I thank Dr. Judith Tucker, whose encouragement and support has touched this work at every level. Many thanks also to Dr. John Voll, the anonymous IJMES reviewers, my colleagues, my sister, and my husband, all of whom patiently read my drafts and provided invaluable comments.

¹ Husayn al-Marsafi, “Risalat al-Kalim al-Thaman,” in Ruʾya fi Tahdith al-Fikr al-Misri: al-Shaykh Husayn al-Marsafi wa-Kitabuhu “Risalat al-Kalim al-Thaman,” ed. Ahmad Zakariya al-Shalaq (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Misriyya al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitab, 1984), 61.

² Ibid., 125.

³ For an overview of some contemporary debates on the role of education and tarbiya, see Bradley, James Cook, “Egypt's National Education Debate,” Comparative Education 36 (2000): 477–90Google Scholar.

⁴ Albert, Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 56Google Scholar.

⁵ Lisa, Pollard, Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing, and Liberating Egypt, 1805–1923 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005), 9–11Google Scholar; Powell, Eve M. Troutt, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2003), 15Google Scholar; Juan, Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's ʿUrabi Movement (Cairo: American University Press, 1999), 81, 133–35Google Scholar.

⁶ For example, see Adeeb, Khalid'sThe Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁷ For example, see Cleveland's, William L. section on the “Dualism of Nineteenth-Century Reforms” and Egyptian education. Cleveland, William L., A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), 101Google Scholar.

⁸ For this article, I looked at a sample of the journal's full run (the journal production cycle was based on the hijrī calendar): the first and last years in their entirety (1287 and 1294) and three six-month samples through the course of the magazine's publication (the second half of 1288, the first halves of 1290 and 1292). These hijrī years correspond to the Gregorian dates April 1870–March 1871, August 1871–March 1872, March–August 1873, February–August 1875, and January–August 1877. When appropriate, I also followed certain annual articles, such as those on testing, that generally appeared in Shaʿban. I analyzed a total of 511 articles and book chapters from this roughly three and a half year period.

⁹ New schools did not hesitate to recruit former Azharis as students and teachers. For an overview of this dynamic, see Aroian, Lois A., The Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education In Egypt: Dar al-ʿUlum and al-Azhar (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1983), 12–14Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 56; Pollard, Nurturing the Nation, 9.

¹¹ Pollard, Nurturing the Nation, 21. Ahmad ʿIzzatʿAbd al-Karim also distinguished between the “modern” (hadīth) schools versus the “old” or “ancient” (qadīm) in Tarikh al-Taʿlim fi ʿAsr Muhammad ʿAli (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahda al-Misriyya, 1938), 555.

¹² For a good overview, see Fritz, Steppat, “National Education Projects in Egypt before the British Occupation,” in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, ed. Polk, William R. and Chambers, Richard L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

¹³ Timothy, Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 76Google Scholar. For a detailed list of its clauses, see Heyworth-Dunne, , An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt (London: Luzac and Co., 1939), 362–69Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The number of students in government-controlled schools rose from 1,399 in 1868 to 4,445 students in the thirty-six schools by 1878, a roughly threefold increase in ten years. Heyworth-Dunne, Introduction to the History of Education, 387–88. As for kuttāb students, the numbers vary widely according to source and range from 29,400 in 1869 to 137,535 in 1878. Heyworth-Dunne believed that “the rapid increase in numbers from year to year can only be explained as having been due to a more exact system of calculation,” 360–61.

¹⁵ Nelly, Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 172Google Scholar; Cole, Colonialism and Revolution, 81, 133–35; Pollard, Nurturing the Nation, 9–11; Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism, 15.

¹⁶ Reimer, Michael J., “Contradiction and Consciousness in Ali Mubarak's Description of al-Azhar,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 63Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978), 163.

¹⁸ Daniel Crecelius, “Nonideological Responses of the Egyptian Ulama to Modernization,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis, 1978), 185.

¹⁹ Ibid., 186, 190–93.

²⁰ For example, see Livingston, John E., “Muhammad ʿAbduh on Science,” The Muslim World 85 (July–October 1995): 216Google Scholar.

²¹ Steppat, “National Education Projects in Egypt,” 287.

²² For information on many of Rawdat al-Madaris's main contributors, see the biographical entries at the end of Muhammad ʿAbd al-Ghani Hasan and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Disuqi's Rawdat al-Madaris: Nashʾatuha wa-Itijahatuha al-Adabiyya wa-l-ʿIlmiyya (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-ʿArabiyya, 1975).

