The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction 9781685858186

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The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction Second Edition

Matti Moosa

A THREE CONTINENTS BOOK

A H

LYNNE R I E N N E R PUBLISHERS« BOULDER & LONDON

A Three Continents

Book

Published in the United States of America in 1997 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 1997 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moosa, Matti. The origins of modern Arabic fiction / Matti Moosa. — 2nd ed. "A Three continents book." Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-89410-683-X (he : alk. paper). ISBN 0-89410-684-8 (pbk : alk. paper). 1. Arabic fiction—1801- —History and criticism. I. Title. PJ7577.M66 1997 892'.73509—dc21 97-21883 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America @

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 5 4 3 2 1

To Inge, my wife, and to Adeeba, my sister, with love and gratitude

Contents

Preface 1

ix

Historical Beginnings: Egypt

1

2 The Rise of the Arab Drama in Syria and Egypt

21

3

Yaqub Sanu and the Rise of the Arab Drama in Egypt

41

4

Abd Allah Nadim and the Art of the Popular Dialogue

67

5 The Translation of Western Fiction

91

6 The Revival of the Maqama

121

7

157

Salim al-Bustani and the Beginning of Modern Arabic Fiction

8 From Salim al-Bustani to Jurji Zaydan:

9

Francis Marrash and Numan Abduh al-Qasatili

185

Jurji Zaydan and the Arab Historical Novel

197

10 Arabic Fiction Comes of Age

219

11 The Growth of the Egyptian Novel

253

12 The Egyptian Modernists and the Novel

291

13 Naguib Mahfouz: The Voice of Egypt

345

Notes Bibliography Index About the Book

373 423 441 455

vii

Preface

The manuscript for the first edition of this book was completed in the summer of 1970, but due to adverse circumstances it did not appear in print until 1983. I benefited greatly from the observations of scholars who reviewed the book and pointed out its strengths and weaknesses; the present edition, revised and expanded by five new chapters, reflects their comments, as well as the results of new research. This book traces the genesis of Arabic literature and analyzes its development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on the cultural ethos within which new genres of Arabic fiction emerged. Fundamentally, this work deals with the question of the connotation of modern Arabic fiction. Unlike the West, the Arab Middle East did not have a tradition of recognizable and generally accepted literary forms to reflect the ethos of Arab culture: the development of modern Arabic literature came late and did not attain fruition until the end of the first half of this century. Accordingly, the idea of Arabic fiction during the nineteenth century is nebulous and elusive. It was drama that appeared first, via the pen of Marun Naqqash, a Syrian, in the 1840s. It continued to dominate the literary scene in the Arab world throughout the nineteenth century. And precisely because of the protracted attention given by Naqqash and other writers to the theater, it will be given a great deal of attention in this work. This should not imply that Arabic drama ever became a polished and multifaceted mode of expression in the Western sense. It remained until the first few decades of this century unpolished, due largely to the absence of a literate and appreciative public. After Naqqash's death in 1855, his brother Niqula formed an amateur troupe that traveled throughout greater Syria staging his brother's plays. He attempted desperately to stimulate interest in the theater. After Niqula's death, his nephew, Salim Khalil Naqqash, formed a professional theatrical troupe, which produced not only his uncle's works but his own plays as

ix

X

Preface

well. Constantly frustrated at the lack of audience reception in Lebanon, he moved his troupe to Egypt, where drama had for some years attracted a small but steadily growing audience. The Khedive Ismail had built a Western-style opera house in 1869, where Verdi's Ai'da was premiered, but because of the dearth of native material, the plays were overwhelmingly Western in origin. In Egypt, Salim Naqqash and his troupe performed the plays he and his uncle Marun had written. Even these, however, were not really "local." Many were Eastern-style adaptations of Western dramas. Marun Naqqash's al-Bakhil (1847), regarded as the first "native" Arabic drama, owes its theme and inspiration to Moliere's L'Avare. The subject matter, characters, and themes of many of Naqqash's other dramas were drawn from the Middle Eastern classic, the Arabian Nights. Thus, genuine creativity was lacking. However, there was a partial exception: Yaqub Sanu, an Egyptian Jew, established a popular theater in Cairo in 1870 in which he performed his own dramas. Unfortunately, the life of this first genuine Arab theater in Egypt was cut short by the despotic Khedive Ismail. Apparently, Ismail took offense at Sanu's play al-Darratayn (The Two Rival Wives), believing it to have been a sly criticism of his own polygamous practices. Ismail closed Sanu's theater and banished him from Egypt. Sanu went to Paris where he lived until his death in 1912. After Sanu the fate of Arabic drama in Egypt quickly took a turn for the worse, and nothing original was attempted until the turn of the century. During that time, Syrian troupes, actors, and playwrights dominated what theater there was in Egypt. Prominent among the Syrian playwrights were al-Shaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani, Sulayman al-Qirdahi, and Iskandar Farah. There was little to distinguish them from previous writers. For instance, al-Qabbani's works were the usual adaptations of Western dramas or rehashes of the fantasies and sentiments of the Arabian Nights. Not until 1905 did a true Egyptian theater emerge again, established by alShaykh Salama Hijazi. An important related development in modern Arabic fiction was the growth in translation of Western fiction, which became widespread toward the end of the nineteenth century. Since Arab writers had only limited fictional models to build on and since there was, in addition to lack of knowledge and technique, little reward for a local effort at creativity, it was natural that Arab writers should find the translation of Western works more to their taste and better for their pockets. Most of these translations were from French because of the ever increasing influence of French culture in Egypt, through Muhammad Ali's contact with France, and in Syria, through the work of the French Jesuit missions. After the establishment of the Syrian Protestant College (the present American University of Beirut), Arab writers began to translate from English as well. The translations, most of

Preface

xi

which were of second-rate romantic fiction, found a ready audience—although they were anathematized by many Arab traditionalists as "immoral." The translation of Western fiction inevitably had an ever growing influence on Arabic culture and literature. It introduced Arab writers to Western literary techniques and models, and it changed the Arabic language through the many words and ideas Arab writers borrowed from Western literature. Although these translations served as a source of innocent entertainment for the literate public, they were vehemently attacked by conservative elements of society. Conservatives believed that they were a corrupting influence on the beauty of the Arabic language and detrimental to public morals. No review of the rise of Arabic fiction would be complete without mention of the maqama. Since literary antecedents upon which to build a modern fictional genre were lacking, some authors depended on the maqama, a unique Arabic form originating in the Arabic Middle Ages. It is based on a single anecdote and features a hero, usually a wandering rogue, in a solitary role, as narrator or monologuist. Simple and straightforward, the original purpose of the maqama was, generally, not only to amuse, but to instruct the Arabs in the subtleties and beauty of their language. However, there were a few who attempted to infuse the maqama with a current or more relevant content toward the beginning of the twentieth century. Men such as Abd Allah Nadim in Kitab al-Masamir (The Book of Nails), Muhammad Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi in Hadith Isa ibn Hisham aw Fatra min al-Zaman (The Narrative of Isa, Son of Hisham, or A Period of Time), Hafiz Ibrahim in Layali Satih (The Nights of Satih), and to a certain extent, Muhammad Lutfi Jumu'a in Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir (The Nights of the Perplexed Spirit) had some success with the form. Due to its inherent rigidity, unfortunately, it never developed into a viable, more complex vehicle of modern expression. Abd Allah Nadim did become known for developing the genre called muhawarat, or popular dialogues; nevertheless, he cannot be properly classified as a dramatist in any modern sense. Thus, throughout the nineteenth century, Arabic fiction and drama languished in a limbo of imitation. On the one hand it had no indigenous inspiration or traditional foundation upon which to build, other than the Arabian Nights and the maqama. The narrow confines of these extant Arabic genres, and the insularity of the Arab world then, prevented an evolution into more modern forms and themes. The denunciations of Arab traditionists and the xenophobic attitude of the many Arabs who were opposed to the translation of Western fiction compounded this difficulty. In addition, the stubborn insistence of others who wanted indiscriminately to translate and use Western forms and themes solely for profit exacerbated the problem. Only in 1870 did a Lebanese writer achieve a semblance of originality and

xii

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modernity with the writing of fiction. This was Salim al-Bustani (d. 1884), son of the celebrated author and encyclopedist, Butrus al-Bustani. In that year, his novel al-Huyam fi Jinan al-Sham (Passionate Love in the Gardens of Damascus) appeared. It may be considered the first "true novel" in the Western sense. Its theme and style, however, still reflect the spirit of the Arabian Nights, although it used contemporary characters. Al-Bustani wrote many other similar romances and short stories reflecting traditionalist Arab styles and themes. For instance, horses, heroes, and damsels in distress are featured with disconcerting regularity, though the audiences were no longer living in a romantic Bedouin world. Al-Bustani's plots are weak, and his characters lack depth and individuality. Yet, he was the first Arab writer to be attentive to the prevailing intellectual currents and ideologies of his time. His treatment of socialism in at least two of his novels is a testimony of his intellectual acumen. He was also the first Arab writer who would coin terms used until this very day in the Arab world, such as Ishtirakiyya (for socialism), and Ibahiyya (for nihilism). Salim al-Bustani's influence, however, had another, more immediate, and perhaps more effective impact. He was one of a host of Syrian intellectuals and men of letters who published their progressive ideas in the magazine al-Jinan (Gardens), which influenced the following generation of Arab writers. Prominent among these men of letters was Francis Marrash, whose importance lies in the fact that he was the first genuine cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer. Marrash was a polymath and wrote about science, metaphysics, pedagogy, criticism, and poetry. He himself did not write much fiction. Yet, his place among the writers of Arabic fiction cannot be overlooked. Less influential than either al-Bustani or Marrash was Numan Abduh al-Qasatili. He was a historian by training and vocation, but he wrote three romances serialized in al-Jinan. They all reflect the influence of al-Bustani, and deal for the most part with the same themes but with one big difference: he strongly advocated the democratization of Syrian society and a parliamentary system modeled on those in the West. Another practitioner of a different literary bent was Abd Allah Nadim, already mentioned. Nadim was particularly known for writing a different genre known as the muhawarat (popular dialogues). His purpose in writing these dialogues was to instruct his compatriots in moral behavior. Also, he intended to teach them how to use their language correctly. Although some of his dialogues (in which he himself acted), are purely fictional, others have a modest amount of realism, though his didactic purposes are never invisible. Thus, his contribution to the development of modern Arabic fiction is commendable, but limited in scope. Prominent among writers of Arabic fiction is Jurji Zaydan (d. 1914), a Lebanese Christian who was a historian, novelist, and journalist. With him

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the first phase in the rise of modern Arabic fiction ends. He was the first to popularize an interest in history through fiction. He succeeded in breaking completely with many constraints that had limited the works of his predecessors. By the beginning of the twentieth century, many writers had tried their hand at the writing of a novel, but their technique was inchoate. Some of them, such as Muhammad Husayn Haykal in his Zaynab, were able to write a reasonably crafted novel. Yet, Haykal's interjection of many superfluous romantic descriptions of nature marred his style and weakened the plot. The works of a host of other writers, such as Farah Anton, Niqula Haddad, Salih Hamdi Hammad, Yaqub Sarruf, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, and others, show that Arabic fiction was maturing; it was coming of age. The 1930s and 1940s saw a breakthrough in Arabic fiction by writers either educated in the West or exposed to Western literature. They include Mahmud Tahir Lashin, Mahmud Timur, and members of the "modernist school,"—Tawfiq al-Hakim, Taha Husayn, Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, and Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, just to mention a few. The new writers increasingly used Western techniques in their character development, rendering them more lifelike. There was also a growing concern with current society in all of its complexity. Manifest in the new kind of fiction was a break with the episodic style of the Arabian Nights. In technique, plot, and analysis, the new fiction had become livelier, more complex, more thought-out, and more sophisticated. The work of these writers is characterized by the growth of realism. There is a major emphasis on society as a whole, rather than on individual characters. This new trend, first dexterously used by Mahmud Tahir Lashin, reached its highest degree of sophistication in the works of Naguib Mahfouz. In Mahfouz's works the environment occupies a distinctive individual identity and is treated as a living entity. The society becomes the dominant factor in the characters' behavior. Thus, characters' lives begin, develop, and move toward a climax in coherent sequence, reflecting the actions and thoughts of real people. *

*

*

This edition never would have been possible without the assistance of many friends and colleagues. I thank Professor George Welch, Jr., who more than anyone else contributed time and effort to correcting this manuscript. The invaluable help rendered to me by the late Dr. Frank Angotti is highly appreciated. I am grateful to Ragai Makar, head librarian of the Middle East Section at the University of Utah; Fawzi Tadros of the Near East Section, the Library of Congress; Dr. Raymond E. Dengel, head reference librarian, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania; and John Pennsy of Gannon University for their indefatigable effort in obtaining many sources

xiv

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on Arabic fiction. I profited greatly from the expertise of Ralph Boyles, academic computing specialist at Edinboro University. I have also benefited from the editing expertise of Dr. Lance Strasser and Mary Ann Rosenfeld. Abd al-Ahad Hannawi, of the Library of Brown University, was helpful in preparing the manuscript copy of this book. I also thank Madame Nawal De Maussion De Favieres of Paris, France, for explaining many French terms. My sister, the late Najiba Moosa, and my brothers, Hazim and Akram Moosa, were most helpful in obtaining many Arabic sources. My daughter Petra Moosa Beck is to be commended for her help with word-processing files; she was also helpful in offering editorial observations. I wish to invoke the memory of my friend and colleague, the late Professor Jack Tohtz of Edinboro University, who corrected the first edition of this book. I must also record my obligation to my brother-in-law Claus Jensen of Copenhagen for his time and effort in checking many sources relating to the subject in European libraries. To my wife I owe a great debt for her patience and endurance during the writing of this book. Without her understanding I would never have been able to complete it.

1 Historical Beginnings: Egypt

The story telling habit is as old as civilization itself, and ancient Arabic literature is no exception. The Arabs of the pre-Islamic era traditionally related tales portraying their tribal life. These tales embodied many aspects of their social behavior, such as generosity, self-praise, courage, group feeling, erotic love, and revenge. Most of these survived into the Islamic era, being retold, particularly to Arab soldiers during the early period of Islamic conquests, to arouse their fighting spirit. Although the exact date of the codification of these tales is not certain, al-Jamhara (a collection of tales), ascribed to Umar ibn Shabba al-Numayri of al-Basrah (789-875), was probably the first anthology which contained some stories of the Arabs and their wars with the neighboring nations before the advent of Islam. 1 Such can hardly be considered the ancestors of modern Arabic fiction. They are completely different not only from each other but also from recent fiction, particularly the short story, in their scope, in their relation to the environment, and in their form. Tales like those collected in the Thousand and One Nights for the most part tell of wonderful adventures in which the ingenuity or good luck of the hero determines the outcome. The action tends to be the fabulous, with no connection to life as it is lived. The settings are usually the romantically far away, and the characters generalized types rather than individual personalities. Moreover, the form of the native tale is markedly rhetorical (as one would expect in an originally oral tradition), and the narrative tends to be episodic rather than organic. It would be equally presumptuous to attempt to establish a relationship between modern Arabic fiction, particularly the novel and short story, and the medieval literary technique known as the maqama. Maqama (literally an assembly or seance) is in essence a romance whose events concern a shrewd, learned, and rhetorical rogue hero who moves from place to place seeking adventure and personal gain. It is retold by a rawi (narrator), who always meets with the hero, relates his adventures, and memorizes his 1

2

Origins

of Modern

Arabic

Fiction

composition. Its style is basically a saj (rhymed prose), which, although rigid and lifeless, is highly rhetorical. The theme in the maqama is secondary and always sacrificed for the florid style. 2 This genre was perfected by the famous belletrist, Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani (d. 1007), followed by Abu al-Qasim al-Hariri (d. 1122), who imitated al-Hamadhani and built on his tradition. The revival of the maqama in the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century by Ahmad al-Barbir (d. 1811), Abu al-Thana al-Alusi (d. 1854), Nasif al-Yaziji (d. 1871), Salih Majdi (d. 1880), (Ahmad) Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq (d. 1887), Abd Allah Fikri (d. 1889), Ibrahim al-Ahdab (d. 1891), Abd Allah Nadim (d. 1896), Ibrahim alMuwaylihi (d. 1906), his son Muhammad Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi (d. 1930), Hafiz Ibrahim (d. 1932), and Muhammad Lutfi Jumu'a (d. 1953), was a continuation of an old tradition rather than the introduction of reworked or reshaped traditional modes. Although they lacked the essential characteristics of the modern novel, particularly development and plot, the "modern" maqamas of Muhammad Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi may be considered the closest approach of the native tradition to the Europeanized long narrative; for their representation of life in Egypt in the last century is realistic, and their characters are finely delineated, as was never the case with old maqamas.3 The then existing social and literary conditions prevented much further development of the novel in Egypt. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Arabic literature, like Arab culture as a whole, had reached a point of exhaustion. Several centuries of despotic rule by the last dynasty of Mamluks had destroyed any possibility of cultural vigor. Ignorant, ruthless, and perpetually engaged in their struggle for power, the Mamluks had no interest in the educational and social well-being of the Egyptians. Illiteracy became widespread, and learning found refuge only in the famous al-Azhar Mosque (now a university)—the sole surviving institution of learning from the Fatimid era. Although al-Azhar helped preserve an interest in the Arabic language, its methods of teaching were archaic, and subjects of study were restricted to grammar, philology, and the religious sciences of Islam. The study of Arabic language was not meant to develop or encourage creative writing or generate new themes and styles; it was seen as a means to understand and interpret the Quran and the Shari'a (Islamic law). The hostility of most of al-Azhar's Ulama toward the study of the humanities and liberal arts prevented the possibility of scientific and literary progress. 4 The inadequacy of literary expression is manifest in the works of Egyptian writers such as Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (d. 1822). AlJabarti's style is poor, colorless, and interspersed with Turkish phrases. 5 Meanwhile, the ignorant and illiterate masses continued to find ancient medieval Arabic folklore a source of entertainment. This material was often religious in origin (e.g., the stories of al-Sayyid al-Badawi,

Historical Beginnings:

Egypt

3

Fatima the Daughter of Bari, Sayyidi Ibrahim al-Dasuqi and The story of Our Lord Ali and the Head of the Ghoul), or it treated the lives of heroes of antiquity (e.g., Abu Zayd al-Hilali, Antara Ibn Shaddad, al-Zahir Baybars, al-Zir Salim, and Sayf Ibn dhi Yazan). The tales, usually recited, were modified, and Egyptianized to some extent, to suit the taste of the illiterate audience. Despite its popularity, or perhaps because of it, folklore won neither approval nor encouragement from the so-called educated classes. They shunned it as trash, while the religious-minded Azharites thought it was beneath their consideration. Not until very recently have contemporary Egyptian writers removed the traditional curse from folklore by studying it seriously. Therefore, by the beginning of the nineteenth century Arabic literature in Egypt, reflecting the cultural decline in the country, was at its lowest ebb. Some contemporary Egyptian writers consider the French occupation of Egypt (1798-1801) the beginning of a new era in the cultural life of that country. They see it as the most significant link between Egyptian thought and Western civilization since the Crusades. 6 This new contact awakened the Egyptians to their deplorable backwardness and aroused their national feeling. This became instrumental in the final disintegration of the Ottoman rule in Egypt. Also, it provoked the Egyptians' curiosity about Western ideas and European civilization. Following the French evacuation, Egypt began to look more toward Europe in pursuit of modern ideas. 7 The immediate cultural impact of the French expedition in Egypt was insignificant. The French remained for only three years, hardly long enough to stabilize their position, let alone to soften the hostility of the Egyptians toward the "infidel" invaders. A historian of this period, Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, bitterly criticizes the behavior of the French, especially of their women, in Egypt. He describes the "immoral" French as infecting the Egyptians with their corruption. Utterly shocked by the French "misbehavior," this conservative Muslim was not slow, however, to observe the good qualities of the French. He greatly admired the French sense of justice, which appeared outstanding when compared with the cruelty of the Turkish rulers. The manner in which the French conducted the trial of Sulayman al-Halabi, the murderer of General Jean Baptiste Kléber, impressed al-Jabarti tremendously. Also, he admired the slogan of the French Revolution, "liberty, equality and fraternity." 8 Other Egyptians from al-Azhar, such as Shaykh Hasan al-Attar (d. 1835), the teacher of Rifaa Rafi alTahtawi, to be discussed shortly, also appreciated French knowledge and learning. Egyptian writers were still following conventional modes and drawing from traditional sources. An example is the collection of popular tales written by al-Shaykh Muhammad al-Mahdi (d.1851), a rector of al-Azhar.9 These attracted the attention of Jean Joseph Marcel (d. 1854), a member of the French expedition. From 1833 to 1835 Marcel published in three volumes

4

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

his French translation of Muhammad al-Mahdi's Tuhfat al-Mustayqiz alAuis fi Nuzhat al-Mustanim wa al-Na'is, under the title Contes Du Cheykh El-Mohdi. In the introduction to this translation, Marcel refers to the close friendship between himself and al-Shaykh al-Mahdi and the manner in which he came to know about the manuscript. One day he asked al-Mahdi about a copy of the Thousand and One Nights. On the next day, al-Mahdi took a manuscript containing tales similar to those of the Thousand and One Nights to Marcel and presented it to him as a gift. Marcel remarks that the manuscript was in the handwriting of al-Shaykh al-Mahdi and adds, "I believe that he is the author, although he did not admit this." 10 Although the Arabic versions of these tales have never been published and are thought to have been lost, the tenor of the original text is clear enough. The French translator divided these tales into two parts. In the introduction the author relates his meeting, on his pilgrimage to Mecca, with a certain adventurer, Abd al-Rahman, who amused the people by his tales. Abd al-Rahman begins to tell the author stories similar to those of the Thousand and One Nights. Of these we may cite the Abbasid Caliph and the Barmecides, The King and Highwaymen, etc. He also relates other tales, such as the Ten Voyages of a certain Murad and the tale of the king who blasphemed and was expelled, but then repented and was restored to his throne. Abd al-Rahman even tells tales told by animals, such as the tale of the Two Foxes and the Gardener, which undoubtedly bears the stamp of the tales of Kalila wa Dimna, a collection of fables translated from the Pahlevi (Middle Persian), by Ibn al-Muqaffa (d.757). Throughout these tales, the narrator relates the adversities that befall him during his adventures and led him finally to an asylum. 11 In the second part, set in the asylum, he not only relates tales to the inmates, but also recounts the tales told by them. He begins by naming his acquaintances among the inmates, Rafif al-Awar (the one-eyed), a certain Abd al-Qadir, and Ibn Bakr al-Astrakhani, nicknamed al-Gellaby, and each in turn reveals the circumstances which had brought him to the asylum. Rafif begins with the story of his escape from Alexandretta, where he made his living by using magic until the governor of that city discovered he was a charlatan. From Alexandretta he had gone to Lebanon, and thence to the land of Gog and Magog. Finally he reached Akka (Acre), then governed by Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, who had Rafif's arm cut off. Rafif returned to Egypt and attempted to join the body of learned men there, but was accused of being mad and thrown into the asylum. Another character, Abd al-Qadir, tells of his relation with the young woman next door. When the neighbors discovered their affair, Abd alQadir was punished for his scandalous behavior and thrown into the Nile. He managed to save himself and returned to his loved one. Then he relates how he joined a band of robbers who captured the daughter of a Persian shah; because of his sense of chivalry he tried to effect the escape of the

Historical Beginnings:

Egypt

5

princess, but was stopped and then thrown by the robbers into a well. Finally he managed to escape and reached a faraway country where he became a king. The people of that country learned of his adventures. They captured him and returned him to the asylum. 12 Despite their narrow scope, rigid style, and unrealistic characters, these tales satisfied the literary curiosity of an eager but illiterate audience. No literary revival like the one indirectly caused by the activities of the American and Jesuit schools in Syria in the nineteenth century took place until the time of Muhammad Ali (reigned 1804-1849), who rose to power after the French had left. The schools he established and the educational missions he sent to Europe in the first quarter of the nineteenth century were the main channels through which Western ideas and culture began to trickle into Egypt. 13 Particularly instrumental in the spread of Western ideas was Madrasat al-Alsun (The School of Languages), established by Muhammad Ali in 1835 under the leadership and supervision of a pioneer Egyptian intellectual Rifaa Rafi al-Tahtawi (d. 1873).14 With his students, he translated many books into Turkish and Arabic. Since most of these were military and scientific treatises, designed to serve Muhammad Ali's purpose in creating a modern, strong Egypt, they had no immediate effect on Arabic literature. When Muhammad Ali sent the first large educational mission to France in 1826, al-Tahtawi was nominated by the Shaykh Hasan al-Attar to accompany it as religious adviser. His stay of a few years in Paris afforded him the opportunity to learn French and to study French social life. His book Takhlis al-Ibriz fi Takhlis Paris (Extraction of Gold in Summarizing Life in Paris, 1834), gives a full description of his trip to and in France. The discussions of French customs and ways of life omit nothing that aroused his curiosity. The progress of the French in the arts and sciences particularly astonished him. Their prosperity, education, and cleanliness, as compared to the Egyptians, impressed him even more. He also found time to become acquainted with several distinguished French Orientalists, including Caussin de Percival, Pierre Amedee Jaubert, and Sylvestre de Sacy. Some of them made use of al-Tahtawi's knowledge of Arabic in their translations. On the other hand, al-Tahtawi learned from them and could read books on ancient civilizations, Greek philosophy, and various sciences. He became interested in the earlier French thought and read Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Racine. Al-Tahtawi seems to have been influenced considerably by French liberal democracy and by French revolutionary ideas. During the revolution of 1830 against Charles X, he sympathized with the revolutionaries rather than with government. He summarized the ideas of the French revolutionaries, defended them, and explained them to his countrymen. 15 Al-Tahtawi was a unique figure in the history of Arabic thought in the nineteenth century. He was the first Egyptian intellectual who thoroughly understood Western ideals which he transmitted to his conservative society without prejudice.16 His writings and progressive ideas helped in constructing

6

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

a new social and cultural foundation of his country. He called for a réévaluation of those archaic traditions that had impeded the progress of Egyptian civilization. Despite his traditional Azharite schooling and rigid religious upbringing, al-Tahtawi revealed an open mind which accepted and appreciated European ideas and civilization. 17 His fellow-religionists, however, considered such foreign notions morally harmful and hostile to their way of life. Al-Tahtawi's importance for modern Arabic literature does not lie in his Takhlis al-Ibriz, or the other seventeen books he either wrote or translated. His major contribution was the translation into Arabic of Les Aventures de Télémaque, by François Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai (d. 1715). Al-Tahtawi gave his translation the title of Mawaqi al-Aflakfi Waqai Tilimak (The Positions of the Celestial Spheres in Relation to the Adventures of Télémaque). 18 Although some of Les Aventures had been translated (but not published) in 1815 by a Syrian merchant and diplomat Basili Fakhr or by one of the translators whom he employed, it lacked the social implication which had motivated al-Tahtawi to translate the entire Les Aventures de Télémaque into Arabie. Al-Tahtawi's purpose in translating Les Aventures de Télémaque. was not primarily literary. He chose this piece because of his circumstances at the time. In 1849 he was appointed as a principal of an elementary school in the Sudan. Although the pretext was that his services were badly needed there, in reality he was being exiled to that country by the Viceroy Abbas I. A slanderer had intrigued against al-Tahtawi and reported to the Viceroy some of al-Tahtawi's revolutionary ideas in Takhlis al-Ibriz. Wronged and humiliated by his exile, al-Tahtawi, who could not openly criticize an unjust ruler, resorted to fiction to express his indignation and to attack despotism indirectly. 19 In Télémaque he found an allegory which perfectly fitted his case and the injustice done to him. 20 It is not surprising, of course, that the translation appeared for the first time in 1867 in Beirut, and not in Egypt, where he did not dare publish it. Nevertheless, the translation has literary merits. Both the Arabic title and the text itself show the extent to which a conservative Muslim could adapt Western literature to the spirit and conditions of his time. Gracing his work with traditional elegant rhymed prose and embellishing it with popular Islamic proverbs, al-Tahtawi followed the original text in its general outlines. He apparently meant to dress his work in an Egyptian garb with Egyptianized figures. Al-Tahtawi was also responsible for the translation of the libretto of Offenbach's La belle Helène as Hilana al-Jamila, published by Bulaq, Cairo in 1869. This effort showed at least an initial departure from traditional and static literary models and opened a gate, however narrow, to future possibilities for the modernization of imaginative literature.

Historical Beginnings:

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7

This tentative beginning gained impetus with the Europeanization policy of the Khedive Ismail, in whose reign (1863-1879) many native and European schools were opened. Also, under his guidance the whole system of education underwent many changes which affected the development of literature. 21 Although the Europeanization of Egypt was eventually built upon the foundation laid by Muhammad Ali, most if not all students in the schools he established were drawn from the feudal Mamluk families which formed the social and political elite. The Egyptian natives were not yet interested in having their children educated and therefore refused to send them to schools unless forced by the government. Furthermore, Muhammad Ali was evidently less interested in education per se than in the aggrandizement of his political ambition to create an empire. The schools he established were meant to serve his army and support his military schemes, and to provide qualified personnel for the civil service. In his eagerness to provide his country with professional specialists, Muhammad Ali gave little attention to the critical problem of establishing a program of general education for all his people. 22 Higher education faced many operational problems. In the first place, qualified staff members were not available in adequate numbers. Teachers were either recruited from Europe, with all the financial problems such recruitment entailed, or drawn from the few members of Napoleon's army who had chosen to stay in Egypt. Moreover, the lack of textbooks in Arabic made interpreters necessary. Lectures delivered in French were usually translated simultaneously and dictated to the students. Because of such difficulties, the Department of Education decided to send the graduates of these schools to Europe, mainly to France, to further their studies. To prepare them for advanced studies, the government established an Egyptian school in Paris to train them in the French language. The future Khedive of Egypt, Ismail, was a student at this school. An Armenian, Istefan (Stephen) Bey, a student in the first Egyptian educational mission to France in 1826, was appointed its principal. He was assisted by another Armenian, Khalil Effendi Charakian, though most of the staff of this school were French army officers, appointed by the French Ministry of War.23 The premature death in 1848 of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali, who had new plans for the advancement of these schools, and the French revolution in that same year impeded the progress of this school and ultimately forced its closing. During the reign of both viceroys Abbas I (1848-1854) and Said (1854-1863), the fate of the Egyptian schools established by Muhammad Ali was sealed. 24 By 1848, the number of graduates who were qualified for the civil service had already exceeded the need of the government for employees. The period of peace which followed the troubled era of Muhammad Ali lessened the demand for army officers, military technicians, and other qualified personnel who came from the

8

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

same schools. A conservative reaction against influences from the West had set in. Under Abbas I (noted for his anti-Western feelings) all schools of higher education except the Military Academy were closed down. When Ismail ascended the throne in 1863, Egypt had only one elementary school, one secondary school, one military academy, a medical school, a midwifery school, and a school of chemistry. Ismail set out to revive the schools his grandfather, Muhammad Ali, had established and resumed educational missions to Europe. Furthermore, new administrative measures were taken. A ministry of education was established for the operation of the schools, which now became known as al-Madaris alAmiriyya (State Schools). They were classified into three types: elementary, secondary, and higher education. When the procedure for popular education was complete, a broad foundation supporting more intense and specialized studies had totally revised the educational system established in the time of Muhammad Ali. 2 5 Ismail also established new schools of law and the liberal arts. One of these, Madrasat al-Idarah (The School of Administration), later became the Law School, to which was added the old School of Languages. This new institution produced qualified government personnel and prepared the future political leaders of Egypt. Al-Tahtawi's liberal ideas contributed to this educational revival. Influenced by French ideals, he felt that education in Egypt would be incomplete if Egyptian women were deprived of it. The opening of two secondary schools for young women was a brave step toward the emancipation of Egyptian women. Unfortunately, this commendable effort was destined to failure because the ultraconservative element in Egyptian society was not prepared to accept or tolerate such a daring change. Another proponent of education in Egypt, A l i Mubarak Pasha (d. 1893), also studied in France, where he specialized in engineering. 26 His responsibilities during the short period he was Minister of Education brought him into more direct contact with specific problems. Therefore, he was more pragmatic in his approach than al-Tahtawi. The crucial problem Mubarak faced was the lack of qualified teachers, mainly of Arabic, in the state schools. Al-Azhar was the only institution he could use to meet this urgent need. Its archaic and traditional methods of teaching, however, posed another problem. Mubarak decided to reform the practices of al-Azhar by introducing modern Western techniques and better qualified teachers. This idea met with bitter opposition from al-Azhar's Ulama, however, and failed to be realized. Not discouraged by this failure, Mubarak struck upon the brilliant idea of establishing in 1872 an all-male school, Dar al-Ulum, to provide the future teachers for the new schools. This was to be wider in scope than alAzhar, adding natural sciences, social sciences, and mathematics to the traditional religious and philological subjects. It was a courageous attempt

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to graft a progressive and dynamic Westernized system onto a static educational scheme. To support his new schools, Mubarak established the Khedivial Library, which housed new and old books gathered from various collections around the country. Along with these empirical, educational methods, Mubarak turned to fiction to convey the importance of education to his compatriots. He also sought indirectly to reprimand the Ulama of al-Azhar for their rigid ideas by writing the romance Alam al-Din.21 The title character is a young man whose father, a villager, sends him to al-Azhar. Upon completing his studies, he teaches there, and soon marries the sister of a friend. One day he meets an English traveler who admires the Arabic language and wishes to perfect himself in it in order to publish Arabic manuscripts. The Englishman, perhaps thinking that the Azharite shaykh is the companion he needs, proposes to take him to Europe. Alam al-Din's pupils dislike this proposal and criticize their master for accepting a journey in the company of a nonMuslim foreigner. He silences them by invoking a Quranic verse which enjoins the Muslim believers to extend help to an infidel who appeals to them for help, so he may hearken to the word of God. His wife encourages him to take the trip, and finally he leaves, taking with him his son, Burhan al-Din. The narrative presents Alam al-Din's description of the countries and the things he saw in Europe and his impressions of a civilization completely foreign to him. This romance reflects Mubarak's desire for Westernization and dramatizes his attempt to show that a traditional Muslim society could find common ground with a progressive, more flexible one. Although the author says that both the Azharite shaykh and the English traveler are fictitious, evidently these two characters represent two different cultures. Alam al-Din is an Azharite shaykh, yet unlike his real-life counterpart, he is enlightened and wants to learn more about the world, even in the company of a European and a Christian. Nevertheless, he refuses to accept wholesale everything he has seen and learned in Europe. As a discerning individual, he tends to accept what he thinks suitable to his Oriental taste and customs. While appreciating the civilization of Europe, he does not attempt to sever his relations with his Muslim tradition. He comes to the conclusion that there is still a great deal of merit in the traditions of his own society. In structure, Alam al-Din is related to the Arabic fiction of antiquity. It lacks the characterization and plot of a typical work of fiction. 28 The novelty is the introduction of a European character to make possible the comparison between East and West. Like the Azharite Alam al-Din, the English traveler is treated as a pawn in a chess game, ready to move only when and where the author wants him to. His role is to explain aspects of European civilization to his Egyptian counterpart. 29 He is more than a guide on a tourist trip; he is an educated man with wide knowledge of the East and West. For instance, when the two travelers board a train, the Englishman

10

Origins of Modem Arabic Fiction

asks Alam al-Din what he thinks of it. Alam al-Din answers that it reminds him of the Day of Resurrection, and that the common people in Egypt think that it is moved by the devil. And here the author fills pages and pages telling the readers (through the Englishman) about the invention of the steam engine, the locomotive, the railways and their spread throughout the world, the division of the passenger trains into three classes of seats, the number of world passengers, and their distribution over these three classes. It seems remarkable, however, that this English traveler draws all his information from French sources. This could only be explained by the fact that Mubarak himself had studied in France and served for a time as an engineer in the Egyptian railways. Moreover, the probability that the author had read Rousseau's t,mile and other similar works during his stay in France helps to account for the particular form which his own work assumed. 30 Furthermore, the author seems to mingle fantasy with fact, particularly in recounting Alam al-Din's search for a wife. Instead of using this theme to project the human aspect of his character, the author discusses the virtue of marriage, the qualifications of the bride, and the question whether a man should choose a rich or poor wife, a virgin or a widow. He concludes that a poor but virgin bride would be the best wife. Evidently, the author poses as an Islamic jurist who wants to provide the readers with sound advice concerning marriage, and the narrative is secondary to his interest. 31 Thus, the literary efforts of Ali Mubarak were strongly meant to inject Western characters and subject matter into the static discourses of Egyptian literature. Like works of medieval Islamic periods, Alam al-Din did not break away from Arabic literary tradition. Principally didactic, it did not serve as a foundation of later efforts. It did, however, prepare the ground for more appreciation and use of these models in the future. Although the educational revival under Ismail was a genuine effort to set Egypt on the road to Westernization, it only touched the surface of Egyptian society. Education, which had been the monopoly of the children of the Turkish and Circassian elite, was provided to most native Egyptians. Yet the new schools produced for the most part only a large group of semiliterates whose number continued to increase under the British occupation in 1882. When education was modified to provide the occupation authorities with suitable government employees, many schools, including the School of Languages, were closed down. The educational missions to Europe were stopped, and emphasis was placed on elementary and secondary training rather than on higher education. Furthermore, while the number of hours for the teaching of English increased, the time devoted to the teaching of Arabic, the native tongue, decreased. To remedy the decline of Arabic studies and native education in the state-controlled schools some Egyptians established private schools. These, however, eventually closed down because of insoluble financial,

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administrative, and academic problems. Not until 1906 was the effort made to found a university designed to shoulder the responsibility of revitalizing education and setting it on the right path. The Egyptian University was officially opened on December 21, 1908.32 The educational revival under Ismail did have one very important consequence for modern Arabic literature: the theater was introduced into Egypt. In 1868, Ismail established Masrah al-Komedi (Théâtre de la Comédie) and in 1869 Dar al-Opera (Théâtre Khédivial de l'Opéra). These were probably intended less to meet a public demand than to show the Khedive's policy of Westernizing Egypt. Since native literature could not provide the theater and the opera with sufficient subject matter, the borrowing of themes from European or ancient Egyptian sources became imperative. The most prominent works acted during this period were Verdi's Rigoletto and Aida, whose plot was derived by the French archaeologist Mariette Pasha (1821-1882) from papyri sources. While the establishment of the theater did not create an indigenous drama, it did afford writers (except Yaqub Sanu, to be discussed later), the opportunity to adapt or Egyptianize many Western plays. They could also experiment with dramas whose themes were drawn from Arab history. As the official use of Arabic dwindled, those who could read French and English found entertainment in the fiction written in these languages. It was also necessary to satisfy the demand for literature by the semi-literate public, which had been superficially touched by Western ideas. For readers who could neither develop a full taste for Western literature nor any longer find enjoyment in the Arabic and Islamic tales of antiquity, French and English texts were translated or, better still, adapted. This activity, which had its roots in al-Tahtawi's translation of Télémaque, came to fruition under Ismail. At the forefront of this effort was Muhammad Uthman Jalal (1829— 189 8). 33 Once a pupil of al-Tahtawi in the School of Languages, Jalal began his career as a member of the Translation Bureau established in 1841. From the beginning he was interested in French literature, mainly drama, and translated many plays into colloquial Egyptian Arabic verse based on the zajal, a popular Arabic meter in strophic form. His voluminous translations included several comedies by Molière—Le Tartuffe, Les Femmes savantes, L'École des maris, L'École des femmes, and Les Fâcheux— Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, La Fontaine's fables, and several of Racine's tragedies. He also wrote a play entitled al-Khaddamin wa alMukhaddimin (Domestic Servants and Employers) in the zajal meter.34 Jalal's adaptations were not intended as literal translations; his purpose was more didactic than literary. He also attempted to provide the pupils of the Egyptian schools with books written in understandable and appealing Arabic, while promoting an interest in Western ideas. To enhance the appeal of French literature, Jalal not only used colloquial Arabic but went as far as to Egyptianize the names, scenes, and, to some extent,

12

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

even the themes to suit his local audience. He gave Paul et Virginie the charming but peculiar title al-Amani wa al-Minna fi Hadith Qabul wa Ward Janna (Expectation and Graciousness in Relating the Narrative of Qabul and Ward Janna). Les Fables by La Fontaine became al-Uyun alYawaqiz fi al-Amthal wa al-Hikam wa al-Mawa'iz (Wakeful Eyes Concerning Proverbs, Wisdom, and Exhortations), and Tartuffe became alShaykh Matluf (Ruined). Jalal gave three of Racine's tragedies—Esther, Iphigenie, and Alexandre le Grand—the general title al-Riwayat al-Mufida fi Ilm al-Tragida (Useful Romances Concerning the Science of Tragedy), His adaptations of four of Moliere's comedies were published in 1889 under the title al-Arba Riwayat min Nukhab al-Tiyatrat (Four Romances Selected for the Theater). The characters were clearly Egyptianized. For example, Tartuffe became an Egyptian Shaykh Matluf; Madame Pernelle, al-Sit Umm al-Nil; Orgon, Ghalbun; and so on. Even the bailiff, Loyal, did not escape Jalal's wit; he became the madhun (a person authorized by Islamic law to perform marriages) Abd al-Al. In Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's romance Paul et Virginie, Paul became Qabul (Acceptance) and Virginie now was Ward Janna (Roses of Paradise). Such free adaptations are typical of Jalal's translations from the French. To show the extent to which Jalal adapted the French text to suit the taste of his Egyptian audience, the following adaptation of Le Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene 1, composed in colloquial Egyptian Arabic verse, is but an example: Matluf: T h o s e w h o h a v e k n o w n or heard of m e w i l l never b e l i e v e that I h a v e c o v e t o u s n e s s of inheritance. Whether little or plenty, there w a s no day w h e n m o n e y d e l i g h t e d m e or attracted m e , and if I a c c e p t e d a g i f t f r o m his father, it w a s b e c a u s e of w i s d o m u n k n o w n to y o u . I am afraid that this m o n e y w i l l fall into the hands o f u n s c r u p u l o u s m e n w h o w i l l spend it o n debauchery or fall into w i c k e d hands. A s to m e , I w i l l o n l y spend this m o n e y in a l a w f u l manner, and instead of drinking w i n e I shall drink pure water. I will also g i v e to the poor, help the righteous and fulfill all the n e e d s o f the M u s l i m s . 3 5

Jalal also meant his adaptations to be a source of entertainment. His introduction to La Fontaine's fables explained that to provide pupils with books containing amusing tales, he chose those that were the most famous in the French language. The Arabic text was intended "to be an example for those who wanted to be educated, since these (fables) contained parables, wisdom, and superb themes." He goes on to say that the reason he used simple language was to make them comply with the customs of al-Umma al-Arabiyya (the Arab nation). 36 Although Jalal used the term al-Umma alArabiyya in a literary connotation, still it would become very significant for the history of Arab nationalism. It was a term then seldom used by any nineteenth-century Egyptian writer. Jalal's literary effort reflected a conservatism which retained its roots in the traditional past yet welcomed and utilized foreign literary models.

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This tendency was shown by the parables and popular sayings of everyday life which embellished his adapted works. Jalal evidently shared alTahtawi's belief that literature is not an art which exists for its own sake, but one that fulfills the dual functions of instruction and entertainment. 37 In presenting French literary models in simple expressive language, he used them as vehicles to convey traditional notions of Egyptian society, with only a slight touch of the original French ideas. What Jalal did not consider was the fact that his literary models were designed to suit a specific audience in seventeenth-century France. The texts he adapted not only reflected aspects of French society then, but also revealed the domestic troubles, frustrations, and passions of the authors. This quality is especially notable in Molière. When Jalal's version of Molière's L'École des femmes (Madrasat al-Nisa) was performed twice in February and March, 1895, on the stage of Sulayman al-Qirdahi in Alexandria, it met widespread popular objection for its treatment of problems thought to be irrelevant to Egyptian society at that time. 38 Thus, Jalal did not always discriminate clearly between the universally human and the particular characteristics of a foreign culture, interpreted by authors whose psychology was foreign to their audiences. His adaptation of La Fontaine's fables was unresponsive to the linguistic subtlety of a text intended for sophisticated French readers and stressed their simple, if not naive, didacticism. Egyptian illustrations, were often introduced into these ingenious moral parables, on the assumption that moral "saws" would appeal to readers whose entire literary orientation was didactic. Nevertheless, Jalal's efforts were a decidedly important contribution to Egyptian literature; through his efforts, the Western stream continued to flow into Arabic waters, revitalizing a literary tradition that had been dying of stagnation. It is evident, accordingly, that Arabic literature was profoundly influenced by the educational revival and the Westernization policy of the Khedive Ismail. These activities had mainly been devoted to fields other than literature, such as the study of the Arabic language and law. Of the great number of Arabic books printed in this period, most dealt with grammar, philology, rhetoric, Islamic Shari'a and jurisprudence, and Arab history. This revival reflects an effort of Egyptian society to preserve its various secular—and religious—traditions against too overt Western influence. Nevertheless, many works in different Western disciplines, mainly French law, European history, and studies of Egypt and the Arab East, were also published. The public press contributed little to this revival of learning. During the first few years of Ismail's reign, it was mainly a mouthpiece for the government and the Khedive, and a sounding board for his ideas. The only publication to escape the Khedive's grip was Rawdat al-Madaris (Schools Orchard), a school journal supervised by al-Tahtawi. This periodical, concerned with educating and guiding students, "incidentally" encouraged

14

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

them to publish some of their literary efforts in it. Even when signs of rebellion in the general society began to appear toward the end of Ismail's reign, the intelligentsia remained more concerned with political liberation than with any literary renaissance. Therefore, literary progress continued to lag behind the changes in politics. 39 Although the didactic aspect of literature had been of great interest to the educated element during the first years of Ismail's reign, by the end of his reign the intelligentsia were openly demanding various kinds of reform. This change in attitude may be attributed to several factors, including the awakening of the social conscience among the people and their increasing dissatisfaction both with foreign intervention in the affairs of Egypt and with their own government. The last was most manifest in the army, where native officers resented the government's discriminatory policy favoring the Turkish and Circassian minority. The most significant factors in the changing climate of opinion were the intellectual revolution caused by the teachings of revolutionist and radical reformer Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897),40 and the different intellectual activities of the Syrians who immigrated to Egypt for several reasons as shall be seen later. These two influences affected in one way or another the intellectual and literary trends in Egypt, including the development of the writing of fiction. Al-Afghani first came to Egypt in 1869, on his way to the Ottoman capital, but remained only forty days. Later he returned and stayed in Egypt from 1871 to 1879, when he was banished by Ismail. The reason was his sharp criticism of Ismail's despotic rule and Europeanization policy. Although he left few writings, al-Afghani's liberal ideas profoundly stirred the conscience of the Muslims. He tried to revolutionize the Islamic world by constantly reminding Muslims that they were intelligent and able to manage their own affairs and to live as a respected civilized nation. AlAfghani believed that the Muslims had lost their pride in their heritage and culture, and that they should do something to revitalize it. He may have viewed himself as a kind of "Messiah" ordained to redeem the Islamic world from the oppression of the "infidel" Western conquerors.41 A t his quarters near al-Azhar, al-Afghani lectured on a variety of subjects with great enthusiasm and eloquence. The subject he loved to discuss continuously was the art of writing and speaking Arabic. Before fighting for their rights, he argued, the Muslims should master the secrets of the language of the Quran, and he was always surrounded by men of letters, poets, grammarians, and journalists—as well as people from other walks of life. To his disciples and to the majority of the people of his time, alAfghani spoke not simply as a reformer and philosopher, but as the "Sage of the East." N o words can express his impact on the intellectual life of Egypt so truthfully and precisely as those of the famous Egyptian poet Hafiz Ibrahim:

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The influence of Jamal al-Din was reflected in noble souls, and his words were quickly picked up by attentive ears. The result was that the death sentence was pronounced on taqlid (blind imitation of tradition), and that God, through him, resurrected the language and resuscitated the remains of composition. He, may God have mercy on him, left Egypt without leaving us a book or writings from which we could learn. He left us, however, heads to think with and to generate ideas. As if he thought of this when he was on his deathbed, he was heard saying, while breathing his last, 'we have left the world without leaving a written trace, but we have left traces engraved on breasts.' He left the world, as did Socrates, without leaving a volume of his writing. And if it were not for Muhammad Abduh, the man of the Afghan would not have been known; likewise, if it were not for Plato, the chief of the Greek philosophers would not have been remembered. 42

Al-Afghani's many disciples believed, as he did, in the idea of Islamic unity. Though fully aware of European intervention in the affairs of Egypt and in the rest of the Islamic world, they were no less convinced that the despotic rule, whether Ottoman or not, was the major factor in their weakness. Thus, the main concern both of the disciples and of their master was to arouse the conscience of the Islamic peoples and to purify Islam from superstition. They encouraged the Muslims to liberate themselves from unjust government and to throw off the European yoke. Also, they sought to rally the Islamic countries around the caliphate as a step towards final unity. 43 While in Egypt, al-Afghani incited young Egyptian patriots against the government of the Prime Minister, Riyad Pasha. He also helped establish al-Hizb al-Watani (The National Party), the first organized national political group of that time. 44 In recent years al-Afghani has come under vitriolic attack by some Muslim writers. They challenged his political and religious motives and his role in reforming Islam. 45 He has been accused of being a Mason, which is blasphemous to Islam, and a British agent and spy. 46 However, such accusations should not be allowed to denigrate the traditional view that al-Afghani was a great Muslim reformer. Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), was probably al-Afghani's most devout follower. Apprehensive about coercive and revolutionary methods of achieving political aims, Abduh believed in a gradual but constructive reform rather than in forced but short-lived changes. Therefore, he preferred to criticize the unjust rule of Riyad Pasha rather than collaborate with the revolutionary element in the army led by Ahmad Urabi (1839—1911). Abduh also believed, with some justification, that the Egyptians were not ready for a revolution. He was particularly astonished at the radical enthusiasm of the middle and poor classes. A revolution did erupt in 1881-1882 but was soon suppressed, and Egypt was occupied by British forces and came under British rule.

16

Origins of Modern Arabic

Fiction

Although Muhammad Abduh's various activities were mainly devoted to the revitalization of the Arabic language, the purification of Islam from superstition, and the reformation of al-Azhar, he also advocated the writing of the novel and encouraged novelists. It is reported that, under the inspiration and direction of Muhammad Abduh, Said al-Bustani (d. 1901) wrote his story Dhat al-Khidr (The Veiled One, 1884). Abduh, who regarded the novel as a useful instrument of social reform, wrote an article in al-Ahram (May 11, 1881) which reviewed the most popular books of his time. 47 He found that the reading audience preferred works of history, articles dealing with moral subjects, and novels. The latter he called romaniyat (romances), and he included among them Telemaque and Kalila wa Dimna (a collection of fables translated from the Pahlevi by Ibn alMuqaffa [d.757]). He also called the attention of readers to a number of short stories that had been translated by Salim Naqqash (d. 1884) and by his friend Adib Ishaq (d. 1885) and published in the weekly newspaper Misr (Egypt) which Ishaq founded in 1877.48 However, Abduh considered fiction of secondary importance, and his role in its development never went beyond offering encouragement or complimenting others. After the failure of the Urabi revolution, Abduh abandoned politics and devoted his efforts to reforming Islam and restoring its fundamental characteristics. He also worked to revitalize Arabic writing, which had long been a frozen stereotypical prose pond. While these variant efforts were a major factor in revolutionizing literary language, they caused little or no change in the themes treated or the subject matter. Nor did they help create new original literary genre in Arabic such as the true novels or drama. In form, Arabic literature still plodded along. Another of al-Afghani's disciples, Abd Allah Nadim (1845-1896), attempted to use colloquial language to satirize the backwardness of the masses in his short-lived journal al-Tank.it wa al-Tabkit (Raillery and Reproof). His association with the masses remained strong; he was the only member of the intelligentsia who adhered to the Urabi revolution to the end, becoming the mouthpiece of that revolution. Although he is best known for his fiery nationalistic speeches, he wrote two plays, al-Watan wa Tali al-Tawfiq (The Homeland and Portent of Good Fortune), and alNuman (named after the sixth-century Arab Lakhmid King al-Numan ibn al-Mundhir). They were performed by the students of the school he had personally established. Unfortunately, al-Numan is lost to us and only a portion of al-Watan has survived. When the Urabi revolution failed, Nadim went into hiding for almost a decade. He reappeared and established his periodical al-Ustadh (Master, Teacher) in 1892.49 We shall elaborate on Nadim's literary contribution in Chapter 4. The defeat of the Urabi revolution in 1882, which was a failure of the national movement then, had tremendous repercussions on the Egyptian intelligentsia. Pious but intellectually enlightened, they now surrounded

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Muhammad Abduh and, like him, were determined to serve their country in fields other than politics. Disappointed in the political development of the country, they concentrated their efforts on the revitalization of the ancient Arabic heritage. Their efforts were also restricted to the modernization of style, and in no way did they seek to invent new fictional genres.

The Syrian Belletrists Meanwhile, the Syrian belletrists had flooded Egypt with translations of Western novels of various kinds. These Syrians, mostly Christians, immigrated to Egypt in the nineteenth century for a variety of reasons. One was their natural propensity for commerce, inherited from ancient people of the area, especially the inhabitants of Lebanon called Phoenicians by the Greeks. Some Syrians, mostly Roman Catholics, who had studied in French schools sought employment, especially as translators, with the French occupation force (1798-1801). When the French were evicted from Egypt in 1801, Syrian translators were employed by Muhammad Ali to translate books from Western languages, mostly French, into Arabic. Further, the Lebanese massacre of 1860 drove some Christians to seek peace and safety in Egypt. Meanwhile, the Westernization policies of the Khedive Ismail required the services of qualified employees who knew both Arabic and French, in which affairs of the state were conducted. Some Syrian immigrants who had previously studied in French schools were thus able to augment the limited ranks of qualified Egyptians. When the British occupied Egypt in 1882, they found in the Syrian immigrants, some of whom may have been educated at the Syrian Protestant College (the present American University of Beirut), a supply of potential civil servants. Finally, the Syrians were attracted to Egypt by the relative freedom of speech. Though it had its roots in the time of Ismail, this freedom was greatly encouraged by Lord Cromer. Many Syrians took full advantage of this freedom which had been denied by the Ottoman authorities. They went to Egypt to establish themselves as writers, publishers, journalists, business people and public servants. The success they attained caused jealousy on the part of the Egyptian Muslims and was a source of constant friction between the two groups. 50 Although in the first half of the nineteenth century there had been little literary activity among the Syrians in Egypt, and what little there had been had no significant effect upon the development of Arabic fiction, the situation changed radically in the 1870s. Then, many Christian Syrians left their native land for Constantinople, Europe, and Egypt in pursuit of better economic conditions. Those who immigrated to Egypt became involved in a remarkably wide range of cultural activities, publishing newspapers, performing on the stage, and translating European fiction for Arab readers.

18

Origins of Modern Arabic

Fiction

They brought to these activities a knowledge of several European languages. Moreover, Syria's trade with Europe, the presence of European businesspeople in Syria, the existence of an Arabic press, and the widespread publication of Arabic books all hastened their cultural sophistication. From roughly 1870 to 1925, then, the literary activities of the Egyptians and the Syrian émigrés, particularly in the translation of European prose fiction and drama, were so intertwined that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. Many Syrian writers (and dramatic performers) shuttled between Syria and Egypt during this period, so that that one is uncertain whether to classify them as Syrians or Egyptians. But it is clear in any case that they not only composed original works but also translated or adapted a great many works of Western fiction, including numerous dramas. 51 The émigrés also actively transmitted European literary and scientific thought into Egyptian society. Their effort was aided by their monopoly of major newspapers and periodicals, such as al-Ahram, established by the Taqla brothers, and al-Muqtataf (Select), founded by Yaqub Sarruf. In their enthusiasm, however, these Syrians failed to consider the different cultural conditions and specific needs of Egyptian society. Some of them—for example, Dr. Shibli Shumayyil (d. 1917) and Farah Anton (d. 1922)—went so far as to introduce toward the end of the nineteenth century progressive concepts such as Marxism. The theories of evolution and communism were not only incomprehensible to most of the Egyptians but completely foreign to their society. Indeed, Muhammad Abduh entered into argument with Farah Anton to defend the tenets of Islam. He attempted to show that Anton was wrong in alleging that Christianity was more tolerant and receptive to scientific investigation than Islam. Many native Egyptian belletrists continued, willy-nilly, to revivify the Arab heritage. At best, they paved the way for the Egyptian "renaissance" which began to dawn in the first decade of this century. They regarded the Syrians' translations with great suspicion, dismissing them as a cheap means to make easy profit and complaining about the degradation of the classic Arabic style: the Arabic of most of the translated novels was rough. Furthermore, since most of them dealt with love, intrigue, murder, and adultery, they were considered not merely worthless, but dangerous to public morals, particularly in the undiscerning younger generation. Many conservative writers considered the novel not as a valid literary form but as an alien and illegitimate child of European society. 52 By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, a few Egyptian belletrists, motivated by quick profit, were competing with the Syrians in translating European fiction into Arabic. Others, like Muhammad Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi, used the maqama as a means to criticize the social and cultural foibles of their society. The revival of the form of the maqama may be considered as a counteraction to the translated European novels: it met

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the demand of the Egyptian reading public and to a certain extent competed with the translations. 53 The "new" drama was also a target for some critics. Translated plays, mainly dealing with mysteries and love affairs, were considered alien to Egyptian society. Also, they were thought to be dangerous because they treated subjects completely out of harmony with Oriental and Islamic customs. Two Egyptian authors, Muhammad Abd al-Muttalib and Abd alMu'ti Mar'i, made this point clear in their book Hayat al-Muhalhil aw Harb al-Basus (Life of the Pre-Islamic Poet al-Muhalhil or the Basus War), which dealt with pre-Islamic Arab themes. After describing the factors that prevented the Arabs from developing the drama, and criticizing European writers for building their plays around cheap love affairs, the authors stated: Our oriental upbringing and Islamic morals forbid us to accept such customs. No literary type has entered our country except this repulsive one. You do not even know what themes of amorous affairs of women do to the youngsters and what bad effect they would have upon them. Therefore, our young generation, at the beginning, responded to this literary type as fun and entertainment, while our sensible men did not concern themselves with it but considered it unnecessary at a time when we were in dire need of fundamental works. But a thing may appear to some people as necessary while to others not necessary. This is why the dramatic art found supporters among men in the field of education, who in later years introduced it into the schools. 5 4

They also set forth their own plan to provide students with a series of plays based on themes drawn from ancient Arab history, to stimulate appreciation of past Arab accomplishments. They insisted that they would avoid amorous subjects of women's affairs, so that their works would be more conducive to virtue. lurji Zaydan (d. 1914), discussed fully in Chapter 9, who devoted his pen to the service of Arab history in works ranging from historical novels to an account of Islamic civilization, viewed the translation of Western literature, mainly the novel, in a different way. He termed this activity a literary renaissance and compared his time with the Abbasid era, when Muslim writers translated tales from the Persian. The stories translated from French, English, and Italian, known as riwayat (romances), were, Zaydan insisted, meant for entertainment rather than social or historical benefit. Zaydan noted that sensible Arab readers had welcomed these romances in the place of the tales which were popular among the common people in the nineteenth century. Dating back to the medieval Islamic period, these tales were more suited to the spirit of the time. 55 Zaydan found the translated novels particularly appealing because, unlike the ancient books of Arabic

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literature, they are presented in a simple language. Moreover, they were close to the understanding of the reading public, which was not educated enough to understand the florid and complicated style of antiquity. Popular taste was influenced also by a psychological factor. The failure of the Urabi revolution and the British occupation of Egypt were a source of despair for many Egyptians. Most of the literate or semiliterate public turned to fiction to escape political reality. At just this time the Syrian belletrists and journalists were busily engaged in the translation of Western fiction. Nevertheless, despite Zaydan's optimistic attitude, these literary forms, particularly the novel, remained in disrepute until the middle of the present century. In 1937 Egyptian writer Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat (d.1968) wrote an article explaining the policy of his periodical al-Risala (The Message), and reflecting the prevailing antipathy toward stories. He states: These readers did not want al-Risala to be a platform of praise or a source of bias. They wanted it to retain a state of poise, dispassion and unsentimentality. They had even categorically refused to see it assign a place for stories. 56

Al-Zayyat obviously wanted to influence his readers' opinions, to make them see storytelling as a shameful art. It would therefore be a disgrace to his publication to condone it—or to promote it. Translations of Western prose fiction, nevertheless, continued to increase in Egypt during the last century. A native Egyptian novel, however, was not born until the first quarter of the twentieth century, when conditions to its emergence finally were more favorable. The chief cultural development of the period was the attempt to initiate various social and educational reforms. They were considered inevitable for the evolution of the "Egyptian" novel. The literary efforts characterized by realism and personal courage, were limited, as noted, in their themes and scope. They reflected the genuine desire of some intellectuals to educate their compatriots. Evidently, these timid, hybrid works could not reach most of the people—at least not until the establishment of the Egyptian University in 1908. Fashioned after European educational institutions, this university was intended to revive the Arabic heritage and language (which the British occupation had repressed). It was also intended to promote higher education, which had been forbidden under British authority. Meanwhile, those Egyptians who were financially able sent their sons to Europe to continue their studies. Educators such as Ahmad Lutfi alSayyid (d. 1963) called for a comprehensive study of the relation of the individual to his society and for a scientific interpretation of human conduct. This would make it more reactive to the best of European intellectual thought and to progressive European institutions. Such a program showed that the ground had become ready for a full-scale cultivation of Western ideas: European literary models were not late in this parade of change, and Egyptian fiction was to make rapid progress in the upcoming century. 57

2 The Rise of the Arab Drama in Syria and Egypt

In ancient Arabic literature drama was simply unknown. Within Arab society in the pre-Islamic and the Islamic periods, literature centered mainly on nondramatic poetry in a tradition that was oral but not imitative. Furthermore, the Arabs of the ninth and tenth centuries A.D. neglected Greek drama and preferred to translate Greek philosophy and medicine. 1 Even ancient Syrian scholars, who introduced the Arabs to Greek philosophy and translated many of these works into Arabic, had no concept of Greek dramatic genres. Thus, Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus (d. 940) in his translation of Aristotle's Poetics understood "tragedy" and "comedy" to mean "praise" and "satire." This misreading led the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198), to apply what he thought to be Aristotle's definition of tragedy and comedy to traditional types of Arabic poetry, madh (praise) and hija (satire) which he supported by examples from native poetry. 2 Some contemporary Arab writers such as Muhammad Mandur maintain that it was the Islamic religion which prevented translation of Greek dramas, since the Arabs thought they involved pagan gods and mythology. However, Mandur sees no contradiction between Islamic religion and Greek philosophy, particularly logic, which was equally effective in either culture: the Muslims used it to support many Islamic tenets against their opponents. 3 The prominent Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim (d. 1987) does not share the idea that Islam prevented the translation of Greek drama although, like Mandur, he sees no contradiction between Islam and Greek philosophy. He says that the Arabs translated and appreciated works such as Kalila wa Dimna and Plato's Republic, which contain paganistic ideas. These ideas did not prevent the Muslim scholar al-Farabi (d. 950) from using Plato's work and adapting it to Islamic philosophy. Al-Hakim is, of course, alluding to al-Farabi's Risala fi Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila (Epistle on the Opinions of the People of the Superior City). 21

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Al-Hakim believes that what prevented the Arabs from translating the Greek drama is the fact that this drama was meant to be performed, not read. He says that the Greek stage was indispensable for the genesis and continuation of the drama. Since the Arabs had no stage, Arab translators found it unnecessary to translate a literary art which was not meant for reading. Al-Hakim further asserts that the Arabs neglected the translation of the Greek drama because they were not yet a settled people and the stage requires a settled life. He goes on to say that someone may object that in the Umayyad and the Abbasid periods, the Arabs were already settled and yet did not establish a stage or translate Greek drama. Against this objection al-Hakim avers that during the Umayyad and the early Abbasid periods, the Arabs continued to consider pre-Islamic poetry as an exemplary, literary art superior to any other art known to them. Thus, they found no need to translate the Greek drama. 4 Other critics, such as Izz al-Din Ismail, think that ancient Arab poets had no ability to explain dramatic composition that requires objective thinking. Furthermore, the ancient Arabs had no aesthetic understanding of what the Greeks came to call tragedy, although they may have experienced it. Therefore they could not produce dramas like those of the Greeks. 5 The opinions of these critics have been attacked since they are influenced by Western writers who have glorified the creativity of the Aryan intellect and its supremacy over other intellects. This Aryan intellectual supremacy, these critics maintain, has created an inferiority complex in modern Arab writers like Izz al-Din Ismail, who cannot perceive that the ancient Arabs were creative people. If this were true, they argue, how then could these same ancient Arabs have created highly polished and perfected types of poetry? Abd al-Munim al-Hifni believed that customs and traditions, not biological deficiency or lack of creativity, prevented the ancient Arabs from composing the drama. Still another contemporary Arab writer attributes the Arabs' ignorance of the drama to the attitude of the Eastern church (the Syrian Church) in the sixth century A.D. Mustafa Ali Umar states that the Greek drama was regarded by the church as a pagan literature which should be suppressed. He argues that if this genre had been available to the translators of the early Abbasid period, they would have translated it into Arabic. Umar contends that the drama was not transmitted to the Arabs because the Syrians did not translate it into Syriac or into Arabic as they did books of Greek philosophy and sciences.6

Popular Entertainment Nevertheless, it is certain that the Arabs in medieval times knew and enjoyed some types of theater. For example, the shadow play—a kind of puppet show called Khayal al-Zill—was popular in Egypt in the twelfth

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century and survived through the nineteenth century. There was a highly developed, shadow-play oral literature. The most popular "playwright" was Shams al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Daniyal al-Mawsili alKhuzai, nicknamed al-Kahhal (the oculist), who probably died in the first part of the fourteenth century. His book Tayf al-Khayal fi Marifat Khayal al-Zill (Phantom of Imagination of the Knowledge of the Shadow Play) was edited in part and published by Georg Jacob. 7 In nineteenth-century Egypt a Turkish puppet show called Qaragoz (black-eyed) was popular among the lower classes. This does not mean that the form was Turkish in origin and had been brought by the Turks after their occupation of Egypt at the beginning of the sixteenth century. More probably, Turkish was used in the Qaragoz plays because of the decline of Arabic and the predominance of the language of the conqueror. 8 The shadow play was also popular in Syria and North Africa in the nineteenth century. 9 The Egyptian public's enjoyment of another type of theatrical entertainment was recorded by the European traveler, Karsten Niebuhr, who visited Egypt in 1780. When he arrived in Cairo, he never expected to see theatrical performances, but he did go to see a play of sorts. A troupe consisting of Muslims, Christians, and Jews performed in the open air on an improvised stage in the yard of a house. There was a backdrop behind which the actors changed their costumes. Niebuhr asserts that although no European resident in Cairo had ever witnessed the performance of a native Egyptian comedy, he saw one in the house of an Italian. It was performed in Arabic, interspersed by Arabic music, and Niebuhr was not attracted to it because of his ignorance of the language. He wittily noted that the role of the heroine was done by a costumed actor who had a great deal of trouble concealing his beard. Niebuhr also described the audience's response to the play. Apparently the heroine, a vicious and cunning woman, attracted travelers to her tent, robbed them of their belongings and money, and then beat and expelled them. When this scene was repeated several times, some spectators became tired and irritated and shouted their total disapproval of such a boring and immoral act. The rest of the audience soon joined in, forcing the actors to stop the performance before the play was half completed. 10 A similar type of entertainment was described by Edward William Lane, who was in Cairo in the 1830s. He saw low and ridiculous farces performed by actors called "al-Muhabbizun," professional comedians who performed at festivals, weddings, and circumcisions, at the houses of the rich and before dignitaries, and sometimes in the squares of Cairo. Their performances were crude, and, "it is chiefly by vulgar jests and indecent actions that they amuse and obtain applause." 11 The actors were mainly men and boys, for it was still considered indecent for women to appear in public. One of these farces was acted before the pasha, Muhammad Ali,

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the Viceroy of Egypt, in honor of the circumcision of one of his sons. The characters were a chief of a village, his servant, a governor of a district, a Copt clerk, a fallah and his wife. The performance was preceded by drumming, piping, and dancing, and the musicians and dancers acted in the play as simple fallahin. The purpose of this farce, it seems, was to alert the ruler of Egypt to the oppression of the peasants by government officials, particularly tax collectors. Lane provides a full description of this play. Awad, the son of Rajab, a poor fallah indebted to the government, is summoned before the Nazir (the Governor of a District) and the Shaykh al-Balad (Chief of a Village) to be questioned for defaulting on his debt. The Nazir and Shaykh al-Balad ask the Christian Copt clerk how much Rajab owes the government; the clerk says a thousand piasters. Of this debt Rajab has apparently paid only five piasters. When asked why he did not bring the money with him to settle the debt, the wretched fallah says he has none. Then Shaykh al-Balad orders his men to throw the fallah down and beat him. The men begin to beat the fallah with an inflated intestine that serves as a whip. The scourged creature screams in his agony to the Nazir, appealing to him for mercy. His appeal even makes the spectators laugh, in spite of the pitiful scene of the fallah being beaten to death. The fallah appeals, "By the honor of thy horse's tail, O Bey! By the honor of thy wife's trousers, O Bey! By the honor of thy wife's headband, O Bey!" He is then ordered to be taken to jail. Presently, the fallah's wife appears, and he implores her to go to the clerk's home and take with her some kind of food as a bribe. She goes to see the Christian clerk, Hanna, and implores him to restore her husband. He advises her to find thirty piasters and take them to the Shaykh al-Balad as a bribe. The Shaykh al-Balad accepts the money and allows her to go and see the Nazir. Before going to see the Nazir, however, she applies heavy makeup herself, blackens her eyelids with kohl, and applies a fresh red dye of henna on her palms and feet. She implores the Nazir to liberate her husband. The Nazir shows unwillingness, but the wife shows him that she is not asking for a favor without giving something in return. The Nazir, obtaining this, takes the husband's side and releases him. 12

Western Theaters Such performances cannot be considered the ancestor of the modern Egyptian theater or drama. There is no evidence that the kind of farce described by Lane had any continuity or connection with later developments, which might be said to begin with the French occupation of Egypt. Napoleon's expedition included actors and musicians who performed French dramas. A few clubs were improvised for such entertainment, and one of them, the Tivoli, built within the French community, had a full

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stage. 13 A contemporary Egyptian writer, Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, mentions that the French met once every ten days in a place called al-Komedi (Comedy) at al-Azbakiyya, where they watched plays for four hours during the evening. No one was allowed to enter this area unless he wore a special dress and presented an identification card. 14 Another stage was established by the French commander Jacques Menou, who became Commander-in-Chief of the French forces after General Kléber was assassinated in 1800.15 But that theater and the dramas acted there were obviously French. The only effect they might have had on the Egyptians was in arousing curiosity about such novelties. Had the French established a firm foothold and remained in Egypt for a long time, their theatrical activity would probably have inspired some Egyptians to attempt native performances. These, in turn, could have stimulated playwrights and indigenous dramas and eventually created an audience for a national theater. This did not happen, of course, but the French influence appeared again under Muhammad Ali. According to a letter of the French Consulate in Cairo dated November 8, 1829, a French stage had been established by young amateurs after the evacuation of the French troops. The reason was to entertain the members of Napoleon's expedition who preferred to remain in Egypt and the French teachers and technicians recruited by Muhammad Ali. Recruiting some young ladies from respectable French families, these amateurs had performed two plays—l'Avocat Patelin and Le Gastronome sans argent—on November 3. The performance was preceded by a verse introduction composed by one of the actors. 16 A few years later Gérard de Nerval reported on another theater, called "Teatro del Cairo." He attended an amateur performance announced as a benefit for the blind. The stalls were packed with Italians and Greeks in red caps, making a great deal of noise. Some officers sat in front of the stage, and the boxes were filled with veiled women wearing Oriental dress. The play was La Mansarde des Artistes, and several major roles were performed by young people from Marseilles; the leading lady was Madame Bonhomme, the head of the French reading room. Most of the female spectators were Greek, Armenian, and Jewish women from high society. They were beautifully dressed in taffeta and black silk and covered their faces with white veils. After leaving the theater, de Nerval says, these women rode on their donkeys preceded by grooms carrying torches. 17 The Egyptian government first issued instructions regulating the proper operation of the theater in 1847. When Regnault traveled to Egypt in 1854, he went to see an Italian drama played on an open-air stage. The interesting aspect of Regnault's report is that the chief actress was Egyptian, with a bronze complexion and a charming voice with which she tried to imitate the Italian accent. 18 Other stages were established by Europeans in coffeehouses, such as the Grand Orient and El-Cazar cafés, and also in the Palais Royal: the

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latter is mentioned by Louis Gardey, 19 and there are also reports of a theater in the time of the Viceroy Said Pasha (1854-1863). 20 When Ismail rose to power, he built the Théâtre de la Comédie in 1868, at the same spot where a hall built by Said once stood, and the Théâtre Khédivial de l'Opéra. Clearly, these stages were neither Arab nor Egyptian and had no direct effect on the development of a native theater. The drama did not become popular, because the public could not understand the languages in which the plays were performed. Furthermore, most ordinary people could not afford the entrance fee. The European theater did appeal to members of Egyptian high society, who attended either from sheer curiosity or in search of novel amusement. The social and cultural conditions which hampered the Egyptian novel probably also prevented the rise of a full-fledged Egyptian theater and an Egyptian drama. Anyway, not until the Khedive Ismail established his theaters was there any sign of genuine interest in the possibility of a popular stage. 21

Marun Naqqash and His Successors Conditions were more favorable in Syria, where theater was introduced before 1870 by Marun Ibn Mikhail Naqqash. He may be rightfully acclaimed as the founder of the Arab theater. 22 Naqqash was born in Sayda (Sidon) on February 9, 1817, to a Maronite family, but raised in Beirut, where the family moved in 1825. A precocious boy, he learned, besides Arabic, Turkish, French, and Italian, began to compose poetry at eighteen, and soon mastered Oriental music. He also studied bookkeeping, which qualified him for the position of chief clerk at the Customs Department in Beirut. For a time he was a member of the Beirut Chamber of Commerce, and later he became a businessman. His work took him to Aleppo, Damascus, and the rest of Syria. In 1846 he visited Alexandria and Cairo and then sailed to Italy, which had strong relations with the Arab East. In Italy he visited many theaters and was so impressed by them that he decided to introduce the stage into his own country. Upon his return to Beirut, he formed a troupe with some friends who shared his enthusiasm. His efforts were crowned by the staging of his drama al-Bakhil (The Miser) toward the end of 1847.23 This may be considered the first drama in the Arabic language. The guests Naqqash invited to the performance at his home included foreign consuls and the dignitaries of Beirut. Soon news of his drama spread, and it was even written about in the European press. (There was no press in Syria at the time). 24 The favorable response of the audience and the eagerness of the people of Beirut to watch this novelty encouraged Naqqash to stage another

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drama, Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal aw Harun al-Rashid (Abu al-Hasan the Gullible or the Caliph Harun al-Rashid), whose plot was borrowed from the Thousand and One Nights. To this performance, again in his house either at the end of 1849 or the beginning of 1850, he invited the foreign consuls, the Turkish Wali, a group of Ottoman high officials who happened to be in the city, and the dignitaries of Beirut. The guests apparently were full of praise and encouraged by the good reception, Naqqash applied to the authorities and obtained a high firman (decree) to build a theater adjacent to his home. On this stage his third and last drama, al-Salit al-Hasud (The Impudent and Jealous Young Man) was performed in 1851. This theater was later purchased by the Papal Nuncio in Beirut and, according to Naqqash's will, converted into a church (probably one standing in the Jummayza quarter). 25 Naqqash's dramas were not as widely popular as he hoped they would be. Only a few foreigners and a handful of educated natives appreciated them; most of the people, from sheer ignorance, remained indifferent. At first they had to be coaxed to attend their productions by the promise that the plays would contain folk music and poetry.26 At times Naqqash became utterly doubtful about the success of his art or the continuance of the theater in his country. 27 The brilliant career of Marun Naqqash ended when, on a business trip to Tarsus, he was stricken by a severe fever and died on June 1, 1855, at the premature age of thirty-eight. Despite his pessimism, his troupe continued to perform dramas of his composition in Syria. 28 Two decades after his death, his nephew, Salim Naqqash (d. 1884), moved the troupe to Egypt, where they performed Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal in 1876. Because al-Bakhil, the first of Naqqash's dramatic works, has the same title as Moliere's L'Avare, some scholars, such as Muhammad Yusuf Najm, believe that it was a translation. However, Jurji Zaydan, a contemporary, emphatically states that this was "the first drama in the Arabic language," and that Naqqash had "composed this play from the beginning to the end." 29 Najm, however, goes on to acknowledge that Naqqash wrote his play after he had read Moliere's comedy and made use of its characterization and humorous elements. 30 The treatment of miserliness or stinginess, which constitutes the main humorous element of the drama, shares much with L'Avare.31 The most striking feature of al-Bakhil is that it is written in verse rather than prose and that it is all set to music. The full title reads "Riwaya Mudhika Kulluha Mulahhana Dhat Khamsat Fusul Marufa bi Riwayat al-Bakhil" (Comical Romance [or Drama] in Five Acts All of Which Is Set to Music Known as The Romance of the Miser).32 Whether this description was devised by the author or his brother, Niqula, who collected and published Naqqash's three plays in Arzat Lubnan, is not important. What is significant is that the drama "is all set to music."33 One might speculate that it was meant to be an

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opera, especially since the author's intention is evident from the introduction he delivered before its first performance. After mentioning his visits to the theaters in Europe and ascribing certain moral and artistic benefits to them, he classified dramas into different categories: "One of them, which the Europeans call prose, is divided into comedy, drama, and tragedy, which are performed without verse and unsung; the second one, which they call opera, is sung." Naqqash goes on to explain: It is most important and necessary for me to compose and translate in the first place the first and not the second type (the opera) because it is easier and more likely. But what made me deviate from the norm and follow this course is that the second type (the opera) was to me more tasteful, desirable, splendid and delightful. Secondly, my opinion, desire and earnest concern made me inclined to believe that the second (opera) would be preferable to my people and kindred. 34

Niqula, in his introduction to Arzat Lubnan, noted the great care his brother took to set his dramas to music. To simplify the task of those who wished to perform the plays, he numbered the roles of the actors to show the type of song or melody to be used for each role. 3 5 At the end of alBakhil, Niqula appended a list of melodies and songs numbered to correspond with the headings in the text. He explained the nature and source of each melody, some of which were based on Egyptian popular songs, others on French songs and melodies. 3 6 These numbers certainly indicate that the drama was meant to be sung throughout. Thus, al-Bakhil was not merely the first native Arabic drama, but the first Arabic comic opera. Naqqash's use of varied dialects and speech patterns to further the development of the plot was particularly effective. Generally, the dialogue is a mixture of classical Arabic and the colloquial speech of Lebanon. One character, Isa, uses Egyptian dialect while impersonating the Egyptian secretary, and two others imitate Turks by speaking broken Arabic. This radical device predictably drew some criticism, and even Niqula tried to justify his brother's use of nonstandard language by explaining that it was only his first drama; this, of course, misses the point entirely. Niqula also argued that Naqqash deliberately used imperfect speech in order to encourage others to compose realistic dialogue. "If it were not for al-Bakhil's poor language I would have not been able to compose the riwaya (drama) of al-Shaykh al-Jahil (The Ignorant Old Man), which is filled with grammatical mistakes." 3 7 But these arguments are rather academic, for despite its artistic and literary innovations, Naqqash's first play was obviously well received even in the conservative Syrian milieu, at least by the literate elite. His next venture, Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal, was, as noted earlier, superficially based on the Thousand and One Nights story "al-Naim wa alYaqzan" (The Sleeping and the Wakeful). 3 8 But it departs from this source

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in both plot and structure. Unlike the story, it treats the problem of the movement from one social class to another. Whether or not Naqqash was aware of the social implications, the encounters of his protagonist, who comes from a low class, with the privileges of a higher class intermingle questions of social standing with the problem of appearance and reality, which is the point of the original story. Abu al-Hasan has always dreamt of bettering his lot, and his daydreams have become a reality to him. However, the Caliph and his Vizier devise a ruse to show him that the world is not as he sees it. Even when he is given the power and authority he has never had before, he faces as many problems as he did when he was poor and powerless. Unlike al-Bakhil, Abu al-Hasan is only partially set to music. A notice at the beginning of the text shows that the index of songs has been numbered the same way as in al-Bakhil. He goes on to say that a line indicates the places where the song ends and the verse or prose speech of the actors begins. 39 The index of melodies at the end of the drama refers to the same French songs used in al-Bakhil. Thus, though Abu al-Hasan is undoubtedly a musical drama, its language is a combination of prose and poetry. In Western terms, it is more musical comedy than opera. The style of this play is less lucid than that of al-Bakhil and uses the traditional rhymed-prose prevalent at the time. (There are also some foreign terms, characters, speeches, and stage directions.) Parts of the dialogue are intolerably long-winded, especially in the first act, which treats of the love and troubles of Abu al-Hasan. Some characters could be eliminated without damaging the structure, the theme, or the sequence of events; for example, the role of al-Hajja, Abu al-Hasan's mother, is unquestionably superfluous. Furthermore, the author does not provide clear stage directions. A strange note at the beginning of the second act, for example, shows that the setting is the Saray of the Caliph and that the room contains the royal clothes, a crown, and a scepter. But Saray is a Persian word for "palace," and the Caliphs of Baghdad never wore crowns or carried scepters. Naqqash makes charming use of Moliere's wit. For example, when Abu al-Hasan asks his brother Said if he knows the attractive Da'd, if he visits her family, and if he has any relations with them, the scene follows the same pattern as Harpagon's questioning of his son Cleante about Marian in L'Avare. Cleante praises the young lady before he realizes his father's interests in her. 40 This entertaining drama must have appealed to the nineteenth-century Syrian audience, and the mere fact that Naqqash adapted a story from the Thousand and One Nights to the stage is evidence of his fertile imagination and prodigious originality. In contrast, the plot and setting of Naqqash's third and last drama, alSalit al-Hasud, reflect various aspects and customs specific to Syria in the middle of the nineteenth century, although it, too has a Molierian touch.

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The characters are recognizable as contemporary types and the action centers around the practice of fixed marriages. Parental authority was dominant, but children sometimes defied it. The author could have ended this drama with the marriage of Rachel to Ishaq al-Qudsi. But for no demonstrable reason he engages Sim'an and the rest of the cast in unnecessary intrigues. Thus, the finale becomes flat. Al-Salit al-Hasud consists of three acts written partly in verse and partly in rhymed prose. The latter does not seem awkward or affected; however, like Naqqash's second drama, it is only partially set to music, and the published text has a numbered index of songs and melodies. Judged in modern critical terms, the style and language are generally inferior. At times the dialogue is lengthy and boring. To display his literary knowledge, the author incorporates into the first act a complete ode on the art of prosody, with a lengthy analysis of the verse meters and their subdivisions. He also explains the correct meanings of many terms used erroneously by the public. In the third act, one of the characters, Jirjis, concludes this discussion with an intolerably long statement explaining inconsistent or defective rhyme and showing how the poet can avoid these defects. Such unnecessary interpolations not only weaken the texture but also obscure the action of the play.41 Nevertheless, Naqqash grants all his characters, including the heroine Rachel, a remarkable degree of freedom to determine their lives. At no point is Rachel oppressed or controlled by her father. The lively and dynamic characters are only occasionally obscured by the introduction of unnecessary subjects. Particularly successful is the portrait of Siman, Rachel's fiance, who despite his stubbornness shows a fragile spirit. Molière's touch is again conspicuous. The dialogue between Abu Isa and his pupil, Jirjis, regarding what is prose and what is verse brings to the memory a similar dialogue between Jourdain and the philosophy master in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.42 The strange and thoughtless Siman recalls Alceste in Le Misanthrope. Furthermore, the two valets, Jabbur and Bishara, who appear as wealthy men of prestige, remind us of Mascarille and Jodelet in Les Précieuses ridicules. When Madelon and Cathos reject their respective lovers, La Grange and Du Croisy, these lovers employ their valets Mascarille and Jodelet to expose the weakness of the two ladies. To conceal their identity, Mascarille clothes himself in his master's finery and assumes the title Marquis of Mascarille while Jodelet appears as the Viscount of Jodelet. 43 Naqqash admits through Siman that he has "borrowed some of its (this drama's) themes from the riwayat Ifranjiyya (European dramas). 44 To evaluate Naqqash's plays properly, however, one must consider the social, political, and literary conditions prevailing in nineteenth-century Lebanon. His work was not only a novelty but marked the beginning of a new epoch in modern Arabic literature. He merits admiration for his boldness, enthusiasm,

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and determination to break through literary tradition by introducing the theater into the Arab world. He rightfully merits the title of the father of the Arab drama. 45 David Urquhart, who happened to be in Beirut in 1850 and saw a performance of Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal, has provided a firsthand account of Naqqash's theatrical talents. On January 12 Urquhart searched through the narrow alleys of Beirut until he reached Naqqash's house which was teeming with people. The guests included a Muslim judge, two muftis, and three serene-looking ulama. Urquhart describes the structure of the stage, reports that the acting was a little confused and that the singing was bad, but concludes that the production was artistically successful. Urquhart realized that the Arab spirit could be easily awakened and stimulated. He also saw that the author had gathered fair knowledge of the European stage during his trip abroad. 46 Although Naqqash's premature death was a great loss to the burgeoning stage, his pioneering efforts were carried forward in both Syria and Egypt. In Lebanon, which was part of Syria until the end of World War I, many writers and artists worked on plays for the stages established either by learned societies or by schools. Al-Madrasa al-Wataniyya (The National School), founded by the celebrated Butrus al-Bustani (d. 1883), staged several dramas, including Yusuf al-Hasan (Joseph the Fair) in 1865, based on the Biblical story of Joseph. In July 1896 an adaptation of Fenelon's Telemaque by Sa'd Allah al-Bustani was performed there. 47 The theater was also encouraged by the schools of al-Sharfa Monastery, 48 the Jewish School of Zaki Cohen, the school of al-Thalathat Aqmar (The Three Moons School), and the Jesuit College, among others. 49 It should be noted, however, that most if not all of the plays performed by the Jesuit College were of a religious nature since the main objective of the college was religious. Louis Cheikho provides information about the plays performed by the college to show that the Christian Catholic schools restored acting to its dignified position after it had been abused by others. After crediting Marun Naqqash with the introduction of the theater to Beirut, Cheikho, who always judged aesthetic literature from a narrow religious view, remarks that acting was abused by public stages where many immoral plays were performed. He concludes that the results were harmful. 50 An especially prominent learned society, al-Jamiyya al-Ilmiyya alSuriyya (The Syrian Scientific Society), established in 1868 for the dissemination of learning and the arts among Arabic-speaking people, promoted acting, and several dramas whose themes were drawn from Arab history were performed by its members. 51 Other plays were staged by amateurs or by charitable associations of the church, including the Rum (Greek) Orthodox Charitable Association and the Maronite Charitable Association. The latter assigned the profits from theatrical performances to help the needy of their communities, as

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did Zahrat al-Adab, established in Beirut in 1873, which included a group of prominent writers. 52 There was also some individual dramatic activity in Syria, with performances in private houses. For example, al-Shabb alJahil al-Sikkir (The Foolish and Drunkard Young Man) by Tannus al-Hurr, was performed in the home of Habib al-Qirdahi in 1863.53 The plot of one drama, al-Murua wa al-Wafa (Virtue and Loyalty), composed by Khalil al-Yaziji (d. 1889) and performed in Beirut in 1878, was drawn from a well-known folk tale of Arab history. 54 According to Jurji Zaydan, who saw the performance, this was the first verse play in the Arabic language and represented an important development for Arabic acting. 55 But it is probably more accurate to grant that status to Marun Naqqash's al-Bakhil. Another drama of consequence was the loose translation of Racine's Andromache by Adib Ishaq (d. 1885). This was composed at the request of the French Consul and was performed three times in Beirut in 1875, the profits going to the assistance of orphan girls. 56 Sayf al-Nasr (The Sword of Victory) composed by Yusuf al-Asir (d. 1889), was also performed in Beirut that year, and its profits were used to purchase printing equipment for the Jamiyyat al-Funun (The Arts Society). 57 It is quite difficult to evaluate systematically the multitude of dramas written in the period between the death of Marun Naqqash and the end of the century. One cannot even ascertain the number of plays translated, adapted, or composed, because a great many of them are lost, have gone out-of-print, or were printed in obscure and forgotten journals. One writer alone, Ibrahim al-Ahdab (1826-1891), wrote at least twenty plays, most of them drawn from Arab history. These gained popularity and the approval and encouragement of Rashid Pasha, the Wali (governor) of Damascus. 58 Marun Naqqash's theatrical activity was directly continued by both his brother Niqula, and his nephew Salim Khalil Naqqash, who died prematurely in 1884. Niqula showed early proficiency in learning Oriental and European languages, particularly Italian. He was trained by his brother in business administration and, when Marun went to Europe, succeeded him at the Beirut Customs. After 1852 Niqula was quite active in business, both private and governmental, besides continuing his study and practice of law. In 1877 he was elected to the Ottoman Parliament. His other activities did not dampen his journalistic ambition, and in 1880 he established a newspaper, al-Misbah (The Lamp), which continued for twentyeight years. Earlier he had edited the periodical al-Najah (Success). 59 Niqula's interest in the theater came more from a recognition of his brother's pioneer accomplishment than from personal ambition. He continued the training of amateur actors and always wished that his brother were still living to see what his disciples had accomplished. 60 Completely modest, he acknowledged his brother's superior dramatic talents and admitted that he was the first to follow in his footsteps. 61 As a

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token of his devotion, he produced his brother's drama al-Salit al-Hasud. The performance was attended by the Ottoman Wali and proved to be a success. Among the actors was Niqula's son. 62 Niqula's own dramas included al-Shaykh al-Jahil (The Ignorant Old Man), al-Musi (The Testator), and Rabia Ibn Ziyad al-Mukaddam, whose theme was drawn from Arab history. 63 Marun's nephew Salim Khalil Naqqash, an active writer, translator, and journalist, proved even more fervent and ambitious in the theater. Although most of the dramas he produced were adaptations of European originals, his literary and theatrical output was amazing. 64 Salim's major literary work was Misr li al-Misriyyin (Egypt for the Egyptians) in nine volumes. The first three were probably suspended and destroyed by the Egyptian government on the pretext that they contained impertinent information in their biographical accounts of Muhammad Ali and the Khedive Ismail. The remaining six volumes appeared in 1884, the year of the young author's death. His publication of several newspapers and periodicals attests to his journalistic successes. 65 Salim's substantial knowledge of the European theater is shown by his article on the advantages of the theater, which gives a short account of its history. He sees its function as more than that of providing entertainment, arguing that drama should reflect the wonderful aspects of virtue and the morbid aspects of vice to induce people to do what is good and shun what is evil. He applies this criterion to the handling of love and amorous situations, though he seems to believe—contrary to the opinion of his contemporaries—that love was an acceptable element in drama. Salim neither condemns nor justifies amorous spectacles, but he contends that both the beautiful and the ugly phases of love should be revealed. If the love presented is decent, it will certainly appeal to those who admire virtue; if it is wicked, it will be condemned by those who have good taste. Even humor and comic incidents, Salim argues, should have moralistic and didactic implications. Otherwise, there is no justification for the drama. 66 Salim keenly promoted the Arab stage by forming and training a theatrical troupe in Beirut at the request of some of his friends. The troupe followed al-Bakhil with a performance of Salim's adaptation of Pierre Corneille's tragedy Horace in 1868. This was so successful that a contemporary writer reported that some European spectators watched and listened attentively until the end. They were fascinated though there was nothing extraordinary about the acting or the scenery. 67 Salim's major problem in training the actors was to harmonize the different voices and adjust them to the musical instruments. Although his theatrical efforts were rudimentary, they were admirably successful. 68 To continue his theatrical activity, Salim needed official or popular support. Training actors and providing plays was not enough to maintain a theater. Faced with what he called lack of "material means," he decided

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to move his troupe to Egypt, which offered more opportunity because of the notable cultural progress it had achieved under the Khedive Ismail. 69 Salim contacted a few Egyptian dignitaries, who advised him to appeal to the Khedive directly, and journeyed to Egypt to convince Drahnet Bey, director of the Opera, of his competence. The response was favorable, and a decree was issued allowing him to perform "Arabic" plays in Egypt. According to al-Jinan (Gardens), when some Egyptians heard of this decision, they praised the Khedive, whose support "would enable the Arab nation to enjoy the performance of riwayat [dramas]." 70 Salim's troupe was expected to arrive in Egypt in September 1875, but because of the outbreak of cholera it was not able to enter until the fall of the following year. Because of the hot weather, its debut was shifted from Cairo to Alexandria, where it opened the season by performing Marun Naqqash's Abu al-Hasan on Saturday, December 23, 1876. There were twelve performers, four of whom were actresses, in the troupe, which performed Marun's other plays and Salim's adaptations. What is noteworthy is that the newspaper al-Ahram (The Pyramids), which reported the arrival of Salim's troupe in Alexandria and its theatrical activity, referred to the actors as Arabs and not as Syrians or Egyptians. It said that "We the Arabs are delighted to see a group of our young men enter this field of activity (theater)." Stressing the fact that Arabs are competent in the art of acting as the Europeans, al-Ahram exhorted its readers to encourage and support Salim Naqqash and his troupe. It reasoned that the success of his activity would "open in our Arab countries the gates of success to this art." 71 In 1876 Salim invited his colleague Adib Ishaq (d. 1885) to Alexandria to help him. In Alexandria Ishaq revised his version of Andromache and had it published, after adding Arabic verse to some roles. He also adapted La fille de Roland by H. de Bornier under the title al-Malik Sharliman wa Ibnat Rolan (King Charlemagne and Roland's Daughter). A loose translation of Pierre Zaccone's La Vengeance was entitled al-Intiqam and published in Alexandria in 1880. The text of another play by Ishaq, Gharaib al-Ittifaq (Strange Coincidences), was among his many possessions stolen in the Lebanese village, al-Hadath, after the author's death. 72 Ishaq's adaptations of Andromache and Charlemagne were performed several times in Alexandria, and one report shows that they were received favorably by the public. 73 However, another account says that Salim's effort was not successful and that both he and his colleague finally became disenchanted with acting, left their troupe in charge of an actor, Yusuf Khayyat, and after that devoted their energies to journalism. 74 In terms of substance and style, Salim Khalil Naqqash contributed little to the development of Arab drama. All of his works were simply adaptations, and some of them distorted the originals, with little regard to the author's ideas, structure, or taste. In this sense, Salim is no different from other writers who took great pains to Arabicize even the names of the

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characters in what were French dramas. His introduction to his version of Horace admits that it was adapted from the French with many changes, particularly the addition of Arabic verses and music. His use of the verb allaftuha implies that he actually wrote this drama, basing it on some themes he borrowed from Corneille. 75 Salim's works were in the mainstream of Arabic fiction during the nineteenth century. All of it leaned heavily on foreign, particularly French sources. His style is more lucid and polished than that of his uncle Marun. He also embellished his writing with time-honored rhymed prose, considered then a literary nicety. The works of Adib Ishaq were progressive steps toward the creation of a domestic drama. Like Naqqash and other contemporary writers, he introduced verse and music into the adapted dramas as a means of attraction for Arab audiences. Furthermore, Adib Ishaq cut down lengthy dialogues because they were boring to Arab audiences. He completely omitted some parts of Racine's Andromache, e.g., scene three of Act III, only part of which was incorporated into scene two—and introduced a new lyric scene into Act I. 76 After Salim Naqqash and Adib Ishaq deserted their theater in 1877, Yusuf Khayyat (d. 1900) reorganized the troupe and added a few Egyptian actors to it. He made his successful debut as director with the performance of Sun al-Jamil (Doing Good), at the Zizinia Theater. 77 In 1879 the company moved the troupe to Cairo, where it enjoyed the Khedive's encouragement and support. The Khedive became indignant, however, watching a performance of al-Zalum (The Tyrant), which contained allusions to despots and injustice. Thinking the play was an indirect criticism of his rule and of his person, the Khedive ordered Khayyat and his troupe out of Egypt. 7 8 The Opera House was closed to Arab actors and performances until 1882. In that year Sulayman al-Qirdahi (d. 1909) and al-Shaykh Salama Hijazi (d. 1917) obtained the government's approval to resume Arab acting. However, because of the Urabi revolution in that year, alQirdahi suspended theatrical activity until 1884. 79

Al-Shaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani In 1884 another noteworthy dramatist, al-Shaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil alQabbani, came from Syria. He had already created considerable theatrical activity in Damascus (which had met with opposition and ridicule from Muslims). He was born, probably in 1833 or 1836, in Damascus to a Turkish family which had emigrated there from Konya (Iconium). Like many Muslim children then, he received religious schooling at the Kuttab (Quranic School). Later he chose the vocation of weighing merchandise by the qabban (platform scale), an activity which earned him the epithet

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al-Qabbani. 80 He also studied Oriental music and dancing under al-Shaykh Ahmad Uqayl al-Halabi, gaining marked proficiency in these arts. Whether al-Qabbani studied acting or acquired it informally through observation is a matter of speculation. The Syrian writer Muhammad Kurd A l i maintains that his importance is demonstrated by the fact that he acquired the art of acting without professional training. It would seem he simply learned how acting was practiced in the West and was able to imitate it.81 Perhaps, however, he saw only one such play in his life. This view seems incredible since acting usually requires much training and practice for its mastery. Another possibility is that, watching the dramas staged by a French troupe at the Lazarite School in Damascus, alQabbani gathered his idea of acting, orchestration, the distribution of roles, and even of costumes and makeup.82 Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Qabbani's modern editor, challenges all of these theories as unlikely and unfounded. He believes that the news of Marun Naqqash's theatrical activity must have reached Damascus and that al-Qabbani had probably seen one of those plays. He may have met someone who saw the performances by a Lebanese troupe in Damascus; Najm notes that Tarrazi reports that Ibrahim al-Ahdab had performed a drama titled Iskander al-Maqduni (Alexander the Macedonian) in Damascus in 1868 at the request of the Wali (governor), Rashid Pasha. Najm also speculates that al-Qabbani may have read the Turkish translations of French dramas. This theory is similar to what N a j m has tenaciously striven to discredit. 83 There is evidence that al-Qabbani trained a group of his friends to act and staged with them his first drama Nakir al-Jamil (The Ungrateful), in the house of his grandfather, probably in 1865.84 But the authorship of this drama raises a problem. In 1956 N a j m said that it was an original work, but his introduction to the anthology of al-Qabbani's writings says that it was adapted from an unknown Western source. 85 The text of Nakir alJamil is an adaptation of Western drama.86 The names of some characters (e.g., Constantine and Alexander) betray its non-Arabic origin. Furthermore, neither the action nor the theme is domestic. Ghadir (meaning treacherous), was saved from death on the roadside by the kind and magnanimous Halim, the Minister's son. Being wicked, he believes that he has become so indebted to his benefactor that he should eliminate him. A l though his plan is revealed to the King, he is pardoned at Halim's request. Ghadir remorsefully confesses his jealousy and with great shame deplores his ingratitude. The drama is reminiscent of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The King's dream recalls the vision of Pilate's wife. Since there is no evidence that al-Qabbani knew Western languages, although he apparently did know Turkish, he could not have adapted or translated this drama from its Western original. 87

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Anyway, Nakir al-Jamil marked the beginning of an era of eventful dramatic activity that did not end until al-Qabbani's death in 1902. Information is lacking about al-Qabbani's early theatrical career. He may have staged several plays before he received official support from Subhi Pasha, the Turkish governor of Syria, in 1871. 88 His work was also endorsed by the liberal Midhat Pasha, the governor in 1878-1879, who promoted the theater as a part of his cultural reform program. When Iskandar Farah, a notable actor, was allowed to form and train a troupe he joined al-Qabbani. Midhat Pasha allowed Iskandar Farah, an employee of the Damascus Customs, to attend to his duty one hour a day only to devote the rest of the time to the training of actors. He also gave Farah twenty thousand piasters to purchase costumes and other materials for the stage. With Midhat's financial support, Farah and al-Qabbani rented a place in Bab Tuma (Thomas's Gate) to perform Aida and the Shah Mahmud. The public's response was encouraging, and prompted by Midhat's interest, al-Qabbani and his partner prepared more material for their newly born stage. 89 Their activity was soon doomed, however, for when the troupe performed Marun Naqqash's Abu al-Hasan, it came under violent attack by both the envious and the reactionaries. The fanatic Shaykh Said alGhabra particularly condemned al-Qabbani for corrupting the people's morals. Conservatives resented the appearance on the stage of the figure of Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the Commander of the Faithful, in the person of the poor and gullible Abu al-Hasan. They thought this denigrated the Caliph's office and person. To placate them, al-Qabbani even agreed to share the profit from his stage with them. According to one report, the Shaykh Said al-Ghabra was not satisfied with his meager share and went to Istanbul to complain personally to the Sultan. During the Friday prayer, which Sultan Abd al-Hamid performed with great pageant and pomp, al-Ghabra popped out of the masses. He admonished the Sultan with ardent zeal against the "hellish heresy that has jeopardized the creed of the Muslims," saying: Help, O Commander of the Faithful. Immorality and debauchery have spread in al-Sham (Syria). Women's honor has been shattered. Virtue has died, morality has been buried, and women have mingled with men.90 A royal decree quickly was issued to the new governor, Hamdi Pasha, preventing al-Qabbani from acting and forcing him to close down his theater. 91 Disgruntled by the antagonism and ingratitude his native city had shown him, al-Qabbani appealed to a wealthy merchant friend, Sa'd Allah Hallaba, a Syrian who had made Alexandria his permanent home. Hallaba's response was favorable, and the troupe of fifty actors journeyed to Alexandria in 1884. 92 Al-Qabbani may have also accepted the advice of

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the famous singer Abduh al-Hamuli, who was then vacationing in Syria. Al-Hamuli suggested that al-Qabbani move the company to Egypt. AlQabbani agreed and set up a wooden theater near al-Ataba al-Khadra in Cairo. 93 Al-Qabbani was very active during his stay in Egypt, and his performances met with marked appreciation. In 1892 al-Qabbani and a troupe consisting of twenty actors came to the United States to perform at the Chicago World's Fair. They spent six months in the United States, and al-Qabbani then returned to Syria. 94 Between 1893 and 1894, al-Qabbani, now in his sixties, taught acting in the evening at a hall made available through by a friend. He was dissatisfied, however, with such semiprofessional work and returned to Egypt to resume acting. His career continued until 1900, when the stage built by the admirer, Inayat Bey, burned down. 95 The troupe dispersed after this disaster and al-Qabbani returned to Damascus. He was penniless, but the sympathetic Syrian government allocated him an annual subsidy. He died of the plague on December 15, 1902.96 Al-Qabbani's output included some sixty dramas adapted either from Western sources, mainly French, or from ancient Arab tales, primarily The Thousand and One Nights. [Only eight of these are currently available, in the collection edited by Najm, who also provides a detailed list of other adapted or original dramas performed by al-Qabbani and his troupe in both Syria and Egypt.] 97 In adopting Western drama and borrowing some of his themes from ancient Arab tales, al-Qabbani was perfectly in tune with the literary activity of his time. He even claimed for himself the authorship of Lubab al-Gharam aw al-Malik Mitridat (Passionate Love or King Mithridates), an adaptation of Racine's Mithridates, first published in 1900.98 It was then acceptable, if not fashionable, for many Arab writers and translators to plagiarize Western novels and dramas. 99 Al-Qabbani's adaptation of Mithridates is not significantly different from Adib Ishaq's adaptation of Andromache. Many scenes have been added, though the structure remains untouched. 100 However, little material is completely deleted; instead, it is used in new scenes which he added to the plot. 101 Some speeches have been rewritten in Arabic verse, and the popular rhymed prose also appears. Although this device is not awkward, it becomes very boring to the modern reader. The fact that the characters seem one-dimensional is not totally the adapter's fault; apart from the slave queen, Monima, the kind, chaste and decent daughter of Ephesus, Racine's original drama lacks effective character portrayal. 102 In al-Qabbani's other dramas, the plots are drawn either from the Thousand and One Nights or from popular Arab tales such as that of the famous pre-Islamic poet-hero Antara ibn Shaddad. The Nights, of course, not only furnished Arab playwrights and story writers with plots but were also a significant source of entertainment for the public. Even before

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Marun Naqqash and al-Qabbani attempted to cast some of them in theatrical form, the stories were read to audiences in major cities throughout the Arab countries, particularly in coffeehouses. Thus, those of al-Qabbani's dramas derived from them perpetuated an old, rather than providing a new, source of entertainment. The technique was different, of course, though it was far from elaborate or accomplished. Like many nineteenth-century Arab playwrights, al-Qabbani treated the historical play as a tale recast in dramatic form, disregarding both accuracy and art. The characters remain as flat as they are in the originals, and their actions reveal little about the age in which they lived. The love scene between Ghanim ibn Ayyub and Qut al-Qulub, the principals in Riwayat Harun al-Rashid ma al-Amir Ghanim ibn Ayyub wa Qut al-Qulub (The Drama of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid with Prince Ghanim, Son of Ayyub and Qut al-Qulub), might have been very touching; instead it is a cold debate about an impersonal matter, with the lovers eventually resigning themselves to accepting fate. 103 In Riwayat Antar ibn Shaddad (The Drama of Antar ibn Shaddad), the characters are even paler. The courageous and chivalrous deeds of the preIslamic poet Antar or Antara ibn Shaddad of the banu Abs—whose name, according to legend, was sufficient to frighten his enemies—are played down, and his unremitting struggle to win the love of his beautiful cousin Abla is even more pointedly distorted. 104 Instead of the fiery lover, he is portrayed as a jealous husband who tries to defend his wife through petty squabbles with his rival al-Amir Masud rather than through his bravery and legendary prowess. 105 The criticism also applies to two of al-Qabbani's other plays, Riwayat Harun al-Rashid ma Uns al-Jalis (The Drama of the Caliph Harun alRashid with Uns al-Jalis), and Riwayat al-Amir Mahmud Najl Shah alAjam (The Drama of Prince Mahmud son of the Shah of Persia). 106 The stereotyped characters lack the dimensions necessary for a forceful drama. Like his contemporaries, al-Qabbani did not have the fortune to possess both literary ability and imagination. Worse, his understanding of dramatic structure was insufficient. Therefore, he could not mold gripping drama out of traditional material, as Racine and Corneille had. The remaining plays of al-Qabbani are either adaptations or loose translations of Western plays. 107 In Mithridates and Riwayat Hiyal al-Nisa, known as Lucia, whose original is unknown to this writer, al-Qabbani left the names of the characters unchanged. In Afifa (Chaste), which is perhaps an adaptation of a French Genevieve, all the characters have Arabic names, while in Nakir al-Jamil (The Ungrateful), also of Western origin, some remain in their original form. 108 Al-Qabbani's dramas are far too limited in scope to be universal. It is perhaps expecting too much from a nineteenth-century Arab playwright to

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harmonize his dramas with traditional and modern ideas. Also, it is unfair to expect him to use some ancient tales to criticize the foibles of his society. Al-Qabbani was an imitator rather than an innovator, but he was perfectly in tune with the tradition set by Marun Naqqash. He might be considered the creator of the "Arab operetta" which influenced the succeeding theater in Egypt, especially that of al-Shaykh Salama Hijazi. He may also be credited with introducing pantomime, a hitherto unknown art which he occasionally displayed at the end of his regular performances. 109 Al-Qabbani's dramas usually consist of four or f i v e acts. In some plays the scenes are called juz (part), while in others the term manzar (scene) is used. In the translated or adapted dramas the scene is called a waqi'a (incident or event). 110 Usually, each play ends with a song in praise of either the Turkish Sultan or the Khedive of Egypt, or both. In one case it was directed to al-Abbas, uncle of the Prophet of Islam. Ultimately, al-Qabbani was more important as an actor-manager than as a playwright. For more than three decades he and his troupe performed numerous plays. Najm's index indicates that some of these were played several times in Syria and Egypt. This shows that al-Qabbani enjoyed great popularity. It also testifies to the people's interest in the theater as a source of entertainment.111 The plays of al-Qabbani, like those of Marun Naqqash and other nineteenth-century playwrights, are history. They have no appeal to contemporary audiences in the Arab world, primarily because of their rhymed prose style and their ineptly manipulated plots. Contemporary Arab audiences do not even find them a source of entertainment. They can find such entertainment in the movies, television, and in reading translated or written dramas that suit their taste. Although Arab audiences still enjoy watching Shakespeare's and Moliere's plays in translation, the works of their own pioneer playwrights have become a matter of academic interest only. Perhaps the absence of a dramatic tradition and the nonexistence of other genres in the Western sense prevented the rise of a first-rate Arab dramatist during the nineteenth century. The playwrights, who had to borrow their plots either from ancient tales or from Western dramas, seem more amateurs than accomplished writers. This lack of tradition is also felt in the plays the famous poet Ahmad Shawqi (d. 1932) composed during the first quarter of the present century. Although Salim Naqqash, Adib Ishaq, and al-Qabbani were all Syrians, they were active in Egypt. It was an Egyptian nationalist Jew, Yaqub Sanu, who first established a significant native theater.

3 Yaqub Sanu and the Rise of the Arab Drama in Egypt

Sanu's Life and Varied Activities Yaqub Rafail Sanu was born at Cairo in February 1839. His family was Jewish, although one contemporary Egyptian critic, Ibrahim Abduh, makes him out to be a Muslim. 1 Sanu's memoirs, which Abduh read in Paris, make no mention of an unusual story in support of this claim. His parents had lost four children before Yaqub was born. Therefore, his mother appealed to a venerable old man at al-Sharani Mosque to beseech God to protect and spare the child she was carrying. Like the prophets of old, the ancient told her that she would have a baby boy and added, "If you dedicate the child to the defense of Islam, then he will live." 2 This account does not make Sanu a Muslim. His mother was only following a common practice of Middle Eastern women, whatever their religious convictions. 3 In his memoirs Sanu does not refer to his Jewish origin. Some of his biographers, however, mention that he was brought up in Judaism, studied the Old Testament, and deserved to be called a Levite. 4 He may have been buried in a Jewish cemetery, as the records of the Consistoire Israélite de Paris show. 5 Evidently, his life and works show that Sanu never emphasized his Jewish heritage or allowed it to override his primary identity as an Egyptian. At twelve he could read the Old Testament in Hebrew, the Gospels in English, and the Quran in Arabic. He began to compose Arabic poetry at an early age, and one of his earliest works was a poem in praise of the principal of his school. On his father's advice, he composed a poem praising Ahmad Yagan, the grandson of Muhammad Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt, to whom he was chief consultant. When young Sanu read this poem in Ahmad Pasha's presence, the latter was so appreciative of the boy's precocity that he offered to send him to Europe to study at his own expense. Sanu was barely thirteen when his benefactor sent him to Livorno, Italy, where he spent three years. Soon after he returned to Egypt at the age of sixteen, Sanu lost both his father and his benefactor. He supported himself by teaching European 41

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languages and sciences to the sons and daughters of Egyptian dignitaries, and even to some members of the Viceroy's family. 6 Later he joined the staff of the Polytechnic School, most probably in 1863. During his six years there, he must have come in contact with many students who later played significant roles in Egyptian society and government. 7 In addition, he must have been intimate with intellectual leaders and no doubt took a strong part in Egypt's cultural awakening in the middle of the nineteenth century. When the Khedive Ismail came to power in 1863, Sanu admired him and composed a poem praising him for championing freedom and progress. Soon, however, he disliked the Khedive's policies and became his bitter critic. 8 Among his varied intellectual activities were the founding of cultural societies and the establishment of several newspapers and periodicals. These interests brought him into the circle of the great reformer and sage Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and the Shaykh Muhammad Abduh, with whom he was soon on intimate terms. 9 Al-Afghani and Abduh benefited from Sanu's knowledge of foreign languages and studied French under him. The sobriquet by which Sanu became known developed from this association. Having decided to establish a journal to satirize the misdoings of the Khedive Ismail, Sanu's friends al-Afghani and Abduh concluded that Sanu was best fitted to serve as its editor. They left the name of the projected paper to his discretion. When he left them, Sanu soon found himself surrounded by drivers each begging him importunately to hire his donkey for the ride home. As he tried to make his choice, he heard one driver shouting, "You with the blue glasses, please hire my donkey!" Sanu admired this new epithet—he was wearing blue sunglasses—and used it to name the new journal—Abu Nazzara Zarqa. The first issue of the journal appeared in 1878, and Sanu was known after that, both in Egypt and in Europe, as Abu Nazzara (the man with the glasses). 10 For many years Sanu devoted himself to introducing European culture to the Arab world and vice versa. He translated many Arabic poems into Italian and often published in English periodicals his many articles dealing with Arabic and Islamic literature. Three plays he wrote in Italian treating of Egyptian customs met with great success in Italy. 11 Sanu was soon disillusioned. In his many newspapers he bitterly criticized the wayward and arbitrary policies of the government. His papers were not devoted wholly to news and editorials. They included a mixture of cartoons, songs, letters, and commentaries whose sole purpose was to satirize the tyrannical rule of the Khedive. Sanu was the first Egyptian to use the European technique of political cartoons, a method that proved even more effective in Egypt than in Europe. 12 Although both his cartoons and his many articles avoided mentioning the Khedive by name, they sarcastically called him "Shaykh al-Hara" [i.e., Chief Man of the Quarter], a

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derogatory term in Egyptian Arabic slang. 13 Sanu's attack on the British occupation of Egypt was no less vehement. He carried this on not only in his publications, but also through the National Party, for which he was an influential spokesman. Sanu may even have devised the party's slogan, "Egypt for the Egyptians," 14 for throughout all his battles Sanu never claimed to be more than an ordinary Egyptian. He once emphatically told a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, "The English call me French, the French call me English, the Turks call me infidel; I am simply an Egyptian." 15 Sanu may have been pretentious about his claim to have established the first Arab theater in Egypt. 1 6 His memoirs describe Cairo in 1870 as swarming with Europeans, particularly French and Italians, and two troupes, one French and one Italian, presented many dramas in both languages on an open-air stage at the beautiful Azbakiyya Park. Sanu says that he took part in all these performances, for he deeply loved those languages and the works of the great dramatists he had read. He adds that the farces, comedies, operettas, and modern dramas moved him to establish an Arab theater, only after he had seriously studied such playwrights as Goldoni, Molière, and Sheridan in their own languages. When he had gained the necessary confidence, he wrote a one-act operetta in colloquial Egyptian, interspersed with popular songs. He chose ten of his most competent pupils, probably from the Polytechnic School, to perform it. 17 Sanu trained a boy to play the romantic female lead, since local custom forbade women to appear on the stage or in public. Sanu invited the Khedive to attend the performance of this operetta. Also, he encouraged him to establish a theater for the Egyptians who were not yet familiar with the dramatic arts. Most of them did not understand Italian operas and French comedies for which the Khedive had established two magnificent stages. Eventually, the Khedive gave his permission for performance of the operetta at the Azbakiyya Park. Sanu was pleased with this official support. More than three thousand people—Egyptians, European visitors and residents, the Khedive's retinue, and members of the foreign diplomatic corps— gathered to watch this novelty, an operetta in the Arabic language. The hall was packed with spectators, most of whom remained standing, when Sanu and his company faced an audience for the first time. He must have been deeply moved by the sight of thousands of people anxiously awaiting the performance. They were greeted with great applause, and he could hear voices shouting, "Excellent! Excellent!" in different languages, so that the hall sounded like the tower of Babel. Collecting his courage, Sanu introduced the actors, briefly explained the benefits of the theater. He apologized for any shortcomings in the performance. Sanu asked the audience to bear in mind that this was the first experiment of an Arab troupe in Egypt. Apparently, the performance was so successful that the audience asked that it be repeated.

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This experience encouraged Sanu to form a regular troupe, with two poor but nonetheless beautiful and honorable young women in the female roles. This innovation was welcomed, and the final reward came when the troupe was invited by the Khedive to perform on his private stage at Qasr al-Nil. They staged three comedies, Anisa ala al-Muda (A Fashionable Young Lady), Ghandur Misr (The Egyptian Dandy), and al-Darratayn (The Two Rival Wives). After the performance of the first two, the Khedive summoned Sanu and, in front of his ministers and entourage, declared, "We are indebted to you for the establishment of our national theater. Your comedies, operettas, and tragedies have introduced our people to the art of the drama. You are our Egyptian Molière, and your name shall forever be so." 18 It is plausible that the delighted Khedive was imitating Louis XIV, who admired and patronized the dramatists he invited to perform in his palace. 19 Later, his delight turned to absolute fury when he watched the third comedy, which revealed how polygamy results in the disruption of the family. Apparently seeing the play as a criticism of his own polygamous practices, the Khedive again summoned Sanu and sarcastically advised him, "My lord Molière, if you have not the endurance to please more than one wife, do not provoke others to be the same." 20 Sanu was advised to drop al-Darratayn from his repertoire or lose his theater. He chose to drop it, although it had already had 53 performances. 21 Nevertheless, Sanu's stage was closed forever in 1872 by order of the man who had earlier called him, seriously, the "Molière of Egypt." Sanu himself gives two principal reasons for this action: the resentment of the British and the hostility of Drahnet Bey, Superintendent of the Khedivial Theaters, and Ali Mubarak. Sanu says that Ismail asked him to perform three theatrical pieces in a great soirée attended by many prominent foreigners. The plays drew a long ovation from most of the audience, including the Khedive. The British dignitaries, however, became piqued when the chief character made a derogatory remark about John Bull. Either directly or through their agents at the Royal Palace, they convinced the Khedive that the plays presented by Abu Nazzara implied criticism of his government and policies. Also, they constituted an imminent danger to his rule and to the destiny of the country. 22 This accusation may or may not be justified. It is true, however, that Sanu was a consistent agitator against British rule in Egypt. He rarely missed an opportunity to rail against British policies and even composed one-act comedies criticizing their behavior and their actions. One of these attributes the sudden rises and declines in the stock market to speculation by foreigners, particularly the British. Sanu sees them as culprits because they manipulated the prices of commodities such as foodstuffs and agricultural produce. 23 Another dialogue, al-Sawwah wa al-Hammar (The

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Tourist and the Donkey Driver) ridicules the broken Arabic accent of an English tourist but makes no substantial criticism of the British. 24 It seems more probable that the Khedive's disenchantment came as the result of Sanu's sharp criticism, in words and pictures, of Ismail's own policies. 25 Sanu also complains that two men close to the Khedive—Drahnet Bey and Ali Mubarak, Minister of Education—were responsible for the demise of his theater. He claims that these adversaries used the press as a platform for attacking him. In his comedy Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih (The Molière of Egypt and What He Suffers), he says with great bitterness: I was happy and comfortable, without worry, until the day I became engaged in the theater and in the writing of riwayat (romances). Then I became sick and weak. My pupils left me, my work stood idle, and I had severe critics and enemies who out of sheer jealousy attacked me in the newspapers. I endured the machinations and vexation of my enemies for the sake of my compatriots. For example, I have been teaching at the Polytechnic School for three years, during which all my pupils were pleased and happy. When I established the Arab theater the crafty Minister Ali Mubarak became jealous of me, especially when our Lord [the Khedive] ordered him to increase our salaries. He immediately ordered my dismissal from the Royal Schools. 2 6

The same play speaks specifically against Drahnet Bey, who enjoyed the favor of higher-ups in the government. Besides his duties at the Opera, he supervised the Comédie Française, and regarded Sanu's newly established theater as a threat to his own domain. One character praises Sanu as the man who deserves to be called "the Molière of Egypt" because he has suffered for so long to establish an Arab theater. He insists that Drahnet Bey, a druggist who used to give injections to Abbas Pasha, has become the greatest enemy of Sanu's new Arab theater. Sanu, however, was prudent not to outwit Drahnet Bey or provoke him to anger. 27 It is more plausible that the Khedive closed down the theater because Sanu's "plays were regarded as subversive." 2 8 Sanu's opposition to polygamy, his criticism of the government in his play al-Watan wa al-Hurriyya (The Fatherland and Freedom), and his exposure of Ismail's tyrannical actions all must have goaded the Khedive to anger. The fact that Azharite Ulama joined Sanu in composing plays for his troupe to perform may have been the final blow. As the Egyptian writer Ibrahim Abduh points out, "It was not surprising that Sanu's theater should have been established under these difficult circumstances. More surprising is the Khedive's toleration of this theater for two years." 2 9 Muhammad Yusuf Najm argues that Sanu exaggerates his achievements both in his autobiography and in Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih, in which he relates his success and frustration in the theater. In his introduction to this play, Sanu merely calls Ismail his best friend, not mentioning the closing of his stage. 30

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The energetic Sanu soon found other outlets for his literary activities. In 1872 he established two societies; Mahfil al-Taqaddum (The Circle of Progress) and Jamiyyat Muhibbi al-Ilm (The Society of the Lovers of Knowledge), to promote literary knowledge and a better understanding of Egyptians, whatever their religious affiliation. 31 Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike were attracted to these societies by their liberal outlook. They contributed many lectures on various topics, which appealed both to such conservatives as Azharite Ulama and to army officers who followed the principles of liberty and equality. 32 In 1874 the Khedive ordered them disbanded and exiled some of their members to the White Nile (Upper Egypt). Here again, Sanu sees the British as villains. They wanted him to advocate and encourage their influence in Egypt and therefore took offense when he delivered a series of lectures on French history and literature: They took revenge on me and succeeded through base methods and cheap intrigues in intimating to the Khedive Ismail that these two societies had become a center for revolution. There was nothing for the Khedive to do but to prevent students and learned men from attending our meetings. The societies were then forced to close their doors. 33

Sanu and other Egyptians who were displeased with the Khedive's despotic rule and his suppression of criticism of his rule in the different media, particularly the press, next decided to keep their countrymen informed of Ismail's policies by translating and distributing articles, dispatches, and telegrams from European newspapers to the reading public. Furthermore, the members and supporters of the National Party resumed their secret meetings. When the Khedive countered by forbidding such translations, Sanu's criticism became even more outspoken. Incensed, the Khedive is said to have remarked, "This foolish 'Molière' is opening the eyes of my subjects more than he should by his lectures and poetry. If I do not eliminate him, I will never be able to rule or be obeyed." 34 The Khedive did get Sanu temporarily out of his hair in 1874, when Sanu went to Europe and stayed for some years. According to the Lebanese writer Philip Tarrazi, Sanu was there to study European political conditions and the character of the Europeans. He returned to Egypt filled with admiration for their progress, and fired with the zeal to introduce such modern civilization to the Egyptians. 35 Sanu's version of the trip, though vague, is substantially different. He claims that he suffered great hardships after the suspension of his societies and that the Khedive sent him to Europe on an important semiofficial mission. Upon his return, he submitted to the Khedive a detailed report of his accomplishment. Ismail prevented its publication for many years and finally destroyed it on the ground that it was revolutionary. He even

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refused to reimburse Sanu for the expenses of the trip, which amounted to 8,000 francs. 36 Sanu's strained relations with the ruler were relaxed when Ahmad Khayri Pasha, the Khedive's chamberlain and a former editor of al-Waqai al-Misriyya (The Egyptian Gazette), convinced the Khedive to trust a man whose activities reflected the great "renaissance" engendered by his own progressive rule. In return for his pardon, Ismail demanded that Sanu should be more moderate in his speeches and writings, and Sanu consented to these stipulations. After that, he tells us, he spent his evenings at the Royal Palace at Abdin and became acquainted with the Khedive's ministers. Some of these ministers asked him to teach their children French and English. Although Sanu resumed his custom of praising Ismail in verse whenever the occasion arose, the truce between the two was short-lived. 37 The more he watched the Khedive, the more he became disenchanted with "his crimes," and though he avoided the local press, he spoke out sharply in both private and public circles. 38 He claims that when Sharif Pasha, Ismail's Minister of Foreign Affairs and a friend and admirer of Sanu, urged the Khedive to introduce some reforms which would placate Sanu, the Khedive roared, threatening that if this arrogant fool did not keep silent, he would teach him how to do so, and that he would squash Sanu as he would a bug. Sanu presents this account in his 'Memoirs' as having been related to him by Sharif Pasha shortly before he died. 39 Sanu finally found a safe platform by asking for and getting the protection of the Italian Consulate, as many other freethinking journalists had done. Assured of security, he began to publish Abu Nazzara Zarqa, in 1878. 40 In all fifteen issues of this paper, Sanu never missed an opportunity to satirize the despotic rule of Ismail. He also lamented the deplorable conditions of the oppressed Egyptian peasant and the anomalies of the government. Furthermore, Sanu condemned the ambitions of foreign powers, particularly the French and British, in Egypt. He also filled it with diverse observations and his recollections of more than three decades. Apparently the paper was immensely popular; De Baignieres says that fifty thousand copies of it, "an enormous number for Egypt," were printed. 41 Sanu published in Abu Nazzara Zarqa some of his scathing one-act comedies satirizing the various conditions of the Egyptian society. He was careful, however, not to arouse Ismail's fury, avoiding any criticism of current political conditions and the Khedive's policies. 42 One of these comedies, al-Qirdati (The Monkey Showman), portrayed an authoritarian ruler whose voracious lust for money led him to exact severe taxes from the impoverished people, even at the cost of their lives or property. Another, Hukm Qaraqush (The Rule of Qaraqush), showed the oppression of the poor fallah (peasant), pointedly emphasized as the result of iniquitous taxes and the forced labor imposed upon him. 43 Still afraid

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that Ismail might retaliate against any overt criticism, Sanu invented the cryptic Shaykh al-Hara as the chief target of his caustic ridicule. To the poor fallah he gave the nickname "Abu al-Ghulb" (The Oppressed One). Sanu was no less harsh in denouncing the actions of Ismail's ministers and of members of the royal family. Abu-Nazzara Zarqa became a platform for the expression of liberal ideas and an advocate of the wronged and the oppressed. Its rebellious tone must have caused some new apprehension in the Egyptian "Pharaoh," as Sanu liked to call the Khedive Ismail. Sanu's defense of the Italian Jewish publisher Castelli, who was persecuted by the Khedive after having lived in Egypt for nearly half a century, exemplifies his noble purpose. 44 Finally, Ismail could no longer tolerate Sanu's attacks on him and his government. He was particularly outraged by the insinuations (which agreed with a current rumor) that the despotic Khedive had his own special way of eliminating his enemies: inviting them to his palace and serving them poisoned coffee. He decided to get rid of Sanu, by murder if necessary. 45 When his friends who were close to the Khedive realized that Sanu's life was in danger, they advised him to leave the country—and to be careful not to drink the Khedive's coffee. 46 The Khedive realized that he could not harm him without provoking trouble with Italy. Like many European states, Italy enjoyed extraterritorial privileges under the system of capitulations. Using diplomatic channels, the Khedive asked the Italian consul to expel Sanu from Egypt and suspend his journal. Sanu's version of the events leading to his deportation is ambiguous and he again blames his misfortune on the British. He claims that the British consul brought to Ismail's attention Sanu's articles praising French culture and convinced him to get rid of the journalist at any cost. 47 Sanu reports that two attempts were made on his life. One day in May 1878, as he was walking at Shubra, a hireling of the Khedive attacked him and stabbed him. Sanu fell to the ground, and his companion chased the assailant, calling police officers to arrest him. The police officer nearby allowed the culprit to escape, on the Khedive's prior instructions. Fortunately, the knife struck the buckle of Sanu's belt, and he was only injured. Later, the Khedive sent one of his men to shoot Sanu as he was entering his house at midnight. The bullet narrowly missed him but made a hole in the door. Sanu left the door unrepaired as evidence that the Khedive had tried to kill him. Some Egyptians, says Sanu, believed that he had escaped death because he had been carrying an amulet which protected him from danger. 48 After these failures, the Khedive used more peaceful and subtle methods to eliminate Sanu. He sent Khayri Pasha to obtain the name of the minister who had apparently provided the secret information about the Khedive's private life which Sanu published the night before the suspension

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of his journal. Khayri, if we may believe Sanu, even tried to bribe him to betray the ministers and assured him that his journal would be protected. He pointed out, however, that if Sanu persisted in refusing to divulge his sources, the Khedive's secret intelligence network would soon discover who had furnished him the information. Sanu was shocked to see an important man like Khayri Pasha acting as a spy for the Khedive. As he showed his visitor to the door, he said, "Tell Ismail that if he is treacherous, I am not, and that all the treasures of the world are not worth the shadow of my honor." 49 Khayri, moved by Sanu's strong sense of honesty, embraced him and tearfully thanked God for allowing him to meet an honest man. He wished that all Egyptians might follow Sanu and make the tyrant tremble before them. Sanu also felt that Khayri must have been carrying royal orders to kill him if he refused to provide information. Soon afterwards, the rumor spread through Cairo that Sanu had been shot in his bed. To the shocked people, the Khedive was a murderer and tyrant. Therefore, he had to act to calm down the restless masses. A few days later, Sanu writes, a group of officers, once his students, urged him to attack the royal palace at Abdin and save Egypt from the murderous Khedive. Sanu warned them, however, that such an action would give the British a reason to occupy the country. Moreover, he argued, since he was under the protection of the Masons, Ismail was extremely afraid to harm him. The Khedive of Egypt still had the power to banish him. This he did after he made Sanu lose his pupils and the support of those Europeans, particularly in the diplomatic service, who were studying Arabic under him. When Ismail ordered his deportation, Sanu left for Alexandria on June 22, 1878. Eight days later he boarded a French ship bound for Marseilles. 50 Sanu, who embellished his brief autobiography with his fertile imagination, makes his departure from Alexandria a dramatic event of national importance. On the day of his departure, he says, the masses became restless. Whenever his train stopped on the way from Cairo to Alexandria, women brought him fruit and lifted up their children to his compartment window, asking him to bless them. The peasants could be heard shouting, "Don't go and leave us in the clutches of Shaykh al-Hara!" On June 29, says Sanu, he was asked by his fellow citizens to visit the statue of Muhammad Ali at the Consuls' Square and bid them farewell. Here is his description of the final scene as he boarded the ship for Marseilles: The passage of time will never obliterate that moving scene. Under the sight of Ismail's spies, men and women of the city [Alexandria], rich and poor, passed before me, silently greeting me and wishing me happiness in subdued voices. On the next day, about noontime, I boarded the French

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ship "Freycinet," which took me to Marseilles. It was an august scene. The Khedive himself wanted to see me leaving the country. He passed by the wharf in his carriage, surrounded by his guards, while I was boarding the boat which carried me to the ship. The masses did not dare shout, 'Down with Ismail!' because there were too many police officers. Instead they shouted, 'Long live Abu Nazzara!' Other voices shouted more loudly, 'We demand a prophecy from you, O Shaykh!' I should admit that I was too perplexed to know what to say. I felt as if I had been inspired to say, 'One year from now Ismail will be exiled as I am today.' Circumstances dictated that this prophecy should become literally true. 51 Sanu's whole account is undoubtedly exaggerated. Khedive Ismail surely wanted to eliminate him, but he did not have to go through so many intrigues to get rid of one man. It is hardly likely that crowds of people, including women, who were traditionally in heavy seclusion and were forbidden to appear in public, came to the harbor in something like a popular demonstration to see Sanu off. Moreover, the account seems to contradict itself when it says that on June 29 the people who passed before Sanu greeted him in low voices, fearing the Khedive's spies, while the next day, in the presence of the Khedive himself, they shouted their approval of him. A similar exaggeration of his own role in provoking a rebellion against Ismail can be implied from Sanu's discussions with French journalists, particularly M. Jehan Soudan and M. Martin. 52 Actually, the French newspapers contributed enormously to his egotism. They attributed to him a greater role in stabilizing the Egyptian financial situation than the one assigned to the special Debt Commission. Once in Paris, where he feared no repression by the Khedive, Sanu vividly presented himself as a formidable Egyptian leader and revolutionary. De Baignières accurately described the aura of glory he built around himself: In these reports from James Sanua to Messrs. Jehan Soudan and Martin, one will perhaps notice that the Egyptian Molière has adopted a role which is not exactly outstanding for modesty. Not realizing this, he would have predicted and anticipated everything. There is perhaps in the above remarks a certain slight poetic exaggeration of which not too much should be made. These are just as common to the West as they are to the East; and from the moment we saw Alexandre Dumas convinced that he had personally produced the Revolution of July, and Lamartine was convinced that he was the instigator of the Revolution of February, we do not see why anyone should criticize the sincere but naive conviction of James Sanua that he was the sole author of the Egyptian Revolution, and that he had accomplished it singlehanded, or practically so. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the Egyptian Revolution up to this point had not achieved much, so that it would not have required much courage to claim the exclusive instigation of it.

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How, after all, could the egotism of Abu Naddara have resisted such inebriation when sober financial journals, especially La Réforme Financière, had assigned a special importance to the actions of his patriotic pamphlet, something he surely had never dreamed of, stating: 'We ask of our readers permission to present to them the man who by himself has done more for the holders of Egyptian bonds than the Debt Commission with all the members of the Investigation Commission, the committees, and all the journalists of Europe.' 5 3

Sanu's self-praise is clearly enunciated in Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih, 1:2, when Istephan says "Regarding our uncle James, let him be content with the praise he receives in Eastern and Western journals. Learned men testify that he is unique." This praise is repeated in the same play, 11:1. This is probably what motivated Sanu to give European reporters exaggerated reports about himself, being under no duress or fear of criticism. In his article "Masrah Yaqub Sanu," Anwar Luqa says that one should not believe all that Sanu said about himself in a lecture delivered in 1902 at the society La Coopération des Idées, later published in a pamphlet titled Ma Vie en Vers et mon Théâtre en Prose (1912). Luqa believes that Sanu published this lecture in hopes of reviving his forgotten fame by relating the account of his struggles and achievements, and that his recollection of his younger days may have been colored by his imagination which could depend also on a faulty memory. In any case, Sanu settled in Paris and continued to write. He published several journals, including Abu Nazzara Zarqa. It is probably the most interesting of all Sanu's journals for its analysis of many aspects of Egypt's history and especially of the Khedive Tawfiq's collaboration and subservience to the British authorities. In a very touching poem which appeared in the issue of January 19, 1883, Sanu rather satirically exposes the Khedive's connivance with the British. He devotes two full pages to a bitter criticism of British policy, not only in Egypt but in other countries, especially in India. He also uses a large part of this journal to relate the history and the development of the Mahdi's revolt in the Sudan. 54 Furthermore, Sanu established relations with prominent statesmen and men of letters both in France and in other European countries. In 1901 he met with the Khedive Abbas II but refused to return to Egypt, on the ground that the country was still under British occupation. 55 In 1908, he visited Istanbul, to participate in the Young Turks' celebration of the proclamation of the new constitution. For this occasion he wrote a tract in French, in rhymed prose approximating the Arabic saj style. His journalistic activity continued until December 1910, when the last issue of Abu Nazzara Zarqa appeared. Toward the end of his life his sight began to fail, and he ended his days in total blindness. He died in Paris on September 30, 1912. 56

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Sanu's Plays It is astonishing that a man of so many talents, who had played such a prominent part in the political and cultural movements in Egypt in the latter half of the nineteenth century, who was a colleague of Jamal al-Din alAfghani, and was the founder both of the first genuine Arab theater and of the first satirical journal in Egypt, should have been forgotten by later generations of Egyptian writers. Although having received thorough and serious attention from Western scholars and reporters, only very recently has Yaqub Sanu begun to attract the attention of contemporary Egyptian writers. Lebanese writer Philip Tarrazi, for instance, devoted a few pages to him in Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya (History of Arabic Journalism), published in 1913, but this was simply a short sketch which offered no critical study of Sanu's multifarious activities. The first Arab writer to interest himself seriously in Sanu's work was Ibrahim Abduh, who contacted Sanu's daughter, Mme. Louli Sanua-Milhaud, in Paris and obtained from her copies of some of her father's publications. Abduh, however, was chiefly interested in Sanu's journalistic activity and paid little attention to his dramatic output. 57 In 1956, Muhammad Yusuf Najm referred to the titles of those plays mentioned earlier by other writers or by Sanu himself in Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih (Beirut, 1912), dedicated to Philip Tarrazi. Najm believed that this was the only one of Sanu's thirty-two plays which had survived. He discovered later that Anwar Luqa had already contacted Sanu's daughter in Paris and obtained a manuscript copy containing eight of his plays. He hoped that Luqa would provide him with copies, so that they could be included in the published series on the Arab theater he was then undertaking. For reasons which Najm himself could not understand, Luqa refused. Finally Najm contacted Sanu's daughter directly and obtained another copy of the eightplay manuscript, which he published in 1963. 58 This incident should not, of course, detract from the credit due Anwar Luqa, for he was the first Arab writer to deal at length with Sanu's dramas, publishing a brief study of all of them in 1961.59 The interest of Arab writers in Sanu's dramatic works is growing, and there is already a booklength study of them. 60 Sanu's earliest theatrical pieces, including a one-act comedy about Egyptian customs, all met with great success when they were performed on Italian stages both in Egypt and in Italy.61 In French he wrote al-Salasil al-Muhattama (The Shattered Chains), an Ottoman patriotic drama which was published in Paris in 1911 and dedicated to the Ottoman Grand Vizier Husayn Hilmi Pasha. 62 He is also reported to have composed a French dialogue Boulala, yet unpublished. 63 But his major contribution was his many Arabic plays—thirty-two, by his own count—several of which are

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now available in print. Many of his dialogues and short comedies appeared in the journals he published in Egypt and Paris. 64 These plays cannot be judged in terms of classical literature. They are written chiefly in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, interspersed with many Italian and French terms. Their language does not follow Arabic grammatical rules and often deviates widely from conventional writing. 65 Moreover, when appropriate, different Arabic dialects and accents, especially for nonArab characters, are used. Although the text of the plays is clear and intelligible to readers familiar with colloquial Egyptian Arabic, it is much more difficult for others. 66 Sanu was aware of this problem, and in Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih he even dramatized the question of writing in colloquial language. One excerpt from that play will convey his views on the matter: Istephan:

This man [the Italian editor] is mad; no one will pay attention to what he says. We will succeed, while he will fail to achieve his goal.

Mitri:

In two words we can answer him, gag his mouth, and make him run to hide in his mother's lap. A comedy contains what takes place and what originates among people.

Istephan:

Well done, Mitri! Your words are like diamonds.

Mitri:

I wonder if, in their communication, people use grammatical or conventional language.

Istephan:

Never in their lives do authorities and learned men communicate with each other in grammatical language. 6 7

There is no doubt that Sanu's cardinal purpose was not to give the public reading material, but to provide pieces for the stage. Another passage makes it clear that composition of verse dramas is not difficult; what is difficult is to perform them. 68 Sanu, it should be remembered, did not write for the educated elite, as did his contemporary Adib Ishaq, and other Syrian and Egyptian writers. He wrote for the masses, in a simple but effective language that they could understand. 69 He also claims that he has written plays to satisfy his penchant for storytelling and romances, and to express social criticism in an acceptable form. 70 His aim was not to satisfy his audience with a cheap laugh or a passing thrill, but to deliver a message to his countrymen. 71 He wanted to arouse his fellow Egyptians' sense of human dignity, to reform customs which he regarded as either inappropriate or unethical. 72 It is hardly surprising therefore, that he emphasized social and moral themes in his works. The humorous nicknames Sanu gave Khedive Ismail, his son, and his ministers perfectly suited their position and behavior. "Shaykh al-Hara" was the chief of a small hara or quarter, the smallest administrative unit in

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the town. Ismail's son Tawfiq (good fortune, success) became "Tawqif" (detention, arrest) or "al-Wad al-Ahbal" (the foolish lad). The Prime Minister Riyad was "Abu Rid" (a derogatory diminutive name), and the Council of Ministers was "Jamiyyat al-Taratir" (the assembly of clowns). The oppressed peasants were given such humble but honorable epithets as "Abu Shaduf" (he who irrigates the land with the primitive shaduf), to symbolize the fallah's cultivating the land and irrigating it with the sweat of his brow, and the previously mentioned "Abu al-Ghulb" (the oppressed one). The cruel officials, mostly men of Turkish origin, were labeled "Kurbaj Aga" (Whip Aga) to symbolize their ruthlessness. 73 The use of such metaphorical language to disguise criticism is, of course, no novelty, in either Eastern or Western literature. Rifaa Rafi alTahtawi, for instance, had employed the device in his translation of Fenelon's Telemaque to criticize the Viceroy Abbas I, who banished him to the Sudan. Once Sanu had reached Paris, where he had no fear of repression, he attacked the Egyptian Khedive and government publicly, using the real names of the people involved. 74 Sanu's one-act comedy al-Qirdati Luba Tiatriyya Hasalatfi Ayyam alGhuzz Sanat 1204 A.//.(The Monkey Showman, a Theatrical Play which Took Place in the Time of the Ghuzz (The Mamluk Turks) in Egypt in 1204 A.H./A.D. 1789), portrays the oppression of the poor. Also, it shows the government's disregard for the lives and property of the common people, during the reign of the Ghuzz, who were notorious for their ruthless and unjust rule. Sa'd, the monkey showman, cannot pay his tax. The tax collector threatens to jail him and even entices him to steal if he must so he can pay. Finally, in desperation Sa'd steals the tax collector's donkey, sells it, and uses the proceeds to settle his tax problem. 75 A one-act farce, Hukm Qaraqush (The Rule of Qaraqush, a powerful figure in the Ayyubid state founded by Saladin in the 12th century, known for his cruelty), also set in the times of the Ghuzz, concerns a peasant who must submit to forced labor and must even sell his ox to pay his taxes. 76 Sanu himself described another one-act comedy, Shaykh al-Hara (Chief Man of the Quarter), as a theatrical play which takes place in the time of the Pharaohs. Yet the dramatization of the disenchantment of both the people and the army with authoritarian policies is strictly contemporary in tone. Shaykh al-Hara is worried about the restlessness of the people, particularly those in the army, who have been alienated by his oppressive policies. He is plagued by fears, suspecting that there is a plot by army officers, students, and peasants to kill him and take the money which he "earned by the sweat of his brow." He trusts no one, not even his closest confidants. His repressive measures prove useless in preventing a revolt by all sections of the population. The revolutionists finally deliver the ruler to the Turkish authorities, who take him out of the country.

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In this short portrayal of the unity of all sections of the population against Ismail's rule, Sanu includes the Azhar's Ulama, who joined the revolt. He contrasts the Egyptians' courage, self-respect, and willingness to fight for their rights with Ismail's cowardice, selfishness, and haste to flee the country with the money he has stolen from the people. For modern readers, the play also recalls the revolt against Farouk (one of Ismail's descendants) in 1952, which led to his deposition and his flight to Europe with large amounts of money. 77 Even after Ismail's removal from office, Sanu feared that the deposed Khedive might one day regain the throne and resume his abusive policies. This concern is expressed in Jursat Ismail (Ismail's Scandal), a comedy that exposes the ruler's intrigues to have his son and successor Tawfiq dethroned. The scene is the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the ex-Khedive is residing with some of his lackeys and wives. Ismail lavishes substantial amounts of money on the British and Italians in Egypt. He also pays journalists in Paris to convince both the Egyptians and the foreign observers to accept his restoration to the throne. A French journalist who plans to expose a great scandal involving Ismail refuses a substantial sum of money to keep silent. He sues Ismail and obtains a court order to freeze his assets. The appearance of court officials at Ismail's hotel suite sends his harem into a panic. Realizing that he must either pay a fine or have his belongings confiscated, he uses the money originally intended for the journalist to pay the court officials. The ghost of Abu Nazzara appears to gloat over the predicament of the bewildered ex-Khedive, who cannot understand why this specter harasses him continuously. This comedy quite plainly exposes Ismail's infinite selfishness, his concern for power rather than for the people. The author presents himself as a ghost, symbolizing all those Egyptian journalists who have been persecuted by Ismail. He appears at intervals to comment on an incident or encourage an opponent to stand his ground against the despot. 78 In al-Wad al-Mariq wa Abu Shaduf al-Hadhiq (The Playboy and the Clever Abu Shaduf), which dramatizes the oppression of the peasants by the ruthless government officials, particularly those of Turkish origin, Sanu exposes the weak character of the Khedive Tawfiq and his submission to the will of his chief minister Riyad. When the Turkish official Nabbut Bey (Club Bey, whose name symbolizes the forcible exaction of taxes) learns that the Khedive will visit his directorate in Upper Egypt, he orders Kurbaj Aga to gather the peasants and make them raise money to pay for the state reception. The Aga threatens to whip with the kurbaj everyone who fails to pay. The peasants reject such oppressive methods and rise against Nabbut Bey. When Khedive Tawfiq arrives, the peasants complain and implore him for mercy, but he is not at all interested in their welfare and pays them no

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attention. Since they expect nothing from a powerless ruler, they mock and even attack him. The Khedive screams to his soldiers for help and they manage to carry him to a waiting ship. The two peasants, Abu Shaduf and Abu Qas'a, who are thought to be the instigators of the uprising, take to their horses and escape. Although the theme of this comedy is not new, it is more effectively constructed than Sanu's other one-act plays. Its action is efficiently manipulated and the main idea dexterously brought home. Sanu shows that the worsening conditions under Tawfiq and the ignorance of the Turkish officials who disregard the peasants' plea that they have no money to pay for the celebration, lead to a logical outcome—revolt, even physical assault, against the Khedive. 79 In Zamzam al-Miskina (Poor Zamzam), the characterization of a poor, oppressed breadseller is weak, but the play is largely successful in conveying the conditions of life for the poor in Egypt. The scene is Suq alSilah street in the Old Cairo district, where Zamzam sits with her basket of bread for sale, her little child, with his face smeared with dirt, next to her. It is the end of the day, and Zamzam, who has not sold her bread, is happy to see a government official approaching her to buy her wares. The unlucky woman does not realize that the official has come to demand that she pay a fee for occupying a place on the street. She insists that she is too poor to pay such a fee, adding that she has heard that the Khedive promised to abolish this tax. The official explains that the question of taxes has passed from the Khedive's control to the foreign consuls. When she says that she will seek support among the religious leaders, she is told that the Khedive (Tawfiq) has already won them over with bribes. Zamzam refuses to pay any tax, and the official begins to beat her. Her cries for help attract a crowd of Muslims and non-Muslims, and some of them take advantage of the chaos to steal her bread. Her appeals for help are lost amid the noise, and while attempting to escape, she drops her child, who is trampled to death by the crowd. Zamzam is caught and brought before another official, seated next to a foreign consul. She is told to pay the tax or become subject to punishment according to the law. Scoffing at such laws, which do not protect the rights of the poor, she appeals to the foreign consul to intercede for her with the official so that she can be exempted from the tax. The consul does so, and the Egyptian official obeys. As she departs, the heroine mourns the loss of her child and condemns the bad times: poverty and injustice prevail, and infidel Christian consuls alone choose to intercede for the believers. 80 Although the affliction of Zamzam and her like is carefully revealed, this ignorant, illiterate breadseller seems more politically sophisticated than she would be drawn from real life, especially during her argument with the government official about the intervention of foreign consuls in

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the domestic affairs of the country. She also displays a fair knowledge of the prominent position of the Azhar's Ulama, weakened by their indifference in upholding their rights. (The author offers no conclusions on these matters, but leaves them to the judgment of his audience). 81 The extant full-length dramas of Sanu do not treat political or social subjects per se. Their praise of Ismail and his achievements seems quite paradoxical in view of the author's usual antagonistic attitude toward the Khedive and his policies. These dramas, perhaps wisely, deal only with such matters as love and marriage, polygamy, and the Egyptians' indiscriminate imitation of European customs and manners irrelevant to an Eastern society. In one of them, for example, the stock market provides the background for a love affair ending in marriage. Another sets forth the hardships the author encountered in establishing his theater and in training and caring for his actors. Today only the eight dramas written in Arabic, as published by Muhammad Yusuf Najm in 1963, and some other lesser pieces written in European languages are available. 82 One of these dramas, a lively one-act operetta, dramatizes the adventure of a European prince in a harem in Cairo. Sanu says that young European visitors to the East have only one desire—to have an adventure in a harem, through the mediation of an Aga (chief eunuch). The matter is not so easy as these young men would like to imagine, for harems are tightly guarded, and intruders may expose themselves to danger. The hero of this unidentified drama is a young European prince who bets Ahmad, the son of an Egyptian pasha, a thousand Egyptian pounds that one month in Cairo will be enough for him to carry off an adventure in a harem. When he does finally arrange to be alone with a concubine, she describes the unbearable life of the harem, in a song which contains this supplication: Save me, O noble son of Europe, from this gloomy palace, which is like a tomb for the living. Save your loving dove from the hands of that old man who defiles her tender body with his unclean caresses, and wilts her lips with his lifeless kisses. Take me far away to your country, and I swear that I will brighten your life by my nearness to you, and by my beauty and kisses. 8 3

According to Sanu, the early part of this scene enraged the spectators, mostly Egyptians who did not wish to see a European, presumably a Christian, trying to elope with a Muslim woman. The supplications of the concubine move the prince, but the lovers are surprised by the sudden appearance of the pasha, the master of both the palace and the harem, with four police officers. Enraged, the pasha orders the police officers to bind the unfaithful concubine back to back with her lover, put them in a sack, and throw them to the crocodiles of the Nile. The

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prince, not yet in the sack, protests the pasha's actions, calling them base and treacherous. Unmindful of these comments, the pasha coolly asks the prince who will receive the winnings from his wager with Ahmad. The frightened prince not only offers the pasha the amount of the bet, but even promises to double it in exchange for his release. At this point, the pasha removes his large white beard, revealing to the unbelieving prince that he is none other than Ahmad. Also, the pretty concubine removes her veil and, to the prince's utmost frustration, is discovered to be a handsome Syrian actor who has artfully played the role of a concubine. One police officer laughingly tells the European prince that he should not believe the legend current among so many European young men that they can venture into a harem without being caught. Finally, everyone is invited to a sumptuous dinner party in the palace garden. 84 Sanu's summary implies that his main purpose in writing this drama was to criticize the harem system, which was a social abuse. He appears to have been extremely cautious not to anger those Egyptians who had harems. Sanu ends his drama by reassuring the audience that what they had heard and seen is not true, merely contrived. Without condemning the harem system, he shows the social ills and problems it produces, particularly the inevitable infidelity of the inmates, who must find outlets for their suppressed emotions. The drama is reminiscent of similar adventures in The Arabian Nights, although the scene is strictly contemporary. 85 Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr (A Comedy Called Egypt's Stock Exchange), reveals the failure of a marriage based solely on material considerations. Yaqub, the president of a financial company, is in love with the pretty sixteen-year-old Labiba, daughter of the banker Salim, but he lacks the courage to ask for her hand in marriage. Salim in turn wants to give his daughter to Halim, a young man she does not love. Salim also considers it his duty as a friend of Yaqub's father to see that Yaqub marries the daughter of his chief clerk Ishaq. But when Labiba refuses to marry Halim, her father suggests that they become engaged for six months, after which she may either marry him or break the engagement. After much conversation designed to persuade her that Yaqub is socially and financially unacceptable as a suitor, Labiba accepts her father's suggestion. In her heart, however, she is determined to marry Yaqub. At the banquet given by Salim for Labiba's engagement to Halim, a broker rushes in. He informs the guests that he has received a telegram from London saying that relations between England and the United States have become tense over the Alabama incident. 86 The telegram also contains the disturbing news that the value of banknotes and bonds has declined. Halim is alarmed because, just a few days earlier, he had invested his money in bonds and banknotes on the advice of his broker. He is threatened not only with bankruptcy, but also with the loss of his fiancée. Furious, he leaves the banquet and goes to the Stock Market to find out the

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facts. In his absence, Yaqub and Labiba join hands and kneel down before her father to receive his blessing and approval of their engagement. Apparently she has convinced her father that love is stronger than money. Halim returns to tell everyone that the news they have just heard is false but discovers that he has lost both his fiancée and a marriage which would have given him money and prestige. 87 Another drama, Komedia Tusamma bi al-Alil (A Comedy Called The Patient), in two acts and seventeen scenes, uses the illness of a character to defend modern medical methods against the claims of quacks, and also to praise the hot-water baths founded by the Khedive Ismail at Hulwan. To make the drama more palatable, Sanu also introduces a love story. Habib, a widower with a pretty young daughter named Hanim, complains of a nervous ailment caused by his shock over the death of his brother at Istanbul. When he asks his servant to summon Zahi Effendi, a famous physician at Qasr al-Ayni Hospital, the servant, who believes in superstition more than medicine, brings instead a quack, one Shaykh Ali. Habib refuses to be attended by such a man but is convinced by his daughter that a treatment cannot do any harm. Ali claims to have the talisman of King Solomon and boasts that he can call forth devils and jinn (genies) and imprison them in glass jugs. He tells Habib that if he wishes to recover, he should make a vow regarding whatever he considers most valuable. Habib, who values nothing more highly than his daughter, vows to give her in marriage to the person who heals him. Then Ali gives Habib a talisman, claiming that it will cure him. Habib alternately fears that the talisman will have the desired effect (in which case Ali will marry Hanim) and feels confident that Ali is a quack and cannot cure him. Finally the physician, Zahi Effendi, advises Habib to bathe at the sulphur springs at Hulwan. Mitri, a young man who loves Hanim, hastens to Hulwan to tell the physician in charge, Kibrit Bey (Sulphur Bey) about Habib's vow and is assured that if Kibrit Bey succeeds in curing her father, Mitri can marry his beloved. When Habib arrives at Hulwan, he meets Elias, a friend of Mitri's, who has great difficulty speaking. Upon hearing Elias stuttering, Habib bursts into laughter and feels so much better that he believes he is cured. Elias, who also knows of Habib's vow, asks for Habib's daughter's hand. After an argument between the two suitors Kibrit Bey intervenes for Mitri, telling Habib that he has been cured not because of Elias, but because of the warm sulphur waters of Hulwan. 88 Komedia Tusamma bi Abu Rida al-Barbari wa Ma 'shuqatuh Tusamma Ka'b al-Khayr (A Comedy Called Abu Rida the Berber and His Beloved Called Ka'b al-Khayr), a play in two acts and eleven scenes, treats another aspect of Egyptian society, matchmaking. It also deals with the relations between domestic servants and their employers. Abu Rida (a male servant) and Ka'b al-Khayr (a female cook), both Nubian domestics, work at the

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home of al-Sitt (Lady) Bunbah. Bunbah discovers that Abu Rida loves Ka'b al-Khayr, but Ka'b al-Khayr loathes Abu Rida for his laziness. She asks her mistress al-Sitt Bunbah to replace him with another male servant. When Bunbah tells Ka'b al-Khayr of Abu Rida's feelings, she becomes angry, for she believes there are no good Berbers and Abu Rida is one. What is more she asks, if Abu Rida truly loves her, why does he flirt with the neighbor? Meanwhile, Nakhla, a rich cloth merchant who owns four shops in the Hamzawi quarter and is in love with al-Sitt Bunbah, elicits the aid of Mabruka, a matchmaker, who tells him that al-Sitt Bunbah will not marry until she has solved the problem of her two domestic servants. Nakhla promises Ka'b al-Khayr ten silk dresses if she will marry Abu Rida. Yet, neither this offer nor his joint efforts with Mabruka persuade her to accept him as a husband. In despair, Abu Rida attempts suicide before Ka'b alKhayr. He ties his turban around his neck to strangle himself, but she remains unmoved. Then he seizes a knife, and just as he is about to stab himself, she rushes to tell him that now she is certain that he loves her. Finally she marries Abu Rida, while her mistress marries Nakhla. 89 The delicate subject of polygamy is treated in the Komedia Tusamma bi al-Darratayn (A Comedy Called The Two Rival Wives), 90 the play which aroused Khedive Ismail's fury. Ahmad, the central figure, is a lower-middle-class Egyptian whose friends usually call him "Malik" (king). He spends most of his time smoking hashish with his friends. Although Sabiha, his wife of fifteen years, is faithful and devoted to him, Ahmad is captivated by Fattuma and desires to marry her. He convinces his wife that she needs a helper around the house, and that Fattuma is just the person. Sabiha reluctantly accepts, but, of course, the two wives begin to fight constantly. Ahmad's life becomes miserable, and he eventually divorces and expels both wives. Soon, however, he discovers that although he is free, he is lonely and unable to manage by himself. He realizes that he has made a great mistake in taking a second wife. Sabiha feels that she should have been more understanding of her husband's situation and returns to him, admitting her mistake. Ahmad is soon reconciled with her and promises not to disrupt their married life again. 91 Another drama dealing with love and marriage, Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa A'ni Zawaj al-Sitt Warda ma Ibn Ammiha, (A Comedy Called Friendship, or the Marriage of Lady Warda to Her Cousin), focuses on three couples. Najib and his sister Warda are orphans who have been living for four years in Alexandria with their Aunt Safsaf, a rich widow who has taken good care of them. Warda loves her young cousin Naum, who is studying in England, and they have vowed to marry after his return. She is worried because for three months she has not received a letter from him. Her brother Najib loves Taqla, the daughter of the Syrian merchant Nimat Allah, who is himself in love with the widow Safsaf and wants to marry her. 92

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A young Englishman meets Warda at a party, admires her, and asks his friend Nimat Allah to ask her aunt for her hand. Warda naturally refuses because she is waiting to marry her cousin, who is in England. When Safsaf tries to convince her niece to marry the young Englishman because her cousin must by now have found an English young woman, Warda tearfully answers that she will never betray him. The young Englishman tells her that he knows her cousin in England, and that the cousin has become engaged to his sister and will soon marry her. Warda faints upon hearing this news but soon recovers and prepares to leave the house when her aunt rebukes her for not marrying the young Englishman. The suitor follows her to the door and reveals his real identity. Naum has disguised himself and played this role to test Warda's love and devotion. In the end Warda marries him, her aunt marries the wealthy merchant, and her brother Najib marries Taqla. 93 In the Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira al-Iskandaraniyya (A Comedy Called The Alexandrian Princess), a drama in two acts, Sanu criticizes the middle-class Egyptians who indiscriminately mimic European life and customs. Ibrahim, a small merchant who lives with his wife Maryam and daughter Adila, is quite content until the day he becomes wealthy. Maryam begins to imitate everything French, even speaking French at home as a sign of her sophistication. She despises her husband because he cannot speak French and accuses him of being ignorant. She insists on his employing a French maid, believing that Arab maids are ignorant and inferior. When a simple clerk, Yusuf, asks to marry her daughter because they are in love, she cannot believe his audacity. Maryam and Adila, her daughter, later encounter a young Frenchman, Victor, at the theater. The next day he hands Maryam two letters. One is from his father, whom the family met in Paris, asking them to take care of his son. The second letter is from Victor himself, asking for Adila's hand. The prospect of such a match greatly pleases Maryam: Victor is not merely French but has the title of a chevalier. The only condition of the marriage would be that she must wait for two weeks while he completes some business in Cairo. He and Adila would be married upon his return. During his absence, Adila and Yusuf devise a plan to deceive her parents. Disguised as Victor, Yusuf comes to the house ahead of schedule to take Adila to be presented before the French Consulate, where they are to be married. The deception is successful. While they are gone, however, Victor's father unexpectedly appears with the shocking news that he had planned to take Victor with him to France to marry his cousin. When the couple returns from the Consulate, the whole truth is revealed. Yusuf has impersonated Victor to marry her. Maryam is shocked and faints. When she recovers, her husband begins to mock her and pins on her breast a medallion recently presented to him by the government, an appropriate prize for someone so obsessed with the

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externalities of life. Victor's father calmly tells her that titles, decorations, and money are nothing compared to what man can earn by honorable conduct and a good reputation. 94 Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih (The Egyptian Molière and What He Suffers) is entirely different from Sanu's other plays. Here the author expresses the theory that theater should dramatize life and explains the hardships he encountered in establishing the Arab theater in Egypt. 9 5 Sanu apparently wrote the play to disprove the criticism of an Italian journalist in Alexandria (possibly the editor of l'Avvenire d'Egitto) who had charged that the Arab theater was undeveloped and that the dramas were written in colloquial and ungrammatical language. The play was also a deliberate affront to the director of the Khedive's stage, who had reportedly told Ismail, after viewing the performance of Sanu's troupe at the Royal Palace, that Sanu himself was a charlatan. 96 The text reveals that Sanu chose certain actors to play certain roles. He may have been influenced by the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. More important is that his drama betrays the unmistakable influence of Molière's L'Impromptu de Versailles, which treats the problems of a theatrical company's director with his actors and actresses. The criticism of Sanu's composition and dramas also recalls the play Le Portrait du Peintre, which Boursault wrote to criticize Molière's comedy L'École des femmes.91 There is no question that Sanu wrote this play with one purpose, to praise himself and what he considers his unparalleled achievement, the founding of the first Arab theater in Egypt. It is important to remember that these plays were written to be acted, not read. The fact that the dialogue is in colloquial Arabic makes it more difficult to understand the humor and meaning. Furthermore, the text is sometimes complicated by many foreign terms, chiefly Italian and French. The humor in these dramas derives not only from subtle situations and odd characters, but also from the different accents of non-Arab characters. The broken Arabic of the Nubian characters in the Komedia Tusamma bi Abu Rida al-Barbari wa Ma'shuqatuh Tusamma Ka'b al-Khayr; of the European maid Theresa in Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr; of another maid, Carolina, in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira al-lskandaraniyya\ of the Greek physician Charalambo in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Alil must have provoked continuous laughter from the audience. 98 While Sanu attempts, often successfully, to dramatize life in Egypt as he sees it, the published texts do not emphasize the settings or provide accurate descriptions of them. In Act I of Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira alIskandaraniyya the setting is specified as a sumptuously furnished room at the home of one of the characters. There is no detailed description of the home, the room, or its furnishings. 99 The first act of Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr is set "in the coffeehouse outside the Stock Market." There is no hint about where the stock market is, what kind of coffeehouse it is, and

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why the characters meet there. The action of the second act occurs "at the home of Khawaja Salim," but Sanu gives us no information about the location or type of house. Throughout the play there are intermittent allusions to places or furniture, but they have no connection with the characters or their daily lives. Although the two acts of the Komedia Tusamma bi Abu Rida al-Barbari wa Ma'shuqatuh Tusamma Ka'b al-Khayr take place in the home of al-Sitt Bunbah, we are not given even the slightest information about the house that would throw some light on the life of Bunbah and her two domestic servants. The same criticism applies to all of Sanu's dramas, both full-length pieces and one-act comedies. Unlike his one-act plays, whose characters are drawn from the peasantry and lower classes of Egypt, Sanu's full-length dramas are peopled with middle or upper-middle class Egyptians. There are bankers and physicians, merchants and actors, and even princes and pashas. They are welleducated—some have received their schooling in Europe—and financially secure, for they live comfortably and can afford to employ domestic servants. They are largely bound up in their own concerns. Nowhere do they seem engaged in the political and social affairs of their country. They do not play any role in advancing their own society. It is not hard to understand why these plays are peopled by such politically passive middle-class characters. When Sanu wrote and staged them between 1870 and 1872, he was moving in high society circles and enjoying the favor of the Khedive Ismail. Himself in a sound financial position, he showed little concern for the poor classes, especially the peasants. It was after Khedive Ismail closed down his theater in 1872 that Sanu felt the heavy-handed rule of the Khedive. What made him more aware of the plight of the oppressed classes was his loss of income from the Polytechnic School and from private tutoring. Yet while he remained in Egypt he was unable to dramatize their tragedy for fear of retaliation by Ismail. Therefore, it was only after he went to Paris that he used all of his talents to defend the Egyptian peasants in his one-act comedies. Although some of the characters in Sanu's longer works are peasants, petty clerks, junior bank employees, and other middle-class types, like the characters in al-Darratayn, I cannot support the contention of the Egyptian writer Abd al-Hamid Ghunaym that Sanu's intention in depicting their conditions was to instigate them to revolt against the government. 100 The minor clerks Najib in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa and Yusuf in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira al-Iskandaraniyya eventually marry wealthy young women; Sanu's portrayal of such characters is on the whole neutral rather than sympathetic. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the Egyptian peasants ever revolted because of their oppression by the government as portrayed in Sanu's dramas. Sanu's characters are lively, and truly express the problems of their society. The extreme generality of the settings, though portraying a very

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limited section of the society, does reflect the universality and significance of his central ideas. The characters need no specific location in time and place to be understood. In his dramas, Sanu shows concern for the inferior treatment of women in a Muslim society. For example, young ladies like Labiba in Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr, Warda in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa, and Adila in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira al-Iskandaraniyya, who supposedly live in a country where women possess neither rights nor freedom, defy parental authority and marry the young men whom they love. On the other hand, the parents are portrayed as traditionalists who believe that they best understand what is good for their children and therefore consider it their right and responsibility to choose the proper husbands for their daughters. Plots such as this one show Sanu's progressive and daring ideas in a society where women enjoyed limited freedom. Sanu is less successful in projecting the true character of the lovers who marry these young ladies. They are feckless, shy, and timid. Yaqub in Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr sends many love letters to Labiba but does not have the courage to ask her father for her hand. 101 Mitri in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Alil is so conservative that he calls his beloved Hanim his "sister" as an expression of respect, and when she tells him that if her father wants to give her in marriage to Habib she will refuse, he advises that she should not disobey her father. 102 Only Naum in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa appears slightly adventurous: he goes through some difficulty in disguising himself to win his beloved Warda. The characters in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Darratayn, particularly Sabiha and Fattuma, provide a believable picture of a house shared by two rival wives. The feud between them becomes intensely dramatic when each comes to believe the husband has sought to serve only her interests. Sabiha, the first wife, contends that Ahmad has married the young and pretty Fattuma not for her beauty, but so that she can help with the house chores. Fattuma argues that Ahmad has married her for her beauty and youth, since Sabiha has become old and unattractive. 103 It is interesting that Sabiha wishes she had the right to marry again, to show Ahmad what having a rival in the house would mean. 104 Ahmad is irresponsible and does not understand the problem which he has created. He is mistaken in thinking that divorcing both wives will settle the matter. Sanu shows great skill and facility in handling the dialogue of his plays. By accurately rendering both idioms and nuances, Sanu faithfully captures the thoughts and life-style of the class he portrays. He knows the language and topics of conversation of the peasants, bourgeoisie, and high society. He is equally adept at reproducing specific speech patterns, including the Nubian accents of the servants in Komedia Tusamma bi Abu Rida al-Barbari wa Ma 'shuqatuh Tusamma Ka 'b al-Khayr and the European

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accents of Theresa in Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr, Carolina in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira al-Iskandaraniyya, Charalambo and Kibrit Bey in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Alil, and Mr. Hinges (most likely Higgins) in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa. Perhaps outstanding among Sanu's accomplishments in this regard, however, are the representations of Nimat Allah's Syrian dialect in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa and Elias's stutter in Komedia Tusamma bi al-Alil. Sanu's dramas not only attracted a large audience of Egyptians of all classes, but also provoked the curiosity and interest of the spectators. The audience became involved with the stage, sometimes to the point of participating in the action. De Baignières quotes a journalist writing for the Saturday Review, who praised Sanu's theater, stating that the audience frequently made comments or suggestions to change the end of a play to satisfy their wish for happy endings. Sometimes the spectators would tell the actors what to do, or incite one character against another. In a love scene, for example, they would exclaim, "Let us see whether you will let your rival take your beloved away from you," or, "How can you prefer such a stupid and arrogant man to this decent and respectable young man?" When these comments came, Sanu was hiding backstage, ready to prompt the actors with the right answers to save them from embarrassment. 105 Sanu also remarks that the quality of his audience improved considerably in the second year of his theater. Intelligent, responsive, and interested, it represented all segments of Egyptian society. Its direct interventions in the performance turned the most serious situations into occasions for roaring laughter. In the drama Ghandur Misr (The Egyptian Dandy), of which a summary survives, Sanu did not realize that the actress he had assigned the role of a desperate lover hated the actor who was to play opposite her. The poor actor truly loved the actress and was grateful for the opportunity to perform a love scene with her. After the actress finished a line expressing her love, the actor, taking her acting as the truth, elatedly turned to her and whispered softly, "May God bless this stage which finally humbled you and made you express your love to me before thousands of spectators." The actress became furious and, forgetting that she was on stage, slapped the presumptuous actor in the face. She turned to the audience and declared that the words of love she had whispered to the conceited actor did not represent her true feelings. "For," she continued, "I would rather be blind than love him. It is the author, the Egyptian Molière, who put these words in my mouth." Sanu says he was shocked and utterly embarrassed by the incident. To his complete disbelief, the audience roared in laughter and applauded. They were so amused by the feud that they demanded a repetition of this incident. Sanu had them repeat it throughout the play's month-long run, for the poor actor thought himself fortunate to be slapped at every performance by the woman he loved. Finally,

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perhaps because of this reiterated scene, the actress relented, changed her mind, and married the actor. 106 Sanu tells another story about the audience's participation in the twoact drama al-Bint al-Asriyya (The Modern Young Woman), of which only a summary survives. Safsaf, the heroine, was an adventuress who, because of her indiscriminate imitation of Western ideas and manners, abused her freedom and overstepped the limits set for her by society. Because of her constant flirting, her fiancé broke their engagement. She was branded as promiscuous; no man would marry her, and she was left brokenhearted and forlorn. The audience did not like this sad ending for the beautiful and vivacious Safsaf and hissed and booed. They implored Sanu to make Safsaf marry a young man worthy of her beauty and youth. The spectators even threatened that if he refused, they would never applaud him or attend his theater. He had to bow to their wishes, though the alteration ran counter to the play's logical structure. 107 The influence of Sanu's theater on the conservative elements of Egyptian society was apparently tremendous. He seems even to have stirred the imagination of the Azharite Ulama, who had never before been stirred to writing a play. Al-Shaykh Muhammad Abd al-Fattah, a learned friend of Sanu's, composed a tragedy titled Layla, which was performed on Sanu's stage. Cabinet ministers, scholars, and poets attended the performance, and the audience's response was quite favorable. During a scene depicting the killing of four sons of a tribal chief by a ruthless despot, however, a wag slyly whispered to two newly assigned police officers in the audience that it was their duty to prevent people from being murdered. The gullible police officers jumped to the stage and arrested the "murderer" amid the jeers and laughter of the spectators. 108 Such incidents reflect Sanu's importance as the creator of a native theater using familiar rather than classic situations. His social comedies reflect his profound understanding of the ethos of the Egyptian people, whose strengths and foibles he depicted more accurately than the Syrian dramatists working simultaneously. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Sanu's plays were ever presented to the public after 1872, though his antagonist the Khedive Ismail was deposed in 1879. Fear of the government's wrath or the prevalent mood for using Western plays may account for this silence.

4 Abd Allah Nadim and the Art of the Popular Dialogue

Abd Allah Nadim (1845-1896), was a uniquely versatile figure in Egyptian literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. He was a writer, an essayist, a journalist, a fiery orator, a composer of maqamas, and a first-rate poet in both classical and colloquial Arabic. Furthermore, he was a social reformer, a nationalist, and a defender of traditional Arabic values against the Westernizers who maintained that the Arab East was effete. He staunchly upheld the Arabic language as evidence of national unity and the vitality of the Arab ethos, and sharply criticized those Egyptians who conversed in Western jargon, mostly French, to show contempt for their mother tongue. Nadim was also well known for his keen wit and exhilarating humor. He could challenge the adabatiyya, street performers who were talented enough to extemporize poetry to make a living and entertain the public, by improvising wittier poetry than theirs. Nadim was a prolific writer, some of whose works have survived, while others are completely lost. Most of all, he was a genuine Egyptian who sprang from the very soil of Egypt and identified himself with the poor, the peasants, the downtrodden. In every sense Nadim personified the true Egyptian countryman (Ibn al-Balad). 1 It is not fortuitous that some writers describe him as "the advocate of the homeland Egypt," "the orator of the East," and the "reviver of nationalism." 2 For his remarkable poetical and oratory talent, the Orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb calls Nadim the Tyrtaeus (seventh-century B.C. Spartan elegiac poet) of the Arab literary revival movement. 3 Abd Allah Nadim was born in Alexandria to a poor family. His father Misbah had a small bakery, barely sufficient to make a decent living. Like most Muslim boys, Nadim attended the Quranic school in his district, where he learned reading and writing and memorized portions of the Quran. Struggling financially, his father sent him not to the Azhar but to the Anwar Mosque, where he learned Islamic jurisprudence, logic, grammar, and morphology. But young Nadim was not satisfied with the rigid 67

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method of teaching at the mosque and eventually left it.4 Life now became his real school, and he began to frequent coffeehouses, which were the meeting place for men of letters. He also frequented literary assemblies convened in the houses of the wealthy who patronized literature and knowledge. Furthermore, he mingled with the adabatiyya, who entertained the public by relating Arab and Egyptian folklore. 5 Nadim quickly gained a wide reputation in Alexandria for his witty poetry and oratorical talent. Alexandria was too small for the ambitious Nadim, however, and he moved to Cairo to seek broader opportunities and a better living. He worked as a telegraph operator in the palace of Khushyar, mother of the Khedive Ismail. 6 But he never missed an opportunity to attend an assembly of men of letters, such as the famous poet Mahmud Sami al-Barudi. He also attended the lectures of Shaykh Muhammad al-Anbabi and other learned men at the Azhar mosque. He was especially drawn to the circle of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and became one of his devoted disciples. 7 He was greatly influenced by al-Afghani's religious and political ideas, particularly about reforming Islam and freeing the Muslim world from Western hegemony. The eventual loss of his job at the palace of the Khedive's mother and the struggle for a living did not discourage Nadim from pursuing his literary activity. His association with al-Afghani was the beginning of his political life. When in 1878 al-Afghani joined Masonic lodges to gain protection from the oppressive policies of the Khedive Ismail, Nadim and other disciples followed him. When al-Afghani discovered that the Masonic lodges refrained from involvement in political matters, he founded a national Egyptian lodge which claimed more than three hundred members, including Nadim. Its stated objective was to free Egypt from foreign oppression. 8 To support this end, Nadim wrote articles in the newspapers Misr (Egypt), and al-Tijara (Commerce), published by Adib Ishaq and Salim Naqqash, and al-Mahrusa (Protected by God), and al-Ahd alJadid (The New Era), by the latter. He also joined Misr al-Fatat (Youthful Egypt), a society in Alexandria whose objective was to overthrow the government of the Khedive Ismail. 9 On June 6, 1881, Nadim first published his weekly al-Tankit wa alTabkit (Raillery and Reproof), whose purpose was to rebuke the Egyptians for their submissive attitude toward the government and the British, who were in total control of the country. In this periodical he wrote several popular dialogues containing mordant criticism of government and society. When Ahmad Urabi led the revolution against the British and the Khedive Tawfiq in September, 1881, Nadim became the spokesman of the revolution. His oratory was so powerful in instigating the people against the British that the London Times wrote in 1893 that Nadim "was one of the most violent and seductive orators who excited the Arabs in 1882." 10 Urabi urged Nadim, as spokesman of the revolution and the people, to rename his periodical Lisan al-Umma (Mouthpiece of the Nation), which seemed

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more appropriate to the national struggle. Nadim disagreed and renamed it al-Ta'if after a town near Mecca. It first appeared as a regular newspaper in Alexandria in November 1882. Soon it became a leading newspaper in Cairo, so popular that other newspapers including the official publication al-Waqai al-Rasmiyya (Official Gazette) reproduced some of Nadim's articles. 11 It grew so influential that Muhammad Pasha Sultan, president of the Egyptian parliament, instructed government offices to subscribe to it, so that government employees could be informed about current events. 12 It also drew praise from many men of letters, especially Yaqub Sanu, who promised to translate some of Nadim's articles into French and English. 13 When the Urabi revolution failed and British troops entered Cairo in September 1882, Nadim had to go into hiding to escape retribution. A prize of one thousand Egyptian pounds was offered to anyone who would hand him over to the government, dead or alive. 14 For nearly ten years Nadim remained in hiding by assuming different names and guises. In October 1891, Nadim was finally spotted by the spy Hasan al-Fararji and arrested; the Council of Ministers banished him to Syria (which then included Palestine) but offered him money for support in exile. Nadim chose Yafa (Joppa) as his place of banishment, remaining in that city until February 1892, when finally he was pardoned by the Khedive Abbas II. After touring Palestine, he returned to Egypt in May of that year. The Khedive's pardon gave Nadim the opportunity to resume his literary activities, and he introduced his magazine al-Ustadh on August 23, 1892. This periodical became by far the most popular of Nadim's publications, claiming a wide circulation, but unfortunately, al-Ustadh did not last long. In the last issue dated June 13, 1893, Nadim apologized for suspending this publication due to his ill health. 15 The truth is probably that Nadim's daring ideas and his continued general popularity were the envy of his enemies who instigated the Khedive against him. As a result, he was exiled again to Yafa in Palestine. This time his enemies would not let him live in peace, instigating the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II against him. The Sultan, fearing the ideas of men like Nadim, had Nadim settle in Istanbul where he would be under the careful surveillance of the Sultan's spies. Thus, Nadim was caught in a golden cage as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and others had been. 16 In Istanbul (Constantinople) Nadim got into an argument with Abu alHuda al-Sayyadi, the religious counselor of Sultan Abd al-Hamid, when he spoke in defense of al-Afghani. His literary activity was further greatly restricted by his very narrow means (provided by the Sultan) and by his own continuing ill health. After dying of tuberculosis on October 13, 1896, he was buried in Istanbul. 17 Abd Allah Nadim was not a true dramatist like his contemporary Yaqub Sanu. Unlike Sanu he had no access to Western dramas, because he knew no Western languages. Thus, he probably developed his concept of

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the theater and theatrical activity by watching Sanu's plays or those performed by Syrian theatrical troupes. 18 Nadim, however, developed a great appreciation of the theater, both as an art and for spreading knowledge, although his idea that the drama is an ancient art which Europeans adopted from the Arabs in the Andalus (Spain) is historically untenable. 19 Nadim wrote two plays, al-Watan wa Tali al-Tawfiq (The Homeland and Portent of Good Fortune) and al-Numan (named after the sixth-century Arab Lakhmid king al-Numan Ibn al-Mundhir), sometimes called al-Arab (The Arabs), because it was meant to portray the excellence of the Arabs. 20 Both plays were performed by the students of the Islamic Charitable Society, which Nadim founded in April 1879. The Khedive Tawfiq attended the performance of al-Watan and was so impressed that he donated a hundred Egyptian pounds to support the society.21 Unfortunately, al-Numan is totally lost to us, while only an excerpt of al-Watan has survived in Sulafat al-Nadim (Choicest Wine of Nadim), compiled and published by his brother Abd al-Fattah Nadim. 22 Abd Allah Nadim makes it clear that his purpose for writing al-Watan was didactic and moralistic, to emphasize to his compatriots the great corruptions and injustices in current Egyptian society. He hoped, by portraying the achievements of ancient Egyptians, to entice his compatriots to emulate them. Drawing a comparison between the sovereignty, knowledge, power, and civilization of their ancestors and their own servitude, ignorance, submission, and backwardness, he undertook to diagnose his countrymen's ills and prescribe treatment, urging them to cooperate with each other and build academic and technical schools. His chief purpose in writing his second play, al-Numan, was to vaunt the Arabs' excellence and their marvelous cultural achievements. 23 He also sought to train his students in oratory and public speech, and to instill patriotism in them. 24 Al-Watan lacks the necessary ingredients of a drama—structure, plot, and denouement. It is simply the procession of a myriad of flat characters who appear on the stage to state their objectives and grievances. They represent segments of the Egyptian society, e.g., peasants, laborers who have moved from the country to the city to seek work, petty bourgeois, and desert Arabs who have returned to Egypt after a long absence. Some of them are semi-literate, having acquired a smattering of some European languages, mostly French, and employment in European consulates. Amid this conglomeration of characters stands al-Watan, a symbol for the homeland, to advise them that the dissemination of education is their only hope for a better and more dignified life. As the play opens Abu Damum, a peasant, and Abu al-Zulfa, a fisherman, come on stage and recount the ill treatment and injustice the peasants and other lower-class people suffer from ruthless government officials. Such treatment, especially the use of cudgels to bring the peasants to

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submission, recalls the treatment described by Yaqub Sanu in his plays. The Watan (homeland) appears, listens to the complaint of the peasants, and tells them that their degradation is the result of ignorance and lack of education. The Watan states, "Since you disdain learning, you will live and die despicable creatures . . . You should agree on a uniform method of learning." 25 Then al-Hajj Husayn and Abu al-Ula enter and engage in a discussion with the other characters. While Abu al-Ula complains about heavy taxes and the ruthless methods the government uses to impose them on the poor and working people, al-Hajj Husayn converses with the others about the use of hashish, which he puffs at night parties. Abu al-Ula looks at the Watan and asks him why his appearance is so miserable. AlWatan answers it is because people like his companions have disgraced him by taking hashish. Next come Sayyid Ali and Sayyid Ibrahim, who engage in a general conversation, as if to suggest that they are more concerned about their private life and pleasures than about the complaints of the other characters. They do not seem to be impressed by the Watan's argument that reform must begin with the opening of schools and the dissemination of knowledge, and they leave the stage unconvinced by what they regard as his idle prating. 26 They are followed by two seamen, Abu Rajab and al-Hajj Razija, who say that they saw a miserable character called al-Watan advocating the expansion of learning and industries; they promptly reject his idea and leave the stage to two new characters: Izzat, who apparently has studied in France and upon returning to Egypt has become employed as chief translator at the French Consulate, and Muzhir, whose conversation is interspersed with French words and phrases. It is clear from their dialogue that they have become superficially Westernized; they embellish their speech with foreign phrases, showing that they hold Western civilization in high esteem while denigrating their own civilization and the Arabic language. The angry Watan exclaims with obvious indignation that if people like these two men continue to use French words in their speech and distort their own language, the homeland (Egypt) and nationalism will be in jeopardy. Al-Watan laments that foreigners who employ such Westernized Egyptians because they know a few useless French words are depriving the country of their expertise. He then engages in a lengthy dialogue with Izzat concerning the people's lack of education and the disparity between Egyptians and Westerners. Izzat complains that the rich people in Egypt are concerned only about their own welfare, and not that of the country. They are obsessed with luxurious living and brag about their high status, measured by the number of cooks and servants they employ, while the rich people in the West promote education, industry, and business to increase their power and that of their sovereigns. The Watan asks Izzat why, if he

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knows so much about conditions in Europe, he does not deliver public speeches to instruct his own people on what is beneficial to them. Izzat answers that the Egyptian government has been trying to educate the people by using tyrannical methods. Government employees drag peasants out of their homes and bring them, shackled, to urban centers to be educated. How can one learn, asks Izzat, while he is shackled? He goes on to say that the public speeches of the "Orator of the East"—meaning Nadim—have influenced more people than the government's education. 27 Through the Watan, he urges these characters to continue his efforts to promote public speech, which he initiated at the Islamic Charitable Society. Toward the end of the play several characters who represent pre-Islamic and Islamic poets like al-Hutay'a and al-Nabigha come on stage to praise the Watan and his intention to reform the country and to restore the Arab people to their past glory through the efforts of the Khedive Tawfiq. Here al-Nabigha extemporizes a lengthy ode in praise of the Khedive and his efforts to introduce reforms into the country. Of course, the ode is that of Nadim who despite his mordant criticism of the government found it necessary to win the sympathy of the Khedive. 28 Nadim wants to warn his compatriots that the dissemination of education through schools is the only means of achieving their emancipation. We can better appreciate Nadim's cry for reform if we realize that in writing this play, he was greatly motivated by the extraordinary conditions before the Urabi revolution. Because Egypt suffered from a heavy foreign debt incurred by the Europeanization policy of the Khedive Ismail, the European countries, especially Britain, saw an opportunity to interfere in the domestic affairs of Egypt, ostensibly to regulate the debt. Egypt thus fell prey to the British authorities because of the too-rushed Westernization of the Khedive Ismail—much like the situation in Iran under the Shah in the 1970s. 29 From a technical and aesthetic point of view, Nadim cannot be considered a genuine playwright. His characters are flat; the dialogue is ineloquent and disjointed, as when Sayyid Ibrahim and Sayyid Ali discuss a multitude of topics ranging from night pleasures, passionate love, women, health and sickness, to the Qaragdz (puppet show). Perhaps Nadim's aim is to show that part of the country's problem is that many Egyptians like these two characters spend their time seeking pleasures when they should be doing something more beneficial to their country. 30 What is most noticeable about this play is the characters' language. Nadim has them use colloquial or classical Arabic, depending on their social status. Thus, the peasants, city dwellers, and Westernized Egyptians speak in various social levels of colloquial Arabic, while the Watan speaks in classical Arabic; the characters who symbolize ancient Arab poets also use classical Arabic verse. Evidently he sought to overcome the objection

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of many playwrights that the classical language was not suited to dramatic dialogue. 31 Farah Anton later used this technique of combining classical with colloquial language in his play Misr al-Jadida wa Misr al-Qadima (New and Old Egypt, 1913), arguing that it was the best way to harmonize the two types of languages. 32 Whatever his shortcomings as a dramatist, however, Nadim excelled in the art of the popular dialogue. It is sometimes realistic, sometimes symbolic, and a fine example of his literary talent. The dialogue contains both mordant raillery and reproof of the foibles of his society. It also manifests his strong desire for political and social reform, especially of what he considered the despicable subservience of the Egyptians to the whims of European powers who manipulated their domestic affairs and, through the unwise policies of the Khedive Ismail, kept them under their control. He constantly lashed out at those Egyptians who were advocates of Western ideas and ways of life while expressing nothing but contempt for their fellow citizens. In the vignette entitled Majlis Tibbi li Musab bi al-Ifranji (A Medical Council for a Person Infected by the Ifranji), Nadim tells the story of a healthy young man who falls into the hands of an immoral rascal who corrupts him by leading him to prostitutes. The young man contracts "al-Daa al-Ifranji" (the Frankish disease), the name used in the Arab countries for syphilis. A medical council meets to treat the sick young man and advises that, beyond practicing sanitary methods, he be kept from contact with foreigners, lest they undermine his treatment and do him more harm than what their disease has already done. 33 According to the Egyptian writer Ahmad Amin, this story is obviously symbolic, intended to show the Egyptians' national sentiment during the reign of the Khedive Ismail and their attitude to the heavy debt the Khedive incurred, forcing the regulation of Egypt's finances by Britain and other foreign powers. Thus, Amin concludes, Nadim describes Egypt's suffering from European intervention by likening it to the Ifranji disease, which is presented as "the heart of the 'Egyptian Question' and its greatest problem." 34 In another dialogue entitled Arabi Tafarnaj (A Westernized Arab), Nadim again satirizes those Egyptians who look with contempt upon their mother tongue. Zuayt is the son of a peasant Muayt. Like most Egyptian fallahin (peasants) he plays in the dust, lives in the mud, drives the water buffalo to the river and runs the water wheel. One day a businessman, seeing Zuayt and his drab condition, advises his father to send him to school, that he might learn something. The father does so, and after Zuayt finishes his elementary schooling the government sends him to France to further his education. On his return home, his father greets him with an embrace according to the Middle Eastern custom, but Zuayt pushes his father away, remarking that this is an obnoxious custom:

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Muayt:

Fiction

"How do you want me to greet you, son?"

Zuayt:

"Say, 'Bonne arrivée,' and just shake my hand."

Muayt:

"Would I say that I am not rifi ['peasant']?"

Zuayt:

"No, not a rifi but arrivée. You sons of the Arabs are like animals."

He then turns to his mother Muayka, who is sautéing meat with onions: Zuayt:

"This thing which causes the eyes to water is called oignon" [French for 'onion']."

Muayka:

"By God, son there is no onion or anything else. This is meat with basal ['onion' in Arabic"].

Zuayt:

"C'est ça basal, basal."

Nadim comments in this dialogue that Zuayt did not receive the right education as a child, for he has learned nothing favorable about his country and now has no respect for his language and traditions. Although he has now been educated in Europe, his education will be of no use to his own despised country and people. 35 In a number of his dialogues Nadim treats the subject of fasting, particularly in the month of Ramadan, and explores whether Muslims fast according to the Quranic strictures. In Salih wa Taii, the title characters discuss the fasting month of Ramadan and agree that those who violate its rules without legitimate excuse do not deserve God's mercy. Then they debate whether fasting is incumbent upon children, when fasters should abstain from eating, drinking, and engaging in sex, and whether according to Islamic usage fasting, like prayer, requires conscious intent and preparation. Nadim explains that fasting is not required for children, and that fasters should abstain from food and drink from dawn to dusk and should abstain from sex altogether. Further, he reminds the Muslims of the physical and spiritual benefits of fasting. 36 Nadim returns to the subject in Saluha wa Taqiyya, discussing the lawful reasons for not fasting. When Saluha tells Taqiyya that she is fasting during her monthly period, Taqiyya admonishes her that the fasting of menstruating woman is unlawful and that she should break her fast. Also, a woman who gives birth in Ramadan should not fast. According to the Shafiite and Hanafite schools of Muslim jurisprudence, the use of kuhl (a preparation of pulverized antimony for darkening the edges of eyelids) does not invalidate fasting, nor does Saluha's inhaling of flour while sifting it. Nadim admonishes women to stay home during Ramadan and take care of their husbands and their homes. 37 In al-Shaykh Alwan wa Nadim, Nadim (a participant in the dialogue) criticizes those Egyptian Muslims who turn the month of fasting into one of debauchery, pleasure, and entertainment. He tells Alwan that he should

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observe his religious duties in the month of Ramadan by praying and listening to the chanting of the Quran, and leave the unrighteous Muslims to their own devices. He should mind his own business and ask God to grant repentance to those who violate the strictures of religion. 38 In Dimyana wa Farhana, Nadim shows the hypocrisy of those Muslim men who present themselves as faithful fasters but secretly eat and drink, violating the rules of fasting. Farhana, a Muslim woman, complains to Dimyana, a Christian Coptic woman, that during Ramadan her husband comes home to eat lunch while pretending to others that he is fasting. She is surprised to hear Dimyana say that her husband does the same during the Christian fasting season [perhaps Lent], Farhana, having believed that only Muslim men like her husband are hypocritical about fasting, now learns that some Christians, and even Jews, are also hypocrites. To some extent Nadim blames the Europeans for diluting the religious practices of the Egyptians, contending that the Europeans in Egypt do not fast or adhere to the rules of religion as Egyptians do. Through Farhana he argues that the Europeans try to make the Egyptians detest their religion to destroy the bonds of unity among them. 39 Hafiza, Hanim wa Nadim, which also deals with fasting, shows Nadim's tolerance toward Europeans. He credits the Europeans, whom he has previously denounced, with inculcating the principles of their religion in their daughters, while the Egyptians leave theirs uneducated like beasts. Hafiza and Hanim complain to Nadim that they are Muslims only by tradition and have learned nothing about their religion. He goes on to teach these women about their religion, especially the rules of fasting. As in the earlier dialogues he elaborates the rules of fasting and describes several actions which do not nullify it: a person's fast remains valid if he eats and drinks, having forgotten that he is fasting; if he takes a particle of dust into his mouth unintentionally; if he wets himself at night; if he swallows water while gargling or swallows his saliva; if an object enters his ears; if he swallows a food particle stuck in his teeth, provided it is no larger than a chickpea; if blood issues from his teeth but does not enter his stomach; or if he is stabbed by a spear which penetrates his belly. In fact, the whole dialogue is about the external practices Muslims consider essential for the true observation of fasting in Ramadan. 40 In other dialogues, Nadim shows how formal education affects people's behavior and how the uneducated and gullible, especially peasants, can fall prey to evildoers. Sahrat al-Anta (An Evening Gathering of Egocentric and Boastful Men) exposes the attitudes of ten rich cronies meeting one evening in the house of one of them. When an educated guest enters the room, they appear quiet and pensive, and he imagines they are considering how to help Egypt attain the same industrial and commercial achievements as Europe has. The host tells him that they are not concerned about the progress of

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their country, or seeking to multiply their wealth because they already have plenty of it. When the guest presses to learn what is occupying their minds, they answer that they have gathered to take kayf{an opiate). They justify their action on the premise that the opiate makes its users happy if taken in the company of friends. Nadim comments that this is the state of a person who had no education in his childhood; when he grows up, he becomes a slave to his lusts, and acts stupidly like these men. 41 In Ghaflat al-Taqlid (The Foolishness of Blind Imitation), Nadim attempts to show that money without education is worthless. He describes a rich but ignorant man who has built a large house and furnished it with the most expensive furniture. He also has graced it with a comprehensive library. An educated friend visits him and asks him about the contents of some books in his library. The rich man says he knows nothing about books, let alone their contents. The friend then asks why he has a library. The rich man replies that one day he visited the home of a certain wealthy dignitary and found the servant dusting the books in his library. He thought that the books were a new style of furniture and, like the dignitary, he wanted to have a library. Nadim, through the educated friend, condemns ignorance and blind imitation, saying that as long as men imitate each other without concern for possible benefits to the whole society there will be in chaos: people will be forever slumbering in their foolishness of blind imitation. 42 In the humorous but sad Muhtaj Jahil fi Yadd Muhtal Tami (A Needy

Ignorant Man Who Falls into the Hands of a Greedy Crook), Nadim shows how ignorant people, especially peasants, fall an easy prey to impostors. Here a peasant has borrowed some money from a usurer (most likely a Greek). Not knowing even how to count, the peasant keeps paying the creditor with cotton and other crops, while the creditor keeps telling him that he has not yet settled the debt. Finally an educated and decent friend of the creditor tells him that out of fear of God, he should settle his account with this ignorant peasant, who has paid him many times the amount of the original debt. In his thick foreign accent, the creditor tells his good friend that the peasant is a jackass, and if he does not treat him as he has, the peasant will become a rich man within five years. The friend rejoins that it is good that the Egyptian government has taken some measures to protect poor and helpless people like this peasant from the exploitation of greedy swindlers 43 One of Nadim's most interesting popular dialogues is Dars Tahdhibi (Educational Lesson), between Nadim himself and a student. This piece, written during the parliamentary crisis following the defeat of the Urabi Revolution in 1882, contains Nadim's ideas about the Islamic concept of shura (consultation) which constitutes a primitive form of democratic rule. His purpose is to explain the meaning of true democratic rule, which should be free from the monopoly of a few self-seeking professional politicians.

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Unlike defeatists who thought that the Urabi Revolution was a failure, Nadim maintains that the major cause of the revolution was the despotic rule of the government, which led Urabi to try to put power into the hands of the people. Democratic rule cannot be achieved without the implementation of the principles of justice and equality for all people. The student, having heard Nadim explain his concept of shura, asks whether there is anyone in Egypt, except the professional politicians, qualified to implement these high principles. Nadim answers that the country contains people of different intellectual, social and financial levels. He argues, if the election of members of parliament is confined only to the rich and the powerful, to the exclusion of the intelligentsia, the parliament will be a disaster for both people and country. With these progressive ideas Nadim was almost a century ahead of his time, for even today many Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, have no democratic government. 44 In his periodical al-Ustadh, Nadim wrote no fewer than twenty-nine dialogues on a variety of subjects. Most of these dialogues are written in a colloquial Egyptian Arabic, since the characters are uneducated common country Egyptians; those dialogues addressed to educated people or concerned with education, however, are done in classical Arabic. We shall treat these dialogues in the chronological order of their appearance in al-Ustadh. From Tahiyyat Baladi (A Greeting to My Country), a dialogue between Nadim and Habib, we learn that Abd Allah Nadim lived in concealment for ten years after the failure of the Urabi Revolution, that Khedive Tawfiq pardoned him, and that Khedive Abbas II allowed him to live in Egypt. Nadim wants his periodical to be a means of educating the Egyptian public and defending the purity of the classical Arabic language, which writers have abused. Despite Habib's plea, he does not want to engage in politics. His intention is to awaken those in power, in order to introduce different reforms to the society. He wants to deliver a moral lesson to those who wasted their money and time in bars drinking. As government officials whip the common people to obedience, Nadim intends to whip government officials to respect people's rights. 45 In Fukahat (Humorous Anecdotes), he continues the argument made in his previous dialogue, Habib tells Nadim that he has nothing good to say about hapless Egyptians except that they drink. Nadim answers that alcohol is detrimental to health, and that God calls wine the worst evil. He criticizes the Egyptians for imitating the Europeans, especially by adopting the Western dress of a jacket and trousers, ill-suited to their climate. He says if some Europeans have already come to reject the jacket and trousers as unsuitable, why should the Egyptians adopt them? 46 Bab al-Tahdhib (The Section on Education) relates how Nadim tried to educate his illiterate servant Salih through dialogues, which are easier to follow than books. All of Salih's previous knowledge had come from his

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mother. Nadim taught him how to read and write, and educated him so that he can appreciate knowledge. There is a play on the word hikam (wisdom) and hakim (a wise man, a philosopher, or a physician). Salih tells Nadim that he knows nothing about his hikam and he could not care less for hukama (physicians), since he follows his mother's instructions regarding the treatment of disease and cure. Nadim explains to Salih the importance of the hukama, whose medical knowledge is less important than their knowledge of the Islamic religious laws. He admonishes Salih not to follow the superstitious knowledge of women like his mother, who, acting as physicians, make grave mistakes and harm those whom they intend to treat. Nadim then goes on to instruct Salih in the correct usage of the Arabic language, giving examples of terms like self-control and determination, and particularly those terms related to natural functions such as defecation and urination. Instead of using the vulgar terms for these actions, Nadim tells him, he should use more polite and decorous language. 47 Al-Taqlid Yanqul Tibaa al-Muqallad (Imitation Transmits the Characteristics of the Imitated), is a follow-up to this dialogue. Salih argues that if he imitates Nadim in everything, he should be like him physically and spiritually. Like Nadim, he should be thin and grow a beard. Spiritually he should be a follower of the Shafiite, and not the Malikite, school of Islamic jurisprudence. Nadim explains that what he means by imitation is the adoption of those characteristics which metamorphose a man into what is not his original nature. By imitating outward actions, man mindlessly becomes a mere mimic-ape and loses his original character. 48 Al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim (Master Hanafi and Nadim) shows Nadim's concern about the economic competition of European products with domestic goods, which they are driving from the market. The Europeans buy Egyptian cotton, transform it through manufacturing, and then sell the finished products to the Egyptians, so that domestic industries and businesses disappear. Many Egyptian businessmen have been forced to close their shops, unable to compete with foreign businesses. Others had no choice but to buy commodities from foreigners or go out of business. Worse, some Egyptians who collaborated with foreigners and became rich have wasted their foreign loot in bars and dancehalls. Two of these, Latafat and Darafat, say they do not fear what Nadim will write about them in his magazine. Nadim's conclusion is that this kind of money comes and goes easily, much to the detriment of the country. 49 Said wa Bakhita (Said and Bakhita), the story of two domestic servants, is a manifestation of Nadim's desire to improve the conditions of the poor classes, by bringing their tragic predicament to the attention of the government. Said (a manservant) and Bakhita (a maid) have lost their jobs and do not know how to survive. Through Said's predicament, Nadim tries to show the methods the government should use to solve the unemployment

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problem to make the poor again productive members of society. Nadim proposes that the government should give the poor people state land to cultivate, and that rich people open shops and employ the poor. Contractors too could employ the poor in groups to dig ditches and irrigation canals and build bridges. Such methods will alleviate the poverty of these people and make them more productive than they can be as domestic servants. 50 Al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim treats the same economic themes as the earlier dialogue of the same title. Here al-Muallim Hanafi relates how rich people of the old generation waste their money on their pleasure while they could use it for the benefit of their countrymen. He again complains that foreigners control domestic industry and business, especially consumer goods and cotton products. To protect domestic industry and business, Hanafi suggests, rich people should get together and purchase ten or fifteen thousand faddan of the wasteland in al-Fayyum, raise ten thousand head of sheep, and use their wool for local industries and their meat and milk products for local food consumption. In this way they will make a great deal of profit, provide consumer goods for the people, and stop dependence on foreign goods. The problem with the Egyptians, however, is that when they create a project, every one of them wants to be the boss, and thus the project fails. Nadim promises to bring Hanafi's ideas to the attention of the dignitaries to see whether they will respond to it. 51 In Hanifa wa Latifa, Nadim shows the dichotomy of the two worlds of men and women in Egyptian society. He is particularly concerned about irresponsible husbands who squander their money on pleasures like drinking and do not return home until late at night. They leave their wives no money to buy food, often forcing the wives to sell their jewelry to sustain the family. Hanifa and Latifa meet to chat. They complain about their husbands' social irresponsibility, and express concern about their daughters, lest they marry irresponsible men as they did. Women pose a dual problem in the Egyptian society: they are a burden to their family if they remain unmarried, and a potentially greater burden if they marry unhappily. Nadim also portrays the strict morality of these two women. Although abused by their husbands, they would never entertain the idea of cheating on them even if they had the opportunity to do so. The morality they learned from their mothers has become part of their psyche and transcends their abuse by their husbands. 52 After this dialogue appeared in al-Ustadh, a friend wrote to Nadim that some readers were furious because he had scandalized the Egyptians by exposing their bad social behavior to the Europeans. Nadim retorted that his intention was to bring such behavior to the attention of the public so that these irresponsible husbands might reform their lives. He invited his critics to write to him directly and air their objections in his magazine for the benefit of the public. 53

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Abu Damum wa al-Shaykh Mar'i focuses on Nadim's contention that the past oppression of peasants is no more, for there exists a state of law and justice for all Egyptians high and low under the new Khedive Abbas II. Abu Damum and al-Shaykh Mar'i are peasants who discuss the state of justice in Egypt. Abu Damum has a few faddans of land, and a powerful man is trying to take them from him on the pretext that they belong to him. Abu Damum believes that being a poor peasant, he cannot defend his rights against the power of the usurper, for no court will listen to his petition or restore justice to him. Al-Shaykh Mar'i tells him that he is wrong. Oppression and injustice are things of the past; under the new Khedive he can sue the usurper, and the courts will uphold justice, despite the usurper's wealth or social status. 54 In Latifa wa Dimyana, Nadim returns to the subject of men who squander their money on drinking and leave their wives in want and distress. Latifa, a Muslim, and Dimyana, a Christian, meet to discuss problems caused by their husbands. Often Dimyana has borrowed money from her neighbor, but she fears that her debts will multiply and she will be forced to sell the rest of her jewelry. The problem of drinking is not confined to Muslims or Christians, but also affects Egyptian Jews; Rebecca, the wife of Rahmin, shares their problem. Latifa, who knows that the drinking of wine is unlawful according to Islam, asks whether it is also unlawful in Christianity. Dimyana answers that Christians say that he who drinks wine shall not enter the kingdom of God. Still many Christians like her husband do drink. Jews also drink, although wine is forbidden according to their religion. Even the Shawam (Syrian émigrés) indulge in drinking. Dimyana relates the good luck of some women whose husbands are straight, responsible, and family-oriented. We also learn from Dimyana that the Christian Copts do not like the Syrian émigrés, many of whom are also Christians. She maintains that the Ifranjis (Europeans) also indulge in drinking, but they support each other, unlike the Egyptians, who condemn each other. The Egyptian men who squander their money on drinking, are forced to sell their property and belongings and end bankrupt. To solve their problem, Latifa and Dimyana call a meeting of the women who were harmed by their husbands' drinking. They ask Najiyya Hanim to lead the discussion because she is educated and has connections with other educated women from the upper class. What is noteworthy is that the women blame part of their problem on the Ifranjis who sell liquor to the Egyptians, take their money, and laugh at their stupidity. Najiyya Hanim closes the meeting by suggesting that she gather with several other women known for their sagacity and wisdom to discuss the problem further. 55 Before the women meet again, Nadim interjects another dialogue, Zubayda wa Nabawiyya, to portray the deleterious consequences not only of drinking but also of taking hashish. Zubayda's husband, a hashish addict, has not only squandered his money but ruined his health. Both

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women complain that when their husbands are drunk or taking hashish, they wish they were divorced, but when they sober up, they reconcile with them. The fact that many other women go through the same cycle of abuse and reconciliation leads Nabawiyya to say that these women live in sin with their husbands. In other words, they seriously consider themselves living with divorced men rather than lawful husbands. Nadim then inexplicably digresses to discuss cleanliness of a dog according to Islamic law. Apparently Shaykh Ahmad, a religious jurist, once saw a dog at Nabawiyya's house and began telling Nabawiyya that she and her family did not observe the rules of cleanliness under Islamic law. Here Nadim explains the different opinions of the two juristic schools of Islam, the Shafiite, and the Malikites, on the subject of cleanliness. According to the Shafiites, to whose school of jurisdiction Nabawiyya belongs, the dog does not make objects unclean by touching them, whereas the Malikites, to whom Zubayda belongs, consider the dog an unclean animal and declare that the object it touches shall not be clean unless washed seven times, one of them with pure sand. 56 Finally, in Aqd Ittifaq (Conclusion of an Agreement), al-Muallim Hanafi, Abu Damum, Mar'i, Hanifa, Latifa, Dimyana, Zubayda, and Nabawiyya meet with Nadim and designate al-Muallim Hanafi as their spokesman. Hanafi tells Nadim that the group wants him to devote a column in his journal al-Ustadh, to the dissemination of high morals and character. Nadim agrees, but stipulates that the column will be written in classical, not colloquial Arabic. Hanafi answers that most of the group, especially the women, lack the education to understand classical Arabic. Here Nadim defends the use of classical Arabic but promises to write in a simple language which everyone can understand. His intention is to protect classical Arabic from the onslaught of European accretions and the use of colloquial language. The group then turns to discuss the treatment of drinking husbands, on which the women have diverse opinions. One woman proposes that when the husbands come home drunk, their wives should beat them. Another objects that the beating of men could be carried out only by impudent women; it cannot be accepted by a man unless he is without honor. Moreover, the isma (the husband's maternal authority over the wife according to the Islamic law), protects him; if a woman beats her husband, he may divorce her and destroy the marriage bond. Another member of the group suggests that if the husband comes home drunk, his wife should not let him in. This solution is rejected since the husband may divorce his wife, or spends the night outside the house or with friends; anyway, it will denigrate his honor and position as a husband. A Coptic woman suggests that women should use harsh language to make life miserable for their drunken husbands until they reform their ways. A Muslim woman, Najiyya, says that such harsh treatment is unacceptable; a Muslim may retaliate by divorcing his wife, but furthermore,

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women are bound to treat their husbands with decorum and respect, because the man is the source of the woman's position and the protector of her honor, the center of the family and the source of its livelihood. In brief, Najiyya says, a married woman is worthless without her husband. Latifa suggests that their group should ask the government to withhold half the pay of an employee known for his drinking habit and give the other half to his family. Furthermore, the government should refer the drinking husband to the Guardianship (Probate) Court and assign to them qualified professionals to rehabilitate him. This suggestion is found a poor one by Najiyya, who argues that the government has no business rehabilitating people, that everyone is free to spend his own money, and that any such treatment would disgrace both men and women. Finally, the women unanimously agree to write a petition to their husbands, explaining their position and asking them to become more responsible. If they continue in their improper behavior, then the wives argue, they will have no alternative but to take their case to the government. The women ask Nadim to write the petition, and he agrees, despite his objection that he expects only insults and humiliation from the husbands. The dialogue is appended to the text of the women's petition. 57 In Madrasat al-Banat: Zakiya wa Nafisa (The School for Girls: Zakiya and Nafisa), Nadim portrays the conflict of traditional cultural values against those imported from Europe. As a Muslim traditionalist, he maintains through Zakiya that European cultural values are of no benefit to a conservative society. Zakiya, an Egyptian woman who upholds the traditional Islamic values, questions the benefit of teaching foreign languages, European dancing, and music in the schools for young women. She cannot understand why young women should learn to speak a foreign language, dance or play the piano when they are destined to marry Egyptian men who have none of these skills. Nafisa, a student, argues that these things are important aspects of modern civilization. Zakiya questions their benefit to the Egyptian woman, who is still veiled and controlled by her husband. She believes that playing the piano is worthless, and modern European dancing is utterly shameless. Nadim also shows the destructive impact of European manners and contraptions on the social behavior of some Egyptian women like Umm Nazmi, who squanders her husband's money on European goods, when she should learn how to knit and make her own dresses. Zakiya advises Nafisa to talk to Ibrahim, a Muslim jurist attached to her school, to learn the practices of her religion, such things as praying, fasting, and performing ablutions, and cleaning herself after menstruation, all of each being much more beneficial than newly imported European notions. May God protect her from bastards, Zakiya adds, and find herself a wonderful husband. 58 In another dialogue, Hanifa wa Latifa, titled after two women, Nadim follows up on the subject of drinking husbands and reveals the result of his

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petition on the wives' behalf. Latifa's husband now abstains altogether from drinking and has become an entirely different man who adheres to religious principles and maintains an immaculate life-style. He curses the one who taught him to drink and laments that the money he spent on drinking for fifteen years could have bought acreage and other property. The Christian Copt Tadros has also reformed, but another Copt, al-Muallim Ghattas, drinks and beats his wife. When Latifa asks what came of their petition, Hanafi answers that most husbands declared it invalid, refusing to follow the wives' demands. Nevertheless, both women praise Nadim for having defended their case in his magazine. They urge him to write more petitions, especially speaking for their children, vowing that if this does not work, they will petition the government to resolve their problem. 59 The third dialogue entitled al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim is also about drinking. Hanafi knows that Nadim has started using his magazine to reform drinkers, but believes that Nadim should direct his efforts elsewhere. Nadim realizes that some alcoholics are beyond hope, but he aims to reform those young men who are following in their elders' footsteps. Then, says Hanafi, he lauds Nadim's efforts, for he thinks there is still hope to reform young men. 60 Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz (The School for Boys: Nadim and Hafiz), is a manual on hygiene. Nadim instructs the young pupil Hafiz on hygienic habits, including washing of face and hands, keeping his eyes clean, treating indigestion, and sleeping properly. He also teaches him how to use the rest room and how to clean himself. Cleanliness, says Nadim, prevents sickness and disease. He also tells Hafiz to learn how to pray, because the person who has no religious faith has no moral conscience, and he who does not fear the fire of hell will have no fear of the punishment of the law. Hafiz says he does not know how to pray, and Nadim promises to teach him on another ocaasion. 61 Next comes a similar dialogue, Madrasat al-Banat: Hafsa wa Bintuha Salma (The School for Girls: Hafsa and her Daughter Salma), in which -Hafsa teaches her umarried daughter Salma how to manage her household and treat her husband according to the rules of home economics when she is married. She tells her how to keep honey and jam in jars with their lids tightly closed (lest a mouse fall in), store legumes in wooden boxes, and clean the dishes and keep them in a safe place, lest they break. Most important, however, is that she keep herself clean and tidy because many husbands divorce their wives, however beautiful, because of their untidiness. When Salma objects that her mother has not taught her how to cook, press clothes, or make salad and sweets, Hafsa promises to teach her these things another time. 62 Imara wa al-Zanati shows Nadim's belief that foolish bickering of members of the same family over property leads to their ruin. Al-Zanati tells Imara that his father and uncle once owned two hundred faddans of

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land. After his father's death, he married a woman who gave him an ultimatum: either divide the property with his uncle and become independent of him, or divorce her. He yielded to his wife's demand, over the objection of his uncle. Al-Zanati took his case to court, but eventually lost most of his property to court costs and legal fees. He and his uncle were ruined. Imara chides Al-Zanati for his stupidity and unseemly treatment of his uncle. He reasons that if he had consulted wise men or if he had some education, he would not have behaved so unwisely. 63 Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz, which follows up the previous dialogue with the same title, contains Nadim's instruction of Hafiz in the rules of physical purification according to Islamic law and tells him to observe these rules before he prays. Nadim tells him to be sure to clean his clothes of urine or excrement, whether of man or animal. According to the Shafiite school of jurisprudence, to which he and Hafiz subscribe, blood which issues from a woman in her menstrual period or at childbirth, or from a wound, alcohol, and contact with a wet dog or pig can all cause uncleanness of body and dress. When Hafiz asks whether an animal's spraying a man walking in a road would render his dress unclean, Nadim answers that if the urine can be seen clearly by the eye and felt by the hand, it should be cleaned, but otherwise not. We also learn that if one's dress is spattered by mud it remains clean, and that the secretions of the eyes and ears are clean. The secretion of the eyes should be removed before one does the ablution, which may otherwise be nullified. Furthermore, vomiting is a cause of contamination, and wetting oneself at night or sleeping with his wife requires total cleansing. He who in these cases does not practice cleanliness is forbidden to pray, read the Quran or even walk around the Kaba during the pilgrimage. Hafiz asks whether the Christian Butrus (Peter) and the Jew Rahmin follow the same rules. Nadim answers that they have rules of their own. He says, according to the teachings of Christianity the observation of such rules is superfluous. Nadim is correct because according to Christ, whatever enters the mouth does not pollute man, but the evil thoughts which come from the heart do pollute him. 64 Hafsa wa Bintuha Salma (Hafsa and Her Daughter Salma) contains a lesson in religious tolerance. Hafsa, teaching her daughter Salma how to clean clothes, says that it is unclean to wash her father's clothes with those of the rest of the family, for the children's clothes may contaminate (or be contaminated by) those of her father. She should not even wash them in the same basin, lest the basin itself become contaminated and consequently invalidate her father's religious worship, causing him to sin. She should follow the same rules when she is married, so that her husband will love and cherish her and will not divorce her. When Salma asks whether these rules also apply to Hannuna (a Christian Copt), Hafsa replies that both Muslims and Christians should follow the rules of their own religions.

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Although the question of purification is peculiar to Islam and not to Christianity, cleanliness by washing is necessary for everyone of any religion. Then Nadim goes on to describe the excellent qualities of the Prophet of Islam as an example for all Muslims, saying that he who does not have faith will become a target of Satan. Hafsa admonishes Salma, when chatting with Hannuna, not to disparage her religion or say a bad word about Jesus because it is a blasphemy. He says that like Muhammad, Jesus is a prophet who has lofty character, and that God revealed to him the Injil (Gospel) just as he revealed the Quran to Muhammad. He maintains that all prophets are right, and their vilification is a blasphemy. 65 In Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz Nadim instructs young Hafiz in civil rights and commendable social behavior. He exhorts Hafiz to respect his teachers and fellow students, and not to begrudge a classmate who is more successful than he. Furthermore, Hafiz should respect the rights of people, despite their race. He should respect and obey his parents, even if they disagree with him. He should consult them about his personal affairs and keep their secrets. Also, Hafiz should not tell a lie or steal that which does not belong to him, because theft, even of something small finally leads to break-ins of homes and worse. He should not insult anyone or use foul language. He should not backbite or gossip. Finally, the sincere believer should not disparage his own teachers, because teachers are the soul of every nation. 66 Madrasat al-Banat: Bahana wa Sitt al-Balad (The School for Girls: Bahana and Sitt al-Balad) focuses on Nadim's attempt to contrast the social behavior of country people and city dwellers. Sitt al-Balad, a country dweller whose peasant husband divorced her, marries an army lieutenant and moves to the city, but does not know how to behave in an urban society. Bahana, who like her was once a peasant but is now a polished city dweller, instructs her on urban social manners and especially how to treat her husband, lest he divorce her. She tells her how to cook, manage her household, and keep her children clean. A b o v e all, she instructs her to obey her husband, and never leave the house without his consent or allow another man to see her. Unlike the custom in the country, she should not lend anything to her neighbors, even food, because in the city things are expensive. She admonishes her not to smoke because smoking will foul her breath and cause her husband to reject her. Bahana tells Sitt al-Balad that the men of today are different from those of the past. They are lecherous and ogle every woman. Therefore, she should stay home, close her door and windows, and draw the curtains so that no man except her husband will see her. 67 In Madrasat al-Banin: Kamil wa Hafiz Nadim laments that Protestant and Jesuit private schools are diluting the strength of Islam. Hafiz, whom we have seen instructed by Nadim in Islamic ceremonial practices, encounters

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Kamil, a student in a private school operated by Protestants (most likely missionaries). Kamil tells his friend Hafiz that he does not know how to do the ablution because his school teaches only Christianity to all students, despite their religions. Thus, Hafiz says, he is taught to pray by saying the (Christian) Lord's Prayer. He and many other Muslim students know nothing about their religion. They do not fast, pray, or distinguish what is lawful or unlawful according to Islam. Hafiz goes on to teach Kamil how to do the ablution by systematically washing his face, ears, and feet, how much water is required for the ablution, and which prayers are to accompany the washing of each part of his body. Some Coptic students have left their church—Shenouda to become a Protestant, and Nakhla to become a follower of the Jesuit priests. Through Hafiz, Nadim laments the actions of the Protestant and Jesuit schools in converting both Muslim and Coptic students to their own faith, thus creating a rift within the religious communities of Egypt, and deplores the fact that foreigners deliberately create this rift to keep the Egyptians divided. 68 Sharifa wa Bahiyya, titled after two women, is about the Islamic stricture that a wife has no right to leave her home without her husband's consent, even to visit a sacred place to fulfill a vow. Sharifa goes to see Bahiyya and finds that she is visiting the shrine of al-Sitt Zaynab. She tells her that leaving the house without her husband's consent, even to visit the shrine of a saint, is unlawful. A woman who disobeys her husband in this regard deserves the curse of angels. After all, Sharifa contends, the shrines are the havens of rascals who accost and ensnare innocent women like Bahiyya. She adds that the Prophet Muhammad himself forbade women to walk publicly in funerals. Many women who dress up nicely and appear in public will be easy targets for chasers of immoral women. They violate the strictures of their religion and sin against God and their husbands. Bahiyya appreciates Sharifa's admonition and promises not to leave the house except in the company of her husband. 69 The dialogue al-Muallim Hanafi wa al-Sayyid Afifi (Master Hanafi and al-Sayyid Afifi), criticizes the Egyptians' negative attitude and their noninvolvement in public affairs, to the extent that they have lost most of their trade and business to foreigners. Al-Sayyid A f i f i sees no benefit in Nadim's ideas (published in al-Ustadh) about reform, civilization, nationalism, education, national unity, and the purity of the Arabic language. Hanafi retorts that because of their nonchalant attitude on these subjects, the Egyptians have become the target of criticism by the Europeans. Al-Sayyid A f i f i believes that the Egyptians are doing well by keeping their affairs to themselves, taking care of their families, and leaving involvement in domestic and external affairs to the press. Why, al-Sayyid A f i f i says, should the Egyptians rave about material things as the Europeans do? Hanafi maintains that the Egyptians should become involved and learn from the Europeans about business to become successful like them.

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Al-Sayyid A f i f i asks him to name any Egyptian who has become involved and successful, and Hanafi cites many Egyptians who have become successful in business. It is useless to accuse the Europeans, the Copts, or other foreigners of being unprincipled and deceitful; the Egyptians must blame themselves for their stagnation. They should cooperate, help each other, and rise to action like the Europeans. 70 In Hanifa wa Nadim, Nadim continues his exhortation of moral behavior, especially that of women. Hanifa, a member of the Society for the Protection of Morals, charges that Nadim has devoted his writings to men and forgotten women. Nadim answers that he has not ignored women and will continue to instruct them about public morality. He says he is distressed to hear that some women drink alcohol in imitation of men, and asks whether this is true. Hanifa informs him that what he has heard is not true: no decent Egyptian woman will ever drink alcohol, use hashish, sit with strange men, leave her house without her husband's consent, or talk to anyone on the road. If she did these things, Hanifa avers, she would be considered a dissolute woman. Nadim says he has heard that some women have drunk heavily at weddings. Hanifa retorts that this may be true, but worse still is the custom of some Egyptians who hire whores to accompany the bride to her husband's house. They dance unveiled before the bride, attend the wedding party with the songstresses, and drink alcohol. If an Egyptian woman is found imitating the European women in drinking, Hanifa says, she cannot be a true Egyptian, and other women are not responsible for her disgraceful act. Nadim concludes that drinking destroys the home and is especially harmful to children. He is surprised that some men give their wives so much freedom to indulge in drinking. Nadim promises to write a guideline for the Society for the Protection of Morals and hopes that the society will not admit any women to membership without first examining her moral qualifications. 71 Another dialogue, titled Hanafi wa Nadim, shows Nadim's opinion about the impact of the press as a medium of information on the Egyptian public. He is pleased that people are reading newspapers and have become well informed about their domestic affairs and the future of their country. They have proven to be concerned about their country, despite the Europeans' accusation that the Egyptians are ignorant savages and are indebted to them for establishing public order and safety in Egypt. Nadim exhorts Hanafi and his friends to continue to read and learn, so that they can avert the intrigues of foreigners and distinguish friend from foe. He also defends the newspapers established by Syrian émigrés like al-Ahram and alMahrusa, which Hanafi's friend, al-Muallim Afifi, charges always disparage the Egyptians and their leaders and extol foreigners. These are Arabic newspapers, Nadim says (showing great understanding and tolerance), established by Easterners and devoted to the service of Egypt and its people. 72 The Egyptians' apprehension about these Syrian-owned newspapers

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will come up again regarding Layali Satih (Satih's Nights), by Hafiz Ibrahim (see Chapter 6). In Hafiz wa Najib, Nadim defends the great achievements and contributions of foreigners, especially Muhammad Ali (an Albanian by birth), who founded a dynasty bearing his name and is credited for the establishment of different schools and the dissemination of education in Egypt. Apparently, Nadim has written an article about the efforts of Muhammad Ali and his successors to promote education in Egypt. 73 Both Hafiz and Najib laud Nadim for presenting the achievements of Muhammad Ali and his dynasty to his readers. They fear that he will concentrate on the history of Muhammad Ali and forget his main objective, defending public morals. Hafiz complains that despite Nadim's effort, some "mixed" Egyptians are trying to disturb the Egyptians and drive them to despair by denying their ability and achievements. Najib responds that if by "mixed" people Hafiz means the Syrian émigrés or other foreigners, he is mistaken. Speaking for Nadim, he goes on to extol the achievement of many foreigners who made Egypt their second home. They are as much Egyptians as the natives and have contributed a great deal to the cultural and economic progress of Egypt. Furthermore, he says these "mixed" people are united with the Egyptians by bonds which have become an integral part of the social order of the country. The Syrians are tied to Egypt by the Ottoman bond, i.e., all of them are Ottoman citizens. Other foreigners are tied to Egypt by international treaties (perhaps Nadim means the extraterritorial privileges offered through treaties by Ottoman Sultans to Western nationals known as the capitulations), and the Egyptians are obliged to respect and implement these treaties lest they invoke the criticism of the Europeans, who always try to denigrate the civil state of the Egyptians. Unity among all Egyptians despite their origin is necessary. Hafiz asks Najib to plead with Nadim to write about Eastern unity during the fasting month of Ramadan. Najib says it would be better to have such an article when the fasting is over and the people, no longer exhausted, will be better able to read it. The dialogue ends with Hafiz's observation that some foreigners accuse the Egyptians of religious fanaticism. Through Najib, Nadim says this is far from true; he adds, religious fanaticism is strong among the Protestants, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits, and is more characteristic of Europeans than of any Arab. 74 Not all of Nadim's dialogues concern public morality and the practice of religious obligations. One of his more imaginative efforts is a dialogue between a ship and a train in which each proclaims its superiority for transportation. 75 In another work, Nadim speaks with his inner self, asking whether "she" is satisfied despite the criticism heaped upon her. She replies that she is well satisfied with her achievements and will never be the cause of destroying the bond of the Islamic Charitable Society, which Nadim founded. This short dialogue suggests that the society must have

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come under attack by Nadim's opponents. Nadim apparently recognizes that its actions will not please everyone, but he is willing to bear criticism to achieve his charitable objectives. 76 Abd Allah Nadim's literary contribution was greater in the art of popular dialogue than in the drama. His dialogues and many of his essays had a decided impact on future Egyptian generations. With his religious tolerance and nationalistic outlook, this self-educated man of letters was greatly ahead of his own time. He is an exemplary Egyptian whose ideas and character should be the envy of the present generation. He was among the few wise and courageous Egyptians to defend the Christian Copts as true fellow citizens of Egypt who should be treated as equals by the Muslims. 77

5 The Translation of Western Fiction

Importance of Translation During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many Western romances, novels, and dramas were translated into Arabic. These not only introduced Arab writers to the techniques of the various modern genres but also taught them the value of characters whose actions might both represent life and make it more meaningful. Although the influence of such translations cannot be ignored, some contemporary Arab writers are reluctant to accept the position that "the art of the Arab novel and the short story is one foreign import which the Arab world slowly adopted, among many other novelties from Western culture, at the beginning of our reactivated, socio-political movements in the middle of the nineteenth century."1 Such Arab scholars argue that ancient Arab writers were already quite skilled in the art of story-telling. To support this view, they refer to the love story "Maddad wa May" from the book alTijan (Crowns), by Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 733). They claim that its theme is as significant and universal as those of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Bernardin de St. Pierre's Paul et Virginie, although it is plainly an indigenous work of Arabic literature. 2 The chief weakness in this view is the obvious confusion of the tale or romance of the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, as typified by the Thousand and One Nights, with the novel and the short story. Like other peoples, the Arabs were obviously capable of inventing and developing prose narratives. These, however, do not approach the complex layers of much Western fiction as we know it today. For instance, the native tale, as it is exemplified in the Thousand and One Nights, offers narrative and episodic sequence. The plot in the Western story also shows narrative sequence, but the sequence is ordered by causality. Events in the native tale are generally characterized by the fabulous. In the Western story the events tend to contribute to the plot. Characters in the native tale are types—the clever or 91

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lucky hero, the beautiful princess, the wise Caliph, the good and the bad advisers, the cunning old woman and the gullible daydreamer. In the Western story the characters tend to be first individuals with well-defined personalities, although they may also represent types. The setting in the native tale is romantic, the long ago and the faraway, and the atmosphere is magical. In the Western story the setting tends toward realism, the tension of man against himself, man against man, man against nature, or man against society. Since these critics did not seek to clarify or deepen their concept of the riwaya, their argument is shallow, not convincing. Of course, Western fiction has also dealt with the magical, or the folk elements, but most of the West's work is psychological, analytical, explanatory of dilemmas, and often deeply interested in the social world in which the characters "live." Other critics take a more moderate position. Writing in the 1950s, Mahmud Timur, the Egyptian novelist and playwright, readily acknowledges that modern Arabic fiction has been influenced by translations of Western literature, although he notes also it has deep roots in the Arab past. A natural inclination toward prose fiction was clearly manifested in diverse and copious works over a period of many generations, but Timur concludes that the Arab writers' Oriental nature gave their works certain characteristics markedly different from those of Western literature. 3 Yet he also confuses the argument about the ancient tale and the modern European novel and short story when he adds: We have been quick to deny that Arabic literature is void of stories. The reason for this denial is that we have used the Western story in its particular structure and determined frame as a criterion. Then we have searched in our Arabic literature to find works of a similar form, but without success. How wrong we are to use such a criterion, because Arabic literature has its own characteristics and form. 4

Contrarily, another contemporary critic stated boldly, without any reservation, that the seeds of modern Arabic fiction (which is alien to Arab society) came from Europe. Yahya Haqqi (d. 1993), who was also a wellknown novelist, maintains that the Arab first came to know the modern story through translations. He cites as evidence the translations of thousands of European stories compiled by the head of the National Library in Beirut before the middle of this century. After such an extensive exposure to Western fiction, Arab writers felt that the tales of the Thousand and One Nights and the maqama were not only an insufficient basis for the creation of a full-fledged story, but "artistic tidbits, lacking unity and showing no opinion or doctrine. They depict the ancient past, but have no connection with the present." 5 Haqqi goes on to say that although the Arabic story has assumed a special form and style different from those of Hadith Isa ibn Hisham (The Narrative of Isa ibn Hisham), it lacks that mysterious touch

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that marks literary art. Haqqi concludes: There is no harm in admitting that the modern story came to us from the West. Those who laid down its foundation were persons influenced by European literature, particularly French literature. Although masterpieces of English literature were translated into Arabic, French literature was the fountain of our story.6 According to the Lebanese Mikhail Naimy, another distinguished critic and man of letters, translation from Western fiction marks an essential stage in the development of Arabic literature. Because of the poverty of Arabic thought and the dearth of Arab writers, there is desperate need for foreign literary ideas and models to satisfy the needs of Arab readers. He makes an agonizingly truthful appeal: Let us translate. The beggar begs when he cannot support himself by the work of his own hands. The thirsty man begs his neighbor for water when his well dries up. We are poor, though we brag about our abundant wealth. Why, then, should we not attempt to satisfy our needs from the abundance of others which is available to us? Our wells have no water to quench our thirst. Why should we, then, not obtain water from the wells of our neighbors, which are not forbidden to us? We are in a stage of literary and social development in which we have become aware of many intellectual needs. These needs were never known to us before our recent contact with the West. We haven't a sufficient number of pens or brains to satisfy these intellectual needs. Therefore, let us translate. 7 Wherever the truth may lie among these diverse opinions, the fact remains that Arab writers translated many short stories, novels, and dramas from Western tongues. Some of those who attempted to write novels or romances in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries acknowledged the superiority of the Western novel and their inability to produce fiction of comparable quality. 8 At the beginning of the present century, the Orientalist Sir Hamilton A.R. Gibb rightly observes: The incentive was thus lacking in literary circles to the composition of works of a similar kind in Arabic. As the demand grew, the most natural course was to meet it by translating French and English novels, instead of setting to the ungrateful task of building up an indigenous novelistic literature, which involved the creation of an entirely new literary technique.9 The investigation of such translations is an exceedingly complex business. Many translators simply plagiarized whole novels, distorting their contents or adapting them for Arabic audiences. Often the translator failed even to furnish the original author's name or the title of the novel. Scholars have tried to trace the origin of novels translated from French and

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English, but many of them were lost, published in periodicals no longer available, or issued serially in daily or weekly journals which are difficult to locate. The task of translation was taken up by the Syrians, many of whom immigrated to Egypt in the 1870s. (It was also taken up by a few Egyptians before the turn of the century.) The somewhat similar cultural conditions existing in the two countries in the nineteenth century gave rise to this activity. As previously noted, in the period preceding the French occupation of Egypt in 1798, the social, political, and cultural conditions in Egypt had reached their nadir. Learning and teaching at al-Azhar were limited to religious thought and related subjects, while the proficiency of craftsmen had deteriorated to an alarming degree. Ignorance, corruption, and the degeneration of much of the culture were making even more shallow the Egyptian society and its art. In addition, the weakness of the Ottoman Empire whetted the ambitions of the Mamluks, whose perpetual struggles for power had turned the country into a battleground. Syria had also experienced a prolonged, tragic cultural decline. 10 However, toward the end of the seventeenth century, with the arrival of religious missions, many Roman Catholic monastic orders, both native and foreign, had been established. These included al-Mukhallisiyya, al-Hannawiyya, and the Maronite order. Among the cultural developments they fostered was the founding of elementary schools whose curricula, determined by their objectives, were religious. 11 Nevertheless, when the French traveler Volney visited Syria and Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century, he was alarmed at the ignorance prevailing in both countries and in Turkey. He remarked particularly on their poverty in the disciplines of science, medicine, music, and mathematics. Volney claims that one group of monks at St. John Monastery in al-Shuwayr were no less ignorant than the rest of the people, although they were associated with Rome. He says they considered the person who told them that the earth rotates about the sun to be an enemy and a blasphemer. 12 Yet a group of luminaries, both Christians and Muslims, did exist in major Syrian cities such as Aleppo. Their literary activity, with the introduction of printing into Syria, may be said to mark the beginning of a new cultural epoch. Included in this group were the Patriarch Makarius alHalabi, who visited Russia in 1652; Bishop Germanos Farhat the Maronite (d. 1732), who left several literary and philological writings, and translations; and Rev. Abd Allah Zakhir al-Halabi (d. 1748), who established what was probably the first press in al-Shuwayr and produced many religious and polemic works. 13 At the end of the eighteenth century, after Syria had fallen prey to ruthless and dictatorial governors like Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, the Wali (governor) of Akka, and the Shihabi princes in Lebanon, a small group of emigrant Syrian merchants, mainly Christians, prospered for a time in

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Egypt. The tyrannical rule of the Mamluks Murad and Ibrahim, however, made it very difficult for them to pursue their business. Eventually they were forced to leave Egypt. They returned, however, after the French occupation had ended the Mamluks' rule, bringing relative peace and safety. As stated earlier, many Christians, both Syrian immigrants and Coptic natives of Egypt, were attracted to the service of the French as translators. The activity of these men was limited to the translation of scientific and medical books, along with official proclamations and circulars issued by the French army command. Prominent among these early translators was an ambitious and active clergyman, Rev. Rafail Anton Zakhur (d. 1831), a Vasilian monk who was the only Oriental member of L' Institut d'Egypte established at the direction of Napoleon Bonaparte. Zakhur came from a Malikite (Roman Catholic) Syrian family which had immigrated from Aleppo to Egypt at the start of the eighteenth century. Born in Cairo, March 7, 1759, he received his early religious education and training there, and at eighteen went to Rome to further his studies. He spent five years at the Seminaire de Saint Athanus, and two more years at an Italian institution, where he studied European languages. In 1781 he returned to Sayda and entered al-Mukhallis (Savior) Monastery, where he was engaged in translating religious books and documents. In 1782 he was ordained a deacon, and three years later he became a priest. After 1785 he departed for Rome to be part of a religious embassy; while there he undertook to translate some documents generated by this embassy or received from various governments. When this embassy finished its duty in Rome, Zakhur returned to Egypt, remaining there until the French occupation of that country under Napoleon Bonaparte. On August 20, 1798, Napoleon issued instructions for the formation of L'Institut d'Egypte, stipulating in Article 20 that the Institute should employ an Arabic translator. Zakhur was selected for this post, and was also chosen as an honorary member of the Institute's Committee of Fine Arts and Literature. He also served as chief translator for Jacques Menou, who became the Commander-in-Chief of the French troops after the assassination of General Kleber. Extremely active and ambitious, he was highly esteemed by many prominent French army commanders, including Napoleon himself. When Egypt reverted to Ottoman rule after the evacuation of Egypt by the French troops in 1801, Zakhur found himself greatly restricted in his activities by the Ottomans, who were obviously highly suspicious of Christians who had worked for the French. Seeking to escape his dilemma, he wrote to Napoleon on March 14, 1802, declaring that he was ready to devote his life to the service of the French Republic under the First Consul. We have no evidence that Napoleon answered Zakhur's letter. However, there is evidence that Sebastiani, whom Napoleon sent to study conditions in Egypt in the aftermath of the evacuation, conferred

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with many prominent Egyptians and presented them with pictures of Napoleon. Zakhur Rahib was among these recipients: he apparently seized this opportunity to renew his relations with the French ruler, for on November 20, 1802, he wrote Napoleon a second letter thanking him for his gift and pledging his absolute submission to "the angel of peace." He included in this letter an Arabic ode and a translation of it into Italian. Since this letter, too, did not have the intended effect, however, Zakhur resolved to go to France himself. In 1803 he arrived at Marseilles and sent word to Talleyrand, the foreign minister, that he was carrying documents which were very important to the French government, though the nature and contents of these documents were not known. Upon arriving in Paris, Zakhur wrote another letter in Italian, seeking an audience with Napoleon, and his request was finally approved. We do not have the details of their meeting, but sixteen days later, on September 24, 1803, Napoleon appointed Zakhur a professor at l'Ecole des Langues in Paris. Zakhur lectured on colloquial Egyptian Arabic and was also engaged in the translation into French of manuscripts in the school's library about Egyptian history and literature. He was also active in writing, and published Arabes du Desert (Paris, 1819) a threevolume translation of al-Badou aw Arab al-Sahra, which he had written during his time in Egypt. Two of his works from this stay in France are extant only in manuscript form: a reader titled Marj al-Azhar wa Shubban Hawadith al-Akhbar, and Majma Asahh al-Ibarat wa Adaqq al-Rumuz fi Ard Misr wa Jabal al-Duruz (A History of Egypt and the Druze Mountains). Zakhur's translations of some of La Fontaine's fables, probably the earliest Arabic version of Western fiction, survive in a manuscript at the library of the School of Oriental Languages in Paris. After Bonaparte's defeat at Waterloo and his exile, Zakhur lost a staunch supporter and patron, and the new French regime, at odds with those who had supported Napoleon, decided to reduce Zakhur's salary. Rather than accept this humiliation, he returned to Egypt in 1816 and entered the service of Muhammad Ali as a translator. At Muhammad Ali's order, he made an Arabic translation of Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince, now preserved as MS 435 in the Egyptian National Archives at Dar al-Kutub. 14 Presumably this activity by Zakhur and other Syrian translators was the first of its kind not only in Egypt, but anywhere in the Arab East. It marked the beginning of the Arab world's direct contact with Western learning, though a more substantial acquaintance with European sciences and culture had to wait until Muhammad Ali rose to power in 1804. When, through a sequence of shrewd and calculated maneuvers, he emerged as the governor of Egypt, a new era in the history of Egypt began. 15 The Syrians, whose prosperity and safety were seriously affected by the power struggle after the French evacuation in 1801, were again forced to leave Egypt. When Muhammad Ali had restored peace, they returned

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and their numbers were swelled by new immigrants. Back in Egypt, Zakhur and a group of Syrian translators were employed by Muhammad Ali to translate foreign textbooks into Arabic and serve as classroom interpreters for the teachers. Among these translators were Yuhanna Anhuri, George Vidal, Augustine Sakakini, and Yusuf Firawn. 16 Such employment was imposed by the exigencies of the educational situation, and hardly an indication of genuine literary activity; the translations were restricted to military and scientific works. Otherwise, the earliest Arabic versions of Western works of fiction were random and unsystematic, often regarded as curiosities or as evidence of the translator's literary virtuosity rather than as projects undertaken for the public good. 17 An anonymous translation of Robinson Crusoe, produced in 1835 at Malta, may have been the work of Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq, who had been engaged by American missionaries there in 1834 to help them in translating religious literature into Arabic. 18 It was perhaps the very first Arabic translation of a work of English fiction. Despite the efforts of Marun Naqqash to adapt Western dramas for native audiences in Syria (discussed earlier), no systematic translation activity developed in the theater. However, increasingly, schools established by European and American missionaries in Syria and Lebanon, together with those later founded by natives, played a significant role in enlarging the audience for fiction. Yet, according to the writer Jurji Zaydan (d. 1914), the real literary renaissance did not begin until the outrageous massacre of the Christians in 1860 forced many Lebanese villagers to move to Beirut, where Europeans and Americans had already established several large schools. 19 As the reading public grew, Arabic language journals began to appear in substantial numbers, attracting new readers by offering translations of Western fiction, published both in single issues and in serial form. The readers were apparently pleased by what they read; many of them bought the journals primarily for the fiction they presented. The first journal to so devote a regular section to fiction was Hadiqat al-Akhbar (The News Garden), founded in 1858 by Khalil al-Khuri. A translation of Dumas pere's The Count of Monte Cristo, made by Salim Sa'b, was published serially in al-Sharika al-Shahriyya (Monthly Enterprise) by Yusuf al-Shalfun. 20 Another journal, al-Jinan (Gardens), founded by Butrus al-Bustani in January 1870, also published many translations and adaptations of Western fiction. Among those stories which appeared in al-Jinan between 1870 and 1871 we may mention Edward and Sylva, translated from Italian by Sa'd Allah al-Bustani; Al-Amir al-Faris wa Imraatuh Isabella (The Knight Prince and his Wife Isabella), translated from French by al-Khawaja Philip Nimat Allah Khuri; Rajul dhu Imraatayn (A Man with Two Wives), from French by Jurji Effendi Jabrail Balit al-Halabi; and Yusuf wa Zawjatuh Maryam (Joseph and His Wife Mary), adapted from French by al-Khawaja

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Constantine Qitta, but supposedly written by al-Sitt Adeleid al-Bustani, probably an adaptation from French, although no admission of this was made. Between 1875 and 1878, Salim al-Bustani published in al-Jinan sixteen translations of Western fiction. Since he never showed the sources of these stories, it is quite difficult to identify their authors. Although most of these works were apparently translated from French, some titles reveal their true English origin. The Arabic titles, freely translated, are as follows: (1875) al-Gharam wa al-Ikhtira (Love and Invention); al-Sawa'iq (Thunderbolts); al-Hubb al-Da'im (Eternal Love); Madha Ra'at Miss Darington (What Did Miss Darington See?); al-Sa'dfi al-Nahs (Good Luck from Misfortune); Jurjinya (Georgina); 1876, Hulm al-Musawwir (An Artist's Dream); Summ al-Afai (Vipers' Venom); Hila Gharamiyya (Love Trick); Hikayat al-Gharam (The Story of Love); Zawjat John Carver (John Carver's Wife); (1877) Khatun ala al-Muda (A Fashionable Lady); La Tansani (Forget Me Not); Qumriya (Turtledove); (1878) Qissa Ghariba (A Strange Story). In 1884-1885, the journal al-Jinan serialized a translation of Le Sage's Gil Bias made by Jamil Mikhail Mudawwar. 21 Other works of Western fiction were published in many periodicals from the middle of the nineteenth century through the first quarter of this century. 22 In Egypt, the School of Languages established by Muhammad Ali in 1835 was the first institution to deal with systematic translations of Western books. Although, as has been noted earlier, most of the works translated were nonfiction, there are two chief exceptions: the version of Fenelon's Telemaque by Rifaa Rafi al-Tahtawi, 23 and the works of alTahtawi's pupil Uthman Jalal, which were primarily adaptations of Moliere's dramas. Most of the translations of fiction were made by the Syrian immigrants, who controlled the major journals in Egypt. Moreover, unlike the conservative Egyptian, the Syrians were not hindered by any belief that fiction was immoral and worthless. They were more closely associated with European ideas and culture than were the Egyptians, whose relations with Europe had suffered a setback under the Viceroy Abbas I. The daily newspaper al-Ahram, founded by the Lebanese Salim and Bishara Taqla in 1876 in Alexandria, devoted a regular space to translations of fiction. 24 Other periodicals, including al-Muqtataf, al-Diya, and al-Hilal, similarly attracted readers by entertaining them with translated stories. While the Syrian immigrants' journals were giving special attention to fiction, Rawdat al-Akhbar, al-Muayyad, al-Manar, al-Liwa, al-Jarida, and other conservative Muslim publications concerned themselves with political, social, and religious reforms—although some of them devoted occasional attention to fiction. 25 At least until the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the Syrian immigrants concentrated on translating French fiction because of their longstanding cultural relationship with France. This relationship dates back to April 1649, when the Roman Catholic Maronite community in Lebanon

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was placed under the protection of France and King Louis XIV. 26 However, translations of fiction were also made from German, Italian, Russian, and other European languages, either directly or through French versions. 27 Most of the reading public was made up of middle-class citizens educated in various foreign schools. They had not gotten sufficient knowledge of European languages to savor fully works written in them. On the other hand, ancient Arabic folklore, whether written down or recited by storytellers in the local coffeehouses, was no longer appealing or attractive to the more sophisticated (read: Europeanized) reading public. Although French for obvious reasons cited had been the predominant Western language in Egypt since the time of Muhammad Ali, translators increasingly devoted themselves to English fiction after the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. To establish a better political climate for the British to train civil and public servants, the Earl of Cromer, Her Majesty's Agent and General Consul in Egypt (1883-1907), introduced the study of the English language into the public schools of Egypt in 1889. He argued that English and French were no longer merely additional subjects to study, but the basic medium of teaching such disciplines as history and the sciences. Cromer further justified his program by pointing out the lack of teachers qualified to teach in the Arabic language. "As the number of highly trained Egyptian teachers increases," stated Cromer, "instruction will without doubt be given in Arabic to a much greater extent than before." 2 8 Thus, the translation of English fiction emanated from two sources: the Syrian immigrants who had been trained at the American school in Beirut and the Egyptian students who had graduated from schools under British control. Another factor which contributed greatly to the popularity of translated fiction was Cromer's relatively lenient policy toward the native press, which tended to encourage freedom of expression. Cromer helped to establish journals published in both Arabic and English, and supported them materially and morally. These journals generally advocated Cromer's policies, however, and others which received no government support either withered away or found their circulation greatly limited. 29 Nevertheless, several periodicals established by Syrian immigrants or by native Egyptians were widely circulated by the turn of the century. 30 One example was the outspoken and courageous al-Liwa, founded by the nationalist leader Mustafa Kamil (d. 1908) in January 1900. 31 Concomitant with the flourishing of domestic journalism, the Egyptians' technical mastery of printing improved greatly, and their printed volumes rivaled in quality those turned out in Syria. 32 As a result, many more journals began to publish both stories and serializations of full-length romances and novels translated from European languages. Just as the writers of fiction, who had to satisfy the taste of the traditionalists, were slow in moving toward the creation of a full-fledged

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domestic novel and short story, the translators moved cautiously to avoid clashing with the accepted moral values of their society. A brief glance at the works translated reveals that most of them came from the romantic tradition. A translator had to portray a pure and platonic love, not a merely sensual relationship. One work which gained wide circulation was Sir Walter Scott's Talisman, loosely translated by Yaqub Sarruf (d. 1927), a prominent writer, translator, and journalist, prepared in 1886. It was offered to the subscribers of Sarruf's periodical al-Muqtataf for the following year. Sarruf was motivated to make this romance available to Arab readers both by its historical theme and by the figure of Salah al-Din (Saladin), who has become a legendary exemplar of chivalry. 33 Another early translation was made by the celebrated Butrus al-Bustani (d.1883), titled al-Tuhfa al-Bustaniyyafi al-Asfar al-Kuruziyya (The Bustani's Gem in Relating Crusoe's Travels), which went through several printings. Among the other works of English fiction which soon appeared in Arabic versions were Scott's Ivanhoe (1889), by an anonymous translator; another novel by Scott serialized in al-Muqattam under the title al-Shahama wa al-Afaf in 1890; Lord Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii (1889), by Farida Atiyya; Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1909), and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1909), by Muhammad al-Siba'i; Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1921), by Riyad Junaydi Effendi; and yet another version of Robinson Crusoe (1923), by Ahmad Abbas. 34 Though the simpler themes and language of romances gained them wider popularity, some works of artistic substance were also translated, either to suit a very limited audience or to reflect the sensitivity of the translators. Among these were Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1912), translated by Muhammad al-Siba'i, and Thackeray's The History of Henry Esmond (1918), adapted by Wahba Mas'ad Effendi. Translation from Russian fiction was also current in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, particularly in Palestine. This was partly connected with religion, since after the eighteenth century Russia claimed protection of the Greek Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Sultan and the holy places in Palestine. To show their interest in the religious and social well being of their brethren in the faith in the Arab East, Russian missionaries were sent to Syria, particularly Palestine, to establish schools, religious orders, and religious societies. Most of these were elementary schools, such as those established in Hims and Biskanta, one of whose graduates is the celebrated man of letters Mikhail Naimy. 35 The Russians also established a Teachers Higher College in Nazareth, whose students were chosen from the top graduates of the Russian-operated elementary schools. It was in these schools that many Arab students were introduced to the masterpieces of Russian literature. Some teachers in these schools were Arabs selected to complete their higher education in

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Russia. 36 Thus, there emerged a group of Syro-Palestinian Arabs who perfected their Russian and appreciated Russian literature and fiction. The Lebanese writer Mikhail Naimy, for example, says that when he had gained a fair command of the Russian language he began to read Russian periodicals and the works of writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. The masterpieces of Russian literature made him aware of the abject poverty of Arabic literature around the turn of the century. Realizing the Arabs' dire need for writers who cared more for substance than for literary trivialities, he was not merely shocked by the dearth of efficient Arabic writers, but felt ashamed of it. 37 Khalil Ibrahim Baydas (d. 1949), a writer and journalist, was perhaps the first translator of Russian fiction into Arabic. He was born in Nazareth in 1875 and received his early education at the Greek Orthodox school in his town. 38 He joined the Russian Teachers Higher College in Nazareth and after his graduation was appointed a principal of the Russian elementary school in Hims. He was transferred to the Russian elementary school in Biskanta, Lebanon, among whose students was Mikhail Naimy between 1899 and 1902. 39 It was Baydas who paved the way for Naimy to enroll in the Russian school in Nazareth. 40 In 1905 Baydas was transferred to Haifa, and in November 1908 he published a periodical Majallat al-Nafa'is (Valuables Magazine), which was renamed in the following year al-Nafa 'is al-Asriyya (Contemporary Valuables). It was moved to Jerusalem in 1911, was suspended for two years, moved again to Haifa and finally disappeared in 1919. 41 In this magazine, Baydas published his translations of many works of Russian fiction and his own original fiction. Baydas was also very active in translating Russian fiction into Arabic. In 1898 he translated three Russian novels, Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, published in Beirut, al-Qusaqi al-Walhan (The Amorous Cossack), serialized in the journal Lubnan, and published separately in 1899; and al-Tabib al-Hadhiq (The Skillful Physician), published in Beirut. Furthermore, he translated Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which was serialized in al-Nafa'is al-Asriyya in 1913, and Knyaz Serebryanyi (Prince Serebryanyi) under the Arabic title Ahwal al-Istibdad (The Horrors of Despotism), published in Haifa in 1909 and reprinted in Cairo in 1927.42 Baydas also translated several European novels from Russian versions. To one work by Marie Corelli he gave the Arabic title Shaqa alMuluk (The Misery of Kings), although a different Russian translation by Z. Gora Viskaya had given it another title. The Arabic translation was serialized in Majallat al-Nafa'is in 1908 and was published separately in Jerusalem in 1922. Another novel which Baydas translated from a Russian translation was one by the Italian writer Emilio Salgari, to which Baydas gave the Arabic title al-Mutanakkira al-Hasna (The Disguised Beautiful Woman). It was appended to the third volume of al-Nafa'is al-Asriyya

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in 1911 and was later published separately in 1925. A Russian version of a historical-biographic work in German by L. Muhlbach was translated by Baydas under the title Henry al-Thamin was Zawjatuh al-Sadisa (Henry VIII and His Sixth Wife) and serialized in the same periodical in 1912— 1913 and later published separately in Jerusalem in 1921. His translation of a historical novel, titled al-Arsh wa al-Hubb (The Throne and Love), was serialized in al-Nafa'is al-Asriyya in 1914 and published separately in Jerusalem in 1921.43 Baydas's knowledge of European languages other than Russian was evidently not strong enough to enable him to translate fiction from the original languages. Translating from a translation of the original was not uncommon in the Arab world; Khalil Matran's translation of some of Shakespeare's plays from the French and Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat's translation of Werthers Leiden (The Sorrows of Werther) from the French are examples. However, al-Zayyat's version of Goethe's story is in so beautiful and engaging a style that it has become in itself an Arabic literary masterpiece. Baydas's approach was not greatly different from that of other translators in his time. Like the translator Tanius Abduh, he took great liberties with the text—often to such an extent that nothing was left of it except its general outlines. In his introduction to his translation of al-Mutanakkira al-Hasna (The Disguised Beautiful Lady), Baydas says that his translation of Salgari's romance is meant to be different from the original. He apologizes that he was forced to condense and summarize a great portion of the text because such a voluminous work would be boring to his readers. 44 Even his version of Knyaz Serebryanyi, which was translated directly from Tolstoy's original, changed, omitted, and reorganized many sections of the novel. He claimed that he intended to render it more suitable and pleasing to the readers and to emphasize its dominant theme of tyranny and despotism. Having lived under the rule of the notorious Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, Baydas perhaps intended Ahwal al-Istibdad to remind his readers of conditions in their own country. 45 Several graduates of the Russian schools in Syria and Palestine followed Baydas's footsteps. However, their translations were usually made directly from the original Russian. In 1902 Rafail Sa'd's version of Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata was first published, not in the Arab world, but in Rio de Janeiro of all places, though it was finally published by Salim Qubayn in Cairo in 1904. Qubayn also translated Tolstoy's play The Power of Darkness in 1909; it was reprinted in Cairo in 1926. In 1908 Rashid Haddad translated Tolstoy's Resurrection and A Prisoner of the Caucasus. In 1922 Anton Ballan published a series of popular tales by Tolstoy under the Arabic title Rawai al-Khayal (Masterpieces of Fiction). Ballan had been active in translating some of Tolstoy's novels and publishing them in

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his periodical Hims. In 1915 Bebbawi Ghali al-Duwayri published his translation of Tolstoy's Family Happiness.46 In the first quarter of this century some Egyptian writers translated other works by Tolstoy, including the play The Light That Shines in the Darkness done by Mahmud Tahir Lashin. Other works of fiction by Tolstoy, such as Assarhadon, Family Happiness, and several children's stories, were translated and published in 1928. It is estimated that before 1946 no fewer than twenty of Tolstoy's works had been translated into Arabic. 47 In the decades since World War II many masterpieces of prominent European novelists have become available in Arabic translations. Early translations, of course, reflected the personal taste of the translators, rather than the possible desires of their readers. The press, and the market, were flooded with what often was the shallowest of European fiction: not until the first quarter of this century did translators begin to deal seriously and systematically with the more profound works of Western literature. 48 For some reason, probably the love of adventure and heroism so common in Arab tales, the translators took a special liking to the works of Alexandre Dumas père. A serial translation of The Count of Monte Cristo by Salim Sa'b was published in the periodical al-Sharika al-Shahriyya (Monthly Enterprise). In 1871, another translation of this work, made by Bishara Shadid, appeared in Cairo. 49 Les deux Dianes: Le comte de Montgomery (al-Kunt di Mungumiri, in Arabic, The Count of Montgomery, in English), by Dumas père, translated by Kaiser Ziniyya, was published serially in al-Ahram in 1881 and reprinted in a separate volume at Alexandria in 1907; Najib Haddad published his translation of The Three Musketeers in Cairo in 18 8 8.50 Between 1888 and 1910, some twenty-five novels by Dumas were translated into Arabic, including two which he had written in collaboration with Emile Gaboriau and August W. Schlegel. The one he wrote with Gaboriau was translated by Salih Jawdat with the title al-Yad al-Athima wa al-Silah al-Khafi (The Wicked Hand and the Secret Weapon, Cairo, 1906), and Le Capitaine Richard, which he wrote with Schlegel, was translated by Nasib Mashalani with the title al-Qa'idan (The Two Commanders, Cairo, 1903).51 Between 1875 and 1894, Arabic versions of at least four works of fiction by Jules Verne also appeared, along with works by Chateaubriand, Pierre Zaccone, Eugène Sue, and other French authors. Of Jules Verne's stories, we may cite Voyage en ballon, which Yusuf Sarkis translated and published as al-Rihla al-Jawwiyya fi al-Markaba al-Hawaiyya (Beirut, 1875); Voyage au centre de la terre, translated by Iskandar Ammun under the title al-Rihla al-Ilmiyyafi Qalb al-Kura al-Ardiyya (Alexandria, 1885); le tour du monde en 80 jours, translated by Yusuf Assaf, and published as

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al-Tawaf Hawl al-Ard fi Thamanin Yawm (Cairo, 1889); and Voyage au pole nord, translated by Tawfiq Bubariya ibn Yusuf Bey under the title alRihla al-Shatawiyya fi al-Jihat al-Thaljiyya (Cairo, 1894). Chateaubriand's Les Aventures du dernier Abencérage was translated into Arabic by Ahmad al-Faghun and was published under the title al-Jawhar al-Wahhaj al-Manfusi fi Gharaib ibn Siraj al-Andalusi (Algiers, 1864); other translations of this romance are by Muhammad al-Musayriqi, Khatam Iqd Bani Siraj (Tunis, 1909); Abu al-Fadl al-Walid Ibn Abd Allah Ibn Tu'ma al-Lubnani, Akhir Bani Siraj bi al-Andalus (South America, 1918); and one by al-Amir Shakib Arslan, who appended to it a short history of the Banu Siraj, was published as Riwayat Akhir bani Siraj (Cairo, 1918, reprinted, 1954). A compendium of this romance entitled al-Dhikra is found in al-Manfaluti's al-Abarat 7th ed. (Cairo, 1933), 81-105. Pierre Zaccone's La vengeance was adapted by Salim Naqqash and Adib Ishaq and published as al-lntiqam (Alexandria, 1880). La Belle Parisienne, by Comtesse Dash, was also adapted by Adib Ishaq and published in Cairo (n.d.). Eugène Sue's Mathilde, translated by Sami Qusayri, was published in two volumes (Beirut, 1885). 52 Several works by Victor Hugo and Georges Ohnet were translated into Arabic by Najib Mikhail Jarjur and published serially in the journal Hadiqat al-Akhbar (News Garden), at Alexandria in 1888. Interestingly, larjur's translation of the episodes of Fantine, Cosette, and Jean Valjean from Les Misérables (1888) appeared almost two full decades before Hafiz Ibrahim made his loose and inaccurate translation of the same work. After the turn of the century there was a great increase in the quantity of French fiction translated, particularly the works of romantic authors. 53 The translation of French and English dramas was even more extensive, although the translators seem to have been more selective in this area. The drama had already been introduced into the Arab world, of course, and because plays were performed rather than read, they could appeal to a wider audience than that available to the fiction writers. Among those dramatists, as previously noted, most favored were Molière, Racine, Corneille, and Shakespeare. Arabic versions were also made of several dramas by Victor Hugo, Voltaire's Mérope, and later one or two dramas by George Bernard Shaw. 54 By the turn of the century, a new generation of Egyptians, educated under the British occupation, began to rival the Syrians in the translation of Western fiction. Two new phenomena could be observed: the appearance not only of periodicals wholly devoted to the publication of fiction, but also of monthly and bimonthly volumes of translated fiction published either by individuals or by publishing houses, and the commercialization of translation as both the publishers and the translators discovered in it a new, rewarding source of income. 55 Notable among the periodicals and monthly volumes were Silsilat al-Fukahat ("Humor Series": Beirut, 1884);

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Diwan al-Fukaha ("Humor Anthology": Beirut, 1885); Muntakhabat alRiwayat ("Select Novels, Romances": Cairo, 1894), by Iskandar Karkur; Silsilat al-Riwayat ("Novels, Romances Series": Cairo, 1899), by Muhammad Khidr and Bashir al-Halabi; Majallat al-Riwayat al-Shahriyya ("Monthly Novels, Romances Magazine" Cairo, 1901), by Yaqub Jamal; and Musamarat al-Nadim ("Evening Entertainment Companion": Cairo, 1903), by Ibrahim Effendi Ramzi. Perhaps the most popular of all was Khalil Sadiq Effendi's bimonthly Musamarat al-Sha'b ("Folk Evening Entertainment": Cairo, 1904-1911), which encouraged many writers by publishing their translations. Other monthly and bimonthly publications which offered to their readers translations of fiction were al-Bustan al-Zahir ("The Blooming Garden": Cairo, 1907), al-Fukahat al-Asriyya ("Contemporary Humor": Cairo, 1908), founded by Abd Allah Ghazala al-Halabi; Silsilat al-Riwayat al-Uthmaniyya ("Ottoman Novels, Romances Series": Tanta, 1908) by Jurji Dahhan; Hadiqat al-Riwayat ("Novels, Romances Garden": Cairo, 1909), founded by Sharikat Nashr al-Riwayat; al-Rawi ("The Narrator": Beirut, 1909), by Tanius Abduh; al-Musamarat al-Usbu'iyya ("Weekly Evening Entertainment": Alexandria, 1909), al-Riwayat al-Jadida ("The New Novels, Romances": Cairo, 1910), by Niqula Rizq Allah; al-Samir ("Evening Entertainment Companion": Alexandria, 1911), by Kaiser Shumayyil; Musamarat al-Muluk ("Kings' Evening Entertainment"), published by Alfred Khuri in 1912; al-Riwayat al-Kubra ("Great Novels, Romances": Cairo, 1914), by Murad al-Husayni; al-Musamarat ("Evening Entertainment": Cairo, 1921); al-Nadim al-Riwa'i ("Romance Evening Companion": Cairo, 1922); al-Samir al-Musawwar ("Pictorial Evening Entertainment Companion": Cairo, 1921); and al-Riwaya ("The Novel, Romance": Cairo, 1937).56 Amazingly, almost until the end of World War II, most of the translated fiction consisted of detective and mystery stories. This does not mean, of course, that many masterpieces of Western fiction were not available in Arabic, but they were the exception rather than the rule. The works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Ponson du Terrail, Zavier de Montépin, Michel Zévaco, Paul Segonzac, Maurice Leblanc, Mary Jules, Michel Morphy, and Charles Mérouvel were widely available. Detectives and romantic adventurers, such as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, du Terrail's Rocambole, Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin, and Michel Zévaco's Pardaillan were very popular in the Arab world in the 1930s.57 Of course, these popular translations were not made for any literary or aesthetic purpose. They brought their translators quick fame and easy living and provided a semiliterate, unsophisticated audience with temporary diversion. Because they were mass produced by men with little or no literary finesse, they were mostly superficial and erratic; moreover, they were badly printed on inferior paper and priced low enough—no more than a dime for an individual title of a series—to be within the means of

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nearly every reader. Although it is impossible to cite the names of all the translators of fiction of this sort, we should mention Niqula Rizq Allah (d. 1915), Tanius Abduh (d. 1926), and As'ad Khalil Daghir (d. 1935) as the most prolific of them. 58 In many instances the translators of Western fiction took extensive and sometimes unwarranted liberties with the original text of a work. 59 Yaqub Sarruf not only changed the title of Scott's Talisman to Qalb al-Asad wa Salah al-Din (The Lion Heart and Saladin), but also admitted that he had taken the liberty of omitting, adding, and changing parts of this romance to suit what he believed to be his audience's taste. 60 Another translator, Muhammad Kamil Hajjaj, condensed the works of some twenty Western writers and published them at Cairo in two volumes under the title Balaghat al-Gharb (Literary Eloquence of the West). 61 Other translators changed the titles and the names of the characters and the contents, in order, they claimed, to make the translated work more acceptable to their readers and more consistent with the native literary tradition. An interesting case involves a romance titled Tuhfat al-Muridfi Zawaj Odette bi-Farid (A Unique Gift for the One Who Seeks to Explore the Marriage of Odette to Farid), translated by Muhammad Lutfi Teleghrafji (a telegraph operator) and published in Cairo in 1888. His introduction justifies his alterations by pointing out that when he saw that many writers had compiled volume upon volume of histories, exhortations, aphorisms, tales, and poetry for the common benefit of their readers, he too found it expedient to present a "strange tractate" based on an English version of the original French work. He changed the Western names to facilitate their pronunciation for the "Sons of the Arabs," a generic term applied to all Arabs; therefore this is a "love story between Odette and a Christian young man whom I have chosen to call Farid." 62 Some translators had the audacity to plagiarize whole works without mentioning the name of the author or even the language of the original. In 1918 there appeared Mukhtasar Sirat Henry Esmond (A Short Biography of Henry Esmond) by the renowned man of letters Wahba Masad Effendi, a member of the staff of the Great Coptic College in Cairo. Dedicated to the Director General of the Coptic Schools in Egypt, this work was branded by Latifa al-Zayyat "an audacious thievery." 63 Al-Zayyat gives several more instances of outright plagiarism, including Hafiz Awad's version of Frederick Marryat's Japhet in Search of a Father, which was published in the Musamarat al-Sha'b series already mentioned. Awad gave new titles to each of the five installments, justifying this division on the grounds that each of the component parts should be considered as a separate work of fiction. 64 Another translator, Abd al-Qadir Hamza, plagiarized a French novel which he called Dahaya al-Aqdar (The Victims of Fates) for the same series. 65 Such unethical practices made it very difficult to establish the source of some of the translations of Western fiction.

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Henri Pérès, who meticulously compiled a substantial bibliography of works translated from French, found it impossible to trace the origin of many romances; finally he gave up his investigation and listed many as anonymous. 66 Still other translators tried to legitimize their plagiarism by mentioning only the language of the original work, concealing the name of the author. The editor of al-Hilal criticized these translators in unequivocal terms: We blame translators, and particularly those who translate romances, for suppressing the names of authors. What is the wisdom of doing so? If these translators claim these works to be their own, we could then say that they want to ascribe these works to themselves. But when they admit that they have only translated these works, would it not be better if they affixed the name of the author, who has consumed his brain and spent nights in research and exposed himself to bitter criticism and reproach to write a romance? He even probably paid for the publication of his romance, without making a profit. Should not his right in writing his work be preserved as we preserve our right of publishing these works? 67

The Quality of the Translations Since these translations were mass produced by men who were motivated by monetary rather than literary considerations, it is hardly to be expected that they should be flawless. They are often poor, principally because of the translators' utter disregard for the literary essence of the works with which they were dealing. Tanius Abduh was perhaps the most irresponsible of all: according to writers and journalists who knew him personally, Abduh did not really translate but Arabicized what he read. He never followed the original or tried to convey its meaning. He translated anywhere and everywhere, regardless of his circumstances—in a coffeeshop, on a sidewalk, on a train, even on the flat roof of his house. Abduh was, if we may believe one contemporary description, a walking library. A writer and journalist, Salim Sarkis, says that Abduh carried with him sheets of paper in one pocket and a French novel in the other. He would then read a few lines, put the novel back in his pocket, and begin to scratch in a fine script whatever he could remember of the few lines he had read. He wrote all day long without striking out a word or rereading a line. 68 Another writer, Karam Mulham Karam, says that in translating, Abduh never followed the text of the original, but merely summarized what he had read, using poor and inartistic language. Karam does not agree with Abduh that the poor language of his translations should be excused since it was easier for the common reader to understand. Moreover, Karam says, Abduh's shoddy translations cannot be justified simply by his claim that

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he was too anxious to make a living from them to have sufficient time to concentrate on their quality. Another writer, Anton al-Jumayyil, states in his introduction to the Diwan of Tanius Abduh that Abduh produced no less than seven hundred translations and adaptations of fiction which became widely circulated, and adds, "No wonder that one finds the poor and the excellent among the output of a man whose books are counted by the hundreds." 69 More qualified writers, fortunately, could make the task of translation a respectable literary craft. They were more conscientious in choosing the works they dealt with and in conveying the spirit of the author in an artistic Arabic style, with little loss of the original sense. Some of them even took pains to write introductions providing a brief account of the author and his period, his purpose in writing the work translated, and the aesthetic value of his work. 70 Muhammad al-Siba'i (d. 1931), who spent a quarter of a century trans 5 lating works from several European languages, belonged to what has been termed the "modern school" of translation, which included Ahmad Hafiz Awad, Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Muhammad Badran, and other graduates of the Higher Teachers Schools, known for their proficiency in both Arabic and European languages. 71 Al-Siba'i was born at Cairo in 1881, to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother. After graduating from the Higher Teachers College, he spent some years in teaching, but was unable to endure the rigid regulations of the state schools. Thus, he resigned his position to venture into the field of writing. He began his new career by writing in al-Jarida (Newspaper), in 1908 and later in al-Bayan (Eloquence), a periodical founded by Abd al-Rahman al-Barquqi in 1911. AlBayan greatly encouraged the translation of Western fiction into Arabic, and both al-Siba'i and his colleague Abbas Hafiz became engaged in translating novels and short stories, which they offered regularly to its readers. So strong was this periodical concerned with fiction that in 1914 it began to call itself a journal of fiction, history, and literature. According to Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, it emphasized the publication of Western fiction in translation to such an extent that not one "short story by an Egyptian writer appeared in it until its suspension in 1919." 72 Al-Sibai's noteworthy translations from English included Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Thackeray's Henry Esmond (in collaboration with his younger brother Taha), and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. From the Russian authors he generally chose realistic writings of wider variety than those earlier translated by Khalil Baydas. 73 His contemporaries, among them al-Mazini, considered al-Siba'i a very meticulous and capable translator who not only captured the spirit of the author but made the work thoroughly enjoyable to the Arab reader. He deserves high praise for having chosen to deal with the best of Western fiction, for he was genuinely concerned with the aesthetic and literary development of

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his audience. Near the end of his career, however, al-Siba'i grew despondent, saying that the writing profession had become barren and that his pen had become as undignified as a beggar's flute. 74 Other writers carried on the process of adapting Western fiction which had begun in the nineteenth century. Among these, Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti (d. 1924) became a distinguished literary figure in the Arab world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His exquisite (if somewhat sentimental) treatment of his material made him master of a distinct Arabic style and founder of a literary school. 75 His popularity among Arab readers, young and old, was challenged only by the engaging but highly sentimental writings of Gibran Kahlil Gibran (d. 1931), whose The Prophet and other early writings in English were translated into Arabic by Rev. Antonius Bashir. Al-Manfaluti was born in 1876 in Manfalut, Egypt, to an Arab father and a Turkish mother, both of fairly high social standing. At the local kuttab, a primary school attached to a mosque, he received a firm religious education and, like other children, learned parts of the Quran by heart when he was barely eleven years old. He spent ten years in study at the religious university of al-Azhar but became disenchanted with the traditional subjects taught there and found in the lectures of the modernist al-Shaykh Muhammad Abduh what his perplexed soul was yearning for. He was influenced strongly by the bold, revolutionary teachings of Abduh, especially by his new approach to the exposition of the Quran and to the works of pioneer Arab writers. 76 His main interest was not in cultivating religious studies but in absorbing various literary works. Disregarding the peculiar notion held by many ultraconservative Shaykhs at al-Azhar that studying literature or even getting a little knowledge of it was "an act of idleness and a temptation of the Devil," al-Manfaluti read the works of ancient and modern Arab writers voraciously. His reading about the pre-Islamic period became so imprinted in his memory that the Arabs' tribal life, their tents and camels, their wars, their loves and other emotions became utterly real for him. 77 He read whatever translation he could obtain of Western fiction, chiefly the works of the French romanticists such as Rousseau and Victor Hugo, and of the neo-Arab writers such as Farah Anton (d. 1922) and Gibran Kahlil Gibran. In a real sense, al-Manfaluti was a romantic writer. His life was neither cheerful nor enjoyable. When his master alShaykh Muhammad Abduh died in 1905, al-Manfaluti, despite his differences with and his criticism of Abduh, grieved greatly. To assuage his sorrow, he returned to his native town and remained two years in semiisolation, busying himself only with an article for al-Shaykh Ali Yusuf's journal al-Muayyad. Later, al-Manfaluti was supported by the nationalist leader Sa'd Zaghlul, who gave him a job as an Arabic editor at the Ministry of Education. When Zaghlul was transferred to the Ministry of Justice,

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al-Manfaluti went along with him but was dismissed from his position when Zaghlul fell out of power. He continued to write for local journals until 1923, when Zaghlul obtained for him the position as a clerkship at the Egyptian Senate. He was unable to enjoy this new post for long, however, for he died the following year. 78 Except the severe but highly disciplined attack against the literary conservatism of Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i (d. 1937) by modernist writers like Taha Husayn (d. 1973), Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini (d. 1949), and Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad (d. 1964), no other Arab literary figure has ever come under such heavy critical fire as al-Manfaluti. Both al-Mazini and alAqqad in their book al-Diwan: Kitabfi al-Adab wa al-Naqd (Anthology of Literature and Criticism, Cairo, 1921), were intent on destroying the popularity al-Manfaluti had gained among Arab readers. 79 The controversy over al-Manfaluti's literary skill and achievements was stirred up not only by his subjects and ideas, but by his ever-changing position on many issues. His emotionalism, his impatience, and most of all his lack of consistency, made him unaware that he might simultaneously be a conservative and a liberal, a reformer and a reactionary, a moralist who condemned suicide, and an author who showed some of his characters taking their own lives. 80 The Orientalist Hamilton A. R. Gibb has rightly observed: A s a religious reformer, he attacked conservatism and its sanctuary, the C o l l e g e of al-Azhar, and condemned saint worship, the dervish orders, etc., yet went out of his way to insult his master Muhammad Abduh, and having blamed him for introducing modern interpretations of the Koran, went on in the very next paragraph to make drastic interpretations himself. Together with a fervent Islamic patriotism, which led him at one time to condemn all Western studies and at another to protest against Armenian massacres, he betrayed on almost every page of his work the influence of Western currents of t h o u g h t . . . In essay after essay he preached the duty of charity (ihsan), especially toward wronged and persecuted women. Yet he attacked Qasim Amin as the corrupter of Egyptian womanhood, and asserted the intellectual inferiority of women to men. 8 1

Al-Manfaluti's condemnation of Western civilization is most manifest in his essay al-Madaniyya al-Gharbiyya (Western Civilization), in his alNazarat (Reflections, Cairo, 1947) where he emphatically but unjustifiably says: Each step that the Egyptian takes toward the West will bring him to his end, to an abyss where he will be buried until doomsday. The Egyptian, weak and submissive as he is, when he approaches Western civilization, b e c o m e s like a sieve which holds the bran and lets the flour out. He will be like a wine-filter which holds the residue and siphons the wine. He should flee from Western civilization as the healthy person flees from the patient w h o is stricken with scabies.

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The Egyptian writer Shukri Ayyad rightly comments that if this Egyptian is so weak and submissive that he cannot take from Western civilization what benefits him and reject what is harmful to him, it is truer still that he should be unable to reject this civilization, which has entered his gates. 82 Al-Manfaluti's critics have been at odds as to how they should categorize him as a writer. Some positively classify him merely as a translator, others make him merely a hack adapter of Western fiction. 83 Still others regard him as a sensitive translator with a special gift of translating a work so that the new version becomes his very own creation. 84 Some consider him primarily an essayist and short story writer. 85 That al-Manfaluti as an essayist possessed an exquisite and effective style is especially apparent in the three volumes of al-Nazarat. He cannot properly be called a genuine translator, for he himself knew no European languages. He simply reworked the literal and probably unpolished translations made for him by friends and put them into his own melancholy, sentimental style. Al-Manfaluti often took extensive liberties with the original to fit the theme to a Muslim background and to promote his own didactic purposes. He could cut down an entire romance into a short story, as with Dumas fils's La dame aux camélias, which he published as al-Dahiyya aw Mudhakkirat Margarit (The Victim, or The Memoirs of Marguerite). He condensed Chateaubriand's Atala et René and Le dernier Abencérage into short stories, giving them the titles al-Shuhada (The Martyrs) and alDhikra (Memorial), but indicated immediately beneath their titles that they were translations. 86 From a literal translation made for him by Muhammad Fuad Kamil he rewrote Alphonse Karr's Sous les tilleuls, which he retitled Magdulin aw Taht Zilal al-Zayzafun (Madeleine or Under the Shades of the Linden Trees). He also reworked an earlier version of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, gave it the title al-Sha'ir aw Sirano di Berjrak, and published it in prose form at Cairo in 1921.87 He took the greatest liberty with his version of François Coppée's drama Pour la couronne, reworking a previous translation made by Muhammad Abd al-Salam al-Jundi. Al-Manfaluti's prose version, which he called Fi Sabil al-Taj (In the Interest of the Crown), bears deep traces of his highly rhetorical style. 88 He also adapted Bernardin de St. Pierre's Paul et Virginie, publishing it under the title al-Fadila (Virtue) aw Paul wa Virginie (Cairo, 1923). 89 No matter these various strictures, al-Manfaluti's Arabic adaptations of Western fiction do merit attention as the works of a man of letters greatly influenced by Western ideas, which he both admired and warned against. Apparently, his polemical objectives were to employ Western fictional techniques to vivify and magnify himself, his Islamic ideals, and the true sentiments of his own society.

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His adaptation of Coppee's Pour la couronne repeatedly subordinates the story to long and (to the modern reader) tedious orations in praise of patriotic devotion to one's country and concern for one's fellows. In the second chapter, for instance, the protagonist, Constantine, explains to his stepmother the necessity of caring for women and children, and those too weak to care for themselves. Because of his didactic aim, al-Manfaluti often forgets time, place, and even his characters to confront his audience in the manner of a religious preacher. His moralizing becomes a harangue, and any discerning reader quickly finds that he has become distracted from the main theme of the work. Coppee's work was essentially an attempt to propel the Balkan countries into a revolt against the Ottomans. However, the straightforward and martial French drama is, in the translation, weighted down by al-Manfaluti's leaden moral exhortations. Worse, al-Manfaluti distorts the dialogue by interpolating Quranic verses, forgetting that the speaker to whom he assigns them is a Christian defending his country against the Muslim Turks. 90 As al-Manfaluti presents the matter, the chief issue is not the struggle of a vigorous nation for its freedom and independence, but the submissiveness of defeated people blaming their tragic domination by their enemy on their arrogance. Furthermore, the issue as al-Manfaluti presents it is the confidence of the defeated people in themselves rather than God, and the contempt of the rich and strong among them for the poor and weak. 91 In many ways his attitude is curiously reminiscent of the early medieval Christian apologists, who forced pagan writers of the pre-Christian period to become (posthumous) defenders of the Gospel. He was doing for Islam what St. Augustine, especially, had done for Christianity. Al-Manfaluti's unique techniques are more clearly revealed by a comparison of his adaptation of St. Pierre's Paul et Virginie with that by Uthman Jalal. Jalal's objective was to Egyptianize this romance and give it a strong Muslim atmosphere, to make it more acceptable to a domestic audience of unsophisticated readers. Al-Manfaluti's adaptation, on the other hand, is written in a highly rhetorical and polished language and is intended for an elite group of readers, the graduates of Dar al-Ulum and similar "Western" schools established in the time of the Khedive Ismail. 92 Nevertheless, al-Manfaluti was generally more successful than Jalal in choosing Western works which were suited to the tastes and sentiments of his citified audience. Most of them dealt with such touching problems as ideal love and the plight of the poor and oppressed. These highly sentimental romances, with his sentimental style, explain al-Manfaluti's infatuating appeal to the Arab reader's romantic nature. A controversy arose between Mansur Fahmi and Taha Husayn over al-Manfaluti's adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Fahmi admired al-Manfaluti's effort and described his adaptation as useful, because it presented to Arab readers a masterpiece

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of Western literature. Although al-Manfaluti did not produce the original exactly, Fahmi argued, he succeeded in presenting in a clear Arabic style a reasonable likeness of it; his presentation of some parts of this romance was impeccable. In defending al-Manfaluti, Fahmi contended that it would be better to have some slight notion of a new work of literature k n o w n only in translation than to avoid this literature altogether. Taha Husayn criticized a l - M a n f a l u t i ' s conversion of R o s t a n d ' s drama f r o m verse to prose. Furthermore, said Husayn, al-Manfaluti did not work f r o m the original but f r o m someone else's translation. He questioned whether it was worthwhile to have a deficient and distorted translation, or to argue that such work is better than no translation at all. 9 3 At least one contemporary writer, Isa Ubayd, himself a pioneer in Arabic literature, does not blame alM a n f a l u t i for converting K a r r ' s novel Sous les tilleuls into a fantastic piece of prose fiction, or for cruelly suppressing the personality of Stephen. With great respect for the man he calls "our greatest living writer," Ubayd d e f e n d s al-Manfaluti's Arabicization of K a r r ' s work and his modification of some of its characters by asserting that he was attempting to inject fresh life into modern Arabic fiction. He says: Does not his distortion of this romance and modification of the characters show that he was subject to his Oriental temperament, which motivated him to portray human perfection and the highest ideals of immaculate love? Furthermore, does not al-Manfaluti's choice of Cyrano de Bergerac serve as proof enough that there is an inherent propensity in the Egyptian writer that motivates him to portray impeccable beauty and perfection which are as far from reality as heaven is from earth? 94

Despite the validity of these opinions, al-Manfaluti's wholly new style captivated not only many Arab readers, but those writers who were later to b e c o m e his severest critics. Young writers like Taha Husayn and A h m a d Hasan al-Zayyat sat in the Abbasid porch of al-Azhar Mosque, waiting for the newest issue of al-Muayyad so that they could read al-Manfaluti's articles, essays, and stories. Al-Zayyat professes that he was flabbergasted by al-Manfaluti's style, and he and his colleagues wished that they might establish contact with this man " w h o m God has chosen to carry the message of the newborn literature." 9 5 More than that of anyone else, al-Zayyat's style in translating Western fiction into Arabic bears the mark of al-Manfaluti's influence. Like alManfaluti, he began his career in literature by absorbing the works of ancient Arab writers and later fell under the influence of Western literature, which was more viable, relevant, and universal than that of his native precursors. 9 6 Born and raised in al-Daqahliyya in the Egyptian countryside, he reveals the p r o f o u n d influence of Egyptian village life in works which are filled with descriptions of the village and the sad lot of the wretched

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fallah. The four-volume Wahi al-Risala (The Inspiration of al-Risala), containing his essays and observations over twenty years, to a great degree resembles al-Manfaluti's Nazarat, except that al-Zayyat is less depressing and lachrymose. Yet every page of Wahi al-Risala betrays his romanticism and his unrealistic approach to social, political, and moral problems. Al-Zayyat studied law in France in the 1920s, and may have practiced his profession upon returning to Egypt after receiving his degree in 1925. By 1930, however, he was in Baghdad, teaching Arabic literature at the Higher Teachers' School. 97 There he established intimate relations with King Faysal I and with Iraqi men of letters, including the famous poet Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi (d. 1936).98 Three years later, however, this school was closed down, and al-Zayyat returned to Cairo to embark on a long literary career which began with the publication of his esteemed weekly alRisala (The Message). The anecdote he relates about the birth of this journal illustrates his determination to carve for himself a place in the domain of Arabic literature. One evening in November 1933, four months after his return from Baghdad, al-Zayyat went to see his friend Taha Husayn, who had recently lost his chair at the College of Arts in Fuad University. Al-Zayyat suggested the publication of a literary weekly, but Husayn's response was discouraging. Such a magazine, Husayn argued, would have little appeal in Egyptian society; the majority of the people were illiterate, and those who could read tended to prefer European works or light, entertaining pieces written by domestic authors. Al-Zayyat, realizing the difficulties of his project, decided to go ahead with it anyway, and thus al-Risala was born. Until its disappearance in 1953, it served as a kind of "literary school," training and polishing the styles of formerly unknown writers. It became the mouthpiece of the Arab intelligentsia who found it a platform from which they could announce their opinions. Its reputation even reached the Western world, and many prominent Orientalists contributed articles to it. 99 Unlike Tanius Abduh, al-Zayyat did not rely on translation for his living. He was a prominent litterateur with an exquisite and distinctive style. Also, he was a prolific writer who produced nearly twenty books of his own. His literary achievement, Wahi al-Risala, was formally recognized when he received the State Prize for Literature in 1953. 100 While al-Zayyat, like al-Manfaluti, is a sentimental writer whose heart is particularly touched by poverty, his method of alleviating suffering does not extend beyond doling out some money as alms or the Muslim poor tax. He believes it sufficient that tax monies should be collected from the wealthy and distributed to the poor. Al-Zayyat sincerely feels that poverty can be combated only through religion, which would create better relations among all members of the community and would force the rich to help the needy. 101

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More than for his essays or original works, however, al-Zayyat will be remembered for his translations, as discussed above, of Goethe's Werthers Leiden and Alphonse Lamartine's Raphael. Drawing from the impeccable, highly polished language of the Quran, these will remain classics of Arabic literature. 102 The fact that al-Zayyat translated the Sorrows ofWerther from French rather than the original German does not diminish the quality of his work; in Goethe's sentimental novella he found echoes of his own suffering in an early frustrated love affair, whose end pulled him back into the bitter world of reality. His Arabic version of Lamartine's Raphael was also motivated by his sentimental nature. Both are considered two of the best translations made from Western literature. By the time I was introduced to them in 1938, they were commonly read by the student of secondary schools in Iraq, along with the adaptations of al-Manfaluti and the works of Gibran Kahlil Gibran. For some time al-Zayyat had felt the need for a systematic effort to translate Western literary and scientific masterpieces. In an open letter to the Minister of Education, Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri, he proposed the establishment of a translation bureau independent of the Ministry. The bureau should have the same status enjoyed by Egypt's institutions of higher learning. It should be staffed by two hundred translators competent in at least three European languages. Its translation efforts would be selective and systematic. Its goal would be a complete translation of four hundred pages each day, so that any important new book published in Europe would soon be available in Arabic. 103 Al-Zayyat complained that modern Arabic writings were inadequate in both quality and expression. The reason is that the Arabs had repudiated their ancient literary tradition and were never able to keep pace with the rapid development of literature in the West. As a result, he argued, Arabic literature had neither enriched its past nor developed its present, but had merely become stagnant. Thus, the modern Arab reader could find no nourishment or satisfaction in either ancient or contemporary Arabic literature, particularly the latter, which was no match for the highly developed and sophisticated Western literature. 104 To show the deficiency of Arabic writing in the present era, al-Zayyat pointed out that the most effective writer in Egypt could not find acceptable terms for new inventions or new ideas, as could his Western counterpart. If the Egyptian Academy were to provide a comprehensive glossary with adequate translations of the common Western technical and literary terms, such a work would become hopelessly obsolete. Yet, he went on, the nation whose language is inadequate and whose writers cannot express themselves properly is half-dumb. 1 0 5 Scientific literature in Arabic, he complained, was very meager, consisting chiefly of adaptations which were likely to be of use only to beginners. Most of the people who thirst

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for knowledge could find no edifying reading matter on scientific subjects. Since such materials were not available to the public, the Arabic language and the Arab mind would remain within a medieval structure. 106 Al-Zayyat emphasized that for good or bad the sources of contemporary scientific knowledge were European and American, and that the wide cultural gap between East and West could be bridged only through the sciences. He realized that the rapid expansion of knowledge which had enabled man to dominate the earth and the skies would always be unattainable for the Egyptians. Al-Zayyat reasoned that unless the Egyptians had this new knowledge translated from the Western texts and manuals into their own Arabic, they would keep suffering from cultural deficiency. Neither schools nor many students would by themselves suffice to keep the nation abreast of modern scientific developments; the only answer was translation. Al-Zayyat emphatically concluded: If we translate into Arabic the scientific, artistic, and literary masterpieces of English, American, French, German, Russian, and Italian writers, these masterpieces will soon become part of our scientific and literary structure, which we shall cherish, preserve, and then add to, as did our ancestors, who translated the sciences of the Greeks, Indians, Jews, Syrians and Persians into their language. 1 0 7

There is much to be said for the opinion that the only means of making a new Arabic literature viable and universal was through massive translation of Western literature. Al-Zayyat, for one, especially devoted most of his life to the advancement of Arabic literature and literary excellence both through original writings and through translations. He founded a periodical, al-Riwaya (The Novel, Romance), devoted to the translation of Western stories, especially those of Guy de Maupassant, and the publication of Arabic short stories. The translations, generally preceded by a brief introduction, were remarkable for their precision and for the beauty of their language. 1 0 8 Among the members of the "modern school" of translation, perhaps the most famous was Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini (d. 1949). He was considered by many of his contemporaries to have converted translation into a true literary art. His career was shaped by his sad childhood, his physical deformity, and the family troubles which gave him a deep-rooted inferiority complex he was never able to overcome. 1 0 9 Al-Mazini's interest in translations from English was a natural outgrowth of his work in World War I, translating war dispatches and telegrams. 110 In the 1920s, al-Mazini contributed some translations of fiction to al-Bayan, a periodical with which he had been associated since 1907, and to such newspapers as alAkhbar, al-Ittihad, al-Siyasa, and al-Balagh.ni He translated Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes and Other Stories, H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quartermain, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal. Then

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he went on to John Galsworthy's The Fugitive, the Russian Artsibashev's Sanine, which he translated from an English version, entitling it Ibn alTabi'a (The Son of Nature), and H. G. Wells' The Time Machine.m In addition, al-Mazini produced Mukhtarat min al-Qisas al-Ingilizi (Select English Stories, Cairo, 1939), an anthology including English stories by writers such as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and H.G. Wells. In his introduction to this volume, al-Mazini explains that his sole purpose in choosing and translating particular works was to project the style of the original writer, not that of the translator. He says that he adheres so strictly to the original that his translation may be considered literal, but admits that he has had to omit some phrases for lack of suitable Arabic equivalents. He uses some colloquial terms which may be incorrect but were found in Arabic lexicons and literary works. Also, he skipped translating some lines because he could not fully understand their contents. 113 Al-Mazini's stated purpose is borne out by the testimony of his lifelong friend and sometime coauthor Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, who says that he knew no one in Eastern or Western literature with a "translation genius" comparable to that of al-Mazini. He pointed out that al-Mazini translated prose in an elegant and rhetorical style like that of al-Jahiz (d. 868) or Khalid ibn Safwan (d. 757), while to translate Western verse he uses the style of the Arab poets al-Buhturi (d. 897) and al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1016). Moreover, claims al-Aqqad, he translated without losing so much as a letter of a word and without altering the sense of the original. 114 This claim is hardly credible: while al-Mazini is generally considered a first-rate translator, often he appears quite careless. His version of Wells's The Time Machine, for example, omits many words and terms for which suitable Arabic equivalents were readily available. Moreover, he interpolates many terms on his own initiative and uses other words and phrases whose meanings do not correspond to the original, and he leaves some terms untranslated because he apparently could not understand their proper meaning. 115 Most serious, however, was the charge of plagiarism leveled against al-Mazini. In 1920 he had translated Mikhail Petrovich Artsibashev's Sanine from an English version made by Percy Pinkerton in 1915, and he afterwards "incorporated" parts of this work in his own novel Ibrahim alKatib (Ibrahim the Writer), published in 1931. Some critics affirm that apparently al-Mazini had "borrowed" parts of the Russian novel, while others contend merely that his protagonist, Ibrahim, has some traits in common with Sanine. 116 Al-Mazini defended himself by saying that he never intended to copy parts of the Russian novel, but that some of its scenes and incidents may have remained fixed in his mind when he wrote Ibrahim al-Katib a decade later—in short, the similarity between the two works is sheer coincidence. That he loosely used parts of Galsworthy's drama The Fugitive, which he

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published under the Arabic title Gharizat al-Mar'a aw Hukm al-Ta'a (Woman's Instinct or Sentenced to Obey), was shown by Muhammad Ali Hammad in a series of articles published in al-Balagh and later collected in a book titled al-Mi'wal (Pickax). By comparing Galsworthy's text closely with that of al-Mazini, Hammad showed that al-Mazini's originality in this work consisted solely of changing the proper names into Arabic. 117 There was some truth also in the allegation that in writing his Rifilai al-Hijaz (Al-Hijaz's Journey), al-Mazini was influenced by Mark Twain's travel narrative The Innocents Abroad.m He also "used" parts of other works by Twain, among them Tom Sawyer, which became Al-Sighar wa al-Kibar (The Young and the Old); The Interview, which he titled alHaqaiq al-Bariza fi Hayati (Prominent Realities in My Life); Adam's Diary, which became Muqtatafat min Mudhakkirat Hawwa fi al-Janna (Select Memoirs of Eve in Paradise). These works were incorporated with Ba 'd al-Khuruj min al-Janna (After the Expulsion from Paradise) into his book Sunduq al-Dunya (Kaleidoscope, Cairo, 1929). 119 This volume also contains his adaptation of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, with the Arabic title al-Ghurfa al-Mashura (The Enchanted Room). 120 Whether alMazini "plagiarized" or "used" part of Western literature is not important. What is important is his most exquisite form of translation which, I think, has not been yet matched. He is the Arab translator par excellence of modern times. In the decade between 1920 and 1930, many translators were busy condensing novels and translating short stories which they published either in journals like al-Siyasa al-Usbuiyya (Political Weekly), or in anthologies (mukhtarat). Among these translators, working chiefly with French sources, were Muhammad Kamil Hajjaj, Aziz Abd Allah Salam, Faraj Gibran, Tawfiq Abd Allah, Muhammad Abd Allah Inan, and Kamil Gaylani. 121 Although much of the attention of the translators was devoted to unsophisticated works of Western fiction, many qualified writers and men of letters made a sincere effort to put before the educated Arab reader artistic and substantial works. In the period between the two world wars Lajnat al-Talif wa al-Tarjama wa al-Nashr (Writing, Translation, and Publication Committee) attempted to choose, translate, and publish much worthwhile Western fiction. Besides the anthology of English and American stories made by al-Mazini, this committee also published Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, translated by Fakhri Abu al-Su'ud; Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, translated by Muhammad Awad Muhammad; and Egmont, translated by Muhammad Ibrahim al-Dasuqi. 122 Dar al-Katib al-Misri (The Egyptian Writer Publishing House), under the supervision of the celebrated writer Taha Husayn (d. 1973), was responsible for the publication of such works as Voltaire's Zadig and André Gide's Oedipus Theseus, both of which were translated by Husayn himself; H. G. Wells's The Food of the Gods, translated by Muhammad Badran; Aldous Huxley's Brave New

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World, translated by Mahmud Mahmud; Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost, both done by Louis Awad; François Mauriac's The Mother, translated by Muhammed Abd al-Hamid Anbar, and Le Nœud de Vipers (Vipers' Tangle), by Nazih al-Hakim; Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, by Abd al-Hamid al-Dawakhili; and Prosper Mérimée's Colomba by Muhammad Ghallab. The works of other Western authors, including Maurice Ries, Anton Chekhov, and Ivan Turgenev, were translated by such men as Muhammad Abd al-Hamid Anbar, Abd al-Hamid Abdin, Mahmud Tahir Lashin, Mahmud Abd al-Munim Murad, Abd al-Rahman Badawi, and Mahmud alShaniti. 123 The influence of these translations was certainly enormous. There is hardly a writer in the modern Arab world who has not in some way or other been affected by Western fiction. Translations not only introduced the Arab writers of fiction to Western techniques and assisted in preparing many of them for their craft, but also changed the Arabic language by the infusion of many borrowed words which remain in the language. 1 2 4 Through imitation and adaptation, and even through outright plagiarism, Arab writers learned their craft well enough to create a body of fiction available to only Arabic readers. At the very least, the translations from Western authors provided entertainment for the reading public and shattered the traditional view that fiction was worthless and even detrimental to its readers. Not until the Arab world was disabused of this notion could prose fiction exist on a par with those literary genres which had traditionally enjoyed a dignified position in the Arab culture.

6 The Revival of the Maqama

Most of the Syrian émigrés in Egypt were Christians with a fair degree of education and ambition. They were engaged in journalism, in various other kinds of writing, and in translating different types of Western fiction into Arabic. Some Egyptian writers welcomed these Syrians and appreciated their contribution, but many others thought of them as rivals seeking to control the literary field for whatever profits it might bring. In fact, their translations from Western fiction were often haphazard, hasty, and cheap productions. Many Egyptian writers with a taste for classical Arabic considered these translations literary trash. Some even believed that they were intended to corrupt the morals of the young and to nourish dishonorable affections. Therefore, a few serious Egyptian writers began to revive and adapt an elegant medieval literary genre, the maqama, to criticize many aspects of their society. Their ideas and literary techniques were important to the development of modern Arabic fiction. The earliest meaning of maqama is "an assembly" or "a place of meeting." The term was used in this sense by many pre-Islamic poets, such as Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, though one of them, Labid ibn Rabia, used it to signify the people who attended such an assembly. In the early Islamic era, maqama denoted the audience of the caliph, in whose presence a witty person would deliver a speech or tell a tale, and it came also to refer to the tale told in the caliph's presence. Later, it acquired the more general meaning of "a narration" or "an episode narrated by an eloquent individual." In this last sense, it is properly applied to the tales of Badi al-Zaman alHamadhani and his followers. Such a tale takes the form of a short narrative related by an imaginary rawi (narrator) who describes the adventures of a fictitious hero. The hero, a rogue and beggar, is generally endowed with the supreme gift of rhetorical speech. The beauty of his language not only leaves his hearers spellbound, but forces them, almost involuntarily, to reach into their pockets 121

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and shower him with money. Always restless, this rogue goes from country to country and from town to town, using his power of eloquence to beg more. Each maqama focuses on a single event, which may either be drawn from experience or invented by the hero. Although its plot is usually connected with begging, the hero sometimes chooses to entertain his casual audience with another subject, such as poetry. He may roam into the realm of metaphysics, enchanting his listeners with tales about ghosts and the devil. He may assume the role of a preacher to remind the people of the true precepts of their religion and to inveigh against atheists and atheism. Badi al-Zaman, for instance in al-Maqama al-Maristaniyya, supports the religious views of the Muslim Sunnites against the rationalist Mutazila, whom he criticizes bitterly. The central figure of the tale may even be an animal, as in al-Maqama al-Asadiyya (The Lion's Maqama), in which the same author provides a detailed description of the lion's life and character and enumerates his various names in the Arabic language. He also describes traveling and all the wonders and dangers associated with it. Similarly, in the interesting tale al-Maqama al-Hamdaniyya, named for Sayf al-Dawla al-Hamdani (d. 964), the founder of al-Hamdaniyya dynasty in Syria and Mosul, the hero Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari provides a copious description of the Arabian horse and shows his profound knowledge of the Arabic language. Still other maqamas elaborate the life in a particular city, such as Baghdad or Hulwan, and the character of its inhabitants. Both in content and structure, the maqama is more limited in scope and theme than the modern short story. It is a dialogue between the narrator and the central figure, superbly framed in a highly rhetorical rhymed prose. There is no unified plot in the modern literary sense, and the aesthetic purpose is not primary. Its main objective is unmistakably didactic and rhetorical: to present to the Arab audience the quintessential beauty of their language. Thus, the tales are characterized by highly ornamental language, embellished with simile and metaphor. The narrative and its significance are less important. Because of its loose and episodic structure, its lack of plot and description, and its dialogue form, the maqama can hardly be considered an antecedent of the modern short story. Properly polished and improved, it might have developed into a viable literary genre. With form exalted over content, it remained stylized. Furthermore, Arabic society, which had been declining since medieval times and was conservative in religion, social, and literary matters, was unable to nurture the first-rate authors needed to develop this and other viable literary models. Some recent Arab critics have sought to draw an analogy between the maqama and certain European literary types, particularly those of Spanish origin. Shawqi Dayf, for example, asserts that the maqama was introduced into Europe, along with other Arabic works, because of the intellectual interrelations between East and West in medieval times. He specifies that

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several of al-Hariri's maqamas were translated into Latin, German, and English. Dayf cautiously notes that the impact of the maqama upon European literature, unlike that of the Thousand and One Nights, is hard to trace because of its concentration on rhetorical style rather than narrative. Nevertheless, Dayf attempts to link the Spanish novella picaresca (rogue novel) with the maqama, largely based on similarities between the Spanish picaro and the fictitious characters Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari of Badi alZaman and Abu Zayd al-Saruji of al-Hariri. 1 Another writer, Fakhri Abu al-Su'ud, believes that the maqamas of Badi al-Zaman occupy a place in Arabic literature comparable to that held by the works of Addison and Steele in English literature. Abu al-Su'ud traces the parallel emergence of a fictional form characterized by social consciousness, analysis of individual characters, skillful use of artistic devices, and unity of thought. This argument, however, rests on a weak analogy between the narrators of the maqamas and the invented personalities who populated the Tatler and the Spectator: Isaac Bickerstaff, Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport, and Will Honeycomb, along with a few female characters. Unlike the restless, ever-wandering heroes of the maqamas, these characters are static and stereotyped (except Sir Roger) although endowed with some measure of individuality and humor. Abu al-Su'ud maintains, quite unrealistically, that had the maqama appeared in the eighth century, when Arabic literature was in its infancy, rather than in the tenth century, it would have been followed by developments which corresponded to those in English literature after the time of Addison and Steele, and would have led eventually to a full-fledged Arabic novel. 2 Obviously Abu al-Su'ud ignores the complete disparity between the circumstances in which the maqama arose and those in which Addison and Steele developed the fictionalized essay. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, England could offer a substantial and growing body of readers who were delighted by the presentation of exciting and imaginative factual accounts. Journalism came in this period to be a potent force in the development of new modes and new tastes in literature, as is evident from the popularity of Sir Roger L'Estrange's Observateur (1679), John Dunton's Athenian Gazette (1690), Pierre Motteux's Gentleman's Journal (1692), Ned Ward's monthly London Spy (1698), and Daniel Defoe's newspaper The Review (1704-1713). Furthermore, the rising commercial class, with more and more leisure time available, formed an indispensable reading public for English writers. These two elements, the ready audience and the means of reaching it, were lacking in Arab society even at the height of its cultural development in the tenth century. In the modern period, the maqama was revived by writers throughout the Arab world, among them Ahmad al-Barbir (d. 1811), Niqula al-Turk (d. 1818), the priest Hannanya al-Munayyar (d. ca. 1850), Abu al-Thana al-Alusi (d. 1854), Nasif al-Yaziji (d. 1871), Salih Majdi (d. 1880), Faris

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ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq (d. 1887), Ibrahim al-Ahdab (d. 1891), Abd Allah Nadim (d. 1896), Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi (d. 1905), Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (d. 1930), Hafiz Ibrahim (d. 1932), Muhammad Lutfi Jumu'a (d. 1953), and many others. Moreover, there were two distinct lines of development within this revival: while some writers, including the Lebanese al-Yaziji and al-Shidyaq, followed the traditional form of the maqama, Egyptian writers, such as al-Muwaylihi and Hafiz Ibrahim, attempted to experiment with it. Nasif al-Yaziji was, by virtue of his training and inclination, a perpetuator rather than a modifier of medieval Arabic literary models. Bom at Kafr Shima in Lebanon to a Malkite Roman Catholic family, he learned the fundamentals of reading and writing at the local church school. In his youth he revealed a burning desire to master the Arabic language, which he deeply venerated. Probably because he considered Arabic sufficient for literary accomplishment, al-Yaziji never bothered learning a European language, although the Roman Catholic missionary schools of that time had made French popular in Lebanon. His literary career started with poetry. One of his early poems, composed in praise of the Amir Bashir al-Shihabi (d. 1850), ruler of Lebanon, won the favor of the Amir, who attached the young poet to his court as his secretary. After losing this position following the deposition of the Amir in 1840, al-Yaziji moved to Beirut and accepted several invitations to teach Arabic at various schools. He was also invited to revise the Arabic translation of the Holy Bible made by missionaries at the Syrian Protestant College, later to become the American University of Beirut. Besides teaching, he began writing on Arabic grammar, morphology, and rhetoric. Al-Yaziji was capable not only of imitating the medieval belletrists who invented the maqama, but of actually surpassing them in the production of this complex literary form. His volume, Majma al-Bahrayn (The Confluence of the Two Seas), contained sixty maqamas, ten more than the number composed by al-Hariri. 3 Nasif's maqamas seem keen imitations of al-Hariri's in both form and content. Like the medieval writers, he contrived two fictitious characters: Suhayl ibn Abbad, the narrator, and Maymun ibn Khizam, the hero. Like al-Hariri, who always presented his hero Abu Zayd al-Saruji arguing with his wife, his disciple, or his associate, al-Yaziji often portrayed Maymun ibn Khizam quarreling with his daughter Layla or his attendant Rajab. Furthermore, his hero, like al-Hariri's, was an eloquent scoundrel and beggar who used disreputable means to make a living. The secondary characters are also alike in sentiment, nature, and objectives. Finally, al-Yaziji's style is a highly rhetorical rhymed prose, embellished intermittently with lines of poetry. However, al-Hariri's natural and unpretentious rhymed prose flows more smoothly than the forced and involved imitation of al-Yaziji. The Lebanese writer even quotes the Quran so profusely that there can be

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no doubt that, although he was a Christian, his profound knowledge of sacred writings exceeded that of his Muslim predecessor. Essentially, he attempted to challenge, if not to surpass, al-Hariri's mastery of rhetoric. Unfortunately, however, the maqamas of al-Yaziji are largely anachronistic, primarily because of their blindly imitative use of pre-Islamic and Islamic settings and themes. His hero travels between Mecca and al-Madina in the Hijaz, takes excursions to al-Kufa, al-Basrah, Baghdad, and alAnbar in Iraq, or visits Alexandria, Cairo, and Dimyat in Egypt and Damascus in Syria. Al-Yaziji provides an elaborate description of the customs and way of life in each of these places, although he never left his native Lebanon. He also provides detailed information about many aspects of pre-Islamic culture, such as food and its connection with Arab hospitality, the multifarious names and different characteristics of the Arabian horse, and the various types of Arab dwellings. He delves into astronomy to explain the names of the stars, the movements of the planets, and the different names of the nights, according to whether the moon is full, half, or new. Al-Yaziji cites the names assigned to the sounds produced by the pen, the arrow, and the fire, and to those sounds related to laughing, chuckling, weeping, and snoring. He does not fail to enumerate the endless names for the voices of many animals. In brief, he digresses into many realms of the knowledge which, despite his meticulous and most commendable scholarship, add nothing to the development of Arabic prose fiction. 4 Moreover, the very nature of the maqama precluded its use as a contemporary form of imaginative literature. Its main purpose was to instruct the Arabs of medieval times in the subtleties of their language, and the adventures of its ever-restless, wandering hero were intended to render the didactic element more pleasant. Thus, the element of romance in the maqama was less important. If al-Yaziji is to be criticized for describing places he never saw, the same stricture must apply equally to al-Hariri, who very probably did not visit all the places he describes in his maqamas.5 It is a mistake to expect al-Yaziji to have written according to modern Western fictional models when his prime purpose, as his introduction to Majma al-Bahrayn implies, was purely conservative and didactic. 6 A contemporary of al-Yaziji, Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq, made a distinct step, however awkward, in the direction of the Western short story. Born and raised in Lebanon, and conversant with almost every branch of the Arabic language and Arabic literature, he was also conservative in style and literary outlook. Yet he had an advantage over al-Yaziji; his wide travels in the Mediterranean area and especially his contact with Europe had broadened his intellectual perspective and to some extent refined his style. The discerning reader can sense in his writing a creativeness and originality lacking in the work of al-Yaziji. In Al-Saq ala al-Saqfi ma huwa al-Fariyaq, al-Shidyaq presents four maqamas written in the traditional rhymed-prose style and ornamented

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with bits of poetry. They are episodic in structure, and the narrative is long-winded at times. Following tradition, al-Shidyaq invents a fictitious hero, al-Haris ibn Haththam, but the author himself, under the name alFariyaq, serves as narrator. Furthermore, unlike the personages of the traditional maqamas, al-Shidyaq's characters are living creatures with a clear identity and some degree of independence. The plots and settings are contemporary, reflecting the spirit and sentiment of the communities in which he lived and worked. Al-Shidyaq's artistry is most conspicuous in the work titled Maqama Muqima. The hero leaves home after a fight with his nagging wife, full of bitter feelings against all women. While wandering aimlessly, he meets a group of fourteen females whose physical charms win his attention and his admiration. His anger allayed, he feels himself again and even recites poetry in praise of their beauty. One of these women approaches al-Haris and informs him that he is not the only one of his kind among men. Then she recites to him a poem composed by her husband, and each of her companions in turn does the same. Enchanted by the ladies' recitations, al-Haris thinks so highly of their husbands that he wishes to make their acquaintance. He is told that they are at the seashore, and when he comes upon them, he discovers they have pitched a tent to protect themselves from the sun. Approaching, he enters in conversation with them about problems relating to women and marriage. Soon the quiet conversation turns into a heated but inconclusive argument, and al-Haris, impatient, leaves these men to seek answers to the problems elsewhere. Finally he meets alFariyaq in the marketplace, carrying a shopping basket filled with dainty foods. Al-Haris asks him his opinion regarding women and marriage, and amid the hustle and bustle of an oriental marketplace, al-Fariyaq recites a poem expressing his views on these matters. 7 The social and human elements in this and other maqamas of alShidyaq are vigorously presented, and the characters are witty and eloquent. Yet the absence of plot and the unrealistic portrayal of the characters' sentiments reveal the inadequacy of the form, despite subtle language, as a basis for new techniques of prose fiction. The main interest of readers of maqamas of al-Shidyaq lies in the vividness of their poetry and the variety of amusing (though often trivial) details. Henri Pérès attempts to attribute al-Shidyaq's ideas, creativeness, and lively style solely to his contact with European life and thought. He leads the reader to believe that in his monumental work al-Saq ala al-Saq, Faris al-Shidyaq was greatly influenced by French writers, particularly Rabelais. In this regard Fuad Afram al-Bustani, a contemporary writer and critic, observes: It would have been more appropriate if Pérès had been less precipitate in attributing whatever beauties are contained in al-Saq ala al-Saq to Western sources, such as the author's remark to his wife, "Let us now come

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back to the question of farewell," which Pérès connected with Panurge's famous saying, "Retournons à nos moutons," while the difference between the two sayings and their circumstances is obvious. Pérès should have been less outspoken in his evaluation of al-Saq ala al-Saq, an imaginative style, but still lacking many characteristics of Western story writing.8

Another contemporary Egyptian man of letters who wrote maqamas is Abd Allah Nadim, whose popular dialogues have been discussed in Chapter 4. Nadim wrote nine maqamas, which were published in Egypt with the title Kitab al-Masamir (The Book of Nails), with the initials of the friend through whose effort the book appeared. In his preface the publisher says that this is the first volume, to be followed by a second, but there is no evidence that another volume exists. 9 Nadim follows the traditional form of the maqamas by having a narrator, al-Sharif Abu Hashim, son of al-Sharif Hazim, who relates the adventures of the principal character al-Shaykh Madin, well-known as Abu al-Qasim the Gnostic. His maqamas are quite different in substance from other maqamas, whether ancient or contemporary. They are diatribes written in the most vulgar and obscene language against Abu al-Huda alSayyadi, religious adviser to the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II. Nadim happened to be in Constantinople in 1893 when Jamal al-Din al-Afghani was also in that city. Al-Sayyadi, who wielded tremendous influence over the superstitious sultan by working miracles, especially miracles of healing, became jealous of Jamal al-Din because of the great honor and respect the Sultan accorded him. Al-Sayyadi, considering Jamal al-Din as his rival, criticized him before the sultan in hopes of eliminating him. Nadim, a devout disciple and admirer of al-Afghani, supported him. The result was the nine maqamas, Masamir (Nails), a vitriolic satire against al-Sayyadi, whom Nadim calls Abu al-Dalal (the one who misguides). From the narrator we learn that the hero al-Shaykh Madin Abu alQasim is a virtuous man who follows the true Islamic faith and spends his time in praying and fasting. He also instructs people in religious sciences and guides them to the true path of their religion. Abu al-Qasim has spent forty years in devout worship of God without heeding the temptations of Satan, although he realizes that Satan was the enemy of righteous men. One day he begins to wonder why Satan had not yet touched or tempted him for all these years. Determined to search for Satan and challenge him face to face, he embarks upon an extensive journey and visits countries in the east and west looking for Satan. Finally, after many hardships, Abu alQasim stumbles upon one of the jinn (genies) sitting in a corner of a desolate cavern. He asks the genie where he can find his father Iblis (Satan), and is told he can find him behind a nearby mound. Abu al-Qasim goes to the mound and finds a company of the sons and grandsons of Satan, apparently in a great state of turmoil. Abu al-Qasim approaches a morbid-looking

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genie and asks him why his fellow genies are in such turmoil, as if they were anticipating the day of resurrection. The genie replies that since time immemorial, Satan has been tempting people, but now man has begun tempting Satan, causing him to lose his power over men. He asks Abu alQasim whether he wishes to meet Satan, and Abu al-Qasim says he does. The genie leads Abu al-Qasim to a desolate cave filled with dirt, where he finds Satan looking greatly distressed. He asks Satan why he is distressed, and Satan answers that it is because of Abu al-Dalal, who challenged his power and authority. Abu al-Qasim wonders how a h u m a n being could tempt Satan, when it is known that he tempts and misguides human beings. Weeping and lamenting his misfortune, Satan asks Abu al-Qasim to wait until he has heard his story about Abu al-Dalal. They move f r o m the cave into an open area, where Satan begins to relate his story of Abu al-Dalal. (It should be pointed out here that dalal (misguidance) is the antonym of huda (religious guidance to the path).) Thus, when Abu al-Huda alSayyadi becomes Abu al-Dalal, the connotation is clear. Satan's story, purportedly related by al-Sharif Abu Hashim as he heard it f r o m Abu alQasim, is the invention of N a d i m ' s fertile imagination. 1 0 The maqamas contain the story of Abu al-Dalal al-Sayyadi from birth to his rise to eminence through the machinations of Satan. We learn that Satan aided in arranging the marriage of al-Sayyadi's father, whom Nadim calls Zantut Ibn Kharshana, to his mother, Amsha Matun. The names of both husband and wife are derogatory, and the two are portrayed in the most obscene manner. Zantut was a thug who robbed and killed some Christians in cold blood and then escaped to Mosul, Iraq. There he continued his crimes, and the people of the city were determined to bring him to justice. Zantut escaped to Khan Shaykhun, a village near Aleppo, Syria, where he called himself Hasan al-Sayyad. (In reality, Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi was born in this village, and his father's name was Hasan.) Al-Sayyadi's conception, birth, upbringing and rise to eminence in the court of Sultan Abd al-Hamid II all were managed through the wiles and devices of Satan. Finally, we learn that Satan's purpose in choosing al-Sayyadi and raising him to an eminent position was to distort the religion of Islam and create dissension among the Muslims. In the seventh chapter of Kitab al-Masamir, Satan says: I have chosen this sayyad (al-Sayyadi) to deceive mankind and lead the common people astray, to inveigh against Muslim learned men and distort Muslim books. I have cultivated most blasphemous men, but found no other more amenable than al-Sayyadi. Thus I taught, trained, and prepared him for that day when he will bring calamities upon the Muslims.11 Nothing shows N a d i m ' s antagonistic attitude toward al-Sayyadi better than the two lines of Arabic verse which appear as a caption for his picture in the book:

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This one, who before entering Dar al-Saada (Istanbul) was a miserable beggar, today, as his picture reveals, through despicable intrigues has become an Ustadh (master). 12

Nadim wrote mostly in lucid classical Arabic, interspersed with a few colloquial and Turkish phrases common in his time, fitted into the traditional rhymed-prose style of the maqama.13 His themes are at odds with the moral and didactic objectives of the traditional maqamas. Nadim's maqamas serve no esthetic or entertaining purpose. They are not worthy of a man of letters who is famed for his moral fortitude, eloquence, and mastery of the Arabic language. Because of its vulgar and obscene language, Kitab al-Masamir could not be a source of pride for its author. 14 Medieval both in form and spirit, the maqamas of al-Yaziji did not set out to create an illusion of reality. Those of al-Shidyaq, by virtue of the relative independence of their characters, advanced only in the direction of realism. This is also true of the maqamas of Abd Allah Nadim, whose only worth is that they are written in the form of traditional maqamas; their content is markedly abusive, meant to vilify Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi. Similarly, Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi's Mir'at al-Alam aw Hadith Musa ibn Isam (World Mirror or the Narrative of Musa son of Isam), serialized in Misbah al-Sharq (The Lamp of the East) in 1899, is an extremely rigid imitation of the traditional maqamas, written in rhymed prose and filled with similes, metaphors, anecdotes and testimonies from the Quran. But the romance Hadith Isa ibn Hisham aw Fatra min al-Zaman (The Narrative of Isa ibn Hisham Or a Period), by Ibrahim's son Muhammad alMuwaylihi, is not only a modified form of the maqama, but also a genuine (though not quite successful) effort to create a new literary mode in the Western manner. 15 A conservative by education and social upbringing, but liberal in thought, al-Muwaylihi must have found it quite difficult to produce a modernized fictional work which would not enrage the Muslim conservative element but would, at the same time, not dissatisfy the modernists. He therefore chose to present liberal ideas in the rigid form of the maqama.16 The result was an interesting fictional narrative which was neither a medieval tale nor a full-fledged modern story. Al-Muwaylihi was born at Cairo in 1858 to a conservative Muslim family, several of whose members achieved fame in literature, politics, and public life. His grandfather, the chief merchant of Cairo during the rule of Viceroy Muhammad Ali, established a silk industry in Egypt. His father, Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi, was the private secretary of the Khedive Ismail and achieved prominence as a public servant, writer, and journalist. The young Muwaylihi was sent to the Kharanfash school, where he learned French. He was highly introverted, however, and shunned his schoolmates and showed little interest in his studies. Most of the time he did not even attend classes, but studied privately at home under the supervision of his father. At the age of fifteen he stopped going to school entirely. Meanwhile,

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he attended lectures at al-Azhar, especially those delivered by the celebrated Muhammad Abduh, striving to perfect his knowledge of Arabic and of Muslim religious subjects. He also joined the informal assemblies of eminent philologists, grammarians, Muslim jurists, and men of letters who called on his father. 17 He also established contact with the reformer Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, whose ideas strongly influenced him. His Hadith reveals that he had obtained a fair knowledge of many different aspects of Egyptian society. 18 Al-Muwaylihi's cultural horizon was further broadened by his travels abroad, especially in Europe. After losing his position with the government because of his support of the revolution of Ahmad Urabi in 1882, he went to Italy, where he studied Italian and French under the direction of an Italian lawyer, once a neighbor and friend of his father. He remained in Europe for three years, traveling between Italy, France, and England. In France he became acquainted with Alexandre Dumas fils and other leading writers and was involved in the literary activities of al-Afghani. 19 In 1885, he accompanied his father to London and then to Istanbul, where his father held an appointment as a member of the Supreme Educational Board. His stay at Istanbul afforded him an opportunity to read and to transcribe the newspaper al-Muqattam. He later joined the government but resigned his post in 1895 to aid his father in publishing the newspaper Misbah al-Sharq (The Lamp of the East), which opened an entirely new vista in Arabic literature and by itself was a new school of refined literature in Egypt. 20 It was in this newspaper that al-Muwaylihi published the first installments of Hadith Isa ibn Hisham between 1898 and 1900, when he left Egypt for Paris and London in the company of the Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. He continued to publish in Misbah al-Sharq until its end in 1903. He also contributed articles to other newspapers, although these did not attract as much public attention as his earlier work. His most important nonfiction is an interesting work titled Ilaj al-Nafs (The Remedy of the Soul), a series of profound meditations about life and morality. It reflects the author's comprehensive reading of ancient and modern works, both Eastern and Western, and also his life experience. Of primary importance here is his fictional romance Hadith Isa ibn Hisham (The Narrative of Isa ibn Hisham), whose title character recalls the narrator of the maqamas of Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani. In general, al-Muwaylihi restricts himself to the traditional rhymed prose of the maqama, but when he writes naturally, the result is a refreshingly smooth, free prose style. Isa ibn Hisham is not simply the narrator but also the central figure of the tale, and he frequently expresses the author's own attitudes. Hadith attempts to diagnose and remedy the ills of Egyptian society, and to show the progress in the different sectors of Egyptian life since the era of Muhammad Ali.

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Al-Muwaylihi begins the narrative with the traditional phrase "Haddathana Isa ibn Hisham" (Isa ibn Hisham related to us), which opened the maqamas of Badi al-Zaman. Isa ibn Hisham recalls that he saw, as in a dream, a graveyard on a moonlit night. Touched by the tranquillity of the night and the stillness of the graves, he became absorbed in profound thoughts about life and death, and especially about those who were lying in eternal rest and had been made equal by death. Yesterday, he thought, there were among these dead great kings and rulers who controlled the destinies of their subjects, beautiful women who captivated and humbled men by their beauty, and many others who enjoyed the earthly vanity of pride, power, and prestige. Today they lie here, not only helpless, but sharing equally the same spot and the same destiny. While deep in contemplation, he heard behind him a sudden, violent convulsion which shocked him terribly. Despite his fright, he turned around and, to his consternation, saw that a grave had cleft and a tall figure with an extraordinary but noble appearance had sprung from it. The sight of the resurrected figure snapped him out of his trance, and he found himself and walked faster. He heard the figure, who now seemed as real as a mortal being, calling to him to wait. He obeyed, he explains, to avoid the evil which might be inflicted upon him if he refused. The resurrected figure approached Isa and began talking to him, sometimes in Arabic and sometimes in Turkish. With this incident the author initiates the lengthy dialogue between the two characters which runs throughout the book. Subsidiary characters are also introduced to explain a given situation or to illustrate some aspect of Egyptian society, as circumstances may require. The resurrected character identifies himself as Ahmad Pasha alManikli, Minister of War under Muhammad Ali, and Isa identifies himself as a man of letters. When the pasha asks to be led to his house, Isa answers that houses in Cairo are no longer identified by the names of their owners, but by a new system of numbers. The once prominent minister is indignant and bewildered to discover not only that his house cannot be found, but that the entire city has changed. He is immediately faced with new situations, different people, and drastically changed social, cultural, judicial, and administrative institutions. His inability to realize the changes brings him into conflict with both government and people. The various predicaments which the pasha encounters are obviously designed by the author to vindicate his criticism of Egyptian society. As one predicament leads to another, we are in each instance given a remarkably adroit portrayal of the pasha's reaction to his new situation. 21 The first problem arises from social and judicial institutions. On his way to search for his house, accompanied now by his guide Isa ibn Hisham, the resurrected pasha pauses at the Citadel of Cairo to say a

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prayer over the tomb of his master Muhammad A l i . Immediately after leaving the Citadel, the two companions meet a donkey-driver whose slow-moving animal delays their progress. The donkey-driver, too, becomes impatient with the lazy beast. Craftily but jokingly, he invites the pasha to mount the donkey since, he claims, the pasha has for two hours blocked the way by walking right in front of him and his donkey. The pasha feels insulted and retorts to this villain that he has not blocked the way, and that furthermore a man of his prominence would not so humble himself as to ride a braying donkey, when he had always had a thoroughbred stallion. As the argument continues and the donkey-driver grows excited, he complains that while the pasha was walking and talking with his companion, he beckoned as if he wished to hire the donkey. The donkeydriver insists that the pasha must either hire his donkey or pay him on the spot for his delay. The pasha obviously losing patience, pushes the donkey-driver aside and regrets that he has no weapon to kill him. Astonished by his companion's reluctance to rid himself of this nuisance, on the pretext that he cannot touch him because of the law, the pasha decides to take the matter into his own hands. He begins beating the donkey-driver mercilessly, while the poor victim calls for aid from the police. 22 Similar situations are used to explore the different institutions of Egyptian society and their methods of operation. The pasha's quarrel with the donkey-driver leads him to the police, to the prosecutor, and to the attorney. In the Civil Court he is found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison, but the Court of Appeal dismisses his case and releases him. Despite his j o y at his acquittal, he is disappointed to discover that he still must pay his attorney's fees. Where and how will he get the money to pay these fees? Enraged, the lawyer begins to lecture the humiliated pasha on how, in the old days, he and his powerful colleagues among the aristocracy pilfered public money, oppressed the poor, the widows, and the orphans, and practiced every illegal method to amass wealth at the expense of the people. 23 The remorseless pasha recalls that he had some property which he had retained during his lifetime as a waqf (religious endowment). While the pasha is searching for his property, the author provides a detailed description of the uses and abuses of the waqf.24 The search for his descendants brings the pasha to the sad discovery that the only surviving beneficiary, a young man, has squandered the income of the property through profligate living. Next the pasha seeks aid from three of his former colleagues, who are still living in apparent luxury, but the old men will not believe his story. Finally, when he sees that they have no more patience with him, he leaves. He notices that he has been followed by a businessman who has evidently recognized him as his former master. Approaching the annoyed pasha, the businessman recalls the kind favors which the pasha did for him during his lifetime, which brought him wealth and social prestige. He pulls out a

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purse and offers it to the pasha in gratitude for his past favors. The desperate pasha accepts the offer and asks his companion Isa ibn Hisham to take him immediately to the lawyer, so that he can pay his fees. Isa advises him first to find a religious lawyer and claim his waqf. Thus the author transfers the focus from the civil courts to the religious courts, which have jurisdiction over matters of this nature. Al-Muwaylihi never misses an opportunity to expose the maladministration and the chaotic conditions of the religious courts. 25 From this point on, the narrative becomes discursive and disjointed. Isa ibn Hisham passes from one facet of Egyptian society to another, treating such topics as physicians and medicine and the plague with the confidence of one who has a thorough knowledge of his subject. He examines the worlds of science and literature, of business and agriculture, of politics and civil service, and describes in detail the social customs of his time, from Egyptian weddings to the functions of the Umda (village headman), which he treats at length with evident charm. Finally, after an exhaustive portrayal of city and village life in Egypt, the author abruptly transports the reader to Europe, the setting of The Second Journey, which occupies the rest of the book. 26 This shift is suggested on the spur of the moment by the pasha, who seeks an explanation of the drastic changes which have occurred since his lifetime. Isa tells him that these, especially the lower standards of morality, have resulted from the invasion of Oriental societies by the West, and from the Orientals' blind imitation of the customs and behavior of Westerners.27 On this pretext, the scene abruptly changes to Paris. The author, through Isa ibn Hisham, shows marked astonishment at the crowded streets, the elegant shops, and the magnificent edifices of the city. Describing the crowds and the shops in Paris, al-Muwaylihi says, Each pedestrian was trembling in his walk like a sparrow and glancing like a frightened quail. If his sight failed him, death would be his lot, and if his foot stumbled, his blood would be spilled. They sought the sidewalks as the drowning man seeks the shore. On both sides of the streets the shops were adorned with fascinating merchandise and magnificent handicrafts which enticed the self-denying to crave for them and tempted the thrifty to buy them. Everywhere the bars were filled with people carrying a cup in one hand and a newspaper in the other. In such a state, we were about to lose our minds because of our complete bewilderment, fright, and distraction. Even if Luqman the Wise had stood in the square where we stood, he would have lost his wisdom. 2 8

The pasha is also astonished by what he sees and tries to compare Paris with ancient capitals such as Athens, Rome, and even Surra-manRa'a (Samarra), once the capital of the Abbasids. A subsidiary character, whom the author identifies as "a friend," is arbitrarily introduced. The

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newcomer starts immediately to degrade French civilization and to accuse all Westerners of being arrogant, especially the French, who he says believe their civilization is superior to any other. To attain some objectivity in his judgment of European civilization, the author interjects another character, a learned old sage and Orientalist, who accompanies the Egyptian visitors on their tour of Paris and explains to them the good and the bad aspects of Western civilization. The visitors stop first at the international exhibition sponsored by the French government, and then at an art gallery, where the author describes some paintings. Isa ibn Hisham becomes upset when at the immaculate gallery he notices a filthy old man whom he characterizes as a "lump of dirt." Asking what this filthy creature is doing in such a beautiful place, he learns that the old man is a famous artist whose paintings are worth millions of francs. He marvels at the way Westerners respect their talented men. When the visitors are shown a lady posing in the nude for an artist, the pasha, utterly shocked, condemns the sight as "debasement and vulgarity." The old Orientalist interrupts to explain to him that what he has seen is generally accepted as beautiful art in Europe, both because of its Greek origin and because of its support by Christianity. On the other hand, the Orientalist remarks, Islam has forbidden this kind of art and has made it unpopular among Muslim nations. Then the visitors enter a section of the exhibition where they see an ugly turbaned man behind a desk, on which stand an inkpot and paper. For those who have paid this charlatan money, he scratches a talisman or incantation, and some visitors are heard to say, "Come, let this shaykh of the Muslims write down for us a part of Muhammad's Quran." The dialect of this supposed shaykh, however, betrays him as a native of Syria. Isa and his companions think it is their Muslim duty to rebuke him for doing that which had been denounced by Islam, but the shaykh retorts that he has to make a living. Another turbaned teacher is reportedly discovered squatting on the floor surrounded by French children in Egyptian costumes. He is reading the Quran to them in a loud voice and shaking his body, meanwhile striking them with a palm twig to discipline them, amid the laughter and ridicule of the people who have gathered to watch the methods of teaching employed in Egypt. He is no less sharply rebuked by Isa and his companions than the first charlatan had been. Like the other, however, this teacher of the Quran, a poor Egyptian, defends his action as a means for making a living. Apparently a private company, not the Egyptian government, sponsored the performance of these men in the Paris exhibition, for the sole purpose of making money. 29 The visitors' excursion subsequently takes them to a planetarium, an observatory, the Eiffel Tower, a nightclub with Egyptian dancers (whom the author condemns as disgraceful to Egypt's reputation), and carnivals in which some Egyptian customs are lampooned. 30

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When the journey to Paris is over, the Orientalist warns the visitors not to imitate Western civilization blindly, but to adopt what is good in it and reject the bad. With this advice, the narrative of Isa ibn Hisham comes to a close. The author halts it by stating simply that since there is nothing more to say, everyone should return to his country. He brings the travelers back to Egypt without giving the slightest hint as to the destiny of the poor resurrected Pasha, who is left suspended in misery. Of all the characters of the Hadith, the pasha is the most interesting. A s a supernatural phenomenon, he is in a unique position to explore the different changes in Egyptian society, unrestricted by any time element. This convenient device is cleverly used to pronounce the author's approval or disapproval of the changes in values and institutions in late-nineteenthcentury Egypt. From the beginning, the pasha appears as a fully developed character. He is intelligent, inquisitive, and a keen observer of society. He even becomes vexed when he is denied the opportunity to quench his thirst for learning more about the new Egyptian society. 3 1 Although he has returned to life at a time when the prevalent values are almost in violent conflict with his own, the pasha is not driven to return to his former state to escape the misery he experiences. He does sometimes complain, and even wishes he could return once more to the grave, but gradually he assumes a more positive attitude. The pasha is capable of adapting himself to the new times, values and institutions, and attempts to reestablish those ties which bound him to his former life. Although his former position as a minister of war does not exist any more, his children have died, his property—particularly his waqf—is in ruins, and his grandson, who lives in dissipation, ridicules him and shuns him as a senile old man, 32 he does not despair. Nor does he condemn life as meaningless but strengthens his resolve to live on and understand his new life. He becomes more tolerant of the changes which he has witnessed, and reluctantly—though they cause him pain—accepts some of them. Most important, he makes a very human attempt to reconcile his anachronistic values with those of the new Egyptian society. 33 Perhaps the question the author is posing and attempting to answer through the device of the reborn pasha is whether life itself is an abstract entity separate from the individual's lifetime and all the related phenomena that seemingly comprise it and bind man to it. Although the pasha's ties with his former life have all but disappeared and he is reluctant to accept new values which contradict his own, he does not unequivocally demand to be returned to his former state. L i f e in any form seems to be much preferable to the oblivion and meaninglessness of the grave. This is a questionable interpretation, since the author does not give the poor pasha a choice. He leaves his fate unresolved, apparently because al-Manikli's main role as an agent between the old and the new has been fulfilled.

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Since the pasha symbolizes the values of the old Egyptian society, his ongoing presence can only mean that those values have not completely faded away. Like a palimpsest, the spirit of the old society is still manifest in the person of the undying pasha. The Hadith uses the traditional rhymed prose style of the maqama, but with more vividness, simplicity, and smoothness. There is no attempt to emulate the style of the medieval belletrists. The marked influence of traditional medieval Arabic style on his writing simply reflects the author's conservative sentiments. Like many writers of his time, al-Muwaylihi must have believed in the propriety and beauty of rhymed prose, despite its redundant and repetitive nature. The dialogue of the Hadith is, however, more natural than the narrative portions and is more effectual in expressing the ideas of the author. The length or brevity of the dialogue depends upon the nature and importance of the situation to be treated. In some parts of the Hadith, the dialogue is extended to cover issues not related to the main theme of the narrative, such as the chapter titled al-Tibb wa al-Atibba (Medicine and Physicians). Whereas the traditional maqama treats a single event, the Hadith is substantially wider in scope and comprehends a variety of characters, scenes, and settings. Although the characters may appear to move solely at the author's behest, one can detect in their actions the expression of extremely personal emotions, however stifled, as they react to one another or to a given situation. The author seeks, moreover, to ridicule with wit and wisdom various types of human behavior. The comedy is generally grim and at times gives way to acrimonious sarcasm as it exposes man's foibles and his blind submission to his own whims. An excellent example in this regard is the Umda (village headman) who, by sheer folly, falls prey to a playboy panderer, a pretentious businessman, and a flirtatious dancing young woman. Moreover, the author never misses an opportunity to examine the different aspects of Egyptian life, from food and eating habits to horses, from police and court procedures to the press. The author devotes eight chapters to describing the Umda and other institutions of Egyptian society. 34 Focusing on the everyday world, the author admirably points out the follies of ordinary men and reveals hypocrisy, social chaos, and the exploitation of the masses in Egyptian society. In scope and form, then, the Hadith is more flexible than the maqama. The Egyptian writer and critic Ali al-Ra'i regards it as a social satire intended to ridicule life in Egypt, comparing it with Cervantes's Don Quixote. Cervantes, he says, presents a knight whose heart and mind are filled with dreams of past ages which refuse to die. So Don Quixote sets out, taking along a traveling companion, a horse, and a donkey, to search for truth and beauty, which have died in his world but still live in his heart. From the painful yet humorous contrast between the world perceived by

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Don Quixote and that perceived by his society, Cervantes derives an extraordinarily brilliant criticism and moral lesson. In al-Muwaylihi's Hadith, a conspicuous contrast exists between the pasha who has come back to life and the world around him, which has been drastically changed. Values which he thought were beautiful and eternal have been replaced by others of whose beauty and perpetuity he is most doubtful. 35 Al-Ra'i also observes that from the conflicts in attitude between the resurrected pasha and the people among whom he moves, al-Muwaylihi derives criticism of Egyptian society. Like Don Quixote, who sets out to search for the truth, the pasha and his companion, Isa ibn Hisham, set out to search for the spirit of Egypt. In their first journey, the author represents different aspects of Egyptian society; in the journey abroad, he attempts to assess the impact of European values on their society. From the author's criticism, al-Ra'i believes, we may realize that the "truth" these two companions hoped to find was a bourgeois Egypt. From the conflict of the pasha and Isa ibn Hisham with such bourgeois characters as the lawyer and the physician, we may deduce that the author considers the bourgeoisie the most progressive of the social classes in Egypt. 36 Al-Muwaylihi may criticize the bourgeoisie at length and vigorously, but always constructively, for he desires to see it continue, despite its many faults. On the other hand, while Isa ibn Hisham decries the rigidly antiprogressive attitude of the Muslim jurists and the inflexibility of the Muslim religious courts, never does he advocate the abolition of these courts or the dismissal of the judges. Instead he suggests the reform of these courts and the establishment of civil courts to counterbalance them. In brief, the author expresses the hopes and expectations of the Egyptian middle class, which since the time of Muhammad Ali has seen in the various cultural, judicial, juristic, and political institutions impediments to its own progress. The Hadith shows in essence the struggle of this class to free itself from the Turkish aristocracy and from British imperialism, and from the feudal system they had perpetuated. This struggle, of course, manifested itself in a series of conflicts which ultimately brought the middle class to power. Al-Ra'i concludes that we must consider the comparison between Don Quixote and Hadith Isa ibn Hisham valid, since each work centers about the conflict of an anachronistic protagonist with a modern culture, and in each encounter between old and new the bafflement of the protagonist serves to highlight not only the absurdity but also the pathos of the human condition. What gives Don Quixote its timelessness is repeated in a lower key in the Hadith; it is not so much the satire as the great humanity the author reveals by his deep compassion and tolerance in the face of man's folly. We cannot predict what the critical judgment of the Hadith may be in later generations, but we must recall that to Cervantes's contemporaries, Don Quixote was little more than a comedy. 37

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Egyptian critic Ghali Shukri does not share this judgment. He says that al-Ra'i was very anxious to show similarities between Arabic literary works and the great classics of the West, to give the former more prestige. 38 Another view is presented by the Egyptian writer Shukri Muhammad Ayyad who says that in his Hadith al-Muwaylihi reflected the state of Egyptian capitalism, which began showing its impact in the time of the Khedive Ismail and which supported the Urabi revolution but later was overwhelmed by foreign capital during the British occupation. 39 Hadith Isa ibn Hisham is plainly episodic in structure; its events are so disjointed that they could be arranged in almost any order without serious damage to the continuity of the work. The narrative and descriptive elements are merely a frame for the expository dialogue, which depicts the ills of Egyptian society and explains the impact of the West on that society. The moralizing which is its primary motive constantly reminds the reader that the importance of the Hadith lies in its meaning, not its story. Yet the discerning reader may observe that the author has sought to develop the central theme through subtleness and gradual intensified conflict of ideas rather than by a conventional plot. Thus, it may be argued, alMuwaylihi left the Pasha's fate unresolved for the simple reason that he had already achieved the moral and didactic purpose of his narration. Not only do the characters of the Hadith exist without a plot, but they are not seriously presented as complex human beings, and for this reason they have sometimes been regarded simply as stock figures to be manipulated by the author. In a real sense, al-Muwaylihi uses the Pasha to symbolize the old values of Egypt under Muhammad Ali, and Isa ibn Hisham to explain and evaluate the changes in these values resulting from Egypt's contact with European life and thought. Though he is a keen observer of the actions of his characters, the author never fully explains their nature or reveals their emotions and reactions to the surroundings and the behavior of other characters. Yet, crude and primitively handled as they may be, the characters of the Hadith have distinct personalities and are closely connected with the real world of the author. Some of them may seem static, and some may appear or disappear at random, yet many are lifelike characters who appear throughout the greater part of the romance. Among the latter group we may include the village headman, the dancing young woman, and the playboy. Even the Pasha, perhaps the crudest of all the characters in the Hadith, is capable of development. At first arrogant, slow to understand, and intransigent in his refusal to accept the new values of Egyptian society, he becomes ultimately more tolerant of the changes in that society. 40 Despite its episodic structure, the Hadith tells a complete story which begins with the resurrection of the Pasha and develops simultaneously with his personality. Because of its narrative quality and the flexible nature of some of its characters, one may regard al-Muwaylihi's Hadith as an early form of the Egyptian novel.

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It is equally important that to portray Egyptian life, institutions, and social characteristics of the people, al-Muwaylihi intended realism. This is evident f r o m his attempt to cater to the conservative reading public, who disdained fiction, by stating in his introduction that the Hadith

represents

reality, not fiction. Despite his effort to reduce the fictional element of his romance, al-Muwaylihi never escaped the reproach o f the conservative readers. According to A l i al-Ra'i, the Egyptian writer T a w f i q al-Hakim once related that some friends, concerned about the reputation of alM u w a y l i h i ' s family, complained to his father, " Y o u r son has pursued a path the very thought of which was uncommendable." 4 1 This book stands as a milestone in the development of native prose fiction in Egypt. The very facts that al-Muwaylihi based his fiction upon contemporary life in Egypt and that his portrayal of this life as he knew it is remarkably accurate are in themselves a sufficient contribution. W h i l e the Hadith

clearly cannot be considered a novel in the Western sense, it

does contain the basic ingredients of that form. It is a step beyond A l i Mubarak's Alam al-Din,

which lacks not only vision but also the ingenious

subtlety with which al-Muwaylihi satirizes Egyptian society. Whereas A l i Mubarak chose Europe alone as his setting, to instruct his countrymen in the virtues of the far superior European civilization, al-Muwaylihi concentrates on Egyptian life and society, treating Western civilization only as it bears upon his main subject. The literary and cultural impact of Hadith Isa ibn Hisham upon Egyptian l i f e was considerable, particularly after its inclusion by the Ministry of Education in the curriculum for secondary schools in 1927. The Ministry said: As the Hadith Isa ibn Hisham becomes reading matter for the pupils of the secondary schools, it will do them the greatest good, for it will attract them by the rhetorical style, sound expression, and exquisite wording with which it has treated the manifold questions of current interest among people. These qualities have been lacking in all the books written in earlier times. Moreover, it will broaden their faculties and accustom them to penetrating observations, powerful expression, and the handling of the different arguments on both sides of a given question.42 Another work of fiction closer to the traditional maqama

is

Layali

Satih (Satih's Nights), by the celebrated Egyptian poet H a f i z Ibrahim, whose portrayal of the hopes and sentiments of the common people gained him the epithet " T h e Poet of the N i l e . " H e was also interested in prose and once translated Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables

into Arabic. 4 3

Layali Satih is constructed around two principal characters, a narrator and a second man similar to the resurrected Pasha in Hadith

Isa

ibn

Hisham. The narrator is designated simply as Ahad Abna al-Nil ( A Son of the N i l e ) , and it is clear f r o m the context of the work that he represents the

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author himself. The second character is Satih, a pre-Islamic Arab oracle whom the narrator uses as a vehicle to discuss various political, social, and literary matters relating to Egyptian society. In the first of the seven nights which comprise Layali Satih,44 the anonymous narrator, feeling depressed, goes for a walk along the Nile to forget his cares. As he sits on the bank watching the majestic river, he notices a foul odor, apparently from a decayed corpse floating on the surface. He is outraged at the way people have desecrated the river and turned it into a graveyard. How long, he wonders, will the Nile bear this ignorant nation which has repaid its goodness and blessings with ingratitude? He decides to find another spot, but as he prepares to arise, he hears a voice praising the Merciful God. Drawing nearer, he hears, but cannot see, someone saying, "A miserable poet and man of letters, oppressed and dejected, came out to seek solace and diversion." The voice apparently refers to this Son of the Nile, no other than Hafiz himself, who has been attacked by jealous men for his Arabic translation of Les Misérables, on which he spent twelve months. Finally the voice (that of Satih) tells the Son of the Nile to go home and return to the same spot on the following night with a companion, so that they can resume their conversation. 45 The Son of the Nile keeps the appointment the next night though he does not yet know the identity of the companion whom the voice mentioned. When he reaches the place, he sees a man of his acquaintance deep in thought. He may be the intended companion, but the Son of the Nile does not wish to interrupt his contemplation and whispers to himself that this great man would never be preoccupied with thoughts of anything other than the welfare of his country and his countrymen. The Son of the Nile notices a boat passing on the river. On board are beautiful maidens, together with men of great wealth and prestige, drinking and indulging in pleasure. Suddenly the pensive man, raising his head and looking at the jocund company in the boat, begins to condemn their indecency. When he has finished, the Son of the Nile relates to him the events of the preceding night and finds that he too wishes a meeting with Satih. As they near the place, the Son of the Nile hears the same cryptic voice hailing his companion as "the possessor of a new doctrine and new idea. He called on the people to discard the veil and free their women, but instead they discarded the veil of decency." Although the companion's name is not given, we know from Satih's words that he is Qasim Amin (d. 1908), the great Egyptian reformer and staunch advocate of the liberation of Eastern women. Satih assures Amin that his views on the liberation of woman will, within just fifty years, be proven correct. He also predicts that Western women will soon demand the liberation of their Eastern sisters. When the Son of the Nile begs the voice to reveal his identity, Satih promises to do so but asks the Son of the Nile to return to the same place the following night. 46

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The two companions leave the voice, which begins again to utter praises, and start home. On their way they meet two young men, one of whom asks his companion to name his chief ambition in life. The other replies that he wishes to become the president of the Mixed Courts—not, apparently, to advance the cause of justice, but to gain a high salary and live comfortably. The first young man then says he wants to be like a certain student who entered the Engineering School and has gained much respect. His teachers are English, and the lowest ranking of them is paid thirty-five pieces of gold. If Caesar himself had wanted his son educated, the young man thinks, he could have wanted no better training for him than that provided by the efforts of the Ministry of Education. With this thought, the events of the second night end. When he returns to the same spot on the third night, the Son of the Nile sees an eminent Syrian man of letters sitting there in a pensive mood. After they exchange customary greetings, the Syrian says that he has been complaining to the river against the Egyptians, who, for no reason except that the Syrians are more industrious and active, have ostracized his countrymen. The Son of the Nile tries to console the man of letters and promises to present his complaint to Satih. When the Syrian, astonished, asks who Satih is, he is assured that he will presently see Satih himself. As they approach, Satih begins to praise Syria and Egypt as sisters whose mother is the Arabic tongue, and to defend those Syrians who immigrated to Egypt seeking a better living and greater freedom. 4 7 Specifically, he remarks on the achievement of the Christian Syrians in spreading the Arabic language, a task at which they have been far more successful than the missionaries who have attempted to spread Christianity. Moreover, he wonders whether, if the Syrian Muslims had taken as strong a role in the development of education as the Syrian Christians, there might not be among the Muslims men who would excel both in learning and in imparting their knowledge to others. Satih then cites some Syrian writers, both Muslim and Christian, who immigrated to Egypt and achieved fame and success. Among them are Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (d. 1903), the author of Umm al-Qura (The City of Mecca), who he says fled from AlSayyad (the hunter), most likely Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi, religious counselor to Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, who was known for persecuting liberal thinkers and reformers; al-Shaykh Muhammad Rashid Rida, owner and publisher of al-Manar; and the Syrian Christian Jurji Zaydan, author of Ashhar Mashahir al-lslam (more correctly, Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq (Biographies of Famous Men of the Orient). Satih concludes that God has apparently destined the Muslims to live among the cattle, but has given the Christian the opportunity to become a man of action and knowledge. When the Syrian asks about the faults of his countrymen among the Egyptians, Satih criticizes them for monopolizing business and the press, and for competing with the Egyptians in making their living. 48 Having heard this

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judgment, the Son of the Nile asks why the Syrian Christian community has so many eminent writers and journalists who have developed newspapers and periodicals like al-Muqtataf, al-Diya, Dairat al-Maarif, al-Hilal, and al-Jami 'a, while the Syrian Muslim community in Egypt has produced only salesmen, brokers, horse trainers, and butchers. Satih attributes this difference to the Muslims' unwise decision to let their children attend the Christians' schools, where their opportunities for learning have been restricted. The Son of the Nile retorts that Egypt has thus far sent just one hundred and fifty students to a single Christian school in Beirut; Satih argues strongly, however, that the Egyptians have no need to send their sons to Beirut, but should establish their own college. With this remark the conversation is ended, and the Son of the Nile and his companion return home. 49 When the Son of the Nile goes back to the same place on the fourth night, he sees a man weeping and wailing. The man laments that his brother, who was his sole refuge and support, has been stabbed to death by a foreigner residing in Egypt. The Son of the Nile consoles him and takes him to meet Satih. Seeing the bereft man, Satih begins condemning the concessions which have allowed foreign citizens to commit crimes against Egyptians and escape punishment under the protection of their governments. The Egyptians have no choice but to carry off their dead and submit like slaves to this inequity. Satih bitterly criticizes "those who have occupied Egypt" (i.e., the British), to whom he attributes the dissension among the Egyptians and the perpetuation of the concessions which have weakened them and made them dependent upon foreigners. 50 The British, Satih says, are shrewd and treacherous; even if they are weak, they pretend to be strong and daring. They are like wine which seems powerless in the cup but grows strong once it goes to the head. He concludes by likening the fight for control of the East to a chess game played by two men, one Anglo-Saxon, the other French. It is evident to the careful observer that the winner will be whichever player can best avoid haste and rashness when temporization and caution are called for. 51 When Satih finishes his remarks, the two visitors leave. A s he is returning home, the Son of the Nile hears two old men discussing the different types of happiness. One of them asserts that the happiest man is the shaykh who pretends to be religious and uses religion to make money. Even happier than this pretender, it is said, are the dead shaykhs whom gullible people believe to be men of God. Their remains are harbored in huge shrines, to which people flock to worship them and seek their blessing. The dialogue between the two old men describes other fortunate men. The list includes the legal guardians of orphans, who can appropriate their wards' money for their own use without being questioned, and administrators of religious endowments, who can make unrestricted use of the profits. A l s o happy are the crafty old women who fool gullible ladies of rank and then manipulate them to suit their own ends.

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Leaving these men behind, the Son of the Nile hurries home to bed, but he cannot sleep because of the sad things he has encountered this day. Reaching for a copy of al-Luzumiyyat, by the blind poet Abu al-Ala alMa'arri (d. 1058), he reads until morning, when at last sleep comes to him. 52 On the next night the Son of the Nile, again on his way to meet Satih, sees yet another man in despair. This man grieves because he cannot continue his studies at the state schools and has become a burden to his family. His efforts to find work have failed because he does not have a degree, and his desperate venture into journalism, as he explains, has caused his present misfortune. He established a weekly paper and did everything in his power to make it succeed, although his writing talent was severely limited. To his disappointment, however, the weekly was not successful, and after much reflection he ascribed its failure to the moral corruption of his nation. Wishing to combat this corruption, but feeling he was unqualified to do so effectively, he suddenly changed his policy and made his newspaper a wholly commercial affair. He published anything, even vilification, since he received payment for it. He was indicted for libel, convicted, and fined, and soon he found himself without any means of subsistence. The Son of the Nile takes the man to Satih, who promptly rebukes him for having undertaken a task for which he was not qualified. In a long speech Satih explains the influence of the press on the public, quoting Kalila wa Dimna to prove that the journalist can "make the truth seem false and that which is false seem true." Therefore, he concludes, the press is not the right profession for this man; nor is he suited to use the methods of the journalists. Satih continues the discourse upon the advantages and disadvantages of weekly journals but offers no solution for the problems of the unfortunate man who has come to him. 53 The Son of the Nile and his companion, taking leave of Satih, come to the palace of the Khedive Ismail Pasha in al-Giza, which has been converted into a zoo. Here the narrator reprints a chapter of al-Muwaylihi's Hadith Isa ibn Hisham describing this palace and the sad fate of the Khedive, who was deposed in 1879. 54 From there the Son of the Nile goes to a club, where he notices three young men whose attire marks them as men of wealth and position. Soon becoming drunk, they begin to brag about the positions their fathers hold in the government or in the courts. One of them, jealous of another whose father holds a higher and more rewarding post than his own, makes no effort to conceal his feelings. At last the three young men leave the place, and the Son of the Nile returns home. On the sixth night, again on his way to meet Satih, the narrator hears a friend reciting poetry and conceals himself to listen unobserved. When the friend has finished, the Son of the Nile emerges from his hiding place and asks who wrote the poem. The friend answers that it is his own work. The Son of the Nile then asks him why he does not offer such immaculate

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poetry to the public, as other poets do. However, the friend replies that he cannot do so because the market for poetry in Egypt is stagnant, and a poet cannot achieve popularity unless he finds favor with the press. He cites the case of Ahmad Shawqi (d. 1932) as an example of the press's ability to make the works of a poet popular. He declares that the press has assigned to Shawqi titles which the press in Constantinople would not have dared to give to the Sultan. 55 The Son of the Nile answers that his friend should not derogate the "Poet of the East" or underestimate his work. Shawqi, he says, is an excellent poet, but prolific, and such writers seldom avoid error. When his friend disagrees on this point, the Son of the Nile suggests that they consult Satih. Satih says that they have both been extreme in their evaluation of Shawqi: the Son of the Nile has praised him too highly, while his friend has criticized him too harshly. Satih attempts to defend Shawqi against the objections of the latter, who finds fault with his shallowness and his distortion of some works of the great Arab poet Abu alTayyib al-Mutanabbi (d. 965), whom Shawqi imitated. The debate continues, with each man citing examples from Shawqi's poetry to support his view, and finally Satih asserts the supremacy of Shawqi among Arab poets. Then he advises the poets to forget their rivalry and collaborate in revitalizing Arabic literature, and he praises the efforts of Jamal al-Din alAfghani in this regard. Satih goes on to assert that the language and literature of a nation reflect its vitality and progress. To illustrate the importance of language, he cites the example of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. Muhammad, he says, was sent by God at a time when the Arabic language was in its prime, but when the Arab nation had lost everything except her conscience and her tongue. He could communicate with the people in a language which touched the very conscience of the Arabs and, as it were, electrified their souls. Satih further calls on all men of concern to support what he calls the "state of literature," without which the Western nations could not have progressed. Contemplate their eminence, he argues, and you will find that their progress is due to the fact that their writers can influence the public by their ideas. They are assisted in this task by the fact that Westerners write in the same way they speak, and thus writers and poets are readily understood by the public. Satih then skillfully explains that the Arabs' difficulty in communicating with one another, and that of their writers in reaching the public at large, arises from the sharp distinctions between classical and colloquial Arabic. He cites the instance of an Arab orator familiar with European languages. When he addresses native speakers of those languages, the effectiveness of what he says is plain in their faces. He can address an Egyptian audience from dawn till dusk and never be understood, even if he recites the Quran followed by the Gospels. The cause of this tragedy is that the Egyptians have two styles of language, one for writing and one for speaking, which differ sharply from each other. Writers

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thus cannot use the literary language in addressing people whose understanding is limited to colloquial Arabic. Satih declares that if concerned men of letters do not act to bridge the gap between the spoken and written languages, they will soon be writing the death notice of their tongue. 56 On the seventh night the Son of the Nile, going as usual to seek Satih, meets a handsome young man who introduces himself in eloquent Arabic as Satih's son. The narrator asks to see Satih and is told to come to the same place the following day, when Satih will depart from this life. Apparently Satih, who is busy preparing for his departure, has sent his son to discuss his problems with the Son of the Nile. Strolling along, they cross a bridge, and Satih's son breaks the silence by asking the Son of the Nile to take him to the Azbakiyya, where he imagines the devil welcomes the people with a smile which conceals the destruction awaiting them. The Azbakiyya is full of nightclubs, dancehalls, and notorious places of vice. In a club they see a man whose ragged appearance and frail body reveal his miserable poverty. The Son of the Nile, recognizing him as an old acquaintance, quite bitterly tells Satih's son that the man is a victim of the British policy in Egypt. Drawing the miserable man into a corner, the two companions listen as he tells them of his ordeal. He begins by criticizing the military law issued by Herbert Kitchener, the conqueror of Umm Darman, governor of the Sudan, and destroyer of the tomb of the Mahdi. This harsh law revealed the full extent of the British discrimination against the Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers, which culminated in the ammunition incident (so called because the British military commander in the Sudan disarmed the native soldiers and forced them into rebellion). Furthermore, he explains, the British treated the native forces as inferior and punished the rebels with dismissal from the army and imprisonment. To substantiate his judgment of British policy in Egypt, the man reads from an article in the newspaper al-Muayyad, "al-Siyasa al-Daifa alAnifa" (The Weak Violent Policy). The article very strongly assails the policies pursued in Egypt by Lord Cromer, whom it portrays as an absolute ruler. So extensive were his powers that he would not trade positions with anyone in the British Cabinet, nor would he consent to represent his country as ambassador in the largest capitals of Europe. The article attacks Lord Cromer especially for his justification of the infamous Dinshaway tragedy, in which four Egyptian villagers were hanged by British authorities before the eyes of their own families, for having allegedly killed an English officer who had been hunting birds in the village of Dinshaway. Lord Cromer accused the Egyptians of religious fanaticism and xenophobia, and defended this action as an emergency measure taken to put down a potential rebellion of the lower class in Egypt. 57 Leaving this unfortunate person to his misery, the two companions visit a dancehall, where they see a middle-aged woman dancing in a very

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debased manner. Here the author is critical of the places where Egyptian men waste their time and money. He becomes especially sad when he discovers that, though all of the dancers are Egyptians, their manager is a European. Moving on, the two companions come to the palace of a wealthy man who lives in luxury, but whose only talent is for accumulating still more wealth. Satih's son and the Son of the Nile discuss here whether the government should not legally control the wealth of misers as it does that of spendthrifts. Their conversation also includes an analysis of Egyptian society, particularly of the way the shrewd city dwellers snare the gullible villagers and take their money. Walking on, the two companions see a group of students running. The Son of the Nile, who understands that the British authorities encourage athletics and praise them for building up the students physically to achieve "a sound mind in a sound body," criticizes them for neglecting other aspects of education. Satih's son replies modestly that wealthy Egyptians too deserve blame for their negligence and indifference to such public concerns as the establishment of a college and the remuneration of writers. The two men then come across a young man reciting poetry and recognize him as a pupil of the "Sage of Islam," Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. The pupil starts explaining al-Afghani's role in stimulating the Egyptians to achieve self-realization and take pride in their religious, political, literary, and social heritage. Their discussion moves on to al-Afghani's political activities and the possible means of reforming Egyptian society, and all agree that the most effective way to achieve this goal is to establish an Egyptian university. Education is the ultimate remedy for Egypt, though religion and public morals should also be emphasized. While the Egyptians should harmonize their religious life with their secular life, they should in no way violate the interdiction of the Quran. A return to the quiet, warm, cohesive family life is needed if the Egyptians are to have a full and meaningful existence. Nightclubs and other places of vice have undermined the influence of the family. In the past, people gathered in family circles or with close friends to discuss and resolve their mutual problems. They felt like one family, sharing one another's sorrows and joys. Today, however, they spend most of their time in the clubs, isolated from others' concerns. Yet another remedy suggested for the ills of Egyptian society is more economical management of money and land, since most of Egypt's wealth is controlled by foreigners. 58 At this point Layali Satih comes to an abrupt end. The reader can only guess about the characters' fate. The ending is so implausible that the author must surely have meant to continue his narrative beyond the seventh night. 59 Like the Hadith Isa ibn Hisham, the Layali Satih of Hafiz Ibrahim serves both to convey criticism of different aspects of Egyptian society and to reproduce the traditional rhymed prose of the maqama. Satih reminds us to some extent of the resurrected Pasha, but, whereas al-Muwaylihi

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provided justification for the reappearance of the Pasha, Hafiz fails to account for the presence of Satih or even to identify him. Hafiz's romance lacks a continuous narrative and a carefully developed structure, and the characters are flat and static. Consequently, the Layali seems a series of essays criticizing various facets of Egyptian society. Thus, it is far more limited in scope than the Hadith Isa ibn Hisham. The fact that the narrator makes seven nocturnal excursions to see the soothsayer Satih at a specified place and ask his opinion on various matters has tremendously narrowed the range of the actions. The characters are merely spokesmen for the author, and the reader does not share their experiences. Furthermore, the plot is monotonous and tiresome. It is most likely that at least from the historical point of view Hafiz in writing Layali Satih was influenced by al-Muwaylihi's Hadith. The two works appeared within a short period; the Hadith was first serialized in the periodical Misbah al-Sharq (1898-1903), and the first edition of Hafiz's Layali was published in 1906. Thus the two works reflected similar political, social, and cultural conditions, though their authors had different motives, characteristics, moods, and style. Al-Muwaylihi, who came from a wealthy family and had a comfortable life, appears as a sober observer and critic of the maladies of his society. His sobriety, sometimes tempered by a mordant sense of humor, may be attributed to the fact that when he began writing toward the end of the nineteenth century the political turmoil following the Urabi revolution had subsided and political leaders were clamoring for social reform rather than useless political squabbles. By contrast, Hafiz who came from a lower-class family and experienced poverty, was restless and dissatisfied with his lot in life. Furthermore, as an officer in the Egyptian army, Hafiz witnessed the control of the army by the British, their high-handed policies, and their preference of the rich and the influential over the poor and helpless officers. He also witnessed the dispatch of troops by the British authorities to fight the Boer war in South Africa, with which the Egyptians had nothing to do. Finally, he witnessed the ugly Dinshaway incident, as shall be seen shortly. It is no wonder that Hafiz was pessimistic. Thus, while a touch of delight and cheerfulness pervades alMuwaylihi's Hadith even when he criticizes the foibles of his society, Hafiz appears gloomy and extremely pessimistic in his Layali. The attitudes of both authors may also have influenced their use of the maqama form. Al-Muwaylihi, by presenting more mature characters and depicting interesting situations, moved farther from the traditional maqama toward a more sophisticated story resembling modern prose fiction, while Hafiz followed the maqama's principles and focused on the didactic aspect of his Layali rather than its artistic qualities. 60 Hafiz may have been seeking to imitate al-Muwaylihi's narrative, particularly in introducing casual characters to voice his own ideas. He does

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not try to express the problems of his society through the experiences of his characters. His description of the nightclubs and dancehalls of the Azbakiyya does not reveal the abuses connected with the lives of a woman dancer, a gullible village headman, and a shrewd city playboy. Furthermore, his treatment of the problems of his society lacks both system and purpose, and his presentation of them demonstrates little ingenuity or creativeness. The problems which Hafiz discusses vary in their nature and dimensions. He advocates the removal of the veil and the extension of freedom and education for the Egyptian women. He reveals tolerance and understanding in defending the Syrian immigrants' competition with the Egyptians in the different spheres of activity. He vigorously attacks social and religious superstitions and ridicules the way people continue to revere religious impostors after their death. He assails the archaic system of marriages arranged by crafty, witchlike old women. His discussion of the Egyptian press centers upon the influence of the Syrian émigrés, the effect of commercialism, and the deterioration of journalism, which incompetents and charlatans have used for making their living. Hafiz also discusses the division of men of letters and poets into two groups, one supporting the right of Ahmad Shawqi to be called "The Prince of Poets," the other supporting himself. Although he praises Shawqi's poetry, he does not neglect an opportunity to present examples which show that not all his compositions were powerful and pleasant. Hafiz criticizes Shawqi indirectly by citing al-Asma'i's (d. 828) comment on Abu al-Atahiya (d. 825), "His poetry is like a King's court, containing earthenware and gold." 61 Generally, however, Hafiz remains impartial in this controversy, and ultimately he urges the opponents to forget their jealousies and unite. This discussion of literature touches on one of the most critical and complex problems confronting the Arabs in Hafiz's time—namely, the Arabic language. The differences between classical and colloquial Arabic, he argues, have made it all but impossible for Arab writers and speakers to reach their audience, and this inability has been the cause of the tragic backwardness that has beset the Egyptians. Hafiz strongly criticizes the press for not attempting to bridge the gap in communications, while he defends the efforts of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and his disciple Muhammad Abduh to stimulate the Egyptians to revive both their heritage and their language. For the student of politics, perhaps the most striking feature of the Layali is the way the author presents the British occupation of Egypt and the many problems which he believed it had created. The Layali may even be regarded as a succinct historical portrayal of Anglo-Egyptian relations from 1882, when the British occupied Egypt, to the tragedy of Dinshaway in 1906. Hafiz's vehement attacks against British policy in Egypt and the Sudan can be better understood if one realizes that he himself was affected

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by this policy. He had been an eyewitness to the expedition against the followers of the Mahdi in the Sudan, led by British military commanders and officers. After an unhappy career as an attorney, he decided to join the army in hopes that a government position afforded a stabler income and greater security than the practice of law. He entered the military academy, became a second lieutenant upon graduation in 1891, and was promoted two years later to first lieutenant in the artillery. He did not enjoy his new position for long. In 1894 he was transferred to the police force, on which he served until October 1895. Shortly afterwards, he was placed on pension, and his meager allowance of four pounds per month was barely enough for subsistence. The next year, however, he was recalled as a recruitment officer with the Egyptian expedition led by the Sirdar Herbert Kitchener to reconquer the Sudan and stop the power of the Mahdi's followers, who had occupied that country. 62 Hafiz does not confine his criticism to the way British authorities treated himself and his colleagues in the Sudan, but recounts at some length their treatment of Egyptian army officers since the beginning of the occupation. The British, he says, maintained absolute control of the Egyptian army and gave native officers no opportunity for promotion. Moreover, they weakened the military schools' curricula and robbed them of competent instructors, lest they graduate efficient officers. Thus paralyzed, the military schools were reduced to turning out officers whose knowledge when they graduated was as poor as when they entered six months earlier. Consequently, the military schools soon became a refuge for incompetent and indolent students. Hafiz also discusses the discriminatory policies pursued by the British, which he saw as weakening still further the position of native officers in the army. Thus it is hardly surprising that he devotes a large part of his "seventh night" to criticizing this situation, and it is to illustrate this situation that he mentions the notorious "ammunition incident." Another work related to the revival of the maqama is Muhammad Lutfi Jumu'a's Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir (The Nights of the Perplexed Spirit), which appeared in 1912. The imaginary dialogue between the author and the perplexed spirit of his late friend Mustafa, and the division of the book into fifteen nights recall the Layali Satih of Hafiz Ibrahim, and to a lesser extent the tale told of the resurrected Pasha in Hadith Isa ibn Hisham.6i Jumu'a's dedication of Layali to the noble Egyptian young men reflects his didactic aims. Having lived among them and shared their ideas, doubts, and sentiments, he hopes they will find in his book solutions to the confusing problems besetting them, and be touched in their hearts by the cries of the "perplexed spirit." While Jumu'a shows a deep concern over the problems facing Egyptian youth, the intelligent reader who anxiously awaits their solution puts the book aside with resentment and disappointment when he finds his expectations have not been met. He will be

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absolutely appalled, after finishing the account of the third night, to learn that the author blames the decline of the East on the simplistic premise that Easterners do not respect or appreciate their great men. This oversimplification of complex issues, however, should not detract from Jumu'a's importance among the intelligentsia in Egypt in the first quarter of this century.64 The first night of Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir, entitled "Ritha Sadiq" (The Eulogy of a Friend), begins with the author's memory of an evening when, sitting on a stone of the great Pyramid, he was fascinated by the view of the sunset, the Nile, the buildings of Cairo, and al-Muqattam Mountain in the background. Finally darkness fell, bringing a deep silence interrupted only by the hooting of night owls. Behind the mountain lay the city of the dead, in which rested, among many others, the remains of his friend Mustafa. Yesterday, he reflected, Mustafa was full of life, hope, and determination, but alas! nothing is left of him today except dry bones. (This demonstration of man's weakness and the vanity of his existence recalls the beginning of Hadith Isa ibn Hisham at the cemetery.) Walking to the cemetery outside Cairo, Jumu'a visited his friend's grave. Later, as he returned home, he fell deep into thought, contemplating the secrets of the universe and trying to find answers to the many problems which haunted his mind. He reviewed the history of mankind but found it could not provide an answer; it was only a drop in the vast ocean of existence. "What is man, after all?" he asked. "He is nothing but a poor, miserable creature, lost in the eternal cosmos and shrouded by the sea of darkness, seeing nothing but darkness everywhere." While deep in thought, he heard a voice saying from the depths of the earth, "You who are searching for the truth and lost in the wilderness of doubt." Startled by the voice, he managed to gather himself and ask who had addressed him. "I am the perplexed spirit of your friend. I have come to answer your call," said the spirit. They engaged in a lengthy dialogue which lasted through the remaining nights. 65 Among the different subjects discussed in the remaining nights of the narrative, the question of the qualities that make nations strong receives careful attention. Jumu'a mentions group solidarity, sound leadership, consideration of the public interest, and continuous progress and evolution. He decries the cultural decline in his country and criticizes the leaders who disappear in times of national crisis when they are needed most. 66 Then he goes on to discuss the decline of the East, which he naively attributes to the Easterners' disrespect, contempt, even hatred of their leaders. He calls on them to honor their great men if they aspire to regain their past glory. 67 Then he divides the people into two categories, the exploiters and the exploited. This simplistic conception provides the basis for Jumu'a's view that many people who hide behind masks of feigned greatness, nobility, and knowledge are charlatans who continue to survive solely by deceiving

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others. Even more naive is his definition of public opinion as the adherence by a large group of people to the ideas of an eloquent orator or able writer, though he may have evil intentions or may seek only to increase his own power and fame. 68 His obvious pessimism mingled with cynicism, the author dismisses morals, ethics, and virtues as nothing more than universal lies and fantasies, cunning devices invented by man to subdue his fellow men. The condition of men as either exploiters or exploited, he goes on, recalls the tale of Sinbad the Sailor, who was once stranded on a desert island with a man who was blind and crippled. Out of sheer mercy, he offered to be this man's eyes and feet. So he walked about the island, carrying the man on his shoulders, so that he could pluck fruit from the trees and eat. The cripple would not get off Sinbad's shoulders, lest he lose the source of his survival, and he gave his benefactor neither rest nor peace. Finally, however, Sinbad managed through a trick to free himself of his burden. In the same manner some people survive and even thrive by exploiting others, says Jumu'a, and such exploitation is an accepted practice. 69 Jumu'a's work consists mostly of the author's reflections on life and death and various aspects of human existence. Like al-Muwaylihi, who made an excursion to Europe to better understand the impact of Western civilization on Egypt, Jumu'a transports his audience to Europe, more specifically to Lausanne. He seems not so much interested in Western civilization as obsessed with the futility of life, which is symbolized by the visit to the cemetery in Lausanne related by the spirit of the author's friend. Because he had become disenchanted with Eastern cemeteries, says the spirit, he visited a Lausanne cemetery which resembled a beautiful park and went among the graves reading epitaphs. Here was the grave of a child named Charles who had died in 1900; there stood an unfenced grave marked by a marble musical instrument, revealing that the departed, Henri, had been a musician. The spirit was then drawn to the English cemetery, which stood alone. In utter admiration of the English love for independence he exclaimed, "May God fight them! They love to be independent even when they are dead." He criticized them mildly because "they deny independence to others in life." Seeing another English grave with the epitaph, "He lived and died free," he addressed these words to Freedom: "They [the English] praise your name even in death and love to be associated with you in the grave." His attitude toward the English in this regard is one of praise and admiration, despite the British occupation of his country. 70 The account of the thirteenth night shifts from prose to what appears at first glance to be free verse. It contains names of poets like Verlaine and Whitman. The contents are divided in two parts, Basmat al-Rabi (The Smile of Spring) and Urush al-Jababira (The Thrones of Mighty Men),

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separated by a short song titled Ughniyat al-Nar (The Song of Fire). These parts take the form of quatrains to which the author gives the title Shi 'r alArwah (The Verse of the Spirits), creating the impression that they are poetry rather than prose. They are neither shi'r hurr (free verse) nor shi'r manthur (prose poetry), but simply prose. Arabic free verse, as the Iraqi woman poet Nazik al-Malaika defines it, essentially uses the customary meters of Arabic poetry, but, instead of being limited to a single metrical foot, contains different feet and combines elements of different poetic meters. 71 Jumu'a's Shi'r al-Arwah does not satisfy this definition, and it would be equally incorrect to attempt to treat this portion of his work as shi'r manthur, as certain contemporary writers have done. 72 The observation of one contemporary critic that "this is written in shi'r manthur, or prose poetry, in which there is neither meter nor rhyme," 73 is very difficult to reconcile with the substantial body of opinion which holds that prose is wholly distinct from poetry. From the point of view of fiction, the sixth, seventh, eleventh, and twelfth nights are of greatest interest. These contain short, episodic, plotless stories related by the perplexed spirit of the author's friend, who sometimes is apparently recounting experiences he had while on earth. In the first story, "Narjis al-Amya" (Narjis the Blind), the title character is a blind five-year-old orphan who lived with her poor but proud grandmother in a dingy room next door to the narrator. The old woman, reluctant to accept charity, chose to sell candy to the children in the district rather than beg. She was frequently seen carrying her granddaughter on her shoulders; in her hand was a box filled with candy and toys, and she called in a faint voice for the children to buy her wares. The narrator relates that he saw Narjis and took pity on her. He tried to make her happy by taking her to the seashore, where they listened to the waves. Narjis anxiously asked what the waves and the sea were, and what they looked like. She also asked about ships and birds. She felt safer when she placed her head in his lap, he kissed her with great compassion and felt as if she had become his own. One day he told her a story which he had heard from an old woman, about a poor blind young woman whom the son of the King saw and took to his palace and married after she had been healed by an Indian physician. Narjis, upon hearing the story, wished she could be cured by the same man. Later, the narrator goes on, his family moved, and he left behind the poor blind young woman, who had done nothing to deserve such misfortunes. One day, as he passed by a bridge, he heard a faint feminine voice chanting the Quran. Walking toward the place the voice came from, he saw an old woman in rags, sitting on the ground with two shabby-looking children. He recognized her as the poor, blind Narjis whom he had known as a child. He felt helpless to relieve her misery, for now he belonged to the world of the spirit, and he appealed to his friend to aid her. 74

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This anecdote is clearly not a short story in the modern sense. Nor could the piece be classed, for example, as a social commentary. Many Western short stories avoid such a portrayal. The theme and style of the story reveal the influence of romanticism, which was strong in Egypt in the first quarter of this century, and whose chief exponent was Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti (d. 1924). This romantic influence is again revealed in the second story, Sadiqi Ali (My Friend Ali), whose title character, like the narrator, belongs now to the world of the spirit. Ali, the narrator proudly relates, was a black slave whose master, a physician, brought him to Egypt from the farthest part of Africa, whose inhabitants were mostly of Arab origin. Ali must have been a man of dignity and pride, not a common slave without social roots, for his father and relatives were businessmen and shipowners. He was deceived by the physician, who enticed Ali to escape with him aboard an army ship and seek a better life in Egypt. On their arrival, the physician took care of Ali's upbringing and education, treating him as a member of the family. Ali studied chemistry and medicine, and helped his benefactor in his work. When Ali grew to manhood, the physician changed his attitude and would not allow him to associate with his daughter Zubayda. When she came to marriageable age, her father shielded her from Ali and told him he could no longer see her. Having been in love with her since childhood, Ali obeyed the physician's order resignedly. He discovered that despite the generosity of his benefactor, he was only a slave, thought to be unworthy of marrying the free Zubayda. When he asked the physician to increase his pay, the latter reminded him that he should be grateful to him for what he had, and that he owed him his education and even his life. Ali had no choice but to leave the physician's home and try his fortune elsewhere. After moving to another town, he was stricken with tuberculosis, and Zubayda was given in marriage to someone else. Although gravely ill, he managed to leave his bed and go to the physician's home to censure him as the cause of his tragedy. In his fury he leapt at his onetime benefactor, but his weak body collapsed, and he cut his head so badly that he bled to death. Finally, in the world of the spirits, Ali met his beloved Zubayda, still as beautiful as when he had known her on earth. He also saw the spirit of her father, the physician, tormented by a jinni's whip. 75 These two stories draw their themes and characters from Egyptian life and society and may therefore be regarded as the most important portion of Jumu'a's book. 76 They are undoubtedly more typical of Egyptian sentiments than his other two stories, al-Akhawat al-Thalath (The Three Sisters) and al-Fakiha al-Muharrama (The Forbidden Fruit), in which he abruptly transfers the reader to European settings to reveal some aspect of European life and society. Al-Akhawat al-Thalath concerns three daughters born to an Italian father and a French mother. The first sister, with no apparent physical

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beauty, was practical and industrious. She visited Italy and lived in England for three years, during which time she married an Englishman. She soon came to the opinion that the English are doers rather than talkers, and this taught her to be practical. She controlled her husband and manipulated him "as the English play soccer," sometimes treating him like a child. She became the head of the family, while he became the hired hand. She was happily married. The second sister, a pretty brunette, seemed more Sicilian, Neapolitan, or Venetian than French. Secretive, almost enigmatic, she could love or hate with great vigor. She could have been Catherine de Medici or, had she been a man, Machiavelli. Moreover, she was vindictive, although educated and well read. She was born to be a queen. The third sister, the plain and insignificant member of the family, received no attention from her mother. She did not remain with the family, but lived in other households, where she served as a maid. However, she had a magnificent character. 77 The second story, al-Fakiha al-Muharrama, relates some aspects of the life of the beautiful eighteen-year-old Renée, a brunette whom the narrator met in an Alpine village. She was a young woman with exquisite artistic taste. Renée was suspicious of men, however, because once she had loved a man who betrayed her. Once, when she was in church, her eyes met those of the priest during the sermon; after the service he followed her to the woods to express his love for her, but she spurned his suit. When they met for the last time, the priest asked her to stop hating men. She answered that she had no reason to hate men; after all, Adam did not hate Eve, though she was the one who had enticed him to eat of the forbidden fruit which cost him paradise. 78 Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir is different from the traditional maqama in both structure and style. It is closer to Layali Satih than to Hadith Isa ibn Hisham, both because the perplexed spirit resembles Satih and because the narrative is divided into nights. Jumu'a's work belongs chiefly to the "romantic school," which was prevalent in the Arab countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which drew heavily on Western models and ideas. The opinion expressed by the Egyptian critic Shukri Muhammad Ayyad, that the romantic themes of Jumu'a's four narratives treated in the maqama form freed Arabic prose fiction from the rigid formalism of that genre, is hardly convincing. It seems even less plausible to assert that plot, which in the maqama followed a single pattern, has in these narratives been freed from any pattern and thus come closer to the pattern of the Western short story.79 What Ayyad has apparently missed is that like the traditional maqama, these stories are simply chains of unconnected incidents which do not form a unified plot. Their style is not so rigid as the rhymed prose of the maqama, however, and the aesthetic subjects with which they deal are more sophisticated, although less empirical,

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than those of the maqama. Jumu'a's work unmistakably reflects the great resolution of the intelligentsia in Egypt to prevent their Islamic heritage from being overcome by the invading Western ideas which were already making their impact on Eastern societies.

7 Salim al-Bustani and the Beginning of Modern Arabic Fiction

In the two decades following the death of Marun Naqqash in 1855, most writers of fiction in Syria were providing the public and private theaters with dramas whose themes were drawn from Arab history or from Western works which they knew in translation. These plays were designed to suit the social customs, taste, and moral views of a conservative Oriental society. When theatrical activities were transferred to Egypt, the development of the drama in Syria lagged. The theater had remained a novelty, more a curiosity than a genuine reflection of Syrian cultural life. Prose fiction received more attention, largely because of the press. In 1858, Khalil al-Khuri (d. 1907) established his weekly Hadiqat al-Akhbar (The Garden of News), devoting part of this periodical to original prose fiction and translations. He published serially his story "Wai Idhan Lastu bi Ifranji" (Shame, I am not then a 'European'), which Tarrazi describes as "a moralistic book written in the manner of a story, in which the author incorporated a careful criticism of morals and customs with subtle observations on al-Mutanabbi and Lamartine." 1 The effect of this romance on the public is hard to decide, but it must surely have set the precedent for later writers' use of the popular magazines in advancing their techniques and ideas. The most notable magazine promoting Arabic fiction was al-Jinan (Gardens), established by the celebrated Butrus al-Bustani (d. 1883) in Beirut in January 1870. Its scope included social and political matters. Its popularity, which to no small degree stemmed from the name and fame of its founder, helped to attract contributions from many renowned writers. One of them was al-Bustani's son, Salim, whose voluminous output of stories of varying length marked the beginning of modern Arabic prose fiction. Salim's background and literary talents equipped him to undertake at an early age the editing and publication of several periodicals, including al-Jinan, al-Janna (Garden), and al-Junayna (A Little Garden). 2 Born at Abayh, Lebanon, in 1848, Salim was fortunate in being raised in a home filled with learning. 3 He was privileged to study the Arabic 157

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language and literature under the eminent master of those fields, Nasif alYaziji; he also mastered Turkish, French, and English. In 1862 Salim succeeded his father as the translator for the American Consulate in Beirut. With seemingly inexhaustible energy, he undertook formidable assignments, ranging from editing several periodicals to teaching English at alMadrasa al-Wataniyya (The National School), established by his father at Beirut. He also helped his father in writing his Arabic encyclopedia and participated in the myriad activities of al-Jamiyya al-Ilmiyya al-Suriyya (The Syrian Scientific Society), of which he was vice-president. He contributed many articles to his journals and wrote the editorials for al-Jinan under the heading Jumla Siyasiyya (Political Commentary). Salim al-Bustani was best known for his purely literary activity. He was unique in the Arab literary world. Most of the writers we have examined so far were more or less isolated cases, men who labored alone. They were never widely known and appreciated and almost immediately forgotten. Salim al-Bustani, however, was caught up in the whirlwind of the new and heightened intellectual and social consciousness of the late nineteenth century that engulfed, and had its effect upon, the most isolated outposts of civilization. Although he was well acquainted with the West and appreciated many of its progressive aspects, he remained devoted to Arabic civilization. Accordingly, he epitomized two unique but different qualities: Arabic traditionalism and Western liberalism. On the one hand, he loved and wished to preserve those unique customs which were the foundations of the moral and ethical fibre of the Arabs. On the other, he was acutely aware of and influenced by the contemporary currents of rationalism, empiricism, and liberalism emanating from the West. Therefore, he was anxious to acquaint his Arab countrymen with, and have them adopt the more liberating and humanizing approaches, ideas, and usages of the socially and scientifically advanced West. Thus, he assumed the self-appointed role of critic and educator, using as his main theme the necessity to participate in Ruh al-Asr (The Spirit of the Age, Zeitgeist)—that is, the spirit of liberality and human progress emanating from the West. Only if one understands the underlying educative purpose of his whole life's work, his sense of Western humanism, can one appreciate and understand the importance and place of his writings. Furthermore, one can establish a definite link between the prolific and innovative al-Bustani and later writers. He may be rightfully considered the true father of the Arab short story and novel, including historical fiction. If one reads the lists of subscribers which al-Bustani appended to his popular journal al-Jinan, one can quite justifiably conclude that his ideas must have reached influential circles. As for his purely fictional activities, between 1870 and his death in 1884 al-Bustani composed and translated many pieces of prose fiction, and

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wrote three plays. His stories range from short didactic pieces of few pages to historical novels of considerable length. Despite this productivity, however, the themes and structure of much of his fiction are generally limited in scope. Love, marriage, and all the moral lessons concerning them are his favorite subjects. Furthermore, his stories are crammed with so many facts and incidents, all within a short space, that they often lack coherence. This is evident in al-Huyam fi Jinan al-Sham (Passionate Love in the Gardens of al-Sham), al-Bustani's earliest novel, serialized in al-Jinan in 1870. In it he interrupts the narrative to discuss marriage and its conditions, honor and respect for women, and the comparative cultural and scientific achievements of Europeans and Middle Easterners. He explains in detail the meaning of love, and also the European customs which have invaded Middle Eastern societies. As a conservative Middle Easterner, al-Bustani understood love not as a fleeting impulse based on first sight but as a slowly maturing relationship which grows with time. He also believed that a successful marriage was based on mutual understanding and respect between the spouses. Although he condemned many European social customs adopted by his countrymen, especially excessive freedom of women and their dancing with men in public, he thought that his people could learn a great deal from Europeans (al-Jinan, 1870, pp. 21, 85, 135, 189, 377). Furthermore, the narrative abounds with improbable adventures reminiscent of the tales of Thousand and One Nights. The scope of al-Huyam fi Jinan al-Sham is too broad and the events are random. The novel opens when the author-narrator meets the hero, his friend Sulayman Khalid, at the Cedars of Lebanon. Sulayman relates his adventures to the author, but the narrative is interrupted when he leaves to search for his loved one, Warda. The author completes the story with information from letters Sulayman writes during his travels and, when he stops writing, from information about him from his friends and relatives. The hero Sulayman originally comes from Beirut, lives for a while in Baghdad and then returns to Lebanon. Al-Bustani presents him as a rich, generous, modest, adventure-loving young man. (al-Jinan, 1870, 699). At a garden in al-Sham (Damascus) Sulayman meets the young woman Warda among a group of female friends, Malka, Su'da, and Hawwa, and he falls in love with her. At an inn in Damascus Sulayman establishes a friendship with foreign boarders, including a physician named Buff, Lady Genly (sic), and Mr. and Mrs. Belrose. He begins the study of medicine under the physician, and through him has the opportunity to meet Warda, who is being treated by Buff for an eye problem. One day Sulayman and the foreign visitors decide to visit the ancient city of Tadmur (Palmyra). On the way they are attacked by a band of Bedouins who capture them, put them

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in chains, and then lead them to their chief, who sentences them to death. While they are waiting to be beheaded, Sulayman hears a feminine voice imploring the Bedouin's chief to spare his life. Sulayman is surprised when he recognizes Warda's voice and realizes that she is attempting to save him, even offering her life for his. The Bedouin's chief does not listen to Warda's supplication and orders that she be executed with Sulayman. Coincidentally, Said, the Bedouin chief's son, who is also in love with Warda, appears suddenly on his horse and rescues Warda and Sulayman from death. Warda relates to Sulayman that she was abducted while convalescing in a place near Damascus. Her kidnapper, Mustafa, son of another Bedouin chief, enticed her to marry him, but she kept him in suspense. Meanwhile, Mustafa's tribe is attacked by Said's tribe and Warda falls into the hands of Said, whose men have also captured Sulayman and the foreign visitors. Said shows great magnanimity by releasing Sulayman's foreign companions, but retains Warda with the intention of marrying her. He also retains Sulayman because he claimed to be Warda's relative. Meanwhile, Sulayman and Warda plan to escape by bribing a certain Bedouin who hates Said, but the plan fails and the two lovers are returned to their chains. When the Syrian government troops attack Said's tribe for disciplinary measures, Warda and Sulayman seize the opportunity to escape to Damascus. While fleeing, the unfortunate lovers are attacked by a band of robbers from Damascus who kidnap Warda and leave the brokenhearted Sulayman in tears. On his way to Damascus, Sulayman meets the government troops and asks them to take him to their commander. The commander, Khalil Effendi Ayyub, sympathizes with Sulayman and sends him to Rashid Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Syria. Rashid Pasha, listens to Sulyaman's story, offers him money and assigns two of his men to accompany him to the town of Ba'lbak. From Ba'lbak, he goes to the Cedars of Lebanon where he meets the author and relates the story to him (al-Jinan,

1870, 506-507). From this point on the author continues the narrative, based on the letters he receives from Sulayman and on the oral information provided by friends. Sulayman, searching for Warda, reaches the city of Tripoli in Lebanon and hears that Warda is on board a ship heading toward an unknown destination. He boards a ship searching for her, but his ship loses its course and meets another ship that has also lost its course. To his astonishment, Sulayman discovers that Warda is on board the other ship. He transfers to Warda's ship and collaborates with the passengers to rescue her. However, the passengers encounter a pirate ship, Arcadia, and are captured and sent to Crete, which then was an Ottoman domain. Crete is rocked by a revolution against the Ottoman authorities, and Sulayman, Warda, and other captives are forced to join the Cretan revolutionaries, but

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they are captured by the Ottoman authorities and thrown into prison. After incredible hardships, Sulayman and Warda manage to escape to Naples, Italy, where their suffering ends happily with their marriage. The novel is crammed with exaggerated situations and events lacking logical sequence. The improbable adventures of Sulayman leave the reader with the impression that he is another legendary Telemachus or Sinbad the Sailor. To show that the story actually happened, al-Bustani provides names of Ottoman officials who assisted Sulayman in his predicament. In many places the author interrupts the narrative to discuss social conditions in Syria, especially educational progress, and the increasing number of schools and students in Beirut in the two decades preceding the appearance of al-Jinan in 1870. He also mentions the progress made in building new roads and communications facilities. He criticizes the division of the inhabitants of Beirut into many factions, each of them following its own dialect, dress, religious beliefs, and way of life, which made the city's people alien to each other. Al-Bustani deplores the adoption by the people of Beirut of worthless rather than genuine Western customs. The imitation of Western customs which he describes as "poison" has spread, he says, into most of the Middle Eastern cities and has even penetrated the remote villages. However, al-Bustani gives due credit to Westerners for such good things they gave the Middle East as the dissemination of knowledge; he laments that with honey they served up such bee stings as social prejudice. Although he concludes those Western achievements such as newspapers, printing presses, construction works, hospitals, schools, and trade have made Beirut the most progressive city in the Middle East, al-Bustani, with prophetic alarm, foretells the weakness of his country: "Woe to us because we have no industries" {al-Jinan, 1870, 700-702). Al-Bustani's plots are monotonous and repetitive. Commonly, they depict the rivalry of young men who hope to marry the same young woman and the intrigue, deceit, and violence which surround these rivalries. On a deeper plane, however, the works of al-Bustani stand as a testimony to his "Western conscience" and his concern for the freedom and dignity of his own countrymen. It is significant that he was the first Arab writer to transport some of his characters beyond their native area to Europe, often using Italy as a setting. 4 The tone and narrative technique of his stories are, at times, reminiscent of the Thousand and One Nights. For example, several young men are in rivalry for the hand of Asma in the novel which bears her name, but only one of them, Karim al-Baghdadi, wins at the end. 5 This plot is repeated in Bint al-Asr and Fatina.6 The situations in other stories by alBustani, such as Salma and Samiya, are similarly simplistic.7 A typical Thousand and One Nights technique which al-Bustani employs is the introduction

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of an experienced and cunning woman employed to help achieve the amorous goals of a young suitor. Al-Bustani's characters are fully developed symbols of vice or virtue. Primarily occupied with their own love affairs and/or intrigues, they are completely oblivious to their surroundings. Other people are only incidental to their lives. Typically bourgeois, they enjoy the amenities of life and appreciate their middle-class status. The male figures are mostly businessmen with a fair degree of education. Some of them use their mental keenness to achieve sinister goals, including the elimination of a rival for the love of a beautiful and virtuous young woman. The names of al-Bustani's heroines—Warda, Rima, Asma, Fatina, Salma, and Samiya—are stereotypical. They are highly educated young women—indeed surprisingly so, given the lack of opportunity for a woman to gain a decent education in nineteenth-century Syria. They are always virtuous, beautiful, balanced, and bright. Those who are not heroines—for instance, sisters, servants, and girlfriends—are mostly uneducated, superficial, or frivolous. 8 This dichotomy between virtue and vice is manifested more strongly among the male characters. In Bint al-Asr, Majid epitomizes all the good qualities that a hero should have: humility, refinement, and intelligence. His unworthy rivals are, on the other hand, evil, arrogant, and deceitful. They plot to compromise Majid in a shoddy financial transaction to make him lose his money and therefore lose Rima, the virtuous and beautiful heroine. 9 In his adversity, Majid, being of firm and noble character, never loses his faith in people. Neither does he condemn the villains, but ends up by judging man as a noble creature although, at times, he shows signs of avarice and envy. 10 The opposite poles of virtue and vice are also reflected in men's attitudes toward their jobs and family. In the novel Asma, for instance, Nadir, the heroine's father, is a rich but modest merchant who never boasts of his position or wealth. Furthermore, he always puts his family ahead of his work. His friend, Sadir, is just the opposite. He brags about his wealth and puts his work ahead of his family. Thus, he neglects his children, who grow up weak and ill-bred. 11 Karim al-Baghdadi, who eventually wins Asma's hand, is an educated and virtuous gentleman who believes that wealth alone cannot make men better. More important is the development of those spiritual qualities which elevate man from an elemental baseness to a refined human being. His opposite is Badi, Asma's brother, an arrogant braggart who believes he is better than other people. 12 He is so evil and envious that he even conspires to kill Karim to prevent Asma from marrying him. 13 Majid faces his predicament with patience and forbearance, never losing faith in the human race. Karim, a man of like quality facing a similar situation, loses his confidence in the human justice represented by the Ottoman court.

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Al-Bustani appears to share this view since he shows a great deal of sympathy for his character's ordeal. Interjecting himself into the narrative, as was his usual practice, the author indicates that the reader should sympathize with Karim, sharing his tears and sadness. 14 Of course, al-Bustani could never have criticized Ottoman justice openly without exposing himself to the punishment of the authorities and jeopardizing his career. He condemns Badi's attempt to kill Karim and observes that there is no limit to the savagery of man, although he gives the appearance of being civilized. He believes that only an enlightened education makes man truly civilized and prevents him from attempting such atrocities. 15 Al-Bustani's attitude reflects nineteenth-century enthusiasm about the healing balm of education. In the bloody crucible of two world wars, and the continuing agony of the twentieth century, such overt optimism about education—although natural under the circumstances—betrays a certain naïveté. It is symptomatic of the social and cultural ethos in al-Bustani's time. In Fatina, Murad is portrayed as an envious cheat and intriguer, although a man of considerable means. 16 His friend Sabir is a further example of meanness and vice, who would do anything to harm people. Sabir is the instrument of the hero's woe, in an intrigue which appears in almost every story with numbing repetition: he lures him to a brothel to besmirch his name, hoping to prevent him from marrying Fatina. 17 This scheme is little different from those of the stock characters of al-Bustani's other works, whose crimes are as numerous as their vices. More important than this simple moral dichotomy of good and evil, however, is al-Bustani's attempt to represent the spirit of his time. This includes the effect of the cultural changes which had taken place in the Arab East because of the invasion of Western thought and culture. Al-Bustani was the first Arab writer to use the term Ruh al-Asr (The Spirit of the Age), and apply it to the writing of fiction. Widely read in Western thought, al-Bustani could have found no better translation for the German term Zeitgeist than Ruh al-Asr. He used it to identify those collective forces which reflect the most progressive, enlightening, edifying, and humanizing aspects of contemporary civilization. When a society violates these principles, for whatever reason, then it is said that the Ruh (spirit) of the nation is opposite to Ruh al-Asr—The Spirit of the Age. However, al-Bustani does not seem to believe that nationalism, for which he uses the term al-Usba al-Jinsiyya (Ethnic Bond) with its components of common ethnic origin, language, religion and historical background, is compatible with Ruh al-Asr. He believes that these components are particular and cannot be achieved without the exclusion of certain people. 19 Al-Bustani believed that his own society was opposed to the Ruh alAsr as he had observed and interpreted its operation in Europe. He cited

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those principles which best characterize its essence as equality, freedom, and religious tolerance. More specifically and adamantly, he emphasized the freedom of the individual and the necessity to arouse his consciousness of his political rights. 20 In this context, obviously, al-Bustani was influenced by the West and, most especially, by the principles of the French Revolution. To him, these principles have characterized France as the "wet-nurse" of Ruh al-Asr. This is evident from his several editorials in alJinan where he discussed the effect of the principles of the French Revolution on the regimes of Europe. He intended those regimes which were overthrown because of the kings' insistence on preserving their own rights against "Ruh hadha al-Asr" (the spirit of this age), by which he means the age of the freedom of man. 21 Ruh al-Asr as al-Bustani views it is more than these principles alone. It is a combination of historical customs, traditions, institutions, and activities, including religion, which characterize a civilized society. Those elements that constitute the spirit of a certain age in a certain place, in effect its Weltanschauung, differ greatly from the Weltanschauung of another age and another place. What was common in the past, for example, may not be suitable for the changed aspect of contemporary times in midnineteenth-century Syria. Therefore, it is necessary, according to alBustani, for the individual and society to conform to the Ruh al-Asr as it currently appears in every age. Al-Bustani believed it inexcusable to cling tenaciously and irrationally to outworn traditions and customs which prevent progress, since they do not correspond with the spirit and exigencies of the new age. 22 Evidently, al-Bustani's conception of Ruh al-Asr expressed, among other things, the idea of the liberation of one's self from outworn tradition, customs, and laws prejudicial to the freedom, dignity, and progress of man. Much of Syrian life was based upon narrow provincialism, state despotism, infantile religious bigotry, and gross restrictions upon individual freedom. These social constraints, al-Bustani affirmed, are out of step with the true spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist of human freedom and dignity emanating from the West, and such narrownesses should be rejected because they militate against the progress of Syria and other Eastern societies. Progress, he believed, would be promoted by the liberal influx of the spirit of the times into a stagnant society, his own, which was out of harmony with the edifying ideas and thought. In other words, Ruh al-Asr recognized no national boundaries or artificial restrictions. It leaped over or slipped under the arbitrary boundaries of state and society, encompassing in its ontological thrust all peoples and all countries. Obviously, the Zeitgeist of freedom, equality, liberty, parliamentary government and religious liberty, etc., was stronger and more apparent in the Western world than the Islamic world in al-Bustani's day. Nevertheless, he believed that the Zeitgeist was so strong and its imperatives so noble

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that if Arab society did not conform to the Hegelian world spirit, it would be out of harmony with the true and noble course of human development. His own society was beginning to change, because of the invasion of European ideas, values, customs, and style. Al-Bustani, however, became disappointed because most of these changes were, as yet, based upon a mere superficial assimilation and veneer. Dancing, for instance, and the acceptance of European "party dresses" was just one example of the acquisition by Eastern society of the superficial aspects of European society that al-Bustani himself disliked. Al-Bustani remarked that such customs should be rejected by his fellow Arabs because they were not useful. 23 Since the ideas, values, and customs of the West were vastly different from the Eastern ones, al-Bustani thought it necessary to explain them to his countrymen so that they would adopt only those that were the best while maintaining their own individuality. Thus, the purpose of his novels Asma and Bint al-Asr (Daughter of the A g e ) was to explain certain customs and practices that were different from, or incompatible with, the cultural approach of his countrymen. The adoption of different customs, practices, and ideas usually takes place at a time when a country is trying to adapt itself to the customs of other people who have preceded them in cultural progress. 24 Bint al-Asr deals nicely with both situations. However, al-Bustani also inserts a word of caution: rather than the wholesale assimilation of external forces emanating from a more culturally progressive society, he counseled the exercise of judgment and prudence in adjusting one's self to foreign ideas and values. Above all, he did not want to see his society completely transform itself into a Western society, but only to adopt those ideas and practices which conform to the essence of the Ruh al-Asr, reflecting the universal exigencies of human freedom, dignity, and equality. He believed strongly in retaining those unique historical commitments to custom and tradition that allow for a unique individuality and distinguish one society from another. He preferred to see an ontological unity in diversity characterized by the mutual sharing of the Zeitgeist rather than a oneness of complete conformity. In Bint al-Asr, the protagonist Rima is portrayed as beautiful, educated, and modest. She possesses those physical and mental qualities alBustani apparently considered requisite for a model woman. Although outwardly she is perhaps not very different from other young women of her age, she is perspicacious enough to realize that the times are changing and that her country must change with them. She is careful not to adopt those meaningless European practices that have invaded her country and contradicted established traditions. In other words, Rima represents, in her attitude and actions, the correct approach to an adaptation to the Ruh al-Asr: selective and prudent assimilation of the good practices and ideas of the West.

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Furthermore, nothing could exemplify the meaningful connotations of Ruh al-Asr better than the diverse attitudes of Rima and her sister Jamila. While the heroine is an open-minded and intelligent young woman who approaches life rationally, her sister is frivolous and superficial. Above all, whereas Rima ignores European dancing because it lacks any redeeming value, Jamila adores it and criticizes her sister's failure to understand "civilized manners" and the requisites of the Asr.25 When Rima rebukes her sister for her frivolity and superficiality, Jamila retorts that she is not in need of her advice because it is she, not her sister, who is "in step with the times." Of course, she is mistaking superficial activities for true freedom, but she tries to live and behave the way she sees fit, ignoring all the values of her society. 26 Rima epitomizes the rational approach, which differentiates between the essential and nonessential. She does not wish to overthrow everything, nor does she wish to be completely "free." She accepts and conforms to those unique spiritual attitudes and good customs of her country. Rima seeks not to displace but to build on that which is good in the old and the familiar. Hers is the voice of reason that understands the necessity of using the past in a rational way, of evolving slowly with the Zeitgeist while maintaining one's essential character through the retention of those individual traits of custom of life that marks people as historically and spiritually different. It is not clothes, dancing, smoking, or drinking that brings one into conformity with the spirit of the age, but the slow and steady inculcation of those universally valid ideas and values that mark the late nineteenth century but stand for the most important imperatives of the human spirit: freedom, the dignity of the individual, equality, and tolerance. These are the qualities that the Arab East lacked and that al-Bustani would like to see his countrymen attain through an open-minded, educated approach to the essential spirit of the age. Anis, a young man who is struggling to win Rima's hand in marriage, represents the bad example of a young man who has been corrupted by the detrimental influence of European civilization. In an existential sense, the author meant to portray in Bint al-Asr that particular period in the nineteenth century when Syrian society was experiencing the brunt of Western influence. The transition in manners, customs, and values had thrust it into conflict. He states: These things are taking place at a time whose meaning, like the uncertain light of dawn, is yet unclear. Therefore, the minds of many people, too, are not clear. Even strangers (Europeans) are in the dark, like the natives. This state of affairs shows that the country is suffering under the burden of a cultural situation whose values are in an uncertain state of transition. 27

That al-Bustani was fully aware of the social, economic, and cultural transition of his society is clear not only in his fiction but in his other works.

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In his article entitled "al-Tawfir al-Siyasi wa Tahsin Ahwal al-Umma" (Political Economy and the Improvement of the Conditions of the Nation) published in al-Jinan (1875, 204) al-Bustani, after discussing the economic decline in Syria, shifts from economics to sociology and discusses the inability of the Syrian society to accept new and unfamiliar forms and customs such as allowing women to sit in the assemblies of men before they could learn how to discuss subjects other than engagements, marriages, clothes, and cosmetics. Fatina displays this transition of values. 28 Like Rima, Fatina symbolizes Ruh al-Asr. She is educated and enlightened. She values learning and right thought more than money, sumptuous clothes, or external appearance. Also, she is aware of the transitional tension in her society as the result of the invasion of European civilization. Moreover, Fatina is prudent enough, unlike most of her friends, not to imitate the superficial European customs without appreciating her own native customs. 29 Al-Bustani realized that the rejection of established customs and the adoption of new foreign ones is not an easy task. The problem, as he sees it, is that the conflict between two rival traditions creates a most unsettling crisis of conscience and peace of mind. The problem becomes even more acute when foreign customs are completely unsuitable to those who adopt them. 30 Al-Bustani further explains his position on this subject in his editorial "Jumla Adabiyya" (Literary Commentary), in al-Jinan (January 1874, 38-39) where he says that it is not shameful to adopt European customs; what is shameful is to adopt ugly European customs just because they are European. Young al-Bustani himself was often confused about the confrontation of European manners and values with those of his own society. He maintained that "genuine" civilization was not the use of superficial graces or material acquisitions. Al-Bustani believed that true civilization consists of following those human values necessary to refine the individual and free society from sophistic ideas and corrupting principles. 31 This mental attitude of al-Bustani is reflected in his protagonist Asma, who, like her creator, is deeply perplexed over the conflict of her own values with those of Europe. Should she follow her friends who have aped the "counterfeit" aspects of a foreign civilization into her being? To find a solution to her mental predicament she seeks enlightenment through reading and learning. Thus, she finally finds peace of mind through knowledge and marries Karim al-Baghdadi, who understands the true meaning of civilization based on genuine human values. 32 The impact of Western civilization on Syria and other Arab countries may have first been deeply felt by intellectuals like al-Bustani, but the abundant tensions of the conflict are still present, a century later, in Arab societies. The continuing impress of the mores and manners of the West has created crucial problems for the twentieth-century Middle East. Nations

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are still seeking, without much success, to maintain their cultural integrity while reconciling it with Western values often antithetical to their own. They recognize that the momentum of progress lies with the West, but that raises the difficulty. They want to adopt those trends of modernization which have swept over the world from the West. This requires full commitment they are loath to make because of their traditions and history. Thus, caught in the throes of an eternally frozen antithetical tension, the synthesis which implies compromise and promises progress lies forever unconsummated. It is not surprising that al-Bustani criticizes European customs and, most of all, his own countrymen for imitating the most worthless and unsuitable of them. He himself is never clear about just what it is that he wishes his fellow Arabs to assimilate. One can only imply that it is those ideas and activities that will not "corrupt" Arab society but will put it in step with the spirit of the age. Of course, a subtle psychological element compounded the whole problem. The invading European way of life had created a sense of inferiority in Arab society. This was so strong that the collective notion arose that everything European was good while all that was Eastern was inferior. This belief became so deeply embedded in the Eastern mind that to this day there is a widespread belief that in almost every way the West is far superior to the East. The behavior of al-Bustani's characters reflects this attitude. Nabiha, one of his female characters, for example, prefers Western clothes not because they are suitable for the weather of her country, but because she believes wearing them will somehow elevate her to a more exalted status. She goes to the extreme of determining to marry a European husband even if he is poor. Nabiha believes that being a European means being—without exception—highly cultured, civilized, and moral. 33 If Nabiha goes to extremes, her mother is even more drawn to imitating everything Western. She thinks that by mimicking European manners she will automatically become a better and more respected woman—in effect, a European woman. Her attitude is unequivocally expressed in her response to her son-in-law when he ridicules the European clothes she had made for herself: I am quite unfortunate. My son-in-law has ridiculed me while I thought he would consider me a European woman in every respect. I mingle with men, appear unveiled in public, wear European dress and communicate in a European language, but still I am told that I am far from being one of them. 3 4

Badi'a especially likes the European men's manners and their behavior toward women, such as the etiquette of "ladies first." Having little real

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education, she appreciates these external forms of European manners without understanding the reasons behind them. Al-Bustani shows in the narrative that the reason European men always give their wives deference is their belief that women are more fragile and require more care and attention. He continues, with sly insight, that European men behave gallantly toward their women in unimportant matters to make it easier for them to subjugate them in more essential things. Badi'a could not, of course, understand these things. 35 Asma recognizes that the Europeans surpass the Easterners in many respects, particularly in social progress. She believes that it is wrong to prefer one nation to another. Furthermore, individuals should be judged according to their relative merits, regardless of their racial or ethnic origin. 36 At this point al-Bustani—true to his usual approach—injects his own ideas. He says that Nabiha is wrong and her indiscriminate preference for European manners is a demonstration of inferiority. 37 The most predominant situations in al-Bustani's stories revolve around love between a young man and a young woman. This typically involves her desire to marry a man of her own choice, even in defiance of parental authority. The freedom which the heroines exercise in their relations with young men and their mature understanding of love is particularly striking because al-Bustani was writing in the 1870s. They seem to act completely against the established modes of behavior and traditional mores of society. The question is, therefore, why did he depict such unrealistic situations? The answer is that he was influenced by the role of the heroine and her relation with her lover as portrayed in Western literature. Evidently, this freedom never leads to or even implies illicit relations. Al-Bustani is a conservative and a moralist, and his characters reflect many of his own ideas of what love and courtship should mean. The lovers meet in their homes and in sight of their families. They are engaged or about to be engaged. It is during engagement that the couple can know each other. This in turn will help prevent problems which might otherwise arise after their marriage. Al-Bustani even allows the couple to decide the time and kind of entertainment. The meeting, however, should be at home. 38 To a modern Western reader, such a relationship appears natural and commonplace. In nineteenth-century Syria, even this degree of freedom between unmarried young men and women would be incredible. Again, this puzzling superimposition of Western love upon Eastern characters must be understood in the light of al-Bustani's main philosophical and literary theme: Ruh al-Asr. Al-Bustani believed that the social progress which included courting and marriage customs in the West reflected the liberating force of the Zeitgeist. The brutal social customs and stagnant traditions he wanted to liberate his own society from were epitomized in the total subservience of

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young people, in relation to marriage and love, to the desires of their elders. Here we can find the difference between important and nonimportant aspects of Ruh al-Asr—almost, its essence. This was truly a theme that he could get his teeth into. It consistently conforms to his essential idea of Ruh al-Asr as a metaphysical force in terms of its moral imperatives of liberty, freedom, equality, and justice. Al-Bustani portrays his protagonists, particularly Asma, not as teenage girls—which they in fact are—but as mature women with consummate wisdom and reasoning power. Asma has read about love and acquired a fair knowledge about the ecstasy awaiting the meeting of two lovers. She discusses intellectual topics and is knowledgeable about a variety of disciplines. We are told nothing about the kind of books she read or in what languages she reads them. They are surely not Arabic. In the 1870s the Arabic press in Syria was in its infancy, Arabic literary materials were rare, and translation from Western literature into Arabic, as noted, was even more meager. Al-Bustani consistently portrays his female characters as paragons of knowledge, maturity, and resourcefulness despite their young age. Evidently, he has more than the realistic portrayal of a young woman's manner or intelligence in mind. 3 9 The heroines serve to express many of his ideas about intelligence, common sense, and decency—the essence of Ruh al-Asr. As an idealistic young woman, Asma believes that love is not an accidental but an essential aspect of life. She craves the experience through which she will be transported to an emotional realm beyond human experience. The love she craves in her idealized fantasies is immaculate and pure, 4 0 the noble emotion which transforms man into a decent human being. "It makes the miser generous and the lisper eloquent." 4 1 She rejects the actions of Helen of Troy, who deserted her husband to join her lover, arguing that if love motivated people to do what is dishonorable and infamous, it would be shameful to fall in love. 4 2 Love, then, as Asma—or, to be precise, as al-Bustani himself—sees it, is not a sensual relationship, but it is that indomitable force through which the short and often melancholy existence of man is redeemed. It is the path of selflessness and dedication; a participation in the life of the spirit and, therefore, in the existence of God, who is pure love. 4 3 Al-Bustani constantly emphasizes the spiritual beauty of love. He seems almost the knight errant reincarnated in the guise of a nineteenth-century Christian Arab. To him, true love between man and woman is based on spiritual not physical beauty. In conformity to his whole approach, he maintains that man should not allow his reason to be controlled by his passions. Unfortunately, passions play a great role in the relationships of his own Arab contemporaries. Thus, they are not in conformity with one of the noblest impulses of Ruh al-Asr—love.44

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This is the love that is prerequisite for marriage, without which it becomes a nightmare. While Asma likes and respects Badi, she really does not love him because he does not fulfill her expectations of idealized love. Asma, however, has an enlightened father who champions marriage based upon love. In this regard she is more fortunate than al-Bustani's other female protagonists. Their problem, for the most part, is a pull between the old and the new, between parental selection and the daughter's freedom of choice. In Fatina, for instance, the conflict between the heroine's free will and parental authority is acute. Her parents want her to marry Murad because of his wealth and social status. Fatina, however, is in love with Fuad, who is of noble character but less rich than Murad. She insists that hearts are not commodities available to the highest bidder. 45 Her parents do not share this attitude and think her unrealistic. Torn between her own idea of individual freedom and filial obedience, Fatina becomes confused and is unable at last to distinguish between the many facets and demands of reality. She even goes as far as denying that the world is real. 46 Finally, realizing that it is futile to oppose her parents' will, Fatina submits to fate. She is aware that marrying a man she does not love is tantamount to living death. Of course, the story does have a happy ending. Al-Bustani predictably adopts the last-minute device of reprieve and rescue through the uncovering of Murad's deceits and intrigues. Like the other villains in al-Bustani's stories, Murad stands for the forces of reaction and unreason. In depicting the intrigue designed by Murad to eliminate Fuad and marry Fatina, al-Bustani uses Italy as a setting and the "Mafia" as its executors. Of course, he had to be careful of the censor's ban, and this device enabled him neatly to expound certain points through foreign characters and foreign settings. For instance, a socialist bandit chieftain is the voice and conscience of al-Bustani himself, who seems to have been influenced by the socialist thought of the West. Murad's involvement with the chieftain comes about when Fatina's health deteriorates because of the conflict between will and authority over the question of her marriage. Italy is suggested as a place for rest and recuperation, and her father accompanies her there. To Fatina's delight Fuad is asked to come along. Her happiness, however, is marred when Murad decides to join the group. The company stays in a quiet, middle-sized town only a short distance from the main highway and not far from an Italian seaport. Murad arranges to have Fuad abducted and brought to the lair of the bandit chieftain, who rules over his followers with unchallenged authority, though he has come to power through the election of the members under him. 47 This democratic idea, awkward as it is, is necessary because it serves to expound al-Bustani's democratic and egalitarian principles. Angered by the insinuations of Murad, the bandit chieftain instructs him in

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"right thinking." While people consider taking money from the rich as robbery, he and his followers regard it as restitution of what is rightfully theirs. God has made money and property for the benefit and enjoyment of all people, he explains. It is wrong that only a few should have all the wealth and property at the expense of the happiness of the majority of the people. It is not only the rich who are criticized. The government and its officials are no different, for they extort money and exploit people in the same way. Therefore, the leader informs Murad, he and his followers decided to obtain what was rightfully theirs without harming anybody. They take only the money and possessions of the rich and the rulers, "which are also ours." To explain his principles regarding the distribution of wealth further, the chieftain argues that the wealth acquired by individuals through accidents of birth is unjust. " W h y should people starve," he asks, "because they are born to poor parents?" " W h y should," he asserts, "a man inherit a million from his father while the other has nothing to cover his body? Is this not an injustice and a corruption of divine justice? Therefore, you see us here abide by the rules of religion and justice. W e truly shun evil." 4 8 Finally, the leader startles Murad by accusing him of acting unjustly against his friend. For this he must pay a large sum of money before being released. 49 Having announced his terms to Murad, the leader then calls Fuad and attempts to convince him in turn, of the soundness and humaneness of his principles. When Fuad attempts to defend Murad, the leader rebukes him for being a simpleton who cannot understand that it is Murad who connived with him and his men to have him killed. 50 Wherever men are willing to be deceived, al-Bustani seems to be saying, there are always those who will deceive them and exploit them. Neither Murad nor Fuad accepts the leader's argument in defense of the principles which guide him and his band. Murad is so frightened that he says nothing, but the innocent Fuad is bolder. 51 If the band is defending a just cause, he points out, they should go out and preach their principles to the public rather than resort to illegal practices. The leader retorts that habit has so bound people and controlled their minds that nothing can change them. As for the few who could help, greed and self-interest have prevented any action on their part. It is therefore, imperative to resort to force and clandestine activity to take the excess money in society and distribute it to the poor. 52 Al-Bustani seems adamant in his belief that it is very hard to reform people—especially the rich and powerful. Although the plot against Fuad boomerangs and both men are soon released, Murad continues his intrigues to eliminate Fuad and take Fatina for himself. Eventually, however, his plots are unsuccessful. After Fatina and Fuad are married, Murad sinks more deeply into vice and finally dies—the wages of sin.53 L o v e and individual freedom at last triumph over irrational convention, parental authority, and evil ways!

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These highly romantic themes of free will versus parental authority and marriage based on love and nobility of character are more predominant in Samiya than in Fatina or Asma. Samiya also expresses a plea for religious freedom and an end to bigotry. It examines socialism and its implications as al-Bustani understood them. Primarily, however, it argues in defense of the rights of women and the dignity of the individual. Samiya's parents, of course, have no understanding of what constitutes the happiness or freedom of their daughter. They want her to marry Wasif for his wealth, while she refuses because riches are unimportant. She believes nothing is more important than decency and intelligence in the man she wants to marry. 54 Samiya reminds her parents that if they try to force her to marry someone against her will, she would prefer to stay single. They accuse her of being inexperienced, unrealistic, and unaware of the hardships of life. This argument reflects the attitude of nineteenthcentury Middle Easterners who, almost without exception, married for security. 55 Such an attitude still prevails in many Middle Eastern societies. To criticize such practices and champion human dignity and freedom, al-Bustani endows his young women protagonists with a strong will. Samiya is no exception. She is determined to assert freedom as a conscious and free individual. Such heroines exposed readers to the tyranny of ugly practices related to women. Also, they alerted them to the significance of the dignity and freedom of individuals. In this respect, al-Bustani was imitating his father, Butrus, known for his defense of women's liberation and education. 56 The son, however, is overzealous in championing freedom, particularly that of young women against patriarchal authority. In his time young women had no freedom of action. Essentially, al-Bustani's purpose was not to offer an accurate portrayal of the behavior of Syrian or Eastern characters and their societies. His intention was to show the impact of European manners and social doctrines upon mid-nineteenth-century Syria and the slowly changing societal patterns that resulted. Some of these changes were agonizingly slow when considering the more edifying and necessary changes he believed necessary. This is evident in the attitude of parents toward their daughters when they sought after Western freedom, clashing often with their authority. There is little detail about time and place in al-Bustani's works. Even the names of the characters, although Arabic, are not typical of any particular country. Whether al-Bustani based his characters on real Syrian models is not certain. However, by presenting them in universal terms, he could criticize those traditions, practices, and beliefs he considered harmful to individual freedom and social progress. Nowhere does al-Bustani show parents pressuring their sons to marry a particular young woman. This may seem unimportant on the surface, but it reflects the dominant position of the male in Middle Eastern societies.

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The social and moral values which applied to women did not necessarily apply to men. Samiya's brother Zahir, for example, is a gambler, conniver, and playboy, but al-Bustani seems to take his faults for granted. Al-Bustani intends that the male in Middle Eastern societies enjoys more rights and freedom than the female. This was especially apparent in social matters such as the right to choose a wife. Al-Bustani's major interest was in improving the status of the woman. Nevertheless, some of his Eastern readers may have found Samiya an appealing statement of the male ethos. Samiya also champions religious freedom and denounces bigotry. Through the vivacious character Sida, who appears to us too mature for her age, al-Bustani affirms religious tolerance and calls for respect of all faiths. Sida expresses al-Bustani's belief that religion should never be a source of hatred and discord among citizens of the same country. 57 That position, in turn, reflects the religious attitude of the family in which he was raised. His father, born a Maronite Catholic, was a convert to Protestantism. In spite of his advocacy of tolerance, however, al-Bustani does not accept those who profess unbelief. He believes that religion is necessary for civilization and that man cannot with impunity ignore it. 58 Moreover, he regards faith as a source of consolation and hope, motivating man to constantly improve his life. 59 The most interesting and unusual aspect of Samiya is that in it alBustani treats socialism (al-Ishtirakiyya) for the first time. Remember that he was writing in the 1880s, when socialism was in its infancy in Europe and hardly known in the Middle East. Treating socialism is a testimony of the intellectual acumen of this young Lebanese writer. The opening chapter establishes that young Faiz is deeply in love with Samiya although she does not return this love. He is a radical socialist determined to use any means to eliminate his rivals, Wasif and Fuad, for the love of Samiya. 60 His extremist methods to achieve this end include force, extortion, and violence. If al-Bustani does not sympathize with him, it is because he has a deep distaste for such an imprudent and impious revolutionary. Al-Bustani equates socialism with nihilism, for which he coined the term, Ibahiyya, a term which is in use to this day in the Arab world. 61 To promote his aims Faiz establishes a clandestine society whose members swear to uphold the principles of socialism and obey their leader unto death. Faiz's ideology can be epitomized in two words—universal equality. According to his simplistic principles, all people are members of the human family and, therefore, no one of them should possess more than the others. It is not an abstract goal that Faiz advocates, however, but a pragmatic economic, political, and social equality. He and his followers, fifteen in number, meet once a week in his home, and, after some entertainment, he speaks to them about his beliefs. He contrasts their righteousness with the corruption of those who exploit the people:

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Brethren, you are the pillars of equality, the germ of true principles, the pride of the age and the foundation of true success in a country in which the darkness of ignorance prevails. Here tyrants have control and the oppressors have plundered property and money and left the people and their children in misery and want. They have increased their wealth at the expense of the poor and helpless through cruel measures. In the world of equality there is no dominion, privilege, bravery, wealth or noble birth. Dominion is public and skill, knowledge, bravery and wealth are common. No man has the right to claim the possession of parts of them to the exclusion of others. How can we recognize the rich man's ownership and wealth if he got them through sheer luck or coincidence? Why should a man be privileged because of his birth because he was born among people whose ignorance made them incapable of understanding that others were no more noble than themselves? All privileged things are acquired through coincidence, luck or as a gift of nature. 62

This espousal of egalitarianism is very extreme. Faiz even professes a belief in complete and uniform psychological and physiological equality. He places equality in wealth, social status, and opportunity on the same plane with equality in mental and natural ability. Fame and fortune are gained through sheer coincidence or circumstances. In Faiz's view, nature alone is the source of all things and to nature they shall return. Therefore, nature alone is worthy of the praise and gratitude of men whose minds have been freed from ignorance and bias. They are the kind of men who devote their energies to freeing society from unjust practices. These practices were perpetuated by men for their selfinterest and ambition. The result has been that the few came to possess what belongs to the many and in the process they have dominated the many. 63 Faiz, or perhaps al-Bustani himself, seems to embrace an anachronistic and confused view of the role of nature. No doubt the meaning he attached to it was learned from his reading of Enlightenment literature. His understanding of the term, however, was more naive and less rational. Nature is the "source of all things"; nature alone is worthy of "praise and worship"; all cleverness is a "gift of nature"; all distinctions are "due to nature." If all men are equal through nature and by nature, how then is it possible to say in the next breath that it is nature that makes us unequal? Further, that men are not better through their own merits but because nature has endowed them with different abilities? These are examples of the many instances in which al-Bustani's interest in the doctrines, ideas, and thoughts of the West outstripped his ability to grasp them. (The insular cocoon of geography, thought, and centuries was a heavy burden.) Faiz and his followers maintain that much evil in society springs from false teachers and leaders who have corrupted its natural order. They have controlled the peoples' minds by their false doctrines, usurped their rights,

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extorted their wealth and the sources of their livelihood. Since these usurpers will never give up their possessions and privileges of their own will, force is the only means left to overpower them and achieve equality. 64 It is left up to the socialists, the "mighty men," as Faiz calls them, to destroy the present world order, including the unresponsive and corrupt government, and to build a foundation for a new order. 65 There is a close parallel between the ideas that al-Bustani has, that his so-called socialist spokesman espouses, and those of the philosophers. Socialist doctrine is not based upon "natural law," but it is an ideology founded upon a particular (post-Hegelian) view of history and society. Faiz maintains that most of the people are not satisfied with the present order or with their lot. Because of fear, selfish interest, laziness, or ignorance, they do not join the socialists who endeavor to improve their life. He sees ignorance as the greatest impediment to progress. The state of ignorance has been perpetuated by those in power. By money, force, and religion they want to control the masses and prevent them from obtaining their rights. Furthermore, Faiz and his socialist group, true to the extremist revolutionary principles that they espouse, are atheists. They do not believe in God, resurrection, eternal punishment, and reward. Their secular eschatology is based on a vague egalitarianism reminiscent of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They reject the teachings of prophets and consider religion as humbug. Commensurate with their atheism, they are materialists, arguing, with a unique and mystical Eastern twist, that they are an inseparable part of all. Injecting his own ideas into the texture of the narrative, al-Bustani condemns socialism and the methods adopted by Faiz to achieve universal equality. He describes Faiz and his followers as extremists, nihilists, and anarchists. He even condones killing them or putting them in prison in order to rid society of their evil. In more than one place he strives to refute socialism and its principles as manifested by the extremism of Faiz and his group. Men like Faiz agitate the common people to do things contrary to order, things which involve grave dangers and are contrary to the moderation called for by conformity to Ruh al-Asr. Al-Bustani has an inherent, deep-seated distrust of the masses. He believes they are a dangerous force, since they are easily led because of the instinctive greed and an inclination toward hatred and jealousy of those who surpass them in any way. It is education, not revolution, that will bring about true reform. Al-Bustani believes that equality under the law is possible, but absolute equality—which Faiz calls for—is not and can never be a practical possibility. While affirming that equality in property and money is not possible, he does believe that the state should guarantee work for the people and grant social benefits. These measures should be achieved through legislation, education, and enlightenment, not revolution.

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Al-Bustani believes that equality in rights is desirable but those who believe in equality in mental and physical powers are mere dreamers. Equality is, furthermore, not possible in the possession of wealth. He says that the inequality in livelihood is the one which requires reform. This reform should be achieved through laws and statutes, not violence, plunder, and killing. Al-Bustani seems to advocate a moderate kind of socialism. He says that legislation should be enacted to enable every person to have a sufficient living by doing work commensurate with his ability. Furthermore, legislation should guarantee adequate compensation for the poor, the disabled, and the sick. 66 Faiz appears as a confused young man with an erratic passion for his convictions. At times he seems a staunch socialist, a man of conviction; at other times, mean and petty. Moreover, he tries to use socialism as a device to justify the elimination of his rivals in love. 67 Though he succeeds in having his chief rival, Fuad, killed by his followers, he loses Samiya in the end and spends many years in jail. 68 His behavior and his fate demonstrate that it is not only the deprivation of man's property or livelihood but also less material and more enduring elements, such as unrequited love, that can drive man to the extreme of sacrificing his convictions. At one point, Faiz even assures Samiya that he has forsworn his socialistic convictions and that she alone is the idol of his worship. 69 Wasif is no less a compromiser. At the outset he is portrayed as an advocate of socialism, praising equality and believing in the communal ownership of property. When he becomes rich, his attachment to socialism weakens and his lust for revenge against his rivals for Samiya's love becomes intensified. Believing that socialism means that everything should be shared in common is different from believing that he would or could tolerate sharing his love for Samiya with other men. 70 Although al-Bustani's sources on socialism are not known, it is clear from his editorials in al-Jinan that he must have been following its development in Europe. One of them mentions the Second Communist International and emphasizes the point that more moderate reformers—with whom he could more comfortably identify—were trying to ensure social and economic justice through legislation rather than extreme revolutionary measures. Furthermore, al-Bustani wishes the Europeans would put a stop to the extremists, not the socialists. The reason is that the extremists' violent expectation of the millennium is detrimental to the moderate social reformers who call on countries of the world to enact laws to insure more social and economic justice. 71 Al-Bustani detested the extreme and violent revolutionary doctrines preached by certain followers of socialist ideology. He was not against socialism per se but against the wrenching up and destroying—in the name of abstract principles—the concrete traditions, values, and ways of life. He denounced the peripheral extremes associated with socialism, nihilism,

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and anarchism. As he believed his own country out of touch with the edifying main winds of the Western Zeitgeist, so he believed that these offshoots were cancerous growths disrupting and imperiling the momentum of moderation that characterized Ruh al-Asr. With this in mind, al-Bustani tried to show the spread and the good and bad effects of socialism on the political, social, and economic planes in European countries in the 1880s.72 Samiya was a pioneer work in Arabic literature in treating mature social and political questions. It attempted to portray the virtues and vices of socialism both as a Western doctrine and as a possible palliative to the social and economic ills of Arab society. While al-Bustani himself cannot be labeled a socialist, it is, nevertheless, through his socialist protagonist that he vehemently attacked the unjust, unegalitarian, and unintelligent ways of much of his society. How was he able to do this, considering censorship exercised by the Ottoman authorities? Perhaps he was prudent to show in the preface that the characters, events, and loci he used were sheer fiction. They were universal and not particular. This may have satisfied the Ottoman censor. 73 Most of al-Bustani's works, particularly Samiya, offer an important warning to his society. If it does not change its ways and conform to the liberal and moderating winds of the scientific and democratic Zeitgeist blowing from the West; if it does not implement an open social system by which refreshing and revitalizing ideas can be let in and aired, then it is asking for trouble from extremists like Faiz. Al-Bustani agrees with egalitarian principles but is ardently against the extremists' violence. His approach is moralistic, idealistic, and didactic. Al-Bustani may also be regarded as one of the pioneer writers of fiction to derive his themes from Arab history. Prominent among his stories is Zenobia, which treats the affairs of the queen of Palmyra. The little kingdom of Palmyra was conquered by the Roman Emperor Aurelian in 273 A.D. Zenobia and her daughter Julia were captured and taken to Rome. The story concentrates on the conquest of Egypt, the love affair between Julia and a Roman prince, and Zenobia's ill-fated war with the Romans. The author's purpose was to inculcate moral virtues rather than to reconstruct a faithful picture of the Palmyran society. He admits that he was concerned with reconstructing the past by providing his reader with a few historical facts. He also admits that he refrained from incorporating depressing events of Zenobia's suppression by the Romans in order not to sadden his readers. 74 In Zenobia, al-Bustani interrupts the narrative to criticize indirectly the customs and morals and the actions of Ottoman governors and civil servants. He exaggerates the traits of Zenobia, whom he presents as a model of beauty, courage, and political sagacity. Zenobia's two sons and her other daughter, Livia, whom he mentions at the beginning of the story, play hardly any role as the narrative progresses. The characters are pale

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and flat and never develop as events progress. Generally, they are al-Bustani's mouthpieces, voicing his own principles and values. The only part of the story which stimulates the reader's anxiety over the outcome is the love of the Roman prince Pisa for Julia, though they belong to two hostile camps. 75 His second historical story, Budur, is set about 750 A.D., during the period when the Umayyads lost their power to the Abbasids. Budur (Full Moons) is the daughter of an Umayyad prince who, among other princes, was killed by the Abbasid Caliph Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah (d. 754). The story centers on Budur's love for her cousin, an Umayyad prince, Abd alRahman ibn Muawiyah ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, who later established an Umayyad dynasty in Spain. Budur hurries to explain to him the Abbasid conspiracy against the Umayyad house and urges him to leave immediately because his life is in danger. Appreciating her advice, Abd alRahman and three companions flee to Egypt. Meanwhile, Budur, her mother, and the rest of the Umayyad women are arrested by the soldiers of the Abbasid caliph. News of Budur's beauty and intelligence reaches the caliph, who becomes anxious to meet her. When he does meet her (in a palace which he has made ready for her and her mother in al-Sham [Damascus]), he becomes infatuated and asks her to marry him. She does not give him a definite answer, but leaves him dangling. He even urges Budur's mother to convince her daughter to accept him as her husband, but meets with no success. Annoyed by the caliph's insistence, Budur manages to escape with the assistance of her maid and eunuch. When the news of Budur's escape reaches the caliph, he becomes infuriated and orders Budur's mother thrown in jail. Budur hides in a village, disguised as the prince Sadiq. She captures the hearts of the good villagers by her wonderful manners and the gifts she lavishes upon them. Her identity is soon discovered, however, and she is arrested and returned to the jail. Meanwhile, Abd al-Rahman seeks refuge with some Bedouin tribes and meets Sa'd, Budur's messenger, who hands him a letter from his beloved. To escape arrest by his Abbasid pursuers, Abd al-Rahman travels to Egypt, where he spends two years in wandering. Then he goes to North Africa and becomes the guest of a tribal chief Wanus, nicknamed Abu Qurra. The soldiers of Ibn Habib, the governor of Barqa, chase him, and finally he finds a refuge with his cousins in Zanata in North Africa. The Zanatis warmly receive him and after a short time he becomes a chief among them. When internal strife arises among the Arab tribes who settled in Spain in the time of the Arab governor Yusuf ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, an influential Arab, Wuhayb ibn Dahir, suggests to prominent Arabs that they establish a government in Spain and invite Abd al-Rahman to become their ruler. The suggestion is accepted and Abd al-Rahman arrives in Spain, defeats al-Fihri, and establishes an Umayyad state in Spain. Meanwhile, Budur is able to escape from prison. Learning that Abd alRahman is in North Africa, she decides to find him. She rents a ship, but

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she and her companions are attacked by pirates, who capture the ship. The pirates' leader sends Budur and her mother to his city beyond the Pyrenees and uses Budur's attendants to work on his farms. The pirates' leader falls in love with Budur and hires a tutor to teach her Spanish and the tenets of Christianity. Budur coaxes the pirates' leader to believe that she is in love with him, but in reality she is trying to find the right moment to escape. Finally, she manages to flee through the efforts of her Spanish tutor, who in turn falls madly in love with her. Budur escapes with her mother, her tutor, and her attendants. She barely misses falling into the hands of the pirates' leader, who has sent a company of men to chase her. Of all the people who were with Budur, only her mother, her eunuch, and Sa'd and herself are safe. Budur arrives in North Africa and learns at Zanata that Abd al-Rahman is in Spain about to be crowned king. After suffering many incredible vicissitudes and falling once again in the hands of pirates, Budur and those with her reach Spain, and she is crowned as queen at the same time. 76 The story abounds with adventures, battles, and shipwrecks, interspersed with moral exhortations which indicate the author's didactic purpose. The author digresses to advocate the education of women, to praise the benefit of learning, and to inveigh, though cautiously, against the Ottoman rulers and their corrupt administration. In some places he refers to the present to discuss affairs in his own time. Although he is careful in presenting the historical facts connected with the story, he makes the obvious mistake of calling Abd al-Rahman and Budur "king" and "queen," while in reality, Abd al-Rahman was an emir (prince) and never even assumed the title of caliph. Al-Bustani's al-Huyamfi Futuh al-Sham (Passionate Love During the Conquest of Syria) derives its theme from the Arab conquest of Syria in 632-636 A.D. The story centers on two romances, one at the Byzantine camp, the other in the Arab camp. Julian, a Byzantine commander, is in love with Augusta, daughter of a Byzantine official. When they are engaged and ready to marry, Julian is called to fight against the Arabs. Augusta accompanies her fiance to the battlefront and tries to spy on the Muslims' camp, pretending to be mute. She is arrested by the Muslims but manages to escape with Julian's help. Then she loses track of Julian and returns to Damascus, brokenhearted and despairing of finding him. Apparently, Julian has been wounded and is under treatment. Augusta goes to Antioch to enter a convent after she has given up hope of seeing Julian again. Julian finds out that she is in Antioch, repairs to that city, and convinces her to marry him. The two lovers then go to Constantinople and are united in marriage. Meanwhile, in the Arab camp, another love affair is going on. Salim, the son of a Yemenite prince and an Arab hero, is in love with Salma, daughter of another Yemenite prince. Salma joins her prince in the battlefield and is captured and sent to Aleppo to be thrown into prison. When

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the Arabs finally conquer Syria, Salma is released and marries her prince. 77 Nothing is new in this story, which like others by the same author abounds with similar and often repeated themes. Commenting on this story, Muhammad Yusuf Najm states that al-Bustani indirectly and shrewdly underplayed the Arab conquest of Syria. Najm complains that alBustani attributes the victory of the Arabs to the weakness and division of the Byzantines, not to the religious valor and fervor of the believers of Islam. Thus, he portrays the love, sincerity, and will to sacrifice of Salim and Salma in a way that makes us admire them less than we do Julian and Augusta. 78 Historical evidence, however, is on the side of al-Bustani. The Byzantine persecution of their Syrian coreligionists, who believe in the "one incarnate nature of the God-Logos," who are erroneously called "Monophysites," was a decisive factor in opening the gates of Syria to the invading Arabs and their final victory. The Syrian Christians also believe that the Arab conquest of Syria was a divine punishment inflicted upon the Byzantines by God for persecuting the Syrians. 79 Hadhir wa Layla, the last historical story by the author, derives its theme from the notorious war between the two tribes of Bakr and Taghlib known as Harb al-Basus. The story centers on the love between Hadhir, a Taghlibite, and Layla, daughter of a notable Bakrite named Ramih. During the war Layla saves the wounded Hadhir from a Bakrite woman who is about to kill him, then cleans and dresses his wounds. Although he is an enemy, she loves him at first sight. Naturally, she is afraid of her father, who, according to Arab custom, will prevent her marriage if he knows that she is in love with Hadhir. In spite of the enmity between the two tribes, Layla finally obtains her father's approval to marry Hadhir, and love triumphs. 80 Al-Bustani believed that the function of fiction is to reform and regenerate society by portraying the operative efficacy of correct principles in terms of characters and situations. 81 A s a corollary, bad qualities are to be exposed through the actions of bad characters. In al-Huyamfi Jinan alSham, he states: It is imperative that we should expose our faults and those of others through the writing of novels and reveal the good and bad through the portrayal of the characters whose actions we are presently narrating. 82

He further defends "moralistic" novels as a means to implant proper principles in the readers and show them, in a perceptive way, the rewards of right thinking. He believes that the critical novels which he calls al-Riwayat al-Tankitiyya (Raillery Romances), that is, works which expose bad qualities through fictitious characters, are "the most effective means to reform." 83 Because he is a moralist, his characters always receive their punishment or reward according to their deeds. Hardly one of them escapes justice,

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whether human or divine. Behind this there is a moral lesson pointing to a fault of character of a given society or that of the novel's main family which inevitably causes misfortune and misery. For all this, al-Bustani's novels and some of his short stories are saturated with a great deal of sentimentalism and sensibility. The characters, both male and female, often fall apart under their misfortune and break into tears. They faint, grieve, and constantly complain. They are extremely serious and seldom laugh or express joyfulness. To them love or falling in love is a matter which requires thorough study and time, an attitude prevalent in Middle Eastern societies to this day. They are more than mere devices used by the author to further his own idea in relation to decency and virtue or his criticism and condemnation of immorality and vice. Al-Bustani's work is episodic and lacks warmth. It is, however, free from the time-honored saj (rhymed prose). 84 The narrative tone is similar to that of the Arabian Nights', the author uses many phrases and situations akin to those found in the Nights. Although he strives to create a modern genre, he is unable to break from the sterile tradition of Arabic fiction. Al-Bustani never uses dialogue in his fiction, despite the surprising fact that he had written several plays. His characters, like those of the Nights, are presented at the outset as fully developed personalities whose attitudes and traits are rigidly set and forever formulated. They are exemplars of either virtue, endurance, beauty, and nobility, or wickedness and villainy. While the historical novels and stories are packed with facts, the reader cannot reexperience their feelings and aspirations. Thus, the characters remain mere stock figures, superimposed upon historical narrative. Al-Bustani's novels abound with improbabilities and implausible situations. In many of them the central theme and moral exhortations are freely interspersed. The author frequently digresses to unrelated subjects, halting the action while he dwells on long discussions of social topics. This projection of the writer into the texture of the narrative may be artistically indefensible. It may have been the only method al-Bustani could use to convey his opinions to his readers. Furthermore, the monotonous narrative and the repetition of identical events and situations renders the reading of al-Bustani's novels tedious and sometimes boring. Nevertheless, al-Bustani's contribution to modern Arabic fiction cannot be ignored. He was the first Arab writer who attempted to write a novel in the modern sense and to incorporate in his art a semblance of originality. He is a unique figure who stands in the middle of the road between the traditional Arab tale and the modern novel. Furthermore, al-Bustani is the first Arab writer to show more than a passing interest in, and knowledge of, things happening in the world beyond the Mediterranean, most especially in Europe. He incorporated for the first time not only Western themes and a Western style but real events and lively characters that depict a real world beyond his own country.

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Thus, while his main themes and didactic endeavors are germane to the Arab world, he does not hesitate to use a European setting to speak of European ideology—socialism—or to convey to his readers that the West can and must be learned from. It is the West which avoids encasing in a sanctimonious aura many traditions, customs, and practices which their more rational and scientific approach would never tolerate. Most of all, al-Bustani was the first Arab in the nineteenth century to have a true understanding of the instructional possibilities of the novel. A strong point in his favor is that he did not feel compelled to strive for an illusion of complete authenticity, contrary to the demands of his contemporaries. He emphasizes the fictitiousness of some of his novels to show that he was using fiction as a vehicle for a worthy purpose. Despite the many artistic and technical handicaps which prevented him from creating the first "pure and artistic novel," al-Bustani can be rightfully considered th& father of the modern Arabic novel.

8 From Salim al-Bustani to Jurji Zaydan: Francis Marrash and Numan Abduh al-Qasatili Between 1870, which marks the birth of modern Arabic prose fiction through the writings of Salim al-Bustani, and 1891, when another celebrated Syrian writer, Jurji Zaydan (d. 1914), published his historical novel al-Mamluk al-Sharid, no other Arab writer appeared who could measure up to the status of these two. Al-Bustani was first to lay the foundation of the Arab novel in 1870 and the Arab historical novel in 1871. But it was Zaydan who later popularized Arab history in fictional form. Zaydan's historical novels are broader in scope than al-Bustani's. While the three historical novels of al-Bustani, Zenobia, Budur, and alHuyam fi Futuh al-Sham, and the short story Hadhir wa Lay la treat particular events in Arab history, the twenty-two historical novels of Zaydan cover much of the spectrum of Arab and Islamic history from the sixth century to the first decade of the present century. Between these two pioneers of Arabic fiction stand several other writers who were not as gifted, prolific, or versatile. One of them, Francis Marrash of Aleppo, died prematurely in 1873, at the age of 37. His literary background is similar to that of al-Bustani. He was born in Aleppo in 1836 to a family whose literary achievements were no less prominent than those of the Yazijis or the Bustanis. 1 His brother Abd Allah (d. 1899) and his sister Mary ana (d. 1919) were both prominent in the writing of Arabic prose and poetry. 2 Marrash at first studied the Arabic language and its literature privately. He also received private tutoring in medicine for four years under an English physician and practiced medicine for a year. 3 Then, in 1866, he went to Paris to continue his formal education. Poor health and failing sight forced him to suspend his studies, however, and in less than a year he returned to his native Aleppo totally blind. This loss was compensated for by a keen mind and gifted pen, as is shown by his multiple writings, covering diverse literary and scientific subjects. He also wrote poetry and an account of his journey to Paris. Furthermore, he contributed many articles 185

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on various subjects to popular periodicals, including, most important, alBustani's al-Jinan. Marrash's first significant work of fiction was Ghabat al-Haqq (The Forest of Truth), which he began in 1862 and published three years later in Aleppo. 4 Chronologically, Ghabat al-Haqq precedes the writings of alBustani and, properly speaking, it is not a novel but an allegory. It does contain certain novelistic elements, and, of course, it is fiction. The other work by Marrash is Durr al-Sadaffi Gharaib al-Sudaf(Pearls of Seashells in Relating Strange Coincidences), published in Beirut in 1872. It is a social romance similar to al-Bustani's work in this genre. Ghabat al-Haqq reflects Marrash's belief in the liberating principles of equality and freedom. It portrays the conflict between man's freedom and the many restrictions placed upon it by an arbitrary social system. This conflict, as the author sees it, does not involve abstract principles but is concrete, affecting man's daily existence and the institutions of his society. The basic concept echoes Rousseau's idea that man is born free but everywhere is in chains. From the cradle to the grave man is subject to an infinite variety of repressions. This state of bondage is, however, of man's own making. In Marrash's mind, it is an insult to God, who intended man to be free. Ghabat al-Haqq presents the Utopian world of the author. There are three kingdoms: the kingdom of freedom, the kingdom of bondage, and the kingdom of spiritual freedom. The first, an ideal state as the author sees it, is the "true" kingdom of civilization, where man has attained the highest human goal—happiness. The king and queen of this kingdom symbolize freedom and wisdom, its army is called the army of civilization, and its chief minister is the minister of love and peace. 5 This ideal state is in constant war with the state of bondage, which is based on despotism and denies individual freedom. Such warfare is inevitable because the two states stand for antithetical and irreconcilable concepts: freedom of the individual and force. In the final showdown between these two states, the king and army of bondage are defeated and he and seven of his commanders are taken captives to the state of freedom to be tried. The description of the commanders of the army of the kingdom of bondage reveals their true nature. They exemplify ignorance, arrogance, envy, miserliness, malevolence, calumny, falsehood, and treachery. In contrast, the commanders of the army of the kingdom of freedom stand for knowledge, humbleness, contentedness, generosity, truthfulness, and tolerance. 6 The leaders of the state of bondage are tried and found guilty of causing all of the trouble in the world, most of all disturbing the peace of civil society. It is resolved that they should be placed under the charge of the State of Civilization to be taught and trained in the noble ideals of life. If they refuse to learn, banishment would be their fate. Civilization and barbarism cannot live side by side.

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Of course, this solution to the ills of the state of barbarism is idealistic and impractical, but it reflects Marrash's social philosophy. His primary belief was that men can achieve the highest degree of civilization through education. With knowledge, man becomes better and more civilized, and can gain freedom, found only within the limits of law and civic responsibility. Marrash was amazingly restrained in his ideas about the conditions of freedom. The liberty he speaks of is not the Utopian vision of many thinkers of the modern world. It implies meaningful responsibility, restraint, and acceptance of the duties, laws, and structure of society. Marrash seems to have recognized that the great danger is advocating the immediate and unqualified reification of an abstract and liberal terminology. The freedom of the individual is important to Marrash. He believes that society as a civilized entity cannot exist without the fecundation of this freedom. As an abstract ideal, however, freedom, if abused, can become bondage. Marrash also believes that freedom is an historical concept. It can survive only in those societies which have matured historically through the development of laws, institutions, and civic consciousness. In the ambience of true civilization, freedom is a moral imperative and cannot be denied. 7 Marrash also develops a philosophy of history which is interesting for a time and place when speculative excursions into the genesis and development of society were entirely absent. His ethos was not only for the most part ahistorical, but saw a world entirely content to believe in the present without any relation to the past, except as idealized in literature. Marrash maintains that the family is the origin of society. It develops into a tribe, which multiplies into a society when a strong chief assumes power by force. The society builds a city, where the strongest chief becomes a ruler. Meanwhile, other families and tribes go through the same process. The city states become engaged in wars, and one of them expands its realm at the expense of others. In this manner, empires are created. 8 With the aid of laws and organization, civilizations are primordially created. Marrash does not engage in an overtly idealistic approach to history. He has a sane grasp of the realities of war and dominance. These two factors have played a great role in the evolution of society and civilization. Marrash does not condone the dolorous spectacle of the bloodletting and cruelty of the past. He recognizes it as a primordial factor necessary to the growth of society and civilization. 9 This philosophy of history contains the kernel of Marrash's literary productivity. Most of his works are mildly polemical statements about the need to advance knowledge, whether in the scientific, legalistic, or socialeconomic realm. The more civilized a society, the more advanced, humane, and intelligent its treatment of its problems is. Historically, society advances from the less perfect to the perfect. One may assume that this

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progress would be speeded up by the inculcation of ideas and educated consciousness into a stagnant society, such as, of course, Marrash's own. The third kingdom in Ghabat al-Haqq is the spiritual kingdom, or the church. Marrash believes that the existence of the secular realm is imperative. So is that of the spiritual state. He denounces the allegations that the church has been propagating untruths to deceive and control gullible people. He maintains that the church has always taught those principles which bring fulfillment and happiness. The church is the guardian of morality and brings its followers together in universal fellowship. The existence of the church is, therefore, necessary for the existence of the state; they complement each other. Marrash believes that the destruction of the church means the end of the State of Civilization. Furthermore, his strong Christian belief manifests itself in his positive attitude that the destruction of the church is impossible because the Lord has promised that "the gates of hell cannot prevail against her." 10 The basis of Ghabat al-Haqq is Marrash's deep belief in God as source and author of freedom. His Shahadat al-Tabiafi Wujud Allah wa alShari'a (Nature's Proof of the Existence of God and the Divine Law) is a strong testimony to this conviction. 11 Such allegories which portray the paradox of human existence, the conflict between good and evil, and the primacy of freedom, were not completely unknown in ancient Arabic writings. 12 Ghabat al-Haqq has no hero, no visible character, not even a portrayal of particular surroundings and personages. Its characters are lifeless materializations of virtues and vices. They do show, however, the author's dream of a better and more progressive society where people live in harmony without discrimination or prejudice. Such enlightenment exemplifies the triumph of man's most noble proclivities and accomplishments. Marrash realized, however, that his Utopian world was completely inapposite to the political, social, and cultural conditions in his own country. There was no freedom of any kind under the Ottomans, no viable political institution, and no cultural progress. He saw nothing but desolation beyond the beautiful dreamlike society in the Forest of Truth. In desperation he asks himself how the wilderness of man could bloom again after an infertility of a thousand years. The answer is disappointing; his majesty the Sultan Abd al-Aziz has turned his attention toward Syria, and there is "no doubt that reform and prosperity will soon come to her." 13 It may seem surprising that Marrash, who glorifies freedom and attacks every form of human bondage, should praise the very symbol of despotism, the Ottoman Sultan. It is even more surprising how he could expect prosperity for his country through the effort of a tyrant. He may have feared the chastisement of the Ottoman censor and Ottoman authorities and tried to escape both by undue praise of the Sultan. What seems

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more plausible, however, is that Marrash was an idealist removed from the reality of an external world by blindness and ill health. This is shown in the distinctions he had already made between the pathway to truth and the entangling disappointment of false prophets and premature hopes. Marrash's style is lucid, at times even elegant, and less florid than the embellished prose of most of his contemporaries. Most important, he knew how to use effective dialogue, and in this sense, he surpasses Salim alBustani, who scarcely used it. The dialogue between two slave brothers, Yaqut and Murjan, who met by chance on the Galata bridge in Istanbul is an example: "Greetings, friend." "Greetings to you." After looking at him carefully I felt something like an electric shock running through my body. I asked him: "What is your name?" "Murjan." I felt more compassion for him. "How did you leave the country?" "Kidnapped." "Were you kidnapped alone or with others?" "A band of Egyptians kidnapped my brother with me after they killed our mother, who tried to protect us." I had no doubt that this slave was my brother. My eyes were filled with tears of joy and my heart throbbed with compassion but I attempted to control my emotions to obtain more information from him and further asked: "What is your brother's name?" "Yaqut, and he is older than me." I held his hand and told him "Follow me to see your brother." I took him to my residence and told him, "I am your brother Yaqut." We embraced and wept. I told him my story and asked him to tell me his. 1 4

Marrash's ironic title Ghabat al-Haqq (The Forest of Truth) reflects his philosophy of history. He understands that the pathway to truth, which is the prerogative of a historically mature society, is covered over with the brambles and tangles of inexperience, superstition, dominance, warfare, and cruelty. Once man has pushed through the shadows and tangled undergrowth of the forest of human passion and ignorance, truth can be found by those who truly seek. Freedom, however, is difficult to find and understand. The reason is that freedom becomes increasingly fructified in a society through history as that society brings to bear productive laws on enlarged civil consciousness and enlightened institutions. These imply a society capable of restraint, responsibility, and responsiveness. Marrash's other work of fiction, Durr al-Sadaffi Gharaib al-Sudaf, published in Beirut in 1872, 15 is inferior to Ghabat al-Haqq in the expression of

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ideas and intensity of ideals and human compassion. Nor does it treat a complex human issue. As the title suggests, it narrates a series of events brought about by strange coincidences, one of the oldest of all literary devices. The narrator, depressed by the saddening news of the defeat of France—whose culture he knew and admired—by the Germans, seeks solace in a deserted place outside the city. Here he meets an old friend who tells him not only his personal love story, but also another story told him by a friend. In substance, then, Durr al-Sadaf contains two unrelated stories told by a friend to the narrator who in turn transmits them as told to him. There is nothing about the characters or the theme to excite the imagination. In every aspect it is inferior to the work of Salim al-Bustani, and one is tempted to conclude that Marrash, who was a contributor to alJinan had, in essence, followed closely in this romance in the footsteps of al-Bustani. Durr al-Sadaf is effusively moralistic. It exhorts the reader to learn the noble traits of perseverance, fortitude, and pursuit of knowledge. Further, the reader should not judge people by their appearance. The author reiterates many of his ideas concerning human compassion, respect, and love of mankind. Measured by the standards of learning in his time, Marrash was a highly educated man. He saw the evils of his society and attacked them where they were worst. A romance was perhaps the most effective and least abrasive of all devices to express his ideas to his countrymen without provoking the wrath of backward civil authorities. Yet, his technique conforms with the familiar techniques of Arab fiction, which, still in its infancy, leaned heavily on models of antiquity. It fell short of the much more advanced handling of characters, plot, and locale in Western literature. Marrash's characters are drawn from the middle class, but they are singularly without color and life. Diligent, industrious, and sober, they show no signs of being as vicious and intriguing as some of al-Bustani's characters. However, Marrash does cast a shadow of suspicion on the behavior of Suda—a main character in Durr al-Sadaf—toward her private tutor. This hardly denigrates a decent young woman; the novelty in her behavior is her ability to love two persons simultaneously. Otherwise, there is nothing exciting about her. Like the rest of the characters, she serves as a mouthpiece voicing the author's criticism of different social behaviors of his time. Like most of al-Bustani's romances, the outcome of Durr al-Sadaf is the sudden and unexpected meeting of the lovers and their ultimate happy union in marriage. Yet other factors in part compensate for the shortcomings of this romance. Marrash's protests against stagnant traditions and practices may appear commonplace today but were in his own time most daring. As with al-Bustani, it required tremendous courage to voice criticism

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of customs and authority at a time when it could cause loss of career, individual freedom, and, sometimes, one's own life. Less known than either al-Bustani or Francis Marrash is Numan Abduh al-Qasatili of Damascus. Between 1880 and 1882 he contributed three romances to al-Bustani's periodical al-Jinan, but then he seems to have sunk into complete oblivion until his death in 1920. The circumstances that caused this silence remain unknown. His small fictional output reveals a remarkable writing talent at an early age, despite al-Qasatili's apology that he was not qualified to write fiction. 16 Born in Damascus in 1854, al-Qasatili was six years old when Syria suffered the notorious Druzes' massacre of the Christians in 1860. He relates that he was saved from death by hiding in an old oven. Soon after 1860 his family left Damascus for Beirut to seek freedom and fortune in a more peaceful place. 17 Dividing his time between Beirut and Damascus, where he moved in educated circles, al-Qasatili showed his talent early. He was hardly twenty-two years old when he wrote the history of Damascus and an unpublished work entitled Mir'at Suriyya wa Falastin (The Mirror of Syria and Palestine). Later, he visited Sinai and Egypt and was greatly attracted to the primitive life of the Bedouins. His association with the Bedouins left a visible stamp on his writing of fiction. 18 Al-Qasatili was twenty-six when he submitted his first romance, alFatat al-Amina wa Ummuha (The Faithful Young Woman and her Mother), to be serialized in al-Jinan in 1880.19 Amina, the heroine, is the embodiment of faithfulness in its purest form. She decides to preserve her love for the hero, Thabit, against the rest of her family. Amina, however, is the victim of an impudent, selfish, and cruel mother who does not hesitate to insult her daughter in public or private. Amina falls ill but recovers when Thabit pays her a visit and decides to marry her, though he lacks sufficient material means to support her. To prevent this, Amina's family has her thrown into a dark prison, chained, and subjected to harsh physical punishment and humiliation. When her sister, Da'd, protests against her mother's ruthlessness, she meets the same fate as Amina. Finally Thabit's friend Khalil intercedes with the mother, who relents and admits the great wrong she has done her daughters. Moved by a sense of remorse and awakened parental compassion, she releases her daughters and admits that she has been the victim of harsh social customs. The romance is a protest against the cruel social tradition which denied young women freedom to marry for love. The basic theme is the female right of choice versus parental authority, which was considered inviolable in nineteenth-century Middle Eastern society and is still dominant in many parts of the Middle East. Amina's virtue lies in her fidelity to the man she loves. She is totally his, and marrying someone else would be a violation of a sacred trust.

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Amina is an example for every man and woman fighting against harmful practices and obsolete traditions. In her prison she declares to her sister, "My death would be a great lesson to the country's young men and women." 20 What gives Amina more importance than her counterparts in alBustani's stories is her awareness of her role as an opponent of deleterious social customs and the embodiment of a moral lesson. Thabit is equally aware of his role as a champion of freedom and social progress. He believes that nothing should prevent two lovers from uniting in happiness. By remaining loyal to Amina to the end, he is attempting to break down the walls of social prescription. Thabit also believes that his death will serve as a message of love and inspiration for future generations. 21 Riwayat Anis is another social romance but on a wider canvas. 2 2 It contains two distinct plots superficially joined by the fact that their principal characters are relatives. More important, the principal characters in both fall in love, suffer deeply, and, through that suffering, find final redemption and reward. Anis is an orphan whose father died when he was five years old, leaving him in the care of his mother, Fadila, and a testator, Wakid. He receives an education and becomes a successful businessman. Anis falls in love with a young woman, Anisa, but not without suffering. Nur, the daughter of the merchant with whom Anis worked at the beginning of his career, is also in love with him. She tries to separate them. Nur causes great suffering by her many intrigues, but finally Anis marries Anisa. Meanwhile, Fahima, Anis's cousin, falls in love with a young man, Adib, but the wicked Shakir, the antagonist, tries to separate the lovers to marry Fahima himself. His intrigues against Adib also cause great tribulation, but finally Adib and Fahima crown their long sufferings by marriage. Fahima, a vivacious and educated young woman, refuses to marry Shakir because of his vices. To force their daughter to marry the husband they chose for her, Fahima's parents beat and whip her. They tell her that her death is better than their dishonor caused by her disobedience. 23 Like alBustani, al-Qasatili defends the freedom of young women to marry husbands of their choice. He tenaciously defends the individual's freedom as sacred. 24 Though he defends man's freedom, al-Qasatili seems convinced that man is imperfect and tends toward evil. He maintains that evil exists coeternally with the world. One of his characters, Adib, explains to his loved one that the true source of their misery is man's inherent wickedness. 25 Nevertheless, like al-Bustani, al-Qasatili criticizes those traditions which impede the progress of the East. He lauds the West for its ability to reject harmful customs while adopting mores which are beneficial to mass society. 26 In Riwayat Murshid wa Fitna, which focuses on love relations between a young man, Murshid, and a young woman, Fatna, al-Qasatili continues his moralization on social themes, but in a different setting. This novel is a pastoral romance set in a ghaba (forest) in Syria—possibly the

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ghuta (orchards) of Damascus, although this is not clear in the romance. The author's main purpose, as he explains at the end of the romance, is to portray the life and customs of the Bedouin Arabs of Syria. 27 He presents information from his own experience living among these people, and from his Mir'at Suriyya wa Falastin, mentioned above. Al-Qasatili interrupts the narrative to refer the reader to this work, which he states is still in manuscript form. 28 Murshid wa Fitna contains two interwoven plots of love, suffering, and triumph involving two couples. The love affair between Murshid and Fitna is the major plot, while that of the characters May and Huwaydil is secondary. Young Murshid is the son of the Bedouin Shaykh Hamad, chief of the Ruqaymat Arab tribe, and therefore enjoys a prominent social and economic position within the tribe. Fitna, his beloved, is a beautiful, brown-skinned sixteen-year-old who belongs to the Arab tribe of Luhayb. One day, while Murshid is tending sheep, he meets Fitna doing the same thing. The two become attracted to each other, especially Murshid, who is infatuated by Fitna's innocent speech and simple manners. He relates to her accounts of valiant Bedouins and their raids which he has heard from the older men of the tribe. Murshid is captivated not only by Fitna's beauty and innocence, but also by her extraordinary bravery. Once, she chased two members of her tribe who stole two sheep from her herd and hid them in a cave. She vanquished the robbers by hitting them with a club, tied them and released the sheep. She drove the culprits to the tribal quarters, where they were imprisoned by the head of the tribe. On this very day, Fitna chased three wolves who were attacking her sheep. One wolf bit her in the leg, but she managed to hit it with a club, splitting its jaw, killing it. She then chased the other two away, tied up the dead wolf with a rope she made of thin tree branches, slung it onto her back, and led her sheep home. Meeting Murshid on the way, she relates the day's adventure. Murshid, captivated by the fearlessness of this beautiful young woman, falls deeply in love with her. He wants to marry her, but dares not ask the permission of his father, who has already decided to marry him to his young cousin Hind. Murshid, however, is not in love with Hind, and he is determined to marry Fitna, though doing so would violate tribal custom. 29 Meanwhile, Fitna faces the same problem; according to tribal custom she should marry her cousin, and her father is inclined to marry her to Fattam, the son of a prominent chief. Fitna, however, is in love with Murshid and will not marry anyone else. In her desperation, she attempts to shoot herself, but fails twice—once when the pistol jams, and again when she misfires. Fitna faints. Her people, believing she is dead, wrap her in a shroud in preparation for her burial. As she is lowered into the grave, she regains her senses and is rescued by her friend May, who jumps into the grave as the shroud falls from Fitna. Those who watch this extraordinary incident believe that Fitna has miraculously returned from the dead.

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Then Fitna and May decide to escape to another quarter, where they can find freedom to marry the men they love. 30 After many indescribable adventures involving personal danger, tribal wars, and intrigue, Murshid and Fitna are finally united in marriage. Apparently, Fitna's authoritarian father is convinced that love is a stronger bond than tribal custom. Perhaps he realizes that his marriage to her mother was unhappy and does not want his daughter to suffer the same experience. He recalls that his wife was beautiful and much younger than he, and in love with a young man of lower social status than hers. When her parents died and left her alone, her relatives married her to him despite knowing that she did not love him. Meanwhile, May and Huwaydil are in love with each other, but face the same problem of conflict with tribal custom. May's father has promised her in marriage to her cousin Fadil, but in the end love triumphs over custom, and she marries Huwaydil. 31 The dominant theme of the romance is love and the right of a young woman to marry the man she loves. This right leads Fitna in desperation to attempt to take her life with her own hands. Then she tries to escape with May and her lover Huwaydil to another place where they can marry without the constraints of social custom. Al-Qasatili seems to glorify love and considers it as necessary for a civilized society. He defends the equality of men and women and the right of the woman to choose the man she loves. 32 He discusses in detail the different tribal customs, rules of warfare, and laws. He condemns the war of "civilized" nations and considers it more barbaric than Bedouin warfare. 33 He elaborates on the habit of smoking among the Bedouins, who he says are ready to sacrifice money for an ounce of tobacco. 34 He relates the Bedouins' belief in charms and the evil eye, their practice of eating with their bare hands, and their dabka or tribal dance. 35 To imply that the events of this romance actually happened, the author states, "Thus end all the problems of this romance, by the marriage of the lovers on Saturday, the 13th of August, 1800." 36 Al-Qasatili's characters are not much different from those of alBustani. Most of them are typically middle class, well educated, and conscious of the importance of their education and social status. They are fully developed personalities from the beginning and exemplify either vice or virtue. Thus, Laim and Talib are villains who connive to prevent Anis from marrying Anisa. On the other hand, Adib and Anis are virtuous, chivalrous, and decent characters. Also, Murshid and Huwaydil are virtuous and valiant, while Fattam and Fadil are villains who meet a miserable death as a result of their wickedness. 37 Unlike al-Bustani's bourgeois characters, who are aloof from their surroundings and oblivious to the people around them, some of al-Qasatili's characters have a consciousness of responsibility to the lower classes. One of these is Fadila, Anis's mother, a

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woman of some education, who thinks that she should try to educate the "uncouth and ill behaved" children of the village where she is spending the summer.38 Al-Qasatili also advocates political freedom, condemns the tyranny of arbitrary government and calls for the establishment of democratic parliamentarian governments. 39 Considering the despotic rule of the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, this was a daring and audacious position which could have cost al-Qasatili his career, if not his life. As with al-Bustani, it got by the inefficiency and ignorance of the Ottoman censor, who perhaps did not bother to read fiction. 40 While Marrash and al-Qasatili were gifted individuals, they did not contribute significantly to the rise of Arabic fiction. For the most part they dealt with themes, used characterization, and promoted reforms in much the same way as al-Bustani. After al-Bustani's death and until the appearance of Jurji Zaydan's first work of fiction in 1891, there was little fictional creativity. Al-Bustani stands as the solitary beacon in the sterile landscape of literature at this time. Marrash and al-Qasatili are secondary candles whose light of creativity is lost in the more glowing accomplishments of al-Bustani. We are speaking in relative terms, of course, since measured against the sophisticated literary criteria in the West, al-Bustani would not be considered a great writer of fiction. He was, however, representative of a time during which certain of the Arab intelligentsia were attempting to promote a unique Arab consciousness. They did this in the best way they could, given the limitations of their numbers and the limited scope of their freedom. It is a testimony to the restricted nature of this movement that only Marrash and al-Qasatili attempted the kinds of things al-Bustani did, or achieved success anything like his, though al-Bustani's achievement in comparison to those of the Western world, was very modest. It was with the appearance of the eminent writer Jurji Zaydan (d. 1914) that the Arab novel, and in particular the historical novel, was brought to fruition.

9 Jurji Zaydan and the Arab Historical Novel

The appearance in 1870 of what can be considered the first Arab novel, however clumsy, Salim al-Bustani's al-Huyam fi Jinan al-Sham, was an admirable literary achievement. Also, it was a modest beginning for its further development. Al-Bustani may have indirectly alerted future Arab writers to the significance of fiction as a vehicle for rendering history more understandable and entertaining. When Jurji Zaydan embarked upon his prolific novel-writing career less than a decade after the death of alBustani, his primary objective was to present the Arab historical novel in a simple and appealing form. Zaydan was born in Beirut in 1861 to a poor Christian family with (unlike al-Bustani's) no special literary interests. His father ran a small restaurant in Beirut and, being illiterate, he relied completely on young Zaydan not only to keep his accounts, but to cook for the customers. 1 Zaydan's ambition and inclination, however, lay beyond the routine and unrewarding life of the restaurant and its customers. After completing his elementary schooling, Zaydan enrolled in the Syrian Protestant College (the present American University of Beirut) in 1881 to study medicine. 2 When the dismissal of a faculty member, Dr. Louis, because of his lectures on Darwin and Darwinism, caused a rift between teachers and students Zaydan decided to go to Egypt to continue his studies. 3 Instead of studying medicine, however, Zaydan turned to journalism and soon became the editor of al-Zaman (Time), a small newspaper. In 1884, as war correspondent and interpreter, he joined the British expedition to the Sudan to rescue General Gordon. Afterwards, he was decorated for his participation and the courage he demonstrated during the campaign. Because of his journalistic experience and his firsthand experience with Gordon, his interest in history was heightened. He decided to research, write about, and popularize the history of the Islamic world. Therefore, in 1886, intending to research material for his contemplated works on Islamic civilization, he visited London and spent most of his time at the British Museum's Library.

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There he consulted ancient Arabic manuscripts which resulted in the writing of his monumental historical works: Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami (History of Islamic Civilization) and Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya (History of Arabic Literature). After that (from 1891 until his death in 1914), Zaydan devoted his time to writing on a vast range of literary topics and cultural subjects. All of his twenty-three novels except one, entitled Jihad al-Muhibbin (Lovers' Struggle), treated subjects drawn from Arab or Islamic history. 4 This output was encyclopedic and he stands as the most productive and versatile Arab writer of modern times. The periodical alHilal (Crescent), which he founded in Egypt in 1892, became an unofficial "school" and increasingly important source of inspiration to young writers, poets, and historians of every stripe and age. 5 Perhaps Zaydan had no intention, when he started, of re-evoking and disseminating so much Arab and Islamic history through the medium of fiction. When his first historical novel, al-Mamluk al-Sharid (The Fleeing Mamluk), treating the massacre of the Mamluks by Muhammad Ali, appeared in 1891 and was well received, some of his friends suggested that he write a series of novels about the whole history of Islam. 6 Accordingly, in 1892-1893 he wrote two more novels, Asir al-Mutamahdi (The Captive of the Mahdi Pretender), treating the Mahdi's rebellion in the Sudan, and Istibdad al-Mamalik (Despotism of the Mamluks), dealing with the despotic rule of the Mamluks in Egypt during the early part of the nineteenth century. In 1895 he began a series of novels about Islamic history in general. They began with Armanusa al-Misriyya (Egyptian Armanusa), which dealt which the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640, and ended in 1913-1914 with Shajarat al-Durr, which portrays the events leading to the accession in the thirteenth century of Shajarat al-Durr, wife of the Ayyubid Sultan al-Malik al-Salih. Zaydan's historical novels did not attempt to deal with the history of Islam in logical order, or cover the entire Islamic past. 7 Zaydan's purpose was to present Islamic history through the medium of fiction "as a means to arouse the desire of the public to read their history and read it abundantly." 8 To achieve this purpose Zaydan saw fiction as subservient to history, and not vice versa, a mistake he accused Western writers of. 9 He claimed that these writers subjected history to the fictional narrative so that the reader was misled into believing that the fictional events were real. He may have misjudged Western writers whose aim was not so much to portray real history but to use historical background, including real people, to realize the objectives of their craft. Most important, they intended to entertain the reader. Zaydan's main concern, however, was to relate history as it really was within the context of the novel form. He asserted that the historical "facts" he related in his novels could be relied upon as authentic. 10 Zaydan does not identify those Western writers whom he believed to have "subordinated"

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history to fiction; he may have meant, among others, Sir Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas père.11 While Scott and Dumas used historical events only as a frame for the novel and took liberty in relating these events to achieve their novelistic ends, Zaydan, on the contrary, stuck to actual historical events because his main objective was to teach history to the public. 12 The method he pursued in writing most of his novels was the same. Because he serialized his novels in his periodical al-Hilal, Zaydan usually used the summer months (when the periodical was not published) to write a novel and prepare it for the fall. He began by first choosing the historical topic of the novel and reading all the relevant sources until a skeleton outline based on historical fact was developed. He then concocted a romance, usually a love story, chose the characters, and began writing. 13 He followed this method with all of his novels except Armanusa al-Misriyya. Because his basic task was to portray the past faithfully, Zaydan was very concerned with historical facts, and went as far as documenting his sources. He also began each novel with a chapter explaining the historical events relative to the work. In many cases his characters relate historical events extracted from Islamic sources and referred to in footnotes. 14 In Chapters XIX to XXI of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, he refers ten times to Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs), by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 967). 15 Often he provided, in separate introductory chapters, a thorough historical and geographical description of the events and the country in which they took place. 16 Thus, his novels consist of two aspects—history and romance—with the latter always integrated into actual historical events. In Fatat Ghassan (The Young Woman of Ghassan), for instance, the major theme is the Islamic conquest of Syria, a predominantly Christian country, and the contrast between the conditions of Christianity and Islam in the beginning of the seventh century. The characters are relegated to being a vehicle for what the author deemed most important: depicting the declining status of Christianity in Syria and the rise of nascent Islam as a dominant force. Here it is the story of the love between Hammad and Hind that is used to depict historical events. Hammad follows the movements of the Muslim armies in search of an elusive, exclusive earring that he must give to Hind as dowry. In quest of this prize he visits Mecca and meets with Christians, Muslims, and pagans. In the company of the Arab armies he witnesses the Arab conquest of Jerusalem and Damascus. In brief, the novel shows the collapse of a historical era in Syria which preceded the rise of Islam and the beginning of its rule. 17 In Armanusa al-Misriyya, Zaydan uses the love affair between Armanusa, daughter of al-Muqawqis, governor of Egypt, and Arcadius, son of the Byzantine army commander, as a means to portray the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640 A.D. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius (d. 641),

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however, also wanted to marry Armanusa and had already asked her father to send her to his palace in Constantinople. Since she loved Arcadius and did not wish to marry Heraclius, she joined the Arab army on its way to invade Egypt. Its commander, Amr ibn al-As, offered her protection and his friendship until he conquered Alexandria. In Alexandria she miraculously meets Arcadius, and the two marry after Alexandria falls into the hands of the Arabs. 18 In Ghadat Karbala (Young Lady of Karbala), the author portrays the murder of al-Husayn, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, by the Umayyad authorities in Karbala, Iraq, and the religious and political impact of this murder. The romance again portrays the circumstances surrounding a particular historical event. The central character, Abd al-Rahman, loves his cousin Salma, but the problem is the Umayyad Caliph Yazid, son of Muawiya, who also covets Salma. After many adventures Salma arrives in the city of al-Kufa, where she witnesses the killing of alHusayn, whose head is then presented to Yazid. At the end, the Caliph Yazid goes to Hawran where he subsequently dies. Salma then finds Abd al-Rahman, and the two travel to Mecca where they marry and live happily ever after. 19 Abu Muslim al-Khurasani focuses on the accession of the Abbasids to power in 750 through the support of the Persians in Khurasan. The love story revolves around Jullanar, daughter of a Persian leader, and Abu Muslim, who was instrumental in overthrowing the Umayyads and bringing the Abbasids to power. The romance, however, does not culminate in the marriage of the two lovers but their separation. Jullanar loves Abu Muslim, who does not return her love but uses her to further his political ambitions. Thoroughly ruthless, he discovers that Jullanar's father has betrayed the Abbasid cause, and has him assassinated. Jullanar escapes to Syria where she learns that the Abbasid Caliph, Abu Jafar al-Mansur, distrusts Abu Muslim and orders him killed. She hurries to Baghdad, witnesses the beheading of Abu Muslim, and then enters a convent. 20 In Fath al-Andalus aw Tariq ibn Ziyad (The Conquest of Spain, or Tariq son of Ziyad), Zaydan portrays the conquest of Spain in 711 by the army commander Tariq ibn Ziyad. He provides a full description of the state of affairs in Spain; the capital Toledo before its conquest by the Muslims; the usurpation of the throne by Roderick (called Ludhriq by the Arabs), who had deposed Alphonse, son of the Visigothic King Witiza, which outraged the people against Roderick. Roderick was defeated by the Arab army and probably drowned in the river while fleeing for his life. Tariq marched into the interior and reached Toledo but found it deserted. There he settled Jews and some of his men; then he went on to complete the conquest of the country. Significantly, Tariq could not have conquered the country without the assistance of the semilegendary Julian,

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Count of Ceuta in north Africa, the deposed Alphonse, and a Jewish spy named Jacob. Julian turned against Roderick to avenge his honor, while Jacob worked against Roderick because of his ill treatment of the Jews. Alphonse opposed Roderick not only because he had usurped his throne but also because of his determination to rid the country of Roderick's oppressive rule. Zaydan further describes the internal conflict between the different dukes, the condition of the church, and the conflict between Catholicism and Arianism, the heretical faith of the Gothic people. The romance involves the love relations of Alphonse and Florinda, the young and beautiful daughter of Julian. According to royal custom, Florinda had been sent to the court of Roderick to be taught the etiquette of the royal court. Roderick coveted the young woman and tried to violate her, but she resisted and even contemplated suicide rather than surrender to him. So her father Julian conspired with the Arabs and assisted them in occupying Spain. Florinda was in love with Alphonse, who reciprocated her sentiment. The two lovers had personal grudges against Roderick, and collaborated with the Arabs to dethrone him. The result was the loss of their country to the Arabs and with it the loss of Alphonse's throne. Fath al-Andalus ends with the marriage of Florinda and Alphonse, and the march of Tariq ibn Ziyad to occupy the rest of Spain aided by Julian and Alphonse. 21 Sharl wa Abd al-Rahman (Charles and Abd al-Rahman) portrays the state of affairs in Spain after its conquest by Tariq ibn Ziyad, the rise and fall of Musa ibn Nusayr because of his conflicts with Tariq ibn Ziyad, and the Arabs' venture into France under Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, who was appointed governor of Spain in 730. Zaydan describes al-Ghafiqi as a Muslim zealot who thought that Allah intended to deliver the Franks into the hands of the Muslims. Thus, he believed it obligatory to carry Islam to France, Germany, and then eastward down into Constantinople. After such a conquest Islam would then have surrounded the heartlands of Christendom. To accomplish his aim, al-Ghafiqi crossed the Pyrenees and defeated the forces of Duke Eudes of Aquitaine on the banks of the Garonne. He stormed Bordeaux and marched to Poitiers, burned a church outside its walls, and then pushed northward to Tours, which housed the remains of St. Martin, the apostle of the Gauls. At Tours, al-Ghafiqi met a vehement resistance by the Franks commanded by Charles Martel. In 732 the Arab and Frankish armies clashed in a definitive battle which culminated with the total defeat of the Muslim forces, partly because their commander, alGhafiqi, was killed in battle. His death struck terror into the hearts of his troops, who then yielded to the enemy. The romance revolves around the young and beautiful Maryam and young Hani, an army commander under al-Ghafiqi. Hani met Maryam for the first time at Bordeaux when the Arab army occupied it in 733, and fell

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in love with her. Maryam and her mother Salima were among the captives whom Hani was authorized to divide, with the rest of the booty, among the Muslim soldiers. Maryam was forcibly taken by Bistam, a rough and lecherous Berber chief. After conflict with Bistam, however, Hani could claim Maryam and her mother as his own share of the booty. The two ladies appeared before al-Ghafiqi, who was astonished to hear them speak the Arabic language, though with a slight accent. Salima told al-Ghafiqi that her daughter Maryam would be his only after he completed the conquest of France. Mystified about Salima's origin and especially her knowledge of the Arabic language, al-Ghafiqi was anxious to know her secret, but Salima told al-Ghafiqi that she would not divulge her identity, nor how she came to speak Arabic, nor the identity of her husband until he had crossed the Loire River, which would signify his victory over the Franks. She added that if he failed to cross the river, his chances of occupying France would be greatly diminished. As the events of the novel unfold, however, we learn that Salima's circumstances forced her to divulge her own and Maryam's identity. Apparently, Eudes, the duke of Aquitaine, knew about her origin and collaboration with the Arabs and had her detained at the Monastery of St. Martin, near Tours. When finally Maryam and Hani found Salima at the monastery, she disclosed her secret to Maryam, who until then knew nothing about the origin of her mother, or who her own father was. Salima told her daughter that she was Egilona, widow of the Gothic king Roderick, who had lost his life during the Arabs' campaign against Visigothic Spain. She had then married Abd al-Aziz, son of Musa ibn Nusayr, first governor of Muslim Spain, on the condition that she be allowed to keep her Christian faith. She had come to be known as umm-(mother of) Asim, which name Zaydan employed in the novel in addition to Salima. Salima, however, learned about Islam and found it close to Arianism (a fourth-century heresy combatted and condemned by the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325), which the Goths had accepted since their days in the lower Volga area. Maryam learned that her father was Abd al-Aziz, and that she and her mother had learned Arabic in his court at Seville. Rumors, however, reached the Umayyad Caliph Sulayman in Damascus that under the influence of his Christian wife, Abd al-Aziz had secretly converted to Christianity. Subsequently, Abd al-Aziz's enemies did not even seize and send him over to the caliph but employed someone to murder him while he was praying at the mosque. Before his death, however, Abd al-Aziz handed his wife a box and prophesied to her that an Arab military commander would rise, who, should he reach the Loire River, would definitely occupy all of France. He told his wife to ask this future commander to take his daughter Maryam into his trust, and with her the box which contains what is beneficial to the Muslims. Salima understood that

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this future commander was none other than Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi. But Salima was taken back to the court of Duke Eudes of Aquitaine, who probably did away with her, and al-Ghafiqi lost the war against the Franks at Tours. The Muslims' military camp was deserted, and no one remained except Maryam and her lover Hani. Realizing that sooner or later they would fall into the hands of the Franks, Maryam and Hani decided to take their own lives. In a melodramatic scene, the lovers put their arms around each other, and drowned themselves in the river. Maryam was carrying with her the box handed to her by her mother, and whatever secret the box may have contained was now buried with her in the Loire. 22 Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir focuses on the rule of the Umayyad Abd alRahman al-Nasir (r. 912-961) in Spain, who was first to call himself khalifa (caliph) and Amir al-Muminin (Commander of the Faithful). He restored most of the provinces recaptured by the Spanish and expanded his domain into the north of the country. Christian rulers in Europe and Constantinople established peace with him. The novel relates the delegation of the emperors in Constantinople to al-Nasir as a manifestation of his power and glory. At Cordova he erected a magnificent palatial mansion called alZahra, after one of his most favored concubines. In al-Nasir's time Muslim power reached its zenith in Spain. The new caliph lavished huge amounts of money on architecture, e.g., al-Zahra, and surrounded himself with thousands of slaves captured mainly from Europe and North Africa. However, al-Nasir was not without enemies—namely, the Shiite Fatimids of North Africa, who had planted spies in his kingdom in their plot to overthrow the Umayyads. One of these spies was Said, whose personality dominates the novel. Zaydan portrays Said as a highly educated man wellversed in the sciences of his time, including religious jurisprudence, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry. The novel opens with Said as the director of the Cordova library. Another character, Abida, a beautiful young slave girl from Baghdad, is no less learned than Said. She has a vast knowledge of contemporary literature and scholarship, and has even transcribed several books: al-Amali (Dictations), by Ismail ibn al-Qasim al-Qali; al-Aghani (Book of Songs), by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani; and al-Iqd al-Farid (The Unique Necklace), by Ibn Abd Rabbih. She is also a wonderful singer and can play different musical instruments including the zither. She has memorized ancient and contemporary Arabic poetry and sings poems from Diwan al-Hamasa (Poems Celebrating Valor in Battle), the well-known anthology of poetry by Abu Tammam. The library which Said directs was the meeting place of prominent learned men like the jurist Yusuf ibn Abd al-Birr. The love episode, or episodes, are so interwoven within the framework of historical events that extracting them damages any discussion of the plot. Abida is madly in love with Said, but he does not reciprocate her

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love. His intention is to use her to accomplish his scheme of overthrowing al-Nasir and installing in his place someone who is loyal to the Fatimids, probably himself. Said and Abida meet in a secret place outside Cordova with a band of rebels and disgruntled men who are determined to overthrow al-Nasir because of his extravagance, his alienation of the Arab elements in Spain, and his replacing them with slaves and non-Arabs. One of these rebels is a handsome young man known by the epithet Sahib al-Niqma (Man of Revenge), but his real name known only to Said is Salim. As the story unfolds, we learn that Said is passionately in love with alZahra, the favorite concubine of al-Nasir, but she detests him. Said attempts to intrigue against al-Zahra by arranging a meeting between her and Abd Allah, the second son of al-Nasir, while informing al-Nasir about this meeting. Also, he ensnares Abd Allah in the clandestine plot against his father. When al-Nasir discovers that his son is plotting against him and has coveted al-Zahra, he has him killed, along with his son's servant Yasir and the jurist Ibn Abd al-Birr, who participated in the plot. Zaydan, as is his custom, implants a mystery to keep the reader's interest in the outcome. In this case the mystery involves al-Zahra's missing brother. Al-Zahra and her brother originally came from the mountains of Sicily. Later they were sold as slaves to a Jewish merchant, who then sold them to the Arab governor of Sicily. Said, who was in Sicily on a mission for his master the Shiite Imam (caliph) Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi (909-934), ruler of the Fatimid state in north Africa, had seen al-Zahra and fallen in love with her. However, he could not possess her because she had been already sold to the governor of Sicily, who then sent al-Zahra as a gift to his master. While al-Zahra and her brother were on board a ship bound for north Africa, pirates attacked and captured al-Zahra. Said, who was on board the same ship, managed to rescue her brother. Subsequently, he raised him and ultimately employed him in his plot against al-Nasir. Thus, both al-Zahra and her brother ended in Spain. There al-Zahra became the favorite concubine of al-Nasir, and her brother joined the band of rebels against alNasir. Al-Nasir, however, did not know that this rebel was the brother of his beloved al-Zahra. The only person who knows the secret of al-Zahra's brother is Said, now in Spain attempting to foster a rebellion to overthrow al-Nasir. To win al-Zahra's love, Said reveals to her the identity and the destiny of her brother, whom she greatly mourned. Said tells her that he has known her since she was sold as a slave girl in Sicily, that her name is not al-Zahra but Hasna, and that her brother's name is Salim. He also tells her that her brother is alive and she can meet him. Al-Zahra is suspicious of Said's story about her and her brother and keeps rejecting his pleas of love. To prove his sincerity, Said secretly arranges for al-Zahra to slip out of the heavily guarded palace without al-Nasir's knowledge. After

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many adventures, Said and al-Zahra reach the secret place where the rebels met. In a melodramatic scene, she and her brother recognize each other and embrace. Meanwhile, al-Nasir has sent his men searching for al-Zahra. When they find her they arrest her with Said, her brother and the rest of the gang of rebels, and bring them back to Cordova to be tried by al-Nasir. At the trial al-Nasir discovers that the chief perpetrator Said, who plotted against him, compelled him to kill his son Abd Allah, and tried to steal his concubine, al-Zahra. Said confesses his wicked actions against al-Nasir, justifying them on the grounds that al-Nasir had become too extravagant and had weakened the state by alienating the Arab elements and thus was no longer qualified to rule. He then takes poison in the presence of al-Nasir and dies. In contrast, al-Zahra's brother Salim is exonerated, and at the behest of al-Nasir he is married to Abida, who has finally felt and shown affection toward him. 23 Upon reading the novel one appreciates Zaydan's psychological analysis of some characters, especially Said, who was torn between Abida's affection toward him and his intention of using her only for his intrigues. In sum, Zaydan has the capacity to represent his characters as vibrant and real. In the case of Abida, however, one is totally awed by her many talents and profound knowledge, which seem just a little implausible. One especially intriguing part of the novel is the nature of Said's mission. At the outset we receive the impression that Said was plotting to oust al-Nasir for sheer political reasons, but at the end we learn that his main objective was to win al-Zahra's love. Zaydan does not clarify the interrelation between Said's political and amorous objectives. In al-Amin wa al-Mamun, the author portrays the struggle for power in the early Abbasid dynasty between the Arabs and the Persians in the persons of the two brothers al-Amin (809-813) and al-Mamun (813-833), the sons of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809). It ends with the killing of al-Amin and the ascendance of al-Mamun to power. The romance concentrates on the relationship between Maymuna, daughter of Jafar al-Barmaki, and Bahzad, grandson of Abu Muslim al-Khurasani, who becomes involved in the conflict between the two royal brothers. Like the love affairs in Zaydan's other novels, this one ends in marriage. Meanwhile, al-Mamun marries Buran, daughter of al-Hasan ibn Sahl, to please him because his brother al-Fadl, Vizir of al-Mamun, was assassinated for his intrigues against al-Mamun. 24 In Arus Farghana (The Bride introduction of the Turks into the (833-847), their terrorization of building of Samarra in A.D. 836 Turks were stationed. The novel

of Farghana), the historical setting is the Abbasid state by the Caliph al-Mutasim the capital Baghdad, and al-Mutasim's as a new seat of government where the also portrays the struggle of the Arabs,

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the Persians and the Turks within the state, the rise of the Khurrami sect, and the capture of Babik, leader of the sect, in 837. The love story revolves around Jehan, daughter of Tahmaz, the Marzuban (provincial governor) of Farghana, and Dirgham, chief of alMutasim's bodyguard, and ends happily with the marriage of the two lovers. However, not until the end do we discover that Dirgham is alMutasim's brother, whose mother Yaquta was a slave girl of al-Mutasim's father, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Yaquta asks Dirgham to reveal his identity to al-Mutasim to gain his favor, but Dirgham refuses to do so because al-Mutasim may become enraged rather than pleased. After all, reasons Dirgham, no one will believe him if he divulges his identity. 25 Ahmad ibn Tulun treats the historical theme of the founding of the Tulunid state in Egypt by Ahmad ibn Tulun (868-884), as the first state independent of Abbasid rule. We learn about ibn Tulun's public projects, e.g., the building of mosques, and about the way he treated his subjects. He was known for his charity to the poor and the hungry. He was also known for the just and fair treatment of all his subjects. Most of all, we learn about the interrelations of the Christian and Muslim communities in Egypt. The romance pivots around young Dimyana, daughter of Marcus, a rich Copt, and Said, a Christian engineer known as Said al-Farghani. Dimyana's father arranges her betrothal to the rich and profligate middleaged Stefanos. Dimyana, who does not like the arrangement, escapes and hides in a convent, and after many vicissitudes, marries her lover Said. It is significant that although Said is Christian, ibn Tulun does not object to his building the magnificent mosque of ibn Tulun. Ibn Tulun personally orders that preparations be made for Said's wedding. 26 Fatat al-Qayrawan (The Young Woman of al-Qayrawan) deals with the establishment of the first Shiite Fatimid state in Egypt, the expulsion of the Ikhshidis from that country by the army commander Jawhar in A.D. 968, and the move of al-Mu'izz li Din Allah from al-Qayrawan to Cairo. The love story revolves around Lamya of al-Qayrawan, daughter of the governor of Sijilmasa in north Africa, and al-Husayn, son of the army commander Jawhar. It ends with the marriage of Lamya to al-Husayn. In this novel the author incorporates a great deal of information about Kafur al-Ikhshidi, an Abyssinian eunuch who ruled Egypt from 966 to 968, and about life in Egypt under Kafur and under the Fatimid al-Mu'izz. 27 Salah al-Din wa Maka'id al-Hashshashin (Salah al-Din and the Intrigues of the Assassins) marks the end of the Fatimid state, which was supplanted by the Ayyubids, so called after Salah al-Din (Saladin) ibn Ayyub. In 1174 Salah al-Din declared himself independent in Egypt. In the following year he became the sole ruler of Egypt, parts of North Africa, Nubia, Palestine, western Arabia and central Syria. He was now totally and everywhere independent of the Abbasid caliphs in Iraq. Zaydan vividly describes the troubles of Salah al-Din with the Hashshashin (Assassins), an

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esoteric Ismaili Shiite group determined to destroy the Sunnite Muslim state. He describes their leader Rashid al-Din Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, and the clandestine operation of the group. The Assassins attempt to kill Salah al-Din but fail. Finally, Salah alDin besieges the headquarters of the Assassins, ceasing only when he receives assurance from the Assassins that they will stop moving against him. Through Imad al-Din we learn how the Assassins recruited qualified men to carry out the assassination of Sunnite Muslim leaders. When Imad al-Din appears before the leader of the Assassins to be tested, he is drugged and transported to a beautiful place resembling paradise and filled with beautiful young women. Imad al-Din thinks that he is really in paradise. A gorgeous huri (nymphJ is assigned to entertain him and keep him preoccupied. When he begins to make love to her she spurns him, saying that he cannot easily obtain what he wants unless he shows total obedience to the leader. When Imad al-Din tells her that he is most willing to obey the leader, the huri tells him that she cannot do anything without the leader's consent. Nevertheless, she then rubs his hair and hands with perfume, telling him that this perfume will be a token of their relationship until they meet again. Imad al-Din goes to sleep, and wakes up to find himself in the presence of Rashid al-Din Sinan, leader of the Assassins. Still mystified about what had happened, he thinks that he has been dreaming. Imad al-Din, however, smells the perfume which the huri splashed on his hair and hands, and realizes that what he had seen was real. Rashid al-Din Sinan tells him that now he has become one of his votaries. He asks Imad al-Din to open his mouth, and after spitting into it Sinan says, "Be an obedient fida'i [self-sacrificer]." Imad al-Din is surprised to learn that Sinan has no intention of murdering Salah al-Din, but on the contrary he asks Allah to extend his life. Imad al-Din asks one votary about Sinan's attitude toward Salah al-Din, and learns that Sinan had a revelation showing that he and Salah al-Din would die in the same year. Therefore, Sinan reasoned, if he killed Salah al-Din, he too would die. To avoid his own death, Sinan stopped attempting to kill Salah al-Din. Finally, Imad al-Din manages to leave the mansion of Rashid al-Din Sinan and goes to see Salah al-Din and his beloved Sitt al-Mulk. The romance pivots around Sitt al-Mulk, sister of al-Adid, last of the Fatimid caliphs, and Imad al-Din, one of Salah al-Din's lieutenants. Zaydan ends the novel with the statement that all of Egypt celebrated the royal wedding of Sitt al-Mulk and Imad al-Din. 28 In Shajarat al-Durr, Zaydan portrays the end of the Ayyubid state founded by Salah al-Din and the establishment of the Mamluks' power in Egypt by Shajarat al-Durr (Pearl Tree), widow of al-Malik al-Salih (d. 1249), last of the Ayyubid sultans. Al-Salih was fond of recruiting into his service Turkish Mamluks (freed slaves), who later played a great role in the political affairs of Egypt. In his time the Crusaders under Philip IX

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of France attacked Egypt and seized the city of Damieta (Dimyat) through treachery. After the death of al-Salih, Shajarat al-Durr wielded great influence in running the state, although al-Salih's son, Ghiyath al-Din Turan, was installed as the new sultan. Soon the Mamluks rebelled against Ghiyath al-Din, killed him, and installed Shajarat al-Durr as the sultana of Egypt. Thus, Shajarat al-Durr is considered the first queen in the history of Islam. The army commanders chose one Izz al-Din Aybak to be her consort. Shajarat al-Durr married Aybak, who was already married, but treated him as her subordinate. Ultimately she had Aybak strangled during his bath, after she learned that he was intending to marry still another wife, the daughter of Badr al-Din Lulu, governor of Mosul. Soon after she has had Aybak murdered, the female slaves of Aybak's first wife beat Shajarat al-Durr to death with their wooden shoes and throw her body from the tower. Half is eaten by dogs, and the rest of her body is finally buried in the cemetery of al-Sayyida Nafisa. The novel also contains an account of the last days of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim in Baghdad, the Tatars' ravaging of Baghdad under Hulagu, their killing of al-Mustasim, and the transference of the Abbasid caliphate to the Mamluks of Egypt. The love romance revolves around Shukar, the beautiful bondmaid of Shajarat al-Durr, and Rukn al-Din Baybars, an army commander. As usual, the novel ends with the marriage of the two lovers. Ultimately, Rukn alDin is installed as sultan of Egypt in 1259, and comes to be known as alMalik al-Zahir. He eventually receives the caliphate and the designation Caliph al-Mustansir bi Allah from the Abbasids in Baghdad.29 Istibdad al-Mamalik (Despotism of the Mamluks) focuses on the history of the Mamluks in Egypt and their relationship with the Ottoman government in the second half of the eighteenth century. Egypt had been conquered by the Ottomans in 1516, but their rule was nominal in the country. It is true that the Ottoman sultan appointed a governor to rule in his name, but the real authority was in the hands of the Mamluks. The Mamluks were so powerful that they could oust any governor who did not serve their interest. From the novel we learn that a powerful Mamluk, Ali Bey, has just expelled the Ottoman governor and declared his independence from the Ottoman sultan. Ambitious, Ali Bey expanded his authority in 1770 with armies commanded by his lieutenant and son-in-law Muhammad Abu alDhahab. He was backed up by Russia, the traditional enemy of the Ottomans. After entering Damascus, capital of Syria, Abu al-Dhahab betrayed his master Ali Bey and signed an agreement with the Ottoman sultan, and turned his armies against Egypt. Ali Bey, wounded and defeated, then sought refuge with his ally Zahir al-Umar, ruler of Akka. Soon after, in 1773, Ali Bey died from his wounds, and Abu al-Dhahab was installed by the Ottoman sultan as the sole ruler of Egypt.

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Significantly, this is the only novel of Zaydan which does not contain a romantic episode. Rather, the historical part is interwoven with the misfortunes suffered by the members of a Cairene family because of the tyrannical and oppressive rule of the Mamluk Ali Bey. The head of the family, Abd al-Rahman, is a merchant of Cairo known for his business acumen and good character. He is targeted by Ali Bey's tax collectors, who extort money from him and force him to sell his business. His only son, Hasan, an educated young man, is then conscripted into the army marshaled by Ali Bey to invade Mecca. Abd al-Rahman asks his friend Sayyid al-Mahruqi, a dignitary and nobleman respected by Ali Bey, to intercede with him to release his son from the army, and Ali Bey agrees to do so if Abd al-Rahman consents to replace him besides paying a huge amount of money. Abd al-Rahman agrees and thinks this is the end of his misfortune. Yet after he leaves with the army for Mecca, his house is plundered by Ali Bey's men, and his son and wife are taken to Ali Bey, who decrees that Abd al-Rahman's son Hasan should be tied and drowned in the Nile, and the wife serve in his place. After incalculable turmoil and vicissitudes Abd al-Rahman joins the service of Abu al-Dhahab, who has become the ruler of Egypt. Meanwhile, Abd al-Rahman's son is saved from death, and his wife seeks refuge in a monastery. The novel ends with the death of Ali Bey from his wounds, the rise to power of Abu al-Dhahab and the meeting of Abd al-Rahman, his son and his wife in Cairo to resume a new life. 30 With this novel the first phase of the history of the Mamluks ends, and the second one, contained in the novel al-Mamluk al-Sharid (The Fleeing Mamluk), begins. As mentioned above, since Zaydan's primary objective was to popularize history, his plots and characters were subservient to the historical events he attempted to popularize. In many instances, therefore, the plots are weak and the characters feckless, with fate and coincidence playing a large role in the weaving together of historical events. For example, in alMamluk al-Sharid, the "coincidences" pile up: Gharib suddenly meets his father and neither recognizes the other; he has a chance meeting with his brother, Salim, in the city of Akka (Acre); and another of the characters, Sulayman, turns out to be the escaping Mamluk himself. 31 Zaydan surprises us with even more startling coincidences. An excellent example is the account of Jamila. A princess of the Shihabi family in Lebanon, she was not known or even recognized by the Amir Bashir II alShihabi (d. 1850) until the sudden revelation that she was none other than the Princess Salma, thought to have been lost many years ago, even though Jamila lived in the Amir's palace. 32 Similarly, in al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, a prominent statesman and army general under the Umayyads, Layla alUkhayliyya, and Abd Allah, Hasan's servant, seemingly appear out of thin air in al-Hajjaj's camp while he is attacking Mecca to rescue Sumayya,

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Hasan's sweetheart, who has been forced by her father to marry al-Hajjaj. 33 In Fatat Ghassan (The Young Woman of Ghassan), Hind meets Hammad by chance in a convent, 34 and in Adhra Quraysh (The Maiden of Quraysh), Muhammad appears out of nowhere and rescues Asma. 35 Such coincidental meetings might, perhaps, be more meaningful in a fairy tale or in a detective story, but seem terribly contrived in these historical novels. While Zaydan excites our curiosity by introducing at the beginning of most of his novels a puzzling secret, or "mystery," the excitement fades as our attention becomes focused on the sequence of historical events, as Zaydan seems to forget the mystery. When Zaydan finally returns to unravel the mystery, usually toward the end of the novel, it is diluted and out of place. It does not involve our imagination as it would have if the whole plot had focused on the mystery and its solution. Now and then Zaydan does remind the reader of the mystery before the climax, but he does so rather haphazardly and without arousing the reader's avid interest. This is shown, for instance, in Asir al-Mutamahdi (The Captive of the Mahdi Pretender). The story opens in Cairo in 1878, the home of Ibrahim, an employee of the British Consulate, and his wife Suda. We learn that Ibrahim is nervous because of a secret connected to a certain box in his possession. Ibrahim shows his wife the box but refuses to divulge the secret of the box or the circumstances associated with it despite his wife's pleas. 36 The focus of the novel then shifts to Shafiq, Ibrahim's son, who rescues a beautiful young lady, Fadwa; they fall in love, but Shafiq's friend Aziz, an indolent and spoiled wealthy young man, tries to destroy that love to marry Fadwa himself. We also learn along the way that Shafiq uses Fadwa's father, a greedy man, and Dalila, a cunning old woman, to achieve his aim. Later in the narrative, Ibrahim opens the box because of Suda's insistence. In the box, she sees a piece of hair stained with dried blood. She pleads with her husband to tell her the secret of the piece of hair, but he refuses. 37 The story is then interrupted by Zaydan to relate the history of the rebellion of Ahmad ibn Muhammad of Dongola, who claimed to be the expected Mahdi, against the Anglo-Egyptian authorities. He writes about the military campaign led by the British general, Hicks Pasha, against the Mahdi and his followers, the Darawish (Dervishes), which ends in the total annihilation of Hicks's forces and the subsequent delegation of General Gordon to the Sudan and his murder by the followers of the Mahdi in the city of Khartoum. Zaydan continues to interpolate historical events until the very end, when we have almost forgotten the box. When he finally does divulge the secret of the hair, it is most disappointing. We anticipate that Ibrahim is the one who will reveal the secret. The secret is revealed through a letter sent by Fadwa's mother in Egypt to her husband, who is vacationing with Fadwa in Lebanon. Although the letter is not signed, we discover from its contents that Ibrahim had written it

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to his wife Suda. 38 Zaydan does not tell us how and why Fadwa's mother possessed the letter. We also have no idea why Zaydan chose to reveal the secret of the bloodstained hair through an anonymous letter and not through Ibrahim (after he found out that his sister was Fadwa's mother and that Fadwa was his niece, another "twist"). The convolution of the plot and the strained attempt to impart fictional intrigues are frustrating and deny the reader any real literary satisfaction. Zaydan's fictitious characters fit in perfectly with his purpose to teach history. They are not deeply rooted in reality. We know nothing about their skills and professions, nor are we given insight into how they feel or what they think about the people, society, or institutions of their time. They seem only to be Zaydan's means to relate the historical narrative. They are fixed characters and often are portrayed as models either of vice or virtue. As such, they resemble the characters of Salim al-Bustani. Zaydan's usual approach is to introduce his character with a description of his/her qualities so the ordinary reader easily can guess the outcome—good or bad—which will result from these generalities. This prevents the possibility of any character development and the normal unfolding of a personality. Thus, upon reading 17 Ramadan, which treats the opposition to the Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, the assassination of Ali by a Kharijite (seceder) on 17 Ramadan 41 A.H./A.D. 661, from which the novel receives its title, and the subsequent rise of the Umayyads to power, the reader discovers from the first few pages that Qatam, daughter of Shihna, son of Adi, from the tribe of Rabab, is a young woman whose beauty has become the daily talk of the people of the city of Karbala. The reader soon discovers, however, that she is bent on revenge because her father and brother were killed in the battle of the Nahrawan fought between Ali and Muawiya. 39 Another character, Lubab, we are informed, is a cunning old woman whom Qatam employs to execute her plan for avenging her father and brother. 40 This incarnation of evil is typical of the stereotypes that Zaydan constantly produces; she is hunchbacked and limps, but manages to move more swiftly than her old age might be expected to allow; her cheeks are wrinkled, her toothless mouth is sunk in her face and her weary eyes ooze with discharged mucus. We know that she is up to no good! Meanwhile, young Said, whom Lubab employs to carry out the assassination of Caliph Ali, is portrayed as a handsome and naive young man, somewhat given to personal vanity. Qatam shrewdly plays upon this weakness to extract from him a pledge to assassinate Caliph Ali in exchange for Qatam's hand. The gullible but vain Said does not realize that Qatam loathes him. 41 In al-Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid (Al-Abbasa, Sister of al-Rashid), Zaydan has the story begin with a description by the poet Abu al-Atahiya (d. 825)

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of the much discussed and highly controversial love affair and secret marriage between al-Abbasa, sister of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid and the Caliph's minister, Jafar al-Barmaki of the famous Barmaki (Barmecide) family. 42 Zaydan also provides an in-depth historical biography of Abu alAtahiya himself. He tells the reader among other things that Abu alAtahiya was known for his stinginess and for using his poetry as a means to make money through praising prominent people. He dwells upon Abu al-Atahiya's close connections to the court of al-Rashid. Al-Abbasa and Jafar, we learn, were in love with each other, but Harun al-Rashid, who was too fond of his sister, could not bring himself to let her leave the palace in order to marry Jafar. Thus, he arranged a marriage contract which would allow them to see each other, but only in his presence, denying them the opportunity to live together or consummate their marriage. Despite the jealous Caliph's wishes, however, al-Abbasa and Jafar secretly had two sons as a result of their marriage. On the day the events of our story unfold, Abu al-Atahiya happened to spend the evening at the home of Phinehas, a Jewish slave trader who provided slave girls to the Caliph's court and to rich men in Baghdad. While there, Abu al-Atahiya sees a man and a woman lead two young boys into a room in Phinehas's house. Alert to any opportunity for ill-gotten gain, Abu al-Atahiya peeps through the keyhole. He recognizes at once al-Abbasa, sister of the Caliph, and surmises that they are her sons. To avoid her brother's wrath, Abu al-Atahiya realizes, she meets secretly with them in the house of Phinehas. Having discovered what he believes to be proof of the defiance of her brother's will, Abu al-Atahiya, ever greedy, intends to blackmail al-Abbasa and Jafar. He does so, but in the end al-Rashid finds out anyway, and true to character, not only beheads Jafar but also kills his two sons. Al-Abbasa manages to escape. 43 As noted, Zaydan sometimes exaggerates by endowing his characters with extraordinary qualities. Perhaps the most unbelievable of all Zaydan's characters is Gharib in the novel al-Mamluk al-Sharid (The Fleeing Mamluk). 44 Gharib, we learn, was only eight years old when he accompanied the Amir Bashir al-Shihabi (d. 1850), whom he thought wrongly to be his father, to Egypt in 1821. Zaydan states that he looked and acted as if he were at least fifteen and portrays the eight-year-old as tall, mature, intelligent and serene, with the benefit at such a tender age of an excellent education from his private tutor, Butrus Karama (d. 1851), secretary to the Amir Bashir. Also, he would have us believe that at this age, he was an excellent horseman and fencer. 45 While in Egypt this wondrous young boy never ceased writing to his mother, describing his journey to Egypt. 46 In brief, if we accept Zaydan's description, Gharib possessed all the qualities of an exemplary young man although he was only eight years old. In al-Amin

wa al-Mamun,

Zaynab, daughter of al-Mamun, and her

slave girl, Dananir, are similarly portrayed by Zaydan as possessing rare

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qualities. Although Zaynab is only twelve years old, she, like her father, is intelligent, strong, and independent-minded. 47 She attends the private councils of her grandfather, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, in the company of his wife, Zubayda. 48 Often she enters into dialogue with her slave girl, Dananir, about astronomy, celestial bodies, and signs of the zodiac. 49 Dananir is even more extraordinary. Raised in the home of Yahya alBarmaki, she developed an interest in intellectual matters (Zaydan tells us). When Yahya decides to have Ptolemy's book al-Majest translated into Arabic, Dananir seizes the opportunity to meet the translators and discuss astronomy with them. Although Zaydan knows that few books of astronomy and medicine had been translated into Arabic at this time (latter part of the eighth century), he attempts to justify Dananir's knowledge of the sciences, especially astronomy and medicine, by having us believe that she heard them discussed in the home of Yahya al-Barmaki. 50 Dananir was not a typical slave girl looking after a prince. Every time she took al-Mamun to the palace garden to play, she brought astronomical diagrams or medical problems to ponder over and teach to the prince. Consequently, when al-Mamun came of age, we are told, he had developed a strong inclination toward learning, and he became not only a rationalist Mutazilite but a patron of learning and sponsor of translations from the Greek. 51 Islamic history does relate the talents of extraordinary women, but Dananir's intellectual sophistication is too much. Though some critics have pointed out these and other weaknesses in Zaydan's historical novels, 52 the point is that Zaydan was not obviously a historian in a strict sense but a writer of historical romance. Herein lies the key to Zaydan's continuing popularity. He was not a great novelist but an entertaining teller of historical tales.53 He had no antecedent novels or tradition to build upon except the old Arabian tales and the simple stories of Salim alBustani. Though Zaydan may not be considered a great novelist in some world sense, he revolutionized the Arab novel and paved the way for future novelists, whether they were inspired by historical themes or not. In his historical novels Zaydan did not follow strict canons of historiographical practice in his attempt to reproduce the past. His intention was to recall some of its more salient and entertaining aspects to reach a popular audience and inform them of their unknown past. This is why Zaydan's novels invoke historical events rather than minutely reconstruct and profoundly analyze them. Thus, Zaydan portrayed most of his fictitious characters as simple and fixed—being almost passive instruments for the unfolding of an already determined general historical sequence. Often, he was compelled to create fictitious characters and tie them in somehow with the real ones to lend the novel necessary excitement and adventure. He could not do this with authentic historical characters. Accordingly, in al-Inqilab al-Uthmani (The Ottoman Coup d'Etat [which brought the Young Turks to power in 1908]) the plot is based not

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only on the aforementioned "coincidence" approach but the detective-like maneuvers of the characters. Shirin, a young lady, is in love with Ramiz, a revolutionary, who attacks the Sultan's despotism. But Sadiq, an opportunist who comes from an influential Turkish family, is also in love with Shirin and connives with her father to destroy the love between Shirin and Ramiz so that he might marry Shirin. After many intrigues which take us in and out of the Sultan's palace and the company of Young Turks, Shirin finally marries Ramiz, while Sadiq is killed in the revolution of 1908.54 In his novels dealing with ancient Arab and Islamic historical themes, Zaydan's characters reflect his own understanding of those themes as they are recorded by Arab historians. Therefore, it is difficult to judge Zaydan's novels unless we understand that his passion for history was his motivating force. Zaydan's history is made alive not through the actions of his characters but through the sequence of historical events these characters relate at the behest of their creator. This is invariably true of the characters in any of his novels whether they are Hammad in Fatat Ghassan (The Young Woman of Ghassan), the queen, Shajarat al-Durr, in the novel which bears the same name, Qatam in 17 Ramadan, or Florinda in Fath al-Andalus (The Conquest of Spain). None of the major events which influenced the march of Islam to the station of a world power, as he describes them, provokes excitement or even curiosity. The pitched battle of Badr between the Prophet of Islam and his enemies, the tribe of Quraysh, the decisive battle of the Yarmuk which laid Syria open to the Arabs, the battle which opened the gates of Spain to the Muslim armies, all seem disappointingly lifeless as related by characters who parrot accounts of them like high school students. Worse, the causeand-effect relationship of these great events is entirely ignored. Since his purpose, after all, was to make the fictitious subservient to history, Zaydan was perhaps justified in sacrificing literary artistry for historical factualism. He was particularly handicapped when the facts dealing with a certain historical era or event were few. Furthermore, Zaydan is no master of style. His journalistic approach prevented a more colorful description and delivery. His excuse, after all, was that he aimed at some unsophisticated Arab readers hopelessly severed from their long history by deep cultural stagnation. Zaydan was careful, however, to reflect in all his works the moral outlook and social viewpoint of contemporary Arab society. Zaydan himself was highly moralistic and viewed love as a pure and sacred thing which must inevitably end in marriage. The lovers in Zaydan's novels meet each other and speak of love, but they never touch, hug, or kiss—this is the line drawn between pure love and cheap love. Zaydan labors hard to build up the circumstances for the meeting of unblemished lovers, but no sooner does the anxious reader gets there than

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he encounters disappointment. This is most conspicuous in his novel Arus Farghana. Young Jehan, the beauty of the city of Farghana and daughter of Tahmaz, a Persian leader, is in love with Dirgham, chief guard of the Caliph al-Mutasim. As the story unfolds with the description of Jehan's manners, dress, and most of all her enthralling beauty, our curiosity is provoked when we learn that Jehan is soon to meet her lover, whom she has not seen for some time. When the great moment arrives, we see Jehan enter a room and Dirgham stands to greet her with outstretched hands; Jehan immediately releases her hand and sits on a separate chair facing her lover. A dialogue then begins, during which Jehan asks Dirgham to forgive her for calling him her love. Dirgham answers that, to the contrary, now that she has called him "love," he finds the courage to call her "love," too. At these words Jehan bows her head in exquisite shyness, and Dirgham becomes even more enthralled, "embracing her with his eyes where he could not embrace her with his arms." 55 The moment is solemn and the lovers' talk is solemn, again. In another novel, Asir al-Mutamahdi (The Captive of the Mahdi Pretender), he describes the lovers' meeting thus: "they were careful not to touch each other's raiment out of great respect for purity and chastity." 56 This is the pinnacle of romantic love as Zaydan envisaged it, crystal-pure, lofty, and sacred. It is a romance based on the avowed devotion of lovers and their anticipation of eventual marriage. Jihad al-Muhibbin (Lovers' Struggle), published in 1893, is Zaydan's only nonhistorical novel. Zaydan intended it to show the agony of love. 57 The locale is Egypt, 1887, but the characters are Syrian émigrés whom Zaydan could more easily treat. It contains his "eternal plot," that is, love between two young people and the machinations of unscrupulous men seeking to frustrate that love, ending with the triumph of good over evil and the lovers' union. Zaydan here appears at long last to have freed himself from the restricted frame of reference attendant upon his historical novels by the creation of more rounded and believable characters. The critic Muhammad Yusuf Najm acknowledges that, "in this novel Zaydan presents his characters in their normal life, which is a step forward in the writing of a realistic novel." 5 8 The novel itself is really not too successful, but it does show that he is capable of creating believable characters. Salim, the main character, is tense, emotional and, at times, compulsive, while his friend Habib is a calm, devoted, and selfless individual who sacrifices time and effort to ensure Salim's happiness. Salma, his "girlfriend," understands Salim's fears and tries to help him. Then there is Dawud, the Alexandrian businessman casting a shadow on Salma's moral behavior because he is jealous of Salim. There is also the wicked and cunning woman, Warda, who uses the greedy Dawud and her maid Saida to

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trap Salim into marrying her beautiful daughter. Amid this miscellany of characters stands Salim's mother, a naive and simple old lady who is manipulated by the crafty Warda. 59 Zaydan's characters in Jihad al-Muhibbin display the normal strengths and weaknesses of man, his problems and pleasures. Yet they fall short of being really different in this work because of the inclusion of the same lovers' triangle as in all his works and the strict preservation of the sanctity and purity of love as Zaydan understood it. Nonetheless, the "affair" between Salim and Salma was a revolutionary social phenomenon in a conservative country like Egypt. It would be difficult to find any Egyptian writer in the year 1887 who would give his characters such a degree of social freedom as Zaydan in Jihad al-Muhibbin. We should also keep in mind that Zaydan came from Lebanon, a country which was already much influenced by Western conceptions of freedom, particularly in the defense of women, which had its origins in the pioneering work of men like Butrus al-Bustani, who as early as 1849 had written social criticism which encouraged increased freedom for women. Zaydan, influenced by this, but equally aware that he was in Egypt, not Lebanon, made all of his characters Syrian émigrés in order not to outrage the conservatives in Egypt. Egyptian writer Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr was correct when he said that in this early period, Jurji Zaydan had always been unable to use Egyptian names (characters) in a free social situation involving men and women. 60 This is also why the characters in Jihad alMuhibbin appear so detached from "real" Egyptian society and the actions so bereft of any clear sense of time and place. Apart from a cursory allusion to the pyramids or other places like Cairo and Alexandria, Zaydan's characters reveal nothing about the country of their supposed existence. Most of Zaydan's novels have happy endings, usually the marriage of the lovers, or their union after many hardships and a separation. However, he deviated from this norm in a few novels such as Adhra Quraysh, Sharl wa Abd al-Rahman, Abu Muslim al-Khurasani and al-Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid. One novel, Istibdad al-Mamalik, does not have a love story at all! Zaydan, a man of many different talents, was an historian, a philologist, essayist, linguist, biographer, sociologist, and novelist. He even wrote on natural history. His output was tremendous, and our admiration for this remarkable man must increase when we consider the fact that except a very brief period of study at the Syrian Protestant College, he was self-taught. In the field of Islamic history he did what no other writer before or since has done. His five-volume Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami (History of Islamic Civilization), which appeared in 1902, remains a classic. He was also the very first to accomplish the popularization of Islamic history through the medium of fiction. Only a man of Zaydan's intellectual caliber could have accomplished this momentous step.

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His prominence as an Arab and Islamic historian was recognized by Cairo University, which invited him to deliver a series of lectures on Islamic history. Zaydan accepted the invitation with alacrity, and within a short time he had finished writing the lectures. Unfortunately, some extremist Muslims objected vehemently on the ground that, as a Christian, Zaydan had portrayed in his work on Islamic civilization religious Muslim personalities as ordinary men. They thought this sacrilegious. They tried their utmost to denigrate the historical integrity of Zaydan. As a result Cairo University was forced to cancel Zaydan's lectures. 61 Unfortunately, Zaydan's Muslim detractors judged him as a Christian intruder who had stepped into a field of history which they believed to be exclusively the domain of Muslims. While others admired his histories and historical novels, some Muslim apologists believed, as Muhammad Yusuf Najm wrote, "it was preposterous for a Christian to enter the field of Islamic history." 62 Furthermore, these critics accused him of distorting Islamic history out of prejudice. Perhaps the severest criticism of Zaydan's historical writing was leveled by the Shaykh Amin ibn Hasan al-Madani, who wrote a book entitled Nabsh al-Hadhayan min Tarikh Jurji Zaydan (Exposing the Ravings in the History of Jurji Zaydan), Bombay, A.H. 1307/A.D. 1889. In response, Zaydan wrote a refutation of al-Madani's allegations entitled al-Radd Rannan ala Nabsh al-Hadhayan (Resounding Refutation of Nabsh al-Hadhayan), published in 1891. According to the Russian Orientalist Ignaz Kratschkowsky, most of al-Madani's criticism focused on trivial details. 63 In undertaking the tremendous task of writing Islamic history, Zaydan must obviously have found himself in a very difficult situation. The fact that he was a Christian was sufficient for many Muslims to discredit him as a biased writer. It is ironic that while some Muslims accused Zaydan for not having fully presented the excellences of the Arabs and Islam in his writings, some of his Christian compatriots condemned him for having exaggerated the excellence of the Arabs and Islam, even considering him an apostate.64 Despite the opinions of his detractors, Zaydan occupies a prominent place in the history of the Arab novel. He should be studied and judged not as a "scientific" historian, but as a popularizer of Islamic history who did his homework well. He tried to present the past to the modern Arab reader in a vivid and entertaining quasi-fictional manner. This explains his continuing appeal to many readers. The eminent Egyptian writer Taha Husayn (d. 1973), for one, expressed his own fascination with Zaydan's novels, saying that when he was young he had read Zaydan's works, becoming infatuated with them to the point that they distracted him from his study at the Azhar Mosque (the present Azhar University). 65 Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr cites several later novelists who have relied upon the stylistic devices and writing methods of Zaydan, including

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Qa'immaqam Nasib Bey in Khafaya Misr (The Secrets of Egypt), Farah Anton in Urushalim al-Jadida aw Fath al-Arab Bayt al-Maqdis (New Jerusalem, or the Arabs' Conquest of the Holy City) and Abd al-Halim alAskari in Suad, as well as several other unnamed writers. 66 At the same time, Mahmud Hamid Shawkat also shows that several other prominent historical novelists, such as Muhammad Farid Abu Hadid, Ibrahim Ramzi and Ali al-Jarim have also been influenced by Zaydan. 67 Even today, Zaydan's works are immensely popular, appealing to a wide spectrum of Arab readers. His novels have an international appeal as well, having been translated into both Western and Oriental languages. It is reported that the Russian novelist Maxim Gorki showed interest in Zaydan's novel al-Inqilab al-Uthmani, which portrayed the conspiracy of the Young Turks against their government and provoked great concern in contemporary Syria and Egypt. 68

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Zaydan symbolizes the culmination of the slow and not always steady evolution of Arabic fiction during the nineteenth century. This is not to say that with his death in 1914 there were no other writers contributing interesting works of fiction. What makes Zaydan a towering figure is the sheer volume of his work, characterized by unity of purpose and theme. While others wrote novels sporadically and then sank into oblivion, Zaydan persisted in his efforts to establish the Arabic historical novel as a viable literary genre. Today, many readers still appreciate him. Before discussing the progress of Arabic fiction during and after Zaydan's lifetime, and its ultimate attainment of a great degree of sophistication, it is important to mention the factors which interacted to make this possible. The Industrial Revolution had slowly begun to penetrate into the Middle East, with all that it had brought in its wake earlier in the West. First, a literate middle class began to emerge. Second, the mandate system which came out of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 also meant the presence of European power and its influence, for good or bad, on Middle Eastern culture. Certainly, the world of the twentieth century was shrinking. The Middle East was no longer, at least to Europeans, some exotic, faraway place mentioned in the histories of the Crusades. The twentieth century was overtaking the Middle East with a vengeance—so much so that more was accomplished in the area of Arabic fiction in the first few decades of the twentieth century than in the preceding hundred years. Arabic literature, following a general decline in late medieval times, had reached its nadir in the nineteenth century, truly a difficult time for the Arab peoples. Illiteracy was widespread, the economy was stagnant, and harsh censorship and religious proscriptions were realities. Apart from the efforts of Yaqub Sanu to make a viable literary genre of the drama, using domestic themes and characters, and those of Salim alBustani to develop the art of the novel, Arabic fiction, as noted earlier, developed in direct proportion to the influx of Western ideas and culture. 219

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Where they were paramount, as in Egypt, the advance of modern Arabic fiction went apace. It was part of a natural evolutionary process, following inexorably on that in the West, and dealing on its own terms with problems of time and place, most of which had to do with a society influenced by Western ideas. This "evolutionary" process of Arabic fiction manifested itself in the works of writers who treated social issues such as marriage, family relations, and especially love between man and woman. In matters of love, however, they were careful to choose their plots and characters so as not to antagonize a conservative society which could approve love only within the boundaries of legal marriage. To solve this problem, some writers used native characters, but transferred the action to foreign countries where extramarital relations were tolerated if not condoned. Others utilized Western characters along with native ones to show the interaction of East and West. Several writers tackled Western concepts and ideologies, e.g., socialism, which had not been treated since Salim al-Bustani discussed it in his novel Samiya. Still other writers attempted to produce native fiction patterned after Western models, but with domestic themes and settings. Unable to free themselves from conservative attitudes, however, they assailed the deleterious influence of Western civilization upon their own cultural tradition. Nonetheless, many writers of fiction began to concentrate on the analysis of characters and their interrelation with each other and with their society. But we should not lose sight of the fact that there were still some fiction writers who remained faithful to the traditional forms of Arabic fiction while modifying them with new elements. In the next few chapters, we shall examine the slow but steady progress of Arabic fiction from shortly before Jurji Zaydan to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Naguib Mahfouz. Nearly a decade before Zaydan wrote his first historical novel, alMamluk al-Sharid, Said al-Bustani wrote his story Dhat al-Khidr (A Decent Woman under Seclusion), which appeared in 1884. 1 The story takes place in the city of Alexandria. As the author and a friend are visiting a palace, the friend relates the reasons for the ruin of the family that had lived there. The palace belonged to an old man, Bahram, who had married a much younger beautiful woman, Nazik, who deserted him and married his steward, Amin. To her utter consternation, Nazik discovered that Amin was her brother and committed suicide. Apparently, the ruin of the family was caused by Nazik's desertion. The story is disjointed and poorly written. Its best feature is its description of the life and customs of country people, including the condemnation of a bribe, the observance of the first night of Ramadan, and the Zar (exorcism) seances widely practiced in Egypt. In 1892, al-Bustani published a second story, Samir al-Amirfi Lamya wa Thaqib (The Amir Samir in Lamya and Thaqib), whose setting and

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characers are Lebanese. 2 It describes the love between a prince and a common young woman. When Thaqib, son of Prince Ali, marries a commoner, Lamya, his parents object because of social incompatibility. Finally, love triumphs over parental authority despite intrigues. A second plot involves the marriage of Farida, Thaqib's sister, to her cousin—a union based on self-interest rather than love. Apparently, the author's purpose is to show the consequences of the two kinds of marriage, and the detriment caused by the parents' interference in the love relations of their children. In structure and technique, this story is no different from the first. However, the author successfully uses dialogue to portray the motives and thoughts of the characters. Three years before Zaydan wrote al-Mamluk al-Sharid, a talented young Lebanese, Jamil Nakhla Mudawwar (1862-1907), wrote Hadarat al-Islamfi Dar al-Salam (The Civilization of Islam in Baghdad). It was enthusiastically received by Ahmad Jawdat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of Education, and by Ahmad Mukhtar Pasha al-Ghazi, the representative of the Sultan in Egypt. Sultan Abd al-Hamid II favored it and offered Mudawwar a gift of money. 3 Although a work of fiction, Hadarat al-Islam cannot be considered a historical novel. It lacks the essential features of a novel, especially a conventional plot. Yet it merits mention at this time because it shows that some writers before Zaydan had presented historical facts in a fictional form. Mudawwar's book is a historical sketch depicting life in Baghdad under Harun al-Rashid, the legendary caliph of the Arabian Nights. The story is told by a prominent man from the Persian province of Khurasan who, the author says, came to Baghdad in the year 156 A.H./772 A.D., to further his study of Islamic jurisprudence under the famous jurist Abu Yusuf. Upon his arrival, the young Persian began writing his observations about life there, and about some prominent families like the Baramika (Barmecides), to a friend in Persia. He said that he had met al-Mahdi (the future Abbasid caliph) and become the tutor of his sons, Musa al-Hadi and Harun al-Rashid. When al-Mahdi became caliph, he dispatched the narrator to Persia to suppress the rebellion of al-Muqanna (The Veiled One). Returning to Baghdad after some success, the narrator found that Harun alRashid had become caliph, and so resumed his old position as consultant. In the year 186 A.H./802 A.D., the caliph sent him on a diplomatic mission to the king of the Franks (Charlemagne), to form an alliance against the Umayyads of Spain. Except for some historical facts sprinkled here and there, the chronicle is fictitious. Had Mudawwar developed a plot based on a traditional love story, the work would most likely have taken the form of a novel. According to Kratschkowsky, Mudawwar was criticized by some Islamic jurists for his misrepresentation of Islamic sciences. This led Mudawwar to seek the help of the Azhar Ulama to correct the errors in a second edition. 4

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In 1891, two years before Zaydan's social novel Jihad al-Muhibbin appeared, Alice Butrus al-Bustani, daughter of Butrus al-Bustani and sister of Salim al-Bustani, finished her novel Sa 'iba. Although Alice tackled the same problems of marriage her brother had treated twenty years earlier, following his style and technique, she tried to fathom the thoughts and intentions of her characters more deeply. Moreover, she treated the rights of women in her time with deeper insight. Young Sa'iba marries Lutfi, an army officer, instead of her profligate cousin Farid. Feeling humiliated by Sa'iba's rejection, Farid plots to wreck her marriage. Finally, her husband comes home on leave and discovers Farid's wicked actions. Despite (or because of) this he loves and cherishes his wife more than ever. The episode ends in tragedy when Farid shoots Sa'iba in the arms of her husband. Compared with the themes and techniques of many contemporary works of fiction, Alice's novel should be considered a significant step toward more sophisticated Arabic fiction. 5 Husn al-Awaqib aw Ghadat al-Zahira (Good End, or The Maid of alZahira, 1899), by the Lebanese writer Zaynab Fawwaz, continues the popular theme of love and the struggle of good and evil to determine its course. The setting is Lebanon, but the characters are drawn from the Druze community in that country. Two Druze princes, Shakib and Tamir, compete for the hand of their cousin, Princess Fari'a. As a result they are divided into two warring camps, representing good and evil. When Tamir learns that Fari'a prefers Shakib, he has her kidnapped by the wicked Sadiq. Shakib succeeeds in rescuing Fari'a with the help of her brothers Aziz and Khalid. Peace appears possible when a Bedouin chief intercedes to reconcile the antagonists. But Tamir kidnaps Fari'a again, although ultimately Shakib rescues her and marries her. The story is filled with intrigues, adventures and gang warfare. In this sense it resembles the novels of Salim al-Bustani. The events are numerous and occasionally compressed. They are also disjointed, and to maintain continuity, the author reviews what has already been said. Nevertheless, there is a certain element of suspense in her description of the cases of kidnapping, which keeps the reader anxious to know the outcome. 6 In Egypt, the renowned poet Ahmad Shawqi (1868-1932), famous for his verse dramas toward the end of the century, contributed three historical novelettes treating a combination of Egyptian and exotic characters and settings. In Adhra al-Hind aw Tamaddun al-Fara'ina (The Maid of India, or The Civilization of the Pharaohs), which appeared in Alexandria in 1897, the author combines random historical stories to treat a certain period of history. Hamilton A. R. Gibb has called the story "preposterous, not so much in plot as in the portentous supernatural machinery of magicians and sorcerers invoked on nearly every page." 7 Shawqi remained faithful to

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the traditional Arabic fictional forms; yet his pride in ancient Egyptian civilization, as evinced by the setting and characters, redeems the technique. His second novelette, Ladiyas aw Akhir al-Fara'ina (Ladiyas, or The Last Pharaoh), which appeared in Cairo in 1899, is similar, except that its settings are in Egypt, Greece, and Persia. The era in which the events took place is not identified, but we may infer that it was the period of the empire. Ladiyas (perhaps Lydia), the princess of Samos, is rescued after being kidnapped by her cousin Poris. She believes her rescuer is the Persian Prince Bahram, but in fact it is the Pharaoh Hamas (Ahmose), who marries her after killing Bahram in a duel. 8 The events are quite preposterous— especially Hamas's fight with the lion, where he vanquishes the beast, mounts it, and then flies it to his destination amid the people's shouts of praise and joy. 9 The third novelette, Waraqat al-As: Qissa Tarikhiyya (The Myrtle Leaf: A Historical Story), is set in al-Hadar (Hatra), in northern Iraq, during its occupation by the Persian King Shapur in the pre-Islamic era. 10 Nadira, the beautiful daughter of al-Dayzan, king of Hatra, betrays her father and people, and collaborates with Shapur to occupy her own city to become the queen of Persia. Since childhood she has worn a myrtle leaf as an amulet to protect her from evil and to remind her of her loyalty to her country, but she seems now to have forgotten it. One day, while she lies in bed with Shapur, the myrtle leaf falls from her nightgown. Looking down at it, Nadira suddenly realizes she has betrayed her country. Abruptly, her father appears in her bedroom to tell Shapur that she has been unfaithful to him and has had relations with his brother Azdashir. The outraged Shapur then orders Nadira killed. Like other stories of this sort, Waraqat al-As abounds with absurd events, and there is very little real history. The people's lifestyle and customs are all but ignored. The story does not even clearly portray the Hatra, who possessed a great civilization in the pre-Islamic period. Despite their technical defects, however, Shawqi's stories show the interest of Egyptian writers in their country's ancient history. They mark the beginning of the historical fiction which culminated, as shall be seen, in the writing of such novelists as Naguib Mahfouz. Shawqi's style is significant. As a poet he composes a great deal of original Arabic verse either at the beginning of chapters or in the midst of dialogues. Such verse must have attracted the attention and interest of some readers. Shawqi also uses the form of the dialogue, yet it appears pale and insipid, perhaps because he intended it to be turned into verse by someone else. He frequently uses the traditional Arabic style of rhymed prose, which in his time appealed to many readers but is now shunned as cumbersome and obsolete. Khafaya Misr (Egypt's Secrets), by the Qa'immaqam Nasib Bey, published in three volumes in 1901, follows the technique of Zaydan. The

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novel is divided into two parts, one historical and the other a love episode, very flimsily connected. Since the protagonist has the same name as the author, the novel seems to some extent autobiographical. In the historical part, the author treats the Egyptians' customs, their social behavior, and warfare. 11 While Nasib Bey portrays Egyptian history through an ancient family, the author of al-Dam' al-Midrarfi al-Masa 'ib wa al-Madarr (Incessant Flowing of Tears Over Calamities and Injuries), published in 1898, focuses on the life of a contemporary Christian Coptic family. 12 The author, who gives his name as R.G., divides his story into two distinct parts. The first shows the calamities which befall a decent Coptic family whose members have devoted their lives to charity, and the second treats the problems of the Coptic Church. In the first section, the family suffers calamity when an ungrateful guest sets fire to their house. Through the intrigues of some wicked men, the government confiscates the property of the family, which has lost the deed in the fire and thus cannot prove ownership. In the second section a benevolent character, Mughith, tries to help the family by adopting a son and two daughters who survived the fire. The son, who grows up to become a monk, enters into a lengthy discussion with a Catholic monk on religious matters and the conflict between the Coptic patriarch and one of his bishops. At the end, the author shows that reconciliation between the patriarch and the bishop will soon take place. 13 In presentation and technique, the author falls short of Jurji Zaydan. Ishq al-Marhum Mustafa Kamil wa Asma Ashiqatih (The Passionate Love of the Late Mustafa Kamil and the Names of His Mistresses) contains an exciting love plot. The author, who calls himself A.F., relates a love affair between the Egyptian nationalist leader Mustafa Kamil (d. 1908) and a neighbor orphan girl, Aziza. This miraculous love began when Kamil and Aziza were still infants. As mere babes they met, embraced, and fell in love. Initially the author insists it was not imaginary love, yet at the end he says it was only a symbolic love. Aziza represents Egypt, which Mustafa Kamil loved and fought to free from British rule. His rival in this love is an unscrupulous diplomat, Victor, who symbolizes British imperialism. Victor constantly plotted against Kamil and won Aziza's relatives to his side through bribes. The relatives, greedy and self-seeking, enticed him to marry Aziza so that they could receive more favors. The author's style and technique are simplistic, and the narrative disjointed. The first few chapters, devoted to the life and political struggles of Kamil, could be omitted from the novel without damage to the plot. Yet Kamil's symbolic love of Aziza and his struggle to save her from greedy Victor made the story palatable and entertaining in its time. 14 A similar story with a different twist is Suad (Cairo, 1927), by Abd alHalim al-Askari. While in the previous novel the rivalry over Aziza's love was between the Egyptian nationalists and the British imperialists, the

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rivalry over Suad, who also symbolizes Egypt, appears to be between the older and younger generations. An old philosopher, who represents the Egyptian philosopher and statesman Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (d. 1963), is in love with young Suad. Her family tries to separate the pair by sending her to a convent with the help of churchmen, and the philosopher flees Egypt to escape their machinations. He meets a young man (Mustafa Kamil) who also is in love with Suad, although the author does not explain the origin of their love. The young man returns to Egypt and marries Suad; thus, sentimental love apparently triumphs over reason. But Suad, unhappy in her marriage to the young man, decides to join the philosopher, who has been sentenced to death by the government. The author severely condemns Muslim and Christian religious figures alike for their attacks on the rationalistic philosophy of al-Sayyid. 15 He seems most liberal when he defends the man of letters Taha Husayn, whose book on pre-Islamic poetry was thought to be blasphemy by conservative Muslim Egyptians. The author also defends the Muslim jurist A l i Abd al-Raziq, who was condemned by traditionalist Muslims for declaring in his book al-Islam wa Usui al-Hukm (Islam and the Principles of Government) that the o f f i c e of the caliphate is not an Islamic institution endorsed by the Quran. He seems also to attack totalitarian regimes. 16 Like so many other writers of this period, the author is essentially a moralist who uses the novel to convey his own convictions. Many of the foregoing writers were fascinated by Western techniques of fiction or tried to use themes from Islamic history, as Zaydan did. But Arabic fiction assumed a new character by the turn of the century, treating Western ideas, institutions, and ideologies. The champions of this new trend were Farah Anton (1874-1922) and, to a lesser extent, his brother-inlaw Niqula Haddad (1872-1954), who dealt especially with what they considered the abominable social mores of the Middle East. Of Lebanese extraction, both men lived in Egypt, there contributing considerably to Arabic fiction and thought. Farah Anton was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, where he acquired his early education, including the French language. He was a very gifted person, noted for his unusual literary talent and great intellectual acumen.17 While a teenager he was entrusted with the responsibility of administering a charitable society of the Rum Orthodox Church in Tripoli. 18 In 1897 he moved to Alexandria and contributed many articles to different journals. Having gained some fame in literary circles, he founded the journal al-Jami'a al-Uthmaniyya (Pan-Ottomanism) on March 15, 1899, and published it for seven years. 19 He went in 1906 to the United States, where he continued to put out his journal in New York under the name al-Jami'a. He returned to Egypt and resumed the publication of his journal in Cairo in December, 1909. He suspended it the following year, but remained active as a writer until his death in 1922.

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Farah Anton was a versatile and effective writer—a journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, translator and critic. He was an indefatigable critic of the social and intellectual inertia of Arab society. No doubt his relentless efforts were the consequence of his extensive reading in Western literature, especially French literature, which had left an indelible impression. Yet Anton did not gain immediate acceptance on the contemporary literary scene, since he was so far ahead of his society in comprehending such ideologies as socialism, a system still unfamiliar to most Middle Easterners. In this regard he resembled the young Salim al-Bustani, who had discussed socialism in one of his novels some three decades earlier. Like al-Bustani, he died from overwork. Rev. Louis Cheikho put it this way: Farah Anton worked day and night until he died, a victim of his own excessive ambition.20 Anton was a social writer and ideologue, using fiction to convey his ideas on social reform and his criticism of the obsolescent institutions of Arab society. Caught between Christian belief and the doctrines of Karl Marx, between the atheism of Nietzsche and the rationalism of Ernest Renan, he found appealing the materialistic philosophy of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and even wrote a book on it. Therein, perhaps, lies the cause of his confusion and failure to distinguish the good and bad aspects of the different Western ideologies he had studied. He drew praise from the Egyptian rationalist Salama Musa and criticism from the religious traditionalist Louis Cheikho.21 In his story al-Hubb hatta al-Mawt (Love Until Death), serialized in his periodical in 1899, Anton treats social issues relating to love and faithfulness.22 The novel opens with the monk Zalanur from the Monastery of the Virgin (located on a promontory between Beirut and Tripoli) sitting one night on the seashore, contemplating the far horizon. In his company are two young men, Emile and Butrus, awaiting a ship which smuggles passengers to America. Anton, speaking through Zalanur, interpolates a lengthy account of the social and economic advantages and disadvantages of immigration to America. This is understandable when one realizes that by the turn of the century, Lebanese immigration to America was at a high level. It is significant that while Emile is seeking to better his economic condition, Butrus is seeking pleasure. Upon their arrival in America the two young men find themselves caught up in a rivalry over a beautiful woman, Mary, the only daughter and sole heiress of her wealthy father, Khawaja Bulus, who emigrated to America and succeeded in business. Emile already knows Mary, having been her tutor while she and her family were still in Lebanon. Mary likes Emile and seems happy to see him in America. Her uncle Khawaja Hanna wants Butrus, the nephew of his wife Warda, to marry Mary because she will eventually bring a substantial inheritance to Butrus, who as an immigrant would ordinarily have to labor to earn a living (71). Khawaja Hanna

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knows that Mary favors Emile, and that if she should marry him, Butrus will lose a golden financial opportunity. Mary's choice of Emile as a husband so enrages Khawaja Hanna that he turns not only against Emile but also against Mary's friend Fdoki (sic), whom he suspects of convincing Mary to marry Emile. Khawaja Hanna maliciously plots against Emile to destroy the business he has just started and to destroy his reputation within the Syrian immigrant community. Continuing his collaboration with Butrus, he conspires to kill Emile and Mary, but fails. He also plots against Fdoki, causing her to lose her job in a department store. Meanwhile, Fdoki herself falls in love with Emile, but he does not reciprocate her feeling (209-230). Soon she contracts tuberculosis and becomes gravely ill; Mary also becomes ill, and the two young women are advised to seek a more suitable climate for recovery. The plot then shifts, as all the main characters journey to Egypt, then Palestine, and finally to Beirut; from there the company travels to the Cedars of Lebanon. With all this movement Fdoki's health worsens, and she is close to death. In a melodramatic scene, she tells Mary that her end is near and asks her to take care of Emile. The two women break down in tears. As they cry, they hear ravens cawing on the trees behind them. Fdoki takes the sound as a premonition of death and moans, "Lord, into your hands I commit Emile and my own soul." 23 A few days later, the monk Zalanur and Emile's mother join the company at the cedars. Here Anton, through Emile's mother, unravels the plot, revealing that Fdoki is actually Emile's sister. Apparently his parents and Fdoki, then still a child, had been traveling to America aboard the ship Lombardia. Among the other passengers were a woman, her husband, and their young daughter. When the ship sank in the Atlantic, Fdoki's father drowned, while she was separated from her mother and was rescued by the woman passenger, whose husband and daughter also drowned. Having lost her daughter, the woman took Fdoki home and raised her as her own. Fdoki, who is in love with Emile, is naturally utterly stunned to learn that he is her brother. Unable to endure the shock, she collapses. Before she breathes her last, she draws Emile to her and kisses him, saying, "Brother, now I kiss you without fear. Live happily after me. I entrust you with your beloved Mary. Do not forget me or forget that you are the one whom I ever loved." She asks Zalanur to impart his blessing. As he does so, the ravens on the trees begin cawing more loudly. Fdoki looks at them, asking, "Have you come? Have you come?" then closes her eyes in death. Two months later, Emile and Mary are united in marriage. 24 In this simple and passionate love story, Anton, through the monk Zalanur, philosophizes on life in the world at large and the secluded life of monks within the monastery walls. Apparently, Zalanur entered the monastery to escape the wickedness of the world, but there he discovered that people like himself who shun the world eventually become disappointed

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and desire to return to it. Solitary life does not offer the peace and serenity of soul many expect. It can be boring and unfulfilling. There has to be, for most people, a golden mean between free life in the world and the monastic life of seclusion. The fact that Anton decries monastic life through Zalanur makes his criticism of it all the more telling. Anton does not seem enthusiastic about emigrating to America, as he himself had once done briefly before returning to Egypt. Through Zalanur, the author expresses his opinion that instead of going to America, people should stay in their own country to help develop it. This is a noble sentiment, but Anton should have known that most emigrants sought to escape the dire economic and social conditions in Syria under the corrupt, oppressive Ottoman rule. Moreover, after achieving success in America, most immigrants sent money home to support their families. Thus, leaving home often worked well for the immigrants and aided the economy of their native country. Anton is right, however, in showing that living in America had different effects on the "new Americans." While Mary and her family had been Americanized, Khawaja Hanna had retained the old customs of his native country. Anton believes that although no one could predict the impact of Syrian immigrants on America, their departure obviously marked an important change in the history of Syria. Like their ancestors, the Phoenicians who had settled Carthage, the Syrians would in time embrace the free land of George Washington. As Phoenicia had been the nourishing mother of Carthage, America would nurture modern Syria. To Anton, emigration is a natural phenomenon which represents healthy movement and activity; like the ancient Phoenicians, the modern Syrians are extremely active and abhor economic stagnation. 25 Anton's main concern in this novel, however, is to show that true love such as that between Mary and Emile is strong and cannot be foiled by mundane considerations or cheap intrigues. The characters, both primary and secondary, are well developed from the beginning. As the novel opens, we learn a great deal about their ideas, hopes, and actions. Some secondary characters such as the monk Zalanur and Faris, the agent of Khawaja Hanna, are dispensable. The love plot itself could be more powerful and appealing if it were not for Anton's discursive style. Moreover, the unraveling of the secret of Fdoki's real family origin is trite and unexciting. There is also some confusion about her family name; in one place she is called Fdoki Poliaco, in another Fdoki Porpaco. 26 But let us not forget that Anton, writing at the turn of the century, was following the episodic style of practitioners like Salim al-Bustani and Numan Abduh al-Qasatili. Like those writers, he employed his characters as mouthpieces for his own ideas, a method he continued in subsequent novels. It is useful to point out, further, that Anton's references to writers such as Voltaire and Victor Hugo indicate some familiarity with French

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literature. 27 Another matter of interest is that he sometimes embellishes the narrative with Arabic verse, especially that of the renowned tenth-century poet al-Mutannabi. 28 Finally, as in the West, the ravens are used as a premonition of death because of their distinctive, gloomy cawing ( n a ' i q ) ; ravens do not have a pleasant image in Arabic tradition and literature, or anywhere else, it seems. Anton's second story, al-Din wa al-Ilm wa al-Mal aw al-Mudun alThalath (Religion, Science and Possessions, or The Three Cities), which appeared in Alexandria in 1903, treats the conflicts between romanticism and realism, and between capitalism, socialism, and religion in 19th-century Europe. This is not a novel by any definition, and Anton himself admits that only for convenience was he calling the work a novel. In essence the "story" is a social, philosophical and ideological treatise about the conflict between science, money, and religion. Here Anton acknowledges that such a conflict is "European" and does not apply to the [then] current Arab society. Still, he says, he has written this work to express his curiosity and thinking about Western societies and their major preoccupations. In the introduction, Anton warns the world about the advent of the day when the powerless (the workers) become the powerful (presently the capitalists). 29 The central character, young Halim, has studied ancient civilizations. He found that ancient societies were based on force, violence, and injustice, and that the powerless people had no rights. Later he and his friend Sadiq journey to the three "cities" and meet a group of women whom they admire. Halim notices that the city of ownership or wealth stands in tumult, while the city of science is tranquil. Between them stands the city of religion, neither as boisterous as the city of ownership nor totally quiet. After some investigation, Halim discovers that the reason for the tumult in the city of ownership is the conflict between the capitalists and the workers. The workers demand a share in the capital and comprehensive social benefits. Some even demand the abolition of individual property, with wages paid to each according to his need, in conformity with Karl Marx's ideas. The capitalists reject these demands and affirm their belief in the sacred right of individual property. They further demand that measures be taken to stop socialism, and they advocate free international competition. The religious men support the capitalists, while the scientists attempt to reconcile the two opposing factions. They ask the government not to lower the status of the powerful, but to raise the powerless to the level of the powerful, by offering them education and providing them with capital to run farms and businesses, Halim attends many meetings where citizens of the three cities deliver lengthy speeches to support their own points of view, but no compromise is reached. 30 Anton recognizes that there is a socioeconomic problem which he thinks can be solved only through socialism. His is an egalitarian form of

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socialism, however, whose foundation is the nation, not the classes. He contends that class struggle is harmful to the public interest because it allows one class to dominate the others so that the working class, which is weaker than the capitalistic class, will be the loser. This will end in the destruction of the society and civilization. He then goes on to delineate the plans of moderate socialists, which are conducive to the well-being of a viable society. These plans call for an increase in wages, the reduction of the workday to eight hours for men and six hours for women and children, and the establishment of a pension fund for old and unemployed workers. Taxes levied by the government should be spent on social projects, especially those caring for disadvantaged citizens. Unfortunately, being unreasonable, the extremist workers rejected these plans and revolted against the capitalists. The result was a violent revolution where firearms were used, and the three cities became engulfed in flames. Disgusted with their actions, Anton describes the extremist workers as plunderers and murderous devils. He praises the sagacity of the moderate workers and capitalists who refuse to compromise their principles and sink to the level of the extremists. 31 Anton ends by using Halim and Sadiq as a vehicle for proposing the establishment of a new republic, based on the principles of equality, fraternity, and moderate socialism. 32 The influence of Plato's Republic and al-Farabi's Risalafi Ara Ahl alMadina al-Fadila (Epistle on the Opinions of the People of the Exemplary City) is evident. There is also a touch of Francis Marrash's allegory Ghabat al-Haqq (The Forest of Truth), discussed in Chapter 8. Anton's solution to the complicated problems of capitalism and socialism is as Utopian as his solution to the relationship between the capitalists and workers. It recalls the ideas of the Utopian socialist Robert Owen, who founded the community of New Harmony, Indiana, in the nineteenth century. The author's call for fraternity, unity and justice as a solution as a solution to complex social and economic problems echoes the slogan of the French Revolution. Another story, al-Wahsh, al-Wahsh, al-Wahsh aw Siyaha fi Arz Lubnan (The Beast, the Beast, the Beast, or A Journey to the Cedars of Lebanon, 1903) is also a philosophical and ideological treatise. It conveys the author's conviction that there is a beast in every one of us. Evil and the exploitation of the poor and powerless by the wealthy amd powerful are a part of human nature. The story relates the journey of two educated young men, Salim and Kalim, to the Cedars of Lebanon. Their philosophizing and descriptive discourse provide Anton with a mouthpiece for his own opinions. (The fact that Kalim knows English shows the effect of the Syrian Protestant College on some educated Lebanese.) It is only late in the novel that the reader comes to learn about the central scheme of the work. A Lebanese businessman, Matta Harum, has foolishly revealed his business secrets to

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a small merchant, Luqa Tamun, who then maliciously reduces him to bankruptcy. Harum then disappears, abandoning his daughter Emilia, who out of despair throws herself into the sea. She is rescued by young Yaqub Derman (popularly called Makhluf), a native of Tyre who falls in love with her and wants to marry her. She rebuffs him because he is as poor as she. Eventually, Emilia chooses to marry a rich American businessman, Mr. Caledon, and goes to live with him in America. After many years she becomes nostalgic and returns with her husband to Lebanon, where she meets her rescuer Yaqub (Makhluf) and the very same evil Tamun who ruined her father. The plot has Salim and Kalim at the Cedars at the moment of this meeting. They see an old man who looks like a beast dashing out of nowhere. Frightened, Salim attempts to shoot him, but the beastlike man begs him not to do so and leads the two young men to his cave, where he tells them his story. He says that he has been living in isolation since the beginning of the world, and in isolation he has found the real world where goodness exists. Asked why he does not move to such a place, he answers that he cannot overcome all the beasts there. He goes on to say that he once lived in the city, but the beasts in it vanquished him. Eventually, Salim and Kalim learn that this beastlike man is none other than Matta Harum, Emilia's father. Meanwhile Yaqub, who is also at the site, recognizes Emilia and tries to kill her husband, but Salim and Kalim manage to restrain him by tying him up. Emilia promises that on her return to America, she will arrange for Yaqub to come there. Meanwhile, he is interned in the Monastery of Qizhiyya, where he spends the rest of his days chanting poetry about his beloved Emilia. 33 The story, such as it is, is a socio-philosophical treatise meant to convey Anton's own ideas about human nature and good and evil. It is a warning against the "beast" of Western capitalism, which has invaded Middle Eastern countries and is ready to devour them. The characters are obviously mouthpieces for the author, discussing specific social problems. Through Salim and Kalim, Anton treats a variety of subjects. Insects, he says, prefer a spiritual rather than materialistic life. Such a view is reminiscent of the discussion concerning the cicadas between Socrates and Phaedrus in Plato's Phaedrus. He also observes that people devour each other because of pride. Furthermore, he considers the solitary life of monks and maintains that although it fulfills certain spiritual needs, it also has detrimental effects, cutting off the monks from the real world and depriving society of the labor of productive men. He goes on to tell stories about insane people, especially those who have lost their minds because of a passionate love. He further elaborates on the subject of religions and religious doctrines, and on the Cedars of Lebanon. Anton even devotes an entire chapter to a discussion of tuberculosis and the latest treatment, because one character is infected with the disease.

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Not until Chapter 11 does he touch upon the story of the beastlike Matta Harum, who philosophizes on the beast nature in everyone. Clearly Anton uses psychological analysis of his characters to reveal more explicitly the shortcomings of his society. He ends by discussing fraternal relations between people and Rousseau's ideas on education. One can hardly miss the influence of eighteenth-century romanticism on this story.34 Farah Anton's historical novel Urushalim al-Jadida aw Fath al-Arab Bayt al-Maqdis (New Jerusalem, or The Arabs' Conquest of the Holy City), which appeared in 1904, follows the same structure as the novels of Jurji Zaydan, containing two parts, one historical and the other a love story, although Zaydan's love narratives seem more cohesive and entertaining.35 The story opens with a vivid description of the Christmas festivities in Bethlehem in A . D . 636, shortly before the Arab armies occupied Jerusalem. Anton also portrays the Arabs' victory and the journey of the Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab (634-644) to receive the keys of the city from the Patriarch Sophronius. The love story concerns Esther, a beautiful young Jewess, and a young Christian, Iliyya (Elijah), who falls madly in love with her. Iliyya, a peasant from Nazareth, has come to Jerusalem to become a clergyman. When he sees the bishop strike a deacon on the face during the celebration of the Mass because he was slow in bringing him the Gospels to read, Iliyya is shocked. He cannot understand how the bishop could violate the very same gospel he preached. What disturbs Iliyya even more is the sight of a priest crying as he leaves the church. Asked the reason, the priest replies that he has been excommunicated by Patriarch Sophronius because he is a monothelite, one who believes that the divine and human natures of Christ were united in one will, contrary to the patriarch's belief that they were united in one person. Iliyya abandons the idea of becoming a clergyman because of the bishop's actions and the patriarch's intolerance.36 In Jerusalem Iliyya meets a Nestorian monk, Mikhail, who comes from Chaldea (in present-day Iraq), then under Persian rule, and becomes his disciple. In Chaldea Mikhail tried to help his parishioners by taking money from the rich and spending it on the poor. Through the efforts of villagers, he turned vast areas of useless land into collective farms where the villagers built cottages and practiced Christian socialism. However, some unprincipled people spread the rumor that Mikhail was using the money he collected from the people for his own interest. They charged that he was forming secret societies to support the Persians against the Byzantines in Syria. Mikhail was even accused of trying to establish the same type of ideal society Plato had envisaged in the Republic. Finally they accused him of espousing the heresy of Arius, who had maintained that Jesus was created by God and was not of the same divine substance as God the Father. As a result, Mikhail was driven out of Chaldea and sought refuge in Jerusalem, where he got a farm behind the Mount of Olives, paid for by

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a centurion in the Byzantine army, and left its operation to his disciple Sulayman. On this farm Mikhail lived in peace and carried out his socialist ideas and charitable work. 37 Meanwhile, Esther and her father Yaqub have come from Egypt to worship in Jerusalem. When the Christians there learn that there are Jews in the city, they become outraged, believing that no Jew should enter the city. Iliyya tries to save Esther and her father from the mob. He tells the people that there are no Jews in the city. The mob accuses him of being a Jew himself and attempts to kill him. Luckily, he is rescued by Irmiya, a "prophet" respected by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. When the true identity of Esther and her father is finally discovered, the mob wants them baptized in a public ceremony coinciding with the celebration of Christmas. Iliyya pleads with the Patriarch Sophronius to rescue them, but he refuses, saying Esther and her father were spying for the Arabs. Finally, because of Iliyya's constant pleas, the Patriarch orders that Esther be taken to the Convent of the Virgin on the Mount of Olives, to be instructed by the nuns in the Christian faith. He also orders that her father be detained until he has an opportunity to consider his fate. Iliyya goes to see Esther at the convent and falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Irmiya also has fallen in love with her. He is an eccentric character, even considered crazy. Thinking Iliyya will eventually win Esther's hand, Irmiya kidnaps her, but she is rescued and returned to the convent. Irmiya then resorts to lies to create a rift between the lovers, telling Esther that Iliyya despises her because he thinks that her father was spying for the Arabs. When Iliyya hears this falsehood, he asks a priest to seize Irmiya and punish him. But Irmiya frees himself from the priest's grip, crying, "I am an Arab. I have become a Muslim. I am not one of you any more. I do not know you." 38 Irmiya apparently professed his conversion to Islam to escape persecution by his own people. He may have thought that since the Arabs had conquered Jerusalem, he would be safer joining the conquerors. It is surprising that we hear nothing about his conversion to Islam throughout the rest of the novel. On the contrary, we find him at the end bewailing the occupation of Jerusalem by the Arabs, while reading the Book of Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah of the Old Testament. 39 Irmiya was disgruntled and indignant, and his alleged conversion to Islam was the result of his harsh treatment, not of genuine faith. As Anton rightly states, after the Arabs had conquered Christian lands, Christianity declined because many Christians, out of dissatisfaction or to escape injustice, found refuge in Islam. 40 In the chapter titled "The Sermon on the Mount," delivered by the Nestorian monk Mikhail, Anton delineates his vision of Urushalim al-Jadida (The New Jerusalem). To him the new Jerusalem is the true nature of religion (in this context, Christianity), embracing the sublime human

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ideals of love, tolerance, and freedom from theological dogmatism and rigid formalism. The Christian Church received the holy city of Jerusalem from the Jews with their rigid laws and traditions. But the Christians were supposed to transform the Jewish city into a new Jerusalem founded on the teachings of Christ, an egalitarian society where all people would live like one big family in amity and peace, regardless of race, color, or social status. Furthermore, the new Jerusalem is an ideal socialistic society where people work collectively on the land with no strife or exploitation. In this society the government's responsibility is to help the poor and force the wealthy to contribute to the welfare of the poor. To help the poor is not a charitable act but an obligation for the wealthy. This ideal Jerusalem is the one meant by Jesus when he preached around the shores of Lake Tiberias or in the fields of Galilee. In this new Jerusalem, Jesus called the people to return to a simple way of life, free from the complex problems of urban life. Old Jerusalem symbolized the mundane, the unjust, and the intolerant. It was forever torn by war and conflict. In a mournful tone, Anton, through the monk Mikhail, asks whether the new Jerusalem will accomplish what the old Jerusalem failed to do, but the question goes unanswered. 41 However, we may deduce from Mikhail's account that the Christian church was unable to create a new Jerusalem according to the lofty paradigm envisaged by Anton. It merely transformed the liberating teaching of Christ into rigid, dead formalism. In other words, the church stopped being universal; on the contrary, it became dogmatic and intolerant of any other faith. If the Christian church, as Anton says, has failed to establish a new Jerusalem or a society based on the ideals of love, social justice, religious tolerance, and egalitarian socialism, can the Muslims, under whose domination the city has now fallen, succeed where the Christians have failed? Anton answers this question through the Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab (d. 644) after he has heard Sulayman elaborate on the reasons for the failure of the Byzantine empire. Evidently, Anton has drawn his information from Montesquieu's Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734). 42 Sulayman explains that the reason for the empire's decline was the control of the state by the church, especially the monastic orders, and the religious disputes among the different Christian sects. True faith was replaced by the worship of images and icons. This had a detrimental effect on politics and weakened the empire, disrupted its unity, and made it easier for the Muslims to dominate it. Astounded by Sulayman's account, the caliph then wants to know whether the Byzantines had followed the true teachings of the Gospel. He summons Iliyya and asks him whether the Gospel stipulates monasticism, and whether it encourages people to use money for pleasures, promotes competition, and incites animosity among nations. Iliyya answers that all these things are contrary to the teachings of Christ in the Gospel. Upon hearing this reply, the

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Caliph Umar weeps. Asked why, he answers prophetically that the Byzantines failed because they violated the laws of their Gospel, and adds, "I am afraid that we will violate our laws as they violated their own, and we will suffer the same consequences." 43 Thus, like the Christians, the Muslims failed to create the new Jerusalem of Anton's ideals. Anton uses the case of the Jewess Esther to show the failure of the Church in transforming the old Jerusalem. The people of the city unjustly want to force Esther to embrace their religion. Anton defends religious freedom and shows that the Christians should not impose their own faith on other people. His tolerance is manifested in the fact that the Christian Iliyya loves Esther and risks his own life to prevent her from being forcibly baptized in a public ceremony. To Anton, true religion means seeking the truth. In a lengthy conversation between Iliyya and Esther, Anton attempts to separate dogmatism from religious truth. The people who tried to force Esther to be baptized in public, like the nuns who wanted to convert her to Christianity, were dogmatic. Dogmatism aside, Iliyya believes that there is still truth in the Holy Bible about God and His plan for the salvation of man. He tries to convince Esther that whether she accepts the Christian faith or not, the truth remains that the prophets of old foretold the coming of the Messiah who is Jesus, and that her people rejected and crucified Him. However, Iliyya does not condemn the Jews for not accepting Jesus as the Messiah, because they have their own interpretation of the Bible. He reasons that all people are the creation of God and are subject to His dispensation. He concludes that the collapse of the old Jewish Jerusalem and the rise of the new Christian Jerusalem was an act of God. 44 The story reveals Anton's own idea that religion is a universal belief in God. It should be the foundation of those who believe in Him, despite their different interpretations of His nature or His dealing with the world. True religion, according to Anton, should unite people of all faiths and not become a cause for hatred or conflict among them. Anton proposes the separation of church and state and the establishment of a secular society based on rationalism and human understanding. This, as we learn from the novel, is the only way to create an egalitarian society, a "new Jerusalem." The story ends with the death of the monk Mikhail, followed by the deaths of Esther and Iliyya from typhoid fever. Following her wishes, Esther is buried on the farm, between Mikhail and Iliyya. Subsequently her father confesses to being a spy for the Muslims, justifying his action on the grounds that the Christians had taken Jerusalem from his Jewish people, killed them, and forbidden them to enter the city. Now the Christians are spying on the invading Muslims, just as he had spied on the Christians. A month later he follows his daughter to the grave. Irmiya is left lamenting the occupation of Jerusalem by the Arabs. Anton closes by calling on the Eastern people, Jews, Christians and Muslims, to

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live in amity and peace on a land shared by all of them. It would be interesting to know what Anton, were he alive today, would say about the recent events in Jerusalem, a city he describes as "the capital of capitals, the ornament of life and the bride of the whole world." 45 The story is filled with events and characters who serve as vehicles for the author's ideas. Most of the chapters are nothing but lengthy accounts conveying Anton's feverish search for the truth. Therefore, as the Russian critic Kratschkowsky has observed, the form of the novel suffers overmuch from the polemical intentions of the author. 46 Obviously Anton was greatly influenced by the ideas of European Christian humanists and Utopian socialists who were struggling to cope with the socioeconomic changes caused by the Industrial Revolution, and by the ideas of the latitudinarian Andalusian Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), about whom he wrote Ibn Rushd wa Falsafatuh (Ibn Rushd and His Philosophy), published in Alexandria in 1903, and reprinted by Dar al-Farabi (Beirut, 1988). Farah Anton's last story al-Alam al-Jadid (The New World), appended to his periodical al-Jami'a (New York, 1906), consists of two parts— Maryam Qabl al-Tawba (Mary Before Repentance) and Maryam Ba'd alTawba (Mary After Repentance), which he left unfinished. The author gives a summary of the first part and promises to continue the novel later, but never does so; we are left with only the first part, which seems incomplete. The setting is Palestine, and the events take place from ten years before Christ's birth until His crucifixion. The author's aim is to show the contact of Greek and Roman civilizations with Jewish civilization and with Christianity, which had just begun to rise. It contains a thorough portrayal of the dynamics of the new world each of these civilizations intended to realize, and the progress of these dynamics throughout the Christian era, which has preoccupied the attention of men. Maryam (Mary) in this context is the shunned Mary Magdalene of the Gospels, from whom Jesus exorcised seven demons. Anton skillfully portrays the inner conflict of this harlot, her attitude toward her patrons, and their attitude toward her. Interesting are the sentiments of the young man Yusuf, whom Mary calls Rabbi (Teacher), who feels pity for Mary and may entertain the idea of saving her from a sinful life. Yusuf laments Mary's wasted beauty and youth. As he pours out his soul weeping, Mary cleverly asks him to marry her, an idea he rejects. She then scornfully tells Yusuf that he is no better than other men who wallow in self-righteousness. She fully understands what it means to be despised and humiliated. Maryam might have had a chance to be saved by the young Roman, Julius, but at the last moment he abandoned her to marry a rich woman from Jerusalem. So the Jew Yusuf is no better than the pagan Roman Julius. Both men and their like talk about morality and compassion

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but do not practice them. Their self-interest comes first, while she, surrounded by human pigs seeking only sexual fulfillment, is left like a slaughtered bird, writhing to escape the throes of pain and death. Mary's consolation, however, is that her pain and suffering in this life are the catharsis of her soul. She feels that through pain she is closer to God than other people. 4 7 Anton arbitrarily injects Roman characters to contrast Roman civilization with Jewish civilization just before the birth of Christ. Some of these characters are realistically drawn, such as Seneca the Elder and his son Lucius Annaeus, known as Seneca the Younger (4 B.C.7-65 A.D.); others are fictitious, like Cicero, whom Anton portrays as a deformed creature, not to be confused with the great Roman orator, author and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.). Anton uses these and other characters as a vehicle to convey his own ideas of the new world, which he intended to be the focal point of the novel. The three Roman personages empathize with Maryam's unhappy life and her rejection by society. Speaking to his son, Seneca the Elder blames Rome for corrupting the morals of the Jewish people. Rome, he asserts, wants to become the master of the whole world, including Palestine. The Romans have introduced their civilization into this tiny country, disrupting the life and traditions of its people. Many Jews tried to emulate Roman licentious living, but could not and ultimately became victims of mental illness and the resulting social disorder. Maryam's fallen state is but a result of the impact of Roman civilization on the Jewish people. 48 This cannot be historically true, for most of the Jews resisted Rome and its civilization and would have nothing to do culturally with the pagan Romans. The Herods were among the few who attempted to live licentiously like their Roman lords. For the Jewish common people to be morally corrupted by the Roman way of life is hard to believe. Other than Seneca's remark on corruption, we hear nothing further about the Stoic philosophy of Seneca the Younger or his dialogues, which contain moral essays, especially on Stoic passivity and peace of soul. Anton's effort to contrast the Roman and Jewish civilizations and depict their vision of the new world they anticipated is embodied in what he calls "The Sermon in the Valley," delivered by the fictitious Cicero, which takes the whole of Chapter 11 (pp. 56-82). He reminds us that in Urushalim al-Jadida he had the monk Mikhail deliver "The Sermon on the Mount," and Cicero's sermon is its antithesis. While in "The Sermon on the Mount" Anton appears as a Utopian and egalitarian socialist, in "The Sermon in the Valley" he is more like a proponent of Nietzsche's concept of the will to power, mingled with some aspects of Greek philosophy. Cicero's sermon is not strictly a discourse, but a dialogue between him and Yusuf regarding their vision of the new world. The sermon highlights the conflict between a Godless civilization represented by the Roman Cicero

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and the God-centered Jewish civilization represented by Yusuf. Yusuf maintains that his civilization is founded on a solid divine basis, with the Torah (Old Testament) serving as the strongest bond of unity among the Jewish people.The Old Testament contains the belief in one Almighty God, the source of laws intended to regulate the social life of the community on the basis of love, mercy and justice. It also contains the promise of the coming of the Messiah, who will redeem the Jewish people and restore them to their former glory. But the pagan Cicero does not see things the same way. His people have no divine book or laws; therefore, they follow what they deem necessary to expand and preserve their power. Power, not love and mercy, is the center of their civilization. Cicero, however, is not enchanted with the civilization of his own people and even feels that in a way he has rejected it. Although he feels alienated from Roman society, he does not make an effort to seek another way of life. His visit to the Jewish country may have been motivated by the search for a higher civilization than his own, but the Jewish civilization based on fatal submission to a divine power and the dominance of a priestly caste seems to him sheer superstition, no different from the Romans' rigid priestly caste. Thus, in his inner soul, he remains a true Roman who cherishes power. The fallen state of Mary Magdalene prompts his "Sermon in the Valley" in praise of power. To Cicero, the harlot Mary Magdalene is weak, and the weak have no place in society. The powerful and the fittest alone have the right to live and prosper. Away with the weak, the sick and fallen creatures, he argues, for they do not deserve pity. Let Mary Magdalene suffer, and if she is destined to perish, so be it. As for love, mercy, and compassion, they are but nonsensical sentiments which cannot sustain society. 49 Cicero's new world is thus the world where the fittest, the wholesome and the powerful will dominate. It is the world of the Superman as Nietzsche envisaged it. In this sense Cicero and Nietzsche are of the same philosophy, despite the huge gap of time which separates their generations. Cicero maintains that people were not initially created weak, but because of soft upbringing they became weak. Thus in the coming new world mankind should train people to become strong. It should unleash their human desires to full capacity because curbing these desires will be conducive to weakness, indolence, and total resignation. It is futile and harmful to equate the fit with the unfit, the active with the inactive, because doing so not only is farcical but will lead to the destruction of society. 50 Like the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, Cicero maintains that the universe is in constant flux, and change affects every aspect of life. Change and movement are the law of the universe; they constitute life, while permanence and inactivity constitute death. Nothing could describe Jewish rigidity and resignation better than Solomon's words, "Vanity of Vanities. A l l is Vain." (Ecclesiastes 1:1) "What good," says Cicero, "comes

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out of such rigidity, weakness, inactivity, and renunciation of life?" 5 1 Such philosophy is in total opposition to the new world of supermen visualized by Cicero. The Jewish world is stagnant and effete, and carries the seed of its own destruction. The world is for the active, the productive and the powerful, not for the weak, the lazy and the fatalistic. 52 Anton does not miss the opportunity to condemn, through Cicero, the stagnation of the East, by which he means the Middle East or more precisely the Arab East. He believes that it is dying from weakness, and the adherence of the Eastern people to impotent divine concepts such as love and compassion is destroying their human initiative. 53 Yusuf and Mary Magdalene are shocked to hear such audacious ideas. Yusuf thought that the Old Testament, which contains the divine dispensation of an almighty and merciful God, was sufficient to guide man's life, although he realized that other people have different beliefs. Mary Magdalene is more aggressive in opposing Cicero's philosophy. She maintains that being a fallen woman does not make her weak or dispensable. Her being a harlot is palpable proof that she is strong and can survive with the fittest. She loves money, power and lust, and possesses all the qualities which make a person powerful. Thus, she is fit to be Cicero's own disciple—not his antagonist. She is not weak but a powerful member of the new world of Cicero's dreams. 54 The main point, however, is whether Mary really has fallen because of her weakness, or because other people forced her to fall. Anton seems to use the case of Mary Magdalene to show both aspects of society, good and evil. She is like an innocent dove, ensnared and killed by a predatory snake. How then can a man like Cicero dare to exonerate the preying snake because it is strong and, at the same time, condemn the dove because it is weak and helpless? How can one absolve wicked men who step on other people to satisfy their lust for power and wealth, and condemn the meek who are their prey? 55 Anton shows that Mary Magdalene possesses the qualities of both the weak and the fittest, but leaves her case unresolved. He tells us that on hearing her logical and convincing argument, Yusuf was attracted to her mental and physical beauty. He fell deeply in love with her. Yusuf wept in her presence, telling her he did so because "he saw in her abused noble femininity an insult to womanhood." 56 He may have had a noble intention to save this fallen woman, and Mary readily put him to the test. When she asked him to marry her if he was sincere about being in love with her, he was reluctant. Yusuf said that marriage is another matter and lies outside the boundaries of their relationship. The novel ends when Yusuf walks toward the door, leaving her in dead silence. 57 Anton then promises to continue the novel in subsequent issues of al-Jami'a, but there is no evidence that he ever did. Thus, it remains incomplete. Our conclusion is that Anton wanted to have Mary meet Jesus

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and be healed, for according to the Gospel He exorcised seven demons from her. Thus the sinful woman would become wholesome, and the superman philosophy whose ultimate objective was to eliminate the weak and the sick would be overwhelmed by the divine economy of an almighty, compassionate and loving God. Further, the power and wisdom of pagan Rome would be foiled by the omnipotent God of Israel. Finally, like Anton's other novels, al-Alam al-Jadid is episodic, and the characters, as noted, are mere mouthpieces of the author. Frequently, he interpolates remarks to emphasize his ideas or to remind the reader of something previously mentioned. He also appends footnotes to explain parts of the text or refer to the sources, mainly French, from which he cites information. 58 Anton was an eclectic writer who had read French literature and philosophy extensively, but had not completely absorbed the knowledge he acquired in his short life. He was an intellectual, however, and was greatly ahead of his contemporaries with his progressive ideas. His attempt to propagate a liberal and egalitarian philosophy in a rigid and traditionalist Arab society made him a misfit. This whole novel was but an argument for the perfect world he had envisaged. Unfortunately, his religious latitudinarianism was grossly misconstrued by many Muslims, including the fair and level-headed reformer Shaykh Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), who thought that Anton had attacked Islam. Abduh wrote several articles in refutation of Anton's ideas. These articles, with Anton's sober rebuttals, were later appended by Anton to his book on Ibn Rushd (Averroes), already mentioned. Another versatile novelist is Niqula Haddad, whose w i f e Rose was the sister of Farah Anton. Niqula, a journalist and prolific writer, treated a variety of primarily sociological subjects and wrote many novels. When Anton moved to N e w York, Haddad followed him and helped publish alJami'a. Upon his return to Egypt in 1908, he wrote for the newspaper al-Mahrusa. He also contributed many stories to the series Musamarat alSha'b, by Khalil Sadiq, and wrote numerous articles for al-Muqtataf and al-Hilal.59 Like Anton, Haddad was a social writer with profound moralistic predilections. His purpose was to expose the weakness of human nature and to determine whether it is caused by sheer lust or the struggle for the survival of the fittest. Thus, he always wrote prefaces to his novels which clearly set forth their moralistic purpose.60 Haddad's literary output was so enormous that it is impossible to treat all his novels here. Those to be discussed show clearly the influence of Western themes and techniques. Perhaps his intention was to attract the attention and appreciation of Arab audiences, which regarded Western novels as superior in both theme and technique to domestic works.

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In Kulluh Nasib (All is Fate, or Kismet, 1903), Haddad treats the upbringing of young Middle Eastern women and their social attitudes before and after marriage. He presents two female characters, Eugenie and Mary, as opposite poles to represent the good and bad aspects of woman's role in society. The story begins by introducing a Syrian physician, Dawud Fadl, who has studied in England and acquired English habits. He is sober, decent, and industrious. His friend Yusuf Bey introduces him to the family of the wealthy Muhsin Khalil, who lives in Egypt. Fadl soon falls in love with Khalil's daughter Eugenie and becomes engaged to her, but soon discovers that she is a superficial young woman who is not really interested in a solid marriage. She considers a husband not a prospective life partner, but a plaything. Fadl also discovers that his friend Yusuf Bey is plotting to destroy his relations with Eugenie. Meanwhile, Fadl becomes attracted to a young woman, Mary, who serves as nanny to Khalil's daughter. Mary, an orphan raised by Lazarite nuns, is an attractive, decent, serious, responsible young woman. Fadl wants to marry her, but her social status is incompatible with his position as a physician. After many intrigues engineered by Yusuf Bey, Khalil's family accuses Mary of having relations with Fadl and dismisses her. Finally love triumphs, and Fadl weds Mary. At the novel's end, we discover to our utter surprise that Mary is Muhsin Khalil's daughter by a previous marriage. Her mother had died, and her father, who married a second wife, Sophia, sent her to the convent to be educated. Realizing that Fadl was suspicious about her background, she sought the truth about her parents from the Lazarite nuns and learned they had kept documents showing her true origin. 61 The moral tone of the novel is a dominant feature. Haddad wants to show that the upbringing of the female begins at home. Eugenie is a spoiled and superficial young woman, while Mary, who received a proper upbringing from the nuns, is responsible and understanding. The novel is filled with moral and social preaching. To make it more entertaining, the author incorporates humorous anecdotes. His style is that of the romanticists, but is more compact and free from superfluous exaggerated sentiment. Social themes, especially the defense of women's rights, were extremely popular with Middle Eastern writers. They were treated extensively by Salim al-Bustani, Numan Abduh al-Qasatili, and others, and remain to this day a primary concern of writers of fiction. It is not surprising, then, that Haddad should treat such themes in his novels. In Hawwa al-Jadida aw Yvonne Monar (New Eve, or Yvonne Monar), which appeared in 1906 and was republished in 1929, Haddad treats the subject of decent and honorable women who fall prey to unscrupulous men who seduce them and then leave them to suffer dishonor and ostracism. He laments the fact that these women are then condemned by society, while

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the real perpetrators not only go free but are tolerated and respected by the same society. His moralizing is too obvious to be ignored. On the front cover of the novel we read that the treatment of fallen women is the most important social issue presented through a love story. Haddad goes on to say that while contemporary civilization brags about liberty, equality, and fraternity, it tolerates the immoral behavior of man while condemning the same behavior in woman. Man, he says, drags the woman into immorality and leaves her alone to suffer the consequences. Where, then, is the equality in this regard? In the introduction Haddad says that he saw a Western play about the master of a house who enticed and violated the maid. When his immoral action became known, he expelled the maid while he himself remained a very respected member of society. This play motivated Haddad to treat the same theme in a novel, which he finished in two weeks. 62 The story revolves around a decent young woman, Yvonne, and her righteous parents. An unscrupulous friend of the family promises to marry her, but instead seduces her and leaves her shattered and dishonored. She is despised and rejected by her own family. After her disgrace, her seducer goes on with his usual life as a respectable gentleman. He gives no thought to his actions and feels no compunction for the destruction of an innocent. Such a blasé attitude is possible because society condemns a woman who falls by having illicit sex, but tolerates and exonerates the man, who is just as much to blame. Yvonne tries to live a decent life and forget her situation, but her past trespasses are uncovered, causing people to shun her. Yvonne remains torn between hope and despair. After a brief friendship with a prince, she falls in love with Maurice, a decent young man who truly loves her and hopes to marry her. She refuses to marry him because she does not want to connect him with her sin, believing that she does not deserve him. She writes romantic, passionate letters to Maurice telling him that though she loves him dearly, she cannot marry him. She reminds him that when a woman caught in sin was brought to Jesus in the temple, He did not condemn her but asked her to go and sin no more, and asks Maurice whether he would do the same. Maurice loves her, but finds that marrying her is impossible. Instead, he becomes engaged to a beautiful young woman, Mary Martal, who has lost her parents and lives with her uncle. Mary, knowing of the love between Maurice and Yvonne, asks her to release Maurice for her sake. In a passionate love letter to Maurice, Yvonne finally confesses shortly before her death that Mary is her daughter, born out of wedlock. Hearing this truth from Yvonne's own lips on her deathbed, Maurice assures her that he loves her and Mary. The story ends with Yvonne's death and the marriage of Maurice and Mary. 63 The novel drew both praise and criticism. Dr. Shibli Shumayyil (d. 1917) praised it for the author's ability to treat a moral and social problem, ending his review with a line of poetry saying that woman becomes a

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demon if corrupted, but an angel if reformed by man. Jurji Zaydan praised the author for his fascinating portrayal of Yvonne's inner emotions. Critics claimed that the author had imitated Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and La Dame aux camelias, by Dumas fils. To challenge his critics, the author appended the ideas of these writers, with his own rebuttal, to the text of the novel. 64 The ideas of these latter critics are correct. In plot and characterization, Haddad's work is like a Western novel. The setting, partly in Egypt, is artificially imposed on the action. Until this very day, as when Haddad wrote his novel, Middle Eastern societies look with contempt on the woman who engages in illicit sex and condone her punishment by death. Middle Eastern men take great pride in killing female relatives who commit illicit sexual acts. They are widely hailed as heroes who have washed away the stains of their dishonor. Some Middle Eastern penal codes treat the man who kills such a woman not as a perpetrator of a major crime punishable by death, but as a petty criminal deserving only a light sentence. Indeed, the perpetrator is often set free. In brief, Haddad sounds more like an eighteenth-century European romantic writer than a Middle Easterner. However, the novel is well crafted and free from superfluous interpolations or unnecessary details. The plot is tight-knit. The author's dexterous use of dialogue and epistolary style illustrates the innermost feelings of the wounded soul of Yvonne, who must struggle with her painful predicament alone. Haddad's style is economical and his technique consummate. In sum, his tone is more Western than Middle Eastern. Haddad's Asrar Misr (Egypt's Secrets, 1906) reads more like a Western detective story, though social and family-oriented themes still predominate. Prince Ibrahim, a wealthy man, has two children—a son, Na'im, and a daughter, Nimat. After his wife's death he marries a Turkish widow who also has a son, Asim, and a daughter, Bahjat. After Asim grows up, Prince Ibrahim entrusts him with administering his estate. But Asim realizes that he and his sister cannot be the prince's heirs because they are not his offspring. Asim concocts a plan to gain part of the estate: he himself will marry Nimat, and in turn he will give his sister in marriage to Na'im, the prince's son. The plan fails because Na'im is in love with a young Austrian woman, Josephine, whom he later marries; moreover, Nimat does not love him, but rather the young and handsome Ahmad Nazim Bey, whom she finally marries. Frustrated, Asim goes on to plot against almost everyone in the family. As the story unfolds, we learn that Nimat was previously married to Prince Zafir and had a daughter named Mary, who upon her birth disappeared under peculiar circumstances. The same fate befell Yusuf, the son of Na'im and Josephine. After a series of bizarre adventures, including Mary and Yusuf's visit to a convent and the intrigues of Asim with a character

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named Santorli, a beautiful Frenchwoman, and an Italian thug, the characters meet in Egypt. Here, like Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot, Ahmad Nazim Bey deciphers the mystery of each character. Asrar Misr ends with the reunions of Na'im with Josephine and Ahmad Nazim with Nimat, and the marriage of Yusuf and Mary. Because of his failed stratagems, Asim is ultimately rejected by his family. 65 The effect of Western detective stories on Haddad is obvious and not at all surprising, as he translated many such works. As in his earlier novel, the Egyptian setting is artificially imposed on the plot to impart domestic flavor. Most of the bizarre events could not have taken place in a conservative Egyptian society, and were intended primarily to titillate his semiliterate audience. Haddad continues his moralization and use of foreign characters in an Egyptian setting in Adam al-Jadid (The New Adam, 1924-1925). The novelty of this story is that the characters, members of the Syrian Khizami family, meet each other incognito in Egypt, where their true identities are finally revealed. The narrator is Yusuf al-Baraq, a young man educated in Europe. On returning to Egypt, he works for the American Bank and later for a cigarette manufacturer. He becomes involved in an accident when he tries to rescue a young woman attacked by a thug. Wrongly imprisoned, he meets a Greek named Georgy Agius in jail. After leaving prison, Yusuf rescues another young woman, Haifa, from her immoral aunt, who tried to force her to become the mistress of the wealthy Fahim al-Rammah, notorious for collecting mistresses. Then Yusuf falls in love with Layla, the sister of his friend Najib alMarrani, and marries her despite the rivalry of her cousin, the physician Siddiq al-Hayzali. After many adventures, perils, intrigues, and surprises, the story's mysteries begin to unfold. We discover that Georgy Agius is none other than Khalil al-Khizami, the head of the family, and Yusuf and Haifa are his children. Fahim al-Rammah is Prince Sulayman al-Khizami, Khalil's nephew; Layla is the illegitimate daughter of Ibrahim al-Khizami, Khalil's brother; and her mother is Sarah, the sister of Siddiq al-Hayzali. 66 Chance and coincidence are obviously key motifs in this novel. The chance meeting of the characters in Egypt, where their identities are finally revealed, is a manifestation of the author's fertile imagination. The kidnapping incidents recall similar events in Asrar Misr. Haddad's moral instructions are very explicit. He sets himself up like an Old Testament prophet whose mission is to warn people and guide them to the virtuous life. Moreover, the author shows leanings toward socialism, a fact which no doubt reflects the influence of Farah Anton (pp. 56-59). His style is as elegant and effective as in the previous novel. Haddad's continuing fascination with socialism is evident in his novel Fatinat al-Imberator François Joseph Imberator al-Namsa al-Sabiq (The Captor of the Emperor Francis Joseph, the ex-Emperor of Austria, 1922).

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He details the intrigues of the Austrian court and of internal politics, focusing on the socialist party in Austria, without losing track of his usual social and moral themes. 67 He returns to the theme of socialism in Al-Alam al-Jadid aw al-Aja'ib wa al-Ghara'ib al-Amerikiyya (The New World, or The Wondrous and Strange American Phenomena, 1924-25), where he superimposes socialist characters on American society while admitting that socialism has no influence on American government. Nevertheless, he makes the character of Dr. Heiman active within the socialist party, and assigns to him the role of solving the mysteries in the novel. 68 Clearly some Arabic fiction writers used foreign characters and exotic settings although they did not perfectly apply to their own society. They resorted to this device to escape condemnation by conservatives in their society, who would not tolerate anything they deemed immoral. Such a phenomenon was characteristic of all the novelists, whatever their religion and country of origin. Thus, the Egyptian writer Ahmad Rif'at in his novel al-Hasna al-Wafiyya (The Beautiful Faithful Lady, 1902) attributes the love affair of the principal character, Salah, to a cause not associated with the traditions of his society—reading the romantic novels of Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Dumas père and fils, and others. Also, Salah chose as his lover a Christian girl because he would not dare choose a Muslim female partner. 69 Another Egyptian writer, Muhammad Masud, in Ghadat alAhram (The Maid of the Pyramids, 1905) also employed mainly French characters such as Napoleon, General Kléber, Claire, and Josephine, the background being the period of the French occupation of Egypt. 70 A similar practice is seen in the stories of Yaqub Sarruf (1852-1927). Sarruf, an intellectual, a Ph.D. graduate of Cambridge University, was a pioneer journalist, publishing his own science journal, al-Muqtataf (Select). For many years he also taught mathematics and chemistry; thus, it is no wonder that his style seems more scientific than literary. Like many fiction writers of his time, he treated moral themes using foreign characters and settings. In Fatat Misr (The Egyptian Young Woman, 1905), he chose a young Christian Coptic woman and a young Englishman as the central characters of a love story.71 According to the Egyptian writer Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Sarruf's intention was to strengthen relations between the British and the Copts. 72 This may have been the case, but the author's real theme was the search for a universal world—true to any culture. He uses as a background the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 and Japan's effort to stem the Russian influence in Japan. He also vividly portrays economic activity, such as land reclamation for cotton planting in Egypt to break the American control of cotton prices, which had drastically affected the textile factories of Lancashire. The story opens in London, with Henry Brown, son of the owner of the London News, getting ready to travel with his sister to Egypt and the

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Far East. In Egypt, Henry meets a beautiful young woman, Bahiyya, daughter of a wealthy Copt, Wasif Bey. Henry considers her the ideal wife and, after returning from Japan, marries her. Though Sarruf has an entertaining tale to tell, his style is rigid, dry, without humor. Kratschkowsky observes that if Sarruf had just a touch of humor, he would remind us of the works of Dickens and Thackeray. 73 Worse, his characters rarely seem animated by human warmth. They are thinly drawn, and their portrayal suffers drastically due to the author's scientific detachment and his personal lack of intimate knowledge of Englishmen. In 1907 Sarruf published his historical novel Amir Lubnan (The Prince of Lebanon), which depicts the massacre of the Christians of Lebanon by the Druzes and Muslims in I860. 74 The causes of the massacre are complex and require a thorough investigation of the relations between the Druzes and the Christians. But it can be agreed that the most sinister cause of the butchery was the foolish decision of the Ottoman government to punish the Christians who had supported Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt when he occupied Lebanon in the 1840's. Religious and economic issues also played a role in the massacre. The second part of Sarruf's novel revolves around Sir Henry Bedmont, who has come to Lebanon in search of the remains of an ancestor killed there during the Crusades. Henry meets Princess Salma, daughter of the Shihabi Prince Abbas, and marries her. He also finds the grave of his ancestor. Despite these activities, the novel reads like a social tract depicting the life of Lebanese society in the midnineteenth century, with all its economic problems and cultural dislocations. Although the author carefully offers historical information, it could be eliminated without damaging the flow of the love story. Because he is so keen on relating historical events, he even digresses to interpolate details which interrupt some of his interruptions. For example, he treats the actions of the British Consul Wood when the Druze Prince Amin Arslan escaped from Damascus, 75 the history of the Maronite Patriarchate, 76 the extensive details of the massacre in both Syria and the Mount of Lebanon, 77 the funeral of Prince Abbas, 78 and the wedding of Princess Safa. 79 The author hastily ends his story with the marriage of Henry and his Lebanese princess, leaving the vicissitudes of other characters unresolved. Nonetheless, Sarruf succeeds in his captivating description of the massacre and his depiction of social life in Lebanon, especially the assemblies of princes. He faithfully portrays the princes' table manners, 80 the belief in magic and superstition, 81 and the marriage and funeral rites. 82 But his characters are so flat that their actions pale in contrast to the historical events. In Fatat al-Fuyyum (The Young Woman of al-Fayyum, 1908), the novel is sacrificed to the author's social and political aims. 83 He chooses the family of the wealthy Copt, Ibrahim Bey, and more unhappily his daughter Nuhza to reflect the political conditions in Egypt which led to the

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establishment of the National Party, which he summarizes from an item in an English magazine. He also dwells on a variety of factual subjects, such as the transactions at the stock exchange. 84 He preaches on moral themes, interrupting the flow of the narrative. 85 To make the narrative palatable and perhaps more exciting, he relates some frightening incidents, such as the murder of a valet, the derailment of a train, and a house fire. 86 Although his characters are stock and his narrative disjointed and boring, his account of the economic and political events is accurate and still of some relevance. In the first two decades of this century many fiction writers penned romances, historical and nonhistorical, but their work is greatly inferior to that of the earlier novelists, particularly Jurji Zaydan. As was said earlier, many of these writers chose exotic themes and settings. A typical example is Hasan Riyad's al-Fatat al-Yabaniyya (The Japanese Young Woman, 1905), which focuses on the love affair between a Japanese worker and a poor young Japanese woman. The author depicts the astonishing economic progress of Japan and declares it has surpassed England in industrial might. 87 In another romance, Izat al-Tarikh (The Lesson of History, 1905), Abd al-Qadir Hamza uses Russia as the setting and relates the subjugation by Russia of the Circassians, a people whose history he had studied. 88 In another "historical novel," Khalil Bey Sa'ada's Asrar al-Thawra alRusiyya (Secrets of the Russian Revolution, 1905), the reader expects to learn about the circumstances surrounding the unsuccessful Russian revolution at the beginning of this century. Instead, the story revolves around the adventures of Vorchakof, leader of the "nihilists," who meets a Lebanese man and relates to him his political and amorous adventures. 89 According to the Russian Orientalist Kratschkowsky, the author knew nothing about Russia or the events of the revolution,as is clear from his reference to the revolutionaries as nihilists. 90 The story abounds with implausible happenings: the culprit who saves himself by scampering across the rooftops of the houses in St. Petersburg to reach the outskirts of the city, Russian women publicly subjected to physical punishment, and rebels forced to march to Siberia. 91 In 1901 Khalil Khayyat, an editor of the New York Arabic language newspaper Mir'at al-Gharb (Mirror of the West), wrote the first volume of a romance entitled Hannibal al-Phuniqi (Hannibal the Phoenician). 92 Kratschkowsky says the name of this romance is an unfortunate choice, since the author knew nothing of the era in which Hannibal lived, the circumstances of his life, or his military achievements. Evidently the author created this fantasy to arouse patriotic feelings in his countrymen. 93 A similar romance, al-Mar'a Malak wa Shaytan (Woman is an Angel and a Devil, 1907), by Amin Zahir Khayr Allah, revolves around an ancient Greek royal family and the struggle of its members to capture the throne. 94 No specific era of Greek history is identified, however; worse yet, the novel is disjointed and replete with moral preaching. 95

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While Yaqub Sarruf concentrates on the Copts, the Egyptianized Lebanese female writer Labiba Hashim concentrates on the Druzes in the romance Qalb al-Rajul (Man's Heart, 1904). It is a love story between a Lebanese Christian, Habib Nasr Allah, and a young Lebanese Druze woman whom he rescues from death. Hashim succeeds in her faithful portrayal of the story's Lebanese setting, and her use of dialogue adds more vitality to the characters. Like Jurji Zaydan, she resorts to the device of chance to keep the reader in suspense, as with the deaths of the characters Fatina, Salma, and Yusuf. Her style is elegant, and her narrative is natural and free of unnecessary moral instruction. 96 In her novelette Shirin, published in 1907, Hashim bases the plot on an ancient love story about the Sassanid King Khosro, son of Hormizd, and an Armenian beauty, Shirin. Within this context the author offers a vivid description of the Sassanid court, the life and intrigues at the royal palace, and the cruelty of the Sassanid kings. The moral lesson for the reader is that no culprit escapes the justice of fate. 97 In Ghadat Busra (The Young Woman of Busra [present-day Aski Sham], 1911), by Amin Nasir al-Din, the events revolve around the love affair and marriage of the Druze Prince Hani al-Atrash and a young orphan woman, Zaynab. The romance deals with the enmity between the Druzes and the Sunnite Muslims, and the Druzes' loyalty to the Ottoman government. It is filled with actual events and real people in nineteenth-century Syria, which then included Lebanon. It is a melange of events, some of which were apparently gleaned from newspapers. 98 Hasna Salonik (The Beautiful Lady of Salonika [Thessalonia], 1909), by the Lebanese woman writer Labiba Mikhail Sawaya, is a historical romance about the Ottoman coup d'état and the rise to power of the Young Turks in 1908-1909. 99 It precedes Jurji Zaydan's al-Inqilab al-Uthmani (The Ottoman Coup d'État) by a year, but falls short of his craft and technique. The story concerns the Turkish family of Kamal Haydar Khan Zadeh, whose members are known for their persistent struggle for freedom. Because of adverse circumstances, however, the family has to leave Turkey proper to live in Salonika (a Greek province). Zaki is a prominent Young Turk who fights for freedom and as a result ultimately loses his life. His beloved Wasima, daughter of Zadeh, dies shortly of grief because of her loss; strangely, her maid Murjana also dies from grief over Wasima's death. The story would perhaps be more credible if it were more tightly woven. Unfortunately, it is a baffling maze filled with adventures, especially those of Zaki at sea or in Africa, which are not enough to save the work. The author presents historical facts which do not affect the love story (as in Zaydan's works), in the style of a local newspaper. For example, she records verbatim the petition submitted by the Committee of Union and Progress to the agents of foreign states (p. 64). Like many authors of her time, Sawaya intersperses the narrative with lines of verse as

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the circumstances dictate. However, she succeeds admirably in portraying the inner feelings of her characters, especially Zaki and Wasima. 100 Another woman fiction writer who treated the Ottoman coup is the Lebanese Farida Atiyya, in her romance Bayn Arshayn (Between Two Thrones), published in 1912.101 Atiyya seems more of a historian than an artist in chronicling events within the context of a love story. Her penchant for historicity shows in the anecdote concerning the affair of young Camille, a native of Tripoli, Lebanon, and the beautiful Nabiha. They are introduced early on but not until p. 121 do they meet again, by chance, aboard a French ship bound for America, where ultimately they get married. The author even makes use of an article by Shibli Shumayyil about Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, regarding medicine. 102 Adroitly using historical facts, the author depicts the sultan's brutal massacre of the Armenians. She also describes his overthrow by the members of the Committee of Union and Progress, and the installation of Muhammad Rashad as sultan in his place. Within the framework of these events the author introduces another anecdote about the Armenian Dr. Alexander and young Olga, the daughter of the merchant Orfalyan. But the narrative is disjointed, and the bestdrawn characters are historical figures such as Sultan Abd al-Hamid II. Unfortunately, she fails where Zaydan succeeded in portraying the personality of this sultan. In Dr. Alexander's delivery of the eulogy at the grave of his father-in-law Orfalyan, the author apparently forgets that he is an Armenian and not an articulate master of the Arabic language, as the novel shows him to be. 103 We conclude this chapter with al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira (Broken Wings), a novelette by Gibran Khalil Gibran which appeared in New York in 1912. Of Lebanese origin, Gibran is renowned in the West, especially America, for The Prophet and Jesus, the Son of Man. His letters to his benefactress Mary Haskell, principal of the Haskell-Dean School in Boston, reveal that Gibran thought of writing this novelette in 1908, even before she told him of her intention to send him to Paris to study art. He relates that he made a preliminary outline of the novelette that year and began writing it the following year in Paris. He also tells Haskell that he made drastic changes in the original, deleting unnecessary descriptions and adding two new chapters. It is thus no wonder that this work was dedicated to Mary Haskell. 104 Eight years after the appearance of the novelette, Gibran told Haskell why he had chosen the title Broken Wings. Before her marriage, he explained, his mother had wanted to enter a convent. He told her that if she had become a nun, he would not have come into the world. His mother replied that then he would have been an angel, and Gibran declared that he was already an angel. "If you are an angel, then let me feel your wings," his mother answered. Then she put her hands on his shoulders, as if to feel his wings, and said, "But they are broken wings." Gibran said that his mother's words had stayed in his mind ever since. 105

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If we allow ourselves to speak of "Arab romanticism," al-Ajniha alMutakassira should be regarded as its culmination. The plot is anything but complex. It is the passionate account of an adolescent's feelings for a beloved who has captivated his heart and soul. What makes this love even more intense is the desperation of one who realizes that unbridgeable chasms, i.e., rigid social customs and economic disparity, separate him from his beloved. The narrator is Gibran himself, who is eighteen when he falls in love with the lovely Salma Karama. She reciprocates his adolescent love, but destiny has other plans for the two lovers. The powerful Bishop Bulus Ghalib wants Salma as a wife for his corrupt and worthless nephew, Mansur Bey, because Salma's father Faris is rich and she is his sole heir. Salma is forced according to custom to marry Mansur, although she does not love him. For five years she lives in misery with this man; meanwhile, she meets secretly with her lover at the temple of Ashtarut (Astarte), amid the green groves in the environs of Beirut. Salma ultimately conceives, but the child dies at birth, and she herself succumbs to the throes of delivery. The lover finds himself in a hopeless situation. Unlike Goethe's Werther, who commits suicide, he simply throws himself on the grave of his beloved, shedding tears of love and bereavement. 106 Gibran's original intent was not to write a novel. In a letter to Mary Haskell in 1917, he says that he did not like reading novels, and that after starting one he could not finish it because he felt that he had already foreseen the whole plot. 107 Broken Wings is a sketch of the fiery love of an adolescent in Lebanon, where social customs and class differences based on wealth prevented him from winning his loved one. This affair sorely wounded Gibran's soul and impelled him to condemn the clerics and customs which prevent such an innocent love. Thus, we find no analysis of themes; the characters appear fully developed from the beginning and never "improve." 108 To study this novelette as a complex, well-crafted work of fiction, measured by contemporary standards of fiction writing, is to do an injustice to Gibran and his purpose in writing it. The story is highly sentimental. I still recall that when I read it at the age of thirteen, I could not help crying over the fate of the lovers. The story had such a tremendous sentimental appeal that it is no exaggeration to say almost every adolescent in the Arab countries has read it. In 1912 Gibran wrote to Mary Haskell, "Broken Wings is the central topic of Arab journals. A newspaper reports that there are two topics which occupy people today: the Ottoman-Italian war of 1912 and Broken Wings."109 He adds that "some attribute this romance to the worship of Dionysius or Astarte, which is against my principles. Some even maintain that it is anti-Christian, nihilistic, and destructive to the family." Haskell comments that all these accusations are excessive and have no relation to the book. 110

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Some writers believe that in this novelette Gibran described all the bitterness engendered by his love affair with a young Lebanese woman, Hala al-Zahir.111 He was eighteen, a student in the Maronite Hikma School, when he fell in love with Hala, who was two years older. But in letters to Mary Haskell, Gibran denies that the story is drawn from his life or that the characters are real. He says that everything in it is the creation of his own imagination. He goes on to say that he had experienced love, which opened his eyes to real life, but "there is nothing personal in this book, and I have not known any of its characters."112 In a 1912 letter to Mary Haskell, he says that Salma Karama "is half Beatrice and half Francesca."113 Despite these disclaimers, there are many similarities between the written romance and Gibran's own experience. Like Hala alZahir, Salma Karama was two years older than Gibran, and both were slender, of radiant countenance, with carob-colored hair. Just as Salma met her lover at the temple, Gibran and Hala met either in an old temple near Bsharri in southern Lebanon, or near the Monastery of Mar Sarkis, where the remains of Gibran rest today. Salma's lover asked her to leave for a far-off country; Gibran asked Hala to do the same.114 While Salma died an unhappily married woman, however, Hala al-Zahir remained single until she died, blind, in the winter of 1955. Before Gibran's body was laid to rest in Bsharri in August, 1931, a woman wearing black was seen to approach his coffin, kneel down and kiss it, and then disappear. She was Hala al-Zahir.115 Whether it was considered a well-crafted work of fiction or a factual narrative, al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira created a stir in the Arab world for both its sentimental content and its style. Gibran revolutionized Arab writing and destroyed its outward rigidity and colorlessness. He created new modes and offered expressions peculiarly his own. His novelette represents a rebellion against stale social customs which he perceived as destructive to women's freedom and the reciprocation of love. It is a denunciation of religious leaders who, like Bishop Bulus Ghalib, control the will and conscience of simple people such as Salma's father. Gibran seems to lament the fact that marriage in Lebanon was a business which was simultaneously the source of tears and laughter, and that in this affair the woman was always the loser. In moving from her father's house to that of her husband, the woman is like a piece of furniture moved from one place to another. Thus, the relationship of man and woman ends in slow death.116 Gibran may be right; he has recognized that the Middle Eastern woman is burdened by the weight of ancient socioeconomic factors and distinctions which have woven an inextricable web of inequality and degradation into her life. Having little freedom, women succumb to the willful designs of powerful men like the bishop and weak, subservient men like Salma Karama's father. Whatever its shortcomings as a work of fiction,

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al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira had a tremendous impact on prominent writers, including Mikhail Naimy, Gibran's longtime friend. After reading the romance, Naimy, who had not yet met Gibran, wrote an article in Nasib Arida's New York-based magazine al-Funun (The Arts), praising Gibran's dynamic and innovative literary style and appealing content. He saw the dawning of a bright new literary Arabic morn after a long night of desolaation and despair.117 From the foregoing we learn that fiction writers, both Syrian and Egyptian, either followed traditional themes and techniques or sometimes tried to produce fiction patterned after Western models. The latter involved the imposition of domestic themes and settings to make the works look like translated Western novels, which the reading audience regarded as more sophisticated than indigenous works. Most of these works of fiction tended toward the romantic, because of the authors' contact with European romantic fiction. By the turn of the century, however, Arabic fiction in Egypt moved slowly toward realism and the use of contemporary Egyptian themes and settings. Thus, by the 1930's Arabic fiction in Egypt had attained a great degree of sophistication in both form and content. Egyptian writers of fiction became pioneers in producing consummate and wellcrafted novels, as we shall see in the following chapters.

11 The Growth of the Egyptian Novel

The most conspicuous phenomenon we have noticed so far is that Egypt was greatly instrumental in the whole process of modernizing Arabic fiction. Arabic drama began in Lebanon with Marun Naqqash. The Arabic novel also began there with Salim al-Bustani. They came to fruition, however, not in Lebanon but in Egypt. Unlike Syria, which was under direct rule of the Ottoman government, Egypt enjoyed an autonomous status and more freedom, especially freedom of the press, under the British occupation, which began in 1882. Egypt's contact with the West further created a healthy climate for literary ideas and institutions. The opera house founded by the Khedive Ismail, for example, encouraged the rise of the drama. Egypt also appears to have been more prosperous than Syria, and the better economic opportunities attracted many Syrians, including a host of writers and translators. Finally, the establishment of Cairo University in 1908 with its concentration on the humanities, especially literature, produced a host of new native Egyptian fiction writers. While mastering their craft, these writers began gradually to break with the traditional forms of Arabic fiction and create a sophisticated native Arabic Egyptian novel. However, as we have seen in the previous chapter, most of the writers of fiction were Syrians who lived and wrote in Egypt. Influenced by Western literary themes and models, some of them still superimposed Egyptian settings on their works. Later Egyptian writers imitating and influenced by these Syrians gradually became independent and developed a well crafted native Arabic-Egyptian novel. The aim of these writers was to defend the traditional morals of their society. Also, they empathized with the miserable condition of the Egyptian fallah (peasant). They hoped that their portrayal of his condition through fiction might eventually provoke social consciousness and become conducive to improvement in his life. In their portrayal of the human

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condition of the Egyptian fallahin they preceded by a decade Muhammad Husayn Haykal, who treated the same subject in his novel Zaynab. Al-Qisas Hayat (Retaliation Is the Essence of Life), by Abd al-Hamid Khidr Albu Qurqasi, published in 1905, takes its title from Quran 2:178-79 "Men of Understanding! In retaliation you have safeguard for your lives." The author calls it a riwaya (novel) based on a true incident which took place in the town of Abu Qurqas in al-Minya province in Egypt, on October 27, 1903. With its modest size of 88 pages, it is a novelette.1 The plot revolves around the rivalry of two young men for the love of their cousin, Najla. One is Cyril Abd al-Malik al-Turabi, a profligate playboy; the other is his cousin, Ghali Ibrahim al-Turabi, whom Najla's mother, Cyril's aunt favors as a prospective husband for her daughter because of his good nature, though he is poor, uneducated, and gluttonous. Ghali becomes engaged to Najla and begins preparing for their forthcoming wedding by adding an additional room to his father's house. A young boy volunteers to help Ghali move the earth and bricks to the house, and as they work the young boy comes upon a decorated can. He opens the can and discovers that it contains candy, which he and Ghali eagerly devour. Soon they fall dead. Cyril had maliciously filled the can with poisoned candy and, to kill his rival, planted it in the place where Ghali and the boy would find it. Unfortunately, the poor innocent boy also loses his life because of this wicked act. Cyril is tried for his crime and sentenced to death. It is interesting that this romance is written by a Muslim about a love story whose characters come from a Coptic Christian family in Upper Egypt. Why a Muslim at the turn of the century should be concerned about the vicissitudes of a Christian family is not clear. The religious dichotomy between Muslims and Christians was so wide that it was extremely rare for a Muslim to write about a Christian family. This fact shows that Egyptian national identity could cut across the consideration of religion. Furthermore, the crime was so heinous and tragic that the author, despite his religion, felt motivated to record it as a novel. He intended to instruct the natives of the town of Abu Qurqas in morality. To excite the imagination of the reader, the author questions why Ghali did not wonder about the contents of the can before eating the candy. Why and how was the can planted in that particular place? The author explains that the answers are the tragic result of Ghali's ignorance and lack of education. When Ghali was eight years old, for instance, his father had wanted him to become a weaver to bring home a weekly wage; this, the author maintains, was exploitation of the boy by the father. If the father had sent him to a school to be educated, Ghali would have become enlightened and would not have let his gluttony cause such tragedy. The author argues such tragedies are caused by ignorance and goes on to advise his countrymen of the necessity and benefits of education. 2 Through the vehicle of this love story, Albu Qurqasi portrays the actual trial of Cyril, the court which tried him, the jail, the police, and witnesses.

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He records legal documents and information such as the exact place and time of the crime to support his narrative. The author also portrays the condition of the poor and the rich in the town and offers a realistic picture of their reaction to the crime. He depicts the emotional reaction of the perpetrator Cyril when he is arrested and his reaction to his death sentence. We learn that Cyril intended to convert to Islam to escape execution, or at least to gain time until some loophole could be found to annul the verdict. The author also portrays the emotions of Najla, her mother, Ghali, and the priest to show the emotional reactions of the characters and the contradictions of human actions.3 The significant part of this novelette, however, is the author's portrayal of the harsh life and suffering of the fallahin in simple and effective language. One example he gives is of the pregnant wife of a fallah; taking lunch to her husband working in the field, she suddenly feels the throes of labor. She sits by the side of the road and, without aid, delivers her baby and then, carrying the baby, continues her journey as if she had suffered no pain or distress.4 Albu Qurqasi also touches upon the sensitive subject of love and defends the right of a woman to marry the man she loves. This is a liberal idea supported by a writer whose rigid society never offered women such freedom of choice, although in the more liberal Lebanese society, writers like Salim al-Bustani and Numan Abduh al-Qasatili advocated the right of women to marry for love. Furthermore, the author criticizes archaic traditions and backward customs he considers harmful to the establishment of a healthy society. His literary style is lucid, natural, and very effective. It is free of the florid style of many writers of his time, as we see in his description of Cyril in jail. As he walks dragging his chains, stretched on a wooden board, and wearing rough dress, Cyril looks like a predator. The author says that Cyril is worse than a predatory animal because animals of the jungle have no reason, while Cyril is endowed with reason. Albu Qurqasi was among the first Egyptian fiction writers to portray the harsh life and suffering of the fallahin. Another writer, Ahmad Hafiz Awad, emphasized the deleterious influence of Western civilization on his own Egyptian traditions. In his novel al-Hal wa al-Ma'al (The Present and the Future), which appeared in 1905, he assails this influence and shows the effect of Western civilization on his characters.5 The story concerns a young Egyptian lady, Asma, whose relationships with other people reveal the evils of Western influence: she dares to read French novels, and she defies traditional Egyptian morals by greeting young men openly.6 Another writer, Mahmud Khayrat, is more deeply preoccupied with portraying the deplorable conditions and ignorance of the fallahin. His two stories: al-Fata al-Rifi (The Young Countryman), published in 1902, and

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al-Fatat al-Rifiyya (The Young Countrywoman), published in 1905, are examples of his passionate concern for the improvement of the human condition of the Egyptian peasant. 7 A lawyer by profession who had also worked at the Khedivial library and at the Ministry of Interior, Khayrat sought, by writing fiction, to bring public attention that might lead to improvement in the life of the fallah. His characters are peasants and the setting is a fallahin village. The central figures of al-Fata al-Rifi are Mustafa and Fatima, poor peasants from al-Lahun village in the administrative district of al-Fayyum. They are in love, but Mustafa is conscripted into the army and sent to the Sudan to fight the rebellious followers of the Mahdi in 1898. During Mustafa's two-year absence, a young man, Jad al-Haqq, proposes marriage to Fatima, but she rejects him. Jad al-Haqq begins to plot to win Fatima by spreading false rumors that Mustafa has lost his life in the Sudan. Since no news has been heard of him, Fatima and her father come to believe that Mustafa is dead. Fatima's father arranges her marriage to Uways, a rich but ailing young man. On the wedding day, Mustafa suddenly appears, having gained release from the army under the pretext of being the only son in the family. He reveals himself to his beloved Fatima, who is amazed that her lover is alive, and the two are united in marriage. 8 Apart from Khayrat's observations on the low state of Arabic fiction, his didacticism, and the interpolation in the text, al-Fata al-Rifi should be regarded as an authentic Egyptian novel. Here for the first time we have purely contemporary Egyptian themes, characters, and settings. Though awkward in expression and plotting, al-Fata al-Rifi does tell a straightforward and compassionate story, depicting accurately the life of the Egyptian peasants. In showing empathy with the Egyptian peasants, Khayrat preceded by almost a decade Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Zaynab, which appeared anonymously in serialized form in 1912. Khayrat's al-Fatat al-Rifiyya is also a country romance which treats domestic themes. Its major characters are peasants, and the setting is the district of Jabala in the Egyptian countryside. 9 The story is reminiscent of Moses, who chased away the shepherds and helped the daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, to water their father's flock, and finally married Zipporah, a daughter of the priest. The story begins with a lengthy prelude about life in the Egyptian countryside. It describes the scourges of the periodic cholera epidemic. Most important, it shows the condition of the peasant woman who is considered no better than an animal, and compares young women of the village and the city. The plot begins in Chapter 3, where Khayrat cites January 14, 1902, as the beginning of the romance, to give the impression that it is factual. 10 Fatayat, a beautiful young peasant woman, is at the well with other young women to draw water. They see a young man carrying a message from

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Fatayat's mother in Cairo. The young man turns out to be Jamal, son of a wealthy pasha. Fatayat immediately falls in love with Jamal, but realizes that she cannot marry him because of the incompatibility of their social status. After overcoming many intrigues by a certain Na'is and the opposition of Jamal's father, the Pasha, Fatayat marries her beloved Jamal. The author's portrayal of the beauty of country life shows the influence of the European romantic literature on Arabic fiction. 11 In his introduction Khayrat praises European fiction writers for their true depiction of nature, and for their thorough description of characters and events which represent real life. 12 His championing of pure and undefiled love is typical of the attitude of writers of his time, who were obsessed with this subject. Khayrat may not be, from our present viewpoint, an exemplary fiction practitioner. However, his treatment of the human condition of the Egyptian peasant paved the way for such writers as Muhammad Husayn Haykal. Another contemporary fiction writer, Mahmud Tahir Haqqi, uncle of the writer and novelist Yahya Haqqi, wrote Adhra Dinshaway (The Maid of Dinshaway), which was serialized in the periodical al-Minbar (The Pulpit). It was published in book form in 1906 and republished in 1964. 13 Seventy pages in length, it is more of a novelette than a full-length novel. Like Albu Qurqasi's al-Qisas Hayat, Adhra Dinshaway is based on a true event, containing a passionate depiction of the tragedy of the villagers of Dinshaway in June 1906. Several British officers were pigeon hunting in the village of Dinshaway. They did so against the will of the villagers, who raised pigeons for food. In the resulting skirmish between the officers and villagers, some villagers were shot to death and a British officer, Captain Paul, received head injuries. Trying to escape, Captain Paul could not endure the intensive summer heat, dying from exposure. In a sham trial, the British authorities charge some villagers with the murder of the captain, hanging them near their village. The tragedy aroused world opinion, causing the resignation of Lord Cromer, the British Consul. Moved by the incident, Mahmud Tahir Haqqi used this story to record the truth about the Dinshaway incident and to remind Egyptians of the enormity of this tragedy. 14 The maid of Dinshaway, Sitt al-Dar, is a beautiful twenty-year-old peasant whose father, Hasan Ali Mahfuz, is a prominent member of the village of Dinshaway. She is engaged to marry Muhammad al-Abd, but Ahmad Zayid, whom she abhors, wants to marry her. Zayid threatens to inform the authorities that Sitt al-Dar's fiancé is the one who led the attack on the British officers hunting pigeons in the village, causing the death of one of them. Intimidated, Sitt al-Dar agrees to marry him, but her father refuses when he learns about Zayid's threat. The story ends with the hanging of several villagers, including Sitt al-Dar's father, the sentencing of

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others to hard labor, and acquittal of the rest, including, surprisingly, Sitt al-Dar's fiancé, Muhammad al-Abd. Both plot and characters are based on real persons, although the author, perhaps fearing retribution by the authorities, insists that the "the whole novel is fictitious, including the dialogue and the love story." 15 Whether real or fictitious, it is a passionate story. The use of colloquial Egyptian especially adds to the intensity of the horror. Without the extensive use of dialogue the novelette would read like a journalistic report. The characters are fully developed at the outset. Their plight and helplessness in the face of the invincible power of the British authorities and the Egyptian authorities are truthfully portrayed. Upon reading the story one feels as if he were present at the trial and at the executions. Adhra Dinshaway is a powerful exposure of the abortion of justice by the British authorities and of the betrayal of innocent Egyptian peasants by such reprobates as the notorious attorney Ibrahim Bey al-Halbawi. In utter contempt of the accused villagers, al-Halbawi asked the judge to have the courtroom sprayed with perfume to eliminate the foul smell of the villagers, which had caused him indigestion. 16 Adhra Dinshaway is not "the first Egyptian novel about the fallahin, their lives and problems depicted in their own colloquial language," as the Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi states. 17 We have already seen that Mahmud Khayrat preceded Mahmud Tahir Haqqi in focusing on the human condition of the Egyptian peasants. Nor is it the "first seed which paved the way for Muhammad Husayn Haykal to write Zaynab," as Yahya Haqqi further says. 18 Yet he is right in saying that Adhra Dinshaway is a realistic portrayal of thefallah's traits, as in the case of the selfish Ahmad Zayid, who tried to wreck the lives of innocent lovers. He is also right in maintaining that the author has focused on the conflict between good and evil, and that he has displayed different types of human behavior. 19 While earlier writers concentrated on the life of the Egyptian peasantry, another writer, Salih Hamdi Hammad, was writing novels and short stories of moral bent. Hammad had been all but totally neglected by Egyptian critics until he was brought to light by the Egyptian writer Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj. 20 Hammad was a moralist whose objective in writing fiction was to inculcate public morality which he deemed essential for a viable society. He came from a middle-class background and seems to have been well educated, with a broad knowledge of classical and French literature from which he made copious translations. Some of his translations are contained in his book entitled Hayatuna al-Adabiyya (Our Literary Life.) 21 He was also well acquainted with such French writers as Pierre Loti, Lamartine, Fénelon, and many others. In 1910 Hammad published two novels, al-Amira Yara'a (Princess Yara'a) and Ibnati Saniyya (My Daughter Saniyya), together with several

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short stories contained in his three-volume work entitled Ahsan al-Qisas (Best Stories.) 22 Al-Amira Yara'a is an allegory used by the author as a vehicle to convey his moral preachment. It has no conventional plot; it is comprised of lectures by Princess Yara'a on a variety of moral and social subjects delivered to a group of Egyptian men, including Azharite shaykhs. Princess Yara'a, as presented by the author, is a highly educated woman. She is well versed in the classical knowledge of the Greeks and Romans and has a fair knowledge of European literature and poetry, including the works of Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Rousseau, Goethe, Hugo, George Sand, and many others. She has sisters who, like her, symbolize human values who have dedicated themselves to the service of mankind. They are Wisdom, Courage, Virtue, and Justice. Princess Yara'a, who has been living in Europe, explains that the reason for her coming to Egypt was to remind the Egyptians of their glorious past. She encourages them to attempt to restore that past and not accept their manipulation by other nations, and to play again a prominent role in this world. In brief, Yara'a wants to reform the Egyptian people and society through the wisdom she has received from her older sister Wisdom. Princess Yara'a does this through eleven lectures covering a variety of subjects like happiness, social amenities, perception, sentiments, reason, pragmatic life, morals and virtues, human society, happiness in the contemporary society, and life's joy and misery. The author says that these lectures are taken from the book entitled The Philosophy of Happiness by the French writer Paul Janet. 23 They comprise the entire novel and show the influence of French thought on the author and his penchant to reform society. The author, however, does mingle Western ideas with those of such Islamic writers as Mu'ayyid al-Din al-Tughra'i (d. 1121) and Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali (d. l l l l ) . 2 4 Sometimes he supports his moral argument with the traditions of the Prophet. 25 To provide continuity with the second novel, Ibnati Saniyya, he introduces Saniyya, who becomes Yara'a's disciple and later marries her nephew Prince Uqayl. Yara'a lectures Saniyya on the benefits of sound upbringing and promises that she will write down her ideas on this topic and deliver them as lectures to Egyptian women. In a footnote we are told by the author that he will incorporate Yara'a's ideas in this second novel. 26 To prepare the reader for the plot in the next novel, Hammad introduces young Adila Hanim as a foil to Saniyya. While Saniyya is presented as a model of virtue because of her excellent upbringing, Adila Hanim represents all that is evil because of bad upbringing. 27 It is interesting here that the author discusses the movies, which were novelties in his time, calling them the cinematograph. He recalls one film he had seen about two chess players, showing the effect that addiction to games has on people. The two players were so involved in their game that they were totally

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unaware that the place was on fire or that it was inundated with water as firemen tried to extinguish the blaze. The lesson he deduces from the film is that when people become addicted to a hobby, they become captives to it, to the point that they lose their senses and bring destruction upon themselves. He criticizes those Egyptians who become captives to their hobbies or habits spending most of the time in coffeehouses playing games while neglecting their civic duties and their families. 28 In discussing human society through Princess Yara'a, the author maintains that progress in any society is a natural thing and that revolutions like the French Revolution and the Ottoman Revolution (1908-1909) are a manifestation of the determination of man to generate progress and betterment of conditions in society. Hammad further discusses the ideas of socialists who are unhappy with the present condition of society, where there is no fair distribution of wealth. He criticizes their doctrine of common ownership and the vesting of power in the hands of all the people on the premise that such a doctrine is impractical, destroys individual initiative, and kills intellectual perception. The author does not condemn socialism outright but seems to accept a moderate type of socialism (something like Fabianism) which he maintains is close to the Islamic social order. 29 Unlike Hammad's earlier novel, Ibnati Saniyya has a conventional plot. It revolves around Adila Hanim, Saniyya, and her husband Prince Uqayl. Adila Hanim, portrayed as a spoiled and frivolous young woman, is envious of Saniyya because she has married the handsome and decent Prince Uqayl. Adila's agony is intensified because she is madly in love with Uqayl and will do anything to snatch him from Saniyya. After all, she is more beautiful than Saniyya and believes that she is more worthy than Saniyya to have him for a husband. Twice she follows Uqayl to Alexandria and again to Paris to separate him from his wife, but to no avail. 30 Her father, Imad al-Din Bey, denounces his daughter's bad behavior and threatens to disinherit her. Finally, he forces Adila Hanim to marry his friend Safi al-Din Bey, an old but very rich widower who lives with his only daughter, Farida. Adila's marriage to Safi al-Din is a total failure. After several amorous adventures she finally falls into the hands of Shu'ayb, an unscrupuluous married man, a drunkard and dope addict. Shu'ayb and Adila plan to kill Adila's husband so that she can inherit his wealth. Adila forges a document which makes her her husband's only heir. Then she employs Shu'ayb's maid Hanifa to care for her husband. As part of the plan to get rid of Safi al-Din, Hanifa puts poison in his food, and the old man falls violently ill. His daughter Farida immediately calls a young physician, Wasim Bey, who treats Safi al-Din and saves his life. The crime is discovered and reported to the police. Upon interrogation by the police, Hanifa makes a full confession of her crime. The case is tried by the penal court,

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which finds Hanifa, Shu'ayb, and Adila guilty of poisoning Safi al-Din and sentences them all to prison. While in jail Adila contracts consumption and is released because of illness. At home on her deathbed, she confesses her wicked behavior to those whom she has hurt, especially Saniyya, and asks their forgiveness. The novel ends with Adila's death and the marriage of Farida to the physician Wasim Bey. 31 Ibnati Saniyya is a first-person narrative by Saniyya of her memoirs. It begins with her introduction to Princess Yara'a and goes through her marriage to Yara'a's nephew Prince Uqayl and her troubles with Adila. The novel contains fifteen lectures delivered by Princess Yara'a to a group of Egyptian women. To make the novel appear realistic, the author says that Saniyya entered the elementary school in 1899 and graduated four years later at the age of fourteen. Like most young women then, she was kept at home to help her mother with household chores. In 1908 she is introduced to Princess Yara'a, attends her lectures, and then marries her nephew Uqayl. 3 2 In essence, the lectures of Princess Yara'a contain the author's ideas about the condition of women in society. These ideas include early upbringing, education, marriage and the requirements for a successful marriage, motherhood, adolescence, and old age. The lectures are freighted with educational, social, and pedagogical information, the purpose of which is to show that the education and sound upbringing of women is vital to the progress of society. However, the wisdom the author preaches is not totally his own. He admits that most of his information derives from the writings of Madame Necker de Saussure and other French sources. 3 3 The whole plot emphasizes one thing: the benefit of sound education and its impact on the life and behavior of women. Thus, the result of good and bad education and upbringing is manifested in Saniyya and Adila. While Saniyya becomes virtuous, Adila gets ever more wicked. In both novels the style of the author is lucid and free from superfluous interpolations and aphorisms. However, the fact that Hammad places many paragraphs in quotes shows that Hammad has either translated them or paraphrased them from the original sources. Hammad's work is realistic in the sense that he never indulges in sentimental and romantic portrayals of events, as do other Egyptian writers. He knows how to use the art of dialogue effectively to express the intention of the characters. This is manifest in the decision of Adila's father, Imad al-Din, to disinherit his daughter unless she returns to her senses—with one condition. Here is the dialogue: Adila and her mother simultaneously said, "And what is this condition, sir?" He answered, "The condition is that she should marry my friend Safi al-Din." Surprised, both mother and daughter said sarcastically, "That old man!" Imad al-Din said decisively, "Yes. That old man." The

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mother looked at her daughter for a moment and tried to speak, but Adila covered her mother's mouth with her hand and, turning to her father she said audaciously, "Father, I accept and will obey your order. D o whatever you wish." Imad al-Din said, "In that case the wedding contract will be signed tomorrow, and as to the consummation of marriage I will leave it up to you." Shedding bitter tears, the mother said, "Oh, what a calamity for my daughter and myself." Imad al-Din Bey said, "Hush, it is your false compassion and tenderness which caused my daughter to turn against me and forced me to . . . " 3 4

The characters are well developed from the beginning. Their actions, however, reflect the characteristics of their own social class and make them sometimes more than mere stereotypes. For example, Adila Hanim, despite her bad behavior, is lively and exciting, while Saniyya is a real bore. One must keep in mind the author's perspective: to instruct his countrymen with exemplary morals and to express his belief that education, morality, and sound social behavior are the essence of society. This is why he chose Saniyya and Adila to symbolize good and evil. The work of fiction which attracted more attention and received more study than the ones cited above is Zaynab, by Muhammad Husayn Haykal. It has been acclaimed as the finest vintage of a mature and full-fledged modern Egyptian novel. 3 5 The author, who was studying law in Paris, began writing it between April 1910 and March 1911. Parts of it were also written in London and Geneva. In 1912 the author graduated with a law degree and returned to Egypt to practice law. He was proud of writing the novel and thought that he had' opened a new vista in Egyptian literature. After some hesitation, he delivered Zaynab to the journal al-Jarida, which serialized it in 1912 and published it in book form in 1914. Haykal was reluctant to place his name on the front cover of the novel because fiction writers were not respected by the public. Therefore, the novel appeared with the title Zaynab: Manazir wa Akhlaq Rifiyya by Misri Fallah (Zaynab: Country Scenes and Manners by an Egyptian Fallah). Haykal also explains that he intentionally used the term Misri (Egyptian) with fallah (peasant) because the upper class looked down on the fallah, and he wanted the readers to realize that the fallah is just as much a respected Egyptian citizen as is a member of the upper class. It was not until 1929 that the novel was reprinted with the full name of the author. The reasons Haykal offers for concealing his name are challenged by the Egyptian writer Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, who maintains that in the week of its publication in 1912 a review of Zaynab appeared in the journal al-Bayan. If Haykal wanted his name to be anonymous, al-Nassaj argues, where and how did al-Bayan come to know that the author was Haykal himself? This does seem a little strange; al-Nassaj believes that Haykal kept his name anonymous to excite the curiosity of readers and thus to gain more publicity. 36

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The plot revolves around Zaynab, a beautiful young peasant woman, and Hamid, son of the village landlord, who is pursuing his studies in Cairo. Hamid returns to the village and falls in love with Zaynab at first sight. Zaynab flirts with him, though she is in love with the overseer Ibrahim. She is aware that Hamid belongs to the landlord class while she is a mere peasant, and that, according to tradition, she cannot choose to marry the man she loves because marriage is dictated by her father. Young and decent Hasan asks Zaynab's hand in marriage, and her father approves. A s a wife Zaynab is torn between her loyalty to her husband and her constant love for the overseer Ibrahim. Meanwhile, Hamid, according to family tradition, is supposed to marry his town-bred cousin Aziza, but Aziza's family marries her to another man. Frustrated, Hamid disappears from the scene and appears only briefly at the end of the novel. Ibrahim is drafted into the army and sent to fight in the Sudan, where he is killed. Zaynab, who can no longer endure the torment caused by her duty as a wife and the death of her lover, succumbs to consumption. On her deathbed she asks for Ibrahim's kerchief, which he had given her as a token before he left for the Sudan. She kisses the kerchief passionately and requests that it be buried with her. The first thing that strikes our attention is the similarity between the plot of Zaynab and that of al-Fata al-Rifi (The Country Young Man), by Mahmud Khayrat. The characters in both arefallahin and the setting is the Egyptian countryside. In Zaynab, Ibrahim loves Zaynab; in al- Fata al-Rifi Mustafa loves Fatima. Both Ibrahim and Mustafa are poor, and both are drafted into the army and fight in the Sudan. 37 There is also similarity between Zaynab and al-Fatat al-Rifiyya (The Young Countrywoman) in the heroines' awareness of class differences: in Zaynab, Hamid loves Zaynab but she spurns his advances because of their class difference; in al-Fatat al-Rifiyya, Fatima spurns the advances of the Pasha's son Jamal because of their class difference, but then, because of Jamal's insistence and his defiance of his father's authority, she marries him. Such similarities between the works of Khayrat and Haykal lead us to believe that they are more than accidental. Zaynab is better crafted and polished than the works of Khayrat, but its theme and descriptions of the Egyptian countryside and the life of the fallahin are not new, and the apparent esteem in which it has been held by Egyptian critics is exaggerated. According to one critic, Ismail Adham, Zaynab suffers from weak technique and therefore did not have the expected effect on the development of fiction. 38 In Zaynab the characters, except Hamid, like those of Khayrat and Mahmud Tahir Haqqi, are fully developed from the beginning, and their actions can be easily predicted. Even Hamid does not excite our imagination or curiosity. The most conspicuous thing about him is that he is a capricious lover and a philanderer and seems insincere in his love of Zaynab.

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He is a playboy more interested in fleeting, passionate affairs than in a permanent marriage. However, he is not totally deprived of the sense of virtue. He manifests pangs of remorse in confessing his sins to Masud, shaykh of a tariqa (religious brotherhood), which he acknowledges were ignoble. 3 9 Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi remarks in this context that Hamid's confession of sin is a Christian practice which shows Western influence on Haykal. 40 At this point Hamid, for no apparent reason, disappears from the scene. He reappears at the end of the narrative when he writes a seventeenpage letter to his father relating his whole career and the love episodes with Zaynab and his cousin Aziza. Hamid says that he was in love with Zaynab but was not inclined to marry her, and that he has lost her and his cousin Aziza. He continues that he has nothing to look forward to and bids his family adieu but without explaining his plans. Then he vanishes into thin air. 41 The abrupt disappearance of Hamid is a serious defect in the novel. Oddly, Hamid's letter contains a summary of the whole plot and merely reading it would spare one the time of reading the entire novel. Zaynab is a highly romantic novel written by a nostalgic young man who was studying in France. The effect of romantic French literature on him is conspicuous. His extensive romantic description of the life of the Egyptian fallah and the countryside seems at times superfluous and interrupts the narrative. There is hardly a page that does not contain a lengthy description of nature. Frequently, the author introduces unnecessary sentimental episodes into the narrative. 42 But the greatest defect of the novel, from a current point of view, is the author's unrealistic portrayal of the condition of the Egyptian peasants. Haykal presents them as a happy and contented people, despite the unfair treatment and the meager wages they received from their overlords. Some of them appear very happy to receive six piasters for several days of work. Atiyya Abu Faraj, for example, thanks God that his lot was better than that of his neighbor Mabruk Abu Said, who has suffered a disaster by losing his water buffalo. Haykal would have his readers believe that after receiving their meager wages, most of the peasants went their way extremely happy. 43 Or, consider Zaynab. She is not depicted as a barefoot peasant young woman who lives with her family in a mud hut which they share with animals. On the contrary, she is a cheerful and hard-working young woman who sleeps with the rest of the peasants in the field under the clear and starry heaven. The moonlight, spreading over them like a garment, also keeps watch on them and guards them. They find in the moonlight the same pleasure as the rich people find in their trips abroad; that is, to Europe. 44 Haykal presents these wretched peasants as creatures impervious to hard work and pain, as were their ancestors. They are so used to hard work and suffering that misfortune has become part of their nature and a hereditary

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trait. It is slavery the peasants accept with resignation. They work hard and watch the landlord steal the fruits of their labor. As for the landlord, says Haykal, he acts the same as his ancestors. He tries to preserve the tradition (of master-slave relationship) to maintain his high status. 45 This may be the lot of the Egyptian fallah whom Haykal, in his nostalgia for the Egyptian countryside, depicts during his sojourn in France. But, unlike Mahmud Khayrat and Mahmud Tahir Haqqi, who empathized with the peasants and perhaps wanted to improve their lot, Haykal was not the least concerned about the human condition of the peasants. He has beautifully described nature but failed to portray the misery of the fallah. Haykal makes us feel that this wretched creature was enjoying his miserable life. How unrealistic and absurd Haykal is can be seen when he ends his description of the laboring peasants, including Zaynab, saying, "As was their custom they arranged their food neatly to eat together, thus accomplishing the perfect meaning of socialism." 46 As one critic rightly noted, Haykal should have known that socialism is not accomplished by the peasants' eating together their poor-quality food, but by offering them wages commensurate with their work to enable them to buy a better quality of food. 47 And when Zaynab was infected with consumption and weakened by constant coughing, Haykal wants us to believe that "in these Egyptian villages, blessed with salubrious air, warmth and quiet life, one would hardly imagine that consumption exists. The villagers believe the cause is either cold or the evil eye." 48 Haykal seems to forget that despite her grief over the departure of her lover Ibrahim to the Sudan, Zaynab, like the rest of the peasants, worked like an animal. Her coming down with consumption was a natural result of inadequate diet and unsanitary living conditions. Contrary to Egyptian tradition, however, Haykal seems to deplore fixed marriages and defends marriage based on love: Zaynab blames her family for forcing her to marry Hasan and realizing that her end is near, she admonishes her mother not to force her sisters against their will because "it is a pity to do so." 49 A final note about the character of Zaynab: She appears more of a modern Western teenager than a 1910 Egyptian peasant. Not only does she enjoy a great measure of freedom, but she surrenders to the hugs and kisses of Hamid or Ibrahim in Hollywood-movie fashion. Thus, Haykal tells us that Hamid passionately hugs and kisses Zaynab on the hands, the face, the temples, and the hair. She, in return, hugs and kisses him hysterically and, placing her mouth on his, closes her eyes, almost losing consciousness. 50 We are not questioning the young woman's right to love and be loved. But is this a realistic portrayal of the behavior of an Egyptian peasant young woman in a highly traditional and conservative Muslim society, or is it influenced by Western ideas and concepts which subconsciously Haykal allows to creep into his writing? In depicting Zaynab's conflict

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between her love of Ibrahim and marriage obligations, Haykal gives the impression that there is nothing objectionable about Zaynab's flirting with her lover despite her being married. He reasons that since love is the utmost degree of happiness and losing it is unhappiness, a person experiencing both would do better to cherish every particle of happiness, in spite of established customs and people's gossip. Even if Zaynab fears God and knows that betraying her husband is wrong, Haykal, like a Western liberal humanist, reasons that the merciful God realizes her misery and knows that marriage has deprived her of happiness. He knows her past hopes and dreams of marrying the man she loves. So, if fate has frustrated her dreams, would God still punish her? Haykal further reasons that if we spend our life subject to the wiles of cruel and irrational destiny, paying attention to everything and censuring ourselves for our actions for no apparent reason, would life then be palatable, or even worth living? 51 The conclusion we draw is that Haykal, like a Western romanticist, defends love for its own sake even if it is contrary to established Egyptian social and religious traditions. In Zaynab, Haykal uses dialogue and Egyptian colloquial language but not so frequently and effectively as the author of Adhra Dinshaway. Often the events would have been more forceful and meaningful if the author had used dialogue instead of simple narrative. His romantic description of Egyptian life betrays the influence of French romantic literature. The very fact that he wrote the novel in Europe seems to have led to a nostalgic and sentimental attitude toward the deplorable conditions of the Egyptian fallah. It is as if a "Europeanized bourgeois" and not the native Egyptian Haykal were the author of Zaynab. In the period between the two world wars (1918-1939), Arabic fiction underwent substantial changes in both its themes and in its techniques. There were strong nationalistic feelings and a movement for political independence, accompanied by a cultural upheaval which affected many facets of Arab life, especially in Egypt. The revolution of 1919 symbolized the Egyptians' national struggle for political, social, and economic freedom and independence. It focused attention on the reality of Egyptian life, uncamouflaged by false expectations and the rhetoric often used by corrupt politicians. Egypt was seeking its real identity and was moved by the desire to take its rightful dignified place in the community of nations. Touched by the surging new spirit, young Egyptian writers labored seriously to create an indigenous fiction which would realistically reflect Egyptian characteristics. Romantic fiction was too outlandish and unreal a vehicle to portray life in Egypt. There was a need for a new literature based on real human actions in daily life. In other words, literature, and particularly fiction, had to undergo a drastic change if it were to live up to the objectives of the revolution. However, while Egyptian fiction writers sought their themes in Egyptian life and society, they had acknowledged

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the superiority of Western techniques to such traditional Arabic literary forms as the maqama.52 They tended to portray their society as realistically as possible, regarding the romantic outlook of their predecessors as outmoded. Among the pioneers of the new realism were Isa Ubayd, Mahmud Timur, and Mahmud Tahir Lashin. The life and literary achievement of Isa Ubayd is puzzling. Nothing is known about him except the little written by the Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi. A literary recluse, Ubayd was not part of the host of contemporary Egyptian writers and was not even known to them. Haqqi asks in bewilderment "Who is Isa Ubayd? Where is he from? Where is he? Where has he gone? Why did not he mingle with us so we might know him? Why has his literary output been interrupted, and what was his end?" 5 3 These are questions which Haqqi says have no answers. What Haqqi says, however, is that Isa Ubayd belonged to an Egyptianized Syrian Christian family, lost his father early in life and was brought up by an industrious and strongwilled mother, and that he and his brother Shihata received a thorough French education. Haqqi continues that Ubayd wrote in French an unpublished anthology of Egyptian short stories which Haqqi gives the Arabic title of Ala Difaf al-Nil (On the Banks of the Nile). Another unpublished anthology is Mudhakkirat Hikmat Hanim Ba 'd al-Zawaj (The Memoirs of Hikmat Hanim After Marriage), which Ubayd mentions at the end of his anthology Thurayya. Of his surviving writings we have two anthologies of Egyptian stories: Ihsan Hanim: Majmuat Qisas Misriyya Asriyya (Ihsan Hanim: Anthology of Contemporary Egyptian Stories), published in 1921, and Thurayya: Majmuat Qisas Misriyya Asriyya (Thurayya: Anthology of Contemporary Egyptian Stories), published in 1922. 54 Thurayya, the title story of the second anthology, is really a novelette rather than a short story because of its length, complex plot, and characters. By the beginning of the century the genres of drama, novel, and the short story were so confused that all of them were arbitrarily called riwayat (novels). When Ubayd included Thurayya within his anthology, he should have called it a novelette and not a short story. 55 He considers all forms of fiction as a riwayat since they are based on true perception and psychoanalysis. 56 The central figure of Thurayya is not, as one would expect from the title, the vivacious and voluptuous young woman Thurayya, but Wadi Naum, an eccentric and neurotic young man who has struggled since childhood to overcome adversity. Honest and hard working, yet shy and introverted, he falls madly in love with Thurayya, who is attractive and educated. Thurayya is ambitious and intends to marry for wealth and prestige. She rejects Wadi and renounces her Christian faith to marry Ahmad Bey, a wealthy Muslim Turk. Therefore, she is denounced by her family. Wadi remains firm in his love for her and cherishes the dream that one day her husband will divorce her and she will return to him.

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He travels to Alexandria to see if Thurayya is happy and doing well. He figures that she can keep her husband for a while but that her marriage will not last more than two years, after which she will be his. Hoping to win Thurayya's affection by becoming rich, Wadi opens a large shop in Cairo. Unfortunately, Ubayd leaves us in suspense, never to learn whether he achieves his dream. 57 Ubayd is obsessed with realism as the perfect method to portray life. He understands realism as the detailed and photographic description of events and emotions, as shown in his minute and sensuous description of women in their bathing suits at the beach in Alexandria. This view is also shown in his description of Thurayya when Wadi Naum meets her for the first time. She is wearing a transparent white dress reaching halfway to her knees, exposing luscious and lust-arousing white flesh. Thus, Ubayd criticizes those romantic novels which romanticize love so much that they unrealistically attribute the social ills which destroy the family, divorce and polygamy, for example, to lack of love and trust between the spouses. 58 He also seems to say that the sentimental love of Haykal's Zaynab is a strange phenomenon seldom found among "our modern illiterate young women." 5 9 Ubayd understands realism as entailing the factual portrayal of life and the profound psychoanalysis of the behavior of characters. Such a portrayal of life and people should be the ultimate objective of the novelist. In essence, Ubayd says that the novel should be a dossier containing a minute analysis of every aspect of life and characters. 60 In Thurayya, Ubayd offers an in-depth analysis of his character Wadi Naum from early childhood, when he lost his father, until he meets Thurayya at the home of her aunt Labiba. He describes Wadi's mother's struggle to provide a livelihood for herself and her son, complicated by the fact that she suffers paralysis in her right arm. Wadi becomes an apprentice to a skillful Italian carpenter, and his mother thinks that this will secure for him a good living. Wadi is a decent young man who shuns lustful pleasures, but his suppressed emotions cause him neurasthenia, for which physicians prescribe marriage as a cure. His ailment is aggravated when he meets young and voluptuous Thurayya at her aunt's home and falls madly in love with her. Thurayya, however, rejects him because he is poor and she marries a rich man. 61 Speculating that Wadi's passionate love and his rejection by Thurayya might lead to madness and even suicide, Ubayd interrupts the narrative to project his own idea about suicide. He says that Goethe was criticized for ending Werther's life by having him commit suicide, but the truth is that madness and suicide are the natural result of weak and disturbed emotions. Thus, Ubayd avers, either madness or suicide awaits the wretched Wadi if he should become unable to control his emotions. The signs of mental illness have already begun in Wadi's behavior. 62 But if Ubayd knew that his character was sliding down toward suicide, why did he leave his case unresolved without explaining his fate?

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We have no plausible answer, but the abrupt suspension of this character is a serious defect which Ubayd could have avoided. Thurayya is essentially a psychological story, crammed with technical terms and causes of man's emotional condition. Young Thurayya is French educated, independent, and in full control of her sentiments. She is a manipulator who uses the pretense of love to charm and ensnare lovers. Ubayd's portrayal of Thurayya as a free young woman shows the effect of his background as a member of a Christian community in Egypt which approved of the mingling of sexes and offered women greater freedom than did the Muslim community. She seems Westernized, gracing her speech with French or English words. 63 In every respect, she is the opposite of Wadi Naum. They are incompatible. Ubayd may have deliberately magnified the contradictions between these two characters to show his penchant for realism, manifest in the portrayal of all his characters. Most of the characters, especially Wadi Naum, are fully developed from the beginning. This shows Ubayd's conception of realism as the faithful recording of events and characters, with little space for growth or development. Although he states in the introduction to Thurayya his intention to create a genuine Egyptian fiction with Egyptian characteristics, Ubayd's characters are drawn from the Syrian community in Egypt and not from the whole range of Egyptian society, and they are merely superimposed on what the author considers an authentic Egyptian background. 64 However, Ubayd's thorough psychoanalysis of his characters and their freedom of action represents an advancement over the fictional techniques of his predecessors. While Isa Ubayd had an unflinching desire for realism, Mahmud Timur seems to combine both realism and romanticism in his writing of fiction. A prolific and versatile writer, Timur is acclaimed today as the master of the short story, and he also wrote plays and novels. 65 The fact that he came from a wealthy and literary-oriented family relieved him from the financial burden which beset other writers. His father, Ahmad Timur, was a scholar whose private library contained more than 200,000 volumes, mostly rare manuscripts, and whose literary circle was frequented by renowned men of letters. His aunt Aisha was highly educated and a famous woman poet. His brother Muhammad, who died very young, was also a writer. In such propitious circumstances, Timur had the opportunity to establish a solid foundation for his literary career. 66 Like Isa Ubayd, Timur understood realism as the true description of life and human behavior without exaggerated romantic sentiment. This does not mean, however, that he considered realism a rigid portrayal of life that militates against human feeling or imagination; it means avoiding the use of excessive sentiment and imagination. In other words the ideal writer, Timur thinks, is the one who combines realism and romanticism in his writing of fiction. 67 The study of his writings shows that Timur's realism appears mainly in the portrayal of human sentiments and their effect

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on the behavior of his characters with slight attention to the impact of society on such behavior. His projection of what he thought to be a realistic image of life in Egypt is external because of his view of realism as merely the use of Egyptian names and places with native manners, traditions, and settings. Although most of his characters are common people drawn from the various districts of Cairo or from the Egyptian countryside, with which he was very familiar, he, like Isa Ubayd, does not present a realistic view of Egyptian life and society.68 Thus, Timur says that one of his early short stories, al-Shaykh Jumu 'a, is descriptive rather than romantic in nature and that the last short story Azim, Azim (Great, Great), is an analysis of human nature and sentiment. 69 Like many contemporary Egyptian fiction writers, Timur was influenced by Western writers, especially Guy de Maupassant and Anton Chekhov. 70 But there is a question whether, like Ubayd, Timur read all or just portions of the writings of these men to adopt their techniques in his own work. What is a certainty is that, like Ubayd, Timur strove to create indigenous Egyptian fiction and to present Egyptian life as he saw it based on his own understanding of realism. This is manifest in his earliest novel, Rajab Effendi.11 In this novel Timur presents a superficial analysis of the Egyptian society, with stereotyped characters against an unchanging and unrealistic background. Had the author not stated in the introduction that this was "a contemporary Egyptian story with a simple theme the like of which is frequently repeated in our daily life, and in which I have attempted to analyze the psyche of some members of the lower and middle classes," the reader would have to guess whether the story was truly Egyptian. 72 Like Ubayd's Wadi Naum, Timur's hero Rajab Effendi is an eccentric, introverted bachelor, but extremely religious. Through an Azharite (a person who studied at the Azhar Mosque, now a university), Shaykh Abd alHayy, he establishes contact with a spiritualist, Ahmad Halajyan, an Armenian convert to Islam, who is a real estate broker in the Sayyida Zaynab district. Rajab grows obsessed with the idea of communicating with his parents, who died in his childhood, but comes to recognize that Halajyan is a charlatan. In an outburst of rage, he strangles Halajyan and is committed to an asylum for the rest of his life. 73 From the outset, Rajab's character is fixed and is given no opportunity to develop. Timur begins by defining the identity of Rajab—whether he was Rajab Effendi, Shaykh Rajab, or Amm (uncle) Rajab, as common people call him. Timur then describes Rajab's physical constitution, his age, his religious devotion, his constant chanting of the Quran, and his sweet voice. He frequently tells us that Rajab lived with his uncle, al-Shaykh Abu al-Mahasin, and attended elementary school, where his colleagues teased him for his religious devotion. His uncle wants Rajab to marry one of his daughters but he refuses. He leaves his uncle's house and lives alone in the district of Sayyiduna al-Husayn. He is cared for by Umm Nabawiyya,

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a one-eyed trash collector and a hypochondriac. Rajab seldom leaves the house except to visit Abd al-Wahhab al-Makki, a shopkeeper in Khan alKhalili, who sells rosaries and cigarette holders. Rajab is happy in his solitary life until the day a strange thing suddenly occurs and his life is totally changed. Then Timur goes on to relate the story of Rajab with Halajyan. 74 The focus in Rajab Effendi is on the hero as an eccentric individual rather than on his environment. His eccentricity is manifested in his inner conflict about whether he should visit the spiritualist Halajyan to communicate with the spirits of his parents. Not able to decide, he tries to assuage his anxiety by scribbling on the manuscript he is writing questions about the nature of God as the divine essence, and whether He is eternal, omniscient, and ubiquitous, whether it is necessary to communicate with his dead father and mother, and whether those in the afterlife are conscious of those who are still on earth. When he notices a blue fly hovering over his head, he wants to know whether it is the incarnation of his father or mother. The psychological conflict seems to exhaust him and he fails to find an answer to his queries. Finally, he scribbles on the paper with marked sadness that he must be having a bad dream or that he is mightily confused. 75 Timur offers insight into the good and bad traits of his secondary characters—Abd al-Wahhab al-Makki, the Azharite Shaykh Abd al-Hayy, and Ahmad Halajyan. We learn that Abd al-Wahhab al-Makki is ugly and he is the grandson of a nobleman from the Hijaz. Although his shop is small, it is the meeting place of people who share with him the reading of such religious books as Sahih al-Bukhari (al-Bukhari's Genuine Traditions of the Prophet), and the chanting of the Quran. 76 Shaykh Abd al-Hayy, who is Rajab's contact with Halajyan, is a fallah, so thin that he looks like a skeleton with a beard that looks like wild weeds in an arid desert. A s a student Shaykh Abd al-Hayy is a failure, but he becomes obsessed with spiritualism and the supernatural. 77 A s for Halajyan, he is an Armenian who claims to have been converted to Islam and three times made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He is completely Egyptianized and works as a real estate broker in al-Sayyida Zaynab district. When he fails in his profession, he resorts to spiritualism, which he finds as a way to make a living with little or no effort. 7 8 Obviously, Timur is more interested in his characters as mere individuals whose actions do not necessarily reflect the characteristics of society. Thus, we know a great deal about their behavior but not about their environment. This is why their portrayal as Egyptian characters seems to be external and sometimes shallow. One character, al-Mu'allim Fattuha, who has a restaurant near the mosque of al-Husayn, is unimportant except that Rajab and al-Shaykh Abd al-Hayy at one point eat at his restaurant. Timur's description of Fattuha as a tough guy and womanizer has no bearing whatever on the story. He could easily be eliminated without damaging the narrative. 79 Timur's attitude toward his characters and his detailed portrayal of their

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life and conduct reflect his understanding of realism as a detailed description of human character and behavior. He thinks that this realistic description of bizarre situations and the analysis of a mentally sick person will excite the readers and gain their approval of his work. 80 However, at times the narrative is not as forceful, entertaining, or even as gruesome as it is intended to be, and the horror-inspiring element is pale. During the final encounter of Rajab with Halajyan, for example, we are told that in one second Rajab turns from a meek lamb into a wild predator. The reason is that Rajab wants to know whether, in the afterlife, he will end up in the fire of hell or in the Janna (paradise). As he holds Halajyan by the neck, Halajyan tells him that he will be in the fire of hell. In that case, retorts Rajab, he will take Halajyan to hell with him. He keeps pressing on Halajyan's neck until he strangles him to death. The crime story is carried by the evening newspapers, which report that Rajab has been found insane. Rajab is committed to an asylum for the rest of his life, deserted by everyone except Umm Nabawiyya, who pays him a weekly visit, brings him food and sweets, and cries over his distressing condition as if she has lost a son. 81 The novel is one of Timur's earliest works of fiction and may be an imitation of Western macabre stories. However, the plot is not farfetched since there are many people, whether in Egypt or other Middle Eastern countries, obsessed with the bizarre world of Jinn (genies) and Afarit (demons), as shall be seen in Hawwa bila Adam (Eve Without Adam), by Mahmud Tahir Lashin. In his second novel al-Atlal (Life Ruins), published in 1934, which he calls "an Egyptian novel," Timur focuses on the behavioral analysis of his characters, who are drawn from the Turkish aristocracy. The author concentrates on the sexual aberration, specifically sadism, of his major characters and shows the role sex plays for various members of the same family. Sami, an orphan, lives with his brother Hamada and his childless wife in their big mansion in al-Hamzawi district. The principal of Sami's school, Muhyi al-Din Effendi, invites him to his house, and Sami falls in love with the principal's daughter, Fathiyya. His love increases as Fathiyya frequently visits his family in the company of her grandmother Hajir (Hagar). Meantime, he meets young Tahani, who also frequently visits his family with her grandmother Ijlal Hanim, and falls in love with her too. Through the enticement of the maid, Umm Khudayr, Sami begins sexual relations with Fathiyya. When his brother's wife learns of it, she informs her husband, who forbids Fathiyya to visit them any more. Fathiyya, who is pregnant with Sami's child, goes to live in a village to escape shame. Sami decides to marry Fathiyya but his brother warns him not to do so. Frustrated, Sami begins to visit the brothel run by al-Hajja Fatima to quell his sexual desire. Meanwhile, young Tahani, who was vacationing with her family in Istanbul, returns to Egypt looking more beautiful and voluptuous. Sami's brother takes Tahani as his second wife, much against his

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first wife's will. Sami, who is in love with Tahani, engages in abberrant sadistic sexual relations with her, behind the back of his brother. As he indulges in these activities, he considers killing his brother in order to have Tahani completely for himself. But Sami's brother dies suddenly, and Sami becomes agonized with guilt for not telling him the truth about his relations with Tahani. He feels remorseful and stops seeing Tahani, and goes to the village to search for Fathiyya. At the village he is told that she has died, leaving a son. Sami learns that the son is his and finally he finds the child. Also, he stops visiting the brothel and desires to lead a new life. He feels as if a strong hand has lifted him up from the atlal (ruins) of his old life and has hurled him into a new life. 82 Al-Atlal is about characters who represent a narrow social segment of an Egyptian society wherein the majority are either lower middle class or fallahin. Thus, it could be termed Egyptian only as far as the predilection of the author, who comes from a wealthy Egyptianized Turkish class, is concerned. Although al-Atlal treats such matters as sadism and illicit sexual relationships more fully than any previous works of Egyptian fiction, it does not provide sufficient justification for the sadistic actions of the hero. Apparently to show his capacity for understanding human sentiment, Timur has created a sequence of situations revealing the behavioral pattern of an eccentric character, but gives little regard for plot structure. Timur continues his analysis of characters in two more novels which fall within the scope of this study: Nida al-Majhul (The Call of the Unknown, 1939), and Salwa fi Mahbb al-Rih (Salwa Tossed by the Wind, 1943). 83 Nida al-Majhul is a portrayal of the mystical spirit of the East in a Lebanese setting. The plot contains two interrelated stories. The first is about a thirty-five-year-old English Orientalist, Miss Evans, who comes to Lebanon to escape an emotional shock; the second is based on a folklore story which she found popular in Lebanon. According to this story, Yusuf al-Safi, son of a leader of Mount Lebanon, is madly in love with a young woman, Safa, who reciprocates his love. The deep-seated vendetta between their clans prevents the marriage of the lovers, and Safa's family marries her to another man. Yusuf and Safa think that if they cannot unite with each other in this life they can do so in heaven, so they decide to kill themselves together. To go on with their plan, Yusuf shoots Safa to death on her wedding day. She appears as beautiful in her white wedding dress as the angel Yusuf imagines will be with him in heaven. Though he has promised Safa to kill himself after killing her, at the last moment his cowardice causes him to balk, and then he disappears into the unknown. His disappearance excites the imagination of the people, who begin to weave a legend around it. Moved by the story which is reminiscent of her own betrayed love, Miss Evans begins to search for the unknown mansion to which Yusuf alSafi escaped. She tells the story of her adventure to al-Shaykh Ad Abu

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al-Majd, owner of al-Aman hotel where she is staying, and to Mahmud, a young Egyptian man also staying there. Mahmud attempts to win Miss Evans' heart, but she tells him that she is a woman who has lost her heart. Shaykh Ad and Mahmud accompany Miss Evans in her search for Yusuf, taking with them a guide, Muja'is. The company finds the secret mansion where they find Yusuf al-Safi, and he relates his story to them. As the company leaves the mansion Miss Evans suddenly disappears. Mahmud asks where she has gone, and Shaykh Ad, pointing to the secret mansion, says that she has gone there. She escaped to the unknown to find a remedy for her wounded soul. The novel is a manifestation of the literary pattern Timur has followed of combining realism with romanticism. It presents life as subject to unfathomable fate. People who have no control over destiny sometimes choose as a solution to flee from reality. The unknown becomes the only real hope they can cherish. Life becomes a mere illusion, as it did to Miss Evans, who told Mahmud that when she put her trust in this world and offered it the dearest thing she possessed, her heart, the result was tragic. Miss Evans feels that the world has stabbed her in the heart, and because of this she hates the world. She becomes a woman without a heart. She resorts to mysticism in order to fathom the mystery of existence. 84 Thus, instead of ridiculing Yusuf al-Safi, who has fled to an unknown destination, Miss Evans thinks that he is the one who understands the mystery of existence. She reasons that in his solitude al-Safi can draw nearer to God through prayer and contemplation and thus regain serenity of soul and mind. 85 Perhaps Miss Evans saw in the Lebanese legend an echo of her own predicament. In the young bride Safa who is murdered at her wedding, Miss Evans sees herself as an emotionally murdered woman who lost her heart and the life of love and happiness she had anticipated. She loses all perspective and has nothing to live for. She comes under the illusion that Yusuf al-Safi is the real English lover who betrayed her, and she yearns to meet him. 86 In plot, characters (except for Mahmud), and setting, Nida al-Majhul cannot be regarded as an authentic Egyptian story. It only shows Timur's ability to depict the inner emotions and behavior of his characters and his detailed description of settings. It is an exciting story proving that, unlike Isa Ubayd, Timur has deeply probed into the mysteries of the human soul. Like a mystic, he has realized that love transcends material considerations. Despite the real or fictitious identity of Timur's characters, the Egyptian critic Muhammad Mandur avers that by plot and minute description of the traits of characters, Nida al-Majhul is a realistic novel. He goes a step further maintaining that it is factual. He says that the mansion is real and was built by Bashir al-Safi, a real Lebanese tribal chief who was feared by the Ottoman government and its governors of Lebanon. After Bashir's death the mansion went to his grandson, Yusuf al-Safi. Mandur continues that

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the love story of Yusuf and Safa, whom he killed on her wedding day, is real. Unable to kill himself because of his weakness, Yusuf disappeared and finally settled in his grandfather's mansion. He prevented anyone from drawing near the mansion by rolling rocks or setting traps. The mansion became a source of terror, and people came to believe that it was haunted.87 Mandur does not reveal his source, and we are unable to verify his account. In Salwa fi Mahabb al-Rih (Salwa Tossed by the Wind), Timur continues his pattern of analyzing the emotions and behavior of his characters rather than their environment. Again, he depicts the life of a very narrow segment of the Egyptian society, the aristocracy, at which he is most adept since he himself came from an aristocratic family of Turkish origin. True, the heroine, Salwa, comes from a middle-class Egyptian family, but she lives and moves within an aristocratic circle. The novel, then, is an analysis of Salwa's social upbringing and prospects in life. When Salwa is a child her father divorces her mother, a dissolute woman. After her father's death she goes with her nanny, Umm Yunus, to live with her paternal grandfather in the Muharram Bey district in Alexandria. After her grandfather's death, her mother, Duriyya Hanim Shawqi, appears suddenly and takes her to live with her in Cairo. There Salwa discovers the dissolute life of her mother. She becomes a friend of Saniyya, daughter of al-Zuhayri Pasha, a wealthy widower, and through Saniyya she is introduced to the pasha's household. She also meets Hamdi, a decent but poor young man who makes a meager living by tutoring music and giving piano lessons. Hamdi loves her and wants to marry her. Encouraged by her dissipated and greedy mother, Salwa aspires to marry the old pasha, but it turns out that he is more interested in temporary pleasures than in the permanence of marriage. Meanwhile, the pasha showers her and her mother with gifts and money. When her mother dies and the pasha wants her only as his mistress, Salwa opts to marry Hamdi as a palliative to cover up her illicit relationship with the pasha. Hamdi is stricken with consumption and committed to an asylum. Soon, Salwa forgets him, and the poor fellow dies forlorn in the asylum. The pasha also dies, and Salwa establishes a passionate and sensuous relationship with Saniyya's husband, Sharif. Because of Salwa's extravagance, Sharif is driven to gambling, bankruptcy, and then suicide. Salwa discovers that she is carrying Sharif's child. At the hospital she delivers a stillborn baby. Meantime, another woman in the same hospital also has delivered a child but cannot nurse him for lack of breast milk, and the baby is brought to Salwa to nurse. To her surprise, Salwa discovers that the child's mother is her friend Saniyya. The narrative ends with Salwa moving to live with Saniyya as the baby's wet nurse.88 Salwa, then, is the major character, the center of the novel. She comes from a middle-class family which owns some property yielding adequate

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income. However, because of her extravagance, Salwa's mother is always short of money and finds a convenient friend in the pasha, who is ready to lend her money without even a promissory note. The price is, of course, Salwa. Thus, in turn, Salwa's mother unscrupulously entices her own daughter to offer herself to the pasha. It seems that from the beginning Salwa's mother has prepared her daughter for the life of socialite. She wants her to be a modern young woman with an upper-middle-class status. Therefore, she sends her to the private school of Monsieur and Madame Fouquet in Cairo to learn French, dancing, and singing. Thus, unlike many young women of her class who aspire to decent careers in life, Salwa ends a mistress of the wealthy pasha. Also, she steals the husband of her devout friend Saniyya, and drives him to bankruptcy, then suicide. Is Salwa an innocent soul or a calculating young woman without moral scruples? Is she the victim of a broken home, a dissolute mother, and adverse circumstances, or the victim of her own ambition and avid desire to rise to a higher social level? Why does she surrender to an amoral and lecherous old man, the pasha? Can she be justified when she says that she surrendered because she could not control her emotions? Does she really resemble a ship without a rudder tossed by the wind, or is she conscious of her actions? If Salwa surrendered to the wealthy pasha for want or need of money, how can one exonerate her illicit sexual relations with Sharif? What vindication is there for her abject treatment of Hamdi? Hamdi is the only decent and "genuinely Egyptian" character in the entire novel. Nicknamed Abu Fasada (wagtail) because, like this bird, he is thin and haggard, Hamdi comes from the lower Egyptian class. He is noble of character, patient and tolerant, and truly intends to offer Salwa a decent and normal family life. He loves her sincerely and is devoted to her to the end, but she despises and shuns him from the beginning because of his poverty. She marries him only to gain respectability, then deserts him and lets him die alone in the third-class ward of an asylum. Showing her callousness and selfishness, she does not even have the decency to visit him periodically at the asylum. When she finally does remember to pay him a visit, she finds that he has already died and been buried. Hamdi had been selfless and noble. Once he saved ten pounds from his meager salary to pay for the treatment of Salwa's mother, who had borrowed money from the pasha. The ungrateful woman insolently returned the money to him. 89 And when he warns Salwa that she is ruining her life by her immoral relations with the pasha, she deceptively tells him that the pasha is like a father who considers her as his own daughter.90 It is true that Salwa sometimes objects to her mother's relations with the pasha and other men. She even objects to receiving gifts from the pasha, knowing that the old man's intentions toward her are dishonorable. However, she willingly succumbs to her perverted whims and fascination

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with such material things as cars, gifts, clothes, and money. It is incredible in the face of her extravagance and amoral behavior that Hamdi genuinely loves her and is determined to marry her. The Egyptian critic A l i al-Ra'i maintains that Hamdi is a callow and stupid young man. His excessive nobleness of character, which often turns into obvious stupidity, and his strict devotion to Salwa—believing her lies and tolerating her bad treatment—make him a feckless character. A l i alRa'i adds that Hamdi is more of a paragon of love and virtue, an abstract principle, than a lively character.91 What in essence al-Ra'i seems to imply is that no decent and honorable man will love or want to marry a dissolute woman like Salwa. As has been said earlier, Hamdi is a decent and noble character and is far from being gullible or stupid. He knows that Salwa is taking a wrong path, but because of his goodness he tries his utmost to save her from moral waywardness by offering her a decent home and family life. A l - R a ' i could be correct if we consider the sublime traits of virtue and goodness as moral weaknesses. After all, Salwa is conscious of what she wants and what she is getting into. She freely seeks the life-style of a class higher than her own. Salwa knows that the old pasha is corrupt and that his motives are immoral. Yet, because of her greed, selfishness, and fascination with material objects, she offers herself to him. Even her marriage to Hamdi is based on opportunism and deceit. She knows that Hamdi is poor and cannot satisfy her expectations of luxurious living. Still, she marries him to cover up her affair with the pasha. Salwa should have heeded the advice of her nanny, who admonished her not to associate with the pasha and his family. Umm Yunus told her that they belong to a class and a life-style totally different from her own. She advised Salwa to marry Hamdi and forget the superficial externalities of life, adding that if her grandfather were still living he would have married her to Hamdi. Despite her marriage to Hamdi, however, Salwa is still thinking of the pasha and vists him at his home. 92 I think that Timur, with obvious wisdom, places Hamdi in the novel and portrays him as he does to show the conflict between good and evil and the freedom to choose between them. Timur tries to show that human goodness is not totally lost or rendered meaningless in a society dominated by materialism, greed, and selfishness. Hamdi's presence has made the novel more tense and exciting. Without him, those characters who have warped values—like Salwa, her mother, the pasha, and Sharif—would present an erroneous image of Egyptian society. Evidently, this society harbors good, decent, and honest people like Hamdi. A t times even Salwa behaves as if she were not totally without moral sense. She realizes that the pasha's relationship with her and her mother is not sincere, yet she accepts his gifts. She admits that her sexual relations

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with Sharif are wrong and that what she is doing is sinful, yet she also blames Sharif who, she says, is as sinful as she is. Nevertheless, she not only continues her immoral relations with him but demands that he divorce his wife. Unable to decide between Salwa and his wife, Sharif commits suicide. Salwa acknowledges that she drove Sharif to suicide and asks God's forgiveness for her sinful action, but she has no idea what forgiveness is and cannot even comprehend the enormity of her heinous act. Salwa is not sure whether she is a lost soul, though she is totally conscious of her actions. In a conversation with the Egyptian novelist Abd al-Halim Abd Allah, Timur justifies Salwa's stealing Sharif from his w i f e on the premise that it was a protest against what Salwa believed to be social inequality. According to Timur, Salwa felt herself deprived of the social amenities which the pasha's daughter Saniyya enjoyed, and she realized that social equality is one thing and charity is another. In other words, whatever she received from Saniyya's father was mere charity. If there were a fair distribution of wealth, Salwa should have received the same luxuries as did Saniyya. Therefore, Timur says, it is not surprising to see Salwa begrudge the pasha's daughter and steal her husband. 93 This is a lame justification of Salwa's behavior and intentions, for it is Timur himself who portrays her as a young woman without redeeming moral virtue. Timur offers another moral twist to Salwa's behavior, explaining that the Islamic concept of fate plays a decisive role in Salwa's life. She believes that her relationship with al-Zuhayri Pasha is a fate written all over her forehead, a destiny from which she cannot escape. She succumbs to this fate without complaint although she is angered by Umm Yunus's reproach and insistence that she should marry anyone to free herself from her immoral bent. 94 Is it fate or calculated intention? Reading the novel carefully, one is impelled to the conclusion that it is coldly calculated. Let us consider the incident of the newly born lamb. S a l w a is at the pasha's mansion playing cards with him. Suddenly the pasha begins to shower her with passionate kisses, claiming that he considers her as his own daughter. It is late in the evening and he asks her to join him to see the newly born lamb of his gardener's ewe. It is a moonlit night. A s they enter the humble hut which the gardener shares with the animals, the gardener's daughter brings the lamb to Salwa. Salwa compassionately kisses and pets the lamb. While walking back to the mansion the pasha stops Salwa in the moonlight and tells her that according to a local superstition, it is good luck if one sees a new moon rising and immediately looks at a beautiful face. Then the pasha takes her f a c e in his hands and begins kissing her feverishly. She manages to release herself from him and run away, but she stumbles and falls in the mud. The pasha tries to appease her, telling her that he did not realize how childish her behavior was. When she relates the story to her mother, her mother gives Salwa a lesson

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in morality and says that she did the right thing by fleeing from the pasha, for he and his kind will do everything to take advantage of people of lower class to satisfy their lust. However, the pasha continues lavishing presents on S a l w a and her mother, and despite S a l w a ' s supposed objections she seems to enjoy receiving the presents and chooses to continue her relations with the pasha. 95 Again, Timur combines realism with romanticism in his portrayal of Salwa's emotions as she stands to ponder a painting which graces a wall of the pasha's mansion. The painting shows pirates storming a peaceful harbor, ravaging it, killing men and children, and taking the women captives. Staring at it attentively, Salwa sees a peculiar similarity of features between the leader of the pirates and al-Zuhayri Pasha. Both have fiery eyes topped by thick brows, and they have identical bushy mustaches. B e f o r e the pirates' leader stands a beautiful half-naked damsel who is begging him for mercy. A s Salwa's eyes are totally fixed on the painting, she imagines the lips of the leader moving as he gives orders to one of his men. She becomes startled and, turning around, she sees the pasha exit from a room, yelling at Shafiq E f f e n d i , a district clerk. Although she looks at other paintings in the hall, her eyes turn back to this one. 96 One may question Timur's intention in this episode early in the novel when Salwa hardly knows the pasha and has not established permanent immoral relations with him. However, as one reads further, the author's intention becomes clear. Timur attempts to show that when Salwa finds out that the pasha is not interested in marrying her but wants her only for pleasure, she begins to reflect on the action of the pirates' leader in the painting. Salwa recognizes the similarity between him and the pasha. 9 7 Timur has artfully but implicitly shown that the leader of the pirates and the damsel in the painting symbolize the pasha and Salwa, while the peaceful harbor ravaged by the pirates symbolizes the peaceful world of Salwa, which will be ravaged by the pasha, intent on robbing her of her dignity. A s the leader of the pirates plunders and murders innocent people to sati s f y his greed, the pasha steps on innocent people and uses them to satisfy his self-interest. However, unlike the beautiful damsel in the painting, who begs not only for mercy but also for the protection of her honor, Salwa is not concerned about the pasha protecting her honor as much as allowing her the opportunity to join his class of wealth and power and to lavish on her the amenities of luxury. Timur is trying to place before Salwa, through pondering the painting, the choice to follow the pirates—here the pasha— and lose her dignity and honor, or treat him only as a friend and a father figure. Obviously, Salwa makes her choice and surrenders to the pasha to satisfy her lust for an easy, materialistic life. The secondary characters are fully developed from the beginning and, except for Sharif, play insignificant roles in the novel. One example is the fifty-year-old French maid, Madame Chantelle, employed by al-Zuhayri

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Pasha as a housekeeper after his wife dies. We know only that she is an unpleasant character and that she tutors al-Zuhayri's daughter Saniyya in French. 98 Otherwise, her role is superfluous. Two other characters, the attorney Raja'i Bey and the physician Dawud Fahim, are superfluous likewise. The attorney once invited Salwa and her mother to the movies and was an amorous friend of Salwa's mother, but their relationship, which is supposed to betray the dissolute life of the mother, appears haphazard and pale. The physician, Dawud Fahim, is in the novel only because he wrote a superficial letter to Salwa while he was studying medicine in Europe." Only Salwa represents a lively character throughout her life. The thrust of the novel is that from childhood Salwa is destined to become the woman she really is. In childhood and adolescent life, Salwa loses most of her loved ones and is left to battle life alone. She is tossed by the wind, as the title reveals. Timur has succeeded in analyzing the inner thoughts and emotions of Salwa and offers a true picture of the social life of a small segment of Egyptian society. His detailed description of the physical features of the characters is part of what he thought realism should be. Because he is mainly concerned with the life of a middle-class young woman and an upper-middle-class pasha, Timur seldom mentions the poor class of peasants or servants, and then only in relation to the pasha. 100 With Mahmud Tahir Lashin (1894-1954), Egyptian fiction took a new turn from the romantic treatment and the psychoanalysis of characters to realism, based on the interaction of the environment with the lives of the characters. This trend culminated in the works of the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, to be discussed in a later chapter. More than Isa Ubayd and Mahmud Timur, Lashin was concerned with the social predicament of the poor, and the downtrodden, and with the impact of social and moral dictates on their life and behavior. We shall see as we analyze his work that Lashin was concerned with the life and social problems of ordinary people. His kind of realism is meant to show the faults of society through the actions and behavior of the characters. Such behavior is meant to convince the reader that what he has read derives from real life. In fact, by both background and occupation, Lashin was better fitted than Ubayd and Timur to portray Egyptian society realistically. Born of a wholly Egyptianized family of Turkish or Circassian origin, Lashin came in conctact with middle-class city dwellers and small businessmen in his work as a city planning engineer. He familiarized himself with the concerns of ordinary men by frequently visiting the Muslim religious courts and public places, which helped him portray a more realistic picture of his settings. 101 In a scanty account of his life and work, the Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi associates Lashin with a group of writers to which the Egyptian writer Ahmad Khayri Said gave the name of "al-Madrasa al-Haditha" (The New School). 102 This school was contemporary with another literary

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school of "Egyptian modernists," whose members include a group of such prominent writers as Muhammad Husayn Haykal, already discussed, Taha Husayn, and others who will be discussed in a following chapter. There is no common bond between these two schools of writing except that some of their members wrote fiction with the intention to free Egyptian literature from total dependence on the West and to eventually create a new Egyptian literary entity. Also, some writers like Tawfiq al-Hakim were members of the "new school" and the "school of Egyptian modernists." Lashin belonged to the "new school," whose members concentrated more on fiction writing. Members of this school were mostly middle-class young men with a tremendous appreciation of literature. One member, Ahmad Khayri Said, though close to receiving his medical degree, deserted the study of medicine and turned to writing and journalism. 103 The birth of this school was motivated by the national fervor which gripped Egypt in the 1920s. A year earlier, the Egyptian leader Sa'd Zaghlul, of peasant background, led a national revolt against the British authorities, demanding complete independence of his country from British rule. This was shortly after the time when the new Egyptian university and the national bank of Egypt were established. Meanwhile, the artist Mukhtar portrayed the life of the fallahin in his paintings, the architect Hasan Fathi expressed the taste of common people in building the Qurna village, and Sayyid Darwish sang about the fallahin, cabmen, and water carriers. It was also the time when there was a call for the liberation of Egyptian women, who for generations had been under veil and secluded from society, so they might play a meaningful role in the cultural life of Egypt. Champions of women's liberty believed that no department of life in the country, and especially literature, would ever be reformed while women were secluded from the mainstream of Egyptian life. As a result, several journals were established by women to defend the rights of the Egyptian woman: al-Nahda al-Nisa'iyya (The Feminine Awakening), founded by Balsam Abd al-Malik (1922); Rose El-Youssef, founded by Rose El-Youssef (1925), al-Amal (Hope), by Munira Thabit (1925); al-Misriyya (The Egyptian Woman), by Siza Nabrawi (1926); and Ummahat al-Mustaqbal (Mothers of the Future), by Tafida Allam (1930). Egypt was trying to find its own identity and national existence. The Egyptians began using such nationalistic terms as "the Egyptian nation," "Egyptian homeland," and "national independence," to assert their identity. Undoubtedly literature was also affected by the upsurge of national sentiment. Young writers were intent on creating a genuine Egyptian literature with Egyptian characteristics, but they used Western techniques. Students at the Egyptian University called for the creation of a genuine Egyptian writing that would portray realistically "the farmer in his field, the businessman in his store, the prince in his palace, the scholar among his

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books and students, the religious shaykh among his people, the worshiper in his cell, the adolescent in his love affairs. In brief, they wanted a literature which would symbolize their identity." 104 Members of the "new school" were also fascinated by Western literature. Haqqi relates that they read major works of English, French, and Russian writers, but seldom the works of ancient Arab writers or poets. It seems that they were very touched by Russian realistic fiction, which portrays the misfortunes of common people, farmers, and the underprivileged. They were enthralled by this literature with its concentration on the study of human behavior and social problems without neglecting the portrayal of the beauty of nature. Haqqi concludes that he is not too far from the truth when he says that the literary product of this "new school" is due to the impact of Russian fiction. 105 To render literature the property of common people rather than the rich elite, these young men "went down to the street," as Haqqi states, and met in a coffeehouse which jokingly became known as "Qahwat al-Fann" (Arts Coffeehouse). There they discussed their literary undertakings and achievements. On a Thursday evening in April 1925, they met in Lashin's home and decided to establish a journal called al-Fajr (The Dawn) to publish their writings. This was a private enterprise, funded personally by the members of the new school. According to Ahmad Khayri Said (d. 1962), who relates the story of al-Fajr, the journal could not continue because of lack of funds, and he and Mahmud Tahir Lashin lost 96 Egyptian pounds. However, they were compensated for the monetary loss by the publication of some of the members' works. These works included many short stories by Said himself and Lashin's anthology of short stories Sukhriyat al-Nay (Flute's Mockery). Moreover, the journal al-Fajr created a stir in literary circles and projected the members of the "new school" as pioneers of a new literary trend. 106 The intentions and other members of the "new school" was to create an authentic Egyptian fiction and develop a style compatible with the requirements of their time. In the beginning they were awed by such a tremendous task because of their conviction that Western fiction was immensely superior to their own and that they could not rival it. After some hesitation, however, they became bolder and decided that they should take the lead, thus becoming the pioneers of a new literary trend. 107 To fulfill this aspiration, Lashin himself contributed three anthologies: Sukhriyat al-Nay (1927), Yuhka Anna (It Is Related That, 1930), and alNiqab al-Ta'ir (The Flying Veil, 1940). Lashin also wrote his only novel Hawwa bila Adam (Eve Without Adam), published in 1934. After 1940, Lashin wrote more short stories which he intended to publish in a collection entitled Sirr al-Muntahir (The Secret of the One Who Committed Suicide). Though the collection was not published, some stories from it appeared in different journals. Moreover, Lashin wrote several plays

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including al-Umm Bayn Jilayn (The Mother Between T w o Generations), and al-Isba al-Za'ida (The Extra Finger). The first was performed by the Ansar al-Tamthil's (Supporters of the Stage) troupe for a whole month.108 After that nothing is heard about Lashin's literary activity, and, like Isa Ubayd, who despaired of the low state of fiction writing and people's failure to read his kind of fiction, he disappeared from the scene. Unlike Timur, whose plots are not fully integrated because of his concentration on the description of the psychological behavior of the characters, Lashin in Hawwa bila Adam presents an organically integrated, clear, and well-crafted plot. The novel is an authentic work of Egyptian fiction in which the social characteristics of Egyptian society are revealed through the actions of the characters. While in Timur's Salwa fi Mahabb al-Rih great emphasis is placed on the personal behavior of the heroine, in Hawwa bila Adam the emphasis is not only on Hawwa's personal life but also on the attitude of society toward her predicament and that of the Egyptian middle class in the 1930s to which she belongs. Hawwa, an orphan who comes from a poor family, is brought up by her grandmother, Fatima Hanim, a lonely woman who had an unhappy family life. Fatima's husband, a drunkard who spends his nights away from home, divorced her and left her to raise three daughters, one of them Hawwa's mother. Fatima Hanim is superstitious and her world is dominated by jinn (genies) and afarit (demons). Hawwa's mother dies when Hawwa is only ten, and her father remarries, so she is raised by her grandmother. Burdened by the demands of a harsh life, the grandmother tries to escape reality by creating a fictitious world populated by demons. She converses with them and especially with a Sudanese ifrit (demon) named Surur, as if they were normal friends and acquaintances.109 Hawwa grows up to become an ambitious young woman, determined to better her fortune through education. She is nominated for a scholarship to study mathematics in England, but she is denied the scholarship, which is given to Saniyya, an aristocratic and wealthy young woman. Having lost the scholarship, Hawwa becomes a teacher of athletics in a local school. Also, she learns to play the piano and finds in music a diversion from her frustration and poverty. Soon, however, she discovers that her life between home and school has become boring and she decides to become active in community life. She becomes a member of the Women's Society, where she sets up a workshop for the training of orphaned young women under her supervision. Through this workshop she establishes cordial relations with members of the aristocracy. In a speech she delivers at a party held by the workshop, Hawwa questions the objectives of the system of education in Egypt, which emphasized the theoretical rather than the practical training of young women. The speech attracts the attention of a member of the aristocracy, Farida Hanim, w i f e of Major General Nazim Pasha. Farida Hanim invites Hawwa to tutor her young

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daughter, Zizi, and teach her to play the piano. Thus, the door to the world of aristocracy opens for Hawwa. Hawwa's real problem begins when she falls in love with Nazim Pasha's son, Ramzi, a shy twenty-three-year-old employee at the Ministry of Agriculture. Though Ramzi admires Hawwa's talents, he never entertains the idea of loving or marrying her. He thinks of only her as his sister's tutor. Hawwa hopes that one day he might be inclined to love her. Her hopes, however, are shattered when Ramzi becomes engaged to marry a young woman, Suad, from his own class. Her deceased father, Dhihni Bey, was a high-ranking army officer and a friend of Ramzi's father since their service in the army in the Sudan. Hawwa returns home and goes into a hysterical state. Although she recovers, her soul is wounded and she becomes depressed. When she is invited to Ramzi's wedding, she steals a moment to be alone with Ramzi and kisses him, much to the embarrassment of the young man. When she returns home at midnight she puts on her wedding dress and veil, swallows a large dose of the medicine her doctor had prescribed for her, enough to cause her death, and lies down on her bed, breathing her last. The tragic end of Hawwa as Lashin depicts it is not melodramatic, but neither is it totally free from romantic emotionalism. He says that Ramzi is happy in the company of his bride, Hawwa's grandmother is fondling her ifrit (demon) Surur in her dreams, the maid, Najiyya, is dreaming of embracing the butcher's son, and al-Hajj Imam is asking Hawwa for money to buy a new coat as a reward for effecting her recovery. A l l this while Hawwa lies dying, with the voices of the songstresses singing the song of Ramzi's wedding ringing in her ears.110 Unlike Isa Ubayd in Thurayya and Mahmud Timur in Salwa fi Mahabb al-Rih, who focus on the conduct of their heroines with little regard for the impact of society on their behavior, Lashin concentrates on the impact of society on the behavior and destiny of his heroine. Lashin had a deep insight into the social changes in Egypt in the 1930s, especially the struggle of the middle class to assert itself in relation to the aristocracy. He uses Hawwa to portray his own perspective of the dilemma of the lower middle class. In this respect, he precedes Naguib Mahfouz, who in his social novels depicts the same dilemma of the middle class in its struggle to better itself and rise to the social and economic level of the upper middle class. One may assume that Lashin's novel had some impact on Naguib Mahfouz, but Mahfouz told the Egyptian writer Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, he had no recollection of such an impact.111 It is likely that Mahfouz had no opportunity to read Lashin's novel. Mahfouz graduated from the Egyptian University in 1934, the same year Lashin's novel appeared. He used this year as the time of his novel alQahira al-Jadida ( N e w Cairo), published in 1947, in which he treated the

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rise of an Egyptian middle-class intelligentsia and their struggle to find a place in Egyptian society dominated by the upper c l a s s . 1 1 2 Hawwa is a member of this middle-class intelligentsia. Although she comes from a poor family, she struggles hard to get an education and become a teacher. But soon she discovers that education alone is not sufficient to achieve her ambition of bettering her life and rising to a higher social level. The corrupt and self-seeking aristocracy is not only powerful, but also in a position to curb her ambition and control her destiny. She comes to believe that the upper class is the greatest impediment to the realization of her dreams. She realizes this fact when she is denied a fellowship to further her studies in England and Saniyya is chosen instead. In a letter to a friend, H a w w a expresses her bitterness and rebellion against the upper class. She writes that the reason for Saniyya's selection was the aristocrats' belief that they are better, and their children should grow up having the same status and privileges they have. A s for poor and hapless people like Hawwa, the aristocracy dictates that they should not try to improve their status and should always keep their heads lowered in submission; otherwise they should be suppressed. Hawwa writes that she and the members of her class may be slaughtered and skinned in the slaughterhouse of this age which has no regard for ideas or principles, but " w e will not be blindfolded like cattle and only find consolation in what we hear and s e e . " 1 1 3 This is, then, the dilemma of H a w w a and the educated middle class she represents. Hawwa rebels against unjust treatment by a corrupt class which places consideration of its own social status above the knowledge or qualifications of a member of the lower class. But this is not H a w w a ' s only problem; she must also deal with the attitude of her family and class. Lashin rather dexterously presents Hawwa's family life and principles in order to intensify the conflict between the upper and lower classes. If we apply contemporary American standards to Hawwa, w e can readily say that she comes from a broken home. Her parents are divorced, and after her father remarries H a w w a is raised by her grandmother. H a w w a never experiences parental love or a normal family life. What makes her situation even worse is that her grandmother, Fatima Hanim, an illiterate and superstitious woman, communicates with genies and demons. She is under the control of her relative, al-Hajj Imam, who spends most of the time fulfilling the demands of her genie Surur and entertaining her with superstitious tales and her maid, Najiyya, who dreams only of marrying Shafiq, son of the local butcher. At the top of this superstitious pyramid sits al-Shaykh Mustafa alTunisi (nicknamed Abu Darsh), a shopkeeper who sells magical supplies and has great control over the grandmother. 114 Between the two contradictory worlds of enlightenment and superstition, Hawwa stands torn, helpless,

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and dejected. To further delineate her predicament, Lashin postulates that if Hawwa were illiterate she might have a better chance by staying home and using every means to make herself more presentable while awaiting a prospective suitor. Out of desperation, she might have plunged herself into the abyss of immorality. What is amazing about Hawwa is that, despite being torn between these two worlds, she stands tall and firm. 115 But does she really stand tall and firm, or is this only an alternative to what would have been the case if she were illiterate and superstitious? Hawwa is neither illiterate nor superstitious. Lashin's purpose in introducing her into the world of the aristocracy is to show his perspective of the conflict between the upper and lower classes. Her infatuation with the son of an aristocratic family, ten years younger than she, is the manifestation of this conflict. Hawwa, educated and rational as Lashin presents her, should have realized that her dream of marrying someone like Ramzi is sheer fantasy. She foreshadows the ambitious Hasanayn in Naguib Mahfouz's Bidaya wa Nihaya (The Beginning and the End), who wants to rise to the social and economic level of the upper class and is greatly disappointed when a woman rejects him because of the incompatibility of their classes. Although Hawwa is not rejected by Ramzi—because he had no intention of loving or marrying her—she does not behave rationally toward him, although she is rational and educated. In the eyes of Ramzi and his family, she is only a teacher from a poor family who cannot be accepted as their equal. Lashin intends to show that social status, not education, determines the place of a person in Egyptian society. Lost in fanciful dreams and reality, and unable to control her emotions, Hawwa becomes ill. She is so proud of her education and so preoccupied with the excellent work she is doing at the workshop of the Women's Society that she thinks she is on the same social level as the family of the pasha. When her grandmother sees that Hawwa is distraught and depressed, she wants to know the reason. Is she really sick? Hawwa's answer is that she is not sick but perplexed. She feels that she is not in control of herself and her emotions. Her nerves are shattered and she loses sleep. As a woman in love, she cannot overcome her emotions and use reason. 116 Lashin forcefully shows the disparity between the middle and upper classes when Ramzi walks Hawwa home and she invites him in. Although she is anxious for Ramzi to see her humble house, she still fears that he will only compare it to his family's mansion. She is afraid that Ramzi will find the house drab and untidy or that he will observe her grandmother practicing her superstitious ways. Perhaps he will spot al-Hajj Imam wearing his long fluffy pants and performing ablutions in the yard. Then, when Najiyya asks her whether she should buy a one-piaster or half-piaster bottle of carbonated water, Hawwa realizes that Ramzi recognizes the social difference between them. She looks pale and speechless. Abruptly, to save

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face, she resumes the discussion of the conditions of t h e f a l l a h i n which she and Ramzi had already begun. But this does not help, because she realizes that they have already exhausted the subject. Noticing that she is still embarrassed, Ramzi tries to divert Hawwa's attention by asking her to play the piano. She attempts to play a piece she had composed to be sung by the workshop girls at the forthcoming party, but she can only strike the keys in obvious confusion. Hawwa becomes even more embarrassed when Najiyya, looking like a beast, waddles in with her wooden shoes, unkempt hair, and enormous breasts. When Ramzi sees her, he comments scornfully that Najiyya is only fit to be exhibited at an animal show conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture. Hawwa agrees that Najiyya is "a human cow," and then laughs to conceal her embarrassment. 1 1 7 Her agreement with Ramzi's disparaging comments regarding Najiyya reveals that Hawwa is disenchanted with the poor class to which she belongs. Her only ambition is to please the aristocratic Ramzi, who she hopes might love and marry her. She wants to fulfill her ambition by rising to his class. One would imagine that, after Ramzi has discovered her state of poverty, Hawwa would stop her fancies and try to find a man from her own class. However, she continues to entertain an impossible dream, until that dream is shattered when Ramzi becomes engaged to marry a woman from his own class. Only then she does realize that, like his father, Ramzi is destined to become a rich landlord and to perpetuate the same upper-class social and economic values. Unable to reconcile her world of fancy with the real world of disparate classes, and disenchanted with her bad lot in life, Hawwa is left only with suicide. The tragic end demonstrates Lashin's own perception of the inability of members of the educated class to compete with the already established upper class of the 1930s, when the middle class was just beginning to rise. Hawwa is a victim not only of her own attitudes and of her ambition, but also of her unpropitious circumstances, the circumstances of many young women of her social status who find no reward or appreciation in a classconscious society. Thus, she lives her short life without Adam (husband) and with no real hope of a better future. Hawwa bila Adam is a work of genuine social realism. Lashin offers a vivid picture of Egyptian society in the 1930s and the predicament of the rising middle class. He is a true pioneer of Egyptian realism, which culminates, as shall be seen later, in the works of Naguib Mahfouz. We do not know how much Lashin owes to Western fiction in portraying his society as realistically as he did in this novel. We do know, however, that he knew English and was well acquainted with English classics. 118 In his introduction to Hawwa bila Adam, Hasan Mahmud says that Lashin was closer to Charles Dickens than to Thackeray. 119 The novel is well crafted and well written, and shows the budding literary talent that would become the foundation of Egyptian social realism.

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Lashin forcefully presents his heroine, Hawwa, as a dynamic character whose behavior is largely dictated by her environment. She is active and perceptive. Unlike her, Ramzi is a soft and unambitious young man who knows that his family's wealth is a guarantee of a very secure life. At best he resembles the Egyptian semiliterates in the 1930s whose only literary activity was to read the daily newspapers and weekly magazines, acquire collections of books, and brag about their knowledge of the names of the writers. 120 But despite his shallow education and lack of ambition, Ramzi is not free from the sophistry of his class. He sits in the spacious reception room of his stately mansion and talks comfortably about the poverty of the fallahin, expressing his knowledge of their ignorance and his sympathy for their wretched condition. He feels sorry that they work their long days like cattle and sleep at night in a single room. 121 Ramzi also cites the power and authority of his father, but does not suggest that his father might do something to improve their miserable condition or decrease the exorbitant rents he charges. 122 His purpose is only to show that these wretched people do not have the power or authority of the upper class. He seems to share his father's disdain for the fallahin, calling them more wicked than wolves and craftier than foxes. Their poverty and wretchedness are the best cure for their wickedness. Furthermore, like his father, Ramzi believes that to empathize with the fallahin is sheer nonsense and a waste of time. Hawwa realizes that Ramzi is shallow and superficial and disdains the peasants. Because she loves him she is willing to tolerate his weaknesses and go as far as sympathizing with him rather than with the fallahin,123 She is so blinded by love that she cannot see that Ramzi's engagement has changed his life completely. He espouses his father's attitude toward the fallahin and forgets Hawwa. And when he happens to meet her, he shows a sarcastic attitude toward her activities, remarking that she is expending all her physical and mental energies in the service of the public and in the realization of her high objectives. Then he goes to see his fiancée. 124 Lashin seems indirectly to exaggerate the sympathy of the aristocratic characters for Hawwa. When Farida Hanim, wife of the Major General Nazim Pasha, invites Hawwa to ride with her in her car, Hawwa accepts and the pasha is so delighted that his rotund face glows and seems to grow even larger. He rushes to the car with his enormous body and short steps, opens the door and bows as much as his large belly will allow, and sits opposite the two ladies. He repeatedly greets Hawwa in a military fashion as if he, being a major general, were the center of deference, not she. 125 His peculiar behavior implies not so much a manifestation of courtesy, but a supercilious attitude and a sense that he is doing this poor lower-class young woman a social favor.

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Lashin's treatment of some secondary characters is perfunctory. At the beginning he devotes a few pages to the career of Hawwa's grandmother but then drops her and later scarcely mentions her. He also exaggerates the actions of al-Hajj Imam and Shaykh Mustafa al-Tunisi, making them miraculous. 126 Despite these flaws, Lashin's novel reveals the progress of the development of Arabic fiction from romanticism to realism. It is a true portrait of the shortcomings of Egyptian society in a transitional period. This is the only novel Lashin wrote. It is the last cry Lashin sounded as he awaited the dawn of a new age which did not come. He remained silent until 1940, when his collection of short stories entitled al-Niqab al-Ta'ir (The Flying Veil) appeared. After that nothing was heard from him. Like Isa Ubayd, he must have given up writing out of frustration about the state of writing in his time. Hilary Kilpatrick rightfully says, "Lashin's tragedy is a less dramatic version of one aspect of Hawwa's own tragedy; his silence was Egypt's loss." 127 Arabic fiction in Egypt achieved a high level of development by the members of the "new school" whose star, as Yahya Haqqi states, was Mahmud Tahir Lashin. To create a genuine Egyptian fiction, writers like Lashin strove to portray the faults of their society as realistically as possible without indulging in romanticism, as did earlier writers like Muhammad Husayn Haykal. Even more important, the writers of fiction of the "new school" concentrated on the society rather than the individual by showing the impact of the society on the behavior of the characters. This differs from the practice of Mahmud Timur, who is mostly concerned with the behavior of the characters as they affect their society. In other words, members of this "new school" emphasized social realism over romanticism. This trend of social realism later culminated in the novels of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, who will be discussed in Chapter 13. But, concomitant with the "new school" there was another literary school whose members, known as "The Egyptian Modernists," were not devoted solely to fiction but to a variety of literary forms, including fiction. Members of this school included such prominent men of letters as Taha Husayn, Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, and Tawfiq al-Hakim, who as noted, was also a member of the "new school." Our main concern, however, is their novels, which will be studied in the following chapter.

12 The Egyptian Modernists and the Novel

The "Egyptian modernists" were prominent men of letters who aimed to revitalize Arabic literature through the slow process of education and reform, but without sacrificing their Egyptian identity.1 While acknowledging that Egypt was part of the Arab world, they sought to preserve its distinctive native literature and culture in their writings. One of them, Taha Husayn, in his Mustaqbal al-Thaqafa fi Misr (The Future of Culture in Egypt, 1938), said that Egypt was closer to the Mediterranean culture than to the Muslim world. He proposed the teaching of Greek and Latin in the Egyptian schools as the basis of true education. Greatly influenced by his study in France, he had come to believe that Arab culture began in the ninth century with translation from the Greek. He also believed that modern Egypt would never be able to develop its cultural institutions unless the study of classical languages became mandatory not only in higher education but in the public schools.2 Hamilton A. R. Gibb has discussed the careers and literary works of these modernists, but does not treat their fiction in any detail, except Zaynab by Muhammad Husayn Haykal. 3 The most prominent Egyptian modernists who wrote fiction were Taha Husayn, Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, and Tawfiq al-Hakim. Close contemporaries, most of them had been raised in rural communities and recognized the social backwardness of the Egyptian peasant life. All, moreover, had been influenced by European thought and were thus conscious of the cultural and social deprivation inherent in Egyptian life. The conflict between the traditional society in which they had been raised and the brighter future of which they dreamed is manifested in their writings. In their fiction, however, they also appear to psychoanalyze their characters, examining their behavior and attitudes as they confront the human condition in Egyptian society.

Taha Husayn (1889-1973) Taha Husayn, particularly well known for his daring proposals for literary, educational, and social reforms, occupies a prominent place in the 291

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contemporary Egyptian literary renaissance. His writings cover a wide range, from poetry, essays, history, fiction, translation, politics, and ancient Greek and Roman thought, to traditional and modern Arabic literature. Today he is known in the Arab world as Amid al-Adab al-Arabi (the Doyen of Arab letters). 4 But his chief contribution was in the field of modern literary criticism, which he had studied in France. Because literary criticism was little known in the Arab world, his efforts in this area led the traditionalists to consider him an iconoclast. His 1926 book Fi al-Shi'r alJahili (On Pre-Islamic Poetry) raised a storm of protest and brought him the condemnation of Muslim traditionalists and religious reactionaries who accused him not only of literary errors but of blasphemy against Islam. Husayn's thesis was that most of the pre-Islamic poetry revered by the traditionalists was an unauthentic representation of the Arabs' aesthetic genius. The journal al-Manar vilified him as "that Egyptian University professor who, blind of both sight and mind, intends to divest the Egyptians of their religion, language, origin, literature and history, transforming them into a European nation." 5 Under heavy pressure, the Egyptian government withdrew the book from circulation. The next year the book was republished, slightly changed, under the title Fi al-Adab Jahili (On Pre-Islamic Literature), but the author's central thesis was not modified. 6 The turmoil over this book caused Husayn to despair about the condition of intellectual life in Egypt and led him to write al-Ayyam (Days, or The Stream of Days), his major piece of imaginative literature. He went to France, where he dictated the first part of al-Ayyam (serialized in the journal al-Hilal between December 1926, and July 1927, published in book form in 1929, and later translated into English), hoping to escape the realities of the present by contemplating the past. 7 But when he returned to Egypt the controversy was still alive and had even been referred to the Egyptian parliament, and he was under investigation by the niyaba (Office of the District Attorney). 8 Ironically, Husayn wrote the second part of alAyyam under similar circumstances. In 1939, as Dean of the College of Arts at the university, he became involved in a dispute with the Ministry of Education, then headed by the writer Muhammad Husayn Haykal, over a work (not identified) by George Bernard Shaw, assigned for students. The Egyptian government was displeased with the content of the work, and Husayn became the target of criticism. When one day a group of law students demonstrated outside his office, ready to attack him, he resigned and went to France, where he dictated the second part of al-Ayyam, published in book form that year. 9 Husayn's Mudhakkirat (Memoirs), published in 1967, may be considered the third part of al-Ayyam. Apparently, Husayn wrote the first two parts of his work in reaction to the hostility of the traditionalists and religious fanatics. Unable to rebut their accusation that he was an iconoclast, he used fiction to state his liberal views.

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The first part of al-Ayyam covers Husayn's life up to the age of thirteen, when he was sent by his father to study at al-Azhar Mosque, a religious institution since the Fatimid era. It contains a detailed, passionate portrayal of the life and society of the author in Izbat al-Kilo, near the small town of Maghagha in Upper Egypt. Largely autobiographical, it is not simply a narrative, but a cohesive series of sketches which offers a realistic view of the social, religious, and educational aspects of his society. Calling himself al-Fata (the Child) in the third-person narrative, Husayn reveals in an original and exquisite style the hardships of his childhood, his primitive schooling, and the tragedies which befell his family. We learn that Husayn came from a large family (he was the seventh of thirteen children), lost his sight at an early age, and entered the kuttab (Quranic school) of Shaykh Muhammad Jad al-Rubb. 1 0 A sharp memory and acute hearing enabled him to compensate for the loss of his sight due to treatment by a barber lacking proper medical training. The reader often meets the familiar phrase, "He [the Fata] remembers." For instance, the Fata remembers the bamboo hedge and jackrabbits jumping over it. He also remembers that his sister interrupted his listening to the popular tales of the village storyteller, to his displeasure, and carried him home, where his mother vainly put some painful drops in his eyes. He also recalls that he loved to wade in the nearby canal, but dared not because of the fierce dogs who lived nearby. Similarly, he feared the notorious Said the Arabian and his wife Kawabis, who lived alongside the canal. Early in life, the boy was aware of his physical disability, but he would not allow it to cause an inferiority complex or destroy his selfesteem and initiative. It enhanced his sense of individuality, which contributed greatly to his enormous success in life. He accepted his parents' compassion, but sometimes felt neglected by them. He felt that his brothers and sisters treated him cautiously and at times even shunned him, and he was especially saddened to realize he was different from them. Sometimes he was a source of embarrassment to the family. One day he raised his food to his mouth with two hands rather than one. His action caused his brothers and sisters to laugh, his mother to cry, and his father to say sorrowfully, "This is not the way food is eaten, son." After that, he forbade himself any food which required the use of a spoon; quite proud, he did not want to feel the scorn of his siblings or the sorrow of his parents. 11 He found joy hearing his father's friends reciting tales of bygone times, especially from the epics of the pre-Islamic poet Antara or those of al-Zahir Baybars. There was sorrow, too; he recalls the doleful voice of his mother as she, like other Middle Eastern women, lamented the loss of beloved members of her family. Husayn's description of the shaykh in charge of the kuttab is quite hilarious. The shaykh, fat and almost blind, sat on a high wooden platform,

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with the children squatting in a circle on the floor before him. He removed his gown and sandals, lit a cigarette, and began to call the roll. At times he would ask one child to take his sandal to the cobbler to be patched. Because he was corpulent, the shaykh always walked leaning on two pupils, his body swaying as they sang at his request; occasionally he joined them in singing, forgetting that his voice was uglier than his appearance. Moreover, he was selfish, a cheat, and a liar, and grabbed most of the food the pupils had brought with them. Yet the boy Husayn managed to memorize parts of the Quran and thus earned the right to be called a shaykh—to the satisfaction of his father, though he himself did not cherish this title. At this early stage of Husayn's life one detects his strong individualism and self-reliance. He was an achiever and would not let his blindness, which others considered a great disability, keep him from proving himself. Like most Muslim children, he was expected to memorize parts of the Quran; when his father first tested him, Husayn failed completely, apparently confirming the father's opinion that his disabled son was of no worth. Unable to endure his humiliation and his father's rebuke, Husayn went to the kitchen, grabbed a sharp cleaver, and struck himself on the back; he might have bled to death had his mother not rushed to rescue him. This act, neither trivial nor irrational, is evidence of Husayn's pride and self-assertiveness. He could not bear humiliation or rejection. Coming to terms with himself, he was determined to show that despite his blindness, he was the equal of other children. This sense of self-determination remained with him throughout his life and was a decisive factor in his later success. 12 Husayn's account shows that learning in his time meant religion, grammar, philology, and traditional Arabic poetry and tales. Learned men were those who had memorized the Quran and the Hadith (the Prophet's tradition), mastered Arabic grammar, or read commentaries on books of Islamic jurisprudence. They were highly respected by country dwellers who had no knowledge of public education. Husayn admired these men and even believed they were cut from a different mold. Yet many charlatans pretended to be learned men, duping the gullible country folk to make their living. There were also shaykhs of tariqas (religious brotherhoods) who held diverse views, whose votaries believed in their sanctity and miraculous powers. Many of these shaykhs knew little of the religion and simply strained the financial resources of families like Husayn's which offered them hospitality. Husayn offers a true portrait of the mentality of country people in Upper Egypt, who were interested not only in religion but in magic. He relates that peddlers roamed the countryside, peddling religious wares and books of magic. He and a friend, having acquired some of these books, recited incantations and cryptic phrases as they burned incense. They hoped a genie would come out of the wall to obey their requests, but nothing of

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the sort happened. He describes the consternation of the people on hearing that a meteor was about to appear; some thought it was a sign of the end of the world, while others disagreed. People also believed in the supernatural power of amulets and mascots. Some even swallowed pieces of paper prepared by allegedly religious men, containing invocations in a language thought to be Syriac, to prevent diseases or avert misfortunes. Women hung split pieces of onion in the doorways of their homes during the Shamm al-Nasim festival (celebrated by Egyptians on the Monday following Greek-Coptic Easter), or ate only broad beans, to drive away afarit, or demons. Husayn also relates the calamities that befell his family, including the death of one of his sisters, soon followed by the death of a brother on August 21, 1902, from the cholera which then plagued Egypt. Only eighteen, the young man had just finished high school and was expected to enter the medical school at Cairo; his death saddened the whole family, especially his parents. Finally, however, the Fata's father gave him good news: he would send Husayn to Cairo to attend al-Azhar Mosque, where an older brother was already enrolled. His father was pleased to see him attend this prestigious institution, thinking some day he might lecture at al-Azhar. The first part of al-Ayyam closes with Husayn telling his nine-year-old daughter about the great difference between his early life and hers. By 1926, he had finished his study in France, married a Frenchwoman, and returned home to become a professor at the Egyptian University and a prominent literary figure. His daughter's life is vastly different from his; she has not experienced the poverty and hardships he did in Upper Egypt. Husayn closes by crediting the transformation of his life to his wife, who has "changed his misery into bliss, despair into hope, poverty into riches, and unhappiness into happiness." The second part of al-Ayyam covers the period from 1902 until 1921, when Husayn left al-Azhar and joined the Egyptian University. It describes student life at al-Azhar, the traditional mode of teaching, and the relationship between the students and their teachers, the shaykhs. Its real focus is on the intellectual curiosity of this young blind man, whose open and inquisitive mind destined him to become a great thinker of the Arab world. Conscious of his blindness, relying on his older brother, Husayn was greatly relieved when his cousin entered the Azhar and became his guide and companion. It pained him greatly to be called blind. He had never felt more grief and apprehension because of his disability than when he took the entrance examination for al-Azhar. One examiner said, "You may go now, blind one. May God grant you sight." 13 As we will see later, Husayn was again reminded of his disability at the Egyptian University and at the University of Montpelier in France. The curriculum at al-Azhar covered mostly religious sciences relating to the study of the Quran and the Hadith, jurisprudence, Arabic grammar,

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morphology, philology, rhetoric, ancient Arabic poetry, and a commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge, a treatise on Greek philosophy. The shaykhs usually sat on a high platform facing the students, who squatted in a circle on mats on the floor. Teaching methods were sterile, based on the external rather than intrinsic meaning of the text. For example, much time was spent learning the nine forms of the phrase Bism Allah al-Rahman alRahim (In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate), which begins the chapters of the Quran. A grammatical dispute arose when a teacher, Shaykh Ahmad al-Shinqiti, declared that the Arabic name Umar was indeclinable. When a student objected that the distinguished eighthcentury poet al-Khalil Ibn Ahmad, who invented Arabic prosody, had used the name in a declinable form, the shaykh accused him of lying. The other students laughed, and the dispute went unsettled. Other shaykhs such as Muhammad Abduh and Sayyid al-Marsafi followed a much less rigid and more analytical approach to teaching. As the years went by, young Husayn became less enchanted with the shaykhs of al-Azhar and their method of teaching. He had entered alAzhar believing it was the only source of the Ilm (learning, science, knowledge) which he considered sacred. A few years later, older and more mature, he abandoned this belief and resolved to acquire knowledge independently from available original sources. He had learned to inquire and criticize, and not to accept anything at face value. When he challenged a shaykh over a grammatical problem, the shaykh abruptly left the class, saying he could not teach "while this insolent student is present." When Husayn came home on vacation, many villagers were shocked to hear that he had denied many things which they held sacred, like the karamat (the divine power of saints to work miracles and intercede with God), and argued that any mediation between man and God is paganism. Outraged, they said, "This young man is misguided and misguiding; he went to Cairo and heard the harmful lectures of Shaykh Muhammad Abduh and his corrupt and corrupting ideas. Now he has come back to this town to mislead the people." Husayn submitted a strong article attacking the Azhar and its shaykhs to Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, a rationalist and propagator of Peripatetic philosophy, who had established the journal al-Jarida (Newspaper). This was Husayn's first real contact with lay intellectuals who were more tolerant, understanding, and appreciative of secular knowledge than the turbaned shaykhs of al-Azhar, who regarded any change as blasphemy. The second part of al-Ayyam ends with Husayn alternating his studies; by day he attended al-Azhar, and in the evening he went to the Egyptian University to hear lectures by prominent European scholars such as David Santillana, Ignazio Guidi, and Carlo Nallino on a variety of Arabic and Islamic subjects. He was clearly ready to go to Paris to further his studies. In this work Husayn has sketched some wonderfully comic characters. Among these is al-Hajj Firuz, a black man with a noticeable accent who

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sold the Azharite students broad beans dipped in butter or olive oil, honey, and cheese. Firuz looked after the students' mail and often lent them money; he was so indispensable many could not function without him. There is Ammi al-Hajj Ali, a retired Alexandrian rice merchant who made it his duty to take care of the students who lived in Husayn's quarter. He helped prepare their meals, joined them in prayer on Fridays, and led them in their evening prayers. Early in the morning he would order the students to rise and pray, pounding the floor with his cane, shouting, "Wake up, beasts! How long do you want to sleep? I take refuge in God from infidelity and misguidance. Amazing, isn't it? Students of learning sleep late and do not rise to pray until dawn." 14 He usually opened his door and chanted prayers in a loud voice, so that the people of the district would know he was praying. He was above all a source of joy and humor for the students. Husayn also mentions a certain Abu Tartur, a pest who stuck his nose into the students' affairs and even stormed into their rooms to relate immoral stories, distracting them from their homework. He always ogled with apparent lust the maid who came to collect the students' wash. The young Husayn noticed men like Abu Tartur and listened to him and other students chatting, but paid attention only to what caused him to think. Plainly the students' life around al-Azhar was not completely devoted to learning, nor was it all pleasure. Mudhakkirat Taha Husayn (The Memoirs of Taha Husayn, 1967) continues the narrative, although some information in its first chapter overlaps the final chapters of the second part of al-Ayyam. The Mudhakkirat describes the transformation of a blind, helpless turbaned Azharite student from rural Upper Egypt into a great Middle Eastern twentieth-century writer and thinker. Set forth in that exquisite, lucid, captivating style peculiar to Taha Husayn, it is permeated with enchanting humor as the author portrays his life at al-Azhar and the Egyptian University. He describes with a mixture of frustration and ridicule his failure on the graduation examination at the Azhar. The examiners decided to fail him because he had written an article interspersed with mordant Arabic verse in the journal alAlam (The Flag), criticizing some Azharite shaykhs who pretended to be strict Muslims, yet drank alcohol, contrary to Islamic law. As a young man, Husayn contributed articles on various subjects to several journals and wrote poetry, some of it closer to free verse than to the traditional Arabic poetry based on strict meters, though he was inclined to regard his verse compositions as silly.15 Husayn came into contact with Western thought at the university, where European professors, mostly Italians and Germans, lectured on Arabic and Islamic topics. He was fascinated by the depth of their knowledge and methodology, but he never denigrated the stature and attainments of their Egyptian counterparts. He relates a humorous anecdote about the students' treatment of these European professors. With their heavy accents

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and inability to pronounce correctly certain Arabic sounds, the lecturers drew laughter from the students, who sometimes became rude and unruly. Once the students decided to boycott the class of the Italian Orientalist Carlo Nallino, because Italy had made war on Turkey in 1911-1912 and invaded Tripoli. Finding the lecture hall empty, Nallino waited a few minutes for the students to appear; when they did not, he left. On his way out he saw them standing in the hallway. In eloquent Arabic tinged with a slight accent he said, "You behave like the husband who, in order to annoy his wife, castrated himself." The students got the message and never repeated their action, of which Husayn clearly disapproved. 16 In 1914 Husayn was justifiably proud of being the first student to receive a doctorate at the fledgling Egyptian University. His dissertation on the blind poet Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri (d. 1058) was published the next year as Dhikra Abu al-Ala (Remembrance of Abu al-Ala). His success allowed him to meet the writer May Ziyada, who, like some eighteenth-century French women, had a salon where men of letters met; many of them fell in love with her at a time when Middle Eastern women rarely appeared in public or mingled with men. When she expressed interest in reading Husayn's dissertation, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid seized upon the opportunity to bring him to her salon. Not surprisingly, Husayn confesses that when he met May and heard her talk, his heart throbbed with love for the first time. The Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, vacationing in Alexandria, asked to see Husayn because of his achievement. On hearing the news, Husayn was awestruck. It was no small thing for "this poor, blind Azharite to achieve such success that even the 'Occupant of the Throne' asks to see him." It was true. He was now on his way to fame and distinction. Chosen by the university to further his studies in France, Husayn in 1914 took up residence at the University of Montpelier, but soon had to return to Egypt because of financial problems. He was sent abroad again in 1915, this time to the Sorbonne University in Paris. There his life became easier when he met a young Frenchwoman whom he later married, and through whose eyes he was able to see. He asked the authorities to postpone his doctoral examination so that he could marry. He wrote his dissertation on the social philosophy of Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) under the Orientalist Paul Casanova, and was awarded the doctoral degree in philosophy with honors in 1917. When World War I ended, Husayn returned to Egypt to teach at the university and engage in writing and politics. The former Azharite had now adopted European dress, married a European woman, and become totally imbued with European ideas. The last chapter of the Mudhakkirat reveals Husayn's attitude toward the 1919 Egyptian Revolution led by Sa'd Zaghlul. He espoused its objectives, but also felt that educated Egyptians like himself had a great responsibility for its eventual success. His view should not surprise us. Husayn had studied sociology at the Sorbonne under Emile Durkheim

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(d. 1917), who, following the social philosopher Comte de Saint-Simon (d. 1825), maintained that the success of a just, progressive government depends on learned men, for they alone can harmonize the different achievements of science with people's capacity and needs. Sadly, he was mistaken. The learned men, mostly politicians, were selfish hypocrites who collaborated with the British and the king to secure their positions. Many people questioned the benefit of negotiating with the British. Husayn found himself opposing the Wafdists, who maintained there could be no negotiation without Zaghlul, who had been exiled by the British. Husayn says that he immersed himself in politics because to be neutral was cowardly; he did not regret his participation, although he suffered greatly from its consequences. Al-Ayyam has no formal plot; it can hardly be classified as fiction. Yet it is a consummate work of social realism, an awesomely accurate portrayal of life in Egypt as Husayn experienced it. It is not the narrative which gives it timeless beauty, but the elegant and effective language, graced with innocent humor and sincere expression. Taha Husayn's literary style will always be considered among the best in Arabic literature. In his fiction, however, this style seems to overwhelm the structure of the work and diminish the significance of the characters' actions. Another work by Husayn connected with al-Ayyam is Adib (Man of Letters), published in 1935. Chronologically it follows the first part of alAyyam, since Husayn refers to his days at al-Azhar and the Egyptian University. It would be gratuitous to consider it part of al-Ayyam, despite the arguments of the Egyptian writer Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr. 17 To do so not only illogically separates the two parts of al-Ayyam, but also interrupts their continuity with the Mudhakkirat. Furthermore, Husayn's primary intention in writing Adib was to relate the rise and fall of one of his colleagues, Jalal Shuayb, whom he knew at the Egyptian University and later at the Sorbonne. 18 Shuayb came from a village not far from Husayn's and had attended the same kuttab. After finishing high school, he worked as a clerk at the Ministry of Works, then entered the Egyptian University to further his studies. Husayn and Shuayb became close friends; Shuayb taught Husayn French, in return for help with logic and jurisprudence. Though Shuayb had an ugly face and a distinctive raspy voice, he was an industrious student and a voracious reader, distinguished by a keen and inquisitive mind. Because he wrote much but did not try to publish his writings, Husayn called him an adib. After Shuayb won a scholarship for study in Paris, he returned to his village to prepare for the journey. From that point on, Husayn relates a story supposedly based on Shuayb's correspondence with him. At the end, he says a French female friend of Shuayb handed him a bag containing letters and other written materials, along with a note asking him to dispose of them as he saw fit. Husayn claims he tried unsuccessfully to publish the letters, then incorporated the information

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gleaned from them into the book. When the Egyptian writer Fuad Dawwara asked about the papers mentioned at the end of Adib, Husayn answered that the whole episode was fictitious: "There was some information [about Shuayb] which I preferred to write and publish myself, and attribute it to this noble friend." 19 Adib describes some experiences Husayn and Shuayb shared and compares academic life at the university and al-Azhar. Mostly, however, it centers on Shuayb and, through him, on the great difficulty young Egyptian men had in comprehending and adapting to a totally different European culture and way of life. It is the story of a confrontation between East and West. Shuayb, unable to adjust to life in France, fell as its victim. Husayn himself also studied in France, but because of his firm moral standards he was able to overcome the harmful temptations of life. Adib examines Shuayb's moral conduct and his sense of morality. The conflict between good and evil, faithfulness and hypocrisy, altruism and selfishness is depicted in his endeavor to gain the scholarship to study in France. Because one condition was that the applicant be unmarried, Shuayb told the Ministry of Education he was single, though he was married to Hamida, an affable, attractive country woman of strong character. He shamelessly divorced his wife and sent her back to her family; she was an impediment to his success, and he intended to sacrifice her for the scholarship. Worse yet, he told Hamida that his decision to divorce her was evidence of his love for her, for in France, being weak, he would be unable to resist sexual temptations. His aim in going to France was not to continue his study, but to gain a higher position on returning home. He showed no remorse and admitted no wrong in discarding his wife. Husayn thought his friend's action was unethical and there was no need for deception, but he could not change his mind. He merely said that as an Azharite he thought indulging in the immoral ways of European life was sinful, and cautioned Shuayb of its tragic consequences. Jokingly, he cited the words of a strict Azharite: "He who goes to France is either a kafir [unbeliever] or at the least a zindiq [freethinker, atheist]." 20 Shuayb lied to himself when he said he loved his wife so much that her shadow would never leave his memory, even when he was aboard the ship bound for France. When he landed in Marseilles, he forgot the brokenhearted Hamida, as he faced a new life of pleasure with young French women. He had his first adventure with a maidservant at the hotel in Marseilles. In Paris, he met Hellene and was drowned in pleasure. During World War I, as the German army neared Paris, the French government asked the residents of the city to decide whether to stay or leave. Shuayb chose to stay because he loved the city and could not part with Hellene. At this point, he showed signs of mental instability and was nearly insane. He even accused Hellene of reporting him to the Allies as an enemy, and later lamented that she had left him because he was engaged to the daughter of

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a Sorbonne professor. Though he loved Paris, he identified with the Germans and felt persecuted, believing everyone in the city was intriguing against him. He even rejected the Egyptian government's order to return home, saying it was his destiny to remain in France. At last he became hopelessly insane. Husayn happened to be at the Sorbonne, and Hellene handed him Shuayb's bag of papers, with the hope that some day he would publish them. Years later, asked by Fuad Dawwara about the end of his friend, Husayn responded that Shuayb indulged in drinking, became insane, and eventually died of paralysis. 21 Like al-Ayyam, Adib lacks developing characters, since Husayn sets forth the whole story of Shuayb; had he planned differently, Shuayb's downfall could have been the subject of a powerful novel in our current understanding of this genre. Husayn's excellence lies in his poetic style and his elegant words, which make it as expressive as a well-crafted novel. Husayn's novel Du'a al-Karawan (The Call of the Plover, 1934) has a formal plot, but it is totally sacrificed for the ornate poetic style. 22 It describes the misfortunes of a rural Egyptian family. The father, crude and profligate, is killed during one of his pleasure bouts. Zahra and her two young daughters, Amina and Hanadi, move from one place to the other until finally they find work as maidservants. Hanadi's employer, a handsome young irrigation engineer (whose name is never given), seduces her, whereupon her uncle Nasir kills her. Amina, eager to know more of the man who brought dishonor and death to her sister, contrives to work for him after assuming a new name, Suad. The engineer, unaware of her identity, tries to seduce her, but she successfully resists his advances; later, succumbing to her charms, he proposes marriage, and she accepts. The story is related in a lengthy internal monologue by Amina, who interrupts it periodically to talk to a plover about the misfortunes of her family. Husayn uses the plover to reveal Amina's loneliness; she has no intimate, trustworthy friend to whom she can pour out her soul. Her monologue is couched in classic and elegant language which could hardly be expected from an Egyptian country girl. Furthermore, as the author intended, we see the characters' actions only from Amina's viewpoint. Nasir's heinous murder of Hanadi for her sexual fall receives weak and ineffective censure in Amina's perfunctory account; she notes simply that he stabbed Hanadi with a dagger, and she fell dead. The sequence of events following Hanadi's death defies belief. One may accept the idea that Amina hoped to avenge her sister's honor: revenge for one's ird (honor associated with women's chastity) is widely accepted in Middle Eastern countries. However, to retaliate for the shattered honor of her sister by marrying the perpetrator is incredible. The Egyptian writer and poet Salah Abd al-Sabur correctly notes that the plot of Du 'a alKarawan is not indigenous, but influenced by the French romantic novel. He cites a palpable inconsistency between the Arabic poetic style and the

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plot as evidence that Husayn "puts one foot in al-Azhar and the other in Paris." 2 3 Also, there is no indication that Amina was motivated by forgiveness to fall in love with and marry the engineer, and Husayn denies that he "exalted the victory of love over hatred, of forgiveness over revenge." 2 4 A more likely explanation for her actions is that she was a wretched simpleton or had a twisted sense of morality. If Hanadi's tragic murder is viewed in the light of the Middle Eastern concept of honor, how are we to understand the author's blaming the misfortunes of the family on the murder of the profligate father? Husayn wants us to believe that the mother and daughters were expelled from the village because of the dishonor this murder had brought upon them. Egyptian critic Muhammad Mandur asks, "What honor? This we do not know." He correctly observes that dishonor in this respect pertains to the chastity of women, not men. Thus, to attribute the family's suffering to the dishonorable actions and death of the father is a serious flaw. 25 As a romantic story, Du'a al-Karawan reminds us of Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Zaynab. There is some similarity between the relationship of Zaynab and Hamid in Haykal's novel and that of Hanadi with the irrigation engineer. Unlike Taha Husayn, Haykal has a larger purpose, to portray the life of the Egyptian fallah (peasant) and his relationship with the feudal lord. Moreover, while Haykal displays the interaction of the characters with the rural setting, Husayn presents it only through abstract generalizations by the narrator, Amina. 26 In Shajarat al-Bu's (The Tree of Misery, 1944), Husayn undertook to write the first Middle Eastern "generations novel," detailing the life and misfortunes of an Egyptian family in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 27 In this regard he preceded by almost a decade the famous Thulathiyya (Trilogy) of Naguib Mahfouz, treated in the next chapter. Some critics say that his work falls short of the standards of generations novels, because of its compressed time span and the rapid, almost perfunctory treatment of the vicissitudes of the third generation. 28 Yet his intention is clear; whether the reader believes him or not, he says, "I have followed the life and misfortunes of this family closely, with utmost care and precision, and thought it worth recording." Did Husayn know this family, and if so, why did he not reveal its identity at the outset? Rev. Kamal Qultah says that Husayn's son Munis told him that Shajarat al-Bu's is based on Husayn's own family. 29 Shajarat al-Bu's manages to be complex despite its apparent simplicity, and simultaneously insightful without appearing too complex. The main theme is bu's (misery), which permeates the whole novel and affects the lives of the characters. Khalid, son of the merchant Ali, is a pious Muslim studying religion under the shaykh of a Sufi brotherhood. Following the shaykh's advice, he marries Nafisa, the daughter of Abd al-Rahman, a merchant and friend of his father. Because Nafisa, whose mother was

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Abyssinian, is very ugly, his mother objects to the marriage, but her husband threatens to divorce her unless she consents. The wife ominously predicts that by allowing the marriage, he will plant a tree of misery in his house. Khalid's mother dies soon afterwards of grief, and her husband engages in multiple marriages and divorces. Not until his wife delivers a beautiful daughter, Samiha, does Khalid realize how ugly she is; their relation becomes strained, particularly when she bears another daughter, Jullanar, who resembles her. Nafisa, unable to endure feeling alienated from her husband, begins acting as if possessed by a demon. Following the shaykh's counsel, Khalid divorces Nafisa and marries Muna, the daughter of the wealthy Hajj Masud, and has several children by her. His beautiful daughter, Samiha, marries a rich old man but is quite miserable. Jullanar, meanwhile, becomes the family's maid, looking after her father, his new wife, and their children. She was betrothed as a child to her cousin Salim, but, repulsed by her appearance, he married her half-sister Tafida instead. Muna learns that her own children must also one day taste the bitter fruit of the tree of misery; Tafida similarly is miserable in her marriage. The novel ends with the women, now old, widowed or divorced, lamenting their fates. Muna tells Tafida the cause of her misfortune is envy, because she married the man Jullanar was supposed to marry. When Tafida admits that she has taken what does not belong to her, Jullanar retires to her room for several days, leaving it only to rejoin her father "where there is no envy, hatred, gossip, or condemnation." The novel's pallid ending implies that Jullanar has resigned herself to the fact that, being ugly like her mother, she is destined for a miserable life. With marriage out of the question, she has no alternative but to accept her lowly station in life. Simultaneously, she represents the bitter fruit of the tree of misery, as her mother was the cause of its planting. The novel is marked by emotional and psychological insight of deep familial misery. Husayn devotes much of the novel to showing how Muslim religious practices affect the characters' daily lives. After Khalid comes under the influence of the shaykhs, whom he obeys with the utmost deference although they are not always scrupulous, he shows more interest in the brotherhood than in business. His wife's ugliness at first does not concern him, because he thinks a beautiful face might distract him from piety and the pursuit of divine knowledge. When his father-in-law, Abd al-Rahman, wants to take Nafisa and her daughters with him to Cairo, he first seeks the advice of the shaykh. The devil plays a big role in the novel as the source of the family's misery. Husayn attributes Khalid's agony upon seeing Jullanar's face to the stealthy machination of the devil. Often, when Khalid is alone, the devil deceives him by showing him a beautiful woman. He tries to embrace her, but finds to his sorrow that she is only an illusion. The devil constantly reminds Nafisa of her ugliness, whispering to her that one day

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her husband will divorce her for another woman. She becomes so obsessed with the devil that she sees him in everything around her, especially her husband. She begins to hallucinate, imagining that a genie lives in the house and tells her she will soon be divorced, whereupon she scratches her face and chest, sobbing and sighing. Husayn also portrays the practice of polygamy in the behavior of Khalid's father Ali. After his wife died, he took many wives, keeping some and divorcing others, always with the support of the shaykh. He justified his action by observing that Allah permits Muslim men to marry up to four wives, but, following the strictures of the Quran, he was careful to treat them justly, by providing for them equally and spending a night with each in turn. In this regard, Ali is like the character Nunu in Naguib Mahfouz's Khan al-Khalili,30 But his expenses were too high, and he sank into debt. Being a devout Muslim who performed his daily prayers, he asked God to ease his burden by sending him money, but instead God stored for him a place in paradise where rivers of milk, honey, and wine flow, and where mansions stand in a way that "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have [they] entered into the heart of man." This is supposed to be a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, but is from the words of St. Paul (I Corinthians 2:9). Toward the end of his life, however, Ali admitted that he had acted wrongly by marrying his son to Nafisa, thereby planting the tree of misery in his household. Throughout the novel Husayn alludes to social, economic, and cultural matters, such as the government's harsh treatment of the fallahin (peasants), and the shameful state schools where children learned only to speak a garbled mixture of French and Turkish. He shows the adverse effect of competition from Greek, Italian, French, and English merchants on Ali's business, which Ali takes as a sign of God's wrath upon him and his colleagues. He portrays the common view that women are "deficient of reason and religion," later illustrated by Naguib Mahfouz in the first part of his

Thulathiyya.

Some Egyptian writers maintain that Taha Husayn excels not so much in fiction as in literary scholarship, while others aver that he is an excellent storyteller. I do not intend to take sides in this controversy, which has already been discussed by the Egyptian writer Husayn Nassar. 31 On the basis of the works treated here, Taha Husayn is an able practitioner of fiction, endowed with deep social and psychological insight. Like other Egyptian writers, he has a deep understanding of the human condition, manifested in his analysis of the thoughts and attitudes of his characters. Often, his language adds to the beauty of the narrative and renders it all the more vibrant and meaningful. Yet we must remember that he was not only a writer of fiction, but a universal figure whose combination of classical Arabic and French cultures makes him unique among Middle Eastern men of letters.

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Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898 or 19037-1987) Like Taha Husayn, Tawfiq al-Hakim studied in France and was influenced by European thought and culture. He devoted himself mostly to the drama, hoping to raise it to a higher intellectual plane and become the best Egyptian and Arab dramatist. Since his dramas were written to be read, not acted, they are considered to belong to al-Masrah al-Dhihni (The Theater of the Mind). 32 Al-Hakim was born at Alexandria in 1898 (by his own claim) or in 1903, as the critic Ismail Adham has deduced from his novel Awdat al-Ruh (The Return of the Spirit). 33 After he had received a bachelor's degree in law, his father sent him in 1925 to Paris to obtain a doctorate, but alHakim divided his three-year stay there among literature, music, and the theater, burning with desire to master whatever he could have of Western civilization. In 1928 he returned to Egypt, where he worked for many years as a prosecutor, detailing his experiences in Yawmiyyat Na 'ib fi alAryaf (Diaries of a Prosecuting Attorney in the Country, 1937). When Awdat al-Ruh first appeared in 1933, many prospective Egyptian novelists were still struggling to discover the genre which would suit their literary aims. 34 The book was apparently well received, being translated into Russian in 1935 and French in 1937, with parts translated into English in 1942.35 In form and content it represents a step forward in the development of the Arabic novel. It is much better crafted than many earlier Egyptian novels. The Egyptian critic Ghali Shukri wrote admiringly, "We look upon the author who gave us Awdat al-Ruh as the founder of the contemporary Egyptian novel." 36 Had al-Hakim continued to write fiction, he might have become the incomparable Egyptian and Arab novelist. However, he devoted his pen to the drama, leaving to Naguib Mahfouz and others the task of perfecting the Egyptian novel. According to Ismail Adham, al-Hakim sketched an outline of Awdat al-Ruh in French in 1928 and later wrote the whole thing in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. 37 Years later, when al-Hakim revealed his reasons for writing the novel, he said nothing about writing all or parts of it in French. He claimed that he had seen in the 1919 revolution a miracle, a manifestation of a perpetual and mysterious spirit prodding the Egyptians into action. He added, "This feeling about the revolution kept haunting me until I recorded it in Awdat al-Ruh,"38 On the surface, Awdat al-Ruh is a work of social realism, marked by mordant humor, revealing the loves, joys, and sorrows of a middle-class Egyptian family. The novel is set mostly in Cairo, where young Muhsin lives with his two uncles, Hanafi and Abduh, their half brother Salim, and an illiterate, boorish single aunt, Zannuba; some of the action occurs in Damanhor, where Muhsin's parents live. Muhsin is the central figure, and it should be made clear here that he represents al-Hakim. When asked by

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the Egyptian critic Ghali Shukri whether he is the Muhsin of Awdat al-Ruh and Usfur min al-Sharq (Eastern Sparrow, 1938), al-Hakim answered, "Yes, I am Muhsin."» As the novel opens, Muhsin is fifteen years old, attending high school in Cairo and living with his uncles and aunt, who like his father come from a peasant background. His father has married a woman from the rich, powerful Turkish class, aiming to climb socially. Arrogant and bombastic, she constantly reminds him that he is an uncouth fallah whom she has worked hard to civilize, and she treats with equally harsh contempt the peasants who work on her estate. Muhsin and his relatives live in a three-room apartment, with a single bedroom serving all the males except the servant Mabrouk, who sleeps on the kitchen table. The intense harmony that characterizes their life is not unusual, but their wholly communal existence is remarkable, although at times it seems contrived and overdrawn. They share the same circumstances, the same emotions, and the same misfortunes. When they simultaneously fall ill with Spanish fever, the physician who visits them thinks they are like soldiers living in barracks, though they appear content with their lifestyle. Significantly, al-Hakim continually refers to the family as al-Sha'b (The People), which as we shall see later has a nationalistic connotation. The most salient event of the novel is the men's infatuation with their neighbor Saniyya, the beautiful, vivacious seventeen-year-old daughter of a retired army physician, Ahmad Hilmi. Her beauty is exemplary of the true Egyptian female; to Muhsin, she resembles the goddess Isis. Muhsin and his uncles become enamored of her for different reasons. The adolescent Muhsin feels first love, agitated by his febrile imagination and expectations. Once, while on the roof of the house, he finds Saniyya's silk kerchief, blown there by the wind, and keeps it as a token of his love. He holds it in his hands and kisses it, with almost the same reverence Muslims show for the Quran. Music enables him to be near Saniyya. When he visits her with his aunt Zannuba, Saniyya plays the piano and Muhsin sings a piece by the Egyptian singer Abduh al-Hamuli (d. 1901). Afterwards, she offers to teach him the piano if he will teach her to sing. Al-Hakim devotes Chapter 9 to showing how Muhsin came to appreciate music. When he was six, Labiba Shakhla, a family friend who led a female ensemble, entertained his sick mother. Entranced, he insisted on joining the ensemble; Shakhla agreed, and he often performed with her, especially at weddings. His obsessive love of music matches that of al-Hakim himself. Abduh and Salim contrive excuses to meet Saniyya at her home. Abduh, who knows nothing of electrical work, offers to repair a faulty cable, while Salim, equally ignorant, offers to fix her piano. Their preparation to visit Saniyya and their subsequent bragging about how intimate she was with them provide the most hilarious scenes of the novel. Only

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Hanafi appears not to have been involved in his brothers' amorous adventures with Saniyya, being too busy teaching and keeping the family in order. Ironically, Saniyya is totally oblivious to these men's infatuation with her. She has her eye on the handsome young Mustafa Raji, who watches her daily from the coffeehouse across the street. Finally, on meeting her at the dental clinic, Mustafa sends his aunt to seek Saniyya's hand. Saniyya's marriage to Mustafa is a shock to Abduh and Salim, and a devastating blow to Muhsin's dreams. Realizing at last that Saniyya does not love him and has treated him as a mere child, Muhsin returns her silk kerchief and leaves, brokenhearted. Is he truly in love with her, or merely infatuated with an imagined idol? According to the Egyptian writer George Tarabishi, Muhsin is in love not with Saniyya but with his image of her. When his dream runs into reality, his world collapses, causing him great pain. Tarabishi further contends that al-Hakim has based Muhsin's love of Saniyya on his own experience. However, he has adroitly transformed it into a "dream-reality game" continued in his other works, cloaked by fictitious characters. 40 Perhaps Tarabishi is reading too much into Awdat alRuh, but that remains to be seen. Also amusing is the behavior of Zannuba, whose only role in the family is cooking and housekeeping. An illiterate, ugly forty-year-old single woman with no prospect of marriage, she is obsessed with the idea of finding a husband to save her from her drudgery. One day, spotting Mustafa in the coffeehouse staring at her window, she decides to have him as a husband, unaware that he is watching Saniyya. She consults a sorcerer, hoping to make Mustafa fall in love with her. When the sorcerer asks her to find him a hoopoe for a magic spell, her brothers greet her request with ridicule. When the magic does not yield the desired result, Zannuba starts inventing lies about Saniyya, even sending her father unsigned letters accusing her of immoral relations with Mustafa. Her strategy fails, and the lovers eventually marry. The plot, which covers 520 pages yet offers no clue whatever to the meaning of the novel's title, should logically end with Mustafa's marriage to Saniyya. The reader is suddenly faced with two additional chapters in which the author relates that Muhsin and his uncles took part in the Egyptian revolution of 1919 and were arrested and imprisoned by government authorities. There is little preparation for these incidents earlier in the novel; the author makes a few brief allusions to the Egyptian people, their ancient culture, and their ability to rise and reclaim their rights (from the British, who occupy the country) despite their present dormant state. AlHakim constantly refers to the family as al-Sha 'b, emphasizing the collusiveness of the Egyptian people. Not only do they lead a communal life; they fall ill simultaneously, love the same young woman, and take part in the revolution together. At school Muhsin hears his history teacher say that the present Egyptian fallah is the same one who tilled the soil for centuries.

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T h e f a l l a h has forgotten his roots, and his resigned, peaceful attitude is a sign not of his enslavement but of his noble origin. We may assume that al-Hakim intends the family to symbolize the history of Egypt and its people since Pharaonic times. Like their ancestors, they are a cohesive social unit. They may seem passive, but when the revolution erupts, the eternal spirit of the people returns to them and inspires them to reassert themselves as men of action. Interviewed by Ghali Shukri, al-Hakim said that the cultural link between the present-day Egyptians and their ancient past is continuously represented in their will to resist time, weakness, and nonbeing. As the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids and preserved the bodies of their dead, their modern descendants resist weakness through revolutionary struggle. The Egyptian people have remained one despite foreign invasions; their lasting qualities are their unity, indomitable spirit, and distinct identity. Their downtrodden life conceals their dynamic spirit, inherited greatness and determination. Significantly, al-Hakim told Shukri that those Egyptians who prefer to preserve Arab culture while overlooking others have ended up neglecting the legacy of Egyptian civilization. 41 Plainly he means that despite the Arabs' influence, Egypt has retained its ancient Pharaonic legacy. Many Egyptian intellectuals remain proud of their national heritage despite centuries of Arab and Islamic influence. According to the writer Nevill Barbour, al-Hakim in Awdat al-Ruh has emphasized the ancient Pharaonic culture at the expense of Islamic culture. 42 Al-Hakim devotes all of Part II, Chapter 6 to the presumed correlation between Pharaonic Egypt and the present-day nation, as viewed by two foreigners (Mr. Black, a British irrigation engineer, and M. Fouquet, a French archaeologist) who visit the estate of Muhsin's parents. As the fallahin work in the fields, the Frenchman admires their industry, their contentedness, and their colorful dress. The Englishman retorts that they are ignorant and sleep in the same room as their livestock. The Frenchman answers that these people are not ignorant, but possess sublime wisdom and power hidden within their souls. Just open the heart of one of them, he continues, and you will find the residues of ten thousand years of wisdom and experience. What separates them from the Europeans is that they do not know what treasures they possess. In spite of their poverty and wretched life, they enjoy their communal existence. What a marvelous industrial people these fallahin will be in the future! In brief, the Frenchman asserts that the present-day Egyptians, like their distant ancestors, have suffered hard work and pain. When they built the pyramids, the ancient Egyptians worked in unison, singing songs of joy to the gods and their embodiment, the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops). The Egyptian people have the same spirit today, he says, but they need a god to inspire them to action. Strangely, however, we do not see this attitude in the characters' actions until the last two chapters, when al-Hakim abruptly introduces the revolution of 1919. He says at the start of Chapter 24 that

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the French archaeologist was right in stating, "A nation which achieved the miracle of the pyramids is not incapable of achieving another. They say this nation has been dead for centuries, but they do not see its great heart reflected in the sands of the Giza. Egypt fashioned its heart with its own hands, to live forever." More than any other person, al-Hakim concludes, these archaeologists who live in the past can visualize the future of Egypt. The foreigners' conversation is superimposed upon the structure of the novel and could be dropped without damage to the narrative. Similarly, the last two chapters are at best tenuously connected to the plot, and the two quotations from The Book of the Dead which preface both volumes have no significant association with the novel. Perhaps al-Hakim's aim was to portray the life of a middle-class family of peasant origin whose members, until now inactive, suddenly rise to life in the 1919 revolution, inspired by Sa'd Zaghlul (whose name is not mentioned in the final chapters). Perhaps he intended to use Muhsin's family to represent all Egyptians, but such symbolism can be fathomed only by the most discerning critic. It is even more farfetched to assert that Saniyya represents the ancient goddess Isis. As Isis gathered the pieces of Osiris's body, restored it, and finally gave him eternal life, Saniyya brings together her three would-be lovers to serve Egypt collectively. Although they fail to win her favor, they are united in suffering and inspired to give themselves for the greatest idol, Egypt, by joining in the revolution. The Egyptian critic Ali al-Ra'i rightly says that there is nothing in the novel to justify such symbolism, but adds that alHakim was more successful in depicting Zaghlul as the driving spirit behind the revolution. The Egyptian people, so long oppressed by foreigners, need a "god" [leader] to release their spirit from eternal dormancy. When al-Hakim suggests that such a leader has already appeared, it is clear that Zaghlul rather than Saniyya corresponds to Isis. 43 The novel's great weakness is that the events of the Egyptian revolution are extraneous, not rooted in the characters' words and actions. Nowhere until the last two chapters do we find the characters involved in the revolution or even mentioning it. Their participation is presented not because of the gradual development of their political views, but as a sudden and impetuous action. Moreover, al-Hakim's assertion that Egypt has preserved its old indomitable and immutable spirit misinterprets the reality of Egyptian society. Even more disturbing is the tenuous connection between the realistic and symbolic aspects of the novel. Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi comments, "The symbolic aspect seems majestic and is supported by a dynasty of gods and by The Book of the Dead, while the realistic aspect contains childish narratives and events marked by ostentation, sham, and inconsistencies." 44 One may wonder how an intelligent writer like al-Hakim could expect the common reader to fathom his intention of tying Egypt's past to its present. At best, the novel is the episodic love story of three gullible men, including the adolescent Muhsin, and a flirtatious

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seventeen-year-old young woman. Al-Hakim should at least have shown Muhsin's participation in the revolution, but he leaves that to his later work, Usfur min al-Sharq (Eastern Sparrow). The novel is most effective in presenting the contemptuous treatment of the fallahin by Muhsin's Turkish mother. To her, the Egyptian peasant is subhuman and should be treated as an animal. She will not even let the peasant women kiss her hand, lest they dirty her dress. When she finds that the overseer has not provided European baked bread, she angrily orders him to send a peasant to Damanhor to fetch some, or be whipped with the kurbaj. Muhsin is displeased by his mother's harsh treatment of the fallahin, and when she warns them not to draw near, he reprimands her: "Why do you drive them away? It is pitiful." His mother answers, "Pitiful? They are only peasants." One must be impressed with Muhsin's empathy toward the fallahin. He mingles with them and listens with enjoyment as they describe their affairs, especially their relations with the neighboring Bedouins. When the peasant Hasan says that in every respect the fallahin are better than the Bedouins, Muhsin enthusiastically agrees. He cannot understand how his father, born a peasant, can forget his roots and treat his own kind with contempt, just because he married a rich Turkish woman. Muhsin feels anger toward his father, but mostly he feels that his parents are strangers and yearns impatiently to leave their estate and return to his simple uncles in Cairo. Al-Hakim intends here to show that the fallahin are far better human beings than their oppressive masters, as represented by Muhsin's mother, who is pernicious, shallow, and utterly without humility and compassion. Despite their seemingly ordinary life, the members of the family harbor progressive ideas and look forward to a better future. The shy, introverted Muhsin detests his parents' bourgeois life-style and refuses to consider himself better than his poor schoolmates. His uncle Abduh, an engineering student, concentrates on his studies in order to graduate; Salim, giving up his amorous fantasies, finds that participation in the revolution makes his life more dynamic and meaningful. Even Hanafi, an arithmetic teacher who is interested not in politics but in the well-being of the family, takes an active part in the revolution. The servant Mabrouk, once told by Saniyya that he looks like an Umda (village headman), lies that he once was one. Though he realizes that he has no chance of becoming an Umda, he imagines that he could emulate one by wearing glasses and behaving with dignity. Even the illiterate and boorish Zannuba concedes that she lacks an education, which might enable her to attract the right man. These characters have great faith in themselves and pride in belonging to a country whose high civilization, unlike that of Europe, is five thousand years old, far older than Europe's. Al-Hakim's characters speak colloquial Egyptian Arabic, which renders the narrative more powerful and meaningful. But in several articles in

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the journal al-Balagh (Communiqué, Proclamation), Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini criticized al-Hakim's grammatical errors and use of colloquial language. According to Yahya Haqqi, however, al-Hakim never claimed to be a master of Arabic grammar or incapable of making errors. Who is infallible anyway? Haqqi rightly maintains that al-Mazini's criticism is unfair and should not detract from the beauty and cohesiveness of the novel. 45 Al-Hakim's artful use of dialogue is understandable, since he is a master dramatist. The novel reads more like a drama. The style is plain and free from repetition or florid language. Awdat al-Ruh is certainly a step forward in the development of the Arabic novel. It is, as writer William M. Hutchins asserts, "the single most important [work of al-Hakim], if only for the juicy slice of Egyptian life it offers." 4 6 Usfur min al-Sharq (1938), already mentioned, is strongly associated with Awdat al-Ruh because Muhsin is again the central figure. Not surprisingly, al-Hakim dedicates the book "To My Immaculate Protectress Lady Zaynab," referring to a daughter of the Prophet of Islam (a mosque bearing her name still stands in Cairo). The book relates Muhsin's experiences as a law student in Paris (1925-1928) and his first contact with Western civilization. Life in France in the 1920s was truly different from the rigid, closed Egyptian society Muhsin had known as an adolescent. Everything in Paris was different—people, music, literature, the theater. All that Muhsin saw as fann (fine arts, or the pursuit of aesthetics) was suddenly different. Usfur min al-Sharq is not a novel in the current understanding of the genre, but it reads like one. It has a unifying thread throughout, focusing on al-Hakim's experiences in Paris and Egypt. Its greatest merit is that it reveals important aspects of his life and thought, crucial to the study of such a prominent literary figure in Egypt and the Arab world. It also offers a deep insight into the conflict between Middle Eastern and European civilizations. Muhsin is overwhelmed by life in France, but keeps in touch with his Eastern roots. He goes there carrying his traditional religious beliefs and succeeds in reconciling them with Western ideas. Al-Hakim illustrates the difference between Muhsin's spiritual attitude and that of his French friend André when they attend a funeral at the church of St. Germain. Not having entered a church or seen its rituals, Muhsin is awed by what he sees, thinking he has left the earth and been transported to a higher domain. He feels the same reverence as when he visited the mosque of Lady Zaynab, whispering that the house of God is the same everywhere. He joins the rest of the mourners, circling the coffin and sprinkling the coffin with holy water in the form of the cross. After the funeral, at the Dome Cafe, André asks Muhsin whether he knows where they buried the deceased. "Is it not enough," Muhsin asks, "that I prayed for the departed and sprinkled him with holy water?" André says, perhaps sarcastically, "You, Eastern sparrow,

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think it is a great thing to enter a church. Here in Paris we enter a church as we enter a café. What difference does it make? Both are public places. In the church stands the organ, and in the café stands the orchestra." Muhsin whispers to himself, "But heaven is there." 47 His companion, the product of a materialistic society where spirituality counts for little or nothing, does not understand what he means. The dichotomy between the spirituality of the East and the materialism of the West is even more apparent in the ideas of the Russian Ivanovitch, whom Muhsin first encounters reading Das Kapital. A worker who left Russia to seek a better life in France, Ivan (as Muhsin calls him) is a well-read man with avid intellectual curiosity. From their first conversation, we sense that Ivan is disenchanted with Marxism. When Muhsin calls Russia the paradise of the poor, Ivan says that this is a myth; the world will always suffer from the gap between the rich and the poor. Ivan has a high regard for the prophets of the East, who he says understood that economic equality is unachievable; because they could not divide the earthly kingdom between the rich and the poor, they invented heaven and made it part of the basis for the distribution of wealth. Thus while the rich possess the earthly kingdom, the poor will inherit the kingdom of heaven. The West has its own prophets too, he says, but their eyes are fixed on the earth rather than heaven: "Our prophet, Karl Marx, came with his own gospel, trying to achieve justice on this earth. He succeeded only in dividing the land between people and forgot heaven. The result was that the classes struggled and even resorted to killing to own the land." While Marx was dropping his materialistic bomb, the prophets of the East were planting love, patience, and contentment, teaching that there is another place better than earth. Ivan hails these prophets as true geniuses, lamenting that the materialistic thinkers of the West did not leave the Europeans even the opportunity to enjoy "that sweet delusion and solace which [they] bestowed on us." Unconvinced, Muhsin asks Ivan whether he considers the kingdom of heaven a delusion. Ivan, apparently a skeptic, tells Muhsin he should be happy because he is a believer. 48 The same subject comes up again in Chapters 10, 19, and 20. The gist of Ivan's philosophy is that long ago, Asia (the Middle East) and Africa (Egypt) united in marriage and brought forth a beautiful daughter, Europe. However, this daughter grew selfish and exploitative. She lost her parents' faith and became totally involved in industrialism, which divided European communities into those who have (capitalists) and those who have not (workers). Sadly, both groups have lost their spirituality. The Europeans have become mere robots, like the machines they invented. Even the church has become oppressive and materialistic. "Europe today is like a perplexed thinker addicted to opium . . . Europe is effete, and nothing in it can save her." He says Europe's salvation must come from outside: "Let us go to the East . . . I would like to see the Mount of Olives and drink

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from the waters of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Zamzam well in Mecca." 49 Much to Ivan's disappointment, Muhsin sees the spirituality of the East and the materialism of the West in an entirely different light. Not at all impressed by his lamentation, Muhsin asks Ivan how he could leave Europe and its civilization, which has produced "Beethoven, who is a true prophet and messenger of love and peace. He is worthy to symbolize the glory of Europe forever, to light the hearts and purify mankind." Of course, Ivan has known the East only in his dreams, and Muhsin tries to dispel his wrong notions without shocking the poor old man, who cannot find anything in the West to heal his perplexed soul. Since hearing the truth would surely kill him, Muhsin whispers that the East is not as Ivan imagines. It has drastically changed and lost its spirituality. Piety has disappeared, and religious men indulge in wealth and pleasure. The Easterners mimic the Europeans in everything, even dress and parliamentary process, and put more faith in modern European science than in the majesty of heaven. The East is no more, Muhsin laments; it is only a jungle filled with monkeys dressed like Westerners, without order or comprehension. Muhsin realizes that living in the West and enjoying its material amenities has almost made him forget his protectress, Lady Zaynab, but after listening to Ivan he recalls her with great fervor. Ivan has rekindled his faith in the East. Early in the novel, Muhsin (who represents al-Hakim) recalls the events of the revolution. His role was to write fiery nationalistic songs, have them set to music, and sing them to young Egyptians behind prison bars. One bloody spectacle, he says, has left an indelible mark on his memory. He saw revolutionists strike a British soldier with an iron rod, cracking his skull. The sight of blood on the soldier's face made him dizzy. British soldiers brandishing machine guns appeared instantly, and the revolutionists fled. In the dark, Muhsin stood as if glued to a wall, where the soldiers could not see him. When he regained his composure, he ran to safety as fast as he could, stepping on dead bodies. One may ask why, if al-Hakim had such a gruesome experience during the revolution, he did not relate it in Awdat al-Ruh, where it would have been timeless and significant. Unlike Naguib Mahfouz, who made the Egyptian revolution an integral part of his Thulathiyya, al-Hakim has left it as an abstraction, shrouded with vague mystical symbolism. 50 Two-thirds of Usfur min al-Sharq, however, is devoted to Muhsin's amorous adventures—the first with Suzie Dupont, whose real name is Emma Durand. Suzie, a beautiful blond, sells tickets at the Odeon Theater. Muhsin, a regular patron, is infatuated with her but lacks the courage to make her acquaintance. Following her for several days, he discovers that she lives in a hotel outside Paris. He moves there, taking a room one floor above hers, and soon contrives to meet her. Muhsin receives a laundry bill

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and asks her to pay it, pretending to be short of cash; though she hardly knows him, she agrees. Muhsin decides to repay her with an unusual gift. He buys a caged parrot, then lowers the cage on a rope to reach Suzie's window. When she rises in the morning, Suzie is startled to see the parrot outside her window. Looking up, she sees Muhsin watching for her reaction. She appreciates the gift and asks the bird's name; he answers that it is his own name, Muhsin. No sooner does she call the bird by name than the parrot begins repeating, "I love you. I love you." When she is reluctant to establish relations with him, he tries again, inviting her to dine out, and she accepts. They leave the restaurant holding hands, but on reaching the hotel, Muhsin is disappointed when she abruptly says goodnight and goes to her room. Muhsin persists, and she finally comes to his room late one evening. As they are reading Greek poetry, suddenly he finds her in his arms and feels her soft hair against his face. At long last, his dream has become reality. Two weeks later, however, he learns that Suzie has a boyfriend, Henri; then she writes Muhsin that she cannot see him again, and that she has given the parrot to a friend. Shocked by the abrupt end of their relationship, he leaves the hotel and moves to the same building where his friend Ivan is staying. There is nothing remarkable about Muhsin's short-lived affair with Suzie. The Egyptian writer George Tarabishi cites it to support his view that al-Hakim always perceived a woman as an idol to be worshiped while she was beyond his reach, but once she became attainable, this vision was lost. In other words, al-Hakim converts his "dream-reality" love experience into a mere game, which he plays in almost all his works. Thus, Tarabishi declares, in his dreams Muhsin makes Suzie an unequaled queen sitting on a throne and falls in love with her. He is transported back to reality when Andre's wife Germaine tells him to be practical and send Suzie a bouquet and invite her to dinner, because no woman in Paris can refuse such an offer. 51 Tarabishi is reading too much into the text. Clearly the episode reveals Muhsin's lack of experience in dealing with women on an equal, personal level. Unable to speak directly to Suzie, he idealizes her until she becomes a regal, unapproachable figure, then resorts to the ludicrous, infantile means of a parrot as the courier of his love. Muhsin is still the adolescent we encountered in Awdat al-Ruh, a sexually naive young man who grew up in a closed society with solid barriers between males and females. Now in Paris, where women are accessible, he is still too timid to approach them; so he fantasizes about a woman and idealizes her until he discovers that a beautiful blond woman whom he thought beyond his reach will share herself with him. What brings Muhsin to his senses is sheer jealousy. He loves Suzie and takes her seriously, thinking that she is totally his, and his world of dreams crumbles when he finds he is sharing her with another man. He writes to her that if she had told him from the outset about her

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relation with Henri, he would have taken things casually, implying that he never imagined women could be so sexually liberated: "It is easy for my simple Eastern mentality to live in dreams as it does in reality. It will not accept things collapsing so quickly." 52 Muhsin's letters to his friend André from Egypt, incorporated into Zahrat al-Umr (The Bloom of Life, 1943) also suggest that Muhsin felt inferiority in dealing with women. In one, he asks André whether he thinks any woman will ever be inclined to like him. 53 He wonders whether an Alsatian waitress whom he knew still thinks of him, though he did not touch her lest his hopes be shattered. Thus, alHakim says, he abstained from becoming involved with her lest he becomes frustrated as Muhsin did in his relations with Suzie. He recognizes that he was dispirited while studying in Paris and failed at everything, including love. Now, back in Alexandria, he manages to regain selfconfidence. Muhsin's next major love adventure, with Sasha Schwartz, also reveals the immature behavior of an Eastern adolescent, but has a different outcome. Why al-Hakim relates it not in Usfur min al-Sharq but in Zahrat al-Umr is unknown, but this episode is too important to be overlooked. The light it sheds on Muhsin's perception of and attitude toward women helps to dispel Tarabishi's "dream-reality" theory. Muhsin is with a friend in a small bar in Montmartre when Sasha enters, accompanied by a handsome young Spaniard. She reminds him of the statue of Aphrodite in the Louvre, and the young man reminds him of Apollo. A few days later, he meets her at the same bar and learns that her boyfriend has deserted her, leaving her without financial support. He invites her to share his room, and they spend the night in bed. Their relationship is off and on for three months, until she finds work as a dancer and leaves him. Muhsin's relation with Sasha is strictly sensual. He never fantasizes or idolizes her as he did Suzie. He has learned that women in Paris are available and willing to share his bed. Sasha is an easy conquest, a stranger in a foreign country with no family and no job; when they cross paths, she thinks (wrongly) that she can establish a permanent relationship with him. Muhsin says he is unfit to take care of her or make her happy, calling himself "an uncivilized Easterner who believes that woman's place is in the harem, or at least that Sasha should have no role in my life. I have no objection if she shares my room if she leaves me free, never demanding to go out with me or make me feel that she exists in my life." Yes, Sasha is as beautiful as the marble statue of Aphrodite, but from their first night together he is afraid that she will change his life's routine, especially his obsession with visiting the Louvre. He writes André, "She is a burden and a liability. I was not made to walk in this life with a woman hanging onto my arm," later saying he cannot love Sasha because love "is not possible with a woman ever before my eyes." Thus, the female is an idol to be adored, and Sasha is an unattainable bright star who, on falling into his

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hands, turns into a dim lamp "which my hands could n o t . . . protect from fall or destruction." From the works already discussed, we can fairly deduce that alHakim, unable or unwilling to establish a permanent relationship with any woman, idolized females to escape reality. This is evident by his attitude toward a beautiful Polish dancer, Natalie, whom he met on a train from Salzburg to Paris. He records his infatuation with her in Raqisat alMa'bad (The Temple Dancer, 1939). He took Natalie to his studio in Paris, where he offered her his bed while he slept on the couch. After a restless night, he departed early in the morning, leaving her a short note. On returning, he found that Natalie had gone, leaving behind a note of thanks. When he asked to see her at her hotel, she refused but thanked him for his concern. Devastated by her rejection, al-Hakim says, he sought solace with the god of the arts in his temple. He ran away from himself because he lacked the courage to commit himself to a woman, though there is strong evidence that Natalie was ready to establish a relationship with him. Thus al-Hakim has apparently made his choice. He is wedded to the arts and to building his literary career, and cannot bother with women except to satisfy his sexual needs. There is no room for fantasy in his life; the image he later had in Egypt as one who idolized women and, because he remained a bachelor for so long, was called Adu al-Mar'a (misogynist), seems softened. 54 Is al-Hakim really the enemy of women, or is he frightened by women? Muhsin's behavior toward women as an adolescent in Awdat al-Ruh, as a student in Paris, and afterwards as a prosecuting attorney in Egypt, shows that al-Hakim was incapable of real love—the love which ordinary men like his friend Taha Husayn experience in life. Perhaps al-Hakim's strictly authoritarian mother scarred his tender soul, causing him to fear women and adore them only in his world of fancy. Also, he may have remained an adolescent and never matured emotionally to the point where he could love and be loved. Evidently, al-Hakim's problem in relating to women is not, as Tarabishi suggests, that he is playing games. By his own admission, he is an escapist. Because he cannot deal practically with women, he resorts to fantasy. He imagines that the damsels he has met as dancers in the temple of the arts are paragons of beauty. Men are allowed only to see and appreciate them but not touch them. Al-Hakim fantasizes that these damsels belong only to the god of the arts, who declares, "All that [you] men have are these fibers which tie you forever to my chariot." 55 Moreover, Tarabishi seems to misconstrue al-Hakim's perception of woman when he says that his dwelling on fanciful love is better than ordinary love, which brings him face to face with a real woman. Al-Hakim sees in the female a sublime idol, as unapproachable as a remote shining star. When she fails to be an object of worship, i.e., if she becomes an easy sex object, she loses her mysterious sacred image, as rapidly as a

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falling meteor. 56 Such speculation about his view of women was shattered when, in his mature years, al-Hakim married and had children. Yawmiyyat Na'ib fi al-Aryaf describes al-Hakim's experience as a prosecutor in rural Egypt between 1929 and 1934, when he was transferred to a position at the Investigation Bureau in the Ministry of Education. 5 7 The diaries cover a period from October 11 to 22, without specifying the year. Al-Hakim, keen on intellectual pursuits, had no desire for a judicial position, but while still in Paris he received a cable asking him to return to Egypt because he had been appointed a prosecutor. Back home, he wrote to his friend André expressing his shock at the news, saying that his people must have gone mad. How could they expect someone like him, living in the heaven of the arts, to stoop to fill a government position? Unhappy in his new post, he thought he could find relief in the company of his coworkers, but their shallowness only added to his frustration. Nothing did more to alleviate his anxiety than listening to Western music and writing. The job of a prosecuting attorney, he complains, is more difficult than any, save that of a soldier fighting in the trenches. He feels torn between an uneventful outward life and the inward life of his "muses" and sublime values. The conflict of these two lives is his pathos. 58 He reveals his agony in the preface to the Yawmiyyat, asking rhetorically whether he wrote the diaries because they contain a happy part of his life, then noting that a happy man seldom records daily events. As a prosecutor he lived amid crime and criminals; now, free from the fetters of his position, he can write about his experiences in it. Yawmiyyat Na 'ib fi al-Aryaf portrays the good and bad aspects of the Egyptian judicial system. Al-Hakim shows that most of the rural citizens do not understand the procedures or complexity of the law, let alone how it applies to their cases. He also reveals how judicial and police positions are tied in with politics, treating the unscrupulousness of the judges and the police with apparent humor. Nepotism is a way of life, he notes, and every governmental regime favors its own lackeys. The diaries also offer an accurate portrait of Egyptian social life, especially that of t h e f a l l a h i n . The Yawmiyyat also presents the story of a beautiful young country damsel, Rim, and al-Hakim's attitude toward her. The diaries begin and end with her story, intermittently interrupted by accounts of other judicial cases. Rim is the sister of Qamar al-Dawla Alwan, who was shot at night by an unknown assailant and taken to a hospital for treatment. Because Alwan had left his infant son in Rim's care after the death of his wife two years earlier, she is the only source of information about the shooting. When the sixteen-year-old Rim is brought before him, al-Hakim is astounded by her beautiful face and supple body. In her long black robe, she looks like an ebony statue with a face of ivory grafted on it. She claims not to know who shot Alwan, but al-Hakim manages to elicit some information

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that may bear indirectly on the case. When he asks why she is not married, Rim says she had many suitors, but Alwan rejected them all, for reasons she does not understand. Her immediate problem, however, is where she will spend the night, being far from home. When the police commissioner offers to take her to stay with his family, al-Hakim appears alarmed and restless. Distrusting the commissioner, he even considers going secretly at night to his house to assure himself that Rim is safe. At the hospital, when al-Hakim asks Alwan who shot him, he accuses Rim, but he is too seriously wounded to speak further. Soon afterwards, the commissioner tells al-Hakim that Rim appears to have run away with Shaykh Usfur. While the police search for her, al-Hakim receives an anonymous letter saying that Alwan's wife was strangled two years earlier, and that he should question Alwan and Rim about her death. Al-Hakim orders her body exhumed, and a forensic physician reports that she was strangled. Is Rim involved in the death of Alwan's wife, and where is she? As the investigation continues, al-Hakim thinks constantly of Rim until he learns that she has been found dead, a drowning victim. In reverence to the young beauty with whom he was briefly taken, al-Hakim orders her buried without an autopsy and declares the case of Alwan's shooting closed, since the perpetrator is unknown. The Yawmiyyat reveals the same pattern in al-Hakim's attitude toward women. He is taken with Rim's physical beauty, as earlier he was captivated by Saniyya, Suzie, Sasha, and others. When Rim is gone, his image of her evaporates. He is as lonely in the Egyptian countryside as he was in France, and the attraction of a beautiful damsel enlivens his barren existence only briefly. Though he loves and appreciates women, whatever their nationality, he remains unable to deal with them. We gather from the preface to the Yawmiyyat that al-Hakim was so distressed by his confining work that writing the diaries was his only way to experience freedom and overcome boredom. Thus, it is fair to say that in the diaries, al-Hakim is merely an observer of the human condition. Although at times he reveals inconsistencies in the application of the law and shows that the fallahin cannot understand the law or why they are punished when they have done nothing wrong, he is not a social reformer or a defender of the peasants. The work, however, offers an accurate account of the flaws in Egypt's judicial system. Also, it shows the miserable life of the fallahin, whose lot in the 1920s was hardly better than when Yaqub Sanu satirized their conditions and oppression by the government. In al-Ribat al-Muqaddas (The Sacred Bond, 1944) we find two separate themes connected arbitrarily in the plot. The first is whether the sublime arts and their practitioners, like religion, have the power to redeem souls, especially those of morally wayward women; the second deals with the intrinsic meaning of the sacred bond in the traditional marriage in Egypt. While these two themes are disjoint, they reveal for the first time

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al-Hakim's true concept of and attitude toward women. This concept plainly contradicts the romantic, imaginary concept of them in the works previously discussed. 59 As the story opens, we are faced immediately with an inverted version of Thai's, by Anatole France (d. 1924). In this novel France portrays in a spiritual context the conflict between vice and virtue, the spirit and the flesh, and above all true righteousness and self-righteousness. The author shows that redemption from sin, in a Christian context, is not for those who claim to be virtuous, but for those who truly believe and repent of their sins and are justified in the sight of God. No matter how strong his claim to righteousness is, man is always tempted by the wiles of the devil. Unless he adheres to his sublime principles of faith and virtue, man will fall into disbelief and damnation. As evidence he cites the case of Paphnutius, an Egyptian anchorite (monk), who has shunned the world seeking to inherit the kingdom of God. After hearing of Thai's, an Alexandrian dancer/prostitute whose ravishing beauty has captivated many men, he deems it his spiritual duty to save her from the fires of hell. So he journeys to Alexandria to meet Thai's and save her soul. Under his guidance Thai's finally repents, abandons her sinful life, and becomes a saint. Paphnutius, however, lusts after her and desires only sensual pleasure with her. He even blasphemes, declaring that God and heaven are nothing, and there is no truth but life on earth and carnal love. The sinful prostitute Thai's is redeemed, while the self-righteous Paphnutius loses his soul. Al-Hakim uses Thais' s plot for literary rather than spiritual redemption. He refers to himself as Rahib al-Fikr (the monk who has devoted his life to intellectual pursuits), though in fact he is a man of letters who also appreciates the arts. Because of his secluded life and his attire, he seems like a real monk. To him the arts, especially literature, are tantamount to spiritual faith. He maintains that as a man of letters, he has the same message as a man of religion. He seeks to open people's eyes to the light of the mind and guide them to "the religion of the intellect." In this respect he resembles Paphnutius, but while Paphnutius sought Thaïs, the object of Rahib al-Fikr's quest remains anonymous throughout the narrative. A twenty-year-old woman writes asking to see him about an important matter. When they meet the next day, he notes that she is ravishingly beautiful, though at first she seems to him superficial, frivolous, and fun-loving, like many young women of her generation in Egypt. She asks for his help, saying that she likes literature and wants to become a writer, though she has read nothing since leaving school. She is soon to be married, and her fiancé wants her to rise to his intellectual level and be seriously involved in literary pursuits. The young woman asks Rahib al-Fikr to introduce her to the world of literature, intending to become his disciple in order to save her coming marriage. Yet how can Rahib al-Fikr guide this frivolous, shallow young woman, whose only interests are mundane, into the world of the intellect and train

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her to become a writer? He has no model to follow except France's story of Thai's. When on her next visit he gives her the novel to read, she accepts it with great reluctance. A few days later she returns it and asks him to attend one of her tennis matches. He declines, saying that he is interested only in matters of the mind. The young woman reminds him that Paphnutius went all the way to Alexandria to save Thai's; thus, it is his duty to raise her to his intellectual level. Still unconvinced, he rejects her request. Later he is upset to learn that she is already married to the man she called her fiancé, and that in three days she has read not only Thais but all of France's works. What an achievement for such a superficial young woman! Curious to know her motive, he confronts her with her lie, saying he has met her husband, who told him that she is an avid reader. Rahib alFikr declares that since she has come to appreciate knowledge, there is no longer any need for her to see him. The young woman heeds his words, bids him adieu, and quickly disappears. He finally recognizes that despite the wide gulf between his own world and that of the frivolous young woman, he enjoyed their weekly visits, and the sudden end of their relationship is hard to endure. Rahib al-Fikr has been mentally seduced by this ravishing beauty. He realizes that he has lost her, whether through his own stupidity or through fate. How can he live without her? She has become part of his life and thoughts. At night he dreams of her beauty, her movements, even the graceful manner in which she removed her gloves. She was the spirit that filled his cell with life, the light that dispelled the shadows of his dreary existence. One might expect that Tawfiq al-Hakim had by 1944 become a truly mature man living a secluded, selfless life dedicated to intellectual pursuits. A renowned man of letters whose works had been translated into many languages, he had gained many readers and admirers. Weaned from his adolescent idiosyncrasies, he should not revert to them and behave as Muhsin did in Paris and Cairo. Yet to the extent that Rahib al-Fikr represents him, that is just what happened. Realizing that his anonymous friend will not return, he begins writing her letters, but he cannot mail them because he does not know her identity or whereabouts. The letters reveal his disenchantment and his desire for something more than the life of the mind. In them al-Hakim reveals his true self, his career as a thinker and writer. Above all he reveals the reason he had not yet married, a fact which caused people to regard him as Adu al-Mar'a (misogynist). In one letter he begs the anonymous beauty for sympathy. Why? Because he realizes that his life is bleaker than he ever thought. He philosophizes that men of intellect like him walk through a parched desert, not heeding the hardships of the road until they stumble on an oasis. They resume their walk only to plunge again into the inferno of the world. Admitting that the life of the mind he has lived is not all men need, al-Hakim asks, "Why should I not forsake all this and live as other people do?" The answer is that he cannot,

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because he wants to dream of more beautiful things. Thus, he must pay the price of his chosen life. At the very least, al-Hakim is deceiving himself in expressing his desire for a normal married life. In one letter he asks the anonymous beauty what she is doing "at this time of the night" and imagines her cuddling affectionately with her husband: "I always picture you as an exemplary wife, the sort I myself wish to have. Stingy life has forbidden me to have such a wife." Then he cites examples of model women who helped their husbands in times of adversity, such as the wives of Sa'd Zaghlul, Karl Marx, and Benjamin Disraeli, and Khadija, Muhammad's first wife. Finally, perhaps inadvertently, al-Hakim reveals the truth: he wanted a wife to share his life, but could not find one. When his quest proved impossible, he sought an exemplary woman in mythology. He tells his anonymous heroine that he truly loves the Egyptian goddess Isis, not for her beauty but for her devotion to her husband. Apparently, al-Hakim seeks a devout woman who will share his world of books and thought, and he believes he has finally found her. "My dear," he writes, "if they ask me about you I would say that you are the only one in my world." He laments that he was rash to end his relations with her so quickly, "depriving myself of that beauty who alone had the courage to dash into my cell, crammed with dusty volumes. I have closed with my own hands the window of my life, through which your light penetrated. Oh, how I wish you could know how bleak my life is . . . Ah! If only people knew that I am in love." Like Paphnutius, who ended up lusting after Thais, the austere Egyptian still longs for the anonymous beauty who, as we shall see shortly, nearly seduces him into carnal pleasure. A year passes, during which Rahib al-Fikr constantly writes to his anonymous beauty. Al-Hakim could end the narrative at this juncture, declaring that he has achieved his goal by leading her into his world and teaching her to appreciate the life of the mind. However, he continues it for no clear reasons except perhaps to explain his own concept of the "sacred bond." By sheer coincidence he meets the husband of his anonymous heroine at a hotel in Hulwan. The husband, appearing very distressed, has left his wife and is seeking a divorce. He gives Rahib al-Fikr her diary, called "the red notebook," which he reads with avid curiosity. It contains the confessions of his heroine and portrays explicitly the conflict between conventional married relations and love. She says her husband is a wonderful man, but there is something significantly lacking in their marriage—passion. To her, married life is a prison killing her freedom to love and be loved. She calls the traditional marriage lifeless and boring. She wants a man not only to admire her beauty but to seize her in his arms and offer her passionate love, the only kind she considers real. Her febrile emotions have led her to have an ongoing affair with a handsome movie actor, in whose arms she finds what she was seeking. Her husband, having

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chanced upon these confessions, could kill her to wash away his dishonor, and the law of the land and local tradition would be on his side. Being a decent man, he thinks that a quiet, uncomplicated divorce is the best way to end his marriage. He also wants custody of their daughter. He asks Rahib al-Fikr to meet with his wife and negotiate the terms of their divorce. At this point al-Hakim again confronts the reader with a subplot which strains credulity, to express his notion of the "sacred bond." In her diary the anonymous heroine laments the idle and destructive gossip of her female relatives about herself and Mirfat, the wife of her husband's cousin Husni, an army major. She writes that the only thing poor Mirfat desires is to breathe a little and live as a free, civilized human being, but "in the eyes of my aunt and others of her kind she is a fallen woman and a whore." Another female relative says, "Truly everything about this woman, even the perfume she wears, shows her frivolity and wantonness." These words convince Husni that Mirfat has been cheating on him and that their youngest son is not really his. He does not confront his wife to find out the facts, but is so tormented by suspicion that his life becomes unbearable. Although he could kill her in accordance with the accepted tradition in Egypt, he chooses instead to take his own life. When Rahib alFikr learns that the major has shot himself, he says, "The man is dead. May God curse women." Why does he ask God to curse women? Is it to confirm people's view of al-Hakim as the enemy of women? Absolutely not. He cannot accept the idea that the world has changed and women have become liberated, and that what is lawful for men should be lawful for women. He further believes that while marriage is a sacred bond between husband and wife, the strength of that bond depends entirely upon whether the children are the husband's biological offspring. "O God!" Rahib al-Fikr cries out, "how strong this bond is in relation to the husband. Truly it ties the husband to his child. The source of its sanctity is the blood, which should be pure. But if this blood is contaminated by illicit sexual relations and becomes a subject of suspicion, as in the case of Husni, the husband will find it unbearable." He adds that the woman does not grasp the complexity of this issue because she considers every child that comes from her womb her own, whether the father is her husband or not. She cannot distinguish between types of blood; thus, she cannot comprehend the meaning of the sacred bond. Here, then, is al-Hakim's concept of marriage as a sacred bond: children are the natural outcome of the couple's union. If the wife is unfaithful or bears another man's child, the marriage is stained, losing its sacredness. But if the husband cheats on his wife, does his behavior pollute the marriage bond? Al-Hakim answers in the negative. He exonerates the husband for two reasons: first, according to the Quran (4:34), the man is the marriage partner responsible for supporting the wife; second, he does not

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bear the children. Therefore, there is no absolute parity between them regarding adultery. The time may come, al-Hakim pontificates, when the woman will support the family as her husband does, or science will develop a means of establishing the blood relation of the father and child. Then and only then can one discuss parity between the partners. Even in these cases, the husband is still the victim of the wife's aberrant behavior. Rahib al-Fikr's encounter with his anonymous heroine makes clear that al-Hakim places the whole burden of marriage as a sacred bond on the woman. More than anything else in his work, this episode reveals his true nature and the validity of his claim to live the austere life of a monk in the cloisters of arts and the mind. Rahib al-Fikr gives the woman no chance at all to defend herself. He rejects her claim that her diaries are purely fictitious, calling them the result of his effort to lead her into the aesthetic world of the mind. She has proven herself his disciple by writing them. Yet even if she has lived frivolously and committed sinful acts, why should she not have the opportunity to repent and become a saint like Thai's? Rahib al-Fikr answers that Thais was not married and had no children. AlHakim, the moral and intellectual believer, has apparently lost his moral direction. He cares less about repentance or forgiveness than about the legitimacy of children as the manifestation of the sacred marriage bond. At best, he is untrue to his supposed principles. As a student in Paris, Muhsin did not object to Suzie's relationship with Henri; even after she broke off their relationship, he still loved her. Thus, what was acceptable for Suzie is unlawful for his anonymous heroine. Al-Hakim seems to forget that whether the couple has children or not, adultery by either of them will damage their relations. He may be right in declaring that the illegitimacy of a child, if discovered and proved by the husband, may eventually destroy the marriage bond. Al-Hakim's moral dilemma is that despite living in France and seeing the great liberty French women enjoyed, he still thinks like a conservative Middle Easterner, who denies freedom to the woman. He seems to confirm that because Middle Eastern societies are male-oriented, certain sexual practices are allowed to men alone and even considered a source of pride, while they are denied to women. Rahib al-Fikr cannot accept the fact that his heroine has rebelled against the rigid form of marriage, in which true love between husband and wife is nonexistent. She is not opposed to marriage as a spiritual bond; she opposes his view of marriage as a legal contract which ties two parties together, with or without love. To the anonymous heroine, this is simply slavery. She is beautiful and wants to be told so. The anonymous heroine wants to be caressed and loved, and if her husband cannot fulfill her sexual and emotional desires, she will seek pleasure elsewhere. When she calls Rahib al-Fikr a reactionary who does not understand human sentiments, he says, "Thank God I didn't get married!" What could more palpably explain al-Hakim's staying, at least until then,

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single? As we have seen previously, he claimed that he wanted to pursue the intellectual life and so had no time for women. We have also seen that for some psychological reason, he could not handle them. Al-Hakim feels threatened by a woman, especially if she is liberated and wants the freedom to love and be loved. To him, love is a legal rather than spiritual matter. The man who wrote this novel in the 1940s is no longer Muhsin, the student in Paris. His world exists only in his fertile imagination; whatever his ideas about woman and bachelorhood may be, they are merely palliatives for his inferiority complex and escapism. He remains vulnerable to sexual temptation, despite his claim of austerity and virtue. Though alHakim judges the conduct of his anonymous heroine harshly, he still craves her love, as he did with the young women he met in Paris. Because she is married and seems beyond his reach, he begins to mythologize her, writing letters to express his love and desire for her. When the myth turns into reality, he finds himself full of lust, yet jealous of the lover with whom she says she will spend the night. Anxious to know who this fortunate lover is, Rahib al-Fikr asks her to write his name on a piece of paper if she cannot speak it. She sits on the arm of his chair and lifts her dress, exposing a bare leg. She leans against him, apparently trying to open the bureau drawer and find a sheet of paper. Her body seems glued to his. Rahib al-Fikr feels her soft hair touching his face and her tender breast tickling his mouth. Her perfume, mingled with her breath, arouses his desire. He is captivated by her. He has lost his will and is oblivious to all save his presence with this nymph. Rahib al-Fikr hears only her voice whispering, "My love date is you." He stretches his hand to surround her waist, and his lips seek hers. At this moment the lovers' ecstasy is interrupted by a telephone call from her husband, telling her that his cousin the major has shot himself. Rahib al-Fikr walks toward the door, bidding her good-bye. They both know there is no point in her staying, and so she leaves. Obviously Rahib al-Fikr does not consummate his relationship with his heroine, although he desires to do so. The least that can be said is that he falls morally, like the anchorite Paphnutius. The animal in him triumphs over the spiritual. His actions show that the image of the female as Isis or Aphrodite is sheer fantasy. To him, the female is still the beautiful creature, meant to be enjoyed by men. The irony in this novel is that al-Hakim, whether he realizes it or not, deceives himself. He poses as an austere and exemplary monk, a devotee of the intellectual life who, like Paphnutius, has the will and power to redeem wayward women. While Paphnutius loses his soul by lusting after Thai's, the heroine causes Rahib al-Fikr's fall by making him lust after her. Asking him to save her shaky marriage and lead her to the world of the mind, instead she gets a pretender who lusts after her like other men. He is a misfit in a quickly developing world. He has been living too long in seclusion to understand the sentiments of this

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woman who seeks his advice regarding a decent but indifferent husband. Al-Hakim should have started with the husband, not with the sensitive and life-loving young wife. Evidently, he did not, because he was captivated by this woman from the first moment he saw her. Rahib al-Fikr or alHakim never meant to redeem her. Had this been his intent, he would not have sought to communicate with her. Like Paphnutius, he is obsessed by carnal attraction. However, instead of raising the woman to his sublime level, Rahib al-Fikr plummets to her carnal world. In the end, they are both lost. The flesh has triumphed over the spirit. Finally, why did al-Hakim write this novel? Was his intention to defend the institution of traditional marriage? In his introduction to the 1956 edition, he says that the marital relationship needs to be presented with great candor to show the true danger which threatens it. Furthermore, he contends, a wholesome sexual relationship is essential to the marriage bond, which is not a social contract but a spiritual and physical union. It is not exclusively physical or spiritual, but both. "The source of the tragedy in marital life in this novel," he concludes, "is the lack of sexual harmony between the spouses. This is what I wanted to say and say frankly, that it might prevent the ruin of many people and families." 60 The arguments alHakim offers are flimsy. If his intention was to alert people to the dangers which threaten married life, he did not have to lump together different plots, which render the work awkward. He did not need a moral paradigm such as Thais, who only superficially resembles his anonymous heroine. Moreover, the novel cannot be considered a sketch of his life. One wonders why he gave himself the tremendous moral role of Rahib al-Fikr, a devotee of the intellectual life. Finally the introduction, which appeared twelve years after the publication of the novel, is inconsequential, apparently intended to offset the charge that it contains indecent portrayals and language. Al-Ribat al-Muqaddas is a continuation of al-Hakim's fanciful outlook on life. From the beginning he was a dreamer, an idealist who lived in a make-believe world where he found a sanctuary for his fantasies. Whether in Cairo or in Paris, such a world suited his perplexed soul, and he could always turn to it in order to escape harsh reality. 61 But as many of his readers, especially women, believed him to be a misogynist or an idolizer of women as a goddess not to be defiled by the carnality of man, al-Hakim did the unthinkable. He got married. Why he committed the inconceivable act of marriage no one knows. He may have been searching for an exemplary wife. Or, perhaps as he says in al-Ribat al-Muqaddas, he was anxious to have a wife but could not find one. Further still, he says in the same work that his stingy life-style forbade him from having the right wife. Whatever his excuses may be, the fact remains that al-Hakim's visions of what a woman is and what she should be as a wife are at best paradoxical, confusing. Inevitably, as he began to mature

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and gain more confidence in himself, the dreaming worshiper of the female became a realist. The idealist Rahib al-Fikr, who was satisfied to enclose himself in the temple of the mind, deserted his cell to become a man like other men. The pantheon of fanciful idols al-Hakim had erected all his life came tumbling down as he condescended to share his bed with a mortal wife. The ascetic who thought he could retain his fancies about woman for so long in unfathomable mystery stood now in stark nakedness without camouflage as a man who more than anything else in life desired a wife. His paradoxical attitude may baffle us. But we may be justified in what we have more than once said: His idealistic view of woman is a creation of his imaginative mind, a sign of his adolescent immaturity. Whether he remained a bachelor for so long because he was waiting for the right woman at the right moment does not change the fact that he was longing for a wife. We may then conjecture that al-Hakim submitted to the institution of marriage rather late in life when he realized that his idealistic image of woman, cherished for so long, was outright misleading and wholly ungenuine.

Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini (1890-1949) Al-Mazini, already presented in Chapter 5 as a first-rate translator and adapter of Western literature, was also a gifted poet, essayist, journalist, critic, and novelist. With his incisive mind and delightful witty Arabic style, he is rightly ranked among the four giant "modernist" men of letters. Like the others, he believed the East could draw from the fountains of Western culture without losing or compromising its Arab-Islamic identity.62 Unlike Taha Husayn and Tawfiq al-Hakim, he was little influenced by French culture and thought. Rather, his writings reveal the impact of English literature and thought, with which he, like many other Egyptian writers, was more familiar. 63 From 1909 to 1914, he taught translation at the Saidiyya and Khedivial high schools and taught English at the Nasiriyya Teachers' School. 64 His translations of several masterpieces of English literature, as well as Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, attest to his proficiency in English. Al-Mazini began his literary career as a poet, publishing most of his work in the daily newspaper al-Dustur (The Constitution), owned by Muhammad Farid Wajdi. Eventually leaving the teaching profession, he devoted all his time to writing and journalism until his death in 1949.65 Al-Mazini's writings reflect his home life, environment, and physical condition. He was a complex person whose unpredictable sentiments greatly impacted his writings. It is small wonder that the Egyptian writer Nimat Ahmad Fuad found it necessary to devote a long chapter of her work Adah al-Mazini (The Writings of al-Mazini) to his personality traits. 66 His father, an Islamic law attorney who took four wives, was

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especially attracted to Turkish women. He always kept two wives at home; Ibrahim and his brother Ahmad were by his second wife. The father was an authoritarian, too busy with his legal career and his wives to have time for his children. So al-Mazini grew up deprived of fatherly love, and his mother, a passionate woman, fulfilled the roles of father and mother simultaneously. Al-Mazini became a wastrel, like his father before him. His older half brother Khayri, who took over the father's law practice after his death, was superstitious and eccentric. In Khuyut al-Ankabut (Spider's Web, 1935) al-Mazini describes the house in which he spent his childhood, and which plainly impacted his entire life. It was a huge house with large rooms, cold and damp, dark and depressing. The enormous doors squeaked. The kitchen and the dining room, filled with jars, plates, and utensils old and new, resembled a museum dating back to the days of Adam. Everything in the house was random; the furniture was so diverse and conflicting in shape and form that it was altogether chaotic. Al-Mazini's psyche was especially impacted because the house stood next to a cemetery, through which he had to pass on his way in or out. He recalls that one night, as he was headed home, he sensed that someone, perhaps the ghost of a dead person, was chasing him. Fleeing in panic, he stumbled over a stone. Frightened, he fell into an empty grave and imagined someone stretching his arms to embrace him and wrapping his arms around him, then shouted out in fear and ran home. This fear is apparent in al-Mazini's later works, though he claims that he never afterwards feared dead people or cemeteries. Al-Mazini admits that the single incident which most strongly affected him was the one that caused his lameness. In 1914, when his wife became ill and needed surgery, he stayed at her bedside. While giving her medicine, he was startled by a sudden noise, lost his balance, and fell off the bed, breaking his leg. He was hospitalized for three months, but careless treatment left him with one leg shorter than the other. Because of this incident, he says, "Everything changed in my eyes, and I felt that I had grown ten years older. Old age had come upon me. I shunned all enjoyment in life, even innocent pleasure. A wave of bitterness overwhelmed me. My nerves were tired. I became pessimistic and consequently was afflicated with neurasthenia." 67 This incident and al-Mazini's diminutive stature help account for his being high-strung and rebellious in nature. Although he claims that on reading Artzybashev's novel Sanine in 1919 he was cured and became cheerful and optimistic, the truth is that he remained a pessimist who camouflaged his gloom with humor. As late as six years before his death, he wrote an article entitled "Uyubi" (My Defects), still lamenting the deleterious effects of his lameness, saying he could not endure the remarks people made about him, as if he were somehow different. 68 Such people's impudence caused him to be timid, especially in the presence of women, who

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he feared would pity him. Worse still, it made him appear uncertain. He seemingly ignored them, not even attempting to greet them unless they approached and greeted him first. The same attitude is evident in al-Mazini's novels. Women desire his company and are enthralled by his personality, but they must take the lead in coaxing him to love and be loved. Al-Mazini's gloom is reflected in the titles of several of his works, such as Hasad al-Hashim (The Harvest of Chaff), Qabd al-Rih (Grasping the Wind), Khuyut al-Ankabut (Spider's Web), and Sunduq al-Dunya (The Kaleidoscope). These books reveal his pessimism, his restlessness, and especially his inferiority complex, which was exacerbated by his frail health and shortness. In Ibrahim al-Katib (Ibrahim the Writer), his cousin Shushu remarks unkindly that she is taller than he. He chose the tall, majestic writer Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad as his lifelong friend, perhaps to compensate for his defects. He seemed timid and humble, but this attitude at times gave way to outbursts of superiority, aggressiveness, revenge, and even violence. He was habitually shy and shunned crowds, but was sensitive in his relations with women, craving their love and companionship. Because he lacked fatherly love, his mother was everything to him. He had always wanted a daughter; thus, the loss of his wife and two daughters made him extremely compassionate, and he reserved his feelings for his nieces. 69 These facts help to explain why love is a predominant theme in his works. Ibrahim al-Katib, the first of al-Mazini's novels, was written during 1925-1926, but was not published until 1931. Before it went to press, the original manuscript was lost, and al-Mazini hurriedly rewrote portions of the second part. Consequently, there is some unevenness in its quality. 70 The novel presents the title character's romantic adventures with three different women. These episodes are connected only by the central figure, who represents the author himself. In his introduction to the first edition, al-Mazini tries to distinguish between his own personality and that of Ibrahim, but in a 1939 article addressed to Tawfiq al-Hakim, he admits that the novel contains a few pages of his own life. 71 The central character of his next novel, Ibrahim al-Thani (Ibrahim the Second), also a writer, is substantially the same; the Egyptian woman writer Nimat Ahmad Fuad says she was told by members of al-Mazini's family that the events and characters are real, and only the names have been changed. 72 But what particularly draws our attention is al-Mazini's dedication of the novel: "To the one for whom I live and seek, and with whom alone I am concerned, willingly or unwillingly—myself." When an author makes such a dedication, we may legitimately question his motive. Is he egocentric, humorous, or both? Judging from his complex psyche, unhappy childhood, and physical defects, we may conclude that al-Mazini was eccentric and narcissistic. Al-Mazini's mixture of pessimism and gloom with optimism and humor is also manifested in the Biblical quotations prefixed to each chapter of the novel. Most come from Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Song of

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Songs; others derive from Genesis, Job, Isaiah, and Psalms, while there are very few from the New Testament. Each quotation has some bearing on the content of its chapter, revealing the sorrows and joys, the finitude and transitory nature of this life. Ibrahim al-Katib is a tapestry of al-Mazini's philosophy of life, which pivots solely around him. It begins and ends with the author's stated intention to live only for himself. Ibrahim is so narcissistic that his relationships with the three women in the novel serve only to illustrate his selfishness and egotism, and he finds silly excuses to terminate these relationships. The first woman, Mary, is a Syrian Christian nurse who cares for him when he is admitted to the hospital. Ibrahim spends some time with her and then deserts her, declaring that he does not intend to marry her and she is unwilling to become his mistress. The second woman, Shushu, dominates the novel. She is vivacious, charming, and innocent. Shushu is also his cousin, for whom he feels strong family ties. Their love, however, is frustrated by the custom that a girl cannot marry before her older sister. The oldest of her sisters, Najiyya, a strong-willed, authoritarian woman, is married to Shaykh Ali, a good but clumsy creature. She exercises control over her sisters and declares firmly that Shushu cannot marry before Samiha, the middle sister.73 Samiha tries to lure Ibrahim (who detests her) into marrying her. Instead of challenging custom to marry his beloved Shushu, Ibrahim uses it as a pretext for not marrying her. He acts in cowardly fashion, in order to begin his third amorous adventure. Keeping Shushu in suspense, he leaves for Luxor. When Shushu eventually marries a doctor, Mahmud, he pretends not to understand how Najiyya, contrary to social custom, allowed her to marry before Samiha. At Luxor, Ibrahim meets Lay la, who falls in love with him and gratifies his sexual desires. He is anxious to marry her, especially after he learns she is carrying his child, but she refuses, telling him he is gullible and knows little about life. Layla says she is a woman with a past and has entertained many men, mostly in the back seats of cars. He thinks she is mocking him, but she has told the truth. She decides to leave him, thinking she does not deserve his love and trust. Back in Alexandria, now three months pregnant, Layla has an abortion and then marries the doctor who performed it. Thus Ibrahim, who started out worshipping himself, ends up with nothing but himself. Ibrahim al-Katib is an isolated and perplexed man, yet highly sensitive and introspective. He has great confidence in himself but does not know how to function properly in life. Shushu sees that sometimes he is bitter, unpredictable, depressed, and difficult to handle; at other times he is vibrant and cheerful. It is not surprising that he moves aimlessly from one woman to another. He is fluid, shattered, lost, lacking the power of decision and achievement. 74 Even his mother, who notices his constant restlessness, asks whether he has thought of settling down. However, Ibrahim cannot have a home and family, like other men; they are not conducive to

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the arts or progress. A settled married life is too boring and too commonplace for a man who aspires to accomplish extraordinary things. Al-Mazini expresses utter pessimism at the end of the novel. To him, life is a vast, desolate Sahara where only extinction is permanent. This was the world's original condition, and so God has kept it. He has traversed this desolate area hoping to find the "Sublime Aspect," that is, God, but did not succeed. Yet he heard a voice through the darkness (perhaps his own inner voice), saying that he wished he could guide him and light his way, lest his feet sink in the soft sand. The voice explains there are fixed laws which no one can interpret or violate, and Ibrahim, like other human beings, has no control over his destiny. This is the ultimate divine determinism which predisposes the lives of men. It is nihilism unmasked. This experience leads al-Mazini to consider the true essence of life. What is life all about? What are beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, good and evil, reason and sentiment, abundance and barrenness, health and sickness, hope and despair, laughter and weeping? He leaves these questions unanswered. He has only himself to care for and worship. Al-Mazini is uncertain about life, his pessimism mingled with subtle humor and cynicism. At best, Ibrahim has become spiritually paralyzed. He has closed all the doors which might have led to a happier life, and his deep-seated sense of inferiority has robbed him of the best gift life has to offer—serenity of mind and soul. Finally, Ibrahim walks through a cemetery, where he sits leaning against a tombstone and philosophizes about life and death. Ibrahim is bored with life and desires to lie next to the man buried beneath, believing death is at least an eternal rest. He hears a voice saying it is too early for him to depart this life. He leaves the grave with the desire to continue living, if only "for her own sake," that is, for his own self. This ending is entirely consistent with al-Mazini's dedication of the novel to himself. In both instances his egocentricity and his eccentricity are manifest. These qualities are also evident in his other works, particularly Qabd al-Rih, from which he has incorporated the entire scene at the cemetery, as well as a romantic love scene between Ibrahim and Lay la. 75 "His humor," writer and critic M.M. Badawi states, "is lasting because it is so deeply rooted in social reality." 76 This may be true. Nevertheless, alMazini's humor is merely a mask for his gloom and pessimism. There is no portrayal of Egyptian rural life in this novel, since the author is concerned solely with Ibrahim's actions. In fact, Ibrahim admits that he had only slight contact with true country people, meaning the peasants. Al-Mazini's egoism causes him to exaggerate the personality of his hero, to the extent that the other characters, even the women he loves, are of secondary significance. Yet he presents the beautiful seventeen-year-old Shushu, who has spent her entire life in the country, as highly sophisticated in intellectual matters. She attended a French private school, and the books she has read reveal her profound knowledge. She has a philosophical

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conversation with Ibrahim about life and death, matter and reason, and particularly the constant changes in nature. Having read Ars Amatoria, by the Roman poet Ovid, she tells him that Ovid said that virtue is a female, adding, "to the woman's heart love is like fragrance to the flower." She tells Ibrahim that a woman's heart is like Pandora's box; when it is opened, only sorrows and calamities come out. Ibrahim answers by citing Nietzsche, to the effect that people should live dangerously. The dialogue between them is genuinely intellectual; al-Mazini apparently puts in Shushu's mouth the ideas he had derived from Western literature and philosophy. As he describes her gestures, movements, and manner of speech, however, they seem better suited to a movie actress than to a young Egyptian woman in the 1920s. 77 Ibrahim al-Katib has Egyptian characters, but its plot is imported. 78 In this regard, it is more akin to the novels of Mahmud Timur; both authors are concerned chiefly with analyzing their characters' emotions rather than describing their everyday life. Finally, one cannot help noticing that the three women behave with unbridled liberty, which makes them more Western than typical products of a conservative Egyptian society. They take the initiative in their relationships with the central figure. To them, Ibrahim becomes larger than life; they are dwarfed in his presence. He can dictate to them, offer them advice, and speak of life and love as if they were devout disciples, totally controlled by the enigmatic yet captivating personality of this awesome character. They feel that he is so superior that they are unworthy of him. Al-Mazini's portrayal of himself in such an exaggerated manner can be attributed largely to his sense of inferiority, which led him to shun women until they of their own volition initiated contact with him. There is nothing extraordinary about the theme and characters of Ibrahim al-Thani (Ibrahim the Second, 1943), a continuation of Ibrahim al-Katib. Like the earlier novel, it presents the love relationships of the title character with three women, Tahiyya, Mimi, and Aida, differing only in that at the outset Abraham is married to Tahiyya. Ibrahim al-Thani is episodic, with the protagonist serving as the only common thread joining its parts. 79 In a prefatory note, al-Mazini states that the two men are the same, but Ibrahim al-Thani has undergone drastic changes, and close scrutiny is needed to distinguish him from his namesake. To support his view, he appends to the preface a poem declaring that the old al-Mazini is dead and a new one has come to life. The point is whether Ibrahim has changed drastically in the second novel, and if so, what changes has he undergone? Reading the novel carefully, one senses that Ibrahim al-Thani is not really different, merely older. Now fifty, he is haunted by the idea that old age is creeping up on him, and he fears death. Still a womanizer, he is bombastic and given to bragging about his sexual prowess. He still flirts with charming women such as Aida and Mimi, both many years younger than he. His attitude toward women has not changed; he still

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seeks to compensate for his loneliness and the inferiority complex caused by his physical defects. Thus, when Aida dies of dysentery, Ibrahim feels that he has no more friends in life. Her death has the same effect on him as that of his mother. It shatters his world, so that he begins to wonder about life and death, and to doubt the meaning of everything. Moreover, he still suffers from neurasthenia, which causes him to be hypochondriac. Ibrahim is haunted by a fear of death, especially from angina, which killed his mother. In brief, Ibrahim is a nervous wreck, afraid to eat and drink, and most of all fearing old age and death. Ibrahim's flirting with women much younger than himself, although he is married, suggests that he is still emotionally immature or is trying to compensate for his numerous psychological complexes. After all, he lives in a society where men rule supreme, and he can pursue amorous adventures without being condemned. Such adventures are viewed by his society as a sign of manliness. Most important, however, is the question: how can we explain the behavior of his own wife, who tries to rejuvenate him by inviting buxom young women to entertain him? She is confident that they will not tempt her husband, believing he is emotionally mature and impervious to sensual desires. Ibrahim knows that his wife loves him, but fears that her love has become more dull and routine as they age. He craves the spirited love of young women and wants to reciprocate their love. Thus, Ibrahim finds Mimi, who is willing to satisfy his sexual desires but not commit herself to a permanent relationship. The author soon drops Mimi so that Ibrahim can marry Tahiyya and then establish a relationship with his neighbor Aida. Not until Chapter 4 does Mimi resurface; thereafter she, Ibrahim, and her cousin Sadiq are prominent until the end of the novel. Ibrahim meets Aida at home, but Tahiyya encourages him to take her out to cheer her up and alleviate her loneliness. Tahiyya refuses to accompany her husband, declaring, " M y presence with you would restrict Aida's freedom. I have nothing to fear from her." Ibrahim says that he is a middle-aged man, too old for Aida, but his w i f e reiterates her love and trust in him. Thus encouraged, he carries on a flirtation with Aida. Why not? He needs a beautiful young woman to restore his youth. When Aida falls sick and dies, Ibrahim is upset but soon recovers and resumes his relationship with Mimi. His w i f e knows of their amorous adventure, but seems resigned to the idea that it is the only way to cure her husband's psychological ills. Toward the end of the novel, however, Ibrahim becomes sober and changes his attitude toward his w i f e and Mimi. He begins to cherish Tahiyya more, realizing that though she has grown older, she is still charming and capable of love. Desiring a settled married life, Ibrahim considers ending his dalliance with Mimi. To do so without guilt, he encourages her to marry her cousin Sadiq. Mimi is not in love with Sadiq, whom she considers boorish and worthless, and she does not want to part with Ibrahim, who has filled her life with love and expectation. However,

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Ibrahim insists, and finally, for no good reason, she accepts the end of their relationship, though it is unclear whether she marries Sadiq. Meanwhile Ibrahim is ecstatic to learn that Tahiyya is with child, since she was thought to be barren. As a gesture of joy, he takes her to Lebanon for a vacation. As in the earlier novel, the personality of the protagonist dwarfs the other characters. Mimi, Tahiyya, and Aida have no place in the novel without him. Al-Mazini is less concerned with the systematic progression of the narrative than with the life and thoughts of the protagonist. He is not even concerned about a logical ending to the action, leaving the reader to guess the fate of Mimi and Sadiq. Again, the protagonist's actions permeate the entire narrative. Here we have a middle-aged man, married but feeling deprived of the love he experienced in his youth, whose wife willingly surrounds him with beautiful young women to cater to his sensual whims. Yet the author implies that Abraham's relations with these women are characterized by compassion and sympathy rather than sensuality. Egyptian critic Muhammad Mandur defends these adventures with Mimi and Aida as innocent. 80 How can we call a middle-aged man's meeting vivacious young women and enjoying their kisses and company purely innocent? How can we justify the libertine actions of a wife in a conservative, morally strict society who recruits buxom young women to entertain her husband, while convincing herself that he is a rock of morality which cannot be shattered by temptation? Is not her action close to pandering? If Ibrahim's adventures are innocuous, why does he sometimes conceal his relations with Mimi? We can hardly believe al-Mazini when he justifies Ibrahim's actions by saying Mimi is contented with mere friendship. Why should this young woman with excellent marriage prospects waste her time in a relationship with a married middle-aged man who cannot satisfy her material needs? Ironically, while Ibrahim's wife hopes to restore his vanished youth through "innocent" amorous adventures with beautiful young women, he himself contends that he is offering them therapy for their emotional problems. In the light of what we have seen, these two works of al-Mazini constitute sketches of his life experience rather than genuine novels with cohesive plots and dynamic characters. They present random segments of the author's emotional and intellectual life and his philosophy, marked by pessimism camouflaged with witty humor. The protagonist's amorous adventures read like the trite stories common to tabloid journals. The only redeeming factor about these "novels" is the author's masterful Arabic style. Midu wa Shurakah (Midu and His Accomplices) is a short and supposedly comic novel by al-Mazini, published in 1943. 81 It may be comic, but as a work of fiction it is unsatisfactory. In a prefatory note the author says that the action takes place in only forty-eight hours, and that the characters and events are fictitious. Cramming numerous events into such a short time span requires superlative skill to make the narrative logical and

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meaningful. It is precisely here that al-Mazini fails. The events are diverse and incoherent, and parts of the plot are too discordant to allow the whole work to make sense. The events take place in 1941 at the mansion of Ahmad al-Badi, a man of means who owns a car, has servants, loves sport, and, most important, collects books and rare manuscripts for his substantial home library. Another major character is Abduh, a relative of al-Badi's sister Hanifa. A farmer who inherited a large estate, he is huge, rather dull, and semiliterate, but he is thrifty and knows how to guard his wealth. Whenever he visits Cairo, he stays with al-Badi rather than at a hotel. Like al-Badi, he acquires books and manuscripts, but he is interested only in selling them for profit; unfortunately, he is not above stealing them as part of his business. The central character is al-Badi's nephew, a young officer in the Egyptian army. The soldiers call him Midu, while his fellow officers call him Hammada; at the Ministry of Defense he is First Lieutenant Muhammad Effendi Abu Talib al-Bahrawi. A fellow officer, Shakir Ibrahim al-Husayni, is his friend and confidant. Midu has fallen in love with a woman he often sees down the street or at a department store, though he does not know her name. B y sheer coincidence he discovers she is Sarah, a doctor and his friend's sister. Meanwhile, al-Husayni loves Midu's sister Khayriyya. Abduh also loves Khayriyya, but because he stammers and is an uncouth countryman, he does not even know how to express his feelings to her. Midu finally marries Sarah, but al-Mazini leaves Khayriyya's fate unknown because, as Sarah says, she is "torn." All well and good, but the author injects another plot which throws the narrative off course. Apparently Hanifa, who hopes that Khayriyya will marry Abduh rather than Shakir al-Husayni, urges Abduh to steal a manuscript from her brother's library, promising in return to support his suit for Khayriyya. More implausible is that al-Badi knows beforehand that Abduh intends to steal some of his manuscripts. What is totally absurd, however, is Sarah's involvement in this plan; the author gives no explanation for her actions. Though Abduh does not understand her motives, Sarah tells him that she will help him to steal the manuscripts and even concocts a plan. She prescribes a sedative and tells Abduh to put it in al-Badi's glass at dinnertime. Midu happens by and Sarah hands him the prescription, asking him to get it filled. Baffled but unquestioning, he follows her order. At dinner Abduh manages to put the sedative in al-Badi's glass, but the maid mistakenly hands the glass to Shakir, who drinks it and promptly falls into a deep sleep, foiling Sarah's plot. Meantime Abduh, trying not to displease Khayriyya's mother, attempts again to rob the library. At three in the morning he leans a ladder against the upper window and climbs it. As he perches on the windowsill, his foot slips and the ladder falls against a tree in the garden. Fearful of falling, he maintains his perch until the morning;

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then Shakir, having recovered from the effects of the sedative, rescues him. Once more the plot has failed. Abduh then calls on al-Badi, telling him candidly of his plans. If alBadi does not want him to steal a manuscript, he asks, would he mind lending him one? Al-Badi, astonished at Abduh's request, thinks he is a lunatic. From then on al-Badi is very much on his guard. He is confident that Abduh cannot break into his private library; the door is firmly locked, and he carries the key with him and periodically checks its security. Apparently foiled, Abduh says he is returning to his country estate; Hanifa says she and Khayriyya will also depart shortly and asks him to prepare two rooms for them in his house. Al-Badi is happy to see Abduh leave, believing his problem has been solved. On entering the library he is utterly shocked to find that an original manuscript of Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs, by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani [d. 967]), written by the author himself, is missing. The manuscript is so priceless that the head of the National Library had urged al-Badi to donate it to his institution, where it would be safe. AlBadi turned him down, but graciously gave him a copy. He cannot believe that someone managed to break into his library. Intruding on the narrative, al-Mazini states that he does not wish to tantalize and torment the reader, so he will identify the perpetrator of the theft—al-Badi's sister Hanifa. She took the key from his coat while he slept, entered the library and stole the manuscript, then put the key back and went to bed. Al-Mazini says banally, "It is our hope that the reader will keep the secret and not disappoint us or spoil the story for us." Apparently Hanifa, agreeing that the manuscript was a national treasure, conspired with the library director to steal it. The whole company sits down to dinner, preoccupied with the theft. Midu, seeming uninterested in books or his uncle's library, shows unusual calmness. After revealing the good news that he and Sarah are to be married, he leaves the dining room and returns with the stolen manuscript, handing it to the library director, saying, "Is this what you wanted? Do not let my uncle have it again, for he is careless." With this, the novel ends. The whole plot involving the theft of the manuscript is absurd. We cannot discern Midu's role in this episode. And who are his accomplices? His mother, Sarah, Shakir, Khayriyya, or the boorish Abduh? One may ask what is comic about stealing a precious manuscript from a private library. Even if Midu's mother stole the manuscript, we have no idea whether Midu stole it from her or handed it over on her orders. Furthermore, the author's frequent injection of his own ideas disrupts the narrative and prejudges the characters' actions. At one point he states, "We can say, and we are confident that the reader will believe us, that men are divided into three classes." Later he notes, "None but a young woman was calling Shakir. We shall not try, like Midu, to describe [her], because such description is beyond our capacity. Furthermore, no matter how excellent our

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description is, it will never satisfy Midu, who asserts that he has not seen in his life any more beautiful woman than her." The work abounds with such examples, which show that despite his superior Arabic style and his superlative ability as an essayist and critic, al-Mazini has not yet mastered the art of writing fiction. One scene presents Sarah and Khayriyya almost as lesbian lovers, on the pretext that they are acting as they would with their male lovers. In Chapter 10, we are told that Khayriyya regained consciousness in Sarah's arms. Sensing the increased regularity of her breathing, Sarah pressed her to herself with tenderness and affection. Khayriyya responded with a light squeeze, wishing it were Shakir's chest. Her eyes closed, and she felt a fire burning through her loins, rising to her breasts and throat. Then: Sarah gripped [Khayriyya's] waist at this moment, which was filled with possibilities while she was boiling over with emotion. Khayriyya raised her burning face and eyed her friend with a steady gaze although in a kind of fog, for she could scarcely see. She brought her mouth to hers and gave it a long, hot kiss in which she compressed her spirit and forgot herself. Sarah was trembling, shaking, moving her palms up and down, while Khayriyya, as if intoxicated, was embracing, moaning, kissing, rubbing cheek on cheek. Her eyes were closed. The fingers of her right hand were grasping Sarah while her other hand played with her hair, combing it, clutching it. In an embrace they rolled right and left, rocking forward and then back, each of them creeping to her friend as if there were a space between them, then drawing back from the edge of disaster till they collapsed and separated, their breasts like a stormy sea. 8 2

What can this be, if not an erotic description of lesbian activity? It would be hard to believe that they were merely two women trying to practice heterosexual love. Once, al-Mazini does express sympathy toward thtfallahin—and then only indirectly. Sarah's dog Rose is stuck behind a door when Abduh, preparing to steal the manuscript, opens the door and hits Rose, who yelps in pain. He tries to shoo her off, but Rose barks as if to say that he, being bad and ugly, has no right to hit her on the snout. He kicks at her, but she barks even louder, to declare that people like him create trouble and mischief. Abduh is one of the greedy landlords who wrong the fallahin, suck their blood, offer them scanty rewards, and toss them in the Bolsheviks' lap. These words, which al-Mazini strangely puts in the mouth of a dog, reveal his consciousness of the dilemma of the Egyptian peasants. There is no limit to Abduh's greed. Not satisfied with being a landlord with a large country estate, he tries theft to make even more money. Al-Mazini could have made the exploitation of the peasants a major theme in the novel; instead, he misses an opportunity to press for serious reform of Egyptian society. Awd ala Bad (Return to a Beginning, 1948) is a short novel which treats the subject of regression into childhood. 8 3 One morning al-Mazini

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awakes to find himself a ten-year-old child physically, though he still has his adult faculties. His case, while unusual, is not reincarnation or metempsychosis, which requires a man to die in order to allow the rebirth of another soul in his body. In this novel the protagonist has simply experienced a physical change. He is conscious of his former identity, in which he had a wife and two children; only his time and environment are different. His metamorphosis is predicted by Sabah, a clairvoyant whom al-Mazini reluctantly visits at his wife's insistence. She greets them warmly and asks to read his palm, then says that the cloak of manhood will be lifted from him for a time. Naturally al-Mazini does not take her seriously until her prophecy comes true. The whole story is like a dramatic soliloquy by the author, meant to reveal the reasons for his metamorphosis, his reaction to his new form, and people's attitude toward him. However, he refuses throughout to accept any modification of his inner self or actions. The protagonist insists that he is the same person he was yesterday and tries to dismiss his change as merely a dream. In his new physical form, he still has the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Going downstairs in the morning, he sees a beautiful woman whom he recognizes as his wife. When he kisses her, however, she acts like his mother, calling him "Suna," and reminds him to be ready for his birthday party. He also learns that his father is dead, and that his boorish uncle is pressing his mother to marry him. Beginning to worry about his wife and children, he tries to reach them by telephone but receives only static. At his birthday party he is shocked to see his two sons, Hammada and Said, among the guests. When he asks about his family, they act as if he were mad. Hammada mocks him, saying that with his long hair and soft skin he looks like a girl. Here is the protagonist's great agony. His children seem so remote and strange that he cannot tell them about his metamorphosis. Though the woman who acts like his mother is in fact his wife, his new body says this cannot be the case. He realizes that he has two lives—one old, the other new. Can his new life be only a temporary patch on the old one? The entire work is a tour de force. The protagonist's mental faculties and his perception of reality remain the same, despite his diminutive stature. The major theme which al-Mazini treats dexterously in this short novel is that people live only for the present, and they alone are aware of any modification of their existence. The protagonist tries to adapt himself to both lives, but those around him cannot accept his claim that he is an adult. Thus, what matters is not how people treat us, but what we think of ourselves and how we deal with others. This episode of al-Mazini is an outgrowth of his self-consciousness about (and subconscious obsession with) his short stature, which he regarded as a defect. At the end of the novel, al-Mazini awakes to find himself lying beside his wife as before. When he tries to tell her his bizarre story, she chides him, saying that what happened was due to Sabah's anger with him.

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Awd ala Bad is superior to al-Mazini's earlier novels. It is well crafted, with no interpolations by the author. Its theme of physical metamorphosis is novel in Arabic fiction. Awd ala Bad is imaginative, powerful, and amusing. It is a serious psychological work of fiction. Thalathat Rijal wa Imra'a (Three Men and a Woman, 1943) treats the interaction of a young woman with three men. 8 4 Ayyad, of Circassian birth, is fat, pompous, and overbearing. He is a voracious eater and drinker. Halim, a fifty-year-old retired teacher, is thin, with cheekbones protruding from his lean face. He too consumes much food and drink, yet they do not seem to affect his physical constitution. He is tight-fisted and miserly. Halim also is well educated and well read, qualified to teach at a university, but lacks ambition and is content to live on his pension. Thirtyyear-old Mahmud is a handsome, brisk young man, his face somewhat freckled. Of peasant origin, he was raised in Cairo, studied engineering, and entered government service. He is engaged to Ayyad's daughter Mahasin. Mahasin is in her twenties, tall and graceful. She has tiny breasts, but their large, pointed nipples make her more seductive. She has long dark hair and a broad forehead above her big eyes. Mahasin is also a heavy smoker, despite her father's chiding. Unlike other Egyptian young women, she enjoys a great deal of personal freedom. Like her parents, however, Mahasin lacks determination and the ability to face challenges in life. She is pompous and proud like her father. She is hurt because her father lavishes much of his wealth on a foreign mistress, leaving his own family little to live on. The title is somewhat misleading, for the whole novel is about Mahasin's relations with men other than those mentioned. They include Ratib Bey, head of the business firm she works for; young Nasim, an employee of the same firm; and Hamdi al-Dinari, whom she chances to meet on a train. The first man to whose sensual desires she succumbs is Halim. Married and much older, he complains that his wife devotes most of her time to their child. Neglected and deprived of sex, he turns to Mahasin, who at first reciprocates his feelings. The relationship then sours; Halim is miserly, and not the ideal man she desires. Mahasin's fiance Mahmud is a nice fellow, but she does not love him. She knows that before they met he was engaged to a rich young woman, Samira, who used him only to attract another suitor and then broke off with him. Near the end of the novel, Mahmud falls at a dance and breaks his leg. Samira is also there; on seeing him hurt, she accompanies him to the hospital. When he comes to, Samira tells him she still loves him and will never lose him again. Mahasin, uncertain what she wants in life, is seeking the man of her dreams. Her ideal man should be handsome, intelligent, strong, broadshouldered, and of swarthy complexion, with a dimpled chin. He should also be kind and cheerful, someone who has experienced hardship and sorrow. After impulsive relationships with Ratib Bey and Nasim, she finally

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meets the man she desires, Hamdi al-Dinari. She surrenders herself to him and hopes to marry him. Al-Dinari, however, is already married—to the daughter of a landholder who left his wealth to her, whereupon she hired Hamdi to administer the estate. Although there was no reciprocal love between them, she married Hamdi for convenience, but stipulated in the marriage contract her right of divorce, in accordance with the Shari'a (Islamic law). So he cannot legally divorce her unless she divorces him first. Under Islamic law, Hamdi could take Mahasin as a second wife, but she realizes she cannot force him to do so. She accepts her fate, and they remain lovers. The theme of this unremarkable novel is hackneyed and trite. Mahasin comes from a broken home. Her lecherous, irresponsible father has set a bad moral example for her, and she follows it. Al-Mazini's verbose descriptions of some characters, such as Halim, render the narrative boring. By keeping Mahasin in suspense, he robs the novel of excitement, and her acceptance of her fate as Hamdi's mistress is a decidedly unsatisfying ending. As a man of letters, al-Mazini is more at home as an essayist and critic than as a novelist. Nevertheless, he is one of the pioneers who tried writing the novel when it was still in the throes of emergence as a viable literary genre. His plots, dominated by free and libertine amorous adventures, reveal the extent to which he was influenced by Western fiction. They are hardly consistent with his highly conservative Egyptian society.

Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad (1889-1964) Al-Aqqad holds a unique place in modern Arabic literature and thought. He is distinguished as a self-made man of letters. Unlike Taha Husayn and Tawfiq al-Hakim, he did not study in Europe, nor was he extensively educated like his lifelong friend al-Mazini. Yet he is reported to have written somewhere between seventy and eighty-five books. 85 Moreover, to his great credit, he is the only Egyptian writer of note who made a living solely through his work.86 His writings cover a broad spectrum, including poetry, criticism, Islamology, history, philosophy, politics, biography, science, and Arabic literature. He even wrote a book containing his views on Christ. With such a wide range of knowledge, he may be considered the first modern Middle Eastern encyclopedic writer. The Egyptian writer Shawqi Dayf called him "the greatest contemporary Arab writer." 87 That al-Aqqad, a native of Aswan with only a sixth-grade education, managed to achieve such preeminence in writing is truly remarkable. Despite his humble origin, even in his elementary school he exhibited great curiosity and was eager to acquire knowledge. Ahmad al-Jaddawi, a prominent native of Aswan, introduced him to Arabic literature. Al-Aqqad began composing poetry at eleven and even entered a competition conducted by his

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school. 88 Thus he began his literary efforts just as Taha Husayn and alMazini had, but unlike them he continued to write poetry all his life. Endowed with a keen critical mind and unusual stamina, al-Aqqad was a voracious reader who sought knowledge of any conceivable subject. It is said that even on his deathbed he read a book on the geology of Africa. 89 Having learned English in his school years, he tried constantly to improve his mastery of it. Through this language he discovered Western thought, which left an indelible mark on his work. Having absorbed it, he transmitted it to his countrymen, thereby becoming "a significant bridge connecting Western thought with the contemporary nahda, or cultural awakening." 9 0 Yet despite his literary and intellectual achievements, alAqqad defies classification. He is not only a philosopher, historian, or literary critic, but a synthesizer who could take bits of knowledge from diverse sources and put them together in his own terse, unembellished Arabic style. His ideas, especially on Western topics, are unoriginal. His criticisms of Western ideological and social theories like materialistic Marxism and his effort to refute the antisocialist ideas of the French writer Gustave Le Bon (d. 1931) are puerile. 91 Al-Aqqad's sole contribution to Arabic fiction is a short novel, Sarah, published in 1938. Although he was not eager or prepared to write fiction, he says, he wrote Sarah hurriedly when the periodical al-Dunya (The World) asked him to describe his own emotional experiences. He submitted a few sections of the work, but the magazine stopped publishing it, claiming that the language was not suited to its readers. When Abd alQadir Hamza, the editor of the newspaper al-Balagh, asked him to contribute articles as quickly as he could, al-Aqqad indicated that he had written several chapters of a story and wanted to complete it. Thus, within two months he finished Sarah, which was serialized in al-Balagh before appearing in book form. Al-Aqqad lamented that his novel was not well received by critics, although it has been reprinted several times since 1938. 92 Sarah is about the passionate, tempestuous, futile love between Sarah, in her twenties, and Hammam, in his late thirties. The novel has a factual basis. Al-Aqqad's friend and confidant Muhammad Tahir al-Jabalawi, who lived with him and shared his life, recalls in a little book that al-Aqqad fell in love with Sarah, a young woman of Lebanese origin, though he questioned her character and sexual conduct. When al-Aqqad discovered that she was sharing her favors with other men, he tried to alleviate his shock and sorrow with music. Once, when he heard a Lebanese singer declaring that the fire of passionate love shall not be put off or disappear, he broke down in tears and shut off the phonograph. According to al-Jabalawi, alAqqad would neither condone nor condemn her behavior. Suspicious of Sarah, al-Aqqad asked his friend to follow her when she boarded the streetcar and see where she went. Al-Jabalawi did so, and saw her enter a house of ill repute. 93 When he related his findings, al-Aqqad sighed with

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relief and severed his relationship with Sarah. Al-Jabalawi's account appears to be true, since its details have been incorporated into the novel. Yet al-Aqqad does not reveal the lovers' names until a third of the way into the novel, and even then (p. 50) he implies that their names are unimportant. He is concerned with their stormy relationship, their inner feelings, and their attitudes toward love, life, and sex. The reader must wonder why the author did not begin his narrative here and focus on the relations between the central characters. Perhaps his main purpose was to build up the plot to a high pitch and arouse the reader's curiosity to understand what happens to them. Not until p. 105 does al-Aqqad tell how Hammam (who represents himself) met Sarah in a furnished apartment run by Mariana, a French seamstress. Al-Aqqad never reveals Sarah's true identity, but al-Jabalawi says she is a twenty-year-old Lebanese from a family of writers and journalists. Her mother, a pioneer woman journalist, was active in the feminist movement in Lebanon. Sarah herself is educated, fluent in several languages, and familiar with philosophy and literature. Knowing al-Aqqad from his writings and from her family's praise of his literary achievements, she was anxious to meet him and immediately poured out her heart to him. Sarah said that her family, led by her mother, wrongfully forced her to marry a rich man in his fifties. She hated this marriage and felt that her life was empty. After meeting al-Aqqad, she became the joy of his life. He was so taken with her that even Sa'd Zaghlul noticed his distraction. But the relationship was short-lived, for al-Aqqad soon became suspicious of her behavior. One day he met her with her young daughter on the street and observed that she was dressed rather gaudily, wore a new perfume, and had her hair done differently. Her undecorous appearance, entirely unlike what he was used to, led him to suspect her conduct. Even more alarmed when he heard her daughter use foul language, he abruptly broke off his relationship with her. Sarah has no cohesive plot. Its disjointed sketches of Hammam's amorous relations with Sarah never develop into a coherent, plausible novel. Al-Aqqad is concerned chiefly with the two characters' emotional relations and their reactions to physical pleasures. Sarah is a beautiful and licentious female, ruled by her instincts rather than her mind. Her total femininity sets her apart from other women. Al-Aqqad's obsession with femininity permeates the novel so fully that one might conclude, as the Egyptian critic Ali al-Ra'i did, that he is portraying an abstraction rather than a real person. Al-Ra'i maintains that Sarah, as al-Aqqad presents her, is the same immortal Eve who throughout generations has used love, lies, and intrigue to conquer men. 9 4 Al-Aqqad, however, is not merely describing an abstract female, but portraying his relations with a real woman, a beautiful creature to whom he has surrendered his heart. His utter frustration when he learns that she has other lovers is what causes him to represent her as licentious and seductive, cheap and lusty. Al-Aqqad is forgetting that he

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also shows Sarah as a shrewd, spirited, intelligent woman, capable of loving and being loved in return.95 Because her family forced her to marry an older man whom she did not love, Sarah is distrustful, questioning the existence of true friendship or human compassion. Al-Aqqad himself points up Sarah's dilemma when he says that despite her frivolity and waywardness, she would have been upright and decent if she had married the right man, who would love her and save her from sinking into immorality. By concentrating on woman's nature and the conflict between her reason and her feminine instinct, al-Aqqad deflects the reader's attention from the behavior of Hammam, who represents himself. Hammam is as much to blame for Sarah's amoral behavior as she is. The novel reveals that while Hammam is deeply in love with this unfortunate woman, he never attempts to understand her problems, nor does he even consider marrying her. Their relationship is wholly sensual. Hammam tells her he loves her, but he never shows his love by his actions. Although fascinated by her manner of speaking, dress, and perfume, he is not truly committed to making their relationship permanent. Thus, Hammam's intentions toward Sarah are from the beginning insincere. When a man really loves a woman as passionately as al-Aqqad claims to have loved Sarah, he will not hesitate to crown his love with marriage. The chapter titled "Limadha Hama Biha" (Why did he passionately love her?) reveals that Hammam's declared love of Sarah is selfish, intended only to satisfy his own lust, rather than a testimony of true commitment. Worse still, al-Aqqad reveals that he was in love with another woman, Hind, when he first met Sarah, then goes on to compare the two women and his feelings for them. Like any female eager to protect her love, Sarah does everything she can to stop Hammam from visiting Hind. Who is this woman whom al-Aqqad loved simultaneously with Sarah? He does not identify her, but al-Jabalawi says she is the Arab writer May Ziyada (d. 1941).96 She may have loved al-Aqqad, but she was always cautious to stop him if he stepped beyond the bounds of propriety. The main problem in the relationship is that Hammam is distrustful of women. He even suspects Sarah for trivial reasons, such as wearing an unusual dress or having a different hairdo. Because of his ludicrous suspicions he hires a detective (whom he calls Amin) to spy on her. Amin, however, is none other than his friend al-Jabalawi. Although this episode disrupts the narrative, it is evidence of al-Aqqad's fertile imagination. AlAqqad's suspicion of Sarah so permeates the entire novel that the Egyptian woman writer Sahir al-Qalamawi correctly says, "If al-Aqqad were true to himself, he would have called the novel Suspicion rather than Sarah."91 Although al-Aqqad may not have realized it, the novel contains more psychoanalysis of Hammam than of Sarah. It is a study of man's attitude toward woman. It shows that in love affairs, the man takes the initative and can build up or destroy the woman. Sarah aspires for the security of true

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love, but Hammam selfishly declines to commit himself to her. The novel's last lines reveal al-Aqqad's true attitude toward Sarah: "Is it not conceivable that she was faithful to you [Hammam] and deserved your faithfulness, concern, and protection? Is it not conceivable that she was despondent over you and fell morally after you parted company with her?" Here, then is the final explanation of Hammam's relationship with Sarah. He distrusts her from their first meeting on because he believes that woman is unnecessary to man. Also, he believes that Sarah's strongest weapon is her femininity, which she cleverly uses to seduce him. 98 One is tempted to ask whether it was fear, selfishness, or an overly suspicious nature that led al-Aqqad to shun women and remain a bachelor for life. Sarah deviates sharply from the social analysis which marks the modern Egyptian novels so far discussed. It focuses more on the psychoanalytic nature of the characters' feelings than their interaction. Yet social realism remained the main interest of modern Egyptian novelists. With its growth came an increased emphasis on society as a whole rather than on individual characters. This new trend reached its highest degree of sophistication in the works of Naguib Mahfouz, to be treated in the next chapter.

13 Naguib Mahfouz: The Voice of Egypt

Among the major figures in the development of modern Arabic fiction, none has received higher international acclaim than Naguib Mahfouz (1911- ), who in 1988 became the first Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature. He was already known in the West (as were Taha Husayn and Tawfiq al-Hakim) through translations of his work, but to a very limited public. His output includes over thirty novels and a number of short-story anthologies and plays. Until the 1940s, Mahfouz was little known even in his native Egypt, where he began his literary career as an essayist. He gained some fame with the publication of three historical novels; of these, Radobis (A Pharonic Beauty) brought him the Qut al-Qulub Prize, and Kifah Tiba (The Struggle of Thebes) the Ministry of Education Prize. But what won him undisputed literary renown was a series of realistic contemporary novels in which he portrayed various aspects of life in Cairo. The Thulathiyya (Trilogy), published in 1956-1957, was the crowning achievement of his career and brought him wide recognition in literary circles outside Egypt. Born into a middle-class family, Mahfouz was the youngest of seven children. Though he seldom discusses his early life, it appears he grew up in a solid, cohesive family with happily married parents whom he loved and respected, and who nurtured his intellectual interests, particularly in ancient history. His father, a strict Muslim, dominated the home by his patriarchal authority, yet was compassionate and considerate. He also took an interest in politics and instilled in young Mahfouz a reverence for national leaders such as Mustafa Kamil (d. 1908) and Sa'd Zaghlul (d. 1927). Attending public schools, Mahfouz was apparently proficient in Arabic, history, and mathematics, but weak in foreign languages. As a teenager he was active in sports and in promoting high moral standards among his fellow students, and he enjoyed gathering weekly with a group of intimate friends at various coffeehouses. He had also begun to compose Arabic 345

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poetry during those years, at first in traditional meters and rhymes, though he soon broke away to free verse.1 He began a wide reading of Arabic translations of Western detective stories and historical novels, and then the works of prominent Egyptian writers. After completing his formal education, he concentrated on the masterpieces of Western literature in translation. Mahfouz began his literary career in high school, writing essays on various topics in philosophy and literature, along with an occasional short story. After graduating from Cairo University in 1934, he competed unsuccessfully for a government scholarship to continue his study of philosophy in France. Inclined to consider philosophy more important than literature, he finally chose fiction only after he saw his short stories being readily accepted for publication. Even so, he spent the years from 1930 to 1945 largely in writing essays; his first short-story anthology, Hams alJunun (The Whisper of Madness), appeared only in 1938. His first philosophical article, "Ihtidar Mu'taqadat wa Tawallud Mu'taqadat" (The Death and Birth of Doctrines), appeared in Salama Musa's periodical al-Majalla al-Jadida in October, 1930. In it Mahfouz points out that life is subject to constant change and evolution, which man must accept as the inevitable result of civilization. Yet man is also by nature a believer who needs religious faith or an acceptable substitute to achieve tranquillity and happiness. Though imported Western doctrines like socialism and communism were finding some acceptance among the intelligentsia, Mahfouz desired an egalitarian system which would benefit the majority while not offending Muslim believers, something between capitalism and communism. He settled on moderate socialism, but recognized that while it might fulfill some of man's material needs, it could not bring him spiritual happiness. 2 In the late 1960s, when an interviewer suggested that Mahfouz appeared to sympathize with Marxism, he expressed antipathy toward the materialistic tenets on which it is based and doubt about its workability. In his vision of society, individual freedom and happiness must prevail; everything depends on science, which ultimately leads to understanding of the highest truth and the creation of knowledge. 3 Mahfouz's early articles on philosophy reveal him as an intelligent young Muslim trying to reconcile various Western concepts with his traditional beliefs. Despite his respect for philosophy, he seems convinced that the modern age is dominated by science, technology, and pragmatism. 4 Caught between the idea that the concept of God has always been inherent in the collective society and the mystics' view that God is a transcendental essence which man feels in the depths of his soul, Mahfouz grew more perplexed than ever.5 Years later, calling himself a Muslim believer, he declared that in his heart he had combined an aspiration for God, faith in science, and a predilection for socialism. 6 Besides philosophy, religion, and science, Mahfouz wrote on psychology, music, and literature, and two of his articles on Arabic writers are

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especially significant. In one he calls Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad the soul of the Arab literary nahda (awakening), Taha Husayn its intellect, and Salama Musa its will. 7 In a 1945 article, however, he sharply disagrees with alAqqad, whose little book Fi Bayti ( A t M y House) praises poetry at the expense of fiction, which he calls inferior. 8 Art in any form, Mahfouz argued, is an expression of life, and should not be scorned because it brings pleasure to many. He contends that the story is more popular than poetry because its technique is simpler and its purpose is to entertain. With encouragement and help from Salama Musa, Mahfouz published three historical novels before deciding that he was more interested in social realism. He called the first Hikmat Khufu (The Wisdom of Cheops), but Musa renamed it Abath al-Aqdar (Ironies of Fate) and printed it as a separate issue of his magazine in September, 1939. T w o others followed, the previously mentioned Radobis (1943) and Kifah Tiba (The Struggle of Thebes, 1944). In writing these novels, Mahfouz was continuing the tradition of Salim al-Bustani and Jurji Zaydan, later carried to greater heights by Ibrahim Ramzi, Muhammad Said al-Uryan, and others. Several educated writers of his generation, eager to portray current social and political movements, had earlier sought parallels between Egypt's ancient and contemporary history, giving the historical novel a new nationalistic emphasis. Abath al-Aqdar revolves around the struggle between a strong-willed Pharaoh and indomitable fate. Khufu (Cheops), disturbed by a prophecy that his throne will pass not to one of his own sons but to Dedef, the newborn son of the high priest of the temple of Re, seeks to destroy the future king. The high priest, having heard the same prophecy, arranges for Dedef to escape with his mother and a maid, Zaya. But the three lose their way; Zaya abducts the child, leaving his mother in the desert, and makes her way to Khufu's household, where Dedef grows to manhood." He graduates from the military academy, where he wins the respect of Pharaoh and the crown prince, and falls in love with a beautiful (supposed) peasant girl, actually Pharaoh's daughter. Later, rewarded with a military command after saving the crown prince's life, he unwittingly captures his mother on an expedition in Sinai. Meanwhile, the crown prince plots to supplant his father, but Dedef kills him and is designated as Pharaoh's successor. The novel ends with Pharaoh on his deathbed, acknowledging that though he declared war on fate and defied the gods, they have at last humbled him. 10 Apparently based on a legend in James Baikie's book Ancient Egypt, which Mahfouz translated into Arabic as Misr al-Qadima,n the novel shows the conflict between man and fate, an inexorable and mysterious external power, for according to Islamic tradition man's actions, good or evil, are absolutely decreed and predestined by God, and everything that has been or will be depends on His will and foreknowledge. The novel abounds with details intended to endow the events with an aura of authenticity, but suffers

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from historical inaccuracies and confuses fact with fiction; the educational system under Khufu, for instance, is virtually identical to that in modern Egypt. The work has many other shortcomings in both form and content; Mahfouz himself later called it "kid stuff." 1 2 Nevertheless, it marks the end of his obscurity as a novelist and the beginning of his recognition as a leader in his art. Radobis, his second novel, focuses on a love which is totally subject to fate—not, as in Abath al-Aqdar, a strong external power opposed to man's will, but an uncontrollable force emanating from the very depths of the soul. The title character, a beautiful courtesan, lives in a luxurious palace on a small island in the Nile. On the day of the festival of the Nile, an extraordinary sequence of events leads the Pharaoh Mernere to fall in love with her (thereby defying his wife/sister Nitocris), just as he faces a revolt. He summons warriors to quell the rebellion but, appearing unguarded before the crowd, is fatally wounded and dies in the arms of his beloved Radobis, who then takes her own life to avoid falling into the hands of Queen Nitocris. 13 It seems appropriate to label Radobis a romance rather than a historical novel, since it takes considerable liberties with the history of ancient Egypt. Pharaoh, tall and handsome like his grandfather Mehtemsauf, is a valiant warrior, young and rash, given to carnality and luxury—a figure larger than life. So consumed by passion that he would sacrifice himself and Egypt to please Radobis, he neglects his wife and the affairs of state. It is the conflict between his private and public lives that leads to his tragic end. His false claim to divinity is destroyed by fate, which overcomes his will and shows him to be, like other men, a captive of his own nature. Some critics suggest that the Pharaoh should be identified with the profligate, irresponsible King Farouk, but Mahfouz denies that he had any such analogy in mind. 14 Kifah Tiba, the last of the historical novels, portrays the struggle of Thebes against the Hyksos (a northwestern Semitic people who entered Egypt between 1720 and 1710 B.C.), whose expulsion in 1550 B.C. by Ahmose I set Egypt on the way back to independence. The first part deals with the occupation of Egypt by the Hyksos, who under King Apophis defeat the Theban army and kill the native ruler, Sekenenre II. In the second part, set ten years later, Sekenenre's son, Kamose, seeking to regain power, sends the crown prince Ahmose, disguised as a merchant, to spy at the court of the Hyksos king. Ahmose succeeds in recruiting support, but also falls in love with Apophis' beautiful daughter Amenerdis. In the final part, the Theban army liberates Upper Egypt, but Kamose falls in battle and Ahmose succeeds him. Among the Egyptians' captives is the Hyksos princess, who treats Ahmose with contempt and threatens to kill herself. Ahmose forces the Hyksos to sue for peace, and they agree to exchange their prisoners for

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Amenerdis and leave Egypt. Before her release, she confesses her true (but hopeless) love for Ahmose, ending this saga of unrequited love. 15 Whereas the historical events are of minor importance in the earlier novels, here they constitute the central theme, while the love between Ahmose and the Hyksos princess is of secondary importance. Mahfouz admits that while he was writing Kifah Tiba (1937-1938), his major concern was the Egyptians' struggle to overthrow the British, who had occupied the country since 1882. 16 Many of his contemporaries saw a real continuity from the Pharaonic period, the brightest in Egypt's history, to the present age of decadence and humiliation caused by British imperialism and the dominance of the Turko-Egyptian aristocracy. The confrontation between Amenerdis and Ahmose reflects the racial conflict of the brown-skinned Egyptian slaves and the white Hyksos lords, which permeates the novel. In Mahfouz's mind, they represent the struggle between good and evil, civility and savagery, reverence and intolerance. Yet the most important female character in the novel is not Amenerdis but Tetisheri, Sekenenre's mother, who is presented as the symbol of Egypt's indomitable spirit. Thus, Mahfouz is part of the movement which has claimed that by history and culture, Egypt is more Pharaonic than Arab, and it is in this context that we should read Kifah Tiba. After completing Kifah Tiba, Mahfouz abandoned historical themes to focus on contemporary life in his native Cairo, but why he did so is unclear. "To me," he says, "history had lost its charm. There was a time when I wanted to write more historical novels, but I could not." 17 Between 1945 and 1951 he published five novels dealing with social themes drawn from Cairo life. Al-Qahira al-Jadida (New Cairo), which appeared in 1945, examines the lives of four university seniors from December 1933 to September 1934. Since Mahfouz himself graduated in 1934, it is fair to conclude that their actions reveal his vision of his own generation. (Indeed, there was by then a growing Egyptian intelligentsia, for many university students had been exposed to Western concepts, including materialism and socialism, which were alien to their Islamic culture and traditions.) The four students have diverse moral and intellectual views. Mamun Ridwan is a true Muslim, believing in God in heaven and Islam on earth; Ali Taha believes in science and socialism; Ahmad Badir, a journalism student, believes in avoiding involvement; Mahjub Abd al-Dayim, a cynical opportunist, believes in nothing and responds to everything with the motto tuzz ("could not care less"). Unfortunately, Mahfouz presents these characters fully developed, leaving them no room to grow or manifest change by their actions, and then focuses on Mahjub, leaving the others only minor roles interacting with him. Mahjub's aim in life is to attain pleasure and power through any means, and he blames his inability to do so on his poverty. He would

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gladly sell his soul to the devil to climb the social ladder, and soon finds the opportunity. He attends a charity event where he comes face to face with the aristocracy, who inhabit a world far from his own, and eventually secures an appointment as secretary to the cabinet minister Qasim Bey Fahmi, provided he will marry Fahmi's mistress and allow the lovers to continue their relationship. Opportunistic and unprincipled, Mahjub agrees, not knowing that the bride-to-be is Ihsan Shihata Turki, the fiancee of his classmate Ali Taha. Like Mahjub, she is ambitious, selfish, and indecent, with a twisted sense of values which in Mahfouz's view predisposes her towards immoral behavior. Mahjub and Ihsan satisfy their ambition to join the corrupt upper class, but at a price—he by becoming a pimp, she a whore. He is rewarded with a promotion as director of the minister's bureau and thinks he has achieved great success, but a surprising sequence of events shatters his dreams. His father visits unexpectedly and rebukes him for neglecting his parents; their argument is interrupted by Fahmi's wife, who rushes in demanding to know where her husband and Ihsan are making love. The father, totally dumbfounded, realizing his son has lost everything, turns his back on him forever. Mahjub shows no remorse, dismissing his fall with his usual response, tuzz, but this time it rings hollow as he seeks to conceal his utter despair.18 Mahfouz here contrasts the upper and lower middle classes in Cairo in the 1930s, confronting us with the absolute dichotomy between them. The upper class had wealth, power, and prestige, but was morally bankrupt; the poor struggled to improve their lot, but could succeed only by compromising their principles. The moral climate was changeable, and the members of the lower class, seeking answers to society's problems, were beset by diverse, often conflicting concepts. Mamun believes that Islam is the remedy, but offers no evidence that it can promote reform or social justice. Ali Taha's socialism is likewise an abstraction, not a viable ideology offering specific solutions to Egypt's ills. Nowhere in the novel does Mahfouz suggest violence as an instrument of change; he puts his hope in the rising educated class, but offers no practical solutions. Khan al-Khalili (1946) is named for an old quarter of Cairo, filled with small shops and people of diverse origin, looking more like a carnival than a business district. The quarter has an aura of solemnity; it lies next to the famous Azhar Mosque (now a university) and houses the shrine of Husayn, the martyred second son of the Imam Ali. The novel appears to focus on the love of two brothers, Ahmad and Rushdi Akif, for the same young woman, but is really about the quarter where they live. Ahmad Akif, modeled after a real person by that name, is an interesting and even sympathetic subject for psychoanalysis. He has an inferiority complex (later replaced by a superiority complex), a persecution complex (if not paranoia), and a libido complex. A minor official at the Ministry of Public Affairs, still unmarried in his forties, bald and gaunt, slovenly in his dress

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and personal habits, he is always nervous and restless, and at times depressed. Yet there is something admirable about him; having left law school to support his family, he has sacrificed his own career and happiness, but while he laments his bad luck and lost opportunities, he respects and loves his family. He feels wronged by men who cannot understand or appreciate him, yet, like a masochist, enjoys suffering. Mahfouz blames his eccentric behavior partly on his sheltered childhood and partly on the erratic conduct of his hypochondriac mother, who blamed her illness on afarit (demons) and sought to exorcise them. His psychological problems have been compounded by his upbringing; he feared his strict father and loved his doting mother, and at forty he still cannot face life as a man. Ahmad also suffers from a serious sexual problem. Timid by nature, he hates and fears women, especially if they are beautiful, believing that his physical appearance makes him unattractive. Having lost at love twice in his youth, he has lost hope and resigned himself to a life of solitude. Twenty years later, however, he seeks to marry a merchant's daughter, but is rejected because he is " o l d " and his salary is trifling. Desperate for love, he turns to prostitutes, but he is again disappointed, and his complex worsens. Ahmad is suddenly taken with Nawal, a vivacious sixteen-year-old who lives in his building, but his younger brother Rushdi, suave, cheerful, and sociable (and profligate), pursues her until they meet, and soon they fall in love. Ahmad's world of dreams collapses when Rushdi announces his intention to marry her. Though Ahmad urges him to lead a more sober life and save his health, Rushdi keeps up his debauchery and is finally diagnosed with tuberculosis. Within a f e w days he dies, and his shocked family moves to the Zaytun quarter, leaving Khan al-Khalili and its memories. 19 It is ironic that Rushdi, who wins Nawal's love, loses his life. One writer has lamented that Mahfouz often is unsympathetic to his dynamic characters and therefore brings them to tragic ends.20 Sad and frustrated over the condition of the lower classes before the 1952 revolution, Mahfouz says that his characters appreciate life and strive to enjoy it, but often find themselves beaten down by circumstances they cannot control. 21 Ahmad A k i f typifies the many Egyptians of the lower middle class, squeezed in between the upper middle class, which controlled wealth and land, and t h t f a l l a h i n (peasants). He also represents the growing semiliterate segment of the population in the 1940s, people who dabbled in a variety of disciplines, mastering none, and impressed only those less educated than themselves. Mahfouz contrasts him with another character, Nunu the calligrapher, a carefree soul who lives for today, the epitome of the common Egyptian (baladi) in his social outlook and life-style. 22 Nunu embodies the fundamental Islamic concept of total reliance (tawakkul) on God, telling Ahmad that man must accept the order of life or be miserable. Revealing that he has four wives and eleven children, he says that

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polygamy enables him to satisfy his extraordinary sexual desire. Plainly more honest than many of the novel's upper-middle-class characters, Nunu has no feelings of guilt or shame about his behavior. Happy and lecherous, he stands in sharp contrast to Ahmad, a timid introvert beset by complexes. Invited to a coffeehouse by Nunu, Ahmad first faces the reality of life, meeting an odd assortment of lower- and middle-class people whose words and actions reflect the attitudes and behavior of most Egyptians. He is confident that he is superior to them because of his extensive knowledge— until he meets Ahmad Rashid, a young lawyer who says that Khan alKhalili should be razed and replaced by a modern quarter affording a better life-style. Ahmad contends that destroying this centuries-old quarter would also destroy part of Cairo's glorious past. With Rashid promoting science and socialism while Akif defends traditional Islamic values, the debate continues, epitomizing the conflict of liberal and conservative ideas in Egypt in the 1940's. Rashid, who considers science the only solution to mankind's problems and hails Freud and Marx as apostles of the modern age, fails to realize that the past is an existential part of every human being, as real as the present. The teachings of the prophets, Mahfouz implies, are as relevant as science, which should not be used to justify our values and decisions, though his failure to state explicitly what he means by "science" leaves unresolved the question whether it contradicts religion. 23 World War II, Mahfouz shows, has had a dramatic effect on the common people. Nunu says it has turned the world (i.e., Cairo) upside down and laments the spread of prostitution in the quarter. It has also created a class of profiteers who rose to join the aristocracy, blurring the old class distinctions. Mahfouz vividly shows people's credulity and their vulnerability to propaganda from both sides. Yet life goes on in Khan al-Khalili, which stands as a timeless monument to medieval traditions. Not even newcomers like Ahmad Akif and Ahmad Rashid can alter its nature. In Zuqaq al-Midaqq (Midaqq Alley, 1947), the alley becomes the protagonist, defiant and changeless, while its inhabitants hate it, leave it, and return. A timeless relic of the Fatimid and Mamluk periods, it is a monument to antiquity; its people, showing little interest in the outside world, carry on its tradition. 24 The action is set in the last years of World War II; the war affects only a few inhabitants, though the conflict between their traditional values and those imposed upon them by the war is clear. Abbas al-Hulu, the young barber and lover of beautiful Hamida, loses his life and Hamida is badly hurt by Abbas, who attacks her in the midst of a gang of British soldiers in a rough tavern. Yet, as soon as each crisis ends, the alley returns to life as usual, omnipotent and impervious to change. 25 Central to the life of the alley is Kirsha's coffeehouse, the gathering place for the fat, dull confectioner Uncle Kamil, the bakery owners Husniyya and Jaada, the barber al-Hulu, the quack dentist Dr. Bushi, and the

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merchant Salim Alwan. This microcosm, the inhabitants' only link to the outside world, is the scene of intense conflict between old and new values, epitomized in Kirsha's firing of the itinerant bard who has entertained his patrons for twenty years, but is now replaced by a radio. Zuqaq al-Midaqq has no formal plot and no dominant character. Its characters are all common folk from the lower middle class, mostly semiliterate or uneducated. As in the earlier novels, Mahfouz presents them fully developed, and their actions can be viewed only in the context of life in the alley. Uncle Kamil always sits in an enormous chair at the entrance to his shop; he will fail to close up at day's end unless someone prods him to do so. In contrast, Abbas al-Hulu runs a small but tidy shop, reflecting his personality. The liveliest, most vibrant character is twenty-year-old Hamida, whose situation evokes compassion; although Mahfouz did not intend her as a heroine, without her the novel would collapse. Raised by Kirsha's wife alongside her own son Husayn, she is beautiful, yet rebellious and resentful of her poverty. She desires material things and marriage, but sees no prospective husband. The only man she finds attractive is Husayn Kirsha, whom she cannot marry, because under Islamic law he is her foster brother. As the novel develops, we see that Mahfouz has not only prepared for her downfall but facilitated it. Setting himself up as judge and jury, and without presenting substantive evidence that she is a bad person, he depicts Hamida as rootless, quarrelsome, and utterly materialistic. Twice he has an opportunity to redeem her but refuses, because doing so would damage his portrayal of the moral decay of Egyptian society due to the war's impact. At one point it appears Salim Alwan, a prosperous merchant, will marry Hamida and satisfy her material desires. Though thirty years older and already married, with grown children, he has an insatiable sexual appetite and senses that Hamida—young, beautiful, and poor—is an easy target. He tells Umm Hamida that he wishes to marry her adopted daughter, but soon afterwards suffers a near-fatal heart attack, and Hamida quickly forgets him. The second chance to redeem her is through marriage to alHulu, a kind, peaceful, tolerant young man, content with his lot in life. He tells Hamida that he loves her, finally winning her hand by promising to leave the alley and work at the British military base to satisfy her desire for a better life. In his absence, however, she is enticed into prostitution. When he returns to find her a fallen woman, she calls her fall the result of the irrefutable qada (divine decree).26 Bent on vengeance, as previously discussed, he goes to the nightclub-bar where she works, but is beaten and kicked to death by the British soldiers she is entertaining. Some characters leave the alley but return, while others choose to remain. Hamida's foster brother, unable to bear his drab existence, leaves to seek a better life, but loses his job soon afterwards and is forced to take

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refuge in the alley he has cursed and detested. Perhaps the most morbid character is Zita, who inflicts physical deformities on men so that they can become beggars. He personifies the conditions that reduce people to desperation and deprive them of dignity, while the government seems indifferent to their plight. His partner in crime, Dr. Bushi, makes his living by robbing graves and reselling the gold dentures of the dead. Zuqaq alMidaqq is filled with pessimism and misfortune; on finishing it, the reader sees Mahfouz as a pessimist, obsessed with portraying the dark side of life, an even darker "playwright" of terror and poverty. The one slightly bright spot is the decent, devout Sayyid Ridwan alHusayni, who represents the moral conscience of a society plagued by wickedness. An optimist, he cherishes life and believes it is worth living; God is good, and all His creation is absolute goodness. To those who suffer evil and blame God, he says that suffering is a manifestation of God's concern for men, not His retribution. Salim Alwan, recuperating from his heart attack, is unimpressed by this philosophy and complains self-righteously that he has been punished while the pederast Kirsha remains healthy. Worse yet, al-Husayni confirms him in this hypocrisy by calling him good, righteous, and faithful in his religious duties, even comparing him with Job in the Old Testament. Mahfouz, having presented Alwan as a war profiteer and a lecher, may have realized that this analogy does not hold up, but his characters are innocent of such analysis. For some readers, the novel is strong, honest, pulling no punches—doing what a Balzac would do—and not flinching from cruelty, selfishness, or greed in his story. Al-Sarab (The Mirage) appeared in 1948, but some writers assert that Mahfouz finished it before Zuqaq al-Midaqq and withheld it from publication until the latter work was favorably received. 27 While the other contemporary novels focus on everyday life, this one examines the Oedipus complex of its protagonist, Kamil Ruba Laz, modeled after a real person. Some writers consider it a purely psychological novel, while others rightly see it as a continuation of Mahfouz's contemporary social novels, with a different technique and emphasis. 28 A careful reading shows that it is a serious exploration of male-female relationships, family ties, and the social gap between the Turkish aristocracy and common Egyptians. 29 Mahfouz experiments here with a first-person narrative, letting the protagonist describe his own actions without comment. His aim is not to write a psychoanalytical novel, but to reveal Cairo life from the viewpoint of a Turko-Egyptian who happens to suffer from an Oedipus complex. Surprisingly, Kamil admits that he has been aware since early childhood of his undoubtedly erotic attachment to his mother. Unhappily married and then separated from a dissolute, utterly irresponsible husband (who had custody of their two older children), Kamil's mother stimulated Kamil's unnatural desire. Possessive and indulgent, she dressed him in girls' clothes, made him wear long hair, and told him morbid tales of evil and supernatural figures.

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Anxiety became his normal state; above all, he feared the death of his mother, while recognizing that she was the source of his problems. Indeed, her feeling for him destroyed him emotionally and hindered his intellectual development. He finally finished high school at 25 and, after a debacle at law school, found a minor position in the Ministry of Defense, where his coworkers soon exploited his psychological weakness, naturally causing him to feel persecuted. His primary feeling toward his father was not jealousy but rage, though he knew about his father only through his mother. He realized that he was as much her victim as she was his father's. She has created in him a sense of guilt which demanded that he share her misery. One interesting scene is that of Kamil's visit to his father, accompanied by his maternal grandfather—a visit ending abruptly when Kamil's father (with good reason) suggested that Kamil had come only to seek financial support for his education. The grandfather objected that this was not the case, and insisted that the visit was to establish compassionate relationship between father and son. Kamil's father offered no support and told the grandfather either to leave the boy with him or take him back. Years later, when Kamil wanted to marry, he turned once more to his father, who advised him against doing so. Whether Kamil wished to seduce his mother is unclear. His yearning for that time in infancy when he could devour her nipple suggests that he had a strong desire for her, but lacked the will to fulfill it. His first sexual encounter, with a homely young maid, was quite pleasurable, but his mother caught them in the act, expelled the maid, and warned Kamil of the punishment he would suffer evermore. At fourteen, he began masturbating to relieve his inhibited sex drive. He felt aroused only by ugly women. The dichotomy between beauty and ugliness, personified by his mother and the maid, drove him to schizophrenia. Later he came to believe that people suffering from psychological ills should be done away with, and he offers this narrative as evidence of his determination not to kill himself. Torn by the conflict between his spiritual beliefs and his sinful acts, he asked God's forgiveness, but could not overcome his own nature. When one day he spotted a beautiful young woman, Rabab, he grew wild with dreams of love and marriage. He asked for her hand and was overjoyed when her father assented, but when his mother discovered his intentions, she tried to dissuade him and made his life miserable. After the marriage, he was unable to achieve physical union with Rabab, in whom he saw the image of his mother, an untouchable sacred symbol. Soon he became involved with an older woman, Inayat, who unleashed his sex drive, enabling him to enjoy the sensual contact he could not have with his wife. Meanwhile Rabab, pregnant by another man, died during an abortion, and soon after his mother died—but Kamil withstood these shocks, and finally overcame his psychological problems.

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Bidaya wa Nihaya (The Beginning and the End, 1949) presents the hopes and fears of a lower-middle-class family struggling against the hardships caused by the death of its head and sole breadwinner. It is set in the 1930s, when British imperialists controlled Egypt with the aid of subservient, self-seeking politicians. In a stagnant economy, members of the lower middle class (often government employees) had no opportunity to better their standard of living, though they could survive with moderate difficulty, since basic needs were relatively cheap. The novel opens with the death of Kamil Ali, a minor official at the Ministry of Education. His family had lived modestly on his salary; after his death, they find it difficult to manage on his widow's much smaller pension. Left with three sons and a daughter, his widow tries with patience, fortitude, and sound management to keep the family together, but fails. In the end, crushed by her family responsibilities, her children's problems, and the threat of poverty, she is emotionally and physically destroyed. 30 The children's reaction to the loss of their father reveals something of their character. Hasan, the eldest, is pragmatic and regards life as a matter of survival; he realizes he will finally have to stand on his own, but he is too preoccupied with this life to think of eternity or to grieve long. Husayn, gentle and idealistic, accepts his father's death as an act of God's will, but does not blame Him for the family's misfortunes. Hasanayn, Muslim by birth but not by belief, sees death as merely a biological event, an unfathomable mystery which renders life meaningless. Nafisa is most affected by Kamil Ali's death. At 23, she is uneducated, unattractive, and unlikely to marry; though she dared not work while her father was alive, lest she disgrace the family, she now accepts the need to support them after his death. The funeral reflects the family's social status. Most of those present are members of the middle class, though the prestige-conscious Hasanayn is pleased by the unexpected appearance of Ahmad Bey Yusri, a wealthy and prominent government official, signifying that Kamil Ali "was a great man, and like him his funeral was great too." Though others have portrayed the hardships of the Egyptian lower middle class, what distinguishes Mahfouz's work is his detailed, faithful description of characters and situations, rendering them highly believable. The family voices concern about what will happen to them and how they will manage without Kamil Ali. Poverty, Mahfouz implies, is the scourge of the bourgeoisie in this brutal society, threatening the cohesion and moral fabric of the family. Kamil Ali's widow takes the lead, urging the others not to despair of God's mercy, but to rely on His will and providence. (Westerners may wrongly view this reliance on God as an abdication of responsibility; Muslims believe that while He is the supreme source of man's livelihood, this does not mean He will put food on every Muslim table.) Hasan, unconvinced, leaves to make his own way in the world, while his mother moves the family to a cheaper apartment, seeks to cut

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expenses, and urges Nafisa to charge customers for her work as a seamstress. Mahfouz's citing poverty as the cause of the family's problems should be viewed with caution. Their lot, though hardly enviable, was manageable. According to the Egyptian writer Abd al-Muhsin Badr, many families in the 1930s survived on smaller incomes. 31 The novel is not just about want, but about its impact on the moral fiber of the middle class, which is threatened by a corrupt, impotent, and indifferent political system. Though Hasan's name connotes excellence, he is pugnacious and seemingly amoral, yet not wholly devoid of human compassion. His view that the smartest man is the one who can make a living quickest, by whatever means, leads him into a life of crime, and ultimately he is condemned to live without hope or future. Yet he uses his ill-gotten gains to provide food for his family and secure careers for his brothers. Husayn has a deeper sense of morality than his brothers, but is not above selling the bracelets of Hasan's prostitute girlfriend while he waits for his paycheck. He puts the family's interest above his own, postponing plans to further his education and marry until Hasanayn and Nafisa have secure futures. Typifying the moderates of the lower middle class, he recognizes the social and economic disparity in Egypt, perpetuated through hereditary rights. Yet he is not despondent or vindictive, simply sad, seeing himself not as an unfortunate individual but as part of a "wronged nation." Hasanayn represents the upwardly mobile segment of the lower middle class; ambitious, impetuous, and totally selfish, he uses others to achieve his own ends. He fancies himself in love with Bahiyya, a fifteenyear-old neighbor, and even declares himself engaged to her, but she is morally strong and shows remarkable maturity in checking his advances. Later he seeks the aid of Ahmad Bey Yusri in entering the military academy and is equally taken with his daughter, imagining that mounting her would bring him to her social level. After becoming an officer he tries to change his family's life-style to suit his new status, but when he pleads with Hasan to abandon his life of crime, Hasan challenges him to give up his uniform and find another career. Hasanayn then breaks off with Bahiyya to seek the hand of Yusri's daughter. Meanwhile, one of his fellow officers relays the rumors that his brother is a gangster and his sister a common prostitute, and that he himself has been rejected as a suitor, and he soon learns that this last is true. Shortly afterwards Hasan is beaten by rival gangsters, and no sooner does he recover and flee than Nafisa is arrested in a brothel. Summoned to the police station to take her home, Hasanayn incites her to commit suicide by drowning. Watching her body pulled from the Nile, he shamelessly denies seeing her die, but he ultimately accepts his guilt and ends his own life the same way. Despite her adverse circumstances, she is a good person, but Mahfouz justifies her deplorable end by attributing it to her overpowering sex drive. Her one faint prospect for marriage is Jabir, son of the grocer Salman;

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desperate for love, she surrenders herself to him, but later learns that Salman has secretly arranged for his marriage to the daughter of another grocer. She then falls into the clutches of another man who leads her into prostitution, which makes her downfall final and irrevocable. One feels emotionally exhausted and dejected as the characters, who reflect Mahfouz's bleak outlook, are manipulated toward their inevitable (and predictable) tragic ends. The Egyptian woman writer Fatima Musa justifies Mahfouz's pessimism on the grounds that he is a realist who would not distort his vision by portraying a bright future for characters like Hasanayn and Nafisa. 3 2 Al-Thulathiyya (The Trilogy, 1956-1957) is undoubtedly Mahfouz's most important work and one of his personal favorites. In studying the novel as a genre, he had encountered something called the "generations novel," following a single family over an extended period. But he decided to write one only after reading Taha Husayn's Shajarat al-Bu's (Tree of Misery, 1944). Working only in the winter because of sensitive eyes, he took four years, finishing it in 1952, having planned the careers of all his characters down to the last detail. Taha Husayn, asked to review it, wrote an article in Al-Ahram hailing him as a great novelist. 33 Even so, Said Jawdat al-Sahhar agreed to publish it only after it had been successfully serialized; soon it was acclaimed throughout Egypt, earning Mahfouz the State Prize for literature in 1957. The saga of three generations of a Cairo family, it offers a comprehensive view of major social and political events from 1917 to 1944, as seen by the Egyptian lower middle class, which was caught in the clash between traditional Islamic ideals and Western doctrines. The first volume, Bayn al-Qasrayn (Palace Walk), focuses on the family of Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad from 1917 to the outbreak of the 1919 nationalist revolt led by Sa'd Zaghlul. 3 4 The Sayyid, a merchant in his mid-forties, has a 21-year-old son, Yasin, by a prior marriage; he and his wife Amina have two more sons, Fahmi and Kamal, and two daughters, Khadija and Aisha. Again, Mahfouz presents his major characters as fully developed. He also painstakingly describes the historical background, revealing the social, political, and cultural trends in Egypt in the latter years of World War I. The family is conservative and cohesive, ruled by the Sayyid's patriarchal authority, reflecting the dominance of men in Cairene society and elsewhere in the Middle East. Amina, mindful that he has the right to divorce her, appears utterly subservient. When she dares to leave the house without his consent and is struck by a car, the Sayyid expels her from the house, but their children and friends successfully plead for her return. His treatment of her reveals a contemptuous attitude toward women, widespread in the Middle East even today. His authority also affects his children; he forbids Aisha's marriage to one suitor (but finally lets her marry another) and, on discovering that Yasin has tried to rape the family maid,

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commands him to marry. Like most men of his generation, he judges sexual conduct by a double standard, believing that a man is free to do what a woman cannot. He regards an unmarried daughter as a burden on the family, reflecting the then prevalent view that women must either marry or stay at home. Yet Sayyid Ahmad has a multifaceted personality; a strict and feared master at home, he is loved and appreciated by friends outside. He cherishes wine, women, and song, enjoying sexual relationships with several women, and goes to great lengths to maintain his virility. He is also a faithful Muslim, apparently sincere and serious in his prayer, seen by his family as an exemplary man. Critics disagree as to whether he has multiple personalities. 3 5 It seems more accurate to say that he has an unintegrated personality. His life is totally compartmentalized; his conduct at home is quite independent of his behavior in the marketplace, at the mosque, or with his nightly companions. Indeed, the world is full of men like him. The Sayyid's supposed fear of God does not prevent his having an adulterous relationship with his neighbor Umm Maryam. When the elderly Shaykh Mutawalli Abd al-Samad chides his hypocrisy, the Sayyid responds that God is most forgiving, and reasserts his love, obedience, and piety, believing that hasanat (good works) will wash away his sins. 36 Clearly Sayyid Ahmad recognizes his moral weakness but attempts to cloak it in self-righteousness; though the Quran condemns adultery, the Sayyid justifies his illicit relations with loose women by likening them to the slave women of ancient times, even citing Quran 4:3 to support his position. Zubayda and Jalila, two of his sexual partners, tell him he is outwardly religious but inwardly dissolute. Loving his pleasure too much to give it up, he should be considered a fasiq (one who does not meet the requirements of righteousness under Islamic law). 37 His son Yasin also believes that repentance can be put off until it is convenient, but he justifies his sins on the pretext that others do the same things. Deeply affected by the private life of his often-married mother, he distrusts all women, yet pursues them. Like the Sayyid he is somewhat dull, a traditional Muslim, politically uncommitted, and above all driven by his passion for women; he understands sensuality, not love. We first see him dreaming of Zannuba, who lives with her aunt Zubayda, and when he finally visits her at home, he is stunned to find her aunt Zubayda simultaneously entertaining his father. Having seen the Sayyid demand that the family adhere to the highest moral standards, he is elated at having discovered his "real" father, for whom he feels a new sense of love and respect. At Aisha's wedding party, Jalila chides the Sayyid for ending their affair and trying to appear respectable. Yasin is inwardly pleased, realizing she is just one of his father's many conquests, but her accusation shocks Fahmi, who cannot believe Yasin's account of his father's adultery. His

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mother and sisters, however, accept it resignedly, understanding their precarious position in a society dominated by males. Having drunk too much at the wedding, Yasin attempts to rape the homely maid Umm Hanafi, but his father prevents him. This scandalous act shows that Sayyid Ahmad's rigid discipline is incompatible with his own conduct. Indeed, he is not only immoral but selfish; he believes that his main duty is to provide for the family, and they in return owe him respect and complete obedience. Mistakenly believing he can regulate Yasin's conduct, Sayyid Ahmad arranges his marriage to Zaynab, the daughter of his crony Muhammad Iffat. Within a month after the marriage, however, Yasin returns to seeking pleasure elsewhere. Zaynab objects to his dissolute life and complains in vain to her mother-in-law, who says women must accept their husbands as they are. Amina typifies the traditional Egyptian woman, subservient and fatalistic, while Zaynab represents the new generation of women, more aware of their role in life and eager for greater freedom. When she discovers Yasin having sex with her black maid on the rooftop, she leaves for her father's house, effectively ending the marriage. The Sayyid criticizes his conduct—not because it is immoral, but because it constitutes defiance of his authority—but he finally consents to the couple's divorce. Much attention is given to the Sayyid's third son, ten-year-old Kamal, who appears to some extent modeled after Mahfouz himself. Though close to his family, he has no friends his own age. Having his mother's tiny eyes and his father's large nose in a massive head, he is quite self-conscious about his appearance. Inquisitive and intelligent, he is especially eager to learn about Islam and shares his newly acquired knowledge with his mother. Though the Egyptian writer Ghali Shukri says Mahfouz is predisposed to portray the Sayyid as a God figure, it is doubtful that Kamal ever sees him as such; indeed, he loves his father, but fears him as well. Deeply devoted to al-Husayn, whose shrine he passes daily on his way to school, he evinces the sincere, uncomplicated faith typical of children. He has a fertile imagination, aroused by the presence of British occupation troops in Cairo; indeed, he constructs a model military camp on the rooftop, reenacting the encounters between the troops and nationalist demonstrators. He is also particularly curious about Aisha's marriage and the birth of her first child, though it is difficult to believe he is as precocious and inquisitive as Mahfouz makes him appear. In sharp contrast to Yasin stands Fahmi, a bright, idealistic, decent young man whose personal conduct appears above reproach. He is a virtual stranger in his family, related by blood but decidedly unlike them. The Sayyid's daughters are uneducated and, until they marry, engaged in an intensely jealous conflict. The heavyset Khadija—truly her father's daughter, having inherited not only his physical traits but his domineering personality—complains about her slender but attractive sister Aisha, unfairly criticizes Yasin's wife Zaynab, and, after marrying, fights constantly with her mother-in-law.

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M a h f o u z uses the n o v e l to portray the E g y p t i a n s ' national struggle against British domination. T h o u g h all the f a m i l y members support the cause, Fahmi is the only one actively involved. He excitedly reports that S a ' d Z a g h l u l is leading a delegation to London to call for E g y p t ' s independence. A m i n a observes with surprising logic that this action seems unwise, and Z a y n a b agrees. T h e S a y y i d ' s response is every bit as ambivalent as his v i e w of vice and virtue. A s k e d to sign a petition supporting Zaghlul, he does so with a sarcastic comment which makes clear that his personal pleasure takes precedence over politics. L i k e many men of his generation, having seen the British humiliate and dominate E g y p t , he is passive and fatalistic about the political situation, much like M a h f o u z ' s father, w h o reportedly discussed the nationalists' activities, but avoided involvement. 3 8 Fahmi echoes Z a g h l u l in arguing that the protectorate had no legal basis, but w a s a temporary wartime measure imposed by the British to safeguard their interests. His family is alarmed by his activity; his mother, nice but ignorant, cares not w h o rules Egypt, as long as she has her home and family, and the Muslims and their sacred places are undisturbed. She says that politics is not the business of ordinary citizens, and Fahmi should not jeopardize his career and his life. W h i l e the rest of the f a m i l y reacts passively to Z a g h l u l ' s arrest, Fahmi alone understands the reality of politics and senses E g y p t ' s humiliation. He feels that some cataclysmic event is about to happen. W h e n the demonstrators take to the streets, he is elated and unafraid of dying; he knows that he is fighting for a great cause. When the S a y y i d discovers by chance that he is active in the national struggle, Fahmi justifies his actions as part of a jihad (holy war), but his father demands that he break with the movement. D e e p l y committed to his cause, yet reluctant to disobey his father, Fahmi decides that civic responsibility takes precedence over patriarchal authority. M e a n w h i l e , K a m a l finds his freedom of movement restricted and is perplexed by the political situation and the attitudes of various f a m i l y members. He sympathizes with the revolution, but cannot explain why. W h e n Azharite demonstrators pass by his school and urge the students to join them, he falls in and narrowly escapes death; later, returning home, he encounters Fahmi, w h o begs him not to reveal his involvement, lest he incur the S a y y i d ' s wrath. A t first opposed to the British troops in Cairo, K a m a l changes his mind and makes friends with them, deciding in his childish innocence that they are simply human beings. M a h f o u z , preparing for K a m a l ' s role in the second part of the trilogy, portrays him as a romantic idealist, deeply sensitive to the human condition. Nothing reveals the British humiliation of the Egyptians more than the S a y y i d ' s experience: sneaking out of U m m M a r y a m ' s home at midnight, he is taken prisoner by a British soldier and treated cruelly. Yet even with his dignity stripped a w a y he cannot grasp what the British have done to him and his country, nor does he understand the cause for w h i c h Fahmi is

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prepared to give his life. He wishes the revolution would end soon, fearing that someone close to him will become a casualty. He and his friends regard the nationalist demonstrations as irrational action by the younger generation, for which their elders will suffer the consequences. Zaghlul's release is greeted with public celebrations. Fahmi hails the British surrender to the Egyptians' national demands and reconciles with his father, explaining that he was simply serving his country's interest. While taking part in a peaceful demonstration soon afterwards, Fahmi is shot dead by British soldiers. The Sayyid, who has spent his life pursuing pleasure, feels the merciless pangs of grief. Not only is his son dead; his bright future has vanished, and with it the nation's dreams. As he returns home, he hears Kamal singing, "Visit me once a year. It would be a shame if you should forget me completely." This ending is neat and economical, without a trace of sentimentality; though Kamal does not know what has happened, his song is perfectly appropriate to the occasion. The second part of the trilogy, Qasr al-Shawq, translated into English with the title Palace of Desire, covers the period from 1924 to Sa'd Zaghlul's death in August, 1927. 39 In it Mahfouz depicts the deterioration of the national movement into petty squabbling between the politicians and the palace, and shows the clash of traditional values and concepts with those imported from the West, especially as it affects Kamal. Sayyid Ahmad, more conscious of his age and deeply affected by Fahmi's death, has for five years forsworn his old wanton ways. Torn between repentance and pleasure, he finally chooses the latter, but discovers sadly that nothing is the same—not himself, his family, his friends, or the country. Eager to resume his relationship with Zannuba, he professes his love and promises to support her if she will be exclusively his, and she agrees. But later, suspecting she has been cheating on him, he confronts her. She admits to seeing someone else and gives him an ultimatum: marry her or lose her. Though he lusts for her, he finally decides against marrying her, fearing disgrace at home and in society. Humiliated, yet anxious to know who his rival might be, he follows her and learns, to his utter amazement, that it is Yasin. Beset by conflicting emotions, yet feeling no remorse, he simultaneously laments the waning of his sexual prowess and envies his son. 40 Yasin, like his father, is preoccupied with sex, which apparently relieves the frustration he feels in a repressive society where his position is fixed. Though he yearns for a quiet, decent family life, his conduct is influenced by his father's hypocrisy and his lack of a mother's compassion, and his marital relationships are troubled. Early on, he shows an interest in Maryam, whom Fahmi hoped to marry; because she is his choice, not his father's, he believes they can be happy together. But in Chapter 5 he states that marriage cannot satiate his sexual hunger; better he should be like his father, having one woman raise his children while he carries on with others.

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The Sayyid objects to his marrying Maryam, alleging she has a tarnished past, though the real reason is his own earlier affair with her mother. Blatantly defying his father's authority, Yasin moves to his mother's house in Qasr al-Shawq, whereupon the Sayyid reluctantly gives his consent. Ironically, when Yasin calls on Umm Maryam to seek her daughter's hand, he is suddenly aroused by her full figure, and they engage in a brief amorous affair. After it ends, she tries unsuccessfully to rekindle her old relationship with the Sayyid; soon after Maryam marries Yasin, she marries a lowly shopkeeper, but dies days later. Yasin soon tires of Maryam and decides to find another woman who can satisfy him. By chance he meets Zannuba, who says she is looking for a husband. After drinks and small talk, he takes her to his home, where their carousing arouses Maryam and sets off an argument which climaxes when Yasin declares Maryam divorced, though he realizes what he has done only when he awakes in the morning to find her gone and Zannuba in her bed. Telling him she is the mistress of a rich merchant (though in fact her paramour is Yasin's father), Zannuba persuades him to marry her. Sayyid Ahmad reacts angrily, claiming Yasin has compromised the family's honor by marrying a disreputable woman; plainly more concerned about social respectability than his son's happiness, he urges him to divorce her. But Yasin refuses, sensing that she represents his last hope for success in marriage, and tries to convince her that she will be the only woman in his life. Only on learning that Zannuba is pregnant does the Sayyid accept the permanence of their relationship. Sayyid Ahmad must amend his own life before he can demand the same of his son. He meets his old friends on what he calls "Zannuba's houseboat" and attempts vainly to restore his relationship with Zubayda. Soon afterwards he falls seriously ill, suffering from high blood pressure. On recovering, he appears to repent and ask God to protect him—not because he has sinned, but because his illness has precluded his life of pleasure. While Mahfouz does not imply that the Egyptian lower middle class is immoral or dissolute, he exposes the hypocrisy of those whose moral weakness belies their professions of faith. Mahfouz devotes much attention to Kamal, a vibrant, charming, intelligent 17-year-old with a bright future, interested more in intellectual pursuits than in sensuality. He reminds us of Mahfouz, who admits that Kamal's mental crises and suffering reflect his own. 4 1 Though his father wants him to enter a lucrative and prestigious field like law, medicine, or engineering, he wants to enroll in the Teachers' College to study literature and philosophy. Their dialogue on this matter underscores the gap between their generations: the Sayyid considers teaching a wretched profession and urges Kamal to study law like Fuad al-Hamzawi, the son of his assistant, or seek a government job. When his father asks what the life of the mind is, Kamal answers only in vague general terms, largely because he does

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not understand it clearly. Even more upset when Yasin sides with his father, saying he is ignorant of the real values in life, he turns reluctantly to his mother, who at least shows sympathy and understanding. Kamal appears to be an immature adolescent dealing with profound philosophical concepts which are beyond him. Unable to define his priorities, he seems to be a rationalist and something of a dreamer, living in a society which is concerned not with his idealistic life of the mind, but with the brutal reality of everyday life. Mahfouz contrasts the idealistic Kamal with the pragmatic Fuad al-Hamzawi, who realizes that to survive in a materialistic society, he must first assure himself a good living. Kamal is also a romantic, as is clear from his obsessive love of Aida, the sister of his classmate Husayn Shaddad, which causes him much anguish and eventually drives him into stultifying skepticism. This love is based on Mahfouz's own life; as a teenager he was taken with a neighbor girl, but his infatuation never developed into a lasting relationship. 42 Kamal thinks of Aida not as a human being but as a goddess, transcending this material world; she is an adored symbol, above human frailties. He cannot see that in social status, education, and outlook on life she is totally unlike him. Her preference for the aristocracy is plain when she rebukes her brother for criticizing their family's wealth and status. When she chooses to marry Hasan Salim, who is her social equal, Kamal is left with a broken heart and the dream of someday being a famous writer. He is unable and unwilling to understand that she never reciprocated his feelings or even shared his vision of love. Finally realizing he cannot live in a nonsensuous world of romantic idealism, Kamal abandons it altogether and turns to drinking and wenching. Before doing so, however, he is deeply influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution and the descent of man, even publishing an article on the subject. For two years he has struggled with doubt; he maintains that he still believes in God, but now says that science is the only true religion, the key to the mysteries and majesty of the universe. Even if, as Mahfouz says, Kamal reflects his own intellectual crisis, it is unclear whether Kamal accurately represents him or is a purely fictitious character in a fictitious setting. Apparently convinced that to be a rational man seeking beauty and truth means one must be an unbeliever, Kamal, with the aid of his friend Ismail Latif, descends from his world of idealistic dreams to the "real" sensual world. His idealism turns out to be as shallow as his dream of writing a great book, and his faith is shallower still; having begun with high moral ideals, he ends up no better than his father or Yasin—indeed, when he and Yasin meet by chance in a brothel, Kamal declares they were born to be like their father in seeking sensual pleasure. It is unlikely that Kamal represents the mental paralysis of the petty bourgeoisie, as some writers suggest. 43 His conservative upbringing

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is largely responsible for the shattering of his romantic idealism and his belief in absolutes. This second volume of the trilogy says little about politics, except to reveal the divergent attitudes of the lower and upper middle classes. Kamal becomes a follower of Sa'd Zaghlul and the Wafd, which he considers the central force in the national struggle he has inherited from Fahmi, but must often defend his views against his upper-class friends. The novel ends with Zaghlul's death. Kamal, who has already lost his brother and his beloved Aida, grieves for him; it seems there is no end to his suffering. Sayyid Ahmad is again healthy, but has lost much of his virility and patriarchal authority. Yasin seems happy with Zannuba, who is due to give birth on the day of Zaghlul's death; ironically, Aisha loses her husband and sons to typhoid fever the same day. Kamal, meanwhile, appears totally out of place in a society he cannot identify with, homeless in a land which is controlled by foreigners, and whose leaders lack direction and vision. The final volume of the trilogy, al-Sukkariyya (Sugar Street), covers the period from January 1935 to the summer of 1944.44 In it Mahfouz looks closely at political upheavals, the conflict between Western ideologies and traditional Muslim beliefs, and the cultural and social changes wrought by modern civilization and World War II. The family and friends of Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad have experienced many changes. The Sayyid, again seriously ill, has had to close his shop and laments the cruelties time inflicts on people; he still yearns for bygone pleasures and apparently has not repented or prepared himself for the life to come, though by the end of the novel he is dead. Yasin, once a minor government employee, has risen to an administrative post with the help of his son Ridwan and a shady politician. Unlike his father, he has some sense of morality and appears genuinely contrite in confessing his sins. Amina, the typical wife and mother of the older generation, has patiently endured her husband's tyranny and remains faithful to him to the end. Her life is unexciting, but she has more freedom of action than before and seems to enjoy it. Aisha has deteriorated, mentally and physically; tragedy seems to be her lot, for her daughter Naima dies in childbirth. Her sister Khadija, grown fat, views her heaviness as a sign of beauty. She credits the success of her sons, Abd al-Munim and Ahmad, to her discipline and sound upbringing. Zubayda, once the Sayyid's favorite mistress, ends in sheer poverty and misery, but her niece Zannuba becomes a respectable wife and mother after marrying Yasin and gains the admiration of those who know her. The mystic Shaykh Mutawalli Abd al-Samad, now senile, provides some tragicomic relief; at the Sayyid's funeral, he appears totally disoriented and remembers no one. Kamal and his three nephews dominate the novel. Kamal teaches English at an elementary school and writes articles on philosophy. Ridwan and

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Abd al-Munim, both law school graduates, work in the Ministry of Education, while Ahmad translates and writes for al-Insan al-Jadid (The New Man). In al-Sukkariyya Kamal appears as a cohesive but complex personality. He is still self-conscious about his appearance, which his students ridicule as Aida did years earlier, but is a compassionate and effective teacher. He considers his work a chore, but conceals his dissatisfaction and tries to make the best of his situation, while still aspiring to the life of the mind. His writings present no particular view; they are simply surveys presenting philosophers' ideas to a limited audience. In time, however, he comes to question the value of his work and even his own ability; having long since lost faith in God, he now doubts the validity of science and philosophy. Mahfouz contrasts him with a young Copt, Riyad Qaldas, who rejects religion in favor of science and aesthetics, calling one the language of reason, the other the language of all mankind. A s Kamal grows despondent and perplexed, Qaldas attributes his mental crisis to his attempt to fathom the mysteries of life. But Kamal suffers mainly because, unable to harmonize new ideas with his old traditional values, he is lost between East and West. Does Kamal reflect the anxiety Mahfouz himself experienced as a young man? He may, yet it is unrealistic to identify them completely; we do not know, for instance, that Mahfouz lost his faith or so despaired that he considered suicide. We can infer that Kamal embodies the hopes and frustrations of what Mahfouz calls "the middle generation," which had to deal with the forceful challenge of Western ideas. Having disavowed his faith, Kamal looks to science for the meaning of life, but science cannot answer his questions. He is left with no moral rules to follow, no reason for being. His existential emptiness and his inability to achieve inner peace are manifested most clearly in his remaining single. He avoids even discussing marriage, and when his father and friends urge him to marry, he resists, partly because he does not want the responsibility of a family, but also because he harbors a destructive sense of failure. Indeed, he is no longer capable of love. Apart from his writing, the solitary life—from which he finds relief in alcohol and carnal pleasure, in a brothel operated by Jalila, once his father's mistress—is the only reality he has. Kamal's lack of definite goals and his chronic bewilderment are most apparent when he is contrasted with Abd al-Munim and Ahmad. Like him, they have faced problems in choosing a career, but they have shown the will and determination to pursue their goals in life. Ahmad, like Kamal, falls in love with a woman from the upper middle class and is rejected, but, instead of despairing he finds another woman better suited to him and marries her. Kamal briefly contemplates marrying one young woman, but her lower class status deters him. His class consciousness comes to the fore when he opposes Fuad

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al-Hamzawi's desire to marry his niece Naima, on the grounds that he is not well suited to her. Later, when the Ministry of Education orders Kamal's transfer to Asyut, he asks Fuad (now a judge) to intercede on his behalf, but is turned down. Desperate, he turns to his nephew Ridwan, who with the help of his homosexual partner rescinds the order. Life seems utterly purposeless and absurd. The world is topsy-turvy. Fuad has risen as he himself slid down the social scale, and Ridwan helps him save his position through his immoral relations with a cabinet minister, in a decadent society where integrity and intellectual strength count for nothing. Kamal seeks the meaning of existence, but finding it will not alter his life or mitigate his agony. Ultimately he fails in his quest, but he seems to feel that his uncertainty is a small price to pay for survival. Al-Sukkariyya focuses on politics, particularly the efforts to weaken the Wafd, which had sought to unite all Egyptians under the banner of nationalism. Zaghlul's death gave his opponents an opportunity to lead the government and manipulate policy, while the British authorities used both the king and the politicians to control Egypt. At the Jihad national festival (November 13, 1935), Kamal is inspired as Zaghlul's successor Mustafa al-Nahhas urges the people to revolt, then thrust back to reality as British constables and Egyptian soldiers open fire, killing many demonstrators. Soon afterwards, the ailing King Fuad restored the 1923 constitution; the next year, the Wafd won a resounding electoral victory and negotiated the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, signed on August 26, 1936. Meanwhile, Fuad had died; his son Farouk assumed full power in July 1937 and, backed by the Liberal Constitutionalists and the Saadists (disaffected Wafdists), replaced al-Nahhas and dissolved the parliament, calling another national election for April 1938. The new prime minister, Muhammad Mahmud, succeeded in rigging the election so completely that the Wafd won only twelve seats. As the election is held, Aisha's daughter Naima, now married to her cousin Abd al-Munim, dies during childbirth, just as the Egyptians' hopes for democratic rule and independence have died. Mahfouz explores the sensitive question of the Christian Copts in a conversation between Kamal and Riyad Qaldas following al-Nahhas's dismissal. Qaldas says the Copts back the Wafd because they see themselves first and foremost as Egyptians, not as a minority who should be treated differently from the Muslim majority. But Kamal, too wrapped up in his own problems, cannot grasp the Copts' plight or perceive the distinctions drawn between the minority and the majority. Toward the end of the novel Mahfouz describes the restoration of alNahhas to power in 1942, in what has come to be known as "the February 4 affair," whereby the British managed to avert political troubles in Egypt for the duration of the war. He also treats the rift within the Wafd which culminated in the ouster of the Copt Makram Ubayd, one of the party's

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most influential leaders. Qaldas fears that since the Copts have lost their staunchest defender, the Wafdists will turn on them. Kamal, convinced all mankind is acting out a comedy with a tragic ending, argues that what he sees as a problem will disappear if only the Copts will look at Ubayd not as their representative, but simply as a politician. Mahfouz uses the veteran minister Abd al-Rahim Pasha Isa to exemplify the corruption and immorality of many Egyptian politicians. The Pasha calls politics merely a diversion from his loneliness; yet he is hardly lonely, for he has close (plainly homosexual) relationships with several young men. It is through his influence that Ridwan becomes secretary to the Minister of Education, arranges Yasin's promotion, cancels Kamal's transfer, and finds a post for Abd al-Munim. Not surprisingly, he distinguishes between private and public morality, saying his private life has no bearing on his official actions. Mahfouz devotes much of the novel to the third generation, using Ridwan and his cousins to illustrate the changes in Egyptian society between the two world wars. After Zaghlul's death, the nationalists faced competition from extremist groups—the communists on the left, the Muslim Brotherhood on the right. Their rivalry is revealed in the thoughts and actions of Abd al-Munim and Ahmad, who espouse diametrically opposed ideologies and are prepared to suffer and sacrifice for their principles. At the other end of the social spectrum, Ridwan seeks to rise to the top by associating himself with men of power, even if this means accepting immoral conduct. Ahmad and his co-worker Susan Hammad (whom he later marries) are deeply influenced by the socialistic ideas of Adli Karim, the owner-publisher of al-Insan al-Jadid (The New Man), who is modeled after Salama Musa. 4 5 Abd al-Munim, exposed to the teachings of the ultraconservative Muslim Brotherhood while still in high school, accepts its call for a return to the roots of Islam. Both are moral characters, albeit with different values. While Abd al-Munim hosts nightly meetings of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ahmad and Susan gather with friends in the apartment below to study Marxism. Late one night, both brothers are arrested and jailed for distributing antigovernment publications—evidence, Mahfouz implies, that the government does not care what people believe unless they threaten its power, but will use any means to suppress a perceived threat. Later, in a conversation with Kamal, they make clear that they must actively serve a cause bigger than themselves; if they do not use life, they will lose it. But he has become spiritually empty and incapable of feeling, as is clear from his almost indifferent reaction to the news of Aida's death. As the novel ends, he and Yasin await Amina's passing. Life has passed them by; now it is the turn of a new generation to push Egypt toward a better future. Shortly after Mahfouz finished his trilogy in 1952, a group of army officers overthrew King Farouk and proclaimed the dawning of a new day.

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For seven long years he waited, but in 1959, disillusioned by the outcome of the revolution, he wrote the allegorical Awlad Haratina (literally, "Children of Our Quarter," first published in English as Children of Gebelawi) to comment specifically on the Egyptian situation, within the more general context of the human condition. 46 Divided into five chapters, each named for its central figure, the book (like Shaw's "Back to Methuselah") follows a loose chronological sequence. The first chapter retells the thinly disguised story of Adam and Eve; the next three parallel the lives of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad; and the last, most important chapter introduces Arafa, who symbolizes modern science. The characters dwell in the hara (alley) of history, which is dominated by the nearby house of the powerful, enigmatic Gebelawi; they experience history as an endless cycle of hope and despair, escaping tyranny only briefly. Mahfouz is interested here not in religious questions, but in social and political issues and the role science plays in settling them. There is some ambivalence throughout the work concerning the nature of Gebelawi, the idea or concept of God which exists in the minds of men, and whose name is repeated endlessly for generation—not always with love and respect. The people curse him for his lack of compassion, his distance, and his failure to spare them suffering. There is apparently a direct correlation between men's faith and the worldly favors they receive from him, and the division of his "estate" is always on their minds. The third chapter is confusingly disjointed and lacking in historical accuracy if one demands that the "characters" of the work follow the known events of history, or the myths created of such events over the millennias. It portrays Rifaa (Jesus) as a true prophet, concerned solely with the realm of the spirit, but presents Gebelawi not as a concrete, transcendent God, but as one fashioned over time in man's image. The strongest chapter, in terms of character development and motivation, is the fourth, in which Qasim (Muhammad) implies that without force, those who hope to be reformers, religious or otherwise, cannot succeed. One wonders why Mahfouz here describes at length acts of violence, apparently appealing to the imaginative adolescent rather than the sober, intelligent reader. It may be his despair at ever finding solutions to society's ills that leads him to detail such gory events. In the final chapter, the hara has again succumbed to misery and hatred, though its residents still hope to be delivered from their wretched state. Arafa and his dwarf brother Hanash are isolated and scorned, symbolizing Islamic society's low regard for science and technology. Mahfouz introduces a woman, Awatif, who attempts to soften Arafa, i.e., to mitigate the power of science by wedding it to human feelings. Arafa sees himself as having a sort of messianic mission, though he is concerned with worldly, material aims. He does not deny God's existence nor, better, the concept of God—or seek to supplant him, but he does insist that his magic,

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like God's, is all-powerful. Believing he must follow in the footsteps of Gebel, Rifaa, and Qasim, he sets out to see, hear, and identify Gebelawi. Tunneling under the mansion wall, he steals into the ancient, darkened house and unintentionally kills a frail old servant. Soon afterwards, the hara buzzes with the news that Gebelawi is dead, from shock and grief at the loss of his faithful servant. Believing he has indeed killed Gebelawi, Arafa undertakes to give the people something to fill the void. Later, the trustee of Gebelawi's estate successfully pressures Arafa for his magic bottles, i.e., modern weapons, and uses them to dispose of his enemies and subdue the people. Corrupted by hashish and compromised by the trustee, the confused, guilt-ridden Arafa becomes estranged from Awatif, and eventually the trustee kills them both. Yet the rumor spreads through the hara that Hanash, having escaped with Arafa's magic book, will finish his work and avenge his death. Symbolically, science does not (and in fact cannot) kill God, but kills men's image of God, which is distorted by their constant focus on rewards—and perpetuated by God's so-called representatives (priests), science does not, cannot replace religion, but it may dispel the superstitious darkness that has always surrounded the hara. Science has no quarrel with Gebelawi; its enemy is irrational thought and behavior. But, presently forced to serve the narrow political interests of the few, science weakens permanently any faith in a higher, nonmaterial spirit or power. The work reflects Mahfouz's doubt that any society can maintain justice for long. Religious figures come and go, but the people remain powerless and miserable. Science represents the last great hope of mankind, but whether it can overcome human tyranny is unclear. Mahfouz seems to think that religion, if freed from fanaticism, parochialism, and superstition, could lead men's rulers to use science for the good of all. At the same time, he appears to accept the contention of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 11261198) that there are two kinds of truth, philosophical and theological, and that a single phenomenon can be understood rationally in philosophy and allegorically in theology. But this theory, which has long aroused the wrath of Islamic theologians, led to attacks on Awlad Haratina throughout the Muslim world. The work, published in Beirut in 1967, did not appear in book form in Egypt until October 1994. However, a Cairo afternoon newspaper, al-Masa (The Evening), mouthpiece of the leftist Tajammu Party, began serializing the novel on a daily basis. Another more daring newspaper, the weekly alAhali (The People), unauthorized by either Mahfouz himself or the newspaper al-Ahram (The Pyramids), which holds the copyright, printed 45,000 copies of the novel. The reprinting and distribution of the novel rekindled the antagonism of Muslim militants against Mahfouz. Indeed, after Mahfouz received the Nobel Prize in 1988, the blind Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman, member of an Islamic fundamentalist group later accused of involvement

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in a plot to blow up the World Trade Center in New York, issued a fatwa (juristic opinion) in 1989 condemning Mahfouz as a blasphemer, who, according to the Islamic law, either should repent or be killed. 47 On October 14, 1994, Muhammad Naji Mustafa, a Muslim militant, stabbed Mahfouz twice in the neck while he was in a car waiting to be taken to Qasr al-Nil to attend a weekly literary meeting. Fortunately, Mahfouz survived the attack and has partially recovered (he is still in feeble health). Ironically, when the culprit, Naji, was interrogated by the police, he admitted that he had never read the novel but acted only on the strength of Shaykh Abd al-Rahman's fatwa calling for Mahfouz's death. An Egyptian military court tried the case and sentenced Naji and an accomplice, Muhammad Mahalawi, to death. The attempt on Mahfouz's life outraged not only his admirers but also those who cherish and defend the freedom of expression. 48 Mahfouz published six novels and two collections of short stories between 1961 and 1969, in an astonishing burst of literary productivity. This was all the more remarkable because of his increasing distress at the direction Egypt was taking under Jamal Abd al-Nasir. Most noteworthy among them are al-Liss wa al-Kilab (The Thief and the Dogs, 1961), the story of an ex-convict hunted down after he accidentally kills innocent people in his quest for revenge, and al-Summan wa al-Kharif (Autumn Quail, 1962), which realistically examines the "reforms" effected after the 1952 revolution. In the last stage of his literary career, beginning with the publication of Miramar in 1967, Mahfouz appears to have synthesized the social realism of the contemporary novels and the trilogy with the allegory of Awlad Haratina (The Children of Gebelawi). After 1969, he published several more novels and anthologies of short fiction, constantly experimenting with new forms and techniques as he moved further from conventional realism. Miramar, one of his warmest novels, brings together people of diverse backgrounds in an Alexandria boardinghouse run by Mariana, a sixtyish woman of Greek origin (and widow of a British consul) whose beauty and fortunes have faded. Amir Wajdi, an octogenarian journalist, who, like her, recalls the nationalist revolt of 1919, narrates the first and last of its five chapters. Each of the three middle chapters presents the same series of events, as related by representatives of the younger generation: the wealthy Husni Allam, who seeks sensual pleasure as an outlet for his dislike of the ongoing Nasir revolution; Mansour Bahy, who quietly acquiesces in the changes in postrevolution Egypt; and Sirhan al-Buhayri, an opportunist whose effort to profit from the changing economy ultimately costs him his life. The only hopeful character in the novel is Zahra, a young peasant girl newly arrived from the countryside, who represents the growing independence and desire for individual freedom of the masses.

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Since 1972, when he retired from his position in the Ministry of Culture, Mahfouz continued to turn out popular novels and short fiction, in addition to working on film adaptations of several of his novels and producing a weekly column for the newspaper al-Ahram. A further return to his early days is evidenced in his Hikayat Haratina (Fountain and Tomb, 1988) and several works dealing with clerks and bureaucracy. Even when he was publicly criticized for his political and religious positions, he attracted many readers throughout the Arab world. He may be considered the contemporary Egyptian novelist par excellence. Though sometimes called the "Dickens" or "Balzac" of Egypt, he is really the "Mahfouz of Egypt": his realistic style, his interest in social issues, indeed his whole ethos are genuinely Egyptian. He deserves to be claimed by all Arabs, because his works reflect Arab and Islamic traditions, common sense, and sympathy for the confused and oppressed.

Notes

Chapter 1: Historical Beginnings: Egypt 1. The original version of this chapter was first published as "The Development of Modern Arabic Fiction," The Islamic Quarterly, XIII (1969): 140-167. For the life of Umar ibn Shabba al-Numayri and the description of his collection of tales, see Jurji Zaydan, TarikhAdab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 2 (Cairo, 1911-1914): 194, 291. 2. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur 2 (Weimar: 1898-1902): 94, and his article "Makama," Encyclopedia of Islam part 1, 3 (1936): 161-164, and ibid., 6 (1986): 107-151 ed. Ch. Pellat; R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (London, 1907), 328-336; and Shawqi Dayf, al-Maqama (Cairo, 1964). 3. In Part Three of his Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, 1962), Hamilton A. R. Gibb has traced the development of modern Arabic literature in Syria and Egypt in the nineteenth century and has shown the influence of Westernization on this literature. Of particular interest is his systematic study of the factors which prevented the creation of indigenous prose works of entertainment in the Western style. 4. The hostility of the majority of these Ulama to the humanities was even manifested in their opposition to the printing of the Quran in the time of Muhammad Ali. This problem of printing the Quran remained unresolved for nearly forty years. See Ibrahim Abduh, Tarikh al-Waqa'i al-Misriyya 1828-1942 (Cairo, 1942), 7. 5. Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Aja'ib al-Athar fi al-Tarajim wa al-Akhbar (Cairo: Bulaq, 1297 A.H./A.D. 1879). 6. Muhammad Rif'at, Tarikh Misr al-Siyasi 2 (Cairo, 1929): 118. 7. Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi'i. Tarikh al-Haraka al-Qawmiyya wa Nizam alHukmfi Misr 1 (Cairo, 1955): passim. 8. Al-Jabarti, ibid., Chapter 3. Al-Jabarti was an eyewitness to the French occupation of Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. His description of the behavior of the French shows clearly the reaction of a conservative Muslim to Western ideas. 9. Al-Shaykh Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Misri was bom a Christian Copt, but later embraced Islam. He became the rector of al-Azhar in 1812, and the French appointed him a member of the Diwan (Council) established by Napoleon. AlMahdi wrote many tales similar to the Thousand and One Nights, which were compiled in a volume entitled Tuhfat al-Mustayqiz al-Anis fi Nuzhat al-Mustanim wa al-

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Na'is. See J. J. Marcel, Contes du Cheykh El-Mohdi 1 (Paris: Imprimerie de Henri Dupuy, 1835) 8 - 9 , 33. Volumes 1 and 3 were published in 1835, Volume 2 in 1833; Zaydan, ibid., 4: 232, and Jacques Tajir, Harakat al-Tarjama bi Misr Khilal alQarn al-Tasi Ashar (Cairo, 1946), 11. 10. Joseph Marcel, ibid., 1: 32-33; Tajir, ibid., 11; Clement Huart, A History of Arabic Literature (Beirut, 1966), 425-426; A. M. B., "Marcel, Jean Joseph," la Grande Encyclopédie Française (1886-1922), 23; R. G. Canive , L'Imprimerie de l'Expédition d'Egypte. Les Journaux et les Procès-Verbaux de l'Institut, 1798-1801. Sème sére 1 Alexandria (1909), 5-20; F. Charles-Roux, Bonaparte Gouverneur d'Egypte (Paris, 1936), 138-140; Ibrahim Abduh, Tarikh al-Tibaa wa al-Sihafa Khilal al-Hamla al-Faransiyya (Cairo, 1949); and Salaheddine Boustany, The Press During the French Expedition 1798-1801 fn.p. 1954), 7-15. Egyptian writer Mahmud Timur claims that Marcel wrote Tuhfat al-Mustayqiz in French, translated it into Arabic and ascribed its authorship to Shaykh al-Mahdi, which seems farfetched. See Mahmud Timur, al-Qissafi al-Adab al-Arabi wa Buhuth Ukhra (Cairo: Maktabat alAdab, 1971), 15. 11. Marcel, Ibid. Vols 1, 3: passim. 12. Ibid., 2: passim. 13. For the different schools established by Muhammad Ali, their operation and number of students see Zaydan, ibid, 4: 3 1 - 3 4 ; Ali Mubarak, al-Khitat alTawfiqiyya 15 (Cairo: Bulaq, 1886-1888): 5 3 - 5 5 ; Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi'i, Asr Muhammad Ali (Cairo, 1951), 3 8 0 - 3 9 2 and 4 4 1 - 4 7 ; and J. Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt 2d ed. (London, 1968). For Muhammad Ali's educational missions to Europe see Rifaa Rafi al-Tahtawi, Takhlis al-Ibriz ila Talkhis Paris, published through the effort of Mustafa Fahmi the bookseller near al-Azhar (Cairo, 1905), 26. The book was first published (Cairo, 1834); Ahmad Izzat Abd al-Karim, Tarikh al-Ta'limfi Asr Muhammad Ali (Cairo, 1938), 9 0 - 9 1 quoting Douin, Une Mission Militaire de Meh. Ali, 40 (de Boyer à Jomard, 20 mai, 1825); Jamal ai-Din al-Shayyal, Tarikh al-Tarjama wa alHaraka al-Thaqafiyya fi Asr Muhammad Ali (Cairo, 1951), 11-14; and Umar Toson, al-Ba'that al-Ilmiyya fi Ahd Muhammad Ali (Alexandria, 1934). 14. Ali Mubarak, ibid., 15: 54; Abd al-Karim, 328-341; by the same author Tarikh al-Ta'lim fi Asr Abbas wa Said (Cairo, 1946); and al-Shayyal, 38-44. 15. Al-Tahtawi, ibid., passim. 16. Albert Hourani, Arabie Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 (Oxford, 1970), 67-84. 17. Louis Awad, al-Mu'aththirat al-Ajnabiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith (Cairo, 1962), Part 1, "Qadiyyat al-Mar'a," 7 - 9 . 18. Rifa'a Rafi al-Tahtawi, Mawaqi al-Aflakfi Waqa'i Tilimak (Beirut, 1867), 451. Tilimak (Télémaque) was later adapted for the stage by the Lebanese writer Sa'd Allah al-Bustani, and was performed for the first time in July 1869. See As'ad Daghir, "Fann al-Tamthil fi Khilal Qarn," al-Mashriq 42 (1948). Al-Tahtawi was also responsible for the translation of the libretto of Offenbach's La belle Helène with the title Hilana al-Jamila (Bulaq: 1869). See Philip Sadgrove's review of Matti Moosa's The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction in International Journal of Middle East Studies, No. 1, 19 (February, 1987): 110-111. 19. Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal, Rifa'a Rafi al-Tahtawi (Cairo, 1958), 39-40. 20. Al-Tahtawi's intention to express his grievance is evident from his introduction to Waqa'i al-Aflak, 3; Jacques Tajir, Harakat al-Tarjama bi Misr Khilal alQarn al-Tasi Ashar, 149, fn. 1. 21. Izzat Abd al-Karim, Tarikh al-Ta'limfi Misr: Asr Ismail (Cairo, 1945). 22. See Shafiq Ghirbal's introduction to Abd al-Karim, ibid.

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23. Zaydan, 4: 32. 24. Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi'i, Asr Ismail 1 (Cairo, 1948): 1 - 2 2 ; and Abd alKarim, Tarikh al-Ta'limfi Asr Abbas wa Said 1848-1863, 5 - 6 . For a defense of the policies of Abbas I, see Toson, 416-418. 25. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha fi Misr 1870-1938 (Cairo, 1963), 26. 26. For the life and educational activities of Ali Mubarak see al-Khitat alTawfiqiyya, 9, passim; Zaydan, ibid., 4: 290; Louis Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 2 (Beirut, 1926): 97; and al-Rafi'i, ibid., 1: 207-241. 27. Ali Mubarak, Alam al-Din, 3 vols. (Cairo, 1888); and Said Zayid, Ali Mubarak wa A'maluh (Cairo, 1958), 98. 28. The main purpose of Mubarak in writing this romance is evident from his introduction to Alam al-Din, 6 - 7 . 29. Ibid., 2: 82-132. 30.Ibid. 31. Ibid., 30-38. 32. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 3 3 - 3 6 and 4 4 - 4 5 . 33. Muhammad Uthman Jalal ibn Yusuf al-Hasani was born in 1829, enrolled in the School of Languages in al-Azbakiyya and later joined the staff of the Translation Bureau. He became a minister under the Khedive Tawfiq, and was appointed a judge in the Egyptian Court of Appeals and a judge in the Mixed Courts until his retirement in 1895. He died on January 16, 1898. See Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 2: 100-101; Ali Mubarak, al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya, 17: 111-118; and Alyan Sarkis, Mu'jam al-Matbu'at al-Arabiyya wa al-Mu'arraba 2 (Cairo, 1928): 1306-1307. 34. Muhammad Yusuf N a j m published the full texts of the five comedies of Molière which Jalal adapted f r o m the French together with Jalal's only original play, al-Khaddamin wa al-Mukhaddimin. These Molière comedies are Le Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur (al-Shaykh Matluf); Les Femmes savantes (al-Nisa al-Alimat); L'École des maris (Madrasat al-Azwaj); L'École des femmes (Madrasat al-Nisa); and Les Fâcheux (al-Thuqala). See Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-Muhammad Uthman Jalal (Beirut, 1964). 35. For an elaborate study of Molière's plays which Jalal adapted see Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Masrahiyya f i al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith (Beirut, 1967), 2 7 3 - 2 8 8 . The Arabic text of al-Shaykh Matluf is in Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi, ibid., 9 - 9 2 . For further opinion on whether Jalal's work was a faithful translation from the French or mere adaptation, see Louis Awad, Dirasat fi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith (Cairo, 1961), 144-145. 36. Muhammad Uthman Jalal, al-Uyun al-Yawaqiz fi al-Amthal wa al-Hikam wa al-Mawa'iz (Cairo, 1895), the introduction, 2. This introduction is reproduced in Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasi fi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith 1800-1956 (Cairo, 1956), 7 2 - 7 3 . 37. On this point see Shawkat, ibid., 42. 38. Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Muhammad Uthman Jalal, the introduction, 2. 39. The Khedive Ismail supported morally and financially those journals which promoted his ideas as well as the interests of Egypt to the Ottoman government, such as al-Jawa'ib founded by Faris al-Shidyaq and Wadi al-Nil by Abd Allah Abu al-Su'ud. On the other hand, he suspended and even persecuted the publishers of papers that opposed his policies, such as Nuzhat al-Afkar, jointly published by Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi and Muhammad Uthman Jalal, and Abu Nazzara Zarqa by Yaqub Sanu whom the Khedive expelled from Egypt. See Philip Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 1 (Beirut, 1913): 6 1 - 6 9 and 2: 254, 283-284.

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40. For al-Afghani's ideas and their impact on Egyptian society see Nikki R. Kiddie, "Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: A Case of Posthumous Charisma?" in Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership, ed. Dankwart A. Rustow (New York: 1970), 148-179, and by the same author, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: A Political Biography (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1970); Al-A'mal alKamila Ii Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, ed. Muhammad Imara (Cairo, 1968); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought, entire Chapter 5; Muhammad al-Makhzumi, Khatarat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani al-Husayni (Beirut, 1931); Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Cairo, 1948); Eli Kedourie, Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism (London: 1966); and Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt (Oxford, 1933), Chapter 1 . 41. Kiddie, "Jamal al-Din al-Afghani," ibid., 170; Muhammad Rashid Rida, Tarikh al-Imam al-Shaykh Muhammad Abduh 1 (Cairo, 1931): 42-53; and Louis Cheikho, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Rub al-Awwal min al-Qarn alIshrin (Beirut, 1926), 9; Jurji Zaydan, Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq 2 (Cairo, 1902-1903): 55; Tarrazi, ibid., 2: 293-299; Ahmad Amin, Zu'ama al-Islah (Cairo, 1965), 59-120; and al-Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (n.d., n.p.). 42. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, ed. Abd al-Rahman Sidqi (Cairo, 1964), 39. 43. See sources above in footnote 41; Muhammad Abduh's introduction to alAfghani, al-Radd ala al-Dahriyyin, 4th ed. (Cairo, 1914), 15; al-Makhzumi, Khatarat, 67; J. M. Ahmad, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (Oxford, 1960) 16; Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi'i, Asr Ismail, 125-148; and Yusuf Numan Maluf, Khizanat al-Ayyam fi Trajim al-Izam (New York, 1899), 205. 44. J. M. Ahmad, ibid. 45. Rudi Matthee, "Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian National Debate," International Journal of Middle East Studies 21 (May, 1989): 151-165. 46. See Ali Nuri Zadeh, "Thalathat Aqni'a Ii Jamal al-Din al-Afghani" (Three Masks of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani), al-Dustur 13 (London: October 17, 1983), 22-23. When I was in Baghdad in the summer of 1984,1 met with my former junior high school teacher Mahmud al-Joumard, who is an author and man of letters. AlJoumard, who had read the first edition of this book and praised it, lamented the fact that I have given al-Afghani a role he is unworthy of. He said that al-Afghani was a Mason, a spy, a British agent, and that his religious and political motives were highly suspect. 47. Al-Shaykh Muhammad Abduh, "al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya wa Ghayruha," alAhram (May 1881). For the life and thought of Muhammad Abduh, see Rashid Rida, Tarikh al-Ustadh al-Imam; Charles Adams, ibid., entire Chapter 8; Osman Amin, Muhammad Abduh, trans. C. Wendell (American Council of Learned Societies, Washington: 1953; Hourani, Chapter 6; and Eli Kedourie, Afghani and Abduh. 48. See sources in the previous footnote. 49. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya, 4: 19-20. 50. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Hadithafi Misr, 37; The Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt 2 (New York, 1908): 213-217; and Hilmi Ali Marzuq, Tatawwur al-Naqd wa al-Tafkir al-Adabi al-Hadith fi Misr (Cairo, 1966), 38-51. 51. Zaydan, ibid., 4: 37-38, and 41-42. 52. Ahmad Fathi Zaghlul's introduction to his Arabic translation of Edmond Demolins' A quoi Tient La Supériorité des Anglo-Saxons (Paris, 1897), (Sirr Taqaddum al-Ingiliz al-Saksuniyyin), (Cairo,1899), 6; and Cheikho, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Rub al-Awwal min al-Qarn al-Ishrin, 92. 53. Badr, ibid., 37-38, and 41-42.

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54. Muhammad Abd al-Muttalib and Abd al-Mu'ti Mar'i, Hayat Muhalhil aw Harb al-Basus (Cairo, 1911), 3. 55. Zaydan, ibid., 4: 230. Another pioneer writer and novelist, the Palestinian Khalil Ibrahim Baydas (d. 1949), praises the novel and considers it an effective means of promoting culture and morals as well as a delightful source of entertainment. He encourages the translation of Western fiction into Arabic and makes it clear that he had intended to promote fiction in his periodical al-Nafa'is. See his introduction to the first issue of al-Nafa'is (October, 1908), and the introduction to his anthology of short stories entitled Masarih al-Adhhan (Cairo, 1924), 13-14. 56. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat's editorial in al-Risala, No. 183 (1937). 57. Zaydan, ibid., 4: 4 4 ^ 5 , and Badr, 41-42.

Chapter 2: The Rise of the Arab Drama in Syria and Egypt 1. See Tawfiq al-Hakim's introduction to al-Malik Odib (Cairo,1949), 10-11. For an English translation of this introduction see Plays, Prefaces and Postscripts of Tawfiq al-Hakim, translated by W. M. Hutchins (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1981), 1: 273-89; Muhammad Mandur, Masrahiyyat Shawqi (Cairo, 1954), 3-21; and by the same author, al-Masrah (Cairo, 1963), 17-19. But a native European postclassical drama developed from the Catholic Mass, without apparent connection with Greek or Roman drama. For more on the subject see Muhammad al-Khozai, The Development of Early Arabic Drama (London, 1984). 2. Aristotle's Poetics, trans, into Arabic by Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus in Abd al-Rahman Badawi, Fann al-Shi'r (Cairo, 1953), 95-96. 3. See Muhammad Mandur, al-Masrah, 17-18; Said Taqi al-Din's play Lawla al-Muhami (If it were not for the Attorney), (Beirut, 1924), the introduction; Edward Hunayn's discussion of the reasons which prevented the rise of the Arabic drama in al-Mashriq 32 (1930): 563, and by the same author, Shawqi ala al-Masrah (Beirut, 1936), the introduction. A contemporary critic states that Hunayn's judgment is improvised and mostly based on the biased deductions of Father Henri Lammens. See Hashim Yaghi, al-Naqd al-Adabi al-Hadith fi Lubnan (Cairo: 1968), 157. Of particular interest is Georg Jacob, Geschichte des Schattentheaters (Berlin, 1907), 93. 4. See the introduction of Tawfiq al-Hakim to al-Malik Odib, 19-26, and the English translation of the same by W. M. Hutchins, 276-78; Mandur, al-Masrah, 17; Mahmud Timur, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi wa Buhuth Ukhra (Cairo: Maktabat al-Adab, 1971), 62-67. 5. Izz al-Din Ismail, Qadaya al-Insan fi al-Adab al-Masrahi al-Mu'asir (Cairo, n.d.), 49-50; Mandur, al-Masrah, 17; Abd al-Munim Hifni, "al-Ruh alArabi fi al-Adab wa al-Fann," Adab, No. 7 (1963): 68-72. 6. Mustafa Ali Umar, al-Waqi'iyya fi al-Masrah al-Misri (Alexandria, 1968), 112; and Jalal al-Ashri, al-Masrah Abu al-Funun (Cairo, 1971), 6-30. 7. The study of the Arab shadow plays of Ibn Daniyal has interested both Eastern and Western writers. Pioneer Western writings on the shadow play include Georg Jacob, Geschichte des Schattenspiel (Budapest, 1900), 233-236; and by the same author, Drei arab. Schattenspiele aus dem 13. Jahrhundert (Budapest, 1900); Das Schattentheater in seiner Wanderung vom Morgenland zum Abendland (Berlin, 1901); Textproben aus dem Escorial-Codex des Muhammad Ibn Daniyal (Erlangen: 1902); and Geschichte des Schattentheaters, already cited; Th. Menzel,

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"Khayal-i-Zill," The Encyclopdia of Islam 2 (1927): 934-935; and Jacob Landau, Studies in the Arab Theater and Cinema, 9-47. Eastern writings include Ibrahim Hamada, Khayal al-Zill wa Tamthiliyyat Ibn Daniyal (Cairo, 1963), in which the author produces the texts of the plays with the history and analytical study of these plays; and Jurji Zaydan, TarikhAdab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4, 111-121. 8. Landau, ibid., and Hamada, 62-76. Edward William Lane states that "the puppet show of 'Kara-Gyooz' has been introduced into Egypt by the Turks, in whose language the puppets are made to speak." But he goes on to say that these puppet shows were meant to amuse the Turks residing in Cairo and did not appeal to the natives who did not understand Turkish. However, Hamada has demonstrated that this theory is incorrect. See Edward William Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1895), 396-397; Hamada, 62-67. 9. Landau, 33-45. 10. M. Niebuhr, Travels Through Arabia and Other Countries in the East, trans. Robert Heron 1 (Edinburgh, 1792): 143-144. 11. Lane, 395. 12. For a full description of this play see Lane, 395-396. 13. C. de la Jonquiere, l'Expédition d'Égypt 1798-1801 2 (Paris, 1899): 382. 14. Abd Al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Aja'ib al-Athar 3: 139. For French sources on the Egyptian theater see Atia Abu al-Naga, Les sources français du théâtre Égyptien 1870-1939 (Algiers, 1972). 15. Zaydan, ibid., 4: 152-153. 16. Ibid. 17. Gérard de Nerval, Voyage en Orient 1 (Paris,1867): 109-111. Translated into English by Conrad Elphinstone with the title The Women of Cairo 1 (London, 1929): 88-91. 18. A. Regnault, Voyage en Orient: Grèce, Turquie, Egypte (Paris: 1855), 438. 19. Louis Gardey, Voyage du Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz de Stanbul au Cairo (Paris, 1865), 103. 20. Dr. Staquez, l'Egypte, la Basse Nubi et le Sinai, 63, quoted by Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith 1847-1914 (Beirut, 1967), 19-25. 21. Nevill Barbour, "The Arabic Theatre in Egypt," Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies (London, 1935-1937): 173. 22. For more information on Marun Naqqash and his dramas see Arzat Lubnan (Beirut, 1869), compiled by his brother Niqula Naqqash. While the volume contains three of Marun's dramas the title page ascribes the whole work to Marun himself. See Louis Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 1: 106-109; Zaydan, ibid., 4: 134-137; Zaki Tulaymat, "Nahdat al-Tamthil fi alSharq al-Arabi," al-Hilal (April 1939): 144, and by the same author, "Kayfa Dakhala al-Tamthil Bilad al-Sharq," al-Kitab (February 1945): 582; Barbour, ibid., 174-175; Fuad Afram al-Bustani, "Awwal Masrahiyya bi al-Lugha alArabiyya," al-Shira , Nos. 1, 3; Najm, ibid., 31-40, and his edition of Marun's dramas entitled al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-Marun al-Naqqash (Beirut, 1961; John A. Haywood, Modern Arabic Literature 1800-1970 (New York, 1972), 59-61. 23. Arzat Lubnan, 388; and Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 38. 24. According to Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 153 and 250-251, the drama al-Bakhil was staged before the beginning of the literary renaissance in Beirut and ten years prior to the establishment of Arabic newspapers in Syria. The guests of Naqqash invited to the performance at his home included

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foreign consuls and the diginitaries of Beirut. Soon news of this drama appeared in the European press. (There was no press in Syria at this time). Al-Bakhil was published through the efforts of Nasim Murad and Shukri al-Khuri in Sâo Paulo, Brazil in 1916. See Yusuf As'ad Daghir," Fann al-Tamthil Khilal Qarn," al-Mashriq 42 (1948): 446. 25. Arzat Lubnan, 11; Zaydan, ibid., 4, 154; Barbour, 174; and Najm, ibid., 35-38. 26. Salim al-Naqqash, "Fawa'id al-Riwayat wa al-Tiyatrat," al-Jinan (1875): 521. 27. Arzat Lubnan, 389. 28. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 154. 29. Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 416-417. Compare Molière's L'Avare, Act 1, Scene 2 with al-Bakhil, Act 1, Scene 3. 30. Najm, ibid., 416. 31. Molière's L'Avare deals with the petty attitudes of a miser who is extremely avaricious. No matter how ugly and deformed, this miser, like other men, is a human being. He loves to be flattered beyond belief. He wants to marry a young, pretty girl—provided his marriage brings him financial gain, because money is his chief love. His love of money even tempts him to sacrifice the happiness of his own children if it conflicts with his aim. While he vies with his sons to wed the same pretty young lady for pure selfish interest, he denies his daughter the right to marry the man she loves. He would rather have her marry an old but wealthy friend of his. 32. Arzat Lubnan, 90. 33. Ibid., and Jacob Landau, Studies in the Arab Theater and Cinema (Philadelphia, 1958), 57-58. 34. Arzat Lubnan, 16. 35. Ibid. For example, when Hind discovers that her father has determined to marry her to the miser and deformed Qarrad she laments her bad luck and cruel traditions, which were the cause of her misfortune, by singing a highly sentimental verse which must have excited the emotion of the audience. See al-Bakhil, Act 2, Scene 1. 36. Arzat Lubnan, 23-26. For the index of melodies see ibid., 93-107. Two of these melodies are based on popular French songs. One of them is based on the song "Malbrough s'en va t'em guerre." Both are still known in Lebanon. The Arabic version of the second one is probably "Mabruk Safar ala al-Harb." 37. Ibid., 26-27. 38. Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-Marun al-Naqqash, 23. 39. Arzat Lubnan, 110. 40. Landau, 58-59; and Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 369. 41. Arzat Lubnan, 324. In another place Niqula al-Naqqash makes the following statement, "This romance is unique in this art. It is one of the most beautiful of his (Marun's) compositions," ibid., 389. Yusuf As'ad Daghir states without justification that Naqqash's al-Salit al-Hasud is a condensation of one of Molière's plays. See Daghir, "Fann al-Tamthil fi Khilal Qarn," al-Mashriq, 42: 457. 42. Al-Salit al-Hasud, Act 1, Scene 4; Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Act 2, Scene 4. 43. Les Précieuses ridicules. Act 1, Scene 9, and al-Salit al-Hasud, Act 2, Scenes 7-9. 44. Al-Salit al-Hasud, Act 3, Scene 4 in Arzat Lubnan, 389. 45. Arzat Lubnan, 324. 46. David Urquhart, The Lebanon (Mount Souria): History and a Diary 2 (London, 1860): 178-181; and Najm al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 35-38.

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Fiction

47. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 154; and Najm, ibid., 52. The title page of al-Bustani's Arabic version reads thus: Riwayat Tilimak Ta'lif [composed by] al-Mu'allim [Master] Sa'd Allah Effendi al-Bustani (Cairo, n.d.) and gives July 1869 as the date of its performance. 48. Of the plays performed on the stage of al-Sharfa Monastery we may cite Adam wa Hawwa (Adam and Eve), in 1869, written by a clergyman; Yusuf alHasan ibn Yaqub (Joseph the Fair Son of Jacob) in 1869, written by Rev. Stephen al-Shamali; Malik Faris (A Horseman King), translated from the Italian by Rev. Yusuf Mi'mar Bashi and performed on February 27, 1884; Ihsan al-Insan (The Charity of Man), written by Rev. Mikhail Dallal; and al-Fatat al-Kharsa (The Dumb Girl), by the same author. See Daghir, ibid., al-Mashriq 43 (1948), 434 and (1949), 272 and 296. 49. The Jewish school of Zaki Cohen usually performed a play at the beginning and one at the end of each academic year. Of the plays performed by this school we may cite Intisar al-Fadila aw Hadithat al-Ibna al-Isra 'iliyya (The Triumph of Virtue or the Incident of the Daughter of Israel), composed by Salim Cohen and performed in 1894 and 1895. Najm, ibid., quoting Niqula Fayyad, Dhikrayat Adabiyya, being one of the series of lectures delivered at al-Nadwa alLubnaniyya (The Lebanese Club). See also the issue of al-Ahram newspaper cited by Najm in this regard. 50. The following are some of the plays (whose titles are given in English): The Sentence Herod Passed On His Two Sons; The Martyrdom of St. George; and David and Jonathan. Other plays whose themes were drawn from Arab history include Wafa al-Khansa (The Faithfulness of the Poetess al-Khansa); Shuhada Najran (The Martyrs of Najran); Ibn al-Samaw'al (The Son of al-Samaw'al); alMuhalhil; Nakbat al-Baramika (The Calamity of the Barmecides); Ikhwan al-Khansa (The Brothers of the Poetess al-Khansa); and Abdalonim Malik Sayda (Abdalonim King of Sidon). See Cheikho, Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 2: 70. 51. Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 2: 69; Cheikho, ibid., 2: 127; and Najm, ibid., 31. This society was established in 1847 and was officially recognized by the Ottoman government in 1868. It contained 150 members, mostly from Beirut. One of its members was Salim al-Bustani, whose dramas were performed by the society. 52. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 82. 53. For Tannus al-Hurr's, al-Shabb al-Jahil al-Sikkir (The Foolish and Drunkard Young Man), see Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 57, 397-399. It was performed in Beirut in 1863 and published in B'abda, Lebanon, in 1900. 54. Zaydan says that he saw this play in Beirut in 1878. See Zaydan ibid., 4: 157. Khalil al-Yaziji, al-Muru'a wa al-Wafa (Virtue and Loyalty), (Beirut, 1884). Al-Yaziji adapted this verse drama from an original romance entitled al-Nu'man wa Hanzala written by Khalil al-Khuri. This drama was translated into French by Michel Sursuq. See Yusuf As'ad Daghir, Masadir al-Dirasa al-Adabiyya 2 (Beirut, 1956): 346. 55. Zaydan, ibid., 4: 157. 56. For the translated text of Andromache see al-Durar, ed. Awni Ishaq (Beirut, 1909), 533-573. 57. Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 1: 137. 58. Of al-Ahdab's plays we may mention al-Iskandar al-Maqduni; al-Sayfwa al-Qalam; al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad; Riwayat al-Wazir Abi al-Walid ibn Zaydan; and Tuhfat al-Rushdiyya fi Ulum al-Arabiyya. Rashid Pasha was so pleased with

Notes

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al-Ahdab's work that he asked him to perform his play al-Iskandar al-Maqduni in Damascus. See Tarrazi, ibid., 2: 103-104. For titles of these and other plays see Daghir," Fann al-Tamthil fi Khilal Qarn," al-Mashriq (1948), 42, 434, and (1949): 118, 296. 59. Tarrazi, ibid., 1: 122. 60. Arzat Lubnan, 3. 61. Ibid., 5. 62. Shakir al-Khuri, Majma al-Masarrat (Beirut, 1908), 445. 63. Arzat Lubnan, 5. 64. Muhammad Yusuf N a j m published five dramas by Salim al-Naqqash. N a j m complains that he has been unable to discover the originals from which alNaqqash adapted his dramas. See Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi:Dirasat wa NususSalim al-Naqqash (Beirut, 1964). 65. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 287; and Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar, 3: 153. 66. Zaydan, ibid., and Cheikho, ibid. 67. Salim al-Bustani, "al-Riwayat al-Khedaywiyya al-Tashkhisiyya," al-Jinan (1875): 694-696. Al-Bustani himself had probably seen this drama. However, he is incorrect in stating that it was composed by Salim al-Naqqash. 68.Ibid. 69. Al-Jinan (1875), 521; and Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi alHadith, 94. 70. Al-Jinan, ibid., 422; and Najm, ibid., 95. 71. On December 16, 1876 al-Ahram announced the arrival of Salim alNaqqash's troupe in Alexandria and its forthcoming performance of Marun's drama Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal on Saturday, December 23, 1876 at 8:30 p.m. at the Zizinia theater. See summary of al-Ahram's announcement in Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 9 6 - 9 7 . 72. From French fiction Adib Ishaq translated Andromache by Racine; La fille de Roland by H. de Bornier with the title al-Malik Sharliman wa Ibnat Rulan\ and La Belle Parisienne by Comtesse Dash. See Awni Ishaq, al-Durar, 5 - 1 5 ; Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 1: 134-135 and 2: 105-109, and 150: 257-258; Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 274-275 and by the same author, Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq 2: 9 4 - 1 0 0 ; Henri Pérès, Le roman, le conte et la nouvelle dans la littérature arabe moderne, 1 Bibliographie des Ouvrages originaux, Annales de l'Institut Oriental d'Algiers, 111 (1937): 294. 73. Tarrazi, 2: 107; and Daghir, al-Mashriq 42 (1948): 449. 74. According to Zaydan, Salim al-Naqqash and Adib Ishaq left the troupe and devoted their effort to journalism in 1878. See Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha alArabiyya 4: 155; Rashid Rida, Tarikh al-Ustadh al-Imam Muhammad Abduh 1: 45; Barbour, 174; and Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 100-101. 75. The full Arabic title of this drama is May Trajidiyya Dhat Thalathat Fusul, Ta'lif Salim Khalil Naqqash al-Maruni (May Tragedy in Three Acts composed by Salim Khalil Naqqash the Maronite and finished on January 2, 1868), (Beirut, 1875). Considering the date of publication and Naqqash's statement that he had "composed it" eight years ago, he must have finished its adaptation in 1867, not 1868. 76. Al-Durar, 559; and Najm, ibid., 215. 77. Zaydan, 4: 154; and al-Ahram (September 28, 1877); and Najm, ibid., 103 and 106, n. 1. 78. Zaydan, 4, 155; and Barbour, 175. N a j m refers to al-Tijara (March 31, 1879) claiming that Yusuf Khayyat and his troupe did not leave Egypt, as Zaydan

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states, but were still performing on the Zizinia stage. He speculates that Khayyat and his troupe must have remained in hiding somewhere in Alexandria. See Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 104. 79. Zaydan, 4: 155; and Najm, ibid., 107-115. Generally, the plays performed by al-Qirdahi were either adaptations of foreign plays or reconstructions of past Arab history. 80. Kamil al-Khula'i, al-Musiqi al-Sharqi (Damascus, 1948), 137; and Adham Jundi, "al-Abqariyya al-Shamikha: Abu Khalil al-Qabbani," al-Fayha (Damascus, July 12, 1952), quoted by Najm, ibid., 61-62. 81. Muhammad Kurd Ali, Khitat al-Sham 6 (Damascus, 1925): 111-121, 143-144. 82. Ibid. 83. Najm, ibid., 62-65. 84. Ibid., 65. 85. Muhammad Yusuf Najm, ed. al-Masrah al-Arabi:Dirasat wa Nusus-alShaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani (Beirut, 1963), the introduction. 86. Ibid., 355-400. 87. Shakir Mustafa, Muhadarat an al-Qissa fi Suriyya hatta al-Harb alAlamiyya al-Thaniya (Cairo, 1958), 190. Al-Qabbani, as Najm suggests, might have read some Western dramas translated into Turkish. Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi alAdab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 64. 88. Ibrahim al-Gaylani, "Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani," al-Mu'allim alArabi (Damascus, 1948), 65; and Mustafa, 189-190. Mustafa rejects Muhammad Kurd Ali's statement that al-Qabbani staged Nakir al-Jamil in 1865 during the term of the governor Subhi Pasha, on the grounds that Subhi Pasha became governor of Syria in 1871. 89. See Qustandi Rizq, Tarikh al-Musiqa al-Sharqiyya 2 (Cairo, n.d.): 171; Najm, 66-68; Mustafa, 191-192; Barbour, 176; and Landau, 69. 90. Rizq, ibid., and Najm, 67-68., 91. Barbour, 176, fn 2. For the folk songs ridiculing al-Qabbani and accusing him of corrupting the morals of young men and women, see al-Gaylani, ibid., and Najm 70. 92. Adham Jundi, A'lam al-Adab wa al-Fann I (Damascus: Matbaat Majallat Sawt Suriyya, 1954): 252-254; and al-Gaylani, ibid., 50, who says that al-Qabbani took along with him a few members of his troupe, which seems less likely. Mustafa, 193 says that al-Qabbani's troupe consisted of fifty actors. See Najm's comment on this point. Najm, 115, 123. 93. Barbour, 176; and Najm, 126. 94. Mustafa, 194. 95. Ibid. 96. For al-Qabbani's activitiy in Egypt and his vicissitudes see Najm, ibid. 97. Muhammad Yusuf Najm, (ed.) al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-alShaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani (Beirut, 1963). In the summer of 1970 I met with Dr. Muhammad Yusuf Najm at his office on the campus of the American University of Beirut. He told me that he had discovered more dramas by al-Qabbani and hoped to make them available through a future publication. But he refused to show me the texts of these dramas. 98. For this drama see Najm, ibid., 231-300. 99. See Latifa al-Zayyat, "Harakat al-Tarjama al-Adabiyya min al-Ingiliziyya ila al-Arabiyya fi Misr fi al-Fatra ma bayn 1882-1925 wa Mada Irtibatuha bi Sihafat hadhihi al-Fatra" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cairo, 1957), 63, 101; and Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 133-136.

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100. Al-Qabbani omitted two scenes from Act 4, and added eight scenes to Act 2, three scenes to Act 3 and two scenes to Act 5. See Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 212. 101. Najm, ibid., 213. 102. Najm, ibid., 214; Zaki Tulaymat, " Kayfa Dakhala al-Tamthil Bilad alSharq," al-Kitab (1946): 585; and Mustafa, 201. 103. Al-Qabbani, Riwayat Harun al-Rashid ma al-Amir Ghanim ibn Ayyub wa Qut al-Qulub, Act 1, in Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus.al-Shaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani, 3-8. 104. Najm, ibid., 212-222. 105. See particularly Acts 2 and 5 where Antara feels jealous when he learns that Masud, the King of Yaman, has pretended that he is in love with Abla, and Antara threatens to retaliate against him. Najm, ibid., 204-212, 219-229. 106. For the text of these dramas see Najm, ibid., 33-85, 89-127. For a short study of these dramas see Mustafa, 196-202. 107. Najm believes that Riwayat Afifa, set to music by Kamil al-Khula'i, is an adaptation of a Western play entitled Genevieve. Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi, 3 of the introduction. Other dramas are Riwayat Hiyal al-Nisa al-Mashhura bi Lucia, ibid., 301-350, and Nakir al-Jamil, ibid., 351-400. 108. Najm, ibid. 109. Tulaymat, ibid., 585-586 ; and Najm's introduction to al-Masrah alArabi: Dirasat wa Nusus, ibid. 110. See for example the drama Harun al-Rashid ma Uns al-Jalis, in Najm, ibid., 37-85 in which al-Qabbani divides the acts into ajza (parts) rather than scenes. In Riwayat Mahmud Najl Shah al-Ajam, he uses the term manazir for scenes, while in Lubab al-Gharam aw al-Malik Mitridat, he uses the term waqi'a for a scene. 111. See the indexes in Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith: Dirasat wa Nusus, 474-504, for the dates of their performance and the number of times they were performed.

Chapter 3: Yaqub Sanu and the Rise of the Arab Drama in Egypt 1. The original version of this chapter was first published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 401-433. Sanu (Tsanu) is a Hebrew name meaning "modest." Anwar Luqa, "Masrah Yaqub Sanu, al-Majalla (Cairo: March 15, 1961), 51-52, writes the name as Sanua. For Sanu's life and works see Irene L. Gendzier, The Political Visions of Ya'qub Sanu (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1966); and Jacob Landau, "Abu Naddara: An Egyptian Jewish Nationalist," The Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952): 30-44. 2. Ibrahim Abduh, Abu Nazzara Imam al-Sihafa al-Fukahiyya al-Musawwara wa Za'im al-Masrah fi Misr (Cairo, 1953), 18. Abduh, like Luqa, claims to have seen Sanu's memoirs, but merely paraphrases them in his book instead of translating them into Arabic with comments. Gendzier, 154, fns. 34, 35, says this autobiographical essay "has, to my knowledge, not been published or reprinted." But her reference to this document strongly suggests that it is identical with a lecture published by Sanu in Ma Vie en Vers et mon Théâtre en Prose (Montgeron, 1912), cited by Luqa, 53 (cf. notes 8 and 56 below). In 1955 Abduh published another book about Sanu entitled al-Suhufi al-Tha'ir, which may seem an entirely separate

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Fiction

study. In fact, his formerly cited book and this latter are identical except for the change of the title. Reference here will be to the earlier volume. 3. This writer recalls that when he was practicing law in Mosul, Iraq, he met a Muslim whose name was Matti, a typical Christian name in the Arab countries, not used by Muslims. On being asked why he had a Christian name, the man replied that his mother, having lost many children in infancy, was advised to visit the Monastery of al-Shaykh Matti (St. Matthew's Monastery) near Mosul to seek divine aid. She did and vowed that if she bore a male child who survived, she would call him Matti. Evidently, her request was answered, and the son, though a Muslim, bore the name of the celebrated Syrian saint. Muhammad Yusuf Najm's opinion that the story reported by Abduh is "one of the many nonsensical anecdotes related by Abu Nazzara" appears to be untenable. The story is not nonsensical, so much as it is a matter of faith. See Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 92, fn. 3. Abd al-Hamid Ghunaym, Sanu Ra'id al-Masrah al-Misri (Cairo, 1966), 22 suggests that Sanu may have used this anecdote to win the Muslims' sympathy in a country where the Jews were a minority. 4. Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 2: 33-34. 5. Landau, ibid., 33-34. 6. "An Arab Punch," The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Sciences and Arts 42 (July 26, 1879): 112. 7. See Paul De Baignières, L'Egypt Satirique (Paris: 1886), 96. 8. Abduh, 24. 9. Tarrazi, ibid., 2: 283. 10. Ibrahim Abduh relates this anecdote, claiming he found it at Paris in a manuscript in Sanu's handwriting, containing fifteen issues of the journal Abu Nazzara. These are the same issues which appeared in Egypt and were destroyed on the orders of the Khedive Ismail. Further he states that he knows of no place in the world where one may locate any numbers of this periodical. Tarrazi says that he is indebted to Sanu, who sent him the only extant collection of his journals and other information. Abduh, ibid., 43^17; and Tarrazi, 1: 39. 11. Abduh, ibid.; and Tarrazi, ibid. 12. De Baignières published forty-eight of these cartoons, with both Arabic and French captions, in a section entitled Album D'Abu Naddara of his book, already cited. 13. The Saturday Review, 112. 14. De Baignières, 11. 15. Ibid., 12. 16. He makes this point clear through some of the characters in his comedy Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih (The Egyptian Molière and What He Suffers), particularly in Act 1, Scene 2. A new edition of this play was published by Muhammad Yusuf Najm in al-Masrah al-Arabi:Dirasat wa Nusus-Yaqub Sanu (Beirut, 1963), 190-222. 17. Luqa, 60, conjectures that the title of this operetta is La'bat Rastur wa Shaykh al-Balad wa al-Qawwas, basing his idea on Mulyir Misr wa ma Yqasih, Act 1, Scene 2. In the same play Habib, apparently referring to the same operetta, says to Hunayn Act 1, Scene 5, "Why do you deny the blessing we received that evening when we performed at Qasr al-Nil, when James Sanu was honored by the title 'the Egyptian Molière,' and when the comedy al-Qawwas wa Shaykh al-Balad wa Rastur received the admiration of our Khedive Ismail? The hundred pounds which Sanu was awarded by the Khedive he distributed among us." See this part of the drama in Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus: Yaqub Sanu, 219.

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18. According to Abduh, 27, the Khedive gave Sanu the title "the Egyptian Molière" after the performance of Anisa ala al-Muda and Ghandur Misr, while according to the information given in the previous footnote, Sanu was given this title after the performance of al-Qawwas wa Shaykh al-Balad wa Rastur. See Sanu's Mulyir Misr wa Ma Yuqasih in Najm, ibid.; and Luqa, 55. Other writers referred to Sanu as "the Egyptian Beaumarchais." See The Saturday Review, 112; and De Baignières, 14. 19. Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 432-433. 20. Abduh, 28. 21.Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ghunaym, 51-52, presents an abridged text with comments for this one-act, comedy entitled Muhawara bayn Ali Effendi and Mr. Bull fi Qahwat Bursat Misr alQahira (A Dialogue between Ali Effendi and Mr. Bull in the Stock Market Coffeehouse in Cairo). We should note that Sanu pointedly refers to the city as Misr al-Qahira in order to distinguish it from "Misr," the name the Egyptians give to their country. 24. For the text of this dialogue see Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi:Dirasat wa Nusus-Yaqub Sanu, 75-76. 25. Tarrazi, 2: 284. 26. Yaqub Sanu, Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih in Najm, ibid., 209-210. 27. Ibid., 200-201 . 28. Jacob Landau, Studies in the Arab Theater and Cinema, 66. 29. Abduh, 33. 30. De Baignières, 14; Najm, 91; and Ghunaym, 96-97. 31. According to Tarrazi, 2: 283, both societies were founded in 1847. De Baignières, 14-15, mentions the same two groups, but says that Muhibbi al-Ilm was established in 1875. 32. Abduh, 35. 33. Ibid., 34; De Baignières, 15; and Gendzier, 42-43. 34. Abduh, ibid., 35. 35. Tarrazi, 2: 283, 35-37. 36. Abduh, op. cit., 39-40. 37. Ibid., 35-37. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 39^40. 40. Ibid., 40; and Qustaki Elias Attara, Tarikh al-Suhuf al-Misriyya (Alexandria, 1928), 285. 41. De Baignières, 15; Tarrazi, 2: 284; and Abduh, 41-55. There is some doubt concerning the circulation of this journal. See Gendzier, 64. 42. Abduh, 46-47. 43. Ibid., 51. 44. Ibid., 54. 45. Tarrazi, 2: 284. 46. De Baignières, 14. 47. Abduh, 57. Tarrazi, 2: 284, does not make it clear whether Sanu was deported from Egypt by order of the Italian consul, but simply states that the Khedive asked the Italian consul to issue such an order, after which Sanu departed to Alexandria and then sailed to Europe. 48. Abduh, 57. 49. Ibid., 58. Khayri Pasha was evidently Sanu's friend. See Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih, in Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi:Dirasat wa Nusus-Yaqub Sanu, 221.

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Fiction

50. Abduh, 59-60. According to The Saturday Review, 112, Sanu resided in Paris at 65 Rue de Provence. 51. Abduh, 61-62. Tarrazi, 2: 284, briefly mentions Ismail's appearance at the wharf and Sanu's prediction that the Khedive would be banished within a year. But his description of the events of that day is not as full or as dramatic as Sanu's own account. 52. The French journalists' report on Sanu is reproduced in De Baignières, 13-15. 53. De Baignières, 15-16. 54. Among these journals we may note Rihlat Abi Nazzara Zarqa (Journey of Blue Abu Nazzara); al-Nazzara al-Misriyya (The Egyptian Glasses); Abu Saffara (The Flutist); Abu Zammara (The Clarinettist); al-Hawi (The Snake Charmer); Abu Nazzara Lisait Hal al-Umma al-Misriyya (Abu Nazzara, Voice of the Egyptian Nation); and Abu Nazzara Zarqa Lisan Hal al-Umma al-Misriyya al-Hurra (Blue Abu Nazzara, Voice of the Free Egyptian Nation). Sanu's other journals include alWatani al-Misri (The Egyptian Patriot); Abu Nazzara Misr li al-Misriyyin (Abu Nazzara, Egypt for the Egyptians); al-Tawaddud (Friendly Relations); al-Munsif (The Just One); and al-Alam al-Islami (The Muslim World). He also published a journal in eight languages, both Eastern and Western, entitled al-Tharthara al-Misriyya (The Egyptian Chatterbox), or in French, Le Bavard Égyptien. See Abduh, passim; Tarrazi, 2: 254, 284; and Jacob Landau, "Abu Naddara, An Egyptian Jewish Nationalist," The Journal of Jewish Studies 3 (1952): 36-39. An interesting account of Sanu's activity in Paris, see De Baignières, 9-21. 55. Tarrazi, 2: 285. 56. For more on Sanu's activities in Paris and the honors and decorations he received from different heads of states, see sources in note 55. 57. See note 2 above. 58. Muhammad Yusuf Najm in al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusu-Yaqub Sanu, 1-2 of the introduction, describes his contact with Anwar Luqa. 59. Anwar Luqa, "Masrah Yaqub Sanu," al-Majalla, 51-71. Luqa may be correct in observing that the Egyptian writers who recorded the history of the ruling family under the monarchy in Egypt, either out of hypocrisy or from fear of retribution, were careful to exclude Sanu from their writings, as Ismail had banished him from Egypt. 60. Ghunaym, Sanu Ra'id al-Masrah al-Misri, already cited in previous notes. 61. Abduh, 24. The one-act comedy entitled II marito infedele (The Unfaithful Husband), was published at Cairo in 1876. Fatima, a three-act play of unknown date, is probably the one performed in 1868-1870, and may also have been translated into French. See Abduh, 214. 62. Gendzier, 40. 63. Ibid. 64. Abduh, 27. 65. In his introduction to Sanu's dramas, Najm explains various difficulties in their text, and provides a list of the terms whose spelling differs from conventional Arabic orthography. At the end of the text (225-233), he explains the meanings of the French and Italian terms which abound in Sanu's dramas. 66. Najm al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-Yaqub Sanu, the introduction, 1-2. 67. Sanu, Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih, Act 1, Scene 2 in Najm, ibid., 199— 200.

68. Ibid., 201. 69. Ghunaym, 48.

Notes

38 7

70. Abduh, 25. 71. Ibid., 30. 72. De Baignieres, 7-8; al-Sayyid Hasan Id, Tatawwur al-Naqd al-Masrahi fi Misr (Cairo: 1965), 69-70. 73. Ghunaym, 50-53. 74. Ibid., 50. 75. This comedy appeared in Abu Nazzara Zarqa, No. 4, 14th Rabi alAwwal, A.H. 1295/A.D.1878. Cf. Abduh, 40-50. 76. Abu Nazzara Zarqa, No. 5, Wednesday, 21st Rabi al-Awwal, A.H. 1295/ A.D. 1878. Abduh rightly observes that in the first five issues of this journal, Sanu criticized conditions in Egypt, particularly the exaction of taxes from the peasants by oppressive methods, but avoided antagonizing the Khedive Ismail. In his short autobiography, however, Sanu clearly states that the success of his journals encouraged him to "remove the mask from my face and courageously attack the Khedive Ismail, who looted his own subjects by imposing numerous taxes and duties, which broke their backs." See Abduh, 54. 77. Ghunaym, 62-68. 78. Ibid., 69-74. 79. Ibid., 53-61. 80. Ibid., 74-78. 81. Ibid., 78. 82. Abduh, 24, mentions al-Bint al-Asriyya, Ghandur Misr, Rastur wa Shaykh al-Balad wa al-Qawwas, Zubayda, and al-Watan wa al-Huriyya. Abduh, further states that Sanu published another play entitled Suqut Nubar (The Fall of Nubar), depicting the downfall of Khedive Ismail's Prime Minister. Abduh, ibid., 111.

83. For a summary of this operetta see Luqa, 59-60; and Ghunaym, 194-106. 84. Ghunaym, 106. 85. Ibid., 109-111. 86. Sanu refers to the Alabama Arbitration of Claims. 87. Bursat Misr, Act 2, Scene 7 in Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-Yaqub Sanu, 31-33; and Luqa, 68. 88. Al-Alil, Act Act 2, Scene 10, in Najm, ibid., 71-71; Ghunaym, 133-144; Luqa, 63-65; and Gendzier, 39. 89. Abu Rida al-Barbari wa Ma'shuqatuh Ka'b al-Khayr, in Najm, ibid., 8 1 106; Ghunaym, 141-147; Luqa, 63-65. 90. This is a short drama containing one act and seven scenes. 91. Al-Darratayn, in Najm, 157-188; and Ghunaym, 157-165. 92. This drama contains one act and thirteen scenes. 93. Al-Sadaqa, in Najm, ibid., 109-134; and Ghunaym, 152-157; Luqa, 62. 94. Al-Amira al-Iskandaraniyya, in Najm, 137-171; Ghunaym, 152-157. According to Luqa, 67, quoting Jules Barier, L'Aristocratica Allesandrina (Cairo: 1875), Sanu also translated this drama into Italian. 95. Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih, Act 1, Scene 2, in Najm, 200; Luqa, 68-70. 96. Ibid., Act 1, Scene 2, in Najm, 201; Luqa, 70. 97. Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 433. 98. See for example al-Amira al-Iskandaraniyya, Act 1, in Najm, al-Masrah al-Arabi: Dirasat wa Nusus-Yaqub Sanu, 139-165. 99. Najm, ibid.; Luqa, 67; Ghunaym, 157. 100. Ghunaym, 190-191. 101. Bursat Misr, Act 1, Scene 6, in Najm, ibid., 12.

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102. Al-Alil, Act 1, Scene 5, in Njam, 10-11. 103. See the lively argument between the two rival wives in al-Darratayn, Scene 5, in Najm, 181-183; Luqa, 61-62. 104. Al-Darratayn, Scene 5, in Najm, ibid., 181-183. 105. De Baignieres, 6-7, quotes The Saturday Review twice. The first quotation is allegedly from the issue of July 26, 1879; no specific date or number is cited for the second. The issue dated July 26, 1879, contains an article entitled "An Arab Punch, 112," but this article has nothing to do with with the quotations by De Baignieres. Najm, in al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 79, produces a long quotation, purportedly from The Saturday Review of July 26, 1876 (sic), which has no connection whatever with the article "An Arab Punch." Najm, evidently has reproduced De Baigneres's second quotation, and other writers have followed him. See al-Sayyid Hasan Id, Tatawwur al-Naqd al-Masrahi fi Misr, 77-80; Ghunaym, 163-165; and Abduh, 32. 106. Abduh, 31-32; Ghunaym, 114-115; Luqa, 61. 107. Abduh, 32; Ghunaym, 112-114. 108. Abduh, 32.

Chapter 4: Abd Allah Nadim and the Art of the Popular Dialogue 1. The literature on the life and works of Abd Allah al-Nadim is extensive. Perhaps the earliest source is his friend Ahmad Samir's introduction to Sulafat alNadim, ed. Abd al-Fattah Nadim, 1 (Cairo: Matbaat Hindiyya, 1914): 3-23. A summary of Samir's biography is found in Jurji Zaydan, Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharqfi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar (Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, n.d.), 128-137. Other sources are Ahmad Timur, Tarajim Ayan al-Qarn al-Thalith Ashar (Cairo: Abd alHamid Hanafi, 1940); Najib Tawfiq, Abd Allah Nadim Khatib al-Thawra al-Urabiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kuliyyat al-Azhariyya, 1954); Muhammad Ahmad Khalaf Allah, Abd Allah al-Nadim wa Mudhakkiratih al-Siyasiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglo-al-Misriyya, 1956); Ahmad Amin, Zu'ama al-Islah fi al-Asr al-Hadith (Cairo; Maktabat al-Nahda al-Misriyya, 1965); Nafusa Zakariyya Said, Abd Allah al-Nadim ma bayn al-Amiyya wa al-Fusha (Alexandria: al-Dar al-Qawmiyya li alTibaa wa al-Nashr, 1966); the anonymous Abd Allah al-Nadim (Beirut: Dar alAwda, 1975); Muhammad al-Saadi Farhud, al-Nadim al-Adib (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Saadiyya, 1976); Abd al-Munim Ibrahim al-Dasuqi al-Jumayi, Abd Allah alNadim wa Dawruh fi al-Haraka al-Siyasiyya (Cairo: Matbaat al-Jabalawi, 1980); Abu al-Fath Muhammad Ibn al-Husayn, Adab al-Nadim (Cairo: al-Khanji, n.d.); Ali al-Hadidi, Abd Allah al-Nadim Khatib al-Wataniyya (Cairo: al-Muassasa alMisriyya al-Amma, n.d.); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 (Oxford University Press, 1970), 196-197. 2. Ali al-Hadidi, 7. 3. Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), 253-254; and Hourani, ibid.,196-197. 4. Al-Hadidi, 24; Abd al-Latif Hamza, Mustaqbal al-Sihafafi Misr (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-Arabi), 35; Ahmad Amin, 209-210; and Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Ashtat Mujtamiaat fi al-Lugha wa al-Adab (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1963), 106. 5. Amin, 209-210. 6. Sulafat al-Nadim 1: 4-5; Amin, 205; and Abd Allah al-Jumayi, 36-37. 7. Yusuf Numan Maaluf, Khizanat al-Ayyam fi Tarajim al-Izam (New York: Matbaat Jaridat al-Ayyam, 1899), 207.

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8. M. Sabri, Le genese de l'esprit National Égyptien 1863-1882 (Paris: 1920), 142-143; Muhammad al-Makhzumi, Khatarat Jamal ai-Din ai-Afghani alHusayni (Beirut: al-Matbaa al-Ilmiyya, 1931), 41-45. 9. Ahmad Samir's introduction to Sulafat al-Nadim, 1: 6-7; Jacob M. Landau, Parliament and Parties in Egypt (New York: Praeger, 1954; reprinted, 1988), 101. 10. The Times (London: March 19, 1893), and Abd Allah al-Jumayi, 420. 11. Ibrahim Abduh, Tatawwur al-Sihafa al-Misriyya wa Atharuhua fi al-Nahdatayn al-Fikriyya wa al-Ijtimaiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Adab, 1945), 126-127; Salah Isa, al-Thawra al-Urabiyya (Beirut: al-Muassasa al-Arabiyya li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 1972), 20; and Sulafat al-Nadim, 1:10. 12. Al-Hadidi, 180-181. 13. Yaqub Sanu, Abu Nazzara Zarqa Lisan Hai al-Umma al-Misriyya (Paris: March 17, 1882), and al-Jumayi, 428-429. 14. Sulafat al-Nadim, 1: 12-13; Abd Allah Nadim, Kan wa Yakun, 1 (Cairo: Matbaat al-Mahrusa, 1892): 248-249; and Ahmad Timur, 18-20. 15. Abd Allah Nadim, "Tahiyya wa Salam," al-Ustadh, No. 42, 1 (June 13, 1893): 1017-1032. 16. Ahmad Amin, 242. 17. According to some sources Nadim died on October 10 or 11, 1896. But there is strong evidence that he died on October 13 of that year. 18. Nafusa Zakariyya Said, 108-109; and al-Jumayi, 450-451. 19. See Abd Allah Nadim, "Fariq al-Tamthil al-Arabi," in al-Ustadh, No. 21 (January 10, 1893): 501-503, and by the same author, "al-Tashkhis al-Arabi." ibid., No. 33 (April 4, 1893). 773-774. 20. Nafusa Zakariyya Said, 110, fn. 1. 21. Al-Jumayi, 344. 22. Sulafat al-Nadim, 2 (Cairo: Matbaat Amin Hindiyya, 1901): 23-63. 23. Muhammad Ahmad Khalaf Allah, 50-51. 24. Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, 1967), 184; and Muhammad al-Saadi Farhud, 22. 25. See al-Watan in Sulafat al-Nadim, 2: 34-35. 26. Ibid., 2: 38-43. 27. Ibid., 2: 49. 28. Ibid., 2: 61-62; and Jurji Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya, 4 (Cairo: 1914): 80. 29. Khalaf Allah, 50; and Farhud, 24. 30. Sulafat al-Nadim, 2: 41; and Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab Saqarwa Fawzi Shahin, Abd Allah al-Nadim (Cairo: Idarat al-Thaqafa al-Amma li Wizarat alMaarif, n.d.), 197. 31. Nafusa Zakariyya Said, 117. 32. Ibid. 33. See this vignette in al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit (June 6, 1881), 4-6; reproduced in Muntakhabat al-Marhum al-Sayyid Abd Allah al-Nadim, ed. Muhammad Ali Effendi al-Hattab al-Kutubi (Alexandria: al-Matbaa al-Misriyya, 1911), 7-13. 34. Ahmad Amin, 214-215; Umar al-Dasuqi, Fi al-Adab al-Hadith, 1 (Cairo, 1966): 406-407, follows Amin. 35. See Arabi Tafarnaj in al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit (June 6, 1881), 7-8; reproduced in Muntakhabat al-Marhum, 13-16; and Nafusa Zakariyya Said, 155-156. 36. Salih wa Taii, in al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit (Alexandria: 1900), 2-5. 37. Saluha wa Taqiyya, ibid., 5-11. 38. Al-Shaykh Alwan wa Nadim, ibid., 12-14. 39. Dimyana wa Farhana, ibid., 18-24.

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40. Hafiz, Hanim wa Nadim, ibid., 44-47. 41. Sahrat al-Anta in Muntakhabat al-Marhum, 16-20. 42. Ghaflat al-Taqlid, ibid., 26-32; and Sulafat al-Nadim, 1: 88-91. 43. Muhtaj Jahil fi Yadd Muhtal Tami, in Mutakhabat al-Marhum, 22-26. 44. Dars Tahdhibi in al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit No. 14 (September 18, 1881), 219-224; Ali al-Hadidi, 154-158; Khalaf Allah, 127-138, and Nafusa Zakariyya Said, 160-162. 45. Tahiyyat Baladi in al-Ustadh, No. 1 (August 24, 1892): 16-21. 46. Fukahat, ibid., No. 2 (August 30, 1892): 46-48. 47. Bab al-Tahdhib, ibid., No. 3 (September 6, 1892): 56-60. 48. Al-Taqlid Yanqul Tibaa al-Muqallad, ibid., 61-63. 49. Al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim, ibid., 65-70. 50. Said wa Bakhita, ibid., No. 4 (September 13, 1892): 90-93. 51. Al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim, ibid., No. 5 (September 20, 1892): 107-114. 52. Hanifa wa Latifa, ibid., No. 7 (September 27, 1892): 132-140. 53. Al-Rawi, ibid., N. 7 (October 4, 1892): 145-147. 54. Abu Damum wa al-Shaykh Mar'i, ibid., 147-149. 55. Latifa wa Dimyana, ibid., No. 7 (October 4, 1892): 149-158. 56. Zubayda wa Nabawiyya, ibid., No. 9 (October 9, 1892): 210-213. 57. Aqd Ittifaq, ibid., No. 10 (October 25, 1892): 225-228. For the text of the petition see 229-231. 58. Madrasat al-Banat: Zakiya wa Nafisa, ibid., No. 11 (November 1, 1892): 246-251. 59. Hanifa wa Latifa, ibid., No. 12 (November 8, 1892): 268-272. 60. Al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim, ibid., 282-285. 61. Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz, ibid., No. 13 (November 15, 1892): 295-298. 62. Madrasat al-Banat: Hafsa wa Bintuha Salma, ibid., 298-302. 63. Imara wa al-Zanati, ibid., No. 14 (November 22, 1892): 328-332. 64. Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz, ibid., No. 15 (November 29, 1892): 353-356. 65. Madrasat al-Banat: Hafsa wa Bintuha Salma, ibid., 356-360. 66. Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz, ibid., No. 16 (December 6, 1892): 364-369. 67. Madrasat al-Banat: Bihana wa Sitt al-Balad, ibid., 369-374. This dialogue is immediately followed by a petition of liquor sellers in the city of Tanta dated Jumada al-Ula 6, 1310 A.H/July 1892, with an attached letter from'al-Shaykh Ali Muhammad of Tanta. The liquor sellers appeal to Abd Allah Nadim not to attack them in al-Ustadh because they have lost their business and suffered financial ruin as a result of his attacks. See ibid., 374-378. 68. Madrasat al-Banin: Kamil wa Hafiz, ibid., No. 17 (December 13, 1892): 391-395. 69. Sharif a wa Bahiyya, ibid., 395-399. 70. Al-Muallim Hanafi wa al-Sayyid Afifi, ibid., No. 19 (December 27, 1892): 444-449. 71. Hanifa wa Nadim, ibid., No. 27 (February 21, 1893): 648-650. 72. Hanafi wa Nadim, ibid., No. 28 (February 28, 1893): 662-665. 73. See Nadim's article "al-Maarif fi Misr; Haluna al-Yawm wa Ams," ("Education in Egypt: Our Condition Today and Yesterday"), ibid., No. 31 (March 21, 1893): 729-743. 74. Hafiz wa Najib, ibid., No. 32 (March 28, 1893): 753-756. 75. See Al-Safina wa al-Qitar, in Muhammad al-Saadi Farhud, al-Nadim alAdib, 7-90.

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76. Ibid., 92-93. 77. See Abd Allah Nadim, "al-Muslimun wa al-Aqbat," in al-Ustadh, No. 31 (March 21, 1893): 749-750.

Chapter 5: The Translation of Western Fiction 1. The original version of this chapter was first published as "The Translation of Western Fiction into Arabic," in The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. XIV, Number 4 (1971): 202-236; see Faruq Khurshid, Fi al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya: Asr al-Tajmi (Alexandria, n.d.), 5-9. 2. Khurshid, 95. 3. Muhammad Timur, Muhadarat fi al-Qisas fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith Madihi wa Hadiruh (Cairo, 1958), 1-25. 4. Ibid., 26; and Mikhail Naimy, Ibrahim al-Arid, Mahmud Timur, and Jabrail Jabbur, Fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith (Beirut, 1954), 22. 5. Yahya Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya (Cairo, n.d.), 18. 6. Ibid., 17-20. 7. Mikhail Naimy, al-Ghirbal, 7th ed. (Beirut, 1964), 126. 8. See Said al-Bustani's introduction to Dhat al-Khidr (Beirut, 1884), 4-5; Mahmud Khayrat's introduction to al-Fatat al-Rifiyya (Cairo, 1905), 3-7; Henri Pérès, Le roman, le conte et la nouvelle dans la littérature arabe moderne, 1, Bibliographie des Ouvrages originaux, in Annals de l'Institut Oriental d'Algiers, 3 (1937); and by the same author, Littérature Arabe Moderne: Grands Courants— Bibliographie (Alger, 1940); and Latifa al-Zayyat, "Harakat al-Tarjama al-Adabiyya min al-Ingliziyya ila al-Arabiyya" (Ph.D. diss., Cairo University, 1957), 86-181. 9. Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, 1962), 287. 10. By Syria is meant here greater Syria, which included Syria proper, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. After World War I, these countries, except Palestine, assumed their present geographical and political boundaries. 11. The Maronites, through the financial and educational assistance of the Vatican, were forerunners in establishing schools. The oldest Maronite school was founded in 1584 by Pope Gregory; other schools were later established in the Lebanese villages of Ihden, Sopher, and Qarqasha. The Maronites also set up schools in some monasteries, which were commonly known as untush (a Greek term meaning place of refuge or retreat). See Bulus Jwun, in al-Mashriq 2 (1899): 1134-1135. Essentially, these schools were religious although they also taught some science, logic, and rhetoric. See Jurji Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 46-47. 12. Constantine François Chasseboeuf, Comte Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, Pendant les Années 1783 et 1785, 2 (Paris, 1787): passim. 13. Louis Cheikho, "Tarikh Fann al-Tibaa fi al-Mashriq," al-Mashriq 3 (1900): 360-361; Zaydan, ibid., 4:14-15, 54-55; and Gérard de Nerval, Voyage en Orient 1 (Paris, 1867): 304, and the English translation of this work by Conrad Elphinstone under the title, The Women of Cairo 2 (London, 1929): 223. 14. Bulus Qara'ali, al-Suriyyun fi Misr 1 (Cairo, 1928), 20, 76; Yusuf Alyan Sarkis, Mu'jam al-Matbu'at al-Arabiyya wa al-Mu'arraba 2 (Cairo, 1928): 895-896; Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal, "Kayfa wa Mata Arafat Misr Kitab al-Amir li Machiavelli," al-Katib al-Misri 4 (October, 1946): 107-116; and al-Khuri Constantine al-Pasha, "Tarjamat al-Ab Rafail Zakhur," al-Majalla al-Patriarchiyya

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(1932): 486-488, 561-564. Zakhur also compiled an Italian-Arabic dictionary published at Bulaq, Cairo, 1822. 15. Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal, Tarikh al-Tarjama wa al-Haraka al-Thaqafiyya fi Asr Muhammad Ali (Cairo, 1951), 81. 16. Anhuri translated seven French medical books into Arabic which were revised by two prominent Muslim learned men, Muhammad Umran al-Hawi and Ahmad Hasan al-Rashidi. The date of his death is unknown, but it is probably about the middle of the last century. See Isa Iskandar al-Maluf, Dawani al-Qutuf fi Tarikh Bani Al Ma/w/(B'abda, 1907-1908), 257; Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 2: 123; Zaydan, Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq fi al-Qarn alTasi Ashar 2 (Cairo, 1902-1903): 20; al-Khuri Mikhail Burayk al-Dimashqi, Tarikh al-Sham, ed. al-Khuri Constantine al-Pasha (Harisa, 1930), 115; al-Shayyal, ibid., 83-87; and Sarkis, 2: 1389-1390. For the rest of this translation see alShayyal, 87-88. 17. Al-Ashayyal, 81. 18. Sarkis, 1: 558. 19. Zaydan, 4: 46-54, and by the same author, Mudhakkirat Jurji Zaydan ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid (Beirut, 1968), 27-28, 65-97. 20. Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya, 1: 68. Another translation by alShalfun himself was serialized in al-Najah (Beirut, 1871-1872). 21. Al-Jinan (1870): 109-112, 211-213; and (1871): 132-140, 366-367, 401-407. 22. In addition to Pérès's bibliography and al-Zayyat's dissertation, see Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith (Beirut, 1961), 6-21.

23. Other translations and adaptations of Télémaque were made, including an unpublished version by Basili Fakhr, a wealthy Syrian merchant and diplomat, who lived in Dimyat, Egypt in the first half of the nineteenth century. He is mentioned only in Western sources by writers who visited Egypt under Muhammad Ali. See Jacques Tajir, Harakt al-Tarjama bi Misr Khilal al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar (Cairo, Dar al-Maarif, n.d.), 42-43; the review of the first edition of this book by Philip Sadgrove mentions that Basili Fakhr "translated the first volume of Fénelon's Les aventures de Télémaque in 1815," but Sadgrove did not say whether this translation was ever published. For Sadgrove's review see International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (February 1987): 110-111. Another unpublished version of Télémaque was made by Habib al-Yaziji (d. 1870), of which brief mention is made in al-Jinan (1871): 194; Jurji Shahin Atiyya, Waqai Tilimak (Beirut, 1885); Sa'd Allah al-Bustani, Riwayat Tilimak (Cairo, n.d.); and Wadi al-Khuri, Riwayat Tilimak (Beirut, 1912), which is a verse adaptation. Cf. Sarkis, 2: 1340; Pérès, 297. 24. Zaydan, 4: 276; and Latifa al-Zayyat, 206. 25. Abd al-Latif Hamza, Adab al-Maqala al-Suhufiyya, Part 1, 2d ed. (Cairo, 1958): 176-182. 26. J. C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East 1 (Princeton, N.J., 1956): 24. 27. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha fi Misr, 126. 28. The Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt 2 (New York, 1906): 536. 29. For a thorough treatment of the condition of the press in Syria and Egypt in the nineteenth century see Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya\ Abduh, Jaridat al-Ahram, and by the same author, Tatawwur al-Sihafa al-Misriyya 1789-1951; Martin Hartman, The Arabic Press of Egypt (London, 1899); Hamza, Adab alMaqala al-Suhufiyya, 6 vols; and Shams al-Din al-Rifa'i, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Suriyya

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2 vols. (Cairo, 1969). For an Egyptian point of view regarding Cromer's attitude toward the press see Sami Aziz, al-Sihafa al-Misriyya wa Mawqifuha min al-Ihtilal al-Ingilizi (Cairo, 1968). 30. Abduh, Jaridat al-Ahram, 330. 31. Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi'i, Mustafa Kamil Ba'ith al-Haraka al-Wataniyya (Cairo, 1962), 145. 32. Zaydan, 4: 60; Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 2: 192. 33. Tarrazi, 2: 126; Latifa al-Zayyat, 176. 34. Al-Zayyat, 125-164. 35. Mikhail Naimy, Ab'ad min Moscow wa min Washington (Beirut, 1971), 58-64, and by the same author, Sab'un: Hikayat Umr-al-Marhala al-Ula (Beirut, 1959), 75; and I.Y. Kratschkowsky, Among Arabic Manuscripts (Leiden, 1953), 54-61. 36. Naimy, Ab'ad min Moscow, ibid., and Sab'un, 120-155. 37. Naimy, Ab'ad min Moscow, 63-64. This writer recalls that his sixth-grade teacher forbade the reading of such works of fiction, especially those published in the Musamarat al-Jayb series, on the grounds that they were of no literary value. Moreover, translated fiction of this work was so popular among the elementary school students in Mosul, Iraq, that many of them possessed substantial collections of these books. Indeed, this writer and other pupils in 1937 sent to Cairo for two boxes full of detective and mystery stories which they divided by lot. 38. Nasir al-Din al-Asad, Muhadarat an Khalil Baydas Ra'id al-Qissa al-Hadithafi Falastin (Cairo, 1963), 21. 39. Naimy, Sab'un, 75; and Ab'ad min Moscow, 59, 61. 40. Al-Asad, ibid., 21-22. 41. Al-Asad, 29-30; and Yusuf As'ad Daghir, Masadir al-Dirasa al-Adabiyya 2 (Beirut, 1956): 213. 42. For Baydas's translation of Russian fiction see al-Asad, ibid., 34-38. 43. Al-Asad, 34-37 and 59-60; and Hashim Yaghi, al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Falastin wa al-Urdun 1850-1865 (Cairo, 1966), 162. 44. This translation was serialized in al-Nafa'is al-Asriyya 3 (1911). 45. Al-Asad, ibid., 59-61; and Muhammad Yunus al-Saidi, "Tolstoy," alAqlam (Baghdad, November, 1969): 76-78. 46. Al-Saidi, ibid., 76-78; and Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha fi Misr, 131. 47. I. Y. Kratschkowsky, al-Muhktarat 3 (Moscow, 1956): 330. 48. For the works of French fiction translated into Arabic, see Pérès, Le roman, le conte et la nouvelle dans la littérature arabe moderne, 3 (1937); and Sarkis, Mu'jam al-Matbu'at, passim. 49. Sarkis, 1: 1108, says this translation was published in 1870 by Wadi al-Nil press. Pérès, ibid., 295, gives 1871 as the date of its publication. 50. Pérès, 295. A second translation of The Three Musketeers, by Umar Abd al-Aziz Amin, was published in two volumes at Cairo in 1928. 51. Pérès, 295-297. 52. Ibid., 292, 294, and 307. 53. Pérès, 290-301, provides an extensive bibliography of the works of French fiction translated after 1900, including both popular authors and others whose names are known only to a few students of French literature. 54. Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 183, 222-256. Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra was translated by Ibrahim Ramzi and published in 1914. Voltaire's Mérope, was translated by Muhammad Iffat under the

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title Tasliyat al-Qulub fi Mérub and staged in January 1889. Cf. Najm, ibid., 188, quoting al-Ahram (January 10, 1889), No. 3339. 55. Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasifi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith (Cairo, 1956), 127; al-Zayyat, 178. 56. Pérès, 269-270. 57. Ibid., 270. 58. See the introduction of Anton Bey al-Jumayyil to Diwan Tanius Abduh (Cairo, 1925). 59. Pérès, 270. 60. Latifa Al-Zayyat, "Harakat al-Tarjama al-Adabiyya min al-Ingliziyya ila al-Arabiyya," unpub. diss., 173. 61. The first volume of this work by Hajjaj (Haggag, as he writes his name) is undated and bears the French title Choix de poèms et prose d'auteurs français avec leurs biographies, while the second volume, dated 1922, is indicated to be a translation entitled Traduction de quelques chef-d'ouvrés des littératures française allemande, italienne, et anglaise. 62. Latifa Al-Zayyat, 171-172. 63. Ibid. 64. Latifa Al-Zayyat 101. Awad also translated a French novel entitled al-Intiqam (Vengeance), and published in 1905, without the name of the author or the original title. See Pérès, 309, who lists this work as anonymous. 65. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 133. 66. Pérès, 309-311. See also Abdel-Aziz Abd al-Meguid, The Modern Arabic Short Story (Cairo: n.d.), 97-98. 67. Latifa Al-Zayyat, 63. We have found titles of several translated novels whose authors are not identified, published by al-Fawa'id Press in Beirut. They include Khalil Effendi Badawi's translations of Riwayat Shaytan al-Mal (1891), Riwayat al-Fatat al-Sibiriyya (1892), and Riwayat Khatf al-Ibnatayn (1896); and Amin Effendi al-Halabi's translations of Riwayat Mir'at al-Shahama (1894), Riwayat Jaza al-Ghadir (1895), and Riwayat al-Faqid al-Mawjud (1895). Cf. Louis Cheikho, "Tarikh Fann al-Tibaa fi al-Mashriq," al-Mashriq 4 (1901): 323. 68. Salim Sarkis, Majallat Sarkis (1910), quoted by al-Meguid, 98, fn. 3. 69. Karam Mulham Karam, Manahil al-Adab al-Arabi 17 (Beirut, 1942): 67-68. 70. See, for example, Muhammad Badran's translation of Wells's The Food of the Gods, entitled Ta'am al-Aliha (Cairo, 1947). 71. Anwar al-Jundi, Tatawwur al-Tarjama fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Mu'asir (Cairo, n.d,), 49-50, bound together with other two books by the author, entitled Adab al-Mar'a al-Arabiyya and al-Qissa al-Arabiyya al-Mu'asira. 72. Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, Tatawwur Fann al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Misr 1910— 1933 (Cairo, 1968), 56-60. 73. See the article of al-Siba'i's son, Yusuf, a contemporary Egyptian novelist, in al-Jumhuriyya (August 4, 1956). Al-Siba'i translated works by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gorki, Balzac, de Maupassant, Anatole France, Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens, Carlyle, Fitzgerald, Herbert Spencer, Wilkie Collins, and Washington Irving. See Muhammad al-Siba'i, Qisas Rusiyya (Russian Stories) in Iqra Series. See also al-Jundi, 47-57; and al-Nassaj, 55-58. I am indebted to Yusuf alSiba'i, who graciously provided me with several biographies of Egyptian writers including that of his father. 74. See al-Mazini's introduction entitled al-Ustadh al-Siba'i wa Adabuh, to al-Siba'i's book al-Suwar (Cairo, 1946).

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75. For a short account of al-Manfaluti's temperament and style see Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam, 258-268, though the author says little concerning al-Manfaluti's adaptations of Western fiction. Also of interest is Nevill Barbour, "Al-Manfaluti: An Egyptian Essayist," Islamic Culture 7 (1933): 490-492. Barbour draws his information from al-Manfaluti's son, Hasan, the Egyptian writer Shafiq Ghirbal, and other sources. He mentions al-Manfaluti's contradictions and the criticism of his writings by Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad and Taha Husayn. Also, he provides an account of al-Manfaluti's literary merits. See Barbour, ibid., 491. The same journal contains Barbour's translation of several essays of al-Manfaluti. See Islamic Culture 8 (1934): 140-145, 223-236, 448, 621-630; 9 (1935): 6 4 5 664, and 10 (1936): 477-485; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, Supplement 3 (Leiden, 1942): 191-202. 76. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, Wahi al-Risala, 7th ed., 1 (Cairo, 1962): 385-390, where the author discusses al-Manfaluti's life, upbringing, and literary achievement. 77. Al-Manfaluti, al-Nazarat, 1: 5-6; Ahmad Hasan al-al-Zayyat, Wahi alRisala, 1: 389. 78. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, ibid., 1: 398; Shawqi Dayf, al-Adab al-Arabi alMu'asirfi Misr (Cairo, 1961), 228. 79. Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad and Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, al-Diwan: Kitab fi al-Adab wa al-Naqd (Cairo: Maktabat al-Saada 1921), Chapter 2; alAqqad's, Muraja'atfi al-Adab wa al-Funun (Cairo, 1925), 170-184; and Barbour, ibid., 4 9 0 ^ 9 2 . 80. See al-Manfaluti's essays "al-Intihar" (Suicide) and "Ala Sarir al-Mawt" (On the Deathbed) in al-Nazarat, vol. 1; in each work the principal character ends his own life. 81. Gibb, ibid., 264-265. 82. Shukri Muhammad Ayyad, al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Misr: Dirasa fi Ta'sil Fann Adabi (Cairo, 1969), 105. 83. Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasi fi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith, 80-81, makes al-Manfaluti a mutarjim, i.e., a translator, by which he probably means "an adapter." Shawqi Dayf, 229, correctly considers al-Manfaluti an adapter. 84. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 178-180. 85. Ayyad, ibid., 105-118, studies al-Manfaluti as an essayist and short story writer. Abbas Khidr, al-Qissa al-Qsira fi Misr mundhu Nash'atiha hatta Sanat 1930 (Cairo, 1966), 55, 62-66, likewise studies al-Manfaluti as a short story writer. 86. Mustafa Lutfi Al-Manfaluti, "al-Dahiyya aw Mudhakkirat Margarit," in his al-Abarat (Cairo, 1956), 159-208; "al-Shuhada," 22-49; and "al-Dhikra," 71-93. Directly beneath the Arabic titles of these short romances appears the term mutarjama (translated). See also Pérès, 292, on further translations and adaptations of these works. 87. Pérès, 306. According to Yusuf As'ad Daghir, "Fann al-Tamthil fi Khilal Qarn," al-Mashriq 42 (1948): 127, a translation of this romance made by Muhammad Abd al-Salam al-Jundi was published in Egypt in 1921. According to Pérès, 293, fn. 1, an Arabic verse translation by Halim Dammus appeared at Beirut in 1925. 88. Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti, Fi Sabil al-Taj (Cairo, 1920); Pérès, 293. 89. Pérès, 291. For details of al-Manfaluti's manipulation of the original French work, see E. Saussey, "Une Adaptation Arabe de Paul et Virginie," Bulletin d'Études Orientales 1 (1931): 49-80.

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90. See Constantine's speech in Fi Sabil al-Taj, 30-31, in which he uses Quranic verses. Cf. Badr, 183. 91. Al-Manfaluti, Fi Sabil al-Taj, 30-31. 92. Shawkat, 81; and Dayf, 229. 93. Anwar al-Jundi, Tatawwur al-Tarjama fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Mu'asir (Cairo, n.d.), 59-60. 94. See Isa Ubayd's introduction to Ihsan Hanim: Majmu'at Qisas Misriyya Asriyya, 2d ed. (Cairo, 1964). For a glimpse of Isa Ubayd's role in the development of modern Arabic fiction, see Matti Moosa, "The Growth of Modern Arabic Fiction," Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 11 (1968): 8-9. 95. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, Wahi al-Risala, 1: 386-387; and Taha Husayn, Mudhakkirat Taha Husayn (Beirut, 1967), 36-38. 96. Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Thawrat al-Adab (Cairo, 1965), 24-34 and 211-219, makes some interesting observations on the influence of Western literature on both al-Manfaluti and Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat. 97. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, Wahi al-Risala, 4: 154, mentions that he went to Baghdad in 1930. 98. Al-Zayyat, ibid., 1: 45-48, 355-358. 99. Ibid., 4: 72-75. 100. Nimat Fuad, "Sahib al-Risala Yahtajib," al-Ahram (January 21, 1968), 13. Al-Zayyat, Wahi al-Risala, 4: 102-106, gives the reasons for which he suspended the publication of al-Risala. 101. Al-Zayyat, ibid., 2: 1-4, 11-13, 98-114, 328-333. 102. Al-Zayyat, "Limadha Tarjamtu Alam Werther," in Wahi al-Risala 1: 44, defends his use of Quranic language in translating Werthers Leiden, in response to a query by the Iraqi writer, journalist, and statesman Rafail Butti. A much less popular translation of the same was made by Izz al-Arab Ali with the title Ahzan Werther and appeared serially in the newspaper al-Jarida in 1914. See Abd al-Latif Hamza, Adab al-Maqala al-Suhufiyya: Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid 6 (Cairo, 1954), 174. 103. Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat's letter to the Minister of Education appeared in al-Risala (April, 1945), and was followed by an article on the same subject in (June, 1945); both are published in Wahi al-Risala 3: 38^-6. Al-Zayyat reiterates some of his proposals in Wahi al-Risala 4: 299-307. 104. Al-Zayyat, Wahi al-Risala 3: 38-39, 4: 301-303. 105. Ibid., 3: 39. 106. Al-Zayyat, ibid., 3: 40 and 4: 301-303. 107. Al-Zayyat, ibid., 4: 301, complains that in 1953 only fifty-four Western books were translated into Arabic in Egypt, and most of these were badly done. See also Muhyi al-Din Muhammad, "Risala min al-Qahira," Adab 1 (1962): 128-132. 108. For titles of the stories of de Maupassant translated and published in alRisala and other periodicals and anthologies, see Pérès, 303-304. Cf. Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasi fi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith 1800-1956, 131. 109. The most detailed sources of information on al-Mazini are his autobiography Qissat Hayat (Cairo, 1961), and Nimat Ahmad Fuad, Adab al-Mazini (Cairo, 1954) and (Cairo, 1961). 110. Anwar al-Jundi, Tatawwur al-Tarjama fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Mu'asir, 63. 111. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 341. 112. Ibid., 341; and Nimat Ahmad Fuad, Adab al-Mazini, Chapter 5, entitled "al-Mazini al-Mutarjim," 246-270.,

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113. See al-Mazini's introduction to Mukhtarat min al-Qisas al-Ingilizi (Cairo, 1939). 114. Al-Jundi, 65. 115. Nimat Ahmad Fuad, 249-256, where the writer provides specific comparative samples to illustrate al-Mazini's alteration of the original text. 116. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam, 303, 319, fn. 205; Fuad, 258-262. 117. Fuad, ibid. 256-257. 118. Ibid., 263-264 119. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Sunduq al-Dunya (Cairo, 1929), includes al-Sighar wa al-Kibar, 30-38; al-Haqa'iq al-Bariza fi Hayati, 75-86; and Muqtatafat min Mudhakkirat Hawwa, 92-112. Cf. Pérès, 324-325. 120. Al-Mazini, Sunduq al-Dunya, 311-320; Pérès, 325. 121. Aziz Abd Allah Salama, Mukhtarat (Cairo: 1926), and Faraj Gibran, Qisas an Jama'a min Mashahir Kuttab al-Gharb (Cairo, 1927), include some works of Alphonse Daudet, Maxim Gorky, Anatole France, Marcel Prévost, and other anonymous writers. See also Tawfiq Abd Allah, al-Qisas al-Asraiyya (Cairo, n.d.); Muhammad Abd Allah Inan, Qisas Ijtima'iyya wa Namadhij min Adab alGharb (Cairo, 1932); Pérès, 290-307, passim. 122. Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasi fi al-Adab al-Misri alHadith, 130. 123. Ibid. 124. See Charles Issawi, "European Loan-Words in Contemporary Arab Writing: A Case Study in Modernization," Middle East Studies (Spring 1967): 110-133.

Chapter 6: The Revival of the Maqama 1. An original version of this chapter was first published in three parts in The Islamic Review, part 1 (July-August 1969): 12-40, part 11 (October 1969): 30-40, and part 111 (November-December 1969): 25-36; Shawqi Dayf, al-Maqama (Cairo, 1964), 10-11. 2. Fakhri Abu al-Su'ud, "Al-Qissa fi al-Adabayn al-Arabi wa al-Ingilizi," alRisala No. 198 (1937): 653-654; Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Qissafi al-Adab alArabi al-Hadith, 223-225. 3. Nasif al-Yaziji humbly states in Majma al-Bahrayn (Beirut n.d.), 3, that he is only an intruder in the realm of the grear belletrists. Although he considered his output of no great worth, his motivation for writing the maqamas was his desire to produce something new. 4. For discussion of the maqamas of Nasif al-Yaziji see Dayf, ibid., 83-109; Henri Pérès, Les premiere manifestations de la renaissance littéraire arabe en Orient au XIX siecle-Nasif al-Yazigi et Faris as-Sidyaq, Annales de l'Institut d'Études orientales de la Faculté des Lettres d'Alger, 1 (1934-1935): 233-256. The earliest biography of Nasif al-Yaziji is by Salim Effendi Dhiyab in al-Jinan (1871): 150-157, based on the author's friendship and association with al-Yaziji. For other sources on al-Yaziji's life and works, see Fuad Afram al-Bustani, "Nasif al-Yaziji," al-Mashriq (1928): 834-843, 923-939; Ignaz Kratschkowsky, "Al-Yazidjy," The Encyclopedia of Islam 4 (1934): 1170-1171. 5. Fuad Afram al-Bustani," Shadharat fi al-Nahda al-Adabiyya: Nasif al-Yaziji wa Faris al-Shidyaq," al-Mashriq (1936): 443-447; Ra'if Khuri," Yaqdat alWa'i al-Arabi fi Maqamat al-Yaziji," al-Makshuf (1936):426-427; Najm, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 223-235; and Dayf, 83-109. 6. Nasif al-Yaziji, Majma al-Bahrayn, introduction, 3.

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7. Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq, Kitab al-Saq ala al-Saqfi ma huwa al-Faryaq, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1855), reprinted by Yusuf Tuma al-Bustani (Cairo, n.d.), used throughout. Shidyaq is an ecclesiastical term meaning "archdeacon." For the influence of French writers on al-Shidyaq, see Pérès, ibid., 250-252. 8. Al-Bustani, 'Shadharat," al-Mashriq, ibid., 4 4 6 ^ 4 7 . 9. Abd Allah Nadim, Kitab al-Masamir, published by Y.N.H.M., with no date and place of publication. In his preface the anonymous publisher dedicates the book to Musa Bey ibn Isam, a resident of Mecca. However, some writers mention that George Kratchi (sic), a friend of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, was the one who published the book. See Ahmad Amin, Zu'ama al-Islah (Cairo, 1965), 244. 10. Kitab al-Masamir, 1-18. 11. Ibid., 69, 72. 12. See the inside cover of Kitab al-Masamir. 13. Ibid., 52-56, 71-72; and Nafusa Zakariyya Said, Abd Allah al-Nadim bayn al-Amiyya wa al-Fusha (Cairo, 1966), 77-79. 14. Said, ibid., 79; and Ahmad Amin, Zu'ama al-Islah, 244. 15. Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, Hadith Isa ibn Hisham aw Fatra min alZaman, 4th ed. (Cairo, 1964), with an introduction by Ali Adham. 16. Ali Adham's introduction to Hadith Isa ibn Hisham, 1-10; Ali al-Ra'i, Diras at fi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1964), 20; and Abbas Khidr, al-Qissa alQasira fi Misr mundhu Nash'atiha hatta Sanat 1930 (Cairo, 1966), 51. For a recent study on al-Muwaylihi's Hadith, see Roger Allen, al-Muwaylihi's Hadith Isa Ibn Hisham: A Study of Egypt During the British Occupation (Albany, New York: 1974). 17. Adham, ibid.; Abd al-Aziz al-Bishri, al-Mukhtar 1 (Cairo, 1959): 2 3 6 252. According to Abd al-Latif Hamza, Adab al-Maqala al-Suhufiyya 3 (Cairo, 1959): 32, the young Muwaylihi's burning desire to learn motivated him to seek knoweldge from an apothecary who lived next door to his house. 18. Adham, ibid. 19. The influence of Western culture on al-Muwaylihi is most apparent in his literary criticism, particularly of poetry. See Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Rijal Araftuhum (Cairo, 1963), 76-88; and al-Muwaylihi's introduction to the Diwan Hafiz Ibrahim (Cairo, 1901-1903). On al-Muwaylihi as a critic, see Hilmi Ali Marzuq, Tatawwur al-Naqd wa al-Tafkir al-Adabi al-Hadith fi Misr (Cairo, 1966), 201-223. 20. Abd al-Aziz al-Bishri, al-Mukhtar, 1: 241. 21. Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, Hadith Isa ibn Hisham, 1-6. 22. Ibid., 7-13. 23. Ibid., 51-57. 24. Ibid., 57-61. 25. Ibid., 61-93. 26. Ibid., 289-351. 27. Ibid., 284-285. 28. Ibid., 290. 29. Ibid., 312-317, 332-333. 30. Ibid., 332-333. 31. Ibid., 162. 32. Ibid., 16, 55-60, 125. 33. Ibid., 185. 34. Ibid., 185-285. See also Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al Fann al-Qisasifi alAdab al-Misri al-Hadith, 46-47; and Shukri Muhammad Ayyad, al-Qissa alQasira fi Misr: Dirasa fi Ta'sil Fann Adabi (Cairo, 1968), 72-73. 35. Al-Ra'i, Dirasatfi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya 19; Ayyad, 70. 36. Al-Ra'i, ibid., 19.

