Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Expanded contents list
- List of maps, figures, and tables
- List of abbreviations
- Transcription, glosses, and transliterations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: language and identity in modern Egypt
- 1 Identity and beyond: setting the framework of analysis
- 2 A historical overview of the development of national identity in modern Egypt with reference to language: the formative period
- 3 “Arabic” indexes amidst a nation and a nation-state: ideologies, attitudes, and linguistic realities
- 4 Social attributes of Egyptian identity
- 5 Identity and narration in Egypt
- 6 The politics of identity and linguistic unrest: the case of the Egyptian Revolution
- 7 Conclusions
- Appendix: chronological list of songs examined
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - A historical overview of the development of national identity in modern Egypt with reference to language: the formative period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Expanded contents list
- List of maps, figures, and tables
- List of abbreviations
- Transcription, glosses, and transliterations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: language and identity in modern Egypt
- 1 Identity and beyond: setting the framework of analysis
- 2 A historical overview of the development of national identity in modern Egypt with reference to language: the formative period
- 3 “Arabic” indexes amidst a nation and a nation-state: ideologies, attitudes, and linguistic realities
- 4 Social attributes of Egyptian identity
- 5 Identity and narration in Egypt
- 6 The politics of identity and linguistic unrest: the case of the Egyptian Revolution
- 7 Conclusions
- Appendix: chronological list of songs examined
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There lie those nine or ten million native Egyptians at the bottom of the social ladder, a poor, ignorant, credulous, but withal not unkindly race, being such as sixty centuries of misgovernment and oppression by various rules, from pharaohs to pashas, have made them. It is for the civilised Englishman to extend to them the hand of fellowship and encouragement, and to raise them, morally and materially, from the abject state in which he finds them […]
(Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer 1908: 130)In fact, the Englishman will soon find that the Egyptian, whom he wishes to mold into something really useful with the view of his becoming eventually autonomous, is merely the rawest of raw material […]
(Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer 1908: 131)I am the Egyptian, of noble stock.
I have built glory across the two pyramids.
My grandparents created great science
My generous Nile is alive in the fertile valley
My ancestors have survived for thousands of years.
The universe could perish and they still remain
Shall I tell you about a lover that forced me to emigrate and leave my family and friends?
I have given my life as a gift to that lover. I cannot love another
(from the song ?ana l-masri: (“I am the Egyptian”) by Sayyid Darwīsh (1921))- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Identity in Modern Egypt , pp. 78 - 104Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014