A’isha Taymur, the most widely acknowledged woman writer of nineteenth century Egypt, has an important work of fiction titled Nata’ij al-Ahwal fi al-Aqwal wa al-Af`al (the Consequences of Change in Words and Deeds) published in 1887/8. It addressed the role that literature and gender played in nation-building in emerging Islamic societies. Because, students of literature posit a break in the older forms and content of Arabic fictional writing (represented for example by The One Thousand and One Nights) and the modern Arabic novel, this work’s contribution to articulating the needs and/or the demands of the emerging national communities has gone largely unnoticed. In this paper, I will discuss Nata’ij al-Ahwal as an example of a successful adaptation of older literary forms to the concerns of nation-building. I will show how Taymur used the frame story and the story within the story to discuss the parallel crises of the Egyptian dynastic government and the dramatically changing relations and values of existing Islamic communities. In her discussion of the reform of both, fraternal bonds emerge as an alternative to the old master slave relations that characterized Mamluk government with royal and ordinary women having an important role to play not simply in the reproduction of dynastic governments and societies, but as capable counselors of their husbands.