1 For more on modernity and its strategies of counter-balancing its negativism, see Jonathan Culler’s use of Benjamin, Walter, Jauss, Robert, Friedrich, and Hugo, “On the Negativity of Modern Poetry: Friedrich, Baudelaire, and the Critical Tradition,” in Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory, eds. Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (New York: Columbia University, 1989), 189–208Google Scholar, esp. 201. Matei Calinescu argues that the “modern artist … [is] torn between his urge to cut himself off from the past … and his dream to found a new tradition, recognizable as such by the future.” See Calinescu, Matei, Five Faces of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, 67. Baudelaire says, “Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art, of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.” Ibid., 48. From among Arabs who echoed the concept of a much needed rejuvenation through Europe was Aḥmad Ḥasan al-Zayyāt, “Fī̄ al-Adab al-‘Arabī̄,” al-Jadīd 1.2 (February 6, 1928): 19–20. ṬȚāhā Ḥusayn has already drawn on the need in his preface to al-Zayyat’s translation of Goethe’s Werther. See al-Musawi, Muhsin, Islam on the Street (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009)Google Scholar, 8. See also Tageldin, Shaden M., “Proxidistant Reading: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of the Nahḍah in U.S. Comparative Literary Studies,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 2.3 (Fall 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 240.

2 See Salāmah Mūsā, Al-Tathqīf al-dhātī (Self-Teaching; Autodidactus; Cairo: Maṭba‘at Dār al-Taqaddum, .n.d.); in Muḥammad ‘Ābid al-Jābirī, Al-Khiṭāb al-‘Arabī al-mu‘āṣir (Contemporary Arabic Discourse; Beirut: Dār al-ṬȚalī‘ah, 1982; reprint 1986), 36.

3 Salāmah Mūsā, Mā hiya al-Nahḍah (What is the Revival? Cairo: Dār al-Jīl, n.d.), 130.

4 Ibid., 10.

5 Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s article appeared in al-Jadīd (1930); reprinted in Akhbār al-adab 186 (February 2, 1997), 30. Cited by Allen, Roger, “The Post-Classical Period: Parameters and Preliminaries,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, eds. Roger Allen and D. S. Richards (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 14, 15.

6 Muḥammad ‘Ābid al-Jābirī, Al-Khiṭāb al-‘Arabī al-mu‘āṣir (Contemporary Arabic Discourse), 36.

7 First date refers to the Islamic calendar; followed by the Christian era. For a study of the past, see Muhsin al-Musawi, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters (Notre Dame University Press, forthcoming). For dating the Mamluk period, see ‘Abduh ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Qalqīlah, who argues the case for these historical limits in terms of rule: Al-Mu‘izz Aybak al-Turkumānī ruled Egypt in 1250, and Tūmān was defeated by the Ottomans in 1517. See Al-Naqd al-adabī fi al-‘aṣr al-Mamlūkī (Literary Criticism in the Mamluk Period; Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjilū al-Miṣriyyah, 1972; based on his 1969 dissertation), 11 and fn 1. See also ‘Umar Mūsā Bāshā, Tārīkh al-adab al-‘Arabī‘: al-‘aṣr al-Mamlūkī (The History of Arabic Literature: The Mamluk Age; Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1989), 29–39. The new Wālī of Egypt in 1805 was Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha (March 4, 1769–August 2, 1849). He eliminated the Mamluk leaders in 1811. Inviting them to the Cairo Citadel in honor of his son, Ṭusūn, he got them trapped and murdered.

8 The French scholar Pierre Bayle (d. 1706) coined the phrase republic of letters or République des Lettres at the end of the seventeenth century indicating a community or network of intellectuals, like a “republic,” who were able to create and sustain an intellectual and information exchange through correspondence, circulation of epistles, poems, books, and journals, assemblies, such as the Arab majlis, and so on. See Goodman, Dena, The Republic of Letters, A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 2, 15.

9 Writing to Ya‘qūb Ṣarrūf in 1920, Mayy Ziyādah referred to the correspondence between Voltaire (d. 1778) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (d. 1783) with respect to their Encyclopedia project that brought many European intellectuals on board and was seen as evidence of a “republic of letters.” See Khaldi, B., Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 11; Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters.

10 Many books come under titles dealing with both publics; al-Qāsim Abū-Muḥammad al-Ḥarirī’s (1054–1122) Durrat al-ghawāṣṣ fi awhām al-khawāṣṣ (The Diver’s Pearl in the Delusions of the Elite) is one.

