Rethinking the Eurocentric gaze in narratives of urban modernity: the Shaykh, the Flâneur, and the orientalist in Takhlīṣ al-Ibrīz and ʿAlam al-Dīn

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper situates two early nahḍāh texts, Takhlīṣ al- Ibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz and ʿAlam al-Dīn in the canonical imaginary of urban modernity. The paper argues that Takhlīṣ and ʿAlam al-Dīn capture the impact of technology and urban culture on literary writing in the nineteenth-century. By analyzing the authorial position of the figure of the Muslim shaykh in the nineteenth -century metropolis the paper traces the rise of a global Arabic literary imaginary. I argue that Takhlīṣ and ʿAlam al-Dīn posit the literary text as an essential site of legibility in an urban culture where circulation, mobility, and visual cognition played significant roles in shaping authorial positions. I examine how those two early nahḍah texts impose a reevaluation of the current canonical knowledge of the practice of flânerie—commonly associated with the bourgeois male figure of the flâneur. The paper analyzes the history of shaykh Ṭahṭāwī’s encounter with the culture of flânerie tracing its influence on ‘Alī Mubārak’s ʿAlam al-Dīn. By situating those early narratives in the canon of urban literature, this paper sheds light on the intersection between literary narratives, circulation, visual culture, and the conditions of unequal literary exchanges in modern urban culture.