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Nineteenth-Century Arabic Writings On Women And Society: The Interim Role Of The Masonic Press In Cairo — (Al-Lata'if, 1885–1895)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Byron D. Cannon
Byron D. Cannon
Affiliation:
Department Of HistoryUniversity Of Utah
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Extract

This article, which draws largely from Arabica press sources from 1885 to 1900, seeks to sharpen our view of social attitudes reflected in the activities of local Freemasons in Egypt and Syria during the last decades of the Ottoman Empite. A number of earlier historians have attached considerable importance to pre- and post-1908 masonic orders and Ottoman politics. Too few, however, have tried to analyze ways in which essential social themes, some widely recognized as having importance across international and intercultural lines, were viewed through the perspective of late 19th-century Freemasonry. A first task in this introduction, therefore, will be to see how Masons in Europe and the Middle East viewed, or were presumed to view, a number of such social themes in general terms. We will then turn to one specific issue which clearly assumed more than passing importance as a propagandistic cause pursued by a small but influential group of Masons in Syria and Egypt over nearly two decades' time. We may tentatively suggest that the purpose of such endeavors was to encourage majority acceptance of the relevance and value of a cause espoused for the body politic as a whole, without necessary reference to its original, here clearly minority, proponents.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , November 1985 , pp. 463 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 See, for example, Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, 1961), pp. 172–73,Google Scholar and Kedourie, Elie, “Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews,” Middle Eastern Studies 7 (1971), 89–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This point is made in the author's article, “Political Relativity in a 19th-Century Law Treatise: The Kitāb usūl al-qawānīn of Muhammad Rafat,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 16 (1979), 147–61.Google ScholarCf. Smith, Charles D., Islam and the Search for Social Order in Egypt (Albany, N.Y., 1983), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

3 This is true of Amin's 1984 Cairo publication, Les Egyptiens: Réponse à Monsieur le Duc d'Harcourt, which contains harbingers of concerns taken up by the Hizb al-Umma. Issues raised in Tahrīr al-mar'a became, of course, central to the first formally established feminist organization led, after the turn of the century, by Huda Sha'rawi. See Sha'rawi, Huda, al-Dhikra al-mi'awiyya (Cairo, 1980).Google Scholar

4 See discussion in the concluding section of this article, and Goldschmidt, Arthur Jr, “The Egyptian National Party, 1892–1914,” in Holt, P. M., ed., Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (London, 1968).Google Scholar

5 Fay, Bernard, La franc-maconnerie et la révolution intellectuelle du 18me siècle (Paris, 1961), p. 75.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 204. Cf., pp. 89, 99.

8 Johnston, Edgar R., Masonry Defined (Shreveport, Louisiana, 1930), p. 192.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 402.

10 Makariyus, Shahin Bey, Kitāb fadā'il al-masūniyya, (Cairo, 1899), pp. 117–43.Google Scholar

11 This final point (h.) is taken directly from “Al-Dustūr al-masūnī,” article 18, in Al-Latā'if, volume for 1888–89, pp. 131–34.Google Scholar

12 Schneir, Miriam, ed., Feminism, the Essential Historical Writings (New York, 1972), pp. xii, 5–6.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 6–8. Wollstonecraft specifically condemned Rousseau's implication (in Emile) that “obedience is the grand lesson which ought to be impressed [on women] with…rigour.”

14 Frances Wright, for example, delivered part of her controversial “Course of Popular Lectures”sies in New York's Masonic Hall in 1829.Google Scholar

15 See Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women (originally published in 1869), edited by Mansfield, Sye (Arlington Heights, Illinois, 1980). On William Lloyd Garrison, see Miriam Schneir, op. cit., pp. 86–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Delanoue, Gilbert, Moralistes et politiques musulmans dans l'Egypte du XIXme siècle (1798–1882) (Lille, 1980).Google ScholarCf. Khalifah, Ijial, Al Harakat al-nisā'iyyat al-Hadītha (Cairo, 1973);Google Scholar and Philipp, Thomas, “Feminism and Nationalist Politics in Egypt,” in Beck, Lois and Keddie, Nikkie, eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1978). Philipp's comment that “Qasim Amin brought the discussion of emancipation to a new level of intensity…in 1899” suggests the existence of a historical stage which writers, in English, at least, have never developed.Google Scholar

17 Delanoue, Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 505–6.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., pp. 447–48.

19 Ibid., Delanoue notes, for example, that Tahtawi's exposé concentrated on discussions of diverse sorts of beauty,” including blonde and brunette, virgin and nonvirgin charms, and sometimes resembled a “veritable love treatise in the style of lbn Hazm” (p. 448).

20 See comparison of Tunisia's reform period under Ahmad Bey (whose reign had just ended when Ibn Abi Diyaf wrote the essays cited here) with Egypt's experiences under Muhammad 'Ali in Brown, L. Carl, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837–1855 (Princeton, 1974), pp. 6–7; cf., p. 232.Google Scholar

21 Tlili, Béchir, “A l'aube du mouvement des réformes à Tunis: Un important document d'Ahmed Ibn Abi Diyaf sur le féminisme,” in his Etudes d'histoire sociale tunisienne du XIXee siècle (Tunis, 1974). (The present writer obviously has reservations concerning Tlili's suggestion that lbn Diyaf's essays presage later feminist writers in Tunisia.)Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 128.

23 Mubarak, 'Ali, Kitāb tarīq al-hijā' wa't tamrīn 'alā 'l qirā'a fī 'l-lughat al-'arabīyya, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1868).Google Scholar

24 Delanoue, op. cit., p. 503.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 508. Cf., pp. 511–12.

26 Makariyus, Shahin, Kitāb fadā'il al-masūniyya, p. 122.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., pp. 125–27. Makariyus suggested that discontent in Beirut focused on the Ottoman Grand Orient's lack of clear emphasis on “God the Creator.”

