Nahda

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The Nahda (

Arabic: النهضة, romanizedal-nahḍa, meaning "the Awakening"), also referred to as the Arab Awakening or Enlightenment, was a cultural movement that flourished in Arab-populated regions of the Ottoman Empire, notably in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Tunisia
, during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

In traditional scholarship, the Nahda is seen as connected to the cultural shock brought on by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and the reformist drive of subsequent rulers such as Muhammad Ali of Egypt. However, more recent scholarship has shown the Nahda's cultural reform program to have been as "autogenetic" as it was Western-inspired, having been linked to the Tanzimat—the period of reform within the Ottoman Empire which brought a constitutional order to Ottoman politics and engendered a new political class—as well as the later Young Turk Revolution, allowing proliferation of the press and other publications[1] and internal changes in political economy and communal reformations in Egypt and Syria and Lebanon.[2]

The renaissance itself started simultaneously in both Egypt and the Levant.[3] Due to their differing backgrounds, the aspects that they focused on differed as well; with Egypt focused on the political aspects of the Islamic world while Greater Syria focused on the more cultural aspects.[4] The concepts were not exclusive by region however, and this distinction blurred as the renaissance progressed.

Early figures

Rifa'a al-Tahtawi

Rifa'a al-Tahtawi
(1801–1873)

Egyptian scholar Rifa'a al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) is widely seen as the pioneering figure of the Nahda. He was sent to Paris in 1826 by Muhammad Ali's government to study Western sciences and educational methods, although originally to serve as

parliamentarism and women's education[citation needed
].

After five years in France, he then returned to Egypt to implement the philosophy of reform he had developed there, summarizing his views in the book Takhlis al-Ibriz fi Talkhis Bariz (sometimes translated as The Quintessence of Paris), published in 1834. It is written in rhymed prose, and describes France and Europe from an Egyptian Muslim viewpoint. Tahtawi's suggestion was that the Egypt and the Muslim world had much to learn from Europe, and he generally embraced Western society, but also held that reforms should be adapted to the values of Islamic culture. This brand of self-confident but open-minded modernism came to be the defining creed of the Nahda.

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (born 1805 or 1806; died 1887)

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (born 1805 or 1806 as Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq; died 1887) grew up in present-day Lebanon. A Maronite Christian by birth, he later lived in major cities of the Arab world, where he had his career. He converted to Protestantism during the nearly two decades that he lived and worked in Cairo, present-day Egypt, from 1825 to 1848. He also spent time on the island of Malta. Participating in an Arabic translation of the Bible in Great Britain that was published in 1857, Faris lived and worked there for 7 years, becoming a British citizen. He next moved to Paris, France, for two years in the early 1850s, where he wrote and published some of his most important work.

Later in the 1850s Faris moved to Tunisia, where in 1860 he converted to Islam, taking the first name Ahmad. Moving to Istanbul later that year to work as a translator at the request of the Ottoman government, Faris also founded an Arabic-language newspaper. It was supported by the Ottomans, Egypt and Tunisia, publishing until the late 1880s.

Faris continued to promote Arabic language and culture, resisting the 19th-century "Turkization" pushed by the Ottomans based in present-day Turkey. Shidyaq is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature; he wrote most of his fiction in his younger years.

Butrus al-Bustani

Butrus al-Bustani, 1860

Butrus al-Bustani (1819–1893) was born to a

'Abey
and was a central figure in the missionaries' translation of the Bible into Arabic. Despite his close ties to the Americans, Al-Bustani increasingly became independent, eventually breaking away from them.

After the bloody

1860 Druze–Maronite conflict and the increasing entrenchment of confessionalism, Al-Bustani founded the National School or Al-Madrasa Al-Wataniyya in 1863, on secular principles. This school employed the leading Nahda "pioneers" of Beirut and graduated a generation of Nahda thinkers. At the same time, he compiled and published several school textbooks and dictionaries; leading him to becoming known famously as the Master of the Arabic Renaissance.[2]

In the social, national and political spheres, Al-Bustani founded associations with a view to forming a national elite and launched a series of appeals for unity in his magazine Nafir Suriyya.[3]

In the cultural/scientific fields, he published a fortnightly review and two daily newspapers. In addition, he began work, together with Drs.

Cornelius Van Dyck of the American Mission, on a translation of the Bible into Arabic known as the Smith-Van Dyke translation.[4]

His prolific output and groundbreaking work led to the creation of modern Arabic expository prose. While educated by Westerners, and a strong advocate of Western technology, he was a fierce secularist, playing a decisive role in formulating the principles of Syrian nationalism (not to be confused with Arab nationalism).

