The historiography about the beginnings of modern Arabic literature is usually centered on developments in Lebanon and Egypt from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards that among other things led to the emergence of modern narrative prose (fiction), presumably the first Arabic novel. Although textual production from the pre-print age, notably the early eighteenth century has been more and more included into comprehensive studies (see recently Abdelrazzak Patel, 2013), a remarkable void around the turn to the nineteenth century remains. While I do not deny the significant changes that occurred in the Arab milieus in Ottoman society between the two centuries, I presume, however, that the novel in its formal features did only emerge within some already existing literary context. To put it differently, many of the aesthetic features of the novel were not entirely alien to its readership and can be traced to the production of narratives that were circulating orally and in written form (mostly manuscripts). My paper aims to reconstruct the emergence of modern Arabic prose fiction from within. "From within" designates an approach that focusses on similarities in narrative texts from different periods, examining the narratological and rhetorical constitution rather than socio-historical aspects. After briefly questioning early and recent scholarship on the emergence of Modern Arabic literature, I will take as a point of departure for my intertextual examination Khalil Khuri's Alas, "I'm not a European..." (1859/60) which is often considered the first novel in Arabic language. In my analysis of its features, I suggest to distinguish between the author-narrator's implicit claim for renewal and revival of the classical literary heritage and the narrative's embeddedness into established textual strategies. Finally, I argue that prominent features of Khuri’s novel can be broadly contextualized within three fields of narratives from the early and middle Ottoman period (mainly eighteenth century). These are first of all autobiographical writings (e.g. travelogues), second, shorter biographical entities (e.g. hagiographic anthologies), and third, oral story telling (e.g. popular epic).