The turn to being re-enchanted with spiritualism (rūḥiyya)--the occupation with “spirit phenomena” through “mediums” and experiments–was an existential matter within a world-wide trend in the post-Great War moment. The disenchantment with materialism, democracy, and man-kind violence resulted in individuals rethinking their position in the world, not only in Europe and the Americas, but also in Egypt. At the forefront of this Egyptian preoccupation with spiritualism and its usefulness for the reform of the community was the Islamic scholar, philosopher, and periodical editor Muḥammad Farīd Wajdī (1875-1954). Wajdī was known for his advocacy for engaging with spiritualism as a scientific and philosophical study–an initiative, he bemoans, that was inherent in Islamic history but seems to have been lost with the penetration of Western modernity and materialism. This paper looks at the history of spiritualism in fin-de-siècle Egypt to challenge the assumption that modernity and the enculturation of the efendi in colonial Egypt, led to a break with esoteric discourse. When in fact, an inclination towards the esoteric began to manifest in print initiative, where scholars, intellectuals, efendis, and print editors aimed at actively transforming the public’s perception of spiritualism. I take Wajdi’s foray into the world of Egyptian journalism as the space within which he “experimented” with the Egyptian public’s interest in such topics through his editorship of periodicals such as al-Ḥayāh and al-Azhar, as well as periodicals he was a regular contributor to such as al-Ma’rifa. I take these periodicals as “laboratories” (Monroe, p. 9) that mark the gradual emergence of Egyptian spiritualism–not as counter culture or underground attempts on the fringe of society but rather as an integral part of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Egypt. In this paper, I set out to complicate the reading of esotericism as a Western conception, where the entire Islamic world has been treated as a ‘carrier civilization’ of mostly Greek (and hence, one assumes, ‘properly Western’) material. Instead, I present Wajdī’s periodicals as an engagement with spiritualism that is part of the Islamicate tradition and a continuity from the past that is utilized to reflect on contemporary political and social immiserations.

The end of the First World War marked a new conceptual orientation in the Nahḍawi movement that was likewise expressed in a vast number of periodicals edited by Arab émigrés in the Weimar Republic. Germany seemed a good place for anti-colonial nahḍawi alignments: regarded as a fellow victim of the imperial postwar order, it served as a logical ally to contemporary Arab nationalists. In addition, the liberal climate of the Weimar Republic and the cheap living conditions were highly attractive to Arab migrants. First, especially Egyptians came to Berlin, where they gathered in clubs and political organizations and edited regular periodicals. Among them was the bimonthly German journal "Aegyptische Korrespondenz. Organ der ägyptischen Nationalpartei in Deutschland" (1921-1924). This paper aims to go beyond understanding periodicals such as the "Aegyptische Korrespondenz" as primarily nationalist. Rather, I consider them to be predictors for and serving as a panopticon of a larger contemporary anti-colonial Nahḍawi movement that surged in the immediate postwar period and lasted, in Weimar, until the early 1930 ́s. In contrast to the (very few) studies on Arab periodicals in Germany published especially by Gerhard Höpp, I seek to outline the international orientation and transnational connection of these authors and editors. Periodical editing in Weimarian migrant circles served as a political practice of and a meeting place for political actors with varied political aspirations. They, however, often shared a greater goal: overcoming the imperial postwar order. Using the "Aegyptische Korrespondenz" as an example, I aim to highlight how articles which at first appear to pursue a nationalist agenda were in fact internationally oriented in their argument. Moreover, the journal gathered, besides a great number of highly acclaimed Arab politicians and thinkers, guest authors from all around the world. It is thus perfectly suited to illustrate the profound internationalism propagated by Arab Nahḍawi intellectuals in European exile during a time of multiple political crises and global reorientation.

In 1933, Shaikh Abu Al-Yaqzan (d. 1973), a former student of the Ibadite reformist scholar Muḥammad Aṭṭfiyash (d.1914) and one of the first Algerian journalists, defied multiple attempts of censorship by the French colonial administration and launched a newspaper named “al-Umma” anew in Algiers. This publication went on to become his longest-lasting Mozabite periodical during the first half of the 20th century. Notably, "Al-Umma" served as a crucial mediator, fostering a sense of community and developing Ibadite conceptualizations of the umma in interwar French-Algeria. These conceptualizations ranged from local imaginings of a Mozabite umma to pan-African visions, such as the Maghrebian umma, and global perspectives like a pan-Islamic umma. This research aims to discern alternative political imaginaries, envisioned communities, and forms of resistance within Al-Umma al-Yaqzaniyya. A significant aspect to explore is how "Al-Umma" symbolized a robust form of epistemic resilience. This paper illustrates how periodicals, like "Al-Umma," served not only as a powerful form of resistance against French colonial occupation, it further served as a means of asserting Ibadite Muslim subjectivity that thoroughly challenged the dominant Eurocentric and colonial epistemological space that has been upheld by the French settler colonial state since the 1840s.