Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870-1930 9780804799218

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COMPOSING EGYPT

COMPOSING EGYPT Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870–1930

HO DA A . YO U SE F

STA N FOR D U N I V ER SIT Y PR E SS STA N FOR D, CA LIFOR N I A

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8047-9711-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8047-9921-8 (electronic) Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion Pro

In Memory of Nina Tahiyya

CONTENTS



List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi



xv

Note on Transliterations and Translations



Prologue

1



Introduction: Literacies, Publics, and Gender

3



1 The Discourse and Practice of Everyday Literacies

25



2 Literacies of Exclusion: Mistresses of the Pen

49



3 Writing for the Public: Schooled Literacies

77



4 Writing to Be Seen and Heard: Petitions and Protests

103



5 Literacy for All: Ummiyya, Arabic, and the Public Good

129



Conclusion: Literacy and Literacies

157

Notes

165

Bibliography

217

Index

237

I L LUST R AT IONS

Figures 1.1 Domestic Postal Service for Egypt, 1880–1930

45

4.1 Handwritten Group Petition from Fāqūs, 1915

106

4.2 Domestic Telegrams Sent in Egypt, 1880–1930

109

4.3 Article-Petition, 1909

113

4.4 Group Petition, 1915

117

4.5 Group Petition with Nationalist Crest, 1917

118

4.6 “Form” Petition, 1919

119

4.7 Pamphlet Petition, 1925

127

C.1 “Reading Is for Everyone, 2007–2008,” Cairo, Egypt

158

Tables I.1 Official Literacy Rates, 1897–1927

19

3.1 Schools and Students, 1875 versus 1915

82

5.1 Kuttāb Inspections and Subsidies, 1895–1905

151

AC K NOW L E D GM E N T S

Over the course of writing this book I have relied on colleagues, friends, and family who have supported me in innumerable ways. To those I thank here, and to those whom I inadvertently miss, I owe much of what is beneficial in this work. Any mistakes and oversights are my own. My deepest gratitude goes to Judith Tucker, who has been an unfailing mentor, critic, and supporter of my work. It is no exaggeration to say that this book would not exist without her. I have also benefited tremendously from the mentorship of John Voll, Fida Adely, and Eve Troutt Powell and the critical input they provided at various stages of preparing this book. At Georgetown I thrived with the friendship and support of many, among them Allison ­Carpenter, Rehenuma Asmi, Younus Mirza, and Aurèlie Perrier, who read several early chapters. The Georgetown University Graduate School and History Department also generously provided several semesters of research support, for which I am very grateful. My research depended heavily on resources available only in Egypt. I am thankful to the American Research Center in Cairo’s Fellowship program for facilitating my longest research trip to the region. The Center’s unflappable ­administration—Djodi Deutsch and Amira Khattab, among others—did an amazing job of providing advice, resources, and a comfortable institutional base for this sometimes-harried researcher. Dr. Sayyid ‘Ashmawi was a particularly adept mentor who literately opened doors—and often got us invited in for tea—in pursuit of sources off the beaten path. The staff at the Egyptian National Archives, particularly Madam Nadia and Madam Nagwa, expertly guided and helped me to find what I needed from the collections they oversaw. I also thank the Egyptian National Archives for allowing me to reproduce several of the petitions that appear in this work. Ludmila Zamah, Rusha Latif, the women of “10 Naguib Mahfouz,” and my legion of extended family members who shared with me their levity, wonderful meals, and several homes away from home all made

xii   AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

my trips a pleasure. A special thank-you goes to Elsa Elmahdy, who put up with my angst as I struggled to make sense of the history I was uncovering. Beyond her much appreciated friendship, humor, and sagacity, she also was the perfect person with which to discuss the changing uses of Arabic during this period, helping me separate the new from the old and the important from the inconsequential. My colleagues at Franklin & Marshall College have provided cheerful support and encouragement throughout this process and made my first few years in academia an absolute joy. In particular, I wish to thank Laura Shelton and Louise Stevenson for providing insightful advice and reading the complete manuscript in the months leading up to its submission to Stanford University Press. In addition, Maria Mitchell, Matt Hoffman, Doug Anthony, Richard Reitan, Abby Schrader, Ted Pearson, Van Gosse, and Ben McRee have facilitated the writing of this book directly and indirectly in probably more ways than I know. Ann Wagoner offered invaluable support and was always ready to answer my administrative questions and track down books and historical resources as needed. Several incarnations of a Faculty Writing Group afforded happy occasions to meet, share our work, and talk about the vicissitudes of life as scholar-teachers with colleagues from across the College, including Laura Shelton, SherAli Tareen, Stephanie McNulty, Sylvia Alajaji, and Sofia RuizAlfaro. I have also benefitted from the College’s generous faculty resources that funded books, research trips, and time for writing. My editor at Stanford University Press, Kate Wahl, has expertly shepherded this project, generously provided her expertise and insight, and ultimately made this book a reality. To all of the many hands who have touched this work and made it better—among them Mariana Raykov, Alice Rowan, and Emily Pollokoff—I thank you. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers who read this work carefully, provided helpful comments and corrections, and strengthened and sharpened my argument. My parents, Ahmed Yousef and Souzan El-Kest, have supported me in every way and through every step of this process. My mother’s kind voice asking, “How many pages have you done today?” continues to motivate me to this day. To my father I owe my appreciation for the ironies and surprises of history. Nadia, Tarik, and Nabeel—siblings/friends/confidants—have each provided their help in their own ways, not the least of which by being my companions on this journey of life. Arsalan has known this project as long as he has known me. In our years together he has read every word I have written, encouraged me, and been my

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S    xiii

editorial, moral, and grounding touchstone. With him came Saeeda and the late and dearly missed Riaz Siddiqui into my life, enriching it and making it feel whole. Maryam and Zaynab are the “other” joyous project of the last few years, engrossing and completely beguiling, filling our lives with joy, providing laughter and some tears; I love them more than words can express. This book is dedicated to my grandmother, Amina Qandil, whom we affectionately knew as Nina Tahiyya. She passed away in 2009 just as I was starting to conceptualize the ideas at the heart of this book. I had not realized until then just how much my sense of my own heritage and past was, and is, wrapped up in her presence. I carry with me cherished memories of our long afternoon conversations, standing on the balcony or sitting in her breezy living room, as she told me stories about her life and all she had seen over the decades. It is her story that opens this book and frames its narrative, much as her wisdom and warmth continue to guide my sense of history and love of Egypt. wa-l-ḥamdu li-l-lāhi rabbi al-‘ālamīn

NOT E ON T R A NSL I T E R AT IONS A N D T R A NSL AT IONS

I have used the transliteration system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies for all Arabic terms that do not have a commonly accepted spelling in English, with the following exceptions and notes. The diacritical mark ‘ is used in place of the Arabic letter ‘ayn, and ’ is used in place of the hamza. Any hamza that appears at the beginning of a word has been dropped. Plurals of Arabic terms have been created by adding an s to the end of the transliterated word (as in kuttābs for the plural of kuttāb). Author names and the titles of published works that appear in the body of the text and that do not have commonly accepted renditions in English are spelled only with the ‘ayn and hamza diacritical marks. The full diacritical marks are retained in the citations and the bibliography. All translations from the Arabic are my own unless otherwise indicated.

COMPOSING EGYPT



PROLOGUE

T H I S H I S T O R Y is, in part, my grandmother’s story. Born in Egypt around 1920, Amina Qandil grew up flanked by two very different generations: that of her own mother and the generation represented by her youngest sisters. Like many women before her, Amina’s mother never learned to read or write. Meanwhile, the younger women of the family were part of a new generation of learning: they all went to school, some continued on to higher education, and one became a doctor. As for Amina, education was pursued at the hands of a series of female tutors who came to her home to teach her sewing, ­crocheting, baking, reading, and writing. Throughout the many roles she played in her life, Amina used these skills to their utmost capacity. She was the amateur seamstress who saved the family the cost of school uniforms, the baker who made enough bread for the entire street, the family scribe who noted debts and payments in her delicate handwriting, and a voracious consumer of ­novels in her youth and a dedicated reader of a daily Qur’anic litany in her old age. But her story as an unschooled literate—for whom literacy was part skill and part treasure—is absent from the common narrative of Egyptian history, which tends to divide the population into the literate elites and the uneducated majorities. She was neither illiterate nor part of the country’s new, empowered, school-educated classes. Nevertheless, she was part of a growing stratum of Egyptians for whom particular kinds of literacies were deployed, used, and cherished in their everyday social circumstances. Her informal education allowed her to pursue her economic interests when needed,

2   P R O L O G U E

to follow politics when it concerned her, and to make demands on her community when necessary. This is where literacies mattered: how people used and perceived the written word mediated their interaction with much of the larger world around them. Contrary to the hopes of many reformers, literacy neither opened the gates to modernity nor ushered in a new era of social nirvana. However, the idea of literacy and many of the practices it informed did fundamentally alter the social fabric in Egypt, making protests, women, writing, and debates more visible to the Egyptian collective. This book is aimed at those historians of Egypt, the Middle East, and beyond who wish to look at the history of literacy during times of change with new eyes: to appreciate its complexity, unevenness, exclusions, and riches. This reevaluation of the history of literacy gives us a truer picture of how the dramatic social changes that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries actually filtered throughout the diverse parts of Egyptian society. In this space, there is room for a much broader view of the social and cultural history of the emergence of modern Egypt, a view that includes the poor petitioner, the lofty idealist, the struggling student, and the worried mother. All of them are the subjects of this book. All of them were, in one way or another, the “composers” of modern Egypt.



INTRODUCTION Literacies, Publics, and Gender

I N 18 9 4 , Egypt’s first journal published specifically for women posed the following question directly to its audience: “Is a man allowed to open letters that arrive in the name of his wife, or not?”1 In this one-line notice, the journal ­al-Fataa was engaging implicitly and explicitly in one of the defining social and cultural shifts of turn-of-the-century Egypt: the emergence of public literacies as a set of practices and discourses that influenced communal life, civic engagement, and gendered exchanges in Egyptian society. What I am calling “public literacies” were interactions with the written word that made literacy a central platform for a wide range of Egyptians to engage in questions about the nature and future of a nascent Egyptian modernity. As topics of collective debate and sources of new communal exchange, public literacies were reading and writing practices that found articulation in public discussions while also influencing the very structure of the debates of which they were a part. In both form and content, the al-Fataa question highlights several aspects of this new engagement with the written word. It appeared in a commercially sold journal that was one of many such enterprises that exploded onto the literary scene at the end of the nineteenth century. It explicitly referenced the expanding postal system that was making letter writing a viable way to connect distant homes directly to one another via broad networks of written communication. It targeted a female audience, an increasing but still relatively small portion of the newly literate elite. The very format of the question—posed directly to the journal’s audience—invited the reader to participate in a dialogue by providing a written response.

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Meanwhile, the content of the question itself raised issues of visibility, privacy, and gendered roles in the family. Who should “see” written correspondences? What was the purpose of such communications? Could the presence of a sealed letter subvert the family order? How should the man of the house mitigate the latent perils of unmonitored messages between a woman and the outside world? The simple act of literacy described in the question—­receiving and reading a letter—became doubly public: first as a matter interjected into a public forum for debate, and second as a matter of public concern and, ultimately, gendered surveillance. The answer provided in the next issue of alFataa made clear that this particular use of literacy was not merely a private matter but rather had implications for a woman, her family, and the social fabric of the nation as a whole.2 Literacy was never just about reading and writing. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the notion and practices of literacy—who used it and how, what form it should take, what it meant for Egyptian society—became integral to debates about the role of women in Egyptian life, what to do about the British colonial presence, the nature of religious and secular authority, and how to create a national community that was both authentically “Egyptian” and “modern” at the same time. Reformers of this era sought to instill “good literacy” as a way to influence the political and social changes of the era while mitigating the potentially dangerous effects of its “misuse” by those who could undermine their particular reformist goals. To this end, the Egyptian state and civil society increasingly defined literacy as a binary division of the population along the axis of successful “readers and writers” and the “illiterates” who were holding the country back. However, this is only part of the story. Even as literacy was becoming a narrower concept, more individuals—literate, illiterate, and semiliterate alike—were beginning to use the profound new techniques of “public writing” to influence the world around them. The disruptive technology of printing was an important locale for change, yet even the “old” literacy practices of using scribes and traditional educational methods were recast into the new mold of public literacies. In practice, literacies served the purposes of those who wielded them. Parochial, nationalistic, Islamic, educational, feminist, bureaucratic, and personal goals were all aided by this new domain of public literacies, as Egyptians sought to instrumentalize writing and reading to pursue the goal of creating a better Egypt for their communities, their families, and themselves. This work argues that reading and writing practices were not only the object of social reform, but also a central medium of public exchange for Egyptians, irrespective of their literacy abilities.

L I T E R AC I E S , P U B L IC S , A N D G E N D E R    5

The Power of Literacies One of the central questions that inspires this study is this: Does literacy matter to societies and, if so, how? Absent the historical and ideological context in which it is deployed, literacy does not make a society or a person more successful, reasonable, nationalistic, pious, empowered, or a myriad of other qualities that can and have been used to describe the importance of reading and writing. Nevertheless, the repercussions of this “literacy myth,” as Harvey J. Graff famously dubbed it, have been formidable.3 Across the globe, as a concept and ideology of reform, literacy and, even more so, illiteracy have underwritten ambitious government programs to create educational systems for the masses, influenced how societies enumerate and evaluate populations, and created an undying devotion to social reform by way of words. This book eschews this triumphalist vision of literacy as a universal good, one that has underwritten the march toward modernity in “developed” countries and become the singular failure of those countries still mired in “illiterate” ignorance. Rather, this work contextualizes the ideas and practices of literacies just as they were becoming central to Egyptian conceptions of reform, advancement, and civil engagement. To examine exactly how various literacies impacted Egyptian society—and they did—I focus on the public manifestation of literacies as a central practice and discourse of modern Egyptian life. This approach draws from the extensive work done by historians, ethnographers, and sociologists of reading and writing, which has come to be known as literacy studies. In the past few decades, scholars have made great strides in reframing literacy, not as a unitary concept but as a multiplicity of situated reading and writing practices that are bound by historical processes, social power structures, and cultural discourses.4 There is not just one type (or archetype) of literacy that bifurcates communities, societies, and civilizations along an oral-written “great divide,” separating those who possess it from those who do not.5 Rather, literacies—in the plural—exist along a continuum of practices and contexts that often include multiple valences of orality and textuality. By focusing on the practices of literacies, rather than on the designation of literate/ illiterate, we can draw a fuller picture of the changing social and public uses of the written word in times and places with relatively low official literacy rates, like that of Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed, this book is a corollary to others that examine modern Middle Eastern culture, politics, and society beyond the textual world and argue quite convincingly that oral and written culture often functioned in tandem, feeding on each other to reshape

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everything from social mores to political movements.6 From this vantage point, we can not only examine how historical change happened, but also get a fuller view of who was behind it. The consequences of broadening the scope of historical actors engaged in literacies are far-reaching for the history of the modern Middle East and of Egypt specifically. Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century was at the literary center of the Arabic-speaking world, sparking social and cultural transformations that would influence the rest of the Middle East for the next century. With its relative autonomy from the Ottoman system, its regional influence, and its large urban centers that attracted immigrants from much of the eastern Mediterranean world, the events and movements that started or developed in Egypt rarely stayed there. As a result, this period has received particular notice as a turning point in the creation of Egyptian, and wider Arab, sensibilities about gender, political and civic activism, and cultural authenticity.7 The political and cultural backdrops for these late nineteenth-century transformations were the changing educational systems of the region and the nahḍa, or the Arabic cultural renaissance, with its revival of local literature and intellectual thought. Indeed, secular educational systems that channeled the nahḍa are often cited as the catalyzing force in creating a new middle stratum of Westernized elites (­effendiyya) who were the would-be nationalist leaders, journalists, and reformers of the Middle East. In this historical trajectory, though the social import of education and literacy are assumed, the mechanics of how literacy or education actually produces social change within, and beyond, the circle of these educated elites are rarely unpacked or examined.8 The major contributions of this book lie in the interrogation of the everyday literacies of Egyptian men and women during this crucial period through the tri-part lens of gendered public literacies—that is, broad-based literacies that changed the contours of public spaces and had lasting implications for gendered uses of literacy. Literacy, by its most limited definition, is the product of formal education, which in Egypt at the time was the purview of the few. However, once we focus on literacies as sets of skills—reading, writing, and their related practices— available to the many, historians can begin to look beyond the confines of schools or those who had access to education. Literacies were a particular kind of expertise that was widespread in society and that could be employed even by those who were technically “illiterate” or never went to school. Students who wrote petitions, farmers and urbanites who frequented scribes, children

L I T E R AC I E S , P U B L IC S , A N D G E N D E R    7

who memorized the Qur’an and studied little else, and communities that gathered to hear the reading of newspapers all participated in a spectrum of literacies that were taking on new communal import as Egyptians sought to reform and improve their society. This approach requires a delicate balance between the totalizing aspects of institutional education and the ways in which literacy practices manifested in everyday interactions. Perhaps no state institution represents the full power of states to impose on young citizens not only specific reading and writing practices but also the wholesale indoctrination of social values more than a mass educational system. It is undeniable that the Egyptian government undertook several modernizing projects that sought to measure, control, and guide more aspects of Egyptians’ lives, not the least of which included schooling.9 In fact, it would not be difficult to read the sources used in this book as part of the forward march of these totalitarian mechanisms toward bringing the very medium of language under state control. However, there is a flip side to this power: the aspirations of a mass educational system were not absolute in their reach or implementation. In fact, despite moves to bring education under state control starting in the 1860s, it took decades for even the ideal of a mass educational system to arise as a pursuable government goal in the 1920s and 1930s. It would take several more decades before a true mass educational system was actually implemented in any systematic and wholesale way.10 Even then, the relatively low official literacy rate in Egypt to this day indicates that these systems have never been thoroughly successful in even their most basic goal: creating measurably literate Egyptians. Furthermore, among the many subjects that educational institutions sought to instill, literacy was a particularly mutable skill. Even when schools, curricula, good society, and intellectual leaders worked to inculcate particular practices, writing and reading could easily be deployed for unsanctioned and “dangerous” uses. The subversive nature of reading and, particularly, writing for those who were not wealthy, urban, and male, was not lost on educators of the time. They therefore sought to control textual materials and to coax students toward the “good literacy” that they believed would strengthen the existing social order beginning with the individual, then the family, and finally the nation as a whole. However, every indication—and human nature being what it is—suggests that literacy was not so easily monopolized. Love stories were read, political pamphlets were distributed, and reading and writing became means for many to express their unfettered views. Petitioners used prevailing

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reformist discourses to make their case for improving their economic circumstances. Women used writing to thrust themselves and their words into various literary spheres. Egyptians often preferred fiction, romance, and adventure to reading materials that could be deemed more socially beneficial and intellectually edifying. Diverse literacy practices were becoming a part of the social life of Egyptians. The second contribution of this book lies in its focus on various public spaces as central domains for transformation in social understandings of and relationships with the written word. Reading and writing can be deeply personal and isolating practices. In fact, as more individuals became literate, many communal practices eventually gave way to individual literacies. The spaces and mediators of literacy shifted away from the community scribe and the group reading of newspapers and letters to the more private realms of personal writing and silent reading. However, at the turn of the century, Egypt was still very much in transition. The official male literacy rates, even for major urban areas, were only 20 to 30 percent, and communal practices still dominated social life. Furthermore, reading and writing coupled with the new technologies of print opened new possibilities for communication among people in public. This type of communication—via newspapers, journals, petitions, books, and pamphlets—had profound implications for the development of an Egyptian national consciousness, displays and protests, and the role of women in communal life. Central to all these changes is the idea of visibility and its implications for public spaces. Indeed, written language itself is a type of visual disclosure, transposing the aural into the physical world. Once words are written they are no longer ephemeral, they become fixed in a corporeal space that can be decoded by anyone with access to the text and the ability to read. The use of printing presses only compounds the visibility and latent power of these texts, because they can be multiplied, moved, spread, and seen over and over again. Ideas, complaints, and requests that were once private or semiprivate can be shared broadly. Debates behind closed doors can reach large segments of society. Written language has always had the potential to reach broad audiences as an extension of the communicative nature of oral language. However, an audience, a “listening” public that is engaged and ready to interact with public writing and communication, must exist in order for this potential to be realized. Locating this “public audience” has been the work of many historians. As early as the eighth century, famous Arabic masters such as al-Sibawayh and al‑Jahiz

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were “publishing” texts created and disseminated with a public in mind.11 Other researchers have looked at premodern public spheres in the Muslim world— textual and personal networks that were neither strictly private nor state-run.12 The eighteenth century in particular seems to have seen an uptick in literary production by both religious scholars and “middle-class” or non-elite authors who voiced their opinions in writing.13 Between the private and the official, these public spaces were where people could engage each other in full view of a community that stretched beyond what was strictly local or familiar. One can argue that most societies with at least some semblance of a written tradition have developed text-based public spheres at one time or another. In modern societies, the public sphere and language have taken on new relevance.14 The public sphere described by Jürgen Habermas is a space of rational debate (carried on, historically, by middle-class men) that allows citizens to assert their vision of the collective good and effect change in their society.15 Habermas locates the development of public spheres in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in parts of Europe and sees in these shared spaces the underpinnings of modern civil society and social movements. One of the central conditions of these public spheres was the emergence of an autonomous press that allowed news and debates to enter into the social awareness of the reading public. Benedict Anderson has elaborated on the role of the press in developing national consciousness, emphasizing the importance of what he terms print-capitalism.16 For example, Anderson describes the daily reading of newspapers as a communally reinforced ritual that connects individual readers to fellow compatriots, creating “that remarkable confidence of community in anonymity which is the hallmark of modern nations.”17 The dissemination and use of printed materials allowed imagined communities to develop in powerful new ways and ultimately set the stage for the modern nation-state. Taken together, Habermas’s and Anderson’s view of communal, modern life as shaped by nation-states is inconceivable without the written language, audience, and dissemination possible with literate publics. In this book I focus on an expanded understanding of literacy as it relates to communal spaces of shared exchange and debate. In the process, I do not restate or reformulate the argument that the press and its relationship to various public spheres significantly transformed Egyptian conceptions of national sentiment or communal interest.18 Suffice it to say, I accept the premise that public debates and conceptions of Egyptian subjectivity were transformed by print technologies and a growing, literate readership.

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What I do not accept are the boundaries of a single, “literate” public sphere. Rather, what I provide here is a study of the literacy practices and gendered uses of the written word that reached far beyond a traditionally male, urban, and highly visible textual public. Once we fracture the notion of literacy into literacies, the publics they create are also multiplied. The very notion of a unitary reading and writing public—in other words, a single public sphere where a reader is also assumed to be a writer—made little sense in communities where there was a very sharp distinction between those who created and those who consumed written texts. Indeed, during this period, the skills of reading and writing were gendered, used, and often learned separately. As a result, the practices associated with these separate skills often gave individuals access to particular aspects of communal literacies, to the exclusion of others. A person might consume national news, participating as a “reader” of national public debates, and at the same time dictate a petition addressed to local officials, participating as a “writer” at a very different level of public interaction. Significantly, neither action would require formal literacy and could be undertaken by a person of almost any socioeconomic background. In such a circumstance, rather than approaching literacy as the price of entrance for participation in the public sphere, we can begin to think of literacies and their practices as enabling access to various “publics.” As a result, rather than limiting my scope to textual material as such and to the producers and consumers of these works, I look at a range of literacy practices that embodied interactions with communal life via the written word. These interactions that lie between the acts of reading and writing, between the word and its social implications, between the use and negotiation inherent in deploying written text, are at the heart of this work. Finally, these public literacies were inextricably linked to gendered interactions with the written word. Traditionally, written literacies were the preserve of a small, educated, and most definitely masculine segment of society. However, during this period, new educational opportunities and the possibility of social mobility associated with schooling meant that literacy also implied a movement from rural to urban life, from the farm to the office, and from old ideas of Egyptian masculinity to new ones. For a man to engage in particular public literacy practices was to perform one of the essential acts of modern Egyptian life. Returning to the question that opened this chapter, a­ lthough it was published in an ostensibly “female” journal, it was Antun Nawfal, brother of the female proprietor of al-Fataa, who ultimately

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responded with an answer as to whether or not a man was allowed to open letters on behalf of his wife. In doing so, Nawfal was engaging in what would become one of the defining practices of masculine literacies at the time: commenting and proscribing what literacy was to mean for both men and women in Egyptian society. However, public performances of literacy were not always deemed sufficiently masculine, or without their dangers. Writing was at once a powerful action and an ambiguous one for the wrong sort of person. In particular, class concerns and fears about “lazy educated farmers” and masses “too bookish” to engage in manual labor were often present in discussions of education and literacy. Literacy did not always enhance the masculinity of a peasant, for whom it could be perceived as frivolous and a waste of time. For women, literacies had very different implications. To write in public was to become observable, named, and known beyond an immediate social sphere; it was a move from the familial to the public and from the secluded to the visible. This written visibility was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, for elite women, writing in the privacy of the home was a more sheltered and acceptable physical assertion into the social arena than, say, leaving the home unveiled or working in male-dominated workplaces. Yet, on the other hand, writing and being “seen” (with or without a pseudonym) could be interpreted as a public invitation to notoriety and an unacceptable exposure of the female to the largely male outside world. Different suspicions came to the fore: the trope of an educated female became a “Westernized woman” who too freely consorted with men and the girl too caught up in books to look after her duties to family and nation. Nevertheless, many female writers did embrace the designation of “mistresses of the pen” and became part of a larger community of women, activists, reformers, and public intellectuals who were rethinking and critiquing Egyptian society and thus becoming visible to their compatriots. Ultimately, looking at literacies as gendered and embodied practices allows us to understand the implications and discomforts associated with increased literacy, the perceived power of writing, and the contested nature of literacy for newly educated segments of Middle Eastern societies. In summary, this book provides a cultural and social history of the changing dynamics of an emerging Egyptian modernity by tracing the mechanisms by which individuals and communities sought to remake their circumstances through numerous kinds of literacies. This process was undertaken by a wide variety of Egyptians in emerging public spaces and was shaped by gendered

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understandings of what it meant to be Egyptians engaged in civic life. In essence, this work is a study of literacy not only in a particular historical context, but also as a central mediator of social change.

Methodology and Sources: Locating Literacies Although the term literacy can refer to any sort of competency in a particular body of knowledge, in this book I focus on a broadly defined engagement with (or exclusion from) the written word. However, in using the term, I must acknowledge the problems inherent in studying Arabic language literacies. To begin with, there is actually no one word for “literacy” in Arabic. The closest corollaries are references to the composite skills of reading and writing in phrases such as al-ilmām bi-l-qirā’a wa-l-kitāba (competency in reading and writing). Nevertheless, a wide range of educated and learned people, whom we can call literate in different senses, certainly did exist: many could only “read” particular texts from memory, some were scribes who transferred oral dictation into written text, others were masters of the Arabic literary arts, and there were many other learned interactions with the written word. In discussing “literacy,” I am using it as a proxy for these various textual interactions. In this context, looking at literacies in the plural makes particular sense. Given the diversity of experiences, there was simply no one way to be literate in Egyptian society. These rich varieties of literacies also present a methodological challenge: when language across this kind of breadth is your subject, everything ever written becomes your data.19 The locales of literacies are almost innumerable: published works of fiction and nonfiction, private diaries and correspondences, poetry, court records, business interactions, religious litanies and practices, legal texts, schools textbooks, the output of government bureaucracies, street signs and displays, and so on. To narrow down this body of sources, I have made some trenchant choices: to focus on Arabic prose writing and not on poetry or works in other languages, and to largely ignore material that vacillated between oral and written expressions but remained primarily oral, such as theater performances, religious observances and rites, songs, and speeches.20 Furthermore, other topics that came to the fore at the literary and linguistic moment of the early twentieth century—such as the contest between Egyptian colloquial and classical Arabic, the simplification of classical Arabic for public consumption, the impact of new literary forms and styles, debates about Latinizing the Arabic script, and shifting linguistic usages—though often referred to in order to highlight certain points about the nature of literacy changes, are not the subject of this work.21

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To frame the material presented in this book, I focus on two topics: what Egyptian men and women thought and said about public literacies, and what Egyptian men and women did with public literacies. If these seem like two very different approaches, they are. Ideas about public literacies are discourses in the Foucauldian sense: systems of thoughts, ideas, and practices that shape our conception of intellectual and physical subjects.22 This constellation of meanings ultimately cannot be divorced from the power structures within which they operate and that provide legitimization and rules of engagement as we negotiate our understandings of the world. In late nineteenth-century Egypt, several structural changes were contributing to a particular discourse on public literacies: the colonial imposition of the British occupation, the government’s growing interest in the everyday matters of its citizenry, and the emerging class of educated elites who preached a gospel of educational betterment. In line with positivist trends in Europe and other parts of the Middle East, reform and social engineering went hand in hand with literacy promotion at the highest levels.23 The prevailing discourses cast literacy promotion as a unitary, definable, and measurable social goal. Historical sources that address these dominant discourses of public literacy are everywhere. Professional writers had a particular stake in promoting the written word as a medium of exchange and communication. More people engaged in literacy meant more readers, subscribers, and patrons of their work. But professionals were not the only ones promoting literacy. This period has a rich record of journal articles, books written by authors of varied backgrounds, government reports, and pedagogical materials all engaging or advocating notions of literacy and its role as a public concern and widespread social practice. The authors of these works span the social spectrum, with journalists, activists of all stripes, concerned citizens, and bureaucrats, both European and Egyptian, all enlisting the idea of literacy in service of their own social reform projects, be they nationalistic, religious, cultural, economic, or political. Indeed, many of these writers represent an unexplored tier of social reformers—­religious figures, schoolchildren, and teachers—who were never famous enough to make it into history books but nevertheless actively expounded on their vision of Egypt’s future and the role that literacies could play in creating it. How Egyptians actually utilized public literacies is a more complex development to trace. As a set of practices, the literacies that were advocated in print fractured into multiple and variegated directions as individuals and groups used these skills to reproduce, challenge, and transform their social circumstances.

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Words on a page, which we often rely on as our most sacred historical source, could simply be a first (and perhaps most superficial) expression of the communal practices of literacies. A newspaper could be read to a group, discussed, and debated before being passed on to others; a letter ostensibly between two people may have had several intermediaries encode and then decode the symbols put to paper; flyers and notices meant to mobilize the many may have been accessible only to a few, who then mediated how those texts were “heard” and received. How are we to gauge such ephemeral actions, ones that touched the lives of many who would never leave a written record of their interactions with literacies? Here I rely on a combination of aggregate and anecdotal sources. From a macro-level view, data about literacy rates, postal use, and telegraphic communications provide snapshots of the changing landscape of literacy practices on a national scale. A careful reading of these trend lines, along with what they include as well as exclude, shows much, although not everything, about the dynamism of literacy practices in the decades that spanned the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Each of these measures provides a slightly different view into the ways in which Egyptians were using literacies. At the other end of the scope, the individual examples of literacies in practice that appeared in printed texts, letters, and petitions written by Egyptians from various walks of life; works of fiction; and even colonial intelligence reports fill out the particulars of what the statistics of the era were tracking. They provide the “thick” descriptions of what it meant to interact with the written word during this period: the angst of petitioners turning to ever more public ways of seeking redress from the government, the arrival of letters and their reading as communal affairs, or the ubiquity and swiftness with which protesters used public literacy practices to mobilize their fellow Egyptians. This combination of sources allows me to reconstruct some of the humbler origins and uses of literacies that were adopted and adapted by people across the literacy spectrum, be they formally literate, illiterate, or somewhere in between. Looking at both the discourse and the practices of literacy highlights the natural tension between the top-down and bottom-up factors that drive historical narratives. The fact is that the story of Egyptian turn-of-the-century literacies cannot be told without both.

Historical Background The literacies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that emerged as important sites of public interaction as well as the subject of intense public

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concern have deep roots in Egyptian society. Arabic had long served as the language of culture, religion, and intellectual inquiry and it witnessed something of a literary revival starting in the late eighteenth century.24 Meanwhile, traditional communal schools, known as kuttābs, provided basic education that could be channeled through various types of literacies to many thousands of Egyptian children. The technological and political evolution of the country starting in the early 1800s set the stage for many of the changes that would only accelerate as the century came to a close. On the heels of the short-lived French occupation of Egypt between 1798 and 1801, Mehmet ‘Ali seized control of the Egyptian province of the Ottoman Empire and began a reign from 1805 to 1848 that oversaw the expansion of the country’s centralized bureaucracy. Throughout his forty-three years in power, ‘Ali imported European expertise and models of rule as a means of achieving his vision of reform across the military and agricultural sectors of the country; he began sending educational missions to Europe, employed European advisors, and published Egypt’s first official journal. The country’s kuttābs did not serve his bureaucratic and military interests, so ‘Ali started several government-sponsored schools that specialized in administration, translation, medicine, engineering, and the like. However, once his territorial and regional ambitions waned in the 1840s, so too did the Egyptian government’s commitment to state-run education. In the wake of the withdrawal of public funds, private initiatives, backed mostly by foreign missions and minority communities—Greek, Italian, Armenian—began expanding and opening their own European-style schools.25 In the latter part of the nineteenth century, ‘Ali’s grandson Isma‘il (r. 1863–1879) revived some of the earlier state initiatives by investing heavily in the country’s infrastructure and expanding government schools, which were largely inspired and run by Europeans.26 Interestingly, few of the state-run or private schools founded during this period were focused on Arabic literacy per se. The state had little interest in expanding educational and literary endeavors beyond the exigencies they provided for better governance; and foreign-sponsored schools tended to favor the languages of their benefactors, not the Arabic of the majority of Egyptians.27 Nevertheless, these attempts at introducing more “modern” modes of education had a lasting impact on Egyptian reformers, who would later take part in restructuring the country’s educational system. In particular, a new generation of native Egyptian bureaucrats interested in literacy and education—people like Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi and ‘Ali Mubarak—began their careers in enterprises sponsored or inspired by Mehmet ‘Ali’s initiatives. These beneficiaries represented

16   I N T R O D U C T IO N

a small cadre—no more than a few thousand in a country of millions; however, their ambitions for the Egyptian government and its reach were almost unbounded. They designed plans to build “modern” schools in every town, drafted laws to reorganize the kuttābs into an extension of the government system, published textbooks on reading and writing, and pontificated on the benefits of education for modern Egypt.28 These bureaucrats were part of a new political and social elite in Egyptian society that shifted over the course of the nineteenth century. Progressively more native Egyptians, Egyptianized Ottomans (Turks, Armenians, etc.), and Arab immigrants from the Levant became engaged in the political process.29 In addition, intellectuals and activists were willing and eager to express their views in public forums, often challenging themselves and others to pursue reforms they believed would create a better nation for all Egyptians. Meanwhile, women activists and Islamic modernists, who became particularly vocal in the early twentieth century, drew from these narratives of progress and reform to present their own solutions for Egyptian society. More Egyptians than ever before were engaged in asking, and seeking answers to, the great social questions of their age: how to improve the material and moral cultures of the country and restore Egypt to its former glories. Many felt that “intellectual revival and national consciousness have Arabic and historical traditions as their indispensable foundation.”30 The urgency of these questions was intensified by the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and as literacy took on a dimension of political and linguistic competition.31 Although spoken and written French would attain a clear cultural ascendency among the upper classes in Egypt, the English language of the colonizer became the language of power and access to power in the bureaucratic realm.32 Arabic was used only at the local level and in bureaucratic offices that had direct contact with the populace.33 This linguistic separation between the rulers and the ruled was not unusual in Egyptian history. Nevertheless, the extent to which the British occupation promoted both English and Arabic, in strikingly different educational contexts, was unprecedented. Unlike other colonial endeavors, which sought to “civilize” the colonized by forcing Western language and culture on indigenous peoples, in Egypt early colonial administrators such as Consul-General Lord Cromer advocated strict linguistic segregation in the educational system.34 British administrators were aided in part by the Egyptian elites who benefited from this separation and who believed that “higher standards” were maintained by keeping lower-class students out of elite government schools and hence out of white-collar employment.35

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Education became a political battleground. For anticolonial and nationalist movements, Arabic-language education and literacy served as both a cause célèbre and a potential social and political balm.36 Education was seen as the best means to strengthen the national character and make Egyptians more capable of self-rule. Furthermore, increased literacy was one way for the activists in these movements to make sure their fellow Egyptians could receive their wisdom and ultimately their vision of what Egypt was to become. Colonial intransigence toward demands for more educational opportunities was justified in part on the premise that the British occupation of Egypt was necessary in order to impose fiscal austerity on the Egyptian state and economy. The new British administrators largely frowned upon free education and strove to limit the reach of government schools. When they did eventually begin in the 1890s to encourage education, it was in the traditional kuttāb schools. As with earlier attempts, there was hope that these “subsidized schools” would become a nascent elementary school system that could focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic for the masses. However, in practice, kuttābs often served “alternative” literacies by continuing to educate children by the hundreds of thousands not in reading and writing but in the basics of Qur’anic recitation and Islamic or Coptic belief. Ultimately, most Egyptians relied on a network of informal and private instruction that would produce graduates with varying degrees of competence in reading and writing. In this educational milieu, those who aspired to better their economic and social standing clamored for far more opportunities than elite government schools could provide. Through much of the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries, the private missionary schools opened by French, British, and American churches educated many more Egyptians of all faiths than government schools did. Soon nationalists and local religious reformers sought to make their own mark on the educational foundation of the country by opening their own private schools, some of which were purely charitable. However, a common complaint of the era was that too many “for-profit” schools had opened their doors and were taking advantage of parents who were all too willing to pay for education that might or might not improve the employment prospects of their children. For the largely rural population of the country, the productive capacity of children as part of the family unit working the land was often weighed against the considerable time and expense needed for children to attend full-time schools. Nevertheless, there was a general sense that education could confer tangible benefits: the prospect of government employment,

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the opportunity to teach, and the possibility of continuing on to higher education and professions in law, medicine, and engineering, among others. Furthermore, as we shall see, the profession of “writing,” so long associated with scribal and secretarial pursuits, was now expanded to writers who could make their way in life as journalists, novelists, translators, and public intellectuals. Education was associated with brighter prospects and, in the words of countless intellectuals, parents, and students, was considered a way to prevent “losing the future” (ḍayā‘ al-mustaqbal). Literacy was the first step on the official educational ladder and, as such, was on the minds of Egyptian thinkers of the time. From the religious figure Muhammad ‘Abduh to the feminist writer Malak Hifni Nasif, Egyptian activists made “reform of the Arabic language” an important part of their agendas.37 Central to this debate about Arabic reading and writing was the question of who should learn and how. For many Egyptians, the growing strain on limited educational resources served to reignite questions about the goals and beneficiaries of education. These debates had both a class as well as a gender dimension.38 What kind of Arabic should be taught? Did everyone need to become a master of the language? What kinds of reading could be deemed dangerous? Was writing appropriate for women? How could these subjects be taught without compromising the moral character of students or their happiness with their current place in society? At the turn of the century, educators were carefully treading the path of literacy promotion, even as they sought to control and influence how it would be taught. Literacy also touched many aspects of Egyptian life, reaching far beyond the confines of formal education. For a largely illiterate and semiliterate society like Egypt, the skills of reading and writing were deeply communal. Any individual in a community who had learned his or her letters could be called upon to read aloud the daily news or decode correspondences sent from distant relations— becoming mediators of the written world for the largely oral society around them. In more formal settings, professional scribes served the needs of individuals and the state. They drafted petitions and contracts, wrote letters, bore witness in and recorded court proceedings, and facilitated the workings of the bureaucratic state. In the meantime, a national postal system was established in 1865 and expanded exponentially, providing people throughout the countryside with a reliable and relatively inexpensive means of communicating. During this period of Egyptian history, official literacy was also on the rise (see Table I.1). More people were becoming independent of these communal

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literary practices. They could read for themselves, write their own letters, and communicate on their own terms. This change was particularly profound for privileged women, rural elites, and some of the urban poor. These traditionally uneducated segments of society were now afforded a skill that not only conferred potential economic benefits but also could be used for personal and social agendas beyond the intent of the original literacy education. These changes were further fueled by the print culture that matured in the latter part of the nineteenth century.39 The first indigenous press was the government-sponsored Bulaq Press, founded in the 1820s. In the next decade, private presses began publishing, and by the 1860s and 1870s several regular newspapers began wielding great influence.40 Early precedents such as the short-lived 1869 newspaper Nuzhat al-Afkar and the better known Abu Nazzara

TA B L E I . 1  

Census Year

Official Literacy Rates, 1897–1927 Literacy Rates According to Contemporary Reports1

 

% of Males

% of Females

% of Total Population

18972

Literacy Rates for Egyptians 10 Years and Older % of Males

% of Females

% of Total Population

7.3

11.2

0.3

5.8

1897 (revised)

8.0

0.2

4.1

1907

8.5

0.3

4.4

13

1.4

1917

13.6

2.1

7.9

15.2

2.3

8.8

1927

23.0

4.9

13.8

23.9

4.4

14.1

sources: Data from Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Ta‘dād Sukkān al-Quṭr al-Miṣrī, 1897 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1898), 28–29; Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Ta‘dād Sukkān al-Quṭr al-Miṣrī, 1907 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1909), 121; Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat ­ inance/ al-Māliyya, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1917 (Cairo: Government Press, 1920), 565; Egyptian Ministry of F Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Population Census of Egypt, 1927 (Cairo: Government Press, 1931); and UNESCO, Progress of Literacy in Various Countries: A Preliminary Statistical Study of Available Census Data since 1900 (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1953), 83–86. 1  These are self-reported rates according to the contemporary Egyptian census data published at the time. They do not take into account changes in the methodology of calculating literacy rates over time. In the 1897 revised numbers and in 1907, the literacy rate was calculated for the whole population. In the 1917 and 1927 calculations, census officials included only people over the age of five. 2  The year 1897 had several irregularities. First, the rate was calculated only for Egyptians over the age of seven whereas the 1907 census used revised numbers that took into account the whole population. Second, the 1897 calculations did not include Bedouin tribes, thus excluding roughly 600,000 people. See note in Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓarat al-Māliyya, Ta‘dād Sukkān al-Quṭr al-Miṣrī, 1897 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1898), 29.

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Zarqa, started in 1878, were deeply political—and they were soon not alone. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, more than two hundred new Arabic periodicals were introduced in Egypt.41 By 1910, the daily circulation of Egyptian newspapers reached upwards of one hundred thousand.42 Over the same period, other printed materials, such as schoolbooks, reprinted editions of traditional Arabic texts, and new works of fiction and nonfiction, became widely available.43 In addition, new literacies had profound impacts on the Arabic language itself.44 The new “modern” Arabic of the newspapers and journals sought to reach a wider audience, not only the minority who were actually literate. Some newspapers consciously chose Egyptian colloquial Arabic as the medium for their forays into comedy, social commentary, and news.45 Others used a stylistically simplified Arabic that was, in some ways, closer to the spoken word while retaining the overall form of classical Arabic. Ultimately, simplified Arabic and not the Egyptian colloquial language became the norm for printed materials, due in large part to various ideological and religious attachments to classical Arabic as a central expression of national and religious authenticity. In addition, the discourse of literacy promotion, the increased numbers of Egyptians who learned to read, and the influence of schooling also played roles in systematizing and streamlining classical Arabic instruction for the modern educational system.46 This infusion of literacy practices and newly educated individuals fueled the growth of public arenas of debate and contestation. Schools shifted from being locations of vocational and religious training where language was a means to an end, to being spaces where the full use of written language became a central tenet of education. The “woman issue” and women themselves became the subjects and (increasingly) the authors of social and religious commentaries. Public protests, long associated with symbols and oration, were supplemented with written words in the form of banners, petitions, and published calls to action. The contours of these literacies reshaped the social life of Egyptian society for the schooled and unschooled, literate and illiterate, educated and uneducated.

Mapping Literacies in the Emergence of Modern Egypt To map the multiple impacts that literacies have had on the emergence of modern Egypt, the rest of this book moves through several thematic explorations of gendered public literacies from the 1860s to the 1920s. This period started with the educational reforms enacted under Khedive Isma‘il, which in and of themselves were modest endeavors. However, what makes this era distinctive is

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that these reforms were complemented by structural changes in how literacies could be used in public: mainly the growth of private presses, along with the establishment and expansion of national mail and telegraph services. Among the literate elite, this period ushered in new debates about the usage of language in schools, the press, and the bureaucracy; among women; and for the rural and urban poor. Meanwhile, over the next few decades, many of the practices associated with literacies—both in and beyond the school setting—became ingrained in communal practices of protest, petitioning, and correspondence. By the end of the 1920s, many of the ideological concerns surrounding Arabic and its position as the national language had been resolved. Literacy came to be seen as a universal “public good,” and reformers turned to the vexing challenge, which remains even today, of mass-producing Arabic-literate citizens for a newly independent nation.47 Chapter 1 surveys the multifarious sites of literacies during this period. It explores the convergence of new discourses and practices of literacies in making literacy a visible, public concern for those invested in the idea of a modern Egypt: nationalists, women activists, and bureaucrats, as well as Coptic and Muslim reformers. I argue that the idea of literacy was becoming more reified as a social ideal that represented progress, advancement, and optimism for all Egyptian citizens. Those already educated were encouraged to participate in more beneficial forms of literacy, and the visibility of literacies—in life, print, and politics—made literacy central to what it meant to be engaged in the social issues of the day. Meanwhile, the practices of literacies were diversifying and reaching more people across the educational spectrum, particularly through the press and the postal system. Egyptians who were not “officially” literate were able to engage in communal practices of reading aloud, letter writing, and the like, to a quantitatively and qualitatively new extent. In Chapter 2 I turn to the exclusions created by gendered literacies that mediated both participation in and visibility to various publics, often along class lines. Despite the noble rhetoric of literacy promotion, reading and writing were each associated with different kinds of public interactions and, ultimately, societal hazards. To consume potentially dangerous texts or become “visible” through the written word was associated with disruptive social and economic consequences for historically unlettered segments of Egyptian society. Even as these skills allowed more people to participate in wider discussions about the nature of Egyptian society, it was often at the cost of this very same participation coming under communal scrutiny. Nevertheless, in line with other aspects

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of the early women’s movement, several female writers sought to access these visible publics through writing and, in the process, renegotiated and redefined this transgression as a complement to their domestic roles. Just as they could be modern, respectable, and productive “mistresses of the home,” they would now become “mistresses of the pen.” Chapter 3 starts with the important shift that was occurring in and beyond schools regarding the nature of Arabic literacy and the profession associated with “writers” in the era of the Arabic nahḍa. By looking not only at education itself but also at how the very fabric of instruction was designed, executed, and ultimately deployed, we see that both “modern” and the more ubiquitous “traditional” schools were introducing fundamental changes in how they taught the Arabic language. They were emphasizing “practical” instruction, structuring lessons and exams around the skill of composition, and training students how to think, read, and write about their society. The humble school composition (inshā’) became a practical exercise in the art of social commentary, reinforcing certain types of interactions in communal life through the written word. These were new literacy practices for a new generation of students. Ultimately, the power of these newfound skills was in their mutability. They allowed this diverse group of former schoolchildren to express themselves in increasingly public ways, to respond to social and political debates, and to assert their own (and their learned) attitudes about the future of the country. Chapter 4 examines the impact that these new literacies had on the protest and petitioning movements of the early twentieth century. Older forms of communication and writing were adapted to the changing discourses and technologies of the era as individuals and groups sought to channel discussions on nationalism, education, and Egyptian-ness in order to press their cases and attempt to influence the official course of Egyptian politics. This chapter culminates in the events and aftermath of the 1919 Revolution in Egypt, when many of the new technologies of public literacies were deployed by various segments of the Egyptian populace in their attempt to throw off the yoke of the British Protectorate. Ultimately, though many people engaged with these literacies, written forums also imposed their own unevenness, as access to printers and more expensive “modern” forms of literacy determined who could be “seen” in the public spaces of literary production. The final chapter explores the impact and implications of these public literacies, particularly as the concept of illiteracy evolved from a term with positive connotations to one that represented social backwardness and underdevelop-

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ment. Specifically, apprehension about illiteracy as a measure of social backwardness found expression and visibility in publicized census literacy rates that depreciated “alternative” literacies in favor of a defined and measurable skill. This change was strikingly manifest in the growing concern of the 1920s about the social danger of illiteracy and in the first real government attempt to eradicate illiteracy from the population. By 1923, basic education was enshrined as an aspiration of the first Egyptian Constitution. As a result, the groundwork for a true mass educational system was laid as literacy came to be seen as the catalyst for improving the nation, starting with its youngest citizens. However, this narrow, utilitarian, and measurable definition of literacy also created exclusions. So, for example, blind students, who had historically been encouraged to pursue religious studies (or at the very least to memorize the Qur’an), were no longer considered quite as “literate” as their seeing brethren. Unwritten literacies were no longer part of a continuum of learned scholarship, but rather were an exceptional and deficient form of education—one that did not fit with the physical and mental perfection projected by “modern” institutions. Meanwhile, colloquial Arabic was deemed “backward” and detrimental and became a new site for reform as schools sought to instill the “right” kind of Arabic literacy. A new conception of illiteracy underwrote the idea of mass education and the opportunities and exclusions it entailed for members of Egyptian s­ ociety. One of the most enduring legacies of this notion of illiteracy was that it in turn helped to shape the ideals of a new, modern Egypt—one that could conform to the changing definitions of what it meant to be an educated reader and writer of the Arabic language.

1

THE DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE O F E V E RY D AY L I T E R A C I E S

M U H A M M A D A L -M U WAY L I H I ’ S A Period of Time (Fatra min al-Zaman), which first appeared in serialized form starting in 1898, was an early experiment in fictionalized social commentary for the budding Egyptian press. Egyptians had already seen several trailblazers in the art of satire, most notably ‘Abdallah Nadim (1845–1896) and Ya‘qub Sanu‘ (1839–1912). However, al-Muwaylihi’s work is unique in its complexity and narrative vehicle. Time itself is a central character in the arc of the story. A narrator named ‘Isa ibn Hisham stumbles upon the Pasha, a resurrected noble from the early 1800s who desperately needs to be introduced to the modernizing Egypt of the late nineteenth century. The temporal dislocation of the “period of time” that separated the old from the new suffuses the entire text as ‘Isa ibn Hisham struggles to articulate for the Pasha, and by extension for the audience, all of the changes that made this “different” Egypt entirely alien to its past. Among the novelties of the late nineteenth century, changes in literacy receive particular attention in the ­Pasha’s rediscovery of Egypt. As our narrator and guide, ‘Isa is less than sanguine about what this modern world has to offer lovers of language and learning. He gives a bleak assessment of the literacy landscape of his time: even though books have become abundant, people do not purchase them; more people may go to school but whatever is learned is promptly forgotten; and no one appreciates literature or bothers to read.1 Over the course of several vignettes, ‘Isa and the Pasha attend a series of ­social gatherings with the express purpose of learning about the literary

26   T H E D I S C OU R SE A N D P R AC T IC E O F EV E RY DAY L I T E R AC I E S

­ ursuits of the thinking classes of the era.2 In the process of critiquing the p “learned circles” of Egyptian society, al-Muwaylihi provides a dismal but illuminating view of the myriad ways in which Arabic literacy permeated the social life of the time: each of the caricatured groups embodies a particular type of literacy with its own distinct relationship to the Arabic language. For an assembly of religious scholars (‘ulamā’), the language of literacy was the formal Arabic of Cairo’s al-Azhar teaching mosque, one of the Muslim world’s oldest centers of learning. However, al-Muwaylihi implies that these religious scholars were no longer living up to their scholarly duties in that they had “abandoned their chairs, they were all reclining on cushions; in front of them were snuffboxes and braziers instead of penholders and inkwells.” 3 Furthermore, as ‘Isa and the Pasha listen to these ‘ulamā’ debate, it becomes clear that the dense scholarship, commentaries, and expositions of the Azhari literary style are largely incompatible with contemporary debates and the “new” literacy of newspapers and journals. When one of the scholars attempts to write an article for a newspaper, it is so effusive and convoluted that it hardly deserves the praise it garners from his friends.4 One scholar finally asserts that although they could “write such things [newspaper articles] if we really wanted to . . . there’s no point in wasting such jewels on people who don’t realize their value or appreciate their true worth.”5 In terms of their willingness and ability to engage with the larger society, these scholars seem woefully out of touch with the literary life of Egyptian society. Meanwhile, in another setting, a group of merchants—themselves uneducated—debate the disadvantages and merits of educating their sons in the new government schools as a means of social and economic advancement.6 As if to demonstrate the intrinsic value of reading as a business practice, the merchants have one of their sons fetch a newspaper to read aloud to the gathering as they debate how potential commercial interests intersect with politics.7 In a parallel scene, a civil servant is reading a newspaper to his fellow workers. In this setting, every headline and news item generates reproaches and critiques, and the meeting eventually devolves into a political dispute.8 Here Arabic literacy is not merely a tool for social advancement but also a means to engage in the minutia of political debate. In al-Muwaylihi’s final portrayal, ‘Isa and the Pasha visit an upper-class social club where books serve as mere accessories to thumb through aimlessly while the members of the ruling class “focused on the mirror so that they could enjoy the reflected view.”9 Furthermore, “they were talking in a foreign language, not Arabic, all as a way of showing off and looking

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s­ uperior.”10 The literacy of the mosques, the literacy of the market, the literacy of the government, and the literacy of the palaces each represented a particular set of practices dictated by the locale, class, and social expectation of those gathered. These diverse modes of literacy—these literacies—underscore the changing landscape of the Arabic language at the dawn of the twentieth century. By focusing on these particular groups and their interactions with the written word, al-Muwaylihi himself is engaging in two processes central to this chapter and our understanding of the public literacies of modern Egypt. First, the content and form of his critique together serve as an example of the larger discourses that were emerging at the turn of the century on the idea of literacy, its importance, and its social uses. Writers were particularly skilled at this new form of public literacy promotion; they engaged in discussions about the purposes of reading and writing and, ultimately, imposed particular definitions of beneficial literacies. A work like A Period of Time initially appeared in serialized form in a newspaper, not unlike many of the publications depicted in the story itself. This self-referential depiction of reading and writing practices within written works became a hallmark of this era as journalists, reformers, religious scholars, women activists, and government officials all sought to influence the literacy practices of their time. Not unlike al-Muwaylihi, these groups found it hard to look at Egyptian society and not see the potential dangers and opportunities that Arabic literacy posed for the future they envisioned. Literacy was becoming a public concern. Second, the practices that al-Muwaylihi depicts are part of a larger shift in how people were using language in their everyday lives. These literacy practices, or what people do with literacy, provide “the link between the activities of reading and writing and the social structures in which they are embedded and which they help shape.”11 From descriptions given by al-Muwaylihi and others, it is clear that a broad range of Egyptians were interested in reading and writing and were actively engaged in wider debates about literacy in society. Reading newspapers communally, writing articles for newspapers, buying books, and contemplating the benefits of education were all part of the practices prevalent among a subset of the Egyptian population. But these settings were not the only ones affecting and being affected by literacy practices. Beyond the minority of already literate Egyptians, structural changes in Egyptian society were expanding access to written communication and changing the way most Egyptians were using the written word, irrespective of their education, ability to read or write, and social standing. New forms of written materials (newspapers, journals, circulars,

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petitions, etc.), advanced modes of distribution (the printing press, the postal system, etc.), and various publics’ growing engagement with these new kinds of literacy production created an opening for more Egyptians to interact with written communication regardless of their own reading or writing abilities. The confluence of new discourses on reading and writing with new literacy practices ultimately made literacy a visible, public concern for those invested in the idea of a modern Egypt. This is what al-Muwaylihi’s “time” had wrought: a new Egypt where everyday literacies could be both the subject of and the means by which the nation was satirized, re-created, and imagined. We start where al-Muwaylihi left off by charting the kaleidoscope of spaces within which Arabic literacies were becoming more visible and, in some ways, more intrinsic to Egyptian life.

The New Spaces of Everyday Literacies The new literacy landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was built on a rich tradition of communal and individual literacy practices, some of which never stopped evolving. In its broadest sense, Arabic literacy has undoubtedly been a part of Egyptian social life dating back to well before the modern era.12 Since the emergence of Arabic as the language of life, commerce, and government more than a thousand years ago, the use of written language has remained one of the enduring facets of civic life in Egypt. By the Middle Ages, Egyptians had to engage the written word, either mediated by a scribe or with other assistance, on a regular basis for correspondence, basic religious education, the recital of religious litanies, court or administrative needs, social engagements, and business dealings. Over the course of the eighteenth century, literacies resurged, with an increase in book culture and more non-elites writing for audiences beyond traditional religious circles.13 During this period, as many as a third of Cairo’s adult male population received some education and, by extension, were to some degree literate.14 However, starting in the late nineteenth century, populations across the Middle East witnessed a qualitative and quantitative shift in the visibility of literacy in daily life. Some older gathering spots, such as coffeehouses and private venues, took on new import as they became more political, and new milieus—such as theaters and salons—became increasingly prominent features of urban life. The handbills, plays, and reading materials that often drove discussions and debates in and around these new locales were a product of one of the most distinctive changes of the modern era: the emergence of an Arabic language press.

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By the turn of the century, the vibrancy of the Egyptian newspaper and book presses had already been nearly a century in the making. The first government press was started in 1822 primarily to provide translated works and began publishing the official government gazette in 1828. Around 1832, private printing enterprises began appearing, and by the end of the century there were dozens of presses turning out books, newspapers, and journals. 15 The combined output of the public and private sectors was prolific and grew dramatically in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, with more than six thousand unique titles printed.16 Between 1900 and 1925, the number rose to 9,782 separate works.17 Furthermore, although printing was initiated as a governmental expediency to serve a growing bureaucracy, by 1900 only 12 percent of the books published were related to government administration or the military. Rather, the array of publications reflected new private and public priorities. School textbooks for both governmental and private schools consistently represented around 56 percent of all books published throughout the nineteenth century, while fiction and nonfiction books geared to adult audiences made up much of the remaining titles in print.18 In essence, the new publishing world focused on serving the needs of a literate public and creating new “readers” for the future. Meanwhile, newspapers grew in influence as an influx of Syrian intellectuals, the political contestations of the ‘Urabi Revolt led by Egyptian military officers in 1881, and the subsequent arrival of British forces in 1882 galvanized a new class of journalists and writers representing a wide range of political and social causes.19 An admittedly incomplete compilation from 1898 listed 168 different periodicals that had appeared in Egypt.20 Although this is an impressive number given the relative novelty of the medium, the quantity somewhat belies the actual influence of many of these journals, some of which published only a few issues. It was not uncommon for one newspaperman (and they were mostly men) to start several publications at once or in serial. Some of the proprietors of these presses and publications were colorful characters who occasionally made the headlines themselves, switched business and political alliances as needed, and when faced with failure simply started publishing anew under different titles. It was not uncommon to read denunciations of the entire journalistic profession as purveyors of lies, rumor, moral corruption, and tasteless humor.21 The fact that these censures were often published in the very media they criticized only serves to highlight the fact that the largest megaphone for public debate and criticism, even of the press, was still the press itself.

