Nahda

(1945), a painting symbolizing the Nahda The Nahda ( ), also referred to as the Arab Awakening, Arab Enlightenment or Arab Renaissance, was a cultural movement that flourished in Arab-populated regions of the Ottoman Empire, notably in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia, during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. In traditional scholarship, the Nahda is seen as connected to the cultural shock brought on by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and the reformist drive of subsequent rulers such as Muhammad Ali of Egypt. However, more recent scholarship has shown the Nahda's cultural reform program to have been as "autogenetic" as it was Western-inspired, having been linked to the Tanzimat—the period of political reform within the Ottoman Empire which brought a constitutional order to Ottoman politics and engendered a new political class—as well as the later Young Turk Revolution, allowing proliferation of the press and other publications and internal changes in political economy and communal reformations in Egypt and Syria and Lebanon. The renaissance itself started simultaneously in both Egypt and the Levant. Due to their differing backgrounds, the aspects that they focused on differed as well; with Egypt focused on the political aspects of the Muslim world while the Levant focused on the more cultural aspects.…

(1945), a painting symbolizing the Nahda]] The Nahda ( ), also referred to as the Arab Awakening, Arab Enlightenment or Arab Renaissance, was a cultural movement that flourished in Arab-populated regions of the Ottoman Empire, notably in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia, during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. In traditional scholarship, the Nahda is seen as connected to the cultural shock brought on by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and the reformist drive of subsequent rulers such as Muhammad Ali of Egypt. However, more recent scholarship has shown the Nahda's cultural reform program to have been as "autogenetic" as it was Western-inspired, having been linked to the Tanzimat—the period of political reform within the Ottoman Empire which brought a constitutional order to Ottoman politics and engendered a new political class—as well as the later Young Turk Revolution, allowing proliferation of the press and other publications and internal changes in political economy and communal reformations in Egypt and Syria and Lebanon. The renaissance itself started simultaneously in both Egypt and the Levant. Due to their differing backgrounds, the aspects that they focused on differed as well; with Egypt focused on the political aspects of the Muslim world while the Levant focused on the more cultural aspects. The concepts were not exclusive by region however, and this distinction blurred as the renaissance progressed. ==Early figures== ===Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq=== (born 1805¹ or 1806; died 1887)]] Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (born 1805 or 1806 as Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq; died 1887) grew up in present-day Lebanon. A Maronite Christian by birth, he later lived in major cities of the Arab world, where he had his career. He converted to Protestantism during the nearly two decades that he lived and worked in Cairo, present-day Egypt, from 1825 to 1848. He also spent time on the island of Malta. Participating in an Arabic translation of the Bible in Great Britain that was published in 1857¹, Faris lived and worked there for 7 years, becoming a British citizen. He next moved to Paris, France, for two years in the early 1850s, where he wrote and published some of his most important work. Later in the 1850s Faris moved to Tunisia, where in 1860 he converted to Islam, taking the first name Ahmad. Moving to Istanbul later that year to work as a translator at the request of the Ottoman government, Faris also founded an Arabic-language newspaper. It was supported by the Ottomans, Egypt and Tunisia, publishing until the late 1880s. Faris continued to promote Arabic language and culture, resisting the 19th-century "Turkization" pushed by the Ottomans based in present-day Turkey. Shidyaq is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature; he wrote most of his fiction in his younger years. ===Butrus al-Bustani=== , 1860]] Butrus al-Bustani (1819¹–1893) was born to a Lebanese Maronite Christian family in the village of Dibbiye in the Chouf region, in January 1819. A polyglot, educator, and activist, Al-Bustani was a tour de force in the Nahda centered in mid-nineteenth century Beirut. Having been influenced by American missionaries, he converted to Protestantism, becoming a leader in the native Protestant church. Initially, he taught in the schools of the Protestant missionaries at 'Abey and was a central figure in the missionaries' translation of the Bible into Arabic. Despite his close ties to the Americans, Al-Bustani increasingly became independent, eventually breaking away from them. After the bloody 1860 Druze–Maronite conflict and the increasing entrenchment of confessionalism, Al-Bustani founded the National School or Al-Madrasa Al-Wataniyya in 1863¹, on secular principles. This school employed the leading Nahda "pioneers" of Beirut and graduated a generation of Nahda thinkers. At the same time, he compiled and published several school textbooks and dictionaries; leading him to becoming known famously as the Master of the Arabic Renaissance. In the social, national and political spheres, Al-Bustani founded associations with a view to forming a national elite and launched a series of appeals for unity in his magazine Nafir Suriyya. In the cultural/scientific fields, he published a fortnightly review and two daily newspapers. In addition, he began work, together with Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck of the American Mission, on a translation of the Bible into Arabic known as the Smith-Van Dyke translation. His prolific output and groundbreaking work led to the creation of modern Arabic expository prose. While educated by Westerners, and a strong advocate of Western technology, he was a fierce secularist, playing a decisive role in formulating the principles of Syrian nationalism (not to be confused with Arab nationalism). Stephen Sheehi states that Al-Bustani's "importance does not lie in his prognosis of Arab culture or his national pride. Nor is his advocacy of discriminatingly adopting Western knowledge and technology to "awaken" the Arabs' inherent ability for cultural success,(najah), unique among his generation. Rather, his contribution lies in the act of elocution. That is, his writing articulates a specific formula for native progress that expresses a synthetic vision of the matrix of modernity within Ottoman Syria." Bustani's son Salim was also part of the movement. ===Francis Marrash=== (1835 or 29 June 1836 – 1874)]] Syrian scholar, publicist, writer, poet and physician Francis Marrash (1835 or 29 June 1836 – 1874) had traveled throughout West Asia and France in his youth. He expressed ideas of political and social reforms in Ghabat al-haqq (first published 1865¹), highlighting the need of the Arabs for two things above all: modern schools and patriotism "free from religious considerations". In 1870, when distinguishing the notion of fatherland from that of nation and applying the latter to the region of Syria, Marrash pointed to the role played by language, among other factors, in counterbalancing religious and sectarian differences, and thus, in defining national identity. Marrash has been considered the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times, having adhered to and defended the principles of the French Revolution in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in West Asia and North Africa. He also tried to introduce "a revolution in diction, themes, metaphor and imagery in modern Arabic poetry". His use of conventional diction for new ideas is considered to have marked the rise of a new stage in Arabic poetry which was carried on by the Mahjaris. ==Politics and society== Proponents of the Nahda typically supported reforms. While al-Bustani and al-Shidyaq "advocated reform without revolution", the "trend of thought advocated by Francis Marrash [...] and Adib Ishaq" (1856–1884) was "radical and revolutionary. In 1876, the Ottoman Empire promulgated a constitution, as the crowning accomplishment of the Tanzimat reforms (1839–1876) and inaugurating the Empire's First Constitutional Era. It was inspired by European methods of government and designed to bring the Empire back on level with the Western powers. The constitution was opposed by the Sultan, whose powers it checked, but had vast symbolic and political importance. The introduction of parliamentarism also created a political class in the Ottoman-controlled provinces, from which later emerged a liberal nationalist elite that would spearhead the several nationalist movements, in particular Egyptian nationalism. Egyptian nationalism was non-Arab, emphasising ethnic Egyptian identity and history in response to European colonialism and the Turkish occupation of Egypt. This was paralleled by the rise of the Young Turks in the central Ottoman provinces and administration. The resentment towards Turkish rule fused with protests against the Sultan's autocracy, and the largely secular concepts of Arab nationalism rose as a cultural response to the Ottoman Caliphate's claims of religious legitimacy. Various Arab nationalist secret societies rose in the years prior to World War I, such as al-Fatat and al-ʽAhd, which was military-based. This was complemented by the rise of other national movements, including Syrian nationalism, which like Egyptian nationalism was in some of its manifestations essentially non-Arabist and connected to the concept of the region of Syria. The main other example of the late al-Nahda era is the emerging Palestinian nationalism, which was set apart from Syrian nationalism by Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine and the resulting sense of Palestinian particularism. ===Women's rights=== Al-Shidyaq defended women's rights in Leg Over Leg, which was published as early as 1855¹ in Paris. Esther Moyal, a Lebanese Jewish author, wrote extensively on women's rights in her magazine The Family throughout the 1890s. ==Religion== ==Science== Many student missions from Egypt went to Europe in the early 19th century to study arts and sciences at European universities and acquire technical skills. Arabic-language magazines began to publish popular science articles. ==Modern literature== Through the 19th century and early 20th centuries, a number of new developments in Arabic literature started to emerge, initially sticking closely to