In this paper, I argue that the Egyptian Nahda shaped the Iraqi Nahda. While scholars tended to emphasize the ways in which Iraqi connections to the Levant, especially to the influential centers of culture production in Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, influenced the Iraqi public sphere, I suggest that Egypt, a nodal point of the Arab Nahda, played an equally significant role in Iraq's literary life. To illustrate this point, I study the relationships between Shiite and Egyptian intellectuals, in order to underscore the fact that relationships forged by the circulation of print products challenged sectarian boundaries. The Egyptian print market, in other words, cultivated important dialogues between Sunnis and Shiites and inspired shared conversations relating to modernity, colonialism, constitutionalism, nationalism, and Islamic reform. Broadly speaking, the modern Iraqi print market was flooded with Egyptian printed products. Iraqis read newspapers, Arabic and translated novels, and works of political theory, originating from Egypt. They published in Egyptian journals, such as al-Mu’ayyad and especially al-Risala, and commented on Egyptian publications in their own works. In this context, Shiite newspapers like al-'Ilm (published in Najaf in the early 1910s) referenced the works of Islamic religious reformers like Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905)and critiqued Egyptian thinkers like Salama Musa (1887–1958). A unique domain of intellectual exchange between Iraqis and Egyptians was Arabic neoclassical poetry, which Shiite poets used as an important venue for cultural and political expression, on matters such as the Ottoman Constitutional Revolution (1908) or the perils of colonial intervention in Libya. Shiite poets thus shared the thematic and artistic concerns of the Egyptian masters of the neoclassical genre, like Ahmad Shawqi (1868-1932) and Hafiz Ibrahim (1872-1932). In this context, I pay particular heed to Iraqi thinker ‘Abd al-Muhsin al-Kazimi (1870-1935), a Shiite poet who resided in Egypt. Isolated from his networks in Najaf and Kazimiya, and benefiting from his familiarity with Pan-Islamic activist, he fostered a new Iraqi-Egyptian network. I look at his activities in circles affiliated with Muhammad ‘Abduh, at poems he dedicated to Egyptian friends and luminaries, from Sami al-Barudi to Sa‘d Zaghlul, and at his activities in the Eastern Society (Jam‘iat al-Rabita al-Sharqiyya). My close readings of a poem he wrote after ‘Abduh's death highlights the manner in which Pan-Islamic concerns disseminated sectarian boundaries and how transnational Islamic relations were important in Egyptian religious and poetic circles.