A new weekly series about Egypt 

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spent
the first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (6 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptians Frescoes (6): Still on the Trail of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Jamal Al-Afghani.

Meet the main authors of the mood which ushered the twentieth century for Egyptians.

It is as if the world immediately surrounding Egypt had been shattered by the Great War. The Ottoman Empire existed no longer. It had lost its Arab and European provinces, West of Istambul, and had turned in desperation against its Armenian population causing havoc amongst hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians; many Armenians who survived this genocide fled to Egypt where they took refuge. The Russian Empire collapsed and the Bolsheviks faced separatist currents over the entire territory while they preached tirelessly that their revolution would end the wrongs afflicted against those who were oppressed and exploited. The Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved into independent entities. And Britain, France and Germany were in tatters. Egypt, on the other hand, had prospered from the war. Immigrants brought new energies and skills to the Nile Valley. And, to the Egyptians themselves, the scents of freedom were in the air and were finally reaching their shores for the first time.

King Fuad I

The political and ideological configuration of the country had not stopped evolving ever since Muhammad ‘Ali had created his modern kingdom. This time, the British tightened their grip on the Suez Canal. Their troops would remain stationed for much longer in the country. This was confirmed by the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The ruler of Egypt now became yet another son of Isma’il Pasha, Fu’ad (1868-1936) who was crowned King in 1922. Fu’ad 1st was a constitutional monarch who rapidly learnt, with the help of the British, to curtail the powers of the Legislature which the Nationalists controlled, as in 1923 when he abrogated the Constitution. Riots in Cairo forced him to re-instate it.

Fu’ad had previously been Rector of the first Egyptian university named after him. The Secretary of the Fu’ad University, Qasim Amin (1863-1908) was a jurist who had studied Law at the University of Montpellier. He was a friend of ‘Abduh and Zaghlul. He was influenced by Darwinism and proclaimed that, unless Egypt embraced modernity, it would cease to be fit to survive. Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill were his mentors and made him a liberal. Amin is today celebrated for his works on the advancement of women. His Tahrir al-Mar’ah, (The Liberation of Woman) deplored the status of women in his time. Only through education and work could a woman liberate herself from the domination of men. He had applauded Rifa’a al-Tahtawi - the Shaykh who had accompanied two dozen youths to Paris in the early nineteen century - for having, he himself, drafted his marriage contract in all fairness to his spouse. In Huquq al-Nisa fil Islam (The Rights of Women in Islam), he urged that hers be rehabilitated if Egypt were to join the civilized nations. Amin created girls’ schools. He was an inspiration to two prominent feminists, Huda Sha’rawi and Doriyya Shafiq, who would lead an Egyptian Feminist Movement  

Hoda Shaarawi

When the Ottoman State collapsed and surrendered, the Young Turks fled. Tal’at Pasha was assassinated in Berlin by an Armenian patriot seeking revenge. The hero of the Battle at Galipoli, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, assumed control of Turkey’s destinies. He confronted the Greeks and the Italians in Smyrna, faced the French in Alexandretta and the British in Constantinople. The Sultan-Caliph ‘Abd ul-Mejid had sided with the British. Kemal Pasha simply abolished both Sultanate and Caliphate, by a stroke of his pen from his new capital, in Ankara. In British India, a shocked Muslim community reacted swiftly under the leadership of Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali, two brothers who founded the Khilafat Movement and published a Khilafat manifesto calling upon Britain to protect the Caliphate.

In Cairo, Shaykh ‘Ali ‘abd al-Raziq, a student of ‘Abduh, now a Shari’a Judge, published al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm (Islam and the Foundations of Governance) in 1925. Shaykh ‘Ali supported the separation between State and Religion. He argued that the prophet Muhammad had been both prophet and statesman during his lifetime. His role as prophet was that which had made Him be chosen by Allah. The Prophetic Verses of the Coran were meant for all times. Not so his role as a statesman who belonged to seventh century Arabia. This was a most revolutionary statement on the part of one from al-Azhar. It could well have initiated what happened in Christianity when literary criticism was applied to the Scriptures. Instead, political events were occurring in Egypt whereby King Fu’ad was toying with the idea of claiming the Caliphate for himself. A fake genealogy had been fabricated by which Fu’ad, the Albanian who spoke better Italian than Arabic, would be a Qurayshi, from the tribe of the Prophet. The learned at al-Azhar forced ‘Ali ‘abd al-Raziq to recant his profound thoughts publicly.

Appears Rashid Rida (1865-1935). He was born in Tripoli, near Beirut and died in Cairo. He was trained as a ‘Alim, had gotten acquainted with the publication by ‘Abduh and Afghani of al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqah, which they issued while in Paris. Rida was ‘Abduh’s most prominent disciple and they both published al-Manar (The Lighthouse), a monthly magazine which delved into Coranic Commentaries when ‘Abduh returned to Egypt.

Rashid Reda

Eventually, Rida’s political philosophy became that of begging for an Islamic State in which Creed would be purged of all its impurities and Western influences. He wished to rejuvenate the notion of the Caliphate and called upon Muslims to follow the guidance of the Salaf, the early converts to Islam. To the Faithful, ‘Ibadat dealt with religious practice while Mu’amalat concerned social relations. For Islam and for Muslims, Shari’a Law was fundamental towards leading a righteous life; Rashid Rida would not tamper with that principle. In his later days, Rida defended Wahhabism which Egyptians remembered had been defeated by their own Muhammad ‘Ali Basha when his son Ibrahim led the Egyptian armies to Hijaz, in Arabia, in 1803, to wrest the holy cities of Makkah and Madina from the marauding heretics from Najd.

Enters Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963). He was known as the Teacher of his Generation. He was Fu’ad University’s first Principle. al-Sayyid was born in the countryside and went to Coranic School. He was then sent to Cairo to acquire his secondary education at the Khidawiyyah, one of a handful of schools established to provide a solid Arabic and Islamic education alongside all the modern sciences as well as French and English. All my Ma’adi Sporting Club friends went to the Ibrahimiyyah, a similar school. Their teachers were impeccable. I envied them for that school but could not convince my father that there was where he should have sent me. al-Sayyid was a lawyer and a friend of ‘Abduh, and of Zaghlul whom he accompanied to the Paris Peace Conference. He worked under Cromer, also edited at the same time, in 1907, al-Jarida, a nationalist newspaper. He finally founded the Umma Party with Zaghlul. His translation of Aristotle from French is still visited till this day. al-Sayyid was, furthermore, an admirer of British Liberalists and French Encyclopaedists. While heading Fu’ad University, the first batch of women graduating from this institution made history thanks to him and to Qasim Amin. al-Sayyid was an Egyptian Nationalist who preached that Egyptians were not Arabs although they spoke Arabic. He would become the champion of Secularism and Liberalism in Egyptian politics. And, when it was decided to build a Mausoleum to the memory of Sa’d Zaghlul , the Father of the Nation, his arguing that it should reflect the Pharaonic past of Egypt, won the day. It was built of pink granite as a replica of the Mamisi at the Temple of Kom Ombo, along the Nile, in Upper Egypt.

Ibrahim Al-Yaziji

The intellectual ferment which readers in the cities were being exposed to would receive, after the World War, yet another dimension. It came from the shores of Lebanon and dealt with Arabic philology. Its exponents were Christian. They had been trained by Butrus al-Bustani (1819-1883) and Ibrahim al-Yaziji (1847-1906).

The century was maturing and the Egyptian elites were being exposed to several possible avenues as to how they wanted to rule themselves. They could now turn to Egyptian or Arab Nationalism, or to separation of Religion and State, or to a modern form of the Islamic State. These elites were modernists in that they were critical of the rigidity (jumud) of traditional, medieval ways which they blamed for their decadence. As the political scene, in Egypt, witnessed the constant fluidity in alliances between the British High Commissioner, the King and Parliament, new perspectives for the future were being forged within the country or were caused from without in the wider world. After all, is constancy in history not about change and does not our future result from the synthesis which contradiction of the opposites brings about? Contradiction of ideas. Opposites in interests. Cairo’s cafés hummed with theories and ideologies. 

Yet the Shishas bubbled as if to spell that the time for radicalism and totalitarianism had not yet come. A few more frescoes will have to appear before the name of Hasan al-Banna and the organization he will create, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Ikhwan, become habitual café-talk.