Paris, City Flourishing with Arab’s Writings

maydaa nadar

By Maydaa Abo El-Nadar

CAIRO, Feb. 5 (SEE)- A seminar about Refaa Rafee Al Tahtawy’s book “Paris Gold”, known in Arabic as “Takhlis AlIbriz Fi Kitab Paris”, took place at the ongoing 2019 Cairo International Book Fair.

The seminar was led by Seliman Al Attar, Ahmed Darwish, Zakaria Al Refaay and Kamal Moghith. In cooperation with the National Council for Disability Affairs, it was translated by Ahmed Salah to the sign language.

When Mohamed Ali Pasha took over Egypt’s leadership, the country lived dark times for around 300 years. There was no attention paid neither to education nor to renaissance. During the Mameluk Empire, the Egyptian population was estimated by eight million. However, at the time of the French Campaign, its population ranged between two and a half to three million.

Mohamed Ali Pasha

Mohamed Ali ruled Egypt in 1805. He was very keen on pushing the country forward. Thus, after the Citadel’s Massacre and eliminating the country’s enemies in 1811, he started paving the road for a modern state.

Building a modern country was based on developing the following fields: medicine, arts, military, administrative sections, irrigation, agriculture, trade, transportation, industry, and press. On the other side, the smart leader appreciated deeply the cultural field.

The culture here means education, press, translation, various sciences, moderate religious beliefs, renewing religious discourse, and links with the West. For a country to develop, it has to learn from other countries’ experiences. In this regard translation was a playing pivotal role.

For this goal, Mohamed Ali sent educational missions across the western countries. One of these missions was under the supervision of Al Tahtawy (1810-1873). The mission left Egypt to France in 1826 and returned in 1831. It comprised Turkish, Armenians, and Al Tahtawy who was the only Egyptian.

Worth noting is that Hassan Al Attar, former Al Azhar’s Imam, recommended Al Tahtawy’s company to this mission. This was because Al Attar believed in renovation and the importance of communicating with the West for Egypt’s upraise, bearing in mind that his stay in Istanbul and Albania positively influenced his mentality.

Al Tahtawy's Statue, Faculty of Languages, Ain Shames University

Al Tahtawy was an intellectual who practiced his beliefs and realized his theories. His book can be considered as a project that he lived to implement. Some resources considered that Al Tahtawy was sent as the mission’s imam. However, his role as a supervisor never distracted him from utilizing his stay in Paris to write a book that till nowadays is the topic of several prestigious gathering.

The book balances between two dimensions. Firstly it directs its readers to tolerantly open to the West and to absorb their constructive experiences. Secondly, it revives the oriental heritage. Through his writings, it can be understood that he equated between preserving heritage and renewal.

In addition to the book’s social side and analyzing social categories, it included a political side where the writer talked about the French constitution, the French 1830’s revolution, freedom of press and media, and the left and the right parties.

Al Tahtawy was aware of the Egyptian as well as the French societies of that time. Once he returned to Egypt, he established Al Alsun School, currently known as the Faculty of Al Alsun (Faculty of Languages). As he was also aware of the relevant side of history, he translated several history books to the Arabic and his writings have significant and historical depth.

Before his death, via a simple message, he alluded to the importance of renewing the religious discourse, a topic that now is given priority, on the academic, political, religious, and social levels. This shows that he had a deep and poignant future vision.

No wonder that afterward, the book was an inspiration to other writers of his generation and the following one such as Aly Mubarak and Al Tahtawy’s friend Mohamed Aiad Al Tantawy.

Aly Mubarak

Mubarak’s book, called “The Science of Religion”, revived discussions between the East and the West. It came in a form of a group of conversations between a religious Egyptian man (an Al Azhar’s sheikh) and an orientalist, whom he met coincidently through his travel to Europe, especially France.

On the other hand, when Al Tantawy traveled to Russia, he wrote a book about the country mentioning that Saint Petersburg was never less important than Paris.

Paris, nicknamed “La Ville-Lumière”, in English “The City of Light” was depicted in many Arab literary writings as a civilized city of culture. In numerous occasions, Arab writers utilized it as a model for enlightenment.

Amongst these writers the Tunisian Beram Al Tonsy whose poetry includes meaningful verses about Paris. Al Tonsy was a poet concerned about the Arab countries’ negative aspects, a fact that could be seen clearly through his poems. Probably to awake the reader’s awareness, in many occasions he criticized the Arabs’ status by comparing them with that of the West, resorting to cities such as Paris and London.