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Although by 1900 there was certainly a booming supply of journalistic and literary publications, maintaining a dedicated and (more important) paying readership remained a fickle business. The economics of keeping a news­ paper or journal afloat seemed to beleaguer even the most ultimately successful papers. In 1902, just four years after beginning the Islamic journal al-Manar, Rashid Rida published an impassioned plea to “the subscribers of newspapers, who are the elite of the Islamic community [umma].”22 Rida enumerated the various excuses given by people who could afford almost everything but could not spare one Egyptian pound for a year’s subscription. In particular, “friends” of his who believed themselves to be above paying their dues received the most condemnation, because they “deny [the owner of the paper] much benefit and harm him in order to save a little money.”23 A year later, Rida resorted to collective shaming in hopes of encouraging recalcitrant readers to send in their dues. Because “the owners of famous newspapers know the state of people and their dealings,” Rida had no reservations in proclaiming Russians and subscribers from the Arabian Peninsula “the best of God’s creation in terms of trustworthiness.”24 Indian, Algerian, and Moroccan readers ranked at the bottom of the list, although individuals from Fez redeemed their city by promptly sending in payments. When Rida’s al-Manar joined the major newspapers al-Muqattam and al-Muqtatif in a review of subscriber behavior based on profession, the results were disappointing. On average, 25 percent of lawyers and 30 percent of judges were behind in their payments, which paled only in comparison to the 40 percent of civil servants who defaulted on their subscriptions.25 We do not know how these shaming tactics worked in the short term. However, al-Manar did continue to be published until Rida’s death in 1935, so one can assume that Rida was able to secure enough subscribers from among the “few good and chivalrous who give their due and work for the benefit of the nation.”26 The danger of not having enough readers made many journalists nervous and some sought more public, systematic solutions. For example, activist and journalist Labiba Hashim wrote frequently and passionately about reading and writing practices. In an article published in 1900 entitled “Newspapers and Writers,” Hashim articulated her fears regarding the future of the Egyptian press.27 After making the case that there were too few good journalists, she turned to the second half of the equation necessary to create a vibrant press: a sustained and wide base of readers. Although the aforementioned poor quality of journalism turned away some readers, Hashim saw the problem as more widespread. Too few potential readers had spent the requisite money on edu-

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cation to become literate, and those who may have been inclined to read were often too poor to support fledgling journalistic enterprises. In her view, the only way for newspapers to succeed was for “education to become common, the domain of knowledge to be spread, and the number of readers to be increased.”28 In her concern about the low numbers of literate Egyptians, Hashim was certainly not alone. As we shall see, the public visibility of the “illiterate masses” as a social problem would become a staple subject for journalists who wrote regular articles appealing for more general education, more literate Egyptians, and ultimately more readers.29 Gauging the influence of these new literacy spaces is not an easy task. Given the difficulties associated with finding a paying readership for news­papers and journals, publications seemed to have had few qualms about exaggerating their circulation numbers to prove their relevance and advertising potential in a competitive marketplace. Although exact figures are difficult to come by, Ami Ayalon, in his study of the Arab press, provides a good list of estimated circulation for individual publications as well as reported national totals.30 For example, one of the most prominent daily papers, al-Mu’ayyad, started in the last decade of the nineteenth century with a daily circulation of 800. In 1896, circulation peaked at 12,000, during a particularly hot scandal, before settling down to 6,000 papers sold per day in 1899. As for the country as a whole, the reported aggregate average of daily circulation for all publications tended to fluctuate considerably depending on the source. Nevertheless, over roughly fifty years spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trend line was dramatically positive. If an estimated 24,000 newspapers were in circulation on any given day in 1881, by 1928 that number was 180,000. Regardless of the actual numbers, by any measure, the result was that newspapers, books, and other printed materials had become much more widely available by the early twentieth century. Furthermore, the collective impact of a single printed work, be it a book, a newspaper, or a journal, may have been more significant than circulation numbers would imply. As Ayalon notes, there is no way to know how many times an individual newspaper or journal changed hands. Anecdotal references suggest that the practices of reading aloud, reusing papers, or renting papers before returning them to the seller were widespread.31 Even printed materials that we may now view as disposable, such as journals, textbooks, and the like, were often collected and bound to become part of an individual’s private library.32 Newspapers and journals could easily have had second or third lives beyond

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their initial sale, making them integral to the broader and more communal aspects of literacy. This shift in literacy spaces was not invisible to people of the time. There was an awareness that the traditional keepers of language and literacy, not unlike the religious scholars satirized in al-Muwaylihi’s work, were falling by the wayside. There was certainly a perception that the “new” landscape of printed materials was superseding the older styles and centers of linguistic authority. On this matter, the ‘ulamā’ themselves were not silent: the potential of print technology to reach more people through the written word was not lost on the reform-minded among them. As early as 1875, in the newly started ­al-Ahram newspaper, Muslim reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh was extolling newspapers and journals as among God’s greatest blessings.33 ‘Abduh understood the important role the press could play in influencing public opinions, societal norms, and the political future of the nation. His description of newspapers had a reverent, almost prophetic tone: newspapers could lift “the night of ignorance” from the people, and newspapermen were not unlike the “speaker who climbs upon the pulpit of the world” to proclaim messages that could affect matters of life and death.34 Meanwhile, in 1904, a young scholar named Muhammad ­al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri suggested that all ‘ulamā’ should make a habit of reading newspapers and journals: There are some ‘ulamā’ who believe that all the words of newspapers are lies and that it is not permissible to read them. This opinion is obviously wrong. Not reading the newspaper isolates a person completely from the world. . . . this person is seen by others as simpleminded, knowing only religious rulings and nothing of the state of the people.35

Furthermore, al-Zawahiri asserted that expressing oneself in writing was particularly important because of the ability of the written word to reach wider audiences.36 As guardians of the Muslim religious tradition, the ‘ulamā’ needed to be writing and publishing new books in order to spread religious principles and moral reforms in society.37 The fact was that the press was a new domain of public debate, although not everyone was happy about it. Another graduate of al-Azhar, Muhammad Badr al-Din al-Halabi, discusses the problem of authority in the press in his 1906 work al-Ta‘lim wa-l-Irshad (Education and Guidance),38 where he expresses some of the anxieties that this shift of discursive power could present for traditionally educated elites.39 Al-Halabi is particularly appalled by what he sees

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as a crass marketplace of ideas: viewpoints being bought and sold in the public square and every issue of public concern becoming fodder for writers who publish their opinions with no regard for right and wrong. In the onslaught of views, there was no way to distinguish the good from the bad. Even when an insightful scholar did write an important or beneficial article or book, within a day or two he was faced with a barrage of criticism and responses from people who were seldom as knowledgeable as the initial writer. The result was a whole host of ideas floating around society with absolutely no backing and no practical solutions. Public discussion on matters of social import always ended with an observer feeling that solutions were “within grasp; however, when they open their hand they see that they were just clutching at air.”40 With the diffusion of ideas and public discourse also came the inevitable diffusion of authority. Instead of the most knowledgeable people commanding clear and unquestioned respect, anyone with a pen and access to the press could ascend to the heights of public discourse. Ultimately, Egyptian society was faced with literacy spaces that demanded a new structure of authority. The mantle of linguistic and literary leadership was shifting away from the religious community to public and private sectors. In particular, bureaucrats and reformers were quick to seize on the possibility and promise of literacy reform. For both the political and literary worlds, Arabic language literacy was a matter of national concern as they sought to shape the future economic and social fabric of Egyptian society.

The Politics of National Literacies The way in which the multitude of literacies that existed in the Egyptian society were perceived and promoted at the turn of the century reflects the extraordinary political and social power of discourses on literacy. Beyond the mere ability to read and write, Arabic literacy was a contested form of knowledge: who defined it, what form it would take, how it would be imparted to future generations, and what it meant for those who practiced it all became part of larger debates about the political, cultural, and religious direction of the ­nation. Literacy was not just a neutral technology or set of skills. Rather, when promoted and spread throughout a society such as Egypt’s, it represented the various hopes and dreams that Egyptians had for one another and their nation. Though many believed that literacy was imperative to the success of the country, various groups and factions operating within Egyptian society saw Arabic literacy as a way to reshape the country in their own image. Nationalists, c­ olonial

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­ ureaucrats, and religious reformers all expressed their deep concern about the b state of Arabic literacy, even as they pursued their own agendas. The British occupation of Egypt served as the political backdrop for the language contestations of this era. During the initial years after the 1882 occupation, British Consul-General Lord Cromer and his counterpart in the Ministry of Education, Douglas Dunlop, imposed strict financial limitations on government-sponsored education. Despite the growing number of calls from reformers, nationalists, and local communities for more schools, the British overseers of the Egyptian government insisted that the Ministry of Education produce more revenue and not expand its budget. Although a modest number of new schools were added to the Ministry’s charge over the years, the demand for schools far outpaced the supply. When Cromer left Egypt in 1906, there were only thirty-two government primary and four government secondary schools in the country.41 Within these government schools, instruction in Arabic literacy occupied a precarious place. Cromer and Dunlop were both known for their hostility toward the Arabic language. Dunlop in particular, despite residing in Egypt for more than thirty years and being in charge of its educational system, “not only never learned a word of Arabic, but also preferred that his underlings and employees not know Arabic either.”42 This attitude was not lost on the populace as a whole, and Dunlop came to be seen as the embodiment of British animosity toward education and, particularly, Arabic language instruction.43 Unsurprisingly, over the course of Cromer’s period of control, upper-level government schools shifted away from using Arabic and toward using either French or English as the principal language of instruction. By 1897, in government secondary schools all courses other than Arabic language classes were taught in a foreign language.44 Concurrently, primary schools began cutting into their own Arabic instruction to introduce students to either French or English at earlier ages and for more sessions per week.45 Although most students were given a choice between French and English, French was quickly replaced by English as the most opted-for European language for government school pupils, in deference to the obvious preference of the British administrators, inspectors, and de-facto rulers.46 In terms of prestige, Arabic was well behind its European counterparts. Nevertheless, for many literary scholars and Egyptian nationalists at the turn of the century, the Arabic language was an undeniable element of the Egyptian character. Language, unlike religion or even ethnicity, had the power to unite

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Egyptians as they strove to define themselves as a unique people with their own characteristics, history, and geographic boundaries. For nationalists interested in language, the danger of colonial imposition could not be overstated. For example, late nineteenth-century journalist and critic ‘Abdallah Nadim made championing the Arabic language a perennial theme in his work.47 In 1881, Nadim wrote an article entitled “Losing Language Is Surrendering the Self,” in which he argued that protecting one’s native language was tantamount to preserving one’s love of country (waṭaniyya) and religious beliefs. If that language was lost, there would be no way for Egyptians to live as free citizens in their own country; the nation would invariably fall into the hands of foreigners, who could do as they please.48 More than a decade later, and after his fears were realized with the British occupation, this theme reemerged in several articles published in his journal al-Ustadh (The Teacher, 1892–1893). In these articles the connections between language and national identity are reiterated in stronger language.49 Nadim asserts that guarding one’s language is the equivalent of protecting one’s ethnic identity and national sovereignty.50 Furthermore, the danger of linguistic colonialism was explicit: when individuals used the language of the occupier, they were surrendering their very souls to that outside power.51 By 1902, nationalist leader Mustafa Kamil elaborated on this formulation by asserting, “When a nation safeguards its language, it safeguards its independence. When a people safeguards its native tongue, it safeguards its very being.”52 The idea that Arabic was the foundation of national independence had become a rallying cry of the nationalist movement. The idea that language imbued its speakers with certain characteristics and qualities was echoed in many of the arguments against using foreign languages instead of one’s own native language. The idea that one would become some other nationality by virtue of language resonated with writers who saw European habits and cultural norms, particularly among the elites, being imported along with language.53 In this framework, Nadim’s insistence on Arabic language education lest “children grow up neither as Egyptians nor as foreigners” was not meant as hyperbole.54 Abandoning Arabic carried with it the danger of created quasi-Egyptians who were not part of the national family. As an extension of this debate, reformers tended to take up the mantle of education, particularly “nationalist” Arabic education, as one of their major goals. Besides Nadim, other major nationalist figures wrote about the need to use the Arabic language in Egyptian schools as a source of linguistic and national revival. In a speech delivered in 1902 and published in al-Liwa’, Mustafa

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Kamil articulated in the clearest terms why “nationalist” education in the Arabic language was a political and social imperative: It is obvious that Arabic is the tool to achieve the desired improvement and majesty. Language is the lifeblood of the community [umma]. . . . The Arabic language is the only means to improve Egypt and let her achieve the status of other advanced peoples. It is the language of the Qur’an and the tongue of Islam. What has happened to it? . . . the ignorant of its people and the devious of its enemies throw a thousand arrows at it every day.55

In the view of Kamil and others, to defend and propagate the Arabic language was to do no less than defend the nation as a whole. For Christian minorities in Egypt, mostly from the local Coptic community and Levantine emigrants, Arabic served as a sort of binding force for nationalist Arab and Egyptian sentiment. The many Christian Syrians and Lebanese who made Egypt their home in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century took a particular interest in language and played crucial roles in the modernization and feminist movements of the time. For these groups, the Arabic language was not only the means for cultural revival, but also a bridge across religious divides.56 Syrian Christians in particular were active in the Arabic language press, starting some of the most prominent newspapers for both men and women.57 One of the most influential of these émigrés was the proprietor of al-Hilal, Jurji Zaydan, who took particular pride in Arabic as a shared language of history and culture. As a longtime resident of Egypt, Zaydan made explicit the connection between institutional support for Arabic and the cultural revival of the country. Writing in 1910, he declared that “when the righteous rose to create an Egyptian university and announced that Arabic would be the medium of instruction, hope rose for the revival of this language.”58 Furthermore, Zaydan saw Arabic and Islamic civilization as a cultural heritage for Muslims and Christians alike. Although a Christian himself, he authored the influential History of Islamic Civilization in 1902, as well as a series of twentythree books of historical fiction with Arab and Islamic settings.59 Within the Coptic community—a religious minority with deep roots in Egypt—Arabic had long served as one of many common denominators between Copts and their Muslim neighbors.60 However, there was some basis for an ambivalent connection with the Arabic linguistic tradition because Arabic had supplanted the local Coptic language in Egypt after the Arab conquests.61 By the Middle Ages the Coptic language was associated exclusively with liturgical

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purposes—so much so that the idea of using an exclusively Arabic Bible was a point of contention between Copts and American missionaries around the midnineteenth century.62 Nonetheless, by the early twentieth century, the Coptic community and the Coptic Arabic press were extolling literacy practices, among them reading the Bible in Arabic, as part of good religious praxis.63 Ultimately, although assertions of a linguistic difference based on Muslim or Christian Coptic identity were emphasized in some circles, in and outside the Church walls the spoken Egyptian dialect and written standard Arabic were the languages of life and literature for Egyptians of all creeds.64 In large part due to the central role played by Arab Christians in the revival of Arabic, the promotion of Arabic literacy was advocated largely on cultural and political, and not solely religious, grounds. For example, the Coptic founder of the influential daily al-Watan (est. 1877), Mikhail ‘Abd al-Sayyid, maintained that “Arabic is not only the language of Muslims.”65 Moreover, with the spread of European and American missionary schools in Egypt, Copts— like other nationalists and Muslim reformers—sought to counter “foreign” educational intrusions into the religious life of young Egyptians.66 The reformminded among them saw local Coptic schools as an antidote to the problem of Protestant missionaries who were gaining converts primarily at the expense of the Coptic community. As the nationalist movement picked up steam (and significant Coptic support) after World War I, the idea of national unity between the Coptic and Muslim populations became a principal tenet of the Wafd Party, which dominated Egyptian politics into the 1940s.67 In opposition to colonial interventions, prominent Muslim and Coptic nationalist leaders called for a united front of Egyptians—bound by one communal language, culture, and history—that just happened to have two religious traditions. Although political and religious tensions occasionally boiled over,68 at the discursive level of language, this unity seems to have held. Studies of this era that have looked at political language and scientific debates among Arab intellectuals have found no discernable difference based on religious affiliation.69 As the link between the Arabic language and the future of the nation became more prominent, private initiatives by local religious and nationalist groups began focusing on Arabic-language education. The Tawfiq Society (Jam‘iyyat al-Tawfiq), founded in 1891, was the first lay-led Coptic charitable institution dedicated to opening schools for local children; others soon followed.70 By some estimates, work done by these local groups increased the number of Coptic students in Egyptian schools some fifteenfold in twenty

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years.71 Much like their Muslim counterparts, Arabic-language Coptic journals extolled the successes that graduates of Coptic-run schools were seeing on national exams, encouraged reading practices, and published articles by students and teachers.72 Among Muslim reformers, organizations such as the Islamic Benevolent Society (al-Jam‘iyya al-Khayriyya al-Islamiyya) did similar work and were supported by some of the leading activists of the time.73 Political organizations with nationalist rather than religious aims also sought to open schools. In 1899, the Mustafa Kamil School was opened to several hundred students as a first step in fulfilling a “duty to the nation” and its future generations.74 Meanwhile, Kamil and others strongly encouraged and celebrated the opening of schools using private funds as a means of essentially doing what the government was not willing to do.75 In fact, across the political spectrum, the opening of private national schools (madāris waṭaniyya) was seen as an expression of patriotism and a way for wealthy individuals to give back to their communities.76 At the communal level, in 1908, nationalist activists from the National Party (al-Hizb al-Watan) and from the High Schools Club (Nadi al-Madaris ­al-‘Ulya) founded a network of night schools to spread education and teach basic literacy in an effort to reach out to the urban lower class.77 Because foreign missionaries or expatriate communities within Egypt had dominated the first wave of private education in Egypt, nationalist alternatives were seen as an assertion of local identity and pride. These initiatives to create local educational opportunities eventually outstripped governmental and foreign efforts. By 1913, private organizations and individuals who represented Egyptian Islamic, Coptic, Jewish, and nationalist groups as well as local administrative councils ran 739 schools with 99,279 students.78 That year, foreign schools run by French, Italian, Greek, English, American, Austrian, and German groups (both religious and secular) numbered 321 with just over 47,000 students. Significantly, the Egyptian Ministry of Education, which was still recovering from its earlier austerity measures, maintained only 68 schools with 14,774 students.79 Although nationalists and religious reformers were willing in the short term to open private schools, ultimately they saw increased public educational funding for Arabic-based schooling as central to their anticolonial platform and future national aspirations. The notion that Egyptians needed to provide a more “authentic” education for their children became a part of the nationalist narrative. Arabic literacy was an issue of political debate among policymakers as they sought to decide who should get it, who should provide it, and what Arabic

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language literacy meant for the future of Egypt. Underlying these assessments about the spread, containment, and control of the literacy of the national community was a more fundamental question that needed to be addressed: in essence, what was literacy actually supposed to achieve?

Idealized Literacies Literacy would beget social, moral, economic, and cultural progress—at least that was the hope. The increasingly ubiquitous reading materials of the turn of the century became the site of a new kind of social advocacy in favor of reading and writing practices for the already and newly literate segments of Egyptian society. Across the literacy spectrum, readers and writers were increasingly encouraged to partake in literacy practices that were at once more mundane and more publically pervasive. In some ways, this advocacy was rather self-serving, because it was only natural that writers and journalists would want Egyptian society to become more engaged in the reading practices that make books, newspapers, and journals profitable. However, what is most striking about the promotion of literacy was the sheer range of practices that were encouraged. In particular, the act of reading for leisure or edification, historically reserved for only the most educated in society, was increasingly viewed as an everyday occurrence and as something beneficial to a broad array of Egyptians. The acts of reading and writing were explicitly referenced in many of the journals that styled themselves as adabī, that is, focused on the belles-lettres. Two of the most influential of these journals, al-Ustadh and al-Hilal, had proprietors with long-standing interest in the Arabic language who were deeply invested in its revival as a language of Arab literature and culture. Both journals featured prominent series on language, reading, and writing.80 Furthermore, as a service and encouragement for curious readers, adabī journals periodically published recommended reading lists on various literary topics, book reviews of recently published works on reading and writing, and lists of new journalistic publications.81 These recommendations created a sort of ecology of literacy practices, each linked to the others. Readers of a particular kind of journal were expected also to be readers of books, amateur literary historians, and aspiring writers (who might need some good advice to get them started). Unsurprisingly, these recommended practices often reflected the particular point of view of the publication. So, as a journal with a religiously conservative bent, al-Hidaya suggested further reading of books that “tread a desirable path between true Islam and modern civilization,”82 whereas the first women’s journal in Egypt, al-Fataa,

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addressed the concerns of mothers who wished to introduce their daughters to “morally beneficial” works by French authoresses.83 One aspect of literacy promotion that cut across audiences was the unwavering belief that literacy could serve as a moral panacea. As such, the already literate were encouraged to partake in morally or socially beneficial types of reading. In an 1899 article on the conduct of female teachers, the author strongly recommended that teachers read pedagogical works and subscribe to scholarly journals filled “with academic, moral/behavioral, and household b ­ enefits.”84 Similarly, Muslim religious reformers called on students and graduates of al-Azhar to read newspapers regularly, contribute to journals, and author more books in order to spread religious principles. One religious scholar even praised the “Western” practice of using fiction and theater as didactic aides.85 Whether for female teachers or male religious scholars, reading “new” types of media (newspapers and journals) was seen as a way to excel in their professional and moral lives. Potential future readers received special guidance. Speaking to and on behalf of educated women, Labiba Hashim advocated reading regularly and widely—beyond the “basics” of what was imparted in school education— as a necessity for women who might never experience the “outside world” ­directly.86 Writers like Hashim, Malak Hifni Nasif, Nabawiyya Musa, and others recommended books, journals, and newspapers that they believed could help develop a woman’s mind and, if the reading materials were sufficiently educational, provide moral lessons.87 Literacy practices for women were largely seen as extensions of the domestic sphere. Women were to set aside time each day to read, to serve as the family’s record keeper, to make a catalogue of the family library, to maintain financial records, and to keep their own records and notes on housekeeping.88 As for writing practices, although somewhat contentious, the idea of women as “mistresses of the pen” who wrote at their desks as their children played underfoot also served as a useful image of idealized female practices of literacy.89 Ultimately, for many of these writers the literacy practices they envisioned would serve to facilitate a woman’s primary purpose in life: running her home, becoming a good wife, and raising the next generation of Egyptians. Meanwhile, this next generation, represented by the growing population of students in government, private, and religious schools, became the direct focus of literacy promotion. Starting in the 1870s, student magazines and journals, in addition to textbooks, became a mainstay of the Egyptian

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press.90 In these journals, the act of reading was often directly encouraged. For example, the children’s magazine al-Samir al-Saghir published a story about a child who is caught reading the magazine in class and is reprimanded by the teacher.91 Luckily the student knows all the answers to the questions his teacher poses because he has just read them in the last issue of the magazine. The moral of the story was that children should engage in beneficial reading—but on their own time and not in the classroom. Furthermore, as an expansion of the extensive “advice” literature in Muslim societies, the trope of student-teacher dialogue became popular in educational journals and newspapers. ‘Abdallah Nadim used this format extensively in his journal al-Ustadh, and other journals followed suit.92 The role of students was no longer to listen to their teachers and mentors in person. Rather, they were encouraged to read (and in some cases to create their own) educational dialogues, all projected onto the written page.93 Strikingly, students were encouraged to use their newfound skills of reading and writing not only for educational exercise but also as forms of public expression. The earliest educational journal in Egypt, Rawdat al-Madaris, encouraged student submissions and published erudite examples from advanced students who were often well on their way to becoming teachers or administrators themselves.94 Al-Samir al-Saghir regularly solicited writing submissions on subjects ranging from explanations of poetic verses to sample letters to family members.95 It even conducted a contest asking students to submit creative stories based on a series of cartoons.96 The best submissions were then published along with the students’ names and schools.97 Even journals that were not specifically geared to children often published articles written (or purportedly written) by students.98 In some cases, the young authors of these articles were reflexively aware of the literacy practices in which they were engaged, and they encouraged others to write as well.99 In the wake of all these endorsements of literacy practices in the press, the question remains: how was all of this received by Egyptian readers? A general perusal of any of the popular newspapers or journals from this period certainly gives the impression that they had an active audience eager to engage in discussions, respond to questions, and participate in contests and writing opportunities provided by the press. Nevertheless, gleaning the response of the general readership remains a challenge. In an effort to analyze one group of readers, Beth Baron provides an interesting case study of turn-of-the-century women readers.100 Relying on memoirs and reports from literate women, circulation

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and distribution data, and a survey of contributors to the women’s press, Baron paints a fairly detailed picture of the kinds of literacy practices that characterized “a young, unmarried, middle-class Muslim or Christian woman from Cairo or Alexandria.”101 As Baron notes, while certainly useful, any such case study is necessarily limited to a minority of the Egyptian public. Looking at idealized notions of literacy is helpful insofar as the depictions of these literacy practices give us insight into what kinds of expectations existed. Even if these works reached only the intellectual and social leaders in s­ ociety, what educated writers were projecting onto society undoubtedly colored the perspective of the wider public. However, to provide a more comprehensive representation of literacy practices in Egyptian society, one can also examine the more commonplace acts associated with reading and writing.

Broader Literacy Practices In his 1913 novel Zaynab, Muhammad Haykal depicts Egyptian village life through the eyes of two young couples.102 One pair, Hamid and ‘Aziza, represent the quintessential newly educated elite. Hamid, the son of a landlord, is a student sent to school in Cairo, whereas ‘Aziza receives an in-home education until the age of twelve when she starts to veil and enters the seclusion typical of her class. Both are avid readers, constantly write notes and cards, and collect whatever books they can find. Interestingly, their unfulfilled love exists only through a series of letters between the two, sent by post and intermediaries.103 The second couple, Zaynab and Ibrahim, represent the other end of the literacy spectrum. They are village farmers for whom education is simply not a question. Nevertheless, the tragedy of their love story also culminates by way of the written word.104 When Ibrahim is sent to the army, he manages to pay a scribe to dictate a letter for him. Although the letter is not addressed to her, Zaynab harbors hope that Ibrahim has sent her some sort of message. When a child from a local Qur’an school is finally recruited to read the letter aloud to a gathering of friends and family, Zaynab finds that she is not mentioned. She becomes heartbroken and loses her will to live.105 As both love stories unfold, literacy practices such as letter writing, reading of newspapers aloud, and employing scribes are shared by literate and illiterate alike.106 Even as a fictional account, Haykal’s depiction is instructive. Like the satirical vignettes that open this chapter, Haykal’s story provides a layer of “thick description” that can animate a historical account. These portrayals offer a distinct counterpoint to the ostensibly most straightforward measure of literacy during

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this period: the official census. According to that “objective” measure, literacy certainly was expanding but reached nowhere near a majority of people. Between 1897 and 1927, the percentage of men whom the census deemed literate increased from 8 percent to 23 percent, and among women literacy increased from .2 percent to nearly 5 percent (see Table I.1 in the Introduction). Although a tripling of the percentage of men and a twenty-five-fold increase in the percentage of women who were considered “officially literate” over the course of three decades was a vast social change, the absolute numbers were still low. Particularly in rural areas, where literacy rates were often much lower than elsewhere, Egyptians classified as illiterate were the vast majority. However, this process of classification was problematic, for many reasons. Over this period, census takers did not have uniform directions for how to determine an individual’s literacy abilities.107 In all likelihood they relied on their own assumptions or on the self-reporting provided by the head of the household. Furthermore, these official rates of literacy belie the fact that despite being assessed “illiterate,” many Egyptians were still engaged in literacy practices. Gauging the extent and impact of this more ephemeral level of literacy practice is a complex matter. One approach, advocated by historian David Vincent, is to look at postal rates as a measure of functional literacy—how literacy is used by individuals— as a corrective to other “official” measures of literacy.108 Unlike census literacy rates, the number of pieces of posted mail provides a relatively unbiased reading of one of the most basic functions of written literacy: to correspond with people beyond one’s immediate vicinity. In other words, instead of measuring a designation (literate or not literate), postal rates measure one of the most prominent and accessible kinds of literacy practice. Because literate Egyptians were not the only ones sending letters, postal rates also include a larger pool of people who would have used scribes, relatives, or friends to pen letters for them. In this context, it makes sense to view literacy, and particularly letter writing, as a communal act rather than as one undertaken only by educated, self-sufficient Egyptians in the privacy of their own homes.109 The intensification of this type of functional literacy reflects the practices not only of literate individuals but also of people across the entire cultural milieu. However, using postal rates to assess literacy cannot be undertaken without certain reservations. As an aggregate measure, these rates do not explain how individual Egyptians made use of the postal system. Large numbers of particularly prolific letter-writers may have offset the national average, as would more writing-intensive segments of civil society, such as business or journalistic

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e­ nterprises. Furthermore, during the early part of this period, the postal system in Egypt was neither mature nor expansive. In tandem with increasing postal use, the infrastructure of the postal system itself was expanding. In such a situation, it is hard to say if higher capacities earlier on would have produced even higher rates of postal usage or vice versa. However, this ambiguity does not render these records useless. Rather, the postal rates in Egypt for the early part of the twentieth century measure this particular kind of literacy practice while also providing a glimpse into the demand it generated. The postal system was one among several state-building enterprises during this period that were increasingly becoming a part of Egyptian life. In 1865, Khedive Isma‘il bought out the largest privately owned postal company in Egypt and converted it into the Egyptian Postal Service. At the time there were only twenty-five public post offices in Egypt. By 1900, the number of post offices had reached 318, and by 1930 there were 592 across the country.110 As this network of post offices was growing, other extensions of government services were also stretching deeper and deeper into the countryside.111 The centralized bureaucracy and military of the early nineteenth century allowed for more efficient tax collection, improved infrastructure, and an omnipresent threat of corvée or conscription. By the end of the century, new technologies such as the telegraph and railway systems crisscrossed the country and allowed state entities and individuals to engage one another more easily. The postal system was just one way in which the country was becoming a “smaller” place. Over this period, reaching out to others across the country became much easier. Between 1880 and 1930, the number of pieces of mail sent through the national postal system grew exponentially (see Figure 1.1). Regular domestic mail (excluding government correspondence) reached about two million pieces in 1880 and seventy-three million in 1930, roughly doubling every decade. Similarly, in 1880, while only about one and a half million printed journals, newspapers, and samples were sent through the postal system, that number was nearly thirty million in 1930. On a per capita basis, the rate went from about one piece of sent mail per inhabitant per year in 1885 to almost six pieces per inhabitant in 1925.112 Meanwhile, the cost of sending an ordinary letter steadily decreased. In 1878 it cost one piaster to send ten grams anywhere in the country, and by 1898 it was only half a piaster to send thirty grams.113 The net result was that printed materials became more common, sending mail got cheaper for Egyptians, and the volume of written correspondence sent through the Egyptian postal system rose considerably.

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80

70

Millions of Pieces

60

Letters and Postcards Printed Materials

50

40

30

20

10

0 1880 F IG U R E 1 . 1 .  

1885

1890

1895

1900

1905

1910

1915

1920

1925

1930

Domestic Postal Service for Egypt, 1880–1930

sources: Data from Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Annuaire Statistique de l’Égypte, 1915 (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1916), 217; Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Annuaire Statistique de l’Égypte, 1920 (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1921), 142; Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Comparative Statistics of the Postal Traffic in Egypt for the Years 1880–1906 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1907), 7; Union Postale Universelle, Statistique Générale du Service Postal 1925 (Berne: Bureau International de l’Union Postale Universelle, 1927); and Egyptian Ministry of Transportation/Wizārat al-Muwāṣalāt, Al-Taqrīr alSanawī ‘an A‘māl Maṣlaḥat al-Barīd li-Sanat 1938 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1939), 50.

Ultimately, the chance that an Egyptian in 1930 had access to printed materials or had sent or received a letter, even if they themselves could not read or write, had increased significantly. This is an important point. According to the 1927 census there were only 1.7 million officially literate and nearly 9 million illiterate individuals in the country.114 It is hard to imagine that the small minority who in this context were deemed literate had exclusive use of the nearly one hundred million letters, postcards, journals, and newspapers in circulation. Given the communal nature of literacy practices, it is far more likely that these written works were part of a wider range of literacy practices making their way into the homes and lives of a large portion of the population.115 ­Although the absolute numbers of literacy rates or postal rates do not tell much about what

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people were actually doing with literacy, they do point to the fact that, nominally and functionally, the availability and circulation of the written and printed word had changed dramatically over the fifty years between 1880 and 1930. A vast majority of “illiterates,” the Zaynabs and Ibrahims of Egyptian society, would have been beneficiaries of this sea change. The comparative rate of growth of official literacy and postal rates also tells something about the importance of these practices. Whereas it took thirty years (1897–1927) for the official literacy rate in Egypt to triple, over the same period the number of letters sent through the Egyptian postal system increased sixfold. In other words, Egyptians as a whole were adopting literacy practices far faster than individuals were able to acquire literacy skills that could be reflected in a census. In some ways this makes sense. Whereas it takes years and considerable cost for someone to become “officially” literate, for five millieme in postage or a trip to a local gathering place, any Egyptian could get access to one of the most fundamental aspects of literacy: receiving word from afar. To use economic terms, functional literacy practices had a low cost of entry compared to the education involved in becoming officially literate. Coupled with the aforementioned tendency toward communal literacy, these postal rates show that literacy practices were indeed becoming an important part of Egyptian social and economic life. Interestingly enough, those who were functionally literate and could get by in an increasingly written world were largely invisible to those who were concerned with the idea of literacy. This group of scribe-going, group-reading, communally dependent literati did not conform to the model practices that literacy advocates envisioned for them. So even as the practice of literacy was increasing, the ideal of what “good” literacies entailed was narrowing.

Conclusion As a set of practices and discourses, public literacies were becoming integral to communal life in modern Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Writers interested in social reforms, religious revival, or nationalist struggles were quick to extoll the importance of Arabic as a language of education and culture. However, for the majority of Egyptians, literacy remained a tool based on the availability of community—and not necessarily individual—resources. For these officially “illiterate” classes, functional literacy practices were becoming more accessible and more disconnected from idealized visions of what literacy “should” entail. In ways even deeper than

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al-Muwaylihi’s characters perceived, the spaces of literacies were proliferating in Egyptian society. However, this is still only part of the story. Literacy was not always portrayed as an unmitigated benefit, particularly when it came to issues of authority and the expansion of these skills to the traditionally uneducated, such as women and the lower classes. As the rest of this book demonstrates, literacies of all types could be wielded for “unsanctioned” uses as easily as sanctioned ones. Depending on one’s perspective, increased literacy posed either a welcome opportunity or a potentially dangerous prospect.

2

LITERACIES OF EXCLUSION Mistresses of the Pen

I N T H E E A R LY T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY , the idea of “mistresses of the pen,” rabbāt al-aqlām, was novel. It echoed the long-standing designation of “masters of the pen,” or arbāb al-aqlām, the Arabic literati and government functionaries who used the written word to compose, entertain, and record. In the masculine domain, purveyors of the pen also served as foils to the “masters of the sword,” or arbāb al-suyūf, the establishers of empires and defenders of homelands. In the Arabic tradition, a robust literature centers on rhetorical questions about the natures of the pen and the sword: Which is stronger? Which is more effectual? Which is more central to the structures of political and social life? In these debates, each of these symbols represented a particular type of public masculinity.1 The pen and the sword became proxies for inquiries into the primacy of action versus contemplation, of combat versus scholarship, and of conquest versus rule. Meanwhile, the site of femininity was idealized as a sacrosanct private space, a ḥaram. Athough these mythologized private spaces were never as inviolable as imagined, by the late nineteenth century, writers were referring to the women who presided over this private realm as rabbāt al-dār, or “mistresses of the home.”2 If the definitional role for men was to be on the battlefield or behind a desk, then for women it was to be in the familial environment. In this context, when women writers began deploying the imagery of “mistresses of the pen,” they were in a sense playing with the notions of feminine and masculine subjectivity that were developing in the new, modern context. With the increased prominence of literacy

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debates and proliferation of literacy practices, what did it mean for a woman to wield a pen? The answers often revolved around who was using and how they were using—or ought to use—literacy in public domains. Gendered literacies mediated both participation in and visibility to public spaces and were often intimately connected to class-based expectations and cultural anxieties. For women in particular, public literacies brought with them scrutiny, because reading and writing themselves were no longer considered solely “private” acts. Indeed, these literacies could also set and blur distinctions about what was of “public” concern in the first place, and to engage in them was to invite possible exposure. Although the notion of a modern Egyptian public sphere was constantly being remade and redefined, the gendered literacies of the time provide us with one mapping of where women activists, reformers, nationalists, and religious leaders were attempting to place these shifting boundaries. This gendered analysis highlights the very real tensions between the highminded promise of literacy promotion and the perceived dangers of these new skills for some segments of society. When it came to gender and socioeconomic background, the ambiguities associated with literacy promotion were at their most evident.3 Ultimately, what made literacies useful or dangerous was not the act of reading or writing, but rather the perceived social, economic, and moral implications of those acts for the “public” in which they occurred—a set of considerations that cannot be divorced from the actors and their circumstances. Ultimately, particular types of gendered and class-based literacies allowed for participation in various public spaces in uneven ways.

Exclusions: The Nexus of Gender and Class At the turn of the century, the scope of literacy and who should have access to it was an open question. In this context, the intersection of gender and class is a useful framework through which to examine the particular literacies associated with traditionally uneducated groups. Indeed, historically “women as a group are associated with different literacies.”4 As in many other places, in Egypt the contours of these “different literacies” not only were based on gender but also were inseparable from an individual’s position in society. This fact made discussions about different types of female literacy all the more potent and a kind of inflection point for wider debates about reading and writing practices. There were presumably many arguments in favor of elite women being literate. However, it was not always clear to early literacy advocates whether universal

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l­iteracy—which would encompass women and men and the poor and wealthy alike—was indeed even desirable. The similarities between gender and classbased apprehensions regarding literacy, though not always identical, belonged to a larger narrative about the necessity and utility of literacy for Egyptians who were not part of the educated male elite. Given the political and social changes happening in Egypt, the ability to read and write for and on behalf of larger communities was a contested skill. During this period, traditional educated male elites—religious scholars, ruling families, and rural landowners—faced a dilution of their authority with the growth of an urban working class; the emergence of a new middle stratum of Egyptians (the effendiyya, singular effendi); and the beginnings of a nascent feminist movement. On the first front, migration from rural areas to the major delta cities of Egypt was a century-long process as traditional farming became less profitable for small tenants, and urban notables continued to consolidate land holdings at the expense of the peasantry.5 The result was the explosive growth of ­cities such as Cairo and Alexandria as an influx of immigrants augmented the lower and working classes of these population centers. Like their rural brethren, the growing working urban classes, though seldom highly educated, were the lifeblood of many communal literacy practices. They wrote, or had written for them, letters; they used rudimentary literacy for business interactions; and they frequented many coffeehouses and local gathering spots where newspapers and journal articles were read aloud. Some ambitious migrants came specifically for the educational opportunities afforded in the major cities. In addition, the most successful of these new urbanites, even if uneducated themselves, often found value in sending their children to the new, and rather expensive, schools that promised the possibility of government employment and further economic advancement. In turn, these students from modest backgrounds could make their way into the effendiyya, which was made up of a growing number of lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists, civil servants, and other professionals. What made this group distinctive was not necessarily the economic position of its members, but rather their active claim on being both modern and authentically Egyptian. Though there were many “markers” of the sometimes slippery e­ ffendi designation, the use of particular literacy practices—being educated in ­Western-style schools, reading newspapers, writing letters, composing their own memoirs, and so on—made this group a locus for defining what it meant to be a modern,

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educated reader and writer of Arabic.6 It should be noted that these writers often referred to themselves as al-ṭabaqa al-wusṭā (the middle class) and, in doing so, laid claim to a central role in fashioning the emerging ideals of modern Egyptian-ness.7 Meanwhile, by the turn of the century, elite women were beginning to feel the effects of a “women’s awakening” (nahḍa nisā’iyya) that was unfolding on the pages of journals, in newly formed girls’ schools, and among women’s groups.8 Much of this activity can be traced to the emergence of an Egyptian women’s press that began with Hind Nawfal’s al-Fataa (1892–1894) and was continued by the likes of Alexandra Avierino’s Anis al-Jalis (1898–1907/1908), Labiba Hashim’s Fatat al-Sharq (1906–1939), and Malaka Sa‘d’s al-Jins al-Latif (1908–1925). Writer and poetess ‘A’isha Taymur (d. 1902) and activist Huda Sha‘rawi emerged from elite households to become prominent public figures. Among these privileged few were women who traced their feminist awareness to European women who lived in Egypt or to various literary gatherings. However, not all female activists came from such socially rarefied circles. Among those with relatively more modest roots were women like Nabawiyya Musa and Malak Hifni Nasif, two of the first female graduates of new government schools, who used their literary skills to command national audiences for their feminist, nationalist, and pedagogical ideas. Although this first generation of activists tended to work largely within cultural and social norms—focusing often on “women’s issues” while respecting religious and local sensitivities—they represented a growing shift in who could and did engage in issues of national concern. In the midst of these social changes, questions regarding the content and purpose of education and literacy remained contentious issues in Egyptian society and beyond. In the Western world, anxieties associated with the expansion of reading and writing skills to different social classes and to women were prominent throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.9 In many educated circles there was a deep disconnect between the desire to reform society from the bottom up and the realities of what that expansion could mean for less educated segments of society. What was the purpose of reading and writing? Who needed to be literate? If a person could read, did he or she need to write as well? Was it necessary to promote literacy for women, farmers, low-skilled and unskilled workers, and so forth? Did it matter if writing was a private or public act? The answers to these questions highlight the ways in which the abilities to read and write were socially, religiously, and economically bounded by the broader currents of society.

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In the Egyptian case, the question of the efficacy of universal literacy and education pulled in two directions. On the one hand, general distrust of the “Egyptian home” and the “superstitious” and “ignorant” women who presided over early home education suggested that schooling could serve as a much-needed social corrective.10 Schooling advocates hoped that educational institutions could provide a disciplined, controlled environment within which children could get an education more suitable for their expected roles as citizens, workers, and progenitors of future generations of Egyptians. On the other hand, some Egyptians argued that education might have a disastrous effect on young men and women once they left the protective cocoon of schools and returned to their original, humble social situations. In villages, the specter of “tarbushed”11 young men who had attended school and were no longer fit for manual labor, and of “arrogant” educated girls who put on airs in their husband’s home, loomed large in critiques of education for the lower classes.12 In both cases, education was seen as at best giving false hope to students who were destined for much less, and at worst as potentially sowing discontent and social discord. When dealing with the issue of female education, the issues of gender and socioeconomic background were inexorably linked. By the early twentieth century, for the first time, reformers across the religious and political spectrum had to grapple with the full implications of a growing number of women readers and writers, and the issue of class was never far behind. The assumption that a woman was either born or married into her social ­setting—rather than creating it or aspiring to it—meant that what a female child was taught would have to serve her for the rest of her life. Education did not change a woman’s position in society; it simply made her a better (or worse) daughter, wife, or mother within her social circumstance. A woman’s position—and the corresponding literacy needs of her station—was assumed to be immutable. During this period, education for women had a very specific purpose related to perceptions of the social good: women needed to be taught their duties to God, to their husbands, to their children, and increasingly to their nation. In this sense there was very little disagreement: no one wanted “ignorant,” or jāhil, women. However, to alleviate this ignorance, reformers distinguished between two very different types of education: the tarbiya ideal and the ta‘līm ideal.13 Of the pair, tarbiya was the broader concept, encompassing the moral, physical, and intellectual development and upbringing of children.14 Tarbiya

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did not entail any specific course of study or content; rather, it was context and results based. Any kind of “upbringing” that produced the desired results could be designated “good tarbiya.” Meanwhile, ta‘līm often referred specifically to the realm of formal education and intellectual development—the necessity of which was readily contested. In a series of lectures on educating young people, Labiba Hashim provides this articulation of the difference between the two archetypes of education: Ta‘līm is a branch of tarbiya because its purpose is to extend the intellectual gifts of a child with knowledge. As for tarbiya, it includes strengthening his body, improving his morals, and enlightening his mind. So every time we raise him well [rabbaynāhu] we teach him [‘allamnāhu] something, but not every time we teach him something have we raised him well.15

In this context, many Egyptians believed that girls should undoubtedly be raised well, but it was debatable whether or not ta‘līm education truly “improved” women.16 Journals across the ideological spectrum agreed on the superiority of an “uneducated” girl who nevertheless had a good moral tarbiya over the schoolgirl who had formal ta‘līm but was “ignorant” of her duties as an Egyptian woman, wife, Muslim, mother, or citizen.17 Within this schema of education, literacy held a tenuous place. Reading and writing, while absolutely necessary for embarking on ta‘līm, was only tangential to tarbiya, depending on how this type of education was defined. Here again, class was central. The kind of home, husband, and children a woman was educated to serve depended on where she was on the socioeconomic ladder of Egyptian society. In the realm of literacy, someone like ‘Abdallah Nadim could argue in 1892 that an upper-class or elite woman must be literate not only in ­Arabic and possibly Turkish, but also in French and English—the better to engage her husband and her European counterparts.18 Meanwhile, ideally a middle-class woman would be literate enough in Arabic to glean beneficial knowledge from journals and books regarding her household and child-­rearing tasks. A woman of more humble means might not need literacy at all. An education in basic handcrafts and sewing, in order to support herself and her family, was more appropriate. With the expansion of government-sponsored education, the Egyptian government embarked on its own experiment to educate girls in the “proper” way. The first officially sponsored girls’ school in Egypt, named al-Suyufiyya when it was opened in 1873, suffered from schizophrenic expectations about what girls

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of different classes should learn.19 In its original incarnation, the school had the ambitious goal to teach “all the subjects that are beneficial for women.”20 Initially, al-Suyufiyya teachers primarily taught the Qur’an and sewing, but as an indication of the school’s appeal to the Egyptian elite, both Turkish and piano lessons were added a year later.21 After a few years of initial success and of enrollment reaching well over three hundred, a second school, al-Qarabiyya, was opened, intended as a “lower class” version of al-Suyufiyya.22 The financial crises of the late 1870s resulted in the schools being combined and eventually turned over to the charitable wing of the waqf (religious endowments) administration of the government. The parents of upper-class girls quickly abandoned the initiative and enrollment dropped to about one hundred students a year. The school came to serve as an institution for preparing orphan, deaf, and blind girls for basic employment.23 In 1889, the Ministry of Education made plans to revive the school under the name al-Saniyya with the express purpose of reforming the curriculum to attract students from the higher classes.24 However, there was some indication that parents objected to the “mixing” of poor students and paying students.25 In 1890, the newspaper al-Ahram suggested that the government open a school solely for those children whose parents could afford to pay tuition. According to the article, because the only option for these wealthy Egyptians was foreign or missionary schools, many would flock to a school where girls could learn the “language of their fathers and their Arab nation.”26 Language and its utility remained at issue in the official educational policy of female instruction. In 1892, the Deputy of Education at the time, Yacoub Artin, authored a report that he hoped would bring order to the confusion reigning in girls’ schooling.27 Tellingly, Artin chose to assess the needs of Egyptian girls on the basis of class. He suggested no specific plans for either the extremely wealthy or the extremely poor, because he believed that upper-class girls were best served by in-home tutors and that the lower classes would become educated only when compulsory education was imposed from above—a far-off prospect.28 As for the middle classes, Artin proposed a new school that no scholarship students would attend.29 The education would be similar to that provided at male government schools, with additional provisions for training in home­making and domestic tasks. In this middle-class school, basic language education would be part of the curriculum, although unlike in boys’ schools foreign languages (English, French, and Turkish) would be optional. In this

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a­ rrangement, the upper classes could customize their language education as they saw fit, the middle classes would have a primarily Arabic language education, and the lower classes could be summarily ignored. Early female activists largely followed Artin’s lead in their class-based assessments of education and literacy, although not always with the same results. In these evaluations of the necessity of education, literacy and schooling were not goals in and of themselves. Rather, their utility was the overriding concern and therefore the kind of literacy promoted was directly related to the expectations imposed on the group in question. In this calculation, women activists weighted class and gender considerations differently. We can examine as an example a series of ten lectures on the proper tarbiya of girls and boys given in 1911 by the writer Labiba Hashim as part of the short-lived “women’s section” at the new Egyptian University.30 In keeping with the comprehensive nature of the term tarbiya, she devoted her initial lectures to the proper physical and moral upbringing of children before turning to their intellectual development. After mentioning in-home education and schooling, she differentiated educational needs on the basis of a child’s class and social standing (ṭabaqa and markaz).31 According to Hashim, the elite needed to educate their male children to undertake the “grand jobs” of society as leaders, judges, and ambassadors. The purpose of education for the middle class (al-ṭabaqa al-mutawassi ṭa) was to produce artists, doctors, lawyers, and merchants—a clear reference to the effendiyya. Meanwhile, the “general population” needed to receive an education that would serve their need “to work with their hands to earn a living.”32 Hashim emphasized that educating men in what they do not need to know was merely a waste of time, and that a “practical tarbiya that is in accordance with the general population’s station” was more appropriate.33 Interestingly, in Hashim’s view, although education for men was tied to professions and economic standing, for women, literacy was not. Female literacies were not economically based but rather represented a type of refinement that all women required—regardless of social position. In essence, whereas male literacy was tied directly to professions that differed according to station, all women needed the same kind of education because their duties to their families and children were the same regardless of wealth or poverty.34 According to Hashim, women should learn Arabic but not focus too much on grammar or sophisticated linguistic concepts.35 They needed to learn about literature and develop a taste for reading in order to become better companions for their husbands and teachers for their children.36 Even learning the “fine arts” such as

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music, art, and sewing could have a utilitarian rationale.37 For a rich woman, handcrafts were a good use of free time. For the poor woman, they could be a source of income and a means to support her home and family. This utilitarian ethos regarding literacy education based on gender and socioeconomic background was evident in the writings of other early ­feminists. To different degrees, and despite their strong commitment to schooling for upper and middle-class women, many of these writers tended to reinforce stratified literacy promotion when it came to the poorer segments of Egyptian society.38 On one end of the spectrum, Malak Hifni Nasif, one of the first female Egyptian educators in the government schools, strongly advocated compulsory elementary education “for all classes” as early as 1910 while reiterating the need for more secondary and higher educational options for upper-class girls.39 In Nasif ’s vision, every girl and boy would receive a basic education in reading, math, and civics, with only the particularly wealthy or gifted going on to secondary and higher education.40 In this tiered system, a full-fledged women’s medical school, for example, could produce a group of prestigious female doctors to serve other women. However, “if there are not enough wealthy women willing to attend this school, then it is possible to take students from among those who are on scholarship.”41 In other words, literacy would be universal, but advanced education would be limited. In contrast, another female educator and activist, Nabawiyya Musa, held a very different opinion. Writing in 1920, Musa made the case for broad-based literacy and education for women of the upper and middle classes while asserting that even the most basic literacy was of no use for the peasantry and servant classes. For elite women, a modern education that included language, literature, science, and so on, even if not directly relevant to their future roles as mothers and wives, would benefit them overall by strengthening their minds.42 As for the lower classes, the country was wasting precious resources on people who already had enough “useful knowledge” to live respectably.43 In Musa’s view, literacy rates simply were not a measure of a people. Rather, there was no shame in having an illiterate peasantry if there were enough intelligent people to guide the country.44 She explicitly criticized general concern about low l­ evels of basic literacy among the poor when there were clearly not enough primary, secondary, and higher-level schools for middle- and upper-class girls and boys.45 In Musa’s assessment of the utility of literacy through the lenses of gender and socioeconomic background, gender was not the defining exclusionary category; class was.

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Reading Versus Writing To map out the exclusions and contours of gendered literacies, it helps to examine the two categories of reading and writing in their most generic terms: consuming and producing written texts. The “close connection between reading and writing” that we now assume is actually a fairly recent phenomenon.46 Previously, concepts such as reading, writing, and speaking did not always have stable meanings and were constantly “defined in changing relation to each other, according to historically specific institutional developments and cultural concerns.”47 These distinctions are perhaps even more relevant for Arabic, which uses a variety of terms such as qara’a, ṭāla‘a, kataba, khāṭaba, ansha’a, and rasama to designate reading or writing or something else entirely, depending on the setting and context.48 In practice, the most common verb for “reading” a text (qara’a) could equally imply oral recitation, silent reading, or studying with a teacher. Similarly, “writing” as expressed by kataba could refer to composing prose or poetry, simple dictation, recording or registering a matter, or stipulating an order or decree. Meanwhile, a noun like khiṭāb could refer to an oral lecture or a written letter, rasm could denote handwriting or drawing, and so forth. The flexibility of these terms is very much a testament to the fungibility of oral and textual communication in Arabic-speaking societies.49 In the gendered literacies of the time and in their implications for public engagement and visibility, the distinction between reading and writing holds particular importance. Thinking about consumption and production, we can examine the power dynamic inherent in each side of the literacy equation, and the perceived passive nature of consumption versus the more “proactive” act of production.50 This distinction makes further sense given the fact that before the modern period, consuming texts always preceded, and sometimes superseded, the ability to produce them.51 Certainly in Muslim-dominated cultures, the traditional kuttāb schools—despite the affinity to the word for “writing” inherent in the name—were primarily focused on teaching students to memorize religious texts. Even in these educational settings, “reading” in the conventional sense was not a necessity, because holy scriptures could be memorized orally by students who never had to resort to deciphering letters on a page.52 When, in the 1890s, the Egyptian government became interested in bringing these kuttāb schools into the state fold as a first line of defense against illiteracy, they had to face a startling fact: kuttābs were not even remotely focused on literacy. Rather, they were dedicated to a particular kind of consumption (of religious texts) that made them, by the state’s new “modern” educational measures, abysmal fail-

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ures. In a 1902 report of government-inspected kuttābs, the Ministry of Education determined that nearly 40 percent of 39,000 kuttāb students did not know their letters well enough to read, and 80 percent could not write properly.53 References from other sources also indicate that the consumption and production of written texts were taught and used as separate skills. Traveling through Egypt in the 1820s, Edward Lane reported that writing was taught to kuttāb students only if there was reason to believe that they could use the skill.54 Otherwise the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet were the mainstays of this type of education, with poetry, mathematics, and Arabic occasionally included. A similar phenomenon seemed to be at play in latenineteenth-­century Coptic educational settings, where “many Copts appear to have learned to read the Bible without ever learning how to write.”55 A 1900 survey of the endowments of thirty-six kuttābs administered by various government agencies found that all of the endowments prioritized the teaching of the Qur’an and its memorization among the subjects to be taught.56 Twelve of the thirty-six schools also specified some combination of handwriting (khaṭṭ) and copying (istikhrāj) as required subjects. Only five schools listed writing (kitāba) as a subject, which as mentioned previously could mean anything from simple dictation to independent composition. One school, the recently opened ­Madrasat Khalil Agha, went significantly beyond these basic elements of traditional education by specifying Turkish, Persian, grammar, geometry, and math as subjects. A ­ lthough these endowments indicate only the aspirations of their founders and not necessarily the reality of the education ultimately provided, the focus on Qur’anic education does point to a systematic privileging of certain types of consumption literacy at the start of the twentieth century.57 In other circumstances, the focus on reading over writing represented not only a systemic propensity but also a conscious exclusion imposed on particular groups. The consumption and production of texts each carried different implications and a distinction was drawn between the more acceptable skill of reading and the more provocative skill of writing. However, as we shall see, neither skill was without dangers when it came to the newly literate segments of Egyptian society.

Reading as Dangerous Consumption During this period, many writers and thinkers advocated literacy practices, particularly of the consumption variety, for society as a whole: reading journals and newspapers and being good consumers of beneficial information were

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­social imperatives.58 For the social reformer, this aspect of literacy promotion was rather attractive. Increased literacy was seen as an important mechanism for the diffusion of social reforms necessary to shift the foundation of a society, improve its prospects, and raise its civilizational profile. In this view, the solutions for Egypt’s problems were understood by the elites and within reach if only “the people” were educated enough to receive this imparted wisdom. The argument was similar for reformers interested in moral as well as material improvements, for many of them saw religious and moral education as an obvious boon to society. The problem, however, was dissemination and reaching men, women, and children before superstitious and immoral behavior set in. In this sense, it was not enough to be literate. Rather, the masses needed to channel this literacy into productive directions and into the proper reading practices. The tarbiya aspect of education was particularly relevant to how “beneficial” reading practices were perceived. Writers who used the term tarbiya often stressed the moral realm of education and the instilling of proper conduct. Many focused on the concept of adab, a word meaning both moral etiquette and literature.59 According to Husayn al-Marsafi, a late nineteenth-century Arabic writer and teacher, the relationship between these two disparate meanings of adab was not accidental. True eloquence in adab (as literature) was in knowing the proper place for each and every word.60 Likewise, in the wider meaning of adab (as moral etiquette), to embody correct adab was to know the proper place for human inclinations.61 For social reformers, the connection was even more explicit. Reading the proper literature had the power to influence the moral rectitude of the reader. However, the connotation of adab as either moral or literary perfection tended to depend on what kind of education—ta‘līm or tarbiya—was being pursued. For privileged boys, learning to read was generally the first step in their ta‘līm or schooling path. However, for girls or lower class children, for whom reading had no presumable material benefit—neither farmers nor women would ever need to read bureaucratic reports or scientific tracts—the moral benefits of adab became paramount in the inculcating of tarbiya. Unsurprisingly, writers who advocated reading practices often did so in a gendered manner and with a focus on the moral benefits and dangers inherent in the consumption of literature. In his 1891 book on tarbiya, one of Egypt’s foreign administrators, Peltier Bey, encouraged reading for both boys and girls. The importance of language skills for boys stemmed from their future role as leaders of the nation who needed to have a firm grasp of the national lan-

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guage.62 Girls needed to learn to read and write as well, albeit for the purpose of preparing them for marriage and motherhood. Yet, despite the potential benefits, Peltier emphasized that one must be careful with female reading materials. They should be examined in detail to ensure that nothing in them “would be shameful or lead them [girls] to leave even the smallest of their duties.”63 Needless to say, a similar disclaimer did not accompany the recommendations for boys’ reading materials. A slightly different tact can be seen in a pair of books published by ‘Ali Fikri in 1900 and 1901 on adab (here meaning etiquette) for young men and women, respectively.64 In the 1900 male version of the book, schooling was discussed in detail not only as a means to get a respectable job but also as a way to enhance the intellect and learn how to be “men who know what is necessary.”65 Fikri followed this discussion with a section on the benefits of reading and how to select reading materials. Reading was of course praised as a way to “enlighten the mind and gladden the hearts,” although books full of lies and superstitions were a waste of time and bad for morals, so he advised young men to “stay away from reading them.”66 In the parallel section on formal education in the female version of the book, the etiquette of schooling was discussed primarily in relation to instilling good character and moral adab in girls.67 Reading and writing, good or otherwise, were not mentioned other than to give the following advice to young women: be cautious when holding a pen lest ink get into one’s hair or onto one’s clothes.68 For female education, the adab of literature was not a consideration; it was moral adab that was the sole purpose of schooling. Insofar as literature could promote moral rectitude, it was encouraged and supported. However, depending on how “corruption” was defined, reading could be a dangerous moral (adabī) pursuit. So what kinds of consumption were considered dangerous? For feminine literacies, the main culprits were novels and gharāmiyyāt, or love stories. In an 1894 article, the magazine al-Fataa summarized the problem facing literate women who wished to pursue reading once they were no longer in school: They do not know which books to read, so they resort to reading novels. These are stories that are sometimes written for the author’s personal reasons and not for a moral [adabiyya] benefit. So these girls are lowered by that which they sought to raise themselves with. And it is not hidden what a catastrophe this is.69

In the words of one textbook for girls, love stories were dangerous because “they are a source of corruption and whoever is exposed to rain will surely get

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wet.”70 Labiba Hashim, who was a very strong advocate of reading as a way to widen women’s understanding of the world, drew the line at stories that were corrupting or of low value for the same reason: they could harm instead of help.71 She also recommended that parents preapprove their daughters’ reading material and not allow them to read stories until they had developed a good sense of morality. After all, no matter how beneficial a story might be, it would always have some element of intrigue and romance, which could negatively impact a girl’s adabī development.72 This danger also provided fodder for those who opposed schooling for girls altogether. In one publication, a girl who spends her early years in school is depicted as emerging “with a twisted tongue, idle hands, manly, opposing everything having to do with homemaking, and keen on reading stories, particularly love stories.”73 Even Nasif, who doubted that reading books or writing letters would ever distract women from their primary duties, still scolded women for reading stories and not books on health and other beneficial matters.74 Although men were also considered susceptible to the moral dangers of reading, the proscriptive literature of masculine literacies tended to focus on the intellectual and political implications of reading. Around 1881, the Ministry of Interior sought to ban all books deemed “harmful to the intellect,” a move that was praised by the then young religious reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh.75 He had been particularly disturbed by the fact that books of fantasy and imagination “that the mind cannot accept and are not in accord with religious laws” were “countless” in number and popularity while so many books of beneficial literature were available but remained unread.76 For someone with ‘Abduh’s moral frame, this concern over the corrupting influence of reading materials was understandable. However, he was also deeply interested in the positive effects that the right books, newspapers, and journals could provide to “encourage manufacturing and improve innovations” as well as facilitate political reform.77 Of course, for the political establishment, this civic engagement could cut both ways. In the wake of student protests in the early twentieth century, the British colonial administration banned all nonapproved literature from government schools. However, in the larger picture of masculine literacies, even if moral “corruption” similar to that presumed for women were possible, men’s literacies were deemed political and intellectually beneficial in a way that women’s were not. In an interesting display of attitudes regarding gendered literacies, in 1900 the principal of a local school, Mahmud al-Sakhawi, wrote an article for the

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women’s journal Anis al-Jalis entitled “The Call of Nationalism.”78 In it he addressed “educated women,” acknowledging that most of the women who had access to this journal were from elite households. These readers had a unique responsibility to urge their male family members to become involved in the nationalist cause. Because he was an educator, his advice took on a rather scholastic bent. Al-Sakhawi suggested that women should discourage men from reading foreign newspapers and encourage them to read local nationalist newspapers, attend nationalist gatherings and salons, support nationalist schools, and help buy books for impoverished students. For men, these types of literacies reinforced their identity as “good” Egyptians and morally upright, intellectual participants in their country’s political life. Interestingly, the very literacy practices and social circumstances that enabled women to read al-Sakhawi’s letter were not considered efficacious in the public, political realm. Rather, a woman’s literacy had to be harnessed to support the more socially and politically “productive” literacy of the men in her life. This is not to say that all female literacies were perceived as passive. Particularly when it came to the more “active” skill of writing, these literacies presented a unique challenge to masculine conceptions of the public and of participation in the public realm.

Writing as Production and Power Question 3: Some of our scholars do not allow teaching women to write and on this matter they narrate a hadith, which is, “Do not teach women writing and do not let them sleep in rooms.” Oh Skaykh, does this have a basis? Al-Manar, December 5, 1903

Between 1903 and 1914, Rashid Rida, religious reformer and editor of the magazine al-Manar, was asked several times about this purported hadith (a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) on the propriety of teaching women to write.79 In 1903, the questioner himself argued that this hadith did not seem to be in the spirit of Islam and conflicted with reports that at least one of the Prophet Muhammad’s wives was taught to write. Furthermore, in the words of the questioner, “writing is necessary for seeking knowledge, particularly in this era.”80 So, how to reconcile this supposed religious edict with others that encouraged education? In 1903, Rashid Rida simply provided proof that this particular hadith was narrated by a known liar and therefore was not authoritative. When another questioner brought up the “do not teach women writing” tradition in 1904, Rida scolded him for reading books by authors who have no

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knowledge of religious law.81 The irony was that in seeking to limit female literacy, the writer’s own reading choices were questioned. The fixation of some on the perils of women’s writing specifically (apparently no one cared to comment on the “sleeping in rooms” question) perhaps seems odd. However, it reflected the growing prominence of “writing” as a unique type of practice, one that had a very different genealogy than reading in the social fabric of Arabic-speaking—along with other—societies.82 This distinction relates to the unique kind of discursive power that is inherent in writing. The act of writing is predicated on several assumptions: (1) a presumed blank space or tabula rasa, on which inscription operates; (2) a text constructed in or upon this place of blankness; and (3) a strategic intention to dominate or transform83 In this characterization of the practice of writing, the actor (“the writer”), the acted upon (“the blank page”), and medium of action (“the text”) each have a deliberate position vis-à-vis each other. In times and places where peoples or cultures have been presumed to be “blank pages,” dominant ideologies (colonialism, sexism, racism, etc.) have taken the liberty to impose their own texts, histories, and practices in the language of domination. Subordinate groups— whether based on race, on class, or on gender—seldom participated in, ­although were often the subject of, the written act. Generally, women and the lower classes in Egyptian society seldom had direct access to their own “blank” spaces and the capability to construct their own texts. However, with increased access to literacy, they too began engaging in the “strategic intention to dominate or transform.” But this pursuit of “the pen” was not without opposition. For women, the issue of exclusion from particular kinds of literacies—and specifically writing—has a long history.84 In Western societies, into the nineteenth century, women were not expected to create texts: “women were not to ‘take up the pen’ in public matters. . . . Women might read, listen, be lectured to but were not to participate in public in speech or print.”85 This type of inert or read-only literacy also seems to have existed among women in Egypt, where some women and certain slaves were taught to read but not to write.86 Writing in the late nineteenth century, Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi offered this summary of a common fear of his time: educating a woman would encourage her to “write a letter to Zayd, a note to ‘Amr, and a line of poetry to Khalid.”87 Proverbs that asserted that it was acceptable to “teach girls to say words of love but not how to write” reinforced the limits of education for women.88 The reasons for this

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resistance to women writing were often cloaked in cultural, religious, and even economic terms. Among some Muslim conservatives, the spurious hadith that Rashid Rida encountered repeatedly in al-Manar seems to have had some currency. In a particularly virulent response to Qasim Amin’s controversial The Liberation of Women (1899), a writer named Mukhtar al-‘Azmi cited the “do not teach women to write” hadith and went on to explain that writing was not absolutely necessary for true education.89 Al-‘Azmi’s argument was as follows: There is no shame in not knowing how to write. One need not look further than all the righteous people of history, such as God’s Messengers, the female and male companions of the Prophet Muhammad, and scholars who were described as illiterate.90 Because writing was not a necessity for women, it was clearly folly to allow “women to mix with foreign men in order to educate them or allow them to be raised by foreign female teachers, especially those who do not know the morals of their own religion, let alone ours.”91 After all, there was no greater proof of the dangers of this education than the women in all the capitals of the Muslim world who “have been instilled with the disease of learning writing and languages and who mix with foreign women and take on their morals and character.”92 In this framework, writing, foreign education, and the resulting “corruption” of Muslim societies were inexorably linked. Along with this fear of foreign influence, the fear of increased female agency also animated at least one scholarly assessment of the “do not teach women to write” hadith. In an answer to an Indian Muslim about the permissibility of girls’ schools, an 1898 fatwa by Nu‘man Khayr al-Din al-Alusi entitled “The Right Word in Preventing Girls from Writing”93 specifically took aim at female writing. Al-Alusi acknowledged that the “do not teach women to write” hadith was fatally weak. However, he countered that reports having to do with the wives of the Prophet Muhammad learning to write might be applicable only to those few exceptional women. Al-Alusi asserted that for the majority of women the scholarly principle of “avoiding evil is better than achieving what is good” should be applied. There was undoubtedly some good in educating women, such as teaching them the Qur’an and moral principles. However, writing was to be avoided because it would lead to the corruption of women in the fastest way imaginable. His only specific example of this potential corruption was the danger that women would begin to leave their homes claiming that they were going to “write books.” As improbable as it may seem that women would use “writing books” as excuses to leave their homes, the example does point to the

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association between increased public exposure and the act of writing. The other subtext of the fatwa was exposed in al-Alusi’s closing remark: In India, as in Egypt, it was best to use caution because, “as is known to everyone, the place is under the power of the foreigners who make equal the slave and the free, the woman and the man.”94 In other words, in the presence of colonial rule that challenged the natural social order, caution and conservatism were needed when proposing changes that would impact gender roles. Similarly, in an 1899 tract, Shaykh Muhammad Bulaqi singled out the learning of composition (inshā’) and poetry, among many other subjects, as particularly dangerous for women.95 He divided educational subjects into four basic categories: what must be taught (religion), what was explicitly forbidden to be taught (such as music), what was neither forbidden nor encouraged (such as mathematics and medicine), and what was not forbidden explicitly but should be avoided because of the danger it presented.96 It was in this last category that writing and poetry fell, mostly because of “the corruption they may lead to, like love poetry [ghazal wa-nasīb], fairy tales, and lies.”97 One simply should not look at the act of writing in isolation. Rather, teaching women to write predicated other kinds of public and private acts considered unacceptable. Writing was in fact particularly subversive because once women began composing written works, they could use this skill in unsanctioned ways. Women who engaged in writing often encountered variations of these religious and cultural arguments. The author of a compendium on famous women, Zaynab Fawwaz, reported in 1893 a depressing encounter with a group of women at the celebration of the birth of a baby girl.98 Fawwaz had begun engaging some of these women in a debate about the merits of boys over girls. She expressed her belief that if girls became educated they could be as useful to the family as their male counterparts. The women were aghast at the suggestion: “God forbid, are we to be like foreigners and educate our girls like men?” Among their many objections were that girls should remain in seclusion and that people were merely imitating Christians in opening girls’ schools.99 One woman finally proclaimed, “The truth is that teaching girls to read and write is religiously discouraged [makrūh] among us and is not allowed except for Christians. As for Muslims, it is never allowed. . . . The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, used to hate women who could write and read.”100 As Fawwaz attempted to point out that the wives of the Prophet were considered authorities in the Islamic tradition, the conversation devolved into an ill-informed debate about the names of the Prophet’s mother and first wife.

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Fawwaz reported that she left the gathering fearful for future generations of girls raised “in these homes based on ignorance.”101 Even among the handful of elite women who had received a relatively generous in-home education, writing seemed to carry particular religious and cultural baggage. The story of how ‘A’isha Taymur (1840–1902), a prominent nineteenth-century female poet and writer, had to negotiate her entrance into the literate world became a crucial part of her biography.102 According to her own account, as a child Taymur was attracted to the storytelling of the elderly women of her family and to the literary gatherings of her father. As a first step toward literacy, she used to imitate the scribbling of writers on scraps of paper. When she showed no aptitude or interest in the feminine arts of embroidery, her father proposed a compromise with her mother: “Leave me this girl [so I can train her] for the pen and paper. You can have her sister to train in whatever wisdom you desire.”103 Taymur’s father then proceeded to oversee her early education in Persian and Arabic. Later in life, Taymur employed female tutors of language and poetic meter to refine her Arabic skills. However, throughout her life and writing career, some family members and critics of her work opposed her profession as a “writer.”104 Feminist activist Huda Sha‘rawi (1879–1947) was not so lucky in her early attempts at writing in Arabic. In her memoir, she describes her early love of Arabic and her desire to learn to compose poetry and to read beyond the Qur’an.105 When she started taking lessons in Arabic grammar, she was reprimanded by her caretaker with these words: “The young lady has no need of grammar as she will not become a judge!”106 Sha‘rawi learned the Arabic script only through her study of Ottoman Turkish. As a young adult, she again began taking Arabic lessons with an older Azhari shaykh. However, once again she was not able to continue, this time due to the physical difficulty of having her teacher brought into her female quarters. For these women, learning to write was fraught with barriers that, though not insurmountable, were subtly and not so subtly reinforced by a sense that writing was simply not a feminine pursuit. Not all resistance to women writing had a strictly cultural or religious bent. In some cases, the opposition stemmed from economic concerns. Malak Hifni Nasif seemed to be particularly attuned to the fear that educated women would begin to seek employment in masculine fields and edge men out of the workplace.107 In her own writing, Nasif tried to assuage these concerns by insisting that women would not abandon their duties to home and family to pursue careers. Simultaneously, she also argued that certain professions, such as

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education and medicine, were better served when women attended to other women.108 On the whole, the idea of female educators for female students was accepted and, by some, considered preferable. However, language studies were largely the domain of male teachers. In particular, religious scholars saw themselves as a bastion not only of religious authority, but also of linguistic excellence.109 In the early al-Suyufiyya school, even as women comprised the majority of the teaching staff, men were specifically enlisted to teach Arabic and Turkish language classes.110 This “traditional” connection between Arabic studies and male teachers was maintained in the al-Saniyya school and nearly every other institution of female education, all of which drew their Arabic teachers from either the al-Azhar teaching mosque or the quasi-religious teachers’ college Dar al-‘Ulum.111 As one of the few female Arabic language educators in the government school system, Nabawiyya Musa faced this opposition directly in the early 1900s. She reported in her autobiography the hostility she faced when she began teaching Arabic and how her writing ability proved to be both a lightening rod as well as a source of influence.112 The previous inspector of Arabic language instruction for government schools, Shaykh Hamza Fath Allah, never allowed women to teach Arabic, although in his writings he did not oppose teaching women to write and even lauded famous Muslim women who had excelled in the literary arts.113 In other words, for Fath Allah, although writing was acceptable for women, shaping future writers as a teacher of Arabic was not. When male colleagues got word of Musa’s encroachment on their traditional educational role, a campaign of harassment ensued. Musa reported that she became known as “a destroyer of men’s homes, a denier of their God-given earnings, among other things.”114 In addition, the other Arabic teachers began to complain to the principal about her teaching methods and even used her writings in a nationalist journal as proof of her subversive tendencies toward the political system. Although their distress seemed to stem from economic concerns, their critiques of her style of Arabic instruction became quite ideological. In her autobiography, Musa positioned herself in opposition to these “shaykhs” and their antiquated methods of teaching and impractical approach to language in general. Musa explained that when these same teachers were asked to write a report on their own teaching methods, they refused to do so because they had no knowledge of the art of composition, a sad deficiency in both their education and in their style of teaching.115 Meanwhile, her report on the matter of teaching methods was so persuasive that it was distributed

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to other schools. In fact, throughout her autobiography, Musa portrays herself in a series of conflicts in which not only her quick wit but also her potent pen brought her victory against adversarial forces.116 In many ways, she proved some of the fears of the power of the pen to be true: she frequently used writing as an extension of her will and as a way of transforming circumstances to her advantage.

The Publics of Mistresses of the Pen As we have seen in the fears that women would go out to write books or begin to compete with men in the workplace, the act of writing allowed women to, in a sense, “trespass” into spaces that had previously been closed to them. In fact, the increased presence of women in the masculine public sphere was occurring in other parts of Egyptian society as well. Starting around 1907, with the growth of the gramophone market and the commercialization of music, women’s voices, which were once limited to audiences in private gatherings, became prominent in much more public and anxiety-producing ways.117 A career as a writer, though not quite as controversial as that of a singer, was never­ theless another extension of the “female voice” into the public sphere. Early women writers who published their works were entering a particularly masculine space. As Mervat Hatem has summarized, “In becoming tutors, poets, and religious scholars, women were warned that they risked losing their femininity and becoming masculine. Their social milieu continued to stress the irreconcilability of masculinity and femininity.”118 Negotiating a space within which women could at once serve as mothers, wives, and writers became paramount and women began to claim parts of the masculine literary space and create their own spaces, both in private and in public. Here we return to the “mistresses of the pen” and the alternative publics and privates they created. On the one hand, to claim to be a writer was certainly an assertion of power and public agency.119 In 1893, a female student praised the women of her generation who had become “mistresses of the pen and writers” and commanded wide—presumably public—respect.120 Yet, on the other hand, by maintaining an affinity with the designation “mistresses of the home,” many women who proclaimed themselves “writers” could also maintain that they were not transgressing the domestic sphere. Labiba Sham‘un, daughter of famous Lebanese poetess Warda al-Yaziji, made the case that writing was in many ways a profession especially suited for women. Educated women were not trying to become blacksmiths, carpenters, or rulers of the country. Rather,

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they could pursue writing from the confines of the home: “What situation is more beautiful than seeing a woman in the kitchen preparing food one hour, then attending to the needs of her children another hour, and behind her desk writing about the arts and science another hour?”121 In this idealized landscape, writing became part of the domestic sphere without interference. In a similar convergence of the role of writer and housewife, Labiba Hashim asserted that women were created to be homemakers who “hold the needle, the pen, and the book.”122 The dominant masculine sphere of writing could be “domesticated” into a semipublic space that was in service not only of women but also of their homes and families. Outside this domestic realm, writing could be particularly useful in reinforcing the “invisibility” of women even as they entered public, masculine spheres. For example, women were active in petitioning government offices throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.123 This activity certainly points to their ability to act on behalf of themselves and their families as they sought to improve their situations by appealing to local authorities. At the same time, however, the acts of writing in which they engaged were heavily mediated by men at both ends—by male scribes on one end and government officials on the other. In a way, letters and petitions of this sort allowed women to “travel” in this parallel bureaucratic space to make their appeals in the physical places to which they may not have had access to.124 In the same way, the prevalence of anonymity in the women’s press also provided metaphorical cover for women venturing into the predominately male space.125 While announcing plans for a women’s magazine in 1893, ‘Abdallah Nadim encouraged women to “send me their thoughts on matters related to them that are of exceptional moral benefit that occur to them from behind the hijāb [seclusion]. . . .”126 Nadim assured these women that their anonymity would be preserved if they so wished. Even in their seclusion, or perhaps because of it, their communication with the outside world did not have to compromise their visibility. ‘A’isha Taymur, in particular, used this movement between the realm of the hidden to that of the visible to great literary effect. Aside from her scholarly ambitions, Taymur was very much a woman of her age and standing. As part of the Egyptian elite (she was of Kurdish-Circassian descent), she had married young, had several children, outlived her father and husband, and for the most part lived her life in seclusion.127 At points in her writings she criticized women of high standing who ventured outside the home, putting their reputations in danger.128 Yet Taymur seemed to harbor a certain ambivalence toward this

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­social captivity.129 She was acutely aware of her authority as a woman speaking on women’s issues, but also of her lack of standing vis-à-vis the wider public, mostly men, whom she was addressing.130 Nevertheless, in her collection of poetry published in 1892, she proudly asserts the ability she had to move between the two worlds: With the hand of virtue I maintain my veil and with my chastity (‘asmati) I tower over my contemporaries, And with brilliant ideas and a critical disposition, my literary studies and good manners are complete.131

In these lines, Taymur’s boast is twofold: she was able to maintain her separateness and invisibility while still managing to become a recognized master of the literary arts. Similarly, Taymur used the ambiguous term adab, which could mean good manners or literature, to proclaim her ability to master both: My literature/good manners and education did not hurt me except by making me like a flower in a breast collar, My seclusion, head cover and style of clothing did not offend me, My lady like stature, the cover (khimar) draped over my body and face cover (niqab) have not been obstacles that prevented me from reaching the heights132

Through these lines, Taymur depicted herself as a shining example of the kind of freedom that publishing could afford women writers without compromising their reputations, dignity, or even seclusion. She thus occupied an intermediate zone in which she could benefit from public acclaim without public visibility. Not all women promoted this kind of invisibility, particularly as women began claiming space in the press and publishing world as proprietors of new journals, contributors, and authors of books.133 As a writer, Zaynab Fawwaz encouraged newspapers to have a section in which female writers could specifically “pursue the art of writing” while learning their familial duties.134 To encourage girls to contribute, in 1908 the journal al-Jins al-Latif published a letter from a young reader named ‘Aziza.135 After several months in which no other girls came forward, ‘Aziza wrote again to explain the negative perceptions associated with writing for a journal. A friend of hers had equated a girl “writing with her pen” to “displaying her wares to all the male and female readers as if to say, ‘come to me for I am available for marriage.’”136 In response, ‘Aziza replied that writing in a journal was no different than going out in public with an exposed face, another public act that had previously been frowned upon for

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the same reason. The physical and literary acts of being publicly visible, in body or in word, were connected. In addition, despite the religious and economic resistance of some, others from traditionally conservative segments of Egyptian society largely allowed and at times encouraged women to write. The “female voice” could indeed be rather useful to male writers and editors in the press, particularly when it supported their perspectives.137 So, for example, even as the religiously conservative al-Hidaya journal criticized women’s education and their public presence in other forms, it did so through the voice of a female contributor, lending legitimacy to writing as a public act in which women could engage.138 Similarly, al-Manar’s early critiques of female education centered on the fear that allowing girls to leave the home for schooling would result in too much female autonomy and freedom.139 Nevertheless, the magazine did highlight the works of some women writers.140 Indeed, by 1914, al-Manar’s rebuttal of the “do not teach women writing” hadith had become much more assertive. In his final attempt to discredit this purported religious tenet, Rida not only expounded on the weakness of this particular hadith but also cited Hafsa and ‘A’isha, two of Muhammad’s wives, as the first of many female writers and scholars of hadith, literature, and the arts in Muslim history. Rida ended with the statement, “one of the purposes of religious law is to take the Muslim nation [umma] out of illiteracy and to teach them writing.”141 What had been merely an allowance (women may write) became a religious duty that supported Rida’s revivalist notion of Islamic reform (the best Muslim women have always written). As the twentieth century progressed, among male editors and writers there seemed to be a general recognition that women’s writing could be channeled into beneficial avenues for the national, religious, or journalistic good. However, just as gendered literacies allowed women to enter masculine publics and create alternative publics of their own, private literary spaces were also stretching, re-forming, and coming under scrutiny. After all, in most cases, writing was not an explicitly public act but rather one that was used for correspondence and other personal, commercial, or administrative needs. For women, learning to write may have opened new opportunities to communicate with others in complete privacy, without scribes or help from literate family or friends.142 For example, one woman petitioning the government to help her send her children to school found the medium of writing an important refuge for privacy because her husband would not have approved of her letter.143 How-

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ever, beyond a few anecdotes, it is difficult to define the contours of the private literary spaces that certainly would have existed among educated women. The discovery and study of private diaries and correspondences may yet provide a wealth of information on how elite women used writing in their daily lives. What does come to the fore in discussions about private literacies were the dangers that these feminized literary spaces could pose to the moral fiber of a literate female. Nabawiyya Musa mentioned that for a morally corrupt girl, learning to read and write just provided another venue in which to “talk to strangers” and pursue her vices. In fact, such a girl was even baser than her illiterate counterpart because “she may record for herself a shame that cannot be erased.”144 The written word, although an extension of speech, served as a more dangerous form of communication because of its longevity and the possibility that it might not stay private. Meanwhile, in the press, parts of this private realm occasionally appeared as fictitious and real exposés of female private writing. In 1902, the journal al-Jami‘a published several letters that purportedly were the correspondences of two young women, followed by an article about the subsequent discovery of those letters by a father and teacher.145 To add to the story’s authenticity and establish the cloak of secrecy (despite the article’s appearance in the journal), the subtitle proclaimed that “no one is allowed to read this except female readers,” and both of the imaginary young women wondered if the contents of their letters were appropriate; one even asks the other to rip up the letter once it has been read.146 In the next issue of al-Jami‘a, the article was continued, but this time by a teacher who was given the letters by one of the girls’ fathers. The teacher writes an impassioned plea to the young writer to rise above evil inclinations and become a morally exemplary woman. The dangerous potential of female private literacy was thus tamed and redirected by established authority figures (father and teacher) to its higher purpose: to establish good moral character. In another example of the anxieties associated with the private literacies of women, in 1903 someone claiming to be a young Muslim man put an ad in the magazine al-Musawwar announcing his desire to begin a correspondence with an Egyptian girl under the age of twenty. According to an article that appeared in the women’s journal Anis al-Jalis, the writer received seventeen responses and decided to publish them in order to “show, for your amusement, the adab of these female writers.”147 The writer then proceeds to critique the style and content of the writing produced by the women who chose to respond. Throughout the article, the critique of the respondents’ adab is doubly sharp:

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in some cases the women are considered ill-mannered due to a lack of moral adab; in others they are called ill-spoken due to a lack of literary adab. In either case, the author maintains that he wishes to submit these letters to public view as a way of “recording for history women’s writing from this era.”148 In bringing these supposedly private letters into the public sphere, the writer claims to shed light on the private lives and thoughts of women—a possibility available only when there existed public interest in what the letters “exposed.” As one final example, the issue of whether women’s correspondences should remain private was addressed directly in a question proposed by the journal ­al-Fataa to its readers in 1894: “Is a man allowed to read letters that arrive in the name of his wife, or not?”149 In his response, Antun Nawfal brings the moral character of women to the forefront. While he asserts the basic equality of men and women, he faults the lack of female education for creating a situation in which there are only three types of women: prostitutes, tyrants, and gems (‘awāhir, qawāhir, and jawāhir).150 If a wife fell into one of the first two categories, there was not much a man could do. However, in the third case, if a woman was a true companion to her husband, a good mother to her children, and a caretaker of her home, then not only could he open her mail but she could open his as well.151 In other words, only by fulfilling a very specific set of criteria and becoming “exceptional” in their domestic roles could women mitigate the dangers of writing and the secrecy that it may have entailed. In fact, in this idealized relationship, literary space would no longer be male or female but shared. However, as we have seen throughout this chapter, the ability of women to partake in this literary space was predicated on their ability to uphold and improve their moral standing while maintaining the sanctity of their domestic responsibilities. The “corrupted” Egyptian woman with a foreign word on her tongue, a tawdry novel in her hand, and surreptitious letters awaiting her at home was quite consciously the foil for all the “benefits” of literacy.

Conclusion Gendered and class-based literacies served as ways of reinforcing “appropriate” participation in public domains at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The importance of public literacies to Egyptian society was not only in how the skills of reading and writing were used, but also in the exclusions they created. For the lower classes, learning to read or write was deemed of marginal value, particularly when certain types of reading could be morally dangerous for the consumer of these texts, regardless of gender. However, women’s

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­ riting, with its perceived power and visibility, carried with it different culw tural, religious, and economic burdens than men’s writing. Depending on how it was deployed, literacy could enhance either the visibility or the invisibility of women in Egyptian society and therefore carried particular social risks. Feminine literacies redefined the “assertive” masculinity of public literacies and appropriated it in a feminine sphere. Once such literacies were mastered, women could enter various “publics” with their writings or expand the realm of the “private” with their correspondences. In wielding a pen, female writers were negotiating uneasy terrain, and ultimately the power of the pen was alternatively celebrated, feared, or co-opted. In a larger context, the importance of these gendered public literacies stems from the perceived power of the written word. For the turn-of-the-century Egyptian, literacy was a not only a means to participate in public discussions on the most fundamental notions of the self, morality, family, and society, but also a way to create an idealized communal life. Specifically, as the next chapters show, literacies would be put to work for the larger bureaucratic and nationalistic goals of creating a modern Egypt. In this vision for the future, the particular literacies of women and the lower classes were to play an instrumental part.

3

WRITING FOR THE PUBLIC Schooled Literacies

W H E N QA S I M A M I N ’ S The Liberation of Women (Tahrir al-Mar’a) was published in 1899, it was widely viewed as the opening salvo in a heated debate regarding the role of women in Muslim societies.1 By some estimates, Amin’s work generated nearly a hundred books, in addition to a torrent of articles, seeking either to oppose or to defend his positions.2 Although Amin was not the first to delve into these issues, his work was largely canonized (and vilified) as the most important.3 What was it about the appearance of this particular work at the turn of the century that allowed it to enter the Egyptian consciousness with such force? Some historians have pointed to the social upheavals brought on by the British occupation, the economic interests of a newly minted bourgeoisie, or a multitude of other factors in combination.4 However, I propose a different reason: it was a group of public “writers” that allowed issues of social reform to come to the fore of civic debates about the future of the nation. This new generation of self-identified writers—nurtured by the intellectual and linguistic concerns of the Arabic nahḍa (or awakening) and the growth of writing composition as a school subject—participated in the social conversations that helped propel the “women” issue, among others, to prominence. The ability to engage textually with the political issues of Egyptian society became part of the national ethos of modern citizenship; these textual interactions were encouraged within the classroom even as they were playing out in public debates. The following pages trace the popularization and professionalization of the writer category as a distinctive and constitutive feature of Egyptian modernity

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in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whereas the previous two chapters looked at the discourse, practices, and ambiguities associated with writing, this chapter puts those discussions in context by examining historical trajectories that fundamentally altered how writing was taught and deployed for public audiences. Central to this development was the notion of reform and renewal that characterized the great transformation that created the modern Middle East. In these crucial decades, many Egyptians came to believe that the political system, education, religion, the role of women, and even language itself needed to be revitalized and reformulated to meet the contingencies of a new national community—a community that could be protected from foreign intrusion even as it absorbed “outside” innovations. The modernization of the language, the focus on functional literacy rather than on linguistic mastery, and the idea of writing as a public and nationalistic duty all made the notion of writing for, and about, the public good an integral part of the modern Egyptian engagement with language and society. Before beginning this investigation, a word needs to be said about educational spaces and their role in the reproduction of societal structures. It is easy, perhaps too easy, to envision all the ways in which state schooling can create disciplinary regimes for students and ultimately reproduce, not transform, structural inequalities.5 Indeed, the focus on subjects such as literacy, hygiene, and national civics in many schools served a very particular social purpose: to create healthy, loyal citizens. However, schooling in this era was far from a monolithic entity, and the teaching of reading and writing was particularly diverse. Indeed, the students who are the subject of this chapter hailed from a range of private, government, and religious schools; their socialization into gendered public literacies was not necessarily centrally coordinated or government-sponsored. Rather, their education and the inducements to engage in public debates about social issues represented a wide range of ideological perspectives that reflected heterogeneous approaches and uses of public forms of literacies. In the interplay between institutional imperatives and individual student agency, literacies that were deployed in schools seldom stayed there.6 Furthermore, despite their high aspirations, schools of all types faced the rather thorny reality that classroom instruction did not always live up to their own ideals. The pedagogical plans described in this chapter were far from perfect or complete. The complications inherent in creating “properly” literate citizens by way of schooling were, as they still are today, difficult to resolve. In spite of a kind of language instruction that

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in many ways sought to enforce a particular linguistic ideal, the outcome was anything but predetermined.

The Nahḍa, Schools, and the Making of Modern Egypt The period from the 1860s to the years leading up to the Second World War lies at the heart of an era known as the Arab nahḍa. A word that means renaissance, revival, or awakening, nahḍa has been applied to the various political, social, religious, and cultural transformations that centered around the major urban centers of the present-day Arab Middle East.7 Cities such as Beirut, Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus experienced a cultural revival in Arabic literary production—one that drew both on a renewed interest in examining classical Arab history and on the new intellectual influences that swept the region in the wake of Western imperialism. The surge of journalism enterprises, the increased ubiquity of printed materials, transportation and communication innovations, expanded educational opportunities, and the growing significance of these urban centers to national and transnational cultural movements all fueled a heady environment of inquiry, innovation, and reappraisal. The result was a search within the political, religious, social, and linguistic realms for a type of modern authenticity: “authentic” in terms of being true to an imagined ideal of a glorious Arab past, and “modern” in the ability to function within the new exigencies of the colonial and protonational moment. In Egypt, heated debates about where to draw the line between these two somewhat contradictory impulses were premised on the idea that the right practices and structures—be they political, religious, social, or linguistic—were the means by which the national collective could access the riches of the modern world while remaining true to the essential nature of Egyptian-ness. For scholars looking back at this period as well as for the people living through it, the idea of a modern selfhood looms large as the definitive feature of the nahḍa. In academic works, starting with the likes of George A ­ ntonius’s 1938 The Arab Awakening, the story of the nahḍa has generally been seen through the prism of positivist modernization, with the particular efflorescence of the nahḍa as a stepping-stone between a “backward,” traditional past and a modern future defined along Western lines.8 In this framework, the overriding narrative of Middle Eastern modernity is defined by the derivative nature of nahḍa political, religious, and literary projects based on Western models, and by the inevitability of the nation-state as the ultimate expression of communal interest. Many Egyptian intellectuals from this period reflected

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a preoccupation with very fixed ideas about progress and modernity. For these thinkers and writers, to be modern was to embody the articulated values of nahḍa authenticity: middle-class, educated, worldly, urban, civic-minded, and increasingly nationalistic. Academics have begun to reexamine the implications of this model of modernity for the Middle East, and the distortions it can introduce into our understanding of the past.9 Of particular importance for this discussion is the insight provided by Samah Selim and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi that the nahḍa and its effects were contingent rather than inevitable and represented one of many possible outcomes.10 Indeed, the nahḍa had a profoundly disciplinary nature, defining a particular ideal of modernity to the exclusion of all others. In a telling example, Selim points to the elite attitude of this period that regarded “vulgar” forms of fiction and translation as corrupting not only to the language but also to Egyptian authenticity. In defining the boundaries of acceptable Arabic usage, Arabic language proponents often reiterated their vision of a “proper” Egyptian modernity—one that privileged “a kind of domestic composite of the authentic (native) Muslim, middle-class Egyptian.”11 So why and how did this particular vision of Egyptian modernity win out over all others? The catalysts most often credited with shaping and spreading this renaissance were the “new elites,” or the effendiyya class of Egyptian society. A ­ lthough these individuals often hailed from society’s middle strata, what made this group “elite” was its members’ aspirations not only to “social mobility, but more importantly, to passages from non-modernity to modernity in its many forms.”12 The effendiyya were the subset of educated Egyptians who saw themselves, and have been portrayed by historians, as the purveyors of modern sensibilities, middle-class values, revolutionary ideals, nationalist movements, and reformist agendas.13 In sum, they were the self-proclaimed makers of modern Egypt. They embodied in their education, consumption, practices, and moral compass everything the modern Egyptian was supposed to be.14 As Stephen Sheehi has put it, “In short, they claimed proprietorship over the concepts and problematics of modernity. The modernity that many see as absent in the Arab world was in fact institutionalized through their intellectual activity, political praxis, and writing practice.”15 New educational opportunities were central to the growth and genesis of the effendiyya. The history of these opportunities can be traced through a series of educational interventions. The first set of educational reforms, implemented by Mehmet ‘Ali in the 1820s and 1830s, sent enterprising young Egyptian s­ tudents

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to various European capitals to learn and then reappropriate the “modern” expertise of the Western world to support ‘Ali’s burgeoning state needs. The graduates of these educational missions are credited with forming “the first intelligentsia of modern Egypt.”16 ‘Ali also founded several state-sponsored schools that sought to augment the knowledge gained from these missions and to provide local opportunities to train his state and military bureaucracy. A second set of interventions was implemented during the reign of ‘Ali’s grandson, Khedive Isma‘il (r. 1863–1879). One of Isma‘il’s first moves was to reinstitute the Ministry of Education, and over the next fifteen years this bureaucracy oversaw an expansion of the state-run segment of the Egyptian educational system by bringing the local kuttābs under government control and opening a whole host of other schools, ranging from primary schools to institutions for specialized higher education. By the end of Isma‘il’s rule in 1879, his government had overseen a more than tenfold increase in educational spending, and the number of schools under government funding had swelled from 185 to 4,817. These new schools, their scions, and their private sector counterparts were modeled (at least in theory) on Western secular education, and they have been credited with producing a new class of educated Egyptians who populated the nahḍa and all of its concomitant projects.17 Though this focus on government schools and on the “new elites” they produced is not inconsequential, it tends to ignore two very important segments of the educational sector: private schools and religious education, both of which had a big stake in the language debates of the era. As a result of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and the financial constraints it subsequently imposed, government spending on education slowed to a trickle over much of the next three decades. Yet the demand for educational opportunities did not wane, and private enterprises of all sorts were more than willing to fill the need. European and American missionary schools, which had been present since the mid-­nineteenth century, redoubled their efforts. Local communities of Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Armenians expanded their community schools. Nationalist groups, Muslim and Coptic welfare societies, and private individuals began an array of educational projects. Yet the single largest educational setting remained the “traditional” elementary kuttābs, which had enrollments of nearly four hundred thousand students by World War I. A snapshot of the number of schools and their enrollments in 1875, near the height of Isma‘il’s efforts, and in 1914 to 1915 show several interesting phenomena (see Table 3.1). First, over the course of this forty-year period, both the

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TA B L E 3 . 1 .   Schools and Students, 1875 versus 1915 Notably, while the number of schools kept roughly apace with the population growth over this period, the number of students attending these schools increased at a much higher rate.

Number of Schools Type of School

1875

1914– 1915

Percent Change

Number of Students 1875

1914– 1915

Government ministries

35

66

4,375

14,803

Provincial Councils or with subsidies

—

134

­—

14,333

Private, local or Egyptian

15

609

2,188

65,124

Missionary or foreign

74

307

7,450

44,400

4,696

7,596

112,047

382,287

348

15,347

22,196

141,407

543,143

Kuttābs Theological schools (primary and up) Total

41* 4,824

9,060

87.8%

Percent Change

284%

source: Data from Amīn Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr fī Sanatay 1914 wa-1915 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1917), 32 and Appendix 2: Table D. *  The 1875 school statistics counted only the higher institutions of religious learning while listing nearly 13,000 students without corresponding schools. These students were probably associated with various schools sponsored or supported by major theological institutions. These sponsored schools seem to have been added back into the 1914–1915 numbers and likely account for the large jump in primary and secondary schools that “appear” in the 1914–1915 enumeration of theological schools without a matching jump in enrollment.

­ opulation and the number of schools in Egypt roughly doubled.18 Over the p same period, however, the number of students in schools grew nearly fourfold, twice the rate of population growth. This increase corroborates the general sentiment of the time that although new schools were opening all the time, demand far outpaced supply. Second, though government schools still set the standard in many cases for elite education, they were educating a paltry number of students relative to their private and religious counterparts. With almost fifteen thousand students, or even thirty thousand when schools run or subsidized by local Provincial Councils are included, government schools were turning out fewer students than any other type of educational setting other than specialized theological schools.19 Finally, the most dynamic segment of the educational sector was undoubtedly the private (ahlī) schools that were opening under the sponsorship of private individuals and community groups (religious, secular, and nationalist). These private enterprises positioned themselves as servants of the Egyptian community, filling in where religious and

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government institutions were failing. By 1915 these private schools accounted for nearly as many students as missionary, foreign, and government schools combined. Providing educational opportunities was framed as a civic duty for those who wished to refashion or reform society. Schools and schooling were undoubtedly central to the transformations of this period. By 1915, government reports estimated that 24 to 29 percent of school-age boys and roughly 6 percent of girls were getting some form of formal education.20 However, increased schooling by itself does little to explain the emergence of the nahḍa vision of Egyptian modernity. Schools were indeed important, but not because some were more secular, Western, or “enlightened” than others, or because some were more “modern” than the ubiquitous “traditional” models. Rather, public literacies played a crucial role in how language and education were mobilized for the modern Egyptian nahḍa venture. Ultimately, what differentiated late nineteenth-century Egyptian schooling from previous educational projects was the unrelenting focus on basic, functional literacy based on a simplified style of Arabic. But that was not all. Writing itself took on a new meaning as schools prepared students to engage in a new type of civic writing about the issues deemed in the “public interest.” In particular, the private schools that fueled much of the growth during this period led the way. Often founded in opposition to or as a critique of the prevailing political and social currents of the day, these schools had a particular stake in inculcating specific social and political stances in their young students. This shift in the purpose and necessity of writing for public audiences was the defining education “difference” introduced during this period. It allowed the “new elites” and their not-so-elite counterparts to learn, rehearse, and reinforce behaviors that would allow them to engage in the “new” public discourses of their age.

Creating a Modern Language Language played a unique role in nahḍa-era projects, “as an instrument of modernization and as the object of modernization itself.” 21 At its most technical, the modernization of Arabic revolved around linguistic interventions regarding the use of words, the simplification of style, and the incorporation of new terminology into the written lexicon.22 The result was a literary Arabic that was more accessible, as epitomized in the “new” Arabic of Egyptian newspapers and journals. However, as an instrument of modernization, Arabic also seemed to offer much promise to the would-be reformers of society. For

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nationalist thinkers concerned with the political fortunes of Egypt, the power of language to “awaken the mind of Egypt” became “one of the most abiding themes in Egyptian nationalism.”23 The influence of these literary changes and communal aspirations were compounded by the new economic opportunities opening up for literate Egyptians as low-level bureaucrats in the government, as professionals in fields such as law, as writers for journals and newspapers, and as teachers for schools at all levels of education.24 In light of these changes, a growing consensus among Arabic speakers called for a new, modern way to teach Arabic to the growing ranks of the educated. Journals that focused on literary topics led the charge in advocating for a modern Arabic language for a modern world. The alternative was bleak. The journal al-Jami‘a warned that if Arabic was not modernized, the Arab nation would be “shackled to the past like a blind person”25 and mired in “intellectual, moral, and social backwardness.”26 Jurji Zaydan’s al-Hilal became a strong supporter of Arabic reform, insisting that “every age has its own way of writing that is well suited to its people.”27 Both journals argued that the traditional titans of Arabic literature had always been partial to the simple and clear prose that they were now advocating.28 Government officials in the Ministry of Education echoed these sentiments, viewing reform as no less than the savior of Arabic: “It is necessary to change the old way that was used in teaching this language. It is necessary to leave the method that has made its learning difficult and in its stead we must use a method to save [Arabic] from its demise in the schools.”29 Even the religious journal al-Manar welcomed changes to the way of teaching Arabic.30 Schools were a unique testing ground for these innovations. Although a true mass education system was still a relatively distant prospect, the push for literacy at all levels meant that educators needed to create teaching materials to cater to schools (private and public) that wished to produce readers and writers on a large scale. This is an important point. The mass production of readers and writers of the Arabic language had simply never been attempted before, and schools began in earnest to rise to the challenge. Starting in 1887, the Ministry of Education commissioned several textbooks on Arabic grammar and language that attempted to simplify complicated rules, divide the subject into lessons, and incorporate various practice exercises.31 Over the next quarter-­ century, Arabic-language instructional textbooks were the single largest category of commissioned works among all school subjects.32 The 1913 curriculum for the Khidiwiyya Teachers College listed the following crucial influences

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on  the “state of contemporary Arabic language”: the language of the news­ papers, the use of translations, the reform of orthography, and the teaching of school composition.33 In a list that includes some of the signature linguistic reforms of the nahḍa era, the inclusion of “school composition” (al-inshā’ fī ­al-madāris) may seem a bit out of place. While linguistic debates raged between the titans of Arabic language reform, what was going on in schools to warrant their compositions such an influential role in the development of Arabic? ­Although the anonymous authors of the Khidiwiyya Teachers College curriculum did not elaborate, it was an astute addition. The simplified Arabic of the nahḍa and that of the classroom were meant to work in tandem toward the goal of making written Arabic more palatable to the “modern” literate Egyptian: the textbook users, the newspaper readers, and the consumers and producers of personal and business texts. The time-honored guardian of the Arabic language, the al-Azhar teaching mosque, became a focal point of critique. In theory, the traditional study of Arabic was divided into twelve separate sciences that required years of commitment.34 However, even after this exhaustive training in rhetoric, grammar, style, and the like, there was no guarantee that a student would be able to compose written works.35 Two critiques of the Azhari system written by insiders Muhammad al-Halabi and Muhammad al-Zawahiri in the early part of the twentieth century single out this inability of Azhari graduates to function as writers in an increasingly literate world.36 Al-Halabi noted that even after spending years studying Arabic rhetoric (balāgha, literally “the study of eloquence”), students were not able to compose a basic treatise. He contended that focusing on the rules of rhetoric and the oddities of language precluded any real practical application of written literacy.37 Similarly, writing in 1904, al-Zawahiri criticized the writing style and ability of Azhari graduates, noting that they were a source of derision in many circles.38 Furthermore, in al-Zawahiri’s view, although writing was even more necessary in this era than it had been in others, “truthfully, many of the ‘ulamā’ do not know how to write a normal letter half as well as a student in primary school, and this is a shame.”39 Al-Zawahiri saw this lack of written engagement with the wider society as one of the major blights of Azhari education.40 After all, being able to write and communicate their ideas was of utmost importance because the written word has the ability to benefit many, far and wide. In essence, by not educating students in a way that allowed them to produce clear and effective texts and ideas, al-Azhar was failing not only its students but also society as a whole.

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Arabic instruction in the newer government-sponsored schools was consciously positioned in opposition to the “traditional approach” of institutions like al-Azhar. Starting in the 1880s, the Egyptian Ministry of Education viewed the reform of Arabic instruction as a way of breaking with the past.41 In practice, the Arabic language instruction of the early government school system, with its focus on reading and writing, was clearly based on French and English models.42 In making this switch, the entire structure of Arabic instruction and textbooks was rebuilt to accommodate beginner students and a year-by-year curriculum. Meanwhile, supporters of the new Arabic teachers’ college, Dar al-‘Ulum, hoped that it would serve as a modern alternative to al-Azhar and be a force for reforming the Arabic language.43 A 1917 assessment of Dar al‘Ulum summarized modern reforms to Arabic instruction as follows: “to make this language, which is the language of the country, easy for the novice and the student so that they do not spend a lot of time in learning what is absolutely necessary for speech and writing.”44 In pursuit of this goal, Dar al-‘Ulum was to provide the teachers who would spread a new, simplified style of Arabic instruction to schoolchildren.45 The literacy of religious education was clearly framed as problematic: it was a literacy that took years to master, that was studied along with a retinue of linguistic subjects, and that resulted in a style too cumbersome and turgid for the modern world. In practice, Arabic instruction in government schools did not live up to its own ideals and was often the subject of criticism on two fronts. On the one hand, some of the critiques leveled at government schools echoed those regarding al-Azhar—mainly that its teachers of Arabic represented an antiquated brand of pedagogy. For example, the opposition that Nabawiyya Musa faced to become one of the first female instructors of Arabic in government schools in the early 1900s was based not merely on her gender but also on her linguistic affinity to the clear, simplified Arabic of the nahḍa era. Although she confronted stiff opposition from Dar al-‘Ulum teachers on both the linguistic and the gender fronts, ironically, due to their poor writing abilities—certainly by Musa’s standards—these male teachers were not able to articulate their complaints in writing.46 Thus Musa won the right to teach a style that she saw as focused on “the connotation, style, and correct usage of words instead of spending time explaining inane linguistic analyses.”47 On the other hand, some observers viewed Arabic instruction in government schools as too vocational, at the expense of true language literacy. A ­ l-Halabi saw the advantages of distilling Arabic instruction into lessons that could be

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taught in a matter of months rather than years.48 However, he maintained that these terse lessons could not be internalized as easily as more traditional sorts of instruction. The students of the “new” Arabic lessons became little more than parrots, very good at repeating exactly what was in their textbooks, but without the ability to extrapolate or benefit from what they had learned.49 The textbooks themselves were also problematic. According to their critics, they tended to err on the side of simplicity at the expense of good style. How were schools going to produce writers if students were reading only uncomplicated, dull writing?50 These criticisms underscore the problems that faced Arabic literacy instruction when the theoretical met reality. Despite triumphalist assertions that Arabic would pave the way to national and regional revival, the modernization of Arabic and its pedagogy was no simple task. The issues surrounding the incorporation of new terminology, the lack of vowel markings in Arabic script, and colloquial and foreign influences vexed reformers who debated—and indeed continue to debate—the best solutions to the difficulties intrinsic to Arabic language instruction.51 Thus, although there was general consensus that Arabic needed to be reformed, there was no agreement on how to achieve this goal. Educational institutions, tasked with creating an increasingly literate Egyptian populace, were at the crossroads of these debates. They needed to foster a functional literacy for the majority of Egyptians while retaining the linguistic essence, beauty, and yes, complexity of the language.

Dhawqī and Functional Literacy To understand just how radical and difficult a task reformers had given to schools, one needs to get a sense of the previous educational practices, particularly when it came to teaching writing. Whereas reading, as we have seen, was a relatively widespread skill, writing was for the select few, largely due to the notion that writing was a cultivated, creative endeavor. Put simply, until this era, writing was seen as more art than skill. For many, becoming a true adīb (man of letters) was a lifelong pursuit that relied on a deep understanding of dhawq (good taste). The process of learning to write properly, as described by Arabic scholar Husayn al-Marsafi at the end of the nineteenth century, was intrinsically labor intensive. To learn Arabic, one had not only to read but also to commit to memory as many examples of eloquent language as possible.52 Only by assimilating language through extensive exposure and rigorous memorization could one hope to speak and write well.53 One author of a manual on teaching writing acknowledged that although some aspects of the linguistic arts could

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be taught, the most difficult elements of writing—such as dhawq—could be obtained only by “studying the yellowed works of great writers, reading the inhalations [anfās] of the eloquent, and taking them as an example.”54 In fact, just as Sufis used the term dhawq to describe direct or experiential knowledge of the divine, writers claimed that experiential knowledge of the written word was the truest means to achieving good linguistic taste.55 Some authors made explicit the comparison between the spiritual science of Sufism (taṣawwuf ) and rhetoric (balāgha). According to al-Zawahiri, the art of linguistic eloquence could not be taught; rather, like spiritual pursuits, it had to be realized through experience. It was not unlike sensing the sweetness of honey by tasting it.56 The traditional notion that memorization was an important means of developing the proper Arabic dhawq wielded considerable influence on educational programs. In commenting on Azhari education, ‘Abdallah Nadim made the case that those who had memorized the Qur’an had at their fingertips the most eloquent material, lexicon, and writing style available.57 In a similar vein, writer Muhammad al-Muwaylihi suggested in 1893 that in order to embody and assimilate the talent (malaka) to write, students not only needed to know the mechanics of language but also had to read and memorize copious amounts of poetry.58 Though it may seem counterintuitive, al-Muwaylihi suggested that schoolchildren be taught to write by being given a reader of poetry to memorize. In this way, the traditional process of assimilation could be used to cultivate the proper sense of language necessary for writing. Indeed, booklets of “memorization passages” (maḥfūẓāt) became a mainstay of modern Arabic instruction, in contrast to the English and French curricula in Egyptian schools.59 Similarly, a private school established in 1911 made clear its commitment to Arabic instruction by advertising the reliance on “many memorized passages, in poetry and prose, to develop in students the proper Arabic dhawq.”60 Needless to say, many kuttābs and religious schools also continued to use Qur’anic memorization as a foundation of language literacy. However, even as this dhawqī literacy continued to influence Arabic instruction, resources were increasingly dedicated to creating more streamlined ways of educating schoolchildren. In line with the particularly utilitarian bent of literacy advocates, the educational system was geared toward creating students who could become basic users—and not necessarily connoisseurs—of language. This functional kind of literacy, which would provide students with the ability to conduct everyday reading and writing tasks, was deemed well suited to large-scale educational projects. Even the art of handwriting was

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weighed against its service to functional literacy goals. In government schools, handwriting exams that required students to master multiple scripts were phased out in 1922 because “the purpose of secondary school is not to turn out skilled calligraphists. . . . Rather, what is needed of these students is that they have the ability to write clearly and legibly and that their letters are of a good quality.”61 Insofar as education had a functional benefit, it could be justified and encouraged. This functionalist ethos also influenced the contours of language instruction itself. The most striking such change was in the structure of language education in schools and the introduction of new language courses. Traditional language education began with the reading (and sometimes writing) of the Qur’an and culminated in the detailed study of specialized texts on the advanced sciences of grammar, syntax, rhetoric, poetic meter, and the like. However, schools of all types were increasingly moving toward offering general language classes (often named simply lugha ‘arabiyya) that focused on basic literacy and sought to holistically introduce students to the Arabic language. In the government primary schools, “Arabic language” classes for first-year students focused on learning the letters, reading, and dictation.62 Topics such as basic grammar, memorization of texts, and composition were added gradually. Students at Dar al-‘Ulum received more extensive Arabic instruction, based largely on the traditional sciences associated with Arabic, with the important additions of reading, composition, dictation, and handwriting.63 For schools steeped in traditional education, reform laws like the one enacted in 1908 that sought to introduce “new sciences” to al-Azhar and other religious institutions presented a particular challenge.64 A report on the religious schools associated with the Council of Religious Scholars of Alexandria highlighted the problem created by what they called the “modern sciences”—not physics or chemistry but rather general language (lugha) and composition (inshā’ ).65 Ironically, a religious educational institution that prided itself on the preservation of the Arabic language reported difficulty in finding teachers able to teach these basic writing and language classes. They finally resorted to bringing together their own materials and following the curriculum of their government counterparts. Although the traditional model of Arabic instruction provided them with ample tools for language transmission and instruction, they were unprepared to offer “modern” Arabic language and composition courses. The evaluation processes central to modern educational systems also relied heavily on written exams that were alien to more traditional settings. The

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new bureaucratic systems of government education were conceived of in a completely textual manner; they could function only by way of written exams, diplomas, and certifications. Within the exam systems of these government schools, the complex constellation of Arabic sciences was condensed into two types of evaluations: a written composition (inshā’ taḥrīrī) followed by an oral examination on grammar.66 Only students who had a passing score on the composition section were allowed to enter the oral exam.67 In contrast, at the alAzhar, teachers traditionally conducted all exams (official and unofficial) orally. Criticism of this oral and ad-hoc system was one among many denunciations leveled at methods of traditional education. Some of the many reform laws directed at al-Azhar around the turn of the century included provisions to introduce examinations that were not only regularly administered but also written.68 However, when written assessments were finally instituted at al-Azhar in 1911, something of a debacle was created, because students were not trained in this “new science” of writing and had a difficult time adapting to the exam format.69 Not only Arabic instruction but also the very medium of evaluation was being shaped by the new demands of a functional written literacy. In addition to making these structural changes, schools also strove to make the content of Arabic instruction as “practical” as possible. The official government curriculum, upon which many private schools also relied, specified which grammar rules were to be taught each year, how many lines of dictation were to be given to students, and what sections of textbooks were to be read. All material was designed to “familiarize the novice with contemplation, correct his impulses and inclinations, reform his habits, encourage seriousness, and accustom them to orderliness in their words and deeds.”70 With regard to writing, composition topics were geared to “help in daily matters.”71 Toward this end, the primary school curriculum of 1900 suggested writing assignments that described objects, summarized readings, explained poetry or proverbs, depicted famous men, or were sample letters.72 Writing and reading were to explicitly avoid subjects like love and religious blasphemy.73 In a 1907 revamp of the Arabic curriculum for government school students, the Ministry of Education suggested that by the fourth year of primary school, students should be writing on “subjects of general knowledge, such as agriculture and trade.”74 More advanced students, destined to become Arabic teachers, were also encouraged to write on “useful” subjects such as “education, trade, agriculture, and other things that would enlighten the student and increase his knowledge of everyday matters.”75 By 1913, what was “useful” was specified to include administrative and private

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correspondences (for example, how to request a vacation or ask a father for additional spending money), short works on the benefits of government services, and much more.76 Literacies that were deemed “beneficial” for the new social and economic order of the country became inscribed in the educational blueprint of Arabic instruction. In this new calculus, traditional religious instruction and cultivating lifetime mastery of Arabic gave way to a functional, simplified, and systematic Arabic instruction that supported the social good. Pursuit of the latter, as we shall see in the final chapter of this book, was not easy to achieve.

From Scribes to Writers:77 The Art of Inshā’ The interest in promoting this new brand of functional literacy reflected the changing demographics of students and the uses of writing. Traditionally, the “masters of the pen,” or arbāb al-aqlām, had been the religious scholars, bureaucrats, elites, and a smattering of tradesmen and others with personal or professional interests in reading and writing. Throughout the Muslim world, an elite group of “men of letters” (udabā’, sing. adīb) were a continual influence on literary and popular culture, and many writers, such as al-Jahiz from the ninth century, Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century, and al-Jabarti in the late eighteenth century, used fiction, letters, history, and travel writing as vehicles for social commentary. However, what made the turn of the century unique was the systematic training that young students were receiving in literacy and in the practices of reading and writing. Rather than relying on the lifetime mastery or exceptional talent of a few, the state, educational institutions, and parents expected a growing number of students to graduate with the ability to write and comment on their society. In the premodern world, the profession most closely and exclusively associated with writing was that of the kātibs, the scribes and secretaries who composed letters, official documents, and various literary works within both state and private settings.78 However, by the late nineteenth century, the designation kātib shifted and came to refer no longer to the scribal professions but rather to a new nebulous category of general “writer.” In A Period of Time, originally published in serial form between 1898 and 1902, Muhammad al-Muwaylihi uses word play and the changing meaning of the word kātib to highlight the difference between his two main characters: a contemporary narrator named ‘Isa ibn Hisham and an early nineteenth-century “ghost” called the Pasha. The narrator introduces himself to the resurrected Pasha as a kātib, meaning a writer and

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author in contemporary parlance.79 However, the nature of this “profession” seems to escape the early nineteenth-century Pasha: Ghost  Well then, secretary ‘Īsā, where’s your inkwell and notebook? ‘Īsā ibn Hishām  I’m not a secretary in the Treasury or Secretariat, I’m an author. Ghost  Never mind! Go then, my good author, and look for my clothes and bring me my horse . . .80

The narrator’s protestations that he is not just a secretarial scribe but rather a kātib munshi’, literally a “writer/creator,” seem to escape the Pasha. In fact, it is precisely because the resurrected Pasha mistakes the narrator for a “lowly” secretary that their unlikely companionship begins. Meanwhile, to the audience, the implications are clear. Only an author—and not a scribe—could be the audience’s guide through the story that unfolds, spinning the tale of their encounters, turning a critical eye to social norms and mores, and finally publishing the pair’s escapades for a newspaper. The professionalization of writing as a new public format came in many forms. Dyala Hamzah and Anne-Laure Dupont have noted how the category of “writer” evolved for newspapermen such as Rashid Rida and Jurji Zaydan, of al-Manar and al-Hilal respectively. Each man came to view his work and its relationship with a wide public audience through the new lens of “writer,” and they came to see themselves as individuals with a civic duty to convey their critiques of society through the medium of journalism.81 During this period, a parallel transformation occurred in the field of history writing as historians began utilizing in their craft new formats and semantic fields about progress, nationalism, and political modernity.82 Beyond journalists and historians, the new “writers” of the era came to include storytellers, teachers, schoolchildren, homemakers, and anyone who was deemed literate. The art of inshā’, so long associated with scribal pursuits, became normalized in schools, the press, and private homes as an everyday practice for public life. Even as the category of “writer” shifted, the art of composition itself was transformed in two fundamental ways. First, the skills of reading and writing became a function of their social and economic benefits and, as such, were pursued in the most “practical” way possible. In his study on premodern letter writing, Adrian Gully notes that “one of the ways in which letter-writing from the 19th century onwards differed from that of the Middle Ages was that it attempted to promote practicality rather than formality, and it drew less and less on the principles of communicative eloquence, in the context of which it had

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been taught for many centuries.”83 This was in fact true for most of the literacy practices that touched Egyptian society. In this light, the Arabic sciences associated with advanced studies became subsumed by a newly reengineered art of inshā’ designed for the Arabic beginner. In the process, a second change occurred that affected what these new “writers” would compose. Inshā’ instruction, which for so long had centered on private and bureaucratic communication and record keeping, shifted to more public expressions of written sentiment. One way to trace these shifts in the practice of inshā’ is to outline the changes that occurred in pedagogical literature of the era. Before the late nineteenth century, inshā’ instructional literature was characterized by manuals of style, often replete with examples of how to address rulers, colleagues, and friends, as well as sample documents such as contracts, petitions, and other potentially useful texts.84 Although strictly instructional materials did exist, the majority of inshā’ works were aimed at a professional class of scribes and scholars.85 For example, the early nineteenth-century book on inshā’ written by Azhari reformer Hasan al-‘Attar (d. 1835) was one of the first works published by the Egyptian government press, with numerous reprintings throughout the rest of the century.86 Although al-‘Attar was an early innovator in reviving and reforming the Arabic language, his work borrowed from the style of classical writing manuals.87 His collection comprised examples of how to address various groups of people, in a style rife with poetry, rhyming prose, proverbs, and other literary “adornments.” Reflecting the patronage patterns of the early nineteenth century, he addressed his book to those who were scholars of the literary arts or in the service of rulers.88 He ended the book with a short section on record keeping and official documents for various kinds of settings, from establishing business contracts to conducting a marriage.89 In this construction of the subject of writing, communication and recordkeeping were the primary uses of inshā’. Gathering witty words and phrases, protocols, and examples in one place made his book one of the many resources available to those who had already studied the linguistic sciences of Arabic. Learning to write this type of inshā’ was not for the novice. Al-‘Attar’s work and most other inshā’ literature had been composed by scholars or scribes writing for other educated readers, but by the end of the nineteenth century a new type of inshā’ author emerged: the schoolteacher. The textbooks and pedagogical guides they created did not assume a background in formal Arabic study (through Qur’anic elementary education or otherwise) and did not focus exclusively on letter writing or official documents. Rather,

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these teachers were interested in cultivating writing skills in classroom settings, among young students who had little or no experience in the sciences of ­Arabic. On the one hand, these textbooks represented an inversion of traditional language education, in which the art of composition grew out of experience and years of study. In the new language classes, basic literacy was a central goal of Arabic instruction and the skills of reading and writing dominated from the earliest years. On the other hand, these works also had a deeply practical bent; they were, after all, created specifically for the school setting and, as such, reflected institutional goals. As a result, they served to both educate and mold a younger, more impressionable class of writer. One, if not the first, such “modern” textbook was produced in Beirut in 1884 by Sa‘id al-Shartuni, a teacher in a Catholic school.90 Al-Shartuni drew from traditional inshā’ works in his extensive use of examples and his focus on epistolary and contractual documents. However, unlike previous works, he addressed his work directly to students, citing the need to teach writing skills to young children.91 He also explicitly made the point that his work was meant to tackle the “needs of the day,” asserting the necessity to communicate simply, clearly, and with as much brevity as possible.92 His 1899 work Kitab al-Mu‘in fi Sina‘at al-Insha’ delved even deeper into the pedagogical issues of Arabic instruction, with student exercises, composition assignments, and mock scenarios.93 In Egypt a similar movement was under way. In a further departure from traditional inshā’ manuals, in 1889 an Arabic teacher in the government school system named Muhammad Diyab created his own textbook called Kitab alInsha’ (The Book of Composition) to teach writing.94 Rather than focusing on examples of inshā’ or advanced linguistic concepts, Diyab dedicated his work to what he called “theoretical” inshā’ and the most basic elements of composition.95 He began the textbook with advice on how to think through a writing project: mainly extensive reading, contemplation, constructing ideas, and having a clear thesis.96 He suggested that ideas “are nourished by a lot of reading, re-reading, mixing with honorable people, and spending time with many good books, precious essays, and exemplary speeches. For that gives birth to new ideas.”97 To the student ready to write, Diyab offered advice on the proper choice of words and phrases, common mistakes, and so on. Only then did he turn to a quick overview of the linguistic science of balāgha, with examples of rhetorical uses and devices.98 Interestingly, when it came to letter writing, Diyab basically disavowed everything that had made Hasan al-‘Attar’s Insha’

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popular. Like al-Shartuni, Diyab cautioned against overly ornate letters filled with fancy idioms or words and phrases borrowed from older works. Rather, writers should be clear in their expressions, direct in their intent, and provide only relevant information.99 In this inshā’ work, the linguistic sciences and rhetorical devices were in service of the art of composition and the goal of expression. Diyab ended his book with several sections directed to teachers on how to teach writing in the school setting. In the initial years of schooling, he acknowledged, the writing of compositions might be too advanced for young students. Rather, the teacher should encourage the students “to speak and express what is in their soul.”100 For older students, Diyab suggested a series of exercises involving everything from descriptions of places and events to imagining the end of a story or the feelings of a person in a particular situation.101 He even offered advice on how to grade papers and assign homework.102 When it came to education in the secondary schools, Diyab presented a decidedly functional vision of writing instruction, much in line with the interests of the government schools he served. He advised teachers to be aware that “the purpose of this school is to prepare young men for administrative jobs in the government, so [the teacher] should assign compositions relevant to the situation of the country.”103 As for the higher-level schools, each instructor should provide students with assignments pertinent to their future fields of employment in, for example, medicine, engineering, law, or education.104 Ultimately, Diyab’s work represented a deep interest in pedagogy on the part of teachers who were training a new generation of schoolchildren, but always with the overarching goal of socializing students in the literacies of their future professions. Other schoolteachers also took up the pen to expound on the best ways to impart the ability to write onto a new generation of schoolchildren. In a particularly interesting example from 1894, a teacher in both the Azhari and government school systems, Muhammad al-Najjar, gathered his knowledge of writing into one book that he called al-Tiraz al-Muwashsha fi Sina‘at al-Insha’ (The Beautiful Model of Composition). In the process he produced a work that in many ways drew from the traditional study of language, in both style and content. Like many educators before him, he focused on epistolary and literary examples. He reiterated the importance of studying the traditional sciences of language, from poetic meter to various stylistic forms. In his own writing, he used the high rhetoric and flowery language that betrayed his preference for classical, premodern Arabic. However, his book was also a striking departure

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from the centuries of inshā’ instructional literature, because he consciously positioned himself and his work in a “new age” within which the art of composition was reemerging as an important skill to be learned by schoolchildren, who were to become the next generation of “masters of the pen.”105 To accommodate these new consumers of Arabic instruction, al-Najjar cited a call made by the Egyptian Ministry of Education for scholars to produce more didactic works on the Arabic language, and he framed several sections of his book around topics that were of interest to students of the government primary and secondary schools.106 In a similar vein, Mustafa Falaki, an Arabic teacher in a French-run school in Zagazig, wrote a textbook called Madarij al-Irtiqa’ ila Sina‘at al-Insha’ (The Pathways of Perfection in Composition) that drew on Diyab’s work, among others.107 By the early twentieth century, a whole host of texts designed to teach various aspects of writing as well as reading were in circulation.108 All were geared toward creating a new generation of kātibs who would serve not as scribes but as “writers” in the more general sense.

