Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Islamic Knowledge and the Making of Modern Egypt
  • Cited by 5
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2020
Print publication year:
2020
Online ISBN:
9781108526142
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108526142
Subjects:
Middle East Studies, Islam, Area Studies, History, Religion, Middle East History
Information

Book description

This historical study transforms our understanding of modern Egyptian national culture by applying social theory to the history of Egypt's first teacher-training school. It focuses on Dar al-Ulum, which trained students from religious schools to teach in Egypt's new civil schools from 1872. During the first four decades of British occupation (1882-1922), Egyptian nationalists strove to emulate Europe yet insisted that Arabic and Islamic knowledge be reformed and integrated into Egyptian national culture despite opposition from British officials. This reinforced the authority of the alumni of the Dar al-Ulum, the daramiyya, as arbiters of how to be modern and authentic, a position that graduates Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood would use to resist westernisation and create new modes of Islamic leadership in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Establishing a 130-year history for tensions over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modernized public spaces, tensions which became central to the outcomes of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, Hilary Kalmbach demonstrates the importance of Arabic and Islamic knowledge to notions of authority, belonging, and authenticity within a modernising Muslim-majority community.

Reviews

‘A meticulously researched study examining the often-conflicting positions regarding what role Islam can play in the construction of a modern society where educational politics and programmes have been key battlegrounds. Based on close-readings of a variety of material and the use of a scale that brings in individuals, social movements as well as institutions, this is a valuable resource for the study of Islam and education, the relation between state-run projects and grass-root movements and, not least, the force with which claims of authenticity can be used in political mobilization.'

Catharina Raudvere - University of Copenhagen

‘Hilary Kalmbach illuminates a critical hybrid pathway to modernity between al-Azhar and the civil schools - the teacher’s college of Dar al-Ulum. That future Muslim Brothers Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb studied there underlines its significance for understanding Islamic revival movements from the 1930s to the present, in Egypt and around the world.’

Donald M. Reid - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
  • 1 - Reform, Education, and Sociocultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
    pp 49-88
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation
References

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.