The Historical Novels of Jurji Zaydan
History as entertainment, as identity or as politics?

Thomas Philipp, professor of Politics and Contemporary History of the Near East and the Middle East, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Jurji Zaydan was the archetypical member of the Arab Nahda (Awakening). He belonged to that new intellectual elite whose education was not based on traditional or religious learning. This intelligentsia debated new world views, a new social order and different patterns of political power. The major forum for these debates were the newspapers and journals which developed rapidly in Beirut, Cairo and Damascus.

Zaydan concurred with the belief of this intelligentsia that education of the people – and not revolution – was the main instrument to establish a new and better world, progress being very much part of their thinking. Scientific knowledge and scientific thinking seemed the key to education and progress. For Zaydan this also meant ‘scientific’ knowledge of the ‘facts’ of one’s own and culture as the fundament for the development of a new society. His journal al-Hilal was dedicated to this purpose; his multivolume works on Arabic literature and Islamic civilisation testify to his scholarly endeavours in this direction. But he also was – as his efforts for the establishment of a simplified, modern, standard written Arabic show – very much concerned with the spread of education.

These concerns led him to the innovative idea of providing a lighter fare of Arab history and Islamic civilisation in the form of historical novels. The stated aim of these novels was to raise the interest of the readers in their own history. In the end he wrote some 22 novels, all except one, historical novels, most of which he first serialised in al-Hilal. Zaydan established with these 22 tomes the genre of the historical novel in Arabic literature and, indirectly, of the novel in general.

The lecture analysed some of the ways in which Zaydan dealt with the Arab-Muslim past in these novels and discussed the fascination these novels held for their readers.