This chapter considers the writing about ‘empire’ and ‘Judaism’, and the connections between the two concepts, in Egypt during the long 1890s, through a close reading of works by novelist and intellectual Farah Antun (1874–1922). I underline the fact that the Egyptian print media of the period encouraged important conversations about conquest, imperial domination, citizenship rights and democracy, in which writing about ‘the Jew’ was pivotal. I likewise want to challenge an orientalist narrative that suggests that Arabs adopted anti-Semitic discourses as part of their experience of modernity.

As noted by Israel Gershoni, the 1890s marked a new era in which modernity was introduced to Egyptian society through the print media. The existence of several overlapping public sphere venues in Egypt, consisting of networks of clubs, literary salons and cafes, as well as a market of printed books and newspapers, which reached the upper and middle classes, enabled the proliferation of new ideas about nationalism and empire. The print market was dominated by Christian immigrants from Ottoman Syria [al- Sham], although they did face considerable Muslim–Egyptian competition. British censorship limitations notwithstanding, the competition between various intellectuals advancing different political viewpoints (Egyptian and Shawwam [Syrians], Muslims and Christians) fostered debates on key issues relating to modernity and encouraged cultural pluralism.

One of the characteristics of this Egyptian print market was an attempt to position Egypt within a world of empires. In 1895, for instance, national thinker and intellectual Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) wrote in the newspaper al-Mu'ayyad that Egyptians ought to address European audiences in English and French, in order to inform them about the wrongdoings of the British occupation. The French public sphere was an important arena for such activities. The globalisation of the Arab intellectual field and the diasporic location of many Egyptian intellectuals (mostly in Paris) during the 1890s generated discussions about French colonial policies (which were often positioned visa- vis British imperial policies in Egypt). Ziad Fahmy argues that