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After Reading both documents and watching this video https://youtu.be/wgpjMblu98E?si=Hv28BDoBDe42_11h).Answer these questions: 1) What is Nahda? 2) How do you understand modernity? 3)Can you give me an example of the modernity project during the Nahda period from the reading? Your post should be between 150 and 200 words total.

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Y O AV D I – C A P UA
3
Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
Three pieces of writing capture the distance that Arab thought
and culture crossed from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth
century. The first text was written in 1832 by the Egyptian shaykh Rifaʿa
Rafiʿ al-Tahtawi (1801—1873) upon his return from a five-year sojourn in
Paris. The second was published in 1882 by ʿAli Mubarak (1823—1893), an
Egyptian bureaucrat, educator, and cabinet minister. The last was delivered in 1928 as a public lecture, a century after al-Tahtawi’s book, by the
Syrian-Egyptian Islamist Rashid Rida (1865—1935).
Rifaʿa Rafiʿ al-Tahtawi (1832): One should note that the French have
a natural propensity for the acquisition of learning and a craving
for the knowledge of all things. This is why you see that all of them
have a comprehensive knowledge of all things they have acquired.
Nothing is alien to them, so that when you talk with one of them, he
will talk to you in the words of a scholar, even though he is not one of
them. For this reason, you can see ordinary French people examining
and discussing a number of profound scientific questions. The same
is true of their children; from a very early age they are proficient.1
ʿAli Mubarak Pasha (1882): The nation now sheds her false ideas,
frees herself from worthless conceptions and gets used to the new
institutions. Within a short time, all has changed: attitudes, habits,
customs, and institutions. This is what happening in Egypt today.
Anyone who saw Egypt fifty years ago, and who now sees it again
today, will find nothing he knew from former times. He will realize
that it has experienced a revolution.2
Rashid Rida (1928): In a time that is afflicted by ideological, intellectual, political, Communist and Bolshevik upheavals; in a time
that is strained by religious, literary, and social chaos; in a time that
is threatened by women’s revolution, the violation of marital vows,
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Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
55
the disintegration of the family and the bonds of kinship; in a time
in which heresy and unaffected promiscuity have erupted, as well
as attacks on the nation’s religion, language, and values, and its customs, dress, and origins, nothing remains stable [with which] to raise
our youths [and] to teach them respect.3
Between these lines lies the story of the “Arab Renaissance,” or Nahda,
from curious cultural observation to optimistic implementation to skeptical retrospection and even regret. While in the Western academic tradition the Nahda is primarily a story of late nineteenth-century literary and
linguistic renaissance, in the Arab intellectual tradition it is a key concept that accounts for the Arab experience of the Enlightenment. This
essay approaches the Nahda from an expansive perspective that conceives
of both modernity (hadatha) and Enlightenment (tanwir) as two complementary aspects of the same phenomenon.
The sections below discuss the early encounters with modern Europe,
the emergence of an initial selective or defensive modernity focused on
state building, and the crucial roles of Lebanon and Syria where a host
of scholars experimented with cultural renewal and the translation of
European knowledge. The focus then moves to Egypt, the Nahda’s hub,
and the establishment of the sociopolitical and economic infrastructure
necessary for the emergence of the Arab Enlightenment, as well as the
attempts to institute an Arab modernity by way of sociopolitical and
legal reform. The discussion moves on to the response of Islamic modernism that sought synthesis and coexistence with the Nahda, and finally
to the nationalization of the Nahda through competing political and
ideological projects.
Early encounters with Europe and defensive
enlightenment
Most accounts of the Arab Enlightenment consider the late eighteenth
century as a period of significant developments. Already during this era,
life in the Middle East was considerably challenged, enough to elicit two
kinds of reactions: one reformist and the other revivalist.
The reformists, even in a remote province of the Ottoman Empire
such as Yemen, struggled with how to instigate renewal and adapt to the
changing global circumstances of greater economic integration and intercultural influences. Operating from within the conventions of Islamic
culture, they responded to the changing times by rethinking the Islamic
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Yoav Di-Capua
legal tradition and its legal code (shariʿa). Due to the centrality of legal
thought and practice in daily Islamic life, all attempts at reform had to
be conceived of and executed in legal terms, in other words, by answering
the question “Does religious law permit this?” In contrast with this intellectual response, revivalists such as Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (d.
