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Nahda Literary Feuds: Was it an Issue of Adaptation or (Mis) adaptation?
Abstract
Literary feuds, which amounted to fifty, were central to al-Nahda Egypt. They were built on differences between al-Madhab al-Qadim” (The Old School) and al-Madhab al-Jadid (The New School). They involved many prominent intellectuals. The most famous of which were that between the conservative Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi‘i on one hand, and the modernists: Taha Husayn, ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, and Salama Musa, on the other hand. While al-Rafi‘i adhered to tradition and advocated Islamic Revival and a return to Islamic roots, Husayn, al-‘Aqqad, and Musa accepted the supremacy of the European model by seeking to assimilate the achievements of European civilization. This paper sets out to argue that these feuds and polemics were also among modernists who can be divided into two schools: The Latinate School whose education was primarily French, like Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and Husayn, and the Anglo-Saxon School like al-Aqqad, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini, and Musa, and others. While traditionalists castigated modernists for their slavish imitation, and irrelevant employment, of Western ideas, modernists denounced each other for misunderstanding Western ideas/theories.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries