The Evolution of National Culture in Modern Egypt: Intellectual Formation and Social Diffusion, 1892-1945

Abstract

This paper describes both the general historical framework within which modern national culture arose in Egyptian society and its transformation into a major culture within that society.' More precisely, it examines the central processes of this development in the formative period: from the culture's incipient emergence in the late nineteenth century (specifically, since the 1890s, when the Egyptian nationalist movement became active) until its initial appearance as a central culture in the society in the mid-1940s (specifically, in conjunction with the Arab League's establishment, under Egyptian leadership, in 1945). The basic thesis is that modernity (tajdid or hadith, in the language of the Egyptians) was introduced into Egyptian Muslim society through