intellectuals within the emerging public sphere, i.e. within the context that moved and shaped them, one is able to map the web of their relations, the space of their experiences, the horizon of their expectations, the ideational matrix in which they evolved, in their sustained endeavours to plot the coordinates of selfhood as against the coordinates of statehood. If the reclaiming of intellectual history by social history can best avert the ever-looming hierarchical pitfalls of Lovejoyan histories, it is because it shows so acutely how the intellectuals of the Nahḍa and their successors were trying to make sense of their predicament from within an impossible threesome: the colony, the Ottoman Empire and the nation-state in the making. In other words, why their attempts at excavating and questioning the ‘national’ interest, at holding the ‘state’ accountable in the face of competing stately interests and stakes, were largely doomed; and, consequently, why their self-image was so apologetic, and why both their attempts and their selfimage remained doomed and apologetic even after decolonization and the advent of the nation-state, when the ‘Middle Eastern public sphere’ continued to sit awkwardly astride the newly founded nation-states, refusing containment, and rekindling the Ottoman boundaries of the Arab provinces in the ideology of Pan-Arabism. It is perhaps no accident that most recent histories of Iraq systematically resort to the public sphere paradigm, in order to recount not just the predicament of this particular Ottoman province between Empire, colony and nation-state, its pre-Baath pluralism and the extraordinary career of Pan-Arabism within its borders and beyond, but also the negotiation of its peripheral/central position within the emerging Arab world.46 If the production of meaning is a predicate of agency, the latter is always a function of a complex array of factors, ranging from what Bourdieu defines as

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symbolic and economic capital, Malia, the circumstances of the intellectual, Foucault, epistemic formations and, last but not least, Habermas, communicative action. Accounting for this array of factors pre-empts the invocation of external norms, canons or arguments and refocuses attention on the contemporary and local production of meaning. For instance, why most Nahḍawis were not mindful of the radical critics of British imperialism the likes of Hobson (1858–1940),47 but very much cognizant of its foremost promoters the likes of J. S. Mill (1806–1876) is, on the face of it, a paradox. After all, the former condemned imperialism on economic and moral grounds whereas the latter oft praised it on the same grounds. In so doing though, the first was upsetting the coordinates of the system of social inequality in which the Nahḍawis were basing their selfarrogated mission as enlightened tutors of the nation; whereas the second was conversely affording them a particularly relevant idiom of subjugation of the commoners (ʽāmma) by the elite (khāṣṣa). With a complex and long local history, the otherwise foreign, colonial, ‘civilizing’ notion of guidance (Arabic: irshād) was indeed steeped in the projects of the times (religious, educational and social reform) and appeared as a guarantor of the new public intellectuals’ role. The unveiling of such entangled genealogies, or networks of signifiers, needs thus further tools: those provided by conceptual history, whether in its German Koselleckian guise or its British counterpart. This is no invitation to methodological entropy, quite to the contrary. In order to arrive to a ‘history of the uses of concepts in argument’ as called for by Quentin Skinner,48 or to a social history of concepts and of their advocates, the systematic collection of journals as a primary source for such an inquiry appears a prerequisite to any serious socialintellectual history of the modern Middle East, given the crucial importance of these chronicles of Zeitgeist, mentalités and public opinion in the colonial and postcolonial period. Could then the framework of critical theory, the tools of conceptual history in combination with the approaches of sociology, represent the ‘concrete theoretical, methodological and practical conceptual framework’ that ‘the field [of Middle East studies] awaits’, in the words of Gershoni and Singer?49 With all the essays presented here locating the advent of the modern Arab intellectual within an emerging public sphere, the explicit use of this normativehistorical concept of Habermas in the context of the modern Middle East has finally to be discussed with an eye to Habermas’ express objection to the transfer of this concept outside of the context of Western European modernity.50 On the one hand, this objection might have to do with a foreclosed reading of mercantilism and the industrial revolution, i.e. with a reading that disconnects the story of those overseas counters, companies, faraway markets and future colonies from the development of a literary and soon political public sphere ‘at home’. On the other hand, it is true that the quasi concomitant advent of the private printing press, of the salon, of public fora and of a legal (colonial if not yet constitutional) framework of regulation and contestation set the Middle Eastern public sphere on a specific historical course of structural transformation. It did not

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however disqualify its procedural and normative function – that of a discursive locus of political agency, ruled by critical rational argument in lieu of considerations of status – even if it qualified it (‘non-secular’, dysfunctional, etc.). But, ever since Habermas’ work was published in 1962, and mostly since the 1990s, after the publication of its English translation (1989), which Western public sphere has remained unscathed? Among Habermas’ many critics, Nancy Fraser has struck a particularly relevant cord here when she objected, among other things, to Habermas’ conception of identity. The locus of the latter is not, she wrote, the private sphere but very much the public, i.e. as an individual, the citizen does not come fully formed into the public sphere but very much develops there a sense of self.51 This is therefore yet another reason to uphold the (revisited) Habermassian paradigm, in order to witness and make sense of the emergence of the modern Arab intellectual. The essays’ meaningful delineation of the new genres, media, venues and networks that constituted the Nahḍa and their meticulous unpacking of the specific circumstances of its intellectuals allow indeed the figures of the teacher, the publicist and the activist to emerge and, with them, the unfolding of ideologies and the definition of self. As the intellectuals presented here ceaselessly crossed political borders, symbolically and physically, mapping out an imagined reformed and civilized polity, one might finally ask indeed to what extent the final fragmentation of the Middle Eastern public sphere within the confines of the emerging nation-states impacted not just the course of nationalisms but also the advent of modern Arab political subjectivity.

The sequence of articles and rationale of the volume The rationale behind the choice of essays for this volume was grounded in an ongoing dialogue between the authors over the past decade.52 In placing side by side revisited canonical figures, the unknown and the marginal, the volume complicates the categories of intellectual history at large, signaling the cultural directions and social layers that a future history of the emergent middle eastern public sphere, that still awaits to be written, will have to simultaneously probe. The volume’s somewhat Egypto-centric focus partly reflects this arbitrary association of scholars and partly the state of the historiography. Its extended periodization from 1880 to 1960 was meant to include the first public sphere generation (1880–1914) from the heartland of the Nahḍa (Syria–Egypt) and to follow the structural transformation of the Middle Eastern public sphere during its exit from Empire and through decolonization and independence and till the eve of the assumption of power by the Baath in Syria and Iraq and the Six-Day War. By linking and reading side by side the first generation of colonial publicists, the schooled nationalists of the 1930s onward, as well as the highly mobile exiles that moved between nations and empires, the aim was to also show how and why the birth of the Middle Eastern public sphere before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and under colonial auspices later contracted without fitting the contours of the nation-state.

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By opening the sequence of articles with Samah Selim’s paper in Chapter 2, I have meant to reinstate the centrality of the issues of language, literature and translation for the Nahḍa project. The translation in 1906 of a now forgotten best-selling Edwardian gothic novel (Pharos the Egyptian) by the Egyptian nationalist lawyer, writer and translator Muḥammad Luṭfī Gumʽa (1886–1953) is an occasion for Selim to show how the conservative discourse of degeneration in Edwardian Britain both overlapped and collided with nationalist, reformist discourses in turn-of-the-century Egypt. In so doing, she suggests a critique of ‘the colonial difference’ in literary history and posits translation as a central axis of comparative literary history. Translation, she argues, was a key process in the creation and diffusion of texts, genres and literary schools, as well as a defining practice of the Nahḍawi intellectual. While her intention is not to recuperate a marginalized tradition or to reconstruct a new canon for the Arabic novel (Gumʽa was a lesser figure of the Nahḍa and his translation appeared in serialized form in the popular fiction periodical The People’s Entertainments), her essay suggests an alternate model of the practice of writing (and reading) from a post-Romantic point of view. In Chapter 3, discourses of degeneration and reform, authenticity and civilization, are also taken up by Michael Gasper as he examines public deliberations over the ‘peasant question’ in fin-de-siècle Egypt. Gasper looks at the ways in which the first ‘public sphere’ generations of intellectuals (the post-ʽUrābī rebellion publicists) represented the peasant as both an object of moral reform and producing subject and therefore a central figure in the economic viability of Egypt. As the social question of the time, and the one through which power relations were most starkly represented, the ‘peasant question’ charts the way in which Egypt’s emerging literate classes sought to set out a central place for themselves in a social geography they were instrumental in mapping. The diverse questions, concerns and philosophies that made up the peasant question offer Gasper a perspective from which to explore how interventions by particular individuals circumscribed the unfolding of events and how only certain kinds of outcomes were enabled. Among those intellectuals were ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm, Aḥmad Samīr, Yūsuf Shīth and Shaykh Hamza Fatḥallāh, who articulated desires for a new sort of collective future with themselves at the helm of a new kind of polity, paving the way for a definition of Egyptian-ness. In Chapter 4, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi focuses on an identical time framework (1880–1914) to assess the unfolding of a competing radical ideology (socialism) on the pages of two amongst the most influential opinion makers of the Nahḍa, namely, al-Muqtaṭaf (Beirut/Cairo: 1876–1952) and al-Hilāl (Cairo: 1892– present). Until 1914, many if not most Arabic writings on socialism (and anarchism) came in the form of articles, many of which were published on the pages of these two periodicals. Imbued with discursive authority, these periodicals simultaneously shaped and represented the ideas circulating among a larger network of writers and readers whose members were found in the Arab Ottoman world and beyond (including in North and South America). Crucial to Makdisi’s analysis of the making of intellectuals and unfolding of radical ideologies is

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the notion of translocal and/or diasporic cross-denominational networks of publicists, writers and activists. This sustained interest in and engagement with socialist ideas was an integral, if understudied, aspect of the intellectual framework that was being constructed in the Arab world and beyond, namely, the Nahḍa. By analysing this relationship between the Nahḍa and socialism, this chapter shows: (1) how none of the existing reformist and radical intellectual networks was impervious to contacts and interactions with individuals who might have belonged to other networks; and (2) how ingeniously intellectuals the likes of Shiblī Shumayyil engaged with modern political (and ‘Western’) ideas, domesticated and hybridized them, and in the process creatively brought about a local intellectual worldview or sets of references that were simultaneously self-consciously global. In Chapter 5, I look at yet another global Nahḍawi journal (al-Manār, 1898–1935) and at its founder, the highly influential Syrian–Egyptian PanIslamist publicist Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā. Rather than delineate the contents of this new political ideology and its relation with the broader movement of Islamic reform, I suggest stepping out of the dominant paradigm of Islamic revivalism and seeing, in the emergent profession and media of journalism, a decisive change in terms of Weltanschauung. By taking seriously Riḍā’s self-posturing as journalist, I offer a reading of his biography and his work through this lens, arguing that such a focus allows us to see the epistemological displacements brought about by modernity and which the paradigm of revivalism simply does not. I suggest that during the intensely and foundationally competitive quest for a representative expression of the public interest – which arose during the first onslaughts on the Ottoman Empire and reached a new climax with the British occupation of Egypt – a shift in discursive hegemony occurred, ʽilm (Islamic knowledge) making way for ṣiḥāfa (journalism) as the new dominant discourse. By mainstreaming Islamic legal concepts the likes of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma (public interest) in the press, Riḍā not only laid the discursive foundations for public deliberation, but he also inaugurated the ‘Salafi turn’, understood as the discursive expansion of Islam into all aspects of life, in reaction to the ever-increasing powers of the secular, and colonially sanctioned, nation-state. In Chapter 6, Lital Levy turns our attention to Esther Azhari Moyal (1873–1948), a fascinating if unexpected figure of the Nahḍa who died in poverty and oblivion the year the state of Israel came into being. In 1893, Esther was ‘a graduate of the Syrian Protestant College, a young Jewish intellectual in Beirut, in the heyday of the Nahḍa, a figure seemingly ahead of her time.’ On the eve of 1948, Moyal is in Jaffa, a forlorn figure having survived two world wars, and living henceforth in a world defined by the enmity of “Arab and Jew.” What happened to her legacy and to the memory of this legacy, asks Levy? A very active intellectual, Moyal had indeed contributed to literary translation and Arabic journalism. She had also left her mark on the Arab women’s movement and championed ‘Sephardi Zionism’ with its programme of a ‘shared homeland’ for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim inhabitants of Palestine. How does one approach a figure like Esther Moyal, asks Levy further? As a Jewish writer of

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Arabic? As a woman writer of Arabic? As an Arab writer who happened to be both Jewish and female? ‘The reified (and reifying) discursive categorizations available to us make it difficult even to describe a figure who crosses so many boundaries.’ Sitting astride two historiographical narratives of modernity the Arabic Nahḍa (‘renaissance’) and the Hebrew haskala (‘enlightenment’), precursors of Arab and Jewish narratives of nationhood, interstitial subjects such as the Arab Jewish Moyal are not comfortably incorporated into the (reductive) story of national origins and are subsequently left out of modernity’s embrace. ‘It is however such subjects who allow us best to navigate the specificity of the Middle Eastern public sphere, with its Ottoman mooring and colonial fractures.’ In Chapter 7, Leyla Dakhli turns to one of the iconic figures of exile, the Syrian writer Amīn Rīhānī (1876–1940), who emigrated to New York as a youth and came back as a young adult to re-claim his Arabic language and history. The cosmopolitan recluse of the Lebanese mountain village of Frayké engaged in an impressive network of journals, associations and literary ventures, moved through cultural codes and donned multiple identities in a bid to contest Lebanese sectarianism and promote tolerance and freedom, albeit in the framework of ambivalent politics. By focusing on Rīhānī’s travels and texts and on his intellectual posturing, Dakhli explores the ‘Mahjar’ as literary and political territory in the first decades of the twentieth century. Much like Makdisi, she argues that the Nahḍa was a global undertaking. But unlike Makdisi, who argued the ‘transnational’ dimension of the Nahḍa from within its Arab territories, Dakhli argues from without. Many authors, contends Dakhli, have insisted upon the roles of emigrated writers in the development of modern literature and in the elaboration of Arab intellectual modernity; and yet, few have attempted to comprehend in what ways this fundamental specificity modifies our understanding of a Nahḍa that has too often been reduced to categories of modernity borrowed from a conquering West. In Chapter 8, Christoph Schumann assesses the extent to which education was the school of the nation for a later radicalized generation of Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals (1830–1958). A supposed fact but one hardly studied in detail, the relation between the spread of education and the emergence of radical nationalism is crucial for the intellectual history of radical nationalist movements. Schumann notes how the emergence and rapid growth of radical organizations, like the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the League of National Action, demonstrated a growing political self-confidence of the educated ‘new middle class’. Opposing French rule in Syria and Lebanon, they called the legitimacy of the emerging territorial states into question, as well as the claim of the conservativenationalist notables to rule these prospective postcolonial states. ‘Their idea of decolonization, writes Schumann, was tightly connected to their call for a comprehensive reform of the nation. Industrialization, technical modernization and nationalist education were to transform the society from a state of ‘miserable backwardness’ to a ‘higher stage of civilization’, able to cope with the West.’ Radical nationalist parties claimed a leading role in this modernization, as they put forth their acquired ‘modern’ knowledge. Crucial to their self-awareness was indeed their shared experience in education and their intense politicization

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during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. This experience, which Schumann reads in their autobiographies, was shared by all young students, regardless of their social backgrounds and flowed into their consciousness as the experience of a generation. With their elitist self-perception hardly congruent with the socio-political reality in the two countries, the intellectuals projected their hopes into a future where the unification of the nation would bring about their own social and political ascent. In the end, this project dissolved in the bloody power struggles of the later decades. In Chapter 9, Peter Wien also analyses in terms of generational self-awareness the rise of a new generation of Arab nationalists in 1930s Iraq. Based on his reading of newspapers, diaries and memoirs, he introduces a number of exemplary biographies of the so called ‘Young Effendiyya’, a group of men in their twenties and thirties of Sunni and Shia Muslim, as well as Christian, background. Much like their Syrian and Lebanese counterparts, it is their shared experience in state education and their participation in a multi-confessional public sphere that were at the core of their generational consciousness. Iraqi publicists opposed to the pro-British establishment in power debated European models of leadership, but integrated and reworked them in the local context of an Iraqi socio-political framework, which drew a lot from late Ottoman traditions and its militaristic and authoritarian heritage. The pros and cons of European ideologies were equally discussed, there was admiration for strictly organized systems of leadership and disciplined societies, but direct alliances with European powers were mostly rejected out of concern about the imperialist past and present of these powers. Iraqi publicists promoted leadership systems and social discipline, following the example of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Turkey. They were waiting for Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’ to guide the nation into a brighter future. Ideologically then, the members of the Young Effendiyya remained quite undecided and wavered between authoritarian and liberal approaches. But, as Wien argues, inherent contradictions are for us, as readers of their statements, to uncover, but contemporaries did not necessarily consider them as contradictory on the ‘market of opinions and ideologies’ that offered a wide array of ideas to choose from – not only to Iraqis, but to the youth of many decolonizing societies.

Notes 1 Dana Sajdi, ‘Print and its Discontents: A Case for Pre-Print Journalism and Other Sundry Print Matters’, The Translator, 2009, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 105–138. 2 See Dyala Hamzah (ed.), ‘La Censure ou comment la contourner: dire et ne pas dire dans l’Egypte d’aujourd’hui’, Egypte/Monde arabe, 2000, no. 3, 1, pp. 11–23.; Richard Jacquemond, Entre scribes et écrivains. Le champ littéraire dans l’Egypte contemporaine, Arles: Actes Sud, 2002; Elizabeth S. Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspectives, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 3 See the renewed scholarly enthusiasm that the figures of Shidyāq, Muwayliḥī and Zaydān are provoking, and the interest in the social and public figures they cut during their time: Anne-Laure Dupont, ‘What is a katib ‘amm? The Status of Men of Letters According to Jurji Zaydan,’, Middle Eastern Literatures, 2010, vol. 13, no. 2,

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5

6

7

8 9

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pp. 171–181; ibid.; Gurgī Zaydān (1861–1914), Ecrivain réformiste et témoin de la Renaissance arabe, Institut Français du Proche-Orient, Damascus, 2006; Fawwaz Trabulsi and Aziz al-Azmeh (eds), Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Silsilat al-A’mal almajhula, London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1995; Kamran Rastegar, Literary Modernity between the Middle East and Europe: Textual Transactions in Nineteenth-Century Arabic, English, and Persian literatures, London: Routledge, 2007. See also my forthcoming book, Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935) ou le “Tournant salafiste”: Intérêt général, Islam et opinion publique dans l’Egypte coloniale. Keith Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 19. On the social history of women and gender, see M. L. Meriwether and Judith Tucker, A Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East, Boulder: Westview Press, 1999; Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994 (and more recently, Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Elisabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000; on workers, see Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987; on popular politics and non-elite nationalism, see James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. To what extent has European intellectual history, if at all, been affected by E. Said’s opus and to what does it owe its renewal three decades ago? ‘[N]ew intellectual history in the humanities’ since the 1980s is said to be ‘flourishing’, while Middle Eastern intellectual history seems to lag behind and remain ghettoized; despite ‘a few [new] studies . . . located at the cutting edge of Middle Eastern studies . . . works on intellectual history proper remain in the scholarly peripheries of Middle East studies’: Israel Gershoni and Amy Singer, ‘Introduction: Intellectual History in Middle Eastern Studies’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2008, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 183–184. Gershoni and Singer’s list of recent studies includes Roel Meijer, Gabriel Piterberg, Negin Nabavi, Yoav Di-Capua, Orit Bashkin, Christoph Schumann, Stephen Sheehi, Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Omnia El-Shakry and Elliot Colla. Writing in 2008, one might have added Samah Selim, Peter Wien and Keith Watenpaugh, amongst others. Writing after, one should add Leyla Dakhli, Michael Gasper and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, all authors of this present volume. Gershoni and Singer, p. 185. From the following sections, it should become clear that I disagree with Gershoni’s take on Albert Hourani’s role and legacy in Middle East intellectual history, as deconstructor of the crisis narrative. See his ‘The Theory of Crisis and the Crisis in a Theory: Intellectual History in Twentieth-Century Middle Eastern Studies,’ in: Gershoni, Israel, Singer, Amy, Erdem, Y. Hakan (eds), Middle East Historiographies. Narrating the Twentieth Century, Seattle: Washington University Press, 2006, chapter 5, pp. 131–182. Yoav Di-Capua, author of an otherwise important Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in 20th Century Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, spells out the following on his webpage: ‘My field of inquiry is Modern Arab intellectual history. It is a relatively small academic province whose parishioners map the Arab experience of Enlightenment.’ I do not identify with such a mandate. As in William Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Satiʽ al-Husri, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. Malcolm Hooper Kerr, Islamic Reform: the Political and Legal Theories of Muḥammad ʽAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966;

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

D. Hamzah Charles Wendell, The Evolution of the Egyptian National Image, From its Origins to Ahmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. David Commins, Islamic Reform. Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. J. M. Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Douglas Payne, ‘Staying New: Questions of Growth in Postcolonial Studies’, The Free Library (22 June 2002), www.thefreelibrary.com/Staying new: questions of growth in postcolonial studies.-a092049124 (accessed 28 September 2011). Juan Cole, ‘Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and the Revival of Practical Philosophy’, The Muslim World, 1980, vol. 70, pp. 29–46. Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Christoph Schumann (ed.), Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century until the 1960s, Leiden: Brill, 2008. Stephen Longrigg, shortly after the publication of Arabic Thought, in 1963. Quoted in Donald Reid, ‘Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age Twenty Years After’, IJMES, Nov. 1982, vol. 14, p. 554. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. My references are to the paperback edition of 1991 (Berkeley: University of California Press). See Mervat Hatem’s review of Mitchell’s work in the Middle East Journal, Winter 1989, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 127–128. With far more severity, Barbara Harlow wrote that the ‘sometime ahistorical application of a dominant Western theory’, even when the argument is made that the technologies of power were developed in the colony, does not pre-empt altogether ‘a certain renewal of cultural imperialism’ (Middle East Report, Jul.–Aug. 1989, no. 159, p. 40). Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men. Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Omnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory. Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2007. See her introduction, p. 5. Michael Gasper, The Power of Representation. Publics, Peasants and Islam in Egypt, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009. Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2011. Yoav Di-Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 83–85. George Makdisi, 1981, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 202: ‘The field of shahada was both a trade (sina’a) and a science (‘ilm).’ Aḥmadnagarī ʽAbd al-Nabī ibn ʽAbd al-Rasūl, Kitāb jāmiʽ al-ʽulūm al-mulaqqab bidustūr al-ʽulamāʾ fī iṣṭilāḥāt al-ʽulūm wa-l-funūn, Hyderabad: Maktabat dāʾirat almaʽārif al-niẓāmiyya, 1911, vol. 1, part 2, pp. 339–370. For a discussion of learning in the mosque as the practice of a ṣināʽa, see Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 193 (note 61). ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, ‘Ajāʾib al-āthār fī-l tarājim wa-l-akhbār, Cairo (Būlāq), 1779–1780 [H.1297]. (The English translation which refers to this edition is Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann et al., ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Jabartī’s History of Egypt, 3 vols, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994). See for instance I, 393, (vol. 1, p. 656 in Philipp and Perlmann) where Jabartī describes shaykh Ḥasan al-Jabartī (his father), his study and mastery of calligraphy at the hand of two masters and his ‘receiving an ijāza from the (guild of ) writers and permission to practice their craft’. See also Ḥasan

Introduction

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al-Jabartī’s involvement in draftsmanship and his transmission of this ‘craft’ to his servants, I, 397 and 398 (vol. 1, p. 665 in Philipp and Perlmann). [I,21], p. 33 Philipp, Perlmann (I and II). The depletion of Cairo from its craftsmen by Selim I is described in I,20 (vol. 1, p. 33 in Philipp and Perlmann). 28 Jabartī, ‘Ajāʾib, I, 3 (vol. 1, p. 2 in Philipp and Perlmann). 29 Jabartī, ‘Ajāʾib, I, 7 (vol. 1, p. 9 in Philipp and Perlmann): Know that when God . . . created the earth . . . He made human beings dependent on each other for their means of living and food, and for their clothing and shelter; for human beings are not like the other animals, which secure whatever they need without trade or craft. 30 Al-Fārābī (872–950) placed the philosopher at the top of the ladder and at abysmal distance from the commoner. In this intellective and emanative political cosmology, the King came only second, while the Prophet mirrored with ‘images’ what the philosopher articulated with categories. Within Islamic historiography, the gradual prominence of legal scholars over philosophers meant that the philosopher was eventually replaced by the scholar on the ontological ladder, with the Prophet crowning the hierarchy. 31 For instance, see his necrology of the cutler and calligrapher Ibrāhīm al-Sakākīnī, ‘a talented and ingenious master craftsman’, who excelled in the art of producing swords and knives, as well as in that of transcribing books: Jabartī, ‘Ajāʾib, I, 250 (vol. 1, p. 414 in Philipp and Perlmann). 32 For a comprehensive study of al-ʽAṭṭār and his standing in the cultural history of modern Egypt, see Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, Egypt: 1760–1840, 1979, Austin: Texas University Press. See also the counter and complementary readings of de Jong, ‘The Itinerary of Hasan al-ʽAṭṭār (1766–1835): A Reconsideration and its Implications’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 1983, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 99–128 and B. Abu Manneh, ‘Four Letters of Shaykh Ḥasan al-ʽAṭṭār to Shaykh Ṭāhir al-Ḥusaynī of Jerusalem’, Arabica, 2003, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 79–95(17). See also Gilbert Delanoue, vol. 2, in footnote 34. 33 I say ‘necessary’ in response to the critical feedback I received from Sherene Seikaly, on the one hand, and Ulrike Freitag on the other. The first asked whether one needed paradigms at all, the other, whether one really needed to throw the baby out with the bathwater (Hourani’s book and the Lovejoyan paradigm). While I do think that paradigms share despicable features with ideologies (the exclusivism and rigidity that comes from any claim to truth), they are not ideologies but rather express the situatedness of the field and of the individual scholar embracing it. I therefore see paradigms as a healthy reminder of the historicity of the argument, and modesty of the scholar, as well as a powerful analytical grid. On the other hand, while I absolutely consider myself part of Hourani’s legion of inspired pupils and admirers (like so many others, I devised my very dissertation topic while reading his book!), I strongly believe that ideas are rooted in personal motives and circumstances, participate in shared values and collective projects, and articulate normative worldviews within genres that are imbued with a specific social significance. As such, they are unintelligible outside the politics of their users, producers and detractors and, at any rate, a history that does them justice is a history that takes on the social materiality that generated them in lieu of an extraneous and retrospective measuring stick (the coming of the West; failure, etc.). 34 Gilbert Delanoue, Moralistes et politiques musulmans dans l’Egypte du XIXe siècle (1798–1882), Cairo: IFAO, 2 vols, 1982, 739 pp. Anouar Louca finds the context too intellectual and not enough biographical, a sign perhaps of his unease with the social significance given by Delanoue to the question of genre. See Anouar Louca, ‘Gilbert Delanoue, Moralistes et politiques musulmans dans l’Egypte du XIXe siècle (1798–1882), Le Caire: IFAO, 2 vols, 739 pp.’, Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques, vol. 1, 1984, p. 195. 35 Delanoue’s initial project explicitly fell within the liberal periodization of Hourani (the years 1882–1922). He gave up on it in order to investigate what came before, and

18

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

D. Hamzah lasted during, the ‘impact’, along the lines of an histoire des mentalités. His corpus is circumscribed by Napoleon’s invasion and the British occupation of Egypt (1798–1882). Incidentally, Hourani himself had stressed the imperative of taking French scholarship more systematically into account. See his ‘How Should We Write the History of the Middle East?’ IJMES, May 1991, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 125–136. Anouar Louca, ‘Gilbert Delanoue’, p. 395: ‘Un tel classement, qui tâche d’accorder genre et chronologie, ne va pas sans tiraillement.’ Anouar Louca deplores for instance that al-ʽAṭṭār is accordingly separated from his ‘friend’ al-Jabartī. See also footnote 24 above. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Dagmar Glaß, Eva Hanebutt-Benza and Geoffrey Roper, Middle Eastern Languages and the Print Revolution. A Cross-Cultural Encounter, Westhofen: Skulima, 2002. Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East; A History, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Ami Ayalon, “The press and publishing”, in Robert W. Hefner (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 6: Muslims and Modernity: Culture and Society since 1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, ch. 23. See the First and Second Symposia on the History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East, respectively held in Mainz in 2002 and Paris in 2005. Their proceedings were published by Philip Sadgrove in supplements 15 (2004) and 24 (2008) respectively, of the Journal of Semitic Studies. Even if recourse to the concept has become ubiquitous, the existence of the reality it describes is assumed rather than demonstrated. See for example Itzchak Weismann, ‘The Sociology of ‘Islamic Modernism’: Muhammad ‘Abduh, the National Public Sphere, and the Colonial State,’ The Maghreb Review, 2007, vol. 32, pp. 104–121. This is also in a gendered sense. ‘It is remarkable’, writes Elisabeth Thompson, ‘that the conceptual framework of public and private spheres has never dominated Middle Eastern women’s history’: ‘Public and Private in Middle Eastern Women’s History’, Journal of Women’s History, spring 2003, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 52–69. While it certainly has dominated the sociology of contemporary Islam (see footnotes 41 and 43), it has still to contribute a gendered history of the Middle Eastern public sphere. One of the early theorization of the (Muslim rather than Arab) public sphere is in Armando Salvatore and Dale Eickelman, ‘The Public Sphere and Muslim Identities’, Archives européennes de sociologie 2002, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 92–115. (In the same year of 2002, Habermas visited Iran.) In a later work (The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Salvatore seeks alternative genealogies for the public and the private that are not steeped in ‘liberal modernity’. His in-depth readings into the traditions of Islam represent however a normative championing of marginal strands, rather than a historical reconstruction. To understand the fate of the Habermassian model in Middle East studies, it might be helpful to add that discussions of the public sphere in the Middle East were initiated by the debate on civil society, which raged during the 1990s. For a review of that debate, see Denis Joseph Sullivan and Sana Abed-Kotob, Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society vs. the State, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999. Even those rare works dealing historically with public sphere formation do not dwell on this concomitance and on its effects. See Ch. Herzog, R. Motika and M. Ursinus (eds), Querelles privées et contestations publiques. Le rôle de la presse dans la formation de l’opinion publique au Proche Orient, Istanbul: ISIS, 2002. Likewise, though with meticulous descriptions of the protocols of public deliberation, Dagmar Glaß’s more recent monograph does not historically problematize the emergence of the Middle Eastern public sphere: Dagmar Glaß, Der Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit. Aufklärung, Räsonnement und Meinungsstreit in der frühen arabischen

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44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52

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Zeitschriftenkommunikation (vol. 1: Analyse medialer und sozialer Strukturen; vol. 2: Streitgesprächprotokolle), Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004, 2 vols, 750 p. The absence of a history of the Middle Eastern public sphere is to be contrasted with its contemporary sociology. Scholars calling today for an abandonment of this paradigm are usually scholars wired to the most recent Internet-based communication channels (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and to their effects on social movements. For an explicit plea to go beyond the public sphere when analysing the Arab Spring, see Albrecht Hofheinz, ‘Nextopia? Beyond Revolution 2.0’, International Journal of Communication, 2011, vol. 5, pp. 1417–1434. More generally, on the theoretical problems entailed in the conception of a ‘transnational’ public sphere, see Nancy Fraser, ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, 2007, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0605/ fraser/en. In a more restricted context, I had myself touched upon some related issues: Dyala Hamzah, ‘Is There an Arab Public Sphere? The Palestinian Intifada, a Saudi Fatwa and the Egyptian Press’, in Armando Salvatore and Mark Levine (eds), Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005, pp. 181–206. Dagmar Glaß, Der Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit, vol. 1. Ṭahṭāwī, Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīs, 1834 (quoted in Mohammed Sawaie, ‘Rifaʽa Rafiʽ al-Tahtawi and His Contributions to the Lexical Development of Modern Literary Arabic’, IJMES, August 2000, vol. 32, no. 3, p. 395, 402); Yāzijī, Lughat aljarāʾid; 1901; Muwayliḥī, Ḥadith Isa ibn Hisham, 1898–1902, 1907, pp. 35–38; Jirjī Zaydān, ‘Tārikh al-Nahḍa al-ṣiḥafiyya fī al-lugha al-’arabiyya’, al-Hilāl, 2 May 1910. Peter Wien, ‘Who is “Liberal” in 1930s Iraq? Education as a Contested Terrain in a Nascent Public Sphere’, in Christoph Schumann (ed.), Nationalism and Liberal Thought in the Arab East: Political Practice and Experience, SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East, London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 31–47. Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq, 2009, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Peter Sluglett, ‘The Mandate System: High Ideals, Illiberal Practices’, in Christoph Schumann (ed.), Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century until the 1960s (Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia, vol. 104), Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2008, pp. 29–50. Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Author of Imperialism: a Study, published in 1902 in London. Q. Skinner, ‘Reply to My Critics’, in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 283. Gershoni and Singer, ‘Intellectual History’, p. 183. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge: Polity, 1989 (1st German edn, 1962). See the preface to the 1962 edition. Nancy Fraser, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992, pp. 109–142. A dialogue that was started by Keith Watenpaugh and myself in a workshop we convened together in Florence in 2003 and ambitiously entitled ‘Towards a Theory of the Mediterranean Intellectual: Modernity and Axes of Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa (1850–1950)’, (Fourth Mediterranean Political and Social Meeting, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Florence, 19–23 March 2003), and that was continued, formally or informally, in many other venues, among which Mainz, Berlin, Helsinki, Montreal, Boston, Washington and Salt Lake City. While some essays are reprints (Schumann, Wien, Selim), others are chapters or partial chapters of Ph.D.s (Hamzah, Levy) or of book manuscripts that were forthcoming at the start of the project and which have been published since (Khuri-Makdisi, Gasper, Dakhli).

2

Pharaoh’s revenge Translation, literary history and colonial ambivalence1 Samah Selim

It is by now generally accepted that the writing of literary history is – like history tout court – teleologically driven and politically useful, serving, as it most often does, to prop up the cultural claims of a particular language, ethnic group or national hegemony: ‘literary histories not only create continuities, but in the process, confer legitimacy’.2 It might even be argued that literary history is one of the most powerful vehicles by which the nation-state projects its legitimacy and authenticity within and beyond its own borders, and as such, it has played – and continues to play – a central role in the foundation and reproduction of the socio-political structures of modernity, including those of imperialism. Literary history is therefore not innocent of the broader political and discursive practices that have shaped the relationship between Europe and its others in modernity.3 Walter Mignolo has called this relationship ‘the colonial difference’: ‘the outside that is declared as such from the inside’.4 For Mignolo, the colonial difference is both a process and a place: the process of Western discursive self-formation, and the place of its other; of minority, difference and negation; the place where History becomes history and Literature becomes literature.5 For scholars working in Arabic literature, some kind of cognizance of the colonial difference has become unavoidable, particularly because of the way in which it structures the field as a whole. The discipline of English literature, for example, constructs its subject as an integrated and uninterrupted tradition with its own internal historical and formal logic, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. On the other hand, until quite recently, Arabic literature has been characterized primarily in terms of historical collapse and critical dystopia. The Anglo-European philological tradition read classical and early medieval Arabic literature in terms of a larger narrative of rise and fall, or creeping decadence. Literary modernity was then constructed as a renaissance that appropriated and copied – usually imperfectly – European modes and forms. The six-odd centuries in between decline and renaissance – from thirteenth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Beirut – were thereby rendered largely invisible. The 1980s inaugurated a poststructuralist onslaught against the discipline itself: literary history was declared ‘almost moribund’6 because of its seemingly inescapable teleological bent and its inevitable penchant for constructing and naturalizing various ‘fictions of power’. Feminist and postcolonial literary histories were tarred

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with the same brush, reproducing as they did the same fiction of origins and the same genealogical mechanisms as their patriarchal and imperial counterparts. While Linda Hutcheon has made a convincing argument that the way we reflect about the past has a direct bearing on how we act in the present and that, therefore, what she calls the ‘interventionist strategies’ of minority scholars remain an important political tool for historians of literature,7 my intention in what follows is not to recuperate a marginalized tradition or to reconstruct a new canon for the Arabic novel. Rather, this paper will attempt to sketch out an alternate model of the practice of writing (and reading) outside of the dominant, but historically contingent nineteenth-century Romantic tradition by foregrounding translation as a key process in the creation and diffusion of texts, genres and literary schools – in other words, as a central axis of comparative literary history. As I hope to show, this is one way to climb out of the neo-Hegelian teleologies of cultural praxis that continue to shape the way we understand the movements of modernity. While the first part of the paper will outline some of the key questions involved in this ‘translational turn’ in literary history, the second part will focus on a specific Arabic translation published in Cairo in 1906 of Pharos the Egyptian, a bestselling Edwardian novel about ancient Egypt. I will situate the novel in both its British and its local contexts in order to show how the conservative discourse of degeneration in Edwardian Britain both overlapped and collided with nationalist, reformist discourses in turn-of-the-century Egypt.8 In a way then, the paper suggests a critique of ‘the colonial difference’ in literary history, as well as a cartography of the ambivalent historical and textual territories of literary re-writings from a post-Romantic point of view.

Translation and literary history Building on the earlier work of Gideon Toury and Even-Zohar in polysystems theory, Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere argued for a cultural turn in translation studies in the 1990s. Their claim was that translation, like all writing, is never transparent: ‘There is always a context in which the translation takes place, always a history from which a text emerges and into which a text is transposed.’9 Translation is always then doubly contextualized, since the text has a place in two cultures and two literary systems. The elusive search for some kind of normative equivalence between free-floating source texts and target texts which had characterized much of modern translation theory in the West had produced a loaded rhetoric of possession and value to describe the translated text – ‘fidelity’ versus ‘treachery’, ‘bastardization’, ‘usurpation’ and so forth.10 More recently, scholars have begun to interrogate the binary categories of ‘translation’ and ‘original’ institutionalized in the nineteenth century, along with the very discipline of national literature via German Romanticism. The simultaneity of these two processes is important. Nation-building, essentialist concepts of national culture and the reification of solitary, unique genius – of originals versus copies – were all part of the way in which the hierarchies of colonial modernity were constructed and projected both inside and outside Europe.

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S. Selim Literary histories, as they have been written until recently, have had little time for translations, since for the literary historian, translation has had to do with ‘language’ only, not with literature – another pernicious outgrowth of the ‘monolinguization’ of literary history by Romantic historiographers intent on creating ‘national’ literatures preferably as uncontaminated as possible by foreign influences.11

Before the eighteenth century (and I may venture to add, in all the major literary traditions) originality was not in and of itself considered an aesthetic value in relation to literary production. Instead, imitation, free adaptation and commentary were variously privileged in the circulation of poetic forms. Romanticism changed all this however. The ‘spirit’ of a nation was understood by Herder and Schlegel to be reflected in its language and, in turn, in the original literary text, understood as an organic and self-contained form. Nonetheless, German Romanticism used translation as a strategic tool for dismantling the dominance of French models and mediations in its eighteenth-century literary culture and directly accumulating world literature in the German language. At the same time, the institutionalization of north European national literatures and genres was being assimilated to colonial epistemologies and projected outwards to the rest of the world as a series of universal categories. This is how European literary history and literary culture as a whole (mainly those of France, England and Germany) became the ‘original’, while the literary history and culture of the exterior of Europe was reduced to the status of copy. Since translation is the key trope through which this narrative of power operates, translation studies is a useful site from which to launch critical studies of culture and the cultural discourses that have structured colonial modernity. Translation has been the most basic, if largely invisible, mechanism in the production and circulation of new genres, devices and motifs across modern literary cultures. Translations of classical Greek and Latin texts produced major transformations in European vernaculars and poetics from the sixteenth century onwards, for example. The classical Arabic maqāma was transformed by the Spanish picaresque and led to the emergence of seventeenth and eighteenthcentury novelistic forms in France and England through translation. AngloAmerican imagism was directly shaped by Ezra Pound’s translations of East Asian poetic forms like the Japanese Haiku. The same can be argued for the movement of South American magical realism into European postmodernisms.12 The examples multiply once we take into account the entire nexus of texts that make up a literary polysystem, and not just its high cultural forms. Popular literature has historically circulated through a variety of non-normative techniques of translation, including anonymous rewritings, forgeries and pseudotranslations. The eighteenth-century French conte was transformed by Antoine Galland’s adaptation of the Thousand and One Nights (1704–1717) and English gothic was initiated by Horace Walpole’s pseudotranslation, The Castle of Otranto (1764). The nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed the spread, through an onslaught of semi-anonymous adaptations and pseudotranslations, of

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the detective fiction genre, from England to the rest of Europe, Latin America, the Middle and Far East, transforming narrative techniques and literary motifs along the way.13 These are just a few examples of the absolute centrality of translation in literary history in and beyond Europe. But the colonial difference functions partly by repressing these movements and by constructing instead translation as a metaphor for its civilizing mission. In his later work, André Lefevere arrives at the conclusion that translation is itself a form of rewriting and that therefore all texts are essentially rewritings or refractions of other texts. Most people, he argues, never even come into direct contact with the originals of the literary canon, but rather come to know them through the generic ‘translations’ that alone guarantee their survival: abridgements, anthologies, commentaries and film adaptations for example.14 The colonial difference collapses under the force of this perspective. Arguments about original and copy; fidelity and betrayal become irrelevant for the translation historian. What matters are the dialogical chains of relationships constructed between source text and target text and their respective social, historical and literary contexts. Southern intellectuals – particularly south American – were already grappling with these issues from the beginning of the twentieth century at least. In Brazil, the Antropophagia movement was a direct response to the problem of translation as a colonial regime of power. Haroldo de Campos, Fernando Oritz and Octavio Paz’s various poetics of ‘transcreation’ and ‘transculturation’ emerged from this earlier moment in the 1920s. In his theory of ‘mistranslation’, Jorge Luis Borges makes visible the invisible operations historically initiated by translation in all literary cultures. He insists that, since origins are always unstable, originality is not an aesthetic value in and of itself. Instead, he emphasizes ‘the importance of the displacements that occur when one goes from an original to a translation, and how these displacements create the potential for new and unexpected meanings’.15 I am particularly interested here in his notion of the text as a ‘moveable event’; a kind of rough draft that circulates, both diachronically and synchronically, and constantly mutates along the way depending on a variety of contingent rewritings and rereadings. Equally important is Lawrence Venuti’s insight into the political nature of translation – what he calls its ‘scandalous’ status. On the one hand, translation regimes uphold hegemonic cultural and institutional structures; on the other, individual translations can be made to disrupt and challenge these selfsame structures.16 Needless to say, this is a pragmatic position for intellectuals thinking and writing from the so-called margins, from ‘the colonial difference’. I want to turn now to one such marginal/central moment in the Arabic context; the modern Nahḍa, which was historically also a significant translation moment and which produced, among other things, a series of new literary genres, including the novelistic.

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Translation, genre and the literary Nahḍa in Egypt The origins of the Arabic novel are usually located in the Nahḍa, understood as that historical moment in the early nineteenth century when Arab intellectuals began to acquire the cultural and scientific knowledge of the West, thereby initiating a modern ‘renaissance’ that rescues the region from centuries of decadence and stagnation. The story of the Nahḍa is closely entwined with the history of the Arabic novel. This history is supposed to begin with the translation, adaptation and imitation of the European novel towards the end of the nineteenth century. In orientalist discourse, the extent to which Arab writers were able to reproduce this idealized European genre became a kind of yardstick with which to measure the progress and value of the Nahḍa as a whole. Translation occupies a curious position in writing in and about this period because of the way in which it was understood to function as a vehicle of modernity. On the one hand, translation was supposed to help backward Arab societies acquire all kinds of European knowledge. On the other, it was viewed with great suspicion, as a form of destabilizing penetration of supposedly stable national cultures. This ambivalence is most visible in discourses about culture, and especially about literature and translation. To Nahḍawī intellectuals, the novel in particular was a very controversial genre, at first, for the same reasons that it had been controversial in Europe – as a morally corrupting and socially dangerous literary form. Later, nationalist intellectuals sublimated these social concerns into an attack that was based on the idea of its ‘foreignness’ – another cultural instrument of colonialism. It was only much later, somewhere in the late 1920s, that the genre came to be accepted in Arabic after it had been domesticated through the practice of various ‘national literature’ schools. Realism and the bildungsroman came to be the preferred literary forms of the new bourgeois intelligentsia, while romance – and therefore the entire corpus of fiction produced in Arabic from the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of the twentieth – was rejected as a decadent and foreign, anti-national literary mode. This is a critical tradition that runs all the way through from Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid to ʽAbd al-Muḥsin Ṭāha Badr. The thriving fin-de-siècle marketplace of popular fiction has been largely invisible in Arabic literary history. When it does appear, it is as a sign of the social and cultural decadence that the project of renaissance struggles against. ‘Translation’ was the major trope through which this erasure was accomplished. In practically all literary histories of the period, pre-bildungsroman fiction is dismissed as a deeply flawed history of translation – a disreputable stage in the modernization of Arabic literature. Good translation was a jealously guarded literary zone that reproduced European romantic concepts of equivalence in order to guarantee the purity of its foundations. Bad translation cared nothing for origins and genealogies. It raided, plagiarized and fabricated its sources and invented an entirely new literary syntax that drew on heterogeneous – and indeed, it was supposed, mutually exclusive – narrative languages and frames of reference. A process of displacement thus occurs whereby a rich corpus of fiction is contained within the stabilizing and minor category of ‘translation’. The two

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terms – ‘translation’ and ‘popular fiction’ – come to stand for each other, the implication of course being that the popular is itself foreign to national culture. Pharos the Egyptian appeared in English in 1899 and was translated into Arabic by Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa in the popular serial Musāmarāt al-shaʽb (The People’s Entertainments) seven years later in 1906.17 Khalīl Ṣādiq, the publisher of The People’s Entertainments, billed it as ‘the most widely circulating illustrated social fiction weekly in Egypt’.18 The serial was printed at The People’s Press, which was also owned by Ṣādiq and which published separate book editions of full-length novels, as well as other kinds of material, from manuals of modern French jurisprudence to popularized turāth. The serial, which ran from 1904 to 1911, was offered through subscription but also had numerous distribution points in Cairo, as well as in the provinces and as far away as Syria and South America.19 Ṣādiq was keen on casting his literary enterprise as a service to the nation, and he regularly editorialized about the noble and didactic function of novels. On the other hand, Ṣādiq was also an astute businessman and equally invested in promoting the idea of a thriving marketplace in which literature would circulate as a commodity much like any other. Ṣādiq resolved the evident tension between these two poles – and tried to forestall his highbrow critics – by constructing a liberal literary discourse based on the ambiguous idea of profit, simultaneously moral, social and economic. He opened the pages of the Entertainments to the most divergent types of texts – translations, adaptations and original works, ranging from the complex and stylistically sophisticated to the most slapdash and linguistically handicapped – and all for the price of a penny an issue. The serial started out as a bi-weekly publication featuring one complete novel of around eighty pages per issue. Due to readers’ demands, however, by its third year it had become a weekly, publishing multi-issue novels of up to 1,000 pages each. The Entertainments was definitely popular in its range of provocative and easily accessible fiction. But it also recruited a group of authors and translators – Muslims, Christians and Jews; native Egyptians and Syrian émigrés – whose professional activities as lawyers, journalists, police officers and civil servants endowed their work with a deeply embedded social knowledge and sometimes also a genuine sense of social commitment. Some young contributors to the serial went on to make names for themselves as bona fide men of letters: Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa, Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī, Muḥammad al-Sibāʽī and Ṣāliḥ Jawdat, for example. Aḥmad Shawqī, Maḥmūd Khayrat and Niqūlā Ḥaddād published original novels in the Entertainments. But even the less well-known contributors were prolific and professional writers in the most basic sense of the term. Aḥmad Ḥāfiẓ ʽAwaḍ and Niqūlā Rizqallāh were two of these. Both were newspaper editors, the former at al-Muʾayyad and the latter at al-Ahrām. ʽAwaḍ published ten novels in the Entertainments, including two original works, entitled al-Yatīm (The Orphan) and al-Ḥāl wa-l-māl (Life and Property); Rizqallāh published fifteen multi-volume adaptations (of works by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas among others) and unattributed or falsely attributed adapta-

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tions like al-Sāʾila al-ḥasnāʾ (The Lovely Beggar) and Luṣūṣ bārīs (Thieves of Paris).20 Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa was a lawyer, writer, translator and political activist who was frequently in and out of trouble with both the local and the colonial authorities in Egypt.21 He was an ardent disciple of Muḥammad ʽAbduh (whose lectures he attended while a student in Tanta and with whom he corresponded until the latter’s death in 1905) and was closely associated with Muṣṭafā Kāmil and his National Party from 1906 onwards. Born into a modest family in Alexandria in 1886, his education was marked by the syncretic trajectory typical of the period: from the local Kuttāb, to a private Coptic primary school in Tanta, then to the Khedival School in Cairo and on to the Syrian Protestant College of Beirut, where he spent a year before returning to Cairo to work as a journalist and translator. From 1905 to 1906, he worked as an editor at the newspaper alẒāhir along with Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī and ʽAbd al-Qādir al-Maghribī, then he joined the editorial staff of al-Liwāʾ – the organ of the National Party – after having met Muṣṭafā Kāmil and Muḥammad Farīd on a summer trip to Lausanne. Like many intellectuals of his generation, Jumʽa pursued postgraduate studies in France. He received his Ph.D. in Law from the University of Lyon in 1911. During these years (1908–1911), he campaigned extensively for Egyptian independence in conferences and parliamentary commissions in Geneva, Brussels and London, and founded two European-based newspapers to that effect: the first, Ṣawt al-shaʽb (The Voice of the People), was an Arabic language paper published out of Geneva. The second, Miṣr (Egypt), in English, was published variously in Geneva, Florence, Lyon and London, and continued publication after Jumʽa’s return to Egypt in 1912 under the editorial direction of Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Edward Brown.22 Jumʽa’s repertoire was vast and remarkably varied. He authored numerous plays, short stories, novellas, essays, scholarly monographs and translations in and of the social sciences, political philosophy and Pharaonic and Islamic history.23 He is perhaps best remembered today as the author of Layālī al-rūḥ alḥāʾir (Evenings of a Bewildered Soul, 1912) – a romantic, maqāma-like narrative that is often compared by critics to Ḥāfiẓ Ibrahīm’s Layālī Ṣāṭiḥ (Satih’s Evenings, 1909). Curiously – or perhaps appropriately – his two-part translation of Pharos the Egyptian is rarely mentioned in any of the relevant bibliographical sources. In 1906, the function and status of the novel was still a matter of social and moral debate in the Arabic context – this in spite of the fact that Jumʽa’s generation of writers and intellectuals was highly eclectic and open-minded in terms of its disciplinary and generic concerns and interests. The turn of the twentieth century was decidedly a period where the boundaries between genres and disciplines – as between notions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture – had yet to be established.24 This is what made it possible for a non-canonical and now largely forgotten periodical like Salīm Sarkīs’ short-lived Majallat Sarkīs (Sarkis’ Magazine, 1905) to publish translations of popular fiction by Sarkīs himself as well as by a popular giant of the period like Tanius ʽAbduh, alongside poems by Aḥmad Shawqī and Khalīl Muṭrān as well as a regular cultural column by

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Muḥammad al-Muwaylihī. According to Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, the review gave rise to a literary salon whose members included Salīm Sarkīs, Khalīl Muṭrān, Tānius ʽAbduh, Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī.25 On the other hand, the prominent neo-classicist and lexicographer Ibrāhīm alYāzjī’s journal al-Ḍiyāʾ (1898–1906) featured adaptations of British detective and crime fiction (twenty-three stories by Arthur Conan Doyle alone) as well as original fiction by Labība Hāshim among others.26 Jumʽa’s own interests and output reflect this voracious and wide-ranging movement between genres, styles and cultural commitments: from classical Greek to Islamic philosophy, from ancient Egyptian history to Sharia studies and Koranic exegesis, from vernacular popular fiction to poetic realism. We might then conjecture that Jumʽa’s translation of Pharos the Egyptian has simply gone the way of the hundreds of other titles of popular fiction produced by prominent and less prominent writers and intellectuals of the period. Unfortunately so, for it uncovers a window onto a key historical moment in the conflicts and collusions initiated by the colonial encounter, and as such represents an important historical and literary document.

Edwardian anxieties and colonial concerns: ‘imperial gothic’ and ancient Egypt Pharos the Egyptian, by bestselling but now largely forgotten Australian author Guy Newell Boothby, belongs to a late Victorian genre variously called by critics Edwardian Gothic, Trance Gothic, Supernatural Romance or, most commonly, Imperial Gothic. Patrick Brantlinger has defined the genre of Imperial Gothic as an expression of the deep social anxieties of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.27 A fantastic combination of imperialism, scientific materialism and occultism was projected in various ways onto the far reaches of the British Empire, where ‘strange gods and unspeakable rites supposedly still had their millions of devotees’.28 Brantlinger identifies the genre’s three principal themes as ‘individual regression or going native; an invasion of civilization by the forces of barbarism and demonism; and the diminution of opportunities for adventure and heroism in the modern world’.29 Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian belongs to the second thematic category, that of ‘invasion fantasy’, like other more or less well-known novels of the period, from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) to H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1897). Briefly put, in the invasion fantasy strain of Imperial Gothic, a hostile and implacable alien force threatens to attack, colonize and destroy the very foundations of civilization, primarily understood as being British. In Erskine Childer’s The Riddle of the Sands (1903), this alien force is Bismarck’s Germany; in Stoker’s Dracula, it is the demonic empire of the living dead to be engendered in England by the Count himself, the last of a bloodthirsty and atavistic conquering race. In Pharos the Egyptian, it is an immortal ancient Egyptian priest who spreads a deadly plague across Europe. In Rider Haggard’s She (1887) and Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), it is a vengeful or power-hungry

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Ancient Egyptian queen, bent on destroying democracy and ruling first Britain, then the world.30 Invasion fantasy fictions sublimated a group of interconnected ideologies and pseudo-scientific practices that characterized the period. Social Darwinism, criminology, theories of degeneration and the would-be science of eugenics were all articulated around the anxieties provoked by domestic social conflict, rapid urbanization, economic stagnation and the perceived waning of empire. The ‘advanced state of rottenness’ that George Bernard Shaw identified in Britain in 1889 expressed obsessive ruling-class worries about ‘fitness’, ‘national efficiency’ and racial and cultural decadence that characterized the end of the century, and that came to a head in the aftermath of the Boer War.31 ‘Outcast London’ became the central trope around which these biological theories of decline were articulated, since it was primarily in the industrial metropolis that the concerns and objects of the period were located: ‘from cretinism to alcoholism and syphilis, from peasantry to urban working class, bourgeoisie to aristocracy, madness to theft, individual to crowd, anarchism to feminism, population decline to population increase’.32 Scientific theories of degeneration projected anxieties of national decline onto the restive, overworked and underfed masses of urban Britain. The trope of the exponentially self-reproducing mob, the figure of the sickly slum-dweller, sinister immigrant and raving feminist or anarchist all inspired various responses of discovery and control, most notably the new sciences of criminology and eugenics – themselves diffused through translations of scientific research across nineteenth-century Germany, France, Italy and Britain. The disenchanted new-liberal perception of democracy, mass society and urban life that shaped this moment destabilized the British establishment’s sense of imperial mission and the very ‘viability of the ideology of a cohesive and unified ruling race’.33 Invasion fictions played on these anxieties, but also largely served to exorcise them, and to end with the comforting re-assertion of dominant domestic and political values: vampire and mummy destroyed, democracy saved and the monstrous woman brought back into the fold of virtuous femininity. Pharos the Egyptian, along with Haggard’s She and Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, can be situated in another, even more specific context – that of the Egyptological Romance, or mummy fiction, that was all the rage in late Victorian Britain and that eventually gave birth to Boris Karloff ’s famous cinematic mummy.34 Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Rider Haggard are some of the best-known authors in this subgenre. However, far from representing one of the ‘dark places of the earth’, Egypt, in the Victorian imagination, came to be constructed as a central yet deeply ambivalent temporal and physical space. On the one hand, biblical archeology and the emerging field of Egyptology appropriated Ancient Egypt to European historical narratives; as a genealogical point of origin or scriptural authentication, as an imperial model, or as a cryptic site of civilizational difference. These appropriations were domesticated and popularized in Victorian England in the forms taken by mid-century Egyptomania. In an era of political and social turmoil, ‘Egypt was seen as providing a spectacular

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point of stability, its antiquity equating with certainty, its monuments and monumentality contrasting with dissolution’.35 On the other hand, to the British traveler and administrator of the colonial period, modern Egypt provided a living laboratory for the scientific racism being developed by nineteenth-century evolutionary ethnology.36 John Barrell has documented the genocidal fantasies inscribed in Victorian tourist literature on the standard Nile tour; fantasies in which anxieties about racial typing fused with zoological metaphors to produce the modern inhabitants of Egypt as less than human and hence entirely dispensable.37 The following fairly typical quote is from the 1857 travel narrative Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia, of the American lawyer William Prime, who was fond of likening modern Egyptians to dogs and pigs: Two hundred people were lying around me, and I asked who and what they were, and what part they formed in the grand sum of human valuation? Literally nothing. They are not worth counting among the races of men. They are the curse of one of the fairest lands on this earth’s surface.38 Ancient Egypt however retained its status as a place of mystery and monumentality. Occultism and the nostalgia for a lost martial or archeological heroism combined in the work of Edwardian writers to produce Egypt as an irrational and sexy imperial alternative to the humdrum mass-society of bourgeois democracy. Rider Haggard’s She begins with a locked-chest mystery that contains the documentary evidence of a secret and startling genealogy. In the familiar comfort of rooms at Cambridge, the narrator’s impeccably English friend confesses to him that: my sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian priest of Isis, though he was himself of Grecian extraction, and was called Kallikrates. His father was one of the Greek mercenaries raised by Hak-Kor, a Mendesian Pharaoh of the twenty-ninth dynasty, and his grandfather, I believe, was that very Kallikrates mentioned by Herodotus.39 This Egyptian ancestor’s quest for revenge, bequeathed through the generations, takes the family from Egypt to Athens to Rome to Charlemagne’s Brittany, and finally to England, where, by the nineteenth century, they have become boring middle-class British citizens: ‘Sometimes they were soldiers, sometimes merchants, but on the whole they have preserved a dead level of respectability, and a still deader level of mediocrity.40 Colonial Egyptology was one of the practices that made these kinds of fantastic appropriations possible. From the early years of organized looting of artifacts, to the somewhat more regulated archeological excavations of the late nineteenth century, European museums – and particularly the Louvre and the British Museum – were able to amass, classify and display the most significant collections of Ancient Egyptian art in the world.41 The sciences that grew up around these collections detached Egyptian antiquity from the rest of Egyptian history

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and claimed it as the sole preserve of Western scholarship. Until the second decade of the twentieth century, Egyptians were actively prevented from training as Egyptologists by the European experts and administrators resident in Cairo. Only bitter inter-European rivalries and, later, policies set by the new nationalistcontrolled parliament allowed them to slowly gain a toehold in the field. Nonetheless, nationalist intellectuals – like Jumʽah himself – were keenly interested in Egyptian antiquity from the late nineteenth century onwards.42 To the colonial intelligentsia, ancient Egypt came to be associated with nation building and national prestige, as it was of course in Europe. The same holds true for the modern Egyptian state both pre- and postcolonial. From Muḥammad ʽAlī onwards, the state astutely used archeological regulation as a negotiating tool with European governments, as well as a mechanism for bringing the unruly and isolated couth of the country – rich in sites and artifacts – under firmer central control.43 Writers and intellectuals – including Aḥmad Kamāl, the first professional Egyptian Egyptologist – understood that the ability to acquire and interpret the languages and symbols of this distant historical past was one key to political self-determination. Archeological nationalism was not therefore just some naïve or hysterical colonial mythology, but rather a shrewd sizing-up of the relationship between historical practice and political power in the context of the imperial modern nation-state system. Clearly, this was one of the main reasons why Jumʽah chose to translate Boothby’s novel, offering as it does a forceful vision of the glory of imperial Egypt and, no less, by the pen of a British subject. While Jumʽa however deliberately appropriates the text to a nationalist agenda, his interest in the strain of degeneration discourse that runs throughout the novel is fascinating and offers much food for thought about the community of nineteenth-century liberal social discourses across the colonial difference. Elliot Colla’s use of the term ‘ambivalence’ in this context offers a subtle and productive way of describing the kinds of colonial negotiations that play themselves out in a text like Pharos the Egyptian and its Arabic translation. Colla prefers the notion of ambivalence to that of ‘hybridity’ because of the ontological dimension of the latter term, and because ‘ambivalence’ captures the intensely social – and hence conflictual – nature of the history of colonialism and nationalism in Egypt; ‘a history of struggles and competitions . . . governed by relations of domination between a range of actors motivated by divergent, and even selfconflicted interests and desires.’44 He illustrates this point through an analysis of the ancient Egyptian artifact as simultaneously an aesthetic object and an exchangeable commodity circulating between England, France and Egypt. Translation, I propose, represents an equally significant site of historical ambivalence, in the sense offered by Colla, because it offers a window into those vertical relations of colonial domination, but also, no less importantly, into certain horizontal acts of recognition across seemingly fixed cultural identities. The act of translation in the colonial context inevitably performs an ambivalent and simultaneous gesture of appropriation, collusion and critique on a variety of levels – from the purely formal to the broadly historical – and therefore far from

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being a straightforward or naïve act of linguistic transfer, translation typically rewrites the web of discourses, codes and conventions of the literary text in keeping with the conflictual and ‘intensely social nature’ of its cultural histories.

The translator strikes back: Pharos the Egyptian and the degenerate city Pharos the Egyptian opens with a classic device of the gothic genre. A brief exchange of letters between two old Oxford friends introduces a strange manuscript addressed to them by a third long-lost friend from their university days. Cyril Forrester, a young and successful English artist, casts his narrative in the form of a terrible, shameful secret. Forrester is the son of a famous Egyptologist. One day, while taking an evening stroll on the banks of the Thames, he meets a mysterious and repulsive stranger – an extremely old and fabulously wealthy foreigner, endowed with strange powers. The stranger begins to haunt Forrester, appearing with his young and beautiful ward at all the same social events at which he is a guest. He finally arrives at Forrester’s doorstep in the middle of the night and demands the young artist’s prize possession: a perfectly preserved Egyptian mummy inherited from his father. The mummy, Pharos claims, is that of a powerful royal magician, and moreover his direct ancestor. When Forrester refuses to hand it over, Pharos hypnotizes him and steals the mummy anyway. Forrester tracks Pharos down to Sicily, where Pharos seduces him with his magnetic charm and his hashish cigarettes, persuading him to accompany him and his beautiful and mysterious young ward to Egypt, where he intends to re-bury the mummy in its proper resting-place and hence right the wrong done to him and his family by Forrester’s Egyptologist father. This task accomplished, Pharos tricks Forrester into the heart of the Great Pyramid of Giza, where he has him injected with a deadly strain of the plague. As planned, Forrester survives a bout with near-death in the desert and, totally unawares, slowly returns to England, spreading the plague across Europe in his wake and finally bringing it to London itself, causing millions of deaths, untold suffering and the complete breakdown of social infrastructure. At the end of the novel, Pharos the Egyptian reveals himself to be the great magician Phtahmes, cursed to immortality by the gods of Ancient Egypt for having betrayed the Biblical Pharaoh Menephtah. Phtahmes had deliberately deceived his master about the infinitely superior powers of Moses, which in turn had caused the plagues visited on the land of Egypt, including the death of all its first-born sons. The European plague is Pharos’ attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of the gods and to find eternal rest. However, the narrative ends with these same gods refusing Pharos’ act of propitiation. Instead, they condemn his spirit to eternal destruction for ‘using the power vouchsafed thee . . . for thine own purposes and to enrich thyself in the goods of the earth’ – a reference to the origins of Pharos’ fabulous wealth in illicit antiquities trading.45 The novel ends with Forrester and Pharos’ ward escaping a decimated Britain together at sea and to a life of exile and wandering.

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The novel faithfully reproduces all the essential ingredients of the Gothic genre – landscapes, interiors, plot construction and characterization, including the central trope of the doppelganger. Boothby works this device of the Gothic uncanny however into a heightened and historically inflected register. Like Dracula, Pharos’ wealth, urbanity and exquisite taste mask the ruthless and cruel malevolence that is a necessary ingredient of Gothic villains. Unlike Dracula, however, his malevolence is attenuated by the remarkable relationship of complicity that is constructed throughout between Pharos and Forrester, his tortured instrument. Pharos’ ‘extraordinary individuality’46 compels the act of filiation on Forrester’s part, which will prove to be Europe’s doom: His presence had been repulsive to me ever since I had first set eyes on him. I hated the man as I had hitherto deemed it impossible I could hate any one. Yet, despite all this, by some power – how real I cannot expect anyone to believe – he was compelling me to shield him and behave towards him as if he had been my brother, or at least my dearest friend. I can feel the shame of that moment even now, the agonizing knowledge of the deep gulf that separated me from the man I was yesterday, or even an hour before.47 This Gothic ambivalence takes on added meaning in the context of mummy fiction, where heroes tend to identify on some level with Übermensch-like Egyptian characters, usually feminized and hence also sexualized – the lustful, powerhungry mummy-queen intent on destroying democracy and reinstituting good old-fashioned Egyptian style autocracy: ‘a Diana in jackboots who preaches materialism in philosophy and fascism in politics’.48 In Pharos the Egyptian, the mysterious complicity between Pharos and Forrester is partly referred to mesmerism – a popular turn-of-the-century fad and phobia. But it is primarily rooted in a set of discourses and values shared between villain and victim. Pharos’ historical grievance is described at great length throughout the novel. The following is an exemplary passage: ‘Thy father, was it, wretched man,’ he cried, shaking his skeleton fist at me, while his body trembled like a leaf under the whirlwind of his passion, ‘who stole this body from its resting-place? Thy father, was it, who broke the seals the gods had placed upon the tombs of those who were their servants?’ . . . Then, turning to the mummy, he continued, as if to himself, ‘Oh mighty Egypt! has thou fallen so far from thy high estate that even the bodies of thy kings and priests may no longer rest within their tombs, but are ravished from thee to be gaped at in alien lands. But, by Osiris, a time of punishment is coming. It is decreed and none shall stay the sword!’49 This complaint, with which Forrester strongly sympathizes, is rooted in that particular Edwardian neurosis that mixed all kinds of occultisms with racialized fantasies of power projected onto imperial Egypt. From the conservationist polemics of Amelia Edwards to the mystical venerations of Rider Haggard, a

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certain disgust with mass tourism and popular spectacle, or the rational middleclass sensibility of the museum exhibit, produced the reaction against what Haggard attacked as ‘the trade in the dead’.50 In Jumʽa’s translation, this narrative of restitution and sacred trust dominates the Arabic text as an explicit parable of colonial revenge through numerous Arabic additions to Pharos’ various monologues. Moreover, Jumʽa carefully excises most of the passages that construct Forrester’s elaborate and tormented interiority, thereby stripping him of his character and hence his status of Gothic victim (and incidentally, making the novel a lot shorter and less repetitive). More importantly, he deletes the biblical sub-plot that identifies Pharos as the mendacious rival of Moses, removing in the process the entire narrative motor that fixes Egypt within imperial Christian historical time and that establishes Pharos’ immortal villainy.51 The lengthy chapters at the end of the novel that depict the human pathos of a London shattered by death and disease are also deleted in the translation. On the one hand, this translational strategy transforms the human subjects of modern Europe into those same dispensable or invisible multitudes of Victorian colonial fantasy. On the other, it marks a kind of deliberate hesitation or silence in the face of the English novel’s awesome genocidal imaginary. Jumʽa strips the novel of its ambivalent moral economy: Pharos the villain becomes Pharos the Avenger, and Forrester becomes simply his puppet-like accomplice – a victim emptied of his victimhood. Jumʽa elaborates a minor remark in Pharos’ confession at the end of the novel into a grandiloquent and typical statement of purpose: ‘And so I was sent, by the gods’ command, to take vengeance on the corrupt, iniquitous nations, on the Europe that this Plague will annihilate as a just reward for its tyranny and ignorance.52 In the Arabic text, Pharos is destroyed by a well-placed knife in the heart, rather than by the gods’ outraged decree.53 But the trope of historical revenge is only one of Jumʽa’s translational concerns. The real climax of both Boothby’s novel and Jumʽa’s translation is the tour of ‘Outcast London’ on which Pharos takes Forrester after their return to England and before the Egyptian plague begins to decimate its population. Pharos’ declaration that he will show Forreseter ‘London as I see it in my character of Pharos the Egyptian’ is rife with over-determined meaning as it circulates between the English and the Arabic text, for it plays on and finally erases the last vestiges of fixed moral identities on which the genre presumes.54 The degenerate city becomes the shared object of both Pharos and Forrester’s gaze, and hence, through the translation process, of the Arabic reader as well. The full force of Edwardian degeneration discourse is displayed in this series of social tableaus that Pharos unveils to his accomplice in one long night and over ten pages of text. The city, with all its massed human detritus, is offered up as the spectacle of a diseased organism; a modern Sodom and Gomorrah calling for divine retribution. Together, Pharos and Forrester descend the ladder of English society – from scenes of ‘that luxury and extravagance which is fast drawing this great city to its doom’ to the filthy thieves’ dens of London’s darkest alleys.55 This unfolding vision of titled blacklegs, lascivious bourgeois,

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incompetent parliamentarians, scantily clad females, constitutional drunks, thieves and murderers leaves Forrester sick at heart for ‘the sorrow and the sin of London’, as well as ‘the callous indifference to it displayed by Pharos’.56 Jumʽa’s answer to this issue of Pharos’ ‘callous indifference’ is, as I have mentioned earlier, to delete the London tour’s fantastic conclusion from his translation – the last two chapters, which describe the devastating aftermath of the London plague and which successfully invoke the cathartic horror employed by the invasion fantasy genre as a whole. However, the spectacle of the diseased urban microcosm nonetheless remains as an urgent question in the social imaginary of both the English novel and its Arabic translation. In his Faces of Degeneration, Daniel Pick makes the case that the conception of degeneration as it emerged in Europe between 1848 and 1918 was largely the product of a broad crisis in liberal social optimism in the face of real and threatened revolution: ‘. . . the socio-biological theory of degeneration emerged in and beyond the 1880s most powerfully as a counter-theory to mass-democracy and socialism’.57 It can certainly be argued that Egypt experienced a comparable moment around the turn of the century; a moment however in which optimism and crisis existed side by side in a precarious social and discursive tension. As in Europe, translation was one of the means through which this tension was managed and coded for consumption by national middle classes. The issue of national decadence was very much on the minds of Egyptian intellectuals at the turn of the century. The major reform movement initiated by the Nahḍa in Egypt was at least partly shaped through the translation of conservative Darwinian and Utilitarian nineteenth-century European social thought, namely theorists like Gustave Le Bon, Hippolyte Taine, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill.58 From the 1890s till the 1920s, liberal reformist intellectuals like Aḥmad Fatḥī Zaghlūl and Muḥammad ʽUmar produced an Arabic discourse of Egyptian cultural decadence that partly drew on concepts of racial history and evolutionary psychology to describe and analyze the social pathology of the modern Egyptian character. The slothful, vice-ridden and unruly urban and rural masses, as well as, to a lesser extent, the dissolute and acculturated aristocracy were targeted by liberal intellectuals as the source of Egypt’s backwardness and dependency. Though these discourses were never fully articulated in terms of the kinds of biological determinisms produced by nineteenth-century European scientism, they nonetheless represented a powerful disciplinary tool in the hands of emergent national elites.59 In Egypt, the capital city was also identified as a microcosm of this national decadence. While Outcast London certainly works as a metaphor of imperial depravity in Jumʽa’s translation, it can also be read as an opaque and open-ended translation of Outcast Cairo. Alcoholism and drug addiction, vagabondage, insanity, sexual debauchery and the various forms of urban criminality which they produced were also all linked in this strand of Egyptian reformist discourse to anxieties of social malfunction and national breakdown. On the other hand, the unchecked importation of European social and sexual mores was perceived as a disease that afflicted the upper echelons of urban society. Though these social concerns and the discourses they

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produced are primarily associated with the ‘school’ of liberal reformers focused around Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid and the Umma Party, they were nonetheless strongly echoed in the writings of die-hard nationalists from ʽAbdallah al-Nadīm to Muṣṭafā Kāmil himself.60 At the same time, the country at large was being consumed by social unrest. From the ʽUrābī revolt of 1881 and the bitter occupation and restorations of the following years, to the massive urban migrations and broad labor unrest of the period and the dramatic stock market crash of 1907, Cairo was a city just waiting to explode – which is exactly what happened a decade later in 1919. Muḥammad Farīd’s remark about a Port Said strike in 1894 – ‘This European disease has spread to Egypt’ – was, as Lockman points out, emblematic of the general nationalist attitude towards labor activism as a sign of larger social ‘disorder’ and ‘sickness’ imported from abroad.61 It comes as no surprise then that socialism was a topic of intense debate during this period and that, for the most part, both liberal and nationalist intellectuals like Jumʽa polemicized extensively against what they saw as a foreign threat to an emergent social order.62 AlSāḥir al-khālid/al-Intiqām al-hāʾil are thus texts that ‘translate’ the whole gamut of jarring social and political pressures characteristic of the period itself – colonialism and the cultural utopias and dystopias it brings into being; social mobility and social conflict in an era of dramatic economic transformation. Jumʽa’s translation has had no place in canonical versions of Nahḍawī literary history precisely because it lies outside the major narrative of the emergence of the nation as a unified ontological subject. Nonetheless, the questions of national decadence that it raises are surely linked to a whole range of social and textual representations that eventually crystallized into the concept and practice of ‘National Literature’ and of realism as a whole in Egypt. The trope of the diseased city as a metaphor of a dislocated colonial modernity is a defining one in modern Egyptian literature, as is its dialectical opposite – the primordial and authentic countryside, ancient repository of Egypt’s national identity. Pharos the Egyptian/Riwāyat al-sāḥir al-khālid affords us a glimpse into the ambivalent representations that lie at the very heart of literary histories beyond essentialist binaries – like ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ – that continue to structure the way we think about cultural identities. Colonial difference here collapses into the nuances of historical correspondence and the community of social interests across the imperial divide. Studying the historical network of translations allows us to map these correspondences and complicities in a move beyond complacent articulations of difference and minority.

Notes 1 Samah Selim, Translation Studies in Cjritical concepts, ‘Pharaoh’s Revenge: Translation, Literary History and Colonial Ambivalance, Routledge, 2009. 2 Linda Hutcheon, ‘Rethinking the National Model’, in Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdes (eds), Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 7. 3 By Europe’s ‘others’, I also mean those subaltern groups within its own geographical and mythicized borders: women, the poor, ethnic and religious minorities.

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4 Walter Mignolo, ‘Rethinking the Colonial Model’, in Hutcheon and Valdes, Rethinking Literary History, p. 156. 5 Ibid., p. 158. 6 Hutcheon, ‘Rethinking the National Model’, in Hutcheon and Valdes, Rethinking Literary History, p. 4. 7 Ibid., pp. 6–8. 8 As both Daniel Pick and Patrick Brantlinger have shown, degeneration discourse in Europe – and particularly in Britain – was also characterized by internal sociopolitical dissonances and contradictions. Many British socialists of the period used the language of degeneration in their writings, and prominent Fabianists were interested in the possibilities of Eugenics, for example. However, it is not my intention in this paper to delve into the complex social and intellectual history of degeneration politics in England, but rather to focus more broadly on its circulation as a set of potential social languages in fin-de-siècle Egypt. 9 André Lefevere and Susan Bassnett, ‘Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights’, in Bassnett and Lefevere (eds), Translation, History and Culture, London: Pinter Publishers, 1990, p. 11. 10 Modern Arabic literary scholarship has adopted this critical structure wholesale, tashwīh or ‘mutilation’ being the favorite metaphor for translation practices not based on strict equivalence. 11 André Lefevere, ‘Translation: Its Genealogy in the West’, in Bassnett and Lefevere, Translation, History and Culture, p. 24. 12 However, not all of these historical examples have the same normative function. While the Greek and Latin translations of the poets of the Pléiade served to reinforce the construction of Europe’s classical origins, the Arab sources of the Spanish school of Toledo’s extensive translations seem to have played no role in the formation of European self-identities. See Lefevere, ‘Translation: Its Genealogy in the West’, in Bassnett and Lefevere, Translation, History and Culture, pp. 14–28, for an overview of European practices of translation from antiquity to the twentieth century. 13 See the special issue of Le Rocambole, ‘Stratégies de traduction’, Summer 2000, no. 11, pp. 9–103. 14 Lefevere and Bassnett, ‘Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights’, in Bassnett and Lefevere, Translation, History and Culture, p. 10. 15 Sergio Waisman, Borges and Translation: the Irreverence of the Periphery, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005, p. 65. 16 Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethic of Difference, London and New York: Routledge Press, 1998, p. 1. 17 Guy Newell Boothby, Pharos the Egyptian, Doylestown: Wildside Press, 2002 [1899]; Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa, ‘Riwāyat al-sāḥir al-khālid’, Musāmarāt al-shaʽb, 1906, no. 40; ‘Riwāyat al-intiqām al-hāʾil’, Musāmarāt al-shaʽb, 1906, no. 41. 18 This statement is printed on the frontispiece of every issue of the serial. 19 Sociological studies of the specifically literary production of the period are unfortunately non-existent. Therefore, it is almost next to impossible to retrieve publication and distribution figures and to reconstruct readerships except based on the evidence found in the periodical itself. These figures are given by Khalīl Ṣādiq in his editorial columns. Might it be possible then to guess at the social composition of its readers by casting an eye on the regular advertisements published in its pages? Lawyers, pharmacists, doctors, confectioners and haberdashers all advertised in the Entertainments. Can we then assume that – much like the authors and translators themselves – its readership was largely male, largely middle class and largely professional? 20 Of the eighty novels published in the Entertainments, twelve are original compositions, thirteen are translations of known French and English authors, twenty-seven present themselves as translations that cite the name or part of a name, or simply the initials of a (so far) untraceable European author, and the rest – twenty-eight novels –

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21

22

23

24

25 26 27

28 29 30

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merely state on the frontispiece that they have been adapted ‘from the French’ or ‘from the English’. Jumʽa’s nationalist sympathies apparently led to his failure in the final exam at the Khedival School and he left in 1903 without having matriculated. After his return from his brief sojourn in Beirut, he received a degree from a Teacher’s Training College in Darb al-Jamamīz and went on to teach translation at the Helwan Primary School from 1904 to 1905 but was forced to resign from his post after a dispute with the headmaster regarding some Koranic verses that he had translated into English. In 1906, Jumʽa was fired from his editorial post at al-Ẓāhir after having given a speech at the Jubilee of the Khedive ʽAbbās Ḥilmī in which he attacked the Entente Cordiale and the Khedive’s collusion in this betrayal of Egypt. In 1908, he was expelled from the Khedival College of Law due to yet another speech he gave at the college on the occasion of Muṣṭafā Kāmil’s death. See Aḥmad Ḥusayn al-Tamāwī, Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa fī mawkib al-ḥayāt wa-ladab, Cairo: ʽĀlam al-kutub, 1993 and Rabīḥ Luṭfī Jumʽa, Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa wā haʾulāʾ al-aʽlām 1900–1950, Cairo: Dār Wazzān, 1991. Among his translations are two novellas by Arthur Conan Doyle, Plato’s Symposium, Machievelli’s Prince and an abridged translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. His monographs include Ḥukm Nābulyūn (Napoleon’s rule), 1912, Muḥāḍarāt fī-l-tārīkh wa-liqtiṣād (Lectures on History and Economics), 1912, Rasāʾil fī ʽilm al-ijtimāʽ (Essays on the Social Sciences), 1912, Tārīkh falāsifa al-islām (history of the philosophers of Islam), 1927, Ḥayāt al-sharq (The Life of the East), 1932, and his vast oeuvre, Thawrat al-islām wa baṭal al-anbiyāʾ Abū l-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʽAbdallāh (The Revolution of Islam and the Hero of the Prophets Abū l-Qāsim Muḥammad Ibn ʽAbdallāh), 1939/1958. His literary works include Fī buyūt al-nās (In People’s Houses), 1904, Fī wādī al-humūm (In the Valley of Sorrows), 1905, ʽĀʾida, 1932/1934, and Mukhtāra, 1941/1942 – an historical novel set in Mamlūk times – in addition to numerous unpublished works. Aḥmad Ḥusayn al-Tamāwī, Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa fī mawkib al-ḥayāt wa-l-adab, Cairo: ʽĀlam al-kutub, 1993. Nicholas Daly has argued that a similar situation existed in Edwardian Britain, where the dividing line between what Q. D. Leavis has called ‘middlebrow fiction’ and the literature of high modernism was still fluid and largely indistinct, both in critical terms and in terms of the vibrant social and professional networks of contemporary writers. Nicholas Daly, Modernism, Romance and the Fin de Siècle: Popular Fiction and British Culture 1880–1914, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Dawr al-shāmiyyīn al-muhājirīn ilā Miṣr fī-l-nahḍa aladabiyya al-ḥadītha, Damascus: Dār al-Wathba, 1983, pp. 122–125. Ibid., pp. 107–108. Edwardian England played host to a whole range of mystical and supernatural fads and practices, from the Rosicrucian revival and The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, to cabalism and mesmerism. Many prominent writers and politicians of the period were associated with these movements – W. B.Yeats, Bram Stoker, Aleister Crowley, Arthur Conan Doyle and Arthur Balfour, for example. See Thomas Laqueur, ‘Why the Margins Matter: Occultism and the Making of Modernity’, Modern Intellectual History, 2006, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 111–135. Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 228. Ibid., p. 230. The genre became so ubiquitous by the end of the century that P. J. Wodehouse produced a parody in 1909, The Swoop . . . A Tale of the Great Invasion: in which Britain is overwhelmed by simultaneous onslaughts of Germans, Russians, Chinese, Young Turks, The Swiss Navy, Moroccan brigands, cannibals in

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S. Selim war canoes, the Prince of Monaco, and the Mad Mullah, until it is saved by a patriotic Boy Scout named Clarence Chugwater. (Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, p. 235)

31

32 33 34

35 36

37 38 39 40 41

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43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

It is worthwhile noting that our present period has witnessed a revival of this genre in cinematic science fiction. Independence Day inaugurated the Bush Junior era’s war on terrorism, and a variety of film remakes of classics like The Planet of the Apes and The War of the Worlds have proved to be huge box-office successes. Ibid., p. 230. See also, Bernard Porter, ‘The Edwardians and their Empire’, in Donald Read (ed.), Edwardian England, London and Canberra: Croon Helm, 1982, pp. 128–144; Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, 1848–1918, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 176–221. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 184. See Daly, Modernism, Romance and the Fin de Siècle: Popular Fiction and British Culture 1880–1914, pp. 84–117, and Carter Lupton, ‘Mummymania for the Masses – is Egyptology Cursed by the Mummy’s Curse?’ in Sally MacDonald and Michael Rice (eds), Consuming Ancient Egypt, London: UCL Press, 2003, pp. 23–45. Michael Rice and Sally MacDonald, ‘Tea with a Mummy: The Consumer’s View of Egypt’s Immemorial Appeal’, in MacDonald and Rice, Consuming Ancient Egypt, p. 7. See Timothy Champion, ‘Beyond Egyptology: Egypt in 19th and 20th Century Archeology and Anthropology’, in Peter Ucko and Timothy Champion (eds), The Wisdom of Egypt: Changing Visions Through the Ages, London: UCL Press, 2003, pp. 161–185. John Barrell, ‘Death on the Nile: Fantasy and the Literature of Tourism 1840–1860’, Essays in Criticism, April 1991, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 97–127. Quoted in Barrell, ‘Death on the Nile’, p. 115. Rider Haggard, She, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1887, p. 10. Ibid., p. 11. See Donald Malcom Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; and Brian Fagan, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists and Archeologists in Egypt, Boulder: Westview Press, 2004. Jumʽa attended lectures on hieroglyphics while studying in Lyon. He translated The Instruction of Ptah-hotep from the English version of the British Egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn (1918) and published his translation in a volume entitled al-Ḥikma almashriqiyya (Eastern Wisdom) in which he dealt with Pharaonic history. See Aḥmad Ḥusayn al-Tamāwī, Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa fī mawkib al-ḥayāt wa-l-adab, p. 23. Elliott Colla, ‘Hooked on Pharaonics: Literature and the Appropriation of Ancient Egypt’, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, p. 177 and pp. 278–285. Ibid., pp. 169–170. Boothby, Pharos the Egyptian, p. 229. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 43. Quoted in Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, p. 234. Boothby, Pharos the Egyptian, pp. 33–34. See Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, pp. 238–253; and Derek Gregory, ‘Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and the Cultures of Travel’, in James Duncan and Derek Gregory (eds), Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, London: Routledge Press, 2004, pp. 114–149. In his essay of the same name, Haggard was especially offended that the mummies of Egypt’s ancient kings and queens should be displayed in Egyptian museums, and he demanded that some ‘great Christian Power’ rescue these ‘poor

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51 52 53

54 55 56

57 58 59

60

61 62

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fallen folk’ (namely, modern Egyptians) from the spectacle of such desecration. Rider Haggard, ‘The Trade in the Dead’, in The Best Short Stories of Rider Haggard, London: Michael Joseph Ltd., 1981, p. 147. Brantlinger notes that ‘imperialism itself, as an ideology or political faith, functioned as a partial substitute for declining or fallen Christianity and for declining faith in Britain’s future’ (Rule of Darkness, p. 228). This strategy entailed considerable editorial work on Jumʽa’s part, since numerous brief references to the pharaonic subplot as well as long passages describing flashbacks or dream sequences are scattered throughout the English text. Jumʽa, Riwāyat al-intiqām al-hāʾil, p. 138. Ibid., p. 139. In Boothby’s novel, Pharos literally crumbles and shrinks into a shriveled monkey-like creature then disintegrates into an ectoplasmic mess after a vision in which the gods’ eternal curse is pronounced through the medium of his telepathic ward. Jumʽa’s removal of the Biblical subplot in al-Intiqām al-hāʾil obviates the logical necessity of this retributive ending. Instead, it is Pharos’ ward who, in an access of despair and rage, stabs him to death. Jumʽa, Riwāyat al-intiqām al-hāʾil, p. 117. Boothby, Pharos the Egyptian, p. 202. Ibid., p. 210. Jumʽa adds passages of his own invention to this sequence in order to elaborate on these ‘sorrows and sins’ – passages that emphasize a set of moral concerns of particular interest to the Egyptian middle classes of the period: sexual debauchery and alcoholism. See ibid., pp. 120–124. Pick, Faces of Degeneration, p. 218. See Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. It is interesting to note in this context that Faraḥ Antūn – along with his brother-inlaw, Niqūlā Haddād, one of the first Arab intellectuals to advocate socialism – flirted with Eugenics during his Fabian phase. See Donald M. Reid, The Odyssey of Faraḥ Antūn: A Syrian Christian’s Quest for Secularism, Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1975. See Samah Selim, The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt 1880–1986, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, for a discussion of ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm’s cultural politics. See also Zachary Lockman, ‘Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899–1914’, Poetics Today, Summer 1994, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 157–190. Lockman notes that the attitude and strategies of the National Party towards the ‘reformable’ poor – and particularly urban workers – began to change around 1908 when the party began to enlarge its social base, pp. 183–185. Muḥammad Farīd, quoted in Lockman, ‘Imagining the Working Class’, p. 171. Ibid., p. 184. Aḥmad Ḥusayn al-Tamāwī claims that Jumʽa’s lifelong concern for the plight of the poor in Egypt as well as the influence of writers like Turgenev, Tolstoy, Meredith and Daudet demonstrate his ongoing interest in socialism. Al-Tamāwī goes on to note that this interest had its natural limits and that Jumʽa strongly attacked communism in various publications, all unmentioned with the exception of al-Shihāb al-rāṣid – his 1926 polemic against Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s Fī al-shiʽr al-jāhilī. Muḥammad Luṭfī Jumʽa fī mawkib al-ḥayāt, p. 47.

