{"id":176,"date":"2016-06-01T21:21:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T18:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fawwaztraboulsi.com\/?p=176"},"modified":"2026-03-13T14:57:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T12:57:38","slug":"ahmad-faris-al-shidyaq-in-quest-of-another-modernity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/ahmad-faris-al-shidyaq-in-quest-of-another-modernity\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahmad Faris Al-Shidyaq:\u00a0In quest of another modernity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u1e25mad F\u0101ris al-Shidy\u0101q (1804-87):
\n<\/strong>In quest of another modernity<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Fawwaz Traboulsi<\/p>\n

I have chosen to write about Ahmad Faris Shidyaq (1804-1888) in this conference mainly because I owe it to Albert Hourani to have introduced me, and many others, of course, to this great personality of the Nahdah. <\/em><\/p>\n

In his Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age<\/em>, Hourani was indeed one of the first academics, in the Anglo-Saxon world at least, to realize the importance of the author of al-Saq `Ala al- Saq <\/em>in the Nahdah<\/em>. But Hourani did not see any sign of a consistant political insight in Faris Shidyaq\u2019s writings or a consistant political doctrine. He describes Shiyaq\u2019s masterpiece al Saq `al-l-Saqfi ma Huwa al Fariyaq <\/em>as a \u201clong strange original book\u201d written to demonstrate the capacity of the Arabic language and modeled on Rabelais, part autobiography, part social criticism with an implied attack on the Maronite hierarchy that had killed his brother\u201d. (Hourani, 1983: 98)<\/p>\n

Inconsistant, Shidyaq was indeed, especially in his turnabout during the Istanbul phase. Nevertheless, his observations, ideas, social criticism, professions of faith, do not surely constitute a political doctrine in itself, but a body of political and social ideas with some consistency and lots of relevance for the study of the man and the ideas of the Nahdah<\/em>. The following is an attempt to study Shidyaq\u2019s political and social ideas; the result, I presume, will reveal i) an homme a part<\/em> in the annals of the 19th<\/sup> century Nahdah<\/em>, that is, a democratic, secular and socially committed writer compared to his Nahdah<\/em> colleagues; ii) a revision of received wisdom about the factors that led to the Nahdah<\/em> itself .<\/p>\n

The context<\/strong><\/p>\n

Picasso once said: I do not search, I find.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I wish to make the point that Arab intellectuals, when they travel to the Europe or the United States, physically or intellectually, are not a tabula rasa<\/em>; they already have some idea about what they are looking for. Their travel experiences would modify, at times change, these ideas, but rarely do away with their initial problematic, very much determined by their location in their home countries vis-\u00e0-vis power, social status and hierarchy and class interests. The whole idea, in studying their production, therefore, is to follow up the way in which the specific intellectual, or intellectual school, negotiate the effects of their socio-political location with their personal, collective and intellectual experiences and evaluate the end product.<\/p>\n

I am here revisiting the unilinear notion of the European \u2018spark\u2019 that ignited the Arab \u2018enlightenment\u2019 of the 19th<\/sup> century, by means of the Napoleonic adventure, by introducing internal factors into the context. The Lebanese contribution to the 19th<\/sup> century Nahdah<\/em> is excentric to the whole \u2018spark\u2019 model mainly derived on the Egyptian experience. Bonaparte was stopped at Acre, the Maronite Church had banned the ideas of the French Revolution and most of the men of the Lebanese Nahdah<\/em> tended to be anglophile. In fact the background of that part of the Nahdah<\/em> was the crumbling of the Muqata’ji<\/em> system (of tax farming and land tenure) in Mount Lebanon, under the combined effect of its own internal contradictions, the penetration of foreign capital, and the some forty years of commoners and peasant revolts. In all this, Ahmad Faris Shidyaq life and writings are a good case in point. Three factors and events have helped fashion his social and political options and produced the rebel and the subversive intellectual we are studying.<\/p>\n

First, Faris Shidyaq, was born in `Achqut<\/em> (Kisrawan, Mount Lebanon) in 1804, and lived in Hadath, near Beirut, into a family of d\u00e9class\u00e9<\/em> rural notables who suffered a lot from political divisions, the oppression of the Church and the local feudalities. His grandfather, father and brother died as \u201cmartyrs of freedom of thought and inclination <\/em>\u201d, in his own words. Shidyaq\u2019s father and his brothers, Ghalib, Tannous and As`ad, participated in the massive commoners\u2019 revolt of 1820-21 against Bashir Shihab II, the ruler of Mount Lebanon, and had to flee to Damascus after Shihab bloodily crushed the revolt with armed help from the Druze chief Bashir Junblatt. The father died in that same year and young Faris had to leave his studies at the Maronite seminary of `Ayn Waraqah<\/em> and work as a copyist of manuscripts and various other jobs, but continued his studies under his elder brother As`ad, a teacher of Arabic and Syriac.<\/p>\n

Second, As`ad\u2019s death will completely change the course of Faris\u2019s life. In the 1820\u2019s, the Vatican had launched its counter-offensive against the ideas of the French Revolution and Protestantism, and Maronite Patriarch Hubaysh published two declarations against the \u2018protestant heresy\u2019 forbidding his subjects any commerce with them under threat of excommunication. As`ad Shidyaq, gained to the ideas of the Reform, publicly criticized the adoration of icons and considered the Bible, and not the Church, as the supreme authority in matters of Faith. He was arrested and jailed, upon orders of the Patriarch, in the dungeons of the patriarchal seat at Qannubin, in Northern Lebanon, in 1825, where he died five years later. After the arrest of his brother, Faris left the country for an exile from which he will never return.<\/p>\n

Shidyaq\u2019s life in exile spanned a round trip around the Mediterranean. In Cairo, he taught Arabic to American protestant missionaries and perfected his own Arabic and classical learning at the hands of the sheikhs of al-Azhar. Invited by the British Foreign Office and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to translate the Book of Prayers and the Bible into Arabic, Shidyaq- now married to the daughter of rich Christian Egyptian notables of Syrian origin- moved to Malta then to London (1846). No sooner had he finished the translation of the Bible, that he broke with the Protestant missionaries and left for Paris where he lived a life of debauchery and intense literary creativity. After a brief stay in Tunis (1857-1860) in which he is converted to Islam, Shidyaq moved to Istanbul, at the invitation of the Sultan, where he spent the last thirty years of his life.<\/p>\n

Third, Faris himself was typical of the emergence of a new type of intellectuals breaking with a long tradition of the mostly Christian traditional intellectuals, employed as copyists or mudabbirs<\/em> – secretaries, scribes and educators of children – who served various semi feudal emirs, sheikhs and rulers. His would be the new generation of an intelligentsia that lived off translation, journalism, teaching, in close association with Anglo-American Protestant missionaries.<\/p>\n

Dialectics of East and West<\/strong><\/p>\n

The product of an East, which he conceived of as plural and contradictory, Shidyaq saw the West in a similar manner. His disciple Maroun `Abbud called him a westernized intellectual who revealed the negative as well as the positive aspects of the West. (`Abboud, 1980) The attraction of civilization, progress, democracy and freedom did not hide the misery of the majority of the working populations in the Europe of the second half of the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