28 Ibid., pp. 124–25.

29 See, for example, “Al-Nisā' al-falakiyāt,” translated from the French by Sarruf, Madame Ya'qub, in Al-Muqtataf of 10 March 1886; “Al-Nisā': Mukhtar 'ātuhunna, 1 May 1887; and “Nisā' al-misriyyin al-qudamā',” August 1888. The one exception to this pattern (reproduction, March 1887, of a speech on women's rights delivered in Cairo by the Syrian radical thinker Shibli Shummayyil) is all the more notable because, after receiving nonsupporting letters in response, Al-Muqtataf returned to its usual brief anecdotal style of coverage for women's subjects. See, for example, “Al-Nisā' wa jāmi 'ātuhunna,” 1 June 1889.Google Scholar

30 The new trend began with publication of Princess Nadli Hanim's pioneer essay on women's rights (in December 1896, followed in 1897 by several letters commenting on Princess Nadli's views). The real symbol of Al-Muqtataf's “conversion,” however, seems to have been the (definitely European feminist oriented) report on the 1899 World Women's Conference, written by Madame Ya'qub Sarruf and published in the September 1899 issue.Google Scholar

31 Arnett, Mary F., in her unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, “Qasim Amin and the Beginnings of Feminist Movement in Egypt” (Dropsie College, Philadelphia, 1965, pp. 99–100), mentions Al-Fatāt, founded as early as 1881 by Hind Mawful Nair, and Mir'at al-Hasnā', founded in 1896 by Maryam Muzhir. Arnett confirms however, that not until the period 1899–1906 (the years of Qasim Amin's main impact) did women's journals appear regularly.Google Scholar

32 Al-Latā'if 15 August and 15 December 1887; cf., two articles (N.D.) in volume for 1886, pp. 33–38 and 84–86.Google Scholar

33 Al-Latā'if, 15 September 1888.Google Scholar

34 “Al- Wajibāt al-baytiyya wa ta'līm al-nisā',” Al-Latā'if, 15 February 1888.Google Scholar

35 Tarbiyat al-awlād,” 1 September 1888.Google Scholar

36 Ibid.

37 “Risāla li 'l-murazawwijāt”, 15 May 1890.Google Scholar

38 “Imtihān madrasah al-banāt al-amrīkiyya bi-masr”, 15 June 1890.Google Scholar

39 On Amin Shumayyil and his editorship of Al-Huqūq, see Reid, Donald, Lawyers and Politics in the Arab World. 1880–1960 (Minneapolis, 1981), p. 43; and the author's book manuscript, “The Politics of Legal Reform in 19th-Century Egypt,” Chapter Six.Google Scholar

40 On Tuma, see Reid, op. cit., p. 55, and Malek, Anouar Abdel, Idéologie el renaissance nationale: L'Egypte moderne (Paris, 1969), pp. 200, 286, and 451, n. 8.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that Nimr's, FarisAl-Muqtataf (on 1 September 1890) published only Shuqri effendi Sabir's speech, which, of the four given at the A.C.G. graduation, contained the fewest references to specific educational expectations of Middle Eastern women.Google Scholar

41 “Ta'līm al-nisā' fī-dimashq,” 15 November 1890.Google Scholar

42 Ibid.

43 Al-Mar'a wa ta'thīruhā fī- 'l hay'at al-ijtimā'iyya,” 15 September 1892. Again the author found that, although Al-Muqtataf (in its issue of I July 1892) announced the occasion and title of Arslan's speech, it did not print or even summarize the text. On the masonic affiliation of Arslan's family, see Kitāb fada';il al-masūniyya, p. 121.Google Scholar

44 “Al-Mar'ah wa ta'thīruhā,” 15 Semptember 1892.Google Scholar

45 Ibid.

46 “Al Hajarāt al-karīma,” 15 January 1893.Google Scholar

47 Al-Haqā'iq al-'asliyya fī-tārīkh al-masūniyya al-'amaliyya (Cairo, 1895).Google Scholar

48 The Kirāb fadāil al-masūniyya (Cairo, 1899). The lengthy dedication of this book to a former high official in Khedive Isma'l's war ministry (son of an Ottoman Kurd born in Diyar Bekr) is another suggestion that Makariyus's (and Egyptian) masonic politics were entering a new stage around the turn of the century.Google Scholar

49 “Nufūdh al-nisā',” 15 January 1895.Google Scholar

50 “Arā'u al-nās fī' l-zawāj,” 15 February 1895.Google Scholar

51 “Sūq al-zawāj,” 15 October 1895.Google Scholar

52 A 1910 foreign office document shows, for example, that the Grand Orient in Istanbul, under its Grand Master (and C.U.P. interior minister) Talaat Bey, was pressuring lodges in the Levant to help maintain ritual links that could later help spread C.U.P. nationalist stirrings. Ambassador Gerard Lowther definitely suggested that Talaat's snubbing of Idris Bey Raghib, Master of the Grand Lodge of Egypt, to support Watan party head Muhammad Farid as Egyptian delegate to the Grand Orient would foster such aims. The same document stated that “prominent Egyptian Masons,” including the former editor of Al-Latāif Shahin Bey Makariyus, were committed to retaining “separate” masonic allegiances by cultivating the ascendancy of the Grand Lodge in Cairo over as many lodges as possible in Egypt and Syria.Google Scholar See Kedourie, Elie, “Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews,” Middle Eastern Studies 7 (1971), 97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar