Abstract
The year 1892 witnessed the publication of ‵A’isha Taymur’s Mir’at al-Tamul fi al-Umur (a reflective mirror on Some Matters), a 16-page booklet and Hilyat al-Tiraz (the finest of its class), her collected Arabic poems. In this chapter I will examine the first of these two publications where Taymur turned her attention to social criticism—that is, the changing gender relations between men and women in the family and its effects on the representation of the national community. In the process, she offered a novel interpretation (ijtihad) of the contingent nature of the religious and social bases of male leadership over women in the family. Taymur’s work elicited critical responses from Shaykh Abdallah al-Fayumi, a member of the ulema and Abdallah al- Nadeem, the nationalist writer, who offered two perspectives of her work and views of gender as a marker of the community. This early debate underlined the contested character of gender relations and roles as features of the community in the early 1890s long before the work of Qasim Amin’s Tahrir al-Mar’at (The Liberation of the Woman) in 1899.
The lion was enraged by the disrespectful
behavior of his wife who dared to leave him
the leftovers of her hunt … He reminded her
of the inequality of their status … The lioness
laughed at this reminding him: “this was
when you were you and I was me. Now,
Our roles are reversed: you are me and I am you.”
—Mir’at al-Ta’mul fi al-Umur1
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Notes
‵A’isha Taymur, Mir’at al-Tamul fi al-Umur (Cairo: Matb’at al-Mahrussa, 1892), 7.
Ali al-Hadidi, Abdallah al-Nadeem, Khateeb al-Wataniya (Cairo: al-Hay’at al-Misriyat al- ‵Amma lil Kitab, 1987), 300, 315.
Roger Owen, Lord Cromer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 270, 274.
Hoda Elsadda, ed., Al-Fatat (Cairo: Mu’assassat al-Mar’at wa al-Thakira, 2007), 19.
Hoda Elsadda, ed. “Mukkadima,” Al-Fatat (Cairo: Mu’assassat al-Mar’at wa al-Thakira, 2007), 11.
Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)506–7.
Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, “Women and Modernization: A Reevaluation,”, Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Amira El Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 45–46.
Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Women and Men in Late Eighteenth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 20.
Shaykh Abdallah al-Fayumi, Lisan al-Jumhur ‵ala Mir’at al-Tamul fi al-’Umur (Cairo: Mul- taqa al-Mar’at wa al-Thakira, 2002), 48–50.
Yaqub Sarruf, “Muqadimat,”, Bahithat al-Badiya, by Mayy Ziyada (Beirut: Mu’assat Nou- fal, 1983), 9.
Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli, ed., “Abdallah al-Fayumi,”, Al-‵Alam: Qamus Tarajim,” (Beirut: Dar al-‵Ilm lil Malayiin, 1973), 4:143.
Muhammad ‵Amara, Rifa‵at al-Tahtawi: Ra’id al-Tanweer fi al-‵Asr al-Hadith (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1988), 346.
Mervat F. Hatem, “The Nineteenth Century Discursive Roots of the Continuing Debate on the Social-Sexual Contract in Today’s Egypt,” Hawwa, Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 2, no. 1 (2004): 78.
Judith E. Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 54.
Amira El-Azhary Sonbol, “Introduction,”, Women and the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Amira El-Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 1–20.
Professor Hoda Elsadda’s research on Abdallah al-Nadeem brought this reference to my attention. See Hoda Elsadda, “Tanaqudhat al-Khitab al-Watani fi Tanawuluh li Mas’alat al-Mar’at: Qir’at fi Majallat ‘al-Ustaz’ li Abdallah al-Nadeem,” in ‵Aisha Taymur: Tahadiyat al-Thabit wa al-Mutaghayiir fi al-Qarn al-Tasi‵ ‵Ashr, ed. Hoda Elsadda (Cairo: Mu’assat al-Mar’at wa al-Thakira, 2004), 169.
Abdallah al-Nadeem, Abdallah al-Nadeem: Al-‵Addad al-Kamilat li Majallat al-Ustaz (Cairo: Markaz Watha’iq Misr al-Mu‵assir, 1994), 1:10.
See Abdallah al-Nadeem, “Mir’at al-Ta’mul fi al-Umur,” Al-Ustaz, no. 33 (April 4, 1893), in Abdallah al-Nadeeim: al-‵Addad al-Kamila li Majallat al-Ustaz (Cairo: al-Hay’at al-Misriyat al-‵Amma lil Kitab, 1994), 2:775.
Eve M. Troutt Powell, “Slaves or Siblings? Abdallah al-Nadeem’s Dialogues About the Family,”, Histories of the Middle East: New Directions, eds. Israel Gershoni, Hakam Erdem, and Ursula Wokock (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 161–62.
Abdallah al-Nadeem, “Said wa Bakhita,”, Abdallah al-Nadeem: Al-‵Addad al-Kamila li Majallat al-Ustaz (Cairo: al-Hay’at al-Misriyat al-‵Amma lil Kitab, 1994), 1:91, 1:93.
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© 2011 Mervat F. Hatem
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Hatem, M.F. (2011). From Fiction to Social Criticism. In: Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt. Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118607_5
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