11 Such instances will be mentioned in due course.

12 Casanova, Pascale, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. DeBevoise. (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. On this point, see Thomas Austenfeld, who sums the point as follows: to “attain recognition, she argues, writers must be granted a space in this imaginary republic, and in order to be recognized as innovative—her key criterion of excellence—writers must be legitimized by being ‘consecrated’ in Paris, the tolerant world-center of literature since the late 16th century, either through translation into French or by recognition of ‘the authorities.’ Her bold claim, in other words, is to declare Paris ‘the Greenwich meridian’ of literary recognition.” South Atlantic Review, 71.1 (Winter 2006): 141–44, esp. 142.

13 Ibrāhīm b. Muḥ. B. Aydamr b. Duqmāq, al-Jawhar al-thamīn fī siyar al-mulūk wa al-salāṭīn (The Precious Stone in the Conduct Accounts of Kings and Sultans) (Ṣaydā: al-Maktabah al-‘Aṣriyyah, 1999), 223.

14 Hussein N. Kadhim, trans. and analysis, “Rewriting ‘The Waste Land’: Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb's ‘Fī al-Maghrib al-'Arabī,’ ” Journal of Arabic Literature 30.2 (1999): 128–70, at 141.

15 See Peter Gran’s significant contribution to the study of capitalist economy in mid-eighteenth century Egypt, Gran, Peter, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, Egypt, 1760–1840 (reprint of 1979 edition; Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, xv.

16 On Edward Said’s explorations of the dangers for the Third World readers of the internalization of the Western imperialist philological machinery “for the establishment of identitarian truth-claims around the world,” see Mufti, Aamir R., “Orientalism and the Institution of World Literatures,” Critical Inquiry 36.3 (Spring 2010): 458–493CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 462.

17 On modernity disclaiming rhetoric, see Brooke-Rose, Christine, “Whatever Happened to Narratology?” Poetics Today: Narratology Revisited I 11.2 (Summer 1990): 283–293CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 These issues receive a detailed and more focused study in my The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters.

19 Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialectics (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979)Google Scholar, 53.

20 Goethe’s “old straw of habits” in reference to the European Middle Ages comes to one’s mind, especially as Matthew Arnold who was almost contemporaneous with the Arab early modernists was enthusiastically committed to the “great destabilizer” of Western culture. See al-Musawi, Muhsin, Anglo-Orient (Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, 2000)Google Scholar, 143.

21 We should remember that ibn Khaldūn paved the way for this kind of critique, which was picked upon by nationalist thinkers like Michel ‛Aflaq and Qusṭanṭīn Zuraiq who thought of pre-Islamic times as rich with a latent power that needed the message of Islam to resurrect it and move it forward to reach its peak in the Abbasid period.

22 See how this repudiation creeps in his Tārīkh al-adab al-‘Arabī (1928), which is on the whole a well-balanced account of literary history. Jurjī Zaydān’s criticism takes its lead from social and political circumstances, specifically in the Arab East, as Egypt and Syria were engulfed by “backwardness and corruption.” Tārīkh Ādāb al-lughah al-‘Arabiyyah 4.6: 11.

23 See for instance Mīkhā’īl Nu‘ayma’s significant questioning of the term nahḍah in Roger Allen’s “The Post-Classical Period …,” 15.

24 Shaykh Ḥusayn al-Marṣafī, Risālat al-kalam al-thamān, ed. Aḥmad Zakarīyā Shalaq. (Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, GIBO, 1984), 61.

