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Contradiction and Consciousness in ʿAli Mubarak's Description of al-Azhar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Michael J. Reimer
Michael J. Reimer
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Department of Arabic Studies, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt.
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Extract

Of the many talented men who entered government service in Egypt in the 19th century, none equaled in sheer energy and productivity ʿAli Mubarak Pasha (1823/4–1893). Engineer, officer, administrator, educator, and author, he was the outstanding Egyptian of his generation and the first native Muslim to head a government department in modern times. Yet his most enduring legacy are his writings, in particular his famous Khitat. A twenty-volume topographical encyclopedia published in the 1880s, the Khitat of ʿAli Mubarak is a landmark of Arabic prose and probably constitutes the greatest existing historical record of Egyptian society.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1997 , pp. 53 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Sami Musa for assistance in translation, and other colleagues who offered help and advice, especially Claude Audebert, Huda Lutfi, and Elizabeth Sartain. Thanks also to Dr. Mustafa Muhammad Ramadan and Dr. Sayyid Muhammad al-Diqan of Al-Azhar's Department of History for their courteous responses to my inquiries. Finally, I profited greatly from the thoughtful criticisms of several anonymous reviewers.

1 Hunter, F. Robert, Egypt under the Khedives, 1805–1879 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 123 ff.Google Scholar ʿAli Mubarak's career in government is studied in the outstanding dissertation by Dykstra, Darrell J., “A Biographical Study in Egyptian Modernization: ʿAli Mubarak (1823/4–1893)” (University of Michigan, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 The full title of the work is al-Khiṭaṭal-Tawfīqiyya al-Jadīda li-Miṣr al-Qāhirah wa Mudunihā wa Bilādihā al-Qadīma wa al-Shahīra (Bulaq, 1304–5 A.H.) The best analytical summary of the Khiṭaṭ's sources, accuracy, and utility remains Baer, Gabriel, ʿAli Mubarak's Khiṭaṭ as a Source for the History of Modern Egypt,ʾ in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, ed. Holt, P. M. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 13–27Google Scholar.

3 El-Shayyal, Gamal El-Din, A History of Egyptian Histoiography in the Nineteenth Century (Alexandria: University of Alexandria, 1962), 47–65, 85–86Google Scholar. On page 107, El-Shayyal writes that al-Tahtawi's works (and, by extension, those of ʿAli Mubarak) had two effects: “The first is the creation of a historical consciousness which led Egyptians to be interested in history generally and in the history of Egypt in the various ages in particular. The second is the kindling of patriotism and the strengthening of the national spirit.…[M]any factors combined to give these two effects. However, the most important among them, in my opinion, is the new understanding of Ancient Egyptian history and of Egyptian civilization as one continuous entity. Connected with this was the pride which the new historians had in the glories of that history and civilization.“

4 Crabbs, Jack, The Writing of History in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A Study in National Transformation (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1984), 118Google Scholar.

5 El-Shayyal, , History of Egyptian Historiography, 107Google Scholar. On the influence of positivism on Egyptian intellectuals who studied in France (as ʿAli Mubarak did), see Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 138Google Scholar. The themes and methodology of the Khiṭaṭ bear the clear imprint of positivism.

6 Crabbs, , The Writing of History, 116Google Scholar. The work of al-Maqrīzī is entitled al-Mawāʿiẓ wa al-iʿtibār fī Khiṭaṭ Miṣr wa al-Qāhira (as cited by Claude Cahen in The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. [hereafter Ei2], s.v. “Khiṭaṭ”).

7 See the reference to al-Maqrizi, for instance, in the introduction to Mubarak's, ʿAliKhiṭaṭ (1:2,Google Scholar discussed later).

8 The purpose is therefore not, except incidentally, to evaluate the historical accuracy and utility of the Khiṭaṭ. On these topics, see Baer, , KhiṭaṭGoogle Scholar.

9 Khiṭaṭ, 1:55–56Google Scholar.

10 Khiṭaṭ, 1:80Google Scholar.

11 Khiṭaṭ, 1:77Google Scholar. Ghuzz may denote not only Turks but other non-indigenous soldiery such as Mamluks (EI2, s.v. “Ghuzz”).

12 Khiṭaṭ, 1:2, 56, 76, 80Google Scholar. To be precise, the return to conditions of security, well-being, and civilized order mentioned on 1:80 refer specifically to the period after the cessation of war between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in 1841.

