Book contents
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration, Dates and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Who Made the Nahda?
- 2 The Discourse of Civilisation
- 3 A Place in the World
- 4 An Arab Utopian
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - An Arab Utopian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration, Dates and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Who Made the Nahda?
- 2 The Discourse of Civilisation
- 3 A Place in the World
- 4 An Arab Utopian
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter addresses the forms taken by utopian thinking and writing in the Nahda. It first examines the notion of ‘utopia’ and its parallels in older Arabic traditions, and then its relevance to parts of the Beiruti and Cairene Nahda already examined. Next it presents a detailed study of the Aleppine writer Fransīs Marrāsh’s remarkable utopian narrative Ghābat al-Ḥaqq; and, finally, turns to Marrāsh’s later work of the early 1870s, to consider how utopian impulses could lead to a sharp critique of the Nahda’s civilising projects.
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- Information
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda , pp. 188 - 244Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020