Writing Beyond School The humble school composition was more than an exercise; it also often served as a training ground for students to later engage the larger social issues of their generation through the writing of articles and essays. As basic tools of expression, these inshā’s were used as a means to introduce students to wider “lessons” of social and national importance. Issues ranging from women’s education to national pride thus became essential parts of Arabic instruction pedagogy, encouraging students to use their writing for far more than bureaucratic reports, private letters, and business contracts. In the decade before the appearance of Qasim Amin’s The Liberation of Women, the issue of women in society had already “saturated” the Arabic press: “gender trouble could be found everywhere: on the front pages of daily newspapers, in magazine features, in back-page reports on everyday events and crime, through poetry (formal and colloquial), in novels (translated or not) and in biography.”109 Similarly, even as it was making its way into literature and the general-audience press, the “women question” was also already a legitimate subject of school discourse. The earliest example is perhaps ‘Ali Mubarak’s 1868 Arabic-language reader, Tariq al-Hija’ wa-l-Tamrin ‘ala ­al-Qira’a fi al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya (Spelling and Lessons on Reading in Arabic).110 Unlike other educational books that discussed pedagogy in general terms, this textbook was clearly designed as a reader for young schoolchildren.111 Its preface gave

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teachers precise directions on how to instruct students in reading and writing, from using chalkboards to organizing a classroom.112 The text started with individual letters, words, and phrases, and proceeded in the second part to short readings on topics such as love of country, the natural world, and the advancements of the current era. In a section on female education, Mubarak offered the following advice: Share with them [women] virtuous knowledge that is appropriate for their station. Moreover, train them in what they must know about properly raising children, sewing and embroidery, and good homemaking since all this increases their beauty, chastity, and perfection.113

The rest of the textbook continued to address male students in familiar “us” and “we” terms; women were clearly the “other” in this school milieu. “They” were to be taught, trained, and perfected by male students and the future patriarchs of Egyptian society. In a manner that reoccurs throughout schooled discourses on the “women question,” men were encouraged to write about ways in which to reform and improve the female “them.”114 Another example is al-Samir al-Saghir (1897–1900), a magazine aimed specifically at schoolchildren that often highlighted girls as the subjects of educational lessons. In one series of articles, a “good” girl, who was generous, patient, and hardworking, was contrasted with a “bad” girl, who was none of these things and was subsequently shunned by her peers.115 Furthermore, the future role of these girls as homemakers also received considerable attention. The magazine highlighted the work of Fransis Mikha’il, who had studied home economics from French works and authored several Arabic books on the topic.116 As a follow up, al-Samir al-Saghir held a writing contest open to all its readers on the following topic: how should the homemaker spend most of her time?117 The winning response, by a male student, enumerated in detail the duties of the proper housewife: she should keep herself busy organizing the home, ironing, and sewing clothes; she should not be lazy or sleep too much; if she has free time and the ability, she should read beneficial works and teach her children how to read; above all, she must be thrifty and avoid creating problems for her husband.118 On the whole, the magazine’s depiction of girls was much in line with the view that Qasim Amin would espouse only a year later: girls were to be the subjects of intensive schooling and moral education to prepare them to better serve their family and their country. These early examples set the stage for how the “newly educated,” mostly male (none of the responses I saw

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were authored by female writers) generation of schoolchildren was supposed to write for and about women.119 Meanwhile, pursuant to the goal to make reading and writing education “useful,” school curricula and instructional works began including other social issues in their suggestions for writing topics. In the 1913 curriculum for Dar al-‘Ulum, by the fifth year students were expected to write “articles” (maqālāt) on “social issues, like matters of home economics and the proper upbringing [tarbiya] of boys and girls.”120 Students at the Khidiwiyya Teachers College were also expected to be able to “describe in detail the state of the Arab nation from different perspectives.”121 Indeed, instructional literature also began including contemporary “articles” among their samples of writing. For example, a 1909 book dedicated to teaching the principles of writing, al-Qawl al-Muntakhab fi Sina‘at Insha’ al-‘Arab (The Chosen Word in Composing Arabic), contained a whole section on “composition topics and articles” in addition to the usual epistles, proverbs, and selections of poetry that were common in traditional inshā’ manuals. In the “articles” section, the author included short passages on a range of social issues, from the necessity of literary organizations to the benefits and drawbacks of bachelorhood.122 The issue of girls’ education is not neglected as a potential composition topic: a sample passage asserts that in order to become the future mothers and teachers of the next generation, girls needed to be educated and to receive good religious instruction. However, in pursuit of this education, young women should not “cross natural boundaries,” because their place was ultimately in the home.123 Instructional literature increasingly encouraged students to go well beyond the standard rubric of letters, contracts, and government reports by putting forth their opinions and writing about matters of public interest. The public interest advanced most persistently by instructional and school texts was the cultivation of nationalism and loyalty in the youngest members of society.124 One of the earliest staple texts of government-run elementary schools was a textbook called al-Fawa’id al-Fikriyya (The Fikri Maxims), originally published in 1882 and authored by then Minister of Education ‘Abdallah Fikri.125 The book contained a long section on “love of country,” within which Fikri made a rather impassioned plea for students to serve their country, spread education, and be wary of foreign intervention.126 The duty that students had toward their country was paramount: “As soon as a student understands good from evil, he must know the [nation’s] natural rights for the great advantages it has given. He must know he has a debt on his neck that

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he must repay over his whole lifetime, and that is serving the nation in any way he can.”127 Other early books on pedagogy published in Arabic emphasized the importance of nationalism for young students.128 In 1907, an official school course on “national upbringing” (tarbiya waṭaniyya) was introduced into government schools.129 By 1912, the inculcation of nationalism became an official “topic” of textbooks, such as Amin Wasif ’s Manahij al-Adab, that were explicitly modeled on Western “civics” courses designed for primary and secondary school students.130 In Wasif ’s textbook, the rights and responsibilities of students toward their government and nation are spelled out through dialogues, enumerated lists, and summaries.131 Included are writing exercises with questions like “How are the family and the nation similar?” and “Why are justice and goodness meaningless without the national collective (al-jam‘iyya al-waṭaniyya)?”132 The 1913 curriculum for higher-level schools suggested such composition topics as organization, orderliness, and obedience to the p ­ owers that be.133 Meanwhile, in the government educational system, the kind of literacy in which students would engage was state-approved and monitored: “outside” literature, particularly if it was deemed corrupting (politically, morally, or otherwise), was actively banned.134 Of course government schools were not the only educational institutions using literacy training to further written practices that they deemed were in the public interest. In a 1909 report, the Council of Religious Scholars of Alexandria described their efforts to incorporate inshā’, among other subjects, into their curriculum. Their goal for elementary schoolchildren was to get these students accustomed to writing “about general matters” by their fifth year in school.135 In their final exam, advanced elementary school students were asked to write a composition on “the place of the religious sciences in the social sphere and what is required to preserve it by peoples who care about felicity in this world and the next.”136 One of the exam questions for secondary school students was, “A people without righteousness are miserable. In opposition to the teaching of Islam with regard to the principles of culture and civilization, some of the Islamic nations have fallen behind in their civilization. What is your opinion in this matter . . . ?”137 Students were asked to expound in no fewer than ten lines on their vision of civilization, the decline of Islamic nations, and the role of religion in society. It was a tall order. However, it signaled to students that this was the kind of written discourse appropriate for graduates of this religious institution. How many students who had written essays on religion and society, women’s education, or the centrality of the nation went on to follow these debates in the

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national press, write a letter to an editor, or publish a written work expressing their own views? It is impossible to say. Unfortunately, students who did themselves become teachers or businesspeople, civil servants, journalists, homemakers, or a myriad of other professions generally did not identify their written production or their reading practices as an extension of their school work. However, there is at least one example. In 1907, a recent graduate by the name of Amir Ma‘mun al-‘Attar wrote a short work called Ayat al-Insha’ ­wa-Hikmat al-Munshi’in (The Model of Writing and the Wisdom of Writers). He dedicated his work to nationalist leader Mustafa Kamil, who had championed education and whose private boys’ school Amir had attended. Al-‘Attar consciously positioned his work “as the first production that has appeared from one of the students of [Kamil’s] majestic school.”138 The eclectic range of topics covered (more than sixty) and their relative brevity (usually no more than two short pages each) suggests the possibility that this publication was a revised version of al-‘Attar’s own classroom work. In fact, his book reads like a series of subjects that a teacher might assign: descriptions of places, letters between a father and son, the good character of famous figures in Islamic history, and so on. However, it also reflects the particular bent of a school founded by a nationalist figure. In addition to exploring the pervasive theme of strengthening the nation, al-‘Attar also touched on several education-related issues that were points of contention between Egyptian nationalists and the British administrators of the country—in particular the use of Arabic as the language of instruction in schools and the importance of adequate and affordable education.139 The most intriguing aspect of al-‘Attar’s work is the way in which he addressed other students and their future roles as producers of the written word. Al-‘Attar framed the act of writing and publishing this kind of a work as an obligation he owed his nation, his language, and the sons of his people.140 Spreading the knowledge of writing to even one student “who wishes to become a man of writing” was a skill that could in turn be taught to other students who could join the growing ranks of writers, poets, letter writers, and essayists.141 The scribal connotation of “writing” completely disappeared; students were now expected to compose for themselves in service of the nation and its people rather than to compose for others in service of parochial interests. In his closing advice on writing, al-‘Attar gave the standard recommendations to read and memorize works of great literature and study the mechanics of language. He also emphasized, however, that the basis of the art of composition was in “knowing the situations of the people, being aware of the events of the day and

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what goes on at night.”142 In other words, in order to become a writer who “is celebrated by his compatriots and whose writing is cherished by loved ones,”143 writers must be able to speak about the events surrounding them. Although al-‘Attar’s work is one example, it was probably not an isolated one. This particular student, excited with his new skill, had the means and connections to publish his first foray into writing.144 It is not inconceivable that many others also took their “writing” lessons to heart and began using their skills to articulate their views about the world around them. If the sheer volume of petitions written by individual and groups of students discussed in the next chapter is any indication, students were not shy about using their writing skills to complain about grades, school regulations, unfair exams, and unreasonable teachers. It stands to reason that these new cadres of schooled children impacted the wider discussions circulating in the Egyptian press. When they picked up a pen, they did so not as the scribes of old but as the “writers” of modern Egypt.

4

WRITING TO BE SEEN AND HEARD Petitions and Protests

I N E G Y P T , during the early decades of the twentieth century an era of public petitioning was coming into its own. The iconic 1919 Egyptian Revolution left an indelible mark on the national consciousness as a moment of communal expression, protest, and mobilization against the British Protectorate. But before Egyptians took to the streets in the aftermath of the Great War, villagers banded together to push for more resources from central authorities, Coptic groups requested more political autonomy, citizens organized telegram campaigns, and workers and students devised increasingly elaborate requests for access to government benefits or reprieve from perceived oppression. All of these groups chose “public literacy” practices to express their collective will. Well before discontent led to revolution, this new notion of writing for a wide audience was already becoming a social force in Egypt’s modern culture of petitioning and protest as Egyptians across the social spectrum were learning how to wield the written word in ever more potent and visible ways. It is striking that the visibility of these literacy practices was in marked contrast to the actual literacy rates of the era. By any measure, even accounting for the limitations of the censuses of the time, very few Egyptians were formally literate and those who were tended to be men living in major urban centers. In our historical narratives, it is the members of this educated subset of Egyptian society who were the patrons of the “literate arena” of the time—the newspapers, journals, correspondences, and official bureaucratic reports. It was they who ultimately made the anticolonial, nationalist, and various reformist

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movements so influential. Indeed, not surprisingly, historians have tended to privilege the agency of this educated class and their output since the remnants of these literate interactions are most readily visible in the historical record. However, Egyptians at the time were “seeing” much more than the formal engagement with the written word would suggest. Even as the educated few were expressing themselves and their interests in the new media, many more Egyptians were dictating their complaints to scribes, listening to newspapers, sending telegrams, and availing themselves of the expanding postal system even if they themselves were not “literate” in any official sense. By expanding the sphere of literacy to include this wider spectrum of engagements, public literacies become the domain of the literate, illiterate, and semiliterate alike. This expanded landscape of written expressions and its influence on a wide spectrum of Egyptian society allows us to trace the fundamental transformation in the way individuals interacted not only with the written word but also with the larger publics around them. By the early twentieth century, the practices associated with new public literacies created an opening to use the written word, in its multiple formulations, as a means to communicate, express oneself, and increasingly influence the political and social character of Egyptian society. In other words, new repertoires of protest and the way in which Egyptians were pushing the boundaries of the literate world reflect how public literacies were changing Egyptian society.

Semiprivate and Semipublic: Scribes, Petitions, and Telegrams At its most basic, literacy is a process of visual interaction. However, the linearity with which this process tends to occur in the modern world—one literate person sitting down to write/encode and another sitting down to read/ decode—belies its less tidy past. Throughout most of literate human history, neither the act of encoding nor the act of decoding were presumed to be private, or even strictly written, actions.1 This historical legacy is reflected in ­Arabic words like qara’a, which means both “to read” and “to recite,” implying that both reading a text and oral recitation are part of the same field of communication.2 In fact, some scholars studying literacy have looked at engagements with the written word as a hybrid set of interactions along a literacy continuum on which oral and written “spheres” of society are intermixed. Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was very much a hybrid-literate society.

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In Egypt, as in many societies with established literary traditions but limited official literacy, the technology of choice for writing was not pen and paper, lithography, or even the increasingly popular printing press: it was local scribes. Drawing from conventions detailed in numerous “writing manuals,” these scribes often had formal addresses, phrases, and rhetorical flourishes at the ready to draft letters, contracts, or other documents for almost any occasion.3 In addition to having these specialized skills, scribes were accessible and their expertise was relatively inexpensive to utilize. Individuals or groups could employ their services as quickly as the scribe could be located. And compared to the costs involved in printing, paying a scribe’s commission and supplies was certainly minimal. Scribal technology uniquely served the hybrid literacies of the age. A semi­ private method of creating a document, dictating to a scribe was a spoken exercise that could be spontaneous, overheard, and contributed to.4 Letters composed by groups were commonplace; communities would come together to quite literally voice their ideas while the designated writer applied the most appropriate words to paper.5 Once a group’s composition was completed, it might be passed along from person to person to allow each individual community member to leave his or her mark by way of a signature or a personal stamp known as a khatm (see Figure 4.1). The addition of numerous stamps to a single composition was a way to indicate group participation and consent to a letter that reflected their collective work. Even when the stamps and signatures themselves were illegible, they added visual heft to a letter. Who exactly composed, dictated, or penned the letter was rendered irrelevant by the wash of imprints made by the community. These transcribed texts occasionally showcased the bleed between the oral and visual worlds of which they were a part. An adept scribe could meld the conventionalisms of the Arabic language with the spoken dictation of his clients. However, it was not uncommon for the register of classical Arabic, with its formality, to slip into the more colloquial language as scribes undoubtedly hurried to transcribe the particulars of speech. For example, a 1911 petition from Jalila of Shibin al-Kum requesting land from the government to support her family displays just such a slippage.6 The request begins in the third person, with all the politesse expected of this format: “His Highness, our Lord, the great Khedive: Presenting to his Highness our Lord the Lady Jalila the daughter of Jirjis Sa‘d and wife of Suryal Jirjis. . . .”7 However, by the postscript, the tone and language shifts: “God has blessed us with a girl named Insaf, so do a kind thing [i‘mil ma‘rūf ] and respond to us quickly [ḥālan].” The colloquialisms of “doing

F IG U R E 4 . 1 .  

Handwritten Group Petition from Fāqūs, 1915

source: DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 483, “Iltimāsāt Ṭalaba,” Folder 7 (#0069–009413), letter from Fāqūs (June 15, 1915).

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a kind thing” as “quickly” as possible are certainly traces of Jalila’s spoken dictation to her scribe. The conversational, at times verbatim, accounts in the body of these petitions allow the voices of the petitioners to emerge. For Jalila and many others, scribes also operated as intermediaries between the “official” realms of the state and the populace.8 Individuals who wanted to have official documents prepared and submitted, notarized by official witnesses, or composed for official consumption often employed the services of a scribe, even if they themselves were literate. Since the rise of Islamic empires, bureaucracies have dealt with the requests of a diverse populace through various means, at times systematically and at other times on an ad-hoc basis.9 In this regard, petitioning the government for favors, exceptions, or relief was one of the major “public facing” functions of scribes, and one that seems to date from as long as we have had documentation in Arabic itself.10 In Egypt during the nineteenth century, the bureaucratization of the Egyptian government under Mehmet ‘Ali led to a large number of these petitions (by one estimate, at least one million) being recorded and, in some cases, preserved within Egyptian archives.11 Demographically, these documents represent a broad cross-section of society. The wealthy, the poor, students, parents, Muslims, Christians, Jews, villagers, and urbanites all turned to various government offices, if not to the ruler himself, for attention on a myriad of issues—from appeals for charity to complaints about the state of the country.12 One sample of 123 petitions seeking financial assistance between 1905 and 1906 highlights the participation of one group that is often relatively “silent” in other written records: women.13 Of these 123 petitions, 32 percent were penned on behalf of women and 64 percent on behalf of men, with the origins of five petitions indeterminate. Given the exceedingly low official literacy rates among women and the fact that female writers represented a tiny sliver of the literary output of the time, their percentage of participation in this type of written format was remarkably high. As the keepers of the age-old tradition of petitioning, scribes served as a type of writing technology that was available to all. For groups, petitioning was a useful way to express frustration, appeal for aide, or contest injustice. Throughout the nineteenth century it was not unheard of for professional guilds, students, and whole villages to draft petitions to local or national authorities.14 However, the “public” audience for these protests and petitions seeking assiatance was circumscribed by the very nature of the format. In most cases, these collaboratively composed and handwritten petitions represented parochial interests that were often

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geographically limited and sent by people from the same village or place of work. In some cases these requests signified the first in a series of negotiations between the state and local communities, with the petitions and their responses focused largely on the specifics of practical governance.15 Despite their communal aspects, group petitions were definitely created for bureaucratic consumption. In this sense, and despite their possible broader appeal, these petitions served a very localized semipublic (or semi­private) audience of composers, listeners, and readers. By the mid-nineteenth century, new technologies augmented this liminal space of semipublic literacy production and consumption. The most direct parallel with scribal technology in its confluence of the oral and written was the new format of wired telegraphy.16 Unlike semaphoric or optical telegraphy, in which a telegraph tower would signal the next tower over with wooden arms, the new wired telegraphy of the 1850s allowed operators to send short bursts of electricity over cable lines to be decoded at the other end. In Egypt, the first lines were laid between Cairo and Alexandria and between Cairo and Suez in 1855. By 1879, some thirty-six telegraph lines with nine thousand kilometers of cable crisscrossed Egypt and connected Cairo and Alexandria to the new London–Bombay network.17 Along with railway lines and the postal system, telegraphy facilitated the incorporation of the Egyptian countryside into a more centralized Egyptian state. But integration into a national system was not a one-way street. As with other technologies, the telegraph’s state uses did not supersede the ability of individuals to “talk back” to authorities and open up a dialogue with their central government.18 Ultimately, the telegraph provided yet another means for people to communicate in a manner that crossed any oral-written boundaries. As the popularity of telegrams grew, the new telegraph offices could stand in lieu of the scribal intermediary. Formal literacy was neither required nor even particularly valued in the shorthand composition of telegrams. The immediacy, if not brevity, of telegrams lent itself to expressions of protest; in the Egyptian archives, the earliest extant petitions delivered by telegram date to around 1895.19 Yet despite their convenience, it would take several decades for telegrams to become ubiquitous in petitioning circles, in all likelihood due to the fact that it was several times more expensive to send a message by telegram than by mail. In 1907, sending a letter weighing up to thirty grams to anywhere in Egypt cost five millimes. The same five millimes would buy just two words in a twenty millime (two piastres) minimum telegram.20 At four times the cost, and with a

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drastically limited word count, telegrams had their drawbacks. Nevertheless, in 1925 there were 475 telegraph offices in Egypt handling more than three million domestic telegrams per year (see Figure 4.2).21 Over the course of the 1920s, telegrams, particularly in Arabic, became commonplace in the records of petitions; within a decade they appeared with nearly the same frequency as written requests. Although by the 1940s other forms of communication, most notably telephones and radio, began to eclipse telegraphy, the telegram remained a popular way to send a semiofficial missive to government offices. However, the larger problem faced by petitioners was that both scribal writing and telegraphy did not always produce the desired results, namely a prompt response from those with the power to effect change. To mitigate this reality, petitioners increasingly turned to more publicly visible forms of expression to expand beyond the “semipublic” nature of their requests. For example, a petition by a group of court summons officers (muḥḍirīn) in 1923 typified a new innovation

3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000

30 19

25 19

20 19

15 19

10 19

05 19

00 19

95 18

90 18

85 18

18

80

0

F IG U R E 4 . 2 .   Domestic Telegrams Sent in Egypt, 1880–1930 These figures exclude international telegrams and those sent by the port and railway authorities within Egypt. sources: Data from Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques, Statistique Générale de la Télégraphie, Années 1880, 1885, 1890, 1895, 1900, 1905, 1910, 1920, 1925, 1930 (Berne, Switzerland: Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques, 1882–1932); Egyptian Ministry of Finance, Annuaire Statistique de l’Égypte, 1916 (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1917).

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in the art of public protest. In their request they outline their numerous attempts over the previous four years to appeal to various members of the judicial and administrative ministries for better wages and working conditions.22 To “spread the news of their injustice,” they had sent delegations and many telegrams, but to no avail. Ironically, as relatively lowly functionaries of the court, they were considered to be secretarial staff, on par with the court scribes, whom they disdained. Perhaps it is due to this disdain, coupled with their previous unsuccessful attempts, that the summons officers did not go to a scribe for help with their 1923 missive. Rather, they composed their latest petition in the newest medium for public protest to come out of the early twentieth century: a printed petition.

The Evolution of Public Petitioning The changing political, media, and technological landscapes of the early twentieth century were a boon to petitioners who sought public ways of voicing their protests.23 The Egyptian journalism scene, already a vibrant and free-wheeling community, was a mix of ideological, reformist, and political leanings. There were newspapers and journals for almost any interest: nationalist, pro-British, pro-Khedival, Islamic, Coptic, European, satirical, feminist—and the list goes on. Almost completely in private hands, the printing industry—of both journalism and individual publications—had exploded, with presses popping up all over the country. But it was a volatile business: papers and their proprietaries were constantly going out of business, reconstituting themselves, and occasionally being slapped with censures by colonial authorities. In this media environment, nationalist discourse flourished. From the 1880s on, nationalists, often from the middle classes and elite backgrounds, increasingly espoused hope for an Egyptian nation that could achieve full independence from British rule. The media played a central role in fanning nationalist sentiments in 1906 in what became the notorious Dinshawi Incident. A group of British officers had been out shooting pigeons near the village of Dinshawi when a fire broke out and a local woman was injured. In the ensuing altercation between villagers and officers, several of the officers were injured, including one who later died of heatstroke. The British administration convened a tribunal to convict the Egyptian “mob”; four men were hanged and an additional twenty-eight were sentenced to flogging and various prison terms. Many local media outlets covered the sensational events and trial by highlighting every cruel detail, display of British hypocrisy, and dramatic expression of national solidarity. However, perhaps equally telling for the Egyptian populace was the outrage that the

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­ inshawi Incident sparked in England, with parliamentary inquiries and press D denunciation of a “temporary” occupation that was nearly a quarter of a century old. It was a global media event like no other, and it galvanized supporters of nationalist politics. In this heightened media environment, it was not a coincidence that several public petitioning campaigns developed into high-profile affairs. One of the earliest battles, documented by John Chalcraft, was launched by a group of Cairo cabdrivers who, in April of 1907, after several years of individual pleas, set out their demands publicly and went on strike.24 Petitioning and striking were not, in and of themselves, remarkable developments. However, by appealing to both the media and the political establishment, the result was one of the first media-driven popular protests. Both the al-Ahram and al-Jarida newspapers published, in detail, the complaints that the cabdrivers leveled against the Cairo police force. As the cabdrivers organized and went on strike, the nationalist press publicized the petition, rousing supporters of the strikers and bringing the government to the bargaining table. As Chalcraft notes, “the seriousness with which the major Arabic dailies took the demands of the strikers was a warning to the [British] occupiers that alliances might be quick in the making.”25 The demands of the protesters were soon folded into nationalist discourses about justice, governance, and economic independence. The cabbies achieved a major victory, but other guilds that followed suit met with more mixed success.26 In the cabdriver case, the nationalist press mediated the public exposure of these petitioners’ requests. As a result, other groups with grievances learned their lesson about public petitioning and protest, and it was not long before petitioners took matters of publicity into their own hands. Petitioners, who once relied on the semipublic exposure afforded by scribes or telegrams, began employing printed petitions to expand their public reach.27 Yet any decision to launch a printed petition campaign had to be weighed against its potential costs. One the one hand, printing was neither simple nor cheap: it required a drafted original, typesetting, proofing, and access to (certainly compared to pen and paper) expensive machinery. On the other hand, printed petitions had new sorts of flexibilities. They could be reproduced in large quantities and distributed over a large geographic area, and as we shall see they could address a much broader audience than just the official authorities. Petitioners who desired to be widely heard and “seen” undoubtedly considered these printed documents, with their striking images and their association with the “public” sphere of journalism, to be invaluable tools for garnering attention.

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One particularly graphic example is the 1909 petition issued by an anonymous government worker from the Nile delta city of Tanta (see Figure 4.3). His “letter” was printed in the style of a newspaper article, with columns and a headline proclaiming, “Read with Care, May God Show You Mercy.”28 The article-petition complained that the government “does not hear the cries of its small civil servants” as they “wait in vain because their complaints never reach the highest authorities.” In order to make sure that this particular complaint was heard, the author embellished his plea with rhetorical flourishes, such as exclamations of “ahh and a thousand ahhs” and a handwritten assertion that “by God our situation is very dire and we seek kindness and a response to our plea.” The petition was signed with only the initials Ḥ. A. However, in one final populist touch, the last line indicates that it was submitted by way of (bi-wāsiṭa) the patron saint of Tanta, al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi. The writer, although circumscribed in his claims, most definitely created this work as an appeal to public sentiment by mirroring the journalistic format and evoking a hometown hero. Other supplicants saw in the new politics of petitioning a potential global audience. In particular, a coordinated media campaign directed at the right audience became one way to focus local and international attention. One such campaign was launched in 1910 by a group of lay Coptic leaders who were petitioning the British authorities for separate Coptic representation in the legislature, changes to educational and financial allotments, and access to top administrative posts.29 Coptic-Muslim relations were already at a nadir following the February 1910 assassination of Prime Minister Butrus Ghali Pasha, a major Coptic figure, by a Muslim-Egyptian nationalist.30 Although the murder was politically and not religiously motivated, extreme elements of the local Muslim and Coptic press engaged in a war of words that further inflamed communal antagonism.31 Given the heightened tensions at the time, the importance of appealing to the British public was not lost on one group of Coptic activists. A member of the Coptic press, Kyriakos Mikhail, traveled to London in 1910 and promptly began writing letters to British newspapers to drum up support for the demands. He strongly criticized the British colonial administration and, in a 1911 publication entitled Copts and Moslems Under British Control, hoped that “the British public will recognise [sic] the grievous wrong which is being done to Christians in Egypt.”32 Here, on another continent, Mikhail’s “Coptic question” was reformulated to appeal to a new audience. In the meantime, a January 1911 telegram sent to London by the British consul-general in Egypt, Sir Eldon Gorst, expressed his conviction that Copts

F IG U R E 4 . 3 .   Article-Petition, 1909 “Read with Care, May God Show You Mercy.” source: DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Majlis al-Nuẓẓār, Box 8, “Iltimāsāt,” Folder 32 (#0075–029749), “Iqra’ū bi-Im‘ān” (April 4, 1909).

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were not under any duress. Prominent Copts and several Coptic communities in Upper Egypt responded in kind by sending numerous telegrams to British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, other British officials, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and even local British newspapers, appealing to the British public for their support.33 One published pamphlet made the rationale of these tactics explicit: “it is essential that a direct representation should be made to the British parliament and to leaders of public opinion.”34 The campaign culminated in a “Coptic Congress” held in Asyut, Egypt, in March of 1911 that laid out five major points of reform. Colonial officials vigorously disputed Coptic claims and, with British support, a rival “Egyptian Congress” was held in April featuring prominent Muslims from across the political spectrum.35 In addition, the Coptic Church Patriarchy was asked (and obliged) to disown the Coptic Congress and its demands. Although the campaign of 1911 was ultimately unsuccessful in securing its requests for the Coptic community, it was notable in its multipronged use of the press, telegrams, publications, and a communal conference to make oppositional views as visible as possible to publics both in Egypt and abroad. Other groups also took the opportunity to broaden their appeals and transform them into “public” issues by using the new petitioning mediums. In particular, printed group petitions became a mainstay of students’ politics as they sought relief from exams, protested grades or school policies, and lobbied for employment opportunities once they graduated. As we have seen, group petitions in and of themselves were not a novelty. However, the evolution of the printed group petition in this period highlights the ways in which new uses of print technology provided not only a more “public” platform for student concerns but also a way to mobilize the discourse and repertoire of protest for this new generation. The dramatically growing student population of the early twentieth century drew from several different educational systems. There were students of the local kuttābs; students of the Muslim and Coptic higher education teaching mosques and seminaries; students in private schools run by missionaries, foreign nationals, local charities, and political groups; and students of the government schools (see Table 3.1 in the previous chapter). Protests mounted by government school students garnered the most attention; after all, grievance against these schools could easily extend to the government that ran them. However, as student politics became intertwined with nationalist politics, the pool of protesting students widened considerably, most notably to include students of the al-Azhar teaching mosque as well as elements of the private school

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population. They used banners in their marches, circulated nationalist literature, and passed “seditious” circulars and manifestos back and forth across borders and continents.36 The politicization of these students was particularly troubling to the Ministry of Education and, by extension, to the colonial authorities. Several attempts were made to ban political literature from schools because, in the words of a 1910 Ministry regulation, “it is of utmost danger for the students of any grade to enter the school with books, tracts, newspapers, or printings that have a political nature.”37 In the aftermath of rolling strikes in the 1920s, even writing to the press was made grounds for a one-year expulsion.38 However, in the turmoil of the economic downturn of the early 1900s, followed by World War I and, finally, a nationalist movement actively vying for independence, it seems that keeping students’ minds on their studies, rather than on their economic and political futures, was an uphill battle. As one high commissioner of Egypt opined, “the corruption of youth by association with current politics manifestly struck at the root of civilised life.”39 A 1928 report that looked back nostalgically at the pre-1919 “golden era” of Egyptian education under British control credited the English headmasters “to whom students looked up with respect and even awe, and whom they obeyed unquestioningly.”40 In reality, students of this so-called golden era were up to much more than unquestioning obedience. For one thing, student petitions of the pre-1919 revolutionary era were increasingly framed in explicitly nationalist, and implicitly anticolonial, terms: as the “future” of the nation, students had a particularly strong claim to the resources of the national collective. One student equated his appeal to be admitted into a school with national service: “I have no desire in this world except to serve the beloved nation [waṭan], for a person who does not benefit his country or sacrifice his life for it, his death is better than his life.”41 A particularly eloquent student who was in his second year of teaching college and had come under financial strain wrote the following: “I request help in my education so I can become knowledgeable and serve the country under whose sky I was raised and whose sweet winds have relieved me and whose water has quenched me. . . . I must aid the nation with honorable service and my service will not be worthy unless I am educated.”42 Nor did students, in their nationalist fervor, ignore the colonial imposition. In 1908, thirteen students, particularly distressed by longtime British “consultant” to the Ministry of Education Douglas Dunlop and his “opposition to nationalist sentiment,” called upon the Khedive to “rid them of this despot.”43 Once provisional independence was granted to Egypt in 1922, a

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student named Muhammad Darwish thought it an opportune time to ask for tuition relief. He began each paragraph of his letter with “The Trust! The Trust!” [al-amāna] before laying out the kind of trust the nation was to fulfill: “God has brought independence to the nation at the hand of my Lord [the Sultan], and my Lord has truly risen to the duty by establishing a school to guide every lost person.”44 In Darwish’s eyes, national independence and education went hand in hand. Surely the ruler who presided over the former could provide twenty Egyptian pounds to cover the educational expenses of this one humble student. So when students had a problem that needed attention, they drew on their increased political awareness, on the new nationalist discourses, and on both the emerging and old traditions of petitioning to get their “message” out. Surveying the progression of petitions printed by groups of students from the start of the Great War to the postwar period is striking. A first example is a petition printed by a group of students who were not able to find employment after graduating in 1915 (Figure 4.4). In choosing to print their demands, they opted for a graphic representation of the authority from whom they were seeking help: they headed their petition with a crown and an embellished slogan, “long live our Lord Sultan.”45 They did not include any signatures, just the name and location of their school. In light of the precedence of petitions appearing in newspapers, pamphlets, and other publications, presumably the printed petition was meant to give credence to their request. Two years later, 164 students with secondary degrees complained of the same fate.46 In this case, the petitioners seemed to feel that their strength was in their numbers and they included almost three pages listing their individual names. Furthermore, to adorn their petition, they chose the nationalist symbol that would become famous in the 1919 Revolution: the crescent and three stars (Figure 4.5). As an indication of their attempt at a broader appeal, the final address of the petition reads as follows: “We raise our complaint to his honor the president of the Sultan’s council and to all the men of the government and to every upright, fair person who upholds the truth.” The phrase “his honor the president of the Sultan’s council” along with the date were handwritten on empty lines after the petition was printed, signifying that multiple copies of this petition were printed and distributed to various levels of the government in the students’ effort to reach “all the men” in their address. The broadening of the exposure of these petitions can be seen in another set of petitions from 1919 (Figure 4.6).47 This time, a “form petition” was drafted and multiple copies of the same petition were sent to various parts of the

F IG U R E 4 . 4 .   Group Petition, 1915 “Long Live Our Lord Sultan.” source: DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 6 (#0069–009369), “Isti‘ṭāf min Talāmīdh alMaḥākim al-Ahliyya” (May 23, 1915).

F IG U R E 4 . 5 .   Group Petition with Nationalist Crest, 1917 source: DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 8 (#0069–009371), “Istirḥām” (February 4, 1917).

F IG U R E 4 . 6 .   “Form” Petition, 1919 Multiple copies of this printed petition appear in the archives, each with a different date, addressee, and listed petitioners. source: DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 10 (#0069–009373), documents #1–6 (November 2, 1919, to November 10, 1919).

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g­ overnment, each with different signatures from former students working in different shari‘a courts. The name of the addressee, the petitioners’ names, and the dates were filled in after printing as the petitions were circulated among various parts of the court system. With each successive petition, both the extent of the audience and the circle of petitioners widened: a group of students appealed to the Sultan, then an enumerated group of 164 appealed to various levels of government, and finally students from various geographic locations distributed form letters among themselves and government agencies. These petitions printed for distribution became a much easier means for mobilizing people over wide geographic areas than multiple copies of a handwritten petition would have been. The technology of print invited distribution and an appeal to public opinion in a way that handwritten petitions simply did not. The tradition of written petitioning, a literacy practice that now had a new audience and a new medium, had become part of public life.48

The Events of 1919 and Public Literacies in Practice Even before the ink had dried on the November 11 armistice that ended World War I, a group of Egyptian nationalists was laying the groundwork for a bid for Egypt’s complete independence from British colonial domination. The Great War had already wrought one change of status for the country: when the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, the British formally dissolved Egypt’s ties with its former rulers and declared Egypt a British Protectorate. Meanwhile, the War had been hard on the Egyptian populace, with high food prices, a wave of British troops requisitioning animals and supplies, and Egyptians serving as soldiers and in the Labor Corps being called up for duty at home and abroad. The British administration also suspended the constitution, instituted martial law, and imposed tight travel and censorship restrictions, thus adding to the political grievances against the occupation. With news of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to self-determination for all nations and with the planning of the Paris Peace Conference under way, Egyptian nationalists felt their moment had come. To launch their movement, they had a full repertoire of protest tools to draw from, often in ways that took full advantage of the public literacies of the time. At the center of this group was Sa‘d Zaghlul, a lawyer from a rural background who had served in various ministries and in the now-defunct Legislative Assembly. With him were several prominent Egyptians from the Assembly and from the Umma Party. They eventually became known as the Wafd, or

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“delegation,” because they sought to be recognized as the sole representatives of the Egyptian people in the negotiations following World War I. To bolster their claim of national representation, Zaghlul and his compatriots embarked on speaking tours of the country and enlisted students and disenchanted ­effendiyya (educated, middle-class men) to solicit signatures for documents known as tawkīlāt, or delegations of authority. These documents stated that ­Zaghlul and his comrades had a mandate from the Egyptian people to represent their interests. A fellow Wafdist, Makram Ebeid, would later boast that Zaghlul had collected roughly one million signatures from Egyptians in communities all over the country, thus freely “electing” the lawyer as their chosen leader in all negotiations with the British.49 As they were collecting signatures and galvanizing various communities, the Wafd also began coordinating a media campaign at several levels. They distributed circulars among student groups encouraging them to oppose the Protectorate.50 In the coming months, British officials would derisively refer to the legions of students who protested in support of the Wafd as “Zaghlul’s Army.” Wafdists also orchestrated a drive to send telegrams and letters to various delegates of the Paris Peace Conference to request that the principle of self-­determination be applied in the case of the Egyptian people.51 Once it became clear that British officials were not going to allow the Wafd members to travel to Europe, the Wafdists sought an audience with Sultan Fuad on March 3, 1919. When they were not allowed to meet with him, they left a signed petition passionately imploring the ruler of Egypt to stand with his people.52 Their demands did not sit well with the Sultan or his colonial counterparts. On March 8, Zaghlul and three other members of the Wafd party were arrested and exiled to Malta. Unfortunately for the colonial administration, the campaigning, petitioning, sending of telegrams, and collecting of signatures had all been a “silent rehearsal for the 1919 popular uprising.”53 Upon the arrests, petitions and telegrams, some with more than a hundred signatories, began streaming into the offices of the Sultan and the British authorities.54 They came from the Ministry of Justice, the Egyptian Bar Association, doctors, and merchants, as well as from other groups in several provinces around the country, and they all demanded in one way or another the “immediate release of Egypt’s capable leaders and spokesmen to explain to the Peace Conference our cause and aspiration.”55 The acting High Commissioner in Egypt, Milne Cheetham, suspected that “the collection of signatures appears to have been a well organised affair.”56 Indeed, it was.

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In the meantime, the streets erupted. The day after the arrests, students of government schools were the first to announce a strike and to demonstrate. The next day, students from al-Azhar and the professional schools joined them. The day after that, tram workers, cabdrivers, and lawyers were out in force. And on it went, touching nearly all strata of Egyptian society, from government bureaucrats to women’s groups.57 Much to the chagrin of British administrators, who believed themselves to be the “friends” of the rural peasantry, the protests spread not only to other major cities in the Nile delta, but also to rural villages and to the more agrarian Upper Egypt. For all of the rest of March and into April, the country came to a standstill and protests raged, strikes spread, and even communication and railway lines were vandalized. Although the protests would regularly reignite through the twists and turns of the next few years of negotiations, this first eruption of widespread demonstrations did not subside until after April 7, 1919, when the administration relented, freed Zaghlul and his compatriots, and sent them on their way to Paris. Ziad Fahmy has aptly described the street culture of the 1919 Revolution as a “carnival” where normal distinctions and barriers were suspended58 and the collective voice of Egyptians was on display, “embodied in the forms of conversations, rumors, speeches, demonstrations, and publicly performed dances, chants, and songs.”59 In the mobilization of this collectivity, public literacy practices of protest and expression played a unique role.60 On the one hand, the “regular” outlets for information were severely curtailed by the heavy-handed Press Law that had been reinstated in 1909. At that time, the Ministry of the Interior had created a Department of Publications to keep close tabs on proprietors and their political and religious views by issuing (or denying) licenses for newspapers and printing presses.61 With the start of the Great War, all monitoring of Egyptian publications, letters, and telegrams was turned over to British military censors.62 Given the political climate on the ground, the end of the War did not bring an end to the new censorship regime.63 Intelligence reports regularly surveyed the postal censors’ assessments of “English,” “Native,” and “European” opinions on the evolving political conditions.64 By 1919, the British military repeatedly used its power to suspend “seditious” publications or pull articles deemed particularly incendiary.65 Even relatively benign assertions, such as one by al-Ahram and al-Afkar “that all the sympathies of the foreigners of Egypt are on the side of the Nationalists,” did not make the cut.66 Censors were also not above suggesting “slight excisions” to articles in order to create a more “favourable effect,”67 or attempting to plant

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stories that conveyed the right “tone.”68 These provocations did not go unanswered. Papers regularly published blank pages or did not appear to underscore that it was “impossible to work with censorship.”69 In retaliation for its proBritish views, the newspaper al-Muqattam came to the verge of closing because protesters had effectively boycotted the paper.70 By early 1920, a press syndicate of Egyptian newspapers instituted a three-day publishing embargo to protest the curbs on their journalistic freedoms.71 On the other hand, the nationalists were remarkably adroit at deploying their own written and printed materials for all sorts of subversive purposes. As a means of accessing an alternative, uncensored “public,” these works served multiple purposes. On the international scene, the Wafd attempted to raise the profile of “the Egyptian Question” by sending “circular letters” and memoranda to “all persons thought to be interested in Egyptian affairs,” which included each member of the British House of Commons, Peace Conference attendees, and even the presidents of South American states.72 Additionally, the numerous “people’s committees” and spontaneous meetings that sprung up during this period would often publish their “resolutions” and demands for public consumption.73 These written materials proved particularly useful as logistical tools for the protesters and organizers themselves. Students, presumably without a means to communicate their plans more broadly, printed out slips of paper to announce, for example, that “the Secondary and Private Schools have resolved unanimously to continue on strike in spite of warnings and threats.”74 Similarly, a group of Azhari students announced the procession route for a “great, national, peaceful demonstration” with printed notices distributed in the streets.75 Meetings were announced via circulars distributed throughout Cairo, and in one case the result was the largest crowd seen at the al-Azhar Mosque to date—roughly twenty thousand people, “including notables, judges, lawyers, Sheikhs, merchants, Azharians, students, workman, etc. etc.”76 Fearful of British intervention, organizers planned demonstrations for one of the provinces “in s­ ecret,” distributing circulars with “care” that they would not fall into the hands of the authorities.77 Allies of the Wafd also used printed materials to share news from letters and telegrams that were issued from the delegation in Europe but could not make it into Egyptian newspapers.78 An extension of the long petitioning tradition, printed sheets distributed to gather signatures became a regular feature of protest politics. For example, individuals circulating petitions to get signatures from attendees were

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a common occurrence at community meetings in churches and at al-Azhar Mosque.79 After a decade of rocky relations, a newfound solidarity between Coptic and Muslim Egyptians emerged during the winter and spring of 1919, startling the British authorities. To counter British claims that Copts were supporting the nationalist camp out of fear of the Muslim majority, two Coptic lawyers started a petition to publicly assert that Copts were not being forced to support the independence movement.80 Likewise, government workers and lawyers who wished to either start solidarity unions or organize strikes created petitions and sent them around for signatures as a way to gauge support or elicit commitments for their plans.81 The creation and distribution of the “literary” production of the protests was not a simple matter. In the view of British censors, the distribution of pamphlets was one of several “insidious means of terrorism” that stubbornly would not subside even when physical “order” had been restored.82 Authorities therefore regularly raided illicit presses and their proprietors.83 In one example, on a tip that two rooms of a printing press were being rented by Dr. Ismail Sidky Bey, a prominent nationalist, police raided a local printing press, seized “a seditious pamphlet, freshly printed,” and arrested the owner and a workman.84 A British intelligence officer even speculated that the well-established al-Ahram newspaper was using its presses to illegally print invectives against its pro-British competitors.85 Of course the distribution of illicit materials had its own hazards. To be caught with “seditious” circulars or newspapers meant arrest, and raids on local hot spots targeted individuals who were thought to be distributing materials to gathered crowds.86 Yet even with these deterrents, secretly printed newspapers with titles such as The Free Egyptian, Complete Independence, and The Egyptian Deputation managed to produce numerous issues and reach circulation well beyond Cairo.87 Once again, students seemed to be at the fore of this movement, organizing publications with the express purpose of circumventing censors and publishing materials that could not appear in the local press.88 Not only were students “concentrating their efforts on the publication of seditious circulars and newspapers,” but some were even “known to be taking advantage of the situation to make money out of the sale of those newspapers.”89 Clandestine newspapers appeared to be a booming business. The visual landscape that these circulars, pamphlets, advertisements, newspapers, and announcements created was striking. Notices were posted on buildings, on walls, and along the streets of small towns.90 In addition, British intelligence officers noticed that even mosques were being converted into

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“public squares” of sorts with “the walls and pillars of al-Azhar . . . simply covered with seditious circulars, notices, etc., some of which are of a most vulgar nature.”91 These materials even found their way into more intimate locations. Government officials arriving at work would occasionally find tucked into each of their desks “printed circulars” or pamphlets announcing a general strike, most likely planted by one of their colleagues who was sympathetic to the nationalist cause.92 Yet, with the “written word” everywhere, how were these materials received by the majority of Egyptians, who were illiterate? Here again the spectrum of literacies proves instructive. The “distribution” of literature did not depend on the literacy abilities of the audience—it was often done orally and in public. As Fahmy describes, “the interaction between print and oral/aural communication was especially strong during moments of national crisis, when ‘reading’ was more often than not an almost embodied communal event—loud, messy, and unashamedly alive.”93 In major urban centers, mosques, cafés, and bars were the primary locales where these hybrid oral-written literacies took root. Informants and British officials took regular note of the distribution of nationalist literature, often called “the mail,” and of the subsequent speeches and public proclamations they would inspire.94 One report of the scene at a Cairene hotspot highlights the interaction between the written and the performatory aspects of the public literacies of the time: “[The extremist nationalists] seem to be issuing more inflammatory pamphlets and propaganda than ever. These are always distributed round all the principal bars in the evening. . . . the arrival of the ‘mail’ always causes intense excitement; students and others even get up on chairs and make speeches and usually the popular song of the moment is sung.”95 The “mail,” speeches, and songs worked hand in hand to create the protest environment of these heady gatherings of students, effendis, religious scholars, local merchants, and others. Meanwhile, in rural and provincial centers, reading was still very much a communal event. Protest organizers were careful to send literature, invitations to events, and even emissaries and preachers to the countryside to enlist the residents’ support for the nationalist movement.96 In truth, the peasantry were quite capable of engaging in their own practices of public literacies by drawing on local resources. Writing in April of 1919, a British military intelligence officer, initially worried over the reception of the British military’s own printed materials in Egyptian villages, expressed concern that “the fellaheen [peasant farmers] are largely dependent for reading on the educated classes, who are

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precisely those attacked by our propaganda.”97 Two days later, the officer revised his assessment: “The fellah is not, as is thought by some, entirely dependent for the reading of our leaflets on the ‘effendi’ class. . . . In every little village there is a scribe, who has nothing in common with this class and who will certainly be made to give an accurate reading of the leaflets given to the fellahin.”98 Indeed, written appeals made directly to the peasant class by the British and the nationalists did not go to waste. Scribes, literate farmers, tax collectors, and other prominent rural officials who had long served as intermediaries for local literacy practices such as reading newspapers, making public announcements, and the like were tapped to spread the “news” from both sides of the protests.99 On the whole, British political officers were pleased to see gatherings in which “the reading and explanation is listened to with every appearance of interest.”100 Leaflets that asked farmers to reject “agitators and school boys [who] preach the ruin of their fathers and the destruction of their country” were deemed particularly useful.101 Ironically, for both sides the written word was the very thing that was indispensible to reaching those who could not read.102 As the public literacy practices of the time grew, printed materials not only were read and distributed but also served as crucial access points for the literate and illiterate alike to engage in protest, debate, and contestation.

Beyond 1919: The Uneven Landscape of Public Literacies Once unleashed, public literacy practices became inextricably linked with the means and methods by which Egyptians sought to change their society. By the 1920s, printed petitions, sometimes in the form of pamphlets, with various signatures and addressees, were being used by workers, students, government employees, and even ‘ulamā’, all pleading their cases with the government and beyond.103 The production level of these petitions mirrored improvements in the printing process, with better graphics, multiple pages, and higher quality papers. In their design, these documents were meant not only for a one-time appeal but rather for a more extensive audience. Increasingly, public opinion itself became part of the audience as, literally and figuratively, one of the addressees. For example, the cover of a 1925 pamphletpetition from a group of students was addressed to “those in power and public opinion” (Figure 4.7).104 Rather than being just a private or semiprivate plea to those in power, these petitions were crafted, designed, and printed with a large public in mind. They were designed to create a visual impact in the Egyptian public arena.

F IG U R E 4 . 7 .   Pamphlet Petition, 1925 Printed petition addressed to “those in power and public opinion.” source: DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 16 (#0069–009379), “Mudhakkira” (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Karāra, November 2, 1925).

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As we have seen, technological and social changes allowed petitioning and protest to become public rather than exclusively semiprivate affairs. As print became a medium of protest—one with more visual impact and a wider imagined audience than handwritten materials—printed works became part and parcel of the graphic culture of the country. Petitioners and protesters grew more adept at using new technologies to press their case, not only in the halls of power, but also in the streets. However, there is a caveat to this laudatory celebration of public expression: the new forms of public literacies also imposed their own imbalances, particularly as print became more pervasive in the new visual spaces. Although the spread of print tends to be thought of as an equalizing and democratic technology, it nevertheless privileged certain interactions by certain actors. Most notably, print technology was used almost exclusively by the literate to reach the illiterate and literate alike. Meanwhile, older technologies, such as using a scribe, tended to assume that the composer was illiterate. In other words, works that started in the oral-written hybrid realm were designed to give the nonliterate a written voice in a way that printed materials simply were not. The implications of this shift can be seen in the different ways in which various actors used public literacies during and after the 1919 Revolution. For example, both women and lower-class urban and rural Egyptians were active participants in the anticolonial street protests. Villagers attacked railways and telegraph lines, the urban poor gathered at mosques to hear speeches, and  women attended demonstrations and rallies. All of them were affected by, witnesses to, and engaged with the public literacies of the time. A women’s group associated with the Wafd party even regularly submitted group petitions to British authorities protesting their treatment of women and in support of nationalist aspirations.105 However, the largely non-literate elements of Egyptian society were almost completely absent as authors of the circulars, petitions, notices, advertisements, and secret newspapers that emerged in the post-1919 period. This is particularly striking because women of the lower classes, both rural and urban, were active petitioners on behalf of themselves and their families in the handwritten scribal petitions of the previous century. So, even as protesters were “writing to be seen,” the very “public” and privileged nature of the new visual culture of printed materials imposed its own rebalancing of who could be seen in public life.

5

LITERACY FOR ALL Ummiyya, Arabic, and the Public Good

I N T H E WA N I N G Y E A R S of the nineteenth century, the value and desirability of anything approaching widespread literacy was still very much in question. Indeed, it was not even clear that Arabic would be the language of literacy for the Egyptian polity. However, this quickly changed. In the wake of the dual impetus of reformers demanding more educational opportunities and the government pursuing centralization, a new consensus emerged. A certain kind of Arabic literacy became a supreme public good, one that needed to be measured through the census and administered through mass educational systems that taught young men and women the language of the nation. Meanwhile, consolidating states and nationalist movements throughout the Middle East found a new enemy, and this one came from within: illiteracy.1 Just as literacy was becoming more defined as a social good, a new formulation of the concept of “­illiteracy” (ummiyya) was identified as one of the fundamental social problems facing a nascent Egyptian resurgence. As we have already seen, the new uses of widespread literacy practices influenced political and social movements, gender and class dynamics, and the Arabic that appeared in classrooms and in various public spheres. In this chapter, the arc of this work takes a turn: ever more public uses of writing did not just influence society, they became the focus of intense public concern. As they did, the discourse of literacy and the dangers of illiteracy became subject to the very forces that new literacy practices encouraged in other realms of public debate. Nationalists, bureaucrats, women activists, and religious scholars

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g­ rappled with what mass literacy would mean for their causes and their visions of social change. The Egyptian case was not unlike what had happened in parts of Europe and North America in the nineteenth century as literacy and illiteracy became part of an ideological discourse: “literacy was equated with morality, economic prospects, and civic virtue. Illiteracy was paired with the opposites: criminality, poverty, and political apathy.”2 In the debate about the efficacy and purpose of public education, many people came to the conclusion that mass literacy was indispensible. This debate was shaped by the bureaucratic structures that sought to enumerate and define “official literacy.” With the advent of census figures and statistical aggregates that could tell the story of the nation in just a few numbers, literacy and illiteracy rates became key milestones for development, improvement, and reform. Despite the multifaceted uses of reading and writing in every­day practice, when literacy and illiteracy entered the public consciousness as part of a discourse of reform in the early twentieth century, they did so as definable and concrete ideals that had no real precedent in Egyptian society. Ultimately, these same bureaucratic structures—this time by way of mass educational programs—were able to quantify and deliver a version of reading and writing instruction that would become the norm for the modern period.

The Boundaries of Literacy and Illiteracy Before literacy could become a central plank of social reform projects, both literacy and illiteracy had to enter the lexicon of reform in new ways. Literacy was a profoundly modern idea. As such, it had no specific antecedent in the Arabic world. Egyptians had long extolled the educated, the wise, and the knowledgeable. But the concept of literacy was different: it represented a set of skills—reading and writing—that provided a powerful discourse for modern reform movements. As we have seen throughout this work, the reified ideal of literacy was a constructed one. Meanwhile, the opposing concept of illiteracy, or ummiyya, had a very different pedigree in Arab societies. The words ummiyya and ummī (the latter generally used for one who is illiterate or unlettered) were in wide use from at least the dawn of Islam. The term ummī appears several places in the Qur’an in reference to groups of people as well as to the Prophet Muhammad.3 Muslims have tended to interpret references to the Prophet Muhammad as the illiterate or unlettered prophet (al-nabī al-ummī)4 to mean that he literally could neither read nor write.5 Yet even this interpretation has been subject to much debate,

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with conflicting reports indicating that perhaps he could read but not write, or that he was capable of both, but only after he had received the Qur’anic revelation. Reports that the Prophet understood the written word and at times even edited written documents seem to indicate that his “illiteracy” was at the very least not absolute.6 Additionally, the unlettered ummī of Muslim and particularly Sufi literature was more often than not a wise or knowledgeable figure.7 Certainly, insomuch as ummiyya was a prophetic trait, it could be viewed as a positive emulation of the Prophet Muhammad’s example.8 So, for example, the great mystic and theologian Muhyi al-Din ibn ‘Arabi valorized what he called al-‘ilm al-ummī, or unlettered knowledge, as a sort of pure understanding that allowed a more perfect knowledge of the divine to emerge.9 This knowledge came from direct experience of the divine, without the mediation of human reason or thought. Ummiyya thus represented a state of innocence and purity, a clean slate without the clutter of temporal “words” or knowledge.10 The idea that ummiyya could represent a pristine state of being was even echoed by one of Egypt’s leading educators of the late nineteenth century. Hamza Fath Allah, an Arabic teacher at Dar al-‘Ulum and later an inspector for the Ministry of Education, describes the ummiyya of the Arabs this way: “Do not assume that the reason for the preponderance of ummiyya among the majority of pre-Islamic Arabs or the austerity of the Bedouin is due to inability. . . . Rather, their extreme intelligence to a large degree in judgment, prognostication, and tracking is the reason for their abstention from writing and their disinclination to engage in it.”11 By connecting the lack (or active avoidance) of writing to their austere material culture, Fath Allah implies that the Arabs had no need for writing because of their rudimentary lifestyle: they had enough other types of intelligence, cultivated without pen and paper, that reading and writing were justifiably superfluous to their culture. It is an interesting argument, particularly because just a few decades later the Ministry of Education would declare an all-out war against this simple and natural state of being in the name of modernizing Egypt. For nineteenth-century reformers, the moral ballast of education tended to rest not on the literate-illiterate dichotomy but on two other concepts: knowledge as embodied by the term ‘ilm and ignorance referred to as jahl. During this period, the idea of ‘ilm was particularly seductive as a capacious quality of an enlightened person. Ideally, a person of ‘ilm would embrace the “new” sciences of the West as well as the more “traditional” Islamic sciences of the Muslim world; they would be interested in astronomy and geography, the ­intricacies of biology

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and chemistry, and literature and the Arabic language.12 Meanwhile, for many late nineteenth-century Egyptian thinkers and reformers, the true social enemy was jahl. The example of journalist and outspoken political and social  critic ‘Abdallah Nadim (1845–1896) is particularly instructive. He was one of the first public writers to advocate for widespread literacy and education in Egypt.13 As purveyor of two of Egypt’s early independent journals, al-Tankit wa-l-Tabkit (1881–1882) and al-Ustadh (1892–1893), he was supremely concerned with the reading public and their access to the written word. Yet he seldom evoked the idea of ummiyya. Rather, in Nadim’s depiction, the central deficiency facing his compatriots was jahl because it led to a lack of discernment and the failure to distinguish what was useful and true from what was harmful and false.14 In his social critiques, he often focused on the superstitions and ignorance of many Egyptians, seeing it as the primary burden hampering Egypt’s advancement.15 In his play al-Watan, a personification of the nation talks to people from various walks of life trying to encourage them to improve the country.16 The Nation/ Watan is dismayed because jahl has caused disunity in the nation, allowed injustices to prevail, and weakened the society as a whole. In fact, going “toward” jahl was a form of betrayal to the nation, and true reform was possible only if jahl was annihilated.17 The solution was to establish more schools and focus on economic industries and tradecrafts. In the words of the title character, “knowledge is in the schools and the workshops.”18 Spreading ‘ilm in all its forms was necessary to overcome the pervasive dangers of ignorance.19 Significantly, although the benefit of women’s education was viewed with some ambivalence, the danger associated with a woman’s jahl was uncontested; whereas illiteracy could be acceptable or even desirable in women, jahl never was.20 For example, in 1896, the literary journal al-Hilal proposed the following question to its readers: “Which raises the position of women higher, knowledge or money? ”21 In the published answers, although no one disputed the value of knowledge, respondents did argue vehemently about what exactly should be considered useful knowledge for women. Some argued for basic Arabic literacy, others advocated advanced education, and yet others saw no shame in being completely illiterate as long as a woman knew the “useful” ‘ilm of housework.22 There was one thing that most respondents were in complete agreement about: jahl was never an acceptable trait in a woman.23 In a similar tone, a set of 1899 letters to the journal al-Jami‘a al-‘Uthmaniyya, while often expressing reservations about the type of education women received, generally asserted that women should be people of ‘ilm (‘ālimāt), not people of jahl ( jāhilāt).24

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So, how did the once neutral, and even positive, idea of illiteracy become a fundamental measure of ignorance? First, illiteracy had to become visible.

Seeing Ummiyya A noticeable change in rhetoric occurred around the beginning of the twentieth century. Whereas initiatives of the 1860s and 1870s had focused on spreading ‘ilm and fighting jahl, by the 1920s and 1930s the new social cause célèbre was literacy promotion and the eradication of ummiyya. Much of this shift was due to the emergence of new census data that allowed illiteracy to become a defining social measure of the nation as a whole. The gathering and uses of census data often mirrored the intent of those who ordered the massive government initiative. Timothy Mitchell’s ­Colonising Egypt describes the process by which the colonial and local bureaucracies in Egypt were increasingly interested in ordering Egyptian society on every level. Applying Michel Foucault’s ideas on disciplinary power, Mitchell argues that the Egyptian government of the late nineteenth century was engaged in “modern strategies of control . . . to infiltrate, re-order, and colonise.”25 However, ­bureaucratic attempts to reorder the educational system, public hygiene, and even the fabric of the urban landscape required detailed information on the population the state wished to supervise. The French, during their brief occupation, attempted a census of all individuals in Egypt in 1801 as an extension of their “cataloguing” of Egyptian life. As early as 1821, Mehmet ‘Ali (ruler from 1805 to 1848) was using the number of homes as an estimate of population, and by the 1848 census, the Egyptian government began counting individuals, primarily to levy taxes and conscript troops.26 Starting in 1882, the government began implementing European census methods and shifted away from data on individuals to aggregates on the village, provincial, and national level.27 So, instead of the government maintaining detailed information about a local widow and her children, one family’s information became a part of a wider picture about the ­nation as a whole. Whereas earlier nineteenth-century attempts to gather information were part of a “policing” of sorts (to determine who owes the government what), the aggregation of data displayed another type of discursive power: the use of statistics.28 In a sense, the individual faded away. What became important was what the census said about the trajectory of Egyptian society. This emphasis on statistical knowledge is clearly evident in how literacy was measured during the first half of the twentieth century. Prior to 1897, censuses did not record literacy rates, although some did record information

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about whether or not children attended local kuttābs, worked, or were unemployed.29 Although school attendance was not a direct measure of reading and writing ability, these classifications indicate what was important to the census takers: the economic activity in which children engaged, not their abilities or educational level. In contrast, starting in 1897, the census began explicitly tracking the rate of illiteracy to gauge the nation’s level of education, or “cultivation and refinement” (al-tathqīf wa-l-tahdhīb).30 In fact, the censuses of the first half of the twentieth century divided the population along only one measure of education: those who could read and write and those who were ummī. The illiteracy rate became one of only three variables, along with gender and religion, that would be consistently tracked in the census for the next one hundred years.31 Exactly how literacy was measured changed over the years. Yet one thing remained relatively consistent: censuses used a narrow definition of literacy (the ability to read and write) to determine the population’s intellectual capital. For the 1897 and 1907 censuses, it is unclear just how census takers determined whether a person was literate or ummī. The 1897 census gave only the final counts for those who could “read and write” and those who could not. The 1907 census, which was based closely on the 1897 one, also simply asked if individuals “have knowledge of reading and writing or not.”32 Interestingly, the 1907 census used the terms reader and educated interchangeably for those who were literate, whereas those who were illiterate (and presumably not readers or educated) were simply labeled ummī. The 1917 census was more specific in its definition of literacy. Census ­takers were instructed to pose two questions to each person, especially women and children over the age of five:33 Could they read a printed document fluently? And could they write a short letter by themselves or from dictation?34 In asking these two questions separately, the original census forms would have identified individuals who perhaps were able to read but not necessarily able to write. However, in the final coding and reporting, these alternative modes of literacy disappeared. Unlike post-1960 censuses, which included various education levels (primary, secondary, etc.), for much of the twentieth century the Egyptian populous was divided into two groups: the “readers and writers” or simply “readers” in one group and the ummiyya in the other.35 The entire census process was a deliberately public affair. By the late nineteenth century, the census bureau had become a permanent fixture of the Egyptian government, with the hope that accurate censuses would allow it to

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undertake reforms more efficiently. As was noted in a circular distributed about the 1917 census, “The information collected by the Census permits the Government to find out whether its action in the past has been profitable to the country, to throw light on points that demand its particular attention, to avert and remedy possible mistakes and injustice, to ascertain the needs of the people and to endeavour to satisfy them. Thus the country will progress and rank with the other civilized countries.”36 To count every aspect of society was to measure progress and put that progress on display for the country and the world. It was done to the people, but for them and their benefit. The media played a crucial role in spreading this message by disseminating, at the government’s request, information about upcoming censuses.37 By 1927, the government even used mosque Friday sermons to encourage people to do their duty to the nation by cooperating with the census.38 In turn, the reports that resulted from these censuses did not go unnoticed by the new media of the time. When the reports became public, newspapers published the results with much fanfare. In 1927, al-Ahram even conducted a contest among its readership to guess the final total population.39 Meanwhile, the literacy rate, from when it was first measured to this day, has continued to be a subject of intense interest and apprehension.40 Two analyses offered after the 1897 census are emblematic of the grave concerns that the educated classes (and particularly those invested in the newspaper business) voiced. An article that appeared in the women’s journal Anis al-Jalis estimated that there were three million adult women in Egypt, of which only 31,900 could read.41 Furthermore, the census measured only the simplest kind of reading, not “that which could remove jahl or turn away harm.”42 The author of the article feared that there were perhaps no more than 100 women in a million who could read well enough to be considered educated. Furthermore, the article charged that ­although the newspapers had been reporting the dismal statistics for both men and women, the leaders of the country, the shaykhs of al-Azhar, and the populace in general were complacent. With this “deadly ignorance” prevalent in Egypt, people needed to demand that more education be provided for citizens.43 A parallel article in the journal al-Bayan expressed equal alarm.44 The 9,266,519 ummī in Egypt represented the “most obscene kind of jahl,” not seen in countries that have awakened to “modern civilization.” The government should assist people out of the darkness of “jahl and ummiyya” or risk leading the country to “a quick decay and complete destruction.”45 All the social ills that had been associated with ignorance were now equally applicable to

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i­ lliteracy. Indeed, ummiyya was no longer an individual’s problem. Aggregated to the national level, literacy statistics framed ummiyya as an acute social problem that struck at the heart of the nation’s health and well-being. This framing of ummiyya had consequences.

The Exclusions of Modern Literacy The push to see illiteracy as fundamentally a deficiency had profound effects on certain segments of society that had long valued memorization and oral skills. It had always been possible in Egyptian communities to be ummī (illiterate in the written sense) but still educated. Particularly in the realm of religious education, the physicality of reading from a page, though important, tended to serve as a complement to the primarily oral nature of texts and teaching for both Muslims and Copts.46 Muslims considered the Qur’an first a “recitation” and only second a physical “book.” Knowledge of import, whether the technicalities of Islamic law or the subtleties of Sufi spirituality, was ideally transmitted from teacher to student directly; books and reading ­materials served only as supplementary aides. Students memorized succinct tracts of poetry on everything from grammar to theology, while the teacher expounded and explained their meanings. Similarly, Coptic educational and religious settings also relied on the oral teaching, recitation, and singing of Coptic texts and prayers, often from memory.47 In these systems, the written and oral traditions worked hand in hand, allowing for a spectrum of literacy to flourish. For an example of the different kinds of literacy that could coexist, one can look at the 1915 petition of a group of religious functionaries who were employed as reciters of religious texts at the Mosque of ‘Umar ibn al-Farid.48 The variation in the signatures attached to the petition is striking. Although signatures are a notoriously unreliable way to gauge literacy, in this case the diversity of signatures is a possible indication of the range of writing abilities present among these ostensibly “educated” reciters.49 On this particular petition, at least three of the thirteen signatories have very shaky penmanship. The signature of ‘Abdallah Ahmad al-Far is polished, with a flourish in the shaping of the first name. However, the lines are unsteady, indicating that perhaps for al-Far writing was difficult or had become difficult with age or due to some other infirmity. In contrast, the signature of ‘Abdallah al-Jazayrili is childlike, without the fluidity of the more sophisticated naskh script of Arabic, which was usually taught to students once they had completed the basics of Arabic orthography. Most of the signatures accompany a personal stamp or seal, each

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bearing the name of an individual. However, several of the names that accompany these stamps look like they may have been written by the same writer—an ambiguity that tells us very little about the writing ability of these reciters other than that they chose not to write by hand. In other words, some of this group of thirteen religious reciters signed their names, others made their marks, some signed with difficulty, and at least one had received very basic training in writing Arabic. The signatures potentially indicate heterogeneity in the signers’ writing abilities, although all of them would have been considered educated. It is not inconceivable that at least some of these reciters represent one end of the literacy spectrum that had a lot to lose from the new focus on skill-based literacy promotion: the blind. Blind youths were often encouraged to go into the religious sciences as a way of gaining a livelihood, and in so doing they often became among the most educated in their communities.50 Even the blind who had received minimal formal education could, at the very least, become professional reciters of the Qur’an or teach in a Coptic or Muslim kuttāb and perhaps earn an independent existence through their newfound “literacy.”51 In fact, blindness was often associated with special skills: powers of memorization, observation, and vocal expression.52 Of course not every blind or nearly blind person had a natural aptitude for recitation or was able to avail himself or herself of these opportunities. Nevertheless, on the whole, the blind seem to have been well integrated into the intellectual milieus of their society. According to the 1917 census, of the 68,381 males of all ages who were blind in both eyes, roughly half were employed, and half of those worked in religious institutions—probably as teachers or reciters of religious texts.53 In fact, these religious institutions were the single largest employers of the blind. Blindness was most certainly not an automatic disqualifier for education or oral literacy.54 However, the blind or otherwise disabled had a difficult time conforming to new standards that emphasized written skills. Starting in the nineteenth century, European and American Christian missionaries in Egypt began equating the physical blindness of Coptic religious teachers with the spiritual blindness, backwardness, and superstition that they saw as endemic to the entire Coptic religion.55 To be an “enlightened” person, one needed to replace antiquated means of education with new texts and “modern” education. In this formulation, a blind teacher was best suited to teach only the other blind.56 Similarly, almost all attempts to bring Egypt’s multilayered educational system under government control contained a caveat: that all personnel—and in most cases students— must be “healthy of body and eyesight.”57 Given the historical prominence of

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blindness in educational settings, this new rule was actually quite a high bar. An examination of twenty-eight state-sponsored kuttābs by the Department of Public Health in 1913 found that only 63 percent of students had “sufficiently good vision to pass the visual acuity tests demanded previous to entering the Government service in a clerical position.”58 The incongruity between government expectations and local educational settings was based on assertions, similar to missionary ones, that “wholesome bodies” were an extension of moral and educational health.59 A blind teacher did not fit the model of the type of person who represented modern education: someone free of moral, mental, and physical defects.60 Consequently, when written literacy became paramount, it was much harder to see blindness as anything short of a fundamental deficiency and disability. To be blind was a priori to be ummī in at least the written sense.61 Once ummiyya had no room for alternative types of knowledge or literacies, then blindness and the like became disenfranchising conditions. This tension affected both school employees and students. A 1923 petition by a group of blind Azhari students complained that medical exams prevented them from entering into teaching specializations at al-Azhar.62 In particular, they noted that they, unlike their seeing brethren, were already limited in what they could do—they could not undertake written or juridical duties—so they were requesting particular consideration to be allowed to teach, become imams, and give sermons. They also cited the most famous exception: Taha Husayn, the blind educator and writer who had received a doctorate in France and was lecturing at the Egyptian University (1919–1932) despite his blindness. Other exceptions were made, for example, in the 1913 case of a longtime Arabic teacher in a government school whose eyesight had weakened. He was allowed to continue teaching on the condition that he would be subject to additional medical exams, in case his eyesight weakened even further and he would need to be dismissed.63 As a general rule, being able to read and write became a fundamental part of the fitness of teachers and students. In an increasingly penand-paper school environment, schools specifically for the blind were seen as the panacea for this part of the population. In these schools they could learn a version of Arabic braille and other skills deemed useful for the blind. However, in the process they could no longer intersect with or lay claim to the readingwriting literacy of the new Egypt. What had been a spectrum of literacy—with little connection to value judgments about good knowledge and harmful ignorance—became a chasm. On one side stood the modern, educated, literate, productive men and women of

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Egypt, and on the other were the backward, deficient, uneducated, illiterate rabble who held them back. They had to be dealt with. But first, the language of education had to be determined.

Which Language of Literacy for Egypt? At the dawn of the twentieth century, in the midst of this concern about literacy as a social measure, determining what type of literacy to promote became a fraught subject. In retrospect, it may seem obvious that Arabic was destined to be the official language of Egypt; however, it was anything but a forgone conclusion at the time. Just as demand for education was increasing, there were also real questions about the viability and desirability of placing Arabic instruction at the center of new educational policies. Educationalists and reformers had to contend with the dominance of foreign languages in the colonial administration, the cultural cachet of European languages, the role of the Egyptian colloquial language in daily life, and highly contentious questions about how to reform the Arabic language. As early as 1880, a government commission on education in Egypt noted the particularly abysmal state of the Arabic language among government school graduates. After more than twelve years of Arabic instruction in school, “graduates enter government service without having the ability to write an official letter, an administrative report, or judgment.”64 As a result, these graduates relied heavily on low-level secretaries and scribes to compose most of their written texts. Given the amount of effort expended in teaching Arabic, the 1880 commission recommended that the Ministry of Education research new methodologies and reorganize Arabic instruction at all levels of government schools. The following year, in an article entitled “The Problem of Writing,” the editor of the official government journal, a young Muhammad ‘Abduh, expressed his own dismay at the obscure language, lack of clarity, and misuse of words and phrases that were rampant in Egyptian government documents.65 Things did not improve after the British occupation began in 1882. British Consul-General Lord Cromer preferred that students (and their parents) show their dedication to education by paying their way through elite primary, secondary, and higher education schools that used French and, increasingly, ­English as the primary language of instruction.66 Scholarship students, who had made up the majority of students in government schools before the occupation, were almost completely phased out. Schools’ budgets were cut and only a limited number of new schools were opened, despite high demand. Meanwhile,

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Arabic-only education was relegated to the local kuttāb schools as well as to some private and religious institutions. The politics of language promotion through schooling was a matter of interest to colonial officials. In his 1900 report on the affairs of Egypt, Cromer addressed the issue of language in the kuttābs and his view that expanding foreign language instruction to these “basic” schools would be “not only undesirable, but hurtful.”67 He noted that many Egyptians wished their young men to learn English in order to secure a job in the government. However, teaching anything but Arabic would have had disastrous results: “[The English] would see with reluctance the undue growth of a class of Egyptians, many of whom would probably be doomed to disappointment in their aspirations for obtaining Government employment, who would, therefore, become discontented, and who would probably succeed better in life if the time passed in linguistic study had been devoted to other matters.”68 The idea that language education could create a discontented and dangerous class of people conformed to Cromer’s view that too much education, particularly of the free variety, would encourage a new generation of students to “rise in the social scale” instead of staying happily in the class into which they were born.69 Basically, in his view, language education was necessarily a socially stratified pursuit. In this attitude, Cromer shared with some of the Egyptian elite the idea that people of the “wrong” social classes getting the “wrong” education would upset the social balance.70 This balance, however, was largely manufactured by colonial policies. To get a government job, or indeed to get into any of the higher-level schools such as law or medical schools, students needed to know a foreign language. In turn, the teaching of foreign languages was increased in government primary and secondary schools. However, if one did not “value” education enough to pay the tuition for these schools, then one could not learn the requisite languages and would effectively be shut out of middle- and upper-class employment. The result was a striking difference in economic prospects for the many who received free or nearly free Arabic education and the few who had access to tuition-based, multilingual education. The son of a poor farmer who learned Arabic at a local school may have gained a useful skill, but aside from completing his studies at al-Azhar or becoming an elementary school teacher himself, he had few options to continue his education.71 As a government policy, Arabic literacy was promoted deliberately to be an educational, and hence economic, dead end. In this atmosphere, language became a natural arena of cultural, economic, and political competition: Arabic became the language of national and cultural

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pride, just as English and French were the languages of social and political power. The obvious tensions between foreign-language and Arabic instruction were not lost on Egyptian bureaucrats and administrators within the colonial government. These Egyptian bureaucrats occupied a tenuous middle ground as locals who were indispensible to the colonial bureaucracy, even as they sought to reaffirm their national identities and future autonomy.72 Within the colonial bureaucracy, many Egyptians occupied a linguistic middle ground: their recognition of the importance of Arabic literacy for their country and for their own national ambitions did not preclude an appreciation for foreign language instruction.73 Like many Egyptians who flocked to private schools that taught both Arabic and foreign languages, these bureaucrats rejected Cromer’s eitheror proposition for language instruction.74 For an example of the attitudes and sensitivities of Egyptian bureaucrats when it came to Arabic literacy, one can look at a 1911 proposal to reform Dar al-‘Ulum, by then known as the Nasiriyya Teachers College, written by Ahmad Zaki, secretary-general to the Egyptian cabinet.75 Zaki was a prolific writer and Arabic philologist who was deeply involved in both the state administration and the linguistic development of Arabic. His interest in reforming Dar al-‘Ulum stemmed from the school’s founding mission to train future Arabic teachers; it was essentially designed as the incubator to shape the future of Arabic literacy in government schools. Since its inception in 1872, Dar al-‘Ulum’s prestige, location, and institutional affiliation fluctuated, although its association with Arabic instruction remained constant. In his 1911 proposal, Zaki suggested that Dar al-‘Ulum move beyond producing teachers for elementary kuttābs, primary schools, and secondary schools, and add another section for students to specialize in advanced studies of the Arabic language. His vision of an advanced degree was almost a university-level undertaking: it included classes in Arabic grammar, Qur’anic exegesis, Semitic languages, pedagogy, public speaking, and even psychology.76 Zaki’s complaints against the current system were twofold, one pragmatic and the other cultural. The pragmatic concern was that the Egyptian bureaucracy severely lacked administrators who were capable of writing in Arabic. Rather, it used its own jargon that was neither colloquial nor classical Arabic and was riddled with foreign terms. By raising the level of instruction in this most important of Arabic language programs, Dar al-‘Ulum would influence future Egyptians in government service. Meanwhile, the cultural life of Egyptian society as a whole was suffering. Although the goal of producing Arabic

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teachers for the ever-growing number of schools was progressing, the cultivation of a truly high level of Arabic study was being neglected. Zaki asserted, “The country has a great need for authors, writers, litterateurs, philosophers, historians; in short, we are completely lacking intellectuals.”77 Zaki wished to see not only an expanded intellectual class, but also one that could articulate itself in the Arabic language. For Zaki, encouraging higher levels of Arabic instruction and cultural production was essential to the government and country as a whole. In this vision, Arabic was not just a vernacular for the poorest schools, but a potential competitor to European languages among the cultural elite of the country. Zaki also made a carefully constructed argument that Dar al-‘Ulum should also teach students a foreign language. The government teaching colleges of the time were divided on the basis of language: graduates of the Khidiwiyya Teachers College taught in English, graduates of the Tawfiqiyya taught in French, and graduates of Dar al-‘Ulum/Nasiriyya taught in Arabic. Among the three schools, Dar al-‘Ulum was considered a particularly “Muslim” school because its students came from within the Azhari system and the Qur’an was a central element of its Arabic studies. In this context, Zaki made an explicitly religious case for why foreign languages should be taught to Dar al-‘Ulum students. He argued that companions of the Prophet Muhammad and other famous figures of Islamic history had learned Syriac, Persian, Greek, and French. Furthermore, particularly during his own era, most careers required skills in more than one language, and the social and economic realities that required multilingual education for government school graduates in other fields applied equally to those students dedicated to the study of Arabic.78 Caught between rulers who did not value Arabic and a traditional education that did not feel the draw of foreign languages, individuals like Zaki, who were part of both worlds, were looking for compromises that would serve both their country and its students. On the one hand, that meant constructing and promoting modes of Arabic literacy that did not exclude other languages. On the other hand, Arabic needed to be taught and used at higher cultural and administrative levels—not just to serve the basic literacy needs of the masses.

And Which Arabic? Yet the contest between Arabic and foreign languages was not the only pragmatic concern for turn-of-the century reformers. The question of which ­Arabic needed to be taught in schools was also a fraught one. Some voiced a real con-

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cern that formal Arabic, or the fuṣḥā, used in written composition could not really serve as a medium of basic literacy. The Arabic of literary excellence that Zaki imagined was actually very distinct from the spoken Egyptian Arabic, ‘āmmiyya, that every Egyptian used in daily life.79 Even the simplifications and directness of the “new” Arabic of nahḍa-era newspapers and publications was still just a variation on the classical forms. It was a language that required extensive schooling and differed from the “mother tongue” of Egyptians.80 The basic problem was that, up until this period in history, formal literacy—the kind that could be enumerated and measured—had been the pursuit of an educated minority. Spreading reading and writing skills to the Egyptian masses required a fundamental rethinking not only of classical pedagogy but also of the very form of classical Arabic. If the goal was to instill something beyond the functional and communal literacies available in local kuttābs or informal settings, then future farmers, artisans, housewives, and shopkeepers had a long road ahead of them. They could not spend five or more years in the kind of exhaustive linguistic study that seemed to be required if one wanted to be able to read and compose in proper Arabic. The modern conception of basic literacy had to be imparted in a more streamlined way. For this problem, generally one of three solutions was proposed, each of which has implications that continue to reverberate throughout the region to this day. For some, the obvious answer was to make the written language conform to the spoken Egyptian Arabic that everyone already knew and used.81 Others wanted to modify or replace the Arabic script to make written texts easier to read, especially when it came to the short vowels, which were generally dropped in anything other than beginner texts.82 The last, and largest, group held that formal Arabic needed to be modernized and simplified so that it could be taught efficiently and quickly in a mass educational system that seemed to be, at least theoretically, the end goal of Egypt’s educational mission. Although the details of these various solutions are interesting in of themselves, my attention here is on the intersections of social reform, national identity, and the fear of colonial impositions, which were most evident in debates around the most long-lived and potent of the three proposals: the idea of making the Egyptian colloquial language the “national language” and the language of education. One can imagine that in the nationalist moment of turnof-the-century Egypt, many Egyptians presumably had a particular stake in the “Egyptian” character of their spoken language.83 It would seem logical that nationalists would find the unique Egyptian expression of the Arabic language

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a source of national pride. However, the power of Arabic’s Islamic and cultural heritage, and the realities of class and colonial politics, made the idea of holding up the Egyptian colloquial language as a “national” language a difficult proposition. Although this debate has gone through several iterations over the last century or so, two examples from the turn of the twentieth century highlight the complexity of the argument.84 In 1893, William Willcocks, an English engineer in the Ministry of Public Works, delivered a speech at the Azbakiyya Club asserting that the use of standard Arabic for writing and literary works was thwarting the creative and intellectual potentials of the Egyptian nation.85 The fact that standard Arabic took years to master and was overly ostentatious meant that it could never be a truly practical language for the country. Willcocks saw the solution as simple: turn “the spoken language of Egypt into its language of science and culture.” 86 A few years later, in 1901, J. Selden Willmore, a judge serving in Cairo, wrote a grammar of the Cairene dialect of Arabic. In the preface, he makes the case that unless Egyptians wanted only the very elite to be literate, the educational and national system of the country would have to switch to the Egyptian colloquial Arabic.87 The politics of class and colonial power appear in both the critiques and defenses of Egyptian colloquial Arabic as a national language. The leading Egyptian voices in the local press were undoubtedly part of an elite group of readers, writers, and thinkers. Among this category, the reactions to these two propositions were swift and largely negative. Willmore noted in the preface for his second edition that, although several “native gentlemen of high standing” privately intimated to him their support, “a thousand and one columns have been published by a certain section of the native press anathematising [sic] my suggestion that for secular purposes there should be one language for speech and literature, and that the vernacular.”88 For Willmore, his conclusions were nothing short of common sense, because “the working-man, having no time to study a strange idiom, and nothing to gain by learning the letters, remains, and will ever remain under the present system, illiterate.”89 In other words, clinging to the ideals of a high-level Arabic was “at the expense of the lower classes.”90 Despite these pleas on behalf of the masses, most of the reaction to both Willcocks and Willmore was incredulity that colloquial Arabic could ever replace standard Arabic; the colloquial was simply too vulgar and undeveloped, a “dead language.”91 In this resistance, class certainly played a role. As one commentator asked, “Is the language of the donkey seller and seaman capable of express-

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ing the noblest sentiments of the heart?”92 Leading nationalists such as Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, who generally supported some Egyptianizing of Arabic, nevertheless found the colloquial version an anemic language for the theatrical stage and was appalled that others enjoyed it.93 Even for ‘Abdallah Nadim, who used the colloquial language in his journals with the express purpose of reaching out to all parts of Egyptian society, the idea of replacing standard Arabic with the Egyptian dialect was still unthinkable.94 This opposition can be interpreted in a variety of ways. One cannot discount the real and profound attachment that many Egyptians had to classical Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, of high poetry, and of classical literature. 95 Also, a certain elitist outlook underpinned assertions that “high” Arabic should not be debased by that which was “lower” and more common.96 Given that most of the schools during this period were already segregated along class lines, maintaining a reified ideal of “high” Arabic may have further insulated the children of the wealthy from children of other backgrounds. However, there was also a clear element of cultural competition as well as fear of foreign imposition. The fact that both Willcocks and Willmore were British nationals fueled suspicions of a foreign conspiracy against Arabic.97 However, they were certainly not the only advocates of the Egyptian colloquial Arabic. By the 1920s, prominent Arab writers such as Salama Musa and Tawfiq ‘Awwan asserted their belief that the Egyptian dialect would better serve the literary and social realities of the country.98 Nevertheless, in the decades before the end of direct British control in 1922, the logistical and administrative realities of colonial rule laced this discussion with dark undertones. In fact, in some cases, debates on the issue reflected the colonial logic of civilizational ­hierarchy and strength. For example, one of the arguments leveled against proponents of Egyptian Arabic was that in colonial India the British had deemed Hindu dialects too “impoverished” as languages to be used in the Indian educational system; as a result, English had been adopted as the language of education in British India. What would prevent the same from happening in British Egypt? If Egyptians abandoned the “strong,” literary language of Arabic for the “weaker” Egyptian dialect, they would be opening themselves up to the full domination of English in all aspects of their linguistic and scholastic life.99 In a similar vein, Nadim noted that Egyptian money was being spent by Europeans to teach Egyptian children “in the language of a country other than their own and for an interest other than their own.”100 To encourage the teaching of foreign languages in schools, as was the colonial policy for government schools, and then to have

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individual Europeans championing the colloquial language seemed cynical and was received as such.101 Nadim asked, if there is such an obvious benefit in promoting dialects, why do the English not use slang in their own books?102 Ultimately, many reformers did accept the premise that something needed to be done to simplify Arabic instruction. However, they were not willing to discard the formal Arabic completely. Rather, the solution that many advocated was to simplify classical Arabic to suit modern times.103 Educationalists, such as Taha Husayn and others, channeled their energies into reforming the Arabic language in order to make literacy palatable for the modern educational needs of the country.104 The question of resources for this endeavor was a consistent concern. For example, in 1900, the women’s journal Anis al-Jalis argued that neither Latinization nor a switch to Egyptian Arabic would help alleviate the situation of the large number of Egyptians who “were ignorant of reading and writing.”105 Rather than focusing energy on these lost causes, advocates of reform should use their resources to open more schools and spread formal Arabic. On an optimistic note, the article posited that with sufficient support it would take only fifty years to ensure that every Egyptian would be able to read a newspaper in formal, “eloquent” Arabic. Over the long term, this prediction was bullish to say the least; official literacy in standard Arabic remains relatively low among Egyptians, and Arabic language classes are widely despised and derided among public school attendees.106 Regardless, many reformers at the time believed that with the correct policies in place, mass-producing readers and writers of standard Arabic was not just the only way forward but also the best chance of creating a modern, strong Egypt. Changes in educational policies reflected these new priorities. When Sa‘d Zaghlul, the future nationalist leader, became Minister of Education in 1906, he began the process of reverting government primary and secondary schools to largely Arabic instruction.107 In anticipation of the 1907–1908 school year, the curricula for Arabic language, religion, and Islamic history were all redone “in order to be in accordance with the needs of the nation and its desires.”108 Although Zaghlul did not go so far as to completely remove foreign language instruction from primary schools, the change back to Arabic as the language of instruction in primary and secondary schools did mark a fundamental shift in the language of education. By 1912, the British “consultant” to the Ministry of Education, Douglas Dunlop, begrudgingly acquiesced to teaching more government secondary school classes in Arabic out of “political expediency” and to relieve the “very considerable pressure” being brought to bear on his

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Egyptian counterparts.109 In 1921, a commission of the Ministry of Education examining higher education also pushed for Arabic as the principal medium of instruction. Although the commission was concerned that foreign languages might need to be used until enough Arabic instructors and textbooks could be secured, they asserted that Arabic was the preferred language of instruction for university-level study, for nationalist reasons. It also helped that students had greater familiarity with Arabic over any other foreign language.110 Meanwhile, serious projects to create or promote an Egyptian Arabic curriculum were never seriously entertained; Egyptian colloquial Arabic remained outside the realm of “good literacy.” Rather, new organizations and societies for the promotion and standardization of the formal Arabic language continued to gain momentum in the first three decades of the twentieth century.111 In other words, standard Arabic’s role as a national language that served as the medium of instruction in education at all levels was no longer in question; it was just a matter of time.

Schooled Literacy and the Public Good: Compulsory Education The development of a mass educational system has been one of the quintessential hallmarks of the modern nation-state, with Egyptian initiatives toward centralized education coming at the tail end of a global process.112 Over the course of the nineteenth century, many governments worldwide accelerated a very deliberate process of centralizing every aspect of educational policy and thereby becoming the dominant educational provider for their populations. European Enlightenment ideals that posited education as the key to perfecting both the individual and the society underpinned these initiatives. In Egypt, as elsewhere, bureaucrats and reformers saw educational policy as an important vehicle for what can only be called social engineering: a way to create the “proper” citizens, workers, mothers and fathers, and nationalists for Egypt’s future. The roots of this vision came from the nineteenth-century Saint Simonian heritage in Egypt; the popularity of Herbert Spencer’s 1861 treatise Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical; and the accompanying Comtean positivist views of social reform.113 Reformers influenced by this legacy (both within and outside the government) held that there exist scientific laws that govern a society and its development. Gathering information and translating it into action through techno-bureaucratic management and regulation could transform a society. Education was seen as an indispensible part of this formulation,

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a f­ undamental tool of reform that could be wielded to usher in modernization, economic prosperity, cultural changes, and even moral excellence. In this context, “schooled literacy” played a special role in the centralizing of mass education, as both a measurable index of progress and a sanctioned discourse that could be controlled by the state.114 Mass education had many goals, but at its most basic, it had to remove the blight of “illiteracy”—and all its accompanying ills—from all members of society. Instead of being taught in a few schools to encourage a small professional class, literacy had to be spread to all classes of society through a compulsory and free educational system. The government was no longer responsible for promoting ‘ilm just for the few; rather, they had to battle ummiyya in all strata of society. Calls for literacy promotion were linked to questions about proper government involvement in the future role of Arabic literacy as an indispensible part of “nationalist” education. For critics of the colonial state, such as Mustafa Kamil, the idea that the government was standing in the way of Egyptian progress was a powerful one. In an 1899 speech he accused the British colonialists of encouraging jahl and undermining the interests of the Egyptian people: “We see that reading and writing among Western nations is nearly universal because it is considered a human necessity. However, for us, in the eyes of this government of occupation, it is shameful and a huge sin.”115 For nationalists, a unified educational system was the backbone of a strong nation. Their hope was to create a “unified local education so that the men of the future would be soldiers in one army, moved by one emotion, and brought together by a shared feeling of solidarity.”116 Other activists supported compulsory schooling or, at the very least, significant government support as a way of promoting various social goals, such as the advancement of women, increasing the general intellectual caliber of Egyptian society, and improving the economic prospects of future generations.117 Within the government, bureaucrats acknowledged that the demand for expanded Arabic language instruction was part of the state’s mandate to provide education for the nation.118 In the meantime, private enterprises attempted to provide stopgap measures by furnishing young Egyptians with a true “nationalist” (waṭaniyya) education. For example, a new private school that opened in 1911 declared that one of its central missions was to “strengthen students in the noble Arabic language” through memorization of prose and poetry, constant practice in writing, and training students to read properly. 119 This school saw itself as part of a process moving toward the long-awaited day of “nationalist, widespread, and compulsory education.”120

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Both inside and outside the government, the discourse surrounding the necessity of mass education drew on a distrust of the Egyptian home as a safe environment for the crucial task of raising the nation’s future generations. Combating ummiyya, while ideologically about the nation, was in practice squarely a person-by-person initiative. Each child who was not in school, each adult who could not write, and each community without proper educational facilities was contributing to the problems of the nation. An 1897 report on one of the earliest government schools for lower-class girls (the ‘Abbas school) encouraged students to start attending at younger ages to stave off the corruption of their home environments: The one purpose of education is to instill the spirit of industriousness, organization, and wisdom. These good qualities in particular are lacking in Egyptian girls because they do not get practice in these qualities in their homes, where they see the women of the house without work to do. . . . The intelligence of the girls is cured in the time they are under our notice in school; however, we fear that their life in their homes after they leave school not only stops the growth of their intellect but also weakens it.121

Similarly, journal articles advocating the opening of more schools often saw compulsory education as the only solution to national malaise. In an article on education, the journal al-Jami‘a made its case that children (particularly boys, who were coddled if they stayed at home) had to be sent to schools in order for them to become functional members of society.122 It was a “national duty” that women enroll their sons in school, and it was the nation’s obligation to its citizens to provide an education that was free and compulsory: “The immense duty [wājib] of the individual is that they learn and the immense duty of the society is to teach them. The first duty requires compulsory education and the second requires free education. . . . whenever education is compulsory then it must be free.”123 Similar arguments for the education of boys and girls were made in the public press, speeches, and government reports: the fate of future generations could not be left in the care of chaotic households.124 They needed to be given a good education, even if that required forcing parents to send their children to school.125 A focus on combating illiteracy made these new twentieth-century initiatives quite different from previous attempts at educational reform. Earlier educational projects were necessarily limited in scope due to a fundamental assumption that in a largely agrarian society, government-sponsored ­education

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was necessary only for a small segment of that society. Mehmet ‘Ali, who ruled Egypt during the first half of the nineteenth century, opened a series of government schools to train military officers, medical staff, and bureaucrats, essentially promoting selective education in service of the state. Later reforms under his grandson, Khedive Isma‘il, included a more wide-ranging primary education for students and allowed for more diverse employment for graduates, who became lawyers, writers, and teachers as well as government employees. However, despite several proposals to expand the reach of government schools throughout the country, the number of attendees at these governmentsponsored schools was dwarfed by the numbers of students who attended local kuttābs or went without schooling all together.126 The move toward compulsory education was slow and winding. The first government attempts to create a national education system were the 1868 Organic Law and an 1880 Commission to Reform Public Education.127 In response to an ambitious goal to create a completely literate electorate (still a limited subset of the Egyptian populace to be sure) in thirty years, the 1868 law sought to unify all Egyptian schools, private and public, under the control of the newly reinstated Ministry of Education. The law decreed that kuttābs would be subject to the regulation of the Ministry, new schools would be built in each province, and the government would finance the entire project, albeit with help from private donations. The entire scope of the project was never realized, although over the course of the next decade dozens of new schools were built in the major cities and provincial capitals.128 In 1880, a commission of prominent Egyptian and European administrators was appointed to re­examine the state of education in Egypt. In framing their report, the Commission to Reform Public Education compared Egyptian initiatives in public education with those of Europe. It found that Egypt was behind by all measures, but its members believed that with increased funding and help from local communities, the government could begin opening schools in every village with more than two thousand people. However, once the British occupation began in 1882, only a handful of schools were actually completed.129 With the financial restrictions of the British administration in full force, officials in the Ministry of Education began looking at other, cheaper ways to expand the educational system. Early on, Ministers such as ‘Ali Mubarak saw the kuttābs that already existed throughout the country as a potential resource for government initiatives. In an 1890 memorandum to the Khedive, Mubarak indicated that the kuttābs might be the best way to fulfill the ele-

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mentary educational needs of the country.130 However, because these schools were in need of reform (due to dilapidated buildings, unqualified teachers, and limited curricula), the Ministry believed that it was best to bring them under their own administrative control and run them as government schools.131 In 1895, the Ministry of Education began inspecting kuttābs and created a subsidy program for schools that met Ministry standards.132 In return for a financial subsidy based on the number of students, approved kuttābs would need to fulfill curricular and personnel requirements. The program had the added benefit of allowing the Ministry of Education to continue raising fees in the government schools while assuring the public that they were not denying poor children an education.133 Unlike other proposals that were ambitious but seldom got beyond the planning or preliminary execution stage, the subsidy program was a relative success (see Table 5.1). By 1912, the amount of money expended on these elementary institutions reached 23,000 Egyptian pounds for nearly 200,000 students.134 Although this is not an inconsequential amount, it is worth

TA B L E 5 . 1 .  

Year

Kuttāb Inspections and Subsidies, 1895–1905

Number of kuttābs under inspection

Number of subsidized schools

Total amount spent on subsidies (£E)

1895

45

113

1896

43

159

1897

27

27

Male students

Female students

Total students

1898

301

110

495

6,938

598

7,536

1899

403

178

719

9,839

568

10,407

1900

383

246

1,000

11,318

997

12,315

1901

925

507

2,138

24,691

2,140

26,831

1902

1,346

700

3,145

36,142

2,993

39,135

1903

2,623

1,512

6,752

70,702

5,526

76,228

1904

3,698

1,944

9,503

115,871

8,615

124,486

1905

4,859

2,665

13,164

136,083

9,611

145,694

sources: Data from DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, “al-Katātīb,” Folder 9 (#0075–043768), “Note au Conseil des Ministres, concernant les modifications proposées au ‘Règlement relatif aux subventions à accorder aux Kouttabs’” (April 29, 1906) and Folder 13 (#0075–043772), “Note au Conseil des Ministres” (December 9, 1897).

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noting that these subsidies represented only around 5 percent of the Ministry of Education’s total budget.135 Eventually, in 1916, these kuttābs were converted into basic awwalī, or “elementary” schools (as opposed to the elite “primary” schools that the government had been running for decades).136 With the government’s foray into mandating the curricula for kuttābs, the type of literacy that these schools were supposed to promote became crucial. In particular, the promotion of Arabic literacy through the subsidy program was a way to encourage a linguistic division in Egyptian education and, by extension, to shape the class dynamics of future elites of the society. The motives behind the subsidy program were explicitly class-based and introduced a kind of linguistic segregation into the educational system. For a school to qualify as a kuttāb or elementary school, the only language it could teach was Arabic.137 In fact, schools that taught a European language were specifically excluded from the subsidy program. The logic of this requirement was at once cynical and pragmatic. Because these schools were aimed at the masses of Egyptian society, it stood to reason that Arabic would be the main language of instruction. From the government’s perspective, these schools served as cheap alternatives to a mass educational system and as a first line of defense against the new social ill of illiteracy.138 However, by requiring an Arabic-only curriculum, the policy also ensured that graduates of these elementary schools and kuttābs could not continue on to the “elite” secondary or higher-level schools of the government, because they would not have the language skills to understand classes taught in French or English. Additionally, administrators had to contend with the unorthodox literacy that Muslim-run kuttābs provided as schools that traditionally focused on memorization of the Qur’an above all else. Learning to read or write was secondary, if achieved at all. In this regard, the goals of the Ministry of Education and of the local population were at times at cross-purposes. Early reforms of state-inspected kuttābs tended to minimize the teaching of the religious texts; the curricula did not include guidelines for how much needed to be covered and—unlike for reading, writing, and arithmetic—none of the evaluations included measures of how much Qur’an students had memorized.139 This situation created something of an outcry among parents and the Ministry of Endowments, who accused the government of stripping these schools of their original intent.140 For some of these disgruntled parents, what could be termed an alternative Qur’anic literacy was exactly what these kuttābs were designed for. The Ministry of Education responded in 1906 by adding lessons based on the hadith

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(sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and had inspectors track the number of students who had memorized the whole, three-quarters, one half, or one quarter of the Qur’an. They tested students in the religious material they were covering in class and included these statistics in their evaluation of the school’s subsidy. By including Qur’anic memorization in their metrics for evaluating kuttābs, the Ministry of Education was able to co-opt fears of a decrease in religious literacy by making it an official part of the sanctioned and measureable school literacy.141 The Ministry of Education also had to address the discrepancy between kuttāb education and the skills associated with the measurable literacy that the government sought to promote. The main problem was that kuttāb attendance did not translate directly into less ummiyya. Estimates as far back as the late eighteenth century, based on the number of kuttābs in Cairo, suggest that approximately one-third of the men in the city may have attended kuttābs.142 According to 1880 estimates, roughly 40 percent of male children of school age were getting some kind of education.143 More conservatively, a survey of kuttāb schools in 1897 estimated that from 21 to 37 percent of males had received an education in the kuttābs, depending on where in the country they lived.144 However, if the literacy rates of 8 to 11 percent among males reported in the 1897 census are to be believed, the kind of literacy that these students were gaining in the kuttābs was not measurable by census standards. So, for example, in 1902, when there were 39,135 students in the kuttābs that were under Ministry inspection, the Ministry found that roughly fifteen thousand did not know their letters and thirty-one thousand could not write correctly.145 In other words, nearly 80 percent of these students would have been considered illiterate by the census definition of reading and writing. This is not to say that kuttāb education was not useful for students. What children were taught in kuttābs was “transferable” to other sorts of literacy skills in economic and social life.146 However, kuttāb education was not a type of “schooling” conducive to testing, inspection, and enumeration. To counter the inherent plasticity of kuttāb education, one of the main priorities of the Ministry was to include more reading, writing, and arithmetic through teacher education, inspections, and new standardized teaching materials.147 The Ministry requirements went into minute detail about how to teach children the Arabic language. In a nod to the new definitions and necessities of literacy promotion, teachers were cautioned to “be careful to teach reading and writing simultaneously for beginning students.”148 Exclusive memorization of religious texts, learning to read without writing, and a myriad of alternative literacies were not to be encouraged.

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Several additional national plans were proposed to spread elementary education and literacy to all Egyptians. A 1917 report on the state of education in Egypt noted that nearly two million children of school age, or 70 percent of boys and 93 percent of girls, were not receiving any education, be it in government, foreign, or elementary kuttāb schools.149 The report ended with an appeal to create nearly twenty thousand new schools in order to serve the needs of the entire population of Egypt and to focus on basic elementary education for all.150 The high illiteracy rates in the 1907 census and the fear that so many children were being “deprived of education” (maḥrūmīn min al-ta‘līm) were cited as the rationale behind expanding the scope of education.151 In light of this new initiative, the government hoped to achieve a true mass educational system within twenty years.152 In the policies that emerged in the wake of the 1919 Revolution and the end of the British Protectorate in 1922, the connection between mass education and literacy became explicit. The 1923 Egyptian Constitution included an article that stated that all children between the ages of seven and twelve must attend school, and that the schooling would be provided in free elementary kuttābs managed by the government. The constitutional article gave the government ten years to ramp up this program, with a later extension to fifteen years. To fulfill this mandate, in 1925 the Ministry of Education proposed several plans for mass elementary education that strove to combine the needs of the largely agricultural population with the goal of compulsory education. The problem was merging the intellectual education (tarbiya ‘ilmiyya) of the schools with the practical education (tarbiya ‘amaliyya) of craft making or farming. At a bare minimum, the ‘ilm for the mass educational system of elementary schools had a very specific purpose: to “purify students of ummiyya.”153 The compromise agreed upon was half-day schooling in elementary schools, which allowed “the students to be purified from illiteracy while allowing them to work in agriculture or some other craft.”154 The half-day solution also had another benefit. The schools could now have separate morning and afternoon sessions, thereby doubling their student capacity and “speed[ing] up the vanquishing of illiteracy and bring[ing] closer the day that we will realize the conditions and means necessary for compulsory education.”155 That day was long in coming. By the 1940s, despite the ambitions of the 1925 initiative, ummiyya had yet to be vanquished. A new program in 1944 lamented that all attempts to reform Egyptian society had failed precisely because of the high rate of ­illiteracy.156 This latest plan was even more detailed in its specificity. The Ministry instructed a

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legion of teachers on how to progress from single letters to words, what to write on the classroom board, and how to create a quantifiable record of literacy.157 The physicality, tools, and measurability of the transition from a state of illiteracy to literacy became paramount. So, for example, the traditional slate boards (alwāḥ; sing. lawḥ) could be used only for the first ten weeks of the two-year program and only as a precursor to the more stable tools of notebook and pen. The lawḥ was for the unpracticed hand and for the earliest attempts at writing. The notebook was for the “final” drafts and for materials that needed to be saved. The concerns of this 1944 campaign were not new. As early as 1900, the Ministry of Education had advocated the use of notebooks, specifically because they could be subject to inspection at a moment’s notice.158 Instead of depending on the transitory nature of the lawḥ—what was written was wiped away and gone forever—the notebook could serve as a written record of the lessons and dictations of the classroom. Making sure that every teacher in every school across the nation adhered to the “standards” of a quantifiable, reading- and writing-based literacy became the hallmark of Egypt’s mass educational system.

Conclusion By the time nationalist leaders sat down to write the 1923 constitution for the newly independent Egyptian state, near-consensus had been reached on the question of compulsory mass education: the language of Egypt was to be formal Arabic and all children would learn to read and write their national language in schools sponsored by the government.159 This was a novel statement that underscored the high ideals and hopes of the time. However, it also all but obliterated the previous half-century of flexibility; bureaucratic necessity and reform-minded aspirations colluded to define and quantify just what Arabic literacy meant. Illiteracy in the form of ummiyya was no longer an alternative form of knowledge or wisdom; it was now a fundamental social evil—one that needed to be eradicated. Meanwhile, literacy was hailed as the first step in social reforms that would unify and strengthen Egyptians and allow them to compete on the world stage. As literacy became more important for the attainment of the “public good,” and as the government was able to apply its statistical and bureaucratic methods to the challenge of “social reform,” the multiple literacies that have been highlighted throughout this book were condensed into the most basic of definitions of literacy: reading and writing physical words. The results were mixed. The ability to read and write became a right of all Egyptians, not just the few who could afford or who had access to “schooling.”

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However, the mass-production of readers and writers of the formal Arabic language was never easy to achieve. Furthermore, the narrowing definition of literacy and ummiyya also had a negative side. Even as education created opportunities for many, school-based skills of reading and writing became channeled through increasingly intrusive governmental and institutional entities. The flexibility of a multiplicity of literacies, where to attain literacy, and the kind of educated person it produced were lost. The new conception of ummiyya was useful to the bureaucratic world of the nation-state because it could be measured and fought. However, as the rest of this book has demonstrated, literacies of all types were nothing if not mutable in the hands of those who wielded them.



CONCLUSION Literacy and Literacies

T O DAY, the designations “literate” and “illiterate” are shorthand for many social and political assumptions. In fact, when you start to notice discussions about the values inherent in literacy and illiteracy, they can be found everywhere.1 The United Nations Development Reports on the Arab world regularly highlight the low literacy rate in Arab countries, particularly among women, as one of the primary factors holding back economic development in the region.2 Indeed, from its inception in 1990 until 2010, the Human Development Index (HDI) used by the United Nations and many other development organizations relied on literacy rates as one of the three key factors (along with health and economic measures) by which to determine the advancement of a country.3 Meanwhile, among Egyptians, the rate of literacy, considered by many to be the most basic measure of national progress, has been a particular disappointment. Although official literacy is approaching near universality in the developed world, according to the Egyptian government only 74 percent of the country’s population is literate.4 The attention to this particular measure comes from all directions (see Figure C.1).5 In academic and popular works, the low level of literacy is regularly blamed for backwardness, traditionalism, political gullibility, gender inequality, and overall social and cultural stagnation.6 In these value judgments, formal literacy is seldom about ability; rather, it is about an individual’s proximity to a particular educated ideal, one that is often cast as modern, civilized, moral, and/or advanced. Simply put, at the societal level, literacy has become a central index by which social progress is measured.

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F IG U R E C . 1 .  

“Reading Is for Everyone, 2007–2008,” Cairo, Egypt

source: Photo by Hoda Yousef.

A hundred years ago, the situation was not all that different. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the measure of literacy was quickly becoming a way to quantify social advancement.7 In Egypt, the relatively limited number of schools available in the nineteenth century began steadily expanding into a countrywide mass educational system that had literacy promotion as one of its fundamental goals. Schools, and the cultural and bureaucratic elites that influenced them, largely focused on a functional and utilitarian idea of literacy, one that they believed would serve the economic and social needs of a changing nation. To this end, Egyptians expended enormous energies writing and talking about literacy as a national project, encouraging particular “useful” literacy practices, and reforming educational programs to better serve the exigencies of a reading and writing world. Above all, hope was high that the right kind of literacy would produce the right kind of Egyptians. So, did literacies matter? Yes. But not because of any transformative powers inherent in the skills of reading and writing, and not because of the kinds of people these skills produced. Rather, both the practice of various public

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l­iteracies and the idealized concept of literacy as a civic concern wielded enormous influence on the emergence of modern Egypt. It was the everyday lived practices of individuals across the educational spectrum that imbued literacies with their effects—some quite powerful—and not the other way around. Growing numbers of literate, semiliterate, and illiterate Egyptians between the 1860s and 1920s were using literacies to access “spaces” of exchange and expression and to interact with various publics regarding the most important issues of their day. Students in government, private, and religious schools were encouraged to use their newfound literary skills to author works that supported particular reformist, nationalist, or activist visions of the future of Egypt. Women were told that, properly used, literacies could make them better wives, mothers, and citizens, just as the abuse of the written word could bring untold scandal upon them and their families. Protesters, strikers, and petitioners used both the secrecy and the publicity of written documents to maneuver around authorities and invite wider publics to their sides. In all these cases, gendered public literacies provided a means for Egyptians to support, contest, and occasionally subvert the wider political and social battles in which they were engaged. By traversing physical distances, traditional “intellectual” locales, and gender and class barriers, Egyptians had new ways and more public places in which to voice their grievances and aspirations as they pertained to gendered interactions in society, political protests, schooling, and the language itself. Ultimately, elite discourses and everyday practices worked in tandem to promote and utilize these new spaces to maximum effect. Indeed, literacies provide a particularly important lens through which to view the power of discourses and practices to mutually reinforce each other and influence the contours of public and private life. They serve as a medium and mediator of social change. These developments came with a cost; a specific and narrow vision of literacy also became a source of deep social concern. Whereas literacy practices were fractured and variegated in their uses, a singular concept of literacy—as a matter of public and educational policy—became a key measure of social progress. The ability to read and write formal Arabic, as determined by censuses and bureaucratic apparatuses, became a signature marker of Egyptian modernity and modern citizenship. As a consequence of this limited vision, entire segments of the population, such as women, lower classes, and those who were not conventionally literate, found themselves circumscribed by the ideals of what “good literacy” entailed.

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I want to take this final opportunity to emphasize the impact that these parallel natures of public literacies (as a set of practices and as an idealized concept) had not only on ideas about social reform but also on how writers, often well beyond official channels, attempted to engage fellow Egyptians. My example draws on two booklets from the 1920s. The first was a manuscript entitled “Teaching the Illiterate in Two Months,” drafted around 1921 by Ahmad Khalil al-Husayni.8 The second was a short book entitled Reading and Writing Arabic in Three Lunar Months, published in 1928 by a former teacher and elementary school principal named Muhammad al-Tukhi, who was promoting his (self-described) innovative teaching style.9 Both authors made the rather attractive promise to rectify the problem of illiteracy in record time. Yet despite the major illiteracy initiatives of the era, neither book was officially commissioned by government offices. Rather, the published work of al-Tukhi, with its frequent reminder that official copies needed to be bought from the publisher or author, seemed to suggest that the real driver of this work was al-Tukhi’s desire to benefit economically from the growing “crisis” of illiteracy. Illiteracy and literacy reform were not just state-guided initiatives; they could be private and commercial enterprises as well. Similarly, the manuscript of al-Husayni was visibly designed for a broad audience, with blank pages for students to write on, exercises to complete, and a step-by-step process to follow. Yet it clearly was not ready for publication. It is unlikely that the following dialogue between two students on the necessity of literacy and education would have survived an editor’s pen: Zaki said to Ahmad: Come, let us go play in the morning. Ahmad replied: No, I do not play in the morning like dogs do. Rather, I will go to school [al-maktab] and I will play in the afternoon. Indeed, those who prefer playing over school will remain like donkeys, not knowing how to write or read.10

The comparison of children who play and do not learn their letters to dogs and donkeys reflects popular colloquialisms and, overall, language that most Egyptians would not have seen as particularly appropriate for the formal Arabic of an educational text. Nevertheless, it does reveal sensibilities about what literacy meant for “civilized” Egyptians. Children must forgo their lower, animal instincts and go to school in order to learn to read and write. To remain “like donkeys” was a step back, while learning to be literate (in two months, no less) was to engage in an educated and modern future for the country. Al-Husayni’s act of writ-

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ing this text was a quintessential example of the public literacies of his time: he was using a less-than-ideal literacy to address an imagined public about the communal concern of illiteracy. This unpublished, would-be author could employ the practice and discourse of literacies with as much gusto as any bureaucrat, intellectual, or educator. He had pen, paper, a cause, and the ambition to write, and that was all he needed to bring his self-published, informal work into the world. Ultimately, reading and writing were polymorphous skills that could be deployed for various purposes, but often with the goal of creating a modern and reformed Egypt. Public literacy practices and discourses pervaded many contexts: educational and commercial projects, private manuscripts and published works, and both highly “literate” and more “colloquially” inclined settings. Egyptians used the written word to remake their world while being remade by it in the process.

. . . Observers of the Middle East will recognize some clear parallels between the discussions in this book and the seemingly perpetual “crisis” surrounding Arabic literacy in present-day Egypt and beyond.11 Arabic language education is considered unwieldy by many and lacks the prestige of private, foreign-language education. Indeed, public education itself, although technically free, continues to carry enormous hidden costs for everything from books to private lessons. Getting a child into a good school often requires significant financial resources or the right connections. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of Egyptian children languish in schools that are overcrowded and inadequate; becoming a literate Arabic reader and writer remains elusive to many. Meanwhile, the value of Arabic-based education, in terms of gainful employment, appears to be increasingly illusionary. For many, Arabic mass education has essentially failed as an endeavor at both the individual and national levels. Many of the questions that were raised over a century ago remain with us today: What is the purpose of literacy? Is it for economic benefit, social or political mobilization, and/or personal fulfillment? How do societies mass-produce people prepared to use language to its utmost capacity? Is formal Arabic a language suitable for the exigencies of the modern world? Should communities and governments police “bad” or “subversive” literacies? These questions have become even more pressing as language and literacy have yet again expanded into new formats and platforms in the electronic age. The new kinds of literacies being used by young people all over the world today are barely recognizable to older generations as communication, let alone

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l­iteracy. Yet, in the Arab-speaking world, even with the near ubiquity of aural and visual technologies (telephone, radio, broadcast and satellite television, etc.), written communication remains immensely important in the form of traditional print media as well as mobile text messages, Internet posts, and the like.12 In this new world of omnipresent communication, some of these same concerns from a century ago about the diffusion of authority and the right to speak—or to write, blog, text, or tweet—for, and about, communities has become a matter of governmental and civil concern. As this book shows, the ideal of “good literacy” works in tandem with literacy practices that are adaptable, multifaceted, and occasionally subversive; in both ways, public uses of Arabic literacies continue to influence social and political movements in the region. The complexities of public literacies—digital or otherwise—are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the events and aftermath of the “Arab Uprisings” that rocked the Middle East starting in late 2010.13 As Egyptians were reimagining post-Mubarak Egypt, it is unsurprising that anxieties over literacy and illiteracy reemerged as sites of reform and concern. On the one hand, a coalition led by ‘Amr Khalid launched yet another “eradication of illiteracy” campaign, this time as a non-governmental initiative replete with elements like public spokespeople, corporate sponsors, and the language of religious activism.14 On the other, public figures openly wondered whether illiterate Egyptians could possibly be trusted to vote on sophisticated political matters such as constitutional reforms and the future of the nation’s governance.15 In both cases—“appropriate” literacy (as defined by its advocates)—was viewed as the prerequisite to a reformed and brighter future for Egypt. The irony of course is that the “words” that embellished Tahrir Square in the form of signs, works of art, and public performances, defied any “proper” designations.16 In the end, when it came to protests that sought to change the course of the country, Egyptian “protesters used ‘all’ languages and codes available to them:”17 standard Arabic, Egyptian colloquial Arabic, French, English, words, images, poetry, and song. From scribes to printing presses, from telegraphs to text messages, from petitions to social media, from communal gatherings to public campaigns, Egyptians from across the educational and literacy spectrum continue to use the everyday practices of literacies in ways that they believe serve their own and their community’s best interests. Those who made history were not the caretakers of “good literacy,” they were the practitioners of literacies in all their complexity and richness.

