Russian jadîdism and the Islamic world : Ismail Gasprinskii in Cairo, 1908. [A call to the Arabs for the rejuvenation of the Islamic world

Abstract

Thomas Kuttner, Russian jadïdism and the Islamic world Ismail Gasprinskii in Cairo, 1908. The short-lived publication by Ismail Bey Gasprinskii of an Arabic newspaper, al-Nahdah, during his brief sojourn in Cairo in the months of Feb.-March, 1908, has hitherto gone unnoticed. However, the appearance of al-Nahdah is of no little significance, for it underscores the important role which Russian Jadîdism and the Jadîdist thinkers played in the development of Islamic modernism. Al-Nahdah served as a vehicle for Gasprinskii's socio-economic ideas and was his first outright venture into the field of political commentary, an area in which he had not hitherto entered, due to the stringent government control of the Russian Muslim Press. Finally the newspaper served as an organ to broadcast Gasprinskii's proposal for a Universal Islamic Congress, a proposal frowned upon in official circles and one which never came to fruition.