Abstract
This paper analyzes the conceptualization of ideas of race in three historical novels in the fictional work of Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914), a Syrian Christian intellectual who wrote on the Golden Ages of Islamic History through serialized, popular works of historical fiction. In the novels analyzed, Fath al-Andalus (Conquest of Andalusia), Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid (The Caliph’s Sister), and al-Amin wa al-Ma’mun (The Caliph’s Heirs), Zaydan depicts hierarchies of race that are delineated by certain features and categories, especially within the Abbasid among household slaves, and also centers the conflict within the novels around issues of differences in race and lineage. Zaydān shows the importance of rifts in Islamic history stemming from categorizations and distinctions between Arab and non-Arab, or Arab and Persian, or mawāli. The novels also reflect the self-conceptualization of Egyptians in relation to their perceptions of the Sudanese, at a time of the rise of Arab nationalism, in late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Highlights
This paper analyzes the conceptualization of ideas of race in three historical novels in the fictional work of Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914), a Syrian Christian intellectual who wrote on the Golden Ages of Islamic History through serialized, popular works of historical fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century
In this paper I have analyzed three examples of historical fiction composed by Syrian
Christian author Jurji Zaydān: Fath al-Andalus, Al-‘Abbāsa Ukht al-Rashıd and Al-Amın wa al-Ma’mūn/. These novels show us that the historical fiction writing of the early 20th century dealt with important themes such as race, gender and lineage
Summary
Zaydān was a direct intellectual product of the Arab Renaissance, the Nahda, a series of cultural and literary movements in the Arab world led by Syrian Christians in mostly Egypt and Greater Syria towards the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth. Most of these intellectuals moved to Egypt in order to avoid the Ottoman Hamidian oppression in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Once in Cairo, these Christian intellectuals mostly monopolized the press and helped cultivate an increasingly active public sphere
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