Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: Perspectives, Paradigms and Parameters
- 1 Contemporary Interpretations of the Nahḍah: Tradition, Modernity and the Arab Intellectual
- 2 The Reintegration of Pre-modern Christians into the Mainstream of Arabic Literature and the Creation of an Inter-religious Cultural Space
- 3 Guardians of the Pre-modern Arab-Islamic Humanist Tradition: Legends without a Legacy, a Tradition without Heirs
- 4 Language Reform and Controversy: The al-Shartūnīs Respond in Defence of the Pre-modern Humanist Tradition
- 5 Arabism, Patriotism and Ottomanism as Means to Reform
- 6 Arab Intellectuals and the West: Borrowing for the Sake of Progress
- 7 Education, Reform and Enlightened Azharīs
- 8 Enacting Reform: Local Agents, Statesmen, Missionaries and the Evolution of a Cultural Infrastructure
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Reintegration of Pre-modern Christians into the Mainstream of Arabic Literature and the Creation of an Inter-religious Cultural Space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: Perspectives, Paradigms and Parameters
- 1 Contemporary Interpretations of the Nahḍah: Tradition, Modernity and the Arab Intellectual
- 2 The Reintegration of Pre-modern Christians into the Mainstream of Arabic Literature and the Creation of an Inter-religious Cultural Space
- 3 Guardians of the Pre-modern Arab-Islamic Humanist Tradition: Legends without a Legacy, a Tradition without Heirs
- 4 Language Reform and Controversy: The al-Shartūnīs Respond in Defence of the Pre-modern Humanist Tradition
- 5 Arabism, Patriotism and Ottomanism as Means to Reform
- 6 Arab Intellectuals and the West: Borrowing for the Sake of Progress
- 7 Education, Reform and Enlightened Azharīs
- 8 Enacting Reform: Local Agents, Statesmen, Missionaries and the Evolution of a Cultural Infrastructure
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The period beginning with the Ottoman conquest of 1516—17 until Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 is generally thought to be one of unrelenting intellectual and cultural decline in both Arabic and Western studies of Arabic literature. Our knowledge of this period is far from complete, but one of the most conspicuous developments of this period is clear: ‘the reintegration of Christian writers into the mainstream of Arabic literature’. This chapter focuses on the context and history of this period, and in particular on Christian writers like Isṭifān al-Duwayhī (1630—1704), Jirmānūs Farḥāt (1670—1732) and Niqūlā al-Ṣā'igh (1692—1756), whose activities are essential to understanding the approach of nahḍah Christians, many of whom emulated, edited and published their works throughout the nineteenth century. This chapter explains how through their activities as translators and assimilators into Arabic a significant inter-religious cultural space had been created where Christian scholars were eager and able to think of themselves as part of a cultural domain directly linked with Islam, the Arabic language and its literature. This cultural space, it is argued, expanded in such a way during the nahḍah that it not only afforded Christian scholars the opportunity to appropriate elements of the Muslim Arabic literary heritage wholesale into their own works, but also a deep sense of loyalty to the Arabic language.
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- Information
- The Arab NahdahThe Making of the Intellectual and Humanist Movement, pp. 36 - 74Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013