²³ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram 1287/16 April 1870): 4.

²⁴ For statistics on the influx of Europeans under Ismaʿil, see Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 343–44.

²⁵ ʿIlm in this context is more akin to the early modern European idea of “natural philosophy,” which was broader than “science.” See Osler, Margaret J., Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Further complicating matters, uses of ʿālim or ʿulamaʾ were not always references to formally trained religious scholars; in some contexts they connoted a more generic “possessor of ʿilm” or “learned person” with training in any of the wider meanings of ʿilm that were used at the time.

²⁷ For categorization purposes, subjects were grouped together under the following headings: natural sciences (agriculture, astronomy, botany, chemistry, oceanography, and weather charts), language arts (literary criticism, grammar, and writing and composition), education (articles dealing explicitly with education, reports on schools, curriculum listings, and speeches delivered at graduation and awards ceremonies), and history (original Arabic as well as translated works and biographies).

²⁸ It is important to note that although the natural sciences represent the single largest category in Figure 1, even taken together with the math, engineering, medicine, and geography articles, these subjects represent only twenty-five percent of the total number of articles printed.

²⁹ A phrase I have borrowed from Livingston, “Muhammad ʿAbduh,” 234.

³⁰ “Hata tattasiʿ dawaʾir maʿqulihim wa-manqulihim,” Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram, 1287/16 April 1870): 5.

³¹ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Safar 1287/15 May 1870): 18.

³² The ten modes of being are substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, doing, and undergoing.

³³ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Jamad al-Thani 1287/26 September 1870): 14–15.

³⁴ Ibid., 14.

³⁵ Ibid., 15.

³⁶ This is not to say that more restrictive and/or specific definitions of ʿilm were not advanced. See Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Shawwal 1287/22 January 1871): 15–16.

³⁷ For example, see Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1287/29 July 1870): 7.

³⁸ For a discussion of mutūn in classical education, see Brinkley, Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993): 18–35Google Scholar. For examples in Rawdat al-Madaris, see “Al-ʿInwan al-Ridwan fi Madh Sayyid Wild ʿAdnan,” Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (30 Dhu al-Qaʾda 1288/10 February 1872): 6–16; “Risalatayn,” Rawdat al-Madaris 8 (15 Shaʿban 1294/ 22 October 1877): 2–8.

³⁹ See al-Tahtawi's description of Imam Taqi al-Din al-Subki. Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Safar 1287/15 May 1870): 14. Also Rawdat al-Madaris 8 (15 Safar 1294/1 March 1877): 3.

⁴⁰ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Safar 1287/15 May 1870): 14.

⁴¹ See Rawdat al-Madaris 8 (15 Safar 1294/1 March 1877): 3–7; Rawdat al-Madaris 8 (15 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1294/29 April, 1877): 3–7; Rawdat al-Madaris 8 (30 Jamad al-Thani 1294/12 July 1877): 3–7; Rawdat al-Madaris, 8 (15 Rajab 1294/26 July 1877): 3–5.

⁴² Rawdat al-Madaris 4 (15 Muharram 1290/15 March 1873): 8–11; Rawdat al-Madaris 4 (30 Muharram 1290/30 March 1873): 9–14.

⁴³ Dusuqi, “Introduction,” Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (Repub. 1997): 32.

⁴⁴ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram 1287/16 April 1870): 2.

⁴⁵ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Jamad al-Thani 1287/26 September 1870): 13.

⁴⁶ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1287/14 July 1870): 20.

⁴⁷ A notable exception would be ʿAli Mubarak, who wrote a scathing critique of the educational system and the ʿulamaʾ. Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram 1287/16 April 1870): 7–9. For more on ʿAli Mubarak's views of existing educational institutions, see Reimer, “Contradiction and Consciousness,” 54–57. In any case, Mubarak seemed to be the exception, with other writers lauding scholars and their roles in society. See Rawdat al-Madaris 6 (15 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1292/21 May 1875): 6; Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Safar 1287/30 May 1870): 6; Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram 1287/16 April 1870): 15–16.

⁴⁸ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Ramadan 1287/8 December 1870): 25.

⁴⁹ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Safar 1287/15 May 1870): 10–16.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 10–11.

⁵¹ Ibid., 13.

⁵² ʿAli Fahmi's renewed interest in biographies of former luminaries also betrays a similar hope for a revival.

⁵³ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Safar 1287/15 May 1870): 15.

⁵⁴ ʿAli Fahmi's account. Rawdat al-Madaris 6 (30 Jamad al-Awwal 1292/4 July 1875): 3–4.

⁵⁵ Shaykh Husayn al-Shabasi, “Masaʾla Fardiyya,” Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1287/14 July 1870): 16–19.

⁵⁶ Shaykh Ahmad Wahbi, “Maqama Wasfiyya,” Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1287/14 July 1870): 19–21.

⁵⁷ See, for example, the article dedicated to this specifically. “Fukahat al-Jalis wa-Nuzahat al-Anis,” Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (15 Rajab 1288/30 September 1871): 2–4.

⁵⁸ See almost any of Sayyid Salih Majdi's stories of maqamāt. Many have a religious/moral theme, such as “ease after hardship” or “you reap what you sow.” Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Safar 1287/30 May 1870): 7–14; Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Muharram 1287/1 May 1870): 5–9.

⁵⁹ Mahmoud Khayrat, Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (30 Ramadan, 1288/13 December, 1871): 19–20.

⁶⁰ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Safar 1287/15 May 1870): 18.

⁶¹ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Safar 1287/30 May 1870): 14–15.

⁶² Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Jamad al-Thani 1287/11 September 1870): 13–19.

⁶³ See ʿAli Fahmi's introduction to the article, ibid., 13.

⁶⁴ “Risala fi Muqarana baʿd Mabahith al-Hayya bi-l-Warid fi al-Nusus al-Sharʿiyya,” Rawdat al-Madaris 7 (15 Rabiʿ al-Awwal 1293/30 May 1870): 2–23.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 18, 20.

⁶⁶ See ʿAli Fahmi's note, Ibid., 23.

⁶⁷ Reid, Donald M., Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2002), 112Google Scholar. He also mentions that in 1865, 500 copies of al-Tahtawi's Tarikh Misr were commissioned. So, 350 for an initial run would have been modest but certainly not trivial.

⁶⁸ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram 1287/16 April 1870): 4.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ This newest incarnation of the educational ministry was created 26 January 1863, soon after Ismaʿil's ascension to power. Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 347.

⁷¹ Hasan and Disuqi, Rawdat al-Madaris, 88. With its puzzles, opportunities for student publication, and articles (often written by their teachers), Rawdat al-Madaris seemed popular among students, so much so that the ministry had to issue a warning to students not to engage in “journal” activities during school days. Ibid., Rawdat al-Madaris, 89.

⁷² For more about its distribution, see ibid., 89–90.

⁷³ Donald Malcolm Reid. “The Egyptian Geographical Society: From Foreign Layman's Society to Indigenous Professional Association,” Poetics Today (1993): 542, 552; Hasan and Disuqi, Rawdat al-Madaris, 37; Matti, Moosa, Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997), 13–14Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 63.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 74, 76.

⁷⁶ See al-Tahtawi's categorization. Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (30 Safar 1287/30 May 1870): 3.

⁷⁷ Here referring specifically to the installation of streetlights. Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Rabiʿ al-Thani 1287/14 July 1870): 20.

⁷⁸ See, for example, Disuqi's analysis of Shaykh Hasan al-Marsafi's work; ʿAbd al-Aziz al-Dusuqi, Husayn al-Marsafi (Cairo: Al-Hayʾa al-Misriyya al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitab, 1990), 55–56; and Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 131–37.

⁷⁹ See Rawdat al-Madaris 6 (15 Jamad al-Thani 1292/19 July 1875): 3. Formal listings of the curricula appeared more sporadically, but see, for example, issues 3–6 of 1292/1875.

⁸⁰ Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Shaʿban 1287/10 November 1870): 2–3.

⁸¹ Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (15 Rajab 1288/30 September 1871): 3, 5.

⁸² Because al-Azhar was beyond the purview of Diwan al-Madaris, direct discussion of its educational practices seemed off limits or at least not relevant to Rawdat al-Madaris. I believe this does not indicate a categorical separation, but is rather a matter of bureaucratic reach, as we shall see in the case of which kuttābs made it into Rawdat al-Madaris.

⁸³ This was from Dor Bey's report in 1872. Quoted in Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 81.

⁸⁴ Rawdat al-Madaris 4 (15 Safar 1290/14 April 1873): 3–6; Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (15 Dhul Qaʾida 1288/6 May 1871): 3–4; Rawdat al-Madaris 8 (30 Shaʿban 1294/9 September 1877): 2–3.

⁸⁵ Fahmi even includes a list of all 119 students and what types of gifts they received. His reporting these celebrations will be relevant to the subsequent discussion. Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (30 Shawwal 1288/12 January 1872): 3–9.

⁸⁶ See Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 363–69.

⁸⁷ Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (30 Shaʿban 1288/14 November 1871): 4. According to Heyworth-Dunne, the official number of students in 1872 was 44,199. Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 360.

⁸⁸ Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 371–72.

⁸⁹ See report on the opening of a new ahlī school. Rawdat al-Madaris 4 (15 Safar 1290/14 April 1873): 3.

⁹⁰ Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (30 Shaʿban 1288/14 November 1871): 5. For more on Darb al-Gamamiz, see the following discussion.

⁹¹ Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 65, and Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 353–54.

⁹² Rawdat al-Madaris 1 (15 Muharram 1287/16 April 1870): 10.

⁹³ Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 377.

⁹⁴ This is based on the same sample that was used for Figure 1.

⁹⁵ Three articles were written by two Azhar-educated shaykhs who were attending Dar al-ʿUlum, the new “teacher's” college that opened in 1872, also in Darb al-Gamamiz. Azhari students do not appear at all.

⁹⁶ See, for example, Beth, Baron, The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Mona, Russell, Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863–1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)Google Scholar; for Rawdat al-Madaris’s role in the demystification of literature, see Brugman, J., An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 323Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ See Cole, Colonialism and Revolution, chapter 4; William Richards Charles Phelps, “Political Journalism and the ʿUrabi Revolt” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1978).

⁹⁸ Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), 16, 25.

⁹⁹ See Messick, The Calligraphic State.

¹⁰⁰ Juan Cole, “Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890–1920,” in Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, ed. Leila Tarazi Fawaz (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 352.

¹⁰¹ For a general overview, see Crecelius, “Nonideological Responses”; Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo,” 163; Livingston, “Muhammad ʿAbduh,” 216.

¹⁰² Disuqi, Intro, 25.

¹⁰³ My sample of 500 articles represents 152 unique authors, 65 of who appear more than once. Meanwhile, an even smaller group of 34 individuals (who wrote three or more articles) was responsible for 70 percent of the articles sampled.

¹⁰⁴ Hasan and Disuqi, Rawdat al-Madaris, 366–67.

¹⁰⁵ Founded in 1872, Dar al-ʿUlum was meant to provide a bridge between Azhari education and the new government schools that needed qualified Arabic teachers. For a fuller discussion of Dar al-ʿUlum's role, see Aroian, Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education.

¹⁰⁶ John W. Livingston, “Western Science and Educational Reform in the Thought of Shaykh Rifaʾa al-Tahtawi,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 551. Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education, 395.

¹⁰⁷ Aroian frames this idea as a bridge between traditional and secular education. Aroian, Nationalization of Arabic and Islamic Education, 29.

¹⁰⁸ Disuqi, Marsafi, 49–50.

¹⁰⁹ It is interesting that government schools were not the only ones to draw upon indigenous schools’ expertise. See Hasan and Disuqi, Rawdat al-Madaris, 372–73, 380–82.

¹¹⁰ “Al-ʿInwan al-Ridwan fi Madh Sayyid Wild ʿAdnan,” Rawdat al-Madaris 2 (30 Dhu al-Qaʿda 1288/10 Febuary 1872): 1–16.

¹¹¹ Ibid., 4–5.

¹¹² Phelps, “Political Journalism and the ʿUrabi Revolt,” 10.

¹¹³ Crecelius, “Nonideological Responses,” 188–89. For the problems in social mobility this created, see Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 30–31.

¹¹⁴ Livingston, “Muhammad ʿAbduh,” 229–31. Also see Fathi Zaghlul's assessment that the weaknesses of Egyptian culture and character could be cured by reforming education along the English model. Roger Allen, “Writings of Members of the ʿNazli Circle,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 8 (1969–1970): 81–82.

¹¹⁵ For an overview of some of the debates, see Crecelius, “Nonideological Responses,” 189–91.

¹¹⁶ For details about the tug of war that ensued over leadership and reform, see Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millennium of Muslim Learning (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1974), 133–43.