How Zaynab Became the First Arabic Novel

Abstract

AbstractThis paper is part of a History Compass conference cluster tracing the formation of national culture in Egypt. Guest edited by Walter Armbrust, this cluster of articles was originally part of a conference in Oxford on January 12–13, 2007, organized by Walter Armbrust, Ronald Nettler, and Lucie Ryzova, and funded by the Middle East Centre (St. Antony's), The Faculty of Oriental Studies, The Khalid bin ‘Abdullah Al‐Sa’ud Professorship (Professor Clive Holes), and The Centre for Political Ideologies.The cluster is made up of the following articles:Guest Editor: Walter Armbrust ‘The Formation of National Culture in Egypt in the Interwar Period: Cultural Trajectories’, Walter Armbrust, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00571.x‘Repackaging the Egyptian Monarchy: Faruq in the Public Spotlight, 1936–1939’, Matthew Ellis, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00572.x‘How Zaynab Became the First Arabic Novel’, Elliott Colla, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00573.x‘Women in the Singing Business, Women in Songs’, Frédéric Lagrange, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00574.x‘Long Live Patriarchy: Love in the Time of ‘Abd al‐Wahhab’, Walter Armbrust, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00575.x‘Football as National Allegory: Al‐Ahram and the Olympics in 1920s Egypt’, Shaun Lopez, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00576.x‘The Professional Worldview of the Effendi Historian’, Yoav Di‐Capua, History Compass 6 (2008), DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00577.xDespite a long‐standing critical consensus that Muhammad Husayn Haykal's 1914 novel Zaynab was the first ‘mature’ Arabic novel, there is much evidence to the contrary. First, in terms of genre, Zaynab was not the first book calling itself by the term that later critics would call ‘novel’; second, in terms of the bibliographic record, it was not a unique book on the cultural market in 1914; third, in terms of literary style, it was not at the time a particularly unique formal or thematic experiment in prose fiction; and finally, in terms of reception, it was not recognized as significant even by the small market segment and cultural field in which it initially appeared. This article revisits this critical debate and suggests that the canonization of Zaynab as the first Arabic novel cannot be explained by the work itself, but rather by subsequent developments – most especially, in the film adaptations of the novel and in the nationalization of university curricula during the Nasserist period.