Table Of ContentThe Making of the Arab Intellectual
In the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s nineteenth-c entury reforms, as guilds
waned and new professions emerged, the scholarly ‘estate’ underwent social dif-
ferentiation. Some found employment in the state’s new institutions as transla-
tors, 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-d efinition and all things public is the central
concern of this book. Focusing on the period after the tax-f arming 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 dysfunc-
tional 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 Pub-
lique 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-m odern and the
modern periods of the region. While primarily interested in publishing single-
authored 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-F ascist 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-M odern 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-P eter 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
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© 2013 Dyala Hamzah, selection and editorial matter; individual chapters,
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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 ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on transliteration xii
1 Introduction: the making of the Arab intellectual
(1880–1960): empire, public sphere and the colonial
coordinates of selfhood 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) 128
LITAL LEVY
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 245
Periodicals consulted 268
Index 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- en-
Provence in 2003. She is the author of Une génération d’intellectuels arabes.
Syrie et Liban, 1908–1940 (Karthala-I ISMM, 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 Univer-
sität, 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-M akdisi is Associate Professor of Middle East and World History
at Northeastern University, Boston. She is the author of The Eastern Mediter-
ranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 2010).
Lital Levy is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton Univer-
sity, 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-N uremberg, Germany. His publications include Radical National-
ism in Syria and Lebanon, 1930–1958 (Hamburg: Orient- Institute, 2001, in
German) and Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Cen-
tury 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 Univer-
sity of Bonn and master degrees from both the universities of Oxford and
Heidelberg. He is the author of Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Total-
itarian and Pro- Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941 (Routledge, 2006).