3

Public deliberations of the self in fin-de siècle Egypt Michael Gasper

This chapter shares much with Dyala Hamzah’s, Lital Levy’s and Samah Selim’s contributions to this volume insofar as it addresses the powerful effect of discursive constructions of the past on subsequent scholarly work. Specifically, these pages speak to the ways that the drawing of conceptual boundaries between discourses of religious reform and the development of ‘secular’ knowledge has circumscribed our interrogations of Egyptian social and cultural history. For too long, readings of Egyptian (and indeed, Middle Eastern) history tended to shorthand the complicated dynamics of social change into cultural tensions wrought by the opposition of modernity to tradition. Fortunately, over the past two decades or more, historians studying the Middle East have increasingly tried to eschew simple descriptions of cultural and social fields riven by proponents of modernity facing off against the ‘forces of tradition’.1 However, even as some historians came to reject the modernity/tradition framework, others have simply displaced it with one that views the region’s social and cultural fabric (and, therefore, its dynamic for historical change) as partitioned into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ dispositions and tendencies. The first problem with this mode of thinking (similarly to the opposition of modernity and tradition) is that in deciphering a range of complex historical questions it substitutes a simplistic equation for detailed historical analysis. Even more importantly, it displaces historical agency from historical actors onto a field of ideal cultural typologies. This chapter offers a corrective to this kind of anachronistic analysis by reading Egyptian history from the defeat of the ʽUrābī rebellion in the summer of 1882 up until the first decade of the twentieth century according to the cultural logic of the time. Specifically, this chapter questions the notion of the incommensurability of secular and religious worldviews by demonstrating that such distinctions would not have been understood in fin-de-siècle Egypt. In so doing, this chapter seeks to restore historical agency to the social world and back from the ideal realm. The 1882 rebellion started when a group of native-Egyptian mid-rank army officers bristling under the domination of their Circassian commanders objected to plans to decrease their numbers. Groups of landowners, embroiled in their own struggle with the Egyptian ruler, rallied to the support of the officers. They were seeking an expanded role in Egypt’s governing regime to forestall what

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 41 they perceived as deeper European encroachment and to derail what they feared would be increased foreign control over local resources and economic activity. Eventually, the rebellion coalesced around calls for constitutional rule and for limiting the powers of the Ottoman-appointed governor, the Khedive Tawfīq. This led Tawfīq to flee and to seek help from Egypt’s European creditors. The British, acting on behalf of these creditors, intervened in the spring and summer of 1882. They moved when it became clear that the rebels sought to re-establish control over the government budget, which had been ceded to the Europeandominated Public Debt Commission (Caisse de la Dette Publique) after the Egyptian government’s bankruptcy declaration a few years earlier, in 1876. A nascent capitalist print media played a prominent role in the run-up to, and to the unfolding of, the rebellion. Journalism was a field not even a decade old in 1882, yet it had quickly become a vibrant arena of political debate. This development had not escaped the notice of the authorities, and consequently, the Khedive and his European supporters closely monitored it and tried to temper its influence.2 Consequently, Yaʽqūb Ṣannūʽ, a fierce critic of the government and what he depicted as increasing foreign domination in Egypt, and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, the doyen of the Islamic modernist movement, who offered material and moral support to many opposition journalists, had both been deported by 1879 for their anti-Khedival activism and writing. During the rebellion itself, the journalist ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm became known as the spokesman of the rebellion and as a result spent nearly a decade in hiding from a death sentence in the wake of the rebellion. However, the importance of new literate forms of cultural production was not limited to the narrow political circumstances of the day. Indeed, perhaps even more importantly, intellectuals began to craft novel forms of moral, political and social sensibilities through their activities and writing. Much of their output in newspapers, books, pamphlets and their deliberations in various kinds of associations, discussion groups and salons revolved around questions of identity and changing perceptions about the nature of Egypt as a social and political entity. Out of the new forms of cultural production and sociability emerged new kinds of social categories that these intellectuals increasingly began to deploy in order to make sense of the world. These intellectuals, mostly male and urban, increasingly represented themselves as a more or less coherent social formation, the ‘civilized afandiyya’.3 Their self-representations invoked a discrete social vision, a sense of moral propriety and clear political aspirations. At the same time, these intellectuals depicted the rural producers, the ‘peasantry’, as an internally undifferentiated grouping with very few individually distinguishing characteristics. This social imaginary of Egypt consisting of civilized afandīs and peasants became the primary frame for their theorizing about the changing social structure of Egypt as well as for their vision of a new form of political collectivity. In addition, its logic formed the basis for conceptualizing all subsequent social issues, especially the ‘peasant question’. In the ‘peasant question’, the literate, urban intelligentsia sought to determine to what extent its conceptions of society, state and self would include Egypt’s

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vast rural majority. In short, the intellectuals wondered how they might fit this distinct population into the socio-political vision of Egypt that they were in the process of crafting. While the attention given to the peasant (the fallāḥ) was a part of the intense public scrutiny given to agricultural production, it was also a crucial element in the development of collective forms of identity taking shape toward the end of the century. This chapter outlines the state of social relations in Egypt through an examination of public deliberations of the ‘peasant question’. The following pages look at the ways in which intellectuals represented the peasant as both a moral subject and, therefore, as object of reform and producing subject as agricultural worker, and therefore a central figure in the economic viability of Egypt. We will see how, through public debate, Egypt’s emerging literate classes sought to set out a central place for themselves in a social geography they were instrumental in mapping. Therefore, like Leyla Dakhli’s piece in this volume on the Mahjar, this chapter too interrogates the conceptual space of identity formation of a group of intellectuals. In what follows, I argue that the diverse questions, concerns and philosophies that made up the peasant question offer an excellent perspective from which to explore how interventions by particular individuals circumscribed the unfolding of events and how only certain kinds of outcomes were enabled. As the social question receiving the most attention at the time, and the one through which power relations were most starkly represented, the ‘peasant question’ is an excellent site from which to map out the changing social relations of the period. This article goes about this task by looking at representations of peasants in public discourse. Thus, in what follows, the ‘peasant question’ serves as an entrée into an exploration of the changing social relations. In the end, we see how the ‘peasant question’ sometimes assimilated competing concerns into itself. The results of this examination offer new insights into fin-de-siècle Egyptian history. Long before the deployment of romantic and idyllic images of the peasant in nationalist rhetoric and the village novels of the twentieth century, peasants had garnered a substantial amount of attention on all matters – social, economic and political – that Egyptian intellectuals wrote about in their work on Egyptian agriculture. ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm, Aḥmad Samīr, Yūsuf Shīth, Shaykh Ḥamza Fatḥallāh and a host of others articulated desires for a new sort of collective future with themselves at the helm of a new kind of polity. This chapter, therefore, shares with those of Christoph Schumann and Peter Wien an interest in the social, moral and political formation of a distinct and influential group of intellectuals that saw themselves as a societal vanguard.

Fallāḥīn as Egyptians The disruptions caused by the British invasion and occupation, the restoration of the Khedive and the establishment of a British-dominated administration resulted in a temporary lull in Egyptian public cultural activity. Both the British and the Khedive were very wary of a reinvigorated and oppositional press and publishing

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 43 industry. The draconian press law decreed in 1881 by Khedive Tawfīq was strictly enforced until 1908 and journalists acted cautiously so as not to incur the wrath of the authorities.4 As Egyptian intellectuals slowly began to take up the pen again, they now had to come to terms with a changed political environment. Indeed, the re-emergence of journalism several years after the defeat of the ʽUrābists and the stirrings of frustration with the consolidation of British rule were the backdrop for kindling new kinds of discussions about the meaning of ‘Egyptian-ness’. Before the rebellion, discussions about collective identity only implicitly addressed a unique and essential Egyptian-ness. Calls during the rebellion of ‘Miṣr li-l-miṣriyīn’ (Egypt for the Egyptians) notwithstanding, it was not until after the British occupation that intellectuals began to weave together issues of collective identity and calls for moral and religious renewal to produce an increasingly coherent political project.5 One event symbolic of the new concern with Egyptian-ness was the reception accorded Salīm Naqqāsh’s publishing of his eight-volume history of the ʽUrābī rebellion, Miṣr li-l-miṣriyīn (Egypt for the Egyptians), in 1884.6 The book generated a lot of notice and was important in raising the profile of ongoing discussions about the meaning of Egyptian-ness. Contemporary observers immediately recognized its importance. Notices about the book appeared in a number of newspapers. Typical of the sort of recognition it immediately garnered was a piece appearing in al-Bayān on 5 September 1884, which hailed the book as an ‘important’ contribution in both ‘content and style’ to the history of the uprising. The reviewer predicted that the book would ‘become very well-known’ in the future and advised the ‘worthy’ reader to purchase it.7 The new concern with identity was not only a matter of singular events, such as the publishing of Naqqāsh’s book. One can gauge it in seemingly commonplace discussions of the peasantry that detailed their situation and living conditions. In addition, advice columns about agriculture – even those that dealt with strictly technical matters – became forums for delineating the essential qualities of a new form of local identity. A political and social claim to leadership was implicit in much of this writing. The urban intelligentsia that produced and consumed newspapers and the other products of print-capitalism of the period increasingly conferred upon themselves the responsibility of defining Egyptian-ness. In so doing, they staked out their own privileged political position in its future elaboration. During the period, a new kind of hierarchical social taxonomy was incorporated into Egyptians’ meditations on their past. Central to this development was that the figure of the fallāḥ became a mirror to reflect the social and political issues of the day. Narrations of the ‘historical’ peasant were unpacked to explicate the reshaping of social relations and to legitimize the ascendant position of the urban intellectual classes. For example, a piece in the newspaper al-Zamān in 1884 illustrated the increasing prevalence of defining Egyptian-ness through writing about the countryside and agriculture.8 In what was at the time a novel historical exegesis that soon became commonplace, the piece explained that, over the course of history, Egypt’s non-Egyptian rulers had regarded the terms

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Egyptian and fallāḥ as synonyms. Such a notion was obviously anathema to a vision of a socially differentiated Egypt. Thus, perhaps not unsurprisingly, the article argued that, notwithstanding the fact that Egypt’s fallāḥīn shared the experience of living in such a fertile land, there existed much diversity in their ‘condition and mentality’. The piece then reasoned that, since contemporary urban Egyptians were ‘descended from the peasantry’, these urbanites’ lives naturally reflected the diversity that marked peasant experience.9 The al-Zamān piece was ostensibly a narration of the multiplicity of the historical experiences of the fallāḥīn while noting the peasants’ ability to efficiently exploit Egypt’s soil, but it presented a particular view of Egyptian social relations in recounting this story. The writer argued that peasants were ‘more blessed . . . closer to God’ and possessing ‘better morals’ than the guardians of the old regime, the traditional urban-based Ottoman elite or the dhawāt. They neither drank alcoholic beverages nor engaged in the sins of excess. The author concluded, ‘there is no difference between those people that wear pants and jackets and those that wear wool cloaks and walk barefoot in markets’.10 Between the peasants and the dhawāt were the self-described ‘civilized’ middle stratum that was descended from the peasantry and deeply rooted in their own culture, way of life and religion. This class, like its chronicler in al-Zamān, literate and enjoying the new forms of urban intellectual sociability in cafes and in welfare, learned and literary societies was also the class that self-consciously sought a new understanding of the social order. It is clear from the article that this same class assumed that the peasantry, the dhawāt and they themselves belonged to a larger whole. This recognition signaled a significant change from the past, when social categories among the denizens of the Nile valley were mutually exclusive. There had been distinct social strata, the ruling classes of the cities and the great mass of nondescript peasants working Egypt’s fertile, black soil. Between these mutually impermeable strata were various craftsmen, guildsmen, merchants and ulema between which the lines were only occasionally blurred. For those in the countryside, miṣr (in formal Arabic, or masr in local dialects) had referred almost exclusively to Cairo, and miṣriyīn (or maṣriyīn, Egyptians) were the urban inhabitants of Cairo, or more specifically, the urban-based OttomanEgyptian elite. But al-Zamān asserted that all ‘Egyptians are not the same in their way of life nor in their reason’. Indeed, Egyptians were comprised of three distinct social-moral categories: peasants, dhawāt and the new middle classes. Throughout the last two decades of the nineteenth century, writers in the press and the literate media in general crafted these inchoate notions of ‘Egyptian’ into a broader socio-political category. They then placed this category within a dramatic narrative of attaining consciousness and achieving redemption. The expanding and increasingly important literate classes, as the authors of the ‘biography’ of this social body, predictably wrote themselves a definitive role in its elaboration. Agriculture cemented this new social knowledge and provided its complementary political narrative with historical substance. As it became part of the social commonsense that Egypt was ‘one of the most fertile countries [bilād] in the world and one of the most suitable for agriculture’, the amalgamation of

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 45 Egyptian-ness and agriculture became integral parts of a new kind of social imaginary that inserted the peasantry into all political and social computations.11 Just as peasants-as-laborers were indispensable for agricultural production, peasants-as-Egyptians became an ineluctable element in Egypt’s future. Because it was so typical of things that came later, the article in al-Zamān says much about the extent to which the ‘Egyptian’ was coming to incorporate ‘peasant’ in the new social calculus of the urban intelligentsia. Presaging what soon became routinely said, the author of the piece in alZamān, writing in 1884, a mere two years after the end of the ʽUrābī rebellion, sketched the social contours of a new Egypt through an historical exegesis of peasant suffering and oppression. By identifying the fallāḥ’s past tormentors and investigating the circumstances of their present misery, the piece proffered a cautionary tale of threats to Egypt’s awakening and historical redemption. According to this narrative of Egyptian history, peasants had experienced nothing but ‘humiliation’, ‘oppression’, ‘lies’, and ‘contempt’ as Egypt’s rulers built a life of ‘opulence’ on the merciless exploitation of the fallāḥīn.12 Likewise, the country’s ‘exalted classes’ were interested in the fallāḥīn only insofar as the peasants could provide them with more wealth. Through criticisms the writer of the article identified the social group in whose hands rested the fallāḥ’s (and indeed Egypt’s) redemption. He complained that journalists, the quintessential representative of the new urban intelligentsia, merely concerned themselves with news of foreign affairs and the great political issues of the day. This constituted a grave threat to the possibility of real reform and the achievement of a successful collective future. Why was this so? For this writer, the lack of concern shown by journalists toward the hardships of peasant life ironically paralleled the historical injustices perpetrated upon all Egyptians by the country’s rulers across time. Thus, in filling their newspapers with articles about ‘events in foreign lands with little value’ for Egypt and its peasants, Egypt’s urban intellectuals failed to address the ‘necessary reforms that the country and the fallāḥīn require’.13 Inaction on the part of Egyptian writers demonstrated either indifference or that they only feigned concern with the fate of the ‘country and the peasantry’. Indeed, because ‘no one was ignorant’ of how the fallāḥīn were ‘enslaved by papers of the Mixed Courts and other government ministries and agencies’, the silence of the press on the plight of these ‘Egyptians’ suffering under the weight of the country’s debt was a major failing on their part.14 Discussions about the fallāḥīn played an important role in establishing the parameters that came to delineate the modern Egyptian political subject. Although one can identify portents of Egyptian-ness in the works of Yaʽqūb Ṣannūʽ in the 1870s and perhaps even to some extent in Rifāʽa Rāfiʽ al-Ṭahṭāwī’s writings from the 1850s and 1860s, it was the political and economic realities of the post-ʽUrābī period that shaped the more coherent elaborations of Egyptian-ness and the musings on what actions Egyptians concerned about the future of Egypt should take. Through the 1880s and 1890s, the British occupation and the auctioning of government and royal family lands to private bidders – increasingly foreigners

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and foreign-owned land-holding companies – accelerated changes in Egypt’s land-holding patterns, which had powerful repercussions on social relations.15 One sees these changed contexts in new representations of power relations and in characterizations of political acting in which intellectuals depicted themselves as protecting the peasantry from the cruelty of the new legal regime, the neglect of the elite class and the British, and the depravity of backwardness and superstition.16 It is striking that in a wide range of literate products beginning in the 1880s intellectuals rarely spoke about Egyptians, Egypt and Egyptian-ness without taking some account of the peasantry and their exploitation by various political actors. Journalists’ incorporation of the fallāḥ into their deliberations on Egyptianness reflected the changing political economic realities of British occupation and the dominance of export agriculture. Egyptian-ness took concrete form in a newly delineated geographic and morally bound space that was inextricably tied to agricultural production.17 Expressing a common sentiment, a writer in the newspaper al-Falāḥ noted that both the ‘advanced and the backward devote much attention’ to thinking about agriculture because both agree that ‘Egypt is an agricultural land and if its agriculture fails to expand disaster will follow’.18 The twin projects of discursively constructing the economic, political and historical agency of ‘Egypt’ and outlining the socio-economic category of ‘Egyptian’ belonged almost exclusively to the nascent middle classes. They set about these tasks through their production of literate public culture and through new forms of urban public sociability in an effort to establish a dominant position for themselves in a future Egypt they were scripting. As they delineated Egyptian values in the press, they demarcated new boundaries out of which partitioned social categories were increasingly forged. In this guise, ‘Egypt’, for all intents and purposes, was the incarnation of the middle classes’ interests, and ‘independence’ was a metaphor for the dominant social position they sought. Even metaphors ultimately need causality, however, and the responsibility for Egypt’s predicament of impotence in the face of European power was laid at the feet of the peasant. Even if it was through no fault of their own – because of the Mixed Courts, their lack of familiarity with the rules of commodity price fluctuations and financial practices – peasants would have to be the site of any intervention aimed at rectifying agricultural problems and thus insuring the viability of Egypt as a morally and politically independent entity.19 The desire for agricultural growth was essential to the burgeoning political aspirations of the postʽUrābī proto-bourgeois intellectuals. It follows, therefore, that they concentrated on identifying anything that they thought might hinder the growth of Egyptian agriculture. Accordingly, from the mid-1880s through the turn of the century, one of the most common themes in Egyptian writing on politics and society was that only through agricultural expansion could Egypt become civilized and acquire a measure of independence.20 Thus, it was no mere coincidence that newspapers such as al-Zirāʽa and writers such as Muḥammad Bayram al-Khamīs, publisher of al-lʽlām, proffered regular and detailed accounts of the futility and inefficiency of peasant farming

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methods. According to these and other commentators, peasant methods, techniques and ‘ignorance’ were the cause of Egypt’s agricultural retardation and the continued British occupation.22 Strengthening Egyptian agriculture depended on education in the agricultural sciences – biology, horticulture, entomology, chemistry, etc. – and on transforming the traditional methods of peasant cultivation.23 The importance accorded updating peasant agricultural methods was due in part to the fallāḥīn’s role in working Egypt’s fields, but this was not the only reason. Just as peasant agricultural practices required reform in order to produce the necessary surplus to underwrite Egypt’s project of civilizing and attaining independence, so too did the place of peasants in the social imaginary need rescripting. It was for this reason that during the 1880s and 1890s the transformation of the peasantry into a repository of Egyptian authenticity began to take shape.24 This was the background for much of the writing on the question of peasant debt that so often appended it as well as the question of peasant fidelity to a new view of the collective socio-political fate.25 Because agriculture was the basis of ‘civilized life’, and even more importantly because it was ‘the soul’ upon which the ‘social body’ was built, preserving its Egyptian character was critically important.26 According to the general account of peasant financial woes found in the press, the peasant, laden with overwhelming debt (typically to the local money-lender with protégé status27), appeared before the Mixed Courts and forfeited his land and his possessions to foreigners. Now merely a renter or laborer, the peasant continued to farm lands that he formerly owned. Dependent upon the foreigner for his wages, the peasant gradually comes to identify with him and in the process switches his allegiance from ‘Egypt’ to the ‘foreign’ property owner.28 The sense of apprehension in this sort of writing was palpable. Peasants were represented as an indelible part of Egypt due to their timeless connection to the land, and the idea that the ‘Egyptian fallāḥ’ had worked the land continuously from the ‘time of the Pharaohs six thousand years ago’ became utterly ubiquitous.29 Therefore, ‘losing’ the peasant to the foreigner posed nothing less than an existential threat to Egypt. Peasant debt, the possible ‘defection’ of peasants and the future of Egypt were all tied together through the discourse of agricultural reform. In the burgeoning production of technical agricultural literature and agricultural journals, the importance of ‘reforming’ peasant farming methods and irrigation practices became a dominant theme.30 By the turn of the century, rising concerns about lower cotton yields gave even more impetus to this trend as many observers pinned the blame for declining productivity on increasing soil salinization caused by poor drainage and peasant short-sighted practice of hoarding water for summer irrigation.31 A wealth of writing spoke of the ‘store of agricultural knowledge’ possessed by Egyptian peasants. Criticism and approval lay side by side in writing about peasant agriculture; even while decrying peasants’ ‘backward’ methods as defective and unscientific, one finds plenty of praise for the peasant’s vast archive of knowledge accumulated over many centuries about the specific conditions of Egyptian agriculture. At the same time, there was a sense that peasants did not

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really understand how most efficiently to apply that knowledge for the general benefit of all Egyptians. A fairly typical kind of acknowledgment of this point noted that ‘the Egyptian fallāḥ is an expert not a manager . . . he needs to learn the new kinds of organizational knowledge [ʽilm al-tadbīr]’.32 The imperative to improve peasant farming techniques was a constant refrain in the general press, agricultural journals and agricultural societies that became more prominent after the British occupation.33 Many of those writing in newspapers understood peasants’ ‘ignorance’ of modern agricultural knowledge and the economic inefficiency resulting from it as imperiling Egypt’s future as a coherent social-political unit.34 Criticism found in places such as al-Zirāʽa or Maḥmūd ʽAṭiyya’s agriculture textbook Kitāb kāmil al-najāḥ li-l-muzāriʽ wa-lfallāḥ (Guide to Complete Success for the Cultivator and the Peasant) made reference to the peasant’s ‘conservatism’ and ‘inefficiency’ and suggested that both of these could be easily overcome with proper agricultural training and education. Thus, they concluded that Egyptians must step up and perform the ‘local/ patriotic [waṭanī] duty’ of educating their peasants.35 Journalists and technocrats linked peasant agriculture to the stability of the government and, therefore, to the future of Egypt.36 In the main, they concentrated on two areas: agricultural productivity and the tax-paying ability of the peasant producers. A familiar refrain in the general press and writing on agriculture lamented the ‘many faddāns’ lost to ‘foreigners’ and the ‘many [reputable] families’ destroyed by edicts of the Mixed Courts.37 An article in al-Falāḥ in January 1887 entitled ‘al-Muzāriʽūn’ was representative of the way many theorized about Egypt, Egyptians, peasants and agriculture.38 The piece mixed a discussion about the incompetence of irrigation engineers and a condemnation of the tax structure with observations about the British policy of selling foreclosed land to pay off tax debt.39 It argued that agriculture guaranteed the financial solvency of government and the social stability of society. As the writer explained, ‘happiness in the land’ was measured through the ‘comfort of the people’ and insured by a government caring for the ‘well-being of the people’. The journalist from al-Falāḥ appealed to ‘our great nobles, local and regional governors’ who ‘know better than I what is good for the country’. He pleaded with the authorities to undertake the ‘government review’ of tax rates and assessments that ‘landowners have sought for four years’. This was not for a matter of ‘personal interest’ but rather for the good of ‘the homeland [waṭan]’.40

Fallāḥ and Muzāriʽ Another article in al-Falāḥ in February of 1887 attacking the institution of the corvée noted that the hardship caused by the difficult work fell upon the fallāḥ.41 It described the corvée as representing the arbitrary rule of the old regime. The widespread criticism of large landowners found in the press of the time was one way in which the ascendant middle strata intellectuals distinguished themselves from whom they regarded as their social and political rivals.42 In their view, the main beneficiaries of the corvée were the traditional ruling elite, foreigners and

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 49 the local village headmen. In order to satisfy their social and political ambitions, the new urban intellectual classes would have to out-maneuver these other groups. Attacks on the use of corvée labor helped define the discursive space in which urban intellectuals established themselves by setting them apart from the traditional elite. Likewise, we see something analogous in the subtle shifts in vocabulary referring to peasants over the course of the 1880s and 1890s when the terms fallāḥ (peasant) and muzāriʽ (cultivator) changed in Egyptian writing. In contrast to the 1870s and early 1880s when the terms were used almost interchangeably, writers in the 1880s and 1890s increasingly sketched out socio-economic distinctions through their use of the two terms. Distinctions between fallāḥ and muzāriʽ highlighted changing conceptions of Egypt and the relation of the individual to it. There is much insight to be gained about how the urban intellectuals positioned themselves at this early stage of development in modern Egypt’s social geography in the ways they ‘classed’ and ‘de-classed’ the peasant in their representations of society. The primary vehicle for positioning themselves vis-àvis the peasantry was through their ruminations on agricultural knowledge. A review of the first edition of ʽAṭiyya’s Kitāb kāmil al-najāḥ li-l-muzāriʽ wa-l-fallāḥ in 1887 praised the book for using simple language that was known to the ‘people of agriculture [ahl al-zirāʽa] both rich and poor and prince and pauper’, and declared that, ‘the book renders a service to the homeland [alwaṭan] and its people [ahl]’.43 The book, similar to much of the agricultural writing at the time, purported to identify all of those agricultural practices that should be generalized in order for Egyptian agriculture to reach its full potential. In his introduction, ʽAṭiyya explained that he hoped to create a work ‘useful for landowners [li-aṣḥāb al-arḍ] and those working it’.44 The book not only referred to al-muzāriʽ (cultivator) and al-fallāḥ (peasant) and taking them to embody two different approaches to agriculture, but it also treated these terms as if they referred to distinct social formations. In this way, the book, described an agricultural hierarchy that corresponded very closely to the social geography outlined in much of the literate public culture of the urban intelligentsia. ʽAṭiyya addressed himself to the ‘landowners’ who distributed between ‘three and four faddāns’ to each of their experienced workers (ʽummāl and anfār), stable hands (kalāfīn) and night watchmen (khufarāʾ).45 This group of landowners did not consist of absentee landlords who had little regard for agricultural development and who might travel to the countryside once a month to pick up rent money collected by their tyrannical plantation managers. Instead, this group consisted of ‘cultivators’ who conducted agricultural experiments ‘with new kinds of seeds’ and other techniques.46 Such experimentation, in fact, was among the ‘duties’ of the cultivator, who should always be seeking ways to ‘increase the yield’ of his fields.47 ʽAṭiyya’s cultivators were quite clearly commercial farmers, concentrating on expanding their cultivation of market crops, especially cotton.48 One effect of ʽAṭiyya’s work that concerns us here is that the figure of the fallāḥ receded as the ‘peasant’ that appears in the title of the book all but disappears inside the work. ʽAṭiyya made no references to peasants, instead he wrote

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about cultivators and workers. The book reinforces the subaltern status of the peasant as it transforms those toiling in the fields from ‘peasants struggling in ignorance’ to eke out a subsistence living into ‘workers performing agricultural tasks’ who can only be represented by the afandiyya. Underscoring this rescripting of the peasant in ʽAṭiyya’s kāmil al-najāḥ was that the size of one’s land holdings and the economic wherewithal it implied were not all that set cultivator apart from peasant. Indeed, implicit in the work, and in line with much that was written about agriculture in the 1890s, was the perceived moral and civilizational gap between muzāriʽ and fallāḥ. A cultivator was interested in developing new agricultural techniques and learning more about efficient methods of planting and the optimum use of irrigation and fertilizers. On the other hand, whatever ‘agricultural wisdom’ that ‘backward’ peasants might have accumulated over the centuries is rendered useless as a consequence of blind imitation of their ancestors. This was not merely a question of producing more cotton for the mills of the English north, as this writing described an equivalence between agricultural knowledge and moral virtue. The desire to undertake agricultural experimentation evinced a degree of moral virtue apiece with the virtue of using one’s reason to affect collective self-improvement. In the same way that the virtuous cultivator oriented himself toward market production, the civilized literati nurtured a social vision marked by a sense of collective responsibility and political awareness.49 Al-Zirāʽa too proclaimed that a sense of ‘duty’ guided the muzāriʽīn in carrying out agricultural experimentation. This duty comprised a number of different elements not all oriented solely toward increased profit, but included increasing the basic material wealth of the entire ‘homeland [waṭan]’ for the benefit of all.50 This simple idea of duty carried with it significant meaning beyond the question of production and efficiency of method. Embedded in it, too, were notions of community and a claim for socio-moral authority of a specific class – the urban intelligentsia. The figure of the civilized urbanite embodied the same kind of interest and energy that animated the desire for agricultural improvement among the cultivators. Both shared an understanding of Egypt adumbrated by the protobourgeois urban classes reading and writing newspapers and circulating in the new social and literate urban spaces (salons, clubs, learned and professional associations and the like).51 In the search for both agricultural efficiency and societal improvement, certain kinds of knowledge production – the purview of which was the urban middle classes – were important for Egypt’s ‘success’.52 One writer captured this idea with the observation that the cultivator experimenting with new ‘agricultural methods’ and the ‘writers and opinion makers [arbāb al-aqlām wa-l-ārāʾ]’ publishing ‘scientific principles related to agriculture’ in newspapers, agriculture manuals and journals exhibited the same virtues oriented toward the same social and political goals.53 Quite apart from merely seeking to increase personal profit from the land, the muzāriʽīn undertook a project of much greater depth and importance. Like their fellow travelers, the literate urban classes, cultivators aimed to build a particular kind of collective political and social future. As such, part of their duty lay in

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 51 inculcating ‘scientific principles’ of agriculture into the fallāḥīn, who would, in turn, receive their moral education and direction from the literate urbanites. Together, cultivators and writers and opinion makers would bring about the emergence of the ‘new fallāḥ’. This was necessary because the ‘old peasant’ was incapable of ‘organizing agriculture’ according to rational, scientific and economic principles. He needed to develop this ability even ‘before learning agriculture’ and before he could benefit from ‘the enlightening ideas of the muzāriʽīn’.54 According to this view, peasant poverty resulted equally from lack of economic knowledge as much from mindless imitation of the past.55 The press continually contrasted the muzāriʽ’s dynamism, keenness for experimentation and efforts at innovation with that of fallāḥ passivity, stagnation and lack of creative energy. By 1890, it seemed that ‘agricultural method’ was no longer limited to crop hybridization or the use of chemical fertilizers, but it consisted of a wholly distinct orientation to the world of production and consumption; ‘good’ agricultural practices now included a well-considered economic outlook and a proper moral orientation for those engaged in farming. At the same time that the call for ‘reform’ of all aspects of life reverberated through literate urban culture – from the economic to the domestic spheres, from political organizing to matrimony – there arose increasing invective against the putative ancient provenance of peasant agriculture. Al-Zirāʽa, for example, declared that the peasant still used the ‘techniques of [their] grandfathers that dated back to the time of the pharaohs’.56 For ‘six thousand years they used canals’ to irrigate their ‘fields [to] grow fava beans, maize and wheat’.57 Mindless repetition of agricultural tasks snuffed out any trace of an innovative spirit, and in fact, the difficult existence engendered by their inefficient and toilsome labors produced in peasants a conscious refusal to modify or alter any of their agricultural routines and methods. The aversion to innovation and change rendered them unaware of the needs of ‘this era’ and left them in a dire state. AlZirāʽa noted pointedly that the deluded fallāḥīn did not even recognize their misery as they steadfastly maintained the success of their ‘well-established practices . . . over many generations’.58 In short, the fallāḥīn, having not altered their methods of cultivation for 6,000 years, were uninterested in acquiring any new agricultural knowledge and their ignorance overflowed into all areas of their lives.59 This kind of thinking about the peasants and agriculture gave new significance to the understanding of the terms Egyptian and peasant. The term fallāḥ increasingly took on the meaning of what we might recognize as the modern socio-economic category of peasant – that is to say an extended family sitting on the margins of the market economy farming its own subsistence plot and perhaps working the land of others as renters. As such, the fallāḥ was understood as standing outside of the modern economic production/consumption matrix and lacking the political/moral initiative necessary to take part in lifting the entire society. Whereas the term fallāḥ had been at one time an ethnic signifier for Egyptian, it was now separated from Egyptian. The signification of fallāḥ as Egyptian was eclipsed by that of fallāḥ as signifier for lowly status, both moral

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and economic. The result was that Egyptian became a stand-alone social–moral category and the literate urban classes became its guardians.

Scientific agriculture, productivity and collective duty As we have seen, newspapers of the time took it upon themselves to provide evidence for the imperative of adopting a new scientific orientation for agriculture. Beginning in the mid-1880s, an increasing number of agriculture journals and commentators on agriculture expressed concerns about the misuse of land or the obstacles in confronting the cotton worm or the spread of preventable disease among farm animals.60 These problems negatively affected agricultural productivity. In essence, many understood the problem of decreasing productivity as evidence that poor husbandry techniques and a lack of knowledge of modern chemistry and veterinary science undermined the capacity for export commodity crop cultivation and therefore threatened Egypt’s collective health. The scienticity of agriculture was assessed according to its productivity.61 Even more importantly, the social benefits that accrued from preserving and/or increasing productivity took on the complexion of an irrefutable transcendent societal value that overflowed into and across other domains of experience, endeavor and knowledge. Assessments of the moral condition of Egypt, its collective future and even its right to political independence came to be linked to the success of its agricultural productivity.62 Indeed, in arguing that ‘Egyptian cultivators [al-muzāriʽīn al-miṣriyyīn] need to . . . increase crop yields . . . [in order] to increase exports’, al-Zirāʽa was also calling for an improvement in the collective moral health of Egypt. Discussions about science and the importance of adopting scientific knowledge that coursed through the new social and discursive spaces inhabited by the urban intelligentsia owed much to the discourses of Islamic modernism of the nineteenth century.63 Responding to some of the same questions animating Dyala Hamzah’s and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi’s examinations of the fin-de-siècle reform moment, here I investigate the ways that intellectuals drew new kinds of political horizons and sought to put in place ‘reformed’ religious and social sensibilities as they negotiated the ‘border lands’ between epistemic traditions. Muslim reformers had re-interpreted the ‘duties’ enjoined upon individual Muslims and the community in light of new kinds of political pressures and increasing economic domination by Europeans in the region. The reformers’ influence within the intellectual class was very powerful (even among nonMuslims, such as the Jew Yaʽqūb Ṣannūʽ and the Christian Salīm Naqqāsh, who were some of al-Afghānī’s most notable protégés). Therefore, through them, it became a kind of prosaic truth that ‘good’ Muslims not only embraced scientific principles, but they also self-consciously took up the project of re-invigorating ‘eastern’ culture, mores, customs and habits. The ‘benefits’ provided by establishing life upon ‘scientific principle’ was analogous to believers living virtuously according to God’s law, which was ultimately the professed aim of Islamic reform. Thus, for many of those authoring books and writing in the newspapers and journals, scientific knowledge was scientific only insofar as it facilitated the

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 53 construction of a Muslim community and it was ‘true science’ only to the extent that it could be harnessed and exploited for communal benefit.64 They imbued scientific agriculture with Islamic value because it was understood as an integral component of a successful, observant and pious Muslim community. Their emphasis on ‘scientific agriculture’ had other kinds of resonances apart from the purely economic goal to maximize profit. In both a political and a moral sense, science, and specifically scientific agriculture, was not an end in itself. The intelligentsia’s views about agricultural reform were part of a project to build a new enlightened and civilized society. For them, the study of science would advance ‘local [waṭanī] interest’ because ‘political advance’ depended on agriculture.65 Scientific agriculture garnered importance, and indeed meaning, from its new role in the re-cast idea of Islamic duty and from its part in building an Egyptian community.66 It was in this sense that the intelligentsia took Islamic reformers’ ideas about scientific knowledge and its importance for building reformed communities of Muslims and translated them into a social–political project that called for a new kind of moral/political community that they would rule over and that would be populated by a specific kind of pious subject. They yoked science to their political and social projects as they represented themselves as the group with the most efficacious role in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge – they would be the source of new knowledge that would ultimately transform society. One manifestation of this development was that agricultural writers predicted that the science of agriculture would replace the ancient art of filāḥa or peasant agriculture.67 One frequent contributor to al-Zirāʽa, Yūsuf Ḥabīsh, explained that the ‘fallāḥ is not interested in the science [ʽilm] of growing cotton’ nor in the ‘experiments of scientists’ to find the most productive approaches to agriculture.68 The ‘expert’, engineer and scientist would, if not completely replace the fallāḥ, certainly aid, or more precisely guide, him in adopting ‘the most recent advances in agricultural knowledge’.69 Journals such as al-Zirāʽa, al-Majalla al-zirāʽiyya and Kanz al-zirāʽa gave prominent play to this re-configuration of agricultural knowledge and provided lots of practical advice about the kinds of knowledge and techniques even the common field worker should master. For example, ‘Useful Agricultural Instructions’, in the 28 September 1893 edition of al-Zirāʽa, gave detailed instructions for picking cotton and choosing seeds. The piece repeated the refrain again and again that the fallāḥīn had to adopt ‘scientific’ agricultural methods. Specifically, it set out the case against using children to perform agricultural tasks such as picking cotton and pruning the cotton plants. It contended that children’s lack of experience and basic ignorance of agriculture led them to ‘damage the stalks of the plants’ and thereby disqualified them from such tasks.70 Whereas the age-old art of filāḥa had been an endeavor in which the entire family participated, the modern science of cultivation required specialized training and knowledge and could not be carried out by the untutored. In this changed view of agriculture, a peasant could only perform productive activities efficiently by having continual access to expert information and instruction.

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Agricultural journals such as al-Zirāʽa commonly framed discussions about scientific method as ‘disagreement over the extent to which people must adhere to respected, inherited ways’, the value of which was proven by experience and between those who ‘suggest these [established] ways can be improved upon’.71 In contrast to local agricultural ‘traditions [taqālīd]’, ‘scientific’ agriculture was in a state of continual transformation because ‘science makes new discoveries of nature’s truths’ on a daily basis.72 Comparisons between contemporary European farming methods and their resultant productivity and their Egyptian counterparts amplified this contrast. Agricultural writers placed Egypt’s ‘backwardness [taʾakhkhur]’ and ‘old ways’ in stark relief against the scientific, innovative and constantly improving and evolving techniques and methods of European agriculture.73 It is worth repeating here again that more was at stake in this writing than the types of water-lifting devices the peasant should employ or the schedule for fertilizing cotton fields. Indeed, evolving views about agriculture mirrored the changing contours of social relations and this in turn was reflected in the discourses of agricultural and social reform. A typical piece in al-Zirāʽa described the Egyptian peasant as ‘conservative’, steadfastly and stubbornly adhering to ‘old principles’.74 Egyptian peasants ‘resisted new [agricultural] techniques’ and preferred the methods of their ‘grandfathers dating back to the time of the pharaohs’.75 Although agriculture was deeply rooted in their minds [rāsikhan fī adhhān], peasants were viewed as constitutionally unable to change. As a result, they were the main source of Egypt’s ‘backwardness [taʾakhkhur]’.76 There emerged an inexorable association of the ‘enervated peasant’ with the mindless performance of ancient, ossified and inefficient agricultural routines. This same article included a fictive dialogue between an Egyptian ‘peasant’ and a French ‘cultivator’. At the outset, the Egyptian remarks, ‘I continue to rely on the agricultural calendar . . . and the advice of the local official . . . why should I abandon the ways of my grandfathers?’77 In reply, the French cultivator answers, ‘were your grandfathers knowledgeable about biology and chemistry and geology?’ Science, he points out, ‘helped us surpass your agricultural production even though your land and climate’ are so much more favorable for agriculture.78 Only ‘our science allows us to outstrip you’. In defeat, the Egyptian peasant remains silent. This piece is typical in the way it wove the political aspirations of the protomiddle classes into the interstices of the question of agricultural development. Tying ‘conservatism’, stagnation and political subordination together, the author concluded that the ‘conservative’ peasant ‘retarded [akhkhara]’ Egyptian agriculture in the same way that adhering to ‘political traditions . . . retarded [akhkhara]’ Egypt politically.79 Egyptian peasants should, therefore, be weaned from their ‘conservatism’ and be ‘open [aḥrār] to new methods in agriculture’.80 As a result of peasant ‘neglect’, darkness and backwardness reigned in Egyptian agriculture, and the same malady held back Egyptian politics, commerce and indeed every aspect of Egyptian cultural and social life.81 Writing in 1892, alZirāʽa’s Ayyūb ʽAwn opined that the period was ripe for ‘wholesale change’.82

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 55 However, peasants’ ‘conservatism’ stood in the way, for they resisted innovation and change unless compelled.83 Accordingly, ʽAwn argued that, regardless of whatever harm it might cause to peasants, the introduction of new kinds of agricultural methods was absolutely necessary.84 To accomplish this, the peasant should look to the ‘children of this age’, who succeeded by virtue of new advances in agriculture.85 The urgency with which this need was outlined underscored the fact that the concern with outmoded agricultural practices and knowledge was aimed at more than producing higher yields of cotton. The principles of scientific agriculture championed by the urban intelligentsia pointed in new directions and spoke of new energies and a new vision for the future. Local (waṭanī) journalists, social critics and technocrats saw themselves as the conduit for these new approaches and as such projected themselves as the natural torch-bearers illuminating a new path for all of Egypt.86

Conclusion In the 1892 mission statement of the first issue of their short-lived, but renowned journal al-Ustādh, ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm’s brother and collaborator, ʽAbd alFattāḥ al-Nadīm, said ‘we will discuss the craft of politics from a scientific [ʽilmī] point of view in all of its constituent elements: history, morals [akhlāq], customs [ʽādāt] and the practical management of state [tadbīr al-mamālik]’.87 Later, in the same issue, ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm himself elaborated upon this theme, writing that ‘God gives every community [umma] and group [ṭāʾifa] morals and customs . . . and inspires them to adhere to their natural dispositions [khulq]’.88 Nevertheless, these same communities and groups benefit from interacting with strangers. Al-Nadīm remarked on the positive effects of cultural mixing (ikhṭilāt) ‘between east and west’ coincidental to ‘commercial exchange, travel [siyāḥa] and settlement [istiṭān]’. Such mixing, he suggested, would naturally entail ‘change and the adoption of new customs’.89 Al-Nadīm’s views on assimilating the practices of other peoples were consonant with his attitude toward accumulating and disseminating agricultural knowledge. Both were expressions of the urgent need for change in order to preserve and strengthen that which was authentic. But what was authentic? In his writings from the late 1870s and early 1880s, al-Nadīm might have responded to that question in such a way to leave one with the idea that the ‘authentic’ was captured by the term ‘local [waṭanī]’ or perhaps ‘eastern [sharqī]’. A little over a decade later, in 1892, however, he would have responded unequivocally that authentic could only mean ‘Egyptian [miṣrī]’. Who was Egyptian? What was Egyptian-ness? How could this Egyptian-ness be preserved? These questions lay at the heart of the debate about who was most qualified to assimilate the knowledges of ‘this era’ from ‘westerners’ without losing their way and rejecting what ‘God had given’ their ‘umma’. For al-Nadīm, as for most of the other writers discussed in these pages, the group most willing to occupy this leadership position was the urban intelligentsia. Only a decade on from the ʽUrābī uprising, various kinds of cultural and social elements were beginning to

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coalesce into a proto-national bourgeoisie. The maturation of their selfconsciousness is perhaps the most important development in fin-de-siècle Egyptian social and cultural history. In the 1870s, the problematic of East/West was framed primarily as a question of religion and, to some extent, language by al-Afghānī, al-Nadīm and others. But through the 1890s and into the twentieth century, it increasingly became a matter of patria (waṭaniyya) and cultural identity (jinsiyya). Toward the turn of the century, the term ‘Egyptian’ took on new meaning and a moral/ intellectual figure, the afandī, began to stand for the ‘nation’. This article examined ways in which the political aspirations of the urban intelligentsia were expressed through the convergence of agricultural knowledge, cultural authenticity and political independence. Some of what was written about peasants in the 1880s and 1890s foreshadowed the emergence of the peasant as the symbol of the nation after the turn of the century. The peasant eventually came to stand for deep-rooted Egyptian values and cultural authenticity that, although requiring some amelioration, were essentially immutable. ‘Egypt’ and ‘peasant’ were spoken about in the same terms – gritty and steadfast, with a dignity that could only be restored by acquiring new learning and realizing independence. As we have seen, this dream was feasible only because the civilized, reformed urban middle classes led the way.

Notes 1 See Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East The History and Politics of Orientalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 133–181. 2 Both the British and French consuls produced regular reports on the major players and the important issues circulating in the Egyptian press. Likewise, recognizing the importance of the press and the public discussions associated with it, the British, French and Ottoman governments, along with the Khedive himself, subsidized ‘friendly’ journalists and their newspapers to guarantee a hearing for their view of things. 3 I translate the term nabīh here as civilized. For discussions about the translation of the term ‘civilized’, see my The Power of Representation: Peasants, Publics and Islam in Egypt, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 39, 51. 4 The full text of the law can be found in Sāmī ʽAzīz, al-Ṣiḥāfa al-miṣriyya wa mawqifuḥā min al-iḥtilāl al-injilīzī, Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʽArabī, 1967, pp. 339–343. 5 There is no real consensus on the meaning of the slogan ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’. Some historians view it as a proto-nationalist call for Egyptian sovereignty and independence. Others see it as a nativist reaction to the increasing European presence in Egypt. While neither one of these explanations is entirely satisfactory, it is worth noting that, while the Alexandria-born ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm is often credited with coining the phrase, Salīm Naqqāsh, a ‘Syrian’ (actually his family is from what is today Lebanon) journalist, playwright and author of the 1880s multi-volume history of the revolt Egypt for the Egyptians, claimed to have originated it. 6 Alexandria: Maṭbaʽat Jarīdat al-Mahrūsa, 1884. Volumes four through nine were published at the time but volumes one through three were never published. Volumes four through eight are readily available and were recently republished in Cairo (Cairo: alHayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʽĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1998). 7 Al-Bayān was published in Cairo by Yūsuf Shīth. Shīth was well-known in the circles

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8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16

17

of Cairene and Alexandrian journalists. When Ḥamza Fatḥallāh’s Alexandrian ‘Islamic reform’ journal al-Burhān moved to Cairo in 1884, Shīth became its manager and hired Aḥmad Samīr (from al-Tankīt wa-l-tabkīt and al-Nadīm’s eventual biographer) as its editor. On the history of the Alexandrian press of the time, see Niʽmat Aḥmad ʽUthmān, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-iskandariyya 1873–1899, Cairo: al-Hayʾa alMiṣriyya al-ʽĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1995, pp. 110–152. ‘Al-fallāḥīn’, al-Zamān, 18 July 1884, p. 1. Al-Zamān was established as a twice weekly in Cairo by the ‘Syrian’ Alkasān Ṣarafiyān in 1882. During the run-up to the rebellion of 1882, al-Zamān ran afoul of the ʽUrābist cabinet – probably for its proOttoman sentiments – and was suspended. It re-appeared after the defeat of ʽUrābī and was the first Arabic-language newspaper to support the British. By this time, its editor was another Syrian, Mikhāʾīl ʽAwra. Eventually Jirjī Zaydān took over the editorship. Soon after that, the paper was closed by the Khedival government on a request from Mukhtār al-Ghāzī for insulting the Ottoman government. See Filīb Dī Tarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya, Beirut: al-Maṭbaʽa al-Adabiyya, 1913, pp. 22–23; Martin Hartmann, The Arabic Press of Egypt, London: Luzac & Co., 1899, pp. 32, 73. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The author is referring somewhat obliquely to the range of promissory notes, deeds and other official documents that became ubiquitous in the lives of even ordinary Egyptians in the second half of the nineteenth century. The reference here is to the Mixed Court system that came to be feared by many for its putative role in legally taking bankrupted peasants’ land. Even before the ʽUrābī revolt, the Mixed Courts had been the object of severe criticism in the press. The Mixed Courts were established in 1876, seven years after an international commission was set up to look into reforming Egypt’s confusing and complicated legal framework. Representatives from Austria, England, Italy, Russia, France and the United States reached a consensus to replace the antiquated and cumbersome capitulatory legal regime’s multiple jurisdictions and legal codes with a single institutional framework and a unitary legal code based on the Code Napoleon. See Mark Hoyle, The Mixed Courts of Egypt, London: Graham & Trotman, 1991; Byron Cannon, Politics of Law and the Court in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1988, and Jasper Yeates Brinton, The Mixed Courts of Egypt, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. See Ḥamdī al-Wakīl, Mulkiyyat al-arāḍī al-zirāʽiyya fī miṣr khilāl al-qarn al-tāsiʽ ʽashar, Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʽĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 2000, pp. 665–685, on government land holdings and disposal of royal family holdings. See Gabriel Baer, A History of Landownership in Modern Egypt 1800–1950, London: Oxford, 1962, pp. 68–70, on foreign purchases of land and the increasing involvement of landholding companies in the Egyptian land market. One sees this in the works of a range of intellectuals at the time; see the works of ʽAlī Yūsuf, ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm and Zakī ʽAwaḍ, for example. See my The Power of Representation: Peasants, Publics and Islam in Egypt, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009, Chs 2, 3. See, for example, ‘Al-Zirāʽa fī miṣr’, al-Falāḥ, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2. None other than Shakīb Arslān, the famous Syrian pan-Arabist, writing in al-Zirāʽa on 20 October 1894, noted that ‘the Nile Valley is an agricultural land’. See ‘al-Zirāʽa wa-lʽarab’, p. 1. Al-Falāḥ was published beginning on 10 October 1885 in Cairo by two Alexandrian brothers of Christian extraction, Salīm and Ilyās Hamāwī. Salīm was also involved in publishing the weeklies al-Iskandariyya (1878–1882) and Rawḍat

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20

21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28

M. Gasper al-iskandariyya (1882–1885). The latter Hamāwī subsequently moved to Cairo and re-christened Rawḍat al-iskandariyya as al-Fallāḥ. See ʽUthmān, Tārīkh, pp. 155–163 and 449–451. ‘Al-Fallāḥīn’, al-Zamān, 18 July 1884, p. 1. See ‘Dirāsa zirāʽiyya fī taṭbīq qanūn al-taʽwīd’, al-Aʽlām, 6 September 1888, p. 3. In the article, which advocated more widespread training of Egyptian peasants, British engineer Sir William Edmund Garstin (who lived from 1849–1925 and was the designer and builder of the first Aswan Dam on the Nile in Egypt) was quoted as saying that ‘[t]he advancement of agriculture in Europe only occurred with the help of science [ʽilm] spread among peasants themselves’. Thus was the implication of the many articles that spoke of European agricultural expansion through new technology and science. See ‘al-Zirāʽa fī miṣr’, al-Falāḥ, 25 February 1887, p. 1; ‘al-Bank al-ʽaqārī al-miṣrī’, al-Zirāʽa, 8 May 1892, pp. 70–80; ‘Saʽādat al-fallāḥ al-miṣrī wa shaqāwatuhu’, al-Zirāʽa, 24 August 1894, pp. 375–396; ‘Taʽlīm al-zirāʽa’, al-Muqtaṭaf, 1 October 1893, p. 4; ‘al-ʽUmda wa-l-ʽumad’, al-ʽUmda, 10 December 1896, p. 2. The Syrian Ayyūb ʽAwn began publishing the weekly al-Zirāʽa on 23 April 1891. According to Dī Tarrāzī, al-Zirāʽa was the fourth agricultural journal to crop up in Egypt. ʽAwn hoped to ‘raise up’ agriculture and other productive activities in Egypt by ‘enlightening the fallāḥīn’ in order that they might increase the size of their yields and sell them at the highest price and the maximum profit. ʽAwn received funding for his journal from Prince Ḥusayn Kāmil (grandson of Ismāʽīl, the Khedive deposed in 1879) and from Wallace, the English head of the Giza Agricultural School. Dī Tarrāzī described the journal as the mouthpiece of the Giza Agricultural School for a time. After ʽAwn’s untimely death in 1894, Iskandar Karkūr took over the reins. According to Dī Tarrāzī, the journal was noteworthy for providing free legal services to peasants in court and in their dealings with various government agencies. See Dī Tarrāzī, Tārīkh, vol. 3, pp. 81–83. See ‘al-Bank al-ʽaqārī al-miṣrī’, al-Zirāʽa, 8 May 1892, pp. 79–80; ‘Dirāsa zirāʽiyya fī taṭbīq qanūn al-taʽwīd’, al-Aʽlām, 6 September 1888, p. 1; ‘al-Zirāʽa fī Miṣr’, alFallāḥ, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2. ‘Al-Zirāʽa fī miṣr’, al-Falāḥ, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2. The best overall account of this process can be found in Samah Selim’s The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880–1985, New York, London: Routledge Curzon, 2004. For a sense of the early articulation of this formulation, see ‘Ḥafẓ tharwat al-fallāḥ’, al-Zamān, 12 September 1884, p. 1. Egypt as the land of the Pharaohs did not begin to enter into the minds of Egyptians until after European archeologists were translated and popularized in the beginning of the twentieth century. See Donald M. Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, and Elliot Colla, ‘Hooked on Pharaonics: Literature and the Appropriations of Ancient Egypt’, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2000. The terms used here, and which were very common at the time, were al-ḥayāt al-madaniyya for ‘civilized life’ and al-rūḥ for ‘soul’. ‘Al-Fallāḥīn’, al-Zamān, 18 July 1884, p. 1. Here the writer used the term ‘body’ (al-jasad al-majmūʽī). The idea of the ‘social body’ began to fall out of use in the early twentieth century. Eventually, ‘alhayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya’ came to replace it and then finally by the more contemporary term ‘al-mujtamaʽ’. ‘Al-Zirāʽa fī Miṣr’, al-Falāḥ, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2. Many locals were able to obtain foreign citizenship through the intervention of consuls. These ‘protégés’ enjoyed the protection that this status accorded them – in particular, exemption from Egyptian taxes. See Brinton, Hoyle and Cannon (note 14). This scenario, as well as a number of variations, was very common; one can find it in a variety of newspapers. See, for example, al-Zamān, 18 July 1884, p. 1 and 12

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29 30

31 32

33

34

35

36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

September 1884, p. 1; ‘Fī zawāl al-sukhra’, al-Falāḥ, 21 February 1887, pp. 1–2 and ‘al-Zirāʽa fī Miṣr’, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2; ‘Mashāyikh al-balad’, al-Waṭan, 27 January 1889, p. 3; ‘Tharwat al-fallāḥ aw tājir al-quṭn’, al-Nīl, 15 February 1893, pp. 1–2 and 3 March 1893, pp. 1–2; ‘al-Qānūn ightiṣāb al-arāḍī’, al-Zirāʽa, 10 February 1891, pp. 35–36; ‘Musāʽadat al-fallāḥ’, al-Fayyūm, 20 December 1894, p. 3. ‘Al-Zirāʽa fī Miṣr’, al-Falāḥ, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2. Europeans hired by the Egyptian government advocated large-scale training programs because of ‘peasant ignorance and carelessness’ as early as the late 1860s (Behmer quoted in Roger Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, London: Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 140). According to Owen, the British occupation authorities carried out an ‘intensive campaign of public instruction’ to convince the peasants of the advantages of new farming techniques from the 1880s up to the second decade of the twentieth century (See Owen, Cotton, pp. 215–218). See Maḥmūd ʽAṭiyya, Kitāb kāmal al-najāḥ li-l-muzāriʽ wa-l-fallāḥ, Cairo: alMaṭbaʽa al-Adabiyya, 1902, pp. 24–25. ‘Al-Bank al-ʽaqārī al-miṣrī’, al-Zirāʽa, 8 May 1892, pp. 79–80. Al-Zirāʽa often focused on the ‘organizational [tadbīrī]’ deficit of Egyptian agriculture, especially with regard to irrigation and harvesting. See ‘Ṭanṭā fī abrīl 26’, al-Zirāʽa, 28 April 1892. Al-Ajyāl spelled out a specific platform for educational reform and education in ‘al-Zirāʽa fī Miṣr’, on 20 November 1897, p. 1. Agricultural journals such as al-Zirāʽa, al-Majalla al-zirāʽiyya and al-Filāḥa almiṣriyya began to appear in the early 1890s. However, even during the 1880s, many newspapers and journals had begun to devote special sections to agriculture, such as in 1887 in ʽAlī Yūsuf ’s al-Adab, a self-described ‘cultural magazine’. By the 1890s, almost every single periodical had some regular features or columns devoted to agricultural news, developments and/or education. Al-Falāḥ declared on 31 January 1887 in an article entitled ‘al-Muzāriʽūn’ (p. 2) that the ‘general well-being was attached to [peasant] agriculture’. See also al-Waṭan, 2 October 1889, p. 1; al-Zirāʽa, 4 June 1891, p. 105; al-Majalla al-zirāʽiyya, 4 rabīʽ thānī 1312 H (22 October 1893), p. 1. Al-Zirāʽa, 6 September 1891, pp. 288–292. See also al-Zirāʽa, 10 February 1892, pp. 439–440; al-Surūr, 24 February 1894, p. 1; al-ʽIlm al-miṣrī, 16 March 1894, p. 2 for articles which endorsed education for peasants that would equip them with agricultural methods ‘appropriate for this era’ and re-orient them toward a beneficial relationship with contemporary market forces and trade. An agricultural thesis written by an Egyptian named Kamel Gali at l’Institut Agricole de Beauvais in France in 1889 traced the source of these problems back to fallāḥ psychology. The peasant, he wrote, ‘is fatalistic and lives day-to-day, he is not troubled by what comes the next day . . . (h)e recklessly accumulates debt and then becomes angry when bankruptcy claims his land and his possessions’ [122–124]. Kamel Gali, Essai sur L’Agriculture de L’Egypte, Paris: Henri Jouve, 1889. ‘Al-Muzāriʽūn’, al-Falāḥ, 31 January 1887, p. 2. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Fī ziwāl al-sukhra’, al-Falāḥ, 21 February 1887, pp. 1–2. For an historical examination of the increasing criticism of the corvée among Egyptians, see Nathan Brown, ‘Who Abolished Corvee Labor in Egypt and Why?’, Past and Present, August 1994, vol. 144, pp. 116–137. ‘Alan: al-Najāh li-l-muzāriʽ wa-l-fallāḥ’, al-Ṣādiq, 10 August 1887, p. 2. The quote comes from the second, substantially re-worked edition (Cairo: ʽAlī Aḥmad Sukr, 1902), p. 1. ʽAṭiyya, Kitāb kāmal al-najāḥ, p. 36. ‘Taqālīdunā al-zirāʽiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 7 October 1892, pp. 258–262.

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47 ʽAṭiyya, Kitāb kāmal al-najāḥ, pp. 35–36. 48 Ibid. See also, al-Falāḥ, 31 January 1887, p. 2; 21 February 1887, pp. 1–2; 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2; al-Waṭan, 27 November 1889, pp. 1–2; al-Zirāʽa, 18 March 1892, pp. 587–589. 49 An article in al-Zirāʽa called ‘al-Muzāriʽ al-miṣrī wa ḥājātuhu’ (9 July 1891, pp. 177–178) was typical insofar as it assumed that increasing crops yields meant increasing exports. The literate media conflated the needs of the ‘cultivators’ and the needs of the ‘homeland’ in general and this was expressed through a valorization of export agricultural production. 50 ‘Taqālīdunā al-zirāʽiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 7 October 1892, pp. 258–262. 51 Ibid. 52 In the piece cited above in al-Ajyāl, the writer declared that: Egypt is a pure agricultural country . . . but unfortunately the people here are the most uninterested in agriculture . . . the rich and the wealthy prefer to put their money in banks or to build palaces and villas and to live off of the rent . . . although the profits [in agriculture] are superior . . . it is an obvious mistake [for Egyptians] not to use their natural powers to reap benefit and advantage. (‘Al-Zirāʽa fī Miṣr’, al-Ajyāl, 20 November 1897, p. 1) 53 ‘Taqālīdunā al-zirāʽiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 7 October 1892, pp. 258–262. 54 ‘Li mudīr al-jarīda’, al-Zirāʽa, 28 April 1892, p. 1. This piece by ʽAwn described in great detail the peasants’ store of agriculture knowledge but also underscored with great emphasis the importance for the fallāḥīn to be taught to understand the value of new techniques and new scientific principles in agriculture. 55 Ibid. 56 ‘Al-Muḥāfiẓūn wa-l-aḥrār fī-l-zirāʽa’, al-Zirāʽa, 12 June 1892, pp. 129–137. 57 ‘Taqālīdunā al-zirāʽiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 7 October 1892, p. 131. 58 Ibid., p. 136. 59 Ibid. 60 For example, see ‘Asbāb ṭāʽūn al-baqara’, al-Zamān, 2 April 1884, p. 3. This article tried to explain, in self-consciously simple language, the reasons for a devastating outbreak of cow typhus; al-Mahrūsa on 30 July 1886, p. 1, ‘al-Lamḥa al-zirāʽiyya’ questioned the traditional methods used by fallāḥīn of eradicating the cotton worm; al-Ṣādiq 1 December 1886, p. 1, ‘al-Istiʽāna bi-l-sibākh fī-l-zirāʽa’ described how the ill-use of fertilizer and the ignorance of the ‘laws’ of crop rotation adversely affected agriculture. 61 ‘al-Muzāriʽ al-miṣrī wa ḥājātuhu’, al-Zirāʽa, 9 July 1891, pp. 177–178. 62 That the collapsing of questions of morality, politics and science into agriculture was a prosaic truth might be seen in that al-Zirāʽa’s masthead described itself as an ‘Agricultural, Industrial, Commercial, Economic Magazine [majalla]’, even though most of its discussions of these questions made little sense outside of the moral–political matrix discussed throughout this paper. 63 For more on the reform movement, see Dyala Hamzah’s ‘From ʽilm to ṣiḥāfa or the politics of the public interest (maṣlaḥa): Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and his journal alManār (1898–1935)’ in this volume. 64 A cursory glance at the pages of agricultural journals allows this insight. It was not a coincidence that Ḥasan Ḥusnī al-Ṭurānī, who some British officials accused of ‘religious extremism’ for his pan-Islamist/pro-Ottoman views, established an agricultural journal, al-Majalla al-zirāʽiyya, in 1894. That al-Ṭurānī viewed agriculture as one element in building a new sort of society was not exceptional. For example, Kanz alzirāʽa, an agricultural journal edited by Ḥabīb Fāris al-Lubnānī, stated in the first issue on 15 January 15, 1891, p. 1, that ‘our mission’ is to ‘serve our beloved land [quṭr] . . . because agriculture is among the most important material treasures with which God endowed the Earth . . . and made the basis of life’.

Public deliberations of the self in Egypt 61 65 ‘Amānī iqtiṣādiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 4 June 1891, pp. 97–100. See also ‘Jamʽiyyat alhurriyya al-islāmiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 25 November 1895, p. 761; ‘Masʾala iqtiṣādiyya ijtimāʽiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 9 June 1891, pp. 129–134. 66 Mary Poovey (in A History of the Modern Fact, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998) describes the fall of providentialism and emergence of the concept of the modern objective, unattached fact in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. As Hourani himself explained in the later editions of his seminal Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983[1962]), the kinds of parallel processes that occurred in the Arabic-speaking world were not hegemonic in the way they had been in Europe. 67 See ‘al-Zirāʽa fī miṣr’, al-Falāḥ, 25 February 1887, pp. 1–2; ‘Dirāsa zirāʽiyya fī taṭbīq qanūn al-taʽwīd’, al-lʽlām, 6 September 1888, p. 1; front page (untitled) al-Waṭan 18 April 1891; ‘Al-Muḥāfiẓūn wa-l-aḥrār fī-l-zirāʽa’, Al-Zirāʽa, 12 June 1892, p. 1; ‘Taqālīdunā al-zirāʽiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 7 October 1892, pp. 258–262; ‘al-ʽUmda wa-lʽumad’, al-ʽUmda, 10 December 1896, p. 2. 68 Ḥabīsh (some sources have it as Ḥubayyish) was known by the title of Shaykh and wrote an Arabic–French dictionary in 1891. ‘Zirāʽat al-quṭn’, al-Zirāʽa, 23 April 1891, p. 1. ‘Amānī iqtiṣādiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 4 June 1891, makes the same point, but adds that part of the problem is the absence of some media with which to communicate new developments to the fallāḥīn. 69 ‘Al-Fallāḥ al-miṣrī’, al-Zirāʽa, 17 March 1892, pp. 587–589. 70 ‘Taʽlīmāt zirāʽiyya mufīda’, al-Zirāʽa, 28 September 1893, pp. 75–82. 71 ‘Al-Muḥāfiẓūn wa-l-aḥrār fī-l-zirāʽa’, al-Zirāʽa, 12 June 1892, p. 130. 72 Ibid., p. 131. 73 For articles that compare Egyptian and European farming methods and (mostly) French peasants, see ‘Iṣʽad hāl al-fallāḥ’, al-Zirāʽa, 19 November 1891, p. 1; ‘Saʽādat al-fallāḥ al-miṣrī wa shaqāwatuhu’, al-Zirāʽa, 24 August 1894, pp. 375–396; ‘al-ʽUmda wa-l-ʽumad’, al-ʽUmda, 10 December 1896, p. 2. 74 ‘Al-fallāḥ al-miṣrī’, al-Zirāʽa, 17 March 1892, p. 588. 75 ‘Amānī iqtiṣādiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 4 June 1891, p. 99. 76 ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm, writing in al-Ustādh, used this phrase to describe the entire peasant family. ‘Al-Zirāʽa fī miṣr’, al-Ustādh, 21 February 1892, pp. 627–630. 77 ‘Al-Muḥāfiẓūn wa-l-aḥrār fī-l-zirāʽa’, al-Zirāʽa, 12 June 1892, p. 1. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 ‘Al-Zirāʽa al-miṣriyya wa ṭuruq taḥsīnihā’, al-Zirāʽa, 28 February 1893, pp. 525–526. 81 Ibid. Also see ‘Miṣr al-zirāʽa’, al-Zirāʽa, 5 May 1894, p. 1. This article and a number of others note that the source for this new knowledge was newspapers such as ‘alAhrām, al-Nīl, al-Muqaṭṭam, al-Muʾayyad, Le Bosphore, al-Fār, the Egyptian Gazette and Courier de France’. It is worth noting that this list ranges across the spectrum of Egyptian opinion in the early 1890s, from the decidedly pro-British al-Muqaṭṭam to the pro-Ottoman al-Nīl to the pro-independence, anti-British al-Muʾayyad. 82 ‘Li-Mudīr al-jarīda’, al-Zirāʽa, 28 April 1892, p. 64. 83 Ibid. This indeed was the case with the peasants under the rule of Mehmet Ali. Fallāḥīn adopted new methods, techniques and crops prescribed by the wālī as a result of the violence and harsh threats of the wālī’s policies. 84 ‘Li-Mudīr al-jarīda’, al-Zirāʽa, 28 April 1892, p. 1. Even though Mehmet Ali’s policies initially caused great distress among the fallāḥīn, they were eventually beneficial. According to ʽAwn, that peasants continued to follow these methods after the compulsion was lifted demonstrates that the fallāḥīn too realized the benefit of these policies. 85 ‘Amānī iqtiṣādiyya’, al-Zirāʽa, 4 June 1891, p. 64. 86 In the inaugural editorial of al-Zirāʽa, ʽAwn outlined the position of newspapers and technical experts (ahl al-khibra) in disseminating new agricultural ideas and in

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guiding the fallāḥ. For him, newspapers were the essential link in passing important information to interested parties in Egypt and, through them, to the peasantry. ʽAwn proclaimed that ‘newspapers have to bring [European agricultural methods] . . . to the attention of [Egyptian] government and the ruling elite’. ‘I ṣʽād ḥāl al-fallāḥ’, alZirāʽa, 19 November 1891, p. 1. See also ‘Zaqāzīq’, al-Ikhlāṣ, 1 August 1895, p. 3, which reasoned that ‘newspapers are supposed to serve the people for they are the voice of the people’. 87 ‘Al-Muqaddima’, al-Ustādh, 24 August 1892, pp. 2–3. 88 ‘Faṣl fī akhlāq wa ʽādāt’, al-Ustādh, 24 August 1892, p. 2. 89 Ibid., p. 3.

4

Inscribing socialism into the Nahḍa al-Muqtaṭaf, al-Hilāl, and the construction of a Leftist reformist worldview, 1880–19141 Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

Introduction In January 1913, a long essay entitled ‘al-Ishtirākiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa’ appeared on the pages of al-Muqtaṭaf, one of the most formative and influential opinion makers among Arabic readers during the period under study.2 Written by Shiblī Shumayyil (1850–1917),3 a man of many talents who was a doctor, a scientist, the foremost popularizer of Darwinism and evolutionary theory in the Arab world, a writer,4 and a committed socialist, the article sought to explain socialism in fairly simple terms and to connect it to reform (iṣlāḥ), natural science, and civilization (tamaddun). However, if this article stood out and still does as a particularly forceful and lucid piece of writing on socialism, it was certainly neither the first nor the last of its kind to appear in the years between 1880 and 1914 in the Ottoman Arab world. Indeed, while articles, booklets, or utterances on socialism did not appear all too frequently among the published material produced in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria in the period under study, they still constituted a relatively significant body of material, and received enough attention to warrant ours.5 The increasing number of articles and opinion pieces on socialism (and related issues such as anarchism and labor struggle)6 attests to a growing interest in such topics, especially on the eve of the First World War, as illustrated in the publication of four long and seminal articles on the topic in the last few months before the war.7 In any case, their publication should prompt a reevaluation of sweeping claims made by some historians of the Modern Middle East that socialist ideas had attracted little attention or had gained very little support in the Arab world by 1920.8 In fact, throughout the Ottoman world and notably in its Eastern Mediterranean provinces, just as in many parts of the world, the period between 1880 and 1914 seems to have been ripe in radical thought and interest in socialism, anarchism, and other leftist ideas. Indeed, throughout most of the world, and connected to the 1870–1914 wave of globalization – and specifically, as I have argued elsewhere, to the establishment of Diasporic networks of workers and intellectuals9 – the fin de siècle witnessed a ‘radical moment’ and the elaboration of a radical worldview, which can

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be best described as follows: it was made up of selective, hybrid adaptations of socialist and anarchist principles, including calls for social justice, wealth redistribution, workers’ rights, mass education (and specifically workers’ education), and a general challenge to the existing social and political order, at home and abroad. Significantly, such causes were usually combined with seemingly less radical (or non-leftist) demands, such as female education, the establishment of a constitutional and representative government, freedom of speech, the curbing of religious and clerical authority, the seizing of church property, anti-imperialist and/or national liberation struggles in certain parts of the world, and a criticism of European political and economic encroachments. Overall, then, radical ideas and radicalism can be best described as a package combining various elements from socialism and radical leftist movements in general, with very local claims for social change. Assessing the impact of an idea or an ideology is an extremely vexed project. Rather than concentrating on measuring the popularity of radical leftist ideas among the reading populations of Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, the three cities that constituted a nexus which made up the heartland of the Nahḍa, this article initially focuses on identifying expressions of interest in them, and showing how present and vivid the discussions on socialism were. In a second instance, it seeks to explain the increased sympathy expressed toward socialism and actual endorsement by a growing number of intellectuals and publicists on the pages of the two periodicals. While it is obviously impossible to mention and analyze every single instance in which socialism was discussed in the years between 1880 and 1914 and in the above-mentioned three cities – and I will here be limiting myself to writings in Arabic – this paper focuses on the discussions on socialism on the pages of two periodicals, al-Muqtaṭaf (Beirut/ Cairo:1876–1952)10 and al-Hilāl (Cairo:1892–present),11 for the following reasons: first, until 1914, many if not most Arabic writings on socialism and anarchism came in the form of articles, many of which were published on the pages of these two periodicals. Second, the two periodicals were imbued with discursive authority – to use Bourdieu’s expression – while simultaneously shaping and representing the ideas circulating among a larger network of writers and readers whose members were found in the Arab Ottoman world and beyond (including in North and South America). Therefore, a study of the manner in which socialism was covered in these periodicals says something larger than the two periodicals in question. Third, and connected to the previous point, this sustained interest in and engagement with socialist ideas was an integral aspect of the intellectual framework that was being constructed in the Arab world and beyond, namely, the Nahḍa. Given the place that these periodicals occupied in the construction and dissemination of seminal ideas that lay at the core of what the Nahḍa came to represent, an analysis of the place given on the pages of these periodicals to discourses on socialism sheds light on the relationship between the Nahḍa and socialism. Perhaps more than that, by analyzing this relationship, this chapter shows how ingeniously intellectuals of the period engaged with modern political (and Western) ideas, domesticated12 and hybridized them, and in the

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process creatively created a local intellectual worldview or sets of references that were simultaneously and self-consciously global.

The Nahḍa or the mantra of reform What exactly was the Nahḍa? If one were to attempt to define it, as it developed between the years 1860 and 1914 and was constructed in its three main centers, Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, certainly reform would figure as its most dominant theme.13 A conscious intellectual articulation of the need for reform and its manifestations by thinkers belonging to a variety of networks, groups, institutions, and intellectual traditions, the Nahḍa was one geographical and linguistic module (i.e., a provincial, mostly Syro-Egyptian Arab module) of a larger reformist project called upon and implemented by local actors – rulers, administrators, and bureaucrats – in the late nineteenth century throughout the Ottoman. This larger Ottoman reformist movement, which was both local and imperial, aimed to modernize state, institutions, and individuals in order to catch up with Europe and be able to defend the Empire against European hegemony.14 The Nahḍa was not interpreted monolithically and was not the monopoly of a single regional, religious, ethnic, or social category; the impetus for reform was shared by people forming a plethora of networks whose members intersected and collaborated and shared various visions and implementations of reform. The pulse or vitality of the Nahḍa was connected to specific cities – as previously mentioned, Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria – that had privileged relationships with one another and that allowed for the intersection and overlaps of a number of reformist and radical networks.15 Nonetheless, while many aspects of reform were emphasized and interpreted differently by various reformist groups, there were significant common concerns and interests between Nahḍa thinkers that allowed for the formulation of a cohesive worldview. Most centrally, perhaps, is the fact that reform was conceived of as a total project and ‘l’horizon même de toute pensée hic et nunc’.16 This all-encompassing project entailed a religious reform aiming at modernizing religion and looking for ways to purge it from certain of its elements deemed to be incompatible with the present age’s needs and reality – in the case of Islamic reformism; or, in the case of Christian reformism in parts of Syria, rethinking and curbing the authority of both local and foreign religious institutions over communal affairs17 – an educational reform promoting secular and modern education, including female education,18 a political reform underlining the need for constitutional politics, an individual reform emphasizing the centrality of selfimprovement and the use of logic and reason, and, perhaps most importantly, a social reform that would rid society of various internal as well as external ‘diseases’ threatening its cohesion. In the place of an ailing society, reformists would build a strong social body (al-hayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya), a healthy organism where various divisions, including those brought by wealth disparity, would be eliminated, or at least eroded. It is partly within this framework of reform and of a healthy social body that Nahḍa reformists would progressively insert socialism, and in the process, redefine the malleable project of the Nahḍa itself.

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Discursive authority and the making of a new class Before delving into these periodicals’ coverage of socialism, it is imperative we examine the roles these two periodicals played in the production, reproduction, and dissemination of ideas among an educated, literate elite. Succinctly put, alHilāl, and especially al-Muqtaṭaf, represented particularly powerful spheres that conferred legitimacy to ideas and discourses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, but also beyond, including within the Syrian Diaspora in the Americas. The two periodicals were at the center of what Bourdieu has labeled ‘le cercle enchanté de la légitimité’; that is, the ideas expressed on their pages and the discourses constructed there were authoritative, for they were recognized as such and expressed in a specific style which confirmed their authority.19 At the heart of al-Muqtaṭaf ’s authoritative power of pronouncements and its claims to accessible, total, and universal knowledge20 lay the emergence of a new social class seeking to carve its own discursive space, and armed with the actual power to do so. In the late nineteenth century, a new class, that of intellectuals, was being constructed socially, economically and culturally, in Egypt and Syria.21 While there were exceptions to the rule, members of this class tended to have the following characteristics: first, they had had access to a specific kind of education. They had attended, around the same time, the same handful of schools and colleges – most prominently, the Syrian Protestant College and the Patriarchal school in Beirut, and had acquired, through it, skills deemed novel and useful. Through this education, they could construct a rhetoric of difference and distinction to form a cast and demarcate themselves from pre-existing categories and institutions of learned men – at least rhetorically, and when it suited their demands. Second, partly through their educational experience, they had constructed a shared worldview – or collective consciousness22 – and in the process anointed themselves chief-reformists. Third, they had privileged access to the press and could hence disseminate their worldview and recruit new members. Finally, partly because of their privileged access to the press, members of this class had the ability to form a network and remain in close contact – in Cairo, in Alexandria, or in Beirut, but also once they started emigrating: in New York, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and elsewhere.23 Hence, through its access to its own legitimizing institutions, most prominently the press, and its reliance on a professional and personal network,24 this new class was equipped with its own symbolic and cultural capital, as well as relatively autonomous means of achieving authority and legitimacy – at least autonomous from ‘traditional institutions’ such as state and religious institutions.25 It was thus capable and willing to challenge the authority of these institutions, as well as established elites, and it often did so through the promotion or, at the very least, investigation, of radical ideas and practices.26 Socialism would be one of them. The press was to serve as the perfect vehicle for their reformist project, as well as for projecting their voice as one of authority. Keenly promoted as an educational tool and the path, if not the index, to civilization, this relatively new medium constituted one field in which graduates of these schools were present in

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particularly high concentration, be they in Syria, in Egypt, or in the Americas.27 Through the establishment of authoritative and influential periodicals such as alMuqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl, intellectuals constructed, articulated, and disseminated ideas and worldviews, shared these ideas with prospective members of their group, and established a forum and a public space in which intellectuals familiarized themselves with each other’s ideas, discussed and developed their thoughts, and produced cultural capital and ‘preknowledge’ for themselves and their readers.28 It is striking how self-referential these authors and the articles they produced and circulated were. In fact, the articles, subjects, texts, and authors read and discussed among this literate elite, Egyptian or Syrian, are surprisingly few: the same article – or responses to the same article, or variations on one article – appeared in various periodicals, while authors did not limit their contributions to one periodical. Indeed, periodicals and newspapers shamelessly took articles from one another (as well as from others), cut and pasted, translated, and plagiarized; they did not seem to be too bothered by the notion of copyright or intellectual property, which was just starting to gain grounds in the Middle East. What was being created was a common public repertoire of news and articles, one that was made not only by writers, but also by readers, who would send articles they deemed interesting to editors or owners of periodicals.29 Al-Muqtaṭaf and later al-Hilāl were at the center of this wider matrix of articles and discussions, which constituted an extensive forum that was both local and global. Intellectuals articulated, discussed, and exchanged ideas on the pages of periodicals as well as in salons.30 None of the existing reformist and radical intellectual networks was impervious to contacts and interactions with individuals who might have belonged to other networks. Shumayyil discussed his ideas with Rashīd Riḍā, the prominent Muslim reformist and owner of al-Manār, and highranking officials such as Prince Muḥammad ʽAlī Halīm and Aḥmad Zakī Pasha.31 He also managed to publish articles on socialism and other matters in a number of different periodicals, hence casting his net relatively widely.32 Another seminal intellectual who had strong sympathies for socialism, Amīn alRīḥānī, was usually moving between New York and his village of Frayke in Mount Lebanon. During his visits to Cairo, he would occasionally read his articles aloud in front of a circle of Egyptian friends that included the Egyptian poet Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm and the mufti Muḥammad ʽAbduh, who hosted the event.33 A third network, on which I have written extensively elsewhere, and which was quite openly sympathetic to socialism and engaged in radical activities such as the celebration of May 1st in Mount Lebanon and Beirut, was made out of both Syrian Christians and Muslims, and had connections to al-Muqtaṭaf, but also most likely to al-Manār, since its correspondent in Cairo was none other than Ḥusayn Waṣfī Riḍā, Rashīd Riḍā’s brother.34 Clearly, then, secular Syrian Christians and Muslim reformists, be they Egyptian or Syrian, and specifically intellectuals who contributed articles to al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl, had an intellectual authority that went beyond their own community or network, and reached quite deeply within literate Ottoman Arab communities, in the Ottoman Arab world

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and in countries of immigration. Hence, the fact that the two periodicals in question were a central node in a much larger intellectual infrastructure meant that discussions on socialism, and support for socialism on the pages of these periodicals, were not confined to lone voices with no impact on their local societies or at least their intellectual communities, but were the work of individuals, networks, and institutions that were part of an intricate and extensive web of thinkers and their public that transcended geographic, communal, and religious boundaries.

Covering the left: al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl’s articles on socialism Shumayyil’s essay of 1913 was in many ways the crystallization of ideas and debates pertaining to socialism that had begun appearing on the pages of alMuqtaṭaf as early as 1878.35 Until the early years of the twentieth century, alMuqtaṭaf had clearly disapproved of socialism. The advocate of liberalism and free enterprise since the early 1880s, the periodical promoted capitalism and took upon itself the task of initiating its readership to the basic premises of classical economic theory – although not necessarily sticking to liberal economic thought, or unconditionally embracing capitalism, as some have argued.36 It published articles on capital (raʾs al-māl) and the wages of labor, and was particularly interested in political economy (ʽilm al-iqtiṣād al-siyāsī).37 At that time, al-Muqtaṭaf forcefully argued that competition was natural, unavoidable, and necessary, and that it figured at the heart of civilization, as did capitalism, on which it was based.38 It was along these lines that the periodical attacked socialism in its 1890 article on the subject. Socialists, the article claimed, argued erroneously that ‘the current system increases the wealth of the wealthy and the poverty of the poor and . . . the wealth of the wealthy is taken from the poor’, when, in fact: the current system increases the wealth of the earth (khayrāt al-arḍ) and the wealth of both rich and poor together . . . it does not concern one group (farīq) without the other . . . The wealth of the rich is not taken from the poor, but from the wealth of the earth.39 The article praised the individual whose thrift benefited all of society (almuqtaṣid), rich and poor, since he used his savings to build factories and bridges. It also pushed for ‘laws promoting individual freedom and rewarding the hardworking (al-mujtahidīn) so that they get out of the earth’s wealth as much as they can’.40 Capitalism, it concluded, was a system set on improving people’s lives and decreasing the gap between rich and poor. By contrast, socialist principles were ‘damaging’ (muḍirra) however they were promoted.41 Al-Hilāl was rather less polemical than al-Muqtaṭaf about socialism. However, it was quite evident, in the first few years of its life, on which side of the fence its sympathies lay. While the periodical often limited itself to

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objectively reporting events in Europe or to reproducing certain anarchist texts ‘borrowed’ from European newspapers,42 until the first decade of the twentieth century, al-Hilāl had serious reservations about socialism.43 For this periodical, just as for al-Muqtaṭaf, socialism was unnatural, and hence doomed to fail – an argument it regularly repeated for years.44 It was unnatural because the equal distribution of wealth that was its main premise was unknown in the state of nature that relied on competition; since it was unnatural, it was unjust: dividing the earth among people . . . will not last, because [this distribution is] contrary to general justice. Civilization occurs with . . . competition . . . People are not equal, do not put equal effort into their work, and therefore it would not be fair that they all get equal share from the earth’s produce.45 Yet, unlike al-Muqtaṭaf in its early coverage of socialism, al-Hilāl never depicted socialism as morally wrong46 – a view it occasionally held on anarchism, describing it, in one instance, as a disease that needed to be eradicated and whose supporters were ‘evil’ (al-fawḍawiyyūn al-ashrār).47 Rather, al-Hilāl presented the struggle for a more equal distribution of wealth as a lost battle, or wasted energy.48 Instead of obsessing over wealth redistribution, it argued (just like al-Muqtaṭaf ) that socialists should focus on promoting mass education, the genuine path toward reform and the betterment of society.49 Significant changes were to appear in both al-Muqtaṭaf ’s and al-Hilāl’s writings in the quarter of a century between the articles on socialism in the 1890s and those that appeared in the last few years before the First World War. For both periodicals, socialism came to be described in a decidedly more positive light, as it became increasingly equated with reform (iṣlāḥ) and ceased to revolve around the abhorred and feared call for wealth distribution – an aspect of socialism which was ‘shed’ in later articles.50 The kind of reform socialism implied was familiar and desirable, sharing the same vision of society as the readership of al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl. Despite the occasional ‘lapse into antipathy’ in al-Muqtaṭaf ’s coverage of socialism and anarchism, various articles – or even mere sentences or adjectives – suggest that, as early as 1894, the periodical was becoming less Manichean in its worldview. Indeed, from 1894 onwards, al-Muqtaṭaf began suggesting that some aspects of socialism were actually positive. In a long article entitled ‘Socialists and Anarchists’, the author took upon himself: to write about the history of these two factions/sects (ṭāʾifa), their principles and the reasons behind their establishment, and assess . . . the strengths and weaknesses of their principles, that which can be followed from their teachings and what ought to be avoided.51 The article concluded that, while socialists had ‘gone overboard in their demands . . . they helped in some ways, and were detrimental in others’.52 This was a marked departure from the periodical’s position in 1890 that socialist principles were ‘damaging, in whatever way they were promoted’.53

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In fact, as early as 1900, al-Muqtaṭaf was publishing articles by authors who were unabashedly sympathetic to socialists. In one such article that appeared in August of that year, the author Khalīl Thābit engaged with socialist arguments and counter-arguments, emphasizing that ‘moderate socialism has brought many positive things to the world’.54 Thābit, a graduate of the Syrian Protestant College (SPC) in Beirut (class of 1892), and a regular contributor to al-Muqtaṭaf, summarized and engaged with an article that had appeared in Contemporary Review fifteen years earlier. He graphically described workers’ exploitation in terms of sweat and blood, and argued against Spencer’s popular anti-socialist argument, namely that workers only had themselves to blame for their failure to achieve wealth, concluding that ‘there are many among the rich who do no useful work, but . . . are fed by workers . . . with their labor and sweat . . . such people are more damaging to the social body (al-hayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya) than poor workers’.55 Significantly, Thābit credited the ‘revolution of minds in Europe’ (thawrat al-khawāṭir fī Urūbbā) mostly to socialists and concluded that, even if some of their demands were never to materialize: [the socialists’] public declaration/frankness (mujāhara) of their opinions has . . . awakened the minds, and this . . . has led to workers’ interests in their issues and has prompted governments to establish appropriate laws and associations in order to assist the needy among the workers.56 A similar reevaluation of socialism was also taking place on the pages of alHilāl. By 1909, the periodical was overtly displaying its sympathies toward socialism. In a long, five-page article on the Ferrer Affair,57 al-Hilāl portrayed socialism in a positive light and unambivalently expressed its support for moderate socialism, which it equated with reformism.58 It gave a synopsis on socialism in Spain, objectively summarized some of its main trends, and argued that it was crucial to the wellbeing of society by serving as a ‘warning to governments’ to ‘protect the oppressed from the oppressor’.59 Opposing in no uncertain terms Francisco Ferrer’s arrest, the article described the Spanish activist as a reformist (‘a Spanish man who was nurtured on freedom and independence of mind’60) whose goals were praiseworthy. In particular, the school system Ferrer established and which was geared toward mass education was hailed by the periodical as ‘a school on a modern pulse which spread the spirit of freedom and socialist principles’.61 Hence, by 1909, freedom, socialism, and independence of mind had become tied together into one unified worldview, to be mentioned by alHilāl in the same breath. This is not to suggest that the periodicals’ change in attitude toward socialism was linear and moving unhesitatingly toward embracing it. Generally, however, it seems that both periodicals began expressing more favorable opinions toward it in the first few years of the twentieth century, culminating, in the last few months before the irruption of the First World War, with al-Hilāl’s publication of a long article explaining and presenting Marx’s notions of plus-value and labor in a positive light, and connecting them to social democracy, reform and

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workers’ rights, and with al-Muqtaṭaf ’s publication of three articles unequivocally supportive of socialism. In 1913, Shumayyil’s article appeared, and the following year, an article by Salāma Mūsā, again clearly aligning itself with socialism. Perhaps as significantly, under the rubric of ‘Questions and Answers’ in 1914 (Bāb al-masāʾil), the periodical was unambivalent about socialism’s benefits and went as far as to assert that ‘socialism is the reaping (istithmār) of the earth’s goods in a better way than that which is occurring today, and their distribution to people with more justice than now . . . [it is] people’s sharing of goods in equal measure’.63

From reform to socialism and back: domesticating socialism, radicalizing the Nahḍa What explains this shift in al-Hilāl’s and, especially, al-Muqtaṭaf ’s perception of socialism? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the worldwide wave of attacks launched by anarchists (or simply attributed to them) in the 1890s. Indeed, socialism was to gain credit and legitimacy as representing a non-violent alternative to anarchism, one which advocated working from within the system in order to change it, and one whose aims was not the abolition of private property, but the minimization of inequality. In fact, socialism was being promoted and perceived as moderate reformism, and social democracy, in particular the Germany model, won the kudos from many a writer, on the pages of al-Muqtaṭaf.64 Another reason behind al-Muqtaṭaf ’s growing appreciation of socialism might be linked to the progressive decline of laissez-faire economic thought in Britain from the 1880s onward;65 since al-Muqtaṭaf closely followed British politics and political thought and was modeled on British journals – notably Nineteenth Century,66 it most likely became acquainted with and attracted to some of the new ideologies promoting social reform, including Fabianism and other moderate forms of socialism. More generally, though, the two periodicals’ shift reflected local as well as global trends. Indeed, throughout the world, socialism (or more precisely, various interpretations of socialism) was becoming increasingly popular in the first decade of the twentieth century, and this popularity was reflected through the urns as well as on the pages of periodicals in places as far apart as the Philippines, Brazil, and Germany. Closer to home, the first decade of the twentieth century witnessed a ‘radical moment’ that manifested itself in the establishment of free popular universities and night schools in Alexandria and in Mount Lebanon, the celebration of May 1st in the vicinity of Beirut, the performance of plays celebrating anarchist activists, and various strikes, propaganda work, and publications by socialist and anarchists in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria – most, but not all, of whom were local Italians, Greeks, or Levantines.67 In many ways, socialism was altogether an unavoidable topic for any serious periodical that claimed to be interested in social reform and in worldly (and especially European) matters – two claims stridently made on the pages of both periodicals. However, what was particularly significant, in al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl’s coverage of socialism, is the manner in which the periodicals broached the topic.