Stephen Sheehi states that Al-Bustani's "importance does not lie in his prognosis of Arab culture or his national pride. Nor is his advocacy of discriminatingly adopting Western knowledge and technology to "awaken" the Arabs' inherent ability for cultural success,(najah), unique among his generation. Rather, his contribution lies in the act of elocution. That is, his writing articulates a specific formula for native progress that expresses a synthetic vision of the matrix of modernity within Ottoman Syria."[6]

Bustani's son Salim was also part of the movement.[7]

Hayreddin Pasha

Hayreddin Pasha (1820–1890)

Hayreddin Pasha al-Tunsi (1820–1890) had made his way to Ottoman Tunisia as a slave, where he rose through the ranks of the government of Ahmad Bey, the modernizing ruler of Tunisia. He soon was made responsible for diplomatic missions to the Ottoman Empire and the countries of Europe, bringing him into contact with Western ideals, as well as with the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. He served as Prime Minister of Tunisia from 1859 until 1882. In this period, he was a major force of modernization in Tunisia.

In numerous writings, he envisioned a seamless blending of Islamic tradition with Western modernization. Basing his beliefs on European Enlightenment writings and Arabic political thought, his main concern was with preserving the autonomy of the Tunisian people in particular, and Muslim peoples in general. In this quest, he ended up bringing forth what amounted to the earliest example of Muslim constitutionalism.[8] His modernizing theories have had an enormous influence on Tunisian and Ottoman thought.

Francis Marrash

Francis Marrash (born between 1835 and 1837; died 1873 or 1874)

Syrian scholar, publicist, writer, poet and physician

Greater Syria, Marrash pointed to the role played by language, among other factors, in counterbalancing religious and sectarian differences, and thus, in defining national identity.[11]

Marrash has been considered the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times, having adhered to and defended the principles of the French Revolution in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in Western Asia and North Africa.

He also tried to introduce "a revolution in diction, themes, metaphor and imagery in modern Arabic poetry".[12] His use of conventional diction for new ideas is considered to have marked the rise of a new stage in Arabic poetry which was carried on by the Mahjaris.[13]

Politics and society

Proponents of the Nahda typically supported reforms. While al-Bustani and al-Shidyaq "advocated reform without revolution", the "trend of thought advocated by Francis Marrash [...] and Adib Ishaq" (1856–1884) was "radical and revolutionary.[14]

In 1876, the

Sultan
, whose powers it checked, but had vast symbolic and political importance.

The introduction of

Al-fatat
and the military based al-Ahd.

This was complemented by the rise of other national movements, including

Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine
and the resulting sense of Palestinian particularism.

Women's rights

Al-Shidyaq defended women's rights in Leg Over Leg, which was published as early as 1855 in Paris. Esther Moyal, a Lebanese Jewish author, wrote extensively on women's rights in her magazine The Family throughout the 1890s.

Religion

Jamal-al-Din Afghani
advocated Islamic unity in the face of an increasingly stronger Christian Europe.

In the religious field,

authoritarian monarchies with representative rule, and denounced what he perceived as the dogmatism, stagnation and corruption of the Islam of his age. He claimed that tradition (taqlid, تقليد) had stifled Islamic debate and repressed the correct practices of the faith. Al-Afghani's case for a redefinition of old interpretations of Islam, and his bold attacks on traditional religion, would become vastly influential with the fall of the Caliphate in 1924. This created a void in the religious doctrine and social structure of Islamic communities which had been only temporarily reinstated by Abdul Hamid II
in an effort to bolster universal Muslim support, suddenly vanished. It forced Muslims to look for new interpretations of the faith, and to re-examine widely held dogma; exactly what al-Afghani had urged them to do decades earlier.

Muhammad Abduh

Al-Afghani influenced many, but greatest among his followers is undoubtedly his student

Qur'an
, and so empower the Muslim world to stand against colonization and injustices.

Among the students of Abduh were Syrian Islamic scholar and reformer

Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood
.

Christians

A 1920 photograph of four prominent members of The Pen League (from left to right): Nasib Arida, Kahlil Gibran, Abd al-Masih Haddad, and Mikhail Naimy.

philosophy,[17] music, theatre and cinema,[18] medicine,[19] and science.[20] Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, and Aleppo were the main centers of the renaissance, which led to the establishment of schools, universities, theaters and printing presses there. This awakening led to the emergence of a politically active movement known as the "association" that was accompanied by the birth of Arab nationalism and the demand for reformation in the Ottoman Empire. This led to the calling of the establishment of modern states based on Europe.[21]
It was during this stage that the first compound of the Arabic language was introduced along with the printing of it in letters, and later the movement influenced the fields of music, sculpture, history, humanities, economics and human rights.