R E F E R E NCE M AT T E R

NOTES

Introduction

1. “Su’āl,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 11 (March 1, 1894): 497. 2. Anṭūn Nawfal, “Al-Zawjān,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 12 (March 16, 1894): 547–550. 3.  Harvey Graff, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the NineteenthCentury City (New York: Academic Press, 1979). 4.  Brian Street, Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993); James Paul Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2011); and James Collins and Richard K. Blot, Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power, and Identity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 5.  Some of the most influential works on the “great divide” between oral and written cultures are Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982); Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); and Jack Goody and Ian Watt’s “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Jack Goody, 27–68 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1968). In his more recent work, Goody addresses some of the critiques of the “literacy hypothesis” and articulates a more nuanced approach. See Jack Goody, The Power of the Written Tradition (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 1–25. For a good overview of the critique of the “great divide” concept, see Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–33. 6.  Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Carmen Gitre, “Performing Modernity: Theater and Political Culture in Egypt, 1869–1923” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2011); and Virginia Danielson, The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthūm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 7.  Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Dyala Hamzah, ed., The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood (New York: Routledge, 2013); Omnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of

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Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Hanan Kholoussy, For Better, for Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made Modern Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010); and Michael Ezekiel Gasper, The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants, and Islam in Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 8.  Surprisingly, literacy in Egypt during this period has received little attention, although some excellent work had been done in the other parts of the Middle East and on earlier periods of Egyptian history. See Benjamin Fortna, Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004); Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Dana Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo’s Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003); and Konrad Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). For research on contemporary literacy campaigns and language usage in Egypt, see Nermeen Mouftah, “Building Life: Faith, Literacy Development and Muslim Citizenship in Revolutionary Egypt” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2014); and Reem Bassiouney, Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 9.  Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 10.  Judith Cochran, Education in Egypt (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 22–52. 11.  Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, trans. Shawkat M. Toorawa, rev. ed. (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 87 and 104. 12.  Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, and Nehemia Levtzion, eds., The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). 13. Hanna, In Praise of Books; and Sajdi, Barber of Damascus. On the cultural and scholarly revivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840, rev. ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998). For a study on the increase in textualization and its popularization among non-elites in earlier periods, see Hirschler, Written Word. 14.  For an interesting set of approaches and good introduction, see the collection of works in Armando Salvatore and Mark LeVine, eds., Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). For some historical treatments of the importance of print, see Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).

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15.  Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 23–31. 16.  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 37–46. 17. Ibid., 36. 18.  For a good exploration of how public discussions during this period contributed to ideas about Egyptian identity, reform, and modern subjectivities, see Gasper, Power of Representation, 37–41 and 95–103. More generally, Armando Salvatore and Mark LeVine provide a useful summary of the applicability and limitations of Habermas’s public sphere to modern Middle East societies in “Introduction: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies,” in Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies, ed. Armando Salvatore and Mark LeVine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1–25. 19.  Making the helpful distinction between a study of language and the study of the ideologies behind language in his own work, Yasir Suleiman has noted that “Arabic does not constitute the data for this book, but pronouncements about Arabic as a marker of national identity do.” See Yasir Suleiman, The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 14. 20.  Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of orality to the construction of popular culture and nationalism. See Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians; Virginia Danielson, Voice of Egypt; and Carmen Gitre, “Performing Modernity.” On poetry, see Mounah A. Khouri, Poetry and the Making of Modern Egypt (1882–1922), vol. 1 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1971); and Heather J. Sharkey, “Arabic Poetry, Nationalism and Social Change: Sudanese Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives,” in Literature and Nation in the Middle East, ed. Yasir Suleiman and Ibrahim Muhawi (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 162–178. 21.  For an overview of these issues, see Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language: Its Role in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969); Adrian Gully, “Arabic Linguistic Issues and Controversies of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Semitic Studies 42, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 75–120; and J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1984). For an overview and history of language policies across the Middle East, see Reem Bassiouney, Arabic Sociolinguistics: Topics in Diglossia, Gender, Identity, and Politics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009), 210–256. 22.  Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). 23.  For a survey of these social engineering projects in action, see El Shakry, Great Social Laboratory. 24.  See Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism. 25.  James Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt (London: Frank Cass, 1968), 271–284 and 330–339. 26. Ibid., 346–358.

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27.  Notable exceptions were British, and later American, missionaries who favored the vernacular in their work with Egyptian Copts—a development addressed in the next chapter. 28. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, chapter 3; ‘Alī Mubārak, Ṭarīq al-Hijā’ wa-l-Tamrīn ‘alā al-Qirā’a fī al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Wādī al-Nīl, 1868); and Rifā‘a al-Ṭahṭāwī, Al-Murshid al-Amīn li-l-Banāt wa-l-Banīn, ed. Munā Aḥmad Muḥammad Abū Zayd (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb, 2012). 29.  The events of the ‘Urabi Revolt in 1881 highlighted the new coalitions of indigenous groups who were willing to champion political reforms. Juan Cole notes that “the propertied peasants, the urban guilds, and the intelligentsia played the leading role in the Revolution, opposing the dual elite of Ottoman-Egyptian nobles and the European bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy in Egypt.” See Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt’s ‘Urabi Movement (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999), 22. For a helpful overview of the various segments of Egyptian society during the nineteenth century, see ibid., 23–52. 30. Chejne, Arabic Language, 18. 31.  For a good overview, see Mona L. Russell, “Competing, Overlapping, and Contradictory Agendas: Egyptian Education Under British Occupation, 1882–1922,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, nos. 1 and 2 (2001): 50–60. For more on this period, see Robert L. Tignor, Modernization and British Colonial Rule in Egypt, 1882–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966). 32.  Richard Jacquemond, Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt, trans. David Tresilian (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), 11 and 112. 33.  ‘Abd al-Samī‘ Sālim Harrāwī, Lughat al-Idāra al-‘Āmma fī Miṣr (Cairo: Al-Majlis al-A‘lā li-Ri‘āyat al-Funūn wa-l-Ādāb wa-l-‘Ulūm al-Ijtimā‘iyya, 1963), 486–494 and 501– 505. Arabic became the official language of government correspondence only in 1924. 34.  For a case study of the former, see Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, chapter 6. For the differences between the North African case of French colonialism and the Levant and Egypt, see Bassiouney, Arabic Sociolinguistics, 210–254; and Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 11–12. 35.  The idea of education differing on the basis of class was not new. However, the degree to which the British strove to stratify and separate school systems on the basis of the language of instruction was a novelty in Egypt. 36.  Although the Arabic language was central to Egyptian nationalist movements of this period, Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski observe that the pull of Arab nationalism, as a competing allegiance, was not strong in Egypt in the first decades of the twentieth century. Most nationalist sentiment before World War I was of an “EgyptianOttoman orientation” or was a more exclusive Egyptian territorial nationalism. The latter predominated after World War I. See Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 15–20. 37.  See Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, Tārīkh al-Ustādh al-Imām al-Shaykh Muḥammad

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‘Abduh, vol. 1 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Manār, 1931), 11–12; and Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif, Al-Nisā’iyyāt: Majmū‘at Maqālāt Nushirat fī al-Jarīda fī Mawḍū‘ al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya (Cairo: Multaqā al-Mar’a wa-l-Dhākira, 1998). Likewise, Qasim Amin, author of the controversial The Liberation of Women and The New Woman, was interested in the reform of the Arabic language. See Mary Flounders Arnett, “Qāsim Amīn and the Beginnings of the Feminist Movement in Egypt” (PhD diss., Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1965), 115–120. 38.  Selim, “People’s Entertainments”; Mona L. Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863–1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 130–132; and Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 39.  For an overview of this era, see Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 42–61. 40.  Khālid ‘Azab and Aḥmad Manṣūr, Maṭba‘at Būlāq, ed. Ismail Serageldin (Alexandria, Egypt: Maktabat al-Iskandariyya, 2005), 99–104. 41. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 30, table 1. 42. Ayalon, Press in the Arab Middle East, 151–152. 43.  In the 1850s only 443 books were published in Egypt. By the 1860s that number was 1,391 and by the 1880s the total reached 3,021 books over the course of the decade. See ‘Āyida Ibrāhīm Nuṣayr, Ḥarakat Nashr al-Kutub fī Miṣr fī al-Qarn al-Tāsi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1994), 140. 44.  Most scholars trace the beginnings of “modern standard” Arabic to the latter half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, throughout my research I found that many of the writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were quite aware of the fact that they were witnessing a change toward a more simplified and “modern” Arabic. Indeed, since the early twentieth century the language has continued to evolve, particularly as schooling has become more ubiquitous. See Clive Holes, Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 42–50. 45. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 34–36 and 47–59. 46.  This process was not without its problems, as discussed in the final chapter. 47.  For some of the initiatives undertaken during and immediately after this period, see Chejne, Arabic Language, chapter 6.

Chapter 1

1. Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, What ‘Īsā ibn Hishām Told Us: Or, A Period of Time, ed. and trans. Roger Allen, vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 376–379. 2.  The series of encounters with “learned circles” appeared in Misbah al-Sharq between August 24 and September 28 of 1899. Al-Muwaylihi adapted the entire series into a book in 1907. Interestingly, two of the four vignettes that dealt with these literacies were removed from the fourth “school edition” of A Period of Time, which appeared in 1927. Roger Allen, A Period of Time: A Study and Translation of Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham by Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1992), 41–44, 231, 259.

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3. Al-Muwayliḥī, What ‘Īsā ibn Hishām Told Us, 385. 4. Ibid., 394–401. 5. Ibid., 400–401. 6. Ibid., 412–417. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 434–441. 9. Ibid., 446–447. 10. Ibid. 11.  David Barton and Mary Hamilton, Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community (London: Routledge, 1998), 6. Drawing from ethnographic observations of practice we can seek to strike a balance between structural and individual forces: “The idea of practice has emerged as a way of accounting for how structure and agency together perform the work of social and cultural reproduction—that is, the emerging and ongoing flow of social life. Practice has been articulated as a powerful heuristic corrective to the structuralisms (which accorded little agency to individual actors and little power to historical emergence) and voluntarisms (which accorded little power to patterned social forces in constraining or enabling individual action) dominating the social sciences of the twentieth century.” See Bradley A. U. Levinson, We Are All Equal: Student Culture and Identity at a Mexican Secondary School, 1988–1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 339. 12.  For a good overview, see Nelly Hanna, “Literacy and the ‘Great Divide’ in the Islamic World, 1300–1800,” Journal of Global History 2, no. 2 (2007): 175–193. 13.  Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo’s Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003); and Dana Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). 14.  Hanna, “Literacy and the ‘Great Divide,’” 184. 15.  ‘Āyida Ibrāhīm Nuṣayr, Ḥarakat Nashr al-Kutub fī Miṣr fī al-Qarn al-Tāsi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1994), 408–411, 422–443. 16. Nuṣayr, Ḥarakat Nashr al-Kutub, 140. 17.  ‘Āyida Ibrāhīm Nuṣayr, Al-Kutub al-‘Arabiyya allatī Nushirat fī Miṣr Bayna ‘Āmay 1900–1925 (Cairo: Qism al-Nashr bi-l-Jāmi‘a al-Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira, 1983), k. 18. Nuṣayr, Ḥarakat Nashr al-Kutub, 140. 19.  For a good overview of the print culture of the region during this period, see Juan R. I. Cole, “Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890–1920,” in Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, ed. Leila Fawaz, C. A. Bayly, and Robert Ilbert (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 344–364. 20.  Martin Hartmann, The Arabic Press of Egypt (London: Luzac, 1899), 52–86. 21.  Labība Hāshim, “Al-Jarā’id wa-l-Kuttāb,” Al-Ḍiyā’ 2, no. 14 (March 31, 1900): 428–431; Muḥammad ‘Abduh, Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila, ed. Muḥammad ‘Imāra (Beirut: AlMu’assasa al-‘Arabiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr, 1972), 3:126. The fact that eventually ‘Abduh himself was subject to quite a bit of lampooning in the press undoubtedly colored his views.

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22. “Maṭl Qurrā’ al-Jarā’id,” Al-Manār 4, no. 23 (February 22, 1902): 919. 23. Ibid., 920. 24.  “Qurrā’ al-Ṣuḥuf al-Manshūra,” Al-Manār 6, no. 8 (July 12, 1903): 316. 25.  “Wafā’ Qurrā’ al-Ṣuḥuf,” Al-Manār 6, no. 10 (August 10, 1903): 400. 26. “Maṭl Qurrā’ al-Jarā’id,” Al-Manār 4, no. 23 (February 22, 1902): 920. 27.  Hāshim, “Al-Jarā’id wa-l-Kuttāb.” 28. Ibid., 431. 29.  For two early examples, see “Al-Iḥṣā’ al-Miṣrī,” Al-Bayān 1, no. 15 (January 1, 1898): 571–574; “Nisā’unā wa-l-Qirā’a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 1, no. 1 (January 31, 1898): 12–15. 30.  Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 148–151. See also Beth Baron, “Readers and the Women’s Press in Egypt,” Poetics Today 15, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 228–229. 31. Ayalon, Press in the Arab Middle East, 158–159; Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt’s ‘Urabi Movement (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999), 115–116 and 131; Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 33–36 and 153–158. 32.  Baron, “Readers and the Women’s Press,” 226. Such bound publications can still be purchased in the used book markets in and around Cairo. 33. ‘Abduh, Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila, 3:13. 34. ‘Abduh, Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila, 3:14. 35. Muḥammad al-Aḥmadī al-Ẓawāhirī, Al-‘Ilm wa-l-‘Ulamā’ wa-Niẓām al-Ta‘līm (Ṭanṭā, Egypt: Al-Maṭba‘a al-‘Umūmiyya, 1904), 43–44. 36. Ibid., 189. 37. Ibid., 16–17, 143, and 162–163. 38.  It appears from comments made in his book that al-Halabi was a student from another part of the Muslim world who came to Egypt to study at al-Azhar. Muḥammad Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥalabī, Al-Ta‘līm wa-l-Irshād (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Sa‘āda, 1906). 39. Ibid., 216–219. 40. Ibid., 218. 41.  Donald M. Reid, “Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian School Days,” Comparative Education Review 27, no. 3 (October 1983): 381. 42.  Mona L. Russell, “Competing, Overlapping, and Contradictory Agendas: Egyptian Education Under British Occupation, 1882–1922,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, nos. 1 and 2 (2001): 51. 43. Ibid., 54. See also DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, Folder 2 (#0069–009365), letter from ‘Abd al-Maqṣūd Sālim and twelve others (March 1908). 44.  Amīn Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr fī Sanatay 1914 wa-1915 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1917), 12, appendix 3. 45.  This shift is most noticeable between 1888 and 1901. Ibid., 3–4, appendix 3. 46.  Reid, “Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian School Days,” 383. 47.  Nadim did not fit clearly into any one ideological camp. He is sometimes viewed as primarily an Islamic reformer because of his educational background at al-Azhar and

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his religious views. He was, however, also a political figure who had been involved in the ‘Urabi revolt and agitating against the British. He certainly made the “Islamic” case for why Arabic was important (as the language of the Qur’an), but he also wrote passionately about the nation, education, and Arab identity, which is why his defense of Arabic often had strong nationalist overtones. For more background information, see Linda Herrera, “‘The Soul of a Nation’: Abdallah Nadim and Educational Reform in Egypt (1845–1896),” Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies 7, no. 1 (2002): 1–24. 48.  ‘Abdallāh Nadīm, Al-Tankīt wa-l-Tabkīt (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1994), 53–54. 49.  “Bāb al-Lugha,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 20 (January 3, 1893): 468–469; “Tarbiyat alAbnā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 9 (October 18, 1892): 204–205; “Al-Lugha wa-l-Inshā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 8 (October 11, 1892): 169–184. 50.  “Tarbiyat al-Abnā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 9 (October 18, 1892): 204. 51. Ibid. 52.  “Bi-l-‘Ilm Taḥyā al-Bilād,” Majallat al-Liwā’ 1 (1902): 54. 53.  The argument that language was imbued with certain personal and national characteristics was a common theme in writings during this period. One example can be found in the Arabic translation of Peltier’s book al-Qawl al-Muntakhab fī al-Tarbiya wa-l-Adab (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1891). The then-director of Egypt’s teaching schools extols the importance of teaching a “national language,” because it bestows on its masters courage, good morals, and honor (41–42). 54.  “Al-Lugha wa-l-Inshā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 8 (October 11, 1892): 182. 55.  “Bi-l-‘Ilm Taḥyā al-Bilād,” Majallat al-Liwā’ 1 (1902): 53. 56.  About Syrian writers in Egypt, Beth Baron has noted, “Most important, they sought to safeguard Arabic. That they battled over Arabic was not surprising, for language tied the Syrian Christians to other Arabs and Egyptians.” Beth Baron, The ­Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 106; for a wider discussion, see 105–108. 57.  Including but not limited to Salim and ‘Abduh al-Hamawi of al-Kawkab alSharqi; Ya‘qub Sarruf, Faris Nimr, and Shahin Makaryus, who founded al-Muqtataf; Bishara and Salim Taqla of al-Ahram; and Hind Nawfal, who founded al-Fataa. 58.  “Al-Jāmi‘a al-Miṣriyya wa-l-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya wa-Ta‘līm al-Mar’a,” Al-Hilāl 18, no. 4 (January 1, 1910): 235. 59.  For more on Zaydan and his works, see Matti Moosa, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997), 197–218; Thomas Philipp, Jurji Zaidan and the Foundations of Arab Nationalism: A Study (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014). For translations of some of his works on the Arabic language, see “Selected Writing by Jurji Zaidan,” trans. Hilary Kilpatrick and Paul Starkey, in Philipp, Jurji Zaidan and the Foundations of Arab Nationalism, 177–238. 60.  According to census data from this era, Copts represented roughly 7 percent of the population. However, these numbers seem to have systematically underrepresented the number of Copts in Egypt. B. L. Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 5.

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61.  Paul Sedra, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 107–108; and Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 64–66. Interestingly, starting with the rise of the Sunday School Movement in 1918, lay church members began to teach children some basic Coptic vocabulary, although the lessons tended to be largely rudimentary. See S. S. Hasan, Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century-Long Struggle for Coptic Equality (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 74–75 and 205–206. 62.  Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 35, 38. Some prominent British ministries were also strong advocates of reviving the Coptic language as the “native” language of Egyptian Christianity. See also Sedra, From Mission to Modernity, 109–111. 63.  Heather J. Sharkey, “American Missionaries, the Arabic Bible, and Coptic Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters, ed. Mehmet Ali Doǧan and Heather J. Sharkey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011). For examples from Coptic journals, see “Naṣā’iḥ waQawā‘id li-Dars al-Kitāb,” Al-Karāma 4, no. 1 (September 1907): 32–35; and “Ḍarūrat Muṭāla‘at al-Kutub al-Muqaddasa,” Al-Ḥaqq 1, no. 4 (1894): 25–28. 64.  Among these ties were: a common ancestry in the Nile valley, a shared history, and cultural practices that often spanned the religious communities. However, similar to calls for solidarity based on shared Muslim identity, there was also what Sana Hasan has called “Coptic cultural nationalism,” which emphasized racial and cultural distinctions between the two communities. See S. S. Hasan, Christians versus Muslims; Samir Seikaly, “Coptic Communal Reform: 1860–1914,” Middle Eastern Studies 6, no. 3 (October 1970): 269–270. 65.  Quoted in Vivian Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt: Challenges of Modernisation and Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 50. 66. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt, 44–45. 67. Ibrahim, Copts of Egypt, 58–73. 68.  For an example, see the tensions that were ignited by the assassination of Prime Minister Butrus Ghali in 1910 by an Egyptian Muslim. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 105–108. 69.  Ami Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Arabic Political Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 9–10; and Marwa Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 9. 70.  For example, the Jam‘iyyat al-Mahabba (Mahabba Society), founded in 1902, was dedicated exclusively to secular education for Coptic girls, and the Asdiqa’ al-Kitab al-Muqaddas (the Friends of the Holy Bible Society) was founded in 1908 and focused on theological and moral education among Coptic students. See Ibrahim, Copts of Egypt, 106–108 and 112–116. 71.  Seikaly, “Coptic Communal Reform,” 267.

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72.  For example, “Al-Madāris al-Qubṭiyya,” Al-Ḥaqq 1, no. 12 (1894): 93–94; “Naṣā’iḥ wa-Qawā‘id li-Dars al-Kitāb,” Al-Karāma 4, no. 1 (September 1907): 32–35; and “Ḍarūrat Muṭāla‘at al-Kutub al-Muqaddasa,” Al-Ḥaqq 1, no. 4 (1894): 25–28. 73.  These groups included Jam‘iyyat al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa (Society of the Unbreakable Bond) and Jam‘iyyat al-Masa‘i al-Mashkura (Society of Praiseworthy Endeavors) and were supported by political as well as religious leaders such as Muhammad ‘Abduh. 74. Muṣṭafā Kāmil, Awrāq Muṣṭafā Kāmil: Al-Khuṭab, ed. Yuwāqīm Rizq Murquṣ (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1984), 223–224. 75.  Kamil seems to have made a point of speaking at these schools and encouraging the charitable contributions of the founders. Ibid., 192–195, 231–237, and 255–261. 76.  The idea of madāris waṭaniyya was echoed in the press as well as in the literature of actual schools. See “Tarbiyat al-Abnā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 9 (October 18, 1892): 208; DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 230, Folder 2 (#0069–004462), Sayyid Muḥammad, Al-Kulliyya al-Ahliyya bi-Miṣr (1911–1912), 1; and “Iqtirāḥ ‘alā al-‘Ulamā’,” Al-Jāmi‘a 1, no. 18 (December 1, 1899): 412–414. This impetus was encouraged by Cromer and others who wished to see more kuttābs opened with private funds. The government even began giving land grants to private projects to facilitate the opening of schools. Yūnān Labīb Rizq, “Nahḍat al-Katātīb,” in Al-Ahrām: Dīwān al-Ḥayāa al-Mu‘āṣira (Cairo: Markaz Tārīkh al-Ahrām, 2002), 7:65–76. 77. By 1910, there were eight of these schools. See Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 67. 78.  Amir Boktor, School and Society in the Valley of the Nile (Cairo: Elias’ Modern Press, 1936), 117. In the meantime, the “older” form of local education, kuttābs, outnumbered all of the others with 3,794 schools and 231,376 students. 79. Ibid., 117. It should be noted that part of this anemic growth on the part of government schools was due to the fact that in 1911 a movement started to have local Provincial Councils collect their own taxes and supply basic education in their own districts. By 1914, the schools run by these councils and other subsidized schools numbered 134, with 14,333 students (see Figure 3.1 in Chapter 3). 80.  “Tārīkh Ādāb al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya,” Al-Hilāl 2, no. 10 (January 15, 1894): 334– 336; “Tārīkh Ādāb al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya wa-l-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya,” Al-Hilāl 2, no. 22 (July 15, 1894): 702–703; “Al-Lugha wa-l-Inshā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 8 (October 11, 1892): 169–184; and “Bāb al-Lugha,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 20 (January 3, 1893): 468–469. Al-Hilal’s editor, Jurji Zaydan, eventually expanded his journal’s series into his much larger work on Arabic literary history, Tārīkh Ādāb al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya, 4 vols. (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Hilāl, 1911–1914). 81.  As examples, see “As’ila wa-Ajwibatuhā,” Al-Ḍiyā’ 1, no. 17 (May 15, 1899): 529– 532; “Hidāyat al-Sā’il ilā Inshā’ al-Rasā’il,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 19 (December 27, 1892): 454– 455; and “Bāb al-Su’āl wa-l-Iqtirāḥ,” Al-Hilāl 2, no. 17 (May 1, 1894): 536. For an example of an ideal library collection for women from 1915, see Baron, “Readers and the Women’s Press,” 224–226. 82.  “Al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya wa-l-Ḥijāb,” Al-Hidāya 1, no. 19 (October 1910): 546. 83.  “Fā’ida Adabiyya,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 10 (February 15, 1894): 446–448.

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84. ‘Afīfa Ṣalīb, “Al-Mu‘allima,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 11 (November 30, 1899): 430. 85. Al-Ẓawāhirī, Al-‘Ilm wa-l-‘Ulamā’ wa-Niẓām al-Ta‘līm, 16–17, 43–44, and 162– 163. Ironically, in response to al-Zawahiri’s championing of reforms among the religious elite, the rector of al-Azhar ordered all the copies of his book burned. Meir Hatina, Guardians of Faith in Modern Times: ‘Ulama’ in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 121. 86.  Labība Hāshim, “Al-Muṭāla‘a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 11 (November 30, 1899): 421–428. 87. Ibid., 423; Labība Hāshim, “Taqrīẓ wa-Intiqād,” Anīs al-Jalīs 6, no. 4 (April 30, 1903): 1419; Nabawiyya Mūsā, Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Amal (Alexandria: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Waṭaniyya, 1920), 90–94; Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya (Cairo: Al-Mu’assasa alMiṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Ṭibā‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1962), 87. 88.  Mona L. Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863–1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 149–151. 89.  Labība Sham‘ūn, “Muṣībat al-Mar’a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 1, no. 3 (March 31, 1898): 83. 90.  The first such periodical was Rawdat al-Madaris, which was published from 1870 to 1877. Other examples include al-Madrasa, which was founded by Mustafa Kamil and some of his friends when they were in law school in 1893; Al-Samir al-Saghir, which was published from 1897 to 1900; and al-Tarbiya, which was published by the staff of Kamil’s al-Liwa’. 91. “Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr wa-Talāmidhat al-Madāris,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 7 (December 21, 1897): 25–26. 92.  Herrera, “Soul of a Nation,” 10–11. 93.  See, for example, excerpts from Mustafa Kamil’s al-Madrasa. Muṣṭafā Kāmil, Awrāq Muṣṭafā Kāmil: Al-Maqālāt, 1892–1899, ed. Yuwāqīm Rizq Murquṣ, vol. 1 (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1986), 15–16 and 22–25. 94.  Hoda Yousef, “Reassessing Egypt’s Dual System of Education under Isma‘il: Growing ‘Ilm and Shifting Ground in Egypt’s First Educational Journal, Rawdat al-Madaris, 1870–1877,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 1 (February 2008): figure 2. 95. The inshā’ (composition) section was a regular feature of the magazine’s question-and-answer section. 96.  “Su’āl Taṣwīrī Muḍḥik,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 5 (December 1, 1897): 20; and “Su’āl Taṣwīrī Muḍḥik,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 6 (December 11, 1897): 23. 97.  See, for example, “Ḥal Masā’il al-‘Adad al-Sādis,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 8 (January 1, 1898): 31. 98.  “Murāsalāt Bayn Banāt Sharqiyyāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 7 (March 1902): 488–494; “Murāsalāt Bayn Banāt Sharqiyyāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 8 (June 1902): 592–597; Mārī Khalīl Shamīl, “Ijālat Naẓar fī al-Jīl al-Tāsi‘ ‘Ashar,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 6 (May 1893): 271–274; and ‘Azīza, “Ilā al-Banāt,” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 2 (August 1908). 99.  ‘Azīza, “Ṣafaḥāt li-l-Banāt,” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 10 (April 1909): 202. 100.  Baron, “Readers and the Women’s Press.” 101. Ibid., 232. 102. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal, Zainab: The First Egyptian Novel, trans. John Mohammed Grinsted (London: Darf, 1989). Although dubbed the “first real Egyptian novel” by H.A.R. Gibb in 1933, several earlier works could certainly have been given this

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moniker. See J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1984), 210–211. 103. Haykal, Zainab, 128–141. 104. Ibid., 191–194. 105. Ibid., 194–203. 106.  For other depictions of public and private literacy practices, see ibid., 3–4, 13– 14, 25, 49–50, 58, 152, 171–179, and 208. 107.  See Chapter 5 for further details about the census process. 108.  See David Vincent, The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000), 18–21. 109. Ibid., 16–17. 110.  Egyptian Ministry of Transportation/Wizārat al-Muwāṣalāt, Maṣlaḥat al-Barīd, Al-Taqrīr al-Sanawī ‘an A‘māl Maṣlaḥat al-Barīd li-Sanat 1938 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a alAmīriyya, 1939), 48. 111. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 21–27. 112.  Although the exact population numbers enumerated by the Egyptian census can be problematic, as an expression of relative growth they do give some indication of how much more the postal system was being utilized. See Union Postale Universelle, Statistique Générale du Service Postal 1885 (Berne, Switzerland: Imprimerie Suter & ­Lierow, 1887), 2; and Union Postale Universelle, Statistique Générale du Service Postal 1925 (Berne, Switzerland: Bureau International de l’Union Postale Universelle, 1927), 2. If we look at all letters, including those sent through official government channels, the number of pieces of posted mail rose to nearly nine letters per inhabitant in 1925. 113.  One Egyptian pound is worth one hundred piasters, and each piaster is worth ten millieme. Egypt, Les Postes en Égypte (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1934), 75. Initially, in 1865, the government had set a unified rate of one piaster for 7.5 grams. 114. Roughly 14 percent of the population was designated literate by the census standards. Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Population Census of Egypt, 1927 (Cairo: Government Press, 1931). 115. Vincent, Rise of Mass Literacy, 16–17. Official literacy was not a prerequisite for these practices. As we shall see in relation to the long-standing tradition of petition writing, scribes and other forms of assistance were widely used by the illiterate and semiliterate.

Chapter 2

1.  Adrian Gully, “The Sword and the Pen in the Pre-Modern Arabic Heritage: A Literary Representation of an Important Historical Relationship,” in Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, ed. Sebastian Günther (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 403–430; Geert Jan van Gelder, “The Conceit of Pen and Sword: On an Arabic Literary Debate,” Journal of Semitic Studies 32, no. 2 (1987): 329–360. For an example of this literature, see Aḥmad ibn Burd al-Aṣghar, “The Debate of Pen and Sword,” in Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology, ed. and trans. Geert Jan van Gelder (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 248–254.

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2.  For examples of the integration of women into economic and social life well beyond the “private realm,” see Judith E. Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Nevertheless, by the turn of the century, several formulations of “mistresses of the . . . ” that placed women squarely within the domestic space were being used by writers of the period as part of a growing emphasis on particular “modern” forms of domesticity. Zaynab Fawwaz’s 1894 book was entitled “Scattered Pearls on the Generations of Mistresses of Seclusion” (rabbāt al-khudūr) and Malaka Sa‘d’s popular 1915 household manual was entitled “Mistresses of the Home” (rabbāt al-dār). See Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 156–157; and Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 34. 3.  Researchers have also used race as a useful category by which to examine the exclusions that literacy can reinforce. See, for example, Elizabeth McHenry and Shirley Brice Heath, “The Literate and the Literary: African Americans as Writers and Readers—1830–1940,” in Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook, ed. Ellen Cushman et al. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001). 4.  James Collins and Richard K. Blot, Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power, and Identity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 89. 5.  Raouf Abbas and Assem El-Dessouky, The Large Landowning Class and the Peasantry in Egypt, 1837–1952, ed. Peter Gran, trans. Amer Mohsen (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011). 6.  For a fascinating excavation of some of the materials and texts created by this group, see Lucie Ryzova, The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in NationalColonial Egypt (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014). 7.  Keith Watenpaugh’s description of this group as asserting a particular “middleclass modernity” in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean is equally apt in the Egyptian case. Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 17–23. 8. Baron, Women’s Awakening in Egypt; and Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). For one example of how class may have influenced how men saw the emerging feminist movement, see Juan R. I. Cole, “Feminism, Class, and Islam in Turnof-the-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13, no. 4 (November 1981): 387–407. 9.  In addition to Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, see, for example, Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750–1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Patrick Brantlinger, The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); and John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880–1939 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

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10.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4A, Folder 18 (#0075–043968), Nāẓir Qism al-Banāt bi-Madrasat ‘Abbās, “Tarjamat taqrīr” (July 20, 1897); ‘Afīfa Ṣalīb, “Al-Mar’a wa-l-Ta‘līm,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 9 (September 30, 1899): 337; and A. Masābikī, “Waẓīfat al-Mar’a,” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 5 (November 1908). 11. The tarbush, usually coupled with a suit, was seen as a symbol of the effendi class and of modern education. Ryzova, Age of the Efendiyya, 38–39. 12.  See DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 476, “Iltimāsāt, Iqtirāḥāt,” Folder 9 (#0069–009155), letter from ‘Abdallāh al-Mughīra (May 22, 1915); “Al-‘Ilm wa-l-Mar’a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 1 (January 31, 1899): 26; Ibrāhīm al-Jamāl, “Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Ilm wa-l-Māl,” Al-Hilāl 4, no. 12 (February 15, 1896): 457; and Amīn Khūrī, “Hal Ta‘lū Manzilat al-Mar’a bi-l-‘Ilm Akthar am bi-l-Māl,” Al-Hilāl 4, no. 13 (March 1, 1896): 493–494. Yacoub Artin mentions this as a reason that lower classes were loath to send their girls to school. See DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4A, Folder 1 (#0075–043951), Yacoub Artin Pacha, “Mémorandum sur l’Enseignement des Jeunes Filles Soumis à S. A. Le Khédive Abbas Pacha Helmy” (Cairo: Imprimerie Centrale Jules Barbier, 1892), 9. 13.  Although the two terms were sometimes used interchangeably, their connotations were undoubtedly different. One writer in Anīs al-Jālis explicitly cites this divide among supporters of women’s education. See “Sha’n al-Mar’a fī al-Tarbiya ­al-‘Umūmiyya,” Anīs al-Jalīs 3, no. 10 (October 1900): 390. For examples of commentators distinguishing between the effects of good upbringing and schooling, see “­Al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya al-Muslima,” Al-Hidāya 1, no. 1 (February 1910): 51; and Marilyn Booth, “Woman in Islam: Men and the ‘Women’s Press’ in Turn-of-the-20th-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 2 (May 2001): 180. For a detailed discussion of tarbiya literature from this period, see Omnia El Shakry, “Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 126–170. 14.  In her work on the discourse surrounding motherhood and scientific childrearing, Omnia El Shakry provides this definition: “Crucial to the discourse of tarbiya was the indigenous concept of adab, entailing a complex of valued dispositions (intellectual, moral, and social), appropriate norms of behavior, comportment, and bodily habitus” (El Shakry, “Schooled Mothers,” 127). 15.  Labība Hāshim, Kitāb fī al-Tarbiya (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1911), 69. 16. In 1899, the magazine al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya posed this provocative question to its readers: “Does ta‘līm make girls stronger morally, better in character, and give them more comfort than before ta‘līm or if they had never been educated?” The answers from readers ranged from those who believed ta‘līm was always beneficial to those who believed it never was. There was also a lively discussion about the content of truly “beneficial education.” See “Ta‘līm al-Banāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya 1, no. 4 (May 1, 1899): 62–63; “Ta‘līm al-Banāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya 1, no. 5 (May 15, 1899): 82–83; “Tābi‘,” Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya 1, no. 6 (June 1, 1899): 103. 17.  “Nisā’ al-Muslimīn wa-Tarbiyat al-Dīn,” Al-Manār 4, no. 22 (February 9, 1902): 842; “Bint al-Yawm,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 7 (July 31, 1899): 268–269; and “Ta‘līm al-Banāt,”

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Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya 1, no. 4 (May 1, 1899): 63. As a response to assertions that “educated” girls were corrupt, Malak Hifni Nasif claimed that “education does not corrupt the morals of girls; rather, it is insufficient tarbiya.” See Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya (Cairo: Al-Mu’assasa al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Ṭibā‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1962), 80. 18.  “Madrasat al-Banāt,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 11 (November 1, 1892): 246–251. Turkish in particular was the language of the aristocracy and the official language of the Egyptian government until 1869. For upper-class families in which the mother was of recent Turkic or slave origin (as opposed to those who had been in Egypt for one or more generations), Turkish could also be the language of the home. See, for example, Mervat F. Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: The Life and Works of `A’isha Taymur (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 33. 19.  For additional information on class issues related to the ‘Abbas school and to alSuyufiyya and its later incarnation as al-Saniyya, see Mona L. Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863–1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 1o4–107, 120–122, and 139–140. 20.  Initial plans included classes in Arabic, Turkish, history, geography, math, drawing, and needlework. Yūnān Rizq, “Madāris al-Khawātīn al-Fāḍilāt,” in Al-Ahrām: Dīwān al-Ḥayāa al-Mu‘āṣira, vol. 3, part 1 (Cairo: Markaz Tārīkh al-Ahrām, 1999), 348. 21.  DWQ, Dīwān al-Madāris, Sijil 1655 & 1656, “Jarīdat Istiḥqāqāt Khidmat ­Madrasat al-Suyūfiyya” (#4001–003253 and #4001–003254). 22.  For a summary of enrollment in these two schools and the ‘Abbas school (established in 1895) between 1873 and 1914, see Amīn Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr fī Sanatay 1914 wa-1915 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1917), 9, Appendix 2. 23.  A report in 1889 indicated that there were sixty girls in the main section of the school and eighteen in the blind section. All seventy-eight students were in desperate need of clothes. DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 6A, “Awrāq wa-Mudhakkirāt,” Folder 11 (#0075–044139), “Ṭalab Ṣudūr al-Amr bi-mā Yastaḥsin fī Mas’alat mā Yalzam li-l-Madrasa al-Saniyya” (November 18, 1889). 24.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4G, Folder 19 (#0075–044028), ‘Alī Mubārak, “Rapports sur la situation des écoles des filles des aveugles et sourdsmuets et de cette de Rosette” (February 12, 1889). 25. Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman, 120–122. 26.  Rizq, “Madāris al-Khawātīn al-Fāḍilāt,” 350. 27.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4A, Folder 1 (#0075–043951), Yacoub Artin Pacha, “Mémorandum sur l’enseignement des jeunes filles soumis à S.A. le khédive Abbas Pacha Helmy” (Cairo: Imprimerie Centrale Jules Barbier, 1892). 28. Ibid., 7–9. 29. Ibid., 9–12. 30.  These lectures were published in Hāshim, Kitāb fī al-Tarbiya. 31. Ibid., 78. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 80.

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34. Ibid., 82. 35. Ibid., 82–84. 36. Ibid., 83. This particular description seems to imply that Hashim did not always really “see” lower class women as women. According to her previous assessment, a peasant or working-class man would not need to be school-educated, so the image of a literate wife being an equal to her husband seems out of place. 37. Ibid., 86–87. 38.  Although not always explicitly stated, their activism on behalf of “women” was most definitely skewed to those on the wealthier side of the spectrum. The lower classes, when mentioned, were often viewed as outsiders to the cause, as either subjects of charity or potentially nefarious elements of Egyptian society that needed to be guarded against. In particular, women who were servants in wealthy households were singled out for their negative and undue influence on susceptible women and children. 39. Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya, 88, 125–126, 161. See also Hoda Yousef, “Malak Hifni Nasif: Negotiations of a Feminist Agenda between the European and the Colonial,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 7, no. 1 (2011): 83–84. ‘A’isha Taymur, in an article published in 1887, also advocated for broad education for girls. See Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building, 74–75. 40. Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya, 125–126. 41. Ibid., 126. 42.  Nabawiyya Mūsā, Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Amal (Alexandria: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Waṭaniyya, 1920), 46. Musa also believed that women should enter the “professional” fields of law, medicine, and so on, as well as be able to support themselves if circumstances required it. Ibid., 68–73. 43. Mūsā, Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Amal, 51. 44. Ibid., 50–52. 45. Ibid., 55 and 61. 46.  Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose, “Introduction,” in Perspectives on Literacy, ed. Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), xvii. 47.  Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, 31. 48.  A discussion of a few of these terms can be found in Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 90–92. 49.  For a sense of how mutable these terms can be, particularly when studying the literary production of the first few centuries of Islamic history, see Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, trans. Shawkat M. Toorawa, rev. ed (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 50.  The idea here, that everyday practices (including literacy practices) are functions of production and consumption, stems from Michel de Certeau’s work. See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 131–153 and 165–176. 51.  Yun-Kyung Cha, “The Origins and Expansion of Primary School Curricula,

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1800–1920,” in School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century, ed. John W. Meyer, David H. Kamens, and Aaron Benavot (London: Falmer Press, 1992), 64. For a similiar dynamic in the reading practices in the late Ottoman period, see Benjamin C. Fortna, “Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, nos. 1–2 (January 2001): 33–41. 52.  For more on the role of memorization as a first step in traditional Muslim education, as a precursor to understanding later texts, and on how it relates to reasoning, see Helen N. Boyle, “Memorization and Learning in Islamic Schools,” Comparative Education Review 50, no. 3 (August 2006): 488–490. 53. Of 39,000 students, 15,000 did not know their letters and 17,000 had not started to write. A total of 31,000 were determined not to be writing correctly. DWQ, Majlis alWuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 15 (#0075–043777), Taqrīr ‘an Ḥālat al-Katātīb fī Sanat 1902 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1903), 24–25. Similar statistics were reported in 1904 when the Ministry inspected nearly 124,000 students. Cited in Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman, 118. 54.  Edward Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, vol. 1 (London: Knight, 1846), 92. For additional descriptions of the various combinations of reading and writing skills among students and tradesmen, see Lane, An Account, vol. 2, 22 and 30. 55.  Heather J. Sharkey, “American Missionaries, the Arabic Bible, and Coptic Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters, ed. Mehmet Ali Doǧan and Heather J. Sharkey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011), 244. 56.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2 “Al-Katātīb,” Folder 1 (#0075– 043760), Kashf 1 & 4 (May 6, 1900). 57.  Early government schools, bastions of so-called “modern” education, relied heavily on traditional Qur’an teachers or shaykhs to teach Arabic. In other words, even “modern” Arabic education in all probability was also heavily skewed toward a Qur’anic literacy focused on consumption of religious texts. 58.  For an interesting overview of the politics of reading publics, see Carl F. Kaestle, “History of Literacy and the History of Readers,” in Perspectives on Literacy, ed. Eugene R. Kintgen, Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 95–126. 59.  Iman Farag, “Private Lives, Public Affairs: The Uses of Adab,” in Muslim Traditions and Modern Techniques of Power, ed. Armando Salvatore (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2001), 93–120. 60.  See al-Dusuqi’s analysis of al-Marsafi’s work, Al-Wasila al-Adabiyya. ‘Abd al‘Azīz al-Dusūqī, Ḥusayn al-Marṣafī (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1990), 55–60. 61.  In his work, Richard Jacquemond makes the case that this link between the moral and literary component of adab has continued to influence censors and the impetus to judge literature on its moral merits. Richard Jacquemond, Conscience of the

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­Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt, trans. David Tresilian (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), 9–10. 62. Peltier, Al-Qawl al-Muntakhab fī al-Tarbiya wa-l-Adab (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a alAmīriyya, 1891), 41–42. 63. Ibid., 63–64. For the history of this kind of view in Europe, see Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain. 64.  ‘Alī Fikrī, Adab al-Fatā (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Mawsū‘āt, 1900); ‘Alī Fikrī, Adab alFatāa (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Liwā’, 1901). 65. Fikrī, Adab al-Fatā, 30. 66. Ibid., 32. 67. Fikrī, Adab al-Fatāa, 14–16. 68. Ibid., 15. 69.  “Fā’ida Adabiyya,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 10 (February 15, 1894): 446. 70.  Zaynab Mursī, Al-Āyāt al-Bayyināt fī Tarbiyat al-Banāt (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Aḥmad Karāra, 1912), 35. 71.  Labība Hāshim, “Al-Muṭāla‘a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 11 (November 30, 1899): 423. 72. Hāshim, Kitāb fī al-Tarbiya, 101. 73.  “Al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya al-Muslima,” Al-Hidāya 1, no. 1 (February 1910): 49. 74. Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya, 78 and 87. 75. Muḥammad ‘Abduh, Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila, ed. Muḥammad ‘Imāra, vol. 3 (Beirut: Al-Mu’assasa al-‘Arabiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr, 1972), 49–51. 76. Ibid., 49–50. 77. Ibid., 13. 78. Maḥmūd Ḥamdī al-Sakhāwī, “Nidā’ al-Waṭaniyya,” Anīs al-Jalīs 3, no. 1 (January 31, 1900): 22–25. 79.  “Ta‘līm al-Nisā’ al-Kitāba,” Al-Manār 6, no. 18 (December 5, 1903): 704–705; “Ta‘līm al-Nisā’ al-Kitāba,” Al-Manār 6, no. 22 (February 3, 1904): 861–862; and “Ta‘līm al-Nisā’ al-Kitāba,” Al-Manār 17, no. 3 (February 25, 1914): 186–187. 80.  “Ta‘līm al-Nisā’ al-Kitāba,” Al-Manār 6, no. 18 (December 5, 1903): 704. 81.  “Ta‘līm al-Nisā’ al-Kitāba,” Al-Manār 6, no. 22 (February 3, 1904): 861–862. 82.  For some insights into the early tensions between oral and written production in the Muslim world, see Paul L. Heck, “The Epistemological Problem of Writing in Islamic Civilization: Al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s (d. 463/1071) Taqyīd al-‘ilm,” Studia Islamica, no. 94 (2002): 85–114; and Michael Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam,” Arabica 44, no. 4 (1997): 437–530. 83.  Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, 32. This is an elaboration on Michel de Certeau’s concept of “writing practice.” 84.  There is also a long history of exclusion on a racial and class basis. For example, some considered African slaves who could write to be no longer truly African but rather “Arab”; see Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America (New York: Routledge, 1997), 25. Also, as late as 1814 and 1823, in England the Methodist Conference banned writing instruction from mass schooling; see Cha, “Origins and Expansion,” 64. 85.  Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, 79.

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86. Baron, Women’s Awakening in Egypt, 80 and 82. There have of course existed “exceptional” women, and many turn-of-the-century reformers sought to highlight their contributions to Muslim and Arab history. See, for example, Ḥamza Fatḥ Allāh, Bākūrat al-Kalām ‘alā Huqūq al-Nisā’ fī al-Islām (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1890), 90–94. See also the work of Zaynab Fawwaz in Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied. 87. Rifā‘a Ṭahṭāwī, Al-Murshid al-Amīn li-l-Banāt wa-l-Banīn, ed. Munā Aḥmad Muḥammad Abū Zayd (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb, 2012), 144. 88.  Quoted in Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation, 41. ‘A’isha Taymur also mentions the resistance to teaching girls to write in Hatem, Literature, Gender, and NationBuilding, 75. And Nelly Hanna cites Muhammad Abu Dhakir, who wrote in 1759 that husbands should teach their wives to read but not necessarily to write. Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo’s Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 53. 89.  Mukhtār ibn Aḥmad Mu’ayyad al-‘Aẓmī, Faṣl al-Khiṭāb aw Taflīs Iblīs min Taḥrīr al-Mar’a wa-Raf ‘ al-Ḥijāb (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1901), 63–64. 90. Ibid., 64–65. 91. Ibid., 65. 92. Ibid., 64. 93.  Library of Congress, Manṣūr Collection, ms.# 5.683, Nu‘mān Khayr al-Dīn alĀlūsī al-Baghdādī, Al-‘Iṣāba fī Man‘ al-Banāt min al-Kitāba (February 11, 1925). See also Wiebke Walther, “From Women’s Problems to Women as Images in Modern Iraqi Poetry,” Die Welt des Islams 36, no. 2 (July 1996): 220–221. 94.  Library of Congress, Manṣūr Collection, ms.# 5.683, Nu‘man Khayr al-Dīn alAlūsī al-Baghdadi, Al-Iṣāba fī Man‘ al-Banāt min al-Kitāba (February 11, 1925), 10. 95. Muḥammad Būlāqī, Al-Jalīs al-Anīs: Fī al-Taḥdhīr ‘Ammā fī Taḥrīr al-Mar’a min al-Talbīs (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif al-Ahliyya, 1899), 2. This tract was also written in response to Qasim Amin’s work. 96.  These categories were extensions of the Islamic principles of permissibility: wājib (required), mustaḥab (encouraged), mubāḥ (permissible), makrūh (discouraged), and ḥarām (forbidden). Bulaqi considered religious education wājib, medicine and mathematics mubāḥ, and musical education ḥarām. Writing and poetry would be either makrūh or ḥarām because of their ability to lead to what is forbidden. Būlāqī, Al-Jalīs al-Anīs, 10–11. 97. Ibid., 11. 98.  Zaynab Fawwāz, “Al-‘Ilm Nūr,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 4 (March 1, 1893): 159–163. 99.  Starting around the mid-nineteenth century, Coptic and local Jewish communities attended and opened girls’ schools at much higher rates than their Muslim counterparts. In some cases this was due to their openness to attending Western-run missionary schools; in other cases, local collectives opened their own schools to compete with foreign missions that were targeting their communities. Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman, 114–116. See also Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

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100.  Fawwāz, “Al-‘Ilm Nūr,” 160. The association between Christian women and the ability to read reflected in this conversation may have been fostered by the phenomenon of “Bible women.” Some Christian missions focused special attention on teaching Egyptian women how to read the Bible. These “Bible women” would then go to local homes to read to other women and evangelize. See Beth Baron, The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 45 and 56–57. 101.  Fawwāz, “Al-‘Ilm Nūr,”162. 102.  For a reevaluation of some of these biographies and their positioning of Taymur’s father as her “savior,” see Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building, 31–34 and 42–47; Mervat F. Hatem, “‘A’isha Taymur’s Tears and the Critique of the Modernist and the Feminist Discourses on Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in Remaking Women, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 103.  Quoted in Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building, 22. 104. Ibid., 44–47 and 143–144. 105.  Huda Shaarawi, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, trans. Margot Badran (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987), 39–42. 106. Ibid., 40. 107. Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya, 73–74. Excerpt also in Margot Badran and miriam cooke, eds., Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 228–231. 108. Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya, 126. 109.  Although Arabic instruction and writing are no longer dominated by religious scholars, as recently as 1996, Niloofar Haeri noted that these occupations were still predominantly Muslim (Arabic instruction) and male (copyediting and correcting). Niloofar Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 48–49 and 65–66. 110.  DWQ, Dīwān al-Madāris, Sijil 1656, “Jarīdat Istiḥqāqāt Khidmat Madrasat alSuyūfiyya” (#4001–003253). Since “shaykhs” were the ones designated as “Qur’an teachers,” one can assume that, for the girls in this school, Arabic literacy was really an extension of Qur’anic literacy. During this period it was very much the practice of the Egyptian government to enlist Azhar graduates as teachers of language classes, in both male and female schools. 111. Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Jawād, Taqwīm Dār al-‘Ulūm ([Cairo]: n.p., 1990), 1:312–313. 112.  For an extensive look at the literary and symbolic use of “the pen” in Musa’s autobiography, see Christina Civantos, “Reading and Writing the Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian Woman Intellectual: Nabawiyya Musa’s Ta’rikhi bi-Qalami,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 4–31. See also Margot Badran, “Expressing Feminism and Nationalism in Autobiography: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Educator,” in De/colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, ed. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 270–293; and Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation, 56–60. 113. Fatḥ Allāh, Bākūrat al-Kalām, 44 and 90–94.

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114.  Nabawiyya Mūsā, Tārīkhī bi-Qalamī, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Multaqā al-Mar’a wa-lDhākira, 1999), 93. 115. Ibid., 95–97. 116. Ibid., 36–39 and 47–50. She wins over recalcitrant schoolmates by offering to help them with their Arabic assignments and she bests the older and more acclaimed Malak Hifni Nasif in writing contests. For other examples, see Civantos, “Reading and Writing.” 117.  The example of Munira al-Mahdiyya is particularly interesting because she parlayed her musical talents into full-scale business ventures by 1917 and positioned herself squarely in the nationalist camp with her anticolonial lyrics. Carmen Gitre, “Performing Modernity: Theater and Political Culture in Egypt, 1869–1923” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2011), 190–199; and Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 112–117. 118.  Hatem, “‘A’isha Taymur’s Tears,” 83. 119.  On writing and other public acts, see Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation, 47–60 and 183–187. 120.  Mārī Khalīl Shamīl, “Ijālat Naẓar fī al-Jīl al-Tāsi‘ ‘Ashar,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 6 (May 1893): 271. 121.  Labība Sham‘ūn, “Muṣībat al-Mar’a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 1, no. 3 (March 31, 1898): 83. 122.  Hāshim, “Al-Muṭāla‘a,” 424–425. 123.  For examples, see Mine Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), chapter 3. 124.  In one case, a woman named Farida mentioned her physical restrictions (a problem with her legs) as a reason she could not petition in person. In another case, a woman appealed for help in secret, without the knowledge of her husband. DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 377, “Iltimāsāt, I‘ānāt,” Folder 7 (#0069–007462), letter from Farīda Naẓīf (April 16, 1905); and DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 490, “Iltimāsāt, Ṭalab Iltiḥāq,” Folder 6 (#0069– 009599), letter from Karīma (October 14, 1917). 125.  Hoda Elsadda, “Egypt,” in Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873–1999, ed. Radwa Ashour, Ferial J. Ghazoul, and Hasna Reda-Mekdashi (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), 107–108. Likewise, the public disclosure of personal, autobiographical information could be seen as a unique challenge to patriarchal spaces. Badran, “Expressing Feminism and Nationalism in Autobiography,” 276–277. 126. “Al-Murabbī,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 34 (April 11, 1893): 805. 127.  During one period of her life, after the death of her father and husband, and before the tragic death of her daughter in 1875/1876, Taymur did serve as a translator and companion to the women of the royal Khedival court. Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building, 37. 128. Ibid., 123–124. 129. Ibid., 157–163. 130. Ibid., 115–116. 131.  Quoted in ibid., 157; Hatem’s translation. 132. Ibid., 159–160; Hatem’s translation.

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133.  For a fuller discussion of the women’s press, see Baron, Women’s Awakening in Egypt. 134.  Zaynab Fawwāz, Al-Rasā’il al-Zaynabiyya (Cairo: n.p., 1905), 217. 135.  ‘Azīza, “Ilā al-Banāt,” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 2 (August 1908). 136.  ‘Azīza, “Ṣafaḥāt li-l-Banāt,” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 10 (April 1909): 202. 137.  For an interesting example of how a woman’s writing made it into one early Egyptian publication, see Byron D. Cannon, “Nineteenth-Century Arabic Writings on Women and Society: The Interim Role of the Masonic Press in Cairo - (al-Laṭā’if, 1885– 1895),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 4 (November 1985): 473–479. 138.  “Al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya wa-l-Ḥijāb,” Al-Hidāya 1, no. 19 (October 1910): 539; and “­Al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya al-Muslima,” Al-Hidāya 1, no. 1 (February 1910): 56–57. 139. “Maḍar Tarbiyat al-Nisā’ al-Istiqlāliyya,” Al-Manār 6, no. 12 (September 8, 1903): 466–470. 140.  “Nisā’ al-Muslimīn wa-Tarbiyat al-Dīn,” Al-Manār 4, no. 22 (February 9, 1902); “Khuṭbat Khaṭība Miṣriyya ‘alā al-Nisā’,” Al-Manār 12, no. 5 (June 18, 1909): 353–371; “Baḥth fī Khuṭbat al-‘Aqīla al-Miṣriyya Bāḥitha bi-l-Bādiya,” Al-Manār 12, no. 6 (July 17, 1909): 428–432. 141.  “Ta‘līm al-Nisā’ al-Kitāba,” Al-Manār 17, no. 3 (February 25, 1914): 186–187. 142.  For descriptions of what this kind of literacy could have looked like, see Shirin Zubair, “Literacies across Generations: Women’s Religious and Secular Identities in Siraiki Villages,” South Asia Research 23, no. 2 (November 1, 2003): 135–151; and Laura M. Ahearn, Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). In particular, Zubair’s description of the inert or read-only literacy of older women in the village of her study may not have been too different from that of some Egyptian women of this period. 143.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 490, “Iltimāsāt, Ṭalab Iltiḥāq,” Folder 6 (#0069–009599), letter from Karīma (October 14, 1917). 144. Mūsā, Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Amal, 89. 145.  “Murāsalāt Bayn Banāt Sharqiyyāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 7 (March 1902): 488–494; and “Murāsalāt Bayn Banāt Sharqiyyāt,”Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 8 (June 1902): 592–597. Given their didactic nature, these letters are quite obviously not real. 146.  “Murāsalāt Bayn Banāt Sharqiyyāt,” March 1902, 490. 147.  “Al-Mar’a al-Miṣriyya,” Anīs al-Jalīs 6, no. 9 (September 30, 1903): 1546–1547. 148. Ibid., 1554. 149. “Su’āl,” al-Fatāa 1, no. 11 (March 1, 1894): 497. 150. Anṭūn Nawfal, “Al-Zawjān,” Al-Fatāa 1, no. 12 (March 16, 1894): 549. 151. Ibid., 549–550.

Chapter 3

1.  This work and its sequel published in 1900 are available in translation: Qasim Amin, The Liberation of Women and the New Woman: Two Documents in the History of Egyptian Feminism, trans. Samiha Sidhom Peterson (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).

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2.  Majd al-Dīn Ḥifnī Nāṣif, “Bāḥithat al-Bādiya,” in Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya (Cairo: Al-Mu’assasa al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Ṭibā‘a wa-lNashr, 1962), 49. 3.  By the 1930s, Egyptian government textbooks for secondary schools included a selection of Qasim Amin’s work. 4.  Juan R. I. Cole, “Feminism, Class, and Islam in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13, no. 4 (November 1981): 387–407; and Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 144–168. 5.  As a corrective to this overly structuralized view of education, anthropologists have started examining education as a process of “cultural production,” one that can account for the agency of students, educators, and communities in influencing the outcome and uses of education. For a good overview of these debates, see Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 10–15. As an example of this cultural production approach, see Sam Kaplan, The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). 6.  For an interesting discussion of student agency in the context of the late Ottoman period, see Benjamin C. Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), chapter 1. 7.  For overviews of this period and its continued resonance in the region, see Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); and Abdulrazzak Patel, The Arab Nahḍah: The Making of the Intellectual and Humanist Movement (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). 8.  It was Antonius who famously characterized American and French missionary institutions as the “foster-parents” of the Arab cultural and linguistic revival. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938), 35. 9.  Works in this vein include but are not limited to Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840, rev. ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998); Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Stephen Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004); and Dyala Hamzah, “Introduction,” in The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood, ed. Dyala Hamzah (New York: Routledge, 2013), 1–19. 10.  Samah Selim, “The People’s Entertainments: Translation, Popular Fiction, and the Nahdah in Egypt,” in Other Renaissances: A New Approach to World Literature, ed. Brenda Deen Schildgen, Gang Zhou, and Sander L. Gilman (New York: Palgrave McMillan Press, 2006), 38; and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 8–9.

