The 1890s witnessed one of the most intriguing phenomena of modern Egyptian cultural history – the publication of the first of Jurji [Jirji] Zaydan's historical novels, of which he produced some twenty-two in total between 1891 and 1914. Widely read, frequently republished and occasionally even banned, these novels have been recognised as occupying a pivotal position in the history of modern Arab culture, but despite this have, until recently, seldom received much scholarly attention in the West – at least, by comparison with the author's other contributions to the development of Arab culture. Thomas Philipp's study of Zaydan, for example, published in 1979 and generally reckoned to be the standard Western account of the author, devotes no more than a page-and-a-half or so of some 250 pages to Zaydan's novels; while of the major accounts in English of the development of modern Arabic literature, only Matti Moosa accords Zaydan's novels an extended discussion.

Fortunately, however, this situation looks set to change, thanks largely to the establishment by the writer's grandson of the Zaidan Foundation in 2009, which was set up with the purpose of enhancing inter-cultural understanding, and whose activities to date have included, in addition to a one-day conference, the commissioning of a further volume on Zaydan by Thomas Philipp, as well as the commissioning of translations of five of Zaydan's historical novels into English, each accompanied by a study guide. The present chapter may therefore be regarded – in addition to its obvious relevance to Egypt in the 1890s – as a contribution to a reappraisal of a set of works that, as I suggested in my Modern Arabic Literature (2006), have been ‘[a]rguably … in need of reassessment’. In so doing, I also hope to shed light not only on the Egyptian literary tradition, but also on the state of education and intellectual life in Egypt at the time and on the interplay between Egypt and Greater Syria (including Lebanon) during this period.

Jurji Zaydan's Background

It is impossible to understand the genesis and significance of Jurji Zaydan's historical novels without some consideration both of the general Arabic literary context and of Zaydan's own personal background.