Abstract
In this book, I address the Arab Nahḍah (Awakening)1 not only as an engagement with tradition, but also as a sociopolitical movement encapsulating and questioning issues of gender, language, community, and literature. These issues are central to the modernity challenge that emerged through a multifaceted encounter with Europe, and I argue that this complex engagement played a significant role in the rational discussion of the public sphere. The book’s argument is built on the role of the Lebanese-Palestinian litterateur Mayy Ziyādah’s (1886–1941) salon as a transformative moment in public sphere creation in Egypt. I treat Ziyādah’s salon as a microcosm for the Nahḍah in terms of its hybridity, its participation in creating a new public sphere (in relation to politics and culture, the creation of an image of a new nation-community, etc.), and the important but neglected role of women in this Nahḍah project.
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Notes
“Awakening” is the term applied to the so-called Nahdah, the ensuing modernity movement away from the Ottoman rule and Mamluk patriarchy. Epistemologically, it denotes a break with transmitted tradition (naql), the application of reason (‘aql) within a revivalist recovery of both Islamic-Arab rationalism and the European Enlightenment legacy. The term has been analyzed, debated, and disputed. See J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 8–13;
among the latest thoughtful studies, see Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Islam on the Street (Maryland: Roman and Littlefield, 2010), 2.
“By ‘public sphere’ we mean first of all a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public…. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely.” See Jürgen Habermas, On Society and Politics: A Reader, ed. Steven Seidman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 231.
James Bohman, “Expanding Dialogue: The Internet, the Public Sphere and Prospects for Transnational Democracy” in After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere, eds. John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing/The Sociological Review, 2004), 134.
See ‘Abd al-Fattāḥ Kilīṭū, Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, trans. Wail Hassan (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 4.
Salmā al-Ḥaffār al-Kuzbarī, Mayy Ziyādah wa A‘lām Aṣrihā: Rasā’il Makhṭūṭah lam Tunshar (1912–1930) (Mayy Ziyādah and the Luminaries of Her Time: Unpublished Letters (1912–1930)) (Beirut: Mu’assasat Nawfal, 1982), 54. The translation is mine. All translations in the book are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
For a detailed biography of Mayy Ziyādah, see Salmā al-Ḥaffār al-Kuzbarī, Mayy aw Ma’sāt al-Nubūgh (Mayy or the Tragedy of Genius), 2 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat Nawfal, 1987), vol. 1.
Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid was appointed the first president of the Egyptian University in 1924. He served as a minister of education in 1928 and as minister of foreign affairs in 1946. In 1940 he was appointed as a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language and in 1948 he became its president. He was also one of the founders of the Ummah (nation) party and the nationalist party, the Wafd (delegation). He earned the title “ustādh al-jīl” (the teacher of the generation) for his role as an educator rather than a politician. For more information on Aḥmad Luṭfī al-Sayyid, see Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature, 338–344; Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt’s Liberal Experiment, 1922–1936 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 48.
“The Egyptian University” (later named Fu’ād University and currently named Cairo University) was founded on December 21, 1908. The demand for the establishment of a national university found support from leaders like Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), Muṣṭafā Kāmil (d. 1908), Qāsim Amīn (d. 1908), and Sa‘ad Zaghlūl (d. 1927). They called for a modern education system organized according to a European educational model, unlike that of the religious Azhar University. In 1908, 31 women attended lectures, though perhaps three of these were Egyptian (Mayy Ziyādah was said to enroll in courses but has not received any degree). The number increased to 173 in 1935. In 1937 Suhayr al-Qalamāwī became the first Egyptian woman to obtain a masters’ degree and in 1941 the first to be awarded a PhD in Arabic literature. For more information, see Anthony Gorman, Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 36–37, 49–52.
See Kāmil al-Shinnāwī, Alladhīna Aḥabbū Mayy wa Ubīrīt Jamīlah (Those Who Loved Mayy and the Opera of Jamīlah) (Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘ārif, 1972), 15.
The phrase “Republic of Letters,” or République des Lettres, was coined by the French scholar Pierre Bayle (d. 1706) at the end of the seventeenth century to refer to a community or network of intellectuals, (hence the word “Republic”) who sustained an exchange of information through correspondence, circulation of books and journals, academies, salon visits, and so on. See Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters, A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 2, 15.
D’Alembert describes the Age of Enlightenment as one “of philosophy par excellence” in which a “general effervescence of minds casts new light on some matters and new shadows on others.” Ernst Cassirer adds that thought then “not only seeks new goals but it wants to know where it is going and to determine for itself the direction of its journey.” Ernst Cassirer, “The Mind of the Enlightenment,” in Backgrounds to Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. Kathleen Williams (Scranton: Chandler Publishing Company, 1971), 121–152.
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© 2012 Boutheina Khaldi
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Khaldi, B. (2012). Introduction. In: Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137106667_1
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