the classical forms, but addressing modern themes and the challenges faced by the Arab world in the modern era. Francis Marrash was influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. In Egypt, Ahmad Shawqi (1868–1932), among others, began to explore the limits of the classical qasida, although he remained a clearly neo-classical poet. After him, others, including Hafez Ibrahim (1871–1932) began to use poetry to explore themes of anticolonialism as well as the classical concepts. In 1914, Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1888–1956) published Zaynab, often considered the first modern Egyptian novel. This novel started a movement of modernizing Arabic fiction. (born Gibran Khalil Gibran), a prominent figure of the Mahjar in North America|alt=|261x261px]]A group of young writers formed Al-Madrasa al-Ḥadītha ('The New School'), and in 1925¹ began publishing the weekly literary journal Al-Fajr (The Dawn), which would have a great impact on Arabic literature. The group was especially influenced by 19th-century Russian writers such as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol. At about the same time, the Mahjari poets further contributed from America to the development of the forms available to Arab poets. The most famous of these, Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), challenged political and religious institutions with his writing, and was an active member of the Pen League in New York City from 1920 until his death. Some of the Mahjaris later returned to Lebanon, such as Mikhail Naimy (1898–1989). Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914) developed the genre of the Arabic historical novel, and in this respect was one of three major novelists of the Nahda alongside Nu'man al-Qasatili (1854–1920) and Butrus's son Salim al-Bustani. May Ziadeh (1886–1941) was also a key figure in the early 20th century Arabic literary scene. , the founder of modern Arabic literary criticism]] Aleppine writer Qustaki al-Himsi (1858–1941) is credited with having founded modern Arabic literary criticism, with one of his works, The researcher's source in the science of criticism. An example of modern poetry in classical Arabic style with themes of Pan-Arabism is the work of Aziz Pasha Abaza. He came from Abaza family which produced notable Arabic literary figures including Fekry Pasha Abaza, Tharwat Abaza, and Desouky Bek Abaza, among others.==Dissemination of ideas== ===Newspapers and journals=== The first printing press in the Middle East was in the Monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya in Lebanon and dates back to 1610. It printed books in Syriac and Garshuni (Arabic using the Syriac alphabet). The first printing press with Arabic letters was built in St John's monastery in Khinshara, Lebanon by "Al-Shamas Abdullah Zakher" in 1734. The printing press operated from 1734 till 1899. In 1821, Muhammad Ali of Egypt brought the first printing press to Egypt. Modern printing techniques spread rapidly and gave birth to a modern Egyptian press, which brought the reformist trends of the Nahda into contact with the emerging Egyptian middle class of clerks and tradesmen. In 1855, Rizqallah Hassun (1825–1880) founded the first newspaper written solely in Arabic, Mir'at al-ahwal. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram founded by Saleem Takla dates from 1875¹, and between 1870 and 1900, Beirut alone saw the founding of about 40 new periodicals and 15 newspapers. , it circulated widely in the Islamic world, from Morocco to India, disseminated through an elaborate network including Arab businessmen in Bombay. ] Muhammad Abduh and Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī's weekly pan-Islamic anti-colonial revolutionary literary magazine Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa (The Firmest Bond) —though it only ran from March to October 1884 and was banned by British authorities in Egypt and India —was circulated widely from Morocco to India and it's considered one of the first and most important publications of the Nahda. ===Encyclopedias and dictionaries=== The efforts at translating European and American literature led to the modernization of the Arabic language. Many scientific and academic terms, as well as words for modern inventions, were incorporated in modern Arabic vocabulary, and new words were coined in accordance with the Arabic root system to cover for others. The development of a modern press allowed mass literary engagement that transformed Classical Arabic into Modern Standard Arabic through the influence of spoken Arabic dialects. Modern Standard Arabic is the formal standard of Arabic used over the Arab world, though the distinction between the two varieties is fluid. In the late 19th century, Butrus al-Bustani created the first modern Arabic encyclopedia, drawing both on medieval Arab scholars and Western methods of lexicography. Ahmad Rida (1872–1953) created the first modern dictionary of Arabic, Matn al-Lugha. ===Literary salons=== Different salons appeared. Maryana Marrash was the first Arab woman in the nineteenth century to revive the tradition of the literary salon in the Arab world, with the salon she ran in her family home in Aleppo. The first salon in Cairo was Princess Nazli Fadil's. ==Sources==

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1369623381 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.