13 It is not the purpose here to debate the “decline” thesis. Recent treatments challenging traditional views of “decline” include Hathaway, Jane, “The Military Household in Ottoman Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 39–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hanna, Nelly, ed., The State and Its Servants: Administration in Egypt from Ottoman Times to the Present (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

The myth of reawakening is common to Old World nationalism, as indicated by Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 194–95Google Scholar.

14 On this point, see Delanoue, Gilbert, Moralistes et politiques musulmans dans I'Ègypte au XIXe siècle, 2 vols. (Cairo: IFAO, 1982), 2:532–33;Google Scholar and Toledano, Ehud R., “Mehmet Ali Paşa or Muhammad Ali Basha? An Historiographical Appraisal in the Wake of a Recent Book,” Middle Eastern Studies 21 (1985): 141–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 A concise summary of the institution's history is given by J. Jomier in EI 2, s.v. “Al-Azhar.” Fuller discussions are found in Winter, Michael, Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 1517–1798 (London: Routledge, 1992), 118 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Heyworth-Dunne, J., Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt (London: Luzac & Co., 1938), 17 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 El Sayed, Afaf Loutfi, “The Role of the ‘ulama’ in Egypt during the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, 264–80Google Scholar. See also El-Shennawy, Abdel Aziz M., Al-Azhar: Jāmiʿan wa Jāmiʿatan, 2 vols. (Cairo: Anglo–Egyptian Bookshop, 1984)Google Scholar.

17 Lane, E. W., Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1895; reprint, The Hague: East-West Publications, 1978), 213Google Scholar. The effect of Muhammad ʿAli's reforms on waqf lands remains unstudied; on other land-tenure issues, see Cuno, Kenneth M., The Pasha's Peasants (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

18 Toledano, Ehud R., State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 72Google Scholar; Eccel, A. Chris, Egypt, Islam, and Social Change: Al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1984), 73 ffGoogle Scholar.

19 For the following, see Khiṭaṭ, 4:12–13Google Scholar. ʿAli Mubarak's principal source in this section is al-Jabarti.

20 Khiṭaṭ, 2:90Google Scholar. The physical improvements done under Ismaʿil were very modest: Creswell, K. A. C. (The Muslim Architecture of Egypt [Oxford: Clarendon, 1952], 1:41)Google Scholar mentions only the rebuilding of some arcades in the right half of the sanctuary.

21 Khiṭaṭ, 4:13–14Google Scholar.

22 Khiṭaṭ, 4:22–24Google Scholar.

23 Jomard, in the Description de I'Ègypte's discussion of the city of Cairo and the Citadel, says that there were perhaps 1,500 students at al-Azhar in the late 18th century (“Description abrégée de la ville et de la citadelle du Kaire,” Description de I'Ègypte: Ètat moderne, vol. 2, pt. 2, 665)Google Scholar; El-Shayyal, Gamal El-Din (“Some Aspects of Intellectual and Social Life in Eighteenth-Century Egypt,” in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, ed. Holt, P. M.), says that there were 60 or 70 professors at al-Azhar at about the same time (p. 115)Google Scholar. If these figures are right, the 19th century witnessed a large increase in the number of Azharis: the statistics for 1875 show 361 teaching shaykhs and 10,780 residential students (mujāwirūn) at al-Azhar (Khiṭaṭ, 4:14Google Scholar). However, the increase most probably occurred after 1840, as the estimates we possess for the 1830s show no increase over the Description's figures. See Heyworth-Dunne, , History of Education, 27–28Google Scholar.

24 Mubarak, ʿAli translated Sédillot's, L. A.Histoire des Arabes (Paris, 1854)Google Scholar, which appeared as Khu-Iāṣat taʾrikh al-ʿarab (Cairo, 1891)Google Scholar. Sédillot, a medievalist, has little to say about the Ottomans, and what he does say is entirely negative. Commenting upon the causes of cultural decline in Islam, he says, “malheureusement le fatalisme des Ottomans jettera un manteau du glace sur tous les peuples soumis À leur empire” (p. 440).

25 It is characteristic of ʿAli Mubarak and other reformers that they commonly use “civilization” (tamaddun) without qualifying it geographically or culturally. Mubarak implies that the countries that attain intellectual leadership, political dominance, and material progress are the carriers of the only “civilization” worth embracing.

26 Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 2:535Google Scholar.

27 Note the wordplay here: al-jāmiʿ al-jāmiʿ al-azhar al-azhar.

28 Khiṭaṭ, 4:13Google Scholar.

29 Khiṭaṭ, 4:26Google Scholar. The passage describing this loose system of promotion is translated in Eccel, , Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 159Google Scholar; see also Berque, Jacques, Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, trans, from the French by Stewart, Jean (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), 80–81Google Scholar.

30 Khiṭaṭ, 4:41Google Scholar. See also Marsot, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, “The Beginnings of Modernization among the Rectors of al-Azhar, 1798–1879,” in The Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, ed. Polk, William R. and Chambers, Richard L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 277–79Google Scholar.

31 Khiṭaṭ, 4:26–27Google Scholar. On these reforms, see also Eccel, , Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 126 ff, 150Google Scholar; Dodge, Bayard, Al-Azhar: A Millennium of Muslim Learning (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1961), 40–52Google Scholar; Heyworth-Dunne, , History of Education, 41 ff, 400–401Google Scholar; Marsot, , “Beginnings of Modernization,” 278–80Google Scholar; Berque, , Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, 81Google Scholar.

32 Khiṭaṭ, 4:27Google Scholar; cited and discussed in ʿAmāra, Muḥammad, ʿAlī Mubārak: Muʿarrikh al-mujtamaʿ wa muhandis al-ʿumrān (Cairo: Dār al-Mustaqbal al-ʿArabī, 1984), 277–78Google Scholar.

33 Khiṭaṭ, 4:27Google Scholar. ʿAli Mubarak does not say directly that the changes have had these evil results. Rather, he introduces this criticism with the impersonal rubbamā yuqālu inna (“it might be said that…”). However, it is likely that he accepts this criticism of the graduates of the new system. Other judgments of the reform's value are offered in Marsot, “Beginnings of Modernization,” 279–80; Heyworth-Dunne, , History of Education, 400Google Scholar; and Salama, Ibrahim, L'Enseignement islamique en Ègypte (Cairo: Imprimérie Nationale, 1938), 240–41Google Scholar.

34 Khiṭaṭ, 4:30Google Scholar.

35 The passage in which this discussion is found is translated in extenso by Delanoue, (Moralistes et politiques, 2:497–98)Google Scholar. The precise terminology is important, because the goals of education enunciated here represent the values cherished by ʿAli Mubarak: ḥubb al-taqaddum (love of progress), sharaf al-nafs (translated quite literally here as “nobility of spirit,” although one might also translate it as “dignity” or “self-esteem”), and al-ʿiffa (here given as “perfect moderation”). The last term is rendered by Delanoue as désintéressement (unselfishness or impartiality), which does not give the correct sense. ʿIffa is, rather, continence, self-control, or moderation, a positive and chaste enjoyment of pleasures which lies between the evil extremes of dissipation (fujūr) and apathy (khumūd). See Kazimirski, A. de Biberstein, Dictionnaire Arabe-Français, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1875)Google Scholar, s.v. “ʿiffa.” The point is important because the students at al-Azhar are plainly lacking in this virtue.

36 In part, this reputation derived from persons who sought al-Azhar not for education but as a refuge from conscription, tax arrears, or blood vengeance (Berque, , Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, 77)Google Scholar.

37 Khiṭaṭ, 4:30Google Scholar. The system of handling disputes at al-Azhar is discussed by Eccel, , Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 168–69Google Scholar.

38 Khiṭaṭ, 4:30Google Scholar.

39 It goes without saying that the Maghribi mujāwirūn had a reputation for this kind of behavior. When it came to selecting candidates for expulsion, there were obviously plenty of ruffians to choose from (Khiṭaṭ, 4:40)Google Scholar. See also Heyworth-Dunne, , History of Education, 397Google Scholar; and Marsot, , “Beginnings of Modernization,” 276Google Scholar.

40 Khiṭaṭ, 4:41Google Scholar; Heyworth-Dunne, , History of Education, 398Google Scholar; Marsot, , “Beginnings of Modernization,” 276 fGoogle Scholar; Berque, , Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, 79–80Google Scholar.

41 Khiṭaṭ, 4:41–44Google Scholar. The career of Muhammad ʿIlish is studied in Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 1:129–67Google Scholar; his strictures on other ulama are given in Berque, , Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, 78Google Scholar.

42 Cf. Delanoue's analysis of the virtues of the Azhari shaykh in Mubarak's, ʿAli massive “novel,” ʿAlam al-Dīn (Moralistes et politiques, 2:542–44)Google Scholar.

43 Khiṭaṭ, 4:43–44Google Scholar; Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 1:131–33Google Scholar.

44 Khiṭaṭ, 4:31–44Google Scholar. On religion as the foundation of civilized society, see Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 2:537Google Scholar; on the Khiṭaṭ's view of the ulama, see Shaked, Haim, “The Biographies of ʿUlama in Mubarak's Khiṭaṭ as a source for the History of the ʿUlama in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” Asian and African Studies 7 (1971): 41–76Google Scholar.

45 Khiṭaṭ, 1:2–3Google Scholar.

46 Subsequent sections of the Khiṭaṭ will deal with a host of other buildings (e.g., schools, hospitals, roads, markets, etc.).

47 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 204–5Google Scholar.

48 Both the substance and value of technical knowledge are among the predominant themes of ʿAlam al-Dīn. See the discussion in Dykstra, , “A Biographical Study,” 400–418, 526–34Google Scholar.

49 On the obligation to the waṭan, see Dykstra, , “A Biographical Study,” 415–16Google Scholar. It is worth noting that the identification of place with ruler, whereby a “foreign” dynasty is naturalized, is suggested even in the title of the work, al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya. On nationalism and the naturalization of ruling families, see Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 83 ffGoogle Scholar.

50 Khiṭaṭ, 4:28Google Scholar; cited and discussed in ʿAmāra, , ʿAlī Mubārak, 278–79Google Scholar.

51 That is, philosophy (falsafa) in the old-fashioned sense, which would embrace all kinds of knowledge of the natural universe. In ʿAli Mubarak's other writings, he takes a positive view of medieval Muslim philosophy (see, for example, the extended discussion of the relationship of religion and philosophy in ʿAmāra, , ʿAlī Mubārak, 429–45)Google Scholar. Thus, Mubarak says: “The persecution of philosophy and philosophers, and the accusation against them of unbelief during certain periods of history, has caused Muslims to cease using their reason to know what it is possible for men to know.…The Book of God is not rightly appreciated except by those who examine carefully the secrets of his creations.…God has created speech in certain insects as Qurʾan to be recited and studied.” The latter comment, an unmistakable reference to Sūrat al-Naml, suggests the dignity of the natural creation which philosophy undertakes to study. (I thank Claude Audebert and Sami Musa for pointing out to me the multiple meanings and allusions in the passage given here. The foregoing passage is cited in ʿAmāra, , ʿAlī Mubārak, 429.)Google Scholar

ʿAli Mubarak may also be expressing a grudge he held against the ulama of al-Azhar: Dykstra makes the intriguing suggestion that Mubarak may have approached them with the idea of writing the Khiṭaṭ, only to be rebuffed (“A Biographical Study,” 422).

52 This idea is made more explicit, and is more clearly autobiographical, in ʿAlam al-Dīn. On the alternative careers presented to the young protagonist in the book, see Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 2:540–42Google Scholar. The autobiographical content is suggested by al-Qadi, Wadad, “East and West in ʿAli Mubarak's ʿAlamuddin,” 21–37Google Scholar.

53 Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 2:543–44Google Scholar.

54 This assessment was echoed in the judgments of various reform-minded leaders in the decades after the Khiṭaṭ, was published; see Eccel, , Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 148–58Google Scholar. However, the indictment was not entirely justified: both Shaykh Hasan al-ʿAttar and his student Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi evinced great interest in history, geography, and other empirical sciences; see Gran, Peter, Islamic Roots of Capitalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 159–61Google Scholar. Moreover, Azharis were recruited for the new schools and other institutions established by the Khedives; see Salama, Ibrahim, L'Enseignement Islamique, 204–6, 240–41)Google Scholar. Ironically, Azharis were the principal auditors of the public lecture series in which Dar alʿUlum originated (ibid., p. 241). However, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the institution stag-nated; the 19th century witnessed a narrowing rather than an expansion of al-Azhar's curriculum—an unintended result of the attempt at reform in 1872.

55 Khiṭaṭ, 4:29Google Scholar.

56 Translated and cited by al-Qadi, Wadad, “East and West in ʿAli Mubarak's ʿAlamuddin,” 30–31Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that in the monitorial system of schooling developed in England (which may have been one of the models for the new schools of Egypt) students were to take their lessons standing, as this was considered better for their health. See Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 69–71Google Scholar.

57 ʿAli Mubarak's “religion” is intrinsically reasonable and thus useful. In Delanoue's words: “On veut eduquer une religion utile” (Moralistes et politiques, 2:538–39).