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Regardless of whether the articles they published were in favor or critical of socialism, they were articulated through familiar literary devices, tropes, and epistemological and ethical categories that were familiar to their readers and appealed to them. One such familiarizing tactic was to claim that both socialism and anarchism had existed in prior epochs, and in different geographical or civilizational spaces; in other words, to search for the ‘roots’ of the two ideologies or comparable manifestations, and especially in the Arabo-Islamic past.68 Another tactic was to use a genre familiar to readers, namely biography.69 Indeed, many of the articles on socialism and anarchism that appeared in al-Muqtaṭaf and alHilāl between 1880 and 1914 focused on the biographies of great socialist and anarchist thinkers such as Saint-Simon, Owen, Reclus, and Proudhon. The articles typically gave a brief synopsis of the doctrines’ most salient points and consistently showed respect and admiration for these great figures, but steered clear of any deep ideological analysis.70 On a few occasions, both periodicals devoted an entire issue to great European literary figures known for their radical positions – including Zola71 and Tolstoi.72 Socialism, and to a lesser extent anarchism, was brought home through formal as well as substantive devices. Although the coordinates of socialism and anarchism changed over time, al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl consistently framed them within interconnected discourses and tropes (indeed, signifiers) with which their readers were familiar or being familiarized, and in which they were interested, not to say obsessed: civilization, natural science and natural law, progress, Darwinism, and modernity. The two periodicals, which proudly held on to their pretense of objectivity, thus demystified socialism and anarchism and reworked them, making them fit comfortably in the larger Weltanschauung of the Nahḍa that they were busily creating as well as reflecting. Significantly, it was also within the framework spanned by these very same themes – state of nature, naturalness of competition and inequality, the social body’s health, civilization, and modernity – that al-Muqtaṭaf placed its (shifting) discourse on strikes in Egypt and the world, describing them as representing workers’ unnatural and illegal quest for equality; inflicting damages or bringing benefits to society; and hampering or promoting civilization.73 Al-Hilāl proceeded in a similar fashion. Thus, one article appearing in 1906 in al-Hilāl associated socialism with civilization by insinuating that the founding of a Japanese socialist newspaper was in and of itself a sign of civilization,74 while the periodical’s 1909 article on Francisco Ferrer suggested that worldwide socialist opposition to the Spanish government’s treatment of Ferrer was civilized and symbolized the struggle against tyranny.75 The article argued that socialism was the consequence of progress and ‘enlightenment’, since it ‘appeared as such when people got enlightened by knowledge and individual freedom spread in the age of reform, and the masses (al-ʽāmma) learned how to gather and how to ask’.76 The degree of civilization that allowed for socialism to emerge and was linked to the masses’ selfawareness was modern since it was connected to modern industrial inventions.77 Linked to the concept of civilization was that of the social body and its relationship to the individual. For the Nahḍa, civilization meant connecting

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individual interest to social interest; progress toward civilization was achieved when individuals had a strong and fruitful tie with the social body (al-hayʾa alijtimāʽiyya).78 If individuals failed to secure this bond between their interests and that of the social body – if they broke away from it or exposed it to disease such as sectarianism79 – society would be taken ill and civilization threatened. This discourse had been an essential part of the Nahḍa throughout the 1860s and 1870s, partly through the writings of Buṭrus al-Bustānī and Salīm alNaqqāsh, among others.80 It was adapted to socialism as early as 1894, in an article explaining that ‘the aim, in socialism, is that the interest of one be linked to the interest of al-jamāʽa, as was the case in Greece and Rome (wa qadd yurād bi-l-ishtirākiyya an takūn takūna maṣlaḥat kull aḥad mutaʽalliqa bi maṣlaḥat al-jamāʽa maʽan)’.81 Another central signifier for the readers of these periodicals was the question of the state of nature. As we have seen, both initially placed socialism in opposition to nature, emphasizing that competition and inequality were inherent in it, hence demonstrating the deep incompatibility between nature and socialism. Nonetheless, whereas socialism remained within the orbit of natural law, the state of nature, and natural science (which were all connected in the Nahḍa’s imaginaire), that relationship was not always negative: in one relatively early article which appeared in alMuqtaṭaf in 1902, the author, who was clearly in favor of socialism, emphasized that socialism was ‘the natural condition of humanity’ (al-ishtirākiyya ḥālat alinsān al-fiṭriyya) and had been found ‘when humans were nomads’.82

A specific and influential example: Shiblī Shumayyil’s writings on socialism Perhaps no article offers a better illustration of the manner in which socialism was incorporated into the Nahḍa’s matrix of natural science, civilization, Darwinism, and modernity than Shiblī Shumayyil’s essay of 1913.83 Written in a question and answer format, it summarized most of Shumayyil’s ideas regarding socialism, which it sought to explain in fairly simple terms, in line with alMuqtaṭaf ’s popularizing mission. Replying to the (hypothetical) question of ‘why most people consider[ed] socialism one of the evils oppressive to civilization (ʽumrān)’,84 Shumayyil answered that people’s fear of novelty was the main impetus behind their fear of socialism. Part of the problem, he claimed, was that people did not understand the true meaning of socialism, but believed that its aim was the division of wealth in illegal ways. Socialism was not about distributing the wealth of hard-working people to the idle ones, Shumayyil reassured them; rather, it was a way of preserving social harmony by insuring that everybody got their rightful due from their labor: social organization should be such that all people will become useful workers, each benefiting according to their merit so that society would no longer have members doing nothing and others duped (maghbūbūn), who will then be trouble-makers and corrupters (yashūhūn wa yufsidūn).85

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The author argued that it was to the advantage of all parts of society (or this organism) to rid society of all that would lead to trouble and strife and thus endanger the social body’s health. Exploitation posed one such threat, so did sectarianism. Significantly, then, in his advocacy for socialism and his efforts to convince his audience of socialism’s merits, Shumayyil did not so much invoke individual equality and other inalienable rights as much as the social body’s health, which he knew to be a familiar trope and one of prime concern to his readers – and to himself. As previously mentioned, the conception of society as an organism and the concern with its health were at the center of an Ottoman reformist discourse that was simultaneously being formulated by Ottoman reformists in Istanbul and was influential among educated Ottoman subjects throughout the empire.86 This organic articulation of society and the accompanying wish to remedy its ills had become a dominant theme throughout the world, among socialists, social reformists, and anarchists. For one, Shumayyil’s organic conception of society, as it was expressed in his 1913 article in al-Muqtaṭaf, bears striking similarity to the influential French anarchist Elisée Reclus’s comparison of the relationship between individual and society ‘to that of cell and body: each existing independently but completely dependent on the other’.87 Also, like the German scientist and philosopher Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899), whose work he carefully read and translated, Shumayyil believed that cooperation, rather than competition and exploitation, was the most advanced stage of evolution and should be society’s highest aim, and that socialism was therefore the natural and rational application of evolution theory onto human societies.88 Shumayyil emphasized the rational and scientific process through which this conclusion was reached and argued that it was sure proof of socialism’s inherent modernity.89 As a doctor and a scientist, he found the idea that natural science offered a complete epistemology that could be applied to society to be extremely attractive. Natural science, he argued, provided ‘accurate knowledge (al-ʽilm al-ṣaḥīḥ)’ and ‘render[ed] rational judgment accurate (yajʽal aḥkām al-qiyās al-ʽaqlī ṣaḥīḥa)’.90 Hence the connection between natural science and socialism: society ought to be viewed as a comprehensive unit, as a body or an organism, and if any part of this body was dysfunctional or ailing, it would ultimately affect the entire body and would lead to its death. In Shumayyil’s words: As for the relationship [between socialism and natural science], it is clear from the comparison between society and the living organism (al-jism alḥayy) . . . [that] society is formed like the rest of living organisms. . . . It needs to adhere to laws like [that of living organisms.] . . . all members work for the well being of the entire system . . . if there is an imbalance in the exchange of this service . . . and if the balance is lost, then the body will fall into illness (saqam) leading to death . . . and this is exactly the leading principle of socialism; the regulation of work and pay based on one’s work; and the lack of exploitation of the weak by the strong . . . hence socialism becomes . . . a necessary consequence of natural science.91

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Thus, throughout their coverage of socialism (and anarchism), and whether or not they were in favor of socialism, al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl framed the subject itself within discourses that were understandable to their audiences and appealed to them. This special appropriation and reinterpretation of socialism – this ‘packaging’ of socialism that tied it to themes such as reform, civilization, progress, natural science, and the social body’s health, and ultimately ‘marketed’ it as modern – was to have a repercussion on the reception of this socialism and its attractiveness to a certain audience, and shape the brand of socialism that emerged from the pages of such periodicals and, more generally, from the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. Indeed, the brand of socialism that was distilled locally in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in and between Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria was not developed theoretically on its own, but rather seems to have been perpetually linked to other ‘hot’, radical topics connected to the main theme of social health. Under this umbrella, class was one issue of concern, but it is hard to assert that it became the dominant one. While social inequality was identified as a threat to the social body’s health, so were other sources of tension and disease, such as sectarianism and extreme individualism. The fact that readers in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria were exposed to socialism mostly via influential, relatively widely read, and non-socialist periodicals meant that radical ideas were introduced to much larger audiences than those reachable by self-proclaimed radical/socialist and specialized periodicals.

The role of diaspora readership in the coverage of socialism and anarchism Furthermore, the manner in which socialism and anarchism were introduced and developed through these two periodicals offers important insight into intellectual production during the Nahḍa and helps us move beyond binaries and epistemological categories separating writers from readers, intellectuals from audiences, and local from global intellectual production. For while al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl piqued their readers’ curiosity about socialism and anarchism, and also shaped their conception of these ideologies, the two periodicals also reflected and catered to their audiences’ interests in these topics – if not always their perspective. Indeed, many of al-Hilāl and al-Muqtaṭaf ’s articles on socialism and anarchism were written in response to readers’ questions: ‘What are the socialist and nihilist associations which are constantly mentioned in newspapers, and what are their origins?’, asked two readers in 1897,92 while a few readers specifically asked for al-Hilāl’s opinion on various radical ideologies, indicating just how authoritative the periodical had become, a mere couple of years after it had been founded: ‘Do you consider the demands of socialists just, and is socialism beneficial to civilization? What is your opinion on this matter?’93 Or ‘what is your opinion about the future of anarchists? Will states continue to let them be or annihilate them?’94 The two periodicals obliged with articles (or short answers) responding to the readers’ queries. Similarly, an article on Tolstoi had been ‘commissioned’ by a group of readers keen to know al-Hilāl’s opinion of the

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Russian philosopher,95 while the debate on communism and socialism (alijtimāʽiyya wa-l-ishtirākiyya) that had taken place on the pages of another periodical, pitting Shiblī Shumayyil and Sāmī Juraydīnī against an unknown ‘other’, was recapitulated and commented on (at great length) by al-Hilāl (most likely by Jirjī Zaydān himself ), upon readers’ request.96 Significantly, many of the questions addressed to al-Hilāl and al-Muqtaṭaf concerning socialism and anarchism came from Syrian readers in the Americas, and in particular Brazil.97 The Syrians in Brazil had on many occasions expressed interest in and exposure to radical and socialist ideas; one of the earliest (if not the earliest) translations of Tolstoi into Arabic was published in Sao Paulo.98 Syrians in Brazil had also occasionally written articles on radical topics for alMuqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl.99 The desire to know more about these topics is not surprising, given Brazil’s very active anarcho-syndicalist movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.100 One conclusion, hence, is that the interest in socialism and anarchism in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria seems to have been triggered by contact with South America at least as much as with Europe. Specifically, the Brazilian connection seems to have spanned a particularly active and virulent anti-clerical movement among Syrian intellectuals in Brazil, especially through the Sao Paulo-based periodical al-Munāẓir and its owner, Naʽūm Labakī.101 What al-Muqtaṭaf, al-Hilāl, and other periodicals were providing, then, was something of an international public forum connecting Arabic speakers and readers in various continents, in which readers had access to information and ideas from all four continents and could engage with and debate their various merits and interpretations. In such a forum, radical ideas, and socialism specifically, seem to have attracted significant attention and interest.

Contestation and diasporas This should come as no surprise, given how often socialist and anarchist ideas were discussed and how popular they were in the cities of immigration’s various venues, spheres, and institutions. More so, the theme of reform, and even the need to engage in radical activism – even by promoting a revolution, if need be102 – was particularly appealing for a number of Syrian periodical writers and readers throughout the Diaspora. In fact, one of the earlier instances of public proclamations of admiration for socialist ideas came from a Syrian in the Mahjar, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, who, in a lecture delivered in 1900 at the Jamʽiyyat alShubbān al-Mārūniyyīn in New York, qualified the nineteenth century as ‘the century of civilization (tamaddun), light, democratic and socialist principles, and Christian mercy’, and bemoaned the fact that Hamidian tyranny had prevented the Ottomans from truly joining the nineteenth century.103 Before 1908 and the Young Turk Revolution, many of these intellectuals in the Mahjar tirelessly argued for the necessity of reforming the Ottoman Empire and putting an end to ʽAbdülhamid autocratic rule, censorship, and corruption. Of course, such discussions were not confined to Syrians, but were to be found among a number of

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Ottoman and non-Ottoman communities, in parts of the empire itself, in the Americas, and especially in Egypt. The two main Egyptian cities harbored networks of exiled revolutionaries and political theorists from all over the Ottoman empire and even beyond, from the shores of the Mediterranean – including an extensive and active web of Italian anarchists – who plotted various ‘regime changes’, articulated reform programs, formulated new ideologies of contestation, and published pamphlets and periodicals which were distributed throughout the world.104 There were many Syrian political networks among these exiled reformists networks, and they were extremely active in Egypt.105 Among them figured Islamic reformist networks and secular ones (mostly but never exclusively Syrian or Christian). I have elsewhere underlined the existence of a ‘geography of contestation’, as I have labeled it, linking Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria and connecting them to various other parts of the world, especially Italy and North and South America.106 Suffice it to say, here, that a number of institutions and intellectual networks were crucial to the establishment and maintenance of this geography of contestation between the three cities. If the themes of reform and contestation were generally on many people’s lips and minds among the intellectual networks of Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, alMuqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl could boast their own privileged role and position within this geography of contestation. Indeed, al-Muqtaṭaf had been at the center of controversy and contestation with its pioneering place in disseminating evolutionary theory throughout the Arab world, first through ‘objective’ and extensive reports, and then through the passionate and partisan writings of Shiblī Shumayyil.107 Darwinism and specifically the theory of evolution, in the 1880s and until 1914, constituted a main tenet of radical thought in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria and throughout the world. Furthermore, the founders of al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl had all been directly affected by the notorious Lewis affair, which had in fact served as a catalyst for their presence in Egypt. In July 1882, during his graduation speech entitled ‘Knowledge, Science and Wisdom’, Edwin Lewis, a professor of Chemistry and Geology at Beirut’s Syrian Protestant College (SPC), acknowledged the scientific contribution of Darwin’s work. This ignited the fury of the SPC’s ‘old-guard’ missionaries, who forced Lewis to resign. Lewis’ resignation was followed by a faculty and student strike in solidarity with their colleague and professor. Among the supporters of Lewis figured Nimr, Sarrūf and Zaydān. All three left SPC and Beirut for Cairo, as a consequence of this affair.108 In the eyes of many Nahḍa intellectuals and specifically the ones of particular interest to us, the battle over Darwinism as it was manifested through the Lewis affair epitomized many crucial struggles: the battle for freedom of speech, the curbing of clerical and missionary authority in the realm of knowledge, and the supremacy of science. Reform and contestation hence came in a complex package, one that weaved together a number of radical themes or causes (including Darwinism) and one into which socialism could be made to fit. Thus, by the beginning of the First World War, some form of socialism, or at least a number of socialist ideas, had been discussed for a while and had become commonly accepted as part of this reformist worldview that the Nahḍa, by then, had come to represent.

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Conclusion It is not difficult to see how the Nahḍa and socialism, as the latter was being explained and promoted in the Arab world, could be made to intersect: both were total projects of social reform, both emphasized the supremacy of science and rational thought, and both promoted various degrees of secularism, if not blatant anti-clericalism. This, however, is not to say that socialism was an inherent part of the Nahḍa – something that a number of Arab socialist intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s argued, in their efforts to build a genealogy of Arab socialism that connected their own socialism to the intellectual landmark that was the Nahḍa109 – or that it was inherently compatible with it; and yet, the fact that the two of them revolved around similar fundamental points of contention and contestation made it possible to inscribe socialism within the Nahḍa’s discursive realm; or, to be more exact, to inscribe one of the various interpretations and currents within socialism into one of the main formulations of the Nahḍa that was taking shape. At the same time, the kind of socialism as it was formulated and embraced in fin-de-siècle Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria was not a mere European import or a pale imitation of European socialism, but it was adapted to very local needs and discourses, while at the same time being in line with global trends. While I do not here elaborate on this aspect of the Nahḍa, namely its global dimension, as much as I do elsewhere,110 the findings pertaining to socialism in pre-First World War Ottoman Arab lands suggest that we perhaps need to reinterpret this entire period from a different perspective than that which has dominated Middle Eastern historiography so far. Namely, rather than reading the Nahḍa, this period of great intellectual and cultural effervescence in the Arab world, as a chapter within the larger text of Arab or Syrian nationalism, we could place it within a global perspective and view it as an experimentation in the production of global radical culture, with socialism and interest in socialism being one of its most strident features. This is not to suggest that the emergence of nationalism – and specifically Syrian nationalism – was not in and of itself a global radical production; in many ways, it was precisely that. However, nationalism could be seen as one possible historical interpretation, turn, or outcome, one that ought to be contextualized within a larger picture of contention shaped by local as well as global movements.

Appendix al-Muqtaṭaf On socialism and anarchism ‘Taʽlīm al-nihilist’, al-Muqtaṭaf, 1879, vol. 4, pp. 289–92. ‘Fasād madhhab al-ishtirākiyyīn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, March 1890, vol. 14, pp. 361–4. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn wa-l-fawḍawiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, 1 August 1894, vol. 18, pp. 721–9, and pp. 801–7. ‘Ārāʾ al-ʽulamāʾ: ishtirākiyyū Almānyā’, al-Muqtaṭaf, April 1895, vol. 19, 313–14.

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‘Ḍarar al-ishtirākiyya’, al-Muqtaṭaf, June 1895, vol. 19, p. 478. Khalīl Thābit, ‘al-Ishtirākiyyūn al-dīmuqrāṭiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1900, vol. 25, pp. 146–51. ‘Elisée Reclus’, al-Muqtaṭaf, December 1905, vol. 30, p. 960. ‘Numuww al-ishtirākiyya’, al-Muqtaṭaf, June 1906, vol. 31, p. 530. ‘Bāb al-masāʾil: Francisco Ferrer’, al-Muqtaṭaf, March 1910, vol. 36, p. 297. ‘Francisco Ferrer’, al-Muqtaṭaf, April 1910, vol. 36, pp. 344–6. ‘ʽAdad al-ishtirākiyyīn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, February 1911, vol. 38, p. 203. Shiblī Shumayyil, ‘al-Ishtirākiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1913, vol. 42, pp. 9–16. ‘August Babel’, al-Muqtaṭaf, October 1913, vol. 43, pp. 362–6. ‘Bāb al-masāʾil’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1914, vol. 44, pp. 93–4. Salāma Mūsā, ‘al-Fawḍawiyya ʽan zuʽamāʾiha’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1914, vol. 44, pp. 25–8.

On strikes and labor conflicts ‘Mashākil dhawīʾl-aʽmāl: taʽaṣṣub aṣḥāb al-maʽāmil wa-l-ʽummāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, May 1887, vol. 11, pp. 454–60. ‘Ḥall mashākil al-ʽummāl wa aṣḥāb al-aʽmāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, June 1887, vol. 11, pp. 517–20. ‘Ḍiyāʽ al-amwāl bi-iʽtiṣāb al-ʽummāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, October 1889, vol. 14, pp. 27–9. ‘Iʽtiṣāb al-ʽummāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1902, vol. 27, pp. 64–6. Asʽad Dāghir, ‘Istidrāk’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1902, vol. 27, p. 95. ‘Iʽtiṣāb al-ṣunnāʽ’, al-Muqtaṭaf, February 1902, vol. 27, p. 95. Najīb Shāhīn, ‘al-Iʽtiṣāb wa ḥayawiyyat al-umma’, al-Muqtaṭaf, February 1902, vol. 27, pp. 160–1.

On workers ‘Ujūr al-ʽummāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, July 1893, vol. 17, pp. 708–9. ‘Sharikat al-ʽummāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1903, vol. 28, pp. 61–3. ‘Al-Kutub wa-l-ʽummāl’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1906, vol. 31, pp. 649–53. Shiblī Shumayyil, ‘al-ʽUmmāl fī-l-qadīm’, al-Muqtaṭaf, November 1913, vol. 42, pp. 487–9.

al-Hilāl On socialists and anarchists ‘Al-Fawḍa fī faransā’, al-Hilāl, 15 January 1894, p. 317. ‘Al-Fawḍawiyyūn fī īṭālyā’, al-Hilāl, 1 February 1894, p. 348. ‘Al-Fawḍa fī faransā’, al-Hilāl, 1 March 1894, pp. 412–14. ‘Manshūr fawḍawī ʽaqīm’, al-Hilāl, 1 April 1894, p. 475. ‘Al-Fawḍawiyya’, al-Hilāl, 15 September 1897, p. 71. Salīm Yūsuf, ‘al-Ishtirākiyya wa-l-nīhiliyya’, al-Hilāl, 15 December 1897, pp. 290–4. ‘Muʾtamar al-fawḍawiyyīn’, al-Hilāl, 1 January 1899, p. 219. Amīn Qaṭṭīt, ‘al-Ishtirākiyyūn’, al-Hilāl, 1 October 1900, pp. 20–1.

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‘Al-Fawḍawiyya fī-l-islām’, al-Hilāl, 1 October 1901, pp. 7–8. Saʽīd Abū Jamra, ‘al-Fawḍawiyyūn fī-l-islām: tāʾifat al-ḥashshāshīn’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1901, pp. 83–6. ‘Mustaqbal al-anarshiyya’, al-Hilāl, 1 February 1902, p. 285. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyya wa numuwwuha’, al-Hilāl, 1 June 1906, p. 563. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyya: madhhab shāʾiʽ fī ūrūbā’ al-Hilāl, 1 January 1908, p. 252. ‘Al-Ijtimāʽiyya wa-l-ishtirākiyya’, al-Hilāl, 1 February 1908, pp. 265–82. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn fī-l-ʽālam’, al-Hilāl, February 1908, p. 315. ‘Francisco Ferrer wa-l-ishtirākiyya fī isbānyā’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1909, pp. 114–8. Salāma Mūsā, ‘Tārīkh al-ishtirākiyya fī inglitirrā: wa ḥāl al-ʽummāl fīhā wa-l-iʽtibār bi masāʾilihim’, al-Hilāl, 1 March 1910, pp. 335–8. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn fī-l-ʽālam’, al-Hilāl, February 1911, p. 315. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn fī-l-ʽālam’, al-Hilāl, April 1912, p. 442.

Labor issues ‘Al-Jamʽiyya al-iqtiṣādiyya al-sharqiyya li-ʽummāl al-lafāʾif bi-miṣr’, al-Hilāl, 1 July 1896, p. 877. ‘Iʽtiṣāb al-ʽummāl fī faransā’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1892, pp. 100–1. ‘ʽAmālat al-sajāʾir fī miṣr’, al-Hilāl, 15 July 1894, p. 698. ‘Al-ʽUmmāl wa aṣḥāb al-aʽmāl: tārikh al-ʽilāqa baynahum’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1912, pp. 466–75.

The literary canon ‘Zola’, al-Hilāl, 15 February 1897, p. 441. ‘Zola’, al-Hilāl, 15 February 1898, p. 469. Esther Lazari Moyal, ‘Zola’, al-Hilāl, 15 October 1903, p. 63. ‘Riwāyat Maxim Gorki’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1907, p. 504.

Notes 1 This is a modified version from Ch. 2 in Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. My deepest gratitude to Keith Watenpaugh and especially Dyala Hamzah for their close reading of this text and their sharp, thought-provoking, and incisive comments, as well as translation and bibliographical suggestions. I would also like to thank Ussama Makdisi and Terry Burke for their insightful, detailed, and useful comments on my dissertation chapter, on which this book chapter is based. 2 Shiblī Shumayyil, ‘al-Ishtirākiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1913, vol. 42, pp. 9–16, reproduced in Asʽad Razzūq (ed.), Ḥawādith wa khawāṭir: Mudhakkirāt al-duktūr Shiblī Shumayyil, Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrāʾ, 1991, p. 106. On al-Muqtaṭaf ’s central role in the constitution of public opinion, see Dagmar Glaß, Al-Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit: Aufklärung, Räsonnement und Meinungsstreit in der frühen arabischen Zeitschriftenkommunikation, Würzburg: Ergon, 2004, and especially Dyala Hamzah’s incisive review of it in Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée (REMMM) [En ligne], April 2008, no. 121–2 (Yémen Territoires et Identités), pp. 296–301. 3 One of the most remarkable figures of the Nahḍa, Shiblī Shumayyil has yet to fully

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receive the scholarly attention he deserves – Georges Haroun’s superb study on him notwithstanding. A native of Kfar Shīma in Mount Lebanon, Shumayyil first attended the Patriarchal school in Beirut before studying medicine at the Syrian Protestant College (SPC) and graduating from its first medical class (SPC, M.D. 1871). He then pursued his studies in Paris and eventually ended up in Egypt, initially settling in Tanta where he practiced medicine for ten years, before moving permanently to Cairo and issuing the medical periodical al-Shifāʾ, published by al-Muqtaṭaf ’s printing press. Shumayyil’s claim to fame rests on his efforts to popularize Darwinism and especially evolutionary theory in the Arab world starting in the 1880s. For more information on Shumayyil, see relevant sections in Donald Reid, ‘The Syrian Christians and Early Socialism in the Arab World’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 1974, vol. 5, pp. 177–93; Marwa S. Elshakry, ‘Darwin’s Legacy in the Arab East: Science, Religion and Politics, 1870–1914’, Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2003; Georges Haroun, Shiblī Shumayyil: une pensée évolutionniste arabe à l’époque d’an-Nahḍa, Beirut: Université Libanaise, 1985; Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 245–59; Rifʽat al-Saʽīd, Thalāth lubnaniyyīn fī-l-Qāhira: Shiblī Shumayyil, Faraḥ Antūn, Rafīq Jabbūr, Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʽa li-l-Ṭibāʽa wa-lNashr, 1973. Shumayyil had been the second greatest contributor to al-Muqtaṭaf in its early Egyptian phase (1885–1889), regularly submitting articles on Darwinism, socialism, and social and political reform until his death in 1917. He also contributed articles that appeared in a number of other periodicals, including some that were owned by members of his family. Nadia Farag, al-Muqtaṭaf 1876–1900: A Study of the Influence of Victorian Thought on Modern Arabic Thought, D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1969, p. 93. The first contributor was Asʽad Dāghir, whose articles we shall discuss below. On the pages of al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl, I have counted over fifty articles that cover socialism and/or anarchism (thirty-four), or workers and workers’ strikes (fifteen), not to mention articles on Tolstoi, Zola, and Gorki – authors who were considered part of the leftist canon in the fin de siècle and connected to socialism and anarchism throughout the world. See Appendix. While anarchism and socialism certainly differed, they were often covered in the same article and the boundaries between them were not always clear – in the Middle East or elsewhere. I am here treating the two of them under a larger rubric of the Left. See section below entitled ‘Covering the left: al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl’s articles on socialism’. Reid, for one, wrote that: ‘We should underline the fact that the writers examined here did not at first win significant backing even in the Syrian Christian communities and that their ideas on socialism had made little progress by 1920.’ Reid, ‘Syrian Christians’, p. 193. I think Reid’s assessment is based on a ‘purer’, perhaps more ideological and institutional interpretation of what socialism was, one that measures the success of the ‘implantation’ of socialist ideas by looking for the establishment of political parties and perhaps self-proclaimed socialist organs. See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. Al-Muqtaṭaf, a monthly journal initially printed in Beirut in 1876 and issued after 1885 in Cairo. Initially defined by its founders Yaʽqūb Sarrūf and Fāris Nimr as a journal ‘of science, industry, and agriculture’ and modeled on Anglo-Saxon popularizers of science, al-Muqtaṭaf claimed as its mission the objective and rational reporting on scientific and social issues, and prided itself on addressing a wide array of topics, from home economics to the latest scientific discoveries in Europe. alMuqtaṭaf ’s place in the intellectual life of the Arab world has been the subject of a number of studies. See Elshakry, ‘Darwin’s Legacy in the Arab East’, especially

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I. Khuri-Makdisi pages 19–129; Farag, al-Muqtaṭaf 1876–1900; Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Olivier Meier, al-Muqtaṭaf et le débat sur le Darwinisme. Beyrouth, 1876–1885, Cairo: CEDEJ, 1996; and Glaß, al-Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit. Founded by Jirjī Zaydān. See Thomas Philipp, Gurgī Zaidān: His Life and Thought, Beirut: Orient Institut, 1979; as well as relevant sections in his The Syrians in Egypt 1725–1975, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1985, and in Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. See also Anne-Laure Dupont, Gurgī Zaydān, 1861–1914: Ecrivain réformiste et témoin de la renaissance arabe, Damas: Institut français du ProcheOrient, 2006. I have unfortunately not been able to get hold of a copy of this book yet. My thanks to Keith Watenpaugh for suggesting this term. According to Thomas Philipp, the term al-Nahḍa first appeared in al-Muqtaṭaf in 1888 in an article about the development of Arab medicine, but was most likely already familiar to the periodical’s readership. Thomas Philipp, Gurgī Zaidān: His Life and Thought, p. 6. There is a very extensive bibliography on the Nahḍa. For the classic Arab nationalist narrative on the Nahḍa and the period under study, see George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab Nationalist Movement, London: H. Hamilton, 1938. For general discussions, see Marwan Buheiry (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890–1919, Beirut: AUB Press, 1981; Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, and ‘The Arab Awakening Forty Years After’, in Hourani (ed.), The Emergence of the Modern Middle East, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981, pp. 193–215; Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West: the Formative Years 1875–1914, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970; and Raʾīf Khūrī, Modern Arab Thought: Channels of the French Revolution to the Arab East, translated by Ihsān ʽAbbās, revised and edited by Charles Issawi, Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1983. For more recent writings seeking to frame the Nahḍa in discussions on modernity and problematize it, see ʽAzīz al-ʽAẓm, Sharbil Dāghir, Nadīm Nuʽayma, and Mūsā Wahba, ʽAṣr al-Nahḍa: Muqaddimāt lībrāliyya li-l-ḥadātha, Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʽArabī, 2000. For works making use of recent discussions within the field of cultural studies and literary theory, see Stephan Guth, ‘Wa hākadhā kāna ka-iblīs: Satan and social reform in a novel by Salim alBustani (Bint al-ʽasr, 1875)’, in Angelika Neuwirth et al. (eds), Myths, Historical Archetypes and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature: Towards a New Hermeneutic Approach, Beirut: Orient Institut, 1999, pp. 301–7. Reformists throughout the Ottoman Empire argued that reform had become urgent, due to the unequal and exploitative relationship between East and West. In Roussillon’s words, ‘la nécessité et l’urgence de la réforme [en Egypte] s’y sont d’emblée formulées et y ont été vécues dans le cadre d’une relation inégale avec l’Autre’. Roussillon, ‘Introduction’, in Alain Roussillon (ed.), Entre réforme sociale et mouvement national: Identité et modernisation en Egypte (1882–1962), Cairo: CEDEJ, 1995, p. 13. This is a point I develop extensively in The Eastern Mediterranean. Roussillon, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. The conflict between secular and religious institutions is vividly illustrated in the clashes between recently established Majālis milla (communal councils) and local clergies. See Carol Hakim-Dowek, ‘The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea, 1840–1914’, D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1997; Carla Eddé, ‘Démographie des Maronites à Beyrouth au XIXème siècle’, Mémoire de Maitrise, Université Saint-Joseph Beyrouth, 1995, especially pages 19–20; May Davie, ‘La Millat grecque-orthodoxe de Beyrouth 1800–1940: structuration interne et rapport à la cité’, Ph.D. thesis, Université de Paris-IV (Sorbonne), 1993, pp. 164–5, among others. For some of the Nahḍa’s main ideas on education, see the selection of lectures and articles on the subject by key Nahḍa figures such as Buṭrus al Bustāni, Shāhīn

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Makāriyos, Shiblī Shumayyil, Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī, and Labība Hāshim. Yūsuf Quzmā Khūrī (ed.), Maqālāt wa khuṭab fī-l-tarbiya: ʽasr al-Nahḍa al-ḥadītha, Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrāʾ, 1990. Alain Accardo and Philippe Corcuff, La Sociologie de Bourdieu: textes choisis et commentés, Bordeaux: Le Mascaret, 1986, p. 42. On universal values, see Bourdieu, ‘l’exercice du pouvoir symbolique par un groupe, une classe, une nation, a pour objectif d’imposer comme une vérité universelle et allant de soi un arbitraire culturel’, ibid., p. 42. Hisham Sharabi has coined the term ‘vocational intellectuals’ to describe members of this class. He defines vocational intellectuals as ‘those whose roles as intellectuals were lifelong careers’. Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, p. 4. To use Durkheim’s concept. On the concept of collective consciousness, see James Curtis and John Petras (eds), The Sociology of Knowledge: A Reader, New York: Praeger publishers, 1970. For more information on these features, see The Eastern Mediterranean. In fact, the overlap between the professional and the personal – and especially the familial – is a strong recurrent feature among Nahḍa intellectual networks; perhaps no institution embodies this better than al-Muqtaṭaf, many of whose contributors were related, either through blood or through marriage alliances. For instance, Shāhīn Makāriyus, the printer of al-Muqtaṭaf and one of the periodical’s directors, was married to Nimr’s sister. He was also the father-in-law of Khalīl Thābit, who contributed articles sympathetic to socialism in 1902. Sarrūf ’s wife, Yāqūt Barakāt, had a sister who had married Asʽad Dāghir, at one point al-Muqtaṭaf ’s correspondent in Damascus and a contributor of anti-socialist articles to the periodical (see his 1902 articles, discussed in the following pages). Another sister of theirs had married Rizqallāh al-Barbārī, the author of the first article on evolution in al-Muqtaṭaf and a regular contributor to the periodical. Farag, al-Muqtaṭaf 1876–1900, pp. 92–5 and pp. 110–17, and Glaß, al-Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit. See Yves Gonzales-Quijano’s very perceptive article on the emergence, in the Arab world in the late nineteenth century, of a new and modern kind of author. Yves Gonzales-Quijano, ‘Littérature arabe et société’, Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, July/October 1999, vol. 46, nos. 3–4, p. 448. If one is to accept Christopher Lasch’s theory on American radicalism as it developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the emergence of ‘intellectuals’ as a class in a given time and place seems to have gone hand in hand with radicalism. Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type, New York: Norton, 1965. Christophe Charle makes a similar argument about the rise of the intellectual in France by tying it to the Dreyfus affair, and hence radical politics. Christophe Charle, Naissance des intellectuels 1880–1900, Paris: Fayard, 1990, p. 7. For biographies of owners and founders of Arabic periodicals in Egypt and the Americas, see Fīlīb dī Ṭarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa, vols 1 and 2, Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d., 1913–1933. For the press in Egypt specifically, see also Ilyās Zakhūra, al-Sūriyyūn fī Miṣr, Cairo: The Arabic Press, 1927, and relevant sections in Thomas Philipp’s The Syrians in Egypt 1725–1975. Al-Ahrām provided an extreme example of this trend. Fīlīb dī Ṭarrāzī, Dhikra qudamāʾ ṭalabat al-madrasa al-batrakiyya bi Bayrūt 1865–1938, Ṣaydā: al-Maṭbaʽa al-Mukhalliṣiyya, 1938, pp. 11–15. In the words of cultural historian Roger Chartier, the press, as the printed word consumed by many, devised and promoted ‘the explicit indicators by which texts are designated and classified’, which: create expectations of the reading and anticipations of understanding. That is the case as well for the indication of the genre, which links the text to be read to other

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29 Syrian and Egyptian periodicals did not exclusively get their material from one another, but very often translated articles that the owner, editor, a friend, or a reader had read in the British, French, or American press and had deemed of interest. On the process of the selection, translation, and circulation of articles, see KhuriMakdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean, Ch. 2. 30 According to Jirjī Zaydān’s letters to his son, between 1908 and 1912, the Zaydāns would hold a salon once a week, which was ‘attended by people from the cultural elite of Cairene society: journalists, writers, historians and sometimes even a teacher from al Azhar. European orientalists visiting Cairo would join.’ Philipp, Gurgī Zaidān, p. 29. On the role of Arab salons in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Antje Ziegler, ‘Arab Literary Salons at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, in Verena Klemm and Beatrice Gruendler (eds), Understanding Near Eastern Literatures: A Spectrum of Interdisciplinary Approaches, Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2000, pp. 241–53. 31 Shumayyil, in Razzūq (ed.), Ḥawādith wa khawāṭir, p. 255. On Riḍā and al-Manār, see Dyala Hamzah’s chapter in this volume (Ch. 5). 32 Shumayyil published his articles on socialism in a number of periodicals, including family-owned ones. The best-known among Shiblī’s relatives was his nephew, Rashīd Khalīl Shumayyil (1855–1928), founder of al-Baṣīr (Alexandria, 1897). Other close relatives included his brother, Amīn (1828–97), founder of al-Ḥuqūq, one of the first law journals in Egypt, Qaysar, founder of Majallat al-Samīr, and Sabʽ, founder of Majallat al-Tasliya. See Ṭarrāzī, Dhikra qudamāʾ ṭalabat almadrasa al-batrakiyya, pp. 13–15. We also know that Shumayyil had published in 1908 an article on socialism in the Beiruti al-Akhbār, for which he was criticized. Saʽīd, Thalāth lubnaniyyīn fī-l-Qāhira, pp. 61–3. 33 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, ‘Letter to Jamīl Maʽlūf, Cairo May 15 1905’, in Rasāʾil 1896–1940, Beirut: Dār al-Rīḥānī li-l-Ṭibāʽa wa-l-Nashr, 1959, p. 57. 34 My deep gratitude to Dyala Hamzah for having traced down this crucial fraternal connection. For information on this network, see Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, ‘The Nahḍa Revisited: Socialism and Radicalism in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, 1900–1914’, in Christoph Schumann (ed.), Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: late 19th Century until the 1960s, Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 147–74. 35 Other non-socialist, reformist periodicals, such as al-Hilāl, but also al-Akhbār, alMuʾayyad, and al-Liwāʾ, started covering socialism in the 1890s. 36 Various historians, including Farag and Reid, have seen al-Muqtaṭaf and specifically Nimr and Sarrūf as fully embracing liberal economic thought and being unmitigatedly pro-capitalists. I would argue that in fact the two authors’ views on the subject were more nuanced than that and that specifically their promotion of Samuel Smiles’ selfhelp philosophy has been misread. See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. 37 On al-Muqtaṭaf ’s economic thought, at least until 1900, see Farag, al-Muqtaṭaf 1876–1900, pp. 329–52; and Glaß, Al-Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit, vol. 2, pp. 577–90. 38 ‘Fasād madhhab al-ishtirākiyyīn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, March 1890, vol. 14, pp. 361–4. 39 Ibid., p. 363. 40 Ibid., p. 364. 41 Ibid. 42 Such as the letters written by the French anarchist Auguste Valliant, condemned to death for throwing a bomb at the French parliament. Reproduced in al-Hilāl, 1 March 1894, pp. 412–14.

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43 Reid makes the same point and dates al-Hilāl’s ‘conversion’ to around 1908. Reid, ‘Syrian Christians’, p. 180. 44 ‘Socialism as a whole is not compatible with natural occurrences (min al-umūr almutābiqa li-majāriyyāt al-ṭabīʽa), and for that, it will not be able to establish a basis in society (lan taqūma lahu qāʾima).’ ‘Socialism and Nihilism’, al-Hilāl, 15 December 1897, pp. 290–4. Al-Hilāl repeated the same argument in ‘Socialists’, al-Hilāl, 1 October 1900, pp. 20–1 and in ‘Count Tolstoi’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1901, pp. 425–9. 45 ‘Count Tolstoi’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1901, pp. 425–9. 46 We shall recall that al-Muqtaṭaf, in its 1890 article, used terms such as fasād (corrupt) and mufsid (corrupting) time and again to describe socialism. On the other hand, al-Hilāl suggested at most that socialists, by turning toward anarchy, had been ‘corrupted and misled’ (ufsidū wa uḍlilū) by it. ‘Socialism and Nihilism’, al-Hilāl, 15 December 1897, pp. 290–4. 47 ‘Al–Fawḍawiyya’, al-Hilāl, 15 September 1897, p. 71. However, the periodical’s opinion on anarchism would also change and become more nuanced with time. See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. 48 For al-Hilāl, the struggle for a more equal distribution of wealth was a wasted battle because natural differences between people’s abilities meant that, even if wealth inequalities were to be reversed and wealth redistributed equally, the situation would soon revert back to inequality. ‘Count Tolstoi’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1901, pp. 425–9. 49 Ibid. Similarly, al-Muqtaṭaf argued that the main path to reforming society and decreasing its inequalities was through widespread education, which ‘[decreases] the differences between classes of people (ṭabaqāt al-nās)’. ‘Fasād madhhab alishtirākiyyīn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, March 1890, vol. 14, pp. 261–4. 50 While reiterating the futility of wealth distribution, al-Muqtaṭaf sought to explore other aspects of socialism and eventually linked socialism primarily with reform: ‘Socialism is an ancient principle, for all the reformists in the past until now have aimed to reform government . . . so that everybody would become comfortable (rāḥa) and live in ease.’ ‘Al Ishtirākiyyūn wa-l-fawḍawiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1894, vol. 18, pp. 721–9. Ironically, even Shiblī Shumayyil, who considered himself and was considered a socialist, reassured his readership that socialism was not about wealth distribution. See Shumayyil, ‘al-Ishtirākiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1913, vol. 42, pp. 9–16. 51 ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn wa-l-fawḍawiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1894, vol. 18, p. 721; my emphasis. 52 Ibid. Al-Muqtaṭaf attributed the weakness of socialism to the inability of its proponents to: limit themselves to curing the weaknesses/defects of the social body (ʽilal alhayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya) in matters that concern everybody and harm nobody . . . they went overboard in their demands and have turned away from some natural rights . . . they helped in some ways, and were detrimental in others. (ibid., p. 722) 53 ‘Fasād madhhab al-ishtirākiyyīn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, March 1890, vol. 14, p. 364. 54 Khalīl Thābit, ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn al-dīmuqrātiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1900, vol. 25, p. 151. 55 Ibid., p. 149. 56 Ibid., p. 151. 57 Francisco Ferrer y Gardia (1859–1909) was a Spanish anarchist and free-thinker who came under attack from the Spanish government and church and was condemned to death in 1909. On Ferrer and the reception of his ideas and news of his death in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, see Khuri-Makdisi, ‘The Nahḍa Revisited’, pp. 147–9.

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58 At the same time, the article criticized more anarchist-leaning socialists. ‘Francisco Ferrer wa-l-ishtirākiyya fī Isbānya’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1909, pp. 114–18. 59 Ibid., pp. 115–18. The article argued that the wave of protests in Spain served as a warning to the government that it should not neglect its duties toward the people: [the Spanish government] learned that the people are alive, and will not . . . be patient with oppression for long; perhaps it will launch reforms in such a way that it addresses the socialists’ demands and decreases the ambitions of politicians and religious figures. (ibid., p. 118) 60 Ibid., p. 116. 61 Ibid. 62 ‘Al-ʽUmmāl wa aṣḥāb al-aʽmāl: tārīkh al ʽilāqa baynahum’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1912, pp. 466–75. 63 ‘Bāb al-masāʾil’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1914, vol. 44, pp. 93–4. 64 Again, the more ‘moderate’ socialism became and the more it gave up on the elimination of private property and focused on minimizing inequalities, the more it became popular in the eyes of Nahḍa authors, for whom anarchism, with its central tenet of abolition of private property and the state, became more and more problematic. See Salāma Mūsā, ‘al-Fawḍawiyya ʽan zuʽamāʾiha’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1914, vol. 44, pp. 25–8, which illustrates this trend very well. 65 On the decline of laissez-faire in Britain, see Walter L. Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present, sixth edition, Lexington, MA, Toronto: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992, pp. 189–95. 66 For a list of British periodicals that inspired the authors of al-Muqtaṭaf, see Farag, al-Muqtaṭaf 1876–1900 and Glaß, Al-Muqtaṭaf und seine Öffentlichkeit. 67 See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. 68 See the article ‘Socialism and Nihilism’, al-Hilāl, 15 December 1897, pp. 290–4, in which the author claimed that socialism ‘accompanied humanity from its first civilization . . . from Elias of Chalcedonia . . . to Plato’s Republic . . . and the Asyneans, in pre-Christian Syria’. As for anarchism, see ‘al-Fawḍawiyya fī-l-islām’, al-Hilāl, 1 October 1901, pp. 7–8, where the author argued that ‘anarchism did not appear in Islam under the same manifestation as in Europe, but it appeared, in a similar way to today’s anarchism, under different manifestations’. 69 The relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of biography deserves a study of its own. Noteworthy contributions to this topic include Mary Ann Fay (ed.), Auto/Biography and the Construction of Identity and Community in the Middle East, New York: Palgrave, 2001. The obsession with biographies had been a constant feature of al-Muqtaṭaf, as it reflected its deep belief in individual accomplishment and the contribution of great figures to civilization. For a more comprehensive discussion of biographies and their role in al-Muqtaṭaf, see Farag, al-Muqtaṭaf 1876–1900, pp. 167–8. 70 For a detailed ‘who’s who’ in socialism and anarchism, see ‘al-Ishtirākiyyūn wa-lfawḍawiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1894, vol. 18, pp. 721–9. The article described in positive terms the life and work of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Robertus, Lasalle, Karl Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Reclus. 71 See al-Hilāl’s article on Zola, ‘Zūlā’, 15 February 1897, p. 441. Another article that appeared a year later on the Dreyfus Affair evidently mentioned Zola and examined his role in it. See al-Hilāl, 15 February 1898, p. 469. Al-Hilāl also published and advertised a book written by Esther Lazari Moyal (1873–1948) – a Beiruti Jew who had settled in Cairo – on Zola’s writings. Al-Hilāl, 15 October 1903, p. 63. 72 ‘Count Tolstoi’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1901, pp. 425–9. Al-Hilāl was particularly interested in Tolstoi’s theories on the social body’s corruption by wealth and, consequently, the need for wealth distribution. Tolstoi was very much en vogue among

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75 76 77

78 79

80 81 82 83

84 85 86

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radicals all over the world because of his social and controversial religious views that had caused him to be excommunicated by the Russian Church in 1901. Al-Muqtaṭaf showed a serious interest in strikes, and it wavered between condemning them and celebrating them. Again, while it overall condemned them in the 1880s and 1890s, by the first years of the twentieth century, it published a number of articles that were sympathetic to strikers and their goals. See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyya wa numuwwuha’, al-Hilāl, 1 June 1906, p. 563. The exaltation of Japan by Ottoman and, specifically, Arab intellectuals and rulers alike, as illustrating the possible progress of an Eastern secular country, had a long history that actually predated Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905. See ibid., Chs 2 and 3. ‘Ferrer’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1909, p. 115. ‘For this reason, the voices of socialists are only heard when it comes to the defense against injustice or protest against tyranny . . . as they did yesterday at the execution of Francisco Ferrer.’ Ibid., p. 114. Al-Hilāl linked the rise of socialism to industrial inventions, ‘that enriched factory owners’, and the American and French revolutions. The two factors ‘led to the appearance of many thinkers who examined the difference in wealth between workers and capitalists . . . [and] came up with various opposing solutions to this problem’. ‘Ferrer’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1909, pp. 114–15. On this connection, see Khuri-Makdisi, ‘Theater and Radical Politics in Beirut, Cairo and Alexandria 1860–1914’, CCAS Occasional Papers, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Fall 2006. The damage caused by sectarianism was a dominant leitmotiv in the Nahḍa’s worldview. See, among others, Buṭrus al-Bustānī’s implicit references to sectarianism and its damage to the social body in a lecture he gave at the Syrian Scientific Society of Beirut in 1869. Buṭrus al-Bustānī, ‘Khitāb fī-l-hayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya wa-l-muqābala bayna-l-ʽawāʾid al-ʽarabiyya wa-l-ifranjiyya’, in Yūsuf Quzmā Khūrī (ed.), Aʽmāl al-jamʽiyya al-ʽilmiyya al-sūriyya 1868–1869, Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrāʾ, 1990, pp. 204–17, and especially the section entitled ‘al-Hayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya’, pp. 204–7. On Salīm al-Naqqāsh’s writings on al-hayʾa al-ijtimāʽiyya, see Khuri-Makdisi, ‘Theater and Radical Politics’. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyyūn wa-l-fawḍawiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1894, vol. 18, pp. 721–9. Khalīl Thābit, ‘al-Ishtirākiyyūn al-dīmuqrātiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, August 1900, vol. 25, pp. 146–51. However, the most ‘concise’ illustration of plugging socialism into the Nahḍa’s matrix system is probably Zaydān’s one-line summary of Marx’s vision, following his explanation of Marx’s notions of plus value, labor, capitalist, and so on: ‘wa yarā Mārks wa aṣḥābuhu anna mā yaltamisūnahu min iṣlāḥ al-ijtimāʽ innamā huwa ṭabīʽī yaqḍī bihi nāmūs al-irtiqāʾ qiyāsan ilā mā kāna min taʾthīrihi ʽala sāʾir aḥwāl alḥayāt’ (From their perspective, what Marx and his followers seek, out of reforming society, is natural and required by the law of evolution/civilization, analogously to its impact on various aspects of life). ‘Al-ʽUmmāl wa aṣḥāb al-aʽmāl: tārīkh al-ʽilāqa baynahum’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1912, p. 469. Shumayyil, ‘Al-Ishtirākiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa’, in Razzūq (ed.), Ḥawādith wa khawāṭir, p. 106. Ibid.; my emphasis. See Hamit Bozarslan, Les Courants de pensée dans l’Empire ottoman, 1908–1918, Ph.D. thesis, EHESS, Paris, 1992, and Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Marie Fleming, The Geography of Freedom: the Odyssey of Elisée Reclus, Montreal and New York: Black Rose Books, 1988, p. 122. Incidentally, a biographical article on Elisée Reclus’s life and thought had appeared in al-Muqtaṭaf upon his death. See ‘Elisée Reclus’, al-Muqtaṭaf, December 1905, vol. 30, p. 960.

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88 Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899) was the author, among others, of Darwinismus und Sozialismus; oder, Der Kampf um das Dasein und die moderne Gesellschaft, Leipzig: E. Gunther, 1894. His work was at that time highly popular among leftist circles in Europe, as part of a trend of thinking on socialism and political economy in general within the context of evolutionary theory, and his theory on the unity of all beings was particularly influential. Shumayyil seriously started reading about Büchner and his views on Darwinism when he was in Paris in the 1870s and he later published a plethora of articles explaining Büchner’s theories and commenting on them, as well as a translation of his Six Lectures on the Theory of Darwin. This was first published by al-Maḥrūsa, the Alexandrian printing press owned by the Syrian radical thinker, playwright, and theatrical director Salīm al-Naqqāsh. For an explanation of Büchner’s theories, see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, pp. 248–9. See also Reid, ‘Syrian Christians’, p. 184. 89 In Shumayyil’s words, ‘socialism is a modern teaching, although its roots are ancient’. ‘Al-Ishtirākiyya al-ṣaḥīḥa’, in Razzūq (ed.), Ḥawādith wa khawāṭir, p. 105. 90 Ibid., p. 111. My thanks to Dyala Hamzah for her help with translating this expression. 91 Ibid., pp. 111–12. 92 ‘Socialism and Nihilism’, al-Hilāl, 15 December 1897, pp. 290–4. Question from Ṣāliḥ Afandī Yūsuf (Rawḍa) and Najīb Afandī Bannūt (Beirut). 93 ‘Socialists’, al-Hilāl, 1 October 1900, pp. 20–21. Question from Amīn Afandī Qattīt (Sao Paulo, Brazil). 94 ‘The Future of Anarchism’, al-Hilāl, 1 February 1902, p. 285. Question by Ibrāhīm Afandī Shihādī Faraḥ (Sao Paulo, Brazil). 95 ‘Count Tolstoi’, al-Hilāl, 1 May 1901, pp. 425–9. 96 ‘Al-Ijtimāʽiyya wa-l-Ishtirākiyya’, al-Hilāl, 1 February 1908, pp. 265–82. 97 Interestingly, Khawāja Nīqūlā Ibrāhīm Naṣr wrote from Wixbury, Pennsylvania, enquiring whether there existed a compilation of socialists’ and communists’ works and whether there existed a book, in Arabic, clarifying their ideas. Al-Muqtaṭaf answered that, to the best of its knowledge, such a book in Arabic did not exist. ‘Bāb al-masāʾil: al-ishtirākiyyūn wa-l-ijtimāʽiyyūn’, al-Muqtaṭaf, January 1914, vol. 44, pp. 93–4. 98 Raffūl Saʽāda’s translation of Tolstoi’s work, under the title Mā huwa al-dīn, was printed in al-Maṭbaʽa al-Sharqiyya, Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1903. 99 ‘Al-Fawḍawiyyūn fī-l-islām: ṭāʾifat al-ḥashshāshīn’, al-Hilāl, 1 November 1901, pp. 83–86, written by Doctor Saʽīd Abū Jamra (Sao Paulo, Brazil). 100 See, for instance, Jacy Alves de Seixas, Mémoire et oubli: Anarchisme et syndicalisme révolutionnaire au Brésil: mythe et histoire, Paris: éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1992. 101 Al-Munāẓir press had published various Arabic translations of Tolstoi, as well as a number of radical works in Arabic, including Faraḥ Antūn’s works. See also Rīḥānī’s correspondence with Labaki, for instance, his Letter to Naʽūm Labakī, 1901, in Rasāʾil 1896–1940, p. 22. On the Brazilian Arabic press, see KhuriMakdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean, Ch. 2. 102 See Khuri-Makdisi, ‘Theater and Radical Politics’. 103 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rīhāniyyāt, vol. 1, Beirut: Dār al-Rīḥānī li-l-Ṭibāʽa wa-l-Nashr, 1956, p. 17; my emphasis. 104 On the role of Cairo and especially Alexandria in providing political harbor for various revolutionary and reformist networks from around the Mediterranean, see Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. 105 Among the various networks of exiled reformists was the network formed by the social, religious, educational, and charitable institutions al-Maqāṣid and al-ʽUrwa al-Wuthqā, the Muslim reform movement of ʽAbduh, Afghānī, and Riḍā; another network was that spanned by another Syrian network that revolved around Dāʾūd

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Mujāʽis and the two periodicals he edited, al-Nūr and al-Ḥurriyya. For more information, see Khuri-Makdisi, ‘The Nahḍa Revisited’. See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean. So much so that Salāma Mūsā wrote in his memoirs that Yaʽqūb Sarrūf had been ‘obsessed with evolution theory, [and] there were articles about it in every issue’. Salāma Mūsā, Tarbiyat Salāma Mūsā, Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-Miṣrī, 1947. For in-depth studies on the Lewis affair and Darwinism in the Arab world, see the works of Elshakry, Farag, and Meier, as well as Shafīq Juḥa, Dārwīn wa azmat sanat 1882 fī-l-kulliya al-ṭibbiyya: wa awwal thawra ṭullābiyya fī-l-ʽālam al-ʽarabī, Beirut: Shafīq Juḥa, 1991; and Elie Kedourie, ‘The American University of Beirut’, Middle Eastern Studies, October 1966, vol. 3, pp. 74–90, especially pp. 85–7. See, for instance, the introduction to Sami Hanna and George Gardner (eds), Arab Socialism, Leiden: Brill, 1969. See Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean.

5

From ʽilm to Ṣiḥāfa or the politics of the public interest (maṣlaḥa) Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and his journal al-Manār (1898–1935)* Dyala Hamzah

In a fundamental essay on Rashīd Riḍā’s “creative appropriation” of pre-modern thought, Ahmad Dallal has pointed out how Islamic reformers, in their endeavour to provide Islamic legitimacy to each and every institution of the secular European nation-state, ironically produced “a pervasive . . . Islamic discourse that claimed, without historical justification, to cover all aspects of life”, an “allencompassing” discourse that actually “expanded the functional domain of religion into areas that had not previously been covered by it”.1 In his study of contemporary ulema as “custodians of change”, Muhammad Qasim Zaman has likewise remarked that: Modernist Muslim intellectuals have sought, since the nineteenth century, to find ways of making Islam compatible with what they have taken to be the challenges of the modern age. And their proposed reforms have encompassed virtually the entire spectrum of life in Muslim societies.2 While “life” in both accounts is not analytically defined, there is a reliance, implicit in Dallal, and explicit in Zaman, on Talal Asad’s idea that Islam is best defined as a discursive, rather than a social or political, tradition. As a discourse that seeks to instruct practitioners about the correct form and purpose of a given practice, in the process conceptually linking a past and a future through a present, Islam therefore does not include everything that Muslims say and do.3 If Zaman refracts Asad’s notion in order to show roads less travelled or paths not trod by the Modernists – i.e. those other facets of Islam which, besides sharīʽa (the “pre-eminent” discursive tradition), also constitute “discursive traditions in their own right” (Islamic historiography, Hellenic philosophy, Sufism) – Dallal’s essay, on the other hand, generically points to the sphere of politics without specifically analysing those of its sub-domains ironically pervaded. While the need is glaring for empirical research into what exactly was not part of the “functional domain of religion” in the pre-modern period, I do not offer here a positive checklist of either Dallal’s “aspects of life”, Zaman’s “entire spectrum of life” or Asad’s “not everything”. If, despite this missing link, I nonetheless premise my paper on these modern forays of Islam, it is courtesy of the observed migration, in the modern period, of certain legal concepts out of

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their natural habitat and into uncharted public territory. This I take as evidence vindicating the “foreclosure of life” thesis. This paper is then concerned with the means and mechanisms by which this all-out expansion of Islam was actually enacted. One such means, according to Dallal, was the exclusive identification of ijtihād (independent legal reasoning) with qiyās (reasoning by analogy), and the systematization of the latter as an islamically sanctioned procedure of modern legislation, in a bid to resist the ever-increasing powers of the secular nation-state. Another, more fundamental means which actually subsumes the former was the enlistment of the notion of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma (public interest), an otherwise marginal principle of Islamic legal theory, in the service of journalism. If maṣlaḥa actually enjoyed such unprecedented success during the “Arab Renaissance” (Nahḍa), it was not thanks to a theoretical revival. Rather, it was due to the collapse of its technical meaning onto its standard common usage – the latter so adequately defining the raison d’être of the new periodical media in which it was inscribed. As journals and newspapers indeed advertised their mission as the pursuit of the public interest (instituting in the process the public of that interest), maṣlaḥa became articulated with, and inseparable from, the ends of public deliberation. Maṣlaḥa, moreover, was not just any means by which the “Salafi turn” was effected. It was its overarching ideological justification, a part and a parcel, and the rationale behind a three-pronged discursive mechanism that comprised the following: (1) the reduction of a formidable jurisprudential corpus to a limited and ready-to-use lexicon; (2) the breaking up of legal and exegetical methodologies into legislative and deliberative procedures; and 3) the processing of scientific laws as useful opinions. Taking Muhammad Rashīd Riḍā and his journal al-Manār as a case study, this paper argues then that it is during this intensely and foundationally competitive quest for a representative expression of the public interest – which arose during the first onslaughts on the Ottoman Empire and reached a new climax with the British occupation of Egypt – that a shift in discursive hegemony occurred, ʽilm making way for ṣiḥāfa as the new dominant discourse. The paper is therefore premised on two other assumptions: first, that the secularization underway at the turn of the twentieth century was that of the intellectual and of the intellectual field; second, that this gradual autonomization and differentiation of the figure of the intellectual from that of the (religious) scholar was made possible by an inversion of private practice into public. In order to understand why and how this occurred, I suggest stepping out of the dominant paradigm of revivalism and seeing, in the emergent profession and medium of journalism, a decisive change in terms of Weltanschauung. By taking seriously Riḍā’s self-posturing as a journalist and offering a reading of his biography and work through this lens, I argue that such a focus allows us to see the epistemological displacements brought about by modernity which the paradigm of revivalism simply does not. Elsewhere, I have discussed at length the way in which the Nahḍa was, and still is, a captive of this revivalist historiography.4 In what follows, I shall first sketch out the portrait of the intellectual as a journalist,

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showing in the process how Riḍā’s understanding of his new craft was indissociable from the idea of servicing the public interest. Second, I will venture to complexify the genealogy of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma by suggesting that the discursive shift from ʽilm to ṣiḥāfa had been long in the making and was enabled since at least the Tanẓīmāt era and the processes of politicization and bureaucratization of ʽilmī concepts that this era brought about. Finally, I will show in what ways Riḍā was putting the concept of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma to use in his journal al-Manār and in what sense these usages make up what I take to constitute the “Salafi turn”.

Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā: scholar, reformer or journalist? Teleology vs. history or the reformer reconstructed While it is true that Riḍā’s self-portrayal is coined in reformist terms (muṣliḥ), it is not clear why a self-designation should constitute an analytical category, i.e. why the historian should reproduce what sociologists decry as their own tendency “to accept the political self-descriptions (or ‘professional ideologies’) of intellectuals at face value”,5 or why he should fall head on into “the trap of the discourse of the object”.6 In his essay on Riḍā’s reconstruction of the thought of alShawkānī (a pre-modern Yemeni scholar of the eighteenth century), Dallal has put to work this basic – if, in the case of Islam, overlooked – principle of the social sciences in order to demonstrate the symbolic and political functions behind Riḍā’s posturing as a reformer. He argues that Riḍā’s elaboration of a teleological galérie de portraits of reformers is designed to provide him, the last in the chain he traces, with the legitimate backing of undisputed authorities, for purposes foreign to such historical figures and even if in the process this implies a flagrant distortion of their thought.7 In the course of this genealogical elaboration, however, it becomes clear that Riḍā’s definition of a reformer is restricted to one who practises independent legal reasoning (ijtihād) through the exclusive means of qiyās (reasoning by analogy) – a fundamental method and the fourth source of Islamic law8 – and which Riḍā identifies as the mechanism allowing a Muslim polity to legislate in accordance with the needs of the age. Dallal’s fascinating case study then is Riḍā’s misreading of Shawkānī’s position on qiyās, which Riḍā “needs” Shawkānī to advocate when the latter most unambiguously rejected it.9 More broadly, Riḍā’s invocation of the Salafiyya tradition of reformers – a tradition that rejects, more often than not, qiyās and emphasizes the authority of the established textual sources of Islamic law over the opinions of later jurists10 – is actually more of “an ideological posture than an epistemological commitment”. While it authenticates Riḍā’s salafi credentials in matters of ritual worship (deemed beyond human understanding and admitting, therefore, no alterations), it justifies by no means his approach to social transactions. Why, then, did Riḍā go to such pains in forcing qiyās into the mouth of its very detractors? As Dallal rightly notes, while the genealogy is a standard one for the first seven centuries of Islam (ʽUmar ibn ʽAbd al-ʽAzīz, Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Ashʽarī,

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al-Ghazālī, Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim), it becomes provincial in the following seven. Later reformers are defined by Riḍā as “local”, their reforms having been restricted to one region or people: Shātibī (al-Andalus), Shāh Walī Allāh and Muḥammad Ṣiddīq Khān (India), Ibn ʽAbd al-Wahhāb (Najd), and Ibn al-Wazīr, al-Maqbalī and Shawkānī (Yemen). The striking feature in this chain is the downward claims to universality of its members, as Riḍā has them confined to “localities” (qutr), great or small, and their claim to fame becomes contingent upon the extent to which their ideas, however parochial or far-reaching, were needed at a particular moment in time.11 Through this seemingly conventional genealogy, Riḍā has in fact recast the “reformer” into the expedient role of the man of his age, the one most attuned to the here and now – who, in Riḍā’s age, at his end of the chain, and on his own admission, was none other than the journalist (ṣiḥāfī) himself.12 Though representative of nineteenth–twentiethcentury literature concerned with ijtihād,13 Riḍā’s genealogy is noteworthy in that it provides “a general rule for identifying these reformers” resting on an anachronistic basis: in addition to combining solid scholarly reputation and auras of leadership, reformers should be identified on the basis of their ability to meet the requisites of renewal. Yet . . . such needs or requisites have been defined retrospectively; as such, they are better representations of the perceived needs of the age of the examiner than of the period under examination.14 Reformer by analogy or journalist by profession Riḍā’s quest for legitimacy through these reconstructions (what Dallal calls his “creative appropriation”)15 constitutes an almost graphic illustration of his struggle with establishing his new journalistic calling. The newer the trade or purpose, it would seem, the greater the likelihood, or the necessity, of it being clad in recognizable trappings. Riḍā needed (1) Shawkānī, whom he identifies both as the last of the great traditional reformers and as the ad hoc man for his time and place, in order to legitimize his own – dubious – authority (indeed, what is a ʽālim writing outside the formats, genres and institutions of ʽilm?). And he needed (2) the Salafis, whose “fundamentalist” authority is necessary if one is to strike at the two perceived culprits of contemporary Muslim backwardness: Sufis (blamed for superstitious popular religiosity and for abusing the poor and the ignorant)16 and traditional ulema (faulted as servile imitators of the past). Yet he also needed (3) qiyās, which he saw as an instrument allowing all-out legislation in social and political matters. The rationale behind this unlikely alliance is none other than utility itself, a driving principle in the construction of the genealogy and which Dallal again implies when very rightly noting how Riḍā consistently refrained from analysing his champions’ thoughts in any detail.17 In an article on Riḍā’s elaboration of a utilitarian sociology of religion, born out of a sense of anxiety at the advances of Protestant and Bahai missionary activities in the lands of Islam, Juan Cole has shown how Riḍā’s argument in

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favour of institutional proselytizing was based on the recognition that a religion’s value was a function of its worldly success, not of its intrinsic truth.18 That is, how his argument was developed from outside the inter-textual conversations of the tradition and very much from a comparative (i.e. relativistic) social–political perspective. Riḍā’s attribution of qiyās to its detractors participates then in this same utilitarian approach to the Islamic discursive tradition. It is the (perceived) need that dictates the means; tradition is constituted in the very act of coercing it into saying what is needed. Metaphorically this time, the championing of qiyās spells out the sense in which Riḍā, the last in the chain of reformers he traced, was likewise such. He was a reformer by analogy, exerting his independent reasoning, which was by no means just legal, outside the formats, genres and institutions of ʽilm: a publicist. The scion of a village notable family claiming Prophetic descent, Riḍā held the distinctive title of sayyid. However, as if to signify that this social status alone no longer represented a self-fulfilling asset, and henceforth failed to convey the proper social identity of its bearer, throughout his life, Riḍā systematically adjoined to it the title of “founder of the journal al-Manār”. Al-sayyid Rashīd Riḍā, sāhib or munshiʾ majallat al-Manār was to be the consistent signature of Riḍā,19 his calling card, as the designation of his profession in his last passport actually testifies – al-mihna: ṣiḥāfī.20 A scholar by training Sure enough, Riḍā was trained as a “modernist ʽālim”. In Tripoli, at the hands of the Azhari shaykh Ḥusayn al-Jisr and others, he received training in Islamic scholarship (including Arabic, the legal sciences and logic) as well as extracurricular instruction in the relevant disciplines of the positivist age: natural sciences, mathematics and minimal linguistic proficiency in French and Turkish.21 As surely, he was encouraged to enlist his exceptional writing talents neither in the service of Jisr’s school (from which he “graduated” in 1892 with a ʽālimiyya, a licence to teach the Islamic sciences), nor in any other modernizing or traditional institution of learning, but into the service of the struggling local press, and by no other mentor than Jisr himself – a fact highly symptomatic of the profound transformations then at work within the scholarly–intellectual field.22 A subsequent press controversy between patron and protégé is further evidence of a field sufficiently torn open as to embolden a disciple to publicly disagree with his master.23 During his stay in Tripoli, where he actively contributed to a number of newspapers and journals, he was also an assiduous visitor of the libraries of the American Protestant Mission and of liberal Christian associations, in whose debates, books and especially journals (amongst them al-Ṭabīb and al-Muqtaṭaf ) he acquired most of his knowledge on modern science and the West. In 1897, his al-Manār project was ripe and he was ready to leave for Cairo in order to found his journal far from the Hamidian censorship that was crippling his homeland’s press.24 By this time, Riḍā’s notoriety as talented editorialist had reached such heights that he was allegedly offered the chief-editorship of the

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Beiruti weekly Thamarāt al-funūn (1875–1908), the first Muslim journal of Syria and the second of the Empire after al-Jawāʾib.26 An offshoot of the philanthropic Jamʽiyyat al-funūn, (Society of the Arts) 27 Thamarāt al-funūn (The Fruits of the Arts) would cease publication shortly after the Young-Turk Revolution (1908), notwithstanding the enthusiastic predictions of a smiling future of its co-founder, ʽAbd al-Qādir Qabbānī (1849–1935), in one of the periodical’s last issues. The press, Qabbānī wrote, has a role and a responsibility far greater under a constitutional regime than under a despotic one.28 At the geographical heart of the Nahḍa, Thamarāt engaged with many of its homologues, amongst them Shidyāq’s Jawāʾib, but also the Jesuit al-Bashīr (founded in 1870).29 Its network of contributors was composed of many illustrious and crossconfessional activists, notables and writers, many of whom, like Riḍā or the prolific Adīb Isḥāq (1856–1884), would have a prestigious career in Cairo. Riḍā eventually declined Qabbānī’s offer, even as it allegedly came with a free-hand regarding content and editorial line, when it became clear that his freedom to criticize stopped at the threshold of the Sultan.30 As it represents what Riḍā left behind, Thamarāt highlights a very significant aspect of Riḍā’s trajectory: namely, that the socio-professional milieu and expectations of the “young man” were already largely shaped by journalism. What Riḍā indeed left behind in 1897 was neither a career of village preacher nor that of a private school teacher, but quite literally that of a muzzled journalist.31 If the secondary role of Thamarāt has any meaning in Riḍā’s autobiography, it is that of signalling this constitutive moment of the press in his life. Was Riḍā’s exceptional self-portraying as a ʽālim the result of his need for strategic self-promotion and differentiation in the midst of fellow journalists? “The press,” remarks Ayalon, “like other commercial areas, involved competing for a limited market and entailed rivalry and even conflict.”32 Accordingly, any added qualification would be an extra asset in tipping the balance of public opinion. With competitor journalists, who were more often than not also politicians and/or Western-trained advocates, sociologists, scientists, doctors and engineers, it would be perfectly logical for Riḍā to distinguish himself by reinstating himself as a ʽālim. To Riḍā’s credit though, his commitment to his new craft prevented him from doing so, though he certainly did not resist making the best use of others’ representation of him as a ʽālim when the occasion arose. One such occasion was his dramatic editorial reproduction of the concluding section of Yūsuf al-Bustānī’s History of the Balkan War,33 which collated the opinions of the public figures of the age regarding “the most adequate means to salvage the Ottoman Empire”. Amongst the solicited opinions is Riḍā’s own and he is therein presented by Bustānī as al-ʽālim al-islāmī al-kabīr, munshīʾ majallat alManār.34 Riḍā’s publication of this piece, while affording him an easy reinstatement of his Ottoman allegiance, significantly evinces his understanding of the pluralistic basis of public opinion (his fellow contributors are Muslim, Christian, Atheist, nationalist, socialist, Egyptian and Syrian),35 and beyond, his acknowledgement of an epistemological reconfiguration. Indeed, it is in the midst of representatives of the new civilizing contemporary sciences (al-ʽulūm al-ʽaṣriyya

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. . . al-riyāḍiyya, al-ṭabīʽiyya, al-iqtisādiyya: the mathematical, the natural and the economical)36 that he allows himself to be seen reclaiming ʽilm and his status of ʽālim. This is as if in acknowledgement of the fact that the ʽālim of the day is henceforth the bearer of any knowledgeable opinion, of whichever source. This concession to his old status is however a unique instance, as Riḍā is first and foremost keen on projecting onto his self-representation of the journalist (ṣāḥib al-jarīda) a higher role – that of ultimate arbiter. The critical instance (intiqād) is standing above both the ʽālim (whether of the old facture or the new) and the jāhil (the ignorant),37 along a divide which hinges henceforth uncomfortably on the social–religious khāṣṣa/ʽāmma (elite/commoner) divide of yore. A tale of two Nahḍas “Inna lī fī hādhihi al-dunya waṭanayn: waṭan al-nashʾa wa-l-tarbiya, wa huwa sūriya . . . wa waṭan al-ʽamal, wa huwa miṣr”: in acknowledging a dual sense of belonging, and opposing the homeland of work to the homeland of training, Riḍā offers us another insight into why he was no ʽālim.38 By feeding his Syrian context into the Egyptian moreover, he helps us see along which lines new understandings of elite and commoner were being processed. In The Culture of Sectarianism, U. Makdisi discusses the new administrative status of Mount Lebanon designed to put an end to the 1860 bloody sectarian strife. He establishes how the Mutaṣarrifiyya ushered in a new social order which had been defined up to that point by the reign of the realm of knowledge (of the söz sahiblerı, of the notables) over that of ignorance (of the ahālī or commoners). With both realms composed of Maronites and Druze, the pre-1860 social order was one which therefore subsumed religious and tribal senses of belonging under those of knowledge and ignorance. While the foundations of this order had already been shaken as early as 1845, the Règlement organique of 1861 precipitated its disintegration.39 Riḍā of course is of a Sunni notable family, one moreover originating from the Tripoli hinterland, itself a district falling under the jurisdiction of the governorate of Damascus. Tripoli, however, though marking the northern limit between Mount Lebanon and the governorate of Damascus, had historically represented for the inhabitants of Bsharrī, Batrūn and Jubayl (Mount Lebanon, in its original sense) “their main window onto the larger world”.40 What with the commercial interactions between Mount Lebanon and Tripoli, it is not unlikely that the sense of notability of Tripoli’s Sunni families had been as informed by the social order of Mount Lebanon as it had been by that of Damascus. As Sunni village notables from Tripoli’s hinterland, Riḍā’s family was in a way as far from Damascus’ powerful urban Sunni notability as it was from the as-powerful rural Maronite/Druze amīrs of Mount Lebanon. Born four years into the Mutaṣarrifiyya regime, Riḍā came of age after the pre-1860 order had been shattered. The Mutaṣarrifiyya had allowed communal identities to surface and become institutionalized in the representational apparatuses of the modernizing imperial centre. It had also facilitated European missionary penetration, which set up schools and benevolent associations, reinforcing the newly

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mobilized sense of sectarian belonging of the old notabilities and proselytizing/ Westernizing the ahālī, the heretofore “ignorant” non-elite. As he came into Egypt with a sense that notables and scholars no longer possessed an exclusive monopoly over knowledge and power, Riḍā was however faced with the need to rationalize a social order alien to his native homeland. Since the coming to power of Mehmet Ali Pasha (1805–1848), and especially in those sixty years separating the founding of Egypt’s modern army of peasant conscripts and the British occupation following the ’Urābī-led revolt of Egyptian officers (1822–1882), Egypt had witnessed the advent of three major institutions designed to serve the interests of a dynastic centralizing state: military drafting (which would soon become universal), and which ushered in a nationalist revolt (’Urābī, 1881); the printing and periodical press, which would undergo gradual privatization throughout the century; and finally, the foundation of non-religious schools, first military, and soon civil (national and missionary), in an ever more pressing competition vis-à-vis the mosque-based madrasa. These three institutional advents which accompanied profound social and economic change would preside over the emergence of a new class of civil servants, co-opted within an urban elite educated in government or private schools and whose power grew as the State remunerated its services by granting it land and by legally reinstating private property. On the eve of the ’Urābī revolt and through the colonial occupation, it is this class that would take over these institutions (the army, albeit at its lower echelons; the press; and the private and government educational system). As regards the periodical press, this class would be assisted first, then rivalled and finally dominated by Syrian émigrés who flocked into Egypt. The latter were seeking the opportunities of a wider market or later fleeing the Hamidian censorship, especially after the British occupier had established a relatively tolerant press regime, deemed essential, in the words of its administrators, for the good functioning of the colonial institutions.41 Neither Azharī nor Afandī Rashīd Riḍā belonged neither to the religious Azharī establishment nor to the Afandī establishment of the Cairene press (Syrian Christian and/or Westernized Egyptian). He projected the social anxieties of a homeland recently reconfigured along sectarian lines and where power and knowledge were no longer the exclusive preserve of notability and/or scholarship onto a society whose distinctive feature since Mehmet Ali was religious orthodoxy (the Azhar had consolidated as the uncontested centre of Egyptian Sunni Islam after the Pasha had confiscated the financial revenues of countless non-Azharī madrasas) and political ortho-praxis (the praxis of the reformed and centralized state, with its cohorts of civil servants). His rationalization of the Cairene social reality led him to reify, in article after article, the figures of the traditional Azharī scholar and of the new, rising educated middle class in the fictional figures of the muqallid (the servile scholar) and of the mutafarnij (the Westernized up-start). In the first, he saw an anachronistic relic of the old order and, in the second, the aggressive incarnation

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of the new arrivistes.42 To downgrade the first, Riḍā contrasted the reformer’s relentless guidance to the authentic “ways of progress and civilization” with the former’s lazy servility to the ways of the past.43 To degrade the second, Riḍā opposed the reformer’s servicing the interests of the public with the former’s servicing of the interests of the colonizer. If the khāṣṣa of the day have mutated into the makers of al-raʾī al-ʽāmm (public opinion), and the basis of public opinion is de facto pluralistic, it is not to say that it is devoid of sectarian anxieties: Riḍā was intensely aware of religious competition, and all the more when it overlapped with professional rivalry.44 Distinguishing one community over another simply did not accord with the egalitarianism propounded by the reforming empire45 or with the old social order upon which Mount Lebanon had been built and whose members were still busy coming to terms with its passing. However, if the khāṣṣa had de facto been reconstituted in its sectarian diversity,46 albeit on the basis of a revisited conception of knowledge, not so the ʽāmma. In Riḍā’s pan-Islamist vision, the latter remained de jure the Muslim umma.47 In this respect, Riḍā’s misconception of the Copts’ role and position in Egyptian history, past and present,48 is telling of the discrepancy between his political project, the society he came from and the society in which he built his career and a base for such a political platform. From ʽilm to ṣiḥāfa Riḍā’s profession as journalist was neither accidental nor a casual hobby for the odd Friday, but a positive choice. This latter was all the more remarkable in that it entailed three dramatic shifts: (1) a geographic translation from Syria to Egypt; (2) a political move (i.e. an exile, a clandestine flight) from one Ottoman province to a breakaway province under British colonial rule since 1882;49 and (3) conscious downward social mobility: by renouncing his position as village preacher in his birthplace of Qalamūn, Riḍā was indeed demoted from the status of village notable to that of a chronically indebted lower middle-class émigré50 whose new journalistic profession had still to gain social recognition at the turn of the twentieth century.51 Journalism, moreover, was perceived as neither improving nor upgrading the impact of the scholarly teachings for which he was qualified. Rather, the choice of journalism implied as much as generated a clear break – in outlook, vocation and profession: All I wanted to do before I had read al-ʽUrwa al-wuthqā was to teach the tenets of Islam and the transitory nature of life on earth. Now I saw a new light: to work for the unification of the Muslims of the World. My duty I now knew lay in guiding the faithful to the ways of progress and civilization.52 This break in outlook, vocation, and profession was itself brought about by the reading of a journal, not by some epiphany resulting from the exerted study of a legal or theological treatise. Al-ʽUrwa al-Wuthqā was the archetypal, if short-lived,

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militant journal launched by Afghānī (d. 1897) and ʽAbduh (d. 1905) during their Parisian exile in 1884. This is to say that Riḍā’s move from ʽilm to ṣiḥāfa was not dictated by the necessities of ʽilm but by the avenues of ṣiḥāfa, not by any impending sense of crisis within the “tenets of Islam”, but by the state of backwardness and disunity of the world’s Muslims. In other terms, the project and the crisis are not theological but political and the means to their end is not a reformation in any protestant sense but very much a formation (of public opinion, of agency) in a subaltern sense. I am by no means suggesting that Riḍā ignored the need for a theological reformation. Rather, that in a division of labour of sorts, he assigned this mighty task to the ulema themselves, whom he incessantly urged to codify the sharīʽa and revise their methods and curricula, in a bid to rehabilitate and redefine their contemporary role.53 In order to understand the move from ʽilm to ṣiḥāfa as an epistemological shift, i.e. a shift that brought about a fundamental reconfiguration of the coordinates of truth, authority and reality, one has to appreciate the sense in which this shift was sustained by a mental conversion akin to what psychologists describe, albeit in disputed terms, as crepuscular crisis, conversion disorder or even dissociation. I quote Riḍā again, as he came across al-ʽUrwa al-Wuthqā: I found several copies of the journal among my father’s papers, and every issue was like an electric current striking me, giving my soul a shock, or setting it in a blaze, and carrying me from one state to another. . . . My own experience and that of others, and history, have taught me that no other Arabic discourse in this age or the centuries which preceded it has done what it did in the way of touching the seat of emotion in the heart and persuasion in the mind.54 Fellowship, (networks) and journalism When he set out on his Egyptian journey in 1897, it was with that very power of persuasion that Riḍā meant to approach its initiator, Muhammad ʽAbduh, in order to convince him to support his al-Manār project. Or so at least did he wish posterity to believe.55 Riḍā was a stranger in town, but not entirely without connections. True, as a ʽālim trained in Tripoli, he did not belong to the Cairene Azharī establishment. And though a Syrian émigré with a marked self-confidence in his editorial talent and independence of mind,56 neither did he belong in the Christian-dominated journalistic community of the Cairene Syrians. But much as his editorial reputation had allegedly won Riḍā an editorship offer in Tripoli’s Thamarāt al-Funūn, his reputation in Egypt, and news of his arrival, also preceded him. When he was introduced to al-Muqtaṭaf ’s Yaʽqūb Sarrūf (1852–1927) by his fellow traveller and future founder of al-Jāmiʽa, Faraḥ Antūn (1874–1922), the former had already been informed of Riḍā’s arrival by another central figure of Cairo’s journalistic hub, al-Hilāl’s Jirjī Zaydān (1861–1914).57 Soon after, he was offered a salaried position in Bishāra Taqlā’s al-Ahrām newspaper.58 Though he would later contribute to all these and other

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journals, Riḍā declined Taqlā’s offer, much as he had declined Qabbānī’s back in Tripoli, standing firm on his resolve to found his own journal under the auspices of ʽAbduh. Did Riḍā really conceive of al-Manār as perpetuating al-ʽUrwa al-Wuthqā? Or was the self-proclaimed master–disciple bond uniting him to ʽAbduh an opportunistic association? To dispel this accusation effectively levelled at him, Riḍā made no secret of his financial situation, the difficulties of which he attributed not to unsound management or to an intrinsically non-viable project, but to the attacks of the Khedive on ʽAbduh, and the former’s incitements of the National Party against al-Manār.59 Whether or not Riḍā received on more than one occasion financial help from ʽAbduh’s circle,60 it is difficult not to see in Riḍā’s association with ʽAbduh another attempt at defining and legitimizing his new craft. Indeed, it is difficult to ignore Riḍā’s symbolic rewriting of the traditional master–disciple relationship, in terms apposite to his new profession. In his biography of ʽAbduh, Riḍā elaborated on the two reasons for his association with his “master”: besides the ṣuḥba, the fellowship that traditionally binds an aspiring disciple to his master, Riḍā put forth ṣiḥāfa,61 journalism, in lieu of riyāsa, the leadership in a given scholarly field and the outcome of the ṣuḥba phase of the studentship.62 Of considerable import, this seemingly innocuous substitution unmistakably testifies to Riḍā’s extra-scholarly aspirations and goals by setting journalism as the ultimate horizon of his enterprise. In one of the very first issues of al-Manār, Riḍā defined the journal as a medium whose function was the social contract itself.63 Journalism he saw as a craft (ṣināʽa) and the journalists (aṣḥāb al-jarāʾid) as having three interrelated missions: taʽlīm, khaṭāba and iḥtisāb, i.e. teaching, speaking publicly, and promoting good and averting evil.64 Not surprisingly, Riḍā lent journalism the selfarrogated mission of mediation that the ulema have historically upheld between rulers and ruled. Al-Manār reads: “The press is the link (waṣla) between those who govern and the governed, demonstrating for each party its rights and duties with respect to the other party.”65 But while the historical mediation of the ulema was an effect of their power, a power they derived from reading and writing and interpreting the Scriptures’ rulings in the name of God, the publicist’s mediation was derived from no agency other than his own, as he wrote for no other reason than this very mediation. This however left the publicist the liberty neither to side with the State or to succumb to Party politics, nor to promote particular interests. Whilst writing in no one’s name except his own, putting forth his signature and authorial status, the publicist herein acknowledged the loss of a transcendent legitimacy in his effective recognition of his own immanent authority: that of writing in the name of all, in the name of the public interest (maṣlaḥa ʽāmma).

Publicizing the public interest (I): a complex genealogy The concept of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma did not therefore make its entry into journalism by accident but was called for by the necessity of legitimizing journalistic

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writing. This necessity in turn was extraneous to ʽilm, or at least to uṣūl al-fiqh (legal theory) in the sense that it was dictated by the need to cover, describe and make sense of the overwhelming reality of colonial supremacy. That is, it was dictated by the need to inform and mobilize vs. the need to interpret the law. By the time Riḍā and his contemporaries actually took over the shaping of the public sphere from their predecessors, the notion of public interest had become a blueprint of public discourse. Two generations of Nahḍāwī writers, prominent among whom were al-Ṭahṭāwī, Buṭrus al-Bustānī, Salīm al-Naqqāsh and others, had already largely contributed to this inscription, which came in all colours and shapes, i.e. in different lexemes (maṣlaḥa, manfaʽa, al-ṣāliḥ al-ʽāmm, al-nafʽ al-ʽāmm, al-manāfiʽ al-ʽumūmiyya, etc.) and in novel genres (the pedagogical, the encyclopaedic, the theatrical). As the new basmala so-to-speak of the ʽālimturned-journalist, not only was the public interest contextually defined by and in the columns of the publicist, but it was also inter-textually: (1) contested, inflected or supported by competing journals and journalists with diverging ideological orientations and “intellectual genealogies”;66 and (2) challenged by the readership in the multiple venues afforded by the journal – such as the rubric letters to the editor or debates (murāsalāt wa munāẓarāt), or articles (maqālāt), or even by the nature of the question asked in a fatwa, etc.67 As was already noted, the readership and the “competitorship” were not composed of ulema only but of a rising educated urban middle class that was neither exclusively Muslim, nor Egyptian, i.e. whose interest in defining the public interest in any particular manner was alien to the requisites of exegesis. But to assume that the maṣlaḥa that made its way into journalism was itself the pure, uncorrupted principle of legal theory is to forget the long process of bureaucratization that the concept had undergone during the protracted process of Ottoman reforms (Tanẓīmāt), officially begun in 1839.68 The bureaucratization of the Ottoman Empire itself during the nineteenth century had called for a discursive legitimization of its new administrative practice. Here too we lack empirical studies that would allow us to determine with precision just when and how the articulation of legal concepts to administrative practice was effected.69 In his survey of the Mülkiye literature,70 Carter Findley has noted how maṣlaḥa had actually come to be associated, by the time of the Young-Turk revolution, with “old mentality” administrative practice that had “led administrators to request authorization [istizan] from Istanbul even for acts that they had regulatory authority to carry out”.71 The pejorative administrative connotation of maṣlaḥa by the beginning of the twentieth century testifies, if anything, to its effective migration out of the precincts of legal theory and to an appreciably long career into the administration. A conscious and growing sense of professionalism was behind the contrasting, by several Mülkiye writers, of the terms idare-i maṣlaḥat and idare-i memleket: The first meant “administering the affairs” but – since maṣlaḥat had been a favourite term of nineteenth-century reformers – conjured up a vision of the past, with its paper pushing, constant requests to Istanbul for authorization,

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In the case of Egypt more specifically, a likewise assertive annexation of the concept was being carried out not just in administrative practice but in political discourse. A letter of Mehmet Ali to Zaki Effendi, the chef de cabinet of the khedival divan, dated 11 February 1835, ordered the latter to impose quarantine measures on the inhabitants of Alexandria, during the Plague epidemic of 1834–1936, in the name of public interest. While Mehmet Ali refers to the sacred law and to a saying of the Prophet, he does so in colourful and personal terms owing less to a legal argumentation than to the power of invocation: The aversion of the inhabitants of Alexandria to health measures rises from their ignorance . . . the adoption of appropriate measures to ward off the evil is authorized by the precepts of religion, and aims only at the general welfare. Since the plague . . . is a scourge emanating from his divine will, fleeing the wrath of God to take refuge in his mercy is not contrary to the sacred law. . . . One cannot deny that the reigning disease is contagious; and what God has said by . . . His Prophet; “Flee my Vengeance, as you would flee the presence of a lion”, does this not apply to contagion? . . . Consequently, the health measures in force will not be relaxed in the slightest. . . . You will therefore assemble the notables of the city, the chief of police, the directors of hospitals . . . in order to adopt the most effective measures for the welfare of the city.73 Ṣalāḥ Abū Nār has actually shown how maṣlaḥa ʽāmma was at the core of Mehmet Ali’s “ideological project” with countless of his decrees and speeches delivered in the name of the public interest as early as a good two decades before the launch of the Tanẓīmāt.74 In Tārīkh Muḥammad ʽAlī, a panegyric of the Pasha written by Shaykh Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Rajabī in 1822, the use of the expression “the interests of the state” or “of the statesman” (maṣāliḥ al-ṣadr al-ʽalī)75 evinces a casual non-legal use of the term under the pen of an Azhari ʽālim. This detour through the historical context immediately preceding the Nahḍa is meant to bring to mind the overwhelming zeitgeist of utilitarianism that lorded over West and East, and which informs much of the ideological justification of the colonial enterprise as well as responses to it from the colony. John Stuart Mill’s transformation of the relatively anti-imperial liberal tradition he inherited from Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and James Mill into a wholesale justification and defence of the colony has been studied by Eileen P. Sullivan.76 As has been noted by Charles Wendell, “Mill’s justification for the tutelage of primitive people by the more civilized rests on the premise that they lack the capacity to

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govern themselves and therefore need guidance. A direct response to this view from the author of Utilitarianism is in Luṭfī al-Sayyid’s al-Jarīda, who largely concurs with the need for guidance, though insists ‘that competence is not a condition for the political independence of the umma. For this political freedom, i.e., self-rule is a natural right . . .’ ”77 My purpose is not to trace if, how and to what extent the maṣlaḥa ʽāmma of the Tanzīmī and Nahḍāwī Ottomans was modelled on the principle of utility propounded by Bentham and Mill, even as such proper assessment is still missing.78 The objective conditions for such modelling are not in question: for example, the British political economist, colonial administrator of Hong Kong and advisor to Mehmet Ali, Sir John Bowring, was himself a disciple and close friend of Jeremy Bentham;79 at the other end of the century, Aḥmad Fatḥī Zaghlūl would translate into Arabic, in 1891, Bentham’s Principes généraux de législation.80 In between, Ṭahṭāwī celebrated the public utility of industry (al-manāfiʽ al-ʽumūmiyya) and ʽAbduh fused utility (manfaʽa) with the public interest (maṣlaḥa).81 A new assessment of the impact of utility on maṣlaḥa would have to engage with the value judgment of earlier scholarship that had looked into the utilitarian strand of Nahḍāwī thought only to conclude that it was the root-cause of its “failure”. As I have partially tackled elsewhere the question of the Orientalist genealogy that sees (1) a causal relation between the movement of translation of major works of Western political philosophy and their vernacularized usage, and therefore, (2) an explicative principle in the genealogy itself,82 I should rather like to turn my attention here to what I take to be the internal and original response of the Ottoman polity to the pressures and needs of reform. Equating iṣlāḥ and maṣlaḥa This response I posit to be an (unprecedented?) equation of iṣlāḥ (reform) with maṣlaḥa (public interest) and their resolution in the figure of the muṣliḥ (reformer). While both iṣlāḥ and maṣlaḥa originate in the three-letter root ṣ-l-ḥ, they are not connected in any technical way in the history of Islamic thought. Before going into the definition of these two notions and reverting back to their avatars in Riḍā’s writing, I should like to stress that what this conceptual equation generated is the causative or teleological idea that the public interest is the effect, goal or end of reform. While this does not contravene the common sense of course, especially as it relies on an inadequate translation, it appreciably does the technical. Significantly then, what the administrative muṣliḥ has engineered on the one side and, on the other, what the periodical muṣliḥ of the Nahḍa has, if not authored, at least published or publicized (i.e. journalized, mainstreamed) is not just a level articulation between two unrelated concepts, but the annexation by a bureaucratized principle of legal theory (maṣlaḥa) of a topos of Islamic literature at large (iṣlāḥ). I contend therefore that, together with undergoing a conceptual disembowelment, the public interest went public for the first time by virtue of its bureaucratization first, and second, of its journalization. Both processes were sustained by fitting maṣlaḥa in the general discursive framework of iṣlāḥ.

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Iṣlāḥ as topos Rooted in the Koran, the radicals ṣ-l-ḥ cover there a very wide semantic field.83 While the derivative maṣlaḥa is notably absent,84 the verb aṣlaḥa and corresponding infinitive iṣlāḥ are widespread, and variously mean working towards peace, harmony, reconciliation or agreement but also performing pious or virtuous acts or behaving like a holy man.85 A deed and a virtue exemplified in the person of the Prophet himself (al-muṣliḥ al-aʽẓam), iṣlāḥ developed historically into a function of the Islamic ethos and a topos of its literature as the cultural evolution of the community gave rise to dogmatic and liturgical innovations, judged harmful (bidaʽ) to its moral and political cohesion. In its early stages, iṣlāḥ was identified with the service of the Sunna (the Prophetic traditions), thought to provide the best model for the Islamic way of life, as well as the basis for its orthodoxy. In the sense that it consisted in restoring Islam to its (perceived) pristine dogmatic and liturgical purity, iṣlāḥ did not therefore purport to reform the polity. While the Nahḍāwī Islamic reformers did strive to define Islam solely in relation to the scriptural sources, they also largely concurred with their Tanzīmī counterparts in their support of parliamentarian and constitutional politics. The wholesale identification of iṣlāḥ with “administrative measures” (defined, as already shown, as idare-i maṣlaḥat) brought about a significant semantic departure during the era of the Tanẓīmāt (another term for which was ıslahat), as the term assumed then on the meaning of political reform. However, inasmuch as it can be seen as “an intellectual, and frequently practical, response to [iḥtisāb] the canonical injunction of ‘commanding what is good and prohibiting what is evil’ ”, iṣlāḥ, writes Merad, “is a permanent feature in the religious and cultural history of Islam”. Taking Merad’s observation at face value means putting on par a classical instance of such “intellectual response”, for example, Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʽulūm al-dīn,86 which devotes a chapter to this injunction, and Riḍā’s al-Manār, which encodes iḥtisāb in the very definition of journalism. While my endeavour in this paper has been to counter the thesis of continuity, there is, to this paring (called on by Riḍā’s professed admiration for this work) an undoubted heuristic advantage: indeed, it allows one to see that the normative corrections and redress iṣlāḥ seeks to establish, especially in its assumption of iḥtisāb, necessarily bring about a reflection on, and an inflexion in, literary genres; i.e. that the topos of iṣlāḥ is, of necessity, the site of generic– epistemic reconfigurations. As an encyclopaedic attempt at reorganizing the domain of religious knowledge, Iḥyāʾ ʽulūm al-dīn is, as such, precisely a work on genres. As a colossal attempt at fitting “all aspects of life” into Islam, alManār was a genre in the making. By encoding iḥtisāb into the very fabric of journalism (li-aṣḥāb al-jarāʾid thalāth waẓāʾif.: al-taʽlīm wa-l-khaṭāba wa-l-iḥtisāb),87 Riḍā might have been convinced that he was instrumentalizing journalism in view of reforming Islam. The fact remains that, in the course of its journalistic inscription, the topos of iṣlāḥ became the site of Pan-Islam, i.e. the site of a political agenda. Defined over and again in al-Manār’s pages, iṣlāḥ is a struggle towards “the unification

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of Muslims” through a series of institutional steps that are expected to be brought about by party politics89 and the founding of societies and associations.90 Remarkably, Pan-Islamism is therefore not just a political ideology reaching out to the greater Muslim world, but a concrete set of institutional measures designed to bring about this expansion (pan) “into all aspects of life”. By calling for iṣlāḥ in a journal, and identifying iḥtisāb with journalism, Riḍā was moreover acutely aware of diffusing authority and redistributing social roles. “Li-aṣḥāb aljarāʾid,” he writes, “thalāth waẓāʾif lam tajtamiʽ li-ṭabaqa min ṭabaqāt al-nās”! Such a diffusion and redistribution entailed, moreover, a didactic simplification and explanation of attributes or concepts that were heretofore the technical preserve of the ulema. After citing the third obligation of the journalist (iḥtisāb), Riḍā significantly unpacks the full injunction in between parenthesis (commanding good and averting evil), as his average targeted readers, in Egypt, are not primarily ulema, but government officials, Westernized notables with a nonQuranic education, Muslim and non-Muslim fellow journalists, writers and political activists, provincial notables and the (still rare) literate of all walks of life.91 As a function of the Islamic ethos and a topos of its literature, iṣlāḥ therefore refers to a corrective practice, born out of a normative injunction that is seen to have been disregarded and the re-inscribing of which can lead to far-reaching epistemic reconfigurations. Before the nineteenth century, and despite being a derivative of the same three-letter root, the legal concept of maṣlaḥa, on the other hand, does not seem to have been part of the semantic constellation of iṣlāḥ in any significant way. The latter’s invocation as a descriptive/distinctive marker in genealogies or biographies, or as a normative principle in scholarly production, does not ensue from the prior consideration of public interest but from the ethical obligation to conform to a revealed norm. But what of iṣlāḥ’s identification with iḥtisāb – i.e. of its specific implementation though the historical institution of the ḥisba?92 Were not some of the attributes of the muḥtasib as market supervisor designed to ensure the conformity of weights and measures, the regularity of prices, the absence of hoarding in times of scarcity or famine – i.e. was he not, at least in urban settings, and besides being the guardian of public morality,93 the custodian of (at least a chunk of ) the public interest?94 Were the regulation of the market and the administrative control over the guilds defined in the literature in terms of public interest? Though an historical survey of the ḥisba falls beyond the scope of this paper,95 one can arguably venture into asking whether it was not the evolution of the ḥisba institution during the Ottoman nineteenth century and its gradual absorption into municipal functions that opened the doors to this bureaucratization of maṣlaḥa alluded to earlier. After the system of farming out the iḥtisāb office was abolished in Istanbul in 1826, it was indeed replaced by an administration controlled by a government official (the iḥtisāb nāziri). This was abolished in 1854 and passed into the hands of the municipal shehir emīni.

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Maṣlaḥa as legal concept As long as it had remained a strictly legal concept, the public interest had been indeed, and paradoxically, private, or at least particular, confined to the realm of the production of legal knowledge and the reproduction of a social category. By private, I mean that it constituted a corporate pronouncement, a technical privilege of the learned class, who alone could determine what the private and the public interests were. As I hope to show, maṣlaḥa’s controversial status as one of the Principles of Jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh) sharply contrasts indeed with Riḍā’s consensual and casual use, even as he seemingly grounds it theoretically. Actually, its disputed meaning and applications are such that they have historically compromised its status as a concept.96 Contemporary scholars of Islam disagree moreover as to its importance: while Wael Hallaq and Haim Gerber stress its marginality in legal theory,97 and Felicitas Opwis argues for its centrality,98 Khalid Masud identifies the medieval scholar that was instrumental to the Modernists’ grounding of the notion as central.99 In the sections of Uṣūl al-fiqh treatises devoted to an exposition of the four major sources of the law (i.e. the Qurʾān, the sunna, ijmāʽ and qiyās), maṣlaḥa was sometimes discussed as either a fifth source in its own right or a discriminating tool between two contradictory readings of the textual sources, or as a general principle guiding and reminding the faqīh of the spirit rather than of the letter of the law. Developed between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries mainly,100 it was formalized into dichotomous terms by Ghazālī, who asked: (1) was maṣlaḥa to supersede or be subsumed under legal analogy (qiyās)?; and (2): was it part of the intentions of the sacred law (maqāṣid al-sharīʽa) or was it the ad hoc means for safeguarding them?101 Not only did the debate rage in such a frame, it was furthermore specified and complicated by the attributes of maṣlaḥa, which could be textually “attested” (muʽtabara), “non-attested” (mursala) or “invalid” (mulghā), and whose upholding, when it was neither textually endorsed nor rejected (mursala), had to evince an imperative (ḍarūra) or definitive (qaṭʽī) or universal (kullī) quality and could be dictated by either “necessity” (ḍarūra), “need” (ḥāja) or “improvement” (taḥsīn). I contend that Riḍā’s maṣlaḥa was constrained neither by these methodological considerations nor by the Ghazalian dichotomous framework. After all, his paramount objective was not only to allow the idea of human legislation on the basis of maṣlaḥa to prevail (a stipulation the traditional notion, with its arsenal of restrictions, precisely intended to prevent). His intention was to establish the legitimacy of defining and discussing its contents through consultation and public deliberation.

Publicizing the public interest (II): the salafi turn In Riḍā’s enterprise, maṣlaḥa constitutes, as was mentioned in the introduction, the first and foremost mechanism by which the modern “Salafi turn” was effected, i.e. the reductive-ergo-expansive mechanism that would allow him to expand Islam’s jurisdiction into “all aspects of life”. Only one of an array of

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concepts drastically simplified, maṣlaḥa became, by virtue of its allencompassing and open-ended meaning, the template for further simplifications. It is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a statistical or comprehensive demonstration of Riḍā’s reduction of the corpuses, concepts and methodologies of “Islam” to a readily identifiable constellation of authors and ready-to-use lexicon (his “invention” of tradition).102 Yet it is expected that the demonstration of the qualitative reduction of one technical concept into a term of deliberation will also show how a whole constellation of attendant concepts were “shed” in the process of any one reduction.103 The question that first arises when attempting to study maṣlaḥa in al-Manār’s extensive corpus is that of the textual sites chosen for the study, i.e. their quantitative and qualitative representative-ness. In determining those sites, I have fundamentally relied on Laoust’s loaded, if concise, description of al-Manār as possessing a “technicité discrète”.104 While what he meant was that al-Manār was couched in a language whose rigour was no impediment to the greater number of non-specialized readers, I take “discretion” in the sense of both modest and discontinuous. In the sense of modest, I mean that Riḍā’s report of theoretical expositions of the concept of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma evinced remarkable laconism, when it was not outright self-effacement. In the sense of discontinuous, I mean that Riḍā’s recourse to the notion in his editorial pieces is selfcontained and self-sustained, i.e. it is dictated and explained by circumstances. Besides the ubiquitous and overwhelming deliberative usages of the notion over the course of the journal, there are five major sites where maṣlaḥa coalesces into expositions, theoretical or otherwise, of varying length, degree of sophistication and didacticism. In turn, these are fitted in diverse literary genres. Chronologically, these are: the hundred-page fictional dialogue Muḥāwarāt al-muṣliḥ wa-l-muqallid (al-Manār 3[1900] and 4[1902]), published in book form in 1906; the legal treatise on maṣlaḥa by Najm al-Dīn al-Ṭūfī (Risāla fī-l-maṣāliḥ almursala), glossed upon by Riḍā’s contemporary and peer, Jamāl al-Dīn alQāsimī (al-Manār 9[1906]:745–770); the six political essays on the Caliphate (al-Aḥkām al-sharʽiyya al-mutaʽalliqa bi-l-khilāfa al-islāmiyya; al-Manār 23[1922] and 24[1923]), subsequently published in book form under the title Alkhilāfa aw al-imāma al-ʽuẓmā (1923); the ultimate meta-compilation, published in 1928 under the title Yusr al-islam wa uṣūl al-tashrīʽ al-ʽāmm, and consisting of reprints of sections of al-Khilāfa, an exposition of Shawkānī’s views on qiyās, a partial re-exposition of Ṭūfī’s theory of maṣlaḥa and the excerpts of Shāṭibī’s Kitāb al-iʽtiṣām fī-l-ibtidāʽ, which Riḍā had published along with a biography of the Andalusian scholar in al-Manār 17(1914).105 In what follows, I try to make sense of this practice of compilation in as much as it impacts on the reading approach, before finally delving into Riḍā’s journalistic treatment of the legal concept of maṣlaḥa and the editorial strategies underlying his theoretical affiliations.

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Maṣlaḥa left, right, and centre (or: diachronic, synchronic and periodic readings compared) Even if a diachronic reading of maṣlaḥa were possible – i.e. a retrospective reading premised on an evolution in Riḍā’s conception of maṣlaḥa over a period of forty years – the odds are it would not be possible to make sense of the relationship between the theoretical expositions and the overwhelming mass of circumstantial, deliberative usages of maṣlaḥa. By this I mean those instances where maṣlaḥa amounts to a consensual catchword, a slogan around which to mobilize, fitted into informative, analytical or partisan pieces, and where it is not preceded by definitions but rather specified by the context in which it is used. At best, as such a reading is dependent on the template of linear development, it would generate the idea of a divide, of two irreconcilable usages of the term, when actually my contention is that the theoretical exposition legitimizes the deliberative; or, put in other terms, that there is no meaningful evolution to speak of. By seemingly grounding his deliberative usage of the term in legal theory, Riḍā is intent on providing his (unfounded) authorial credentials as a journalist with the Islamic credentials of ʽilm. In a nutshell, by pointing to these traditions that theorize maṣlaḥa as the paramount procedure in Islamic law which allows it to respond to social change (i.e. to legislate), Riḍā is implicitly inscribing the following syllogism in his conception of journalism: A. Islam allows human legislation in accordance with the specific needs of the times; B. the ʽālim-turnedjournalist is the individual most suited to identify these needs; C. Islam therefore allows the journalist to define these interests and write in their name. A diachronic reading would consequently fail to explain what Riḍā is doing with/to maṣlaḥa in his journal, i.e. the role he ascribes to it in instituting a press readership and authorship. The fact is, a strict diachronic reading is not possible, hindered as it is by Riḍā’s constant compilations and recompilations of his theoretical expositions of maṣlaḥa – as if in acknowledgement of diachronic irrelevance. A synchronic reading therefore would seem far more suitable: take any one site where maṣlaḥa occurs and analyse it as a legitimate and representative instance of Riḍā’s usage in conjunction with other notions mobilized at the same time. It is perhaps no accident that he chose a journal as the vehicle of his voice. A periodical is by definition a discrete, discontinuous discourse, a snapshot or a sound-bite if you will, that can, and has to, be understood and appreciated without the backlog of previous issues or of issues to come.106 While perfectly adequate to the medium, the synchronic reading has the added value of showing how, in the process of shedding the conceptual restrictions attached to the legal concept of maṣlaḥa, Riḍā is in fact anchoring it within a new constellation of notions that are alien to the legal concept. An example of this is in al-Khilāfa, where maṣlaḥa is associated with shūrā and irshād (consultation and guidance);107 or in the Muḥāwarāt, where it is associated with talfīq, a process by which the most relevant rulings or sections of rulings of the four different legal schools are cut and pasted together if you will.108 However, while the diachronic

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reading would have been unable to articulate both usages, a synchronic reading might miss altogether one or the other, depending on the textual site chosen for the reading. Now while this of course would be prejudicial to the historian of ideas, it would vindicate the media studies specialist: after all, Riḍā’s readers were never exposed at any one particular moment to the sum total of these usages. Perhaps this was a reason why he went out of his way to compile his major ideas on maṣlaḥa in book form, making available at once what the periodical nature of his serialized articles did not. In the absence of evidence documenting the reason for these compilations,109 I do not wish to speculate lengthily over them, except to state again that they might have boosted his sales and/or corresponded to moments of increased political anxiety. Consider indeed that the dates of those compilations when hammering through the idea of Islam’s compatibility with the secular institutions of the European nation-state seemed to ensue from perceptions of ominous threat or momentous change in the Egyptian, Syrian or Islamic polity at large: 1906, for al-Muḥāwarāt, i.e. months after the “incident” of Dinshaway generated an outraged questioning of British colonial rule and months before the foundation of the first Egyptian political parties; 1923 for the Khilāfa, i.e. after the unilateral declaration of Egyptian independence by Britain, the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate and the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey and before the Caliphate was abolished (1924); 1928, for Yusr,110 following Saʽd Zaghlūl’s death and the defeat of the Great Syrian Revolt and preceding the indefinite suspension by the French of the newly elected national assembly in Syria, and the suspension of parliament, freedom of the press and of the right of public assembly in Egypt.111 If the historical circumstances surrounding Riḍā’s compilations show one thing, it is then the periodical recourse to the theoretical maṣlaḥa in times of acute crisis, against the background of as periodical a recourse to the nontechnical usage in times of lesser, or more diffuse, turmoil. Riḍā’s objectives in grounding his deliberative notion of the public interest in the most radical exponents of the legal theory of maṣlaḥa was to secure the idea that maṣlaḥa was not just a legitimate means (of securing lawful rulings) but an end in itself, the end of public deliberation. The periodical repeat of the grounding theory is therefore designed to consolidate the pillar of journalistic writing, which is the anticipated return of an identifiable forum, rather than of specific contents. Setting the stage: maṣlaḥa as the end of deliberation (muḥāwara) and consultation (shūrā) As one of many technical terms simplified, and mainstreamed by virtue of their deliberative usage, maṣlaḥa was the most frequent and persuasive and the one whose meaning sounded so consensual and comprehensive, as to subsume all others as a matter of fact, i.e. by virtue of its periodical repetition and dissemination. There are literally thousands of occurrences of the term, in its singular, dual or plural, predicated or genitive form (maṣlaḥa ʽāmma; maṣlaḥat al-islām,

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maṣlaḥat al-umma, maṣlaḥat al-dawla, maṣlaḥat al-rijāl wa-l-nisāʾ; almaṣlaḥatayn al-islāmiyya wa-l-ʽarabiyya; al-maṣāliḥ al-waṭaniyya, al-maṣāliḥ al-ʽilmiyya, maṣāliḥ al-bashar, maṣāliḥ al-nās, al-maṣāliḥ, al-maṣlaḥa wa-lmanfaʽa, tadbīr al-maṣāliḥ, jalb al-maṣāliḥ, mazāj al-maṣāliḥ, etc.) While the notion of public interest was not fitted of course in every single editorial piece of al-Manār, its ubiquitous presence however loomed large over the whole and over the specific interpretation of any one piece. For example, if iḥtisāb becomes the distinctive obligation of the journalist, it is because he alone stands at equal distance from the scholar and the ignorant, those who govern and those who are governed, because he alone speaks from the vantage point of the public interest: a reason why Riḍā urges the Egyptian government to regulate the profession, so that its “national interests” (al-maṣāliḥ al-waṭaniyya) are not misrepresented.112 If, on the other hand, talfīq, a simplified methodology for synthetically devising rulings out of the four major legal schools, is established as one basis for modern legislation, it is because it is called for by a public interest, understood as a cohesive and progressive principle, and indeed the pillar of Muslim unity.113 Conversely, while in any one piece, the recurrence of the term can generate diverse positive determinations, its overall unity is maintained by its functional role: that of being the hollow site of meanings to come, a form, rather than a content, informed according to the context and in the process of deliberation. Take, for instance, Muḥāwarāt al-muṣliḥ wa-l-muqallid, which, as one of the earliest texts of al-Manār (1900) and one that takes on the very form of a debate, can be described as the founding text where this deliberative usage is put in use and circulation. It is a manifesto on the legitimacy of discussing and defining the public interest publicly, i.e. outside the formats, genres, institutions, and jargon of ʽilm. How the Muḥāwarāt stage the discursive victory of the ʽālim-turned-journalist (the muṣliḥ) over the conservative ʽālim (the muqallid) is by persuading the latter into a debate on talfīq and maṣlaḥa in most casual terms – recasting in the process the public interest into “the unity of the umma” (though already partially occupied, the latter is not yet politically threatened with extinction: we are in 1900). While the focus here is on the means to realize this unity (legal unification in rulings through the procedure of talfīq), the different usages of the term maṣlaḥa refer as much to the interests of the community to be salvaged as to the interests of the actors in charge of this salvation – i.e. to the social class of public intellectuals and activists in the making and to which Riḍā belongs. Consider, likewise, the forty or so occurrences of the term in al-Khilāfa. Riḍā bemoans herein: Ankara’s move to abolish the sultanate and transform the caliphate into a spiritual institution (against the interests of the Muslim: maṣāliḥ al-muslimīn); the reduction of the caliphate to an apparatus of propaganda in the service of the Republic of Turkey (maṣlaḥat diʽāya (brubaganda) li-l-dawla alturkiyya); the weakness of the Ottoman office of shaykh al-islām, that was unable to resist the encroachments of the modern Turkish state on its “own private interests” (al-maṣāliḥ al-khāṣṣa bihā, i.e. its jurisdiction over law and education) – a weakness Riḍā sees in its having always been a worldly administration only concerned with representation (maṣlaḥa rasmiyya), instead of in the

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meaningful service of a spiritual religion; the ulema’s opposition to science, by making a case for “the present necessities of civilization and the public interests” (ḍarūriyyāt al-ḥaḍāra al-ḥāḍira wa-l-maṣāliḥ al-ʽāmma). Riḍā conversely celebrates that which accords with the intellect and the public interest (mā yuwāfiq al-ʽaql wa-l-maṣlaḥa); the implementation of worldly and religious interests (maṣāliḥ al-dunya wa-l-dīn); the realization of truth, justice and the public interest (al-haqq, al-ʽadl wa-l-maṣlaḥa); the public interest, utility and happiness (almaṣāliḥ wa-l-manāfiʽ wa-l-saʽāda). While not framed by theory but fitted in the very loose but overwhelming rubric/genre of the maqāla, these diverse usages, which are all informed by the anxiety of anomy, are subsumed under the general meaning of “the interests of a polity under threat”. While on the political level, maṣlaḥa was to be implemented through a consultative procedure (shūrā), this implementation was to be critically supported and informed, on the societal level, by the practice of public deliberation (muḥāwara). It is therefore against this fundamental objective of publicization of the concept of maṣlaḥa ʽāmma that one ought to read Riḍā’s “discussion” of theoretical exponents the likes of Ṭūfī and Shāṭibī. The formal analysis of these “discussion” reveals that Riḍā was in fact reporting these theories rather than scholarly furthering or developing them. They therefore constitute nothing but editorial strategies of affiliation. Ṭūfī or Riḍā’s mediated appropriation of tradition By turning to Ṭūfī, I want to underscore how authors apparently highly relevant to his scheme were treated offhand by Riḍā.114 “One of the most innovative scholars writing on the concept of maṣlaḥa in Islamic jurisprudence”, Najm al-Dīn al-Ṭūfī readily provided Riḍā not only with a simplified legal methodology,115 but also with the means to unify the different legal schools behind one certain method for ascertaining rulings in social transactions.116 A ḥanbalī scholar of the dawning Mamluk era, Ṭūfī witnessed the end of a world and birth of another, as the Abbaside caliphate of Baghdad, after the Mongolian sack of the Muslim capital, was transferred to Mamluk Cairo. A dissident and heterodox scholar according to Laoust,117 he has been described by Kerr as “the most radical of all champions of istiṣlāḥ”, expounding an “eccentric” theory.118 In effect, Ṭūfī’s elaborations on maṣlaḥa119 often take the opposite view of historical and contemporary conceptions in an effort to posit maṣlaḥa as “a source of law of equal or even superior standing over the other sources of law, i.e. Qurʾān, Sunna, Consensus and legal analogy”.120 In completing Qarāfī’s inaugural and partial separation of maṣlaḥa from qiyās, Ṭūfī’s purpose was to reduce the imperative of maṣlaḥa to a simple and general principle and to posit it as an independent legal indicant in its own right and the strongest among indicants. In the process, Ṭūfī was departing from the Ghazalian tradition that had moulded maṣlaḥa into a complex procedural criterion of qiyās, classified into levels (attested, non-attested or invalid) and qualitatively differentiated (by necessity, need or improvement).

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Ṭūfī’s point of departure is an identification of maṣlaḥa with the intents of the law (maqāṣid al-sharīʽa), although, as Opwis notes, his argument for its priority as a legal indicant is paradoxically anchored in the textual sources themselves, most notably, the 32nd ḥadīth listed by Nawawī, lā ḍarar wa lā ḍirār (“Do not inflict injury nor repay one injury with another”).121 Ṭūfī counters consensus on the grounds that it is rarely consensual122 but allows two restrictions to stand with regard to maṣlaḥa’s priority: 1) this priority concerns the sole muʽāmalāt, to the exclusion of ʽibādāt, since acts of worship are not intelligible through the agency of the intellect or of customs; 2) maṣlaḥa does not prevail over those indicants from consensus, sunna or Qurʾān that are more specific than the general imperative of safeguarding maṣlaḥa.123 It is easy to see from this very brief insight into Ṭūfī’s theory how it must have appealed to Riḍā. Extraordinarily enough though, his appropriation of Ṭūfī is marginal and mediated in the sense that it boils down: (1) to republishing in al-Manār the presentation of this theory by his Syrian contemporary and friend, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (1866–1914), with barely any commentaries of his own;124 (2) to devoting two and a half pages to Ṭūfī in his Yusr al-islām wa uṣūl al-tashrīʽ al-ʽāmm, themselves a severely selective summary of Ṭūfī’s developments. “I have not seen,” writes Riḍā, “in the writings of Eastern scholars (ʽulamāʾ al-mashārqa) someone more prolix (atnaba) in the study of maṣāliḥ then the ḥanbalī imam Najm al-Dīn al-Ṭūfī, who deceased in 716(H) . . . and none,” Riḍā adds, “in the writings of the Western scholars (ʽulamāʾ al-maghāriba), as prolix as the learned Andalusī Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Shāṭibī, who died in 790(H).”125 In sum, Riḍā’s whole reappropriation of Ṭūfī is made to fit between the extended “creative appropriation” of Shawkānī that Dallal has described126 and the consideration of Shāṭibī’s elaborations.127 Shāṭibī’s symmetrical position to that of Ṭūfī in Riḍā’s opening lines appears to suggest that one could in fact dispense with the verbosity of the Oriental. Before inviting the reader to turn to Qāsimī’s commentary of Ṭūfī in al-Manār, Riḍā drily and partially paraphrases the ḥanbalī. Steering clear from any commentary, he lists: (1) Ṭūfī’s starting point, the ḥadīth lā ḍarar was lā ḍirār and its equation with the prescription of maṣlaḥa and mafsada; (2) his recourse to the sources of the law (Qurʾān, sunna and ijmāʽ) to further the establishment of maṣlaḥa; (3) his evolving of maṣlaḥa into an axis for the establishment of the ratio legis of rulings (taʽlīl al-aḥkām alsharʽiyya), supported by rational insight; (4) the priority of maṣlaḥa over the textual sources and consensus in case of conflict; (5) the recourse to textual sources and consensus only as regards acts of worship and fixed ordinances (ʽibādāt wa muqaddarāt); the consideration of maṣlaḥa regarding social transactions and the remaining prescriptions (muʽāmalāt wa bāqī al-aḥkām). Then follows a remarkable passage where Tūfī makes a case for the inscrutability of God’s motives regarding acts of worship128 in order to explain and justify his exclusion of considerations of maṣlaḥa and of the claims of reason in relation to ʽibādāt. In a very graphic description, he opposes the slave who remains obedient so long as he conforms to what his master has prescribed to him and to what is agreeable to him . . . to the philosophers who have submitted to the cult of the

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intellect and ignored the law, erring and making others err and thus angering God. These have contravened the rights of the religiously accountable (almukallafīn), i.e. the prescriptions that have been established in their interests; (6) the assertion of maṣlaḥa as the strongest legal indicant; (7) a final specification of ʽibādāt (outside the purview of the intellect and of customs) and “the political interest of the religiously accountable” (within the purview of intellect and customs [ʽaql wa ʽādāt]). While the disproportionate paragraph on the philosophers disrupts the economy of the paraphrase, its function is probably to make a case, through Ṭūfī, against the strictly secular claims of his contemporaries, the mutafarnijūn who wished to do away with the sharīʽa by importing foreign legal codes. On the other hand, why the ḥanbalī is so ill-treated can be best explained if we recall that Riḍā argued lengthily in favour of qiyās, when he recast Shawkānī in the role of a modern reformer. Ṭūfī, it should also be remembered, had proceeded to separate maṣlaḥa from qiyās and, as it is, Riḍā precisely and completely omits this crucial separation in his quasi-telegraphic account of Ṭūfī’s theory. Then, and as Dallal remarks, it is not the tradition invoked by Riḍā, i.e. Shawkānī, and now Ṭūfī, which explains his legal and political “theories”, but the way “his own present realities” came to bear on, and indeed inform, the choices and the readings he made in the available stock of conceptual tools.129 But if, as Dallal contends, qiyās had appealed to Riḍā more than taysīr (facilitation),130 or any other procedure of legal theory, why did Riḍā ever mention, quote and publish an author who gave precedence to maṣlaḥa over qiyās? The flexibility of qiyās, as has been mentioned, afforded a means for “covering all aspects of life” in the face of the perceived threats of: (1) the ever-increasing powers of the nationstate; and (2) the introduction into the Egyptian juridical system of foreign legal codes.131 If Riḍā could not dwell on Ṭūfī except to defeat his own purpose, which was to posit qiyās as the paramount tool of political reform, why didn’t he simply omit him? As Riḍā himself acknowledges, the ḥanbalī had championed a unique stand on maṣlaḥa and belonged to that constellation of thirteenth–fourteenth century scholars so revered by the modern Salafis.132 But while this radical stand had conveniently fallen into historical oblivion, it was being revived by Riḍā’s contemporary, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī. At least for those two reasons then, Riḍā could not afford to ignore Ṭūfī.133 Felicitas Opwis has suggested that the probable reason why Ṭūfī was historically obliterated lay in the simplicity of his legal methodology. As her argument describes Riḍā’s own endeavours, and the probable reason why he was never heard by his contenders (the muqallid and the mutafarnij),134 it is worthwhile to quote her extensively: Al-Ṭūfī’s substantive model, I believe, has not found the unanimous acceptance he has hoped for precisely because of the lack of formal criteria to determine which maṣlaḥa is the one the law safeguards (. . .). This lack of regulating criteria gives his concept an air of utilitarianism (. . .). Also, one should not forget that in a discipline which prides itself with intimate knowledge of the divine will, and whose practitioners are distinguished

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If then Riḍā’s alleged discussion of Ṭūfī is neither accurate nor apparently relevant to his championing of qiyās, then the function of his very peculiar reporting (rather than discussion) of Ṭūfī’s theory has to be sought elsewhere, outside of the very theory he is purportedly referring to. Riḍā’s reference to Ṭūfī, I suggest, can only be understood as providing him with a banner. By referring to an author who has precisely divorced qiyās from maṣlaḥa, Riḍā is elevating the latter to a general and overarching justification for tampering with the theory. While Ṭūfī had championed maṣlaḥa only in the case when all other four sources had failed, Riḍā is actually promoting maṣlaḥa to the level of arch-principle of legislation, subsuming de facto in the process all other canonical sources. It is the momentous interest of the community that dictates the need for systematic qiyās, understood as a systematic deduction from the textual sources, of legislation according with the needs of the age. Riḍā however is no legislator and no jurist but a publicist: his promotion of maṣlaḥa as arch-principle of legislation that is determined through public deliberation and consultation is not theoretically expounded but carried out on the basis of a free-floating concept. By providing Riḍā with a “utilitarian” concept lacking “regulating criteria”, i.e. rid of its procedural restrictions (necessity, need, improvement), Ṭūfī has done just that and more: he has literally given Riḍā an imprimatur – i.e. the license to publish, indeed, the license to publicize the public interest, to have it discussed and defined in the public forum of the journal. Shāṭibī or Riḍā’s editing of tradition With Riḍā’s discussion of Shāṭibī, we are in for another surprise. Had he indeed intended to further the theory of maṣlaḥa sophisticatedly elaborated by the Andalusian, Riḍā would have chosen to quote from and comment upon his Muwāfaqāt, the core text where this theory is couched. It is impossible to think that the significance of this text got somehow lost on Riḍā, what with ʽAbduh’s recurrent advice to students and scholars “to study al-Muwāfaqāt in order to understand the true philosophy of ‘Islamic law making’ ”.136 In a remarkably concise paragraph, Masud has thus defined the relevance of the Muwāfaqāt, in the history of legal theory as well as for modern legal thinking: Shāfiʽī’s uṣūl al-fiqh paved the way for juridical theology which defined uṣūl in terms of sources and limited the method of legal reasoning to qiyās. This method led to an impasse in solving modern legal problems in the absence of precedents. Shāṭibī sought a way out of this impasse by means of his doctrine of maqāṣid al-sharīʽa.137 Riḍā’s imbibing of this doctrine, or at least, of this expression, is furthermore attested, mainly in his fatāwā, where reference to the intents of the law is

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common, though it seems to be generated more often than not by the questioner’s own recourse to it.138 Unlike Ṭūfī, Shāṭibī discussed maṣlaḥa in an absolute sense, i.e. not in relation to the four canonical sources of legal theory.139 In al-Muwāfaqāt, Shāṭibī identifies the interests of the people as the primary objective of the lawgiver. The obligations of sharīʽa are therefore nothing but the protection of the law’s objectives (maqāṣid), themselves equated with the people’s interests (maṣāliḥ): “I mean by maṣlaḥa that which concerns the subsistence of human life, the completion of man’s livelihood, and the acquisition of what his emotional and intellectual qualities require of him, in an absolute sense.”140 From this simple statement follows a complex and far-reaching argumentation aiming at recasting the various intents of the law, their implementation and their inter-relation into a three-level system. Where each positive group of measures aims at protecting maṣlaḥa (ʽibādāt, ḥājiyyāt and taḥsiniyāt), there corresponds a preventive group of measures (jināyāt). In the process, it is the whole methodology of legal theory which gets remodelled, with the sources usually considered secondary (istidlāl, istiḥsān, istiṣlāḥ, maṣāliḥ mursala) synonymously taken as maṣlaḥa and promoted to the level of primary legal evidence. While the four canonical sources have been reduced to two (Qurʾān and Sunna), these in turn are only referred to in order to ascertain whether the authority of an indicant is definitive or conjectural. While Riḍā’s ignoring of this text renders its detailed analysis pointless, it is worthwhile reflecting that the fateful demotion of qiyās in Shāṭibī’s theory of maṣlaḥa is again the probable reason at the heart of Riḍā’s neglect of this fundamental text. It is therefore not Shāṭibī’s al-Muwāfaqāt but Kitāb al-Iʽtiṣām that Riḍā publishes in al-Manār as the latter extensively discusses the problem of bidʽa (harmful innovation) in its relation to maṣlaḥa.141 Here again though, while Riḍā’s plain purpose seems to be the promotion of theories legitimizing maṣlaḥa, the underlying reason for this publication seems rather to be of providing him with new ammunition against sufī practice and popular religiosity. Shāṭibī’s stress that the qualification of bidʽa only applies in matters of cult (ʽibādāt) clearly exonerates maṣlaḥa from being such, since it is seen by Riḍā, and the authorities he quotes, as applying only in the domain of muʽāmalāt. Shāṭibī here does not however expound the concept in any formal criteria, the way he does in Muwāfaqāt. Riḍā’s recourse to Kitāb al-Iʽtiṣām is as untheoretical as were his comments on Ṭūfī’s treatise. Clearly, he was content with just that: with inscribing his self-appointed reformers in such a way as allowed him to write about, and in the name of, the public interest, vindicated by their authority but unimpeded by legal theory.

By way of conclusion As much as the sharīʽa was being reduced to family law by the nation-state during the course of the Nahḍa and beyond,142 the vast resources of ʽilm were being narrowed down to a lexicon for public discursive consumption and

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channelled into ṣiḥāfa. Rather than revived concepts or texts, the notions mainstreamed in the press by Riḍā and other Salafi journalists constituted the foundational elements of public debating and public opinion. Expanded out of their legal habitat into the press during the apologetic era of the colonial state, they would be reclaimed by the masses after the advent of mass education, for the purposes of militant reislamization. In the meantime, what the Nahḍa epitomized is that moment when the ahl alraʾy amongst the khāṣṣa became the bearers/representatives of the raʾī al-ʽāmm, of public opinion. Amongst the more spectacular means that enhanced this transformation, and one that has recently received much scholarly attention, was the articulation of fatwa (legal advice) with public opinion, i.e. the sanctioning of what is by definition an unsolicited and unauthorized opinion (the journalist’s) by what is in essence a solicited and authorized opinion (the mufti’s). Much remains to be said about Riḍā’s pioneering articulation of fatwa and public opinion (the contingent and relatively late beginnings of this rubric; his dubious credentials as mufti; the formal and substantial similarity between the fatwa and the letter to the editor, etc.). It has to be remarked that the somehow exclusive focus of recent scholarship on the phenomenon of the modern (print or cyber) fatwa when tracing the modern discursive forays of Islam into the public sphere has detracted from the much more subtle but far-reaching procedures that have sustained these forays. While Dallal has described these procedures as “creative appropriations” of tradition, I hope to have shown that these could not have scored such success had they not been fuelled and consecrated by the new idiom and genres of the press. The transition from ʽilm to ṣiḥāfa implemented by al-Manār was sustained by yet another uncharted procedure – the subsuming under the general epistemological category of opinion of all knowledge, including positive science, whose laws and evidence were being packaged as useful, rather than true, i.e. whose laws and evidence corresponded to Ṭahṭāwī’s manāfiʽ ʽumūmiyya and accorded with Riḍā’s maṣāliḥ ʽāmma – instead of ushering in a new episteme capable of displacing religious truths. This feature is all the more remarkable in that Riḍā himself, an otherwise avid reader of the science popularizer al-Muqtaṭaf, was aware of it: as he bemoaned the absence in the “Orient” of a specialized press (jarāʾid makhṣūṣa), he seems to have equated the “lumped” treatment of the community’s diverse interests with the hegemonic genre of the cultural journal. “A journal that limits its investigation to one topic necessarily accomplishes its purpose, in a way otherwise impossible when dealing with a plurality of topics and a variety of investigations.”143 Needless to say, this criticism applied most relevantly to Riḍā’s journal itself, which, if it did not welcome a critique of its choice of topics (even as it responded to it)144 or of its written style, inscribed the rubric “intiqād ʽalā-l-Manār” at the heart of its enterprise.145 In one of his reiterated invitations to criticize al-Manār for its handling of religious and nonreligious questions, Riḍā recalled the aim of criticism (promoting good and averting evil) and its specific instrument (the debate rubric), after having stated the purpose behind the “intiqād ʽalā-l-Manār” rubric: “In our written pursuit of truth and guidance towards the good,” he wrote, “we believe we are liable to err,

From ʽilm to Ṣiḥāfa 117 therefore we invite scholars to criticize us so that we can perfect ourselves and our readers in the knowledge of truth, the good and the public interest.”146

Notes * This chapter is the compounded outcome of several chapters of my dissertation: “L’intérêt général (maṣlaḥa ʽāmma) ou le triomphe de l’opinion. Fondation délibératoire (et esquisses délibératives) dans la revue al-Manār (1898–1935) du publiciste syro-égyptien Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935)”, EHESS Paris and the Free University of Berlin, 2008. A section of it has appeared in Dyala Hamzah, “Muhammad Rashid Rida or: The Importance of Being (a) Journalist”, in Heike Bock, Jörg Feuchter and Michi Knecht (eds), Religion and its Other: Secular and Sacral Concepts and Practices in Interaction, Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2008. I wish to thank Birgit Krawietz, Muhammad Qasim Zaman and Ilham Makdisi for their invaluable comments on various drafts of this chapter. Any remaining faults or inaccuracies are, needless to say, mine only. 1 Ahmad Dallal, “Appropriating the Past: Twentieth-Century Reconstruction of PreModern Islamic Thought”, Islamic Law and Society, 2000, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 337. 2 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Custodians of Change, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 6–7. 3 Talal Asad, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam”, Occasional Papers Series, Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1986, pp. 11–15. 4 Hamzah, “Muhammad Rashid Rida” pp. 42–44. Therein (pp. 44–45), I also discuss in what ways al-Manār represented a meta-journal. 5 John Rodden, “On the Political Sociology of Intellectuals: George Orwell and the London Left Intelligentsia of the 1930s”, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 1990, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 251–273. 6 François Burgat, L’islamisme en face, Paris: La Découverte, 1996. 7 Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, pp. 338–342, refers to al-Manār 18 (1915), p. 328 sq.; and al-Manār 32 (1931), pp. 2–16, “Bayān kunh al-tajdīd wa-l-iṣlāḥ al-ladhī nahada bihi ḥakīm al-sharq wa-l-islām, wa shaykhunā al-ustādh al-imām, wa wajh al-ḥāja ilayhi wa wujūb al-muḥāfaẓa ʽalayhi.” 8 The fourth source after the Qurʾān, the hadīth (traditions of the Prophet) and ijmāʽ (Consensus). On independent legal reasoning and its relation to tradition in the ongoing debate in the modern era, see Rudolph Peters, “Ijtihād and Taqlīd in 18th and 19th Century Islam”, Die Welt des Islams, 1980, vol. 20, no. 3–4, pp. 131–145. 9 Shawkānī’s rejection of qiyās, in matters both of worship (ʽibādāt) and of social transactions (muʽāmalāt), is a radical limitation of the purview of the sacred law: whatever has not been specified by the scriptural sources falls outside their jurisdiction. Riḍā’s anxiety regarding the increasing powers of the nation-state in Egypt, which he sees as encroaching on the identity of the Islamic polity, needs a legal mechanism that allows an equation of the former’s institutions with its Islamic “analogues”. While he excluded worship from qiyās, he had Shawkānī promote it in the domain of transactions. See Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, pp. 351, 354 and 356. 10 An epistemological posture rather than a school of thought, the Salafiyya refers to those scholars who self-identify, or are identified by others, with al-Salaf al-ṣāliḥ (the righteous predecessors), i.e. the first three pious generations of Muslims: the immediate companions of the Prophet, their successors and the successors’ successors (the Ṣaḥāba, the Tābiʽūn and the Tābiʽū al-Tābiʽīn). 11 Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, p. 341, quoting al-Manār 32 (1931), pp. 2–16. 12 The justification of a journal is a function of its revealing new paths of social conduct. By exposing the vices of the Muslims (maʽāyib al-muslimīn) and the ills of

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D. Hamzah society (al-amrāḍ al-ijtimāʽiyya), al-Manār establishes the legitimacy of its very genre: “Al-iṣlāḥ al-islāmī wa-l-jarāʾid”, al-Manār 1 (1899), p. 949. Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, p. 327. Ibid. Others, commenting on Riḍā’s interventions on ʽAbduh’s legacy, call them outright “manipulations”. See, for instance, Mohamed Haddad, “ʽAbduh et ses lecteurs: pour une histoire critique des ‘lectures’ de M. ʽAbduh”, Arabica, 1998, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 22–49; and “Relire Muhammad ʽAbduh: A propos de l’article ‘M. ʽAbduh’ dans l’Encyclopédie de l’Islam”, Revue de l’Institut de Belles Lettres Arabes (IBLA), 2000, vol. 631/185, pp. 61–84. Riḍā’s rejection of ritual mysticism, which reaches far back in his youth, drives him to reject all kinds of popular religiosity (visits to saints’ tombs, mulids, etc.) entrenched in Egyptian society, probably impeding there the development of a popular basis for his pan-Islamist project. While restraint characterized his approach to the traditions he championed, polemics informed his exchanges with those contemporaries who took his ideas to their ultimate conclusions: see Kerr’s analysis of Riḍā’s diatribes against ʽAlī ʽAbd al-Rāziq and Aḥmad Ṣafwat in Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: the Political and Legal Theories of Muḥammad ʽAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966, pp. 205–208. M. Q. Zaman has likewise noted this “highly instructive tension in Riḍā’s legal thought that reveals his discomfort with the implications of his own proposals.”, M. Q. Zaman, “The ʽUlama of Contemporary Islam and Their Conception of The Common Good”, in Armando Salvatore and Dale Eickelman (eds), Public Islam and the Common Good, Leiden: Brill, 2004, p. 133. Following Dallal, I shall be looking at examples of restraint (Riḍā’s treatment of Ṭūfī and Shāṭibī) in the final section of this chapter. Juan Cole, “Rashid Rida on the Bahaʾi Faith: a Utilitarian Theory of the Spread of Religions”, Arab Studies Quarterly, summer 1983, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 276–291. Riḍā realized very early on the extraordinary impact of foreign missionary educational institutions. After a decade of efforts and manoeuvring at Istanbul, he would found in Cairo the short-lived Madrasat al-daʽwa wa-l-irshād (1912–1914). See al-Manār 15 (1913), p. 58. This title appears on every single issue of al-Manār’s thirty-eight years. After the foundation of his society for propaganda and guidance, Riḍā added to his title: nāẓir madrasat al-daʽwa wa-l-irshād (supervisor of the school for propaganda and guidance). See al-Manār covers of the volumes for 1912 to 1914. Passport issued in 1930 and which expired July 1935, one month before Riḍā’s death: see Aḥmad Sharabāsī, Rashīd Riḍā, ṣāḥib al-Manār, ʽaṣruhu wa ḥayātuhu wa maṣādir thaqāfatihi, Cairo: al-Majlis al-aʽlā li-l-shuʾūn al-islāmiyya, 1970, p. 210. Riḍā, al-Manār wa-l-Azhar, Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-Manār, 1934–1935, p. 139. Prior to his eight years at Jisr’s school, Riḍā had acquired his elementary education at the Quranic school of his village of Qalamūn, going on to the Ottoman government primary school of Tripoli for only one year, because he “did not wish to serve the State”, but probably because most of the instruction there was in the Turkish language. Disciplines at the government school included computing, principles of geography, dogma and cult (all taught in Turkish) and Arabic grammar. Ibrāhīm al-ʽAdawī, Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā: al-imām al-mujtahid, Cairo: alMuʾassasa al-Miṣriyya al-ʽĀmma, 1964, p. 30. Jisr (1845–1909) himself chief-edited the weekly Ṭarābulus al-Shām (1893–1917), the first periodical of Tripoli, and which Dagher defines as a “political” newspaper. Joseph A. Dagher, Dictionnaire de la Presse Libanaise, Beyrouth: Librairie Orientale, 1978, p. 193. The controversy was over the responsibilities of ulema in the present backwardness of Muslims. Jisr’s defence of them made him, in the words of J. Ebert, a scholar

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between tradition and reform, in a way Riḍā clearly was not. J. Ebert, Religion und Reform in der arabischen Provinz: Ḥusayn al-Éisr aṭ-Ṭarābulusī (1845–1909) – ein islamischer Gelehrter zwischen Tradition und Reform, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991, pp. 158–161. On the relative leniency of this censorship in the Syrian province before Sultan Abdul-Hamid’s accession (1876), its (ambiguous) systematization thereafter and the differences in its application in Beirut, Aleppo and Damascus, see Donald J. Cioeta, “Ottoman Censorship in Lebanon and Syria, 1876–1908”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1979, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 167–186. Riḍā, al-Manār wa-l-Azhar. There is no trace of this offer in Donald J. Cioeta, “Thamarat al-Funun, Syria’s First Islamic Newspaper: 1875–1908”, Ph.D. thesis, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979, p. 295. Fīlīb dī Tarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya, Beirut: al-Maṭbaʽa al-Adabiyya, 1914, vol. 2, p. 26; Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 31. Al-Jawāʾib (1861–1883) was a major cultural and political institution of its time and was relatively independent, despite government funding. It was founded in Istanbul by the polymath and twiceconverted (from the Maronite denomination to Protestantism to Islam) Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (1804–1887). Mirʾāt al-Aḥwāl, the very first private paper of the Empire, if we exclude a Turkish-speaking journal published shortly before it by an Englishman, was founded in Istanbul in 1855 by Syrian Christian Rizqallāh Ḥassūn (1823–1880). See Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, pp. 29–30. dī Tarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya, vol. 2, p. 25. Composed of twelve shares of a value of 2500 qirsh each, the journal was, according to Tarrāzī, the first shareholding Arab journal (Jirjī Zaydān held that it was the Egyptian al-Liwāʾ). By the time al-Manār is founded in 1898, Thamarāt was almost a quarter of a century old: its silver jubilee was the occasion of a short report by Riḍā, under the telling heading “al-akhbār al-tārīkhiyya”: al-Manār 2 (1899), p. 157. Tarrāzī notes that all journals then celebrated the silver jubilee as indeed a watershed event in the history of the Arab press. Two years later (1901), it would be the turn of another silver jubilee, that of the vastly influential monthly and science popularizer, al-Muqtaṭaf (1876–1952). On this journal, see the essay of Ilham Khuri-Makdisi in this volume (chapter 4). dī Tarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya vol. 2, p. 27. dī Tarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya vol. 2, p. 26. Among their debates was the notorious controversy over the abolition of slavery in North Africa. Al-Bashīr supported the abolition, while Thamarāt questioned the political motives of the colonizer behind it: abolish slavery to convert? Al-Bashīr countered by stating that the European powers were pressing for the abolition on moral grounds. Riḍā, al-Manār wa-l-Azhar, p. 192. Though practising self-censorship, the “loyal and conscientious” Thamarāt itself was censored repeatedly, between 1878 and 1908 (six specific warnings; five suspensions of up to 100 days). Tarābulus al-Shām was suspended three times for up to one month. See Cioeta, “Ottoman Censorship in Lebanon and Syria, 1876–1908”, pp. 182–186. Like so many others of his Syrian fellow countrymen. See Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, p. 114, quoting al-Manār 1 (1898), p. 658. Ayalon attributes to Riḍā the failure to obtain a licence for his journal in Tripoli. A partnership contract was drawn between Riḍā and “another man” (Riḍā, Tārīkh al-ustādh al-imām alshaykh Muḥammad ʽAbduh, 3 vols, Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-Manār, 1905, 1925 and 1931, i, 1002) identified by Umar Ryad as ʽAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn ʽUbayd Afandī Murād alṬarābulsī. See his “A Printed Muslim ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo: Al-Manār’s Early Years, Religious Aspirations and Reception”, Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 2009, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 27–60 (p. 35). While it is not clear why such a contract would have been drawn in Tripoli rather than Cairo if the journal

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D. Hamzah was to be founded in the latter city, Riḍā did leave for Egypt to found his journal there and retrospectively saw his apprehensions confirmed, when his journal was barred from the Syrian provinces on several occasions and his family harassed (Ryad, op. cit, pp. 45–46). Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, p. 37. Instances of criticism, acrimonious rivalry and resentment are scattered all over the journal. One ideal-typical instance is Riḍā’s expressed grievances at what he perceived as Ottoman preference for and distinction of Christian journals and journalists: see “Al-akhbār altārīkhiyya”, al-Manār 2 (1899), p. 158. Bustānī’s book is reviewed by Riḍā in al-Manār 17 (1914), p. 152. Riḍā, al-Manār 17 (1914), pp. 303–312, “Afḍal al-wasāʾil li-inhād al-salṭana”. Elsewhere, I have analysed this piece by Bustānī (not Riḍā, as erroneously written) as an editorial strategy consisting of opening the forum of al-Manār to advocates of a competing expression of the public interest (manfaʽa), chief amongst whom was the Egyptian nationalist Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid. See D. Hamzah, “La pensée de ʽAbduh à l’âge utilitaire: L’intérêt général entre maṣlaḥa et manfaʽa”, in Maher Charif and Sabrina Mervin (eds), Modernités islamiques, Damascus: IFPO, 2006, p. 49. These are the Darwinian writer and medical doctor Shiblī Shumayyil (1850–1917), the Egyptian nationalist and editor of al-Jarīda (organ of the Umma Party) Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid (1872–1963), the co-founder of al-Muqtaṭaf Fāris Nimr (1857–1951), the founder of al-Hilāl Jirjī Zaydān (1861–1914), the judge, writer and translator Aḥmad Fatḥī Zaghlūl (d. 1914), etc. “Khuṭab wa durūs ṣāḥib al-Manār fī hādhihi al-diyār”, al-Manār 12 (1909), p. 881. Riḍā, “al-Jarāʾid”, al-Manār, 1 (1898), pp. 655–661; see also “al-ʽilm wa-l-jahl”, alManār, 3 (1900), pp. 553–557, where knowledge is called good (khayr) and ignorance evil (sharr); but also felicity and misery (al-ʽilm saʽāda wa-l-jahl shaqāwa) in a semantics reminiscent of Islamic philosophy. Such a teleological terminology (the ends of a polity is the happiness of its people) is familiar in ʽAbduh’s writings, but not so in those of Riḍā which are posterior to his mentor’s death. Riḍā here significantly posits himself as a critic of both the Azhar and the government schools (almadāris al-amīriyya and al-madāris al-ahliyya): of the education (taʽlīm) given at al-Azhar and of the rearing (tarbiya) afforded by secular schools. At stake, the absence of the modern sciences at al-Azhar and the absence of Islamic sciences at government schools. “Khuṭab . . .”, al-Manār 12 (1909), p. 881. Muḥammad Jābir al-Anṣārī, who defines Afghānī and ʽAbduh as the two sides of the “Arab Islamic Movement”, the political and the civilizational, explains the death of the aforementioned movement for lack of a fusion between its two essential components. Interestingly, he notes that this fusion in Riḍā was impeded by his Syrian origins, which barred him from participating in national Egyptian politics: al-Anṣārī, “al-ʽUrwa al-wuthqā wa-l-Manār. Altawfīq bayna al-aṣāla wa-l-muʽāṣara”, in Nadwat al-ʽArabī: al-Majallāt al-thaqāfiyya wa-l-taḥaddiyāt al-muʽāṣira. Dirāsāt wa munāqashāt, Kuwait, 1984, pp. 71–88. Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism. Community, History and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 29, 34 and 159–165. Makdisi’s thesis posits that Lebanese sectarianism was no atavistic social structure of Mount Lebanon, but very much a modern response to the combined pressures of a modernizing imperial centre and of the gradual colonial stronghold. Engin Akarli, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861–1920, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 10. The development of a free press was seen as a condition for the success of the colonial administration. This precept had been put forward by Dufferin, Britain’s special envoy to Egypt after the invasion. See Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, p. 52.

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42 Regarding the muqallid, see the thirteen-article fictional series Muḥāwarāt al-muṣliḥ wa-l-muqallid, published in al-Manār between 1901 and 1902. Regarding the mutafarnij, see, for instance “Madaniyyat al-qawānīn wa saʽī al-mutafarnijūn linabdh baqiyyat al-sharīʽa wa hadm al-dīn”, al-Manār 23 (1922), p. 625. For a fusion between the two figures in the ill-practice of imitation (taqlīd), see “Khātimat almujallad al-khāmis wa-l-ʽishrīn”, al-Manār 25 (1925), p. 800, where Riḍā speaks of a “mutafarnij min duʽāt al-ilḥād al-muqallidīn”. 43 Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 84. 44 See “Al-akhbār al-tārīkhiyya”, al-Manār 2 (1899), p. 158 and note 56. 45 As propounded in the Tanẓīmāt decrees of 1839 and 1856, and as embedded in the 1876 Ottoman Constitution (suspended in 1878 and restored in 1908). 46 Whether Egyptian Copts or Syrian Druze, Shia, Maronites, Greek Orthodox. 47 My concern here not being pan-Islamism per se, I can only speculate over Riḍā’s inability to “convert” the Egyptians to this project: was it due to the emergence of a proto-Egyptian nationalism, i.e. to the fact that, in a way, Riḍā came too late to Egypt? Or to the virulent anti-Sufi component of his project, and which testifies to his fundamental misunderstanding of Egyptian religiosity? It is noteworthy that ʽAbduh, a mystic himself, never supported the Pan-Islamist component of Riḍā’s project. 48 See, for example, “al-Muslimūn wa-l-Qubṭ”, al-Manār, 8 (1911), p. 338 sq. See Thomas Philipp, “Copts and Other Minorities in the Development of the Egyptian Nation-State”, in Shimon Shamir (ed.), Egypt – From Monarchy to Republic: A Reassessment of Revolution and Change, Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1995, pp. 131–150. On Riḍā’s dubious knowledge of recent Egyptian history (and modern sciences), see Maḥmūd al-ʽAqqād’s anecdotal “ʽālim fadhdh, lā yuʽnī bi-l-maʽārif al-ʽaṣriyya!”, al-Muṣawwar, June 1949, no. 1276. 49 Riḍā, al-Manār wa-l-Azhar, pp. 191–193. 50 See Sharabāsī, Rashīd Riḍā, pp. 166–169, for an account of Riḍā’s life-long financial difficulties. When he died, his house was still mortgaged and he owed 1000 pounds in debts. 51 “During the first half of the twentieth century . . . it was the lawyers who ran the show”: D. M. Reid, “Educational and Career Choices of Egyptian Students, 1882–1922”, IJMES, 1977, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 349. Amongst the careers reviewed by Reid are law, medicine, engineering, teaching, science, agriculture and commerce. The press would have to wait for the 1930s (development of journalism departments in Egyptian universities) and 1940s (1941: creation of the press syndicate) to sediment as a profession. See his “The Rise of Professional Organizations in Modern Egypt”, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 1974, vol. 16, pp. 24–57. When, in 1923, Jirgī Zaydān’s al-Hilāl launched a symposium on the future of the Arab press, the idea of founding a school or a university department for training journalists did not generate enthusiasm. See Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, p. 228. Contrast this with Riḍā’s very early awareness of the superiority of the European press, which he attributed to the existence of (1) a specialized press and (2) a formal training: Riḍā, “al-Jarāʾid”, al-Manār 1 (1898), pp. 655–661. 52 Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 84. Citation and translation in Jamal Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism, London: Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 29. 53 In bourdieusian terms, in a bid to fight the hysteresis of their habitus. See, for instance, the dramatic ending of the Muḥāwarāt (al-Manār 4 [1902], p. 865). 54 Riḍā, Tārikh, i, p. 303. The quote and translation are in Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 226. 55 Riḍā tells of how he sought ʽAbduh’s patronage and advice, as he wanted to benefit from “his experience” in founding a “reformist journal” (Riḍā, Tārīkh, I, pp. 1000–1005). 56 Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 1001.

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57 Ryad, “A Printed Muslim ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo”, p. 42. 58 Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 1008. 59 Ibid. Ryad rightly points out that Riḍā makes no mention of his partnership contract with Murād in his financial account in the Tārīkh. He mentions sufficient resources of his own, while the contract, which Ryad had found amongst the archives of Riḍā, stipulates that Murād brought in the capital. See Ryad, “A Printed Muslim ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo”, p. 37. 60 Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, pp. 1007–1008. This once-only financial help was apparently needed after al-Manār’s offices were burglarized. See the discussion of this incident by Ryad (“A Printed Muslim ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo”, p. 37), who however does not make the link between Riḍā’s claim in Tārīkh that this was the act of Istanbul’s spies and his statement in al-Manār 3 (1900), p. 238 that this was the act of his manager, Murād (against whom he filed and won a law suit). When Riḍā made the spy claim some thirty years later, however, he seemed to have either forgiven or reconnected with Murād, whose journal al-Tamaddun al-islāmī, as Ryad shows, Riḍā endorsed. 61 On ṣuḥba/ṣiḥāfa, see Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 1000. 62 George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981, p. 128 sq. 63 J. Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State. Muftis and Fatwas of the Dār al-iftāʾ, Leiden: Brill, 1997, p. 69. 64 Riḍā, “al-Jarāʾid”, al-Manār, 1 (1898), pp. 655–661. Journalism as a form of iḥtisāb was an idea he shared with many of his Pan-Islamist contemporaries, the likes of the Egyptian brothers Muwayliḥī. Their journal Misbāḥ al-sharq was founded the same year as al-Manār. See Werner Ende, Europabild und kulturelles Selbsbewustsein bein denm Muslmimen am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, dargestellt an den Schriften der beiden ägyptischen Schriftsteller Ibrahim und Muhammad al-Muwailihi, Ph.D. thesis, Hamburg University, 1965, p. 60. 65 The translation is that of Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam, p. 69. 66 See Hamzah, “La pensée de ʽAbduh”. On Naqqāsh, theatre and public interest, see Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, “Theater and Radical Politics in Beirut, Cairo and Alexandria, 1860–1914”, in Occasional Papers of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 2006. 67 See a fatwa request on the virtues of the press, in which Riḍā acknowledges their relativity: there is a bad and a good press, depending on its contents and on the moral and cognitive disposition of its readers! al-Manār 31 (1930), p. 46 sq. 68 An implicit assumption in Felicitas Opwis, “Maṣlaḥa in Contemporary Islamic Legal Theory”, Islamic Law and Society, 2005, vol. 12, no. 2, p. 182. While maṣlaḥa also developed legally, it did so in the partial codifications of the sharīʽa (the Ottoman Mecelle of 1877 and, in Egypt, where the latter was never implemented, in Sanhūrī’s 1949 civil code) as well as in their successor civil codes. Codification must have had, on the legal level, as important an impact as bureaucratization had on the journalistic level. 69 The recourse to the notion in the Siyāsatnāme literature from as early as the sixteenth century and through the eighteenth century is actually well attested. See Gottfried Hagen, “Legitimacy and World Order”, in Hakan T. Karatake and Maurus Reinkowski (eds), Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 55–83; Virginia H. Aksan, “Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1993, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 53–69; and Charles Wilkins’s book review of Robert Danckoff, An Ottoman Mentality: the World of Evliya Çelebi, Leiden: Brill, 2004 in MIT-EJMES, spring 2007, vol. 7. I am very grateful to Dana Sajdi for bringing these articles to my attention. 70 The literature generated by the Civil Administration Academy (Mülkiye Mekteb-i), founded 1859.

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71 Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom. A Social History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 253, note 130. 72 Ibid., p. 253. 73 Order to Zaki Effendi (chef de cabinet of the khedival divan), 11 February 1835, quoted in LaVerne Kuhnke, Lives at Risk. Public Health in Nineteenth Century Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 81–82. Note how knowledge is implicitly associated with public interest and ignorance with private interest! 74 Salah Abu Nar, “Muhammad Ali’s Ideological Project”, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, August 2005, no. 754, pp. 4–10. Available at: www.weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/754/ special.htm (accessed 5 June 2007). The emphasis on utility seems to even precede the Tanẓīmāt by a good century, to judge by the nature of the first printed books in the Ottoman polity: of the seventeen works from Ibrāhīm Müteferrika’s press, “eleven are histories . . . and three are concerned with language. . . . The remaining three belong to the useful sciences . . .” The emphasis throughout the publications is on usefulness. Ibrāhīm’s philosophy appears to have been thoroughly utilitarian. History is didactic. Dictionaries are keys to other languages. Good government leads to strong nations. Even magnetism confers “bountiful gifts” on man. William J. Watson, “Ibrāhīm Müteferrika and Turkish Incunabula”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1968, vol. 88, no. 3, p. 436. 75 Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʽAlī, (edited by Daniel Crecelius et al.), Cairo: Dār al-āfāq al-ʽarabiyya, 1997, p. 215. 76 Eileen P. Sullivan, “Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill’s Defence of the British Empire”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1983, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 599–617. 77 See Charles Wendell, The Evolution of the Egyptian National Image, From its Origins to Ahmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, pp. 275–276 and note 242. Like Riḍā, Luṭfī al-Sayyid’s endorsement of the idea of guidance is evinced in the didactic function he ascribes the writer (though his model was Aḥmad Fatḥī Zaghlūl the translator of Rousseau’s Social Contract and Bentham’s Traités de Législation Civile et Pénale, rather than the founder of al-Manār). As already seen, the idea of guidance (irshād) is at the basis of Riḍā’s militant conception of journalism and behind his foundation of Madrasat al-daʽwa wa-l-irshād. 78 To my knowledge, no such monograph exists. Bagby’s wholesale identification of the classical maṣlaḥa with utility itself is questionable on a great number of counts, while his usage of the term of “utilitarianism” in the pre-modern context is arguably anachronistic. See Ihsan Abdul-Wajid Bagby, “Utility in Classical Islamic Law: The Concept of Maṣlaḥa in Uṣūl al-Fiqh”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1986. 79 Author of the “Report on Egypt and Candia”, which played no insignificant part in “the power to colonize”: see Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p. 9. 80 First part of the Traités de législation civile et pénale (1802), originally prepared for publication in French by one of Bentham’s many editors, Etienne Dumont. 81 On Ṭahṭāwī, see the Ph.D. thesis of Israel Altman, “The Political Thought of Rifaʽah Rafiʽ at-Tahtawi, A Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Reformer”, Los Angeles, University of California, 1976; on ʽAbduh, see Hamzah, “La pensée de ʽAbduh”. 82 Hamzah, “La pensée de ʽAbduh”. For a “non-genealogical” treatment of translation, see Samah Selim’s essay in this volume (chapter 2). 83 The main formal feature of iṣlāḥ (etymologically, “to redress”, “to correct”; commonly translated as “reform”) is to be of trans-generic and trans-temporal relevance. The corollary has been the development of highly technical definitions of iṣlāḥ alongside loose thematic usages of the term. As an example of the latter in the context of nineteenth century Egypt, see the – very political – oscillations of iṣlāḥ between the meanings of restoration (iʽāda), establishment (inshāʾ) and invention (ikhtirāʽ), in the already-quoted text of Rajabī, Tārīkh Muḥammad ʽAlī, and my analysis of it in Dyala Hamzah, “Nineteenth-Century Egypt as Dynastic Locus of

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D. Hamzah Universality: The History of Muhammad Ali by Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Rajabi (d. 1829)”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2007, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 62–82. For a case study of the political, social and religious semantics of iṣlāḥ in nineteenth-century Morocco, see the forthcoming habilitation thesis of Bettina Dennerlein: “Religionsgelehrsamkeit und die legitime Ordnung der Gesellschaft: Zur Rolle der ʽUlama im Marokko des 19. Jahrhunderts” (“Religious Scholarship and the Legitimate Order of Society: On the Role of Ulema in Nineteenth-Century Morocco”), Freie Universität Berlin. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy of Islamic Law, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1995, p. 135. See Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, “iṣlāḥ” (A. Merad), Brill: Leiden, 1954–2004. An author central to Riḍā’s self-positioning in the reformers galerie de portrait. Most of the scholars he refers to, whether of the classical or pre-modern period, are described as mujtahidūn (independent legal thinkers) or mujaddidūn (renewers) or muṣliḥūn (reformers), in one respect or the other. See al-Manār 32 (1931), pp. 2–16. “Al-jarāʾid (waẓāʾif aṣḥābihā)”, al-Manār 1 (1898), p. 655. Reformation of religious practice (combating saint worship and “superstition”), of curricula and scope of education (spreading mass education based on sciences, the Arabic and foreign languages and a salafī approach to religion), codifying of the sharīʽa and unifying legal practice; and also: the development of medical knowledge and of industrial and agricultural technologies, in order to raise standards of living, gain economic autonomy, combat colonialism; the drafting of a constitution, parliamentarism . . . a Pan-Islamism recast in Arabism after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. The content of Riḍā’s brand of nationalistic iṣlāḥ not only resembles a political programme, but also, and in more than one way its “liberal” counterpart. Riḍā co-founded the Decentralization Party (Ḥizb al-lā-markaziyya) in 1912 with Iskandar ʽAmmūn and Shiblī Shumayyil. On its role on the eve of and during the Great War, see Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Riḍā respected ʽAbduh’s injunction not to engage in politics up until his death. The latter considered this form of public action as detrimental to iṣlāḥ in general and to al-Manār’s agenda in particular. ʽAbduh had become wary of political partisanship after he was exiled due to his involvement in the ʽUrābī revolt. See Emad Eldin Shaheen, “Muhammad Rashid Rida’s Perspectives on the West as Reflected in al-Manār”, Muslim World, 1989, vol. 79, no. 2, pp. 113–132, and Through Muslim Eyes: Rashīd Riḍā and the West, Herndon, Virginia: International Institute for Islamic Thought, 1993. Riḍā founded or participated in numerous such societies, whether secret or public, political and cultural. Amongst them: Jamʽiyyat al-shūrā al-ʽuthmāniyya, Jamʽiyyat al-rābiṭa al-sharqiyya, Jamʽiyyat al-jāmiʽa al-ʽarabiyya. See al-Manār, 26 (1925), pp. 291–294. See Shaheen, Through Muslim Eyes, p. 3. Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 1003: Riḍā described how ʽAbduh’s assistance was instrumental in securing him lists of potential subscribers from Niqūla Shihāda, the editor of the Egyptian journal al-Rāʾid al-miṣrī. While iḥtisāb refers to the duty of every Muslim to promote good and avert evil, ḥisba translates institutionally into the office of the muḥtasib, effectively entrusted in a town with the supervision of moral behaviour and of the markets. Supervising the performance of religious obligations, the propriety of the behaviour between the sexes in the streets (and at the baths) and the application of discriminatory measures against the dhimmīs. Cf. Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, “ḥisba” (C. Cahen), Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004. See Christian Lange, “Ḥisba and the Problem of Overlapping Jurisdictions: An Introduction to, and Translation of, Ḥisba Diplomas in Qalqashandī’s ‘Ṣubḥ alaʽshā’ ”, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 2006, vol. 7, pp. 85–107.

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95 For a definitive study, see Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 96 Mawil Izzi Dien, “Maṣlaḥa in Islamic Law: A Source or a Concept? A Framework for Interpretation”, in Ian Richard Netton (ed.), Hunter of the East: Arabic and Semitic Studies, Studies in the Honour of Edmund Bosworth, vol. 1, Leiden: Brill, 2000, pp. 345–356. 97 Wael Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories, London: Cambridge University Press, 1997: “Traditionally, a principle of a rather limited application”, p. 214; see also pages 132–133 for a summary of the concept’s development between the eleventh and fourteenth century; Haim Gerber, Islamic Law and Culture, 1600–1840, Leiden: Brill, 1999: “Another mechanism used to introduce innovations was ḍarūra. . . A similar principle that was sometimes employed was maṣlaḥa, the public interest”, p. 139. See also pp. 9 and 98. 98 Felicitas Opwis, “Maṣlaḥa: An Intellectual History of a Core Concept in Islamic Legal Theory”, Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 2001. Note her title published after this article was written, her book is listed in the bibliography but could not be quoted. References throughout are made here to her thesis. 99 Muhammad Khalid Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy of Islamic Law, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1995, publication no. 96: “the core concept of Shatibi’s impact on modern Muslim thought”, p. 127. 100 In her Maṣlaḥa, Opwis has shown how maṣlaḥa grew in preponderance as two major changes occurred in legal epistemology and logic: (1) the move from formal to substantive rationality (pp. 67–70); and (2) the shift from deduction to induction in the law finding process (p. 2). For an analysis of these historical changes in epistemology, cf. Wael Hallaq, “On Inductive Corroboration, Probability and Certainty in Sunnī Legal Thought”, in N. L. Heer (ed.), Islamic Law and Jurisprudence: Studies in Honor of Farhat Ziadeh, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1990, pp. 3–31. And: “From Fatwās to Furūʽ: Growth and Change in Islamic Substantive Law”, Islamic Law and Society, February 1994, vol. 1, pp. 17–56. 101 These are: the preservation of religion (dīn), the self (nafs), progeny (nasl), property (māl) and intellect (ʽaql). 102 A tradition exclusively identified with its legal component (sharīʽa), i.e. with what Zaman had designated as “the paramount discursive tradition”, to the exclusion of Islam’s other “discursive traditions in their own right”: historiography, Hellenic philosophy and Sufism. See note 2. 103 To borrow Ilham Makdisi’s felicitous expression. See her essay in this volume (chapter 4). 104 Henri Laoust, “Le réformisme orthodoxe de la ‘Salafiyya’ et les caractères généraux de son organisation actuelle”, Revue d’Etudes Islamiques, 1932, vol. 6, pp. 175–224. 105 The fifth site is his fatāwā, where both the deliberative and the technical usages intertwine. For reasons of space, I cannot deal with this site here. See Ch. 4.4 of my dissertation. 106 A definition that not only applies to newspapers but to journals too: though the latter rely for strategic reasons on the principle of serialization (securing a reliable number of subscribers), they would have no marketable value if they did not package themselves as autonomous units. 107 Al-Manār 24 (1923), p. 257 sq. 108 To borrow Birgit Krawietz’s most felicitous expression: see her “Cut and Paste in Legal Rules: Designing Islamic Norms with Talfīq”, Die Welt des Islams, 2002, vol. 42, pp. 3–40. 109 In his initial reticence to support al-Manār, ʽAbduh had argued that publishing books would allow Riḍā to reach out to the greater number: Riḍā, Tārīkh, i, p. 1005. Riḍā might have remembered this advice when his sales plummeted.

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110 Which compiles the essays on Shāṭibī, first published in 1914, i.e. after the outbreak of the First World War had prompted Britain to declare a Protectorate over Egypt. 111 1928 was also the year the Muslim Brotherhood was founded by Ḥasan al-Bannā, the continuer of al-Manār after Riḍā’s death; it is no small surprise to find no traces in al-Manār documenting this foundation. However, some of its pages in that year’s volume are devoted to the foundation of the Muslim Youths Association in 1927; this was modelled after the YMCA to counter Christian missionaries: al-Manār 28 (1928), p. 788. 112 “Al-jarāʾid”, al-Manār 1 (1898), p. 655 sq. 113 See the thirteenth dialogue, al-Manār 4 (1902): 452 sq. Al-Muḥāwarāt can be seen as the founding text for a deliberative usage of the notion of maṣlaḥa: there are over thirty occurrences of the word, mostly in its last dialogues. 114 Another such author included in Riḍā’s genealogy of reformists but conspicuously excluded from a theoretical exposition is Shāh Walī Allāh, whose Hujjat Allāh albalīgha centres around maṣlaḥa. I am grateful to Muhammad Qasim Zaman for pointing this out. 115 Opwis, Maṣlaḥa, p. 194. 116 Kerr (Islamic Reform) distinguishes Riḍā’s “constitutional theory” (Chapter 5) from the rest of his “legal doctrines” (Chapter 6). I am not sure what this division is meant to achieve, as both are meaningful only insofar as they are not divorced from their unifying genre and media (the journal al-Manār, in which both al-Khilāfa and Yusr al-islām were first published as a series of essays) and from “the unifying thread that brings [Riḍā’s] ideas together, namely, the necessity of the political independence of Muslim lands”: Mahmoud Haddad quoted by Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, pp. 348–349n. 117 Henri Laoust, Les schismes dans l’Islam, Paris: Payot, 1983 [1965], p. 273. 118 Along with his contemporary, Ibn Taymiyya: Kerr, Islamic Reform, pp. 97 and 56. 119 Expounded primarily not in a work on legal theory but in a collection of ḥadīth: Sharḥ al-arbaʽīn al-nawawiyya, (a commentary on al-Nawawī’s collection of forty ḥadīths). This is a fact that could explain why Ṭūfī’s theory was neglected by jurisprudents, as Opwis suggests (Maṣlaḥa, p. 195). This text was published in the version edited by al-Qāsimī in al-Manār, 9 (1906), pp. 745–770. 120 Opwis, Maṣlaḥa, p. 241. 121 Kerr’s translation, Islamic Reform, p. 97. 122 Ṭūfī seemingly understands consensus as meaning unanimity. 123 See Opwis, Maṣlaḥa, Ch. 3. 124 Al-Manār, 9 (1906), pp. 745–770. 125 Riḍā, Yusr al-islām wa uṣūl al-tashrīʽ al-ʽāmm, Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-Manār, 1928, p. 145. 126 Which spans twelve pages: Riḍā, Yusr, pp. 128–141. 127 Which span seven pages: Riḍā, Yusr, pp. 147–155. Besides the views of Ṭūfī and Shāṭibī on maṣlaḥa and of Shawkānī on qiyās, Yusr also presents those of Ibn Hazm, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, along with his own. 128 The acts of worship are defined by Tūfī as the “rights of God”, or of the “Legislator” or of the “Law”: al-ʽibādāt haqq li-l-shāriʽ khāss bihi: Yusr, p. 146. 129 Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, p. 356. 130 The title of the volume of his collected articles on qiyās and maṣlaḥa is: Yusr alislām wa uṣūl al-tashrīʽ al-ʽāmm, i.e. the Facility of Islam and the Principles of General Legislation. 131 Dallal, “Appropriating the Past”, pp. 356–357. 132 Al-Manār 9 (1906), p. 721. 133 In his al-Manār introduction to Ṭūfī, (al-Manār 9 [1906], p. 721), Riḍā stressed that Qāsimī’s publication of Ṭūfī’s treatise was part of a recent wave of publication of treatises in legal theory by shāfiʽī, ḥanbalī and ẓāhirī scholars, which in his quality of editor, reviewer and publisher he could not ignore.

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134 While Ṭūfī’s maṣlaḥa might have appeared to undermine the ulema’s scholarship through its simplicity, it might have appeared as undermining the Westernized’s attempts at doing away with sharīʽa by introducing foreign legal codes in Egypt. 135 Opwis, Maṣlaḥa, p. 245. Birgit Krawietz has shown that, in later twentieth century uṣūl manuals, Ṭūfī was indeed the whipping boy: B. Krawietz, Hierarchie der Rechtsquellen im tradierten sunnitischen Islam, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2002, pp. 246–247. 136 Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy, p. 110. 137 Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy, p. 111. 138 An expression which is variously coined as maqāṣid al-sharʽ, maqāṣid al-dīn, maqāṣid al-islām, maqāṣid al-qurʾān. See, for instance: al-Manār 7 (1904), p. 361 sq, 457 sq (where maṣlaḥa and sharīʽa are equalized); 6 (1903), p. 266 sq. 139 Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy, p. 151. 140 Shāṭibī, Al-Muwāfaqāt (ed. by Mustapha Muhammad, Cairo, n.d.), vol. 2: 25, quoted in Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy, p. 151. 141 Masud has noted how Riḍā’s (detrimental) promotion of Iʽtiṣām instead of Muwāfaqāt is largely responsible for creating the image of Shāṭibī as a crusader against bidʽa and an upholder of the immutability of Islamic law: pp. 113 and 116. 142 See Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003, ch. 7; Aharon Layish, “The Transformation of the Sharīʽa from Jurists’ Law to Statutory Law in the Contemporary Muslim World”, Die Welt des Islams vol. 44, no. 1, 2004, pp. 85–113. 143 “al-Jarāʾid”, al-Manār 1 (1898), p. 656. 144 See the criticism of Naʽūm Labakī (founder of Sao Paulo’s al-Munāẓir) concerning the inadequacy of al-Manār’s contents with its subtitle, and Riḍā’s reply in alManār 2 (1899), p. 683, quoted in Ryad, “A Printed Muslim ‘Lighthouse’ in Cairo”, p. 46. 145 See, for instance, al-Manār 11 (1908), p. 6. This is one of the oldest and most permanent rubrics of the journal. 146 Ibid. The term scholar in this quotation translates ʽulamā’: certainly Riḍā did not limit the criticism to religious scholars, though he seems here to have addressed them in a bid to co-opt them in his journalistic project. The term which we have seen had become tainted with secular knowledge also assumes that the critic has to possess a certain cultural capital and rational competence: this is confirmed by the last of the rubric’s aim, which is to “mute” those who follow their passions and propound allegations (qatʽ alsinat ahl al-daʽwā wa-l-muttabiʽīn li-l-hawā).

6

Partitioned pasts Arab Jewish intellectuals and the case of Esther Azharī Moyal (1873–1948)1 Lital Levy

In January 1893, the editor of al-Fatāt (The Young Lady), the first Arab women’s journal, reported the exciting news that one of the journal’s contributors had been nominated to a women’s advisory committee for the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition: From Beirut we just received a copy of a letter sent by the women’s congress for the Chicago Exposition2 . . . to our distinguished friend the esteemed writer, Miss Esther Azharī, holder of an academic degree, who has been nominated as a member of the aforementioned congress. Dated 1 October 1892, the letter sent to Miss Azharī explained that a committee of women’s daily newspapers organizing the women’s congress is seeking examples of the “riches of women writers” of the world; toward those ends, Esther Azharī has been nominated to the advisory committee, comprised of 100 renowned women writers, to represent the women of Syria. As a postscript, the journal’s editor, Hind Nawfal, added that Azharī had previously sent her a large amount of correspondence pertaining to the Women’s Exhibit at the Expo, but had requested that al-Fatāt refrain from publishing it until matters were finalized; yet Nawfal could not hold off from printing this news and promised that the rest would follow in due time. Over sixteen years later, in Jaffa of 1909, a Palestinian newspaper reported on a festive Purim gathering hosted by the local Sephardi community. The soirée opened with a choir of young Jews singing a patriotic Ottoman song, after which “the respected Arabic writer and translator Esther Moyal” gave a speech about the influence of Jews on Arabic literature. Following Moyal, the Hebrew writer S. Ben Tsiyon also spoke, and a number of prominent Arabs of Jaffa rose from their seats to praise the cultural understanding and closeness between the two peoples.3 The “Esther Moyal” speaking at this mixed gathering is none other than the former Esther Azharī of Beirut. The nominal occasion for festivities is Purim, a Jewish holiday; but we must remember the year, 1909. These are the heady days following the Young Turk revolt and restoration of the Ottoman constitution, with its promise of equality for all members of the Empire, and a spirit of optimism has galvanized the small community of Sephardi intellectuals in

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Palestine. How is this Jewish holiday (whose heroine is, serendipitously, named Esther) celebrated in Jaffa of 1909? A young Jewish choir sings of Ottoman patriotism; Esther Moyal gives a talk about Jewish participation in Arabic literature; Arab notables praise the understanding between the “two peoples” – a description that, held up to the mirror of contemporary reality, would appear more chimera than chronicle. But our trip through the scrapbook is not yet complete. Let us now fast forward another thirty-five years to our final clipping, from 1944. This one is a lengthy investigative report in Modern Hebrew by Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a,5 which appeared in a newspaper called Hed ha-mizraḥ (The Echo of the East) published by and for the Sephardi community of 1940s Palestine. Yehoshu‘a writes: I had heard her name long before. I knew that she was the wife of the talented Jewish writer and journalist Dr. Shim‘on Yosef Moyal, but only in the last few months did I discover the full extent of her own stature. Esther Moyal is the first and only Jewish woman writer of Arabic to have risen in the East, the East which gave her befitting appreciation in return. Yehoshu‘a explains that he became intrigued by the story of Esther Moyal after he stumbled upon an article from a 1903 issue of the Arabic journal al-Muqtaṭaf (The Selected) reviewing her newly published biography of the French author Émile Zola. The article inspired Yehoshu‘a to discover what had befallen Moyal. “Until meeting with her,” he tells us: I didn’t even know if she was still alive. I spoke with some of the surviving Arab writers who used to frequent Esther Moyal’s house in Jaffa, which had been a meeting place for many of the writers and journalists of the time. And I took notes. I also met with [one of her former female students, now an author herself, who] showed me two articles that Esther Moyal had written for al-Durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr [Scattered Pearls on the Generations of the Mistresses of Seclusion, a biographical dictionary of women],6 published in Cairo in 1893. And finally, I met the author Esther Moyal herself. I wandered through the alleys of old Jaffa, looking for her home, and after much searching my legs led me to al-ʽĀlam Street in Manshiyya,7 where I found the author living in a single narrow room revealing the unmistakable signs of poverty. In a small courtyard adjoining the room, amidst the neighbors’ children, and next to a primus stove heating a tin basin of laundry, sat the old lady, Esther Moyal – her body tiny, her hair gone white and her face etched with wrinkles. Between sighs, she told me indifferently of those bygone glory days, when His light shone over her head.8 After I brought up some fragmented memories of her life and times, I took leave of her, and in my heart was the feeling that I had walked amongst ruins and past landslides, amongst broken souls that resented me for disturbing their rest after they had been forgotten by the dead and by the living alike.