1787) of the Hijaz (in modern-day Saudi Arabia), founder of Wahhabism,
created a movement of moral reconstruction and self-purification that
fought behaviors it defined as representative of cultural decline (such as
the veneration of saints, music, drinking coffee, and smoking) and deviations from a strictly interpreted scriptural tradition. However different
these responses were, they both emphasized cultural continuity and their
legacies would have important roles to play during the twentieth century.
In addition to incremental cultural and economic changes there was
at least one modern “big bang”: Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798.
Later, in 1830, a second trauma occurred when the French invaded and
colonized Algeria. Napoleon’s was the largest long-distance seaborne
force the world had ever seen. Upon landing in Egypt, Napoleon — a
self-declared Muslim — announced that he arrived as a “friend of Islam”
in order to bring to it the values of the French Revolution (primarily
liberty and citizens’ rights) as well as the culture of the Enlightenment.
The French claimed that the Enlightenment and its humanist standards
were of universal value.
In 1801, after encountering much resistance during their three-year
stay, the French withdrew from Egypt. The legacy of their expedition
varied greatly over time. Yet it left behind the possibility of pursuing a
new kind of political power and a new form of state, and two such states
rapidly emerged: Egypt and a reformed Ottoman Empire. In Egypt, following the departure of the French, Muhammad ʿAli Pasha (r. 1805—48)
established a powerful patrimonial regime which relied on skillful ad hoc
application of modern power for its survival. The keyword for the institution of this power was “reform” and it came in all shapes and varieties:
agricultural, economic, bureaucratic, and, first and foremost, military.
By the 1830s, the Egyptian province was so powerful that it threatened
the very existence of Ottoman rule. The common wisdom of this era was
that, although modernity was a complete whole, it was the military and
technological applications — its material aspects — that mattered most.
This was the first Middle Eastern experience with selective, or defensive,
modernity, in which aspects of modernity, especially those that were tied
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Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
57
to technology, were seen as independent of more difficult questions concerning morality and creed.
The second example, in many ways more profound, was that of the
Ottoman Empire itself. In 1839, due to direct European pressure, the
Ottomans embarked on their own era of Tanzimat (literally, “reforms”).
Unlike other selective reforms, the Ottoman ones had a significant political aspect, for they introduced the idea of citizenship and equality
before the law. These measures reflected European liberal thinking and
were thus dependent on the formation of a new elite for their success. In
fact, both the Egyptian and Ottoman experiments saw a systematic state
effort to train a new class of civil bureaucracy. These young conscripts
of modernity studied in new schools, traveled to Europe in official state
delegations, and were employed by new institutions such as the translation bureau, the medical school, the military academy, or the official
Gazette upon their return. They identified the propagation of literacy and
the expansion of a modern education system as crucial means for progress. Their rise, however, came at the expense of the religious elite and
the clerics (ʿulama), whose dependency on the state grew while the need
of the state for their services significantly diminished. Impoverished
and weakened, the ʿulama’s role gradually shrank to that of guardians
of values and morality. The general cultural attitude was that, whatever
modern developments society would undergo, morality would remain a
domain that was exclusively under clerical supervision. In other words,
the first modern experiments in the Middle East envisioned a divided
future in which the moral sphere would retain its authority and authenticity by remaining detached from the material sphere, the one governed
by Islamic religious principles and the other by the modern secular state
and its elites.
The previously cited al-Tahtawi is an exemplar of how some
Egyptians became facilitators for, and at the same time were also products of, these defensive state projects. Al-Tahtawi was a member of the
first Egyptian mission that Muhammad ʿAli sent to France (1825—32).
While in Paris, he learned French, read extensively, and produced a travelogue Refinement of Pure Gold in the Summarizing of Paris (Takhlis al-ibriz fi
talkhis Bariz) that described in detail the cultural differences between the
Ottoman-Egyptian and French worlds. This book, written in the Islamic
tradition of rihla, or travel literature, can be read as a roadmap for his
future career as an administrator and education reformer.
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Yoav Di-Capua
Al-Tahtawi was an astute and comprehensive observer who commented
critically on issues such as ethics, customs and manners, education, political philosophy, status and structure of knowledge, women and society,
language, and science. Al-Tahtawi framed his observations in terms of the
rise of civilizations and their decline into barbarity, and his work displays a
clear sense that Islamic civilization was somewhat behind.
As a chronicler of cultural difference, al-Tahtawi’s observations,
such as “clarity of language is a pre-condition for sound reasoning,”
caused him to wonder about the foundations of Islamic learning. While
modern knowledge prioritized science, philosophy and history, the
Arabo-Islamic scholarly tradition favored “Syntax, inflection, prosody
and vocabulary. Then derivation, poetry and composition. [And then]
… semantics, rhetoric, calligraphy, rhyme and history.”4 Interestingly
enough, al-Tahtawi never considered these two hierarchies of knowledge to be mutually exclusive.
This position was more difficult to maintain when it came to science.
Perhaps the only indication of a certain tension between scientific reasoning and divinity was al-Tahtawi’s reluctance to discard Islamic cosmology (ʿilm al-kawn), the theocentric nature of which was inseparable
from the Qurʾanic notion of God. Thus, he never really embraced the
mechanized law-bound world of Newtonian physics, which was free
of the forces of divine authority and open for rational investigation. At
the same time, however, he argued for a complementary relationship
between reason and revelation. This ambiguity aside, it did not inhibit
the school of translation that al-Tahtawi supervised from producing
more than 2,000 translations of a technical-scientific character. This
practical ambiguity, in which philosophical contradictions and tensions
were overcome by avoiding clarity, characterized the first generation of
defensive modernizers.
The enlightenment in Greater Syria: 1840—1870
While in Egypt the appropriation of modernity was primarily the official business of the state and its bureaucrats, in Lebanon and Syria the
Enlightenment project was in the hands of individuals. Heavily influenced by the presence of missionaries, the impact of the abovementioned state projects in Egypt, the political and diplomatic activities
of Americans and Europeans, as well as global commercial exchange,
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Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
59
a circle of young Arab literati established modern institutions such as
schools, libraries, daily and periodical presses, and theaters. By 1880, a
hundred different schools belonging to a dozen Christian denominations operated in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Jerusalem alone had
forty such schools. Some of these institutions, such as the Maronite
seminary of ʿAyn Waraqa and the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut
(later, the American University of Beirut), functioned as advanced academic laboratories that, however selectively, celebrated and disseminated the achievements of the European Enlightenment, including
the practice of educating girls. Distinguished by such novel habits of
mind, this new educated class soon asserted its influence in public life.
The careers of several of the most significant figures of this period capture the scope of cultural reshuffling that took place during this era. The
life of Faris al-Shidyaq (1804—1887), born a Maronite but later a convert
first to Protestantism and then to Islam (upon which he took the name
Ahmad), revolved around the role of language in public life. He began
his scholarly career in the ranks of American missionaries from whom
he learned about translation (first and foremost that of the Bible) and
publication. He also worked at the American Protestant press in Malta,
traveled extensively in Europe, and was aware of the public impact of
publishing. In subsequent years, numerous books on all manner of subjects from Homer’s Iliad to poems by Victor Hugo were independently
translated by members of his generation.
Al-Shidyaq was particularly interested in linguistic change. This is
because he and his colleagues realized that they had been translating and
writing in an antiquated form of the Arabic language that drew heavily
on classical forms of communication characterized by elaborate rhymed
prose (sajʾ). Beautiful as it was, Classical Arabic stylistics, from a modern
perspective, undermined the communicative capability of printed language and was often lacking in appropriate vocabulary. Equipped with
the necessary publishing skill that he had acquired in Malta, al-Shidyaq
founded al-Jawaʾib, one of the first independent newspapers in the
Middle East. Through this newspaper al-Shidyaq and his peers revolutionized the usage of written language by expanding its vocabulary, as
well as widening its expressive and syntactic scope. In doing so, he and
others set in place the foundation stone for the subsequent creation of a
new journalistic language that was precise, clear, and free from the complexities of Classical Arabic.
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Yoav Di-Capua
The working assumption of these individuals was that clarity in
language is a pre-condition for clarity of thought. After all, despite
its complicated Classical Arabic-style title, this was one of the elementary observations of al-Tahtawi’s travelogue. The Christian Butrus
al-Bustani (1819—1893), a contemporary of al-Shidyaq, had a similar career with American evangelists yet his work took a secular route that the
American missionaries could not have anticipated. A man of multiple
talents, Bustani left a rich cultural inheritance that touched upon many
aspects of Lebanese culture. Perhaps his most enduring legacy was in
the field of lexicography, as he concluded that, in its present form, the
Arabic language fell short of accounting for the dramatic transformation of the contemporary world. As a revivalist who believed in the
possibility of bridging gaps between civilizations, al-Bustani composed
one of the first modern Arabic dictionaries (al-Muhit, 1867—70). In doing
so he coined numerous new Arabic words and legitimized linguistic
experimentation.
Beyond language, al-Bustani’s quest for new forms of knowledge
brought him to compose the first modern Arabic encyclopedia (Daʾirat
al-maʿarif, 1876—82). The western encyclopedia, a classic product of the
Enlightenment’s “Republic of Letters,” was premised on the universality and objectivity of European knowledge as well as on the ability of
all individuals to master it rationally. In the introduction to this work,
al-Bustani wrote that his goal was to expand the knowledge of the “East”
as a pre-condition for bringing the Arabs up to the level of European
civilization.5
Unlike the earlier generation of al-Tahtawi, which did not view
European culture in relativistic or competitive terms, al-Bustani’s call
for an awakening was conditioned by the understanding that Arab civilization should measure up to that of Europe. Put another way, cultural
difference and the ways to abolish it became a major contemporary concern. Many, if not most, cultural entrepreneurs shared a similar view as
they toiled to master new cultural practices. The joint careers of Yaqub
Saruf (1852—1927) and Faris Nimr (1856—1951), two teachers from the
influential Syrian Protestant College, marked a zenith in Lebanese journalism. Indeed, the two men capitalized on the linguistic and cultural
achievements of previous generations and published al-Muqtataf, a scientific periodical that exposed a new generation of educated youth to
the marvels of modern science and to its derivative social implications.
Al-Muqtataf was read all over the Arab East but in 1884, in part due to the
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Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
61
publishers’ belief in Darwinism and its rejection by their home academic
institution, they left for Egypt. By this point, other Lebanese cultural
entrepreneurs, such as al-Bustani’s former students the brothers Bishra
(1852—1901) and Salim (1849—1892) Taqla, had already moved to Egypt
where they published the influential political weekly al-Ahram (still in
print today). Other pioneers such as Jurji Zaydan (1861—1914), author, editor, and publisher of the groundbreaking literary journal al-Hilal (still in
print today), also moved to Egypt, further contributing to Egypt’s dramatic emergence as the region’s cultural hub.
With hardly any cultural opposition — a reality that would change during the 1880s — the emerging Syrian and Lebanese intelligentsia bypassed
existing modes of indigenous knowledge such as biography, travel literature, and other classic genres. In their place, these writers experimented
with European genres such as drama, the novel, the short story, as well
as literary, political, and scientific journalism. Though influential, this
cultural activity was not yet conceived of as a movement and hence did
not have a name. They spoke of progress (taqaddum), civilization (tamaddun), fear of barbarity (tawahhush), and, metaphorically, about “entering
the city.” Yet, since the term Nahda appeared only later (see below), these
modernistic developments remain nameless.
Whatever we might choose to call this yet nameless Nahda front, it was
clearly committed to four fundamental traits of mid-nineteenth-century
European thought: first, a belief in the idea of progress and its dependence on scientific and technological mindedness; second, an unflinching
belief in the power of rationality and its positivist and empirical mindset;
third, the adoption of a historicist habit of mind, or the realization that
objects become intelligible only by grasping them as part of a causal process of development; and, fourth, acceptance of the notion that “civilization” exists in two fundamental states: rise or decline. Like Europeans,
they distinguished between European civilization on the one hand and
Eastern, Arab, and Islamic civilization on the other (all used interchangeably), and investigated the necessary conditions that might facilitate
Arab progress. All four traits conjoined in the need to profoundly reform
Arab civilization, which was now considered to be “lagging behind”
Europe.
Though this generation understood that a European-style cultural
revival necessitated direct political change, they rarely ventured into
politics. Most of them, as members of Christian minorities who identified themselves as secular-minded Arabs, approached the question
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62
Yoav Di-Capua
of modernity exclusively from this ethnic perspective. Not to be confused with nationalism, they called this perspective “patriotism” (hubb
al-watan, lit. love of homeland) and yet it was remarkably apolitical. In
the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when political conditions in
Greater Syria proved hostile to their project, they initiated one of the
most remarkable intellectual migrations in Middle East history and left
for Egypt.
The state of culture: Egypt, 1860—1880
Khedive Ismaʿil (r. 1863—79) had a simple motto: “Egypt is no longer part
of Africa; it has become part of Europe.” He built railways, telegraph
lines, roads, ports, bridges, irrigation canals, dams, hospitals, palaces,
and the Suez Canal. He hoped to “enlighten” black Africa. Ismaʿil’s
great project of “becoming European” was premised on the modernistic
understanding that the machine is a civilizing force and that an influx
of technology could dramatically elevate living conditions and release
Egyptians from poverty and their alleged cultural backwardness. Yet, by
that time the limitations of material/technological modernization were
widely acknowledged and Ismaʿil therefore also invested heavily in cultural institutions such as professional societies, schools (including education for girls), higher training colleges, libraries, a museum, theaters,
an opera house, and a printing press. He generously patronized the arts
and the journalistic scene and increased the number of student delegations to Europe. This was the background for ʿAli Mubarak’s sweeping
statement quoted at the beginning of this essay about profound changes
in urban life.6 In other words, in place of the limited project of defensive
modernity, Ismaʿil envisioned a more holistic cultural process.
The magnitude of Ismaʿil’s enterprises created a wave of migration
during which people from all over the Mediterranean flocked to Egypt in
search of economic opportunity and a better life. By the turn of the century there were 260,000 Italian, French, Maltese, Armenians, Ottoman
Jews, British, and Greeks living in Egypt. The successful reception of
these minorities created a new reality in which, by 1907, about a quarter
of the inhabitants of urban centers like Port Said and Alexandria were
foreigners. Thus, urban life and so-called cosmopolitan culture became
an integral part of the birth of Arab modernism.
Ismaʿil’s actions provided the fundamental sociopolitical and economic infrastructure for the emergence of a viable Arab project of
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Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
63
enlightenment; a skeleton that was soon to be fleshed out with the secular outlook, literary sensitivity, and intellectual resourcefulness of the
Syrians. This development also acquired a name: the Nahda. The term
Nahda signifies “to rise,” “to stand up,” and has the connotation of “to
be fit” and “to be ready for.” It was most likely coined by Shaykh Husayn
al-Marsafi (1815—1890), an educator in the progressive school of Dar
al-ʿUlum (established 1872), which was founded by his friend and patron
ʿAli Mubarak.7
In 1879 Isma ʿ il’s bid for making Egypt part of Europe ended
with dramatic bankruptcy. From the outset, his project was heavily
financed by European credit and, when Egypt defaulted on its loans,
the Europeans collaborated in deposing him and taking over the country. In 1882, the British occupied Egypt, and, in one form or another,
this occupation lasted until 1956. This was a far cry from the kind of
cultural synthesis with Europe and the project of “closing gaps” to
which Ismaʿil had aspired. Thereafter, whatever came from Europe
also came with direct military and political domination to the degree
that the next generation of culture makers was decidedly less naive
and more political.
Putting enlightenment to work: the critical years,
1882—1900
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century a sustainable modern
Arab culture emerged. It was inhabited by only a tiny fraction of the
population, most likely under 10 percent, but was still influential enough
to transform the wider cultural life. Since initially the British rulers of
Egypt safeguarded the elementary political freedoms of association and
expression, Egypt continued to function as the hub of this experimental new sphere. It was centered in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, and several other provincial cities, and from there it radiated as far as Basra in
Iraq and Fez in Morocco, Greater Syria, and Palestine. Reading and writing were the necessary skills for participation. But what exactly was the
nature of this sphere?
