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FREEDOM, JUSTICE, AND THE POWER OF ADAB

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2016

Ellen McLarney
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Abstract

This article analyzes in depth four main writings by the pioneering nahḍa intellectual Rifaʿa Rafiʿ al-Tahtawi, who drew on classical kinds of adab to articulate new kinds of political subjectivities. He especially draws on the image of the body politic as a body with the king at its heart. But he reconfigures this image, instead placing the public, or the people, at the heart of politics, a “vanquishing sultan” that governs through public opinion. For al-Tahtawi, adab is a kind of virtuous comportment that governs self and soul and structures political relationships. In this, he does not diverge from classical conceptions of adab as righteous behavior organizing proper social and political relationships. But in his thought, disciplinary training in adab is crucial to the citizen-subject's capacity for self-rule, as he submits to the authority of his individual conscience, ensuring not only freedom, but also justice. These ideas have had lasting impact on Islamic thought, as they have been recycled for the political struggles of new generations.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 25 - 46
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

NOTES

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2 Ibid.

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39 Asad, Formations of the Secular, 220.

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41 Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 89. This is Taylor's definition of the modern public sphere.

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74 Ibid., 523.

75 Ibid., 519.

76 Ibid., 664.

77 Ibid., 429.

78 Ibid., 433.

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85 Al-Marsafi's lectures on literature were published in the journal Rawdat al-Madaris, for which al-Tahtawi was the editor-in-chief between 1870 and 1873. These lectures were later compiled into a two-volume work al-Wasila al-Adabiyya ila al-ʿUlum al-ʿArabiyya (The Literary Means to the Sciences of Arabic).

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88 Ibid., 85.

89 Ibid., 74.

90 Ibid., 85.

91 Ibid., 85, 86.

92 Ibid., 74.

93 Ibid., 82.

94 Ibid., 117.

95 Ibid., 119.

96 Ibid., 121.

97 Al-Tahtawi, al-Aʿmal al-Kamila, 281.

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99 Rastegar, Literary Modernity, 77–84; El-Ariss, Arab Modernity, 19–52.

100 Gran, “Al-Tahtawi's Trip to Paris.”

101 Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 135–36.

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103 Muhammad ʿImara has published over seven books on al-Tahtawi, many of them multiple times, including a five-volume edition of al-Tahtawi's complete works.