Ghādat al-Ṣīn: the literary trace of Arab–China relations in the Nahda

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, Nahdawi writers increasingly turned their attention to China. This article explores the political and literary function representations of China served in Nahdawi discourse by examining Ṣāliḥ Jawdat’s 1889 Ghādat al-Ṣīn. By illustrating the triangular circuit of textual exchange through which Chinese cultural material entered Arab consciousness mediated by European translation, I demonstrate the political agency acquired by Nahdawi translators who modified and reappropriated the Orientalist strategies of power in European writing about China. Jawdat repurposes the European representation of Chinese men as incapable of self-rule, using these depictions of deficient East Asian masculinity to create a narrative space for female empowerment. What becomes apparent is that the key issues of the Nahda such as free marriage and women’s access to the public sphere took shape along axis of South-South relations.