Tiger Nuts

The importance of archaeobotany has been widely recognized in recent years, and more research is being conducted to study botanical remains. Only a very few of the cultivated vegetables grown in fields and in gardens were indigenous to Egypt, but one was the tiger nut (Cyperus esculentus L.) which was known and consumed since the Predynastic Period. Remains of dry tiger nuts tubers were found in large quantities in tombs from Neolithic times onwards. Some were found inside the stomachs of bodies as early as the Predynastic Period. Tiger nuts are attested in funerary offering lists, festival offerings, in medicine and in diet. This paper sheds light on the importance of tiger nuts and its different uses. It also urges their use in modern Egypt.

‘Modern’ Law and Its Subjects in Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor (1937)

State law as the main transformative device to build a ‘modern’ Egypt has encountered tremendous resistance, yet legal scholars seem utterly uninterested in the matter while historians struggle to account for the reasons of the subjects’ resistance by using archival materials often produced by state officials themselves. In this article, I turn to literature to explore and interrogate literary representations of the rural subjects of ‘modern’ law, and their various forms of resistance to ‘modern’ law itself. In an effort to highlight the benefits of ‘turning to literature’ for legal scholars, I begin with one of the most acclaimed masterpieces and foundational works of the modern Egyptian literary canon: Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor (1937). Listening to the awkward silences and garrulous voices of the Diary’s subjects opens a window onto the strained relations between ‘modern’ law and its subjects in which class, language, and centre/periphery dynamics all play a role. Considering what repertoire these subjects ‘spontaneously’ mobilise to challenge the ‘modern’ law further brings into view their alternative doxic understanding of law and justice. Keywords: ‘Modern’ law, hegemonic legal modernity, everyday resist­ance, extra-judicial justice, vocal dissent, rural subjects, rural courtroom, Egypt, 20th-century fiction, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm, Diary of a Country Prosecutor.

“The Imam of modern Egypt was a sceptic”: Mustafa Sabri's Radical Critique of Muhammad ʿAbduh and Modernist Theology

This article re-examines the theology of Egyptian ʿalim Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) through the writing of Late Ottoman sheikh ül-Islam Mustafa Sabri (1869–1954) and his radical critique of the Muslim reform (tajdīd) movement. One of Mustafa Kemal's most implacable foes, Sabri was alarmed to find Egyptian ʿulamaʾ and intellectuals advancing the positivist-materialist agenda he had challenged in Istanbul before fleeing in 1922 from Ankara's victorious nationalist forces. Debating the leading lights of the modernist movement in Egypt of the 1930s and 1940s, Sabri came to see its reform theology as little more than a calque on Enlightenment notions of religion; his ideas became influential through his close relationship with Hasan al-Banna and other figures from the Muslim Brotherhood. Examining Sabri's work in Istanbul and Cairo, ʿAbduh's early and later writing, and texts such as ʿAbduh's famous debate with Farah Antun, the islāmiyyāt literature of Egypt's liberal age, and material by Sayyid Qutb, I argue that Sabri was instrumental in formulating the hostile discourse that came to dominate Muslim views of ʿAbduh in the later twentieth century once the ideologies of Salafism and Brotherhood Islamism had eclipsed that of the reformers.

Muhammad Abduh and His Epistemology of Reform: Its Essential Impact on Rashid Rida

<p>This paper analyze the influence of Muhammad ‘Abduh on his chief disciple, Muhammad Rashid Rida. Rida was the leading advocate of Abduh’s rational principle and modern ideas through his writing in <em>Tafsir al-Manar</em> (<em>The Manar Commentary</em>) and <em>Tarikh al-Ustadh al-Imam Muhammad Abduh</em> (<em>Biography of Muhammad Abduh</em>). <em>Tafsir al-Manar</em> is a Qur’anic exegesis based on rational approach outlined by Muhammad ‘Abduh and the <em>Tarikh</em> is a comprehensive biography of the life and works of Muhammad Abduh printed in three volumes that significantly documented Abduh’s lasting influence and legacy in modern Egypt. Rida continued to resolutely champion the ideas of reform through <em>Majallat al-Manar</em> (<em>al-Manar Journal</em>) that highly reverberated Abduh’s principles and remarkably claimed extensive influence in contemporary Islamic world.</p>