This cultural renaissance during the late Ottoman rule was a quantum leap for Arabs in the post-industrial revolution, and is not limited to the individual fields of cultural renaissance in the nineteenth century, as the Nahda only extended to include the spectrum of society and the fields as a whole. Christian colleges (accepting of all faiths) like

Saint Joseph University, the Syrian Protestant College (which later became the American University of Beirut) and Al-Hikma University in Baghdad amongst others played a prominent role in the development of Arab culture.[22] It is agreed amongst historians the importance the roles played by the Arab Christians in this renaissance, and their role in the prosperity through participation in the diaspora.[23][16] Given this role in politics and culture, Ottoman ministers began to include them in their governments. In the economic sphere, a number of Christian families like the Greek Orthodox Sursock family became prominent. Thus, the Nahda led the Muslims and Christians to a cultural renaissance and national general despotism. This solidified Arab Christians as one of the pillars of the region and not a minority on the fringes.[24]

Greek Orthodox and two were Maronite Christians.[27]

In the early 20th century, many prominent

Jerusalemite, was Arab Orthodox, as was George Antonius, Lebanese author of The Arab Awakening.[31]

Shia Islam

Shi'a scholars also contributed to the renaissance movement, including the linguist Ahmad Rida and his son-in-law the historian Muhammad Jaber Al Safa. Important political reforms took place simultaneously also in Iran and Shi'a religious beliefs saw important developments with the systematization of a religious hierarchy. A wave of political reform followed, with the constitutional movement in Iran to some extent paralleling the Egyptian Nahda reforms.[citation needed
]

Science

Many student missions from Egypt went to Europe in the early 19th century to study arts and sciences at European universities and acquire technical skills.

Arabic-language magazines began to publish articles of scientific vulgarization.

Modern literature

Through the 19th century and early 20th centuries, a number of new developments in Arabic literature started to emerge, initially sticking closely to the classical forms, but addressing modern themes and the challenges faced by the Arab world in the modern era. Francis Marrash was influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to

Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1888–1956) published Zaynab, often considered the first modern Egyptian novel. This novel started a movement of modernizing Arabic fiction.[3]

Pen League in New York City from 1920 until his death. Some of the Mahjaris later returned to Lebanon, such as Mikhail Naimy
(1898–1989).

Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914) developed the genre of the Arabic historical novel. May Ziadeh (1886–1941) was also a key figure in the early 20th century Arabic literary scene.

Qustaki al-Himsi, the founder of modern Arabic literary criticism

Aleppine writer Qustaki al-Himsi (1858–1941) is credited with having founded modern Arabic literary criticism, with one of his works, The researcher's source in the science of criticism.[34][35]

An example of modern poetry in classical Arabic style with themes of

Fekry Pasha Abaza, Tharwat Abaza, and Desouky Bek Abaza, among others.[5][6]

Dissemination of ideas

Newspapers and journals

The first printing press in the Middle East was in the Monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya in Lebanon and dates back to 1610. It printed books in Syriac and Garshuni (Arabic using the Syriac alphabet). The first printing press with Arabic letters was built in St John's monastery in Khinshara, Lebanon by "Al-Shamas Abdullah Zakher" in 1734. The printing press operated from 1734 till 1899.[36]

In 1821, Muhammad Ali of Egypt brought the first printing press to Egypt.[37] Modern printing techniques spread rapidly and gave birth to a modern Egyptian press, which brought the reformist trends of the Nahda into contact with the emerging Egyptian middle class of clerks and tradesmen.

In 1855,

Rizqallah Hassun (1825–1880) founded the first newspaper written solely in Arabic, Mir'at al-ahwal. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram founded by Saleem Takla
dates from 1875, and between 1870 and 1900, Beirut alone saw the founding of about 40 new periodicals and 15 newspapers.

Despite colonial authorities' banning of Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa, it circulated widely in the Islamic world, from Morocco to India, disseminated through an elaborate network including Arab businessmen in Bombay.[38]

Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī's weekly pan-Islamic anti-colonial revolutionary literary magazine Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa (The Firmest Bond)[39]—though it only ran from March to October of 1884 and was banned by British authorities in Egypt and India[38]—was circulated widely from Morocco to India and it's considered one of the first and most important publications of the Nahda.[40][41]

Encyclopedias and dictionaries

The efforts at translating

Arabic root system to cover for others. The development of a modern press ensured that Classical Arabic ceased to be used and was replaced entirely by Modern Standard Arabic, which is used still today all over the Arab world
.

