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Source notes

The notes below are taken from the AUC Press edition of Muhammad Abduh.

Chapter 1 

  1. The two main sources for Muhammad Abduh’s life are Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), and Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944). This has been translated by Charles Wendell (Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953).
  2. The main source for Afghani’s life is Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
  3. For late pre-modern Islamic education, see Dale F. Eickelman, “The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and its Social Reproduction,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 (1978), pp. 485-516.
  4. For Risalat al-Waridat, see Oliver Scharbrodt, “The Salafiyya and Sufism: Muhammad ‘Abduh and his Risalat al-Waridat (Treatise on Mystical Inspirations),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 70 (2007), pp. 89-115.
  5. Some details on Muhammad Abduh’s early life are taken from B. Michel and Moustapha Abdel Razik, “Introduction sur la vie et les idées du Cheikh Mohammed Abdou,” introduction to Rissalat al Tawhid: exposé de la religion musulmane (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1925).
  6. For Tanta, see Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, “Tanta,” Encyclopaedia of Islam , 2nd edition.
  7. For the Madaniyya, see Josef Van Ess, “Libanesische Mizellen: 6. Die Yashrutiya,” Die Welt des Islams 16 (1975), pp. 1-103, and Fred De Jong, “Madaniyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition.
  8. For the state of education at the Azhar in the late nineteenth century, see Indira Falk Gesink, “Beyond Modernism: Opposition and Negotiation in the Azhar Reform Movement, 1870-1911” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Washington University, St. Louis, 2000).
  9. The allegation of Afghani drinking brandy and flirting with a European barmaid is to be found in Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Cass, 1966), pp. 16-18.

 

Chapter 2 

  1. The two main sources for Muhammad Abduh’s life are again Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), and Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944).
  2. For the events and personalities of these years, see F. Robert Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 1805-1879: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984) and Arthur Goldschmidt, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
  3. The English sources are Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt: Being a Personal Narrative of Events (1907; new edition, New York: H. Fertig, 1967); Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum: Being a Personal Narrative of Events in Continuation of a Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (London: Swift, 1911); and Alexander Meyrick Broadley, How we Defended Arábi and his Friends: A Story of Egypt and the Egyptians (1884; new edition, Cairo: RAPAC, 1980).
  4. For Guizot, see Larry Siedentop’s long and excellent introduction to François Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe (1864; trans. William Hazlitt, London: Penguin Books, 1997), and of course Guizot’s own book.
  5. For freemasonry, see A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh, “Afghani and Freemasonry in Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 92 (1972), p. 25-35; Karim Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt 1798-1921: A Study in Cultural and Political Encounters,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 16, no. 2 (1989), pp. 143-61; and Matthew Scanlan, “Freemasonry Serving Egypt,” Freemasonry Today 31 (Winter 2005), p. 31.
  6. For the press, see Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh, “The Emergence of Political Journalism in Egypt,” The Muslim World 70 (1980), pp. 47–55. See also Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot, “The Cartoon in Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 13, no. 1 (January 1971), pp. 2-15.
  7. For Ishaq on the Babis, see Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt’s ‘Urabi Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 143.
  8. For discussion of the possibility of assassinating the khedive, see Blunt, Secret History, p. 375. Muhammad Abduh did not deny this. Cromer was somewhat shocked. 

 

Chapter 3 

  1. For Cairo, see Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Cass, 1966).
  2. See also Alexander Meyrick Broadley, How we Defended Arábi and his Friends: A Story of Egypt and the Egyptians (1884; new edition, Cairo: RAPAC, 1980), and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt: Being a Personal Narrative of Events (1907; new edition, New York: H. Fertig, 1967).
  3. For Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya , see Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).
  4. For the Damascus Salafis, see Itzchak Weismann, “Between Sufi Reformism and Modernist Rationalism: A Reappraisal of the Origins of the Salafiyya from the Damascene Angle,” Die Welt des Islams 41 (2001), pp. 206-237.
  5. For Beirut, see Jens Hanssen, Fin de siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
  6. For Afghani and Renan, see Ernest Renan, “L’islamisme et la science,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, March 30, 1883, pp. 2-3; Jamal al-Din Afghani, Letter to the editor, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires , May 18, 1883, p. 3; Renan, Letter to the editor, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires , May 19, 1883, p. 3.
  7. For Afghani and Ahmad Khan, see Nikki Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” including a translation of the Refutation of the materialists from the original Persian by Nikki R. Keddie and Hamid Algar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 173.
  8. For the £100 and the move to Paris, Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani,” p. 213.

