The Crisis and Reform of Islamic Dynastic Government and Society

Abstract

This chapter will offer a study of the only work of fiction that Taymur published in 1887/8. Rather than focus on where Nata’ij al-Ahwal stands vis-à-vis the modern Arabic novel, I wish to emphasize its use of the form of Shahrazad’s One Thousand and Owe Nights to address the concerns of the newly emerging national community. While Benedict Anderson treated the modern novel as the only literary form capable of representing the “nation,” Taymur’s use of the structure of One Thousand and One Nights, which included a frame story coupled with a “story within the story,” successfully accomplished this goal through the use of what I categorize as a hybrid narrative that used an old literary form to analyze many of the changes taking place in the different arenas of the community and their connections to each other. In the process, she offered readers ways of recognizing and understanding old cultural bonds they shared with one another as well as their present concerns as members of an imagined national community.

Your highness, he who wishes to evaluate

the advice given to him by others, must

accept as truthful that which is familiar

to the common folk [al-‵amma]… Whatever

is met with the peoples’ [al-nas] approval

should be followed and that which is censured

should be avoided. A rational man is he who

follows the examples set by others.¹

—Nata’ij al-Ahwal