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Yehoshu‘a later mentions that Moyal’s shabby room elicited not a single relic of her literary past and that she was unable to recall any of the titles of the dozen books she had translated from French to Arabic.9 We turn three pages in an imaginary scrapbook: 1893, when the budding writer and feminist received a coveted invitation to the Chicago fair; 1909, when the celebrated author addressed a festive audience in Jaffa; and 1944, when the wizened old lady was found sitting alone, warming herself next to the primus stove, “forgotten by the living and by the dead.” The stark contrast between the scrapbook’s beginning and its end can only lead us to wonder: What in the world happened to Esther Azharī Moyal? What in the world happened to Esther Moyal? Any attempt to answer this question requires that we read it literally: that we situate Moyal’s story within the larger story of what took place in her world during the decades spanned by these snapshots, from the optimistic prelude of 1893 to the somber postscript of 1944. This is a drama that begins in the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Levant, in an era of new possibilities for women as well as for religious minorities in the Empire; it closes in more or less the same place but in a very different world, that of the colonial and semicolonial Middle East lurching its way toward independence – and, in particular, in Palestine at the threshold of partition, facing a postscript of relentless violence. In 1893, when Nawfal printed her article about Esther Azharī’s nomination to the women’s committee of the World Expo, Azharī was a young Jewish intellectual in Beirut, in the heyday of the Arabic Nahḍa, a figure seemingly ahead of her time. By 1944, the date of our last report, Esther Moyal was already living in an environment defined by and through “Jews and Arabs” as essentialized, oppositional figures locked in conflict. When Yehoshu‘a found her in Manshiyya, she seemed – apparently even to herself – an anomaly, an historic anachronism, left behind by a trajectory not of her making. Yet between 1893 and 1914, Moyal had participated in a dizzying array of activities and left palpable imprints on the Arab women’s movement, on Arabic journalism, on literary translation, and on “Sephardi Zionism” with its program of a “shared homeland” for the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim inhabitants of Palestine.10 How do we approach a figure like Esther Azharī Moyal? As a Jewish writer of Arabic? As a woman writer of Arabic? As a modern Arab writer who happened to be both Jewish and female? The reified (and reifying) categories available to us make it difficult even to describe a figure who crosses so many boundaries. No wonder Moyal has all but disappeared from history. But how do we “recover” Moyal? Where and in “whose” history does she belong? The narratives of “Arab” and “Jewish” modernities both originate in cultural reform movements – the Arabic Nahḍa (renaissance) and the Hebrew Haskala (enlightenment) – which, in turn, give rise to the Arab and Jewish narratives of nationhood. Interstitial subjects such as the Arab Jewish Moyal who are not easily incorporated into the reductive story of national “origins” are then subsequently left out of modernity’s embrace. “Modernity” as an epistemological discourse

Partitioned pasts 131 becomes, in part, a violent act of erasure; but as Stephen Sheehi puts it, the domination of this discourse “does not mean that it was beyond confrontation, ambivalence, and subversion.”11

Arab Jews and historiographies of modernity In the Jewish context, historians cite the Haskala, which is typically dated to late eighteenth-century Germany, and Emancipation as the dual harbingers of cultural modernity.12 While Haskala was a loosely defined cultural revival that led to a panoply of competing ideological movements and parties, much of Zionist historiography claims Haskala as a spiritual point of departure, one whose frustrated promise occasioned its replacement in the 1880s by the protonationalist Teḥiyya, or “revival.” Haskala is constructed as a purely European phenomenon, and despite evidence to the contrary, Middle Eastern Jews are not viewed as participants in the nineteenth-century Hebrew literary revival.13 In short, “Jewish modernity” is depicted as a transformative process that fundamentally altered the lives of European Jews. To the limited extent that Middle Eastern Jewries are discussed in general studies of Jewish modernity, they are generally dispensed with in a summary sentence or two, explaining that they were not privy to these historic developments. Rather, it is repeatedly asserted, Middle Eastern Jewries encountered modernity only as a result of immigration to Ashkenazi-dominated Israel.14 This viewpoint, which sees Middle Eastern Jewish modernity beginning only at the end of Middle Eastern Jewish history, so to speak, has become quite prescriptive, manifested in historical, anthropological, sociological, literary, and cultural discourses especially (but not exclusively) in Israel. As Ammiel Alcalay explains: Middle Eastern Jews were typecast in the role of “primitive survivors” of an archaic past, and Israeli educational, social, and cultural institutions stigmatized them. . . . The very idea that these communities possessed densely textured and creative public and private intellectual lives ran against every stereotype embedded in the institutional structures and common rhetoric of the new state. In this context the intellectual life of these Middle Eastern Jewish communities – initiated at the dawn of the technical age and forged in the cauldron of colonialism and nationalism – was almost unimaginable. While mainstream Israeli discourse claimed to have saved these communities from backwardness and stagnation, it simply cut from the script the real and substantial participation of Middle Eastern Jews in crucial and transitional moments of modernity.15 If Middle Eastern Jews are typically overlooked in general studies of “Jewish modernity,” specialized studies of Middle Eastern Jewish communities portray their experience of modernity as derivative, attributed directly to the work of the Alliance israélite universelle (henceforth the AIU), a French–Jewish organization that began establishing secular Jewish schools throughout the Middle East

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and North Africa in 1862 with the explicit aim of regenerating those communities through the mission civilisatrice. In this reading, indigenous Arabicspeaking Jewry are not agents but passive subjects of modernization, empty receptacles for European culture.16 In scholarship on the Middle East, the Napoleonic invasion of 1789 and threeyear occupation of Egypt are typically cited as the terminus a quo of Middle Eastern modernity, although some scholars have argued for indigenous modes of early capitalism in the preceding decades.17 Following the aborted French occupation, in 1805 Mehmet Ali (Muḥammad ʽAlī) established a new dynasty in Egypt. His ambitious reform ventures paved the way for the programs of social transformation undertaken by his successors, especially by Khedive Ismāʽīl (r. 1863–1879). Egypt’s atmosphere of cultural openness and (relative) intellectual freedom encouraged the diffusion of the literary and cultural revival that has come to be known as the Nahḍa. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with the emigration of many Syrian intellectuals to Egypt, the center of the Nahḍa shifted from Beirut to Cairo. The many, variant forms of thought associated with the Nahḍa are often credited with engendering a spectrum of ideological movements whose outgrowths would range from secular Arab nationalism to Islamic fundamentalism. Of striking similarity to the Hebrew case is the proximity between the narrative of modernity and the narrative of nationhood. In his classic 1938 study The Arab Awakening, George Antonius even goes so far as to say that “[t]he story of the Arab national movement opens in Syria in 1847, with the foundation in Beirut of a modest literary society under American patronage.”18 While Antonius is no longer accepted as the determinative historical account of Arab nationalism, his conflation of cultural renaissance with national “awakening” was influential for decades.19 Furthermore, the Nahḍa is still generally viewed as the wellspring of modern Arab subjectivity.20 In this narrative, we find a large number of Syrian and Egyptian Christian writers alongside their Muslim counterparts, writers, and reformers – and a lone Jewish figure, the playwright and journalist Yaʽqūb Ṣanūʽ, whose Jewishness is generally treated as an incidental factor of no real consequence.21 Otherwise, Jews are not believed to have taken part in this movement.22 In point of fact, the numbers of Arab Jews publishing in Hebrew and Arabic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were quite small, and their impact on the development of Modern Hebrew and Arabic letters marginal. Nonetheless, there was an Arab Jewish presence in both cultural revival movements, which, limited though it may have been in scope and influence, is significant for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it challenges the general impression that Arab Jews were collectively (and inherently) uninterested in the major polemics and cultural currents of their time and place; in more provocative terms, it is evidence simply of the existence of Arab Jewish intellectuals during the period predating the mass emigrations to Israel and the West. As a point of departure, that single fact warrants a revision of the Eurocentric narrative of Jewish cultural modernity and an expansion of the Nahḍa narrative.

Partitioned pasts 133 Nineteenth-century Arab Jewish writing in Hebrew demonstrates that the impact of the Haskala and indeed its very channels of transmission were not limited to Europe but actually crisscrossed Europe, North Africa, and Asia. A focus on the transregional circulation of ideas and discursive tropes in the Haskala would constitute a potential paradigm shift, for although studies have already been conducted on Haskala in individual communities in North Africa and in Baghdad, no one has explored the connections between the different nonEuropean way stations of Haskala. Nor have the reciprocal, interregional lines of communication between, say, Odessa, Calcutta, and Essaouria been explored; nor, for that matter, the prodigious amount of translation activity that took place between and among Yiddish, Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, and Standard Arabic along the way. Regarding the Arabic sphere that is the focus of this volume, a survey of the major Arabic periodical literature of the Nahḍa reveals considerably more Jewish interest and involvement in the field than have been previously acknowledged.23 Whether the text in question is a Jewish reader’s letter to al-Hilāl (The Crescent) intended for a mainstream audience or the opening issue of an Arabiclanguage Jewish newspaper meant primarily for the Karaite community in Cairo, there is no denying the authors’ salient cultural Arabness (if indeed I may borrow this term to discuss nineteenth-century figures who predate the rise of a modern “Arab” identity). It is in fact the sameness of the Arabic discourse of Jewish writers that, from today’s vantage point, seems to offer the most meaning, for it suggests that the Jewish writers of Arabic were working as members of a broader intellectual community within the dynamic nexus of the Nahḍa. The fact that Jewish figures such as Yaʽqūb Ṣanūʽ and Shim‘on Moyal interacted with central luminaries of the Nahḍa such as ʽAbdallāh al-Nadīm, Muḥammad ʽAbduh, Rashīd Riḍā, and Jurjī Zaydān indicates the extent of contact and cooperation across sectarian lines.24 Moreover, it demonstrates that Jewish writers of Arabic, marginal though they may have been, moved within an intellectual network whose collective influence was nothing short of determinative for the development of modern Arab culture and society. In this way, the voices of figures such as Esther Moyal allow us to recover a specific kind of Arab Jewish subjectivity and to reconstruct its historical context: an interconfessional, Arabicbased reformist and modernist milieu that arose in the mashriq during the last decades of Ottoman rule. On the other hand, despite the general sameness of their language, rhetoric, and cultural references, Jewish writers of Arabic did not attempt to mask their Jewish identity. Indeed, their writing often betrays an acute awareness of their position as Jews in an overwhelmingly Muslim and Christian society; most of them utilized the Arabic press to defend their coreligionists on matters such as the blood libel accusations, the Dreyfus affair, and the Talmud.25 If Jews could and did participate in the Nahḍa, why then were the numbers of Jewish writers of Arabic so small? In Greater Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) of Moyal’s time, Jews constituted slightly less than two percent of the population. In the last few decades of the nineteenth century, there were one or two thousand Jews in Beirut, a tiny number compared to the majority Christian

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and Muslim communities.26 This, in addition to sociocultural factors such as the ethno-religious stratification of Arabic-language education,27 might explain the paucity of modern Jewish writers of Arabic. Yet while Arab Jews seem markedly underrepresented in the Nahḍa in comparison to their Christian counterparts, the activities of Moyal and others suggest that no impermeable religious or social barrier precluded Jewish individuals from participating in Arabic public culture.

Arab Jewish intellectuals in the Nahḍa In considering those who did find their way into mainstream Arabic culture, we find very individual approaches to the problem of how to represent one’s Jewishness within an emergent discourse that itself was seeking to define Arab subjectivity vis-à-vis the challenges of modernity and European hegemony. The aforementioned Yaʽqūb ibn Rafāʾīl Ṣanūʽ, the most well-known of the Nahḍaera Arab Jewish writers, embodied a presciently secular nationalist position; he is thought to have coined the slogan ‘Miṣr li-l-miṣriyīn’ (Egypt for the Egyptians), which appeared on the masthead of his journal and became the rallying cry of the 1881 ʽUrābī revolt.28 Ṣanūʽ was a forerunner of Arab journalism and theater; the first Arab playwright to stage theater in the colloquial, he dubbed himself “Mulyīr miṣr,” the Egyptian Molière.29 As one of the first truly popular Arab journalists, moreover, he came to be identified with the eponymous character in his satirical journal Abū Naẓẓāra (Mr. Spectacles; better known in the colloquial pronunciation as Abū Naḍḍāra). For his political audacity, Ṣanūʽ was exiled from his beloved Egypt in 1878 and remained in Paris until his death in 1912. In France he styled himself “Le Cheikh James Sanua Abou Naddara” and penned polylingual panegyric odes to royalty and dignitaries. As for his Jewishness, it may be said that, of the many guises he donned, “Le Cheikh Israélite” was not one. Nonetheless, in a 1910 letter to Count Fīlīb dī Ṭarrāzī (for the latter’s history of the Arabic press), Ṣanūʽ explicitly clarified that he had never converted to Islam and still considered himself Jewish.30 We find quite a different exemplar of the Arab Jewish intellectual in the Karaite writer Murād Farag [Faraj], born in 1866. As a devoted spokesman for the Karaite community in Cairo, one of the last remnants of a once thriving Jewish sect, Farag also reminds us of the historical diversity of Arab Jewish communities.31 A lawyer by training (he participated in the drafting of the original Egyptian constitution in 1923), Farag published scores of works on religious law and on Arabic and Hebrew philology, as well as a four-part dīwān or collection of original poetry published between 1912 and 1935. He also translated some of his own poetry into Hebrew. Between 1901 and 1903, Farag published a weekly journal for the Karaite community. Called al-Tahdhīb (Edification), it is the first extant Jewish periodical printed in standard Arabic (as opposed to Judeo-Arabic).32 Throughout his long career, Farag emphasized the proximity and historical interrelation of Judaism and Islam as well as of Hebrew and Arabic (often extrapolating the cultural and historical from the philological);

Partitioned pasts 135 in his later years, he aspired to demonstrate the perceived compatibility of Egyptian and Jewish national aims.33 Farag died in Cairo at the age of ninety and continued publishing in Arabic almost to the end. Additional Jewish writers of Arabic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries include the Moyals’ friend Nissim Malūl, as well as Salīm Zakī Kūhīn and Salīm Elijah Mann of Beirut, and a number of other journalists, publishers, and occasional contributors to the popular Arabic cultural journals. During the interwar period, however, the torch of Jewish participation in modern Arabic letters was decisively passed from Cairo to Baghdad, where it was rekindled by young Iraqi Jewish intellectuals captivated by nascent Iraqi patriotism. Their pioneering short stories and cultural journals were at the vanguard of modern Iraqi print culture.34 Along with their Iraqi and Egyptian Jewish counterparts in music and film,35 this group of writers represents the final and defining moment of the modern Arab Jewish experience. But back in 1909, when Esther Moyal gave a rousing speech before the mixed audience of Sephardi Jews and Christian and Muslim Arabs, she could not have imagined that in but a few decades she would witness the premature foreclosure of Jewish participation in modern Arabic culture.36 Why have the writings of Arab Jewish intellectuals in the Haskala and the Nahḍa been effaced from the historical record? Essentially, Moyal and her counterparts were occluded by two totalizing narratives developing in antinomical directions. Arab Jewish intellectuals have been forgotten not only because they were few in number relative to Muslim and Christian intellectuals, or because their ideological orientations do not speak for their larger Jewish communities, but because their stories do not lead us neatly into the present or toward any telos. Rather, the particular political and cultural trajectory they embodied was abruptly ended in the 1950s (following the creation of Israel) with the dissolution of the Jewish communities of the Muslim world, whereupon the vast majority of Arabic-speaking Jews left for Israel and the West. This fragmentation had consequences both ontological and material: with their departure, not only was the memory of Jewish participation in Arabic modernity largely submerged, but the print sources themselves were dispersed across continents or left behind, many of them now lost.37 Yet even the remaining fragments tell us of possibilities and potentialities – the traces of a path that, while not the historical victor, was nonetheless viable and vibrant. It is through stories such as Moyal’s that we may begin to reconstruct a picture of Arab Jewish modernity that is not about the failure of Middle Eastern societies to provide a space for the cultural and political integration of their Jewish communities, or about the European Jewish cultural “revitalization”cum-colonization of its Eastern brethren, or even about the devastating consequences of the struggle between Zionism and Arab nationalism, but rather about Arab Jews themselves as historical agents who participated in the ideological and cultural discourses of their time and place.

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Esther and Shim‘on Moyal: Levantine intellectual journeys Esther Azharī was born in Beirut in 1873 to the Lazari family, a Sephardic family whose peregrinations led from Spain to Istanbul, and from there to Palestine and Syria; the family resettled in Beirut sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, where their name was corrupted to “al-Azharī” or, eventually, just “Azharī.” The daughter of ʽAbdallāh Azharī, a struggling silk scrap merchant, Esther claimed that as a child she memorized the Koran and mastered the formal rules of Koranic recitation,38 and also studied the New Testament – unusual accomplishments for a young girl at that time, let alone one of Jewish background. When we add to this that the Azharī family did not belong to the Jewish elite, Esther’s educational biography becomes quite exceptional. In 1884, at the age of eleven, she began her studies in Arabic and English with Muḥammad al-Bakr, a respected Arab writer. Six years later, in 1890, after receiving an academic degree (probably from the American College for Girls), Azharī taught for a few years at the Scottish Church Mission and the Beirut AIU.39 The following year, in 1891, she joined Bākūrat Sūriyā (The Dawn of Syria), one of the first Syrian women’s associations, and two years later was appointed its secretary; in 1896, she co-founded another society, Nahḍat alnisāʾ (The Women’s Awakening), also in Beirut.40 It was also in 1893 that Esther Azharī’s name began appearing in the pages of the Arabic press. One of her first publications, a translation of an Alexandre Dumas novella, was printed in installments in Hind Nawfal’s al-Fatāt (The Young Lady), the same journal that carried the news of her nomination to the committee for the Chicago fair.41 In 1894, the women’s biographical dictionary al-Durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (the aforementioned Scattered Pearls, ed. Zaynab Fawwāz) featured two of her pieces in the introduction.42 In the same year, Azharī’s name also appeared in Jurjī Zaydān’s al-Hilāl, making her its first identifiable female contributor.43 Under her married name, she would go on to publish in some of the other major Arabic periodicals of the time, such as al-Ahrām, Lisān al-ḥāl, and Lubnān; in later years, she also wrote for Beirut’s Arabic-language Jewish newspaper al-ʽĀlam al-isrāʾīlī (L’univers israélite, 1921–1946). Additionally, in 1909, she published a short commentary in the Palestinian Hebrew-language periodical Ha-Tsvi.44 Sometime during those early years of the 1890s, Esther Azharī made the acquaintance of Shim‘on Moyal, a Jewish student from Jaffa who had also become active in Nahḍa circles and who was studying medicine in Beirut.45 Esther and Shim‘on were engaged in 1893 and married in 1894; the newlywed couple then moved to Istanbul while Shim‘on obtained his Ottoman medical license. In Istanbul, they renewed their friendship with the famous Egyptian nationalist writer and orator ʽAbdāllah al-Nadīm (1845–1896), who, in turn, introduced them to the figurehead of the Islamic reform movement, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1839–1897).46 The childless and ailing al-Nadīm asked the Moyals to name their first-born son for him, a request they honored. In 1896, Shim‘on received his medical license; after a number of peripatetic years in Safad, Tiberias, and Beirut, the Moyal family resettled once again in

Partitioned pasts 137 Cairo in 1899, joining the large community of Syrian intellectuals and writers who had migrated there.47 That same year, Esther, now a young mother, founded her own journal, the bi-monthly al-ʽĀʾila (The Family), which appeared as an Arabic women’s journal (majalla) through 1902 and was briefly revived as a newspaper (jarīda) in 1904. It was widely circulated both within Egypt and beyond, and is noted by Fīlīb dī Ṭarrāzī in his magisterial History of Arab Journalism, where he refers to Moyal as one of the best women journalists of her age.48 In its first year, al-ʽĀʾila was reviewed favorably by both al-Hilāl and alMuqtaṭaf.49 In its opening issue (1 May 1899), Moyal presents the journal as a conduit of communication for educated women in Egypt and Syria, a “link of literary camaraderie” (rābiṭat iʾtilāf adabī) for discussion of matters “related to the family and society.”50 As for the journal’s content, Moyal adds that it will be divided into three parts: a “literary-scientific section” featuring articles by Eastern writers and translations of writing by women from the West (ʽālimāt algharb); a “family-oriented section” with advice on child rearing and household management; and finally, a section devoted to “humor and entertainment.”51 Contributing writers during the first year included a number of men, notably the Syrian Christian author Niqūlā Ḥaddād, as well as Shim‘on Moyal. Issues from the first year focused primarily on questions of maternal-child relations, health, hygiene, nursing, and education (for children of both sexes). Yet in addition to articles on domestic and literary topics, Moyal also printed lengthy features on world affairs, which was atypical of women’s publications at that time.52 Furthermore, while it was aimed at a general Arab readership, the paper occasionally discussed Jewish matters. For instance, in an August 1904 edition, Moyal praises a new history of the Jewish people in Arabic written by a Christian, Shahīn bek Makāriyūs,53 and defends Makāriyūs against his detractors, arguing that anyone who had written such a laudable book could harbor no ill will toward the “Israelite nation” (which she calls al-umma al-isrāʾīliyya).54 In its 1899 review of the first issue, al-Muqtaṭaf also notes that Moyal quotes Rabbi Akiba (the famous first- and second-century Palestinian rabbi and legal authority, considered the “father” of rabbinic Judaism) on breastfeeding, as saying that the mother who declines to nurse her own child is no better than a barren woman.55 Alongside journalism, literary translation constituted a major facet of the Nahḍa project. Translations of European belles-lettres into Arabic enriched the language, infused modern Arabic thought with European political and social theory, and familiarized Arabic-language readers with the genres of the short story and novel. Moyal was probably the most prolific female French–Arabic translator of her time, with more than a dozen titles to her credit, including one or more novels by Zola.56 In a note appended to one of her translated novels, Moyal describes her own philosophy of translation into Arabic: “We are of the school of those who try to bring the written language close to the spoken language.”57 She was keenly aware of the political as well as cultural implications of translation; in an article in al-ʽĀʾila called “The Eastern Renaissance,” she called for the translation of recent Arabic writings to European languages, citing

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the one-sided transmission of European ideas into Arabic.58 Additionally, Moyal translated numerous short dramas from French to Arabic to be staged at schools, and in particular at the Beirut Jewish school Tif ’eret Isra’el (known in Arabic as al-Madrasa al-waṭaniyya al-isrāʾīliyya or the National Jewish School).59 As of 1944, according to Yehoshu‘a, those plays were still being performed widely in schools in Palestine.60 Not long after the Young Turk Revolution, the Moyals moved to Jaffa in 1908 or 1909, bringing us back to the moment of the Arab Jewish literary soirée. There the couple became active in Ottomanism and Sephardi Zionism. Shim‘on joined the Committee of Union and Progress, and in alliance with a group of other Palestinian Sephardi intellectuals,61 he and Esther sought to promote their vision of a Jewish civic Ottomanism. In the wake of the failed counter-revolution of 1909, Shim‘on established the National Israelite Society in Jaffa to defend the Ottoman constitution “from internal threat and betrayal.”62 Around the same time, the Moyals began monitoring what they perceived as anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism (often conflating the two) in the local Arabic press.63 In 1912, in collaboration with their aforementioned friend Nissim Malūl (another politically active Palestinian Jewish writer of Arabic), the Moyals founded two organizations to raise funds for the establishment of a Jewish printing press in Arabic. The press would enable them to counter attacks on Zionism in the Christian and Muslim Arabic presses and to disseminate their vision of a “shared homeland” within an Ottoman framework for all residents of Palestine.64 In the meantime, Esther continued contributing articles to the Arabic press, founded another women’s organization, and edited a new Jaffa-based Arabic newspaper called al-Akhbār (News). Finally, with Esther’s assistance, in 1914 Shim‘on founded Ṣawt al-ʽuthmāniyya (The Voice of Ottomanism), the society’s long-awaited Jewish newspaper in Arabic, to which both Esther and their son ʽAbdallāh Nadīm were regular contributors.65 The newspaper, however, was to meet an early demise, shuttered by the Ottoman authorities at the beginning of the First World War. In early 1913, Shim‘on had been appointed a medical officer in Ramla and Lydda, where he also practiced as a local doctor; not long after, in 1915, tragedy struck when he died in the war. Following Shim‘on’s untimely death, the widowed Esther left for Marseilles, where she may have had family members,66 and returned to Jaffa some decades later, probably fleeing the Nazi takeover of Europe. There is a frustrating dearth of information on Moyal’s life after her departure from Jaffa; we hear nothing more until Yehoshu‘a’s bleak report of his visit to the aged writer in 1944. What we know, however, is during her sojourn in Marseilles, her old Palestinian intellectual and social milieu had all but evaporated, its Arabic language-based pluralism undermined by an increasingly bitter Arabic–Hebrew divide. That, after returning, Moyal chose to live in an Arab neighborhood of Jaffa (as opposed to one of the adjacent Jewish neighborhoods of Tel Aviv) is suggestive. Her choice may have stemmed from a sense of discomfort in Hebrew society, a lack of funds, or any number of reasons. But why she was

Partitioned pasts 139 left alone and impoverished remains a mystery: where in this picture was her son ʽAbdallāh (‘Ovadia) Nadīm? While he, like his parents, obtained his education in Beirut (at the American University), it appears that in Esther’s absence he remained in Palestine, where he tried his own hand at poetry, publishing collections in Arabic, Hebrew, and French.67 Although the poetry itself is not of a particularly high quality, it evinces a striking cultural mobility. The younger Moyal moves freely not only between languages but also between the AraboIslamic cultural frame of reference characterizing his 1934 Arabic collection and the contemporary proto-Israeli cultural idiom of his 1945 Hebrew collection – a linguistic and cultural change of register that itself seems to adumbrate the story of Arab Jews in post-1936 Palestine. Indeed, in only a decade or so, ʽAbdallāh/ Ovadia’s poetic focus shifted from continuing his parents’ increasingly tenuous cultural project (his Arabic collection contains, inter alia, a versified biography of Maimonides) to penning banal Hebrew verses about hackneyed topics such as the four seasons and the marvels of art. Whether the younger Moyal could not or did not wish to assist his mother in her final years remains a question for further investigation. Esther’s story is thus incomplete, with many lingering questions. The ongoing process of recovery may gradually close those gaps. In the meantime, we can reconstruct a kaleidoscopic image of Moyal as a politically and socially engaged intellectual through her extant writings in numerous arenas of activity. In the interest of forming a nuanced portrait of a nineteenth-century Arab Jewish intellectual, the remainder of this chapter is devoted to Moyal’s authorial voice. My readings draw out her multiple ideological commitments and trace the rhetorical strategies through which she left her mark on modern Arabic writing. As a whole, they aim to convey how Esther Moyal saw her own place in the world through the constellation of positions unique to her as an Arab Jewish woman writer.

An enlightenment devotee Moyal’s entries for the introduction to the Arab women’s biographical dictionary Scattered Pearls, which Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a had mentioned in his investigative report, seem to capture the Zeitgeist of the Nahḍa. The first and longer of the two essays expresses Moyal’s historically informed perspective on the role of the modern intellectual. Titled “The Beneficence of the Writer,” it is an impassioned enumeration of the modern intellectual’s rights and obligations in advancing knowledge and educating the public. In particular, Moyal celebrates the role of publishing, which she sees as a powerful force for the dissemination of knowledge beyond elites and, as follows, for the democratization of learning: [The printed book] has enabled students to dispense of their professors; how many people whose circumstances prevent them from attending school have found this professor calling in his resounding voice: Come o ye lovers of knowledge and desirers of progress, for I will welcome you warmly and

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Like other writers of her time, Moyal subscribed wholeheartedly to the ideal of progress, especially as manifested in intellectual freedom. Recalling the story of Galileo, who spent much of his later life under house arrest for his support of Copernican theory, she says we must thank God, may He be exalted, that we find ourselves in the Hamidian era [al-ʽaṣr al-ḥamīdī], crown of eras past, in which a large arena has been opened for the sages [ʽulamāʾ] to disseminate their truths among peoples; for this has been the biggest ally in the advancement of knowledge and the greatest aid to its promulgation.69 A few lines later, she recalls how Milton, who supported Galileo, wrote in his A Defence of the People of England that, when his doctor warned him to desist from writing lest he go blind, he replied that he considered blindness a lesser evil than silence. By way of conclusion, Moyal calls upon the writer to expose the truth at all costs and to act as a social reformer, while warning that change cannot be imposed from above, but must be introduced through compassionate edification. In this exposition of the benevolent intellectual, Moyal reveals her idealism and the sense of purpose that would infuse her own writing over the next two decades.

Arab feminism Above all, Moyal was a passionate advocate of women’s rights and, in particular, of the need to advance the status of women in the East. Qāsim Amīn’s classic Taḥrīr al-marʾa (The Liberation of Women), often credited with sparking the women’s movement in Egypt, appeared only in 1899; Moyal rose on the crest of the first wave of Arab feminism that arose in the 1880s, a grassroots movement of Syrian and Egyptian women intellectuals who believed that women had the right to education in order to enhance their capabilities as household managers and as the primary educators of their sons.70 The letter Moyal wrote to al-Hilāl appeared in a series of readers’ letters the journal published between January and May of 1894, part of a broader debate in the Arab press on the “abilities” of women and the degree or kind of “equality” those abilities conferred upon them. As Moyal’s letter is an excellent example both of the arguments made by the first wave of Arab feminists and of her own colorful writing style, I have included it here nearly in full: I read the serial article included in your esteemed periodical . . . signed by Dr. Amīn Effendi Khūrī; upon reaching the end, I realized it had been written in response to an earlier article on the same subject, and the following Arabic proverb came to mind: muḥtaris min ghayrihi wa-huwa hāris

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[the pot calling the kettle black]. This was because the esteemed doctor spared no expense in rebuking his opponent and heaping invective upon him for his flimsy arguments and weak reasoning, even though he himself brought forth arguments which, if anything, were even weaker . . . I don’t know how it could be that the esteemed doctor places our gender on a par with horses, donkeys, and dogs. How much more appropriate it would have been had he left the birds of his pen in the cages of nightingales, canaries, and parrots. In all truth, I am utterly flabbergasted and astonished. I dispute his claim that the mind [ʽaql] of women is confined within a narrow circle. I don’t believe that a seamstress other than his own mother sewed him the festive garment he wore to celebrate his weaning from milk on the day that this selfsame mother also prepared the first solid food he tasted. However I turn my glance to the distinguished ladies [al-sayyidāt wa-lsāʾidāt] who have honored me with their affection, I don’t see the respected doctor’s judgment applying to them. How often have I attended their meetings and witnessed their versatility in subjects ranging from the scientific to the religious and the philosophical. And how often have disputants competed before me, one of them belonging to the gender of the esteemed doctor and the other one to our weak gender, that which is incapable of obtaining the doctor’s regard; proofs were exchanged, and the debaters moved from one topic to the other, and the woman was the grace of the debate, if we don’t say the “winner” . . . Furthermore, I remind the esteemed doctor that women have not entered the door of scholarship and belles-lettres until recently due not to any shortcomings of their own but rather because of the strong sex’s disdain for them. The mocking of educated women by the famous French poet Molière and others suffices as a just witness to my words and supports my claims. In closing, I say that the woman who spends some small change on ink and paper, and spends her free time reading and writing and does not kill it with idle chatter, knows quite well how to manage her household and raise her children with the moderation, economy, and wisdom that assure both the happiness of her children and richness of her afterlife.72 While her passion for the women’s cause is spelled out in unequivocal terms, it is ultimately Moyal’s personality that gives life to her argument. From the imaginative invocation of her opponent’s mother’s versatility and skill in the household to the rather poignant description of her colleagues’ intellectual versatility and adroitness (tafannun) in the debate room – a scene she describes with palpable affection – Moyal draws a clear line of female competence and aptitude. Indeed, she seems to restore the original connotation of mastery to the idiomatic phrase al-sayyidāt wa-l-sāʾidāt (distinguished ladies).73 The letter’s creative flourishes (Moyal seems not to miss any variety of caged bird in her metaphor) and feisty elegance exemplify her writerly personality and her skill as an Arabic rhetorician.

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Moyal continued to write on women’s issues in a wide variety of venues, especially her own newspaper, al-ʽĀʾila. In the opening section of the newspaper, she puts forth the following three axioms: 1 2 3

Woman is a moral being, possessor of a free will and active conscience [kāʾin adabī dhū irāda ḥurra wa-ḍamīr ḥayy]. She is equal to man and the state of her existence is subject to his direction [hiya musāwiya li-l-rajul ḥālat kawniha taḥt idāratihi]. Woman has special properties [khuwāṣ] not found in man, and if he is superior to her in bodily strength and in willpower, then she is superior to him in the refinement of her feelings and the precision of her view; given the means of obtaining an education, she would match him in taste and in morals.74

In an August 1899 article for her newspaper on “Why We Fail Where the Westerner Succeeds,” Moyal notes as one cause “the repression [inḥiṭāṭ] of women in our societal institutions,” whereas, by contrast, “the success of the foreigner stems from the just treatment [inṣāf] of their women.” Citing Qāsim Amīn, she repeats his argument that, as women constitute half (or more) of the people and are formative influences on the next generation, woman’s character ultimately determines that of the entire people – an argument that Moyal had also made a few months earlier in the opening paragraph of her newspaper’s inaugural issue.75 (Here, however, she adds that this factor alone would not suffice to explain the chasm between the Easterner and the Westerner of comparable qualifications.) Within a decade of that 1899 article, Moyal would take her argument for the advancement of women well beyond the household domain. Between 1909 and 1912, the years following her move to Jaffa, she contributed some five articles to al-Ḥasnāʾ (La Belle), a women’s journal published in Beirut by Jurjī Niqūlā Bāz.76 By this time, she was insisting that women had the right as well as the innate ability to contribute to public culture and to the economy; that their contribution was essential to the progress of the nation (and region); and that the occlusion of women from public life was in fact one of the primary obstacles to progress in the East. The question of men and women’s roles in the workplace and economy were a topic of heated discussion in the Arabic journals of the period.77 Although the arguments voiced by Moyal eventually became widespread, at the time most proponents of women’s rights viewed women’s work outside the home as unnecessary (except in the case of unsupported women of the lower classes) and as potentially threatening to familial harmony and the social order.78 However, Moyal’s views on work were shared by a small number of other Arab women feminists of the time, such as Bāḥithat al-Bādiya.79 In a 1911 graduation speech delivered at the “American College for Girls”80 and printed in al-Ḥasnāʾ, Moyal speaks with clarity and vigor about the challenges facing women in the Arab East and, in particular, about the need for educational opportunities comparable to those available to women in the West. Here Moyal couches her message not in terms of the needs of the family but in salient

Partitioned pasts 143 terms of the needs of society, nation, and region, arguing that the lowly status of women is impinging on the progress of the East and holding it back in its struggle with Western ascendancy. From the first paragraph of this speech, Moyal invokes the idea of the nation, telling the college graduates that through their educational accomplishments they will “spread the seeds of true civilization and correct upbringing all throughout this beloved homeland.”81 Mincing no words, she defends women’s right to work: You must have heard the lot of those degenerates, may God blot out their hearts, saying that there is no use educating a woman and that every dirham spent toward those ends goes to waste because our Eastern customs have already decided that she be a housewife, and that no learning [kasb] will move her brains, and no art [fann] will refine her mental faculties, or will expand the scope of her imagination, as [they would] for men, who have been alone in the arts and industries and the sole working members of our Eastern societal institutions and organizations. Not at all, o dear ones!82 The essay continues in this vein, telling the graduates that they will fulfill their role in founding an “Eastern Arab civilization in which woman will be the equal partner of man” and “whose foundation is the inherited virtues [of the past] and whose pillars are love of work and excellence in it.”83 To emphasize the importance of personal initiative in creating this new society, Moyal invokes a Koranic verse, “God does not change a people’s status until they change their own disposition.”84 “How much longer,” she asks, “will we have to beg to work and knock on the doors of labor which would bring money to flow into our hands; money being the foundation of modern culture and the pillar of contemporary civilization?”85 Elsewhere, she stresses the importance of financial independence for women who are their family’s sole source of support. The essay strikes a particularly bold note when Moyal touches upon men’s responses to women’s achievements. She tells the girls that, by distinguishing themselves in medicine, law, the sciences, music, and the arts, European women have “earned themselves a lofty place among their countrymen,” but the recognition of women’s capabilities has not tended to please men; she quotes Madame de Staël in her novel Corinne (1807) to the effect that men, even the most refined and excellent among them, cannot help but feel threatened in the presence of an intelligent woman.86 Later in the speech, Moyal refers to her own familial distribution of power and resources, explaining that while she devotes all her heart, soul, and mental energies to her family, her husband can simply provide the family with material support and is free to exert all his energy and talent in pursuit of power and authority.87 This latter point resonates with a statement in an earlier article from 1910, where she declares, “Woman was created to live for others, not for herself.”88 Yet what is perhaps most intriguing about this essay is the Arab nationalist sentiment that appears in the conclusion, a rousing exhortation to the young graduates invoking fidelity to the Arab East, its history, and traditions:

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L. Levy You all know, o dear ones, that you are Arab Syrians and that your knowledge of English or French does not make you Englishwomen or Frenchwomen; and that no matter how much any of you might try to hide her nationality, her face will betray her, revealing her features. Her blood will bear witness against her and her manners will expose her. And lest she forget all this, the Western woman will remind her in how she treats her, in her arrogance and condescension toward her, since the Arab woman will remain [strange] to her, as in the words of the poet: The dwellings of the people are good among dwellings As spring is good among seasons But the young Arab man among them is strange Of face, of hand, tongue, and reason.89 Let us desist from imitating the Westerners in everything they do for better or for worse; and let us renew our efforts to learn our language and expressions [li-dars lughatina wa-tahdhīb ʽibārātina] when conversing; and to endear it to our children, and fill them with desire for memorizing the sayings of our poets and the proverbs of our sages.90 . . . Come then, let us establish an Eastern Arab civilization in which women contribute half the effort for its advancement and glorification in the eyes of the civilized peoples, who count us among the ranks of the Indians and Chinese when they mention the half-savage peoples – and why is that, if not because we do not respect ourselves and thus seem insignificant to others; for man, by nature, does not respect one who does not know his own worth.91

These closing lines raise some questions about the epistemology of the Nahḍa as an autochthonous movement of self-definition responding to the rise of Western hegemony. The conflicted perception of self and other, refracted through such ideologically determined, even axiomatic binarisms as “civilized” and “savage,” is manifest throughout Moyal’s rhetoric here and elsewhere (indeed, references to “savage” peoples appear frequently throughout Nahḍa discourse as early as in Rifāʽa Rāfiʽ al-Ṭahṭāwī’s classic 1834 travelogue Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ bārīz).92 On the one hand, Moyal encourages the young female graduates to emulate European women’s achievements in the arts, sciences, and business. On the other hand, she explicitly tells them not to imitate European women’s mannerisms and culture, and pointedly reminds them that European women view Arab women as inferiors. She quotes a French woman novelist (and as we have seen, her writings are peppered with references to European writers such as Milton and Molière), and yet she enjoins her audience not to be seduced by their knowledge of English and French. Her deployment of European writers within a speech that, politically at least, might be characterized as anti-Western (or perhaps, more accurately, as anti-imperialist) pinpoints the dilemma of the modern Arab intellectual. One might say that Moyal evokes them to make her writing appear learned, to lend it what Bourdieu would call “symbolic capital”93

Partitioned pasts 145 in a market where modern knowledge was still equated with Europe. On the other hand, it could also be argued that it was precisely through such appropriation of these texts that Arab and other non-Western intellectuals were making the self-purported “universal” character of enlightenment synonymous with “global,” as opposed to “European.” Or, to put it another way: native intellectuals were (re)staging modernity by claiming proprietorship over what they saw as universal Enlightenment values in the vein of Kant, and thus felt at complete liberty to call upon the language of the universal to expose Europe’s hypocrisies, its betrayal of those values.94 Ultimately, however, Moyal, like other intellectuals of her time, does not find a consistent path out of the double-bind created by the Western origins of these “universal” values of modernity, which stick to them as a stubbornly indelible trace. Moyal’s mediation of modern ideals of gender equality and her attempts to reconcile them with regional fidelity and cultural “authenticity” thus create a kind of zigzagging effect throughout the speech. That in her closing lines about the importance of self-esteem she makes recourse to the language of colonialism in a way that seems to support its underlying precepts only demonstrates the confusion that underscores her writing and, indeed, the discourse of the Nahḍa as a whole: even while decrying the European attitude of superiority, she appeals to the girls to prove that Arab civilization is above the ranks of the (“half-savage”) Indian and Chinese. Distinguishing oneself from the unenlightened/uncivilized/premodern, it seems here, is a necessary component of the discursive production of the self as an enlightened, civilized, modern subject. In other words, “being enlightened” is not about dismantling the hierarchy per se, but about (re)asserting one’s place within it.

The Dreyfus affair In 1894, the Dreyfus affair erupted in France when Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army captain, was charged with passing state secrets to Germany. Dreyfus was hastily court-martialed, convicted of high treason, and exiled for life, but maintained his innocence; within a few years, evidence supporting a military cover-up began to surface, sparking a massive public controversy about French democracy and anti-Semitism.95 While the affair shook France to its core and raised a maelstrom in the European press, it initially attracted little notice in the Arab world. Toward 1896, as public doubts intensified concerning France’s handling of the case, it began receiving more coverage in the Arabic press. The Arabic periodicals reported on important aspects of the case, the heated debates in the French parliament, and the pro- and anti-Dreyfus camps in the French public and press; the extent and tone of coverage reflected the newspapers’ political orientations and social outlooks, particularly as manifested in their attitude toward Jews.96 In 1898, Émile Zola (1840–1902) famously rose to Dreyfus’s defense in his open letter to the president of the Republic, “J’Accuse!”,97 unleashing the chain of events that would eventually lead to the fall of the rightist government and the exoneration of Dreyfus.98 A number of Arabic papers reprinted “J’Accuse!” and reported on the uproar raised by Dreyfus’s detractors.

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For the Arab world, as elsewhere, the Dreyfus affair became a defining moment in the development of modern journalism, one in which the newspaper emerged as a tool of social and political critique, an arena for exposing corruption and demanding reform.99 As the sole expression of an Arab Jewish perspective, Moyal’s writings on the Dreyfus affair offer us a unique window onto its relevance to non-European Jewry as well as to the Arabic reading public. Her passionate engagement with the issue led to a deep and abiding interest in Zola and his work, some of whose novels she later translated.100 Indeed, the issue would serve as inspiration for Moyal’s only (extant) booklength work: an Arabic-language biography of Zola, which she published in 1903. In the introduction, she characterizes her motivation for compiling the biography as a direct response to the Dreyfus affair and to its treatment in the Arabic press.101 Moyal’s discussion of this watershed event reveals not only how deeply invested she was in setting the record straight for readers of Arabic, but how profoundly immersed she was in Islamic culture. If the introduction tells us explicitly about Dreyfus and Zola’s role in his defense, implicitly it tells us about Moyal’s navigation of her cultural field, hinting at an Arab Jewish discursive subjectivity formulated largely through the idioms and idiolect of the turāth, or Islamic tradition: Zola has died, and his death was announced to the people the morning after they read his book. That book, free of doubt, [was] as a guidance to the judiciary and a light revealing truth and dispelling falsehood [dhālik al-kitāb lā rayba fī-hi hudan li-l-qaḍāʾ wa-nūr aẓhar al-haqq fa-azhaq al-bāṭil]. The morning after, his speech directed to the President of the French Republic was published, decrying the injustice of Dreyfus’s judges and their unjust verdict against him as well as the bias of the judges in the trial of Esterhazy, the wily traitor, and how they trampled on the law to exonerate him. The morning after, Zola’s pen struck a blow against the sword and nicked it, and assaulted the officers with a reed pen sharper than their blades and an eloquence that shattered their edifices. Zola has died, and when his death was announced to the people, it split France into two halves: one half that viewed justice as sacrosanct and rose to its defense, and one half that preferred to let the innocent be trampled by army boots; and the rest is history [fa-kān mā kān].102 In this section, Moyal’s flexible use of allusion enables her to voice her commitments in a culturally persuasive idiom. The line “that book, free of doubt, was a guide to judgment” (i.e., to the judiciary, law, or justice) quotes from “Sūrat albaqara” (The Cow), the second chapter of the Koran.103 The next line, “nūr aẓhar al-haqq fa-azhaq al-bāṭil,” “a light revealing truth and dispelling falsehood,” alludes to another chapter of the Koran entitled “Banū Isrāʾīl” or “alIsrāʾ” (The Children of Israel).104 The interpolation of Koranic quotations into one’s Arabic prose was considered a mark of style. Moyal, moreover, continues

Partitioned pasts 147 her passionate tribute to Zola by quoting from a rithāʾ (elegiac poem) by alMutanabbī, beginning with the lines, “They carried him out [on a bier] and every mourner [marching] behind him/swooned as did Moses when Sinai was crushed.”105 These brushstrokes attest to Moyal’s training, revealing her mastery of both language and style and her familiarity with the classical Arabic canon. To be sure, Christian writers of Arabic such as Buṭrus al-Bustānī had used Islamic references as, for example, a means of displaying the pluralistic nature of patriotic reform.106 As Stephen Sheehi writes concerning al-Yāzijī and alShidyāq, “the method by which Christian Arabs could claim membership in their communal history was to recognize Islam as a cultural phenomenon, one in which they shared and to which they had contributed.”107 Like them, Moyal, a non-Muslim, could freely deploy Islamic cultural references to foster a sense of an interpretive community with her largely Muslim readership, thereby drawing them into her text and her arguments. Moyal’s innovation here is thus not simply the utilization of Islamic material, but her deliberate selection of shared symbols or moments within Islamic and Jewish cultures, such as Moses at Sinai or the verse from “Banū Isrāʾīl.” It seems, in other words, that she employs certain Islamic intertexts not only to enhance the rhetorical appeal of her defense of Dreyfus, but to subtly remind her readers of their shared Judeo-Islamic heritage. The book closes with a report on responses to Zola’s death. In a section devoted to the reaction of Jewish communities worldwide, Moyal notes that the affair “was in actuality not the case of one man but of the entire Jewish people” (qaḍīyat alyahūd ajmaʽ) and part of a greater struggle against clerical prejudice and injustice. This section also elicits a tangential but intriguing succession of references to various European Zionist organizations and activities, indicating that Moyal was closely following developments in this area as early as the turn of the century. Concerning Jewish communities outside Europe, Moyal notes that the community of Alexandria held a gathering in which speeches were made and plans for a commemoration aired, and that the “Israelites of Palestine” had begun establishing a public library in Zola’s name.108 The book’s epilogue again shifts its focus from Zola to Dreyfus, updating readers on the latest in his case (at the time of publication, he had not yet been acquitted) and quoting Dreyfus on developments in his defense. In its September 1903 review of her book, al-Muqtaṭaf praised Moyal’s introduction, yet highlighted (and marveled at) the fact that its author was not only a woman, but a Jewish one at that; it expressed the hope that Moyal’s book was a sign that Arabic literature might again be indebted to the likes of al-Samawʾāl, the legendary pre-Islamic Jewish poet.109 The surprise registered by al-Muqtaṭaf suggests that, although Moyal fit the profile of the first generation of modern Arab women writers in all other ways,110 her Jewishness was perceived even in its own time as an exceptional factor that warranted notice and commentary.

“Sephardi Zionism,” Ottomanism, and Easternism One of the most intriguing positions to emerge from Moyal’s writing is a strident identification with the Arab East in terms that seem to anticipate Arab nationalism

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(such as we glimpsed at the end of her 1911 speech to the graduates of the American Girls’ School in Beirut), coterminous with her support for Jewish settlement in Palestine during the early (and loosely defined) stages of Zionism. For Moyal, as for other Arab Jewish intellectuals of the period, there was no inherent contradiction between the two positions. Rather, swept up in the post-CUP Zeitgeist of liberation and independence, Moyal would probably have seen both movements as manifestations of the same basic principle of self-determination.111 In Jaffa, as noted earlier, the Moyals belonged to a group of Palestinian Sephardim who, while in favor of Zionist settlement in Palestine, advocated an Arabic linguistic and cultural orientation for Palestinian Jewry and promoted cooperation with Palestinian Muslim and Christian Arabs. While the members of this group internalized the argument that Zionist settlement brought economic and technological advances to Palestine, they diverged from mainstream Ashkenazi Zionism in their emphasis on the role such progress would play in the imagined “shared” homeland, which stressed common ownership and responsibility between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.112 Hence it was not implausible that, even as she enumerated the benefits that Zionist settlement would bring to Palestine, Moyal should also agitate for Arab resistance to the expansionist designs of the West. In 1912, al-Hasnāʾ printed another lengthy speech that Moyal had given at a festive meeting for a charitable association, Jamʽiyyat Shams al-Birr (The Sun of Charity). Entitled “Nahḍatunā” (Our Renaissance), the speech’s opening lines leave no doubt as to its tenor: As we say, the matter has been settled and the pen has run dry. It has been decreed upon our East that it be a willing tool in the hand of the West, which does with it as it pleases, and plays with it and its inhabitants as it wishes, and treats it as a king treats all he rules over. Its lands are being divided in violation of all international laws, making a mockery of all the peace treaties, for instance whenever any [European] state wishes to expand its territorial domain. Then [the West] would attack us with horses and men and pillage our lands, spreading destruction and devastation all throughout. And it looks at us with the gaze of the master at his slave, or of the almighty tyrant at a lowly beast before him. For circumstances [al-ayām] allowed one to humiliate the other, and fate, [al-dahr], to enslave him.113 The speech is a call to act on a developmental asymmetry with Europe. It charges Arab Easterners with failure to recognize the gravity of their situation; Arabs must realize that major economic, political, and cultural reforms are needed to curb or counter European expansion into Arab lands. Moyal cautions her audience that if resources become scarce and people are forced to leave the region, it will be because of collective inaction and irresponsibility, and suggests that Arabs look to nations such as Japan, France, Germany, and Sweden that have managed to unify, modernize, and protect their interests. The speech critiques the general condition of the Arab East, ranging from the miserable status of productivity in agriculture and industry to the absence of integrity and professionalism in Arabic journalism:

Partitioned pasts 149 As for our newspapers, most are interested only in trivialities and vanities, and the eloquence of their writers appears only when they are cursing. [The newspapers] have not made freedom and equality and fraternity their motto; rather, they have brought about discord and disunity while we are in desperate need of something to unite our hearts and bring them together under the banner of justice. . . . Is it not a disgrace that [the newspapers] kept their readers occupied for two months with the relative merits of the hat versus the tarbūsh, at a time when Italy was [preparing for war] in Tripolitania?114 Moyal proceeds to call for unity and solidarity among Arabs. Her speech addresses infrastructure development and trade expansion, discussing economic imbalances (imports and exports, and the need to revitalize exports), agricultural development, and gender equality. All of these imperatives, moreover, are framed within the overarching theme of the arrival of modernity and its ensuing demands: “Is it not incumbent upon us, we being the children of this age, the age of electricity and airplanes that laughs at remoteness and makes a mockery of distance, to take from patriotic love of the homeland a strong push toward the advancement of its interests over all others?”115 In the midst of all this rhetoric, even as the speech continues to lambaste European expansionism and to preach Arab unity, Moyal alludes to Zionist settlement as a positive example of the kind of change so urgently needed: And look at those farmers [fallāḥīn], among whom are those who came to our country [bilādinā] decades ago and settled [wa-istaʽmarū] in the cities of Haifa and Jaffa in arid plains, and through their toil, activity, and unity, turned them into green gardens to please the eye and gladden the mind, and found in them a wholesome life and a good living, while the indigenous peasant [fallāḥuhā al-waṭanī], in his poverty, uses the land for his mattress and the sky for his blanket.116 And again, in a section discussing agricultural development, Moyal mentions the high yield achieved through the superior farming techniques practiced by the Zionists: Is it not our duty to replace old agriculture, which is one of the pillars of our wealth, with new agriculture based on sound science, and send the school to the farmer whose circumstances prevent him from going out to it; and replace his old tools with new ones and introduce to him chemical fertilizers that can give him thirty-seven tons for every ton [ghilla] of crops, as is the average harvest in the modern settlements of Palestine [mustaʽmarāt Filasṭīn al-hadītha]?117 Two points from these passages bear mention. First, Moyal chooses to weave in references to Zionist settlement in as neutral a manner as possible, never mentioning the terms “Jewish” or “Zionist” in alluding to the new agricultural settlements.

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Second, while these references to the colonists’ modern agricultural techniques do implicitly serve to justify Zionist settlement, Moyal mentions them not to promote Zionism but to argue for the betterment of the indigenous fallāḥīn (farmers), and for that of the region as a whole. Indeed, in both excerpts, Moyal’s argument is that the peasants deserve access to the same resources and technology enjoyed by the settlers, in order to alleviate their misery. These choices suggest that Moyal genuinely believed that Zionist settlements benefited Palestine and the region, but that for the purposes of this speech, she may have wanted to distance them from the larger, controversial political movement to which they were intrinsically connected. From Moyal’s potent rhetoric in her speeches, we see her as a passionate advocate of “Easternism” (whether in its Arabist, Ottomanist, or regionalist expression).118 In 1912, it was entirely possible and seemingly natural for an Arab Jewish intellectual to espouse such viewpoints, even if he or she were also in favor of European Jewish settlement in Palestine – an orientation that would continue to be voiced decades later in the pages of the regional Arabic-language Jewish press.119

The partitioning of history In this relatively short span of time – 1893 to 1914 – Esther Moyal advanced Arab feminism and Arab women’s writing; contributed directly to the growth of Arabic journalism and literature; defended her coreligionists through her publications in the Arabic press and her biography of Zola; and became a leader in both Palestinian Ottomanism and Sephardi Zionism. And while Moyal’s achievements are truly remarkable, there are other late nineteenth and early twentieth century Jewish writers whose intellectual and political activities also belie the claims that Arab Jews were apolitical, indifferent to Arabic culture, and living in a cloistered world largely untouched by modernity. Their engagements with the discourses of the Haskala and the Nahḍa reveal the fallacy of either dismissing non-European Jewish modernity or reducing it to the unidirectional influence of European Jewry upon stagnant, hermetic Middle Eastern Jewish communities. In particular, Moyal’s rhetorical strategies attest not only to how a late nineteenth century Jewish writer of Arabic might attempt to situate herself vis-à-vis the emerging Arab national consciousness, but also to the potentially intercultural way a Jewish writer could use the Arabic language itself, employing classical Arabic and Islamic terms of reference to articulate and formulate an Arab Jewish subjectivity. At the same time, Moyal’s writings give us an occasion to reconsider the complex, intersubjective relationship of European and AraboIslamic voices within her own textual stagings of modernity – pointing to the futility of isolating “European” from “Arab” modernity, and “Jewish” from all of the above. They illustrate some of the inherent contradictions within the Weltanschauung of the Nahḍa; yet they also reveal a coherent political orientation that would today seem not only surprising, but impossible. Esther Moyal’s fluency in both the language of al-Mutanabbī and the language of Molière; her intimate knowledge of the Koran; her passionate dedication to the causes of

Partitioned pasts 151 Arab women, of Dreyfus, of the future of the Arab East: all these cultural influences and ideological commitments merged seamlessly within her intellectual worldview. If she would not have forced a categorical separation of the ingredients that made her an integral thinker, writer, and individual engaged in the modern world, why should we? Let us now return to the contrast between the Purim soirée in 1909 and the heartbreaking scene described by Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a in 1944, which led to my question: What in the world happened to Esther Azharī Moyal? Esther Azharī was born into one world, that of the multiethnic Ottoman Levant, and died in another, that of the Jewish state-in-becoming on the very cusp of independence. The Moyals’ vision of ha-moledet ha-meshutefet, the shared Arab Jewish homeland, had failed, and Palestine was to be split by partition. Yet in answering my question, I suggest it is not so much the violence of history as the violence of historiography that we consider. In the final analysis, it was not only the land that was partitioned, but the past.120 The world into which Esther Moyal was born, educated, and to which she made her contributions – a world that encompassed both the Nahḍa in Beirut, Istanbul, and Cairo and the mixed Arabic– Hebrew milieu of Jaffa – was to be split into a history of “the Arabs” and a history of “the Jews,” each ethnically cleansed of the hybrid figure of the Arab Jew. In what may be read as an act of involuntary symbolism, Esther Azharī Moyal died in 1948, the very year of Israel’s independence and Palestine’s nakba: a coincidence that speaks her last, if silent, word.

Notes 1 All translations from the Arabic are mine. 2 Muʾtamar al-musāʽada al-nisāʾiyya (congress for the advancement of women); this may refer to the Association for the Advancement of Women which called a special meeting at the Columbian Exposition of women delegates from throughout the world. See Historical Account of the Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873–1893: Twenty-first Women’s Congress, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1893, p. 25. In any case, Nawfal refers here to one of the various committees involved in the organization of the World’s Congress of Representative Women to which Moyal was invited to represent Syria. See “Fī al-qism al-nisāʾī min maʽriḍ shīkāgū: intikhāb ʽaḍū sūrī li-muʾtamar al-nisāʾ” (About the Women’s Section of the Chicago Fair: The Nomination of a Syrian Member to the Women’s Conference), al-Fatāt 1, no. 2 (1 January 1893), pp. 64–5. See also Nawfal, “Al-Qism al-nisāʾī fī maʽriḍ shīkāgū” (The Women’s Section in the Chicago Fair), al-Fatāt 1, no. 1 (20 November 1892), pp. 37–8, where Nawfal mentions Esther Azharī along with Hanna Korany and Maryam Khālid as having already written about the women’s exhibit for Lisān alḥāl, al-Ahrām, and Lubnān. 3 Cited in Hanna Ram, Ha-yishuv ha-yehudi bi-yafo: mi-kehila sfaradit le-merkaz tsiyoni, 1839–1939 (The Jewish Community in Jaffa: From a Sephardic Community to a Zionist Center, 1839–1939), Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Karmel, 1996, p. 258. Ram attributes the article to Filasṭīn 38, but this is impossible as the newspaper Filasṭīn was first issued in 1911. However, Itzhak Bezalel cites a 1909 report of the same gathering in the Hebrew newspaper Ha-Tsvi. See Bezalel, Noladetem tsiyonim: hasefaradim be-erets yisra’el ba-tsiyonut u-va-teḥiyya ha-’ivrit ba-tekufa ha-’otmanit (You Were Born Zionists: The Sephardim in Eretz Israel in Zionism and the Hebrew

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L. Levy Revival during the Ottoman Period), Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 2007, pp. 174–5. In his 1946 article on Moyal, Jurjī Niqūlā Bāz notes that her speech on the participation of Jews in Arabic literature was published, but does not specify where or when; see J. N. Bāz, “Istīr Azharī Mūyāl,” al-ʽĀlam al-isrāʾīlī (L’univers israélite), year 9, no. 357–8, 12 April 1946, p. 10. The 1876 Ottoman constitution promising equality to all members of the Empire was revoked by the despotic ʽAbdülhamid II; in 1908 the Young Turks restored it. Because Purim falls in the spring, the soirée may also have taken place following the failure of the 1909 counter-revolution, which would have given Sephardi intellectuals yet more reason to celebrate. On the participation of Palestinian Sephardi intellectuals in Ottoman politics, see Michelle U. Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Ya‘akov (also Jacob) Yehoshu‘a (1905–1982), writing here under the pen name Yehoshu‘a ben Ḥanania, was the author of thirteen books about the Sephardi community in pre-First World War Jerusalem (in Hebrew) as well as a three-volume study of the Arabic press in Palestine from 1908 to 1948 (in Arabic). He is the father of the well-known Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua. For more on Scattered Pearls, see Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, especially pp. 1–34 (it was published in 1894, not in 1893 as Yehoshu‘a writes). See Zaynab Fawwāz (ed.), al-Durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (Scattered Pearls on the Generations of the Mistresses of Seclusion), 2 vols, Cairo/ Būlāq: al-Maṭbaʽa al-amīriyya, 1894–1895; reprint, Beirut: Manshūrāt Muḥammad ʽAlī Bayḍūn, Dār al-kutub al-ʽilmiyya, 1999. Although once a wealthy mixed Arab Jewish neighborhood, by this time Manshiyya was a slum with few Jewish residents. See Mark LeVine, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 118. Cf. Job 29: 2–3. Yehoshu‘a ben Ḥanania (Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a), “Ha-soferet Ester Moyal u-tkufata” (The Writer Esther Moyal and Her Times, Part One), Hed ha-mizraḥ (17 September 1944), pp. 17–18. I borrow the term “Sephardi Zionism” from Campos, who explains that, in the years leading up to the First World War, Sephardi intellectuals such as the Moyals and Nissim Malūl (another Arab Jewish writer of Arabic) advocated a “shared homeland” for Arabs and Jews within an Ottoman framework, an approach distinct from that of leading Ashkenazi Zionists. See Campos, Ottoman Brothers. Abigail Jacobson also claims that a reading of Sephardi vs. Ashkenazi Zionist newspapers yields “two attitudes to the national question in Palestine,” particularly as regards the Arab question. See A. Jacobson, “Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and the ‘Arab Question’ in pre-First World War Palestine: A Reading of Three Zionist Newspapers,” Middle Eastern Studies, 2003, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 105–30, 106. See also Abigail Jacobson, From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011. Cf. Stephen Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004, p. 196 and also Sheehi, “Arabic Literary-Scientific Journals: Precedence for Globalization and the Creation of Modernity,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 2005, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 438–48. Sheehi points out how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arab intellectuals, steeped as they were in this reigning epistemology, were often blind to the harbingers of modernity in their own societies. Additionally, some historians date the beginning of the Hebrew enlightenment to Prussian legislation in the late eighteenth century, such as Emperor Joseph II’s edict

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imposing German education on Jewish children. See Michael Meyer, “Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?” Judaism, 1975, vol. 24, pp. 329–38 and Arnold M. Eisen, “Rethinking Jewish Modernity,” Jewish Social Studies, Fall 1994, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–21. The Haskala’s temporal and spatial boundaries are typically delineated as follows: “It encompasses over 120 years (from around the 1770s to the 1890s), and a large number of Jewish communities, from London in the west, to Copenhagen in the north, to Vilna and St. Petersburg in the east.” See Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin, New Perspectives on the Haskalah, London and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001, p. 1. My dissertation, “Jewish Writers in the Arab East: Literature, History, and the Politics of Enlightenment, 1863–1914,” UC Berkeley, 2007, devotes two chapters to Arab Jewish writers in the Haskala. For more on Jewish literary modernity in the Arab world, see also Lital Levy, “Reorienting Hebrew Literary History: The View from the East,” Prooftexts 29, pp. 127–72. For instance, see Meyer, “Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?” and Paul R Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 4–5. Ammiel Alcalay, “Intellectual Life,” in Michael Menachem Laskier, Reeva Spector Simon, and Sara Reguer (eds), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 85–112, 85. On the AIU, see Aron Rodrigue, “From Millet to Minority,” in Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson (eds), Paths of Emancipation: Jews, State, and Citizenship, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 238–61; Aron Rodrigue, Jews and Muslims: Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Modern Times, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2003; and Zvi Yehuda, “Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change in the Educational Activity of the Alliance Israelite Universelle,” in Harvey Goldberg (ed.), Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 134–45. Some examples of the characterization of the AIU as the sole or principle progenitor of Middle Eastern Jewish cultural modernity can be found in Rodrigue, “From Millet to Minority,” p. 247; Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 177; and Jane Gerber, “The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa,” in Jack Werthheimer (ed.), The Modern Jewish Experience: A Reader’s Guide, New York: New York University Press, 1993, pp. 39–51, especially p. 43. Cf. Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840, 2nd ed., Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998; Eric Davis, Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1920–1941, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, especially Chapter 2. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement, London: H. Hamilton, 1938, p. 13; my emphasis. See Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, pp. 6–11 for a succinct review of trends in the historiography of Arab nationalism, beginning with Antonius. Stephen Sheehi aptly suggests that the value of Antonius’s book “should be found not in its trustworthiness as a secondary source but in its eloquence and clarity as a primary source” (Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, pp. 8–9). Cf. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983; A. A. Duri, The Historical Formation of the Arab Nation: A Study in Identity and Consciousness, trans. Lawrence I. Conrad, London: Croom Helm, 1987. Despite its flaws, Hourani’s is still considered the standard work on the Nahḍa. Other scholars have critiqued the Nahḍa as an enlightenment discourse; for example, see Aziz al-Azmeh, “The Discourse of Cultural

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Authenticity: Islamic Revivalism and Enlightenment Universalism,” in Islams and Modernities, London: Verso, 1996, pp. 80–100, especially pp. 82–3. 21 Indeed, in Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Jacob Landau writes: [V]ery few Jews actively joined the Egyptian nationalist movement. A notable exception was Jacob (James) Sanua, a journalist, writer, and playwright, who worked throughout his life for the cause of Egyptian nationalism. His activities, however, had so little Jewish content that they lie outside the scope of this book.

22

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See J. Landau, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, New York: New York University Press, 1969, p. 12. The sole exception is Shmuel Moreh and Philip Sadgrove, Jewish Contributions to Nineteenth-Century Arabic Theatre: Plays from Algeria and Syria, A Study and Texts. Journal of Semitic Studies 6, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, especially Chapter 1, “The Jewish Nahḍa (Renaissance) in the Middle East,” pp. 17–31. Unfortunately, this book, which contains a good deal of information on the topic, has not received much scholarly attention. Simply leafing through the pages of the early editions of al-Hilāl or al-Muqtaṭaf (by far the most widely circulated periodicals in the nineteenth-century Middle East) yields names of Jewish readers and contributors from the 1880s on. Some examples include Salmūn Zebulun Levi of Haifa; Zakī Kūhīn of Beirut and later Cairo; Yehuda Effendi Līfī (Levi) of Cairo; Meir Sinyūr (Senior) of Tanta; Asfīr al-Lāwī (Levi); Klīmān Mizraḥi of Cairo; Salīm Elijah Mann of Beirut (Mann also established a printing press in Beirut in 1902 and founded an Arabic-language Jewish newspaper in 1921); and David Yarḥī (author of a regular economic column in alHilāl beginning in September 1896). These are only a few examples of distinctly Jewish names, and there are far more many names that cannot be unequivocally determined as Jewish. Shmuel Moreh and Philip Sadgrove enumerate some seventeen other Egyptian, Syrian, and Tunisian Jewish authors of literary Arabic in the nineteenth century in addition to Ṣanūʽ (Moreh and Sadgrove, Jewish Contributions to Nineteenth-Century Arabic Theatre, pp. 29–31). Ṣanūʽ was on close terms with ʽAbduh and al-Afghānī in Egypt and later, in Paris; al-Afghānī was probably involved in the creation of Abū Naẓẓāra. Moyal was a member of ʽAbduh’s Jamʽiyyat al-taʾlīf wa-l-taqrīb (Association of Friendship and Understanding) in Beirut. In Cairo, around 1905, he collaborated with Jurjī Zaydān on an Arabic-language introduction to and elucidation of the Talmud. In 1911, he corresponded from Jaffa with Riḍā on the question of the Italian–Libyan war. Elaboration on the Moyals’ relationship to al-Nadīm follows. See, for instance, Salīm Zakī Kūhīn, “Safak al-dam ʽinda al-isrāʾīliyyīn” (Bloodletting Among the Jews), al-Muqtaṭaf 14 (1890), pp. 688–9, and Shim‘on Yūsuf Moyal, al-Talmūd: aṣluhu wa-tasalsuluhu wa-ādābuhu (secondarily titled The Talmud: Its Origins and its Morals), Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-ʽarab, 1909. Esther Moyal’s response to the Dreyfus affair will be discussed later in this chapter. See Justin McCarthy, “Jewish Population in the Late Ottoman Period,” in Avigdor Levy (ed.), The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994, pp. 375–94, especially pp. 382–5; Paul Dumont, “Jewish Communities in Turkey during the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century in Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle,” in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. 1, New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1982, pp. 209–42; and Tomer Levi, “Reshita shel ha-kehila ha-yehudit be-veyrut be-shalhey ha-tkufa ha-‘otmanit” (The Origins of the Jewish Community of Beirut at the End of the Ottoman Empire), Pe‘amim 94–5, 2003, pp. 181–209. The religious character of primary education in the Ottoman Empire meant that, traditionally, Jewish schoolchildren were not taught the fundamentals of classical

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Arabic. In the AIU schools, which became the dominant modern educational resource for Jews throughout the Empire, the language of instruction (with the exception of the Baghdad school) was French; the AIU strongly emphasized European languages to the detriment of Arabic. On the general communal/religious “compartmentalization” of socio-cultural life in the Empire, see Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 17, 38–9. A number of Jewish writers of Arabic (including Esther’s husband, Shim‘on Moyal) were graduates of Beirut’s only Arabic-language Jewish school, Tif ’eret Isra’el (al-Madrasa al-waṭaniyya alisrāʾīliyya); see also notes 45 and 59 below. On Ṣanūʽ, see Irene L. Gendzier, The Practical Visions of Yaʽqub Sanuʽ, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 15, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966; on “Egypt for the Egyptians,” see p. 74. Ṣanūʽ claims that the Khedive dubbed him “Molière of Egypt,” and he subsequently adopted the title (see Gendzier, Practical Visions, pp. 31, 37). He titled his 1912 semi-autobiographical play Mulyīr Miṣr wa-mā yuqāsīh (The Molière of Egypt and What He Endured). See Shmuel Moreh, “Yaʽqub Ṣanuʽ: His Religious Identity and Work in the Theater, According to the Family Archive,” in Shimon Shamir (ed.), The Jews of Egypt, a Mediterranean Society in Modern Times, Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1987, pp. 111–12, 114. Gendzier gives Ṣanūʽ’s Jewishness a nuanced discussion in Practical Visions. Ultimately, “[w]hile Sanuʽ did not deny his Jewishness, his allegiance was primarily to his fellow Egyptians and not to the Jewish minority among them” (Practical Visions, pp. 13–16). Karaism developed from an eighth-century dispute over the head of the Babylonian exilarchy and eventually grew into a separate branch of Judaism distinguished by its rejection of rabbinic Judaism, i.e. of the Talmud and Mishna as sources of legal (halakhic) authority and of rabbinic methods of scriptural interpretation. In 1948, there were some 5,000 Karaites in Egypt. It was a weekly for its first year and appeared irregularly during its second year. The journal was reviewed favorably in both al-Hilāl and al-Manār. See al-Hilāl 11, no. 3 (1 November 1902), p. 93; al-Manār 5, no. 14 (18 October 1902), p. 552; and Fīlīb dī Ṭarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya (The History of the Arabic Press), 1933, vol. 4, Beirut: al-Maṭba‘a al-amrīkāniyya fī bayrūt, p. 179. For more on both Farag and al-Tahdhīb, see Lital Levy, “Edification Between Sect and Nation: Murad Farag and al-Tahdhib, 1901-1903,” in Mohammed A. A. Bamyeh (ed.), Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East: Liberalism, Modernity, and Political Discourse, London: I.B. Tauris, 2012, pp. 57–78. Cf. Murād Farag, Tafsīr al-Tawrāt, Cairo: al-Maṭbaʽa al-Raḥmāniyya, 1928; in this tafsīr, Farag attempts to translate every word of the Bible from Hebrew into its morphological equivalent in Arabic to prove that Hebrew and Arabic share the same root. This approach is continued in his massive compendium, Multaqā al-lughatayn al-ʽibriyya wa-l-ʽarabiyya (Crossroads of the Hebrew and Arabic Languages), 4 vols, Cairo: al-Maṭbaʽa al-Raḥmāniyya, 1930–1950. Farag also wrote a Hebrew primer for Arabic speakers, Ustādh al-ʽibriyya (The Hebrew Teacher), Cairo [n.p.], 1925. These included figures such as Murād Mikhāʾīl, Mīr Baṣrī, Shalom Darwīsh, Yaʽqūb Bilbūl, and Anwar Sha’ul. See Nancy Berg, “Jewish Writers of Modern Iraqi Fiction,” in Exile from Exile: Israeli Writers from Iraq, SUNY Press, 1996, pp. 29–39, and Reuven Snir, “ ‘We are Arabs Before We Are Jews’: The Emergence and Demise of Arab-Jewish Culture in Modern Times,” Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies (EJOS) VIII, 2005, vol. 9, pp. 1–47. E.g., the Kuwaytī brothers, Salīma Pasha (Murād), Dahūd Ḥusnī, Togo Mizraḥi, and Laylā Murād.

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36 A note on the terms “Sephardi,” “Mizraḥi,” and “Arab Jewish”: technically, “Sephardi” (pl. Sephardim) refers to descendants of the Spanish exiles, while “Mizraḥi” (lit. “Oriental,” pl. Mizraḥim) is a term coined in Israel to refer to Jews from Asia and Africa. By “Arab Jew,” I mean a Jewish person born in an Arab country, whose native language was one of the Arabic vernaculars. The term “Arab Jew” does not reflect a longstanding historical notion of identity; see Emily Benichou Gottreich, “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Maghrib,” Jewish Quarterly Review, Fall 2008, vol. 98, no. 4, pp. 433–51 and Lital Levy, “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq,” Jewish Quarterly Review, Fall 2008, vol. 98, no. 4, pp. 452–69. Here I say “Sephardi” and not “Mizraḥi” or “Arab Jewish” because the old (pre-Zionist) Jewish population of Palestine was seen as comprised of the “Ashkenazi” and “Sephardi” communities, a distinction that held through Moyal’s own time; and because many members of the latter, including Moyal herself, were actually Arabized Sephardim. 37 Of course, in cases where Jews contributed to mainstream periodicals and publications, such as Esther Moyal’s contributions to al-Durr al-manthūr or al-Hilāl, their writings are readily available. But in cases of Jewish publications or of individual volumes by Jewish authors, the story is very different. Many are lost, and most of the volumes I have located are last copies. 38 In Yehoshu‘a’s article, Esther is quoted in first person, saying “Et ha-koran lamadati be-‘al pe ve-karati bo le-fi kol ta‘amav ve-dikdukav” (I learned the Koran by heart and read it according to all its accents and grammatical rules), to which Yehoshu‘a then appends the parenthetical Arabic phrase (“tajwīd al-Qurʾān”) in Hebrew transliteration. See “Ha-soferet Ester Moyal” (Part One), p. 17. 39 Bāz says she studied first at the “English school” and then “the American school” and that she studied Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, and some German (Bāz, “Istīr Azharī Mūyāl,” p. 10). He adds that, in addition to her teaching activities in Beirut, she also directed a girls’ secondary school affiliated with an Islamic charitable association some twenty years later, apparently when she lived in Jaffa. 40 Bākūrat Sūriyā was founded in 1880 by a group of Beiruti women, including Maryam Makāriyūs (Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied, p. xv). Baron notes that “Esther Moyal, a member of the Syrian group, described their purpose as ‘working for the progress of Eastern women’ and invited Hind Nawfal [the editor of al-Fatāt], among others, to join.” See Esther Azharī, “Murāsalāt al-jihāt” (Correspondence from the Provinces), al-Fatāt 1, no. 5 (1893), pp. 233–4; cited in Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, p. 176 and p. 241, n. 38. 41 The story, called “Nanin, or The Women’s War” was published serially in al-Fatāt 1, nos 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11 (1893–1894). Esther later reprinted it in the first issue of her own newspaper, al-ʽĀʾila. 42 The first essay, entitled “al-Iḥsān al-kitābī” (The Beneficence of the Writer, or The Benefits of Writing), is discussed later in this chapter. The other, “al-Riwāyāt” (Plays/Dramas), is the text of a lecture she delivered in March 1892 at the Beirut AIU school on the pedagogical benefits of plays, particularly for moral edification. Both articles were printed in the introduction under the heading “Maqālāt baʽḍ almuʽāṣirāt” (Articles by Contemporary Women Writers) in al-Durr al-manthūr, pp. 21, 25. 43 I make this claim based on a survey of the journal from its opening issue. There may have been earlier, unsigned contributions by other women. As Beth Baron points out, many women wrote without signing their names or under pseudonyms “for reasons related to reputation and family honor” (The Women’s Awakening, pp. 43, 45). 44 “Aseyfa” or “Meeting,” published under the heading “Katava meyuḥedet” (A Special Report), in Ha-Tsvi (The Deer, or Beauty) 25, no. 141, 1909, p. 2. See also Bezalel, Noladetem tsiyonim, pp. 174–5.

Partitioned pasts 157 45 Shim‘on was born in 1866 to Yosef Bek Moyal (Mūyāl) (1843–1914), the oldest son of Aharon Moyal (Harūn Mūyāl), who brought his family from Rabat to Palestine in 1853, eventually settling in Jaffa. Shim‘on received a religious education up to the age of sixteen, at which time he was sent to Rabbi Zakī Kūhīn’s Tif’eret Isra’el (alMadrasa al-waṭaniyya al-isrāʾīliyya) in Beirut, where he studied Arabic and French (see note 59 below). Afterwards, he attended the famous al-Azhar University in Cairo, where he was influenced by the intellectual circle surrounding Muhammad ʽAbduh. He returned to Beirut to study medicine at the Jesuit college. See Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a, “Doktor Shim‘on Moyal ve-ha-be‘aya ha-yehudit-ha-‘aravit” (Dr. Shim‘on Moyal and the Arab-Jewish Problem), Hed ha-mizraḥ (10 November 1944), pp. 5, 9. 46 Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a indicates that al-Nadīm and Shim‘on Moyal had met through their Masonic activities, although he does not specify where (Yehoshu‘a, “Doktor Shim‘on Moyal,” p. 5). They probably met in Cairo, but as al-Nadīm was banished from Egypt by Khedive Tawfiq in 1893 and sought refuge in Jaffa, it is also possible that they became acquainted or renewed their acquaintance there. Yehoshu‘a also notes that Shim‘on founded the local Masonic lodge in Jaffa in his home, but does not specify when. 47 On Syrian women writers in Cairo (and Syrian émigrés more broadly) and their role in transmitting European ideas and culture to Egyptians, see Baron, The Women’s Awakening, pp. 105–9; for a broader discussion, see Thomas Philipp, The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1985, especially Chapter 4, “The Syrian Intelligentsia in Egypt: Failed Attempts at Integration.” 48 Ṭarrāzī, Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya, vol. 4, p. 287. Moyal was also mentioned in al-Ḥasnāʾ in an article on the history of women in the (global) press (“al-Marʾa wal-ṣiḥāfa”), whose last paragraph, on women journalists in the East, mentions her as “Istīr Azharī madām al-duktūr Shamʽūn Bek Mūyāl kātibat al-ʽĀʾila” (Esther Azharī, wife of Dr. Shim‘on Bek Moyal, writer of al-ʽĀʾila); al-Ḥasnāʾ 2, no. 5, (Tishrīn althānī 1910), p. 167. Al-ʽĀʾila was one of the first Arabic-language women’s publications. It was preceded by Hind Nawfal’s al-Fatāt (1892), by two other short-lived journals in 1896, and one other in 1898 (Baron, The Women’s Awakening, p. 16); it was possibly the first woman’s publication to describe itself as a jarīda (newspaper) and to appear in that format (beginning in 1904). In contemporary scholarship, Moyal has been cited as one of the early founders of the women’s press; see Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 16, 61, and Baron, The Women’s Awakening, pp. 20–1. 49 See al-Hilāl 7, no. 16 (15 May 1899), p. 511, and al-Muqtaṭaf 23, no. 8 (1 August 1899), p. 623. Both described it as a “literary scientific feminist magazine” (majalla adabiyya ʽilmiyya nisāʾiyya); al-Hilāl encouraged both men and women to read it, and noted that “the publication of familial newspapers lifts the status of women in our society, and the lifting of her status lifts the entire nation.” 50 “Muqaddima” (Introduction), al-ʽĀʾila 1, no. 1 (1 May 1899), p. 2. 51 “Khiṭṭatunā” (Our Plan), ibid., p. 4. 52 See also Baron, The Women’s Awakening, pp. 21, 65. The newspaper’s first explicitly political article appears in the seventh issue; see ʽAbdallāh Kūrjī, “Li-mādhā nataʾakhkhar?” (Why Are We Behind?), al-ʽĀʾila 1 (21 July 1899), vol. 7, p. 112. 53 Shāhīn bek Makāriyūs, Tārīkh al-Isrāʾīliyyīn, Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-Muqtaṭaf, 1904. 54 al-ʽĀʾila 3, no. 11 (1 August 1904), pp. 86–7. This rhetorical gesture (“al-umma alisrāʾīliyya”) naturalizes Jews into an Arabo-Islamic discursive frame of reference – an approach that, whether deliberate or reflexive, was employed extensively by both Esther and her husband, Shim‘on, in their prose. It was not uncommon to refer to the Jewish collective in this way; indeed, a 1908 article on Jewish philosophy (“alFalsafa ʽinda al-yahūd”) also invokes the collocation “al-umma al-isrāʾīliyya”; see al-Muqtaṭaf 33, no. 8 (1 February 1908), p. 122.

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55 “al-ʽĀʾila,” al-Muqtaṭaf 23, no. 8 (1 August 1899), p. 623; Rabbi ‘Aqiba is referred to in Arabic as “al-ustādh ʽAqība al-ḥabr al-yahūdī.” Baron notes that “[w]riters in the [Arabic] women’s press condemned the practice of giving infants to a wet nurse” and encouraged breastfeeding (The Women’s Awakening, p. 161). 56 These novels were published between 1903 and 1910. A 1912 article about culture in Greater Syria says that Moyal translated fifteen novels from Arabic; see K. T. Khairallah, “La Syrie,” Revue du Monde Musulman, April–June 1912, vol. 19, p. 113. At the end of one of her translated works, Ḍaḥāyā al-māl (The Victims of Riches), Cairo: al-Ahrām, 1908, a list of Moyal’s other works available for purchase in Cairo includes fifteen titles, one of which is an original work (Tārīkh ḥayāt Imīl Zūlā, discussed below). Her translation of Zola’s novels included his 1891 L’Argent, translated as al-Māl, al-māl, al-māl, Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-Shūrī, 1907, also cited in Baron, The Women’s Awakening, pp. 52, 209 (n. 54). Another translation, al-Intiqām (Revenge), Cairo: al-Akhbār, 1908, may have been from Zola’s Justice. 57 “Fa-naḥnu ʽalā mabdaʾ al-ladhīn yuḥāwilūn taqrīb lughat al-taḥrīr min lughat altaʽbīr,” in al-Ism al-mughtaṣab (The Appropriated Name), Cairo: al-Akhbār, 1908, p. 134. 58 Esther Moyal, “al-Nahḍa al-sharqiyya” (The Eastern Renaissance), al-ʽĀʾila 1, no. 7 (21 July 1899), p. 119. Moyal also noted that what prompted her to consider and write on this matter was the recent publication of a French edition of Qāsim Amīn’s Taḥrīr al-marʾa (The Liberation of Women). 59 Tif ’eret Isra’el/al-Madrasa al-waṭaniyya al-isrāʾīliyya, founded in 1874, was the first modern Jewish school in Beirut (the Beirut AIU was opened four years later). The school was probably established to counteract the Christian missionary schools, which had begun attracting Jewish students; its Arabic name must have been modeled after Buṭrus al-Bustānī’s al-Madrasa al-waṭaniyya (The National School, est. 1863). It was founded by Rabbi Zakī Kūhīn, whose son Salīm also published in Arabic. As opposed to the French-run AIU schools, its language of instruction was Arabic and it promoted modern Arabic-based culture among its students, becoming a center for Arabic drama in Beirut (see Moreh and Sadgrove, Jewish Contributions to Arabic Theatre, Chapters 4 and 5). It is also the school at which Shim‘on Moyal was sent to study from the age of sixteen. The school was closed in 1904. 60 Yehoshu‘a, “Ha-Soferet Ester Moyal” (Part 2), p. 14. 61 E.g., Shim‘on’s brother David Moyal, Nissim Malūl, Avraham Elmaliaḥ (Ibrahīm al-Māliḥ), Albert Antebi, and others. 62 Campos, Ottoman Brothers, p. 201. Campos says the organization had twenty-seven members. 63 Ibid., pp. 162–3. They often signed their articles in Arabic as “Abū al-Khalīl” and “Umm al-Khalīl” (Father of Abraham/Mother of Abraham). 64 See Yehoshu‘a ben Ḥanania (Ya‘akov Yehoshu‘a), “Skira ‘al toldot ha-’itonut ha-‘aravit-ha-yehudit ba-arets be-ḥamishim ha-shanim ha-aḥronot” (Survey of the last fifty years of Arabic-language Jewish journalism in Palestine), Yad la-kore (The Reader’s Aid: A Library Magazine), 1956, vol. 4, no. 4–5, pp. 14–21, and Campos, Ottoman Brothers, pp. 162–3. According to Campos, “[Shim‘on] Moyal indicated how he and others like him were able to reconcile their positions as both supportive of Zionism and seeking rapprochement with their Arab neighbors” as in a 1912 speech quoted in the Sephardi paper ha-Ḥerut (Liberty): . . . our Hebrew national ambitions do not oppose [the Arabs’] own ambitions and we have the ability to work with energy and a devoted spirit for the shared homeland [ha-moledet ha-meshutefet] and for the foundational level of the Ottoman people under whose shadow we stand at the same time that we desire to be a special Jewish nation concerned with its language, its style, its past, its future, and its customs. (p. 163)

Partitioned pasts 159 65 ʽAbdallāh Nadīm Moyal must have been young – perhaps about seventeen or eighteen years of age – at the time. In the only issue of the newspaper I was able to locate, his byline reads “Nadīm Moyal” without his first name. See “Hal yaṣbir li-lYābān: kalima masmūʽa fī al-siyāsa al-dawliyya,” Ṣawt al-ʽuthmāniyya 1, no. 78 (30 Āb 1914), pp. 1–2. My impression from this and from my conversation with Avraham Moyal, a Moyal family descendant (see below) is that he was generally known as Nadīm (Avraham Moyal, personal communication, November 2005). 66 Tarrāzī’s brief biography of Esther Moyal states that, following Shim‘on’s death, she “joined her children who were living in the city of Marseilles and worked in commerce” (Tārīkh al-ṣiḥāfa al-ʽarabiyya, vol. 4, p. 287), information that is repeated in her entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica and again in Baron’s biographical summary (The Women’s Awakening, pp. 20–1). But as Moyal’s eldest son, ʽAbdallāh Nadīm, was born between 1894 and 1896, he would have only been about eighteen or twenty at the time. I have no knowledge of any other offspring, although Jurjī Bāz’s article does refer to “awlādihā” (her children) in the plural (Bāz, “Istīr Azharī Mūyāl,” p. 10). The closest living relation I located is Avraham Moyal, son of Harūn Moyal, Shim‘on’s half-brother. Avraham Moyal does not believe that ʽAbdallāh Nadīm Moyal had descendants, but thinks that Esther may have had two daughters who were lawyers and who lived with her in Jaffa (personal communication, November 2005, August 2007). 67 See ʽAbdallāh Nadīm Moyal, Ḥanīn al-nadīm (Nadīm’s Longings, or The Longings of the Drinking Companion), Beirut: Maṭbaʽat Sādir, 1934; ‘Ovadia Nadīm Moyal, Aux Champs de Bleu, Cairo [n.p.], 1935, and ‘Ovadia Nadīm Moyal, Ha-narkisim, Beirut: Ha-mikhlala ha-Amerikayit shel Beyrut (American University of Beirut Press), 1945. The copy of Ḥanīn al-Nadīm housed at the National Library in Jerusalem bears a handwritten dedication by Moyal to the first president of the Hebrew University, Dr. Judah Magnes. In it, Moyal presents himself as “a Tel Aviv scion of a Sephardi family of over a century standing in the country, and a graduate of the American University of Beyrouth (1915)”; he also adds a postscript about the reception of the book in the Arabic press, and encloses one such review. 68 “al-Iḥsān al-kitābī’” (“The Beneficence of the Writer”, or “The Benefits of Writing”), in al-Durr al-manthūr, p. 22. The idea that the printed text becomes a teacher for those who are otherwise denied the benefits of education is an underlying trope of the Arab women’s press: “Sarah al-Mihiyya launched Fatat al-Nil as a ‘school for girls and ladies,’ Alexandra Avierino labeled a journal ‘a travelling school,’ and Labiba Hashim saw the press as ‘the greatest educator of the nation’ ” (Baron, The Women’s Awakening, p. 118). Furthermore, this particular idea seems to have had reverberated throughout the region, as, for example, the Ladino translator and publisher Alexander Ben Ghiat wrote in the opening issue of his newspaper El meseret (The Joy) in Izmir, 1897: “We will try to make the paper a kind of school, where all – young and old – will be able to study.” See Olga Borovaya, “The Serialized Novel as Rewriting: The Case of Ladino Belles Lettres,” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 1, Fall 2003, p. 32. 69 “al-Iḥsān al-kitābī,” p. 23. While Moyal’s portrayal of the “Hamidian era” as unprecedented in its wide berth for intellectual freedoms may seem questionable (ʽAbdülhamid II abrogated the 1876 constitution, imposed severe restrictions on printing, and is typically remembered as an authoritarian oligarch), we must bear in mind the particulars of her context. Ottoman Jews were historically loyal to the Sultan because the Empire absorbed the Sephardi refugees after the expulsion from Spain; furthermore, nineteenth-century Arab intellectuals who dared to openly criticize the ruling powers tended to find themselves exiled (or worse). 70 As Baron explains, the concept of “women’s rights” in the Nahḍa did not imply “equal rights” or a reassignment of gender roles, although writers did argue that women’s intellect and intelligence were equal to men’s. Hence “[t]he debate on the

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L. Levy woman question thus basically centered on issues such as education, domesticity, and marital relations. Economic rights, particularly for those in need, received some attention, but political rights drew scant support before the 1920s.” See Baron, The Women’s Awakening, pp. 118, 166. Marilyn Booth, however, finds the issue of political rights in the early women’s journals more equivocal. See May Her Likes Be Multiplied, pp. 161–3, and p. 376, n. 218. Literally, “protected from others when he himself is a guard.” Esther Azharī, “Hal li-l-nisāʾ an yatlubna kull ḥuqūq al-rijāl” (Should Women Demand All the Rights of Men?), al-Hilāl 2, no. 4, (1894), pp. 438–40. Sāʾidāt are literally “strong” or “dominant” women, sāʾid being the active participle of sāda-yasūdu (to rule, prevail, or predominate). “Mabdaʾunā” (Our Principles), al-ʽĀʾila 1, no. 1 (1 May 1899), p. 3. “Li-mādhā naḥbiṭ naḥnu ḥaythu yanjaḥ al-gharbī” (Why We Fail Where the Westerner Succeeds), al-ʽĀʾila 1, no. 9 (30 August 1899), pp. 141–4; parentheses in original, i.e. Moyal refers the reader to Amīn’s book. Earlier, in the opening section of her newspaper’s first issue, Moyal writes: Much has been written about the merit of educating women, to the point where this issue has become widely accepted, a matter of conventional wisdom. In particular, it has been conclusively demonstrated that the people’s progress grows in tandem with the progress of its women, as woman establishes the household and holds up the pillars of the family and raises the men and women of the future, of whom the nation (umma) is comprised, and who ultimately determine the success or failure of the nation.

76 77

78 79

See “Muqaddima” (Introduction), al-ʽĀʾila 1, no. 1 (1 May 1899). Amīn himself had stated: “The status of women is inseparably tied to the status of a nation”; see Qāsim Amīn, “The Emancipation of Woman and the New Woman,” in Charles Kurzman (ed.), Modernist Islam, 1840–1949: A Sourcebook, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 61–9, 63. Beirut, ed. Jurjī Niqūlā Bāz (1882–1959); a Beiruti nicknamed “the supporter of women” (see Baron, The Women’s Awakening, p. 77). Bāz also wrote a one-page biography of Esther for al-ʽĀlam al-isrāʾīlī in 1946 (cited throughout this chapter). See, for instance, “Rijāl al-sharq wa-l-iqtiṣād” (Eastern Men and the Economy), Fatāt al-sharq 1, no. 1 (n.d., 1896), pp. 3–6, followed by “Nisāʾ al-sharq wa-liqtiṣād” (Eastern Women and the Economy) in the next volume (15 November 1896), pp. 33–7; and “al-Marʾa wa-l-tijāra” (Woman and Commerce), al-Ḥasnāʾ 2, no. 3 (Aylūl 1910), pp. 87–8. Baron, The Women’s Awakening, pp. 146–9. In a 1909 speech, Bāhithat al-Bādiya (Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif, 1886–1918) argued that “division of labor is merely a human creation” (p. 93) and “specialized work for each sex is a matter of convention” (p. 94). It is not that women are unsuitable for work but rather that “men have pushed women out of work” (p. 92). Because work at home only takes half the day: We [women] must pursue an education in order to occupy the other half of the day but that is what men wish to prevent us from doing under the pretext of taking their jobs away. Obviously, I am not urging women to neglect their home and children to go out and become lawyers or judges or railway engineers. But if any of us wish to work in such professions our personal freedom should not be infringed. (p. 93) See Bahithat al-Badiya, “A Lecture in the Club of the Umma Party,” in Akram Fouad Khater (ed.), Sources in the History of the Modern Middle East, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004, pp. 91–100.