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11.  Selim, “People’s Entertainments,” 49. 12.  Lucie Ryzova, “Egyptianizing Modernity through the ‘New Effendiya’: Social and Cultural Constructions of the Middle Class in Egypt under the Monarchy,” in ReEnvisioning Egypt 1919–1952, ed. Arthur Goldschmidt, Amy J. Johnson, and Barak A. Salmoni (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 125. For a fuller exploration of this social group, see Lucie Ryzova, The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014). 13.  For a good overview of the term effendiyya and the significance of this middle stratum to the historiography of the Middle East, see, in addition to Lucie Ryzova’s works cited earlier, Michael Eppel, “Note About the Term Effendiyya in the History of the Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (August 2009): 535–539. 14.  Lucie Ryzova makes the important point that it was not economic income but rather a set of claims to modernity that set the effendiyya apart. Ryzova, Age of the Efendiyya, 8–18. 15. Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity, 194. 16.  Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798–1939 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 54. 17.  In practice, these schools were largely dependent on the educational manpower and models of “traditional” education. See Hoda Yousef, “Reassessing Egypt’s Dual System of Education under Isma‘il: Growing ‘Ilm and Shifting Ground in Egypt’s First Educational Journal, Rawdat al-Madaris, 1870–1877,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 1 (February 2008): 109–130. 18.  Regarding the population of Egypt over this period: exact numbers from before 1897 are hard to come by, but the 1882 census reported 6.7 million residents in Egypt. By 1917, the official census was up to 12.7 million. 19.  The term theological schools here refers to educational institutions such as the al-Azhar teaching mosque in Cairo, Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta, and schools opened under their auspices. 20.  Amīn Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr fī Sanatay 1914 wa-1915 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1917), Appendix 1, n.p. These figures of course do not account for informal education or in-home tuition. 21.  Yasir Suleiman, The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 174. For an examination of the role and centrality of literature in these nahḍa projects, see Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity. 22.  Adrian Gully, “Arabic Linguistic Issues and Controversies of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Semitic Studies 42, no.1 (Spring 1997): 75–120; and Marwa Elshakry, “Knowledge in Motion: The Cultural Politics of Modern Science Translations in Arabic,” Isis 99, no. 4 (December 2008): 701–730. 23. Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 170. 24.  For an overview of the shift from traditional careers in the military and religious establishments to these new professions, see Donald M. Reid, “Educational and

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Career Choices of Egyptian Students, 1882–1922,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 8, no. 3 (July 1977): 349–378. 25.  “Al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya al-Jadīda,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 7 (March 1902): 497. 26. “Al-Ṣarf wa-l-Naḥw al-Faransī wa-l-‘Arabī,” Al-Jāmi‘a 1, no. 21/22 (February 1, 1900): 517. 27.  “Al-Ta’līf fī al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya,” Al-Hilāl 20, no. 9 (June 1, 1912): 543. 28.  “Al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya al-Jadīda,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 7 (March 1902): 496–497. Meanwhile, Zaydan argued that complicated prose was rooted in the late Ottoman period of Arab history; see Jurjī Zaydān, Tārīkh Ādāb al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya, vol. 4 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Hilāl, 1914), 269. 29.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 238, Folder 1 (#0069–004659), Tarjamat al-Taqrīr al-Marfū‘ min Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya li-l-A‘tāb al-Saniyya ‘an Ḥālat al-Ta‘līm bi-lMadāris fī Sanat 1888 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1889), 20. 30.  “‘Ināyat Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-Miṣriyya bi-l-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya,” Al-Manār 16, no. 11 (October 30, 1913): 880. 31.  This series of textbooks was called al-Durus al-Nahawiyya and was authored by Hifni Nasif and a committee of several others. Thirty years later, this initial attempt to simplify grammar was still being praised as “the best book authored in order to simplify the teaching of the Arabic language” (Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 63). 32.  Of the 141 textbooks commissioned between 1886 and 1914, 43 were for Arabic language instruction, followed by 28 for mathematics and 20 for scientific subjects. See Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 106. 33.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Barnāmaj Madrasat al-Mu‘allimīn al-Khidīwiyya (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1913), 4. 34.  Scholars divided the study of language into subjects of varying numbers. For example, the twelve sciences made famous by classical scholar and linguist al-Jurjani (d. 1078) were philology (lugha), morphology (ṣarf), derivations (ishtiqāq), syntax or grammar (naḥw), semantics (ma‘ānī), figures of speech (bayān), prosody (‘urūḍ), rhyme (qawāfī), handwriting (khaṭṭ), writing poetry (qarḍ al-shi‘r), composition (inshā’), and literary history (tārīkh). 35.  In practice, composition (inshā’) was not taught as an independent subject in al-Azhar before the twentieth century. Rather, according to A. Chris Eccel, language education at al-Azhar focused on syntax or grammar (naḥw), morphology (ṣarf), and rhetoric (balāgha), which was made up of semantics (ma‘ānī), figures of speech (bayān), and ornamentations of speech (badī‘ ). See A. Chris Eccel, Egypt, Islam, and Social Change: Al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation (Berlin, Germany: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1984), 150. 36.  These critiques date back to at least 1865, when an Azhari rector complained that “few graduates . . . were masters of grammar and able to write tolerable Arabic composition.” See A. L. Tibawi, Islamic Education: Its Traditions and Modernization into the Arab National Systems (London: Luzac, 1972), 57. 37. Muḥammad Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥalabī, Al-Ta‘līm wa-l-Irshād (Cairo: Maṭba‘at alSa‘āda, 1906), 207–208.

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38. Muḥammad al-Aḥmadī al-Ẓawāhirī, Al-‘Ilm wa-l-‘Ulamā’ wa-Niẓām al-Ta‘līm (Ṭanṭā, Egypt: Al-Maṭba‘a al-‘Umūmiyya, 1904), 190. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 128 and 189–191. 41.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 238, Folder 1 (#0069–004659), Tarjamat al-Taqrīr al-Marfū‘ min Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya li-l-A‘tāb al-Saniyya ‘an Ḥālat al-Ta‘līm bi-lMadāris fī Sanat 1888 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1889), 20. 42.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Brūjrām al-Ta‘līm al-Ibtidā’ī wa-Brūjrām al-Ta‘līm al-Thānawī (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā alAmīriyya, 1900), 58–59 and 62–69. See, for example, Peltier, Al-Hidāya al-Tawfīqiyya ilā al-Muṭāla‘a al-Ibtidā’iyya: Premières Lectures Courantes: Morale et Leçons de Chose, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1889). Also, another early reader used in government schools starting in 1899 was based on the work of French orientalist Silvestre de Sacy. This textbook was originally commissioned by Yacoub Artin and was a selection of de Sacy’s work with additional notes and biographies. Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Khulāṣat al-Munsha’āt al-Saniyya li-Muṭāla‘at al-Madāris al-Thānawiyya, 4th ed., vol. 1 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1906), 4–5. 43.  See Lois A. Aroian, The Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education in Egypt: Dar al-‘Ulum and al-Azhar (Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1983), 2 and 60. See also Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 96. 44. Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 52–53. 45. Ibid., 53 and 96. 46.  Nabawiyya Mūsā, Tārīkhī bi-Qalamī, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Multaqā al-Mar’a wa-lDhākira, 1999), 93–97. 47. Ibid., 97. 48. Al-Ḥalabī, Al-Ta‘līm wa-l-Irshād, 76–80. 49. Ibid., 71–72 and 80–81. 50. Nabawiyya Mūsā, Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Amal (Alexandria, Egypt: Al-Maṭba‘a ­al-Waṭaniyya, 1920), 94–96; and Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya (Cairo: Al-Mu’assasa al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Ṭibā‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1962), 150. 51.  From his vantage point of writing a history of Arabic in the 1960s, and after over a half-century of debate, Anwar Chejne saw no immediate resolution to these debates. Suffice it to say that these debates have yet to abate. Indeed, the “crisis of Arabic” has become a perennial meme in contemporary Arab media. See Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language: Its Role in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), chapters 6 and 8; and Niloofar Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), chapter 5. 52.  Ḥusayn al-Marṣafī, Al-Wasīla al-Adabiyya ilā al-‘Ulūm al-‘Arabiyya, vol. 1 (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1982), 375–377. 53.  This idea parallels the concept of embodiment that often accompanies parents’ desire for their children to memorize the Qur’an. See Helen N. Boyle, “Memorization

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and Learning in Islamic Schools,” Comparative Education Review 50, no. 3 (August 2006): 489–494. At the other end of the spectrum, Jurji Zaydan did not believe that writing dhawq could be acquired through reading or otherwise; rather, it was a function of innate talent. See the following debate with a reader: “Al-Inshā’,” Al-Hilāl 5, no. 20 (June 15, 1897): 778–783. See also “Malakat al-Inshā’,” Al-Hilāl 9, no. 5 (December 1, 1900): 151–153. 54. Shukrī Ṣādiq, Al-Qawl al-Muntakhab fī Ṣinā‘at Inshā’ al-‘Arab (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-‘Āmira al-Milījiyya, 1909), 16. See also pages 18–19. 55.  One definition of dhawq: “The real meaning of dhawq is the best intellectual faculty of the soul which enables man to perceive what could not be perceived by other faculties of the soul.” Binyamin Abrahamov, “Al-Ghazālī’s Supreme Way to Know God,” Studia Islamica, no. 77 (1993): 166. 56. Al-Ẓawāhirī, Al-‘Ilm wa-l-‘Ulamā’, 144. He also draws on the Sufi concepts of wijdān (finding or inviting an experience of the divine) and taḥaqquq (realization) to describe this experiential knowledge. 57.  “Al-Lugha wa-l-Inshā’,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 8 (October 11, 1892): 177. 58. Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Muwayliḥī: Al-A‘māl alKāmila, ed. Roger Allen, vol. 2 (Cairo: Al-Majlis al-A‘lā li-l-Thaqāfa, 2002), 121–123. 59.  See Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Brūjrām al-Ta‘līm, 17–19 and 29–42; Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al‘Umūmiyya, Minhāj al-Ta‘līm al-Ibtidā’ī li-l-Banīn (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1928), 19–23. 60.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 230, Folder 2 (#0069–004462), Sayyid Muḥammad, Al-­ Kulliyya al-Ahliyya bi-Miṣr (1911–1912), 27. 61.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 31, Folder 5 (#0069–000579), Muṣṭafā Mahir, “Mudhakkira” (April 1, 1922). 62.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Brūjrām alTa‘līm, 14–20. 63.  During this period, Dar al-‘Ulum was known as Madrasat al-Mu‘allimin alNasiriyya. See Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Qānūn wa-Brūjrām Madrasat al-Mu‘allimīn al-Nāṣiriyya (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1903), 19–31. The shift from more specialized topics to a general “Arabic language” course can be seen in the classes offered at Dar al-‘Ulum between 1890 and 1913; see Eccel, Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 166–167. 64. Eccel, Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 191–193. 65.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 230, Folder 2 (#0069–004462), Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl alJīzāwī, Al-Taqrīr al-Sādis ‘an A‘māl Mashīkhat ‘Ulamā’ al-Iskandariyya (Alexandria: AlMaṭba‘a al-Miṣriyya, 1909), 27–28. Ironically, both lugha and inshā’ were considered part of the traditional sciences of the Arabic language. However, in practice, inshā’ literature was associated with scribes and was not taught as its own “science” or subject in most traditional, religious schools. 66. Egypt, Qānūn Nimra 12 li-Sanat 1913 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1913), 6–7. 67.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Tarjamat

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Mudhakkira ilā Majlis al-Nuẓẓār bi-Taḥwīr Niẓām al-Dirāsa al-Thānawiyya (Cairo: AlMaṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1905), 16–17; Egypt, Qānūn Nimra 12 li-Sanat 1913, 18. 68. Eccel, Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 217–229. 69. Ibid. 70.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Brūjrām alTa‘līm 17. See also ibid., 83. 71. Ibid., 17. 72. Ibid., 18. 73. Ibid., 20. 74.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 23 A, Folder 8 (#0075–045558), “Al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya” (May 23, 1907), 5. 75.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Qānūn waBrūjrām Madrasat al-Mu‘allimīn, 27. 76. Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Minhāj Madrasat al-Mu‘allimīn al-Nāṣiriyya al-Mu’aqqat 1913 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1921), 2–3, 4–5, and 9. 77.  I have adapted this phrasing from the title of Richard Jacquemond’s Entre scribes et écrivains: le champ littéraire dans l’Egypte contemporaine (Paris: Sindbad, 2003). Translated as Richard Jacquemond, Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt, trans. David Tresilian (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008). 78.  See Adrian Gully, The Culture of Letter-Writing in Pre-Modern Islamic Society (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). In the words of one writing manual: “scribes are the pillars of the regime; its seeing eyes and support. Within them is the glory of the state and its organization.” See Muḥammad al-Najjār, Al-Ṭirāz al-Muwashsha fī Ṣinā‘at al-Inshā’ (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ta’līf, 1894), 25. 79.  The original newspaper version of this work uses the term kātib while the fourth “school” edition uses the phrase ṣinā‘at al-aqlām, or “crafts of the pen.” Subsequent references to the profession of author use variations of the phrase kātib al-inshā’, literally “writer of compositions.” Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, What ‘Īsā ibn Hishām Told Us: Or, A Period of Time, ed. and trans. Roger Allen, vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 38–39; and Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, Ḥadīth ‘Īsā ibn Hishām aw Fatra min al-Zamān, 4th ed. (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Miṣr, n.d.), 10–11. 80.  What is translated here as “author” is kātib munshi’ in Arabic. Al-Muwayliḥī, What ‘Īsā ibn Hishām Told Us, 38–39. 81.  Dyala Hamzah, “From ‘Ilm to Ṣiḥāfa or the Politics of the Public Interest (Maṣlaḥa): Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and His Journal Al-Manār (1898–1935),” in The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood, ed. Dyala Hamzah (New York: Routledge, 2013), 90–127; and Anne-Laure Dupont, “What Is a Kātib ‘Āmm? The Status of Men of Letters and the Conception of Language According to Jurjī Zaydān,” Middle Eastern Literatures 13, no. 2 (2010): 171–181. 82.  For the shifts in premodern to modern writing, including many hybrid intermediaries, and their implications for the historiography of Egypt, see Yoav Di-Capua,

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Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), chapters 1 and 2. 83. Gully, Culture of Letter-Writing, 20. 84.  Adrian Gully, “Epistles for Grammarians: Illustrations from the Inshā’ Literature,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 23, no. 2 (November 1996): 147–150; and Gully, Culture of Letter-Writing, 1–23. Interestingly, among the broadest definitions of inshā’ is simply to “create language” in either written or oral form. See the definitions quoted in al-Najjār, Al-Ṭirāz al-Muwashsha, 28–29. 85.  Two of the most famous works for scribes and scholars were Ibn Qutayba’s Adab al-Kātib and Qalqashandi’s massive work Ṣubḥ al-A‘shā’ fī Ṣinā‘at al-Inshā’. Other words were addressed to both the “elite and the general people.” See Muḥammad Ḥumaydī, Paving the Way to Learning the Art of Letter Writing: Tashīl al-Sabīl ilā Ta‘allum al-Tarsīl, ed. Fuat Sezgin (Frankfurt, Germany: Institute for History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1985), 2. There is also a long history of texts on general pedagogical issues; for examples see Sebastian Günther, “Be Masters in That You Teach and Continue to Learn: Medieval Muslim Thinkers on Educational Theory,” Comparative Education Review 50, no. 3 (August 2006): 367–388; and Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo’s Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 60–61. 86.  Edward Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, vol. 2 (London: Knight, 1846), 29. Al-‘Attar’s work was first published during his lifetime and, judging from Lane’s commentary, he was particularly proud of it. Versions were reprinted in 1855, 1875, 1882, and 1886. 87. Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, 155–157. For further analysis of ‘Attar’s works and his role in a neoclassical revival of grammar, literature, theology, and history, see the rest of Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism. 88.  Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār, Inshā’ al-Shaykh Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al‘Uthmāniyya, 1886), 2. 89. Ibid., 61–72. 90.  I was able to locate the second edition: Sa‘īd al-Shartūnī, Al-Shihāb al-Thāqib fī Ṣinā‘at al-Kātib, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Maṭba‘at al-Ābā’ al-Mursalīn al-Yasū‘īyīn, 1889). Gully singles out al-Shartuni’s work as a substantial departure from works written before it. Gully, Culture of Letter-Writing, 20–22. See also Abdulrazzak Patel, “Nahḍa Epistolography: Al-Shartūnī’s al-Shihāb and the Western Art of Letter-Writing,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 9 (2009): 37–81. 91. Al-Shartūnī, Al-Shihāb al-Thāqib fī Ṣinā‘at al-Kātib, 5. 92. Ibid., 6–10. 93. Gully, Culture of Letter-Writing, 22. 94. Muḥammad Diyāb, Kitāb al-Inshā’, vol. 1 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā alAmīriyya, 1889). In his later work on the history of Arabic literature (completed in 1897), Diyab mentions al-Shartuni’s al-Shihāb al-Thāqib and his own Kitāb al-Inshā’, indicating that he saw both works as part of the same progression in the development of inshā’ literature. Muḥammad Diyāb, Tārīkh Ādāb al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya (Cairo: Al-Majlis al-A‘lā li-l-Thaqāfa, 2003), 441.

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95.  It is not clear whether a second planned volume on ‘amalī, or “practical writing,” was ever published. Nevertheless, this focus on theoretical pedagogy seems to have been part of a larger trend in Europe and Egypt in the latter part of the nineteenth century. See Hilary Kalmbach, “Training Teachers How to Teach: Translational Exchange and the Introduction of Social-Scientific Pedagogy in 1890s Egypt,” in The Long 1890s in Egypt: Colonial Quiescence, Subterranean Resistance, ed. Marilyn Booth and Anthony Gorman (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 94–96 and 100–105. 96. Diyāb, Kitāb al-Inshā’, 5–9. 97. Ibid., 6. 98. Ibid., 25–51. 99. Ibid., 62–63. 100. Ibid., 59. 101. Ibid., 60–62. 102. Ibid., 63. 103. Ibid., 64. 104. Ibid., 64–65. 105. Al-Najjār, Al-Ṭirāz al-Muwashsha, 13–14. 106. Ibid., 13 and 17. 107. Muṣṭafā Falakī, Madārij al-Irtiqā’ ilā Ṣinā‘at al-Inshā’ (Cairo: M. M. al-Falakī, 1897). Ironically, Falaki copies word for word Diyab’s section on the importance of not simply copying text from other works (ibid., 3–4). 108.  These writing texts included Ḥusayn Wālī, Kitāb al-Imlā’ (Cairo: Maṭba‘at alManār al-Islāmiyya, 1904); and Ṣādiq, Al-Qawl al-Muntakhab. Readers were particularly popular. Among the earliest of these was Yūsuf Abū al-Ḥajjāj al-Balawī, Hādhā Kitāb Alif Bā’ (Cairo: Jam‘iyyat al-Ma‘ārif, 1870); ‘Abdallāh Fikrī, Al-Fawā’id al-Fikriyya li-l-Makātib al-Miṣriyya (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Wādī al-Nīl al-‘Arabiyya, 1882); Peltier, Al-Hidāya alTawfīqiyya; Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Khulāṣat al-Munsha’āt; and Nabawiyya Mūsā, Kitāb al-Muṭāla‘a al-‘Arabiyya li-Madāris al-Banāt (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1909). 109.  Marilyn Booth, “Before Qasim Amin: Writing Women’s History in 1890s Egypt,” in The Long 1890s in Egypt: Colonial Quiescence, Subterranean Resistance, ed. Marilyn Booth and Anthony Gorman (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 365. 110.  ‘Alī Mubārak, Ṭarīq al-Hijā’ wa-l-Tamrīn ‘alā al-Qirā’a fī al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Wādī al-Nīl, 1868). 111.  For a work on general pedagogy, see Rifā‘a al-Ṭahṭāwī, Al-Murshid al-Amīn li-lBanāt wa-l-Banīn, ed. Munā Aḥmad Muḥammad Abū Zayd (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb, 2012). 112.  These precise instructions are a clear reference to the Lancasterian Monitorial System of education. See Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 69–74. 113. Mubārak, Ṭarīq al-Hijā’, 2:82. 114.  Marilyn Booth makes the point that even though in the early decades of Egypt’s budding journalistic scene a few publications existed primarily for female audiences,

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discussions about women were geared primarily to male audiences. Booth, “Before Qasim Amin,” 390–393. 115. “Mulaḥ wa-Ādāb,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 2 (November 1, 1897): 7. 116.  Fransīs Mikhā’īl, “Tadbīr al-Manzil,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 15 (March 11, 1898): 57–58. For more on his textbooks, see Mona L. Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863–1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 145–154. Mikha’il seems to have made introducing home economics to Egyptian schools something of a personal quest. In 1915 he even requested that the Sultan of Egypt encourage the Ministry of Education to adopt his textbooks. See DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 655, Folder 13 (#0069–014326), letter to Sultan from Fransīs Mikhā’īl (January 1915). 117.  “Masā’il li-l-Ḥall: Inshā’,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 20 (May 1, 1898): 79. 118.  “Tadbīr al-Manzil,” Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr 1, no. 34 (September 21, 1898): 134. 119.  For a useful overview of the promotion of a particular ideal of womanhood and nationalism in Egyptian schools, see Lisa Pollard, Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing and Liberating Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 100–131. 120.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Minhāj Madrasat al-Mu‘allimīn al-Nāṣiriyya, 11. 121.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Barnāmaj Madrasat a-Mu‘allimīn al-Khidīwiyya, 3. 122.  Ṣādiq, Al-Qawl al-Muntakhab, 59–79. 123. Ibid., 64–65. 124.  For an interesting survey of these goals with regard to elementary education and the kuttāb system, see Nicolas de Lavergne, “La modernisation des kuttâb en Égypte au tournant du XXe siècle,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 75 (2007): 74–89. 125.  This textbook was designed specifically for kuttāb students, but it continued to appear in primary and elementary school curricula as late as 1927. Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Murāqabat al-Ta‘līm al-Awwalī (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1927), 79. 126. Fikrī, Al-Fawā’id al-Fikriyya, 105–120. 127. Ibid., 105. 128.  For example, Peltier, Al-Qawl al-Muntakhab fī al-Tarbiya wa-l-Adab (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1891), 41–42. 129.  For more on tarbiya waṭaniyya, see Pollard, Nurturing the Nation, 119–122. See also the course work for “moral and national education” (al-akhlāq wa-l-tarbiya al-waṭaniyya) in the 1927 curriculum for primary schools, in Egyptian Ministry of Education, Minhāj al-Ta‘līm, 9–13. 130.  Amīn Wāṣif, Manāhij al-Adab, 5th ed., vol. 1 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1914). Given that by 1914 this book was already in its fifth edition, it had probably been in use since around 1909. However, I found records of purchase from the Ministry of Education starting only in 1912. DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’ Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 8, Folder 31 (#0075–044540), “Kashf ” (May 1912).

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131. Wāṣif, Manāhij al-Adab, 119–150. 132. Ibid., 131. 133.  Egyptian Ministry of Education, Minhāj Madrasat al-Mu‘allimīn, 5. 134. The Qānūn Niẓām al-Madāris (School Regulations) for Egyptian government schools stated the following: “No books or printings are allowed in the hands of students, or to be sold to them, without permission from the Ministry.” In 1910 this statement was amended as follows: “No books or printings are allowed in any school, nor their distribution or sale to the students, without permission from the Ministry. In addition, it is of utmost danger for the students of any grade to enter the school with books, tracts, newspapers, or printings that have a political nature.” DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’ Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 24, Folder 1 (#0075–045582), Egyptian Ministry of Education, “Mudhakkira” (June 10, 1910). 135.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 230, Folder 2 (#0069–004462), Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl alJīzāwī, Al-Taqrīr al-Sādis ‘an A‘māl Mashīkhat ‘Ulamā’ al-Iskandariyya (Alexandria: AlMaṭba‘a al-Miṣriyya, 1909), 39. 136. Ibid., 54. 137. Ibid. 138.  Amīr Ma’mūn al-‘Aṭṭār, Āyat al-Inshā’ wa-Ḥikmat al-Munshi’īn (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Taqaddum, 1907), 1. 139. Ibid., 14–15 and 17–19. 140. Ibid., 2. 141. Ibid., 3. 142. Ibid., 109. 143. Ibid., 110. 144.  The promotional notices at the start of the book indicate that he came from an important family with connections to influential people at al-Azhar and beyond.

Chapter 4

1.  See, for example, Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 2.  Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, trans. Shawkat M. Toorawa, rev. ed. (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 3.  One of the most famous premodern manuals was Aḥmad Qalqashandī’s Kitāb Ṣubḥ al-A‘shā’ fī Ṣinā‘at al-Inshā’ (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 2006). Well into the nineteenth century, however, prominent scholars were still innovating and expounding on this particular form of writing instruction. See Mar‘ī Karmī and Hasan ‘Aṭṭār, Inshā’ Mar‘ī wa-Inshā’ al-‘Aṭṭār, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Maṭba‘at al-Jawā’ib, 1882). 4.  For a description of these “scribal intermediaries” (along with some wonderful contemporary illustrations) in the context of Ottoman Palestine, see Yuval Ben-­Bassat, Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine (London: I. B. ­Tauris, 2013), 50–54. 5.  John T. Chalcraft documents several group petitions composed by guild members in the 1860s and 1870s in chapter 3 of The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories:

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Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863–1914 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005); see also John T. Chalcraft, “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, no. 3 (August 2005): 303–325. 6.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 487, “Iltimāsāt Majjāniyyat al-Ta‘līm,” Folder 5 (#0069– 009555), letter from Sitt Jalīla bint Jirjis Sa‘d (March 29, 1911). 7. Ibid. 8.  Similarly, Brinkley Messick describes the private notaries in the Yemeni context who served as “legal specialists [who] functioned in an institutional space that was, again, neither public nor private in the modern sense. It was located outside the purview of the Islamic state and involved serving the public with acquired legal knowledge in a marketplace-demand fashion.” See Brinkley Messick, “Written Identities: Legal Subjects in an Islamic State,” History of Religions 38, no. 1 (1998): 38. 9.  ‘Imād Aḥmad Hilāl, “Al-‘Arḍuḥāl: Maṣdar Majhūl li-Dirāsat Tārīkh Miṣr fī alQarn al-Tāsi‘ ‘Ashar,” Al-Ruzname 2 (2004): 304. 10.  Geoffrey Khan, “The Historical Development of the Structure of Medieval Arabic Petitions,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 53, no. 1 (1990): 8. 11.  Hilāl, “Al-‘Arḍuḥāl,” 37–309. For a collection of replies sent by Mehmet ‘Ali to various government officials in response to petitions, see Muḥammad Ṣābir ‘Arab, Aḥmad Zakariyyā al-Shalaq, and Nāṣir ‘Abdallāh ‘Uthmān, eds., Al-Sulṭa wa-‘Arḍuḥālāt al-Maẓlūmīn: Min ‘Aṣr Muḥammad ‘Alī, 1820–1823 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Dār al-Kutub wa-lWathā’iq al-Qawmiyya, 2009). Mine Ener has also used these petition records to explore requests for charitable assistance. See Mine Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), xxi–xxiii. 12.  For examples of requests for charity by men and women in the nineteenth century, see Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor, chapter 3. 13.  This sample is drawn from DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 377, “Iltimāsāt, I‘ānāt” Folders 7 and 8. This box just happens to be the first of nearly two hundred boxes of petitions in the ‘Ābidīn collection. In my perusal of some of these records I found that this level of female participation was not uncommon, particularly when it came to requests for charity. However, in boxes dedicated to requests by individuals from male-dominated professions and segments of society (bureaucrats, religious scholars, etc.), women are noticeably absent. 14.  For several nineteenth-century examples, see Chalcraft, “Engaging the State” and Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories. 15.  For example, two villages requesting upgrades or continued support for their local schools engaged in a back and forth with Ministry of Education officials in 1892. See DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4D, “Mawdū‘āt Mukhtalifa” Folder 24 (#0075–044063), letters from Bilbīs and Ibrāhīmiyya (October 1 and 5, 1892) and response from Ministry of Education (October 31, 1892). 16.  For more on the development and repercussions of telegraphy during this period in Egypt, see On Barak, On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt

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(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Yuval Ben-Bassat notes a similar propensity to use telegraphy for petitioning in Ottoman Palestine; see Ben-Bassat, Petitioning the Sultan, 34–35 and 54–57. 17.  Arthur Goldschmidt, Historical Dictionary of Egypt, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 98; and Barak, On Time, 127. 18.  Eugene Rogan, “Instant Communication: The Impact of the Telegraph in Otto­ man Syria,” in The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation: Bilād alShām from the 18th to the 20th Century, ed. Thomas Philipp and Birgit Schaebler (Stuttgart, Germany: F. Steiner, 1998), 126. Looking at the situation in Ottoman Syria, Rogan suggests that “the telegraph could be interpreted as an instrument giving subjects a political voice to reach all levels of government, to express opinions, make complaints, petition for change” (ibid., 114). On the basis of my review of telegraphed petitions in the Egyptian Archives, this indeed seems to be the case. 19.  See early examples in DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 623, “Dīwān Khidīwī, ‘Arḍuḥālāt.” 20.  Egyptian State Railways, Cairo, Egypt and How to See It (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1907), 167–168. 21.  This total excludes domestic telegrams that were used by the port and railway authorities. Bureau International des Administrations Télégraphiques, Statistique Générale de la Télégraphie, Année 1925 (Berne, Switzerland: Bureau International de l’Union Télégraphique, 1927), 7 and 9. 22.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 408, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Muwaẓẓafīn,” Folder 1 (#0069– 007864), letter from Muḥḍiray al-Maḥākim al-Ahliyya (October 27, 1923). 23.  Urban protests certainly were a regular part of life in Egypt even before this period. However, the class and structural dynamics of the turn of the century were unique. Sami Zubaida, “Urban Social Movements, 1750–1950,” in The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 1750–1950, ed. Peter Sluglett (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008). 24. Chalcraft, Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories, 164–187. 25. Ibid., 175. 26. Ibid., 175–183. 27.  For some of the epistemological implications of this shift in use of legal documents, see F. Robert Hunter, “Egypt Under the Successors of Muhammad ‘Ali,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. M.W. Daly, vol. 2, 180–197 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 186. 28.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Majlis al-Nuẓẓār, Box 8, “Iltimāsāt,” Folder 32 (#0075– 029749), “Iqra’ū bi-Im‘ān” (April 4, 1909). 29.  For the genesis of these events in the context of Coptic minority politics and Coptic-British relations, see C. A. Bayly, “Representing Copts and Muhammadans: Empire, Nation, and Community in Egypt and India, 1880–1914,” in Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, ed. Leila Fawaz, C. A. Bayly, and Robert Ilbert (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 167–176; and Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 69–72. For Consul-General Sir Eldon Gorst’s summary of these

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events, see House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and ­Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1910 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1911), 5–10. 30.  Malak Badrawi, Political Violence in Egypt, 1910–1924: Secret Societies, Plots and Assassinations, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 22–47. 31.  BNA, FO 141/484/1, “Mahomedans and Copts,” Gorst to Grey, June 4, 1910; and Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation Through Popular Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 105–108. 32.  Kyriakos Mikhail, Copts and Moslems under British Control (London: Smith, Elder, 1911), vi. 33.  BNA, FO 371/1111, documents 300–418. 34.  BNA, FO 371/1113, “The Copts and Sir Eldon Gorst’s Report,” Habib Doss, 1911, 384. 35.  BNA, FO 371/1113, Note from Advisor of the Interior to Mr. Cheetham, May 4, 1911. 36. Badrawi, Political Violence in Egypt, 5, 32, 94–95, and 100–101. 37.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 24, Folder 1 (#0075–045582), Ministry of Education, “Mudhakkira” (June 10, 1910). 38.  BNA, FO 141/521/5, Mr. Hoare to Lord Cushendun, August 20, 1928. 39.  BNA, FO 141/521/5, Telegram from Lord Lloyd to Sir Austen Chamberlain, November 20, 1926. 40.  BNA, FO 141/521/5, “The present state of Education in Egyptian Government schools,” George Robb, 1928. 41.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 487, “Iltimāsāt Majjāniyyat al-Ta‘līm,” Folder 9 (#0069– 009559), letter from Jibriyāl Jirjis (January 21, 1915). 42.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 487, “Iltimāsāt Majjāniyyat al-Ta‘līm,” Folder 13 (#0069– 009563), letter from ‘Abdū Ibrāhīm al-Ṣiftī (April 17, 1917). 43.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 2 (#0069–009365), letter from ‘Abd al-Maqṣūd Sālim and twelve others (March 1908). 44.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 487, “Iltimāsāt Majjāniyyat al-Ta‘līm,” Folder 18 (#0069– 009568), letter from Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Wahhāb Darwīsh (September 13, 1922). 45.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 6 (#0069–009369), “Isti‘ṭāf min Talāmīdh al-Maḥākim al-Ahliyya bi-l-Iskandariyya” (May 23, 1915). 46.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 8 (#0069–009371), “Istirḥām” (February 4, 1917). 47.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 10 (#0069–009373), documents #1–6 (November 2, 1919, to November 10, 1919). 48.  For examples of this strategy of petitioning and appealing to the press in the 1930s, see Beth Baron, The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 138–140 and 142–143. 49.  W. Makram Ebeid, Complete Independence versus the Milner Scheme (or the Zaghlul-Adly Issue) (London: Caledonian Press, 1921), 20. 50.  BNA, FO 608/213, “Egypt,” 212. 51.  BNA, FO 608/212, “Telegram from Berne to Peace Congress,” February 17, 1919,

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242; and BNA, FO 608/212, “To the Delegates to the Peace Conference,” 206; and BNA, FO 608/212, S. Zagloul to President Wilson, 216. 52. Aḥmad ‘Izzat ‘Abd al-Karīm, Khamsūn ‘Ām ‘alā Thawrat 1919 (Cairo: Al-Ahrām, 1970), 179–182. 53.  Marius Deeb, Party Politics in Egypt: The Wafd and Its Rivals, 1919–1939 (London: Ithaca Press, 1979), 43. Cited in Lisa Pollard, Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing and Liberating Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 173. 54.  BNA, FO 371/3714, “To: Cabinet du Sultan,” March 10, 1919, 414–416; BNA, FO 371/3714, “To: Cabinet du Sultan,” March 8, 1919, 417–418; BNA, FO 371/3714, “A Sa Hautesse le Sultan d’Egypte,” March 1919, 419; and BNA, FO 371/3714, “To: Cabinet du Sultan,” March 10, 1919, 420. 55.  BNA, FO 608/212, Telegram from Zidan to Mr. Balfour, March 14, 1919, 248. 56.  BNA, FO 371/3714, Letter from M. Cheetham to Earl Curzon, March 16, 1919, 411. 57.  ‘Abd al-Karīm, Khamsūn ‘Ām ‘alā Thawrat 1919, 188–206. 58. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 165–166. 59. Ibid., 139. 60.  I first became aware of the rich sources available in the British National Archives from Fahmy’s work on the 1919 Revolution in Ordinary Egyptians. He uses British intelligence reports and correspondences to describe the various media—print, speeches, song, theater, and so on—that Egyptians were using to create a sense of nationalism and community during this seminal event. In the pages that follow I will be using some of the sources cited in his chapter 6, as well as additional reports, to analyze the interplay of public literacies and the repertoires of protest we have already seen. 61. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 103–105. 62. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 149–151. 63.  BNA, FO 141/751/17, Letter from M. Cheetham to Earl Curzon, May 11, 1919. 64.  In the British National Archive catalogue, many of these files are listed under FO 141/781/6 and FO 141/781/7. However, in the FO 141/781 box they are titled only “Cairo 1919, File 8915, Intelligence Reports.” I will be using FO 141/781/8915, following the precedence set by Fahmy, Joel Beinin, Zachary Lockman, and others who have cited these files. 65.  For example, al-Minbar, which published “articles of an inflammatory tendency,” was shut down temporarily in April of 1919; see BNA, FO 141/751/17, Letter from M. Cheetham to Earl Curzon, May 11, 1919. Misr was also sanctioned for displaying an old Egyptian-Turkish flag deemed offensive to British troops; see BNA, FO 141/781/8915, Report by S. Delmé-Radcliffe, April 8, 1911. 66.  BNA, FO 141/751/17, “Attitude of the Press,” March 23/24, 1919. 67.  BNA, FO 141/751/17, Letter from Major Radcliffe to Keown-Boyd, April 19, 1919. 68.  BNA, FO 141/751/17, “Counterpropaganda,” S. Delmé-Radcliffe, April 19, 1919. Eventually, British intelligence suggested a more sophisticated approach of courting the press in hopes of mitigating their more “vile” tendencies. See BNA, FO 141/751/17, “Notes for the Treatment of the Press in Egypt,” G. S. Symes, December 6, 1919.

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69.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, Report by Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe, April 7, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Notes,” April 6, 1919. 70.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Notes on the Press,” April 11, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Notes on the Press,” S. Delmé-Radcliffe. 71.  BNA, FO 141/751/17, “Note on Egyptian Press,” Symes, March 12, 1920. 72.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 14, 1919. 73.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Circular Issued to Egyptian Government Employee,” April 12, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Police Report,” April 27, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Notes,” April 14, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Notes,” May 28, 1919. 74.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Notes,” May 8, 1919. 75. Ibid. 76.  Quote from BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 28, 1919. For other examples, see BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 27, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” April 22, 1919. 77.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 27, 1919. 78.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” August 27, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” August 24, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” September 28, 1919. 79.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Notes,” April 7, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 17, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Notes,” May 28, 1919. For more on the role of religious institutions in the protests, see Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 147–149. 80.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Notes,” May 23, 1919. 81.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” June 4, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 31, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” June 2, 1919. 82.  BNA, FO 371/3714, To M. Cheetham, March 25, 1919, 315. 83.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 24, 1919. For additional examples of British attempts at censorship, see Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 149–156; and Badrawi, Political Violence in Egypt, 140–141, 155. 84.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Report,” May 3, 1919. 85.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Notes on the Press,” S. Delmé-Radcliffe, April 15, 1919. 86.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 29, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Report,” May 3, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” August 4, 1919; and Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 153–154. 87.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” August 9, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” September 26, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Notes,” May 21, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” June 4, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 18, 1919. 88.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 22, 1919.

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89.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 16, 1919. 90.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Notes,” April 17, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” April 22, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Notes,” May 21, 1919. 91.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 23, 1919. For a more extensive quote from this report, see Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 148. For another example, see BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 14, 1919. 92.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 21, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Notes,” April 4, 1919. 93. Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 156. 94.  The code words mail and postman were used in these cafés and bars to refer to illicit materials and their carriers. BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 5, 1919; and Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 155–156. 95.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Special Intelligence Report,” May 3, 1919; and Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians, 156. 96.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 14, 1919; BNA, “Intelligence Notes,” May 21, 1919, FO 141/781/8915; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 9, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” August 1, 1919. 97.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Verbal Propaganda,” Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe, April 26, 1919. 98.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Verbal Propaganda,” Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe, April 28, 1919. 99.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Secret,” Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe to All Political Officers, May 3, 1919; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Secret,” Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe to All Political Officers, May 10, 1919; and BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 18, 1919. 100.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Intelligence Report on the Egyptian Situation,” June 11, 1919. 101.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “The Wisdom of the Young!” and “Ḥikmat al-Fityān”; BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Summary,” May 29, 1919. At one point the British ordered some one hundred thousand propaganda leaflets in hopes that they would turn the tide of the protests. BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Secret,” Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe to All Political Officers, May 23, 1919. 102.  BNA, FO 141/781/8915, “Secret,” Major S. Delmé-Radcliffe to All Political Officers, May 18, 1919. 103.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 16 (#0069–009379), “Mudhakkira” (1925); DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 408, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Muwaẓẓafīn,” Folder 4 (#0069–007867), petitions (January 1, 1923, to December 31, 1924); DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 408, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Muwaẓẓafīn,” Folder 10 (#0069–007873), petitions (February 3, 1927, to May 28, 1927); and DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 502, “Iltimāsāt al-Azhar,” Folder 5 (#0069–009970), “Mudhakkira” from blind student of Azhar (November 3, 1923). 104.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 482, “Iltimāsāt Jamā‘ī Ṭalaba,” Folder 16 (#0069–009379), “Mudhakkira” (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Karāra, November 2, 1925).

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105.  Huda Shaarawi and Margot Badran, “Epilogue,” in Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, trans. Margot Badran (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987), 112–122. See also BNA, FO 141/751/17, “Note on Egyptian Press,” Symes, January 21, 1920.

Chapter 5

1.  Benjamin C. Fortna, “Education and Autobiography at the End of the Ottoman Empire,” Die Welt des Islams 41, no. 1 (March 2001): 1–2. 2.  James Collins and Richard K. Blot, Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power, and Identity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 23. 3.  See Qur’an 2:78, 3:20, and 62:2. 4. Qur’an 7:157–158. 5.  This interpretation seems to have solidified during the second Islamic century. See Isaiah Goldfeld, “The Illiterate Prophet (Nabī Ummī): An Inquiry into the Development of a Dogma in Islamic Tradition,” Der Islam 57 (1980): 58–67. 6.  For a study of the written works ascribed to the Prophet and of the early tradition of writing in Islam, see Sarah Zubair Mirza, “Oral Tradition and Scribal Conventions in the Documents Attributed to the Prophet Muhammad” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010), 180–181. 7.  One example is ‘Ali Khawwas (d. 1532/3), teacher of ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Shi‘rani (d. 1565). There are also reports that ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Mahdawi (d. 1224), Ibn ‘Arabi’s teacher, was ummī. Gerald T. Elmore, “Shaykh ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Mahdawī, Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Mentor,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 4 (December 2001): 604–605; Éric Geoffroy, “Une grande figure de saint ummî: le cheikh ‘Alî al-Khawwâs (m. 939/1532),” in The Development of Sufism in Mamluk Egypt, ed. Richard McGregor and Adam Sabra (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2006). 8.  Adam Sabra, “Illiterate Sufis and Learned Artisans: The Circle of ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Sha‘rânî,” in The Development of Sufism in Mamluk Egypt, ed. Richard McGregor and Adam Sabra (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2006), 155. 9.  William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 235–236. 10.  For example, Ibn Khaldun, the famous fourteenth century historian, saw the Prophet’s ummiyya as in fact an expression of his perfection. See Geoffroy, “Une grande figure de saint ummî,” 169–173. 11.  Ḥamza Fatḥ Allāh, Bākūrat al-Kalām ‘alā Huqūq al-Nisā’ fī al-Islām (Cairo: AlMaṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1890), 46. 12.  Hoda Yousef, “Reassessing Egypt’s Dual System of Education under Isma‘il: Growing ‘Ilm and Shifting Ground in Egypt’s First Educational Journal, Rawdat alMadaris, 1870–1877,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 1 (February 2008): 109–130. 13.  For more about his efforts see Linda Herrera, “‘The Soul of a Nation:’ Abdallah Nadim and Educational Reform in Egypt (1845–1896),” Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies 7, no. 1 (2002): 1–24.

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14.  “Amātak man Aslamak li-l-Jahāla,” Al-Tankīt wa-l-Tabkīt 1, no. 11 (August 21, 1881): 174–175. 15.  “Taghfīla wa-Jahāla,” Al-Tankīt wa-l-Tabkīt 1, no. 10 (August 15, 1881): 162; “Amātak man Aslamak li-l-Jahāla,” Al-Tankīt wa-l-Tabkīt 1, no. 11 (August 21, 1881): 173–175. 16.  For a portion of the play that was published, see ‘Abdallāh Nadīm, Sulāfat alNadīm fī Muntakhabāt al-Sayyid ‘Abdallāh al-Nadīm, vol. 2 (Cairo: Maṭba‘a Hindiyya, 1901), 33–63. 17. Ibid., 44 and 51. 18. Ibid., 45. 19. Ibid., 42, 44, and 50–52. 20.  “Nisā’unā wa-l-Qirā’a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 1, no. 1 (January 31, 1898): 14; Nabawiyya Mūsā, Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Amal (Alexandria: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Waṭaniyya, 1920), 39–41. 21. “Iqtirāḥ ‘alā Ḥaḍarāt al-Udabā’,” Al-Hilāl 4, no. 10 (January 15, 1896): 376. 22.  Ibrāhīm al-Jamāl, “Al-Mar’a wa-l-‘Ilm wa-l-Māl,” Al-Hilāl 4, no. 12 (February 15, 1896): 456–458. 23.  Salīm Bashāra Khūrī, “Hal Ta‘lū Manzilat al-Mar’a bi-l-‘Ilm Akthar am bi-lMāl,” Al-Hilāl 4, no. 11 (February 1, 1896): 412–414; Ḥabīb Ṭayyāb, “Hal Ta‘lū Manzilat al-Mar’a bi-l-‘Ilm Akthar am bi-l-Māl,” Al-Hilāl 4 no. 11 (February 1, 1896): 415; Aḥmad Ḥusayn, “Hal Ta‘lū Manzilat al-Mar’a bi-l-‘Ilm Akthar am bi-l-Māl,” Al-Hilāl 4, no. 11 (February 1, 1896): 415–416. 24.  “Ta‘līm al-Banāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya 1, no. 5 (May 15, 1899): 82. See also “Ta‘līm al-Banāt,” Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya 1, no. 4 (May 1, 1899): 62–63. 25.  Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 35. 26.  For information on the early censuses, see Kenneth M. Cuno and Michael J. Reimer, “The Census Registers of Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A New Source for Social Historians,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24, no. 2 (November 1997): 197. Fear of taxes and conscription fostered a perennial distrust of the census on the part of Egyptians. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 111–112; ‘Alī Barakāt, “Dafātir Ta‘dād al-Nufūs,” Al-Ruzname 3 (2005): 496–497. 27.  Cuno and Reimer, “Census Registers,” 194–195. 28.  For other examples of the import of statistical knowledge to the state bureaucracy, see Mitchell, Rule of Experts; for a discussion on the early censuses in particular, see Omnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 150–153. 29.  Cuno and Reimer, “Census Registers,” 205. 30.  This was the title of the literacy section for the 1907 census; see Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1909). 31.  Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales, Century Census Egypt, 1882–1996, Joint Booklet (Cairo: Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales, 2003), 16.

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32. “Hal lahu ma‘rifa bi-l-qirā’a wa-l-kitāba am lā?” Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, Ta‘dād Sukkān al-Quṭr al-Miṣrī, 1907 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a alAmīriyya, 1909). 33.  Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1917 (Cairo: Government Press, 1920), xl and xliv. For some reason the English translation of these French instructions did not include the emphasis on asking women directly. 34.  Ibid., Census Form No. 2. 35.  It is unclear what designation was attached to people who had only one of the literacy skills. The regulations that were suggested for subsequent years imply that perhaps those who could “read only” or “write only” were considered literate. Ibid., xlviii. 36.  Egyptian Ministry of Finance, Census of Egypt Taken in 1917, xxvii. 37.  For examples from the 1897, 1917, and 1927 census campaigns, see Yūnān Rizq, “Ta‘dād al-Anfus,” in Al-Ahrām: Dīwān al-Ḥayāa al-Mu‘āṣira, vol. 3, part 1 (Cairo: Markaz Tārīkh al-Ahrām, 1999), 332–337; Yūnān Rizq, “Ta‘dād al-Nufūs fī al-Mamlaka,” in Al-Ahrām: Dīwān al-Ḥayāa al-Mu‘āṣira, vol. 12 (Cairo: Markaz Tārīkh al-Ahrām, 2005), 294–295; and Egyptian Ministry of Finance, Census of Egypt Taken in 1917, xxviii. 38.  Rizq, “Ta‘dād al-Nufūs fī al-Mamlaka,” 294–295. 39.  Rizq, “Ta‘dād al-Nufūs fī al-Mamlaka,” 298–301. 40.  The bemoaning of the country’s illiteracy rates seems to be a fairly regular ritual for Egyptian newspapers. See “Al-Iḥṣā’ al-Miṣrī,” Al-Bayān 1, no. 15 (January 1, 1898): 571–574; ‘Abdallāh Imām, “86 ‘Āman min al-Ḥarb Ḍidd al-Baṣma,” Rūz al-Yūsuf, September 9, 1968; Najāḥ ‘Umar, “Al-Arḍ wa-l-Ummiyya wa-l-Fallāḥ,” Ṣabāḥ al-Khayr, September 9, 1971; Silmī al-Amīn, “Hādhihi Asbāb Fashlinā fī Maḥw Ummiyyat Rub‘ Milyūn Miṣrī!,” Akhbār al-Yawm, December 17, 2005. 41.  According to the final official census report that appeared after this article, in the entire country only 10,264 Egyptian and 24,930 foreign women could read and write. “Nisā’unā wa-l-Qirā’a,” Anīs al-Jalīs 1, no. 1 (January 31, 1898): 13. 42. Ibid., 14. 43. Ibid., 14. 44. “Al-Iḥṣā’ al-Miṣrī,” Al-Bayān 1, no. 15 (January 1, 1898): 571–574. 45. Ibid., 573. 46.  Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 90–92; Helen N. Boyle, “Memorization and Learning in Islamic Schools,” Comparative Education Review 50, no. 3 (August 2006): 478–495; and Paul Sedra, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 1–2 and 106–109. 47. Sedra, From Mission to Modernity, 106–109. 48.  These reciters would be commissioned (usually through a religious endowment) to read the Qur’an or religious texts at a particular grave and dedicate the blessings of the recitation to the soul of the deceased. In this case, the reciters were entrusted to read the Qur’an, the hadith collection of Sahih al-Bukhari, and the collection of prayers on

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the Prophet known as Dala’il al-Khayrat. This would have been a respectable, though not particularly prestigious, position. DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 502, Folder 3 (#0069–009968), letter 7 (January 7, 1915). 49.  The use of signatures to estimate European literacy rates has undergone a lot of scrutiny. In Egypt during this period there was no official need to use signatures on government documents relating to individuals (for marriage, court appearances, etc.). Even the use of a stamp to make an individual’s mark was not an indication of illiteracy, because owning a stamp could just as easily be an indication of high status. 50.  Perhaps the most famous example (as well as exception to the rule) was the blind Taha Husayn, who chronicled his education in his autobiography al-Ayyām. ­Although Husayn was originally encouraged to take the “traditional” route of religious education, he went on to become a noted public figure, university professor, writer, and government official. See also the 1889 report that acknowledges that the teaching mosque of al-Azhar did a reasonably good job of integrating these blind students into its educational system. DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4J, “Mawḍū‘āt Mukhtalifa,” Folder 19 (#0075–044028), Ministry of Education, “Rapports sur la situation des écoles des filles des aveugles et sourds-muets et de cette de Rosette” (February 12, 1889). For a larger discussion on blindness in the early modern period, see Sara S­ calenghe, Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 52–87. 51.  For example, a government report on the blind sections of some government kuttābs mentions that the most useful pursuit for these students was study of the Qur’an, precisely for economic reasons. See DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 15 (#0075–043777), Ministry of Education, Taqrīr ‘an Ḥālat al-Katātīb fī Sanat 1902 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1903), 10. 52. Scalenghe, Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 61–66. 53.  Egyptian Ministry of Finance, Census of Egypt Taken in 1917, 618–622. 54.  In an interesting use of the notion of the “learned blind person,” one opponent of female education used the fact that many blind people were educated—while still being technically illiterate—as a reason not to teach women to read and write. In other words, because literacy was not a prerequisite for being a “learned” individual, women did not need to be taught how to read and write. Mukhtār ibn Aḥmad Mu’ayyad al-‘Aẓmī, Faṣl al-Khiṭāb aw Taflīs Iblīs min Taḥrīr al-Mar’a wa-Raf ‘ al-Ḥijāb (Cairo: ­Al-Maṭba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1901), 65. 55. Sedra, From Mission to Modernity, 176–178. 56. Ibid., 109. 57.  Many of the new regulations for teachers in government schools as well as for those in kuttābs under government inspection required them to undergo medical examinations. Eyesight was one of the criteria. The earliest example I found was from 1892. DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 16, Folder 2 (#0075–045116), “Tarjamat Lā’iḥa” (July 16, 1892). 58.  BNA, PRO 30/57/9, “Report on the Ophthalmic Section of the Department of Public Health, 1913,” 7.

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59.  See, for example, Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), chapters 2 and 3. 60.  One of the critiques of kuttāb education leveled by Lord Cromer was that these schools were “directed by teachers who are not in a few cases blind and almost illiterate.” House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Report on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt, and the Progress of Reforms (London: Harrison and Sons, 1896), 20. 61.  There were attempts during this period to create an Arabic braille, although none of these seems to have caught on as a standard; see Lesley Lababidi, Silent No More: Special Needs People in Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2002), 8–9. Oral, not written, literacies were still the predominant way for the blind to integrate into scholarly or educated life. 62.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 502, Folder 5 (#0069–009970), letter #12 (November 3, 1923). 63.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 14/2, Folder 30 (#0075–045086), “Note au Conseil des Ministres” (December 31, 1913). 64.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 5A, Folder 4 (#0075–044101), Taqrīr Qūmisyūn Tanẓīm al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya (November 10, 1880), 45. 65.  Cited in ‘Abd al-Samī‘ Sālim Harrāwī, Lughat al-Idāra al-‘Āmma fī Miṣr (Cairo: Al-Majlis al-A‘lā li-Ri‘āyat al-Funūn wa-l-Ādāb wa-l-‘Ulūm al-Ijtimā‘iyya, 1963), 473– 477. Elsewhere ‘Abduh also criticized the scribes in the court system; see Muḥammad ‘Abduh, Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila, ed. Muḥammad ‘Imāra, vol. 2 (Beirut: Al-Mu’assasa ­al-‘Arabiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr, 1972), 231, 233. 66.  House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Report by Her Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1898 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1899), 39. 67.  House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1900 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1901), 51. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., 50. 70.  Mona L. Russell, “Competing, Overlapping, and Contradictory Agendas: Egyptian Education Under British Occupation, 1882–1922,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, nos. 1 and 2 (2001): 51–52. 71.  In Cromer’s view, these students should have gone on to some sort of skilled manual labor. He therefore championed additional technical schools. By 1917, the options for kuttāb students had expanded a bit. Boys could continue into new “advanced” elementary schools, into the industrial and agricultural school, or into Dar al-‘Ulum (also known as the al-Nasiriyya Teachers College). Girls could attend the advanced ­elementary schools, the school for home economics, or the school of midwifery. DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 237, Folder 5 (#0069–004641), Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, “Note sur l’Organisation et la Direction de l’Enseignement” (November 22, 1917). 72.  For a look at these dynamics in Sudan, see Heather J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Berkeley: University

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of California Press, 2003); and Heather J. Sharkey, “A Century in Print: Arabic Journalism and Nationalism in Sudan, 1899–1999,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31, no. 4 (November 1999): 531–549. In Sudan, however, the assertion of Arabic as a “national” language also had divisive racial, ethnic, and political implications for the country’s North-South divide. See Heather J. Sharkey, “Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race,” African Affairs 107, no. 426 (January 2008): 21–43. 73.  Lucie Ryzova has called this the “endless dilemma” facing the entire effendiyya, “to modernize first or to liberate first? It seemed impossible to fight both battles at once, because the West, or modernity, potentially represented both the disease as well as the cure.” Lucie Ryzova, The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-­ Colonial Egypt (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014), 25. 74.  Cromer was constantly having to reiterate his position, particularly because private schools started by Egyptians seemed intent on teaching both languages. 75.  Dar al-‘Ulum underwent several name changes between 1872 and 1920. From 1900 to 1920 it was known as Madrasat al-Mu‘allimin al-Nasiriyya (the Nasiriyya Teachers College), although Dar al-‘Ulum was still a recognized name. Lois A. Aroian, The Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education in Egypt: Dar al-‘Ulum and al-Azhar (Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1983), 25. Zaki’s report is located in DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 6, Folder 27 (#0075–029227), Aḥmad Zakī, “Rapport sur la nécessité de la création d’une Ecole Normale Supérieure, essentiellement arabe” (June 9, 1911). 76.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 6, Folder 27 (#0075–029227), Aḥmad Zakī, “Rapport sur la nécessité de la création d’une Ecole Normale Supérieure, essentiellement arabe” (June 9, 1911), 10. 77.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 6, Folder 27 (#0075–029227), Aḥmad Zakī, “Rapport sur la nécessité de la création d’une Ecole Normale Supérieure, essentiellement arabe” (June 9, 1911), 9. 78.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 6, Folder 27 (#0075–029227), Aḥmad Zakī, “Rapport sur la nécessité de la création d’une Ecole Normale Supérieure, essentiellement arabe” (June 9, 1911), 14-15. 79.  I use the designations Egyptian Arabic, Egyptian colloquial, and spoken Egyptian Arabic interchangeably. 80.  For more on the differences between formal Arabic and Egyptian Arabic and their respective uses in life, school, the press, and the state, see Niloofar Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). For more on the implications of Arabic in its various forms for Egyptian identity, see Reem Bassiouney, Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 81.  Journalist and writer Salama Musa, for example, advocated this idea; Yasir ­Suleiman, The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 185–190. Some writers who wished to see the literary arts reflect the “Egyptian character” also championed the use of colloquial. See,

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for example, playwright Muhammad Taymur (d. 1921) and his use of the colloquial, described in M. M. Badawi, Early Arabic Drama (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 101–104. 82.  One example was Jamil Zahawi, who created an entirely new script: Jamīl Zahāwī, Al-Khaṭṭ al-Jadīd (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Muqtaṭaf, 1896). For a response, see Rafīq al-‘Aẓam, “Al-Qawl al-Sadīd fī al-Radd ‘alā Ṣāḥib al-Khaṭṭ al-Jadīd,” Al-Hilāl 5, no. 5 (November 1, 1896): 170–173. This is something that Malak Nasif and Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid also promoted, although unlike Zahawi, they wanted to modify the Arabic script to make it more explicit; see Malak Ḥifnī Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya (Cairo: ­Al-Mu’assasa al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Ta’līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Ṭibā‘a wa-l-Nashr, 1962), 143–145. Complete Latinization of the script was also advocated by some; see Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language: Its Role in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 157–160. 83.  For some of the debates on issues of language and territorial nationalism, see Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 84.  For additional information and examples of this ongoing debate, see Chejne, Arabic Language, chapters 6 and 8; Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People; and Adrian Gully, “Arabic Linguistic Issues and Controversies of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Semitic Studies 42, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 87–95. 85. Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 185; and Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People, 84. 86. Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 185. 87.  J. Selden Willmore, The Spoken Arabic of Egypt: Grammar, Exercises, Vocabularies, 2nd ed. (London: David Nutt, 1905), xx. 88.  Ibid., xii–xiii. 89.  Ibid., xx. 90. Ibid. 91.  “Bāb al-Lugha,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 20 (January 3, 1893): 476. This was an inversion of the claim that classical Arabic was a dead language in that it did not have the ability to adapt to modern needs. 92.  “Ayya Lugha Nattakhidh li-l-‘Ilm wa-l-Ta‘līm,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 6 (January 1902): 428. 93. Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 173–174. 94.  Other journal editors such as Jurji Zaydan, Ibrahim al-Yaziji, and Ya‘qub Sarruf expressed varying degrees of disapproval at the idea of adopting the Egyptian colloquial, even if they accepted that some degree of linguistic reform was necessary. Gully, “Arabic Linguistic Issues,” 87–95. For a translation of Zaydan’s 1893 response, see “Literary and Colloquial Arabic,” trans. Paul Starkey in Jurji Zaidan and the Foundations of Arab Nationalism: A Study, ed. Thomas Philipp (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 194–198. 95.  Formal Arabic has retained many of these positive associations into the contemporary period. See, Bassiouney, Language and Identity, 110–118.