 

Chapter 4 

  1. For events in Paris, Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum: Being a Personal Narrative of Events in Continuation of a Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (London: Swift, 1911).
  2. For the reception of Al-Urwa al-wuthqa in India, Aziz Ahmad, “Afghani’s Indian Contacts,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 89 (1969), p. 482.
  3. On dress: for Muhammad Abduh, see Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum , p. 208. For Saad Zaghlul, see Yunan Labib Rizk, “Demise of the Red Headgear,” Al-Ahram Weekly 525 (March 15, 2001). For Afghani, “Les Anglais en Egypte,” Journal des débats, April 6, 1883, p. 2.
  4. For Muhammad Abduh and Mirza Muhammad Baqir, see Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944; trans. Charles Wendell. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953), p. 52.
  5. For Muhammad Abduh’s quote while under arrest, Alexander Meyrick Broadley, How we Defended Arábi and his Friends: A Story of Egypt and the Egyptians (1884; new edition, Cairo: RAPAC, 1980), p. 231.
  6. “Classic” interpretations of the Quran are taken from the Tafsir al-jalalayn .
  7. For Muhammad Abduh, “Nations have not fallen from their greatness...” Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 131. 

 

Chapter 5 

  1. The main source for the basic narrative of these years is Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944; Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953). Also used are Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), and Jens Hanssen, Fin de siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
  2. For the text of Risalat al-tawhid , the original edition is Muhammad Abduh, Risala al-tawhid (Cairo: Matba’a al-kubra al-amiriya, 1897). The only English translation is by Ishaq Nusa’ad and Kenneth Cragg, as The Theology of Unity (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966).
  3. For Taylor, see Thomas Prasch, “Which God for Africa: The Islamic-Christian Missionary Debate in Late-Victorian England,” Victorian Studies 33 (1989), pp. 51-73. For Muhammad Abduh and Taylor, B. Michel and Moustapha Abdel Razik, “Introduction sur la vie et les idées du Cheikh Mohammed Abdou,” introduction to Rissalat al Tawhid: exposé de la religion musulmane (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1925), pp. xlvi-xlvii, and Isaac Taylor, Leaves from an Egyptian Notebook (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1888), p.104. Michel and Moustapha Abdel Razik do not identify Taylor, and Taylor does not identify Muhammad Abduh, but even so the quotations are clearly from slightly different versions of one letter. The exchange between Muhammad Abduh and Taylor is said to have been published in the Beirut newspaper Thamarat al-Funun, but I have not seen it.
  4. See Elie Kedourie, “The Death of Adib Ishaq,” Middle Eastern Studies 9 (1973), pp. 97-98, and Marwa Elshakry, “The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late Ottoman Beirut,” Past and Present 196 (2007), pp 212-23.
  5. For Muhammad Abduh on “the interests of the Muslims,” Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh , p. 75.
  6. On who took the notes for Risalat al-tawhid: Adams, Islam and Modernism , says that notes were taken by Muhammad Abduh’s “brother,” “Hamuda Bey.” No brother of Muhammad Abduh is mentioned anywhere else, and this is probably a mistake for Sa’d al-Din Humada’s brother, Muhyi al-Din Bey Humada.
  7. For Muhammad Abduh and the Baha’is, Juan R. I. Cole, “Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida: A Dialogue on the Baha’i Faith,” World Order 15, no.s 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1981), pp. 11-12. 