Shidyaq\u2019s life in Europe is related in three of his books, Al-Wasitah fi Ma`rifat Ahwal Malta <\/em>(1863)<\/em>, Kashf al-Mukhabba `An Funun Urubba <\/em>(1863)<\/em>, al-Saq<\/em> `ala-l-Saq<\/em> Fima Houwa al-Fariyaq<\/em> (1855) and in numerous articles of al-Jaw\u00e2\u2019ib<\/em>. With a keen sense of observation, a highly conscious sensitivity to the paradoxical and the equivocal, he described every conceivable aspect of the complexity of French and British societies. He marveled at the security the English enjoy and the absence of fear among them vis-\u00e0-vis<\/em> the police as much as was horrified by the abominable serial crimes committed in London and the countryside. He noticed approvingly that Europeans never ask people about their origin or religion, contrary to what prevails in the East, yet he still preferred the generosity, solidarity and intimacy of life in the East to the individualism and selfishness that dominate European life. Indeed, he does acclaim the newest scientific discoveries (the telegraph and the gas-lit streets) but does not disregard the widespread superstition and the practice of black magic among the British.<\/p>\n

Much that he admired equality among citizens in England, he was aware of the rigidity of its social hierarchy, noting that \u201cstratification between the different classes of the people is very much like the stratification of the organs of the human body, each having its own specific function which it does not transgress<\/em>\u201d. (Shidyaq, 1855: 191) Comparing the British and the French, he noticed that the first venerate titles whereas the latter give priority to competence. But most importantly, our author was shocked to find that the condition of English peasants was no better than that of their counterparts in his own country. (Shidyaq, 1855: 76) Not content with mere description, he sought after causes and discovered that at the basis of the peasants\u2019 misery lies the system of land ownership in which a few thousands families monopolize the majority of the country\u2019s cultivable land. (Shidyaq, 1855: 591) Writing on industrial relations, he discovered exploitation: \u201cThe whole world rests on the labor of those who produced it and are yet deprived of it.\u201d<\/em> (Shidyaq, 1855: 595) He especially discovered that the misery of the many made the happiness of the few: \u201cHow could it be that this world is built upon so much corruption? <\/em>He asked, How could it be that a thousand human beings, nay two thousands, should labor for the happiness of only one man?<\/em>\u201d (Shidyaq, 1855: 595) and in Victorian London, where rich and poor quarters coexisted \u201cas Heaven and Hell would coexist<\/em>\u201d, Shidyaq realized that poverty was at the basis of social ills: crime, suicide, prostitution of adolescents, abortion, etc. Shidyaq was thus gained to socialism. He confessed that a \u2018State of the Poor\u2019 would be closer to reality and to justice than the \u2018State of the Rich\u2019. (Al-Sulh: 209), strongly opposed to inherited wealth, rejected the argument of the rich that giving the poor their due would only lead to more avidity on their part, and was skeptical of the idealization of poverty propagated by religions and posited that money corrupted human relations and feelings. Later, in 1878, as he was following the development of the Russian socialist movement in al-Jawa\u2019eb<\/em>, he would coin the Arabic translation of \u2018socialism\u2019 – Ishtirakiyyah<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Shidyaq marveled how come, despite all the social ills and the flagrant class differences, the English do not rebel, compared to the frequent rebellions and revolutions of the French? He ventured two interpretations: i) their individualism (each minding his\/her own business, in the literal sense of the term); ii) their extreme poverty which prevents them from being preoccupied with anything else but gaining their daily bread (Shidyaq, 1863: 121-22). That passivity explains, in his view, the low percentage of policemen to the overall population required to keep law and order: 25.000 policemen for a population of 17 millions.<\/p>\n

Be it said, Shidyaq was not a romantic in his reaction to capitalism and modern civilization. His positions could be contrasted with those of Jibran Khalil Jibran, a figure of the late Nahdah<\/em>, and a good example of the romantic attitude of an Oriental facing industrial society. The author of The Prophet<\/em> looked down on scientific discoveries as mere toys with which the \u2018Mind plays in time of rest\u2019. As he defined the East primarily as a spiritual essence, he saw the West as essentially material, scientific and technological. His reaction to the latter led him to prophesy the end of cities and of the \u2018absurd\u2019 material civilization, denouncing its \u2018mechanical inferno\u2019, dreaming of the destruction of its most paramount symbol, the airplane- this \u2018scientific horse of fire\u2019- so that the \u201cwinged human spirit can freely soar in the unseen highs\u2019 <\/em>(re: Khalil Hawi on Gibran).<\/p>\n

Hourani seems to consider Shidyaq\u2019s description of life in England and France \u201cless perspective\u201d than that of Tahtawi (Hourani, 1983: 98) whatever the case, it is relevant here to compare Shidyaq with Rifaa Rifaat al-Tahtawi (1801-1873) descriptions of their stay in Europe in the light of geographical and social location and what each is looking for. To begin with, the events witnessed by the two men were radically different. Tahtawi lived in Paris in 1826-1831 around a quarter of a century before Shidyaq and left after the outbreak of the republican revolution of 1831. In his Takhlees al-Ibreez fi Talkhees Bareez<\/em> (1834) he did not hide his sympathy for the \u2018Party of Freedom\u2019 in the face of the \u2018Monarchist Party\u2019. Shidyaq was in Paris in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, which had a powerful working class component and more pronounced democratic and social aims.<\/p>\n

The position held by each of the two men in his own country and the kind of experience he had in Europe greatly influenced their outlook. Tahtawi, the Azhari scholar, was an official of Mohamad Ali\u2019s administration in Egypt visiting Paris in his capacity as Imam of a student mission in the French capital. His outlook was very much determined by the project to build a modern state in Egypt. What attracted his attention in France were elements that pertained directly to political power and state building: the republican constitution, in particular the political and judicial equality between citizens, the State of Law, the division of powers, etc. In addition, he was very much attracted to the role of education in modernization, an Arab Nahdah<\/em> obsession, par excellence<\/em>. In brief, Tahtawi\u2019s observations and comments on his stay in Paris would categorize him as a liberal capitalist in economics and a republican in politics. He admired industrialization without neglecting the negative aspects of capitalism, which he viewed as economic phenomenon with not much interest in its social effects. The Azhari sheikh thus rejected the practice of interest and usury- but did not question the profit principle- and warned that competition among capitalists often leads to bankruptcy, but not to monopoly and the control of the market.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Shidyaq, exiled rebel, marginal critic of feudalism and the Church, declared enemy of traditions and of inequality among men, was more focused on society than on the State, on radical social change rather than on State-building. In his Kashf al-Mukhabba<\/em>, he criticized Tahtawi for failing to see such aspects of European life and society.<\/p>\n

Work, Women, Time: In Quest of a different Modernity<\/strong><\/p>\n

This critical view of European society of his time is completely altered when Shidyaq discusses problems of the East. He accepts the problematic of the Nahdah<\/em> – how to explain the progress of the West and the regression of the East and how to bridge the gap between the two: \u201cWhen will we, sons and daughters of Adam, become human being as they are? When will we finally learn our rights and our duties?<\/em>\u201d Yet, his answers are radically different from those of his contemporaries. They are articulated around three main axes: freedom, the value of work, and woman\u2019s liberation.<\/p>\n

All the intellectual and life adventures of Shidyaq are but a long quest for freedom. At the heart of this conception lies his revolt against inequality among men and his firm belief in freedom of opinion. Commenting on his brother\u2019s incarceration and death, he addressed the Maronite patriarch Yussuf Hubaych with the following words: \u201clet us suppose that my brother had discussed and polemized in matters religious and maintained that you were in the wrong, you had no right to kill him for that. You should have rather refuted his proofs and his arguments by words or written texts….<\/em>\u201d (Shidyaq, 1855:188) [1]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The French editor of 1991 was not as indulgent as the Arab merchant who financed the publication of the Arab version in 1855 who had asked the deletion of that same chapter but retracted at the insistence of Shidyaq. More surprisingly, the French translator, a Syrian Catholic Christian himself, has no explanation for the suppression of the chapter in question apart from pretending that it contained autobiographical material, whereas he pretends that the book is a \u2018novel\u2019. Whether Shidyaq\u2019s book can be considered or not be considered as an early Arabic novel, remains that the fact that the suppressed autobiographical episode is one of hundreds of entries that relate episodes from the life of the author. The author himself did not hide the fact that his book is autobiographical, fictionized for sure. This is revealed in the book\u2019s subtitle Al-S\u00e2q `Alal-S\u00e2q F\u00eem\u00e2 Huwa-l-F\u00e2riy\u00e2q<\/em> (The Leg Over the Leg on Who is Al-Fariyaq<\/strong>), Fariyaq being but a contraction of the name of Shidyaq himself Far<\/strong>(is Shid)yaq.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact, the reason for the suppression of that chapter (barely 8 pages, pp. 187-194) in the French translation was the vicious attack Shidyaq launches on only on the Maronite Church and its Patriarch, but also on the Catholic church and the Papacy. In it, he relates episodes about the debauchery, corruption and criminality of certain earlier popes. The chapter ends with a blame by Shidyaq to his maternal cousin, bishop Boulos Mas`ad, who was assigned as the jailer of Faris\u2019s brother As`ad when he was incarcerated in the patriarchal see where he died.<\/p>\n

Whatever the case may be, Shidyaq preached religious tolerance and denounced sectarianism in his home country. A secularist, he considered religion as a private matter that cannot be a viable foundation for the State. He advocated the separation of religion and State and strongly supported the sovereignty of the State over all religious institutions. Yet he believed that every State should be inspired by the ideals of justice and equity which religions preach.<\/p>\n

While the Nahdah<\/em> tradition gave priority to education, as a principal mode of access to modernity and progress, Shidyaq emphasized industrialization and the work ethic. In the Muhammad Ali tradition, he conceived of modernity, as the reproduction of the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to it in the West. Work constituted a pleasure in itself, he said, it is also the means by which the future was assured. He warned against reducing modernity and progress to education, living in the cities and speaking a foreign language. \u201cEducation without work, <\/em>says he, is like a tree without fruits or a river without water\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Shidyaq gives equal importance to the notion of Time. During his Istanbul years, he frequently criticized the sheer waste of Time in the everyday life of the countries of the East.<\/p>\n

Women and Language<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shidyaq\u2019s literary and intellectual production lies in his ideas on women. He defined the purpose of the book as \u201cuncovering the marvels of Arabic and singing the praise of women <\/em>\u201d and goes on to say that \u201che had himself been metamorphosed into a woman<\/em>\u201d while writing his book then God him back as a man. The conjugation of language and woman in al-Saq<\/em>, produces an unending delirium in which the most beautiful words of love coexist with the detailed descriptions of the sexual perversions of rich Europeans, the debauchery of the clergy and the variety of sexual services offered by Parisian prostitutes, all punctuated by long lexicons on the different names for the parts of the woman\u2019s body, the act of love, etc.<\/p>\n

More than forty years before the pioneer of Arab feminism, Qasim Amin (whose Tahrir al-Mar\u2019ah appeared<\/em> in 1899), Shidyaq had launched the famous formula \u201cthere will be no liberation nor renaissance of the East without the liberation and renaissance of the Oriental woman <\/em>\u201d. But, in contrast to the other pioneers of feminism (Tahtawi, Bustani or Amin) who dreamt of an ideal oriental woman educated yet restricted to her household, and whose education was destined to produce a more enlightened generation of men, Shidyaq stressed equality between women and men. He opposed sexual segregation- that reduces woman to a sexual object – and defended women\u2019s right to work, to choose their husbands and to have equal right to divorce. Yet he considered that the right of women to education and work will remain incomplete as long as man does not share all his interests with his wife and contribute to the development of her own personality.<\/p>\n

However, Shidyaq\u2019s most original contribution on women is his defense of women\u2019s right to pleasure. This is found in his long dialogues with his feminine alter ego<\/em> Al-Fariyaqiyah, a fiction character, who, though evidently Fariyaq\u2019s wife, could not be reduced to that status or else he would have simply referred to her simply as Fariyaqa, feminine of Fariyaq. Whatever, Fariyaq discusses with Fariyaqiyyah the most intimate questions concerning the emotional and sexual life of man and woman around the theme of instincts between freedom and repression. Fariyaqiyyah evokes \u2018extra-marital love\u2019 (as both refrain from using the term \u2018infidelity\u2019) and Fariyaq attacks social hypocrisy and double-standards in dealing with this issue noting that woman have more reasons to be \u2018unfaithful\u2019 than men have, among which, the husband\u2019s incapacity to satisfy his wife sexually.<\/p>\n

Worthy of note is that Shidyaq does not deal with European women as a model. He describes them in their social differences and finest details – in looks, personality, dress, behavior, relations with men, etc. – constantly comparing between French and British women, noting that Parisian women exert stronger control over their men, and not hiding his preference for British women (he would marry one after the death of his Arab wife). Yet, in all these cases, he refrained from generalization and from stereotyping.<\/p>\n

It would be interesting, in this respect, to compare Shidyaq\u2019s views on European women with those of the French novelist Gustave Flaubert on Arab women. Edward Said has already noted the identification Flaubert makes between the Orient and sex. In explaining this identification, the author of Orientalism <\/em>maintains that the French novelist was searching in Egypt for what he, and his contemporaries, lacked in 19th<\/sup> Century Victorian Europe, where sex had become institutionalized and subject to a whole network of legal, moral and even political restraints. (Said, 1978: 188) It could very well be added that the dialectic of the East-West relationship operates in such a manner that each of the two writers was searching in the country of the other for what he lacked in his own country. Flaubert searched for prostitutes in Cairo and Shidyaq in Paris and both found them. Yet the way each viewed his own \u2018discovery\u2019 is radically different.<\/p>\n

Flaubert spent eight months in Egypt in 1848-49 during which he wrote a travel journal. At that time, Shidyaq was in England. When Flaubert\u2019s journal was published in Paris, in 1853, (Flaubert, 1991) Shidyaq had moved to Paris where he stayed for approximately a similar period. In a few linguistically stunning pages, Shidyaq describes the different sexual services offered by Parisian prostitutes in a highly sophisticated classical Arabic, drawing heavily on the rich tradition of classical Arab erotic literature. In contrast, the great French novelist considered his sexual encounters with a dozen `alimas<\/em> and prostitutes in Egypt as sufficient data for him to generalize and stereotype. Egyptian prostitutes become synonymous to \u2018Arab woman\u2019, in general, who appears to him as a \u2018mere sexual tool\u2026incapable of distinguishing one man from another\u2019 inasmuch as she is incapable of obtaining pleasure or reaching orgasm due the fact that she has undergone clitoridectomy.<\/p>\n

Further, Shidyaq\u2019s curiosity concerning everything related to Europe drives him to study prostitution as a social and human problem. He produces statistics concerning the respective number of prostitutes in London and Paris and investigates their legal and sanitary status, then posits that poverty is a major cause that leads women to prostitution. He is particularly angry at the prostitution of minors describing, in biting terms, the various afflictions they suffer from, notably sexually transmitted diseases (STM)and abortion. In contrast, Flaubert boasts that he had sex with a fourteen-year-old Egyptian prostitute (Flaubert, 1991).<\/p>\n

In his Istanbul years, Shidyaq radically changed his political and social ideas and positions, partly in conformity with his new patrons and partly due to his conversion to Islam, but also under the impact of events around hima. Paradoxically, it is the workers\u2019 revolt that pushed Shidyaq to depart from his radical democratic ideas. The Paris Commune (1871) shocked him by the unbridled violence of the working masses. Though, as a journalist, he scrutinized news concerning the event, refusing to take for granted the right-wing campaign against the rebels, the violence of the Commune led him to became a partisan of an \u2018overriding government\u2019 (Hukumah Qahirah<\/em>) capable of subduing its citizens. As a moderate reformer, now, he defended the Ottoman Tanzimat<\/em> (1839, 1856) and sought to strike a compromise between the Islamic shura<\/em> and the Western Republican principle of popular sovereignty without abandoning his search to achieving reconciliation between freedom and equality. In his last days, he reacted to the Toranic nationalism of the Young Turks by an act of faith in the Arabic language and \u2018Arab ethnicity\u2019, an early formulation of Arab national consciousness.<\/p>\n

Language<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to all of the above, Shidyaq was a grammarian, lexicographer, translator and one of the earliest modern Arab professional journalists in the Ottoman empire, who initiated the art of the maqalah<\/em> (opinion column) in Arabic and wrote on a wide variety of topics and in so many different styles, including his meditations on the theater and on music.<\/p>\n

Shidyaq’s translation of the Bible stands as the best among the three main translations, according to Bishop Yusuf Dibs, though it has not adopted for religious service. His major work on lexicography, Al-Jasus `Ala al-Qamus<\/em>, is a critique of the famous claasical dictionary Al-Qamus<\/em> by al-Fayruzabadi.<\/p>\n

The way Shidyaq presented the aim of this book al saq<\/em>– “revealing the wonders of language and singing the praise of women” – says a lot about the his infatuation with language and the art of writing inasmuch as his insistance on reviving Arabic in the typical way the men of the Nahdah<\/em> sought to do: go back to the original sources of the language, poetry and prose in order to renovate. he did not fare well in poetry, though he wrote a lot. But succeeded in prose.<\/p>\n

In language Shidyaq was an adept of the sound theory, as he maintained that language emerged from the imitation of the sounds in nature by early humans. He rejected stylistic ornamentation dominant in his times and satyrised on the saj<\/em>` (rhymed prose) and on the traditional maqama<\/em> form. His major stylistic interest lay in linking form and content. His style sought simplicity and naturalness, despite the fact that he was capable of fishing out the most sophisticated and antiquated words from the dictionaries and sprinkle them with colloquial ones derived from the fus’ha<\/em>. A decided enemy of rhetoric, he says that there is so much freshness, elegance and ornamentation in beauty that need no further additions, the way a beautiful woman is in no need to wear jewelry and ornaments, hence her name ghaniyah<\/em> in Arabic. He goes further to say that linguistic ornamentation diverts the readers’ attention from the interior meaning of the word to the exterior form (Shidyaq: 1855, 15) .<\/p>\n

Perhaps his most memorable idea on language is his observtion that freedon of expression imposes its own style.(Shidyaq: 1855, 72-73)<\/p>\n

Let me conclude with two brief notes.<\/p>\n

One. Albert Hourani mentions that Shidyaq was influenced by Rabelais. Indeed he was. We now know that Al Saq<\/em> was also, and perhaps primarily, written under the influence of Laurence Sterne\u2019s Tristram Shandy<\/em> (1760). In line with this discovery, the Egyptian novelist and critic Radhwa `Ashour has written an essay in which she defends the thesis that Al Saq<\/em> should be considered the first novel in modern Arabic literature. The book\u2019s title resumes `Ashour\u2019s view of Shidyaq\u2019s literary production: \u2018Al Hadatha al Mumkina\u2019<\/em> (The Possible Modernity). This can also be used to characterize all of his intellectual production.<\/p>\n

Second. The more one studies the Nahdah<\/em>, the more one discovers to what extent the \u2018spark\u2019 theory has blocked many avenues of research among which research into the intellectual history of the writers who contributed to it. I am constantly being surprised at the contradiction between attributing the Nahdah<\/em> to European cultural and intellectual influence, on the one hand, and the quasi absence of research into what these men read of European culture and intellectual production, on the other.<\/p>\n

Let the memory of Albert Hourani and his example challenge us to wade into this new field.<\/p>\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

– `Abboud, Maroun, \u201cAl-Shidyaq wa-l-Jahiz wa-l-Mutanabbi\u201d in Mu\u2019allafat Marun <\/em><\/p>\n

`Abbud al Kamilah<\/em>, Beirut, Dar Marun `Abboud, 1980.<\/p>\n

– Al Azmeh, Aziz and Traboulsi, Fawwaz, Al A`mal al Majhula li\u2013Ahmad Faris al Shidyaq<\/em>, Beirut, Riad Rayess Books, 1987.<\/p>\n

– A.J. Arberry, \u201cFresh Light on Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq\u201d IC <\/em>(1952), pp. 155-168.<\/p>\n

– Chidyaq, Faris, La jambe sur la jambe<\/em>, roman, traduit de l\u2019arabe par Ren\u00e9 R. Khawam, Paris, Ph\u00e9bus, 1991.<\/p>\n

– Flaubert, Gustave, Voyage en Egypte<\/em>, Paris, Grasset, 1991.<\/p>\n

– Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age<\/em>, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983,<\/p>\n

– Al Tahtawi, Rifa`a Rafi`, Takhlees al Ibreez fi Talkhees Bareez, <\/em>Beirut, Al Mu\u2019assassa al `Arabiya lil Dirassat wal Nashr, 1973.<\/p>\n

– Said, Edward, Orientalism<\/em>, New York, Pantheon, 1978.<\/p>\n

– Shidyaq, Fares, Al-Saq `ala-l-Saq fi ma Houwa al-Fariyaq<\/em>, Paris, 1855.<\/p>\n

– Al Sulh, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq<\/em>, Beirut, Dar al Nahar, 1980.<\/p>\n

Note<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. . Cf. Faris Chidyaq: La jambe sur la jambe<\/em>, roman, traduit de l\u2019arabe par Ren\u00e9 R. Khawam, Paris, Ph\u00e9bus, 1991. \u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A\u1e25mad F\u0101ris al-Shidy\u0101q (1804-87): In quest of another modernity by Fawwaz Traboulsi I have chosen to write about Ahmad Faris Shidyaq (1804-1888) in this conference mainly because I owe it to Albert Hourani to have introduced me, and many others, of course, to this great personality of the Nahdah. In his Arabic Thought in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[],"content_type":[531],"themes":[408,305],"country":[337],"language":[66],"archive_type":[113],"archive_author":[246],"media_type":[1732],"keywords":[573,582,587,622,641,650,672,675,749,892,979,1064,1132,1172,1182,1230,1257,1396,1583,1430],"ft_dossier":[3346],"ft_categories":[],"published_in":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","content_type-papers-en","themes-art-literature-en","themes-history-en","country-lebanon-en","language-english","archive_type-by-ft-en","archive_author-fawwaz-traboulsi-en","media_type-cambridge-university-press-en","keywords-19th-century-arab-thought-en","keywords-ahmad-faris-al-shidyaq-en","keywords-albert-hourani-en","keywords-arab-feminism-en","keywords-arab-modernity-en","keywords-arab-renaissance-en","keywords-arabic-language-en","keywords-arabic-literature-en","keywords-class-and-intellectuals-en","keywords-french-revolution-en","keywords-intellectual-biography-en","keywords-lebanese-history-en","keywords-maronites-en","keywords-mount-lebanon-en","keywords-nahda-en","keywords-ottoman-empire-en","keywords-peasant-revolts-en","keywords-sectarianism-en","keywords-secularism-en","keywords-social-criticism-en","ft_dossier-lebanon-war-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/themes?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive_type?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"archive_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive_author?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keywords?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"ft_dossier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ft_dossier?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"ft_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ft_categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"published_in","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fawwaztraboulsi.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/published_in?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}