25 Piterberg, Gabriel, “Tropes of Stagnation and Awakening in Nationalist Historical Consciousness: The Egyptian Case,” in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, eds. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 42–61Google Scholar; Sedra, Paul, From Mission to Modernity (London: I. B. Taurus, 2011)Google Scholar and Maqdisi, Usama, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. As a site of complexity and difference, we can direct attention to such variegated response in the following: the renowned Syrian scholar Muḥammad Kurd ‘Alī argued that Muslim and Arab intellectuals had long entertained the need for rising from decadence; there is also a counter discourse that argues otherwise. See his articles in al-Muqtabas, vol. 1 (1906): 432–33 and vol. 2 (1907): 620–21. For an opposite argument, see the following article in Al-Hilāl, 1939 by ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz al-Bishrī, in “Muhimu al-adīb fī al-Sharq an yakūna adīban Sharqiyyan” (How Disturbing for a Littérateur in the East to be an Oriental Littérateur; the title can delude one to read it as the “mission of . . . to be . . .”) where he argues: “By God, the greatest of our Eastern littérateurs and the grandest cast their eyes only to the West, and think only through the West, and depict what they find in a Western style; nay, their nerves get relaxed and open up only to what reaches them from there. They were thrilled by Western civilization and fascinated by its beauty; and Western thought closed their mind to any other; thus no space is left in their mind to explore the East, to check out its literate scape and to dig deep for its hidden treasures. . . .”Al-Hilāl (1939): 117–19, esp. 117. The renowned scholar Zakī Mubārak writes in specific identitarian politics of domination that jointly reflect on a politic of Egyptian ascendancy and European colonialism. In “Mustaqbal al-adab al-‘Arabī” (The Future of Arabic Literature), he argues: “It is a shame for Egyptians to admit their being disciples to the West while sublimated to mentoring the East.” See Al-Hiāl (1939), Special Issue, 129–31, esp. 131. In Yaqẓat al-fikr (Awakening of the Mind; Cairo: Maktabat al-‘͗ Ādāb, 1986), the reputed dramatist, novelist, and essayist Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm suggests a different line, one of openness to cultures. In an article of 1946 titled “Tabi‘ātunā naḥwa al-shabāb” (Our Responsibilities toward Youth), he argues: “The harm in my old thoughts and opinions derives from the fact that they dispose the young to erect prisons and fortifications from their Eastern spirituality and the remains of their Egyptian civilization that isolate them from global thought, and prevent them from a daring and powerful participation in the common human intellectual activity. Upon this participation they’ll perhaps stop seeing in Western culture and foreign civilizations monsters that threaten to snatch away their souls!” 107–13, esp. 109.

26 Sulaymān Khaṭṭār al-Bustānī produces Homer’s Ilyad in 1904, Arabized in verse, with a historical and literary explanation (Ilyādhat Hūmīrūs: mu‘rrabah naẓman wa-‘alayhā sharḥ tarīkhī adabī; Miṣr: Al-Hilāl, 1904). Dār a-Ma‘ārif in Sousse reprint, n.d. is used, 161.

27 As well defined by Martin Irvine, these include: the lexicon, the gloss or commentary, the compilation, the library, and the encyclopedia. See The Making of Textual Culture: “Grammatica” and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 426.

28 See Bauer, Thomas, “Mamluk Literature: Misunderstandings and New Approaches,” Mamluk Studies Review IX, 2 (2005): 105–132Google Scholar, esp. 106; his “In Search of ‘Post-Classical Literature’ ”: A Review Article, Mamluk Studies Review, XI, 2 (2007): 137–67, esp. 142–45; and also his “Communication and Emotion: The Case of Ibn Nubātah’s Kindertotenlieder,” Mamluk Studies Review VII (2003): 48–95, esp. 74–75.

29 See Muhsin al-Musawi, Reading Iraq (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006, 63, 164 and fn 108.The verse reads as follows: “White are our deeds (we are good and generous); black are our battles (they make our foes grieve); our fields are green (we are affluent not needy); and our swords are red (we are cavaliers and knights who defeat their enemies).” The poem that opens with a plea for a female addressee to “ask the sharp edged stout lances of our great feats/ and get the attestations of swords if we ever fail their expectations” refers to the Zawrā’ battle (Al-Zawrā’ is also one of the sobriquets for Baghdad), after his tribe, which made up the population of the city Ḥilla, rose, “like one man” and fought a battle against their enemies who killed his uncle in his own mosque. He was among the frontline fighters, and they achieved a glorious victory.

30 A discussion of these that evidentially build on ibn Nubātah’s is by van Gelder, G. J., “Conceit of Pen and Sword,” Journal of Semitic Studies 32.2 (1987): 329–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Gully, Adrian, “The Sword and the Pen in the Pre-Modern Arabic Heritage: A Literary Representation of an Important Historical Relationship,” Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, ed. Sebastian Günther (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 403–430Google Scholar.

31 It appeared under this title in a reprint by Ibrahim al-Yāzijī,, from Khizānat al-adab (The Ultimate Treasure Trove of literature), by ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī (d. AH 837 /AD 1434), ed. Kawkab Diyāb, vol. II, 217–38; in Al-Ḍiyā` (1900), vol. 6, 68, reprinted in Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī, Abḥāth lughawiyyah: al-lughah ‘unwān al-ummah wa mir’āt aḥwālihā (Linguistic Research: Language Is the Identity of a Nation and the Mirror of Its State), ed. Yūsuf Qazmā Khūrī (Beirut: Dār al-Ḥamrā`, 1993), 184–91. Ibn Ḥijjah included this in his Sharḥ (mistakenly called Khizānat al-adab) as “Risālat al-sayf wa al-qalam.” See Khizānat al-adab wa-ghāyat al-arab, 1, p. 360. There is a further note on this misunderstanding.

32 In 1868 the Lebanese Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī’s ode “Tanabbahū wa istafīqū ayyuhā al-‘arabu” (“awake, O Arabs, and arise”) was popular enough to catch fire everywhere. See George Habib Antonius (d. 1942), The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (London: H. Hamilton, 1938). On this “famous ode,” of 1879, see also Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1962; reprint 1983)Google Scholar, 277.

33 George Antonius used this line as the epigraph for his book, The Arab Awakening, to argue the case for Arab struggle for independence from the Ottomans.

34 According to ibn Ḥijjah, ibn Nubātah used it as “A witty deviation from the usual, in praising what others condemn or condemning what others praise.” See Pierre Cachia, The Arch Rhetorician or the Schemer’s Skimmer, 129.

35 More on this point is in al-Qalqashandī, see Adrian Gully’s references, “The Sword and the Pen …,” 411–12.

36 The Egyptian poet Maḥmūd Sāmī al-Bārūdī was one of the leaders of the ‘Urābī Revolt of 1881. See Khouri, Mounah A., Poetry and the Making of Modern Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 12–36Google Scholar.

37 It was originally called Al-Jami‘ah al-‘Uthmāniyyah (The Ottoman Confederation) but changed to a monthly publication under the abridged Al-Jāmiʻah, and was inconsistently published. Only five issues were published in 1902, six in 1903, and two in 1904. After moving to New York it was irregularly published between 1906 and 1909.

38 See Bauer, Thomas, “Mamluk Literature: Misunderstandings and New Approaches,” Mamluk Studies Review IX, 2 (2005): 105–132Google Scholar, esp. 106; and his “In Search of ‘Post-Classical Literature’”: A Review Article, Mamluk Studies Review, XI, 2 (2007): 137–67, esp. 142–145.

39 See Qalqīlah, 426–36.

40 Also known as El-Firuz Abadi or al-Fīrūsabādī, 1329–1414. His first Qāmūs made use of his predecessors, along with the Andalusian philologist ibn Sīdah (d. 1066) and Sāghānī (d. 1252), and was abridged in al-Qāmūs al- muḥīṭ (The Encompassing Ocean; i.e., the comprehensive dictionary). The dictionary elicited more responses and led to other compilations including the voluminous Tāj al-‘arūs and Buṭrus al-Bustānī’s (1818/1819–1882/1883) Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ (1867).

41 See more on the role of some scholars, Sawaie, Mohammed, “Rifa'a Rafi’ al-Ṭahtawi and His Contribution to the Lexical Development of Modern Literary Arabic,” in International Journal of Middle East Studies 32.3 (August 2000): 395–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gully, Adrian, “Arabic Linguistic Issues and Controversies of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Journal of Semitic Studies XLII, 1 (Spring 1997): 75–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 On Zabīd as a center for jurisprudence, Sufism, and piety, see ibn Baṭṭūṭah, vol. II, 367–68.

43 The Order of Things, 43.

44 See ‘Abd al-Ḥāmid al-Kātib, “Risālah ilā al-kuttāb,” in Rasā’il al-bulaghā’ (Epistles of the Rhetoricians), ed. Muḥammad Kurd ‘Alī.

45 See Roper, Geoffrey, “Texts from Nineteenth-Century Egypt: The Role of E. W. Lane,” in Travelers in Egypt, eds. Paul and Janet Starkey (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 244–254Google Scholar.

46 AUB commissioned ‘Abdullāh al-Bustānī in 1930 to issue another dictionary, which he named al-Bustān (the Orchard), which he abridged into Fākihat al-bustān (The Bounties of the Orchard). The awakening lexicographic fervor continued in the unfinished German Fischer’s Oxford-like dictionary, Ismā‘īl Maẓhar’s Qāmūs al-Nahḍah (The awakening dictionary) with its appropriation of newly used technical and scientific terms, and al-Muʻjam al-wasīṭ, which was authorized by Ibrāhīm Madkūr and collated by Ibrāhīm Muṣṭafā and others. The significance of the latter is its inclusion of the professional languages of different groups and its opening the door to qiyās (analogy).

47 Elshakry, Marwa, “Knowledge in Motion: The Cultural Politics to Modern Science Translations in Arabic,” Isis 99, 4 (December 2008): 701–730CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Ismā‘īl Maẓhar, Al-Nahḍa Dictionary (Cairo: Renaissance Bookshop, n.d.), two volumes; vol. I: preface, n.p.

49 For some detailed readings of the recapitulations, corrections, and improvements on each of these as carried out by grammarians and scholars at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, see ‘Adnān al-Khaṭīb, Al-Mu‘jam al-‘Arabī (1966; amended edition, 1994; Beirut: Maktabat Lubnān, 1994), 51–54.