58 The law is analyzed in detail by Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 2:508–11, 550–57Google Scholar; the following comments are based on Delanoue's study.

59 This is Delanoue's conclusion, after reviewing the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality in the educational projects of Ismaʿil; see his Moralistes et politiques, 2:550–57. It is therefore misleading to speak of an educational system which aimed to produce “the individual citizen” (as in Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 69). This may have been part of the rhetoric of reform under Ismaʿil, but it was never seriously entertained as something practicable or even desirable

60 The phraseology and concept of “bypassing al-Azhar” are cribbed from Eccel, , Egypt, Islam, and Social Change, 162 ffGoogle Scholar. On the bifurcation of Egypt's educational system and the rise of new career opportunities for those trained in government schools, see Reid, Donald, Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Although ʿAli Mubarak is quite capable of ignoring important personalities when it suits him. In particular, he has been criticized by several authors for ignoring certain persons associated with the ʿUrabi revolt; see, for example, the discussion of DrṬāhā, Samīr Muḥammad, ʿAlī Mubārak wa atharuhu fī al-ḥayāh al-fikriyya al-siyāsiyya fī miṣr fī al-qarn al-tāsiʿ ʿashar (Cairo: ʿAyn Shams University, 1985), 162–65Google Scholar. It is noteworthy, however, that he does not elide the biography of Muhammad ʿIlish, despite ʿIlish's prominent role in the ʿUrabi movement (as was pointed out to me by Professor Donald Reid). Nevertheless, it is obvious that a presentation of Cairo–s topography and history without al-Azhar would not be credible.

62 Delanoue, , Moralistes et politiques, 2:523–25Google Scholar.

63 As Delanoue himself suggests in his discussion of ʿAli Mubarak's view of religion and men of religion, based on a reading of ʿAlam al-Dīn; see his Moralistes et politiques, 2:537–44Google Scholar.

64 On the spiritual atmosphere of al-Azhar, see the Khiṭaṭ, 4:12Google Scholar; on the shaykhs mentioned here, see ibid., 4:40–44.

65 I believe that the discussion of al-Azhar and its role in Professor Berque's great work on Egypt, Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, misses the mark in suggesting that the mosque “had always been the place where energies arising from the grass roots of society fused in civic achievement” (p. 81). This may have been so in the past; but if ʿAli Mubarak's judgment concerning the 19th century is correct, then civic pride, spirit, and achievement were quite alien to the spirit of education at al-Azhar.

66 The use of the term ʿibra in Mubarak's, ʿAli introduction to his work (Khiṭaṭ, 1:2)Google Scholar sets him squarely within the tradition of Muslim historians who defended the legitimacy of their undertaking by appealing to the Qurʾan and the hadiths which called for Muslims to contemplate the ʿibar (moral lessons) of history. Thus, for example, Ibn Khaldun's famous prolegomena is entitled Kitāb al-ʿlbar. On the layered meanings of the term, see Mahdi, Muhsin, Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 63–73Google Scholar.

67 Qurʾan 40:21; Tafsīr al-Jalālayn—probably the most popular of the tafāsīr at al-Azhar, as it is the first mentioned in the Khiṭaṭ's listing of commentaries—takes the āthār to be maṣāniʿ wa quṣūr (“manufactories and palaces”).

68 al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Din, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa al-iʿtibār bi-dhikr al-Khiṭaṭ wa al-āthār, 2 vols. (Cairo, n.d.), 3Google Scholar. Closer to ʿAli Mubarak's time, we have the example of ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jabarti citing Surat Yusuf (v. 111), where the stories of the past are said to be ʿibratan li-ʿūlī al-albāb (roughly, “a lesson for those with hearts to understand”). He suggests that knowledge of the conditions and actions of past generations offers counsel for the present, but the ʿibra of al-Jabarti's history is a generalized moral instruction based on the experience of various communities (al-umam al-madhkūra al-sālifln); see ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī al-tarājim wa al-akhbār, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl., n.d), 1:6, 9Google Scholar. This is quite unlike ʿAli Mubarak's challenge to contemporary Egyptians based on the specific history of their community.

69 Hourani, , Arabic Thought, 114Google Scholar. It is interesting in this context to note that ʿAli Mubarak's description of al-Azhar makes no mention of the Ismaʿili (and hence heretical) origins of al-Azhar. The importance of the institution lies rather in its accumulated architectural endowments, and the great men and events of its past, not in its doctrine.