Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Among the best books I read at this time… was Tarikh al-falak 'inda al-'Arab [The History of Astronomy among the Arabs] by Professor Nallino. I scrutinized it thoroughly, and I learned from it how the leading orientalists did their research, and how they persisted in their investigations, how they actually lived in the subject of their specialization, and how they proceeded carefully and deliberately from the simple to the complex in their research. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that I learned the methodology of research from this book.
Author's note: A preliminary version of this article was presented at the conference of the Middle East Studies Association in San Francisco, November 28 to December 1, 1984. I would like to thank the Fulbright Fellowship program and Cairo University for making possible the research on which the article is based.
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23 Minute by Peterson, May 5, 1933, FO371/ 17023/ J1080.
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37 Amin, My Life: The Autobiography of an Egyptian Scholar, Writer, and Cultural Leader, p. 68.
38 Husayn, al- Tarbiyya al-haditha, 386, 392–93.
39 Husayn, Passage, p. 44, which also mentions ridicule of the orientalists' Arabic.
40 'Allam, Majma⊂iyyun, p. 228.
41 Husayn, al-Tarbiyya al-haditha, 386–87.
42 Ibid., p. 392.
43 Husayn, Passage, p. 35.
44 Ibid., p. 54, and Husayn, al-Tarbiyya al-haditha, 392.
45 Husayn, al-Tarbiyya al-haditha, 391–92.
46 ' Azzam, Sahifat 2: 83, 84.
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53 Zaydan, letter to his son Emile, October 12, 1910, translated in Philipp, , Zaidan, p. 212.Google Scholar Analysis of incident by Philipp, , pp. 63–65.Google Scholar See also the accounts in al-Hilal, 19 (December 1910), 177–81, and CUA, Box 2, Folder 126, Minutes of the Council of Administration, Nov. 8, 10, and 12, 1910.
54 Philipp, Zaidan, p. 236, mentions a manuscript in the archives of the American University of Beirut entitled “Misr al-'Uthmaniyya.” Zaydan had prepared it for his Egyptian University course.
55 CUA, Box 2, Folder 126, Minutes of the Council of Administration, Nov. 10, 1910, and Husayn Mu⊃nis in his introduction to the 1968 edition of Zaydan, , Tamaddun, Vol. I, p. 9.Google Scholar
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61 In Muslim doctrine dhimmis were Christian and Jewish subjects who enjoyed protection and certain rights but were not legally equal to Muslims.
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68 Ibid., p. 6, n. 5.
69 Ibid., pp. 15–16.
70 Ibid., p. 23.
71 CUA, Box 3, Folder 136, Minutes of the Council of Administration, July 22, 1920; and Box 3, Folder 137, Minutes, April 18, 1921.
72 Philipp, Zaidan, p. 44. On Taha Husayn generally see Cachia, Pierre, Taha Husayn: His Place in the Egyptian Literary Renaissance (London, 1956)Google Scholar, and al-Sakkut, Hamdi and Jones, Marsden, A'lam al-adab al-mu'asir fi Misr, Vol. 1: Taha Husayn (Cairo, 1975).Google ScholarIbrahim, 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Dissuqi al-Jami'i, Taha Husayn wa al-Jami'i al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1981), focuses specifically on Taha's role in the university.Google Scholar
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78 Analyzed in Hourani, Arabic Thought, pp. 183–92.
79 Jami'i, Taha Husayn, pp. 51–67, follows Taha's career crisis in the 1930s.
80 “Islah 'azim fi wizarat al-ma'arif,” al-Manar, 34 (April 1932), 299–305. Al-Manar, 27 (May 13, 1926), 120, contrasts “the religious university of al-Azhar” with the “godless Egyptian University.”
81 See the lists of delegates in Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Congress of Orientalists, Oxford, 1928 (London, 1929), and subsequent Proceedings (in various languages) of the congress.
82 Primary documents on the Khalaf Allah affair are Allah, Muhammad Ahmad Khalaf, al-Fann al-qasasi fi al-Qur⊃an al-Karim, 3rd ed. (Cairo, 1965) and the running debate between Khalaf Allah and his critics in al-Risala beginning September 15, 1947.Google Scholar My account also relies on Jomier, J., “Quelques positions actuelles de l'exégèse coranique en Egypte révélées par une polémique récente (1947–1951),” Mélanges, Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales de Caire, Vol. 1 (1954), 39–72Google Scholar, and Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, Contemporary Islam and the Challenge of History (Albany, N.Y., 1982), pp. 46–53.Google Scholar
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86 Bahi's, massive polemic is al-Fikr al-Islami al-hadith wa salatuh bi-al-isti'mar al-gharbi (Cairo, 1975). The book was in its eighth edition in 1975, showing heavy and continuing demand for it.Google Scholar
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