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96.  In his 1893 rebuttal of Willcocks, Jurji Zaydan asserted the common assumption of the time that “a language follows the mentality of its speakers in terms of its higher or lower registers. The colloquial language is lower, in terms of register, in accordance with the mentality of its speakers, and it cannot take the place of the literary language.” In “Literary and Colloquial Arabic,” trans. Paul Starkey in Jurji Zaidan and the Foundations of Arab Nationalism: A Study, ed. Thomas Philipp (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 195. 97.  British colonial advocacy of Egyptian colloquial Arabic dated back to the first years of the occupation of Egypt. Bassiouney, Language and Identity, 93–94. See also Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People, 84. 98. Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 185–190; and Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs, 219–221. There were earlier advocates for colloquial Arabic, most notably Tantawi Jawhari and several anonymous writers in debates that appeared in the newspapers. See Chejne, Arabic Language, 129; and Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People, 82–84. For later debates, see Chejne, Arabic Language, 161– 168; and Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People, 134–139. 99.  This anxiety about colonial domination was reported as part of a debate between Willmore and Shaykh ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Jawish during a gathering hosted by a literary club in Cairo; see “Mu’tamar al-Tarbiya wa-l-Ta‘līm fī al-Hind,” Al-Manār 4, no. 22 (February 9, 1902): 878–879. 100.  “Bāb al-Lugha,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 20 (January 3, 1893): 475. 101. Willmore noted that his proposition earned more scorn because of his background. 102.  “Bāb al-Lugha,” Al-Ustādh 1, no. 20 (January 3, 1893): 476. 103.  “Al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya al-Jadīda,” Al-Jāmi‘a 3, no. 7 (March 1902): 494–497; “AlTa’līf fī al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya,” Al-Hilāl 20, no. 9 (June 1, 1912): 543; and “Al-Ṣarf wa-lNaḥw al-Faransī wa-l-‘Arabī,” Al-Jāmi‘a 1, no. 21 & 22 (February 1, 1900): 516–517; Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity, 170–174. 104. Chejne, Arabic Language, 20–21 and 148–149. 105. “Al-Ṣaḥāfa al-‘Arabiyya,” Anīs al-Jalīs 3, no. 4 (April 30, 1900): 132. 106. Haeri, Sacred Language, Ordinary People, 39–43 and 116–121. There is also a widespread trope of the “Arabic teacher” as a figure worthy of derision. See Bassiouney, Language and Identity, 121–127. 107.  Donald M. Reid, “Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian School Days,” Comparative Education Review 27, no. 3 (October 1983): 391–392; and Russell, “Competing, Overlapping, and Contradictory Agendas,” 53–54. 108.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4D, Folder 3 (#0075–044043), Sa‘d Zaghlūl, “Ijābat Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif ” (May 25, 1907), 3. 109.  BNA, PRO 30/57/42, Letter from Douglas Dunlop to Lord Kitchener, August 10, 1912. 110.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Final Report of the University Commission (Cairo: Government Press, 1921), 27–28. The report by this commission expressed both the positives and negatives of using the Arabic language for

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instruction. Their final recommendation was that Arabic be the medium of instruction but in practice there would be some leeway until proper instructors and textbooks could be obtained. Ibid., 28–29. 111. Chejne, Arabic Language, 104–105. 112.  John W. Meyer, “Introduction,” in School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century, ed. John W. Meyer, David H. Kamens, and Aaron Benavot (London: Falmer Press, 1992), 9; and Yun-Kyung Cha, “The Origins and Expansion of Primary School Curricula, 1800–1920,” in School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and Primary National Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century, ed. John W. Meyer, David H. Kamens, and Aaron Benavot (London: Falmer Press, 1992), 63–73. For mid-century debates in Egypt, see Misako Ikeda, “Toward the Democratization of Public Education: The Debate in Late Parliamentary Egypt, 1943–52,” in Re-Envisioning Egypt 1919–1952, ed. Arthur Goldschmidt, Amy J. Johnson, and Barak A. Salmoni (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 218–248. 113.  El Shakry, Great Social Laboratory, 10–11; Marwa Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 195–198. On the influence of these movements in North Africa, see Osama Abi-Mershed, Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing Mission in Algeria (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). 114.  Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, 74, 96–98. 115. Muṣṭafā Kāmil, Awrāq Muṣṭafā Kāmil: Al-Khuṭab, ed. Yuwāqīm Rizq Murquṣ (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Miṣriyya al-‘Āmma li-l-Kitāb, 1984), 193. 116.  Majallat al-Liwā’ (Cairo: 1900), 80. 117. Nāṣif, Āthār Bāḥithat al-Bādiya, 88, 125, and 161; Maḥmūd Ibrāhīm, “Mustaqbal al-Nisā’ fī Miṣr,” Anīs al-Jalīs 3, no. 9 (September 30, 1900): 345–349; and “Al-Ṣaḥāfa al‘Arabiyya,” Anīs al-Jalīs 3, no. 4 (April 30, 1900): 129–132. 118.  See, for example, the 1902 reforms that included expanded Arabic instruction in government schools. DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4D, Folder 10 (#0075–044050), Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, “Note au Conseil des Ministres relative aux propositions concernant l’Instruction Publique” (May 18, 1902), 2–3. 119.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 230, Folder 2 (#0069–004462), Sayyid Muḥammad, Al-­ Kulliyya al-Ahliyya bi-Miṣr (1911–1912), 27. This school was one of a growing number of private schools promising nationalist education for Egyptian students. 120.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 230, Folder 2 (#0069–004462), Sayyid Muḥammad, Al-­ Kulliyya al-Ahliyya bi-Miṣr (1911–1912), 2. 121.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4A, Folder 18 (#0075–043968), Nāẓir Qism al-Banāt bi-Madrasat ‘Abbās, “Tarjamat taqrīr” (July 20, 1897). 122.  “Al-Tarbiya al-Thāniyya,” Al-Jāmi‘a 1, no. 21 & 22 (February 1, 1900): 511–515. 123. Ibid., 513. 124.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4A, Folder 1 (#0075–043951), Yacoub Artin Pacha, “Mémorandum sur l’Enseignement des Jeunes Filles Soumis à S.A. Le Khédive Abbas Pacha Helmy” (June 10, 1892), 9; ‘Afīfa Ṣalīb, “Al-Mar’a wa-l-Ta‘līm,” Anīs al-Jalīs 2, no. 9 (September 30, 1899): 337; A. Masābikī, “Waẓīfat al-Mar’a,” Al-Jins

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al-Laṭīf 1, no. 5 (November 1908). See also Muhammad ‘Abduh’s 1900 speech at one of the Islamic Benevolent Society’s schools, in ‘Abduh, Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila, 3:161–162. 125.  Ṣalīb, “Al-Mar’a wa-l-Ta‘līm,” 337. 126.  Most notably, the 1880 commission on education envisioned schools throughout the countryside. Yet even these proposals were modest in that they suggested one school per city—hardly enough to educate all the children of an area. 127.  See DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 5A, Folders 3 and 4. See also Amīn Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr fī Sanatay 1914 wa-1915 (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif, 1917), 36–47. 128.  The decree, along with its literacy goal, was abandoned in 1888; see Judith Cochran, Education in Egypt (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 10. 129. Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 46–47. 130.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 12 (#0075–043771), ‘Alī Mubārak, “Surat Taqrīr” (June 9, 1890). 131. In 1890, the Ministry of Education was given (once again) nominal control over the kuttābs, but not the funding they requested. Mubarak originally envisioned opening an additional five hundred schools over the next ten years, but only a handful were actually built. See Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 68–70. 132.  The system was modeled after grant-in-aid programs used in India. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Report on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt, 20. 133.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 5B, Folder 10 (#0075–044111), Ministry of Education, Note from Majlis al-Ma‘ārif al-A‘lā (October 1901). The class separation inherent in this system would have appealed to Egyptians in the upper echelons of the Ministry of Education who hailed from wealthier households. 134. Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 87. 135. For budget numbers, see Yūsuf Ibrāhīm Yūsuf, Matḥaf al-Ta‘līm (Cairo: Maṭba‘at Wizārat al-Tarbiya wa-l-Ta‘līm, 1971), 282. On the persistent inequity of the system, see Donald M. Reid, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 110–113. 136.  Elementary school graduates, unlike primary school graduates, could not go on to secondary or other higher education in the government system. 137.  House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Report by Her Majesty’s Agent (1899), 43. This requirement was frequently reiterated by Lord Cromer in his reports: “It cannot be too distinctly understood that the Government views with entire disfavour any attempt to teach European language in these schools. . . . I mention the point as several attempts have been made to teach English in these schools.” House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1904 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1905), 73. 138.  House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Reports on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt, and the Progress of Reforms (London: Harrison and Sons, 1898), 40.

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139.  Early regulations on the kuttābs and their teachers made no mention of religious studies of any kind. DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 8 (#0075–043767), Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, Règlement Relatif aux Subventions Annuelles à Accorder aux Kouttabs (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1898); DWQ, Majlis alWuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 8 (#0075–043767), Ministère de l’Instruction, Règlement pour l’examen des Fikis et des Arifs (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900). 140. The 1906 changes to the subsidy program mentioned deference to “public opinion” in making their changes. See also DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4D, Folder 3 (#0075–044043), Sa‘d Zaghlūl, “Ijābat Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif ” (May 25, 1907), 3. Similarly, in 1900, the Ministry of Endowments objected to religious endowment (waqf) money funding schools whose primary purpose was no longer the teaching of the Qur’an, as their endowments specified. The Ministry of Education responded that students were indeed memorizing the Qur’an in addition to the other subjects that had been added. See DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 1 (#0075–043760). 141.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 9 (#0075–043768), “Mudhakkira Marfū‘a min Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif ” (April 29, 1906). By 1907 the Ministry of Education was even increasing Qur’anic studies in all primary (not just the kuttāb) schools. “The primary [ibtidā’iyya] education program has been redone, especially the program of the Qur’an, and religious principles, Arabic language, and Islamic history in order to be in accordance with the needs of the umma and its desires.” See DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4D, Folder 3 (#0075–044043), Sa‘d Zaghlūl. “Ijābat Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif ” (May 25, 1907), 3. For the larger debates about the role of religion in education from this period into the contemporary era, see Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 142.  Nelly Hanna, “Literacy and the ‘Great Divide’ in the Islamic World, 1300–1800,” Journal of Global History 2, no. 2 (2007): 184. 143.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 5A, Folder 4 (#0075–044101), Taqrīr Qūmisyūn Tanẓīm al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya (November 10, 1880), 4. 144. Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 85–86. 145.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 15 (#0075–043777), Taqrīr ‘an Ḥālat al-Katātīb fī Sanat 1902 (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1903), 24–25. 146.  Nelly Hanna notes that kuttāb-educated men in the eighteenth century would use literacy in an unofficial capacity for personal memoirs, commercial pursuits, and so on. Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo’s Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), chapter 3. 147.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 4D, Folder 10 (#0075–044050), Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, “Note au Conseil des Ministres relative aux propositions concernant l’Instruction Publique” (May 18, 1902), 3–4. 148.  DWQ, Majlis al-Wuzarā’, Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, Box 2, Folder 8 (#0075–043767), Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, Règlement Relatif Aux Subventions Annuelles a Accorder aux Kouttabs (Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1898), 8–10.

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149. Sāmī, Al-Ta‘līm fī Miṣr, 121. 150. Ibid., 127–133. 151.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 237, Folder 5 (#0069–004641), Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, “Note sur l’organisation et la direction de l’enseignement” (November 22, 1917), 27. 152. Yūsuf, Matḥaf al-Ta‘līm, 209. 153.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 232, Folder 5 (#0069–004497), Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif, “Mashrū‘ al-Madrasa al-‘Āmila” (March 4, 1925), 3. 154. Ibid. 155.  Ibid. The Ministry of Education proposed building 650 new elementary schools each year for ten years starting with the 1926–1927 school year. DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 237, Folder 7 (#0069–004643). 156.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 236, “al-Ta‘līm,” Folder 18 (#0069–004627), Ministry of Education, Al-Lā’iḥa al-Mu’aqqata li-Ijrā’āt Mukāfaḥat al-Ummiyya (Cairo: Maṭba‘a liJannat al-Ta’līf, 1946), 3. 157.  DWQ, ‘Ābidīn, Box 236, “al-Ta‘līm,” Folder 18 (#0069–004627), The General Administration for Elementary Education and Combating Illiteracy, “Minhāj Mukāfaḥat al-Ummiyya” and “Tawzī‘ Minhāj al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya ‘alā Thalāth Fatrāt al-Sana” (March 29, 1947). For the debates about the direction of public education during this period, see Ikeda, “Toward the Democratization of Public Education,” 218–248. 158.  Egyptian Ministry of Education/Niẓārat al-Ma‘ārif al-‘Umūmiyya, Brūjrām al-Ta‘līm al-Ibtidā’ī wa-Brūjrām al-Ta‘līm al-Thānawī (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā alAmīriyya, 1900), 14. 159.  For more on this process of becoming a national language, see Shlomit Shraybom-Shivtiel, “Language and Political Change in Modern Egypt,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 137, no. 1 (2009): 131–140.

Conclusion

1.  There is a very long history of concern about literacy: Yacoub Artin, L’instruction publique en Égypte (Paris: Earnest Leroux, 1890), 162; Amir Boktor, School and Society in the Valley of the Nile (Cairo: Elias’ Modern Press, 1936), 165–167; Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 140–144; and Mohamed Maamouri, Language Education and Human Development: Arabic Diglossia and Its Impact on the Quality of Education in the Arab Region (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998). In the press, Egyptian newspapers regularly publish articles bemoaning the literacy rates and the failed (or failing) programs designed to address this issue. 2.  United Nations Development Program, The Arab Human Development Report 2002 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2002); United Nations Development Program, The Arab Human Development Report 2003 (New York: United Nations Development Program, 2003); United Nations Development Program, The Arab Human Development Report 2005 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2006); and United Nations Development Program, The Arab Human Development Re-

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port 2009 (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2009). The 2005 report focuses particularly on women and, as Frances S. Hasso has noted, “too often represents poor women as too poor, illiterate, and otherwise subjugated to conceptualize rights and recognize themselves in individual terms.” Frances S. Hasso, “Empowering Governmentalities Rather Than Women: The Arab Human Development Report 2005 and Western Development Logics,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 1 (February 2009): 72. For other critiques of the framing of education in the 2005 report, see Fida J. Adely, “Educating Women for Development: The Arab Human Development Report 2005 and the Problem with Women’s Choices,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 1 (February 2009): 105–122; Lila Abu-Lughod, “Dialects of Women’s Empowerment: The International Circuitry of the Arab Human Development Report 2005,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 1 (February 2009): 87–88. 3.  As more countries approach universal literacy, literacy rates are no longer considered a useful measure of educational progress over time. In 2010, the “education” component of the HDI was revised to exclude literacy rates as a central measure. Instead, education is now evaluated on the basis of the mean of years of schooling for adults aged twenty-five and expected years of schooling for children of school-going age. “Indices & Data | Human Development Index | Human Development Reports (HDR) | United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),” http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi, accessed August 11, 2011. For the rationale behind the move away from literacy rates and a review of the critiques of these measures, see Jeni Klugman, Francisco Rodríguez, and Hyung-Jin Choi, “The HDI 2010: New Controversies, Old Critiques,” Journal of Economic Inequality 9, no. 2 (June 2011): 253 and 266–267. 4. The 2015 official literacy rate is currently estimated at 73.8 percent, well below the global average. Central Intelligence Agency, “The World Factbook: Literacy,” https:// www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html, accessed May 29, 2015. 5.  A common complaint from the 1930s that is still echoed today is that “[illiteracy] results in wide-spread ignorance among the peasant masses and prevents the growth of enlightened public opinion throughout the country. It also prevents the recommendation of educational solutions which depend upon a literate and well-informed local public for their successful execution.” Russell Galt, The Effects of Centralization on Education in Modern Egypt (Cairo: Department of Education, American University at Cairo, 1936), 9. 6.  “Egypt’s high illiteracy rate accounts for the predominance of traditional cultural beliefs and practices which could still block the flow of integrative sentiments toward the nation and the elite.” Mahmud A. Faksh, “The Consequences of the Introduction and Spread of Modern Education: Education and National Integration in Egypt,” Middle Eastern Studies 16, no. 2 (May 1980): 48; Al-Mu’tamar al-Sanawī li-Maḥw Ummiyyat al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiyya, Al-Mu’tamar al-Sanawī al-Rābi‘: Maḥw Ummiyyat al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiyya: Mushkilāt wa-Ḥulūl (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-‘Arabī, 2007); Najāḥ ‘Umar, “Al-Arḍ wa-l-Ummiyya wa-l-Fallāḥ,” Ṣabāḥ al-Khayr, September 9, 1971; and Silmī alAmīn, “Hādhihi Asbāb Fashlinā fī Maḥw al-Ummiyyat Rub‘ Milyūn Miṣrī!” Akhbār al-Yawm, December 17, 2005.

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7.  For a good overview, see David Vincent, “The Progress of Literacy,” Victorian Studies 45, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 409–415. 8.  DKM, ms.# 7470 H ‘Arabī, Aḥmad Khalīl al-Ḥusaynī, “Ta‘līm al-Ummī fī Shahrayn,” n.d. 9. Muḥammad al-Ṭūkhī, Al-Kitāba wa-l-Qirā’a al-‘Arabiyya fī Thalāthat Ashhur ­Qamariyya (Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Raḥmāniyya, 1928). 10. Al-Ḥusaynī, “Ta‘līm al-Ummī fī Shahrayn,” 64. 11.  The “crisis of Arabic” is a perennial issue of discussion in the Arab world. Anwar Chejne, writing in the 1960s, noted the ongoing apprehension regarding its future. Anwar G. Chejne, The Arabic Language: Its Role in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 173–175. A 2010 show on the al-Jazeera cable channel that debated the “present state of the Arabic language” raised many similar concerns; see http:// www.aljazeera.net/programs/opposite-direction/2010/8/16/, accessed May 29, 2015. Reem Bassiouney has explored the reemergence of this crisis narrative in the context of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. See Reem Bassiouney, Language and Identity in Modern Egypt (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), chapter 6. 12.  Linda Herrera, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet (London: Verso, 2014), 6–12. 13.  For an interesting set of articles on post-Uprising digital media, see “Roundtable: The Digital Age in the Middle East,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no. 2 (May 2015): 343–368. 14.  Nermeen Mouftah looks at what she calls the “Islamic literacy development” advocated by the NGO Life Makers (with sponsorship from Vodafone Egypt) and its impact on several communities in “Building Life: Faith, Literacy Development and Muslim Citizenship in Revolutionary Egypt” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2014). 15. Bassiouney, Language and Identity, 337–338. For more on the debate about illiteracy and the Egyptian electorate, see William J. Dobson, “What Happens in Tahrir Square Stays in Tahrir Square?” March 21, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/postpartisan/post/what_happens_in_tahrir_square_stays_in_tahrir_square/2011/03/21/ ABTOcf8_blog.html; and H. Kubra, “Egyptian Blogosphere’s White Liberalism | KABOBfest,” April 4, 2011, http://www.kabobfest.com/2011/04/the-white-liberalism-of-theegyptian-blogosphere.html. 16.  For a striking set of reflections on the visuality of the protests, see Mikala Hyldig Dal, ed., Cairo: Images of Transition: Perspectives on Visuality in Egypt, 2011-2013 (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2013). 17. Bassiouney, Language and Identity, 331.

BIBLIOGR APHY

Names of authors that begin with the Arabic article al- are alphabetized according to the main part of the name.

Archival Collections British National Archives (BNA), Kew Gardens Department of Education and Science (ED) 23/360 Foreign Office (FO) 141, 371, 608, 848, and 891 Public Records Office (PRO) 30/57/42 Egyptian National Archives, Dār al-Wathā’iq al-Qawmiyya (DWQ), Cairo ‘Ābidīn Collection Dīwān al-Madāris, Sijil 1655 and 1656 Majlis al-Wuzarā’ Egyptian National Library, Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya (DKM), Cairo Manuscripts Collection Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Manṣūr Collection

Arabic Periodicals

Anīs al-Jalīs Al-Bayān Al-Ḍiyā’ Al-Fatāa Al-Ḥaqq Al-Hidāya Al-Hilāl Al-Jāmi‘a Al-Jāmi‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya Al-Jins al-Laṭīf Al-Karāma Majallat al-Liwā’ Al-Manār

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Rawdat al-Madāris Al-Samīr al-Ṣaghīr Al-Tankīt wa-l-Tabkīt Al-Ustādh

Reports and Official Publications

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———. Tarjamat Mudhakkira ilā Majlis al-Nuẓẓār bi-Taḥwīr Niẓām al-Dirāsa alThānawiyya. Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1905. Egyptian Ministry of Finance/Niẓārat al-Māliyya. Annuaire Statistique de l’Égypte, 1915. Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1916. ———. Annuaire Statistique de l’Égypte, 1916. Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1917. ———. Annuaire Statistique de l’Égypte, 1920. Cairo: Imprimerie Nationale, 1921. ———. The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907. Cairo: National Printing Department, 1909. ———. The Census of Egypt Taken in 1917. Cairo: Government Press, 1920. ———. Comparative Statistics of the Postal Traffic in Egypt for the Years 1880–1906. Cairo: National Printing Department, 1907. ———. Population Census of Egypt, 1927. Cairo: Government Press, 1931. ———. Ta‘dād Sukkān al-Quṭr al-Miṣrī, 1897. Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Kubrā al-Amīriyya, 1898. ———. Ta‘dād Sukkān al-Quṭr al-Miṣrī, 1907. Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1909. Egyptian Ministry of Transportation/Wizārat al-Muwāṣalāt, Maṣlaḥat al-Barīd. Al-Taqrīr al-Sanawī ‘an A‘māl Maṣlaḥat al-Barīd li-Sanat 1938. Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1939. House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. Report by Her Majesty’s Agent and ConsulGeneral on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1898. London: Harrison and Sons, 1899. ———. Report on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt, and the Progress of Reforms. London: Harrison and Sons, 1896. ———. Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1900. London: Harrison and Sons, 1901. ———. Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1904. London: Harrison and Sons, 1905. ———. Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1910. London: Harrison and Sons, 1911. ———. Reports on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt, and the Progress of Reforms. London: Harrison and Sons, 1898. UNESCO. Progress of Literacy in Various Countries: A Preliminary Statistical Study of Available Census Data since 1900. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1953. Union Postale Universelle. Statistique Générale du Service Postal 1885. Berne, Switzerland: Imprimerie Suter & Lierow, 1887. ———. Statistique Générale du Service Postal 1925. Berne, Switzerland: Bureau International de l’Union Postale Universelle, 1927. United Nations Development Program. The Arab Human Development Report 2002. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2002. ———. The Arab Human Development Report 2003. New York: United Nations Development Program, 2003.

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———. The Arab Human Development Report 2005. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2006. ———. The Arab Human Development Report 2009. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2009.

Books and Articles

‘Abd al-Jawād, Muḥammad. Taqwīm Dār al-‘Ulūm. Vol. 1. Cairo: n.p., 1990. ‘Abd al-Karīm, Aḥmad ‘Izzat. Khamsūn ‘Ām ‘alā Thawrat 1919. Cairo: Al-Ahrām, 1970. ‘Abduh, Muḥammad. Al-A‘māl al-Kāmila. Edited by Muḥammad ‘Imāra. 6 vols. Beirut: Al-Mu’assasa al-‘Arabiyya li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Nashr, 1972. ‘Arab, Muḥammad Ṣābir, Aḥmad Zakariyyā al-Shalaq, and Nāṣir ‘Abdallāh ‘Uthmān, eds. Al-Sulṭa wa-‘Arḍuḥālāt al-Maẓlūmīn: Min ‘Aṣr Muḥammad ‘Alī, 1820–1823. Cairo: Maṭba‘at Dār al-Kutub wa-l-Wathā’iq al-Qawmiyya, 2009. al-‘Aṭṭār, Amīr Ma’mūn. Āyat al-Inshā’ wa-Ḥikmat al-Munshi’īn. Cairo: Maṭba‘at alTaqaddum, 1907. al-‘Aṭṭār, Ḥasan. Inshā’ al-Shaykh Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār. Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-‘Uthmāniyya, 1886. ‘Azab, Khālid, and Aḥmad Manṣūr. Maṭba‘at Būlāq. Edited by Ismail Serageldin. Alexandria, Egypt: Maktabat al-Iskandariyya, 2005. ‘Azīza. “Ilā al-Banāt.” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 2 (August 1908). ———. “Ṣafaḥāt li-l-Banāt.” Al-Jins al-Laṭīf 1, no. 10 (April 1909). al-‘Aẓmī, Mukhtār ibn Aḥmad Mu’ayyad. Faṣl al-Khiṭāb aw Taflīs Iblīs min Taḥrīr al-Mar’a wa-Raf ‘ al-Ḥijāb. Cairo: Al-Maṭba‘a al-Adabiyya, 1901. Abbas, Raouf, and Assem El-Dessouky. The Large Landowning Class and the Peasantry in Egypt, 1837–1952. Edited by Peter Gran. Translated by Amer Mohsen. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011. Abi-Mershed, Osama. Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing Mission in Algeria. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Abrahamov, Binyamin. “Al-Ghazālī’s Supreme Way to Know God.” Studia Islamica, no. 77 (1993): 141–168. Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Dialects of Women’s Empowerment: The International Circuitry of the Arab Human Development Report 2005.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 1 (February 2009): 83–103. Adely, Fida J. “Educating Women for Development: The Arab Human Development Report 2005 and the Problem with Women’s Choices.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 1 (February 2009): 105–122. Ahearn, Laura. Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Allen, Roger. A Period of Time: A Study and Translation of Hadith ‘Isa ibn Hisham by Muhammad al-Muwaylihi. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1992. Amin, Qasim. The Liberation of Women and the New Woman: Two Documents in the

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History of Egyptian Feminism. Translated by Samiha Sidhom Peterson. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000. al-Amīn, Silmī. “Hādhihi Asbāb Fashlinā fī Maḥw Ummiyyat Rub‘ Milyūn Miṣrī!” Akhbār al-Yawm, December 17, 2005. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991. Antonius, George. The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938. Arnett, Mary Flounders. “Qāsim Amīn and the Beginnings of the Feminist Movement in Egypt.” PhD diss., Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1965. Aroian, Lois. The Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education in Egypt: Dar al-‘Ulum and al-Azhar. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1983. Artin, Yacoub. L’instruction publique en Égypte. Paris: Earnest Leroux, 1890. al-Aṣghar, Aḥmad ibn Burd. “The Debate of Pen and Sword.” In Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology, edited and translated by Geert Jan van Gelder, 248–254. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Austin, Allan D. African Muslims in Antebellum America. New York: Routledge, 1997. Ayalon, Ami. Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Arabic Political Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. ———. The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. ———. Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900–1948. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. al-‘Aẓam, Rafīq. “Al-Qawl al-Sadīd fī al-Radd ‘alā Ṣāḥib al-Khaṭṭ al-Jadīd,” Al-Hilāl 5, no. 5 (November 1, 1896): 170–173. Badawi, M. M. Early Arabic Drama. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Badran, Margot. “Expressing Feminism and Nationalism in Autobiography: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Educator.” In De/colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, 270–293. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. ———. Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Badran, Margot, and miriam cooke, eds. Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Badrawi, Malak. Political Violence in Egypt, 1910–1924: Secret Societies, Plots and Assassinations. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000. al-Balawī, Yūsuf Abū al-Ḥajjāj. Hādhā Kitāb Alif Bā’. Cairo: Jam‘iyyat al-Ma‘ārif, 1870. Barak, On. On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Barakāt, ‘Alī. “Dafātir Ta‘dād al-Nufūs.” Al-Ruzname 3 (2005): 495–510. Baron, Beth. The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014.

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———. “Readers and the Women’s Press in Egypt.” Poetics Today 15, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 217–240. ———. The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. Barton, David, and Mary Hamilton. Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community. London: Routledge, 1998. Bassiouney, Reem. Arabic Sociolinguistics: Topics in Diglossia, Gender, Identity, and Politics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009. ———. Language and Identity in Modern Egypt. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Bayly, C. A. “Representing Copts and Muhammadans: Empire, Nation, and Community in Egypt and India, 1880–1914.” In Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, edited by Leila Fawaz, C.A. Bayly, and Robert Ilbert, 158–203. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Beinin, Joel, and Zachary Lockman. Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Ben-Bassat, Yuval. Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine. London: I. B. Tauris, 2013. Boktor, Amir. School and Society in the Valley of the Nile. Cairo: Elias’ Modern Press, 1936. Booth, Marilyn. “Before Qasim Amin: Writing Women’s History in 1890s Egypt.” In The Long 1890s in Egypt: Colonial Quiescence, Subterranean Resistance, edited by Marilyn Booth and Anthony Gorman, 365–398. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. ———. May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. ———. “Woman in Islam: Men and the ‘Women’s Press’ in Turn-of-the-20th-Century Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 2 (May 2001): 171–201. Boyle, Helen N. “Memorization and Learning in Islamic Schools.” Comparative Education Review 50, no. 3 (August 2006): 478–495. Brantlinger, Patrick. The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-­ Century British Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Brugman, J. An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1984. Būlāqī, Muḥammad. Al-Jalīs al-Anīs: Fī al-Taḥdhīr ‘Ammā fī Taḥrīr al-Mar’a min alTalbīs. Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Ma‘ārif al-Ahliyya, 1899. Cannon, Byron D. “Nineteenth-Century Arabic Writings on Women and Society: The Interim Role of the Masonic Press in Cairo—(Al-Laṭā’if, 1885–1895).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 4 (November 1985): 463–484. Carey, John. The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880–1939. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Carter, B. L. The Copts in Egyptian Politics. London: Croom Helm, 1986.

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INDEX

Page numbers followed by “f ” and “t” refer to figures and tables, respectively. ‘Abbas School, 149 ‘Abd al-Sayyid, Mikhail, 37 ‘Abduh, Muhammad, 18, 32, 62, 139, 174n73 adab (moral etiquette or literature), 60–62, 71, 73–74 adabī journals, 39–40 al-Afkar, 122 ahlī (private) schools, 82. See also private schools al-Ahram, 32, 55, 111, 122, 124, 135 ‘A’isha (wife of Muhammad), 72 ‘Ali, Mehmet, 15, 80–81, 107, 133, 150, 197n11 al-Alusi, Nu‘man Khayr al-Din, 65–66 Amin, Qasim, 65, 77, 96, 97, 168–69n37, 183n95, 187n3 ‘āmmiyya. See Egyptian colloquial Arabic Anderson, Benedict, 9 Anis al-Jalis, 52, 62–63, 73, 135, 146 anticolonialism. See nationalist and anticolonial movements Antonius, George, 79, 187n8 The Arab Awakening (Antonius), 79 Arab Human Development Report (UN), 157, 214n2 ‘Arabi, Muhyi al-Din ibn, 131 Arabic instruction: al-Azhar method, critiques of, 68, 85–86, 189n36; exams, 90, 99; functional literacy, shift to, 88–91; government schools and, 16, 34, 139, 141–42, 146–47; kuttābs and, 140, 152–53; pedagogical shifts in, 83–91, 155; teachers, 68, 93–96, 138, 184n109; textbooks, 94–98, 189nn31–32; traditional sciences

and, 85, 87–88, 143, 189n34–35. See also Dar al-‘Ulum; inshā’ (composition) Arabic language: Azhar style of, 26; braille and, 138, 207n61; Christians and, 36–38, 184n100; “crisis of Arabic,” 161, 216n11; debates over who should read and write, 18; English and French vs., 16, 34, 139–41; formal vs. Egyptian colloquial, 20, 142–47, 209n94, 210nn96–98; linguistic reforms and modernization of, 18, 20, 83–88, 143, 146, 169n44; nationalism, nationalists and, 17, 21, 33–38, 98–100, 143–47, 148; women and, 54–56, 67, 132. See also nahḍa Arab nationalism. See nationalist and anticolonial movements Artin, Yacoub, 55–56, 190n42 al-‘Attar, Amir Ma‘mun, 100–101 al-‘Attar, Hasan, 93, 94–95, 193n86 Avierino, Alexandra, 52 ‘Awwan, Tawfiq, 145 Ayalon, Ami, 31 Ayat al-Insha’ wa-Hikmat al-Munshi’in (The Model of Writing and the Wisdom of Writers) (al-‘Attar), 100–101 al-Azhar teaching mosque: blind students at, 138, 206n50; critiques of, 26, 40, 85–86, 135, 189n36; demonstrations at, 123–25; language education at, 85, 89, 189n35; oral exams at, 90; student protests, 114–15, 122; style of writing, 26 al-‘Azmi, Mukhtar, 65 al-Badawi, al-Sayyid Ahmad, 112

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Bahithat al-Badiya. See Nasif, Malak Hifni banning of books, 62, 99, 115, 196n134 Baron, Beth, 41–42, 172n56 al-Bayan, 135 Bible, 37, 59 Bible women, 184n100 blindness, 55, 137–38, 206nn50–51, 206n54, 207nn60–61 book bans, 62, 99, 115, 196n134 Booth, Marilyn, 194n114 braille, Arabic, 138, 207n61 British occupation of Egypt: Arabic vs. English and French and, 16, 34–35, 139–41; Coptic community and, 112, 114, 124; Dinshawi Incident, 110–11; education and, 16–17, 34, 81, 115, 139–41, 150, 168n35; Egyptian colloquial Arabic and, 144–46, 210n97; Egyptian Revolution (1919), 103, 120–26; jahl (ignorance), accusation of encouraging, 148; political and social impact of, 29, 77, 110 Bulaq Press, 19 Bulaqi, Muhammad, 66, 183n96 bureaucratization, 15, 89–90, 107, 133–34, 147, 155–56 bureaucrats, 15–16, 33, 84, 141, 147, 148 cabdrivers strike, Cairo (1907), 111 “The Call of Nationalism” (al-Sakhawi), 63 censorship, 120, 122–24, 181n61; banning of materials, 62, 99, 115, 196n134; Department of Publications, 122; Press Law, 122 census: blind and their vocations, 137; Coptic population, 172n60; distrust of, 204n26; history of, 133; determination of literacy for, 43, 133–34, 153, 205n35; media responses to, 135–36, 205n40; official literacy rates, 18–19, 19t, 43; population growth, 188n18; postal rates compared to official literacy, 43–46; statistical knowledge and census data, 130, 133–36, 159 Certeau, Michel de, 180n50, 182n83 Chalcraft, John, 111, 196n5 Cheetham, Milne, 121 children’s magazines, 41, 175n90 class: anxiety about “lower” classes, 11, 18, 50, 140, 149, 180n38; education and, 16,

38, 54–57, 60, 140, 168n35; effendiyya, 51–52, 56, 80–81, 125–26, 188nn13–14; Egyptian colloquial Arabic and, 144–45; feminists and, 177n8, 180n36, 180n38; gender, intersection with, 18, 50–57, 128; language and, 16, 140, 179n18; literacy and, 64, 74, 125–26. See also middle class classical Arabic. See Arabic language; fuṣḥā Cole, Juan R. I., 168n29 colonialism, linguistic, 35. See also British occupation of Egypt colloquial Arabic. See Arabic language; Egyptian colloquial Arabic Commission to Reform Public Education (1880), 139, 150, 212n126 communal literacy practices, 6–8, 14, 18, 31–32, 42–46, 51. See also petitions and protests compulsory mass education, 7, 55, 57, 84, 143, 147–55, 161 Constitution, Egyptian (1923), 154, 155 Coptic community: Arabic language and, 36–38; Bible reading, 37, 59; campaign for legislative representation, 112, 114; Coptic language, 36–37, 173nn61–62; “cultural nationalism” and, 173n64; Egyptian Revolution and solidarity with Muslims, 37, 124; missionaries and, 37, 137, 168n27; oral education in, 136; population of, 172n60; schools, 37–38, 81 137, 173n70, 183n99 Coptic Congress (Asyut, 1911), 114 Coptic language, 36–37, 173nn61–62 Copts and Moslems Under British Control (Mikhail), 112 Council of Religious Scholars of Alexandria, 89, 99 Cromer, Consul-General Lord, 16, 34, 139– 40, 207n60, 207n71, 208n74, 212n137 Dar al-‘Ulum (Nasiriyya Teachers College), 68, 86, 89, 98, 141–42, 191n63, 208n75 Darwish, Muhammad, 116 Department of Publications, 122 Dhakir, Muhammad Abu, 183n88 dhawq (good taste), 87–88, 190n53, 191n55 Dinshawi Incident, 110–11

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Diyab, Muhammad, 94–95, 96, 193n94, 194n107 Dunlop, Douglas, 34, 115, 146–47 Dupont, Anne-Laure, 92 al-Durus al-Nahawiyya (Nasif), 189n31 Ebeid, Makram, 121 Eccel, A. Chris, 189n35 education: blindness and, 137–38, 206nn50–51, 207nn60–61; Bulaqi’s four categories, 66; class and, 16, 38, 54–57, 60, 140; compulsory mass education, 7, 57, 147–55; contemporary status of, 161–62; effendiyya and, 51–52, 56, 80–81, 125–26; exams, 89–90, 99; gender, class, and, 52–58; history of, 14–18; ‘ilm (knowledge) 131–33, 148, 154; nationalist, 35–36, 38, 99; as process of cultural production, 187n5; reproduction of societal structures and, 78; social engineering and educational policy, 13, 147–48; tarbiya and ta‘līm, 53–54, 56, 60–61, 178nn13–14, 178nn16–7. See also Arabic instruction; schooling; schools effendiyya, 6, 51–52, 56, 80–81, 121, 125–26, 188nn13–14, 208n73 Egypt: centralization of state, 44, 108, 147– 48; declared British Protectorate, 120; historiography of, 192n82; as literary center of Arabic speaking-world, 6; official language of, 16, 179n18; Ottoman period, 6, 15, 120; population of, 133, 188n18. See also specific topics Egyptian colloquial Arabic, 12, 20, 143, 208n79; class and, 144–46; examples of, 105, 107, 160; formal vs., 20, 142–47, 209n94, 210nn96–98; nationalism and, 143–46, 208n81; print media and, 20, 145, 209n94 Egyptian Postal System. See postal system Egyptian Revolution (1919), 103, 116, 120–26, 200n60 El Shakry, Omnia, 178n14 English language, 16, 34, 54, 139–42, 145–46, 212n137 everyday literacies discourse and practice, 13–14, 158–59; census vs. postal rates as

measurement of, 42–46, 45f; Coptic community and, 36–38; Haykal’s Zaynab and, 42–43; idealized literacies and literacy promotion, 39–42; al-Muwaylihi’s A Period of Time and, 25–28; new spaces of, 28–33; politics of national literacies, 33–39. See also literacy and literacies exams: composition questions, 99; medical exams, 138, 206n57; oral vs. written, 89–90 exclusions. See blindness; class; oral skills; women’s literacies Fahmy, Ziad, 122, 125, 200n60 Falaki, Mustafa, 96, 194n107 al-Fataa, 3–4, 10–11, 40, 52, 61, 74 Fatat al-Sharq, 52 Fath Allah, Hamza, 68, 131 al-Fawa’id al-Fikriyya (The Fikri Maxims), 98–99 Fawwaz, Zaynab, 66–67, 71, 177n2 fellaheen (peasant farmers), 11, 42, 51, 57, 122, 125–26, 215n5 fiction: danger of, 61–62, 80; in education, 40; gharāmiyyāt (love stories), 61–62 Fikri, ‘Abdallah, 98–99 Fikri, ‘Ali, 61 form petitions, 116, 119f, 120 formal Arabic. See Arabic language; fuṣḥā Foucault, Michel, 13, 133 French language, 16, 34, 54, 139, 141, 142 French occupation of Egypt, 15, 133 Fuad, Sultan, 121 functional literacy, 43–46, 45f, 78, 87–91, 95 fuṣḥā Arabic, 20, 26, 105, 143, 145–47, 155, 159, 208n80, 209n91. See also Arabic language gender: class and, 18, 50–57, 128; debates regarding, 96–98; al-Fataa question on opening letters of wives, 3–4, 10–11, 74; literacy practices and, 63, 97–98; masculinity, 10–11, 49, 62–63, 69–70, 75; “masters of the pen” (arbāb al-aqlām), 49, 91, 96; “mistresses of the home,” 49, 69, 74, 177n2; “mistresses of the pen” (rabbāt ­al-aqlām), 11, 40, 49, 69–74; p ­ ublic

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­literacies and, 10–11, 18, 50, 159; shared spaces and, 74. See also women’s literacies gendered public literacies, 6–12, 50–51, 62–63, 75–76. See also gender; public literacies; women’s literacies Gershoni, Israel, 168n36 Ghali Pasha, Butrus, 112, 173n68 gharāmiyyāt (love stories), 61–62 Gorst, Eldon, 112, 114 government schools: Arabic instruction in, 34, 68, 86–87, 90, 139, 141–42, 146–47, 181n57, 210n110; censorship at, 62, 99, 196n134; creation and expansion of, 15– 16, 81, 150–55; financial limitations on, 17, 34, 139, 174n79; girls’ schools, 52, 54–56, 149; number of schools and students, 81, 82t, 150; primary schools, elite, 34, 89, 90, 146, 152, 212n136; private schools and, 17, 38, 90, 174n76; students and graduates of, 26, 52, 114, 122, 139; teachers in, 57, 68–69, 86, 94–96, 131, 138, 141–42, 160, 184n110; textbooks, 29, 84, 87, 94–99, 187n3, 189n32, 190n42. See also specific school names Graff, Harvey J., 5 “great divide” between oral and written, 5, 165n5 Grey, Edward, 114 group petitions, 105–10, 106f, 111, 116–20, 117f, 118f, 121, 123–24, 126, 127f, 136, 138 Gully, Adrian, 92–93, 193n90 Habermas, Jürgen, 9, 167n18 hadith, 63, 65, 72, 152–53, 205n48 Haeri, Niloofar, 184n109 Hafsa (wife of Muhammad), 72 al-Halabi, Muhammad, 32–33, 85, 86–87 Hamzah, Dyala, 92 handwriting, 58, 59, 88–89, 189n34 handwritten texts, 105, 106f, 107–8, 112, 116, 120, 128, 136–37. See also scribes Hanna, Nelly, 183n88, 213n146 Hashim, Labiba, 30–31, 40, 52, 54, 56, 62, 70, 180n36 Hatem, Mervat, 69 Haykal, Muhammad, 42–43 al-Hidaya, 39–40, 72

High Schools Club (Nadi al-Madaris al‘Ulya), 38 al-Hilal, 36, 39, 84, 92, 132 al-Hizb al-Watani (National Party), 38 Human Development Index (HDI), 157, 215n3 Husayn, Taha, 138, 146, 206n50 al-Husayni, Ahmad Khalil, 160–61 Ibn Khaldun, 91, 203n10 idealized literacies, 39–42, 158–59 illiteracy. See ummiyya ‘ilm (knowledge), 131–33, 148, 154. See also ta‘līm al-‘ilm al-ummī (unlettered knowledge), 131 India, colonial, 65–66, 145, 212n132 inshā’ (composition): art of, 91–96; at alAzhar, 189n35; broader definition of, 193n84; dangers of, 66; instructional manuals, 93–96; as school subject, 85, 89–91, 93; schoolteachers as authors, 93– 96; social issues, nationalism in school, 96–101. See also “writer” category Islamic Benevolent Society (al-Jam‘iyya ­al-Khayriyya al-Islamiyya), 38 Isma‘il, Khedive, 15, 20, 44, 81, 150 Jacquemond, Richard, 181n61, 192n77 al-Jahiz, 8–9, 91 jāhilāt (ignorant women), 53, 132 jahl (ignorance), 131–33, 135, 148 Jalila of Shibin al-Kum, 105, 107 al-Jami‘a, 73, 84, 149 al-Jami‘a al-‘Uthmaniyya, 132, 178n16 Jankowski, James P., 168n36 al-Jarida, 111 Jawhari, Tantawi, 210n98 al-Jazayrili, ‘Abdallah, 136 Jewish community: schools, 38, 81; girls attending schools, 183n99 al-Jins al-Latif, 52, 71–72 al-Jurjani, 189n34 Kamil, Mustafa, 35–36, 38, 100, 148, 174n75, 175n90 kātib munshi’ (writer/creator), 92, 192n79. See also “writer” category

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kātibs (scribes, secretaries, or writers), 91– 92, 96, 192n79. See also scribes; “writer” category Khalid, ‘Amr, 162 Khidiwiyya Teachers College, 84–85, 98, 142 Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham, 80 Kitab al-Insha’ (Diyab), 94–95, 193n94 Kitab al-Mu‘in fi Sina‘at al-Insha’ (al-Shartuni), 94 kuttāb schools: “alternative” literacies and, 17, 58–59, 152–53, 213n146; Arabic-only education and, 140, 152, 212n137; blindness and, 137–38, 206n51, 207n60; British administrators and, 17, 140, 174n76; history of, 15; inspections and subsidies, 17, 151–53, 151t; mass education and, 150–54; number of students at, 82t, 133–34, 150, 174n78; options for students of, 207n71; Qur’anic literacy and, 88, 152–53, 213n139; reading vs. writing and, 58–59; reorganized under government control, 16, 81, 152, 154, 212n131; ummiyya (illiteracy) and, 150–53

literacy rates: anxieties about, 57, 135–36, 154, 157, 205n40; census history, 133–35; contemporary, 157; Human Development Index and, 157, 215n3; kuttābs and, 153; official, 8, 18–19, 19t; postal rates compared to, 43–46, 45f; social advancement as measured by, 57, 157–58; statistical knowledge, power of, 133–36; of women, 19t, 135, 205n41 literacy studies, 5 literacies, everyday. See everyday literacies discourse and practice literacies, gendered public, 6–12. See also gender; public literacies; women’s literacies literacies, nationalist. See under nationalist and anticolonial movements; nationalist literacies literacies, public. See public literacies literacies, women’s. See women’s literacies “Losing Language Is Surrendering the Self ” (Nadim), 35

Lane, Edward, 59, 193n86 languages, hierarchy of, 34, 145 letter writing, 14, 18–19, 51, 92–93, 94–95, 100; census and, 134; critiques of style, 73–74, 85, 139; postal system and, 42–46, 45t; women and, 3–4, 62, 64, 70, 71, 72–74. See also petitions and protests; scribes The Liberation of Women (Amin), 65, 77, 96 literacy and literacies: Arabic terms for, 12, 58; communal aspect of, 18; debates over, 18; functional, 43–46, 45f, 88–91; “good” vs. “bad,” 4, 7, 46, 74–75, 159; history of Arabic literacy in Egypt, 28–33; idea of literacy and practices of literacies, 13–14, 27, 158–59; idealized, 39–42; literacy myth, 5; multiplicity and continuum of, 5–8, 12, 26–27, 42, 125–26, 136–38; narrowly defined as reading and writing, 134, 155–56, 159; official census vs. postal rates as measures of, 43–46, 45f; reading vs. writing, 10, 58–59; as visual interaction, 104. See also exclusions; public literacies; ummiyya (illiteracy); women’s literacies literacy myth, 5

Madarij al-Irtiqa’ ila Sina‘at al-Insha’ (The Pathways of Perfection in Composition) (Falaki), 96 madāris waṭaniyya (private national schools), 38, 148, 174n76 Madrasat Khalil Agha, 59 al-Mahdiyya, Munira, 185n117 Manahij al-Adab (Wasif), 99, 195n130 al-Manar, 30, 63, 72, 84, 92 al-Marsafi, Husayn, 60, 87 masculinity: literacy and, 10–11, 49, 62–63, 75; spaces, 69–70 mass educational system, 7, 55, 57, 84, 143, 147–55, 161 “masters of the pen” (arbāb al-aqlām), 49, 91, 96 medical exams, 138, 206n57 memorization, 58, 87–88, 100, 136–37, 148, 152–53, 181n52, 190n53 “men of letters” (udabā’), 87, 91 merchants, 26 Messick, Brinkley, 197n8 middle class, 9, 51–52, 54–57, 80–81; alṭabaqa al-wusṭā, 52, 56. See also class

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Mikhail, Kyriakos, 112 Mikha’il, Fransis, 97, 195n116 missionaries 37, 38, 137, 168n27, 173n62 missionary schools, 15, 17, 37, 55, 81, 82t, 183n99, 187n8 “mistresses of the home” (rabbāt al-dār), 49, 69, 74, 177n2 “mistresses of the pen” (rabbāt al-aqlām), 11, 40, 49, 69–74 Mitchell, Timothy, 133 modernity: effendiyya and, 80, 177n7, 188n14, 208n73; literacy and, 5, 77–78, 138–39, 159; nahḍa vision of, 79–83 morality: adab as, 60–62, 71, 73–74, 178n14, 181n61; education and, 60, 65, 138, 148–49, 178nn16–17; feminized literary spaces and, 73–74; ‘ilm (knowledge) vs. jahl (ignorance), 131–33, 135; language and, 172n53; literacy and, 32, 39–40, 130; tarbiya and, 53–54, 60. See also women’s literacy al-Mu’ayyad, 31 Mubarak, ‘Ali, 15, 96–97, 150–51, 212n131 Muhammad the Prophet, 63, 65, 66, 130–31, 203n10 al-Muqattam, 30, 123 Musa, Nabawiyya, 40, 52, 57, 68–69, 73, 86, 180n42, 185n116 Musa, Salama, 145, 208n81 al-Musawwar, 73 Mustafa Kamil School, 38, 100 al-Muwaylihi, Muhammad, 25–28, 88, 91–92, 169n2 Nadim, ‘Abdallah, 25, 35, 41, 54, 70, 88, 132, 145–46, 171n47 nahḍa (Arabic cultural renaissance): historical role of, 6; linguistic reforms, 83–87; modernity and, 79–83; “writers” and, 77 nahḍa al-nisā’iyya (women’s awakening), 52 al-Najjar, Muhammad, 95–96 Nasif, Malak Hifni, 18, 40, 52, 57, 62, 67–68, 178n17, 185n116, 189n31, 209n82 Nasiriyya Teachers College (Dar al-‘Ulum), 68, 86, 89, 141–42, 191n63, 208n75 National Party (al-Hizb al-Watani), 38 nationalist and anticolonial movements: Arabic as central to, 16, 34–36, 84;

Arabic-language education and, 16–17, 38–39, 100, 146–49; Arab nationalism and, 168n36; Egyptian colloquial Arabic and, 143–47; Egyptian Revolution (1919), 103, 120–26, 200n60; gendered practices as a way to support, 63, 97–98; instructional texts and, 98–99; literacy and, 33–39; media and public petitioning and, 110–11; students and, 114–16, 118f, 121–25; ummiyya as enemy, 129, 136, 148; women and, 52, 128, 195n119 nationalist literacies, 9, 33–39, 110–11 Nawfal, Antun, 10–11, 74 Nawfal, Hind, 52 newspapers: Arabic of, 20, 26, 85, 143, 146; censorship and, 122–23; circulation, 20, 31; communal reading of, 9, 14, 26, 31, 42, 51, 126; critiques of, 29, 32–33; history of, 19–20, 28–29, 36; multiple use of, 31–32; political role, 110–11, 124; praise for, 32; professionalization of writing and, 92; readership, 30–31, 41–42, 63; underground, 124. See also press; specific papers by name “Newspapers and Writers” (Hashim), 30–31 notaries, 107, 197n8 notebooks, 155 oral practices: blindness and, 137–38; education and, 12, 136; examinations, 90; excluded from “literacy,” 136; “great divide” between written and, 5, 165n5; textual practices and connection to, 5–6, 58, 104, 105, 108, 125, 193n84. See also memorization; scribes Organic Law (1868), 150 Ottoman period, 6, 15, 120, 168n36, 189n28 pamphlet petitions, 126, 127f peasantry, 11, 42, 51, 57, 122, 125–26, 215n5 pedagogy. See Arabic instruction Peltier, 60–61, 172n53 pen vs. sword debate, 49 people’s committees, 123 A Period of Time (Fatra min al-Zaman) (alMuwaylihi), 25–28, 91–92, 169n2 permissibility, Islamic principles of, 183n96

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petitions and protests: bureaucratization and, 107; Cairo cabdrivers strike (1907), 111; Coptic (1910–11), 112, 114; form petitions, 116, 119f, 120; group petitions, 105, 106f, 107–8, 111, 116–27 passim, 117f, 118f, 127f, 136, 138; media and nationalist discourse, 110–11; pamphlet petitions, 126, 127f; printed petitions, 111–12, 113f, 114, 123–24, 126; scribes and, 105–7; shift from semiprivate to semipublic, 107–10; by students, 114–27 passim; tawkīlāt (delegations of authority), 121; by telegraph, 108– 9, 109f, 114, 121, 123, 198n18; Wafd Party and Egyptian Revolution (1919), 120–26; women and, 70, 72, 105, 107, 128 positivist social reform, 13, 79, 147–48 postal rates a measure of functional literacy, 43–46, 45f postal system, 3, 18, 42–46, 108; censorship of, 122; postal rates, 43–46, 45t, 176n112; postman and mail as code, 202n94 practice. See everyday literacy discourse and practice press: Anderson’s “print-capitalism,” 9; authority, problem of, 32–33; censorship of, 115, 122–23, 124; development and growth of, 19–20, 29, 31, 36–37; political role, 110–12, 124; women as subjects of, 73–74, 96–98; women’s, 41–42, 52, 70–72; writing for, 92, 99–101, 115. See also newspapers; specific persons and titles Press Law, 122 primary schools, elite, 34, 89, 90, 139, 140, 146, 152, 212n136, 213n141 printed petitions, 111–12, 113f, 114, 123–24, 126; handwritten vs., 120, 128 privacy: al-Fataa question on opening letters of wives, 3–4, 10–11, 74; public exposure vs., 70–72, 73–74, 185n125 private literary spaces, female, 72–74 private schools, 17, 38, 82–83, 82t, 148, 174n76, 208n74 “The Problem of Writing” (‘Abduh), 139 promotion of literacy, 39–42, 50, 59–60, 133, 147–155. See also ummiyya (illiteracy) protest politics. See petitions and protests Provincial Councils, 82, 82t, 174n79

public literacies: defined, 3, 6–10; exclusions from, 128; gender and, 10–12, 50–51, 62– 63, 75–76; historical approach to sources on, 13–14; idea and practices of, 13–14, 27–28, 160–61; protest movements and, 103, 120–26; semipublic and semiprivate literacies, 104–10. See also specific topics publics, multiple, 10, 69–72 public spaces: class and gender dynamic of, 50; as domains for transformation, 8–11; female presence in masculine public spaces, 69–72; Habermas and Anderson on, 9; multiple publics, 10 Qandil, Amina, 1–2 qara’a (“to read” and “to recite”), 58, 104 al-Qarabiyya school, 55 Qur’anic literacy: Arabic literacy as extension of, 88, 181n57, 184n110; blindness and, 137, 206n51; government schools and, 181n57, 213nn140–41; kuttābs and, 17, 59, 152–53; memorization and, 59, 88, 136–37, 152–53, 181n52; recitation and, 136, 205n48 race, exclusion based on, 64, 182n84 Rawdat al-Madaris, 41, 175n90 reading: as dangerous, 59–63; terms for, 58, 104; writing vs., 10, 58–59. See also specific topics Reading and Writing Arabic in Three Lunar Months (al-Tukhi), 160 recitation of religious texts, 136–37, 205n48 religious scholars. See ‘ulamā’ Rida, Rashid, 30, 63–64, 65, 72, 92 “The Right Word in Preventing Girls from Writing” (al-Alusi), 65–66 Rogan, Eugene, 198n18 Ryzova, Lucie, 188n14, 208n73 Sacy, Silvestre de, 190n42 Sa‘d, Malaka, 52, 177n2 al-Sakhawi, Mahmud, 62–63 al-Samir al-Saghir, 41, 97, 175n90 al-Saniyya school, 55, 68, 179n23 Sanu‘, Ya‘qub, 25 Sarruf, Ya‘qub, 209n94

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satire, 25 al-Sayyid, Ahmad Lutfi, 145, 209n82 schooling: advocacy for increased, 34–38, 53, 149; history of, 14–20, 81–83; language of, 34–36, 86–87, 139–41, 146–47; social reproduction and, 78–79. See also Arabic instruction; ta‘līm schools: Coptic, 37–38, 81 137, 173n70, 183n99; girls’ schools, 52, 54–55, 66, 149, 183n99; madāris waṭaniyya (private national schools), 38, 148, 174n76; missionary, 15, 17, 37, 38, 55, 81, 82t, 183n99, 187n8; number and enrollments, by type, 81–83, 82t; private, 17, 38, 81, 82–83, 174n76, 208n74; technical, 207n71; theological, 82, 188n19. See also government schools; kuttāb schools; specific school names scribes, professional: accessibility to literate and non-literate, 42, 107, 128, 176n115; communal aspect of, 18, 42, 43, 46, 126; as official notaries, 107, 197n8; petitions and, 105–7; praise of, 192n78; shifting meaning of kātib, 91–93, 96 . See also “writer” category Selim, Samah, 80 semiprivate and semipublic literacies, 104–10 Sham‘un, Labiba, 69 Sha‘rawi, Huda, 52, 67 al-Shartuni, Sa‘id, 94, 193n90, 193n94 Sheehi, Stephen, 80 al-Shihab al-Thaqib (al-Shartuni), 94, 193n94 al-Sibawayh, 8–9 Sidky Bey, Ismail, 124 signatures, 105, 136–37, 206n49 slate boards (alwāḥ), 155 social issues, school writing about, 96–101 Spencer, Herbert, 147 statistical knowledge, 133–36. See also census student magazines and journals, 40–41, 124, 175n90 student petitions and protests, 114–27 passim subsidy program for kuttābs, 17, 151–53, 151t Sudan, 207n72

Suleiman, Yasir, 167n19 Sunday School Movement, 173n61 al-Suyufiyya school, 54–55, 68 sword vs. pen debate, 49 Syrian Christians, 36, 172n56 al-Tahtawi, Rifa‘a, 15, 64 ta‘līm education, 53–54, 60, 178n16 al-Ta‘lim wa-l-Irshad (Education and Guidance) (al-Halabi), 32–33 al-Tankit wal-l-Tabkit, 132 tarbiya education, 53–54, 56, 60–61, 178nn13–14, 178n17 tarbiya waṭaniyya, 99, 195n129 Tariq al-Hija’ wa-l-Tamrin ‘ala al-Qira’a fi al-Lugha al-‘Arabiyya (Spelling and Lessons on Reading in Arabic) (Mubarak), 96–97 Tawfiqiyya Teaching College, 142 Tawfiq Society (Jam‘iyyat al-Tawfiq), 37 tawkīlāt (delegations of authority), 121 Taymur, ‘A’isha, 52, 67, 70–71, 180n39, 183n88, 185n127 teachers: female, 40, 65, 68–69; as inshā’ authors, 93–96; literacy practices of, 40, 68–69; male, 68, 86, 184n110; regulations on, 137–38, 206n57. See also Arabic instruction; education teachers colleges: Dar al-‘Ulum (Nasiriyya), 68, 86, 89, 98, 141–42, 191n63, 208n75; Khidiwiyya, 85, 98, 142; Tawfiqiyya 142 “Teaching the Illiterate in Two Months” (alHusayni), 160–61 technical schools, 207n71 telegraphy and telegrams, 108–10,109f, 114, 121, 123, 128, 198n18 textbooks, 29, 61–62, 84, 87, 93–99, 187n3, 189nn31–32, 190n42, 195n116, 195n125 theological schools, 82t, 188n19 al-Tiraz al-Muwashsha fi Sina‘at al-Insha’ (The Beautiful Model of Composition) (al-Najjar), 95–96 al-Tukhi, Muhammad, 160 Turkish language, 54, 68, 179n18 ‘ulamā’ (religious scholars): in al-Muwaylini’s A Period of Time, 26; newspapers,

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journals, and, 32–33; printed petitions and, 126; al-Zawahiri on, 85. See also alAzhar teaching mosque ‘Umar ibn al-Farid, Mosque of, 136 ummiyya (illiteracy): anxieties about, 5, 130, 135–36, 154, 157, 214nn1–2, 215nn5–6; blindness and, 137–38, 206nn50–51, 207n60; census data, statistical knowledge, and, 133–36; campaigns to eradicate, 23, 154–55, 162; compulsory mass education programs, 147–55; concept of, 129, 130; al-Husayni on “animal instincts” and, 160–61; jahl (ignorance) vs., 131–33; kuttābs and, 58–59, 150–53; memorization and oral skills, exclusion of, 136–38; Prophet Mohammad and Muslim traditions on, 130–31, 203n10; public good and, 129–30 ‘Urabi Revolt, 29, 168n29 urbanization, 51 al-Ustadh (The Teacher), 35, 39, 41, 132 Vincent, David, 43 visibility: al-Fataa question on opening letters of wives and, 4; gender and doubleedged sword of, 11; historical record and, 104; print and, 28, 128; public spaces and, 8; women’s writing and, 11, 50, 70–72; of written word vs. oral, 8, 104 Wafd Party, 37, 120–21, 123, 128 Wasif, Amin, 99, 195n130 al-Watan (Nadim), 132 Watenpaugh, Keith, 177n7 Willcocks, William, 144–45, 210n96 Willmore, J. Selden, 144–45, 210n99 Wilson, Woodrow, 120 “women’s awakening” (nahḍa nisā’iyya), 52 women’s literacies: Amin and, 97; Arabic and, 54–56, 67, 132; blind students, similarity to, 206n54; class-gender nexus and, 18, 50–57, 128; “do not teach women to write” hadith, 63, 65–66, 72; education and, 52–57; female voice in the masculine

sphere, 69–72; foreign language education and, 54, 56, 65, 74; history of exclusion in Western societies, 64; idealized literacy and, 40; illiteracy rates, 135; literacy rates in census, 19t, 205n41; “mistresses of the pen” (rabbāt al-aqlām), 11, 40, 49, 69–74, 177n2; Nawfal’s three types of women, 74; petitions and, 70, 72, 105, 107, 128; press and, 41–42, 52, 70–72; private female literary space, danger of, 72–74; reading as dangerous consumption, 59–63; reading vs. writing and, 58–59; visibility and, 11, 50, 70–72; “women question” and, 96–98; writing and power, 63–69. See also gender; gendered public literacies World War I, 103, 120, 122 “writer” category: dhawq (good taste) and functional literacy approach, 87–91; modernization of Arabic language instruction and, 83–87; nahḍa and, 79–83; professionalization of writing, 92; reproduction of societal structures and, 78; schoolteachers as inshā’ authors, 93–96; shifting meaning of kātib (scribe or writer), 91–92, 96, 192n79; social issues and nationalism in instructional works, 96–101; the “women question” in instructional works, 96–98. See also inshā’ writing: reading vs., 58–59; terms for, 58; women’s writing and power, 63–69. See also petitions and protests; inshā’ al-Yaziji, Ibrahim, 209n94 al-Yaziji, Warda, 69 Zaghlul, Sa‘d, 120–22, 146 Zahawi, Jamil, 209n82 Zaki, Ahmad, 141–42, 143 al-Zawahiri, Muhammad, 32, 85, 88, 175n85 Zaydan, Jurji, 36, 84, 92, 189n28, 191n53, 209n94, 210n96 Zaynab (Haykal), 42–43, 46 Zubair, Shirin, 186n142