Islamic Knowledge and the Making of Modern Egypt

A history of Egypt's first teacher-training school, exploring 130 years of tension over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modernized public spheres.

Hilary Kalmbach (Author)

9781108423472, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 October 2020

288 pages
16 x 23.5 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'Hilary Kalmbach illuminates a critical hybrid pathway to modernity between al-Azhar and the civil schools - the teacher's college of Dar al-Ulum. That future Muslim Brothers Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb studied there underlines its significance for understanding Islamic revival movements from the 1930s to the present, in Egypt and around the world.' Donald M. Reid, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This historical study transforms our understanding of modern Egyptian national culture by applying social theory to the history of Egypt's first teacher-training school. It focuses on Dar al-Ulum, which trained students from religious schools to teach in Egypt's new civil schools from 1872. During the first four decades of British occupation (1882-1922), Egyptian nationalists strove to emulate Europe yet insisted that Arabic and Islamic knowledge be reformed and integrated into Egyptian national culture despite opposition from British officials. This reinforced the authority of the alumni of the Dar al-Ulum, the daramiyya, as arbiters of how to be modern and authentic, a position that graduates Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood would use to resist westernisation and create new modes of Islamic leadership in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Establishing a 130-year history for tensions over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modernized public spaces, tensions which became central to the outcomes of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, Hilary Kalmbach demonstrates the importance of Arabic and Islamic knowledge to notions of authority, belonging, and authenticity within a modernising Muslim-majority community.

Introduction. Hybridity, Islamic knowledge and 'being modern' in Egypt
1. Reform, education, and sociocultural politics in nineteenth-century Egypt
2. Dar al-?Ulum: hybridity, education, and sociocultural change, 1871–1900
3. Hybridity, Islamic knowledge, and the formation of Egyptian national culture, 1882–1922
4. Fighting over the future of Egyptian national culture, 1923–1952
Conclusion. Authority, authenticity, and revolution.

Subject Areas: Islam [HRH], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]