Book contents
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration, Dates and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Who Made the Nahda?
- 2 The Discourse of Civilisation
- 3 A Place in the World
- 4 An Arab Utopian
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Discourse of Civilisation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration, Dates and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Who Made the Nahda?
- 2 The Discourse of Civilisation
- 3 A Place in the World
- 4 An Arab Utopian
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Our first chapter has considered the cultural movement of the Nahda – or its distinct component formations, in Bilād al-Shām and Egypt – from a largely external point of view, in an attempt to ‘place’ it socially and historically. The remainder of this study will consider it to a far greater extent from an ‘internal’ aspect, by examining in detail some of the movement’s actual intellectual and creative production. I will turn first to the Beiruti ‘formation’ in the 1850s and 1860s, and concentrate on what seems to me probably the most crucial contribution of the Beiruti intellectuals in these decades. This is the discourse and vocabulary centred around the concept of ‘civilisation’, which may be seen as growing to maturity in this time and place – in conjunction with the literary forms in which it was expressed. It was to a large extent through this discourse that the Arab Nahda writers through the latter half of the nineteenth century and beyond would attempt to comprehend, come to terms with, celebrate or resist the forces that were changing their world.
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- Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda , pp. 79 - 128Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020