399 37. Ibid. 38. Ghali Shukri, Thawrat al-Fikr fi Adabina al-Hadith (Cairo, 1965), 186188. 39. Ayyad, 70. 40. Mahmud Timur, Fann al-Qisas (Cairo, 1948), 37, and by the same author Nushu al-Qissa wa Tatawwuruha (Cairo, 1936), 46-47; Umar al-Dasuqi, Muhadarat an Nash'at al-Nathr al-Hadith wa Tatawwurih (Cairo, 1962), 137-138; Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Hadithafi Misr, 37. According to Ayyad, ibid., 73-74, since al-Muwaylihi's purpose was to expose and criticize social problems in Egypt, he chose to voice his opinions through several different characters rather than a single one. Thus, his characters should not be faulted for lacking coordination of action or unity of purpose. 41. Al-Ra'i, 10. 42. Umar al-Dasuqi, 138. 43. This translation, generally poor, reflected Hafiz's inadequate grasp of the French language. See Taha Husayn, Hafiz wa Shawqi (Cairo, 1982), 99-109; and Abd al-Hamid Sanad al-Jundi, Hafiz Ibrahim Sha'ir al-Nil (Cairo, 1968), 72. 44. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, ed. with an introduction by Abd al-Rahman Sidqi (Cairo, 1964); later references are to this text. Layali Satih first appeared in 1906. Another edition worth noting is that of Muhammad Kamil Jumu'a (Cairo, 1959). 45. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, 1-4. 46. Ibid., 4-9. 47. The Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt 2 (New York, 1908): 213-217; and Hilmi Ali Marzuq, Tatawwur al-Naqd wa al-Tafkir al-Adabi al-Hadith fi Misr, 38-51. 48. For a justification of this allegation, see Cromer, ibid., 2: 214. 49. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, 9-13. 50. For the extraterritorial privileges which foreign nationals enjoyed in Egypt and the British attitude toward these privileges, see Cromer, ibid., 2, 254-259, 426-442; and Muhammad Awad Muhammad, al-Isti'mar wa al-Madhahib al-Isti'mariyya (Cairo, 1961), 54-56. 51. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, 16. 52. Ibid., 17-19. 53. Ibid., 19-23. 54. The reproduction of a chapter from al-Muwaylihi's Hadith is not an indication that Hafiz consciously imitated al-Muwaylihi, but rather evidence that he was influenced by some of al-Muwaylihi's ideas. See Abd al-Rahman Sidqi's introduction to Layali Satih, 169-170; Muhammad Mandur, Qadaya Jadidafi Adabina al-Hadith (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1958), 48-58; Fuad Dawwara, Fi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya (Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-Arabi li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1968), 5-10; and Muhammad Kamil Jumu'a, Hafiz Ibrahim Ma Lahu Wa Ma Alayh (Cairo: 1960), 323-332. 55. In recognition of Shawqi's superb poetic talent and his defense of Arab attributes, poets from all over the Arab world assembled in Cairo in 1927 to confer upon him the title "The Prince of Poets." For a thorough study of Hafiz and Shawqi see Taha Husayn, Hafiz wa Shawqi. 56. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, 40-42. Nafusa Zakariyya Said, Tarikh alDa'wa ila al-Amiyya wa Atharuha fi Misr (Cairo, 1964), presents the views of those Egyptian writers who advocated the widespread use of colloquial Egyptian instead of classical Arabic as the literary language. Interestingly, some Arab writers who teach the Arabic language and culture in the United States hold an entirely opposite view. Khalil Semaan, for example, complains that Orientalists and some Arab writers consider the Arabic language difficult to teach and learn, largely because of alleged differences between its spoken and written forms. This distorted view,

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Semaan explains, is but one of many held by Orientalists, particularly those concerned with the study of the Arabs' language and culture, about the Arab East, which they often associate with the desert, camels, and tents. See Khalil Semaan, "Ala Hamish Da'wa al-Su'uba fi Ta'allum al-Arabiyya," Majallat Majma al-Lugha al-Arabiyya bi Dimashq 42 (October 1967): 795. 57. For a criticism of Cromer's policies, particularly educational policy in Egypt, see Umar al-Dasuqi, Fi al-Adab al-Hadith 1 (Beirut, 1967): 440-454; and 2, 10-50; Ali Yusuf in al-Mu'ayyad (May 7, 1907). A more detailed analysis of Cromer's policies is found in Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, Egypt and Cromer: A Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations (New York, 1969). 58. In this chapter Hafiz seems to come closest to al-Muwaylihi's Hadith in his moralization and condemnation of immoral practices. 59. Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Hadith fi Misr, 70. 60. Fuad Dawwara, Fi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya, 7; Mahmud Timur, Malamih wa Ghudun (Cairo, 1950), 215; Ayyad, Tatawwur al-Qissa al-Qasirafi Misr: Dirasafi Ta'sil Fann Adabi, 89-90; and Abd al-Rahman Sidqi's introduction to Layali Satih, 169-170. 61. Hafiz Ibrahim, Layali Satih, 34. 62. Sidqi's introduction to Layali Satih, 67-71. 63. Muhammad Lutfi Jumu'a, Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir (Cairo, 1912), 4-11; and Ayyad, ibid., 92. 64. Jumu'a, Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir, 22-28. 65. Ibid., 4-11. 66. Ibid., 12-21. 67. Ibid., 22-28. 68. Ibid., 29-35. 69. Ibid., 36-41. 70. Ibid., 41-43. 71. For the controversial origin of Arabic free verse see Nazik al-Mala'ika, Qadaya al-Shi'r al-Mu'asir (Beirut, 1962); Louis Cheikho, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Rub al-Awwal min al-Qarn al-Ishrin (Beirut, 1926), 6-7, 40-43; Umar al-Dasuqi, Fi al-Adab al-Hadith, 2: 225-237; and Anis al-Khuri al-Maqdisi, al-Ittijahat al-Adabiyya fi al-Alam al-Arabi al-Hadith (Beirut, 1967), 235-290. 72. Ayyad, ibid., 92. 73. See above fn. 71. Of interest are Jamil Said, Nazaratfi al-Tayyarat al-Adabiyya al-Haditha fi al-Iraq (Cairo, 1954), 95-99; and al-Adab al-Arabi alMu 'asir, minutes of the conference on Arabic literature which met in Rome in October 1961, 171-191. For more detailed study see Jalil Kamal al-Din, al-Shi'r al-Arabi al-Hadith wa Ruh al-Asr (Beirut, 1964). 74. Jumu'a, Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir, 42-50. 75. Ibid., 51-56. 76. Ayyad, 89. 77. Jumu'a, Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir, 88-97. 78. Ibid., 98-104. 79. Ayyad, 99.

Chapter 7: Salim al-Bustani and the Beginning of Modern Arabic Fiction 1. An original version of this chapter was first published as "Salim al-Bustani and the Rise of the Arab Short Story and the Historical Novel," in Islamic Literature,

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Vol. XVI, Number 3 (March 1970): 5-27; Philip Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 1 (Beirut: 1913): 103. 2. Al-Jinan, founded by al-Mu'allim (Master) Butrus al-Bustani, was a political, scientific, literary, and historical magazine. The motto printed on its first page "The Country's Love Is of Faith," shows the beginnings of national sentiment in Syria. It was probably the first Arabic magazine to adopt a motto, and others followed its precedent. Al-Jinan was very popular in the Arab countries and attracted such eminent writers as Shibly Shumayyil, who contributed many articles on modern sciences; Ibrahim al-Yaziji; Sulayman al-Bustani, who translated Homer's Iliad into Arabic verse; Bishop Anton Qandalaft; Cornelius Van Dyke, the pioneer American missionary; Iskandar Abkarius; Marquis Musa de Fraige; al-Shaykh Nawfal Nawfal; Adib Ishaq; Ibrahim Sarkis; Francis Marrash; Shakir Shuqayr; Jamil Mudawwar; Jurji Yeni; As'ad Tirad; Numan Abduh al-Qasatili; and others. 3. For the life and works of Salim al-Bustani see Michel Jeha, Silsilat al-A'mal al-Majhula: Salim al-Bustani (London: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 1989); Tarrazi, 2: 68-70; Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar, 2: 127-128; Yusuf Alyan Sarkis, Mu'jam al-Matbu'at al-Arabiyya wa al-Mu'arraba, 1: 559; Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Qissa al-Qasira fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 31-65, 140-156, 236-243; Leon Zolendek," Socio-Political Views of Salim al-Bustani (1848-1884), Middle East Studies (1965-1966), 2: 144-155.; and Abd al-Rahman Yaghi, al-Juhud al-Riwa'iyya min Salim al-Bustani ila Naguib Mahfouz (Beirut, 1972), 23-33. 4. Al-Jinan (1877), 393. 5. Asma appeared serially in al-Jinan in 1873. 6. Bint al-Asr appeared serially in al-Jinan in 1875, and Fatina appeared serially in al-Jinan in 1877. 7. Salma was serialized in al-Jinan in 1878-1879; and Samiya in the same periodical in 1882, 1883, and 1884. 8. See, for example, Asma in al-Jinan (1873), 284. 9. Bint al-Asr, in al-Jinan (1875), 143. 10. Bint al-Asr, ibid., 318. 11. Asma, in al-Jinan (1873), 35. 12. Ibid., 68-69. 13. Ibid., 214-215. 14. Ibid., 317. 15. Ibid., 430. 16. Fatina in al-Jinan (1877), 66. 17. Ibid., 70, 102. 18. Al-Bustani wrote an article entitled "Ruh al-Asr" (The Spirit of the Age), in the July issue of al-Jinan (1870), 285-288. See also Michel Jeha, ibid., 146152; Zolendek, ibid., 144; and Salih J. Altoma," Ruh al-Asr wa Salim al-Bustani," al-Adab (October 1970): 44-46. 19. Al-Jinan (1870), 641-648. 20. See al-Bustani's editorial which he commonly called "Jumla Siyasiyya" in al-Jinan (1873), 362. His association of equality, justice, and religious tolerance with Ruh al-Asr is evident in most of his editorials. 21. Al-Jinan (1872), 650; (1873), 685; and (1877), 3. 22. See al-Bustani's article "al-Insaf," in al-Jinan (1870), 369-371, reproduced in Michel Jeha, Silsilat al-A'mal al-Majhula: Salim al-Bustani, 77-92. 23. Bint al-Asr in al-Jinan (1875), 67-68. 24. Asma in al-Jinan (1873), 826. 25. Bint al-Asr, ibid., 68. 26. Ibid., 31-32.

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27. Ibid., 39-40, 204. 28. Fatina in al-Jinan (1877). 29. Ibid., 68-69. 30. Ibid., 33. 31. Asma in al-Jinan (1875), 32. 32. Ibid., 67. 33. Ibid., 294, 537-538, 608-610. Of interest is Nabiha's conversation with a certain European man about the East and West and their agreement that both of them have their own good and bad aspects. See ibid., 610. 34. Ibid., 642. 35. Ibid., 211. 36. Ibid., 608-610. 37. Ibid., 249. 38. Ibid., 140. 39. Beside Asma, see, for example, Samiya who although eighteen years old, speaks like a sage with profound knowledge of her society and is aware of the responsibilities of the individual as well as those of the society. Consider also Sida, who enters with Fuad into intellectual, philosophical, and religious conversation which demonstrates her to be a near prodigy. See Asma in al-Jinan (1873), 33; and Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 477, 703, 729. 40. Asma, ibid., 33. 41. Ibid., 104. 42. Ibid., 66. 43. Ibid., 66. 44. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 731. 45. Fatina in al-Jinan (1877), 105. 46. Ibid., 107, 214, 284-285. 47. Ibid., 395. Al-Bustani states that the reader would like to know the details about this incident. This incident took place in Italy he said, in which of late, there were many robbers who attacked passengers and travelers. Some of them live in underground caves and obey their leader who acts also as a judge. He further says that they are generous and magnanimous. 48. Fatina in al-Jinan (1877), 428. 49. Ibid., 428. 50. Ibid., 430-431. 51. Ibid., 429-431. 52. Ibid., 756. 53. Ibid., 756. 54. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 538-539. 55. Ibid., 539. 56. See the text of Butrus al-Bustani's speech advocating women's education, delivered at the meeting of the Syrian Society on January 14, 1849 in al-Jinan (1882), 207-214. 57. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 729. 58. See ibid., 702-703, for the long dialogue between Sida and Fuad. 59. See Sida's conversation with Faiz in al-Jinan (1883), 621. 60. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 411-412. 61. Samiya in al-Jinan (1883), 286, 350. 62. Ibid., 524. 63. Ibid., 524. 64. Ibid., 525.

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65. Ibid., 525. 66. Ibid., 350-351, 526-527. 67. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 410-411, 507. 68. Samiya in al-Jinan (1884), 127. 69. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 569. 70. Ibid., 508. 71. Al-Jinan (March 1, 1873), 145. 72. Samiya in al-Jinan (1882), 415. 73. Ibid., 507. As an example of how far the censors would go in restricting the freedom of the writers and critics in handling a theme inimicable to their taste, we have only to look at an incident which happened in 1906. In this year, Niqula Haddad published a novel entitled Hawaw al-Jadida aw Yvonne Monar (The New Eve or Yvonne Monar), 3d ed. (Cairo, 1929), in which he criticized Arab society for punishing women for extramarital practices which it considers outrageous and immoral in women while completely ignoring or tacitly approving of the same thing in men. Critics in Syria were not permitted to evaluate the new novel as freely as they might have because the censor believed that Eve was a sacrosanct figure and should not be a subject treated by writers. See Niqula Haddad, Hawwa al-Jadia aw Yvonne Monar, 115; and Chapter 10 for an analysis of the novel. 74. See Zenobia in al-Jinan (1871), 499; and Nuhammad Yusuf Najm, alQissafi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 140-146. 75. Zenobia, ibid., 1, 4, 100, 281, 391, 494, 530-532, 822; and Najm, 144-146. 76. See Budur in al-Jinan (1872); and Najm, 146-152. 77. See al-Huyamfi Futuh al-Sham in al-Jinan (1874); and Najm, 152-154. 78. Najm, ibid., 155. 79. See the testimony of the Syrian Patriarch Dionysius Tal Mahri, in Michael the Great, Chronicle, ed. J. B. Chabot, Book II (Paris: 1910): chap. 3. 80. See al-Jinan (1873), 163-168; and Najm, ibid., 239. 81. Asma in al-Jinan (1873), 826. 82. Al-Huyam fi Jinan al-Sham in al-Jinan (1870), 732. 83. Ibid., 826. 84. Al-Bustani was not in favor of using saj (rhymed prose). See the addendum to his article "al-Ajab al-Ujab" in al-Jinan (September 15, 1871), 611; reproduced in Michel Jeha, Silsilat al-A'mal al-Majhula: Salim al-Bustani, 176-179 with the title "A'jab al-Ajab."

Chapter 8: From Salim al-Bustani to Jurji Zaydan: Francis Marrash and Numan Abduh al-Qasatili 1. For the biography and writings of Francis Marrash see Philip Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 1: 141-143; Jurji Zaydan, Tarikh Adah al-Lugha alArabiyya 4: 236-238; Cheikho, Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar 2: 44-48; Qustaki al-Himsi, Udaba Halab Dhawu al-Athar fi al-Qarn alTasi Ashar, 2d ed. (Aleppo, 1968), 58-72; and Haydar Hajj Ismail, Taba'i alIstibdad wa Ahwal al-Thawra (n.p., n.d.), 11-12. 2. For a short biography of Abd Allah and Maryana Marrash see Qustaki alHimsi, ibid., 53-57 and 94-96; and Tarrazi, ibid., 2: 241-144 for Maryana Marrash, and 2; 278-281 for Abd Allah Marrash.

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3. Jurji Zaydan, ibid., 4: 236-238; and Cheikho, TarikhAdab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Rub al-Awwal min al-Qarn al-Ishrin, 20 for Abd Allah Marrash, and 107 for Maryana Marrash. 4. Ghabat al-Haqq (The Forest of Truth) was first published by the Maronite Press in Aleppo in 1865. It was republished in Beirut, and also in Cairo by alUmran Press in 1922, the edition used here. Antaki also wrote an introduction to the 1922 edition. 5. Ghabat al-Haqq, 6, 44, 50; and Khalil Hawi, Gibran, His Background, Character and Works (Beirut, 1963), 58-59. 6. Ghabat al-Haqq, 71-78. 7. Ibid., 20-27, 75. 8. Ibid., 33-41. 9. Ibid., 27-32. 10. Ibid., 31. 11. This book was published undated in Beirut. See Tarrazi, ibid., 1: 141-143; Zaydan, ibid., 4:237; and Cheikho, al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Qarn al-Tasi Ashar, 2: 45. 12. Of these allegories we may cite Hayy ibn Yaqzan (The Living One, Son of the Vigilant), by the renowned Muslim Spanish philosopher Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl (Abubacer, d. 1185). See Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th ed. (London, 1970), 582. 13. Ghabat al-Haqq, 99-100. 14. Ibid., 84-85. 15. Francis Marrash, Durr al-Sadaffi Ghara'ib al-Sudaf (Beirut, 1872). 16. See the remark of Numan Abduh al-Qasatili at the end of his Riwayat Anis in al-Jinan (1882), 382. 17. Numan Abduh al-Qasatili, al-Rawda al-Ghanna fi Tarikh Dimasha alFayha, 90, quoted by Shakir Mustafa, al-Qissa fi Suriyya hatta al-Harb alAlamiyya al-Thaniya (Cairo, 1958), 97. 18. Al-Qasatili mentions these experiences in his Murshid wa Fitna which appeared serially in al-Jinan (1880-1881). 19. Numan Abduh al-Qasatili, al-Fatat al-Amina wa Ummuha in al-Jinan (1880), 30. 20. Ibid., 90. 21. Ibid., 122-123. 22. Numan Abduh al-Qasatili, Riwayat Anis in al-Jinan (1881-1882). 23. Riwayat Anis in al-Jinan (1881), 185-186. 24. Ibid., 250-251, 572-573, 634. 25. Ibid., 250. 26. Ibid., 378-379. 27. Numan Abduh al-Qasatili, Riwayat Murshid wa Fitna in al-Jinan (1881), 31. 28. Al-Qasatili, Riwayat Murshid wa Fitna, in al-Jinan (1880), 410-444, 543. 29. Ibid., 153-158. 30. Ibid., 668-670. 31. Ibid., 251. 32. Ibid., 570, 634-667. 33. Ibid., 474-475. 34. Ibid., 217. 35. Ibid., 222, 251. 36. Ibid., 30.

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37. Ibid., 31. 38. Ibid., 60. 39. Ibid., 62, 153, 159, 255, 281. 40. For al-Bustani's criticism of Ottoman government officials, see his novel Zenobia in al-Jinan (1871): 1, 4, 494, 822. Perhaps for fear of retaliation by the Ottoman censor, al-Bustani's criticism was mostly only implied.

Chapter 9: Jurji Zaydan and the Arab Historical Novel 1. See Mudhakkirat Jurji Zaydan, ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid (Beirut, 1968), 1-20. Portions of these Mudhakkirat have been appended to Zaydan's TarikhAdab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4 (Beirut, 1914): 325-326. See also Mukhtarat Jurji Zaydan 1 (Cairo, 1919): 7-17; Ignaz Kratschkowsky, "Zaidan," The Encyclopedia of Islam 4 (Leyden: 1934): 1195—1196; C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur 3 (Leiden, 1939): 185-188; Muhammad Abd al-Ghani Hasan, Jurji Zaydan (Cairo, 1970), 1-44; Cheikho, Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya fi al-Rub al-Awwal min al-Qarn al-Ishrin, 71; and Thomas Philipp, Gurgi Zaidan: His Life and Thought (Beirut and Wiesbaden, 1979). 2. Mudhakkirat Jurji Zaydan, 1, 53. 3. The Mudhakkirat end with Zaydan's arrival in Alexandria in October 1883. 4. Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya 4: 325-326; Mukhtarat Jurji Zaydan, 1: 14-15; and Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi alHadith, 74-76. For a list of Zaydan's writings see Yusuf Alyan Sarkis, Mu 'jam alMatbu'at al-Arabiyya wa al-Mu'arraba 1: 987; Yusuf As'ad Daghir, Masadir alDirasa al-Adabiyya 2 (Beirut, 1955): 442-446; Elias Zakhura, Mir'at al-Asr fi Tarikh wa RusumAkabir al-Rijal fi Misr (Cairo, 1879), 464; Anis al-Khuri al-Maqdisi, al-Funun al-Adabiyya wa A'lamuha (Beirut, 1963), 516; Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha fi Misr 1870-1938 (Cairo, 1963), 409-410; and Joseph Harb, Jurji Zaydan: Rajul fi Rijal (Beirut, 1970), 25-26. 5. Kratschkowsky, ibid., 1195-1196. 6. See al-Hilal 5 (1896):24. 7. See Zaydan's introduction to his novel al-lnqilab al-Uthmani in al-Hilal, 16 (1908); and his Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami, ed. Husayn Munis 1 (Cairo, n.d.): 12; Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya, 96; and Najm, al-Qissa fi alAdab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 143-144. 8. See Zaydan's introduction to his novel al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, in al-Hilal, 10 (1901); and Kratschkowsky, ibid., 1195, who states that "the main value of his [Zaydan's] novels lies in their popularizing of history." 9. See Zaydan's introduction to his novel al-lnqilab al-Uthmani, in al-Hilal, 16 (1908), and his introduction to Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami, ed. Munis, 1: 12. 10. See Zaydan's introduction to Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-lslami, 12-13. 11. Badr, ibid., 90; and Najm, ibid., 162. 12. Badr, ibid., 91-92; and Najm, ibid., 162. 13. See Abd al-Fattah Ibada, Jurji Zaydan, 133, quoted by Najm, ibid., 159-160. 14. See for example, Ghadat Karbala in al-Hilal 9 (1901): 106-107, 143. 15. Zaydan, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, in al-Hilal 9 (1901): 36-40; and Badr, ibid., 96. 16. This is true of all Zaydan's novels. See for example, al-lnqilab alUthmani, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 5 (Beirut, n.d.): 3, 42-43; and al-Abbasa

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Ukht al-Rashid, ibid., 3: 3-4, where Zaydan gives full description of the city of Baghdad. Reference will be made throughout to Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam in 5 vols. (Beirut, n. d.), which contain all of Zaydan's historical novels. 17. Zaydan, Fatat Ghassan, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 1: 1-376. Cf. Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasifi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith, 146. 18. Zaydan, Armanusa al-Misriyya in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 1: 1-184; and Shawkat, ibid., 146. 19. Zaydan, Ghadat Karbala in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 2: 7-192 and Shawkat, ibid. 20. Zaydan, Abu Muslim al-Khurasani, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 3: 1-177; Shawkat, ibid., 146-147; and Najm, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 183-186. 21. Zaydan, Fath al-Andalus aw Tariq ibn Ziyad, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 2: 1-185. 22. Zaydan, Sharl wa Abd al-Rahman, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 2: 1-173. 23. Zaydan, Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 4: 1-176. 24. Zaydan, al-Amin wa al-Mamun in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 3:1-178. 25. Zaydan, Arus Farghana, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 3: 1-173. 26. Zaydan, Ahmad ibn Tulun, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 3: 1-162. 27. Zaydan, Fatat al-Qayrawan, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 4: 1-177. 28. Zaydan, Salah al-Din wa Maka'id al-Hashshashin, in Riwayat Tarikh alIslam 4: 1-181. 29. Zydan, Shajarat al-Durr, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 4: 1-165. 30. Zaydan, Istibdad al-Mamalik, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 5:1-146. 31. Zaydan, al-Mamluk al-Sharid in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 5: 32-55, 67-88. 32. Ibid. 33. Zaydan al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 2: 115-122. 34. Zaydan, Fatat Ghassan, Part 2, in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 1: 361-363. 35. Zaydan, Adhra Quraysh in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 1: 89-91. 36. Zaydan, Asir al-Mutamahdi in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 4: 29, 132. 37. Ibid., 28. 38. Ibid., 143-160. 39. Zaydan, 17 Ramadan in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 2: 5-6. 40. Ibid., 7. 41. Ibid., 9-15. 42. Zaydan, al-Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 3:5-7. 43. Ibid., 7-16. According to the Arab historian Abu al-Hasan al-Masudi (d. 956), al-Abbasa used Jafar's mother to arrange for her meeting with Jafar. Jafar's mother dressed al-Abbasa like one of her slave girls and offered her as a present to her son. Not knowing that she was the sister of the Caliph al-Rashid, Jafar had intercourse with al-Abbasa, who later revealed her identity to Jafar. Al-Abbasa conceived with Jafar a boy who was raised in Mecca. When the Caliph al-Rashid discovered that Jafar had violated his order, he had him beheaded. Al-Masudi, Muruj al-Dhahab wa Ma'adin al-Jawhar, ed. Muhyi al-Din Abd al-Hamid 3 (Cairo, 1938): 290-292. 44. Zaydan, al-Mamluk al-Sharid in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 5:19. 45. Ibid., 23, 34. 46. Ibid., 23-24, 27-31. 47. Zaydan, al-Amin wa al-Mamun in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam, 3: 16-17. 48. Ibid., 16. 49. Ibid., 18. 50. Ibid., 17. 51. Ibid., 17-18.

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52. Najm, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith, 161. 53. Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha fi Misr, 90-101, insists that Zaydan was only an instructor of history. 54. Zaydan, al-Inqilab al-Uthmani in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 5: 99-100; Najm, ibid., 168-169. 55. Zaydan, Ar us Farghana in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 3: 5-12, 38-40. 56. Zaydan, Asir al-Mutamahdi in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 5: 36, 69. 57. Zaydan, Jihad al-Muhibbin in Riwayat Tarikh al-Islam 5: 1. 58. Najm, ibid., 77-78. 59. Zaydan, Jihad al-Muhibbin, ibid., 20-23, 44-51. 60. Badr, 106. 61. In his introduction to Zaydan's Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal, n.d.): 10, Husayn Munis states that Zaydan gave the manuscript of his lectures to Cairo University, and kept a photocopy set of the same with the intention of publishing the lectures, which he apparently did not do. See also Alman Arasili (sic), Jurji Zaydan wa al-Riwaya al-Tarikhiyya fi al-Adab al-Arabi, translated by Muhammad Yunus (Baghdad: Maktabat Baghdad, 1969), 39-39. 62. Najm, 158-159. 63. Ignaz Kratschkowsky, "Zaidan," The Encyclopedia of Islam 4 (1934): 1196. Other critics mentioned by Kratschkowsky include Yusuf Tabshi, al-Burhan fi Intiqad Riwayat Adhra Quraysh (Cairo, 1900). See Ignaz Krackovskij (Kratschkowsky) "Der historische Roman in der neueren arabischen Literatur," trans. Gerhard von Mende, Die Welt des Islams 12 (1930):75, n. 56; Najm, ibid., 158-159; Muhammad Abd al-Ghani Hasan, Jurji Zaydan (Cairo, 1970), 156; and Zaydan, Tarikh Adab al-Luhgha al-Arabiyya 3: 6. 64. Kratschkowsky, "Zaidan," 1196; Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Fi Awqat alFaragh, 2d ed. (Cairo, 1968), 238; and Muhammad Abd al-Ghani Hasan, ibid., 153-161. 65. For this statement by Taha Husayn see al-Kitab al-Dhahabi li al-Hilal (Cairo, 1942), quoted by Muhammad Abd al-Ghani Hasan, ibid., 104. 66. Badr, 107-115. 67. Shawkat, ibid., 152-179. 68. Alman Arasili, 98-99.

Chapter 10: Arabic Fiction Comes of Age 1. Said al-Bustani, Dhat al-Khidr (Cairo, 1884), 56-59, 132-134, 135-136, 147-148; Muhammad Yusuf Najm, al-Qissa fi al-Adab al-Arabi al-Hadith 1870-1914 (Beirut, 1961), 67-69. 2. Said al-Bustani, Samir al-Amirfi Lamya wa Thaqib (Cairo, 1892); Najm, 69-71. 3. Philip Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya 1: 115. 4. Ignaz Krackovskij (Kratschkowsky), "Der historische Roman in der neueren arabischen Literatur," Die Welt des Islams 12 (1930-1931): 67-69. 5. Alice al-Bustani, Sa'iba (Beirut, 1891); and Najm, 72-73. 6. Zaynab Fawwaz, Husn al-Awaqib aw Ghadat al-Zahira (Cairo, 1895 or 1899?); Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha fi Misr 1870-1983, 148-152, 162-163; Najm, 117-120. 7. For this story see Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, 1962), 288.

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8. Ahmad Shawqi, Ladiyas aw Akhir al-Fara'ina (Cairo, 1899). The edition used here is published in Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijariyya), n.d. 9. Ibid., 80-85. 10. Ahmad Shawqi, Waraqat al-As: Qissa Tarikhiyya (Cairo: al-Maktaba alTijariyya, n.d. 11. The Qa'immaqam Nasib Bey, Khafaya Misr (Cairo, 1901); Badr, 107-108. 12. This novel was published in Cairo by Jam'iyyat Muntazah al-Nufus alAdabiyya, 1898. It was discovered serendipitously by Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr. See Badr, 109, fn. 4. 13. Badr, 111, fn. 2. 14. A. F., Ishaq al-Marhum Mustafa Kamil wa Asma Ashiqatih in Badr, ibid., 111-114. 15. Abd al-Halim al-Askari, Su'ad (Cairo, 1927), 19-25; Badr, 114-115. 16. Al-Askari, ibid., 38-42, 123, 108-111; Badr, 114-115. 17. Ahmad Abu al-Khidr Mansi, Farah Anton (Cairo, Matbaat al-Ittihad, 1923), 14-16; Manahil al-Adab al-Arabi: Farah Anton (Beirut, 1950), 38; Farah Anton: Muqtatafat min Atharih, compiled by Butrus al-Bustani (Beirut, 1950), 4-5; Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Mutala'at (Cairo, 1924), 61-66; Najm, 80 who bases his information on the special edition of the journal al-Sayyidat wa al-Rijal (1923) about Farah Anton; Haydar Hajj Ismail, al-Mujtama wa al-Din wa al-lshtirakiyya: Farah Anton, (Beirut, 1972), 7-8; and "Farah Anton," al-Hilal (October 1, 1922): 65-67. 18. Kratschkowsky, "Der historische Roman," 81; Najm, ibid., and Marun Abbud, Judad wa Qudama (Beirut, 1954), 22. 19. Mansi, 21, 26. For more information on Farah Anton see Makki Habib alMumin and Ali Ajil Manhal, Min Talai Yaqdat al-Umma al-Arabiyya (Baghdad, 1981), 55-90. 20. Louis Cheikho, Tarikh al-Adab al-Arabiyya fi al-Rub al-Awwal min alQarn al-Ishrin (Beirut, 1926), 112. 21. Cheikho, 112; Abbud, 22. 22. Farah Anton, al-Hubb hatta al-Mawt (Alexandria, 1899); Abbud, 36-38. 23. Anton, al-Hubb hatta al-Mawt, 232. 24. Ibid., 232. 25. Ibid., 51. 26. Ibid., 192, and 211. 27. Ibid., 1, and 8. 28. Ibid., 212. 29. Farah Anton, al-Din wa al-Ilm wa al-Mal aw al-Mudun al-Thalath (Alexandria, 1903), 1 of the introduction; Makki Habib al-Mumin and Ali Ajil Manhal, 73-78; Haydar Hajj Ismail, ibid., 60-67. 30. Anton, ibid., 43-50, Haydar Hajj Ismail, 26-39, Abbud, 39-43; Badr, 84-86; Najm, 82-84. 31. Anton, ibid., 47-49. 32. Ibid., 50. 33. Farah Anton, al-Wahsh., al-Wahsh, al-Wahsh aw Siyaha fi Arz Lubnan (Alexandria, 1903). 34. Najm, 84-85; Abbud, 44-50; Badr, 85-87. 35. Farah Anton, Urushalim al-Jadida aw Fath al-Arab Bayt al-Maqdis (Alexandria, 1904); Abbud, 51-63; Najm, 187-190; Badr, 108-109, unjustly accuses Anton of being prejudiced against the Arabs and Muslims because "not all his characters are Arabs, and he credits the Arabs' occupation of Jersualem not to their courage but, among other things, to the weakness of the Byzantine emperor. Also he treats with contempt Irmiya because he converted to Islam, and finally for his claim that the Arabs' occupation of Jersualem was a disaster for the East."

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36. Anton, Urushalim al-Jadida, 39-40. 37. Ibid., 51-54, 62. 38. Ibid., 139. 39. Ibid., 177-179. 40. Ibid., 139; and Badr, 108-109 on the conversion of Irmiya to Islam. Cf. above fn. 35. 41. Ibid., 50-51. 42. Ibid., 147-152 with the footnotes. 43. Ibid., 160-161. 44. Ibid., entire Chapter 12: 81-95. Especially 87-88. 45. Ibid., 180. 46. Kratschkowsky, 82. 47. Farah Anton, Maryam Qabl al-Tawba (New York, 1906), 16-17, 83-92; Abbud, 64-66. 48. Anton, Maryam Qabl al-Tawba, 24. 49. Ibid., 68. 50. Ibid., 64. 51. Ibid., 61-62. 52. Ibid., 63, 65-66. 53. Ibid., 62. 54. Ibid., 71-72. 55. Ibid., 72-74. 56. Ibid., 88. 57. Ibid., 89-90. 58. Ibid., 41,46-47, 49-50. 59. See Najm's interview of Haddad on April 24, 1951. Najm, 87-88. 60. Niqula Haddad, Hawwa al-Jadida aw Yvonne Monar 3d ed. (Cairo, 1929), 3-4. The novel was first published in 1906. 61. Niqula Haddad, Kulluh Nasib (Cairo, 1903); Najm, 88-95. 62. Haddad, Hawwa al-Jadida aw Yvonne Monar, 3-4. 63. Ibid., 92-99, 102-124. 64. Ibid., 102-124. 65. Niqula Haddad, As rar Mis r (Cairo, 1906); Badr, 152-153. 66. Niqula Haddad, Adam al-Jadid (Cairo, 1914); Najm, 102-106. 67. Niqula Haddad, Fatinat al-lmberator (François Joseph Imberator alNamsa al-Sabiq), (Cairo, 1922); Badr, 159. 68. Niqula Haddad, Al-Alam al-Jadid aw al-Aja'ib wa al-Ghara'ib alAmerikiyya (Cairo, 1924-25); Badr, 159. 69. Ahmad Rif'at, al-Hasna al-Wafiyya (Cairo, 1902); Badr, 155. 70. Muhammad Masud, Ghadat al-Ahram (Cairo, Silsilat Musamarat al-Sha'b No. 13, 1905); Badr, 155. 71. Yaqub Sarruf, Fatat Misr (Cairo, 1905), 14, 28, 92; Najm, 108-110. 72. Badr, 155. 73. Kratschkowsky, "Der historische Roman," 83. 74. Yaqub Sarruf, Amir Lubnan (Cairo, 1907); Najm, 191-195. 75. Sarruf, Amir Lubnan, 104-105. 76. Ibid., 33. 77. Ibid., 75-76, 100. 78. Ibid., 89, 94. 79. Ibid., 29. 80. Ibid., 9-12. 81. Ibid., 10-12. 82. Ibid., 27-31, 89-94. 83. Yaqub Sarruf, Fatat al-Fayyum (Cairo, 1908); Najm, 110-113.

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Origins of Modern Arabic

Fiction

84. Sarruf, Fatat al-Fayyum, 47-53. 85. Ibid., 81-93. 86. Ibid., 14, 28, 97. 87. Hasan Riyad, al-Fatat al-Yabaniyya (Cairo: Silsilat Musamarat al-Sha'b No. 16, 1905); Badr, 142. 88. Abd al-Qadir Hamza, hat al-Tarikh (Cairo: Musamarat al-Sha'b No. 15, 1905); Badr, 142. 89. Khalil Bey Sa'ada, Asrar al-Thawra al-Rusiyya (Cairo, 1905). 90. Kratschkowsky, 85. 91. Kratschkowsky, 85; Najm, 212-214; Badr, 142. 92. Khalil Khayyat, Hannibal al-Phuniqi (New York, 1901). 93. Kratschkowsky, 84. 94. Amin Zahir Khayr Allah, al-Mar'a Malak wa Shaytan (New York, 1907). 95. Kratschkowsky, 84; Najm, 214-216. 96. Labiba Hashim, Qalb al-Rajul (Cairo, 1904); Najm, 114-116. 97. Labiba Hashim, Shirin (Cairo, 1907); Najm, 217-219. 98. Amin Nasir al-Din, Ghadat Busra (Alayh: Lebanon, 1329 A.H./1911 A.D.); Najm, 196-198. 99. Labiba Mikhail Sawaya, Hasna Salonik (Damascus: The Rum Orthodox Patriarchate Press, 1909). 100. Sawaya, Hasna Salonik, 119; Najm, 203. 101. Farida Atiyya, Bayn Arshayn (Tarabulus [Tripoli]: Lebanon, 1912). 102. Atiyya, 182; Najm, 207. 103. Atiyya, 193; Najm, 209. 104. Gibran Khalil Gibran, al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira (New York, 1912). The edition used here is in al-Majmu'a al-Kamila li Mu'allafat Gibran Khalil Gibran (Beirut, 1949), 169-243. 105. Tawfiq Sa'igh, Adwa Jadida ala Gibran (Beirut, 1966), 223. 106. Al-Majmu'a al-Kamila, 239. 107. Sa'igh, 220. 108. Khalil S. Hawi, Kahlil Gibran: His Background, Character and Works (Beirut, 1963), 149-152 and 249; Rose Ghurayyib, Gibran fi Atharih al-Kitabiyya (Beirut, 1969), 269-270. 109. Sa'igh, 223. 110. Ibid. 111. See Matti Moosa, introduction to Yusuf al-Huwayyik, Gibran in Paris (New York, 1976), 16; Jamil Jabr, Gibran: Siratuh, Adabuh, Falsafatuh wa Rasmuh (Beirut, 1958), 107-108; Najm, 122-123. 112. Sa'igh, 222. 113.Ibid. 114. Jabr, 108. 115. Ibid., 180-181. 116. Al-Majmu'a al-Kamila, 209. 117. Mikhail Naimy, Khalil Gibran: His Life and His Work (Beirut, 1967), 131-132; Jabr, 111.

Chapter 11: The Growth of the Egyptian Novel 1. Abd al-Hamid Khidr Albu Qurqasi, al-Qisas Hayat (Cairo: Maktabat alNajah, 1905), 2; Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, Panorama al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya alHaditha (Beirut, 1982), 25.

Notes

411

2. Albu Qurqasi, 11-12. 3. Al-Nassaj, 27. 4. Albu Qurqasi, 7. 5. Ahmad Hafiz Awad, al-Hal wa al-Ma'al (Cairo, 1905), 16, 21, 31, 86. 6. Ibid., and Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya alHaditha, 145. 7. Mahmud Khayrat, al-Fata al-Rifi (Cairo, 1902); and al-Fatat al-Rifiyya (Cairo, 1905). Cf. Badr, 156-157. 8. Khayrat, al-Fata al-Rifi, 114-116. 9. Khayrat, al-Fatat al-Rifiyya , 28-34. 10. Ibid. 11. Badr, 156. 12. Khayrat, al-Fatat al-Rifiyya, 7-13. 13. See Yahya Haqqi's introduction to Mahmud Tahir Haqqi, Adhra Dinshaway (Cairo, 1964), 1, 4, 12, 15. 14. Ibid., the introduction, 4-5. 15. Ibid., the introduction, 3. 16. Mahmud Tahir Haqqi, Adhra Dinshaway, 52-53. 17. Yahya Haqqi, introduction to Adhra Dinshaway, 3. 18. Ibid., 4-5. 19. Ibid. 20. Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, Tatawwur Fann al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Misr min Sanat 1910 ila Sanat 1933 (Cairo, 1968), 65-74; and by the same author Panorama al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 30-33. 21. Salih Hamdi Hammad, Hayatuna al-Adabiyya, 2d ed. (Cairo, 1913). This volume is appended by two treatises translated from the French, one by Cicero and the other by Volney. 22. Salih Hamdi Hammad, Ahsan al-Qisas in 3 volumes (Cairo, 1910-1911). The first volume contains the entire novel al-Amira Yara'a, 3-134, and a short story entitled al-Ba'isat (The Miserable Women), 135-142. The second volume contains the entire novel Ibnati Saniyya (My Daughter Saniyya), 1-149. The third volume, published in 1911, contains a long story entitled Bayn Ashiqayn (Between Two Lovers), 3-62; three short stories: Min al-Faqr ila al-Ghina (From Poverty to Riches), 63-95; Fi al-Rif( In the Country), 96-114; S... Bey, 115-127; and several legends and humorous anecdotes. 23. Salih Hamdi Hammd, al-Amira Yara'a in Ahsan al-Qisas, 1: 20. 24. Ibid., 55-56. 25. Ibid., 28. 26. Ibid., 73-74. 27. Ibid., 57. 28. Ibid., 94-100. 29. Ibid., 100-106. 30. Salih Hamdi Hammad, Ibnati Saniyya in Ahsan al-Qisas, 2: 65-69. 31. Ibid., 73-78, 95-98, 143. 32. Ibid., 4, 6. 33. Salih Hamdi Hammad, Bayn Ashiqayn in Ahsan al-Qisas 3: 26, 7, fn. 1 and 2. 34. Hammad, Ibnati Saniyya in Ahsan al-Qisas, 2: 104. 35. Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasifi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith 1800-1956, 220; Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam, 291; Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 317, 333; and Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, al-Riwa'i wa al-Ard (The Novelist and the Earth, Cairo: al-Hay'a al Misriyya al-Amma li al-Ta'lif wa al-Nashr, 1971), 45-71.

412

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

36. See Muhammad Husayn Haykal's introduction to Zaynab: Manazir wa Akhlaq Rifiyya (Cairo, 1963), 7 - 8 ; Abd al-Aziz Sharaf, Muhammad Husayn Haykalfi Dhikrah (Cairo, 1978), 76; Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, Panorama al-Riwaya alArabiyya al-Haditha, 34. 37. Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Haditha, 157. 38. See, for example, Yahya Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahda, n.d.), 38, 53; Ismail Adham and Ibrahim Naji, Tawfiq al-Hakim (Cairo: Dar Sa'd Misr li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1945), 36. 39. Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Zaynab, 16-17. 40. Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya, 50. 41. Haykal, Zaynab, 266-283. 42. Gibb, 293. 43. Haykal, Zaynab, 16-17. 44. Ibid., 18. 45. Ibid., 21-23. 46. Ibid., 53. 47. Hasan Muhassib, Qadiyyat al-Fallah fi al-Qissa al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1971), 44-45. 48. Haykal, Zaynab, 314. 49. Ibid., 330. For more on Zaynab see Shawkat, 220-330; Badr, 317; Gibb, 291-296; Ali al-Ra'i, Dirasatfi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya, 23-54. 50. Haykal, Zaynab, 32-34, 96. 51. Ibid., 150. 52. Haqqi, 75-76, 103-106; Farouk Shusha, "Ma al-Udaba: Mahmud Timur," al-Adab (September, 1960): 10-11, reproduced in Mahmud Timur, Dilal Mudi'a: Falsafat al-Adab wa al-Fann wa Mushkilat al-Mujtama wa al-Hayat (Cairo, 1963), 9-58; Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Thawrat al-Adab (Cairo, 1965), 8-9. 53. Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya, 102-103; Abbas Khidr's introduction to Isa Ubayd, Ihsan Hanim: Majmu'at Qisas Misriyya Asriyya (Cairo, 1964), 1-2; and Fatima Musa, Fi al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya al-Mu'asira (Cairo, 1971), 208-210. 54. For Ihsan Hanim see previous note and Isa Ubayd, Thurayya: Majmu 'at Qisas Misriyya Asriyya (Cairo, 1922). 55. Badr, 212; Abbas Khidr's introduction to Ihsan Hanim, 18. 56. See Isa Ubayd's introduction to Ihsan Hanim, 9. 57. Isa Ubayd, Thurayya, 87; Badr, 250. 58. Ubayd, Ihsan Hanim, 2; and Thurayya, 20-22, 56-57. 59. Ubayd, Thurayya, 53. 60. See Ubayd's introduction to Ihsan Hanim, 8. 61. Ubayd, Thurayya, 5-9. 62. Ibid., 14-15, 19-20, 32, 52; Badr, 256-258. 63. Ubayd, Thurayya, 27, 38, 51,62; Badr, 257. 64. Ubayd's introduction to Thurayya, 6. 65. For a discussion of Timur's works and career see Nazih al-Hakim, Mahmud Timur Ra'id al-Qissa al-Arabiyya (Cairo, 1944); Salah al-Din Abu Salim, Mahmud Timur al-Adib al-Insan (Cairo, 1961); Fathi al-Abyari, Mahmud Timur wa Fann al-Uqsusa al-Arabiyya (Cairo, 1961), and, by the same author, Fann al-Qissa ind Mahmud Timur (Cairo, 1964). 66. Mahmud Timur, al-Shaykh Jumu'a wa Aqasis Ukhra (Cairo, 1927), 12; Sayyid Hamid al-Nassaj, Tatawwur Fann al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Misr, 333-334; Fathi al-Abyari, Mahmud Timur wa Fann al-Uqsusa al-Arabiyya, 43-45. 67. See Muhammad Jibril's interview of Mahmud Timur in Timur's Dilal Mudi'a, 69-72, 191-192; and by the same author, Dirasatfi al-Qissa wa al-Masrah

Notes

413

(Cairo, n.d.), 146; Salah al-Din Abu Salim, 14-91; al-Nassaj, Tatawwur Fan alQissa al-Qasira fi Misr, 309-310. 68. Farouk Shusha, "Ma al-Udaba: Mahmud Timur," al-Adab (September 1960): 10. 69. See Abbas Bahi's interview of Mahmud Timur in Timur's Dilal Mudi'a, 93-95; and Shusha, 12. 70. Mahmud Timur, Dilal Mudi'a, 95-96; al-Abyari, Mahmud Timur wa Fann al-Uqsusa al-Arabiyya, 45. 71. Mahmud Timur, Raj ab Effendi (Cairo, 1928). 72. Ibid., the introduction, 3. 73. Ibid., 107. 74. Ibid., 5-9. 75. Ibid., 26-28. 76. Ibid., 9. 77. Ibid., 22. 78. Ibid., 12. 79. Ibid., 61-66. 80. Ibid., 111. In an epilogue Timur states that after correcting the manuscript of Rajab Effendi, he thought that the story was not long enough to fill a whole book. So he added a short story entitled al-Mahkum bi al-I'dam, whose plot is of the nature of Rajab Effendi, in order to please his readers. 81. Ibid., 102-115. 82. Mahmud Timur, al-Atlal (Cairo, 1934); al-Abyari, Fann al-Qissa ind Mahmud Timur, 12-14; Badr, 258-259. In 1951 Timur rewrote this novel with modifications and additions, adding several new chapters and publishing it under the title Shabab wa Ghaniyat. See al-Abyari, ibid., 14-15. 83. Mahmud Timur, Nida al-Majhul (Beirut, 1939). The 4th ed. (Cairo, 1948), is used here throughout. For English translation see The Call of the Unknown, translated by Hume Horan (Beirut: Khayat's, 1964). 84. Timur, Nida al-Majhul, 24. 85. Ibid., 153. 86. Al-Abyari, Fann al-Qissa ind Mahmud Timur, 37-38. 87. Muhammad Mandur, Fi al-Mizan al-Jadid 4th ed. (Cairo, n.d.), 46-49; Salah al-Din Abu Salim, Mahmud Timur al-Adib al-Insan, 93-94. 88. Mahmud Timur, Salwafi Mahabb al-Rih (Cairo, 1943). The 1974 reprint is cited here throughout. The reference here is to 386-388. 89. Ibid., 267-268. 90. Ibid., 283. 91. Ali al-Ra'i, Dirsatfi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya, 216. 92. Timur, Salwafi Mahabb al-Rih, 262. 93. Ibid., 333-335, 354; and Abd al-Halim Abd Allah, "Hadith al-Shahr ma Mu'allif Salwa fi Mahabb al-Rih Mahmud Timur," Al-Qissa (July, 1964): 19-26, especially 22. 94. Timur, Salwafi Mahabb al-Rih, 262, 279-280. 95. Ibid., 178-183, 194. 96. Ibid., 143-144. 97. Ibid., 250-257, 261. 98. Ibid., 11, 28, 143. 99. Ibid.,70-71, 78, 135-136. 100. Ibid., 160-161. 101. Yahya Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriya, 84-85, and his introduction to Mahmud Tahir Lashin, Sukhriyat al-Nay (Cairo, 1964), 8.

414

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102. Haqqi's introduction to Sukhriyat al-Nay, 8; the interview of Tawfiq alHakim by Fuad Dawwara in the latter's book Ashrat Udaba Yatahaddathun (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal, 1965), 52; and Miriam Cooke, The Anatomy of an Egyptian Intellectual: Yahya Haqqi (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984), 5 - 8 , 66-68, 81-87, 123, 129, 137, 148, 168. 103. Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya, 74-78. 104. Ibid., 76; Farouk Shusha, "Ma al-Udaba: Mahmud Timur," al-Adab (September, 1960): 76; Ahmad Dayf, Muqaddima li Dirasat Balaghat al-Arab (Cairo, 1921), quoted in al-Nassaj, Tatawwur Fann al-Qissa al-Qasira, 113. 105. Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya, 80-82. 106. Haqqi, ibid., 78-80; and Haqqi, introduction to Sukhriyat al-Nay, 19; Dawwara, 52-53; al-Nassaj, Tatawwur Fann al-Qissa al-Qasira fi Misr, 196-197. For more on this "new school," the journal al-Fajr and the works of fiction it has published see al-Nassaj, ibid., 166-180; and Miriam Cooke, The Anatomy of an Egyptian Intellectual: Yahya Haqqi, 66-68, 81-86, 123-129, 137, 168, and by the same author, "Yahya Haqqi As Critic and Nationalist," International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (1981), 1-34. For the short stories of Ahmad Khayri Said published in al-Fajr, see al-Nassaj, ibid., 181-195. 107. Haqqi, 79. 108. Haqqi's introduction to Lashin's Sukhriyat al-Nay, 13-14. 109. Mahmud Tahir Lashin, Hawwa bila Adam (Cairo, 1934), 30-34. For an analysis of this novel see Hilary Kilpatrick, "Hawwa bila Adam: An Egyptian Novel of the 1930s," Journal of Arabic Literature 4 (1973): 48-56, especially 4 9 - 5 0 for a summary of the plot. 110. Lashin, Hawwa bila Adam, 160; Badr, 270-271; Kilpatrick, 50. 111. Badr, 263. 112. Naguib Mahfouz, al-Qahira al-Jadida (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.), entire Chapter 12. 113. Lashin, Hawwa bila Adam, 45-47. 114. Ibid., 19, 34-35. 115. Ibid., 42-43; Badr, 267. 116. Lashin, Hawwa bila Adam, 56-57. 117. Ibid., 26, 82-83. 118. Yahya Haqqi, Fajr al-Qissa al-Misriyya, 84. 119. See Hasan Mahmud's introduction to Hawwa bila Adam, 8-9. 120. Lashin, Hawwa bila Adam, 65-66. 121. Ibid., 66-67. 122. Ibid., 67. 123. Ibid., 66-68. 124. Ibid., 146-147. 125. Ibid., 51-52. 126. Ibid., 17-19. 127. Kilpatrick, 56.

Chapter 12: The Egyptian Modernists and the Novel 1. Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, 1962), 268-286. 2. Taha Husayn, Mustaqbal al-Thaqafafi Misr (Cairo, 1938), translated into English by Sydney Glazer as The Future of Culture in Egypt (Washington, 1954); Pierre Cachia, Taha Husayn: His Place in the Egyptian Literary Renaissance (London: Luzac, 1956), 73-103; Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age

Notes

415

1798-1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 324-340; Salah Abd al-Sabur, al-A'mal al-Kamila: Aqul Lakum an Jil al-Ruwwad (Cairo: al-Haya al-Amma li alKitab, 1989), 49. 3. Gibb, 268-286; Cachia, 86-103; Hourani, 324-340; John Haywood, Modern Arabic Literature 1800-1970 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972), 193-197. 4. Fuad Dawwara, Ashrat Udaba Yatahaddathun (Cairo: Kitab al-Hilal, 1965), 20. 5. See al-Manar, XXVII (Cairo, 1926): 387-388, quoted in Gibb, 321; and Abd al-Halim Abd Allah's interview of Taha Husayn in al-Qissa (February 1964), 6. 6. Most sources on Taha Husayn deal with this subject in some fashion. See Ahmad Kamal Zaki, "Fi al-Shi'r al-Jahili: Nazra am Nazariyya," al-Hilal (February, 1966), 167-172; Khayri Shalabi, Muhakamat Taha Husayn (Beirut: al-Muassasa alArabiyya li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 1972); Muhammad Ahmad al-Ghamrawi, alNaqd al-Tahlili li Kitab Fi al-Adab al-Jahili (Cairo: al-Matbaa al-Salafiyya, 1929); Mahmud Awad, Afkar Didd al-Rasas, Silsilat Iqra 358 (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif bi Misr, 1972), 145-192; Sami al-Kayyali, Ma Taha Husayn, Silsilat Iqra 1 (Cairo: Dar-al-Maarif bi Misr): 51-61. 7. Taha Husayn, al-Ayyam, Part 1, translated into English by E. H. Paxton with the title An Egyptian Childhood (London: Routledge, 1932). 8. Abd Allah, 6. 9. Taha Husayn, al-Ayyam, Part 2, translated into English by Hillary Wayment with the title The Stream of Days (London: Longmans, Green, 1948). 10. Husayn, al-Ayyam, I (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1960): 1-16, 29-36; Abd alRahman Sidqi, "Amid al-Adab al-Arabi wa Mu'jizat al-Ayyam," al-Hilal (February 1966), 12-29; Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, Tatawwur al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya alHadithafi Misr 1870-1938 (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1963), 297-312; Abd al-Aziz Sharaf, Taha Husayn wa Zawal al-Mujtama al-Taqlidi (Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya al-Amma li al-Kitab, 1977), 23. 11. Husayn, al-Ayyam, I: 20. 12. See Kamil Zuhayri, "Taha Husayn: Rajul wa Minhaj," al-Hilal (February 1966), 108. 13. Taha Husayn, al-Ayyam, 2 (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif bi Misr, 1960): 102. 14. Husayn, ibid., 43. 15. Anwar al-Jundi, "Safahat Majhula min Hayat Taha Husayn 1908-1916," al-Hilal (February 1966), 83-84. 16. Taha Husayn, Mudhakkirat Taha Husayn (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1967), 70-71. 17. See Badr, 315. 18. Muhammad Najib Ahmad al-Tallawi, Taha Husayn wa al-Fann al-Qisasi (Cairo: Dar al-Hidaya, 1986), 76. 19. Dawwara, 21. 20. Taha Husayn, Adib (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif bi Misr, 1962), 85. For a summary of the plot see Cachia, 240-241; al-Sabur, 27-34; and Hilary Kilpatrick, The Modern Egyptian Novel (London: Ithaca Press, 1974), 36-38. 21. Dawwara, 21. 22. Taha Husayn, Du'a al-Karawan (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif bi Misr, n.d.); Cachia, 243-244; and Hamdi Sakkut, The Egyptian Novel and Its Main Trends from 1913 to 1952 (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1971), 3 1 36. 23. Al-Sabur, 22-23. 24. Cachia, 194-195. 25. Muhammad Mandur, Fi al-Mizan al-Jadid, 3d edition (Cairo: Matbaat Nahdat Misr, n.d.), 57-58.

416

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Fiction

26. See Badr al-Din Dib, "Du'a al-Karawan aw Taha Husayn al-Riwa'i," alAdib (Beirut: June, 1953), 24; Yusuf al-Sharuni, "Abu Mandur bayn Zaynab wa Du'a al-Karawan wa al-Ard," al-Qissa (January 1964), 118-119; Ali al-Ra'i, Dirasatfi al-Riwaya al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1964), 140-156; Sakkut, 31-36. 27. Taha Husayn, Shajarat al-Bu's (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif bi Misr, 1944); Cachia, 241-243; Sakkut, 100-101; Kilpatrick, 39-40; and Mahmud Hamid Shawkat, al-Fann al-Qisasifi al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith 1800-1956 (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-Arabi, 1956), 233-234. 28. Hamdi Sakkut and John Marsden, A 'lam al-Adab: Taha Husayn—Bibliography (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1975), 48. 29. Kamal Qultah, Taha Husayn wa Athar al-Thaqafa al-Faransiyya fi Adabih (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1970), 195-197; Tallawi, 56, n. 110. 30. Matti Moosa, The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Images of Modern Egypt (Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 1994), 78-79. 31. Husayn Nassar, "Fann al-Qissa ind Taha Husayn," al-Qissa (January 1964), 32-47. 32. See Theater of the Mind: Plays, Prefaces and Postscripts of Tawfiq alHakim, translated into English by W. M. Hutchins, 2 vols. (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981). 33. Ismail Adham and Ibrahim Naji, Tawfiq al-Hakim (Cairo: Dar Sa'd Misr li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1945), 64, fn. 1. 34. Tawfiq al-Hakim, Awdat al-Ruh, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Adab, n.d., first published by Matbaat al-Ragha'ib, 1933). Translated into English by William M. Hutchins as Return of the Spirit (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1990). See Hutchins, "Introduction" to Return of the Spirit, 3-22; Badr, 372-394; and Ghali Shukri, Thawrat al-Mu'tazil: Dirasafi Adab Tawfiq al-Hakim (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglo-al-Misriyya, 1966), 149-194; Abd al-Muhsin Taha Badr, al-Riwa'i wa al-Ard (Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya al-Amma li al-Ta'lif wa al-Nashr, 1971), 105-111. 35. Tawfiq al-Hakim, Zahrat al-Umr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Adab, n.d.), 6, lists works by al-Hakim which have been translated into European languages. 36. Ghali Shukri, Thawrat al-Fikr fi Adabina al-Hadith (Cairo: Maktabat alAnglo-al-Misriyya, 1965), 206-207. Egyptian writer Salah Abd al-Sabur, 41 states, "With Awdat al-Ruh the contemporary Arab story was born." 37. Adham and Naji, 92, 159. 38. See the anonymous Tawfiq al-Hakim al-Fannan (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab alJadid, n.d.), 27; Abd al-Halim Abd Allah, "Ma Mu'alliMwdar al-Ruh Tawfiq alHakim," al-Qissa (April 1964), 5-13. 39. Ghali Shukri, Mudhakkirat Thaqafa Tahtadir (Beirut: Dar al-Taliaa li alTibaa wa al-Nashr, 1970), 243. 40. George Tarabishi. La'bat al-Hulm wa al-Waqi: Dirasa fi Adab Tawfiq alHakim (Beirut: Dar al-Taliaa li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1972), 24. 41. Shukri, Mudhakkirat Thaqafa Tahtadir, 237. 42. Nevill Barbour, "Audatu'-Ruh—An Egyptian Novel," The Islamic Culture (July 1935), 487-492. 43. Al-Ra'i, 125-127. 44. Yahya Haqqi, Khutuwatfi al-Naqd (Cairo: Maktabat Dar al-Uruba, n.d.), 101. 45. Haqqi, 104-105. 46. Hutchins, "Introduction" to Return of the Spirit, 3-22. 47. Tawfiq al-Hakim, Usfur min al-Sharq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Adab, n.d.), 20-21. 48. Ibid., 84-90.

Notes

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49. Ibid., 173-184, 190. 50. Moosa, 180-200. 51. Tarabishi, 39-40. 52. Al-Hakim, Usfur min al-Sharq, 143. 53. Al-Hakim, Zahrat al-Umr, 169. 54. Dawwara, 26-28. Al-Hakim's explanation of the term Adu al-Mar'a is unconvincing. 55. Tawfiq al-Hakim, Raqisat al-Ma'bad (Cairo: Matbaat al-Tawakkul, 1943), 158. 56. Tarabishi, 33. 57. Tawfiq al-Hakim, Yawmiyyat Na'ib fi al-Aryaf(Cairo: Maktabat al-Adab, n.d., originally published by Matbaat Lajnat al-Tal'if wa al-Tarjama). The book was translated into English by A. S. Eban with the title Maze of Justice (London: The Harvill Press, 1947); Badr, al-Riwa'i wa al-Ard, 90-104. 58. Al-Hakim, ibid., 170-171, 236-237; see al-Hakim, "Mintaqat al-Iman," al-Risala, 4, No. 145 (April 1936), 606-608. 59. Tawfiq al-Hakim, al-Ribat al-Muqaddas (Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya alArama li al-Kitab, 1974). 60. Tawfiq al-Hakim, Introduction to al-Ribat al-Muqaddas (Cairo: Dar Rose El-Youssef, 1956); this introduction is missing from the 1974 edition. 61. Tarabishi, 121-122. 62. Gibb, 281. 63. Nimat Ahmad Fuad, Adab al-Mazini, 2d ed. (Cairo: Muassasat al-Khanji, 1961), 114-115. 64. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Khuyut al-Ankabut (Cairo, 1935), 392; Ahmad Ubayd, Mashahir Shu'ara al-Asr, I, 13-16, quoted in Fuad, 59; Muhammad Mandur, Ibrahim al-Mazini (Cairo: Matbaat Nahdat Misr, 1954), 28. 65. Fuad, 59-62. 66. Ibid., 41-108. 67. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, "Ahamm Hadith Aththara fi Majra Hayati," al-Hilal (April 1935), 532-533. 68. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, "Uyubi," al-Hilal (March 1943), 60-62. 69. Fuad, 53-54, 69, 73. 70. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Ibrahim al-Katib (Cairo: al-Dar alQawmiyya li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1960), Introduction, 10-11. Unfortunately, this edition does not preserve the author's introduction to the first edition (Cairo: Matbaat al-Taraqqi, 1931). The novel was translated into English by Magdi Wahba under the title Ibrahim the Writer (Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1976). For more comments on the novel see Gibb, 301; Sakkut, 17-25; Kilpatrick, 26-28; al-Ra'i, 75-97; al-Sabur, 306-323; Badr, 333-356; Fuad, 200-205; Shawkat, 253-255; and M. M. Badawi, "Al-Mazini the Novelist," Journal of Arabic Literature IV (1973): 112-145. 71. For further information see Fuad, 199; and Badr, 342-343. 72. Fuad, 200. 73. See M. E. Saussey, "Ibrahim al-Mazini et Son Roman d'Ibrahim," Bulletin d'Etudes Des Orientales 2 (1932): 150-158. 74. For more analysis see al-Ra'i, 75-97; and Badr, 347. 75. Al-Ra'i, 94; Saussey, 168, footnote. 76. Badawi, 127, 139. 77. Badr, 353-354. 78. Gibb, 302, says that Ibrahim al-Katib is not an Egyptian novel except for its characters and setting. For different views see Collin Bailey, "Ray Ingilizi fi

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al-Qissa al-Misriyya," al-Hilal (May 1943), 211; and William M. Hutchins's introduction to al-Mazini's Egypt (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1983), 3-4. The latter work contains Hutchins's translations of three works by al-Mazini: Midu and His Accomplices, Return to a Beginning, and The Fugitive. 79. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Ibrahim al-Thani (Cairo: al-Dar alQawmiyya li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1962). In his introduction to al-Mazini's Egypt, 4, Hutchins says "Ibrahim al-Thani is a more cohesive novel [than Ibrahim alKatib]." 80. Mandur, 69. 81. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Midu wa Shurakah (Cairo: Matbaat alNahar, 1943). Translated into English by William M. Hutchins as Midu and His Accomplices, in al-Mazini's Egypt, 13-98. 82. Al-Mazini, Midu wa Shurakah, 134-135.1 have followed here Hutchins's translation, 80. 83. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Awd ala Bad, bound together with his Hukm al-Ta'a (Cairo: al-Kitab al-Masi, 1963?), first published in 1943 by Dar alMaarif in Cairo. Translated into English by William M. Hutchins as Return to a Beginning, in al-Mazini's Egypt, 99-166. 84. Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, Thalathat Rijal wa Imra'a (Cairo: Dar alSha'b, 1974). 85. See "Al-Aqqad 1889-1964," al-Hilal (April 1967), 30; Muhammad Abd al-Halim Abd Allah, "Hadith al-Shahr Ma Mu'allif Sarah," al-Qissa (March 1964), 5, 13; Abd al-Sami al-Misri, "Al-Aqqad fi Dhikrah al-Thaniya," al-Majalla (April 1966), 50; and al-Sabur, 69-191. 86. Abd al-Hamid Yunus, "Innama al-Aqqad Sha'ir," al-Hilal (April 1967), 60. 87. Shawqi Dayf, Ma al-Aqqad (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif bi Misr, n.d.), 57. 88. Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, "Ahamm Hadith Aththara fi Majra Hayati," alHilal (November 1929), 14-141. 89. Mahmud Timur, "Al-Aqqad Kama Arah," al-Hilal (April 1967), 23. 90. Dayf, 57. 91. For al-Aqqad's ideas on Marxism see Uthman Amin, "Al-Janib al-Falsafi ind al-Aqqad," al-Hilal (April 1967), 94-96. For his refutation of Gustave Le Bon's antisocialism see Kamil Zuhayri, "Al-Aqqad Siyasiyyan," al-Hilal (April 1967), 124-126. 92. Abd al-Halim Abd Allah, in al-Qissa (March 1964), 6-7. 93. Muhammad Tahir al-Jabalawi, Fi Suhbat al-Aqqad (Cairo: Maktabat alAnglo-al-Misriyya, 1964), 162-166. 94. Al-Ra'i, 55, 68-69. 95. Ibid., 69-70. 96. Al-Jabalawi, 139-143. 97. Sahir al-Qalamawi, "Sarah aw Abqariyyat al-Shakk," al-Hilal (April 1967), 156. 98. See Sofi Abd Allah, "Al-Mar'a ind al-Aqqad," al-Hilal (April 1967), 161175.

Chapter 13: Naguib Mahfouz: The Voice of Egypt 1. Fuad Dawwara, "Rihlat al-Khamsin ma al-Qira'a wa al-Kitaba," al-Katib (January 1963), 12, reproduced in his book Ashrat Udaba Yatahaddathun (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal, 1965), 265-292. Mahfouz describes himself as the pioneer of the Arabic free verse movement.

Notes

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2. Naguib Mahfouz, "Ihtidar Mu'taqadat wa Tawallud Mu'taqadat," al-Majalla al-Jadida (October 1930), 1468-1470; Ghali Shukri, ai-Muntami: Dirasa fi Adab Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo: Matbaat al-Zunnari, 1964), 46; Abd al-Muhsin Badr, Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafa li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, 1978), 43^44. 3. See Raja al-Naqqash's interview of Mahfouz in al-Hilal (February 1970), and by the same author, "al-Wajh al-Alami li Naguib Mahfouz," in the anthology Naguib Mahfouz: Nobel 1988, A Memorial Book (Cairo: Matabi al-Haya al-Misriyya al-Amma li al-Kitab, 1988), 87. 4. See Naguib Mahfouz, "Ma'na al-Falsafa," al-Jihad (August 21, 1934), 7; Badr, 52. 5. See Naguib Mahfouz, "Allah," al-Majalla al-Jadida (January 1936), 4 3 46, and "Fikrat Allah fi al-Falsafa," al-Majalla al-Jadida (March 1936), 33-40; Sabri Hafiz, "Naguib Mahfouz bayn al-Din wa al-Falsafa," al-Hilal (February 1970), 118-119; Badr, 52-55. 6. See Mahfouz's responses to the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas in Rose ElYoussef, No. 2486 (February 2, 1976), 87, and "Hiwar ma Naguib Mahfouz," Afaq Arabiyya, No. 6 (February 1976), 101; Badr, 74; and Sulayman al-Shatti, "Naguib Mahfouz: Rihlat al-Hara min al-Mu'anat ila al-Masarrat," al-Arabi (January 1989), 65. Mahfouz first made this statement to Muhammad Hasan Abd Allah in al-Bayan (March 1973). 7. See Naguib Mahfouz, "Thalatha min Udaba'ina," al-Majalla al-Jadida (February 1934), 65-66; Badr, 66. 8. Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Fi Bayti (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif li al-Tibaa wa al-Nashr, Silsilat Iqra, 1945), 27. 9. Naguib Mahfouz, "al-Qissa ind al-Aqqad," al-Risala (Cairo: August 27, 1945), 952-954. Cf. Badr, 65-67. 10. Naguib Mahfouz, Abath al-Aqdar (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1960). See Sasson Somekh, The Changing Rhythm: A Study of Naguib Mahfouz's Novels (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), 200-201 ; Abd Allah, al-Islamiyya wa al-Ruhiyyafi Adab Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1978), 31-34; Badr, 156-163; and Matityahu Peled, Religion, My Own: The Literary Works of Naguib Mahfouz (New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Books, 1983), 29-36. 11. James Baikie, Ancient Egypt, trans. Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo: al-Majalla alJadida Press, 1932), 5 - 8 , 32-33; Abath al-Aqdar, 5-25; Fatima Musa, Fi alRiwaya al-Arabiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglo-Misriyya, 1971), 35. 12. Dawwara, "Rihlat al-Khamsin," 22. 13. Naguib Mahfouz, Radobis (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1977). See Somekh, 201-202; Abd Allah, 4 3 ^ 4 ; Badr, 189-229; and Peled, 41-50. 14. Badr, 189-190. 15. Naguib Mahfouz, Kifah Tiba (Cairo: Lajnat al-Nashr li al-Jami'iyyin, 1948). See Somekh, 202-203; Abd Allah, 53-55; Badr, 246-249; Peled, 57-66. 16. Sabri Hafiz, "Naguib Mahfouz: Masadir wa Mukawwinat Tajribatih al-Ibda'iyya," al-Adab (July 1973), 36-37; reprinted in Naguib Mahfouz: Atahaddath Ilaykum (Beirut: Dar al-Awda, 1977), 86-87. 17. Hafiz, al-Adab (July 1973), 38. 18. Naguib Mahfouz, al-Qahira al-Jadida (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.). See Hilary Kilpatrick, The Modern Egyptian Novel, A Study in Social Criticism (London: Ithaca Press, 1974), 73-75, 213-214; Abd Allah, 146, 149; and Badr, 312-313. 19. Naguib Mahfouz, Khan al-Khalili (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n. d.). See Kilpatrick, 76, 78, 215-216. 20. Badr, 356. 21. Faruq Shusha, "Ma al-Udaba: Naguib Mahfouz," al-Adib (June 1960), 18. 22. Abd Allah, 84.

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23. Ibid., 88-89. 24. Naguib Mahfouz, Zuqaq al-Midaqq (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.). For an English version, see Midaq Alley, trans. Trevor LeGassick (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1988). Reference is made here to the Arabic text. See also Ali B. Jad, Form and Technique in the Egyptian Novel, 1912-1971 (London: Ithaca Press, 1973), 151, 164, 170; Roger Allen, "Najib Mahfuz: Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1988," World Literature Today, 63 (1989): 6; and Kilpatrick, 70-80, 215-216. 25. See Badr, 409-410, and Sulayman al-Shatti, al-Ramz wa al-Ramziyya fi Adab Naguib Mahfouz (Kuwait: al-Matbaa al-Misriyya, 1976), 118. 26. On Islamic qada or predestination see Sahih Muslim, 8 (Cairo: Muhammad Ali Sabih Press, 1334/1915): 44, 51. 27. Fatima Musa, 43. 28. Abd Allah, al-Waqi'iyya fi al-Riwaya al-Arabiyya (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1971), 486; Nabil Raghib, Qadiyyat al-Shakl al-Fanni ind Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo: Dar al-Katib, 1967), 199; Somekh, 100, 105; Jamal al-Ghitani, Naguib Mahfouz Yatadhakkar (Beirut: Dar al-Masira, 1980), 65; Mahmud Amin al-Alim, Ta'ammulatfi Alam Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya al-Amma li al-Talif wa alNashr, 1970), 42; Badr, 366, 369. 29. Naguib Mahfouz, al-Sarab (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.). See Jad, 161— 162, 166, 172, 174-175; Kilpatrick, 216-218; and Peled, 151, 154. 30. Naguib Mahfouz, Bidaya wa Nihaya (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.). For an English version see Ramses Awad, trans., The Beginning and the End (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1985). 31. Badr, 449, 451. 32. Fatima Musa, 64-65. 33. See the postscript by Said Jawdat al-Sahhar to Naguib Mahfouz, al-Baqi min al-Zaman Sa'a (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.), 2. 34. Naguib Mahfouz, Bayn al-Qasrayn (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.), translated into English by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny with the title Palace Walk (New York: Doubleday, 1990). Reference is made throughout to the Arabic text. 35. Rev. Jacques Jomier, Thulathiyyat Naguib Mahfouz, trans. Nazmi Luqa (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, 1959), 26; Yusuf al-Sharuni, Dirasatfi al-Adab al-Arabi alMu'asir (Cairo: al-Muassasa al-Misriyya al-Amma, 1964), 67; Dr. Louis Awad, Dirasat fi al-Adab wa al-Naqd (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglo-al-Misriyya, n.d.), 359-365. 36. Naguib Mahfouz, Bayn al-Qasrayn, 50, 52. See Abd Allah, 199-200. 37. For a definition of fasiq see Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), 402. 38. Al-Ghitani, Naguib Mahfouz Yatadhakkar, 14. 39. Naguib Mahfouz, Qasr al-Shawq (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.), translated into English by William Maynard Hutchins, Lome Kenny, and Olive E. Kenny as Palace of Desire (New York: Doubleday, 1991). Reference is made here to the Arabic text. 40. Naguib Mahfouz, Qasr al-Shawq, 359-360, 362. 41. See al-Ghitani, 65, and Shukri, al-Muntami, 7; George N. Sfeir, "The Contemporary Arabic Novel," in Fiction in Several Languages, ed. Henri Peyre (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 67. 42. Shukri, 57; al-Ghitani, 17, 21. 43. Shukri, 57, 68. 44. Naguib Mahfouz, al-Sukkariyya (Cairo: Maktabat Misr, n.d.). Translated into English by William Maynard Hutchins and Angele Botros Samaan under the title Sugar Street (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

Notes

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45. See Salama Musa, Tarbiyat Salama Musa (Cairo: Muassasat al-Khanji, 1962), 236, 268-269. 46. Naguib Mahfouz, Awlad Haratina (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1967), translated into English by Philip Stewart from the serialized version (1959) under the title Children of Gebelawi (London: Heinemann, 1981, and Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981 and 1988). A revised translation of Children of Gebelawi is published by Passeggiata Press in 1997. See Shukri, al-Muntami, 231, and Haim Gordon, Naguib Mahfouz's Egypt: Existential Themes in His Writings (New Brunswick, N.J.: Greenwood Press, 1990), 87. 47. See Abd Sattar Tawila, "Mu'amarat al-Samt ala Fatwa al-Shaykh Umar," Rose El-Youssef No. 3177 (Cairo: May 1, 1989): 12-14; and in the same issue Karam Jabr, "Ana wa Salman Rushdi," 14-16. Shaykh Abd al-Rahman Umar, a member of the extremist Islamic group al-Jihad, issued a fatwa (juristic opinion) that Mahfouz should repent or be killed. For further attacks against Mahfouz see Anwar al-Jundi, "Riwayat Salman Rushdi wa Naguib Mahfouz," al-I'tisam, No. 1 (Cairo, April 1, 1989): 5-7; and Shaykh Abd al-Hamid Kishk, Kalimatunafi alRadd ala Awlad Haratina (Cairo: al-Mukhtar al-Islami, 1989), 227-261, which contains articles against Awlad Haratina by Mustafa Adnan, originally published in the newspaper al-Nur in 1988. 48. See the Cairo newspaper al-Ahram (October 15, 1994); Chris Hedges, "Writer's Unwitting Role: Sword against Militants," The New York Times, Tuesday November 15, 1994, A4; and Mona El-Nahhas, "Intellectuals Strike Back," alAhram: November 3-9, 1994.

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Matthee, Rudi. "Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian National Debate," International Journal of Middle East Studies 21, No. 2 (May, 1989): 151-165. Mazini, Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-. "Ahamm Hadith Aththara fi Majra Hayati," alHilal (March 1935), 532-533. . "Uyubi," al-Hilal (March 1943), 60-62. Menzel. Th. "Khayal-i-Zill," The Encyclopedia of Islam 2 (1927): 934-935. Misri, Abd al-Sami. "Al-Aqqad fi Dhikrah al-Thaniya," al-Majalla (April 1966), 39-50. Moosa, Matti. "The Growth of Modern Arabic Fiction," Critique: Studies in Modern Arabic Fiction 11 (Minneapolis: 1968): 5-18. . "Naguib Mahfouz: Life in the Alley of Arab History," The Georgia Review (Spring 1995), 224-230. Mousa, Nedal A1-. "The Nature and Uses of the Fantastic in the Fictional World of Naguib Mahfouz, Journal of Arabic Literature (March 23, 1992), 36-48. Muhammad, Muhyi al-Din, "Risala min al-Qahira," al-Adab (1962): 128-132. Nadim, Abd Allah. "Al Daa al-Ifranji," in al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit (June 6, 1881), reproduced in Mutakhabat al-Marhum al-Sayyid Abd Allah al-Nadim, ed. Muhammad Ali Effendi al-Hattab al-Kutubi (Alexandria: al-Matbaa al-Misriyya, 1911), 7-13. . "Arabi Tafarnaj," in Muntakhabat al-Marhum, 13-16, and al-Tankit wa alTabkit (June 6, 1881):7-8. . "Salih wa Taii," al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit. Alexandria, 1900, 2-5. . "Saluha wa Taqiyya," al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit, 5-11. . "Al-Shaykh Alwan wa Nadim," al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit, 12-14. . "Hafiz, Hanim wa Nadim," al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit, 44-47. . "Sahrat al-Anta," in Muntakhabat al-Marhum, 16-20. . al-Taqlid, in Muntakhabat al-Marhum, 26-32, and Sulafat al-Nadim 1: 88-91. . "Muhtaj Jahil fi Yadd Muhtal Tami," in Muntakhabat al-Marhum, 22-26. . "Dimyana wa Farhana," al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit, 18-24. . "Dars Tahdhibi," in al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit No. 14 (September 18, 1881): 219-224, reproduced in al-Hadithi, 154-158; Khalaf Allah, 127-138; Nafusa Zakariyya, 160-162. . "Tahiyyat Baladi," in al-Ustadh, No. 1 (August 24, 1892): 16-21. . "Fukahat," al-Ustadh, No. 2 (August 30, 1892): 4 6 ^ 8 . . "Bab al-Tahdhib," al-Ustadh, No. 3. (September 6, 1892): 56-60. -—-—-. "Al-Taqlid Yanqul Tibaa al-Muqallad," al-Ustadh, No. 3 (September 6, 1892): 61-63. . "Al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim," al-Ustadh (September 6, 1892): 65-70. . "Said wa Bakhita," al-Ustadh, No. 4 (September 13, 1892): 90-93. . "Al-Muallaim Hanafi wa Nadim," al-Ustadh No. 5 (September 20, 1892): 107-114. — . "Hanifa wa Latifa," al-Ustadh, No. 6 (September, 27, 1892): 132-140. . "Al-Rawi," al-Ustadh, No. 7 (October 4, 1892): 145-147. . "Abu Damum wa al-Shaykh Mar'i" al-Ustadh (October 4, 1892): 147-149. . "Latifa wa Dimyana," al-Ustadh, No. 7 (October 4, 1892): 149-150. . "Zubayda wa Nabawiyya," al-Ustadh, No. 9 (October 18, 1892): 210-213. — . "Aqd Ittifaq," al-Ustadh, No. 10 (October 25, 1892): 229-231. . "Yusuf al-Qammash wa Salama al-Sayyad wa Zawjatuh Khadra," al-Ustadh, No. 10 (October 25, 1892): 233-237. . "Madrasat al-Banat: Zakiya wa Nafisa," al-Ustadh, No. 11 (November 1, 1892): 246-251. . "Hanifa wa Latifa," al-Ustadh, No. 12 (November 8, 1892): 268-272.

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Index

al-Abarat, 104 Abath al-Aqdar, 347, 348 Abbas, Ahmad, 100 Abbas Hilmi II, Khedive, 51, 69,77, 130, 298 Abbas Pasha, 45 Abbas, a Shihabi prince, 246 Abbas I, Viceroy of Egypt, 6, 7, 8, 45, 54, 98 Abbasid Caliph and the Barmicides, The, 4 al-Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid, 211, 212, 216 Abd al-Aziz, Ottoman Sultan, 188 Abd al-Aziz, son of Musa ibn Nusayr, 202 Abd al-Birr, Yusuf ibn, 203 Abd al-Fattah, al-Shaykh Muhammad, 66 Abd al-Hamid II, Ottoman Sultan, 69, 102, 127, 141, 195,221,249 Abd Allah, Abd al-Halim, 278 Abd Allah, Tawfiq, 118 Abd al-Malik, Balsam, 281 Abd al-Nasir, Jamal, 371 Abd Rabbih, Ibn , 203 Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir, 203 Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir, Umayyad Caliph of Spain, 204, 205 Abd al-Rahman ibn Muawiya ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, 179, 180 Abd al-Rahman, Shaykh Umar, 371 Abd al-Sabur, Salah, 301 Abdin, Abd al-Hamid, 119 Abduh, Ibrahim, 41, 45 Abduh, al-Shaykh Muhammad, 14-18,42, 109, 130, 148, 240, 296 Abduh, Tanius, 102, 105, 106, 107, 114 Abu al-Hasan al-Mughaffal aw Harun alRashid, 27, 28, 29, 31, 37 Abu Damum and al-Shaykh Mar '¡,80 Abu Muslim al-Khurasani, 200, 216 Abu Nazzara Zarqa, 42, 47, 48, 51 Adab al-Mazini, 326 Adabatiyya, 67, 68 Adam's Diary, 118

Adam al-Jadid, 244 Addison, Joseph, 123 Adham, Ismail, 305 Adhra Dinshaway, 257, 258, 266 Adhra al-Hind aw Tammadun al-Fara 'ina, 222 Adhra Quraysh, 210, 216 Adib, 299, 300, 301 Adu al-Mar'a. See Tawfiq al-Hakim, 316, 320 Afghani, Jamal al-Din al-, 14,42, 52, 68, 69, 127, 129, 146, 148 Afifa, 39 Aghani, Kitab al-, 203, 335 al-Ahali, 370 Ahdab, Ibrahim al-, 2, 32, 124 Ahmad ibn Tulun, 206 Ahmose 1, Pharaoh, 348 Al-Ahram, 16, 18, 34, 87, 98, 103, 358, 370, 372 Ahsan al-Qisas, 259 Ahwal al-Istibdad, 101 Ai'da, by Verdi, ix, 11, 37 al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira, 249-252. See also Broken Wings "al-Akhawat al-Thalath", 153, 154 al-Akhbar, 98, 116 Akhir Bani Siraj bi al-Andalus, 104 Ala Difaf al-Nil, 267 Alam al-Din, 9, 10, 139 al-Alam al-Jadid, 236, 240, al-Alam al-Jadid aw a-Aja'ib wa al-Ghara'ib al-Amerikiyya, 245 al-Amal, 281 al-Amali, 203 al-Amani wa al-Minnafi Hadith Qabul wa Ward J anna, 12 al-Amin wa al-Mamun, 205, 213 al-Amir al-Faris wa Imraatuh Isabella, 91 al-Amira Yara'a, 258-260 Alexandre le Grand, 12

441

442

Index

Ali Bey, (Mamluk), 208, 209 Ali, Muhammad Kurd, 36 Ali, Muhammad, Viceroy of Egypt, x, 5, 7, 8, 25, 49, 96-99, 129-138 Alphonse, son of Visigothic King Witiza, 200, 201 Allam, Tafida, 281 Allan Quartermain, 116 Alusi, Abu al-Thana al-, 2, 123 Amid al-Adab al-Arabi, 292 Amin, Ahmad, 73 Amin, al-, Abbasid Caliph, 205 Amir Lubnan, 246 Amiriyya, al-Madaris al-, 8 Ammun, Iskandar, 103 Amr ibn al-As, 200 Anbabi, Shaykh Muhammad al-, 68 Anbar, Abd al-Hamid, 119 Ancient Egypt, 347 Andromache, 32, 34, 35, 38 Anhuri, Yuhanna, 97 Anisa ala al-Muda, 44 Anna Karenina, 101 Ansar al-Tamthil, 283 Anton, Farah, xiii, 18, 109, 218, 225-240 Anwar Mosque, 67 Apophis, King, 348 Aqd Ittifaq, 81 Aqqad, Abbas Mahmud al-, xiii, 110, 117, 289, 291, 328, 339-343, 347 Arabes du Desert, 96 Arabi Tafarnaj, 73 Arabian Nights, x, xii, xiii, 58, 182, 221 al-Arba Riwayat min Nukhab al-Tiyatrat, 12 Arianism, 202 Arida, Nasib, 252 Arius, 232 Armanusa al-Misriyya, 198, 199, 200 Ars Amatoria, 331 Arsene Lupin, 105 al-Arsh wa al-Hubb, 102 Arslan, al-Amir Shakib, 104 Arslan, a Druze prince, 246 Artsibashev, Mikhail Petrovich, 117, 327 Arus Farghana, 205, 214, 215 Arzat Lubnan, 27, 28 Asir al-Mutamahdi, 198, 210, 215 Asir, Yusuf al-, 32 Askari, Abd al-Halim al-, 218, 224 Asma, 162 , 165, 169, 170, 171, 173 Asma'i, Abd al-Malik al-, 148 Asrar Misr, 243, 244 Asrar al-Thawra al-Rusiyya, 247 Assaf, Yusuf, 103 Assarhadon, 103 Atahiya, Abu al-, 148, 211, 212 Atala et René, 111 Athenian Gazette, 123

Atiyya, Farida, 100, 249 al-Atlal, 272, 273 Atrash, Hani al-, 248 Attar, Shaykh Hasan al-, 3, 5 Aurelian, Roman Emperor, 178 Awad, Hafiz, 106, 255 Awad, Louis, 119 Awd ala Bad, 336, 338 Awdat al-Ruh, 305-308, 311, 313, 314, 316 Awlad Haratina, (Children of Gebelawi), 369-372 Aybak, Izz al-Din, 208 Ayyad, Shukri Muhammad, 111, 138, 154 al-Ayyam, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301 Ayyub, Khalil Effendi, 159 Azhar, al-, 2, 3, 8, 15, 57, 66, 68, 109, 113, 130, 218, 221, 270, 293, 295, 296, 299, 300, 302, 350, 361 Aziz, a Druze prince, 222 Bab Tahdhibi, 77 Back to Methuselah, 369 Badawi, Abd al-Rahman, 119 Badawi, M. M., 330 Badawi, al-Sayyid al-, 2 al-Badou aw Arab al-Sahra, 96 Badran, Muhammad, 108, 118 Ba'd al-Khuruj min al-Janna, 118 Badr, Abd al-Muhsin Taha, 216, 218, 245, 284, 299, 357 Baignieres, Paul de, 47,50,65 Baikie, James, 347 al-Bakh.il, 26-29, 32, 33 al-Balagh, 116, 1 1 8 , 3 1 1 , 3 4 0 Balaghat al-Gharb, 106 Ballan, Anton, 102 "Balzac of Egypt." See Naguib Mahfouz, 372 Barbir, Ahmad al-, 2, 123 Barbour, Nevill, 308 Barmaki, Jafar al-, 205, 212 Barmaki, Yahya al-, 213 Barquqi, Abd al-Rahman al-, 108 Barudi, Mahmud Sami al-, 68 Bashir, Rev. Antonius, 109 Basmat al-Rabi, 151 al-Bayan, 108, 116, 261 Baybars, al-Malik al-Zahir (Rukn al-Din), 3, 208 Baydas, Khalil Ibrahim, 101, 102, 108 Bayn al-Qasrayn, 358-362 Bayn Arshayn, 249 Bedmont, Sir Henry, 246 Bickerstaff, Isaac, 123 Bidaya wa Nihaya, 286, 356-358 al-Bint al-Amina wa Ummuha, 191 Bintal-Asr, 161, 162, 165, 166 al-Bint al-Asriyya, 66 Bonhomme, Madame, 25

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

443

Bomier, H. de, 34 Book of the Dead, The, 309 Boulala, 52 Brave New World, 118 Broken Wings, 249, 250. See also al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira Brown, Heniy, 245, 246 Budur, 179, 180, 185 Buhturi, Abu Ibada al-, 117 Bulwer-Lytton, Lord, 100 al-Bustan al-Zahir, 105 Bustani, Alice, al-, 222 Bustani, al-Sitt Adeleid, al-, 98 Bustani, Butrus, al-, xi, 31, 97, 100, 157, 222 Bustani, Fuad Afram al-, 126 Bustani, Sa'd Allah, al-, 31, 97 Bustani, Said al-, 16, 220 Bustani, Salim al-, xi, xii, 157-183, 185, 186, 190-195, 197, 213, 219, 220, 222, 226, 228, 241, 253, 347

Da'irat al-Maarif, 142 al-Dam'al-Midrarfi al-Masa'ib wa alMadar, 224 Daqahliyya, al-, 113 Dar al-Katib al-Misri, 118 Dar al-Opera, 11 Dar al-Saada, 129 Dar al-Ulum, 8, 112 Darawish (Dervishes), followers of the Mahdi of Sudan, 210 al-Darratayn, x, 44 Dar s Tahdhibi, 76 Darwin, Charles Robert, 197 Das Kapital, 312 Dash, Comtesse, 104 Dasuqi, Muhammad Ibrahim al-, 118 Dawakhili, Abd al-Hamid al-, 119 Dawwara, Fuad, 301 Dayf, Shawqi, 122, 123, 339 Dayzan, al-, King of Hatra, 223 Debt Commission, 50, 51 Defoe, Daniel, 123

Canterville Ghost, The, 119 Captain's Daughter, The, 101 Cassanova, Paul, 298 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 136, 137 Charakian, Khalil Effendi, 7 Charitable Islamic Society, 88 Charles X, King of France, 5 Chateaubriand, François René, 103, 104, 111 Cheikho, Louis, 31, 226 Chekhov, Anton, 101, 119 Chicago World Fair, 38 Christ, 232, 234 (Messiah), 238 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 237-239 Cohen, Zaki, 31 Colomba, 119 Collins, Wilkie, 100 Committee of Union and Progress, 249 Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, 234 Corelli, Marie, 101 Corneille, Pierre, 33, 35, 39, 104, 259 Council of Nicea, 202 Count of Monte Crista, The, 97, 103 Coverley, Sir Roger de, 123 Consistoire Israélite, 41 Convent of the Virgin, 233 Coppée, François, 111, 112 Cromer, Lord, 17 (Earl of), 99, 145, 257 Crusaders, 208, 219, 246 Cyrano de Bergerac, 111-113

Dhahab, Muhammad Abu al-, (Mamluk), 208 Dhat al-Khidr, 16, 220 al-Dhikra, 104, 111 Dickens, Charles, 100, 108, 117, 246, 287 "Dickens of Egypt." See Naguib Mahfouz, 372 al-Din wa al-Ilm wa al-Mal aw al-Mudun alThalath, 229 Dimyana wa Farhana, 75 Dinshaway, 145, the tragedy o f , 257 Dirgham, Chief of al-Mutasim's bodyguard, 206,215 Disraeli, Benjamin, 321 Diwan al-Fukaha, 105 Diwan al-Hamasa, 203 al-Diwan: Kitabfi al-Adab wa al-Naqd, 110 Diwan Tanius Abduh, 108 Diya, al-, 98, 142 Don Quixote, 136, 137 Dongola, Ahmad ibn Muhammad of, 210 Dostoevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich, 101 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 105 Dr. Louis, 197 Drahnet Bey, 34, 45

Daghir, As'ad Khalil, 105 Dahaya al-Aqdar, 106 Dahhan, Jurji, 105 al-Dahiyya aw Mudhakkirat Margarit, 111 Daily Telegraph, 43

Druze, massacre of the Christians by the, 246 Du Croisy, 30 Du'a al-Karawan, 301, 302 Dumas, Alexandre fils, 111, 130, 243, 245 Dumas, Alexandre père, 50, 97, 103, 199, 245 Dunton, John, 123 Dunya, al-, 340 Dürkheim, Emile, 298 Durr al-Sadaffi Gharaib al-Sudaf, 186, 189, 190 Dustur, al-, 326 Duwayri, Bebbawi Ghali al-, 103

444

Index

Edward wa Sylva, 97 Egilona, 202 Egmont, 118 " Egyptian Modernists, The, " 289 Emile, 10 Esther, 12 Euydes of Aquitaine, Duke, 201-203 Evolutionary process of Arabic fiction, 219-220

Gardey, Louis, 26 Gaylani, Kamil, 118 Genevieve, 39 Gentleman's Journal, 123 Ghabat al-Haqq, 186-189, 230 Ghabra, Shaykh Said al-, 37 Ghadat al-Ahram, 245 Ghadat Busra, 248 Ghadat Karbala, 200 Ghaflat al-Taqlid, 76

al-Fadila, 111 Fahmi, Mansur, 112, 113 al-Fajr, 282 "Al-Fakiha al-Muharrama," 153 Fakhr, Basili, 6 Family Happiness, 103 Farabi, Abu Nasr al-, 21, 230 Farah, Iskandar, x, 37 Farghani, Said al-, 206 Farhat, Bishop Germanos, 94 Fari'a, a Druze princess, 222 Farouk, King, 55, 348, 367, 368 Fatat al-Fayyum, 246 Fatat Ghassan, 199, 210, 214 Fatat Misr, 245 Fatat al-Qayrawan, 206 al-Fata al-Rifi, 255, 256, 263 al-Fatat al-Rifiyya, 256, 263 al-Fatat al-Yabaniyya, 247 Fatima Daughter of Bari, 3 Fathi, Hasan, 281

Ghafiqi, Abd al-Rahman al-, 201, 202, 203 Ghalib, Bishop Bulus, 250, 251 Ghallab, Muhammad, 119 Ghandur Misr, 44,65 Gharaib al-Ittifaq, 34 al-Gharam wa al-Ikhtira, 98 Gharizat al-Mar'a aw Hukm al-Ta'a, 118 Ghazi, Ahmad Mukhtar Pasha al-, 221 Ghazzali, Abu Hamid al-, 259 Ghunaym, Abd al-Hamid, 63 Gibb, Sir A.R. Hamilton, 67, 93, 110, 222 Gibran, Faraj, 118 Gibran Kahlil Gibran, xiii, 109, 115, 249251 Gide, André, 118 Gil Bias, 98 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 102, 115, 118, 250, 259 Gog and Magog, 4 Goldoni, 42 Gordon, General Charles George, (of Khartoum), 210 Gorki, Maxim, 218 Guidi, Ignazio, 296 Gulliver Travels, 100

Fath al-Andalus aw Tariq ibn Ziyad, 200, 201, 214 Fatinat al-Imberator François Imberator alNamsa al-Sabiq, 244 Fawwaz, Zaynab, 222 Fdoki, 227, 228 Fi al-Shi 'r al-Jahili, 292 Fi al-Adab al-Jahili, 292 Fi Bayti, 347 fida'i (self-sacrificer), 207 Fi Sabil al-Taj, 111 Fihri, Yusuf ibn Abd al-Rahman al-, 179 Fikri, Abd Allah, 2 Firawn, Yusuf, 97 Food of the Gods, 118 France, Anatole, 319 Freeport, Sir Andrew, 123 Freud, Sigmund, 352 Fuad, King, 367 Fuad, Nimat Ahmad, 326, 328 Fugitive, The,111 Fukahat, 77 al-Fukahat al-Asriyya, 105 al-Funun, 252 Gaboriau, Émile, 103 Galsworthy, John, 117

Hadarat al-Islamfi Dar al-Salam, 221 Haddad, Najib, 103 Haddad, Niqula, xiii, 225, 240, 245 Haddad, Rashid, 102 Hadar, al-, (Hatra), 223 Hadhir wa Layla, 181, 185 Hadi, Musa al-, Abbasid Caliph, 221 Hadid, Muhammad Farid Abu, 218 Hadiqat al-Akhbar, 97, 104, 157 Hadiqat al-Riwayat, 105 Hadith Isa Ibn Hisham aw Fatra min alZaman, xi, 92, 130, 131, 133-139, 143, 146, 147, 150, 154 Hafiza Hanim wa Nadim, 75 Hafiz wa Najib, 88 Hafsa wa Bintuha Salma, 84 Haggard, H. Rider, 116 al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, 199, 209, 210 Hajjaj, Muhammad Kamil, 106, 118 Hakim, Nazih al-, 119 Hakim, Tawfiq al-, xiii, 21, 22, 139, 281, 289, 291, 305-326, 328

Origins of Modem Arabic Fiction

al-Hal wa al-Ma 'al, 255 Halabi, Abd Allah Ghazala al-, 105 Halabi, Abd Allah Zakhir al-, 94 Halabi, Bashir al-, 105 Halabi, Jurji Effendi Jabrail Balit al-, 97 Halabi, Patriarch Makarius al-, 94 Halabi, Sulayman al-, 3 Hallaba, Sa'd Allah, 37, 38 Hamadhani, Badi al-Zaman al-, 2, 121, 122, 123, 130, 131 Hamdani, Sayf al-Dawla al-, 122 Hamdi Pasha, governor of Syria, 37 Hammad, Muhammad Ali, 118 Hammad, Salih Hamdi, xiii, 258, 259, 260 Hams al-Junun, 346 Hamuli, Abduh al-, 38, 306 Hamza, Abd al-Qadir, 106, 247, 340 Hanafi wa Nadim, 87 Hanibal al-Funiqi, 247 Hanifa wa Latifa, 79, 82 Hanifa wa Nadim, 87 Hanafite School of Jurisprudence, 74 Hannawiyya al-, Roman Catholic monastic order, 94 al-Haqaiq al-Bariza fi Hayati, 118. See also The Interview Haqqi, Mahmud Tahir, 257, 258, 263 Haqqi, Yahya, 92, 258, 263, 267, 282, 289, 311 Harb al-Basus, 181 Hardy, Thomas, 118 Hariri, Abu al-Qasim al, 2, 123, 124 Hasad al-Hashim, 328 Hasan al-Sayyad. See Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi Hashim, Labiba, 248 Hashshashin (Assassins), 206, 207 Haskell, Mary, 249-251 Hasna Salonik, 248 al-Hasna al-Wafiyya, 245 Hawwa al-Jadida aw Yvonnne Monar, 241 Hawwa bilaAdam, 272, 282, 283, 285-289 Hayat Muhalhil aw Harb al-Basus, 19 Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, xiii, 254, 256, 257, 261-266, 268, 281, 289, 291, 292, 302 Hegelian world spirit, 165, 176 Helen of Troy, 169 Henry al-Thamin wa Zawjatuh al-Sadisa, 102 Henry Esmond, 100, 108 Heraclius, Byzantine emperor, 200 Hermann und Dorothea, 118 Hifni, Abd al-Munim al-, 22 Hijazi, al-Shaykh Salama, x, 35, 40 Hikayat Haratina, 372 Hikma (Maronite) School, 251 Hikmat Khufu, 347 al-Hilal, 98, 107, 142, 198, 199, 240, 292 Hilana al-Jamila, 6

445

Hilali, Abu Zayd al-,3 Holmes, Sherlock, 105, 244 Honeycomb, Will, 123 Horace, 33, 35 al-Hubb al-Da'im, 98 al-Hubb hatta al-Mawt, 226 Hugo, Victor, 104, 109, 139, 228, 243, 259 Hukm Qaraqush, 47,54 Hulm al-Musawwir, 98 Hun (nymph), 207 Hurr, Tannus al-, 32 Husayn Hilmi Pasha, 52 Husayn, Taha, xii, 110, 112, 113, 118, 281, 289-303, 305, 316, 326, 340, 347, 358 Husayni, Murad al-, 105 Husn al-Awaqib aw Ghadat al-Zahira, 222 Hutay'a, al-, 72 Hutchins, William, 311 Huxley, Aldous, 118 al-Huyam fi Futuh al-Sham, 180, 185 al-Huyam fi Jinan al-Sham, xi, 159, 181, 197 Hyksos, 348, 349 Ibahiyya (nihilism), xii, 174 Ibn Rushd wa Falsafatuh, 236 Ibn al-Tabi'a, 117 Ibnati Saniyya, 258, 259, 261 Ibrahim Bey, 246 Ibrahim, (a Mamluk), 95 Ibrahim, Hafiz, xi, 2,14, 104, 107, 124, 139, 147-149 Ibrahim al-Katib, 328, 329, 331 Ibrahim Pasha, 7, 246 Ibrahim al-Thani, 328, 331, 332, 333 Ihsan Hanim: Majmuat Qisas Misriyya Asriyya, 267 "Ihtidar Mu'taqadat wa Tawallud Mu'taqadat", 346 Ikhshidi, Kafur al-, 206 Ilaj al-Nafs, 130 Imara wa al-Zanati, 83 Inan, Muhammad Abd Allah, 118 Inayat Bey, 38 Industrial Revolution, 219 Innocents Abroad, The, 118, 326 al-Inqilab al-Uthmani, 214, 218, 248 al-Insan al-Jadid, 366, 368 Interview, The, 118 al-Intiqam, 104 Iphigenie, 12 al-Iqd al-Farid, 203 Irving, Washington, 118 Isagoge, 296 al-Isba al-Za'ida, 283 Isfahani, Abu al-Faraj al-, 199, 203, 335 Ishaq, Adib, 16, 32, 34, 35, 40, 68, 104 Ishq al-Marhum Mustafa Kamil wa Asma Ashiqatih, 224

446

Index

Ishtirakiyya (socialism), xii, 174 al-Islam wa Usui al-Hukm, 225 Ismail, Izz al-Din, 22 Ismail, Khedive, x, xi, 7-9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 26, 33- 35, 42-50, 53, 55, 59, 60, 62, 63, 68, 72, 73, 112, 129, 143,253 Ismaili Shiites, 207 Istephan Bey, 7 Istibdad al-Mamalik, 198, 208, 216 al-Ittihad, 116 Ivanhoe, 100 Izat al-Tarikh, 247 Jabalawi, Muhammad Tahir al-, 340-342 Jabarti, Abd al-Rahman al-, 2, 3, 25 Jacob, Georg, 23 Jad al-Rabb, Shaykh Muhammad, 293 Jaddawi, Ahmad al-, 339 Jodid, al-Ahd al-,6% Jalal, Muhammad Uthman, 11-13, 98 Jamal, Yaqub, 105 Jamhara.al-, 1 al-Jami 'a, 142, 225, 236, 239 al-Jami'a al-Uthmaniyya, 225 Jamila, a Shihabi princess, 209 Jamiyyat Muhibbi al-Ilm, 46 Jamiyyat al-Funun, 32 Jamiyyat al-Taratir, 54 Janet, Paul, 259 al-Jarida, 98, 108, 296 Jarim, Ali al-, 218 Jarjur, Najib Mikhail, 104 Jaubert, Pierre Amédée, 5 Jawdat Pasha, Ahmad, 221 Jawdat, Salih, 103 Jawhar, commander of the Fatimid army, 206 al-Jawhar al-Wahhaj al-Manfusifi Gharaib Ibn Siraj al-Andalusi, 104 Jazzar, Ahmad Pasha al-, 4, 94 Jesuit College, 31 Jihad al-Muhibbin, 198, 215, 216, 222 al-Jinan, xi, 34, 97, 98, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167, 177, 186, 191 Jinn (genies), 59, 153, 272, 283 Joseph in Search of a Father, 106 Jules, Mary, 105 Julian, a Byzantine commander, 180 Jumayyil, Anton al, 107 "Jumla Adabiyya", 167 "Jumla Siasiyya", 158 Jumu'a, Muhammad Lutfi, xi, 2, 124, 149, 151, 154, 155 Junaydi Effendi, Riyad, 100 al-Junayna, 157 Jundi, Muhammad Abd al-Salam al-, 111 Jursat Ismail, 55 Kalila wa Dimna, 4, 16, 21, 143

Kamil, Muhammad Fuad, 111 Kamil, Mustafa, 99, 224, 345 Kamose, 348 Karam Mulham Karam, 107 Karama, Butrus, 212 Karama, Salma, 250, 251 Karkur, Iskandar, 105 Karr, Alphonse, 111, 113 Kawakibi, Abd al-Rahman al-, 141 Kayf (opiate), 75 al-Khaddamin wa al-Mukhaddimin, 11 Khafaya Misr, 218, 223 Khaldun, Abd al-Rahman ibn, 298 Khalid, a Druze prince, 222 Khalil ibn Ahmad, 296 Khan al-Khalili, 304, 350-352 Khan Shaykhun, 128 Kharanfash School, 129 Khatam Iqd Bani Siraj, 104 Khattab, Umar ibn al-, Caliph, 232, 234, 235 Khatun ala al-Muda, 98 Khayal al-Zill, 22 Khayr Allah, Zahir, 247 Khayrat, Mahmud, 255-257, 263, 264 Khayri Pasha, 48, 49 Khayyat, Khalil, 247 Khayyat, Yusuf, 35 Khidr, Muhammad, 105 Khizami, Prince Sulayman al-, 244 Khizamis, a Syrian family, 244 Khosro, Sassanid King, 248 Khurasani, Abu Muslim al-, 205 Khuri, Alfred, 105 Khuri, Khalil al-, 97, 157 Khurrami, Babik, 206 Khushyar, mother of Khedive Ismail, 68 Khuyut al-Ankabut, 327, 328 Khuzai, Shams al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Daniyal al-Mawsili al-, 23 Kifah Tiba, 345, 347, 348, 349 Kilpatrick, Hilary, 289 King Faysal I, 114 King and Highwaymen, The, 4 Kitab al-Aghani, 199 Kitab al-Masamir, x, 127, 128, 129 Kitchener, Herbert, 145, 149 Kleber, Jean Baptiste, 3, 25, 95, 245 Knyaz Serebryanyi, 102 Komedia Tusamma bi al-Darratayn, 60, 63, 64 Komedia Tusamma bi al-Amira alIskandaraniyya, 61-65 Komedia Tusamma bi Abu Rida al-Barbari wa Ma 'shuqatuh Tusmma Ka 'b al-Khayr, 59, 62, 63 Komedia Tusamma bi Al-Alil, 59, 62, 64

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

Komedia Tusamma bi al-Sadaqa A 'ni Zawaj al-Sitt Warda ma Ibn Ammiha, 60, 63, 64, 65 Komedia Tusamma Bursat Misr, 58, 62, 64, 65 Kratschkowsky, Ignaz, 217, 221, 236, 246, 247 Kreuzer Sonata, 102 Kulluh Nasib, 241 Kurbaj Aga, 54, 55 L'Avare, x, 27, 29 L'Avocat Patelin, 25 L'Avvenire d' Egitto, 62 L'École des femmes, 13, 62 L'École des Langues, 96 L'École des maris, 11 L' Estrange Observateur, 123 L'Impromptu de Versailles, 62 L'Institut d'Égypte, 95 La belle Helène, 6 La Belle Parisienne, 104 La Chartreuse de Parme, 119 La Coopération des Idées, 51 La dame aux camélias, 111, 243 La fille Roland, 34 La Fontaine, 11,12,96 La Grange, 30 La Mansarde des artistes, 25 La Réforme Financière, 51 La Tansani, 98 La Vengeance, 34 Ladiyas aw Akhir al-Fara'ina, 223 Lajnat al-Talif wa al-Taijama wa al-Nashr, 118 Lamartine, Alphonse ,50, 115, 157 Lane, Edward William, 23 Lashin, Mahmud Tahir, xiii, 103, 119, 267, 272, 280-284, 286-289 Last Days of Pompeii, The, 100 Latifa wa Dimyana, 80 Layali al-Ruh al-Ha'ir, xi, 149, 150, 154 Layali Satih, xi, 139- 147, 149 Layla (a drama by al-Shaykh Muhammd Abd al-Fattah), 66 Layla al-Ukhayliyya, 209 Lazarite Nuns, 241 Leblanc, Muarice, 105 Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, 30 Le Capitaine Richard, 103 Le Gastronome sans argent, 25 Le Misanthrope, 30 Le Nœud de Vipèrs, 119 Le Portrait du Peintre, 62 Le Tartuffe, 11, 12 Les Aventures de Télémaque, 6, 11, 98 Les Aventures du dernier Abencérage, 104 Les deux Diaries: he comte de Montgomery, 103

44 7

Les Fables, 12 Les Fâcheux, 11 Les Femmes savantes, 11 Les Misérables, 104, 139, 140, 243 Les Précieuses ridicules, 30 Liberal Constitutionalists, 367 Light that Shines in the Darkness, The, 103 "Limadha Hama Biha", 342 Lisan al-Umma, 68 al-Liss wa al-Kilab, 371 al-Liwa, 98 London News, 245 London Spy, 123 Lord Arthur Savile's Crimes and Other Stories, 116 Louis XIV, 44,99 Lubab al-Gharam aw al-Malik Mitridat, 38 Lubnan, ajournai, 101 Lubnani, Abu al-Fadl al-Walid ibn Abd Allah ibn Tu'ma al-, 104 Luqa, Anwar, 51, 52 Lulu, Badr al-Din, Atabeg of Mosul, 208 al-Luzumiyyat, 143 Ma Vie en Vers mon Théâtre, 51 Ma'arri, Abu al-Ala al-, 143, 298 Machiavelli, Nicollo, 154 al-Madaniyya al-Gharbiyya, 110 Maddad wa May, 91 Madha Ra 'at Miss Darington, 98 "al-Madrasa al-Haditha", 280 Madrasat al-Alsun, 5,10,98 Madrasat al-Banat: Bahana wa Sitt al-Balad, 85 Madrasat al-Banat: Hafsa wa Bintuha Salma, 83 Madrasat al-Banat: Zakiya wa Nafisa, 82 Madrasat al-Banin: Kamil wa Hafiz 85 Madrasat al-Banin: Nadim wa Hafiz, 83-85 Madrasat al-Idarah, 8 Madrasat al-Thalathat Aqmar, 31 Mafia, 171 Magdalene, Mary, 236-239 Magdulin aw Taht Zilal al-Zayzafun, 111 Mahalawi, Muhammad, 371 Mahdi, al-, Abbasid Caliph, 221 Mahdi, al-Shaykh Muhammad al-,3,4 Mahdi, al-, of Sudan, 145, 149, 198, 210. See Dongola, Ahmad ibn Muhammad of. Mahdi, Ubayd Allah al-, 204 Mahfouz, Naguib, xiii, 220, 223, 280, 284, 286, 287, 289, 302, 304, 305, 313, 343, 345-372 Mahmud, Mahmud, 119 Mahmud, Muhammad, 367 al-Mahrusa, 68, 87, 240 al-Majalla al-Jadida, 346 Majallat al-Nafa'is, 101

448

Index

Majallat al-Nafa'is al-Asriyya, 101-102 Majallat al-Riwayat al-Shahriyya, 105 Majdi, Salih, 2, 123 al-Majest, 213 Majlis Tibbi li Musab bi al-Ifranji, 73 Majma al-Bahrayn, 124, 125 Majma Asahh al-Ibarat wa Adaqq al-Rumuz fi Ard Misr wa Jabal al-Duruz, 96 Malaika, Nazik al-, 152 al-Malik Sharliman wa Ibnat Rolan, 34 Malikite School of Jurisprudence, 78,81 Mamluks, 2, 7, 54, 94, 198, 207, 208, 209, 352 al-Mamluk al-Sharid, 185, 198, 209, 212, 220, 221 Mamun, al-, Abbasid Caliph, 205, 213 al-Manar, 98, 99, 141, 292 Mandur, Muhammad, 21, 274, 302, 333 Manfaluti, Mustafa Lutfi al-, 104, 109-115, 153 Manikli, Ahmad Pasha al-, 131, 135 Mansur, Abu Jafar al-, Abbasid Caliph, 200 Mansur Bey, 250 Maqama, xi, 1, 2, 18, 67, 92, 121-129, 136, 146, 147, 149, 154, 155, 267 al-Maqama al-Asadiyya, 122 al-Maqama al-Hamdaniyya, 122 al-Maqama al-Maristaniyya, 122 Maqama Muqima, 126 Maqduni, Iskandar al-, 36 al-Mar'a Malak wa Shaytan, 247 Mar Sarkis Monastery, 251 Marcel, Jean Joseph, 3, 4 Mar'i, Abd al-Mu'ti, 19 Marj al-Azhar wa Shubban Hawadith Alakhbar, 96 Maronite Charitable Association, 31 Marrash, Abd Allah, 185, 191 Marrash, Francis, xii, 185-195, 230 Marrash, Maryana, 185 Marriette Pasha, 11 Marry at, Frederick, 106 Marsafi, Sayyid al-, 296 Martin, M, 50, 312 Marx, Karl, 226, 229, 321, 352 Marxism, 18, 312, 340, 346, 368 Maryam Ba'd al-Tawba, 236 Maryam Qabl al-Tawba, 236 al-Masa, 370 Mash'alani, Nasib, 103, Masonic Lodges, 68 Masons, 49 al-Masrah al-Dhihni, 305 Masrah al-Komedi (Théâtre de la Comédie), 11 Masud, Muhammad, 245 Mathilde, 104 Matran, Khalil, 102

Maupassant, Guy de, 116 Mauriac, François, 119 Mawaqi al-Aflakfi Waqai Tilimak, 6 Mazini, Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al, xiii, 108, 110, 116, 117, 289, 291, 311, 326-339, 340 Medici, Catherine de, 154 Menou, Jacques, 25, 95 Merchant of Venice, The, 108 Memere, Pharaoh, 348 Mérimée, Prosper, 119 Mérope, 104 Mérouvel, Charles, 1051 Midhat Pasha, 37 Midu wa Shurakah, 333, 334 al-Minbar, 257 Miramar, 371 Mir 'at al-Alam aw Hadith Musa Ibn Isam, 129 Mir 'at al-Gharb, 247 Mir'at Suriyya wa Falastin, 191, 193 al-Misbah, 32 Misbah al-Sharq, 129, 130, 147 Misr, 16,68 Misr al-Fatat, society, 68 Misr al-Jadida wa Misr al-Qadima, 73 Misr al-Qadima, 347 Misr li al-Misriyyin, 33 al-Misriyya, 281 Mithridates, 38, 39 al-Mi'wal, 118 Molière, 11, 12, 13, 27, 29, 30,40, 43, 62, 98, 104 Montépin, Zavier de, 105 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondât, baron de, 5, 234 Morphy, Michel, 105 Mother, The, 119 Motteux, Pierre, 123 al-Muallim Hanafi wa Nadim, 78, 79, 83 al-Muallaim Hanafi wa al-Sayyid Afifì, 86 Muawiya, Umayyad Caliph, 200, 212 Muayyad, al-, 109, 113, 145 Mubarak, Ali, 8,9, 10, 45, 139 Mudawwar, Jamil Mikhail, 98, 221 Mudhakkirat Hikmat Hanim Ba'd al-Zawaj, 267 Mudhakkirati Taha Husayn, 292, 296, 299 Muhammad Awad Muhammad, 118 Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, 144, 200, 304 Muhawarat (popular dialogues), by Abd Allah Nadim, xii Mühlbach, L., 102 Muhtaj Jahil fi Yadd Muhtal Tami, 76 Muizz, al-, (li Din Allah), Fatimid Caliph, 206 Mukhalisiyya, al-, Roman Catholic Monastic Order, 94 Mukhtarat min al-Qisas al-Ingilizi, 117

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

Mukhtasar Sirat Henry Esmond, 106 Munabbih, Wahb Ibn, 91 Munayyar, Hannanya al-, 123 Muntakhabat al-Riwayat, 105 Mulyir Misr wa ma Yuqasih, 45,51-53,62 Muqaffa, Ibn al-, 4,16 Muqanna (The Veiled One), al-, 221 Muqattam, al-, 100, 130 Muqattam, (mountain), al-, 150 Muqtataf, al-, 18, 98, 100, 142, 240, 245 Muqtatafat min Mudhakkirat Hawwafi alJanna, 118 Muqawqis, al-, 199 Murad, (a Mamluk), 95 Murad, Muhammad Abd al-Munim, 119 Murshid wa Fitna, 193 al-Murua wa al-Wafa, 32 Musa, Fatima, 358 Musa, Salama, 226, 346, 347, 368 Musamarat al-Muluk, 105 Musamarat al-Nadim, 105 Musamarat al-Sha'b, 105, 106, 240 al-Musamarat al-Usbui'iyya, 105 Musayriqi, Muhammad al-, 104 al-Musi, 33 Muslim Brotherhood, 368 Müsset, Alfred de, 245 Mustafa, Muhammad Naji, 371 Mustansir, al-, (bi Allah), Abbasid Caliph, 208 Mustaqbal al-Thaqafa fi Misr, 291 al-Mutanakkira al-Hasna, 100, 102 Mutannabi, Abu al-Tayyib al-, 144, 157, 229 Mutasim, Abu Ishaq al-, Abbasid Caliph, 205, 208, 215 Mutazila (Muslim rationalists), 122 Muttalib, Muhammad Abd al-, 10 Muwaylihi, Ibrahim al-, 2, 124, 129 Muwaylihi, Muhammad Ibrahim al, xi, 2, 18, 124, 129, 130, 133, 137, 138, 139, 143, 146, 151 Nabigha, al-, pre-Islamic poet, 72 Nabrawi, Siza, 281 Nadim, Abd al-Fattah, 70 Nadim, Abd Allah, xi, xii, 2, 16, 67-89, 124, 127, 128, 129 al-Nafa'is (al-Nafa'is al-Asriyya), 101, 102 Nafisa, al-Sayyida, 208 Nahrawan, battle of al-, 211 Nahhas, Mustafa al-, 367 al-Naim wa al-Yaqzan, 28 Naimy, Mikhail, 93, 100, 101, 252 al-Najah, 32 Najm, Muhammad Yusuf, 27, 36, 38, 40, 52, 57, 181,215, 217 Nakir al-Jamil, 36, 37, 39 Nallino, Carlo, 296, 298

449

Napoleon Bonaparte, 24, 25, 95, 96, 245 Naqqash, Marun, i, 26-40, 97, 253 Naqqash, Niqula, ix, 28, 32, 33 Naqqash, Salim Khalil, ix, x, 16, 27, 32-35, 40, 68 Narjis al-Amya, 152 Nasib Bey, Qa'immaqam, 218, 223, 224 Nasir al-Din, Amin, 248 Nassaj, Sayyid Hamid al-, 258, 261 Nasr Allah, Habib, 248 National Party, 247 al-Nazarat, 110, 111, 114 Nazim Bey, Ahmad, 244 Nazzara, Abu. See Yaqub Sanu Nerval, Gérard de, 25 New Harmony, 230 Nida al-Majhul, 273, 274 Nisa'iyya, al-Nahda al-,281 Niebuhr, Karsten, 23 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 226, 238 al-Niqab al-Ta'ir, 282, 289 Nitocris, Queen of Egypt, 348 al-Numan, 16, 70 Numayri, Umar Ibn Shabba al-, 1 Nusyar, Musa ibn, 201 Oedipus Theseus, 118 Ohnet, Georges, 104 Old Testament, 233, 238 Our Lord Ali and the Head of the Ghoul, 3 Ovid, Publius Ovidius Naso, 331 Owen, Robert, 230 Pardaillan, 105 Paris Peace Conference, 219 Paul et Virginie, 11, 91, 111, 112 Percival, Caussin de, 5 Pérès, Henri, 107 Phaedrus, 231 Pharaoh Hamas (Ahmose), 223 Philip IX, king of France, 208 Philosophy of Happiness, The, 259 Picture of Dorian Gray, The, 119 Pilate's Wife, 36 Phoenicia, 228 Poetics, by Aristotle, 21 Poirot, Hercules, 244 Poitiers, 201 Polytechnic School, 42, 63 Porphyry, Greek philosopher, 296 Pour la caronne, 111, 112 Power of Darkness, The, 102 Prince Ibrahim, 243 Prince Zafir, 243 Prisoner of the Caucasus, A, 102 Prophet, The, 109, 249 Ptolemy, 213 Pushkin, Alexandre Sergeyevich, 101

450

Index

Qabbani, al-Shaykh Ahmad Abu Khalil al-, x, 35-40 Qabd al-Rih, 328, 330 qada (divine decree), 353 al-Qahira al-Jadida, 284, 349, 350 "Qahwat al-Fann", 282 al-Qa'idan, 103 Qalamawi, Sahir al-, 342 Qalb al-Rajul, 248 Qalb al-Asad wa Salah al-Din, 106 Qali, Ismail ibn al-Qasim al-, 203 Qaragöz, 23,72 Qasatili, Numan Abduh al-, xii, 185, 191-195, 228, 241 Qasr al-Shawq, 362-365 Qirdahi, Habib al-, 32 Qirdahi, Sulayman al-, x, 13, 35 al-Qirdati, 47 al-Qirdati Luba Tiyatriyya Hasalatfi Zaman al-Ghuzz, 54 al-Qisas Hayat, 254, 257 Qissa Ghariba, 98 Qitta, Constantine, 98 Qizhiyya, Monastery of, 231 Qubain, Salim, 102 Qultah, Kamal, 302 Qumriya, 98 Qurqasi, Abd al-Hamd Khidr Albu, 254, 255, 257 al-Qusaqi al-Walhan, 101 Rabia ibn Ziyad al-Mukaddam, 33 Rabia, Labid, ibn, 121 Racine, Jean , 5, 32, 35, 38, 39, 104, 259 al-Radd al-Rannan ala Nabsh al-Hadhayan, 217 Radi, al-Sharif al-, 117 Radobis, 345, 347, 348 Rafi'i, Mustafa Sadiq al-, 110 Rahib al-Fikr. See Tawfiq al-Hakim, 319-326 Ra'i, Ali al-, 137, 139, 277, 309, 341 Rajab Effendi, 270, 271 Rajul dhu Imraatayn, 97 Ramzi, Ibrahim, 105, 218, 347 Raphael, 115 Raqisat al-Ma'bad, 316 Rashad, Muhammad, Ottoman Sultan, 249 Rashid, Harun al-, Abbasid Caliph, 205, 206, 212, 213, 221 Rashid Pasha, 32,36, 160 Rawa'i al-Khayal, 102 Rawdat al-Akhbar, 98 Rawdat al-Madaris, 13 Rawi (narrator), 121 al-Rawi, 105 Raziq, Ali Abd al-, 225 Regnault, A., 25 Renan, Ernest, 226

Republic, by Plato, 21, 230, 232 Resurrection, 102 Review, The, 123 al-Ribat al-Muqaddas, 318, 325 Rida, al-Shaykh Muhammad, 141 Ries, Maurice, 119 Rif'at, Ahmad, 245 Rigoletto, 11 al-Rihla al-Ilmiyya fi Qalb al-Kura alArdiyya, 103 al-Rihla al-Jawiyya fi al-Markaba alHawaiyya, 103 al-Rihla al-Shatawiyya fi al-Jihat alThaljiyya, 104 Rihlat al-Hijaz, 118 Rip Van Winkle, 118 al-Risala, 20, 114 Risala fi Ära Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila, 21, 230 Riwa'i, al-Nadim al-, 105 Riwaya, concept of, 92 al-Riwaya, 105, 116 Riwayat al-Amir Mahmud Najl Shah al-Ajam, 39 Riwayat Akhir bani Siraj, 104 Riwayat Anis, 192 Riwayat Antar ibn Shaddad, 39 Riwayat Harun al-Rashid ma al-Amir Ghanim ibn Ayyub wa Qut al-Qulub, 39 Riwayat Harun al-Rashid ma Uns al-Jalis, 39 Riwayat Hiyal al-Nisa al-Ma 'rufa bi Lucia, 39 Riwayat Ifranjiyya, 30 al-Riwayat al-Jadida, 105 al-Riwayat al-Kubra, 105 al-Riwayat al-Mufidafi Ilm al-Tragida, 12 Riwayat Murshid wa Fitna, 192 "al-Riwayat al-Tankitiyya", 181 Riyad, Hasan, 247 Riyad Pasha, 14, 54, 55 Rizq Allah, Niqula, 105, 106 Robinson Crusoe, 97,100 Rocamole, 105 Roderick (Arabic Ludhriq), King of Spain, 200,201,202 Romeo and Juliet, 91 Rose El-Youssef, 281 Rostand, Edmond, 111, 113 Rousseau, J.J., 5, 109, 186, 232, 259 Ruh al-Asr, 158, 163-167, 169, 170, 176, 178 Rukn al-Din Baybars. See Baybars, al-Zahir. Rum Orthodox Charitable Association, 31 Rushd, Ibn (Averroes), 21, 226, 240, 370 Saadists, 367 Sa'ada, Khalil Bey, 247 Sa'b, Salim, 97, 103 Sacy, Silvestre de, 5

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

al-Sa'dfi al-Nahs, 98 Sa'd Rafail, 102 Sadiq Effendi, Khalil, 105, 240 "Sadiqi Ali, " 153 Safa, Druze Princess, 246 Saffah, Abu al-Abbas al-, Abbasid Caliph, 179 Safwan, Khalid ibn, 117 Sahhar, Said Jawdat al-, 358 Sahib al-Niqma, 204 Sahih al-Bukhari, 111 Sahl, al-Fadl ibn, 205 Sahl, al-Hasan ibn, 205 Sahrat al-Anta,75 Sa'iba, 222 Said, Ahmad Khayri, 280-282 Said Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, 26 Said wa Bakhita, 78 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri Rouvroy, comte de, 299 Saj (rhymed prose), 2, 182 Sakakini, Augustine, 97 Salah (Salah al-Din), Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt, 54, 206, 207 Salah al-Din wa Maka'id al-Hashshsashin, 206 Salam, Aziz Abd Allah, 118 al-Salasil al-Muhattama, 52 Salgari, Emilio, 102 Salih, al-Malik al-Salih, last of the Ayyubid sultans, 207, 208 Salih wa Taii, 74 Salim, al-Zir,3 al-Salit al-Hasud, 27, 29, 3 Salma, a Shihabi princess, 246 Salma, a novel by Salim al-Bustani, 161 Saluha wa Taqiyya, 74 Salwafi Mahabb al-Rih, 273, 275-280, 283, 284 al-Samir, 105 Samir al-Amir fi Lamya wa Thaqib, 220 al-Samir al-Musawwar, 105 Samiya, 161, 173, 174, 177, 178, 220 Sand, George, 259 Sanhuri, Abd al-Razzaq al-, 115 Sanine, 117, 327 Santillana, David, 296 Sanu, Yaqub, x, 11,40-66, 69, 71, 219, 318 Sanua-Milhaud, Mme. Louli, 52 al-Saq ala al-Saqfi ma huwa al-Faryaq, 125, 126 al-Sarab, 354-355 Sarah, 340-343 Sarkis, Salim, 107 Sarkis, Yusuf, 103 Sarruf, Yaqub, xiii, 18, 100, 106, 245, 246, 248 Saruji, Abu Zayd al-, 123

451

Saussure, Madame Necker de, 261 Satih. See Layali Satih Saturday Review, 65 al-Sawa 'iq,9& al-Sawwah wa al-Hammar, 44 Sayf al-Nasr, 32 Sayyadi, Abu al-Huda al-, 127, 128, 141 Sayyid, Ahmad Lutfi al-, 20, 225, 296, 298 Sayyid Darwish, 281 Sayyidi Ibrahim al-Dasuqi, 3 Sawaya, Labiba Mikhail, 248 School for Scandal, 116 School of Languages, 10. See Madrasat alAlsun Schlegel, August, 103 Schwartz, Sasha, 315 Scott, Sir Walter, 100, 199 Second Communist International, 177 Segonzac, Paul, 105 Sekenenre II, 348 Seminaire de Saint Athanus, 95 Seneca the Elder, 237 Seneca the Younger, Lucius Annaeus, 237 " Sermon in the Valley, The " 237 " Sermon on the Mount, The" 233, 237 Seventeen (17) Ramadan, 211, 214 al-Shabb al-Jahil al-Sikkir, 32 Shaddad, Antara ibn, 3, 38 Shadid, Bishara, 103 Shafiite School of Islamic Jurisprudence, 74, 78 Shah Mahmud, 37 Shahadat al-Tabiafi Wujud Allah wa alShari'a, 188 al-Shahama wa al-Afaf, 100 al-Sha 'ir aw Sirano di Berjrak, 111 Shajarat al-Bu's, 302-304, 358 Shajarat al-Durr, 198, 207 Shajarat al-Durr, widow of the Ayyubid Sultan al-Malik al-Salih, 207, 208, 214 Shakespeare, 40, 104, 108, 259 Shakhla, Labiba, 306 Shakib, a Druze prince, 222 Shaniti, Mahmud al-, 119 Shapur, Persian King, 223 Shaqa al-Muluk, 101 Sharani, al-, Mosque, 41 Sharfa, al-, Monastery, 31 Sharif Pasha, 47 Sharifa wa Bahiyya, 86 al-Sharika al-Shahriyya, 97, 103 Sharl wa Abd al-Rahman, 201, 216 Shaw, George Bernard, 104, 292, 369 Shawkat, Mahmud Hamid, 218 Shawqi, Ahmad, 40, 144, 148, 222, 223 al-Shaykh Alwan wa Nadim, 74 Shaykh al-Hara, 42, 48, 49, 53, 54 Shaykh Hamad, 193

452

Index

al-Shaykh al-Jahil, 28,33 al-Shaykh Jumu 'a, 270 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 43, 116 Shidyaq, Fans ibn Yusuf al-, 2, 97, 123-126, 129 Shihabi, Amir Bashir al-, 124, 209, 212 Shihabi princes of Lebanon, 94 Shinqiti, Shaykh Ahmad al-, 296 Shi'r al-Arwah, 152 Shi'r Hurr, 152 Shi'r Manthur, 152 Shirin, 248 Shu'ayb, Jalal, 299-301 al-Shuhada, 111 Shukri, Ghali, 138, 306, 308 Shumayyil, Kaiser, 105 Shumayyil, Shibli, 19, 242, 249 Shura, concept of, 76 Siba'i, Muhammad al-, 100, 108, 109 al-Sighar wa al-Kibar, 118 Silsilat al-Fukahat, 104 Silisilat al-Riwayat, 105 Silsilat al-Riwayat al-Uthmaniyya, 105 Sinan, Rashid al-Din (Old Man of the Mountain), 207 Sinbad the Sailor, 151 Sirr al-Muntahir, 282 Sitt al-Mulk, 207 Siyasa, al-, 116, 118 "al-Siyasa al-Da'ifa al-Anifa," 145 Socrates, 231 Solomon, King, 238 Sophronius, Patriarch, 232 Soudan, M. Jehan, 50 Sous les tilleuls, 111, 113 Spectator, The, 123 Spirit of the Age. See Ruh al-Asr St. Augustine, 112 St. Martin, apostle of the Gauls, 201, 202 St. Paul, 304 St. Pierre, Bernardin de, 111, 112 Steele, Richard, 123 Stendhal, Marie Henri Beyle, 119 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 100 Suad, 218, 224, 225 Subhi Pasha, governor of Syria, 37 Sue, Eugène, 103, 104 Sukhriyat al-Nay, 282 al-Sukkariyya, 365-369 Sulafat al-Nadim, 70 Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik, Umayyad Caliph, 202 Sulma, Zuhayr ibn Abi, 121 Sultan, Muhammad Pasha, 69 Summ al-Afa'i, 98 al-Summan wa al-Kharif, 371 Sun al-Jamil, 35 Sunduq al-Dunya, 118, 328

Suriyya, al-Jamiyya al-Ilmiyya al-, 31, 158 Su'ud, Fakhri Abu al-, 118, 123 Swift, Jonathan, 100 Syrian Protestant College (American University of Beirut), x, 124, 197, 216, 230 Syrian Christians labeled as "Monophysites", 181 al-Tabib al-Hadhiq, 101 Tahiyyat Baladi, 11 Tahmaz, Marzupan of Farghana, 206 "Tahsin Ahwal al-Umma," 167 Tahtawi, Rifaa Rafi al-, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13,54, 98 al-Ta'if 69 Tajammu Party, 370 Takhlis al-Ibrizfi Talkhis Paris, 5, 6 Tale of Two Cities, A, 100 Talib, Ali ibn Abi, Caliph, 211 Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott, 100, 106 Tamir, a Druze prince, 222 Tammam, Abu, 203 al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit, 16, 68 Taqla, Salim and Bishara, 98 al-Taqlid Yanqul Tibaa al-Muqallad, 78 Tarabishi, George, 307, 314, 315, 316 Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq, 141 Tarikh Adab al-Lugha al-Arabiyya, 198 Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Arabiyya, 52 Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islami, 198, 217 Tarrazi, Philip, 36, 52 Tatars, 28 Tatler, The, 123 al-Tawaf Hawl al-Ard fi Thamanin Yawm, 104 Tawfiq Bubariya ibn Yusuf Bey, 104 Tawfiq, Khedive, 51, 54, 55, 56, 68, 70, 72 "al-Tawfir al-Siyasi", 167 Tayf al-Khayal fi Marifat Khayal al-Zill, 23 Teatro del Cairo, 25 Telegraphji, Muhammad Lutfi, 106 Ten Voyages of Murad, 4 Terrail, Ponson du, 105 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, 118 Tetisheri, 349 Thabit, Munira, 281 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 100, 108, 246, 287 Thaïs, 319, 320, 323 Thalathat Rijal wa Imra 'a, 338 Théâtre de la Comédie, 26 Théâtre de l'Opéra, 26 Theresa, 62 Thousand and One Nights, 4, 27-38, 91, 92, 159, 161, 162 Three Musketeers, The, 103 Thulathiyya (Trilogy), 302, 304, 313, 345, 358

Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction

Thurayya: Majmuat Qisas Misriyya Asriyya, 267, 268, 269, 284 al-Tijan, 91 al-Tijara, 68 Time Machine, 117 Timur, Ahmad, 269 Timur, Mahmud, xiii, 92, 267, 269, 272, 273-280, 283,284, 289 Timur, Muhammad, 269 Tolstoy, Leo , 101, 102 Tom Sawyer, 118 Tours, 201, 202, 203 Treasure Island, 100 Tughra'i, Mu'ayyid al-Din al-, 259 al-Tuhfa al-Bustaniyya fi al-Asfar alKumziyya, 100 Tuhfat al-Murid fi Zawaj Odette bi Farid, 106 Tuhfat al-Mustayqiz al-Anisfi Nuzhat alMustanim wa al-Na 'is, 4 Turabi, Ghali Ibrahim al-, 254 Turan, Ghiyath al-Din, 208 Turgenev, Ivan, 119 Turk, Niqula al-, 123 Two Foxes and the Gardener, 4 Twain, Mark 118, 326 Tyrtaeus, 67 Ubayd, Isa, 113, 267-270, 280, 283, 284, 289 Ubayd, Makram, 367 Ughniyat al-Nar, 151 Umar, Mustafa Ali, 22 Umar, Zahir al-, 208 al-Umm Bayn Jilayn, 283 Ummuhat al-Mustaqbal, 281 Umm al-Qura, 141 Urabi, Ahmad, 14, 16, 20, 35, 68, 69, 72, 76, 130, 147 Urquhart, David, 31 Urush al-Jababira, 151 Urushalim al-Jadida aw Fath al-Ararb Bayt al-Maqdis, 199, 218, 232, 233, 237 Uryan, Muhammad Said al-, 347 "al-Usba al-Jinsiyya," 163 Usfurmin al-Sharq, 306, 310, 311, 313, 315 al-Ustadh, 16, 69, 76, 79, 81, 86 "Uyubi", 327 al-Uyun al-Yawaqizfi al-Amthal wa al-Hikam wa al-Mawa'iz, 12 "Vanity of Vanities. All is Vain," 238 Verne, Jules, 103 Victor, 60, 61 Vidal, George, 97 Virgin, Monastarey of the, 226 Viskaya, Z. Gora, 101 Voltaire, 5, 104, 118, 228 Vorchakov, leader of the "nihilists, " 247 Voyage au centre de la terre, 103

453

Voyage au pole nord, 104 Voyage en ballon, 103 al-Wad al-Mariq wa Abu Shaduf al-Hadhiq, 55 Wafd, Wafdists, 367 Wahba, Mas'ad Effendi, 100, 106 Wahi al-Risala, 114 al-Wahsh, al-Wahsh, al-Wahsh aw Siyahafi Arz Lubnan, 230 "Wai Idhan Lastu bi Ifranji," 157 Wajdi, Muhammad Farid, 326 al-Waqai al-Misriyya, 47 al-Waqai al-Rasmiyya, 69 Waqf, 132, 133, 135 Waqi'a, 40 Waraqat al-As: Qissa Tarikhiyya, 223 Ward, Ned, 123 Washington, George, 228 al-Watan wa al-Huriyya, 45 al-Watan wa Tali al-Tawfiq, 16,70 Watani, al-Hizb al-, 15 Wataniyya, ai-Madrasa al-, 31, 158 Wells, H.G., 117, 118 Weltanschauung, 164 Werthers, 250 Werther Leiden, 102, 115 Wilde, Oscar, 116, 117, 119 Witiza, Visigothic King, 200 Woman in White, The, 100 Wood, British Consul, 246 World Trade Center, 371 Wuhayb ibn Dahir, 179 al-Yad al-Athima wa al-Silah al-Khafi, 103 Yagan, Ahmad, 41 Yawmiyyat Na 'ib fi al-Aryaf, 305, 317, 318 Yazan, Sayf ibn Dhi, 3 Yazid, Umayyyad Caliph, 200 Yaziji, Khalil al-, 32 Yaziji, Nasif al-, 2, 123-125, 129, 157 Yazijis, 185 Young Turks, 214, 218, 248 Yuhka Anna, 282 Yunus, Abu Bishr Matta ibn, 21 Yusuf, Abu, Islamic jurist, 221 Yusuf al-Hasan, 31 Yusuf, al-Shaykh Ali, 109 Yusuf wa Zawjatuh Maryam, 97 Zaccone, Pierre, 34, 103, 104 Zadeh, Kamal Haydar Khan, 248 Zadig, 118 Zaghlul, Sa'd, 109, 110, 281, 298, 299, 309, 321, 341, 345, 358, 361, 362, 365 Zahawi, Jamil Sidqi al-, 114 Zahi Effendi, 59 Zahir, Hala al-, 251

454 Zahra, al-, 203-205 Zahrat al-Adab, 32 Zahrat al-Umr, 315 Zakhur, Rafail Anton, 95,96 al-Zalum, 35 al-Zaman, 197 Zamzam al-Miskina, 56 Zanata, a north African tribe, 179, 180 Zar (exorcism), 220 Zawjat John Carver, 98 Zaydan, Jurji, xii, 19, 20, 27, 32, 97, 141, 185, 195, 197-221, 224, 232, 247, 248, 249, 347

Index

Zaynab, xiii, 254, 256, 258, 262, 263-266, 268, 291, 302 Zayyat, Ahmad Hasan al-, 20, 102, 113-116 Zayyat, Latifa al-, 106 Zeitgeist. See Ruh al-Asr Zenobia, 178, 185 Zévaco, Michel, 105 Ziyad, Tariq ibn, 200, 201 Ziyada, May, 298, 342 Ziniyya, Kaiser, 103 Zizinia Theater, 35 Zubayda wa Nabawiyya, 80 Zuqaq al-Midaqq, 352-354

About the Book

The first edition of this book, completed in 1970, was hailed as a major contribution to scholarship on the development of Arabic fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this revised and greatly expanded second edition, Matti Moosa has added five entirely new chapters—one on the popular dialogues of Abd Allah Nadim, and four devoted to twentieth-century fiction, culminating with the novels of Naguib Mahfouz. He has also incorporated the results of more than two decades of fresh research. Moosa's exhaustive discussion, demonstrating the influence of both Western and Islamic ideology and culture, presents many works of fiction for the first time to Western students of Arabic literature. Matti Moosa, a native of Iraq, is a Middle Eastern scholar with a deep insight into Arab cultural ethos. His publications include The Wives of the Prophet (ed.), Gibran in Paris (ed.), The Maronites in History, Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects, The Early Novels of Naguib Mahfouz: Images of Modern Egypt, and numerous articles on Arabic literature and Middle Eastern history in leading periodicals.

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