In this paper I would like to present a general overview of the emergence of early modern Arabic literary criticism. There are three fields where the discourse on literary criticism develops. These are: the burgeoning cultural journal market, where critique or intiqād is presented as a necessary concept; journal articles by lay literati who compared European and Arab literary works and ideas; and in the field of academic literary comparison, where scholars established the foundations of literary criticism in the modern sense. These developments will be surveyed paying close attention to the internalisation of the decline thesis or inḥiṭāṭ. As the paper will demonstrate the indigenisation and assimilation of intiqād involved an epistemic shift from traditional to modern ways of knowing literature. The thinkers discussed developed their ideas about literary criticism through a manipulation of the lafẓ/ma’na pair from traditional Arabic literary criticism. The motivation for doing so was a desire to cast literature as socially and politically useful, and to move away from what they believed was a stagnant and excessively formalistic literary heritage. The paper will conclude with the inauguration of literary criticism as an academic discipline in 1910 at the Egyptian University. The central role played by intiqād in this epistemic shift will be highlighted throughout, as will be the coloniality embedded in the European models and ideas these thinkers sought to emulate.