The structural transformation gave birth to a modern professional
class of doctors, technicians, teachers, lawyers, journalists, state bureaucrats, and engineers, which formed an embryonic professional middle
class, or, in Arabic, effendiyya. It was heavily dependent on the effendiyya’s experience of metropolitan Europe. Because they read, wrote, and
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64
Yoav Di-Capua
formed opinions, sometimes in several languages, this class evinced
greater willingness to translate its understanding of the world into
action. With both collective and individualized reading on the rise,
the new habits of mind with which the Syrian—Lebanese intelligentsia
experimented achieved unprecedented presence.
At the heart of this sphere stood the modern Arab intellectual, a
new type of activist-thinker who replaced the religious scholar and
bureaucrat-scholar of previous generations. These intellectuals spoke
in the new journalistic language of “public Arabic.” Their business was
to influence the public and hence their work had a built-in political
aspect to it.
Intellectuals could do so only because by this point in time, as Shaykh
Husayn al-Marsafi observed in his essay A Treatise on Eight Crucial Words
(Risalat al-kalim al-thaman), this new form of the Arabic language, “Public
Arabic,” also stood for political modernity. An expert on giving names to
abstractions, Marsafi elaborated on the new meaning which eight powerful words — indeed political concepts — had acquired since the 1870s. A
review of these words — nation (umma), homeland (watan), government
(hukuma), justice (ʿadl), oppression (zulm), politics (siyasa), freedom (hurriyya), and education (tarbiya) — illustrates that the Nahda was not merely
a literary phenomenon but a fully fledged political force whose interest
was the public good.
This great revolution in political expression was not simply a matter
of quantity in writing. The most important aspect of this tide was the
continuous acculturation of new disciplines and genres such as modern
history, geography, the short story, the op-ed essay, and the historical
novel. Jurji Zaydan, a Lebanese Greek Orthodox émigré to Egypt was a
senior member in a circle of like-minded intellectuals, such as compatriot Greek Orthodox Farah Antun (1874—1922) and Shibli Shumayyil
(1850—1917). Antun was a journalist, historical novelist, and playwright,
and the first Arab translator of Nietzsche. Shumayyil was a physician and
scientist who also wrote stories, poetry, and political criticism. He ultimately became a precursor of socialism.
Zaydan, the most prolific and versatile writer in this group, wrote
twenty-three historical novels and the first modern history book on
Islamic civilization. His extremely popular historical novels taught his
readers how to “think with history,” and were therefore important propagators of historical consciousness. Influenced by European Orientalist
scholarship, Zaydan was the first Arab to treat the history of Islamic
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Nahda: the Arab project of enlightenment
65
civilization as a secular rather than a divine story. His ambition in this
field was bitterly opposed by mainstream Islamic scholars.
While the work of this generation of pioneers was hostile to popular
culture (fiction, colloquial Arabic, and mass Islamic culture in general)
it was particularly disruptive for the Islamic notion of what constitutes
proper knowledge. This is why they were sometimes called “intruders.” Thereafter, the disciplinary hierarchy that Tahtawi had elaborated
existed no more. Science, philosophy, and history, three fields which had
been at the bottom of the Islamic intellectual structure, were now at the
top. All three preached secular reason. But, more importantly, all three
conjoined to deliver a much more profound message. As Albert Hourani,
the most integrative historian of this tradition, succinctly put it, the new
knowledge propagated the realization that “from the discoveries of science there could be inferred a system of social morality which was the
secret of social strength.”8
The idea that the public good was backed by a force of moral, political, and social truth engendered a growing urban expectation
to rationalize authority and the overall management of society.
Positivism and multiple other ideologies of social betterment that
relied on social Darwinism were readily available in Arabic. The ideas
of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Henri Bergson, and Gustave Le
Bon were understood within the specific social and historical context
of the Arab World. Once intellectuals forged a connection between the
scientific, the philosophical, and the political, the ground was conceptually ready for a new notion of political community. Thereafter,
groups such as the confessional communities of culturally autonomous minorities, or rural communities, began their transformation
into a unified territorial linguistic whole and the vague sentiment of
patriotism that earlier generations had invoked began to be forged in
terms of nationalism.
By then the experience of the Enlightenment touched upon so many
aspects of Arab life that it was no longer possible to restrict it to one specific realm. The most noteworthy indication of this state of affairs was
that morality and family structure — perhaps the most intimate aspects
of Islamic life, which up unti