Partitioned pasts 161 80 Probably the American School for Girls, founded in Beirut in 1835 by American Presbyterian missionaries (which in 1927 became the American Junior College for Women and is now the Lebanese American University). 81 Moyal, “Khiṭāb,” al-Ḥasnāʾ 3, no. 1 (Tishrīn I, 1911), p. 24. 82 Ibid., p. 24. 83 Ibid., p. 25. 84 “Inna Allāha lā yughayyiru mā bi-qawmin ḥattā yughayyirū mā bi-anfusihim,” sūra 13, verse 11. The same verse is quoted by Muḥammad ʽAbduh in his Risālat altawḥīd (The Theology of Unity); see “Laws Should Change and The Theology of Unity,” in Kurzman (ed.), Modernist Islam, p. 55. 85 Moyal, “Khiṭāb,” p. 25. 86 In this way, you will demonstrate your actual equality with men, those men who are not pleased in the least by the recognition of it. As Madame de Staël said in her novel Corinne, no matter how refined and excellent a man may be, inevitably there is something that will mar his happiness and ruin the pleasure he feels in the company of a wise and intelligent woman; and even if he loves her, apprehension and envy of her will enter his heart. (ibid.) 87 Ibid., p. 26. 88 “Jamāl al-zawja wa jamāl al-umm” (The Beauty of the Wife and Mother), al-Ḥasnāʾ 2, no. 3 (Āb 1910), pp. 58–61, 58. 89 The “people” (al-shaʽb) in the phrase “The dwellings of the people” probably refers to the Arabs (i.e., Bedouin). In context, Esther quotes these lines to convey that the appearance, language, and writing of the (contemporary) Arabs seem strange to Europeans. 90 The term ḥafẓ in ḥafẓ aqwāl shuʽarāʾinā wa-amthāl ḥukamāʾinā, which I have translated as “to learn,” could be read either as “memorizing” or as “preserving” their sayings and proverbs. 91 Moyal, “Khitāb,” pp. 28–9. Similar arguments were voiced by Bāḥithat al-Bādiya in her 1909 speech (see note 79 above). For instance, she complains that, due to social conventions prohibiting Egyptian men from seeing women following engagement, they are seeking European women in marriage, and warns that “if we do not solve this problem we shall become subject to occupation by women of the West.” Like Moyal, she also cautions against excessive imitation of the West and especially of Western women: “[I]f we pursue everything Western we shall destroy our own civilization and a nation that has lost its civilization grows weak and vanishes.” See Bahithat al-Badiya, “A Lecture in the Club of the Umma Party, 1909,” p. 98. 92 See, for example, Rifāʽa Rāfiʽ al-Ṭaḥṭāwī, “The Extraction of Gold, or an Overview of Paris,” in Kurzman (ed.), Modernist Islam, pp. 31–9, especially pp. 32–3 and p. 36. In the same volume, see also Khayr al-Dīn al-Tūnisī, “The Surest Path,” pp. 40–9, especially p. 49, and Qāsim Amīn, “The Emancipation of Women and the New Woman,” p. 63. In his introduction to the volume, Kurzman notes the prevalence within modernist Islamic discourse of purportedly “biological” social or civilizational hierarchies, revealing the influence of the then-popular theories of social Darwinism. See “Introduction: The Modernist Islamic Movement,” pp. 3–27, especially p. 18. In an Arab Jewish context, Murād Farag expresses similar notions in the opening issue of his newspaper al-Tahdhīb (Edification; Cairo, 1901). In an article titled “Sharaf al-fard al-waḥīd min sharaf ummatihi aw ṭāʾifatihi” (The Honor of the Individual Derives from the Honor of his Nation [umma] or Sect [ṭāʾifa]), Farag directs his readers to model themselves after the US and Britain, not the “savages” (al-mutawaḥḥishīn) of the Sudan. See al-Tahdhīb 1, no. 1 (12 August 1901), p. 1. 93 Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. and with intro. by John B.

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L. Levy Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. See Timothy Mitchell, “The Stage of Modernity,” in Mitchell (ed.), Questions of Modernity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, pp. 1–34. Two years later, in 1896, Theodore Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). Herzl had been covering the trial of Dreyfus for an Austro-Hungarian newspaper, and the Dreyfus affair is thought to have played an instrumental role in his thinking. For instance, as Shaul Sehayik points out, the pro-French al-Ahrām took a cautious middle line, while the pro-British al-Muqaṭṭam, which supported Dreyfus, used the case to criticize the hypocrisy of the French republic’s claims of equality for all its citizens. Articles on Dreyfus also appeared in al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl in 1898 and 1899. Of particular interest is Rashīd Riḍā’s clear stance in support of French Jewry in his Islamic paper al-Manār, in which he made an explicit appeal to Arab writers to halt the tide of anti-Semitism rolling into the East from France. See “al-Yahūd fī-Faransā wa fī-Miṣr” (The Jews in France and in Egypt), al-Manār 1, no. 2 (22 March 1898), pp. 53–5. For more on the Dreyfus affair in the Arabic press, see Chapter 9, “Parshat dreyfus” (The Dreyfus Affair), in Shaul Sehayik, “Dmut hayehudi be-re’i ha-‘itonut ha-‘aravit beyn ha-shanim 1858–1908” (The Image of Jews as Reflected in Arabic Journals between 1858–1908), Ph.D. thesis, The Hebrew University, 1991, pp. 172–82. “J’accuse!” (I accuse!) was published on 13 January 1898 in the maiden issue of the newspaper L’Aurore (The Dawn). A law separating church and state was passed in 1905; Dreyfus was pardoned in 1906 and his military rank and honors restored. Keith Watenpaugh suggests that the “emergence of activist intellectuals at the time of the Dreyfus Affair” was influential for a number of Syrian journalists in the early twentieth century. See Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 71. See note 56 above. Esther Moyal, Tārīkh ḥayāt Imīl Zūlā (The Biography of Émile Zola), Cairo: Maṭbaʽat al-tawfīq, 1903, p. 12. In the preface to her book, Moyal begged her readers’ understanding: So if readers find any inconsistency or error in [the book’s] organization, they should remember that the book is not translated from another language and that writing a biography about the life of a man like Zola and judging his works requires time, effort, and resources that are not available to us. (ibid., p. 13)

102 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 103 Sūra 2, verse 2: “Dhālika-l-kitābu la-rayba fī-hi hudan li-l-muttaqīna” (This is the Book free of doubt, a guidance for those of certainty [i.e. of certain faith]). Moyal has substituted al-muttaqīn, the believers, with al-qaḍāʾ, the judiciary. 104 Sūra 17, verse 81: “wa-qul jāʾa al-haqqu wa zahaqa al-bāṭil inna al-bāṭil kāna zahūqan” (Say: “Truth has come and falsehood come to naught; verily, falsehood is ephemeral”). 105 The tenth-century Iraqi-Syrian poet al-Mutanabbī is perhaps the most canonical of classical Arab poets. The line quoted by Moyal reads “Kharajū bi-hi wa li-kulli bākin khalfahu/ṣaʽaqātu mūsā ḥīna dukka al-ṭūru”; see ʽUmar Fārūk al-Ṭabbāʽ (ed.), Dīwān Abī al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī, vol. 1., Beirut: Dār al-Arqam ibn al-Arqam, 1994, p. 407. The poem is a rithāʾ (elegy) for Muḥammad bin Isḥāq al-Tanūkhī, describing the mourners marching to his funeral; Moyal quotes the poem to attest to the dignity of Zola’s funeral. The line referring to the suffering of Moses when God reduced Mount Sinai to dust is itself an allusion to sūra 7, al-Aʽrāf (The Heights),

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verse 143, narrating the story of the revelation at Mount Sinai. Moyal may have selected this poem in part because of its evocation of Moses, a shared symbol for Muslims, Jews, and Christians. See Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, p. 49. Ibid., p. 153. (Of course, al-Shidyāq is not quite a straightforward example given that he converted to Islam, but his conversion is thought to have been nominal and it is said that he converted back to Catholicism before he died; see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, p. 98.) Moyal, Tārīkh ḥayāt Īmīl Zūlā, pp. 189–91. The library was to contain Zola’s works in the original as well as in the numerous languages into which they had been translated. See “Tārīkh ḥayāt Īmīl Zūlā,” al-Muqtaṭaf 28, no. 9 (September 1903), pp. 290–2. Baron sketches this profile in her chapter “Pioneers of the Women’s Press.” Most of them were Syrian women born in the mid-1870s to early 1880s, who had been educated either at home or at one of the many varieties of new modern schools, though not abroad (although some had traveled abroad). “A few were among the first teachers and administrators in girls’ schools, almost the only career options available”; they also organized their own associations, contributed to other women’s journals and started their own (The Women’s Awakening, pp. 36–7). Each and every one of these characteristics applies to Moyal’s biography. In trying to make sense of Moyal’s position, it is important to keep in mind that early twentieth-century Zionism was not a monolithic philosophy or program and, moreover, that ideologies we might now term “Easternism” and “Arabism” were quite fluid. Furthermore, while the questions of when Arab nationalism began and when Zionist positions solidified are beyond the scope of this discussion, it is clear that 1911–1912 predated the major milestones of both movements. Through the 1920s and possibly until the 1936 Arab revolt, many Zionist leaders and even a few Arab Muslim intellectuals believed that Palestinian Arab and Jewish coexistence was possible and that Zionism was of potential benefit to the region. See also Campos, Ottoman Brothers, pp. 207–8; as Campos notes, “Ottoman Jews of Palestine insisted on the absolute compatibility of their Ottomanism and Zionism.” Campos, Ottoman Brothers, pp. 163–5, 207–8. “Nahḍatunā” (Our Renaissance), al-Hasnāʾ 3, no. 9 (Ḥuzayrān 1912), pp. 408–15, 408. Bāz introduces it as “a speech by Mme. Esther Azharī Moyal, owner of the journal The Family (majallat al-ʽĀʾila al-mahjūba).” Ibid., p. 411. Ibid., p. 412. Ibid., p. 409; in colloquial Arabic, “yaftarish al-arḍ wa-yaltaḥif al-samāʾ” (The land is his mattress and the sky is his blanket) is an idiom expressing dire poverty. Ibid., p. 412; my emphasis. Although “Easternism” was not an established ideological movement or position at the time of Moyal’s speech, discursive formulations of the concept had been in circulation since the end of the nineteenth century. For example, in 1898, the Egyptian nationalist Muṣṭafā Kāmil (editor of the influential journal al-Liwāʾ) published a study of “The Eastern Question,” in which he “warned of the dangers to the Islamic community represented by European designs on Ottoman territory”; see Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 7. Such writings probably influenced Moyal’s way of thinking. This was a standpoint adopted by the editors of newspapers such as Isrāʾīl (the Arabic edition of a trilingual French/Arabic/Hebrew newspaper; Cairo, 1920–1933), al-Misbāḥ (ha-Menora/The Candelabra; Baghdad, 1924–1929), and al-Shams (The Sun; Cairo, 1934–1948). I borrow the collocation “partitioning of the past” from Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land, New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p. 340.

7

The Mahjar as literary and political territory in the first decades of the twentieth century The example of Amīn Rīḥānī (1876–1940) Leyla Dakhli

Isn’t it [Syria] that gave us Jibrān,1 Mayy,2 Mikhāʾīl Nuʽayma,3 Muṭrān,4 Rīḥānī and their kind? The ones who launched the real literary renaissance, who were the heroes of the modern intellectual revolution in Arab culture? Why then is its soil dry today; why has its land ceased to be fertile?5

Aḥmad Shākir al-Karmī’s bitter observation in 1921 in the Damascus newspaper Alif Bā’ stresses a phenomenon that has frequently been relegated to the margins of scholarly work on literary renaissance and oriental politics. Many authors have insisted upon the roles of emigrated writers in the development of modern literature and the elaboration of Arab intellectual modernity;6 yet, few have attempted to comprehend in what ways this specificity modifies our understanding of a Nahḍa that has all too often been reduced to categories of modernity borrowed from a conquering West. When taking this transnational dimension into account, Arab intellectual renaissance enters world modernity – the modernity of commercial trade and human exchanges that developed as early as the end of the nineteenth century between various parts of the world, and in which the East, especially Lebanon, plays a specific role. This dimension ushers out binary and Manichean oppositions between the Orient and the West, between the civilized world and underdeveloped territories. Some of the most significant protagonists are children emerging from two or even three cultures; they live in an open world and ask unprecedented questions of the society where they were born, as well as of the one they have adopted.7 When studying the Syrian–Lebanese intellectual world at the beginning of the twentieth century, one is struck from the start by its geographically scattered nature. In this universe, the fluidity of exchanges in the different parts of the globe where men and women settled may seem surprising: they sent each other letters, articles and books; they gathered and they parted; they crossed paths and shared ideas and experiences. At the end of the nineteenth century, these intellectuals lived in a world that became smaller through a common sense of belonging and the knowledge of particular codes.

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 165 As the Ottoman Empire began to open its borders and enter a modernity characterized by both a political and an economic opening, and rising social violence,8 the Arab intellectual movement dispersed overseas, especially to the Americas. Thus, the Arab Renaissance, the Nahḍa, is a global undertaking. It brings together a group of individualities and territories created throughout the world with their own landmarks and their personalities. This landscape is largely located outside of the Ottoman Empire, which is drawing to an end. Its geographically scattered nature and its anchoring points in lands of refuge and exile constitute necessary milestones in the outline of its own network. The wealth of newspapers in Cairo and Paris is a product of this paradox of a community composed of connections between scattered people, whose loyalty from one place of exile to another continues to grow stronger and more assertive. Going through the memoirs of some of these people, and reading letters they sent to each other, one can retrace a universe of travel and regular interaction, from New York to Sao Paulo, via Cairo, Paris, London, Geneva and, of course, “home”. This phenomenon has acquired a name in historiography: the Mahjar, a migration, a world of immigrants, a Diaspora that quickly became synonymous with the Nahḍa of the intellectual community; so much so that the word Mahjar, which first pointed to the social reality of exile, but also a certain anchoring despite the distance, ended up referring to an intellectual trend (adab al-Mahjar), a way to position oneself in the intellectual landscape, even a certain type of writing in Arabic.9 In this article, I study this evolution, this semantic change, through the example of Amīn al-Rīḥānī, a writer who immigrated to the United States in early childhood. An English speaker at the beginning, he traveled back to his homeland to relearn his language and remained a Mahjar writer until he died in his village in the Lebanese mountains, where he was listened to, read and invited to contribute to magazines and newspapers throughout the Arab world.

At the turn of the century, entering modernity in Arabic The portrait of Amīn I came back to my country as if in mourning, carrying a book, wanting to make one hundred and one books out of this book; I knew almost nothing of my culture, and so I dived into its depths, without rest.10 This is what Amīn al-Rīḥānī writes when he speaks of his first return to Lebanon in 1898 as a twenty-two-year-old. Only six years later, he decides to settle in his own country and continue his quest for the “one hundred and one books”. In 1908, he is back in his village of Frayké, located twenty kilometers northeast of Beirut, having immigrated to the United States as a child. He spends most of his time (re)learning Arabic, teaching English and writing in both languages. However, the Young Turk Revolution is for Amīn, exiled in his own country, a

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major event that compels him to emerge from his eremitic lifestyle, to speak up, to add his voice to the contemporary voices of hope and enthusiasm. He was born in this same village of Frayké on 24 November 1876, the eldest son of a prosperous family. He learned how to read and write at school in the churchyard. When he was twelve years old, in 1888, he left with his uncle for America. There, he studied English at a small school run by the Sisters of Charity, near New York; then, he started working for his father as a regular employee. Leading a rather dissolute life and more attracted to the pleasures of the city than to the trade, he joins an itinerant theatre company at the age of seventeen. In 1897, he starts law school in Boston, having convinced his father to pay for his education. And yet, he stays there only one year; an illness forces him to return to Lebanon. Back in New York in 1899, he sets out to translate Abū-l-ʽAlāʾ al-Maʽarrī’s poems. In 1905, back in the places of his childhood, he is a young man, half dandy, half wise man, elegantly dressed in three-piece suits and affecting a certain indifference, subsequently deepened by his retreat to the mountains. From a small Christian mountain village, he builds relations with the entire intellectual world of his time and generation. He is a man who passes at ease in networks of people, who is himself a place where different worlds converge, across seas and cultures. He is an observant adviser, but he is also on a quest for his mother tongue, the Arabic language, which is not quite yet his intellectual tongue:11 he wants to master this tool in order to better speak about his country, to assert his position within the Syro-Lebanese debate, to better participate. He calls on men, intellectuals and scholars he meets and with whom he surrounds himself. In such a way, he humbly submits his texts to Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī’s judgment, whom he met during this period of freedom (in his own words, ‘ahd al-ḥurriyya designates the years 1908–1912).12 His relationship with the future president of the Arab Academy of Damascus is one of mutual admiration and it can be hypothesized that, for Amīn, Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī represents the modern Arab intellectual, a man in agreement with both his country and his language. The diasporic dispersion of the one corresponds to the apparent unity and coherence of the other. In order to better appropriate this territory of people who speak Arabic, he sets out on long journeys across Arabia, meeting princes and common people, describing marvels and landscapes, and brings back narrations that retrace the tales of important Arab travelers. The photographs we have show Rīḥānī as a man of elegance. He often appears distant, quite ironic and even contemptuous; but his commitment is at variance with this image. His status as an intellectual is both original and classic. He is known by everyone, the center of conversation, and yet, he remains in the background, rarely seen, in part because he is doubly exiled: as a former emigrant and as a philosopher isolated in the mountains. He stands out with his suit; he adopts attitudes witnessed in the behavior of other emigrants familiar with European politeness. He does not regularly frequent places where the Beirut intelligentsia meets. He looks at Lebanese society, while this society keeps him at a distance, removed. It is both a social position – the muhājir stands next to

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 167 his country, looking at it from afar – and an intellectual position – the “wise man” who must keep away from clans and subjective interests. Provoking old Lebanon In spite of this aesthetic and existential distance in the years 1909–1910, Amīn is at the hub of a violent debate between “those who do not belong to any clan and the clans themselves”;13 on the one hand, free thinkers, and on the other, those who want Lebanon to be controlled by community leaders. Directly or indirectly, he stands at the heart of the public debate in the newspapers. However, his stands cannot be compared to mere daily opinions in current conventional debates: instead, he examines Syro-Lebanese society in depth, which is appreciated by some, and gives rise to fierce opposition from others. He rejects consensus, and moreover, never ceases to question it in his political positions and his work of philosophical and historical reflection. His text on religious tolerance, presented and published for the first time in New York in 1900,14 constitutes a direct attack on the political role of the Maronite clergy and its politics of denominational division. Hostilities began in Lebanon when the second edition was published in 1910. In the introduction to each new edition of this text, Rīḥānī insists more and more vigorously on the need for religious tolerance. In 1901, he reasserts his belief that all faiths should be united. In 1910, after the Young Turk Revolution, his introduction urges readers to support the efforts of the CUP (Committee for Union and Progress) to unite Ottomans against community divisions. At a time when the identity of persecuted minorities is being constructed, especially in the Maronite community, and notably among immigrants, at a time when attempts are being made to have their aspirations and their own claims taken into account, Rīḥānī’s vision gets in the way of those who are building this denominational ideology in Lebanon, whose “natural and historical borders” have just been discovered by means of a map belonging to the French army staff.15 Rīḥānī’s most virulent adversaries are Jesuit fathers, who violently revile him in their publications and accuse him, quite predictably, of being a freemason.16 As for so-called philosophers, these liars, all too many of them have seen the light of day, especially since the proclamation of the Constitution, but the loudest of them all; the one whose coughs reach furthest, is a man called Amīn al-Rayḥānī. Behind his perfume [rayḥān], there is a whiff that American heathens passed on to him when he went to that country with faith . . . he spreads his pernicious poison everywhere . . . if we had the opportunity to quote his articles, we would debunk his sophisms.17 This violent reaction is the result of Rīḥānī taking on the very structure of power in the Maronite mountain. With every possible means, he consistently denounces the control exerted by the Church over the destiny of individuals and of the entire country. The speech he gives in 1900 and republishes in 1910 denies members of religious communities the right to speak of religion:

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L. Dakhli If you ask me: “why do you undertake to study religion when you are not a religious man?” I will answer as did Rousseau when he was asked why he criticized politics when he was not a prince or a governor. He answered: “I am neither a prince nor a governor and it is for this very reason that I write; because if I were a prince or a governor, I would not waste time writing what I am supposed to do, but I would do it and in this case, I would have to remain silent.” As for me, I am neither a minister nor a priest, and because of this, I give a speech about religion; because if I were a minister or a priest, I would reform and improve, and I would have to remain silent.18

In 1903, he was excommunicated following the publication of his pamphlet The Tripartite Alliance in the Animal Kingdom, where the Catholic Church is depicted as a donkey, the protestant as a mule and orthodoxy as a horse.19 These chaotic interactions with religious hierarchy are no longer news in 1910; he was accused, at the same time, of being a protestant and of wanting to convert to Islam.20 But his criticism is more social, more political than religious. He criticizes ecclesiastic hierarchy rather than faith, despite his pleasure in provoking controversies – for example, by praising the Koran. As early as 1899, in a beautiful letter to Jamīl Maʽlūf (1879–1951),21 he lays out his position regarding religion and fanaticism, in a consciously disinterested style. He writes the letter like a tale, the ironic counterpoint of which makes the text even more offensive: My friend does not share my conviction. I acknowledge that idealist philosophy has won me over and that I prefer it to materialist philosophy. But my friend is fanatically attached to his “maronity”; and he wants to work for Maronites in everything he does. If he had the power to do so, he would destroy by the fiercest force all men who are not Maronite. As far as I am concerned, I hate fanaticism and all faiths are for me like trades: men are nothing but human beings.22 This ironic and dispassionate position, which appears in his most polemic texts, seems to be fueled by a sense of detachment vis-à-vis his own community, on which he is not dependent. Thus it is his immigrant status alone that allows him to distinguish between religion and clergy, between faith and community. This “evidence” of the local, this primary affiliation, is questioned by virtue of his belonging to the mahjarīs. His detachment is the prerequisite for his freedom, in as much as it partly determines his ability to re-root himself within a territory.23 Choosing an identity between divinities and nationalism Beyond expressing his opinions, by which he will stubbornly stand throughout his life, Rīḥānī’s work supplies a description of the intellectual circle in which he moves and develops relationships. The landscape he describes begins with himself. His personality is diluted into multiple ties, which he tries to elucidate.

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 169 With a series of “splittings” of the self, Rīḥānī describes himself in the first pages of the Rīḥāniyyāt:24 Here is my personality; here are its Oriental and Aryan races, that are also Assyrian, Iranian, Greek, Arab (see the gods of these countries). Here are its divinities: Baal, Adonis, monotheist, Christian, Muslim, Sufi (see the history of the gods of these countries). Here is its Oriental Western culture, philosophical and poetic, erudite and scientific (see my respect for poets and philosophers in the Orient, and for Western scholars and scientists). Here is its (Oriental) aristocratic and (Western) democratic politics, a desire for aristocracy and a democratic attitude, simply articulated together, lofty and goal oriented, producing freedom and independence for nations within the framework of human rights and under the auspices of fraternity and peace. And on top of all this, I have the personality of an artist who sees Truth and Beauty not only in what is, but who sees and adores them in both external appearances and in the depths of the mind. His personality is dual; his monotheism leaves room for many gods; his culture comes from everywhere and his politics are ambivalent. He stands between the new and the old (he writes: “old by his roots, new by the fruits”);25 he represents all kinds of perspectives. And yet, he never ceases to celebrate the unity formed by all that composes him. The multiplications he describes stem from the historical strata of the country he was born in and the civilizations that succeeded one another. He carries within himself the history of this land without opting for one origin rather than another. This temporal plurality combines with the plurality of the space of origin, of a possible identity. In another text, he asserts even more clearly his open vision of the nation and of nationalism: I am Syrian first, Lebanese next, and only then, Maronite. I am Syrian and I demand the national, geographical and political unity of Syria. I am Syrian with a house in Lebanon . . . and I believe in the one and only God.26 It is as if Rīḥānī has found in monotheism the unity of this multiple territory, just as he finds in his spiritualism the strength to unify his own personality of multiple belongings. The polyglot immigrant, the traveler, moves spiritually from one culture to the other, with a constant sense of remaining the same person in the same place. And yet, he knows that he is like Janus; he can play with these identities, multiply them as he pleases. The multifaceted identity he displays is also anchored in a form of “Syrian nationalism” he acquired through immigration, tinged with nostalgia but altered by concrete political stakes when he returns to Lebanon. On the eve of the revolution, his speeches on the nation become more frequent.27 They constitute a good account of the particular understanding of culture by immigrants. From his idiosyncratic position, he uses explicit or implicit comparisons between the

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America of the Mahjar and the native country in order to define a sense of belonging, to assess the current situation, and to call for change and reforms. Instead of concealing his experience as a muhājir, he uses it to show how much he is attached to the nation. In a speech he prepared for the annual celebration of the association Jamʽiyyat Shams al-Birr (Association of the Sun of Charity) – but never gave because the organizers feared censorship – probably in 1907, he juxtaposes a “here” and a “there”.28 He does not incite his fellow countrymen abroad to return because he mistrusts the West, but in order for them to contribute their experience to Lebanon and what is about to happen there. Well aware of their nostalgia for their homeland, of their expectations and also of the manipulations that oppress them, he asks men and women of the Mahjar to come and see for themselves, to stop looking at the country with the deforming eyes of others. I remember the day when, from America, I decided to side with my nation and I remembered my country in the Empire. And now I am in front of people from my nation, in the Empire, and I remember America. I like to compare the two communities, but time is short and the tie even shorter. Then, when will the enlightened muhājirūn come back home? When will the divisions and the rifts end? How do we protect and love our national sentiment while enlightened Syrians are scattered across the world, lost in the shadows of quarrels and disputes, fighting each other in every region and in every country? Syrian people who immigrated are ignorant; but they are alert and active. Syrian people here are educated to a certain extent, but they are submissive and apathetic. There, Syrians are agitated and confused; quarrels and disputes rise up, ready for a fight, shadowy. Here, Syrians are frozen, asleep. There, national sentiment is weakening; denominational sectarianism intensifies through the work of ecclesiastics who collect money and sow dissension, and here – but I forget that I am not allowed to speak of the business of the ones who rule, either in this assembly, or in the rest of the country.29 This text accurately describes the situation of immigrants, all of whom are concerned about the country, involved in activities from abroad that are forbidden in the country itself. When reading his texts, it is easy to understand Rīḥānī’s insistence on conquering spaces of freedom, on imposing an overt nationalism that would allow the Lebanese people to speak up. These themes quickly become a Leitmotiv in his political writings. When he comes back, Amīn feels he is indebted to his native country; he wants to give it back energy and strength so that it can achieve its freedom. What the Mahjar can bring is a desire for political, personal and literary freedom. This particular position allows him to present himself as the adviser of the people and to write in 1909: Two days demanding rights are better spent than years plowing fields and looking for means of support. One dirham of prevention is worth more than

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 171 a hundred kilo of medicine. Leave your work for two days and unite in every jurisdiction, in every mudīriyya, in every village, form a delegation. You only need to know what you want, and demand it vigorously, stubbornly and with confidence. Form these delegations and let your voice be heard by institutions. There is no need to dress up with new clothes or European clothes.30

The Mahjar: an intellectual network Amīn is not only a man of the Mahjar because of the years he spent in the United States. As his correspondence reveals, he moves in a particular cosmopolitan community that is indeed scattered throughout the world. The intellectuals he meets and to whom he writes cross regions, cultures and multiple national and political entities with a facility that surfaces in their language, in their writings, in the ease with which they communicate. Because they all belong to a multi-polar dynastic empire, to a world of open trade thanks to the Diaspora, of consular protection that provides them with even more openings, these men and women enjoy a surprising freedom of movement and speech (at least, in the practice of language). In this way, the situation prolongs and spreads the cosmopolitan universes of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century in a movement that resembles a blotter absorbing ink: an urban environment witnesses a flood of people coming into it from the aftermath of fading empires and emerging nations, residues of European conflicts and of those in the Mediterranean region, all in a world more and more dominated by vast imperial powers (France, Great Britain, Germany and the United States). In this game of states and power, individuals launch explorations in new gaps and porosities, experienced as natural. Amīn on the move The web of the intellectual world can be retraced through its travels. Writings often encompass travel narratives, long journeys or simple crossings between different worlds. They place boats, roads or railroad tracks at the center; describe various stops, cities where men get lost or find traces of their predecessors, both close and far away. The Mediterranean is, of course, the preferred location for these descriptions. In their records, intellectuals become Ibn Baṭṭūṭa,31 or, closer to them, Ṭahṭāwī.32 To describe a trip is always to focus on the strange and rediscover the familiar, in short, to make comparisons. Fakhrī al-Bārūdī,33 who left at a very young age on a long journey to France, insists particularly upon the relation – which he considers unhealthy – between Europeans and their pets. He is shocked to see people kissing their dogs and living with them. As for Amīn alRīḥānī, who travels regularly between the Middle East and the United States, he takes the opportunity of a European trip to visit Andalusia,34 a country full of landmarks, the lost paradise of the great oriental empire. Crossings do not lose their meaning; they are always experienced or written as quests.

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These narratives are peppered with boat names: the Adriatique, the New Amsterdam, the Persia, the Excalibur, the American Express Lines, the Lotus, the Mariette Pacha. . . .35 Writing paper headers carry these brands along with hotel names on various coasts: Lebanese summer retreats, Parisian hotels in the Latin Quarter and next to the Opera, stopovers at Port Said, a universe of ports described as feverish worlds. However, travel narratives and other literary accounts of what lies beyond the seas are not the core element of the displacements encountered and reported. These men and women are constantly on the move; they are not searching for an “elsewhere”, they are always on the sea and on the roads. Thus, their short or long travels can be followed like daily movements that barely disturb their quotidian universe. The texts, in their very structure, are witnesses to these travels and this mobility. Their authors are translators before they are writers; they discover a way to write in Arabic that can adapt to these worlds they want to describe; a more fluid form of writing also less confined by strict grammar rules. The textual contents reflect this geography: literature is a parable to express hopes; fiction takes them back to ideal worlds that resemble the country they left and allow them to tell of their aspirations for change. For Rīḥānī, travel equals exploration, discoveries and meetings, but it is also a duty of the intellectual. In a letter to Shakīb Arslān in 1932, he writes: “I will come see you in Geneva on my way to the United States; I am tired of traveling . . . but we must explain to the Americans what it is that we want and relieve them of a few dollars . . .”36 Once he settles down in Frayké, familiar trips, such as those from his birth country to his country of immigration, become vaguely defined missions: during the First World War, he energetically sets about calling on his fellow Syrians to save a Syria suffering from starvation; in 1937, he spends six months in the United States, where he is invited to give lectures at universities. There, he speaks to audiences in English about Arab countries (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq) and their “scientific, cultural, political, economical and social situation”.37 It is in the role of witness that he travels outside of his country. Apart from such familiar transcontinental journeys, he undertakes several study and discovery trips, first to Arabia in the years 1922–1924, then to the Maghreb in the 1930s.38 These travels are a personal and political quest for the unity of the Arab world. In the Najd and in Saudi Arabia, Amīn meets several leading figures and makes anthropological observations on the civilization of the Bedouins. These observations of a reality he considers relative to the essence of Arabness are imbued with a certain “orientalist” fascination. He encounters emirs and elites, about whom he presents a veritable hagiography. It is this same fascination that drives him to pursue his travels in Arabia and the Maghreb. Operating in the manner of the classical travelers, he points out interesting sites and remarkable personalities, both local and colonial. The texts resemble personal itineraries as much as struggles: both in English and Arabic, they serve to show the wealth of the Arab world; they convey a sense of his being unlike any other American, as he writes in the preface of al-Maghrib al-aqṣā:

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 173 There are several reasons for [my strong attachment to the nation]: the first relates to my having left my country at 10; New York then became a stage for my games and adventures and left its enduring stamp on me, to the point where I became one of its sons; and when I tried to do away with these ties through my travels to the Arab world, I did not find myself reconciled, because these travels in many ways revived in me the rights of New York, and even of America as a whole39 He conducts a real exploration of the Lebanese mountains in preparation for his book Qalb Lubnān (the Heart of Lebanon) in 1936.40 He writes the book with the help of Charles Corm,41 who becomes his guide and translates for him the landscapes of the mountain and to whom he sends an extraordinarily detailed letter about his travel impressions, particularly about the trees in the Lebanese mountains.42 The text is written in the same mode as that of his travels to Arabia, and yet, it tends to describe foreign lands from a different angle: for the discoverer, all is discovery, even the cedar tree that has stood forever in his garden. Rīḥānī’s awareness that he is tracing the contours of a nation is also what brings together these two writing projects. This does not mean that he should be labeled a pro- or proto-nationalist Arab, or that he promotes the union of all Arab-speaking territories, but his project is obviously pedagogical in nature, for himself and for his nation. Traveling across Arab space is going back in time, finding his roots. In the years 1925–1940, he writes history with renewed energy, with a sense of taking part in a fundamental work. Traumas from the war, struggles for independence make his work even more urgent. In a letter from 1927, he describes what has, like the work on language, become a concrete and necessary task: “We – I, Yūsuf [Ṣadr], and the employees of the printing industry – are in the center of history [the history of the modern Najd]. Half of it has been printed and will be released, let us hope, in August.”43 The travels that surveyor Rīḥānī narrates also help the national cause. He participates in the making of the book and its circulation. He uses the way he apprehends the world to build relations and make history, to give and to find support for his project. Corresponding to the way he travels, Rīḥānī develops a concept of literature and intellectual work that functions as a link between men and places, forming a tight web of individualities. A letter to Marie ʽAjamī in 1909 develops at length this theme of exchanges among intellectuals. First, these exchanges consist of offers of advice and mutual assistance (in this case, from the elder to the beginner), salutations and quotations, all of which go beyond formalities and are also in-depth exchanges. He writes to the young journalist and woman of letters from Damascus44 to warn her against appearances and the temptation of easy writing, encouraging her to enter the closed world of those who seek more than glory: accuracy and wisdom. Your sweet letter was almost lost between the Barada river and the Frayké river and it took thirty days for it to reach me; I send back to you the

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L. Dakhli envelope so that you can see for yourself the exactness of what I say. Who transformed the Orient’s post office into a storm! Philosophy, wisdom and poetry are dear to all of us; they are both close and far away if we really want them; they are far away if we let our imagination dupe us and if we see them everywhere. And what should we think of those whose intelligence alone motivates to write! Praise, my sister, is like wine: a small quantity allows the heart to be joyful, but excess alienates indulgence, and spoils the rhyme and the rhythm of poetry and the mind. So content yourself with little and be wary of excess that results from your enthusiasm and the encouragement of sycophants. As for me, I read what you write and I advise you to not write too fast, to remain simple, because rapidity and a too large production are writing’s enemies. You know that wisdom lasts longer than intelligence, which by itself is despicable. Shelter your intelligence and do not waste your wisdom. The pure soul of your texts, the instinct of your Semite mind, are among the most beautiful things I have ever seen in the Syrian land. May God watch over you and make you a fighter for truth and beauty in arts and sciences.45

Marie ʽAjamī had sent him a very touching letter at the end of 1908.46 At first, she does not know how to address him and starts her letter with a polite “ayyuhā al-Rīḥānī”.47 She apologizes for her audacity and her questions, reminds him that they met in Zahlé and that he asked her to write to him. She tells him how good she is at imitating his style: she earned much praise from her female friends when she read her prose to them, written in Rīḥānī’s style. Finally, she tells him in a thousand different ways how much she admires him and asks him to let her adulate him, touch his papers and his writing. “I also wonder how to address him. Should I say ‘the great philosopher’ or ‘the magnificent Rīḥānī’ or ‘Rīḥānī, my brother’, because I am lost in your description and your names . . .” Despite her admiration for him, Marie ʽAjamī does not follow Amīn’s advice about wisdom and patience: she decides to take up the fight, creates a newspaper and writes whenever and wherever she can. From a personal position, Rīḥānī continues to encourage young intellectuals and talented young people by giving them advice and support. He refuses to judge, to replace posterity as the only true judge of genius. In doing so, he takes on the responsibility of goading and stimulating the young, if only to foster intellectual activity and creation. His “monotheist polytheism” applies to literature and to intellectual production. He dialogues with his opponents; he reads Arab grammarian scholars as well as local poets, Byron and al-Mutanabbī, and out of this apparent chaos extracts pearls and admiration. Rīḥānī envisages this task of sorting, the work of writing and reading, as a retreat: “I am in a period of silence, which I need. Because silence is absolutely necessary to writers for purification and studying, at least once a year,” he writes in 1934 to Emile al-Ghūrī,48 who asks for an article for his journal. In its most formal and material aspects, Rīḥānī’s work is influenced by this seal of movement: as a result of his dual linguistic competence, his texts are

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 175 translations of and passages between languages, between universes. He is their uniting element throughout his travels; he is the one who opens dialogue. He often translates his own work: the intellectual task of translating is not merely an exercise for this author, who writes in English and in Arabic. When asked to translate one of his texts from English into Arabic, he does not simply endeavor to make the text in its original form more comprehensible to another audience; he transforms it, too, adapting it to this other audience, to this other language.49 In these troubled times and in spite of the various stakes that are also part of what binds men together, Amīn tries to maintain the intrinsic rhythm of writing that leads to what he calls wisdom. Writing becomes his form of dwelling: a form of individual spirituality, of rootedness. But it also functions as a permanent link between people. It is as if men and women who are connected through Rīḥānī’s correspondence are suspended in a motionless time zone; questions and answers, problems they strive to solve together are not related to immediacy; instead, they create a link out of the contingencies of the present, away from the hazards of navigation and daily activities. The time of their action, even if action occurs mainly with pens, parallels the time of their epistolary writing, a thread between worlds, the very prerequisite for intellectual action and public appearances. There, words are slow but dense. The web that is being written is the result of a tight process of weaving with an infinite sum of crossings, revealing the most concrete ties among men. Postal services are rarely slow and the largest distances are overcome with shared questions and the confrontation of aspirations. Sometimes, letters follow Rīḥānī in his travels around the world in crazy tribulations.50 He imprints this timelessness on them and, at the same time, the breadth of spaces. He is like the motionless core that structures a field of movement and unrest that others transmit to him. He is the wise and slow heart of a busy web of men and women who are constantly at war. He is also present on the battlefield, in newspaper columns, but as a player who will not modify his strategy, as a mere visitor, a scout in the debates who never leads the way, a target for critics but never the source of polemics. Is this a posture? A pose? As a result of his eremitism, he lacks the ties, the roots he could fight for, to become one of those who throw themselves into the lion’s den. He travels within his convictions, which are infallibly stable intellectually. Culturally and historically, but also in terms of his convictions, he can be compared to a mosaic. And yet, the counterpart of this dispersal of the individual is necessarily a retreat or, more precisely, a withdrawal – not retreat to an ivory tower, but rather the indispensable distance required to speak and to read. In May 1905, the Cairo journal al-Muqtaṭaf publishes the text of a lecture given by Amīn Rīḥānī at the association Jamʽiyyat Shams al-Birr (the Beirut Association of the Sun of Charity.) In this speech about “retirement”, he first explains his own retirement after New York to his country’s mountains, where echoes are his only answers. He then makes a distinction between different modes of isolation: the philosopher’s, the poet’s and the prophet’s. He encourages his audience to follow a

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path that goes against the modern ideology of “fī-ḥaraka baraka” (happiness resides in motion) and promotes a calm and slow way of life, retreat. Wherever he goes, he receives books and then writes to the authors to offer criticism; he too sends articles and books, asks for explanations, finds guides for his travels, encourages some and lectures others.51 He writes above his door: “The satisfaction of the nation is first the satisfaction of the individual, and the interest of kings and powerful leaders is the interest of the people.”52 Word threads: correspondence and meetings Amīn’s paradox consists in his deep desire for immobility while constantly in movement and in wisdom becoming a component of fighting. The attention he gives to writing letters and pursuing constant dialogue across the ocean with friends and colleagues seems to reconcile both aspects of his character and his dual anchoring. Addresses may change but networks remain and the weaving continues in spaces of creation, discussion and publication. Print shops, newspapers, central meeting points apart from the texts themselves and the exchange of ideas. This is what Kartachkosky describes when he meets Rīḥānī, this small office in Beirut where all men of letters, immigrants, and rural and urban individuals of the “milieu” land. These places are located in different continents. Amīn transforms his house in Frayké into a vacation home for young writers; he is also the soul of Sadr Editions, a publishing company managed by his brother-in-law. Circles, committees and assemblies develop around these material and spatial markers, which he relentlessly encourages. They are made up of more or less eclectic groups of individuals who gather around various literary, political and artistic projects, or simply meet in order to comment together on the country’s evolution. We can trace a topography of the intellectual debate from Rīḥānī’s correspondence. Although incomplete, it reveals the complexity of relations and webs, and gives an idea of the small world of Syro-Lebanese intellectuals. They may live on different continents and use multiple languages, but these men know each other (or can at least “situate” one another), speak to each other, talk about each other; in short, they debate incessantly. Letters make some of these dialogues, which occasionally go on for years, come to life, disclosing information about what ties these men of letters together, about the centrality of a specific relationship to the country that developed in the distance. They are most often feverishly informed about the smallest change and involved all the more passionately. The issue of coming back is always present, like a possible future, a hypothesis or regret. Letters between Amīn and Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān bring out their intellectual, affective and aesthetic complicity. In fact, they seldom write to each other, but they never lose track of one another; they organize reunions, meet in New York, Boston, Paris, London or Lebanon as if they had parted the day before. At times, this very strong tie gives the impression of a fusion. It is based on the shared

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 177 experience of exile, albeit lived in different ways. Jibrān cannot make the decision to “go home” and recreates nostalgia in his office, his little closed universe in Boston, the only world where he feels complete. Thus, Amīn seems to be the one who travels for the other, particularly the one who finds the strength to “go back”. In a letter from 1912,53 Jibrān writes to Amīn: I wanted to say good bye and hug you before the boat takes you away to the rising sun. I even wanted to accompany you to this country whose rocks and rivers I love, and whose clergymen and leaders I loathe. But dreams are erased when we awaken, and clear hope is masked by inability. You are leaving tomorrow for the most beautiful and the most sacred country in the world, and I stay in this distant exile: what joy for you and how unhappy I remain. But if you think of me in front of Mount Sannīn, next to Byblos and in the Frayké valley, you will ease the pains of exile and alleviate for me the suffering of immigration and distance. Further on in the letter, he tells his friend to remember to bring him the most sumptuous ʽabāya as a souvenir.54 Ties to the country, first poetic and nostalgic, also focus on an intellectual awakening and “those who reflect a lot but do not speak much, who always feel”,55 in opposition to the powerful who preach and promote lack of reflection. The friendship between Jibrān and Rīḥānī is first and foremost aesthetic – even romantic, but also deeply political. They find common ground in the savage criticism of Mount Lebanon’s traditional society, its moral order and its obscurantism. In 1908, Khalīl Jibrān publishes al-Arwāḥ al-mutamarrida (Rebel Spirits),56 a parable about Lebanese society and violence. He stresses in particular the enslavement of women, married against their will to aging men who care only about appearances;57 he vigorously attacks the powerful, the lords and men of the Church.58 “Villagers, Myriam, learned from the monks and the priests to hate anybody who thinks for himself. Thus, they imitate them, and like them, dislike those who think and refuse to blindly follow.”59 The Church is an obstacle to the emancipation of free men and women, and to thought, and is a tool of obscurantism. But it is also accused of starving the Lebanese mountain regions, of depriving them of all their resources. In church, he tells you to care for the poor and the needy, but when the angry cry at his door, and when the destitute hold out their hands in front of his very eyes, he does not see them, he does not hear . . . he bargains with his prayer and the one who does not buy it is a blasphemer who insults God and His Prophets, and who will not access heaven and eternal life. This extremely violent pamphlet brought him fierce hatred from the ecclesiastic authorities. But its style is distinctive; there is a sense of “reform” in these lines. Social criticism surfaces through a mystic of love, of the real prophet against the

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materialistic and power-seeking Church. Language decodes nature and its signs; it speaks of the simplicity of the poor and their intuition that places them on the side of Rightness and the Truth, while the rich strive only to maintain their power and their wealth with terror and lies, severing ties with the country itself, with the land and with nature. What Rīḥānī calls wisdom, the result of reflection and interactions, Jibrān formulates as signs of the divine scattered in nature, in the elevation of the soul. These two aspirations are not so far apart but their approaches definitively classify the one in action and the other in meditation. One travels relentlessly all over the world, while the other locks himself up in his workshop to write and draw without rest. The weaving of relations that merely surfaces in letters is strong because a new “social web”, a network independent of former alliances, is literally in the process of creation. Territorialization and polarizations of intellectual societies can be detected in the worlds of exile, where people experiment with small-scale forms of association. This is one of the reasons why, in the time of a dying and authoritarian Empire, intellectual groups emerge mostly in faraway lands. Microsocieties form on the outside; the intellectual interplay takes place, at first, largely outside of the Bilād al-Shām territory; and yet, it is always in relation to the homeland. Those who settle in Europe, Paris, London, Geneva or Brussels show similarities in organizing internal micro-societies in each location, and yet there are specific differences. In these Diasporic territories, Paris and London are mandatory stops for intellectuals who want to study and discover; they are points of anchor to organize political and social opposition. 1910: Jibrān and Amīn are in London. They are invited to the parties of English high society; they are among the civilized, beings of high culture. They are so integrated in this world that they can mock it. This they do in 1910 by dressing up in “Arab clothes” for a costume ball.60 They play here on a peculiar intellectual distinction, on the ambiguity of their own integration into European intellectual and artistic circles. As “good Arabs” who speak impeccable English, almost completely polished by the work of the Empire, they are accepted and acknowledged. But it is as “exotic” beings that members of these circles appreciate them, the strange character of Asian lands, where people speak Arabic and where men live, they think, so far from civilization. With this joke, they push aside their exceptional status for one night – or, on the contrary, they reinforce it; on this journey and its exchanges, they create their own syncretic and provocative cultural universe. Fascination flickers through Amīn and Jibrān’s letters,61 and both men’s entirely aesthetic admiration for European art and treasures, particularly museums: London, 7 July 1910 My dear Yūsuf,62 We are in this town under dark clouds, just like a southern bird that has gotten lost in a northern storm. But what does the storm do with the marvels

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 179 of heaven’s birds? And what force could keep us away from the works that fine arts accumulated here? We stopped in front of Watson’s drawings, the draughtsmen’s poet, and in front of Rossetti, the poet’s draughtsman. We admired Burn John’s drawings that give to the 20th century what Botticelli imagined in the 15th. We had decided to each write a line but Jibrān became besotted with the arts and forgot his betrayed brother. Forgive him.63 The travels of these young men (Amīn, Jibrān, but also Yūsuf Ḥuwayk, to whom this letter is addressed) are reminiscent of the initiation journeys of romantic artists a century before. In fact, Jibrān considers his journey to Italy64 a source of inspiration, drawing also from monuments, museums and landscapes. When he goes back to Boston, he brings sketches, colors and new reflections about life and art.65

Exiles and the nation’s inventions Rīḥānī’s correspondence as a whole elicits a perfect image of the intellectual network. The list of correspondents is significant in itself. First, it reveals an extraordinary geographical diversity. The Lebanese Diaspora is reanimated (especially communities in North and South America) as are the multiple contacts with Arab and non-Arab regions. Also, they reveal the absence of a denominational envisioning of friendship or other ties between men of letters, but translate the illusion of state partition following the Mandates. These letters do not recognize these borders; they consistently eschew differentiation between communities and faiths. For Rīḥānī, the unification of Bilād al-Shām is not a political demand that seeks concrete influence on the layout of the borders, for example. It is a deeply intimate response to what defines a sense of belonging. It is a strong belief in a common humanity, in the duty of intellectuals to provide each man and woman with the means to be free to choose their destiny. Traces of ties through friendship and work demonstrate this natural expansion of the intellectual world, which far exceeds its borders, underpinned by common denominators such as craft work, writing and means of distribution: newspapers and books, publishing and speeches. War The network revealed in Amīn al-Rīḥānī’s correspondence is not based solely on aesthetic complicity: it also has a political goal. Thus, Jibrān’s ivory tower is not completely removed from the social and political stakes of his time; during the First World War, he becomes more and more involved. As shown in a letter from 1916, he is engrossed in activities for the “Support Committee for disaster victims in Syria and Mount Lebanon” in New York. He cannot help deploring the deceptive tactics of some people, the divisive strategies; he clearly seems ill at ease in this atmosphere: . . . “If it wasn’t for the cries of the starving that fill my

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heart, I would not have stayed one minute in this office, not an hour in this town.”66 It is in this year, 1916, that the Mahjar enters the war. Up to this point, the Syro-Lebanese community in the United States was focused on its own exile and the quarrels they had “exported” to the new continent. Now, the community is mobilized under the leadership of a few against the war and starvation that has suddenly struck the homeland. The mobilization of Syrians and Lebanese of the Mahjar is an important undertaking and men of letters are in the front line of a battle with which they are not familiar. This forces them to contact, for example, all expatriates, merchants and clergymen. Until this moment, intellectuals acted on their own, making a life in the country that welcomed them; they must now create a new position there. Their papers addressed other men of letters before; they must now use them as tools to mobilize their Syrian brothers outside of the region. The template of a letter sent to all Syrian residents asking for their contribution to this patriotic effort appears in Amīn al-Rīḥānī’s correspondence. The immigrant network, its circles, its clubs and newspapers now serve as vectors of charity and support, under the banner of a renewal of national solidarity.67 In the battle, one of the stakes is to prevent the Maronite Church from standing as the unique intermediary for the distribution of financial aid. Amīn and his friends impose an additional distribution via newspaper and association intermediaries to thwart the monopoly of the Church.68 The events of the First World War provide the opportunity to materialize what might at one time have been considered abstract and aesthetic ideas. In New York, the solidarity movement emerging at this moment leads to the subsequent formation of the most dynamic intellectual circles of the Mahjar. The al-Funūn newspaper, founded in 1913, releases a special issue entitled “Syria in Distress” in October 1916, with contributions from all the writers of the community in a call for solidarity.69 In 1920, al-Rābiṭa al-Qalamiyya (New York Pen League) is founded. It consists of the union of Syrian writers in the United States and is soon known simply as al-Mahjar, with Jibrān, Mikhāʾīl Nuʽayma, William Katsaflis, Īliyā Abū Mādī, Nasīb ʽArīdā, ʽAbd al-Masīḥ Ḥaddād, Wadīʽ Bahūt, Rashīd Ayyūb, Nadra Ḥaddād and Ilyās ʽAṭallāh. This formal constitution gives the Mahjar structure and provides special insights into the societies of those who created a full literary movement and an intellectual spirit. But this merely gives an organized form to a pre-existing network in publishing houses70 and newspapers,71 which takes on a new dimension of involvement during the famine that hit Lebanon and Syria, and in the face of Ottoman repression. AlRābiṭa’s first objective is to revive the Arabic language, to present new forms of Arab literature and to translate Western texts. These associations represent yet another landscape within the confines of the immigrant communities, adding to religious or geographical affiliations. Amīn al-Rīḥānī played an important part in their creation. Constantly traveling back and forth between “home” and the United States, he works as a material intermediary between local concerns and exiled intellectuals. Indeed, more and more, he

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 181 organizes his travels with this mission in mind. He tours the United States and gives speeches in associations, clubs and universities in order to mobilize Syrians abroad and support the national struggles. Creating symbols for the homeland In 1917, Rīḥānī decides to publish his most nationalist text in New York, entitled “The Cross or a Day in Beirut”.72 This narrative presents itself as a dream, a fiction. The narrator wanders around a ghost town populated by shadows that no longer understand his language and find refuge in silence. He is looking for his friends, whom he hardly remembers. Finally, he arrives at Union Square.73 . . . and I found myself in the middle of gallows, with my friends and my brothers, martyrs of truth, nation and freedom; night let some light shine on their faces. Then I understood the meaning of silence for the people of the city. Terror had taken over their hearts. Adversity had conquered their minds.74 A female shape appears to him in the square, a figure of the motherland crowned with a cross. She does not know who he is; she does not know her sons of the Mahjar, and when he tells her he has been fighting for her freedom, she answers that she has been hearing this for the past three years and yet she is still suffering. He tells her armies are coming to free her. She replies: I will not believe it until I see them, and I see the swords and spears shine. I heard they were still divided. Look at these gallows. They carry martyrs in Union Square, a union in death, and a union in martyrdom; do you think they know Muslims from Christians? That they make a difference between Lebanese and Syrian?75 This nationalist tale, which brings to mind some of French nationalist author Maurice Barrès’s texts,76 stages the suffering people, represented by the divinity on the cross, a female Christ in passion, who laments over the sacrifice of her children, hanged or starved to death, reduced to the condition of beasts. It is a strange propaganda text, a call for unity – reminiscent of 1908, marked in urban toponymy – against repression, written in an evocative mode. The issues of political strategy he evokes in the narrator’s dialogue with the Mother are suddenly unimportant. My children in Egypt, Paris, and the Mahjar are fighting against each other; they are divided in sects; finally, they give up. And today, I ask only for help and a piece of bread. May consolation come, my son, even from the hand of monkeys; and may deliverance come, even from the hand of devils.77 The homeland, and a woman abandoned in pain, a protective but powerless mother lectures her sons and calls them to the real fight, to arms.

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Rīḥānī’s specific position is entirely present in this text: emotional and passionate, he calls for a national awakening; he writes in Arabic but from far away. The strength of the gallows symbol he chooses to become the “place of memory” is, more than the famine that gives rise to the solidarity movement, the foundation on which he builds a national monument. “The Syrian is now one man, and gallows themselves proclaim it. Because being Lebanese, Damascene, Beiruti, Aleppine, Palestinian, Muslim, Druze, Christian, Jewish are only first names. The family name, our family, is Syria.”78 Rīḥānī chooses his mother tongue as his primary language; he has also chosen his position and shifts it to better serve a national ideal. He never ceases to vigorously reassert it – for example, in his speech in Baghdad in 1922: I am like you, gentlemen, I am one of you. I am Arab in my heart and soul; Arabic is my language. No matter how much I am interested in Western civilization and culture, no matter how long I stayed in a faraway country with Western letters, I am and I remain attached to this Arab country; I miss it when I am away; I am proud of my patriotism; I feel the wealth of its past; I am fully content when I am in the company of its sons who are my brothers; I want to see them first among peoples, I want to see them reconquer the place they lost when Tartars invaded Iraq.79 It is around language that the core definition of the potential of “Mahjar culture” crystalizes, as well as around all the tensions implicit in the cultural and intellectual Levantine Renaissance. For the children of immigrants, the remaining points of attachment end up translated into a sacralizing of language. If Mahjar writers have given Arab prose a new flexibility it had hitherto not possessed, they have also developed a concept of language purity that contrasts with the efforts at modernization of their contemporaries, who are attracted to less rigorous accommodations. It differs markedly from an opening to the world that makes (again) Lebanon a land of pidgin. I must tell the truth – if the reader allows me to use the word truth for my own purposes. When I came back from traveling in Arab countries, listening to people of my nation, in cities as well as in mountains, who filled their conversations with foreign words, I decided that if a man or a woman from my country, one of those modern creatures of the café Le Tabaris,80 talked to me in French or in English, I would answer in Arabic; and I would criticize his or her errors – regarding language rules. And if that was not enough and the situation required it, without shame, I would rub it in: “Speak Arabic, sir. Speak Arabic, madam. All of you speak Arabic.” And I think members of the Arab Circle (al-Rābiṭa al-ʽarabiyya) should follow this as a rule, including during their “tabarassian” debates, or their “marimarian” demonstrations. They should display this resolution and make it public so that each and everyone imitates this example if he or she so chooses.81

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 183 Thus, the greatest formal freedom and the most innovative prose are accompanied by a degree of conservatism. This characterizes the Mahjar spirit and the literary world of the 1920s. Because men and women of letters in exile know the Western world and are, in a sense, from the West, they seek the purity of their origins with even greater intensity. As we see in this article, Amīn is not ready to accept seeing his country lose its Arab personality, and if he keeps on giving new music and new uses to this rediscovered language, he does so in order to save and preserve it, to fix it as an untouchable monument.

Conclusion Rīḥānī’s itinerary in the initial decades of the twentieth century highlights the particular relation between the literary work of the intellectuals and their political texts. Here definitions of identity and the nation are at play, in a period when both are maturing and being influenced by other events: conflicts, imperialisms, national struggles, and economic and commercial relationships. And yet, the complexity of such times allows these Western Arabs to be actors in their country through the newspapers and groups they set up and, above all, through the research they undertake on their language, their literature and their spaces. Mobility, “outsiderness”, offers them a new perspective on a heritage that was, up until then, petrified. Their nostalgia for a country they do not know well, or for brief spells only, motivates them to reinvent or rediscover it. Almost unconsciously, they are creating a new culture. Far from the land of origin, mystified by memory, they can project onto it other influences, other accents. Long considered splendid exceptions in a Nahḍa literature that is both heavy and didactic, they blazed new trails for the Arab intellectuals who followed them, for poetry and literature, as well as in journalism. The elements of this heritage that have most frequently been noted are the audacity, the freedom in the way they write and the formal simplicity. What has been remarked less often is the way this freedom was connected to nostalgic sacralization, meticulous respect for grammar accuracy, and methodical and encyclopedic work as a means of preparing the ground for the “linguistic land”. Moreover, while acknowledging their national commitment, most scholars have misunderstood what kept these men of letters connected to their second country. Rīḥānī found an Arab homeland. But when he addresses his compatriots who stayed in America, he advises them to learn how to live in that country they should now call home; he advises them to stay away from nostalgia; he summons them to choose a country for themselves. In this regard, he is a true American, since he defines this national duty in terms of communities and of enrichment. Muhājirūn do their American national duty the way they must only if they protect moral and aesthetic values that their original nationality brings them. This is why I am speaking to the new generation of Syrians: do not take everything you inherit from your ancestors. Do not borrow either all that

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After choosing for himself the most nationalist of intellectual fights, Amīn summarizes here the complexity of his position, the understanding he has acquired through experience. One cannot read this text without thinking about another Mahjar intellectual who called for the creation of a discipline that would rival Orientalism, a form of “Occidentalism”, inspired by the experience of Arab foreigners in the West, both full Westerners and completely Arab. It was, of course, Edward W. Said.

Notes 1 Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān (1883–1931), a writer and sketch artist who lived in New York. 2 Mayy Ziyādé (1895–1988), a journalist and novelist who lived in Cairo. 3 Mikhāʾīl Nuʽayma (1889–1988), a novelist and translator (in particular from Russian, which he learned in Russia between 1906 and 1911) who lived in the United States for twenty years. 4 Khalīl Muṭrān (1872–1949), a writer and journalist who lived in Cairo. 5 Aḥmad Shākir al-Karmī, “al-Maʽraḍ al-ʽāmm”, a series of articles published under the pseudonym Qudâma in the Alif Bāʾ newspaper in 1921, in Mukhtārāt min āthārihi al-adabiyya wa-l-naqdiyya wa-l-qiṣṣaṣiyya (choice of texts), Damascus: Ministry of Culture, 1964. For further analysis on this text, see L. Dakhli, “L’entrée en scène d’un anonyme: usages de l’identité dans la mise en place d’une posture intellectuelle militante (Damas, 1921): Aḥmad Shākir al-Karmī, ‘L’Exposition publique’ (al-Maʽraḍ al-ʽāmm)”, in Genèses, Sciences sociales et Histoire, June 2005, vol. 59, pp. 94–113. 6 First and foremost, Albert Hourani’s foundational text, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970, in which he devotes a significant part of his analysis to shawām immigration to Egypt. However, he completely ignores the intellectual movements of the Mahjar, with the exception of Faraḥ Antūn, considered essentially in his polemic with Muḥammad ʽAbduh. 7 This particular milieu has been analyzed in the various contributions of Ottmar Ette and Friederike Pannewick (eds), Arab Americas. Literary Entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World, Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag, 2006. 8 See Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut. The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005; Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home. Emigration, Gender and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 9 Literature on this issue abounds. The classics are Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi (eds), The Lebanese in the World. A Century of Emigration, London: Center for Lebanese Studies and I. B. Tauris, 1992; Roger Owen, “The Eastern Mediterranean during the First Wave of Globalization, 1870–1914”, Third Mediterranean Program Lecture, European University Institute, Florence, 23 March 2001; Thomas Philipp, “Demographic Patterns of Syrian Immigration to Egypt in the 19th Century”, Asian and African Studies, February 1982, pp. 171–96, and The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1985; André Raymond, Egyptiens et Français au Caire, 1798–1801, Cairo: IFAO, 1998.

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Amīn al-Rīḥānī, Mulūk al-ʽarab, Beirut: Dār al-jīl, s.d., p. 6. He gave his first speech in Arabic in New York in 1901. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Rajul al-shaʽb”, al-Qawmiyyāt, Beirut: Dār al-jīl, s.d., [1909], p. 7. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rīḥāniyyāt, Beirut: Dār al-jīl, s.d., [1910], p. 33. He made this speech in New York on 9 February 1900. It appears in al-Riḥāniyyāt, p. 33. See Carole Hakim-Dowek, “The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea (1840–1914)”, Ph.D. dissertation, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, 1997. In a letter on 18 November 1932 to a professor who had written a book about him, Rīḥānī denies being a member of the freemasons. “What surprises me [in your book] is that you assert I was the Grand Master, the first president, and the Oriental general delegate of freemasons. I am not a mason enough to understand the meaning of these words and assess their real and symbolic value”, in Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 294. Al-Mashriq, XII, 1909, quoted by Jean Fontaine, La Crise religieuse des écrivains syro-libanais chrétiens de 1825 à 1940, Tunis: IBLA, 1996, p. 44. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Al-tasāhul al-dīnī”, al-Rīḥāniyyāt, art. 3, p. 34. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, Al-Mukhālafa al-thulāthiyya fī-l-mamlaka al-ḥayawāniyya, New York: Al-Huda Printing Press, 1903. On this issue, see Jean Fontaine, La Crise religieuse, pp. 35–47. Jamīl Maʽlūf, Lebanese (from Zahlé) writer and journalist, he immigrated to New York, worked for the al-Ayyām newspaper and then went on to Sao Paolo, Paris and Istanbul. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 22. On the cultural aspects of migration, see Engseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim, Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, California World History Library, University of California Press, 2006. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Man anā” (who I am), al-Rīḥāniyyāt, pp. 29–32. Ibid., p. 32. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “al-Tatawwur wa-l-istiqlāl” (progress and independence), alQawmiyyāt, p. 152. All of these speeches and articles appear in the collection al-Qawmiyyāt. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Hunā wa hunāk” (here and there), al-Qawmiyyāt, pp. 30–5. Ibid., p. 33. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Ilā-l-shaʽb al-lubnānī” (to the Lebanese people), al-Qawmiyyāt, vol. 1, p. 21. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (1304–1377), an Arab traveler and geographer in the fourteenth century; he travels across Asia and Africa from 1325 to 1353. The book Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz ilā talkhīṣ Bārīz (the extraction of gold in the summary of Paris), a description of Paris by Rifāʽa Badawī Rāfiʽ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–1873), is considered one of the founding Nahḍa texts. Syrian politician (1887–1966). His articles are published under the title: Awrāq wa mudhakkarāt Fakhrī al-Bārūdī, 1887–1966, Khamsūna ʽāman min ḥayāt al-waṭan (Fakhrī al-Bārūdī, articles and memoirs), Damascus: Ministry of Culture, 1999. In 1917. The poem “Andalusia” dates from this trip. It appeared in A Chant of Mystics, an anthology published in New York in 1921. A short film showing Amīn on the deck of one of the boats is available online at www.ameenrihani.org/index.php?page=multimedia. In a letter from Amīn al-Rīḥānī to Shakīb Arslān, in exile in Geneva, 1932, al-Rasāʾil, pp. 501–4. Letter to Yāsmīn Lūsī Yāsmīn dated 17 April 1937, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, pp. 359–60. One of the speeches is available as an audio file online at www.ameenrihani.org/index.php?page=multimedia. Around the Coast of Arabia, London: Constable and Co., 1930; Ibn Saoud of Arabia,

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His People and His Land, London: Constable and Co., 1928; Qalb al-ʽIrāq (the heart of Iraq), Beirut: Sader Printing Press, 1935; al-Maghrib al-aqṣā (the far Morocco), [posth.], Cairo: Al-Maʽaref Publishers, 1952. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Maghrib al-aqṣā, Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, pp. 7–8. Subtitled Siyāḥa qasīra fī jibālinā wa tārīkhinā (a short visit to our mountains and our history). Francophone writer (1895–1963), former student at the Collège Jésuite Saint-Joseph in Beirut and founder of the short-lived journal Revue phénicienne. He celebrated Lebanese identity, rooted in the Mountain. In 1934, he publishes a collection of poems, La Montagne inspirée, and, in 1938, L’enfant de la Montagne and L’Humanisme de la Montagne. Letter to Charles Corm dated 1 September 1936, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasā’il, pp. 351–5. Letter dated 2 June 1927, to Muḥammad Kurd ʽAlī: Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil. Yūsuf Ṣadr (1875–1965) was the owner of the Sadr print shop in Beirut. He was both Rīḥānī’s publisher and brother-in-law (husband of his sister Adèle). (1888–1965). She has just turned twenty-one; a recent graduate of the Protestant College, she teaches and occasionally writes articles for newspapers in Cairo. Letter to Marie ʽAjamī, Frayké, 23 November 1909: Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 138. In Albert al-Rīḥānī (ed.), al-Rīḥānī wa muʽāsirūhu, Rasāʾil al-udabāʾ ilayhi, Beirut, 1966, p. 115. Ayyuhā is an interpellation that can be translated as “O, you”. Palestinian writer. The letter is dated 9 March 1934, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 324. See, for example, letter from Fu’ād Sarrūf, chief editor of al-Muqṭaṭaf, where he comments on the translation of a poem he sent, 16 September 1933, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, alRasā’il, p. 313. Letter from Yasmīn Lūsī Yasmīn, a Syrian immigrant to Brazil, addressed to Amīn in his village of Frayké. On tour for six months in the United States, he finally receives it, via Europe, in Indiana, USA. Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasā’il, p. 359, letter dated 17 April 1937. Letter dated 24 April 1938: he is enthusiastic about Bishr Fāris’s writing and advises him to send a copy of his book to Fuʾād Hubaysh, owner of the journal and publishing house al-Makshūf, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 368. Letter to Ḥabīb al-Zaḥlāwī dated 1 June 1935, in which he urges him to leave space for young writers, not to be too rigid, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 337. “Fī iṣlāḥ al-fard iṣlāḥ al-umma wa fī tahdhīb al-shaʽb iṣlāḥ al-ruʾasāʾ wa-l-ḥukkām.” Letter dated June 1912, J. Khalīl Jibrān, al-Rasāʾil, in al-Aʽmāl al-kāmila, Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, s.d., p. 97. Traditional item of clothing, similar to a large embroidered coat. Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, ibid., p. 3. Published in Arabic in New York in 1908, now available in a French translation, Les esprits rebelles, Paris: Sindbad Actes Sud, 2000. I quote from the translation. The theme of his first short story, “Warda al-Hānī”, and his third, “Le lit de la mariée”. “Le cri des tombes” criticizes the lords’ justice, which overburdens the poorest people. “Khalil l’hérétique” tells the story of a pious and humble young man – bearing the author’s name – who fights against a corrupt and impious ecclesiastic hierarchy. Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, “Khalil l’hérétique”, in Les esprits rebelles, p. 66. Letter from Amīn to his mother and sister, 13 July 1910, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, p. 596. See especially Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Letter to a Friend”, 1908, sent to Bishāra al-Khūrī and published in al-Barq, al-Khūrī’s newspaper, in January 1910. Here he describes the joys and possibilities of a trip to Europe.

The Mahjar as literary and political territory 187 62 Yūsuf Ḥuwayk (1883–1862), sculptor. He traveled with friends to Paris on the first stage of their trip to Europe. 63 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, pp. 147–8. 64 He mentions this trip in a letter from 1908; see Jibrān, al-Rasāʾil, pp. 86–7. 65 Letters to Amīn in 1910, written from Paris and then from Boston, Jibrān, al-Rasāʾil, pp. 92–4. 66 Jibrān, al-Rasāʾil, p. 98. I agree with the publisher’s hypothesis that this letter was written in 1916 and not 1918. The following seems to confirm this: Rīḥānī is in Lebanon (in 1918, he is back in the United States), various committees are still in formation and the United States has not yet entered war. It is also the year the famine begins in Bilād al-Shām. 67 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, pp. 419–20. 68 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Rasāʾil, letter to Jibrān, dated 14 September 1916, p. 321. 69 ʽAdad sūriyya al-mankūba, al-Funūn, 2nd year, no. 5. 70 Notably, Al Mohajeer Printing. 71 In particular, al-Funūn, established in 1913, and the journal al-Rābita al-qalamiyya, the organ of the association of the same name, founded in 1920. Publications prior to this were al-Hudāʾ in New York, a popular newspaper founded in 1898 by Naʽūm Mukarzil (1861–1934) and al-Jāmiʽa, a more confidential monthly magazine issued by Faraḥ Antūn from 1908–1909. 72 This text was inserted in al-Qawmiyyāt, pp. 112–18. 73 It was named Union Square during the constitutional restoration. Today it is known as Martyrs’ Square. 74 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, al-Qawmiyyāt, p. 114. 75 Ibid. 76 “Il n’y a pas même de liberté de penser. Je ne puis vivre que selon mes morts. Eux et ma terre me commandent une certaine activité”, in “La Terre des morts”, Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme, Plon: Paris, 1902. This is also reminiscent of scenes where, going back to Nancy occupied by the Germans, he makes the dead and the shadows speak about the defeat of 1871. 77 Amīn al-Rīḥānī al-Qawmiyyāt, p. 117. 78 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “al-Ḥayāt wa-l-ḥurriyya wa-l-sayf ” (life, freedom, sword), speech given in New York in front of the Committee for the Liberation of Syria and Lebanon, 1917, in al-Qawmiyyāt, pp. 122–31. 79 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Ghāyatī wa thawratī” (my cause and my fight), in al-Qawmiyyāt, pp. 170–2. 80 Name of a popular café in Beirut. 81 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Takallamū bi-l-ʽarabī” (speak Arabic), an article written in 1922, in al-Qawmiyyāt, pp. 173–4. Al-Rābiṭa al-ʽarabiyya was a literary group founded by Bishāra al-Khūrī, writer and journalist. 82 Amīn al-Rīḥānī, “Risālat al-mughtaribīn” (the Westernalists’ letter), in al-Qawmiyyāt, p. 199, speech given in New York in 1927.

8

The generation of broad expectations Nationalism, education, and autobiography in Syria and Lebanon, 1930–19581 Christoph Schumann

The period between 1930 and 1958 was a crucial time for the history of nationalism in Syria and Lebanon. The emergence and rapid growth of radical organizations, like the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and the League of National Action (ʽUṣbat al-ʽAmal al-Qawmī), demonstrated a growing political selfconfidence of the educated ‘new middle class’. With a more radical form of nationalism, these groups directed their criticism not only at the French rule in Syria and Lebanon, but at the whole colonial system as such. By this, they called the legitimacy of the emerging territorial states into question, as well as the claim of the conservative-nationalist notables to rule these prospective postcolonial states. Their idea of decolonization was tightly connected to their call for a comprehensive reform of the nation. Industrialization, technical modernization, and nationalist education were to transform the society from a state of ‘miserable backwardness’ to a ‘higher stage of civilization’, able to cope with the West. Within this envisaged political and social modernization, the radical nationalist parties claimed a leading role, referring to their members’ acquired higher education and their ‘modern’ knowledge. The close interrelation between the spread of education and the emergence of radical nationalism is a generally supposed fact – one hardly studied in detail, however. Therefore, it is the aim of this article to elaborate and assess some interrelations between school and university education and political socialization, or rather radicalization. The main historiographical interest in nationalism has concentrated on its origins in Syria and Lebanon during the period from the late nineteenth century until the end of King Fayṣal’s rule in 1920.2 The following stage of radicalization, however, has been less under discussion. The most comprehensive description of this particular era of the Syrian history is Philip Khoury’s work on Syria and the French Mandate, in which he describes the complex interrelationship between the new radical nationalist groups (especially the League of National Action) and the traditional nationalist movement.3 In his approach, he relates the analysis of political discourse and action to contemporary social and economic changes. Studies on particular parties or organizations are unequally distributed. Works on the Baʽth are manifold, but mostly written with a view to the party’s

The generation of broad expectations 189 later rise to power, thus treating its organizational forerunners – like the League of National Action – and the early history of the party as a prelude.4 The most comprehensive study on the Syrian Social Nationalist Party is still Yamak’s book.5 Most of these studies on single nationalist organizations have in common that they emphasize questions of ideology and party structure, but tend to neglect social and cultural factors in a broader perspective. In a more general sense, a growing historiographical interest concentrates on the interrelationship between education and social mobility, on the one hand, and socio-political change, on the other hand. In this context, special attention is paid to the crucial role of the ‘intellectuals’ (muthaqqafūn), or the so-called Effendiyya, in the process of the radicalization and spread of nationalism.6 A new insight into the complex interrelationship between education and political socialization can now be given on the basis of numerous autobiographies, which have been written and published by (former) radical nationalists. There is also a growing number of studies which approach autobiographies primarily as a literary genre.7 The usefulness of autobiographies as historical sources, however, is controversially discussed among historians.8 Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus that autobiographical texts cannot be regarded as transparent records of the past. In fact, for the historical analysis of autobiographical material, one has to distinguish three different kinds of ‘facts’. First, there is the representation of facts and events in the narrower sense, which can only be verified by a crosscheck with other contemporary sources or, in comparative perspective, with other autobiographies. Second, every historical period leaves its specific imprint on the narrative plots, by which the authors bring their individual life experience and the recent past of their society together in one comprehensive story.9 And last, but not least, there are the socio-cultural patterns of self- and worldperception which can be regarded as a result of the authors’ upbringing and their life-courses, i.e. their socialization. In this latter regard, the work of Pierre Bourdieu provides an interesting approach for the theoretical conceptualization of the complex interrelation between (a) the socio-cultural conditions of the authors’ early surroundings, (b) the processes of their socialization, and (c) the resulting patterns of their social ‘habitus’. For the purpose of this study, two aspects of Bourdieu’s social theory are of particular relevance.10 First, a new perspective is provided by Bourdieu’s analytical or rather constructivist re-definition of the notion of ‘class’. For Bourdieu, class affiliation is not to be understood as the individual’s ontological-economic position within the process of production, but as his analytically defined position in ‘social space’ (i.e. society), in terms of the relational differences to other positions, and corresponding to the economic as well as the cultural conditions. The most decisive factor which characterizes the social position of an individual is his possession of different kinds of ‘capital’, of which Bourdieu distinguishes three main sorts, namely ‘economic capital’ (material and financial property), ‘cultural capital’ (level of education), and ‘social capital’ (social prestige and good connections). The second concept of interest is Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’, which is mainly derived from his notions of class and social space.

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Habitus describes the intermediate between the individual’s objective conditions and the patterns of his thought, perception, and action.11 Therefore, habitus can be defined as a system of durable and transferable dispositions (not determinants!), which are acquired by socialization and social experience. Since Bourdieu understands socialization as a lifelong and open process, the habitus is neither static nor determinative. Applying these rather theoretical reflections to the methodological question of using autobiographies as historical sources, one can state that autobiographical texts are obviously shaped by the authors’ patterns of world- and self-perception, or rather by their social habitus. Beyond this, the biographical information of the texts permits drawing conclusions about the social and cultural conditions under which these patterns of the habitus were acquired. There is no doubt that autobiographies provide access to a rather small segment of society: only persons who are capable of, and experienced in, writing are able to compose and publish autobiographies. But it is this reason that makes autobiographies of even higher significance for the study of intellectuals as a social group. In the context of this study, I understand ‘intellectuals’ as persons whose social positions are characterized by a higher-than-average level of education or rather cultural ‘capital’.12 Among this group, one has to distinguish between persons from upper-class backgrounds (with a high level of inherited social and economic ‘capitals’) and persons from middle-class backgrounds (with respectively little inherited ‘capitals’). The corresponding Arabic notion, which is mostly found in the investigated sources as a self-description, is muthaqqaf. Next to this self-selective character of autobiographies, only books of authors who regard, or formerly regarded, themselves as nationalists were put into consideration in this study.

The educational situation On the threshold of the era of independence, the educational system in Lebanon and Syria was characterized by its outstanding variety, a situation which can be described negatively as ‘fragmentation’.13 The common form of traditional learning was, since the Middle Ages, mainly tied to the religious communities. Islamic education especially was based on highly developed educational institutions from the elementary Koranic schools (kuttāb or maktab), to the advanced religious schools (madrasa), and it was crowned by famous institutions, like alAzhar in Cairo, the Süleymaniye in Istanbul, or al-Zaytūna in Tunis. Christian education had also deep historical roots in the region, but it experienced a tremendous change due to the missionary activities of the West. In fact, it was mainly the liberalization policy of Ibrahim Pasha’s rule in Bilād al-Shām which attracted Western missionaries to the Levant. Since 1843, the centre of the Jesuit mission was Ghazīr, which later became the Université St. Joseph (USJ) in Beirut. American Missionaries were present in Lebanon since the 1820s. Their most prominent institution, the Syrian Protestant College – later known as the American University of Beirut (AUB) – was opened in 1866. In the long run, the activities of foreign missionaries reinforced the educational efforts in all parts of

The generation of broad expectations 191 society. Private denominational schools were founded by all religious communities in Syria and Lebanon, but also non-confessional schools were established by famous intellectuals, like Buṭrus al-Bustānī, who founded the Collège National in 1863. The Ottoman administration, which had undertaken serious efforts to install reformed schools in the capital, now turned increasingly towards its provinces. The historical climax of this policy in Greater Syria was the foundation of a medical school in Damascus in 1903, which was re-established by King Fayṣal in 1919, and finally turned out as the nucleus of the University of Damascus. So, at the end of the First World War, not only was the educational landscape of Syria and Lebanon rather diverse, but educational opportunities were also very unequally distributed. The vast majority of the population was still illiterate and hardly had any access to educational institutions. Schools were mainly concentrated in the big cities and the areas of the former Mount Lebanon, while large parts of both countries had few or no educational institutions at all. The French Mandate did not change this situation much. Educational efforts mainly concentrated on the primary level, while the establishment of secondary schools was left to private initiative. As a consequence, the enrolment rate grew slowly. In Syria, the absolute number of enrolled pupils tripled from 53,403 in 1923 to 162,818 in 1944/1945, while in Lebanon the total number grew from 67,383 pupils in 1924 to 144,702 in 1944/1945.14 However, this expansion was diminished by the huge problems within the schools and classes. Teaching facilities in state schools were mostly poor, primary teachers were often not sufficiently qualified, and classes were overcrowded. As a consequence, the steady growth of enrolment rates was not really accompanied by a corresponding increase of graduates with a complete baccalauréat. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that the enrolment rates at the three universities – AUB, USJ, and Damascus University – grew at an even slower pace. A real explosion of the student numbers can be observed only for the period after the 1950s.15 However, a significant improvement can be noticed for parts of the lower middle class. Since the French Mandate period, increasing numbers of individuals from this social stratum were enabled by scholarships to reach secondary and even higher education.16 Here, a small door for social mobility was opened from the 1930s for boys who did not stem from the absentee land-owning class or the urban bourgeoisie.

Education and social background Not only were educational opportunities unequally distributed in Syria and Lebanon, but also social attitudes towards education were different in the various socio-cultural milieus of the Lebanese and Syrian society. With a view to the autobiographical descriptions, one can classify roughly three different types of outlooks: the upper-class attitude, the ‘petit-bourgeois’17 attitude, and, last but not least, the lower-class attitude.18 Upper-class affiliation was characterized by a higher-than-average level of the three mentioned capitals: property, education, and social prestige. Especially

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in the urban milieu, the ruling class regarded good education as its natural privilege and, furthermore, as a necessary means to preserve its inherited social position. The study of law was especially preferred because of its usefulness in safeguarding vested interests in juridical questions concerning personal property and for acting in the political field.19 Most established advocates came from an upper-class background and, moreover, until 1958, a large part of the members of the parliaments and cabinets of both countries held law degrees.20 Autobiographers who stemmed from upper-class backgrounds and later became members of radical nationalist organizations point out that the awareness of the importance of modern secular education was deeply rooted in their families. For them, it was a matter of social prestige to send young men (and even women) to the best available schools and universities, with the foreign provenance of these institutions being no obstacle at all. One example of a radical nationalist from an upper-class background is Hishām Sharābī (b. 1928). Sharābī, who was an active member of the SSNP from 1946 until 1949, wrote two autobiographies within a period of almost fifteen years.21 His second book especially describes his family background at length. In his childhood, Sharābī spent much time at his grandparents in Acre, while his parents lived in Jaffa. His grandfather served as higher Ottoman bureaucrat in Bosra until the end of the First World War. Later on, he lived on the revenues of his land possessions in Lebanon, which also helped him to finance the building of a new, comfortable house in Acre.22 Only Sharābī’s grandmother seemed to be worried about the young boy’s religious education and sent him to the sheikh of a neighbouring little mosque for religious instruction. But after a few sessions, the young Hishām refused to go there and to learn ‘uninteresting’ and ‘useless’ things.23 As in most other autobiographies of modern educated authors, Sharābī remembers the experience of traditional religious education as a short and rather bizarre interlude. From then on, he attended only British and American foreign educational institutions. First, he was enrolled at a private British school in Jaffa and later became a boarder at the Friends’ School of Ramallah. When his family moved to Lebanon in the late 1930s to evade the rumours of the national revolt in Palestine, Sharābī was enrolled at the International College (IC), a secondary school which was closely connected to the AUB, where he started his studies of philosophy in 1943. All these schools were among the best available educational institutions in the region and were rather expensive, especially for boarders. In retrospect, Sharābī realizes his rather exceptional situation: All those who studied at the American University of Beirut at that time came from the rich or, at least, from the well-to-do class. We were among the few of the ten thousands of young men of our people who had the opportunity to acquire knowledge and higher education. Nevertheless, we did not feel that we enjoyed special privileges, from which the rest was excluded. We were accustomed to living in spacious houses, we enjoyed life as we wanted, and we did not know the meaning of privation, as if happiness would be our natural right.24

The generation of broad expectations 193 On the contrary, the petit-bourgeois attitude saw education as the best way to realize the fervent hope for social ascent. The social position of the lower middle-class families was characterized by few financial and material possessions, which were, however, still enough to be sold and invested in the children’s education. The parents’ education (cultural capital) mostly lacked formal diplomas, but they had often acquired a remarkable level of knowledge by autodidactic efforts, which was enough to recognize the relevance and opportunities of modern education. An example of this social stratum is Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir (b. 1920), who stems from a petit-bourgeois Shiite family from Baalbek and who later became a SSNP member.25 ʽAbd al-Sātir’s grandfather had spent a part of his life working as a peasant in a little village, until he moved to Baalbek and opened a butcher shop. Since he was an orphan, he enjoyed no school education in his former village, but was later able to attain some religious learning. The author describes his grandfather as the most important person in his personal surroundings and as setting all his hopes on his grandson. He wanted the boy to achieve the social ascent from which he himself had been barred. Although it is impossible to reconstruct the ‘real’ personality of this grandfather by referring to ʽAbd al-Sātir’s description, one can certainly say that the author himself was deeply marked by the described social orientation. His aspiration for social ascent provides one important leitmotif, which runs through the whole book, and it was certainly an important part of the author’s self-view and of his life-project. From his autobiographical descriptions, one can further assess the remarkable efforts which his family undertook to make his studies up to the law diploma possible. Muṣṭafā’s uncle, Abū ʽAlī Ḥusayn, discovered a secondary school with low tuition fees in Aley (al-Jāmiʽa al-Waṭaniyya), so that the family could afford his and his cousins’ enrolment.26 Obviously, the main criterion for the choice of this school was not quality but affordability. In contrast to the boarders from a wealthier background, ʽAbd al-Sātir and his cousins lived in small rented rooms and their parents assured their board by bringing everything by train from Baalbek to Aley. Some years later, the author decided to go to Damascus for his law studies for similar reasons. Life was cheaper there and, besides this, he had relatives in the Syrian capital with whom he could stay for the time being.27 The lower-class attitude towards education can be reconstructed historically only by autobiographical texts of authors who originally stemmed from this milieu, but succeeded in building themselves a petit-bourgeois existence and reaching a better level of education. Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm (b. 1928) provides an example for such a life trajectory.28 The author stemmed from humble origins and was a member of the Baʽth-party from 1946 to the early 1950s. He grew up in a conservative Sunni family of the peasant village milieu. His family’s income came exclusively from peasant work and was therefore entirely dependent on the market prices for agricultural goods. So, the standards of living in his family were very low and even close to poverty.29 Economically, however, the family was not dependent on others, as were urban workers or rural day labourers. Since his family held a small plot of land, its economic position has to be described, strictly speaking, as lower middle class. Nevertheless, the prevalent social

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habitus, especially the attitude towards social ascent and education, was clearly different from the above-described petit-bourgeois attitude and must therefore be named as lower class.30 In ʽAbd al-Karīm’s family, the educational level was restricted to a smattering of religious knowledge for only a few persons, with the overwhelming majority of the family members being illiterate. Under these circumstances, social ascent was not even a dream, let alone a realistic life project. Every person capable of working was urgently needed in the fields, and every bad harvest could threaten the economic survival of the whole family. When ʽAbd al-Karīm enrolled at the secondary school in Damascus, a room had to be rented. This expense was a heavy financial burden for his family. The unstable income from the agricultural work seriously threatened the completion of his secondary education several times.31 Only the support of his elder brother, who helped his father in the fields, enabled ʽAbd al-Karīm to finish his secondary education. But beyond this, he had to face stubborn opposition to his education from outside his family. For some peasants, the young pupils were just ‘lazybones and jobless’, while the notables of the village tried to convince Aḥmad’s father that a brevet-degree and a career as village policeman would be an ‘appropriate’ goal.32 We [my cousin ʽAbdallāh and I] took off the village clothes and put on the new Western clothes for the first time in our lives. From this moment on, we became Effendiyya in the view of the village people. For us, it was an important and fundamental crossroads, but for the sons of our village, it was even more. By completing our secondary education, we became, in their view, absolutely different in content and form, because we took the ʽUqqāl and the Kūfiyya off from our heads. From this time on, some of the village sheikhs began to call us even ‘the bareheaded’ (al-mufarriʽīn), by which they meant that we would not accept their traditions and customs anymore, only because we uncovered our heads.33 In contrast to the petit-bourgeois attitude, which aimed at social ascent by education at any costs, in the conservative lower-class milieu, reservations against higher education in general, and against secular Western education in particular, prevailed. The short overview on the social attitudes towards education shows that there was no uniform outlook on education enclosing the whole Syrian and Lebanese society at that time. The most important differences followed the boundaries of the socio-cultural milieus and cannot simply be attributed to religious affiliation. As the expansion of the educational system progressed and access to secondary and higher education became easier, the petit-bourgeois attitude grew correspondingly. In 1961, already 94 per cent of the household heads in the poorly developed Lebanese Bekaa-plain considered education as being ‘very important for both boys and girls’ and said that they would ‘undergo deprivation to provide a respectable amount for their children’.34

The generation of broad expectations 195

The experience of education For every author, the biographical period of the school and university days was an important experience, and it therefore occupies an important place in all life narratives.35 This period of time was mostly connected to several more or less comprehensive biographical changes. As secondary schools were to be found only in the big cities and universities only in the two capitals, Beirut and Damascus, most pupils had to move at least once in the course of their education. This new spatial distance from the families could be experienced either as loneliness and isolation or as a new freedom. Thus Hishām Sharābī writes ironically in his second autobiography: ‘Leaving the bosom of the family meant the beginning of freedom. At that time, I discovered that there were many forms of freedom, of which smoking cigarettes was the most important one.’36 However, the pupils enjoyed this new freedom only outside the school buildings. Inside, they were confronted with new forms of discipline and authority, which were rather different from home. The Jesuit schools, for example, were well-known for their strict rules.37 The dense timetable with its continuous succession of lessons, sport activities, and religious services very effectively prevented the pupils from engaging in political and other activities. Beside this, it was strictly forbidden to bring outside books, magazines, or papers into the schools. No wonder that the history of the Université St. Joseph knows few political student activities.38 But the reasons for this are manifold. On the one hand, the USJ was not a campus university, a fact which impedes the organization and realization of political activities. Beside this, most students of the USJ came from a relatively homogeneous and predominantly well-to-do social stratum. The career prospects of USJ students were generally very good and the students did not want to endanger their opportunities. So the dominant political current among the students was a conservative or liberal Lebanese patriotism, as represented by the Katāʾib or the Destour Party.39 However, Arab or Syrian nationalists with more radical attitudes were not absent from French Catholic institutions. One example was Saʽīd Abū al-Ḥusn, who got in touch with – and later joined – the League of National Action during his education at the Jesuit School of Beirut. The first political conflict which he experienced in his class was the refusal of his soccer team to play under the leadership of a French captain. The author describes the impact of this event on the political atmosphere at his school as follows: It must not be stressed again that this event reinforced the impact of the common intellectual atmosphere. The result was an almost complete segregation of those [student] groups which believed in their nationalism as well as in their right for an independent, free and dignified life and in their struggle for this goal. These groups became the object of surveillance and a psychological war was waged against them, which aimed at making their point of view the object of amusement and sometimes even mockery.40 The directors of the French private institutions were in no way willing to tolerate student activism, least of all anti-colonial or nationalist activities. Nevertheless,

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as Abū al-Ḥusn remarks, the common politicized atmosphere was too strong and its influence on the students could therefore not be eliminated. Even direct repression did not prevent a number of activists from engaging in politics. Compared to the French Catholic schools, the Anglo-Saxon educational institutions allowed more room for personal development. Timetables were not so dense and the general emphasis was placed on a rather broad education.41 Nevertheless, since the Darwin affair of 1882,42 the history of the AUB was marked by a series of student protests. The centrality of the university campus as well as the international composition of the student body eased political exchange among the students and the organization of activities.43 Especially since the 1930s, student activism increased, although the university administration tried again and again to restrict the political commitment of their students. During the Second World War, every student had to declare that he would refrain from political activities. At the same time, all political organizations on the campus were disbanded.44 However, after 1945, political life returned to the university and was additionally reinforced by the enduring crisis in Palestine. The SSNP in particular gained much support among the students, making the AUB the party’s most important stronghold in the region. The most active Arab nationalist group on the campus was the Jamʽiyyat al-ʽUrwa al-Wuthqā. This association, which was founded under the supervision of the AUB professor Constantine Zurayk, was originally dedicated to the cultivation of Arabic culture and language, but became increasingly politicized.45 After violent demonstrations against the Baghdad Pact, it was dissolved by the university and, simultaneously, five students were suspended. In general, the AUB administration was in a constant state of tension between the two poles, namely the dedication to its liberal principles and the political pressure from the Lebanese state or the Mandate authorities.46 The situation at the government schools and the state university in Syria was quite different from this, although it covered a broad scale of regional varieties. In the minority provinces of Latakia and the Jabal Druze, the French Mandate authority had some success in imposing its educational policy. The prevailing atmosphere at these schools was pro-French and anti-nationalist. Teachers with apparently nationalist attitudes had to be aware of disciplinary measures. The pupils were encouraged and sometimes even forced to participate in antinationalist or rather separatist manifestations. ʽAbd al-Laṭīf al-Yūnus (b. 1914), an ʽAlawite who grew up in the province of Latakia, tells of a speech he had to make in French on the occasion of the governor’s visit, the text of which was written by his teacher.47 Other similar occasions for pro-French manifestations in the mentioned provinces were the annual celebrations of the ‘national holidays’ of these would-be states. Saʽīd Abū al-Ḥusn, who grew up in the province of Jabal Druze, describes the trip of his class to the provincial capital on occasion of the ‘Independence Day’, whereas he ridicules the whole celebration with its uniforms, titles, and symbols.48 Even if there are no corresponding autobiographies which tell about these events in positive terms, one can see from the descriptions that, at that time, the schools were a battleground for both sides, the pro-French forces and the nationalists. Therefore, pro-French celebrations could

The generation of broad expectations 197 easily switch into nationalist manifestations. Bashīr al-ʽAẓma, who was a pupil in the well-known Maktab ʽAnbar during the early 1920s, reports one instance in which an official celebration suddenly turned into its opposite.49 When the High Commissioner, Henri de Jouvenal, made his first visit at Maktab ʽAnbar after the end of the Great Revolt, he was welcomed with shouts and whistles. Finally, the boy who was designated to read a prepared French speech insulted the High Commissioner and his company. De Jouvenal left Maktab ʽAnbar immediately, but the unfriendly reception had apparently no consequences. This event hints at the opposite side of the above-mentioned scale. Probably only few schools in the Middle East were as nationalist as some of the Syrian state secondary schools. These schools were especially situated in the bigger cities, like Aleppo, Homs, and Hama, whereas the most outstanding institution was, at that time, the Damascene Maktab ʽAnbar and, later on, the preparatory school known as al-Tajhīz al-Ūlā. Here, the French authorities were apparently unable to get the nationalist activities under control. This is all the more striking since all Syrian secondary teachers were trained in France until 1946.50 The politicization of these governmental schools grew increasingly from the early days of the Mandate period. With an apparently ironical undertone, Bashīr al-ʽAẓma describes the first wave of patriotism which engulfed Maktab ʽAnbar after the end of the Ottoman Empire: After the withdrawal of the Turks, a revolution (inqilāb) in all fields took place from one day to the next. Our identity became Arab and our hymns nationalist. I, myself, wrote the following hymn as a reply to the rising and roaring wave: ‘The Arab lands are our fatherlands (bilād al-ʽarab awṭānunā), we do not want any solicitude! Into the war, get up to war, thou Arab people!’ . . . I participated with a group of children, who were controlled by their teacher, in parade-like student manifestations, whereas the occasions for these events occurred almost daily. So, I participated in a demonstration, close to the Hijaz Station, within the rows of the school and under the cane of our teacher, which he swung above our heads or beat upon the ground between our feet.51 From other autobiographical reminiscences, one can make out two main factors in the politicization of the pupils: the content of the instruction, on the one hand, and the personal charisma of particular teachers, on the other. The teaching of Arabic literature and history, for example, was almost automatically regarded as a nationalist manifestation by the pupils and students. It was not even necessary that the teacher added political statements on this. Michel ʽAflaq left an especially deep impression on his pupils as a rousing history teacher. Riyāḍ al-Mālikī (b. 1922), the brother of the famous Baʽth-officer ʽAdnān al-Mālikī and himself a later Baʽth member, describes the lessons of Michel ʽAflaq as follows: Despite his subdued and slow voice, he excited the pupils by his outstanding lectures, in which he shed light on the history of the Arabic nation and its

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This quotation shows how strongly the perception of the nationalist message was intertwined with the charisma of the teacher. For good reasons, Michel ʽAflaq was simply called ‘the teacher’ (al-ustādh) by his adherents, whereas one of them even wrote ‘Aflaq’s biography under this title.53 Many teachers were simultaneously regarded as political leaders and, likewise, some political leaders were treated like teachers. One of them was the founder of the SSNP, Anṭūn Saʽāda, who, in fact, taught at the AUB at the beginning of his career. Hishām Sharābī characterizes his personal relation to Saʽāda at that time: ‘I showed no resistance at all against the way of thought, as he practiced it, but rather submitted to him like the pupil to his teacher or the son to the power of his father.’54 In fact, the political influence of the teacher often transcended the walls of the class room. Some teachers, like Michel ʽAflaq, Constantine Zurayk, Zakī al-Arsūzī, or, during his time at the AUB, Anṭūn Saʽāda, invited their pupils to private meetings, which often constituted the core groups of later organizations. Beyond this, the common organization and participation in political manifestations was another important means for the further politicization of the pupils and students. In this sense, Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm tells about the political activities at the Maktab ʽAnbar: Our teachers played the first role in the preparation, promotion, and even leadership of the demonstrations. Often they even walked at the head, like the teachers Michel ʽAflaq, Ṣalāḥ al-Bīṭār [sic], Muḥammad al-Mubārak, Bakrī Qaddūra, Muḥammad al-Bazm, and Ḥimāda. Sometimes they sacrificed their duties and were arrested, but I don’t say ‘oppression’, because, at that time, I never heard that something like torture happened in any prison . . .55 Nevertheless, one has to underline that the situation in Damascus thus described was more the exception than the rule, compared to the rest of Syria. An important number of Syrian pupils were still enrolled at foreign and private institutions, and not all of the state schools were as politicized as in the bigger cities. The same has to be said of Lebanon. Only in a few schools were the pupils directly imbued with nationalist ideology. Even though an atmosphere of patriotism and attachment to Arabic culture was widespread, most teachers regarded the political commitment of their students with outspoken scepticism. More than repression from the state and the Mandate authorities, the teachers often feared a deterioration in the work of their pupils. The young SSNP members in particular were sometimes absolutely absorbed by party activities. ʽAbdallāh Saʽāda and Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir, for example, joined this party during their secondary

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school days. Both were firmly admonished by their teachers to reduce their party activities, not because of the teachers’ dislike of the party, but because they had fallen behind in their studies. However, the teachers had few means to hinder their students from their activities. This situation points to the most important factor in the political socialization of the pupils and students during the period of time at issue. Nearly no school was able to function in loco parentis. In particular, the students who lived in rented apartments, but also the boarders, easily found opportunities to get in touch with nationalist organizations or even to get involved in party activities. All the above-mentioned autobiographers joined the respective organizations during their school days or their university studies. The educational institutions could try to curb, or rather not reinforce, this tendency, but not even the strict Jesuit schools were able to cut their pupils off from these influences. Beyond the concrete contacts with radical nationalist organizations or parties, the common politicized atmosphere had a decisive impact on the political socialization of the young men, and it is therefore mentioned in every autobiography. There is not one book to be found of a former nationalist in which the author does not describe how much he was impressed by the common ‘patriotic atmosphere’ (al-jaww al-waṭanī).57 Nearly every writer had himself participated in nationalist demonstrations and describes his lasting impressions. The martyrs, the symbols, and the marching masses stirred the imagination of the young students. However, no particular event impressed all authors in the same way. Hishām Sharābī, for example, emphasizes the events of 1943 which lead to the Lebanese independence. Nadīm Dimashqiyya witnessed the Kaylānī Revolt in Iraq, when he was there with a student delegation, and thought about joining the uprising. The general strike and the demonstrations of 1936 were mentioned as particularly impressive by ʽAbd al-Laṭīf al-Yūnus and Riyāḍ al-Mālikī.58 The events mentioned apparently vary according to the regional and biographical circumstances. But they all have in common the fact that the authors perceived them as manifestations of the nation’s possible or rather future unity and harmony.59 It would go too far to describe these kinds of events as ‘formative experiences’, but they show that the schools and universities were, at that time, situated in a complex and politicized atmosphere which had inevitable repercussions on the students, as well as on the educational institutions itself.