In the late 19th century, Butrus al-Bustani created the first modern Arabic encyclopedia, drawing both on medieval Arab scholars and Western methods of lexicography. Ahmad Rida (1872–1953) created the first modern dictionary of Arabic, Matn al-Lugha.

Literary salons

Different salons appeared.

Princess Nazli Fadil's.[43]

See also

Notes

  1. equal suffrage, equality before the law, the development of infrastructure, support for trade and commerce, state funds for inventors, and the regular maintenance of buildings and public space.[9]

References

  1. ^ Adnan A. Musallam, Arab Press, Society and Politics at the End of The Ottoman Era Archived 19 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Stephen Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004 [1]
  3. ^ .
  4. The University of Texas at Austin
    . Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  5. ^ Peter Gran, "Tahtawi in Paris Archived 19 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine," Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Issue No.568, 10–16 January 2002.
  6. ^ Stephen Sheehi, "Butrus al-Bustani: Syria's Ideologue of the Age," in "The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers, and Identity", Adel Bishara (ed.). London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 57–78
  7. S2CID 232248436
    .
  8. .
  9. ^ Wielandt 1992, pp. 129–130, 135.
  10. ^ Moreh 1988, p. 95; Hourani 1983, p. 247.
  11. ^ Suleiman 2003, p. 114.
  12. ^ Moreh 1976, p. 45.
  13. ^ Moreh 1976, p. 44
  14. ^ Zeitschrift für internationale Freimaurerforschung. 2006. p. 62.
  15. ^ Gran, Peter (January 2002). "Tahtawi in Paris". Al-Ahram Weekly Online (568). Archived from the original on 24 June 2003.
  16. ^ from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  17. .
  18. ^ Hourani 1983, p. [page needed].
  19. from the original on 6 January 2020. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  20. ^ Ira M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History, (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 200.
  21. ^ Boueiz Kanaan, Claude. Lebanon 1860–1960: A Century of Myth and Politics. la University of Michigan. p. 127.
  22. ^ Lattouf, 2004, p. 70
  23. ^ Teague, Michael (2010). "The New Christian Question". Al Jadid Magazine. 16 (62). Archived from the original on 27 February 2021. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  24. ^ محطات مارونية من تاريخ لبنان، مرجع سابق، ص.185
  25. ^ Fahrenthold, Stacy (2014). Making Nations, in the Mahjar: Syrian and Lebanese Long-distance Nationalisms in New York City, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, 1913–1929. Northeastern University. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  26. .
  27. ^ Moreh 1976, p. 85.
  28. from the original on 20 October 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  29. ^ Aflaq, Michel (1977). Choice of Texts from the Baʻth Party Founder's Thought. Unity Freedom Socialism. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  30. ^ Asian and African Studies. Jerusalem Academic Press. 1973. Archived from the original on 3 May 2021. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  31. .
  32. ^ Moreh 1976, p. 292; Jayyusi 1977, p. 23.
  33. ^ See Somekh, "The Neo-Classical Poets" in M.M. Badawi (ed.) "Modern Arabic Literature", Cambridge University Press 1992, pp36-82
  34. ^ "صحيفة الثورة". صحيفة الثورة.
  35. .
  36. ^ Pascal Zoghbi, "[The First Arabic Script Printing Press in Lebanon: Arabic Type Designer & Typographer: Arabic Type. 29 letters 5 January 2009. Retrieved 11 December 2011.]".
  37. ^ Sabri Al-Adl, "All the Pasha's Papers Archived 2 March 2006 at the Wayback Machine," Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Issue No. 742, 12–18 May 2005.
  38. ^ a b ""العروة الوثقى" عبر الهند". www.alkhaleej.ae. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
  39. ^ "Urwat al-Wuthqa, al- – Oxford Islamic Studies Online". www.oxfordislamicstudies.com. Archived from the original on 26 April 2014. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  40. ^ "الارشيف". archive.islamonline.net. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
  41. ^ "Urwa al-Wuthqa, al- | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
  42. ^ Watenpaugh, H. Z., 2010, p. 227; Watenpaugh, K. D., 2006, p. 52.
  43. .

Sources

Further reading

External links

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