 

Chapter 6 

  1. The main source for the basic narrative of these years is again Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944; Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953).
  2. For the Azhar and the mufti, see A. Chris Eccel, Egypt, Islam and Social Change: Al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation (Berlin: Schwarz, 1984), and Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State: Muftis and Fatwas of the Dar al-Ifta (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
  3. For the law, see Byron D. Cannon, “Social Tensions and the Teaching of European Law in Egypt Before 1900,” History of Education Quarterly 15, no 3 (Autumn 1975), pp. 299-315.
  4. For the khedive, see Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, Memoirs: The Last Khedive of Egypt (1940; trans. & ed. Amira Sonbol, Reading: Ithaca Press, 1988).
  5. For an unusual and interesting view of “reform,” see Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
  6. For Muhammad Abduh’s French accent and reading, Richard Gottheil, “Mohammed Abduh, Late Mufti of Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 28 (1907), p. 196.
  7. For Cromer on “the Egyptian horse,” Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt (London, 1908), p. 175. 

 

Chapter 7 

  1. The main source for the basic narrative of these years is again Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944; Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953).
  2. See also Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and Jamal Mohammed Ahmed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London: Oxford University Press, 1960).
  3. For the Azhar lectures as recorded and edited by Rida, see Tafsir al-Qur’an al-hakim al-mushtahar bi-ism Tafsir al-Manar , ed. Muhammad Rashid Rida (Cairo: Dar al-Manar, 1906-1935). For a commentary, see Jacques Jomier, Le commentaire coranique du Manar: tendances modernes d’exégèse coranique en Egypte (Paris: G. P. Maisaneuve, 1954).
  4. For Farah Antun, see Donald Malcolm Reid, The Odyssey of Farah Antun: A Syrian Christian’s Quest for Secularism (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1975).
  5. For the early history of Al-Manar, see Keddie, “'Pan-Islamism as Proto-Nationalism,” The Journal of Modern History 41, no. 1 (March, 1969), p. 218, and Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 180.
  6. For the routine fatwas, Andreas Klemke, Stiftungen im muslimischen Rechtsleben des neuzeitlichen Ägypten (Frankfurt: Heidelberger Orientalistischer Studien, 1991), pp. 109-17.
  7. For the kaum muda in Malaya, William R. Roff, “Kaum Muda - Kaum Tua: Innovation and Reaction amongst the Malays, 1900-1941,” in Papers on Malayan History , ed. K. G. Tregonning (Singapore: Journal of South-East Asian History, 1962), pp. 162-92. Roff has other interesting articles on related topics, notably “Whence cometh the Law? Dog Saliva in Kelantan, 1937,” in Shari'at and Ambiguity in South East Asian Islam , ed. Katharine Pratt Ewing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 25-42.
  8. For schooling, Linda Herrera, “Overlapping Modernities: From Christian Missionary to Muslim Reform Schooling in Egypt,” CIAO Working Paper, 2001.
  9. For Muhammad Abduh paying stipends out of his own funds: Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ‘Abduh (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 96, for the gifts; Indira Falk Gesink, “Beyond Modernism: Opposition and Negotiation in the Azhar Reform Movement, 1870-1911” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Washington University, St. Louis, 2000), p. 17, for the destination.
  10. For Muhammad Abduh on Darwin, Donald Malcolm Reid, The Odyssey of Farah Antun: A Syrian Christian’s Quest for Secularism (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1975), p. 130. 

 

Chapter 8 

  1. The main source for the basic narrative of these years is again Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944; Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953).
  2. See also Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State: Muftis and Fatwas of the Dar al-Ifta (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
  3. For Islam in south Africa, see Ibrahim Mahomed Mahida, “History of Muslims in South Africa,” South African History Online, http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/library-resources/online%20books/history-muslims/1800s.htm.
  4. Regarding Muhammad Abduh on interest: profit-share according to Skovgaard-Petersen, Defining Islam , p. 298; for 2½%, Joel Beinin, “Islamic Responses to the Capitalist Penetration of the Middle East,” in The Islamic Impulse, ed. Barbara F. Stowasser (Washington: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 89.
  5. For Muhammad Abduh on images, Robin Ostle, “Modern Egyptian Renaissance Man,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 57 (1994), p. 185.
  6. Praying with shoes on: the fatwa was described by a reliable source in Egypt, who sadly died before I could see the text of the fatwa. For Muhammad Abduh himself praying with his shoes on, Jacques Jomier, Le commentaire coranique du Manar: tendances modernes d’exégèse coranique en Egypte (Paris: G. P. Maisaneuve, 1954), pp. 100-01, quoting private information from Rashid Bey Roustem.
  7. Muhammad Abduh on Europe: quoted in Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh, p. 91. 