Nationalism and the framework of an ‘intellectual habitus’ Even though the social and cultural backgrounds of these autobiographers as well as the form and content of their formal education differed, all regard the period of their school and university days as pivotal in their biographies. One aspect of this importance is the professional training which they received in the educational institutions and which was decisive for their later professional careers. The other aspect refers to their politicization, or rather radicalization, which took place during the same biographical phase. In retrospect, both aspects appear to be tightly intertwined. Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir, for example, who later

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became an advocate and a middle-ranking party official in the SSNP, assesses his time at the secondary school in Aley (Lebanon) as follows: During my school days in ‘Aley, I experienced incidents which had a farreaching impact on my life course. In this school, my ability to give speeches grew, which had a tremendous impact on my professional work in the lawsuits and in my nationalist political work. . . . The second incident, which had great influence on my life, as well as, later on, on the life of my family and the life of those who were influenced by me, was my joining the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.60 In the autobiographies of ʽAbd al-Sātir and other writers, the experienced parallelism of the professional training and the nationalist politicization flows into a common consciousness of forming a specific ‘generation’ (jīl). Of course, this ‘imagined generation’ does not comprise all members of the whole nation who were born in the same period of time. The two mentioned biographical experiences rather restrict the extent of this ‘generation’ to a distinct group, namely to the politicized and educated persons of a certain age. The consciousness of belonging to a specific generation was even more explicit among the pupils who participated actively in the struggle for independence. In this context, Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm remembers: I was proud, because I was among the pupils of the First Preparatory School in the capital. This outstanding school enjoyed a scientific as well as patriotic reputation, especially in the 1940s, and was a stronghold of the national movement and the struggle against colonialism.61 When the author later entered the first class of the War Academy in Homs, he was excited by the feeling of being exclusively among like-minded students from all over Syria: The students came from all parts of the country and most of them stemmed from middle-class families. As pupils of secondary schools, all had participated in the period of struggle and demonstrations against the French; therefore, the prevailing attitude among them was the deep belief in the fatherland and the Arab nation (al-īmān al-ʽamīq bi-l-waṭan wa-l-umma al-ʽarabiyya).62 This patriotic or nationalistic outlook of the young men was already connected to a far-reaching disappointment with the policy of the ruling nationalist elite. In their view, the traditional notables lacked modern education, ideological commitment, radical determination, and appropriate organizational forms. When Saʽīd Abū al-Ḥusn was still in the Jesuit School of Beirut, he told his friends that it was now time for them to take the banner of the revolution, because ‘we are the new educated generation’.63 Similarly, Riyāḍ al-Mālikī was sure that it is

The generation of broad expectations 201 ‘our generation, which struggles enthusiastically for the realization of its national goals’.64 Here again, intellectualism and political determination appear not only as an aspect in the self-perception of this generation, but also as a means of distinction in regard to the ruling nationalist elite. The new radical organizations, which emerged during the 1930s and 1940s, like the SSNP, the League of National Action, or the Baʽth, were more an expression than the cause of this new outlook. In retrospect, the entry into one or the other of these parties appeared for some autobiographers as almost natural, if not even as ‘a fateful necessity’ (amr muqaddar).65 The Jordanian politician and physician Jamāl alShāʽir, who joined the Baʽth party during his studies at the AUB, writes about the political attitude of his generation: My entry into the Baʽth party was neither exceptional nor difficult after the educational culture which I had experienced in the city of al-Salṭ, as well as the short experience in the Syrian Nationalist Party [i.e. the later SSNP], the events of 1948, the political atmosphere at the American University, and also in the cities of Beirut and Damascus. The generation of broad expectations, as they were expressed by the Baʽth party, saw the joining and support of this party as almost natural, since our generation believed in unity and democracy, as a course to dignity and strength, as well as a means to develop the country, and to realize a nationalist personality.66 However, political determination as a criterion for the adherence to the soperceived generation was rather ambivalent. On the one hand, the graduates from the secondary schools and universities certainly had a specific political consciousness which was based on common experiences during the school days. But, on the other hand, political cleavages divided this imagined generation into hostile ideological camps. Nevertheless, beyond these political gaps, all groups were convinced that they represented a political as well as social elite. This eliteconsciousness was partly transformed into specific political concepts, as in the leftist notion al-ṭalīʽa (avant-garde) or the corresponding rightist notion, annukhba (elite). But even the general terms, like ‘party’ (ḥizb) or ‘movement’ (ḥaraka), were used in a rather elitist sense. In any case, intellectualism played a pivotal role in the political and social self-perception of the radical nationalists. It was mainly expressed in two forms: first, as pride in their acquired education, connected to their respective formal diplomas, and, second, in the high esteem given their acquired ‘modern’, ‘scientific’ knowledge. The specific political meaning of the elite concept becomes more apparent in the following quotation from a speech which was made by Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir in the early 1950s, during an election campaign of the SSNP: What it [the underdeveloped people] deserves is a conscious, intellectual and brave leadership, who devote their knowledge, their thoughts, their experiences, and all their ability to raise the level of the people in all its parts and in all vital social fields, and who expend all their energies on service to

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This kind of elitism was not only confined to the political field, but played a very similar role in the professional self-perception of the respective authors. In general, graduates from the secondary schools, and especially those who acquired an academic diploma, either turned to the liberal professions, like medicine, the legal professions, or the service industries, or worked as teachers, officers, or in the civil service. Whatever the profession of the respective author, it is remarkable that everyone depicts his profession as being of outstanding political importance and pivotal for the future development of the whole nation. Bashīr al-ʽAẓma, for example, who worked as a doctor and later even became a Syrian prime minister, dedicates a large part of his autobiography to the description of his professional work. However, what was meant as an account of his past efforts turns out to be almost a sketch for a future national health programme.68 Similarly, Saʽīd Abū al-Ḥusn, who financed his studies at the Université St. Joseph partly by working as a teacher in the Jabal Druze, stresses that he regarded the education of the ‘future elite’ as his national duty. In this sense, he felt he was ‘more a voluntary soldier than a professional teacher’.69 Later on, when the author became an advocate, he was convinced in the same manner that the ‘real advocate’ is ‘less the holder of a certain profession than of a mission’ (li-annahu ṣāḥib risāla lā mihna).70 In a similar way, the Lebanese solicitor Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir regards the advocate as belonging even to ‘the highest level of the intellectual elite in society’.71 Yet the most crucial development in this regard was the politicization of the young army officers. Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm describes his professional self-perception at that time as follows: I believed that I belonged, by virtue of my membership in the Arab Baʽth Party and my position as an officer, to the front line of the combative elite of our people. . . . We all believed that the generation of the youth and the party, of which we were members, were enough to take over the mission of the nation (risālat al-umma), the realization of its goals, as well as the expectations of the people in Syria and the other regions . . .72 In general, one can say that the autobiographical texts considered here show a remarkable elitism, which is expressed by two main aspects: first, an intellectual elitism, which results from a very high or rather over-estimation of the acquired knowledge, and second, a professional elitism, which results from a politicized perception of one’s own profession. The narratives show that these patterns of social self-assessment constituted, at that time, a natural and unquestioned part of the authors’ general outlook on society. In this sense, they can be described as internalized or ‘habitualized’ (Bourdieu) structures of thought and perception. As the social formation and the individual acquisition of these patterns are tightly connected to the biographical phase of formal education, the whole

The generation of broad expectations 203 complex can be named as ‘intellectual habitus’. However, it is to be stressed that the thought patterns of the intellectual habitus did not replace the habitus structures, which were acquired during an earlier stage of socialization, like in the family milieu. The latter were modified, but were not erased. However, the selfassessment of the nationalists examined here hardly corresponded with the realities of the social and political power distribution in Syria and Lebanon at that time. On the one hand, the young intellectuals claimed to constitute a new kind of elite, legitimized by their recently acquired cultural capital, as well as their political determination, their new organizational forms, and their comprehensive ideologies. On the other hand, the traditional leadership, legitimized by its economic power and social prestige, was not at all willing to give up its position or even to share its power. Therefore, the social and political outlook of the young intellectual nationalists became a constant anticipation of the future. As the social self-perception did not coincide with the social realities, the solution of this dilemma was projected into the future. The sharpest description of this situation is probably Jamāl al-Shāʽir’s above-quoted dictum of ‘the generation of broad expectations’. Hishām Sharābī describes the gap between expectations and reality as follows: At that time, our lives were dominated by the future. We experienced the main part of the present while we were waiting for the future, which would bring all our dreams to fruition. . . . I desired the same as all the others, who belonged to this rising generation: the basic transformation of this corrupt society. We wanted revolution. However, revolution was for us a theoretical matter or even a romantic event: we take the power and change the course of history.73 Of course, neither all nationalists nor all autobiographers were in pursuit of revolution. In most cases, the expectations, directed at the future, were rather vague. However, personal desires and political expectations were always tightly intertwined. One example is Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm, who has already been introduced as someone stemming from a rural, lower middle-class background and struggling hard to achieve secondary education despite the economic shortcomings of his family, on the one hand, and the scepticism of the conservative village elite, on the other hand. When he achieved his first successes at school and was even able to provide the village community with interesting and important information from the capital, his personal prestige as well as his expectations rose: This situation stimulated some desires in my soul, and my imagination deluded me into broad wishes concerning my own future and the future of my country. I was proud of my humble rural background and my diligence. I desired to sacrifice my life to my fatherland and, especially, to the deprived rural areas, as well as to the struggle to raise its level and to the fight against all negative sides of the rural society.74

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From this quotation, it becomes clear that, at that time, the author had neither an elaborated revolutionary plan in mind nor concrete plans for his personal future. However, he was sure that his personal prospects were tightly connected to the future of his nation. So, the reform of society and the individual’s social ascent are drawn into one meaning pattern and expected to come true in the near future. In the following decades, the revolutionary transformation of the nation would turn out as a stony or even bloody path. However, the individual career patterns of the nationalists were as diverse as their social backgrounds and the different fields of their professional training. Members of the upper class usually found appropriate jobs rather easily. Hishām Sharābī, for example, left the Middle East with the help of his parents, as the SSNP was persecuted after the party’s abortive coup of 1949 and the execution of Anṭūn Saʽāda. In the USA, Sharābī was able to transform his already attained cultural capital (education) into a secure position within the academic system.75 For members of the middle and lower middle class, career prospects were more dependent on the respective professional fields. The growth of the national health systems and the common need for technical expertise made the social ascent easier for graduates of these academic disciplines. One example of this career pattern is the biography of Bashīr al-ʽAẓma, who stems from a rural middle-class background and studied medicine at the University of Damascus. After his graduation, he immediately found a job in a Damascene hospital. His joy at his successful social ascent and his new responsibilities is remarkable: From one day to the next I was suddenly transported from earth to the seventh heaven. From woodcutter, football star, and grave-robber to doctordictator, on a small scale perhaps, but wielding absolute power. A truly liberating leap, like the leap of a creeping worm that has turned into a butterfly, and flits about as though dancing with its radiantly colorful wings. It does not settle on a branch, but is filled with joy at its liberation from the dust of the earth, and joy in its mate.76 In contrast to this, the prospects in the legal profession were much worse, especially for graduates from middle-class or lower middle-class backgrounds. Despite the general growth and changing social composition of law graduates, the legal profession in Syria remained dominated by the upper class, while, in Lebanon, the Maronite upper and middle class prevailed. Therefore, opportunities for newcomers were few in both countries. This dilemma is reflected at length in the autobiographies of Saʽīd Abū al-Ḥusn and Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir.77 The latter describes his disappointment after his graduation from the Faculty of Law in Damascus as follows: When I received my law degree, I was full of joy and I thought that the doors of happiness were wide open in front of me. How badly reality hit me soon after! I went to Beirut to look for a well-known firm of solicitors. I wanted to join it and to earn money immediately afterwards. However, I had

The generation of broad expectations 205 to realize that some solicitors would even demand money for my joining their firm.78 In the political arena, individual success was even harder to attain for members of the middle class. Several of the mentioned autobiographers entered election campaigns, but they all had to face a nearly invincible network of coalitions between the notable families, as well as patron–client relations, corruption, and direct intimidation.79 Only a few managed to gain a seat in parliament or in other political institutions. On the whole, one can say that, apart from some individuals who realized a certain social ascent, the intellectuals did not attain the political importance they felt was their right. They neither achieved social recognition as members of the elite nor were they able to replace the dominant power relations with a new political system. In retrospect, most autobiographers view the achievements of their generation with disillusionment. Though most regard a specific event as crucial for their disillusionment, the variety of the mentioned events is as broad as the variety of the individual life courses and their socio-political circumstances. Often the crucial events are connected to personal sufferings, like imprisonment, exile, or professional set-backs. Arab nationalists tend to mention, first of all, the defeat by Israel, the brutalization of the military regimes (especially the period of Adīb al-Shishaklī’s rule in Syria), and the disintegration of the unity between Syria and Egypt, while (former) members of the SSNP refer mostly to the decline and persecution of their party. However, the implicit consensus of all authors seems to be that, compared with their initial ‘broad expectations’ (Jamāl al-Shāʽir), their generation turned out to be a ‘generation of defeat’ (jīl al-hazīma), as Bashīr al-ʽAẓma programmatically titles his autobiography.80

Conclusion In his article on the Effendiyya in Iraq between 1921 and 1958, Michael Eppel states that this new educated stratum had, despite its rising influence on political life, ‘no special self-awareness or political identity’.81 While Peter Wien in this volume has contributed to challenging this assessment, I hope to have shown how it also does not hold true for the intellectuals of Syria and Lebanon. Even though they lacked political and organizational unity, they had a remarkable awareness of their distinctiveness. Beyond this, the political discourse of radical nationalism can, with good reason, be regarded as the authentic expression of their political identity. Crucial to the self-awareness of these intellectuals was the experienced parallelism of their advanced and higher education and their intense politicization during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. This experience enveloped all young students, without regard to their social backgrounds. Their pride in the recently attained education and participation in nationalist activities flowed into their consciousness to constitute a specific ‘generation’, by which they meant, strictly speaking, a ‘generation’ composed only of intellectual nationalists. Beyond this,

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their notion of generation was tightly connected to their intellectual elitism. With reference to their academic knowledge and their acquired diploma, they felt themselves to be the real elite in society. Since this self-perception was hardly congruent with the socio-political reality in the two countries, the intellectuals tended to project their hopes into the future. The unification and modernization of the nation would bring about their own social and political ascent. In the end, this project either failed or dissolved in the bloody power struggles of the later decades. However, the political and intellectual history of the radical nationalist movements cannot be understood without looking at the crucial interrelation between education and political socialization.

Notes 1 This article has been published first in Welt des Islam, 2001, vol. 41, pp. 174–205. I wish to thank Brill Publishers for giving me the permission for this reprint. 2 For a survey of the debate, see: C. E. Dawn, ‘The Origins of Arab Nationalism’, in Rashid Khalidi et al. (eds), The Origins of Arab Nationalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, pp. 3–30. Recent studies: J. L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics at the Close of the Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 and J. F. Gelvin, ‘The Social Origins of Popular Nationalism in Syria: Evidence for a New Framework’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1994, vol. 26, pp. 645–61. Mahmoud Haddad, ‘The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1994, vol. 26, pp. 201–22. H. Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 3 P. S. Khoury, ‘Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1981, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 441–69; P. S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 219ff.; and P. S. Khoury, ‘The Paradoxical in Arab Nationalism: Interwar Syria Revisited’, in J. Jankowski and I. Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, pp. 273–88. 4 For the history of the Baʽth-Party before its rise to power in 1963, see: K. S. Abu Jaber, The Arab Baʽth Socialist Party: History, Ideology, and Organization, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1966; N. M. Kaylani, ‘The Rise of the Syrian Baʽth, 1940–58: Political Success and Party Failure’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1972, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 2–23; J. F. Devlin, The Baʽth-Party: A History from its Origins, Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1976; D. Roberts, The Baʽth and the Creation of Modern Syria, London: Croom Helm, 1987. For the political socialization within nationalist organizations, see Raymond Hinnebusch’s instructive study on the (Baʽthist) Revolutionary Youth Movement after 1963, in: R. A. Hinnebusch, ‘Political Recruitment and Socialization in Syria: The Case of the Revolutionary Youth Federation’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1980, vol. 11, pp. 143–74. 5 L. B. Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966; D. Pipes, ‘Radical Politics and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1988, vol. 20, pp. 303–24; D. Pipes, Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. 6 I. Gershoni, ‘Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in the Middle East, 1920–1945: Old and New Narrative’, in J. Jankowski and I. Gershoni (eds), Rethinking

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10

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Nationalism, pp. 3–25, here esp. pp. 18ff.; M. Eppel, ‘The Elite, the Effendiyya, and the Growth of Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in Hashemite Iraq, 1921–1958’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1998, vol. 30, pp. 227–50; D. M. Reid, Lawyers and Politics in the Arab World, 1880–1960 (Studies in Middle Eastern History, vol. 5), Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1981; ʽA. Ḥannāʾ, alMuthaqqafūn fī l-siyāsa wa-l-mujtamaʽ: Namūdhaj al-aṭibbāʾ fī Sūriyya, Damascus: al-Ahālī, 1996. See e.g.: F. Malti-Douglas, Blindness and Autobiography: Al-Ayyām of Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988; T. Rooke, In My Childhood: A Study of Arabic Autobiography (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, no. 15), Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1997; N. Odeh, Dichtung – Brücke zur Außenwelt: Studien zur Autobiographie Fadwā Ṭūqāns, Berlin: K. Schwarz, 1994. R. Ostle et al. (eds), Writing the Self: Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature, London: Saqi, 1998. Most historians stress the value of autobiographical material for the field of cultural and intellectual history. Socio-historical approaches, however, remain sparse. See e.g.: E. Kedourie, Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies, London: Cass, 1974, pp. 177–205; T. Philipp, Gurgī Zaidān: His Life and Thought (Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 3), Beirut, Stuttgart: Steiner, 1979; T. Philipp, ‘The Autobiography in Modern Arab Literature and Culture’, Poetics Today, 1993, vol. 14, pp. 573–604; S. A. Shuiskii, ‘Some Observations on Modern Arabic Autobiography’, Journal of Arabic Literature, 1982, vol. 13, pp. 111–23; M. Kramer (ed.), Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991; S. Enderwitz, Unsere Situation schuf unsere Erinnerungen: palästinensische Autobiographien zwischen 1967 und 2000, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2002; C. Schumann, Radikalnationalismus in Syrien und Libanon, 1930–1958, Hamburg: Deutsches Orient Institut, 2001; C. Schumann, ‘The Experience of Organized Nationalism: Radical Discourse and Political Socialization in Syria and Lebanon’, in T. Philipp and C. Schumann (eds), From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon (Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 96), Würzburg: Ergon, 2004, pp. 343–58; C. Schumann, ‘The “Failure” of Radical Nationalism and the “Silence” of Liberal Thought in the Arab World’, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 2008, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 404–15. Compare also Peter Wien’s chapter in this volume, as well as his Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941, London: Routledge, 2006. One such fact is – as will be shown at length later on – the remarkable tendency of all investigated autobiographers to embed their own life-stories in the broader historical context of their ‘generation’ as well as their pessimistic or rather negative assessment of their own experiences. In this discussion, I mainly refer to the following works: P. Bourdieu, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979; P. Bourdieu, Le sens pratique, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980; P. Bourdieu, ‘Espace social et genèse de “classe” ’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1984, vol. 52, no. 3. For Bourdieu’s theory in general, see D. Robbins, The Work of Pierre Bourdieu: Recognizing Society, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991. For a critical discussion of his central concepts, see Craig Calhoun et al. (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. See also the editor’s introduction to this volume. Concerning the concept of ‘habitus’, I mainly refer to P. Bourdieu, La distinction, Ch. 3, and P. Bourdieu, Le sens pratique, Ch. 3. For a recent adaptation of Bourdieu to Arab intellectual history, see M. Sing, ‘Illiberal Metamorphoses of a Liberal Discourse: The Case of Syrian Intellectual Sami al-Kayyali (1898–1972)’, in C. Schumann (ed.), Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century until the 1960s (Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia, vol. 104), Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2008, pp. 293–322.

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12 The formation of ‘intellectuals’ as a modern social group is a main theme of this volume. Comparable arguments are made particularly by Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Dyala Hamzah, Leyla Dakhli, and Peter Wien in their respective chapters. 13 On education in the Ottoman Empire and the Central and Eastern Arab land, see Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ‘maʽārif ’ (M. Winter), Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004. 14 R. D. Matthews and M. Akrawi, Education in Arab Countries of the Near East, Washington: American Council of Education, 1949, table 59, p. 351 (for Syria) and table 72, p. 422 (for Lebanon). 15 The impact on Lebanese politics and society is studied by H. Barakat, M. A. Bashshur, and T. Hanf, while comparable studies on Syria are missing. H. Barakat, Lebanon in Strife: Student Preludes to the Civil War, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977; M. A. Bashshur, ‘The Role of Two Western Universities in the National Life of Lebanon and the Middle East: a Comparative Study of the American University of Beirut and Université St. Joseph’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1964. See also: M. Bashshur: ‘The Role of Education: A Mirror of a Fractured National Image’, in Halim Barakat (ed.), Toward a Viable Lebanon, Washington: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1988, pp. 27–41. T. Hanf, Erziehungswesen in Gesellschaft und Politik des Libanon (Freiburger Studien zu Politik und Gesellschaft überseeischer Länder, vol. 5), Bielefeld: Bertelsmann, 1969; T. Hanf, ‘Le comportement politique des étudiants libanais’, Travaux et Jours, 1973, vol. 46, pp. 5–52; T. Hanf, ‘Die Hochschulen in den gesellschaftlichen Konflikten des Libanon’, in U. Haarmann and P. Bachmann (eds), Die islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für H. R. Roemer (Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 22), Beirut, Stuttgart: Steiner, 1979, pp. 230–53. 16 According to Matthews and Akrawi, about one-third of the student body in Syria was exempted from tuition fees or even had scholarships in the 1940s. R. D. Matthews and M. Akrawi, Education in Arab Countries, pp. 370f. 17 In using the notion ‘petit-bourgeois’, I refer to Pierre Bourdieu, for whom this class is more distinguished by its social attitudes than by its economic situation. Esp. in P. Bourdieu, La distinction, Ch. 6, pp. 500ff. 18 It is important to stress here that the lower-class attitude is not synonymous to ‘attitude prevailing in the lower class’. According to Bourdieu, the social outlook is a central criterion for one’s social position. A worker with a petit-bourgeois outlook is not ‘estranged from his class’, but is already about to change his social position. 19 D. Reid, Lawyers and Politics, pp. 91ff. 20 Ibid.; and R. B. Winder, ‘Syrian Deputies and Cabinet Ministers, 1918–58’, Middle East Journal, 1962, vol. 16, pp. 407–29 and 1963, vol. 17, pp. 35–51. 21 H. Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād: Dhikrayāt muthaqqaf ʽarabī, second edition, Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʽa li-l-Ṭibāʽa wa-l-Nashr, 1988 [first edition 1978]; H. Sharābī, Ṣuwar almāḍī: Sīra dhātiyya, Beirut: Dār Nilsun, 1993; English: Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual, trans. Issa J. Boullata, Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2008. For a detailed analysis of Sharābī’s autobiographies, see C. Schumann, Radikalnationalismus, pp. 111–36; T. Rooke, In My Childhood, esp. pp. 31 and 152. For a comparable autobiographer from the same social background, see Nadīm Dimashqiyya (b. 1920, member of the League of National Action), Maḥaṭṭāt fī ḥayātī al-diblūmāsiyya: Dhikrayāt fī-l-siyāsa wa-l-ʽalāqāt al-dawliyya, Beirut: Dār al-Nahār, 1995. 22 H. Sharābī, Ṣuwar al-māḍī, pp. 45ff. and 77ff. 23 H. Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, p. 95f. 24 Ibid., p. 17. 25 Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya: Min muʽānāt muthaqqaf ʽarabī, Beirut: Dār Muʾassasat Fikr li-l-Abḥāth wa-l-Nashr, 1982. For a comparable autobiographer from the same social background, see S. Abū al-Ḥusn (b. 1912, member of the League of National Action), Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam. Sīra dhātiyya, Damascus: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa,

The generation of broad expectations 209

26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46

47

1994. Furthermore, A. Qaddūra (b. 1917, SSNP member), Ḥaqāʾiq wa-mawāqif, Beirut: Dār Muʾassasat Fikr li-l-Abḥāth wa-l-Nashr, 1989. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, pp. 32ff. Ibid., pp. 55ff. Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād: Sinīn khaṣiba wa-thimār murra, Beirut: Bīsān li-lNashr wa-l-Tawzīʽ, 1994. For a comparable autobiographer from the same social background, see B. al-ʽAẓma (b. 1910, later Nasserist, but not organized), Jīl alhazīma: Bayna-l-waḥda wa-l-infiṣāl. Mudhakkirāt, London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1991. On the theme of poverty in Arabic autobiographies, see T. Rooke, In My Childhood, pp. 200–36. In this distinction, I follow Bourdieu’s characterization of the working class ‘habitus’, in P. Bourdieu, La distinction, Ch. 7, pp. 585ff. ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād, pp. 47ff. and 70. Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., p. 54. Similar problems faced S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, pp. 127 and 143. T. G. Khoury, ‘The Lebanese Educational System and its Relation to Lebanese Society’, Ph.D. thesis, Wayne State University, 1974, p. 79. Khoury refers to a study which was carried out by G. C. Fetter, Attitudes Towards Selected Aspects of Rural Life and Technological Change among Central Bika’s Farmers, vol. 13, Beirut: A. U. B. Press, 1961, pp. 66–9. On the theme of education in Arabic autobiographies, see T. Rooke, In My Childhood, pp. 97–102. H. Sharābī, Ṣuwar al-māḍī, p. 104. R. D. Matthews and M. Akrawi, Education in Arab Countries, p. 465. D. K. Emmerson summarizes on Catholic institutions in the Third World: ‘Catholic institutions generally impose stricter discipline on their students. A shared religious commitment in a highly structured campus environment allows the Catholic university to function more effectively in loco parentis.’ In D. K. Emmerson, ‘Conclusion’, in Emerson (ed.), Students and Politics in Developing Nations, New York: Praeger, 1968, pp. 390–426, here p. 400. For a comparative analysis of student activism at Lebanese universities, see R. S. Ghusayni, ‘Student Activism at Lebanese Universities, 1951–71’, Ph.D. thesis, SOAS, London, 1974, esp. pp. 108ff., 283ff., and 308ff. R. S. Ghusayni, ‘Student Activism at Lebanese Universities’, pp. 283ff. S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, p. 161. See T. Hanf, Erziehungswesen in Gesellschaft und Politik des Libanon, pp. 196f. For the so-called Darwin affair, see T. Philipp, Gurgī Zaidān, pp. 172–206; E. Kedourie, ‘The American University of Beirut’, in Arabic Political Memoirs, pp. 59ff. In general, A. A. Ziadat, Western Science in the Arab World. The Impact of Darwinism, 1860–1930, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986. R. S. Ghusayni, ‘Student Activism at Lebanese Universities’, pp. 244ff. and S. M. Lipset, ‘University Students and Politics in Underdeveloped Countries’, in Lipset (ed.), Student Politics, New York: Basic Books, 1967, pp. 3–53. R. S. Ghusayni, ‘Student Activism at Lebanese Universities’, p. 35. Descriptions of Zurayk by N. Dimashqiyya, Maḥaṭṭāt fī ḥayātī al-diblūmāsiyya, p. 23 and J. al-Shāʽir, Siyāsī yatadhakkar: Tajriba fī-l-ʽamal al-siyāsī, London: Riad ElRayyes, 1987, p. 42. An important change of the university’s policy towards student activism can be observed when Stephen Penrose followed B. Dodge as president of the university. Penrose was an ardent anti-communist and tried to restrict student activism by severe measures. R. S. Ghusayni, ‘Student Activism at Lebanese Universities’, pp. 36ff. ʽA. al-Yūnus, Mudhakkirāt ad-Duktūr ʽAbd al-Laṭīf al-Yūnus, Damascus: Dār li-lʽIlm, 1992, p. 30f.

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48 S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, pp. 40ff. 49 B. al-ʽAẓma, Jīl al-hazīma, p. 69. 50 On the education of teachers in Syria, see: R. D. Matthews and M. Akrawi, Education in Arab Countries, p. 379; F. I. Qubain, Education and Science in the Arab World, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966, p. 470ff.; and T. A. H. al-Doughli, ‘A Historical Review of Education in Syria, with Special Emphasis on the Effects of Arab Nationalism on Education from 1920–62’, Ph.D. thesis, East Texas State University, 1970. 51 B. al-ʽAẓma, Jīl al-hazīma, p. 57. 52 R. al-Mālikī, Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma, Damascus: Maṭbaʽat alThabāt, 1972, p. 44. 53 Z. al-Mārdīnī: al-Ustādh: Qiṣṣat ḥayāt Mīshīl ʽAflaq, London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1988. 54 H. Sharābī: al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, p. 83. 55 ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād, p. 69. 56 ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, pp. 34f.; and ʽA. Saʽāda, Awrāq qawmiyya: Mudhakkirāt ad-duktūr ʽAbdallāh Saʽāda, Beirut: published by the author, 1987, pp. 25ff. 57 Explicitly in H. Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, p. 20; ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, p. 33; S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, p. 160; ʽA. Saʽāda, Awrāq qawmiyya, p. 20. 58 H. Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, p. 20; N. Dimashqiyya, Maḥaṭṭāt fī ḥayātī aldiblūmāsiyya, p. 29ff.; ʽA. al-Mulūḥī, Bayna madīnatayn: Min Ḥimṣ ilā al-Shām, London: Riad El-Rayyes, 1990, pp. 121ff.; ʽA. al-Yūnus, Mudhakkirāt, pp. 41f.; and R. al-Mālikī, Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma, p. 38. 59 Riyāḍ al-Mālikī writes on the strikes of 1936: I was then 14 years old and my consciousness began to realize what was going on on the soil of this fatherland. The people formed, on the one hand, one firm block, which followed its patriotic leadership, struggled for its dignity and fought the despicable colonialism. They were confronted, on the other side, by the occupational forces, which were armed with the most superior and modern weapons of war. . . . (R. al-Mālikī, Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma, p. 38) H. Sharabi writes on the year of 1943: ‘This period was filled with enthusiasm and patriotism. The Lebanese were working hand in hand for one goal, which stood above all partial or confessional interests.’ H. Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, p. 20. 60 M. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, p. 36f. 61 ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād, p. 55f. The same assessment on this school: B. al-ʽAẓma, Jīl al-hazīma, p. 71. 62 ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād, p. 93. In this context, the author also mentions the problems which he and his classmates had in accepting the orders and the authority of the officers. This statement dovetails with Van Dusen’s analysis of the generational conflicts within the Syrian army of the post-independence era: Almost all cadets from this generation, in addition to its lower middle class origins, were completely politicized by the time they entered the military academy. The extent of the politicization is the crucial distinction between the post-independence cadets and their predecessors. (M. H. van Dusen, ‘Intra- and Inter-Generational Conflict in the Syrian Army’, Ph.D. thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1971, p. 70) 63 S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, p. 218. By the term ‘revolution’, the author refers to the Syrian Revolt of 1925, which he experienced as a child. 64 R. al-Mālikī, Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma, p. 20. 65 H. Sharābī, Ṣuwar al-māḍī, p. 23.

The generation of broad expectations 211 66 J. al-Shāʽir, Siyāsī yatadhakkar, p. 51. 67 M. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, pp. 158 and 198. 68 B. al-ʽAẓma, Jīl al-hazīma, pp. 121–68. In some autobiographies, the politicization of the legal profession is even more striking. Riyāḍ al-Mālikī tells little on his work in the courtyard, while he describes at length all the international conference in which he participated as a representative of the Syrian National Bar Association. His speeches, on these occasions, apparently revolved more round the Palestine problem, rather than legal questions. R. al-Mālikī, Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma, pp. 67–96. See also D. Reid, Lawyers and Politics, passim. 69 S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, p. 257. 70 Ibid., p. 297. 71 M. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, p. 64. 72 ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād, p. 102. 73 H. Sharābī, Ṣuwar al-māḍī, p. 171 and Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, p. 197. 74 ʽAbd al-Karīm, Ḥiṣād, p. 71. 75 H. Sharābī, al-Jamr wa-l-ramād, pp. 210ff. and 217ff.; and Sharābī, Ṣuwar al-māḍī, pp. 21ff. 76 B. al-ʽAẓma, Jīl al-hazīma, p. 83. A similar career pattern in: ʽA. Saʽāda, Awrāq qawmiyya. 77 S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, pp. 270–85 and 357ff. M. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, pp. 58–72. 78 M. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, p. 58. 79 Most impressive is probably the description of Saʽīd Abū al-Ḥusn, who dared to challenge the political primacy of the al-Aṭrash-clan in the Jabal Druze: S. Abū al-Ḥusn, Nīrān ʽalā al-qimam, pp. 394–419. M. ʽAbd al-Sātir, Ayyām wa-qaḍīya, pp. 152–74; ʽA. Saʽāda, Awrāq qawmīya, pp. 49–56. ʽA. al-Yūnus, Mudhakkirāt, pp. 198ff. An example for a successful candidature is Riyāḍ al-Mālikī, who defeated the candidate of the Muslim Brethren, Muṣṭafā as-Sibāʽī, in Damascus in 1957: R. al-Mālikī, Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma, pp. 197–216. 80 Compare the titles of the following autobiographies: Bashīr al-ʽAẓma, ‘Generation of Defeat’ (Jīl al-hazīma); Hisham Sharabi, ‘Embers and Ashes’ (al-Jamr wa-l-ramād); Muṣṭafā ʽAbd al-Sātir, ‘Days and a Cause: On the Sufferings of an Arab Intellectual’ (Ayyām wa-qaḍīya. Min muʽānāt muthaqqaf ʽarabī); Aḥmad ʽAbd al-Karīm: ‘Harvest: Fruitful Years and Bitter Fruits’ (Ḥiṣād. Sinīn khaṣiba wa-thimār murra); Riyāḍ al-Mālikī, ‘Reminiscences on the Path of Struggle and Defeat’ (Dhikrayāt ʽalā darb al-kifāḥ wa-l-hazīma); and last but not least, the former SSNP member Ibrāhīm Yamūt (b. 1919), ‘The Bitter Crop’ (al-Ḥiṣād al-murr), Beirut: Dār al-Rukn, 1993. 81 M. Eppel, ‘The Elite, the Effendiyya’, here p. 246.

9

Waiting for the Superman A new generation of Arab nationalists in 1930s Iraq1 Peter Wien

’Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice. And when justice is gone, there’s always force. Laurie Anderson, O Superman

The 1930s in Iraq was a decade of political turmoil in an atmosphere of heightened nationalist fervor among Arab state elites. It took place against the backdrop of a militarization of politics and saw a shift toward increasingly authoritarian, if not totalitarian, state ideas. The Iraqi state in the 1930s, however, was not sufficiently consolidated to bring about a fully-fledged totalitarian system. Rather than a wide public affair, political discourse was limited to the small educated circles of essentially two generations of graduates from either military or civilian institutions of higher education: an older generation of socalled Sherifian Officers, and a younger one of the Young Effendiyya. The Sherifians date back to the Ottoman period. Their name, however, derives from their participation in sherif Ḥusayn’s Arab Revolt in the First World War. Military education during the Hamidian and Young Turk eras had enabled young men of modest provincial origin to rise through the ranks of military academies in provincial capitals and the Istanbul staff academy and take on leading positions in the Ottoman army.2 Officers of Iraqi origin, who had attended the Baghdad military college and later the Harbiye in the Ottoman capital, thus became leading staff officers. The shared educational experience and the shared military experience of involvement in the First World War bound these Iraqi Arab officers together, a bond strengthened by the fact that many of them met in the secret Arab societies of the late war period, which led some of them to join Prince Fayṣal’s Arab army in the Hijaz to fight in the Arab Revolt. Outstanding examples of this type of career are Nūrī al-Saʽīd, who became the dominant political figure in Iraq in the course of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as Jaʽfar al-ʽAskarī and Yāsīn al-Hāshimī, two prime ministers of the interwar period. When the British put Fayṣal on the Iraqi throne in 1921, the latter brought along this entourage, the members of which gained ample opportunity to exploit their positions in government and to locate themselves favorably in a system of nepotism and patronage.

Waiting for the Superman 213 Central to this article is, however, a cross-section of memoirs by Arab nationalist intellectuals, publicists and politicians among the so-called Young Effendiyya in Iraq. These were men who were in their twenties and thirties during the interwar period. Of diverse ethnic and sectarian backgrounds, they had gone through the Arab nationalist system of state education that the Sherifian “founding fathers” of the Iraqi state had helped to establish. It was a principle of Fayṣal and his entourage – not least the renowned nationalist educationalist Sāṭiʽ alḤuṣrī – to use public schooling for nationalist indoctrination, next to military training at officer academies and, from the mid-1930s, compulsory military service. In my interpretation, the Young Effendiyya developed a generational consciousness on the basis of this shared experience of state education.3 I will assess the impact of this consciousness on their ideological standing. The Young Effendiyya did not in itself represent a political inclination; its members were found on all sides of the political spectrum. They were among the youthful supporters of the Arab nationalist rule of Yāsīn al-Hāshimī, who ruled Iraq as prime minister from 1935 to 1936 and was removed from office in Iraq’s first military coup as a result of his dictatorial approach.4 The Young Effendiyya was, however, also instrumental in the so-called Ahālī group, a forerunner of moderate left-wing trends in Iraq that had opposed al-Hāshimī’s pan-Arab nationalism and entered Iraq’s government for the first time in the aftermath of the coup of 1936. The Young Effendiyya was in government for a second time during the so-called Rashīd ʽĀlī movement of April and May 1941, when a group of fierce Arab nationalists tried to force Iraq out of its dependence on Great Britain by entering a short-lived liaison with Nazi Germany. The outcome was disastrous military defeat by Britain and the postponement of the generational change in Iraq so desired by the Young Effendiyya nationalists. This led to an even stronger radicalization of oppositional politics, which reverberated in the revolution of 1958 and its aftermath. My cross-section of autobiographies highlights the unmistakable authoritarian trend among Arab nationalists of the time. This trend, however, was less influenced by contemporaneous European ideologies than has often been assumed. In fact, the initial goal of my research on this topic was to explore whether Nazism in particular had had a strong impact in Iraq during that period. What I found was a lot more ambivalence and a rather complex reception in lieu of a mere appropriation of fascist ideology. Iraqi publicists debated European models, but integrated and reworked them in the local context of an Iraqi socio-political framework that drew significantly from Young Turk traditions and their militaristic and authoritarian heritage. The pros and cons of European ideologies were equally discussed, there was admiration for strictly organized systems of leadership and disciplined societies, but direct alliances with European powers were mostly rejected out of concern about the imperialist past and present of these powers. Iraqi publicists promoted leadership systems and social discipline, but the most prominent example was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Turkey and not any of the fascist leaders of the West. They were waiting for Nietzsche’s “Superman” to guide the nation into a brighter future.

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As I concentrate on Arab nationalists in my analysis, there are Sunni and Shiite Muslims, as well as a Christian in my sample, but no Kurds or, for that matter, Ahālī members. However, I will address the vision of Anwar Shāʾūl, a young Iraqi Jewish poet and intellectual of the same age cohort, about his Iraqiness. It is important to point out the differences because of the centrality in the literature of the argument about rising anti-Semitism among Arab nationalists in the 1930s and the clash between “Arabs” and “Jews” (I place them in quotation marks because the distinction may have been less obvious in the 1930s). This argument likened authoritarian and totalitarian trends in Iraq to a clear takeover of Nazi ideology.5 Accordingly, the so-called Farhūd, a pogrom against the poorer sections of the Jewish population of Baghdad in early June 1941 after the Iraqi defeat, would have been an outburst of Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism.6 The outcome of this generational survey was that, ideologically, the members of the Young Effendiyya remained quite undecided, wavering between authoritarian and liberal approaches. They saw themselves as the avant-garde of society. Inherent contradictions are for us, as readers of their statements, to uncover, but contemporaries did not necessarily consider them contradictory on the “market of opinions and ideologies” that offered a wide array of ideas to choose from – not only to Iraqis, but to the youth of many decolonizing societies.

Generational awareness Elite awareness was a distinguishing element of generational identity not only for the Sherifians, but also for a younger generation of both military and civilian Arab nationalists. The young urban Arab elite of intellectuals used the press and the growing numbers of debating clubs as a forum for debate. Thus, they dominated the emerging urban public sphere. In a framework of generational conflict, these Iraqis of a younger age cohort developed authoritarian views about a change in society to further Arab nationalism. Leadership and obedience played a crucial role in their imagery, in contrast to constitutional and democratic principles, which they deemed discredited by the democratic, but colonizing power, Britain, and the perceived collaboration of the Sherifians with the British overlord. Here, several memoirs will provide examples: that of ʽAbd al-Amīr ʽAlāwī, a physician who introduced pediatric medicine to Iraq, as well as those of the intellectuals Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī, editor of the Iraqi newspaper al-Bilād, the writer– politician Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī, and Muḥammad Mahdī Kubba, vice-director of the nationalist Muthannā Club. Some remarks from the memoirs of ʽAlī Maḥmūd al-Shaykh ʽAlī, a member of the 1941 Kaylānī government, Ṭālib Mushtāq, teacher and Iraqi diplomat, and Maḥmūd al-Durra, a young staff officer, complete the picture. The biographies of these men show many similarities, but also remarkable differences in standpoints on the nation, the generation and totalitarian ideas. Clearly, personal memories cannot be taken at face value. Autobiographies and memoirs remain constructs and the single account of an event mirrors the effort

Waiting for the Superman 215 to “make sense” of an individual life story in its entirety. This is evident in ʽAlāwī’s text, which he wrote in the late twentieth century as an old man. Kubba wrote his memoirs in the light of his role as a nationalist politician after the Second World War. Buṭṭī’s memoirs primarily contain diary notes or short-term memories that were edited by his son, Fāʾiq Buṭṭī. This study does not focus on “events” and the factual quality of their description, however, but on the quality of experience and the impact of impressions on the individual. Arguably, experiences of great importance to the individual are those that remain most present in a person’s memory. Therefore, these memories have a high information value even in late memoirs, as indicators of how people constructed their identities rather than in a factual sense. For ʽAlāwī, for instance, the awareness of his Arabness and of his adherence to a community of Iraqi youth with similar awareness became arguably so important because he continuously experienced disappointment and political persecution after the Iraqi revolution of 1958. ʽAlāwī finally left the country for good in 1980.7 ʽAbd-al-Amīr ʽAlāwī ʽAbd-al-Amīr ʽAlāwī was a Shiite. He was born in Baghdad in 1912 into a family of merchants on his father’s side and religious scholars on his mother’s side. He went through the new educational system of Iraq in the 1920s. In the early 1930s, he studied pediatric medicine in London and introduced the new discipline to Iraq after his return.8 He later advanced to the post of minister of health. After the revolution of 1958, he fled Iraq. His memoirs are a valuable source on the spirit of nationalist education in the late 1920s, as well as on the modernizing efforts of the Young Effendiyya.9 Education was crucial for the formation of generational awareness among the Young Effendiyya in interwar Iraq, and so it was for ʽAbd al-Amīr ʽAlāwī. He underlined in his memoirs that he belonged to a group of students who shared a common anti-British stance: literally, the secondary education graduates were full of hate against imperialism in general and its British version in particular. They were conscious of the fact that the British exploited the split between denominations, nationalities and religious doctrines. Thus, the imperialist mandate power followed the usual strategies of imperialist policy and favored religious minorities, offering them employment and schooling. The British continued this favoritism even after independence in 1932.10 The Shiite ʽAlāwī connected two issues of personal concern: his nationalist stance against imperialism and his sense of underprivilege despite belonging to the majority. He clearly recognized that Shiites had been excluded from positions of influence and from the political elite even though they formed the majority in the country. He therefore accused the British of practicing a policy of “divide and rule,” a standard Shiite allegation.11 Nevertheless, ʽAlāwī was explicit in defining his own adherence: the graduates. Group adherence shaped his identity and stood above his confessional belonging. Earlier in the book he gives an account of the so-called “Umayyad

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riots” that broke out in 1927, when Anīs al-Nuṣūlī, a Syrian history teacher in Iraq, published a book about the Umayyad state in Syria. Shiites felt offended by the anti-Shiite standpoint of the work. They claimed that the book was an insult to imam ʽAlī and imam Ḥusayn, since it emphasized the superior political competence of the Umayyad Muʽāwiya.12 According to ʽAlāwī, the riots caused a split between “the brothers that had one heart and common thoughts.” The minister of education put pressure on the authorities to deport the teacher, but students launched a powerful demonstration to the ministry. Fiery speeches were made, and some people used the situation to instigate a riot between Sunnis and Shiites.13 Hence ʽAlāwī considered the riots a consequence of negative incitement. In spite of the disadvantages of Shiite students in state schooling – only small numbers of Shiite pupils entered higher education due to their parents’ inherited mistrust of secular state institutions14 – he still regarded the Muslim Arabs, both Shiites and Sunnis, as one, in contrast to the minorities favored by the British. His adherence to the group of graduates from an Arab nationalist secondary school was consequently more important to him than the fact that he was a Shiite. He stressed at first that he was born of “Iraqi Arab” parents. Only then did he explain that his family originated from the Rabīʽa tribe and had moved to Baghdad in the late eighteenth century.15 ʽAlāwī was aware that he was talking about only a small minority of the population of Iraq – at least at the time of writing his memoirs. He remarked that education was restricted to the sons of state employees and officers. The number of government schools was small. Most people from other backgrounds were illiterate.16 ʽAlāwī’s older brothers had attended modern schools during the Ottoman period already, the oldest even a European Christian school (Madrasat al-Lātīn).17 ʽAlāwī was also aware of the urban–rural divide between Baghdad and the rest of the country: the “sons of the one city and of the one fatherland” were not in accordance. ʽAlāwī suspected that this was a fabricated divide, aimed at upholding factionalism and dissent among the compatriots. Arrogance dictated the relationship between the rulers and the ruled. It affected the area of secondary and university education as well.18 ʽAlāwī emphasized the importance of education in overcoming the divide. For him, secondary school was a vital space for students to mingle with their Iraqi brothers (ikhwānunā al-ʽirāqiyyūn). Elsewhere they were isolated in their environments of origin and had no opportunity to meet.19 ʽAlāwī made no distinction of ethnicity or confession between the “Iraqi brothers.” It was apparently their nature to be Iraqis. The school brought this to the fore, while their places of origin could only prevent this internal nature from coming to light. The image of a modern youth underlined the contrast between a nationalist community and traditional factionalism. Schooling served to implant this notion in the hearts of the pupils. Muḥammad Mahdī Kubba20 Like ʽAlāwī, Muḥammad Mahdī Kubba was of Shiite origin. He was born in 1900 in Samarra, where his father was a Shiite mujtahid (cleric) from a Baghdad

Waiting for the Superman 217 merchant family. He had moved southward in order to take up religious studies. Kubba went through several kinds of Shiite community education before he moved to Baghdad in 1924. Unfortunately, he remains quite vague in his memoirs as far as the details of his higher education are concerned. In 1928, Kubba ran for a parliamentary seat for the first time, albeit unsuccessfully. Later, he became vice-president of the nationalist Muthannā Club and, in 1946, the first president of the newly founded Istiqlāl party, which had its roots in the Muthannā Club.21 Kubba’s involvement in Iraqi political and intellectual life in the 1930s suggests that he moved in the same circles as Buṭṭī and Sabʽāwī. He occasionally published articles in Buṭṭī’s al-Bilād. As the vice-president of the Muthannā Club, he would certainly have been in touch with Sabʽāwī, one of its prominent members.22 Muḥammad Mahdī Kubba had already discovered the predominance of his Arabness in pre-First World War Samarra. His education had a stronger confessional inclination than that of ʽAlāwī. Nevertheless, both became nationalists. Kubba visited an Ottoman state school shortly after its establishment in Samarra in 1910. It was closed down during the First World War. Later, Kubba studied Arabic and religious studies with different teachers until the British besieged the town. He remembered that he had entered many fierce discussions with nonArabs, probably Iranians, during his childhood in Samarra. They constituted the majority of students because Samarra had become a leading center of Shiite scholarship after the mujtahid Muḥammad Ḥasab Shīrāzī had moved there in 1875. He and his successors attracted many Shiite students to a city that had originally been almost entirely Sunni.23 Most confrontations among the students evolved from issues of national and racial adherence. This apparently strengthened Kubba’s nationalist inclination, since he noticed that the non-Arabs rejected anything that was Arab.24 At some point, a violent clash between foreign students and people from Samarra took place, and even attracted Ottoman military intervention and attempts by the Russian and British consuls to intervene.25 Thus, Kubba traced his nationalist initiation back to his childhood. As a young boy, he experienced rejection by his co-religionists because of his ethnic origin. Arabness was evidently more crucial to Kubba’s identity than Shiism. Nevertheless, Kubba’s engagement in nationalist activities continued to take place in Shiite institutions. His family moved to Kāẓimiyya (Kāẓimayn) in 1918, where he had a friendly relationship with the al-Khāliṣī family. Kubba wrote that the family head, imam Muḥammad Mahdī al-Khāliṣī, believed it was a primary duty of a religious person to support the nationalist cause. The imam’s house and his madrasa were centers of nationalist political activities and a venue for political personalities. Kubba and a group of shabāb (youths) from Kāẓimiyya took part in the activities that preceded the Iraqi Revolt of 1920.26 During the revolt, the Shiite mujtahids of the shrine cities (Najaf and Karbala) propagated an uprising against the British administration of Iraq. While Iraqi nationalist mythology turned the uprising into the initiation of the Arab nationalist struggle in Iraq, the motivation behind the Shiite efforts was of a much more socio-economic and religious nature. The Anglo-Iranian treaty of 1919 threatened the position of the

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Iran-oriented mujtahids. They perceived the British occupation of Iraq as a Christian intervention and hence a threat to Islam. Unlike the Shiite fatwas (binding religious directives), the Sherifian propaganda contained notions of Arab nationalism. The al-Khāliṣīs in particular were strongly opposed to King Fayṣal’s regime, in spite of its Arab nationalist appearance. To them, it was proBritish. In 1923, they backed a fierce anti-Sherifian campaign.27 Only in hindsight did Kubba create a harmonious line between the image of his adherence to extremist Shiite circles and his later Iraqi Arab nationalist commitment. In accordance with the myth of a nationalist uprising in 1920, he portrayed himself as one of the shabāb who were among the first revolutionaries. Thus, the revolt formed a starting point for the nationalist careers of Kubba and his generational fellows. Despite its roots in group-related interests, the youth experienced the revolt as their first encounter with political activity. They took part in nationalist rallies and contributed to newly founded newspapers such as al-Istiqlāl. To a previously unknown extent, they gained the opportunity to express themselves in an emerging trans-confessional public sphere.28 ʽAlī Maḥmūd al-Shaykh ʽAlī It was clear to ʽAlī Maḥmūd al-Shaykh ʽAlī, too, that the 1920 revolt was the initiation of a new generation in the public of the new state. Shaykh ʽAlī wrote his memoirs while he was in prison following the downfall of Kaylānī’s government. He had served this government as minister of justice. He wrote that his political opinions emerged very early because he lived in an environment that taught him politics. His father was involved in party politics in Ottoman times, fighting the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Shaykh ʽAlī had a clear political view at the age of seventeen (i.e., around 1918), especially about British policy in the Arab world and Iraq, in particular. At the dawn of the 1920 revolt, he began to publish nationalist articles in the newspaper.29 He experienced that he could participate in the nationalist struggle at a very young age, which gave both him and others a sense of self-respect. They emerged as actors at a time of renewal and of growing doubts about inherited patterns. They were able to break through old-established structures and were permitted to experiment with new media and new ideas. Later, as a lawyer and a journalist, he opposed the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1924 and was arrested for his activities, but acquitted in the subsequent trial.30 When the treaty of independence was signed in 1930, the self-respect of this rising generation of intellectuals mixed with a sense of being deprived of their due influence in politics, in particular when they saw that the nationalist fervor of their mentors in the Sherifian generation had given way to an overt willingness to cooperate with the pro-British faction in Iraqi politics and in the palace as soon as they entered into government. Some young hotheads, such as Yūnus alSabʽāwī, as we shall see below, even served terms in prison for their participation in rallies of the opposition. Although their immediate influence in politics remained marginal for most of the 1930s, they succeeded in dominating the field of publishing.

Waiting for the Superman 219 Ṭālib Mushtāq Ṭālib Mushtāq was a leading functionary of Iraqi Arab nationalist education and a diplomat in the 1930s.31 He took part in the activities of the intellectual nationalist youth in 1920 and worked for al-Istiqlāl.32 This experience was evidently a turning point in his life, although his educational narrative is somewhat different from that of his fellow shabāb. Mushtāq was born in Kāẓimiyya in 1900. His father was an Ottoman official of Turkoman origin. He spent his youth in an entirely Shiite neighborhood and, although his grandmother had told him to stick to the rules of his Sunni confession, he took part in all of the Shiite rituals. When the First World War broke out, Mushtāq strove to enter the Ottoman army, but was rejected because of his age.33 When the British consecutively occupied Iraq, Mushtāq fled to the north with his father. They settled in Kirkūk until Mushtāq was sent to Istanbul to the Sulṭāniyya boarding school on a government grant. However, when he arrived, the Istanbul Sulṭāniyya was full and he was obliged to move to another school in Izmit. In Izmit, Mushtāq became part of an educational system that put all its emphasis on Turkish. With nostalgia, he recounts how he turned out to be the best in written Turkish. He recited patriotic poetry, performed in plays and later, after the Ottoman defeat in the war, took part in nationalist rallies in Istanbul against the Greek invasion. Once, he even gave a rousing speech, calling for the independence of Izmir. At this point, Mushtāq had decided to remain in Istanbul and share the fate of the Turkish people. His Ottoman education and his experience in times of upheaval in the Turkish metropolis had evidently made Mushtāq a Turkish nationalist. However, his economic situation went from bad to worse. One day, he heard that a representative of sherif Ḥusayn was offering financial support to Iraqis in Istanbul who were willing to return to their fatherland. This “. . . rescued him from the disgrace of unemployment and the shame of poverty.” Hence, his return to Iraq was motivated by pragmatism rather than nationalism. He claims, however, that his conversion from a Turkish to an Arab nationalist was remarkably swift. Mushtāq took a train to Aleppo on his way home. There were two other Iraqis on the train, one of them an old man who looked like an old Ottoman official. The other, his son, still wore the uniform of an Ottoman reserve officer. In the narrative of Mushtāq’s memoirs, the two symbolize the difficulties of Ottoman Arabs in relinquishing the Ottoman legacy. Mushtāq made explicit that up until then he had neither heard of sherif Ḥusayn’s Arab Revolt nor of the declaration of Arab independence in Mekka. It was only during this trip that he learned the names of important Iraqi officers who had taken part in the revolt and were now members of the administration of the Hijazi and Syrian kingdoms, among them Yāsīn al-Hāshimī, Jaʽfar al-ʽAskarī and Nūrī alSaʽīd. When they finally arrived in Aleppo, the metamorphosis was complete: there, they saw the flag of the Syrian Arab kingdom and for the first time had a sense of love and honor for their fatherland. “We had been Ottomans until that moment, but we became Arab with an identity among the nations, a state among the states, and a flag among flags.”34 Seeing the flag was the symbolic transition

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to the new nationalist creed. The experience of uproar in Istanbul, the shuffling around of his “identity” beliefs and the experience of deprivation and poverty had turned Mushtāq into a tabula rasa. The Arab flag put him back on a clear course. Quite probably, Mushtāq’s conversion took longer in reality and the experience of engagement in nationalist activities during the 1920 revolt undoubtedly played a significant role. He later became a teacher and headmaster, and an associate of Sāṭiʽ al-Ḥuṣrī. He mentions his posting as deputy director of education in Basra, where he organized political lectures for the shabāb of the town “to incite the nationalist spirit among them,”35 and his role in the demonstrations against the visit of Zionist Alfred Mond in 1928. Mushtāq was the headmaster of the Central Secondary School in Baghdad at the time.36 It is nevertheless remarkable that he never denied the break in his life that had made him, the Ottomanist, an Arab nationalist. Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī and Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī The biographies of these two men are more directly intertwined than the others and are good examples of the impact of shared educational and professional experience on creating shared generational values in spite of contrasting backgrounds. Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī (1899–1956) was about the same age as Kubba. He left a collection of both diary notes and memoirs.37 Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī, born in 1910, was hanged in Baghdad in 1942 as a key member of the Rashīd ʽĀlī movement of 1941. Several works contain sources on and information about his life, such as newspaper articles and poetry.38 Both Buṭṭī and Sabʽāwī were born in Mosul into poor families, Buṭṭī to a Christian and Sabʽāwī to a Muslim family. Both started to teach at a very young age to support their families, and both went to Baghdad for higher education. Sabʽāwī was hailed the best primary school graduate of Iraq in 1924–192539 and went on to become a “man of a restless and active mind.”40 Both Buṭṭī and Sabʽāwī studied law in Baghdad and had already started to work as journalists when they were secondary school students. Buṭṭī founded the newspaper al-Bilād in 1929. When he discovered the talent of Sabʽāwī early in the 1930s, he made him translator of foreign news and literature on his paper. Soon afterwards, however, they split up as a result of Sabʽāwī’s extreme ambition, which led him to defame his former mentor, as Buṭṭī wrote. Sabʽāwī went on to publish and became a leading voice in the rising political extremism in Baghdad. In 1930, he was imprisoned for two months together with a group of youngsters who had published a call for protest against the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of independence. For the rest of the decade, he was active in journalism and politics. Buṭṭī’s newspaper was often in conflict with the authorities during the 1930s. He went to prison in 1931 and 1932. Al-Bilād was banned several times, but Buṭṭī occasionally supported the government as well. In 1935, the year Yāsīn al-Hāshimī became prime minister, he became a member of parliament. Al-Hāshimī’s dictatorial tendencies seem to have had Buṭṭī’s full support.41 In 1938, Buṭṭī was appointed editor of the al-Mustaqbal newspaper,

Waiting for the Superman 221 founded by the Committee for the Defense of Palestine.42 After the 1941 war, he was imprisoned under the allegation of being a Nazi sympathizer.43 The parallels between the two biographies are striking, as in their social background, education and profession. Both protagonists were shaped by the young Iraqi state and its Arab nationalism. Both had a strong belief in the importance of “modern” literature and the ideas of modern writers. The ten-year age difference between them materialized in Buṭṭī’s more moderate attitude. He kept his distance from the extremists of late 1930s Iraqi nationalist politics, while Sabʽāwī was one of their intellectual forerunners.44 For this study, the allegation made against both of having been Nazi sympathizers will be inspected in the light of statements in their writings. Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī did not differ in his opinion that the young generation had become politically aware during their education under the British Mandate and entered the public sphere when Iraq and Britain signed the treaty of independence in 1930. Buṭṭī did in fact use the term “generation” (jīl), but presented the common socialization in the course of their education as the single distinctive element for its formation. He added that most members of this generation came from law schools. Some of them had returned from studying abroad. The exceptions to the rule were those who originated from the lower (shaʽbī) classes and had little or no education. Education functioned as a catalyst of generational solidarity, and Buṭṭī was aware of this. The majority of graduates immediately seized state offices when they left their schools due to lack of qualified personnel at this stage of state formation and the absence of other employment opportunities.45 However, nationalist education and contact with “modern” ideas created a certain potential for protest, too. It could be directed against the ruling elite of the state if the latter failed to fulfill the ideals of national freedom and independence propagated in the classroom. This happened during the early 1930s when dominance over the political debate shifted from the teachers of the founding period of the Iraqi kingdom to their pupils. New, non-state institutions, such as clubs and societies – for example, Kubba’s Muthannā Club or Jamʽiyyat alJawwāl (Society of Wanderers/Hiking Society), founded in 1934 – were crucial to this debate.46 The latter was a secret and oppositional society since most of its members were government employees. In the late 1930s, they gathered considerable political momentum when they aligned with young officers from the army. Their political credo was the idea of “the new system” (al-tanẓīm al-ḥadīth) for the state. According to Buṭṭī, al-Jawwāl served as a model for youth and promoted its bloc formation.47 Their self-esteem grew when they managed to gain influence on adolescent youth, but only when they aligned with the military did they build up a critical mass. Young intellectuals developed a sense of adherence that differed from that of the older generation of state leaders: Sunni Sherifians and their families, who had risen as a result of their elevated position. Stemming originally from the lower strata of Iraqi Sunni society, they had acquired privileges as loyal officers of Ottoman military background. In contrast, the Young Effendiyya consisted of

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Shiites, Sunnis, Christians and arguably even Jews. The juxtaposition of a proBritish establishment and this group of young intellectuals produced an openness to extremist views among the latter, built around the image of a new generation of youth ready to overcome the corruption of the old establishment.

The Muthannā Club The young intellectuals found their venue in the Muthannā Club. The Jawwāl society merged with it in 1935.48 Its name derived from al-Muthannā Ibn-Ḥāritha al-Shaybānī, an early Islamic warrior.49 The club did not merely cater for the Young Effendiyya. Its president, Ṣāʾib Shawkat, a leading member of Baghdad’s medical establishment, belonged to the “old ‘aristocracy’ of officials.”50 Nūrī alSaʽīd, the embodiment of the Sherifian elite and its pro-British stance, spoke in the club, and Sāṭiʽ al-Ḥuṣrī lectured there repeatedly. The grand teacher of Sherifian-style Arab nationalism, the latter belonged to a generation that had no interest in altering the system that suited its members so well: they could claim to lead a country that was the haven of Arab nationalism, but at the same time, their position was economically and politically so strong that hardly anybody could effectively challenge their status. Hence later allegations that the Muthannā Club had pursued a pro-Nazi line and was ideologically inclined toward a complete makeover of the state structure rest on somewhat weak foundations.51 Indeed, we can only assert that the club had a distinct pan-Arab direction and authoritarian inclinations.52 In February 1935, Ṣāʾib Shawkat, Darwīsh al-Miqdādī, a Palestinian history teacher who worked in Iraq, and others approached the Ministry of the Interior to found the club. Apparently, this accorded with the policy of the then government under Prime Minister Yāsīn al-Hāshimī. The aims of the club were publicized in an announcement in Buṭṭī’s newspaper, al-Bilād, on 29 August 1935: the club was to serve the spread of Arabism and to heighten respect for the Arab tradition, as well as to educate the youth physically and strengthen their Arab manliness. Furthermore, the club was to establish a new Arab culture that combined Arab traditions with the positive elements of Western culture.53 Kubba, Muthannā’s vice-president, wrote that the club was opposed to internationalist views that had begun to emerge in the 1930s, when new means of communication spread new ideologies. A group of young intellectuals feared that new thinking would endanger the position of Arab nationalism and the importance of national heritage in Iraqi politics and society.54 These remarks allude to the success of the socialist ideas of the Ahālī group that had aligned with General Bakr Ṣidqī after the military coup of 1936.55 Kubba asserted nevertheless that the founding group of the Muthannā Club was by no means conservative. Instead, they wanted to vest new developments in politics, society and economy, and modern principles of justice and solidarity in an Arab nationalist way. They were convinced, as Kubba stated, that Arabism was the only way to achieve these goals. The club therefore “. . . assembled the elite of the youth, and presented a prospect of its nationalist efforts.”56 It aimed

Waiting for the Superman 223 at reviving people’s nationalist sentiments and Arab compatriotism in order to keep the national heritage alive and to spread Arab culture among the different layers of society. In general, it was to cultivate the pride of youth in national adherence and in the history of the nation. Its members were Arab nationalists from diverse professional backgrounds, such as lawyers, medical doctors, publicists and schoolteachers – in brief, the Young Effendiyya. ʽAbd al-Amīr ʽAlāwī was a founding member, for instance.57 During general meetings, members and guests gave lectures on various topics in literature, history and society, or on issues related to Arab culture. The club published some of these lectures in the press as well as in its own organ, alMuthannā ibn Ḥāritha al-Shaybānī.58 Furthermore, the club organized excursions to historical sites59 and received delegations and deputies from other Arab countries to celebrate and to exchange news and reports about the Arab nation with a specific focus on the defense of Palestine. Kubba emphasized that the club was not a political party, and was neither interested nor involved in internal Iraqi politics. Differences in political points of view were fought out outside the club. This is why, despite political disagreements, the club was so attractive to nationalists of various currents. Becoming involved in internal politics would have threatened the club’s existence and the basic common understanding of its members. Once, Prime Minister Jamīl alMidfaʽī attended a celebration at the club. A speaker attacked him and his party policy. Midfaʽī had no choice but to leave in anger.60 Afterwards, Kubba apologized to Midfaʽī and members harshly criticized the speaker. When Nūrī al-Saʽīd later tried to use the club for his own political aims, Kubba withdrew. The Muthannā Club was hence mainly a venue for pan-Arab nationalists. According to Kubba, they represented a variety of opinions and degrees of extremism, probably in accordance with the respective ages of the members concerned. Arabism, it seems, was the all-encompassing frame. In addition, the club was a place to discipline young intellectuals. The establishment could observe them easily and, by granting them a platform, keep them under control. Thus, the club was welcomed by older politicians of the Sherifian generation, who frequented it often.61 Certainly, a wealth of ideas was discussed in the Muthannā Club.62 In 1941, it supported Rashīd ʽĀlī’s government.63 However, Kubba insisted that the Muthannā Club was politically impartial. After the war of 1941, he ardently rejected the accusation that the club had been pro-Nazi. An English lecturer in the Ikhwān al-Ḥurriyya Club (Brothers of Freedom), the successor institution of Muthannā after the British occupation, expressed the suspicion that earlier on members had supported Nazism and collaborated with Germany.64 There are reports, though, that Kubba, whom a contemporary once called the “Goebbels of the nationalists,”65 published an article in the magazine al-Muthannā after the fall of the Ḥikmat-Bakr regime, claiming that “National Socialism” (alishtirākiyya al-qawmiyya) would bridge the contradiction of a single nation (alumma al-wāḥida), a single fatherland (al-waṭan al-wāḥid) and class struggle.66 National Socialism was therefore probably among the model concepts discussed

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in the Muthannā Club. However, even if Kubba’s terminology suggests an approach to Nazism, the mere use of terms says little about the actual concepts behind them. Today, the term National Socialism stands for a clear-cut image of ideology and a distinct historical period. For an intellectual of interwar Iraq, however, the terms may have retained their isolated meanings of “nationalism” and “socialism,” albeit combined. A linkage of the two may have had a specific appeal in the context of Iraqi Arab nationalism. Still, the existence of Kubba’s article sheds a particular light on his denial of ever having supported Nazism.67 Kubba was sure that the British authorities wanted to fight fascism with propaganda when the Ikhwān al-Ḥurriyya Club was founded after the Iraqi defeat in May 1941 as a surrogate for the dismantled al-Muthannā. The club functioned in the same way as al-Muthannā before it. Presided over by Freya Stark, numerous English lecturers gave speeches there. The new club moved into the Muthannā building that had been built earlier with donations from members, supporters and sympathizers.68 Kubba complained that the British showed imperialist propaganda films, and opposed, vilified and discredited the principles of Arab nationalism. He indicated further that the club had become a venue for the British intelligence service and expressed dissatisfaction about the discrepancy between the former stronghold of Arabism and the current center under control of the British intelligence service. In fact, the British – re-installed as an imperialist power represented by Freya Stark, the perfect image of the British traveler spy and chronicler of Britain’s Middle Eastern Empire69 – seem to have thoroughly understood the pivotal role of the Muthannā Club prior to the Rashīd ʽĀlī movement: a place to control, influence and restrict the freedom of intellectual debate in Iraq. Had it been the site of pure propagation of Nazi principles, as the British were apparently keen to make the members of the club believe, it is quite unlikely that they would have created this continuity. On the contrary, they realized that the club was a favored and trusted venue for nationalist Iraqi Arab intellectuals to discuss new trends in politics. Consequently, the British needed to claim it for themselves.

