Russian influences on Arabic literature have almost been completely ignored or dismissed as Soviet propaganda in previous studies. And yet Russian literature played a formative role in the founding of Arabic literature (cf. Ali-Zade, Badawi, Bell, Bilyk, Dolinina, Hasan, Imangulieva, Jayussi, Khalifa, Krachkovskii, Mahamid, Moreh, N.Naimy, Nijland, Starkey, Swanson, and Tamer), for which I give several undisputed reasons in my paper. Because of the limited time, we will explore this relationship by examining the impact of Russian literature on the poetry of Mikhail Naimy and Naseeb ‘Areedah, Levantine Arab emigrants and graduates of Russian schools in the Levant at the turn of the twentieth century. They were exposed to both Arabic literature and language and Russian culture, language, literature, and religion at Russian Orthodox religious institutions. They were also both familiar with Russian and Arabic folk songs. We examine specific examples of this impact on their translations, imitations, and “arabizations” of Russian poetry in their verses, and briefly touch upon the main innovations that they introduced into modern Arabic poetry, such as changes to the prosodic meters of traditional Arabic qasidah, the borrowing of devices from Romanticism, and the emphasis on the unity of poetic form and content. We also provide reasons why Naimy and ‘Areedah turned to specific Russian poets, literary genres, and currents. Naimy and ‘Areedah embraced and transformed the achievements of different world literatures in their poetry, including the Russian literary tradition, and they synthesized these accomplishments with the best of the Arabic literary traditions. They helped raise Arabic literature to a new level by diversifying themes in their poetry and following new literary currents that had never been explored in Arabic literature before. They created new forms of artistic expression. They not only helped advance modern Arabic poetry, but they also influenced other literary schools and built an information channel through which Eastern and Western literature could exchange cultural, spiritual, and moral values. This topic, which scholars have recently expressed a renewed interest in, is an excellent point of departure for studies and classes devoted to comparative literature, modern Arabic literature and poetry, and Russo-Arabic political, social, and cultural relations.

In March 1909, Sir Eldon Gorst (British Consul General) re-instituted of Egypt’s 1881 censorship law, which had been suspended upon the British invasion of Egypt. In reaction, a leading poet, Khal?l Mu?r?n, penned an 8-line poem , “Al-Muq??a‘ah (Boycott),” which galvanized opposition to Gorst but was ultimately unsuccessful in leading to the withdrawal of his initiative. The poem has been considered one of Mutran’s most rhetorically effective compositions (Hijazi 1975, 11 and Saadé 1985, 129). I propose to examine the elements (diction, thematics, repetition and prosody) that contributed to the poem’s success. I will contextualize the poem in the politics of the time and examine its role in Mutran’s oeuvre. Unlike the immediate assumption (Khouri 1971,149-50) that this poem is an anomaly among lyrics shaped exclusively by Mutran’s preoccupation with creating organic unity and thereby allowing it to express more clearly and fully individualism and the psychology of the self (as influenced by European Romantic thought), “Boycott” in fact represents a constant strain found in Mutran, which links it especially to the Romanticism found in English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which M.H Abrams has said makes them “all centrally political and social poets” (Abrams, 1963 101). It focuses on political and social themes—particularly Mutran’s concern with freedom and individual rights. Gorst’s re-imposition of the 1881 Press Law followed more direct attempts to weaken the populist and nationalist political party al-Hizb al-wa?an?, whose charismatic leader Mu??af? K?mil had died the previous year. Gorst was unable to exile the new leaders of the Nationalist Party (Khouri 1971, 92) so he effectively used the registration regulations in the old 1881 Egyptian Press Law and its provisions for prior restraint of publication to harass and repress Nationalist Party activities (Jankowski 2000, 102). Mutran, a follower of Mustafa Kamil and once a journalist himself, was determined in his opposition to Gorst’s moves, but it was only after Gorst’s retirement in 1911, and an intervention by the Khedive that he was able to regain his prominent role in the development of modern Arabic poetry. M.H. Abrams. 1963 “English Romanticism: The Spirit of the Age,” in Romanticism Reconsidered. Ed. Northrop Frye. New York: Columbia University Press. Ahmad ‘Abd al-Mu‘?? Hij?z?. 1975 Khal?l Mu?r?n: qa??’id. Beirut: D?r al-?d?b. James Jankowski. 2000 A Short History of Egypt. London: Oneworld. Mounah Khouri. 1971 Poetry and the Making of Modern Egypt. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Nicholas Saadé 1985 Khalil Mutran. Beirut: Librairie Orientale.

In this paper, I unpack (A?mad) F?ris al-Shidy?q’s (1805-87) theory of translation as manifest in two of his major texts: his fictional al-S?q ?al? al-S?q (Leg over Leg) and his travelogue, titled Kashf al-Mukhabba? ?an Fun?n Ur?bba (Revealing the Hidden in the Arts of Europe). Examining al-Shidy?q’s linguistic world, which is for the most part predicated on semantic overlap within endless lists of synonymy, I argue that al-Shidy?q saw “contiguity” rather than strict “equivalence” as driving force of meaning. This suggests the notion that translation and, by implication cultural assimilation, is an impossible undertaking. In this sense, looking at al-Shidy?q’s take on the impossibility of translation helps nuance our common view of translation during the Nah?ah, especially in Egypt, which generally projected assimilation and equivalence as preconditions to a cultural participation in modernity—an argument which Shaden Tageldine profoundly advanced in her Disarming Words. Towards that end, I trace the moments in which al-Shidy?q’s text itself is subversive of the over-determined category of “equivalence.” This subversive energy, I suggest, can be explained historically since al-Shidy?q came to an awareness that there cannot be symmetrical relationships between different cultural, literary, and linguistic systems. Navigating different literary, linguistic, and religious worlds, al-Shidy?q found his poetic (native) and translational (trans-regional/trans-national) selves at jarring conflict. On the one hand, his Qur??n-inspired translations of the Bible into Arabic were criticized and rejected by some Maronite Christians, precisely for their lack of rak?kah (linguistic feebleness) which was arguably, but paradoxically, deemed necessary to draw the reader nearer to a “Christian God.” On the other hand, his classical panegyric qa??dah or ode to a European notable was dismissed for its inclusion of the inaugurational part of nas?b (praise of women). Responsive to European taste, al-Shidy?q re-wrote his panegyric by removing the classical part, thus resulting in what Abdelfatt?? Kili?? refers to as “poetic castration” (ikh?a? al-shi?r). In my analysis, I draw heavily on Kili??’s deconstructive method which questions the notions of correspondence and equivalence among different linguistic and cultural systems.

Recent revisionist histories of the Nahda have compelled scholars to re-asses the movement through transnational and pan-Islamic intellectual exchanges across several languages, including Turkish, Urdu, and Persian, among others. This paper responds to this this scholarly turn by looking at the intellectual legacy of Jurji Zaidan’s work in mid-century India and Pakistan, focusing specifically on the ways in which his work on Islamic history was refashioned to appeal to the changing contours of Muslim presence in the subcontinent in the first half of the twentieth century. While the exact extent of Zaidan’s influence on Indian Muslim political and literary thought remains understudied, some archival research has revealed a considerable readership among North Indian elites and a paradoxical position as both a champion and an enemy of Islam. In this paper, I explore Raees Ahmed Jafri’s Urdu translation of Zaidan’s The Conquest of Andalusia (Lahore 1954), framing it within the deep history of intellectual exchange between South Asia and North Africa, specifically the reform movements launched by Indian Muslim intelligentsia at the end of the nineteenth century that sought solidarities with Arab and Turkish intellectuals in a putative pan-Islamic vision of the world. In the preface to the translation, Jafri notes that he excised such parts of the novel as he deemed incorrect and insulting. This filtered version of Zaidan’s work resonates with other responses to him throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this paper, I focus on the texture of this translation that admittedly presents the novel in a “new form,” transforming the faced-paced didacticism of the original into a dastan-inflected fable.

In 1849, the Damascene notable Mikha’il Mishaqa became an open convert to Protestantism. He also published an autobiographical account of his religious opinions, stating that since his youth he had not been a believer in any recognised religion, although outwardly conforming to the Greek Catholic rite of his family. What had initially provoked his religious crisis, around 1818, was his reading of European Enlightenment books translated into Arabic at Damietta. Mishaqa was apparently not alone. At a similar period Protestant missionaries were reporting on the dangers of groups of Syrian Christians falling prey to scepticism or unbelief; Catholic missionaries were also on their guard against the ‘modern errors’ emanating from Europe; and accounts of temptation into religious doubt began to appear in Arabic literary texts. This hitherto hidden facet of intellectual and religious life in Ottoman Syria calls into question the relations between new, European-derived ideas – of both ‘Enlightenment’ and Christian varieties – and existing intellectual trends in the Arab world. It also calls attention to contemporary shifts in the inter-religious dynamics of Syria, with the creation of the new millet regime and related conversions between religious communities. This paper will examine the possible meanings of unbelief in this context through a range of published sources and missionary archives, including previously unexamined correspondence between Protestant missionaries and converts such as Mikha’il Mishaqa. It argues that the threat of religious unbelief or scepticism was a key element in Protestant missionaries’ understanding of Syrian society, alongside their oppositional relationship to existing local forms of religion: Protestantism offered itself as a ‘middle way’ between the ‘superstition’ of established local churches and the ‘infidelity’ into which Syrian Christians were in danger of falling, particularly as they encountered the scientific and sceptical heritage deriving from the Enlightenment. The relationship between faith, doubt, and scientific or rational knowledge thus played a significant part in Arabic-speaking Syrians’ appropriations of Western knowledge from the first half of the nineteenth century onwards.