 

Chapter 9 

  1. The basic source for the opposition to Muhammad Abduh is Indira Falk Gesink, “Beyond Modernism: Opposition and Negotiation in the Azhar Reform Movement, 1870-1911,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Washington University, St. Louis, 2000. I would like to repeat my thanks to Indira Falk Gesink for allowing me to use her thesis.
  2. Also of use is, once again, Uthman Amin, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo: Dar ihya al-kutub al-arabiyya, 1944; Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953).
  3. Taha Husayn’s Al-ayyam is available in translation as The Days: Taha Husayn, his Autobiography in Three Parts, ed. E. H. Paxton, Hilary Wayment and Kenneth Cragg (Cairo: AUC Press, 1997).
  4. For Muhammad Abduh in Algeria, see Rachid Bencheneb, “Le séjour du sayh ‘Abduh en Algerie (1903),” Studia Islamica 53 (1981), pp. 121-35.
  5. For Léon Fahmy, Earl of Cromer, Abbas II (London: Macmillan, 1915), p. 77-79.
  6. For cholera and the hajj, Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt (London, 1908), vol. 2, pp. 179-80; Abbas Hilmi, Memoirs (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1988), p. 252; Werner Köhler and Simon P. Hardy, “Zentralblatt für Bakteriologie – 100 years ago: Early considerations of the El Tor vibrios,” International Journal of Medical Microbiology 296 (2006), pp. 334, 336; and Matthew Smallman-Raynor and Andrew D. Cliff, “The Philippines Insurrection and the 1902–4 Cholera Epidemic,” Journal of Historical Geography 24, no. 1 (January 1998), pp. 69-89.
  7. For the visit to the Sudan, Noah Salomon, “Undoing the Mahdiyya: British Colonialism as Religious Reform in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-1914,” University of Chicago Divinity School working paper, May 2004.
  8. For the khedive on Abduh, Ahmad Shafiq, Madhakkitati fi nisf qarn (Cairo: Matba’at Misr, 1963), p. 449, quoted in Mohamed Haddad, “Abduh et ses lecteurs : pour une histoire critique des lectures de M. ‘Abduh,” Arabica 45 (1998), p. 32.
  9. For Muhammad Abduh as a mason in 1901, Karim Wissa, “Freemasonry in Egypt 1798-1921: A Study in Cultural and Political Encounters,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 16, no. 2 (1989), p. 155. 

 

Chapter 10 

  1. For politics, Walid Kazziha, “The Jaridah-Ummah Group and Egyptian Politics,” Middle Eastern Studies 13 (1977), pp 373-385.
  2. For the reception of Abduh, Mohamed Haddad, “Les oeuvres de ‘Abduh : histoire d’une manipulation,” Institut de Belles Lettres Arabes (Tunis) 60 (1997), pp. 197-222 and Mohamed Haddad, “Abduh et ses lecteurs : pour une histoire critique des lectures de M. ‘Abduh,” Arabica 45 (1998), pp. 22-49.
  3. For insurance, Samir Mankabady, “Insurance and Islamic Law: The Islamic Insurance Company,” Arab Law Quarterly 4, no. 3 (August 1989), pp. 200-201.
  4. For the painting, “The School of Alexandria,” Robin Ostle, “Modern Egyptian Renaissance Man,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 57 (1994), pp. 184-92.

 

© Mark Sedgwick, 2009

Revised 28.02.2022
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Mark Sedgwick