Ideology The experience of being the first age cohort to enjoy a state-supervised nationalist education created among the Young Effendiyya a sense of being an elite and of distinction from the elders and their Ottoman background. In the 1930s, their generational awareness became public when they took over public functions. Maḥmūd al-Durra took part in the politicization of the army during his politically active period from 1939 to 1941, when he was still a young officer. He was a member of the army’s “nationalist bloc.” The term bloc (Arabic: kutla) is used on a regular basis to characterize the nationalist group formation of the youth in the 1930s. According to Durra, the politicization of the army was based on its opposition to the treaty of independence of 1930. He added that the spreading of new ideas and the observation of hitherto unknown developments in the world contributed to this politicization. He stated that news arrived from abroad of the

Waiting for the Superman 225 heroism of Kemal Atatürk and his leadership in Turkey, from Reza Shah in Iran, as well as the echo of the fascist and the Nazi movements as represented by Italy and Germany. However, Durra underlined the fact that news and ideas of this kind had a heavy impact on a small portion of the youth only – that is, those who were educated and ambitious – while the rest remained ignorant and backward. These young officers had a dream that Iraq would become the “Prussia of the Arabs,” uniting the Arab lands into a single state. They were waiting for a heroic leader to restore the Arabs to their former pride and glory, following Atatürk, Reza Shah or Mussolini.70 In the last statement, he did not mention Hitler. Durra’s remarks on the politicization of the army represent an accurate sample of the various images and references to nationalist debate and the debate on role models that dominated the Iraqi press in the 1930s. The dominant model country was Turkey. References to fascism supported this image.71 In the eyes of Iraqi intellectuals and journalists, fascism propagated superior leadership. How did the dissemination of all the images and news that came from abroad work? An extensive reading list in Buṭṭī’s memoirs gives a hint. Apparently, he kept track of his intellectual consumption. His reading of European thinkers ranged from Descartes to Bacon, Nietzsche and Proust, Kant and Hegel, to name but a few.72 It is not clear, though, to what extent Buṭṭī read complete works by these authors or merely excerpts and articles about them in newspapers and journals. The list shows that Buṭṭī read numerous Egyptian newspapers. In addition, he undoubtedly let others profit from his access to literature. When Sabʽāwī worked for al-Bilād, Buṭṭī allowed him to buy all sorts of English journals, papers and books for the newspaper. He showed the books to his friends and other youth, and thus became a transmitter of knowledge. According to Buṭṭī, Sabʽāwī had a strong influence on other youth and the formation of their elite awareness.73 He had been in touch with young nationalist officers since the late 1920s.74 Taking into account the small number of Young Effendiyya intellectuals at the time, as well as the close ties among them through state schooling, Sabʽāwī’s influence on his immediate surroundings may have been considerable. He played a key role in disseminating themes and terminology for the debate. Based on an awareness of intellectual debates in the West, a specific kind of knowledge emerged as a result of access to journals and books. However, the young intellectuals had to make sense of the debates for themselves, which was an opportunity. The resulting hegemony over knowledge was another active factor in shaping a sense of community.75 Buṭṭī described how Sabʽāwī and his friends were pushed into extremism and opposition. Around 1930, the Nationalist Party al-Ikhāʾ al-Waṭanī (National Brotherhood), which opposed the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of independence, began to exploit them and drove them to agitation.76 The Ḥizb al-ʽAhd (Party of the Covenant), founded in 1930 as a pro-treaty government party by Nūrī al-Saʽīd and other representatives of his generation, tried to attract young politicians, lawyers and doctors. On the other hand, Nūrī al-Saʽīd and his government rejected this youth opposition, among them writers and journalists, and imprisoned them after they had published a call for protest against the treaty.77 It is easy to imagine

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how the experience of exploitation and rejection added to their alienation from the political system and the generation of leaders. Common imprisonment created more shared experiences. Frustration increased when members of the Ikhāʾ al-Waṭanī party, formerly opposed to the British and the treaty, entered the government a few years later and adopted the same stance. A search for political alternatives was the necessary consequence. According to sociologist Karl Mannheim, signs such as slogans, gestures or styles have a stronger formative impact on generational awareness than the actual content behind them.78 Thus, a certain treatment of favored themes in the debate formed a vehicle for community spirit. For the Iraqi Young Effendiyya, such a theme was the desire for change, which found expression in the image of a great leader. The theme was very strong in the nationalist press of the time. It appears, for instance, that Buṭṭī’s worldview focused centrally on it. Buṭṭī’s memoirs are partly a collection of extracts from his notebook. He wrote down quotes from his readings and aphorisms that occurred to him. A favorite reference in these notes was Nietzsche’s idea of the “Superman” (al-insān al-aʽlā/ Übermensch), whose ambition raised him above the people. They had to serve the great (ʽaẓīm) and become tools in the realization of his aims.79 Buttī’s Nietzsche reception was superficial. Throughout the memoirs, he stressed the idea of the Superman only. It is nevertheless tempting to see profascist tendencies in his vision of the mediocre masses obeying a superior character. However, there is no immediate reference to fascism of any significance in this context. Instead, Buṭṭī’s principal idol in terms of true leadership was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He strongly believed that Turkey as a Muslim Eastern country was a model for Arab intellectuals. Following its example, they should direct their countries to a true awakening in politics and society for a civilized life.80 Hence Buṭṭī’s approach to totalitarian principles was ambivalent. Although he desired to have a benevolent leader, this idea was not connected to force and militarism. He expected a leader to initiate a spiritual revival of the Arabs on a civilian field for the sake of a civilized life. Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī supported the Iraqi state-run Futuwwa youth movement, too. Authors often refer to al-Futuwwa as the outstanding example of pro-fascist tendencies in Iraq.81 As early as 1935, he had considered al-Futuwwa a first step in the creation of an organization of a “youth of the leader” (fityān al-zaʽīm).82 This leader was to control Iraqi affairs in a common and universal party. Once, in a parliamentary speech, Buṭṭī declared: “I believe in the system of strength.”83 He elaborated further on how the country would have profited if young intellectuals had founded such a universal party to control the feelings of the public. Most of the old were unaware of the modern meaning of state. Hence, Buṭṭī called for a revolution of the young to abolish the old. The old had only been able to act with force and sometimes to the detriment of the public benefit. The term he used for the old was “hollow temples” (al-hayākil al-jawfāʾ),84 probably in reference to the generation of old Sherifian leaders: sanctified but inflexible. Buṭṭī complained that the youth had never managed to form a determined organization,

Waiting for the Superman 227 such as a Japanese youth organization he referred to. He described how the appreciation of public service (al-khidma al-ʽāmma) had grown among the youth. For instance, the students of the medical and law colleges had founded the Nādī al-Shabāb (Youth Club) in 1936. The club, however, had appealed to the students of these two colleges only and was dissolved in 1939. Buṭṭī assigned that public opinion in Iraq had suppressed Iraqi youth, while political parties had remained ignorant of their drive. The youth had become fragmented; everyone catered for their own benefit and beliefs.85 Intellectuals such as Buṭṭī wanted a true leader to fill this void of national leadership. Model nations provided examples of leaders who had succeeded in unifying their peoples for a common goal. Prominent references in leadership were Kemal Atatürk, Reza Shah and, on a secondary level only, Mussolini and Hitler. The examples of neighboring countries were far more popular, not least because of suspicions that European leaders would show their imperialist face eventually. Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī published an article in al-ʽĀlam al-ʽarabī as early as 31 October 1931, in which he compared the fascist movement in Italy with the Kemalist awakening (Arabic: Nahḍa) in Turkey. He preferred the latter (the Turkish) to the former (the Italian) due to his Arab nationalist attitude, as his biographer remarks. Sabʽāwī wrote that the Italian nationalist revival was stained with selfishness and carried the sins of the old world. Sabʽāwī pointed to the fact that the fascists had not hesitated to pursue the harshest colonialist means in Tripoli. Pleasure at the Italian revival would grow if the country were to honor the sentiments of other nations and help them in their liberation from the burden of imperialism. In contrast, Sabʽāwī found the Turkish awakening most satisfying. It came along without aggression and was at ease with its natural predispositions. This prevented the Turks from perpetrating the same crimes as the Italians.86 What was the position of the Young Effendiyya in regard to fascism? The fascist states, with their revolutionary and forceful outlook, certainly provided a successful image of how to challenge old authorities. While the young intellectuals associated Britain and France with the old elites in their own country, they considered the fascists a force that provoked Britain and France as old authorities. The movements in Germany and Italy thus gained sympathy in Iraq, albeit for domestic reasons rather than as potential partners.87 ʽAbd al-Amīr ʽAlāwī described the political atmosphere during the time his class graduated from medical college. He emphasized that it was the time when Hitler emerged as the Nazi leader in Germany. Iraqi public opinion, he claimed, was in favor of Nazism, “not for love of it in any way but out of hate for imperialism.”88 ʽAlāwī’s graduation took place in 1933, when anti-British sentiments were exceptionally strong following the newly signed treaty of independence. The treaty was regarded as a bow to British dominance in the country. Hence the Iraqi attitude of considering Germany an alternative. It is significant that ʽAlāwī had already perceived Germany as an antagonist of Britain when Hitler assumed power. The anti-British stance of the new German regime was not yet clear at that time. It is likely, therefore, that this general sympathy for a strong Germany

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was grounded on the heritage of the First World War, when Germany was an ally of the Ottoman Empire. Hence, Germany seemed to be a natural opponent of the British. Sympathy for Nazism was merely a label for anti-British sentiments in the rising confrontation of pro- and anti-British forces. It had little to do with ideology at this point. The superficiality of ʽAlāwī’s pro-Nazi statement stands in sharp contrast to an account of his friendship with Dr. Lederer (Līdīrār), an Austrian Jewish pediatrician, who had fled Austria after its annexation in 1938. He was one of three Jewish physicians who came to Iraq. A Christian of Jewish origin, Lederer had been Professor of Pediatric Medicine at the University of Vienna. In his memoirs, ʽAlāwī remembered Dr. Lederer with utmost gratefulness. He admired him for his exceptional knowledge as a pediatrician, and for his cultivated and educated personality. Many Baghdadis remembered his performances as a musician at his own or friends’ houses. Lederer joined the physicians’ training hospital in Baghdad. It belonged to the Royal Hospital, of which Ṣāʾib Shawkat was director at the time. ʽAlāwī became Lederer’s assistant, and the Austrian was like a father to him. ʽAlāwī originally liked to spend his spare time with amusement of some kind after the pain of work, but Lederer taught him patience and endurance, besides many other skills. These lessons enlightened ʽAlāwī with regard to his future professional life. When Lederer fled Austria after the Nazis took over his country, he left his wife and daughter behind. He never heard from them again and committed suicide in 1941.89 There is a striking contradiction between ʽAlāwī’s admiration for Nazism and his grief over the man who had suffered so much from Nazi tyranny. In 1941, the year of Lederer’s death, ʽAlāwī was enthusiastic about the prospect of an alliance between Iraq and Germany. According to ʽAlāwī, they (this is most likely a reference to the doctors at the hospital) had closely followed the development of Nazism and its success in Germany, and the general feeling was one in favor of Germany when the Second World War broke out. Ṣāʾib Shawkat encouraged them to take German lessons in the Royal Hospital after office hours. This was probably after Rashīd ʽĀlī’s coup d’état of April 1941, as only four lessons had taken place when the outbreak of the British–Iraqi war in May put an end to these studies.90 Apparently, ʽAlāwī did not realize that his strong empathy for Lederer and his pro-German standpoint were incompatible. The Rashīd ʽĀlī intermezzo and Lederer’s suicide must have been close to each other, at least chronologically. Even in retrospect, ʽAlāwī did not link the two events. The modern physician Lederer fit perfectly into ʽAlāwī’s vision of modern professionalism. His emphasis that Lederer was his teacher in practical and theoretical matters contrasts with the description of his own struggle against the oldfashioned medical establishment in Iraq. When ʽAlāwī returned to Iraq from London in 1935, he was faced with considerable resistance from this same medical establishment. It opposed his ideas of a specialization in health care on pediatric medicine. He was forced to practice in ʽAmāra instead of at a Baghdad hospital. Later, he was obliged to work as a police physician. ʽAlāwī had

Waiting for the Superman 229 reflected on the medical situation in Iraq during the interwar period: a change in medical practice only occurred after the first graduates had left medical college. They were now no longer the male nurses and half-doctors the older Istanbul graduates had wished them to be. A change in mental attitude was required, for instance, if women were to give birth in hospital rather than at home. A sign of reform was the child protection society founded in the early 1930s.91 Here, ʽAlāwī described the conflict of generations in the professional sphere: the old-fashioned and superstitious against the modern and enlightened science that ʽAlāwī transferred to Iraq after he had absorbed it in the West. Lederer, the cultivated Westerner, was ʽAlāwī’s ideal image of a doctor for Iraq, yet Lederer remained foreign and lonely there. He was ʽAlāwī’s protagonist of modernism in Iraq and at the same time a victim of the Nazis. Although ʽAlāwī’ went as far as to acknowledge the severe impact of its tyranny when he mourned his friend Lederer, he still admired Nazism as an anti-British force. Fāʾiq Buṭṭī, editor of his father’s memoirs, claims that Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī was under the influence of the worldwide nationalist and expansionist atmosphere and the spread of militarism during the period of military coups in Iraq.92 He insists that Buṭṭī supported Rashīd ʽĀlī al-Kaylānī and the Four Officers who led the military coup in 1941.93 However, many of the statements in the memoirs attempt to convey a “liberal” outlook. Fāṭima Muḥsin suggests in her introduction to the memoirs that he was a typical Iraqi intellectual. According to her, the conflicting formulas of Iraqi intellectuals and the abundance of objective factors at work in the country weakened the stance of the “liberal project.” In other words, the imperialist dominance of Great Britain and the personal rivalries of the intellectuals compromised the success of a liberal system. Its supporters were torn between their desire for true parliamentary life, constitution and respected laws, and contradictory temptations, such as the idea of the leader that each of them desired to be.94 However, if we take into consideration that “. . . the acid test of every liberal intellectual in this decade was whether he raised a clear cry against fascist totalitarianism and Nazi racism,” Buṭṭī’s stance remains ambivalent.95 He claimed that his newspaper adhered to the democratic faction during the Second World War. He recounted attacks by nationalist youth for not being nationalist enough, as well as by Nūrī al-Saʽīd’s pro-British government.96 However, Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī probably wrote this in his own defense while in prison after the downfall of the 1941 Government of National Defense for allegedly being pro-Nazi. He was also accused of having received bribes from Axis agents.97 In an article in alBilād in May 1936, Buṭṭī likened the Iraqi Futuwwa youth movement to Mussolini’s Balilla and the Hitler Youth.98 Buṭṭī in fact had contradicting views on fascist thought. An accurate and complete reception of models was less important in the nationalist debate than finding the stronger argument. The ideas behind the arguments emerged from the respective regional context. In the context of leadership, Buṭṭī was first and foremost interested in individualism. He agreed with an American journalist that the prevailing circumstances in Germany were solely due to Hitler’s individual genius: without Hitler, there would be no war and Germany would be a republic. The ideological implications

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of Nazism were apparently of no concern to him. On the one hand, he stressed that he had rejected Marxism all his life because of the anti-individualist nature of this ideology. On the other hand, he connected his individualist orientation to the arguably fascist leader principle. Referring to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Buṭṭī thought that the great individual (al-fard) had to awaken the nation: “When will this desired individual appear in Iraq from among the Iraqis? When will this Arab individual appear in the Arab world?”99 Either through disregard or ignorance, Buṭṭī did not discuss the fact that dictatorial leadership regimes rested on the humiliation of the individual, as well. Sabʽāwī was keen to become an Arab leader, too. In his case, we can trace the reception of a European leadership model to the example of Napoleon. Sabʽāwī was impressed by Emil Ludwig’s biography of Bonaparte.100 In a letter, he confided to his friend Shaykh ʽAlī that he had a desire to be like this man or to have his strength, but that he would have to learn a great deal about life and about people if he were to measure up to him. There are a few passages in Ludwig’s book that may have been of particular interest to Sabʽāwī. The tone is one of heroism and underlines the emergence of the individual through his own willpower and genius. In a letter to his parents, the young Corsican Napoleon complained about his schoolfellows at a French boarding school. He wrote that the arrogant French boys were superior to him only in terms of wealth. In the nobility of their minds, they were way beneath him.101 Ludwig presented Napoleon as an outright anti-French Corsican nationalist who could only be subdued by material power. Morally, however, he was superior to the economically superior. According to Ludwig’s Napoleon, the nationalist was entitled to defend himself by all available means. Thus, an Iraqi nationalist could well have perceived Corsica as yet another victim of French imperialism. In another quote, the future emperor declared the absurdity of finding it sinful to depose a usurping monarchic ruler. He stressed that a people had the right to get rid of a foreign intruder (meaning the French).102 The epilogue of Ludwig’s biography reads like an Iraqi manual for the ambitious leader: only once in a millennium would a mortal shape his life as Napoleon did. He proved what courage, self-confidence, imagination and willpower could achieve. Ludwig himself drew a link between the Napoleonic era and his own time, an era of revolutions that would give rise to untold possibilities and where Napoleon would be the outstanding example for the ambitious youth of the day.103 It appears that an Iraqi intellectual like Sabʽāwī had no preferences in his choice of examples. Napoleon could set an example for individual leadership, as could Hitler. The ambivalence in Sabʽāwī’s selection of models is conspicuous. Of course, Napoleon was also a representative of French imperialism. He was the invader of Egypt. Coherence was not the goal of Sabʽāwī’s choice of idols, and Butti’s memoirs contain a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte as the ideal “Superman” and leader, too.104 From a different angle, the coherence of antagonisms between European nations in the eyes of the European observer was not the coherence sought by the Iraqi nationalist. For Sabʽāwī, searching for idols did not necessarily include emulation of all their politics and principles. He was

Waiting for the Superman 231 more interested in models of charismatic leadership than in ideological or political systems. Sabʽāwī is notorious for his translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Arabic. He published it as a series in al-ʽĀlam al-ʽarabī after 21 October 1933 and encouraged his readership to learn more about the substance of Nazism. Sabʽāwī introduced Hitler as a political leader who tackled complicated political issues and difficult circumstances. For Sabʽāwī, Hitlerism was a modern movement. In Germany, the anger and drive of the youth had brought this to the fore. Sabʽāwī assumed that the substance of Hitler’s movement and its aims were suitable for Iraq and the rest of the world. To him, Mein Kampf was the wonderful story of a great adventurer, the German leader who rose from the rank of ordinary soldier to the leadership of a people who belonged to the most advanced in culture and knowledge.105 In Sabʽāwī’s eyes, Hitler’s Nazism was about individual leadership and modernism, about personal courage and adventure. Sabʽāwī wanted Iraq to belong to the “advanced peoples” as he called them.106 After all, this was again the acknowledgement of a project of Western modernization, regardless of its totalitarianism. Nationalism in Iraq was simultaneously anti-colonialist and proWestern. The British mandatory power was blamed for preventing the modernization and liberalization of Iraq according to the “European Enlightenment Project.” The British were considered exploiters, interested in keeping Iraq subordinate in order to benefit from its resources. The emphasis on modernization as a nationalist aim in Iraq “affirmed the legitimacy of the colonial project itself.”107 Iraqis could therefore refer to another concept of modernization, one that was developed in the same cultural framework but different in appearance. From a contemporary Arab perspective, Nazism and the fascist movements in European countries were appealing at the time because they provided a successful model. It was thus not only the alliance between the bourgeoisie and other dominant classes that shaped anti-colonial resistance in Iraq.108 It was also a shift in paradigm and pattern of reference toward totalitarian views in the “classic” de-colonization theme of development and modernization in a nationalist discourse, thus paving the way for later political developments in the Middle East as well. Nevertheless, Hitler’s role in the debate was merely that of a superior individual. The racist and expansionist implications of his ideology were apparently of little concern, as far as we can conclude from the material at hand. Sabʽāwī’s biographer also links his protagonist’s interest in Nazism to his reception of Nietzsche’s Superman. He assumes that it was behind the tendency in some of Sabʽāwī’s articles to glorify death and sacrifice, such as in his review of the film Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), which appeared on 19 March 1931 in al-Siyāsa. (This was one of the names Buṭṭī’s alBilād newspaper adopted while it was banned.) Sabʽāwī remarked positively that the film presented the noble objectives of death. The warrior was unique (fardan), fought to survive, agreed with a social system, followed his path of destiny and approved of certain ways of thinking. He followed the schools of thought he found most suitable. The battlefields opened up to him, as they

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comprised all nations and races fighting for religion or ideology to achieve goals that were also his.109 These lines are indicative of Sabʽāwī’s attitude toward individualism. It was located between the individual’s decision for a particular ideology and the de-individualized wish for self-sacrifice and death among the masses for the sake of an ideology. It was an attitude reminiscent of Buṭṭī’s contradictory standpoint. Sabʽāwī evidently saw the individual as the “new man,” who could be shaped to join a new generation on its “predestined path.” He was thus in line with ideas that already existed in Europe in the early twentieth century: of shaping a generation rather than accepting it as a given entity.110 As a side remark, it is astonishing that Sabʽāwī completely ignored the fact that the film was an expression of pacifism and, as such, highly contested in Germany, for instance. Examples of strong leadership and national awakening provided Iraqis with a model image for the revolt of the young and strong against the old and inflexible. Both neighboring and fascist countries supplied these examples. However, the adaptation of Western models to an Iraqi context proved difficult. Sabʽāwī reflected on this problem. In an article for al-Siyāsa newspaper on 10 March 1931, he wrote that youth remained a toy in the hand of writers and translators. Those who transferred Western thought suffered confusion, swaying back and forth between the ideologies. Some preferred Karl Marx, others promoted Lenin or Gustave Le Bon, or Nietzsche’s ideology of strength. Thus, the different currents of thought clashed around them and so did the confidence of the youth behind them.111 The problem of reception was hence one of second-hand delivery. Already, the translators were unsure of their process of selection and presentation. Incoherence began with them and was even stronger among their readers. Consequently, the recipient Sabʽāwī put Nietzsche next to Lenin, not as a philosopher but as an outright ideologist. Ideas of individuality and mass following remained unclear. In 1937, an article in the Iraqi satirical newspaper Ḥabazbūz recounted a probably fictional story, in which the author met Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī in Damascus, who passed him on an invitation from the communists.112 As a matter of fact, Sabʽāwī had contact to Iraqi communists as well and supported the moderately socialist Ahālī movement in the mid-1930s. In exile after the downfall of the Rashīd ʽĀlī government in 1941, he addressed the embassy of the Soviet Union in Teheran to ask for support for the nationalist cause in Iraq and recognition of the former government as a government in exile.113

Anwar Shāʾʾūl: a Jewish voice For the purpose of comparison, it is worth looking at how an Iraqi Jew related to the paradigm of the Iraqi nationalist discourse. Anwar Shāʾūl was born in 1904 or 1907. He wrote his memoirs after his final emigration to Israel in 1971.114 Shāʾūl stemmed from a family of merchants in Ḥilla that played a significant role in the town’s Jewish community. In 1916, Shāʾūl’s family moved to Baghdad, where he went through primary education at the Jewish Alliance Israélite Universelle School. Later, he graduated from the state-run secondary

Waiting for the Superman 233 evening school to enroll in the Law College in 1928, where he studied until 1931. To finance his higher education, he worked as a teacher of Arabic. In 1924, he wrote for al-Miṣbāḥ newspaper; in 1929, he became editor of the weekly literary and political journal al-Ḥāṣid,115 but wrote for Buṭṭī’s al-Bilād as well.116 Furthermore, he was a prolific writer and poet.117 Anwar Shāʾūl did not experience the generational community spirit in the same way as the Muslim and Christian protagonists of this study. Nevertheless, he shared many interests, attitudes and activities with them. Like all of them, he left the trodden path of traditional religious education and went through some sort of modern schooling. The school of the Paris-based Alliance Israélite Universelle, which he attended in Baghdad, had been the primary expression of reformed Jewish education since the nineteenth century. French, English and Arabic were the languages of instruction. In the 1920s, the French-oriented training provided graduates with a certain advantage over their compatriots in obtaining state offices.118 Along with Buṭṭī, Sabʽāwī and Kubba, Shāʾūl shared the notion that moving to Baghdad was the initiation to “modernity.” They left “traditional” life, and sometimes a life of poverty, behind to become figures involved in public debates. Estimates say that, before the First World War, there were 80,000 Jews in Iraq. Of these, 50,000 lived in Baghdad, some in its surroundings and the rest in smaller communities in the south. In the north, most Jews were farmers in villages and smaller towns. The largest communities were those of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, where 74 percent of the Iraqi Jewish population lived. By 1947, the Jewish population had risen to 118,000. The Baghdadi community increased by about 50 percent. Up to the 1940s, the commercial dominance of the Jews was so strong that on Saturdays commercial activity in Baghdad literally ground to a halt.119 The Alliance Israélite Universelle had begun to establish its schools in the Ottoman Empire in the 1860s.120 The Iraqi school, founded in 1865,121 was the first modern school in Iraq and initiated a Jewish cultural revival. Community ties were strong, but after the foundation of the Iraqi state, Jewish schools put less emphasis on the teaching of Hebrew. Rather, the subjects promoted were those required for the entry examination to higher state education. As a consequence, Jews formed the greater part of new government employees after the foundation of the kingdom. Abraham S. Elkabir, Jewish Accountant General in the Ministry of Finance, wrote that in 1926 he could not find enough skilled Muslims for his department. Its staff comprised mainly Jews and Christians.122 In the 1920s, Jews enjoyed increasing prosperity in society. Zionism was considered contradictory to Iraqi patriotism and did not coincide with the Jews’ striving to integrate. Iraq encouraged Jewish integration, when Fayṣal I was ready to grant them equal rights and demanded that Jews make their superior skills available. One in twenty senator posts was reserved for a Jew and the constitution of 1924 guaranteed equality before the law, freedom of worship and the establishment of minority language schools, as well as equal civil rights and access to government posts. When Iraq entered the League of Nations in 1932,

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the new independent state had to guarantee minority rights again. In the 1930s, Jews grew up increasingly as integrated members of Iraqi society. They faced no serious discrimination and did not think of emigration.123 Jews even became army and police officers for the new state and took part in press culture.124 Nevertheless, tension began to mount with the growing concern of Arab nationalists over the Palestine question. In the late 1920s, Zionism and the British policy in Palestine started to become a topic that nationalists could easily exploit to arouse public dismay and mobilize youth for their own purposes. The outbreak of the Palestine Revolt in 1936 during the rule of Yāsīn al-Hāshimī in Iraq gave fresh impetus to anti-Zionist activity. Traditional tolerance toward Iraqi Jews gave way to an atmosphere of suspicion.125 In addition, there was a tendency to blur distinctions between Jews and Zionists, and physical attacks on Jews occurred, but they remained few.126 In 1935, leading Arab nationalists founded the Committee for the Defense of Palestine, which had close ties with the Muthannā Club and the Jawwāl Society.127 The Palestinian nationalist Muḥammad ʽIzzat Darwaza witnessed the new atmosphere on a visit to Baghdad in October 1937. He noted in his diary that several Iraqi youths made speeches during a festival in the Muthannā Club to commemorate the beginning of the Sherifian Revolt in the Hijaz. One of them presented a forceful poem that pointed to the economic activities of the Jews in Iraq and their detrimental plots.128 Darwaza’s notes also suggest that politicians discussed the Palestine issue in the framework of a worldwide “Jewish Problem.” Apparently, this terminology was adopted from the Palestine debates at the League of Nations.129 All this added to the mounting hardship for Iraqi Jews before and during the Second World War. However, it did not extend to the racist exclusion of Jews from public life, as we shall see. Anwar Shāʾūl entered the Alliance school of Baghdad in the autumn of 1918 after having attended several religious schools with Jewish teachers.130 This was a truly enlightening discovery for him: he wrote that the school “embraced,” “trained” and “cultivated” him. He found lofty examples of the prevalence of right, the honoring of justice and the love of freedom. He concluded that, thus, the school was able to make a true Iraqi citizen of him, faithfully Jewish and proud of it.131 This last point distinguished him from his non-Jewish fellow Iraqi intellectuals. Sabʽāwi and Buṭṭī, for instance, were products of the nationalist system of state education established in the 1920s. Although the Alliance school did adopt a stronger Arab inclination than before,132 it still catered mainly for the Jewish community and went on to support the sense of communal identity. However, the numbers of young intellectuals like Anwar Shāʾūl increased. They played an important role within the community, apart from the wealthy and the notables among the Jews.133 The intellectuals went beyond the boundaries of the community. Shāʾūl was in close contact with Sabʽāwī and Buṭṭī. When he enrolled in the Law College in 1928, Sabʽāwī was in his class.134 When Buṭṭī was in prison in 1939, Shāʾūl went to visit him and published an extensive report on the condition of his fellow journalist behind bars.135 There was some room for identification: Shāʾūl was more

Waiting for the Superman 235 or less of Buṭṭī’s age and had the same type of education as Kubba – that is, partly denominational and partly public. As a journalist, he had the same profession as most intellectuals. He had even taught at school. Nevertheless, his book contains no remarks on a generational unity among Iraqi youth comparable to those of his non-Jewish fellows. Shāʾūl was a member neither of the Jawwāl Society, nor of the Muthannā Club, but of the Iraqi Pen Club, where he met many of the Arab nationalists.136 He even took part in nationalist rallies and recited his poetry. During these events, he made statements of brotherhood and tolerance – for example, during the mourning service for former Prime Minister ʽAbd al-Muḥsin al-Saʽdūn in the Kaylānī mosque in November 1929.137 Shāʾūl’s terminology of patriotic adherence was closely associated with communal diversity. In his view, the prerequisite for patriotic unity was tolerance among the segregated communities, as distinct from Buṭṭī’s and Sabʽāwī’s demands for a generational unity to overcome divides through common Arabness. Shāʾūl stressed diversification in his account of Saʽdūn’s honorary service. Two further attendants expressed their astonishment that a Jewish poet was taking part in this service using the Arabic language, “lughat al-ḍād.”138 Indeed, many Jews rejected their compatriots’ allegation that they were proZionist. In the summer of 1938, several Arab Jews came out with statements supporting an Arab Palestine. Articles appeared in Iraqi and Egyptian newspapers encouraging the Jews to support Arabism and the fight against Zionism. Anwar Shāʾūl himself encouraged Jews in other Arab countries to issue similar statements. On Iraqi Palestine Day, a group of Iraqi doctors and lawyers sent a statement to the press, in which they declared that they were young Arab Jews (“naḥnu shabāb al-yahūd al-ʽarab . . .”) who supported the cause and the people of their brother country.139 This expression of Arabness went beyond mere pragmatic lip service to please the ears of Muslim Arab nationalists. Therefore, some Jewish youth probably felt generational adherence, too, although it became more and more defensive in character. For Anwar Shāʾūl, the perception of the great individual as the harbinger of modernity was key to explaining the authoritarian tendencies of the Young Effendiyya. He linked apparent pro-Nazi tendencies to the cult of the individual as performed by the intellectuals. In his paper, al-Ḥāṣid, he confirmed that he fought those who rode in the stirrups of dictatorships and struggled against the apotheosis of the individual (“taʾlīh al-fard”) as practiced in the Italian Fascist and German Nazi systems.140 Shāʾūl formulated numerous complaints about those who bowed to Nazi propaganda and the activities of the German embassy in Baghdad. He had particular contempt for Rashīd ʽĀlī al-Kaylānī and Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī. The former was a professor at the Law College when both Sabʽāwī and Shāʾūl were students there. Shāʾūl accused al-Kaylānī of bigotry because he had put so much emphasis in his lectures on the importance of the rule of law. When he was prime minister in 1941, however, he broke the law himself and pursued the path of Nazism.141 The same was true of Sabʽāwī, whom Shāʾūl described as a calm and gentle fellow student. Sabʽāwī disclosed his true proNazi personality when he translated Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The culmination was

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his participation in the Rashīd ʽĀlī movement.142 Shāʾūl mentioned further names of pro-Nazi agents among newspaper editors.143 He linked them to the activities of the Italian and German embassies. He also mentioned that he encountered difficulties with the Directorate of Press at the Ministry of the Interior whenever he published articles opposing the politics of the fascist powers. This was sometimes due to embassy intervention.144 However, Shāʾūl never supplied details of German activities, or their impact. In general, anti-Jewish or pro-Nazi activities during the period under review are mentioned in his autobiography in a general sense only, when he attributes such activities to rogues and opportunists.145 The only example was Maḥmūd al-Watarī, Shāʾūl’s Arabic teacher during primary education at the Alliance school. Shāʾūl had heard nothing about him until one day, in 1938, when the Baghdadi newspapers published a front-page report about an Iraqi mission headed by al-Watarī that had returned from Berlin. They had visited teachers and their associations in the Nazi capital, responding to a special invitation by Goebbels to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the two peoples.146 There was a picture showing al-Watarī shaking hands with Goebbels. However, it is important to note that the event did not give rise to serious concern among the Iraqi Jewish community. On the contrary, Shāʾūl mentioned instead that it caused amusement and joking among those who knew Maḥmūd al-Watarī well.147 It is arguable, therefore, that the assumptions of a spread of Nazi influence among the non-Jewish population were to a considerable extent projections on the history of the 1930s. The growing difficulties of the Jews resulted from rising concern about the Palestine issue among Arab nationalists in Iraq rather than from racism of the Nazi kind. Historiography has often looked at the 1930s as foreshadowing the Farhūd of 1941 and the persecution of Iraqi Jews in the decades after 1948.148 Shāʾūl’s assessment of public feelings in Iraq may reflect this historiography. In contrast, he did not mention any repercussions of anti-Jewish sentiments in the army when he wrote about his draft during the 1941 war.149

Conclusion It has been the goal of this survey to give proof that certain discursive themes within Arab nationalism – sometimes mere slogans and catchwords, such as the “Superman” – emerged during the 1930s and bound a group of mainly graduates from the nascent Iraqi system of public education together, even across sectarian differences. In a generational conflict, these graduates called for a renewal of Arab society and challenged the authority of their elders. The circumstances of the time, however, led to their often uncritical reference to authoritarian and totalitarian themes. Fascism and Nazism were part of their repertoire, but came second to regional models, such as Kemalism in Turkey. The generational awareness of the Young Effendiyya made resistance against imperialist oppression a unifying theme for the educated youth. The motives behind this search for generational adherence, however, were individual. For ʽAlāwī, for instance, it was essential to overcome the confessional divide from

Waiting for the Superman 237 which he suffered. Buṭṭī and Sabʽāwī were looking for leadership to guide a newly formed generation. Sabʽāwī had ambitions of becoming such a leader himself. It seems that Jews stood outside the paradigm of Arab nationalism. This did not imply, though, that they were excluded from Iraq’s public sphere altogether. They were highly active as writers and activists to the left of the political spectrum, which gained considerable currency in the mid-1930s, and again after the Second World War when the Iraqi Communist Party became a dominant force in the political public. A complete appreciation of the political spectrum of Iraq’s intellectuals would have to take these trends into account, too.150

Notes 1 This article is a slightly modified excerpt from my book Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941, London, New York: Routledge, 2006. 2 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Baʽthists, and Free Officers, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 319f. Yücel Güçlü, “The Role of the Ottoman-Trained Officers in Independent Iraq,” Oriente Moderno n.s., 2002, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 441ff. 3 According to Eppel, the Young Effendiyya was mostly defined by standards of shared “social experience,” rather then a similar economic standing. See Michael Eppel, “The Elite, the Effendiyya, and the Growth of Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in Hashemite Iraq, 1921–1958,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1998, vol. 30, pp. 229ff. My usage of the concept “generation” and “generational conflict” draws considerably from the works of Karl Mannheim (see references below) and from Reinhart Koselleck, “ ‘Erfahrungsraum’ und ‘Erwartungshorizont’ – zwei historische Kategorien,” in Reinhart Koselleck (ed.), Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000 (Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Keith Tribe trans., Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1985). More details in Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism, pp. 14ff. 4 Mohammad A. Tarbush, The Role of the Military in Politics. A Case Study of Iraq to 1941, London: Kegan Paul International, 1982, p. 116. Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, third edition, p. 86. 5 See, for instance, Elie Kedourie, “The Kingdom of Iraq: A Retrospect,” in Elie Kedourie (ed.), The Chatham House Version, and Other Middle-Eastern Studies, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970, p. 275. 6 Daphne Tsimhoni, “The Pogrom (Farhud) Against the Jews of Baghdad in 1941: Jewish and Arab Approaches,” in John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell (eds), Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 570–588. 7 E-mail conversation with ʽAlī ʽAlāwī, 26 June 2003: ʽAbd-al-Amīr ʽAlāwī: . . . left Baghdad in 1959 . . . apart from a short ban on his travel, he was not really harassed by the Qasim regime. He became a professor at the Institute for Child Health in London, but returned to Iraq to reopen his clinic in 1961. He avoided political entanglements and though clearly disapproving of military rule, he was treated reasonably well by the regime of the Aref Brothers. However, when the Baath returned to power in 1968, he was increasingly threatened and was jailed in 1971 on trumped up charges relating to an imaginary membership of a “masonic conspiracy.” When he was released, his practice continued to be strong but he

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P. Wien could not abide the regime. When his travel ban was lifted, he found himself in London again and when the Iran–Iraq War broke out, we prevailed on him to stay in London. Although he loved London, he loved Iraq even more but the family would not allow him to return. One of my great regrets is that he didn’t live to see the demise of Saddam and the Baath, who destroyed his beloved Iraq.

8 ʽAwwād mentioned that ʽAlāwī’s book Dalīl al-umm fī tarbiyat al-ṭifl (The mother’s guide in raising her child) was in its third edition in Baghdad in 1946. Kūrkīs ʽAwwād, Muʽjam al-muʾallifīn al-ʽirāqiyyīn fī-l-qarnayn at-tāsiʽ ʽashar wa-lʽishrīn: 1800–1969, Baghdad: Maṭbaʽat al-Irshād, 1969, 3 vols, vol. 2, p. 207. 9 ʽAbd-al-Amīr ʽAlāwī, Tajārib wa-dhikrayāt, Kingsbury, London: Dar al-Makarim, 2000. The memoirs were edited by his son ʽAlī ʽAlāwī, who served as a minister in several Iraqi governments after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. I learned a great deal from him about the Iraqi exile community, especially that of his father’s generation. 10 ʽAlāwī, Tajārib, p. 129. 11 Elie Kedourie, “The Break Between Muslims and Jews in Iraq,” in Mark R. Cohen and Abraham L. Udovitch (eds), Jews among Arabs: Contacts and Boundaries, Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1989, pp. 25f. 12 Nuṣūlī had come to Iraq with a number of “specialists” in education who followed Sāṭiʽ al-Ḥuṣrī’s call. Thus, the Shiite protests were an indirect assault on Ḥuṣrī and his educational policy. Werner Ende, Arabische Nation und islamische Geschichte: Die Umayyaden im Urteil arabischer Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts, Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 20, Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1977, pp. 132ff. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, pp. 398f. Yitzhak Nakash, The Shiʽis of Iraq, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 114. Reeva S. Simon, Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Creation and Implementation of a Nationalist Ideology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, p. 98 and p. 108. 13 ʽAlāwī, Tajārib, p. 67. 14 Simon, Iraq Between the Two World Wars, p. 81. She refers to the 1930s, when the system of state schooling had become significantly stronger than during ʽAlāwī’s time. In addition, efforts to bring more Shiites into state schooling had increased: see Nakash, Shiʽis of Iraq, pp. 111f. and pp. 125f. 15 ʽAlāwī, Tajārib, p. 25. 16 Ibid., p. 62. Although the educational system expanded in the 1930s, more than three-quarters of students in higher education lived in the cities. Ayad Al-Qazzaz, “Power Elite in Iraq – 1920–1958. A Study of the Cabinet,” The Muslim World, 1971, vol. 61. Tarbush, Military in Politics, p. 19. 17 ʽAlāwī, Tajārib, p. 55. 18 Ibid., p. 41. 19 Ibid., p. 70. 20 See Khaldūn Sāṭiʽ al-Ḥuṣrī, “Muqaddima fī tārīkh al-ʽirāq al-ḥadīth,” in Khaldūn Sāṭiʽ al-Ḥuṣrī (ed.), Mudhakkirāt Ṭaha al-Hāshimī 1919–1943, Beirut: Dār al-Talīʽa, 1967, p. 24. Ḥuṣrī introduces Kubba as a highly influential thinker of the interwar period. His first publications listed in ʽAwwād appeared, however, after the Second World War. ʽAwwād, Muʽjam, vol. 3, p. 254. 21 Werner Ende, “Neue arabische Memoirenliteratur zur Geschichte des modernen Irak,” Der Islam, 1972, vol. 49, p. 107. Muḥammad Mahdī Kubba, Mudhakkirātī fī ṣamīm al-aḥdāth: 1918–1958, Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʽa, 1965, p. 16. On the Muthannā Club, see p. 222. 22 Kubba, Mudhakkirātī, pp. 35ff. and p. 99. 23 Nakash, Shiʽis of Iraq, pp. 23–25. 24 Kubba, Mudhakkirātī, p. 16. 25 Ibid., p. 11.

Waiting for the Superman 239 26 Ibid., p. 18. 27 Nakash, Shiʽis of Iraq, pp. 66ff. and p. 81. 28 See Leslie Tramontini, “ ‘Fatherland, if ever I betrayed you . . .’ Reflections on Nationalist Iraqi Poetry,” al-Abḥāth, 2003, vol. 50–51. (Ms. Tramontini kindly made the original typescript available to me.) 29 Muḥammad Ḥusayn Zubaydī (ed.), Mudhakkirāt ʽAlī Maḥmūd al-Shaykh ʽAlī: wazīr fī ḥukūmat al-difāʽ al-waṭaniyya fī wizārat Rashīd ʽAlī al-Kaylānī al-akhīra sanat 1941, Baghdad: Dār Wāsiṭ, 1985, pp. 13f. and p. 245. I refer primarily to the summary of the memoirs in the introduction by the editor. 30 Ibid., pp. 16f. 31 Muḥammad ʽAbd al-Fattāḥ Yāfī, Al-ʽIrāq bayna inqilābayn, Beirut: Manshūrāt alMakshūf, 1938, pp. 118ff. Yāfī counted him among the great men of Iraq (rijālāt al-ʽIrāq) and as one of the enthusiastic youth (min al-shabāb al-waṭanī almutaḥammis). 32 Ṭālib Mushtāq, Awrāq ayyāmī: al-juzʾ al-awwal 1900–1958, Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʽa lil-Ṭibāʽa wa-l-Nashr, 1968, p. 88. 33 Ibid., pp. 9ff. 34 Ibid., pp. 20f., 31, 38ff. and 52ff. 35 Ibid., p. 145f. 36 Ibid., pp. 188ff. Compare Kedourie, “Break Between Muslims and Jews,” p. 27. Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: 1914–1932, London: Ithaca Press, 1976, pp. 159f. 37 Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya 1900–1956, 2 vols., vol. 1, Fāʾiq Buṭṭī (ed.), Damascus, 2000. According to another source, he was born in 1901: Fāʾiq Buṭṭī, Aʽlām fī ṣiḥāfat al-ʽIrāq, Baghdad: Maṭbaʽat Dār al-Sāʽa, 1971, p. 85. 38 Khaldun S. al-Husry, “The Political Ideas of Yunis al-Sabʽawi,” in Marwan R. Buheiry (ed.), Intellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890–1939, Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1981. Khayrī al-ʽUmarī, Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī: Sīrat siyāsī ʽiṣāmī, Baghdad: al-Jumhūrriyya al-ʽIrāqiyya, Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa-l-Funūn, 1978. 39 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣabbāgh called him a “torch of intelligence.” Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn alṢabbāgh, Mudhakkirāt al-shahīd al-ʽaqīd al-rukn Ṣalāḥ-al-Dīn al-Ṣabbāgh: Fursān al-ʽurūba fī-l-ʽIrāq, Damascus: s.n., 1956, p. 15. 40 Batatu, The Old Social Classes, p. 456. 41 Phebe Marr, “Yāsīn al-Hāshimī: The Rise and Fall of a Nationalist (a Study of the Nationalist Leadership in Iraq, 1920–1936),” Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1966, vol. 1, p. 348 and pp. 350f. 42 The Committee was a venue for influential Iraqi nationalists and organized much of the Iraqi support for the Arab revolt in Palestine. See Michael Eppel, The Palestine Conflict and the History of Modern Iraq: The Dynamics of Involvement 1928–1948, Ilford, Portland: Frank Cass, 1994, pp. 30ff. 43 Buṭṭī, Aʽlām, pp. 92ff. 44 His only book, mentioned in ʽAwwād’s bibliography, was not available for this study. It is entitled al-Qawmiyya wa-l-waṭaniyya: Ḥaqāʾiq wa-īḍāḥāt wa-manāḥij lil-mustaqbal and was published in Mossul, 1938. ʽAwwād, Muʽjam, vol. 3, p. 493. 45 Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽIrāqiyya, vol. 2, 31. 46 ʽImād Aḥmad al-Jawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā wa-wājihāt al-tajammuʽ al-qawmī fī-lʽIrāq, 1934–1942, Baghdad: Maṭbaʽat Dār al-Jāhiẓ, 1984, p. 21. See the large number of Iraqi clubs and societies in al-Dalīl al-ʽirāqī al-rasmī li sanat 1936 (The Iraq Directory), Baghdad: Maḥall Dankūr li-l-Ṭibāʽa wa-l-Nashr, 1936, pp. 825ff. Cohen states that Darwīsh al-Miqdādī founded the society in 1931 in the Baghdad state secondary school. Hayyim J. Cohen, “The Anti-Jewish Farhūd in Baghdad, 1941,” Middle Eastern Studies, 1966, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 6. According to Jabbār, the society was established in 1933: ʽAbbās ʽAṭiyya Jabbār, al-ʽIrāq wa-l-qaḍiyya alfilasṭīniyya: 1932–1941, Baghdad: Dār al-shuʾūn al-thaqāfiyya al-ʽāmma, 1990, p. 16. See more on this in the following section.

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47 Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, pp. 450f. 48 See “Ijtimāʽ al-hayʾa al-ʽāmma li-Jamʽiyyat al-Jawwāl al-ʽArabī,” al-Istiqlāl, 12 September 1939, p. 4. Al-Jawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā, pp. 23f. 49 See Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., “al-Muthannā b. Ḥāritha” (F. M. Donner), Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004. 50 Batatu, The Old Social Classes, p. 298n. 51 See, for instance, Simon, Iraq Between the Two World Wars, p. 72 and p. 88. For links to Syria, see Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 564ff. See al-Jawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā, p. 23. Al-Jawāhirī attests that there was obvious admiration for Nazism and fascism in the club, but attributes it to an attitude of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” 52 Batatu, The Old Social Classes, p. 298. 53 Jabbār, al-Qaḍiyya al-filasṭīniyya, pp. 52f. 54 Kubba, Mudhakkirātī, pp. 54ff. 55 See, for instance, Tripp, A History of Iraq, pp. 86ff. 56 Kubba, Mudhakkirātī, p. 55. 57 Al-Jawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā, p. 30. 58 See, for instance, the newspaper al-Bilād on 18 and 19 September 1940, al-Istiqlāl on 17 November 1940, etc. See Jabbār, al-Qaḍiyya al-filasṭīniyya, pp. 52f. 59 At the time, many Iraqi Arab nationalists emphasized national heritage to construct an “imagined community.” See Amatzia Baram, “A Case of Imported Identity: The Modernizing Secular Ruling Elites of Iraq and the Concept of Mesopotamian-Inspired Territorial Nationalism, 1922–1992,” Poetics Today, 1994, vol. 15, pp. 292ff. Eric Davis, “The Museum and the Politics of Social Control in Modern Iraq,” in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 93ff. Reeva S. Simon, “The Teaching of History in Iraq before the Rashid Ali Coup of 1941,” Middle Eastern Studies, 1986, vol. 22, pp. 43ff. Compare Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 2003, 12th ed. 60 Kubba, Mudhakkirātī, p. 56. 61 Compare European trends: Elisabeth Domansky, “Politische Dimensionen von Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in der Zwischenkriegszeit in Deutschland,” in Dieter Dowe (ed.), Jugendprotest und Generationenkonflikt in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert: Deutschland, England und Italien im Vergleich. Vorträge eines internationalen Symposiums des Instituts für Sozialgeschichte Braunschweig-Bonn und der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung vom 17.–19. Juni 1985 in Braunschweig, Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1986, pp. 115ff. Jürgen Reulecke, “The Battle for the Young: Mobilising Young People in Wilhelmine Germany,” in Mark Roseman (ed.), Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770–1968, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 96. 62 Compare Tripp, History of Iraq, p. 93. 63 Jabbār, al-Qaḍiyya al-filasṭīniyya, p. 53. 64 Kubba, Mudhakkirātī, pp. 56–59. 65 ʽUmar Abū al-Naṣr, al-ʽIrāq al-jadīd, Beirut: Maṭbaʽat Dār al-Aḥad, 1937, p. 79. 66 al-Ḥuṣrī, “Muqaddima fī tārīkh,” p. 24. He quotes Abū al-Naṣr, al-ʽIrāq al-jadīd, p. 86. According to Stefan Wild, Abū al-Naṣr published a partial translation of Mein Kampf in 1935 in Beirut. He “. . . seems to have been an all-round historian and journalist, whose work made up in breadth what it lacked in profoundness.” However, he was apparently critical of Hitler and National Socialism. See Stefan Wild, “National Socialism in the Arab Near East Between 1933 and 1939,” Die Welt des Islams, 1985, vol. 25, pp. 148f. 67 Al-Jawāhirī’s assessment of the club’s perception of Nazism remains vague: alJawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā, pp. 58ff.

Waiting for the Superman 241 68 Ibid., p. 27 and pp. 157f. 69 In the 1950s, British junior Foreign Office officials in the Middle East were told to read her books “. . . to learn how to enter into human relationships with the people around them.” Molly Izzard, Freya Stark: A Biography, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993, p. 15, pp. 13ff. 70 Maḥmūd al-Durra, al-Ḥarb al-ʽirāqiyya al-brīṭāniyya 1941, Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʽa, 1969, p. 15, pp. 46f. Durra graduated from staff college in early 1938 and later became assistant to the Chief of Staff. In 1941, he worked closely with Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣabbāgh, a key figure in the Rashīd ʽĀlī movement. 71 Kemalism was at its peak in Iraq during the rule of Bakr Ṣidqī and Ḥikmat Sulaymān, who both admired Atatürk: Güçlü, “The Role of the Ottoman-Trained Officers,” pp. 451ff. 72 Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 2, pp. 263ff. 73 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 145. 74 Batatu, The Old Social Classes, p. 457. 75 Schumann refers to Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus” to describe this sense of community. Compare Christoph Schumann, “The Generation of Broad Expectations: Nationalism, Education and Autobiography in Syria and Lebanon, 1930–1958,” Die Welt des Islams, 2001, vol. 41. It is reprinted in this volume (chapter 8). Schumann, Radikalnationalismus in Syrien und Libanon: Politische Sozialisation und Elitenbildung 1930–1958, Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 2001. 76 Güçlü states that opposition to the treaty came in fact from old Ottoman officials, who rejected the dominance of the Sherifians in nationalist politics. Güçlü, “The Role of the Ottoman-Trained Officers,” p. 446. 77 Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, 146f, vol. 2, pp. 31f. Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī, al-Ṣiḥāfa fī-lʽIrāq: Muḥāḍarāt, Cairo: Arab League Centre for Advanced Arab Studies, 1955, pp. 112f. Among those imprisoned were Yūnus al-Sabʽāwī, Fāʾiq al-Sāmarrāʾī, Khalīl Kanna, ʽAbd al-Qādir Ismāʽīl and Jamīl ʽAbd al-Wahhāb. They were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment but released after two months. 78 Karl Mannheim, “Das Problem der Generationen,” in Kurt H. Wolff (ed.), Wissenssoziologie: Auswahl aus dem Werk, Soziologische Texte, vol. 28, Berlin, Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964, pp. 544f. 79 Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, p. 32. See an Arabic translation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Felix Fāris in the Egyptian journal al-Risāla. It was published in sequels starting 2 November 1936 (pp. 1801ff: “Hakadhā qāla Zarādusht”). In his introduction (ibid.), Fāris complained that the Arab Zarathustra reception had been superficial and prejudiced so far, in particular with respect to the “Superman” topos. 80 Ibid., p. 165. Among the first to praise Atatürk as a model for the Arabs was Sāṭiʽ alḤuṣrī. See William L. Cleveland, “Atatürk Viewed by his Arab Contemporaries: The Opinions of Satiʽ al-Husri and Shakib Arslan,” International Journal of Turkish Studies, 1981–82, vol. 2, no. 2; Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Satiʽ al-Husri, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 116. 81 See my discussion of al-Futuwwa in Iraqi Arab Nationalism, div. 82 Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, p. 449. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 33. 85 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 32f. 86 al-ʽUmarī, Sabʽāwī, pp. 37f. 87 Compare Haggai Erlich, “Youth and Arab Politics: The Political Generation of 1935–1936,” in Roel Meijer (ed.), Alienation or Integration of Arab Youth: Between Family, State and Street, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, p. 55. 88 ʽAlāwī, Tajārib, p. 129. 89 Ibid., pp. 124ff.

242 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

111 112

113 114

P. Wien Ibid., p. 130. Ibid., pp. 116ff. Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, p. 449. Ibid. Ibid., p. 32. Israel Gershoni, “Egyptian Liberalism in an Age of ‘Crisis of Orientation’: alRisala’s Reaction to Fascism and Nazism, 1933–39,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1999, vol. 31, p. 570. Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, pp. 194ff. Ibid., pp. 204ff. Marr, Yāsīn al-Hāshimī, p. 348. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 291. Emil Ludwig, Napoleon, Berlin: Rowohlt, 1930. Al-ʽUmarī, Sabʽāwī, p. 51. Emil Ludwig (1881–1948) was one of the most renowned German writers of the interwar period. Of Jewish origin and a liberal, he enjoyed a worldwide reputation as a leading representative of Weimar Germany. His biographies of Bismarck, Wilhelm II and Napoleon were translated into many languages, making him one of the most successful authors of the time. In 1932, he emigrated to Switzerland; in 1933, his books were burnt by the Nazis. When he emigrated to the USA in 1940, he became a special consultant to President Roosevelt. In 1945, he returned to Switzerland, where he died in 1948. “Ludwig, Emil,” in Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.), Neue Deutsche Biographie, Berlin, 1987, passim. Ludwig’s books enjoyed great popularity in the Arab world, but the first translation into Arabic of his biography of Napoleon only appeared after the Second World War in Cairo. See Mustafa Maher, Wolfgang Ule and Inter Nationes e.V., Deutsche Autoren in arabischer Sprache, arabische Autoren in deutscher Sprache, Bücher über Deutsche und Deutschland in arabischer Sprache, München etc.: Saur, 1979, p. 15, p. 124. Sabʽāwī had therefore probably read an English translation. Ludwig, Napoleon, p. 15. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 676. Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 2, p. 268. al-ʽUmarī, Sabʽāwī, p. 41. Wild, “National Socialism,” pp. 150ff. al-ʽUmarī, Sabʽāwī, p. 41. Samira Haj, The Making of Iraq, 1900–1963: Capital, Power and Ideology, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997, pp. 83f. Ibid., pp. 84f. al-ʽUmarī, Sabʽāwī, p. 40. Jürgen Reulecke, “Generationen und Biografien im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Bernhard Strauß and Michael Geyer (eds), Psychotherapie in Zeiten der Veränderung: Historische, kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Hintergründe einer Profession, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2000, p. 29. al-ʽUmarī, Sabʽāwī, p. 36. Al-Ḥabazbūz, 31 August 1937, p. 3: “al-Shuyūʽiyya wa-l-marʾa.” Sabʽāwī had gone into exile during the regime of Bakr Ṣidqī and Ḥikmat Sulaymān. At the time of writing, he had probably not yet returned, although the Ḥikmat-Bakr government had fallen in mid-August. On Sabʽāwī’s stance toward the Ḥikmat-Bakr regime, see Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 2, pp. 188ff. As Batatu confirms, however, he never developed communist inclinations. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, pp. 457ff. Sasson Somekh, “Lost Voices: Jewish Authors in Modern Arabic Literature,” in Mark R. Cohen and Abraham L. Udovitch (eds), Jews among Arabs: Contacts and Boundaries, Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1989, pp. 16ff.

Waiting for the Superman 243 115 Anwar Shāʾūl, Qiṣṣat ḥayātī fī Wādī al-Rāfidayn, Jerusalem: Rābiṭat al-Jāmiʽiyyīn al-Yahūd al-Nāziḥīn min al-ʽIrāq, 1980, pp. 11, 14–20, 34f., 56, 79, 138–140, 148ff. Buṭṭī, Dhākira ʽirāqiyya, vol. 1, p. 151. 116 Buṭṭī, Aʽlām, p. 91. 117 ʽAwwād, Muʽjam, vol. 1, p. 156. 118 See, for instance, Sylvia G. Haim, “Aspects of Jewish Life in Baghdad under the Monarchy,” Middle Eastern Studies, 1976, vol. 12, pp. 189f. Daphne Tsimhoni, “Jewish Muslim Relations in Modern Iraq,” in Kirsten E. Schulze, Martin Stokes and Colm Campbell (eds), Nationalism, Minorities and Diasporas: Identities and Rights in the Middle East, London, New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996, p. 96. 119 The Palestinian nationalist Muḥammad ʽIzzat Darwaza observed this during a visit to Baghdad in 1937 and learned that most of the cinemas belonged to Jews as well. Muḥammad ʽIzzat Darwaza, Mudhakkirāt Muḥammad ʽIzzat Darwaza: Sijill ḥāfil bi-masīrat al-ḥaraka al-ʽarabiyya wa-l-qaḍiyya al-filasṭīniyya khilāla qarn min alzaman, 1305h-1404h/1887m-1984m, vol. 3, Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993, p. 46. See also Batatu, The Old Social Classes, pp. 244ff. An excellent recent study on the Jews of Iraq is Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians. A History of Jews in Modern Iraq, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. 120 Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 47ff. Compare also Reeva S. Simon, “Iraq,” in Reeva S. Simon, Michael M. Laskier and Sarah Reguer (eds), The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, pp. 359ff. 121 “Alliance Israélite Universelle,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, 1971, p. 652. 122 Avraham S. El-Kabir, “Memoires,” unpublished manuscript, Or Yehuda: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, [1963–1970?], pp. 42f. See also Kedourie, “Break Between Muslims and Jews,” p. 23. Tsimhoni, “Jewish Muslim Relations,” p. 96. 123 Moshe Gat, The Jewish Exodus from Iraq 1948–1951, London, Portland: Frank Cass, 1997, pp. 6f., 10ff. Kedourie, “Break Between Muslims and Jews,” p. 23. Briefly on Jewish participation in Iraqi press culture: Ali Ibrahim Abdo and Khairieh Kasmieh, “Jews of Arab Countries,” in Palestine Liberation Organization (ed.), Palestine Monographs, vol. 82, Beirut, 1971, p. 22. Compare also Simon, “Iraq,” p. 364. 124 Yūsuf Rizqallāh Ghanīma, Nuzhat al-mushtāq fī tārīkh yahūd al-ʽIrāq, maʽa mulḥaq bi-tārīkh yahūd al-ʽIrāq fī l-qarn al-ʽashrīn bi-qalam Mīr Baṣrī, London: Dār alWarrāq, 1997, pp. 285ff. 125 Kedourie, “Break between Muslims and Jews,” pp. 27ff. Compare also Jabbār, alQaḍiyya al-filasṭīniyya, passim. Eppel, Palestine Conflict, passim. 126 Haim, “Aspects of Jewish Life,” p. 192. 127 Jabbār, al-Qaḍiyya al-filasṭīniyya, p. 55. 128 Darwaza, Mudhakkirāt, vol. 3, pp. 53f. 129 Ibid., p. 48, p. 290. 130 Shāʾūl, Qiṣṣat ḥayātī, pp. 48ff. 131 Ibid., p. 56. 132 Haim, “Aspects of Jewish Life,” p. 189. 133 Gat, Jewish Exodus, p. 15. 134 Shāʾūl, Qiṣṣat ḥayātī, p. 139. 135 Published in al-Ḥāṣid, 11 December 1930: “Sāʽa fī sijn Baghdād maʽa-l-zamīl alustādh Rufāʾīl Buṭṭī,” ibid., pp. 161–165. 136 al-Jawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā, pp. 26ff., p. 32. 137 Ibid., pp. 119f. 138 Ibid., p. 120.

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139 Darwaza, Mudhakkirāt, vol. 3, p. 545, p. 603, p. 676. See also Shāʾūl, Qiṣṣat Ḥayātī, pp. 214f. 140 Shāʾūl, Qiṣṣat ḥayātī, p. 215. 141 Ibid., p. 133. 142 Ibid., p. 139. 143 Such as Salmān al-Ṣafwānī in his paper al-Yaqẓa and Kamāl-al-Dīn al-Ṭāʾī in Majallat al-hidāya al-islāmiyya. Ibid., p. 213. 144 Ibid., pp. 215f. 145 Ibid., pp. 63, 213, 227, 240. 146 These invitations to students and members of clubs were fairly common. See, for instance, al-Jawāhirī, Nādī al-Muthannā, pp. 59f. Their impact is hard to determine, however, especially with regard to the popularity of Beirut, and institutions of learning in Great Britain and the USA, as well as Egypt and Turkey as places to study abroad. Compare the lists of “scientific missions” to universities abroad in al-Dalīl al-ʽirāqī, pp. 600ff. 147 Ibid., p. 63. 148 See Peter Wien, “Arab Nationalists, Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust: An Unlucky Contemporaneity,” in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (eds), Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah = The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah, Zürich: Chronos-Verlag, 2002. 149 Shāʾūl, Qiṣṣat ḥayātī, pp. 245ff. 150 For this, see Orit Bashkin’s excellent study The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2008.

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Periodicals consulted

al-Adab (Literature). Beirut. al-ʽĀʾila (The Family). Cairo. al-Ajyāl (The Generations). Cairo. al-Ahrām (The Pyramids). Alexandria and Cairo. al-Akhbār (The News). Cairo. al-Iʽlām (The News). Cairo. al-ʽĀlam al-Isrāʾīlī/L’Univers israélite (The Jewish World). Beirut. al-ʽIlm al-miṣrī (The Egyptian Knowledge). Cairo. al-Bayān (The Exposition). Cairo. Le Bosphore. Constantinople. al-Burhān (The Proof ). Alexandria. The Egyptian Gazette. Cairo. al-Falāḥ (Prosperity). Alexandria. al-Fatāt (The Young Lady). Cairo. Fatāt al-sharq (Young Woman of the East). Cairo. al-Fayyūm, (El Fayyum). El Fayyum. al-Filāḥa al-miṣriyya (Egyptian Agriculture). Cairo. al-Hasnā’/La Belle (The Beautiful Lady). Beirut. al-Hilāl (The Crescent). Cairo. Ha-Tsvi (The Deer/Beauty). Jerusalem. Hed ha-mizraḥ (Echo of the East). Tel Aviv. al-Ikhlāṣ (Loyalty). Cairo. al-Iskandariyya. Alexandria. al-Jarīda (The Newspaper). Cairo. Kanz al-zirāʽa (The Treasure of Agriculture). al-Majalla al-zirāʽiyya (Agricultural Journal). Cairo. al-Maḥrūsa (The Protected – i.e., The City of Cairo). Cairo. al-Manār (The Lighthouse). Cairo. al-Muʾayyad (The Tutor). Cairo. al-Muqaṭṭam (Muqattam). Cairo. al-Muqtaṭaf (The Selected). Beirut and Cairo. Musāmarāt al-shaʽb (The People’s Entertainments). Cairo. al-Nīl (The Nile). Cairo. Rawḍat al-iskandariyya (Garden of Alexandria). Alexandria. al-Ṣādiq (The Truthful). Alexandria. Ṣawt al-ʽuthmāniyya (The Voice of Ottomanism). Jaffa.

Periodicals consulted 269 al-Surūr (Happiness). Alexandria. al-Tankīt wa-l-tabkīt (What Makes One Laugh, makes One Cry). Alexandria. al-Tahdhīb (Edification). Cairo. al-ʽUmda (The Mayor). Cairo. al-Ustādh (The Teacher). Cairo. al-Waṭan (The Country). Cairo. Yad la-kore (The Reader’s Aid: A Library Magazine). al-Ẓāhir (The Manifest). Cairo. al-Zamān (The Time). Cairo. al-Zirāʽa (Agriculture). Cairo. al-Zirāʽa al-iskandariyya (Alexandrian Agriculture). Alexandria.

Index

ʽAbd al-Karīm, A. 193–4, 198, 200, 202–3 ʽAbd al-Sātir, M. 193, 198–202, 204 ʽAbduh, M. 26–7, 67, 88n105, 99–100, 103, 114, 118n15, 120n38, 121n47, 121n55, 124n89, 124n91, 125n109, 133, 154n24, 157n45, 184n6 Abū al- Ḥusn, S. 195–6, 200, 202, 204, 210n63 activists 11, 71, 95, 110, 196, 237; political 105 al-Afghānī, J. 136, 154n24 agriculture 43–51, 53–5, 60n52, 60n60, 60n64, 81n10, 149, 194; development 58n19, 58n21, 149; export 60n49; School 58n21; journals 58n21, 59n33, 60n62, 60n64; knowledge 56; land 57n17; methods 59n35, 61n86; peasant 59n34; production 42, 52, 193; scientific 51–2, 60n54; technologies 124n88; thesis 59n36 ahālī 96–7; movement 213–14, 222, 232 ʽAjamī, M. 173–4 ʽAlāwī, A. 215, 237n7, 238n9 alcoholism 28, 34, 39n55 ʽālim 1, 93–6, 99, 102; ‘ālim-turnedjournalist 101, 108, 110 American University of Beirut 89n108, 139, 159n67, 159n67, 190, 192, 201, 208n15, 209n42; Lebanese American University 161n80 anarchist 28, 64, 69, 71–2, 75–6, 79, 86n58; French 74, 84n42; Italian 77; Spanish 85n57 Antonius, G. 132, 153n19 Arabic 11, 64, 137– 9; journalism 12, 130, 148, 150; thought 2–3, 6–7, 16n15, 184n6; translation 21, 30, 34, 88n101, 137, 241n79

Arabic language 13, 26, 154n24, 166, 180, 235; biography 146; education 134; Jewish press 150, 154n23; Jewish journalism 158n64; Jewish newspaper 133, 136, 154n23; Jewish school 155n27; novel 11, 21, 24; readers 137; women’s publication 157n48 Arab intellectual 1–2, 24, 39n58, 87n74, 183, 226; history 15n7, 207n11; Iraqi 224; modern 4, 9–10, 144, 166; modernity 13, 164; movement 165; nineteenth-century 159n69; twentiethcentury 152n11 Arab Jews 13, 130–1, 133, 138, 146, 151, 152n7, 156n36, 157n45, 161n92, 235; intellectuals 132–5, 139, 148, 150; writers 139, 152n10, 153n13 Arab societies 1, 236; backward 24; secret 124n90, 212, 221 Arab Spring 2, 18n43 Arab women 144, 151; Association for the Advancement 151n2; biographical dictionary 139; feminists 142; journal 128; press 159n68; women’s movement 12, 130; writers 147, 150 archeology 28–9; European archeologists 58; museums 33, 38, 178–9; regulation 30 army 97, 236; Arab 212; French 145, 167; officers 40, 202, 221, 234; Ottoman 212, 219; politicization 224–5; standing 4; Syrian 210n62 Asad, T. 90, 117n3 ʽAtiyya, M. 48–50, 59n31 authoritarian 3, 212, 214, 222, 235–6; Empire 178; heritage 14, 213; oligarch 159n69 ʽAwwād, K. 238n8, 238n20 Ayalon, A. 95, 119n26, 120n32, 121n51

Index Baron, B. 156n40, 156n43, 157n47, 158n55, 159n66, 159n70, 163n110 Barrell, J. 29, 38n36 al-Bārūdī, F. 171, 185n33 Bassnett, S. and Lefevere, A. 21, 23, 36n8, 36n11, 36n13 Baʽth 10, 188, 197, 237n7; party 193, 201–2, 206n4; pre-Baʽth pluralism 8 Bāz, J.N. 142, 152n3, 156n39, 159n66, 160n76 Bentham, J. 3, 102–3, 123n77, 123n80l Booth, M. 152n6, 156n40, 160n70 Boothby, G.N. 27, 30, 32–3, 36n16, 39n52 Bourdieu, P. 8, 64, 66, 83n20, 121n53, 144, 189–90, 202, 207n10, 208n17–18, 209n30, 241n75 bourgeois 24, 33; democracy 29; petitbourgeois 191, 193–4, 208n18; protobourgeois 46, 50 bourgeoisie 28, 231; proto-national 56 Brantlinger, P. 27, 36n7, 37n29, 38n49 Brazil 23, 71; Arabic Press 88n101; Syrians in Brazil 76, 186n50 Britain 31, 36n7, 37n29, 39n49, 71, 86n65, 109, 120n41, 125n120, 161n92, 171, 213, 221, 227, 229, 244n146; colonizing power 214; Edwardian 11, 21, 37n23; Victorian 28 British Empire 27; Middle Eastern 224 British colonial rule 98, 109; policy 48, 218, 234 Büchner, L. 74, 88n88 al-Bustānī, B. 73, 87n79, 101, 147, 158n59, 191 Buttī, R. 214–15, 217, 220–2, 225–35, 237 Caliphate 107, 109–10; Abbaside 111 Campos, M.U. 152n4, 158n64, 163n111 capitalism 68, 84n36, 132; print 41, 43 Charle, C. 83n26 children 53, 55, 129, 137, 141, 144, 149, 159n66, 160n79, 164, 181, 194, 197; education 193; of immigrants 182; Jewish 153n12, 154n27 Cioeta, D. 119n24, 119n25, 119n30 Cole, J. 93, 118n18 Colla, E. 15n5, 30, 58n26 colonial 2, 4, 8, 16n17, 21–2, 35,97, 102; difference 11, 20, 23, 30; state 116; system 188 colonialism 24, 30, 35, 124n88, 131, 145, 200, 210n59, 227; anti-colonialist 231 Colonizing Egypt 4–6 confessional 210n59, 215, 217; cross-

271

confessional 95; divide 236; interconfessional 133; multi-confessional 14; non-confessional 191; transconfessional 218 consensus 111–12, 117n8, 126n122, 167 conservatism 48, 54–5, 183 Copts 98, 121n46, 121n48; Coptic school 26 corrupt 33, 85n46, 203; corrupting 24, 85n46; corruption 76, 86n72, 146, 205, 222 corvée labor 48–9, 59n42 cotton 47, 49–50, 53–5, 59n30; worm 52, 60n60 craft 5–6, 16n27, 17n29, 41–2, 44, 55, 92, 95, 100, 179; craftsmen 6, 16n27, 17n31, 44 cultivators 48–52, 54, 60n49 culture 44, 164–6, 169, 171, 182–3, 231; Arab 133–5, 150, 158n59, 196, 198, 222–3; eastern 52; educational 201; European 132, 144, 157n47; global 78; high and low 26, 178; Islamic 146, 147; Jewish 147, 155n34; literary 22–3; modern 143; national 21, 24–5; press 234, 243n123; public 46, 49, 51, 142; Syrian 158n56 Dallal, A. 90–3, 112–13, 116, 117n9 Darwaza, M. 234, 243n119 Darwin, C. 77, 81n3, 81n10, 88n88, 196, 209n42; Darwinian thought 34, 120n35; Darwinism 28, 63, 72–3, 81n4, 88n88, 161n92 degeneration 11, 21, 28, 30, 33, 36n7; Faces of Degeneration 34 Delanoue, G. 6–7, 17n34, 17n35 democracy 28–9, 32, 34, 70–1, 201; French 145 diachronic reading 23, 108 diaspora 75–6, 165, 171; diasporic network 11, 63, 166, 178; Lebanese 179; Syrian 66 Di-Capua, Y. 4, 15n5, 15n7 Dimashqiyya, N. 199, 208n21 Dī Tarrāzī, F. 58n21, 119n27, 159n66 Dreyfus affair 83n26, 86n71, 133, 145–7, 151, 154n25, 162n95, 162n96, 162n98, 162n99 Druze 96, 121n46, 182; Jabal 196, 202, 211n79 al-Durra, M. 214, 224, 241n70 education 213; nationalist 13, 188, 215, 219, 221, 224; state 14, 233–4

272

Index

Egypt 2, 4–5, 11–12, 24–6, 28–30, 32–3, 35, 36n7, 39n61, 40–2, 44–5, 47–50, 52, 55–6, 57n14, 60n52, 66–7, 72, 77, 81n3, 97, 99, 137, 205, 230; agriculture 42, 46–7, 49, 54, 59n32; ancient 21, 27–31, 38n42, 58n26, 102, 105, 109, 117n9, 122n68; Arab periodicals 83n27; backwardness 34, 46, 54; British occupation 12, 18n35, 43, 45–8, 59n30, 91, 97, 124n110; cultural history 17n32; economic viability 11, 42; Egypt for the Egyptians 43, 56n5, 134, 155n28; Egyptian-ness 11, 43, 45–6, 55; Egyptology 28–9 ; fin-de-siècle 11, 36n7, 40, 42, 52, 56, 78; French occupation 132; immigration to 184n6, 184n9; institutions of learning 244n146; law journal 84n32; Mixed Courts 45–8, 57n14; modern 5, 29–30, 34; peasant question 11, 41–2; postcolonial 4, 16n19; redemption 44–5; values 46, 56; women’s movement 140 election 2, 109; campaign 201, 205 el-Kabir, A.S. 233, 243n122 enlightenment 3, 13, 15n7, 72, 130, 139, 145; discourse 153n20; European 231 Eppel, M. 205, 237n3, 239n42 ethnic 20, 35n2, 51, 65, 151, 213, 216–17 evolution 29, 34, 74, 77, 83n24, 87n83, 89n107; cultural 104–5, 108, 165, 176; theory 63, 81n3 exile 10, 13, 31, 98, 124n89, 134, 145, 159n69, 165–6, 177–80, 183, 205, 232, 242n112; Iraqi community 238n9; Parisian 99; reformists 77, 88n105; Spanish 156n36 expert 48, 53; European 30; technical 61n86, 204 extremism 220, 223, 225; religious 60n64 Fabianism 36n7, 39n58, 71 al-Falāḥ 46, 48, 57n17, 58n20, 59n34 falāḥīn 42–6, 47–51, 53, 58n21, 59n36, 60n54, 60n60, 61n68, 61n83, 61n84, 62n86, 149–50 Farag, M. 134–5, 155n32, 155n33, 161n92 fascist 213, 225–7, 229–32, 235–6 fatwa 7, 101, 116, 122n67; Shiite 218 Fawwāz, Z. 136, 152n6 feminist 28, 130; Arab 140, 142; literary history 20; magazine 157n49 Ferrer, F. 70, 72, 79–80, 85n57, 86n58, 87n75–7 Findley, C.V. 101, 122n71

First World War 63, 69–70, 77, 125n110, 138, 172, 179–80, 191–2, 212, 217, 219, 228, 233; pre-First World War 78, 152n5, 152n10 France 22, 26, 28, 30, 57n14, 59n36, 83n26, 134, 145–6, 148, 162n96, 171, 197, 227 French 54, 94, 109, 139, 156n39, 157n45, 182, 197, 200, 233; anarchist 74, 84n42; army staff 167; authors 36n19, 129, 144, 181; Catholic institutions 195–6, 230; consuls 56n2; French-Jewish 131, 145; history 198; jurisprudence 25; Mandate 188, 191, 196, 206n3; models 22; newspaper 163; occupation 132; poet 141; President 146; press 84n29, 123n80, 158n58; pro-French 162n96, 196; revolution 87n77; rule 13, 188; scholarship 18; schools 155n27, 158n59; translation 130, 137–8, 186n56 Gerber, H. 106, 125n97 Germany 21–2, 27–8, 71, 145, 148, 171, 223, 225, 227–9, 231–2, 240n61, 242n100; eighteenth-century 131; Nazis 213 Glaß, D. 8, 18n42, 80n2 gothic genre 11, 22, 31–3; imperial gothic 27 government 45, 48, 56n2, 57n8, 70, 123n74, 145, 212, 220, 222–3, 226, 232; agencies 58n21; constitutional 64; Egyptian 41, 59n30, 62n86, 110; employees 221, 233; European 30; funding 119n26; grant 219; HikmatBakr 242n112; Iraqi 213, 238n9; Kaylānī 214, 218; land holdings 57n15; officials 105; pro-British 229; pro-treaty party 225; reform 85n50; schools 97, 118n21, 120n37, 196–7, 216; Spanish 72, 85n57, 86n59 graduates 66, 70, 94, 155n27, 159n67, 191, 204, 212, 220–1, 227, 229, 232, 233, 236, 241n70; postgraduate studies 26; secondary school 201–2, 215–16; women 12, 143–4, 148, 186n44 Güçlü, Y. 241n71, 241n76 Habermas 9–10, 18n41; theory 5, 7 Haggard, R. 27–9, 32–3, 38n49 Hallaq, W. 106, 125n97 Hamidian era 140, 119n24, 159n69, 212; censorship 94, 97; tyranny 76 Hamzah, D. 52, 60n63

Index Hasanayn, A.T. 27, 37n24 haskala 13, 130–3, 135, 150, 152n12, 153n13 Hegel 225; neo-Hegelian 21 al-Hilāl 11, 64, 66–72, 75–7, 79–80, 81n5, 85n44, 85n46, 85n48, 86n58, 86n68, 86n71, 87n74, 87n75, 87n77, 87n83, 99, 120n35, 121n51, 133, 136–7, 140, 157n49, 162n96 Hitler, A. 225–7, 230–1, 235, 240n66; Youth 229 Hourani, A. 3–4, 6–7, 17n35, 61n66, 184n6 al-Husri, S. 213, 220–2, 238n12, 238n20, 240n66 Hutcheon, L. 21, 35n1 ijtihād 91–3, 117n8 ‘ilm 16n24 imperialism 14, 20, 27, 38n49, 183, 213, 215, 224, 227, 229; anti-imperialist 64, 144; British 9; cultural 16n17; French 230; oppression 236 innovation 51, 54–5, 104, 115, 125n97, 147, 183 intellectual 12, 65, 151; history 4, 7–9, 13; Arab 15n7, 207n11; English 36n7; European 15n5; Middle East 2–3; radical nationalist 206 intelligentsia 53, 117n5; Beirut 166; bourgeois 24; colonial 30; Syrian 157n47; urban 41, 43, 45, 49–50, 52, 55–6 invasion 27; British 42, 120n41; fantasy 28, 34; Greek 219; Napoleonic 18n35, 132; Ottoman 5 Iraq 8, 10, 14, 172, 182, 199, 205, 212–22, 224–34, 236–7, 237n7, 241n71; AngloIraqi treaty 218, 220, 225; British occupation 218, 223; kingdom 221; Secular Ruling Elites 240n59 Iraqi 14, 214, 216, 219, 224, 230–2; communists 232, 237; defeat 214; intellectuals 225, 229–30, 234; Jews 135, 232–4, 236; nationalists 217–18, 221, 230, 232, 239n42; newspapers 214, 232; patriotism 135, 233; politics 217–18, 221–3; press 225, 243n123; print culture 135; publicists 14, 213; revolution 215, 217; socio-political framework 14, 213; state 212–13, 221, 226, 233; Sunni society 221 Iraqi youth 215, 227, 234–5; Futuwwa movement 226, 229; Young Effendiyya 14, 212–15, 221–7, 235–6, 237n3

273

irrigation 47, 50–1, 59n32; engineers 48 islāḥ 63, 69, 103–5, 123n83, 124n88, 124n89 Islamic 108; historiography 4, 17n30, 90; journal 57n7; knowledge (‘ilm) 5–6, 12, 16n24, 48, 53, 55, 58n19, 68, 74, 87n79, 91–4, 96, 98–9, 101, 110, 115–16; law 92, 114, 127n141; legal theory 12, 91, 122n68; reform 12, 52, 65, 77; reformers 53, 90, 104; revivalism 12,154n20 Israelite 147; nation 137; National Society 138 Italy 28, 57n14, 77, 149, 179, 225, 227 Japan 87n74, 148; haiku 22; socialist newspaper 72; youth organization 227 Jewish intellectuals 12, 130; Arab 132, 134–5, 139, 148, 150; European 135, 150 Jibrān, J.K. 176–80, 184n1, 186n53, 187n66 journalist 1, 5, 12, 25–6, 45–6, 41, 43, 48, 55, 91–3, 95–6, 98–101, 104–5, 108–10, 121n51, 122n64, 123n77, 129, 132, 146, 154n21, 184, 218, 220, 225, 234–5, 240n66; Arabic 12, 130, 134–5, 137, 148, 150; Egyptian 57n7, 84n30; friendly 56n2; Jewish 158n64; Salafi 116; Syrian 56n5, 162n99; training 121n51; women 137, 157n48, 173, 184n2 Jumʽa, M.L. 25–7, 30, 33–5, 37n20, 38n41, 39n50, 39n52, 39n55, 39n61 Kant, I. 145, 225 Karaite community 133–4, 155n31 al-Karmī, A.S. 164, 184n5 al-Kaylānī, A. 229, 235; revolt 199 Kemal Atatürk, M. 14, 213, 225–7; Kemalism 227, 236, 241n71 Kerr, M.H. 111, 118n17, 126n116 Khedive 6, 37n20, 41–3, 56n2, 58n21, 100, 132, 155n29, 157n46; government 57n8; divan 102, 123n73; School 26, 37n20 Khoury, P.S. 188, 206n3, 240n51 Khuri-Makdisi, I. 11, 52 Koran 27, 104, 150, 156n38, 168; Koranic recitation 136; quotations 146; schools 190; verses 37n20, 143: see also Qur’ān Krawietz, B. 125n108, 127n135 Kubba, M.M. 214–18, 220–4, 233, 235, 238n20

274

Index

Kūhīn, S.Z. 135, 154n23, 154n25 Kurd ʽAlī, M. 25–7, 166, 186n43 Labakī, N. 76, 88n101, 127n144 Landau, J. 154n21 landowners 40, 48–9 language of instruction 155n27, 158n59, 233 Laoust, H. 107, 111, 125n104 leadership 43, 55, 93, 100, 180, 195, 198, 201, 214, 225–7, 229, 231–2, 237; European models 14, 213, 230; patriotic 210n59; traditional 203 League of National Action 13, 188–9, 195, 201 legal concepts 12, 90, 101; maslaḥa 106–8 legislation 93, 114; human 106, 108; law sources 106, 112; modern 91, 110; Prussian 152n12 legitimacy 13, 20, 66, 71, 93, 100, 106, 110, 117n12, 188, 231; Islamic 90 Lewis, E. 77, 89n108 literary history 11, 20–3; Arabic 24; Nahdāwī 35 literature 5, 10, 20, 24–5, 93; Arabic 24, 128–9, 147, 152n3, 197; Islamic 103–5; modern 13, 164, 221; Mülkiye 101, 122n70; national 22, 35 Lockman, Z. 35, 39n59 Ludwig, E. 230, 242n100 madrasa 5, 97, 138, 155n27, 157n45, 158n59, 190, 216–17 Mahjar 13, 42, 76, 168, 170–1, 180–1, 183, 184n6; intellectual 184; writers 165, 182 Makāriyūs, S. 83n24, 137, 156n40 al-Mālikī, R. 197, 199–200, 210n59, 211n68 al-Manār 8, 12, 60n63, 67, 91–2, 94–5, 99–101, 103–4, 107, 110, 112, 115–16, 117n4, 117n7, 117n12, 118n19–21, 119n27, 119n31, 120n34, 120n37–8, 122n60, 122n64, 123n77, 124n89, 125n109, 125n111, 126n116, 126n133, 162n96 Maronite 96, 119n26, 121n46, 167–9, 180, 204 Marx, K. 70, 86n70, 87n83, 230, 232 maslaḥa 12, 60n63, 91–2, 100–15, 122n68, 123n78, 125n97, 125n100, 126n113, 126n119, 126n130, 126n134, 127n135 Masud, M.K. 106, 114, 124n84 Matthews, R.D. and Akrawi, M. 208n16, 210n50

Mehmet Ali Pasha 5, 61n83–4, 97, 102–3, 132 Mein Kampf 235, 240n66; Arabic translation 231 men of letters 1, 25, 176, 179–80, 183 middle class 2, 13, 34, 36n18, 44, 46, 54, 204–5; background 190; British 29; educated 97, 188; Egyptian 39n55; lower 98, 191, 193, 203, 210n62; students 200; urban 50, 56, 101 migration 35, 90, 101, 137, 185n23; emigrated writers 13, 164; emigration 66, 132, 232, 234, 242n100; immigration 68, 76, 131, 165, 169–70, 172, 177, 184n6, 185n21 Mill, J.S. 9, 34, 102 minority 2, 20–1, 35, 216; Jewish 155; language schools 233; persecuted 167; provinces 196; religious 35n2, 121n48, 130, 215; rights 234 missionary 77, 93, 96–7, 190, 118n18, 158n59 modernization 3, 24, 132, 182, 206; in Iraq 231; technical 13, 188 Moyal, E. 12–13, 86n71, 128–51, 151n2, 152n3, 152n10, 155n27, 156, 158n58, 159n66 Moyal, S.Y. 129, 133, 136–8, 155n27, 157n45, 157n46, 157n48, 157n54, 158n59, 158n64 al-Muqtataf 8, 11, 18n42, 63–4, 66–78, 80n2, 81n4, 81n10, 83n24, 84n36, 85n46, 85n49, 85n50, 85n52, 86n64, 86n69, 87n73, 94, 99, 116, 119n27, 129, 137, 147, 175 Mūsā, S. 71, 79–80, 86n64, 89n107 Mushtāq, T. 214, 219–20 Muslim 25, 52–3, 67, 90, 98–9, 105, 117n10, 117n12, 118n23, 148, 163n105, 181, 214, 233; Arab 135, 216; Brotherhood 125n111; community 53, 90, 134; nationalists 235; press 138; reform 52, 67, 88n105 Mussolini, B. 225, 227, 229 al-Mutanabbī, D. 147, 150, 162n105, 174 Muthannā Club 214, 217, 221–4, 234–5 muzāri‘ 48–52, 59n31, 59n34, 59n42, 60n61 al-Nadīm, A. 11, 35, 39n59, 133, 136, 157n46 Nahda 2–3, 5, 8, 11–13, 19n45, 23–4, 34, 64–5, 71–3, 75, 78; intellectuals 77, 80n3, 82n13, 82n18, 83n24, 86n64,

Index 87n79, 87n83, 91, 95–6, 102–3, 115–16, 130, 132–6, 139, 144–5, 150–1, 153n20, 158n58, 159n70, 164–5, 183, 227; project 10, 137 Nahdāwī 5, 9, 12, 104; intellectuals 11, 24, 77; literary history 35; Ottomans 103; writers 101 Naqqāsh, S. 43, 52, 56n5, 73, 88n88, 101 nationalism 3, 10, 78, 131, 168–70, 188–9, 195, 199, 219; Arab 132, 135, 147, 153n19, 163n111, 210n50, 214, 218, 221–2, 224, 236–7; Egyptian 121n47, 154n21; in Iraq 231; radical 13, 205 National Party 26, 39n59, 100 natural science 63, 72–5, 94 Nawfal, H. 128–30, 136, 151n2, 156n40, 157n48 Nazi 138, 213–14, 225, 242n100; Nazism 224, 227–31, 240n51, 240n67; pro-Nazi 222–3, 235–6; sympathizer 221 newspapers 14, 41, 43–6, 48, 50–2, 56n2, 58n28, 59n33, 61n81, 61n86, 67, 75, 91, 94, 125n106, 145, 149, 163n119, 164–5, 167, 176, 179–80, 183, 218; Egyptian 225, 235–6; European 26, 69; women’s 128, 157n49; Zionist 152n10 Nietzsche, F. 225–6, 232, 241n79; Superman 14, 213, 231; Zarathustra 230 North and South America 11, 64, 77, 179 Opwis, F. 106, 112–13, 125n100, 126n119 Ottoman 1, 4–5, 11, 41, 65, 76, 103, 105, 163; Arab world 63–4, 67, 78; background 221, 224; education 208n13, 217, 219; Empire 7–8, 10, 12, 77, 82n14, 91, 95, 101, 124n88, 153n19, 165, 197, 228, 233; intellectuals 87n74; late 2, 14; patriotism 129; period 152n3, 154n26, 212, 216, 218;pro-Ottoman views 60n64, 61n81; reformist 65, 74; repression 180 Ottoman administration 191; bureaucrat 192; elite 44; government 56n2, 57n8, 118n21; Jews 159n69, 163n111; medical license 136; officials 241n76; people 158n64, 167 Ottoman Censorship 119n24, 119n30; Constitution 121n45, 128, 138, 152n4; framework 152n10; Lebanon 120n38, 184; Levant 130, 151; Mecelle 122n68; office 110; polity 123n74; preference 120n32; province 98; rule 133; sultanate 109 Owen, R. 59n30, 72

275

Palestine 12, 130, 133, 136, 138–9, 172, 192, 196, 234, 236; Arabs 235, 239n42; defense of 221, 223; Iraqi Palestine day 235; Jewish population 147–50, 156n36; partition 151; Sephardi intellectuals 128–9, 152n5, 152n10 pan-Arab 222–3; pan-Arabism 2, 8, 213 Pan-Islam 2, 104; pan-Islamism 12, 60n64, 98, 105, 118n16, 121n47, 122n64 Pasha 6, 8, 67, 102; Ibrahim 190; Mehmet Ali 97 Pharos the Egyptian 11, 21, 25–8, 30–3, 35 Philipp, T. 17n31, 82n13, 209n42 political 46, 150; activists 26, 105; activities 195–6, 198, 217–18; cosmology 6, 17n30; independence 52, 56, 103, 126n116; moral 41–2, 53, 60n62, 104; orientation 145; socialization 188–9, 199, 206, 206n4 popular fiction 11, 24–7 postcolonial 3, 9, 20, 30; states 2, 4, 13, 188 poverty 12, 51, 68, 129, 149, 163n116, 193, 219–20, 233; poor people 2, 35n2, 39n61, 68, 93, 177, 178, 186n58, 194, 214 press 8, 12, 44–8, 51, 56n2, 57n14, 66, 83n27, 83n28, 95, 97, 100, 109, 116, 121n51, 122n67, 138, 159n68, 214, 223, 235 prime minister 220, 222–3, 235; interwar period 212; Iraqi 213; Syrian 202 professional 1, 4, 83n24, 228–9; associations 50, 121n51; background 220, 223; Egyptologist 30; network 66; professionalism 101, 148, 228; rivalry 98; self-perception 202; set-backs 205; training 199–200, 204; writers 25, 36n18, 37n23 professions 1, 5, 12, 91–4, 98, 100, 110, 121n51, 160n79, 202, 205, 221, 235; legal 204, 211n68 public interest 1, 5, 12, 60n63, 91–2, 100–6, 109–11, 114–15, 117, 120n34, 122n66, 123n73 publicist 1, 10, 64, 94, 100–1, 114, 223; Iraqi 14, 213; Pan-Islamist 12; postʽUrābī rebellion 11; scholars-turnedpublicists 5 public sphere 1, 5, 11, 101, 116, 221; imperial-colonial; Iraqi 237; Middle Eastern 7–10, 18n40, 18n41, 18n42, 18n43; trans-confessional 14, 218; transnational 19n43; urban 214

276

Index

Qāsim Amīn 140, 142, 158n58, 160n75, 161n92 qiyās 91–4, 106–7, 111–15, 117n9, 126n130 Qur’ān 106, 111–12, 115, 117n8; Quranic school 118n21; non-Quranic education 105 radical nationalist 13, 188–9, 192, 199, 201, 206 rebellion 40–1, 43, 45, 57n8 Reclus, E. 74, 79, 87n87 Reid, D. 6, 39n58, 58n26, 81n3, 81n8, 84n36, 85n43, 121n51 religious 194; commitment 195, 209n37; communities 167, 190–1; education 157n45, 192, 217, 233; institutions 65–6, 82n17; ; knowledge 104; minorities 35, 130, 215; reform 40, 65 renaissance 13, 20, 24, 148; Arab 91, 130, 165; cultural 132; Eastern 137, 158n58; Levantine 182; literary 164 revivalism 91; Islamic 12, 154n20 revolution 34, 56n5, 70, 76, 169, 192, 197, 200, 203, 210n63, 213, 217–18, 220, 226, 230, 232; Arab 163n111, 219, 239n42; counter-revolution 138, 152n4; French and American 87n77; Great Syrian 109, 210n63; intellectual 164; Iraqi 199, 215; Sherifian 234; uprising 43, 55, 199; ‘Urābī 35, 57n14, 97, 134; Young Turk 76, 95, 101, 128, 138, 152n4, 165, 167 revolutionary 88n104, 218, 227; exiled 77, 124n89; plan 204; Youth Movement 206n4 Ridā, M.R. 12, 27, 60n63, 67, 90–101, 103–16, 117n9, 118n16–18, 118n21, 119n27, 119n31, 120n32, 120n37–8, 121n47, 121n51, 122n59–60, 124n89, 133, 162n96 rights 1, 52, 64, 71, 73–4, 100, 103, 109, 113, 167, 170, 192, 195, 205, 230, 233; human 169; intellectual 139; minority 234 al-Rīḥānī, A. 67, 76, 84n33, 165, 171, 174, 179–80, 185n16, 186n43, 186n50, 186n51, 186n61 ruling elite 48, 62n86, 221 Russia 57n14, 87n74; excommunication 87n87; Russian 37n29, 75–6, 184; Russian consul 217 Ryad, U. 122n59, 122n60 al-Sabʽāwī, Y. 214, 217–18, 220–1, 225, 227, 230–5, 237, 241n77, 242n112

al-Sabbāgh, S. 239n39, 241n70 Sādiq, K. 25, 36n18 salafi 93, 113, 124n88; journalist 116; Salafi turn 12, 91–2, 106; Salafiyya 92, 117n10, 125n104 Salvatore, A. and Eickelman, D. 18n41, 19n43 Sarkīs, S. 26–7 scholars 1, 5–6, 10, 17n33, 18n43, 20, 91–2, 94, 97, 106–7, 110, 113–14, 117, 117n10, 132, 166, 183; legal 17n30; minority 21; religious 127n146, 215; scholarships 191, 208n16 scholarship 1–7, 14n3, 26, 81n3, 94, 97–8, 100, 103, 105, 111, 116, 141, 154n22; Arabic 36n9; contemporary 157n48; Eastern 112, 132; French 18n35; reputation 93; Shiite 217; ulema 126n134; Western 30, 169; work 40, 164 school 5, 13, 26, 35, 66, 94, 96–7, 121n51, 137–9, 156n39, 166, 188, 191–2; AIU 155n27, 156n42, 158n59, 203, 213, 215–16, 234; boarding 219, 230; elementary 198; for girls 148, 159n68, 161n80, 163n110; Giza Agricultural 58n21; government 118n21, 120n37, 196; Jesuit 195, 199; Jewish 131, 138, 154n27, 158n59, 232; Jisr’s 94, 118n21; Khedival 26, 37n20; legal 108, 110–11, 221; literary 11, 21, 24; night 71, 233; Patriarchal 66, 81n3; for propaganda 118n19; religious 190, 234, 236; secondary 191–5, 197–202, 216, 220, 239n46; Spanish 36n11; state 217, 225, 238n14; system 70; teacher 95, 223, 235 Second World War 228; after 215, 237, 238n20, 242n100; during 196, 229, 234 Selim, S. 10–11, 15n5, 39n59, 40, 58n24 al-Shāʽir, J. 201, 203, 205 Sharabi, H. 83n21, 192, 195, 198–9, 203–4 sharīʽa 90, 99, 106, 112–15, 121n42, 122n68, 124n88, 125n102, 126n134 Shā’ūl, A. 214, 232–6 al-Shawkānī 92–3, 107, 112–13, 117n9, 126n127 Shawkat, S. 222, 228 Sheehi, S. 131, 147, 152n11, 153n19 Shiite 193, 215–17, 219, 222, 238n14; fatwas 218; Muslim 14, 214; protests 238n12 Shumayyil, S. 12, 63, 67–8, 71, 73–4, 76–7, 80n2, 81n3, 81n4, 84n32, 85n50, 88n88, 120n35

Index socialism 11–12, 34–5, 39n58, 39n61, 63–79, 81n4–6, 81n8, 83n24, 84n32, 85n44, 85n46, 85n50, 86n58–9, 86n64, 86n68, 87n75, 87n77, 87n83, 88n88, 88n97; British 36n7; ideas 12, 63–4, 76–7, 81n8, 222; National 223–4, 240n66; principles 68–70, 76 social position 166, 189–90, 193, 208n18; dominant 46; inherited 192 social reform 9, 54, 65, 71, 74, 78, 82n13, 140 solidarity 77, 149, 221–2; movement 180, 182 South American 22; intellectuals 23 Stoker, B. 27–8, 37n26 Sufi 6, 93, 169; anti-Sufi 121n47; practice 115; Sufism 90, 125n102 Sullivan, E.P. 102, 123n76 Sunna 104, 106, 111–12, 115 Sunni 14, 96–7, 125n100, 193, 214, 216–17, 219, 222; Sherifians 221 Syria 10, 12–13, 25, 65–7, 95, 98, 109, 128, 132–3, 136–7, 169, 172, 179–80, 182, 188, 190–1, 196, 198, 200, 202–6, 216; army 210n62; Christians 67, 81n3, 81n8, 97, 119n26, 137; diaspora 66; emigrés 25, 97, 99, 157n47, 186n50; intellectuals 13, 132, 137, 216; nationalism 78, 169, 195; Revolt 109, 210n63; teachers 197, 216, 210n50; women 136, 140, 157n47, 163n110; writers 13, 76, 180 Syrian Protestant College 12, 26, 66, 70, 77, 81n3, 190 Syrian Social Nationalist Party 13, 188–9, 192, 196, 200–1, 204, 205; members 193, 198, 209n25, 211n80 al-Tahtāwī, R. 8, 16n12, 19n45, 45, 101, 103, 116, 123n81 al-Tamāwī, A.H. 37n21, 37n22, 39n61 Tanzīmāt 7, 92, 101–4, 121n45, 123n74 tax 58n27; rates 48 teachers 1, 10, 159n68, 196–9, 202, 214, 217, 220–1, 223, 228; Arabic 233, 236; education of 210n50; history 216, 222; Jewish 234; primary 191; private school 95; secondary 197; Training College 37n20; women 163n110 Thabit, K. 70, 79, 83n24 The People’s Entertainments 11, 25, 36n18–19 Tolstoi, L. 72, 75–6, 81n5, 85n44, 86n72, 88n98

277

transformation 22, 47, 54, 94, 102, 116, 204; economic 35; social 132, 203; structural 7, 9–10 translation 4, 26–7, 34, 37n22, 88n88, 88n98, 103, 136–7, 158n56, 231, 240n66; pseudo- 22; translators 1, 11, 25–6, 31, 36n18, 123n77, 128, 137, 159n68, 172, 220, 232 Tripoli 94, 96, 99–100, 118n21–2, 149, 227 Tsimhoni, D. 237n6 al-Tūfī, N. 107, 111–15, 118n17, 126n133–4 Turkey 14, 109–10, 154n26, 213, 225–7, 236 ulema 6, 44, 90, 93, 99–101, 105, 111, 118n23, 124n83, 126n134 United States 57n14, 165, 171–2, 180–1, 184n3, 186n50, 187n66 utilitarian 34, 93–4, 114, 118n18, 123n74; utilitarianism 102–3, 113, 123n78 van Dusen, M.H. 210n62 Venuti, L. 23, 36n15 Watenpaugh, K. 2, 15n4, 19n51, 162n99 Weltanschauung 12, 72, 91, 150 Wien, P. 14, 42, 205 women 2, 35n2, 129–30, 136, 140–4, 156n40, 160n79, 161n91, 164, 170–2, 175, 192, 229; biographical dictionary 139; Eastern 18n40, 160n77; education 64–5, 160n75, 161n80; emancipation 160n70, 160n72, 161n92; enslavement 177; European 161n91; journalists 137, 157n48; of letters 173, 183; organizations 138; rights 159n70; status 157n49; Syrian 157n47, 163n110: see also Arab women women’s press 158n55, 159n68, 163n110; al-Fatāt 128, 136, 151n2, 156n40, 156n41, 157n48; Arabic 128, 137; journals 142, 160n70, 163n110; publications 157n48; writers 128, 156n42, 156n43, 157n47 workers 2, 50, 63, 73, 79, 81n5, 87n77, 208n18; agricultural 11, 42; experienced 49; exploitation 70; field 53; rights 64, 71–2; urban 39n59, 193 Yamak, L.B. 189, 206n5 Yehoshu‘a, Y. 129–30, 138–9, 151, 152n5, 156n38, 157n45, 157n46, 158n64 al-Yūnus, A. 196, 199

278

Index

Zaghlūl, A.F. 34, 103, 109, 120n35, 123n77 al-Zamān 43–5, 57n8, 58n26, 60n60 Zaydān, G. 8, 14n3, 57n8, 76–7, 84n30, 87n83, 99, 121n51, 133, 136, 154n24 Zionism 131, 135, 138, 148–50, 152n10, 158n64, 163n111, 233–5; Center 151n3; Sephardi 12, 130

al-Zirāʽa 46, 48, 50–4, 57n17, 58n20, 58n21, 59n32, 59n33, 59n35, 60n49, 60n54, 60n62, 61n68, 61n73, 61n84, 61n86 Zola, É. 72, 80, 81n5, 86n71, 129, 137, 145–7, 150, 158n56, 162n101, 162n105, 163n108